The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark
Twain, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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Title: The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: September 20, 2004 [EBook #3200]
[Date last updated: August 5, 2005 (Pudd'nhead Wilson update)]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPLETE PG TWAIN ***
Produced by David Widger and Many Project Gutenberg Volunteers
THE ENTIRE GUTENBERG TWAIN FILES
BY MARK TWAIN (SAMUEL CLEMENS)
PG EDITOR'S NOTE:
This is a compilation of all the works of Mark Twain in the Project
Gutenberg Mark Twain collection which now has over sixty files. These
individual files have been prepared by many different Gutenberg
volunteers over a period of many years. Any of the individual works
may be found in much smaller size than this "entire" file at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
As additional works of Mark Twain become available the present file will
be updated to include them. The bibliography of Twain by Albert Bigelow
Paine has been used in organizing the major works in this collection in
the order of the date of their first publication; however many of the
short stories, speeches and other shorter works are not in chronologic
order as they were originally included as part of major works of much
different publishing date.
D.W.
CONTENTS OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG TWAIN COLLECTION
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
MARK TWAIN'S (BURLESQUE) AUTO-BIOGRAPHY
FIRST ROMANCE.
ROUGHING IT
THE GILDED AGE (with Charles Dudley Warner)
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
MY WATCH
POLITICAL ECONOMY
THE JUMPING FROG
JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE
THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY
THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY
A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE
NIAGARA
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
TO RAISE POULTRY
EXPERIENCE OF THE MCWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP
MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE
HOW THE AUTHOR WAS SOLD IN NEWARK
THE OFFICE BORE
JOHNNY GREER
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT
THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER
DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY
THE JUDGES "SPIRITED WOMAN"
INFORMATION WANTED
SOME LEARNED FABLES, FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP
A FASHION ITEM
RILEY-NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT
A FINE OLD MAN
SCIENCE vs. LUCK
THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
MR. BLOKE'S ITEM
A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
PETITION CONCERNING COPYRIGHT
AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
LIONIZING MURDERERS
A NEW CRIME
A CURIOUS DREAM
A TRUE STORY
THE SIAMESE TWINS
SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON
A GHOST STORY
THE CAPITOLINE VENUS
SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE
JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK
HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER
THE PETRIFIED MAN
MY BLOODY MASSACRE
THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT
CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS
AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN
"AFTER" JENKINS
ABOUT BARBERS
"PARTY CRIES" IN IRELAND
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECANT RESIGNATION
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
HONORED AS A CURIOSITY
FIRST INTERVIEW KITH ARTEMUS WARD
CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS
THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR "LOCALIZED"
THE WIDOW'S PROTEST
THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST
CURING A COLD
A CURIOUS PLEASURE EXCURSION
RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR
A MYSTERIOUS VISIT
THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR AND OTHER WHIMSICAL SKETCHES
THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR
A MEMORY
INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA".
ABOUT SMELLS
A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES
DAN MURPHY
THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870
CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE
A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS
A ROYAL COMPLIMENT
THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC
THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE
OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC
THE EUROPEAN WAR
THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED
LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN
1601--CONVERSATION AT THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE OF THE TUDORS
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CONNECTICUT
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON AND OTHER STORIES
THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON
ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING
ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE
THE GRATEFUL POODLE
THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR
THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND
PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH
THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN
THE CANVASSER'S TALE
AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER
PARIS NOTES
LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY
SPEECH ON THE BABIES
SPEECH ON THE WEATHER
CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE
ROGERS
SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION
THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT
A TRAMP ABROAD
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY
IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
FENNIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
TOM SAWYER ABROAD
THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON
THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR, A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG AND OTHER STORIES
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG
MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT
THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN'S ROMANCE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY
IS HE LIVING OR IS HE DEAD?
MY DEBUT AS A LITERARY PERSON
AT THE APPETITE-CURE
CONCERNING THE JEWS
FROM THE 'LONDON TIMES' OF 1904
ABOUT PLAY-ACTING
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
LUCK
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
STIRRING TIMES IN AUSTRIA
MEISTERSCHAFT
MY BOYHOOD DREAMS
TO THE ABOVE OLD PEOPLE
IN MEMORIAM--OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS
WHAT IS MAN AND OTHER ESSAYS
WHAT IS MAN?
THE DEATH OF JEAN
THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY
SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY
AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET
AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY
CONCERNING TOBACCO
TAMING THE BICYCLE
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER AND OTHER STORIES
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER
A FABLE
HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY
THE McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM
A DOUBLE BARRELED DETECTIVE
THE $30,000 BEQUEST AND OTHER STORIES
THE $30,000 BEQUEST
A DOG'S TALE
WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?
A CURE FOR THE BLUES
THE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE TRIUMPHANT
THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE
A HELPLESS SITUATION
A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION
EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE
THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE
THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES
ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER
ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR
A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY
HOW TO TELL A STORY
GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT
WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE "TWO-YEAR-OLDS"
AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE
A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
AMENDED OBITUARIES
A MONUMENT TO ADAM
A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN
INTRODUCTION TO "THE NEW GUIDE OF THE
CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH"
ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS
POST-MORTEM POETRY
THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED
PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III
DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?
EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY
EVE'S DIARY
A HORSE'S TALE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
EXTRACT FROM CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING
GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN
HOW TO TELL A STORY AND OTHER STORIES
HOW TO TELL A STORY
THE WOUNDED SOLDIER
THE GOLDEN ARM
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN
THE INVALIDS STORY
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
THE STORY OF A SPEECH
PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS
COMPLIMENTS AND DEGREES
BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND HATS
DEDICATION SPEECH
DIE SCHRECKEN DER DEUTSCHEN SPRACHE.
THE HORRORS OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE
GERMAN FOR THE HUNGARIANS
A NEW GERMAN WORD
UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM
THE WEATHER
THE BABIES
OUR CHILDREN AND GREAT DISCOVERIES
EDUCATING THEATRE-GOERS
THE EDUCATIONAL THEATRE
POETS AS POLICEMEN
PUDD'NHEAD WILSON DRAMATIZED
DALY THEATRE
THE DRESS OF CIVILIZED WOMAN
DRESS REFORM AND COPYRIGHT
COLLEGE GIRLS
GIRLS
THE LADIES
WOMAN'S PRESS CLUB
VOTES FOR WOMEN
WOMAN-AN OPINION
ADVICE TO GIRLS
TAXES AND MORALS
TAMMANY AND CROKER
MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT
CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES
THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL MORALS
LAYMAN'S SERMON
UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT SOCIETY
PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
EDUCATION AND CITIZENSHIP
COURAGE
THE DINNER TO MR. CHOATE
ON STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE
HENRY M. STANLEY
DINNER TO MR. JEROME
HENRY IRVING
DINNER TO HAMILTON W. MABIE
INTRODUCING NYE AND RILEY
DINNER TO WHITELAW REID
ROGERS AND RAILROADS
THE OLD-FASHIONED PRINTER
SOCIETY OF AMERICAN AUTHORS
READING-ROOM OPENING
LITERATURE
DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE
THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB DINNER
THE ALPHABET AND SIMPLIFIED SPELLING
SPELLING AND PICTURES
BOOKS AND BURGLARS
AUTHORS' CLUB
BOOKSELLERS
"MARK TWAIN's FIRST APPEARANCE"
MORALS AND MEMORY
QUEEN VICTORIA
JOAN OF ARC
ACCIDENT INSURANCE--ETC.
OSTEOPATHY
WATER-SUPPLY
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
CATS AND CANDY
OBITUARY POETRY
CIGARS AND TOBACCO
BILLIARDS
THE UNION RIGHT OR WRONG?
AN IDEAL FRENCH ADDRESS
STATISTICS
GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
CHARITY AND ACTORS
RUSSIAN REPUBLIC
RUSSIAN SUFFERERS
WATTERSON AND TWAIN AS REBELS
ROBERT FULTON FUND
FULTON DAY, JAMESTOWN
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN
COPYRIGHT
IN AID OF THE BLIND
DR. MARK TWAIN, FARMEOPATH
MISSOURI UNIVERSITY SPEECH
BUSINESS
CARNEGIE THE BENEFACTOR
ON POETRY, VERACITY, AND SUICIDE
WELCOME HOME
AN UNDELIVERED SPEECH
SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY
TO THE WHITEFRIARS
THE ASCOT GOLD CUP
THE SAVAGE CLUB DINNER
GENERAL MILES AND THE DOG
WHEN IN DOUBT, TELL THE TRUTH
THE DAY WE CELEBRATE
INDEPENDENCE DAY
AMERICANS AND THE ENGLISH
ABOUT LONDON
PRINCETON
THE ST. LOUIS HARBOR-BOAT "MARK TWAIN"
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY
MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 1853-1910
ARRANGED WITH COMMENT BY ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
THE COMPLETE PROJECT GUTENBERG MARK TWAIN
INNOCENTS ABROAD
by Mark Twain
[From an 1869--1st Edition]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
Popular Talk of the Excursion--Programme of the Trip--Duly Ticketed for
the Excursion--Defection of the Celebrities
CHAPTER II.
Grand Preparations--An Imposing Dignitary--The European Exodus
--Mr. Blucher's Opinion--Stateroom No. 10--The Assembling of the Clans
--At Sea at Last
CHAPTER III.
"Averaging" the Passengers--Far, far at Sea.--Tribulation among the
Patriarchs--Seeking Amusement under Difficulties--Five Captains in the
Ship
CHAPTER IV.
The Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated--Pilgrim Life at Sea
--"Horse-Billiards"--The "Synagogue"--The Writing School--Jack's "Journal"
--The "Q. C. Club"--The Magic Lantern--State Ball on Deck--Mock Trials
--Charades--Pilgrim Solemnity--Slow Music--The Executive Officer Delivers
an Opinion
CHAPTER V.
Summer in Mid-Atlantic--An Eccentric Moon--Mr. Blucher Loses Confidence
--The Mystery of "Ship Time"--The Denizens of the Deep--"Land Hoh"
--The First Landing on a Foreign Shore--Sensation among the Natives
--Something about the Azores Islands--Blucher's Disastrous Dinner
--The Happy Result
CHAPTER VI.
Solid Information--A Fossil Community--Curious Ways and Customs
--JesuitHumbuggery--Fantastic Pilgrimizing--Origin of the Russ Pavement
--Squaring Accounts with the Fossils--At Sea Again
CHAPTER VII.
A Tempest at Night--Spain and Africa on Exhibition--Greeting a Majestic
Stranger--The Pillars of Hercules--The Rock of Gibraltar--Tiresome
Repetition--"The Queen's Chair"--Serenity Conquered--Curiosities of
the Secret Caverns--Personnel of Gibraltar--Some Odd Characters
--A Private Frolic in Africa--Bearding a Moorish Garrison (without loss
of life)--Vanity Rebuked--Disembarking in the Empire of Morocco
CHAPTER VIII.
The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco--Strange Sights--A Cradle of
Antiquity--We become Wealthy--How they Rob the Mail in Africa--The Danger
of being Opulent in Morocco
CHAPTER IX.
A Pilgrim--in Deadly Peril--How they Mended the Clock--Moorish
Punishments for Crime--Marriage Customs--Looking Several ways for Sunday
--Shrewd, Practice of Mohammedan Pilgrims--Reverence for Cats--Bliss of
being a Consul-General
CHAPTER X.
Fourth of July at Sea--Mediterranean Sunset--The "Oracle" is Delivered
of an Opinion--Celebration Ceremonies--The Captain's Speech--France in
Sight--The Ignorant Native--In Marseilles--Another Blunder--Lost in
the Great City--Found Again--A Frenchy Scene
CHAPTER XI.
Getting used to it--No Soap--Bill of Fare, Table d'hote--"An American
Sir"--A Curious Discovery--The "Pilgrim" Bird--Strange Companionship
--A Grave of the Living--A Long Captivity--Some of Dumas' Heroes--Dungeon
of the Famous "Iron Mask."
CHAPTXR XII.
A Holiday Flight through France--Summer Garb of the Landscape--Abroad
on the Great Plains--Peculiarities of French Cars--French Politeness
American Railway Officials--"Twenty Mnutes to Dinner!"--Why there
are no Accidents--The "Old Travellers"--Still on the Wing--Paris at
Last----French Order and Quiet--Place of the Bastile--Seeing the Sights
--A Barbarous Atrocity--Absurd Billiards
CHAPTER XIII.
More Trouble--Monsieur Billfinger--Re-Christening the Frenchman--In the
Clutches of a Paris Guide--The International Exposition--Fine Military
Review--Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of Turkey
CHAPTER XIV.
The Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame--Jean Sanspeur's Addition
--Treasures and Sacred Relics--The Legend of the Cross--The Morgue--The
Outrageious 'Can-Can'--Blondin Aflame--The Louvre Palace--The Great Park
--Showy Pageantry--Preservation of Noted Things
CHAPTER XV.
French National Burying--Ground--Among the Great Dead--The Shrine of
Disappointed Love--The Story of Abelard and Heloise--"English Spoken
Here"--"American Drinks Compounded Here"--Imperial Honors to an
American--The Over-estimated Grisette--Departure from Paris--A Deliberate
Opinion Concerning the Comeliness of American Women
CHAPTER XVI.
Versailles--Paradise Regained--A Wonderful Park--Paradise Lost
--Napoleonic Strategy
CHAPTER XVII.
War--The American Forces Victorious--" Home Again"--Italy in Sight
The "City of Palaces"--Beauty of the Genoese Women--The "Stub-Hunters"
--Among the Palaces--Gifted Guide--Church Magnificence--"Women not
Admitted"--How the Genoese Live--Massive Architecture--A Scrap of Ancient
History--Graves for 60,000
CHAPTER XVIII.
Flying Through Italy--Marengo--First Glimpse of the Famous Cathedral
--Description of some of its Wonders--A Horror Carved in Stone----An
Unpleasant Adventure--A Good Man--A Sermon from the Tomb--Tons of Gold
and Silver--Some More Holy Relics--Solomon's Temple
CHAPTER XIX
"Do You Wiz zo Haut can be?"--La Scala--Petrarch and Laura--Lucrezia
Borgia--Ingenious Frescoes--Ancient Roman Amphitheatre--A Clever
Delusion--Distressing Billiards--The Chief Charm of European Life--An
Italian Bath--Wanted: Soap--Crippled French--Mutilated English--The Most
Celebrated Painting in the World--Amateur Raptures--Uninspired Critics
--Anecdote--A Wonderful Echo--A Kiss for a Franc
CHAPTER XX
Rural Italy by Rail--Fumigated, According to Law--The Sorrowing
Englishman--Night by the Lake of Como--The Famous Lake--Its Scenery
--Como compared with Tahoe--Meeting a Shipmate
CHAPTER XXI.
The Pretty Lago di Lecco--A Carriage Drive in the Country--Astonishing
Sociability in a Coachman--Sleepy Land--Bloody Shrines--The Heart and
Home of Priestcraft--A Thrilling Mediaeval Romance--The Birthplace of
Harlequin--Approaching Venice
CHAPTER XXII.
Night in Venice--The "Gay Gondolier"--The Grand Fete by Moonlight
--The Notable Sights of Venice--The Mother of the Republics Desolate
CHANTER XXIII.
The Famous Gondola--The Gondola in an Unromantic Aspect--The Great Square
of St. Mark and the Winged Lion--Snobs, at Home and Abroad--Sepulchres of
the Great Dead--A Tilt at the "Old Masters"--A Contraband Guide
--The Conspiracy--Moving Again
CHAPTER XXIV.
Down Through Italy by Rail--Idling in Florence--Dante and Galileo--An
Ungrateful City--Dazzling Generosity--Wonderful Mosaics--The Historical
Arno--Lost Again--Found Again, but no Fatted Calf Ready--The Leaning
Tower of Pisa--The Ancient Duomo--The Old Original First Pendulum that
Ever Swung--An Enchanting Echo--A New Holy Sepulchre--A Relic of
Antiquity--A Fallen Republic--At Leghorn--At Home Again, and Satisfied,
on Board the Ship--Our Vessel an Object of Grave Suspicion--Garibaldi
Visited--Threats of Quarantine
CHAPTER XXV.
The Works of Bankruptcy--Railway Grandeur--How to Fill an Empty
Treasury--The Sumptuousness of Mother Church--Ecclesiastical Splendor
--Magnificence and Misery--General Execration--More Magnificence
A Good Word for the Priests--Civita Vecchia the Dismal--Off for Rome
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Modern Roman on His Travels--The Grandeur of St. Peter's--Holy Relics
--Grand View from the Dome--The Holy Inquisition--Interesting Old Monkish
Frauds--The Ruined Coliseum--The Coliseum in the Days of its Prime
--Ancient Playbill of a Coliseum Performance--A Roman Newspaper Criticism
1700 Years Old
CHAPTER XXVII.
"Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday"--The Man who Never Complained
--An Exasperating Subject--Asinine Guides--The Roman Catacombs
The Saint Whose Fervor Burst his Ribs--The Miracle of the Bleeding Heart
--The Legend of Ara Coeli
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Picturesque Horrors--The Legend of Brother Thomas--Sorrow Scientifically
Analyzed--A Festive Company of the Dead--The Great Vatican Museum
Artist Sins of Omission--The Rape of the Sabines--Papal Protection of
Art--High Price of "Old Masters"--Improved Scripture--Scale of Rank
of the Holy Personages in Rome--Scale of Honors Accorded Them
--Fossilizing--Away for Naples
CHAPTER XXIX.
Naples--In Quarantine at Last--Annunciation--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius--A
Two Cent Community--The Black Side of Neapolitan Character--Monkish
Miracles--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Stranger and the
Hackman--Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side---Ascent of Mount
Vesuvius Continued
CHAPTER XXX.
Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--Beautiful View at Dawn--Less
Beautiful in the Back Streets--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--Dwellings a
Hundred Feet High--A Motley Procession--Bill of Fare for a Peddler's
Breakfast--Princely Salaries--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--An Average of
Prices--The wonderful "Blue Grotto"--Visit to Celebrated Localities in
the Bay of Naples--The Poisoned "Grotto of the Dog"--A Petrified Sea of
Lava--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Summit Reached--Description
of the Crater--Descent of Vesuvius
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Buried City of Pompeii--How Dwellings Appear that have been
Unoccupied for Eighteen hundred years--The Judgment Seat--Desolation--The
Footprints of the Departed--"No Women Admitted"--Theatres, Bakeshops,
Schools--Skeletons preserved by the Ashes and Cinders--The Brave Martyr
to Duty--Rip Van Winkle--The Perishable Nature of Fame
CHAPTER XXXII.
At Sea Once More--The Pilgrims all Well--Superb Stromboli--Sicily by
Moonlight--Scylla and Charybdis--The "Oracle" at Fault--Skirting the
Isles of Greece Ancient Athens--Blockaded by Quarantine and Refused
Permission to Enter--Running the Blockade--A Bloodless Midnight
Adventure--Turning Robbers from Necessity--Attempt to Carry the Acropolis
by Storm--We Fail--Among the Glories of the Past--A World of Ruined
Sculpture--A Fairy Vision--Famous Localities--Retreating in Good Order
--Captured by the Guards--Travelling in Military State--Safe on Board
Again
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Modern Greece--Fallen Greatness--Sailing Through the Archipelago and the
Dardanelles--Footprints of History--The First Shoddy Contractor of whom
History gives any Account--Anchored Before Constantinople--Fantastic
Fashions--The Ingenious Goose-Rancher--Marvelous Cripples--The Great
Mosque--The Thousand and One Columns--The Grand Bazaar of Stamboul
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Scarcity of Morals and Whiskey--Slave-Girl Market Report--Commercial
Morality at a Discount--The Slandered Dogs of Constantinople
--Questionable Delights of Newspaperdom in Turkey--Ingenious Italian
Journalism--No More Turkish Lunches Desired--The Turkish Bath Fraud
--The Narghileh Fraud--Jackplaned by a Native--The Turkish Coffee Fraud
CHAPTER XXXV.
Sailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea--"Far-Away Moses"
--Melancholy Sebastopol--Hospitably Received in Russia--Pleasant English
People--Desperate Fighting--Relic Hunting--How Travellers Form "Cabinets"
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Nine Thousand Miles East--Imitation American Town in Russia--Gratitude
that Came Too Late--To Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Summer Home of Royalty--Practising for the Dread Ordeal--Committee on
Imperial Address--Reception by the Emperor and Family--Dresses of the
Imperial Party--Concentrated Power--Counting the Spoons--At the Grand
Duke's--A Charming Villa--A Knightly Figure--The Grand Duchess--A Grand
Ducal Breakfast--Baker's Boy, the Famine-Breeder--Theatrical Monarchs a
Fraud--Saved as by Fire--The Governor--General's Visit to the Ship
--Official "Style"--Aristocratic Visitors--"Munchausenizing" with Them
--Closing Ceremonies
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Return to Constantinople--We Sail for Asia--The Sailors Burlesque the
Imperial Visitors--Ancient Smyrna--The "Oriental Splendor" Fraud
--The "Biblical Crown of Life"--Pilgrim Prophecy-Savans--Sociable
Armenian Girls--A Sweet Reminiscence--"The Camels are Coming, Ha-ha!"
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Smyrna's Lions--The Martyr Polycarp--The "Seven Churches"--Remains of the
Six Smyrnas--Mysterious Oyster Mine Oysters--Seeking Scenery--A Millerite
Tradition--A Railroad Out of its Sphere
CHAPTER XL.
Journeying Toward Ancient Ephesus--Ancient Ayassalook--The Villanous
Donkey--A Fantastic Procession--Bygone Magnificence--Fragments of
History--The Legend of the Seven Sleepers
CHAPTER XLI.
Vandalism Prohibited--Angry Pilgrims--Approaching Holy Land!--The "Shrill
Note of Preparation"--Distress About Dragomans and Transportation
--The "Long Route" Adopted--In Syria--Something about Beirout--A Choice
Specimen of a Greek "Ferguson"--Outfits--Hideous Horseflesh--Pilgrim
"Style"--What of Aladdin's Lamp?
CHAPTER XLII.
"Jacksonville," in the Mountains of Lebanon--Breakfasting above a Grand
Panorama--The Vanished City--The Peculiar Steed, "Jericho"--The Pilgrims
Progress--Bible Scenes--Mount Hermon, Joshua's Battle Fields, etc.
--The Tomb of Noah--A Most Unfortunate People
CHAPTER XLIII.
Patriarchal Customs--Magnificent Baalbec--Description of the Ruins
--Scribbling Smiths and Joneses--Pilgrim Fidelity to the Letter of the Law
--The Revered Fountain of Baalam's Ass
CHAPTER XLIV.
Extracts from Note-Book--Mahomet's Paradise and the Bible's--Beautiful
Damascus the Oldest City on Earth--Oriental Scenes within the Curious Old
City--Damascus Street Car--The Story of St. Paul--The "Street called
Straight"--Mahomet's Tomb and St. George's--The Christian Massacre
--Mohammedan Dread of Pollution--The House of Naaman
--The Horrors of Leprosy
CHAPTER XLV.
The Cholera by way of Variety--Hot--Another Outlandish Procession--Pen
and-Ink Photograph of "Jonesborough," Syria--Tomb of Nimrod, the Mighty
Hunter--The Stateliest Ruin of All--Stepping over the Borders of
Holy-Land--Bathing in the Sources of Jordan--More "Specimen" Hunting
--Ruins of Cesarea--Philippi--"On This Rock Will I Build my Church"--The
People the Disciples Knew--The Noble Steed "Baalbec"--Sentimental Horse
Idolatry of the Arabs
CHAPTER XLVI.
Dan--Bashan--Genessaret--A Notable Panorama--Smallness of Palestine
--Scraps of History--Character of the Country--Bedouin Shepherds--Glimpses
of the Hoary Past--Mr. Grimes's Bedouins--A Battle--Ground of Joshua
--That Soldier's Manner of Fighting--Barak's Battle--The Necessity of
Unlearning Some Things--Desolation
CHAPTER XLVII.
"Jack's Adventure"--Joseph's Pit--The Story of Joseph--Joseph's
Magnanimity and Esau's--The Sacred Lake of Genessaret--Enthusiasm of the
Pilgrims--Why We did not Sail on Galilee--About Capernaum--Concerning the
Saviour's Brothers and Sisters--Journeying toward Magdela
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Curious Specimens of Art and Architecture--Public Reception of the
Pilgrims--Mary Magdalen's House--Tiberias and its Queer Inhabitants
--The Sacred Sea of Galilee--Galilee by Night
CHAPTER XLIX.
The Ancient Baths--Ye Apparition--A Distinguished Panorama--The Last
Battle of the Crusades--The Story of the Lord of Kerak--Mount Tabor
--What one Sees from its Top--Memory of a Wonderful Garden--The House of
Deborah the Prophetess
CHAPTER L.
Toward Nazareth--Bitten By a Camel--Grotto of the Annunciation, Nazareth
--Noted Grottoes in General--Joseph's Workshop--A Sacred Bowlder
--The Fountain of the Virgin--Questionable Female Beauty
--Literary Curiosities
CHAPTER LI.
Boyhood of the Saviour--Unseemly Antics of Sober Pilgrims--Home of the
Witch of Endor--Nain--Profanation--A Popular Oriental Picture--Biblical
Metaphors Becoming steadily More Intelligible--The Shuuem Miracle
--The "Free Son of The Desert"--Ancient Jezrael--Jehu's Achievements
--Samaria and its Famous Siege
CHAPTER LII
Curious Remnant of the Past--Shechem--The Oldest "First Family" on Earth
--The Oldest Manuscript Extant--The Genuine Tomb of Joseph--Jacob's Well
--Shiloh--Camping with the Arabs--Jacob's Ladder--More Desolation
--Ramah, Beroth, the Tomb of Samuel, The Fountain of Beira--Impatience
--Approaching Jerusalem--The Holy City in Sight--Noting Its Prominent
Features--Domiciled Within the Sacred Walls
CHAPTER LIII.
"The Joy of the Whole Earth"--Description of Jerusalem--Church of the
Holy Sepulchre--The Stone of Unction--The Grave of Jesus--Graves of
Nicodemus and Joseph of Armattea--Places of the Apparition--The Finding
of the There Crosses----The Legend--Monkish Impostures--The Pillar of
Flagellation--The Place of a Relic--Godfrey's Sword--"The Bonds of
Christ"--"The Center of the Earth"--Place whence the Dust was taken of
which Adam was Made--Grave of Adam--The Martyred Soldier--The Copper
Plate that was on the Cross--The Good St. Helena--Place of the Division
of the Garments--St. Dimas, the Penitent Thief--The Late Emperor
Maximilian's Contribution--Grotto wherein the Crosses were Found, and the
Nails, and the Crown of Thorns--Chapel of the Mocking--Tomb of
Melchizedek--Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders--The Place of the
Crucifixion
CHAPTER LIV.
The "Sorrowful Way"--The Legend of St. Veronica's Handkerchief
--An Illustrious Stone--House of the Wandering Jew--The Tradition of the
Wanderer--Solomon's Temple--Mosque of Omar--Moslem Traditions--"Women not
Admitted"--The Fate of a Gossip--Turkish Sacred Relics--Judgment Seat of
David and Saul--Genuine Precious Remains of Solomon's Temple--Surfeited
with Sights--The Pool of Siloam--The Garden of Gethsemane and Other
Sacred Localities
CHAPTER LV.
Rebellion in the Camp--Charms of Nomadic Life--Dismal Rumors--En Route
for Jericho and The Dead Sea--Pilgrim Strategy--Bethany and the Dwelling
of Lazarus--"Bedouins!"--Ancient Jericho--Misery--The Night March
--The Dead Sea--An Idea of What a "Wilderness" in Palestine is--The Holy
hermits of Mars Saba--Good St. Saba--Women not Admitted--Buried from the
World for all Time--Unselfish Catholic Benevolence--Gazelles--The Plain
of the Shepherds--Birthplace of the Saviour, Bethlehem--Church of the
Nativity--Its Hundred Holy Places--The Famous "Milk" Grotto--Tradition
--Return to Jerusalem--Exhausted
CHAPTER LVI.
Departure from Jerusalem--Samson--The Plain of Sharon--Arrival at Joppa
--Horse of Simon the Tanner--The Long Pilgrimage Ended--Character of
Palestine Scenery--The Curse
CHAPTER LVII.
The Happiness of being at Sea once more--"Home" as it is in a Pleasure
Ship--"Shaking Hands" with the Vessel--Jack in Costume--His Father's
Parting Advice--Approaching Egypt--Ashore in Alexandria--A Deserved
Compliment for the Donkeys--Invasion of the Lost Tribes of America--End
of the Celebrated "Jaffa Colony"--Scenes in Grand Cairo--Shepheard's
Hotel Contrasted with a Certain American Hotel--Preparing for the
Pyramids
CHAPTER LVIII.
"Recherche" Donkeys--A Wild Ride--Specimens of Egyptian Modesty--Moses in
the Bulrushes--Place where the Holy Family Sojourned--Distant view of the
Pyramids--A Nearer View--The Ascent--Superb View from the top of the
Pyramid--"Backsheesh! Backsheesh!"--An Arab Exploit--In the Bowels of the
Pyramid--Strategy--Reminiscence of "Holiday's Hill"--Boyish Exploit--The
Majestic Sphynx--Things the Author will not Tell--Grand Old Egypt
CHAPTER LIX.
Going Home--A Demoralized Note-Book--A Boy's Diary--Mere Mention of Old
Spain--Departure from Cadiz--A Deserved Rebuke--The Beautiful Madeiras
--Tabooed--In the Delightful Bermudas--An English Welcome--Good-by to
"Our Friends the Bermudians"--Packing Trunks for Home--Our First
Accident--The Long Cruise Drawing to a Close--At Home--Amen
CHAPTER LX.
Thankless Devotion--A Newspaper Valedictory--Conclusion
PREFACE
This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a
solemn scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that
profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper
to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it
is only a record of a pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is to suggest to
the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked
at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in
those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how
he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea--other books do
that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need.
I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of
travel-writing that may be charged against me--for I think I have seen with
impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly, whether
wisely or not.
In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the
Daily Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal
having waived their rights and given me the necessary permission. I have
also inserted portions of several letters written for the New York
Tribune and the New York Herald.
THE AUTHOR.
SAN FRANCISCO.
CHAPTER I.
For months the great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land was
chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America and discussed at
countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions--its like
had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which
attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic
scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam
ferry--boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up
some obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves
out with a long summer day's laborious frolicking under the impression
that it was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying
and cannon pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in
many a strange clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to
sail for months over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean;
they were to scamper about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts
and laughter--or read novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks,
or watch for the jelly-fish and the nautilus over the side, and the
shark, the whale, and other strange monsters of the deep; and at night
they were to dance in the open air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a
ballroom that stretched from horizon to horizon, and was domed by the
bending heavens and lighted by no meaner lamps than the stars and the
magnificent moon--dance, and promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make
love, and search the skies for constellations that never associate with
the "Big Dipper" they were so tired of; and they were to see the ships of
twenty navies--the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples--the
great cities of half a world--they were to hob-nob with nobility and hold
friendly converse with kings and princes, grand moguls, and the anointed
lords of mighty empires! It was a brave conception; it was the offspring
of a most ingenious brain. It was well advertised, but it hardly needed
it: the bold originality, the extraordinary character, the seductive
nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked comment everywhere
and advertised it in every household in the land. Who could read the
program of the excursion without longing to make one of the party? I will
insert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this book,
nothing could be better:
EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT,
THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST.
BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867
The undersigned will make an excursion as above during the coming
season, and begs to submit to you the following programme:
A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and capable of
accommodating at least one hundred and fifty cabin passengers, will
be selected, in which will be taken a select company, numbering not
more than three-fourths of the ship's capacity. There is good
reason to believe that this company can be easily made up in this
immediate vicinity, of mutual friends and acquaintances.
The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort,
including library and musical instruments.
An experienced physician will be on board.
Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant route will
be taken across the Atlantic, and passing through the group of
Azores, St. Michael will be reached in about ten days. A day or two
will be spent here, enjoying the fruit and wild scenery of these
islands, and the voyage continued, and Gibraltar reached in three or
four days.
A day or two will be spent here in looking over the wonderful
subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit these galleries
being readily obtained.
From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and France,
Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here ample time will be
given not only to look over the city, which was founded six hundred
years before the Christian era, and its artificial port, the finest
of the kind in the Mediterranean, but to visit Paris during the
Great Exhibition; and the beautiful city of Lyons, lying
intermediate, from the heights of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc
and the Alps can be distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to
extend the time at Paris can do so, and, passing down through
Switzerland, rejoin the steamer at Genoa.
From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The excursionists
will have an opportunity to look over this, the "magnificent city of
palaces," and visit the birthplace of Columbus, twelve miles off,
over a beautiful road built by Napoleon I. From this point,
excursions may be made to Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to
Milan, Verona (famous for its extraordinary fortifications), Padua,
and Venice. Or, if passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for
Correggio's frescoes) and Bologna, they can by rail go on to
Florence, and rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending about
three weeks amid the cities most famous for art in Italy.
From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the coast in one
night, and time appropriated to this point in which to visit
Florence, its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its cathedral and
"Leaning Tower," and Lucca and its baths, and Roman amphitheater;
Florence, the most remote, being distant by rail about sixty miles.
From Leghorn to Naples (calling at Civita Vecchia to land any who
may prefer to go to Rome from that point), the distance will be made
in about thirty-six hours; the route will lay along the coast of
Italy, close by Caprera, Elba, and Corsica. Arrangements have been
made to take on board at Leghorn a pilot for Caprera, and, if
practicable, a call will be made there to visit the home of
Garibaldi.
Rome [by rail], Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Vergil's tomb, and
possibly the ruins of Paestum can be visited, as well as the
beautiful surroundings of Naples and its charming bay.
The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful
city of Sicily, which will be reached in one night from Naples. A
day will be spent here, and leaving in the evening, the course will
be taken towards Athens.
Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the
group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania, both
active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with "Scylla" on
the one hand and "Charybdis" on the other, along the east coast of
Sicily, and in sight of Mount Etna, along the south coast of Italy,
the west and south coast of Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up
Athens Gulf, and into the Piraeus, Athens will be reached in two and
a half or three days. After tarrying here awhile, the Bay of
Salamis will be crossed, and a day given to Corinth, whence the
voyage will be continued to Constantinople, passing on the way
through the Grecian Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the Sea of
Marmora, and the mouth of the Golden Horn, and arriving in about
forty-eight hours from Athens.
After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out through
the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to Sebastopol and
Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours. Here it is proposed to
remain two days, visiting the harbors, fortifications, and
battlefields of the Crimea; thence back through the Bosphorus,
touching at Constantinople to take in any who may have preferred to
remain there; down through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles,
along the coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which
will be reached in two or two and a half days from Constantinople.
A sufficient stay will be made here to give opportunity of visiting
Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.
From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay through the
Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of Patmos, along the coast
of Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the Isle of Cyprus. Beirut will be
reached in three days. At Beirut time will be given to visit
Damascus; after which the steamer will proceed to Joppa.
From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias,
Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of interest in the
Holy Land can be visited, and here those who may have preferred to
make the journey from Beirut through the country, passing through
Damascus, Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria, and by the River Jordan and
Sea of Tiberias, can rejoin the steamer.
Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be
Alexandria, which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The ruins
of Caesar's Palace, Pompey's Pillar, Cleopatra's Needle, the
Catacombs, and ruins of ancient Alexandria will be found worth the
visit. The journey to Cairo, one hundred and thirty miles by rail,
can be made in a few hours, and from which can be visited the site
of ancient Memphis, Joseph's Granaries, and the Pyramids.
From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling at
Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), and Palma (in Majorca), all
magnificent harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding in fruits.
A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma in the
evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next morning. A few
days will be spent in this, the finest city of Spain.
From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued, skirting
along the coast of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena, Palos, and Malaga
will be passed but a mile or two distant, and Gibraltar reached in
about twenty-four hours.
A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage continued to
Madeira, which will be reached in about three days. Captain
Marryatt writes: "I do not know a spot on the globe which so much
astonishes and delights upon first arrival as Madeira." A stay of
one or two days will be made here, which, if time permits, may be
extended, and passing on through the islands, and probably in sight
of the Peak of Teneriffe, a southern track will be taken, and the
Atlantic crossed within the latitudes of the northeast trade winds,
where mild and pleasant weather, and a smooth sea, can always be
expected.
A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this route
homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from Madeira, and
after spending a short time with our friends the Bermudians, the
final departure will be made for home, which will be reached in
about three days.
Already, applications have been received from parties in Europe
wishing to join the Excursion there.
The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists, if
sick, will be surrounded by kind friends, and have all possible
comfort and sympathy.
Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named in the
program, such ports will be passed, and others of interest
substituted.
The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each adult
passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables apportioned
in the order in which passages are engaged; and no passage
considered engaged until ten percent of the passage money is
deposited with the treasurer.
Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports, if
they desire, without additional expense, and all boating at the
expense of the ship.
All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the most
perfect arrangements be made for starting at the appointed time.
Applications for passage must be approved by the committee before
tickets are issued, and can be made to the undersigned.
Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers
during the voyage, may be brought home in the steamer free of
charge.
Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair
calculation to make for all traveling expenses onshore and at the
various points where passengers may wish to leave the steamer for
days at a time.
The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by unanimous vote
of the passengers.
CHAS. C. DUNCAN, 117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK R. R. G******,
Treasurer
Committee on Applications J. T. H*****, ESQ. R. R. G*****,
ESQ. C. C. Duncan
Committee on Selecting Steamer CAPT. W. W. S* * * *, Surveyor
for Board of Underwriters
C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada J. T.
H*****, Esq. C. C. DUNCAN
P.S.--The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel steamship
"Quaker City" has been chartered for the occasion, and will leave
New York June 8th. Letters have been issued by the government
commending the party to courtesies abroad.
What was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly
irresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris,
England, Scotland, Switzerland, Italy--Garibaldi! The Grecian
Archipelago! Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and
"our friends the Bermudians"! People in Europe desiring to join the
excursion--contagious sickness to be avoided--boating at the expense of
the ship--physician on board--the circuit of the globe to be made if the
passengers unanimously desired it--the company to be rigidly selected by
a pitiless "Committee on Applications"--the vessel to be as rigidly
selected by as pitiless a "Committee on Selecting Steamer." Human nature
could not withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the
treasurer's office and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that
a few vacant staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal
examination into my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred
to all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who
would be least likely to know anything about me.
Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the
Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then
paid the balance of my passage money.
I was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an
excursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to
the novelty of being "select."
This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to provide
themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the ship, with
saddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for
Egypt, and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy
Land. Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship's library
would afford a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if
each passenger would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and
some standard works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted
chiefly of books relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part
of the excursion and seemed to be its main feature.
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition, but
urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other
passengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared
more willingly. Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party
also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular
actress had entered her name on the ship's books, but something
interfered and she couldn't go. The "Drummer Boy of the Potomac"
deserted, and lo, we had never a celebrity left!
However, we were to have a "battery of guns" from the Navy Department (as
per advertisement) to be used in answering royal salutes; and the
document furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make
"General Sherman and party" welcome guests in the courts and camps of the
old world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I
think, were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions.
However, had not we the seductive program still, with its Paris, its
Constantinople, Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and "our friends the
Bermudians?" What did we care?
CHAPTER II.
Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street
to inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was coming
on, how additions to the passenger list were averaging, how many people
the committee were decreeing not "select" every day and banishing in
sorrow and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little
printing press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was
glad to learn that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to
be the best instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I
was proud to observe that among our excursionists were three ministers of
the gospel, eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military
and naval chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of "Professors"
of various kinds, and a gentleman who had "COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA" thundering after his name
in one awful blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take rather a
back seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material that
would alone be permitted to pass through the camel's eye of that
committee on credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing
array of military and naval heroes and to have to set that back seat
still further back in consequence of it maybe; but I state frankly that I
was all unprepared for this crusher.
I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said
that if that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must
--but that to my thinking, when the United States considered it necessary
to send a dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in
better taste, and safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections
in several ships.
Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and that
his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting of
seeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar bullfrogs
for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the Smithsonian
Institute, I would have felt so much relieved.
During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for once
in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement. Everybody
was going to Europe--I, too, was going to Europe. Everybody was going to
the famous Paris Exposition--I, too, was going to the Paris Exposition.
The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various ports of
the country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the aggregate.
If I met a dozen individuals during that month who were not going to
Europe shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked about
the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for the
excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated,
companionable; but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had the
most extraordinary notions about this European exodus and came at last to
consider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. We
stepped into a store on Broadway one day, where he bought a handkerchief,
and when the man could not make change, Mr. B. said:
"Never mind, I'll hand it to you in Paris."
"But I am not going to Paris."
"How is--what did I understand you to say?"
"I said I am not going to Paris."
"Not going to Paris! Not g---- well, then, where in the nation are you
going to?"
"Nowhere at all."
"Not anywhere whatsoever?--not any place on earth but this?"
"Not any place at all but just this--stay here all summer."
My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a word
--walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the street
apiece he broke silence and said impressively: "It was a lie--that is my
opinion of it!"
In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her passengers.
I was introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my roommate, and
found him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, unselfish, full of
generous impulses, patient, considerate, and wonderfully good-natured.
Not any passenger that sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his
endorsement of what I have just said. We selected a stateroom forward of
the wheel, on the starboard side, "below decks." It bad two berths in
it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a washbowl in it, and a long,
sumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do service as a sofa--partly
--and partly as a hiding place for our things. Notwithstanding all this
furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat
in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the room was
large, for a ship's stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.
The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early in June.
A little after noon on that distinguished Saturday I reached the ship and
went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark
before somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men;
passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel's decks were
encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in
unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain
and looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The
gallant flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and
disheartened by the mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest
spectacle! It was a pleasure excursion--there was no gainsaying that,
because the program said so--it was so nominated in the bond--but it
surely hadn't the general aspect of one.
Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting, and hissing of
steam rang the order to "cast off!"--a sudden rush to the gangways--a
scampering ashore of visitors-a revolution of the wheels, and we were
off--the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the
dripping crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery
decks; the flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the "battery of guns"
spake not--the ammunition was out.
We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was
still raining. And not only raining, but storming. "Outside" we could
see, ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still,
in the calm harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed
from fifteen states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before;
manifestly it would not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until
they had got their sea-legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that
had accompanied us with a rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers
on board who wished to bid farewell to one of our number in due and
ancient form departed, and we were alone on the deep. On deep five
fathoms, and anchored fast to the bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at
that. This was pleasuring with a vengeance.
It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer meeting.
The first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might have been
devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced mind if
it would have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivolities,
considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind we were in.
We would have shone at a wake, but not at anything more festive.
However, there is always a cheering influence about the sea; and in my
berth that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves and lulled by
the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all
consciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and damaging
premonitions of the future.
CHAPTER III.
All day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal, but the
sea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in air "outside,"
as we could plainly see with the glasses. We could not properly begin a
pleasure excursion on Sunday; we could not offer untried stomachs to so
pitiless a sea as that. We must lie still till Monday. And we did. But
we had repetitions of church and prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we
were just as eligibly situated as we could have been any where.
I was up early that Sabbath morning and was early to breakfast. I felt a
perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at the
passengers at a time when they should be free from self-consciousness
--which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in the lives of human
beings at all.
I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people--I might almost
say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads was
apt to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a
tolerably fair sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of
gentlemen and ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither
actually old or absolutely young.
The next morning we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great
happiness to get away after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I thought
there never was such gladness in the air before, such brightness in the
sun, such beauty in the sea. I was satisfied with the picnic then and
with all its belongings. All my malicious instincts were dead within me;
and as America faded out of sight, I think a spirit of charity rose up in
their place that was as boundless, for the time being, as the broad ocean
that was heaving its billows about us. I wished to express my feelings
--I wished to lift up my voice and sing; but I did not know anything to
sing, and so I was obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the
ship, though, perhaps.
It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could
not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was
taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was
trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird
sensation it is to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you
and see the bow climbing high away among the clouds! One's safest course
that day was to clasp a railing and hang on; walking was too precarious a
pastime.
By some happy fortune I was not seasick.--That was a thing to be proud
of. I had not always escaped before. If there is one thing in the world
that will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to
have his stomach behave itself, the first day it sea, when nearly all his
comrades are seasick. Soon a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and
bandaged like a mummy, appeared at the door of the after deck-house, and
the next lurch of the ship shot him into my arms. I said:
"Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day."
He put his hand on his stomach and said, "Oh, my!" and then staggered
away and fell over the coop of a skylight.
Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door with
great violence. I said:
"Calm yourself, Sir--There is no hurry. It is a fine day, Sir."
He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said "Oh, my!" and reeled away.
In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same
door, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said:
"Good morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were about to
say--"
"Oh, my!"
I thought so. I anticipated him, anyhow. I stayed there and was
bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out of
any of them was "Oh, my!"
I went away then in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good pleasure
excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still they
are sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have
the "Oh, my" rather bad.
I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was glad
of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.
Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant;
walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the
breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but
these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing
people suffering the miseries of seasickness.
I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one time
I was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel's stem was in the sky;
I was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody
ejaculated:
"Come, now, that won't answer. Read the sign up there--NO SMOKING ABAFT
THE WHEEL!"
It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of
course. I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck
state-rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it--there was a
ship in the distance.
"Ah, ah--hands off! Come out of that!"
I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep--but in a low voice:
"Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant
voice?"
"It's Captain Bursley--executive officer--sailing master."
I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do,
fell to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an
insinuating, admonitory voice:
"Now, say--my friend--don't you know any better than to be whittling the
ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that."
I went back and found the deck sweep.
"Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?"
"That's Captain L****, the owner of the ship--he's one of the main
bosses."
In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the
pilot-house and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they
"take the sun" through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel
through it. I had hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the
shoulder and said deprecatingly:
"I'll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there's anything you'd
like to know about taking the sun, I'd as soon tell you as not--but I
don't like to trust anybody with that instrument. If you want any
figuring done--Aye, aye, sir!"
He was gone to answer a call from the other side. I sought the
deck-sweep.
"Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious
countenance?"
"It's Captain Jones, sir--the chief mate."
"Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of before.
Do you--now I ask you as a man and a brother--do you think I could
venture to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a
captain of this ship?"
"Well, sir, I don't know--I think likely you'd fetch the captain of the
watch may be, because he's a-standing right yonder in the way."
I went below--meditating and a little downhearted. I thought, if five
cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure
excursion.
CHAPTER IV.
We plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict of
jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon
learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life in
the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine of a
barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely so by
any means--but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is always
the fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms
--a sign that they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no
longer half-past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and
the Mississippi Valley, it was "seven bells"; eight, twelve, and four
o'clock were "eight bells"; the captain did not take the longitude at
nine o'clock, but at "two bells." They spoke glibly of the "after
cabin," the "for'rard cabin," "port and starboard" and the "fo'castle."
At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for
such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people
walked arm-in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine
summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves
up in the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and
looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon
until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were
various. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not
by the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked
after and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through
opera-glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more
than that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was
run up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of
those strangers; in the smoking room there were always parties of
gentlemen playing euchre, draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes,
that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, "for'rard"
--for'rard of the chicken-coops and the cattle--we had what was called
"horse billiards." Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good,
active exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of
"hop-scotch" and shuffleboard played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch
diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment
numbered. You stand off three or four steps, with some broad wooden
disks before you on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous
thrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not
count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it
counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time. That
game would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but with us, to
play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the
ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a
heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was
that that disk missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then
there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.
When it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course--or at
least the cabins--and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking out
of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.
By 7 o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's promenade
on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority of
the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon fifty or
sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the
"Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth
Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen
minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea
was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without
being lashed to his chair.
After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing
school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before.
Behind the long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered
from one end to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen
and ladies sat them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three
hours wrote diligently in their journals. Alas! that journals so
voluminously begun should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as
most of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host
but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the first twenty
days' voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain that not ten
of the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding twenty
thousand miles of voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest
ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a
book; and he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him
the notion that keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world,
and the pleasantest. But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find
out that only those rare natures that are made up of pluck, endurance,
devotion to duty for duty's sake, and invincible determination may hope
to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal
and not sustain a shameful defeat.
One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head
full of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in
the way of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress
every morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say:
"Oh, I'm coming along bully!" (he was a little given to slang in his
happier moods.) "I wrote ten pages in my journal last night--and you
know I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that.
Why, it's only fun!"
"What do you find to put in it, Jack?"
"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many
miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and
horse billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the
sermon Sundays (because that'll tell at home, you know); and the ships we
saluted and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and
whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don't
ever carry any, principally, going against a head wind always--wonder
what is the reason of that?--and how many lies Moult has told--Oh, every
thing! I've got everything down. My father told me to keep that
journal. Father wouldn't take a thousand dollars for it when I get it
done."
"No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars--when you get it
done."
"Do you?--no, but do you think it will, though?
"Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars--when you
get it done. May be more."
"Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a journal."
But it shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One night
in Paris, after a hard day's toil in sightseeing, I said:
"Now I'll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give you a
chance to write up your journal, old fellow."
His countenance lost its fire. He said:
"Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal anymore.
It is awful tedious. Do you know--I reckon I'm as much as four thousand
pages behind hand. I haven't got any France in it at all. First I
thought I'd leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't do,
would it? The governor would say, 'Hello, here--didn't see anything in
France? That cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought I'd copy
France out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the for'rard cabin,
who's writing a book, but there's more than three hundred pages of it.
Oh, I don't think a journal's any use--do you? They're only a bother,
ain't they?"
"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal
properly kept is worth a thousand dollars--when you've got it done."
"A thousand!--well, I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a
million."
His experience was only the experience of the majority of that
industrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a
heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to
keep a journal a year.
A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists amused
and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met in
the writing school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we
were approaching and discussed the information so obtained.
Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his
transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition.
His views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two
home pictures among them. He advertised that he would "open his
performance in the after cabin at 'two bells' (nine P.M.) and show the
passengers where they shall eventually arrive"--which was all very well,
but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas
was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!
On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the
awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by
hanging a number of ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music
consisted of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little
asthmatic and apt to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong,
a clarinet which was a little unreliable on the high keys and rather
melancholy on the low ones, and a disreputable accordion that had a leak
somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked--a more elegant term does
not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was infinitely worse than
the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole platoon of
dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in mass
at the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to
port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around
precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down
to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as
performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than
any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of interest to the spectator
as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the
participant. We gave up dancing, finally.
We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a
poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea
that hadn't a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an
overcoat from stateroom No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a
crier of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for
the defendant; witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much
challenging. The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory,
as witnesses always are. The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and
vindictively abusive of each other, as was characteristic and proper.
The case was at last submitted and duly finished by the judge with an
absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.
The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young
gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished
success of all the amusement experiments.
An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure.
There was no oratorical talent in the ship.
We all enjoyed ourselves--I think I can safely say that, but it was in a
rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the
flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was
of it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune
--how well I remember it--I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We
never played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions--but I
am too fast: young Albert did know part of a tune something about
"O Something-Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He's His
What's-his-Name" (I do not remember the exact title of it, but it was
very plaintive and full of sentiment); Albert played that pretty much
all the time until we contracted with him to restrain himself. But
nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational
singing at church and prayers was not of a superior order of
architecture. I put up with it as long as I could and then joined in
and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to join in
too, and that made a failure of it; because George's voice was just
"turning," and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass it was apt to
fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle
on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes, either, which was
also a drawback to his performances. I said:
"Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will
provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a
good tune--you can't improve it any, just off-hand, in this way."
"Why, I'm not trying to improve it--and I am singing like the others
--just as it is in the notes."
And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but
himself when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him the
lockjaw.
There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing
head-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said
openly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going
on, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by
letting George help was simply flying in the face of Providence. These
said that the choir would keep up their lacerating attempts at melody
until they would bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship.
There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the
pilgrims had no charity:
"There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying for fair
winds--when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going
east this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming west--what's a
fair wind for us is a head wind to them--the Almighty's blowing a fair
wind for a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear
around so as to accommodate one--and she a steamship at that! It ain't
good sense, it ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity, it ain't
common human charity. Avast with such nonsense!"
CHAPTER V.
Taking it "by and large," as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten days'
run from New York to the Azores islands--not a fast run, for the distance
is only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the main.
True, we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences
which sent fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship
look dismal and deserted--stormy experiences that all will remember who
weathered them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray
that every now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept
the ship like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer
weather and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the
phenomenon of a full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at
the same hour every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the
part of the moon did not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when
we reflected that we were gaining about twenty minutes every day because
we were going east so fast--we gained just about enough every day to keep
along with the moon. It was becoming an old moon to the friends we had
left behind us, but to us Joshuas it stood still in the same place and
remained always the same.
Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first voyage,
was a good deal worried by the constantly changing "ship time." He was
proud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when
eight bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he
were losing confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on
deck and said with great decision:
"This thing's a swindle!"
"What's a swindle?"
"Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois--gave $150 for her--and I
thought she was good. And, by George, she is good onshore, but somehow
she don't keep up her lick here on the water--gets seasick may be. She
skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all
of a sudden, she lets down. I've set that old regulator up faster and
faster, till I've shoved it clear around, but it don't do any good; she
just distances every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way
that's astonishing till it is noon, but them eight bells always gets in
about ten minutes ahead of her anyway. I don't know what to do with her
now. She's doing all she can--she's going her best gait, but it won't
save her. Now, don't you know, there ain't a watch in the ship that's
making better time than she is, but what does it signify? When you hear
them eight bells you'll find her just about ten minutes short of her
score sure."
The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was
trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he
had said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the
watch was "on its best gait," and so nothing was left him but to fold his
hands and see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he
explained to him the mystery of "ship time" and set his troubled mind at
rest. This young man asked a great many questions about seasickness
before we left, and wanted to know what its characteristics were and how
he was to tell when he had it. He found out.
We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, &c., of course, and by and
by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list
of sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine
color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that
spreads itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot
or two long dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an
accomplished sailor and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when
a storm threatens or the wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely
and goes down when a gale blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in
good sailing order by turning over and dipping it in the water for a
moment. Seamen say the nautilus is only found in these waters between
the 35th and 45th parallels of latitude.
At three o'clock on the morning of the twenty-first of June, we were
awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I
did not take any interest in islands at three o'clock in the morning.
But another persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally
believing that the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in
peace, I got up and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half
o'clock now, and a raw, blustering morning. The passengers were huddled
about the smoke-stacks and fortified behind ventilators, and all were
wrapped in wintry costumes and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless
gale and the drenching spray.
The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud
standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon
it the sun came out and made it a beautiful picture--a mass of green
farms and meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and
mingled its upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp,
steep ridges and cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the
heights, rocky upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and
castles; and out of rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that
painted summit, and slope and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of
somber shade between. It was the aurora borealis of the frozen pole
exiled to a summer land!
We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and
all the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle
disputes as to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or
groves of weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were
really villages or only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally
we stood to sea and bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became a
dome of mud again and sank down among the mists, and disappeared. But to
many a seasick passenger it was good to see the green hills again, and
all were more cheerful after this episode than anybody could have
expected them to be, considering how sinfully early they had gotten up.
But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up
about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense
dictated a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island
of the group--Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the
accent on the first syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of
Horta, half a mile from the shore. The town has eight thousand to ten
thousand inhabitants. Its snow-white houses nestle cosily in a sea of
fresh green vegetation, and no village could look prettier or more
attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of hills which are
three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully cultivated clear
to their summits--not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm and every
acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls, whose duty
it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that
blow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava
walls, make the hills look like vast checkerboards.
The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese
characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy,
noisy, lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen, with
brass rings in their ears and fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship's
sides, and various parties of us contracted with them to take us ashore
at so much a head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls
of a little fort, armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders,
which Horta considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever
to get after it with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to
move it out in the country if they wanted it where they could go and find
it again when they needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one--men
and women, and boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and
unclean, and by instinct, education, and profession beggars. They
trooped after us, and never more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid
of them. We walked up the middle of the principal street, and these
vermin surrounded us on all sides and glared upon us; and every moment
excited couples shot ahead of the procession to get a good look back,
just as village boys do when they accompany the elephant on his
advertising trip from street to street. It was very flattering to me to
be part of the material for such a sensation. Here and there in the
doorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese hoods on. This hood is
of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same stuff, and is a
marvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad, and is
unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman's head is
hidden away in it like the man's who prompts the singers from his tin
shed in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about
this monstrous capote, as they call it--it is just a plain, ugly
dead-blue mass of sail, and a woman can't go within eight points of the
wind with one of them on; she has to go before the wind or not at all.
The general style of the capote is the same in all the islands, and will
remain so for the next ten thousand years, but each island shapes its
capotes just enough differently from the others to enable an observer to
tell at a glance what particular island a lady hails from.
The Portuguese pennies, or reis (pronounced rays), are prodigious. It
takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are
made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out
through Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on
solid land once more that he wanted to give a feast--said he had heard it
was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited
nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In
the midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable
anecdotes, the landlord presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and
his countenance fell. He took another look to assure himself that his
senses had not deceived him and then read the items aloud, in a faltering
voice, while the roses in his cheeks turned to ashes:
"'Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!' Ruin and desolation!
"'Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!' Oh, my sainted mother!
"'Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!' Be with us all!
"'TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED REIS!' The suffering Moses!
There ain't money enough in the ship to pay that bill! Go--leave me to
my misery, boys, I am a ruined community."
I think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could say a
word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb. Wine glasses
descended slowly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars dropped
unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his neighbor's eye,
but found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At last the fearful
silence was broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve settled upon
Blucher's countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and said:
"Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I'll never, never stand it.
Here's a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and it's all you'll get--I'll
swim in blood before I'll pay a cent more."
Our spirits rose and the landlord's fell--at least we thought so; he was
confused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word that
had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher
several times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for
when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language
that a Christian could understand--thus:
10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or . . .$6.00
25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or . . . 2.50
11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or 13.20
Total 21,700 reis, or . . . . $21.70
Happiness reigned once more in Blucher's dinner party. More refreshments
were ordered.
CHAPTER VI.
I think the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of our
whole ship's company there was not a solitary individual who knew
anything whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning
most other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that
they were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic,
something more than halfway between New York and Gibraltar. That was
all. These considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts
just here.
The community is eminently Portuguese--that is to say, it is slow, poor,
shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the
King of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme
control and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands
contain a population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese.
Everything is staid and settled, for the country was one hundred years
old when Columbus discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and
they raise it and grind it just as their great-great-great-grandfathers
did. They plow with a board slightly shod with iron; their trifling
little harrows are drawn by men and women; small windmills grind the
corn, ten bushels a day, and there is one assistant superintendent to
feed the mill and a general superintendent to stand by and keep him from
going to sleep. When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and
actually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are
in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could
be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from the ear, after
the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a
wheelbarrow in the land--they carry everything on their heads, or on
donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of
wood and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in
the islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have
failed. The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to
shield him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did
before him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw
no chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of
a family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged
by vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger,
and are desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their
dead. The latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys
they eat and sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp
are the half a dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the
soldiers of the little garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to
twenty-four cents a day, and those of a good mechanic about twice as
much. They count it in reis at a thousand to the dollar, and this makes
them rich and contented. Fine grapes used to grow in the islands, and an
excellent wine was made and exported. But a disease killed all the vines
fifteen years ago, and since that time no wine has been made. The
islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is necessarily very
rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and two or three
crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is exported save a
few oranges--chiefly to England. Nobody comes here, and nobody goes
away. News is a thing unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a passion
equally unknown. A Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if our
civil war was over. Because, he said, somebody had told him it was--or
at least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him something like
that! And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the
Tribune, the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in
them from Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer.
He was told that it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay
a cable ten years ago, but it had been in his mind somehow that they
hadn't succeeded!
It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We
visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a
piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It
was polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if
the dread tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen
centuries ago. But these confiding people believe in that piece of wood
unhesitatingly.
In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver--at
least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of hundred
to the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver miners)--and before
it is kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout lady who died, left
money and contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and
also stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and
night. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very
small lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I
think, if it went out altogether.
The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a
perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of
rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some
on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and
some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left
to blow--all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for
the hospital than the cathedral.
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures
of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful
costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or
somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old
father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us
if he could have risen. But he didn't.
As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little donkeys
ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.
They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and
this furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups,
but really such supports were not needed--to use such a saddle was the
next thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample support clear out to
one's knee joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around
us, offering their beasts at half a dollar an hour--more rascality to the
stranger, for the market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us
mounted the ungainly affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a
ridiculous spectacle of ourselves through the principal streets of a town
of 10,000 inhabitants.
We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede,
and made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were
necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers
beside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked
them with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded like
"Sekki-yah!" and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam
itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always
up to time--they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was
a lively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded audiences to the
balconies wherever we went.
Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered
zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher
against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high
stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and
then on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the
house he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at
the doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, "Now,
that's enough, you know; you go slow hereafter."
But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply said,
"Sekki-yah!" and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a comer
suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every
mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a
heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more
consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after
the catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up
and put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted
to swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and
let off a series of brays that drowned all other sounds.
It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful
canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh,
new, exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn
and threadbare home pleasures.
The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island with
only a handful of people in it--25,000--and yet such fine roads do not
exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go,
in any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare,
just sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters
neatly paved with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like
Broadway. They talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a
new invention--yet here they have been using it in this remote little
isle of the sea for two hundred years! Every street in Horta is
handsomely paved with the heavy Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and
true as a floor--not marred by holes like Broadway. And every road is
fenced in by tall, solid lava walls, which will last a thousand years in
this land where frost is unknown. They are very thick, and are often
plastered and whitewashed and capped with projecting slabs of cut stone.
Trees from gardens above hang their swaying tendrils down, and contrast
their bright green with the whitewash or the black lava of the walls and
make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch across these narrow
roadways sometimes and so shut out the sun that you seem to be riding
through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the bridges are all
government work.
The bridges are of a single span--a single arch--of cut stone, without a
support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework.
Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and
handsome--and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous
pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads
and streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly free from any sign
or semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it
is Horta, it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons
and their domiciles, are not clean--but there it stops--the town and the
island are miracles of cleanliness.
We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the
irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street,
goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting "Sekki-yah," and singing
"John Brown's Body" in ruinous English.
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and jawing
and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was nearly
deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of his
donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a
quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented
bills for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every
vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic
in gesture than his neighbor. We paid one guide and paid for one
muleteer to each donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the
shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up
with one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet,
and thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a
fog!
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in these
Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent
Office reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days
out from the Azores.
CHAPTER VII.
A week of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of
seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarterdecks drenched with
spray--spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick with
a white crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering in the
shelter of the lifeboats and deckhouses by day and blowing suffocating
"clouds" and boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking room at
night.
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no
thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling
of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters.
But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven--then paused
an instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from
a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The
blackness of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of
lightning clove it with a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving
world of water where was nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to
glittering silver, and lit up the faces of the men with a ghastly luster!
Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and
the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and
it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and
see the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral
cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on
the ocean. And once out--once where they could see the ship struggling
in the strong grasp of the storm--once where they could hear the shriek
of the winds and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic
picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce
fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild night
--and a very, very long one.
Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o'clock this lovely
morning of the thirtieth of June with the glad news that land was in
sight! It was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship's family
abroad once more, albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance
could only partly conceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had
wrought there. But dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks
flushed again, and frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the
quickening influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a
still more potent influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed
land again!--and to see it was to bring back that motherland that was in
all their thoughts.
Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall
yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in
a blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds--the same being according
to Scripture, which says that "clouds and darkness are over the land."
The words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe.
On our left were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is
only thirteen miles wide in its narrowest part.
At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone
towers--Moorish, we thought--but learned better afterwards. In former
times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their
boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in
and capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they
could find. It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The
Spaniards built these watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a
sharper lookout on the Moroccan speculators.
The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the
changeless sea, and by and by the ship's company grew wonderfully
cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the
lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained
every eye like a magnet--a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till
she was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the
sea like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was
for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by
and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought,
hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was
beautiful before--she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then
for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home
compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision
of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a
very river of sluggish blood!
We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the
African one, "Ape's Hill," a grand old mountain with summit streaked with
granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar,
was yet to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the
head of navigation and the end of the world. The information the
ancients didn't have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book
after book and epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the
existence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must
have known it was there, I should think.
In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing seemingly
in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides by
the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious traveled
parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like
that in one kingdom.
The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by
1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One
side and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the
side of a house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep
slant which an army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of
this slant is the walled town of Gibraltar--or rather the town occupies
part of the slant. Everywhere--on hillside, in the precipice, by the
sea, on the heights--everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad
with masonry and bristling with guns. It makes a striking and lively
picture from whatsoever point you contemplate it. It is pushed out into
the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip of land, and is suggestive of
a "gob" of mud on the end of a shingle. A few hundred yards of this flat
ground at its base belongs to the English, and then, extending across the
strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a distance of a quarter of
a mile, comes the "Neutral Ground," a space two or three hundred yards
wide, which is free to both parties.
"Are you going through Spain to Paris?" That question was bandied about
the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never
could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more
tired of answering, "I don't know." At the last moment six or seven had
sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did
go, and I felt a sense of relief at once--it was forever too late now and
I could make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a
prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to
make it up.
But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten rid
of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another--a
tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about
it, even in the first place: "That high hill yonder is called the Queen's
Chair; it is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there
when the French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she
would never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the
fortresses. If the English hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag
for a few hours one day, she'd have had to break her oath or die up
there."
We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the
subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These
galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in
them great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six
hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean
work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery
guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might
as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the
perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford
superb views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was
hollowed out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and
whose windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far
away, and a soldier said:
"That high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair; it is because a queen
of Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish troops
were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot
till the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English
hadn't been gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day,
she'd have had to break her oath or die up there."
On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no doubt
the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was
good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from
the narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the
tiniest little toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes,
and other vessels that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said,
and invisible to the naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through
those same telescopes. Below, on one side, we looked down upon an
endless mass of batteries and on the other straight down to the sea.
While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my
baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to
another party came up and said:
"Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen's Chair--"
"Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don't
--now don't inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!"
There--I had used strong language after promising I would never do so
again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you
had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa
and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze
and enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have
even burst into stronger language than I did.
Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly four
years' duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by
stratagem. The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so
impossible a project as the taking it by assault--and yet it has been
tried more than once.
The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old
castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town,
with moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in
battles and sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock
behind it was discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of
exquisite workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that
antiquaries are not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman.
Roman armor and Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave
in the sea extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of
the country about the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the
statement.
In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony
coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived
before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be
true--it looks reasonable enough--but as long as those parties can't vote
anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave
likewise are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every
part of Africa, yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any
portion of Spain save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that
the channel between Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the
low, neutral neck between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was
once ocean, and of course that these African animals, being over at
Gibraltar (after rock, perhaps--there is plenty there), got closed out
when the great change occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel,
are full of apes, and there are now and always have been apes on the rock
of Gibraltar--but not elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting
one.
There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so
uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress
costumes of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed
Highlander; and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and
veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and
turbaned, sashed, and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and
long-robed, bare-legged, ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and
Tangier, some brown, some yellow and some as black as virgin ink--and
Jews from all around, in gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they
are in pictures and theaters, and just as they were three thousand years
ago, no doubt. You can easily understand that a tribe (somehow our
pilgrims suggest that expression, because they march in a straggling
procession through these foreign places with such an Indian-like air of
complacency and independence about them) like ours, made up from fifteen
or sixteen states of the Union, found enough to stare at in this
shifting panorama of fashion today.
Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people among
us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the Oracle in
that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who
eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have
any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think
of a longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of
any long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will
serenely venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up
complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally
when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has
been there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken
arguments, only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your
very teeth as original with himself. He reads a chapter in the
guidebooks, mixes the facts all up, with his bad memory, and then goes
off to inflict the whole mess on somebody as wisdom which has been
festering in his brain for years and which he gathered in college from
erudite authors who are dead now and out of print. This morning at
breakfast he pointed out of the window and said:
"Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It's one of
them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say--and there's the ultimate one
alongside of it."
"The ultimate one--that is a good word--but the pillars are not both on
the same side of the strait." (I saw he had been deceived by a
carelessly written sentence in the guidebook.)
"Well, it ain't for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that
way, and some states it different. Old Gibbons don't say nothing about
it--just shirks it complete--Gibbons always done that when he got stuck
--but there is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, be says that they was
both on the same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and
Langomarganbl----"
"Oh, that will do--that's enough. If you have got your hand in for
inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say--let them be
on the same side."
We don't mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the
Oracle very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising
idiot on board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies
of his verses to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch--to
anybody, in fact, who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly
meant. His poetry is all very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he
wrote an "Ode to the Ocean in a Storm" in one half hour, and an
"Apostrophe to the Rooster in the Waist of the Ship" in the next, the
transition was considered to be rather abrupt; but when he sends an
invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal and another to the commander
in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar with the compliments of the
Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the passengers.
The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not bright,
not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he recollects
the answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as the
"Interrogation Point," and this by constant use has become shortened to
"Interrogation." He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal
they pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet
long. And they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000
feet high running through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He
repeated it to everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes.
Finally, he took a useful hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old
pilgrim made:
"Well, yes, it is a little remarkable--singular tunnel altogether--stands
up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end of it
sticks out of the hill about nine hundred!"
Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers
them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform! He
told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock
Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!
At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure
excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of
white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish
town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than
that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over
these sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny
land. Care cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.
We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat
(a stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco) without a twinge of fear.
The whole garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening
attitude--yet still we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and
counter-marched within the rampart, in full view--yet notwithstanding
even this, we never flinched.
I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the
garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben
Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to
help him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and
he was competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was
evidence which one could not well refute. There is nothing like
reputation.
Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes
itself upon me. Dan and the ship's surgeon and I had been up to the
great square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and
contemplating English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at
nine o'clock were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the
Judge, the Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United
States of America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club
House to register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare;
and they told us to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of
Justice and buy some kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very
moderate in price. It seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid
gloves, and we acted upon the hint. A very handsome young lady in the
store offered me a pair of blue gloves. I did not want blue, but she
said they would look very pretty on a hand like mine. The remark touched
me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my hand, and somehow it did seem
rather a comely member. I tried a glove on my left and blushed a little.
Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I felt gratified when she
said:
"Oh, it is just right!" Yet I knew it was no such thing.
I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:
"Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves--but some gentlemen
are so awkward about putting them on."
It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on
the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove
from the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand--and tried to hide
the rent. She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to
deserve them or die:
"Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They
are just right for you--your hand is very small--if they tear you need
not pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a
gentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it
that only comes with long practice." The whole after-guard of the glove
"fetched away," as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the
knuckles, and nothing was left but a melancholy ruin.
I was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the merchandise on
the angel's hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I
hated the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the
proceedings. I wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean
when I said cheerfully:
"This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that fits.
No, never mind, ma'am, never mind; I'll put the other on in the street.
It is warm here."
It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill,
and as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light
in the woman's eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from
the street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other,
I said to myself with withering sarcasm, "Oh, certainly; you know how to
put on kid gloves, don't you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be
flattered out of your senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the
trouble to do it!"
The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly:
"Some gentlemen don't know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some do."
And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):
"But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid
gloves."
Dan soliloquized after a pause:
"Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long
practice."
"Yes, indeed, I've noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he
was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting
on kid gloves; he's had ex--"
"Boys, enough of a thing's enough! You think you are very smart, I
suppose, but I don't. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in
the ship about this thing, I'll never forgive you for it; that's all."
They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other
alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had
bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together
this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with
broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public
exhibition. We had entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take
her in. She did that for us.
Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us
ashore on their backs from the small boats.
CHAPTER VIII.
This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it
--these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well
enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.
Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we
have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always
with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and
so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted
something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign--foreign from top to
bottom--foreign from center to circumference--foreign inside and outside
and all around--nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness
--nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun.
And lo! In Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing
that ever we have seen save in pictures--and we always mistrusted the
pictures before. We cannot anymore. The pictures used to seem
exaggerations--they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But
behold, they were not wild enough--they were not fanciful enough--they
have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land if ever there
was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save
The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of
humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in
a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the
houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone,
plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no
cornices, whitewashed all over--a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the
doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the
floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored
porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad
bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of
Jewish dwellings) save divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may
know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the
streets are oriental--some of them three feet wide, some six, but only
two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by
extending his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?
There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud
of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers
fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the
mountains--born cut-throats--and original, genuine Negroes as black as
Moses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs--all sorts and
descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon.
And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed
Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and
crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trousers
that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards of stuff
in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow
slippers, and gun of preposterous length--a mere soldier!--I thought he
was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white
beards and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long,
cowled, striped cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven
except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after
corner of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird
costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who
are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can
only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and
never look at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public.
Here are five thousand Jews in blue gabardines, sashes about their
waists, slippers upon their feet, little skullcaps upon the backs of
their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across
the middle of it from side to side--the selfsame fashion their Tangier
ancestors have worn for I don't know how many bewildering centuries.
Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked
alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost
believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and
do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree
comforting.
What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest
and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the
stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet
are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall
that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the
Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first
Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted
castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden
time; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where
it stands today when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and
sold in the streets of ancient Thebes!
The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have
battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged,
oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling
his goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the
Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge
built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the
infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms have stood upon it, maybe.
Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his ships and
loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the
Christian era.
Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the
phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood
a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two
thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:
"WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT
HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN
BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."
Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here is
a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt
against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and
keep to themselves.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it
was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion skin,
landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus,
the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the
fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called
Tingis then) lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed in skins and
carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were constantly
obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race and did no work.
They lived on the natural products of the land. Their king's country
residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the
coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone
now--no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a
personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an
enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good,
bona-fide god, because that would be unconstitutional.
Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where that
hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier
country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact
makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not
have kept a journal.
Five days' journey from here--say two hundred miles--are the ruins of an
ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor tradition.
And yet its arches, its columns, and its statues proclaim it to have been
built by an enlightened race.
The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary
shower bath in a civilized land. The Muhammadan merchant, tinman,
shoemaker, or vendor of trifles sits cross-legged on the floor and
reaches after any article you may want to buy. You can rent a whole
block of these pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The market people
crowd the marketplace with their baskets of figs, dates, melons,
apricots, etc., and among them file trains of laden asses, not much
larger, if any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is
picturesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-changers
have their dens close at hand, and all day long are counting bronze coins
and transferring them from one bushel basket to another. They don't coin
much money nowadays, I think. I saw none but what was dated four or five
hundred years back, and was badly worn and battered. These coins are not
very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have
money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said
he had "swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head
of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the
change." I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling
myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I
care nothing for wealth.
The Moors have some small silver coins and also some silver slugs worth a
dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce--so much so that when
poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it.
They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds me
of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry
letters through the country and charge a liberal postage. Every now and
then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed.
Therefore, warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two
dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little gold
pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was
good while it was unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave
the sagacious United States mail an emetic and sat down to wait.
The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers under
him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of
taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on
some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison.
Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a
luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or
later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him--any sort of one will
do--and confiscates his property. Of course, there are many rich men in
the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and
counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the Emperor imprisons a man who
is suspected of the crime of being rich, and makes things so
uncomfortable for him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden
his money.
Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the
foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor's
face with impunity.
CHAPTER IX.
About the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing here,
came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some
mules and asses and started out under the guardianship of the stately,
the princely, the magnificent Hadji Muhammad Lamarty (may his tribe
increase!) when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich
with checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and every part and portion
of the edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and
Blucher started to ride into the open doorway. A startling "Hi-hi!" from
our camp followers and a loud "Halt!" from an English gentleman in the
party checked the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a
profanation is it for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred
threshold of a Moorish mosque that no amount of purification can ever
make it fit for the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in
entering the place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town
and stoned; and the time has been, and not many years ago, either, when a
Christian would have been most ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a
mosque. We caught a glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements within
and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the fountains, but even
that we took that glimpse was a thing not relished by the Moorish
bystanders.
Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.
The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since
there was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient
as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave
to consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter
thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch arose and
said:
"Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog
of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his
presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the
stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore,
send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to
mend the clock, and let him go as an ass!"
And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside
of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his
natural character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners
making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of
civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three
murderers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are
not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance they set up
the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and practiced on
them--kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half an hour before
they managed to drive the center.
When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and
nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their surgery
is not artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break off the
limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he
don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always
brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a wince,
without a tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of suffering
can bring down the pride of a Moor or make him shame his dignity with a
cry.
Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There
are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in
dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations--no nothing that is
proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father
selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees
her for the first time. If after due acquaintance she suits him, he
retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles her back to her
father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just and
reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear children, back she
goes to the home of her childhood.
Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand. They
are called wives, though I believe the Koran only allows four genuine
wives--the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don't know how
many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that is near
enough--a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't matter.
Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.
I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they
are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a
Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for
the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.
They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other savages
the world over.
Many of the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a
female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and as
soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which
contains the creed) he can no longer be held in bondage.
They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Muhammadans' comes on
Friday, the Jews' on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on
Sunday. The Jews are the most radical. The Moor goes to his mosque
about noon on his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the
door, performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to
the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work.
But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all;
soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends the
synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have anything to do with fire; and
religiously refrains from embarking in any enterprise.
The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled to high
distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thenceforward a great
personage. Hundreds of Moors come to Tangier every year and embark for
Mecca. They go part of the way in English steamers, and the ten or
twelve dollars they pay for passage is about all the trip costs. They
take with them a quantity of food, and when the commissary department
fails they "skirmish," as Jack terms it in his sinful, slangy way. From
the time they leave till they get home again, they never wash, either on
land or sea. They are usually gone from five to seven months, and as
they do not change their clothes during all that time, they are totally
unfit for the drawing room when they get back.
Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the
ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back
he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their
fortunes again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In
order to confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood and
possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should make the pilgrimage
save bloated aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in specie. But
behold how iniquity can circumvent the law! For a consideration, the
Jewish money-changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough
for him to swear himself through, and then receives it back before the
ship sails out of the harbor!
Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is that Spain sends
her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these Muslims,
while America and other nations send only a little contemptible tub of a
gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they
see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the
Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a
small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their
representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant
them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish
minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or
not.
Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece
of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She
compromised on an augmentation of her territory, twenty million dollars'
indemnity in money, and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she
never gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats.
They would not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are
very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as
something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that
time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a
hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving
them out of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes
forever now. France had a minister here once who embittered the nation
against him in the most innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions
of cats (Tangier is full of them) and made a parlor carpet out of their
hides. He made his carpet in circles--first a circle of old gray
tomcats, with their tails all pointing toward the center; then a circle
of yellow cats; next a circle of black cats and a circle of white ones;
then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a centerpiece of
assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but the Moors curse his memory
to this day.
When we went to call on our American Consul General today I noticed that
all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on his
center tables. I thought that hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was
correct. His is the only American family in Tangier. There are many
foreign consuls in this place, but much visiting is not indulged in.
Tangier is clear out of the world, and what is the use of visiting when
people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So each
consul's family stays at home chiefly and amuses itself as best it can.
Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary
prison. The Consul General has been here five years, and has got enough
of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family
seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over
and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for
two or three more till they wear them out, and after that for days
together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old
road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries
have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They have literally
nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-war is
a godsend to them. "O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have
seen in thy face?" It is the completest exile that I can conceive of.
I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that
when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate
punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.
I am glad to have seen Tangier--the second-oldest town in the world. But
I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe.
We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and
doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next
forty-eight hours.
CHAPTER X.
We passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean. It
was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day--faultlessly
beautiful. A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine
that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains
of water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly,
brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities with the
spell of its fascination.
They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean--a thing that is
certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed away
from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so
rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle,
that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner
gong and tarried to worship!
He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have none of them
things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account
of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun's diramic
combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What
should you think?"
"Oh, go to bed!" Dan said that, and went away.
"Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an
argument which another man can't answer. Dan don't never stand any
chance in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you
say, Jack?"
"Now, Doctor, don't you come bothering around me with that dictionary
bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone."
"He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as
they say, but the old man's most too many for 'em. Maybe the Poet Lariat
ain't satisfied with them deductions?"
The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below.
"'Pears that he can't qualify, neither. Well, I didn't expect nothing
out of him. I never see one of them poets yet that knowed anything.
He'll go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush
about that old rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or
anybody he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but
somebody'd take that poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out
of him. Why can't a man put his intellect onto things that's some value?
Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient
philosophers was down on poets--"
"Doctor," I said, "you are going to invent authorities now and I'll leave
you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding the
luxuriance of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests on your
own responsibility; but when you begin to soar--when you begin to support
it with the evidence of authorities who are the creations of your own
fancy--I lose confidence."
That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a sort of
acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always
persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in language
that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite torture a
minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over
half a dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day; from that time
forward he would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all comers, and so
tranquilly, blissfully happy!
But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth
of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our
information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent
aloft except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the
ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance.
During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set
to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship's
company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the
asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled "The
Star-Spangled Banner," the choir chased it to cover, and George came in
with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered
it. Nobody mourned.
We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional
and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned behind a cable
locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the "Reader," who
rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have
all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said;
and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and
he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so
religiously believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the choir into
court again, with the complaining instruments, and assaulted "Hail
Columbia"; and when victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned
with his dreadful wild-goose stop turned on and the choir won, of course.
A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little gathering
disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was
concerned.
At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited with
spirit by one of the ship's captains, and thirteen regular toasts were
washed down with several baskets of champagne. The speeches were bad
--execrable almost without exception. In fact, without any exception but
one. Captain Duncan made a good speech; he made the only good speech of
the evening. He said:
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--May we all live to a green old age and be
prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne."
It was regarded as a very able effort.
The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those miraculous
balls on the promenade deck. We were not used to dancing on an even
keel, though, and it was only a questionable success. But take it all
together, it was a bright, cheerful, pleasant Fourth.
Toward nightfall the next evening, we steamed into the great artificial
harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw the dying sunlight gild
its clustering spires and ramparts, and flood its leagues of environing
verdure with a mellow radiance that touched with an added charm the white
villas that flecked the landscape far and near. [Copyright secured
according to law.]
There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the ship.
It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm--we wanted to see France!
Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman for the
privilege of using his boat as a bridge--its stern was at our companion
ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow backed out
into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was to walk
over his thwarts and step ashore, and asked him what he went away out
there for. He said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still he
could not understand. He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The
doctor tried him, but he could not understand the doctor. I asked this
boatman to explain his conduct, which he did; and then I couldn't
understand him. Dan said:
"Oh, go to the pier, you old fool--that's where we want to go!"
We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak to this
foreigner in English--that he had better let us conduct this business in
the French language and not let the stranger see how uncultivated he was.
"Well, go on, go on," he said, "don't mind me. I don't wish to
interfere. Only, if you go on telling him in your kind of French, he
never will find out where we want to go to. That is what I think about
it."
We rebuked him severely for this remark and said we never knew an
ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and
the doctor said:
"There now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means he is
going to the hotel. Oh, certainly--we don't know the French language."
This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism
from the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of
great steamships and stopped at last at a government building on a stone
pier. It was easy to remember then that the douain was the customhouse
and not the hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French
politeness the officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined
to examine our passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the
first cafe we came to and entered. An old woman seated us at a table and
waited for orders. The doctor said:
"Avez-vous du vin?"
The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate
distinctness of articulation:
"Avez-vous du--vin!"
The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said:
"Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere. Let me try
her. Madame, avez-vous du vin?--It isn't any use, Doctor--take the
witness."
"Madame, avez-vous du vin--du fromage--pain--pickled pigs' feet--beurre
--des oeufs--du boeuf--horseradish, sauerkraut, hog and hominy--anything,
anything in the world that can stay a Christian stomach!"
She said:
"Bless you, why didn't you speak English before? I don't know anything
about your plagued French!"
The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled the supper, and
we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could. Here
we were in beautiful France--in a vast stone house of quaint
architecture--surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French signs
--stared at by strangely habited, bearded French people--everything
gradually and surely forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that at
last, and beyond all question, we were in beautiful France and absorbing
its nature to the forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to feel
the happy romance of the thing in all its enchanting delightfulness--and
to think of this skinny veteran intruding with her vile English, at such
a moment, to blow the fair vision to the winds! It was exasperating.
We set out to find the centre of the city, inquiring the direction every
now and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just
exactly what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending
just exactly what they said in reply, but then they always pointed--they
always did that--and we bowed politely and said, "Merci, monsieur," and
so it was a blighting triumph over the disaffected member anyway. He was
restive under these victories and often asked:
"What did that pirate say?"
"Why, he told us which way to go to find the Grand Casino."
"Yes, but what did he say?"
"Oh, it don't matter what he said--we understood him. These are educated
people--not like that absurd boatman."
"Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that
goes some where--for we've been going around in a circle for an hour.
I've passed this same old drugstore seven times."
We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood (but we knew it was not).
It was plain that it would not do to pass that drugstore again, though
--we might go on asking directions, but we must cease from following
finger-pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected
member.
A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks of
vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone every house and every
block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a
mile, and all brilliantly lighted--brought us at last to the principal
thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations
of gas burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks
--hurry, life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and laughter
everywhere! We found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote
down who we were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the
place we came from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked
it, how old we were, where we were bound for and when we expected to get
there, and a great deal of information of similar importance--all for the
benefit of the landlord and the secret police. We hired a guide and
began the business of sightseeing immediately. That first night on
French soil was a stirring one. I cannot think of half the places we
went to or what we particularly saw; we had no disposition to examine
carefully into anything at all--we only wanted to glance and go--to move,
keep moving! The spirit of the country was upon us. We sat down,
finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and called for unstinted
champagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats where it costs
nothing of consequence! There were about five hundred people in that
dazzling place, I suppose, though the walls being papered entirely with
mirrors, so to speak, one could not really tell but that there were a
hundred thousand. Young, daintily dressed exquisites and young,
stylishly dressed women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in
couples and groups about innumerable marble-topped tables and ate fancy
suppers, drank wine, and kept up a chattering din of conversation that
was dazing to the senses. There was a stage at the far end and a large
orchestra; and every now and then actors and actresses in preposterous
comic dresses came out and sang the most extravagantly funny songs, to
judge by their absurd actions; but that audience merely suspended its
chatter, stared cynically, and never once smiled, never once applauded!
I had always thought that Frenchmen were ready to laugh at any thing.
CHAPTER XI.
We are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting
reconciled to halls and bedchambers with unhomelike stone floors and no
carpets--floors that ring to the tread of one's heels with a sharpness
that is death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy,
noiseless waiters, who glide hither and thither, and hover about your
back and your elbows like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders, quick
to fill them; thankful for a gratuity without regard to the amount; and
always polite--never otherwise than polite. That is the strangest
curiosity yet--a really polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot. We are
getting used to driving right into the central court of the hotel, in the
midst of a fragrant circle of vines and flowers, and in the midst also of
parties of gentlemen sitting quietly reading the paper and smoking. We
are getting used to ice frozen by artificial process in ordinary bottles
--the only kind of ice they have here. We are getting used to all these
things, but we are not getting used to carrying our own soap. We are
sufficiently civilized to carry our own combs and toothbrushes, but this
thing of having to ring for soap every time we wash is new to us and not
pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our heads and faces
thoroughly wet or just when we think we have been in the bathtub long
enough, and then, of course, an annoying delay follows. These
Marseillaises make Marseillaise hymns and Marseilles vests and Marseilles
soap for all the world, but they never sing their hymns or wear their
vests or wash with their soap themselves.
We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d'hote
with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup, then wait
a few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are
changed, and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas;
change again and take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer
grasshoppers); change and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry
pie and ice cream; then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc.;
finally coffee. Wine with every course, of course, being in France.
With such a cargo on board, digestion is a slow process, and we must sit
long in the cool chambers and smoke--and read French newspapers, which
have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight story till you get
to the "nub" of it, and then a word drops in that no man can translate,
and that story is ruined. An embankment fell on some Frenchmen
yesterday, and the papers are full of it today--but whether those
sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared is more
than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give anything to know.
We were troubled a little at dinner today by the conduct of an American,
who talked very loudly and coarsely and laughed boisterously where all
others were so quiet and well behaved. He ordered wine with a royal
flourish and said:
"I never dine without wine, sir" (which was a pitiful falsehood), and
looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to
find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would as soon
expect to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine!--in a land
where wine is nearly as common among all ranks as water! This fellow
said: "I am a free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want
everybody to know it!" He did not mention that he was a lineal
descendant of Balaam's ass, but everybody knew that without his telling
it.
We have driven in the Prado--that superb avenue bordered with patrician
mansions and noble shade trees--and have visited the chateau Boarely and
its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there--a copy of
the first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The delicate
little skeletons were lying in broken vaults and had their household gods
and kitchen utensils with them. The original of this cemetery was dug up
in the principal street of the city a few years ago. It had remained
there, only twelve feet underground, for a matter of twenty-five hundred
years or thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built Rome, and thought
something of founding a city on this spot, but gave up the idea. He may
have been personally acquainted with some of these Phoenicians whose
skeletons we have been examining.
In the great Zoological Gardens we found specimens of all the animals the
world produces, I think, including a dromedary, a monkey ornamented with
tufts of brilliant blue and carmine hair--a very gorgeous monkey he was
--a hippopotamus from the Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird with a
beak like a powder horn and close-fitting wings like the tails of a dress
coat. This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and his shoulders stooped
forward a little, and looked as if he had his hands under his coat
tails. Such tranquil stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such
self-righteousness, and such ineffable self-complacency as were in the
countenance and attitude of that gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed,
and preposterously uncomely bird! He was so ungainly, so pimply about
the head, so scaly about the legs, yet so serene, so unspeakably
satisfied! He was the most comical-looking creature that can be
imagined. It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh--such natural and
such enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since
our ship sailed away from America. This bird was a godsend to us, and I
should be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in
these pages. Ours was a pleasure excursion; therefore we stayed with
that bird an hour and made the most of him. We stirred him up
occasionally, but he only unclosed an eye and slowly closed it again,
abating no jot of his stately piety of demeanor or his tremendous
seriousness. He only seemed to say, "Defile not Heaven's anointed with
unsanctified hands." We did not know his name, and so we called him "The
Pilgrim." Dan said:
"All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection."
The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat! This cat
had a fashion of climbing up the elephant's hind legs and roosting on his
back. She would sit up there, with her paws curved under her breast, and
sleep in the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the elephant at
first, and he would reach up and take her down, but she would go aft and
climb up again. She persisted until she finally conquered the elephant's
prejudices, and now they are inseparable friends. The cat plays about
her comrade's forefeet or his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then
she goes aloft out of danger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs
lately that pressed his companion too closely.
We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the small
islands in the harbor to visit the Castle d'If. This ancient fortress
has a melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political
offenders for two or three hundred years, and its dungeon walls are
scarred with the rudely carved names of many and many a captive who
fretted his life away here and left no record of himself but these sad
epitaphs wrought with his own hands. How thick the names were! And
their long-departed owners seemed to throng the gloomy cells and
corridors with their phantom shapes. We loitered through dungeon after
dungeon, away down into the living rock below the level of the sea, it
seemed. Names everywhere!--some plebeian, some noble, some even
princely. Plebeian, prince, and noble had one solicitude in common--they
would not be forgotten! They could suffer solitude, inactivity, and the
horrors of a silence that no sound ever disturbed, but they could not
bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by the world. Hence the
carved names. In one cell, where a little light penetrated, a man had
lived twenty-seven years without seeing the face of a human being--lived
in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but his own thoughts,
and they were sorrowful enough and hopeless enough, no doubt. Whatever
his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his cell by night
through a wicket.
This man carved the walls of his prison house from floor to roof with all
manner of figures of men and animals grouped in intricate designs. He
had toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while
infants grew to boyhood--to vigorous youth--idled through school and
college--acquired a profession--claimed man's mature estate--married and
looked back to infancy as to a thing of some vague, ancient time, almost.
But who shall tell how many ages it seemed to this prisoner? With the
one, time flew sometimes; with the other, never--it crawled always. To
the one, nights spent in dancing had seemed made of minutes instead of
hours; to the other, those selfsame nights had been like all other nights
of dungeon life and seemed made of slow, dragging weeks instead of hours
and minutes.
One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls, and
brief prose sentences--brief, but full of pathos. These spoke not of
himself and his hard estate, but only of the shrine where his spirit fled
the prison to worship--of home and the idols that were templed there.
He never lived to see them.
The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home are
wide--fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of Dumas'
heroes passed their confinement--heroes of "Monte Cristo." It was here
that the brave Abbe wrote a book with his own blood, with a pen made of a
piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of
cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the
thick wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of
a stray piece of iron or table cutlery and freed Dantes from his chains.
It was a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come to
naught at last.
They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated "Iron Mask"--that
ill-starred brother of a hardhearted king of France--was confined for a
season before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life from
the curious in the dungeons of Ste. Marguerite. The place had a far
greater interest for us than it could have had if we had known beyond all
question who the Iron Mask was, and what his history had been, and why
this most unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery! That
was the charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that
heart so freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed
with its piteous secret had been here. These dank walls had known the
man whose dolorous story is a sealed book forever! There was fascination
in the spot.
CHAPTER XII.
We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France.
What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of
bright green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their
grasses trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured
and their symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners.
Surely the long straight rows of stately poplars that divide the
beautiful landscape like the squares of a checker-board are set with line
and plummet, and their uniform height determined with a spirit level.
Surely the straight, smooth, pure white turnpikes are jack-planed and
sandpapered every day. How else are these marvels of symmetry,
cleanliness, and order attained? It is wonderful. There are no
unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt,
no decay, no rubbish anywhere--nothing that even hints at untidiness
--nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful--every
thing is charming to the eye.
We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy banks;
of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old red-tiled
villages with mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their midst; of
wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles
projecting above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us,
such visions of fabled fairyland!
We knew then what the poet meant when he sang of: "--thy cornfields
green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France!"
And it is a pleasant land. No word describes it so felicitously as that
one. They say there is no word for "home" in the French language. Well,
considering that they have the article itself in such an attractive
aspect, they ought to manage to get along without the word. Let us not
waste too much pity on "homeless" France. I have observed that Frenchmen
abroad seldom wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time
or other. I am not surprised at it now.
We are not infatuated with these French railway cars, though. We took
first-class passage, not because we wished to attract attention by doing
a thing which is uncommon in Europe but because we could make our journey
quicker by so doing. It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any
country. It is too tedious. Stagecoaching is infinitely more
delightful. Once I crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the
West in a stagecoach, from the Missouri line to California, and since
then all my pleasure trips must be measured to that rare holiday frolic.
Two thousand miles of ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and
by day, and never a weary moment, never a lapse of interest! The first
seven hundred miles a level continent, its grassy carpet greener and
softer and smoother than any sea and figured with designs fitted to its
magnitude--the shadows of the clouds. Here were no scenes but summer
scenes, and no disposition inspired by them but to lie at full length on
the mail sacks in the grateful breeze and dreamily smoke the pipe of
peace--what other, where all was repose and contentment? In cool
mornings, before the sun was fairly up, it was worth a lifetime of city
toiling and moiling to perch in the foretop with the driver and see the
six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping of the whip that never
touched them; to scan the blue distances of a world that knew no lords
but us; to cleave the wind with uncovered head and feel the sluggish
pulses rousing to the spirit of a speed that pretended to the resistless
rush of a typhoon! Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of
limitless panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of
pinnacled cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal
rocks and splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy
altitudes among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where
thunders and lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and
the storm clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces!
But I forgot. I am in elegant France now, and not scurrying through the
great South Pass and the Wind River Mountains, among antelopes and
buffaloes and painted Indians on the warpath. It is not meet that I
should make too disparaging comparisons between humdrum travel on a
railway and that royal summer flight across a continent in a stagecoach.
I meant in the beginning to say that railway journeying is tedious and
tiresome, and so it is--though at the time I was thinking particularly of
a dismal fifty-hour pilgrimage between New York and St. Louis. Of course
our trip through France was not really tedious because all its scenes and
experiences were new and strange; but as Dan says, it had its
"discrepancies."
The cars are built in compartments that hold eight persons each. Each
compartment is partially subdivided, and so there are two tolerably
distinct parties of four in it. Four face the other four. The seats and
backs are thickly padded and cushioned and are very comfortable; you can
smoke if you wish; there are no bothersome peddlers; you are saved the
infliction of a multitude of disagreeable fellow passengers. So far, so
well. But then the conductor locks you in when the train starts; there
is no water to drink in the car; there is no heating apparatus for night
travel; if a drunken rowdy should get in, you could not remove a matter
of twenty seats from him or enter another car; but above all, if you are
worn out and must sleep, you must sit up and do it in naps, with cramped
legs and in a torturing misery that leaves you withered and lifeless the
next day--for behold they have not that culmination of all charity and
human kindness, a sleeping car, in all France. I prefer the American
system. It has not so many grievous "discrepancies."
In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no mistakes. Every
third man wears a uniform, and whether he be a marshal of the empire or a
brakeman, he is ready and perfectly willing to answer all your questions
with tireless politeness, ready to tell you which car to take, yea, and
ready to go and put you into it to make sure that you shall not go
astray. You cannot pass into the waiting room of the depot till you have
secured your ticket, and you cannot pass from its only exit till the
train is at its threshold to receive you. Once on board, the train will
not start till your ticket has been examined--till every passenger's
ticket has been inspected. This is chiefly for your own good. If by any
possibility you have managed to take the wrong train, you will be handed
over to a polite official who will take you whither you belong and bestow
you with many an affable bow. Your ticket will be inspected every now
and then along the route, and when it is time to change cars you will
know it. You are in the hands of officials who zealously study your
welfare and your interest, instead of turning their talents to the
invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very
often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the
railroad conductor of America.
But the happiest regulation in French railway government is--thirty
minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls, muddy
coffee, questionable eggs, gutta-percha beef, and pies whose conception
and execution are a dark and bloody mystery to all save the cook that
created them! No, we sat calmly down--it was in old Dijon, which is so
easy to spell and so impossible to pronounce except when you civilize it
and call it Demijohn--and poured out rich Burgundian wines and munched
calmly through a long table d'hote bill of fare, snail patties, delicious
fruits and all, then paid the trifle it cost and stepped happily aboard
the train again, without once cursing the railroad company. A rare
experience and one to be treasured forever.
They say they do not have accidents on these French roads, and I think it
must be true. If I remember rightly, we passed high above wagon roads or
through tunnels under them, but never crossed them on their own level.
About every quarter of a mile, it seemed to me, a man came out and held
up a club till the train went by, to signify that everything was safe
ahead. Switches were changed a mile in advance by pulling a wire rope
that passed along the ground by the rail, from station to station.
Signals for the day and signals for the night gave constant and timely
notice of the position of switches.
No, they have no railroad accidents to speak of in France. But why?
Because when one occurs, somebody has to hang for it! Not hang, maybe,
but be punished at least with such vigor of emphasis as to make
negligence a thing to be shuddered at by railroad officials for many a
day thereafter. "No blame attached to the officers"--that lying and
disaster-breeding verdict so common to our softhearted juries is seldom
rendered in France. If the trouble occurred in the conductor's
department, that officer must suffer if his subordinate cannot be proven
guilty; if in the engineer's department and the case be similar, the
engineer must answer.
The Old Travelers--those delightful parrots who have "been here before"
and know more about the country than Louis Napoleon knows now or ever
will know--tell us these things, and we believe them because they are
pleasant things to believe and because they are plausible and savor of
the rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about us
everywhere.
But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and
lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a
few feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded
every individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their
throttle valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar,
and blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand
aim, is to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and
humble in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you
know anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they
laugh unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand
the statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest
absurdities; they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair
images they have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless
ferocity of the fanatic iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers.
I love them for their witless platitudes, for their supernatural ability
to bore, for their delightful asinine vanity, for their luxuriant
fertility of imagination, for their startling, their brilliant, their
overwhelming mendacity!
By Lyons and the Saone (where we saw the lady of Lyons and thought little
of her comeliness), by Villa Franca, Tonnere, venerable Sens, Melun,
Fontainebleau, and scores of other beautiful cities, we swept, always
noting the absence of hog-wallows, broken fences, cow lots, unpainted
houses, and mud, and always noting, as well, the presence of cleanliness,
grace, taste in adorning and beautifying, even to the disposition of a
tree or the turning of a hedge, the marvel of roads in perfect repair,
void of ruts and guiltless of even an inequality of surface--we bowled
along, hour after hour, that brilliant summer day, and as nightfall
approached we entered a wilderness of odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped
through it, and then, excited, delighted, and half persuaded that we were
only the sport of a beautiful dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris!
What excellent order they kept about that vast depot! There was no
frantic crowding and jostling, no shouting and swearing, and no
swaggering intrusion of services by rowdy hackmen. These latter gentry
stood outside--stood quietly by their long line of vehicles and said
never a word. A kind of hackman general seemed to have the whole matter
of transportation in his hands. He politely received the passengers and
ushered them to the kind of conveyance they wanted, and told the driver
where to deliver them. There was no "talking back," no dissatisfaction
about overcharging, no grumbling about anything. In a little while we
were speeding through the streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing
certain names and places with which books had long ago made us familiar.
It was like meeting an old friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the
street corner; we knew the genuine vast palace of the Louvre as well as
we knew its picture; when we passed by the Column of July we needed no
one to tell us what it was or to remind us that on its site once stood
the grim Bastille, that grave of human hopes and happiness, that dismal
prison house within whose dungeons so many young faces put on the
wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew humble, so many brave hearts
broke.
We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds put into one
room, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a restaurant,
just after lamplighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory, lingering
dinner. It was a pleasure to eat where everything was so tidy, the food
so well cooked, the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing
company so moustached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and
wonderfully Frenchy! All the surroundings were gay and enlivening. Two
hundred people sat at little tables on the sidewalk, sipping wine and
coffee; the streets were thronged with light vehicles and with joyous
pleasure-seekers; there was music in the air, life and action all about
us, and a conflagration of gaslight everywhere!
After dinner we felt like seeing such Parisian specialties as we might
see without distressing exertion, and so we sauntered through the
brilliant streets and looked at the dainty trifles in variety stores and
jewelry shops. Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we
put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the
incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed
we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile
verbs and participles.
We noticed that in the jewelry stores they had some of the articles
marked "gold" and some labeled "imitation." We wondered at this
extravagance of honesty and inquired into the matter. We were informed
that inasmuch as most people are not able to tell false gold from the
genuine article, the government compels jewelers to have their gold work
assayed and stamped officially according to its fineness and their
imitation work duly labeled with the sign of its falsity. They told us
the jewelers would not dare to violate this law, and that whatever a
stranger bought in one of their stores might be depended upon as being
strictly what it was represented to be. Verily, a wonderful land is
France!
Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy it had been
a cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some day in a palatial
barber-shop in Paris. I wished to recline at full length in a cushioned
invalid chair, with pictures about me and sumptuous furniture; with
frescoed walls and gilded arches above me and vistas of Corinthian
columns stretching far before me; with perfumes of Araby to intoxicate
my senses and the slumbrous drone of distant noises to soothe me to
sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up regretfully and find my
face as smooth and as soft as an infant's. Departing, I would lift my
hands above that barber's head and say, "Heaven bless you, my son!"
So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but never a
barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making establishments, with
shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound upon the heads of painted waxen
brigands who stared out from glass boxes upon the passer-by with their
stony eyes and scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances.
We shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that the
wig-makers must of necessity be the barbers as well, since we could find
no single legitimate representative of the fraternity. We entered and
asked, and found that it was even so.
I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where my room was. I
said never mind where my room was, I wanted to be shaved--there, on the
spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an
excitement among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and
afterwards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors
from obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a
little mean, shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs
and placed us in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss
vanished into thin air!
I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making
villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by
plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with
a strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this
outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six
fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of
destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my
face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed and raved, and the other
boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong and thick. Let us draw the
curtain over this harrowing scene.
Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of
a shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my
cheeks now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held a
basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and
into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of
washing away the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel and
was going to comb my hair, but I asked to be excused. I said, with
withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned--I declined to be
scalped.
I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never,
never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore.
The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no
barber shops worthy of the name in Paris--and no barbers, either, for
that matter. The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and
napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately
skins you in your private apartments. Ah, I have suffered, suffered,
suffered, here in Paris, but never mind--the time is coming when I shall
have a dark and bloody revenge. Someday a Parisian barber will come to
my room to skin me, and from that day forth that barber will never be
heard of more.
At eleven o'clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly referred to
billiards. Joy! We had played billiards in the Azores with balls that
were not round and on an ancient table that was very little smoother than
a brick pavement--one of those wretched old things with dead cushions,
and with patches in the faded cloth and invisible obstructions that made
the balls describe the most astonishing and unsuspected angles and
perform feats in the way of unlooked-for and almost impossible
"scratches" that were perfectly bewildering. We had played at Gibraltar
with balls the size of a walnut, on a table like a public square--and in
both instances we achieved far more aggravation than amusement. We
expected to fare better here, but we were mistaken. The cushions were a
good deal higher than the balls, and as the balls had a fashion of always
stopping under the cushions, we accomplished very little in the way of
caroms. The cushions were hard and unelastic, and the cues were so
crooked that in making a shot you had to allow for the curve or you would
infallibly put the "English" on the wrong side of the hall. Dan was to
mark while the doctor and I played. At the end of an hour neither of us
had made a count, and so Dan was tired of keeping tally with nothing to
tally, and we were heated and angry and disgusted. We paid the heavy
bill--about six cents--and said we would call around sometime when we had
a week to spend, and finish the game.
We adjourned to one of those pretty cafes and took supper and tested the
wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and found them
harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however, if we
had chosen to drink a sufficiency of them.
To close our first day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we now sought
our grand room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre and climbed into our
sumptuous bed to read and smoke--but alas!
It was pitiful,
In a whole city-full,
Gas we had none.
No gas to read by--nothing but dismal candles. It was a shame. We tried
to map out excursions for the morrow; we puzzled over French "guides to
Paris"; we talked disjointedly in a vain endeavor to make head or tail of
the wild chaos of the day's sights and experiences; we subsided to
indolent smoking; we gaped and yawned and stretched--then feebly wondered
if we were really and truly in renowned Paris, and drifted drowsily away
into that vast mysterious void which men call sleep.
CHAPTER XIII.
The next morning we were up and dressed at ten o'clock. We went to the
'commissionaire' of the hotel--I don't know what a 'commissionaire' is,
but that is the man we went to--and told him we wanted a guide. He said
the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and
Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good
guide unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he
only had three now. He called them. One looked so like a very pirate
that we let him go at once. The next one spoke with a simpering
precision of pronunciation that was irritating and said:
"If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to me rattain in
hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat is magnifique to look
upon in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw."
He would have done well to have stopped there, because he had that much
by heart and said it right off without making a mistake. But his
self-complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of
unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin. Within ten
seconds he was so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn and
bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever have gotten
him out of it with credit. It was plain enough that he could not
"speaky" the English quite as "pairfaitemaw" as he had pretended he
could.
The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but he had a
noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a high silk hat which was
a little old, but had been carefully brushed. He wore second-hand kid
gloves, in good repair, and carried a small rattan cane with a curved
handle--a female leg--of ivory. He stepped as gently and as daintily as
a cat crossing a muddy street; and oh, he was urbanity; he was quiet,
unobtrusive self-possession; he was deference itself! He spoke softly
and guardedly; and when he was about to make a statement on his sole
responsibility or offer a suggestion, he weighed it by drachms and
scruples first, with the crook of his little stick placed meditatively to
his teeth. His opening speech was perfect. It was perfect in
construction, in phraseology, in grammar, in emphasis, in pronunciation
--everything. He spoke little and guardedly after that. We were charmed.
We were more than charmed--we were overjoyed. We hired him at once. We
never even asked him his price. This man--our lackey, our servant, our
unquestioning slave though he was--was still a gentleman--we could see
that--while of the other two one was coarse and awkward and the other was
a born pirate. We asked our man Friday's name. He drew from his
pocketbook a snowy little card and passed it to us with a profound bow:
A. BILLFINGER,
Guide to Paris, France, Germany,
Spain, &c., &c.
Grande Hotel du Louvre.
"Billfinger! Oh, carry me home to die!"
That was an "aside" from Dan. The atrocious name grated harshly on my
ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive, and even to like, a
countenance that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I
fancy, become reconciled to a jarring name so easily. I was almost sorry
we had hired this man, his name was so unbearable. However, no matter.
We were impatient to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to call a
carriage, and then the doctor said:
"Well, the guide goes with the barbershop, with the billiard-table, with
the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of Paris.
I expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la
Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the
villagers at home, but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Billfinger!
Oh! This is absurd, you know. This will never do. We can't say
Billfinger; it is nauseating. Name him over again; what had we better
call him? Alexis du Caulaincourt?"
"Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville," I suggested.
"Call him Ferguson," said Dan.
That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we expunged
Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson.
The carriage--an open barouche--was ready. Ferguson mounted beside the
driver, and we whirled away to breakfast. As was proper, Mr. Ferguson
stood by to transmit our orders and answer questions. By and by, he
mentioned casually--the artful adventurer--that he would go and get his
breakfast as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get
along without him and that we would not want to loiter about and wait for
him. We asked him to sit down and eat with us. He begged, with many a
bow, to be excused. It was not proper, he said; he would sit at another
table. We ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.
Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake.
As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always hungry; he was
always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late; he could not pass a
restaurant; he looked with a lecherous eye upon every wine shop.
Suggestions to stop, excuses to eat and to drink, were forever on his
lips. We tried all we could to fill him so full that he would have no
room to spare for a fortnight, but it was a failure. He did not hold
enough to smother the cravings of his superhuman appetite.
He had another "discrepancy" about him. He was always wanting us to buy
things. On the shallowest pretenses he would inveigle us into shirt
stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops--anywhere under the broad
sweep of the heavens that there seemed a chance of our buying anything.
Anyone could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a percentage on
the sales, but in our blessed innocence we didn't until this feature of
his conduct grew unbearably prominent. One day Dan happened to mention
that he thought of buying three or four silk dress patterns for presents.
Ferguson's hungry eye was upon him in an instant. In the course of
twenty minutes the carriage stopped.
"What's this?"
"Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris--ze most celebrate."
"What did you come here for? We told you to take us to the palace of the
Louvre."
"I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk."
"You are not required to 'suppose' things for the party, Ferguson. We do
not wish to tax your energies too much. We will bear some of the burden
and heat of the day ourselves. We will endeavor to do such 'supposing'
as is really necessary to be done. Drive on." So spake the doctor.
Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before another silk
store. The doctor said:
"Ah, the palace of the Louvre--beautiful, beautiful edifice! Does the
Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson?"
"Ah, Doctor! You do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come there directly.
But since we pass right by zis store, where is such beautiful silk--"
"Ah! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did not wish to
purchase any silks to-day, but in my absent-mindedness I forgot it. I
also meant to tell you we wished to go directly to the Louvre, but I
forgot that also. However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming
carelessness, Ferguson. Drive on."
Within the half hour we stopped again--in front of another silk store.
We were angry; but the doctor was always serene, always smooth-voiced.
He said:
"At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how small! How
exquisitely fashioned! How charmingly situated!--Venerable, venerable
pile--"
"Pairdon, Doctor, zis is not ze Louvre--it is--"
"What is it?"
"I have ze idea--it come to me in a moment--zat ze silk in zis magazin--"
"Ferguson, how heedless I am. I fully intended to tell you that we did
not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also intended to tell you that we
yearned to go immediately to the palace of the Louvre, but enjoying the
happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this morning has so filled
me with pleasurable emotions that I neglect the commonest interests of
the time. However, we will proceed now to the Louvre, Ferguson."
"But, doctor," (excitedly,) "it will take not a minute--not but one small
minute! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he not wish to--but only look at
ze silk--look at ze beautiful fabric. [Then pleadingly.] Sair--just only
one leetle moment!"
Dan said, "Confound the idiot! I don't want to see any silks today, and
I won't look at them. Drive on."
And the doctor: "We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our hearts yearn for
the Louvre. Let us journey on--let us journey on."
"But doctor! It is only one moment--one leetle moment. And ze time will
be save--entirely save! Because zere is nothing to see now--it is too
late. It want ten minute to four and ze Louvre close at four--only one
leetle moment, Doctor!"
The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a gallon of
champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We got no sight of the
countless treasures of art in the Louvre galleries that day, and our only
poor little satisfaction was in the reflection that Ferguson sold not a
solitary silk dress pattern.
I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abusing that
accomplished knave Billfinger, and partly to show whosoever shall read
this how Americans fare at the hands of the Paris guides and what sort of
people Paris guides are. It need not be supposed that we were a stupider
or an easier prey than our countrymen generally are, for we were not.
The guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the
first time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little
experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again someday, and then let
the guides beware! I shall go in my war paint--I shall carry my tomahawk
along.
I think we have lost but little time in Paris. We have gone to bed every
night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International
Exposition. All the world did that. We went there on our third day in
Paris--and we stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and last
visit. To tell the truth, we saw at a glance that one would have to
spend weeks--yea, even months--in that monstrous establishment to get an
intelligible idea of it. It was a wonderful show, but the moving masses
of people of all nations we saw there were a still more wonderful show.
I discovered that if I were to stay there a month, I should still find
myself looking at the people instead of the inanimate objects on
exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious old tapestries of
the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs came by, and their dusky
faces and quaint costumes called my attention away at once. I watched a
silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements and a living
intelligence in his eyes--watched him swimming about as comfortably and
as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a
jeweler's shop--watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and
hold up his head and go through all the customary and elaborate motions
of swallowing it--but the moment it disappeared down his throat some
tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I yielded to their
attractions.
Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which
looked strangely like a modern Colt, but just then I heard that the
Empress of the French was in another part of the building, and hastened
away to see what she might look like. We heard martial music--we saw an
unusual number of soldiers walking hurriedly about--there was a general
movement among the people. We inquired what it was all about and learned
that the Emperor of the French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to
review twenty-five thousand troops at the Arc de l'Etoile. We
immediately departed. I had a greater anxiety to see these men than I
could have had to see twenty expositions.
We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the
American minister's house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with
a board and we hired standing places on it. Presently there was a sound
of distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly
toward us; a moment more and then, with colors flying and a grand crash
of military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged from the dust
and came down the street on a gentle trot. After them came a long line
of artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their
imperial majesties Napoleon III and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of
people swung their hats and shouted--the windows and housetops in the
wide vicinity burst into a snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs, and the
wavers of the same mingled their cheers with those of the masses below.
It was a stirring spectacle.
But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was ever such a
contrast set up before a multitude till then? Napoleon in military
uniform--a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely moustached, old,
wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty, scheming
expression about them!--Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the loud
plaudits, and watching everything and everybody with his cat eyes from
under his depressed hat brim, as if to discover any sign that those
cheers were not heartfelt and cordial.
Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman empire--clad in dark green
European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red
Turkish fez on his head; a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded,
black-eyed, stupid, unprepossessing--a man whose whole appearance
somehow suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white
apron on, one would not be at all surprised to hear him say: "A mutton
roast today, or will you have a nice porterhouse steak?"
Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization,
progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by
nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive,
superstitious--and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity,
Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the
First Century greets the Nineteenth!
NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting thousands, by
military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and companioned by
kings and princes--this is the man who was sneered at and reviled and
called Bastard--yet who was dreaming of a crown and an empire all the
while; who was driven into exile--but carried his dreams with him; who
associated with the common herd in America and ran foot races for a
wager--but still sat upon a throne in fancy; who braved every danger to
go to his dying mother--and grieved that she could not be spared to see
him cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty; who kept
his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common policeman of
London--but dreamed the while of a coming night when he should tread the
long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries; who made the miserable fiasco of
Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse
to perch upon his shoulder; delivered his carefully prepared, sententious
burst of eloquence upon unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the
butt of small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world
--yet went on dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who
lay a forgotten captive in the dungeons of Ham--and still schemed and
planned and pondered over future glory and future power; President of
France at last! a coup d'etat, and surrounded by applauding armies,
welcomed by the thunders of cannon, he mounts a throne and waves before
an astounded world the sceptre of a mighty empire! Who talks of the
marvels of fiction? Who speaks of the wonders of romance? Who prates of
the tame achievements of Aladdin and the Magii of Arabia?
ABDUL-AZIZ, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a
throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a
vast royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a
tyrannical mother; a man who sits upon a throne--the beck of whose finger
moves navies and armies--who holds in his hands the power of life and
death over millions--yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles with his
eight hundred concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and
sleeping and idling, and would rouse up and take the reins of government
and threaten to be a sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad
Pacha with a pretty plan for a new palace or a new ship--charmed away
with a new toy, like any other restless child; a man who sees his people
robbed and oppressed by soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to
save them; who believes in gnomes and genii and the wild fables of The
Arabian Nights, but has small regard for the mighty magicians of to-day,
and is nervous in the presence of their mysterious railroads and
steamboats and telegraphs; who would see undone in Egypt all that great
Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer rather to forget than emulate him;
a man who found his great empire a blot upon the earth--a degraded,
poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous agglomeration of ignorance, crime,
and brutality--and will idle away the allotted days of his trivial life
and then pass to the dust and the worms and leave it so!
Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France in ten years
to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt
Paris and has partly rebuilt every city in the state. He condemns a
whole street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them, and rebuilds
superbly. Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original
owner is given the first choice by the government at a stated price
before the speculator is permitted to purchase. But above all things, he
has taken the sole control of the empire of France into his hands and
made it a tolerably free land--for people who will not attempt to go too
far in meddling with government affairs. No country offers greater
security to life and property than France, and one has all the freedom he
wants, but no license--no license to interfere with anybody or make
anyone uncomfortable.
As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen abler
men in a night.
The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napoleon III., the
genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise; and the feeble Abdul-Aziz, the
genius of Ignorance, Bigotry, and Indolence, prepared for the Forward
--March!
We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean
soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw--well, we saw every thing,
and then we went home satisfied.
CHAPTER XIV.
We went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We had heard of it before.
It surprises me sometimes to think how much we do know and how
intelligent we are. We recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment;
it was like the pictures. We stood at a little distance and changed from
one point of observation to another and gazed long at its lofty square
towers and its rich front, clustered thick with stony, mutilated saints
who had been looking calmly down from their perches for ages. The
Patriarch of Jerusalem stood under them in the old days of chivalry and
romance, and preached the third Crusade, more than six hundred years ago;
and since that day they have stood there and looked quietly down upon the
most thrilling scenes, the grandest pageants, the most extraordinary
spectacles that have grieved or delighted Paris. These battered and
broken-nosed old fellows saw many and many a cavalcade of mail-clad
knights come marching home from Holy Land; they heard the bells above
them toll the signal for the St. Bartholomew's Massacre, and they saw the
slaughter that followed; later they saw the Reign of Terror, the carnage
of the Revolution, the overthrow of a king, the coronation of two
Napoleons, the christening of the young prince that lords it over a
regiment of servants in the Tuileries to-day--and they may possibly
continue to stand there until they see the Napoleon dynasty swept away
and the banners of a great republic floating above its ruins. I wish
these old parties could speak. They could tell a tale worth the
listening to.
They say that a pagan temple stood where Notre Dame now stands, in the
old Roman days, eighteen or twenty centuries ago--remains of it are still
preserved in Paris; and that a Christian church took its place about A.D.
300; another took the place of that in A.D. 500; and that the foundations
of the present cathedral were laid about A.D. 1100. The ground ought to
be measurably sacred by this time, one would think. One portion of this
noble old edifice is suggestive of the quaint fashions of ancient times.
It was built by Jean Sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, to set his conscience
at rest--he had assassinated the Duke of Orleans. Alas! Those good old
times are gone when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and
soothe his troubles to sleep simply by getting out his bricks and mortar
and building an addition to a church.
The portals of the great western front are bisected by square pillars.
They took the central one away in 1852, on the occasion of thanksgivings
for the reinstitution of the presidential power--but precious soon they
had occasion to reconsider that motion and put it back again! And they
did.
We loitered through the grand aisles for an hour or two, staring up at
the rich stained-glass windows embellished with blue and yellow and
crimson saints and martyrs, and trying to admire the numberless great
pictures in the chapels, and then we were admitted to the sacristy and
shown the magnificent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned Napoleon
I; a wagon-load of solid gold and silver utensils used in the great
public processions and ceremonies of the church; some nails of the true
cross, a fragment of the cross itself, a part of the crown of thorns.
We had already seen a large piece of the true cross in a church in the
Azores, but no nails. They showed us likewise the bloody robe which that
archbishop of Paris wore who exposed his sacred person and braved the
wrath of the insurgents of 1848, to mount the barricades and hold aloft
the olive branch of peace in the hope of stopping the slaughter. His
noble effort cost him his life. He was shot dead. They showed us a cast
of his face taken after death, the bullet that killed him, and the two
vertebrae in which it lodged. These people have a somewhat singular
taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that the silver cross
which the good archbishop wore at his girdle was seized and thrown into
the Seine, where it lay embedded in the mud for fifteen years, and then
an angel appeared to a priest and told him where to dive for it; he did
dive for it and got it, and now it is there on exhibition at Notre Dame,
to be inspected by anybody who feels an interest in inanimate objects of
miraculous intervention.
Next we went to visit the Morgue, that horrible receptacle for the dead
who die mysteriously and leave the manner of their taking off a dismal
secret. We stood before a grating and looked through into a room which
was hung all about with the clothing of dead men; coarse blouses,
water-soaked; the delicate garments of women and children; patrician
vestments, hacked and stabbed and stained with red; a hat that was
crushed and bloody. On a slanting stone lay a drowned man, naked,
swollen, purple; clasping the fragment of a broken bush with a grip
which death had so petrified that human strength could not unloose it
--mute witness of the last despairing effort to save the life that was
doomed beyond all help. A stream of water trickled ceaselessly over the
hideous face. We knew that the body and the clothing were there for
identification by friends, but still we wondered if anybody could love
that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew meditative and
wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that ghastly thing
was dandling it upon her knee, and kissing it and petting it and
displaying it with satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic vision
of this dread ending ever flitted through her brain. I half feared that
the mother, or the wife or a brother of the dead man might come while we
stood there, but nothing of the kind occurred. Men and women came, and
some looked eagerly in and pressed their faces against the bars; others
glanced carelessly at the body and turned away with a disappointed look
--people, I thought, who live upon strong excitements and who attend the
exhibitions of the Morgue regularly, just as other people go to see
theatrical spectacles every night. When one of these looked in and
passed on, I could not help thinking--
"Now this don't afford you any satisfaction--a party with his head shot
off is what you need."
One night we went to the celebrated Jardin Mabille, but only staid a
little while. We wanted to see some of this kind of Paris life, however,
and therefore the next night we went to a similar place of entertainment
in a great garden in the suburb of Asnieres. We went to the railroad
depot, toward evening, and Ferguson got tickets for a second-class
carriage. Such a perfect jam of people I have not often seen--but there
was no noise, no disorder, no rowdyism. Some of the women and young
girls that entered the train we knew to be of the demi-monde, but others
we were not at all sure about.
The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves modestly and
becomingly all the way out, except that they smoked. When we arrived at
the garden in Asnieres, we paid a franc or two admission and entered a
place which had flower beds in it, and grass plots, and long, curving
rows of ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower
convenient for eating ice cream in. We moved along the sinuous gravel
walks, with the great concourse of girls and young men, and suddenly a
domed and filigreed white temple, starred over and over and over again
with brilliant gas jets, burst upon us like a fallen sun. Nearby was a
large, handsome house with its ample front illuminated in the same way,
and above its roof floated the Star-Spangled Banner of America.
"Well!" I said. "How is this?" It nearly took my breath away.
Ferguson said an American--a New Yorker--kept the place, and was carrying
on quite a stirring opposition to the Jardin Mabille.
Crowds composed of both sexes and nearly all ages were frisking about the
garden or sitting in the open air in front of the flagstaff and the
temple, drinking wine and coffee or smoking. The dancing had not begun
yet. Ferguson said there was to be an exhibition. The famous Blondin
was going to perform on a tightrope in another part of the garden. We
went thither. Here the light was dim, and the masses of people were
pretty closely packed together. And now I made a mistake which any
donkey might make, but a sensible man never. I committed an error which
I find myself repeating every day of my life. Standing right before a
young lady, I said:
"Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!"
"I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir, than
for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!" This in good,
pure English.
We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did not
feel right comfortable for some time afterward. Why will people be so
stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten
thousand persons?
But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched cable, far away
above the sea of tossing hats and handkerchiefs, and in the glare of the
hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked like a wee
insect. He balanced his pole and walked the length of his rope--two or
three hundred feet; he came back and got a man and carried him across; he
returned to the center and danced a jig; next he performed some gymnastic
and balancing feats too perilous to afford a pleasant spectacle; and he
finished by fastening to his person a thousand Roman candles, Catherine
wheels, serpents and rockets of all manner of brilliant colors, setting
them on fire all at once and walking and waltzing across his rope again
in a blinding blaze of glory that lit up the garden and the people's
faces like a great conflagration at midnight.
The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple. Within it was a
drinking saloon, and all around it was a broad circular platform for the
dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty
sets formed, the music struck up, and then--I placed my hands before my
face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were dancing
the renowned "Can-can." A handsome girl in the set before me tripped
forward lightly to meet the opposite gentleman, tripped back again,
grasped her dresses vigorously on both sides with her hands, raised them
pretty high, danced an extraordinary jig that had more activity and
exposure about it than any jig I ever saw before, and then, drawing her
clothes still higher, she advanced gaily to the center and launched a
vicious kick full at her vis-a-vis that must infallibly have removed his
nose if he had been seven feet high. It was a mercy he was only six.
That is the can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as noisily,
as furiously as you can; expose yourself as much as possible if you are a
woman; and kick as high as you can, no matter which sex you belong to.
There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid, respectable,
aged people who were there that night can testify to the truth of that
statement. There were a good many such people present. I suppose French
morality is not of that straight-laced description which is shocked at
trifles.
I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can. Shouts, laughter,
furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling forms,
stormy jerking and snatching of gay dresses, bobbing beads, flying arms,
lightning flashes of white-stockinged calves and dainty slippers in the
air, and then a grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub, and a wild
stampede! Heavens! Nothing like it has been seen on earth since
trembling Tam O'Shanter saw the devil and the witches at their orgies
that stormy night in "Alloway's auld haunted kirk."
We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk purchases in view,
and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them
were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about
them of the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small
pleasure in examining them. Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons
was more prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than the
charms of color and expression which are claimed to be in the pictures.
Gratitude for kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that some of those
artists carried it so far that it ceased to be gratitude and became
worship. If there is a plausible excuse for the worship of men, then by
all means let us forgive Rubens and his brethren.
But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old masters
that might as well be left unsaid.
Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless park, with its
forests, its lakes, its cascades, and its broad avenues. There were
thousands upon thousands of vehicles abroad, and the scene was full of
life and gaiety. There were very common hacks, with father and mother
and all the children in them; conspicuous little open carriages with
celebrated ladies of questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes
and Duchesses abroad, with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally
gorgeous outriders perched on each of the six horses; there were blue and
silver, and green and gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and
descriptions of stunning and startling liveries out, and I almost yearned
to be a flunkey myself, for the sake of the fine clothes.
But presently the Emperor came along and he outshone them all. He was
preceded by a bodyguard of gentlemen on horseback in showy uniforms, his
carriage-horses (there appeared to be somewhere in the remote
neighborhood of a thousand of them,) were bestridden by gallant-looking
fellows, also in stylish uniforms, and after the carriage followed
another detachment of bodyguards. Everybody got out of the way;
everybody bowed to the Emperor and his friend the Sultan; and they went
by on a swinging trot and disappeared.
I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I can not do it. It is simply
a beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an
enchanting place. It is in Paris now, one may say, but a crumbling old
cross in one portion of it reminds one that it was not always so. The
cross marks the spot where a celebrated troubadour was waylaid and
murdered in the fourteenth century. It was in this park that that fellow
with an unpronounceable name made the attempt upon the Russian Czar's
life last spring with a pistol. The bullet struck a tree. Ferguson
showed us the place. Now in America that interesting tree would be
chopped down or forgotten within the next five years, but it will be
treasured here. The guides will point it out to visitors for the next
eight hundred years, and when it decays and falls down they will put up
another there and go on with the same old story just the same.
CHAPTER XV.
One of our pleasantest visits was to Pere la Chaise, the national
burying-ground of France, the honored resting-place of some of her
greatest and best children, the last home of scores of illustrious men
and women who were born to no titles, but achieved fame by their own
energy and their own genius. It is a solemn city of winding streets and
of miniature marble temples and mansions of the dead gleaming white from
out a wilderness of foliage and fresh flowers. Not every city is so well
peopled as this, or has so ample an area within its walls. Few palaces
exist in any city that are so exquisite in design, so rich in art, so
costly in material, so graceful, so beautiful.
We had stood in the ancient church of St. Denis, where the marble
effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens lay stretched at
length upon the tombs, and the sensations invoked were startling and
novel; the curious armor, the obsolete costumes, the placid faces, the
hands placed palm to palm in eloquent supplication--it was a vision of
gray antiquity. It seemed curious enough to be standing face to face, as
it were, with old Dagobert I., and Clovis and Charlemagne, those vague,
colossal heroes, those shadows, those myths of a thousand years ago! I
touched their dust-covered faces with my finger, but Dagobert was deader
than the sixteen centuries that have passed over him, Clovis slept well
after his labor for Christ, and old Charlemagne went on dreaming of his
paladins, of bloody Roncesvalles, and gave no heed to me.
The great names of Pere la Chaise impress one, too, but differently.
There the suggestion brought constantly to his mind is, that this place
is sacred to a nobler royalty--the royalty of heart and brain. Every
faculty of mind, every noble trait of human nature, every high occupation
which men engage in, seems represented by a famous name. The effect is a
curious medley. Davoust and Massena, who wrought in many a battle
tragedy, are here, and so also is Rachel, of equal renown in mimic
tragedy on the stage. The Abbe Sicard sleeps here--the first great
teacher of the deaf and dumb--a man whose heart went out to every
unfortunate, and whose life was given to kindly offices in their service;
and not far off, in repose and peace at last, lies Marshal Ney, whose
stormy spirit knew no music like the bugle call to arms. The man who
originated public gas-lighting, and that other benefactor who introduced
the cultivation of the potato and thus blessed millions of his starving
countrymen, lie with the Prince of Masserano, and with exiled queens and
princes of Further India. Gay-Lussac the chemist, Laplace the
astronomer, Larrey the surgeon, de Suze the advocate, are here, and with
them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini; de Balzac, Beaumarchais, Beranger;
Moliere and Lafontaine, and scores of other men whose names and whose
worthy labors are as familiar in the remote by-places of civilization as
are the historic deeds of the kings and princes that sleep in the marble
vaults of St. Denis.
But among the thousands and thousands of tombs in Pere la Chaise, there
is one that no man, no woman, no youth of either sex, ever passes by
without stopping to examine. Every visitor has a sort of indistinct idea
of the history of its dead and comprehends that homage is due there, but
not one in twenty thousand clearly remembers the story of that tomb and
its romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard and Heloise--a
grave which has been more revered, more widely known, more written and
sung about and wept over, for seven hundred years, than any other in
Christendom save only that of the Saviour. All visitors linger pensively
about it; all young people capture and carry away keepsakes and mementoes
of it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are disappointed in love come
there to bail out when they are full of tears; yea, many stricken lovers
make pilgrimages to this shrine from distant provinces to weep and wail
and "grit" their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the
sympathies of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of
immortelles and budding flowers.
Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that tomb. Go when
you will, you find it furnished with those bouquets and immortelles. Go
when you will, you find a gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to supply
the deficiencies caused by memento-cabbaging vandals whose affections
have miscarried.
Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise? Precious few
people. The names are perfectly familiar to every body, and that is
about all. With infinite pains I have acquired a knowledge of that
history, and I propose to narrate it here, partly for the honest
information of the public and partly to show that public that they have
been wasting a good deal of marketable sentiment very unnecessarily.
STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE
Heloise was born seven hundred and sixty-six years ago. She may have had
parents. There is no telling. She lived with her uncle Fulbert, a canon
of the cathedral of Paris. I do not know what a canon of a cathedral is,
but that is what he was. He was nothing more than a sort of a mountain
howitzer, likely, because they had no heavy artillery in those days.
Suffice it, then, that Heloise lived with her uncle the howitzer and was
happy. She spent the most of her childhood in the convent of Argenteuil
--never heard of Argenteuil before, but suppose there was really such a
place. She then returned to her uncle, the old gun, or son of a gun, as
the case may be, and he taught her to write and speak Latin, which was
the language of literature and polite society at that period.
Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made himself widely
famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in Paris.
The originality of his principles, his eloquence, and his great physical
strength and beauty created a profound sensation. He saw Heloise, and
was captivated by her blooming youth, her beauty, and her charming
disposition. He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again; she
answered again. He was now in love. He longed to know her--to speak to
her face to face.
His school was near Fulbert's house. He asked Fulbert to allow him to
call. The good old swivel saw here a rare opportunity: his niece, whom
he so much loved, would absorb knowledge from this man, and it would not
cost him a cent. Such was Fulbert--penurious.
Fulbert's first name is not mentioned by any author, which is
unfortunate. However, George W. Fulbert will answer for him as well as
any other. We will let him go at that. He asked Abelard to teach her.
Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came often and staid
long. A letter of his shows in its very first sentence that he came
under that friendly roof like a cold-hearted villain as he was, with the
deliberate intention of debauching a confiding, innocent girl. This is
the letter:
"I cannot cease to be astonished at the simplicity of Fulbert;
I was as much surprised as if he had placed a lamb in the power
of a hungry wolf. Heloise and I, under pretext of study, gave
ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude that love seeks
our studies procured for us. Books were open before us, but we
spoke oftener of love than philosophy, and kisses came more
readily from our lips than words."
And so, exulting over an honorable confidence which to his degraded
instinct was a ludicrous "simplicity," this unmanly Abelard seduced the
niece of the man whose guest he was. Paris found it out. Fulbert was
told of it--told often--but refused to believe it. He could not
comprehend how a man could be so depraved as to use the sacred protection
and security of hospitality as a means for the commission of such a crime
as that. But when he heard the rowdies in the streets singing the
love-songs of Abelard to Heloise, the case was too plain--love-songs come
not properly within the teachings of rhetoric and philosophy.
He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard returned secretly and carried
Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his native country. Here, shortly
afterward, she bore a son, who, from his rare beauty, was surnamed
Astrolabe--William G. The girl's flight enraged Fulbert, and he longed
for vengeance, but feared to strike lest retaliation visit Heloise--for
he still loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry Heloise
--but on a shameful condition: that the marriage should be kept secret
from the world, to the end that (while her good name remained a wreck, as
before,) his priestly reputation might be kept untarnished. It was like
that miscreant. Fulbert saw his opportunity and consented. He would see
the parties married, and then violate the confidence of the man who had
taught him that trick; he would divulge the secret and so remove somewhat
of the obloquy that attached to his niece's fame. But the niece
suspected his scheme. She refused the marriage at first; she said
Fulbert would betray the secret to save her, and besides, she did not
wish to drag down a lover who was so gifted, so honored by the world,
and who had such a splendid career before him. It was noble,
self-sacrificing love, and characteristic of the pure-souled Heloise,
but it was not good sense.
But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place. Now for
Fulbert! The heart so wounded should be healed at last; the proud spirit
so tortured should find rest again; the humbled head should be lifted up
once more. He proclaimed the marriage in the high places of the city and
rejoiced that dishonor had departed from his house. But lo! Abelard
denied the marriage! Heloise denied it! The people, knowing the former
circumstances, might have believed Fulbert had only Abelard denied it,
but when the person chiefly interested--the girl herself--denied it, they
laughed, despairing Fulbert to scorn.
The poor canon of the cathedral of Paris was spiked again. The last hope
of repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What next?
Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed it. The historian says:
"Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and
inflicted upon him a terrible and nameless mutilation."
I am seeking the last resting place of those "ruffians." When I find it
I shall shed some tears on it, and stack up some bouquets and
immortelles, and cart away from it some gravel whereby to remember that
howsoever blotted by crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did
one just deed, at any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict
letter of the law.
Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world and its
pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of Abelard
--never even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress of
Argenteuil and led a life of complete seclusion. She happened one day to
see a letter written by him, in which he narrated his own history. She
cried over it and wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his "sister
in Christ." They continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language
of unwavering affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the polished
rhetorician. She poured out her heart in passionate, disjointed
sentences; he replied with finished essays, divided deliberately into
heads and sub-heads, premises and argument. She showered upon him the
tenderest epithets that love could devise, he addressed her from the
North Pole of his frozen heart as the "Spouse of Christ!" The abandoned
villain!
On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some disreputable
irregularities were discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis
broke up her establishment. Abelard was the official head of the
monastery of St. Gildas de Ruys, at that time, and when he heard of her
homeless condition a sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a
wonder the unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed
her and her troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious
establishment which he had founded. She had many privations and
sufferings to undergo at first, but her worth and her gentle disposition
won influential friends for her, and she built up a wealthy and
flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite with the heads of the
church, and also the people, though she seldom appeared in public. She
rapidly advanced in esteem, in good report, and in usefulness, and
Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her that he made her
the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents, and ranking
as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and
distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple
him from the high position he held in the world of intellectual
excellence, and it came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle
St. Bernard in debate and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a
royal and illustrious assemblage, and when his antagonist had finished he
looked about him and stammered a commencement; but his courage failed
him, the cunning of his tongue was gone: with his speech unspoken, he
trembled and sat down, a disgraced and vanquished champion.
He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, A.D., 1144. They removed his
body to the Paraclete afterward, and when Heloise died, twenty years
later, they buried her with him, in accordance with her last wish. He
died at the ripe age of 64, and she at 63. After the bodies had remained
entombed three hundred years, they were removed once more. They were
removed again in 1800, and finally, seventeen years afterward, they were
taken up and transferred to Pere la Chaise, where they will remain in
peace and quiet until it comes time for them to get up and move again.
History is silent concerning the last acts of the mountain howitzer. Let
the world say what it will about him, I, at least, shall always respect
the memory and sorrow for the abused trust and the broken heart and the
troubled spirit of the old smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his!
Such is the story of Abelard and Heloise. Such is the history that
Lamartine has shed such cataracts of tears over. But that man never
could come within the influence of a subject in the least pathetic
without overflowing his banks. He ought to be dammed--or leveed, I
should more properly say. Such is the history--not as it is usually
told, but as it is when stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that
would enshrine for our loving worship a dastardly seducer like Pierre
Abelard. I have not a word to say against the misused, faithful girl,
and would not withhold from her grave a single one of those simple
tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to her memory, but I am
sorry enough that I have not time and opportunity to write four or five
volumes of my opinion of her friend the founder of the Parachute, or the
Paraclete, or whatever it was.
The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug in my
ignorance! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this sort
of people, until I have read them up and know whether they are entitled
to any tearful attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles back, now,
and that bunch of radishes.
In Paris we often saw in shop windows the sign "English Spoken Here,"
just as one sees in the windows at home the sign "Ici on parle
francaise." We always invaded these places at once--and invariably
received the information, framed in faultless French, that the clerk who
did the English for the establishment had just gone to dinner and would
be back in an hour--would Monsieur buy something? We wondered why those
parties happened to take their dinners at such erratic and extraordinary
hours, for we never called at a time when an exemplary Christian would be
in the least likely to be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it
was a base fraud--a snare to trap the unwary--chaff to catch fledglings
with. They had no English-murdering clerk. They trusted to the sign to
inveigle foreigners into their lairs, and trusted to their own
blandishments to keep them there till they bought something.
We ferreted out another French imposition--a frequent sign to this
effect: "ALL MANNER OF AMERICAN DRINKS ARTISTICALLY PREPARED HERE." We
procured the services of a gentleman experienced in the nomenclature of
the American bar, and moved upon the works of one of these impostors. A
bowing, aproned Frenchman skipped forward and said:
"Que voulez les messieurs?" I do not know what "Que voulez les
messieurs?" means, but such was his remark.
Our general said, "We will take a whiskey straight."
[A stare from the Frenchman.]
"Well, if you don't know what that is, give us a champagne cock-tail."
[A stare and a shrug.]
"Well, then, give us a sherry cobbler."
The Frenchman was checkmated. This was all Greek to him.
"Give us a brandy smash!"
The Frenchman began to back away, suspicious of the ominous vigor of the
last order--began to back away, shrugging his shoulders and spreading his
hands apologetically.
The General followed him up and gained a complete victory. The
uneducated foreigner could not even furnish a Santa Cruz Punch, an
Eye-Opener, a Stone-Fence, or an Earthquake. It was plain that he was a
wicked impostor.
An acquaintance of mine said the other day that he was doubtless the only
American visitor to the Exposition who had had the high honor of being
escorted by the Emperor's bodyguard. I said with unobtrusive frankness
that I was astonished that such a long-legged, lantern-jawed,
unprepossessing-looking specter as he should be singled out for a
distinction like that, and asked how it came about. He said he had
attended a great military review in the Champ de Mars some time ago, and
while the multitude about him was growing thicker and thicker every
moment he observed an open space inside the railing. He left his
carriage and went into it. He was the only person there, and so he had
plenty of room, and the situation being central, he could see all the
preparations going on about the field. By and by there was a sound of
music, and soon the Emperor of the French and the Emperor of Austria,
escorted by the famous Cent Gardes, entered the enclosure. They seemed
not to observe him, but directly, in response to a sign from the
commander of the guard, a young lieutenant came toward him with a file of
his men following, halted, raised his hand, and gave the military salute,
and then said in a low voice that he was sorry to have to disturb a
stranger and a gentleman, but the place was sacred to royalty. Then this
New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and begged pardon, then with the
officer beside him, the file of men marching behind him, and with every
mark of respect, he was escorted to his carriage by the imperial Cent
Gardes! The officer saluted again and fell back, the New Jersey sprite
bowed in return and had presence of mind enough to pretend that he had
simply called on a matter of private business with those emperors, and so
waved them an adieu and drove from the field!
Imagine a poor Frenchman ignorantly intruding upon a public rostrum
sacred to some six-penny dignitary in America. The police would scare
him to death first with a storm of their elegant blasphemy, and then pull
him to pieces getting him away from there. We are measurably superior to
the French in some things, but they are immeasurably our betters in
others.
Enough of Paris for the present. We have done our whole duty by it. We
have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the Madeleine, that wonder
of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great churches and museums,
libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the
Pantheon, Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the legislative
body, the billiard rooms, the barbers, the grisettes--
Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are another romantic
fraud. They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so
beautiful--so neat and trim, so graceful--so naive and trusting--so
gentle, so winning--so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible
to buyers in their prattling importunity--so devoted to their
poverty-stricken students of the Latin Quarter--so lighthearted and
happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs--and oh, so charmingly,
so delightfully immoral!
Stuff! For three or four days I was constantly saying:
"Quick, Ferguson! Is that a grisette?"
And he always said, "No."
He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette. Then he showed
me dozens of them. They were like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever saw
--homely. They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug
noses as a general thing, and moustaches that not even good breeding
could overlook; they combed their hair straight back without parting;
they were ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were not graceful; I
knew by their looks that they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and
finally, to my thinking it would be base flattery to call them immoral.
Aroint thee, wench! I sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin
Quarter now, even more than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to earth
another idol of my infancy.
We have seen every thing, and tomorrow we go to Versailles. We shall see
Paris only for a little while as we come back to take up our line of
march for the ship, and so I may as well bid the beautiful city a
regretful farewell. We shall travel many thousands of miles after we
leave here and visit many great cities, but we shall find none so
enchanting as this.
Some of our party have gone to England, intending to take a roundabout
course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or Naples several weeks hence.
We came near going to Geneva, but have concluded to return to Marseilles
and go up through Italy from Genoa.
I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud to
be able to make--and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially endorse
it, to wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born
and reared in America.
I feel now like a man who has redeemed a failing reputation and shed
luster upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the
eleventh hour.
Let the curtain fall, to slow music.
CHAPTER XVI.
VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try to
understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the
Garden of Eden--but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of
beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite
dream. The scene thrills one like military music! A noble palace,
stretching its ornamented front, block upon block away, till it seemed
that it would never end; a grand promenade before it, whereon the armies
of an empire might parade; all about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal
statues that were almost numberless and yet seemed only scattered over
the ample space; broad flights of stone steps leading down from the
promenade to lower grounds of the park--stairways that whole regiments
might stand to arms upon and have room to spare; vast fountains whose
great bronze effigies discharged rivers of sparkling water into the air
and mingled a hundred curving jets together in forms of matchless beauty;
wide grass-carpeted avenues that branched hither and thither in every
direction and wandered to seemingly interminable distances, walled all
the way on either side with compact ranks of leafy trees whose branches
met above and formed arches as faultless and as symmetrical as ever were
carved in stone; and here and there were glimpses of sylvan lakes with
miniature ships glassed in their surfaces. And every where--on the
palace steps, and the great promenade, around the fountains, among the
trees, and far under the arches of the endless avenues--hundreds and
hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran or danced, and gave to
the fairy picture the life and animation which was all of perfection it
could have lacked.
It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Everything is on so gigantic a scale.
Nothing is small--nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the
palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are
interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles
are vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and
these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more
beautiful than it was possible for any place in the world to be. I know
now that the pictures never came up to the subject in any respect, and
that no painter could represent Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it
is in reality. I used to abuse Louis XIV for spending two hundred
millions of dollars in creating this marvelous park, when bread was so
scarce with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He took a
tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make this
park and build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept 36,000
men employed daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that they used
to die and be hauled off by cartloads every night. The wife of a
nobleman of the time speaks of this as an "inconvenience," but naively
remarks that "it does not seem worthy of attention in the happy state of
tranquillity we now enjoy."
I always thought ill of people at home who trimmed their shrubbery into
pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and
when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to
feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom
of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees
into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room,
and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred
thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of
leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower down than six feet above the
ground; from that point the boughs begin to project, and very gradually
they extend outward further and further till they meet overhead, and a
faultless tunnel of foliage is formed. The arch is mathematically
precise. The effect is then very fine. They make trees take fifty
different shapes, and so these quaint effects are infinitely varied and
picturesque. The trees in no two avenues are shaped alike, and
consequently the eye is not fatigued with anything in the nature of
monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject now, leaving it to
others to determine how these people manage to make endless ranks of
lofty forest trees grow to just a certain thickness of trunk (say a foot
and two-thirds); how they make them spring to precisely the same height
for miles; how they make them grow so close together; how they compel one
huge limb to spring from the same identical spot on each tree and form
the main sweep of the arch; and how all these things are kept exactly in
the same condition and in the same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry
month after month and year after year--for I have tried to reason out the
problem and have failed.
We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and
fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that
to be in such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his
disposal. These pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary
little canvas among them all treats of anything but great French
victories. We wandered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit
Trianon, those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so
mournful--filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and
three dead kings and as many queens. In one sumptuous bed they had all
slept in succession, but no one occupies it now. In a large dining room
stood the table at which Louis XIV and his mistress Madame Maintenon, and
after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked and
unattended--for the table stood upon a trapdoor, which descended with it
to regions below when it was necessary to replenish its dishes. In a
room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as poor Marie
Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the King to
Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious
carriages that showed no color but gold--carriages used by former kings
of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly head
is to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with them were
some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans, tigers,
etc.--vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs and
fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their
history. When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told
Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think
of anything now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be
perfection--nothing less. She said she could think of but one thing--it
was summer, and it was balmy France--yet she would like well to sleigh
ride in the leafy avenues of Versailles! The next morning found miles
and miles of grassy avenues spread thick with snowy salt and sugar, and a
procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to receive the chief concubine
of the gaiest and most unprincipled court that France has ever seen!
From sumptuous Versailles, with its palaces, its statues, its gardens,
and its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and sought its antipodes
--the Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, narrow streets; dirty children
blockading them; greasy, slovenly women capturing and spanking them;
filthy dens on first floors, with rag stores in them (the heaviest
business in the Faubourg is the chiffonier's); other filthy dens where
whole suits of second and third-hand clothing are sold at prices that
would ruin any proprietor who did not steal his stock; still other filthy
dens where they sold groceries--sold them by the half-pennyworth--five
dollars would buy the man out, goodwill and all. Up these little crooked
streets they will murder a man for seven dollars and dump the body in the
Seine. And up some other of these streets--most of them, I should say
--live lorettes.
All through this Faubourg St. Antoine, misery, poverty, vice, and crime
go hand in hand, and the evidences of it stare one in the face from every
side. Here the people live who begin the revolutions. Whenever there is
anything of that kind to be done, they are always ready. They take as
much genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in cutting a
throat or shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these savage-looking
ruffians who storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries occasionally, and
swarm into Versailles when a king is to be called to account.
But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more soldiers'
heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He
is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble
boulevards as straight as an arrow--avenues which a cannon ball could
traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible
than the flesh and bones of men--boulevards whose stately edifices will
never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented
revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares radiate from one
ample centre--a centre which is exceedingly well adapted to the
accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot there, but they
must seek another rallying-place in future. And this ingenious Napoleon
paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition
of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones--no more
assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles. I cannot feel friendly
toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III., especially at this
time,--[July, 1867.]--when in fancy I see his credulous victim,
Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow
watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never
come--but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his shrewd good
sense.
CHAPTER XVII.
We had a pleasant journey of it seaward again. We found that for the
three past nights our ship had been in a state of war. The first night
the sailors of a British ship, being happy with grog, came down on the
pier and challenged our sailors to a free fight. They accepted with
alacrity, repaired to the pier, and gained--their share of a drawn
battle. Several bruised and bloody members of both parties were carried
off by the police and imprisoned until the following morning. The next
night the British boys came again to renew the fight, but our men had had
strict orders to remain on board and out of sight. They did so, and the
besieging party grew noisy and more and more abusive as the fact became
apparent (to them) that our men were afraid to come out. They went away
finally with a closing burst of ridicule and offensive epithets. The
third night they came again and were more obstreperous than ever. They
swaggered up and down the almost deserted pier, and hurled curses,
obscenity, and stinging sarcasms at our crew. It was more than human
nature could bear. The executive officer ordered our men ashore--with
instructions not to fight. They charged the British and gained a
brilliant victory. I probably would not have mentioned this war had it
ended differently. But I travel to learn, and I still remember that they
picture no French defeats in the battle-galleries of Versailles.
It was like home to us to step on board the comfortable ship again and
smoke and lounge about her breezy decks. And yet it was not altogether
like home, either, because so many members of the family were away. We
missed some pleasant faces which we would rather have found at dinner,
and at night there were gaps in the euchre-parties which could not be
satisfactorily filled. "Moult" was in England, Jack in Switzerland,
Charley in Spain. Blucher was gone, none could tell where. But we were
at sea again, and we had the stars and the ocean to look at, and plenty
of room to meditate in.
In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing from
the decks, early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of Genoa
rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her hundred
palaces.
Here we rest for the present--or rather, here we have been trying to
rest, for some little time, but we run about too much to accomplish a
great deal in that line.
I would like to remain here. I had rather not go any further. There may
be prettier women in Europe, but I doubt it. The population of Genoa is
120,000; two-thirds of these are women, I think, and at least two-thirds
of the women are beautiful. They are as dressy and as tasteful and as
graceful as they could possibly be without being angels. However, angels
are not very dressy, I believe. At least the angels in pictures are not
--they wear nothing but wings. But these Genoese women do look so
charming. Most of the young demoiselles are robed in a cloud of white
from head to foot, though many trick themselves out more elaborately.
Nine-tenths of them wear nothing on their heads but a filmy sort of veil,
which falls down their backs like a white mist. They are very fair, and
many of them have blue eyes, but black and dreamy dark brown ones are met
with oftenest.
The ladies and gentlemen of Genoa have a pleasant fashion of promenading
in a large park on the top of a hill in the center of the city, from six
till nine in the evening, and then eating ices in a neighboring garden an
hour or two longer. We went to the park on Sunday evening. Two thousand
persons were present, chiefly young ladies and gentlemen. The gentlemen
were dressed in the very latest Paris fashions, and the robes of the
ladies glinted among the trees like so many snowflakes. The multitude
moved round and round the park in a great procession. The bands played,
and so did the fountains; the moon and the gas lamps lit up the scene,
and altogether it was a brilliant and an animated picture. I scanned
every female face that passed, and it seemed to me that all were
handsome. I never saw such a freshet of loveliness before. I did not
see how a man of only ordinary decision of character could marry here,
because before he could get his mind made up he would fall in love with
somebody else.
Never smoke any Italian tobacco. Never do it on any account. It makes
me shudder to think what it must be made of. You cannot throw an old
cigar "stub" down anywhere, but some vagabond will pounce upon it on the
instant. I like to smoke a good deal, but it wounds my sensibilities to
see one of these stub-hunters watching me out of the corners of his
hungry eyes and calculating how long my cigar will be likely to last.
It reminded me too painfully of that San Francisco undertaker who used to
go to sick-beds with his watch in his hand and time the corpse. One of
these stub-hunters followed us all over the park last night, and we never
had a smoke that was worth anything. We were always moved to appease him
with the stub before the cigar was half gone, because he looked so
viciously anxious. He regarded us as his own legitimate prey, by right
of discovery, I think, because he drove off several other professionals
who wanted to take stock in us.
Now, they surely must chew up those old stubs, and dry and sell them for
smoking-tobacco. Therefore, give your custom to other than Italian
brands of the article.
"The Superb" and the "City of Palaces" are names which Genoa has held for
centuries. She is full of palaces, certainly, and the palaces are
sumptuous inside, but they are very rusty without and make no pretensions
to architectural magnificence. "Genoa the Superb" would be a felicitous
title if it referred to the women.
We have visited several of the palaces--immense thick-walled piles, with
great stone staircases, tesselated marble pavements on the floors,
(sometimes they make a mosaic work, of intricate designs, wrought in
pebbles or little fragments of marble laid in cement,) and grand salons
hung with pictures by Rubens, Guido, Titian, Paul Veronese, and so on,
and portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and gallant coats
of mail, and patrician ladies in stunning costumes of centuries ago.
But, of course, the folks were all out in the country for the summer, and
might not have known enough to ask us to dinner if they had been at home,
and so all the grand empty salons, with their resounding pavements, their
grim pictures of dead ancestors, and tattered banners with the dust of
bygone centuries upon them, seemed to brood solemnly of death and the
grave, and our spirits ebbed away, and our cheerfulness passed from us.
We never went up to the eleventh story. We always began to suspect
ghosts. There was always an undertaker-looking servant along, too, who
handed us a program, pointed to the picture that began the list of the
salon he was in, and then stood stiff and stark and unsmiling in his
petrified livery till we were ready to move on to the next chamber,
whereupon he marched sadly ahead and took up another malignantly
respectful position as before. I wasted so much time praying that the
roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkies that I had but little
left to bestow upon palace and pictures.
And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the
guides. This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far
as English was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside
himself could talk the language at all. He showed us the birthplace of
Christopher Columbus, and after we had reflected in silent awe before it
for fifteen minutes, he said it was not the birthplace of Columbus, but
of Columbus' grandmother! When we demanded an explanation of his conduct
he only shrugged his shoulders and answered in barbarous Italian. I
shall speak further of this guide in a future chapter. All the
information we got out of him we shall be able to carry along with us, I
think.
I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have in the last
few weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their
specialty. Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens of
Genoa. I think there is a church every three or four hundred yards all
over town. The streets are sprinkled from end to end with shovel-hatted,
long-robed, well-fed priests, and the church bells by dozens are pealing
all the day long, nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of
orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads,
and with feet cased in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer
in the flesh and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look
like consummate famine-breeders. They are all fat and serene.
The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a building as we
have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has colonnades of noble pillars,
and a great organ, and the customary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures,
frescoed ceilings, and so forth. I cannot describe it, of course--it
would require a good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place.
They said that half of it--from the front door halfway down to the altar
--was a Jewish synagogue before the Saviour was born, and that no
alteration had been made in it since that time. We doubted the
statement, but did it reluctantly. We would much rather have believed
it. The place looked in too perfect repair to be so ancient.
The main point of interest about the cathedral is the little Chapel of
St. John the Baptist. They only allow women to enter it on one day in
the year, on account of the animosity they still cherish against the sex
because of the murder of the Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias. In
this Chapel is a marble chest, in which, they told us, were the ashes of
St. John; and around it was wound a chain, which, they said, had confined
him when he was in prison. We did not desire to disbelieve these
statements, and yet we could not feel certain that they were correct
--partly because we could have broken that chain, and so could St. John,
and partly because we had seen St. John's ashes before, in another
church. We could not bring ourselves to think St. John had two sets of
ashes.
They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St.
Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures
by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never
once mentioning in his writings that he could paint.
But isn't this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the
true cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that
held it together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have
seen as much as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns;
they have part of one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also
in Notre Dame. And as for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have
seen enough of them to duplicate him if necessary.
I only meant to write about the churches, but I keep wandering from the
subject. I could say that the Church of the Annunciation is a wilderness
of beautiful columns, of statues, gilded moldings, and pictures almost
countless, but that would give no one an entirely perfect idea of the
thing, and so where is the use? One family built the whole edifice, and
have got money left. There is where the mystery lies. We had an idea at
first that only a mint could have survived the expense.
These people here live in the heaviest, highest, broadest, darkest,
solidest houses one can imagine. Each one might "laugh a siege to
scorn." A hundred feet front and a hundred high is about the style, and
you go up three flights of stairs before you begin to come upon signs of
occupancy. Everything is stone, and stone of the heaviest--floors,
stairways, mantels, benches--everything. The walls are four to five feet
thick. The streets generally are four or five to eight feet wide and as
crooked as a corkscrew. You go along one of these gloomy cracks, and
look up and behold the sky like a mere ribbon of light, far above your
head, where the tops of the tall houses on either side of the street bend
almost together. You feel as if you were at the bottom of some
tremendous abyss, with all the world far above you. You wind in and out
and here and there, in the most mysterious way, and have no more idea of
the points of the compass than if you were a blind man. You can never
persuade yourself that these are actually streets, and the frowning,
dingy, monstrous houses dwellings, till you see one of these beautiful,
prettily dressed women emerge from them--see her emerge from a dark,
dreary-looking den that looks dungeon all over, from the ground away
halfway up to heaven. And then you wonder that such a charming moth
could come from such a forbidding shell as that. The streets are wisely
made narrow and the houses heavy and thick and stony, in order that the
people may be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool, and stay
so. And while I think of it--the men wear hats and have very dark
complexions, but the women wear no headgear but a flimsy veil like a
gossamer's web, and yet are exceedingly fair as a general thing.
Singular, isn't it?
The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied by one family,
but they could accommodate a hundred, I should think. They are relics of
the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days--the days when she was a great
commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses, solid
marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish color,
outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle
scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar
illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded to age
and exposure and is peeling off in flakes and patches, the effect is not
happy. A noseless Cupid or a Jupiter with an eye out or a Venus with a
fly-blister on her breast, are not attractive features in a picture.
Some of these painted walls reminded me somewhat of the tall van,
plastered with fanciful bills and posters, that follows the bandwagon of
a circus about a country village. I have not read or heard that the
outsides of the houses of any other European city are frescoed in this
way.
I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such massive
arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering
broad-winged edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great
blocks of stone of which these edifices are built can never decay; walls
that are as thick as an ordinary American doorway is high cannot
crumble.
The republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the Middle Ages.
Their ships filled the Mediterranean, and they carried on an extensive
commerce with Constantinople and Syria. Their warehouses were the great
distributing depots from whence the costly merchandise of the East was
sent abroad over Europe. They were warlike little nations and defied, in
those days, governments that overshadow them now as mountains overshadow
molehills. The Saracens captured and pillaged Genoa nine hundred years
ago, but during the following century Genoa and Pisa entered into an
offensive and defensive alliance and besieged the Saracen colonies in
Sardinia and the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy that maintained its
pristine vigor and held to its purpose for forty long years. They were
victorious at last and divided their conquests equably among their great
patrician families. Descendants of some of those proud families still
inhabit the palaces of Genoa, and trace in their own features a
resemblance to the grim knights whose portraits hang in their stately
halls, and to pictured beauties with pouting lips and merry eyes whose
originals have been dust and ashes for many a dead and forgotten century.
The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders of knights of
the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its mailed sentinels once
kept watch and ward in its massive turrets and woke the echoes of these
halls and corridors with their iron heels.
But Genoa's greatness has degenerated into an unostentatious commerce in
velvets and silver filagree-work. They say that each European town has
its specialty. These filagree things are Genoa's specialty. Her smiths
take silver ingots and work them up into all manner of graceful and
beautiful forms. They make bunches of flowers, from flakes and wires of
silver, that counterfeit the delicate creations the frost weaves upon a
windowpane; and we were shown a miniature silver temple whose fluted
columns, whose Corinthian capitals and rich entablatures, whose spire,
statues, bells, and ornate lavishness of sculpture were wrought in
polished silver, and with such matchless art that every detail was a
fascinating study and the finished edifice a wonder of beauty.
We are ready to move again, though we are not really tired yet of the
narrow passages of this old marble cave. Cave is a good word--when
speaking of Genoa under the stars. When we have been prowling at
midnight through the gloomy crevices they call streets, where no
footfalls but ours were echoing, where only ourselves were abroad, and
lights appeared only at long intervals and at a distance, and
mysteriously disappeared again, and the houses at our elbows seemed to
stretch upward farther than ever toward the heavens, the memory of a cave
I used to know at home was always in my mind, with its lofty passages,
its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its
flitting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations of branching
crevices and corridors where we least expected them.
We are not tired of the endless processions of cheerful, chattering
gossipers that throng these courts and streets all day long, either; nor
of the coarse-robed monks; nor of the "Asti" wines, which that old doctor
(whom we call the Oracle,) with customary felicity in the matter of
getting everything wrong, misterms "nasty." But we must go,
nevertheless.
Our last sight was the cemetery (a burial place intended to accommodate
60,000 bodies,) and we shall continue to remember it after we shall have
forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded corridor extending
around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble,
and on every slab is an inscription--for every slab covers a corpse. On
either side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments,
tombs, and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full
of grace and beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect,
every feature guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and therefore,
to us these far-reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold
more lovely than the damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the
wreck of ancient art and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship
of the world.
Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we are now ready
to take the cars for Milan.
CHAPTER XVIII.
All day long we sped through a mountainous country whose peaks were
bright with sunshine, whose hillsides were dotted with pretty villas
sitting in the midst of gardens and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines
were cool and shady and looked ever so inviting from where we and the
birds were winging our flight through the sultry upper air.
We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our perspiration,
though. We timed one of them. We were twenty minutes passing through
it, going at the rate of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.
Beyond Alessandria we passed the battle-field of Marengo.
Toward dusk we drew near Milan and caught glimpses of the city and the
blue mountain peaks beyond. But we were not caring for these things
--they did not interest us in the least. We were in a fever of impatience;
we were dying to see the renowned cathedral! We watched--in this
direction and that--all around--everywhere. We needed no one to point it
out--we did not wish any one to point it out--we would recognize it even
in the desert of the great Sahara.
At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber sunlight,
rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in the far
horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the waste
of waves, at sea,--the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment.
Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural autocrat
was our sole object of interest.
What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate,
so airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in
the soft moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish
with a breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of
spires were cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon
its snowy roof! It was a vision!--a miracle!--an anthem sung in stone, a
poem wrought in marble!
Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful!
Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible
and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention.
Leave your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they
will surely turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you
rise in the morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at
night. Surely it must be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man
conceived.
At nine o'clock in the morning we went and stood before this marble
colossus. The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a
bas-relief of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so
ingeniously carved out of the marble that they seem like living
creatures--and the figures are so numerous and the design so complex that
one might study it a week without exhausting its interest. On the great
steeple--surmounting the myriad of spires--inside of the spires--over the
doors, the windows--in nooks and corners--every where that a niche or a
perch can be found about the enormous building, from summit to base,
there is a marble statue, and every statue is a study in itself!
Raphael, Angelo, Canova--giants like these gave birth to the designs, and
their own pupils carved them. Every face is eloquent with expression,
and every attitude is full of grace. Away above, on the lofty roof, rank
on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the air, and through
their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. In their midst the central
steeple towers proudly up like the mainmast of some great Indiaman among
a fleet of coasters.
We wished to go aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble stairway (of
course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest--there is no other
stone, no brick, no wood, among its building materials) and told us to go
up one hundred and eighty-two steps and stop till he came. It was not
necessary to say stop--we should have done that any how. We were tired
by the time we got there. This was the roof. Here, springing from its
broad marble flagstones, were the long files of spires, looking very tall
close at hand, but diminishing in the distance like the pipes of an
organ. We could see now that the statue on the top of each was the size
of a large man, though they all looked like dolls from the street. We
could see, also, that from the inside of each and every one of these
hollow spires, from sixteen to thirty-one beautiful marble statues looked
out upon the world below.
From the eaves to the comb of the roof stretched in endless succession
great curved marble beams, like the fore-and-aft braces of a steamboat,
and along each beam from end to end stood up a row of richly carved
flowers and fruits--each separate and distinct in kind, and over 15,000
species represented. At a little distance these rows seem to close
together like the ties of a railroad track, and then the mingling
together of the buds and blossoms of this marble garden forms a picture
that is very charming to the eye.
We descended and entered. Within the church, long rows of fluted
columns, like huge monuments, divided the building into broad aisles, and
on the figured pavement fell many a soft blush from the painted windows
above. I knew the church was very large, but I could not fully
appreciate its great size until I noticed that the men standing far down
by the altar looked like boys, and seemed to glide, rather than walk. We
loitered about gazing aloft at the monster windows all aglow with
brilliantly colored scenes in the lives of the Saviour and his followers.
Some of these pictures are mosaics, and so artistically are their
thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put together that the work
has all the smoothness and finish of a painting. We counted sixty panes
of glass in one window, and each pane was adorned with one of these
master achievements of genius and patience.
The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said was
considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not
possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature
with such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a
skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon and tissue
of the human frame represented in minute detail. It looked natural,
because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be
likely to look that way unless his attention were occupied with some
other matter. It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination
about it some where. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always
see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes. I shall dream that it is
resting its corded arms on the bed's head and looking down on me with its
dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me
and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy cold legs.
It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how I ran off from
school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night, concluded
to climb into the window of my father's office and sleep on a lounge,
because I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed. As I lay
on the lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I
could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched upon the floor. A
cold shiver went through me. I turned my face to the wall. That did not
answer. I was afraid that that thing would creep over and seize me in
the dark. I turned back and stared at it for minutes and minutes--they
seemed hours. It appeared to me that the lagging moonlight never, never
would get to it. I turned to the wall and counted twenty, to pass the
feverish time away. I looked--the pale square was nearer. I turned
again and counted fifty--it was almost touching it. With desperate will
I turned again and counted one hundred, and faced about, all in a
tremble. A white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such an awful sinking
at the heart--such a sudden gasp for breath! I felt--I cannot tell what
I felt. When I recovered strength enough, I faced the wall again. But
no boy could have remained so with that mysterious hand behind him. I
counted again and looked--the most of a naked arm was exposed. I put my
hands over my eyes and counted till I could stand it no longer, and then
--the pallid face of a man was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn
down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting
posture and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the bare
breastline by line--inch by inch--past the nipple--and then it disclosed
a ghastly stab!
I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a
hurry, but I simply went--that is sufficient. I went out at the window,
and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it
was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it.--I was
not scared, but I was considerably agitated.
When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed
perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that
afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only lived
an hour. I have slept in the same room with him often since then--in my
dreams.
Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan
Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been
silent and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.
The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was
the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a
man whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the
faint-hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and
wherever he found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always
open. With his story in one's mind he can almost see his benignant
countenance moving calmly among the haggard faces of Milan in the days
when the plague swept the city, brave where all others were cowards, full
of compassion where pity had been crushed out of all other breasts by the
instinct of self-preservation gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying
with all, helping all, with hand and brain and purse, at a time when
parents forsook their children, the friend deserted the friend, and the
brother turned away from the sister while her pleadings were still
wailing in his ears.
This was good St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop of Milan. The people idolized
him; princes lavished uncounted treasures upon him. We stood in his
tomb. Near by was the sarcophagus, lighted by the dripping candles. The
walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in
massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his
black robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to turn a
windlass slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two parts, lengthwise, and
the lower part sank down and disclosed a coffin of rock crystal as clear
as the atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed in costly habiliments
covered with gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems. The
decaying head was black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the
bones, the eyes were gone, there was a hole in the temple and another in
the cheek, and the skinny lips were parted as in a ghastly smile! Over
this dreadful face, its dust and decay and its mocking grin, hung a crown
sown thick with flashing brilliants; and upon the breast lay crosses and
croziers of solid gold that were splendid with emeralds and diamonds.
How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in presence of the
solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death! Think of Milton,
Shakespeare, Washington, standing before a reverent world tricked out in
the glass beads, the brass ear-rings and tin trumpery of the savages of
the plains!
Dead Bartolomeo preached his pregnant sermon, and its burden was: You
that worship the vanities of earth--you that long for worldly honor,
worldly wealth, worldly fame--behold their worth!
To us it seemed that so good a man, so kind a heart, so simple a nature,
deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of prying
eyes, and believed that he himself would have preferred to have it so,
but peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard.
As we came out upon the floor of the church again, another priest
volunteered to show us the treasures of the church.
What, more? The furniture of the narrow chamber of death we had just
visited weighed six millions of francs in ounces and carats alone,
without a penny thrown into the account for the costly workmanship
bestowed upon them! But we followed into a large room filled with tall
wooden presses like wardrobes. He threw them open, and behold, the
cargoes of "crude bullion" of the assay offices of Nevada faded out of my
memory. There were Virgins and bishops there, above their natural size,
made of solid silver, each worth, by weight, from eight hundred thousand
to two millions of francs, and bearing gemmed books in their hands worth
eighty thousand; there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred pounds,
carved in solid silver; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks six and
eight feet high, all of virgin gold, and brilliant with precious stones;
and beside these were all manner of cups and vases, and such things, rich
in proportion. It was an Aladdin's palace. The treasures here, by
simple weight, without counting workmanship, were valued at fifty
millions of francs! If I could get the custody of them for a while, I
fear me the market price of silver bishops would advance shortly, on
account of their exceeding scarcity in the Cathedral of Milan.
The priests showed us two of St. Paul's fingers, and one of St. Peter's;
a bone of Judas Iscariot, (it was black,) and also bones of all the other
disciples; a handkerchief in which the Saviour had left the impression of
his face. Among the most precious of the relics were a stone from the
Holy Sepulchre, part of the crown of thorns, (they have a whole one at
Notre Dame,) a fragment of the purple robe worn by the Saviour, a nail
from the Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the
veritable hand of St. Luke. This is the second of St. Luke's Virgins we
have seen. Once a year all these holy relics are carried in procession
through the streets of Milan.
I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral. The
building is five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and
the principal steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high.
It has 7,148 marble statues, and will have upwards of three thousand more
when it is finished. In addition it has one thousand five hundred
bas-reliefs. It has one hundred and thirty-six spires--twenty-one more
are to be added. Each spire is surmounted by a statue six and a half
feet high. Every thing about the church is marble, and all from the
same quarry; it was bequeathed to the Archbishopric for this purpose
centuries ago. So nothing but the mere workmanship costs; still that is
expensive --the bill foots up six hundred and eighty-four millions of
francs thus far (considerably over a hundred millions of dollars,) and
it is estimated that it will take a hundred and twenty years yet to
finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from being so. We
saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one which had
been standing these four hundred years, they said. There are four
staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred
thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn
them. Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful
structure more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six
years to work out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the
builders. He is dead now. The building was begun a little less than
five hundred years ago, and the third generation hence will not see it
completed.
The building looks best by moonlight, because the older portions of it,
being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly with the newer and whiter
portions. It seems somewhat too broad for its height, but may be
familiarity with it might dissipate this impression.
They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter's at
Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by human
hands.
We bid it good-bye, now--possibly for all time. How surely, in some
future day, when the memory of it shall have lost its vividness, shall we
half believe we have seen it in a wonderful dream, but never with waking
eyes!
CHAPTER XIX.
"Do you wis zo haut can be?"
That was what the guide asked when we were looking up at the bronze
horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant, do you wish to go up there?
I give it as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make
life a burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk
forever and forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use.
Inspiration itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would only show
you a masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house, or a
battle-field, hallowed by touching memories or historical reminiscences,
or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold still for ten minutes
and let you think, it would not be so bad. But they interrupt every
dream, every pleasant train of thought, with their tiresome cackling.
Sometimes when I have been standing before some cherished old idol of
mine that I remembered years and years ago in pictures in the geography
at school, I have thought I would give a whole world if the human parrot
at my side would suddenly perish where he stood and leave me to gaze, and
ponder, and worship.
No, we did not "wis zo haut can be." We wished to go to La Scala, the
largest theater in the world, I think they call it. We did so. It was a
large place. Seven separate and distinct masses of humanity--six great
circles and a monster parquette.
We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We saw a
manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of Petrarch,
the gentleman who loved another man's Laura, and lavished upon her all
through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw material. It was
sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame, and
created a fountain of commiseration for them in sentimental breasts that
is running yet. But who says a word in behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do
not know his other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews him with tears?
Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do you suppose he liked the
state of things that has given the world so much pleasure? How did he
enjoy having another man following his wife every where and making her
name a familiar word in every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with
his sonnets to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy--he
got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called
poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not chime with my
notions of right. It is too one-sided--too ungenerous.
Let the world go on fretting about Laura and Petrarch if it will; but as
for me, my tears and my lamentations shall be lavished upon the unsung
defendant.
We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I
have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare
histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of
gilded wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the
facility with which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the
corpses ready for it. We saw one single coarse yellow hair from
Lucrezia's head, likewise. It awoke emotions, but we still live. In
this same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians
call him Mickel Angelo,) and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and
pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.)
We reserve our opinion of these sketches.
In another building they showed us a fresco representing some lions and
other beasts drawing chariots; and they seemed to project so far from the
wall that we took them to be sculptures. The artist had shrewdly
heightened the delusion by painting dust on the creatures' backs, as if
it had fallen there naturally and properly. Smart fellow--if it be smart
to deceive strangers.
Elsewhere we saw a huge Roman amphitheatre, with its stone seats still in
good preservation. Modernized, it is now the scene of more peaceful
recreations than the exhibition of a party of wild beasts with Christians
for dinner. Part of the time, the Milanese use it for a race track, and
at other seasons they flood it with water and have spirited yachting
regattas there. The guide told us these things, and he would hardly try
so hazardous an experiment as the telling of a falsehood, when it is all
he can do to speak the truth in English without getting the lock-jaw.
In another place we were shown a sort of summer arbor, with a fence
before it. We said that was nothing. We looked again, and saw, through
the arbor, an endless stretch of garden, and shrubbery, and grassy lawn.
We were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be
done. It was only another delusion--a painting by some ingenious artist
with little charity in his heart for tired folk. The deception was
perfect. No one could have imagined the park was not real. We even
thought we smelled the flowers at first.
We got a carriage at twilight and drove in the shaded avenues with the
other nobility, and after dinner we took wine and ices in a fine garden
with the great public. The music was excellent, the flowers and
shrubbery were pleasant to the eye, the scene was vivacious, everybody
was genteel and well-behaved, and the ladies were slightly moustached,
and handsomely dressed, but very homely.
We adjourned to a cafe and played billiards an hour, and I made six or
seven points by the doctor pocketing his ball, and he made as many by my
pocketing my ball. We came near making a carom sometimes, but not the
one we were trying to make. The table was of the usual European style
--cushions dead and twice as high as the balls; the cues in bad repair.
The natives play only a sort of pool on them. We have never seen any
body playing the French three-ball game yet, and I doubt if there is any
such game known in France, or that there lives any man mad enough to try
to play it on one of these European tables. We had to stop playing
finally because Dan got to sleeping fifteen minutes between the counts
and paying no attention to his marking.
Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for some
time, enjoying other people's comfort and wishing we could export some of
it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in
this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe--comfort. In
America, we hurry--which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go
on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry
our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we
ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn
up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into
a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime
in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it
lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear across the
continent in the same coach he started in--the coach is stabled somewhere
on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days;
when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an edge, the
barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own
accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none upon
ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be,
if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our
edges!
I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When the work of the
day is done, they forget it. Some of them go, with wife and children, to
a beer hall and sit quietly and genteelly drinking a mug or two of ale
and listening to music; others walk the streets, others drive in the
avenues; others assemble in the great ornamental squares in the early
evening to enjoy the sight and the fragrance of flowers and to hear the
military bands play--no European city being without its fine military
music at eventide; and yet others of the populace sit in the open air in
front of the refreshment houses and eat ices and drink mild beverages
that could not harm a child. They go to bed moderately early, and sleep
well. They are always quiet, always orderly, always cheerful,
comfortable, and appreciative of life and its manifold blessings. One
never sees a drunken man among them. The change that has come over our
little party is surprising. Day by day we lose some of our restlessness
and absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease that is in the
tranquil atmosphere about us and in the demeanor of the people. We grow
wise apace. We begin to comprehend what life is for.
We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They were going to
put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we objected. Each of us had an
Italian farm on his back. We could have felt affluent if we had been
officially surveyed and fenced in. We chose to have three bathtubs, and
large ones--tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real
estate, and brought it with them. After we were stripped and had taken
the first chilly dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has
embittered our lives in so many cities and villages of Italy and France
--there was no soap. I called. A woman answered, and I barely had time to
throw myself against the door--she would have been in, in another second.
I said:
"Beware, woman! Go away from here--go away, now, or it will be the worse
for you. I am an unprotected male, but I will preserve my honor at the
peril of my life!"
These words must have frightened her, for she skurried away very fast.
Dan's voice rose on the air:
"Oh, bring some soap, why don't you!"
The reply was Italian. Dan resumed:
"Soap, you know--soap. That is what I want--soap. S-o-a-p, soap;
s-o-p-e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up! I don't know how you Irish spell
it, but I want it. Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it. I'm freezing."
I heard the doctor say impressively:
"Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners cannot understand
English? Why will you not depend upon us? Why will you not tell us what
you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the country? It would
save us a great deal of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance
causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: 'Here,
cospetto! corpo di Bacco! Sacramento! Solferino!--Soap, you son of a
gun!' Dan, if you would let us talk for you, you would never expose your
ignorant vulgarity."
Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once, but
there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about the
establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had to
send far up town, and to several different places before they finally got
it, so they said. We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. The same
thing had occurred the evening before, at the hotel. I think I have
divined the reason for this state of things at last. The English know
how to travel comfortably, and they carry soap with them; other
foreigners do not use the article.
At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the
last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it
in the bill along with the candles and other nonsense. In Marseilles
they make half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the
Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they
have obtained from books of travel, just as they have acquired an
uncertain notion of clean shirts, and the peculiarities of the gorilla,
and other curious matters. This reminds me of poor Blucher's note to the
landlord in Paris:
PARIS, le 7 Juillet. Monsieur le Landlord--Sir: Pourquoi don't you
mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce que vous pensez I
will steal it? La nuit passee you charged me pour deux chandelles
when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had
none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other
on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice.
Savon is a necessary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman, et je
l'aurai hors de cet hotel or make trouble. You hear me. Allons.
BLUCHER.
I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed
up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but
Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it and
average the rest.
Blucher's French is bad enough, but it is not much worse than the English
one finds in advertisements all over Italy every day. For instance,
observe the printed card of the hotel we shall probably stop at on the
shores of Lake Como:
"NOTISH."
"This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb, is
handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with the most
splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King of Belgian, and
Serbelloni. This hotel have recently enlarge, do offer all
commodities on moderate price, at the strangers gentlemen who whish
spend the seasons on the Lake Come."
How is that, for a specimen? In the hotel is a handsome little chapel
where an English clergyman is employed to preach to such of the guests of
the house as hail from England and America, and this fact is also set
forth in barbarous English in the same advertisement. Wouldn't you have
supposed that the adventurous linguist who framed the card would have
known enough to submit it to that clergyman before he sent it to the
printer?
Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the
mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world--"The Last
Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of pictures,
but of course we went there to see this wonderful painting, once so
beautiful, always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever to be
famous in song and story. And the first thing that occurred was the
infliction on us of a placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take
a morsel of it: "Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand
side at the spectator,) uncertain and doubtful about what he thinks to
have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by himself at Christ
and by no others."
Good, isn't it? And then Peter is described as "argumenting in a
threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot."
This paragraph recalls the picture. "The Last Supper" is painted on the
dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church
in ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every
direction, and stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon's horses
kicked the legs off most the disciples when they (the horses, not the
disciples,) were stabled there more than half a century ago.
I recognized the old picture in a moment--the Saviour with bowed head
seated at the centre of a long, rough table with scattering fruits and
dishes upon it, and six disciples on either side in their long robes,
talking to each other--the picture from which all engravings and all
copies have been made for three centuries. Perhaps no living man has
ever known an attempt to paint the Lord's Supper differently. The world
seems to have become settled in the belief, long ago, that it is not
possible for human genius to outdo this creation of da Vinci's. I
suppose painters will go on copying it as long as any of the original is
left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in the room, and as
many artists transferring the great picture to their canvases. Fifty
proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were scattered around, too.
And as usual, I could not help noticing how superior the copies were to
the original, that is, to my inexperienced eye. Wherever you find a
Raphael, a Rubens, a Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a da Vinci (and we see
them every day,) you find artists copying them, and the copies are always
the handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new,
but they are not now.
This picture is about thirty feet long, and ten or twelve high, I should
think, and the figures are at least life size. It is one of the largest
paintings in Europe.
The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled and marred,
and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur upon
the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are
certain.
People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify this
masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted
lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of
rapture:
"Oh, wonderful!"
"Such expression!"
"Such grace of attitude!"
"Such dignity!"
"Such faultless drawing!"
"Such matchless coloring!"
"Such feeling!"
"What delicacy of touch!"
"What sublimity of conception!"
"A vision! A vision!"
I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be
honest--their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity
toward any of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself
upon me, How can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a
man who looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra,
and said: "What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!" What
would you think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said:
"What sublimity! What feeling! What richness of coloring!" What would
you think of a man who stared in ecstasy upon a desert of stumps and
said: "Oh, my soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!"
You would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing
things that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood
before "The Last Supper" and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and
beauties and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a
hundred years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was
once in an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps; but
we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am
willing to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the
Last Supper and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a
tint that has faded away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and
color, and add, to the dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand
before him aglow with the life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all
the noble beauty that was theirs when first they came from the hand of
the master. But I can not work this miracle. Can those other uninspired
visitors do it, or do they only happily imagine they do?
After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a
very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years ago.
It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of "feeling," "expression,"
"tone," and those other easily acquired and inexpensive technicalities of
art that make such a fine show in conversations concerning pictures.
There is not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a
pictured face is intended to express. There is not one man in five
hundred that can go into a court-room and be sure that he will not
mistake some harmless innocent of a juryman for the black-hearted
assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of "character" and presume to
interpret "expression" in pictures. There is an old story that Matthews,
the actor, was once lauding the ability of the human face to express the
passions and emotions hidden in the breast. He said the countenance
could disclose what was passing in the heart plainer than the tongue
could.
"Now," he said, "observe my face--what does it express?"
"Despair!"
"Bah, it expresses peaceful resignation! What does this express?"
"Rage!"
"Stuff! It means terror! This!"
"Imbecility!"
"Fool! It is smothered ferocity! Now this!"
"Joy!"
"Oh, perdition! Any ass can see it means insanity!"
Expression! People coolly pretend to read it who would think themselves
presumptuous if they pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on the
obelisks of Luxor--yet they are fully as competent to do the one thing as
the other. I have heard two very intelligent critics speak of Murillo's
Immaculate Conception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the past few
days. One said:
"Oh, the Virgin's face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is complete
--that leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!"
The other said:
"Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading--it says as plainly as
words could say it: 'I fear; I tremble; I am unworthy. But Thy will be
done; sustain Thou Thy servant!'"
The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room; it can be easily
recognized: the Virgin (the only young and really beautiful Virgin that
was ever painted by one of the old masters, some of us think,) stands in
the crescent of the new moon, with a multitude of cherubs hovering about
her, and more coming; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and upon her
uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens. The reader may
amuse himself, if he chooses, in trying to determine which of these
gentlemen read the Virgin's "expression" aright, or if either of them did
it.
Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will comprehend how much
"The Last Supper" is damaged when I say that the spectator can not really
tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians. These ancient
painters never succeeded in denationalizing themselves. The Italian
artists painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the
Virgins of the French painters were Frenchwomen--none of them ever put
into the face of the Madonna that indescribable something which proclaims
the Jewess, whether you find her in New York, in Constantinople, in
Paris, Jerusalem, or in the empire of Morocco. I saw in the Sandwich
Islands, once, a picture copied by a talented German artist from an
engraving in one of the American illustrated papers. It was an allegory,
representing Mr. Davis in the act of signing a secession act or some such
document. Over him hovered the ghost of Washington in warning attitude,
and in the background a troop of shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform
were limping with shoeless, bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm.
Valley Forge was suggested, of course. The copy seemed accurate, and yet
there was a discrepancy somewhere. After a long examination I discovered
what it was--the shadowy soldiers were all Germans! Jeff Davis was a
German! even the hovering ghost was a German ghost! The artist had
unconsciously worked his nationality into the picture. To tell the
truth, I am getting a little perplexed about John the Baptist and his
portraits. In France I finally grew reconciled to him as a Frenchman;
here he is unquestionably an Italian. What next? Can it be possible
that the painters make John the Baptist a Spaniard in Madrid and an
Irishman in Dublin?
We took an open barouche and drove two miles out of Milan to "see ze
echo," as the guide expressed it. The road was smooth, it was bordered
by trees, fields, and grassy meadows, and the soft air was filled with
the odor of flowers. Troops of picturesque peasant girls, coming from
work, hooted at us, shouted at us, made all manner of game of us, and
entirely delighted me. My long-cherished judgment was confirmed. I
always did think those frowsy, romantic, unwashed peasant girls I had
read so much about in poetry were a glaring fraud.
We enjoyed our jaunt. It was an exhilarating relief from tiresome
sight-seeing.
We distressed ourselves very little about the astonishing echo the guide
talked so much about. We were growing accustomed to encomiums on wonders
that too often proved no wonders at all. And so we were most happily
disappointed to find in the sequel that the guide had even failed to rise
to the magnitude of his subject.
We arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo Simonetti--a
massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family of ragged Italians.
A good-looking young girl conducted us to a window on the second floor
which looked out on a court walled on three sides by tall buildings. She
put her head out at the window and shouted. The echo answered more times
than we could count. She took a speaking trumpet and through it she
shouted, sharp and quick, a single "Ha!" The echo answered:
"Ha!--ha!----ha!--ha!--ha!-ha! ha! h-a-a-a-a-a!" and finally went off
into a rollicking convulsion of the jolliest laughter that could be
imagined. It was so joyful--so long continued--so perfectly cordial and
hearty, that every body was forced to join in. There was no resisting
it.
Then the girl took a gun and fired it. We stood ready to count the
astonishing clatter of reverberations. We could not say one, two, three,
fast enough, but we could dot our notebooks with our pencil points almost
rapidly enough to take down a sort of short-hand report of the result.
My page revealed the following account. I could not keep up, but I did
as well as I could.
I set down fifty-two distinct repetitions, and then the echo got the
advantage of me. The doctor set down sixty-four, and thenceforth the
echo moved too fast for him, also. After the separate concussions could
no longer be noted, the reverberations dwindled to a wild, long-sustained
clatter of sounds such as a watchman's rattle produces. It is likely
that this is the most remarkable echo in the world.
The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl, and was taken a
little aback when she said he might for a franc! The commonest gallantry
compelled him to stand by his offer, and so he paid the franc and took
the kiss. She was a philosopher. She said a franc was a good thing to
have, and she did not care any thing for one paltry kiss, because she had
a million left. Then our comrade, always a shrewd businessman, offered
to take the whole cargo at thirty days, but that little financial scheme
was a failure.
CHAPTER XX.
We left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles behind us; vast,
dreamy, bluish, snow-clad mountains twenty miles in front of us,--these
were the accented points in the scenery. The more immediate scenery
consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed
dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not
show-people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in Italy
to attract attention.
We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep, wooded,
cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and there, and with
dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up toward the drifting clouds.
We lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot of the lake, and
then took the small steamer and had an afternoon's pleasure excursion to
this place,--Bellaggio.
When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose cocked hats and
showy uniforms would shame the finest uniform in the military service of
the United States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked us in. We
had the whole passenger list for company, but their room would have been
preferable, for there was no light, there were no windows, no
ventilation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It was the
Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose about
our feet--a smoke that smelled of all the dead things of earth, of all
the putrefaction and corruption imaginable.
We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was hard to tell which
of us carried the vilest fragrance.
These miserable outcasts called that "fumigating" us, and the term was a
tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard themselves against the
cholera, though we hailed from no infected port. We had left the cholera
far behind us all the time. However, they must keep epidemics away
somehow or other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must either
wash themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower classes had
rather die than wash, but the fumigation of strangers causes them no
pangs. They need no fumigation themselves. Their habits make it
unnecessary. They carry their preventive with them; they sweat and
fumigate all the day long. I trust I am a humble and a consistent
Christian. I try to do what is right. I know it is my duty to "pray for
them that despitefully use me;" and therefore, hard as it is, I shall
still try to pray for these fumigating, maccaroni-stuffing
organ-grinders.
Our hotel sits at the water's edge--at least its front garden does--and
we walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off at
Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no
closer; we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely
little boat and sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on
the thwarts and listen to the distant laughter, the singing, the soft
melody of flutes and guitars that comes floating across the water from
pleasuring gondolas; we close the evening with exasperating billiards on
one of those same old execrable tables. A midnight luncheon in our ample
bed-chamber; a final smoke in its contracted veranda facing the water,
the gardens, and the mountains; a summing up of the day's events. Then
to bed, with drowsy brains harassed with a mad panorama that mixes up
pictures of France, of Italy, of the ship, of the ocean, of home, in
grotesque and bewildering disorder. Then a melting away of familiar
faces, of cities, and of tossing waves, into a great calm of
forgetfulness and peace.
After which, the nightmare.
Breakfast in the morning, and then the lake.
I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much finer.
I have to confess now, however, that my judgment erred somewhat, though
not extravagantly. I always had an idea that Como was a vast basin of
water, like Tahoe, shut in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge
mountains is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked
as any brook, and only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as the
Mississippi. There is not a yard of low ground on either side of it
--nothing but endless chains of mountains that spring abruptly from the
water's edge and tower to altitudes varying from a thousand to two
thousand feet. Their craggy sides are clothed with vegetation, and white
specks of houses peep out from the luxuriant foliage everywhere; they are
even perched upon jutting and picturesque pinnacles a thousand feet above
your head.
Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats, surrounded by
gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, sometimes in nooks carved by
Nature out of the vine-hung precipices, and with no ingress or egress
save by boats. Some have great broad stone staircases leading down to
the water, with heavy stone balustrades ornamented with statuary and
fancifully adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored flowers--for
all the world like a drop curtain in a theatre, and lacking nothing but
long-waisted, high-heeled women and plumed gallants in silken tights
coming down to go serenading in the splendid gondola in waiting.
A great feature of Como's attractiveness is the multitude of pretty
houses and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on its mountain
sides. They look so snug and so homelike, and at eventide when every
thing seems to slumber, and the music of the vesper bells comes stealing
over the water, one almost believes that nowhere else than on the lake of
Como can there be found such a paradise of tranquil repose.
From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the other side of the
lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and wrinkled
precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a tiny bench
half way up its vast wall, sits a little snowflake of a church, no bigger
than a martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of the cliff are a
hundred orange groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white
dwellings that are buried in them; in front, three or four gondolas lie
idle upon the water--and in the burnished mirror of the lake, mountain,
chapel, houses, groves and boats are counterfeited so brightly and so
clearly that one scarce knows where the reality leaves off and the
reflection begins!
The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a grove-plumed
promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its palace in the blue
depths; in midstream a boat is cutting the shining surface and leaving a
long track behind, like a ray of light; the mountains beyond are veiled
in a dreamy purple haze; far in the opposite direction a tumbled mass of
domes and verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here indeed does
distance lend enchantment to the view--for on this broad canvas, sun and
clouds and the richest of atmospheres have blended a thousand tints
together, and over its surface the filmy lights and shadows drift, hour
after hour, and glorify it with a beauty that seems reflected out of
Heaven itself. Beyond all question, this is the most voluptuous scene we
have yet looked upon.
Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the other side
crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in the lake with a
wonderful distinctness, and streams of light from many a distant window
shot far abroad over the still waters. On this side, near at hand, great
mansions, white with moonlight, glared out from the midst of masses of
foliage that lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell from the
cliff above--and down in the margin of the lake every feature of the
weird vision was faithfully repeated.
Today we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached to a ducal
estate--but enough of description is enough, I judge.
I suspect that this was the same place the gardener's son deceived the
Lady of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage
somewhere:
"A deep vale,
Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,
Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold
And whispering myrtles:
Glassing softest skies, cloudless,
Save with rare and roseate shadows;
A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,
From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds."
That is all very well, except the "clear" part of the lake. It certainly
is clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters are compared
with the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of the north
shore of Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a
hundred and eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par
here, but with no success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at
fifty percent discount. At this rate I find some takers; perhaps the
reader will receive it on the same terms--ninety feet instead of one
hundred and eighty. But let it be remembered that those are forced
terms--Sheriff's sale prices. As far as I am privately concerned, I
abate not a jot of the original assertion that in those strangely
magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a trout of the
large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet--may see every
pebble on the bottom--might even count a paper of dray-pins. People talk
of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my own
experience I know they cannot compare with those I am speaking of. I
have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four
feet I have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their
gills open and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at
that distance in the open air.
As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the
snow-peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong
upon me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in
that august presence.
Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to
year permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests
no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea
in the clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at
times, at times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded
by a cordon of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand
feet above the level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose
belongings are all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!
Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and
suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute--possibly it is Digger.
I am satisfied it was named by the Diggers--those degraded savages who
roast their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones
with tar, and "gaum" it thick all over their heads and foreheads and
ears, and go caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These
are the gentry that named the Lake.
People say that Tahoe means "Silver Lake"--"Limpid Water"--"Falling
Leaf." Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger
tribe,--and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn't worth while, in these
practical times, for people to talk about Indian poetry--there never was
any in them--except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an
extinct tribe that never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have
camped with the Indians; I have been on the warpath with them, taken part
in the chase with them--for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I
have roamed with them, scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would
gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance.
But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the
lakes. Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the
truth. They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it
does not look a dead enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five
hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist's
measurement. They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand
feet high: but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is
a good honest lie. The lake is a mile wide, here, and maintains about
that width from this point to its northern extremity--which is distant
sixteen miles: from here to its southern extremity--say fifteen miles--it
is not over half a mile wide in any place, I should think. Its snow-clad
mountains one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in
the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and
its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits are never free from
snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange: it never has
even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of
mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in
winter.
It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and
compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here--an old soldier
of the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his
campaigns in these sunny lands.--[Colonel J. HERON FOSTER, editor of a
Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman. As these sheets are
being prepared for the press I am pained to learn of his decease shortly
after his return home--M.T.]
CHAPTER XXI.
We voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain
scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of Lecco.
They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo,
and that we would arrive there in good season for the railway train. We
got an open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver, and set out. It was
delightful. We had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road. There were
towering cliffs on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on our right,
and every now and then it rained on us. Just before starting, the driver
picked up, in the street, a stump of a cigar an inch long, and put it in
his mouth. When he had carried it thus about an hour, I thought it would
be only Christian charity to give him a light. I handed him my cigar,
which I had just lit, and he put it in his mouth and returned his stump
to his pocket! I never saw a more sociable man. At least I never saw a
man who was more sociable on a short acquaintance.
We saw interior Italy, now. The houses were of solid stone, and not
often in good repair. The peasants and their children were idle, as a
general thing, and the donkeys and chickens made themselves at home in
drawing-room and bed-chamber and were not molested. The drivers of each
and every one of the slow-moving market-carts we met were stretched in
the sun upon their merchandise, sound a sleep. Every three or four
hundred yards, it seemed to me, we came upon the shrine of some saint or
other--a rude picture of him built into a huge cross or a stone pillar by
the road-side.--Some of the pictures of the Saviour were curiosities in
their way. They represented him stretched upon the cross, his
countenance distorted with agony. From the wounds of the crown of
thorns; from the pierced side; from the mutilated hands and feet; from
the scourged body--from every hand-breadth of his person streams of blood
were flowing! Such a gory, ghastly spectacle would frighten the children
out of their senses, I should think. There were some unique auxiliaries
to the painting which added to its spirited effect. These were genuine
wooden and iron implements, and were prominently disposed round about the
figure: a bundle of nails; the hammer to drive them; the sponge; the reed
that supported it; the cup of vinegar; the ladder for the ascent of the
cross; the spear that pierced the Saviour's side. The crown of thorns
was made of real thorns, and was nailed to the sacred head. In some
Italian church-paintings, even by the old masters, the Saviour and the
Virgin wear silver or gilded crowns that are fastened to the pictured
head with nails. The effect is as grotesque as it is incongruous.
Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse
frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. It could not
have diminished their sufferings any to be so uncouthly represented.
We were in the heart and home of priest craft--of a happy, cheerful,
contented ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and
everlasting unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently: it suits
these people precisely; let them enjoy it, along with the other animals,
and Heaven forbid that they be molested. We feel no malice toward these
fumigators.
We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreampt-of old towns, wedded
to the customs and steeped in the dreams of the elder ages, and perfectly
unaware that the world turns round! And perfectly indifferent, too, as
to whether it turns around or stands still. They have nothing to do but
eat and sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a little when they can get a
friend to stand by and keep them awake. They are not paid for thinking
--they are not paid to fret about the world's concerns. They were not
respectable people--they were not worthy people--they were not learned
and wise and brilliant people--but in their breasts, all their stupid
lives long, resteth a peace that passeth understanding! How can men,
calling themselves men, consent to be so degraded and happy.
We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick with ivy that
swung its green banners down from towers and turrets where once some old
Crusader's flag had floated. The driver pointed to one of these ancient
fortresses, and said, (I translate):
"Do you see that great iron hook that projects from the wall just under
the highest window in the ruined tower?"
We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no doubt it was
there.
"Well," he said; "there is a legend connected with that iron hook.
Nearly seven hundred years ago, that castle was the property of the noble
Count Luigi Gennaro Guido Alphonso di Genova----"
"What was his other name?" said Dan.
"He had no other name. The name I have spoken was all the name he had.
He was the son of----"
"Poor but honest parents--that is all right--never mind the particulars
--go on with the legend."
THE LEGEND.
Well, then, all the world, at that time, was in a wild excitement about
the Holy Sepulchre. All the great feudal lords in Europe were pledging
their lands and pawning their plate to fit out men-at-arms so that they
might join the grand armies of Christendom and win renown in the Holy
Wars. The Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild
September morning, armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering
culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep
with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy.
He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her
young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and
buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away with a happy heart.
He made a raid on a neighboring baron and completed his outfit with the
booty secured. He then razed the castle to the ground, massacred the
family and moved on. They were hardy fellows in the grand old days of
chivalry. Alas! Those days will never come again.
Count Luigi grew high in fame in Holy Land. He plunged into the carnage
of a hundred battles, but his good Excalibur always brought him out
alive, albeit often sorely wounded. His face became browned by exposure
to the Syrian sun in long marches; he suffered hunger and thirst; he
pined in prisons, he languished in loathsome plague-hospitals. And many
and many a time he thought of his loved ones at home, and wondered if all
was well with them. But his heart said, Peace, is not thy brother
watching over thy household?
* * * * * * *
Forty-two years waxed and waned; the good fight was won; Godfrey reigned
in Jerusalem--the Christian hosts reared the banner of the cross above
the Holy Sepulchre!
Twilight was approaching. Fifty harlequins, in flowing robes, approached
this castle wearily, for they were on foot, and the dust upon their
garments betokened that they had traveled far. They overtook a peasant,
and asked him if it were likely they could get food and a hospitable bed
there, for love of Christian charity, and if perchance, a moral parlor
entertainment might meet with generous countenance--"for," said they,
"this exhibition hath no feature that could offend the most fastidious
taste."
"Marry," quoth the peasant, "an' it please your worships, ye had better
journey many a good rood hence with your juggling circus than trust your
bones in yonder castle."
"How now, sirrah!" exclaimed the chief monk, "explain thy ribald speech,
or by'r Lady it shall go hard with thee."
"Peace, good mountebank, I did but utter the truth that was in my heart.
San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find the stout Count Leonardo in
his cups, sheer from the castle's topmost battlements would he hurl ye
all! Alack-a-day, the good Lord Luigi reigns not here in these sad
times."
"The good Lord Luigi?"
"Aye, none other, please your worship. In his day, the poor rejoiced in
plenty and the rich he did oppress; taxes were not known, the fathers of
the church waxed fat upon his bounty; travelers went and came, with none
to interfere; and whosoever would, might tarry in his halls in cordial
welcome, and eat his bread and drink his wine, withal. But woe is me!
some two and forty years agone the good count rode hence to fight for
Holy Cross, and many a year hath flown since word or token have we had of
him. Men say his bones lie bleaching in the fields of Palestine."
"And now?"
"Now! God 'a mercy, the cruel Leonardo lords it in the castle. He
wrings taxes from the poor; he robs all travelers that journey by his
gates; he spends his days in feuds and murders, and his nights in revel
and debauch; he roasts the fathers of the church upon his kitchen spits,
and enjoyeth the same, calling it pastime. These thirty years Luigi's
countess hath not been seen by any [he] in all this land, and many
whisper that she pines in the dungeons of the castle for that she will
not wed with Leonardo, saying her dear lord still liveth and that she
will die ere she prove false to him. They whisper likewise that her
daughter is a prisoner as well. Nay, good jugglers, seek ye refreshment
other wheres. 'Twere better that ye perished in a Christian way than
that ye plunged from off yon dizzy tower. Give ye good-day."
"God keep ye, gentle knave--farewell."
But heedless of the peasant's warning, the players moved straightway
toward the castle.
Word was brought to Count Leonardo that a company of mountebanks besought
his hospitality.
"'Tis well. Dispose of them in the customary manner. Yet stay! I have
need of them. Let them come hither. Later, cast them from the
battlements--or--how many priests have ye on hand?"
"The day's results are meagre, good my lord. An abbot and a dozen
beggarly friars is all we have."
"Hell and furies! Is the estate going to seed? Send hither the
mountebanks. Afterward, broil them with the priests."
The robed and close-cowled harlequins entered. The grim Leonardo sate in
state at the head of his council board. Ranged up and down the hall on
either hand stood near a hundred men-at-arms.
"Ha, villains!" quoth the count, "What can ye do to earn the hospitality
ye crave."
"Dread lord and mighty, crowded audiences have greeted our humble efforts
with rapturous applause. Among our body count we the versatile and
talented Ugolino; the justly celebrated Rodolpho; the gifted and
accomplished Roderigo; the management have spared neither pains nor
expense--"
"S'death! What can ye do? Curb thy prating tongue."
"Good my lord, in acrobatic feats, in practice with the dumb-bells, in
balancing and ground and lofty tumbling are we versed--and sith your
highness asketh me, I venture here to publish that in the truly marvelous
and entertaining Zampillaerostation--"
"Gag him! throttle him! Body of Bacchus! am I a dog that I am to be
assailed with polysyllabled blasphemy like to this? But hold! Lucretia,
Isabel, stand forth! Sirrah, behold this dame, this weeping wench. The
first I marry, within the hour; the other shall dry her tears or feed the
vultures. Thou and thy vagabonds shall crown the wedding with thy
merry-makings. Fetch hither the priest!"
The dame sprang toward the chief player.
"O, save me!" she cried; "save me from a fate far worse than death!
Behold these sad eyes, these sunken cheeks, this withered frame! See
thou the wreck this fiend hath made, and let thy heart be moved with
pity! Look upon this damosel; note her wasted form, her halting step,
her bloomless cheeks where youth should blush and happiness exult in
smiles! Hear us and have compassion. This monster was my husband's
brother. He who should have been our shield against all harm, hath kept
us shut within the noisome caverns of his donjon-keep for lo these thirty
years. And for what crime? None other than that I would not belie my
troth, root out my strong love for him who marches with the legions of
the cross in Holy Land, (for O, he is not dead!) and wed with him! Save
us, O, save thy persecuted suppliants!"
She flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees.
"Ha!-ha!-ha!" shouted the brutal Leonardo. "Priest, to thy work!" and
he dragged the weeping dame from her refuge. "Say, once for all, will
you be mine?--for by my halidome, that breath that uttereth thy refusal
shall be thy last on earth!"
"NE-VER?"
"Then die!" and the sword leaped from its scabbard.
Quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning's flash, fifty monkish
habits disappeared, and fifty knights in splendid armor stood revealed!
fifty falchions gleamed in air above the men-at-arms, and brighter,
fiercer than them all, flamed Excalibur aloft, and cleaving downward
struck the brutal Leonardo's weapon from his grasp!
"A Luigi to the rescue! Whoop!"
"A Leonardo! 'tare an ouns!'"
"Oh, God, Oh, God, my husband!"
"Oh, God, Oh, God, my wife!"
"My father!"
"My precious!" [Tableau.]
===
Count Luigi bound his usurping brother hand and foot. The practiced
knights from Palestine made holyday sport of carving the awkward
men-at-arms into chops and steaks. The victory was complete. Happiness
reigned. The knights all married the daughter. Joy! wassail! finis!
"But what did they do with the wicked brother?"
"Oh nothing--only hanged him on that iron hook I was speaking of. By the
chin."
"As how?"
"Passed it up through his gills into his mouth."
"Leave him there?"
"Couple of years."
"Ah--is--is he dead?"
"Six hundred and fifty years ago, or such a matter."
"Splendid legend--splendid lie--drive on."
We reached the quaint old fortified city of Bergamo, the renowned in
history, some three-quarters of an hour before the train was ready to
start. The place has thirty or forty thousand inhabitants and is
remarkable for being the birthplace of harlequin. When we discovered
that, that legend of our driver took to itself a new interest in our
eyes.
Rested and refreshed, we took the rail happy and contented. I shall not
tarry to speak of the handsome Lago di Gardi; its stately castle that
holds in its stony bosom the secrets of an age so remote that even
tradition goeth not back to it; the imposing mountain scenery that
ennobles the landscape thereabouts; nor yet of ancient Padua or haughty
Verona; nor of their Montagues and Capulets, their famous balconies and
tombs of Juliet and Romeo et al., but hurry straight to the ancient city
of the sea, the widowed bride of the Adriatic. It was a long, long ride.
But toward evening, as we sat silent and hardly conscious of where we
were--subdued into that meditative calm that comes so surely after a
conversational storm--some one shouted--
"VENICE!"
And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great
city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of
sunset.
CHAPTER XXII.
This Venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic for
nearly fourteen hundred years; whose armies compelled the world's
applause whenever and wherever they battled; whose navies well nigh held
dominion of the seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the remotest
oceans with their sails and loaded these piers with the products of every
clime, is fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy decay. Six
hundred years ago, Venice was the Autocrat of Commerce; her mart was the
great commercial centre, the distributing-house from whence the enormous
trade of the Orient was spread abroad over the Western world. To-day her
piers are deserted, her warehouses are empty, her merchant fleets are
vanished, her armies and her navies are but memories. Her glory is
departed, and with her crumbling grandeur of wharves and palaces about
her she sits among her stagnant lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten
of the world. She that in her palmy days commanded the commerce of a
hemisphere and made the weal or woe of nations with a beck of her
puissant finger, is become the humblest among the peoples of the earth,
--a peddler of glass beads for women, and trifling toys and trinkets for
school-girls and children.
The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject for
flippant speech or the idle gossipping of tourists. It seems a sort of
sacrilege to disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures her to us
softly from afar off as through a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin and
her desolation from our view. One ought, indeed, to turn away from her
rags, her poverty and her humiliation, and think of her only as she was
when she sunk the fleets of Charlemagne; when she humbled Frederick
Barbarossa or waved her victorious banners above the battlements of
Constantinople.
We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse belonging
to the Grand Hotel d'Europe. At any rate, it was more like a hearse than
any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a gondola. And this
was the storied gondola of Venice!--the fairy boat in which the princely
cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the moonlit
canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of patrician
beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar
and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and this
the gorgeous gondolier!--the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable
hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy,
barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which
should have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a
corner and shot his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of
towering, untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to
the traditions of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said:
"Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a
stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such
caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water.
It is enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been blighted
forever as to the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier; this
system of destruction shall go no farther; I will accept the hearse,
under protest, and you may fly your flag of truce in peace, but here I
register a dark and bloody oath that you shan't sing. Another yelp, and
overboard you go."
I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed
forever. But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out
into the Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry
and romance stood revealed. Right from the water's edge rose long lines
of stately palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding swiftly hither and
thither and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates and alleys;
ponderous stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glittering waves.
There was life and motion everywhere, and yet everywhere there was a
hush, a stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of secret
enterprises of bravoes and of lovers; and clad half in moonbeams and half
in mysterious shadows, the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed to
have an expression about them of having an eye out for just such
enterprises as these at that same moment. Music came floating over the
waters--Venice was complete.
It was a beautiful picture--very soft and dreamy and beautiful. But what
was this Venice to compare with the Venice of midnight? Nothing. There
was a fete--a grand fete in honor of some saint who had been instrumental
in checking the cholera three hundred years ago, and all Venice was
abroad on the water. It was no common affair, for the Venetians did not
know how soon they might need the saint's services again, now that the
cholera was spreading every where. So in one vast space--say a third of
a mile wide and two miles long--were collected two thousand gondolas, and
every one of them had from two to ten, twenty and even thirty colored
lanterns suspended about it, and from four to a dozen occupants. Just as
far as the eye could reach, these painted lights were massed together
--like a vast garden of many-colored flowers, except that these blossoms
were never still; they were ceaselessly gliding in and out, and mingling
together, and seducing you into bewildering attempts to follow their mazy
evolutions. Here and there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a
rocket that was struggling to get away, splendidly illuminated all the
boats around it. Every gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and
pyramids and circles of colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the
faces of the young and the sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture;
and the reflections of those lights, so long, so slender, so numberless,
so many-colored and so distorted and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture
likewise, and one that was enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a party
of young ladies and gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely
decorated, and ate supper on board, bringing their swallow-tailed,
white-cravatted varlets to wait upon them, and having their tables
tricked out as if for a bridal supper. They had brought along the
costly globe lamps from their drawing-rooms, and the lace and silken
curtains from the same places, I suppose. And they had also brought
pianos and guitars, and they played and sang operas, while the plebeian
paper-lanterned gondolas from the suburbs and the back alleys crowded
around to stare and listen.
There was music every where--choruses, string bands, brass bands, flutes,
every thing. I was so surrounded, walled in, with music, magnificence
and loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of the scene, and
sang one tune myself. However, when I observed that the other gondolas
had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard, I
stopped.
The fete was magnificent. They kept it up the whole night long, and I
never enjoyed myself better than I did while it lasted.
What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is! Narrow streets,
vast, gloomy marble palaces, black with the corroding damps of centuries,
and all partly submerged; no dry land visible any where, and no sidewalks
worth mentioning; if you want to go to church, to the theatre, or to the
restaurant, you must call a gondola. It must be a paradise for cripples,
for verily a man has no use for legs here.
For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Arkansas town,
because of its currentless waters laving the very doorsteps of all the
houses, and the cluster of boats made fast under the windows, or skimming
in and out of the alleys and by-ways, that I could not get rid of the
impression that there was nothing the matter here but a spring freshet,
and that the river would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty high-water
mark on the houses, and the streets full of mud and rubbish.
In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the
charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered
sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once
more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is easy,
then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and
fair ladies--with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon
the rich argosies of Venetian commerce--with Othellos and Desdemonas,
with Iagos and Roderigos--with noble fleets and victorious legions
returning from the wars. In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice
decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless--forgotten and
utterly insignificant. But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of
greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the
princeliest among the nations of the earth.
"There is a glorious city in the sea;
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
Lead to her gates! The path lies o'er the sea,
Invisible: and from the land we went,
As to a floating city--steering in,
And gliding up her streets, as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently--by many a dome,
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant kings;
The fronts of some, tho' time had shatter'd them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
As tho' the wealth within them had run o'er."
What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice? The Bridge of
Sighs, of course--and next the Church and the Great Square of St. Mark,
the Bronze Horses, and the famous Lion of St. Mark.
We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into the Ducal
Palace first--a building which necessarily figures largely in Venetian
poetry and tradition. In the Senate Chamber of the ancient Republic we
wearied our eyes with staring at acres of historical paintings by
Tintoretto and Paul Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the
one thing that strikes all strangers forcibly--a black square in the
midst of a gallery of portraits. In one long row, around the great hall,
were painted the portraits of the Doges of Venice (venerable fellows,
with flowing white beards, for of the three hundred Senators eligible to
the office, the oldest was usually chosen Doge,) and each had its
complimentary inscription attached--till you came to the place that
should have had Marino Faliero's picture in it, and that was blank and
black--blank, except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that the
conspirator had died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that
pitiless inscription still staring from the walls after the unhappy
wretch had been in his grave five hundred years.
At the head of the Giant's Staircase, where Marino Faliero was beheaded,
and where the Doges were crowned in ancient times, two small slits in the
stone wall were pointed out--two harmless, insignificant orifices that
would never attract a stranger's attention--yet these were the terrible
Lions' Mouths! The heads were gone (knocked off by the French during
their occupation of Venice,) but these were the throats, down which went
the anonymous accusation, thrust in secretly at dead of night by an
enemy, that doomed many an innocent man to walk the Bridge of Sighs and
descend into the dungeon which none entered and hoped to see the sun
again. This was in the old days when the Patricians alone governed
Venice--the common herd had no vote and no voice. There were one
thousand five hundred Patricians; from these, three hundred Senators were
chosen; from the Senators a Doge and a Council of Ten were selected, and
by secret ballot the Ten chose from their own number a Council of Three.
All these were Government spies, then, and every spy was under
surveillance himself--men spoke in whispers in Venice, and no man trusted
his neighbor--not always his own brother. No man knew who the Council of
Three were--not even the Senate, not even the Doge; the members of that
dread tribunal met at night in a chamber to themselves, masked, and robed
from head to foot in scarlet cloaks, and did not even know each other,
unless by voice. It was their duty to judge heinous political crimes,
and from their sentence there was no appeal. A nod to the executioner
was sufficient. The doomed man was marched down a hall and out at a
door-way into the covered Bridge of Sighs, through it and into the
dungeon and unto his death. At no time in his transit was he visible to
any save his conductor. If a man had an enemy in those old days, the
cleverest thing he could do was to slip a note for the Council of Three
into the Lion's mouth, saying "This man is plotting against the
Government." If the awful Three found no proof, ten to one they would
drown him anyhow, because he was a deep rascal, since his plots were
unsolvable. Masked judges and masked executioners, with unlimited power,
and no appeal from their judgements, in that hard, cruel age, were not
likely to be lenient with men they suspected yet could not convict.
We walked through the hall of the Council of Ten, and presently entered
the infernal den of the Council of Three.
The table around which they had sat was there still, and likewise the
stations where the masked inquisitors and executioners formerly stood,
frozen, upright and silent, till they received a bloody order, and then,
without a word, moved off like the inexorable machines they were, to
carry it out. The frescoes on the walls were startlingly suited to the
place. In all the other saloons, the halls, the great state chambers of
the palace, the walls and ceilings were bright with gilding, rich with
elaborate carving, and resplendent with gallant pictures of Venetian
victories in war, and Venetian display in foreign courts, and hallowed
with portraits of the Virgin, the Saviour of men, and the holy saints
that preached the Gospel of Peace upon earth--but here, in dismal
contrast, were none but pictures of death and dreadful suffering!--not a
living figure but was writhing in torture, not a dead one but was smeared
with blood, gashed with wounds, and distorted with the agonies that had
taken away its life!
From the palace to the gloomy prison is but a step--one might almost jump
across the narrow canal that intervenes. The ponderous stone Bridge of
Sighs crosses it at the second story--a bridge that is a covered tunnel
--you can not be seen when you walk in it. It is partitioned lengthwise,
and through one compartment walked such as bore light sentences in
ancient times, and through the other marched sadly the wretches whom the
Three had doomed to lingering misery and utter oblivion in the dungeons,
or to sudden and mysterious death. Down below the level of the water, by
the light of smoking torches, we were shown the damp, thick-walled cells
where many a proud patrician's life was eaten away by the long-drawn
miseries of solitary imprisonment--without light, air, books; naked,
unshaven, uncombed, covered with vermin; his useless tongue forgetting
its office, with none to speak to; the days and nights of his life no
longer marked, but merged into one eternal eventless night; far away from
all cheerful sounds, buried in the silence of a tomb; forgotten by his
helpless friends, and his fate a dark mystery to them forever; losing his
own memory at last, and knowing no more who he was or how he came there;
devouring the loaf of bread and drinking the water that were thrust into
the cell by unseen hands, and troubling his worn spirit no more with
hopes and fears and doubts and longings to be free; ceasing to scratch
vain prayers and complainings on walls where none, not even himself,
could see them, and resigning himself to hopeless apathy, driveling
childishness, lunacy! Many and many a sorrowful story like this these
stony walls could tell if they could but speak.
In a little narrow corridor, near by, they showed us where many a
prisoner, after lying in the dungeons until he was forgotten by all save
his persecutors, was brought by masked executioners and garroted, or
sewed up in a sack, passed through a little window to a boat, at dead of
night, and taken to some remote spot and drowned.
They used to show to visitors the implements of torture wherewith the
Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused--villainous machines
for crushing thumbs; the stocks where a prisoner sat immovable while
water fell drop by drop upon his head till the torture was more than
humanity could bear; and a devilish contrivance of steel, which inclosed
a prisoner's head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a
screw. It bore the stains of blood that had trickled through its joints
long ago, and on one side it had a projection whereon the torturer rested
his elbow comfortably and bent down his ear to catch the moanings of the
sufferer perishing within.
Of course we went to see the venerable relic of the ancient glory of
Venice, with its pavements worn and broken by the passing feet of a
thousand years of plebeians and patricians--The Cathedral of St. Mark.
It is built entirely of precious marbles, brought from the Orient
--nothing in its composition is domestic. Its hoary traditions make it an
object of absorbing interest to even the most careless stranger, and thus
far it had interest for me; but no further. I could not go into
ecstasies over its coarse mosaics, its unlovely Byzantine architecture,
or its five hundred curious interior columns from as many distant
quarries. Every thing was worn out--every block of stone was smooth and
almost shapeless with the polishing hands and shoulders of loungers who
devoutly idled here in by-gone centuries and have died and gone to the
dev--no, simply died, I mean.
Under the altar repose the ashes of St. Mark--and Matthew, Luke and John,
too, for all I know. Venice reveres those relics above all things
earthly. For fourteen hundred years St. Mark has been her patron saint.
Every thing about the city seems to be named after him or so named as to
refer to him in some way--so named, or some purchase rigged in some way
to scrape a sort of hurrahing acquaintance with him. That seems to be
the idea. To be on good terms with St. Mark, seems to be the very summit
of Venetian ambition. They say St. Mark had a tame lion, and used to
travel with him--and every where that St. Mark went, the lion was sure to
go. It was his protector, his friend, his librarian. And so the Winged
Lion of St. Mark, with the open Bible under his paw, is a favorite emblem
in the grand old city. It casts its shadow from the most ancient pillar
in Venice, in the Grand Square of St. Mark, upon the throngs of free
citizens below, and has so done for many a long century. The winged lion
is found every where--and doubtless here, where the winged lion is, no
harm can come.
St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was martyred, I think.
However, that has nothing to do with my legend. About the founding of
the city of Venice--say four hundred and fifty years after Christ--(for
Venice is much younger than any other Italian city,) a priest dreamed
that an angel told him that until the remains of St. Mark were brought to
Venice, the city could never rise to high distinction among the nations;
that the body must be captured, brought to the city, and a magnificent
church built over it; and that if ever the Venetians allowed the Saint to
be removed from his new resting-place, in that day Venice would perish
from off the face of the earth. The priest proclaimed his dream, and
forthwith Venice set about procuring the corpse of St. Mark. One
expedition after another tried and failed, but the project was never
abandoned during four hundred years. At last it was secured by
stratagem, in the year eight hundred and something. The commander of a
Venetian expedition disguised himself, stole the bones, separated them,
and packed them in vessels filled with lard. The religion of Mahomet
causes its devotees to abhor anything that is in the nature of pork, and
so when the Christian was stopped by the officers at the gates of the
city, they only glanced once into his precious baskets, then turned up
their noses at the unholy lard, and let him go. The bones were buried in
the vaults of the grand cathedral, which had been waiting long years to
receive them, and thus the safety and the greatness of Venice were
secured. And to this day there be those in Venice who believe that if
those holy ashes were stolen away, the ancient city would vanish like a
dream, and its foundations be buried forever in the unremembering sea.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its gliding movement, as
a serpent. It is twenty or thirty feet long, and is narrow and deep,
like a canoe; its sharp bow and stern sweep upward from the water like
the horns of a crescent with the abruptness of the curve slightly
modified.
The bow is ornamented with a steel comb with a battle-ax attachment which
threatens to cut passing boats in two occasionally, but never does. The
gondola is painted black because in the zenith of Venetian magnificence
the gondolas became too gorgeous altogether, and the Senate decreed that
all such display must cease, and a solemn, unembellished black be
substituted. If the truth were known, it would doubtless appear that
rich plebeians grew too prominent in their affectation of patrician show
on the Grand Canal, and required a wholesome snubbing. Reverence for the
hallowed Past and its traditions keeps the dismal fashion in force now
that the compulsion exists no longer. So let it remain. It is the color
of mourning. Venice mourns. The stern of the boat is decked over and
the gondolier stands there. He uses a single oar--a long blade, of
course, for he stands nearly erect. A wooden peg, a foot and a half
high, with two slight crooks or curves in one side of it and one in the
other, projects above the starboard gunwale. Against that peg the
gondolier takes a purchase with his oar, changing it at intervals to the
other side of the peg or dropping it into another of the crooks, as the
steering of the craft may demand--and how in the world he can back and
fill, shoot straight ahead, or flirt suddenly around a corner, and make
the oar stay in those insignificant notches, is a problem to me and a
never diminishing matter of interest. I am afraid I study the
gondolier's marvelous skill more than I do the sculptured palaces we
glide among. He cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or misses
another gondola by such an imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself
"scrooching," as the children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel
grazes his elbow. But he makes all his calculations with the nicest
precision, and goes darting in and out among a Broadway confusion of busy
craft with the easy confidence of the educated hackman. He never makes a
mistake.
Sometimes we go flying down the great canals at such a gait that we can
get only the merest glimpses into front doors, and again, in obscure
alleys in the suburbs, we put on a solemnity suited to the silence, the
mildew, the stagnant waters, the clinging weeds, the deserted houses and
the general lifelessness of the place, and move to the spirit of grave
meditation.
The gondolier is a picturesque rascal for all he wears no satin harness,
no plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His attitude is stately; he is lithe
and supple; all his movements are full of grace. When his long canoe,
and his fine figure, towering from its high perch on the stern, are cut
against the evening sky, they make a picture that is very novel and
striking to a foreign eye.
We sit in the cushioned carriage-body of a cabin, with the curtains
drawn, and smoke, or read, or look out upon the passing boats, the
houses, the bridges, the people, and enjoy ourselves much more than we
could in a buggy jolting over our cobble-stone pavements at home. This
is the gentlest, pleasantest locomotion we have ever known.
But it seems queer--ever so queer--to see a boat doing duty as a private
carriage. We see business men come to the front door, step into a
gondola, instead of a street car, and go off down town to the
counting-room.
We see visiting young ladies stand on the stoop, and laugh, and kiss
good-bye, and flirt their fans and say "Come soon--now do--you've been
just as mean as ever you can be--mother's dying to see you--and we've
moved into the new house, O such a love of a place!--so convenient to the
post office and the church, and the Young Men's Christian Association;
and we do have such fishing, and such carrying on, and such
swimming-matches in the back yard--Oh, you must come--no distance at all,
and if you go down through by St. Mark's and the Bridge of Sighs, and cut
through the alley and come up by the church of Santa Maria dei Frari, and
into the Grand Canal, there isn't a bit of current--now do come, Sally
Maria--by-bye!" and then the little humbug trips down the steps, jumps
into the gondola, says, under her breath, "Disagreeable old thing, I hope
she won't!" goes skimming away, round the corner; and the other girl
slams the street door and says, "Well, that infliction's over, any way,
--but I suppose I've got to go and see her--tiresome stuck-up thing!"
Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world. We see the
diffident young man, mild of moustache, affluent of hair, indigent of
brain, elegant of costume, drive up to her father's mansion, tell his
hackman to bail out and wait, start fearfully up the steps and meet "the
old gentleman" right on the threshold!--hear him ask what street the new
British Bank is in--as if that were what he came for--and then bounce
into his boat and skurry away with his coward heart in his boots!--see
him come sneaking around the corner again, directly, with a crack of the
curtain open toward the old gentleman's disappearing gondola, and out
scampers his Susan with a flock of little Italian endearments fluttering
from her lips, and goes to drive with him in the watery avenues down
toward the Rialto.
We see the ladies go out shopping, in the most natural way, and flit from
street to street and from store to store, just in the good old fashion,
except that they leave the gondola, instead of a private carriage,
waiting at the curbstone a couple of hours for them,--waiting while they
make the nice young clerks pull down tons and tons of silks and velvets
and moire antiques and those things; and then they buy a paper of pins
and go paddling away to confer the rest of their disastrous patronage on
some other firm. And they always have their purchases sent home just in
the good old way. Human nature is very much the same all over the world;
and it is so like my dear native home to see a Venetian lady go into a
store and buy ten cents' worth of blue ribbon and have it sent home in a
scow. Ah, it is these little touches of nature that move one to tears in
these far-off foreign lands.
We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for an
airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the
gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at
midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious
youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold
the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go
skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them separate here and there,
and disappear up divergent streets; we hear the faint sounds of laughter
and of shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the
strange pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water
--of stately buildings--of blotting shadows--of weird stone faces
creeping into the moonlight--of deserted bridges--of motionless boats at
anchor. And over all broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy
quiet, that befits so well this old dreaming Venice.
We have been pretty much every where in our gondola. We have bought
beads and photographs in the stores, and wax matches in the Great Square
of St. Mark. The last remark suggests a digression. Every body goes to
this vast square in the evening. The military bands play in the centre
of it and countless couples of ladies and gentlemen promenade up and down
on either side, and platoons of them are constantly drifting away toward
the old Cathedral, and by the venerable column with the Winged Lion of
St. Mark on its top, and out to where the boats lie moored; and other
platoons are as constantly arriving from the gondolas and joining the
great throng. Between the promenaders and the side-walks are seated
hundreds and hundreds of people at small tables, smoking and taking
granita, (a first cousin to ice-cream;) on the side-walks are more
employing themselves in the same way. The shops in the first floor of
the tall rows of buildings that wall in three sides of the square are
brilliantly lighted, the air is filled with music and merry voices, and
altogether the scene is as bright and spirited and full of cheerfulness
as any man could desire. We enjoy it thoroughly. Very many of the young
women are exceedingly pretty and dress with rare good taste. We are
gradually and laboriously learning the ill-manners of staring them
unflinchingly in the face--not because such conduct is agreeable to us,
but because it is the custom of the country and they say the girls like
it. We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the
different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when
we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with
our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off. All our
passengers are paying strict attention to this thing, with the end in
view which I have mentioned. The gentle reader will never, never know
what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad. I speak now,
of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad,
and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise,
I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and
call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own
heart when I shall have finished my travels.
On this subject let me remark that there are Americans abroad in Italy
who have actually forgotten their mother tongue in three months--forgot
it in France. They can not even write their address in English in a
hotel register. I append these evidences, which I copied verbatim from
the register of a hotel in a certain Italian city:
"John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis. "Wm. L. Ainsworth, travailleur (he
meant traveler, I suppose,) Etats Unis. "George P. Morton et fils,
d'Amerique. "Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, ville de Boston,
Amerique. "J. Ellsworth Baker, tout de suite de France, place de
naissance Amerique, destination la Grand Bretagne."
I love this sort of people. A lady passenger of ours tells of a
fellow-citizen of hers who spent eight weeks in Paris and then returned
home and addressed his dearest old bosom friend Herbert as Mr.
"Er-bare!" He apologized, though, and said, "'Pon my soul it is
aggravating, but I cahn't help it--I have got so used to speaking
nothing but French, my dear Erbare--damme there it goes again!--got so
used to French pronunciation that I cahn't get rid of it--it is
positively annoying, I assure you." This entertaining idiot, whose name
was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed three times in the street
before he paid any attention, and then begged a thousand pardons and
said he had grown so accustomed to hearing himself addressed as "M'sieu
Gor-r-dong," with a roll to the r, that he had forgotten the legitimate
sound of his name! He wore a rose in his button-hole; he gave the French
salutation--two flips of the hand in front of the face; he called Paris
Pairree in ordinary English conversation; he carried envelopes bearing
foreign postmarks protruding from his breast-pocket; he cultivated a
moustache and imperial, and did what else he could to suggest to the
beholder his pet fancy that he resembled Louis Napoleon--and in a spirit
of thankfulness which is entirely unaccountable, considering the slim
foundation there was for it, he praised his Maker that he was as he was,
and went on enjoying his little life just the same as if he really had
been deliberately designed and erected by the great Architect of the
Universe.
Think of our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our Williamses writing
themselves down in dilapidated French in foreign hotel registers! We
laugh at Englishmen, when we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to
their national ways and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad
very forgivingly. It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his
nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is pitiable
to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female,
neither fish, flesh, nor fowl--a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite
Frenchman!
Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such things, visited by
us in Venice, I shall mention only one--the church of Santa Maria dei
Frari. It is about five hundred years old, I believe, and stands on
twelve hundred thousand piles. In it lie the body of Canova and the
heart of Titian, under magnificent monuments. Titian died at the age of
almost one hundred years. A plague which swept away fifty thousand lives
was raging at the time, and there is notable evidence of the reverence in
which the great painter was held, in the fact that to him alone the state
permitted a public funeral in all that season of terror and death.
In this church, also, is a monument to the doge Foscari, whose name a
once resident of Venice, Lord Byron, has made permanently famous.
The monument to the doge Giovanni Pesaro, in this church, is a curiosity
in the way of mortuary adornment. It is eighty feet high and is fronted
like some fantastic pagan temple. Against it stand four colossal
Nubians, as black as night, dressed in white marble garments. The black
legs are bare, and through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of
shiny black marble, shows. The artist was as ingenious as his funeral
designs were absurd. There are two bronze skeletons bearing scrolls, and
two great dragons uphold the sarcophagus. On high, amid all this
grotesqueness, sits the departed doge.
In the conventual buildings attached to this church are the state
archives of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to number
millions of documents. "They are the records of centuries of the most
watchful, observant and suspicious government that ever existed--in which
every thing was written down and nothing spoken out." They fill nearly
three hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts from the archives of
nearly two thousand families, monasteries and convents. The secret
history of Venice for a thousand years is here--its plots, its hidden
trials, its assassinations, its commissions of hireling spies and masked
bravoes--food, ready to hand, for a world of dark and mysterious
romances.
Yes, I think we have seen all of Venice. We have seen, in these old
churches, a profusion of costly and elaborate sepulchre ornamentation
such as we never dreampt of before. We have stood in the dim religious
light of these hoary sanctuaries, in the midst of long ranks of dusty
monuments and effigies of the great dead of Venice, until we seemed
drifting back, back, back, into the solemn past, and looking upon the
scenes and mingling with the peoples of a remote antiquity. We have been
in a half-waking sort of dream all the time. I do not know how else to
describe the feeling. A part of our being has remained still in the
nineteenth century, while another part of it has seemed in some
unaccountable way walking among the phantoms of the tenth.
We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at
them and refuse to find interest in them any longer. And what wonder,
when there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and
fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there are Titians and the
works of other artists in proportion. We have seen Titian's celebrated
Cain and Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham's Sacrifice. We have
seen Tintoretto's monster picture, which is seventy-four feet long and I
do not know how many feet high, and thought it a very commodious picture.
We have seen pictures of martyrs enough, and saints enough, to regenerate
the world. I ought not to confess it, but still, since one has no
opportunity in America to acquire a critical judgment in art, and since I
could not hope to become educated in it in Europe in a few short weeks, I
may therefore as well acknowledge with such apologies as may be due, that
to me it seemed that when I had seen one of these martyrs I had seen them
all. They all have a marked family resemblance to each other, they dress
alike, in coarse monkish robes and sandals, they are all bald headed,
they all stand in about the same attitude, and without exception they are
gazing heavenward with countenances which the Ainsworths, the Mortons and
the Williamses, et fils, inform me are full of "expression." To me there
is nothing tangible about these imaginary portraits, nothing that I can
grasp and take a living interest in. If great Titian had only been
gifted with prophecy, and had skipped a martyr, and gone over to England
and painted a portrait of Shakspeare, even as a youth, which we could all
have confidence in now, the world down to the latest generations would
have forgiven him the lost martyr in the rescued seer. I think posterity
could have spared one more martyr for the sake of a great historical
picture of Titian's time and painted by his brush--such as Columbus
returning in chains from the discovery of a world, for instance. The old
masters did paint some Venetian historical pictures, and these we did not
tire of looking at, notwithstanding representations of the formal
introduction of defunct doges to the Virgin Mary in regions beyond the
clouds clashed rather harshly with the proprieties, it seemed to us.
But humble as we are, and unpretending, in the matter of art, our
researches among the painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in
vain. We have striven hard to learn. We have had some success. We have
mastered some things, possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the
learned, but to us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our
little acquirements as do others who have learned far more, and we love
to display them full as well. When we see a monk going about with a lion
and looking tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is St. Mark. When
we see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven,
trying to think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see
a monk sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human
skull beside him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St.
Jerome. Because we know that he always went flying light in the matter
of baggage. When we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven,
unconscious that his body is shot through and through with arrows, we
know that that is St. Sebastian. When we see other monks looking
tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we always ask who
those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to learn. We have
seen thirteen thousand St. Jeromes, and twenty-two thousand St. Marks,
and sixteen thousand St. Matthews, and sixty thousand St. Sebastians, and
four millions of assorted monks, undesignated, and we feel encouraged to
believe that when we have seen some more of these various pictures, and
had a larger experience, we shall begin to take an absorbing interest in
them like our cultivated countrymen from Amerique.
Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative way
of the old masters and their martyrs, because good friends of mine in the
ship--friends who do thoroughly and conscientiously appreciate them and
are in every way competent to discriminate between good pictures and
inferior ones--have urged me for my own sake not to make public the fact
that I lack this appreciation and this critical discrimination myself. I
believe that what I have written and may still write about pictures will
give them pain, and I am honestly sorry for it. I even promised that I
would hide my uncouth sentiments in my own breast. But alas! I never
could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because
the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a
very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to
make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was
crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather
have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary
capacity. I certainly meant to keep that promise, but I find I can not
do it. It is impossible to travel through Italy without speaking of
pictures, and can I see them through others' eyes?
If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread before me
every day of my life by that monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I
should come to believe, sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of
the beautiful, whatsoever.
It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once I have
discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy of all
praise, the pleasure it gives me is an infallible proof that it is not a
beautiful picture and not in any wise worthy of commendation. This very
thing has occurred more times than I can mention, in Venice. In every
single instance the guide has crushed out my swelling enthusiasm with the
remark:
"It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance."
I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was, and so always I
had to simply say,
"Ah! so it is--I had not observed it before."
I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro, the offspring
of a South Carolina slave. But it occurred too often for even my
self-complacency, did that exasperating "It is nothing--it is of the
Renaissance." I said at last:
"Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him
permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?"
We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man; that renaissance was a
term used to signify what was at best but an imperfect rejuvenation of
art. The guide said that after Titian's time and the time of the other
great names we had grown so familiar with, high art declined; then it
partially rose again--an inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these
shabby pictures were the work of their hands. Then I said, in my heat,
that I "wished to goodness high art had declined five hundred years
sooner." The Renaissance pictures suit me very well, though sooth to say
its school were too much given to painting real men and did not indulge
enough in martyrs.
The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet who knew any
thing. He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents. They came to
Venice while he was an infant. He has grown up here. He is well
educated. He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and
French, with perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and thoroughly
conversant with it; knows the history of Venice by heart and never tires
of talking of her illustrious career. He dresses better than any of us,
I think, and is daintily polite. Negroes are deemed as good as white
people, in Venice, and so this man feels no desire to go back to his
native land. His judgment is correct.
I have had another shave. I was writing in our front room this afternoon
and trying hard to keep my attention on my work and refrain from looking
out upon the canal. I was resisting the soft influences of the climate
as well as I could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent
and happy. The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I would be
shaved. I reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my
declaration that I would suffer no more on Italian soil. I said "Not any
for me, if you please."
I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard him say:
"Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the ship."
He said again, presently:
"Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving him."
Dan took the chair. Then he said:
"Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters."
I wrote on. Directly Dan said:
"Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship's barber isn't any thing to
him."
My rough beard wee distressing me beyond measure. The barber was rolling
up his apparatus. The temptation was too strong. I said:
"Hold on, please. Shave me also."
I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber soaped my face,
and then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into
convulsions. I jumped out of the chair: Dan and the doctor were both
wiping blood off their faces and laughing.
I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud.
They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond any thing
they had ever experienced before, that they could not bear the idea of
losing such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion from me on the subject.
It was shameful. But there was no help for it. The skinning was begun
and had to be finished. The tears flowed with every rake, and so did the
fervent execrations. The barber grew confused, and brought blood every
time. I think the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen
or heard since they left home.
We have seen the Campanile, and Byron's house and Balbi's the geographer,
and the palaces of all the ancient dukes and doges of Venice, and we have
seen their effeminate descendants airing their nobility in fashionable
French attire in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating ices and
drinking cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail and
destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors did in the days of
Venetian glory. We have seen no bravoes with poisoned stilettos, no
masks, no wild carnival; but we have seen the ancient pride of Venice,
the grim Bronze Horses that figure in a thousand legends. Venice may
well cherish them, for they are the only horses she ever had. It is said
there are hundreds of people in this curious city who never have seen a
living horse in their lives. It is entirely true, no doubt.
And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow, and leave the
venerable Queen of the Republics to summon her vanished ships, and
marshal her shadowy armies, and know again in dreams the pride of her old
renown.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Some of the Quaker City's passengers had arrived in Venice from
Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were
expected every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no
sickness.
We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through a
good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes.
I find no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we
arrived there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the
place is so justly celebrated.
Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.
Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great figure
of David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the Rape
of the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of paintings
and statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make that
statement in self-defense; there let it stop. I could not rest under the
imputation that I visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles
of picture galleries. We tried indolently to recollect something about
the Guelphs and Ghibelines and the other historical cut-throats whose
quarrels and assassinations make up so large a share of Florentine
history, but the subject was not attractive. We had been robbed of all
the fine mountain scenery on our little journey by a system of
railroading that had three miles of tunnel to a hundred yards of
daylight, and we were not inclined to be sociable with Florence. We had
seen the spot, outside the city somewhere, where these people had allowed
the bones of Galileo to rest in unconsecrated ground for an age because
his great discovery that the world turned around was regarded as a
damning heresy by the church; and we know that long after the world had
accepted his theory and raised his name high in the list of its great
men, they had still let him rot there. That we had lived to see his dust
in honored sepulture in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of
literati, and not to Florence or her rulers. We saw Dante's tomb in that
church, also, but we were glad to know that his body was not in it; that
the ungrateful city that had exiled him and persecuted him would give
much to have it there, but need not hope to ever secure that high honor
to herself. Medicis are good enough for Florence. Let her plant Medicis
and build grand monuments over them to testify how gratefully she was
wont to lick the hand that scourged her.
Magnanimous Florence! Her jewelry marts are filled with artists in
mosaic. Florentine mosaics are the choicest in all the world. Florence
loves to have that said. Florence is proud of it. Florence would foster
this specialty of hers. She is grateful to the artists that bring to her
this high credit and fill her coffers with foreign money, and so she
encourages them with pensions. With pensions! Think of the lavishness
of it. She knows that people who piece together the beautiful trifles
die early, because the labor is so confining, and so exhausting to hand
and brain, and so she has decreed that all these people who reach the age
of sixty shall have a pension after that! I have not heard that any of
them have called for their dividends yet. One man did fight along till
he was sixty, and started after his pension, but it appeared that there
had been a mistake of a year in his family record, and so he gave it up
and died.
These artists will take particles of stone or glass no larger than a
mustard seed, and piece them together on a sleeve button or a shirt stud,
so smoothly and with such nice adjustment of the delicate shades of color
the pieces bear, as to form a pigmy rose with stem, thorn, leaves, petals
complete, and all as softly and as truthfully tinted as though Nature had
builded it herself. They will counterfeit a fly, or a high-toned bug, or
the ruined Coliseum, within the cramped circle of a breastpin, and do it
so deftly and so neatly that any man might think a master painted it.
I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence--a little
trifle of a centre table--whose top was made of some sort of precious
polished stone, and in the stone was inlaid the figure of a flute, with
bell-mouth and a mazy complication of keys. No painting in the world
could have been softer or richer; no shading out of one tint into another
could have been more perfect; no work of art of any kind could have been
more faultless than this flute, and yet to count the multitude of little
fragments of stone of which they swore it was formed would bankrupt any
man's arithmetic! I do not think one could have seen where two particles
joined each other with eyes of ordinary shrewdness. Certainly we could
detect no such blemish. This table-top cost the labor of one man for ten
long years, so they said, and it was for sale for thirty-five thousand
dollars.
We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to
weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli,
(I suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside
elsewhere and rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion
in Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and
admire the Arno. It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great
historical creek with four feet in the channel and some scows floating
around. It would be a very plausible river if they would pump some water
into it. They all call it a river, and they honestly think it is a
river, do these dark and bloody Florentines. They even help out the
delusion by building bridges over it. I do not see why they are too good
to wade.
How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices
sometimes! I might enter Florence under happier auspices a month hence
and find it all beautiful, all attractive. But I do not care to think of
it now, at all, nor of its roomy shops filled to the ceiling with snowy
marble and alabaster copies of all the celebrated sculptures in Europe
--copies so enchanting to the eye that I wonder how they can really be
shaped like the dingy petrified nightmares they are the portraits of. I
got lost in Florence at nine o'clock, one night, and staid lost in that
labyrinth of narrow streets and long rows of vast buildings that look all
alike, until toward three o'clock in the morning. It was a pleasant
night and at first there were a good many people abroad, and there were
cheerful lights about. Later, I grew accustomed to prowling about
mysterious drifts and tunnels and astonishing and interesting myself with
coming around corners expecting to find the hotel staring me in the face,
and not finding it doing any thing of the kind. Later still, I felt
tired. I soon felt remarkably tired. But there was no one abroad, now
--not even a policeman. I walked till I was out of all patience, and very
hot and thirsty. At last, somewhere after one o'clock, I came
unexpectedly to one of the city gates. I knew then that I was very far
from the hotel. The soldiers thought I wanted to leave the city, and
they sprang up and barred the way with their muskets. I said:
"Hotel d'Europe!"
It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether that was
Italian or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at each other and at me,
and shook their heads and took me into custody. I said I wanted to go
home. They did not understand me. They took me into the guard-house and
searched me, but they found no sedition on me. They found a small piece
of soap (we carry soap with us, now,) and I made them a present of it,
seeing that they regarded it as a curiosity. I continued to say Hotel
d'Europe, and they continued to shake their heads, until at last a young
soldier nodding in the corner roused up and said something. He said he
knew where the hotel was, I suppose, for the officer of the guard sent
him away with me. We walked a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, it
appeared to me, and then he got lost. He turned this way and that, and
finally gave it up and signified that he was going to spend the remainder
of the morning trying to find the city gate again. At that moment it
struck me that there was something familiar about the house over the way.
It was the hotel!
It was a happy thing for me that there happened to be a soldier there
that knew even as much as he did; for they say that the policy of the
government is to change the soldiery from one place to another constantly
and from country to city, so that they can not become acquainted with the
people and grow lax in their duties and enter into plots and conspiracies
with friends. My experiences of Florence were chiefly unpleasant. I
will change the subject.
At Pisa we climbed up to the top of the strangest structure the world has
any knowledge of--the Leaning Tower. As every one knows, it is in the
neighborhood of one hundred and eighty feet high--and I beg to observe
that one hundred and eighty feet reach to about the hight of four
ordinary three-story buildings piled one on top of the other, and is a
very considerable altitude for a tower of uniform thickness to aspire to,
even when it stands upright--yet this one leans more than thirteen feet
out of the perpendicular. It is seven hundred years old, but neither
history or tradition say whether it was built as it is, purposely, or
whether one of its sides has settled. There is no record that it ever
stood straight up. It is built of marble. It is an airy and a beautiful
structure, and each of its eight stories is encircled by fluted columns,
some of marble and some of granite, with Corinthian capitals that were
handsome when they were new. It is a bell tower, and in its top hangs a
chime of ancient bells. The winding staircase within is dark, but one
always knows which side of the tower he is on because of his naturally
gravitating from one side to the other of the staircase with the rise or
dip of the tower. Some of the stone steps are foot-worn only on one end;
others only on the other end; others only in the middle. To look down
into the tower from the top is like looking down into a tilted well. A
rope that hangs from the centre of the top touches the wall before it
reaches the bottom. Standing on the summit, one does not feel altogether
comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl on your
breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out
far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and
convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that
the building is falling. You handle yourself very carefully, all the
time, under the silly impression that if it is not falling, your trifling
weight will start it unless you are particular not to "bear down" on it.
The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe. It
is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high
commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a
necessity, or rather a possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and
ruin, it conveys to us a more tangible impression of the former greatness
of Pisa than books could give us.
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a
stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. In it
hangs the lamp whose measured swing suggested to Galileo the pendulum.
It looked an insignificant thing to have conferred upon the world of
science and mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it
has. Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a crazy
universe of swinging disks, the toiling children of this sedate parent.
He appeared to have an intelligent expression about him of knowing that
he was not a lamp at all; that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised,
for prodigious and inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and not
a common pendulum either, but the old original patriarchal Pendulum--the
Abraham Pendulum of the world.
This Baptistery is endowed with the most pleasing echo of all the echoes
we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about half an
octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the most
melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It
was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by
distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this be the case
my ear is to blame--not my pen. I am describing a memory--and one that
will remain long with me.
The peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time, which placed a higher
confidence in outward forms of worship than in the watchful guarding of
the heart against sinful thoughts and the hands against sinful deeds, and
which believed in the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy
by contact with holy things, is illustrated in a striking manner in one
of the cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought in ships
from the Holy Land ages ago. To be buried in such ground was regarded by
the ancient Pisans as being more potent for salvation than many masses
purchased of the church and the vowing of many candles to the Virgin.
Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It was one of the
twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that commonwealth which has left
so many monuments in testimony of its extraordinary advancement, and so
little history of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A Pisan
antiquarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full four
thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of one of the oldest of
the Etruscan cities. He said it came from a tomb, and was used by some
bereaved family in that remote age when even the Pyramids of Egypt were
young, Damascus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and ancient Troy
not yet [dreampt] of, to receive the tears wept for some lost idol of a
household. It spoke to us in a language of its own; and with a pathos
more tender than any words might bring, its mute eloquence swept down the
long roll of the centuries with its tale of a vacant chair, a familiar
footstep missed from the threshold, a pleasant voice gone from the
chorus, a vanished form!--a tale which is always so new to us, so
startling, so terrible, so benumbing to the senses, and behold how
threadbare and old it is! No shrewdly-worded history could have brought
the myths and shadows of that old dreamy age before us clothed with human
flesh and warmed with human sympathies so vividly as did this poor little
unsentient vessel of pottery.
Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own,
armies and navies of her own and a great commerce. She was a warlike
power, and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese
and Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population of four
hundred thousand; but her sceptre has passed from her grasp, now, her
ships and her armies are gone, her commerce is dead. Her battle-flags
bear the mold and the dust of centuries, her marts are deserted, she has
shrunken far within her crumbling walls, and her great population has
diminished to twenty thousand souls. She has but one thing left to boast
of, and that is not much, viz: she is the second city of Tuscany.
We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of it long before
the city gates were closed for the evening, and then came on board the
ship.
We felt as though we had been away from home an age. We never entirely
appreciated, before, what a very pleasant den our state-room is; nor how
jolly it is to sit at dinner in one's own seat in one's own cabin, and
hold familiar conversation with friends in one's own language. Oh, the
rare happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and
knowing that every word one says in return will be understood as well!
We would talk ourselves to death, now, only there are only about ten
passengers out of the sixty-five to talk to. The others are wandering,
we hardly know where. We shall not go ashore in Leghorn. We are
surfeited with Italian cities for the present, and much prefer to walk
the familiar quarterdeck and view this one from a distance.
The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government can not understand that so
large a steamer as ours could cross the broad Atlantic with no other
purpose than to indulge a party of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure
excursion. It looks too improbable. It is suspicious, they think.
Something more important must be hidden behind it all. They can not
understand it, and they scorn the evidence of the ship's papers. They
have decided at last that we are a battalion of incendiary, blood-thirsty
Garibaldians in disguise! And in all seriousness they have set a
gun-boat to watch the vessel night and day, with orders to close down on
any revolutionary movement in a twinkling! Police boats are on patrol
duty about us all the time, and it is as much as a sailor's liberty is
worth to show himself in a red shirt. These policemen follow the
executive officer's boat from shore to ship and from ship to shore and
watch his dark maneuvres with a vigilant eye. They will arrest him yet
unless he assumes an expression of countenance that shall have less of
carnage, insurrection and sedition in it. A visit paid in a friendly
way to General Garibaldi yesterday (by cordial invitation,) by some of
our passengers, has gone far to confirm the dread suspicions the
government harbors toward us. It is thought the friendly visit was only
the cloak of a bloody conspiracy. These people draw near and watch us
when we bathe in the sea from the ship's side. Do they think we are
communing with a reserve force of rascals at the bottom?
It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples. Two or three
of us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore, when we are rested, we
propose to go in a French steamer to Civita and from thence to Rome, and
by rail to Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no matter where they
got their passengers from.
CHAPTER XXV.
There are a good many things about this Italy which I do not understand
--and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt Government can
have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of turnpikes. Why,
these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line, as smooth as
a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see any other
object, one can still see the white turnpikes of France and Italy; and
they are clean enough to eat from, without a table-cloth. And yet no
tolls are charged.
As for the railways--we have none like them. The cars slide as smoothly
along as if they were on runners. The depots are vast palaces of cut
marble, with stately colonnades of the same royal stone traversing them
from end to end, and with ample walls and ceilings richly decorated with
frescoes. The lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the broad
floors are all laid in polished flags of marble.
These things win me more than Italy's hundred galleries of priceless art
treasures, because I can understand the one and am not competent to
appreciate the other. In the turnpikes, the railways, the depots, and
the new boulevards of uniform houses in Florence and other cities here, I
see the genius of Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that
statesman imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall
be a foundation for these improvements--money. He has always the
wherewithal to back up his projects; they strengthen France and never
weaken her. Her material prosperity is genuine. But here the case is
different. This country is bankrupt. There is no real foundation for
these great works. The prosperity they would seem to indicate is a
pretence. There is no money in the treasury, and so they enfeeble her
instead of strengthening. Italy has achieved the dearest wish of her
heart and become an independent State--and in so doing she has drawn an
elephant in the political lottery. She has nothing to feed it on.
Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all manner of useless
expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day. She squandered
millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and the first time
she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than
Gilderoy's kite--to use the language of the Pilgrims.
But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy saw
utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth the
paper they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a 'coup de main'
that would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less
desperate circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of
the Church! This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has
groped in the midnight of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred
years! It was a rare good fortune for Italy, the stress of weather that
drove her to break from this prison-house.
They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound
too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of
churches in Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in
its closets, and each with its battalion of priests to be supported.
And then there are the estates of the Church--league on league of the
richest lands and the noblest forests in all Italy--all yielding immense
revenues to the Church, and none paying a cent in taxes to the State.
In some great districts the Church owns all the property--lands,
watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They buy, they sell, they
manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to compete with
them?
Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize it
in rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something must be done to
feed a starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all Italy
--none but the riches of the Church. So the Government intends to take to
itself a great portion of the revenues arising from priestly farms,
factories, etc., and also intends to take possession of the churches and
carry them on, after its own fashion and upon its own responsibility.
In a few instances it will leave the establishments of great pet churches
undisturbed, but in all others only a handful of priests will be retained
to preach and pray, a few will be pensioned, and the balance turned
adrift.
Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and see
whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not. In Venice,
today, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve hundred
priests. Heaven only knows how many there were before the Parliament
reduced their numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old
regime it required sixty priests to engineer it--the Government does it
with five, now, and the others are discharged from service. All about
that church wretchedness and poverty abound. At its door a dozen hats
and bonnets were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as
many hands extended, appealing for pennies--appealing with foreign words
we could not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken
cheeks, and ragged raiment, that no words were needed to translate. Then
we passed within the great doors, and it seemed that the riches of the
world were before us! Huge columns carved out of single masses of
marble, and inlaid from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures
wrought in costly verde antique; pulpits of the same rich materials,
whose draperies hung down in many a pictured fold, the stony fabric
counterfeiting the delicate work of the loom; the grand altar brilliant
with polished facings and balustrades of oriental agate, jasper, verde
antique, and other precious stones, whose names, even, we seldom hear
--and slabs of priceless lapis lazuli lavished every where as recklessly as
if the church had owned a quarry of it. In the midst of all this
magnificence, the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar seemed
cheap and trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely fortune.
Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while
half of that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going
to keep body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting
hundreds upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the
useless trumpery of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to
death with taxation to uphold a perishing Government?
As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her
energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a
vast array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens
to accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of magnificence and
misery. All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could
hardly buy the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And
for every beggar in America, Italy can show a hundred--and rags and
vermin to match. It is the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth.
Look at the grand Duomo of Florence--a vast pile that has been sapping
the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly
finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but
when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking,
too suggestive, and I said, "O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of
enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye?
Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don't you rob your church?"
Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral.
And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body I
can think of. They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built
to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in. It sounds
blasphemous, but it is true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and
damned Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her curse
for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly vaults,
and in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up. The
expedition sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could not
accomplish the burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant
now. They say the entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre,
and was only turned into a family burying place after the Jerusalem
expedition failed--but you will excuse me. Some of those Medicis would
have smuggled themselves in sure.--What they had not the effrontery to
do, was not worth doing. Why, they had their trivial, forgotten exploits
on land and sea pictured out in grand frescoes (as did also the ancient
Doges of Venice) with the Saviour and the Virgin throwing bouquets to
them out of the clouds, and the Deity himself applauding from his throne
in Heaven! And who painted these things? Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul
Veronese, Raphael--none other than the world's idols, the "old masters."
Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them
for ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve. Served
him right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and
Marie de Medicis seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with the
Virgin Mary and the angels, (to say nothing of higher personages,) and
yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old
masters--because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in their
productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but I keep on
protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those masters
to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such monsters as
the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and three hundred
years ago, all the same.
I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful things for bread,
the princes and potentates being the only patrons of art. If a grandly
gifted man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for bread
rather than starve with the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse
is a valid one. It would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons,
and unchastity in women as well.
But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory. It
is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement of
a King's palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls are
made of--what? Marble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red porphyry
--verde antique--jasper--oriental agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl
--chalcedony--red coral--lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are made wholly
of these precious stones, worked in, and in and in together in elaborate
pattern s and figures, and polished till they glow like great mirrors
with the pictured splendors reflected from the dome overhead. And before
a statue of one of those dead Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with
diamonds and emeralds enough to buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These
are the things the Government has its evil eye upon, and a happy thing it
will be for Italy when they melt away in the public treasury.
And now----. However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and
destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of
vituperation.
Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his comrades
--having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a kindlier
mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests and the
churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about either I
ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to the credit
of the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is
the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of
the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican friars--men who wear a
coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go
barefoot. They live on alms altogether, I believe. They must
unquestionably love their religion, to suffer so much for it. When the
cholera was raging in Naples; when the people were dying by hundreds and
hundreds every day; when every concern for the public welfare was
swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen made the
taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded themselves
together and went about nursing the sick and burying the dead. Their
noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them down
cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise, and
hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the
salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the
unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these would save their
souls though they were bankrupt in the true religion--which is ours.
One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with us
in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in the
cabin. He belonged in the steerage. He was the life of the ship, the
bloody-minded son of the Inquisition! He and the leader of the marine
band of a French man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera turn
about; they sang duets together; they rigged impromptu theatrical
costumes and gave us extravagant farces and pantomimes. We got along
first-rate with the friar, and were excessively conversational, albeit he
could not understand what we said, and certainly he never uttered a word
that we could guess the meaning of.
This Civita Vecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance we
have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which is
just like it. The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have
a smell about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well
the alleys are not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person
can stand, and of course, if they were wider they would hold more, and
then the people would die. These alleys are paved with stone, and
carpeted with deceased cats, and decayed rags, and decomposed
vegetable-tops, and remnants of old boots, all soaked with dish-water,
and the people sit around on stools and enjoy it. They are indolent, as
a general thing, and yet have few pastimes. They work two or three
hours at a time, but not hard, and then they knock off and catch flies.
This does not require any talent, because they only have to grab--if
they do not get the one they are after, they get another. It is all the
same to them. They have no partialities. Whichever one they get is the
one they want.
They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant.
They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind
of things than other communities, but they do not boast.
They are very uncleanly--these people--in face, in person and dress.
When they see any body with a clean shirt on, it arouses their scorn.
The women wash clothes, half the day, at the public tanks in the streets,
but they are probably somebody else's. Or may be they keep one set to
wear and another to wash; because they never put on any that have ever
been washed. When they get done washing, they sit in the alleys and
nurse their cubs. They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and the others
scratch their backs against the door-post and are happy.
All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not appear to have
any schools here, and only one billiard table. Their education is at a
very low stage. One portion of the men go into the military, another
into the priesthood, and the rest into the shoe-making business.
They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in Turkey. This
shows that the Papal States are as far advanced as Turkey. This fact
will be alone sufficient to silence the tongues of malignant
calumniators. I had to get my passport vised for Rome in Florence, and
then they would not let me come ashore here until a policeman had
examined it on the wharf and sent me a permit. They did not even dare to
let me take my passport in my hands for twelve hours, I looked so
formidable. They judged it best to let me cool down. They thought I
wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they know me. I wouldn't
have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They took one of my
ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read it backwards.
But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and every body
speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.
It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over
deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his
opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I
immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around.
And so I explained and explained and explained, and they took notes of
all I said, but the more I explained the more they could not understand
it, and when they desisted at last, I could not even understand it
myself. They said they believed it was an incendiary document, leveled
at the government. I declared solemnly that it was not, but they only
shook their heads and would not be satisfied. Then they consulted a good
while; and finally they confiscated it. I was very sorry for this,
because I had worked a long time on that joke, and took a good deal of
pride in it, and now I suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose
it will be sent up and filed away among the criminal archives of Rome,
and will always be regarded as a mysterious infernal machine which would
have blown up like a mine and scattered the good Pope all around, but for
a miraculous providential interference. And I suppose that all the time
I am in Rome the police will dog me about from place to place because
they think I am a dangerous character.
It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very narrow
and the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection
against the heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does
not appear to have a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that
went up in the chariot of fire could stand the climate.
There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with
eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not
show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any
smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or
Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't
any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross.
We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here.
CHAPTER XXVI.
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a
man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring
to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have
walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that
you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea--to
discover a great thought--an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of
a field that many a brain--plow had gone over before. To find a new
planet, to invent a new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings
carry your messages. To be the first--that is the idea. To do
something, say something, see something, before any body else--these are
the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are
tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his
first message, brought by his servant, the lightning; Fulton, in that
long-drawn century of suspense, when he placed his hand upon the
throttle-valve and lo, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his patient with
the cow's virus in his blood, walked through the smallpox hospitals
unscathed; Howe, when the idea shot through his brain that for a hundred
and twenty generations the eye had been bored through the wrong end of
the needle; the nameless lord of art who laid down his chisel in some old
age that is forgotten, now, and gloated upon the finished Laocoon;
Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the zenith, to print the
landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and he obeyed; Columbus,
in the Pinta's shrouds, when he swung his hat above a fabled sea and
gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men who have really
lived--who have actually comprehended what pleasure is--who have crowded
long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.
What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me?
What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is
there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me
before it pass to others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing
whatsoever. One charm of travel dies here. But if I were only a Roman!
--If, added to my own I could be gifted with modern Roman sloth, modern
Roman superstition, and modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance, what
bewildering worlds of unsuspected wonders I would discover! Ah, if I
were only a habitant of the Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome!
Then I would travel.
I would go to America, and see, and learn, and return to the Campagna and
stand before my countrymen an illustrious discoverer. I would say:
"I saw there a country which has no overshadowing Mother Church, and yet
the people survive. I saw a government which never was protected by
foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that required to carry on the
government itself. I saw common men and common women who could read;
I even saw small children of common country people reading from books;
if I dared think you would believe it, I would say they could write,
also.
"In the cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made of chalk
and water, but never once saw goats driven through their Broadway or
their Pennsylvania Avenue or their Montgomery street and milked at the
doors of the houses. I saw real glass windows in the houses of even the
commonest people. Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of
bricks; I solemnly swear they are made of wood. Houses there will take
fire and burn, sometimes--actually burn entirely down, and not leave a
single vestige behind. I could state that for a truth, upon my
death-bed. And as a proof that the circumstance is not rare, I aver
that they have a thing which they call a fire-engine, which vomits forth
great streams of water, and is kept always in readiness, by night and by
day, to rush to houses that are burning. You would think one engine
would be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred; they keep men
hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but put out fires. For a
certain sum of money other men will insure that your house shall not
burn down; and if it burns they will pay you for it. There are hundreds
and thousands of schools, and any body may go and learn to be wise, like
a priest. In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is
damned; he can not buy salvation with money for masses. There is really
not much use in being rich, there. Not much use as far as the other
world is concerned, but much, very much use, as concerns this; because
there, if a man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can become a
legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an
ass he is--just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great
places, even though sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if a
man be rich, they give him costly presents, they ask him to feasts, they
invite him to drink complicated beverages; but if he be poor and in
debt, they require him to do that which they term to "settle." The
women put on a different dress almost every day; the dress is usually
fine, but absurd in shape; the very shape and fashion of it changes
twice in a hundred years; and did I but covet to be called an
extravagant falsifier, I would say it changed even oftener. Hair does
not grow upon the American women's heads; it is made for them by cunning
workmen in the shops, and is curled and frizzled into scandalous and
ungodly forms. Some persons wear eyes of glass which they see through
with facility perhaps, else they would not use them; and in the mouths
of some are teeth made by the sacrilegious hand of man. The dress of
the men is laughably grotesque. They carry no musket in ordinary life,
nor no long-pointed pole; they wear no wide green-lined cloak; they wear
no peaked black felt hat, no leathern gaiters reaching to the knee, no
goat-skin breeches with the hair side out, no hob-nailed shoes, no
prodigious spurs. They wear a conical hat termed a "nail-kag;" a coat
of saddest black; a shirt which shows dirt so easily that it has to be
changed every month, and is very troublesome; things called pantaloons,
which are held up by shoulder straps, and on their feet they wear boots
which are ridiculous in pattern and can stand no wear. Yet dressed in
this fantastic garb, these people laughed at my costume. In that
country, books are so common that it is really no curiosity to see one.
Newspapers also. They have a great machine which prints such things by
thousands every hour.
"I saw common men, there--men who were neither priests nor princes--who
yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. It was not rented from the
church, nor from the nobles. I am ready to take my oath of this. In
that country you might fall from a third story window three several
times, and not mash either a soldier or a priest.--The scarcity of such
people is astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen civilians for
every soldier, and as many for every priest or preacher. Jews, there,
are treated just like human beings, instead of dogs. They can work at
any business they please; they can sell brand new goods if they want to;
they can keep drug-stores; they can practice medicine among Christians;
they can even shake hands with Christians if they choose; they can
associate with them, just the same as one human being does with another
human being; they don't have to stay shut up in one corner of the towns;
they can live in any part of a town they like best; it is said they even
have the privilege of buying land and houses, and owning them themselves,
though I doubt that, myself; they never have had to run races naked
through the public streets, against jackasses, to please the people in
carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers into a
church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and their
religion especially and particularly cursed; at this very day, in that
curious country, a Jew is allowed to vote, hold office, yea, get up on a
rostrum in the public street and express his opinion of the government if
the government don't suit him! Ah, it is wonderful. The common people
there know a great deal; they even have the effrontery to complain if
they are not properly governed, and to take hold and help conduct the
government themselves; if they had laws like ours, which give one dollar
of every three a crop produces to the government for taxes, they would
have that law altered: instead of paying thirty-three dollars in taxes,
out of every one hundred they receive, they complain if they have to pay
seven. They are curious people. They do not know when they are well
off. Mendicant priests do not prowl among them with baskets begging for
the church and eating up their substance. One hardly ever sees a
minister of the gospel going around there in his bare feet, with a
basket, begging for subsistence. In that country the preachers are not
like our mendicant orders of friars--they have two or three suits of
clothing, and they wash sometimes. In that land are mountains far higher
than the Alban mountains; the vast Roman Campagna, a hundred miles long
and full forty broad, is really small compared to the United States of
America; the Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which stretches its
mighty course almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can scarcely
throw a stone across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as the
American Mississippi--nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hudson. In America
the people are absolutely wiser and know much more than their
grandfathers did. They do not plow with a sharpened stick, nor yet with
a three-cornered block of wood that merely scratches the top of the
ground. We do that because our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I
suppose. But those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors.
They plow with a plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it cuts
into the earth full five inches. And this is not all. They cut their
grain with a horrid machine that mows down whole fields in a day. If I
dared, I would say that sometimes they use a blasphemous plow that works
by fire and vapor and tears up an acre of ground in a single hour--but
--but--I see by your looks that you do not believe the things I am telling
you. Alas, my character is ruined, and I am a branded speaker of
untruths!"
Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter, frequently.
I knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious structure. I knew it
was just about the length of the capitol at Washington--say seven hundred
and thirty feet. I knew it was three hundred and sixty-four feet wide,
and consequently wider than the capitol. I knew that the cross on the
top of the dome of the church was four hundred and thirty-eight feet
above the ground, and therefore about a hundred or may be a hundred and
twenty-five feet higher than the dome of the capitol.--Thus I had one
gauge. I wished to come as near forming a correct idea of how it was
going to look, as possible; I had a curiosity to see how much I would
err. I erred considerably. St. Peter's did not look nearly so large as
the capitol, and certainly not a twentieth part as beautiful, from the
outside.
When we reached the door, and stood fairly within the church, it was
impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to
cipher a comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more
similes. St. Peter's is bulky. Its height and size would represent two
of the Washington capitol set one on top of the other--if the capitol
were wider; or two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary buildings
set one on top of the other. St. Peter's was that large, but it could
and would not look so. The trouble was that every thing in it and about
it was on such a scale of uniform vastness that there were no contrasts
to judge by--none but the people, and I had not noticed them. They were
insects. The statues of children holding vases of holy water were
immense, according to the tables of figures, but so was every thing else
around them. The mosaic pictures in the dome were huge, and were made of
thousands and thousands of cubes of glass as large as the end of my
little finger, but those pictures looked smooth, and gaudy of color, and
in good proportion to the dome. Evidently they would not answer to
measure by. Away down toward the far end of the church (I thought it was
really clear at the far end, but discovered afterward that it was in the
centre, under the dome,) stood the thing they call the baldacchino--a
great bronze pyramidal frame-work like that which upholds a mosquito bar.
It only looked like a considerably magnified bedstead--nothing more. Yet
I knew it was a good deal more than half as high as Niagara Falls. It
was overshadowed by a dome so mighty that its own height was snubbed.
The four great square piers or pillars that stand equidistant from each
other in the church, and support the roof, I could not work up to their
real dimensions by any method of comparison. I knew that the faces of
each were about the width of a very large dwelling-house front, (fifty or
sixty feet,) and that they were twice as high as an ordinary three-story
dwelling, but still they looked small. I tried all the different ways I
could think of to compel myself to understand how large St. Peter's was,
but with small success. The mosaic portrait of an Apostle who was
writing with a pen six feet long seemed only an ordinary Apostle.
But the people attracted my attention after a while. To stand in the
door of St. Peter's and look at men down toward its further extremity,
two blocks away, has a diminishing effect on them; surrounded by the
prodigious pictures and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look
very much smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the
open air. I "averaged" a man as he passed me and watched him as he
drifted far down by the baldacchino and beyond--watched him dwindle to an
insignificant school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of
human pigmies gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been
decorated, on the occasion of a great ceremony in honor of St. Peter, and
men were engaged, now, in removing the flowers and gilt paper from the
walls and pillars. As no ladders could reach the great heights, the men
swung themselves down from balustrades and the capitals of pilasters by
ropes, to do this work. The upper gallery which encircles the inner
sweep of the dome is two hundred and forty feet above the floor of the
church--very few steeples in America could reach up to it. Visitors
always go up there to look down into the church because one gets the best
idea of some of the heights and distances from that point. While we
stood on the floor one of the workmen swung loose from that gallery at
the end of a long rope. I had not supposed, before, that a man could
look so much like a spider. He was insignificant in size, and his rope
seemed only a thread. Seeing that he took up so little space, I could
believe the story, then, that ten thousand troops went to St. Peter's,
once, to hear mass, and their commanding officer came afterward, and not
finding them, supposed they had not yet arrived. But they were in the
church, nevertheless--they were in one of the transepts. Nearly fifty
thousand persons assembled in St. Peter's to hear the publishing of the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is estimated that the floor of
the church affords standing room for--for a large number of people; I
have forgotten the exact figures. But it is no matter--it is near
enough.
They have twelve small pillars, in St. Peter's, which came from Solomon's
Temple. They have, also--which was far more interesting to me--a piece
of the true cross, and some nails, and a part of the crown of thorns.
Of course we ascended to the summit of the dome, and of course we also
went up into the gilt copper ball which is above it.--There was room
there for a dozen persons, with a little crowding, and it was as close
and hot as an oven. Some of those people who are so fond of writing
their names in prominent places had been there before us--a million or
two, I should think. From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every
notable object in Rome, from the Castle of St. Angelo to the Coliseum.
He can discern the seven hills upon which Rome is built. He can see the
Tiber, and the locality of the bridge which Horatius kept "in the brave
days of old" when Lars Porsena attempted to cross it with his invading
host. He can see the spot where the Horatii and the Curatii fought their
famous battle. He can see the broad green Campagna, stretching away
toward the mountains, with its scattered arches and broken aqueducts of
the olden time, so picturesque in their gray ruin, and so daintily
festooned with vines. He can see the Alban Mountains, the Appenines, the
Sabine Hills, and the blue Mediterranean. He can see a panorama that is
varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history
than any other in Europe.--About his feet is spread the remnant of a
city that once had a population of four million souls; and among its
massed edifices stand the ruins of temples, columns, and triumphal arches
that knew the Caesars, and the noonday of Roman splendor; and close by
them, in unimpaired strength, is a drain of arched and heavy masonry that
belonged to that older city which stood here before Romulus and Remus
were born or Rome thought of. The Appian Way is here yet, and looking
much as it did, perhaps, when the triumphal processions of the Emperors
moved over it in other days bringing fettered princes from the confines
of the earth. We can not see the long array of chariots and mail-clad
men laden with the spoils of conquest, but we can imagine the pageant,
after a fashion. We look out upon many objects of interest from the dome
of St. Peter's; and last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon
the building which was once the Inquisition. How times changed, between
the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago,
the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the
Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It
was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear
the new doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore
the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the
twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the
holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the
error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant
Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so
merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and
they did all they could to persuade them to love and honor him--first by
twisting their thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their
flesh with pincers--red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable
in cold weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by
roasting them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The
true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to
administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive,
also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts
and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the
system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized
people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.
I prefer not to describe St. Peter's. It has been done before. The
ashes of Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose in a crypt under the
baldacchino. We stood reverently in that place; so did we also in the
Mamertine Prison, where he was confined, where he converted the soldiers,
and where tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow in order
that he might baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter's
face in the hard stone of the prison wall and said he made that by
falling up against it, we doubted. And when, also, the monk at the
church of San Sebastian showed us a paving-stone with two great
footprints in it and said that Peter's feet made those, we lacked
confidence again. Such things do not impress one. The monk said that
angels came and liberated Peter from prison by night, and he started away
from Rome by the Appian Way. The Saviour met him and told him to go
back, which he did. Peter left those footprints in the stone upon which
he stood at the time. It was not stated how it was ever discovered whose
footprints they were, seeing the interview occurred secretly and at
night. The print of the face in the prison was that of a man of common
size; the footprints were those of a man ten or twelve feet high. The
discrepancy confirmed our unbelief.
We necessarily visited the Forum, where Caesar was assassinated, and also
the Tarpeian Rock. We saw the Dying Gladiator at the Capitol, and I
think that even we appreciated that wonder of art; as much, perhaps, as
we did that fearful story wrought in marble, in the Vatican--the Laocoon.
And then the Coliseum.
Every body knows the picture of the Coliseum; every body recognizes at
once that "looped and windowed" band-box with a side bitten out. Being
rather isolated, it shows to better advantage than any other of the
monuments of ancient Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan
altars uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated
gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built about
with shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred. But the monarch of
all European ruins, the Coliseum, maintains that reserve and that royal
seclusion which is proper to majesty. Weeds and flowers spring from its
massy arches and its circling seats, and vines hang their fringes from
its lofty walls. An impressive silence broods over the monstrous
structure where such multitudes of men and women were wont to assemble in
other days. The butterflies have taken the places of the queens of
fashion and beauty of eighteen centuries ago, and the lizards sun
themselves in the sacred seat of the Emperor. More vividly than all the
written histories, the Coliseum tells the story of Rome's grandeur and
Rome's decay. It is the worthiest type of both that exists. Moving
about the Rome of to-day, we might find it hard to believe in her old
magnificence and her millions of population; but with this stubborn
evidence before us that she was obliged to have a theatre with sitting
room for eighty thousand persons and standing room for twenty thousand
more, to accommodate such of her citizens as required amusement, we find
belief less difficult. The Coliseum is over one thousand six hundred
feet long, seven hundred and fifty wide, and one hundred and sixty-five
high. Its shape is oval.
In America we make convicts useful at the same time that we punish them
for their crimes. We farm them out and compel them to earn money for the
State by making barrels and building roads. Thus we combine business
with retribution, and all things are lovely. But in ancient Rome they
combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary that the
new sect called Christians should be exterminated, the people judged it
wise to make this work profitable to the State at the same time, and
entertaining to the public. In addition to the gladiatorial combats and
other shows, they sometimes threw members of the hated sect into the
arena of the Coliseum and turned wild beasts in upon them. It is
estimated that seventy thousand Christians suffered martyrdom in this
place. This has made the Coliseum holy ground, in the eyes of the
followers of the Saviour. And well it might; for if the chain that bound
a saint, and the footprints a saint has left upon a stone he chanced to
stand upon, be holy, surely the spot where a man gave up his life for his
faith is holy.
Seventeen or eighteen centuries ago this Coliseum was the theatre of
Rome, and Rome was mistress of the world. Splendid pageants were
exhibited here, in presence of the Emperor, the great ministers of State,
the nobles, and vast audiences of citizens of smaller consequence.
Gladiators fought with gladiators and at times with warrior prisoners
from many a distant land. It was the theatre of Rome--of the world--and
the man of fashion who could not let fall in a casual and unintentional
manner something about "my private box at the Coliseum" could not move in
the first circles. When the clothing-store merchant wished to consume
the corner grocery man with envy, he bought secured seats in the front
row and let the thing be known. When the irresistible dry goods clerk
wished to blight and destroy, according to his native instinct, he got
himself up regardless of expense and took some other fellow's young lady
to the Coliseum, and then accented the affront by cramming her with ice
cream between the acts, or by approaching the cage and stirring up the
martyrs with his whalebone cane for her edification. The Roman swell was
in his true element only when he stood up against a pillar and fingered
his moustache unconscious of the ladies; when he viewed the bloody
combats through an opera-glass two inches long; when he excited the envy
of provincials by criticisms which showed that he had been to the
Coliseum many and many a time and was long ago over the novelty of it;
when he turned away with a yawn at last and said,
"He a star! handles his sword like an apprentice brigand! he'll do for
the country, may be, but he don't answer for the metropolis!"
Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday
matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed the
gladiators from the dizzy gallery.
For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among the rubbish of
the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that establishment now extant.
There was a suggestive smell of mint-drops about it still, a corner of it
had evidently been chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these
words were written in a delicate female hand:
"Meet me on the Tarpeian Rock tomorrow evening, dear, at sharp
seven. Mother will be absent on a visit to her friends in the
Sabine Hills. CLAUDIA."
Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little hand that
wrote those dainty lines? Dust and ashes these seventeen hundred years!
Thus reads the bill:
ROMAN COLISEUM.
UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION!
NEW PROPERTIES! NEW LIONS! NEW GLADIATORS!
Engagement of the renowned
MARCUS MARCELLUS VALERIAN!
FOR SIX NIGHTS ONLY!
The management beg leave to offer to the public an entertainment
surpassing in magnificence any thing that has heretofore been attempted
on any stage. No expense has been spared to make the opening season one
which shall be worthy the generous patronage which the management feel
sure will crown their efforts. The management beg leave to state that
they have succeeded in securing the services of a
GALAXY OF TALENT!
such as has not been beheld in Rome before.
The performance will commence this evening with a
GRAND BROADSWORD COMBAT!
between two young and promising amateurs and a celebrated Parthian
gladiator who has just arrived a prisoner from the Camp of Verus.
This will be followed by a grand moral
BATTLE-AX ENGAGEMENT!
between the renowned Valerian (with one hand tied behind him,) and two
gigantic savages from Britain.
After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive,) will fight with the
broad-sword,
LEFT HANDED!
against six Sophomores and a Freshman from the Gladiatorial College!
A long series of brilliant engagements will follow, in which the finest
talent of the Empire will take part
After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy known as
"THE YOUNG ACHILLES,"
will engage four tiger whelps in combat, armed with no other weapon than
his little spear!
The whole to conclude with a chaste and elegant
GENERAL SLAUGHTER!
In which thirteen African Lions and twenty-two Barbarian Prisoners will
war with each other until all are exterminated.
BOX OFFICE NOW OPEN.
Dress Circle One Dollar; Children and Servants half price.
An efficient police force will be on hand to preserve order and keep the
wild beasts from leaping the railings and discommoding the audience.
Doors open at 7; performance begins at 8.
POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST.
Diodorus Job Press.
It was as singular as it was gratifying that I was also so fortunate as
to find among the rubbish of the arena, a stained and mutilated copy of
the Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing a critique upon this very
performance. It comes to hand too late by many centuries to rank as
news, and therefore I translate and publish it simply to show how very
little the general style and phraseology of dramatic criticism has
altered in the ages that have dragged their slow length along since the
carriers laid this one damp and fresh before their Roman patrons:
"THE OPENING SEASON.--COLISEUM.--Notwithstanding the inclemency of
the weather, quite a respectable number of the rank and fashion of
the city assembled last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan
boards of the young tragedian who has of late been winning such
golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty
thousand persons were present, and but for the fact that the streets
were almost impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would
have been full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied
the imperial box, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many
illustrious nobles and generals of the Empire graced the occasion
with their presence, and not the least among them was the young
patrician lieutenant whose laurels, won in the ranks of the
"Thundering Legion," are still so green upon his brow. The cheer
which greeted his entrance was heard beyond the Tiber!
"The late repairs and decorations add both to the comeliness and the
comfort of the Coliseum. The new cushions are a great improvement
upon the hard marble seats we have been so long accustomed to. The
present management deserve well of the public. They have restored
to the Coliseum the gilding, the rich upholstery and the uniform
magnificence which old Coliseum frequenters tell us Rome was so
proud of fifty years ago.
"The opening scene last night--the broadsword combat between two
young amateurs and a famous Parthian gladiator who was sent here a
prisoner--was very fine. The elder of the two young gentlemen
handled his weapon with a grace that marked the possession of
extraordinary talent. His feint of thrusting, followed instantly by
a happily delivered blow which unhelmeted the Parthian, was received
with hearty applause. He was not thoroughly up in the backhanded
stroke, but it was very gratifying to his numerous friends to know
that, in time, practice would have overcome this defect. However,
he was killed. His sisters, who were present, expressed
considerable regret. His mother left the Coliseum. The other youth
maintained the contest with such spirit as to call forth
enthusiastic bursts of applause. When at last he fell a corpse, his
aged mother ran screaming, with hair disheveled and tears streaming
from her eyes, and swooned away just as her hands were clutching at
the railings of the arena. She was promptly removed by the police.
Under the circumstances the woman's conduct was pardonable, perhaps,
but we suggest that such exhibitions interfere with the decorum
which should be preserved during the performances, and are highly
improper in the presence of the Emperor. The Parthian prisoner
fought bravely and well; and well he might, for he was fighting for
both life and liberty. His wife and children were there to nerve
his arm with their love, and to remind him of the old home he should
see again if he conquered. When his second assailant fell, the
woman clasped her children to her breast and wept for joy. But it
was only a transient happiness. The captive staggered toward her
and she saw that the liberty he had earned was earned too late. He
was wounded unto death. Thus the first act closed in a manner which
was entirely satisfactory. The manager was called before the
curtain and returned his thanks for the honor done him, in a speech
which was replete with wit and humor, and closed by hoping that his
humble efforts to afford cheerful and instructive entertainment
would continue to meet with the approbation of the Roman public
"The star now appeared, and was received with vociferous applause
and the simultaneous waving of sixty thousand handkerchiefs. Marcus
Marcellus Valerian (stage name--his real name is Smith,) is a
splendid specimen of physical development, and an artist of rare
merit. His management of the battle-ax is wonderful. His gayety
and his playfulness are irresistible, in his comic parts, and yet
they are inferior to his sublime conceptions in the grave realm of
tragedy. When his ax was describing fiery circles about the heads
of the bewildered barbarians, in exact time with his springing body
and his prancing legs, the audience gave way to uncontrollable
bursts of laughter; but when the back of his weapon broke the skull
of one and almost in the same instant its edge clove the other's
body in twain, the howl of enthusiastic applause that shook the
building, was the acknowledgment of a critical assemblage that he
was a master of the noblest department of his profession. If he has
a fault, (and we are sorry to even intimate that he has,) it is that
of glancing at the audience, in the midst of the most exciting
moments of the performance, as if seeking admiration. The pausing
in a fight to bow when bouquets are thrown to him is also in bad
taste. In the great left-handed combat he appeared to be looking at
the audience half the time, instead of carving his adversaries; and
when he had slain all the sophomores and was dallying with the
freshman, he stooped and snatched a bouquet as it fell, and offered
it to his adversary at a time when a blow was descending which
promised favorably to be his death-warrant. Such levity is proper
enough in the provinces, we make no doubt, but it ill suits the
dignity of the metropolis. We trust our young friend will take
these remarks in good part, for we mean them solely for his benefit.
All who know us are aware that although we are at times justly
severe upon tigers and martyrs, we never intentionally offend
gladiators.
"The Infant Prodigy performed wonders. He overcame his four tiger
whelps with ease, and with no other hurt than the loss of a portion
of his scalp. The General Slaughter was rendered with a
faithfulness to details which reflects the highest credit upon the
late participants in it.
"Upon the whole, last night's performances shed honor not only upon
the management but upon the city that encourages and sustains such
wholesome and instructive entertainments. We would simply suggest
that the practice of vulgar young boys in the gallery of shying
peanuts and paper pellets at the tigers, and saying "Hi-yi!" and
manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by such observations as
"Bully for the lion!" "Go it, Gladdy!" "Boots!" "Speech!" "Take
a walk round the block!" and so on, are extremely reprehensible,
when the Emperor is present, and ought to be stopped by the police.
Several times last night, when the supernumeraries entered the arena
to drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in the gallery shouted,
"Supe! supe!" and also, "Oh, what a coat!" and "Why don't you pad
them shanks?" and made use of various other remarks expressive of
derision. These things are very annoying to the audience.
"A matinee for the little folks is promised for this afternoon, on
which occasion several martyrs will be eaten by the tigers. The
regular performance will continue every night till further notice.
Material change of programme every evening. Benefit of Valerian,
Tuesday, 29th, if he lives."
I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was often
surprised to notice how much more I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did;
and it gratifies me to observe, now, how much better my brethren of
ancient times knew how a broad sword battle ought to be fought than the
gladiators.
CHAPTER XXVII.
So far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud of himself, and
satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written about the Coliseum, and
the gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once used
the phrase "butchered to make a Roman holiday." I am the only free white
man of mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron originated the
expression.
Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for the first seventeen or
eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that it
begins to grow tiresome. I find it in all the books concerning Rome--and
here latterly it reminds me of Judge Oliver. Oliver was a young lawyer,
fresh from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of Nevada to
begin life. He found that country, and our ways of life, there, in those
early days, different from life in New England or Paris. But he put on a
woollen shirt and strapped a navy revolver to his person, took to the
bacon and beans of the country, and determined to do in Nevada as Nevada
did. Oliver accepted the situation so completely that although he must
have sorrowed over many of his trials, he never complained--that is, he
never complained but once. He, two others, and myself, started to the
new silver mines in the Humboldt mountains--he to be Probate Judge of
Humboldt county, and we to mine. The distance was two hundred miles. It
was dead of winter. We bought a two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred
pounds of bacon, flour, beans, blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it;
we bought two sorry-looking Mexican "plugs," with the hair turned the
wrong way and more corners on their bodies than there are on the mosque
of Omar; we hitched up and started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver
did not complain. The horses dragged the wagon two miles from town and
then gave out. Then we three pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver
moved ahead and pulled the horses after him by the bits. We complained,
but Oliver did not. The ground was frozen, and it froze our backs while
we slept; the wind swept across our faces and froze our noses. Oliver
did not complain. Five days of pushing the wagon by day and freezing by
night brought us to the bad part of the journey--the Forty Mile Desert,
or the Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this
mildest-mannered man that ever was, had not complained. We started across
at eight in the morning, pushing through sand that had no bottom; toiling
all day long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons, the skeletons of ten
thousand oxen; by wagon-tires enough to hoop the Washington Monument to
the top, and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island; by human graves;
with our throats parched always, with thirst; lips bleeding from the
alkali dust; hungry, perspiring, and very, very weary--so weary that when
we dropped in the sand every fifty yards to rest the horses, we could
hardly keep from going to sleep--no complaints from Oliver: none the next
morning at three o'clock, when we got across, tired to death.
Awakened two or three nights afterward at midnight, in a narrow canon, by
the snow falling on our faces, and appalled at the imminent danger of
being "snowed in," we harnessed up and pushed on till eight in the
morning, passed the "Divide" and knew we were saved. No complaints.
Fifteen days of hardship and fatigue brought us to the end of the two
hundred miles, and the Judge had not complained. We wondered if any
thing could exasperate him. We built a Humboldt house. It is done in
this way. You dig a square in the steep base of the mountain, and set up
two uprights and top them with two joists. Then you stretch a great
sheet of "cotton domestic" from the point where the joists join the
hill-side down over the joists to the ground; this makes the roof and the
front of the mansion; the sides and back are the dirt walls your digging
has left. A chimney is easily made by turning up one corner of the roof.
Oliver was sitting alone in this dismal den, one night, by a sage-brush
fire, writing poetry; he was very fond of digging poetry out of himself
--or blasting it out when it came hard. He heard an animal's footsteps
close to the roof; a stone or two and some dirt came through and fell by
him. He grew uneasy and said "Hi!--clear out from there, can't you!"
--from time to time. But by and by he fell asleep where he sat, and pretty
soon a mule fell down the chimney! The fire flew in every direction, and
Oliver went over backwards. About ten nights after that, he recovered
confidence enough to go to writing poetry again. Again he dozed off to
sleep, and again a mule fell down the chimney. This time, about half of
that side of the house came in with the mule. Struggling to get up, the
mule kicked the candle out and smashed most of the kitchen furniture, and
raised considerable dust. These violent awakenings must have been
annoying to Oliver, but he never complained. He moved to a mansion on
the opposite side of the canon, because he had noticed the mules did not
go there. One night about eight o'clock he was endeavoring to finish his
poem, when a stone rolled in--then a hoof appeared below the canvas--then
part of a cow--the after part. He leaned back in dread, and shouted
"Hooy! hooy! get out of this!" and the cow struggled manfully--lost
ground steadily--dirt and dust streamed down, and before Oliver could get
well away, the entire cow crashed through on to the table and made a
shapeless wreck of every thing!
Then, for the first time in his life, I think, Oliver complained. He
said,
"This thing is growing monotonous!"
Then he resigned his judgeship and left Humboldt county. "Butchered to
make a Roman holyday" has grown monotonous to me.
In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael Angelo
Buonarotti. I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo--that
man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture--great in
every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for
breakfast--for luncheon--for dinner--for tea--for supper--for between
meals. I like a change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every
thing; in Milan he or his pupils designed every thing; he designed the
Lake of Como; in Padua, Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of,
from guides, but Michael Angelo? In Florence, he painted every thing,
designed every thing, nearly, and what he did not design he used to sit
on a favorite stone and look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa
he designed every thing but the old shot-tower, and they would have
attributed that to him if it had not been so awfully out of the
perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn and the custom house
regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here--here it is frightful. He
designed St. Peter's; he designed the Pope; he designed the Pantheon, the
uniform of the Pope's soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the Coliseum, the
Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John Lateran, the
Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths of Caracalla, the
Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima--the eternal bore designed the
Eternal City, and unless all men and books do lie, he painted every thing
in it! Dan said the other day to the guide, "Enough, enough, enough!
Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made Italy from
designs by Michael Angelo!"
I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled
with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael
Angelo was dead.
But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles
of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and
through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has
shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to
frescoe the heavens--pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him
we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us
--imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect--they
have no idea of a sarcasm.
He shows us a figure and says: "Statoo brunzo." (Bronze statue.)
We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks: "By Michael Angelo?"
"No--not know who."
Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks: "Michael
Angelo?"
A stare from the guide. "No--thousan' year before he is born."
Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: "Michael Angelo?"
"Oh, mon dieu, genteelmen! Zis is two thousan' year before he is born!"
He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes, that he dreads to
show us any thing at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can think
of to make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible for the
creation of a part of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded yet.
Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and sightseeing is
necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough. Therefore this guide
must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it, so much the worse for
him. We do.
In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning those necessary
nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart he could
do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has wished he could get
some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the affliction of his
society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our experience can
be made useful to others they are welcome to it.
Guides know about enough English to tangle every thing up so that a man
can make neither head or tail of it. They know their story by heart--the
history of every statue, painting, cathedral or other wonder they show
you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would--and if you interrupt,
and throw them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again.
All their lives long, they are employed in showing strange things to
foreigners and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is human
nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts
children to say "smart" things, and do absurd ones, and in other ways
"show off" when company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in
rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news.
Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege it
is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw them into perfect
ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he could not by any possibility
live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered this, we never went
into ecstasies any more--we never admired any thing--we never showed any
but impassible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of the
sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We had found their weak point.
We have made good use of it ever since. We have made some of those
people savage, at times, but we have never lost our own serenity.
The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his
countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more
imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes
natural to him.
The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because
Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion
before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he
had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation--full of
impatience. He said:
"Come wis me, genteelmen!--come! I show you ze letter writing by
Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!--write it wis his own hand!
--come!"
He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of
keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread
before us. The guide's eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the
parchment with his finger:
"What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! handwriting
Christopher Colombo!--write it himself!"
We looked indifferent--unconcerned. The doctor examined the document
very deliberately, during a painful pause.--Then he said, without any
show of interest:
"Ah--Ferguson--what--what did you say was the name of the party who wrote
this?"
"Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!"
Another deliberate examination.
"Ah--did he write it himself; or--or how?"
"He write it himself!--Christopher Colombo! He's own hand-writing, write
by himself!"
Then the doctor laid the document down and said:
"Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could
write better than that."
"But zis is ze great Christo--"
"I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you
musn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not
fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of
real merit, trot them out!--and if you haven't, drive on!"
We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more
venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said:
"Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, O, magnificent
bust Christopher Colombo!--splendid, grand, magnificent!"
He brought us before the beautiful bust--for it was beautiful--and sprang
back and struck an attitude:
"Ah, look, genteelmen!--beautiful, grand,--bust Christopher Colombo!
--beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!"
The doctor put up his eye-glass--procured for such occasions:
"Ah--what did you say this gentleman's name was?"
"Christopher Colombo!--ze great Christopher Colombo!"
"Christopher Colombo--the great Christopher Colombo. Well, what did he
do?"
"Discover America!--discover America, Oh, ze devil!"
"Discover America. No--that statement will hardly wash. We are just
from America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher Colombo
--pleasant name--is--is he dead?"
"Oh, corpo di Baccho!--three hundred year!"
"What did he die of?"
"I do not know!--I can not tell."
"Small-pox, think?"
"I do not know, genteelmen!--I do not know what he die of!"
"Measles, likely?"
"May be--may be--I do not know--I think he die of somethings."
"Parents living?"
"Im-poseeeble!"
"Ah--which is the bust and which is the pedestal?"
"Santa Maria!--zis ze bust!--zis ze pedestal!"
"Ah, I see, I see--happy combination--very happy combination, indeed.
Is--is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?"
That joke was lost on the foreigner--guides can not master the subtleties
of the American joke.
We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent
three or four hours in the Vatican, again, that wonderful world of
curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes--even
admiration--it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though.
Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was bewildered
--non-plussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up extraordinary
things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it was a failure; we
never showed any interest in any thing. He had reserved what he
considered to be his greatest wonder till the last--a royal Egyptian
mummy, the best preserved in the world, perhaps. He took us there. He
felt so sure, this time, that some of his old enthusiasm came back to
him:
"See, genteelmen!--Mummy! Mummy!"
The eye-glass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.
"Ah,--Ferguson--what did I understand you to say the gentleman's name
was?"
"Name?--he got no name!--Mummy!--'Gyptian mummy!"
"Yes, yes. Born here?"
"No! 'Gyptian mummy!"
"Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?"
"No!--not Frenchman, not Roman!--born in Egypta!"
"Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality,
likely. Mummy--mummy. How calm he is--how self-possessed. Is, ah--is
he dead?"
"Oh, sacre bleu, been dead three thousan' year!"
The doctor turned on him savagely:
"Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for
Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn! Trying to impose
your vile second-hand carcasses on us!--thunder and lightning, I've a
notion to--to--if you've got a nice fresh corpse, fetch him out!--or by
George we'll brain you!"
We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman. However, he has
paid us back, partly, without knowing it. He came to the hotel this
morning to ask if we were up, and he endeavored as well as he could to
describe us, so that the landlord would know which persons he meant. He
finished with the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observation
was so innocent and so honest that it amounted to a very good thing for a
guide to say.
There is one remark (already mentioned,) which never yet has failed to
disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing
else to say. After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out
to us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or
broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five,
ten, fifteen minutes--as long as we can hold out, in fact--and then ask:
"Is--is he dead?"
That conquers the serenest of them. It is not what they are looking for
--especially a new guide. Our Roman Ferguson is the most patient,
unsuspecting, long-suffering subject we have had yet. We shall be sorry
to part with him. We have enjoyed his society very much. We trust he
has enjoyed ours, but we are harassed with doubts.
We have been in the catacombs. It was like going down into a very deep
cellar, only it was a cellar which had no end to it. The narrow passages
are roughly hewn in the rock, and on each hand as you pass along, the
hollowed shelves are carved out, from three to fourteen deep; each held a
corpse once. There are names, and Christian symbols, and prayers, or
sentences expressive of Christian hopes, carved upon nearly every
sarcophagus. The dates belong away back in the dawn of the Christian
era, of course. Here, in these holes in the ground, the first Christians
sometimes burrowed to escape persecution. They crawled out at night to
get food, but remained under cover in the day time. The priest told us
that St. Sebastian lived under ground for some time while he was being
hunted; he went out one day, and the soldiery discovered and shot him to
death with arrows. Five or six of the early Popes--those who reigned
about sixteen hundred years ago--held their papal courts and advised with
their clergy in the bowels of the earth. During seventeen years--from
A.D. 235 to A.D. 252--the Popes did not appear above ground. Four were
raised to the great office during that period. Four years apiece, or
thereabouts. It is very suggestive of the unhealthiness of underground
graveyards as places of residence. One Pope afterward spent his entire
pontificate in the catacombs--eight years. Another was discovered in
them and murdered in the episcopal chair. There was no satisfaction in
being a Pope in those days. There were too many annoyances. There are
one hundred and sixty catacombs under Rome, each with its maze of narrow
passages crossing and recrossing each other and each passage walled to
the top with scooped graves its entire length. A careful estimate makes
the length of the passages of all the catacombs combined foot up nine
hundred miles, and their graves number seven millions. We did not go
through all the passages of all the catacombs. We were very anxious to
do it, and made the necessary arrangements, but our too limited time
obliged us to give up the idea. So we only groped through the dismal
labyrinth of St. Callixtus, under the Church of St. Sebastian. In the
various catacombs are small chapels rudely hewn in the stones, and here
the early Christians often held their religious services by dim, ghostly
lights. Think of mass and a sermon away down in those tangled caverns
under ground!
In the catacombs were buried St. Cecilia, St. Agnes, and several other of
the most celebrated of the saints. In the catacomb of St. Callixtus, St.
Bridget used to remain long hours in holy contemplation, and St. Charles
Borromeo was wont to spend whole nights in prayer there. It was also the
scene of a very marvelous thing.
"Here the heart of St. Philip Neri was so inflamed with divine love
as to burst his ribs."
I find that grave statement in a book published in New York in 1808, and
written by "Rev. William H. Neligan, LL.D., M. A., Trinity College,
Dublin; Member of the Archaeological Society of Great Britain."
Therefore, I believe it. Otherwise, I could not. Under other
circumstances I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip had for
dinner.
This author puts my credulity on its mettle every now and then. He tells
of one St. Joseph Calasanctius whose house in Rome he visited; he visited
only the house--the priest has been dead two hundred years. He says the
Virgin Mary appeared to this saint. Then he continues:
"His tongue and his heart, which were found after nearly a century
to be whole, when the body was disinterred before his canonization,
are still preserved in a glass case, and after two centuries the
heart is still whole. When the French troops came to Rome, and when
Pius VII. was carried away prisoner, blood dropped from it."
To read that in a book written by a monk far back in the Middle Ages,
would surprise no one; it would sound natural and proper; but when it is
seriously stated in the middle of the nineteenth century, by a man of
finished education, an LL.D., M. A., and an Archaeological magnate, it
sounds strangely enough. Still, I would gladly change my unbelief for
Neligan's faith, and let him make the conditions as hard as he pleased.
The old gentleman's undoubting, unquestioning simplicity has a rare
freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading and telegraphing
days. Hear him, concerning the church of Ara Coeli:
"In the roof of the church, directly above the high altar, is
engraved, 'Regina Coeli laetare Alleluia." In the sixth century
Rome was visited by a fearful pestilence. Gregory the Great urged
the people to do penance, and a general procession was formed. It
was to proceed from Ara Coeli to St. Peter's. As it passed before
the mole of Adrian, now the Castle of St. Angelo, the sound of
heavenly voices was heard singing (it was Easter morn,) Regina
Coeli, laetare! alleluia! quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia!
resurrexit sicut dixit; alleluia!" The Pontiff, carrying in his
hands the portrait of the Virgin, (which is over the high altar and
is said to have been painted by St. Luke,) answered, with the
astonished people, 'Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia!' At the same time
an angel was seen to put up a sword in a scabbard, and the
pestilence ceased on the same day. There are four circumstances
which 'CONFIRM'--[The italics are mine--M. T.]--this miracle: the
annual procession which takes place in the western church on the
feast of St Mark; the statue of St. Michael, placed on the mole of
Adrian, which has since that time been called the Castle of St.
Angelo; the antiphon Regina Coeli which the Catholic church sings
during paschal time; and the inscription in the church."
CHAPTER XXVIII.
From the sanguinary sports of the Holy Inquisition; the slaughter of the
Coliseum; and the dismal tombs of the Catacombs, I naturally pass to the
picturesque horrors of the Capuchin Convent. We stopped a moment in a
small chapel in the church to admire a picture of St. Michael vanquishing
Satan--a picture which is so beautiful that I can not but think it
belongs to the reviled "Renaissance," notwithstanding I believe they told
us one of the ancient old masters painted it--and then we descended into
the vast vault underneath.
Here was a spectacle for sensitive nerves! Evidently the old masters had
been at work in this place. There were six divisions in the apartment,
and each division was ornamented with a style of decoration peculiar to
itself--and these decorations were in every instance formed of human
bones! There were shapely arches, built wholly of thigh bones; there
were startling pyramids, built wholly of grinning skulls; there were
quaint architectural structures of various kinds, built of shin bones and
the bones of the arm; on the wall were elaborate frescoes, whose curving
vines were made of knotted human vertebrae; whose delicate tendrils were
made of sinews and tendons; whose flowers were formed of knee-caps and
toe-nails. Every lasting portion of the human frame was represented in
these intricate designs (they were by Michael Angelo, I think,) and there
was a careful finish about the work, and an attention to details that
betrayed the artist's love of his labors as well as his schooled ability.
I asked the good-natured monk who accompanied us, who did this? And he
said, "We did it"--meaning himself and his brethren up stairs. I could
see that the old friar took a high pride in his curious show. We made
him talkative by exhibiting an interest we never betrayed to guides.
"Who were these people?"
"We--up stairs--Monks of the Capuchin order--my brethren."
"How many departed monks were required to upholster these six parlors?"
"These are the bones of four thousand."
"It took a long time to get enough?"
"Many, many centuries."
"Their different parts are well separated--skulls in one room, legs in
another, ribs in another--there would be stirring times here for a while
if the last trump should blow. Some of the brethren might get hold of
the wrong leg, in the confusion, and the wrong skull, and find themselves
limping, and looking through eyes that were wider apart or closer
together than they were used to. You can not tell any of these parties
apart, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes, I know many of them."
He put his finger on a skull. "This was Brother Anselmo--dead three
hundred years--a good man."
He touched another. "This was Brother Alexander--dead two hundred and
eighty years. This was Brother Carlo--dead about as long."
Then he took a skull and held it in his hand, and looked reflectively
upon it, after the manner of the grave-digger when he discourses of
Yorick.
"This," he said, "was Brother Thomas. He was a young prince, the scion
of a proud house that traced its lineage back to the grand old days of
Rome well nigh two thousand years ago. He loved beneath his estate. His
family persecuted him; persecuted the girl, as well. They drove her from
Rome; he followed; he sought her far and wide; he found no trace of her.
He came back and offered his broken heart at our altar and his weary life
to the service of God. But look you. Shortly his father died, and
likewise his mother. The girl returned, rejoicing. She sought every
where for him whose eyes had used to look tenderly into hers out of this
poor skull, but she could not find him. At last, in this coarse garb we
wear, she recognized him in the street. He knew her. It was too late.
He fell where he stood. They took him up and brought him here. He never
spoke afterward. Within the week he died. You can see the color of his
hair--faded, somewhat--by this thin shred that clings still to the
temple. This, [taking up a thigh bone,] was his. The veins of this
leaf in the decorations over your head, were his finger-joints, a hundred
and fifty years ago."
This business-like way of illustrating a touching story of the heart by
laying the several fragments of the lover before us and naming them, was
as grotesque a performance, and as ghastly, as any I ever witnessed. I
hardly knew whether to smile or shudder. There are nerves and muscles in
our frames whose functions and whose methods of working it seems a sort
of sacrilege to describe by cold physiological names and surgical
technicalities, and the monk's talk suggested to me something of this
kind. Fancy a surgeon, with his nippers lifting tendons, muscles and
such things into view, out of the complex machinery of a corpse, and
observing, "Now this little nerve quivers--the vibration is imparted to
this muscle--from here it is passed to this fibrous substance; here its
ingredients are separated by the chemical action of the blood--one part
goes to the heart and thrills it with what is popularly termed emotion,
another part follows this nerve to the brain and communicates
intelligence of a startling character--the third part glides along this
passage and touches the spring connected with the fluid receptacles that
lie in the rear of the eye. Thus, by this simple and beautiful process,
the party is informed that his mother is dead, and he weeps." Horrible!
I asked the monk if all the brethren up stairs expected to be put in this
place when they died. He answered quietly:
"We must all lie here at last."
See what one can accustom himself to.--The reflection that he must some
day be taken apart like an engine or a clock, or like a house whose owner
is gone, and worked up into arches and pyramids and hideous frescoes, did
not distress this monk in the least. I thought he even looked as if he
were thinking, with complacent vanity, that his own skull would look well
on top of the heap and his own ribs add a charm to the frescoes which
possibly they lacked at present.
Here and there, in ornamental alcoves, stretched upon beds of bones, lay
dead and dried-up monks, with lank frames dressed in the black robes one
sees ordinarily upon priests. We examined one closely. The skinny hands
were clasped upon the breast; two lustreless tufts of hair stuck to the
skull; the skin was brown and sunken; it stretched tightly over the cheek
bones and made them stand out sharply; the crisp dead eyes were deep in
the sockets; the nostrils were painfully prominent, the end of the nose
being gone; the lips had shriveled away from the yellow teeth: and
brought down to us through the circling years, and petrified there, was a
weird laugh a full century old!
It was the jolliest laugh, but yet the most dreadful, that one can
imagine. Surely, I thought, it must have been a most extraordinary joke
this veteran produced with his latest breath, that he has not got done
laughing at it yet. At this moment I saw that the old instinct was
strong upon the boys, and I said we had better hurry to St. Peter's.
They were trying to keep from asking, "Is--is he dead?"
It makes me dizzy, to think of the Vatican--of its wilderness of statues,
paintings, and curiosities of every description and every age. The "old
masters" (especially in sculpture,) fairly swarm, there. I can not write
about the Vatican. I think I shall never remember any thing I saw there
distinctly but the mummies, and the Transfiguration, by Raphael, and some
other things it is not necessary to mention now. I shall remember the
Transfiguration partly because it was placed in a room almost by itself;
partly because it is acknowledged by all to be the first oil painting in
the world; and partly because it was wonderfully beautiful. The colors
are fresh and rich, the "expression," I am told, is fine, the "feeling"
is lively, the "tone" is good, the "depth" is profound, and the width is
about four and a half feet, I should judge. It is a picture that really
holds one's attention; its beauty is fascinating. It is fine enough to
be a Renaissance. A remark I made a while ago suggests a thought--and a
hope. Is it not possible that the reason I find such charms in this
picture is because it is out of the crazy chaos of the galleries? If
some of the others were set apart, might not they be beautiful? If this
were set in the midst of the tempest of pictures one finds in the vast
galleries of the Roman palaces, would I think it so handsome? If, up to
this time, I had seen only one "old master" in each palace, instead of
acres and acres of walls and ceilings fairly papered with them, might I
not have a more civilized opinion of the old masters than I have now? I
think so. When I was a school-boy and was to have a new knife, I could
not make up my mind as to which was the prettiest in the show-case, and I
did not think any of them were particularly pretty; and so I chose with a
heavy heart. But when I looked at my purchase, at home, where no
glittering blades came into competition with it, I was astonished to see
how handsome it was. To this day my new hats look better out of the shop
than they did in it with other new hats. It begins to dawn upon me, now,
that possibly, what I have been taking for uniform ugliness in the
galleries may be uniform beauty after all. I honestly hope it is, to
others, but certainly it is not to me. Perhaps the reason I used to
enjoy going to the Academy of Fine Arts in New York was because there
were but a few hundred paintings in it, and it did not surfeit me to go
through the list. I suppose the Academy was bacon and beans in the
Forty-Mile Desert, and a European gallery is a state dinner of thirteen
courses. One leaves no sign after him of the one dish, but the thirteen
frighten away his appetite and give him no satisfaction.
There is one thing I am certain of, though. With all the Michael
Angelos, the Raphaels, the Guidos and the other old masters, the sublime
history of Rome remains unpainted! They painted Virgins enough, and
popes enough and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise, almost,
and these things are all they did paint. "Nero fiddling o'er burning
Rome," the assassination of Caesar, the stirring spectacle of a hundred
thousand people bending forward with rapt interest, in the coliseum, to
see two skillful gladiators hacking away each others' lives, a tiger
springing upon a kneeling martyr--these and a thousand other matters
which we read of with a living interest, must be sought for only in
books--not among the rubbish left by the old masters--who are no more, I
have the satisfaction of informing the public.
They did paint, and they did carve in marble, one historical scene, and
one only, (of any great historical consequence.) And what was it and why
did they choose it, particularly? It was the Rape of the Sabines, and
they chose it for the legs and busts.
I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pictures, also
--even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and monks looking down in
meditation, and monks skirmishing for something to eat--and therefore I
drop ill nature to thank the papal government for so jealously guarding
and so industriously gathering up these things; and for permitting me, a
stranger and not an entirely friendly one, to roam at will and unmolested
among them, charging me nothing, and only requiring that I shall behave
myself simply as well as I ought to behave in any other man's house. I
thank the Holy Father right heartily, and I wish him long life and plenty
of happiness.
The Popes have long been the patrons and preservers of art, just as our
new, practical Republic is the encourager and upholder of mechanics. In
their Vatican is stored up all that is curious and beautiful in art; in
our Patent Office is hoarded all that is curious or useful in mechanics.
When a man invents a new style of horse-collar or discovers a new and
superior method of telegraphing, our government issues a patent to him
that is worth a fortune; when a man digs up an ancient statue in the
Campagna, the Pope gives him a fortune in gold coin. We can make
something of a guess at a man's character by the style of nose he carries
on his face. The Vatican and the Patent Office are governmental noses,
and they bear a deal of character about them.
The guide showed us a colossal statue of Jupiter, in the Vatican, which
he said looked so damaged and rusty--so like the God of the Vagabonds
--because it had but recently been dug up in the Campagna. He asked how
much we supposed this Jupiter was worth? I replied, with intelligent
promptness, that he was probably worth about four dollars--may be four
and a half. "A hundred thousand dollars!" Ferguson said. Ferguson
said, further, that the Pope permits no ancient work of this kind to
leave his dominions. He appoints a commission to examine discoveries
like this and report upon the value; then the Pope pays the discoverer
one-half of that assessed value and takes the statue. He said this
Jupiter was dug from a field which had just been bought for thirty-six
thousand dollars, so the first crop was a good one for the new farmer.
I do not know whether Ferguson always tells the truth or not, but I
suppose he does. I know that an exorbitant export duty is exacted upon
all pictures painted by the old masters, in order to discourage the sale
of those in the private collections. I am satisfied, also, that genuine
old masters hardly exist at all, in America, because the cheapest and
most insignificant of them are valued at the price of a fine farm. I
proposed to buy a small trifle of a Raphael, myself, but the price of it
was eighty thousand dollars, the export duty would have made it
considerably over a hundred, and so I studied on it awhile and concluded
not to take it.
I wish here to mention an inscription I have seen, before I forget it:
"Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth TO MEN OF GOOD WILL!" It is
not good scripture, but it is sound Catholic and human nature.
This is in letters of gold around the apsis of a mosaic group at the side
of the 'scala santa', church of St. John Lateran, the Mother and Mistress
of all the Catholic churches of the world. The group represents the
Saviour, St. Peter, Pope Leo, St. Silvester, Constantine and Charlemagne.
Peter is giving the pallium to the Pope, and a standard to Charlemagne.
The Saviour is giving the keys to St. Silvester, and a standard to
Constantine. No prayer is offered to the Saviour, who seems to be of
little importance any where in Rome; but an inscription below says,
"Blessed Peter, give life to Pope Leo and victory to king Charles." It
does not say, "Intercede for us, through the Saviour, with the Father,
for this boon," but "Blessed Peter, give it us."
In all seriousness--without meaning to be frivolous--without meaning to
be irreverent, and more than all, without meaning to be blasphemous,--I
state as my simple deduction from the things I have seen and the things I
have heard, that the Holy Personages rank thus in Rome:
First--"The Mother of God"--otherwise the Virgin Mary.
Second--The Deity.
Third--Peter.
Fourth--Some twelve or fifteen canonized Popes and martyrs.
Fifth--Jesus Christ the Saviour--(but always as an infant in arms.)
I may be wrong in this--my judgment errs often, just as is the case with
other men's--but it is my judgment, be it good or bad.
Just here I will mention something that seems curious to me. There are
no "Christ's Churches" in Rome, and no "Churches of the Holy Ghost," that
I can discover. There are some four hundred churches, but about a fourth
of them seem to be named for the Madonna and St. Peter. There are so
many named for Mary that they have to be distinguished by all sorts of
affixes, if I understand the matter rightly. Then we have churches of
St. Louis; St. Augustine; St. Agnes; St. Calixtus; St. Lorenzo in Lucina;
St. Lorenzo in Damaso; St. Cecilia; St. Athanasius; St. Philip Neri; St.
Catherine, St. Dominico, and a multitude of lesser saints whose names are
not familiar in the world--and away down, clear out of the list of the
churches, comes a couple of hospitals: one of them is named for the
Saviour and the other for the Holy Ghost!
Day after day and night after night we have wandered among the crumbling
wonders of Rome; day after day and night after night we have fed upon the
dust and decay of five-and-twenty centuries--have brooded over them by
day and dreampt of them by night till sometimes we seemed moldering away
ourselves, and growing defaced and cornerless, and liable at any moment
to fall a prey to some antiquary and be patched in the legs, and
"restored" with an unseemly nose, and labeled wrong and dated wrong, and
set up in the Vatican for poets to drivel about and vandals to scribble
their names on forever and forevermore.
But the surest way to stop writing about Rome is to stop. I wished to
write a real "guide-book" chapter on this fascinating city, but I could
not do it, because I have felt all the time like a boy in a candy-shop
--there was every thing to choose from, and yet no choice. I have drifted
along hopelessly for a hundred pages of manuscript without knowing where
to commence. I will not commence at all. Our passports have been
examined. We will go to Naples.
CHAPTER XXIX.
The ship is lying here in the harbor of Naples--quarantined. She has
been here several days and will remain several more. We that came by
rail from Rome have escaped this misfortune. Of course no one is allowed
to go on board the ship, or come ashore from her. She is a prison, now.
The passengers probably spend the long, blazing days looking out from
under the awnings at Vesuvius and the beautiful city--and in swearing.
Think of ten days of this sort of pastime!--We go out every day in a boat
and request them to come ashore. It soothes them. We lie ten steps from
the ship and tell them how splendid the city is; and how much better the
hotel fare is here than any where else in Europe; and how cool it is; and
what frozen continents of ice cream there are; and what a time we are
having cavorting about the country and sailing to the islands in the Bay.
This tranquilizes them.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS.
I shall remember our trip to Vesuvius for many a day--partly because of
its sight-seeing experiences, but chiefly on account of the fatigue of
the journey. Two or three of us had been resting ourselves among the
tranquil and beautiful scenery of the island of Ischia, eighteen miles
out in the harbor, for two days; we called it "resting," but I do not
remember now what the resting consisted of, for when we got back to
Naples we had not slept for forty-eight hours. We were just about to go
to bed early in the evening, and catch up on some of the sleep we had
lost, when we heard of this Vesuvius expedition. There was to be eight
of us in the party, and we were to leave Naples at midnight. We laid in
some provisions for the trip, engaged carriages to take us to
Annunciation, and then moved about the city, to keep awake, till twelve.
We got away punctually, and in the course of an hour and a half arrived
at the town of Annunciation. Annunciation is the very last place under
the sun. In other towns in Italy the people lie around quietly and wait
for you to ask them a question or do some overt act that can be charged
for--but in Annunciation they have lost even that fragment of delicacy;
they seize a lady's shawl from a chair and hand it to her and charge a
penny; they open a carriage door, and charge for it--shut it when you get
out, and charge for it; they help you to take off a duster--two cents;
brush your clothes and make them worse than they were before--two cents;
smile upon you--two cents; bow, with a lick-spittle smirk, hat in hand
--two cents; they volunteer all information, such as that the mules will
arrive presently--two cents--warm day, sir--two cents--take you four
hours to make the ascent--two cents. And so they go. They crowd you
--infest you--swarm about you, and sweat and smell offensively, and look
sneaking and mean, and obsequious. There is no office too degrading for
them to perform, for money. I have had no opportunity to find out any
thing about the upper classes by my own observation, but from what I hear
said about them I judge that what they lack in one or two of the bad
traits the canaille have, they make up in one or two others that are
worse. How the people beg!--many of them very well dressed, too.
I said I knew nothing against the upper classes by personal observation.
I must recall it! I had forgotten. What I saw their bravest and their
fairest do last night, the lowest multitude that could be scraped up out
of the purlieus of Christendom would blush to do, I think. They
assembled by hundreds, and even thousands, in the great Theatre of San
Carlo, to do--what? Why, simply, to make fun of an old woman--to deride,
to hiss, to jeer at an actress they once worshipped, but whose beauty is
faded now and whose voice has lost its former richness. Every body spoke
of the rare sport there was to be. They said the theatre would be
crammed, because Frezzolini was going to sing. It was said she could not
sing well, now, but then the people liked to see her, anyhow. And so we
went. And every time the woman sang they hissed and laughed--the whole
magnificent house--and as soon as she left the stage they called her on
again with applause. Once or twice she was encored five and six times in
succession, and received with hisses when she appeared, and discharged
with hisses and laughter when she had finished--then instantly encored
and insulted again! And how the high-born knaves enjoyed it!
White-kidded gentlemen and ladies laughed till the tears came, and
clapped their hands in very ecstacy when that unhappy old woman would
come meekly out for the sixth time, with uncomplaining patience, to meet
a storm of hisses! It was the cruelest exhibition--the most wanton, the
most unfeeling. The singer would have conquered an audience of American
rowdies by her brave, unflinching tranquillity (for she answered encore
after encore, and smiled and bowed pleasantly, and sang the best she
possibly could, and went bowing off, through all the jeers and hisses,
without ever losing countenance or temper:) and surely in any other land
than Italy her sex and her helplessness must have been an ample
protection to her--she could have needed no other. Think what a
multitude of small souls were crowded into that theatre last night. If
the manager could have filled his theatre with Neapolitan souls alone,
without the bodies, he could not have cleared less than ninety millions
of dollars. What traits of character must a man have to enable him to
help three thousand miscreants to hiss, and jeer, and laugh at one
friendless old woman, and shamefully humiliate her? He must have all
the vile, mean traits there are. My observation persuades me (I do not
like to venture beyond my own personal observation,) that the upper
classes of Naples possess those traits of character. Otherwise they may
be very good people; I can not say.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
In this city of Naples, they believe in and support one of the
wretchedest of all the religious impostures one can find in Italy--the
miraculous liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. Twice a year the
priests assemble all the people at the Cathedral, and get out this vial
of clotted blood and let them see it slowly dissolve and become liquid
--and every day for eight days, this dismal farce is repeated, while the
priests go among the crowd and collect money for the exhibition. The
first day, the blood liquefies in forty-seven minutes--the church is
crammed, then, and time must be allowed the collectors to get around:
after that it liquefies a little quicker and a little quicker, every day,
as the houses grow smaller, till on the eighth day, with only a few
dozens present to see the miracle, it liquefies in four minutes.
And here, also, they used to have a grand procession, of priests,
citizens, soldiers, sailors, and the high dignitaries of the City
Government, once a year, to shave the head of a made-up Madonna--a
stuffed and painted image, like a milliner's dummy--whose hair
miraculously grew and restored itself every twelve months. They still
kept up this shaving procession as late as four or five years ago. It
was a source of great profit to the church that possessed the remarkable
effigy, and the ceremony of the public barbering of her was always
carried out with the greatest possible eclat and display--the more the
better, because the more excitement there was about it the larger the
crowds it drew and the heavier the revenues it produced--but at last a
day came when the Pope and his servants were unpopular in Naples, and the
City Government stopped the Madonna's annual show.
There we have two specimens of these Neapolitans--two of the silliest
possible frauds, which half the population religiously and faithfully
believed, and the other half either believed also or else said nothing
about, and thus lent themselves to the support of the imposture. I am
very well satisfied to think the whole population believed in those poor,
cheap miracles--a people who want two cents every time they bow to you,
and who abuse a woman, are capable of it, I think.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
These Neapolitans always ask four times as much money as they intend to
take, but if you give them what they first demand, they feel ashamed of
themselves for aiming so low, and immediately ask more. When money is to
be paid and received, there is always some vehement jawing and
gesticulating about it. One can not buy and pay for two cents' worth of
clams without trouble and a quarrel. One "course," in a two-horse
carriage, costs a franc--that is law--but the hackman always demands
more, on some pretence or other, and if he gets it he makes a new demand.
It is said that a stranger took a one-horse carriage for a course
--tariff, half a franc. He gave the man five francs, by way of experiment.
He demanded more, and received another franc. Again he demanded more,
and got a franc--demanded more, and it was refused. He grew vehement
--was again refused, and became noisy. The stranger said, "Well, give me
the seven francs again, and I will see what I can do"--and when he got
them, he handed the hackman half a franc, and he immediately asked for
two cents to buy a drink with. It may be thought that I am prejudiced.
Perhaps I am. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
Well, as I was saying, we got our mules and horses, after an hour and a
half of bargaining with the population of Annunciation, and started
sleepily up the mountain, with a vagrant at each mule's tail who
pretended to be driving the brute along, but was really holding on and
getting himself dragged up instead. I made slow headway at first, but I
began to get dissatisfied at the idea of paying my minion five francs to
hold my mule back by the tail and keep him from going up the hill, and so
I discharged him. I got along faster then.
We had one magnificent picture of Naples from a high point on the
mountain side. We saw nothing but the gas lamps, of course--two-thirds
of a circle, skirting the great Bay--a necklace of diamonds glinting up
through the darkness from the remote distance--less brilliant than the
stars overhead, but more softly, richly beautiful--and over all the great
city the lights crossed and recrossed each other in many and many a
sparkling line and curve. And back of the town, far around and abroad
over the miles of level campagna, were scattered rows, and circles, and
clusters of lights, all glowing like so many gems, and marking where a
score of villages were sleeping. About this time, the fellow who was
hanging on to the tail of the horse in front of me and practicing all
sorts of unnecessary cruelty upon the animal, got kicked some fourteen
rods, and this incident, together with the fairy spectacle of the lights
far in the distance, made me serenely happy, and I was glad I started to
Vesuvius.
ASCENT OF MOUNT VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
This subject will be excellent matter for a chapter, and tomorrow or next
day I will write it.
CHAPTER XXX.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
"See Naples and die." Well, I do not know that one would necessarily die
after merely seeing it, but to attempt to live there might turn out a
little differently. To see Naples as we saw it in the early dawn from
far up on the side of Vesuvius, is to see a picture of wonderful beauty.
At that distance its dingy buildings looked white--and so, rank on rank
of balconies, windows and roofs, they piled themselves up from the blue
ocean till the colossal castle of St. Elmo topped the grand white pyramid
and gave the picture symmetry, emphasis and completeness. And when its
lilies turned to roses--when it blushed under the sun's first kiss--it
was beautiful beyond all description. One might well say, then, "See
Naples and die." The frame of the picture was charming, itself. In
front, the smooth sea--a vast mosaic of many colors; the lofty islands
swimming in a dreamy haze in the distance; at our end of the city the
stately double peak of Vesuvius, and its strong black ribs and seams of
lava stretching down to the limitless level campagna--a green carpet that
enchants the eye and leads it on and on, past clusters of trees, and
isolated houses, and snowy villages, until it shreds out in a fringe of
mist and general vagueness far away. It is from the Hermitage, there on
the side of Vesuvius, that one should "see Naples and die."
But do not go within the walls and look at it in detail. That takes away
some of the romance of the thing. The people are filthy in their habits,
and this makes filthy streets and breeds disagreeable sights and smells.
There never was a community so prejudiced against the cholera as these
Neapolitans are. But they have good reason to be. The cholera generally
vanquishes a Neapolitan when it seizes him, because, you understand,
before the doctor can dig through the dirt and get at the disease the man
dies. The upper classes take a sea-bath every day, and are pretty
decent.
The streets are generally about wide enough for one wagon, and how they
do swarm with people! It is Broadway repeated in every street, in every
court, in every alley! Such masses, such throngs, such multitudes of
hurrying, bustling, struggling humanity! We never saw the like of it,
hardly even in New York, I think. There are seldom any sidewalks, and
when there are, they are not often wide enough to pass a man on without
caroming on him. So everybody walks in the street--and where the street
is wide enough, carriages are forever dashing along. Why a thousand
people are not run over and crippled every day is a mystery that no man
can solve. But if there is an eighth wonder in the world, it must be the
dwelling-houses of Naples. I honestly believe a good majority of them
are a hundred feet high! And the solid brick walls are seven feet
through. You go up nine flights of stairs before you get to the "first"
floor. No, not nine, but there or thereabouts. There is a little
bird-cage of an iron railing in front of every window clear away up, up,
up, among the eternal clouds, where the roof is, and there is always
somebody looking out of every window--people of ordinary size looking
out from the first floor, people a shade smaller from the second, people
that look a little smaller yet from the third--and from thence upward
they grow smaller and smaller by a regularly graduated diminution, till
the folks in the topmost windows seem more like birds in an uncommonly
tall martin-box than any thing else. The perspective of one of these
narrow cracks of streets, with its rows of tall houses stretching away
till they come together in the distance like railway tracks; its
clothes-lines crossing over at all altitudes and waving their bannered
raggedness over the swarms of people below; and the white-dressed women
perched in balcony railings all the way from the pavement up to the
heavens--a perspective like that is really worth going into Neapolitan
details to see.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
Naples, with its immediate suburbs, contains six hundred and twenty-five
thousand inhabitants, but I am satisfied it covers no more ground than an
American city of one hundred and fifty thousand. It reaches up into the
air infinitely higher than three American cities, though, and there is
where the secret of it lies. I will observe here, in passing, that the
contrasts between opulence and poverty, and magnificence and misery, are
more frequent and more striking in Naples than in Paris even. One must
go to the Bois de Boulogne to see fashionable dressing, splendid
equipages and stunning liveries, and to the Faubourg St. Antoine to see
vice, misery, hunger, rags, dirt--but in the thoroughfares of Naples
these things are all mixed together. Naked boys of nine years and the
fancy-dressed children of luxury; shreds and tatters, and brilliant
uniforms; jackass-carts and state-carriages; beggars, Princes and
Bishops, jostle each other in every street. At six o'clock every
evening, all Naples turns out to drive on the 'Riviere di Chiaja',
(whatever that may mean;) and for two hours one may stand there and see
the motliest and the worst mixed procession go by that ever eyes beheld.
Princes (there are more Princes than policemen in Naples--the city is
infested with them)--Princes who live up seven flights of stairs and
don't own any principalities, will keep a carriage and go hungry; and
clerks, mechanics, milliners and strumpets will go without their dinners
and squander the money on a hack-ride in the Chiaja; the rag-tag and
rubbish of the city stack themselves up, to the number of twenty or
thirty, on a rickety little go-cart hauled by a donkey not much bigger
than a cat, and they drive in the Chiaja; Dukes and bankers, in sumptuous
carriages and with gorgeous drivers and footmen, turn out, also, and so
the furious procession goes. For two hours rank and wealth, and
obscurity and poverty clatter along side by side in the wild procession,
and then go home serene, happy, covered with glory!
I was looking at a magnificent marble staircase in the King's palace, the
other day, which, it was said, cost five million francs, and I suppose it
did cost half a million, may be. I felt as if it must be a fine thing to
live in a country where there was such comfort and such luxury as this.
And then I stepped out musing, and almost walked over a vagabond who was
eating his dinner on the curbstone--a piece of bread and a bunch of
grapes. When I found that this mustang was clerking in a fruit
establishment (he had the establishment along with him in a basket,) at
two cents a day, and that he had no palace at home where he lived, I lost
some of my enthusiasm concerning the happiness of living in Italy.
This naturally suggests to me a thought about wages here. Lieutenants in
the army get about a dollar a day, and common soldiers a couple of cents.
I only know one clerk--he gets four dollars a month. Printers get six
dollars and a half a month, but I have heard of a foreman who gets
thirteen.
To be growing suddenly and violently rich, as this man is, naturally
makes him a bloated aristocrat. The airs he puts on are insufferable.
And, speaking of wages, reminds me of prices of merchandise. In Paris
you pay twelve dollars a dozen for Jouvin's best kid gloves; gloves of
about as good quality sell here at three or four dollars a dozen. You
pay five and six dollars apiece for fine linen shirts in Paris; here and
in Leghorn you pay two and a half. In Marseilles you pay forty dollars
for a first-class dress coat made by a good tailor, but in Leghorn you
can get a full dress suit for the same money. Here you get handsome
business suits at from ten to twenty dollars, and in Leghorn you can get
an overcoat for fifteen dollars that would cost you seventy in New York.
Fine kid boots are worth eight dollars in Marseilles and four dollars
here. Lyons velvets rank higher in America than those of Genoa. Yet the
bulk of Lyons velvets you buy in the States are made in Genoa and
imported into Lyons, where they receive the Lyons stamp and are then
exported to America. You can buy enough velvet in Genoa for twenty-five
dollars to make a five hundred dollar cloak in New York--so the ladies
tell me. Of course these things bring me back, by a natural and easy
transition, to the
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
And thus the wonderful Blue Grotto is suggested to me. It is situated on
the Island of Capri, twenty-two miles from Naples. We chartered a little
steamer and went out there. Of course, the police boarded us and put us
through a health examination, and inquired into our politics, before they
would let us land. The airs these little insect Governments put on are
in the last degree ridiculous. They even put a policeman on board of our
boat to keep an eye on us as long as we were in the Capri dominions.
They thought we wanted to steal the grotto, I suppose. It was worth
stealing. The entrance to the cave is four feet high and four feet wide,
and is in the face of a lofty perpendicular cliff--the sea-wall. You
enter in small boats--and a tight squeeze it is, too. You can not go in
at all when the tide is up. Once within, you find yourself in an arched
cavern about one hundred and sixty feet long, one hundred and twenty
wide, and about seventy high. How deep it is no man knows. It goes down
to the bottom of the ocean. The waters of this placid subterranean lake
are the brightest, loveliest blue that can be imagined. They are as
transparent as plate glass, and their coloring would shame the richest
sky that ever bent over Italy. No tint could be more ravishing, no
lustre more superb. Throw a stone into the water, and the myriad of tiny
bubbles that are created flash out a brilliant glare like blue theatrical
fires. Dip an oar, and its blade turns to splendid frosted silver,
tinted with blue. Let a man jump in, and instantly he is cased in an
armor more gorgeous than ever kingly Crusader wore.
Then we went to Ischia, but I had already been to that island and tired
myself to death "resting" a couple of days and studying human villainy,
with the landlord of the Grande Sentinelle for a model. So we went to
Procida, and from thence to Pozzuoli, where St. Paul landed after he
sailed from Samos. I landed at precisely the same spot where St. Paul
landed, and so did Dan and the others. It was a remarkable coincidence.
St. Paul preached to these people seven days before he started to Rome.
Nero's Baths, the ruins of Baiae, the Temple of Serapis; Cumae, where the
Cumaen Sybil interpreted the oracles, the Lake Agnano, with its ancient
submerged city still visible far down in its depths--these and a hundred
other points of interest we examined with critical imbecility, but the
Grotto of the Dog claimed our chief attention, because we had heard and
read so much about it. Every body has written about the Grotto del Cane
and its poisonous vapors, from Pliny down to Smith, and every tourist has
held a dog over its floor by the legs to test the capabilities of the
place. The dog dies in a minute and a half--a chicken instantly. As a
general thing, strangers who crawl in there to sleep do not get up until
they are called. And then they don't either. The stranger that ventures
to sleep there takes a permanent contract. I longed to see this grotto.
I resolved to take a dog and hold him myself; suffocate him a little, and
time him; suffocate him some more and then finish him. We reached the
grotto at about three in the afternoon, and proceeded at once to make the
experiments. But now, an important difficulty presented itself. We had
no dog.
ASCENT OF VESUVIUS--CONTINUED.
At the Hermitage we were about fifteen or eighteen hundred feet above the
sea, and thus far a portion of the ascent had been pretty abrupt. For
the next two miles the road was a mixture--sometimes the ascent was
abrupt and sometimes it was not: but one characteristic it possessed all
the time, without failure--without modification--it was all
uncompromisingly and unspeakably infamous. It was a rough, narrow trail,
and led over an old lava flow--a black ocean which was tumbled into a
thousand fantastic shapes--a wild chaos of ruin, desolation, and
barrenness--a wilderness of billowy upheavals, of furious whirlpools, of
miniature mountains rent asunder--of gnarled and knotted, wrinkled and
twisted masses of blackness that mimicked branching roots, great vines,
trunks of trees, all interlaced and mingled together: and all these weird
shapes, all this turbulent panorama, all this stormy, far-stretching
waste of blackness, with its thrilling suggestiveness of life, of action,
of boiling, surging, furious motion, was petrified!--all stricken dead
and cold in the instant of its maddest rioting!--fettered, paralyzed, and
left to glower at heaven in impotent rage for evermore!
Finally we stood in a level, narrow valley (a valley that had been
created by the terrific march of some old time irruption) and on either
hand towered the two steep peaks of Vesuvius. The one we had to climb
--the one that contains the active volcano--seemed about eight hundred or
one thousand feet high, and looked almost too straight-up-and-down for
any man to climb, and certainly no mule could climb it with a man on his
back. Four of these native pirates will carry you to the top in a sedan
chair, if you wish it, but suppose they were to slip and let you fall,
--is it likely that you would ever stop rolling? Not this side of
eternity, perhaps. We left the mules, sharpened our finger-nails, and
began the ascent I have been writing about so long, at twenty minutes to
six in the morning. The path led straight up a rugged sweep of loose
chunks of pumice-stone, and for about every two steps forward we took, we
slid back one. It was so excessively steep that we had to stop, every
fifty or sixty steps, and rest a moment. To see our comrades, we had to
look very nearly straight up at those above us, and very nearly straight
down at those below. We stood on the summit at last--it had taken an
hour and fifteen minutes to make the trip.
What we saw there was simply a circular crater--a circular ditch, if you
please--about two hundred feet deep, and four or five hundred feet wide,
whose inner wall was about half a mile in circumference. In the centre
of the great circus ring thus formed, was a torn and ragged upheaval a
hundred feet high, all snowed over with a sulphur crust of many and many
a brilliant and beautiful color, and the ditch inclosed this like the
moat of a castle, or surrounded it as a little river does a little
island, if the simile is better. The sulphur coating of that island was
gaudy in the extreme--all mingled together in the richest confusion were
red, blue, brown, black, yellow, white--I do not know that there was a
color, or shade of a color, or combination of colors, unrepresented--and
when the sun burst through the morning mists and fired this tinted
magnificence, it topped imperial Vesuvius like a jeweled crown!
The crater itself--the ditch--was not so variegated in coloring, but yet,
in its softness, richness, and unpretentious elegance, it was more
charming, more fascinating to the eye. There was nothing "loud" about
its well-bred and well-creased look. Beautiful? One could stand and
look down upon it for a week without getting tired of it. It had the
semblance of a pleasant meadow, whose slender grasses and whose velvety
mosses were frosted with a shining dust, and tinted with palest green
that deepened gradually to the darkest hue of the orange leaf, and
deepened yet again into gravest brown, then faded into orange, then into
brightest gold, and culminated in the delicate pink of a new-blown rose.
Where portions of the meadow had sunk, and where other portions had been
broken up like an ice-floe, the cavernous openings of the one, and the
ragged upturned edges exposed by the other, were hung with a lace-work of
soft-tinted crystals of sulphur that changed their deformities into
quaint shapes and figures that were full of grace and beauty.
The walls of the ditch were brilliant with yellow banks of sulphur and
with lava and pumice-stone of many colors. No fire was visible any
where, but gusts of sulphurous steam issued silently and invisibly from a
thousand little cracks and fissures in the crater, and were wafted to our
noses with every breeze. But so long as we kept our nostrils buried in
our handkerchiefs, there was small danger of suffocation.
Some of the boys thrust long slips of paper down into holes and set them
on fire, and so achieved the glory of lighting their cigars by the flames
of Vesuvius, and others cooked eggs over fissures in the rocks and were
happy.
The view from the summit would have been superb but for the fact that the
sun could only pierce the mists at long intervals. Thus the glimpses we
had of the grand panorama below were only fitful and unsatisfactory.
THE DESCENT.
The descent of the mountain was a labor of only four minutes. Instead of
stalking down the rugged path we ascended, we chose one which was bedded
knee-deep in loose ashes, and ploughed our way with prodigious strides
that would almost have shamed the performance of him of the seven-league
boots.
The Vesuvius of today is a very poor affair compared to the mighty
volcano of Kilauea, in the Sandwich Islands, but I am glad I visited it.
It was well worth it.
It is said that during one of the grand eruptions of Vesuvius it
discharged massy rocks weighing many tons a thousand feet into the air,
its vast jets of smoke and steam ascended thirty miles toward the
firmament, and clouds of its ashes were wafted abroad and fell upon the
decks of ships seven hundred and fifty miles at sea! I will take the
ashes at a moderate discount, if any one will take the thirty miles of
smoke, but I do not feel able to take a commanding interest in the whole
story by myself.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE BURIED CITY OF POMPEII
They pronounce it Pom-pay-e. I always had an idea that you went down
into Pompeii with torches, by the way of damp, dark stairways, just as
you do in silver mines, and traversed gloomy tunnels with lava overhead
and something on either hand like dilapidated prisons gouged out of the
solid earth, that faintly resembled houses. But you do nothing the kind.
Fully one-half of the buried city, perhaps, is completely exhumed and
thrown open freely to the light of day; and there stand the long rows of
solidly-built brick houses (roofless) just as they stood eighteen hundred
years ago, hot with the flaming sun; and there lie their floors,
clean-swept, and not a bright fragment tarnished or waiting of the
labored mosaics that pictured them with the beasts, and birds, and
flowers which we copy in perishable carpets to-day; and here are the
Venuses, and Bacchuses, and Adonises, making love and getting drunk in
many-hued frescoes on the walls of saloon and bed-chamber; and there are
the narrow streets and narrower sidewalks, paved with flags of good hard
lava, the one deeply rutted with the chariot-wheels, and the other with
the passing feet of the Pompeiians of by-gone centuries; and there are
the bake-shops, the temples, the halls of justice, the baths, the
theatres--all clean-scraped and neat, and suggesting nothing of the
nature of a silver mine away down in the bowels of the earth. The
broken pillars lying about, the doorless doorways and the crumbled tops
of the wilderness of walls, were wonderfully suggestive of the "burnt
district" in one of our cities, and if there had been any charred
timbers, shattered windows, heaps of debris, and general blackness and
smokiness about the place, the resemblance would have been perfect. But
no--the sun shines as brightly down on old Pompeii to-day as it did when
Christ was born in Bethlehem, and its streets are cleaner a hundred
times than ever Pompeiian saw them in her prime. I know whereof I
speak--for in the great, chief thoroughfares (Merchant street and the
Street of Fortune) have I not seen with my own eyes how for two hundred
years at least the pavements were not repaired!--how ruts five and even
ten inches deep were worn into the thick flagstones by the
chariot-wheels of generations of swindled tax-payers? And do I not know
by these signs that Street Commissioners of Pompeii never attended to
their business, and that if they never mended the pavements they never
cleaned them? And, besides, is it not the inborn nature of Street
Commissioners to avoid their duty whenever they get a chance? I wish I
knew the name of the last one that held office in Pompeii so that I
could give him a blast. I speak with feeling on this subject, because I
caught my foot in one of those ruts, and the sadness that came over me
when I saw the first poor skeleton, with ashes and lava sticking to it,
was tempered by the reflection that may be that party was the Street
Commissioner.
No--Pompeii is no longer a buried city. It is a city of hundreds and
hundreds of roofless houses, and a tangled maze of streets where one
could easily get lost, without a guide, and have to sleep in some ghostly
palace that had known no living tenant since that awful November night of
eighteen centuries ago.
We passed through the gate which faces the Mediterranean, (called the
"Marine Gate,") and by the rusty, broken image of Minerva, still keeping
tireless watch and ward over the possessions it was powerless to save,
and went up a long street and stood in the broad court of the Forum of
Justice. The floor was level and clean, and up and down either side was
a noble colonnade of broken pillars, with their beautiful Ionic and
Corinthian columns scattered about them. At the upper end were the
vacant seats of the Judges, and behind them we descended into a dungeon
where the ashes and cinders had found two prisoners chained on that
memorable November night, and tortured them to death. How they must have
tugged at the pitiless fetters as the fierce fires surged around them!
Then we lounged through many and many a sumptuous private mansion which
we could not have entered without a formal invitation in incomprehensible
Latin, in the olden time, when the owners lived there--and we probably
wouldn't have got it. These people built their houses a good deal alike.
The floors were laid in fanciful figures wrought in mosaics of
many-colored marbles. At the threshold your eyes fall upon a Latin
sentence of welcome, sometimes, or a picture of a dog, with the legend
"Beware of the Dog," and sometimes a picture of a bear or a faun with no
inscription at all. Then you enter a sort of vestibule, where they used
to keep the hat-rack, I suppose; next a room with a large marble basin
in the midst and the pipes of a fountain; on either side are bedrooms;
beyond the fountain is a reception-room, then a little garden,
dining-room, and so forth and so on. The floors were all mosaic, the
walls were stuccoed, or frescoed, or ornamented with bas-reliefs, and
here and there were statues, large and small, and little fish-pools, and
cascades of sparkling water that sprang from secret places in the
colonnade of handsome pillars that surrounded the court, and kept the
flower-beds fresh and the air cool. Those Pompeiians were very
luxurious in their tastes and habits. The most exquisite bronzes we
have seen in Europe, came from the exhumed cities of Herculaneum and
Pompeii, and also the finest cameos and the most delicate engravings on
precious stones; their pictures, eighteen or nineteen centuries old, are
often much more pleasing than the celebrated rubbish of the old masters
of three centuries ago. They were well up in art. From the creation of
these works of the first, clear up to the eleventh century, art seems
hardly to have existed at all--at least no remnants of it are left--and
it was curious to see how far (in some things, at any rate,) these old
time pagans excelled the remote generations of masters that came after
them. The pride of the world in sculptures seem to be the Laocoon and
the Dying Gladiator, in Rome. They are as old as Pompeii, were dug from
the earth like Pompeii; but their exact age or who made them can only be
conjectured. But worn, and cracked, without a history, and with the
blemishing stains of numberless centuries upon them, they still mutely
mock at all efforts to rival their perfections.
It was a quaint and curious pastime, wandering through this old silent
city of the dead--lounging through utterly deserted streets where
thousands and thousands of human beings once bought and sold, and walked
and rode, and made the place resound with the noise and confusion of
traffic and pleasure. They were not lazy. They hurried in those days.
We had evidence of that. There was a temple on one corner, and it was a
shorter cut to go between the columns of that temple from one street to
the other than to go around--and behold that pathway had been worn deep
into the heavy flagstone floor of the building by generations of
time-saving feet! They would not go around when it was quicker to go
through. We do that way in our cities.
Every where, you see things that make you wonder how old these old houses
were before the night of destruction came--things, too, which bring back
those long dead inhabitants and place the living before your eyes. For
instance: The steps (two feet thick--lava blocks) that lead up out of the
school, and the same kind of steps that lead up into the dress circle of
the principal theatre, are almost worn through! For ages the boys
hurried out of that school, and for ages their parents hurried into that
theatre, and the nervous feet that have been dust and ashes for eighteen
centuries have left their record for us to read to-day. I imagined I
could see crowds of gentlemen and ladies thronging into the theatre, with
tickets for secured seats in their hands, and on the wall, I read the
imaginary placard, in infamous grammar, "POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST, EXCEPT
MEMBERS OF THE PRESS!" Hanging about the doorway (I fancied,) were
slouchy Pompeiian street-boys uttering slang and profanity, and keeping a
wary eye out for checks. I entered the theatre, and sat down in one of
the long rows of stone benches in the dress circle, and looked at the
place for the orchestra, and the ruined stage, and around at the wide
sweep of empty boxes, and thought to myself, "This house won't pay." I
tried to imagine the music in full blast, the leader of the orchestra
beating time, and the "versatile" So-and-So (who had "just returned from
a most successful tour in the provinces to play his last and farewell
engagement of positively six nights only, in Pompeii, previous to his
departure for Herculaneum,") charging around the stage and piling the
agony mountains high--but I could not do it with such a "house" as that;
those empty benches tied my fancy down to dull reality. I said, these
people that ought to be here have been dead, and still, and moldering to
dust for ages and ages, and will never care for the trifles and follies
of life any more for ever--"Owing to circumstances, etc., etc., there
will not be any performance to-night." Close down the curtain. Put out
the lights.
And so I turned away and went through shop after shop and store after
store, far down the long street of the merchants, and called for the
wares of Rome and the East, but the tradesmen were gone, the marts were
silent, and nothing was left but the broken jars all set in cement of
cinders and ashes: the wine and the oil that once had filled them were
gone with their owners.
In a bake-shop was a mill for grinding the grain, and the furnaces for
baking the bread: and they say that here, in the same furnaces, the
exhumers of Pompeii found nice, well baked loaves which the baker had not
found time to remove from the ovens the last time he left his shop,
because circumstances compelled him to leave in such a hurry.
In one house (the only building in Pompeii which no woman is now allowed
to enter,) were the small rooms and short beds of solid masonry, just as
they were in the old times, and on the walls were pictures which looked
almost as fresh as if they were painted yesterday, but which no pen could
have the hardihood to describe; and here and there were Latin
inscriptions--obscene scintillations of wit, scratched by hands that
possibly were uplifted to Heaven for succor in the midst of a driving
storm of fire before the night was done.
In one of the principal streets was a ponderous stone tank, and a
water-spout that supplied it, and where the tired, heated toilers from the
Campagna used to rest their right hands when they bent over to put their
lips to the spout, the thick stone was worn down to a broad groove an
inch or two deep. Think of the countless thousands of hands that had
pressed that spot in the ages that are gone, to so reduce a stone that
is as hard as iron!
They had a great public bulletin board in Pompeii--a place where
announcements for gladiatorial combats, elections, and such things, were
posted--not on perishable paper, but carved in enduring stone. One lady,
who, I take it, was rich and well brought up, advertised a dwelling or so
to rent, with baths and all the modern improvements, and several hundred
shops, stipulating that the dwellings should not be put to immoral
purposes. You can find out who lived in many a house in Pompeii by the
carved stone door-plates affixed to them: and in the same way you can
tell who they were that occupy the tombs. Every where around are things
that reveal to you something of the customs and history of this forgotten
people. But what would a volcano leave of an American city, if it once
rained its cinders on it? Hardly a sign or a symbol to tell its story.
In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man was found,
with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key in the other. He had
seized his money and started toward the door, but the fiery tempest
caught him at the very threshold, and he sank down and died. One more
minute of precious time would have saved him. I saw the skeletons of a
man, a woman, and two young girls. The woman had her hands spread wide
apart, as if in mortal terror, and I imagined I could still trace upon
her shapeless face something of the expression of wild despair that
distorted it when the heavens rained fire in these streets, so many ages
ago. The girls and the man lay with their faces upon their arms, as if
they had tried to shield them from the enveloping cinders. In one
apartment eighteen skeletons were found, all in sitting postures, and
blackened places on the walls still mark their shapes and show their
attitudes, like shadows. One of them, a woman, still wore upon her
skeleton throat a necklace, with her name engraved upon it--JULIE DI
DIOMEDE.
But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern
research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete
armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of
Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its
glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till
the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could
not conquer.
We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write
of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so
well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier--not a policeman
--and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,--because the warrior
instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have
staid, also--because he would have been asleep.
There are not half a dozen flights of stairs in Pompeii, and no other
evidences that the houses were more than one story high. The people did
not live in the clouds, as do the Venetians, the Genoese and Neapolitans
of to-day.
We came out from under the solemn mysteries of this city of the Venerable
Past--this city which perished, with all its old ways and its quaint old
fashions about it, remote centuries ago, when the Disciples were
preaching the new religion, which is as old as the hills to us now--and
went dreaming among the trees that grow over acres and acres of its still
buried streets and squares, till a shrill whistle and the cry of "All
aboard--last train for Naples!" woke me up and reminded me that I
belonged in the nineteenth century, and was not a dusty mummy, caked with
ashes and cinders, eighteen hundred years old. The transition was
startling. The idea of a railroad train actually running to old dead
Pompeii, and whistling irreverently, and calling for passengers in the
most bustling and business-like way, was as strange a thing as one could
imagine, and as unpoetical and disagreeable as it was strange.
Compare the cheerful life and the sunshine of this day with the horrors
the younger Pliny saw here, the 9th of November, A.D. 79, when he was so
bravely striving to remove his mother out of reach of harm, while she
begged him, with all a mother's unselfishness, to leave her to perish and
save himself.
'By this time the murky darkness had so increased that one might
have believed himself abroad in a black and moonless night, or in a
chamber where all the lights had been extinguished. On every hand
was heard the complaints of women, the wailing of children, and the
cries of men. One called his father, another his son, and another
his wife, and only by their voices could they know each other. Many
in their despair begged that death would come and end their
distress.
"Some implored the gods to succor them, and some believed that this
night was the last, the eternal night which should engulf the
universe!
"Even so it seemed to me--and I consoled myself for the coming death
with the reflection: BEHOLD, THE WORLD IS PASSING AWAY!"
* * * * * * * *
After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and
after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless
imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing
strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting
character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and
struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in
generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in
the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name. Well, twenty
little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy
inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and
tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell
wrong)--no history, no tradition, no poetry--nothing that can give it
even a passing interest. What may be left of General Grant's great name
forty centuries hence? This--in the Encyclopedia for A. D. 5868,
possibly:
"URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT--popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec
provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say
flourished about A. D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states
that he was a cotemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and
flourished about A. D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan
war instead of before it. He wrote 'Rock me to Sleep, Mother.'"
These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Home, again! For the first time, in many weeks, the ship's entire family
met and shook hands on the quarter-deck. They had gathered from many
points of the compass and from many lands, but not one was missing; there
was no tale of sickness or death among the flock to dampen the pleasure
of the reunion. Once more there was a full audience on deck to listen to
the sailors' chorus as they got the anchor up, and to wave an adieu to
the land as we sped away from Naples. The seats were full at dinner
again, the domino parties were complete, and the life and bustle on the
upper deck in the fine moonlight at night was like old times--old times
that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks so crowded with
incident, adventure and excitement, that they seemed almost like years.
There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker City. For once,
her title was a misnomer.
At seven in the evening, with the western horizon all golden from the
sunken sun, and specked with distant ships, the full moon sailing high
over head, the dark blue of the sea under foot, and a strange sort of
twilight affected by all these different lights and colors around us and
about us, we sighted superb Stromboli. With what majesty the monarch
held his lonely state above the level sea! Distance clothed him in a
purple gloom, and added a veil of shimmering mist that so softened his
rugged features that we seemed to see him through a web of silver gauze.
His torch was out; his fires were smoldering; a tall column of smoke that
rose up and lost itself in the growing moonlight was all the sign he gave
that he was a living Autocrat of the Sea and not the spectre of a dead
one.
At two in the morning we swept through the Straits of Messina, and so
bright was the moonlight that Italy on the one hand and Sicily on the
other seemed almost as distinctly visible as though we looked at them
from the middle of a street we were traversing. The city of Messina,
milk-white, and starred and spangled all over with gaslights, was a fairy
spectacle. A great party of us were on deck smoking and making a noise,
and waiting to see famous Scylla and Charybdis. And presently the Oracle
stepped out with his eternal spy-glass and squared himself on the deck
like another Colossus of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see him abroad at
such an hour. Nobody supposed he cared anything about an old fable like
that of Scylla and Charybdis. One of the boys said:
"Hello, doctor, what are you doing up here at this time of night?--What
do you want to see this place for?"
"What do I want to see this place for? Young man, little do you know me,
or you wouldn't ask such a question. I wish to see all the places that's
mentioned in the Bible."
"Stuff--this place isn't mentioned in the Bible."
"It ain't mentioned in the Bible!--this place ain't--well now, what place
is this, since you know so much about it?"
"Why it's Scylla and Charybdis."
"Scylla and Cha--confound it, I thought it was Sodom and Gomorrah!"
And he closed up his glass and went below. The above is the ship story.
Its plausibility is marred a little by the fact that the Oracle was not a
biblical student, and did not spend much of his time instructing himself
about Scriptural localities.--They say the Oracle complains, in this hot
weather, lately, that the only beverage in the ship that is passable, is
the butter. He did not mean butter, of course, but inasmuch as that
article remains in a melted state now since we are out of ice, it is fair
to give him the credit of getting one long word in the right place,
anyhow, for once in his life. He said, in Rome, that the Pope was a
noble-looking old man, but he never did think much of his Iliad.
We spent one pleasant day skirting along the Isles of Greece. They are
very mountainous. Their prevailing tints are gray and brown, approaching
to red. Little white villages surrounded by trees, nestle in the valleys
or roost upon the lofty perpendicular sea-walls.
We had one fine sunset--a rich carmine flush that suffused the western
sky and cast a ruddy glow far over the sea.--Fine sunsets seem to be
rare in this part of the world--or at least, striking ones. They are
soft, sensuous, lovely--they are exquisite refined, effeminate, but we
have seen no sunsets here yet like the gorgeous conflagrations that flame
in the track of the sinking sun in our high northern latitudes.
But what were sunsets to us, with the wild excitement upon us of
approaching the most renowned of cities! What cared we for outward
visions, when Agamemnon, Achilles, and a thousand other heroes of the
great Past were marching in ghostly procession through our fancies? What
were sunsets to us, who were about to live and breathe and walk in actual
Athens; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid in person
for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public market-place, or gossip
with the neighbors about the siege of Troy or the splendid deeds of
Marathon? We scorned to consider sunsets.
We arrived, and entered the ancient harbor of the Piraeus at last. We
dropped anchor within half a mile of the village. Away off, across the
undulating Plain of Attica, could be seen a little square-topped hill
with a something on it, which our glasses soon discovered to be the
ruined edifices of the citadel of the Athenians, and most prominent among
them loomed the venerable Parthenon. So exquisitely clear and pure is
this wonderful atmosphere that every column of the noble structure was
discernible through the telescope, and even the smaller ruins about it
assumed some semblance of shape. This at a distance of five or six
miles. In the valley, near the Acropolis, (the square-topped hill before
spoken of,) Athens itself could be vaguely made out with an ordinary
lorgnette. Every body was anxious to get ashore and visit these classic
localities as quickly as possible. No land we had yet seen had aroused
such universal interest among the passengers.
But bad news came. The commandant of the Piraeus came in his boat, and
said we must either depart or else get outside the harbor and remain
imprisoned in our ship, under rigid quarantine, for eleven days! So we
took up the anchor and moved outside, to lie a dozen hours or so, taking
in supplies, and then sail for Constantinople. It was the bitterest
disappointment we had yet experienced. To lie a whole day in sight of
the Acropolis, and yet be obliged to go away without visiting Athens!
Disappointment was hardly a strong enough word to describe the
circumstances.
All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and
glasses, trying to determine which "narrow rocky ridge" was the
Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the Museum Hill,
and so on. And we got things confused. Discussion became heated, and
party spirit ran high. Church members were gazing with emotion upon a
hill which they said was the one St. Paul preached from, and another
faction claimed that that hill was Hymettus, and another that it was
Pentelicon! After all the trouble, we could be certain of only one
thing--the square-topped hill was the Acropolis, and the grand ruin that
crowned it was the Parthenon, whose picture we knew in infancy in the
school books.
We inquired of every body who came near the ship, whether there were
guards in the Piraeus, whether they were strict, what the chances were of
capture should any of us slip ashore, and in case any of us made the
venture and were caught, what would be probably done to us? The answers
were discouraging: There was a strong guard or police force; the Piraeus
was a small town, and any stranger seen in it would surely attract
attention--capture would be certain. The commandant said the punishment
would be "heavy;" when asked "how heavy?" he said it would be "very
severe"--that was all we could get out of him.
At eleven o'clock at night, when most of the ship's company were abed,
four of us stole softly ashore in a small boat, a clouded moon favoring
the enterprise, and started two and two, and far apart, over a low hill,
intending to go clear around the Piraeus, out of the range of its police.
Picking our way so stealthily over that rocky, nettle-grown eminence,
made me feel a good deal as if I were on my way somewhere to steal
something. My immediate comrade and I talked in an undertone about
quarantine laws and their penalties, but we found nothing cheering in the
subject. I was posted. Only a few days before, I was talking with our
captain, and he mentioned the case of a man who swam ashore from a
quarantined ship somewhere, and got imprisoned six months for it; and
when he was in Genoa a few years ago, a captain of a quarantined ship
went in his boat to a departing ship, which was already outside of the
harbor, and put a letter on board to be taken to his family, and the
authorities imprisoned him three months for it, and then conducted him
and his ship fairly to sea, and warned him never to show himself in that
port again while he lived. This kind of conversation did no good,
further than to give a sort of dismal interest to our quarantine-breaking
expedition, and so we dropped it. We made the entire circuit of the town
without seeing any body but one man, who stared at us curiously, but said
nothing, and a dozen persons asleep on the ground before their doors,
whom we walked among and never woke--but we woke up dogs enough, in all
conscience--we always had one or two barking at our heels, and several
times we had as many as ten and twelve at once. They made such a
preposterous din that persons aboard our ship said they could tell how we
were progressing for a long time, and where we were, by the barking of
the dogs. The clouded moon still favored us. When we had made the whole
circuit, and were passing among the houses on the further side of the
town, the moon came out splendidly, but we no longer feared the light.
As we approached a well, near a house, to get a drink, the owner merely
glanced at us and went within. He left the quiet, slumbering town at our
mercy. I record it here proudly, that we didn't do any thing to it.
Seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant Acropolis
for a mark, and steered straight for it over all obstructions, and over a
little rougher piece of country than exists any where else outside of the
State of Nevada, perhaps. Part of the way it was covered with small,
loose stones--we trod on six at a time, and they all rolled. Another
part of it was dry, loose, newly-ploughed ground. Still another part of
it was a long stretch of low grape-vines, which were tanglesome and
troublesome, and which we took to be brambles. The Attic Plain, barring
the grape-vines, was a barren, desolate, unpoetical waste--I wonder what
it was in Greece's Age of Glory, five hundred years before Christ?
In the neighborhood of one o'clock in the morning, when we were heated
with fast walking and parched with thirst, Denny exclaimed, "Why, these
weeds are grape-vines!" and in five minutes we had a score of bunches of
large, white, delicious grapes, and were reaching down for more when a
dark shape rose mysteriously up out of the shadows beside us and said
"Ho!" And so we left.
In ten minutes more we struck into a beautiful road, and unlike some
others we had stumbled upon at intervals, it led in the right direction.
We followed it. It was broad, and smooth, and white--handsome and in
perfect repair, and shaded on both sides for a mile or so with single
ranks of trees, and also with luxuriant vineyards. Twice we entered and
stole grapes, and the second time somebody shouted at us from some
invisible place. Whereupon we left again. We speculated in grapes no
more on that side of Athens.
Shortly we came upon an ancient stone aqueduct, built upon arches, and
from that time forth we had ruins all about us--we were approaching our
journey's end. We could not see the Acropolis now or the high hill,
either, and I wanted to follow the road till we were abreast of them, but
the others overruled me, and we toiled laboriously up the stony hill
immediately in our front--and from its summit saw another--climbed it and
saw another! It was an hour of exhausting work. Soon we came upon a row
of open graves, cut in the solid rock--(for a while one of them served
Socrates for a prison)--we passed around the shoulder of the hill, and
the citadel, in all its ruined magnificence, burst upon us! We hurried
across the ravine and up a winding road, and stood on the old Acropolis,
with the prodigious walls of the citadel towering above our heads. We
did not stop to inspect their massive blocks of marble, or measure their
height, or guess at their extraordinary thickness, but passed at once
through a great arched passage like a railway tunnel, and went straight
to the gate that leads to the ancient temples. It was locked! So, after
all, it seemed that we were not to see the great Parthenon face to face.
We sat down and held a council of war. Result: the gate was only a
flimsy structure of wood--we would break it down. It seemed like
desecration, but then we had traveled far, and our necessities were
urgent. We could not hunt up guides and keepers--we must be on the ship
before daylight. So we argued. This was all very fine, but when we came
to break the gate, we could not do it. We moved around an angle of the
wall and found a low bastion--eight feet high without--ten or twelve
within. Denny prepared to scale it, and we got ready to follow. By dint
of hard scrambling he finally straddled the top, but some loose stones
crumbled away and fell with a crash into the court within. There was
instantly a banging of doors and a shout. Denny dropped from the wall in
a twinkling, and we retreated in disorder to the gate. Xerxes took that
mighty citadel four hundred and eighty years before Christ, when his five
millions of soldiers and camp-followers followed him to Greece, and if we
four Americans could have remained unmolested five minutes longer, we
would have taken it too.
The garrison had turned out--four Greeks. We clamored at the gate, and
they admitted us. [Bribery and corruption.]
We crossed a large court, entered a great door, and stood upon a pavement
of purest white marble, deeply worn by footprints. Before us, in the
flooding moonlight, rose the noblest ruins we had ever looked upon--the
Propylae; a small Temple of Minerva; the Temple of Hercules, and the
grand Parthenon. [We got these names from the Greek guide, who didn't
seem to know more than seven men ought to know.] These edifices were all
built of the whitest Pentelic marble, but have a pinkish stain upon them
now. Where any part is broken, however, the fracture looks like fine
loaf sugar. Six caryatides, or marble women, clad in flowing robes,
support the portico of the Temple of Hercules, but the porticos and
colonnades of the other structures are formed of massive Doric and Ionic
pillars, whose flutings and capitals are still measurably perfect,
notwithstanding the centuries that have gone over them and the sieges
they have suffered. The Parthenon, originally, was two hundred and
twenty-six feet long, one hundred wide, and seventy high, and had two
rows of great columns, eight in each, at either end, and single rows of
seventeen each down the sides, and was one of the most graceful and
beautiful edifices ever erected.
Most of the Parthenon's imposing columns are still standing, but the roof
is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred and fifty years ago, when
a shell dropped into the Venetian magazine stored here, and the explosion
which followed wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but little about the
Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and figures for the use of
other people with short memories. Got them from the guide-book.
As we wandered thoughtfully down the marble-paved length of this stately
temple, the scene about us was strangely impressive. Here and there, in
lavish profusion, were gleaming white statues of men and women, propped
against blocks of marble, some of them armless, some without legs, others
headless--but all looking mournful in the moonlight, and startlingly
human! They rose up and confronted the midnight intruder on every side
--they stared at him with stony eyes from unlooked-for nooks and recesses;
they peered at him over fragmentary heaps far down the desolate
corridors; they barred his way in the midst of the broad forum, and
solemnly pointed with handless arms the way from the sacred fane; and
through the roofless temple the moon looked down, and banded the floor
and darkened the scattered fragments and broken statues with the slanting
shadows of the columns.
What a world of ruined sculpture was about us! Set up in rows--stacked
up in piles--scattered broadcast over the wide area of the Acropolis
--were hundreds of crippled statues of all sizes and of the most exquisite
workmanship; and vast fragments of marble that once belonged to the
entablatures, covered with bas-reliefs representing battles and sieges,
ships of war with three and four tiers of oars, pageants and processions
--every thing one could think of. History says that the temples of the
Acropolis were filled with the noblest works of Praxiteles and Phidias,
and of many a great master in sculpture besides--and surely these elegant
fragments attest it.
We walked out into the grass-grown, fragment-strewn court beyond the
Parthenon. It startled us, every now and then, to see a stony white face
stare suddenly up at us out of the grass with its dead eyes. The place
seemed alive with ghosts. I half expected to see the Athenian heroes of
twenty centuries ago glide out of the shadows and steal into the old
temple they knew so well and regarded with such boundless pride.
The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens, now. We
sauntered carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty
battlements of the citadel, and looked down--a vision! And such a
vision! Athens by moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of
the New Jerusalem were revealed to him, surely saw this instead! It lay
in the level plain right under our feet--all spread abroad like a
picture--and we looked down upon it as we might have looked from a
balloon. We saw no semblance of a street, but every house, every window,
every clinging vine, every projection was as distinct and sharply marked
as if the time were noon-day; and yet there was no glare, no glitter,
nothing harsh or repulsive--the noiseless city was flooded with the
mellowest light that ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some
living creature wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its further side was a
little temple, whose delicate pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich
lustre that chained the eye like a spell; and nearer by, the palace of
the king reared its creamy walls out of the midst of a great garden of
shrubbery that was flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights
--a spray of golden sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of the
moon, and glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage like the pallid
stars of the milky-way. Overhead the stately columns, majestic still in
their ruin--under foot the dreaming city--in the distance the silver sea
--not on the broad earth is there an other picture half so beautiful!
As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the
illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it again
and reveal themselves to our curious eyes--Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes,
Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus,
Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of
celebrated names! But more than all, I wished that old Diogenes, groping
so patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously for one solitary
honest man in all the world, might meander along and stumble on our
party. I ought not to say it, may be, but still I suppose he would have
put out his light.
We left the Parthenon to keep its watch over old Athens, as it had kept
it for twenty-three hundred years, and went and stood outside the walls
of the citadel. In the distance was the ancient, but still almost
perfect Temple of Theseus, and close by, looking to the west, was the
Bema, from whence Demosthenes thundered his philippics and fired the
wavering patriotism of his countrymen. To the right was Mars Hill, where
the Areopagus sat in ancient times and where St. Paul defined his
position, and below was the market-place where he "disputed daily" with
the gossip-loving Athenians. We climbed the stone steps St. Paul
ascended, and stood in the square-cut place he stood in, and tried to
recollect the Bible account of the matter--but for certain reasons, I
could not recall the words. I have found them since:
"Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in
him, when he saw the city wholly given up to idolatry. "Therefore
disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout
persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
* * * * * * * * *
"And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we
know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is?
* * * * * * * * *
"Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars hill, and said, Ye men of
Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious; "For
as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this
inscription: To THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you."--Acts, ch. xvii."
It occurred to us, after a while, that if we wanted to get home before
daylight betrayed us, we had better be moving. So we hurried away. When
far on our road, we had a parting view of the Parthenon, with the
moonlight streaming through its open colonnades and touching its capitals
with silver. As it looked then, solemn, grand, and beautiful it will
always remain in our memories.
As we marched along, we began to get over our fears, and ceased to care
much about quarantine scouts or any body else. We grew bold and
reckless; and once, in a sudden burst of courage, I even threw a stone at
a dog. It was a pleasant reflection, though, that I did not hit him,
because his master might just possibly have been a policeman. Inspired
by this happy failure, my valor became utterly uncontrollable, and at
intervals I absolutely whistled, though on a moderate key. But boldness
breeds boldness, and shortly I plunged into a Vineyard, in the full light
of the moon, and captured a gallon of superb grapes, not even minding the
presence of a peasant who rode by on a mule. Denny and Birch followed my
example.
Now I had grapes enough for a dozen, but then Jackson was all swollen up
with courage, too, and he was obliged to enter a vineyard presently. The
first bunch he seized brought trouble. A frowsy, bearded brigand sprang
into the road with a shout, and flourished a musket in the light of the
moon! We sidled toward the Piraeus--not running you understand, but only
advancing with celerity. The brigand shouted again, but still we
advanced. It was getting late, and we had no time to fool away on every
ass that wanted to drivel Greek platitudes to us. We would just as soon
have talked with him as not if we had not been in a hurry. Presently
Denny said, "Those fellows are following us!"
We turned, and, sure enough, there they were--three fantastic pirates
armed with guns. We slackened our pace to let them come up, and in the
meantime I got out my cargo of grapes and dropped them firmly but
reluctantly into the shadows by the wayside. But I was not afraid. I
only felt that it was not right to steal grapes. And all the more so
when the owner was around--and not only around, but with his friends
around also. The villains came up and searched a bundle Dr. Birch had in
his hand, and scowled upon him when they found it had nothing in it but
some holy rocks from Mars Hill, and these were not contraband. They
evidently suspected him of playing some wretched fraud upon them, and
seemed half inclined to scalp the party. But finally they dismissed us
with a warning, couched in excellent Greek, I suppose, and dropped
tranquilly in our wake. When they had gone three hundred yards they
stopped, and we went on rejoiced. But behold, another armed rascal came
out of the shadows and took their place, and followed us two hundred
yards. Then he delivered us over to another miscreant, who emerged from
some mysterious place, and he in turn to another! For a mile and a half
our rear was guarded all the while by armed men. I never traveled in so
much state before in all my life.
It was a good while after that before we ventured to steal any more
grapes, and when we did we stirred up another troublesome brigand, and
then we ceased all further speculation in that line. I suppose that
fellow that rode by on the mule posted all the sentinels, from Athens to
the Piraeus, about us.
Every field on that long route was watched by an armed sentinel, some of
whom had fallen asleep, no doubt, but were on hand, nevertheless. This
shows what sort of a country modern Attica is--a community of
questionable characters. These men were not there to guard their
possessions against strangers, but against each other; for strangers
seldom visit Athens and the Piraeus, and when they do, they go in
daylight, and can buy all the grapes they want for a trifle. The modern
inhabitants are confiscators and falsifiers of high repute, if gossip
speaks truly concerning them, and I freely believe it does.
Just as the earliest tinges of the dawn flushed the eastern sky and
turned the pillared Parthenon to a broken harp hung in the pearly
horizon, we closed our thirteenth mile of weary, round-about marching,
and emerged upon the sea-shore abreast the ships, with our usual escort
of fifteen hundred Piraean dogs howling at our heels. We hailed a boat
that was two or three hundred yards from shore, and discovered
in a moment that it was a police-boat on the lookout for any
quarantine-breakers that might chance to be abroad. So we dodged--we
were used to that by this time--and when the scouts reached the spot we
had so lately occupied, we were absent. They cruised along the shore,
but in the wrong direction, and shortly our own boat issued from the
gloom and took us aboard. They had heard our signal on the ship. We
rowed noiselessly away, and before the police-boat came in sight again,
we were safe at home once more.
Four more of our passengers were anxious to visit Athens, and started
half an hour after we returned; but they had not been ashore five minutes
till the police discovered and chased them so hotly that they barely
escaped to their boat again, and that was all. They pursued the
enterprise no further.
We set sail for Constantinople to-day, but some of us little care for
that. We have seen all there was to see in the old city that had its
birth sixteen hundred years before Christ was born, and was an old town
before the foundations of Troy were laid--and saw it in its most
attractive aspect. Wherefore, why should we worry?
Two other passengers ran the blockade successfully last night. So we
learned this morning. They slipped away so quietly that they were not
missed from the ship for several hours. They had the hardihood to march
into the Piraeus in the early dusk and hire a carriage. They ran some
danger of adding two or three months' imprisonment to the other novelties
of their Holy Land Pleasure Excursion. I admire "cheek."--[Quotation
from the Pilgrims.]--But they went and came safely, and never walked a
step.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
From Athens all through the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, we saw
little but forbidding sea-walls and barren hills, sometimes surmounted by
three or four graceful columns of some ancient temple, lonely and
deserted--a fitting symbol of the desolation that has come upon all
Greece in these latter ages. We saw no ploughed fields, very few
villages, no trees or grass or vegetation of any kind, scarcely, and
hardly ever an isolated house. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert,
without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports
its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
I suppose that ancient Greece and modern Greece compared, furnish the
most extravagant contrast to be found in history. George I., an infant
of eighteen, and a scraggy nest of foreign office holders, sit in the
places of Themistocles, Pericles, and the illustrious scholars and
generals of the Golden Age of Greece. The fleets that were the wonder of
the world when the Parthenon was new, are a beggarly handful of
fishing-smacks now, and the manly people that performed such miracles of
valor at Marathon are only a tribe of unconsidered slaves to-day. The
classic Illyssus has gone dry, and so have all the sources of Grecian
wealth and greatness. The nation numbers only eight hundred thousand
souls, and there is poverty and misery and mendacity enough among them
to furnish forty millions and be liberal about it. Under King Otho the
revenues of the State were five millions of dollars--raised from a tax
of one-tenth of all the agricultural products of the land (which tenth
the farmer had to bring to the royal granaries on pack-mules any
distance not exceeding six leagues) and from extravagant taxes on trade
and commerce. Out of that five millions the small tyrant tried to keep
an army of ten thousand men, pay all the hundreds of useless Grand
Equerries in Waiting, First Grooms of the Bedchamber, Lord High
Chancellors of the Exploded Exchequer, and all the other absurdities
which these puppy-kingdoms indulge in, in imitation of the great
monarchies; and in addition he set about building a white marble palace
to cost about five millions itself. The result was, simply: ten into
five goes no times and none over. All these things could not be done
with five millions, and Otho fell into trouble.
The Greek throne, with its unpromising adjuncts of a ragged population of
ingenious rascals who were out of employment eight months in the year
because there was little for them to borrow and less to confiscate, and a
waste of barren hills and weed-grown deserts, went begging for a good
while. It was offered to one of Victoria's sons, and afterwards to
various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and were out of
business, but they all had the charity to decline the dreary honor, and
veneration enough for Greece's ancient greatness to refuse to mock her
sorrowful rags and dirt with a tinsel throne in this day of her
humiliation--till they came to this young Danish George, and he took it.
He has finished the splendid palace I saw in the radiant moonlight the
other night, and is doing many other things for the salvation of Greece,
they say.
We sailed through the barren Archipelago, and into the narrow channel
they sometimes call the Dardanelles and sometimes the Hellespont. This
part of the country is rich in historic reminiscences, and poor as Sahara
in every thing else. For instance, as we approached the Dardanelles, we
coasted along the Plains of Troy and past the mouth of the Scamander; we
saw where Troy had stood (in the distance,) and where it does not stand
now--a city that perished when the world was young. The poor Trojans are
all dead, now. They were born too late to see Noah's ark, and died too
soon to see our menagerie. We saw where Agamemnon's fleets rendezvoused,
and away inland a mountain which the map said was Mount Ida. Within the
Hellespont we saw where the original first shoddy contract mentioned in
history was carried out, and the "parties of the second part" gently
rebuked by Xerxes. I speak of the famous bridge of boats which Xerxes
ordered to be built over the narrowest part of the Hellespont (where it
is only two or three miles wide.) A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy
structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors
might have a good effect on the next set, called them out before the army
and had them beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for
the bridge. It has been observed by ancient writers that the second
bridge was a very good bridge. Xerxes crossed his host of five millions
of men on it, and if it had not been purposely destroyed, it would
probably have been there yet. If our Government would rebuke some of our
shoddy contractors occasionally, it might work much good. In the
Hellespont we saw where Leander and Lord Byron swam across, the one to
see her upon whom his soul's affections were fixed with a devotion that
only death could impair, and the other merely for a flyer, as Jack says.
We had two noted tombs near us, too. On one shore slept Ajax, and on the
other Hecuba.
We had water batteries and forts on both sides of the Hellespont, flying
the crimson flag of Turkey, with its white crescent, and occasionally a
village, and sometimes a train of camels; we had all these to look at
till we entered the broad sea of Marmora, and then the land soon fading
from view, we resumed euchre and whist once more.
We dropped anchor in the mouth of the Golden Horn at daylight in the
morning. Only three or four of us were up to see the great Ottoman
capital. The passengers do not turn out at unseasonable hours, as they
used to, to get the earliest possible glimpse of strange foreign cities.
They are well over that. If we were lying in sight of the Pyramids of
Egypt, they would not come on deck until after breakfast, now-a-days.
The Golden Horn is a narrow arm of the sea, which branches from the
Bosporus (a sort of broad river which connects the Marmora and Black
Seas,) and, curving around, divides the city in the middle. Galata and
Pera are on one side of the Bosporus, and the Golden Horn; Stamboul
(ancient Byzantium) is upon the other. On the other bank of the Bosporus
is Scutari and other suburbs of Constantinople. This great city contains
a million inhabitants, but so narrow are its streets, and so crowded
together are its houses, that it does not cover much more than half as
much ground as New York City. Seen from the anchorage or from a mile or
so up the Bosporus, it is by far the handsomest city we have seen. Its
dense array of houses swells upward from the water's edge, and spreads
over the domes of many hills; and the gardens that peep out here and
there, the great globes of the mosques, and the countless minarets that
meet the eye every where, invest the metropolis with the quaint Oriental
aspect one dreams of when he reads books of eastern travel.
Constantinople makes a noble picture.
But its attractiveness begins and ends with its picturesqueness. From
the time one starts ashore till he gets back again, he execrates it. The
boat he goes in is admirably miscalculated for the service it is built
for. It is handsomely and neatly fitted up, but no man could handle it
well in the turbulent currents that sweep down the Bosporus from the
Black Sea, and few men could row it satisfactorily even in still water.
It is a long, light canoe (caique,) large at one end and tapering to a
knife blade at the other. They make that long sharp end the bow, and you
can imagine how these boiling currents spin it about. It has two oars,
and sometimes four, and no rudder. You start to go to a given point and
you run in fifty different directions before you get there. First one
oar is backing water, and then the other; it is seldom that both are
going ahead at once. This kind of boating is calculated to drive an
impatient man mad in a week. The boatmen are the awkwardest, the
stupidest, and the most unscientific on earth, without question.
Ashore, it was--well, it was an eternal circus. People were thicker than
bees, in those narrow streets, and the men were dressed in all the
outrageous, outlandish, idolatrous, extravagant, thunder-and-lightning
costumes that ever a tailor with the delirium tremens and seven devils
could conceive of. There was no freak in dress too crazy to be indulged
in; no absurdity too absurd to be tolerated; no frenzy in ragged
diabolism too fantastic to be attempted. No two men were dressed alike.
It was a wild masquerade of all imaginable costumes--every struggling
throng in every street was a dissolving view of stunning contrasts. Some
patriarchs wore awful turbans, but the grand mass of the infidel horde
wore the fiery red skull-cap they call a fez. All the remainder of the
raiment they indulged in was utterly indescribable.
The shops here are mere coops, mere boxes, bath-rooms, closets--any thing
you please to call them--on the first floor. The Turks sit cross-legged
in them, and work and trade and smoke long pipes, and smell like--like
Turks. That covers the ground. Crowding the narrow streets in front of
them are beggars, who beg forever, yet never collect any thing; and
wonderful cripples, distorted out of all semblance of humanity, almost;
vagabonds driving laden asses; porters carrying dry-goods boxes as large
as cottages on their backs; peddlers of grapes, hot corn, pumpkin seeds,
and a hundred other things, yelling like fiends; and sleeping happily,
comfortably, serenely, among the hurrying feet, are the famed dogs of
Constantinople; drifting noiselessly about are squads of Turkish women,
draped from chin to feet in flowing robes, and with snowy veils bound
about their heads, that disclose only the eyes and a vague, shadowy
notion of their features. Seen moving about, far away in the dim, arched
aisles of the Great Bazaar, they look as the shrouded dead must have
looked when they walked forth from their graves amid the storms and
thunders and earthquakes that burst upon Calvary that awful night of the
Crucifixion. A street in Constantinople is a picture which one ought to
see once--not oftener.
And then there was the goose-rancher--a fellow who drove a hundred geese
before him about the city, and tried to sell them. He had a pole ten
feet long, with a crook in the end of it, and occasionally a goose would
branch out from the flock and make a lively break around the corner, with
wings half lifted and neck stretched to its utmost. Did the
goose-merchant get excited? No. He took his pole and reached after
that goose with unspeakable sang froid--took a hitch round his neck, and
"yanked" him back to his place in the flock without an effort. He
steered his geese with that stick as easily as another man would steer a
yawl. A few hours afterward we saw him sitting on a stone at a corner,
in the midst of the turmoil, sound asleep in the sun, with his geese
squatting around him, or dodging out of the way of asses and men. We
came by again, within the hour, and he was taking account of stock, to
see whether any of his flock had strayed or been stolen. The way he did
it was unique. He put the end of his stick within six or eight inches of
a stone wall, and made the geese march in single file between it and the
wall. He counted them as they went by. There was no dodging that
arrangement.
If you want dwarfs--I mean just a few dwarfs for a curiosity--go to
Genoa. If you wish to buy them by the gross, for retail, go to Milan.
There are plenty of dwarfs all over Italy, but it did seem to me that in
Milan the crop was luxuriant. If you would see a fair average style of
assorted cripples, go to Naples, or travel through the Roman States.
But if you would see the very heart and home of cripples and human
monsters, both, go straight to Constantinople. A beggar in Naples who
can show a foot which has all run into one horrible toe, with one
shapeless nail on it, has a fortune--but such an exhibition as that would
not provoke any notice in Constantinople. The man would starve. Who
would pay any attention to attractions like his among the rare monsters
that throng the bridges of the Golden Horn and display their deformities
in the gutters of Stamboul? O, wretched impostor! How could he stand
against the three-legged woman, and the man with his eye in his cheek?
How would he blush in presence of the man with fingers on his elbow?
Where would he hide himself when the dwarf with seven fingers on each
hand, no upper lip, and his under-jaw gone, came down in his majesty?
Bismillah! The cripples of Europe are a delusion and a fraud. The truly
gifted flourish only in the by-ways of Pera and Stamboul.
That three-legged woman lay on the bridge, with her stock in trade so
disposed as to command the most striking effect--one natural leg, and two
long, slender, twisted ones with feet on them like somebody else's
fore-arm. Then there was a man further along who had no eyes, and whose
face was the color of a fly-blown beefsteak, and wrinkled and twisted
like a lava-flow--and verily so tumbled and distorted were his features
that no man could tell the wart that served him for a nose from his
cheek-bones. In Stamboul was a man with a prodigious head, an uncommonly
long body, legs eight inches long and feet like snow-shoes. He traveled
on those feet and his hands, and was as sway-backed as if the Colossus
of Rhodes had been riding him. Ah, a beggar has to have exceedingly
good points to make a living in Constantinople. A blue-faced man, who
had nothing to offer except that he had been blown up in a mine, would
be regarded as a rank impostor, and a mere damaged soldier on crutches
would never make a cent. It would pay him to get apiece of his head
taken off, and cultivate a wen like a carpet sack.
The Mosque of St. Sophia is the chief lion of Constantinople. You must
get a firman and hurry there the first thing. We did that. We did not
get a firman, but we took along four or five francs apiece, which is much
the same thing.
I do not think much of the Mosque of St. Sophia. I suppose I lack
appreciation. We will let it go at that. It is the rustiest old barn in
heathendom. I believe all the interest that attaches to it comes from
the fact that it was built for a Christian church and then turned into a
mosque, without much alteration, by the Mohammedan conquerors of the
land. They made me take off my boots and walk into the place in my
stocking-feet. I caught cold, and got myself so stuck up with a
complication of gums, slime and general corruption, that I wore out more
than two thousand pair of boot-jacks getting my boots off that night, and
even then some Christian hide peeled off with them. I abate not a single
boot-jack.
St. Sophia is a colossal church, thirteen or fourteen hundred years old,
and unsightly enough to be very, very much older. Its immense dome is
said to be more wonderful than St. Peter's, but its dirt is much more
wonderful than its dome, though they never mention it. The church has a
hundred and seventy pillars in it, each a single piece, and all of costly
marbles of various kinds, but they came from ancient temples at Baalbec,
Heliopolis, Athens and Ephesus, and are battered, ugly and repulsive.
They were a thousand years old when this church was new, and then the
contrast must have been ghastly--if Justinian's architects did not trim
them any. The inside of the dome is figured all over with a monstrous
inscription in Turkish characters, wrought in gold mosaic, that looks as
glaring as a circus bill; the pavements and the marble balustrades are
all battered and dirty; the perspective is marred every where by a web of
ropes that depend from the dizzy height of the dome, and suspend
countless dingy, coarse oil lamps, and ostrich-eggs, six or seven feet
above the floor. Squatting and sitting in groups, here and there and far
and near, were ragged Turks reading books, hearing sermons, or receiving
lessons like children. and in fifty places were more of the same sort
bowing and straightening up, bowing again and getting down to kiss the
earth, muttering prayers the while, and keeping up their gymnastics till
they ought to have been tired, if they were not.
Every where was dirt, and dust, and dinginess, and gloom; every where
were signs of a hoary antiquity, but with nothing touching or beautiful
about it; every where were those groups of fantastic pagans; overhead the
gaudy mosaics and the web of lamp-ropes--nowhere was there any thing to
win one's love or challenge his admiration.
The people who go into ecstasies over St. Sophia must surely get them out
of the guide-book (where every church is spoken of as being "considered
by good judges to be the most marvelous structure, in many respects, that
the world has ever seen.") Or else they are those old connoisseurs from
the wilds of New Jersey who laboriously learn the difference between a
fresco and a fire-plug and from that day forward feel privileged to void
their critical bathos on painting, sculpture and architecture forever
more.
We visited the Dancing Dervishes. There were twenty-one of them. They
wore a long, light-colored loose robe that hung to their heels. Each in
his turn went up to the priest (they were all within a large circular
railing) and bowed profoundly and then went spinning away deliriously and
took his appointed place in the circle, and continued to spin. When all
had spun themselves to their places, they were about five or six feet
apart--and so situated, the entire circle of spinning pagans spun itself
three separate times around the room. It took twenty-five minutes to do
it. They spun on the left foot, and kept themselves going by passing the
right rapidly before it and digging it against the waxed floor. Some of
them made incredible "time." Most of them spun around forty times in a
minute, and one artist averaged about sixty-one times a minute, and kept
it up during the whole twenty-five. His robe filled with air and stood
out all around him like a balloon.
They made no noise of any kind, and most of them tilted their heads back
and closed their eyes, entranced with a sort of devotional ecstacy.
There was a rude kind of music, part of the time, but the musicians were
not visible. None but spinners were allowed within the circle. A man
had to either spin or stay outside. It was about as barbarous an
exhibition as we have witnessed yet. Then sick persons came and lay
down, and beside them women laid their sick children (one a babe at the
breast,) and the patriarch of the Dervishes walked upon their bodies. He
was supposed to cure their diseases by trampling upon their breasts or
backs or standing on the back of their necks. This is well enough for a
people who think all their affairs are made or marred by viewless spirits
of the air--by giants, gnomes, and genii--and who still believe, to this
day, all the wild tales in the Arabian Nights. Even so an intelligent
missionary tells me.
We visited the Thousand and One Columns. I do not know what it was
originally intended for, but they said it was built for a reservoir. It
is situated in the centre of Constantinople. You go down a flight of
stone steps in the middle of a barren place, and there you are. You are
forty feet under ground, and in the midst of a perfect wilderness of
tall, slender, granite columns, of Byzantine architecture. Stand where
you would, or change your position as often as you pleased, you were
always a centre from which radiated a dozen long archways and colonnades
that lost themselves in distance and the sombre twilight of the place.
This old dried-up reservoir is occupied by a few ghostly silk-spinners
now, and one of them showed me a cross cut high up in one of the pillars.
I suppose he meant me to understand that the institution was there before
the Turkish occupation, and I thought he made a remark to that effect;
but he must have had an impediment in his speech, for I did not
understand him.
We took off our shoes and went into the marble mausoleum of the Sultan
Mahmoud, the neatest piece of architecture, inside, that I have seen
lately. Mahmoud's tomb was covered with a black velvet pall, which was
elaborately embroidered with silver; it stood within a fancy silver
railing; at the sides and corners were silver candlesticks that would
weigh more than a hundred pounds, and they supported candles as large as
a man's leg; on the top of the sarcophagus was a fez, with a handsome
diamond ornament upon it, which an attendant said cost a hundred thousand
pounds, and lied like a Turk when he said it. Mahmoud's whole family
were comfortably planted around him.
We went to the great Bazaar in Stamboul, of course, and I shall not
describe it further than to say it is a monstrous hive of little shops
--thousands, I should say--all under one roof, and cut up into innumerable
little blocks by narrow streets which are arched overhead. One street is
devoted to a particular kind of merchandise, another to another, and so
on.
When you wish to buy a pair of shoes you have the swing of the whole
street--you do not have to walk yourself down hunting stores in different
localities. It is the same with silks, antiquities, shawls, etc. The
place is crowded with people all the time, and as the gay-colored Eastern
fabrics are lavishly displayed before every shop, the great Bazaar of
Stamboul is one of the sights that are worth seeing. It is full of life,
and stir, and business, dirt, beggars, asses, yelling peddlers, porters,
dervishes, high-born Turkish female shoppers, Greeks, and weird-looking
and weirdly dressed Mohammedans from the mountains and the far provinces
--and the only solitary thing one does not smell when he is in the Great
Bazaar, is something which smells good.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Mosques are plenty, churches are plenty, graveyards are plenty, but
morals and whiskey are scarce. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to
drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say
the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy. It
makes our cheeks burn with shame to see such a thing permitted here in
Turkey. We do not mind it so much in Salt Lake, however.
Circassian and Georgian girls are still sold in Constantinople by their
parents, but not publicly. The great slave marts we have all read so
much about--where tender young girls were stripped for inspection, and
criticised and discussed just as if they were horses at an agricultural
fair--no longer exist. The exhibition and the sales are private now.
Stocks are up, just at present, partly because of a brisk demand created
by the recent return of the Sultan's suite from the courts of Europe;
partly on account of an unusual abundance of bread-stuffs, which leaves
holders untortured by hunger and enables them to hold back for high
prices; and partly because buyers are too weak to bear the market, while
sellers are amply prepared to bull it. Under these circumstances, if the
American metropolitan newspapers were published here in Constantinople,
their next commercial report would read about as follows, I suppose:
SLAVE GIRL MARKET REPORT.
"Best brands Circassians, crop of 1850, L200; 1852, L250; 1854,
L300. Best brands Georgian, none in market; second quality, 1851,
L180. Nineteen fair to middling Wallachian girls offered at L130 @
150, but no takers; sixteen prime A 1 sold in small lots to close
out--terms private.
"Sales of one lot Circassians, prime to good, 1852 to 1854, at L240
@ 242, buyer 30; one forty-niner--damaged--at L23, seller ten, no
deposit. Several Georgians, fancy brands, 1852, changed hands to
fill orders. The Georgians now on hand are mostly last year's crop,
which was unusually poor. The new crop is a little backward, but
will be coming in shortly. As regards its quantity and quality, the
accounts are most encouraging. In this connection we can safely
say, also, that the new crop of Circassians is looking extremely
well. His Majesty the Sultan has already sent in large orders for
his new harem, which will be finished within a fortnight, and this
has naturally strengthened the market and given Circassian stock a
strong upward tendency. Taking advantage of the inflated market,
many of our shrewdest operators are selling short. There are hints
of a "corner" on Wallachians.
"There is nothing new in Nubians. Slow sale.
"Eunuchs--None offering; however, large cargoes are expected from
Egypt today."
I think the above would be about the style of the commercial report.
Prices are pretty high now, and holders firm; but, two or three years
ago, parents in a starving condition brought their young daughters down
here and sold them for even twenty and thirty dollars, when they could do
no better, simply to save themselves and the girls from dying of want.
It is sad to think of so distressing a thing as this, and I for one am
sincerely glad the prices are up again.
Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There is no gainsaying that.
Greek, Turkish and Armenian morals consist only in attending church
regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and in breaking the ten commandments
all the balance of the week. It comes natural to them to lie and cheat
in the first place, and then they go on and improve on nature until they
arrive at perfection. In recommending his son to a merchant as a
valuable salesman, a father does not say he is a nice, moral, upright
boy, and goes to Sunday School and is honest, but he says, "This boy is
worth his weight in broad pieces of a hundred--for behold, he will cheat
whomsoever hath dealings with him, and from the Euxine to the waters of
Marmora there abideth not so gifted a liar!" How is that for a
recommendation? The Missionaries tell me that they hear encomiums like
that passed upon people every day. They say of a person they admire,
"Ah, he is a charming swindler, and a most exquisite liar!"
Every body lies and cheats--every body who is in business, at any rate.
Even foreigners soon have to come down to the custom of the country, and
they do not buy and sell long in Constantinople till they lie and cheat
like a Greek. I say like a Greek, because the Greeks are called the
worst transgressors in this line. Several Americans long resident in
Constantinople contend that most Turks are pretty trustworthy, but few
claim that the Greeks have any virtues that a man can discover--at least
without a fire assay.
I am half willing to believe that the celebrated dogs of Constantinople
have been misrepresented--slandered. I have always been led to suppose
that they were so thick in the streets that they blocked the way; that
they moved about in organized companies, platoons and regiments, and took
what they wanted by determined and ferocious assault; and that at night
they drowned all other sounds with their terrible howlings. The dogs I
see here can not be those I have read of.
I find them every where, but not in strong force. The most I have found
together has been about ten or twenty. And night or day a fair
proportion of them were sound asleep. Those that were not asleep always
looked as if they wanted to be. I never saw such utterly wretched,
starving, sad-visaged, broken-hearted looking curs in my life. It seemed
a grim satire to accuse such brutes as these of taking things by force of
arms. They hardly seemed to have strength enough or ambition enough to
walk across the street--I do not know that I have seen one walk that far
yet. They are mangy and bruised and mutilated, and often you see one
with the hair singed off him in such wide and well defined tracts that he
looks like a map of the new Territories. They are the sorriest beasts
that breathe--the most abject--the most pitiful. In their faces is a
settled expression of melancholy, an air of hopeless despondency. The
hairless patches on a scalded dog are preferred by the fleas of
Constantinople to a wider range on a healthier dog; and the exposed
places suit the fleas exactly. I saw a dog of this kind start to nibble
at a flea--a fly attracted his attention, and he made a snatch at him;
the flea called for him once more, and that forever unsettled him; he
looked sadly at his flea-pasture, then sadly looked at his bald spot.
Then he heaved a sigh and dropped his head resignedly upon his paws. He
was not equal to the situation.
The dogs sleep in the streets, all over the city. From one end of the
street to the other, I suppose they will average about eight or ten to a
block. Sometimes, of course, there are fifteen or twenty to a block.
They do not belong to any body, and they seem to have no close personal
friendships among each other. But they district the city themselves, and
the dogs of each district, whether it be half a block in extent, or ten
blocks, have to remain within its bounds. Woe to a dog if he crosses the
line! His neighbors would snatch the balance of his hair off in a
second. So it is said. But they don't look it.
They sleep in the streets these days. They are my compass--my guide.
When I see the dogs sleep placidly on, while men, sheep, geese, and all
moving things turn out and go around them, I know I am not in the great
street where the hotel is, and must go further. In the Grand Rue the
dogs have a sort of air of being on the lookout--an air born of being
obliged to get out of the way of many carriages every day--and that
expression one recognizes in a moment. It does not exist upon the face
of any dog without the confines of that street. All others sleep
placidly and keep no watch. They would not move, though the Sultan
himself passed by.
In one narrow street (but none of them are wide) I saw three dogs lying
coiled up, about a foot or two apart. End to end they lay, and so they
just bridged the street neatly, from gutter to gutter. A drove of a
hundred sheep came along. They stepped right over the dogs, the rear
crowding the front, impatient to get on. The dogs looked lazily up,
flinched a little when the impatient feet of the sheep touched their raw
backs--sighed, and lay peacefully down again. No talk could be plainer
than that. So some of the sheep jumped over them and others scrambled
between, occasionally chipping a leg with their sharp hoofs, and when the
whole flock had made the trip, the dogs sneezed a little, in the cloud of
dust, but never budged their bodies an inch. I thought I was lazy, but I
am a steam-engine compared to a Constantinople dog. But was not that a
singular scene for a city of a million inhabitants?
These dogs are the scavengers of the city. That is their official
position, and a hard one it is. However, it is their protection. But
for their usefulness in partially cleansing these terrible streets, they
would not be tolerated long. They eat any thing and every thing that
comes in their way, from melon rinds and spoiled grapes up through all
the grades and species of dirt and refuse to their own dead friends and
relatives--and yet they are always lean, always hungry, always
despondent. The people are loath to kill them--do not kill them, in
fact. The Turks have an innate antipathy to taking the life of any dumb
animal, it is said. But they do worse. They hang and kick and stone and
scald these wretched creatures to the very verge of death, and then leave
them to live and suffer.
Once a Sultan proposed to kill off all the dogs here, and did begin the
work--but the populace raised such a howl of horror about it that the
massacre was stayed. After a while, he proposed to remove them all to an
island in the Sea of Marmora. No objection was offered, and a ship-load
or so was taken away. But when it came to be known that somehow or other
the dogs never got to the island, but always fell overboard in the night
and perished, another howl was raised and the transportation scheme was
dropped.
So the dogs remain in peaceable possession of the streets. I do not say
that they do not howl at night, nor that they do not attack people who
have not a red fez on their heads. I only say that it would be mean for
me to accuse them of these unseemly things who have not seen them do them
with my own eyes or heard them with my own ears.
I was a little surprised to see Turks and Greeks playing newsboy right
here in the mysterious land where the giants and genii of the Arabian
Nights once dwelt--where winged horses and hydra-headed dragons guarded
enchanted castles--where Princes and Princesses flew through the air on
carpets that obeyed a mystic talisman--where cities whose houses were
made of precious stones sprang up in a night under the hand of the
magician, and where busy marts were suddenly stricken with a spell and
each citizen lay or sat, or stood with weapon raised or foot advanced,
just as he was, speechless and motionless, till time had told a hundred
years!
It was curious to see newsboys selling papers in so dreamy a land as
that. And, to say truly, it is comparatively a new thing here. The
selling of newspapers had its birth in Constantinople about a year ago,
and was a child of the Prussian and Austrian war.
There is one paper published here in the English language--The Levant
Herald--and there are generally a number of Greek and a few French papers
rising and falling, struggling up and falling again. Newspapers are not
popular with the Sultan's Government. They do not understand journalism.
The proverb says, "The unknown is always great." To the court, the
newspaper is a mysterious and rascally institution. They know what a
pestilence is, because they have one occasionally that thins the people
out at the rate of two thousand a day, and they regard a newspaper as a
mild form of pestilence. When it goes astray, they suppress it--pounce
upon it without warning, and throttle it. When it don't go astray for a
long time, they get suspicious and throttle it anyhow, because they think
it is hatching deviltry. Imagine the Grand Vizier in solemn council with
the magnates of the realm, spelling his way through the hated newspaper,
and finally delivering his profound decision: "This thing means mischief
--it is too darkly, too suspiciously inoffensive--suppress it! Warn the
publisher that we can not have this sort of thing: put the editor in
prison!"
The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two
Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days of
each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed. From
time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors that
the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that editor
knows better, he still has to print the notice. The Levant Herald is too
fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the Sultan,
who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore that
paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of trouble.
Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper that the
Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different tenor,
from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and fifty
dollars for it. Shortly he printed another from the same source and was
imprisoned three months for his pains. I think I could get the assistant
editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to worry along
without it.
To suppress a paper here involves the ruin of the publisher, almost. But
in Naples I think they speculate on misfortunes of that kind. Papers are
suppressed there every day, and spring up the next day under a new name.
During the ten days or a fortnight we staid there one paper was murdered
and resurrected twice. The newsboys are smart there, just as they are
elsewhere. They take advantage of popular weaknesses. When they find
they are not likely to sell out, they approach a citizen mysteriously,
and say in a low voice--"Last copy, sir: double price; paper just been
suppressed!" The man buys it, of course, and finds nothing in it. They
do say--I do not vouch for it--but they do say that men sometimes print a
vast edition of a paper, with a ferociously seditious article in it,
distribute it quickly among the newsboys, and clear out till the
Government's indignation cools. It pays well. Confiscation don't amount
to any thing. The type and presses are not worth taking care of.
There is only one English newspaper in Naples. It has seventy
subscribers. The publisher is getting rich very deliberately--very
deliberately indeed.
I never shall want another Turkish lunch. The cooking apparatus was in
the little lunch room, near the bazaar, and it was all open to the
street. The cook was slovenly, and so was the table, and it had no cloth
on it. The fellow took a mass of sausage meat and coated it round a wire
and laid it on a charcoal fire to cook. When it was done, he laid it
aside and a dog walked sadly in and nipped it. He smelt it first, and
probably recognized the remains of a friend. The cook took it away from
him and laid it before us. Jack said, "I pass"--he plays euchre
sometimes--and we all passed in turn. Then the cook baked a broad, flat,
wheaten cake, greased it well with the sausage, and started towards us
with it. It dropped in the dirt, and he picked it up and polished it on
his breeches, and laid it before us. Jack said, "I pass." We all
passed. He put some eggs in a frying pan, and stood pensively prying
slabs of meat from between his teeth with a fork. Then he used the fork
to turn the eggs with--and brought them along. Jack said "Pass again."
All followed suit. We did not know what to do, and so we ordered a new
ration of sausage. The cook got out his wire, apportioned a proper
amount of sausage-meat, spat it on his hands and fell to work! This
time, with one accord, we all passed out. We paid and left. That is
all I learned about Turkish lunches. A Turkish lunch is good, no doubt,
but it has its little drawbacks.
When I think how I have been swindled by books of Oriental travel, I want
a tourist for breakfast. For years and years I have dreamed of the
wonders of the Turkish bath; for years and years I have promised myself
that I would yet enjoy one. Many and many a time, in fancy, I have lain
in the marble bath, and breathed the slumbrous fragrance of Eastern
spices that filled the air; then passed through a weird and complicated
system of pulling and hauling, and drenching and scrubbing, by a gang of
naked savages who loomed vast and vaguely through the steaming mists,
like demons; then rested for a while on a divan fit for a king; then
passed through another complex ordeal, and one more fearful than the
first; and, finally, swathed in soft fabrics, been conveyed to a princely
saloon and laid on a bed of eider down, where eunuchs, gorgeous of
costume, fanned me while I drowsed and dreamed, or contentedly gazed at
the rich hangings of the apartment, the soft carpets, the sumptuous
furniture, the pictures, and drank delicious coffee, smoked the soothing
narghili, and dropped, at the last, into tranquil repose, lulled by
sensuous odors from unseen censers, by the gentle influence of the
narghili's Persian tobacco, and by the music of fountains that
counterfeited the pattering of summer rain.
That was the picture, just as I got it from incendiary books of travel.
It was a poor, miserable imposture. The reality is no more like it than
the Five Points are like the Garden of Eden. They received me in a great
court, paved with marble slabs; around it were broad galleries, one above
another, carpeted with seedy matting, railed with unpainted balustrades,
and furnished with huge rickety chairs, cushioned with rusty old
mattresses, indented with impressions left by the forms of nine
successive generations of men who had reposed upon them. The place was
vast, naked, dreary; its court a barn, its galleries stalls for human
horses. The cadaverous, half nude varlets that served in the
establishment had nothing of poetry in their appearance, nothing of
romance, nothing of Oriental splendor. They shed no entrancing odors
--just the contrary. Their hungry eyes and their lank forms continually
suggested one glaring, unsentimental fact--they wanted what they term in
California "a square meal."
I went into one of the racks and undressed. An unclean starveling
wrapped a gaudy table-cloth about his loins, and hung a white rag over my
shoulders. If I had had a tub then, it would have come natural to me to
take in washing. I was then conducted down stairs into the wet, slippery
court, and the first things that attracted my attention were my heels.
My fall excited no comment. They expected it, no doubt. It belonged in
the list of softening, sensuous influences peculiar to this home of
Eastern luxury. It was softening enough, certainly, but its application
was not happy. They now gave me a pair of wooden clogs--benches in
miniature, with leather straps over them to confine my feet (which they
would have done, only I do not wear No. 13s.) These things dangled
uncomfortably by the straps when I lifted up my feet, and came down in
awkward and unexpected places when I put them on the floor again, and
sometimes turned sideways and wrenched my ankles out of joint. However,
it was all Oriental luxury, and I did what I could to enjoy it.
They put me in another part of the barn and laid me on a stuffy sort of
pallet, which was not made of cloth of gold, or Persian shawls, but was
merely the unpretending sort of thing I have seen in the negro quarters
of Arkansas. There was nothing whatever in this dim marble prison but
five more of these biers. It was a very solemn place. I expected that
the spiced odors of Araby were going to steal over my senses now, but
they did not. A copper-colored skeleton, with a rag around him, brought
me a glass decanter of water, with a lighted tobacco pipe in the top of
it, and a pliant stem a yard long, with a brass mouth-piece to it.
It was the famous "narghili" of the East--the thing the Grand Turk smokes
in the pictures. This began to look like luxury. I took one blast at
it, and it was sufficient; the smoke went in a great volume down into my
stomach, my lungs, even into the uttermost parts of my frame. I exploded
one mighty cough, and it was as if Vesuvius had let go. For the next
five minutes I smoked at every pore, like a frame house that is on fire
on the inside. Not any more narghili for me. The smoke had a vile
taste, and the taste of a thousand infidel tongues that remained on that
brass mouthpiece was viler still. I was getting discouraged. Whenever,
hereafter, I see the cross-legged Grand Turk smoking his narghili, in
pretended bliss, on the outside of a paper of Connecticut tobacco, I
shall know him for the shameless humbug he is.
This prison was filled with hot air. When I had got warmed up
sufficiently to prepare me for a still warmer temperature, they took me
where it was--into a marble room, wet, slippery and steamy, and laid me
out on a raised platform in the centre. It was very warm. Presently my
man sat me down by a tank of hot water, drenched me well, gloved his hand
with a coarse mitten, and began to polish me all over with it. I began
to smell disagreeably. The more he polished the worse I smelt. It was
alarming. I said to him:
"I perceive that I am pretty far gone. It is plain that I ought to be
buried without any unnecessary delay. Perhaps you had better go after my
friends at once, because the weather is warm, and I can not 'keep' long."
He went on scrubbing, and paid no attention. I soon saw that he was
reducing my size. He bore hard on his mitten, and from under it rolled
little cylinders, like maccaroni. It could not be dirt, for it was too
white. He pared me down in this way for a long time. Finally I said:
"It is a tedious process. It will take hours to trim me to the size you
want me; I will wait; go and borrow a jack-plane."
He paid no attention at all.
After a while he brought a basin, some soap, and something that seemed to
be the tail of a horse. He made up a prodigious quantity of soap-suds,
deluged me with them from head to foot, without warning me to shut my
eyes, and then swabbed me viciously with the horse-tail. Then he left me
there, a snowy statue of lather, and went away. When I got tired of
waiting I went and hunted him up. He was propped against the wall, in
another room, asleep. I woke him. He was not disconcerted. He took me
back and flooded me with hot water, then turbaned my head, swathed me
with dry table-cloths, and conducted me to a latticed chicken-coop in one
of the galleries, and pointed to one of those Arkansas beds. I mounted
it, and vaguely expected the odors of Araby a gain. They did not come.
The blank, unornamented coop had nothing about it of that oriental
voluptuousness one reads of so much. It was more suggestive of the
county hospital than any thing else. The skinny servitor brought a
narghili, and I got him to take it out again without wasting any time
about it. Then he brought the world-renowned Turkish coffee that poets
have sung so rapturously for many generations, and I seized upon it as
the last hope that was left of my old dreams of Eastern luxury. It was
another fraud. Of all the unchristian beverages that ever passed my
lips, Turkish coffee is the worst. The cup is small, it is smeared with
grounds; the coffee is black, thick, unsavory of smell, and execrable in
taste. The bottom of the cup has a muddy sediment in it half an inch
deep. This goes down your throat, and portions of it lodge by the way,
and produce a tickling aggravation that keeps you barking and coughing
for an hour.
Here endeth my experience of the celebrated Turkish bath, and here also
endeth my dream of the bliss the mortal revels in who passes through it.
It is a malignant swindle. The man who enjoys it is qualified to enjoy
any thing that is repulsive to sight or sense, and he that can invest it
with a charm of poetry is able to do the same with any thing else in the
world that is tedious, and wretched, and dismal, and nasty.
CHAPTER XXXV.
We left a dozen passengers in Constantinople, and sailed through the
beautiful Bosporus and far up into the Black Sea. We left them in the
clutches of the celebrated Turkish guide, "FAR-AWAY MOSES," who will
seduce them into buying a ship-load of ottar of roses, splendid Turkish
vestments, and ail manner of curious things they can never have any use
for. Murray's invaluable guide-books have mentioned 'Far-away Moses'
name, and he is a made man. He rejoices daily in the fact that he is a
recognized celebrity. However, we can not alter our established customs
to please the whims of guides; we can not show partialities this late in
the day. Therefore, ignoring this fellow's brilliant fame, and ignoring
the fanciful name he takes such pride in, we called him Ferguson, just as
we had done with all other guides. It has kept him in a state of
smothered exasperation all the time. Yet we meant him no harm. After he
has gotten himself up regardless of expense, in showy, baggy trowsers,
yellow, pointed slippers, fiery fez, silken jacket of blue, voluminous
waist-sash of fancy Persian stuff filled with a battery of silver-mounted
horse-pistols, and has strapped on his terrible scimitar, he considers it
an unspeakable humiliation to be called Ferguson. It can not be helped.
All guides are Fergusons to us. We can not master their dreadful foreign
names.
Sebastopol is probably the worst battered town in Russia or any where
else. But we ought to be pleased with it, nevertheless, for we have been
in no country yet where we have been so kindly received, and where we
felt that to be Americans was a sufficient visa for our passports. The
moment the anchor was down, the Governor of the town immediately
dispatched an officer on board to inquire if he could be of any
assistance to us, and to invite us to make ourselves at home in
Sebastopol! If you know Russia, you know that this was a wild stretch of
hospitality. They are usually so suspicious of strangers that they worry
them excessively with the delays and aggravations incident to a
complicated passport system. Had we come from any other country we could
not have had permission to enter Sebastopol and leave again under three
days--but as it was, we were at liberty to go and come when and where we
pleased. Every body in Constantinople warned us to be very careful about
our passports, see that they were strictly 'en regle', and never to
mislay them for a moment: and they told us of numerous instances of
Englishmen and others who were delayed days, weeks, and even months, in
Sebastopol, on account of trifling informalities in their passports, and
for which they were not to blame. I had lost my passport, and was
traveling under my room-mate's, who stayed behind in Constantinople to
await our return. To read the description of him in that passport and
then look at me, any man could see that I was no more like him than I am
like Hercules. So I went into the harbor of Sebastopol with fear and
trembling--full of a vague, horrible apprehension that I was going to be
found out and hanged. But all that time my true passport had been
floating gallantly overhead--and behold it was only our flag. They never
asked us for any other.
We have had a great many Russian and English gentlemen and ladies on
board to-day, and the time has passed cheerfully away. They were all
happy-spirited people, and I never heard our mother tongue sound so
pleasantly as it did when it fell from those English lips in this far-off
land. I talked to the Russians a good deal, just to be friendly, and
they talked to me from the same motive; I am sure that both enjoyed the
conversation, but never a word of it either of us understood. I did most
of my talking to those English people though, and I am sorry we can not
carry some of them along with us.
We have gone whithersoever we chose, to-day, and have met with nothing
but the kindest attentions. Nobody inquired whether we had any passports
or not.
Several of the officers of the Government have suggested that we take the
ship to a little watering-place thirty miles from here, and pay the
Emperor of Russia a visit. He is rusticating there. These officers said
they would take it upon themselves to insure us a cordial reception.
They said if we would go, they would not only telegraph the Emperor, but
send a special courier overland to announce our coming. Our time is so
short, though, and more especially our coal is so nearly out, that we
judged it best to forego the rare pleasure of holding social intercourse
with an Emperor.
Ruined Pompeii is in good condition compared to Sebastopol. Here, you
may look in whatsoever direction you please, and your eye encounters
scarcely any thing but ruin, ruin, ruin!--fragments of houses, crumbled
walls, torn and ragged hills, devastation every where! It is as if a
mighty earthquake had spent all its terrible forces upon this one little
spot. For eighteen long months the storms of war beat upon the helpless
town, and left it at last the saddest wreck that ever the sun has looked
upon. Not one solitary house escaped unscathed--not one remained
habitable, even. Such utter and complete ruin one could hardly conceive
of. The houses had all been solid, dressed stone structures; most of
them were ploughed through and through by cannon balls--unroofed and
sliced down from eaves to foundation--and now a row of them, half a mile
long, looks merely like an endless procession of battered chimneys. No
semblance of a house remains in such as these. Some of the larger
buildings had corners knocked off; pillars cut in two; cornices smashed;
holes driven straight through the walls. Many of these holes are as
round and as cleanly cut as if they had been made with an auger. Others
are half pierced through, and the clean impression is there in the rock,
as smooth and as shapely as if it were done in putty. Here and there a
ball still sticks in a wall, and from it iron tears trickle down and
discolor the stone.
The battle-fields were pretty close together. The Malakoff tower is on
a hill which is right in the edge of the town. The Redan was within
rifle-shot of the Malakoff; Inkerman was a mile away; and Balaklava
removed but an hour's ride. The French trenches, by which they
approached and invested the Malakoff were carried so close under its
sloping sides that one might have stood by the Russian guns and tossed a
stone into them. Repeatedly, during three terrible days, they swarmed up
the little Malakoff hill, and were beaten back with terrible slaughter.
Finally, they captured the place, and drove the Russians out, who then
tried to retreat into the town, but the English had taken the Redan, and
shut them off with a wall of flame; there was nothing for them to do but
go back and retake the Malakoff or die under its guns. They did go
back; they took the Malakoff and retook it two or three times, but their
desperate valor could not avail, and they had to give up at last.
These fearful fields, where such tempests of death used to rage, are
peaceful enough now; no sound is heard, hardly a living thing moves about
them, they are lonely and silent--their desolation is complete.
There was nothing else to do, and so every body went to hunting relics.
They have stocked the ship with them. They brought them from the
Malakoff, from the Redan, Inkerman, Balaklava--every where. They have
brought cannon balls, broken ramrods, fragments of shell--iron enough to
freight a sloop. Some have even brought bones--brought them laboriously
from great distances, and were grieved to hear the surgeon pronounce them
only bones of mules and oxen. I knew Blucher would not lose an
opportunity like this. He brought a sack full on board and was going for
another. I prevailed upon him not to go. He has already turned his
state-room into a museum of worthless trumpery, which he has gathered up
in his travels. He is labeling his trophies, now. I picked up one a
while ago, and found it marked "Fragment of a Russian General." I
carried it out to get a better light upon it--it was nothing but a couple
of teeth and part of the jaw-bone of a horse. I said with some asperity:
"Fragment of a Russian General! This is absurd. Are you never going to
learn any sense?"
He only said: "Go slow--the old woman won't know any different." [His
aunt.]
This person gathers mementoes with a perfect recklessness, now-a-days;
mixes them all up together, and then serenely labels them without any
regard to truth, propriety, or even plausibility. I have found him
breaking a stone in two, and labeling half of it "Chunk busted from the
pulpit of Demosthenes," and the other half "Darnick from the Tomb of
Abelard and Heloise." I have known him to gather up a handful of pebbles
by the roadside, and bring them on board ship and label them as coming
from twenty celebrated localities five hundred miles apart. I
remonstrate against these outrages upon reason and truth, of course, but
it does no good. I get the same tranquil, unanswerable reply every time:
"It don't signify--the old woman won't know any different."
Ever since we three or four fortunate ones made the midnight trip to
Athens, it has afforded him genuine satisfaction to give every body in
the ship a pebble from the Mars-hill where St. Paul preached. He got all
those pebbles on the sea shore, abreast the ship, but professes to have
gathered them from one of our party. However, it is not of any use for
me to expose the deception--it affords him pleasure, and does no harm to
any body. He says he never expects to run out of mementoes of St. Paul
as long as he is in reach of a sand-bank. Well, he is no worse than
others. I notice that all travelers supply deficiencies in their
collections in the same way. I shall never have any confidence in such
things again while I live.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
We have got so far east, now--a hundred and fifty-five degrees of
longitude from San Francisco--that my watch can not "keep the hang" of
the time any more. It has grown discouraged, and stopped. I think it
did a wise thing. The difference in time between Sebastopol and the
Pacific coast is enormous. When it is six o'clock in the morning here,
it is somewhere about week before last in California. We are excusable
for getting a little tangled as to time. These distractions and
distresses about the time have worried me so much that I was afraid my
mind was so much affected that I never would have any appreciation of
time again; but when I noticed how handy I was yet about comprehending
when it was dinner-time, a blessed tranquillity settled down upon me, and
I am tortured with doubts and fears no more.
Odessa is about twenty hours' run from Sebastopol, and is the most
northerly port in the Black Sea. We came here to get coal, principally.
The city has a population of one hundred and thirty-three thousand, and
is growing faster than any other small city out of America. It is a free
port, and is the great grain mart of this particular part of the world.
Its roadstead is full of ships. Engineers are at work, now, turning the
open roadstead into a spacious artificial harbor. It is to be almost
inclosed by massive stone piers, one of which will extend into the sea
over three thousand feet in a straight line.
I have not felt so much at home for a long time as I did when I "raised
the hill" and stood in Odessa for the first time. It looked just like an
American city; fine, broad streets, and straight as well; low houses,
(two or three stories,) wide, neat, and free from any quaintness of
architectural ornamentation; locust trees bordering the sidewalks (they
call them acacias;) a stirring, business-look about the streets and the
stores; fast walkers; a familiar new look about the houses and every
thing; yea, and a driving and smothering cloud of dust that was so like a
message from our own dear native land that we could hardly refrain from
shedding a few grateful tears and execrations in the old time-honored
American way. Look up the street or down the street, this way or that
way, we saw only America! There was not one thing to remind us that we
were in Russia. We walked for some little distance, reveling in this
home vision, and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and
presto! the illusion vanished! The church had a slender-spired dome that
rounded inward at its base, and looked like a turnip turned upside down,
and the hackman seemed to be dressed in a long petticoat with out any
hoops. These things were essentially foreign, and so were the carriages
--but every body knows about these things, and there is no occasion for
my describing them.
We were only to stay here a day and a night and take in coal; we
consulted the guide-books and were rejoiced to know that there were no
sights in Odessa to see; and so we had one good, untrammeled holyday on
our hands, with nothing to do but idle about the city and enjoy
ourselves. We sauntered through the markets and criticised the fearful
and wonderful costumes from the back country; examined the populace as
far as eyes could do it; and closed the entertainment with an ice-cream
debauch. We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are
apt to dissipate to excess. We never cared any thing about ice-cream at
home, but we look upon it with a sort of idolatry now that it is so
scarce in these red-hot climates of the East.
We only found two pieces of statuary, and this was another blessing. One
was a bronze image of the Duc de Richelieu, grand-nephew of the splendid
Cardinal. It stood in a spacious, handsome promenade, overlooking the
sea, and from its base a vast flight of stone steps led down to the
harbor--two hundred of them, fifty feet long, and a wide landing at the
bottom of every twenty. It is a noble staircase, and from a distance the
people toiling up it looked like insects. I mention this statue and this
stairway because they have their story. Richelieu founded Odessa
--watched over it with paternal care--labored with a fertile brain and a
wise understanding for its best interests--spent his fortune freely to
the same end--endowed it with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet
make it one of the great cities of the Old World--built this noble
stairway with money from his own private purse--and--. Well, the people
for whom he had done so much, let him walk down these same steps, one
day, unattended, old, poor, without a second coat to his back; and when,
years afterwards, he died in Sebastopol in poverty and neglect, they
called a meeting, subscribed liberally, and immediately erected this
tasteful monument to his memory, and named a great street after him.
It reminds me of what Robert Burns' mother said when they erected a
stately monument to his memory: "Ah, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and
they hae gi'en ye a stane."
The people of Odessa have warmly recommended us to go and call on the
Emperor, as did the Sebastopolians. They have telegraphed his Majesty,
and he has signified his willingness to grant us an audience. So we are
getting up the anchors and preparing to sail to his watering-place. What
a scratching around there will be, now! what a holding of important
meetings and appointing of solemn committees!--and what a furbishing up
of claw-hammer coats and white silk neck-ties! As this fearful ordeal we
are about to pass through pictures itself to my fancy in all its dread
sublimity, I begin to feel my fierce desire to converse with a genuine
Emperor cooling down and passing away. What am I to do with my hands?
What am I to do with my feet? What in the world am I to do with myself?
CHAPTER XXXVII.
We anchored here at Yalta, Russia, two or three days ago. To me the
place was a vision of the Sierras. The tall, gray mountains that back
it, their sides bristling with pines--cloven with ravines--here and there
a hoary rock towering into view--long, straight streaks sweeping down
from the summit to the sea, marking the passage of some avalanche of
former times--all these were as like what one sees in the Sierras as if
the one were a portrait of the other. The little village of Yalta
nestles at the foot of an amphitheatre which slopes backward and upward
to the wall of hills, and looks as if it might have sunk quietly down to
its present position from a higher elevation. This depression is covered
with the great parks and gardens of noblemen, and through the mass of
green foliage the bright colors of their palaces bud out here and there
like flowers. It is a beautiful spot.
We had the United States Consul on board--the Odessa Consul. We
assembled in the cabin and commanded him to tell us what we must do to be
saved, and tell us quickly. He made a speech. The first thing he said
fell like a blight on every hopeful spirit: he had never seen a court
reception. (Three groans for the Consul.) But he said he had seen
receptions at the Governor General's in Odessa, and had often listened to
people's experiences of receptions at the Russian and other courts, and
believed he knew very well what sort of ordeal we were about to essay.
(Hope budded again.) He said we were many; the summer palace was small
--a mere mansion; doubtless we should be received in summer fashion--in the
garden; we would stand in a row, all the gentlemen in swallow-tail coats,
white kids, and white neck-ties, and the ladies in light-colored silks,
or something of that kind; at the proper moment--12 meridian--the
Emperor, attended by his suite arrayed in splendid uniforms, would appear
and walk slowly along the line, bowing to some, and saying two or three
words to others. At the moment his Majesty appeared, a universal,
delighted, enthusiastic smile ought to break out like a rash among the
passengers--a smile of love, of gratification, of admiration--and with
one accord, the party must begin to bow--not obsequiously, but
respectfully, and with dignity; at the end of fifteen minutes the Emperor
would go in the house, and we could run along home again. We felt
immensely relieved. It seemed, in a manner, easy. There was not a man
in the party but believed that with a little practice he could stand in a
row, especially if there were others along; there was not a man but
believed he could bow without tripping on his coat tail and breaking his
neck; in a word, we came to believe we were equal to any item in the
performance except that complicated smile. The Consul also said we ought
to draft a little address to the Emperor, and present it to one of his
aides-de-camp, who would forward it to him at the proper time.
Therefore, five gentlemen were appointed to prepare the document, and the
fifty others went sadly smiling about the ship--practicing. During the
next twelve hours we had the general appearance, somehow, of being at a
funeral, where every body was sorry the death had occurred, but glad it
was over--where every body was smiling, and yet broken-hearted.
A committee went ashore to wait on his Excellency the Governor-General,
and learn our fate. At the end of three hours of boding suspense, they
came back and said the Emperor would receive us at noon the next day
--would send carriages for us--would hear the address in person. The Grand
Duke Michael had sent to invite us to his palace also. Any man could see
that there was an intention here to show that Russia's friendship for
America was so genuine as to render even her private citizens objects
worthy of kindly attentions.
At the appointed hour we drove out three miles, and assembled in the
handsome garden in front of the Emperor's palace.
We formed a circle under the trees before the door, for there was no one
room in the house able to accommodate our three-score persons
comfortably, and in a few minutes the imperial family came out bowing and
smiling, and stood in our midst. A number of great dignitaries of the
Empire, in undress unit forms, came with them. With every bow, his
Majesty said a word of welcome. I copy these speeches. There is
character in them--Russian character--which is politeness itself, and the
genuine article. The French are polite, but it is often mere ceremonious
politeness. A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness, both
of phrase and expression, that compels belief in their sincerity. As I
was saying, the Czar punctuated his speeches with bows:
"Good morning--I am glad to see you--I am gratified--I am delighted--I am
happy to receive you!"
All took off their hats, and the Consul inflicted the address on him. He
bore it with unflinching fortitude; then took the rusty-looking document
and handed it to some great officer or other, to be filed away among the
archives of Russia--in the stove. He thanked us for the address, and
said he was very much pleased to see us, especially as such friendly
relations existed between Russia and the United States. The Empress said
the Americans were favorites in Russia, and she hoped the Russians were
similarly regarded in America. These were all the speeches that were
made, and I recommend them to parties who present policemen with gold
watches, as models of brevity and point. After this the Empress went and
talked sociably (for an Empress) with various ladies around the circle;
several gentlemen entered into a disjointed general conversation with the
Emperor; the Dukes and Princes, Admirals and Maids of Honor dropped into
free-and-easy chat with first one and then another of our party, and
whoever chose stepped forward and spoke with the modest little Grand
Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is fourteen years old,
light-haired, blue-eyed, unassuming and pretty. Every body talks
English.
The Emperor wore a cap, frock coat and pantaloons, all of some kind of
plain white drilling--cotton or linen and sported no jewelry or any
insignia whatever of rank. No costume could be less ostentatious. He is
very tall and spare, and a determined-looking man, though a very
pleasant-looking one nevertheless. It is easy to see that he is kind and
affectionate There is something very noble in his expression when his cap
is off. There is none of that cunning in his eye that all of us noticed
in Louis Napoleon's.
The Empress and the little Grand Duchess wore simple suits of foulard
(or foulard silk, I don't know which is proper,) with a small blue spot
in it; the dresses were trimmed with blue; both ladies wore broad blue
sashes about their waists; linen collars and clerical ties of muslin;
low-crowned straw-hats trimmed with blue velvet; parasols and
flesh-colored gloves. The Grand Duchess had no heels on her shoes. I
do not know this of my own knowledge, but one of our ladies told me so.
I was not looking at her shoes. I was glad to observe that she wore her
own hair, plaited in thick braids against the back of her head, instead
of the uncomely thing they call a waterfall, which is about as much like
a waterfall as a canvas-covered ham is like a cataract. Taking the kind
expression that is in the Emperor's face and the gentleness that is in
his young daughter's into consideration, I wondered if it would not tax
the Czar's firmness to the utmost to condemn a supplicating wretch to
misery in the wastes of Siberia if she pleaded for him. Every time
their eyes met, I saw more and more what a tremendous power that weak,
diffident school-girl could wield if she chose to do it. Many and many
a time she might rule the Autocrat of Russia, whose lightest word is law
to seventy millions of human beings! She was only a girl, and she
looked like a thousand others I have seen, but never a girl provoked
such a novel and peculiar interest in me before. A strange, new
sensation is a rare thing in this hum-drum life, and I had it here.
There was nothing stale or worn out about the thoughts and feelings the
situation and the circumstances created. It seemed strange--stranger
than I can tell--to think that the central figure in the cluster of men
and women, chatting here under the trees like the most ordinary
individual in the land, was a man who could open his lips and ships
would fly through the waves, locomotives would speed over the plains,
couriers would hurry from village to village, a hundred telegraphs would
flash the word to the four corners of an Empire that stretches its vast
proportions over a seventh part of the habitable globe, and a countless
multitude of men would spring to do his bidding. I had a sort of vague
desire to examine his hands and see if they were of flesh and blood,
like other men's. Here was a man who could do this wonderful thing, and
yet if I chose I could knock him down. The case was plain, but it
seemed preposterous, nevertheless--as preposterous as trying to knock
down a mountain or wipe out a continent. If this man sprained his
ankle, a million miles of telegraph would carry the news over mountains
--valleys--uninhabited deserts--under the trackless sea--and ten thousand
newspapers would prate of it; if he were grievously ill, all the nations
would know it before the sun rose again; if he dropped lifeless where he
stood, his fall might shake the thrones of half a world! If I could
have stolen his coat, I would have done it. When I meet a man like
that, I want something to remember him by.
As a general thing, we have been shown through palaces by some
plush-legged filagreed flunkey or other, who charged a franc for it; but
after talking with the company half an hour, the Emperor of Russia and
his family conducted us all through their mansion themselves. They made
no charge. They seemed to take a real pleasure in it.
We spent half an hour idling through the palace, admiring the cosy
apartments and the rich but eminently home-like appointments of the
place, and then the Imperial family bade our party a kind good-bye, and
proceeded to count the spoons.
An invitation was extended to us to visit the palace of the eldest son,
the Crown Prince of Russia, which was near at hand. The young man was
absent, but the Dukes and Countesses and Princes went over the premises
with us as leisurely as was the case at the Emperor's, and conversation
continued as lively as ever.
It was a little after one o'clock, now. We drove to the Grand Duke
Michael's, a mile away, in response to his invitation, previously given.
We arrived in twenty minutes from the Emperor's. It is a lovely place.
The beautiful palace nestles among the grand old groves of the park, the
park sits in the lap of the picturesque crags and hills, and both look
out upon the breezy ocean. In the park are rustic seats, here and there,
in secluded nooks that are dark with shade; there are rivulets of crystal
water; there are lakelets, with inviting, grassy banks; there are
glimpses of sparkling cascades through openings in the wilderness of
foliage; there are streams of clear water gushing from mimic knots on the
trunks of forest trees; there are miniature marble temples perched upon
gray old crags; there are airy lookouts whence one may gaze upon a broad
expanse of landscape and ocean. The palace is modeled after the choicest
forms of Grecian architecture, and its wide colonnades surround a central
court that is banked with rare flowers that fill the place with their
fragrance, and in their midst springs a fountain that cools the summer
air, and may possibly breed mosquitoes, but I do not think it does.
The Grand Duke and his Duchess came out, and the presentation ceremonies
were as simple as they had been at the Emperor's. In a few minutes,
conversation was under way, as before. The Empress appeared in the
verandah, and the little Grand Duchess came out into the crowd. They had
beaten us there. In a few minutes, the Emperor came himself on
horseback. It was very pleasant. You can appreciate it if you have ever
visited royalty and felt occasionally that possibly you might be wearing
out your welcome--though as a general thing, I believe, royalty is not
scrupulous about discharging you when it is done with you.
The Grand Duke is the third brother of the Emperor, is about thirty-seven
years old, perhaps, and is the princeliest figure in Russia. He is even
taller than the Czar, as straight as an Indian, and bears himself like
one of those gorgeous knights we read about in romances of the Crusades.
He looks like a great-hearted fellow who would pitch an enemy into the
river in a moment, and then jump in and risk his life fishing him out
again. The stories they tell of him show him to be of a brave and
generous nature. He must have been desirous of proving that Americans
were welcome guests in the imperial palaces of Russia, because he rode
all the way to Yalta and escorted our procession to the Emperor's
himself, and kept his aids scurrying about, clearing the road and
offering assistance wherever it could be needed. We were rather familiar
with him then, because we did not know who he was. We recognized him
now, and appreciated the friendly spirit that prompted him to do us a
favor that any other Grand Duke in the world would have doubtless
declined to do. He had plenty of servitors whom he could have sent, but
he chose to attend to the matter himself.
The Grand Duke was dressed in the handsome and showy uniform of a Cossack
officer. The Grand Duchess had on a white alpaca robe, with the seams
and gores trimmed with black barb lace, and a little gray hat with a
feather of the same color. She is young, rather pretty modest and
unpretending, and full of winning politeness.
Our party walked all through the house, and then the nobility escorted
them all over the grounds, and finally brought them back to the palace
about half-past two o'clock to breakfast. They called it breakfast, but
we would have called it luncheon. It consisted of two kinds of wine;
tea, bread, cheese, and cold meats, and was served on the centre-tables
in the reception room and the verandahs--anywhere that was convenient;
there was no ceremony. It was a sort of picnic. I had heard before that
we were to breakfast there, but Blucher said he believed Baker's boy had
suggested it to his Imperial Highness. I think not--though it would be
like him. Baker's boy is the famine-breeder of the ship. He is always
hungry. They say he goes about the state-rooms when the passengers are
out, and eats up all the soap. And they say he eats oakum. They say he
will eat any thing he can get between meals, but he prefers oakum. He
does not like oakum for dinner, but he likes it for a lunch, at odd
hours, or any thing that way. It makes him very disagreeable, because it
makes his breath bad, and keeps his teeth all stuck up with tar. Baker's
boy may have suggested the breakfast, but I hope he did not. It went off
well, anyhow. The illustrious host moved about from place to place, and
helped to destroy the provisions and keep the conversation lively, and
the Grand Duchess talked with the verandah parties and such as had
satisfied their appetites and straggled out from the reception room.
The Grand Duke's tea was delicious. They give one a lemon to squeeze
into it, or iced milk, if he prefers it. The former is best. This tea
is brought overland from China. It injures the article to transport it
by sea.
When it was time to go, we bade our distinguished hosts good-bye, and
they retired happy and contented to their apartments to count their
spoons.
We had spent the best part of half a day in the home of royalty, and had
been as cheerful and comfortable all the time as we could have been in
the ship. I would as soon have thought of being cheerful in Abraham's
bosom as in the palace of an Emperor. I supposed that Emperors were
terrible people. I thought they never did any thing but wear magnificent
crowns and red velvet dressing-gowns with dabs of wool sewed on them in
spots, and sit on thrones and scowl at the flunkies and the people in the
parquette, and order Dukes and Duchesses off to execution. I find,
however, that when one is so fortunate as to get behind the scenes and
see them at home and in the privacy of their firesides, they are
strangely like common mortals. They are pleasanter to look upon then
than they are in their theatrical aspect. It seems to come as natural to
them to dress and act like other people as it is to put a friend's cedar
pencil in your pocket when you are done using it. But I can never have
any confidence in the tinsel kings of the theatre after this. It will be
a great loss. I used to take such a thrilling pleasure in them. But,
hereafter, I will turn me sadly away and say;
"This does not answer--this isn't the style of king that I am acquainted
with."
When they swagger around the stage in jeweled crowns and splendid robes,
I shall feel bound to observe that all the Emperors that ever I was
personally acquainted with wore the commonest sort of clothes, and did
not swagger. And when they come on the stage attended by a vast
body-guard of supes in helmets and tin breastplates, it will be my duty
as well as my pleasure to inform the ignorant that no crowned head of my
acquaintance has a soldier any where about his house or his person.
Possibly it may be thought that our party tarried too long, or did other
improper things, but such was not the case. The company felt that they
were occupying an unusually responsible position--they were representing
the people of America, not the Government--and therefore they were
careful to do their best to perform their high mission with credit.
On the other hand, the Imperial families, no doubt, considered that in
entertaining us they were more especially entertaining the people of
America than they could by showering attentions on a whole platoon of
ministers plenipotentiary and therefore they gave to the event its
fullest significance, as an expression of good will and friendly feeling
toward the entire country. We took the kindnesses we received as
attentions thus directed, of course, and not to ourselves as a party.
That we felt a personal pride in being received as the representatives of
a nation, we do not deny; that we felt a national pride in the warm
cordiality of that reception, can not be doubted.
Our poet has been rigidly suppressed, from the time we let go the anchor.
When it was announced that we were going to visit the Emperor of Russia,
the fountains of his great deep were broken up, and he rained ineffable
bosh for four-and-twenty hours. Our original anxiety as to what we were
going to do with ourselves, was suddenly transformed into anxiety about
what we were going to do with our poet. The problem was solved at last.
Two alternatives were offered him--he must either swear a dreadful oath
that he would not issue a line of his poetry while he was in the Czar's
dominions, or else remain under guard on board the ship until we were
safe at Constantinople again. He fought the dilemma long, but yielded at
last. It was a great deliverance. Perhaps the savage reader would like
a specimen of his style. I do not mean this term to be offensive. I
only use it because "the gentle reader" has been used so often that any
change from it can not but be refreshing:
"Save us and sanctify us, and finally, then,
See good provisions we enjoy while we journey to Jerusalem.
For so man proposes, which it is most true
And time will wait for none, nor for us too."
The sea has been unusually rough all day. However, we have had a
lively time of it, anyhow. We have had quite a run of visitors. The
Governor-General came, and we received him with a salute of nine guns.
He brought his family with him. I observed that carpets were spread
from the pier-head to his carriage for him to walk on, though I have
seen him walk there without any carpet when he was not on business. I
thought may be he had what the accidental insurance people might call an
extra-hazardous polish ("policy" joke, but not above mediocrity,) on his
boots, and wished to protect them, but I examined and could not see that
they were blacked any better than usual. It may have been that he had
forgotten his carpet, before, but he did not have it with him, anyhow.
He was an exceedingly pleasant old gentleman; we all liked him,
especially Blucher. When he went away, Blucher invited him to come
again and fetch his carpet along.
Prince Dolgorouki and a Grand Admiral or two, whom we had seen yesterday
at the reception, came on board also. I was a little distant with these
parties, at first, because when I have been visiting Emperors I do not
like to be too familiar with people I only know by reputation, and whose
moral characters and standing in society I can not be thoroughly
acquainted with. I judged it best to be a little offish, at first. I
said to myself, Princes and Counts and Grand Admirals are very well, but
they are not Emperors, and one can not be too particular about who he
associates with.
Baron Wrangel came, also. He used to be Russian Ambassador at
Washington. I told him I had an uncle who fell down a shaft and broke
himself in two, as much as a year before that. That was a falsehood, but
then I was not going to let any man eclipse me on surprising adventures,
merely for the want of a little invention. The Baron is a fine man, and
is said to stand high in the Emperor's confidence and esteem.
Baron Ungern-Sternberg, a boisterous, whole-souled old nobleman, came
with the rest. He is a man of progress and enterprise--a representative
man of the age. He is the Chief Director of the railway system of
Russia--a sort of railroad king. In his line he is making things move
along in this country He has traveled extensively in America. He says he
has tried convict labor on his railroads, and with perfect success. He
says the convicts work well, and are quiet and peaceable. He observed
that he employs nearly ten thousand of them now.
This appeared to be another call on my resources. I was equal to the
emergency. I said we had eighty thousand convicts employed on the
railways in America--all of them under sentence of death for murder in
the first degree. That closed him out.
We had General Todtleben (the famous defender of Sebastopol, during the
siege,) and many inferior army and also navy officers, and a number of
unofficial Russian ladies and gentlemen. Naturally, a champagne luncheon
was in order, and was accomplished without loss of life. Toasts and
jokes were discharged freely, but no speeches were made save one thanking
the Emperor and the Grand Duke, through the Governor-General, for our
hospitable reception, and one by the Governor-General in reply, in which
he returned the Emperor's thanks for the speech, etc., etc.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
We returned to Constantinople, and after a day or two spent in exhausting
marches about the city and voyages up the Golden Horn in caiques, we
steamed away again. We passed through the Sea of Marmora and the
Dardanelles, and steered for a new land--a new one to us, at least--Asia.
We had as yet only acquired a bowing acquaintance with it, through
pleasure excursions to Scutari and the regions round about.
We passed between Lemnos and Mytilene, and saw them as we had seen Elba
and the Balearic Isles--mere bulky shapes, with the softening mists of
distance upon them--whales in a fog, as it were. Then we held our course
southward, and began to "read up" celebrated Smyrna.
At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused
themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The
opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows:
"We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply
for recreation--and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial
state--and, therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting
ourselves before your Majesty, save the desire of offering our
grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm, which, through good
and through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land
we love so well."
The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally
in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing
a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a
dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the
flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord
High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare
tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting
"watch below," transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by
rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves and
swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and bowing low,
began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few
monarchs could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a
slush-plastered deck-sweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and
proceeded to read, laboriously:
"To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of Russia:
"We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for
recreation,--and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state--and
therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before
your Majesty--"
The Emperor--"Then what the devil did you come for?"
--"Save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord
of a realm which--"
The Emperor--" Oh, d--n the Address!--read it to the police.
Chamberlain, take these people over to my brother, the Grand Duke's, and
give them a square meal. Adieu! I am happy--I am gratified--I am
delighted--I am bored. Adieu, adieu--vamos the ranch! The First Groom
of the Palace will proceed to count the portable articles of value
belonging to the premises."
The farce then closed, to be repeated again with every change of the
watches, and embellished with new and still more extravagant inventions
of pomp and conversation.
At all times of the day and night the phraseology of that tiresome
address fell upon our ears. Grimy sailors came down out of the foretop
placidly announcing themselves as "a handful of private citizens of
America, traveling simply for recreation and unostentatiously," etc.; the
coal passers moved to their duties in the profound depths of the ship,
explaining the blackness of their faces and their uncouthness of dress,
with the reminder that they were "a handful of private citizens,
traveling simply for recreation," etc., and when the cry rang through the
vessel at midnight: "EIGHT BELLS!--LARBOARD WATCH, TURN OUT!" the
larboard watch came gaping and stretching out of their den, with the
everlasting formula: "Aye-aye, sir! We are a handful of private citizens
of America, traveling simply for recreation, and unostentatiously, as
becomes our unofficial state!"
As I was a member of the committee, and helped to frame the Address,
these sarcasms came home to me. I never heard a sailor proclaiming
himself as a handful of American citizens traveling for recreation, but I
wished he might trip and fall overboard, and so reduce his handful by one
individual, at least. I never was so tired of any one phrase as the
sailors made me of the opening sentence of the Address to the Emperor of
Russia.
This seaport of Smyrna, our first notable acquaintance in Asia, is a
closely packed city of one hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and,
like Constantinople, it has no outskirts. It is as closely packed at its
outer edges as it is in the centre, and then the habitations leave
suddenly off and the plain beyond seems houseless. It is just like any
other Oriental city. That is to say, its Moslem houses are heavy and
dark, and as comfortless as so many tombs; its streets are crooked,
rudely and roughly paved, and as narrow as an ordinary staircase; the
streets uniformly carry a man to any other place than the one he wants to
go to, and surprise him by landing him in the most unexpected localities;
business is chiefly carried on in great covered bazaars, celled like a
honeycomb with innumerable shops no larger than a common closet, and the
whole hive cut up into a maze of alleys about wide enough to accommodate
a laden camel, and well calculated to confuse a stranger and eventually
lose him; every where there is dirt, every where there are fleas, every
where there are lean, broken-hearted dogs; every alley is thronged with
people; wherever you look, your eye rests upon a wild masquerade of
extravagant costumes; the workshops are all open to the streets, and the
workmen visible; all manner of sounds assail the ear, and over them all
rings out the muezzin's cry from some tall minaret, calling the faithful
vagabonds to prayer; and superior to the call to prayer, the noises in
the streets, the interest of the costumes--superior to every thing, and
claiming the bulk of attention first, last, and all the time--is a
combination of Mohammedan stenches, to which the smell of even a Chinese
quarter would be as pleasant as the roasting odors of the fatted calf to
the nostrils of the returning Prodigal. Such is Oriental luxury--such is
Oriental splendor! We read about it all our days, but we comprehend it
not until we see it. Smyrna is a very old city. Its name occurs several
times in the Bible, one or two of the disciples of Christ visited it, and
here was located one of the original seven apocalyptic churches spoken of
in Revelations. These churches were symbolized in the Scriptures as
candlesticks, and on certain conditions there was a sort of implied
promise that Smyrna should be endowed with a "crown of life." She was to
"be faithful unto death"--those were the terms. She has not kept up her
faith straight along, but the pilgrims that wander hither consider that
she has come near enough to it to save her, and so they point to the fact
that Smyrna to-day wears her crown of life, and is a great city, with a
great commerce and full of energy, while the cities wherein were located
the other six churches, and to which no crown of life was promised, have
vanished from the earth. So Smyrna really still possesses her crown of
life, in a business point of view. Her career, for eighteen centuries,
has been a chequered one, and she has been under the rule of princes of
many creeds, yet there has been no season during all that time, as far as
we know, (and during such seasons as she was inhabited at all,) that she
has been without her little community of Christians "faithful unto
death." Hers was the only church against which no threats were implied
in the Revelations, and the only one which survived.
With Ephesus, forty miles from here, where was located another of the
seven churches, the case was different. The "candlestick" has been
removed from Ephesus. Her light has been put out. Pilgrims, always
prone to find prophecies in the Bible, and often where none exist, speak
cheerfully and complacently of poor, ruined Ephesus as the victim of
prophecy. And yet there is no sentence that promises, without due
qualification, the destruction of the city. The words are:
"Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and
do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will
remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."
That is all; the other verses are singularly complimentary to Ephesus.
The threat is qualified. There is no history to show that she did not
repent. But the cruelest habit the modern prophecy-savans have, is that
one of coolly and arbitrarily fitting the prophetic shirt on to the wrong
man. They do it without regard to rhyme or reason. Both the cases I
have just mentioned are instances in point. Those "prophecies" are
distinctly leveled at the "churches of Ephesus, Smyrna," etc., and yet
the pilgrims invariably make them refer to the cities instead. No crown
of life is promised to the town of Smyrna and its commerce, but to the
handful of Christians who formed its "church." If they were "faithful
unto death," they have their crown now--but no amount of faithfulness and
legal shrewdness combined could legitimately drag the city into a
participation in the promises of the prophecy. The stately language of
the Bible refers to a crown of life whose lustre will reflect the
day-beams of the endless ages of eternity, not the butterfly existence
of a city built by men's hands, which must pass to dust with the
builders and be forgotten even in the mere handful of centuries
vouchsafed to the solid world itself between its cradle and its grave.
The fashion of delving out fulfillments of prophecy where that prophecy
consists of mere "ifs," trenches upon the absurd. Suppose, a thousand
years from now, a malarious swamp builds itself up in the shallow harbor
of Smyrna, or something else kills the town; and suppose, also, that
within that time the swamp that has filled the renowned harbor of Ephesus
and rendered her ancient site deadly and uninhabitable to-day, becomes
hard and healthy ground; suppose the natural consequence ensues, to wit:
that Smyrna becomes a melancholy ruin, and Ephesus is rebuilt. What
would the prophecy-savans say? They would coolly skip over our age of
the world, and say: "Smyrna was not faithful unto death, and so her crown
of life was denied her; Ephesus repented, and lo! her candle-stick was
not removed. Behold these evidences! How wonderful is prophecy!"
Smyrna has been utterly destroyed six times. If her crown of life had
been an insurance policy, she would have had an opportunity to collect on
it the first time she fell. But she holds it on sufferance and by a
complimentary construction of language which does not refer to
her. Six different times, however, I suppose some infatuated
prophecy-enthusiast blundered along and said, to the infinite disgust of
Smyrna and the Smyrniotes: "In sooth, here is astounding fulfillment of
prophecy! Smyrna hath not been faithful unto death, and behold her
crown of life is vanished from her head. Verily, these things be
astonishing!"
Such things have a bad influence. They provoke worldly men into using
light conversation concerning sacred subjects. Thick-headed commentators
upon the Bible, and stupid preachers and teachers, work more damage to
religion than sensible, cool-brained clergymen can fight away again, toil
as they may. It is not good judgment to fit a crown of life upon a city
which has been destroyed six times. That other class of wiseacres who
twist prophecy in such a manner as to make it promise the destruction and
desolation of the same city, use judgment just as bad, since the city is
in a very flourishing condition now, unhappily for them. These things
put arguments into the mouth of infidelity.
A portion of the city is pretty exclusively Turkish; the Jews have a
quarter to themselves; the Franks another quarter; so, also, with the
Armenians. The Armenians, of course, are Christians. Their houses are
large, clean, airy, handsomely paved with black and white squares of
marble, and in the centre of many of them is a square court, which has in
it a luxuriant flower-garden and a sparkling fountain; the doors of all
the rooms open on this. A very wide hall leads to the street door, and
in this the women sit, the most of the day. In the cool of the evening
they dress up in their best raiment and show themselves at the door.
They are all comely of countenance, and exceedingly neat and cleanly;
they look as if they were just out of a band-box. Some of the young
ladies--many of them, I may say--are even very beautiful; they average a
shade better than American girls--which treasonable words I pray may be
forgiven me. They are very sociable, and will smile back when a stranger
smiles at them, bow back when he bows, and talk back if he speaks to
them. No introduction is required. An hour's chat at the door with a
pretty girl one never saw before, is easily obtained, and is very
pleasant. I have tried it. I could not talk anything but English, and
the girl knew nothing but Greek, or Armenian, or some such barbarous
tongue, but we got along very well. I find that in cases like these, the
fact that you can not comprehend each other isn't much of a drawback.
In that Russia n town of Yalta I danced an astonishing sort of dance an
hour long, and one I had not heard of before, with a very pretty girl,
and we talked incessantly, and laughed exhaustingly, and neither one ever
knew what the other was driving at. But it was splendid. There were
twenty people in the set, and the dance was very lively and complicated.
It was complicated enough without me--with me it was more so. I threw in
a figure now and then that surprised those Russians. But I have never
ceased to think of that girl. I have written to her, but I can not
direct the epistle because her name is one of those nine-jointed Russian
affairs, and there are not letters enough in our alphabet to hold out.
I am not reckless enough to try to pronounce it when I am awake, but I
make a stagger at it in my dreams, and get up with the lockjaw in the
morning. I am fading. I do not take my meals now, with any sort of
regularity. Her dear name haunts me still in my dreams. It is awful on
teeth. It never comes out of my mouth but it fetches an old snag along
with it. And then the lockjaw closes down and nips off a couple of the
last syllables--but they taste good.
Coming through the Dardanelles, we saw camel trains on shore with the
glasses, but we were never close to one till we got to Smyrna. These
camels are very much larger than the scrawny specimens one sees in the
menagerie. They stride along these streets, in single file, a dozen in a
train, with heavy loads on their backs, and a fancy-looking negro in
Turkish costume, or an Arab, preceding them on a little donkey and
completely overshadowed and rendered insignificant by the huge beasts.
To see a camel train laden with the spices of Arabia and the rare fabrics
of Persia come marching through the narrow alleys of the bazaar, among
porters with their burdens, money-changers, lamp-merchants, Al-naschars
in the glassware business, portly cross-legged Turks smoking the famous
narghili; and the crowds drifting to and fro in the fanciful costumes of
the East, is a genuine revelation of the Orient. The picture lacks
nothing. It casts you back at once into your forgotten boyhood, and
again you dream over the wonders of the Arabian Nights; again your
companions are princes, your lord is the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid, and
your servants are terrific giants and genii that come with smoke and
lightning and thunder, and go as a storm goes when they depart!
CHAPTER XXXIX.
We inquired, and learned that the lions of Smyrna consisted of the ruins
of the ancient citadel, whose broken and prodigious battlements frown
upon the city from a lofty hill just in the edge of the town--the Mount
Pagus of Scripture, they call it; the site of that one of the Seven
Apocalyptic Churches of Asia which was located here in the first century
of the Christian era; and the grave and the place of martyrdom of the
venerable Polycarp, who suffered in Smyrna for his religion some eighteen
hundred years ago.
We took little donkeys and started. We saw Polycarp's tomb, and then
hurried on.
The "Seven Churches"--thus they abbreviate it--came next on the list. We
rode there--about a mile and a half in the sweltering sun--and visited a
little Greek church which they said was built upon the ancient site; and
we paid a small fee, and the holy attendant gave each of us a little wax
candle as a remembrancer of the place, and I put mine in my hat and the
sun melted it and the grease all ran down the back of my neck; and so now
I have not any thing left but the wick, and it is a sorry and a
wilted-looking wick at that.
Several of us argued as well as we could that the "church" mentioned in
the Bible meant a party of Christians, and not a building; that the Bible
spoke of them as being very poor--so poor, I thought, and so subject to
persecution (as per Polycarp's martyrdom) that in the first place they
probably could not have afforded a church edifice, and in the second
would not have dared to build it in the open light of day if they could;
and finally, that if they had had the privilege of building it, common
judgment would have suggested that they build it somewhere near the town.
But the elders of the ship's family ruled us down and scouted our
evidences. However, retribution came to them afterward. They found that
they had been led astray and had gone to the wrong place; they discovered
that the accepted site is in the city.
Riding through the town, we could see marks of the six Smyrnas that have
existed here and been burned up by fire or knocked down by earthquakes.
The hills and the rocks are rent asunder in places, excavations expose
great blocks of building-stone that have lain buried for ages, and all
the mean houses and walls of modern Smyrna along the way are spotted
white with broken pillars, capitals and fragments of sculptured marble
that once adorned the lordly palaces that were the glory of the city in
the olden time.
The ascent of the hill of the citadel is very steep, and we proceeded
rather slowly. But there were matters of interest about us. In one
place, five hundred feet above the sea, the perpendicular bank on the
upper side of the road was ten or fifteen feet high, and the cut exposed
three veins of oyster shells, just as we have seen quartz veins exposed
in the cutting of a road in Nevada or Montana. The veins were about
eighteen inches thick and two or three feet apart, and they slanted along
downward for a distance of thirty feet or more, and then disappeared
where the cut joined the road. Heaven only knows how far a man might
trace them by "stripping." They were clean, nice oyster shells, large,
and just like any other oyster shells. They were thickly massed
together, and none were scattered above or below the veins. Each one was
a well-defined lead by itself, and without a spur. My first instinct was
to set up the usual--
NOTICE:
"We, the undersigned, claim five claims of two hundred feet each,
(and one for discovery,) on this ledge or lode of oyster-shells,
with all its dips, spurs, angles, variations and sinuosities, and
fifty feet on each side of the same, to work it, etc., etc.,
according to the mining laws of Smyrna."
They were such perfectly natural-looking leads that I could hardly keep
from "taking them up." Among the oyster-shells were mixed many fragments
of ancient, broken crockery ware. Now how did those masses of
oyster-shells get there? I can not determine. Broken crockery and
oyster-shells are suggestive of restaurants--but then they could have
had no such places away up there on that mountain side in our time,
because nobody has lived up there. A restaurant would not pay in such a
stony, forbidding, desolate place. And besides, there were no champagne
corks among the shells. If there ever was a restaurant there, it must
have been in Smyrna's palmy days, when the hills were covered with
palaces. I could believe in one restaurant, on those terms; but then how
about the three? Did they have restaurants there at three different
periods of the world?--because there are two or three feet of solid
earth between the oyster leads. Evidently, the restaurant solution will
not answer.
The hill might have been the bottom of the sea, once, and been lifted up,
with its oyster-beds, by an earthquake--but, then, how about the
crockery? And moreover, how about three oyster beds, one above another,
and thick strata of good honest earth between?
That theory will not do. It is just possible that this hill is Mount
Ararat, and that Noah's Ark rested here, and he ate oysters and threw the
shells overboard. But that will not do, either. There are the three
layers again and the solid earth between--and, besides, there were only
eight in Noah's family, and they could not have eaten all these oysters
in the two or three months they staid on top of that mountain. The
beasts--however, it is simply absurd to suppose he did not know any more
than to feed the beasts on oyster suppers.
It is painful--it is even humiliating--but I am reduced at last to one
slender theory: that the oysters climbed up there of their own accord.
But what object could they have had in view?--what did they want up
there? What could any oyster want to climb a hill for? To climb a hill
must necessarily be fatiguing and annoying exercise for an oyster. The
most natural conclusion would be that the oysters climbed up there to
look at the scenery. Yet when one comes to reflect upon the nature of an
oyster, it seems plain that he does not care for scenery. An oyster has
no taste for such things; he cares nothing for the beautiful. An oyster
is of a retiring disposition, and not lively--not even cheerful above the
average, and never enterprising. But above all, an oyster does not take
any interest in scenery--he scorns it. What have I arrived at now?
Simply at the point I started from, namely, those oyster shells are
there, in regular layers, five hundred feet above the sea, and no man
knows how they got there. I have hunted up the guide-books, and the gist
of what they say is this: "They are there, but how they got there is a
mystery."
Twenty-five years ago, a multitude of people in America put on their
ascension robes, took a tearful leave of their friends, and made ready to
fly up into heaven at the first blast of the trumpet. But the angel did
not blow it. Miller's resurrection day was a failure. The Millerites
were disgusted. I did not suspect that there were Millers in Asia Minor,
but a gentleman tells me that they had it all set for the world to come
to an end in Smyrna one day about three years ago. There was much
buzzing and preparation for a long time previously, and it culminated in
a wild excitement at the appointed time. A vast number of the populace
ascended the citadel hill early in the morning, to get out of the way of
the general destruction, and many of the infatuated closed up their shops
and retired from all earthly business. But the strange part of it was
that about three in the afternoon, while this gentleman and his friends
were at dinner in the hotel, a terrific storm of rain, accompanied by
thunder and lightning, broke forth and continued with dire fury for two
or three hours. It was a thing unprecedented in Smyrna at that time of
the year, and scared some of the most skeptical. The streets ran rivers
and the hotel floor was flooded with water. The dinner had to be
suspended. When the storm finished and left every body drenched through
and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down
from the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons! They had been
looking down upon the fearful storm going on below, and really believed
that their proposed destruction of the world was proving a grand success.
A railway here in Asia--in the dreamy realm of the Orient--in the fabled
land of the Arabian Nights--is a strange thing to think of. And yet they
have one already, and are building another. The present one is well
built and well conducted, by an English Company, but is not doing an
immense amount of business. The first year it carried a good many
passengers, but its freight list only comprised eight hundred pounds of
figs!
It runs almost to the very gates of Ephesus--a town great in all ages of
the world--a city familiar to readers of the Bible, and one which was as
old as the very hills when the disciples of Christ preached in its
streets. It dates back to the shadowy ages of tradition, and was the
birthplace of gods renowned in Grecian mythology. The idea of a
locomotive tearing through such a place as this, and waking the phantoms
of its old days of romance out of their dreams of dead and gone
centuries, is curious enough.
We journey thither tomorrow to see the celebrated ruins.
CHAPTER XL.
This has been a stirring day. The Superintendent of the railway put a
train at our disposal, and did us the further kindness of accompanying us
to Ephesus and giving to us his watchful care. We brought sixty scarcely
perceptible donkeys in the freight cars, for we had much ground to go
over. We have seen some of the most grotesque costumes, along the line
of the railroad, that can be imagined. I am glad that no possible
combination of words could describe them, for I might then be foolish
enough to attempt it.
At ancient Ayassalook, in the midst of a forbidding desert, we came upon
long lines of ruined aqueducts, and other remnants of architectural
grandeur, that told us plainly enough we were nearing what had been a
metropolis, once. We left the train and mounted the donkeys, along with
our invited guests--pleasant young gentlemen from the officers' list of
an American man-of-war.
The little donkeys had saddles upon them which were made very high in
order that the rider's feet might not drag the ground. The preventative
did not work well in the cases of our tallest pilgrims, however. There
were no bridles--nothing but a single rope, tied to the bit. It was
purely ornamental, for the donkey cared nothing for it. If he were
drifting to starboard, you might put your helm down hard the other way,
if it were any satisfaction to you to do it, but he would continue to
drift to starboard all the same. There was only one process which could
be depended on, and it was to get down and lift his rear around until his
head pointed in the right direction, or take him under your arm and carry
him to a part of the road which he could not get out of without climbing.
The sun flamed down as hot as a furnace, and neck-scarfs, veils and
umbrellas seemed hardly any protection; they served only to make the long
procession look more than ever fantastic--for be it known the ladies were
all riding astride because they could not stay on the shapeless saddles
sidewise, the men were perspiring and out of temper, their feet were
banging against the rocks, the donkeys were capering in every direction
but the right one and being belabored with clubs for it, and every now
and then a broad umbrella would suddenly go down out of the cavalcade,
announcing to all that one more pilgrim had bitten the dust. It was a
wilder picture than those solitudes had seen for many a day. No donkeys
ever existed that were as hard to navigate as these, I think, or that had
so many vile, exasperating instincts. Occasionally we grew so tired and
breathless with fighting them that we had to desist,--and immediately the
donkey would come down to a deliberate walk. This, with the fatigue, and
the sun, would put a man asleep; and soon as the man was asleep, the
donkey would lie down. My donkey shall never see his boyhood's home
again. He has lain down once too often. He must die.
We all stood in the vast theatre of ancient Ephesus,--the stone-benched
amphitheatre I mean--and had our picture taken. We looked as proper
there as we would look any where, I suppose. We do not embellish the
general desolation of a desert much. We add what dignity we can to a
stately ruin with our green umbrellas and jackasses, but it is little.
However, we mean well.
I wish to say a brief word of the aspect of Ephesus.
On a high, steep hill, toward the sea, is a gray ruin of ponderous blocks
of marble, wherein, tradition says, St. Paul was imprisoned eighteen
centuries ago. From these old walls you have the finest view of the
desolate scene where once stood Ephesus, the proudest city of ancient
times, and whose Temple of Diana was so noble in design, and so exquisite
of workmanship, that it ranked high in the list of the Seven Wonders of
the World.
Behind you is the sea; in front is a level green valley, (a marsh, in
fact,) extending far away among the mountains; to the right of the front
view is the old citadel of Ayassalook, on a high hill; the ruined Mosque
of the Sultan Selim stands near it in the plain, (this is built over the
grave of St. John, and was formerly Christian Church ;) further toward
you is the hill of Pion, around whose front is clustered all that remains
of the ruins of Ephesus that still stand; divided from it by a narrow
valley is the long, rocky, rugged mountain of Coressus. The scene is a
pretty one, and yet desolate--for in that wide plain no man can live, and
in it is no human habitation. But for the crumbling arches and monstrous
piers and broken walls that rise from the foot of the hill of Pion, one
could not believe that in this place once stood a city whose renown is
older than tradition itself. It is incredible to reflect that things as
familiar all over the world to-day as household words, belong in the
history and in the shadowy legends of this silent, mournful solitude.
We speak of Apollo and of Diana--they were born here; of the
metamorphosis of Syrinx into a reed--it was done here; of the great god
Pan--he dwelt in the caves of this hill of Coressus; of the Amazons--this
was their best prized home; of Bacchus and Hercules both fought the
warlike women here; of the Cyclops--they laid the ponderous marble blocks
of some of the ruins yonder; of Homer--this was one of his many
birthplaces; of Cirmon of Athens; of Alcibiades, Lysander, Agesilaus
--they visited here; so did Alexander the Great; so did Hannibal and
Antiochus, Scipio, Lucullus and Sylla; Brutus, Cassius, Pompey, Cicero,
and Augustus; Antony was a judge in this place, and left his seat in the
open court, while the advocates were speaking, to run after Cleopatra,
who passed the door; from this city these two sailed on pleasure
excursions, in galleys with silver oars and perfumed sails, and with
companies of beautiful girls to serve them, and actors and musicians to
amuse them; in days that seem almost modern, so remote are they from the
early history of this city, Paul the Apostle preached the new religion
here, and so did John, and here it is supposed the former was pitted
against wild beasts, for in 1 Corinthians, xv. 32 he says:
"If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus,"
&c.,
when many men still lived who had seen the Christ; here Mary Magdalen
died, and here the Virgin Mary ended her days with John, albeit Rome has
since judged it best to locate her grave elsewhere; six or seven hundred
years ago--almost yesterday, as it were--troops of mail-clad Crusaders
thronged the streets; and to come down to trifles, we speak of meandering
streams, and find a new interest in a common word when we discover that
the crooked river Meander, in yonder valley, gave it to our dictionary.
It makes me feel as old as these dreary hills to look down upon these
moss-hung ruins, this historic desolation. One may read the Scriptures
and believe, but he can not go and stand yonder in the ruined theatre and
in imagination people it again with the vanished multitudes who mobbed
Paul's comrades there and shouted, with one voice, "Great is Diana of the
Ephesians!" The idea of a shout in such a solitude as this almost makes
one shudder.
It was a wonderful city, this Ephesus. Go where you will about these
broad plains, you find the most exquisitely sculptured marble fragments
scattered thick among the dust and weeds; and protruding from the ground,
or lying prone upon it, are beautiful fluted columns of porphyry and all
precious marbles; and at every step you find elegantly carved capitals
and massive bases, and polished tablets engraved with Greek inscriptions.
It is a world of precious relics, a wilderness of marred and mutilated
gems. And yet what are these things to the wonders that lie buried here
under the ground? At Constantinople, at Pisa, in the cities of Spain,
are great mosques and cathedrals, whose grandest columns came from the
temples and palaces of Ephesus, and yet one has only to scratch the
ground here to match them. We shall never know what magnificence is,
until this imperial city is laid bare to the sun.
The finest piece of sculpture we have yet seen and the one that impressed
us most, (for we do not know much about art and can not easily work up
ourselves into ecstasies over it,) is one that lies in this old theatre
of Ephesus which St. Paul's riot has made so celebrated. It is only the
headless body of a man, clad in a coat of mail, with a Medusa head upon
the breast-plate, but we feel persuaded that such dignity and such
majesty were never thrown into a form of stone before.
What builders they were, these men of antiquity! The massive arches of
some of these ruins rest upon piers that are fifteen feet square and
built entirely of solid blocks of marble, some of which are as large as a
Saratoga trunk, and some the size of a boarding-house sofa. They are not
shells or shafts of stone filled inside with rubbish, but the whole pier
is a mass of solid masonry. Vast arches, that may have been the gates of
the city, are built in the same way. They have braved the storms and
sieges of three thousand years, and have been shaken by many an
earthquake, but still they stand. When they dig alongside of them, they
find ranges of ponderous masonry that are as perfect in every detail as
they were the day those old Cyclopian giants finished them. An English
Company is going to excavate Ephesus--and then!
And now am I reminded of--
THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.
In the Mount of Pion, yonder, is the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. Once
upon a time, about fifteen hundred years ago, seven young men lived near
each other in Ephesus, who belonged to the despised sect of the
Christians. It came to pass that the good King Maximilianus, (I am
telling this story for nice little boys and girls,) it came to pass, I
say, that the good King Maximilianus fell to persecuting the Christians,
and as time rolled on he made it very warm for them. So the seven young
men said one to the other, let us get up and travel. And they got up and
traveled. They tarried not to bid their fathers and mothers good-bye, or
any friend they knew. They only took certain moneys which their parents
had, and garments that belonged unto their friends, whereby they might
remember them when far away; and they took also the dog Ketmehr, which
was the property of their neighbor Malchus, because the beast did run his
head into a noose which one of the young men was carrying carelessly, and
they had not time to release him; and they took also certain chickens
that seemed lonely in the neighboring coops, and likewise some bottles of
curious liquors that stood near the grocer's window; and then they
departed from the city. By-and-by they came to a marvelous cave in the
Hill of Pion and entered into it and feasted, and presently they hurried
on again. But they forgot the bottles of curious liquors, and left them
behind. They traveled in many lands, and had many strange adventures.
They were virtuous young men, and lost no opportunity that fell in their
way to make their livelihood. Their motto was in these words, namely,
"Procrastination is the thief of time." And so, whenever they did come
upon a man who was alone, they said, Behold, this person hath the
wherewithal--let us go through him. And they went through him. At the
end of five years they had waxed tired of travel and adventure, and
longed to revisit their old home again and hear the voices and see the
faces that were dear unto their youth. Therefore they went through such
parties as fell in their way where they sojourned at that time, and
journeyed back toward Ephesus again. For the good King Maximilianus was
become converted unto the new faith, and the Christians rejoiced because
they were no longer persecuted. One day as the sun went down, they came
to the cave in the Mount of Pion, and they said, each to his fellow, Let
us sleep here, and go and feast and make merry with our friends when the
morning cometh. And each of the seven lifted up his voice and said, It
is a whiz. So they went in, and lo, where they had put them, there lay
the bottles of strange liquors, and they judged that age had not impaired
their excellence. Wherein the wanderers were right, and the heads of the
same were level. So each of the young men drank six bottles, and behold
they felt very tired, then, and lay down and slept soundly.
When they awoke, one of them, Johannes--surnamed Smithianus--said, We are
naked. And it was so. Their raiment was all gone, and the money which
they had gotten from a stranger whom they had proceeded through as they
approached the city, was lying upon the ground, corroded and rusted and
defaced. Likewise the dog Ketmehr was gone, and nothing save the brass
that was upon his collar remained. They wondered much at these things.
But they took the money, and they wrapped about their bodies some leaves,
and came up to the top of the hill. Then were they perplexed. The
wonderful temple of Diana was gone; many grand edifices they had never
seen before stood in the city; men in strange garbs moved about the
streets, and every thing was changed.
Johannes said, It hardly seems like Ephesus. Yet here is the great
gymnasium; here is the mighty theatre, wherein I have seen seventy
thousand men assembled; here is the Agora; there is the font where the
sainted John the Baptist immersed the converts; yonder is the prison of
the good St. Paul, where we all did use to go to touch the ancient chains
that bound him and be cured of our distempers; I see the tomb of the
disciple Luke, and afar off is the church wherein repose the ashes of the
holy John, where the Christians of Ephesus go twice a year to gather the
dust from the tomb, which is able to make bodies whole again that are
corrupted by disease, and cleanse the soul from sin; but see how the
wharves encroach upon the sea, and what multitudes of ships are anchored
in the bay; see, also, how the city hath stretched abroad, far over the
valley behind Pion, and even unto the walls of Ayassalook; and lo, all
the hills are white with palaces and ribbed with colonnades of marble.
How mighty is Ephesus become!
And wondering at what their eyes had seen, they went down into the city
and purchased garments and clothed themselves. And when they would have
passed on, the merchant bit the coins which they had given him, with his
teeth, and turned them about and looked curiously upon them, and cast
them upon his counter, and listened if they rang; and then he said, These
be bogus. And they said, Depart thou to Hades, and went their way. When
they were come to their houses, they recognized them, albeit they seemed
old and mean; and they rejoiced, and were glad. They ran to the doors,
and knocked, and strangers opened, and looked inquiringly upon them. And
they said, with great excitement, while their hearts beat high, and the
color in their faces came and went, Where is my father? Where is my
mother? Where are Dionysius and Serapion, and Pericles, and Decius? And
the strangers that opened said, We know not these. The Seven said, How,
you know them not? How long have ye dwelt here, and whither are they
gone that dwelt here before ye? And the strangers said, Ye play upon us
with a jest, young men; we and our fathers have sojourned under these
roofs these six generations; the names ye utter rot upon the tombs, and
they that bore them have run their brief race, have laughed and sung,
have borne the sorrows and the weariness that were allotted them, and are
at rest; for nine-score years the summers have come and gone, and the
autumn leaves have fallen, since the roses faded out of their cheeks and
they laid them to sleep with the dead.
Then the seven young men turned them away from their homes, and the
strangers shut the doors upon them. The wanderers marveled greatly, and
looked into the faces of all they met, as hoping to find one that they
knew; but all were strange, and passed them by and spake no friendly
word. They were sore distressed and sad. Presently they spake unto a
citizen and said, Who is King in Ephesus? And the citizen answered and
said, Whence come ye that ye know not that great Laertius reigns in
Ephesus? They looked one at the other, greatly perplexed, and presently
asked again, Where, then, is the good King Maximilianus? The citizen
moved him apart, as one who is afraid, and said, Verily these men be mad,
and dream dreams, else would they know that the King whereof they speak
is dead above two hundred years agone.
Then the scales fell from the eyes of the Seven, and one said, Alas, that
we drank of the curious liquors. They have made us weary, and in
dreamless sleep these two long centuries have we lain. Our homes are
desolate, our friends are dead. Behold, the jig is up--let us die. And
that same day went they forth and laid them down and died. And in that
self-same day, likewise, the Seven-up did cease in Ephesus, for that the
Seven that were up were down again, and departed and dead withal. And
the names that be upon their tombs, even unto this time, are Johannes
Smithianus, Trumps, Gift, High, and Low, Jack, and The Game. And with
the sleepers lie also the bottles wherein were once the curious liquors:
and upon them is writ, in ancient letters, such words as these--Dames of
heathen gods of olden time, perchance: Rumpunch, Jinsling, Egnog.
Such is the story of the Seven Sleepers, (with slight variations,) and I
know it is true, because I have seen the cave myself.
Really, so firm a faith had the ancients this legend, that as late as
eight or nine hundred years ago, learned travelers held it in
superstitious fear. Two of them record that they ventured into it, but
ran quickly out again, not daring to tarry lest they should fall asleep
and outlive their great grand-children a century or so. Even at this day
the ignorant denizens of the neighboring country prefer not to sleep in
it.
CHAPTER XLI.
When I last made a memorandum, we were at Ephesus. We are in Syria, now,
encamped in the mountains of Lebanon. The interregnum has been long,
both as to time and distance. We brought not a relic from Ephesus!
After gathering up fragments of sculptured marbles and breaking ornaments
from the interior work of the Mosques; and after bringing them at a cost
of infinite trouble and fatigue, five miles on muleback to the railway
depot, a government officer compelled all who had such things to
disgorge! He had an order from Constantinople to look out for our party,
and see that we carried nothing off. It was a wise, a just, and a
well-deserved rebuke, but it created a sensation. I never resist a
temptation to plunder a stranger's premises without feeling insufferably
vain about it. This time I felt proud beyond expression. I was serene
in the midst of the scoldings that were heaped upon the Ottoman
government for its affront offered to a pleasuring party of entirely
respectable gentlemen and ladies I said, "We that have free souls, it
touches us not." The shoe not only pinched our party, but it pinched
hard; a principal sufferer discovered that the imperial order was
inclosed in an envelop bearing the seal of the British Embassy at
Constantinople, and therefore must have been inspired by the
representative of the Queen. This was bad--very bad. Coming solely
from the Ottomans, it might have signified only Ottoman hatred of
Christians, and a vulgar ignorance as to genteel methods of expressing
it; but coming from the Christianized, educated, politic British
legation, it simply intimated that we were a sort of gentlemen and
ladies who would bear watching! So the party regarded it, and were
incensed accordingly. The truth doubtless was, that the same
precautions would have been taken against any travelers, because the
English Company who have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and
have paid a great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve
to be. They can not afford to run the risk of having their hospitality
abused by travelers, especially since travelers are such notorious
scorners of honest behavior.
We sailed from Smyrna, in the wildest spirit of expectancy, for the chief
feature, the grand goal of the expedition, was near at hand--we were
approaching the Holy Land! Such a burrowing into the hold for trunks
that had lain buried for weeks, yes for months; such a hurrying to and
fro above decks and below; such a riotous system of packing and
unpacking; such a littering up of the cabins with shirts and skirts, and
indescribable and unclassable odds and ends; such a making up of bundles,
and setting apart of umbrellas, green spectacles and thick veils; such a
critical inspection of saddles and bridles that had never yet touched
horses; such a cleaning and loading of revolvers and examining of
bowie-knives; such a half-soling of the seats of pantaloons with
serviceable buckskin; then such a poring over ancient maps; such a
reading up of Bibles and Palestine travels; such a marking out of
routes; such exasperating efforts to divide up the company into little
bands of congenial spirits who might make the long and arduous Journey
without quarreling; and morning, noon and night, such mass-meetings in
the cabins, such speech-making, such sage suggesting, such worrying and
quarreling, and such a general raising of the very mischief, was never
seen in the ship before!
But it is all over now. We are cut up into parties of six or eight, and
by this time are scattered far and wide. Ours is the only one, however,
that is venturing on what is called "the long trip"--that is, out into
Syria, by Baalbec to Damascus, and thence down through the full length of
Palestine. It would be a tedious, and also a too risky journey, at this
hot season of the year, for any but strong, healthy men, accustomed
somewhat to fatigue and rough life in the open air. The other parties
will take shorter journeys.
For the last two months we have been in a worry about one portion of this
Holy Land pilgrimage. I refer to transportation service. We knew very
well that Palestine was a country which did not do a large passenger
business, and every man we came across who knew any thing about it gave
us to understand that not half of our party would be able to get dragomen
and animals. At Constantinople every body fell to telegraphing the
American Consuls at Alexandria and Beirout to give notice that we wanted
dragomen and transportation. We were desperate--would take horses,
jackasses, cameleopards, kangaroos--any thing. At Smyrna, more
telegraphing was done, to the same end. Also fearing for the worst, we
telegraphed for a large number of seats in the diligence for Damascus,
and horses for the ruins of Baalbec.
As might have been expected, a notion got abroad in Syria and Egypt that
the whole population of the Province of America (the Turks consider us a
trifling little province in some unvisited corner of the world,) were
coming to the Holy Land--and so, when we got to Beirout yesterday, we
found the place full of dragomen and their outfits. We had all intended
to go by diligence to Damascus, and switch off to Baalbec as we went
along--because we expected to rejoin the ship, go to Mount Carmel, and
take to the woods from there. However, when our own private party of
eight found that it was possible, and proper enough, to make the "long
trip," we adopted that programme. We have never been much trouble to a
Consul before, but we have been a fearful nuisance to our Consul at
Beirout. I mention this because I can not help admiring his patience,
his industry, and his accommodating spirit. I mention it also, because I
think some of our ship's company did not give him as full credit for his
excellent services as he deserved.
Well, out of our eight, three were selected to attend to all business
connected with the expedition. The rest of us had nothing to do but look
at the beautiful city of Beirout, with its bright, new houses nestled
among a wilderness of green shrubbery spread abroad over an upland that
sloped gently down to the sea; and also at the mountains of Lebanon that
environ it; and likewise to bathe in the transparent blue water that
rolled its billows about the ship (we did not know there were sharks
there.) We had also to range up and down through the town and look at the
costumes. These are picturesque and fanciful, but not so varied as at
Constantinople and Smyrna; the women of Beirout add an agony--in the two
former cities the sex wear a thin veil which one can see through (and
they often expose their ancles,) but at Beirout they cover their entire
faces with dark-colored or black veils, so that they look like mummies,
and then expose their breasts to the public. A young gentleman (I
believe he was a Greek,) volunteered to show us around the city, and said
it would afford him great pleasure, because he was studying English and
wanted practice in that language. When we had finished the rounds,
however, he called for remuneration--said he hoped the gentlemen would
give him a trifle in the way of a few piastres (equivalent to a few five
cent pieces.) We did so. The Consul was surprised when he heard it, and
said he knew the young fellow's family very well, and that they were an
old and highly respectable family and worth a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars! Some people, so situated, would have been ashamed of the berth
he had with us and his manner of crawling into it.
At the appointed time our business committee reported, and said all
things were in readdress--that we were to start to-day, with horses, pack
animals, and tents, and go to Baalbec, Damascus, the Sea of Tiberias, and
thence southward by the way of the scene of Jacob's Dream and other
notable Bible localities to Jerusalem--from thence probably to the Dead
Sea, but possibly not--and then strike for the ocean and rejoin the ship
three or four weeks hence at Joppa; terms, five dollars a day apiece, in
gold, and every thing to be furnished by the dragoman. They said we
would lie as well as at a hotel. I had read something like that before,
and did not shame my judgment by believing a word of it. I said nothing,
however, but packed up a blanket and a shawl to sleep in, pipes and
tobacco, two or three woollen shirts, a portfolio, a guide-book, and a
Bible. I also took along a towel and a cake of soap, to inspire respect
in the Arabs, who would take me for a king in disguise.
We were to select our horses at 3 P.M. At that hour Abraham, the
dragoman, marshaled them before us. With all solemnity I set it down
here, that those horses were the hardest lot I ever did come across, and
their accoutrements were in exquisite keeping with their style. One
brute had an eye out; another had his tail sawed off close, like a
rabbit, and was proud of it; another had a bony ridge running from his
neck to his tail, like one of those ruined aqueducts one sees about Rome,
and had a neck on him like a bowsprit; they all limped, and had sore
backs, and likewise raw places and old scales scattered about their
persons like brass nails in a hair trunk; their gaits were marvelous to
contemplate, and replete with variety under way the procession looked
like a fleet in a storm. It was fearful. Blucher shook his head and
said:
"That dragon is going to get himself into trouble fetching these old
crates out of the hospital the way they are, unless he has got a permit."
I said nothing. The display was exactly according to the guide-book, and
were we not traveling by the guide-book? I selected a certain horse
because I thought I saw him shy, and I thought that a horse that had
spirit enough to shy was not to be despised.
At 6 o'clock P.M., we came to a halt here on the breezy summit of a
shapely mountain overlooking the sea, and the handsome valley where dwelt
some of those enterprising Phoenicians of ancient times we read so much
about; all around us are what were once the dominions of Hiram, King of
Tyre, who furnished timber from the cedars of these Lebanon hills to
build portions of King Solomon's Temple with.
Shortly after six, our pack train arrived. I had not seen it before, and
a good right I had to be astonished. We had nineteen serving men and
twenty-six pack mules! It was a perfect caravan. It looked like one,
too, as it wound among the rocks. I wondered what in the very mischief
we wanted with such a vast turn-out as that, for eight men. I wondered
awhile, but soon I began to long for a tin plate, and some bacon and
beans. I had camped out many and many a time before, and knew just what
was coming. I went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled
my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected
through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents
were up--tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and
crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then
they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents;
they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white
sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and
on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels
--one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we
could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed
pins or such things, they were sticking every where. Then came the
finishing touch--they spread carpets on the floor! I simply said, "If
you call this camping out, all right--but it isn't the style I am used
to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount."
It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables--candles set in bright,
new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell--a genuine, simon-pure bell
--rang, and we were invited to "the saloon." I had thought before that
we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided
for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the
others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was
very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a
place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and
napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we
were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks,
soup-plates, dinner-plates--every thing, in the handsomest kind of
style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those
stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a
dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose,
potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands
were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a
finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other
finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that
polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole
affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for
a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future!
It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning.
They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to
be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.
CHAPTER XLII.
We are camped near Temnin-el-Foka--a name which the boys have simplified
a good deal, for the sake of convenience in spelling. They call it
Jacksonville. It sounds a little strangely, here in the Valley of
Lebanon, but it has the merit of being easier to remember than the Arabic
name.
"COME LIKE SPIRITS, SO DEPART."
"The night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away."
I slept very soundly last night, yet when the dragoman's bell rang at
half-past five this morning and the cry went abroad of "Ten minutes to
dress for breakfast!" I heard both. It surprised me, because I have not
heard the breakfast gong in the ship for a month, and whenever we have
had occasion to fire a salute at daylight, I have only found it out in
the course of conversation afterward. However, camping out, even though
it be in a gorgeous tent, makes one fresh and lively in the morning
--especially if the air you are breathing is the cool, fresh air of the
mountains.
I was dressed within the ten minutes, and came out. The saloon tent had
been stripped of its sides, and had nothing left but its roof; so when we
sat down to table we could look out over a noble panorama of mountain,
sea and hazy valley. And sitting thus, the sun rose slowly up and
suffused the picture with a world of rich coloring.
Hot mutton chops, fried chicken, omelettes, fried potatoes and coffee
--all excellent. This was the bill of fare. It was sauced with a savage
appetite purchased by hard riding the day before, and refreshing sleep in
a pure atmosphere. As I called for a second cup of coffee, I glanced
over my shoulder, and behold our white village was gone--the splendid
tents had vanished like magic! It was wonderful how quickly those Arabs
had "folded their tents;" and it was wonderful, also, how quickly they
had gathered the thousand odds and ends of the camp together and
disappeared with them.
By half-past six we were under way, and all the Syrian world seemed to be
under way also. The road was filled with mule trains and long
processions of camels. This reminds me that we have been trying for some
time to think what a camel looks like, and now we have made it out. When
he is down on all his knees, flat on his breast to receive his load, he
looks something like a goose swimming; and when he is upright he looks
like an ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not beautiful, and
their long under lip gives them an exceedingly "gallus"--[Excuse the
slang, no other word will describe it]--expression. They have immense,
flat, forked cushions of feet, that make a track in the dust like a pie
with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular about their diet.
They would eat a tombstone if they could bite it. A thistle grows about
here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think;
if one touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity. The
camels eat these. They show by their actions that they enjoy them. I
suppose it would be a real treat to a camel to have a keg of nails for
supper.
While I am speaking of animals, I will mention that I have a horse now by
the name of "Jericho." He is a mare. I have seen remarkable horses
before, but none so remarkable as this. I wanted a horse that could shy,
and this one fills the bill. I had an idea that shying indicated spirit.
If I was correct, I have got the most spirited horse on earth. He shies
at every thing he comes across, with the utmost impartiality. He appears
to have a mortal dread of telegraph poles, especially; and it is
fortunate that these are on both sides of the road, because as it is now,
I never fall off twice in succession on the same side. If I fell on the
same side always, it would get to be monotonous after a while. This
creature has scared at every thing he has seen to-day, except a haystack.
He walked up to that with an intrepidity and a recklessness that were
astonishing. And it would fill any one with admiration to see how he
preserves his self-possession in the presence of a barley sack. This
dare-devil bravery will be the death of this horse some day.
He is not particularly fast, but I think he will get me through the Holy
Land. He has only one fault. His tail has been chopped off or else he
has sat down on it too hard, some time or other, and he has to fight the
flies with his heels. This is all very well, but when he tries to kick a
fly off the top of his head with his hind foot, it is too much variety.
He is going to get himself into trouble that way some day. He reaches
around and bites my legs too. I do not care particularly about that,
only I do not like to see a horse too sociable.
I think the owner of this prize had a wrong opinion about him. He had an
idea that he was one of those fiery, untamed steeds, but he is not of
that character. I know the Arab had this idea, because when he brought
the horse out for inspection in Beirout, he kept jerking at the bridle
and shouting in Arabic, "Ho! will you? Do you want to run away, you
ferocious beast, and break your neck?" when all the time the horse was
not doing anything in the world, and only looked like he wanted to lean
up against something and think. Whenever he is not shying at things, or
reaching after a fly, he wants to do that yet. How it would surprise his
owner to know this.
We have been in a historical section of country all day. At noon we
camped three hours and took luncheon at Mekseh, near the junction of the
Lebanon Mountains and the Jebel el Kuneiyiseh, and looked down into the
immense, level, garden-like Valley of Lebanon. To-night we are camping
near the same valley, and have a very wide sweep of it in view. We can
see the long, whale-backed ridge of Mount Hermon projecting above the
eastern hills. The "dews of Hermon" are falling upon us now, and the
tents are almost soaked with them.
Over the way from us, and higher up the valley, we can discern, through
the glasses, the faint outlines of the wonderful ruins of Baalbec, the
supposed Baal-Gad of Scripture. Joshua, and another person, were the two
spies who were sent into this land of Canaan by the children of Israel to
report upon its character--I mean they were the spies who reported
favorably. They took back with them some specimens of the grapes of this
country, and in the children's picture-books they are always represented
as bearing one monstrous bunch swung to a pole between them, a
respectable load for a pack-train. The Sunday-school books exaggerated
it a little. The grapes are most excellent to this day, but the bunches
are not as large as those in the pictures. I was surprised and hurt when
I saw them, because those colossal bunches of grapes were one of my most
cherished juvenile traditions.
Joshua reported favorably, and the children of Israel journeyed on, with
Moses at the head of the general government, and Joshua in command of the
army of six hundred thousand fighting men. Of women and children and
civilians there was a countless swarm. Of all that mighty host, none but
the two faithful spies ever lived to set their feet in the Promised Land.
They and their descendants wandered forty years in the desert, and then
Moses, the gifted warrior, poet, statesman and philosopher, went up into
Pisgah and met his mysterious fate. Where he was buried no man knows
--for
"* * * no man dug that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er
-- For the Sons of God upturned the sod
And laid the dead man there!"
Then Joshua began his terrible raid, and from Jericho clear to this
Baal-Gad, he swept the land like the Genius of Destruction. He
slaughtered the people, laid waste their soil, and razed their cities to
the ground. He wasted thirty-one kings also. One may call it that,
though really it can hardly be called wasting them, because there were
always plenty of kings in those days, and to spare. At any rate, he
destroyed thirty-one kings, and divided up their realms among his
Israelites. He divided up this valley stretched out here before us, and
so it was once Jewish territory. The Jews have long since disappeared
from it, however.
Back yonder, an hour's journey from here, we passed through an Arab
village of stone dry-goods boxes (they look like that,) where Noah's tomb
lies under lock and key. [Noah built the ark.] Over these old hills and
valleys the ark that contained all that was left of a vanished world once
floated.
I make no apology for detailing the above information. It will be news
to some of my readers, at any rate.
Noah's tomb is built of stone, and is covered with a long stone building.
Bucksheesh let us in. The building had to be long, because the grave of
the honored old navigator is two hundred and ten feet long itself! It is
only about four feet high, though. He must have cast a shadow like a
lightning-rod. The proof that this is the genuine spot where Noah was
buried can only be doubted by uncommonly incredulous people. The
evidence is pretty straight. Shem, the son of Noah, was present at the
burial, and showed the place to his descendants, who transmitted the
knowledge to their descendants, and the lineal descendants of these
introduced themselves to us to-day. It was pleasant to make the
acquaintance of members of so respectable a family. It was a thing to be
proud of. It was the next thing to being acquainted with Noah himself.
Noah's memorable voyage will always possess a living interest for me,
henceforward.
If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around
us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would
let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it
difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a
diving-bell. The Syrians are very poor, and yet they are ground down by
a system of taxation that would drive any other nation frantic. Last
year their taxes were heavy enough, in all conscience--but this year
they have been increased by the addition of taxes that were forgiven
them in times of famine in former years. On top of this the Government
has levied a tax of one-tenth of the whole proceeds of the land. This
is only half the story. The Pacha of a Pachalic does not trouble
himself with appointing tax-collectors. He figures up what all these
taxes ought to amount to in a certain district. Then he farms the
collection out. He calls the rich men together, the highest bidder gets
the speculation, pays the Pacha on the spot, and then sells out to
smaller fry, who sell in turn to a piratical horde of still smaller fry.
These latter compel the peasant to bring his little trifle of grain to
the village, at his own cost. It must be weighed, the various taxes set
apart, and the remainder returned to the producer. But the collector
delays this duty day after day, while the producer's family are
perishing for bread; at last the poor wretch, who can not but understand
the game, says, "Take a quarter--take half--take two-thirds if you will,
and let me go!" It is a most outrageous state of things.
These people are naturally good-hearted and intelligent, and with
education and liberty, would be a happy and contented race. They often
appeal to the stranger to know if the great world will not some day come
to their relief and save them. The Sultan has been lavishing money like
water in England and Paris, but his subjects are suffering for it now.
This fashion of camping out bewilders me. We have boot-jacks and a
bath-tub, now, and yet all the mysteries the pack-mules carry are not
revealed. What next?
CHAPTER XLIII.
We had a tedious ride of about five hours, in the sun, across the Valley
of Lebanon. It proved to be not quite so much of a garden as it had
seemed from the hill-sides. It was a desert, weed-grown waste, littered
thickly with stones the size of a man's fist. Here and there the natives
had scratched the ground and reared a sickly crop of grain, but for the
most part the valley was given up to a handful of shepherds, whose flocks
were doing what they honestly could to get a living, but the chances were
against them. We saw rude piles of stones standing near the roadside, at
intervals, and recognized the custom of marking boundaries which obtained
in Jacob's time. There were no walls, no fences, no hedges--nothing to
secure a man's possessions but these random heaps of stones. The
Israelites held them sacred in the old patriarchal times, and these other
Arabs, their lineal descendants, do so likewise. An American, of
ordinary intelligence, would soon widely extend his property, at an
outlay of mere manual labor, performed at night, under so loose a system
of fencing as this.
The plows these people use are simply a sharpened stick, such as Abraham
plowed with, and they still winnow their wheat as he did--they pile it on
the house-top, and then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air until the
wind has blown all the chaff away. They never invent any thing, never
learn any thing.
We had a fine race, of a mile, with an Arab perched on a camel. Some of
the horses were fast, and made very good time, but the camel scampered by
them without any very great effort. The yelling and shouting, and
whipping and galloping, of all parties interested, made it an
exhilarating, exciting, and particularly boisterous race.
At eleven o'clock, our eyes fell upon the walls and columns of Baalbec, a
noble ruin whose history is a sealed book. It has stood there for
thousands of years, the wonder and admiration of travelers; but who built
it, or when it was built, are questions that may never be answered. One
thing is very sure, though. Such grandeur of design, and such grace of
execution, as one sees in the temples of Baalbec, have not been equaled
or even approached in any work of men's hands that has been built within
twenty centuries past.
The great Temple of the Sun, the Temple of Jupiter, and several smaller
temples, are clustered together in the midst of one of these miserable
Syrian villages, and look strangely enough in such plebeian company.
These temples are built upon massive substructions that might support a
world, almost; the materials used are blocks of stone as large as an
omnibus--very few, if any of them, are smaller than a carpenter's tool
chest--and these substructions are traversed by tunnels of masonry
through which a train of cars might pass. With such foundations as
these, it is little wonder that Baalbec has lasted so long. The Temple
of the Sun is nearly three hundred feet long and one hundred and sixty
feet wide. It had fifty-four columns around it, but only six are
standing now--the others lie broken at its base, a confused and
picturesque heap. The six columns are their bases, Corinthian capitals
and entablature--and six more shapely columns do not exist. The columns
and the entablature together are ninety feet high--a prodigious altitude
for shafts of stone to reach, truly--and yet one only thinks of their
beauty and symmetry when looking at them; the pillars look slender and
delicate, the entablature, with its elaborate sculpture, looks like rich
stucco-work. But when you have gazed aloft till your eyes are weary, you
glance at the great fragments of pillars among which you are standing,
and find that they are eight feet through; and with them lie beautiful
capitals apparently as large as a small cottage; and also single slabs of
stone, superbly sculptured, that are four or five feet thick, and would
completely cover the floor of any ordinary parlor. You wonder where
these monstrous things came from, and it takes some little time to
satisfy yourself that the airy and graceful fabric that towers above your
head is made up of their mates. It seems too preposterous.
The Temple of Jupiter is a smaller ruin than the one I have been speaking
of, and yet is immense. It is in a tolerable state of preservation. One
row of nine columns stands almost uninjured. They are sixty-five feet
high and support a sort of porch or roof, which connects them with the
roof of the building. This porch-roof is composed of tremendous slabs of
stone, which are so finely sculptured on the under side that the work
looks like a fresco from below. One or two of these slabs had fallen,
and again I wondered if the gigantic masses of carved stone that lay
about me were no larger than those above my head. Within the temple, the
ornamentation was elaborate and colossal. What a wonder of architectural
beauty and grandeur this edifice must have been when it was new! And
what a noble picture it and its statelier companion, with the chaos of
mighty fragments scattered about them, yet makes in the moonlight!
I can not conceive how those immense blocks of stone were ever hauled
from the quarries, or how they were ever raised to the dizzy heights they
occupy in the temples. And yet these sculptured blocks are trifles in
size compared with the rough-hewn blocks that form the wide verandah or
platform which surrounds the Great Temple. One stretch of that platform,
two hundred feet long, is composed of blocks of stone as large, and some
of them larger, than a street-car. They surmount a wall about ten or
twelve feet high. I thought those were large rocks, but they sank into
insignificance compared with those which formed another section of the
platform. These were three in number, and I thought that each of them
was about as long as three street cars placed end to end, though of
course they are a third wider and a third higher than a street car.
Perhaps two railway freight cars of the largest pattern, placed end to
end, might better represent their size. In combined length these three
stones stretch nearly two hundred feet; they are thirteen feet square;
two of them are sixty-four feet long each, and the third is sixty-nine.
They are built into the massive wall some twenty feet above the ground.
They are there, but how they got there is the question. I have seen the
hull of a steamboat that was smaller than one of those stones. All these
great walls are as exact and shapely as the flimsy things we build of
bricks in these days. A race of gods or of giants must have inhabited
Baalbec many a century ago. Men like the men of our day could hardly
rear such temples as these.
We went to the quarry from whence the stones of Baalbec were taken. It
was about a quarter of a mile off, and down hill. In a great pit lay the
mate of the largest stone in the ruins. It lay there just as the giants
of that old forgotten time had left it when they were called hence--just
as they had left it, to remain for thousands of years, an eloquent rebuke
unto such as are prone to think slightingly of the men who lived before
them. This enormous block lies there, squared and ready for the
builders' hands--a solid mass fourteen feet by seventeen, and but a few
inches less than seventy feet long! Two buggies could be driven abreast
of each other, on its surface, from one end of it to the other, and leave
room enough for a man or two to walk on either side.
One might swear that all the John Smiths and George Wilkinsons, and all
the other pitiful nobodies between Kingdom Come and Baalbec would
inscribe their poor little names upon the walls of Baalbec's magnificent
ruins, and would add the town, the county and the State they came from
--and swearing thus, be infallibly correct. It is a pity some great ruin
does not fall in and flatten out some of these reptiles, and scare their
kind out of ever giving their names to fame upon any walls or monuments
again, forever.
Properly, with the sorry relics we bestrode, it was a three days' journey
to Damascus. It was necessary that we should do it in less than two.
It was necessary because our three pilgrims would not travel on the
Sabbath day. We were all perfectly willing to keep the Sabbath day, but
there are times when to keep the letter of a sacred law whose spirit is
righteous, becomes a sin, and this was a case in point. We pleaded for
the tired, ill-treated horses, and tried to show that their faithful
service deserved kindness in return, and their hard lot compassion. But
when did ever self-righteousness know the sentiment of pity? What were a
few long hours added to the hardships of some over-taxed brutes when
weighed against the peril of those human souls? It was not the most
promising party to travel with and hope to gain a higher veneration for
religion through the example of its devotees. We said the Saviour who
pitied dumb beasts and taught that the ox must be rescued from the mire
even on the Sabbath day, would not have counseled a forced march like
this. We said the "long trip" was exhausting and therefore dangerous in
the blistering heats of summer, even when the ordinary days' stages were
traversed, and if we persisted in this hard march, some of us might be
stricken down with the fevers of the country in consequence of it.
Nothing could move the pilgrims. They must press on. Men might die,
horses might die, but they must enter upon holy soil next week, with no
Sabbath-breaking stain upon them. Thus they were willing to commit a sin
against the spirit of religious law, in order that they might preserve
the letter of it. It was not worth while to tell them "the letter
kills." I am talking now about personal friends; men whom I like; men
who are good citizens; who are honorable, upright, conscientious; but
whose idea of the Saviour's religion seems to me distorted. They lecture
our shortcomings unsparingly, and every night they call us together and
read to us chapters from the Testament that are full of gentleness, of
charity, and of tender mercy; and then all the next day they stick to
their saddles clear up to the summits of these rugged mountains, and
clear down again. Apply the Testament's gentleness, and charity, and
tender mercy to a toiling, worn and weary horse?--Nonsense--these are for
God's human creatures, not His dumb ones. What the pilgrims choose to
do, respect for their almost sacred character demands that I should allow
to pass--but I would so like to catch any other member of the party
riding his horse up one of these exhausting hills once!
We have given the pilgrims a good many examples that might benefit them,
but it is virtue thrown away. They have never heard a cross word out of
our lips toward each other--but they have quarreled once or twice. We
love to hear them at it, after they have been lecturing us. The very
first thing they did, coming ashore at Beirout, was to quarrel in the
boat. I have said I like them, and I do like them--but every time they
read me a scorcher of a lecture I mean to talk back in print.
Not content with doubling the legitimate stages, they switched off the
main road and went away out of the way to visit an absurd fountain called
Figia, because Baalam's ass had drank there once. So we journeyed on,
through the terrible hills and deserts and the roasting sun, and then far
into the night, seeking the honored pool of Baalam's ass, the patron
saint of all pilgrims like us. I find no entry but this in my note-book:
"Rode to-day, altogether, thirteen hours, through deserts, partly,
and partly over barren, unsightly hills, and latterly through wild,
rocky scenery, and camped at about eleven o'clock at night on the
banks of a limpid stream, near a Syrian village. Do not know its
name--do not wish to know it--want to go to bed. Two horses lame
(mine and Jack's) and the others worn out. Jack and I walked three
or four miles, over the hills, and led the horses. Fun--but of a
mild type."
Twelve or thirteen hours in the saddle, even in a Christian land and a
Christian climate, and on a good horse, is a tiresome journey; but in an
oven like Syria, in a ragged spoon of a saddle that slips fore-and-aft,
and "thort-ships," and every way, and on a horse that is tired and lame,
and yet must be whipped and spurred with hardly a moment's cessation all
day long, till the blood comes from his side, and your conscience hurts
you every time you strike if you are half a man,--it is a journey to be
remembered in bitterness of spirit and execrated with emphasis for a
liberal division of a man's lifetime.
CHAPTER XLIV.
The next day was an outrage upon men and horses both. It was another
thirteen-hour stretch (including an hour's "nooning.") It was over the
barrenest chalk-hills and through the baldest canons that even Syria can
show. The heat quivered in the air every where. In the canons we almost
smothered in the baking atmosphere. On high ground, the reflection from
the chalk-hills was blinding. It was cruel to urge the crippled horses,
but it had to be done in order to make Damascus Saturday night. We saw
ancient tombs and temples of fanciful architecture carved out of the
solid rock high up in the face of precipices above our heads, but we had
neither time nor strength to climb up there and examine them. The terse
language of my note-book will answer for the rest of this day's
experiences:
"Broke camp at 7 A.M., and made a ghastly trip through the Zeb Dana
valley and the rough mountains--horses limping and that Arab
screech-owl that does most of the singing and carries the
water-skins, always a thousand miles ahead, of course, and no water
to drink--will he never die? Beautiful stream in a chasm, lined
thick with pomegranate, fig, olive and quince orchards, and nooned
an hour at the celebrated Baalam's Ass Fountain of Figia, second in
size in Syria, and the coldest water out of Siberia--guide-books do
not say Baalam's ass ever drank there--somebody been imposing on
the pilgrims, may be. Bathed in it--Jack and I. Only a
second--ice-water. It is the principal source of the Abana river
--only one-half mile down to where it joins. Beautiful
place--giant trees all around--so shady and cool, if one could keep
awake--vast stream gushes straight out from under the mountain in a
torrent. Over it is a very ancient ruin, with no known history
--supposed to have been for the worship of the deity of the fountain
or Baalam's ass or somebody. Wretched nest of human vermin about
the fountain--rags, dirt, sunken cheeks, pallor of sickness, sores,
projecting bones, dull, aching misery in their eyes and ravenous
hunger speaking from every eloquent fibre and muscle from head to
foot. How they sprang upon a bone, how they crunched the bread we
gave them! Such as these to swarm about one and watch every bite
he takes, with greedy looks, and swallow unconsciously every time
he swallows, as if they half fancied the precious morsel went down
their own throats --hurry up the caravan!--I never shall enjoy a
meal in this distressful country. To think of eating three times
every day under such circumstances for three weeks yet--it is worse
punishment than riding all day in the sun. There are sixteen
starving babies from one to six years old in the party, and their
legs are no larger than broom handles. Left the fountain at 1 P.M.
(the fountain took us at least two hours out of our way,) and
reached Mahomet's lookout perch, over Damascus, in time to get a
good long look before it was necessary to move on. Tired? Ask of
the winds that far away with fragments strewed the sea."
As the glare of day mellowed into twilight, we looked down upon a picture
which is celebrated all over the world. I think I have read about four
hundred times that when Mahomet was a simple camel-driver he reached this
point and looked down upon Damascus for the first time, and then made a
certain renowned remark. He said man could enter only one paradise; he
preferred to go to the one above. So he sat down there and feasted his
eyes upon the earthly paradise of Damascus, and then went away without
entering its gates. They have erected a tower on the hill to mark the
spot where he stood.
Damascus is beautiful from the mountain. It is beautiful even to
foreigners accustomed to luxuriant vegetation, and I can easily
understand how unspeakably beautiful it must be to eyes that are only
used to the God-forsaken barrenness and desolation of Syria. I should
think a Syrian would go wild with ecstacy when such a picture bursts upon
him for the first time.
From his high perch, one sees before him and below him, a wall of dreary
mountains, shorn of vegetation, glaring fiercely in the sun; it fences in
a level desert of yellow sand, smooth as velvet and threaded far away
with fine lines that stand for roads, and dotted with creeping mites we
know are camel-trains and journeying men; right in the midst of the
desert is spread a billowy expanse of green foliage; and nestling in its
heart sits the great white city, like an island of pearls and opals
gleaming out of a sea of emeralds. This is the picture you see spread
far below you, with distance to soften it, the sun to glorify it, strong
contrasts to heighten the effects, and over it and about it a drowsing
air of repose to spiritualize it and make it seem rather a beautiful
estray from the mysterious worlds we visit in dreams than a substantial
tenant of our coarse, dull globe. And when you think of the leagues of
blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infamous
country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is the most
beautiful, beautiful picture that ever human eyes rested upon in all the
broad universe! If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on
Mahomet's hill about a week, and then go away. There is no need to go
inside the walls. The Prophet was wise without knowing it when he
decided not to go down into the paradise of Damascus.
There is an honored old tradition that the immense garden which Damascus
stands in was the Garden of Eden, and modern writers have gathered up
many chapters of evidence tending to show that it really was the Garden
of Eden, and that the rivers Pharpar and Abana are the "two rivers" that
watered Adam's Paradise. It may be so, but it is not paradise now, and
one would be as happy outside of it as he would be likely to be within.
It is so crooked and cramped and dirty that one can not realize that he
is in the splendid city he saw from the hill-top. The gardens are hidden
by high mud-walls, and the paradise is become a very sink of pollution
and uncomeliness. Damascus has plenty of clear, pure water in it,
though, and this is enough, of itself, to make an Arab think it beautiful
and blessed. Water is scarce in blistered Syria. We run railways by our
large cities in America; in Syria they curve the roads so as to make them
run by the meagre little puddles they call "fountains," and which are not
found oftener on a journey than every four hours. But the "rivers" of
Pharpar and Abana of Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and
so every house and every garden have their sparkling fountains and
rivulets of water. With her forest of foliage and her abundance of
water, Damascus must be a wonder of wonders to the Bedouin from the
deserts. Damascus is simply an oasis--that is what it is. For four
thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed.
Now we can understand why the city has existed so long. It could not
die. So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the midst of
that howling desert, so long will Damascus live to bless the sight of the
tired and thirsty wayfarer.
"Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of
spring, blooming as thine own rose-bud, and fragrant as thine own
orange flower, O Damascus, pearl of the East!"
Damascus dates back anterior to the days of Abraham, and is the oldest
city in the world. It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah. "The
early history of Damascus is shrouded in the mists of a hoary antiquity."
Leave the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old
Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world but
Damascus was in existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far as
you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the
writings of every century for more than four thousand years, its name has
been mentioned and its praises sung. To Damascus, years are only
moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time,
not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise,
and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw
the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes, and Ephesus laid; she saw these
villages grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their
grandeur--and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given
over to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted,
and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and flourish two
thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it
overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundreds
of years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old
Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly worth remembering.
Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she
lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will
see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims
the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal City.
We reached the city gates just at sundown. They do say that one can get
into any walled city of Syria, after night, for bucksheesh, except
Damascus. But Damascus, with its four thousand years of respectability
in the world, has many old fogy notions. There are no street lamps
there, and the law compels all who go abroad at night to carry lanterns,
just as was the case in old days, when heroes and heroines of the Arabian
Nights walked the streets of Damascus, or flew away toward Bagdad on
enchanted carpets.
It was fairly dark a few minutes after we got within the wall, and we
rode long distances through wonderfully crooked streets, eight to ten
feet wide, and shut in on either side by the high mud-walls of the
gardens. At last we got to where lanterns could be seen flitting about
here and there, and knew we were in the midst of the curious old city.
In a little narrow street, crowded with our pack-mules and with a swarm
of uncouth Arabs, we alighted, and through a kind of a hole in the wall
entered the hotel. We stood in a great flagged court, with flowers and
citron trees about us, and a huge tank in the centre that was receiving
the waters of many pipes. We crossed the court and entered the rooms
prepared to receive four of us. In a large marble-paved recess between
the two rooms was a tank of clear, cool water, which was kept running
over all the time by the streams that were pouring into it from half a
dozen pipes. Nothing, in this scorching, desolate land could look so
refreshing as this pure water flashing in the lamp-light; nothing could
look so beautiful, nothing could sound so delicious as this mimic rain to
ears long unaccustomed to sounds of such a nature. Our rooms were large,
comfortably furnished, and even had their floors clothed with soft,
cheerful-tinted carpets. It was a pleasant thing to see a carpet again,
for if there is any thing drearier than the tomb-like, stone-paved
parlors and bed-rooms of Europe and Asia, I do not know what it is.
They make one think of the grave all the time. A very broad, gaily
caparisoned divan, some twelve or fourteen feet long, extended across one
side of each room, and opposite were single beds with spring mattresses.
There were great looking-glasses and marble-top tables. All this luxury
was as grateful to systems and senses worn out with an exhausting day's
travel, as it was unexpected--for one can not tell what to expect in a
Turkish city of even a quarter of a million inhabitants.
I do not know, but I think they used that tank between the rooms to draw
drinking water from; that did not occur to me, however, until I had
dipped my baking head far down into its cool depths. I thought of it
then, and superb as the bath was, I was sorry I had taken it, and was
about to go and explain to the landlord. But a finely curled and scented
poodle dog frisked up and nipped the calf of my leg just then, and before
I had time to think, I had soused him to the bottom of the tank, and when
I saw a servant coming with a pitcher I went off and left the pup trying
to climb out and not succeeding very well. Satisfied revenge was all I
needed to make me perfectly happy, and when I walked in to supper that
first night in Damascus I was in that condition. We lay on those divans
a long time, after supper, smoking narghilies and long-stemmed chibouks,
and talking about the dreadful ride of the day, and I knew then what I
had sometimes known before--that it is worth while to get tired out,
because one so enjoys resting afterward.
In the morning we sent for donkeys. It is worthy of note that we had to
send for these things. I said Damascus was an old fossil, and she is.
Any where else we would have been assailed by a clamorous army of
donkey-drivers, guides, peddlers and beggars--but in Damascus they so
hate the very sight of a foreign Christian that they want no intercourse
whatever with him; only a year or two ago, his person was not always
safe in Damascus streets. It is the most fanatical Mohammedan purgatory
out of Arabia. Where you see one green turban of a Hadji elsewhere (the
honored sign that my lord has made the pilgrimage to Mecca,) I think you
will see a dozen in Damascus. The Damascenes are the ugliest, wickedest
looking villains we have seen. All the veiled women we had seen yet,
nearly, left their eyes exposed, but numbers of these in Damascus
completely hid the face under a close-drawn black veil that made the
woman look like a mummy. If ever we caught an eye exposed it was
quickly hidden from our contaminating Christian vision; the beggars
actually passed us by without demanding bucksheesh; the merchants in the
bazaars did not hold up their goods and cry out eagerly, "Hey, John!"
or "Look this, Howajji!" On the contrary, they only scowled at us and
said never a word.
The narrow streets swarmed like a hive with men and women in strange
Oriental costumes, and our small donkeys knocked them right and left as
we plowed through them, urged on by the merciless donkey-boys. These
persecutors run after the animals, shouting and goading them for hours
together; they keep the donkey in a gallop always, yet never get tired
themselves or fall behind. The donkeys fell down and spilt us over their
heads occasionally, but there was nothing for it but to mount and hurry
on again. We were banged against sharp corners, loaded porters, camels,
and citizens generally; and we were so taken up with looking out for
collisions and casualties that we had no chance to look about us at all.
We rode half through the city and through the famous "street which is
called Straight" without seeing any thing, hardly. Our bones were nearly
knocked out of joint, we were wild with excitement, and our sides ached
with the jolting we had suffered. I do not like riding in the Damascus
street-cars.
We were on our way to the reputed houses of Judas and Ananias. About
eighteen or nineteen hundred years ago, Saul, a native of Tarsus, was
particularly bitter against the new sect called Christians, and he left
Jerusalem and started across the country on a furious crusade against
them. He went forth "breathing threatenings and slaughter against the
disciples of the Lord."
"And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus, and suddenly there
shined round about him a light from heaven:
"And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, 'Saul,
Saul, why persecutest thou me?'
"And when he knew that it was Jesus that spoke to him he trembled,
and was astonished, and said, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?'"
He was told to arise and go into the ancient city and one would tell
him what to do. In the meantime his soldiers stood speechless and
awe-stricken, for they heard the mysterious voice but saw no man. Saul
rose up and found that that fierce supernatural light had destroyed his
sight, and he was blind, so "they led him by the hand and brought him to
Damascus." He was converted.
Paul lay three days, blind, in the house of Judas, and during that time
he neither ate nor drank.
There came a voice to a citizen of Damascus, named Ananias, saying,
"Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire at
the house of Judas, for one called Saul, of Tarsus; for behold, he
prayeth."
Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he had heard of Saul before, and
he had his doubts about that style of a "chosen vessel" to preach the
gospel of peace. However, in obedience to orders, he went into the
"street called Straight" (how he found his way into it, and after he did,
how he ever found his way out of it again, are mysteries only to be
accounted for by the fact that he was acting under Divine inspiration.)
He found Paul and restored him, and ordained him a preacher; and from
this old house we had hunted up in the street which is miscalled
Straight, he had started out on that bold missionary career which he
prosecuted till his death. It was not the house of the disciple who sold
the Master for thirty pieces of silver. I make this explanation in
justice to Judas, who was a far different sort of man from the person
just referred to. A very different style of man, and lived in a very
good house. It is a pity we do not know more about him.
I have given, in the above paragraphs, some more information for people
who will not read Bible history until they are defrauded into it by some
such method as this. I hope that no friend of progress and education
will obstruct or interfere with my peculiar mission.
The street called Straight is straighter than a corkscrew, but not as
straight as a rainbow. St. Luke is careful not to commit himself; he
does not say it is the street which is straight, but the "street which is
called Straight." It is a fine piece of irony; it is the only facetious
remark in the Bible, I believe. We traversed the street called Straight
a good way, and then turned off and called at the reputed house of
Ananias. There is small question that a part of the original house is
there still; it is an old room twelve or fifteen feet under ground, and
its masonry is evidently ancient. If Ananias did not live there in St.
Paul's time, somebody else did, which is just as well. I took a drink
out of Ananias' well, and singularly enough, the water was just as fresh
as if the well had been dug yesterday.
We went out toward the north end of the city to see the place where the
disciples let Paul down over the Damascus wall at dead of night--for he
preached Christ so fearlessly in Damascus that the people sought to kill
him, just as they would to-day for the same offense, and he had to escape
and flee to Jerusalem.
Then we called at the tomb of Mahomet's children and at a tomb which
purported to be that of St. George who killed the dragon, and so on out
to the hollow place under a rock where Paul hid during his flight till
his pursuers gave him up; and to the mausoleum of the five thousand
Christians who were massacred in Damascus in 1861 by the Turks. They say
those narrow streets ran blood for several days, and that men, women and
children were butchered indiscriminately and left to rot by hundreds all
through the Christian quarter; they say, further, that the stench was
dreadful. All the Christians who could get away fled from the city, and
the Mohammedans would not defile their hands by burying the "infidel
dogs." The thirst for blood extended to the high lands of Hermon and
Anti-Lebanon, and in a short time twenty-five thousand more Christians
were massacred and their possessions laid waste. How they hate a
Christian in Damascus!--and pretty much all over Turkeydom as well. And
how they will pay for it when Russia turns her guns upon them again!
It is soothing to the heart to abuse England and France for interposing
to save the Ottoman Empire from the destruction it has so richly deserved
for a thousand years. It hurts my vanity to see these pagans refuse to
eat of food that has been cooked for us; or to eat from a dish we have
eaten from; or to drink from a goatskin which we have polluted with our
Christian lips, except by filtering the water through a rag which they
put over the mouth of it or through a sponge! I never disliked a
Chinaman as I do these degraded Turks and Arabs, and when Russia is ready
to war with them again, I hope England and France will not find it good
breeding or good judgment to interfere.
In Damascus they think there are no such rivers in all the world as their
little Abana and Pharpar. The Damascenes have always thought that way.
In 2 Kings, chapter v., Naaman boasts extravagantly about them. That was
three thousand years ago. He says: "Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of
Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them
and be clean?" But some of my readers have forgotten who Naaman was,
long ago. Naaman was the commander of the Syrian armies. He was the
favorite of the king and lived in great state. "He was a mighty man of
valor, but he was a leper." Strangely enough, the house they point out
to you now as his, has been turned into a leper hospital, and the inmates
expose their horrid deformities and hold up their hands and beg for
bucksheesh when a stranger enters.
One can not appreciate the horror of this disease until he looks upon it
in all its ghastliness, in Naaman's ancient dwelling in Damascus. Bones
all twisted out of shape, great knots protruding from face and body,
joints decaying and dropping away--horrible!
CHAPTER XLV.
The last twenty-four hours we staid in Damascus I lay prostrate with a
violent attack of cholera, or cholera morbus, and therefore had a good
chance and a good excuse to lie there on that wide divan and take an
honest rest. I had nothing to do but listen to the pattering of the
fountains and take medicine and throw it up again. It was dangerous
recreation, but it was pleasanter than traveling in Syria. I had plenty
of snow from Mount Hermon, and as it would not stay on my stomach, there
was nothing to interfere with my eating it--there was always room for
more. I enjoyed myself very well. Syrian travel has its interesting
features, like travel in any other part of the world, and yet to break
your leg or have the cholera adds a welcome variety to it.
We left Damascus at noon and rode across the plain a couple of hours, and
then the party stopped a while in the shade of some fig-trees to give me
a chance to rest. It was the hottest day we had seen yet--the sun-flames
shot down like the shafts of fire that stream out before a blow-pipe--the
rays seemed to fall in a steady deluge on the head and pass downward like
rain from a roof. I imagined I could distinguish between the floods of
rays--I thought I could tell when each flood struck my head, when it
reached my shoulders, and when the next one came. It was terrible. All
the desert glared so fiercely that my eyes were swimming in tears all the
time. The boys had white umbrellas heavily lined with dark green. They
were a priceless blessing. I thanked fortune that I had one, too,
notwithstanding it was packed up with the baggage and was ten miles
ahead. It is madness to travel in Syria without an umbrella. They told
me in Beirout (these people who always gorge you with advice) that it was
madness to travel in Syria without an umbrella. It was on this account
that I got one.
But, honestly, I think an umbrella is a nuisance any where when its
business is to keep the sun off. No Arab wears a brim to his fez, or
uses an umbrella, or any thing to shade his eyes or his face, and he
always looks comfortable and proper in the sun. But of all the
ridiculous sights I ever have seen, our party of eight is the most so
--they do cut such an outlandish figure. They travel single file; they all
wear the endless white rag of Constantinople wrapped round and round
their hats and dangling down their backs; they all wear thick green
spectacles, with side-glasses to them; they all hold white umbrellas,
lined with green, over their heads; without exception their stirrups are
too short--they are the very worst gang of horsemen on earth, their
animals to a horse trot fearfully hard--and when they get strung out one
after the other; glaring straight ahead and breathless; bouncing high and
out of turn, all along the line; knees well up and stiff, elbows flapping
like a rooster's that is going to crow, and the long file of umbrellas
popping convulsively up and down--when one sees this outrageous picture
exposed to the light of day, he is amazed that the gods don't get out
their thunderbolts and destroy them off the face of the earth! I do--I
wonder at it. I wouldn't let any such caravan go through a country of
mine.
And when the sun drops below the horizon and the boys close their
umbrellas and put them under their arms, it is only a variation of the
picture, not a modification of its absurdity.
But may be you can not see the wild extravagance of my panorama. You
could if you were here. Here, you feel all the time just as if you were
living about the year 1200 before Christ--or back to the patriarchs--or
forward to the New Era. The scenery of the Bible is about you--the
customs of the patriarchs are around you--the same people, in the same
flowing robes, and in sandals, cross your path--the same long trains of
stately camels go and come--the same impressive religious solemnity and
silence rest upon the desert and the mountains that were upon them in the
remote ages of antiquity, and behold, intruding upon a scene like this,
comes this fantastic mob of green-spectacled Yanks, with their flapping
elbows and bobbing umbrellas! It is Daniel in the lion's den with a
green cotton umbrella under his arm, all over again.
My umbrella is with the baggage, and so are my green spectacles--and
there they shall stay. I will not use them. I will show some respect
for the eternal fitness of things. It will be bad enough to get
sun-struck, without looking ridiculous into the bargain. If I fall,
let me fall bearing about me the semblance of a Christian, at least.
Three or four hours out from Damascus we passed the spot where Saul was
so abruptly converted, and from this place we looked back over the
scorching desert, and had our last glimpse of beautiful Damascus, decked
in its robes of shining green. After nightfall we reached our tents,
just outside of the nasty Arab village of Jonesborough. Of course the
real name of the place is El something or other, but the boys still
refuse to recognize the Arab names or try to pronounce them. When I say
that that village is of the usual style, I mean to insinuate that all
Syrian villages within fifty miles of Damascus are alike--so much alike
that it would require more than human intelligence to tell wherein one
differed from another. A Syrian village is a hive of huts one story high
(the height of a man,) and as square as a dry-goods box; it is
mud-plastered all over, flat roof and all, and generally whitewashed
after a fashion. The same roof often extends over half the town,
covering many of the streets, which are generally about a yard wide.
When you ride through one of these villages at noon-day, you first meet
a melancholy dog, that looks up at you and silently begs that you won't
run over him, but he does not offer to get out of the way; next you meet
a young boy without any clothes on, and he holds out his hand and says
"Bucksheesh!" --he don't really expect a cent, but then he learned to
say that before he learned to say mother, and now he can not break
himself of it; next you meet a woman with a black veil drawn closely
over her face, and her bust exposed; finally, you come to several
sore-eyed children and children in all stages of mutilation and decay;
and sitting humbly in the dust, and all fringed with filthy rags, is a
poor devil whose arms and legs are gnarled and twisted like grape-vines.
These are all the people you are likely to see. The balance of the
population are asleep within doors, or abroad tending goats in the
plains and on the hill-sides. The village is built on some consumptive
little water-course, and about it is a little fresh-looking vegetation.
Beyond this charmed circle, for miles on every side, stretches a weary
desert of sand and gravel, which produces a gray bunchy shrub like
sage-brush. A Syrian village is the sorriest sight in the world, and
its surroundings are eminently in keeping with it.
I would not have gone into this dissertation upon Syrian villages but for
the fact that Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter of Scriptural notoriety, is
buried in Jonesborough, and I wished the public to know about how he is
located. Like Homer, he is said to be buried in many other places, but
this is the only true and genuine place his ashes inhabit.
When the original tribes were dispersed, more than four thousand years
ago, Nimrod and a large party traveled three or four hundred miles, and
settled where the great city of Babylon afterwards stood. Nimrod built
that city. He also began to build the famous Tower of Babel, but
circumstances over which he had no control put it out of his power to
finish it. He ran it up eight stories high, however, and two of them
still stand, at this day--a colossal mass of brickwork, rent down the
centre by earthquakes, and seared and vitrified by the lightnings of an
angry God. But the vast ruin will still stand for ages, to shame the
puny labors of these modern generations of men. Its huge compartments
are tenanted by owls and lions, and old Nimrod lies neglected in this
wretched village, far from the scene of his grand enterprise.
We left Jonesborough very early in the morning, and rode forever and
forever and forever, it seemed to me, over parched deserts and rocky
hills, hungry, and with no water to drink. We had drained the goat-skins
dry in a little while. At noon we halted before the wretched Arab town
of El Yuba Dam, perched on the side of a mountain, but the dragoman said
if we applied there for water we would be attacked by the whole tribe,
for they did not love Christians. We had to journey on. Two hours later
we reached the foot of a tall isolated mountain, which is crowned by the
crumbling castle of Banias, the stateliest ruin of that kind on earth, no
doubt. It is a thousand feet long and two hundred wide, all of the most
symmetrical, and at the same time the most ponderous masonry. The
massive towers and bastions are more than thirty feet high, and have been
sixty. From the mountain's peak its broken turrets rise above the groves
of ancient oaks and olives, and look wonderfully picturesque. It is of
such high antiquity that no man knows who built it or when it was built.
It is utterly inaccessible, except in one place, where a bridle-path
winds upward among the solid rocks to the old portcullis. The horses'
hoofs have bored holes in these rocks to the depth of six inches during
the hundreds and hundreds of years that the castle was garrisoned. We
wandered for three hours among the chambers and crypts and dungeons of
the fortress, and trod where the mailed heels of many a knightly Crusader
had rang, and where Phenician heroes had walked ages before them.
We wondered how such a solid mass of masonry could be affected even by an
earthquake, and could not understand what agency had made Banias a ruin;
but we found the destroyer, after a while, and then our wonder was
increased tenfold. Seeds had fallen in crevices in the vast walls; the
seeds had sprouted; the tender, insignificant sprouts had hardened; they
grew larger and larger, and by a steady, imperceptible pressure forced
the great stones apart, and now are bringing sure destruction upon a
giant work that has even mocked the earthquakes to scorn! Gnarled and
twisted trees spring from the old walls every where, and beautify and
overshadow the gray battlements with a wild luxuriance of foliage.
From these old towers we looked down upon a broad, far-reaching green
plain, glittering with the pools and rivulets which are the sources of
the sacred river Jordan. It was a grateful vision, after so much desert.
And as the evening drew near, we clambered down the mountain, through
groves of the Biblical oaks of Bashan, (for we were just stepping over
the border and entering the long-sought Holy Land,) and at its extreme
foot, toward the wide valley, we entered this little execrable village of
Banias and camped in a great grove of olive trees near a torrent of
sparkling water whose banks are arrayed in fig-trees, pomegranates and
oleanders in full leaf. Barring the proximity of the village, it is a
sort of paradise.
The very first thing one feels like doing when he gets into camp, all
burning up and dusty, is to hunt up a bath. We followed the stream up to
where it gushes out of the mountain side, three hundred yards from the
tents, and took a bath that was so icy that if I did not know this was
the main source of the sacred river, I would expect harm to come of it.
It was bathing at noonday in the chilly source of the Abana, "River of
Damascus," that gave me the cholera, so Dr. B. said. However, it
generally does give me the cholera to take a bath.
The incorrigible pilgrims have come in with their pockets full of
specimens broken from the ruins. I wish this vandalism could be stopped.
They broke off fragments from Noah's tomb; from the exquisite sculptures
of the temples of Baalbec; from the houses of Judas and Ananias, in
Damascus; from the tomb of Nimrod the Mighty Hunter in Jonesborough; from
the worn Greek and Roman inscriptions set in the hoary walls of the
Castle of Banias; and now they have been hacking and chipping these old
arches here that Jesus looked upon in the flesh. Heaven protect the
Sepulchre when this tribe invades Jerusalem!
The ruins here are not very interesting. There are the massive walls of
a great square building that was once the citadel; there are many
ponderous old arches that are so smothered with debris that they barely
project above the ground; there are heavy-walled sewers through which the
crystal brook of which Jordan is born still runs; in the hill-side are
the substructions of a costly marble temple that Herod the Great built
here--patches of its handsome mosaic floors still remain; there is a
quaint old stone bridge that was here before Herod's time, may be;
scattered every where, in the paths and in the woods, are Corinthian
capitals, broken porphyry pillars, and little fragments of sculpture; and
up yonder in the precipice where the fountain gushes out, are well-worn
Greek inscriptions over niches in the rock where in ancient times the
Greeks, and after them the Romans, worshipped the sylvan god Pan. But
trees and bushes grow above many of these ruins now; the miserable huts
of a little crew of filthy Arabs are perched upon the broken masonry of
antiquity, the whole place has a sleepy, stupid, rural look about it, and
one can hardly bring himself to believe that a busy, substantially built
city once existed here, even two thousand years ago. The place was
nevertheless the scene of an event whose effects have added page after
page and volume after volume to the world's history. For in this place
Christ stood when he said to Peter:
"Thou art Peter; and upon this rock will I build my church, and the
gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto
thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
On those little sentences have been built up the mighty edifice of the
Church of Rome; in them lie the authority for the imperial power of the
Popes over temporal affairs, and their godlike power to curse a soul or
wash it white from sin. To sustain the position of "the only true
Church," which Rome claims was thus conferred upon her, she has fought
and labored and struggled for many a century, and will continue to keep
herself busy in the same work to the end of time. The memorable words I
have quoted give to this ruined city about all the interest it possesses
to people of the present day.
It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground that was once
actually pressed by the feet of the Saviour. The situation is suggestive
of a reality and a tangibility that seem at variance with the vagueness
and mystery and ghostliness that one naturally attaches to the character
of a god. I can not comprehend yet that I am sitting where a god has
stood, and looking upon the brook and the mountains which that god looked
upon, and am surrounded by dusky men and women whose ancestors saw him,
and even talked with him, face to face, and carelessly, just as they
would have done with any other stranger. I can not comprehend this; the
gods of my understanding have been always hidden in clouds and very far
away.
This morning, during breakfast, the usual assemblage of squalid humanity
sat patiently without the charmed circle of the camp and waited for such
crumbs as pity might bestow upon their misery. There were old and young,
brown-skinned and yellow. Some of the men were tall and stalwart, (for
one hardly sees any where such splendid-looking men as here in the East,)
but all the women and children looked worn and sad, and distressed with
hunger. They reminded me much of Indians, did these people. They had
but little clothing, but such as they had was fanciful in character and
fantastic in its arrangement. Any little absurd gewgaw or gimcrack they
had they disposed in such a way as to make it attract attention most
readily. They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our
every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly
Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and uncomfortable and
savage that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe.
These people about us had other peculiarities, which I have noticed in
the noble red man, too: they were infested with vermin, and the dirt had
caked on them till it amounted to bark.
The little children were in a pitiable condition--they all had sore eyes,
and were otherwise afflicted in various ways. They say that hardly a
native child in all the East is free from sore eyes, and that thousands
of them go blind of one eye or both every year. I think this must be so,
for I see plenty of blind people every day, and I do not remember seeing
any children that hadn't sore eyes. And, would you suppose that an
American mother could sit for an hour, with her child in her arms, and
let a hundred flies roost upon its eyes all that time undisturbed? I see
that every day. It makes my flesh creep. Yesterday we met a woman
riding on a little jackass, and she had a little child in her arms
--honestly, I thought the child had goggles on as we approached, and I
wondered how its mother could afford so much style. But when we drew
near, we saw that the goggles were nothing but a camp meeting of flies
assembled around each of the child's eyes, and at the same time there was
a detachment prospecting its nose. The flies were happy, the child was
contented, and so the mother did not interfere.
As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our party, they
began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his
nature, had taken a child from a woman who sat near by, and put some sort
of a wash upon its diseased eyes. That woman went off and started the
whole nation, and it was a sight to see them swarm! The lame, the halt,
the blind, the leprous--all the distempers that are bred of indolence,
dirt, and iniquity--were represented in the Congress in ten minutes, and
still they came! Every woman that had a sick baby brought it along, and
every woman that hadn't, borrowed one. What reverent and what worshiping
looks they bent upon that dread, mysterious power, the Doctor! They
watched him take his phials out; they watched him measure the particles
of white powder; they watched him add drops of one precious liquid, and
drops of another; they lost not the slightest movement; their eyes were
riveted upon him with a fascination that nothing could distract.
I believe they thought he was gifted like a god. When each individual
got his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with joy
--notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive race--and
upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that nothing on earth
could prevent the patient from getting well now.
Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick. They flocked to our
poor human doctor this morning when the fame of what he had done to the
sick child went abroad in the land, and they worshiped him with their
eyes while they did not know as yet whether there was virtue in his
simples or not. The ancestors of these--people precisely like them in
color, dress, manners, customs, simplicity--flocked in vast multitudes
after Christ, and when they saw Him make the afflicted whole with a
word, it is no wonder they worshiped Him. No wonder His deeds were the
talk of the nation. No wonder the multitude that followed Him was so
great that at one time--thirty miles from here--they had to let a sick
man down through the roof because no approach could be made to the door;
no wonder His audiences were so great at Galilee that He had to preach
from a ship removed a little distance from the shore; no wonder that
even in the desert places about Bethsaida, five thousand invaded His
solitude, and He had to feed them by a miracle or else see them suffer
for their confiding faith and devotion; no wonder when there was a great
commotion in a city in those days, one neighbor explained it to another
in words to this effect: "They say that Jesus of Nazareth is come!"
Well, as I was saying, the doctor distributed medicine as long as he had
any to distribute, and his reputation is mighty in Galilee this day.
Among his patients was the child of the Shiek's daughter--for even this
poor, ragged handful of sores and sin has its royal Shiek--a poor old
mummy that looked as if he would be more at home in a poor-house than in
the Chief Magistracy of this tribe of hopeless, shirtless savages. The
princess--I mean the Shiek's daughter--was only thirteen or fourteen
years old, and had a very sweet face and a pretty one. She was the only
Syrian female we have seen yet who was not so sinfully ugly that she
couldn't smile after ten o'clock Saturday night without breaking the
Sabbath. Her child was a hard specimen, though--there wasn't enough of
it to make a pie, and the poor little thing looked so pleadingly up at
all who came near it (as if it had an idea that now was its chance or
never,) that we were filled with compassion which was genuine and not put
on.
But this last new horse I have got is trying to break his neck over the
tent-ropes, and I shall have to go out and anchor him. Jericho and I
have parted company. The new horse is not much to boast of, I think.
One of his hind legs bends the wrong way, and the other one is as
straight and stiff as a tent-pole. Most of his teeth are gone, and he is
as blind as bat. His nose has been broken at some time or other, and is
arched like a culvert now. His under lip hangs down like a camel's, and
his ears are chopped off close to his head. I had some trouble at first
to find a name for him, but I finally concluded to call him Baalbec,
because he is such a magnificent ruin. I can not keep from talking about
my horses, because I have a very long and tedious journey before me, and
they naturally occupy my thoughts about as much as matters of apparently
much greater importance.
We satisfied our pilgrims by making those hard rides from Baalbec to
Damascus, but Dan's horse and Jack's were so crippled we had to leave
them behind and get fresh animals for them. The dragoman says Jack's
horse died. I swapped horses with Mohammed, the kingly-looking Egyptian
who is our Ferguson's lieutenant. By Ferguson I mean our dragoman
Abraham, of course. I did not take this horse on account of his personal
appearance, but because I have not seen his back. I do not wish to see
it. I have seen the backs of all the other horses, and found most of
them covered with dreadful saddle-boils which I know have not been washed
or doctored for years. The idea of riding all day long over such ghastly
inquisitions of torture is sickening. My horse must be like the others,
but I have at least the consolation of not knowing it to be so.
I hope that in future I may be spared any more sentimental praises of the
Arab's idolatry of his horse. In boyhood I longed to be an Arab of the
desert and have a beautiful mare, and call her Selim or Benjamin or
Mohammed, and feed her with my own hands, and let her come into the tent,
and teach her to caress me and look fondly upon me with her great tender
eyes; and I wished that a stranger might come at such a time and offer me
a hundred thousand dollars for her, so that I could do like the other
Arabs--hesitate, yearn for the money, but overcome by my love for my
mare, at last say, "Part with thee, my beautiful one! Never with my
life! Away, tempter, I scorn thy gold!" and then bound into the saddle
and speed over the desert like the wind!
But I recall those aspirations. If these Arabs be like the other Arabs,
their love for their beautiful mares is a fraud. These of my
acquaintance have no love for their horses, no sentiment of pity for
them, and no knowledge of how to treat them or care for them. The Syrian
saddle-blanket is a quilted mattress two or three inches thick. It is
never removed from the horse, day or night. It gets full of dirt and
hair, and becomes soaked with sweat. It is bound to breed sores. These
pirates never think of washing a horse's back. They do not shelter the
horses in the tents, either--they must stay out and take the weather as
it comes. Look at poor cropped and dilapidated "Baalbec," and weep for
the sentiment that has been wasted upon the Selims of romance!
CHAPTER XLVI.
About an hour's ride over a rough, rocky road, half flooded with water,
and through a forest of oaks of Bashan, brought us to Dan.
From a little mound here in the plain issues a broad stream of limpid
water and forms a large shallow pool, and then rushes furiously onward,
augmented in volume. This puddle is an important source of the Jordan.
Its banks, and those of the brook are respectably adorned with blooming
oleanders, but the unutterable beauty of the spot will not throw a
well-balanced man into convulsions, as the Syrian books of travel would
lead one to suppose.
From the spot I am speaking of, a cannon-ball would carry beyond the
confines of Holy Land and light upon profane ground three miles away.
We were only one little hour's travel within the borders of Holy Land--we
had hardly begun to appreciate yet that we were standing upon any
different sort of earth than that we had always been used to, and see how
the historic names began already to cluster! Dan--Bashan--Lake Huleh
--the Sources of Jordan--the Sea of Galilee. They were all in sight but
the last, and it was not far away. The little township of Bashan was
once the kingdom so famous in Scripture for its bulls and its oaks.
Lake Huleh is the Biblical "Waters of Merom." Dan was the northern and
Beersheba the southern limit of Palestine--hence the expression "from Dan
to Beersheba." It is equivalent to our phrases "from Maine to Texas"
--"from Baltimore to San Francisco." Our expression and that of the
Israelites both mean the same--great distance. With their slow camels
and asses, it was about a seven days' journey from Dan to Beersheba---say
a hundred and fifty or sixty miles--it was the entire length of their
country, and was not to be undertaken without great preparation and much
ceremony. When the Prodigal traveled to "a far country," it is not
likely that he went more than eighty or ninety miles. Palestine is only
from forty to sixty miles wide. The State of Missouri could be split
into three Palestines, and there would then be enough material left for
part of another--possibly a whole one. From Baltimore to San Francisco
is several thousand miles, but it will be only a seven days' journey in
the cars when I am two or three years older.--[The railroad has been
completed since the above was written.]--If I live I shall necessarily
have to go across the continent every now and then in those cars, but one
journey from Dan to Beersheba will be sufficient, no doubt. It must be
the most trying of the two. Therefore, if we chance to discover that
from Dan to Beersheba seemed a mighty stretch of country to the
Israelites, let us not be airy with them, but reflect that it was and is
a mighty stretch when one can not traverse it by rail.
The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the
Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol
captured the place, and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping
gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors
whenever they wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to
fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous trips to
Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to their rightful
allegiance. With all respect for those ancient Israelites, I can not
overlook the fact that they were not always virtuous enough to withstand
the seductions of a golden calf. Human nature has not changed much since
then.
Some forty centuries ago the city of Sodom was pillaged by the Arab
princes of Mesopotamia, and among other prisoners they seized upon the
patriarch Lot and brought him here on their way to their own possessions.
They brought him to Dan, and father Abraham, who was pursuing them, crept
softly in at dead of night, among the whispering oleanders and under the
shadows of the stately oaks, and fell upon the slumbering victors and
startled them from their dreams with the clash of steel. He recaptured
Lot and all the other plunder.
We moved on. We were now in a green valley, five or six miles wide and
fifteen long. The streams which are called the sources of the Jordan
flow through it to Lake Huleh, a shallow pond three miles in diameter,
and from the southern extremity of the Lake the concentrated Jordan flows
out. The Lake is surrounded by a broad marsh, grown with reeds. Between
the marsh and the mountains which wall the valley is a respectable strip
of fertile land; at the end of the valley, toward Dan, as much as half
the land is solid and fertile, and watered by Jordan's sources. There is
enough of it to make a farm. It almost warrants the enthusiasm of the
spies of that rabble of adventurers who captured Dan. They said: "We
have seen the land, and behold it is very good. * * * A place where
there is no want of any thing that is in the earth."
Their enthusiasm was at least warranted by the fact that they had never
seen a country as good as this. There was enough of it for the ample
support of their six hundred men and their families, too.
When we got fairly down on the level part of the Danite farm, we came to
places where we could actually run our horses. It was a notable
circumstance.
We had been painfully clambering over interminable hills and rocks for
days together, and when we suddenly came upon this astonishing piece of
rockless plain, every man drove the spurs into his horse and sped away
with a velocity he could surely enjoy to the utmost, but could never hope
to comprehend in Syria.
Here were evidences of cultivation--a rare sight in this country--an acre
or two of rich soil studded with last season's dead corn-stalks of the
thickness of your thumb and very wide apart. But in such a land it was a
thrilling spectacle. Close to it was a stream, and on its banks a great
herd of curious-looking Syrian goats and sheep were gratefully eating
gravel. I do not state this as a petrified fact--I only suppose they
were eating gravel, because there did not appear to be any thing else for
them to eat. The shepherds that tended them were the very pictures of
Joseph and his brethren I have no doubt in the world. They were tall,
muscular, and very dark-skinned Bedouins, with inky black beards. They
had firm lips, unquailing eyes, and a kingly stateliness of bearing.
They wore the parti-colored half bonnet, half hood, with fringed ends
falling upon their shoulders, and the full, flowing robe barred with
broad black stripes--the dress one sees in all pictures of the swarthy
sons of the desert. These chaps would sell their younger brothers if
they had a chance, I think. They have the manners, the customs, the
dress, the occupation and the loose principles of the ancient stock.
[They attacked our camp last night, and I bear them no good will.]
They had with them the pigmy jackasses one sees all over Syria and
remembers in all pictures of the "Flight into Egypt," where Mary and the
Young Child are riding and Joseph is walking alongside, towering high
above the little donkey's shoulders.
But really, here the man rides and carries the child, as a general thing,
and the woman walks. The customs have not changed since Joseph's time.
We would not have in our houses a picture representing Joseph riding and
Mary walking; we would see profanation in it, but a Syrian Christian
would not. I know that hereafter the picture I first spoke of will look
odd to me.
We could not stop to rest two or three hours out from our camp, of
course, albeit the brook was beside us. So we went on an hour longer.
We saw water, then, but nowhere in all the waste around was there a foot
of shade, and we were scorching to death. "Like unto the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land." Nothing in the Bible is more beautiful than
that, and surely there is no place we have wandered to that is able to
give it such touching expression as this blistering, naked, treeless
land.
Here you do not stop just when you please, but when you can. We found
water, but no shade. We traveled on and found a tree at last, but no
water. We rested and lunched, and came on to this place, Ain Mellahah
(the boys call it Baldwinsville.) It was a very short day's run, but the
dragoman does not want to go further, and has invented a plausible lie
about the country beyond this being infested by ferocious Arabs, who
would make sleeping in their midst a dangerous pastime. Well, they ought
to be dangerous. They carry a rusty old weather-beaten flint-lock gun,
with a barrel that is longer than themselves; it has no sights on it, it
will not carry farther than a brickbat, and is not half so certain. And
the great sash they wear in many a fold around their waists has two or
three absurd old horse-pistols in it that are rusty from eternal disuse
--weapons that would hang fire just about long enough for you to walk out
of range, and then burst and blow the Arab's head off. Exceedingly
dangerous these sons of the desert are.
It used to make my blood run cold to read Wm. C. Grimes' hairbreadth
escapes from Bedouins, but I think I could read them now without a
tremor. He never said he was attacked by Bedouins, I believe, or was
ever treated uncivilly, but then in about every other chapter he
discovered them approaching, any how, and he had a blood-curdling fashion
of working up the peril; and of wondering how his relations far away
would feel could they see their poor wandering boy, with his weary feet
and his dim eyes, in such fearful danger; and of thinking for the last
time of the old homestead, and the dear old church, and the cow, and
those things; and of finally straightening his form to its utmost height
in the saddle, drawing his trusty revolver, and then dashing the spurs
into "Mohammed" and sweeping down upon the ferocious enemy determined to
sell his life as dearly as possible. True the Bedouins never did any
thing to him when he arrived, and never had any intention of doing any
thing to him in the first place, and wondered what in the mischief he was
making all that to-do about; but still I could not divest myself of the
idea, somehow, that a frightful peril had been escaped through that man's
dare-devil bravery, and so I never could read about Wm. C. Grimes'
Bedouins and sleep comfortably afterward. But I believe the Bedouins to
be a fraud, now. I have seen the monster, and I can outrun him. I shall
never be afraid of his daring to stand behind his own gun and discharge
it.
About fifteen hundred years before Christ, this camp-ground of ours by
the Waters of Merom was the scene of one of Joshua's exterminating
battles. Jabin, King of Hazor, (up yonder above Dan,) called all the
sheiks about him together, with their hosts, to make ready for Israel's
terrible General who was approaching.
"And when all these Kings were met together, they came and pitched
together by the Waters of Merom, to fight against Israel. And they
went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as
the sand that is upon the sea-shore for multitude," etc.
But Joshua fell upon them and utterly destroyed them, root and branch.
That was his usual policy in war. He never left any chance for newspaper
controversies about who won the battle. He made this valley, so quiet
now, a reeking slaughter-pen.
Somewhere in this part of the country--I do not know exactly where
--Israel fought another bloody battle a hundred years later. Deborah, the
prophetess, told Barak to take ten thousand men and sally forth against
another King Jabin who had been doing something. Barak came down from
Mount Tabor, twenty or twenty-five miles from here, and gave battle to
Jabin's forces, who were in command of Sisera. Barak won the fight, and
while he was making the victory complete by the usual method of
exterminating the remnant of the defeated host, Sisera fled away on foot,
and when he was nearly exhausted by fatigue and thirst, one Jael, a woman
he seems to have been acquainted with, invited him to come into her tent
and rest himself. The weary soldier acceded readily enough, and Jael put
him to bed. He said he was very thirsty, and asked his generous
preserver to get him a cup of water. She brought him some milk, and he
drank of it gratefully and lay down again, to forget in pleasant dreams
his lost battle and his humbled pride. Presently when he was asleep she
came softly in with a hammer and drove a hideous tent-pen down through
his brain!
"For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died." Such is the touching
language of the Bible. "The Song of Deborah and Barak" praises Jael for
the memorable service she had rendered, in an exultant strain:
"Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be,
blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
"He asked for water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter
in a lordly dish.
"She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head
when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.
"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed,
he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead."
Stirring scenes like these occur in this valley no more. There is not a
solitary village throughout its whole extent--not for thirty miles in
either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin
tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles,
hereabouts, and not see ten human beings.
To this region one of the prophecies is applied:
"I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which dwell
therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the
heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall
be desolate and your cities waste."
No man can stand here by deserted Ain Mellahah and say the prophecy has
not been fulfilled.
In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase
"all these kings." It attracted my attention in a moment, because it
carries to my mind such a vastly different significance from what it
always did at home. I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by
this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of interest
connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many
things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. I must begin a
system of reduction. Like my grapes which the spies bore out of the
Promised Land, I have got every thing in Palestine on too large a scale.
Some of my ideas were wild enough. The word Palestine always brought to
my mind a vague suggestion of a country as large as the United States.
I do not know why, but such was the case. I suppose it was because I
could not conceive of a small country having so large a history. I think
I was a little surprised to find that the grand Sultan of Turkey was a
man of only ordinary size. I must try to reduce my ideas of Palestine to
a more reasonable shape. One gets large impressions in boyhood,
sometimes, which he has to fight against all his life. "All these
kings." When I used to read that in Sunday School, it suggested to me
the several kings of such countries as England, France, Spain, Germany,
Russia, etc., arrayed in splendid robes ablaze with jewels, marching in
grave procession, with sceptres of gold in their hands and flashing
crowns upon their heads. But here in Ain Mellahah, after coming through
Syria, and after giving serious study to the character and customs of the
country, the phrase "all these kings" loses its grandeur. It suggests
only a parcel of petty chiefs--ill-clad and ill-conditioned savages much
like our Indians, who lived in full sight of each other and whose
"kingdoms" were large when they were five miles square and contained two
thousand souls. The combined monarchies of the thirty "kings" destroyed
by Joshua on one of his famous campaigns, only covered an area about
equal to four of our counties of ordinary size. The poor old sheik we
saw at Cesarea Philippi with his ragged band of a hundred followers,
would have been called a "king" in those ancient times.
It is seven in the morning, and as we are in the country, the grass ought
to be sparkling with dew, the flowers enriching the air with their
fragrance, and the birds singing in the trees. But alas, there is no dew
here, nor flowers, nor birds, nor trees. There is a plain and an
unshaded lake, and beyond them some barren mountains. The tents are
tumbling, the Arabs are quarreling like dogs and cats, as usual, the
campground is strewn with packages and bundles, the labor of packing them
upon the backs of the mules is progressing with great activity, the
horses are saddled, the umbrellas are out, and in ten minutes we shall
mount and the long procession will move again. The white city of the
Mellahah, resurrected for a moment out of the dead centuries, will have
disappeared again and left no sign.
CHAPTER XLVII.
We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough,
but is given over wholly to weeds--a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we
saw only three persons--Arabs, with nothing on but a long coarse shirt
like the "tow-linen" shirts which used to form the only summer garment of
little negro boys on Southern plantations. Shepherds they were, and they
charmed their flocks with the traditional shepherd's pipe--a reed
instrument that made music as exquisitely infernal as these same Arabs
create when they sing.
In their pipes lingered no echo of the wonderful music the shepherd
forefathers heard in the Plains of Bethlehem what time the angels sang
"Peace on earth, good will to men."
Part of the ground we came over was not ground at all, but
rocks--cream-colored rocks, worn smooth, as if by water; with seldom an
edge or a corner on them, but scooped out, honey-combed, bored out with
eye-holes, and thus wrought into all manner of quaint shapes, among
which the uncouth imitation of skulls was frequent. Over this part of
the route were occasional remains of an old Roman road like the Appian
Way, whose paving-stones still clung to their places with Roman
tenacity.
Gray lizards, those heirs of ruin, of sepulchres and desolation, glided
in and out among the rocks or lay still and sunned themselves. Where
prosperity has reigned, and fallen; where glory has flamed, and gone out;
where beauty has dwelt, and passed away; where gladness was, and sorrow
is; where the pomp of life has been, and silence and death brood in its
high places, there this reptile makes his home, and mocks at human
vanity. His coat is the color of ashes: and ashes are the symbol of
hopes that have perished, of aspirations that came to nought, of loves
that are buried. If he could speak, he would say, Build temples: I will
lord it in their ruins; build palaces: I will inhabit them; erect
empires: I will inherit them; bury your beautiful: I will watch the worms
at their work; and you, who stand here and moralize over me: I will crawl
over your corpse at the last.
A few ants were in this desert place, but merely to spend the summer.
They brought their provisions from Ain Mellahah--eleven miles.
Jack is not very well to-day, it is easy to see; but boy as he is, he is
too much of a man to speak of it. He exposed himself to the sun too much
yesterday, but since it came of his earnest desire to learn, and to make
this journey as useful as the opportunities will allow, no one seeks to
discourage him by fault-finding. We missed him an hour from the camp,
and then found him some distance away, by the edge of a brook, and with
no umbrella to protect him from the fierce sun. If he had been used to
going without his umbrella, it would have been well enough, of course;
but he was not. He was just in the act of throwing a clod at a
mud-turtle which was sunning itself on a small log in the brook.
We said:
"Don't do that, Jack. What do you want to harm him for? What has he
done?"
"Well, then, I won't kill him, but I ought to, because he is a fraud."
We asked him why, but he said it was no matter. We asked him why, once
or twice, as we walked back to the camp but he still said it was no
matter. But late at night, when he was sitting in a thoughtful mood on
the bed, we asked him again and he said:
"Well, it don't matter; I don't mind it now, but I did not like it today,
you know, because I don't tell any thing that isn't so, and I don't think
the Colonel ought to, either. But he did; he told us at prayers in the
Pilgrims' tent, last night, and he seemed as if he was reading it out of
the Bible, too, about this country flowing with milk and honey, and about
the voice of the turtle being heard in the land. I thought that was
drawing it a little strong, about the turtles, any how, but I asked Mr.
Church if it was so, and he said it was, and what Mr. Church tells me, I
believe. But I sat there and watched that turtle nearly an hour today,
and I almost burned up in the sun; but I never heard him sing. I believe
I sweated a double handful of sweat---I know I did--because it got in my
eyes, and it was running down over my nose all the time; and you know my
pants are tighter than any body else's--Paris foolishness--and the
buckskin seat of them got wet with sweat, and then got dry again and
began to draw up and pinch and tear loose--it was awful--but I never
heard him sing. Finally I said, This is a fraud--that is what it is, it
is a fraud--and if I had had any sense I might have known a cursed
mud-turtle couldn't sing. And then I said, I don't wish to be hard on
this fellow, and I will just give him ten minutes to commence; ten
minutes --and then if he don't, down goes his building. But he didn't
commence, you know. I had staid there all that time, thinking may be he
might, pretty soon, because he kept on raising his head up and letting
it down, and drawing the skin over his eyes for a minute and then
opening them out again, as if he was trying to study up something to
sing, but just as the ten minutes were up and I was all beat out and
blistered, he laid his blamed head down on a knot and went fast asleep."
"It was a little hard, after you had waited so long."
"I should think so. I said, Well, if you won't sing, you shan't sleep,
any way; and if you fellows had let me alone I would have made him shin
out of Galilee quicker than any turtle ever did yet. But it isn't any
matter now--let it go. The skin is all off the back of my neck."
About ten in the morning we halted at Joseph's Pit. This is a ruined
Khan of the Middle Ages, in one of whose side courts is a great walled
and arched pit with water in it, and this pit, one tradition says, is the
one Joseph's brethren cast him into. A more authentic tradition, aided
by the geography of the country, places the pit in Dothan, some two days'
journey from here. However, since there are many who believe in this
present pit as the true one, it has its interest.
It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book which
is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain that
not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite story
of Joseph. Who taught those ancient writers their simplicity of
language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and above all,
their faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of the reader
and making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell itself?
Shakspeare is always present when one reads his book; Macaulay is present
when we follow the march of his stately sentences; but the Old Testament
writers are hidden from view.
If the pit I have been speaking of is the right one, a scene transpired
there, long ages ago, which is familiar to us all in pictures. The sons
of Jacob had been pasturing their flocks near there. Their father grew
uneasy at their long absence, and sent Joseph, his favorite, to see if
any thing had gone wrong with them. He traveled six or seven days'
journey; he was only seventeen years old, and, boy like, he toiled
through that long stretch of the vilest, rockiest, dustiest country in
Asia, arrayed in the pride of his heart, his beautiful claw-hammer coat
of many colors. Joseph was the favorite, and that was one crime in the
eyes of his brethren; he had dreamed dreams, and interpreted them to
foreshadow his elevation far above all his family in the far future, and
that was another; he was dressed well and had doubtless displayed the
harmless vanity of youth in keeping the fact prominently before his
brothers. These were crimes his elders fretted over among themselves and
proposed to punish when the opportunity should offer. When they saw him
coming up from the Sea of Galilee, they recognized him and were glad.
They said, "Lo, here is this dreamer--let us kill him." But Reuben
pleaded for his life, and they spared it. But they seized the boy, and
stripped the hated coat from his back and pushed him into the pit. They
intended to let him die there, but Reuben intended to liberate him
secretly. However, while Reuben was away for a little while, the
brethren sold Joseph to some Ishmaelitish merchants who were journeying
towards Egypt. Such is the history of the pit. And the self-same pit is
there in that place, even to this day; and there it will remain until the
next detachment of image-breakers and tomb desecraters arrives from the
Quaker City excursion, and they will infallibly dig it up and carry it
away with them. For behold in them is no reverence for the solemn
monuments of the past, and whithersoever they go they destroy and spare
not.
Joseph became rich, distinguished, powerful--as the Bible expresses it,
"lord over all the land of Egypt." Joseph was the real king, the
strength, the brain of the monarchy, though Pharaoh held the title.
Joseph is one of the truly great men of the Old Testament. And he was
the noblest and the manliest, save Esau. Why shall we not say a good
word for the princely Bedouin? The only crime that can be brought
against him is that he was unfortunate. Why must every body praise
Joseph's great-hearted generosity to his cruel brethren, without stint of
fervent language, and fling only a reluctant bone of praise to Esau for
his still sublimer generosity to the brother who had wronged him? Jacob
took advantage of Esau's consuming hunger to rob him of his birthright
and the great honor and consideration that belonged to the position; by
treachery and falsehood he robbed him of his father's blessing; he made
of him a stranger in his home, and a wanderer. Yet after twenty years
had passed away and Jacob met Esau and fell at his feet quaking with fear
and begging piteously to be spared the punishment he knew he deserved,
what did that magnificent savage do? He fell upon his neck and embraced
him! When Jacob--who was incapable of comprehending nobility of
character--still doubting, still fearing, insisted upon "finding grace
with my lord" by the bribe of a present of cattle, what did the gorgeous
son of the desert say?
"Nay, I have enough, my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself!"
Esau found Jacob rich, beloved by wives and children, and traveling in
state, with servants, herds of cattle and trains of camels--but he
himself was still the uncourted outcast this brother had made him. After
thirteen years of romantic mystery, the brethren who had wronged Joseph,
came, strangers in a strange land, hungry and humble, to buy "a little
food"; and being summoned to a palace, charged with crime, they beheld in
its owner their wronged brother; they were trembling beggars--he, the
lord of a mighty empire! What Joseph that ever lived would have thrown
away such a chance to "show off?" Who stands first--outcast Esau
forgiving Jacob in prosperity, or Joseph on a king's throne forgiving the
ragged tremblers whose happy rascality placed him there?
Just before we came to Joseph's Pit, we had "raised" a hill, and there, a
few miles before us, with not a tree or a shrub to interrupt the view,
lay a vision which millions of worshipers in the far lands of the earth
would give half their possessions to see--the sacred Sea of Galilee!
Therefore we tarried only a short time at the pit. We rested the horses
and ourselves, and felt for a few minutes the blessed shade of the
ancient buildings. We were out of water, but the two or three scowling
Arabs, with their long guns, who were idling about the place, said they
had none and that there was none in the vicinity. They knew there was a
little brackish water in the pit, but they venerated a place made sacred
by their ancestor's imprisonment too much to be willing to see Christian
dogs drink from it. But Ferguson tied rags and handkerchiefs together
till he made a rope long enough to lower a vessel to the bottom, and we
drank and then rode on; and in a short time we dismounted on those shores
which the feet of the Saviour have made holy ground.
At noon we took a swim in the Sea of Galilee--a blessed privilege in this
roasting climate--and then lunched under a neglected old fig-tree at the
fountain they call Ain-et-Tin, a hundred yards from ruined Capernaum.
Every rivulet that gurgles out of the rocks and sands of this part of the
world is dubbed with the title of "fountain," and people familiar with
the Hudson, the great lakes and the Mississippi fall into transports of
admiration over them, and exhaust their powers of composition in writing
their praises. If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged
upon the fountains and the bland scenery of this region were collected in
a book, it would make a most valuable volume to burn.
During luncheon, the pilgrim enthusiasts of our party, who had been so
light-hearted and so happy ever since they touched holy ground that they
did little but mutter incoherent rhapsodies, could scarcely eat, so
anxious were they to "take shipping" and sail in very person upon the
waters that had borne the vessels of the Apostles. Their anxiety grew
and their excitement augmented with every fleeting moment, until my fears
were aroused and I began to have misgivings that in their present
condition they might break recklessly loose from all considerations of
prudence and buy a whole fleet of ships to sail in instead of hiring a
single one for an hour, as quiet folk are wont to do. I trembled to
think of the ruined purses this day's performances might result in.
I could not help reflecting bodingly upon the intemperate zeal with which
middle-aged men are apt to surfeit themselves upon a seductive folly
which they have tasted for the first time. And yet I did not feel that
I had a right to be surprised at the state of things which was giving me
so much concern. These men had been taught from infancy to revere,
almost to worship, the holy places whereon their happy eyes were resting
now. For many and many a year this very picture had visited their
thoughts by day and floated through their dreams by night. To stand
before it in the flesh--to see it as they saw it now--to sail upon the
hallowed sea, and kiss the holy soil that compassed it about: these were
aspirations they had cherished while a generation dragged its lagging
seasons by and left its furrows in their faces and its frosts upon their
hair. To look upon this picture, and sail upon this sea, they had
forsaken home and its idols and journeyed thousands and thousands of
miles, in weariness and tribulation. What wonder that the sordid lights
of work-day prudence should pale before the glory of a hope like theirs
in the full splendor of its fruition? Let them squander millions!
I said--who speaks of money at a time like this?
In this frame of mind I followed, as fast as I could, the eager footsteps
of the pilgrims, and stood upon the shore of the lake, and swelled, with
hat and voice, the frantic hail they sent after the "ship" that was
speeding by. It was a success. The toilers of the sea ran in and
beached their barque. Joy sat upon every countenance.
"How much?--ask him how much, Ferguson!--how much to take us all--eight
of us, and you--to Bethsaida, yonder, and to the mouth of Jordan, and to
the place where the swine ran down into the sea--quick!--and we want to
coast around every where--every where!--all day long!--I could sail a
year in these waters!--and tell him we'll stop at Magdala and finish at
Tiberias!--ask him how much?--any thing--any thing whatever!--tell him we
don't care what the expense is!" [I said to myself, I knew how it would
be.]
Ferguson--(interpreting)--"He says two Napoleons--eight dollars."
One or two countenances fell. Then a pause.
"Too much!--we'll give him one!"
I never shall know how it was--I shudder yet when I think how the place
is given to miracles--but in a single instant of time, as it seemed to
me, that ship was twenty paces from the shore, and speeding away like a
frightened thing! Eight crestfallen creatures stood upon the shore, and
O, to think of it! this--this--after all that overmastering ecstacy!
Oh, shameful, shameful ending, after such unseemly boasting! It was too
much like "Ho! let me at him!" followed by a prudent "Two of you hold
him--one can hold me!"
Instantly there was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp. The two
Napoleons were offered--more if necessary--and pilgrims and dragoman
shouted themselves hoarse with pleadings to the retreating boatmen to
come back. But they sailed serenely away and paid no further heed to
pilgrims who had dreamed all their lives of some day skimming over the
sacred waters of Galilee and listening to its hallowed story in the
whisperings of its waves, and had journeyed countless leagues to do it,
and--and then concluded that the fare was too high. Impertinent
Mohammedan Arabs, to think such things of gentlemen of another faith!
Well, there was nothing to do but just submit and forego the privilege of
voyaging on Genessaret, after coming half around the globe to taste that
pleasure. There was a time, when the Saviour taught here, that boats
were plenty among the fishermen of the coasts--but boats and fishermen
both are gone, now; and old Josephus had a fleet of men-of-war in these
waters eighteen centuries ago--a hundred and thirty bold canoes--but
they, also, have passed away and left no sign. They battle here no more
by sea, and the commercial marine of Galilee numbers only two small
ships, just of a pattern with the little skiffs the disciples knew. One
was lost to us for good--the other was miles away and far out of hail.
So we mounted the horses and rode grimly on toward Magdala, cantering
along in the edge of the water for want of the means of passing over it.
How the pilgrims abused each other! Each said it was the other's fault,
and each in turn denied it. No word was spoken by the sinners--even the
mildest sarcasm might have been dangerous at such a time. Sinners that
have been kept down and had examples held up to them, and suffered
frequent lectures, and been so put upon in a moral way and in the matter
of going slow and being serious and bottling up slang, and so crowded in
regard to the matter of being proper and always and forever behaving,
that their lives have become a burden to them, would not lag behind
pilgrims at such a time as this, and wink furtively, and be joyful, and
commit other such crimes--because it would not occur to them to do it.
Otherwise they would. But they did do it, though--and it did them a
world of good to hear the pilgrims abuse each other, too. We took an
unworthy satisfaction in seeing them fall out, now and then, because it
showed that they were only poor human people like us, after all.
So we all rode down to Magdala, while the gnashing of teeth waxed and
waned by turns, and harsh words troubled the holy calm of Galilee.
Lest any man think I mean to be ill-natured when I talk about our
pilgrims as I have been talking, I wish to say in all sincerity that I do
not. I would not listen to lectures from men I did not like and could
not respect; and none of these can say I ever took their lectures
unkindly, or was restive under the infliction, or failed to try to profit
by what they said to me. They are better men than I am; I can say that
honestly; they are good friends of mine, too--and besides, if they did
not wish to be stirred up occasionally in print, why in the mischief did
they travel with me? They knew me. They knew my liberal way--that I
like to give and take--when it is for me to give and other people to
take. When one of them threatened to leave me in Damascus when I had the
cholera, he had no real idea of doing it--I know his passionate nature
and the good impulses that underlie it. And did I not overhear Church,
another pilgrim, say he did not care who went or who staid, he would
stand by me till I walked out of Damascus on my own feet or was carried
out in a coffin, if it was a year? And do I not include Church every
time I abuse the pilgrims--and would I be likely to speak ill-naturedly
of him? I wish to stir them up and make them healthy; that is all.
We had left Capernaum behind us. It was only a shapeless ruin. It bore
no semblance to a town, and had nothing about it to suggest that it had
ever been a town. But all desolate and unpeopled as it was, it was
illustrious ground. From it sprang that tree of Christianity whose broad
arms overshadow so many distant lands to-day. After Christ was tempted
of the devil in the desert, he came here and began his teachings; and
during the three or four years he lived afterward, this place was his
home almost altogether. He began to heal the sick, and his fame soon
spread so widely that sufferers came from Syria and beyond Jordan, and
even from Jerusalem, several days' journey away, to be cured of their
diseases. Here he healed the centurion's servant and Peter's
mother-in-law, and multitudes of the lame and the blind and persons
possessed of devils; and here, also, he raised Jairus's daughter from
the dead. He went into a ship with his disciples, and when they roused
him from sleep in the midst of a storm, he quieted the winds and lulled
the troubled sea to rest with his voice. He passed over to the other
side, a few miles away and relieved two men of devils, which passed into
some swine. After his return he called Matthew from the receipt of
customs, performed some cures, and created scandal by eating with
publicans and sinners. Then he went healing and teaching through
Galilee, and even journeyed to Tyre and Sidon. He chose the twelve
disciples, and sent them abroad to preach the new gospel. He worked
miracles in Bethsaida and Chorazin--villages two or three miles from
Capernaum. It was near one of them that the miraculous draft of fishes
is supposed to have been taken, and it was in the desert places near the
other that he fed the thousands by the miracles of the loaves and
fishes. He cursed them both, and Capernaum also, for not repenting,
after all the great works he had done in their midst, and prophesied
against them. They are all in ruins, now--which is gratifying to the
pilgrims, for, as usual, they fit the eternal words of gods to the
evanescent things of this earth; Christ, it is more probable, referred
to the people, not their shabby villages of wigwams: he said it would be
sad for them at "the day of judgment"--and what business have mud-hovels
at the Day of Judgment? It would not affect the prophecy in the least
--it would neither prove it or disprove it--if these towns were splendid
cities now instead of the almost vanished ruins they are. Christ visited
Magdala, which is near by Capernaum, and he also visited Cesarea
Philippi. He went up to his old home at Nazareth, and saw his brothers
Joses, and Judas, and James, and Simon--those persons who, being own
brothers to Jesus Christ, one would expect to hear mentioned sometimes,
yet who ever saw their names in a newspaper or heard them from a pulpit?
Who ever inquires what manner of youths they were; and whether they
slept with Jesus, played with him and romped about him; quarreled with
him concerning toys and trifles; struck him in anger, not suspecting
what he was? Who ever wonders what they thought when they saw him come
back to Nazareth a celebrity, and looked long at his unfamiliar face to
make sure, and then said, "It is Jesus?" Who wonders what passed in
their minds when they saw this brother, (who was only a brother to them,
however much he might be to others a mysterious stranger who was a god
and had stood face to face with God above the clouds,) doing strange
miracles with crowds of astonished people for witnesses? Who wonders if
the brothers of Jesus asked him to come home with them, and said his
mother and his sisters were grieved at his long absence, and would be
wild with delight to see his face again? Who ever gives a thought to
the sisters of Jesus at all?--yet he had sisters; and memories of them
must have stolen into his mind often when he was ill-treated among
strangers; when he was homeless and said he had not where to lay his
head; when all deserted him, even Peter, and he stood alone among his
enemies.
Christ did few miracles in Nazareth, and staid but a little while. The
people said, "This the Son of God! Why, his father is nothing but a
carpenter. We know the family. We see them every day. Are not his
brothers named so and so, and his sisters so and so, and is not his
mother the person they call Mary? This is absurd." He did not curse his
home, but he shook its dust from his feet and went away.
Capernaum lies close to the edge of the little sea, in a small plain some
five miles long and a mile or two wide, which is mildly adorned with
oleanders which look all the better contrasted with the bald hills and
the howling deserts which surround them, but they are not as deliriously
beautiful as the books paint them. If one be calm and resolute he can
look upon their comeliness and live.
One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our
observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which
sprang the now flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey
our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem--about one hundred
to one hundred and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to
Sidon--say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart--as
American appreciation of distances would naturally suggest--the places
made most particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly
all right here in full view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum.
Leaving out two or three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his
life, preached his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no
larger than an ordinary county in the United States. It is as much as I
can do to comprehend this stupefying fact. How it wears a man out to
have to read up a hundred pages of history every two or three miles--for
verily the celebrated localities of Palestine occur that close together.
How wearily, how bewilderingly they swarm about your path!
In due time we reached the ancient village of Magdala.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Magdala is not a beautiful place. It is thoroughly Syrian, and that is
to say that it is thoroughly ugly, and cramped, squalid, uncomfortable,
and filthy--just the style of cities that have adorned the country since
Adam's time, as all writers have labored hard to prove, and have
succeeded. The streets of Magdala are any where from three to six feet
wide, and reeking with uncleanliness. The houses are from five to seven
feet high, and all built upon one arbitrary plan--the ungraceful form of
a dry-goods box. The sides are daubed with a smooth white plaster, and
tastefully frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed there
to dry. This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of having been
riddled with cannon-balls, and imparts to it a very warlike aspect. When
the artist has arranged his materials with an eye to just proportion
--the small and the large flakes in alternate rows, and separated by
carefully-considered intervals--I know of nothing more cheerful to look
upon than a spirited Syrian fresco. The flat, plastered roof is
garnished by picturesque stacks of fresco materials, which, having
become thoroughly dried and cured, are placed there where it will be
convenient. It is used for fuel. There is no timber of any consequence
in Palestine--none at all to waste upon fires--and neither are there any
mines of coal. If my description has been intelligible, you will
perceive, now, that a square, flat-roofed hovel, neatly frescoed, with
its wall-tops gallantly bastioned and turreted with dried camel-refuse,
gives to a landscape a feature that is exceedingly festive and
picturesque, especially if one is careful to remember to stick in a cat
wherever, about the premises, there is room for a cat to sit. There are
no windows to a Syrian hut, and no chimneys. When I used to read that
they let a bed-ridden man down through the roof of a house in Capernaum
to get him into the presence of the Saviour, I generally had a
three-story brick in my mind, and marveled that they did not break his
neck with the strange experiment. I perceive now, however, that they
might have taken him by the heels and thrown him clear over the house
without discommoding him very much. Palestine is not changed any since
those days, in manners, customs, architecture, or people.
As we rode into Magdala not a soul was visible. But the ring of the
horses' hoofs roused the stupid population, and they all came trooping
out--old men and old women, boys and girls, the blind, the crazy, and the
crippled, all in ragged, soiled and scanty raiment, and all abject
beggars by nature, instinct and education. How the vermin-tortured
vagabonds did swarm! How they showed their scars and sores, and
piteously pointed to their maimed and crooked limbs, and begged with
their pleading eyes for charity! We had invoked a spirit we could not
lay. They hung to the horses's tails, clung to their manes and the
stirrups, closed in on every aide in scorn of dangerous hoofs--and out of
their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most
infernal chorus: "Howajji, bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh! howajji,
bucksheesh! bucksheesh! bucksheesh!" I never was in a storm like that
before.
As we paid the bucksheesh out to sore-eyed children and brown, buxom
girls with repulsively tattooed lips and chins, we filed through the town
and by many an exquisite fresco, till we came to a bramble-infested
inclosure and a Roman-looking ruin which had been the veritable dwelling
of St. Mary Magdalene, the friend and follower of Jesus. The guide
believed it, and so did I. I could not well do otherwise, with the house
right there before my eyes as plain as day. The pilgrims took down
portions of the front wall for specimens, as is their honored custom, and
then we departed.
We are camped in this place, now, just within the city walls of Tiberias.
We went into the town before nightfall and looked at its people--we cared
nothing about its houses. Its people are best examined at a distance.
They are particularly uncomely Jews, Arabs, and negroes. Squalor and
poverty are the pride of Tiberias. The young women wear their dower
strung upon a strong wire that curves downward from the top of the head
to the jaw--Turkish silver coins which they have raked together or
inherited. Most of these maidens were not wealthy, but some few had been
very kindly dealt with by fortune. I saw heiresses there worth, in their
own right--worth, well, I suppose I might venture to say, as much as nine
dollars and a half. But such cases are rare. When you come across one
of these, she naturally puts on airs. She will not ask for bucksheesh.
She will not even permit of undue familiarity. She assumes a crushing
dignity and goes on serenely practicing with her fine-tooth comb and
quoting poetry just the same as if you were not present at all. Some
people can not stand prosperity.
They say that the long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking body-snatchers,
with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of
each ear, are the old, familiar, self-righteous Pharisees we read of in
the Scriptures. Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their general
style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect that
self-righteousness was their specialty.
From various authorities I have culled information concerning Tiberias.
It was built by Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist, and
named after the Emperor Tiberius. It is believed that it stands upon the
site of what must have been, ages ago, a city of considerable
architectural pretensions, judging by the fine porphyry pillars that are
scattered through Tiberias and down the lake shore southward. These were
fluted, once, and yet, although the stone is about as hard as iron, the
flutings are almost worn away. These pillars are small, and doubtless
the edifices they adorned were distinguished more for elegance than
grandeur. This modern town--Tiberias--is only mentioned in the New
Testament; never in the Old.
The Sanhedrim met here last, and for three hundred years Tiberias was the
metropolis of the Jews in Palestine. It is one of the four holy cities
of the Israelites, and is to them what Mecca is to the Mohammedan and
Jerusalem to the Christian. It has been the abiding place of many
learned and famous Jewish rabbins. They lie buried here, and near them
lie also twenty-five thousand of their faith who traveled far to be near
them while they lived and lie with them when they died. The great Rabbi
Ben Israel spent three years here in the early part of the third century.
He is dead, now.
The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe
--[I measure all lakes by Tahoe, partly because I am far more familiar with
it than with any other, and partly because I have such a high admiration
for it and such a world of pleasant recollections of it, that it is very
nearly impossible for me to speak of lakes and not mention it.]--by a
good deal--it is just about two-thirds as large. And when we come to
speak of beauty, this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a
meridian of longitude is to a rainbow. The dim waters of this pool can
not suggest the limpid brilliancy of Tahoe; these low, shaven, yellow
hillocks of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, can not suggest the
grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and chasmed
fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and smaller as
they climb, till one might fancy them reduced to weeds and shrubs far
upward, where they join the everlasting snows. Silence and solitude
brood over Tahoe; and silence and solitude brood also over this lake of
Genessaret. But the solitude of the one is as cheerful and fascinating
as the solitude of the other is dismal and repellant.
In the early morning one watches the silent battle of dawn and darkness
upon the waters of Tahoe with a placid interest; but when the shadows
sulk away and one by one the hidden beauties of the shore unfold
themselves in the full splendor of noon; when the still surface is belted
like a rainbow with broad bars of blue and green and white, half the
distance from circumference to centre; when, in the lazy summer
afternoon, he lies in a boat, far out to where the dead blue of the deep
water begins, and smokes the pipe of peace and idly winks at the
distant crags and patches of snow from under his cap-brim; when the boat
drifts shoreward to the white water, and he lolls over the gunwale and
gazes by the hour down through the crystal depths and notes the colors of
the pebbles and reviews the finny armies gliding in procession a hundred
feet below; when at night he sees moon and stars, mountain ridges
feathered with pines, jutting white capes, bold promontories, grand
sweeps of rugged scenery topped with bald, glimmering peaks, all
magnificently pictured in the polished mirror of the lake, in richest,
softest detail, the tranquil interest that was born with the morning
deepens and deepens, by sure degrees, till it culminates at last in
resistless fascination!
It is solitude, for birds and squirrels on the shore and fishes in the
water are all the creatures that are near to make it otherwise, but it is
not the sort of solitude to make one dreary. Come to Galilee for that.
If these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never,
never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and
faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum; this
stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal plumes of
palms; yonder desolate declivity where the swine of the miracle ran down
into the sea, and doubtless thought it was better to swallow a devil or
two and get drowned into the bargain than have to live longer in such a
place; this cloudless, blistering sky; this solemn, sailless, tintless
lake, reposing within its rim of yellow hills and low, steep banks, and
looking just as expressionless and unpoetical (when we leave its sublime
history out of the question,) as any metropolitan reservoir in
Christendom--if these things are not food for rock me to sleep, mother,
none exist, I think.
But I should not offer the evidence for the prosecution and leave the
defense unheard. Wm. C. Grimes deposes as follows:--
"We had taken ship to go over to the other side. The sea was not
more than six miles wide. Of the beauty of the scene, however, I
can not say enough, nor can I imagine where those travelers carried
their eyes who have described the scenery of the lake as tame or
uninteresting. The first great characteristic of it is the deep
basin in which it lies. This is from three to four hundred feet
deep on all sides except at the lower end, and the sharp slope of
the banks, which are all of the richest green, is broken and
diversified by the wadys and water-courses which work their way down
through the sides of the basin, forming dark chasms or light sunny
valleys. Near Tiberias these banks are rocky, and ancient
sepulchres open in them, with their doors toward the water. They
selected grand spots, as did the Egyptians of old, for burial
places, as if they designed that when the voice of God should reach
the sleepers, they should walk forth and open their eyes on scenes
of glorious beauty. On the east, the wild and desolate mountains
contrast finely with the deep blue lake; and toward the north,
sublime and majestic, Hermon looks down on the sea, lifting his
white crown to heaven with the pride of a hill that has seen the
departing footsteps of a hundred generations. On the north-east
shore of the sea was a single tree, and this is the only tree of any
size visible from the water of the lake, except a few lonely palms
in the city of Tiberias, and by its solitary position attracts more
attention than would a forest. The whole appearance of the scene is
precisely what we would expect and desire the scenery of Genessaret
to be, grand beauty, but quiet calm. The very mountains are calm."
It is an ingeniously written description, and well calculated to deceive.
But if the paint and the ribbons and the flowers be stripped from it, a
skeleton will be found beneath.
So stripped, there remains a lake six miles wide and neutral in color;
with steep green banks, unrelieved by shrubbery; at one end bare,
unsightly rocks, with (almost invisible) holes in them of no consequence
to the picture; eastward, "wild and desolate mountains;" (low, desolate
hills, he should have said;) in the north, a mountain called Hermon, with
snow on it; peculiarity of the picture, "calmness;" its prominent
feature, one tree.
No ingenuity could make such a picture beautiful--to one's actual vision.
I claim the right to correct misstatements, and have so corrected the
color of the water in the above recapitulation. The waters of Genessaret
are of an exceedingly mild blue, even from a high elevation and a
distance of five miles. Close at hand (the witness was sailing on the
lake,) it is hardly proper to call them blue at all, much less "deep"
blue. I wish to state, also, not as a correction, but as matter of
opinion, that Mount Hermon is not a striking or picturesque mountain by
any means, being too near the height of its immediate neighbors to be so.
That is all. I do not object to the witness dragging a mountain
forty-five miles to help the scenery under consideration, because it is
entirely proper to do it, and besides, the picture needs it.
"C. W. E.," (of "Life in the Holy Land,") deposes as follows:--
"A beautiful sea lies unbosomed among the Galilean hills, in the
midst of that land once possessed by Zebulon and Naphtali, Asher and
Dan. The azure of the sky penetrates the depths of the lake, and
the waters are sweet and cool. On the west, stretch broad fertile
plains; on the north the rocky shores rise step by step until in the
far distance tower the snowy heights of Hermon; on the east through
a misty veil are seen the high plains of Perea, which stretch away
in rugged mountains leading the mind by varied paths toward
Jerusalem the Holy. Flowers bloom in this terrestrial paradise,
once beautiful and verdant with waving trees; singing birds enchant
the ear; the turtle-dove soothes with its soft note; the crested
lark sends up its song toward heaven, and the grave and stately
stork inspires the mind with thought, and leads it on to meditation
and repose. Life here was once idyllic, charming; here were once no
rich, no poor, no high, no low. It was a world of ease, simplicity,
and beauty; now it is a scene of desolation and misery."
This is not an ingenious picture. It is the worst I ever saw. It
describes in elaborate detail what it terms a "terrestrial paradise," and
closes with the startling information that this paradise is "a scene of
desolation and misery."
I have given two fair, average specimens of the character of the
testimony offered by the majority of the writers who visit this region.
One says, "Of the beauty of the scene I can not say enough," and then
proceeds to cover up with a woof of glittering sentences a thing which,
when stripped for inspection, proves to be only an unobtrusive basin of
water, some mountainous desolation, and one tree. The other, after a
conscientious effort to build a terrestrial paradise out of the same
materials, with the addition of a "grave and stately stork," spoils it
all by blundering upon the ghastly truth at the last.
Nearly every book concerning Galilee and its lake describes the scenery
as beautiful. No--not always so straightforward as that. Sometimes the
impression intentionally conveyed is that it is beautiful, at the same
time that the author is careful not to say that it is, in plain Saxon.
But a careful analysis of these descriptions will show that the materials
of which they are formed are not individually beautiful and can not be
wrought into combinations that are beautiful. The veneration and the
affection which some of these men felt for the scenes they were speaking
of, heated their fancies and biased their judgment; but the pleasant
falsities they wrote were full of honest sincerity, at any rate. Others
wrote as they did, because they feared it would be unpopular to write
otherwise. Others were hypocrites and deliberately meant to deceive.
Any of them would say in a moment, if asked, that it was always right and
always best to tell the truth. They would say that, at any rate, if they
did not perceive the drift of the question.
But why should not the truth be spoken of this region? Is the truth
harmful? Has it ever needed to hide its face? God made the Sea of
Galilee and its surroundings as they are. Is it the province of Mr.
Grimes to improve upon the work?
I am sure, from the tenor of books I have read, that many who have
visited this land in years gone by, were Presbyterians, and came seeking
evidences in support of their particular creed; they found a Presbyterian
Palestine, and they had already made up their minds to find no other,
though possibly they did not know it, being blinded by their zeal.
Others were Baptists, seeking Baptist evidences and a Baptist Palestine.
Others were Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, seeking evidences
indorsing their several creeds, and a Catholic, a Methodist, an
Episcopalian Palestine. Honest as these men's intentions may have been,
they were full of partialities and prejudices, they entered the country
with their verdicts already prepared, and they could no more write
dispassionately and impartially about it than they could about their own
wives and children. Our pilgrims have brought their verdicts with them.
They have shown it in their conversation ever since we left Beirout.
I can almost tell, in set phrase, what they will say when they see Tabor,
Nazareth, Jericho and Jerusalem--because I have the books they will
"smouch" their ideas from. These authors write pictures and frame
rhapsodies, and lesser men follow and see with the author's eyes instead
of their own, and speak with his tongue. What the pilgrims said at
Cesarea Philippi surprised me with its wisdom. I found it afterwards in
Robinson. What they said when Genessaret burst upon their vision,
charmed me with its grace. I find it in Mr. Thompson's "Land and the
Book." They have spoken often, in happily worded language which never
varied, of how they mean to lay their weary heads upon a stone at Bethel,
as Jacob did, and close their dim eyes, and dream, perchance, of angels
descending out of heaven on a ladder. It was very pretty. But I have
recognized the weary head and the dim eyes, finally. They borrowed the
idea--and the words--and the construction--and the punctuation--from
Grimes. The pilgrims will tell of Palestine, when they get home, not as
it appeared to them, but as it appeared to Thompson and Robinson and
Grimes--with the tints varied to suit each pilgrim's creed.
Pilgrims, sinners and Arabs are all abed, now, and the camp is still.
Labor in loneliness is irksome. Since I made my last few notes, I have
been sitting outside the tent for half an hour. Night is the time to see
Galilee. Genessaret under these lustrous stars has nothing repulsive
about it. Genessaret with the glittering reflections of the
constellations flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever
saw the rude glare of the day upon it. Its history and its associations
are its chiefest charm, in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble
in the searching light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the fetters.
Our thoughts wander constantly to the practical concerns of life, and
refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague and unreal. But when the day
is done, even the most unimpressible must yield to the dreamy influences
of this tranquil starlight. The old traditions of the place steal upon
his memory and haunt his reveries, and then his fancy clothes all sights
and sounds with the supernatural. In the lapping of the waves upon the
beach, he hears the dip of ghostly oars; in the secret noises of the
night he hears spirit voices; in the soft sweep of the breeze, the rush
of invisible wings. Phantom ships are on the sea, the dead of twenty
centuries come forth from the tombs, and in the dirges of the night wind
the songs of old forgotten ages find utterance again.
In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the
heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a
religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed
to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees. But in the
sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words
which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen
centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands
of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the circumference
of the huge globe?
One can comprehend it only when night has hidden all incongruities and
created a theatre proper for so grand a drama.
CHAPTER XLIX.
We took another swim in the Sea of Galilee at twilight yesterday, and
another at sunrise this morning. We have not sailed, but three swims are
equal to a sail, are they not? There were plenty of fish visible in the
water, but we have no outside aids in this pilgrimage but "Tent Life in
the Holy Land," "The Land and the Book," and other literature of like
description--no fishing-tackle. There were no fish to be had in the
village of Tiberias. True, we saw two or three vagabonds mending their
nets, but never trying to catch any thing with them.
We did not go to the ancient warm baths two miles below Tiberias. I had
no desire in the world to go there. This seemed a little strange, and
prompted me to try to discover what the cause of this unreasonable
indifference was. It turned out to be simply because Pliny mentions
them. I have conceived a sort of unwarrantable unfriendliness toward
Pliny and St. Paul, because it seems as if I can never ferret out a place
that I can have to myself. It always and eternally transpires that St.
Paul has been to that place, and Pliny has "mentioned" it.
In the early morning we mounted and started. And then a weird apparition
marched forth at the head of the procession--a pirate, I thought, if ever
a pirate dwelt upon land. It was a tall Arab, as swarthy as an Indian;
young-say thirty years of age. On his head he had closely bound a
gorgeous yellow and red striped silk scarf, whose ends, lavishly fringed
with tassels, hung down between his shoulders and dallied with the wind.
From his neck to his knees, in ample folds, a robe swept down that was a
very star-spangled banner of curved and sinuous bars of black and white.
Out of his back, somewhere, apparently, the long stem of a chibouk
projected, and reached far above his right shoulder. Athwart his back,
diagonally, and extending high above his left shoulder, was an Arab gum
of Saladin's time, that was splendid with silver plating from stock clear
up to the end of its measureless stretch of barrel. About his waist was
bound many and many a yard of elaborately figured but sadly tarnished
stuff that came from sumptuous Persia, and among the baggy folds in front
the sunbeams glinted from a formidable battery of old brass-mounted
horse-pistols and the gilded hilts of blood-thirsty knives. There were
holsters for more pistols appended to the wonderful stack of long-haired
goat-skins and Persian carpets, which the man had been taught to regard
in the light of a saddle; and down among the pendulous rank of vast
tassels that swung from that saddle, and clanging against the iron shovel
of a stirrup that propped the warrior's knees up toward his chin, was a
crooked, silver-clad scimitar of such awful dimensions and such
implacable expression that no man might hope to look upon it and not
shudder. The fringed and bedizened prince whose privilege it is to ride
the pony and lead the elephant into a country village is poor and naked
compared to this chaos of paraphernalia, and the happy vanity of the one
is the very poverty of satisfaction compared to the majestic serenity,
the overwhelming complacency of the other.
"Who is this? What is this?" That was the trembling inquiry all down
the line.
"Our guard! From Galilee to the birthplace of the Savior, the country is
infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness it is, in this life,
to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending Christians. Allah be
with us!"
"Then hire a regiment! Would you send us out among these desperate
hordes, with no salvation in our utmost need but this old turret?"
The dragoman laughed--not at the facetiousness of the simile, for verily,
that guide or that courier or that dragoman never yet lived upon earth
who had in him the faintest appreciation of a joke, even though that joke
were so broad and so ponderous that if it fell on him it would flatten
him out like a postage stamp--the dragoman laughed, and then, emboldened
by some thought that was in his brain, no doubt, proceeded to extremities
and winked.
In straits like these, when a man laughs, it is encouraging when he
winks, it is positively reassuring. He finally intimated that one guard
would be sufficient to protect us, but that that one was an absolute
necessity. It was because of the moral weight his awful panoply would
have with the Bedouins. Then I said we didn't want any guard at all.
If one fantastic vagabond could protect eight armed Christians and a pack
of Arab servants from all harm, surely that detachment could protect
themselves. He shook his head doubtfully. Then I said, just think of
how it looks--think of how it would read, to self-reliant Americans, that
we went sneaking through this deserted wilderness under the protection of
this masquerading Arab, who would break his neck getting out of the
country if a man that was a man ever started after him. It was a mean,
low, degrading position. Why were we ever told to bring navy revolvers
with us if we had to be protected at last by this infamous star-spangled
scum of the desert? These appeals were vain--the dragoman only smiled
and shook his head.
I rode to the front and struck up an acquaintance with King
Solomon-in-all-his-glory, and got him to show me his lingering eternity
of a gun. It had a rusty flint lock; it was ringed and barred and plated
with silver from end to end, but it was as desperately out of the
perpendicular as are the billiard cues of '49 that one finds yet in
service in the ancient mining camps of California. The muzzle was eaten
by the rust of centuries into a ragged filigree-work, like the end of a
burnt-out stove-pipe. I shut one eye and peered within--it was flaked
with iron rust like an old steamboat boiler. I borrowed the ponderous
pistols and snapped them. They were rusty inside, too--had not been
loaded for a generation. I went back, full of encouragement, and
reported to the guide, and asked him to discharge this dismantled
fortress. It came out, then. This fellow was a retainer of the Sheik
of Tiberias. He was a source of Government revenue. He was to the
Empire of Tiberias what the customs are to America. The Sheik imposed
guards upon travelers and charged them for it. It is a lucrative source
of emolument, and sometimes brings into the national treasury as much as
thirty-five or forty dollars a year.
I knew the warrior's secret now; I knew the hollow vanity of his rusty
trumpery, and despised his asinine complacency. I told on him, and with
reckless daring the cavalcade straight ahead into the perilous solitudes
of the desert, and scorned his frantic warnings of the mutilation and
death that hovered about them on every side.
Arrived at an elevation of twelve hundred feet above the lake, (I ought
to mention that the lake lies six hundred feet below the level of the
Mediterranean--no traveler ever neglects to flourish that fragment of
news in his letters,) as bald and unthrilling a panorama as any land can
afford, perhaps, was spread out before us. Yet it was so crowded with
historical interest, that if all the pages that have been written about
it were spread upon its surface, they would flag it from horizon to
horizon like a pavement. Among the localities comprised in this view,
were Mount Hermon; the hills that border Cesarea Philippi, Dan, the
Sources of the Jordan and the Waters of Merom; Tiberias; the Sea of
Galilee; Joseph's Pit; Capernaum; Bethsaida; the supposed scenes of the
Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the multitudes and the miraculous
draught of fishes; the declivity down which the swine ran to the sea; the
entrance and the exit of the Jordan; Safed, "the city set upon a hill,"
one of the four holy cities of the Jews, and the place where they believe
the real Messiah will appear when he comes to redeem the world; part of
the battle-field of Hattin, where the knightly Crusaders fought their
last fight, and in a blaze of glory passed from the stage and ended their
splendid career forever; Mount Tabor, the traditional scene of the Lord's
Transfiguration. And down toward the southeast lay a landscape that
suggested to my mind a quotation (imperfectly remembered, no doubt:)
"The Ephraimites, not being called upon to share in the rich spoils
of the Ammonitish war, assembled a mighty host to fight against
Jeptha, Judge of Israel; who, being apprised of their approach,
gathered together the men of Israel and gave them battle and put
them to flight. To make his victory the more secure, he stationed
guards at the different fords and passages of the Jordan, with
instructions to let none pass who could not say Shibboleth. The
Ephraimites, being of a different tribe, could not frame to
pronounce the word right, but called it Sibboleth, which proved them
enemies and cost them their lives; wherefore, forty and two thousand
fell at the different fords and passages of the Jordan that day."
We jogged along peacefully over the great caravan route from Damascus to
Jerusalem and Egypt, past Lubia and other Syrian hamlets, perched, in the
unvarying style, upon the summit of steep mounds and hills, and fenced
round about with giant cactuses, (the sign of worthless land,) with
prickly pears upon them like hams, and came at last to the battle-field
of Hattin.
It is a grand, irregular plateau, and looks as if it might have been
created for a battle-field. Here the peerless Saladin met the Christian
host some seven hundred years ago, and broke their power in Palestine for
all time to come. There had long been a truce between the opposing
forces, but according to the Guide-Book, Raynauld of Chatillon, Lord of
Kerak, broke it by plundering a Damascus caravan, and refusing to give up
either the merchants or their goods when Saladin demanded them. This
conduct of an insolent petty chieftain stung the Sultan to the quick, and
he swore that he would slaughter Raynauld with his own hand, no matter
how, or when, or where he found him. Both armies prepared for war.
Under the weak King of Jerusalem was the very flower of the Christian
chivalry. He foolishly compelled them to undergo a long, exhausting
march, in the scorching sun, and then, without water or other
refreshment, ordered them to encamp in this open plain. The splendidly
mounted masses of Moslem soldiers swept round the north end of
Genessaret, burning and destroying as they came, and pitched their camp
in front of the opposing lines. At dawn the terrific fight began.
Surrounded on all sides by the Sultan's swarming battalions, the
Christian Knights fought on without a hope for their lives. They fought
with desperate valor, but to no purpose; the odds of heat and numbers,
and consuming thirst, were too great against them. Towards the middle of
the day the bravest of their band cut their way through the Moslem ranks
and gained the summit of a little hill, and there, hour after hour, they
closed around the banner of the Cross, and beat back the charging
squadrons of the enemy.
But the doom of the Christian power was sealed. Sunset found Saladin
Lord of Palestine, the Christian chivalry strewn in heaps upon the field,
and the King of Jerusalem, the Grand Master of the Templars, and Raynauld
of Chatillon, captives in the Sultan's tent. Saladin treated two of the
prisoners with princely courtesy, and ordered refreshments to be set
before them. When the King handed an iced Sherbet to Chatillon, the
Sultan said," It is thou that givest it to him, not I." He remembered
his oath, and slaughtered the hapless Knight of Chatillon with his own
hand.
It was hard to realize that this silent plain had once resounded with
martial music and trembled to the tramp of armed men. It was hard to
people this solitude with rushing columns of cavalry, and stir its torpid
pulses with the shouts of victors, the shrieks of the wounded, and the
flash of banner and steel above the surging billows of war. A desolation
is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and
action.
We reached Tabor safely, and considerably in advance of that old
iron-clad swindle of a guard. We never saw a human being on the whole
route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins. Tabor stands solitary and
alone, a giant sentinel above the Plain of Esdraelon. It rises some
fourteen hundred feet above the surrounding level, a green, wooden cone,
symmetrical and full of grace--a prominent landmark, and one that is
exceedingly pleasant to eyes surfeited with the repulsive monotony of
desert Syria. We climbed the steep path to its summit, through breezy
glades of thorn and oak. The view presented from its highest peak was
almost beautiful. Below, was the broad, level plain of Esdraelon,
checkered with fields like a chess-board, and full as smooth and level,
seemingly; dotted about its borders with white, compact villages, and
faintly penciled, far and near, with the curving lines of roads and
trails. When it is robed in the fresh verdure of spring, it must form a
charming picture, even by itself. Skirting its southern border rises
"Little Hermon," over whose summit a glimpse of Gilboa is caught. Nain,
famous for the raising of the widow's son, and Endor, as famous for the
performances of her witch are in view. To the eastward lies the Valley
of the Jordan and beyond it the mountains of Gilead. Westward is Mount
Carmel. Hermon in the north--the table-lands of Bashan--Safed, the holy
city, gleaming white upon a tall spur of the mountains of Lebanon
--a steel-blue corner of the Sea of Galilee--saddle-peaked Hattin,
traditional "Mount of Beatitudes" and mute witness brave fights of the
Crusading host for Holy Cross--these fill up the picture.
To glance at the salient features of this landscape through the
picturesque framework of a ragged and ruined stone window--arch of the
time of Christ, thus hiding from sight all that is unattractive, is to
secure to yourself a pleasure worth climbing the mountain to enjoy. One
must stand on his head to get the best effect in a fine sunset, and set a
landscape in a bold, strong framework that is very close at hand, to
bring out all its beauty. One learns this latter truth never more to
forget it, in that mimic land of enchantment, the wonderful garden of my
lord the Count Pallavicini, near Genoa. You go wandering for hours among
hills and wooded glens, artfully contrived to leave the impression that
Nature shaped them and not man; following winding paths and coming
suddenly upon leaping cascades and rustic bridges; finding sylvan lakes
where you expected them not; loitering through battered mediaeval castles
in miniature that seem hoary with age and yet were built a dozen years
ago; meditating over ancient crumbling tombs, whose marble columns were
marred and broken purposely by the modern artist that made them;
stumbling unawares upon toy palaces, wrought of rare and costly
materials, and again upon a peasant's hut, whose dilapidated furniture
would never suggest that it was made so to order; sweeping round and
round in the midst of a forest on an enchanted wooden horse that is moved
by some invisible agency; traversing Roman roads and passing under
majestic triumphal arches; resting in quaint bowers where unseen spirits
discharge jets of water on you from every possible direction, and where
even the flowers you touch assail you with a shower; boating on a
subterranean lake among caverns and arches royally draped with clustering
stalactites, and passing out into open day upon another lake, which is
bordered with sloping banks of grass and gay with patrician barges that
swim at anchor in the shadow of a miniature marble temple that rises out
of the clear water and glasses its white statues, its rich capitals and
fluted columns in the tranquil depths. So, from marvel to marvel you
have drifted on, thinking all the time that the one last seen must be the
chiefest. And, verily, the chiefest wonder is reserved until the last,
but you do not see it until you step ashore, and passing through a
wilderness of rare flowers, collected from every corner of the earth, you
stand at the door of one more mimic temple. Right in this place the
artist taxed his genius to the utmost, and fairly opened the gates of
fairy land. You look through an unpretending pane of glass, stained
yellow--the first thing you see is a mass of quivering foliage, ten short
steps before you, in the midst of which is a ragged opening like a
gateway-a thing that is common enough in nature, and not apt to excite
suspicions of a deep human design--and above the bottom of the gateway,
project, in the most careless way! a few broad tropic leaves and
brilliant flowers. All of a sudden, through this bright, bold gateway,
you catch a glimpse of the faintest, softest, richest picture that ever
graced the dream of a dying Saint, since John saw the New Jerusalem
glimmering above the clouds of Heaven. A broad sweep of sea, flecked
with careening sails; a sharp, jutting cape, and a lofty lighthouse on
it; a sloping lawn behind it; beyond, a portion of the old "city of
palaces," with its parks and hills and stately mansions; beyond these, a
prodigious mountain, with its strong outlines sharply cut against ocean
and sky; and over all, vagrant shreds and flakes of cloud, floating in a
sea of gold. The ocean is gold, the city is gold, the meadow, the
mountain, the sky--every thing is golden-rich, and mellow, and dreamy as
a vision of Paradise. No artist could put upon canvas, its entrancing
beauty, and yet, without the yellow glass, and the carefully contrived
accident of a framework that cast it into enchanted distance and shut out
from it all unattractive features, it was not a picture to fall into
ecstasies over. Such is life, and the trail of the serpent is over us
all.
There is nothing for it now but to come back to old Tabor, though the
subject is tiresome enough, and I can not stick to it for wandering off
to scenes that are pleasanter to remember. I think I will skip, any how.
There is nothing about Tabor (except we concede that it was the scene of
the Transfiguration,) but some gray old ruins, stacked up there in all
ages of the world from the days of stout Gideon and parties that
flourished thirty centuries ago to the fresh yesterday of Crusading
times. It has its Greek Convent, and the coffee there is good, but never
a splinter of the true cross or bone of a hallowed saint to arrest the
idle thoughts of worldlings and turn them into graver channels.
A Catholic church is nothing to me that has no relics.
The plain of Esdraelon--"the battle-field of the nations"--only sets one
to dreaming of Joshua, and Benhadad, and Saul, and Gideon; Tamerlane,
Tancred, Coeur de Lion, and Saladin; the warrior Kings of Persia, Egypt's
heroes, and Napoleon--for they all fought here. If the magic of the
moonlight could summon from the graves of forgotten centuries and many
lands the countless myriads that have battled on this wide, far-reaching
floor, and array them in the thousand strange Costumes of their hundred
nationalities, and send the vast host sweeping down the plain, splendid
with plumes and banners and glittering lances, I could stay here an age
to see the phantom pageant. But the magic of the moonlight is a vanity
and a fraud; and whoso putteth his trust in it shall suffer sorrow and
disappointment.
Down at the foot of Tabor, and just at the edge of the storied Plain of
Esdraelon, is the insignificant village of Deburieh, where Deborah,
prophetess of Israel, lived. It is just like Magdala.
CHAPTER L.
We descended from Mount Tabor, crossed a deep ravine, followed a hilly,
rocky road to Nazareth--distant two hours. All distances in the East are
measured by hours, not miles. A good horse will walk three miles an hour
over nearly any kind of a road; therefore, an hour, here, always stands
for three miles. This method of computation is bothersome and annoying;
and until one gets thoroughly accustomed to it, it carries no
intelligence to his mind until he has stopped and translated the pagan
hours into Christian miles, just as people do with the spoken words of a
foreign language they are acquainted with, but not familiarly enough to
catch the meaning in a moment. Distances traveled by human feet are also
estimated by hours and minutes, though I do not know what the base of the
calculation is. In Constantinople you ask, "How far is it to the
Consulate?" and they answer, "About ten minutes." "How far is it to the
Lloyds' Agency?" "Quarter of an hour." "How far is it to the lower
bridge?" "Four minutes." I can not be positive about it, but I think
that there, when a man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he wants them
a quarter of a minute in the legs and nine seconds around the waist.
Two hours from Tabor to Nazareth--and as it was an uncommonly narrow,
crooked trail, we necessarily met all the camel trains and jackass
caravans between Jericho and Jacksonville in that particular place and
nowhere else. The donkeys do not matter so much, because they are so
small that you can jump your horse over them if he is an animal of
spirit, but a camel is not jumpable. A camel is as tall as any ordinary
dwelling-house in Syria--which is to say a camel is from one to two, and
sometimes nearly three feet taller than a good-sized man. In this part
of the country his load is oftenest in the shape of colossal sacks--one
on each side. He and his cargo take up as much room as a carriage.
Think of meeting this style of obstruction in a narrow trail. The camel
would not turn out for a king. He stalks serenely along, bringing his
cushioned stilts forward with the long, regular swing of a pendulum, and
whatever is in the way must get out of the way peaceably, or be wiped out
forcibly by the bulky sacks. It was a tiresome ride to us, and perfectly
exhausting to the horses. We were compelled to jump over upwards of
eighteen hundred donkeys, and only one person in the party was unseated
less than sixty times by the camels. This seems like a powerful
statement, but the poet has said, "Things are not what they seem." I can
not think of any thing, now, more certain to make one shudder, than to
have a soft-footed camel sneak up behind him and touch him on the ear
with its cold, flabby under-lip. A camel did this for one of the boys,
who was drooping over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced up and saw
the majestic apparition hovering above him, and made frantic efforts to
get out of the way, but the camel reached out and bit him on the shoulder
before he accomplished it. This was the only pleasant incident of the
journey.
At Nazareth we camped in an olive grove near the Virgin Mary's fountain,
and that wonderful Arab "guard" came to collect some bucksheesh for his
"services" in following us from Tiberias and warding off invisible
dangers with the terrors of his armament. The dragoman had paid his
master, but that counted as nothing--if you hire a man to sneeze for you,
here, and another man chooses to help him, you have got to pay both.
They do nothing whatever without pay. How it must have surprised these
people to hear the way of salvation offered to them "without money and
without price." If the manners, the people or the customs of this
country have changed since the Saviour's time, the figures and metaphors
of the Bible are not the evidences to prove it by.
We entered the great Latin Convent which is built over the traditional
dwelling-place of the Holy Family. We went down a flight of fifteen
steps below the ground level, and stood in a small chapel tricked out
with tapestry hangings, silver lamps, and oil paintings. A spot marked
by a cross, in the marble floor, under the altar, was exhibited as the
place made forever holy by the feet of the Virgin when she stood up to
receive the message of the angel. So simple, so unpretending a locality,
to be the scene of so mighty an event! The very scene of the
Annunciation--an event which has been commemorated by splendid shrines
and august temples all over the civilized world, and one which the
princes of art have made it their loftiest ambition to picture worthily
on their canvas; a spot whose history is familiar to the very children of
every house, and city, and obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of
Christendom; a spot which myriads of men would toil across the breadth of
a world to see, would consider it a priceless privilege to look upon.
It was easy to think these thoughts. But it was not easy to bring myself
up to the magnitude of the situation. I could sit off several thousand
miles and imagine the angel appearing, with shadowy wings and lustrous
countenance, and note the glory that streamed downward upon the Virgin's
head while the message from the Throne of God fell upon her ears--any one
can do that, beyond the ocean, but few can do it here. I saw the little
recess from which the angel stepped, but could not fill its void. The
angels that I know are creatures of unstable fancy--they will not fit in
niches of substantial stone. Imagination labors best in distant fields.
I doubt if any man can stand in the Grotto of the Annunciation and people
with the phantom images of his mind its too tangible walls of stone.
They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the roof, which
they said was hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of Nazareth, in the
vain hope of pulling down the sanctuary. But the pillar remained
miraculously suspended in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported
then and still supports the roof. By dividing this statement up among
eight, it was found not difficult to believe it.
These gifted Latin monks never do any thing by halves. If they were to
show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you
could depend upon it that they had on hand the pole it was elevated on
also, and even the hole it stood in. They have got the "Grotto" of the
Annunciation here; and just as convenient to it as one's throat is to his
mouth, they have also the Virgin's Kitchen, and even her sitting-room,
where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with Hebrew toys
eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all clean, spacious,
comfortable "grottoes." It seems curious that personages intimately
connected with the Holy Family always lived in grottoes--in Nazareth, in
Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus--and yet nobody else in their day and
generation thought of doing any thing of the kind. If they ever did,
their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we ought to wonder at the
peculiar marvel of the preservation of these I speak of. When the Virgin
fled from Herod's wrath, she hid in a grotto in Bethlehem, and the same
is there to this day. The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was
done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a grotto--both are shown to
pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that these tremendous events all
happened in grottoes--and exceedingly fortunate, likewise, because the
strongest houses must crumble to ruin in time, but a grotto in the living
rock will last forever. It is an imposture--this grotto stuff--but it is
one that all men ought to thank the Catholics for. Wherever they ferret
out a lost locality made holy by some Scriptural event, they straightway
build a massive--almost imperishable--church there, and preserve the
memory of that locality for the gratification of future generations. If
it had been left to Protestants to do this most worthy work, we would not
even know where Jerusalem is to-day, and the man who could go and put his
finger on Nazareth would be too wise for this world. The world owes the
Catholics its good will even for the happy rascality of hewing out these
bogus grottoes in the rock; for it is infinitely more satisfactory to
look at a grotto, where people have faithfully believed for centuries
that the Virgin once lived, than to have to imagine a dwelling-place for
her somewhere, any where, nowhere, loose and at large all over this town
of Nazareth. There is too large a scope of country. The imagination can
not work. There is no one particular spot to chain your eye, rivet your
interest, and make you think. The memory of the Pilgrims can not perish
while Plymouth Rock remains to us. The old monks are wise. They know
how to drive a stake through a pleasant tradition that will hold it to
its place forever.
We visited the places where Jesus worked for fifteen years as a
carpenter, and where he attempted to teach in the synagogue and was
driven out by a mob. Catholic chapels stand upon these sites and protect
the little fragments of the ancient walls which remain. Our pilgrims
broke off specimens. We visited, also, a new chapel, in the midst of the
town, which is built around a boulder some twelve feet long by four feet
thick; the priests discovered, a few years ago, that the disciples had
sat upon this rock to rest, once, when they had walked up from Capernaum.
They hastened to preserve the relic. Relics are very good property.
Travelers are expected to pay for seeing them, and they do it cheerfully.
We like the idea. One's conscience can never be the worse for the
knowledge that he has paid his way like a man. Our pilgrims would have
liked very well to get out their lampblack and stencil-plates and paint
their names on that rock, together with the names of the villages they
hail from in America, but the priests permit nothing of that kind.
To speak the strict truth, however, our party seldom offend in that way,
though we have men in the ship who never lose an opportunity to do it.
Our pilgrims' chief sin is their lust for "specimens." I suppose that by
this time they know the dimensions of that rock to an inch, and its
weight to a ton; and I do not hesitate to charge that they will go back
there to-night and try to carry it off.
This "Fountain of the Virgin" is the one which tradition says Mary used
to get water from, twenty times a day, when she was a girl, and bear it
away in a jar upon her head. The water streams through faucets in the
face of a wall of ancient masonry which stands removed from the houses of
the village. The young girls of Nazareth still collect about it by the
dozen and keep up a riotous laughter and sky-larking. The Nazarene girls
are homely. Some of them have large, lustrous eyes, but none of them
have pretty faces. These girls wear a single garment, usually, and it is
loose, shapeless, of undecided color; it is generally out of repair, too.
They wear, from crown to jaw, curious strings of old coins, after the
manner of the belles of Tiberias, and brass jewelry upon their wrists and
in their ears. They wear no shoes and stockings. They are the most
human girls we have found in the country yet, and the best natured.
But there is no question that these picturesque maidens sadly lack
comeliness.
A pilgrim--the "Enthusiast"--said: "See that tall, graceful girl! look at
the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance!"
Another pilgrim came along presently and said: "Observe that tall,
graceful girl; what queenly Madonna-like gracefulness of beauty is in her
countenance."
I said: "She is not tall, she is short; she is not beautiful, she is
homely; she is graceful enough, I grant, but she is rather boisterous."
The third and last pilgrim moved by, before long, and he said: "Ah, what
a tall, graceful girl! what Madonna-like gracefulness of queenly beauty!"
The verdicts were all in. It was time, now, to look up the authorities
for all these opinions. I found this paragraph, which follows. Written
by whom? Wm. C. Grimes:
"After we were in the saddle, we rode down to the spring to have a
last look at the women of Nazareth, who were, as a class, much the
prettiest that we had seen in the East. As we approached the crowd
a tall girl of nineteen advanced toward Miriam and offered her a cup
of water. Her movement was graceful and queenly. We exclaimed on
the spot at the Madonna-like beauty of her countenance. Whitely was
suddenly thirsty, and begged for water, and drank it slowly, with
his eyes over the top of the cup, fixed on her large black eyes,
which gazed on him quite as curiously as he on her. Then Moreright
wanted water. She gave it to him and he managed to spill it so as
to ask for another cup, and by the time she came to me she saw
through the operation; her eyes were full of fun as she looked at
me. I laughed outright, and she joined me in as gay a shout as ever
country maiden in old Orange county. I wished for a picture of her.
A Madonna, whose face was a portrait of that beautiful Nazareth
girl, would be a 'thing of beauty' and 'a joy forever.'"
That is the kind of gruel which has been served out from Palestine for
ages. Commend me to Fennimore Cooper to find beauty in the Indians, and
to Grimes to find it in the Arabs. Arab men are often fine looking, but
Arab women are not. We can all believe that the Virgin Mary was
beautiful; it is not natural to think otherwise; but does it follow that
it is our duty to find beauty in these present women of Nazareth?
I love to quote from Grimes, because he is so dramatic. And because he
is so romantic. And because he seems to care but little whether he tells
the truth or not, so he scares the reader or excites his envy or his
admiration.
He went through this peaceful land with one hand forever on his revolver,
and the other on his pocket-handkerchief. Always, when he was not on the
point of crying over a holy place, he was on the point of killing an
Arab. More surprising things happened to him in Palestine than ever
happened to any traveler here or elsewhere since Munchausen died.
At Beit Jin, where nobody had interfered with him, he crept out of his
tent at dead of night and shot at what he took to be an Arab lying on a
rock, some distance away, planning evil. The ball killed a wolf. Just
before he fired, he makes a dramatic picture of himself--as usual, to
scare the reader:
"Was it imagination, or did I see a moving object on the surface of
the rock? If it were a man, why did he not now drop me? He had a
beautiful shot as I stood out in my black boornoose against the
white tent. I had the sensation of an entering bullet in my throat,
breast, brain."
Reckless creature!
Riding toward Genessaret, they saw two Bedouins, and "we looked to our
pistols and loosened them quietly in our shawls," etc. Always cool.
In Samaria, he charged up a hill, in the face of a volley of stones; he
fired into the crowd of men who threw them. He says:
"I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the
perfection of American and English weapons, and the danger of
attacking any one of the armed Franks. I think the lesson of that
ball not lost."
At Beit Jin he gave his whole band of Arab muleteers a piece of his mind,
and then--
"I contented myself with a solemn assurance that if there occurred
another instance of disobedience to orders I would thrash the
responsible party as he never dreamed of being thrashed, and if I
could not find who was responsible, I would whip them all, from
first to last, whether there was a governor at hand to do it or I
had to do it myself"
Perfectly fearless, this man.
He rode down the perpendicular path in the rocks, from the Castle of
Banias to the oak grove, at a flying gallop, his horse striding "thirty
feet" at every bound. I stand prepared to bring thirty reliable
witnesses to prove that Putnam's famous feat at Horseneck was
insignificant compared to this.
Behold him--always theatrical--looking at Jerusalem--this time, by an
oversight, with his hand off his pistol for once.
"I stood in the road, my hand on my horse's neck, and with my dim
eyes sought to trace the outlines of the holy places which I had
long before fixed in my mind, but the fast-flowing tears forbade my
succeeding. There were our Mohammedan servants, a Latin monk, two
Armenians and a Jew in our cortege, and all alike gazed with
overflowing eyes."
If Latin monks and Arabs cried, I know to a moral certainty that the
horses cried also, and so the picture is complete.
But when necessity demanded, he could be firm as adamant. In the Lebanon
Valley an Arab youth--a Christian; he is particular to explain that
Mohammedans do not steal--robbed him of a paltry ten dollars' worth of
powder and shot. He convicted him before a sheik and looked on while he
was punished by the terrible bastinado. Hear him:
"He (Mousa) was on his back in a twinkling, howling, shouting,
screaming, but he was carried out to the piazza before the door,
where we could see the operation, and laid face down. One man sat
on his back and one on his legs, the latter holding up his feet,
while a third laid on the bare soles a rhinoceros-hide koorbash
--["A Koorbash is Arabic for cowhide, the cow being a rhinoceros.
It is the most cruel whip known to fame. Heavy as lead, and
flexible as India-rubber, usually about forty inches long and
tapering gradually from an inch in diameter to a point, it
administers a blow which leaves its mark for time."--Scow Life in
Egypt, by the same author.]--that whizzed through the air at every
stroke. Poor Moreright was in agony, and Nama and Nama the Second
(mother and sister of Mousa,) were on their faces begging and
wailing, now embracing my knees and now Whitely's, while the
brother, outside, made the air ring with cries louder than Mousa's.
Even Yusef came and asked me on his knees to relent, and last of
all, Betuni--the rascal had lost a feed-bag in their house and had
been loudest in his denunciations that morning--besought the Howajji
to have mercy on the fellow."
But not he! The punishment was "suspended," at the fifteenth blow to
hear the confession. Then Grimes and his party rode away, and left the
entire Christian family to be fined and as severely punished as the
Mohammedan sheik should deem proper.
"As I mounted, Yusef once more begged me to interfere and have mercy
on them, but I looked around at the dark faces of the crowd, and I
couldn't find one drop of pity in my heart for them."
He closes his picture with a rollicking burst of humor which contrasts
finely with the grief of the mother and her children.
One more paragraph:
"Then once more I bowed my head. It is no shame to have wept in
Palestine. I wept, when I saw Jerusalem, I wept when I lay in the
starlight at Bethlehem. I wept on the blessed shores of Galilee.
My hand was no less firm on the rein, my anger did not tremble on
the trigger of my pistol when I rode with it in my right hand along
the shore of the blue sea" (weeping.) "My eye was not dimmed by
those tears nor my heart in aught weakened. Let him who would sneer
at my emotion close this volume here, for he will find little to his
taste in my journeyings through Holy Land."
He never bored but he struck water.
I am aware that this is a pretty voluminous notice of Mr. Grimes' book.
However, it is proper and legitimate to speak of it, for "Nomadic Life in
Palestine" is a representative book--the representative of a class of
Palestine books--and a criticism upon it will serve for a criticism upon
them all. And since I am treating it in the comprehensive capacity of a
representative book, I have taken the liberty of giving to both book and
author fictitious names. Perhaps it is in better taste, any how, to do
this.
CHAPTER LI.
Nazareth is wonderfully interesting because the town has an air about it
of being precisely as Jesus left it, and one finds himself saying, all
the time, "The boy Jesus has stood in this doorway--has played in that
street--has touched these stones with his hands--has rambled over these
chalky hills." Whoever shall write the boyhood of Jesus ingeniously will
make a book which will possess a vivid interest for young and old alike.
I judge so from the greater interest we found in Nazareth than any of our
speculations upon Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee gave rise to. It was
not possible, standing by the Sea of Galilee, to frame more than a vague,
far-away idea of the majestic Personage who walked upon the crested waves
as if they had been solid earth, and who touched the dead and they rose
up and spoke. I read among my notes, now, with a new interest, some
sentences from an edition of 1621 of the Apocryphal New Testament.
[Extract.]
"Christ, kissed by a bride made dumb by sorcerers, cures her. A
leprous girl cured by the water in which the infant Christ was
washed, and becomes the servant of Joseph and Mary. The leprous son
of a Prince cured in like manner.
"A young man who had been bewitched and turned into a mule,
miraculously cured by the infant Savior being put on his back, and
is married to the girl who had been cured of leprosy. Whereupon the
bystanders praise God.
"Chapter 16. Christ miraculously widens or contracts gates,
milk-pails, sieves or boxes, not properly made by Joseph, he not
being skillful at his carpenter's trade. The King of Jerusalem
gives Joseph an order for a throne. Joseph works on it for two
years and makes it two spans too short. The King being angry with
him, Jesus comforts him--commands him to pull one side of the
throne while he pulls the other, and brings it to its proper
dimensions.
"Chapter 19. Jesus, charged with throwing a boy from the roof of a
house, miraculously causes the dead boy to speak and acquit him;
fetches water for his mother, breaks the pitcher and miraculously
gathers the water in his mantle and brings it home.
"Sent to a schoolmaster, refuses to tell his letters, and the
schoolmaster going to whip him, his hand withers."
Further on in this quaint volume of rejected gospels is an epistle of St.
Clement to the Corinthians, which was used in the churches and considered
genuine fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. In it this account of the
fabled phoenix occurs:
"1. Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection, which
is seen in the Eastern countries, that is to say, in Arabia.
"2. There is a certain bird called a phoenix. Of this there is
never but one at a time, and that lives five hundred years. And
when the time of its dissolution draws near, that it must die, it
makes itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices,
into which, when its time is fulfilled, it enters and dies.
"3. But its flesh, putrefying, breeds a certain worm, which, being
nourished by the juice of the dead bird, brings forth feathers; and
when it is grown to a perfect state, it takes up the nest in which
the bones of its parent lie, and carries it from Arabia into Egypt,
to a city called Heliopolis:
"4. And flying in open day in the sight of all men, lays it upon
the altar of the sun, and so returns from whence it came.
"5. The priests then search into the records of the time, and find
that it returned precisely at the end of five hundred years."
Business is business, and there is nothing like punctuality, especially
in a phoenix.
The few chapters relating to the infancy of the Saviour contain many
things which seem frivolous and not worth preserving. A large part of
the remaining portions of the book read like good Scripture, however.
There is one verse that ought not to have been rejected, because it so
evidently prophetically refers to the general run of Congresses of the
United States:
"199. They carry themselves high, and as prudent men; and though
they are fools, yet would seem to be teachers."
I have set these extracts down, as I found them. Everywhere among the
cathedrals of France and Italy, one finds traditions of personages that
do not figure in the Bible, and of miracles that are not mentioned in its
pages. But they are all in this Apocryphal New Testament, and though
they have been ruled out of our modern Bible, it is claimed that they
were accepted gospel twelve or fifteen centuries ago, and ranked as high
in credit as any. One needs to read this book before he visits those
venerable cathedrals, with their treasures of tabooed and forgotten
tradition.
They imposed another pirate upon us at Nazareth--another invincible Arab
guard. We took our last look at the city, clinging like a whitewashed
wasp's nest to the hill-side, and at eight o'clock in the morning
departed. We dismounted and drove the horses down a bridle-path which I
think was fully as crooked as a corkscrew, which I know to be as steep as
the downward sweep of a rainbow, and which I believe to be the worst
piece of road in the geography, except one in the Sandwich Islands, which
I remember painfully, and possibly one or two mountain trails in the
Sierra Nevadas. Often, in this narrow path the horse had to poise
himself nicely on a rude stone step and then drop his fore-feet over the
edge and down something more than half his own height. This brought his
nose near the ground, while his tail pointed up toward the sky somewhere,
and gave him the appearance of preparing to stand on his head. A horse
cannot look dignified in this position. We accomplished the long descent
at last, and trotted across the great Plain of Esdraelon.
Some of us will be shot before we finish this pilgrimage. The pilgrims
read "Nomadic Life" and keep themselves in a constant state of Quixotic
heroism. They have their hands on their pistols all the time, and every
now and then, when you least expect it, they snatch them out and take aim
at Bedouins who are not visible, and draw their knives and make savage
passes at other Bedouins who do not exist. I am in deadly peril always,
for these spasms are sudden and irregular, and of course I cannot tell
when to be getting out of the way. If I am accidentally murdered, some
time, during one of these romantic frenzies of the pilgrims, Mr. Grimes
must be rigidly held to answer as an accessory before the fact. If the
pilgrims would take deliberate aim and shoot at a man, it would be all
right and proper--because that man would not be in any danger; but these
random assaults are what I object to. I do not wish to see any more
places like Esdraelon, where the ground is level and people can gallop.
It puts melodramatic nonsense into the pilgrims' heads. All at once,
when one is jogging along stupidly in the sun, and thinking about
something ever so far away, here they come, at a stormy gallop, spurring
and whooping at those ridgy old sore-backed plugs till their heels fly
higher than their heads, and as they whiz by, out comes a little
potato-gun of a revolver, there is a startling little pop, and a small pellet
goes singing through the air. Now that I have begun this pilgrimage, I
intend to go through with it, though sooth to say, nothing but the most
desperate valor has kept me to my purpose up to the present time. I do
not mind Bedouins,--I am not afraid of them; because neither Bedouins nor
ordinary Arabs have shown any disposition to harm us, but I do feel
afraid of my own comrades.
Arriving at the furthest verge of the Plain, we rode a little way up a
hill and found ourselves at Endor, famous for its witch. Her descendants
are there yet. They were the wildest horde of half-naked savages we have
found thus far. They swarmed out of mud bee-hives; out of hovels of the
dry-goods box pattern; out of gaping caves under shelving rocks; out of
crevices in the earth. In five minutes the dead solitude and silence of
the place were no more, and a begging, screeching, shouting mob were
struggling about the horses' feet and blocking the way. "Bucksheesh!
bucksheesh! bucksheesh! howajji, bucksheesh!" It was Magdala over
again, only here the glare from the infidel eyes was fierce and full of
hate. The population numbers two hundred and fifty, and more than half
the citizens live in caves in the rock. Dirt, degradation and savagery
are Endor's specialty. We say no more about Magdala and Deburieh now.
Endor heads the list. It is worse than any Indian 'campoodie'. The hill
is barren, rocky, and forbidding. No sprig of grass is visible, and only
one tree. This is a fig-tree, which maintains a precarious footing among
the rocks at the mouth of the dismal cavern once occupied by the
veritable Witch of Endor. In this cavern, tradition says, Saul, the
king, sat at midnight, and stared and trembled, while the earth shook,
the thunders crashed among the hills, and out of the midst of fire and
smoke the spirit of the dead prophet rose up and confronted him. Saul
had crept to this place in the darkness, while his army slept, to learn
what fate awaited him in the morrow's battle. He went away a sad man, to
meet disgrace and death.
A spring trickles out of the rock in the gloomy recesses of the cavern,
and we were thirsty. The citizens of Endor objected to our going in
there. They do not mind dirt; they do not mind rags; they do not mind
vermin; they do not mind barbarous ignorance and savagery; they do not
mind a reasonable degree of starvation, but they do like to be pure and
holy before their god, whoever he may be, and therefore they shudder and
grow almost pale at the idea of Christian lips polluting a spring whose
waters must descend into their sanctified gullets. We had no wanton
desire to wound even their feelings or trample upon their prejudices, but
we were out of water, thus early in the day, and were burning up with
thirst. It was at this time, and under these circumstances, that I
framed an aphorism which has already become celebrated. I said:
"Necessity knows no law." We went in and drank.
We got away from the noisy wretches, finally, dropping them in squads and
couples as we filed over the hills--the aged first, the infants next, the
young girls further on; the strong men ran beside us a mile, and only
left when they had secured the last possible piastre in the way of
bucksheesh.
In an hour, we reached Nain, where Christ raised the widow's son to life.
Nain is Magdala on a small scale. It has no population of any
consequence. Within a hundred yards of it is the original graveyard, for
aught I know; the tombstones lie flat on the ground, which is Jewish
fashion in Syria. I believe the Moslems do not allow them to have
upright tombstones. A Moslem grave is usually roughly plastered over and
whitewashed, and has at one end an upright projection which is shaped
into exceedingly rude attempts at ornamentation. In the cities, there is
often no appearance of a grave at all; a tall, slender marble tombstone,
elaborately lettred, gilded and painted, marks the burial place, and this
is surmounted by a turban, so carved and shaped as to signify the dead
man's rank in life.
They showed a fragment of ancient wall which they said was one side of
the gate out of which the widow's dead son was being brought so many
centuries ago when Jesus met the procession:
"Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold there was a
dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a
widow: and much people of the city was with her.
"And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said, Weep
not.
"And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood
still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, arise.
"And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered
him to his mother.
"And there came a fear on all. And they glorified God, saying, That
a great prophet is risen up among us; and That God hath visited his
people."
A little mosque stands upon the spot which tradition says was occupied by
the widow's dwelling. Two or three aged Arabs sat about its door. We
entered, and the pilgrims broke specimens from the foundation walls,
though they had to touch, and even step, upon the "praying carpets" to do
it. It was almost the same as breaking pieces from the hearts of those
old Arabs. To step rudely upon the sacred praying mats, with booted
feet--a thing not done by any Arab--was to inflict pain upon men who had
not offended us in any way. Suppose a party of armed foreigners were to
enter a village church in America and break ornaments from the altar
railings for curiosities, and climb up and walk upon the Bible and the
pulpit cushions? However, the cases are different. One is the
profanation of a temple of our faith--the other only the profanation of a
pagan one.
We descended to the Plain again, and halted a moment at a well--of
Abraham's time, no doubt. It was in a desert place. It was walled three
feet above ground with squared and heavy blocks of stone, after the
manner of Bible pictures. Around it some camels stood, and others knelt.
There was a group of sober little donkeys with naked, dusky children
clambering about them, or sitting astride their rumps, or pulling their
tails. Tawny, black-eyed, barefooted maids, arrayed in rags and adorned
with brazen armlets and pinchbeck ear-rings, were poising water-jars upon
their heads, or drawing water from the well. A flock of sheep stood by,
waiting for the shepherds to fill the hollowed stones with water, so that
they might drink--stones which, like those that walled the well, were
worn smooth and deeply creased by the chafing chins of a hundred
generations of thirsty animals. Picturesque Arabs sat upon the ground,
in groups, and solemnly smoked their long-stemmed chibouks. Other Arabs
were filling black hog-skins with water--skins which, well filled, and
distended with water till the short legs projected painfully out of the
proper line, looked like the corpses of hogs bloated by drowning. Here
was a grand Oriental picture which I had worshiped a thousand times in
soft, rich steel engravings! But in the engraving there was no
desolation; no dirt; no rags; no fleas; no ugly features; no sore eyes;
no feasting flies; no besotted ignorance in the countenances; no raw
places on the donkeys' backs; no disagreeable jabbering in unknown
tongues; no stench of camels; no suggestion that a couple of tons of
powder placed under the party and touched off would heighten the effect
and give to the scene a genuine interest and a charm which it would
always be pleasant to recall, even though a man lived a thousand years.
Oriental scenes look best in steel engravings. I cannot be imposed upon
any more by that picture of the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon. I shall
say to myself, You look fine, Madam but your feet are not clean and you
smell like a camel.
Presently a wild Arab in charge of a camel train recognized an old friend
in Ferguson, and they ran and fell upon each other's necks and kissed
each other's grimy, bearded faces upon both cheeks. It explained
instantly a something which had always seemed to me only a farfetched
Oriental figure of speech. I refer to the circumstance of Christ's
rebuking a Pharisee, or some such character, and reminding him that from
him he had received no "kiss of welcome." It did not seem reasonable to
me that men should kiss each other, but I am aware, now, that they did.
There was reason in it, too. The custom was natural and proper; because
people must kiss, and a man would not be likely to kiss one of the women
of this country of his own free will and accord. One must travel, to
learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any
significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.
We journeyed around the base of the mountain--"Little Hermon,"--past the
old Crusaders' castle of El Fuleh, and arrived at Shunem. This was
another Magdala, to a fraction, frescoes and all. Here, tradition says,
the prophet Samuel was born, and here the Shunamite woman built a little
house upon the city wall for the accommodation of the prophet Elisha.
Elisha asked her what she expected in return. It was a perfectly natural
question, for these people are and were in the habit of proffering favors
and services and then expecting and begging for pay. Elisha knew them
well. He could not comprehend that any body should build for him that
humble little chamber for the mere sake of old friendship, and with no
selfish motive whatever. It used to seem a very impolite, not to say a
rude, question, for Elisha to ask the woman, but it does not seem so to
me now. The woman said she expected nothing. Then for her goodness and
her unselfishness, he rejoiced her heart with the news that she should
bear a son. It was a high reward--but she would not have thanked him for
a daughter--daughters have always been unpopular here. The son was born,
grew, waxed strong, died. Elisha restored him to life in Shunem.
We found here a grove of lemon trees--cool, shady, hung with fruit. One
is apt to overestimate beauty when it is rare, but to me this grove
seemed very beautiful. It was beautiful. I do not overestimate it. I
must always remember Shunem gratefully, as a place which gave to us this
leafy shelter after our long, hot ride. We lunched, rested, chatted,
smoked our pipes an hour, and then mounted and moved on.
As we trotted across the Plain of Jezreel, we met half a dozen Digger
Indians (Bedouins) with very long spears in their hands, cavorting around
on old crowbait horses, and spearing imaginary enemies; whooping, and
fluttering their rags in the wind, and carrying on in every respect like
a pack of hopeless lunatics. At last, here were the "wild, free sons of
the desert, speeding over the plain like the wind, on their beautiful
Arabian mares" we had read so much about and longed so much to see! Here
were the "picturesque costumes!" This was the "gallant spectacle!"
Tatterdemalion vagrants--cheap braggadocio--"Arabian mares" spined and
necked like the ichthyosaurus in the museum, and humped and cornered like
a dromedary! To glance at the genuine son of the desert is to take the
romance out of him forever--to behold his steed is to long in charity to
strip his harness off and let him fall to pieces.
Presently we came to a ruinous old town on a hill, the same being the
ancient Jezreel.
Ahab, King of Samaria, (this was a very vast kingdom, for those days, and
was very nearly half as large as Rhode Island) dwelt in the city of
Jezreel, which was his capital. Near him lived a man by the name of
Naboth, who had a vineyard. The King asked him for it, and when he would
not give it, offered to buy it. But Naboth refused to sell it. In those
days it was considered a sort of crime to part with one's inheritance at
any price--and even if a man did part with it, it reverted to himself or
his heirs again at the next jubilee year. So this spoiled child of a
King went and lay down on the bed with his face to the wall, and grieved
sorely. The Queen, a notorious character in those days, and whose name
is a by-word and a reproach even in these, came in and asked him
wherefore he sorrowed, and he told her. Jezebel said she could secure
the vineyard; and she went forth and forged letters to the nobles and
wise men, in the King's name, and ordered them to proclaim a fast and set
Naboth on high before the people, and suborn two witnesses to swear that
he had blasphemed. They did it, and the people stoned the accused by the
city wall, and he died. Then Jezebel came and told the King, and said,
Behold, Naboth is no more--rise up and seize the vineyard. So Ahab
seized the vineyard, and went into it to possess it. But the Prophet
Elijah came to him there and read his fate to him, and the fate of
Jezebel; and said that in the place where dogs licked the blood of
Naboth, dogs should also lick his blood--and he said, likewise, the dogs
should eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. In the course of time, the
King was killed in battle, and when his chariot wheels were washed in the
pool of Samaria, the dogs licked the blood. In after years, Jehu, who
was King of Israel, marched down against Jezreel, by order of one of the
Prophets, and administered one of those convincing rebukes so common
among the people of those days: he killed many kings and their subjects,
and as he came along he saw Jezebel, painted and finely dressed, looking
out of a window, and ordered that she be thrown down to him. A servant
did it, and Jehu's horse trampled her under foot. Then Jehu went in and
sat down to dinner; and presently he said, Go and bury this cursed woman,
for she is a King's daughter. The spirit of charity came upon him too
late, however, for the prophecy had already been fulfilled--the dogs had
eaten her, and they "found no more of her than the skull, and the feet,
and the palms of her hands."
Ahab, the late King, had left a helpless family behind him, and Jehu
killed seventy of the orphan sons. Then he killed all the relatives, and
teachers, and servants and friends of the family, and rested from his
labors, until he was come near to Samaria, where he met forty-two persons
and asked them who they were; they said they were brothers of the King of
Judah. He killed them. When he got to Samaria, he said he would show
his zeal for the Lord; so he gathered all the priests and people together
that worshiped Baal, pretending that he was going to adopt that worship
and offer up a great sacrifice; and when they were all shut up where they
could not defend themselves, he caused every person of them to be killed.
Then Jehu, the good missionary, rested from his labors once more.
We went back to the valley, and rode to the Fountain of Ain Jelud. They
call it the Fountain of Jezreel, usually. It is a pond about one hundred
feet square and four feet deep, with a stream of water trickling into it
from under an overhanging ledge of rocks. It is in the midst of a great
solitude. Here Gideon pitched his camp in the old times; behind Shunem
lay the "Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Children of the East," who
were "as grasshoppers for multitude; both they and their camels were
without number, as the sand by the sea-side for multitude." Which means
that there were one hundred and thirty-five thousand men, and that they
had transportation service accordingly.
Gideon, with only three hundred men, surprised them in the night, and
stood by and looked on while they butchered each other until a hundred
and twenty thousand lay dead on the field.
We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started again at one
o'clock in the morning. Somewhere towards daylight we passed the
locality where the best authenticated tradition locates the pit into
which Joseph's brethren threw him, and about noon, after passing over a
succession of mountain tops, clad with groves of fig and olive trees,
with the Mediterranean in sight some forty miles away, and going by many
ancient Biblical cities whose inhabitants glowered savagely upon our
Christian procession, and were seemingly inclined to practice on it with
stones, we came to the singularly terraced and unlovely hills that
betrayed that we were out of Galilee and into Samaria at last.
We climbed a high hill to visit the city of Samaria, where the woman may
have hailed from who conversed with Christ at Jacob's Well, and from
whence, no doubt, came also the celebrated Good Samaritan. Herod the
Great is said to have made a magnificent city of this place, and a great
number of coarse limestone columns, twenty feet high and two feet
through, that are almost guiltless of architectural grace of shape and
ornament, are pointed out by many authors as evidence of the fact. They
would not have been considered handsome in ancient Greece, however.
The inhabitants of this camp are particularly vicious, and stoned two
parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who brought about the difficulty
by showing their revolvers when they did not intend to use them--a thing
which is deemed bad judgment in the Far West, and ought certainly to be
so considered any where. In the new Territories, when a man puts his
hand on a weapon, he knows that he must use it; he must use it instantly
or expect to be shot down where he stands. Those pilgrims had been
reading Grimes.
There was nothing for us to do in Samaria but buy handfuls of old Roman
coins at a franc a dozen, and look at a dilapidated church of the
Crusaders and a vault in it which once contained the body of John the
Baptist. This relic was long ago carried away to Genoa.
Samaria stood a disastrous siege, once, in the days of Elisha, at the
hands of the King of Syria. Provisions reached such a figure that "an
ass' head was sold for eighty pieces of silver and the fourth part of a
cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver."
An incident recorded of that heavy time will give one a very good idea of
the distress that prevailed within these crumbling walls. As the King
was walking upon the battlements one day, "a woman cried out, saying,
Help, my lord, O King! And the King said, What aileth thee? and she
answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him
to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did
eat him; and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son that we may
eat him; and she hath hid her son."
The prophet Elisha declared that within four and twenty hours the prices
of food should go down to nothing, almost, and it was so. The Syrian
army broke camp and fled, for some cause or other, the famine was
relieved from without, and many a shoddy speculator in dove's dung and
ass's meat was ruined.
We were glad to leave this hot and dusty old village and hurry on. At
two o'clock we stopped to lunch and rest at ancient Shechem, between the
historic Mounts of Gerizim and Ebal, where in the old times the books of
the law, the curses and the blessings, were read from the heights to the
Jewish multitudes below.
CHAPTER LII.
The narrow canon in which Nablous, or Shechem, is situated, is under high
cultivation, and the soil is exceedingly black and fertile. It is well
watered, and its affluent vegetation gains effect by contrast with the
barren hills that tower on either side. One of these hills is the
ancient Mount of Blessings and the other the Mount of Curses and wise men
who seek for fulfillments of prophecy think they find here a wonder of
this kind--to wit, that the Mount of Blessings is strangely fertile and
its mate as strangely unproductive. We could not see that there was
really much difference between them in this respect, however.
Shechem is distinguished as one of the residences of the patriarch Jacob,
and as the seat of those tribes that cut themselves loose from their
brethren of Israel and propagated doctrines not in conformity with those
of the original Jewish creed. For thousands of years this clan have
dwelt in Shechem under strict tabu, and having little commerce or
fellowship with their fellow men of any religion or nationality. For
generations they have not numbered more than one or two hundred, but they
still adhere to their ancient faith and maintain their ancient rites and
ceremonies. Talk of family and old descent! Princes and nobles pride
themselves upon lineages they can trace back some hundreds of years.
What is this trifle to this handful of old first families of Shechem who
can name their fathers straight back without a flaw for thousands
--straight back to a period so remote that men reared in a country where
the days of two hundred years ago are called "ancient" times grow dazed
and bewildered when they try to comprehend it! Here is respectability
for you--here is "family"--here is high descent worth talking about.
This sad, proud remnant of a once mighty community still hold themselves
aloof from all the world; they still live as their fathers lived, labor
as their fathers labored, think as they did, feel as they did, worship in
the same place, in sight of the same landmarks, and in the same quaint,
patriarchal way their ancestors did more than thirty centuries ago. I
found myself gazing at any straggling scion of this strange race with a
riveted fascination, just as one would stare at a living mastodon, or a
megatherium that had moved in the grey dawn of creation and seen the
wonders of that mysterious world that was before the flood.
Carefully preserved among the sacred archives of this curious community
is a MSS. copy of the ancient Jewish law, which is said to be the oldest
document on earth. It is written on vellum, and is some four or five
thousand years old. Nothing but bucksheesh can purchase a sight. Its
fame is somewhat dimmed in these latter days, because of the doubts so
many authors of Palestine travels have felt themselves privileged to cast
upon it. Speaking of this MSS. reminds me that I procured from the
high-priest of this ancient Samaritan community, at great expense, a
secret document of still higher antiquity and far more extraordinary
interest, which I propose to publish as soon as I have finished
translating it.
Joshua gave his dying injunction to the children of Israel at Shechem,
and buried a valuable treasure secretly under an oak tree there about the
same time. The superstitious Samaritans have always been afraid to hunt
for it. They believe it is guarded by fierce spirits invisible to men.
About a mile and a half from Shechem we halted at the base of Mount Ebal
before a little square area, inclosed by a high stone wall, neatly
whitewashed. Across one end of this inclosure is a tomb built after the
manner of the Moslems. It is the tomb of Joseph. No truth is better
authenticated than this.
When Joseph was dying he prophesied that exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt which occurred four hundred years afterwards. At the same time he
exacted of his people an oath that when they journeyed to the land of
Canaan they would bear his bones with them and bury them in the ancient
inheritance of his fathers. The oath was kept. "And the bones of Joseph,
which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in
Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor
the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver."
Few tombs on earth command the veneration of so many races and men of
divers creeds as this of Joseph. "Samaritan and Jew, Moslem and
Christian alike, revere it, and honor it with their visits. The tomb of
Joseph, the dutiful son, the affectionate, forgiving brother, the
virtuous man, the wise Prince and ruler. Egypt felt his influence--the
world knows his history."
In this same "parcel of ground" which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor
for a hundred pieces of silver, is Jacob's celebrated well. It is cut in
the solid rock, and is nine feet square and ninety feet deep. The name
of this unpretending hole in the ground, which one might pass by and take
no notice of, is as familiar as household words to even the children and
the peasants of many a far-off country. It is more famous than the
Parthenon; it is older than the Pyramids.
It was by this well that Jesus sat and talked with a woman of that
strange, antiquated Samaritan community I have been speaking of, and told
her of the mysterious water of life. As descendants of old English
nobles still cherish in the traditions of their houses how that this king
or that king tarried a day with some favored ancestor three hundred years
ago, no doubt the descendants of the woman of Samaria, living there in
Shechem, still refer with pardonable vanity to this conversation of their
ancestor, held some little time gone by, with the Messiah of the
Christians. It is not likely that they undervalue a distinction such as
this. Samaritan nature is human nature, and human nature remembers
contact with the illustrious, always.
For an offense done to the family honor, the sons of Jacob exterminated
all Shechem once.
We left Jacob's Well and traveled till eight in the evening, but rather
slowly, for we had been in the saddle nineteen hours, and the horses were
cruelly tired. We got so far ahead of the tents that we had to camp in
an Arab village, and sleep on the ground. We could have slept in the
largest of the houses; but there were some little drawbacks: it was
populous with vermin, it had a dirt floor, it was in no respect cleanly,
and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom, and two donkeys in
the parlor. Outside there were no inconveniences, except that the dusky,
ragged, earnest-eyed villagers of both sexes and all ages grouped
themselves on their haunches all around us, and discussed us and
criticised us with noisy tongues till midnight. We did not mind the
noise, being tired, but, doubtless, the reader is aware that it is almost
an impossible thing to go to sleep when you know that people are looking
at you. We went to bed at ten, and got up again at two and started once
more. Thus are people persecuted by dragomen, whose sole ambition in
life is to get ahead of each other.
About daylight we passed Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant rested
three hundred years, and at whose gates good old Eli fell down and "brake
his neck" when the messenger, riding hard from the battle, told him of
the defeat of his people, the death of his sons, and, more than all, the
capture of Israel's pride, her hope, her refuge, the ancient Ark her
forefathers brought with them out of Egypt. It is little wonder that
under circumstances like these he fell down and brake his neck. But
Shiloh had no charms for us. We were so cold that there was no comfort
but in motion, and so drowsy we could hardly sit upon the horses.
After a while we came to a shapeless mass of ruins, which still bears the
name of Bethel. It was here that Jacob lay down and had that superb
vision of angels flitting up and down a ladder that reached from the
clouds to earth, and caught glimpses of their blessed home through the
open gates of Heaven.
The pilgrims took what was left of the hallowed ruin, and we pressed on
toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem.
The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare,
repulsive and dreary the landscape became. There could not have been
more fragments of stone strewn broadcast over this part of the world, if
every ten square feet of the land had been occupied by a separate and
distinct stonecutter's establishment for an age. There was hardly a tree
or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends
of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape
exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the
approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the
surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the
roads than in the surrounding country.
We passed Ramah, and Beroth, and on the right saw the tomb of the prophet
Samuel, perched high upon a commanding eminence. Still no Jerusalem came
in sight. We hurried on impatiently. We halted a moment at the ancient
Fountain of Beira, but its stones, worn deeply by the chins of thirsty
animals that are dead and gone centuries ago, had no interest for us--we
longed to see Jerusalem. We spurred up hill after hill, and usually
began to stretch our necks minutes before we got to the top--but
disappointment always followed:--more stupid hills beyond--more unsightly
landscape--no Holy City.
At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bite of wall and
crumbling arches began to line the way--we toiled up one more hill, and
every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high! Jerusalem!
Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed together
and hooped with high gray walls, the venerable city gleamed in the sun.
So small! Why, it was no larger than an American village of four
thousand inhabitants, and no larger than an ordinary Syrian city of
thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.
We dismounted and looked, without speaking a dozen sentences, across the
wide intervening valley for an hour or more; and noted those prominent
features of the city that pictures make familiar to all men from their
school days till their death. We could recognize the Tower of Hippicus,
the Mosque of Omar, the Damascus Gate, the Mount of Olives, the Valley of
Jehoshaphat, the Tower of David, and the Garden of Gethsemane--and dating
from these landmarks could tell very nearly the localities of many others
we were not able to distinguish.
I record it here as a notable but not discreditable fact that not even
our pilgrims wept. I think there was no individual in the party whose
brain was not teeming with thoughts and images and memories invoked by
the grand history of the venerable city that lay before us, but still
among them all was no "voice of them that wept."
There was no call for tears. Tears would have been out of place. The
thoughts Jerusalem suggests are full of poetry, sublimity, and more than
all, dignity. Such thoughts do not find their appropriate expression in
the emotions of the nursery.
Just after noon we entered these narrow, crooked streets, by the ancient
and the famed Damascus Gate, and now for several hours I have been trying
to comprehend that I am actually in the illustrious old city where
Solomon dwelt, where Abraham held converse with the Deity, and where
walls still stand that witnessed the spectacle of the Crucifixion.
CHAPTER LIII.
A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely
around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one
understand how small it is. The appearance of the city is peculiar. It
is as knobby with countless little domes as a prison door is with
bolt-heads. Every house has from one to half a dozen of these white
plastered domes of stone, broad and low, sitting in the centre of, or in
a cluster upon, the flat roof. Wherefore, when one looks down from an
eminence, upon the compact mass of houses (so closely crowded together,
in fact, that there is no appearance of streets at all, and so the city
looks solid,) he sees the knobbiest town in the world, except
Constantinople. It looks as if it might be roofed, from centre to
circumference, with inverted saucers. The monotony of the view is
interrupted only by the great Mosque of Omar, the Tower of Hippicus, and
one or two other buildings that rise into commanding prominence.
The houses are generally two stories high, built strongly of masonry,
whitewashed or plastered outside, and have a cage of wooden lattice-work
projecting in front of every window. To reproduce a Jerusalem street, it
would only be necessary to up-end a chicken-coop and hang it before each
window in an alley of American houses.
The streets are roughly and badly paved with stone, and are tolerably
crooked--enough so to make each street appear to close together
constantly and come to an end about a hundred yards ahead of a pilgrim as
long as he chooses to walk in it. Projecting from the top of the lower
story of many of the houses is a very narrow porch-roof or shed, without
supports from below; and I have several times seen cats jump across the
street from one shed to the other when they were out calling. The cats
could have jumped double the distance without extraordinary exertion. I
mention these things to give an idea of how narrow the streets are.
Since a cat can jump across them without the least inconvenience, it is
hardly necessary to state that such streets are too narrow for carriages.
These vehicles cannot navigate the Holy City.
The population of Jerusalem is composed of Moslems, Jews, Greeks, Latins,
Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Abyssinians, Greek Catholics, and a handful of
Protestants. One hundred of the latter sect are all that dwell now in
this birthplace of Christianity. The nice shades of nationality
comprised in the above list, and the languages spoken by them, are
altogether too numerous to mention. It seems to me that all the races
and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the
fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness,
poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of
Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers,
cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they
know but one word of but one language apparently--the eternal
"bucksheesh." To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased
humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might
suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the
Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of
Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not
desire to live here.
One naturally goes first to the Holy Sepulchre. It is right in the city,
near the western gate; it and the place of the Crucifixion, and, in fact,
every other place intimately connected with that tremendous event, are
ingeniously massed together and covered by one roof--the dome of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Entering the building, through the midst of the usual assemblage of
beggars, one sees on his left a few Turkish guards--for Christians of
different sects will not only quarrel, but fight, also, in this sacred
place, if allowed to do it. Before you is a marble slab, which covers
the Stone of Unction, whereon the Saviour's body was laid to prepare it
for burial. It was found necessary to conceal the real stone in this way
in order to save it from destruction. Pilgrims were too much given to
chipping off pieces of it to carry home. Near by is a circular railing
which marks the spot where the Virgin stood when the Lord's body was
anointed.
Entering the great Rotunda, we stand before the most sacred locality in
Christendom--the grave of Jesus. It is in the centre of the church, and
immediately under the great dome. It is inclosed in a sort of little
temple of yellow and white stone, of fanciful design. Within the little
temple is a portion of the very stone which was rolled away from the door
of the Sepulchre, and on which the angel was sitting when Mary came
thither "at early dawn." Stooping low, we enter the vault--the Sepulchre
itself. It is only about six feet by seven, and the stone couch on which
the dead Saviour lay extends from end to end of the apartment and
occupies half its width. It is covered with a marble slab which has been
much worn by the lips of pilgrims. This slab serves as an altar, now.
Over it hang some fifty gold and silver lamps, which are kept always
burning, and the place is otherwise scandalized by trumpery, gewgaws, and
tawdry ornamentation.
All sects of Christians (except Protestants,) have chapels under the roof
of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and each must keep to itself and not
venture upon another's ground. It has been proven conclusively that they
can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in
peace. The chapel of the Syrians is not handsome; that of the Copts is
the humblest of them all. It is nothing but a dismal cavern, roughly
hewn in the living rock of the Hill of Calvary. In one side of it two
ancient tombs are hewn, which are claimed to be those in which Nicodemus
and Joseph of Aramathea were buried.
As we moved among the great piers and pillars of another part of the
church, we came upon a party of black-robed, animal-looking Italian
monks, with candles in their hands, who were chanting something in Latin,
and going through some kind of religious performance around a disk of
white marble let into the floor. It was there that the risen Saviour
appeared to Mary Magdalen in the likeness of a gardener. Near by was a
similar stone, shaped like a star--here the Magdalen herself stood, at
the same time. Monks were performing in this place also. They perform
everywhere--all over the vast building, and at all hours. Their candles
are always flitting about in the gloom, and making the dim old church
more dismal than there is any necessity that it should be, even though it
is a tomb.
We were shown the place where our Lord appeared to His mother after the
Resurrection. Here, also, a marble slab marks the place where St.
Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, found the crosses about
three hundred years after the Crucifixion. According to the legend, this
great discovery elicited extravagant demonstrations of joy. But they
were of short duration. The question intruded itself: "Which bore the
blessed Saviour, and which the thieves?" To be in doubt, in so mighty a
matter as this--to be uncertain which one to adore--was a grievous
misfortune. It turned the public joy to sorrow. But when lived there a
holy priest who could not set so simple a trouble as this at rest? One
of these soon hit upon a plan that would be a certain test. A noble lady
lay very ill in Jerusalem. The wise priests ordered that the three
crosses be taken to her bedside one at a time. It was done. When her
eyes fell upon the first one, she uttered a scream that was heard beyond
the Damascus Gate, and even upon the Mount of Olives, it was said, and
then fell back in a deadly swoon. They recovered her and brought the
second cross. Instantly she went into fearful convulsions, and it was
with the greatest difficulty that six strong men could hold her. They
were afraid, now, to bring in the third cross. They began to fear that
possibly they had fallen upon the wrong crosses, and that the true cross
was not with this number at all. However, as the woman seemed likely to
die with the convulsions that were tearing her, they concluded that the
third could do no more than put her out of her misery with a happy
dispatch. So they brought it, and behold, a miracle! The woman sprang
from her bed, smiling and joyful, and perfectly restored to health. When
we listen to evidence like this, we cannot but believe. We would be
ashamed to doubt, and properly, too. Even the very part of Jerusalem
where this all occurred is there yet. So there is really no room for
doubt.
The priests tried to show us, through a small screen, a fragment of the
genuine Pillar of Flagellation, to which Christ was bound when they
scourged him. But we could not see it, because it was dark inside the
screen. However, a baton is kept here, which the pilgrim thrusts through
a hole in the screen, and then he no longer doubts that the true Pillar
of Flagellation is in there. He can not have any excuse to doubt it, for
he can feel it with the stick. He can feel it as distinctly as he could
feel any thing.
Not far from here was a niche where they used to preserve a piece of the
True Cross, but it is gone, now. This piece of the cross was discovered
in the sixteenth century. The Latin priests say it was stolen away, long
ago, by priests of another sect. That seems like a hard statement to
make, but we know very well that it was stolen, because we have seen it
ourselves in several of the cathedrals of Italy and France.
But the relic that touched us most was the plain old sword of that stout
Crusader, Godfrey of Bulloigne--King Godfrey of Jerusalem. No blade in
Christendom wields such enchantment as this--no blade of all that rust in
the ancestral halls of Europe is able to invoke such visions of romance
in the brain of him who looks upon it--none that can prate of such
chivalric deeds or tell such brave tales of the warrior days of old. It
stirs within a man every memory of the Holy Wars that has been sleeping
in his brain for years, and peoples his thoughts with mail-clad images,
with marching armies, with battles and with sieges. It speaks to him of
Baldwin, and Tancred, the princely Saladin, and great Richard of the Lion
Heart. It was with just such blades as these that these splendid heroes
of romance used to segregate a man, so to speak, and leave the half of
him to fall one way and the other half the other. This very sword has
cloven hundreds of Saracen Knights from crown to chin in those old times
when Godfrey wielded it. It was enchanted, then, by a genius that was
under the command of King Solomon. When danger approached its master's
tent it always struck the shield and clanged out a fierce alarm upon the
startled ear of night. In times of doubt, or in fog or darkness, if it
were drawn from its sheath it would point instantly toward the foe, and
thus reveal the way--and it would also attempt to start after them of its
own accord. A Christian could not be so disguised that it would not know
him and refuse to hurt him--nor a Moslem so disguised that it would not
leap from its scabbard and take his life. These statements are all well
authenticated in many legends that are among the most trustworthy legends
the good old Catholic monks preserve. I can never forget old Godfrey's
sword, now. I tried it on a Moslem, and clove him in twain like a
doughnut. The spirit of Grimes was upon me, and if I had had a graveyard
I would have destroyed all the infidels in Jerusalem. I wiped the blood
off the old sword and handed it back to the priest--I did not want the
fresh gore to obliterate those sacred spots that crimsoned its brightness
one day six hundred years ago and thus gave Godfrey warning that before
the sun went down his journey of life would end.
Still moving through the gloom of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre we
came to a small chapel, hewn out of the rock--a place which has been
known as "The Prison of Our Lord" for many centuries. Tradition says
that here the Saviour was confined just previously to the crucifixion.
Under an altar by the door was a pair of stone stocks for human legs.
These things are called the "Bonds of Christ," and the use they were once
put to has given them the name they now bear.
The Greek Chapel is the most roomy, the richest and the showiest chapel
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its altar, like that of all the
Greek churches, is a lofty screen that extends clear across the chapel,
and is gorgeous with gilding and pictures. The numerous lamps that hang
before it are of gold and silver, and cost great sums.
But the feature of the place is a short column that rises from the middle
of the marble pavement of the chapel, and marks the exact centre of the
earth. The most reliable traditions tell us that this was known to be
the earth's centre, ages ago, and that when Christ was upon earth he set
all doubts upon the subject at rest forever, by stating with his own lips
that the tradition was correct. Remember, He said that that particular
column stood upon the centre of the world. If the centre of the world
changes, the column changes its position accordingly. This column has
moved three different times of its own accord. This is because, in great
convulsions of nature, at three different times, masses of the earth
--whole ranges of mountains, probably--have flown off into space, thus
lessening the diameter of the earth, and changing the exact locality of
its centre by a point or two. This is a very curious and interesting
circumstance, and is a withering rebuke to those philosophers who would
make us believe that it is not possible for any portion of the earth to
fly off into space.
To satisfy himself that this spot was really the centre of the earth, a
sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of the
church to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down
perfectly convinced. The day was very cloudy and the sun threw no
shadows at all; but the man was satisfied that if the sun had come out
and made shadows it could not have made any for him. Proofs like these
are not to be set aside by the idle tongues of cavilers. To such as are
not bigoted, and are willing to be convinced, they carry a conviction
that nothing can ever shake.
If even greater proofs than those I have mentioned are wanted, to satisfy
the headstrong and the foolish that this is the genuine centre of the
earth, they are here. The greatest of them lies in the fact that from
under this very column was taken the dust from which Adam was made. This
can surely be regarded in the light of a settler. It is not likely that
the original first man would have been made from an inferior quality of
earth when it was entirely convenient to get first quality from the
world's centre. This will strike any reflecting mind forcibly. That
Adam was formed of dirt procured in this very spot is amply proven by the
fact that in six thousand years no man has ever been able to prove that
the dirt was not procured here whereof he was made.
It is a singular circumstance that right under the roof of this same
great church, and not far away from that illustrious column, Adam
himself, the father of the human race, lies buried. There is no question
that he is actually buried in the grave which is pointed out as his
--there can be none--because it has never yet been proven that that grave
is not the grave in which he is buried.
The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far
away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover
the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a
relation. The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The
fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths,
and I gave way to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst
into tears. I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor
dead relative. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume
here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through Holy
Land. Noble old man--he did not live to see me--he did not live to see
his child. And I--I--alas, I did not live to see him. Weighed down by
sorrow and disappointment, he died before I was born--six thousand brief
summers before I was born. But let us try to bear it with fortitude.
Let us trust that he is better off where he is. Let us take comfort in
the thought that his loss is our eternal gain.
The next place the guide took us to in the holy church was an altar
dedicated to the Roman soldier who was of the military guard that
attended at the Crucifixion to keep order, and who--when the vail of the
Temple was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock of
Golgotha was split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of heaven
thundered, and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead
flitted about the streets of Jerusalem--shook with fear and said, "Surely
this was the Son of God!" Where this altar stands now, that Roman
soldier stood then, in full view of the crucified Saviour--in full sight
and hearing of all the marvels that were transpiring far and wide about
the circumference of the Hill of Calvary. And in this self-same spot the
priests of the Temple beheaded him for those blasphemous words he had
spoken.
In this altar they used to keep one of the most curious relics that human
eyes ever looked upon--a thing that had power to fascinate the beholder
in some mysterious way and keep him gazing for hours together. It was
nothing less than the copper plate Pilate put upon the Saviour's cross,
and upon which he wrote, "THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS." I think St.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, found this wonderful memento when she
was here in the third century. She traveled all over Palestine, and was
always fortunate. Whenever the good old enthusiast found a thing
mentioned in her Bible, Old or New, she would go and search for that
thing, and never stop until she found it. If it was Adam, she would find
Adam; if it was the Ark, she would find the Ark; if it was Goliath, or
Joshua, she would find them. She found the inscription here that I was
speaking of, I think. She found it in this very spot, close to where the
martyred Roman soldier stood. That copper plate is in one of the
churches in Rome, now. Any one can see it there. The inscription is
very distinct.
We passed along a few steps and saw the altar built over the very spot
where the good Catholic priests say the soldiers divided the raiment of
the Saviour.
Then we went down into a cavern which cavilers say was once a cistern.
It is a chapel, now, however--the Chapel of St. Helena. It is fifty-one
feet long by forty-three wide. In it is a marble chair which Helena used
to sit in while she superintended her workmen when they were digging and
delving for the True Cross. In this place is an altar dedicated to St.
Dimas, the penitent thief. A new bronze statue is here--a statue of St.
Helena. It reminded us of poor Maximilian, so lately shot. He presented
it to this chapel when he was about to leave for his throne in Mexico.
From the cistern we descended twelve steps into a large roughly-shaped
grotto, carved wholly out of the living rock. Helena blasted it out when
she was searching for the true Cross. She had a laborious piece of work,
here, but it was richly rewarded. Out of this place she got the crown of
thorns, the nails of the cross, the true Cross itself, and the cross of
the penitent thief. When she thought she had found every thing and was
about to stop, she was told in a dream to continue a day longer. It was
very fortunate. She did so, and found the cross of the other thief.
The walls and roof of this grotto still weep bitter tears in memory of
the event that transpired on Calvary, and devout pilgrims groan and sob
when these sad tears fall upon them from the dripping rock. The monks
call this apartment the "Chapel of the Invention of the Cross"--a name
which is unfortunate, because it leads the ignorant to imagine that a
tacit acknowledgment is thus made that the tradition that Helena found
the true Cross here is a fiction--an invention. It is a happiness to
know, however, that intelligent people do not doubt the story in any of
its particulars.
Priests of any of the chapels and denominations in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre can visit this sacred grotto to weep and pray and worship the
gentle Redeemer. Two different congregations are not allowed to enter at
the same time, however, because they always fight.
Still marching through the venerable Church of the Holy Sepulchre, among
chanting priests in coarse long robes and sandals; pilgrims of all colors
and many nationalities, in all sorts of strange costumes; under dusky
arches and by dingy piers and columns; through a sombre cathedral gloom
freighted with smoke and incense, and faintly starred with scores of
candles that appeared suddenly and as suddenly disappeared, or drifted
mysteriously hither and thither about the distant aisles like ghostly
jack-o'-lanterns--we came at last to a small chapel which is called the
"Chapel of the Mocking." Under the altar was a fragment of a marble
column; this was the seat Christ sat on when he was reviled, and
mockingly made King, crowned with a crown of thorns and sceptred with a
reed. It was here that they blindfolded him and struck him, and said in
derision, "Prophesy who it is that smote thee." The tradition that this
is the identical spot of the mocking is a very ancient one. The guide
said that Saewulf was the first to mention it. I do not know Saewulf,
but still, I cannot well refuse to receive his evidence--none of us can.
They showed us where the great Godfrey and his brother Baldwin, the first
Christian Kings of Jerusalem, once lay buried by that sacred sepulchre
they had fought so long and so valiantly to wrest from the hands of the
infidel. But the niches that had contained the ashes of these renowned
crusaders were empty. Even the coverings of their tombs were gone
--destroyed by devout members of the Greek Church, because Godfrey and
Baldwin were Latin princes, and had been reared in a Christian faith
whose creed differed in some unimportant respects from theirs.
We passed on, and halted before the tomb of Melchisedek! You will
remember Melchisedek, no doubt; he was the King who came out and levied a
tribute on Abraham the time that he pursued Lot's captors to Dan, and
took all their property from them. That was about four thousand years
ago, and Melchisedek died shortly afterward. However, his tomb is in a
good state of preservation.
When one enters the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Sepulchre itself is
the first thing he desires to see, and really is almost the first thing
he does see. The next thing he has a strong yearning to see is the spot
where the Saviour was crucified. But this they exhibit last. It is the
crowning glory of the place. One is grave and thoughtful when he stands
in the little Tomb of the Saviour--he could not well be otherwise in such
a place--but he has not the slightest possible belief that ever the Lord
lay there, and so the interest he feels in the spot is very, very greatly
marred by that reflection. He looks at the place where Mary stood, in
another part of the church, and where John stood, and Mary Magdalen;
where the mob derided the Lord; where the angel sat; where the crown of
thorns was found, and the true Cross; where the risen Saviour appeared
--he looks at all these places with interest, but with the same conviction
he felt in the case of the Sepulchre, that there is nothing genuine about
them, and that they are imaginary holy places created by the monks. But
the place of the Crucifixion affects him differently. He fully believes
that he is looking upon the very spot where the Savior gave up his
life. He remembers that Christ was very celebrated, long before he came
to Jerusalem; he knows that his fame was so great that crowds followed
him all the time; he is aware that his entry into the city produced a
stirring sensation, and that his reception was a kind of ovation; he can
not overlook the fact that when he was crucified there were very many in
Jerusalem who believed that he was the true Son of God. To publicly
execute such a personage was sufficient in itself to make the locality of
the execution a memorable place for ages; added to this, the storm, the
darkness, the earthquake, the rending of the vail of the Temple, and the
untimely waking of the dead, were events calculated to fix the execution
and the scene of it in the memory of even the most thoughtless witness.
Fathers would tell their sons about the strange affair, and point out the
spot; the sons would transmit the story to their children, and thus a
period of three hundred years would easily be spanned--[The thought is
Mr. Prime's, not mine, and is full of good sense. I borrowed it from his
"Tent Life."--M. T.]--at which time Helena came and built a church upon
Calvary to commemorate the death and burial of the Lord and preserve the
sacred place in the memories of men; since that time there has always
been a church there. It is not possible that there can be any mistake
about the locality of the Crucifixion. Not half a dozen persons knew
where they buried the Saviour, perhaps, and a burial is not a startling
event, any how; therefore, we can be pardoned for unbelief in the
Sepulchre, but not in the place of the Crucifixion. Five hundred years
hence there will be no vestige of Bunker Hill Monument left, but America
will still know where the battle was fought and where Warren fell. The
crucifixion of Christ was too notable an event in Jerusalem, and the Hill
of Calvary made too celebrated by it, to be forgotten in the short space
of three hundred years. I climbed the stairway in the church which
brings one to the top of the small inclosed pinnacle of rock, and looked
upon the place where the true cross once stood, with a far more absorbing
interest than I had ever felt in any thing earthly before. I could not
believe that the three holes in the top of the rock were the actual ones
the crosses stood in, but I felt satisfied that those crosses had stood
so near the place now occupied by them, that the few feet of possible
difference were a matter of no consequence.
When one stands where the Saviour was crucified, he finds it all he can
do to keep it strictly before his mind that Christ was not crucified in a
Catholic Church. He must remind himself every now and then that the
great event transpired in the open air, and not in a gloomy,
candle-lighted cell in a little corner of a vast church, up-stairs
--a small cell all bejeweled and bespangled with flashy ornamentation,
in execrable taste.
Under a marble altar like a table, is a circular hole in the marble
floor, corresponding with the one just under it in which the true Cross
stood. The first thing every one does is to kneel down and take a candle
and examine this hole. He does this strange prospecting with an amount
of gravity that can never be estimated or appreciated by a man who has
not seen the operation. Then he holds his candle before a richly
engraved picture of the Saviour, done on a messy slab of gold, and
wonderfully rayed and starred with diamonds, which hangs above the hole
within the altar, and his solemnity changes to lively admiration. He
rises and faces the finely wrought figures of the Saviour and the
malefactors uplifted upon their crosses behind the altar, and bright with
a metallic lustre of many colors. He turns next to the figures close to
them of the Virgin and Mary Magdalen; next to the rift in the living rock
made by the earthquake at the time of the Crucifixion, and an extension
of which he had seen before in the wall of one of the grottoes below; he
looks next at the show-case with a figure of the Virgin in it, and is
amazed at the princely fortune in precious gems and jewelry that hangs so
thickly about the form as to hide it like a garment almost. All about
the apartment the gaudy trappings of the Greek Church offend the eye and
keep the mind on the rack to remember that this is the Place of the
Crucifixion--Golgotha--the Mount of Calvary. And the last thing he looks
at is that which was also the first--the place where the true Cross
stood. That will chain him to the spot and compel him to look once more,
and once again, after he has satisfied all curiosity and lost all
interest concerning the other matters pertaining to the locality.
And so I close my chapter on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre--the most
sacred locality on earth to millions and millions of men, and women, and
children, the noble and the humble, bond and free. In its history from
the first, and in its tremendous associations, it is the most illustrious
edifice in Christendom. With all its clap-trap side-shows and unseemly
impostures of every kind, it is still grand, reverend, venerable--for a
god died there; for fifteen hundred years its shrines have been wet with
the tears of pilgrims from the earth's remotest confines; for more than
two hundred, the most gallant knights that ever wielded sword wasted
their lives away in a struggle to seize it and hold it sacred from
infidel pollution. Even in our own day a war, that cost millions of
treasure and rivers of blood, was fought because two rival nations
claimed the sole right to put a new dome upon it. History is full of
this old Church of the Holy Sepulchre--full of blood that was shed
because of the respect and the veneration in which men held the last
resting-place of the meek and lowly, the mild and gentle, Prince of
Peace!
CHAPTER LIV.
We were standing in a narrow street, by the Tower of Antonio. "On these
stones that are crumbling away," the guide said, "the Saviour sat and
rested before taking up the cross. This is the beginning of the
Sorrowful Way, or the Way of Grief." The party took note of the sacred
spot, and moved on. We passed under the "Ecce Homo Arch," and saw the
very window from which Pilate's wife warned her husband to have nothing
to do with the persecution of the Just Man. This window is in an
excellent state of preservation, considering its great age. They showed
us where Jesus rested the second time, and where the mob refused to give
him up, and said, "Let his blood be upon our heads, and upon our
children's children forever." The French Catholics are building a church
on this spot, and with their usual veneration for historical relics, are
incorporating into the new such scraps of ancient walls as they have
found there. Further on, we saw the spot where the fainting Saviour fell
under the weight of his cross. A great granite column of some ancient
temple lay there at the time, and the heavy cross struck it such a blow
that it broke in two in the middle. Such was the guide's story when he
halted us before the broken column.
We crossed a street, and came presently to the former residence of St.
Veronica. When the Saviour passed there, she came out, full of womanly
compassion, and spoke pitying words to him, undaunted by the hootings and
the threatenings of the mob, and wiped the perspiration from his face
with her handkerchief. We had heard so much of St. Veronica, and seen
her picture by so many masters, that it was like meeting an old friend
unexpectedly to come upon her ancient home in Jerusalem. The strangest
thing about the incident that has made her name so famous, is, that when
she wiped the perspiration away, the print of the Saviour's face remained
upon the handkerchief, a perfect portrait, and so remains unto this day.
We knew this, because we saw this handkerchief in a cathedral in Paris,
in another in Spain, and in two others in Italy. In the Milan cathedral
it costs five francs to see it, and at St. Peter's, at Rome, it is almost
impossible to see it at any price. No tradition is so amply verified as
this of St. Veronica and her handkerchief.
At the next corner we saw a deep indention in the hard stone masonry of
the corner of a house, but might have gone heedlessly by it but that the
guide said it was made by the elbow of the Saviour, who stumbled here and
fell. Presently we came to just such another indention in a stone wall.
The guide said the Saviour fell here, also, and made this depression with
his elbow.
There were other places where the Lord fell, and others where he rested;
but one of the most curious landmarks of ancient history we found on this
morning walk through the crooked lanes that lead toward Calvary, was a
certain stone built into a house--a stone that was so seamed and scarred
that it bore a sort of grotesque resemblance to the human face. The
projections that answered for cheeks were worn smooth by the passionate
kisses of generations of pilgrims from distant lands. We asked "Why?"
The guide said it was because this was one of "the very stones of
Jerusalem" that Christ mentioned when he was reproved for permitting the
people to cry "Hosannah!" when he made his memorable entry into the
city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said, "But there is no evidence
that the stones did cry out--Christ said that if the people stopped from
shouting Hosannah, the very stones would do it." The guide was perfectly
serene. He said, calmly, "This is one of the stones that would have
cried out. "It was of little use to try to shake this fellow's simple
faith--it was easy to see that.
And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding interest
--the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has been
celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years as the
Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood in this
old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the struggling mob
that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would have sat down and
rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said, "Move on!" The
Lord said, "Move on, thou, likewise," and the command has never been
revoked from that day to this. All men know how that the miscreant upon
whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down the wide world,
for ages and ages, seeking rest and never finding it--courting death but
always in vain--longing to stop, in city, in wilderness, in desert
solitudes, yet hearing always that relentless warning to march--march on!
They say--do these hoary traditions--that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and
slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by-ways, the
Wandering Jew was seen always in the thickest of the fight, and that when
battle-axes gleamed in the air, he bowed his head beneath them; when
swords flashed their deadly lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared
his breast to whizzing javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every
weapon that promised death and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was
useless--he walked forth out of the carnage without a wound. And it is
said that five hundred years afterward he followed Mahomet when he
carried destruction to the cities of Arabia, and then turned against him,
hoping in this way to win the death of a traitor. His calculations were
wrong again. No quarter was given to any living creature but one, and
that was the only one of all the host that did not want it. He sought
death five hundred years later, in the wars of the Crusades, and offered
himself to famine and pestilence at Ascalon. He escaped again--he could
not die. These repeated annoyances could have at last but one effect
--they shook his confidence. Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a
kind of desultory toying with the most promising of the aids and
implements of destruction, but with small hope, as a general thing. He
has speculated some in cholera and railroads, and has taken almost a
lively interest in infernal machines and patent medicines. He is old,
now, and grave, as becomes an age like his; he indulges in no light
amusements save that he goes sometimes to executions, and is fond of
funerals.
There is one thing he can not avoid; go where he will about the world, he
must never fail to report in Jerusalem every fiftieth year. Only a year
or two ago he was here for the thirty-seventh time since Jesus was
crucified on Calvary. They say that many old people, who are here now,
saw him then, and had seen him before. He looks always the same--old,
and withered, and hollow-eyed, and listless, save that there is about him
something which seems to suggest that he is looking for some one,
expecting some one--the friends of his youth, perhaps. But the most of
them are dead, now. He always pokes about the old streets looking
lonesome, making his mark on a wall here and there, and eyeing the oldest
buildings with a sort of friendly half interest; and he sheds a few tears
at the threshold of his ancient dwelling, and bitter, bitter tears they
are. Then he collects his rent and leaves again. He has been seen
standing near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on many a starlight night,
for he has cherished an idea for many centuries that if he could only
enter there, he could rest. But when he approaches, the doors slam to
with a crash, the earth trembles, and all the lights in Jerusalem burn a
ghastly blue! He does this every fifty years, just the same. It is
hopeless, but then it is hard to break habits one has been eighteen
hundred years accustomed to. The old tourist is far away on his
wanderings, now. How he must smile to see a pack of blockheads like us,
galloping about the world, and looking wise, and imagining we are finding
out a good deal about it! He must have a consuming contempt for the
ignorant, complacent asses that go skurrying about the world in these
railroading days and call it traveling.
When the guide pointed out where the Wandering Jew had left his familiar
mark upon a wall, I was filled with astonishment. It read:
"S. T.--1860--X."
All I have revealed about the Wandering Jew can be amply proven by
reference to our guide.
The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around it, occupy a fourth
part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount Moriah, where King Solomon's
Temple stood. This Mosque is the holiest place the Mohammedan knows,
outside of Mecca. Up to within a year or two past, no Christian could
gain admission to it or its court for love or money. But the prohibition
has been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh.
I need not speak of the wonderful beauty and the exquisite grace and
symmetry that have made this Mosque so celebrated--because I did not see
them. One can not see such things at an instant glance--one frequently
only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after
considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara
Falls, to majestic mountains and to mosques--especially to mosques.
The great feature of the Mosque of Omar is the prodigious rock in the
centre of its rotunda. It was upon this rock that Abraham came so near
offering up his son Isaac--this, at least, is authentic--it is very much
more to be relied on than most of the traditions, at any rate. On this
rock, also, the angel stood and threatened Jerusalem, and David persuaded
him to spare the city. Mahomet was well acquainted with this stone.
From it he ascended to heaven. The stone tried to follow him, and if the
angel Gabriel had not happened by the merest good luck to be there to
seize it, it would have done it. Very few people have a grip like
Gabriel--the prints of his monstrous fingers, two inches deep, are to be
seen in that rock to-day.
This rock, large as it is, is suspended in the air. It does not touch
any thing at all. The guide said so. This is very wonderful. In the
place on it where Mahomet stood, he left his foot-prints in the solid
stone. I should judge that he wore about eighteens. But what I was
going to say, when I spoke of the rock being suspended, was, that in the
floor of the cavern under it they showed us a slab which they said
covered a hole which was a thing of extraordinary interest to all
Mohammedans, because that hole leads down to perdition, and every soul
that is transferred from thence to Heaven must pass up through this
orifice. Mahomet stands there and lifts them out by the hair. All
Mohammedans shave their heads, but they are careful to leave a lock of
hair for the Prophet to take hold of. Our guide observed that a good
Mohammedan would consider himself doomed to stay with the damned forever
if he were to lose his scalp-lock and die before it grew again. The most
of them that I have seen ought to stay with the damned, any how, without
reference to how they were barbered.
For several ages no woman has been allowed to enter the cavern where that
important hole is. The reason is that one of the sex was once caught
there blabbing every thing she knew about what was going on above ground,
to the rapscallions in the infernal regions down below. She carried her
gossiping to such an extreme that nothing could be kept private--nothing
could be done or said on earth but every body in perdition knew all about
it before the sun went down. It was about time to suppress this woman's
telegraph, and it was promptly done. Her breath subsided about the same
time.
The inside of the great mosque is very showy with variegated marble walls
and with windows and inscriptions of elaborate mosaic. The Turks have
their sacred relics, like the Catholics. The guide showed us the
veritable armor worn by the great son-in-law and successor of Mahomet,
and also the buckler of Mahomet's uncle. The great iron railing which
surrounds the rock was ornamented in one place with a thousand rags tied
to its open work. These are to remind Mahomet not to forget the
worshipers who placed them there. It is considered the next best thing
to tying threads around his finger by way of reminders.
Just outside the mosque is a miniature temple, which marks the spot where
David and Goliah used to sit and judge the people.--[A pilgrim informs
me that it was not David and Goliah, but David and Saul. I stick to my
own statement--the guide told me, and he ought to know.]
Every where about the Mosque of Omar are portions of pillars, curiously
wrought altars, and fragments of elegantly carved marble--precious
remains of Solomon's Temple. These have been dug from all depths in the
soil and rubbish of Mount Moriah, and the Moslems have always shown a
disposition to preserve them with the utmost care. At that portion of
the ancient wall of Solomon's Temple which is called the Jew's Place of
Wailing, and where the Hebrews assemble every Friday to kiss the
venerated stones and weep over the fallen greatness of Zion, any one can
see a part of the unquestioned and undisputed Temple of Solomon, the same
consisting of three or four stones lying one upon the other, each of
which is about twice as long as a seven-octave piano, and about as thick
as such a piano is high. But, as I have remarked before, it is only a
year or two ago that the ancient edict prohibiting Christian rubbish like
ourselves to enter the Mosque of Omar and see the costly marbles that
once adorned the inner Temple was annulled. The designs wrought upon
these fragments are all quaint and peculiar, and so the charm of novelty
is added to the deep interest they naturally inspire. One meets with
these venerable scraps at every turn, especially in the neighboring
Mosque el Aksa, into whose inner walls a very large number of them are
carefully built for preservation. These pieces of stone, stained and
dusty with age, dimly hint at a grandeur we have all been taught to
regard as the princeliest ever seen on earth; and they call up pictures
of a pageant that is familiar to all imaginations--camels laden with
spices and treasure--beautiful slaves, presents for Solomon's harem--a
long cavalcade of richly caparisoned beasts and warriors--and Sheba's
Queen in the van of this vision of "Oriental magnificence." These
elegant fragments bear a richer interest than the solemn vastness of the
stones the Jews kiss in the Place of Wailing can ever have for the
heedless sinner.
Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the orange-trees
that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a wilderness of
pillars--remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it. There are
ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying "plough"
of prophecy passed harmless. It is pleasant to know we are disappointed,
in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual Temple of
Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that they were a
monkish humbug and a fraud.
We are surfeited with sights. Nothing has any fascination for us, now,
but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We have been there every day, and
have not grown tired of it; but we are weary of every thing else. The
sights are too many. They swarm about you at every step; no single foot
of ground in all Jerusalem or within its neighborhood seems to be without
a stirring and important history of its own. It is a very relief to
steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly
about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the
day when it achieved celebrity.
It seems hardly real when I find myself leaning for a moment on a ruined
wall and looking listlessly down into the historic pool of Bethesda. I
did not think such things could be so crowded together as to diminish
their interest. But in serious truth, we have been drifting about, for
several days, using our eyes and our ears more from a sense of duty than
any higher and worthier reason. And too often we have been glad when it
was time to go home and be distressed no more about illustrious
localities.
Our pilgrims compress too much into one day. One can gorge sights to
repletion as well as sweetmeats. Since we breakfasted, this morning, we
have seen enough to have furnished us food for a year's reflection if we
could have seen the various objects in comfort and looked upon them
deliberately. We visited the pool of Hezekiah, where David saw Uriah's
wife coming from the bath and fell in love with her.
We went out of the city by the Jaffa gate, and of course were told many
things about its Tower of Hippicus.
We rode across the Valley of Hinnom, between two of the Pools of Gihon,
and by an aqueduct built by Solomon, which still conveys water to the
city. We ascended the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas received his
thirty pieces of silver, and we also lingered a moment under the tree a
venerable tradition says he hanged himself on.
We descended to the canon again, and then the guide began to give name
and history to every bank and boulder we came to: "This was the Field of
Blood; these cuttings in the rocks were shrines and temples of Moloch;
here they sacrificed children; yonder is the Zion Gate; the Tyropean
Valley, the Hill of Ophel; here is the junction of the Valley of
Jehoshaphat--on your right is the Well of Job." We turned up
Jehoshaphat. The recital went on. "This is the Mount of Olives; this is
the Hill of Offense; the nest of huts is the Village of Siloam; here,
yonder, every where, is the King's Garden; under this great tree
Zacharias, the high priest, was murdered; yonder is Mount Moriah and the
Temple wall; the tomb of Absalom; the tomb of St. James; the tomb of
Zacharias; beyond, are the Garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of the
Virgin Mary; here is the Pool of Siloam, and----"
We said we would dismount, and quench our thirst, and rest. We were
burning up with the heat. We were failing under the accumulated fatigue
of days and days of ceaseless marching. All were willing.
The Pool is a deep, walled ditch, through which a clear stream of water
runs, that comes from under Jerusalem somewhere, and passing through the
Fountain of the Virgin, or being supplied from it, reaches this place by
way of a tunnel of heavy masonry. The famous pool looked exactly as it
looked in Solomon's time, no doubt, and the same dusky, Oriental women,
came down in their old Oriental way, and carried off jars of the water on
their heads, just as they did three thousand years ago, and just as they
will do fifty thousand years hence if any of them are still left on
earth.
We went away from there and stopped at the Fountain of the Virgin. But
the water was not good, and there was no comfort or peace any where, on
account of the regiment of boys and girls and beggars that persecuted us
all the time for bucksheesh. The guide wanted us to give them some
money, and we did it; but when he went on to say that they were starving
to death we could not but feel that we had done a great sin in throwing
obstacles in the way of such a desirable consummation, and so we tried to
collect it back, but it could not be done.
We entered the Garden of Gethsemane, and we visited the Tomb of the
Virgin, both of which we had seen before. It is not meet that I should
speak of them now. A more fitting time will come.
I can not speak now of the Mount of Olives or its view of Jerusalem, the
Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab; nor of the Damascus Gate or the tree
that was planted by King Godfrey of Jerusalem. One ought to feel
pleasantly when he talks of these things. I can not say any thing about
the stone column that projects over Jehoshaphat from the Temple wall like
a cannon, except that the Moslems believe Mahomet will sit astride of it
when he comes to judge the world. It is a pity he could not judge it
from some roost of his own in Mecca, without trespassing on our holy
ground. Close by is the Golden Gate, in the Temple wall--a gate that was
an elegant piece of sculpture in the time of the Temple, and is even so
yet. From it, in ancient times, the Jewish High Priest turned loose the
scapegoat and let him flee to the wilderness and bear away his
twelve-month load of the sins of the people. If they were to turn one
loose now, he would not get as far as the Garden of Gethsemane, till
these miserable vagabonds here would gobble him up,--[Favorite pilgrim
expression.]--sins and all. They wouldn't care. Mutton-chops and sin
is good enough living for them. The Moslems watch the Golden Gate with
a jealous eye, and an anxious one, for they have an honored tradition
that when it falls, Islamism will fall and with it the Ottoman Empire.
It did not grieve me any to notice that the old gate was getting a
little shaky.
We are at home again. We are exhausted. The sun has roasted us, almost.
We have full comfort in one reflection, however. Our experiences in
Europe have taught us that in time this fatigue will be forgotten; the
heat will be forgotten; the thirst, the tiresome volubility of the guide,
the persecutions of the beggars--and then, all that will be left will be
pleasant memories of Jerusalem, memories we shall call up with always
increasing interest as the years go by, memories which some day will
become all beautiful when the last annoyance that incumbers them shall
have faded out of our minds never again to return. School-boy days are
no happier than the days of after life, but we look back upon them
regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school, and how
we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed--because we
have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of that canonized epoch and
remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden sword pageants and its
fishing holydays. We are satisfied. We can wait. Our reward will come.
To us, Jerusalem and to-day's experiences will be an enchanted memory a
year hence--memory which money could not buy from us.
CHAPTER LV.
We cast up the account. It footed up pretty fairly. There was nothing
more at Jerusalem to be seen, except the traditional houses of Dives and
Lazarus of the parable, the Tombs of the Kings, and those of the Judges;
the spot where they stoned one of the disciples to death, and beheaded
another; the room and the table made celebrated by the Last Supper; the
fig-tree that Jesus withered; a number of historical places about
Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, and fifteen or twenty others in
different portions of the city itself.
We were approaching the end. Human nature asserted itself, now.
Overwork and consequent exhaustion began to have their natural effect.
They began to master the energies and dull the ardor of the party.
Perfectly secure now, against failing to accomplish any detail of the
pilgrimage, they felt like drawing in advance upon the holiday soon to be
placed to their credit. They grew a little lazy. They were late to
breakfast and sat long at dinner. Thirty or forty pilgrims had arrived
from the ship, by the short routes, and much swapping of gossip had to be
indulged in. And in hot afternoons, they showed a strong disposition to
lie on the cool divans in the hotel and smoke and talk about pleasant
experiences of a month or so gone by--for even thus early do episodes of
travel which were sometimes annoying, sometimes exasperating and full as
often of no consequence at all when they transpired, begin to rise above
the dead level of monotonous reminiscences and become shapely landmarks
in one's memory. The fog-whistle, smothered among a million of trifling
sounds, is not noticed a block away, in the city, but the sailor hears it
far at sea, whither none of those thousands of trifling sounds can reach.
When one is in Rome, all the domes are alike; but when he has gone away
twelve miles, the city fades utterly from sight and leaves St. Peter's
swelling above the level plain like an anchored balloon. When one is
traveling in Europe, the daily incidents seem all alike; but when he has
placed them all two months and two thousand miles behind him, those that
were worthy of being remembered are prominent, and those that were really
insignificant have vanished. This disposition to smoke, and idle and
talk, was not well. It was plain that it must not be allowed to gain
ground. A diversion must be tried, or demoralization would ensue. The
Jordan, Jericho and the Dead Sea were suggested. The remainder of
Jerusalem must be left unvisited, for a little while. The journey was
approved at once. New life stirred in every pulse. In the saddle
--abroad on the plains--sleeping in beds bounded only by the horizon: fancy
was at work with these things in a moment.--It was painful to note how
readily these town-bred men had taken to the free life of the camp and
the desert The nomadic instinct is a human instinct; it was born with
Adam and transmitted through the patriarchs, and after thirty centuries
of steady effort, civilization has not educated it entirely out of us
yet. It has a charm which, once tasted, a man will yearn to taste again.
The nomadic instinct can not be educated out of an Indian at all.
The Jordan journey being approved, our dragoman was notified.
At nine in the morning the caravan was before the hotel door and we were
at breakfast. There was a commotion about the place. Rumors of war and
bloodshed were flying every where. The lawless Bedouins in the Valley of
the Jordan and the deserts down by the Dead Sea were up in arms, and were
going to destroy all comers. They had had a battle with a troop of
Turkish cavalry and defeated them; several men killed. They had shut up
the inhabitants of a village and a Turkish garrison in an old fort near
Jericho, and were besieging them. They had marched upon a camp of our
excursionists by the Jordan, and the pilgrims only saved their lives by
stealing away and flying to Jerusalem under whip and spur in the darkness
of the night. Another of our parties had been fired on from an ambush
and then attacked in the open day. Shots were fired on both sides.
Fortunately there was no bloodshed. We spoke with the very pilgrim who
had fired one of the shots, and learned from his own lips how, in this
imminent deadly peril, only the cool courage of the pilgrims, their
strength of numbers and imposing display of war material, had saved them
from utter destruction. It was reported that the Consul had requested
that no more of our pilgrims should go to the Jordan while this state of
things lasted; and further, that he was unwilling that any more should
go, at least without an unusually strong military guard. Here was
trouble. But with the horses at the door and every body aware of what
they were there for, what would you have done? Acknowledged that you
were afraid, and backed shamefully out? Hardly. It would not be human
nature, where there were so many women. You would have done as we did:
said you were not afraid of a million Bedouins--and made your will and
proposed quietly to yourself to take up an unostentatious position in the
rear of the procession.
I think we must all have determined upon the same line of tactics, for it
did seem as if we never would get to Jericho. I had a notoriously slow
horse, but somehow I could not keep him in the rear, to save my neck.
He was forever turning up in the lead. In such cases I trembled a
little, and got down to fix my saddle. But it was not of any use. The
others all got down to fix their saddles, too. I never saw such a time
with saddles. It was the first time any of them had got out of order in
three weeks, and now they had all broken down at once. I tried walking,
for exercise--I had not had enough in Jerusalem searching for holy
places. But it was a failure. The whole mob were suffering for
exercise, and it was not fifteen minutes till they were all on foot and I
had the lead again. It was very discouraging.
This was all after we got beyond Bethany. We stopped at the village of
Bethany, an hour out from Jerusalem. They showed us the tomb of Lazarus.
I had rather live in it than in any house in the town. And they showed
us also a large "Fountain of Lazarus," and in the centre of the village
the ancient dwelling of Lazarus. Lazarus appears to have been a man of
property. The legends of the Sunday Schools do him great injustice; they
give one the impression that he was poor. It is because they get him
confused with that Lazarus who had no merit but his virtue, and virtue
never has been as respectable as money. The house of Lazarus is a
three-story edifice, of stone masonry, but the accumulated rubbish of
ages has buried all of it but the upper story. We took candles and
descended to the dismal cell-like chambers where Jesus sat at meat with
Martha and Mary, and conversed with them about their brother. We could
not but look upon these old dingy apartments with a more than common
interest.
We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like a
blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down a
close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature could
enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander. It was such a dreary,
repulsive, horrible solitude! It was the "wilderness" where John
preached, with camel's hair about his loins--raiment enough--but he never
could have got his locusts and wild honey here. We were moping along
down through this dreadful place, every man in the rear. Our guards--two
gorgeous young Arab sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns, pistols and
daggers on board--were loafing ahead.
"Bedouins!"
Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a mud-turtle.
My first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My second
was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that
direction. I acted on the latter impulse. So did all the others. If
any Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass,
they would have paid dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that,
afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there
that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man told what he
would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and
unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man
said he had calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need
be, but never yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly patience,
till he could count the stripes upon the first Bedouin's jacket, and
then count them and let him have it. Another was going to sit still
till the first lance reached within an inch of his breast, and then
dodge it and seize it. I forbear to tell what he was going to do to
that Bedouin that owned it. It makes my blood run cold to think of it.
Another was going to scalp such Bedouins as fell to his share, and take
his bald-headed sons of the desert home with him alive for trophies.
But the wild-eyed pilgrim rhapsodist was silent. His orbs gleamed with
a deadly light, but his lips moved not. Anxiety grew, and he was
questioned. If he had got a Bedouin, what would he have done with him
--shot him? He smiled a smile of grim contempt and shook his head.
Would he have stabbed him? Another shake. Would he have quartered him
--flayed him? More shakes. Oh! horror what would he have done?
"Eat him!"
Such was the awful sentence that thundered from his lips. What was
grammar to a desperado like that? I was glad in my heart that I had been
spared these scenes of malignant carnage. No Bedouins attacked our
terrible rear. And none attacked the front. The new-comers were only a
reinforcement of cadaverous Arabs, in shirts and bare legs, sent far
ahead of us to brandish rusty guns, and shout and brag, and carry on like
lunatics, and thus scare away all bands of marauding Bedouins that might
lurk about our path. What a shame it is that armed white Christians must
travel under guard of vermin like this as a protection against the
prowling vagabonds of the desert--those sanguinary outlaws who are always
going to do something desperate, but never do it. I may as well mention
here that on our whole trip we saw no Bedouins, and had no more use for
an Arab guard than we could have had for patent leather boots and white
kid gloves. The Bedouins that attacked the other parties of pilgrims so
fiercely were provided for the occasion by the Arab guards of those
parties, and shipped from Jerusalem for temporary service as Bedouins.
They met together in full view of the pilgrims, after the battle, and
took lunch, divided the bucksheesh extorted in the season of danger, and
then accompanied the cavalcade home to the city! The nuisance of an Arab
guard is one which is created by the Sheiks and the Bedouins together,
for mutual profit, it is said, and no doubt there is a good deal of truth
in it.
We visited the fountain the prophet Elisha sweetened (it is sweet yet,)
where he remained some time and was fed by the ravens.
Ancient Jericho is not very picturesque as a ruin. When Joshua marched
around it seven times, some three thousand years ago, and blew it down
with his trumpet, he did the work so well and so completely that he
hardly left enough of the city to cast a shadow. The curse pronounced
against the rebuilding of it, has never been removed. One King, holding
the curse in light estimation, made the attempt, but was stricken sorely
for his presumption. Its site will always remain unoccupied; and yet it
is one of the very best locations for a town we have seen in all
Palestine.
At two in the morning they routed us out of bed--another piece of
unwarranted cruelty--another stupid effort of our dragoman to get ahead
of a rival. It was not two hours to the Jordan. However, we were
dressed and under way before any one thought of looking to see what time
it was, and so we drowsed on through the chill night air and dreamed of
camp fires, warm beds, and other comfortable things.
There was no conversation. People do not talk when they are cold, and
wretched, and sleepy. We nodded in the saddle, at times, and woke up
with a start to find that the procession had disappeared in the gloom.
Then there was energy and attention to business until its dusky outlines
came in sight again. Occasionally the order was passed in a low voice
down the line: "Close up--close up! Bedouins lurk here, every where!"
What an exquisite shudder it sent shivering along one's spine!
We reached the famous river before four o'clock, and the night was so
black that we could have ridden into it without seeing it. Some of us
were in an unhappy frame of mind. We waited and waited for daylight, but
it did not come. Finally we went away in the dark and slept an hour on
the ground, in the bushes, and caught cold. It was a costly nap, on that
account, but otherwise it was a paying investment because it brought
unconsciousness of the dreary minutes and put us in a somewhat fitter
mood for a first glimpse of the sacred river.
With the first suspicion of dawn, every pilgrim took off his clothes and
waded into the dark torrent, singing:
"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wistful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie."
But they did not sing long. The water was so fearfully cold that they
were obliged to stop singing and scamper out again. Then they stood on
the bank shivering, and so chagrined and so grieved, that they merited
holiest compassion. Because another dream, another cherished hope, had
failed. They had promised themselves all along that they would cross the
Jordan where the Israelites crossed it when they entered Canaan from
their long pilgrimage in the desert. They would cross where the twelve
stones were placed in memory of that great event. While they did it they
would picture to themselves that vast army of pilgrims marching through
the cloven waters, bearing the hallowed ark of the covenant and shouting
hosannahs, and singing songs of thanksgiving and praise. Each had
promised himself that he would be the first to cross. They were at the
goal of their hopes at last, but the current was too swift, the water was
too cold!
It was then that Jack did them a service. With that engaging
recklessness of consequences which is natural to youth, and so proper and
so seemly, as well, he went and led the way across the Jordan, and all
was happiness again. Every individual waded over, then, and stood upon
the further bank. The water was not quite breast deep, any where. If it
had been more, we could hardly have accomplished the feat, for the strong
current would have swept us down the stream, and we would have been
exhausted and drowned before reaching a place where we could make a
landing. The main object compassed, the drooping, miserable party sat
down to wait for the sun again, for all wanted to see the water as well
as feel it. But it was too cold a pastime. Some cans were filled from
the holy river, some canes cut from its banks, and then we mounted and
rode reluctantly away to keep from freezing to death. So we saw the
Jordan very dimly. The thickets of bushes that bordered its banks threw
their shadows across its shallow, turbulent waters ("stormy," the hymn
makes them, which is rather a complimentary stretch of fancy,) and we
could not judge of the width of the stream by the eye. We knew by our
wading experience, however, that many streets in America are double as
wide as the Jordan.
Daylight came, soon after we got under way, and in the course of an hour
or two we reached the Dead Sea. Nothing grows in the flat, burning
desert around it but weeds and the Dead Sea apple the poets say is
beautiful to the eye, but crumbles to ashes and dust when you break it.
Such as we found were not handsome, but they were bitter to the taste.
They yielded no dust. It was because they were not ripe, perhaps.
The desert and the barren hills gleam painfully in the sun, around the
Dead Sea, and there is no pleasant thing or living creature upon it or
about its borders to cheer the eye. It is a scorching, arid, repulsive
solitude. A silence broods over the scene that is depressing to the
spirits. It makes one think of funerals and death.
The Dead Sea is small. Its waters are very clear, and it has a pebbly
bottom and is shallow for some distance out from the shores. It yields
quantities of asphaltum; fragments of it lie all about its banks; this
stuff gives the place something of an unpleasant smell.
All our reading had taught us to expect that the first plunge into the
Dead Sea would be attended with distressing results--our bodies would
feel as if they were suddenly pierced by millions of red-hot needles; the
dreadful smarting would continue for hours; we might even look to be
blistered from head to foot, and suffer miserably for many days. We were
disappointed. Our eight sprang in at the same time that another party of
pilgrims did, and nobody screamed once. None of them ever did complain
of any thing more than a slight pricking sensation in places where their
skin was abraded, and then only for a short time. My face smarted for a
couple of hours, but it was partly because I got it badly sun-burned
while I was bathing, and staid in so long that it became plastered over
with salt.
No, the water did not blister us; it did not cover us with a slimy ooze
and confer upon us an atrocious fragrance; it was not very slimy; and I
could not discover that we smelt really any worse than we have always
smelt since we have been in Palestine. It was only a different kind of
smell, but not conspicuous on that account, because we have a great deal
of variety in that respect. We didn't smell, there on the Jordan, the
same as we do in Jerusalem; and we don't smell in Jerusalem just as we
did in Nazareth, or Tiberias, or Cesarea Philippi, or any of those other
ruinous ancient towns in Galilee. No, we change all the time, and
generally for the worse. We do our own washing.
It was a funny bath. We could not sink. One could stretch himself at
full length on his back, with his arms on his breast, and all of his body
above a line drawn from the corner of his jaw past the middle of his
side, the middle of his leg and through his ancle bone, would remain out
of water. He could lift his head clear out, if he chose. No position
can be retained long; you lose your balance and whirl over, first on your
back and then on your face, and so on. You can lie comfortably, on your
back, with your head out, and your legs out from your knees down, by
steadying yourself with your hands. You can sit, with your knees drawn
up to your chin and your arms clasped around them, but you are bound to
turn over presently, because you are top-heavy in that position. You can
stand up straight in water that is over your head, and from the middle of
your breast upward you will not be wet. But you can not remain so. The
water will soon float your feet to the surface. You can not swim on your
back and make any progress of any consequence, because your feet stick
away above the surface, and there is nothing to propel yourself with but
your heels. If you swim on your face, you kick up the water like a
stern-wheel boat. You make no headway. A horse is so top-heavy that he
can neither swim nor stand up in the Dead Sea. He turns over on his side
at once. Some of us bathed for more than an hour, and then came out
coated with salt till we shone like icicles. We scrubbed it off with a
coarse towel and rode off with a splendid brand-new smell, though it was
one which was not any more disagreeable than those we have been for
several weeks enjoying. It was the variegated villainy and novelty of it
that charmed us. Salt crystals glitter in the sun about the shores of
the lake. In places they coat the ground like a brilliant crust of ice.
When I was a boy I somehow got the impression that the river Jordan was
four thousand miles long and thirty-five miles wide. It is only ninety
miles long, and so crooked that a man does not know which side of it he
is on half the time. In going ninety miles it does not get over more
than fifty miles of ground. It is not any wider than Broadway in New
York.
There is the Sea of Galilee and this Dead Sea--neither of them twenty
miles long or thirteen wide. And yet when I was in Sunday School I
thought they were sixty thousand miles in diameter.
Travel and experience mar the grandest pictures and rob us of the most
cherished traditions of our boyhood. Well, let them go. I have already
seen the Empire of King Solomon diminish to the size of the State of
Pennsylvania; I suppose I can bear the reduction of the seas and the
river.
We looked every where, as we passed along, but never saw grain or crystal
of Lot's wife. It was a great disappointment. For many and many a year
we had known her sad story, and taken that interest in her which
misfortune always inspires. But she was gone. Her picturesque form no
longer looms above the desert of the Dead Sea to remind the tourist of
the doom that fell upon the lost cities.
I can not describe the hideous afternoon's ride from the Dead Sea to Mars
Saba. It oppresses me yet, to think of it. The sun so pelted us that
the tears ran down our cheeks once or twice. The ghastly, treeless,
grassless, breathless canons smothered us as if we had been in an oven.
The sun had positive weight to it, I think. Not a man could sit erect
under it. All drooped low in the saddles. John preached in this
"Wilderness!" It must have been exhausting work. What a very heaven the
messy towers and ramparts of vast Mars Saba looked to us when we caught a
first glimpse of them!
We staid at this great convent all night, guests of the hospitable
priests. Mars Saba, perched upon a crag, a human nest stock high up
against a perpendicular mountain wall, is a world of grand masonry that
rises, terrace upon terrace away above your head, like the terraced and
retreating colonnades one sees in fanciful pictures of Belshazzar's Feast
and the palaces of the ancient Pharaohs. No other human dwelling is
near. It was founded many ages ago by a holy recluse who lived at first
in a cave in the rock--a cave which is inclosed in the convent walls,
now, and was reverently shown to us by the priests. This recluse, by his
rigorous torturing of his flesh, his diet of bread and water, his utter
withdrawal from all society and from the vanities of the world, and his
constant prayer and saintly contemplation of a skull, inspired an
emulation that brought about him many disciples. The precipice on the
opposite side of the canyon is well perforated with the small holes they
dug in the rock to live in. The present occupants of Mars Saba, about
seventy in number, are all hermits. They wear a coarse robe, an ugly,
brimless stove-pipe of a hat, and go without shoes. They eat nothing
whatever but bread and salt; they drink nothing but water. As long as
they live they can never go outside the walls, or look upon a woman--for
no woman is permitted to enter Mars Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever.
Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years. In all that
dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed
voice of a woman; they have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they
have known no human joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts
are no memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future.
All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them;
against all things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that
are music to the ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared
their relentless walls of stone forever. They have banished the tender
grace of life and left only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips
are lips that never kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that
never hate and never love; their breasts are breasts that never swell
with the sentiment, "I have a country and a flag." They are dead men who
walk.
I set down these first thoughts because they are natural--not because
they are just or because it is right to set them down. It is easy for
book-makers to say "I thought so and so as I looked upon such and such a
scene"--when the truth is, they thought all those fine things afterwards.
One's first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet it is no
crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to modification by
later experience. These hermits are dead men, in several respects, but
not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill of them at first, I
should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them I should reiterate the
words and stick to them. No, they treated us too kindly for that. There
is something human about them somewhere. They knew we were foreigners
and Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much friendliness
toward them. But their large charity was above considering such things.
They simply saw in us men who were hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and
that was sufficient. They opened their doors and gave us welcome. They
asked no questions, and they made no self-righteous display of their
hospitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved quietly about,
setting the table for us, making the beds, and bringing water to wash in,
and paid no heed when we said it was wrong for them to do that when we
had men whose business it was to perform such offices. We fared most
comfortably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building
with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battlements and
smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild scenery and the sunset.
One or two chose cosy bed-rooms to sleep in, but the nomadic instinct
prompted the rest to sleep on the broad divan that extended around the
great hall, because it seemed like sleeping out of doors, and so was more
cheery and inviting. It was a royal rest we had.
When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new men. For all
this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could give something if
we chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if we were stingy.
The pauper and the miser are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of
Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is
Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to
discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I
feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that
is, the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers
in Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome
for any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple.
The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim
without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the
length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes
find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings.
Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and
the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent.
Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a
pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our
party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to
touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent
Fathers of Palestine.
So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away over the
barren mountains of Judea, and along rocky ridges and through sterile
gorges, where eternal silence and solitude reigned. Even the scattering
groups of armed shepherds we met the afternoon before, tending their
flocks of long-haired goats, were wanting here. We saw but two living
creatures. They were gazelles, of "soft-eyed" notoriety. They looked
like very young kids, but they annihilated distance like an express
train. I have not seen animals that moved faster, unless I might say it
of the antelopes of our own great plains.
At nine or ten in the morning we reached the Plain of the Shepherds, and
stood in a walled garden of olives where the shepherds were watching
their flocks by night, eighteen centuries ago, when the multitude of
angels brought them the tidings that the Saviour was born. A quarter of
a mile away was Bethlehem of Judea, and the pilgrims took some of the
stone wall and hurried on.
The Plain of the Shepherds is a desert, paved with loose stones, void of
vegetation, glaring in the fierce sun. Only the music of the angels it
knew once could charm its shrubs and flowers to life again and restore
its vanished beauty. No less potent enchantment could avail to work this
miracle.
In the huge Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen hundred
years ago by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us below ground, and
into a grotto cut in the living rock. This was the "manger" where Christ
was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription to
that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many generations of
worshiping pilgrims. The grotto was tricked out in the usual tasteless
style observable in all the holy places of Palestine. As in the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here. The
priests and the members of the Greek and Latin churches can not come by
the same corridor to kneel in the sacred birthplace of the Redeemer, but
are compelled to approach and retire by different avenues, lest they
quarrel and fight on this holiest ground on earth.
I have no "meditations," suggested by this spot where the very first
"Merry Christmas!" was uttered in all the world, and from whence the
friend of my childhood, Santa Claus, departed on his first journey, to
gladden and continue to gladden roaring firesides on wintry mornings in
many a distant land forever and forever. I touch, with reverent finger,
the actual spot where the infant Jesus lay, but I think--nothing.
You can not think in this place any more than you can in any other in
Palestine that would be likely to inspire reflection. Beggars, cripples
and monks compass you about, and make you think only of bucksheesh when
you would rather think of something more in keeping with the character of
the spot.
I was glad to get away, and glad when we had walked through the grottoes
where Eusebius wrote, and Jerome fasted, and Joseph prepared for the
flight into Egypt, and the dozen other distinguished grottoes, and knew
we were done. The Church of the Nativity is almost as well packed with
exceeding holy places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself. They
even have in it a grotto wherein twenty thousand children were
slaughtered by Herod when he was seeking the life of the infant Saviour.
We went to the Milk Grotto, of course--a cavern where Mary hid herself
for a while before the flight into Egypt. Its walls were black before
she entered, but in suckling the Child, a drop of her milk fell upon the
floor and instantly changed the darkness of the walls to its own snowy
hue. We took many little fragments of stone from here, because it is
well known in all the East that a barren woman hath need only to touch
her lips to one of these and her failing will depart from her. We took
many specimens, to the end that we might confer happiness upon certain
households that we wot of.
We got away from Bethlehem and its troops of beggars and relic-peddlers
in the afternoon, and after spending some little time at Rachel's tomb,
hurried to Jerusalem as fast as possible. I never was so glad to get
home again before. I never have enjoyed rest as I have enjoyed it during
these last few hours. The journey to the Dead Sea, the Jordan and
Bethlehem was short, but it was an exhausting one. Such roasting heat,
such oppressive solitude, and such dismal desolation can not surely exist
elsewhere on earth. And such fatigue!
The commonest sagacity warns me that I ought to tell the customary
pleasant lie, and say I tore myself reluctantly away from every noted
place in Palestine. Every body tells that, but with as little
ostentation as I may, I doubt the word of every he who tells it. I could
take a dreadful oath that I have never heard any one of our forty
pilgrims say any thing of the sort, and they are as worthy and as
sincerely devout as any that come here. They will say it when they get
home, fast enough, but why should they not? They do not wish to array
themselves against all the Lamartines and Grimeses in the world. It does
not stand to reason that men are reluctant to leave places where the very
life is almost badgered out of them by importunate swarms of beggars and
peddlers who hang in strings to one's sleeves and coat-tails and shriek
and shout in his ears and horrify his vision with the ghastly sores and
malformations they exhibit. One is glad to get away. I have heard
shameless people say they were glad to get away from Ladies' Festivals
where they were importuned to buy by bevies of lovely young ladies.
Transform those houris into dusky hags and ragged savages, and replace
their rounded forms with shrunken and knotted distortions, their soft
hands with scarred and hideous deformities, and the persuasive music of
their voices with the discordant din of a hated language, and then see
how much lingering reluctance to leave could be mustered. No, it is the
neat thing to say you were reluctant, and then append the profound
thoughts that "struggled for utterance," in your brain; but it is the
true thing to say you were not reluctant, and found it impossible to
think at all--though in good sooth it is not respectable to say it, and
not poetical, either.
We do not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when
the glare, and the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we
revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom
pageants of an age that has passed away.
CHAPTER LVI.
We visited all the holy places about Jerusalem which we had left
unvisited when we journeyed to the Jordan and then, about three o'clock
one afternoon, we fell into procession and marched out at the stately
Damascus gate, and the walls of Jerusalem shut us out forever. We paused
on the summit of a distant hill and took a final look and made a final
farewell to the venerable city which had been such a good home to us.
For about four hours we traveled down hill constantly. We followed a
narrow bridle-path which traversed the beds of the mountain gorges, and
when we could we got out of the way of the long trains of laden camels
and asses, and when we could not we suffered the misery of being mashed
up against perpendicular walls of rock and having our legs bruised by the
passing freight. Jack was caught two or three times, and Dan and Moult
as often. One horse had a heavy fall on the slippery rocks, and the
others had narrow escapes. However, this was as good a road as we had
found in Palestine, and possibly even the best, and so there was not much
grumbling.
Sometimes, in the glens, we came upon luxuriant orchards of figs,
apricots, pomegranates, and such things, but oftener the scenery was
rugged, mountainous, verdureless and forbidding. Here and there, towers
were perched high up on acclivities which seemed almost inaccessible.
This fashion is as old as Palestine itself and was adopted in ancient
times for security against enemies.
We crossed the brook which furnished David the stone that killed Goliah,
and no doubt we looked upon the very ground whereon that noted battle was
fought. We passed by a picturesque old gothic ruin whose stone pavements
had rung to the armed heels of many a valorous Crusader, and we rode
through a piece of country which we were told once knew Samson as a
citizen.
We staid all night with the good monks at the convent of Ramleh, and in
the morning got up and galloped the horses a good part of the distance
from there to Jaffa, or Joppa, for the plain was as level as a floor and
free from stones, and besides this was our last march in Holy Land.
These two or three hours finished, we and the tired horses could have
rest and sleep as long as we wanted it. This was the plain of which
Joshua spoke when he said, "Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou
moon in the valley of Ajalon." As we drew near to Jaffa, the boys
spurred up the horses and indulged in the excitement of an actual race
--an experience we had hardly had since we raced on donkeys in the Azores
islands.
We came finally to the noble grove of orange-trees in which the Oriental
city of Jaffa lies buried; we passed through the walls, and rode again
down narrow streets and among swarms of animated rags, and saw other
sights and had other experiences we had long been familiar with. We
dismounted, for the last time, and out in the offing, riding at anchor,
we saw the ship! I put an exclamation point there because we felt one
when we saw the vessel. The long pilgrimage was ended, and somehow we
seemed to feel glad of it.
[For description of Jaffa, see Universal Gazetteer.] Simon the Tanner
formerly lived here. We went to his house. All the pilgrims visit Simon
the Tanner's house. Peter saw the vision of the beasts let down in a
sheet when he lay upon the roof of Simon the Tanner's house. It was from
Jaffa that Jonah sailed when he was told to go and prophesy against
Nineveh, and no doubt it was not far from the town that the whale threw
him up when he discovered that he had no ticket. Jonah was disobedient,
and of a fault-finding, complaining disposition, and deserves to be
lightly spoken of, almost. The timbers used in the construction of
Solomon's Temple were floated to Jaffa in rafts, and the narrow opening
in the reef through which they passed to the shore is not an inch wider
or a shade less dangerous to navigate than it was then. Such is the
sleepy nature of the population Palestine's only good seaport has now and
always had. Jaffa has a history and a stirring one. It will not be
discovered any where in this book. If the reader will call at the
circulating library and mention my name, he will be furnished with books
which will afford him the fullest information concerning Jaffa.
So ends the pilgrimage. We ought to be glad that we did not make it for
the purpose of feasting our eyes upon fascinating aspects of nature, for
we should have been disappointed--at least at this season of the year. A
writer in "Life in the Holy Land" observes:
"Monotonous and uninviting as much of the Holy Land will appear to
persons accustomed to the almost constant verdure of flowers, ample
streams and varied surface of our own country, we must remember that
its aspect to the Israelites after the weary march of forty years
through the desert must have been very different."
Which all of us will freely grant. But it truly is "monotonous and
uninviting," and there is no sufficient reason for describing it as being
otherwise.
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be
the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are
unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a
feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and
despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a
vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant
tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or
mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every
feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no
enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.
Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush
of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the
far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like
much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem,
Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots
would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a
limitless desolation.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a
curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where
Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now
floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over
whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead
--about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of
cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching
lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that
ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with
songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins
of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even
as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem
and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about
them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the
Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their
flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to
men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature
that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest
name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is become a
pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to compel the
admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple which was
the pride and the glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman crescent is
lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in the annals of
the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of Galilee, where
Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed
in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and
commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a
shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and
Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round
about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice
and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is
inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can
the curse of the Deity beautify a land?
Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and
tradition--it is dream-land.
CHAPTER LVII.
It was worth a kingdom to be at sea again. It was a relief to drop all
anxiety whatsoever--all questions as to where we should go; how long we
should stay; whether it were worth while to go or not; all anxieties
about the condition of the horses; all such questions as "Shall we ever
get to water?" "Shall we ever lunch?" "Ferguson, how many more million
miles have we got to creep under this awful sun before we camp?" It was
a relief to cast all these torturing little anxieties far away--ropes of
steel they were, and every one with a separate and distinct strain on it
--and feel the temporary contentment that is born of the banishment of
all care and responsibility. We did not look at the compass: we did not
care, now, where the ship went to, so that she went out of sight of land
as quickly as possible. When I travel again, I wish to go in a pleasure
ship. No amount of money could have purchased for us, in a strange
vessel and among unfamiliar faces, the perfect satisfaction and the sense
of being at home again which we experienced when we stepped on board the
"Quaker City,"--our own ship--after this wearisome pilgrimage. It is a
something we have felt always when we returned to her, and a something we
had no desire to sell.
We took off our blue woollen shirts, our spurs, and heavy boots, our
sanguinary revolvers and our buckskin-seated pantaloons, and got shaved
and came out in Christian costume once more. All but Jack, who changed
all other articles of his dress, but clung to his traveling pantaloons.
They still preserved their ample buckskin seat intact; and so his short
pea jacket and his long, thin legs assisted to make him a picturesque
object whenever he stood on the forecastle looking abroad upon the ocean
over the bows. At such times his father's last injunction suggested
itself to me. He said:
"Jack, my boy, you are about to go among a brilliant company of gentlemen
and ladies, who are refined and cultivated, and thoroughly accomplished
in the manners and customs of good society. Listen to their
conversation, study their habits of life, and learn. Be polite and
obliging to all, and considerate towards every one's opinions, failings
and prejudices. Command the just respect of all your fellow-voyagers,
even though you fail to win their friendly regard. And Jack--don't you
ever dare, while you live, appear in public on those decks in fair
weather, in a costume unbecoming your mother's drawing-room!"
It would have been worth any price if the father of this hopeful youth
could have stepped on board some time, and seen him standing high on the
fore-castle, pea jacket, tasseled red fez, buckskin patch and all,
placidly contemplating the ocean--a rare spectacle for any body's
drawing-room.
After a pleasant voyage and a good rest, we drew near to Egypt and out of
the mellowest of sunsets we saw the domes and minarets of Alexandria rise
into view. As soon as the anchor was down, Jack and I got a boat and
went ashore. It was night by this time, and the other passengers were
content to remain at home and visit ancient Egypt after breakfast. It
was the way they did at Constantinople. They took a lively interest in
new countries, but their school-boy impatience had worn off, and they had
learned that it was wisdom to take things easy and go along comfortably
--these old countries do not go away in the night; they stay till after
breakfast.
When we reached the pier we found an army of Egyptian boys with donkeys
no larger than themselves, waiting for passengers--for donkeys are the
omnibuses of Egypt. We preferred to walk, but we could not have our own
way. The boys crowded about us, clamored around us, and slewed their
donkeys exactly across our path, no matter which way we turned. They
were good-natured rascals, and so were the donkeys. We mounted, and the
boys ran behind us and kept the donkeys in a furious gallop, as is the
fashion at Damascus. I believe I would rather ride a donkey than any
beast in the world. He goes briskly, he puts on no airs, he is docile,
though opinionated. Satan himself could not scare him, and he is
convenient--very convenient. When you are tired riding you can rest your
feet on the ground and let him gallop from under you.
We found the hotel and secured rooms, and were happy to know that the
Prince of Wales had stopped there once. They had it every where on
signs. No other princes had stopped there since, till Jack and I came.
We went abroad through the town, then, and found it a city of huge
commercial buildings, and broad, handsome streets brilliant with
gas-light. By night it was a sort of reminiscence of Paris. But finally
Jack found an ice-cream saloon, and that closed investigations for that
evening. The weather was very hot, it had been many a day since Jack had
seen ice-cream, and so it was useless to talk of leaving the saloon till
it shut up.
In the morning the lost tribes of America came ashore and infested the
hotels and took possession of all the donkeys and other open barouches
that offered. They went in picturesque procession to the American
Consul's; to the great gardens; to Cleopatra's Needles; to Pompey's
Pillar; to the palace of the Viceroy of Egypt; to the Nile; to the superb
groves of date-palms. One of our most inveterate relic-hunters had his
hammer with him, and tried to break a fragment off the upright Needle and
could not do it; he tried the prostrate one and failed; he borrowed a
heavy sledge hammer from a mason and tried again. He tried Pompey's
Pillar, and this baffled him. Scattered all about the mighty monolith
were sphinxes of noble countenance, carved out of Egyptian granite as
hard as blue steel, and whose shapely features the wear of five thousand
years had failed to mark or mar. The relic-hunter battered at these
persistently, and sweated profusely over his work. He might as well have
attempted to deface the moon. They regarded him serenely with the
stately smile they had worn so long, and which seemed to say, "Peck away,
poor insect; we were not made to fear such as you; in ten-score dragging
ages we have seen more of your kind than there are sands at your feet:
have they left a blemish upon us?"
But I am forgetting the Jaffa Colonists. At Jaffa we had taken on board
some forty members of a very celebrated community. They were male and
female; babies, young boys and young girls; young married people, and
some who had passed a shade beyond the prime of life. I refer to the
"Adams Jaffa Colony." Others had deserted before. We left in Jaffa Mr.
Adams, his wife, and fifteen unfortunates who not only had no money but
did not know where to turn or whither to go. Such was the statement made
to us. Our forty were miserable enough in the first place, and they lay
about the decks seasick all the voyage, which about completed their
misery, I take it. However, one or two young men remained upright, and
by constant persecution we wormed out of them some little information.
They gave it reluctantly and in a very fragmentary condition, for, having
been shamefully humbugged by their prophet, they felt humiliated and
unhappy. In such circumstances people do not like to talk.
The colony was a complete fiasco. I have already said that such as could
get away did so, from time to time. The prophet Adams--once an actor,
then several other things, afterward a Mormon and a missionary, always an
adventurer--remains at Jaffa with his handful of sorrowful subjects. The
forty we brought away with us were chiefly destitute, though not all of
them. They wished to get to Egypt. What might become of them then they
did not know and probably did not care--any thing to get away from hated
Jaffa. They had little to hope for. Because after many appeals to the
sympathies of New England, made by strangers of Boston, through the
newspapers, and after the establishment of an office there for the
reception of moneyed contributions for the Jaffa colonists, One Dollar
was subscribed. The consul-general for Egypt showed me the newspaper
paragraph which mentioned the circumstance and mentioned also the
discontinuance of the effort and the closing of the office. It was
evident that practical New England was not sorry to be rid of such
visionaries and was not in the least inclined to hire any body to bring
them back to her. Still, to get to Egypt, was something, in the eyes of
the unfortunate colonists, hopeless as the prospect seemed of ever
getting further.
Thus circumstanced, they landed at Alexandria from our ship. One of our
passengers, Mr. Moses S. Beach, of the New York Sun, inquired of the
consul-general what it would cost to send these people to their home in
Maine by the way of Liverpool, and he said fifteen hundred dollars in
gold would do it. Mr. Beach gave his check for the money and so the
troubles of the Jaffa colonists were at an end.--[It was an unselfish
act of benevolence; it was done without any ostentation, and has never
been mentioned in any newspaper, I think. Therefore it is refreshing to
learn now, several months after the above narrative was written, that
another man received all the credit of this rescue of the colonists.
Such is life.]
Alexandria was too much like a European city to be novel, and we soon
tired of it. We took the cars and came up here to ancient Cairo, which
is an Oriental city and of the completest pattern. There is little about
it to disabuse one's mind of the error if he should take it into his head
that he was in the heart of Arabia. Stately camels and dromedaries,
swarthy Egyptians, and likewise Turks and black Ethiopians, turbaned,
sashed, and blazing in a rich variety of Oriental costumes of all shades
of flashy colors, are what one sees on every hand crowding the narrow
streets and the honeycombed bazaars. We are stopping at Shepherd's
Hotel, which is the worst on earth except the one I stopped at once in a
small town in the United States. It is pleasant to read this sketch in
my note-book, now, and know that I can stand Shepherd's Hotel, sure,
because I have been in one just like it in America and survived:
I stopped at the Benton House. It used to be a good hotel, but that
proves nothing--I used to be a good boy, for that matter. Both of
us have lost character of late years. The Benton is not a good
hotel. The Benton lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel.
Perdition is full of better hotels than the Benton.
It was late at night when I got there, and I told the clerk I would
like plenty of lights, because I wanted to read an hour or two.
When I reached No. 15 with the porter (we came along a dim hall that
was clad in ancient carpeting, faded, worn out in many places, and
patched with old scraps of oil cloth--a hall that sank under one's
feet, and creaked dismally to every footstep,) he struck a light
-- two inches of sallow, sorrowful, consumptive tallow candle, that
burned blue, and sputtered, and got discouraged and went out. The
porter lit it again, and I asked if that was all the light the clerk
sent. He said, "Oh no, I've got another one here," and he produced
another couple of inches of tallow candle. I said, "Light them both
--I'll have to have one to see the other by." He did it, but the
result was drearier than darkness itself. He was a cheery,
accommodating rascal. He said he would go "somewheres" and steal a
lamp. I abetted and encouraged him in his criminal design. I heard
the landlord get after him in the hall ten minutes afterward.
"Where are you going with that lamp?"
"Fifteen wants it, sir."
"Fifteen! why he's got a double lot of candles--does the man want
to illuminate the house?--does he want to get up a torch-light
procession?--what is he up to, any how?"
"He don't like them candles--says he wants a lamp."
"Why what in the nation does----why I never heard of such a thing?
What on earth can he want with that lamp?"
"Well, he only wants to read--that's what he says."
"Wants to read, does he?--ain't satisfied with a thousand candles,
but has to have a lamp!--I do wonder what the devil that fellow
wants that lamp for? Take him another candle, and then if----"
"But he wants the lamp--says he'll burn the d--d old house down if
he don't get a lamp!" (a remark which I never made.)
"I'd like to see him at it once. Well, you take it along--but I
swear it beats my time, though--and see if you can't find out what
in the very nation he wants with that lamp."
And he went off growling to himself and still wondering and
wondering over the unaccountable conduct of No. 15. The lamp was a
good one, but it revealed some disagreeable things--a bed in the
suburbs of a desert of room--a bed that had hills and valleys in it,
and you'd have to accommodate your body to the impression left in it
by the man that slept there last, before you could lie comfortably;
a carpet that had seen better days; a melancholy washstand in a
remote corner, and a dejected pitcher on it sorrowing over a broken
nose; a looking-glass split across the centre, which chopped your
head off at the chin and made you look like some dreadful unfinished
monster or other; the paper peeling in shreds from the walls.
I sighed and said: "This is charming; and now don't you think you
could get me something to read?"
The porter said, "Oh, certainly; the old man's got dead loads of
books;" and he was gone before I could tell him what sort of
literature I would rather have. And yet his countenance expressed
the utmost confidence in his ability to execute the commission with
credit to himself. The old man made a descent on him.
"What are you going to do with that pile of books?"
"Fifteen wants 'em, sir."
"Fifteen, is it? He'll want a warming-pan, next--he'll want a
nurse! Take him every thing there is in the house--take him the
bar-keeper--take him the baggage-wagon--take him a chamber-maid!
Confound me, I never saw any thing like it. What did he say he
wants with those books?"
"Wants to read 'em, like enough; it ain't likely he wants to eat
'em, I don't reckon."
"Wants to read 'em--wants to read 'em this time of night, the
infernal lunatic! Well, he can't have them."
"But he says he's mor'ly bound to have 'em; he says he'll just go
a-rairin' and a-chargin' through this house and raise more--well,
there's no tellin' what he won't do if he don't get 'em; because
he's drunk and crazy and desperate, and nothing'll soothe him down
but them cussed books." [I had not made any threats, and was not in
the condition ascribed to me by the porter.]
"Well, go on; but I will be around when he goes to rairing and
charging, and the first rair he makes I'll make him rair out of the
window." And then the old gentleman went off, growling as before.
The genius of that porter was something wonderful. He put an armful
of books on the bed and said "Good night" as confidently as if he
knew perfectly well that those books were exactly my style of
reading matter. And well he might. His selection covered the whole
range of legitimate literature. It comprised "The Great
Consummation," by Rev. Dr. Cummings--theology; "Revised Statutes of
the State of Missouri"--law; "The Complete Horse-Doctor"--medicine;
"The Toilers of the Sea," by Victor Hugo--romance; "The works of
William Shakspeare"--poetry. I shall never cease to admire the tact
and the intelligence of that gifted porter.
But all the donkeys in Christendom, and most of the Egyptian boys, I
think, are at the door, and there is some noise going on, not to put it
in stronger language.--We are about starting to the illustrious Pyramids
of Egypt, and the donkeys for the voyage are under inspection. I will go
and select one before the choice animals are all taken.
CHAPTER LVIII.
The donkeys were all good, all handsome, all strong and in good
condition, all fast and all willing to prove it. They were the best we
had found any where, and the most 'recherche'. I do not know what
'recherche' is, but that is what these donkeys were, anyhow. Some
were of a soft mouse-color, and the others were white, black, and
vari-colored. Some were close-shaven, all over, except that a tuft like
a paint-brush was left on the end of the tail. Others were so shaven in
fanciful landscape garden patterns, as to mark their bodies with curving
lines, which were bounded on one side by hair and on the other by the
close plush left by the shears. They had all been newly barbered, and
were exceedingly stylish. Several of the white ones were barred like
zebras with rainbow stripes of blue and red and yellow paint. These
were indescribably gorgeous. Dan and Jack selected from this lot
because they brought back Italian reminiscences of the "old masters."
The saddles were the high, stuffy, frog-shaped things we had known in
Ephesus and Smyrna. The donkey-boys were lively young Egyptian rascals
who could follow a donkey and keep him in a canter half a day without
tiring. We had plenty of spectators when we mounted, for the hotel was
full of English people bound overland to India and officers getting
ready for the African campaign against the Abyssinian King Theodorus.
We were not a very large party, but as we charged through the streets of
the great metropolis, we made noise for five hundred, and displayed
activity and created excitement in proportion. Nobody can steer a
donkey, and some collided with camels, dervishes, effendis, asses,
beggars and every thing else that offered to the donkeys a reasonable
chance for a collision. When we turned into the broad avenue that leads
out of the city toward Old Cairo, there was plenty of room. The walls
of stately date-palms that fenced the gardens and bordered the way,
threw their shadows down and made the air cool and bracing. We rose to
the spirit of the time and the race became a wild rout, a stampede, a
terrific panic. I wish to live to enjoy it again.
Somewhere along this route we had a few startling exhibitions of Oriental
simplicity. A girl apparently thirteen years of age came along the great
thoroughfare dressed like Eve before the fall. We would have called her
thirteen at home; but here girls who look thirteen are often not more
than nine, in reality. Occasionally we saw stark-naked men of superb
build, bathing, and making no attempt at concealment. However, an hour's
acquaintance with this cheerful custom reconciled the pilgrims to it, and
then it ceased to occasion remark. Thus easily do even the most
startling novelties grow tame and spiritless to these sight-surfeited
wanderers.
Arrived at Old Cairo, the camp-followers took up the donkeys and tumbled
them bodily aboard a small boat with a lateen sail, and we followed and
got under way. The deck was closely packed with donkeys and men; the two
sailors had to climb over and under and through the wedged mass to work
the sails, and the steersman had to crowd four or five donkeys out of the
way when he wished to swing his tiller and put his helm hard-down. But
what were their troubles to us? We had nothing to do; nothing to do but
enjoy the trip; nothing to do but shove the donkeys off our corns and
look at the charming scenery of the Nile.
On the island at our right was the machine they call the Nilometer, a
stone-column whose business it is to mark the rise of the river and
prophecy whether it will reach only thirty-two feet and produce a famine,
or whether it will properly flood the land at forty and produce plenty,
or whether it will rise to forty-three and bring death and destruction to
flocks and crops--but how it does all this they could not explain to us
so that we could understand. On the same island is still shown the spot
where Pharaoh's daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Near the spot we
sailed from, the Holy Family dwelt when they sojourned in Egypt till
Herod should complete his slaughter of the innocents. The same tree they
rested under when they first arrived, was there a short time ago, but the
Viceroy of Egypt sent it to the Empress Eugenie lately. He was just in
time, otherwise our pilgrims would have had it.
The Nile at this point is muddy, swift and turbid, and does not lack a
great deal of being as wide as the Mississippi.
We scrambled up the steep bank at the shabby town of Ghizeh, mounted the
donkeys again, and scampered away. For four or five miles the route lay
along a high embankment which they say is to be the bed of a railway the
Sultan means to build for no other reason than that when the Empress of
the French comes to visit him she can go to the Pyramids in comfort.
This is true Oriental hospitality. I am very glad it is our privilege to
have donkeys instead of cars.
At the distance of a few miles the Pyramids rising above the palms,
looked very clean-cut, very grand and imposing, and very soft and filmy,
as well. They swam in a rich haze that took from them all suggestions of
unfeeling stone, and made them seem only the airy nothings of a dream
--structures which might blossom into tiers of vague arches, or ornate
colonnades, may be, and change and change again, into all graceful forms
of architecture, while we looked, and then melt deliciously away and
blend with the tremulous atmosphere.
At the end of the levee we left the mules and went in a sailboat across
an arm of the Nile or an overflow, and landed where the sands of the
Great Sahara left their embankment, as straight as a wall, along the
verge of the alluvial plain of the river. A laborious walk in the
flaming sun brought us to the foot of the great Pyramid of Cheops. It
was a fairy vision no longer. It was a corrugated, unsightly mountain of
stone. Each of its monstrous sides was a wide stairway which rose
upward, step above step, narrowing as it went, till it tapered to a point
far aloft in the air. Insect men and women--pilgrims from the Quaker
City--were creeping about its dizzy perches, and one little black swarm
were waving postage stamps from the airy summit--handkerchiefs will be
understood.
Of course we were besieged by a rabble of muscular Egyptians and Arabs
who wanted the contract of dragging us to the top--all tourists are. Of
course you could not hear your own voice for the din that was around you.
Of course the Sheiks said they were the only responsible parties; that
all contracts must be made with them, all moneys paid over to them, and
none exacted from us by any but themselves alone. Of course they
contracted that the varlets who dragged us up should not mention
bucksheesh once. For such is the usual routine. Of course we contracted
with them, paid them, were delivered into the hands of the draggers,
dragged up the Pyramids, and harried and be-deviled for bucksheesh from
the foundation clear to the summit. We paid it, too, for we were
purposely spread very far apart over the vast side of the Pyramid. There
was no help near if we called, and the Herculeses who dragged us had a
way of asking sweetly and flatteringly for bucksheesh, which was
seductive, and of looking fierce and threatening to throw us down the
precipice, which was persuasive and convincing.
Each step being full as high as a dinner-table; there being very, very
many of the steps; an Arab having hold of each of our arms and springing
upward from step to step and snatching us with them, forcing us to lift
our feet as high as our breasts every time, and do it rapidly and keep it
up till we were ready to faint, who shall say it is not lively,
exhilarating, lacerating, muscle-straining, bone-wrenching and perfectly
excruciating and exhausting pastime, climbing the Pyramids? I beseeched
the varlets not to twist all my joints asunder; I iterated, reiterated,
even swore to them that I did not wish to beat any body to the top; did
all I could to convince them that if I got there the last of all I would
feel blessed above men and grateful to them forever; I begged them,
prayed them, pleaded with them to let me stop and rest a moment--only one
little moment: and they only answered with some more frightful springs,
and an unenlisted volunteer behind opened a bombardment of determined
boosts with his head which threatened to batter my whole political
economy to wreck and ruin.
Twice, for one minute, they let me rest while they extorted bucksheesh,
and then continued their maniac flight up the Pyramid. They wished to
beat the other parties. It was nothing to them that I, a stranger, must
be sacrificed upon the altar of their unholy ambition. But in the midst
of sorrow, joy blooms. Even in this dark hour I had a sweet consolation.
For I knew that except these Mohammedans repented they would go straight
to perdition some day. And they never repent--they never forsake their
paganism. This thought calmed me, cheered me, and I sank down, limp and
exhausted, upon the summit, but happy, so happy and serene within.
On the one hand, a mighty sea of yellow sand stretched away toward the
ends of the earth, solemn, silent, shorn of vegetation, its solitude
uncheered by any forms of creature life; on the other, the Eden of Egypt
was spread below us--a broad green floor, cloven by the sinuous river,
dotted with villages, its vast distances measured and marked by the
diminishing stature of receding clusters of palms. It lay asleep in an
enchanted atmosphere. There was no sound, no motion. Above the
date-plumes in the middle distance, swelled a domed and pinnacled mass,
glimmering through a tinted, exquisite mist; away toward the horizon a
dozen shapely pyramids watched over ruined Memphis: and at our feet the
bland impassible Sphynx looked out upon the picture from her throne in
the sands as placidly and pensively as she had looked upon its like full
fifty lagging centuries ago.
We suffered torture no pen can describe from the hungry appeals for
bucksheesh that gleamed from Arab eyes and poured incessantly from Arab
lips. Why try to call up the traditions of vanished Egyptian grandeur;
why try to fancy Egypt following dead Rameses to his tomb in the Pyramid,
or the long multitude of Israel departing over the desert yonder? Why
try to think at all? The thing was impossible. One must bring his
meditations cut and dried, or else cut and dry them afterward.
The traditional Arab proposed, in the traditional way, to run down
Cheops, cross the eighth of a mile of sand intervening between it and the
tall pyramid of Cephron, ascend to Cephron's summit and return to us on
the top of Cheops--all in nine minutes by the watch, and the whole
service to be rendered for a single dollar. In the first flush of
irritation, I said let the Arab and his exploits go to the mischief.
But stay. The upper third of Cephron was coated with dressed marble,
smooth as glass. A blessed thought entered my brain. He must infallibly
break his neck. Close the contract with dispatch, I said, and let him
go. He started. We watched. He went bounding down the vast broadside,
spring after spring, like an ibex. He grew small and smaller till he
became a bobbing pigmy, away down toward the bottom--then disappeared.
We turned and peered over the other side--forty seconds--eighty seconds
--a hundred--happiness, he is dead already!--two minutes--and a quarter
--"There he goes!" Too true--it was too true. He was very small, now.
Gradually, but surely, he overcame the level ground. He began to spring
and climb again. Up, up, up--at last he reached the smooth coating--now
for it. But he clung to it with toes and fingers, like a fly. He
crawled this way and that--away to the right, slanting upward--away to
the left, still slanting upward--and stood at last, a black peg on the
summit, and waved his pigmy scarf! Then he crept downward to the raw
steps again, then picked up his agile heels and flew. We lost him
presently. But presently again we saw him under us, mounting with
undiminished energy. Shortly he bounded into our midst with a gallant
war-whoop. Time, eight minutes, forty-one seconds. He had won. His
bones were intact. It was a failure. I reflected. I said to myself, he
is tired, and must grow dizzy. I will risk another dollar on him.
He started again. Made the trip again. Slipped on the smooth coating
--I almost had him. But an infamous crevice saved him. He was with us
once more--perfectly sound. Time, eight minutes, forty-six seconds.
I said to Dan, "Lend me a dollar--I can beat this game, yet."
Worse and worse. He won again. Time, eight minutes, forty-eight
seconds. I was out of all patience, now. I was desperate.--Money was
no longer of any consequence. I said, "Sirrah, I will give you a hundred
dollars to jump off this pyramid head first. If you do not like the
terms, name your bet. I scorn to stand on expenses now. I will stay
right here and risk money on you as long as Dan has got a cent."
I was in a fair way to win, now, for it was a dazzling opportunity for an
Arab. He pondered a moment, and would have done it, I think, but his
mother arrived, then, and interfered. Her tears moved me--I never can
look upon the tears of woman with indifference--and I said I would give
her a hundred to jump off, too.
But it was a failure. The Arabs are too high-priced in Egypt. They put
on airs unbecoming to such savages.
We descended, hot and out of humor. The dragoman lit candles, and we all
entered a hole near the base of the pyramid, attended by a crazy rabble
of Arabs who thrust their services upon us uninvited. They dragged us up
a long inclined chute, and dripped candle-grease all over us. This chute
was not more than twice as wide and high as a Saratoga trunk, and was
walled, roofed and floored with solid blocks of Egyptian granite as wide
as a wardrobe, twice as thick and three times as long. We kept on
climbing, through the oppressive gloom, till I thought we ought to be
nearing the top of the pyramid again, and then came to the "Queen's
Chamber," and shortly to the Chamber of the King. These large apartments
were tombs. The walls were built of monstrous masses of smoothed
granite, neatly joined together. Some of them were nearly as large
square as an ordinary parlor. A great stone sarcophagus like a bath-tub
stood in the centre of the King's Chamber. Around it were gathered a
picturesque group of Arab savages and soiled and tattered pilgrims, who
held their candles aloft in the gloom while they chattered, and the
winking blurs of light shed a dim glory down upon one of the
irrepressible memento-seekers who was pecking at the venerable
sarcophagus with his sacrilegious hammer.
We struggled out to the open air and the bright sunshine, and for the
space of thirty minutes received ragged Arabs by couples, dozens and
platoons, and paid them bucksheesh for services they swore and proved by
each other that they had rendered, but which we had not been aware of
before--and as each party was paid, they dropped into the rear of the
procession and in due time arrived again with a newly-invented delinquent
list for liquidation.
We lunched in the shade of the pyramid, and in the midst of this
encroaching and unwelcome company, and then Dan and Jack and I started
away for a walk. A howling swarm of beggars followed us--surrounded us
--almost headed us off. A sheik, in flowing white bournous and gaudy
head-gear, was with them. He wanted more bucksheesh. But we had
adopted a new code--it was millions for defense, but not a cent for
bucksheesh. I asked him if he could persuade the others to depart if we
paid him. He said yes--for ten francs. We accepted the contract, and
said--
"Now persuade your vassals to fall back."
He swung his long staff round his head and three Arabs bit the dust. He
capered among the mob like a very maniac. His blows fell like hail, and
wherever one fell a subject went down. We had to hurry to the rescue and
tell him it was only necessary to damage them a little, he need not kill
them.--In two minutes we were alone with the sheik, and remained so.
The persuasive powers of this illiterate savage were remarkable.
Each side of the Pyramid of Cheops is about as long as the Capitol at
Washington, or the Sultan's new palace on the Bosporus, and is longer
than the greatest depth of St. Peter's at Rome--which is to say that each
side of Cheops extends seven hundred and some odd feet. It is about
seventy-five feet higher than the cross on St. Peter's. The first time I
ever went down the Mississippi, I thought the highest bluff on the river
between St. Louis and New Orleans--it was near Selma, Missouri--was
probably the highest mountain in the world. It is four hundred and
thirteen feet high. It still looms in my memory with undiminished
grandeur. I can still see the trees and bushes growing smaller and
smaller as I followed them up its huge slant with my eye, till they
became a feathery fringe on the distant summit. This symmetrical Pyramid
of Cheops--this solid mountain of stone reared by the patient hands of
men--this mighty tomb of a forgotten monarch--dwarfs my cherished
mountain. For it is four hundred and eighty feet high. In still earlier
years than those I have been recalling, Holliday's Hill, in our town, was
to me the noblest work of God. It appeared to pierce the skies. It was
nearly three hundred feet high. In those days I pondered the subject
much, but I never could understand why it did not swathe its summit with
never-failing clouds, and crown its majestic brow with everlasting snows.
I had heard that such was the custom of great mountains in other parts of
the world. I remembered how I worked with another boy, at odd afternoons
stolen from study and paid for with stripes, to undermine and start from
its bed an immense boulder that rested upon the edge of that hilltop; I
remembered how, one Saturday afternoon, we gave three hours of honest
effort to the task, and saw at last that our reward was at hand; I
remembered how we sat down, then, and wiped the perspiration away, and
waited to let a picnic party get out of the way in the road below--and
then we started the boulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the
hillside, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass, ripping and
crushing and smashing every thing in its path--eternally splintered and
scattered a wood pile at the foot of the hill, and then sprang from the
high bank clear over a dray in the road--the negro glanced up once and
dodged--and the next second it made infinitesimal mince-meat of a frame
cooper-shop, and the coopers swarmed out like bees. Then we said it was
perfectly magnificent, and left. Because the coopers were starting up
the hill to inquire.
Still, that mountain, prodigious as it was, was nothing to the Pyramid of
Cheops. I could conjure up no comparison that would convey to my mind a
satisfactory comprehension of the magnitude of a pile of monstrous stones
that covered thirteen acres of ground and stretched upward four hundred
and eighty tiresome feet, and so I gave it up and walked down to the
Sphynx.
After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so
sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of
earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never any
thing human wore. It was stone, but it seemed sentient. If ever image
of stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of
the landscape, yet looking at nothing--nothing but distance and vacancy.
It was looking over and beyond every thing of the present, and far into
the past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time--over lines of
century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and
nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward
the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed
ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations
whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose
annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death, the
grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was the
type of an attribute of man--of a faculty of his heart and brain. It was
MEMORY--RETROSPECTION--wrought into visible, tangible form. All who know
what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and faces
that have vanished--albeit only a trifling score of years gone by--will
have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave eyes that
look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before History was
born--before Tradition had being--things that were, and forms that moved,
in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know of--and passed
one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the midst of a
strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.
The Sphynx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude;
it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is
that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with
its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one
something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful
presence of God.
There are some things which, for the credit of America, should be left
unsaid, perhaps; but these very things happen sometimes to be the very
things which, for the real benefit of Americans, ought to have prominent
notice. While we stood looking, a wart, or an excrescence of some kind,
appeared on the jaw of the Sphynx. We heard the familiar clink of a
hammer, and understood the case at once. One of our well meaning
reptiles--I mean relic-hunters--had crawled up there and was trying to
break a "specimen" from the face of this the most majestic creation the
hand of man has wrought. But the great image contemplated the dead ages
as calmly as ever, unconscious of the small insect that was fretting at
its jaw. Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and earthquakes of
all time has nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of ignorant
excursionists--highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his
enterprise. We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had the authority, or to
warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of Egypt the crime he was
attempting to commit was punishable with imprisonment or the bastinado.
Then he desisted and went away.
The Sphynx: a hundred and twenty-five feet long, sixty feet high, and a
hundred and two feet around the head, if I remember rightly--carved out
of one solid block of stone harder than any iron. The block must have
been as large as the Fifth Avenue Hotel before the usual waste (by the
necessities of sculpture) of a fourth or a half of the original mass was
begun. I only set down these figures and these remarks to suggest the
prodigious labor the carving of it so elegantly, so symmetrically, so
faultlessly, must have cost. This species of stone is so hard that
figures cut in it remain sharp and unmarred after exposure to the weather
for two or three thousand years. Now did it take a hundred years of
patient toil to carve the Sphynx? It seems probable.
Something interfered, and we did not visit the Red Sea and walk upon the
sands of Arabia. I shall not describe the great mosque of Mehemet Ali,
whose entire inner walls are built of polished and glistening alabaster;
I shall not tell how the little birds have built their nests in the
globes of the great chandeliers that hang in the mosque, and how they
fill the whole place with their music and are not afraid of any body
because their audacity is pardoned, their rights are respected, and
nobody is allowed to interfere with them, even though the mosque be thus
doomed to go unlighted; I certainly shall not tell the hackneyed story of
the massacre of the Mamelukes, because I am glad the lawless rascals were
massacred, and I do not wish to get up any sympathy in their behalf; I
shall not tell how that one solitary Mameluke jumped his horse a hundred
feet down from the battlements of the citadel and escaped, because I do
not think much of that--I could have done it myself; I shall not tell of
Joseph's well which he dug in the solid rock of the citadel hill and
which is still as good as new, nor how the same mules he bought to draw
up the water (with an endless chain) are still at it yet and are getting
tired of it, too; I shall not tell about Joseph's granaries which he
built to store the grain in, what time the Egyptian brokers were "selling
short," unwitting that there would be no corn in all the land when it
should be time for them to deliver; I shall not tell any thing about the
strange, strange city of Cairo, because it is only a repetition, a good
deal intensified and exaggerated, of the Oriental cities I have already
spoken of; I shall not tell of the Great Caravan which leaves for Mecca
every year, for I did not see it; nor of the fashion the people have of
prostrating themselves and so forming a long human pavement to be ridden
over by the chief of the expedition on its return, to the end that their
salvation may be thus secured, for I did not see that either; I shall not
speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway--I shall only say
that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three
thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that
purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out
pettishly, "D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out
a King;"--[Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am
willing to believe it. I can believe any thing.]--I shall not tell of
the groups of mud cones stuck like wasps' nests upon a thousand mounds
above high water-mark the length and breadth of Egypt--villages of the
lower classes; I shall not speak of the boundless sweep of level plain,
green with luxuriant grain, that gladdens the eye as far as it can pierce
through the soft, rich atmosphere of Egypt; I shall not speak of the
vision of the Pyramids seen at a distance of five and twenty miles, for
the picture is too ethereal to be limned by an uninspired pen; I shall
not tell of the crowds of dusky women who flocked to the cars when they
stopped a moment at a station, to sell us a drink of water or a ruddy,
juicy pomegranate; I shall not tell of the motley multitudes and wild
costumes that graced a fair we found in full blast at another barbarous
station; I shall not tell how we feasted on fresh dates and enjoyed the
pleasant landscape all through the flying journey; nor how we thundered
into Alexandria, at last, swarmed out of the cars, rowed aboard the ship,
left a comrade behind, (who was to return to Europe, thence home,) raised
the anchor, and turned our bows homeward finally and forever from the
long voyage; nor how, as the mellow sun went down upon the oldest land on
earth, Jack and Moult assembled in solemn state in the smoking-room and
mourned over the lost comrade the whole night long, and would not be
comforted. I shall not speak a word of any of these things, or write a
line. They shall be as a sealed book. I do not know what a sealed book
is, because I never saw one, but a sealed book is the expression to use
in this connection, because it is popular.
We were glad to have seen the land which was the mother of civilization
--which taught Greece her letters, and through Greece Rome, and through
Rome the world; the land which could have humanized and civilized the
hapless children of Israel, but allowed them to depart out of her borders
little better than savages. We were glad to have seen that land which
had an enlightened religion with future eternal rewards and punishment in
it, while even Israel's religion contained no promise of a hereafter.
We were glad to have seen that land which had glass three thousand years
before England had it, and could paint upon it as none of us can paint
now; that land which knew, three thousand years ago, well nigh all of
medicine and surgery which science has discovered lately; which had all
those curious surgical instruments which science has invented recently;
which had in high excellence a thousand luxuries and necessities of an
advanced civilization which we have gradually contrived and accumulated
in modern times and claimed as things that were new under the sun; that
had paper untold centuries before we dreampt of it--and waterfalls before
our women thought of them; that had a perfect system of common schools so
long before we boasted of our achievements in that direction that it
seems forever and forever ago; that so embalmed the dead that flesh was
made almost immortal--which we can not do; that built temples which mock
at destroying time and smile grimly upon our lauded little prodigies of
architecture; that old land that knew all which we know now, perchance,
and more; that walked in the broad highway of civilization in the gray
dawn of creation, ages and ages before we were born; that left the
impress of exalted, cultivated Mind upon the eternal front of the Sphynx
to confound all scoffers who, when all her other proofs had passed away,
might seek to persuade the world that imperial Egypt, in the days of her
high renown, had groped in darkness.
CHAPTER LIX.
We were at sea now, for a very long voyage--we were to pass through the
entire length of the Levant; through the entire length of the
Mediterranean proper, also, and then cross the full width of the
Atlantic--a voyage of several weeks. We naturally settled down into a
very slow, stay-at-home manner of life, and resolved to be quiet,
exemplary people, and roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more,
at least, than from stem to stern of the ship. It was a very comfortable
prospect, though, for we were tired and needed a long rest.
We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries in my
note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition), prove. What a
stupid thing a note-book gets to be at sea, any way. Please observe the
style:
"Sunday--Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night,
also. No cards.
"Monday--Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased at
Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened. The
water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of their
after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs. It is
well they are not cows--it would soak in and ruin the milk. The
poor devil eagle--[Afterwards presented to the Central Park.]--from
Syria looks miserable and droopy in the rain, perched on the forward
capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea voyage, and if
it were put into language and the language solidified, it would
probably essentially dam the widest river in the world.
"Tuesday--Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta. Can
not stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers
seasick and invisible.
"Wednesday--Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land birds to
sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also. He
circled round and round the ship, wanting to light, but afraid of
the people. He was so tired, though, that he had to light, at last,
or perish. He stopped in the foretop, repeatedly, and was as often
blown away by the wind. At last Harry caught him. Sea full of
flying-fish. They rise in flocks of three hundred and flash along
above the tops of the waves a distance of two or three hundred feet,
then fall and disappear.
"Thursday--Anchored off Algiers, Africa. Beautiful city, beautiful
green hilly landscape behind it. Staid half a day and left. Not
permitted to land, though we showed a clean bill of health. They
were afraid of Egyptian plague and cholera.
"Friday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening,
promenading the deck. Afterwards, charades.
"Saturday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening,
promenading the decks. Afterwards, dominoes.
"Sunday--Morning service, four bells. Evening service, eight bells.
Monotony till midnight.--Whereupon, dominoes.
"Monday--Morning, dominoes. Afternoon, dominoes. Evening,
promenading the decks. Afterward, charades and a lecture from Dr.
C. Dominoes.
"No date--Anchored off the picturesque city of Cagliari, Sardinia.
Staid till midnight, but not permitted to land by these infamous
foreigners. They smell inodorously--they do not wash--they dare not
risk cholera.
"Thursday--Anchored off the beautiful cathedral city of Malaga,
Spain.--Went ashore in the captain's boat--not ashore, either, for
they would not let us land. Quarantine. Shipped my newspaper
correspondence, which they took with tongs, dipped it in sea water,
clipped it full of holes, and then fumigated it with villainous
vapors till it smelt like a Spaniard. Inquired about chances to run
to blockade and visit the Alhambra at Granada. Too risky--they
might hang a body. Set sail--middle of afternoon.
"And so on, and so on, and so forth, for several days. Finally,
anchored off Gibraltar, which looks familiar and home-like."
It reminds me of the journal I opened with the New Year, once, when I was
a boy and a confiding and a willing prey to those impossible schemes of
reform which well-meaning old maids and grandmothers set for the feet of
unwary youths at that season of the year--setting oversized tasks for
them, which, necessarily failing, as infallibly weaken the boy's strength
of will, diminish his confidence in himself and injure his chances of
success in life. Please accept of an extract:
"Monday--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Tuesday--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Wednesday--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Thursday--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Friday--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Next Friday--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Friday fortnight--Got up, washed, went to bed.
"Following month--Got up, washed, went to bed."
I stopped, then, discouraged. Startling events appeared to be too rare,
in my career, to render a diary necessary. I still reflect with pride,
however, that even at that early age I washed when I got up. That
journal finished me. I never have had the nerve to keep one since. My
loss of confidence in myself in that line was permanent.
The ship had to stay a week or more at Gibraltar to take in coal for the
home voyage.
It would be very tiresome staying here, and so four of us ran the
quarantine blockade and spent seven delightful days in Seville, Cordova,
Cadiz, and wandering through the pleasant rural scenery of Andalusia, the
garden of Old Spain. The experiences of that cheery week were too varied
and numerous for a short chapter and I have not room for a long one.
Therefore I shall leave them all out.
CHAPTER LX.
Ten or eleven o'clock found us coming down to breakfast one morning in
Cadiz. They told us the ship had been lying at anchor in the harbor two
or three hours. It was time for us to bestir ourselves. The ship could
wait only a little while because of the quarantine. We were soon on
board, and within the hour the white city and the pleasant shores of
Spain sank down behind the waves and passed out of sight. We had seen no
land fade from view so regretfully.
It had long ago been decided in a noisy public meeting in the main cabin
that we could not go to Lisbon, because we must surely be quarantined
there. We did every thing by mass-meeting, in the good old national way,
from swapping off one empire for another on the programme of the voyage
down to complaining of the cookery and the scarcity of napkins. I am
reminded, now, of one of these complaints of the cookery made by a
passenger. The coffee had been steadily growing more and more execrable
for the space of three weeks, till at last it had ceased to be coffee
altogether and had assumed the nature of mere discolored water--so this
person said. He said it was so weak that it was transparent an inch in
depth around the edge of the cup. As he approached the table one morning
he saw the transparent edge--by means of his extraordinary vision long
before he got to his seat. He went back and complained in a high-handed
way to Capt. Duncan. He said the coffee was disgraceful. The Captain
showed his. It seemed tolerably good. The incipient mutineer was more
outraged than ever, then, at what he denounced as the partiality shown
the captain's table over the other tables in the ship. He flourished
back and got his cup and set it down triumphantly, and said:
"Just try that mixture once, Captain Duncan."
He smelt it--tasted it--smiled benignantly--then said:
"It is inferior--for coffee--but it is pretty fair tea."
The humbled mutineer smelt it, tasted it, and returned to his seat. He
had made an egregious ass of himself before the whole ship. He did it no
more. After that he took things as they came. That was me.
The old-fashioned ship-life had returned, now that we were no longer in
sight of land. For days and days it continued just the same, one day
being exactly like another, and, to me, every one of them pleasant. At
last we anchored in the open roadstead of Funchal, in the beautiful
islands we call the Madeiras.
The mountains looked surpassingly lovely, clad as they were in living,
green; ribbed with lava ridges; flecked with white cottages; riven by
deep chasms purple with shade; the great slopes dashed with sunshine and
mottled with shadows flung from the drifting squadrons of the sky, and
the superb picture fitly crowned by towering peaks whose fronts were
swept by the trailing fringes of the clouds.
But we could not land. We staid all day and looked, we abused the man
who invented quarantine, we held half a dozen mass-meetings and crammed
them full of interrupted speeches, motions that fell still-born,
amendments that came to nought and resolutions that died from sheer
exhaustion in trying to get before the house. At night we set sail.
We averaged four mass-meetings a week for the voyage--we seemed always in
labor in this way, and yet so often fallaciously that whenever at long
intervals we were safely delivered of a resolution, it was cause for
public rejoicing, and we hoisted the flag and fired a salute.
Days passed--and nights; and then the beautiful Bermudas rose out of the
sea, we entered the tortuous channel, steamed hither and thither among
the bright summer islands, and rested at last under the flag of England
and were welcome. We were not a nightmare here, where were civilization
and intelligence in place of Spanish and Italian superstition, dirt and
dread of cholera. A few days among the breezy groves, the flower
gardens, the coral caves, and the lovely vistas of blue water that went
curving in and out, disappearing and anon again appearing through jungle
walls of brilliant foliage, restored the energies dulled by long drowsing
on the ocean, and fitted us for our final cruise--our little run of a
thousand miles to New York--America--HOME.
We bade good-bye to "our friends the Bermudians," as our programme hath
it--the majority of those we were most intimate with were negroes--and
courted the great deep again. I said the majority. We knew more negroes
than white people, because we had a deal of washing to be done, but we
made some most excellent friends among the whites, whom it will be a
pleasant duty to hold long in grateful remembrance.
We sailed, and from that hour all idling ceased. Such another system of
overhauling, general littering of cabins and packing of trunks we had not
seen since we let go the anchor in the harbor of Beirout. Every body was
busy. Lists of all purchases had to be made out, and values attached, to
facilitate matters at the custom-house. Purchases bought by bulk in
partnership had to be equitably divided, outstanding debts canceled,
accounts compared, and trunks, boxes and packages labeled. All day long
the bustle and confusion continued.
And now came our first accident. A passenger was running through a
gangway, between decks, one stormy night, when he caught his foot in the
iron staple of a door that had been heedlessly left off a hatchway, and
the bones of his leg broke at the ancle. It was our first serious
misfortune. We had traveled much more than twenty thousand miles, by
land and sea, in many trying climates, without a single hurt, without a
serious case of sickness and without a death among five and sixty
passengers. Our good fortune had been wonderful. A sailor had jumped
overboard at Constantinople one night, and was seen no more, but it was
suspected that his object was to desert, and there was a slim chance, at
least, that he reached the shore. But the passenger list was complete.
There was no name missing from the register.
At last, one pleasant morning, we steamed up the harbor of New York, all
on deck, all dressed in Christian garb--by special order, for there was a
latent disposition in some quarters to come out as Turks--and amid a
waving of handkerchiefs from welcoming friends, the glad pilgrims noted
the shiver of the decks that told that ship and pier had joined hands
again and the long, strange cruise was over. Amen.
CHAPTER LXI.
In this place I will print an article which I wrote for the New York
Herald the night we arrived. I do it partly because my contract with my
publishers makes it compulsory; partly because it is a proper, tolerably
accurate, and exhaustive summing up of the cruise of the ship and the
performances of the pilgrims in foreign lands; and partly because some of
the passengers have abused me for writing it, and I wish the public to
see how thankless a task it is to put one's self to trouble to glorify
unappreciative people. I was charged with "rushing into print" with
these compliments. I did not rush. I had written news letters to the
Herald sometimes, but yet when I visited the office that day I did not
say any thing about writing a valedictory. I did go to the Tribune
office to see if such an article was wanted, because I belonged on the
regular staff of that paper and it was simply a duty to do it. The
managing editor was absent, and so I thought no more about it. At night
when the Herald's request came for an article, I did not "rush." In
fact, I demurred for a while, because I did not feel like writing
compliments then, and therefore was afraid to speak of the cruise lest I
might be betrayed into using other than complimentary language. However,
I reflected that it would be a just and righteous thing to go down and
write a kind word for the Hadjis--Hadjis are people who have made the
pilgrimage--because parties not interested could not do it so feelingly
as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned the valedictory. I have read it,
and read it again; and if there is a sentence in it that is not fulsomely
complimentary to captain, ship and passengers, I can not find it. If it
is not a chapter that any company might be proud to have a body write
about them, my judgment is fit for nothing. With these remarks I
confidently submit it to the unprejudiced judgment of the reader:
RETURN OF THE HOLY LAND EXCURSIONISTS--THE STORY OF THE CRUISE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE HERALD:
The steamer Quaker City has accomplished at last her extraordinary
voyage and returned to her old pier at the foot of Wall street.
The expedition was a success in some respects, in some it was not.
Originally it was advertised as a "pleasure excursion." Well,
perhaps, it was a pleasure excursion, but certainly it did not look
like one; certainly it did not act like one. Any body's and every
body's notion of a pleasure excursion is that the parties to it will
of a necessity be young and giddy and somewhat boisterous. They
will dance a good deal, sing a good deal, make love, but sermonize
very little. Any body's and every body's notion of a well conducted
funeral is that there must be a hearse and a corpse, and chief
mourners and mourners by courtesy, many old people, much solemnity,
no levity, and a prayer and a sermon withal. Three-fourths of the
Quaker City's passengers were between forty and seventy years of
age! There was a picnic crowd for you! It may be supposed that the
other fourth was composed of young girls. But it was not. It was
chiefly composed of rusty old bachelors and a child of six years.
Let us average the ages of the Quaker City's pilgrims and set the
figure down as fifty years. Is any man insane enough to imagine
that this picnic of patriarchs sang, made love, danced, laughed,
told anecdotes, dealt in ungodly levity? In my experience they
sinned little in these matters. No doubt it was presumed here at
home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all
day, and day after day, and kept up a noisy excitement from one end
of the ship to the other; and that they played blind-man's buff or
danced quadrilles and waltzes on moonlight evenings on the
quarter-deck; and that at odd moments of unoccupied time they jotted
a laconic item or two in the journals they opened on such an
elaborate plan when they left home, and then skurried off to their
whist and euchre labors under the cabin lamps. If these things were
presumed, the presumption was at fault. The venerable excursionists
were not gay and frisky. They played no blind-man's buff; they
dealt not in whist; they shirked not the irksome journal, for alas!
most of them were even writing books. They never romped, they
talked but little, they never sang, save in the nightly
prayer-meeting. The pleasure ship was a synagogue, and the pleasure
trip was a funeral excursion without a corpse. (There is nothing
exhilarating about a funeral excursion without a corpse.) A free,
hearty laugh was a sound that was not heard oftener than once in
seven days about those decks or in those cabins, and when it was
heard it met with precious little sympathy. The excursionists
danced, on three separate evenings, long, long ago, (it seems an
age.) quadrilles, of a single set, made up of three ladies and five
gentlemen, (the latter with handkerchiefs around their arms to
signify their sex.) who timed their feet to the solemn wheezing of a
melodeon; but even this melancholy orgie was voted to be sinful, and
dancing was discontinued.
The pilgrims played dominoes when too much Josephus or Robinson's
Holy Land Researches, or book-writing, made recreation necessary
-- for dominoes is about as mild and sinless a game as any in the
world, perhaps, excepting always the ineffably insipid diversion
they call croquet, which is a game where you don't pocket any balls
and don't carom on any thing of any consequence, and when you are
done nobody has to pay, and there are no refreshments to saw off,
and, consequently, there isn't any satisfaction whatever about it
-- they played dominoes till they were rested, and then they
blackguarded each other privately till prayer-time. When they were
not seasick they were uncommonly prompt when the dinner-gong
sounded. Such was our daily life on board the ship--solemnity,
decorum, dinner, dominoes, devotions, slander. It was not lively
enough for a pleasure trip; but if we had only had a corpse it would
have made a noble funeral excursion. It is all over now; but when I
look back, the idea of these venerable fossils skipping forth on a
six months' picnic, seems exquisitely refreshing. The advertised
title of the expedition--"The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion"
-- was a misnomer. "The Grand Holy Land Funeral Procession" would have
been better--much better.
Wherever we went, in Europe, Asia, or Africa, we made a sensation,
and, I suppose I may add, created a famine. None of us had ever
been any where before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a
wild novelty to us, and we conducted ourselves in accordance with
the natural instincts that were in us, and trammeled ourselves with
no ceremonies, no conventionalities. We always took care to make it
understood that we were Americans--Americans! When we found that a
good many foreigners had hardly ever heard of America, and that a
good many more knew it only as a barbarous province away off
somewhere, that had lately been at war with somebody, we pitied the
ignorance of the Old World, but abated no jot of our importance.
Many and many a simple community in the Eastern hemisphere will
remember for years the incursion of the strange horde in the year of
our Lord 1867, that called themselves Americans, and seemed to
imagine in some unaccountable way that they had a right to be proud
of it. We generally created a famine, partly because the coffee on
the Quaker City was unendurable, and sometimes the more substantial
fare was not strictly first class; and partly because one naturally
tires of sitting long at the same board and eating from the same
dishes.
The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They
looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of
America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes.
They noticed that we looked out for expenses, and got what we
conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the
mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes
and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in
making those idiots understand their own language. One of our
passengers said to a shopkeeper, in reference to a proposed return
to buy a pair of gloves, "Allong restay trankeel--may be ve coom
Moonday;" and would you believe it, that shopkeeper, a born
Frenchman, had to ask what it was that had been said. Sometimes it
seems to me, somehow, that there must be a difference between
Parisian French and Quaker City French.
The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. We
generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with
them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we
crushed them. And yet we took kindly to the manners and customs,
and especially to the fashions of the various people we visited.
When we left the Azores, we wore awful capotes and used fine tooth
combs--successfully. When we came back from Tangier, in Africa, we
were topped with fezzes of the bloodiest hue, hung with tassels like
an Indian's scalp-lock. In France and Spain we attracted some
attention in these costumes. In Italy they naturally took us for
distempered Garibaldians, and set a gunboat to look for any thing
significant in our changes of uniform. We made Rome howl. We could
have made any place howl when we had all our clothes on. We got no
fresh raiment in Greece--they had but little there of any kind. But
at Constantinople, how we turned out! Turbans, scimetars, fezzes,
horse-pistols, tunics, sashes, baggy trowsers, yellow slippers--Oh,
we were gorgeous! The illustrious dogs of Constantinople barked
their under jaws off, and even then failed to do us justice. They
are all dead by this time. They could not go through such a run of
business as we gave them and survive.
And then we went to see the Emperor of Russia. We just called on
him as comfortably as if we had known him a century or so, and when
we had finished our visit we variegated ourselves with selections
from Russian costumes and sailed away again more picturesque than
ever. In Smyrna we picked up camel's hair shawls and other dressy
things from Persia; but in Palestine--ah, in Palestine--our splendid
career ended. They didn't wear any clothes there to speak of. We
were satisfied, and stopped. We made no experiments. We did not
try their costume. But we astonished the natives of that country.
We astonished them with such eccentricities of dress as we could
muster. We prowled through the Holy Land, from Cesarea Philippi to
Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, a weird procession of pilgrims, gotten
up regardless of expense, solemn, gorgeous, green-spectacled,
drowsing under blue umbrellas, and astride of a sorrier lot of
horses, camels and asses than those that came out of Noah's ark,
after eleven months of seasickness and short rations. If ever those
children of Israel in Palestine forget when Gideon's Band went
through there from America, they ought to be cursed once more and
finished. It was the rarest spectacle that ever astounded mortal
eyes, perhaps.
Well, we were at home in Palestine. It was easy to see that that
was the grand feature of the expedition. We had cared nothing much
about Europe. We galloped through the Louvre, the Pitti, the
Ufizzi, the Vatican--all the galleries--and through the pictured and
frescoed churches of Venice, Naples, and the cathedrals of Spain;
some of us said that certain of the great works of the old masters
were glorious creations of genius, (we found it out in the
guide-book, though we got hold of the wrong picture sometimes,) and
the others said they were disgraceful old daubs. We examined modern
and ancient statuary with a critical eye in Florence, Rome, or any
where we found it, and praised it if we saw fit, and if we didn't we
said we preferred the wooden Indians in front of the cigar stores of
America. But the Holy Land brought out all our enthusiasm. We fell
into raptures by the barren shores of Galilee; we pondered at Tabor
and at Nazareth; we exploded into poetry over the questionable
loveliness of Esdraelon; we meditated at Jezreel and Samaria over
the missionary zeal of Jehu; we rioted--fairly rioted among the holy
places of Jerusalem; we bathed in Jordan and the Dead Sea, reckless
whether our accident-insurance policies were extra-hazardous or not,
and brought away so many jugs of precious water from both places
that all the country from Jericho to the mountains of Moab will
suffer from drouth this year, I think. Yet, the pilgrimage part of
the excursion was its pet feature--there is no question about that.
After dismal, smileless Palestine, beautiful Egypt had few charms
for us. We merely glanced at it and were ready for home.
They wouldn't let us land at Malta--quarantine; they would not let
us land in Sardinia; nor at Algiers, Africa; nor at Malaga, Spain,
nor Cadiz, nor at the Madeira islands. So we got offended at all
foreigners and turned our backs upon them and came home. I suppose
we only stopped at the Bermudas because they were in the programme.
We did not care any thing about any place at all. We wanted to go
home. Homesickness was abroad in the ship--it was epidemic. If the
authorities of New York had known how badly we had it, they would
have quarantined us here.
The grand pilgrimage is over. Good-bye to it, and a pleasant memory
to it, I am able to say in all kindness. I bear no malice, no
ill-will toward any individual that was connected with it, either as
passenger or officer. Things I did not like at all yesterday I like
very well to-day, now that I am at home, and always hereafter I
shall be able to poke fun at the whole gang if the spirit so moves
me to do, without ever saying a malicious word. The expedition
accomplished all that its programme promised that it should
accomplish, and we ought all to be satisfied with the management of
the matter, certainly. Bye-bye!
MARK TWAIN.
I call that complimentary. It is complimentary; and yet I never have
received a word of thanks for it from the Hadjis; on the contrary I speak
nothing but the serious truth when I say that many of them even took
exceptions to the article. In endeavoring to please them I slaved over
that sketch for two hours, and had my labor for my pains. I never will
do a generous deed again.
CONCLUSION.
Nearly one year has flown since this notable pilgrimage was ended; and as
I sit here at home in San Francisco thinking, I am moved to confess that
day by day the mass of my memories of the excursion have grown more and
more pleasant as the disagreeable incidents of travel which encumbered
them flitted one by one out of my mind--and now, if the Quaker City were
weighing her anchor to sail away on the very same cruise again, nothing
could gratify me more than to be a passenger. With the same captain and
even the same pilgrims, the same sinners. I was on excellent terms with
eight or nine of the excursionists (they are my staunch friends yet,) and
was even on speaking terms with the rest of the sixty-five. I have been
at sea quite enough to know that that was a very good average. Because a
long sea-voyage not only brings out all the mean traits one has, and
exaggerates them, but raises up others which he never suspected he
possessed, and even creates new ones. A twelve months' voyage at sea
would make of an ordinary man a very miracle of meanness. On the other
hand, if a man has good qualities, the spirit seldom moves him to exhibit
them on shipboard, at least with any sort of emphasis. Now I am
satisfied that our pilgrims are pleasant old people on shore; I am also
satisfied that at sea on a second voyage they would be pleasanter,
somewhat, than they were on our grand excursion, and so I say without
hesitation that I would be glad enough to sail with them again. I could
at least enjoy life with my handful of old friends. They could enjoy
life with their cliques as well--passengers invariably divide up into
cliques, on all ships.
And I will say, here, that I would rather travel with an excursion party
of Methuselahs than have to be changing ships and comrades constantly, as
people do who travel in the ordinary way. Those latter are always
grieving over some other ship they have known and lost, and over other
comrades whom diverging routes have separated from them. They learn to
love a ship just in time to change it for another, and they become
attached to a pleasant traveling companion only to lose him. They have
that most dismal experience of being in a strange vessel, among strange
people who care nothing about them, and of undergoing the customary
bullying by strange officers and the insolence of strange servants,
repeated over and over again within the compass of every month. They
have also that other misery of packing and unpacking trunks--of running
the distressing gauntlet of custom-houses--of the anxieties attendant
upon getting a mass of baggage from point to point on land in safety.
I had rasher sail with a whole brigade of patriarchs than suffer so.
We never packed our trunks but twice--when we sailed from New York, and
when we returned to it. Whenever we made a land journey, we estimated
how many days we should be gone and what amount of clothing we should
need, figured it down to a mathematical nicety, packed a valise or two
accordingly, and left the trunks on board. We chose our comrades from
among our old, tried friends, and started. We were never dependent upon
strangers for companionship. We often had occasion to pity Americans
whom we found traveling drearily among strangers with no friends to
exchange pains and pleasures with. Whenever we were coming back from a
land journey, our eyes sought one thing in the distance first--the ship
--and when we saw it riding at anchor with the flag apeak, we felt as a
returning wanderer feels when he sees his home. When we stepped on
board, our cares vanished, our troubles were at an end--for the ship was
home to us. We always had the same familiar old state-room to go to, and
feel safe and at peace and comfortable again.
I have no fault to find with the manner in which our excursion was
conducted. Its programme was faithfully carried out--a thing which
surprised me, for great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they
perform. It would be well if such an excursion could be gotten up every
year and the system regularly inaugurated. Travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on
these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can
not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's
lifetime.
The Excursion is ended, and has passed to its place among the things that
were. But its varied scenes and its manifold incidents will linger
pleasantly in our memories for many a year to come. Always on the wing,
as we were, and merely pausing a moment to catch fitful glimpses of the
wonders of half a world, we could not hope to receive or retain vivid
impressions of all it was our fortune to see. Yet our holyday flight has
not been in vain--for above the confusion of vague recollections, certain
of its best prized pictures lift themselves and will still continue
perfect in tint and outline after their surroundings shall have faded
away.
We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of
Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again,
we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw
majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset
and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again,
and her stately Cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires.
And Padua--Verona--Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat
on her stagnant flood--silent, desolate, haughty--scornful of her humbled
state--wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and
triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.
We can not forget Florence--Naples--nor the foretaste of heaven that is
in the delicious atmosphere of Greece--and surely not Athens and the
broken temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome--nor the
green plain that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness
with her gray decay--nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain
and clothe their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall
remember St. Peter's: not as one sees it when he walks the streets of
Rome and fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues
away, when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome
looms superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace,
strongly outlined as a mountain.
We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus--the colossal
magnificence of Baalbec--the Pyramids of Egypt--the prodigious form, the
benignant countenance of the Sphynx--Oriental Smyrna--sacred Jerusalem
--Damascus, the "Pearl of the East," the pride of Syria, the fabled Garden
of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights, the oldest
metropolis on earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name
and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires
of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of
pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten!
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Innocents Abroad
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
A BURLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Mark Twain
Contents:
Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Auto-Biography
First Romance.
1871
BURLESQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would
write an autobiography they would read it, when they got leisure, I yield
at last to this frenzied public demand, and herewith tender my history:
Ours is a noble old house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.
The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the
family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when
our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is
that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when
one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert
foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever
felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we
leave it alone. All the old families do that way.
Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note a solicitor on the highway
in William Rufus' time. At about the age of thirty he went to one of
those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see about
something, and never returned again. While there he died suddenly.
Augustus Twain, seems to have made something of a stir about the year
1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old
sabre and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,
and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was a
born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first time
he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one
end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it
could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any
situation so much or stuck to it so long.
Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession of
soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle
singing; right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right
ahead of it.
This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that our
family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at
right angles, and bore fruit winter, and summer.
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OUR FAMILY TREE
Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called "the Scholar."
He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's
hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to
see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and by he took a
contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled
his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone
business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years.
In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years he gave such
satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week till
government gave him another. He was a perfect pet. And he was always a
favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member of their
benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang. He always wore his
hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died lamented by
the government. He was a sore loss to his country. For he was so
regular.
Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came over
to this country with Columbus in 1492, as a passenger. He appears to
have been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of the
food all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless
there was a change. He wanted fresh shad. Hardly a day passed over his
head that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air,
sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus knew
where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorable cry
of "Land ho!" thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed a while
through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the distant
water, and then said: "Land be hanged,--it's a raft!"
When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought
nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked
"B. G.," one cotton sock marked "L. W. C." one woollen one marked "D. F."
and a night-shirt marked "O. M. R." And yet during the voyage he worried
more about his "trunk," and gave himself more airs about it, than all
the rest of the passengers put together.
If the ship was "down by the head," and would got steer, he would go and
move his "trunk" farther aft, and then watch the effect. If the
ship was "by the stern," he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men
to "shift that baggage." In storms he had to be gagged, because his
wailings about his "trunk" made it impossible for the men to hear the
orders. The man does not appear to have been openly charged with any
gravely unbecoming thing, but it is noted in the ship's log as a "curious
circumstance" that albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a
newspaper, he took it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a
couple of champagne baskets. But when he came back insinuating in an
insolent, swaggering way, that some of his things were missing, and was
going to search the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they
threw him overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to come
up, but not even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. But while
every one was most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was
momentarily increasing, it was observed with consternation that the
vessel was adrift and the anchor cable hanging limp from the bow. Then
in the ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note:
"In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde
gonne downe and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to
ye dam sauvages from ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it,
ye sonne of a ghun!"
Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride that
we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who ever
interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our Indians.
He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to his dying day he
claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more restraining and
elevating influence on the Indians than any other reformer that ever,
labored among them. At this point the chronicle becomes less frank and
chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the old voyager went to see
his gallows perform on the first white man ever hanged in America, and
while there received injuries which terminated in his death.
The great grandson of the "Reformer" flourished in sixteen hundred and
something, and was known in our annals as, "the old Admiral," though in
history he had other titles. He was long in command of fleets of swift
vessels, well armed and, manned, and did great service in hurrying up
merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always
made good fair time across the ocean. But if a ship still loitered in
spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could
contain himself no longer--and then he would take that ship home where he
lived and, keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it,
but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out
of the sailors of that ship by compelling, them to take invigorating
exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils
liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying
it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always
burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. At last
this fine old tar was cut down in the fulness of his years and honors.
And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if he had
been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been resuscitated.
Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth
century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. He converted
sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth
necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to
divine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and when
his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the
restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that he
was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of him.
PAH-GO-TO-WAH-WAH-PUKKETEKEEWIS (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye) TWAIN
adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided Gen. Braddock
with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was this
ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree.
So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is
correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth
round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being
reserved by the Great Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not
lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously
impairs the integrity of history. What he did say was:
"It ain't no (hic !) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' still
long enough for a man to hit him. I (hic !) I can't 'ford to fool away
any more am'nition on him!"
That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was, a good
plain matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself to
us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about it.
I always enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving
that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier a couple of
times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missed him,
jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was reserving that soldier
for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared that the only reason why
Washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is, that in his
the prophecy' came true, and in that of the others it didn't. There are
not books enough on earth to contain the record of the prophecies Indians
and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may carry in his
overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have been
fulfilled.
I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so
thoroughly well known in history by their aliases, that I have not felt
it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the
order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned RICHARD BRINSLEY
TWAIN, alias Guy Fawkes; JOHN WENTWORTH TWAIN, alias Sixteen-String Jack;
WILLIAM HOGARTH TWAIN, alias Jack Sheppard; ANANIAS TWAIN, alias Baron
Munchausen; JOHN GEORGE TWAIN, alias Capt. Kydd; and them there are
George Francis Train, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar and Baalam's Ass--they
all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat distantly
removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral branch,
whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in order to
acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for, they have
got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.
It is not well; when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry
down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of
your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I now
do.
I was born without teeth--and there Richard III had the advantage of me;
but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the
advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously
honest.
But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame
contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave
it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read
had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have
been a felicitous thing, for the reading public. How does it strike you?
AWFUL, TERRIBLE
MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
CHAPTER I
THE SECRET REVEALED.
It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of
Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the
tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret
council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in
a chair of state meditating. Presently he, said, with a tender
accent:
"My daughter!"
A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail,
answered:
"Speak, father!"
"My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath
puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the
matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of
Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were
born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a son
were born to me. And further, in case no son, were born to either, but
only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich's daughter,
if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed,
if she retained a blameless name. And so I, and my old wife here, prayed
fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain. You were
born to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize slipping from my
grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had been so hopeful!
Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no
heir of either sex.
"'But hold,' I said, 'all is not lost.' A saving scheme had shot athwart
my brain. You were born at midnight. Only the leech, the nurse, and six
waiting-women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour had
sped. Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the
proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty
Brandenburgh! And well the secret has been kept. Your mother's own
sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing.
"When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich. We grieved,
but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural
enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she throve
--Heaven's malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe. For,
Ha-ha! have we not a son? And is not our son the future Duke? Our
well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?--for, woman of eight-and-twenty years
--as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you!
"Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother,
and he waxes feeble. The cares of state do tax him sore. Therefore he
wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke--in act, though not
yet in name. Your servitors are ready--you journey forth to-night.
"Now listen well. Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as
Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal
chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people,
SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your
judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the
throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that
your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to
make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life."
"Oh; my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie! Was it that I
might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights? Spare me, father,
spare your child!"
"What, huzzy! Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has
wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of
thine but ill accords with my humor.
"Betake thee to the Duke, instantly! And beware how thou meddlest with my
purpose!"
Let this suffice, of the conversation. It is enough for us to know that
the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl
availed nothing. They nor anything could move the stout old lord of
Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the
castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the
darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed, vassals and a brave
following of servants.
The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter's departure,
and then he turned to his sad wife and said:
"Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is full three months since I
sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my
brother's daughter Constance. If he fail, we are not wholly safe; but if
he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though
ill-fortune should decree she never should be Duke!"
"My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well."
"Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of
Brandenburgh and grandeur!"
CHAPTER II.
FESTIVITY AND TEARS
Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the
brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with
military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes;
for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke's, heart
was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing
had won his love at once. The great halls of the palace were thronged
with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did all
things seem, that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and giving
place to a comforting contentment.
But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature
was, transpiring. By a window stood the Duke's only child, the Lady
Constance. Her eyes were red and swollen, and full of tears. She was
alone. Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud:
"The villain Detzin is gone--has fled the dukedom! I could not believe
it at first, but alas! it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to
love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him.
I loved him--but now I hate him! With all, my soul I hate him! Oh, what
is to become of me! I am lost, lost, lost! I shall go mad!"
CHAPTER III.
THE PLOT THICKENS.
Few months drifted by. All men published the praises of the young
Conrad's government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the
mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself
in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands,
and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir
delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier.
It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men
as Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy. But strange enough,
he was not. For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun
to love him! The love of, the rest of the world was happy fortune for
him, but this was freighted with danger! And he saw, moreover, that the
delighted Duke had discovered his daughter's passion likewise, and was
already dreaming of a marriage. Every day somewhat of the deep sadness
that had been in the princess' face faded away; every day hope and
animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles
visited the face that had been so troubled.
Conrad was appalled. He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to
the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own
sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace--when he was sorrowful
and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He now
began to avoid, his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for,
naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in
his way. He marveled at this at first; and next it startled him. The
girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and
in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly
anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere.
This could not go on forever. All the world was talking about it. The
Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very
ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a
private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted
him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed:
"Oh, why, do you avoid me? What have I done--what have I said, to lose
your kind opinion of me--for, surely I had it once? Conrad, do not
despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot--cannot hold the words
unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise
me if you must, but they would be uttered!"
Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then,
misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she
flung her arms about his neck and said:
"You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you
will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'"
Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and
he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor
girl from him, and cried:
"You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!" And then
he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement.
A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was
crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both save ruin
staring them in the face.
By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying:
"To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought
it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! He spurned me--did this
man--he spurned me from him like a dog!"
CHAPTER IV
THE AWFUL REVELATION.
Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance
of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more
now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad's
color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and
he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom.
Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew
louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold-of it. It
swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said:
"The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!"
When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice
around his head and shouted:
"Long live. Duke Conrad!--for lo, his crown is sure, from this day
forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall
be rewarded!"
And he spread, the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no
soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to
celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein's
expense.
CHAPTER V.
THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE.
The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh
were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was
left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit.
Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier's chair, and on
either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly
commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor,
and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered.
Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the
misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did not
avail.
The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast.
The gladdest was in his father's. For, unknown to his daughter "Conrad,"
the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles,
triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house.
After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries
had followed, the venerable Lord Chief justice said:
"Prisoner, stand forth!"
The unhappy princess rose and stood unveiled before the vast multitude.
The Lord Chief Justice continued:
"Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been
charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth
unto a child; and by our ancient law the penalty is death, excepting in
one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord
Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give
heed."
Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same moment
the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed
prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak,
but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly:
"Not there, your Grace, not there! It is not lawful to pronounce
judgment upon any of the ducal line SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!"
A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron
frame of his old father likewise. CONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED--dared he
profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must
be done. Wondering eyes were already upon him. They would be suspicious
eyes if he hesitated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he
stretched forth the sceptre again, and said:
"Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of
Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me.
Give heed to my words. By the ancient law of the land, except you
produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner,
you must surely die. Embrace this opportunity--save yourself while yet
you may. Name the father of your child!"
A solemn hush fell upon the great court--a silence so profound that men
could hear their own hearts beat. Then the princess slowly turned, with
eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad,
said:
"Thou art the man!"
An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill to
Conrad's heart like the chill of death itself. What power on earth could
save him! To disprove the charge, he must reveal that he was a woman;
and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death! At one
and the same moment, he and his grim old father swooned and fell to, the
ground.
[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in
this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.]
The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly
close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her)
out of it again--and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole
business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers--or
else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten
out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.
[If Harper's Weekly or the New York Tribune desire to copy these initial
chapters into the, reading columns of their valuable journals, just as
they do the opening chapters of Ledger and New York Weekly novels, they
are at liberty to do so at the usual rates, provided they "trust."]
MARK TWAIN
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Burlesque Autobiography
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
ROUGHING IT
by Mark Twain
1880
TO
CALVIN H. HIGBIE,
Of California,
an Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend.
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
By the Author,
In Memory of the Curious Time
When We Two
WERE MILLIONAIRES FOR TEN DAYS.
ROUGHING IT
BY
MARK TWAIN.
(SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.)
PREFATORY.
This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history
or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of
variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting
reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad
him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information
concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about
which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in
person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude
to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada
-a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind,
that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely
to occur in it.
Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the
book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped:
information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar
of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would
give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk
up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore,
I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not
justification.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
My Brother appointed Secretary of Nevada--I Envy His Prospective
Adventures--Am Appointed Private Secretary Under Him--My Contentment
Complete--Packed in One Hour--Dreams and Visions--On the Missouri River
--A Bully Boat
CHAPTER II.
Arrive at St. Joseph--Only Twenty-five Pounds Baggage Allowed--Farewell
to Kid Gloves and Dress Coats--Armed to the Teeth--The "Allen"--A
Cheerful Weapon--Persuaded to Buy a Mule--Schedule of Luxuries--We Leave
the "States"--"Our Coach"--Mails for the Indians--Between a Wink and an
Earthquake--A Modern Sphynx and How She Entertained Us--A Sociable Heifer
CHAPTER III.
"The Thoroughbrace is Broke"--Mails Delivered Properly--Sleeping Under
Difficulties--A Jackass Rabbit Meditating, and on Business--A Modern
Gulliver--Sage-brush--Overcoats as an Article of Diet--Sad Fate of a
Camel--Warning to Experimenters
CHAPTER IV.
Making Our Bed--Assaults by the Unabridged--At a Station--Our Driver a
Great and Shining Dignitary--Strange Place for a Frontyard
--Accommodations--Double Portraits--An Heirloom--Our Worthy Landlord
--"Fixings and Things"--An Exile--Slumgullion--A Well Furnished Table--The
Landlord Astonished--Table Etiquette--Wild Mexican Mules--Stage-coaching
and Railroading
CHAPTER V.
New Acquaintances--The Cayote--A Dog's Experiences--A Disgusted Dog--The
Relatives of the Cayote--Meals Taken Away from Home
CHAPTER VI.
The Division Superintendent--The Conductor--The Driver--One Hundred and
Fifty Miles' Drive Without Sleep--Teaching a Subordinate--Our Old Friend
Jack and a Pilgrim--Ben Holliday Compared to Moses
CHAPTER VII.
Overland City--Crossing the Platte--Bemis's Buffalo Hunt--Assault by a
Buffalo--Bemis's Horse Goes Crazy--An Impromptu Circus--A New Departure
--Bemis Finds Refuge in a Tree--Escapes Finally by a Wonderful Method
CHAPTER VIII.
The Pony Express--Fifty Miles Without Stopping--"Here he Comes"--Alkali
Water--Riding an Avalanche--Indian Massacre
CHAPTER IX.
Among the Indians--An Unfair Advantage--Laying on our Arms--A Midnight
Murder--Wrath of Outlaws--A Dangerous, yet Valuable Citizen
CHAPTER X.
History of Slade--A Proposed Fist-fight--Encounter with Jules--Paradise
of Outlaws--Slade as Superintendent--As Executioner--A Doomed Whisky
Seller--A Prisoner--A Wife's Bravery--An Ancient Enemy Captured--Enjoying
a Luxury--Hob-nobbing with Slade--Too Polite--A Happy Escape
CHAPTER XI.
Slade in Montana--"On a Spree"--In Court--Attack on a Judge--Arrest by
the Vigilantes--Turn out of the Miners--Execution of Slade--Lamentations
of His Wife--Was Slade a Coward?
CHAPTER XII.
A Mormon Emigrant Train--The Heart of the Rocky Mountains--Pure
Saleratus--A Natural Ice-House--An Entire Inhabitant--In Sight of
"Eternal Snow"--The South Pass--The Parting Streams--An Unreliable Letter
Carrier--Meeting of Old Friends--A Spoiled Watermelon--Down the
Mountain--A Scene of Desolation--Lost in the Dark--Unnecessary Advice
--U.S. Troops and Indians--Sublime Spectacle--Another Delusion Dispelled
--Among the Angels
CHAPTER XIII.
Mormons and Gentiles--Exhilarating Drink, and its Effect on Bemis--Salt
Lake City--A Great Contrast--A Mormon Vagrant--Talk with a Saint--A Visit
to the "King"--A Happy Simile
CHAPTER XIV.
Mormon Contractors--How Mr. Street Astonished Them--The Case Before
Brigham Young, and How he Disposed of it--Polygamy Viewed from a New
Position
CHAPTER XV.
A Gentile Den--Polygamy Discussed--Favorite Wife and D. 4--Hennery for
Retired Wives--Children Need Marking--Cost of a Gift to No. 6
--A Penny-whistle Gift and its Effects--Fathering the Foundlings
--It Resembled Him--The Family Bedstead
CHAPTER XVI
The Mormon Bible--Proofs of its Divinity--Plagiarism of its Authors
--Story of Nephi--Wonderful Battle--Kilkenny Cats Outdone
CHAPTER XVII.
Three Sides to all Questions--Everything "A Quarter"--Shriveled Up
--Emigrants and White Shirts at a Discount--"Forty-Niners"--Above Par--Real
Happiness
CHAPTER XVIII.
Alkali Desert--Romance of Crossing Dispelled--Alkali Dust--Effect on the
Mules--Universal Thanksgiving
CHAPTER XIX.
The Digger Indians Compared with the Bushmen of Africa--Food, Life and
Characteristics--Cowardly Attack on a Stage Coach--A Brave Driver--The
Noble Red Man
CHAPTER XX.
The Great American Desert--Forty Miles on Bones--Lakes Without Outlets
--Greely's Remarkable Ride--Hank Monk, the Renowned Driver--Fatal Effects
of "Corking" a Story--Bald-Headed Anecdote
CHAPTER XXI.
Alkali Dust--Desolation and Contemplation--Carson City--Our Journey
Ended--We are Introduced to Several Citizens--A Strange Rebuke--A Washoe
Zephyr at Play--Its Office Hours--Governor's Palace--Government Offices
--Our French Landlady Bridget O'Flannigan--Shadow Secrets--Cause for a
Disturbance at Once--The Irish Brigade--Mrs. O'Flannigan's Boarders--The
Surveying Expedition--Escape of the Tarantulas
CHAPTER XXII.
The Son of a Nabob--Start for Lake Tahoe--Splendor of the Views--Trip on
the Lake--Camping Out--Reinvigorating Climate--Clearing a Tract of Land
--Securing a Title--Outhouse and Fences
CHAPTER XXIII.
A Happy Life--Lake Tahoe and its Moods--Transparency of the Waters--A
Catastrophe--Fire! Fire!--A Magnificent Spectacle--Homeless Again--We
take to the Lake--A Storm--Return to Carson
CHAPTER XXIV.
Resolve to Buy a Horse--Horsemanship in Carson--A Temptation--Advice
Given Me Freely--I Buy the Mexican Plug--My First Ride--A Good Bucker--I
Loan the Plug--Experience of Borrowers--Attempts to Sell--Expense of the
Experiment--A Stranger Taken In
CHAPTER XXV.
The Mormons in Nevada--How to Persuade a Loan from Them--Early History of
the Territory--Silver Mines Discovered--The New Territorial Government--A
Foreign One and a Poor One--Its Funny Struggles for Existence--No Credit,
no Cash--Old Abe Currey Sustains it and its Officers--Instructions and
Vouchers--An Indian's Endorsement--Toll-Gates
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Silver Fever--State of the Market--Silver Bricks--Tales Told--Off for
the Humboldt Mines
CHAPTER XXVII.
Our manner of going--Incidents of the Trip--A Warm but Too Familiar a
Bedfellow--Mr. Ballou Objects--Sunshine amid Clouds--Safely Arrived
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Arrive at the Mountains--Building Our Cabin--My First Prospecting Tour
--My First Gold Mine--Pockets Filled With Treasures--Filtering the News to
My Companions--The Bubble Pricked--All Not Gold That Glitters
CHAPTER XXIX.
Out Prospecting--A Silver Mine At Last--Making a Fortune With Sledge and
Drill--A Hard Road to Travel--We Own in Claims--A Rocky Country
CHAPTER XXX.
Disinterested Friends--How "Feet" Were Sold--We Quit Tunnelling--A Trip
to Esmeralda--My Companions--An Indian Prophesy--A Flood--Our Quarters
During It
CHAPTER XXXI.
The Guests at "Honey Lake Smith's"--"Bully Old Arkansas"--"Our Landlord"
--Determined to Fight--The Landlord's Wife--The Bully Conquered by Her
--Another Start--Crossing the Carson--A Narrow Escape--Following Our Own
Track--A New Guide--Lost in the Snow
CHAPTER XXXII.
Desperate Situation--Attempts to Make a Fire--Our Horses leave us--We
Find Matches--One, Two, Three and the Last--No Fire--Death Seems
Inevitable--We Mourn Over Our Evil Lives--Discarded Vices--We Forgive
Each Other--An Affectionate Farewell--The Sleep of Oblivion
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Return of Consciousness--Ridiculous Developments--A Station House--Bitter
Feelings--Fruits of Repentance--Resurrected Vices
CHAPTER XXXIV.
About Carson--General Buncombe--Hyde vs. Morgan--How Hyde Lost His Ranch
--The Great Landslide Case--The Trial--General Buncombe in Court--A
Wonderful Decision--A Serious Afterthought
CHAPTER XXXV.
A New Travelling Companion--All Full and No Accommodations--How Captain
Nye found Room--and Caused Our Leaving to be Lamented--The Uses of
Tunnelling--A Notable Example--We Go into the "Claim" Business and Fail
--At the Bottom
CHAPTER XXXVI.
A Quartz Mill--Amalgamation--"Screening Tailings"--First Quartz Mill in
Nevada--Fire Assay--A Smart Assayer--I stake for an advance
CHAPTER XXXVII.
The Whiteman Cement Mine--Story of its Discovery--A Secret Expedition--A
Nocturnal Adventure--A Distressing Position--A Failure and a Week's
Holiday
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Mono Lake--Shampooing Made Easy--Thoughtless Act of Our Dog and the
Results--Lye Water--Curiosities of the Lake--Free Hotel--Some Funny
Incidents a Little Overdrawn
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Visit to the Islands in Lake Mono--Ashes and Desolation--Life Amid Death
Our Boat Adrift--A Jump For Life--A Storm On the Lake--A Mass of Soap
Suds--Geological Curiosities--A Week On the Sierras--A Narrow Escape From
a Funny Explosion--"Stove Heap Gone"
CHAPTER XL.
The "Wide West" Mine--It is "Interviewed" by Higbie--A Blind Lead--Worth
a Million--We are Rich At Last--Plans for the Future
CHAPTER XLI.
A Rheumatic Patient--Day Dreams--An Unfortunate Stumble--I Leave
Suddenly--Another Patient--Higbie in the Cabin--Our Balloon Bursted
--Worth Nothing--Regrets and Explanations--Our Third Partner
CHAPTER XLII.
What to do Next?--Obstacles I Had Met With--"Jack of All Trades"--Mining
Again--Target Shooting--I Turn City Editor--I Succeed Finely
CHAPTER XLIII.
My Friend Boggs--The School Report--Boggs Pays Me An Old Debt--Virginia
City
CHAPTER XLIV.
Flush Times--Plenty of Stock--Editorial Puffing--Stocks Given Me--Salting
Mines--A Tragedian In a New Role
CHAPTER XLV.
Flush Times Continue--Sanitary Commission Fund--Wild Enthusiasm of the
People--Would not wait to Contribute--The Sanitary Flour Sack--It is
Carried to Gold Hill and Dayton--Final Reception in Virginia--Results of
the Sale--A Grand Total
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Nabobs of Those Days--John Smith as a Traveler--Sudden Wealth--A
Sixty-Thousand-Dollar Horse--A Smart Telegraph Operator--A Nabob in New
York City--Charters an Omnibus--"Walk in, It's All Free"--"You Can't Pay
a Cent"--"Hold On, Driver, I Weaken"--Sociability of New Yorkers
CHAPTER XLVII.
Buck Fanshaw's Death--The Cause Thereof--Preparations for His Burial
--Scotty Briggs the Committee Man--He Visits the Minister--Scotty Can't
Play His Hand--The Minister Gets Mixed--Both Begin to See--"All Down
Again But Nine"--Buck Fanshaw as a Citizen--How To "Shook Your Mother"
--The Funeral--Scotty Briggs as a Sunday School Teacher
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The First Twenty-Six Graves in Nevada--The Prominent Men of the County
--The Man Who Had Killed His Dozen--Trial by Jury--Specimen Jurors--A
Private Grave Yard--The Desperadoes--Who They Killed--Waking up the Weary
Passenger--Satisfaction Without Fighting
CHAPTER XLIX.
Fatal Shooting Affray--Robbery and Desperate Affray--A Specimen City
Official--A Marked Man--A Street Fight--Punishment of Crime
CHAPTER L.
Captain Ned Blakely--Bill Nookes Receives Desired Information--Killing of
Blakely's Mate--A Walking Battery--Blakely Secures Nookes--Hang First and
Be Tried Afterwards--Captain Blakely as a Chaplain--The First Chapter of
Genesis Read at a Hanging--Nookes Hung--Blakely's Regrets
CHAPTER LI.
The Weekly Occidental--A Ready Editor--A Novel--A Concentration of
Talent--The Heroes and the Heroines--The Dissolute Author Engaged
--Extraordinary Havoc With the Novel--A Highly Romantic Chapter--The Lovers
Separated--Jonah Out-done--A Lost Poem--The Aged Pilot Man--Storm On the
Erie Canal--Dollinger the Pilot Man--Terrific Gale--Danger Increases--A
Crisis Arrived--Saved as if by a Miracle
CHAPTER LII.
Freights to California--Silver Bricks--Under Ground Mines--Timber
Supports--A Visit to the Mines--The Caved Mines--Total of Shipments in
1863
CHAPTER LIII.
Jim Blaine and his Grandfather's Ram--Filkin's Mistake--Old Miss Wagner
and her Glass Eye--Jacobs, the Coffin Dealer--Waiting for a Customer--His
Bargain With Old Robbins--Robbins Sues for Damage and Collects--A New Use
for Missionaries--The Effect--His Uncle Lem. and the Use Providence Made
of Him--Sad Fate of Wheeler--Devotion of His Wife--A Model Monument--What
About the Ram?
CHAPTER LIV.
Chinese in Virginia City--Washing Bills--Habit of Imitation--Chinese
Immigration--A Visit to Chinatown--Messrs. Ah Sing, Hong Wo, See Yup, &c.
CHAPTER LV.
Tired of Virginia City--An Old Schoolmate--A Two Years' Loan--Acting as
an Editor--Almost Receive an Offer--An Accident--Three Drunken Anecdotes
--Last Look at Mt. Davidson--A Beautiful Incident
CHAPTER LVI.
Off for San Francisco--Western and Eastern Landscapes--The Hottest place
on Earth--Summer and Winter
CHAPTER LVII.
California--Novelty of Seeing a Woman--"Well if it ain't a Child!"--One
Hundred and Fifty Dollars for a Kiss--Waiting for a turn
CHAPTER LVIII.
Life in San Francisco--Worthless Stocks--My First Earthquake--Reportorial
Instincts--Effects of the Shocks--Incidents and Curiosities--Sabbath
Breakers--The Lodger and the Chambermaid--A Sensible Fashion to Follow
--Effects of the Earthquake on the Ministers
CHAPTER LIX.
Poor Again--Slinking as a Business--A Model Collector--Misery loves
Company--Comparing Notes for Comfort--A Streak of Luck--Finding a Dime
--Wealthy by Comparison--Two Sumptuous Dinners
CHAPTER LX.
An Old Friend--An Educated Miner--Pocket Mining--Freaks of Fortune
CHAPTER LXI.
Dick Baker and his Cat--Tom Quartz's Peculiarities--On an Excursion
--Appearance On His Return--A Prejudiced Cat--Empty Pockets and a Roving
Life
CHAPTER LXII.
Bound for the Sandwich Islands--The Three Captains--The Old Admiral--His
Daily Habits--His Well Fought Fields--An Unexpected Opponent--The Admiral
Overpowered--The Victor Declared a Hero
CHAPTER LXIII.
Arrival at the Islands--Honolulu--What I Saw There--Dress and Habits of
the Inhabitants--The Animal Kingdom--Fruits and Delightful Effects
CHAPTER LXIV.
An Excursion--Captain Phillips and his Turn-Out--A Horseback Ride--A
Vicious Animal--Nature and Art--Interesting Ruins--All Praise to the
Missionaries
CHAPTER LXV.
Interesting Mementoes and Relics--An Old Legend of a Frightful Leap--An
Appreciative Horse--Horse Jockeys and Their Brothers--A New Trick--A Hay
Merchant--Good Country for Horse Lovers
CHAPTER LXVI.
A Saturday Afternoon--Sandwich Island Girls on a Frolic--The Poi
Merchant--Grand Gala Day--A Native Dance--Church Membership--Cats and
Officials--An Overwhelming Discovery
CHAPTER LXVII.
The Legislature of the Island--What Its President Has Seen--Praying for
an Enemy--Women's Rights--Romantic Fashions--Worship of the Shark--Desire
for Dress--Full Dress--Not Paris Style--Playing Empire--Officials and
Foreign Ambassadors--Overwhelming Magnificence
CHAPTER LXVIII.
A Royal Funeral--Order of Procession--Pomp and Ceremony--A Striking
Contrast--A Sick Monarch--Human Sacrifices at His Death--Burial Orgies
CHAPTER LXIX.
"Once more upon the Waters."--A Noisy Passenger--Several Silent Ones--A
Moonlight Scene--Fruits and Plantations
CHAPTER LXX.
A Droll Character--Mrs. Beazely and Her Son--Meditations on Turnips--A
Letter from Horace Greeley--An Indignant Rejoinder--The Letter Translated
but too Late
CHAPTER LXXI.
Kealakekua Bay--Death of Captain Cook--His Monument--Its Construction--On
Board the Schooner
CHAPTER LXXII.
Young Kanakas in New England--A Temple Built by Ghosts--Female Bathers--I
Stood Guard--Women and Whiskey--A Fight for Religion--Arrival of
Missionaries
CHAPTER LXXIII.
Native Canoes--Surf Bathing--A Sanctuary--How Built--The Queen's Rock
--Curiosities--Petrified Lava
CHAPTER LXXIV.
Visit to the Volcano--The Crater--Pillar of Fire--Magnificent Spectacle
--A Lake of Fire
CHAPTER LXXV.
The North Lake--Fountains of Fire--Streams of Burning Lava--Tidal Waves
CHAPTER LXXVI.
A Reminiscence--Another Horse Story--My Ride with the Retired Milk Horse
--A Picnicing Excursion--Dead Volcano of Holeakala--Comparison with
Vesuvius--An Inside View
CHAPTER LXXVII.
A Curious Character--A Series of Stories--Sad Fate of a Liar--Evidence of
Insanity
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
Return to San Francisco--Ship Amusements--Preparing for Lecturing
--Valuable Assistance Secured--My First Attempt--The Audience Carried
--"All's Well that Ends Well."
CHAPTER LXXIX.
Highwaymen--A Predicament--A Huge Joke--Farewell to California--At Home
Again--Great Changes. Moral.
APPENDIX.
A.--Brief Sketch of Mormon History
B.--The Mountain Meadows Massacre
C.--Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never Consummated
CHAPTER I.
My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory--an
office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and
dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting
Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars
a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an
air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I
envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor,
but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going to
make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to
travel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel" had a
seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of
miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of
the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and
antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or
scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all
about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver
mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and
pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and
silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and
return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and
the ocean, and "the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any consequence to
have seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered in contemplating
his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, when he offered me, in cold
blood, the sublime position of private secretary under him, it appeared
to me that the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was
rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My
contentment was complete.
At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much
packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage
from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a
small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those
fine times of ten or twelve years ago--not a single rail of it.
I only proposed to stay in Nevada three months--I had no thought of
staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and
strange, and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would
not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven
uncommonly long years!
I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due
time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a
steamboat bound up the Missouri River.
We were six days going from St. Louis to "St. Jo."--a trip that was so
dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on my
memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many
days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused
jumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked over with
one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and then
retired from and climbed over in some softer place; and of sand-bars
which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out our
crutches and sparred over.
In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for
she was walking most of the time, anyhow--climbing over reefs and
clambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The
captain said she was a "bully" boat, and all she wanted was more "shear"
and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the
deep sagacity not to say so.
CHAPTER II.
The first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph
was to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars
apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Nevada.
The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty breakfast, and
hurried to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itself
which we had not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannot
make a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of baggage
--because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could take
--twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a
selection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-five
pounds apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis
again. It was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats and
white kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, and
no stove-pipe hats nor patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessary
to make life calm and peaceful. We were reduced to a war-footing. Each
of us put on a rough, heavy suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and
"stogy" boots included; and into the valise we crowded a few white
shirts, some under-clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary,
took along about four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds of
Unabridged Dictionary; for we did not know--poor innocents--that such
things could be bought in San Francisco on one day and received in Carson
City the next. I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith &
Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill,
and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought
it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had
one fault--you could not hit anything with it. One of our "conductors"
practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and
behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about,
and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief. The Secretary
had a small-sized Colt's revolver strapped around him for protection
against the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried it
uncapped. Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis was
our fellow-traveler.
We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original
"Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a "pepper-box." Simply
drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger
came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn over,
and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball.
To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a feat
which was probably never done with an "Allen" in the world. But George's
was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage-drivers
afterward said, "If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch
something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed
against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to
the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with
a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a
cheerful weapon--the "Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off
at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about,
but behind it.
We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in
the mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest--we took none
along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two
large canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and we
also took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in
the way of breakfasts and dinners.
By eight o'clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side of
the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and we
bowled away and left "the States" behind us. It was a superb summer
morning, and all the landscape was brilliant with sunshine. There was a
freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation
from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feel
that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving,
had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along through Kansas,
and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly abroad on the
great Plains. Just here the land was rolling--a grand sweep of regular
elevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach--like the
stately heave and swell of the ocean's bosom after a storm. And
everywhere were cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this
limitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry ground
was to lose its "rolling" character and stretch away for seven hundred
miles as level as a floor!
Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous
description--an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsome
horses, and by the side of the driver sat the "conductor," the legitimate
captain of the craft; for it was his business to take charge and care of
the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We three were the
only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About all
the rest of the coach was full of mail bags--for we had three days'
delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall
of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great pile of it
strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were full.
We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver said--"a
little for Brigham, and Carson, and 'Frisco, but the heft of it for the
Injuns, which is powerful troublesome 'thout they get plenty of truck to
read." But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance
which was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, we
guessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that we
would unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and
leave it to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it.
We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over the
hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the
coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued.
After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles further on, and
we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and
conductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sit
there in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a
mosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand
till she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that
would have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the
corpse with tranquil satisfaction--for she never missed her mosquito; she
was a dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but left
them there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill
thirty or forty mosquitoes--watched her, and waited for her to say
something, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversation
myself. I said:
"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam."
"You bet!"
"What did I understand you to say, madam?"
"You BET!"
Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:
"Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did,
b'gosh. Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust'n muskeeters and
wonderin' what was ailin' ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I
thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin', and then by and by I begin to
reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn't think of nothing to
say. Wher'd ye come from?"
The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were
broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty
nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge
of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder
projecting above the tossing waste of dislocated grammar and decomposed
pronunciation!
How we suffered, suffered, suffered! She went on, hour after hour, till
I was sorry I ever opened the mosquito question and gave her a start.
She never did stop again until she got to her journey's end toward
daylight; and then she stirred us up as she was leaving the stage (for we
were nodding, by that time), and said:
"Now you git out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o'
days, and I'll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any good
by edgin' in a word now and then, I'm right thar. Folks'll tell you't
I've always ben kind o' offish and partic'lar for a gal that's raised in
the woods, and I am, with the rag-tag and bob-tail, and a gal has to be,
if she wants to be anything, but when people comes along which is my
equals, I reckon I'm a pretty sociable heifer after all."
We resolved not to "lay by at Cottonwood."
CHAPTER III.
About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothly
over the road--so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle,
lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and dulling our
consciousness--when something gave away under us! We were dimly aware of
it, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver and
conductor talking together outside, and rummaging for a lantern, and
swearing because they could not find it--but we had no interest in
whatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of those
people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our nest with
the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed to be an
examination going on, and then the driver's voice said:
"By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!"
This startled me broad awake--as an undefined sense of calamity is always
apt to do. I said to myself: "Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of a
horse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver's
voice. Leg, maybe--and yet how could he break his leg waltzing along
such a road as this? No, it can't be his leg. That is impossible,
unless he was reaching for the driver. Now, what can be the
thoroughbrace of a horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall not
air my ignorance in this crowd, anyway."
Just then the conductor's face appeared at a lifted curtain, and his
lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said:
"Gents, you'll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke."
We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless and
dreary. When I found that the thing they called a "thoroughbrace" was
the massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks itself
in, I said to the driver:
"I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can
remember. How did it happen?"
"Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days' mail
--that's how it happened," said he. "And right here is the very direction
which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put out for the
Injuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most uncommon lucky, becuz it's so
nation dark I should 'a' gone by unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace
hadn't broke."
I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though I
could not see his face, because he was bent down at work; and wishing him
a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the mail-sacks.
It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all out. When they
had mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put no
mail on top, and only half as much inside as there was before. The
conductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach just
half full of mail-bags from end to end. We objected loudly to this, for
it left us no seats. But the conductor was wiser than we, and said a bed
was better than seats, and moreover, this plan would protect his
thoroughbraces. We never wanted any seats after that. The lazy bed was
infinitely preferable. I had many an exciting day, subsequently, lying
on it reading the statutes and the dictionary, and wondering how the
characters would turn out.
The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station to
take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on.
It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs full length on
the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide wastes
of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an expectant
look in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a
tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking
gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most
exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering
of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi!
g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared
to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after
us with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the
pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome
city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one
complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had found it.
After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgotten, we three
climbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the conductor have our
bed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun made me drowsy, I lay down on
my face on top of the coach, grasping the slender iron railing, and slept
for an hour or more. That will give one an appreciable idea of those
matchless roads. Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast hold of
the railing when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and sways, no
grip is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit in their
places and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good roads, while
spinning along at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. I saw them do
it, often. There was no danger about it; a sleeping man will seize the
irons in time when the coach jolts. These men were hard worked, and it
was not possible for them to stay awake all the time.
By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue and Little
Sandy; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska. About a mile further
on, we came to the Big Sandy--one hundred and eighty miles from St.
Joseph.
As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal known
familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert--from Kansas
clear to the Pacific Ocean--as the "jackass rabbit." He is well named.
He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to
twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the
most preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a
jackass.
When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or
unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him
conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death,
and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can
see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out
straight and "streaking it" through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes
right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where
the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and
then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the
stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious.
Presently he comes down to a long, graceful "lope," and shortly he
mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will
sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him,
when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature
once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the
best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his
long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick
every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy
indifference that is enchanting.
Our party made this specimen "hump himself," as the conductor said. The
secretary started him with a shot from the Colt; I commenced spitting at
him with my weapon; and all in the same instant the old "Allen's" whole
broadside let go with a rattling crash, and it is not putting it too
strong to say that the rabbit was frantic! He dropped his ears, set up
his tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed which can only be
described as a flash and a vanish! Long after he was out of sight we
could hear him whiz.
I do not remember where we first came across "sage-brush," but as I have
been speaking of it I may as well describe it.
This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled and
venerable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two feet-high, with its
rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picture
the "sage-brush" exactly. Often, on lazy afternoons in the mountains, I
have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and entertained
myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were liliputian
birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its base were
liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdignag
waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him.
It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the
"sage-brush." Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint to
desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and "sage-tea"
made from it taste like the sage-tea which all boys are so well
acquainted with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows
right in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing
else in the vegetable world would try to grow, except "bunch-grass."
--["Bunch-grass" grows on the bleak mountain-sides of Nevada and
neighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for stock, even in the
dead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and exposes it;
notwithstanding its unpromising home, bunch-grass is a better and more
nutritious diet for cattle and horses than almost any other hay or grass
that is known--so stock-men say.]--The sage-bushes grow from three to
six or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the Far
West, clear to the borders of California. There is not a tree of any
kind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles--there is no vegetation at all
in a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its cousin the
"greasewood," which is so much like the sage-brush that the difference
amounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts would be
impossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as large as a
boy's wrist (and from that up to a man's arm), and its crooked branches
are half as large as its trunk--all good, sound, hard wood, very like
oak.
When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; and
in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a
foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush
chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing
coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently
no swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little
replenishing; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around
which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and
profoundly entertaining.
Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished
failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his
illegitimate child the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness
is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or
brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes
handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for
dinner. Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything will
relieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy.
In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of
my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a
critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of
getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as
an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet.
He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth,
and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while
opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had
never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then
he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve.
Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment
that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing
about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps
and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then my
newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that
--manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on
dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those
documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he
would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth; it
was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good
courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements
that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and
gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about
a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's work-bench,
and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the
manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had
choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact
that I ever laid before a trusting public.
I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occasionally one
finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch and
foliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usual
height.
CHAPTER IV.
As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation
for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty
canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and
redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible.
And we did improve it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved
and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea. Next we
hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where they had
settled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons
and heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had been swinging
all day, and clothed ourselves in them--for, there being no ladies either
at the stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot, we had looked
to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine o'clock in the
morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy Dictionary
where it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed the water-canteens
and pistols where we could find them in the dark. Then we smoked a final
pipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we put the pipes, tobacco
and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the mail-bags, and then
fastened down the coach curtains all around, and made the place as "dark
as the inside of a cow," as the conductor phrased it in his picturesque
way. It was certainly as dark as any place could be--nothing was even
dimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled ourselves up like
silk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and sank peacefully to sleep.
Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try to
recollect where we were--and succeed--and in a minute or two the stage
would be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country, now,
threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks
on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the
other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down
in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture,
and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads.
And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of
mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust rose
from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us
would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbow
out of my ribs!--can't you quit crowding?"
Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the
Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged
somebody. One trip it "barked" the Secretary's elbow; the next trip it
hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis's nose up till he
could look down his nostrils--he said. The pistols and coin soon settled
to the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clattered
and floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us,
and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and water
down our backs.
Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore
gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible through
the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with
satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was
necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled
off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly in
time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his
bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low
hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter
of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp commands, awoke to a
louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the station at
our smartest speed. It was fascinating--that old overland stagecoaching.
We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reins
out on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavy
buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity--taking
not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquires after his health,
and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of
service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers and
hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh
team out of the stables--for in the eyes of the stage-driver of that day,
station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures,
useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kind
of beings which a person of distinction could afford to concern himself
with; while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and the
hostler, the stage-driver was a hero--a great and shining dignitary, the
world's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of the
nations. When they spoke to him they received his insolent silence
meekly, and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man;
when he opened his lips they all hung on his words with admiration (he
never honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed it
with a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surrounding
country and the human underlings); when he discharged a facetious
insulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day;
when he uttered his one jest--old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless,
and inflicted on the same audience, in the same language, every time his
coach drove up there--the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and
swore it was the best thing they'd ever heard in all their lives. And
how they would fly around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the
same, or a light for his pipe!--but they would instantly insult a
passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands.
They could do that sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied it
from--for, let it be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little
less contempt for his passengers than he had for his hostlers.
The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful conductor of
the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, but
the driver was the only being they bowed down to and worshipped. How
admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he gloved
himself with lingering deliberation, while some happy hostler held the
bunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it! And how
they would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his
long whip and went careering away.
The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sundried, mud-colored
bricks, laid up without mortar (adobes, the Spaniards call these bricks,
and Americans shorten it to 'dobies). The roofs, which had no slant to
them worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with a
thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weeds
and grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a man's front yard on
top of his house. The building consisted of barns, stable-room for
twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating-room for passengers.
This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a hostler or two.
You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and you had to bend in order to
get in at the door. In place of a window there was a square hole about
large enough for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it.
There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard. There was no
stove, but the fire-place served all needful purposes. There were no
shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an open sack of
flour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black and venerable
tin coffee-pots, a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon.
By the door of the station-keeper's den, outside, was a tin wash-basin,
on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of yellow bar
soap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt, significantly
--but this latter was the station-keeper's private towel, and only two
persons in all the party might venture to use it--the stage-driver and
the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of decency; the former
would not, because did not choose to encourage the advances of a
station-keeper. We had towels--in the valise; they might as well have
been in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used our
handkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door,
inside, was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass frame, with two
little fragments of the original mirror lodged down in one corner of it.
This arrangement afforded a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you when
you looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple of inches
above the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a
string--but if I had to describe that patriarch or die, I believe I would
order some sample coffins.
It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair
ever since--along with certain impurities. In one corner of the room
stood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches
of ammunition. The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven
stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ample
additions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rode
horseback--so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and
unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of high
boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whose
little iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore a
huge beard and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no
suspenders, no vest, no coat--in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great
long "navy" revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and
projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie-knife. The furniture of
the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The rocking-chairs and
sofas were not present, and never had been, but they were represented by
two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet long, and two empty
candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the
table-cloth and napkins had not come--and they were not looking for them,
either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup,
were at each man's place, and the driver had a queens-ware saucer that
had seen better days. Of course this duke sat at the head of the table.
There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it a
touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the caster. It was
German silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so preposterously out
of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among
barbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect even
in its degradation.
There was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked,
broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozen
preserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had invested
there.
The station-keeper upended a disk of last week's bread, of the shape and
size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were as
good as Nicholson pavement, and tenderer.
He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced old
hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the
United States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage
company had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and
employees. We may have found this condemned army bacon further out on
the plains than the section I am locating it in, but we found it--there
is no gainsaying that.
Then he poured for us a beverage which he called "Slum gullion," and it
is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really
pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old
bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler.
He had no sugar and no milk--not even a spoon to stir the ingredients
with.
We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the "slumgullion." And
when I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the anecdote
(a very, very old one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down to
a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of mustard. He
asked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said:
"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel
enough there for six."
"But I don't like mackerel."
"Oh--then help yourself to the mustard."
In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but
there was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor
out of it.
Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.
I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed. The
station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last,
when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with
himself upon a matter too vast to grasp:
"Coffee! Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm d---d!"
We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers and
herdsmen--we all sat at the same board. At least there was no
conversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, from
one employee to another. It was always in the same form, and always
gruffly friendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, at
first, and interested me; but it presently grew monotonous, and lost its
charm. It was:
"Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!" No, I forget--skunk was not the
word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in
fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no
matter--probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark
in my memory which tells me where I first encountered the vigorous new
vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains.
We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to our
mail-bag bed in the coach, and found comfort in our pipes. Right here we
suffered the first diminution of our princely state. We left our six
fine horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wild
Mexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and
hold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at
last he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly away
from the mules' heads and the coach shot from the station as if it had
issued from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper! It was a
fierce and furious gallop--and the gait never altered for a moment till
we reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection of
little station-huts and stables.
So we flew along all day. At 2 P.M. the belt of timber that fringes the
North Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of the
Plains came in sight. At 4 P.M. we crossed a branch of the river, and
at 5 P.M. we crossed the Platte itself, and landed at Fort Kearney,
fifty-six hours out from St. Joe--THREE HUNDRED MILES!
Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years
ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected to
live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the
railroad is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons and
contrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York Times,
of a recent trip over almost the very ground I have been describing. I
can scarcely comprehend the new state of things:
"ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
"At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and
started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner
was announced--an "event" to those of us who had yet to experience
what it is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels; so, stepping
into the car next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves
in the dining-car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on
Sunday. And though we continued to dine for four days, and had as
many breakfasts and suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire
the perfection of the arrangements, and the marvelous results
achieved. Upon tables covered with snowy linen, and garnished with
services of solid silver, Ethiop waiters, flitting about in spotless
white, placed as by magic a repast at which Delmonico himself could
have had no occasion to blush; and, indeed, in some respects it
would be hard for that distinguished chef to match our menu; for, in
addition to all that ordinarily makes up a first-chop dinner, had we
not our antelope steak (the gormand who has not experienced this
--bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?) our delicious
mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and (sauce
piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-compelling
air of the prairies?
"You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and
as we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we
sped along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the
fastest living we had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two
days afterward when we made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven
minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled to the brim spilled not
a drop!) After dinner we repaired to our drawing-room car, and, as
it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old hymns--"Praise God
from whom," etc.; "Shining Shore," "Coronation," etc.--the voices of
the men singers and of the women singers blending sweetly in the
evening air, while our train, with its great, glaring Polyphemus
eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into the night and
the Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches, where we slept the
sleep of the just and only awoke the next morning (Monday) at eight
o'clock, to find ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte,
three hundred miles from Omaha--fifteen hours and forty minutes
out."
CHAPTER V.
Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came,
by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses
of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterly
without visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of
such amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand
were more than three mile away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed
a-top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted
occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears back
and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing away,
and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for things new
and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through and
through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom
that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overland
mornings!
Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog
villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly,
this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te) of the farther
deserts. And if it was, he was not a pretty creature or respectable
either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak
with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking
skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail
that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and
misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly
lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all
over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always
hungry.
He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures
despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is
so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are
pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he
is so homely!--so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.
When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and
then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head
a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush,
glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about
out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey
of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again--another fifty and stop
again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of
the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no
demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest
in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal
of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you have
raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the time
you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time you
have "drawn a bead" on him you see well enough that nothing but an
unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where he is
now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy it
ever so much--especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of
himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed.
The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his, and
every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that
will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly ambition,
and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck
further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out
straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy,
and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of desert
sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the level plain!
And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet behind the cayote,
and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why it is that he cannot
get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him
madder and madder to see how gently the cayote glides along and never
pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more
incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire
stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm, soft-footed trot
is; and next he notices that he is getting fagged, and that the cayote
actually has to slacken speed a little to keep from running away from
him--and then that town-dog is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain
and weep and swear, and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the
cayote with concentrated and desperate energy. This "spurt" finds him
six feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends. And
then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his face, the
cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and with a something
about it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have to tear myself away from
you, bub--business is business, and it will not do for me to be fooling
along this way all day"--and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the
sudden splitting of a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that
dog is solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude!
It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs the
nearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his head
reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to
his train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and
feels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at
half-mast for a week. And for as much as a year after that, whenever
there is a great hue and cry after a cayote, that dog will merely glance
in that direction without emotion, and apparently observe to himself,
"I believe I do not wish any of the pie."
The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding desert,
along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets an
uncertain and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to subsist
almost wholly on the carcases of oxen, mules and horses that have dropped
out of emigrant trains and died, and upon windfalls of carrion, and
occasional legacies of offal bequeathed to him by white men who have been
opulent enough to have something better to butcher than condemned army
bacon.
He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the
desert-frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat anything
they can bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the only
creatures known to history who will eat nitro-glycerine and ask for more
if they survive.
The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarly
hard time of it, owing to the fact that his relations, the Indians, are
just as apt to be the first to detect a seductive scent on the desert
breeze, and follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as he
is himself; and when this occurs he has to content himself with sitting
off at a little distance watching those people strip off and dig out
everything edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens
explore the skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that the
cayote, and the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify their
blood kinship with each other in that they live together in the waste
places of the earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship, while
hating all other creature and yearning to assist at their funerals. He
does not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fifty
to dinner, because he is sure to have three or four days between meals,
and he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as lying
around doing nothing and adding to the burdens of his parents.
We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the cayote as it
came across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among the
mail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune, made
shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day's good luck and a
limitless larder the morrow.
CHAPTER VI.
Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty hours.
Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph, Missouri, to
Sacramento, California, by stage-coach, was nearly nineteen hundred
miles, and the trip was often made in fifteen days (the cars do it in
four and a half, now), but the time specified in the mail contracts, and
required by the schedule, was eighteen or nineteen days, if I remember
rightly. This was to make fair allowance for winter storms and snows,
and other unavoidable causes of detention. The stage company had
everything under strict discipline and good system. Over each two
hundred and fifty miles of road they placed an agent or superintendent,
and invested him with great authority. His beat or jurisdiction of two
hundred and fifty miles was called a "division." He purchased horses,
mules harness, and food for men and beasts, and distributed these things
among his stage stations, from time to time, according to his judgment of
what each station needed. He erected station buildings and dug wells.
He attended to the paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers and
blacksmiths, and discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, very
great man in his "division"--a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of the
Indies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and manner,
and in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling stage-driver
dwindled to a penny dip. There were about eight of these kings, all
told, on the overland route.
Next in rank and importance to the division-agent came the "conductor."
His beat was the same length as the agent's--two hundred and fifty miles.
He sat with the driver, and (when necessary) rode that fearful distance,
night and day, without other rest or sleep than what he could get perched
thus on top of the flying vehicle. Think of it! He had absolute charge
of the mails, express matter, passengers and stage, coach, until he
delivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for them.
Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, decision and
considerable executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant man,
who attended closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a gentleman.
It was not absolutely necessary that the division-agent should be a
gentleman, and occasionally he wasn't. But he was always a general in
administrative ability, and a bull-dog in courage and determination
--otherwise the chieftainship over the lawless underlings of the overland
service would never in any instance have been to him anything but an
equivalent for a month of insolence and distress and a bullet and a
coffin at the end of it. There were about sixteen or eighteen conductors
on the overland, for there was a daily stage each way, and a conductor on
every stage.
Next in real and official rank and importance, after the conductor, came
my delight, the driver--next in real but not in apparent importance--for
we have seen that in the eyes of the common herd the driver was to the
conductor as an admiral is to the captain of the flag-ship. The driver's
beat was pretty long, and his sleeping-time at the stations pretty short,
sometimes; and so, but for the grandeur of his position his would have
been a sorry life, as well as a hard and a wearing one. We took a new
driver every day or every night (for they drove backward and forward over
the same piece of road all the time), and therefore we never got as well
acquainted with them as we did with the conductors; and besides, they
would have been above being familiar with such rubbish as passengers,
anyhow, as a general thing. Still, we were always eager to get a sight
of each and every new driver as soon as the watch changed, for each and
every day we were either anxious to get rid of an unpleasant one, or
loath to part with a driver we had learned to like and had come to be
sociable and friendly with. And so the first question we asked the
conductor whenever we got to where we were to exchange drivers, was
always, "Which is him?" The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not
know, then, that it would go into a book some day. As long as everything
went smoothly, the overland driver was well enough situated, but if a
fellow driver got sick suddenly it made trouble, for the coach must go
on, and so the potentate who was about to climb down and take a luxurious
rest after his long night's siege in the midst of wind and rain and
darkness, had to stay where he was and do the sick man's work. Once, in
the Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver sound asleep on the box, and
the mules going at the usual break-neck pace, the conductor said never
mind him, there was no danger, and he was doing double duty--had driven
seventy-five miles on one coach, and was now going back over it on this
without rest or sleep. A hundred and fifty miles of holding back of six
vindictive mules and keeping them from climbing the trees! It sounds
incredible, but I remember the statement well enough.
The station-keepers, hostlers, etc., were low, rough characters, as
already described; and from western Nebraska to Nevada a considerable
sprinkling of them might be fairly set down as outlaws--fugitives from
justice, criminals whose best security was a section of country which was
without law and without even the pretence of it. When the
"division-agent" issued an order to one of these parties he did it with
the full understanding that he might have to enforce it with a navy
six-shooter, and so he always went "fixed" to make things go along
smoothly.
Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a hostler
through the head to teach him some simple matter that he could have
taught him with a club if his circumstances and surroundings had been
different. But they were snappy, able men, those division-agents, and
when they tried to teach a subordinate anything, that subordinate
generally "got it through his head."
A great portion of this vast machinery--these hundreds of men and
coaches, and thousands of mules and horses--was in the hands of Mr. Ben
Holliday. All the western half of the business was in his hands. This
reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here, so
I will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down in my
Holy Land note-book:
No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday--a man of prodigious
energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the
continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind--two
thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch! But
this fragment of history is not about Ben Holliday, but about a
young New York boy by the name of Jack, who traveled with our small
party of pilgrims in the Holy Land (and who had traveled to
California in Mr. Holliday's overland coaches three years before,
and had by no means forgotten it or lost his gushing admiration of
Mr. H.) Aged nineteen. Jack was a good boy--a good-hearted and
always well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New
York, and although he was bright and knew a great many useful
things, his Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected--to
such a degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new
to him, and all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his
virgin ear.
Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of
Jack, in that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast
concerning them. He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired
of listening to his speeches, nor he of making them. He never
passed a celebrated locality, from Bashan to Bethlehem, without
illuminating it with an oration. One day, when camped near the
ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with something like this:
"Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds
the Jordan valley? The mountains of Moab, Jack! Think of it, my
boy--the actual mountains of Moab--renowned in Scripture history!
We are actually standing face to face with those illustrious crags
and peaks--and for all we know" [dropping his voice impressively],
"our eyes may be resting at this very moment upon the spot WHERE
LIES THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES! Think of it, Jack!"
"Moses who?" (falling inflection).
"Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself--you ought to
be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide,
soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot
where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred
miles in extent--and across that desert that wonderful man brought
the children of Israel!--guiding them with unfailing sagacity for
forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing
rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within
sight of this very spot; and where we now stand they entered the
Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing! It was a wonderful,
wonderful thing to do, Jack! Think of it!"
"Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday would
have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!"
The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said anything that
was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or felt offended with
him--and nobody could but some ungenerous spirit incapable of excusing
the heedless blunders of a boy.
At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the "Crossing of the South
Platte," alias "Julesburg," alias "Overland City," four hundred and
seventy miles from St. Joseph--the strangest, quaintest, funniest
frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been
astonished with.
CHAPTER VII.
It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us
such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless
solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric
people crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up
suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City
as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to
spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous
affair, called a "mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails.
Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy
South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars and
pigmy islands--a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of the
enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with
the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either
bank. The Platte was "up," they said--which made me wish I could see it
when it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They said it
was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were liable
to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made to ford
it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or twice in
midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so threateningly that
we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to be
shipwrecked in a "mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert at last. But we
dragged through and sped away toward the setting sun.
Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles
from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or
six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a
party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport
galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our
part of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo
bull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his
horse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for
some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little,
and finally he said:
"Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making
themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for
awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if
I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people--but of
course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish
those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh
so. If I had had a horse worth a cent--but no, the minute he saw that
buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up in the
air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him
round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came
down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped
pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle.
"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded
perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally
prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him,
and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a
minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind--he was, as
sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then
the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and
took a fresh start--and then for the next ten minutes he would actually
throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get
unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in--and so he stood there
sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and
then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for
breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck--the horse's, not
the bull's--and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head
up, and sometimes heels--but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be
ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you
might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away
some of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at
the time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to
him to get up and hunt for it.
"And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! and
you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too--head down, tongue
out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down the
weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a
whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on
the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel
with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass
rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when
the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left,
and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with
his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish
I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only
solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could
see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with
four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was
astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my
breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of
one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously.
There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there
were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in
case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I
sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle----"
"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?"
"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't.
No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down."
"Oh--exactly."
"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the
limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining
tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see
the length. It reached down twenty-two feet--half way to the ground.
I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt
satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing that I
dread, all right--but if he does, all right anyhow--I am fixed for him.
But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that
always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety
--anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a
situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a
thought came into the bull's eye. I knew it! said I--if my nerve fails
now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in
to climb the tree----"
"What, the bull?"
"Of course--who else?"
"But a bull can't climb a tree."
"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a
bull try?"
"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."
"Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you
never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done?"
"Well, all right--go on. What did you do?"
"The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slipped
and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again--got up a little
higher--slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he was
careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went down
more and more. Up he came--an inch at a time--with his eyes hot, and his
tongue hanging out. Higher and higher--hitched his foot over the stump
of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You are my meat, friend.'
Up again--higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got.
He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,--and then said I,
'It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I paid it
out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let go of
the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than
lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was
an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the
smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from
the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you
could count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow--I shinned down the tree and
shot for home."
"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"
"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't."
"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there were
some proofs----"
"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?"
"No."
"Did I bring back my horse?"
"No."
"Did you ever see the bull again?"
"No."
"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as
you are about a little thing like that."
I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by
the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my
brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town
in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of
Eckert, an Englishman--a person famous for the number, ingenuity and
imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most
celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to "draw him out" before
strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house
where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie.
One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and
sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on
Eckert. As we jogged along, said he:
"Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on his
guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly
well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody
might know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer than
that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself--let him drop it or
change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to
draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget
himself and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don't get impatient
--just keep quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem
to me that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple
trick as that."
Eckert received us heartily--a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered creature.
We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about the
king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all manner of
things; and I noticed that my comrade never led the conversation himself
or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert's lead, and betrayed no
solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was shortly
perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more and more
at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hour
passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:
"Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to
astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard
of--I've got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut--and
not only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so--I'll swear to it."
A quick glance from Bascom--a glance that I understood--then:
"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
impossible."
"I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat."
He went in the house. Bascom said:
"There--what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. You
see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions to sleep.
I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eat
a cocoanut--oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly--he will tell the
absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again.
"Cat eat a cocoanut--the innocent fool!"
Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.
Bascom smiled. Said he:
"I'll hold the cat--you bring a cocoanut."
Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a
wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it,
swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!
We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent,
though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal,
notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off
homeward, Bascom said:
"Keep the horse till morning. And--you need not speak of this
--foolishness to the boys."
CHAPTER VIII.
In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and
watching for the "pony-rider"--the fleet messenger who sped across the
continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred
miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh
and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man,
brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night
his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer,
raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his "beat" was a level
straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices, or
whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with
hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be
off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty.
He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight,
or through the blackness of darkness--just as it happened. He rode a
splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a
gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he
came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh,
impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the
twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight
before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider
and horse went "flying light." The rider's dress was thin, and fitted
close; he wore a "round-about," and a skull-cap, and tucked his
pantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms--he
carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage
on his literary freight was worth five dollars a letter.
He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry--his bag had business
letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight,
too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket.
He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets
strapped under the rider's thighs would each hold about the bulk of a
child's primer. They held many and many an important business chapter
and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin as
gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The
stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles
a day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty.
There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and
day, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to
California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among
them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and
see a deal of scenery every single day in the year.
We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider,
but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to
streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the
swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of
the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would
see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:
"HERE HE COMES!"
Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away
across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears
against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!
In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling,
rising and falling--sweeping toward us nearer and nearer--growing more
and more distinct, more and more sharply defined--nearer and still
nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear--another
instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's
hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and
go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!
So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for
the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack after
the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted whether
we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.
We rattled through Scott's Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here
somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali water
in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class curiosity, and a
thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the ignorant at home.
This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in many places the
ground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the strange alkali
water excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know
we felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life
after we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and some
other people had not. In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons
as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and the
Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that it
isn't a common experience. But once in a while one of those parties
trips and comes darting down the long mountain-crags in a sitting
posture, making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench to
bench, and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes,
and still glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into
himself every now and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things
to save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him,
roots and all, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders,
then acres of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still
gathering as he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping
grandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he
waves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a
raging and tossing avalanche!
This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by excitement, but
ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments next
day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top of him?
We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail robbery and
massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor perished, and also all
the passengers but one, it was supposed; but this must have been a
mistake, for at different times afterward on the Pacific coast I was
personally acquainted with a hundred and thirty-three or four people who
were wounded during that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives.
There was no doubt of the truth of it--I had it from their own lips. One
of these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in his
system for nearly seven years after the massacre; and another of them
told me that he was struck so literally full of arrows that after the
Indians were gone and he could raise up and examine himself, he could not
restrain his tears, for his clothes were completely ruined.
The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one man, a
person named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was desperately
wounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg was
broken) to a station several miles away. He did it during portions of
two nights, lying concealed one day and part of another, and for more
than forty hours suffering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst and
bodily pain. The Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained,
including quite an amount of treasure.
CHAPTER IX.
We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out we
found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow
(apparently) looming vast and solitary--a deep, dark, rich indigo blue in
hue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling brows
of storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but he
only seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We
breakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles out
from St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and during
the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort
all the time we were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of the
trees we dashed by at arm's length concealed a lurking Indian or two.
During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through
the pony-rider's jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, because
pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things except
when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them they had to
stick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been waiting for
them a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and a
half before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of it
had fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air that
the Indian had "skipped around so's to spile everything--and ammunition's
blamed skurse, too." The most natural inference conveyed by his manner of
speaking was, that in "skipping around," the Indian had taken an unfair
advantage.
The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front--a reminiscence of
its last trip through this region. The bullet that made it wounded the
driver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the place to keep
a man "huffy" was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches,
before the company moved the stage line up on the northern route. He
said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that he
came as near as anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance,
because they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he "couldn't hold
his vittles."
This person's statement were not generally believed.
We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the hostile
Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most of
the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and
listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were
among woods and rocks, hills and gorges--so shut in, in fact, that when
we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The
driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long
intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible
dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the
grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of
the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable
from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining
perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of
the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels.
We listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath; every
time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start to
say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden "Hark!" and
instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So the
tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our
tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one
might call such a condition by so strong a name--for it was a sleep set
with a hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird
and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams--a sleep that
was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of the
night were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by such a long, wild,
agonizing shriek! Then we heard--ten steps from the stage--
"Help! help! help!" [It was our driver's voice.]
"Kill him! Kill him like a dog!"
"I'm being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?"
"Look out! head him off! head him off!"
[Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of many feet,
as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object;
several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice that said appealingly,
"Don't, gentlemen, please don't--I'm a dead man!" Then a fainter groan,
and another blow, and away sped the stage into the darkness, and left the
grisly mystery behind us.]
What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the time it
occupied--maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at a
curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hindering
flurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling and
thundering away, down a mountain "grade."
We fed on that mystery the rest of the night--what was left of it, for it
was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery, for all we could
get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that sounded,
through the clatter of the wheels, like "Tell you in the morning!"
So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a chimney, and
lay there in the dark, listening to each other's story of how he first
felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselves
upon us, and what his remembrance of the subsequent sounds was, and the
order of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there was never a
theory that would account for our driver's voice being out there, nor yet
account for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were
Indians.
So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, our
boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presence
of something to be anxious about.
We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence. All that
we could make out of the odds and ends of the information we gathered in
the morning, was that the disturbance occurred at a station; that we
changed drivers there, and that the driver that got off there had been
talking roughly about some of the outlaws that infested the region ("for
there wasn't a man around there but had a price on his head and didn't
dare show himself in the settlements," the conductor said); he had talked
roughly about these characters, and ought to have "drove up there with
his pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of him, and begun
business himself, because any softy would know they would be laying for
him."
That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither the conductor
nor the new driver were much concerned about the matter. They plainly
had little respect for a man who would deliver offensive opinions of
people and then be so simple as to come into their presence unprepared to
"back his judgment," as they pleasantly phrased the killing of any
fellow-being who did not like said opinions. And likewise they plainly
had a contempt for the man's poor discretion in venturing to rouse the
wrath of such utterly reckless wild beasts as those outlaws--and the
conductor added:
"I tell you it's as much as Slade himself want to do!"
This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I cared
nothing now about the Indians, and even lost interest in the murdered
driver. There was such magic in that name, SLADE! Day or night, now, I
stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something
new about Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to Overland
City, we had begun to hear about Slade and his "division" (for he was a
"division-agent") on the Overland; and from the hour we had left Overland
City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only three things
--"Californy," the Nevada silver mines, and this desperado Slade. And a
deal the most of the talk was about Slade. We had gradually come to have
a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart and hands
and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his dignity; a
man who awfully avenged all injuries, affront, insults or slights, of
whatever kind--on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack of
earlier opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him day and
night till vengeance appeased it--and not an ordinary vengeance either,
but his enemy's absolute death--nothing less; a man whose face would
light up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe and had him at a
disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw
among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the
most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that
inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains.
CHAPTER X.
Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and conductors had
been about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reached
Julesburg. In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conception
of what a Rocky Mountain desperado is, in his highest state of
development, I will reduce all this mass of overland gossip to one
straightforward narrative, and present it in the following shape:
Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about twenty-six years
of age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the country. At St. Joseph,
Missouri, he joined one of the early California-bound emigrant trains,
and was given the post of train-master. One day on the plains he had an
angry dispute with one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their
revolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon
cocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a
matter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the
quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed, and
threw down his pistol--whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, and
shot him dead!
He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing his time
between fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois sheriff, who had been
sent to arrest him for his first murder. It is said that in one Indian
battle he killed three savages with his own hand, and afterward cut their
ears off and sent them, with his compliments, to the chief of the tribe.
Slade soon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was sufficient
merit to procure for him the important post of overland division-agent at
Julesburg, in place of Mr. Jules, removed. For some time previously, the
company's horses had been frequently stolen, and the coaches delayed, by
gangs of outlaws, who were wont to laugh at the idea of any man's having
the temerity to resent such outrages. Slade resented them promptly.
The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did not fear
anything that breathed the breath of life. He made short work of all
offenders. The result was that delays ceased, the company's property was
let alone, and no matter what happened or who suffered, Slade's coaches
went through, every time! True, in order to bring about this wholesome
change, Slade had to kill several men--some say three, others say four,
and others six--but the world was the richer for their loss. The first
prominent difficulty he had was with the ex-agent Jules, who bore the
reputation of being a reckless and desperate man himself. Jules hated
Slade for supplanting him, and a good fair occasion for a fight was all
he was waiting for. By and by Slade dared to employ a man whom Jules had
once discharged. Next, Slade seized a team of stage-horses which he
accused Jules of having driven off and hidden somewhere for his own use.
War was declared, and for a day or two the two men walked warily about
the streets, seeking each other, Jules armed with a double-barreled shot
gun, and Slade with his history-creating revolver. Finally, as Slade
stepped into a store Jules poured the contents of his gun into him from
behind the door. Slade was plucky, and Jules got several bad pistol
wounds in return.
Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, both
swearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time. Both were
bedridden a long time, but Jules got to his feet first, and gathering his
possessions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to the
Rocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against the day of
reckoning. For many months he was not seen or heard of, and was
gradually dropped out of the remembrance of all save Slade himself. But
Slade was not the man to forget him. On the contrary, common report said
that Slade kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive!
After awhile, seeing that Slade's energetic administration had restored
peace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the overland
stage company transferred him to the Rocky Ridge division in the Rocky
Mountains, to see if he could perform a like miracle there. It was the
very paradise of outlaws and desperadoes. There was absolutely no
semblance of law there. Violence was the rule. Force was the only
recognized authority. The commonest misunderstandings were settled on
the spot with the revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day,
and with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them.
It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their private
reasons for it; for other people to meddle would have been looked upon as
indelicate. After a murder, all that Rocky Mountain etiquette required
of a spectator was, that he should help the gentleman bury his game
--otherwise his churlishness would surely be remembered against him the
first time he killed a man himself and needed a neighborly turn in
interring him.
Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of this
hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of them
aired his insolent swaggerings in his presence he shot him dead! He
began a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time he
had completely stopped their depredations on the stage stock, recovered a
large number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes of
the district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that they
respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him! He wrought the same
marvelous change in the ways of the community that had marked his
administration at Overland City. He captured two men who had stolen
overland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them. He was supreme
judge in his district, and he was jury and executioner likewise--and not
only in the case of offences against his employers, but against passing
emigrants as well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lost
or stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With a
single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected,
and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding the
fourth.
From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.--["The Vigilantes
of Montana," by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale.]--I take this paragraph:
"While on the road, Slade held absolute sway. He would ride down to
a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and
maltreat the occupants most cruelly. The unfortunates had no means
of redress, and were compelled to recuperate as best they could."
On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the fine
little half-breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who lived with his
widow after his execution. Stories of Slade's hanging men, and of
innumerable assaults, shootings, stabbings and beatings, in which he was
a principal actor, form part of the legends of the stage line. As for
minor quarrels and shootings, it is absolutely certain that a minute
history of Slade's life would be one long record of such practices.
Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends say
that one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling comfortable, he saw
a man approaching who had offended him some days before--observe the fine
memory he had for matters like that--and, "Gentlemen," said Slade,
drawing, "it is a good twenty-yard shot--I'll clip the third button on
his coat!" Which he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they all
attended the funeral, too.
On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the station did
something which angered Slade--and went and made his will. A day or two
afterward Slade came in and called for some brandy. The man reached
under the counter (ostensibly to get a bottle--possibly to get something
else), but Slade smiled upon him that peculiarly bland and satisfied
smile of his which the neighbors had long ago learned to recognize as a
death-warrant in disguise, and told him to "none of that!--pass out the
high-priced article." So the poor bar-keeper had to turn his back and
get the high-priced brandy from the shelf; and when he faced around again
he was looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol. "And the next
instant," added my informant, impressively, "he was one of the deadest
men that ever lived."
The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade would leave
a hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and unmentioned, for weeks
together--had done it once or twice at any rate. And some said they
believed he did it in order to lull the victims into unwatchfulness, so
that he could get the advantage of them, and others said they believed he
saved up an enemy that way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and made
the pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation.
One of these cases was that of a Frenchman who had offended Slade.
To the surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on the spot, but let
him alone for a considerable time. Finally, however, he went to the
Frenchman's house very late one night, knocked, and when his enemy opened
the door, shot him dead--pushed the corpse inside the door with his foot,
set the house on fire and burned up the dead man, his widow and three
children! I heard this story from several different people, and they
evidently believed what they were saying. It may be true, and it may
not. "Give a dog a bad name," etc.
Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him.
They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong log-house, and placed a
guard over him. He prevailed on his captors to send for his wife, so
that he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving,
spirited woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death.
When she arrived they let her in without searching her, and before the
door could be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and
her lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire,
they mounted double and galloped away unharmed!
In the fulness of time Slade's myrmidons captured his ancient enemy
Jules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the remote
fastnesses of the mountains, gaining a precarious livelihood with his
rifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound hand and foot, and
deposited him in the middle of the cattle-yard with his back against a
post. It is said that the pleasure that lit Slade's face when he heard
of it was something fearful to contemplate. He examined his enemy to see
that he was securely tied, and then went to bed, content to wait till
morning before enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the night
in the cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never known.
In the morning Slade practised on him with his revolver, nipping the
flesh here and there, and occasionally clipping off a finger, while Jules
begged him to kill him outright and put him out of his misery. Finally
Slade reloaded, and walking up close to his victim, made some
characteristic remarks and then dispatched him. The body lay there half
a day, nobody venturing to touch it without orders, and then Slade
detailed a party and assisted at the burial himself. But he first cut
off the dead man's ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he carried
them for some time with great satisfaction. That is the story as I have
frequently heard it told and seen it in print in California newspapers.
It is doubtless correct in all essential particulars.
In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to
breakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and
bearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The most
gentlemanly-appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet found along
the road in the Overland Company's service was the person who sat at the
head of the table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I did
when I heard them call him SLADE!
Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it!--looking upon it
--touching it--hobnobbing with it, as it were! Here, right by my side, was
the actual ogre who, in fights and brawls and various ways, had taken the
lives of twenty-six human beings, or all men lied about him! I suppose I
was the proudest stripling that ever traveled to see strange lands and
wonderful people.
He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in
spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that
this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the
raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the mountains terrified
their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable
about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones,
and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and
straight. But that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me,
for since then I seldom see a face possessing those characteristics
without fancying that the owner of it is a dangerous man.
The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Slade
was about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty.
He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politely
declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that morning, and might
be needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted on
filling my cup, and said I had traveled all night and better deserved it
than he--and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the last
drop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I could
not feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given it
away, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss.
But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six dead
people to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the thought
that in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that breakfast-table I had
pleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to the coach and saw us
off, first ordering certain rearrangements of the mail-bags for our
comfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear of
him again, some day, and wondering in what connection.
CHAPTER XI.
And sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear him again.
News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigilance Committee in Montana
(whither Slade had removed from Rocky Ridge) had hanged him. I find an
account of the affair in the thrilling little book I quoted a paragraph
from in the last chapter--"The Vigilantes of Montana; being a Reliable
Account of the Capture, Trial and Execution of Henry Plummer's Notorious
Road Agent Band: By Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, Virginia City, M.T."
Mr. Dimsdale's chapter is well worth reading, as a specimen of how the
people of the frontier deal with criminals when the courts of law prove
inefficient. Mr. Dimsdale makes two remarks about Slade, both of which
are accurately descriptive, and one of which is exceedingly picturesque:
"Those who saw him in his natural state only, would pronounce him to be a
kind husband, a most hospitable host and a courteous gentleman; on the
contrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor and surrounded by a
gang of armed roughs, would pronounce him a fiend incarnate." And this:
"From Fort Kearney, west, he was feared a great deal more than the
almighty." For compactness, simplicity and vigor of expression, I will
"back" that sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale's
narrative is as follows. In all places where italics occur, they are
mine:
After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the
Vigilantes considered that their work was nearly ended. They had
freed the country of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and
they determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority
they would establish a People's Court where all offenders should be
tried by judge and jury. This was the nearest approach to social
order that the circumstances permitted, and, though strict legal
authority was wanting, yet the people were firmly determined to
maintain its efficiency, and to enforce its decrees. It may here be
mentioned that the overt act which was the last round on the fatal
ladder leading to the scaffold on which Slade perished, was the
tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ of this court, followed
by his arrest of the Judge Alex. Davis, by authority of a presented
Derringer, and with his own hands.
J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante; he
openly boasted of it, and said he knew all that they knew. He was
never accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery,
committed in this Territory (the latter crime was never laid to his
charge, in any place); but that he had killed several men in other
localities was notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was
a most powerful argument in determining his fate, when he was
finally arrested for the offence above mentioned. On returning from
Milk River he became more and more addicted to drinking, until at
last it was a common feat for him and his friends to "take the
town." He and a couple of his dependents might often be seen on one
horse, galloping through the streets, shouting and yelling, firing
revolvers, etc. On many occasions he would ride his horse into
stores, break up bars, toss the scales out of doors and use most
insulting language to parties present. Just previous to the day of
his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one of his followers;
but such was his influence over them that the man wept bitterly at
the gallows, and begged for his life with all his power. It had
become quite common, when Slade was on a spree, for the shop-keepers
and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being
fearful of some outrage at his hands. For his wanton destruction of
goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he
had money; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small
satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal
enemies.
From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew
would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct. There was
not a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public
did not expect to hear of some bloody outrage. The dread of his
very name, and the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who
followed him alone prevented a resistance which must certainly have
ended in the instant murder or mutilation of the opposing party.
Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose
organization we have described, and had treated it with respect by
paying one or two fines and promising to pay the rest when he had
money; but in the transaction that occurred at this crisis, he
forgot even this caution, and goaded by passion and the hatred of
restraint, he sprang into the embrace of death.
Slade had been drunk and "cutting up" all night. He and his
companions had made the town a perfect hell. In the morning, J. M.
Fox, the sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and
commenced reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of
arraignment. He became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the
writ, he tore it up, threw it on the ground and stamped upon it.
The clicking of the locks of his companions' revolvers was instantly
heard, and a crisis was expected. The sheriff did not attempt his
retention; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he
succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situation and the
conqueror and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers. This was a
declaration of war, and was so accepted. The Vigilance Committee
now felt that the question of social order and the preponderance of
the law-abiding citizens had then and there to be decided. They
knew the character of Slade, and they were well aware that they must
submit to his rule without murmur, or else that he must be dealt
with in such fashion as would prevent his being able to wreak his
vengeance on the committee, who could never have hoped to live in
the Territory secure from outrage or death, and who could never
leave it without encountering his friend, whom his victory would
have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that would have rendered
them reckless of consequences. The day previous he had ridden into
Dorris's store, and on being requested to leave, he drew his
revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to him.
Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of
wine, he tried to make the animal drink it. This was not considered
an uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and
commenced firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede.
A leading member of the committee met Slade, and informed him in the
quiet, earnest manner of one who feels the importance of what he is
saying: "Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will
be ---- to pay." Slade started and took a long look, with his dark
and piercing eyes, at the gentleman. "What do you mean?" said he.
"You have no right to ask me what I mean," was the quiet reply, "get
your horse at once, and remember what I tell you." After a short
pause he promised to do so, and actually got into the saddle; but,
being still intoxicated, he began calling aloud to one after another
of his friends, and at last seemed to have forgotten the warning he
had received and became again uproarious, shouting the name of a
well-known courtezan in company with those of two men whom he
considered heads of the committee, as a sort of challenge; perhaps,
however, as a simple act of bravado. It seems probable that the
intimation of personal danger he had received had not been forgotten
entirely; though fatally for him, he took a foolish way of showing
his remembrance of it. He sought out Alexander Davis, the Judge of
the Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at his
head, and told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own
safety. As the judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no
resistance to his captor, no further outrage followed on this score.
Previous to this, on account of the critical state of affairs, the
committee had met, and at last resolved to arrest him. His
execution had not been agreed upon, and, at that time, would have
been negatived, most assuredly. A messenger rode down to Nevada to
inform the leading men of what was on hand, as it was desirable to
show that there was a feeling of unanimity on the subject, all along
the gulch.
The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and
forming in solid column about six hundred strong, armed to the
teeth, they marched up to Virginia. The leader of the body well
knew the temper of his men on the subject. He spurred on ahead of
them, and hastily calling a meeting of the executive, he told them
plainly that the miners meant "business," and that, if they came up,
they would not stand in the street to be shot down by Slade's
friends; but that they would take him and hang him. The meeting was
small, as the Virginia men were loath to act at all. This momentous
announcement of the feeling of the Lower Town was made to a cluster
of men, who were deliberation behind a wagon, at the rear of a store
on Main street.
The committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities. All
the duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task
before them; but they had to decide, and that quickly. It was
finally agreed that if the whole body of the miners were of the
opinion that he should be hanged, that the committee left it in
their hands to deal with him. Off, at hot speed, rode the leader of
the Nevada men to join his command.
Slade had found out what was intended, and the news sobered him
instantly. He went into P. S. Pfouts' store, where Davis was, and
apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back.
The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched
up at quick time. Halting in front of the store, the executive
officer of the committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was
at once informed of his doom, and inquiry was made as to whether he
had any business to settle. Several parties spoke to him on the
subject; but to all such inquiries he turned a deaf ear, being
entirely absorbed in the terrifying reflections on his own awful
position. He never ceased his entreaties for life, and to see his
dear wife. The unfortunate lady referred to, between whom and Slade
there existed a warm affection, was at this time living at their
ranch on the Madison. She was possessed of considerable personal
attractions; tall, well-formed, of graceful carriage, pleasing
manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horsewoman.
A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her
husband's arrest. In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all
the energy that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament
and a strong physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve
miles of rough and rocky ground that intervened between her and the
object of her passionate devotion.
Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations
for the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch. Beneath
the site of Pfouts and Russell's stone building there was a corral,
the gate-posts of which were strong and high. Across the top was
laid a beam, to which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box
served for the platform. To this place Slade was marched,
surrounded by a guard, composing the best armed and most numerous
force that has ever appeared in Montana Territory.
The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and
lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the
fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, "My God! my God! must I die?
Oh, my dear wife!"
On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of
Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee,
but who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of
his sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his
handkerchief and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still
begged to see his wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny
his request; but the bloody consequences that were sure to follow
the inevitable attempt at a rescue, that her presence and entreaties
would have certainly incited, forbade the granting of his request.
Several gentlemen were sent for to see him, in his last moments, one
of whom (Judge Davis) made a short address to the people; but in
such low tones as to be inaudible, save to a few in his immediate
vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting his powers of
entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the prisoner could
not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hundred guns were
instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being
brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a
promise of future peaceable demeanor.
Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of
the citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made.
All lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution.
Everything being ready, the command was given, "Men, do your duty,"
and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died
almost instantaneously.
The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a
darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and
bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to
find that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and
heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her
attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed
before she could regain the command of her excited feelings.
There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly
unaccountable--at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true
desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most
infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before
a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under
the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words are
cheap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not
"die game" are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and when
we read of Slade that he "had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and
lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal
beam," the disgraceful word suggests itself in a moment--yet in
frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountain
cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never
offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless
bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a
chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying
speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with
what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in
believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not
moral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not
the requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted
Slade lacked?--this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman,
who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill
them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a
conundrum worth investigating.
CHAPTER XII.
Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of
thirty-three wagons; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd of
loose cows, were dozens of coarse-clad and sad-looking men, women and
children, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day for
eight lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance our
stage had come in eight days and three hours--seven hundred and
ninety-eight miles! They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless
and ragged, and they did look so tired!
After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid,
sparkling stream--an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that our
furious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of that kind. We
changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours--changed
mules, rather--six mules--and did it nearly every time in four minutes.
It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station six
harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of an
eye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and away
again.
During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Creek, Independence Rock,
Devil's Gate and the Devil's Gap. The latter were wild specimens of
rugged scenery, and full of interest--we were in the heart of the Rocky
Mountains, now. And we also passed by "Alkali" or "Soda Lake," and we
woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across the
world when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from Great
Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone by
they had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a dry
lake) to load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagons-loads
of a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it for
twenty-five cents a pound.
In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we had been
hearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were suffering to see.
This was what might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now,
and sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the men
could scape the soil on the hill-side under the lee of a range of
boulders, and at a depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice--hard,
compactly frozen, and clear as crystal!
Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat with raised
curtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and contemplating the first
splendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountain
peaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, as
if the invisible Creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted with
a smile, we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, the
postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal
and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted
us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news,
and a little Rocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains information
in return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed on up
among the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass City
consisted of four log cabins, one if which was unfinished, and the
gentleman with all those offices and titles was the chiefest of the ten
citizens of the place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster, blacksmith,
mayor, constable, city marshal and principal citizen all condensed into
one person and crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was "a perfect
Allen's revolver of dignities." And he said that if he were to die as
postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and blacksmith both, the
people might stand it; but if he were to die all over, it would be a
frightful loss to the community.
Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time that
mysterious marvel which all Western untraveled boys have heard of and
fully believe in, but are sure to be astounded at when they see it with
their own eyes, nevertheless--banks of snow in dead summer time. We were
now far up toward the sky, and knew all the time that we must presently
encounter lofty summits clad in the "eternal snow" which was so common
place a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering
in the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew the month was August
and that my coat was hanging up because it was too warm to wear it, I was
full as much amazed as if I never had heard of snow in August before.
Truly, "seeing is believing"--and many a man lives a long life through,
thinking he believes certain universally received and well established
things, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by those things
once, he would discover that he did not really believe them before, but
only thought he believed them.
In a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with long claws
of glittering snow clasping them; and with here and there, in the shade,
down the mountain side, a little solitary patch of snow looking no larger
than a lady's pocket-handkerchief but being in reality as large as a
"public square."
And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS, and whirling
gayly along high above the common world. We were perched upon the
extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward which we
had been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days and
nights together--and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kings
that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet high--grand old
fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight.
We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populations of the
earth, that now and then when the obstructing crags stood out of the way
it seemed that we could look around and abroad and contemplate the whole
great globe, with its dissolving views of mountains, seas and continents
stretching away through the mystery of the summer haze.
As a general thing the Pass was more suggestive of a valley than a
suspension bridge in the clouds--but it strongly suggested the latter at
one spot. At that place the upper third of one or two majestic purple
domes projected above our level on either hand and gave us a sense of a
hidden great deep of mountains and plains and valleys down about their
bases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and look
over. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes
of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off fringed
and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; and catching
presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it about and brooded there
--then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had left the
purple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing, these
monstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the
spectator's head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his
impulse was to shrink when they came closet. In the one place I speak
of, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags and
canyons leading down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in it
which was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees,--a
pretty picture sleeping in the sunlight--but with a darkness stealing
over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a
coming storm; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon
brightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth down
there and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted rain
drive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash and
roar. We had this spectacle; a familiar one to many, but to us a
novelty.
We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though it
had been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour or
more), we came to a spring which spent its water through two outlets and
sent it in opposite directions. The conductor said that one of those
streams which we were looking at, was just starting on a journey westward
to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, through hundreds and
even thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other was
just leaving its home among the snow-peaks on a similar journey eastward
--and we knew that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivulet
it would still be plodding its patient way down the mountain sides, and
canyon-beds, and between the banks of the Yellowstone; and by and by
would join the broad Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts
and unvisited wildernesses; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage among
snags and wrecks and sandbars; and enter the Mississippi, touch the
wharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rocky
channels, then endless chains of bottomless and ample bends, walled with
unbroken forests, then mysterious byways and secret passages among woody
islands, then the chained bends again, bordered with wide levels of
shining sugar-cane in place of the sombre forests; then by New Orleans
and still other chains of bends--and finally, after two long months of
daily and nightly harassment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful
peril of parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter
into its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its
snow-peaks again or regret them.
I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and
dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for
postage somewhere.
On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons, many tired
men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow.
In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition I recognized
John -----. Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the Rocky
Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should have
looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for years.
But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it had
never been renewed. The act of which I speak was this. I had been
accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third
story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave
me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but
chancing to look out of the window, I saw John standing directly under it
and an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his head,
which I immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the melon, and
John never forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and parted, but now
met again under these circumstances.
We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as warmly
as if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion was made
to any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of meeting a
familiar face in that isolated spot so far from home, was sufficient to
make us forget all things but pleasant ones, and we parted again with
sincere "good-bye" and "God bless you" from both.
We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for
many tedious hours--we started down them, now. And we went spinning away
at a round rate too.
We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Mountains behind, and
sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long
ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen--monuments of the huge
emigration of other days--and here and there were up-ended boards or
small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of
more precious remains.
It was the loneliest land for a grave! A land given over to the cayote
and the raven--which is but another name for desolation and utter
solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a
soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague
desert. It was because of the phosphorus in the bones. But no
scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted
by one of those ghostly lights and knew that a skull held it.
At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it--indeed, I
did not even see this, for it was too dark. We fastened down the
curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in in
twenty places, nothwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved his
feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one; and if he moved his
body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenched
blankets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck.
Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it,
for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road,
and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no keeping the horses
still. With the first abatement the conductor turned out with lanterns
to look for the road, and the first dash he made was into a chasm about
fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a meteor. As soon as he
touched bottom he sang out frantically:
"Don't come here!"
To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had
disappeared, replied, with an injured air: "Think I'm a dam fool?"
The conductor was more than an hour finding the road--a matter which
showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking.
He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two
places. I have always been glad that we were not killed that night.
I do not know any particular reason, but I have always been glad.
In the morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large,
limpid stream--stuck in it with the water just up to the top of our
mail-bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep
bank. But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any
fresh place on us to wet.
At the Green River station we had breakfast--hot biscuits, fresh antelope
steaks, and coffee--the only decent meal we tasted between the United
States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really
thankful for.
Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it,
to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a
shot-tower after all these years have gone by!
At five P.M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles
from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St.
Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met
sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had
fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed
gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued,
four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but
nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out
and join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four
hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians.
Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow
street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous
perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hundred feet high in
many places, and turreted like mediaeval castles. This was the most
faultless piece of road in the mountains, and the driver said he would
"let his team out." He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz
through there now any faster than we did then in the stage-coach, I envy
the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our
wheels and fly--and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything
and held in solution! I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a
thing I mean it.
However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit
of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world
was glorified with the setting sun, and the most stupendous panorama of
mountain peaks yet encountered burst on our sight. We looked out upon
this sublime spectacle from under the arch of a brilliant rainbow! Even
the overland stage-driver stopped his horses and gazed!
Half an hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a
Mormon "Destroying Angel."
"Destroying Angels," as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are
set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious
citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and
the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one's
house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was
nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard! He was murderous
enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you have any
kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an
unclean shirt and no suspenders? Could you respect an Angel with a
horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer?
There were other blackguards present--comrades of this one. And there
was one person that looked like a gentleman--Heber C. Kimball's son, tall
and well made, and thirty years old, perhaps. A lot of slatternly women
flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of bread,
and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the wives of
the Angel--or some of them, at least. And of course they were; for if
they had been hired "help" they would not have let an angel from above
storm and swear at them as he did, let alone one from the place this one
hailed from.
This was our first experience of the western "peculiar institution," and
it was not very prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it, but
hurried on to the home of the Latter-Day Saints, the stronghold of the
prophets, the capital of the only absolute monarch in America--Great Salt
Lake City. As the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake
House and unpacked our baggage.
CHAPTER XIII.
We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables--a
great variety and as great abundance. We walked about the streets some,
afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascination
in surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon.
This was fairy-land to us, to all intents and purposes--a land of
enchantment, and goblins, and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to ask
every child how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart; and
we experienced a thrill every time a dwelling-house door opened and shut
as we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs and
shoulders--for we so longed to have a good satisfying look at a Mormon
family in all its comprehensive ampleness, disposed in the customary
concentric rings of its home circle.
By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other
"Gentiles," and we spent a sociable hour with them. "Gentiles" are
people who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passenger, Bemis, took care of
himself, during this part of the evening, and did not make an
overpowering success of it, either, for he came into our room in the
hotel about eleven o'clock, full of cheerfulness, and talking loosely,
disjointedly and indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a
ragged word by the roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it.
This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side of a
chair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and piling his pants
on the floor just in front of the same chair, and then comtemplating the
general result with superstitious awe, and finally pronouncing it "too
many for him" and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that
something he had eaten had not agreed with him.
But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was
the exclusively Mormon refresher, "valley tan."
Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky,
or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in
Utah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and brimstone. If I
remember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom
by Brigham Young, and no private drinking permitted among the faithful,
except they confined themselves to "valley tan."
Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad, straight, level
streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of a city of fifteen
thousand inhabitants with no loafers perceptible in it; and no visible
drunkards or noisy people; a limpid stream rippling and dancing through
every street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim
dwellings, built of "frame" and sunburned brick--a great thriving orchard
and garden behind every one of them, apparently--branches from the street
stream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and fruit trees--and a
grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and comfort, around and
about and over the whole. And everywhere were workshops, factories, and
all manner of industries; and intent faces and busy hands were to be seen
wherever one looked; and in one's ears was the ceaseless clink of
hammers, the buzz of trade and the contented hum of drums and fly-wheels.
The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bears
holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the
pertinent remark, "UNITED, WE STAND--(hic!)--DIVIDED, WE FALL." It was
always too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest
was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove.
It was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees all at work!
The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of
Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curving wall
of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose
shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long.
Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles off, Great
Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is suggestive of a
child's toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the Chinese
wall.
On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every
day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot
days in late spring and early autumn the citizens could quit fanning and
growling and go out and cool off by looking at the luxury of a glorious
snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance,
at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets,
or anywhere near them.
Salt Lake City was healthy--an extremely healthy city.
They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was
arrested every week regularly and held to answer under the vagrant act
for having "no visible means of support." They always give you a good
substantial article of truth in Salt Lake, and good measure and good
weight, too. [Very often, if you wished to weigh one of their airiest
little commonplace statements you would want the hay scales.]
We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American "Dead Sea," the
great Salt Lake--seventeen miles, horseback, from the city--for we had
dreamed about it, and thought about it, and talked about it, and yearned
to see it, all the first part of our trip; but now when it was only arm's
length away it had suddenly lost nearly every bit of its interest. And
so we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day--and that was
the last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable Gentiles;
and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and talked long with
that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since deceased), a
saint of high degree and a mighty man of commerce.
We saw the "Tithing-House," and the "Lion House," and I do not know or
remember how many more church and government buildings of various kinds
and curious names. We flitted hither and thither and enjoyed every hour,
and picked up a great deal of useful information and entertaining
nonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied.
The second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased)
and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king.
He seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed old
gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye that
probably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was just taking
off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians,
and Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with our
secretary and certain government officials who came with us. But he
never paid any attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attempts
to "draw him out" on federal politics and his high handed attitude toward
Congress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine. But he
merely looked around at me, at distant intervals, something as I have
seen a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was meddling
with her tail.
By and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat until the end,
hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart for an ignorant savage.
But he was calm. His conversation with those gentlemen flowed on as
sweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer brook. When the
audience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put his
hand on my head, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to my
brother:
"Ah--your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?"
CHAPTER XIV.
Mr. Street was very busy with his telegraphic matters--and considering
that he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy, uninhabited
mountains, and waterless, treeless, melancholy deserts to traverse with
his wire, it was natural and needful that he should be as busy as
possible. He could not go comfortably along and cut his poles by the
road-side, either, but they had to be hauled by ox teams across those
exhausting deserts--and it was two days' journey from water to water, in
one or two of them. Mr. Street's contract was a vast work, every way one
looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words "eight hundred
miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts" mean, one must go over the
ground in person--pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary
reality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S.'s mightiest difficulty
turned out to be one which he had never taken into the account at all.
Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his great
undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going to
make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their poles
overboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they took the
notion, and drove home and went about their customary business! They
were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care anything
for that. They said they would "admire" to see a "Gentile" force a
Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah! And they made themselves
very merry over the matter. Street said--for it was he that told us
these things:
"I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in a
given time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin. It was an
astounding thing; it was such a wholly unlooked-for difficulty, that I
was entirely nonplussed. I am a business man--have always been a
business man--do not know anything but business--and so you can imagine
how like being struck by lightning it was to find myself in a country
where written contracts were worthless!--that main security, that
sheet-anchor, that absolute necessity, of business. My confidence left
me. There was no use in making new contracts--that was plain. I talked
with first one prominent citizen and then another. They all sympathized
with me, first rate, but they did not know how to help me. But at last a
Gentile said, 'Go to Brigham Young!--these small fry cannot do you any
good.' I did not think much of the idea, for if the law could not help
me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with
either making the laws or executing them? He might be a very good
patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but something
sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred
refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But what was a man to do? I
thought if Mr. Young could not do anything else, he might probably be
able to give me some advice and a valuable hint or two, and so I went
straight to him and laid the whole case before him. He said very little,
but he showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all the
papers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch, either
in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the thread
and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory result.
Then he made a list of the contractors' names. Finally he said:
"'Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are strictly
and legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These men
manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault or
flaw anywhere.'
"Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and
said: 'Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have these
men here at such-and-such an hour.'
"They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a
number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he
said to them:
"'You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own
free will and accord?'
"'Yes.'
"'Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go!'
"And they did go, too! They are strung across the deserts now, working
like bees. And I never hear a word out of them.
"There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here,
shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican
form of government--but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute
monarchy and Brigham Young is king!"
Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him well
during several years afterward in San Francisco.
Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we
had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of
polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to
calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.
I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I
was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until
I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my
head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely"
creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I
said, "No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian
charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their
harsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of
open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered
in his presence and worship in silence."
[For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow
massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]
CHAPTER XV.
It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about
assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of
anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a
Gentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped
in among the pleading and defenceless "Morisites" and shot them down, men
and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel,
shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt.
And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how
heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or
polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at
daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley,
contentedly waiting for the hearse.
And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these
Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder,
or a bishop, marries a girl--likes her, marries her sister--likes her,
marries another sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries her
mother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather,
and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young
thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable
grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's
esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this
dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest of mother
and daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her own mother
in rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit to because
their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and
the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in
the world to come--and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say
anything about that.
According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young's harem
contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown
old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared
for in the henery--or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along
with each wife were her children--fifty altogether. The house was
perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took
their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was
pronounced to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner
with Mr. Young, but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have
enjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterous
account of the "calling of the roll," and other preliminaries, and the
carnage that ensued when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished
rather too much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings
of certain of his "two-year-olds," observing with some pride that for
many years he had been the heaviest contributor in that line to one of
the Eastern magazines; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the
pets that had said the last good thing, but he could not find the child.
He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide
which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said:
"I thought I would know the little cub again but I don't." Mr. Johnson
said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing
--"because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be
blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr.
Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in
private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin,
remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to
No. 6, and she, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go on
without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Young
reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that if
the state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger,
he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she
went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in and
demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young
cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one,
and it was "no use for him to try to impose on her--she hoped she knew
her rights." He gave his promise, and she went. And presently three
Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband a tempest of
tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6, No. 11, and
No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gone
when nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest
burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine
breast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in
came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven
promised breast-pins purchased peace once more.
"That is a specimen," said Mr. Young. "You see how it is. You see what
a life I lead. A man can't be wise all the time. In a heedless moment I
gave my darling No. 6--excuse my calling her thus, as her other name has
escaped me for the moment--a breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five
dollars--that is, apparently that was its whole cost--but its ultimate
cost was inevitably bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen
it climb up to six hundred and fifty dollars--and alas, even that is not
the end! For I have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have
dozens of wives whose numbers, even, I do not know without looking in the
family Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and
valleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear
of this wretched breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or
die. No. 6's breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before
I see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pins
together, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be
thrown on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep peace in
the family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but all the time you were
present with my children your every movement was watched by vigilant
servitors of mine. If you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick
of candy, or any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out of
the house instantly, provided it could be done before your gift left your
hand. Otherwise it would be absolutely necessary for you to make an
exactly similar gift to all my children--and knowing by experience the
importance of the thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself that
you did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my
children a tin whistle--a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one
which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty
or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done--the man
escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for
vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted
the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they never
caught him. I am not cruel, sir--I am not vindictive except when sorely
outraged--but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would
have locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death.
By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assail!) there
was never anything on this earth like it! I knew who gave the whistle to
the child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me. They
believed I did it, and the result was just what any man of reflection
could have foreseen: I had to order a hundred and ten whistles--I think
we had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them are
off at college now--I had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking
things, and I wish I may never speak another word if we didn't have to
talk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the children got
tired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a
child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than
Haman! That is the word with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi! You don't
know anything about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. I
am benevolent, and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strong
fatherly instinct and all the foundlings are foisted on me.
"Every time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her brain
to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, a
woman came here once with a child of a curious lifeless sort of
complexion (and so had the woman), and swore that the child was mine and
she my wife--that I had married her at such-and-such a time in
such-and-such a place, but she had forgotten her number, and of course I
could not remember her name. Well, sir, she called my attention to the
fact that the child looked like me, and really it did seem to resemble
me--a common thing in the Territory--and, to cut the story short, I put
it in my nursery, and she left. And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when
they came to wash the paint off that child it was an Injun! Bless my
soul, you don't know anything about married life. It is a perfect dog's
life, sir--a perfect dog's life. You can't economize. It isn't
possible. I have tried keeping one set of bridal attire for all
occasions. But it is of no use. First you'll marry a combination of
calico and consumption that's as thin as a rail, and next you'll get a
creature that's nothing more than the dropsy in disguise, and then you've
got to eke out that bridal dress with an old balloon. That is the way it
goes. And think of the wash-bill--(excuse these tears)--nine hundred and
eighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there is no such a thing as economy
in a family like mine. Why, just the one item of cradles--think of it!
And vermifuge! Soothing syrup! Teething rings! And 'papa's watches' for
the babies to play with! And things to scratch the furniture with! And
lucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass to cut themselves
with! The item of glass alone would support your family, I venture to
say, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze all I can, I still can't get ahead as
fast as I feel I ought to, with my opportunities. Bless you, sir, at a
time when I had seventy-two wives in this house, I groaned under the
pressure of keeping thousands of dollars tied up in seventy-two bedsteads
when the money ought to have been out at interest; and I just sold out
the whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and built a bedstead seven feet
long and ninety-six feet wide. But it was a failure, sir. I could not
sleep. It appeared to me that the whole seventy-two women snored at once.
The roar was deafening. And then the danger of it! That was what I was
looking at. They would all draw in their breath at once, and you could
actually see the walls of the house suck in--and then they would all
exhale their breath at once, and you could see the walls swell out, and
strain, and hear the rafters crack, and the shingles grind together. My
friend, take an old man's advice, and don't encumber yourself with a
large family--mind, I tell you, don't do it. In a small family, and in a
small family only, you will find that comfort and that peace of mind
which are the best at last of the blessings this world is able to afford
us, and for the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and no
acquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever compensate us. Take my
word for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need--never go over it."
Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being unreliable.
And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if some of the
information he gave us could have been acquired from any other source.
He was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons.
CHAPTER XVI.
All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have
seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a
copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a
pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of
inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this
book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any
rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain
ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he
found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of
translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.
The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the
Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New
Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint,
old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the
Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half
ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained;
the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his
speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he
ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came
to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to
pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been
only a pamphlet.
The title-page reads as follows:
THE BOOK OF MORMON: AN ACCOUNT WRITTEN BY THE HAND OF MORMON, UPON
PLATES TAKEN FROM THE PLATES OF NEPHI.
Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi,
and also of the Lamanites; written to the Lamanites, who are a
remnant of the House of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile; written
by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of
revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that
they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of
God unto the interpretation thereof; sealed by the hand of Moroni,
and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of
Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God. An
abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which is a record of
the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord
confounded the language of the people when they were building a
tower to get to Heaven.
"Hid up" is good. And so is "wherefore"--though why "wherefore"? Any
other word would have answered as well--though--in truth it would not
have sounded so Scriptural.
Next comes:
THE TESTIMONY OF THREE WITNESSES.
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto
whom this work shall come, that we, through the grace of God the
Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which
contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and
also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of
Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we
also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of
God, for His voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a
surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen
the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown
unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with
words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and
he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the
plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the
grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld
and bear record that these things are true; and it is marvellous in
our eyes; nevertheless the voice of the Lord commanded us that we
should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the
commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know
that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the
blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of
Christ, and shall dwell with Him eternally in the heavens. And the
honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which
is one God. Amen.
OLIVER COWDERY,
DAVID WHITMER,
MARTIN HARRIS.
Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come
anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything; but for me, when a
man tells me that he has "seen the engravings which are upon the plates,"
and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see
them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to
conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and
even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either.
Next is this:
AND ALSO THE TESTIMONY OF EIGHT WITNESSES.
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto
whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jr., the translator of
this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken,
which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the
said Smith has translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also
saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of
ancient work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record
with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for
we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith
has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names
unto the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen;
and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.
CHRISTIAN WHITMER,
JACOB WHITMER,
PETER WHITMER, JR.,
JOHN WHITMER,
HIRAM PAGE,
JOSEPH SMITH, SR.,
HYRUM SMITH,
SAMUEL H. SMITH.
And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they
grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen
the plates too; and not only seen those plates but "hefted" them, I am
convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire
Whitmer family had testified.
The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen "books"--being the books of Jacob,
Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zeniff, Alma, Helaman, Ether, Moroni, two
"books" of Mormon, and three of Nephi.
In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, which
gives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the "children of Lehi";
and it goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness, during
eight years, and their supernatural protection by one of their number, a
party by the name of Nephi. They finally reached the land of
"Bountiful," and camped by the sea. After they had remained there "for
the space of many days"--which is more Scriptural than definite--Nephi
was commanded from on high to build a ship wherein to "carry the people
across the waters." He travestied Noah's ark--but he obeyed orders in
the matter of the plan. He finished the ship in a single day, while his
brethren stood by and made fun of it--and of him, too--"saying, our
brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship." They did
not wait for the timbers to dry, but the whole tribe or nation sailed the
next day. Then a bit of genuine nature cropped out, and is revealed by
outspoken Nephi with Scriptural frankness--they all got on a spree!
They, "and also their wives, began to make themselves merry, insomuch
that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness;
yea, they were lifted up unto exceeding rudeness."
Nephi tried to stop these scandalous proceedings; but they tied him neck
and heels, and went on with their lark. But observe how Nephi the
prophet circumvented them by the aid of the invisible powers:
And it came to pass that after they had bound me, insomuch that I
could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord,
did cease to work; wherefore, they knew not whither they should
steer the ship, insomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a
great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters
for the space of three days; and they began to be frightened
exceedingly, lest they should be drowned in the sea; nevertheless
they did not loose me. And on the fourth day, which we had been
driven back, the tempest began to be exceeding sore. And it came to
pass that we were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea.
Then they untied him.
And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the
compass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass
that I prayed unto the Lord; and after I had prayed, the winds did
cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm.
Equipped with their compass, these ancients appear to have had the
advantage of Noah.
Their voyage was toward a "promised land"--the only name they give it.
They reached it in safety.
Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added by
Brigham Young after Joseph Smith's death. Before that, it was regarded
as an "abomination." This verse from the Mormon Bible occurs in Chapter
II. of the book of Jacob:
For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in
iniquity; they understand not the Scriptures; for they seek to
excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things
which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold,
David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing
was abominable before me, saith the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the
Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by
the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous
branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore, I the Lord
God, will no suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.
However, the project failed--or at least the modern Mormon end of it--for
Brigham "suffers" it. This verse is from the same chapter:
Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their
filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are
more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment
of the Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should
have, save it were one wife; and concubines they should have none.
The following verse (from Chapter IX. of the Book of Nephi) appears to
contain information not familiar to everybody:
And now it came to pass that when Jesus had ascended into heaven,
the multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his
children, and did return to his own home.
And it came to pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was
gathered together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised
from the dead, whose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name
was Jonas, and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen,
and Kumenenhi, and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah,
and Isaiah; now these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had
chosen.
In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur and
picturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompanied on of the
tenderest episodes in the life of our Saviour than other eyes seem to
have been aware of, I quote the following from the same "book"--Nephi:
And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise.
And they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye
because of your faith. And now behold, My joy is full. And when He
had said these words, He wept, and the multitude bear record of it,
and He took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and
prayed unto the Father for them. And when He had done this He wept
again, and He spake unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold
your little ones. And as they looked to behold, they cast their
eyes toward heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw
angels descending out of heaven as it were, in the midst of fire;
and they came down and encircled those little ones about, and they
were encircled about with fire; and the angels did minister unto
them, and the multitude did see and hear and bear record; and they
know that their record is true, for they all of them did see and
hear, every man for himself; and they were in number about two
thousand and five hundred souls; and they did consist of men, women,
and children.
And what else would they be likely to consist of?
The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of if "history," much of
it relating to battles and sieges among peoples whom the reader has
possibly never heard of; and who inhabited a country which is not set
down in the geography. These was a King with the remarkable name of
Coriantumr,^^ and he warred with Shared, and Lib, and Shiz, and others,
in the "plains of Heshlon"; and the "valley of Gilgal"; and the
"wilderness of Akish"; and the "land of Moran"; and the "plains of
Agosh"; and "Ogath," and "Ramah," and the "land of Corihor," and the
"hill Comnor," by "the waters of Ripliancum," etc., etc., etc. "And it
came to pass," after a deal of fighting, that Coriantumr, upon making
calculation of his losses, found that "there had been slain two millions
of mighty men, and also their wives and their children"--say 5,000,000 or
6,000,000 in all--"and he began to sorrow in his heart." Unquestionably
it was time. So he wrote to Shiz, asking a cessation of hostilities, and
offering to give up his kingdom to save his people. Shiz declined,
except upon condition that Coriantumr would come and let him cut his head
off first--a thing which Coriantumr would not do. Then there was more
fighting for a season; then four years were devoted to gathering the
forces for a final struggle--after which ensued a battle, which, I take
it, is the most remarkable set forth in history,--except, perhaps, that
of the Kilkenny cats, which it resembles in some respects. This is the
account of the gathering and the battle:
7. And it came to pass that they did gather together all the
people, upon all the face of the land, who had not been slain, save
it was Ether. And it came to pass that Ether did behold all the
doings of the people; and he beheld that the people who were for
Coriantumr, were gathered together to the army of Coriantumr; and
the people who were for Shiz, were gathered together to the army of
Shiz; wherefore they were for the space of four years gathering
together the people, that they might get all who were upon the face
of the land, and that they might receive all the strength which it
was possible that they could receive. And it came to pass that when
they were all gathered together, every one to the army which he
would, with their wives and their children; both men, women, and
children being armed with weapons of war, having shields, and
breast-plates, and head-plates, and being clothed after the manner
of war, they did march forth one against another, to battle; and
they fought all that day, and conquered not. And it came to pass
that when it was night they were weary, and retired to their camps;
and after they had retired to their camps, they took up a howling
and a lamentation for the loss of the slain of their people; and so
great were their cries, their howlings and lamentations, that it did
rend the air exceedingly. And it came to pass that on the morrow
they did go again to battle, and great and terrible was that day;
nevertheless they conquered not, and when the night came again, they
did rend the air with their cries, and their howlings, and their
mournings, for the loss of the slain of their people.
8. And it came to pass that Coriantumr wrote again an epistle unto
Shiz, desiring that he would not come again to battle, but that he
would take the kingdom, and spare the lives of the people. But
behold, the Spirit of the Lord had ceased striving with them, and
Satan had full power over the hearts of the people, for they were
given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of
their minds that they might be destroyed; wherefore they went again
to battle. And it came to pass that they fought all that day, and
when the night came they slept upon their swords; and on the morrow
they fought even until the night came; and when the night came they
were drunken with anger, even as a man who is drunken with wine; and
they slept again upon their swords; and on the morrow they fought
again; and when the night came they had all fallen by the sword save
it were fifty and two of the people of Coriantumr, and sixty and
nine of the people of Shiz. And it came to pass that they slept
upon their swords that night, and on the morrow they fought again,
and they contended in their mights with their swords, and with their
shields, all that day; and when the night came there were thirty and
two of the people of Shiz, and twenty and seven of the people of
Coriantumr.
9. And it came to pass that they ate and slept, and prepared for
death on the morrow. And they were large and mighty men, as to the
strength of men. And it came to pass that they fought for the space
of three hours, and they fainted with the loss of blood. And it
came to pass that when the men of Coriantumr had received sufficient
strength, that they could walk, they were about to flee for their
lives, but behold, Shiz arose, and also his men, and he swore in his
wrath that he would slay Coriantumr, or he would perish by the
sword: wherefore he did pursue them, and on the morrow he did
overtake them; and they fought again with the sword. And it came to
pass that when they had all fallen by the sword, save it were
Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz had fainted with loss of blood.
And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword,
that he rested a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came
to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz
raised upon his hands and fell; and after that he had struggled for
breath, he died. And it came to pass that Coriantumr fell to the
earth, and became as if he had no life. And the Lord spake unto
Ether, and said unto him, go forth. And he went forth, and beheld
that the words of the Lord had all been fulfilled; and he finished
his record; and the hundredth part I have not written.
It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary former
chapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming
interesting.
The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is
nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable
--it is "smouched" [Milton] from the New Testament and no credit given.
CHAPTER XVII.
At the end of our two days' sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City hearty
and well fed and happy--physically superb but not so very much wiser, as
regards the "Mormon question," than we were when we arrived, perhaps.
We had a deal more "information" than we had before, of course, but we
did not know what portion of it was reliable and what was not--for it all
came from acquaintances of a day--strangers, strictly speaking. We were
told, for instance, that the dreadful "Mountain Meadows Massacre" was the
work of the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried to
fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told, likewise, that the Indians were
to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we were told, likewise, and
just as positively, that the Mormons were almost if not wholly and
completely responsible for that most treacherous and pitiless butchery.
We got the story in all these different shapes, but it was not till
several years afterward that Mrs. Waite's book, "The Mormon Prophet,"
came out with Judge Cradlebaugh's trial of the accused parties in it and
revealed the truth that the latter version was the correct one and that
the Mormons were the assassins. All our "information" had three sides to
it, and so I gave up the idea that I could settle the "Mormon question"
in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one.
I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things
existed there--and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a
state of things existed there at all or not. But presently I remembered
with a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or three
trivial things there which we could be certain of; and so the two days
were not wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at last
in a pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality.
The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and
bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the
smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the smallest
purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallest
coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller quantity of an
article could be bought than "five cents' worth." In Overland City the
lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in Salt Lake there did
not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a quarter, or any
smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than twenty-five cents'
worth. We had always been used to half dimes and "five cents' worth" as
the minimum of financial negotiations; but in Salt Lake if one wanted a
cigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter; if
he wanted a peach, or a candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a little
Gentile whiskey to rub on his corns to arrest indigestion and keep him
from having the toothache, twenty-five cents was the price, every time.
When we looked at the shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to be
wasting our substance in riotous living, but if we referred to the
expense account we could see that we had not been doing anything of the
kind.
But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fond
and vain of both--it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices that
is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one's toleration. After
a month's acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the average
human being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his despicable
five-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in gaudy Nevada,
every time I thought of my first financial experience in Salt Lake.
It was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great authors, and
a very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody say on this wise when they
are talking). A young half-breed with a complexion like a yellow-jacket
asked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at the Salt Lake House
the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he blacked them. Then I
handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent air of a person
who is conferring wealth and blessedness upon poverty and suffering. The
yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be suppressed emotion, and
laid it reverently down in the middle of his broad hand. Then he began
to contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates a gnat's ear in the
ample field of his microscope. Several mountaineers, teamsters,
stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into the tableau and fell to
surveying the money with that attractive indifference to formality which
is noticeable in the hardy pioneer. Presently the yellow-jacket handed
the half dime back to me and told me I ought to keep my money in my
pocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I wouldn't get it cramped and
shriveled up so!
What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the mongrel
reptile on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was detaching
his scalp, for the remark he made was good for an "Injun."
Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices without
letting the inward shudder appear on the surface--for even already we had
overheard and noted the tenor of conversations among drivers, conductors,
and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until we were well
aware that these superior beings despised "emigrants." We permitted no
tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we wanted to seem
pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-drivers, Mountain
Meadow assassins--anything in the world that the plains and Utah
respected and admired--but we were wretchedly ashamed of being
"emigrants," and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could not
swear in the presence of ladies without looking the other way.
And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion to remember with
humiliation that we were "emigrants," and consequently a low and inferior
sort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada, or
California, even in these latter days, and while communing with himself
upon the sorrowful banishment of these countries from what he considers
"the world," has had his wings clipped by finding that he is the one to
be pitied, and that there are entire populations around him ready and
willing to do it for him--yea, who are complacently doing it for him
already, wherever he steps his foot.
Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New York
coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feeble
profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts,
tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt
enough interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinking
what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely land,
the citizens around him are looking down on him with a blighting
compassion because he is an "emigrant" instead of that proudest and
blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a "FORTY-NINER."
The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almost
seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacks
at all. We had made one alteration, however. We had provided enough
bread, boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundred
miles of staging we had still to do.
And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the
majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eat
ham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternately
in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenery
like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe--an old, rank,
delicious pipe--ham and eggs and scenery, a "down grade," a flying coach,
a fragrant pipe and a contented heart--these make happiness. It is what
all the ages have struggled for.
CHAPTER XVIII.
At eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been
the important military station of "Camp Floyd," some forty-five or fifty
miles from Salt Lake City. At four P.M. we had doubled our distance and
were ninety or a hundred miles from Salt Lake. And now we entered upon
one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames the
diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara--an "alkali" desert. For
sixty-eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not remember that
this was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but a
watering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty-eight miles. If my
memory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but the
water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the further side of the
desert. There was a stage station there. It was forty-five miles from
the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it.
We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night,
and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the
forty-five-mile part of the desert and got to the stage station where the
imported water was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to
cross a desert in the night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant to
reflect, in the morning, that we in actual person had encountered an
absolute desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence
of the ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that
this was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one,
the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very
comfortable and satisfactory--but now we were to cross a desert in
daylight. This was fine--novel--romantic--dramatically adventurous
--this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would
write home all about it.
This enthusiasm, this stern thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry
August sun and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour--and
then we were ashamed that we had "gushed" so. The poetry was all in the
anticipation--there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, waveless
ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes; imagine this solemn waste tufted
with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitude
that belong to such a place; imagine a coach, creeping like a bug through
the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled volumes of dust
as if it were a bug that went by steam; imagine this aching monotony of
toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the shore still as far
away as ever, apparently; imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so
deeply coated with ashes that they are all one colorless color; imagine
ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations
on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it.
The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the
perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a
sign of it finds its way to the surface--it is absorbed before it gets
there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a
merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a
living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank
level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a
sound--not a sigh--not a whisper--not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or
distant pipe of bird--not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless
people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting
mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness,
not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more
lonesome and forsaken than before.
The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make
at stated intervals a "spurt," and drag the coach a hundred or may be two
hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back,
enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem
afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and
bit-champing. Then another "spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest at
the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules
and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours,
which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert.
It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so
hot! and so close! and our water canteens went dry in the middle of the
day and we got so thirsty! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull! and
the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel
deliberation! It was so trying to give one's watch a good long
undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling
away the time and not trying to get ahead any! The alkali dust cut
through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate
membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding--and truly and
seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the
desert trip nothing but a harsh reality--a thirsty, sweltering, longing,
hateful reality!
Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours--that was what we
accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a
snail-pace as that, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles
an hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert,
we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because
we never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort
of dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could
not have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language
sufficient to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three
mile pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were,
would be to "gild refined gold or paint the lily."
Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit--but no
matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive
thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where
it would fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind
distracted and ill at ease, and made my narrative seem broken and
disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to
leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary
respite from the wear and tear of trying to "lead up" to this really apt
and beautiful quotation.
CHAPTER XIX.
On the morning of the sixteenth day out from St. Joseph we arrived at the
entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake.
It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any habitation
of white men, except the stage stations, that we came across the
wretchedest type of mankind I have ever seen, up to this writing. I
refer to the Goshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could
learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger
Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent;
inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans; inferior to the Hottentots, and
actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of Africa. Indeed, I
have been obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood's "Uncivilized Races
of Men" clear through in order to find a savage tribe degraded enough to
take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to that
shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa. Such
of the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the stations,
were small, lean, "scrawny" creatures; in complexion a dull black like
the ordinary American negro; their faces and hands bearing dirt which
they had been hoarding and accumulating for months, years, and even
generations, according to the age of the proprietor; a silent, sneaking,
treacherous looking race; taking note of everything, covertly, like all
the other "Noble Red Men" that we (do not) read about, and betraying no
sign in their countenances; indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless,
like all other Indians; prideless beggars--for if the beggar instinct
were left out of an Indian he would not "go," any more than a clock
without a pendulum; hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusing
anything that a hog would eat, though often eating what a hog would
decline; hunters, but having no higher ambition than to kill and eat
jack-ass rabbits, crickets and grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion from
the buzzards and cayotes; savages who, when asked if they have the common
Indian belief in a Great Spirit show a something which almost amounts to
emotion, thinking whiskey is referred to; a thin, scattering race of
almost naked black children, these Goshoots are, who produce nothing at
all, and have no villages, and no gatherings together into strictly
defined tribal communities--a people whose only shelter is a rag cast on
a bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the
most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other can
exhibit.
The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same
gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, which-ever animal--Adam the
Darwinians trace them to.
One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yet
they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few months
and then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burn
down the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out.
And once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District
Judge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first
volley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains,
wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was
full of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver's call Judge Mott
swung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team,
and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under a
hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the
boot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he
would manage to keep hold of them until relieved.
And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his head
between Judge Mott's feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the road;
he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun and
left behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would be at
an end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions about
bad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the next
station without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last
rattled up to the station and knew that the night's perils were done; but
there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierly
driver was dead.
Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland
drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of
Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man--even of the scholarly savages in
the "Last of the Mohicans" who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmen
who divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part critically
grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just such
an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk
might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett's works and
studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks--I say
that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set me
to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimating
the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance.
The revelations that came were disenchanting. It was curious to see how
quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous,
filthy and repulsive--and how quickly the evidences accumulated that
wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more or
less modified by circumstances and surroundings--but Goshoots, after all.
They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have mine--at this
distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody's.
There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington Railroad
Company and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error.
There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to
mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both
tribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start
the report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have
been, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who
have a hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky
Mountains, Heaven knows! If we cannot find it in our hearts to give
those poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, in
God's name let us at least not throw mud at them.
CHAPTER XX.
On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet
seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its
heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless.
On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound
telegraph-constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his
Excellency Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six
miles).
On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert--forty
memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk from
six inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across.
That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long
and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert
to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the
forty miles and set our feet on a bone at every step! The desert was one
prodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rotting
wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw
log-chains enough rusting there in the desert, to reach across any State
in the Union. Do not these relics suggest something of an idea of the
fearful suffering and privation the early emigrants to California
endured?
At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The "Sink" of the
Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or a hundred
miles in circumference. Carson River empties into it and is lost--sinks
mysteriously into the earth and never appears in the light of the sun
again--for the lake has no outlet whatever.
There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this mysterious
fate. They end in various lakes or "sinks," and that is the last of
them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Mono Lake, are all great
sheets of water without any visible outlet. Water is always flowing into
them; none is ever seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain always
level full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with their
surplus is only known to the Creator.
On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Ragtown. It
consisted of one log house and is not set down on the map.
This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Julesburg, on the
Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said:
"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace.
The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through
the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to
go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago.
But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on
time'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"
A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads, and
he told us a good deal about the country and the Gregory Diggings.
He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairs
of Colorado. By and by he remarked:
"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The
coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through
the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to
go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago.
But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on
time!'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"
At Fort Bridger, some days after this, we took on board a cavalry
sergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other man
during the whole journey, did we gather such a store of concise and
well-arranged military information. It was surprising to find in the
desolate wilds of our country a man so thoroughly acquainted with
everything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior
rank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened
to him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of
trans-continental travel, and presently said:
"I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The
coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through
the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to
go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago.
But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on
time!'--and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"
When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got in
with us at a way station--a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one whom
any stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the pathos
that was in his voice as he told, in simple language, the story of his
people's wanderings and unpitied sufferings. No pulpit eloquence was
ever so moving and so beautiful as this outcast's picture of the first
Mormon pilgrimage across the plains, struggling sorrowfully onward to the
land of its banishment and marking its desolate way with graves and
watering it with tears. His words so wrought upon us that it was a
relief to us all when the conversation drifted into a more cheerful
channel and the natural features of the curious country we were in came
under treatment. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, and
at length the stranger said:
"I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to
listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was
leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an
engagement to lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go through
quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The
coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the
buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through
the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to
go easier--said he warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago.
But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on
time!'--and you bet you bet you he did, too, what was left of him!"
Ten miles out of Ragtown we found a poor wanderer who had lain down to
die. He had walked as long as he could, but his limbs had failed him at
last. Hunger and fatigue had conquered him. It would have been inhuman
to leave him there. We paid his fare to Carson and lifted him into the
coach. It was some little time before he showed any very decided signs
of life; but by dint of chafing him and pouring brandy between his lips
we finally brought him to a languid consciousness. Then we fed him a
little, and by and by he seemed to comprehend the situation and a
grateful light softened his eye. We made his mail-sack bed as
comfortable as possible, and constructed a pillow for him with our coats.
He seemed very thankful. Then he looked up in our faces, and said in a
feeble voice that had a tremble of honest emotion in it:
"Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life; and
although I can never be able to repay you for it, I feel that I can at
least make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you are
strangers to this great thorough fare, but I am entirely familiar with
it. In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if
you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley----"
I said, impressively:
"Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the melancholy
wreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has brought me to
this? That thing which you are about to tell. Gradually but surely,
that tiresome old anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined my
constitution, withered my life. Pity my helplessness. Spare me only
just this once, and tell me about young George Washington and his little
hatchet for a change."
We were saved. But not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdote
in his system he strained himself and died in our arms.
I am aware, now, that I ought not to have asked of the sturdiest citizen
of all that region, what I asked of that mere shadow of a man; for, after
seven years' residence on the Pacific coast, I know that no passenger or
driver on the Overland ever corked that anecdote in, when a stranger was
by, and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed and recrossed
the Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times by stage and
listened to that deathless incident four hundred and eighty-one or
eighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. Drivers always told it,
conductors told it, landlords told it, chance passengers told it, the
very Chinamen and vagrant Indians recounted it. I have had the same
driver tell it to me two or three times in the same afternoon. It has
come to me in all the multitude of tongues that Babel bequeathed to
earth, and flavored with whiskey, brandy, beer, cologne, sozodont,
tobacco, garlic, onions, grasshoppers--everything that has a fragrance to
it through all the long list of things that are gorged or guzzled by the
sons of men. I never have smelt any anecdote as often as I have smelt
that one; never have smelt any anecdote that smelt so variegated as that
one. And you never could learn to know it by its smell, because every
time you thought you had learned the smell of it, it would turn up with a
different smell. Bayard Taylor has written about this hoary anecdote,
Richardson has published it; so have Jones, Smith, Johnson, Ross Browne,
and every other correspondence-inditing being that ever set his foot upon
the great overland road anywhere between Julesburg and San Francisco; and
I have heard that it is in the Talmud. I have seen it in print in nine
different foreign languages; I have been told that it is employed in the
inquisition in Rome; and I now learn with regret that it is going to be
set to music. I do not think that such things are right.
Stage-coaching on the Overland is no more, and stage drivers are a race
defunct. I wonder if they bequeathed that bald-headed anecdote to their
successors, the railroad brakemen and conductors, and if these latter
still persecute the helpless passenger with it until he concludes, as did
many a tourist of other days, that the real grandeurs of the Pacific
coast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his
adventure with Horace Greeley. [And what makes that worn anecdote the
more aggravating, is, that the adventure it celebrates never occurred.
If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest
virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness; but what ought to be
done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this? If I
were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be called
extravagant--but what does the sixteenth chapter of Daniel say? Aha!]
CHAPTER XXI.
We were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of
the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the capital of
Nevada Territory. We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine
pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well
accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a
stand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a village was not
agreeable, but on the contrary depressing.
Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow-clad
mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but
the endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We
were plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose in
thick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning
house.
We were coated with it like millers; so were the coach, the mules, the
mail-bags, the driver--we and the sage-brush and the other scenery were
all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distance
envelope in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on
fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw.
Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation.
Every twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast of burthen,
with its dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs.
Frequently a solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplated
the passing coach with meditative serenity.
By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a
great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an
assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of mountains
overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of companionship
and consciousness of earthly things.
We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a "wooden" town;
its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four or
five blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit down
on, but not too high for various other purposes; in fact, hardly high
enough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were
scarce in that mighty plain.
The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined to
rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores,
was the "plaza" which is native to all towns beyond the Rocky Mountains
--a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a liberty pole in it, and very
useful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass meetings,
and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the plaza were
faced by stores, offices and stables.
The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering.
We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the
way up to the Governor's from the hotel--among others, to a Mr. Harris,
who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himself
with the remark:
"I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that
swore I helped to rob the California coach--a piece of impertinent
intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man."
Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter,
and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were
emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr.
Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through
one of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little
rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse's sides and made the animal
look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it
recalled to mind that first day in Carson.
This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, now, and according
to custom the daily "Washoe Zephyr" set in; a soaring dust-drift about
the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the
capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view.
Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting
to new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things
strange to the upper air--things living and dead, that flitted hither and
thither, going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling
billows of dust--hats, chickens and parasols sailing in the remote
heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles a shade lower;
door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles on the
next grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next; disrupted
lumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only
thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating
roofs and vacant lots.
It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could
have kept the dust out of my eyes.
But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows
flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones
like sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills the
passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people
there, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are
looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on
Summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around
their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.
The "Washoe Zephyr" (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiar
Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh." That is to
say, where it originates. It comes right over the mountains from the
West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the
other side! It probably is manufactured on the mountain-top for the
occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regular wind, in the
summer time. Its office hours are from two in the afternoon till two the
next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during those twelve hours
needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to leeward
of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe
visitor to San Francisco makes, is that the sea winds blow so, there!
There is a good deal of human nature in that.
We found the state palace of the Governor of Nevada Territory to consist
of a white frame one-story house with two small rooms in it and a
stanchion supported shed in front--for grandeur--it compelled the respect
of the citizen and inspired the Indians with awe. The newly arrived
Chief and Associate Justices of the Territory, and other machinery of the
government, were domiciled with less splendor. They were boarding around
privately, and had their offices in their bedrooms.
The Secretary and I took quarters in the "ranch" of a worthy French lady
by the name of Bridget O'Flannigan, a camp follower of his Excellency the
Governor. She had known him in his prosperity as commander-in-chief of
the Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would not desert him in his
adversity as Governor of Nevada.
Our room was on the lower floor, facing the plaza, and when we had got
our bed, a small table, two chairs, the government fire-proof safe, and
the Unabridged Dictionary into it, there was still room enough left for a
visitor--may be two, but not without straining the walls. But the walls
could stand it--at least the partitions could, for they consisted simply
of one thickness of white "cotton domestic" stretched from corner to
corner of the room. This was the rule in Carson--any other kind of
partition was the rare exception. And if you stood in a dark room and
your neighbors in the next had lights, the shadows on your canvas told
queer secrets sometimes! Very often these partitions were made of old
flour sacks basted together; and then the difference between the common
herd and the aristocracy was, that the common herd had unornamented
sacks, while the walls of the aristocrat were overpowering with
rudimental fresco--i.e., red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks.
Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvas by
pasting pictures from Harper's Weekly on them. In many cases, too, the
wealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of a
sumptuous and luxurious taste. [Washoe people take a joke so hard that I
must explain that the above description was only the rule; there were
many honorable exceptions in Carson--plastered ceilings and houses that
had considerable furniture in them.--M. T.]
We had a carpet and a genuine queen's-ware washbowl. Consequently we
were hated without reserve by the other tenants of the O'Flannigan
"ranch." When we added a painted oilcloth window curtain, we simply took
our lives into our own hands. To prevent bloodshed I removed up stairs
and took up quarters with the untitled plebeians in one of the fourteen
white pine cot-bedsteads that stood in two long ranks in the one sole
room of which the second story consisted.
It was a jolly company, the fourteen. They were principally voluntary
camp-followers of the Governor, who had joined his retinue by their own
election at New York and San Francisco and came along, feeling that in
the scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not make
their condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably expect
to make it better. They were popularly known as the "Irish Brigade,"
though there were only four or five Irishmen among all the Governor's
retainers.
His good-natured Excellency was much annoyed at the gossip his henchmen
created--especially when there arose a rumor that they were paid
assassins of his, brought along to quietly reduce the democratic vote
when desirable!
Mrs. O'Flannigan was boarding and lodging them at ten dollars a week
apiece, and they were cheerfully giving their notes for it. They were
perfectly satisfied, but Bridget presently found that notes that could
not be discounted were but a feeble constitution for a Carson
boarding-house. So she began to harry the Governor to find employment
for the "Brigade." Her importunities and theirs together drove him to a
gentle desperation at last, and he finally summoned the Brigade to the
presence. Then, said he:
"Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you
--a service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes,
and afford you never ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds by
observation and study. I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City
westward to a certain point! When the legislature meets I will have the
necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged."
"What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains?"
"Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point!"
He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so on, and turned
them loose in the desert. It was "recreation" with a vengeance!
Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush, under a
sultry sun and among cattle bones, cayotes and tarantulas.
"Romantic adventure" could go no further. They surveyed very slowly,
very deliberately, very carefully. They returned every night during the
first week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly. They
brought in great store of prodigious hairy spiders--tarantulas--and
imprisoned them in covered tumblers up stairs in the "ranch." After the
first week, they had to camp on the field, for they were getting well
eastward. They made a good many inquiries as to the location of that
indefinite "certain point," but got no information. At last, to a
peculiarly urgent inquiry of "How far eastward?" Governor Nye
telegraphed back:
"To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you!--and then bridge it and go on!"
This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased from
their labors. The Governor was always comfortable about it; he said Mrs.
O'Flannigan would hold him for the Brigade's board anyhow, and he
intended to get what entertainment he could out of the boys; he said,
with his old-time pleasant twinkle, that he meant to survey them into
Utah and then telegraph Brigham to hang them for trespass!
The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite
a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these
spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular
legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they
were the wickedest-looking desperadoes the animal world can furnish.
If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up
and spoiling for a fight in a minute. Starchy?--proud? Indeed, they
would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress.
There was as usual a furious "zephyr" blowing the first night of the
brigade's return, and about midnight the roof of an adjoining stable blew
off, and a corner of it came crashing through the side of our ranch.
There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the
brigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other
in the narrow aisle between the bedrows. In the midst of the turmoil,
Bob H---- sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with
his head. Instantly he shouted:
"Turn out, boys--the tarantulas is loose!"
No warning ever sounded so dreadful. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave
the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a
trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence--a
silence of grisly suspense it was, too--waiting, expectancy, fear. It
was as dark as pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those
fourteen scant-clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a
thing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the
silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his
voice, or locate any other sound a sufferer made by his gropings or
changes of position. The occasional voices were not given to much
speaking--you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of "Ow!" followed by a
solid thump, and you knew the gentleman had felt a hairy blanket or
something touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor.
Another silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say:
"Su--su--something's crawling up the back of my neck!"
Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a
sorrowful "O Lord!" and then you knew that somebody was getting away from
something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it,
either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear:
"I've got him! I've got him!" [Pause, and probable change of
circumstances.] "No, he's got me! Oh, ain't they never going to fetch a
lantern!"
The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O'Flannigan, whose
anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not
prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and
lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, up stairs, or had a larger
contract.
The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was
picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us.
Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so
strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too
genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the
semblance of a smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable of
suffering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the
dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had
skipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and every
time I touched anything that was furzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had
rather go to war than live that episode over again. Nobody was hurt.
The man who thought a tarantula had "got him" was mistaken--only a crack
in a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was
ever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and
hunted the place high and low for them, but with no success. Did we go
back to bed then? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have
persuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbage
and keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy.
CHAPTER XXII.
It was the end of August, and the skies were cloudless and the weather
superb. In two or three weeks I had grown wonderfully fascinated with
the curious new country and concluded to put off my return to "the
States" awhile. I had grown well accustomed to wearing a damaged slouch
hat, blue woolen shirt, and pants crammed into boot-tops, and gloried in
the absence of coat, vest and braces. I felt rowdyish and "bully," (as
the historian Josephus phrases it, in his fine chapter upon the
destruction of the Temple). It seemed to me that nothing could be so
fine and so romantic. I had become an officer of the government, but
that was for mere sublimity. The office was an unique sinecure. I had
nothing to do and no salary. I was private Secretary to his majesty the
Secretary and there was not yet writing enough for two of us. So Johnny
K---- and I devoted our time to amusement. He was the young son of an
Ohio nabob and was out there for recreation. He got it. We had heard a
world of talk about the marvellous beauty of Lake Tahoe, and finally
curiosity drove us thither to see it. Three or four members of the
Brigade had been there and located some timber lands on its shores and
stored up a quantity of provisions in their camp. We strapped a couple
of blankets on our shoulders and took an axe apiece and started--for we
intended to take up a wood ranch or so ourselves and become wealthy.
We were on foot. The reader will find it advantageous to go horseback.
We were told that the distance was eleven miles. We tramped a long time
on level ground, and then toiled laboriously up a mountain about a
thousand miles high and looked over. No lake there. We descended on the
other side, crossed the valley and toiled up another mountain three or
four thousand miles high, apparently, and looked over again. No lake
yet. We sat down tired and perspiring, and hired a couple of Chinamen to
curse those people who had beguiled us. Thus refreshed, we presently
resumed the march with renewed vigor and determination. We plodded on,
two or three hours longer, and at last the Lake burst upon us--a noble
sheet of blue water lifted six thousand three hundred feet above the
level of the sea, and walled in by a rim of snow-clad mountain peaks that
towered aloft full three thousand feet higher still! It was a vast oval,
and one would have to use up eighty or a hundred good miles in traveling
around it. As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly
photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the
fairest picture the whole earth affords.
We found the small skiff belonging to the Brigade boys, and without loss
of time set out across a deep bend of the lake toward the landmarks that
signified the locality of the camp. I got Johnny to row--not because I
mind exertion myself, but because it makes me sick to ride backwards when
I am at work. But I steered. A three-mile pull brought us to the camp
just as the night fell, and we stepped ashore very tired and wolfishly
hungry. In a "cache" among the rocks we found the provisions and the
cooking utensils, and then, all fatigued as I was, I sat down on a
boulder and superintended while Johnny gathered wood and cooked supper.
Many a man who had gone through what I had, would have wanted to rest.
It was a delicious supper--hot bread, fried bacon, and black coffee.
It was a delicious solitude we were in, too. Three miles away was a
saw-mill and some workmen, but there were not fifteen other human beings
throughout the wide circumference of the lake. As the darkness closed
down and the stars came out and spangled the great mirror with jewels, we
smoked meditatively in the solemn hush and forgot our troubles and our
pains. In due time we spread our blankets in the warm sand between two
large boulders and soon feel asleep, careless of the procession of ants
that passed in through rents in our clothing and explored our persons.
Nothing could disturb the sleep that fettered us, for it had been fairly
earned, and if our consciences had any sins on them they had to adjourn
court for that night, any way. The wind rose just as we were losing
consciousness, and we were lulled to sleep by the beating of the surf
upon the shore.
It is always very cold on that lake shore in the night, but we had plenty
of blankets and were warm enough. We never moved a muscle all night, but
waked at early dawn in the original positions, and got up at once,
thoroughly refreshed, free from soreness, and brim full of friskiness.
There is no end of wholesome medicine in such an experience. That
morning we could have whipped ten such people as we were the day before
--sick ones at any rate. But the world is slow, and people will go to
"water cures" and "movement cures" and to foreign lands for health.
Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy
to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do
not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and
delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.
I think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together that a
man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side. Not under a
roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summer
time. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure of it.
He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had no
appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future.
Three months later he was sleeping out of doors regularly, eating all he
could hold, three times a day, and chasing game over mountains three
thousand feet high for recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, but
weighed part of a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His
disease was consumption. I confidently commend his experience to other
skeletons.
I superintended again, and as soon as we had eaten breakfast we got in
the boat and skirted along the lake shore about three miles and
disembarked. We liked the appearance of the place, and so we claimed
some three hundred acres of it and stuck our "notices" on a tree. It was
yellow pine timber land--a dense forest of trees a hundred feet high and
from one to five feet through at the butt. It was necessary to fence our
property or we could not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to
cut down trees here and there and make them fall in such a way as to form
a sort of enclosure (with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down three
trees apiece, and found it such heart-breaking work that we decided to
"rest our case" on those; if they held the property, well and good; if
they didn't, let the property spill out through the gaps and go; it was
no use to work ourselves to death merely to save a few acres of land.
Next day we came back to build a house--for a house was also necessary,
in order to hold the property. We decided to build a substantial
log-house and excite the envy of the Brigade boys; but by the time we had
cut and trimmed the first log it seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate,
and so we concluded to build it of saplings. However, two saplings, duly
cut and trimmed, compelled recognition of the fact that a still modester
architecture would satisfy the law, and so we concluded to build a
"brush" house. We devoted the next day to this work, but we did so much
"sitting around" and discussing, that by the middle of the afternoon we
had achieved only a half-way sort of affair which one of us had to watch
while the other cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be
able to find it again, it had such a strong family resemblance to the
surrounding vegetation. But we were satisfied with it.
We were land owners now, duly seized and possessed, and within the
protection of the law. Therefore we decided to take up our residence on
our own domain and enjoy that large sense of independence which only such
an experience can bring. Late the next afternoon, after a good long
rest, we sailed away from the Brigade camp with all the provisions and
cooking utensils we could carry off--borrow is the more accurate word
--and just as the night was falling we beached the boat at our own landing.
CHAPTER XXIII.
If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber
ranch for the next two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I
have not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see a
human being but ourselves during the time, or hear any sounds but those
that were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, and
now and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us
was dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with
sunshine, the broad lake before us was glassy and clear, or rippled and
breezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature's mood; and its
circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with
land-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering
snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The view was always
fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing,
night or day, in calm or storm; it suffered but one grief, and that was
that it could not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep.
We slept in the sand close to the water's edge, between two protecting
boulders, which took care of the stormy night-winds for us. We never
took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we were
always up and running foot-races to tone down excess of physical vigor
and exuberance of spirits. That is, Johnny was--but I held his hat.
While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel
peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as
it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests
free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water
till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought in
and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to
"business."
That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore.
There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white.
This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage
than it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards
or so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let
the boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked.
It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious
rest and indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep,
curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand-beaches; and where the
sand ended, the steep mountain-sides rose right up aloft into space--rose
up like a vast wall a little out of the perpendicular, and thickly wooded
with tall pines.
So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or
thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct that the boat
seemed floating in the air! Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep.
Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every
hand's-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite
boulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom
apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently
it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to
seize an oar and avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the
boulder descend again, and then we could see that when we had been
exactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet below the
surface. Down through the transparency of these great depths, the water
was not merely transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objects
seen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, but
of every minute detail, which they would not have had when seen simply
through the same depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did all spaces
seem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high aloft in
mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions "balloon-voyages."
We fished a good deal, but we did not average one fish a week. We could
see trout by the thousand winging about in the emptiness under us, or
sleeping in shoals on the bottom, but they would not bite--they could see
the line too plainly, perhaps. We frequently selected the trout we
wanted, and rested the bait patiently and persistently on the end of his
nose at a depth of eighty feet, but he would only shake it off with an
annoyed manner, and shift his position.
We bathed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for all it
looked so sunny. Sometimes we rowed out to the "blue water," a mile or
two from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo there, because of the
immense depth. By official measurement the lake in its centre is one
thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep!
Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp, and smoked
pipes and read some old well-worn novels. At night, by the camp-fire, we
played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind--and played them with
cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summer's acquaintance with
them could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs from the jack of
diamonds.
We never slept in our "house." It never recurred to us, for one thing;
and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We
did not wish to strain it.
By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back to the old
camp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day, and reached home
again about night-fall, pretty tired and hungry. While Johnny was
carrying the main bulk of the provisions up to our "house" for future
use, I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the coffee-pot,
ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a fire, and went back to the boat to
get the frying-pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny,
and looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises!
Johnny was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames to
get to the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched the
devastation.
The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the fire
touched them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonderful to see with
what fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled! My coffee-pot was
gone, and everything with it. In a minute and a half the fire seized
upon a dense growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high,
and then the roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific.
We were driven to the boat by the intense heat, and there we remained,
spell-bound.
Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of
flame! It went surging up adjacent ridges--surmounted them and
disappeared in the canons beyond--burst into view upon higher and farther
ridges, presently--shed a grander illumination abroad, and dove again
--flamed out again, directly, higher and still higher up the
mountain-side--threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there, and
sent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts and
ribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the lofty
mountain-fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled network of red lava
streams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy
glare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell!
Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of the
lake! Both pictures were sublime, both were beautiful; but that in the
lake had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted the eye and held
it with the stronger fascination.
We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thought
of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o'clock the
conflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness
stole down upon the landscape again.
Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The provisions
were all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see. We were homeless
wanderers again, without any property. Our fence was gone, our house
burned down; no insurance. Our pine forest was well scorched, the dead
trees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away. Our
blankets were on our usual sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and went
to sleep. The next morning we started back to the old camp, but while
out a long way from shore, so great a storm came up that we dared not try
to land. So I baled out the seas we shipped, and Johnny pulled heavily
through the billows till we had reached a point three or four miles
beyond the camp. The storm was increasing, and it became evident that it
was better to take the hazard of beaching the boat than go down in a
hundred fathoms of water; so we ran in, with tall white-caps following,
and I sat down in the stern-sheets and pointed her head-on to the shore.
The instant the bow struck, a wave came over the stern that washed crew
and cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered in the lee of
a boulder all the rest of the day, and froze all the night through. In
the morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled down to the camp
without any unnecessary delay. We were so starved that we ate up the
rest of the Brigade's provisions, and then set out to Carson to tell them
about it and ask their forgiveness. It was accorded, upon payment of
damages.
We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadth
escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in any
history.
CHAPTER XXIV.
I resolved to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such wild, free,
magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad
Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in Carson
streets every day. How they rode! Leaning just gently forward out of
the perpendicular, easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-hat brim blown
square up in front, and long riata swinging above the head, they swept
through the town like the wind! The next minute they were only a sailing
puff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up gallantly
and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse; did not go jiggering up and
down after the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the riding-schools. I had
quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety to
learn more. I was resolved to buy a horse.
While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying
through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on
him as a dromedary, and was necessarily uncomely; but he was "going,
going, at twenty-two!--horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars,
gentlemen!" and I could hardly resist.
A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auctioneer's brother)
noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very
remarkable horse to be going at such a price; and added that the saddle
alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous
'tapidaros', and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering with
the unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then this
keen-eyed person appeared to me to be "taking my measure"; but I
dismissed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of
guileless candor and truthfulness. Said he:
"I know that horse--know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and so
you might think he was an American horse, maybe, but I assure you he is
not. He is nothing of the kind; but--excuse my speaking in a low voice,
other people being near--he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a Genuine
Mexican Plug!"
I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was something
about this man's way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that I
would own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die.
"Has he any other--er--advantages?" I inquired, suppressing what
eagerness I could.
He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one
side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words:
"He can out-buck anything in America!"
"Going, going, going--at twent--ty--four dollars and a half, gen--"
"Twenty-seven!" I shouted, in a frenzy.
"And sold!" said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican Plug
to me.
I could scarcely contain my exultation. I paid the money, and put the
animal in a neighboring livery-stable to dine and rest himself.
In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certain
citizens held him by the head, and others by the tail, while I mounted
him. As soon as they let go, he placed all his feet in a bunch together,
lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me
straight into the air a matter of three or four feet! I came as straight
down again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost
on the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse's neck--all
in the space of three or four seconds. Then he rose and stood almost
straight up on his hind feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately,
slid back into the saddle and held on. He came down, and immediately
hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, and
stood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began the
original exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time I
went up I heard a stranger say:
"Oh, don't he buck, though!"
While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a
leathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine Mexican Plug was not
there. A California youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if he
might have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine,
got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended,
and the horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fences
like a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley.
I sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my
hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. I
believe I never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the human
machinery--for I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Pen
cannot describe how I was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive how
disjointed I was--how internally, externally and universally I was
unsettled, mixed up and ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd around
me, though.
One elderly-looking comforter said:
"Stranger, you've been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows that
horse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he'd buck; he is
the very worst devil to buck on the continent of America. You hear me.
I'm Curry. Old Curry. Old Abe Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-pure,
out-and-out, genuine d--d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that,
too. Why, you turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark, there's chances
to buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for that
bloody old foreign relic."
I gave no sign; but I made up my mind that if the auctioneer's brother's
funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone all
other recreations and attend it.
After a gallop of sixteen miles the Californian youth and the Genuine
Mexican Plug came tearing into town again, shedding foam-flakes like the
spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a
wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the "ranch."
Such panting and blowing! Such spreading and contracting of the red
equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye! But was the
imperial beast subjugated? Indeed he was not.
His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to
go down to the Capitol; but the first dash the creature made was over a
pile of telegraph poles half as high as a church; and his time to the
Capitol--one mile and three quarters--remains unbeaten to this day. But
then he took an advantage--he left out the mile, and only did the three
quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut across lots, preferring
fences and ditches to a crooked road; and when the Speaker got to the
Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made
the trip on a comet.
In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the
Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the
animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six
miles, and he walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed.
Everybody I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get enough
exercise any other way.
Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him,
my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower's hands,
or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing ever
happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and
survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try
experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he
always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get
his rider through intact, but he always got through himself. Of course I
had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met
with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on
him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and
destroying children, and never got a bid--at least never any but the
eighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make.
The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if
they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew
the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue
next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron,
temperance tracts--any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and we
retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more.
Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the
matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things.
Finally I tried to give him away. But it was a failure. Parties said
earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast--they did not wish to
own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of
the "Brigade." His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again,
and he said the thing would be too palpable.
Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks'
keeping--stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse,
two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the
article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let
him.
I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay
during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty
dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five
hundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that there was such
scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities had
brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might be
guessed without my telling it: peopled turned their stock loose to
starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were
almost literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler there
will verify these statements.
I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine
Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into
my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the
donation.
Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize
the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated
--but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a
fancy sketch, perhaps.
CHAPTER XXV.
Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and a
pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no end
of hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers and
farmers to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from California,
but no love was lost between the two classes of colonists. There was
little or no friendly intercourse; each party staid to itself. The
Mormons were largely in the majority, and had the additional advantage of
being peculiarly under the protection of the Mormon government of the
Territory. Therefore they could afford to be distant, and even
peremptory toward their neighbors. One of the traditions of Carson
Valley illustrates the condition of things that prevailed at the time I
speak of. The hired girl of one of the American families was Irish, and
a Catholic; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the only person
outside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the Mormons. She
asked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was a mystery to
everybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door, a large bowie
knife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress asked for an
explanation she observed that she was going out to "borry a wash-tub from
the Mormons!"
In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in "Carson County," and then the
aspect of things changed. Californians began to flock in, and the
American element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Young
and Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for
"Washoe" was instituted by the citizens. Governor Roop was the first and
only chief magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed a
bill to organize "Nevada Territory," and President Lincoln sent out
Governor Nye to supplant Roop.
At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteen
thousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were being vigorously
developed and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active and
prosperous and growing more so day by day.
The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted government, but
did not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put in
authority over them--a sentiment that was natural enough. They thought
the officials should have been chosen from among themselves from among
prominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and who
would be in sympathy with the populace and likewise thoroughly acquainted
with the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing the matter
thus, without doubt. The new officers were "emigrants," and that was no
title to anybody's affection or admiration either.
The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was not
only a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth plucking
--except by the smallest of small fry office-seekers and such. Everybody
knew that Congress had appropriated only twenty thousand dollars a year
in greenbacks for its support--about money enough to run a quartz mill a
month. And everybody knew, also, that the first year's money was still
in Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be a tedious and
difficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise to open up a
credit account with the imported bantling with anything like indecent
haste.
There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-born
Territorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a trying
time of it. The Organic Act and the "instructions" from the State
Department commanded that a legislature should be elected at
such-and-such a time, and its sittings inaugurated at such-and-such a
date. It was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day,
although board was four dollars and fifty cents, for distinction has its
charm in Nevada as well as elsewhere, and there were plenty of patriotic
souls out of employment; but to get a legislative hall for them to meet
in was another matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a room
rent-free, or let one to the government on credit.
But when Curry heard of the difficulty, he came forward, solitary and
alone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar and got her afloat
again. I refer to "Curry--Old Curry--Old Abe Curry." But for him the
legislature would have been obliged to sit in the desert. He offered his
large stone building just outside the capital limits, rent-free, and it
was gladly accepted. Then he built a horse-railroad from town to the
capitol, and carried the legislators gratis.
He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, and
covered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittoon
combined. But for Curry the government would have died in its tender
infancy. A canvas partition to separate the Senate from the House of
Representatives was put up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollars
and forty cents, but the United States declined to pay for it. Upon
being reminded that the "instructions" permitted the payment of a liberal
rent for a legislative hall, and that that money was saved to the country
by Mr. Curry's generosity, the United States said that did not alter the
matter, and the three dollars and forty cents would be subtracted from
the Secretary's eighteen hundred dollar salary--and it was!
The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature of
the new government's difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey his
volume of written "instructions," and these commanded him to do two
certain things without fail, viz.:
1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and,
2. For this work, pay one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand" for
composition, and one dollar and fifty cents per "token" for press-work,
in greenbacks.
It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely
impossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down to
forty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody by
printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per "thousand"
and one dollar and fifty cents per "token," in gold. The "instructions"
commanded that the Secretary regard a paper dollar issued by the
government as equal to any other dollar issued by the government. Hence
the printing of the journals was discontinued. Then the United States
sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the "instructions," and
warned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got some printing done,
forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits of the high prices of
things in the Territory, and called attention to a printed market report
wherein it would be observed that even hay was two hundred and fifty
dollars a ton. The United States responded by subtracting the
printing-bill from the Secretary's suffering salary--and moreover
remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his
"instructions" requiring him to purchase hay!
Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U.S.
Treasury Comptroller's understanding. The very fires of the hereafter
could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the days I
speak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that twenty
thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commodities
ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories, where
exceeding cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who looked out for
the little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the Territory kept
his office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he charged the
United States no rent, although his "instructions" provided for that item
and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I would
have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been Secretary
myself). But the United States never applauded this devotion. Indeed, I
think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person in its
employ.
Those "instructions" (we used to read a chapter from them every morning,
as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in Sunday school
every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and had
much valuable religious matter in them along with the other statistics)
those "instructions" commanded that pen-knives, envelopes, pens and
writing-paper be furnished the members of the legislature. So the
Secretary made the purchase and the distribution. The knives cost three
dollars apiece. There was one too many, and the Secretary gave it to the
Clerk of the House of Representatives. The United States said the Clerk
of the House was not a "member" of the legislature, and took that three
dollars out of the Secretary's salary, as usual.
White men charged three or four dollars a "load" for sawing up
stove-wood. The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the United
States would never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian to saw
up a load of office wood at one dollar and a half. He made out the usual
voucher, but signed no name to it--simply appended a note explaining that
an Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable and
satisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of ability
in the necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay that dollar and a
half. He thought the United States would admire both his economy and his
honesty in getting the work done at half price and not putting a
pretended Indian's signature to the voucher, but the United States did
not see it in that light.
The United States was too much accustomed to employing dollar-and-a-half
thieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation of
the voucher as having any foundation in fact.
But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a
cross at the bottom of the voucher--it looked like a cross that had been
drunk a year--and then I "witnessed" it and it went through all right.
The United States never said a word. I was sorry I had not made the
voucher for a thousand loads of wood instead of one.
The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic
villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable
pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.
That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legislature.
They levied taxes to the amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and
ordered expenditures to the extent of about a million. Yet they had
their little periodical explosions of economy like all other bodies of
the kind. A member proposed to save three dollars a day to the nation by
dispensing with the Chaplain. And yet that short-sighted man needed the
Chaplain more than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat with
his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer.
The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private tollroad franchises
all the time. When they adjourned it was estimated that every citizen
owned about three franchises, and it was believed that unless Congress
gave the Territory another degree of longitude there would not be room
enough to accommodate the toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging over
the boundary line everywhere like a fringe.
The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such important
proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly
acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful silver mines.
CHAPTER XXVI.
By and by I was smitten with the silver fever. "Prospecting parties"
were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and taking
possession of rich silver-bearing lodes and ledges of quartz. Plainly
this was the road to fortune. The great "Gould and Curry" mine was held
at three or four hundred dollars a foot when we arrived; but in two
months it had sprung up to eight hundred. The "Ophir" had been worth
only a mere trifle, a year gone by, and now it was selling at nearly four
thousand dollars a foot! Not a mine could be named that had not
experienced an astonishing advance in value within a short time.
Everybody was talking about these marvels. Go where you would, you heard
nothing else, from morning till far into the night. Tom So-and-So had
sold out of the "Amanda Smith" for $40,000--hadn't a cent when he "took
up" the ledge six months ago. John Jones had sold half his interest in
the "Bald Eagle and Mary Ann" for $65,000, gold coin, and gone to the
States for his family. The widow Brewster had "struck it rich" in the
"Golden Fleece" and sold ten feet for $18,000--hadn't money enough to buy
a crape bonnet when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her husband at Baldy Johnson's
wake last spring. The "Last Chance" had found a "clay casing" and knew
they were "right on the ledge"--consequence, "feet" that went begging
yesterday were worth a brick house apiece to-day, and seedy owners who
could not get trusted for a drink at any bar in the country yesterday
were roaring drunk on champagne to-day and had hosts of warm personal
friends in a town where they had forgotten how to bow or shake hands from
long-continued want of practice. Johnny Morgan, a common loafer, had
gone to sleep in the gutter and waked up worth a hundred thousand
dollars, in consequence of the decision in the "Lady Franklin and Rough
and Ready" lawsuit. And so on--day in and day out the talk pelted our
ears and the excitement waxed hotter and hotter around us.
I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone mad like the
rest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs of lead, were
arriving from the mills every day, and such sights as that gave substance
to the wild talk about me. I succumbed and grew as frenzied as the
craziest.
Every few days news would come of the discovery of a bran-new mining
region; immediately the papers would teem with accounts of its richness,
and away the surplus population would scamper to take possession. By the
time I was fairly inoculated with the disease, "Esmeralda" had just had a
run and "Humboldt" was beginning to shriek for attention. "Humboldt!
Humboldt!" was the new cry, and straightway Humboldt, the newest of the
new, the richest of the rich, the most marvellous of the marvellous
discoveries in silver-land was occupying two columns of the public prints
to "Esmeralda's" one. I was just on the point of starting to Esmeralda,
but turned with the tide and got ready for Humboldt. That the reader may
see what moved me, and what would as surely have moved him had he been
there, I insert here one of the newspaper letters of the day. It and
several other letters from the same calm hand were the main means of
converting me. I shall not garble the extract, but put it in just as it
appeared in the Daily Territorial Enterprise:
But what about our mines? I shall be candid with you. I shall
express an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination.
Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God's footstool.
Each mountain range is gorged with the precious ores. Humboldt is
the true Golconda.
The other day an assay of mere croppings yielded exceeding four
thousand dollars to the ton. A week or two ago an assay of just
such surface developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to
the ton. Our mountains are full of rambling prospectors. Each day
and almost every hour reveals new and more startling evidences of
the profuse and intensified wealth of our favored county. The metal
is not silver alone. There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore.
A late discovery plainly evinces cinnabar. The coarser metals are
in gross abundance. Lately evidences of bituminous coal have been
detected. My theory has ever been that coal is a ligneous
formation. I told Col. Whitman, in times past, that the
neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous
manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no
confidence in his lauded coal mines. I repeated the same doctrine
to the exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt. I talked with my
friend Captain Burch on the subject. My pyrhanism vanished upon his
statement that in the very region referred to he had seen petrified
trees of the length of two hundred feet. Then is the fact
established that huge forests once cast their grim shadows over this
remote section. I am firm in the coal faith.
Have no fears of the mineral resources of Humboldt county. They are
immense--incalculable.
Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to better
comprehend certain items in the above. At this time, our near neighbor,
Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining locality in Nevada. It
was from there that more than half the daily shipments of silver bricks
came. "Very rich" (and scarce) Gold Hill ore yielded from $100 to $400
to the ton; but the usual yield was only $20 to $40 per ton--that is to
say, each hundred pounds of ore yielded from one dollar to two dollars.
But the reader will perceive by the above extract, that in Humboldt from
one fourth to nearly half the mass was silver! That is to say, every one
hundred pounds of the ore had from two hundred dollars up to about three
hundred and fifty in it. Some days later this same correspondent wrote:
I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this
region--it is incredible. The intestines of our mountains are
gorged with precious ore to plethora. I have said that nature
has so shaped our mountains as to furnish most excellent
facilities for the working of our mines. I have also told you
that the country about here is pregnant with the finest mill
sites in the world. But what is the mining history of Humboldt?
The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco
capitalists. It would seem that the ore is combined with metals
that render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain
machinery. The proprietors have combined the capital and labor
hinted at in my exordium. They are toiling and probing. Their
tunnel has reached the length of one hundred feet. From primal
assays alone, coupled with the development of the mine and public
confidence in the continuance of effort, the stock had reared
itself to eight hundred dollars market value. I do not know that
one ton of the ore has been converted into current metal. I do
know that there are many lodes in this section that surpass the
Sheba in primal assay value. Listen a moment to the calculations
of the Sheba operators. They purpose transporting the ore
concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its
locality) to Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton;
from Virginia to San Francisco, forty dollars per ton; from
thence to Liverpool, its destination, ten dollars per ton. Their
idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their
cost of original extraction, the price of transportation, and the
expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net
them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be extravagant.
Cut it in twain, and the product is enormous, far transcending
any previous developments of our racy Territory.
A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield
five hundred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the Gould
& Curry, the Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the
darkest shadow. I have given you the estimate of the value of a
single developed mine. Its richness is indexed by its market
valuation. The people of Humboldt county are feet crazy. As I
write, our towns are near deserted. They look as languid as a
consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy and athletic
fellow-citizens? They are coursing through ravines and over
mountain tops. Their tracks are visible in every direction.
Occasionally a horseman will dash among us. His steed betrays
hard usage. He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily
exchanges courtesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay
office and from thence to the District Recorder's. In the
morning, having renewed his provisional supplies, he is off again
on his wild and unbeaten route. Why, the fellow numbers already
his feet by the thousands. He is the horse-leech. He has the
craving stomach of the shark or anaconda. He would conquer
metallic worlds.
This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the above article,
four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We commenced getting ready at
once. And we also commenced upbraiding ourselves for not deciding
sooner--for we were in terror lest all the rich mines would be found and
secured before we got there, and we might have to put up with ledges that
would not yield more than two or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. An
hour before, I would have felt opulent if I had owned ten feet in a Gold
Hill mine whose ore produced twenty-five dollars to the ton; now I was
already annoyed at the prospect of having to put up with mines the
poorest of which would be a marvel in Gold Hill.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time. Our party consisted of four
persons--a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself.
We bought a wagon and two miserable old horses. We put eighteen hundred
pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of
Carson on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were so weak and old
that we soon found that it would be better if one or two of us got out
and walked. It was an improvement. Next, we found that it would be
better if a third man got out. That was an improvement also. It was at
this time that I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven a
harnessed horse before and many a man in such a position would have felt
fairly excused from such a responsibility. But in a little while it was
found that it would be a fine thing if the drive got out and walked also.
It was at this time that I resigned the position of driver, and never
resumed it again. Within the hour, we found that it would not only be
better, but was absolutely necessary, that we four, taking turns, two at
a time, should put our hands against the end of the wagon and push it
through the sand, leaving the feeble horses little to do but keep out of
the way and hold up the tongue. Perhaps it is well for one to know his
fate at first, and get reconciled to it. We had learned ours in one
afternoon. It was plain that we had to walk through the sand and shove
that wagon and those horses two hundred miles. So we accepted the
situation, and from that time forth we never rode. More than that, we
stood regular and nearly constant watches pushing up behind.
We made seven miles, and camped in the desert. Young Clagett (now member
of Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and watered the horses;
Oliphant and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water to cook
with; and old Mr. Ballou the blacksmith did the cooking. This division
of labor, and this appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey.
We had no tent, and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain. We
were so tired that we slept soundly.
We were fifteen days making the trip--two hundred miles; thirteen,
rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horses
rest.
We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had towed
the horses behind the wagon, but we did not think of that until it was
too late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too when we
might have saved half the labor. Parties who met us, occasionally,
advised us to put the horses in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whose
iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not
do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses
being "bituminous from long deprivation." The reader will excuse me from
translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long
word, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the best
and kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life. He was
gentleness and simplicity itself--and unselfishness, too. Although he
was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself any
airs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a young man's
share of the work; and did his share of conversing and entertaining from
the general stand-point of any age--not from the arrogant, overawing
summit-height of sixty years. His one striking peculiarity was his
Partingtonian fashion of loving and using big words for their own sakes,
and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he was
purposing to convey. He always let his ponderous syllables fall with an
easy unconsciousness that left them wholly without offensiveness.
In truth his air was so natural and so simple that one was always
catching himself accepting his stately sentences as meaning something,
when they really meant nothing in the world. If a word was long and
grand and resonant, that was sufficient to win the old man's love, and he
would drop that word into the most out-of-the-way place in a sentence or
a subject, and be as pleased with it as if it were perfectly luminous
with meaning.
We four always spread our common stock of blankets together on the frozen
ground, and slept side by side; and finding that our foolish, long-legged
hound pup had a deal of animal heat in him, Oliphant got to admitting him
to the bed, between himself and Mr. Ballou, hugging the dog's warm back
to his breast and finding great comfort in it. But in the night the pup
would get stretchy and brace his feet against the old man's back and
shove, grunting complacently the while; and now and then, being warm and
snug, grateful and happy, he would paw the old man's back simply in
excess of comfort; and at yet other times he would dream of the chase and
in his sleep tug at the old man's back hair and bark in his ear. The old
gentleman complained mildly about these familiarities, at last, and when
he got through with his statement he said that such a dog as that was not
a proper animal to admit to bed with tired men, because he was "so
meretricious in his movements and so organic in his emotions." We turned
the dog out.
It was a hard, wearing, toilsome journey, but it had its bright side; for
after each day was done and our wolfish hunger appeased with a hot supper
of fried bacon, bread, molasses and black coffee, the pipe-smoking,
song-singing and yarn-spinning around the evening camp-fire in the still
solitudes of the desert was a happy, care-free sort of recreation that
seemed the very summit and culmination of earthly luxury.
It is a kind of life that has a potent charm for all men, whether city or
country-bred. We are descended from desert-lounging Arabs, and countless
ages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root out of us
the nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at the
thought of "camping out."
Once we made twenty-five miles in a day, and once we made forty miles
(through the Great American Desert), and ten miles beyond--fifty in all
--in twenty-three hours, without halting to eat, drink or rest. To stretch
out and go to sleep, even on stony and frozen ground, after pushing a
wagon and two horses fifty miles, is a delight so supreme that for the
moment it almost seems cheap at the price.
We camped two days in the neighborhood of the "Sink of the Humboldt."
We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not
answer. It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either. It left a
taste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a burning in the
stomach that was very uncomfortable. We put molasses in it, but that
helped it very little; we added a pickle, yet the alkali was the
prominent taste and so it was unfit for drinking.
The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet
invented. It was really viler to the taste than the unameliorated water
itself. Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage felt
constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little
sips, making shift to praise it faintly the while, but finally threw out
the remainder, and said frankly it was "too technical for him."
But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then,
with nothing to mar our enjoyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we
entered into our rest.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
After leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt river a little
way. People accustomed to the monster mile-wide Mississippi, grow
accustomed to associating the term "river" with a high degree of watery
grandeur. Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when they
stand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a "river"
in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Erie
canal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four times
as deep. One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can
contrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is
overheated, and then drink it dry.
On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred miles and
entered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a driving
snow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a liberty-pole.
Six of the cabins were strung along one side of a deep canyon, and the
other five faced them. The rest of the landscape was made up of bleak
mountain walls that rose so high into the sky from both sides of the
canyon that the village was left, as it were, far down in the bottom of a
crevice. It was always daylight on the mountain tops a long time before
the darkness lifted and revealed Unionville.
We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and roofed it
with canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney, through which
the cattle used to tumble occasionally, at night, and mash our furniture
and interrupt our sleep. It was very cold weather and fuel was scarce.
Indians brought brush and bushes several miles on their backs; and when
we could catch a laden Indian it was well--and when we could not (which
was the rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it.
I confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lying
all about the ground. I expected to see it glittering in the sun on the
mountain summits. I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me
that I might possibly have an exaggerated idea about it, and so if I
betrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself. Yet I was as
perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was
going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver
enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy--and so my fancy was already
busy with plans for spending this money. The first opportunity that
offered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on
the other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemed
to be observing me; but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fled
away as guiltily as a thief might have done and never halted till I was
far beyond sight and call. Then I began my search with a feverish
excitement that was brimful of expectation--almost of certainty.
I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing
the dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at
them with anxious hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart
bounded! I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it with
a nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pronounced than absolute
certainty itself could have afforded. The more I examined the fragment
the more I was convinced that I had found the door to fortune. I marked
the spot and carried away my specimen. Up and down the rugged mountain
side I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmenting
gratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time. Of all the
experiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures of
silver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy. It was a delirious
revel.
By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining
yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me! A gold mine, and in my
simplicity I had been content with vulgar silver! I was so excited that
I half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me. Then a fear
came upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret.
Moved by this thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended a
knoll to reconnoiter. Solitude. No creature was near. Then I returned
to my mine, fortifying myself against possible disappointment, but my
fears were groundless--the shining scales were still there. I set about
scooping them out, and for an hour I toiled down the windings of the
stream and robbed its bed. But at last the descending sun warned me to
give up the quest, and I turned homeward laden with wealth. As I walked
along I could not help smiling at the thought of my being so excited over
my fragment of silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose. In
this little time the former had so fallen in my estimation that once or
twice I was on the point of throwing it away.
The boys were as hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing. Neither could
I talk. I was full of dreams and far away. Their conversation
interrupted the flow of my fancy somewhat, and annoyed me a little, too.
I despised the sordid and commonplace things they talked about. But as
they proceeded, it began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hear
them planning their poor little economies and sighing over possible
privations and distresses when a gold mine, all our own, lay within sight
of the cabin and I could point it out at any moment. Smothered hilarity
began to oppress me, presently. It was hard to resist the impulse to
burst out with exultation and reveal everything; but I did resist. I
said within myself that I would filter the great news through my lips
calmly and be serene as a summer morning while I watched its effect in
their faces. I said:
"Where have you all been?"
"Prospecting."
"What did you find?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? What do you think of the country?"
"Can't tell, yet," said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold miner, and had
likewise had considerable experience among the silver mines.
"Well, haven't you formed any sort of opinion?"
"Yes, a sort of a one. It's fair enough here, may be, but overrated.
Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though.
"That Sheba may be rich enough, but we don't own it; and besides, the rock
is so full of base metals that all the science in the world can't work
it. We'll not starve, here, but we'll not get rich, I'm afraid."
"So you think the prospect is pretty poor?"
"No name for it!"
"Well, we'd better go back, hadn't we?"
"Oh, not yet--of course not. We'll try it a riffle, first."
"Suppose, now--this is merely a supposition, you know--suppose you could
find a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a ton
--would that satisfy you?"
"Try us once!" from the whole party.
"Or suppose--merely a supposition, of course--suppose you were to find a
ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton--would that satisfy
you?"
"Here--what do you mean? What are you coming at? Is there some mystery
behind all this?"
"Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly well there
are no rich mines here--of course you do. Because you have been around
and examined for yourselves. Anybody would know that, that had been
around. But just for the sake of argument, suppose--in a kind of general
way--suppose some person were to tell you that two-thousand-dollar ledges
were simply contemptible--contemptible, understand--and that right yonder
in sight of this very cabin there were piles of pure gold and pure
silver--oceans of it--enough to make you all rich in twenty-four hours!
Come!"
"I should say he was as crazy as a loon!" said old Ballou, but wild with
excitement, nevertheless.
"Gentlemen," said I, "I don't say anything--I haven't been around, you
know, and of course don't know anything--but all I ask of you is to cast
your eye on that, for instance, and tell me what you think of it!" and I
tossed my treasure before them.
There was an eager scramble for it, and a closing of heads together over
it under the candle-light. Then old Ballou said:
"Think of it? I think it is nothing but a lot of granite rubbish and
nasty glittering mica that isn't worth ten cents an acre!"
So vanished my dream. So melted my wealth away. So toppled my airy
castle to the earth and left me stricken and forlorn.
Moralizing, I observed, then, that "all that glitters is not gold."
Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my
treasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learned
then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull,
unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration
of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of
the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of
mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.
CHAPTER XXIX.
True knowledge of the nature of silver mining came fast enough. We went
out "prospecting" with Mr. Ballou. We climbed the mountain sides, and
clambered among sage-brush, rocks and snow till we were ready to drop
with exhaustion, but found no silver--nor yet any gold. Day after day we
did this. Now and then we came upon holes burrowed a few feet into the
declivities and apparently abandoned; and now and then we found one or
two listless men still burrowing. But there was no appearance of silver.
These holes were the beginnings of tunnels, and the purpose was to drive
them hundreds of feet into the mountain, and some day tap the hidden
ledge where the silver was. Some day! It seemed far enough away, and
very hopeless and dreary. Day after day we toiled, and climbed and
searched, and we younger partners grew sicker and still sicker of the
promiseless toil. At last we halted under a beetling rampart of rock
which projected from the earth high upon the mountain. Mr. Ballou broke
off some fragments with a hammer, and examined them long and attentively
with a small eye-glass; threw them away and broke off more; said this
rock was quartz, and quartz was the sort of rock that contained silver.
Contained it! I had thought that at least it would be caked on the
outside of it like a kind of veneering. He still broke off pieces and
critically examined them, now and then wetting the piece with his tongue
and applying the glass. At last he exclaimed:
"We've got it!"
We were full of anxiety in a moment. The rock was clean and white, where
it was broken, and across it ran a ragged thread of blue. He said that
that little thread had silver in it, mixed with base metal, such as lead
and antimony, and other rubbish, and that there was a speck or two of
gold visible. After a great deal of effort we managed to discern some
little fine yellow specks, and judged that a couple of tons of them
massed together might make a gold dollar, possibly. We were not
jubilant, but Mr. Ballou said there were worse ledges in the world than
that. He saved what he called the "richest" piece of the rock, in order
to determine its value by the process called the "fire-assay." Then we
named the mine "Monarch of the Mountains" (modesty of nomenclature is not
a prominent feature in the mines), and Mr. Ballou wrote out and stuck up
the following "notice," preserving a copy to be entered upon the books in
the mining recorder's office in the town.
"NOTICE."
"We the undersigned claim three claims, of three hundred feet each
(and one for discovery), on this silver-bearing quartz lead or lode,
extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips,
spurs, and angles, variations and sinuosities, together with fifty
feet of ground on either side for working the same."
We put our names to it and tried to feel that our fortunes were made.
But when we talked the matter all over with Mr. Ballou, we felt depressed
and dubious. He said that this surface quartz was not all there was of
our mine; but that the wall or ledge of rock called the "Monarch of the
Mountains," extended down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the earth
--he illustrated by saying it was like a curb-stone, and maintained a
nearly uniform thickness-say twenty feet--away down into the bowels of
the earth, and was perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side
of it; and that it kept to itself, and maintained its distinctive
character always, no matter how deep it extended into the earth or how
far it stretched itself through and across the hills and valleys. He
said it might be a mile deep and ten miles long, for all we knew; and
that wherever we bored into it above ground or below, we would find gold
and silver in it, but no gold or silver in the meaner rock it was cased
between. And he said that down in the great depths of the ledge was its
richness, and the deeper it went the richer it grew. Therefore, instead
of working here on the surface, we must either bore down into the rock
with a shaft till we came to where it was rich--say a hundred feet or so
--or else we must go down into the valley and bore a long tunnel into the
mountain side and tap the ledge far under the earth. To do either was
plainly the labor of months; for we could blast and bore only a few feet
a day--some five or six. But this was not all. He said that after we
got the ore out it must be hauled in wagons to a distant silver-mill,
ground up, and the silver extracted by a tedious and costly process. Our
fortune seemed a century away!
But we went to work. We decided to sink a shaft. So, for a week we
climbed the mountain, laden with picks, drills, gads, crowbars, shovels,
cans of blasting powder and coils of fuse and strove with might and main.
At first the rock was broken and loose and we dug it up with picks and
threw it out with shovels, and the hole progressed very well. But the
rock became more compact, presently, and gads and crowbars came into
play. But shortly nothing could make an impression but blasting powder.
That was the weariest work! One of us held the iron drill in its place
and another would strike with an eight-pound sledge--it was like driving
nails on a large scale. In the course of an hour or two the drill would
reach a depth of two or three feet, making a hole a couple of inches in
diameter. We would put in a charge of powder, insert half a yard of
fuse, pour in sand and gravel and ram it down, then light the fuse and
run. When the explosion came and the rocks and smoke shot into the air,
we would go back and find about a bushel of that hard, rebellious quartz
jolted out. Nothing more. One week of this satisfied me. I resigned.
Clagget and Oliphant followed. Our shaft was only twelve feet deep. We
decided that a tunnel was the thing we wanted.
So we went down the mountain side and worked a week; at the end of which
time we had blasted a tunnel about deep enough to hide a hogshead in, and
judged that about nine hundred feet more of it would reach the ledge.
I resigned again, and the other boys only held out one day longer.
We decided that a tunnel was not what we wanted. We wanted a ledge that
was already "developed." There were none in the camp.
We dropped the "Monarch" for the time being.
Meantime the camp was filling up with people, and there was a constantly
growing excitement about our Humboldt mines. We fell victims to the
epidemic and strained every nerve to acquire more "feet." We prospected
and took up new claims, put "notices" on them and gave them grandiloquent
names. We traded some of our "feet" for "feet" in other people's claims.
In a little while we owned largely in the "Gray Eagle," the "Columbiana,"
the "Branch Mint," the "Maria Jane," the "Universe," the
"Root-Hog-or-Die," the "Samson and Delilah," the "Treasure Trove," the
"Golconda," the "Sultana," the "Boomerang," the "Great Republic," the
"Grand Mogul," and fifty other "mines" that had never been molested by a
shovel or scratched with a pick. We had not less than thirty thousand
"feet" apiece in the "richest mines on earth" as the frenzied cant
phrased it--and were in debt to the butcher. We were stark mad with
excitement--drunk with happiness--smothered under mountains of
prospective wealth--arrogantly compassionate toward the plodding millions
who knew not our marvellous canyon--but our credit was not good at the
grocer's.
It was the strangest phase of life one can imagine. It was a beggars'
revel. There was nothing doing in the district--no mining--no milling
--no productive effort--no income--and not enough money in the entire camp
to buy a corner lot in an eastern village, hardly; and yet a stranger
would have supposed he was walking among bloated millionaires.
Prospecting parties swarmed out of town with the first flush of dawn, and
swarmed in again at nightfall laden with spoil--rocks. Nothing but
rocks. Every man's pockets were full of them; the floor of his cabin was
littered with them; they were disposed in labeled rows on his shelves.
CHAPTER XXX.
I met men at every turn who owned from one thousand to thirty thousand
"feet" in undeveloped silver mines, every single foot of which they
believed would shortly be worth from fifty to a thousand dollars--and as
often as any other way they were men who had not twenty-five dollars in
the world. Every man you met had his new mine to boast of, and his
"specimens" ready; and if the opportunity offered, he would infallibly
back you into a corner and offer as a favor to you, not to him, to part
with just a few feet in the "Golden Age," or the "Sarah Jane," or some
other unknown stack of croppings, for money enough to get a "square meal"
with, as the phrase went. And you were never to reveal that he had made
you the offer at such a ruinous price, for it was only out of friendship
for you that he was willing to make the sacrifice. Then he would fish a
piece of rock out of his pocket, and after looking mysteriously around as
if he feared he might be waylaid and robbed if caught with such wealth in
his possession, he would dab the rock against his tongue, clap an
eyeglass to it, and exclaim:
"Look at that! Right there in that red dirt! See it? See the specks of
gold? And the streak of silver? That's from the Uncle Abe. There's a
hundred thousand tons like that in sight! Right in sight, mind you!
And when we get down on it and the ledge comes in solid, it will be the
richest thing in the world! Look at the assay! I don't want you to
believe me--look at the assay!"
Then he would get out a greasy sheet of paper which showed that the
portion of rock assayed had given evidence of containing silver and gold
in the proportion of so many hundreds or thousands of dollars to the ton.
I little knew, then, that the custom was to hunt out the richest piece of
rock and get it assayed! Very often, that piece, the size of a filbert,
was the only fragment in a ton that had a particle of metal in it--and
yet the assay made it pretend to represent the average value of the ton
of rubbish it came from!
On such a system of assaying as that, the Humboldt world had gone crazy.
On the authority of such assays its newspaper correspondents were
frothing about rock worth four and seven thousand dollars a ton!
And does the reader remember, a few pages back, the calculations, of a
quoted correspondent, whereby the ore is to be mined and shipped all the
way to England, the metals extracted, and the gold and silver contents
received back by the miners as clear profit, the copper, antimony and
other things in the ore being sufficient to pay all the expenses
incurred? Everybody's head was full of such "calculations" as those
--such raving insanity, rather. Few people took work into their
calculations--or outlay of money either; except the work and expenditures
of other people.
We never touched our tunnel or our shaft again. Why? Because we judged
that we had learned the real secret of success in silver mining--which
was, not to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our brows and the
labor of our hands, but to sell the ledges to the dull slaves of toil and
let them do the mining!
Before leaving Carson, the Secretary and I had purchased "feet" from
various Esmeralda stragglers. We had expected immediate returns of
bullion, but were only afflicted with regular and constant "assessments"
instead--demands for money wherewith to develop the said mines. These
assessments had grown so oppressive that it seemed necessary to look into
the matter personally. Therefore I projected a pilgrimage to Carson and
thence to Esmeralda. I bought a horse and started, in company with
Mr. Ballou and a gentleman named Ollendorff, a Prussian--not the party
who has inflicted so much suffering on the world with his wretched
foreign grammars, with their interminable repetitions of questions which
never have occurred and are never likely to occur in any conversation
among human beings. We rode through a snow-storm for two or three days,
and arrived at "Honey Lake Smith's," a sort of isolated inn on the Carson
river. It was a two-story log house situated on a small knoll in the
midst of the vast basin or desert through which the sickly Carson winds
its melancholy way. Close to the house were the Overland stage stables,
built of sun-dried bricks. There was not another building within several
leagues of the place. Towards sunset about twenty hay-wagons arrived and
camped around the house and all the teamsters came in to supper--a very,
very rough set. There were one or two Overland stage drivers there,
also, and half a dozen vagabonds and stragglers; consequently the house
was well crowded.
We walked out, after supper, and visited a small Indian camp in the
vicinity. The Indians were in a great hurry about something, and were
packing up and getting away as fast as they could. In their broken
English they said, "By'm-by, heap water!" and by the help of signs made
us understand that in their opinion a flood was coming. The weather was
perfectly clear, and this was not the rainy season. There was about a
foot of water in the insignificant river--or maybe two feet; the stream
was not wider than a back alley in a village, and its banks were scarcely
higher than a man's head.
So, where was the flood to come from? We canvassed the subject awhile
and then concluded it was a ruse, and that the Indians had some better
reason for leaving in a hurry than fears of a flood in such an
exceedingly dry time.
At seven in the evening we went to bed in the second story--with our
clothes on, as usual, and all three in the same bed, for every available
space on the floors, chairs, etc., was in request, and even then there
was barely room for the housing of the inn's guests. An hour later we
were awakened by a great turmoil, and springing out of bed we picked our
way nimbly among the ranks of snoring teamsters on the floor and got to
the front windows of the long room. A glance revealed a strange
spectacle, under the moonlight. The crooked Carson was full to the brim,
and its waters were raging and foaming in the wildest way--sweeping
around the sharp bends at a furious speed, and bearing on their surface a
chaos of logs, brush and all sorts of rubbish. A depression, where its
bed had once been, in other times, was already filling, and in one or two
places the water was beginning to wash over the main bank. Men were
flying hither and thither, bringing cattle and wagons close up to the
house, for the spot of high ground on which it stood extended only some
thirty feet in front and about a hundred in the rear. Close to the old
river bed just spoken of, stood a little log stable, and in this our
horses were lodged.
While we looked, the waters increased so fast in this place that in a few
minutes a torrent was roaring by the little stable and its margin
encroaching steadily on the logs. We suddenly realized that this flood
was not a mere holiday spectacle, but meant damage--and not only to the
small log stable but to the Overland buildings close to the main river,
for the waves had now come ashore and were creeping about the foundations
and invading the great hay-corral adjoining. We ran down and joined the
crowd of excited men and frightened animals. We waded knee-deep into the
log stable, unfastened the horses and waded out almost waist-deep, so
fast the waters increased. Then the crowd rushed in a body to the
hay-corral and began to tumble down the huge stacks of baled hay and roll
the bales up on the high ground by the house. Meantime it was discovered
that Owens, an overland driver, was missing, and a man ran to the large
stable, and wading in, boot-top deep, discovered him asleep in his bed,
awoke him, and waded out again. But Owens was drowsy and resumed his
nap; but only for a minute or two, for presently he turned in his bed,
his hand dropped over the side and came in contact with the cold water!
It was up level with the mattress! He waded out, breast-deep, almost,
and the next moment the sun-burned bricks melted down like sugar and the
big building crumbled to a ruin and was washed away in a twinkling.
At eleven o'clock only the roof of the little log stable was out of
water, and our inn was on an island in mid-ocean. As far as the eye
could reach, in the moonlight, there was no desert visible, but only a
level waste of shining water. The Indians were true prophets, but how
did they get their information? I am not able to answer the question.
We remained cooped up eight days and nights with that curious crew.
Swearing, drinking and card playing were the order of the day, and
occasionally a fight was thrown in for variety. Dirt and vermin--but let
us forget those features; their profusion is simply inconceivable--it is
better that they remain so.
There were two men----however, this chapter is long enough.
CHAPTER XXXI.
There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort.
One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one
song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one
small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person's
music. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and
quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its
tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content
to die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart
ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt and a
bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and always
suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would
accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap
somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and
then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but
invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a
disappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a
meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a
promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the
fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an
opportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with
whisky, and said:
"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection--"
Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansas
rose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he:
"Wha-what do you know a--about Pennsylvania? Answer me that. Wha--what
do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?"
"I was only goin' to say--"
"You was only goin' to say. You was! You was only goin' to say--what
was you goin' to say? That's it! That's what I want to know. I want to
know wha--what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you're
makin' yourself so d---d free. Answer me that!"
"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me--"
"Who's a henderin' you? Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!--don't you
do it. Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and cussin' and goin' on
like a lunatic--don't you do it. 'Coz I won't stand it. If fight's what
you want, out with it! I'm your man! Out with it!"
Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:
"Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don't give a man no
chance. I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have an
election next week--that was all--that was everything I was goin' to say
--I wish I may never stir if it wasn't."
"Well then why d'n't you say it? What did you come swellin' around that
way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?"
"Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas--I just--"
"I'm a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar's ghost--"
"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish I
may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I've always spoke well
of you, and respected you more'n any man in the house. Ask Smith. Ain't
it so, Smith? Didn't I say, no longer ago than last night, that for a
man that was a gentleman all the time and every way you took him, give me
Arkansas? I'll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the very
words I used. Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink--le's shake
hands and take a drink. Come up--everybody! It's my treat. Come up,
Bill, Tom, Bob, Scotty--come up. I want you all to take a drink with me
and Arkansas--old Arkansas, I call him--bully old Arkansas. Gimme your
hand agin. Look at him, boys--just take a look at him. Thar stands the
whitest man in America!--and the man that denies it has got to fight me,
that's all. Gimme that old flipper agin!"
They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part and
unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink,
was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was so
happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to
have marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansas
shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:
"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?"
"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year old
when he died."
"Was that all that you said?"
"Yes, that was all."
"Didn't say nothing but that?"
"No--nothing."
Then an uncomfortable silence.
Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the
counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right
boot, while the awkward silence continued. But presently he loafed away
toward the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three
men out of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping
dog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs
and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In a
little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched back
to the bar and said:
"Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and blowin'
about your father? Ain't this company agreeable to you? Ain't it? If
this company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better leave. Is that
your idea? Is that what you're coming at?"
"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing. My
father and my mother--"
"Lan'lord, don't crowd a man! Don't do it. If nothing'll do you but a
disturbance, out with it like a man ('ic)--but don't rake up old bygones
and fling'em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to be
peaceable if they could git a chance. What's the matter with you this
mornin', anyway? I never see a man carry on so."
"Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with it if it's
onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what with
the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for--"
"So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it? You want us to leave
do you? There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. Is
that it? Come!"
"Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now you know that I ain't the man to--"
"Are you a threatenin' me? Are you? By George, the man don't live that
can skeer me! Don't you try to come that game, my chicken--'cuz I can
stand a good deal, but I won't stand that. Come out from behind that bar
till I clean you! You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin'
underhanded hound! Come out from behind that bar! I'll learn you to
bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to
befriend you and keep you out of trouble!"
"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot! If there's got to be bloodshed--"
"Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? So
it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado! You'd made up your
mind to murder somebody this mornin'--I knowed it perfectly well. I'm
the man, am I? It's me you're goin' to murder, is it? But you can't do
it 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted,
white-livered son of a nigger! Draw your weepon!"
With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over
benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape.
In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass
door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenly
appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of
scissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye
she stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The
astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed.
She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then,
while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another
tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before,
perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause
shook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and
the same breath.
The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and
the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season
of island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of
permanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast,
and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly
leveled at him, and that man was "Arkansas."
By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but
the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no
possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for an
entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to
insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so
we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we
embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses
after us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow,
with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern
holding the halters. When the horses lost their footing and began to
swim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that the
horses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed
to land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost
surely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now.
Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be
swept to sea in the "Sink" or overturned and drowned. We warned
Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself carefully, but
it was useless; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring and
the canoe whirled upside down in ten-foot water.
Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and I
had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats. But we held on to the
canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we managed
to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold and
water-soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles
were gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there
they had to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and
ferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night
in the inn before making another venture on our journey.
The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with our
new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. The
snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road
perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more
than a hundred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the
mountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his
instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could "strike a
bee-line" for Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he
were to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would
assail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his
wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough,
but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff
shouted proudly:
"I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right in
somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble.
Let's hurry up and join company with the party."
So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow,
and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors,
for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end of
an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher--but what surprised us
was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily
increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such
a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be a
company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and
jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now.
But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of
soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment--Ballou said they had
already increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped his horse and
said:
"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing round
and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind
desert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!"
Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all
manner of hard names--said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and
ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he "did not know as much
as a logarythm!"
We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his
"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment.
After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While
we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and
took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song
about his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its
mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white
oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and
lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to
Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became
exhausted and dropped.
Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and
started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We
hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted
merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump of
locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We
were soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep
ruts the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the
afternoon, and consequently it was not very long before night came--and
not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a
cellar door, as is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still as
thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us;
but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern
the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in
front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling
and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.
Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height--three or four feet;
they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each of
them was a mere snow-mound, now; in any direction that you proceeded (the
same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself moving down a
distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either side
of it--an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in its
breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of
the mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the chilly
thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the
night, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago
been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brush
avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and further away
from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back is
placid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of blood
that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the
drowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake at
once--and shaking and quaking with consternation, too. There was an
instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of
the road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be
discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly
could not with one's nose nearly against it.
CHAPTER XXXII.
We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by
walking off in various directions--the regular snow-mounds and the
regular avenues between them convinced each man that he had found the
true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly the
situation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses were
tired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning.
This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the
snow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing to
hopeless if we kept on.
All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us,
now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so
we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever
tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that
it could be done, and without any trouble--because every man in the party
had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe
it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and
believed that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters
making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.
We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put
their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while the
feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary,
we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs from a sage
bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our
bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then,
while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense,
Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pile
clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever was.
This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror--the horses
were gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing
anxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped them and
the released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless to try
to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one could
pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave them
up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that
said horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionship
in a distressful time like ours.
We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now.
Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them,
and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, to
light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience,
and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good
place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and
tried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing
them together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled,
and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters
and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered
dismally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballou
fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To
have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck
compared to this.
One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances--or how
lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time we
gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light
the first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that
pages of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully a
moment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it
if it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died.
The wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of
success. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a
solicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last
hope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a
robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent
gradually down and every heart went with him--everybody, too, for that
matter--and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks
at last, took gradual hold upon them--hesitated--took a stronger hold
--hesitated again--held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave a
sort of human gasp and went out.
Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence;
even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise
than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation
began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the
conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped
that I was the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowledged
their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said:
"Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feeling
towards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that you
have felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing too
much and leading you round and round in the snow--but I meant well;
forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against
Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I
do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and
unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has
hurt me a great deal--but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my
heart, and--"
Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for I
was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again
and forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his
bottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never
touch another drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and
although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he
wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason,
but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself
to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to
guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a
beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the
precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended by
saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the
presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to
prosecute it to men's help and benefit--and with that he threw away the
bottle of whisky.
Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he could
not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had
solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable.
He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with
cards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly
pure and blemishless without eschewing them. "And therefore," continued
he, "in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with that
spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform." These
rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have
done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled with
satisfaction.
My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I know
that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We were
all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the
presence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doing
it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden
me like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the
good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might
now do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me
if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears
came again. We put our arms about each other's necks and awaited the
warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing.
It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last
farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding
senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered
body. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed
an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a
gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I
shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, "this is death--this is
the hereafter."
Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness:
"Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?"
It was Ballou--at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture,
with Ballou's voice.
I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were
the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still
saddled and bridled horses!
An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and
the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word.
We really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not
"do the subject justice," the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous
and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where to
commence anyhow.
The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh
dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and
sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at
everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and
in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them,
and sought shelter in the station.
I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd
adventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually
went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm,
forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn.
For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust.
The mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had
deserted us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a
minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed
all our confessions and lamentations.
After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back.
The world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever.
Presently an uneasiness came over me--grew upon me--assailed me without
ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete--I wanted to smoke!
I resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered away
alone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of reform
and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But it
was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts
hunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, and
crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a
good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer
comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and
no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed
of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt
that perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and so
I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff
turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat
unconscious Ballou deep in a game of "solitaire" with the old greasy
cards!
Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no more
about "reform" and "examples to the rising generation."
The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert.
If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we must
have heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were expecting
some sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would infallibly
get lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by sounds.
While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly
exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were never
heard of afterward.
We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together with
preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the
delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great
land-slide case of Hyde vs. Morgan--an episode which is famous in Nevada
to this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will set
down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe
Valleys--very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting
off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and
soften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot know what
a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the whole
side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the
valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain's
front to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all the years that he
may go on living within seventy miles of that place.
General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial
officers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyer
of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it--partly
for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was
Territorially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the older
citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a
calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way--when it
gets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes the shape of a
practical joke.
One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe's door in
Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his
horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him
to conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he
achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of
profanity, he poured out his grief. He said it was pretty well known
that for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the more
customary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of
it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the
edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above
it on the mountain side.
And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides
had come and slid Morgan's ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and
everything down on top of his ranch and exactly covered up every single
vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet. Morgan
was in possession and refused to vacate the premises--said he was
occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else's--and said
the cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always
stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate.
"And when I reminded him," said Hyde, weeping, "that it was on top of my
ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask me
why didn't I stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see him
a-coming! Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic--by George,
when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the
whole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain side
--splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow, odds and
ends of hay stacks, and awful clouds of dust!--trees going end over end
in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet high
and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out and
a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth!--and
in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on
his gate-post, a-wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession! Laws
bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in
three jumps exactly.
"But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won't move
off'n that ranch--says it's his'n and he's going to keep it--likes it
better'n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad! Well, I've been so
mad for two days I couldn't find my way to town--been wandering around in
the brush in a starving condition--got anything here to drink, General?
But I'm here now, and I'm a-going to law. You hear me!"
Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man's feelings so outraged as
were the General's. He said he had never heard of such high-handed
conduct in all his life as this Morgan's. And he said there was no use
in going to law--Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was
--nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would take
his case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said that right there was where
he was mistaken--everybody in town sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a very
smart lawyer, had taken his case; the courts being in vacation, it was to
be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already been
appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall
near the hotel at two that afternoon.
The General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the people
of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy,
rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain
as if the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears and
left.
At two in the afternoon referee Roop's Court opened and Roop appeared
throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing
upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his
fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended,
after all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness
prevailed, for at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the
command:
"Order in the Court!"
And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his
way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, and
on his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first respectful
recognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, and
it trickled pleasantly through his whole system:
"Way for the United States Attorney!"
The witnesses were called--legislators, high government officers,
ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were
called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably
went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only added new
testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's
property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the Morgan
lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones
--they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the General,
with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he
pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and
howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm,
statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand
war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the
Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal justice!
[Applause.]
When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there
was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and
admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan's case was killed.
Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking,
and the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stood
erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor
with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the
audience waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and
began impressively:
"Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day.
This is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is the
most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide.
Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have
perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in
favor of the plaintiff Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks of
counsel, with high interest--and especially will I commend the masterly
and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the
plaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human
testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to
influence us at a moment so solemn as this. Gentlemen, it ill becomes
us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plain
to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this
defendant's ranch for a purpose. We are but creatures, and we must
submit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this
marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the
position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove
it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it
ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act or
inquire into the reasons that prompted it. No--Heaven created the
ranches and it is Heaven's prerogative to rearrange them, to experiment
with them around at its pleasure. It is for us to submit, without
repining.
"I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which the
sacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle.
Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard
Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God! And from
this decision there is no appeal."
Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room
frantic with indignation. He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, an
inspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated
with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the
floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some
sort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got up to
walk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up
happily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch
underneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title to
the ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was of
opinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and--
The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always an
impatient and irascible man, that way. At the end of two months the fact
that he had been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself, like
another Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his understanding.
CHAPTER XXXV.
When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the
company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor's brother. He had
a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination
which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the
talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the
journey. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two
other endowments of a marked character. One was a singular "handiness"
about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or
organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a horse,
or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of accommodation
that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of
anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and
dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity--hence he always
managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the
emptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, in
camp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had been
acquainted with a relative of the same. Such another traveling comrade
was never seen before. I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way in
which he overcame difficulties. On the second day out, we arrived, very
tired and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told that
the house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley to
spare for the horses--must move on. The rest of us wanted to hurry on
while it was yet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile.
We dismounted and entered. There was no welcome for us on any face.
Capt. John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he had
accomplished the following things, viz.: found old acquaintances in three
teamsters; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord's
mother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once in
California, by stopping her runaway horse; mended a child's broken toy
and won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the hostler
bleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the "heaves";
treated the entire party three times at the landlord's bar; produced a
later paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat himself down to read
the news to a deeply interested audience. The result, summed up, was as
follows: The hostler found plenty of feed for our horses; we had a trout
supper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good beds to sleep in, and
a surprising breakfast in the morning--and when we left, we left lamented
by all! Capt. John had some bad traits, but he had some uncommonly
valuable ones to offset them with.
Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more
forward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on were
entirely worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one cropped
out of the top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired
Board of Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the
ledge. The tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then
strike the ledge at the same dept that a shaft twelve feet deep would
have reached! The Board were living on the "assessments." [N.B.--This
hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; they
have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The Board
had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of
silver as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend's
tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the "Daley" till he was
well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunnel
two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on the hill
to look into matters.
He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly
sharp-pointed peak, and a couple of men up there "facing" the proposed
tunnel. Townsend made a calculation. Then he said to the men:
"So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundred
and fifty feet to strike this ledge?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and
arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?"
"Why no--how is that?"
"Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side;
and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of your
tunnel on trestle-work!"
The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous.
We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, but
never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of work on
each to "hold" it, else other parties could seize our property after the
expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new claims and doing a
little work on them and then waiting for a buyer--who never came. We
never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; and
as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working ore and extracting
the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and none returned to
take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for ourselves; and
altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one--for we never ceased
to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some day.
At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be
borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (I
being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to milling.
That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at
ten dollars a week and board.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow
down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I
learned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to get the
silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it.
We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark.
This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright
rods of iron, as large as a man's ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of
iron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, and
these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an
iron box called a "battery." Each of these rods or stamps weighed six
hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up
masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the
battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to
powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to
a creamy paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine wire
screen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into great
tubs warmed by super-heated steam--amalgamating pans, they are called.
The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving
"mullers." A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, and
this seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held on
to them; quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also,
about every half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities of coarse
salt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to assist the
amalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold and silver
and would not let it unite with the quicksilver.
All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. Streams of
dirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broad
wooden troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of gold
and silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; and
in order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and
little obstructing "riffles" charged with quicksilver were placed here
and there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned and
the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious
accumulations--and after all this eternity of trouble one third of the
silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the
troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day.
There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was any
idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pity
that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in
order to understand the full force of his doom to "earn his bread by the
sweat of his brow." Every now and then, during the day, we had to scoop
some pulp out of the pans, and tediously "wash" it in a horn spoon--wash
it little by little over the edge till at last nothing was left but some
little dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom. If they were soft and
yielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of copper or some
other chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if they were crisp to the
touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all the silver
and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pan needed a
fresh charge of quicksilver. When there was nothing else to do, one
could always "screen tailings." That is to say, he could shovel up the
dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs and
dash it against an upright wire screen to free it from pebbles and
prepare it for working over.
The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this
included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great
diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the
methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without
"screening the tailings." Of all recreations in the world, screening
tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most
undesirable.
At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we "cleaned up."
That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed
the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long accumulating
mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we made into
heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap
for inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring--that
and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the
same facility with which water saturates a sponge--separated its
particles and the ring crumbled to pieces.
We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe
leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat.
The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail,
and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again.
Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it. On opening the
retort, there was our week's work--a lump of pure white, frosty looking
silver, twice as large as a man's head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was
gold, but the color of it did not show--would not have shown if two
thirds of it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of it
by pouring it into an iron brick-mould.
By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained.
This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The first
one in Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificant
affair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immense
establishments afterwards located at Virginia City and elsewhere.
From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the "fire-assay"--a
method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metals
in the mass. This is an interesting process. The chip is hammered out
as thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if you
weigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on the
paper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will take
marked notice of the addition.
Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silver
and the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel,
made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold. The
base metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of the
cupel. A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is left
behind, and by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the
proportion of base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the gold
from the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in
the furnace and kept some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it is
rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric
acid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to
be weighed on its own merits. Then salt water is poured into the vessel
containing the dissolved silver and the silver returns to palpable form
again and sinks to the bottom. Nothing now remains but to weigh it; then
the proportions of the several metals contained in the brick are known,
and the assayer stamps the value of the brick upon its surface.
The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that the
speculative miner, in getting a "fire-assay" made of a piece of rock from
his mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of picking out
the least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but quite the
contrary. I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless quartz
for an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a filbert, which
was rich in gold and silver--and this was reserved for a fire-assay! Of
course the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of such rock would
yield hundreds of dollars--and on such assays many an utterly worthless
mine was sold.
Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it,
occasionally, who were not strictly scientific and capable. One assayer
got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he
acquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achieve
success, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayers
entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens
into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they broke
a little fragment off a carpenter's grindstone and got a stranger to take
it to the popular scientist and get it assayed. In the course of an hour
the result came--whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield
$1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold!
Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the
popular assayer left town "between two days."
I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business
one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance
in my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it;
that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so
short a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to
intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and
nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and
washing blankets--still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary.
He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round
sum. How much did I want?
I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was about
all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times.
I was ordered off the premises! And yet, when I look back to those days
and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that
mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand.
Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of the
population, about the mysterious and wonderful "cement mine," and to make
preparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might offer to go
and help hunt for it.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous
Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be
reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of
night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement--because he
must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow him.
In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules and
donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half the
community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of
Whiteman. But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days
together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the
miners ran out, and they would have to go back home. I have known it
reported at eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that Whiteman had
just passed through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before, would
be swarming with men and animals. Every individual would be trying to be
very secret, but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor that W.
had passed through. And long before daylight--this in the dead of
Winter--the stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the whole
population gone chasing after W.
The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty years
ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacre
on the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trails
and roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to find
California before they starved, or died of fatigue. And in a gorge in
the mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them noticed a
curious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps of
dull yellow metal. They saw that it was gold, and that here was a
fortune to be acquired in a single day. The vein was about as wide as a
curbstone, and fully two thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of the
wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200.
Each of the brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of it,
and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing of
the locality and the principal landmarks in the vicinity, and started
westward again. But troubles thickened about them. In their wanderings
one brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go on
and leave him to die in the wilderness. Another, worn out and starving,
gave up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks of
incredible hardships, the third reached the settlements of California
exhausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrown
away all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to set
everybody wild with excitement. However, he had had enough of the cement
country, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither. He was
entirely content to work on a farm for wages. But he gave Whiteman his
map, and described the cement region as well as he could and thus
transferred the curse to that gentleman--for when I had my one accidental
glimpse of Mr. W. in Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost mine, in
hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen years.
Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he had
not. I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to have
been given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductive
nature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a slice
of fruit cake. The privilege of working such a mine one week would be
sufficient for a man of reasonable desires.
A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and a
friend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well acquainted with him, and not
only that, but had Whiteman's promise that he should have a private hint
in time to enable him to join the next cement expedition. Van Dorn had
promised to extend the hint to us. One evening Higbie came in greatly
excited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town,
disguised and in a pretended state of intoxication. In a little while
Van Dorn arrived and confirmed the news; and so we gathered in our cabin
and with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers.
We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three small
parties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the "divide"
overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant. We were to make no
noise after starting, and not speak above a whisper under any
circumstances. It was believed that for once Whiteman's presence was
unknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave broke
up at nine o'clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and with
profound secrecy. At eleven o'clock we saddled our horses, hitched them
with their long riatas (or lassos), and then brought out a side of bacon,
a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred pounds of
flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few
other necessary articles. All these things were "packed" on the back of
a led horse--and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack
an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness. That
is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect. He
put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on
it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, "every which
way," taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surging
back on it till the horse's sides sunk in and he gasped for breath--but
every time the lashings grew tight in one place they loosened in another.
We never did get the load tight all over, but we got it so that it would
do, after a fashion, and then we started, in single file, close order,
and without a word. It was a dark night. We kept the middle of the
road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows of cabins, and whenever
a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the light would shine on us
an excite curiosity. But nothing happened. We began the long winding
ascent of the canyon, toward the "divide," and presently the cabins began
to grow infrequent, and the intervals between them wider and wider, and
then I began to breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and a
murderer. I was in the rear, leading the pack horse. As the ascent grew
steeper he grew proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and began
to pull back on his riata occasionally and delay progress. My comrades
were passing out of sight in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxed
and bullied the pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and then
the tin cups and pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran.
His riata was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by
he dragged me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on
without me. But I was not alone--the loosened cargo tumbled overboard
from the pack horse and fell close to me. It was abreast of almost the
last cabin.
A miner came out and said:
"Hello!"
I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very
dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head
appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walked
toward me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:
"Sh! Listen."
I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping
justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on
a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure
what they did. One said:
"I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be
about there--"
A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a
postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little
he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated
secret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last,
though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men
said:
"I'll tell you what! Welch knew what he was talking about when he said
he saw Whiteman to-day. I heard horses--that was the noise. I am going
down to Welch's, right away."
They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so they
went. I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better.
As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the
gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast
again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and
as day broke we reached the "divide" and joined Van Dorn. Then we
journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted
to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three hours
later the rest of the population filed over the "divide" in a long
procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake!
Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at
least one thing was certain--the secret was out and Whiteman would not
enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with
chagrin.
We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and
enjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is
sometimes called, and sometimes the "Dead Sea of California." It is one
of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is
hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies
away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at
that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to take
upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of our
second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on
the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered
it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp. We
hired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived
some ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation.
We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its
peculiarities.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand
feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand
feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This solemn,
silent, sail-less sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth
--is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending expanse
of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two
islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered
lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes,
the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has
seized upon and occupied.
The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong
with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into
them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it
had been through the ablest of washerwomen's hands. While we camped
there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week's washing astern of
our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all
to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a
rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water
is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a
valuable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him
than sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped
overboard one day to get away from the flies. But it was bad judgment.
In his condition, it would have been just as comfortable to jump into the
fire.
The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he
struck out for the shore with considerable interest. He yelped and
barked and howled as he went--and by the time he got to the shore there
was no bark to him--for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and
the alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and he
probably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ran
round and round in a circle, and pawed the earth and clawed the air, and
threw double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in
the most extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as a
general thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I
never saw him take so much interest in anything before. He finally
struck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two
hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was about
nine years ago. We look for what is left of him along here every day.
A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure
lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes,
though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever
saw. [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except to
parties requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received high
commendation from some of the ablest minds of the age.]
There are no fish in Mono Lake--no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs
--nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions of wild
ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists
under the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch
long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides. If
you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand of
these. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance. Then
there is a fly, which looks something like our house fly. These settle
on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore--and any time, you can see
there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt
extends clear around the lake--a belt of flies one hundred miles long.
If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they look
dense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as you
please--they do not mind it--they are only proud of it. When you let
them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and
walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a
view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that particular
way. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things have their
uses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy: the ducks eat
the flies--the flies eat the worms--the Indians eat all three--the wild
cats eat the Indians--the white folks eat the wild cats--and thus all
things are lovely.
Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean--and
between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains--yet
thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear
their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas.
And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's
wisdom. The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated
over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or
anything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless to
anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of
boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there,
and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have
made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling
spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome.
So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge--and if
nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who was
crusty and disobliging, and didn't know anything about the time tables,
or the railroad routes--or--anything--and was proud of it--I would not
wish for a more desirable boarding-house.
Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream
of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls, apparently, and
what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery.
There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake--and these
are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next. More
than once (in Esmeralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning open
up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o'clock, and seen the
snow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical thermometer go
down to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o'clock at night.
Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every single
month in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is the
climate in Summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be
prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm and
her snow shoes under the other. When they have a Fourth of July
procession it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a general
thing when a man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops it
off with a hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar. And it
is further reported that the old soakers haven't any teeth--wore them out
eating gin cocktails and brandy punches. I do not endorse that
statement--I simply give it for what it is worth--and it is worth--well,
I should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straining
himself. But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July--because I know
that to be true.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
About seven o'clock one blistering hot morning--for it was now dead
summer time--Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage of
discovery to the two islands. We had often longed to do this, but had
been deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severe
enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great
difficulty--and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest
swimming, for that venomous water would eat a man's eyes out like fire,
and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelve
miles, straight out to the islands--a long pull and a warm one--but the
morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy and
dead, that we could not resist the temptation. So we filled two large
tin canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the locality
of the spring said to exist on the large island), and started. Higbie's
brawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached our
destination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles than
twelve.
We landed on the big island and went ashore. We tried the water in the
canteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it; it was so brackish
that we could not drink it; so we poured it out and began a search for
the spring--for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that one
has no means at hand of quenching it. The island was a long, moderately
high hill of ashes--nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which we
sunk to our knees at every step--and all around the top was a forbidding
wall of scorched and blasted rocks. When we reached the top and got
within the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin, carpeted
with ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand. In places,
picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence that
although this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there was
still some fire left in its furnaces. Close to one of these jets of
steam stood the only tree on the island--a small pine of most graceful
shape and most faultless symmetry; its color was a brilliant green, for
the steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them always
moist. It contrasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautiful
outcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings. It was like a cheerful
spirit in a mourning household.
We hunted for the spring everywhere, traversing the full length of the
island (two or three miles), and crossing it twice--climbing ash-hills
patiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting posture,
plowing up smothering volumes of gray dust. But we found nothing but
solitude, ashes and a heart-breaking silence. Finally we noticed that
the wind had risen, and we forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greater
importance; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains about
securing the boat. We hurried back to a point overlooking our landing
place, and then--but mere words cannot describe our dismay--the boat was
gone! The chances were that there was not another boat on the entire
lake. The situation was not comfortable--in truth, to speak plainly, it
was frightful. We were prisoners on a desolate island, in aggravating
proximity to friends who were for the present helpless to aid us; and
what was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had neither
food nor water. But presently we sighted the boat. It was drifting
along, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea.
It drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe distance from
land, and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us.
At the end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran ahead
and posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault. If
we failed there, there was no hope for us. It was driving gradually
shoreward all the time, now; but whether it was driving fast enough to
make the connection or not was the momentous question. When it got
within thirty steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I could
hear my own heart beat. When, a little later, it dragged slowly along
and seemed about to go by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemed
as if my heart stood still; and when it was exactly abreast him and began
to widen away, and he still standing like a watching statue, I knew my
heart did stop. But when he gave a great spring, the next instant, and
lit fairly in the stern, I discharged a war-whoop that woke the
solitudes!
But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not been
caring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that it
passed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind to
shut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance. Imbecile that I
was, I had not thought of that. It was only a long swim that could be
fatal.
The sea was running high and the storm increasing. It was growing late,
too--three or four in the afternoon. Whether to venture toward the
mainland or not, was a question of some moment. But we were so
distressed by thirst that we decide to try it, and so Higbie fell to work
and I took the steering-oar. When we had pulled a mile, laboriously,
we were evidently in serious peril, for the storm had greatly augmented;
the billows ran very high and were capped with foaming crests,
the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury.
We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boat
around, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she would
upset, of course. Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas.
It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored
the billows with her rising and falling bows. Now and then one of
Higbie's oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would
snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus.
We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally
shipped water. By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his great
exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should change
places with him till he could rest a little. But I told him this was
impossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while we
changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize,
and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of
soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be
present at our own inquest.
But things cannot last always. Just as the darkness shut down we came
booming into port, head on. Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah--I dropped
mine to help--the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went!
The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered
hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it
--but we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding.
In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned
that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking
masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles
inferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock
he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls' eggs deeply
imbedded in the mass. How did they get there? I simply state the fact
--for it is a fact--and leave the geological reader to crack the nut at his
leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion.
At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion,
and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished
successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was
between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling
ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet
deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers
flourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost
freezing to death. Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the
cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to
Esmeralda. Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect,
set out alone for Humboldt.
About this time occurred a little incident which has always had a sort of
interest to me, from the fact that it came so near "instigating" my
funeral. At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the citizens
hid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to hand
when wanted. A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in the
bake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the open
ground near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day never
thought of it again. We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing for
us, and he took up quarters under the shed with his tub. The ancient
stove reposed within six feet of him, and before his face. Finally it
occurred to him that hot water would be better than cold, and he went out
and fired up under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a kettle of
water. Then he returned to his tub.
I entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and was
about to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash, and
disappeared, leaving not a splinter behind. Fragments of it fell in the
streets full two hundred yards away. Nearly a third of the shed roof
over our heads was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting a
small stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between us
and drove partly through the weather-boarding beyond. I was as white as
a sheet and as weak as a kitten and speechless. But the Indian betrayed
no trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort. He simply stopped
washing, leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment,
and then remarked:
"Mph! Dam stove heap gone!"--and resumed his scrubbing as placidly as if
it were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do. I will explain,
that "heap" is "Injun-English" for "very much." The reader will perceive
the exhaustive expressiveness of it in the present instance.
CHAPTER XL.
I now come to a curious episode--the most curious, I think, that had yet
accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside
toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking
quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that
extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company
entitled the "Wide West." There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep
on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with the
rock that came from it--and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but nothing
extraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the inexperienced
stranger all the quartz of a particular "district" looks about alike, an
old resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed pile of rock,
separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came from, as easily
as a confectioner can separate and classify the various kinds and
qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article.
All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement.
In mining parlance the Wide West had "struck it rich!" Everybody went to
see the new developments, and for some days there was such a crowd of
people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have supposed
there was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic was discussed
but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about anything else.
Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washed
it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the marvelous
result. It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could be
crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on a paper
exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of "native" silver.
Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it out his
amazement was beyond description. Wide West stock soared skywards. It
was said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thousand dollars
a foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the "blues"--the mere
sky-blues--but mine were indigo, now--because I did not own in the Wide
West. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief. I lost my
appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything. Still I had to
stay, and listen to other people's rejoicings, because I had no money to
get out of the camp with.
The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of "specimens," and
well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sun of some
consequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that
a sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the
mouth of the shaft, at one dollar a pound; and the man who bought it
"packed" it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the
mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate that
would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West people also
commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permission
to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up my "blue"
meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a
different sort. He puzzled over the "rock," examined it with a glass,
inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, and
after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the
same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:
"It is not Wide West rock!"
He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West
shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he
got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night;
failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in
ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three
hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once,
but was premature--one of the men came back for something; tried it
again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose
up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the
ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the
mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and
slid down the shaft.
He disappeared in the gloom of a "side drift" just as a head appeared in
the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"--which he did not
answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered the
cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and
exclaimed in a stage whisper:
"I knew it! We are rich! IT'S A BLIND LEAD!"
I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt--conviction--doubt
again--exultation--hope, amazement, belief, unbelief--every emotion
imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I
could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I
shook myself to rights, and said:
"Say it again!"
"It's blind lead!"
"Cal, let's--let's burn the house--or kill somebody! Let's get out where
there's room to hurrah! But what is the use? It is a hundred times too
good to be true."
"It's a blind lead, for a million!--hanging wall--foot wall--clay
casings--everything complete!" He swung his hat and gave three cheers,
and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was worth
a million dollars, and did not care "whether school kept or not!"
But perhaps I ought to explain. A "blind lead" is a lead or ledge that
does not "crop out" above the surface. A miner does not know where to
look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the
course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide West
rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developments
the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide
West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that
there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West
people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went down
the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through
the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in
its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public
property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any
miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not.
We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the
foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great
surprise to him. Higbie said:
"We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and
establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out
any more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter
--nobody can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to
your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead. Now we propose to take
you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you
say?"
What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his
hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and
without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his
name? He could only say, "Agreed."
The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder's
books before ten o'clock. We claimed two hundred feet each--six hundred
feet in all--the smallest and compactest organization in the district,
and the easiest to manage.
No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night.
Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake
and think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace,
the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany.
Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me
bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an
electric battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments of
conversation back and forth at each other. Once Higbie said:
"When are you going home--to the States?"
"To-morrow!"--with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position.
"Well--no--but next month, at furthest."
"We'll go in the same steamer."
"Agreed."
A pause.
"Steamer of the 10th?"
"Yes. No, the 1st."
"All right."
Another pause.
"Where are you going to live?" said Higbie.
"San Francisco."
"That's me!"
Pause.
"Too high--too much climbing"--from Higbie.
"What is?"
"I was thinking of Russian Hill--building a house up there."
"Too much climbing? Shan't you keep a carriage?"
"Of course. I forgot that."
Pause.
"Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?"
"I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic."
"But what kind?"
"Well, I don't hardly know. Brick, I suppose."
"Brick--bosh."
"Why? What is your idea?"
"Brown stone front--French plate glass--billiard-room off the
dining-room--statuary and paintings--shrubbery and two-acre grass plat
--greenhouse--iron dog on the front stoop--gray horses--landau, and a
coachman with a bug on his hat!"
"By George!"
A long pause.
"Cal., when are you going to Europe?"
"Well--I hadn't thought of that. When are you?"
"In the Spring."
"Going to be gone all summer?"
"All summer! I shall remain there three years."
"No--but are you in earnest?"
"Indeed I am."
"I will go along too."
"Why of course you will."
"What part of Europe shall you go to?"
"All parts. France, England, Germany--Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria,
Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt--all over--everywhere."
"I'm agreed."
"All right."
"Won't it be a swell trip!"
"We'll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one,
anyway."
Another long pause.
"Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to
stop our--"
"Hang the butcher!"
"Amen."
And so it went on. By three o'clock we found it was no use, and so we
got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my week
to cook. I always hated cooking--now, I abhorred it.
The news was all over town. The former excitement was great--this one
was greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie said
the foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third
of the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such
price. My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly
believe that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect
than to make me hold off for more.
I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me a
three-hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed note
for it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was
actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous other
evidences of a similar nature--among which I may mention the fact of the
butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about
money.
By the laws of the district, the "locators" or claimants of a ledge were
obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new property
within ten days after the date of the location, or the property was
forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So we
determined to go to work the next day. About the middle of the
afternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner,
who told me that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place
(the "Nine-Mile Ranch"), and that he and his wife were not able to give
him nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said if he
would wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room.
I ran to the cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a note
on the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner's
wagon.
CHAPTER XLI.
Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old
gentleman was himself--which is to say, he was kind-hearted and agreeable
when comfortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things did not
go well. He would be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a sudden
spasm of his disease would take him and he would go out of his smile into
a perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the anguish, and
fill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that strong
convictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair opportunity he
could swear very well and handle his adjectives with considerable
judgment; but when the spasm was on him it was painful to listen to him,
he was so awkward. However, I had seen him nurse a sick man himself and
put up patiently with the inconveniences of the situation, and
consequently I was willing that he should have full license now that his
own turn had come. He could not disturb me, with all his raving and
ranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently,
night and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering
and amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety of
having the billard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor with
the dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue for
the upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blue
I feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged by dust and
sunlight; likewise while I was content to put the coachman in a modest
livery, I was uncertain about a footman--I needed one, and was even
resolved to have one, but wished he could properly appear and perform his
functions out of livery, for I somewhat dreaded so much show; and yet,
inasmuch as my late grandfather had had a coachman and such things, but
no liveries, I felt rather drawn to beat him;--or beat his ghost, at any
rate; I was also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get it
all laid out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to it
--everything, with one exception--namely, whether to cross the desert from
Cairo to Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence down
through the country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to the friends
at home every day, instructing them concerning all my plans and
intentions, and directing them to look up a handsome homestead for my
mother and agree upon a price for it against my coming, and also
directing them to sell my share of the Tennessee land and tender the
proceeds to the widows' and orphans' fund of the typographical union of
which I had long been a member in good standing. [This Tennessee land
had been in the possession of the family many years, and promised to
confer high fortune upon us some day; it still promises it, but in a less
violent way.]
When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better,
but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair and
gave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on the
bed again. We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar produced
pain. Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs; in an unfortunate
moment I stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony of
torture. I never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like a
maniac, and tried to snatch a revolver from the table--but I got it.
He ordered me out of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he would
kill me wherever he caught me when he got on his feet again. It was
simply a passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in
an hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too; but it angered me a little, at
the moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined to go back to
Esmeralda. I thought he was able to get along alone, now, since he was
on the war path. I took supper, and as soon as the moon rose, began my
nine-mile journey, on foot.
Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile
jaunt without baggage.
As I "raised the hill" overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes of
twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the bright
moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of the
village massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave an
exulting bound, and I said to myself, "They have made a new strike
to-night--and struck it richer than ever, no doubt." I started over
there, but gave it up. I said the "strick" would keep, and I had climbed
hill enough for one night. I went on down through the town, and as I was
passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in
and help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged she
was right--he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into one.
Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of a
success of it. I ran up the street half a block or so and routed out a
sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled with
the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour,
and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and the
doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends.
It was a little after one o'clock. As I entered the cabin door, tired
but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting by
the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his fingers,
and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at him. He
looked at me, stolidly. I said:
"Higbie, what--what is it?"
"We're ruined--we didn't do the work--THE BLIND LEAD'S RELOCATED!"
It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved--broken-hearted, indeed. A
minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, and
very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and
useless self-upbraidings, busy with "Why didn't I do this, and why didn't
I do that," but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into mutual
explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came out that Higbie
had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on the
foreman. The folly of it! It was the first time that ever staid and
steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to be
true to his full share of a responsibility.
But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the
first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last.
He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon--had
ridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a
hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a
broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had remained
undisturbed for nine days:
"Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W.
has passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at
Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He says
he will find it this time, sure. CAL."
"W." meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed "cement!"
That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more
withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this
"cement" foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he was
famishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for
months; and now, against his better judgment, he had gone off and "taken
the chances" on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered
cement veins. They had not been followed this time. His riding out of
town in broad daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had
not attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the
fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they could
not find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that something
might have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold
the blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible),
and forthwith he started home with all speed. He would have reached
Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a great
part of the distance. And so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda
by one road, I entered it by another. His was the superior energy,
however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of turning aside
as I had done--and he arrived there about five or ten minutes too late!
The "notice" was already up, the "relocation" of our mine completed
beyond recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some facts
before he left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about the
streets since the night we had located the mine--a telegram had called
him to California on a matter of life and death, it was said. At any
rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the community were
taking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth day, the ledge
would be "relocatable," and by eleven o'clock the hill was black with men
prepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd I had seen when I
fancied a new "strike" had been made--idiot that I was.
[We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had,
provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men,
duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their "notice" and
proclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of the
"Johnson." But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden
appearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said
his name must be added to the list, or he would "thin out the Johnson
company some." He was a manly, splendid, determined fellow, and known to
be as good as his word, and therefore a compromise was effected. They
put in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customary
two hundred feet each. Such was the history of the night's events, as
Higbie gathered from a friend on the way home.
Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning,
glad to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and after a month or
two of hardship and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more.
Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had
consolidated; that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet,
or shares; that the foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, and
considering such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for
ninety thousand dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it.
If the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand shares
in the corporation, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have been
worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the difference
between six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We
would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade
one little day on our property and so secured our ownership!
It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses,
and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is
easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have
it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million
dollars, once, for ten days.
A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old millionaire
partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp in
California that after nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving,
he was at last in a position where he could command twenty-five hundred
dollars, and said he meant to go into the fruit business in a modest way.
How such a thought would have insulted him the night we lay in our cabin
planning European trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill!
CHAPTER XLII.
What to do next?
It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for
myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends;
and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian
stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I could not
live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with). I had
gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not dazzled anybody
with my successes; still the list was before me, and the amplest liberty
in the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to work--which I did not,
after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery clerk, for one day,
but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I was relieved from
further duty by the proprietor; said he wanted me outside, so that he
could have my custom. I had studied law an entire week, and then given
it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had engaged briefly in the
study of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time trying to fix the bellows
so that it would blow itself, that the master turned me adrift in
disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had been a bookseller's
clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so much I could not read
with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to
put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store part of a summer, but
my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to sell more stomach pumps
than soda water. So I had to go. I had made of myself a tolerable
printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day,
but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open
in the Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slow
compositor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of apprentices
of two years' standing; and when I took a "take," foremen were in the
habit of suggesting that it would be wanted "some time during the year."
I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means
ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty
dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a
wheel again and never roam any more--but I had been making such an ass of
myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my
European excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointed
miner had done before; said "It is all over with me now, and I will never
go back home to be pitied--and snubbed." I had been a private secretary,
a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less than
nothing in each, and now--
What to do next?
I yielded to Higbie's appeals and consented to try the mining once more.
We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little
rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie
descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened
up a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled
shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it out.
You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till it is
full, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your left
shoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of the
shaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck.
I never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly
resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself and
shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel.
I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery--so to
speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters
to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial
Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print.
My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to me
that they might have found something better to fill up with than my
literature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home from
the hill side, and finally I opened it. Eureka! [I never did know what
Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any when
no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to me of
Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Virginia and be city editor of
the Enterprise.
I would have challenged the publisher in the "blind lead" days--I wanted
to fall down and worship him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week--it looked
like bloated luxury--a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of money.
But my transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent
unfitness for the position--and straightway, on top of this, my long
array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I must
presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing
necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such a
humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to be proud of,
since it is so common--but then it was all I had to be proud of. So I
was scared into being a city editor. I would have declined, otherwise.
Necessity is the mother of "taking chances." I do not doubt that if, at
that time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from the
original Hebrew, I would have accepted--albeit with diffidence and some
misgivings--and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money.
I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty
looking city editor, I am free to confess--coatless, slouch hat, blue
woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to
the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I
secured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver.
I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do
so, but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in
order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and a
subject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers, carried
revolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman, I will
call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do) for some
instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all over town
and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes of the
information gained, and write them out for publication. And he added:
"Never say 'We learn' so-and-so, or 'It is reported,' or 'It is rumored,'
or 'We understand' so-and-so, but go to headquarters and get the absolute
facts, and then speak out and say 'It is so-and-so.' Otherwise, people
will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable certainly is the
thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation."
It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find a
reporter commencing his article with "We understand," I gather a
suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he
ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise well
when I was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too
often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day's
experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody,
boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end
of five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. He
said:
"Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time when
there were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the
Truckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed activity and all
that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know.
"It isn't sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks business
like."
I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging
in from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by
sixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions, made
sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about hay
as Virginia City had never seen in the world before.
This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I was
getting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, a
desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I never
was so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the
murderer:
"Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this day
which I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you any
slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you have
relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me
your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor."
If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching
desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to
details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret--namely,
that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work
him up too.
Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and
found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and
had fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that the
circumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within
rigid limits by the presence of the reporters of the other papers I could
add particulars that would make the article much more interesting.
However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made some
judicious inquiries of the proprietor. When I learned, through his short
and surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was certainly going on
and would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got ahead of the
other papers, for I took down his list of names and added his party to
the killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I put this wagon through
an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history.
My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt
that I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within
myself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper needed, and I
felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it.
Mr. Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan. I desired no
higher commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could
take my pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and
the interests of the paper demanded it.
CHAPTER XLIII.
However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the
run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to
any large extent, and became able to fill my columns without diverging
noticeably from the domain of fact.
I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and we
swapped "regulars" with each other and thus economized work. "Regulars"
are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, "clean-ups"
at the quartz mills, and inquests. Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we
had an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally set
down among the "regulars." We had lively papers in those days. My great
competitor among the reporters was Boggs of the Union. He was an
excellent reporter. Once in three or four months he would get a little
intoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary and cautious drinker
although always ready to tamper a little with the enemy. He had the
advantage of me in one thing; he could get the monthly public school
report and I could not, because the principal hated the Enterprise.
One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly wondering
how I was going to get it. Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted
street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where he was going.
"After the school report."
"I'll go along with you."
"No, sir. I'll excuse you."
"Just as you say."
A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and
Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He gazed fondly after the boy
and saw him start up the Enterprise stairs. I said:
"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't,
I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get them to let me
have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don't begin to
suppose they will. Good night."
"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting around
with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down
to the principal's with me."
"Now you talk like a rational being. Come along."
We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report and
returned to our office. It was a short document and soon copied.
Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch. I gave the manuscript back
to him and we started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shots
near by. We got the particulars with little loss of time, for it was
only an inferior sort of bar-room murder, and of little interest to the
public, and then we separated. Away at three o'clock in the morning,
when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual
--for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on
the guitar and on that atrocity the accordion--the proprietor of the
Union strode in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything of
Boggs or the school report. We stated the case, and all turned out to
help hunt for the delinquent. We found him standing on a table in a
saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the
other, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on the iniquity of
squandering the public moneys on education "when hundreds and hundreds of
honest hard-working men are literally starving for whiskey." [Riotous
applause.] He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for
hours. We dragged him away and put him to bed.
Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me
accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass
its absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that the
misfortune had occurred.
But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report was next
due, the proprietor of the "Genessee" mine furnished us a buggy and asked
us to go down and write something about the property--a very common
request and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies,
for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. In due time
we arrived at the "mine"--nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feet
deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and
being lowered with a windlass. The workmen had just gone off somewhere
to dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk; so I took an
unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the
rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start
of him, and then swung out over the shaft. I reached the bottom muddy
and bruised about the elbows, but safe. I lit the candle, made an
examination of the rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs to
hoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in the circle of
daylight away aloft, and a voice came down:
"Are you all set?"
"All set--hoist away."
"Are you comfortable?"
"Perfectly."
"Could you wait a little?"
"Oh certainly--no particular hurry."
"Well--good by."
"Why? Where are you going?"
"After the school report!"
And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when
they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.
I walked home, too--five miles--up hill. We had no school report next
morning; but the Union had.
Six months after my entry into journalism the grand "flush times" of
Silverland began, and they continued with unabated splendor for three
years. All difficulty about filling up the "local department" ceased,
and the only trouble now was how to make the lengthened columns hold the
world of incidents and happenings that came to our literary net every
day. Virginia had grown to be the "livest" town, for its age and
population, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks swarmed with
people--to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy matter
to stem the human tide. The streets themselves were just as crowded with
quartz wagons, freight teams and other vehicles. The procession was
endless. So great was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait half
an hour for an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat on
every countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in
every eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in
every brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money was
as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a
melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen. There were military
companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres,
"hurdy-gurdy houses," wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows,
civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey
mill every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor,
a City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and
Third Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police
force, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen
jails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a
church. The "flush times" were in magnificent flower! Large fire-proof
brick buildings were going up in the principal streets, and the wooden
suburbs were spreading out in all directions. Town lots soared up to
prices that were amazing.
The great "Comstock lode" stretched its opulent length straight through
the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligent
process of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundred
and seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage was, "as
the 'Gould and Curry' goes, so goes the city." Laboring men's wages were
four and six dollars a day, and they worked in three "shifts" or gangs,
and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night
and day.
The "city" of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount
Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea, and
in the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of fifty
miles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand,
and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees
and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the
"Comstock," hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same
streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of a
blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office.
The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant to it
like a roof. Each street was a terrace, and from each to the next street
below the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of the houses were
level with the street they faced, but their rear first floors were
propped on lofty stilts; a man could stand at a rear first floor window
of a C street house and look down the chimneys of the row of houses below
him facing D street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere,
to ascend from D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath when
you got there; but you could turn around and go down again like a house
a-fire--so to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on account of the
great altitude, that one's blood lay near the surface always, and the
scratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying about, for the chances
were that a grievous erysipelas would ensue. But to offset this, the
thin atmosphere seemed to carry healing to gunshot wounds, and therefore,
to simply shoot your adversary through both lungs was a thing not likely
to afford you any permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain
to be around looking for you within the month, and not with an opera
glass, either.
From Virginia's airy situation one could look over a vast, far-reaching
panorama of mountain ranges and deserts; and whether the day was bright
or overcast, whether the sun was rising or setting, or flaming in the
zenith, or whether night and the moon held sway, the spectacle was always
impressive and beautiful. Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its gray
dome, and before and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlemented
hills, making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was
glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it, bordered
with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a delicate fringe;
and still further away the snowy mountains rose up and stretched their
long barrier to the filmy horizon--far enough beyond a lake that burned
in the desert like a fallen sun, though that, itself, lay fifty miles
removed. Look from your window where you would, there was fascination in
the picture. At rare intervals--but very rare--there were clouds in our
skies, and then the setting sun would gild and flush and glorify this
mighty expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of color that held the
eye like a spell and moved the spirit like music.
CHAPTER XLIV.
My salary was increased to forty dollars a week. But I seldom drew it.
I had plenty of other resources, and what were two broad twenty-dollar
gold pieces to a man who had his pockets full of such and a cumbersome
abundance of bright half dollars besides? [Paper money has never come
into use on the Pacific coast.] Reporting was lucrative, and every man
in the town was lavish with his money and his "feet." The city and all
the great mountain side were riddled with mining shafts. There were more
mines than miners. True, not ten of these mines were yielding rock worth
hauling to a mill, but everybody said, "Wait till the shaft gets down
where the ledge comes in solid, and then you will see!" So nobody was
discouraged. These were nearly all "wild cat" mines, and wholly
worthless, but nobody believed it then. The "Ophir," the "Gould &
Curry," the "Mexican," and other great mines on the Comstock lead in
Virginia and Gold Hill were turning out huge piles of rich rock every
day, and every man believed that his little wild cat claim was as good as
any on the "main lead" and would infallibly be worth a thousand dollars a
foot when he "got down where it came in solid." Poor fellow, he was
blessedly blind to the fact that he never would see that day. So the
thousand wild cat shafts burrowed deeper and deeper into the earth day by
day, and all men were beside themselves with hope and happiness. How
they labored, prophesied, exulted! Surely nothing like it was ever seen
before since the world began. Every one of these wild cat mines--not
mines, but holes in the ground over imaginary mines--was incorporated and
had handsomely engraved "stock" and the stock was salable, too. It was
bought and sold with a feverish avidity in the boards every day. You
could go up on the mountain side, scratch around and find a ledge (there
was no lack of them), put up a "notice" with a grandiloquent name in it,
start a shaft, get your stock printed, and with nothing whatever to prove
that your mine was worth a straw, you could put your stock on the market
and sell out for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. To make money,
and make it fast, was as easy as it was to eat your dinner.
Every man owned "feet" in fifty different wild cat mines and considered
his fortune made. Think of a city with not one solitary poor man in it!
One would suppose that when month after month went by and still not a
wild cat mine (by wild cat I mean, in general terms, any claim not
located on the mother vein, i.e., the "Comstock") yielded a ton of rock
worth crushing, the people would begin to wonder if they were not putting
too much faith in their prospective riches; but there was not a thought
of such a thing. They burrowed away, bought and sold, and were happy.
New claims were taken up daily, and it was the friendly custom to run
straight to the newspaper offices, give the reporter forty or fifty
"feet," and get them to go and examine the mine and publish a notice of
it. They did not care a fig what you said about the property so you said
something. Consequently we generally said a word or two to the effect
that the "indications" were good, or that the ledge was "six feet wide,"
or that the rock "resembled the Comstock" (and so it did--but as a
general thing the resemblance was not startling enough to knock you
down). If the rock was moderately promising, we followed the custom of
the country, used strong adjectives and frothed at the mouth as if a very
marvel in silver discoveries had transpired. If the mine was a
"developed" one, and had no pay ore to show (and of course it hadn't), we
praised the tunnel; said it was one of the most infatuating tunnels in
the land; driveled and driveled about the tunnel till we ran entirely out
of ecstasies--but never said a word about the rock. We would squander
half a column of adulation on a shaft, or a new wire rope, or a dressed
pine windlass, or a fascinating force pump, and close with a burst of
admiration of the "gentlemanly and efficient Superintendent" of the mine
--but never utter a whisper about the rock. And those people were always
pleased, always satisfied. Occasionally we patched up and varnished our
reputation for discrimination and stern, undeviating accuracy, by giving
some old abandoned claim a blast that ought to have made its dry bones
rattle--and then somebody would seize it and sell it on the fleeting
notoriety thus conferred upon it.
There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that was not salable.
We received presents of "feet" every day. If we needed a hundred dollars
or so, we sold some; if not, we hoarded it away, satisfied that it would
ultimately be worth a thousand dollars a foot. I had a trunk about half
full of "stock." When a claim made a stir in the market and went up to a
high figure, I searched through my pile to see if I had any of its stock
--and generally found it.
The prices rose and fell constantly; but still a fall disturbed us
little, because a thousand dollars a foot was our figure, and so we were
content to let it fluctuate as much as it pleased till it reached it.
My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their
claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no
thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal
"thank you;" and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that.
If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples in
your hands, and you meet a friend, you naturally invite him to take a
few. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flush
times." Every man had his pockets full of stock, and it was the actual
custom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friends
without the asking.
Very often it was a good idea to close the transaction instantly, when a
man offered a stock present to a friend, for the offer was only good and
binding at that moment, and if the price went to a high figure shortly
afterward the procrastination was a thing to be regretted. Mr. Stewart
(Senator, now, from Nevada) one day told me he would give me twenty feet
of "Justis" stock if I would walk over to his office. It was worth five
or ten dollars a foot. I asked him to make the offer good for next day,
as I was just going to dinner. He said he would not be in town; so I
risked it and took my dinner instead of the stock. Within the week the
price went up to seventy dollars and afterward to a hundred and fifty,
but nothing could make that man yield. I suppose he sold that stock of
mine and placed the guilty proceeds in his own pocket. [My revenge will
be found in the accompanying portrait.] I met three friends one
afternoon, who said they had been buying "Overman" stock at auction at
eight dollars a foot. One said if I would come up to his office he would
give me fifteen feet; another said he would add fifteen; the third said
he would do the same. But I was going after an inquest and could not
stop. A few weeks afterward they sold all their "Overman" at six hundred
dollars a foot and generously came around to tell me about it--and also
to urge me to accept of the next forty-five feet of it that people tried
to force on me.
These are actual facts, and I could make the list a long one and still
confine myself strictly to the truth. Many a time friends gave us as
much as twenty-five feet of stock that was selling at twenty-five dollars
a foot, and they thought no more of it than they would of offering a
guest a cigar. These were "flush times" indeed! I thought they were
going to last always, but somehow I never was much of a prophet.
To show what a wild spirit possessed the mining brain of the community,
I will remark that "claims" were actually "located" in excavations for
cellars, where the pick had exposed what seemed to be quartz veins--and
not cellars in the suburbs, either, but in the very heart of the city;
and forthwith stock would be issued and thrown on the market. It was
small matter who the cellar belonged to--the "ledge" belonged to the
finder, and unless the United States government interfered (inasmuch as
the government holds the primary right to mines of the noble metals in
Nevada--or at least did then), it was considered to be his privilege to
work it. Imagine a stranger staking out a mining claim among the costly
shrubbery in your front yard and calmly proceeding to lay waste the
ground with pick and shovel and blasting powder! It has been often done
in California. In the middle of one of the principal business streets of
Virginia, a man "located" a mining claim and began a shaft on it. He
gave me a hundred feet of the stock and I sold it for a fine suit of
clothes because I was afraid somebody would fall down the shaft and sue
for damages. I owned in another claim that was located in the middle of
another street; and to show how absurd people can be, that "East India"
stock (as it was called) sold briskly although there was an ancient
tunnel running directly under the claim and any man could go into it and
see that it did not cut a quartz ledge or anything that remotely
resembled one.
One plan of acquiring sudden wealth was to "salt" a wild cat claim and
sell out while the excitement was up. The process was simple.
The schemer located a worthless ledge, sunk a shaft on it, bought a wagon
load of rich "Comstock" ore, dumped a portion of it into the shaft and
piled the rest by its side, above ground. Then he showed the property to
a simpleton and sold it to him at a high figure. Of course the wagon
load of rich ore was all that the victim ever got out of his purchase.
A most remarkable case of "salting" was that of the "North Ophir."
It was claimed that this vein was a "remote extension" of the original
"Ophir," a valuable mine on the "Comstock." For a few days everybody was
talking about the rich developments in the North Ophir. It was said that
it yielded perfectly pure silver in small, solid lumps. I went to the
place with the owners, and found a shaft six or eight feet deep, in the
bottom of which was a badly shattered vein of dull, yellowish,
unpromising rock. One would as soon expect to find silver in a
grindstone. We got out a pan of the rubbish and washed it in a puddle,
and sure enough, among the sediment we found half a dozen black,
bullet-looking pellets of unimpeachable "native" silver. Nobody had ever
heard of such a thing before; science could not account for such a queer
novelty. The stock rose to sixty-five dollars a foot, and at this figure
the world-renowned tragedian, McKean Buchanan, bought a commanding
interest and prepared to quit the stage once more--he was always doing
that. And then it transpired that the mine had been "salted"--and not in
any hackneyed way, either, but in a singularly bold, barefaced and
peculiarly original and outrageous fashion. On one of the lumps of
"native" silver was discovered the minted legend, "TED STATES OF," and
then it was plainly apparent that the mine had been "salted" with melted
half-dollars! The lumps thus obtained had been blackened till they
resembled native silver, and were then mixed with the shattered rock in
the bottom of the shaft. It is literally true. Of course the price of
the stock at once fell to nothing, and the tragedian was ruined. But for
this calamity we might have lost McKean Buchanan from the stage.
CHAPTER XLV.
The "flush times" held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr.
Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty dollars and
set out from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of
Virginia. They found the Territorial Enterprise, a poverty-stricken
weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought it,
type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a thousand dollars, on long time.
The editorial sanctum, news-room, press-room, publication office,
bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one apartment
and it was a small one, too. The editors and printers slept on the
floor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the "imposing-stone" was the
general dinner table. But now things were changed. The paper was a
great daily, printed by steam; there were five editors and twenty-three
compositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year; the
advertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The paper
was clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and the
"Enterprise Building" was finished and ready for occupation--a stately
fireproof brick. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columns
of "live" advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic and
irregular "supplements."
The "Gould & Curry" company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill at
a cost that ultimately fell little short of a million dollars. Gould &
Curry stock paid heavy dividends--a rare thing, and an experience
confined to the dozen or fifteen claims located on the "main lead," the
"Comstock." The Superintendent of the Gould & Curry lived, rent free, in
a fine house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of
horses which were a present from the company, and his salary was twelve
thousand dollars a year. The superintendent of another of the great
mines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight thousand
dollars a year, and in a law suit in after days claimed that he was to
have had one per cent. on the gross yield of the bullion likewise.
Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to get it,--but
how to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so it
was a happy thing that just at this juncture the news came over the wires
that a great United States Sanitary Commission had been formed and money
was wanted for the relief of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the
Union languishing in the Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of it
came word that San Francisco had responded superbly before the telegram
was half a day old. Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was
hurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C street
and tried to make the clamorous multitude understand that the rest of the
committee were flying hither and thither and working with all their might
and main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office would
be ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive
contributions. His voice was drowned and his information lost in a
ceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received now
--they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but,
deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and rained
checks of gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more. Hands
clutching money, were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this
eloquent appeal would cleave a road their strugglings could not open.
The very Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half
dollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was all about.
Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the
cart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their apparel in
a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had
ever seen and the most determined and ungovernable; and when at last it
abated its fury and dispersed, it had not a penny in its pocket.
To use its own phraseology, it came there "flush" and went away "busted."
After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, and
for weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous
stream. Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied upon
themselves a regular weekly tax for the sanitary fund, graduated
according to their means, and there was not another grand universal
outburst till the famous "Sanitary Flour Sack" came our way. Its history
is peculiar and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of
Reuel Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reese
river country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor.
He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man
should be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the
successful one, and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley was
defeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it
and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper
Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived
there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people
thought he had better do with it. A voice said:
"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund."
The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted
a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher
and higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at
last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty
dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour
delivered, and he said:
"Nowhere--sell it again."
Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the
spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired
till the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the sack
to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand
dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession.
The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:
"Fetch along your flour sack!"
Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meeting
was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack had
come sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly aroused,
and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been
secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community. However,
there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and acknowledge
vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the
night the principal citizens were at work arranging the morrow's
campaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the result.
At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages, attended by
clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display of flags,
filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing
multitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with the flour
sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint and gilt
lettering; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the recorder.
The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors and
reporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd pressed
to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to begin there,
but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised; for the
cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of importance, and
took its way over the "divide," toward the small town of Gold Hill.
Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and Dayton, and those
communities were at fever heat and rife for the conflict. It was a very
hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a short half hour we
descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying, and
enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole population--men, women
and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main street, all
the flags in town were at the mast head, and the blare of the bands was
drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who would make the first
bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. said:
"The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars,
coin!"
A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia,
and fifteen minutes afterward that city's population was massed in the
streets devouring the tidings--for it was part of the programme that the
bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new
dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement grew.
Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to bring
back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At the
end of an hour Gold Hill's small population had paid a figure for the
flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand total
was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade moved
on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it--for the
people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it--and
within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and Dayton
by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had been
telegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered Virginia and
filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the town was abroad
in the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags flying, bands playing,
cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city ready to surrender at
discretion. The auction began, every bid was greeted with bursts of
applause, and at the end of two hours and a half a population of fifteen
thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum
equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks! It was at a rate in the
neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child of the
population. The grand total would have been twice as large, but the
streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to bid could not get
within a block of the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These
grew tired of waiting and many of them went home long before the auction
was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps.
Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; also
in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two
Atlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he
finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being
held, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on the
enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada's donation
had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed
them at high prices.
It was estimated that when the flour sack's mission was ended it had been
sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where common
family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public market.
It is due to Mr. Gridley's memory to mention that the expenses of his
sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and
returning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his own
pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months.
Mr. Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian.
He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted.
CHAPTER XLVI.
There were nabobs in those days--in the "flush times," I mean. Every
rich strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several of
these. They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general thing, and
the community at large was as much benefited by their riches as they were
themselves--possibly more, in some cases.
Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take a
small segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They
gave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But
not long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each
owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month--say $100,000 a year.
One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000 worth
of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he could not
spend his money as fast as he made it.
Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a
month; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine
that yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the
country.
The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets of
fortune--lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single
night--who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official
distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it--but failed to get it,
his politics not being as sound as his bank account.
Then there was John Smith. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted soul,
born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant.
He drove a team, and owned a small ranch--a ranch that paid him a
comfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay, what little
it did yield was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market.
Presently Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped
silver mine in Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little
unpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward he retired from
the hay business, for his mining income had reached a most comfortable
figure. Some people said it was $30,000 a month, and others said it was
$60,000. Smith was very rich at any rate.
And then he went to Europe and traveled. And when he came back he was
never tired of telling about the fine hogs he had seen in England, and
the gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had
noticed in the vicinity of Rome. He was full of wonders of the old
world, and advised everybody to travel. He said a man never imagined
what surprising things there were in the world till he had traveled.
One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which was
to be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the run
of the vessel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon, the
figures were all in the purser's hands in sealed envelopes. Smith was
serene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But another
party won the prize! Smith said:
"Here, that won't do! He guessed two miles wider of the mark than I did."
The purser said, "Mr. Smith, you missed it further than any man on board.
We traveled two hundred and eight miles yesterday."
"Well, sir," said Smith, "that's just where I've got you, for I guessed
two hundred and nine. If you'll look at my figgers again you'll find a 2
and two 0's, which stands for 200, don't it?--and after 'em you'll find a
9 (2009), which stands for two hundred and nine. I reckon I'll take that
money, if you please."
The Gould & Curry claim comprised twelve hundred feet, and it all
belonged originally to the two men whose names it bears. Mr. Curry owned
two thirds of it--and he said that he sold it out for twenty-five hundred
dollars in cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market value in
hay and barley in seventeen days by the watch. And he said that Gould
sold out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a bottle of
whisky that killed nine men in three hours, and that an unoffending
stranger that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four years afterward
the mine thus disposed of was worth in the San Francisco market seven
millions six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin.
In the early days a poverty-stricken Mexican who lived in a canyon
directly back of Virginia City, had a stream of water as large as a man's
wrist trickling from the hill-side on his premises. The Ophir Company
segregated a hundred feet of their mine and traded it to him for the
stream of water. The hundred feet proved to be the richest part of the
entire mine; four years after the swap, its market value (including its
mill) was $1,500,000.
An individual who owned twenty feet in the Ophir mine before its great
riches were revealed to men, traded it for a horse, and a very sorry
looking brute he was, too. A year or so afterward, when Ophir stock went
up to $3,000 a foot, this man, who had not a cent, used to say he was the
most startling example of magnificence and misery the world had ever
seen--because he was able to ride a sixty-thousand-dollar horse--yet
could not scrape up cash enough to buy a saddle, and was obliged to
borrow one or ride bareback. He said if fortune were to give him another
sixty-thousand-dollar horse it would ruin him.
A youth of nineteen, who was a telegraph operator in Virginia on a salary
of a hundred dollars a month, and who, when he could not make out German
names in the list of San Francisco steamer arrivals, used to ingeniously
select and supply substitutes for them out of an old Berlin city
directory, made himself rich by watching the mining telegrams that passed
through his hands and buying and selling stocks accordingly, through a
friend in San Francisco. Once when a private dispatch was sent from
Virginia announcing a rich strike in a prominent mine and advising that
the matter be kept secret till a large amount of the stock could be
secured, he bought forty "feet" of the stock at twenty dollars a foot,
and afterward sold half of it at eight hundred dollars a foot and the
rest at double that figure. Within three months he was worth $150,000,
and had resigned his telegraphic position.
Another telegraph operator who had been discharged by the company for
divulging the secrets of the office, agreed with a moneyed man in San
Francisco to furnish him the result of a great Virginia mining lawsuit
within an hour after its private reception by the parties to it in San
Francisco. For this he was to have a large percentage of the profits on
purchases and sales made on it by his fellow-conspirator. So he went,
disguised as a teamster, to a little wayside telegraph office in the
mountains, got acquainted with the operator, and sat in the office day
after day, smoking his pipe, complaining that his team was fagged out and
unable to travel--and meantime listening to the dispatches as they passed
clicking through the machine from Virginia. Finally the private dispatch
announcing the result of the lawsuit sped over the wires, and as soon as
he heard it he telegraphed his friend in San Francisco:
"Am tired waiting. Shall sell the team and go home."
It was the signal agreed upon. The word "waiting" left out, would have
signified that the suit had gone the other way.
The mock teamster's friend picked up a deal of the mining stock, at low
figures, before the news became public, and a fortune was the result.
For a long time after one of the great Virginia mines had been
incorporated, about fifty feet of the original location were still in the
hands of a man who had never signed the incorporation papers. The stock
became very valuable, and every effort was made to find this man, but he
had disappeared. Once it was heard that he was in New York, and one or
two speculators went east but failed to find him. Once the news came
that he was in the Bermudas, and straightway a speculator or two hurried
east and sailed for Bermuda--but he was not there. Finally he was heard
of in Mexico, and a friend of his, a bar-keeper on a salary, scraped
together a little money and sought him out, bought his "feet" for a
hundred dollars, returned and sold the property for $75,000.
But why go on? The traditions of Silverland are filled with instances
like these, and I would never get through enumerating them were I to
attempt do it. I only desired to give, the reader an idea of a
peculiarity of the "flush times" which I could not present so strikingly
in any other way, and which some mention of was necessary to a realizing
comprehension of the time and the country.
I was personally acquainted with the majority of the nabobs I have
referred to, and so, for old acquaintance sake, I have shifted their
occupations and experiences around in such a way as to keep the Pacific
public from recognizing these once notorious men. No longer notorious,
for the majority of them have drifted back into poverty and obscurity
again.
In Nevada there used to be current the story of an adventure of two of
her nabobs, which may or may not have occurred. I give it for what it is
worth:
Col. Jim had seen somewhat of the world, and knew more or less of its
ways; but Col. Jack was from the back settlements of the States, had led
a life of arduous toil, and had never seen a city. These two, blessed
with sudden wealth, projected a visit to New York,--Col. Jack to see the
sights, and Col. Jim to guard his unsophistication from misfortune. They
reached San Francisco in the night, and sailed in the morning. Arrived
in New York, Col. Jack said:
"I've heard tell of carriages all my life, and now I mean to have a ride
in one; I don't care what it costs. Come along."
They stepped out on the sidewalk, and Col. Jim called a stylish barouche.
But Col. Jack said:
"No, sir! None of your cheap-John turn-outs for me. I'm here to have a
good time, and money ain't any object. I mean to have the nobbiest rig
that's going. Now here comes the very trick. Stop that yaller one with
the pictures on it--don't you fret--I'll stand all the expenses myself."
So Col. Jim stopped an empty omnibus, and they got in. Said Col. Jack:
"Ain't it gay, though? Oh, no, I reckon not! Cushions, and windows, and
pictures, till you can't rest. What would the boys say if they could see
us cutting a swell like this in New York? By George, I wish they could
see us."
Then he put his head out of the window, and shouted to the driver:
"Say, Johnny, this suits me!--suits yours truly, you bet, you! I want
this shebang all day. I'm on it, old man! Let 'em out! Make 'em go!
We'll make it all right with you, sonny!"
The driver passed his hand through the strap-hole, and tapped for his
fare--it was before the gongs came into common use. Col. Jack took the
hand, and shook it cordially. He said:
"You twig me, old pard! All right between gents. Smell of that, and see
how you like it!"
And he put a twenty-dollar gold piece in the driver's hand. After a
moment the driver said he could not make change.
"Bother the change! Ride it out. Put it in your pocket."
Then to Col. Jim, with a sounding slap on his thigh:
"Ain't it style, though? Hanged if I don't hire this thing every day for
a week."
The omnibus stopped, and a young lady got in. Col. Jack stared a moment,
then nudged Col. Jim with his elbow:
"Don't say a word," he whispered. "Let her ride, if she wants to.
Gracious, there's room enough."
The young lady got out her porte-monnaie, and handed her fare to Col.
Jack.
"What's this for?" said he.
"Give it to the driver, please."
"Take back your money, madam. We can't allow it. You're welcome to ride
here as long as you please, but this shebang's chartered, and we can't
let you pay a cent."
The girl shrunk into a corner, bewildered. An old lady with a basket
climbed in, and proffered her fare.
"Excuse me," said Col. Jack. "You're perfectly welcome here, madam, but
we can't allow you to pay. Set right down there, mum, and don't you be
the least uneasy. Make yourself just as free as if you was in your own
turn-out."
Within two minutes, three gentlemen, two fat women, and a couple of
children, entered.
"Come right along, friends," said Col. Jack; "don't mind us. This is a
free blow-out." Then he whispered to Col. Jim,
"New York ain't no sociable place, I don't reckon--it ain't no name for
it!"
He resisted every effort to pass fares to the driver, and made everybody
cordially welcome. The situation dawned on the people, and they pocketed
their money, and delivered themselves up to covert enjoyment of the
episode. Half a dozen more passengers entered.
"Oh, there's plenty of room," said Col. Jack. "Walk right in, and make
yourselves at home. A blow-out ain't worth anything as a blow-out,
unless a body has company." Then in a whisper to Col. Jim: "But ain't
these New Yorkers friendly? And ain't they cool about it, too? Icebergs
ain't anywhere. I reckon they'd tackle a hearse, if it was going their
way."
More passengers got in; more yet, and still more. Both seats were
filled, and a file of men were standing up, holding on to the cleats
overhead. Parties with baskets and bundles were climbing up on the roof.
Half-suppressed laughter rippled up from all sides.
"Well, for clean, cool, out-and-out cheek, if this don't bang anything
that ever I saw, I'm an Injun!" whispered Col. Jack.
A Chinaman crowded his way in.
"I weaken!" said Col. Jack. "Hold on, driver! Keep your seats, ladies,
and gents. Just make yourselves free--everything's paid for. Driver,
rustle these folks around as long as they're a mind to go--friends of
ours, you know. Take them everywheres--and if you want more money, come
to the St. Nicholas, and we'll make it all right. Pleasant journey to
you, ladies and gents--go it just as long as you please--it shan't cost
you a cent!"
The two comrades got out, and Col. Jack said:
"Jimmy, it's the sociablest place I ever saw. The Chinaman waltzed in as
comfortable as anybody. If we'd staid awhile, I reckon we'd had some
niggers. B' George, we'll have to barricade our doors to-night, or some
of these ducks will be trying to sleep with us."
CHAPTER XLVII.
Somebody has said that in order to know a community, one must observe the
style of its funerals and know what manner of men they bury with most
ceremony. I cannot say which class we buried with most eclat in our
"flush times," the distinguished public benefactor or the distinguished
rough--possibly the two chief grades or grand divisions of society
honored their illustrious dead about equally; and hence, no doubt the
philosopher I have quoted from would have needed to see two
representative funerals in Virginia before forming his estimate of the
people.
There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a
representative citizen. He had "killed his man"--not in his own quarrel,
it is true, but in defence of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers.
He had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing
helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a divorce.
He had held a high position in the fire department and been a very
Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation throughout
the town, but especially in the vast bottom-stratum of society.
On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a
wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body,
cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his
neck--and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with
intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death "by
the visitation of God." What could the world do without juries?
Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral. All the vehicles in
town were hired, all the saloons put in mourning, all the municipal and
fire-company flags hung at half-mast, and all the firemen ordered to
muster in uniform and bring their machines duly draped in black. Now
--let us remark in parenthesis--as all the peoples of the earth had
representative adventurers in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had
brought the slang of his nation or his locality with him, the combination
made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely varied and
copious that had ever existed anywhere in the world, perhaps, except in
the mines of California in the "early days." Slang was the language of
Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood.
Such phrases as "You bet!" "Oh, no, I reckon not!" "No Irish need
apply," and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lips
of a speaker unconsciously--and very often when they did not touch the
subject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything.
After Buck Fanshaw's inquest, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhood
was held, for nothing can be done on the Pacific coast without a public
meeting and an expression of sentiment. Regretful resolutions were
passed and various committees appointed; among others, a committee of one
was deputed to call on the minister, a fragile, gentle, spiritual new
fledgling from an Eastern theological seminary, and as yet unacquainted
with the ways of the mines. The committeeman, "Scotty" Briggs, made his
visit; and in after days it was worth something to hear the minister tell
about it. Scotty was a stalwart rough, whose customary suit, when on
weighty official business, like committee work, was a fire helmet,
flaming red flannel shirt, patent leather belt with spanner and revolver
attached, coat hung over arm, and pants stuffed into boot tops.
He formed something of a contrast to the pale theological student. It is
fair to say of Scotty, however, in passing, that he had a warm heart, and
a strong love for his friends, and never entered into a quarrel when he
could reasonably keep out of it. Indeed, it was commonly said that
whenever one of Scotty's fights was investigated, it always turned out
that it had originally been no affair of his, but that out of native
good-heartedness he had dropped in of his own accord to help the man who
was getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, for
years, and had often taken adventurous "pot-luck" together. On one
occasion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in a
fight among strangers, and after gaining a hard-earned victory, turned
and found that the men they were helping had deserted early, and not only
that, but had stolen their coats and made off with them! But to return
to Scotty's visit to the minister. He was on a sorrowful mission, now,
and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence he
sat down before the clergyman, placed his fire-hat on an unfinished
manuscript sermon under the minister's nose, took from it a red silk
handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness,
explanatory of his business.
He choked, and even shed tears; but with an effort he mastered his voice
and said in lugubrious tones:
"Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?"
"Am I the--pardon me, I believe I do not understand?"
With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:
"Why you see we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe you
would give us a lift, if we'd tackle you--that is, if I've got the rights
of it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next door."
"I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door."
"The which?"
"The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary
adjoins these premises."
Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said:
"You ruther hold over me, pard. I reckon I can't call that hand. Ante
and pass the buck."
"How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?"
"Well, you've ruther got the bulge on me. Or maybe we've both got the
bulge, somehow. You don't smoke me and I don't smoke you. You see, one
of the boys has passed in his checks and we want to give him a good
send-off, and so the thing I'm on now is to roust out somebody to jerk
a little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome."
"My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations
are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way?
At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it
not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements
of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of metaphor and
allegory?"
Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty:
"I'll have to pass, I judge."
"How?"
"You've raised me out, pard."
"I still fail to catch your meaning."
"Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me--that's the idea. I
can't neither-trump nor follow suit."
The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his head
on his hand and gave himself up to thought.
Presently his face came up, sorrowful but confident.
"I've got it now, so's you can savvy," he said. "What we want is a
gospel-sharp. See?"
"A what?"
"Gospel-sharp. Parson."
"Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman--a parson."
"Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put it
there!"--extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister's small
hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and fervent
gratification.
"Now we're all right, pard. Let's start fresh. Don't you mind my
snuffling a little--becuz we're in a power of trouble. You see, one of
the boys has gone up the flume--"
"Gone where?"
"Up the flume--throwed up the sponge, you understand."
"Thrown up the sponge?"
"Yes--kicked the bucket--"
"Ah--has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no
traveler returns."
"Return! I reckon not. Why pard, he's dead!"
"Yes, I understand."
"Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some
more. Yes, you see he's dead again--"
"Again? Why, has he ever been dead before?"
"Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat?
But you bet you he's awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I'd never
seen this day. I don't want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw.
I knowed him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze to
him--you hear me. Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullier
man in the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on a
friend. But it's all up, you know, it's all up. It ain't no use.
They've scooped him."
"Scooped him?"
"Yes--death has. Well, well, well, we've got to give him up. Yes
indeed. It's a kind of a hard world, after all, ain't it? But pard, he
was a rustler! You ought to seen him get started once. He was a bully
boy with a glass eye! Just spit in his face and give him room according
to his strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and go in.
He was the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard, he was on
it! He was on it bigger than an Injun!"
"On it? On what?"
"On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the fight, you understand.
He didn't give a continental for any body. Beg your pardon, friend, for
coming so near saying a cuss-word--but you see I'm on an awful strain, in
this palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything so
mild. But we've got to give him up. There ain't any getting around
that, I don't reckon. Now if we can get you to help plant him--"
"Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the obsequies?"
"Obs'quies is good. Yes. That's it--that's our little game. We are
going to get the thing up regardless, you know. He was always nifty
himself, and so you bet you his funeral ain't going to be no slouch
--solid silver door-plate on his coffin, six plumes on the hearse, and a
nigger on the box in a biled shirt and a plug hat--how's that for high?
And we'll take care of you, pard. We'll fix you all right. There'll be
a kerridge for you; and whatever you want, you just 'scape out and we'll
'tend to it. We've got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, in
No. 1's house, and don't you be afraid. Just go in and toot your horn,
if you don't sell a clam. Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard,
for anybody that knowed him will tell you that he was one of the whitest
men that was ever in the mines. You can't draw it too strong. He never
could stand it to see things going wrong. He's done more to make this
town quiet and peaceable than any man in it. I've seen him lick four
Greasers in eleven minutes, myself. If a thing wanted regulating, he
warn't a man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he would
prance in and regulate it himself. He warn't a Catholic. Scasely. He
was down on 'em. His word was, 'No Irish need apply!' But it didn't
make no difference about that when it came down to what a man's rights
was--and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard and started
in to stake out town-lots in it he went for 'em! And he cleaned 'em,
too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself."
"That was very well indeed--at least the impulse was--whether the act was
strictly defensible or not. Had deceased any religious convictions?
That is to say, did he feel a dependence upon, or acknowledge allegiance
to a higher power?"
More reflection.
"I reckon you've stumped me again, pard. Could you say it over once
more, and say it slow?"
"Well, to simplify it somewhat, was he, or rather had he ever been
connected with any organization sequestered from secular concerns and
devoted to self-sacrifice in the interests of morality?"
"All down but nine--set 'em up on the other alley, pard."
"What did I understand you to say?"
"Why, you're most too many for me, you know. When you get in with your
left I hunt grass every time. Every time you draw, you fill; but I don't
seem to have any luck. Lets have a new deal."
"How? Begin again?"
"That's it."
"Very well. Was he a good man, and--"
"There--I see that; don't put up another chip till I look at my hand.
A good man, says you? Pard, it ain't no name for it. He was the best
man that ever--pard, you would have doted on that man. He could lam any
galoot of his inches in America. It was him that put down the riot last
election before it got a start; and everybody said he was the only man
that could have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in one hand and a
trumpet in the other, and sent fourteen men home on a shutter in less
than three minutes. He had that riot all broke up and prevented nice
before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always for
peace, and he would have peace--he could not stand disturbances. Pard,
he was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you could
chip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the Micks
got to throwing stones through the Methodis' Sunday school windows, Buck
Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple of
six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday school. Says he, 'No
Irish need apply!' And they didn't. He was the bulliest man in the
mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and hold
more tangle-foot whisky without spilling it than any man in seventeen
counties. Put that in, pard--it'll please the boys more than anything
you could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother."
"Never shook his mother?"
"That's it--any of the boys will tell you so."
"Well, but why should he shake her?"
"That's what I say--but some people does."
"Not people of any repute?"
"Well, some that averages pretty so-so."
"In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own
mother, ought to--"
"Cheese it, pard; you've banked your ball clean outside the string.
What I was a drivin' at, was, that he never throwed off on his mother
--don't you see? No indeedy. He give her a house to live in, and town
lots, and plenty of money; and he looked after her and took care of her
all the time; and when she was down with the small-pox I'm d---d if he
didn't set up nights and nuss her himself! Beg your pardon for saying
it, but it hopped out too quick for yours truly.
"You've treated me like a gentleman, pard, and I ain't the man to hurt
your feelings intentional. I think you're white. I think you're a
square man, pard. I like you, and I'll lick any man that don't. I'll
lick him till he can't tell himself from a last year's corpse! Put it
there!" [Another fraternal hand-shake--and exit.]
The obsequies were all that "the boys" could desire. Such a marvel of
funeral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse, the
dirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flags
drooping at half mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed secret
societies, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines,
carriages of officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted
multitudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs and windows; and for
years afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display in
Virginia was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw's funeral.
Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner, occupied a prominent place
at the funeral, and when the sermon was finished and the last sentence of
the prayer for the dead man's soul ascended, he responded, in a low
voice, but with feelings:
"AMEN. No Irish need apply."
As the bulk of the response was without apparent relevancy, it was
probably nothing more than a humble tribute to the memory of the friend
that was gone; for, as Scotty had once said, it was "his word."
Scotty Briggs, in after days, achieved the distinction of becoming the
only convert to religion that was ever gathered from the Virginia roughs;
and it transpired that the man who had it in him to espouse the quarrel
of the weak out of inborn nobility of spirit was no mean timber whereof
to construct a Christian. The making him one did not warp his generosity
or diminish his courage; on the contrary it gave intelligent direction to
the one and a broader field to the other.
If his Sunday-school class progressed faster than the other classes, was
it matter for wonder? I think not. He talked to his pioneer small-fry
in a language they understood! It was my large privilege, a month before
he died, to hear him tell the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren
to his class "without looking at the book." I leave it to the reader to
fancy what it was like, as it fell, riddled with slang, from the lips of
that grave, earnest teacher, and was listened to by his little learners
with a consuming interest that showed that they were as unconscious as he
was that any violence was being done to the sacred proprieties!
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied by
murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will
always say and believe. The reason why there was so much slaughtering
done, was, that in a new mining district the rough element predominates,
and a person is not respected until he has "killed his man." That was
the very expression used.
If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was capable,
honest, industrious, but--had he killed his man? If he had not, he
gravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of small
consequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated
according to the number of his dead. It was tedious work struggling up
to a position of influence with bloodless hands; but when a man came with
the blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognized at
once and his acquaintance sought.
In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief
desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon keeper, occupied the same
level in society, and it was the highest. The cheapest and easiest way
to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at
large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell
whisky. I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher
rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was
his privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movement
could succeed without the countenance and direction of the
saloon-keepers. It was a high favor when the chief saloon-keeper
consented to serve in the legislature or the board of aldermen.
Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the honors of the law, or the
army and navy as to the dignity of proprietorship in a saloon.
To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious. Hence the
reader will not be surprised to learn that more than one man was killed
in Nevada under hardly the pretext of provocation, so impatient was the
slayer to achieve reputation and throw off the galling sense of being
held in indifferent repute by his associates. I knew two youths who
tried to "kill their men" for no other reason--and got killed themselves
for their pains. "There goes the man that killed Bill Adams" was higher
praise and a sweeter sound in the ears of this sort of people than any
other speech that admiring lips could utter.
The men who murdered Virginia's original twenty-six cemetery-occupants
were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented
trial by jury and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justice
in his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century the
condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from
the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove
the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human
wisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that we simpletons would
go on using his jury plan after circumstances had stripped it of its
usefulness, any more than he could imagine that we would go on using his
candle-clock after we had invented chronometers? In his day news could
not travel fast, and hence he could easily find a jury of honest,
intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try
--but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear
in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly
excludes honest men and men of brains.
I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a
jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most
wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and
all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not
deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out,
and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned
precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America:
"Have you heard of this homicide?"
"Yes."
"Have you held conversations upon the subject?"
"Yes."
"Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?"
"Yes."
"Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?"
"Yes."
"We do not want you."
A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of
high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence
and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of excellent standing,
were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the
public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that
sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable
him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the
facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case.
Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice.
When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men
was impaneled--a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked
about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle
in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the
streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes,
two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who could
not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out
afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were
the same thing.
The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one
expect?
The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium
upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must
continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years
ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence
and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh,
with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon mere hearsay, he
is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and
stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than in theirs.
Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and
honesty and equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show
the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on
another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and
equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with
the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence
and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and
people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated
--every effort I make to save the country "misses fire."
My idea, when I began this chapter, was to say something about
desperadoism in the "flush times" of Nevada. To attempt a portrayal of
that era and that land, and leave out the blood and carnage, would be
like portraying Mormondom and leaving out polygamy. The desperado
stalked the streets with a swagger graded according to the number of his
homicides, and a nod of recognition from him was sufficient to make a
humble admirer happy for the rest of the day. The deference that was
paid to a desperado of wide reputation, and who "kept his private
graveyard," as the phrase went, was marked, and cheerfully accorded.
When he moved along the sidewalk in his excessively long-tailed
frock-coat, shiny stump-toed boots, and with dainty little slouch hat
tipped over left eye, the small-fry roughs made room for his majesty;
when he entered the restaurant, the waiters deserted bankers and
merchants to overwhelm him with obsequious service; when he shouldered
his way to a bar, the shouldered parties wheeled indignantly, recognized
him, and --apologized.
They got a look in return that froze their marrow, and by that time a
curled and breast-pinned bar keeper was beaming over the counter, proud
of the established acquaintanceship that permitted such a familiar form
of speech as:
"How're ye, Billy, old fel? Glad to see you. What'll you take--the old
thing?"
The "old thing" meant his customary drink, of course.
The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging to
these long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors,
capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but
it seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as
Sam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike,
Pock Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris,
Six-fingered Pete, etc., etc. There was a long list of them. They were
brave, reckless men, and traveled with their lives in their hands. To
give them their due, they did their killing principally among themselves,
and seldom molested peaceable citizens, for they considered it small
credit to add to their trophies so cheap a bauble as the death of a man
who was "not on the shoot," as they phrased it. They killed each other
on slight provocation, and hoped and expected to be killed themselves
--for they held it almost shame to die otherwise than "with their boots
on," as they expressed it.
I remember an instance of a desperado's contempt for such small game as a
private citizen's life. I was taking a late supper in a restaurant one
night, with two reporters and a little printer named--Brown, for
instance--any name will do. Presently a stranger with a long-tailed coat
on came in, and not noticing Brown's hat, which was lying in a chair, sat
down on it. Little Brown sprang up and became abusive in a moment. The
stranger smiled, smoothed out the hat, and offered it to Brown with
profuse apologies couched in caustic sarcasm, and begged Brown not to
destroy him. Brown threw off his coat and challenged the man to fight
--abused him, threatened him, impeached his courage, and urged and even
implored him to fight; and in the meantime the smiling stranger placed
himself under our protection in mock distress. But presently he assumed
a serious tone, and said:
"Very well, gentlemen, if we must fight, we must, I suppose. But don't
rush into danger and then say I gave you no warning. I am more than a
match for all of you when I get started. I will give you proofs, and
then if my friend here still insists, I will try to accommodate him."
The table we were sitting at was about five feet long, and unusually
cumbersome and heavy. He asked us to put our hands on the dishes and
hold them in their places a moment--one of them was a large oval dish
with a portly roast on it. Then he sat down, tilted up one end of the
table, set two of the legs on his knees, took the end of the table
between his teeth, took his hands away, and pulled down with his teeth
till the table came up to a level position, dishes and all! He said he
could lift a keg of nails with his teeth. He picked up a common glass
tumbler and bit a semi-circle out of it. Then he opened his bosom and
showed us a net-work of knife and bullet scars; showed us more on his
arms and face, and said he believed he had bullets enough in his body to
make a pig of lead. He was armed to the teeth. He closed with the
remark that he was Mr. ---- of Cariboo--a celebrated name whereat we shook
in our shoes. I would publish the name, but for the suspicion that he
might come and carve me. He finally inquired if Brown still thirsted for
blood. Brown turned the thing over in his mind a moment, and then--asked
him to supper.
With the permission of the reader, I will group together, in the next
chapter, some samples of life in our small mountain village in the old
days of desperadoism. I was there at the time. The reader will observe
peculiarities in our official society; and he will observe also, an
instance of how, in new countries, murders breed murders.
CHAPTER XLIX.
An extract or two from the newspapers of the day will furnish a
photograph that can need no embellishment:
FATAL SHOOTING AFFRAY.--An affray occurred, last evening, in a
billiard saloon on C street, between Deputy Marshal Jack Williams
and Wm. Brown, which resulted in the immediate death of the latter.
There had been some difficulty between the parties for several
months.
An inquest was immediately held, and the following testimony
adduced:
Officer GEO. BIRDSALL, sworn, says:--I was told Wm. Brown was drunk
and was looking for Jack Williams; so soon as I heard that I started
for the parties to prevent a collision; went into the billiard
saloon; saw Billy Brown running around, saying if anybody had
anything against him to show cause; he was talking in a boisterous
manner, and officer Perry took him to the other end of the room to
talk to him; Brown came back to me; remarked to me that he thought
he was as good as anybody, and knew how to take care of himself; he
passed by me and went to the bar; don't know whether he drank or
not; Williams was at the end of the billiard-table, next to the
stairway; Brown, after going to the bar, came back and said he was
as good as any man in the world; he had then walked out to the end
of the first billiard-table from the bar; I moved closer to them,
supposing there would be a fight; as Brown drew his pistol I caught
hold of it; he had fired one shot at Williams; don't know the effect
of it; caught hold of him with one hand, and took hold of the pistol
and turned it up; think he fired once after I caught hold of the
pistol; I wrenched the pistol from him; walked to the end of the
billiard-table and told a party that I had Brown's pistol, and to
stop shooting; I think four shots were fired in all; after walking
out, Mr. Foster remarked that Brown was shot dead.
Oh, there was no excitement about it--he merely "remarked" the small
circumstance!
Four months later the following item appeared in the same paper (the
Enterprise). In this item the name of one of the city officers above
referred to (Deputy Marshal Jack Williams) occurs again:
ROBBERY AND DESPERATE AFFRAY.--On Tuesday night, a German named
Charles Hurtzal, engineer in a mill at Silver City, came to this
place, and visited the hurdy-gurdy house on B street. The music,
dancing and Teutonic maidens awakened memories of Faderland until
our German friend was carried away with rapture. He evidently had
money, and was spending if freely. Late in the evening Jack
Williams and Andy Blessington invited him down stairs to take a cup
of coffee. Williams proposed a game of cards and went up stairs to
procure a deck, but not finding any returned. On the stairway he
met the German, and drawing his pistol knocked him down and rifled
his pockets of some seventy dollars. Hurtzal dared give no alarm,
as he was told, with a pistol at his head, if he made any noise or
exposed them, they would blow his brains out. So effectually was he
frightened that he made no complaint, until his friends forced him.
Yesterday a warrant was issued, but the culprits had disappeared.
This efficient city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation of
being a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he had
several times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions on
citizens at dead of night in the public streets of Virginia.
Five months after the above item appeared, Williams was assassinated
while sitting at a card table one night; a gun was thrust through the
crack of the door and Williams dropped from his chair riddled with balls.
It was said, at the time, that Williams had been for some time aware that
a party of his own sort (desperadoes) had sworn away his life; and it was
generally believed among the people that Williams's friends and enemies
would make the assassination memorable--and useful, too--by a wholesale
destruction of each other.
It did not so happen, but still, times were not dull during the next
twenty-four hours, for within that time a woman was killed by a pistol
shot, a man was brained with a slung shot, and a man named Reeder was
also disposed of permanently. Some matters in the Enterprise account of
the killing of Reeder are worth nothing--especially the accommodating
complaisance of a Virginia justice of the peace. The italics in the
following narrative are mine:
MORE CUTTING AND SHOOTING.--The devil seems to have again broken
loose in our town. Pistols and guns explode and knives gleam in our
streets as in early times. When there has been a long season of
quiet, people are slow to wet their hands in blood; but once blood
is spilled, cutting and shooting come easy. Night before last Jack
Williams was assassinated, and yesterday forenoon we had more bloody
work, growing out of the killing of Williams, and on the same street
in which he met his death. It appears that Tom Reeder, a friend of
Williams, and George Gumbert were talking, at the meat market of the
latter, about the killing of Williams the previous night, when
Reeder said it was a most cowardly act to shoot a man in such a way,
giving him "no show." Gumbert said that Williams had "as good a
show as he gave Billy Brown," meaning the man killed by Williams
last March. Reeder said it was a d---d lie, that Williams had no
show at all. At this, Gumbert drew a knife and stabbed Reeder,
cutting him in two places in the back. One stroke of the knife cut
into the sleeve of Reeder's coat and passed downward in a slanting
direction through his clothing, and entered his body at the small of
the back; another blow struck more squarely, and made a much more
dangerous wound. Gumbert gave himself up to the officers of
justice, and was shortly after discharged by Justice Atwill, on his
own recognizance, to appear for trial at six o'clock in the evening.
In the meantime Reeder had been taken into the office of Dr. Owens,
where his wounds were properly dressed. One of his wounds was
considered quite dangerous, and it was thought by many that it would
prove fatal. But being considerably under the influence of liquor,
Reeder did not feel his wounds as he otherwise would, and he got up
and went into the street. He went to the meat market and renewed
his quarrel with Gumbert, threatening his life. Friends tried to
interfere to put a stop to the quarrel and get the parties away from
each other. In the Fashion Saloon Reeder made threats against the
life of Gumbert, saying he would kill him, and it is said that he
requested the officers not to arrest Gumbert, as he intended to kill
him. After these threats Gumbert went off and procured a
double-barreled shot gun, loaded with buck-shot or revolver balls,
and went after Reeder. Two or three persons were assisting him along
the street, trying to get him home, and had him just in front of the
store of Klopstock & Harris, when Gumbert came across toward him
from the opposite side of the street with his gun. He came up
within about ten or fifteen feet of Reeder, and called out to those
with him to "look out! get out of the way!" and they had only time
to heed the warning, when he fired. Reeder was at the time
attempting to screen himself behind a large cask, which stood
against the awning post of Klopstock & Harris's store, but some of
the balls took effect in the lower part of his breast, and he reeled
around forward and fell in front of the cask. Gumbert then raised
his gun and fired the second barrel, which missed Reeder and entered
the ground. At the time that this occurred, there were a great many
persons on the street in the vicinity, and a number of them called
out to Gumbert, when they saw him raise his gun, to "hold on," and
"don't shoot!" The cutting took place about ten o'clock and the
shooting about twelve. After the shooting the street was instantly
crowded with the inhabitants of that part of the town, some
appearing much excited and laughing--declaring that it looked like
the "good old times of '60." Marshal Perry and officer Birdsall
were near when the shooting occurred, and Gumbert was immediately
arrested and his gun taken from him, when he was marched off to
jail. Many persons who were attracted to the spot where this bloody
work had just taken place, looked bewildered and seemed to be asking
themselves what was to happen next, appearing in doubt as to whether
the killing mania had reached its climax, or whether we were to turn
in and have a grand killing spell, shooting whoever might have given
us offence. It was whispered around that it was not all over yet
--five or six more were to be killed before night. Reeder was taken
to the Virginia City Hotel, and doctors called in to examine his
wounds. They found that two or three balls had entered his right
side; one of them appeared to have passed through the substance of
the lungs, while another passed into the liver. Two balls were also
found to have struck one of his legs. As some of the balls struck
the cask, the wounds in Reeder's leg were probably from these,
glancing downwards, though they might have been caused by the second
shot fired. After being shot, Reeder said when he got on his feet
--smiling as he spoke--"It will take better shooting than that to
kill me." The doctors consider it almost impossible for him to
recover, but as he has an excellent constitution he may survive,
notwithstanding the number and dangerous character of the wounds he
has received. The town appears to be perfectly quiet at present, as
though the late stormy times had cleared our moral atmosphere; but
who can tell in what quarter clouds are lowering or plots ripening?
Reeder--or at least what was left of him--survived his wounds two days!
Nothing was ever done with Gumbert.
Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a
palladium is, having never seen a palladium, but it is a good thing no
doubt at any rate. Not less than a hundred men have been murdered in
Nevada--perhaps I would be within bounds if I said three hundred--and as
far as I can learn, only two persons have suffered the death penalty
there. However, four or five who had no money and no political influence
have been punished by imprisonment--one languished in prison as much as
eight months, I think. However, I do not desire to be extravagant--it
may have been less.
However, one prophecy was verified, at any rate. It was asserted by the
desperadoes that one of their brethren (Joe McGee, a special policeman)
was known to be the conspirator chosen by lot to assassinate Williams;
and they also asserted that doom had been pronounced against McGee, and
that he would be assassinated in exactly the same manner that had been
adopted for the destruction of Williams--a prophecy which came true a
year later. After twelve months of distress (for McGee saw a fancied
assassin in every man that approached him), he made the last of many
efforts to get out of the country unwatched. He went to Carson and sat
down in a saloon to wait for the stage--it would leave at four in the
morning. But as the night waned and the crowd thinned, he grew uneasy,
and told the bar-keeper that assassins were on his track. The bar-keeper
told him to stay in the middle of the room, then, and not go near the
door, or the window by the stove. But a fatal fascination seduced him to
the neighborhood of the stove every now and then, and repeatedly the
bar-keeper brought him back to the middle of the room and warned him to
remain there. But he could not. At three in the morning he again
returned to the stove and sat down by a stranger. Before the bar-keeper
could get to him with another warning whisper, some one outside fired
through the window and riddled McGee's breast with slugs, killing him
almost instantly. By the same discharge the stranger at McGee's side
also received attentions which proved fatal in the course of two or three
days.
CHAPTER L.
These murder and jury statistics remind me of a certain very
extraordinary trial and execution of twenty years ago; it is a scrap of
history familiar to all old Californians, and worthy to be known by other
peoples of the earth that love simple, straightforward justice
unencumbered with nonsense. I would apologize for this digression but
for the fact that the information I am about to offer is apology enough
in itself. And since I digress constantly anyhow, perhaps it is as well
to eschew apologies altogether and thus prevent their growing irksome.
Capt. Ned Blakely--that name will answer as well as any other fictitious
one (for he was still with the living at last accounts, and may not
desire to be famous)--sailed ships out of the harbor of San Francisco for
many years. He was a stalwart, warm-hearted, eagle-eyed veteran, who had
been a sailor nearly fifty years--a sailor from early boyhood. He was a
rough, honest creature, full of pluck, and just as full of hard-headed
simplicity, too. He hated trifling conventionalities--"business" was the
word, with him. He had all a sailor's vindictiveness against the quips
and quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first and last
aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice.
He sailed for the Chincha Islands in command of a guano ship. He had a
fine crew, but his negro mate was his pet--on him he had for years
lavished his admiration and esteem. It was Capt. Ned's first voyage to
the Chinchas, but his fame had gone before him--the fame of being a man
who would fight at the dropping of a handkerchief, when imposed upon, and
would stand no nonsense. It was a fame well earned. Arrived in the
islands, he found that the staple of conversation was the exploits of one
Bill Noakes, a bully, the mate of a trading ship. This man had created a
small reign of terror there. At nine o'clock at night, Capt. Ned, all
alone, was pacing his deck in the starlight. A form ascended the side,
and approached him. Capt. Ned said:
"Who goes there?"
"I'm Bill Noakes, the best man in the islands."
"What do you want aboard this ship?"
"I've heard of Capt. Ned Blakely, and one of us is a better man than
'tother--I'll know which, before I go ashore."
"You've come to the right shop--I'm your man. I'll learn you to come
aboard this ship without an invite."
He seized Noakes, backed him against the mainmast, pounded his face to a
pulp, and then threw him overboard.
Noakes was not convinced. He returned the next night, got the pulp
renewed, and went overboard head first, as before.
He was satisfied.
A week after this, while Noakes was carousing with a sailor crowd on
shore, at noonday, Capt. Ned's colored mate came along, and Noakes tried
to pick a quarrel with him. The negro evaded the trap, and tried to get
away. Noakes followed him up; the negro began to run; Noakes fired on
him with a revolver and killed him. Half a dozen sea-captains witnessed
the whole affair. Noakes retreated to the small after-cabin of his ship,
with two other bullies, and gave out that death would be the portion of
any man that intruded there. There was no attempt made to follow the
villains; there was no disposition to do it, and indeed very little
thought of such an enterprise. There were no courts and no officers;
there was no government; the islands belonged to Peru, and Peru was far
away; she had no official representative on the ground; and neither had
any other nation.
However, Capt. Ned was not perplexing his head about such things. They
concerned him not. He was boiling with rage and furious for justice.
At nine o'clock at night he loaded a double-barreled gun with slugs,
fished out a pair of handcuffs, got a ship's lantern, summoned his
quartermaster, and went ashore. He said:
"Do you see that ship there at the dock?"
"Ay-ay, sir."
"It's the Venus."
"Ay-ay, sir."
"You--you know me."
"Ay-ay, sir."
"Very well, then. Take the lantern. Carry it just under your chin.
I'll walk behind you and rest this gun-barrel on your shoulder, p'inting
forward--so. Keep your lantern well up so's I can see things ahead of
you good. I'm going to march in on Noakes--and take him--and jug the
other chaps. If you flinch--well, you know me."
"Ay-ay, sir."
In this order they filed aboard softly, arrived at Noakes's den, the
quartermaster pushed the door open, and the lantern revealed the three
desperadoes sitting on the floor. Capt. Ned said:
"I'm Ned Blakely. I've got you under fire. Don't you move without
orders--any of you. You two kneel down in the corner; faces to the wall
--now. Bill Noakes, put these handcuffs on; now come up close.
Quartermaster, fasten 'em. All right. Don't stir, sir. Quartermaster,
put the key in the outside of the door. Now, men, I'm going to lock you
two in; and if you try to burst through this door--well, you've heard of
me. Bill Noakes, fall in ahead, and march. All set. Quartermaster,
lock the door."
Noakes spent the night on board Blakely's ship, a prisoner under strict
guard. Early in the morning Capt. Ned called in all the sea-captains in
the harbor and invited them, with nautical ceremony, to be present on
board his ship at nine o'clock to witness the hanging of Noakes at the
yard-arm!
"What! The man has not been tried."
"Of course he hasn't. But didn't he kill the nigger?"
"Certainly he did; but you are not thinking of hanging him without a
trial?"
"Trial! What do I want to try him for, if he killed the nigger?"
"Oh, Capt. Ned, this will never do. Think how it will sound."
"Sound be hanged! Didn't he kill the nigger?"
"Certainly, certainly, Capt. Ned,--nobody denies that,--but--"
"Then I'm going to hang him, that's all. Everybody I've talked to talks
just the same way you do. Everybody says he killed the nigger, everybody
knows he killed the nigger, and yet every lubber of you wants him tried
for it. I don't understand such bloody foolishness as that. Tried!
Mind you, I don't object to trying him, if it's got to be done to give
satisfaction; and I'll be there, and chip in and help, too; but put it
off till afternoon--put it off till afternoon, for I'll have my hands
middling full till after the burying--"
"Why, what do you mean? Are you going to hang him any how--and try him
afterward?"
"Didn't I say I was going to hang him? I never saw such people as you.
What's the difference? You ask a favor, and then you ain't satisfied
when you get it. Before or after's all one--you know how the trial will
go. He killed the nigger. Say--I must be going. If your mate would
like to come to the hanging, fetch him along. I like him."
There was a stir in the camp. The captains came in a body and pleaded
with Capt. Ned not to do this rash thing. They promised that they would
create a court composed of captains of the best character; they would
empanel a jury; they would conduct everything in a way becoming the
serious nature of the business in hand, and give the case an impartial
hearing and the accused a fair trial. And they said it would be murder,
and punishable by the American courts if he persisted and hung the
accused on his ship. They pleaded hard. Capt. Ned said:
"Gentlemen, I'm not stubborn and I'm not unreasonable. I'm always
willing to do just as near right as I can. How long will it take?"
"Probably only a little while."
"And can I take him up the shore and hang him as soon as you are done?"
"If he is proven guilty he shall be hanged without unnecessary delay."
"If he's proven guilty. Great Neptune, ain't he guilty? This beats my
time. Why you all know he's guilty."
But at last they satisfied him that they were projecting nothing
underhanded. Then he said:
"Well, all right. You go on and try him and I'll go down and overhaul
his conscience and prepare him to go--like enough he needs it, and I
don't want to send him off without a show for hereafter."
This was another obstacle. They finally convinced him that it was
necessary to have the accused in court. Then they said they would send a
guard to bring him.
"No, sir, I prefer to fetch him myself--he don't get out of my hands.
Besides, I've got to go to the ship to get a rope, anyway."
The court assembled with due ceremony, empaneled a jury, and presently
Capt. Ned entered, leading the prisoner with one hand and carrying a
Bible and a rope in the other. He seated himself by the side of his
captive and told the court to "up anchor and make sail." Then he turned
a searching eye on the jury, and detected Noakes's friends, the two
bullies.
He strode over and said to them confidentially:
"You're here to interfere, you see. Now you vote right, do you hear?--or
else there'll be a double-barreled inquest here when this trial's off,
and your remainders will go home in a couple of baskets."
The caution was not without fruit. The jury was a unit--the verdict.
"Guilty."
Capt. Ned sprung to his feet and said:
"Come along--you're my meat now, my lad, anyway. Gentlemen you've done
yourselves proud. I invite you all to come and see that I do it all
straight. Follow me to the canyon, a mile above here."
The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do the
hanging, and--
Capt. Ned's patience was at an end. His wrath was boundless. The
subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped.
When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a tree and
arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man. He opened his
Bible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at random, he read it
through, in a deep bass voice and with sincere solemnity. Then he said:
"Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself; and the
lighter a man's manifest is, as far as sin's concerned, the better for
him. Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you that'll bear
inspection. You killed the nigger?"
No reply. A long pause.
The captain read another chapter, pausing, from time to time, to impress
the effect. Then he talked an earnest, persuasive sermon to him, and
ended by repeating the question:
"Did you kill the nigger?"
No reply--other than a malignant scowl. The captain now read the first
and second chapters of Genesis, with deep feeling--paused a moment,
closed the book reverently, and said with a perceptible savor of
satisfaction:
"There. Four chapters. There's few that would have took the pains with
you that I have."
Then he swung up the condemned, and made the rope fast; stood by and
timed him half an hour with his watch, and then delivered the body to the
court. A little after, as he stood contemplating the motionless figure,
a doubt came into his face; evidently he felt a twinge of conscience--a
misgiving--and he said with a sigh:
"Well, p'raps I ought to burnt him, maybe. But I was trying to do for
the best."
When the history of this affair reached California (it was in the "early
days") it made a deal of talk, but did not diminish the captain's
popularity in any degree. It increased it, indeed. California had a
population then that "inflicted" justice after a fashion that was
simplicity and primitiveness itself, and could therefore admire
appreciatively when the same fashion was followed elsewhere.
CHAPTER LI.
Vice flourished luxuriantly during the hey-day of our "flush times." The
saloons were overburdened with custom; so were the police courts, the
gambling dens, the brothels and the jails--unfailing signs of high
prosperity in a mining region--in any region for that matter. Is it not
so? A crowded police court docket is the surest of all signs that trade
is brisk and money plenty. Still, there is one other sign; it comes
last, but when it does come it establishes beyond cavil that the "flush
times" are at the flood. This is the birth of the "literary" paper.
The Weekly Occidental, "devoted to literature," made its appearance in
Virginia. All the literary people were engaged to write for it. Mr. F.
was to edit it. He was a felicitous skirmisher with a pen, and a man who
could say happy things in a crisp, neat way. Once, while editor of the
Union, he had disposed of a labored, incoherent, two-column attack made
upon him by a contemporary, with a single line, which, at first glance,
seemed to contain a solemn and tremendous compliment--viz.: "THE LOGIC OF
OUR ADVERSARY RESEMBLES THE PEACE OF GOD,"--and left it to the reader's
memory and after-thought to invest the remark with another and "more
different" meaning by supplying for himself and at his own leisure the
rest of the Scripture--"in that it passeth understanding." He once said
of a little, half-starved, wayside community that had no subsistence
except what they could get by preying upon chance passengers who stopped
over with them a day when traveling by the overland stage, that in their
Church service they had altered the Lord's Prayer to read: "Give us this
day our daily stranger!"
We expected great things of the Occidental. Of course it could not get
along without an original novel, and so we made arrangements to hurl into
the work the full strength of the company. Mrs. F. was an able romancist
of the ineffable school--I know no other name to apply to a school whose
heroes are all dainty and all perfect. She wrote the opening chapter,
and introduced a lovely blonde simpleton who talked nothing but pearls
and poetry and who was virtuous to the verge of eccentricity. She also
introduced a young French Duke of aggravated refinement, in love with the
blonde. Mr. F. followed next week, with a brilliant lawyer who set about
getting the Duke's estates into trouble, and a sparkling young lady of
high society who fell to fascinating the Duke and impairing the appetite
of the blonde. Mr. D., a dark and bloody editor of one of the dailies,
followed Mr. F., the third week, introducing a mysterious Roscicrucian
who transmuted metals, held consultations with the devil in a cave at
dead of night, and cast the horoscope of the several heroes and heroines
in such a way as to provide plenty of trouble for their future careers
and breed a solemn and awful public interest in the novel. He also
introduced a cloaked and masked melodramatic miscreant, put him on a
salary and set him on the midnight track of the Duke with a poisoned
dagger. He also created an Irish coachman with a rich brogue and placed
him in the service of the society-young-lady with an ulterior mission to
carry billet-doux to the Duke.
About this time there arrived in Virginia a dissolute stranger with a
literary turn of mind--rather seedy he was, but very quiet and
unassuming; almost diffident, indeed. He was so gentle, and his manners
were so pleasing and kindly, whether he was sober or intoxicated, that he
made friends of all who came in contact with him. He applied for
literary work, offered conclusive evidence that he wielded an easy and
practiced pen, and so Mr. F. engaged him at once to help write the novel.
His chapter was to follow Mr. D.'s, and mine was to come next. Now what
does this fellow do but go off and get drunk and then proceed to his
quarters and set to work with his imagination in a state of chaos, and
that chaos in a condition of extravagant activity. The result may be
guessed. He scanned the chapters of his predecessors, found plenty of
heroes and heroines already created, and was satisfied with them; he
decided to introduce no more; with all the confidence that whisky
inspires and all the easy complacency it gives to its servant, he then
launched himself lovingly into his work: he married the coachman to the
society-young-lady for the sake of the scandal; married the Duke to the
blonde's stepmother, for the sake of the sensation; stopped the
desperado's salary; created a misunderstanding between the devil and the
Roscicrucian; threw the Duke's property into the wicked lawyer's hands;
made the lawyer's upbraiding conscience drive him to drink, thence to
delirium tremens, thence to suicide; broke the coachman's neck; let his
widow succumb to contumely, neglect, poverty and consumption; caused the
blonde to drown herself, leaving her clothes on the bank with the
customary note pinned to them forgiving the Duke and hoping he would be
happy; revealed to the Duke, by means of the usual strawberry mark on
left arm, that he had married his own long-lost mother and destroyed his
long-lost sister; instituted the proper and necessary suicide of the Duke
and the Duchess in order to compass poetical justice; opened the earth
and let the Roscicrucian through, accompanied with the accustomed smoke
and thunder and smell of brimstone, and finished with the promise that in
the next chapter, after holding a general inquest, he would take up the
surviving character of the novel and tell what became of the devil!
It read with singular smoothness, and with a "dead" earnestness that was
funny enough to suffocate a body. But there was war when it came in.
The other novelists were furious. The mild stranger, not yet more than
half sober, stood there, under a scathing fire of vituperation, meek and
bewildered, looking from one to another of his assailants, and wondering
what he could have done to invoke such a storm. When a lull came at
last, he said his say gently and appealingly--said he did not rightly
remember what he had written, but was sure he had tried to do the best he
could, and knew his object had been to make the novel not only pleasant
and plausible but instructive and----
The bombardment began again. The novelists assailed his ill-chosen
adjectives and demolished them with a storm of denunciation and ridicule.
And so the siege went on. Every time the stranger tried to appease the
enemy he only made matters worse. Finally he offered to rewrite the
chapter. This arrested hostilities. The indignation gradually quieted
down, peace reigned again and the sufferer retired in safety and got him
to his own citadel.
But on the way thither the evil angel tempted him and he got drunk again.
And again his imagination went mad. He led the heroes and heroines a
wilder dance than ever; and yet all through it ran that same convincing
air of honesty and earnestness that had marked his first work. He got
the characters into the most extraordinary situations, put them through
the most surprising performances, and made them talk the strangest talk!
But the chapter cannot be described. It was symmetrically crazy; it was
artistically absurd; and it had explanatory footnotes that were fully as
curious as the text. I remember one of the "situations," and will offer
it as an example of the whole. He altered the character of the brilliant
lawyer, and made him a great-hearted, splendid fellow; gave him fame and
riches, and set his age at thirty-three years. Then he made the blonde
discover, through the help of the Roscicrucian and the melodramatic
miscreant, that while the Duke loved her money ardently and wanted it, he
secretly felt a sort of leaning toward the society-young-lady. Stung to
the quick, she tore her affections from him and bestowed them with
tenfold power upon the lawyer, who responded with consuming zeal. But
the parents would none of it. What they wanted in the family was a Duke;
and a Duke they were determined to have; though they confessed that next
to the Duke the lawyer had their preference. Necessarily the blonde now
went into a decline. The parents were alarmed. They pleaded with her to
marry the Duke, but she steadfastly refused, and pined on. Then they
laid a plan. They told her to wait a year and a day, and if at the end
of that time she still felt that she could not marry the Duke, she might
marry the lawyer with their full consent. The result was as they had
foreseen: gladness came again, and the flush of returning health. Then
the parents took the next step in their scheme. They had the family
physician recommend a long sea voyage and much land travel for the
thorough restoration of the blonde's strength; and they invited the Duke
to be of the party. They judged that the Duke's constant presence and
the lawyer's protracted absence would do the rest--for they did not
invite the lawyer.
So they set sail in a steamer for America--and the third day out, when
their sea-sickness called truce and permitted them to take their first
meal at the public table, behold there sat the lawyer! The Duke and
party made the best of an awkward situation; the voyage progressed, and
the vessel neared America.
But, by and by, two hundred miles off New Bedford, the ship took fire;
she burned to the water's edge; of all her crew and passengers, only
thirty were saved. They floated about the sea half an afternoon and all
night long. Among them were our friends. The lawyer, by superhuman
exertions, had saved the blonde and her parents, swimming back and forth
two hundred yards and bringing one each time--(the girl first). The Duke
had saved himself. In the morning two whale ships arrived on the scene
and sent their boats. The weather was stormy and the embarkation was
attended with much confusion and excitement. The lawyer did his duty
like a man; helped his exhausted and insensible blonde, her parents and
some others into a boat (the Duke helped himself in); then a child fell
overboard at the other end of the raft and the lawyer rushed thither and
helped half a dozen people fish it out, under the stimulus of its
mother's screams. Then he ran back--a few seconds too late--the blonde's
boat was under way. So he had to take the other boat, and go to the
other ship. The storm increased and drove the vessels out of sight of
each other--drove them whither it would.
When it calmed, at the end of three days, the blonde's ship was seven
hundred miles north of Boston and the other about seven hundred south of
that port. The blonde's captain was bound on a whaling cruise in the
North Atlantic and could not go back such a distance or make a port
without orders; such being nautical law. The lawyer's captain was to
cruise in the North Pacific, and he could not go back or make a port
without orders. All the lawyer's money and baggage were in the blonde's
boat and went to the blonde's ship--so his captain made him work his
passage as a common sailor. When both ships had been cruising nearly a
year, the one was off the coast of Greenland and the other in Behring's
Strait. The blonde had long ago been well-nigh persuaded that her lawyer
had been washed overboard and lost just before the whale ships reached
the raft, and now, under the pleadings of her parents and the Duke she
was at last beginning to nerve herself for the doom of the covenant, and
prepare for the hated marriage.
But she would not yield a day before the date set. The weeks dragged on,
the time narrowed, orders were given to deck the ship for the wedding--a
wedding at sea among icebergs and walruses. Five days more and all would
be over. So the blonde reflected, with a sigh and a tear. Oh where was
her true love--and why, why did he not come and save her? At that moment
he was lifting his harpoon to strike a whale in Behring's Strait, five
thousand miles away, by the way of the Arctic Ocean, or twenty thousand
by the way of the Horn--that was the reason. He struck, but not with
perfect aim--his foot slipped and he fell in the whale's mouth and went
down his throat. He was insensible five days. Then he came to himself
and heard voices; daylight was streaming through a hole cut in the
whale's roof. He climbed out and astonished the sailors who were
hoisting blubber up a ship's side. He recognized the vessel, flew
aboard, surprised the wedding party at the altar and exclaimed:
"Stop the proceedings--I'm here! Come to my arms, my own!"
There were foot-notes to this extravagant piece of literature wherein the
author endeavored to show that the whole thing was within the
possibilities; he said he got the incident of the whale traveling from
Behring's Strait to the coast of Greenland, five thousand miles in five
days, through the Arctic Ocean, from Charles Reade's "Love Me Little Love
Me Long," and considered that that established the fact that the thing
could be done; and he instanced Jonah's adventure as proof that a man
could live in a whale's belly, and added that if a preacher could stand
it three days a lawyer could surely stand it five!
There was a fiercer storm than ever in the editorial sanctum now, and the
stranger was peremptorily discharged, and his manuscript flung at his
head. But he had already delayed things so much that there was not time
for some one else to rewrite the chapter, and so the paper came out
without any novel in it. It was but a feeble, struggling, stupid
journal, and the absence of the novel probably shook public confidence;
at any rate, before the first side of the next issue went to press, the
Weekly Occidental died as peacefully as an infant.
An effort was made to resurrect it, with the proposed advantage of a
telling new title, and Mr. F. said that The Phenix would be just the name
for it, because it would give the idea of a resurrection from its dead
ashes in a new and undreamed of condition of splendor; but some
low-priced smarty on one of the dailies suggested that we call it the
Lazarus; and inasmuch as the people were not profound in Scriptural
matters but thought the resurrected Lazarus and the dilapidated mendicant
that begged in the rich man's gateway were one and the same person, the
name became the laughing stock of the town, and killed the paper for good
and all.
I was sorry enough, for I was very proud of being connected with a
literary paper--prouder than I have ever been of anything since, perhaps.
I had written some rhymes for it--poetry I considered it--and it was a
great grief to me that the production was on the "first side" of the
issue that was not completed, and hence did not see the light. But time
brings its revenges--I can put it in here; it will answer in place of a
tear dropped to the memory of the lost Occidental. The idea (not the
chief idea, but the vehicle that bears it) was probably suggested by the
old song called "The Raging Canal," but I cannot remember now. I do
remember, though, that at that time I thought my doggerel was one of the
ablest poems of the age:
THE AGED PILOT MAN.
On the Erie Canal, it was,
All on a summer's day,
I sailed forth with my parents
Far away to Albany.
From out the clouds at noon that day
There came a dreadful storm,
That piled the billows high about,
And filled us with alarm.
A man came rushing from a house,
Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray,
[The customary canal technicality for "tie up."]
Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,
Snub up while yet you may."
Our captain cast one glance astern,
Then forward glanced he,
And said, "My wife and little ones
I never more shall see."
Said Dollinger the pilot man,
In noble words, but few,
--"Fear not, but lean on Dollinger,
And he will fetch you through."
The boat drove on, the frightened mules
Tore through the rain and wind,
And bravely still, in danger's post,
The whip-boy strode behind.
"Come 'board, come 'board," the captain cried,
"Nor tempt so wild a storm;"
But still the raging mules advanced,
And still the boy strode on.
Then said the captain to us all,
"Alas, 'tis plain to me,
The greater danger is not there,
But here upon the sea.
"So let us strive, while life remains,
To save all souls on board,
And then if die at last we must,
Let . . . . I cannot speak the word!"
Said Dollinger the pilot man,
Tow'ring above the crew,
"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
And he will fetch you through."
"Low bridge! low bridge!" all heads went down,
The laboring bark sped on;
A mill we passed, we passed church,
Hamlets, and fields of corn;
And all the world came out to see,
And chased along the shore
Crying, "Alas, alas, the sheeted rain,
The wind, the tempest's roar!
Alas, the gallant ship and crew,
Can nothing help them more?"
And from our deck sad eyes looked out
Across the stormy scene:
The tossing wake of billows aft,
The bending forests green,
The chickens sheltered under carts
In lee of barn the cows,
The skurrying swine with straw in mouth,
The wild spray from our bows!
"She balances!
She wavers!
Now let her go about!
If she misses stays and broaches to,
We're all"--then with a shout,
"Huray! huray!
Avast! belay!
Take in more sail!
Lord, what a gale!
Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule's tail!"
"Ho! lighten ship! ho! man the pump!
Ho, hostler, heave the lead!"
"A quarter-three!--'tis shoaling fast!
Three feet large!--t-h-r-e-e feet!
--Three feet scant!" I cried in fright
"Oh, is there no retreat?"
Said Dollinger, the pilot man,
As on the vessel flew,
"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
And he will fetch you through."
A panic struck the bravest hearts,
The boldest cheek turned pale;
For plain to all, this shoaling said
A leak had burst the ditch's bed!
And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,
Our ship swept on, with shoaling lead,
Before the fearful gale!
"Sever the tow-line! Cripple the mules!"
Too late! There comes a shock!
Another length, and the fated craft
Would have swum in the saving lock!
Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew
And took one last embrace,
While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes
Ran down each hopeless face;
And some did think of their little ones
Whom they never more might see,
And others of waiting wives at home,
And mothers that grieved would be.
But of all the children of misery there
On that poor sinking frame,
But one spake words of hope and faith,
And I worshipped as they came:
Said Dollinger the pilot man,
--(O brave heart, strong and true!)
--"Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,
For he will fetch you through."
Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips
The dauntless prophet say'th,
When every soul about him seeth
A wonder crown his faith!
"And count ye all, both great and small,
As numbered with the dead:
For mariner for forty year,
On Erie, boy and man,
I never yet saw such a storm,
Or one't with it began!"
So overboard a keg of nails
And anvils three we threw,
Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,
Two hundred pounds of glue,
Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,
A box of books, a cow,
A violin, Lord Byron's works,
A rip-saw and a sow.
A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!
"Labbord!--stabbord!--s-t-e-a-d-y!--so!
--Hard-a-port, Dol!--hellum-a-lee!
Haw the head mule!--the aft one gee!
Luff!--bring her to the wind!"
For straight a farmer brought a plank,
--(Mysteriously inspired)
--And laying it unto the ship,
In silent awe retired.
Then every sufferer stood amazed
That pilot man before;
A moment stood. Then wondering turned,
And speechless walked ashore.
CHAPTER LII.
Since I desire, in this chapter, to say an instructive word or two about
the silver mines, the reader may take this fair warning and skip, if he
chooses. The year 1863 was perhaps the very top blossom and culmination
of the "flush times." Virginia swarmed with men and vehicles to that
degree that the place looked like a very hive--that is when one's vision
could pierce through the thick fog of alkali dust that was generally
blowing in summer. I will say, concerning this dust, that if you drove
ten miles through it, you and your horses would be coated with it a
sixteenth of an inch thick and present an outside appearance that was a
uniform pale yellow color, and your buggy would have three inches of dust
in it, thrown there by the wheels. The delicate scales used by the
assayers were inclosed in glass cases intended to be air-tight, and yet
some of this dust was so impalpable and so invisibly fine that it would
get in, somehow, and impair the accuracy of those scales.
Speculation ran riot, and yet there was a world of substantial business
going on, too. All freights were brought over the mountains from
California (150 miles) by pack-train partly, and partly in huge wagons
drawn by such long mule teams that each team amounted to a procession,
and it did seem, sometimes, that the grand combined procession of animals
stretched unbroken from Virginia to California. Its long route was
traceable clear across the deserts of the Territory by the writhing
serpent of dust it lifted up. By these wagons, freights over that
hundred and fifty miles were $200 a ton for small lots (same price for
all express matter brought by stage), and $100 a ton for full loads.
One Virginia firm received one hundred tons of freight a month, and paid
$10,000 a month freightage. In the winter the freights were much higher.
All the bullion was shipped in bars by stage to San Francisco (a bar was
usually about twice the size of a pig of lead and contained from $1,500
to $3,000 according to the amount of gold mixed with the silver), and the
freight on it (when the shipment was large) was one and a quarter per
cent. of its intrinsic value.
So, the freight on these bars probably averaged something more than $25
each. Small shippers paid two per cent. There were three stages a day,
each way, and I have seen the out-going stages carry away a third of a
ton of bullion each, and more than once I saw them divide a two-ton lot
and take it off. However, these were extraordinary events.
[Mr. Valentine, Wells Fargo's agent, has handled all the bullion shipped
through the Virginia office for many a month. To his memory--which is
excellent--we are indebted for the following exhibit of the company's
business in the Virginia office since the first of January, 1862: From
January 1st to April 1st, about $270,000 worth of bullion passed through
that office, during the next quarter, $570,000; next quarter, $800,000;
next quarter, $956,000; next quarter, $1,275,000; and for the quarter
ending on the 30th of last June, about $1,600,000. Thus in a year and a
half, the Virginia office only shipped $5,330,000 in bullion. During the
year 1862 they shipped $2,615,000, so we perceive the average shipments
have more than doubled in the last six months. This gives us room to
promise for the Virginia office $500,000 a month for the year 1863
(though perhaps, judging by the steady increase in the business, we are
under estimating, somewhat). This gives us $6,000,000 for the year.
Gold Hill and Silver City together can beat us--we will give them
$10,000,000. To Dayton, Empire City, Ophir and Carson City, we will
allow an aggregate of $8,000,000, which is not over the mark, perhaps,
and may possibly be a little under it. To Esmeralda we give $4,000,000.
To Reese River and Humboldt $2,000,000, which is liberal now, but may not
be before the year is out. So we prognosticate that the yield of bullion
this year will be about $30,000,000. Placing the number of mills in the
Territory at one hundred, this gives to each the labor of producing
$300,000 in bullion during the twelve months. Allowing them to run three
hundred days in the year (which none of them more than do), this makes
their work average $1,000 a day. Say the mills average twenty tons of
rock a day and this rock worth $50 as a general thing, and you have the
actual work of our one hundred mills figured down "to a spot"--$1,000 a
day each, and $30,000,000 a year in the aggregate.--Enterprise.
[A considerable over estimate--M. T.]]
Two tons of silver bullion would be in the neighborhood of forty bars,
and the freight on it over $1,000. Each coach always carried a deal of
ordinary express matter beside, and also from fifteen to twenty
passengers at from $25 to $30 a head. With six stages going all the
time, Wells, Fargo and Co.'s Virginia City business was important and
lucrative.
All along under the centre of Virginia and Gold Hill, for a couple of
miles, ran the great Comstock silver lode--a vein of ore from fifty to
eighty feet thick between its solid walls of rock--a vein as wide as some
of New York's streets. I will remind the reader that in Pennsylvania a
coal vein only eight feet wide is considered ample.
Virginia was a busy city of streets and houses above ground. Under it
was another busy city, down in the bowels of the earth, where a great
population of men thronged in and out among an intricate maze of tunnels
and drifts, flitting hither and thither under a winking sparkle of
lights, and over their heads towered a vast web of interlocking timbers
that held the walls of the gutted Comstock apart. These timbers were as
large as a man's body, and the framework stretched upward so far that no
eye could pierce to its top through the closing gloom. It was like
peering up through the clean-picked ribs and bones of some colossal
skeleton. Imagine such a framework two miles long, sixty feet wide, and
higher than any church spire in America. Imagine this stately
lattice-work stretching down Broadway, from the St. Nicholas to Wall
street, and a Fourth of July procession, reduced to pigmies, parading on
top of it and flaunting their flags, high above the pinnacle of Trinity
steeple. One can imagine that, but he cannot well imagine what that
forest of timbers cost, from the time they were felled in the pineries
beyond Washoe Lake, hauled up and around Mount Davidson at atrocious
rates of freightage, then squared, let down into the deep maw of the mine
and built up there. Twenty ample fortunes would not timber one of the
greatest of those silver mines. The Spanish proverb says it requires a
gold mine to "run" a silver one, and it is true. A beggar with a silver
mine is a pitiable pauper indeed if he cannot sell.
I spoke of the underground Virginia as a city. The Gould and Curry is
only one single mine under there, among a great many others; yet the
Gould and Curry's streets of dismal drifts and tunnels were five miles in
extent, altogether, and its population five hundred miners. Taken as a
whole, the underground city had some thirty miles of streets and a
population of five or six thousand. In this present day some of those
populations are at work from twelve to sixteen hundred feet under
Virginia and Gold Hill, and the signal-bells that tell them what the
superintendent above ground desires them to do are struck by telegraph as
we strike a fire alarm. Sometimes men fall down a shaft, there, a
thousand feet deep. In such cases, the usual plan is to hold an inquest.
If you wish to visit one of those mines, you may walk through a tunnel
about half a mile long if you prefer it, or you may take the quicker plan
of shooting like a dart down a shaft, on a small platform. It is like
tumbling down through an empty steeple, feet first. When you reach the
bottom, you take a candle and tramp through drifts and tunnels where
throngs of men are digging and blasting; you watch them send up tubs full
of great lumps of stone--silver ore; you select choice specimens from the
mass, as souvenirs; you admire the world of skeleton timbering; you
reflect frequently that you are buried under a mountain, a thousand feet
below daylight; being in the bottom of the mine you climb from "gallery"
to "gallery," up endless ladders that stand straight up and down; when
your legs fail you at last, you lie down in a small box-car in a cramped
"incline" like a half-up-ended sewer and are dragged up to daylight
feeling as if you are crawling through a coffin that has no end to it.
Arrived at the top, you find a busy crowd of men receiving the ascending
cars and tubs and dumping the ore from an elevation into long rows of
bins capable of holding half a dozen tons each; under the bins are rows
of wagons loading from chutes and trap-doors in the bins, and down the
long street is a procession of these wagons wending toward the silver
mills with their rich freight. It is all "done," now, and there you are.
You need never go down again, for you have seen it all. If you have
forgotten the process of reducing the ore in the mill and making the
silver bars, you can go back and find it again in my Esmeralda chapters
if so disposed.
Of course these mines cave in, in places, occasionally, and then it is
worth one's while to take the risk of descending into them and observing
the crushing power exerted by the pressing weight of a settling mountain.
I published such an experience in the Enterprise, once, and from it I
will take an extract:
AN HOUR IN THE CAVED MINES.--We journeyed down into the Ophir mine,
yesterday, to see the earthquake. We could not go down the deep
incline, because it still has a propensity to cave in places.
Therefore we traveled through the long tunnel which enters the hill
above the Ophir office, and then by means of a series of long
ladders, climbed away down from the first to the fourth gallery.
Traversing a drift, we came to the Spanish line, passed five sets of
timbers still uninjured, and found the earthquake. Here was as
complete a chaos as ever was seen--vast masses of earth and
splintered and broken timbers piled confusedly together, with
scarcely an aperture left large enough for a cat to creep through.
Rubbish was still falling at intervals from above, and one timber
which had braced others earlier in the day, was now crushed down out
of its former position, showing that the caving and settling of the
tremendous mass was still going on. We were in that portion of the
Ophir known as the "north mines." Returning to the surface, we
entered a tunnel leading into the Central, for the purpose of
getting into the main Ophir. Descending a long incline in this
tunnel, we traversed a drift or so, and then went down a deep shaft
from whence we proceeded into the fifth gallery of the Ophir. From
a side-drift we crawled through a small hole and got into the midst
of the earthquake again--earth and broken timbers mingled together
without regard to grace or symmetry. A large portion of the second,
third and fourth galleries had caved in and gone to destruction--the
two latter at seven o'clock on the previous evening.
At the turn-table, near the northern extremity of the fifth gallery,
two big piles of rubbish had forced their way through from the fifth
gallery, and from the looks of the timbers, more was about to come.
These beams are solid--eighteen inches square; first, a great beam
is laid on the floor, then upright ones, five feet high, stand on
it, supporting another horizontal beam, and so on, square above
square, like the framework of a window. The superincumbent weight
was sufficient to mash the ends of those great upright beams fairly
into the solid wood of the horizontal ones three inches, compressing
and bending the upright beam till it curved like a bow. Before the
Spanish caved in, some of their twelve-inch horizontal timbers were
compressed in this way until they were only five inches thick!
Imagine the power it must take to squeeze a solid log together in
that way. Here, also, was a range of timbers, for a distance of
twenty feet, tilted six inches out of the perpendicular by the
weight resting upon them from the caved galleries above. You could
hear things cracking and giving way, and it was not pleasant to know
that the world overhead was slowly and silently sinking down upon
you. The men down in the mine do not mind it, however.
Returning along the fifth gallery, we struck the safe part of the
Ophir incline, and went down it to the sixth; but we found ten
inches of water there, and had to come back. In repairing the
damage done to the incline, the pump had to be stopped for two
hours, and in the meantime the water gained about a foot. However,
the pump was at work again, and the flood-water was decreasing.
We climbed up to the fifth gallery again and sought a deep shaft,
whereby we might descend to another part of the sixth, out of reach
of the water, but suffered disappointment, as the men had gone to
dinner, and there was no one to man the windlass. So, having seen
the earthquake, we climbed out at the Union incline and tunnel, and
adjourned, all dripping with candle grease and perspiration, to
lunch at the Ophir office.
During the great flush year of 1863, Nevada [claims to have]
produced $25,000,000 in bullion--almost, if not quite, a round
million to each thousand inhabitants, which is very well,
considering that she was without agriculture and manufactures.
Silver mining was her sole productive industry. [Since the above was
in type, I learn from an official source that the above figure is
too high, and that the yield for 1863 did not exceed $20,000,000.]
However, the day for large figures is approaching; the Sutro Tunnel
is to plow through the Comstock lode from end to end, at a depth of
two thousand feet, and then mining will be easy and comparatively
inexpensive; and the momentous matters of drainage, and hoisting and
hauling of ore will cease to be burdensome. This vast work will
absorb many years, and millions of dollars, in its completion; but
it will early yield money, for that desirable epoch will begin as
soon as it strikes the first end of the vein. The tunnel will be
some eight miles long, and will develop astonishing riches. Cars
will carry the ore through the tunnel and dump it in the mills and
thus do away with the present costly system of double handling and
transportation by mule teams. The water from the tunnel will
furnish the motive power for the mills. Mr. Sutro, the originator
of this prodigious enterprise, is one of the few men in the world
who is gifted with the pluck and perseverance necessary to follow up
and hound such an undertaking to its completion. He has converted
several obstinate Congresses to a deserved friendliness toward his
important work, and has gone up and down and to and fro in Europe
until he has enlisted a great moneyed interest in it there.
CHAPTER LIII.
Every now and then, in these days, the boys used to tell me I ought to
get one Jim Blaine to tell me the stirring story of his grandfather's old
ram--but they always added that I must not mention the matter unless Jim
was drunk at the time--just comfortably and sociably drunk. They kept
this up until my curiosity was on the rack to hear the story. I got to
haunting Blaine; but it was of no use, the boys always found fault with
his condition; he was often moderately but never satisfactorily drunk.
I never watched a man's condition with such absorbing interest, such
anxious solicitude; I never so pined to see a man uncompromisingly drunk
before. At last, one evening I hurried to his cabin, for I learned that
this time his situation was such that even the most fastidious could find
no fault with it--he was tranquilly, serenely, symmetrically drunk--not a
hiccup to mar his voice, not a cloud upon his brain thick enough to
obscure his memory. As I entered, he was sitting upon an empty
powder-keg, with a clay pipe in one hand and the other raised to command
silence. His face was round, red, and very serious; his throat was bare
and his hair tumbled; in general appearance and costume he was a stalwart
miner of the period. On the pine table stood a candle, and its dim light
revealed "the boys" sitting here and there on bunks, candle-boxes,
powder-kegs, etc. They said:
"Sh--! Don't speak--he's going to commence."
THE STORY OF THE OLD RAM.
I found a seat at once, and Blaine said:
'I don't reckon them times will ever come again. There never was a more
bullier old ram than what he was. Grandfather fetched him from Illinois
--got him of a man by the name of Yates--Bill Yates--maybe you might have
heard of him; his father was a deacon--Baptist--and he was a rustler,
too; a man had to get up ruther early to get the start of old Thankful
Yates; it was him that put the Greens up to jining teams with my
grandfather when he moved west.
'Seth Green was prob'ly the pick of the flock; he married a Wilkerson
--Sarah Wilkerson--good cretur, she was--one of the likeliest heifers that
was ever raised in old Stoddard, everybody said that knowed her. She
could heft a bar'l of flour as easy as I can flirt a flapjack. And spin?
Don't mention it! Independent? Humph! When Sile Hawkins come a
browsing around her, she let him know that for all his tin he couldn't
trot in harness alongside of her. You see, Sile Hawkins was--no, it
warn't Sile Hawkins, after all--it was a galoot by the name of Filkins
--I disremember his first name; but he was a stump--come into pra'r meeting
drunk, one night, hooraying for Nixon, becuz he thought it was a primary;
and old deacon Ferguson up and scooted him through the window and he lit
on old Miss Jefferson's head, poor old filly. She was a good soul--had a
glass eye and used to lend it to old Miss Wagner, that hadn't any, to
receive company in; it warn't big enough, and when Miss Wagner warn't
noticing, it would get twisted around in the socket, and look up, maybe,
or out to one side, and every which way, while t' other one was looking
as straight ahead as a spy-glass.
'Grown people didn't mind it, but it most always made the children cry, it
was so sort of scary. She tried packing it in raw cotton, but it
wouldn't work, somehow--the cotton would get loose and stick out and look
so kind of awful that the children couldn't stand it no way. She was
always dropping it out, and turning up her old dead-light on the company
empty, and making them oncomfortable, becuz she never could tell when it
hopped out, being blind on that side, you see. So somebody would have to
hunch her and say, "Your game eye has fetched loose. Miss Wagner dear"
--and then all of them would have to sit and wait till she jammed it in
again--wrong side before, as a general thing, and green as a bird's egg,
being a bashful cretur and easy sot back before company. But being wrong
side before warn't much difference, anyway; becuz her own eye was
sky-blue and the glass one was yaller on the front side, so whichever way
she turned it it didn't match nohow.
'Old Miss Wagner was considerable on the borrow, she was. When she had a
quilting, or Dorcas S'iety at her house she gen'ally borrowed Miss
Higgins's wooden leg to stump around on; it was considerable shorter than
her other pin, but much she minded that. She said she couldn't abide
crutches when she had company, becuz they were so slow; said when she had
company and things had to be done, she wanted to get up and hump herself.
She was as bald as a jug, and so she used to borrow Miss Jacops's wig
--Miss Jacops was the coffin-peddler's wife--a ratty old buzzard, he was,
that used to go roosting around where people was sick, waiting for 'em;
and there that old rip would sit all day, in the shade, on a coffin that
he judged would fit the can'idate; and if it was a slow customer and kind
of uncertain, he'd fetch his rations and a blanket along and sleep in the
coffin nights. He was anchored out that way, in frosty weather, for
about three weeks, once, before old Robbins's place, waiting for him; and
after that, for as much as two years, Jacops was not on speaking terms
with the old man, on account of his disapp'inting him. He got one of his
feet froze, and lost money, too, becuz old Robbins took a favorable turn
and got well. The next time Robbins got sick, Jacops tried to make up
with him, and varnished up the same old coffin and fetched it along; but
old Robbins was too many for him; he had him in, and 'peared to be
powerful weak; he bought the coffin for ten dollars and Jacops was to pay
it back and twenty-five more besides if Robbins didn't like the coffin
after he'd tried it. And then Robbins died, and at the funeral he
bursted off the lid and riz up in his shroud and told the parson to let
up on the performances, becuz he could not stand such a coffin as that.
You see he had been in a trance once before, when he was young, and he
took the chances on another, cal'lating that if he made the trip it was
money in his pocket, and if he missed fire he couldn't lose a cent. And
by George he sued Jacops for the rhino and got jedgment; and he set up
the coffin in his back parlor and said he 'lowed to take his time, now.
It was always an aggravation to Jacops, the way that miserable old thing
acted. He moved back to Indiany pretty soon--went to Wellsville
--Wellsville was the place the Hogadorns was from. Mighty fine family.
Old Maryland stock. Old Squire Hogadorn could carry around more mixed
licker, and cuss better than most any man I ever see. His second wife
was the widder Billings--she that was Becky Martin; her dam was deacon
Dunlap's first wife. Her oldest child, Maria, married a missionary and
died in grace--et up by the savages. They et him, too, poor feller
--biled him. It warn't the custom, so they say, but they explained to
friends of his'n that went down there to bring away his things, that
they'd tried missionaries every other way and never could get any good
out of 'em--and so it annoyed all his relations to find out that that
man's life was fooled away just out of a dern'd experiment, so to speak.
But mind you, there ain't anything ever reely lost; everything that
people can't understand and don't see the reason of does good if you only
hold on and give it a fair shake; Prov'dence don't fire no blank
ca'tridges, boys. That there missionary's substance, unbeknowns to
himself, actu'ly converted every last one of them heathens that took a
chance at the barbacue. Nothing ever fetched them but that. Don't tell
me it was an accident that he was biled. There ain't no such a thing as
an accident.
'When my uncle Lem was leaning up agin a scaffolding once, sick, or drunk,
or suthin, an Irishman with a hod full of bricks fell on him out of the
third story and broke the old man's back in two places. People said it
was an accident. Much accident there was about that. He didn't know
what he was there for, but he was there for a good object. If he hadn't
been there the Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can ever make me
believe anything different from that. Uncle Lem's dog was there. Why
didn't the Irishman fall on the dog? Becuz the dog would a seen him a
coming and stood from under. That's the reason the dog warn't appinted.
A dog can't be depended on to carry out a special providence. Mark my
words it was a put-up thing. Accidents don't happen, boys. Uncle Lem's
dog--I wish you could a seen that dog. He was a reglar shepherd--or
ruther he was part bull and part shepherd--splendid animal; belonged to
parson Hagar before Uncle Lem got him. Parson Hagar belonged to the
Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his
sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got
nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than
a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his
remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral.
There was fourteen yards in the piece.
'She wouldn't let them roll him up, but planted him just so--full length.
The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they
had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn't
bury him--they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument.
And they nailed a sign on it and put--put on--put on it--sacred to--the
m-e-m-o-r-y--of fourteen y-a-r-d-s--of three-ply--car---pet--containing
all that was--m-o-r-t-a-l--of--of--W-i-l-l-i-a-m--W-h-e--'
Jim Blaine had been growing gradually drowsy and drowsier--his head
nodded, once, twice, three times--dropped peacefully upon his breast, and
he fell tranquilly asleep. The tears were running down the boys' cheeks
--they were suffocating with suppressed laughter--and had been from the
start, though I had never noticed it. I perceived that I was "sold."
I learned then that Jim Blaine's peculiarity was that whenever he reached
a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from
setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure
which he had once had with his grandfather's old ram--and the mention of
the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him
get, concerning it. He always maundered off, interminably, from one
thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep.
What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfather's old ram is
a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out.
CHAPTER LIV.
Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia--it is the
case with every town and city on the Pacific coast. They are a harmless
race when white men either let them alone or treat them no worse than
dogs; in fact they are almost entirely harmless anyhow, for they seldom
think of resenting the vilest insults or the cruelest injuries. They are
quiet, peaceable, tractable, free from drunkenness, and they are as
industrious as the day is long. A disorderly Chinaman is rare, and a
lazy one does not exist. So long as a Chinaman has strength to use his
hands he needs no support from anybody; white men often complain of want
of work, but a Chinaman offers no such complaint; he always manages to
find something to do. He is a great convenience to everybody--even to
the worst class of white men, for he bears the most of their sins,
suffering fines for their petty thefts, imprisonment for their robberies,
and death for their murders. Any white man can swear a Chinaman's life
away in the courts, but no Chinaman can testify against a white man.
Ours is the "land of the free"--nobody denies that--nobody challenges it.
[Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.] As I write, news
comes that in broad daylight in San Francisco, some boys have stoned an
inoffensive Chinaman to death, and that although a large crowd witnessed
the shameful deed, no one interfered.
There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen
on the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia. They
were penned into a "Chinese quarter"--a thing which they do not
particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together. Their
buildings were of wood; usually only one story high, and set thickly
together along streets scarcely wide enough for a wagon to pass through.
Their quarter was a little removed from the rest of the town. The chief
employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing. They always send a
bill, like this below, pinned to the clothes. It is mere ceremony, for
it does not enlighten the customer much. Their price for washing was
$2.50 per dozen--rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash
for at that time. A very common sign on the Chinese houses was: "See
Yup, Washer and Ironer"; "Hong Wo, Washer"; "Sam Sing & Ah Hop, Washing."
The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly
Chinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed.
Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick
to learn and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a
thing twice, as a general thing. They are imitative. If a Chinaman were
to see his master break up a centre table, in a passion, and kindle a
fire with it, that Chinaman would be likely to resort to the furniture
for fuel forever afterward.
All Chinamen can read, write and cipher with easy facility--pity but all
our petted voters could. In California they rent little patches of
ground and do a deal of gardening. They will raise surprising crops of
vegetables on a sand pile. They waste nothing. What is rubbish to a
Christian, a Chinaman carefully preserves and makes useful in one way or
another. He gathers up all the old oyster and sardine cans that white
people throw away, and procures marketable tin and solder from them by
melting. He gathers up old bones and turns them into manure.
In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men
have abandoned as exhausted and worthless--and then the officers come
down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the
legislature has given the broad, general name of "foreign" mining tax,
but it is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen. This swindle
has in some cases been repeated once or twice on the same victim in the
course of the same month--but the public treasury was no additionally
enriched by it, probably.
Chinamen hold their dead in great reverence--they worship their departed
ancestors, in fact. Hence, in China, a man's front yard, back yard, or
any other part of his premises, is made his family burying ground, in
order that he may visit the graves at any and all times. Therefore that
huge empire is one mighty cemetery; it is ridged and wringled from its
centre to its circumference with graves--and inasmuch as every foot of
ground must be made to do its utmost, in China, lest the swarming
population suffer for food, the very graves are cultivated and yield a
harvest, custom holding this to be no dishonor to the dead. Since the
departed are held in such worshipful reverence, a Chinaman cannot bear
that any indignity be offered the places where they sleep.
Mr. Burlingame said that herein lay China's bitter opposition to
railroads; a road could not be built anywhere in the empire without
disturbing the graves of their ancestors or friends.
A Chinaman hardly believes he could enjoy the hereafter except his body
lay in his beloved China; also, he desires to receive, himself, after
death, that worship with which he has honored his dead that preceded him.
Therefore, if he visits a foreign country, he makes arrangements to have
his bones returned to China in case he dies; if he hires to go to a
foreign country on a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that
his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells
a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is
specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in
case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or
another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies
keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies
home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of
these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand
members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it
has a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal
state in seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a
numerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, with
the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship
that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese
corpses--or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious
refinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat
underhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered,
whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There was
another bill--it became a law--compelling every incoming Chinaman to be
vaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctor
would defile himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it.
As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the
law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese
immigration.
What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what the
Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may be
gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting
for that paper:
CHINATOWN.--Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through
our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their
portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither
carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a
general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o'clock
at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little
cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning
Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly,
guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed
vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium,
motionless and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess
of satisfaction--or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately
after having passed the pipe to his neighbor--for opium-smoking is a
comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits
on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's
mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on
fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a
hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds
to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of
the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue.
John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen
whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we
could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his
visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular
washing, and feast on succulent rats and birds'-nests in Paradise.
Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang
street. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest
way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies,
with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs,
and which he offered to us in dainty little miniature wash-basins of
porcelain. He offered us a mess of birds'-nests; also, small, neat
sausages, of which we could have swallowed several yards if we had chosen
to try, but we suspected that each link contained the corpse of a mouse,
and therefore refrained. Mr. Sing had in his store a thousand articles
of merchandise, curious to behold, impossible to imagine the uses of, and
beyond our ability to describe.
His ducks, however, and his eggs, we could understand; the former were
split open and flattened out like codfish, and came from China in that
shape, and the latter were plastered over with some kind of paste which
kept them fresh and palatable through the long voyage.
We found Mr. Hong Wo, No. 37 Chow-chow street, making up a lottery
scheme--in fact we found a dozen others occupied in the same way in
various parts of the quarter, for about every third Chinaman runs a
lottery, and the balance of the tribe "buck" at it. "Tom," who speaks
faultless English, and used to be chief and only cook to the Territorial
Enterprise, when the establishment kept bachelor's hall two years ago,
said that "Sometime Chinaman buy ticket one dollar hap, ketch um two tree
hundred, sometime no ketch um anything; lottery like one man fight um
seventy--may-be he whip, may-be he get whip heself, welly good."
However, the percentage being sixty-nine against him, the chances are,
as a general thing, that "he get whip heself." We could not see that
these lotteries differed in any respect from our own, save that the
figures being Chinese, no ignorant white man might ever hope to succeed
in telling "t'other from which;" the manner of drawing is similar to
ours.
Mr. See Yup keeps a fancy store on Live Fox street. He sold us fans of
white feathers, gorgeously ornamented; perfumery that smelled like
Limburger cheese, Chinese pens, and watch-charms made of a stone
unscratchable with steel instruments, yet polished and tinted like the
inner coat of a sea-shell. As tokens of his esteem, See Yup presented
the party with gaudy plumes made of gold tinsel and trimmed with
peacocks' feathers.
We ate chow-chow with chop-sticks in the celestial restaurants; our
comrade chided the moon-eyed damsels in front of the houses for their
want of feminine reserve; we received protecting Josh-lights from our
hosts and "dickered" for a pagan God or two. Finally, we were impressed
with the genius of a Chinese book-keeper; he figured up his accounts on a
machine like a gridiron with buttons strung on its bars; the different
rows represented units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He fingered them
with incredible rapidity--in fact, he pushed them from place to place as
fast as a musical professor's fingers travel over the keys of a piano.
They are a kindly disposed, well-meaning race, and are respected and well
treated by the upper classes, all over the Pacific coast. No Californian
gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any
circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East.
Only the scum of the population do it--they and their children; they,
and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise,
for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as
well as elsewhere in America.
CHAPTER LV.
I began to get tired of staying in one place so long.
There was no longer satisfying variety in going down to Carson to report
the proceedings of the legislature once a year, and horse-races and
pumpkin-shows once in three months; (they had got to raising pumpkins and
potatoes in Washoe Valley, and of course one of the first achievements of
the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar Agricultural Fair
to show off forty dollars' worth of those pumpkins in--however, the
territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum"). I wanted
to see San Francisco. I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted--I did not
know what I wanted. I had the "spring fever" and wanted a change,
principally, no doubt. Besides, a convention had framed a State
Constitution; nine men out of every ten wanted an office; I believed that
these gentlemen would "treat" the moneyless and the irresponsible among
the population into adopting the constitution and thus well-nigh killing
the country (it could not well carry such a load as a State government,
since it had nothing to tax that could stand a tax, for undeveloped mines
could not, and there were not fifty developed ones in the land, there was
but little realty to tax, and it did seem as if nobody was ever going to
think of the simple salvation of inflicting a money penalty on murder).
I believed that a State government would destroy the "flush times," and I
wanted to get away. I believed that the mining stocks I had on hand
would soon be worth $100,000, and thought if they reached that before the
Constitution was adopted, I would sell out and make myself secure from
the crash the change of government was going to bring. I considered
$100,000 sufficient to go home with decently, though it was but a small
amount compared to what I had been expecting to return with. I felt
rather down-hearted about it, but I tried to comfort myself with the
reflection that with such a sum I could not fall into want. About this
time a schoolmate of mine whom I had not seen since boyhood, came
tramping in on foot from Reese River, a very allegory of Poverty.
The son of wealthy parents, here he was, in a strange land, hungry,
bootless, mantled in an ancient horse-blanket, roofed with a brimless
hat, and so generally and so extravagantly dilapidated that he could have
"taken the shine out of the Prodigal Son himself," as he pleasantly
remarked.
He wanted to borrow forty-six dollars--twenty-six to take him to San
Francisco, and twenty for something else; to buy some soap with, maybe,
for he needed it. I found I had but little more than the amount wanted,
in my pocket; so I stepped in and borrowed forty-six dollars of a banker
(on twenty days' time, without the formality of a note), and gave it him,
rather than walk half a block to the office, where I had some specie laid
up. If anybody had told me that it would take me two years to pay back
that forty-six dollars to the banker (for I did not expect it of the
Prodigal, and was not disappointed), I would have felt injured. And so
would the banker.
I wanted a change. I wanted variety of some kind. It came. Mr. Goodman
went away for a week and left me the post of chief editor. It destroyed
me. The first day, I wrote my "leader" in the forenoon. The second day,
I had no subject and put it off till the afternoon. The third day I put
it off till evening, and then copied an elaborate editorial out of the
"American Cyclopedia," that steadfast friend of the editor, all over this
land. The fourth day I "fooled around" till midnight, and then fell back
on the Cyclopedia again. The fifth day I cudgeled my brain till
midnight, and then kept the press waiting while I penned some bitter
personalities on six different people. The sixth day I labored in
anguish till far into the night and brought forth--nothing. The paper
went to press without an editorial. The seventh day I resigned. On the
eighth, Mr. Goodman returned and found six duels on his hands--my
personalities had borne fruit.
Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is
easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy
to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a
correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write
editorials. Subjects are the trouble--the dreary lack of them, I mean.
Every day, it is drag, drag, drag--think, and worry and suffer--all the
world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled.
Only give the editor a subject, and his work is done--it is no trouble to
write it up; but fancy how you would feel if you had to pump your brains
dry every day in the week, fifty-two weeks in the year. It makes one low
spirited simply to think of it. The matter that each editor of a daily
paper in America writes in the course of a year would fill from four to
eight bulky volumes like this book! Fancy what a library an editor's
work would make, after twenty or thirty years' service. Yet people often
marvel that Dickens, Scott, Bulwer, Dumas, etc., have been able to
produce so many books. If these authors had wrought as voluminously as
newspaper editors do, the result would be something to marvel at, indeed.
How editors can continue this tremendous labor, this exhausting
consumption of brain fibre (for their work is creative, and not a mere
mechanical laying-up of facts, like reporting), day after day and year
after year, is incomprehensible. Preachers take two months' holiday in
midsummer, for they find that to produce two sermons a week is wearing,
in the long run. In truth it must be so, and is so; and therefore, how
an editor can take from ten to twenty texts and build upon them from ten
to twenty painstaking editorials a week and keep it up all the year
round, is farther beyond comprehension than ever. Ever since I survived
my week as editor, I have found at least one pleasure in any newspaper
that comes to my hand; it is in admiring the long columns of editorial,
and wondering to myself how in the mischief he did it!
Mr. Goodman's return relieved me of employment, unless I chose to become
a reporter again. I could not do that; I could not serve in the ranks
after being General of the army. So I thought I would depart and go
abroad into the world somewhere. Just at this juncture, Dan, my
associate in the reportorial department, told me, casually, that two
citizens had been trying to persuade him to go with them to New York and
aid in selling a rich silver mine which they had discovered and secured
in a new mining district in our neighborhood. He said they offered to
pay his expenses and give him one third of the proceeds of the sale.
He had refused to go. It was the very opportunity I wanted. I abused
him for keeping so quiet about it, and not mentioning it sooner. He said
it had not occurred to him that I would like to go, and so he had
recommended them to apply to Marshall, the reporter of the other paper.
I asked Dan if it was a good, honest mine, and no swindle. He said the
men had shown him nine tons of the rock, which they had got out to take
to New York, and he could cheerfully say that he had seen but little rock
in Nevada that was richer; and moreover, he said that they had secured a
tract of valuable timber and a mill-site, near the mine. My first idea
was to kill Dan. But I changed my mind, notwithstanding I was so angry,
for I thought maybe the chance was not yet lost. Dan said it was by no
means lost; that the men were absent at the mine again, and would not be
in Virginia to leave for the East for some ten days; that they had
requested him to do the talking to Marshall, and he had promised that he
would either secure Marshall or somebody else for them by the time they
got back; he would now say nothing to anybody till they returned, and
then fulfil his promise by furnishing me to them.
It was splendid. I went to bed all on fire with excitement; for nobody
had yet gone East to sell a Nevada silver mine, and the field was white
for the sickle. I felt that such a mine as the one described by Dan
would bring a princely sum in New York, and sell without delay or
difficulty. I could not sleep, my fancy so rioted through its castles in
the air. It was the "blind lead" come again.
Next day I got away, on the coach, with the usual eclat attending
departures of old citizens,--for if you have only half a dozen friends
out there they will make noise for a hundred rather than let you seem to
go away neglected and unregretted--and Dan promised to keep strict watch
for the men that had the mine to sell.
The trip was signalized but by one little incident, and that occurred
just as we were about to start. A very seedy looking vagabond passenger
got out of the stage a moment to wait till the usual ballast of silver
bricks was thrown in. He was standing on the pavement, when an awkward
express employee, carrying a brick weighing a hundred pounds, stumbled
and let it fall on the bummer's foot. He instantly dropped on the ground
and began to howl in the most heart-breaking way. A sympathizing crowd
gathered around and were going to pull his boot off; but he screamed
louder than ever and they desisted; then he fell to gasping, and between
the gasps ejaculated "Brandy! for Heaven's sake, brandy!" They poured
half a pint down him, and it wonderfully restored and comforted him.
Then he begged the people to assist him to the stage, which was done.
The express people urged him to have a doctor at their expense, but he
declined, and said that if he only had a little brandy to take along with
him, to soothe his paroxyms of pain when they came on, he would be
grateful and content. He was quickly supplied with two bottles, and we
drove off. He was so smiling and happy after that, that I could not
refrain from asking him how he could possibly be so comfortable with a
crushed foot.
"Well," said he, "I hadn't had a drink for twelve hours, and hadn't a
cent to my name. I was most perishing--and so, when that duffer dropped
that hundred-pounder on my foot, I see my chance. Got a cork leg, you
know!" and he pulled up his pantaloons and proved it.
He was as drunk as a lord all day long, and full of chucklings over his
timely ingenuity.
One drunken man necessarily reminds one of another. I once heard a
gentleman tell about an incident which he witnessed in a Californian
bar-room. He entitled it "Ye Modest Man Taketh a Drink." It was nothing
but a bit of acting, but it seemed to me a perfect rendering, and worthy
of Toodles himself. The modest man, tolerably far gone with beer and
other matters, enters a saloon (twenty-five cents is the price for
anything and everything, and specie the only money used) and lays down a
half dollar; calls for whiskey and drinks it; the bar-keeper makes change
and lays the quarter in a wet place on the counter; the modest man
fumbles at it with nerveless fingers, but it slips and the water holds
it; he contemplates it, and tries again; same result; observes that
people are interested in what he is at, blushes; fumbles at the quarter
again--blushes--puts his forefinger carefully, slowly down, to make sure
of his aim--pushes the coin toward the bar-keeper, and says with a sigh:
"Gimme a cigar!"
Naturally, another gentleman present told about another drunken man. He
said he reeled toward home late at night; made a mistake and entered the
wrong gate; thought he saw a dog on the stoop; and it was--an iron one.
He stopped and considered; wondered if it was a dangerous dog; ventured
to say "Be (hic) begone!" No effect. Then he approached warily, and
adopted conciliation; pursed up his lips and tried to whistle, but
failed; still approached, saying, "Poor dog!--doggy, doggy, doggy!--poor
doggy-dog!" Got up on the stoop, still petting with fond names; till
master of the advantages; then exclaimed, "Leave, you thief!"--planted a
vindictive kick in his ribs, and went head-over-heels overboard, of
course. A pause; a sigh or two of pain, and then a remark in a
reflective voice:
"Awful solid dog. What could he ben eating? ('ic!) Rocks, p'raps.
Such animals is dangerous.--' At's what I say--they're dangerous. If a
man--('ic!)--if a man wants to feed a dog on rocks, let him feed him on
rocks; 'at's all right; but let him keep him at home--not have him layin'
round promiscuous, where ('ic!) where people's liable to stumble over him
when they ain't noticin'!"
It was not without regret that I took a last look at the tiny flag (it
was thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide) fluttering like a lady's
handkerchief from the topmost peak of Mount Davidson, two thousand feet
above Virginia's roofs, and felt that doubtless I was bidding a permanent
farewell to a city which had afforded me the most vigorous enjoyment of
life I had ever experienced. And this reminds me of an incident which
the dullest memory Virginia could boast at the time it happened must
vividly recall, at times, till its possessor dies. Late one summer
afternoon we had a rain shower.
That was astonishing enough, in itself, to set the whole town buzzing,
for it only rains (during a week or two weeks) in the winter in Nevada,
and even then not enough at a time to make it worth while for any
merchant to keep umbrellas for sale. But the rain was not the chief
wonder. It only lasted five or ten minutes; while the people were still
talking about it all the heavens gathered to themselves a dense blackness
as of midnight. All the vast eastern front of Mount Davidson,
over-looking the city, put on such a funereal gloom that only the
nearness and solidity of the mountain made its outlines even faintly
distinguishable from the dead blackness of the heavens they rested
against. This unaccustomed sight turned all eyes toward the mountain;
and as they looked, a little tongue of rich golden flame was seen waving
and quivering in the heart of the midnight, away up on the extreme
summit! In a few minutes the streets were packed with people, gazing with
hardly an uttered word, at the one brilliant mote in the brooding world
of darkness. It flicked like a candle-flame, and looked no larger; but
with such a background it was wonderfully bright, small as it was. It
was the flag!--though no one suspected it at first, it seemed so like a
supernatural visitor of some kind--a mysterious messenger of good
tidings, some were fain to believe. It was the nation's emblem
transfigured by the departing rays of a sun that was entirely palled from
view; and on no other object did the glory fall, in all the broad
panorama of mountain ranges and deserts. Not even upon the staff of the
flag--for that, a needle in the distance at any time, was now untouched
by the light and undistinguishable in the gloom. For a whole hour the
weird visitor winked and burned in its lofty solitude, and still the
thousands of uplifted eyes watched it with fascinated interest. How the
people were wrought up! The superstition grew apace that this was a
mystic courier come with great news from the war--the poetry of the idea
excusing and commending it--and on it spread, from heart to heart, from
lip to lip and from street to street, till there was a general impulse to
have out the military and welcome the bright waif with a salvo of
artillery!
And all that time one sorely tried man, the telegraph operator sworn to
official secrecy, had to lock his lips and chain his tongue with a
silence that was like to rend them; for he, and he only, of all the
speculating multitude, knew the great things this sinking sun had seen
that day in the east--Vicksburg fallen, and the Union arms victorious at
Gettysburg!
But for the journalistic monopoly that forbade the slightest revealment
of eastern news till a day after its publication in the California
papers, the glorified flag on Mount Davidson would have been saluted and
re-saluted, that memorable evening, as long as there was a charge of
powder to thunder with; the city would have been illuminated, and every
man that had any respect for himself would have got drunk,--as was the
custom of the country on all occasions of public moment. Even at this
distant day I cannot think of this needlessly marred supreme opportunity
without regret. What a time we might have had!
CHAPTER LVI.
We rumbled over the plains and valleys, climbed the Sierras to the
clouds, and looked down upon summer-clad California. And I will remark
here, in passing, that all scenery in California requires distance to
give it its highest charm. The mountains are imposing in their sublimity
and their majesty of form and altitude, from any point of view--but one
must have distance to soften their ruggedness and enrich their tintings;
a Californian forest is best at a little distance, for there is a sad
poverty of variety in species, the trees being chiefly of one monotonous
family--redwood, pine, spruce, fir--and so, at a near view there is a
wearisome sameness of attitude in their rigid arms, stretched down ward
and outward in one continued and reiterated appeal to all men to "Sh!
--don't say a word!--you might disturb somebody!" Close at hand, too,
there is a reliefless and relentless smell of pitch and turpentine; there
is a ceaseless melancholy in their sighing and complaining foliage; one
walks over a soundless carpet of beaten yellow bark and dead spines of
the foliage till he feels like a wandering spirit bereft of a footfall;
he tires of the endless tufts of needles and yearns for substantial,
shapely leaves; he looks for moss and grass to loll upon, and finds none,
for where there is no bark there is naked clay and dirt, enemies to
pensive musing and clean apparel. Often a grassy plain in California, is
what it should be, but often, too, it is best contemplated at a distance,
because although its grass blades are tall, they stand up vindictively
straight and self-sufficient, and are unsociably wide apart, with
uncomely spots of barren sand between.
One of the queerest things I know of, is to hear tourists from "the
States" go into ecstasies over the loveliness of "ever-blooming
California." And they always do go into that sort of ecstasies. But
perhaps they would modify them if they knew how old Californians, with
the memory full upon them of the dust-covered and questionable summer
greens of Californian "verdure," stand astonished, and filled with
worshipping admiration, in the presence of the lavish richness, the
brilliant green, the infinite freshness, the spend-thrift variety of form
and species and foliage that make an Eastern landscape a vision of
Paradise itself. The idea of a man falling into raptures over grave and
sombre California, when that man has seen New England's meadow-expanses
and her maples, oaks and cathedral-windowed elms decked in summer attire,
or the opaline splendors of autumn descending upon her forests, comes
very near being funny--would be, in fact, but that it is so pathetic.
No land with an unvarying climate can be very beautiful. The tropics are
not, for all the sentiment that is wasted on them. They seem beautiful
at first, but sameness impairs the charm by and by. Change is the
handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with. The land that has
four well-defined seasons, cannot lack beauty, or pall with monotony.
Each season brings a world of enjoyment and interest in the watching of
its unfolding, its gradual, harmonious development, its culminating
graces--and just as one begins to tire of it, it passes away and a
radical change comes, with new witcheries and new glories in its train.
And I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in its
turn, seems the loveliest.
San Francisco, a truly fascinating city to live in, is stately and
handsome at a fair distance, but close at hand one notes that the
architecture is mostly old-fashioned, many streets are made up of
decaying, smoke-grimed, wooden houses, and the barren sand-hills toward
the outskirts obtrude themselves too prominently. Even the kindly
climate is sometimes pleasanter when read about than personally
experienced, for a lovely, cloudless sky wears out its welcome by and by,
and then when the longed for rain does come it stays. Even the playful
earthquake is better contemplated at a dis----
However there are varying opinions about that.
The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The
thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly
changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and
Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing.
You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, just
the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the
other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as
pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is
doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a
good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if
you choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there. It has
only snowed twice in San Francisco in nineteen years, and then it only
remained on the ground long enough to astonish the children, and set them
to wondering what the feathery stuff was.
During eight months of the year, straight along, the skies are bright and
cloudless, and never a drop of rain falls. But when the other four
months come along, you will need to go and steal an umbrella. Because
you will require it. Not just one day, but one hundred and twenty days
in hardly varying succession. When you want to go visiting, or attend
church, or the theatre, you never look up at the clouds to see whether it
is likely to rain or not--you look at the almanac. If it is Winter, it
will rain--and if it is Summer, it won't rain, and you cannot help it.
You never need a lightning-rod, because it never thunders and it never
lightens. And after you have listened for six or eight weeks, every
night, to the dismal monotony of those quiet rains, you will wish in your
heart the thunder would leap and crash and roar along those drowsy skies
once, and make everything alive--you will wish the prisoned lightnings
would cleave the dull firmament asunder and light it with a blinding
glare for one little instant. You would give anything to hear the old
familiar thunder again and see the lightning strike somebody. And along
in the Summer, when you have suffered about four months of lustrous,
pitiless sunshine, you are ready to go down on your knees and plead for
rain--hail--snow--thunder and lightning--anything to break the monotony
--you will take an earthquake, if you cannot do any better. And the
chances are that you'll get it, too.
San Francisco is built on sand hills, but they are prolific sand hills.
They yield a generous vegetation. All the rare flowers which people in
"the States" rear with such patient care in parlor flower-pots and
green-houses, flourish luxuriantly in the open air there all the year
round. Calla lilies, all sorts of geraniums, passion flowers, moss
roses--I do not know the names of a tenth part of them. I only know that
while New Yorkers are burdened with banks and drifts of snow,
Californians are burdened with banks and drifts of flowers, if they only
keep their hands off and let them grow. And I have heard that they have
also that rarest and most curious of all the flowers, the beautiful
Espiritu Santo, as the Spaniards call it--or flower of the Holy Spirit
--though I thought it grew only in Central America--down on the Isthmus.
In its cup is the daintiest little facsimile of a dove, as pure as snow.
The Spaniards have a superstitious reverence for it. The blossom has
been conveyed to the States, submerged in ether; and the bulb has been
taken thither also, but every attempt to make it bloom after it arrived,
has failed.
I have elsewhere spoken of the endless Winter of Mono, California, and
but this moment of the eternal Spring of San Francisco. Now if we travel
a hundred miles in a straight line, we come to the eternal Summer of
Sacramento. One never sees Summer-clothing or mosquitoes in San
Francisco--but they can be found in Sacramento. Not always and
unvaryingly, but about one hundred and forty-three months out of twelve
years, perhaps. Flowers bloom there, always, the reader can easily
believe--people suffer and sweat, and swear, morning, noon and night, and
wear out their stanchest energies fanning themselves. It gets hot there,
but if you go down to Fort Yuma you will find it hotter. Fort Yuma is
probably the hottest place on earth. The thermometer stays at one
hundred and twenty in the shade there all the time--except when it varies
and goes higher. It is a U.S. military post, and its occupants get so
used to the terrific heat that they suffer without it. There is a
tradition (attributed to John Phenix [It has been purloined by fifty
different scribblers who were too poor to invent a fancy but not ashamed
to steal one.--M. T.]) that a very, very wicked soldier died there,
once, and of course, went straight to the hottest corner of perdition,
--and the next day he telegraphed back for his blankets. There is no doubt
about the truth of this statement--there can be no doubt about it. I
have seen the place where that soldier used to board. In Sacramento it
is fiery Summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries
and ice-cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at
eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon
put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner
Lake, seven thousand feet above the valley, among snow banks fifteen feet
deep, and in the shadow of grand mountain peaks that lift their frosty
crags ten thousand feet above the level of the sea.
There is a transition for you! Where will you find another like it in
the Western hemisphere? And some of us have swept around snow-walled
curves of the Pacific Railroad in that vicinity, six thousand feet above
the sea, and looked down as the birds do, upon the deathless Summer of
the Sacramento Valley, with its fruitful fields, its feathery foliage,
its silver streams, all slumbering in the mellow haze of its enchanted
atmosphere, and all infinitely softened and spiritualized by distance--a
dreamy, exquisite glimpse of fairyland, made all the more charming and
striking that it was caught through a forbidden gateway of ice and snow,
and savage crags and precipices.
CHAPTER LVII.
It was in this Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the
most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see,
in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured
by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see
such disfigurements far and wide over California--and in some such
places, where only meadows and forests are visible--not a living
creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a
sound, not even a whisper to disturb the Sabbath stillness--you will find
it hard to believe that there stood at one time a fiercely-flourishing
little city, of two thousand or three thousand souls, with its newspaper,
fire company, brass band, volunteer militia, bank, hotels, noisy Fourth
of July processions and speeches, gambling hells crammed with tobacco
smoke, profanity, and rough-bearded men of all nations and colors, with
tables heaped with gold dust sufficient for the revenues of a German
principality--streets crowded and rife with business--town lots worth
four hundred dollars a front foot--labor, laughter, music, dancing,
swearing, fighting, shooting, stabbing--a bloody inquest and a man for
breakfast every morning--everything that delights and adorns existence
--all the appointments and appurtenances of a thriving and prosperous and
promising young city,--and now nothing is left of it all but a lifeless,
homeless solitude. The men are gone, the houses have vanished, even the
name of the place is forgotten. In no other land, in modern times, have
towns so absolutely died and disappeared, as in the old mining regions of
California.
It was a driving, vigorous, restless population in those days. It was a
curious population. It was the only population of the kind that the
world has ever seen gathered together, and it is not likely that the
world will ever see its like again. For observe, it was an assemblage of
two hundred thousand young men--not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved
weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves, brimful of
push and energy, and royally endowed with every attribute that goes to
make up a peerless and magnificent manhood--the very pick and choice of
the world's glorious ones. No women, no children, no gray and stooping
veterans,--none but erect, bright-eyed, quick-moving, strong-handed young
giants--the strangest population, the finest population, the most gallant
host that ever trooped down the startled solitudes of an unpeopled land.
And where are they now? Scattered to the ends of the earth--or
prematurely aged and decrepit--or shot or stabbed in street affrays--or
dead of disappointed hopes and broken hearts--all gone, or nearly all
--victims devoted upon the altar of the golden calf--the noblest holocaust
that ever wafted its sacrificial incense heavenward. It is pitiful to
think upon.
It was a splendid population--for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained
sloths staid at home--you never find that sort of people among pioneers
--you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that
population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding
enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring
and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this
day--and when she projects a new surprise, the grave world smiles as
usual, and says "Well, that is California all over."
But they were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in gold, whisky,
fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner
raked from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and
what with the gambling dens and the other entertainments, he hadn't a
cent the next morning, if he had any sort of luck. They cooked their own
bacon and beans, sewed on their own buttons, washed their own shirts
--blue woollen ones; and if a man wanted a fight on his hands without any
annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in public in a white shirt
or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated. For those people
hated aristocrats. They had a particular and malignant animosity toward
what they called a "biled shirt."
It was a wild, free, disorderly, grotesque society! Men--only swarming
hosts of stalwart men--nothing juvenile, nothing feminine, visible
anywhere!
In those days miners would flock in crowds to catch a glimpse of that
rare and blessed spectacle, a woman! Old inhabitants tell how, in a
certain camp, the news went abroad early in the morning that a woman was
come! They had seen a calico dress hanging out of a wagon down at the
camping-ground--sign of emigrants from over the great plains. Everybody
went down there, and a shout went up when an actual, bona fide dress was
discovered fluttering in the wind! The male emigrant was visible. The
miners said:
"Fetch her out!"
He said: "It is my wife, gentlemen--she is sick--we have been robbed of
money, provisions, everything, by the Indians--we want to rest."
"Fetch her out! We've got to see her!"
"But, gentlemen, the poor thing, she--"
"FETCH HER OUT!"
He "fetched her out," and they swung their hats and sent up three rousing
cheers and a tiger; and they crowded around and gazed at her, and touched
her dress, and listened to her voice with the look of men who listened to
a memory rather than a present reality--and then they collected
twenty-five hundred dollars in gold and gave it to the man, and swung
their hats again and gave three more cheers, and went home satisfied.
Once I dined in San Francisco with the family of a pioneer, and talked
with his daughter, a young lady whose first experience in San Francisco
was an adventure, though she herself did not remember it, as she was only
two or three years old at the time. Her father said that, after landing
from the ship, they were walking up the street, a servant leading the
party with the little girl in her arms. And presently a huge miner,
bearded, belted, spurred, and bristling with deadly weapons--just down
from a long campaign in the mountains, evidently-barred the way, stopped
the servant, and stood gazing, with a face all alive with gratification
and astonishment. Then he said, reverently:
"Well, if it ain't a child!" And then he snatched a little leather sack
out of his pocket and said to the servant:
"There's a hundred and fifty dollars in dust, there, and I'll give it to
you to let me kiss the child!"
That anecdote is true.
But see how things change. Sitting at that dinner-table, listening to
that anecdote, if I had offered double the money for the privilege of
kissing the same child, I would have been refused. Seventeen added years
have far more than doubled the price.
And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the
Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single
file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in
the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation--a genuine, live
Woman! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eye
to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing
flap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other.
And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, I
voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.--M.T.] years old, and hadn't a
tooth in her head.
CHAPTER LVIII.
For a few months I enjoyed what to me was an entirely new phase of
existence--a butterfly idleness; nothing to do, nobody to be responsible
to, and untroubled with financial uneasiness. I fell in love with the
most cordial and sociable city in the Union. After the sage-brush and
alkali deserts of Washoe, San Francisco was Paradise to me. I lived at
the best hotel, exhibited my clothes in the most conspicuous places,
infested the opera, and learned to seem enraptured with music which
oftener afflicted my ignorant ear than enchanted it, if I had had the
vulgar honesty to confess it. However, I suppose I was not greatly worse
than the most of my countrymen in that. I had longed to be a butterfly,
and I was one at last. I attended private parties in sumptuous evening
dress, simpered and aired my graces like a born beau, and polkad and
schottisched with a step peculiar to myself--and the kangaroo. In a
word, I kept the due state of a man worth a hundred thousand dollars
(prospectively,) and likely to reach absolute affluence when that
silver-mine sale should be ultimately achieved in the East. I spent
money with a free hand, and meantime watched the stock sales with an
interested eye and looked to see what might happen in Nevada.
Something very important happened. The property holders of Nevada voted
against the State Constitution; but the folks who had nothing to lose
were in the majority, and carried the measure over their heads. But
after all it did not immediately look like a disaster, though
unquestionably it was one I hesitated, calculated the chances, and then
concluded not to sell. Stocks went on rising; speculation went mad;
bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, laborers, even the very
washerwomen and servant girls, were putting up their earnings on silver
stocks, and every sun that rose in the morning went down on paupers
enriched and rich men beggared. What a gambling carnival it was! Gould
and Curry soared to six thousand three hundred dollars a foot! And then
--all of a sudden, out went the bottom and everything and everybody went
to ruin and destruction! The wreck was complete.
The bubble scarcely left a microscopic moisture behind it. I was an
early beggar and a thorough one. My hoarded stocks were not worth the
paper they were printed on. I threw them all away. I, the cheerful
idiot that had been squandering money like water, and thought myself
beyond the reach of misfortune, had not now as much as fifty dollars when
I gathered together my various debts and paid them. I removed from the
hotel to a very private boarding house. I took a reporter's berth and
went to work. I was not entirely broken in spirit, for I was building
confidently on the sale of the silver mine in the east. But I could not
hear from Dan. My letters miscarried or were not answered.
One day I did not feel vigorous and remained away from the office. The
next day I went down toward noon as usual, and found a note on my desk
which had been there twenty-four hours. It was signed "Marshall"--the
Virginia reporter--and contained a request that I should call at the
hotel and see him and a friend or two that night, as they would sail for
the east in the morning. A postscript added that their errand was a big
mining speculation! I was hardly ever so sick in my life. I abused
myself for leaving Virginia and entrusting to another man a matter I
ought to have attended to myself; I abused myself for remaining away from
the office on the one day of all the year that I should have been there.
And thus berating myself I trotted a mile to the steamer wharf and
arrived just in time to be too late. The ship was in the stream and
under way.
I comforted myself with the thought that may be the speculation would
amount to nothing--poor comfort at best--and then went back to my
slavery, resolved to put up with my thirty-five dollars a week and forget
all about it.
A month afterward I enjoyed my first earthquake. It was one which was
long called the "great" earthquake, and is doubtless so distinguished
till this day. It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I was
coming down Third street. The only objects in motion anywhere in sight
in that thickly built and populous quarter, were a man in a buggy behind
me, and a street car wending slowly up the cross street. Otherwise, all
was solitude and a Sabbath stillness. As I turned the corner, around a
frame house, there was a great rattle and jar, and it occurred to me that
here was an item!--no doubt a fight in that house. Before I could turn
and seek the door, there came a really terrific shock; the ground seemed
to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down,
and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together.
I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow. I knew what it was,
now, and from mere reportorial instinct, nothing else, took out my watch
and noted the time of day; at that moment a third and still severer shock
came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing,
I saw a sight! The entire front of a tall four-story brick building in
Third street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the
street, raising a dust like a great volume of smoke! And here came the
buggy--overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it the
vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards of
street.
One could have fancied that somebody had fired a charge of chair-rounds
and rags down the thoroughfare. The street car had stopped, the horses
were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends,
and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side
of the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an
impaled madman. Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could
reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could
execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people
stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded.
Never was solemn solitude turned into teeming life quicker.
Of the wonders wrought by "the great earthquake," these were all that
came under my eye; but the tricks it did, elsewhere, and far and wide
over the town, made toothsome gossip for nine days.
The destruction of property was trifling--the injury to it was
wide-spread and somewhat serious.
The "curiosities" of the earthquake were simply endless. Gentlemen and
ladies who were sick, or were taking a siesta, or had dissipated till a
late hour and were making up lost sleep, thronged into the public streets
in all sorts of queer apparel, and some without any at all. One woman
who had been washing a naked child, ran down the street holding it by the
ankles as if it were a dressed turkey. Prominent citizens who were
supposed to keep the Sabbath strictly, rushed out of saloons in their
shirt-sleeves, with billiard cues in their hands. Dozens of men with
necks swathed in napkins, rushed from barber-shops, lathered to the eyes
or with one cheek clean shaved and the other still bearing a hairy
stubble. Horses broke from stables, and a frightened dog rushed up a
short attic ladder and out on to a roof, and when his scare was over had
not the nerve to go down again the same way he had gone up.
A prominent editor flew down stairs, in the principal hotel, with nothing
on but one brief undergarment--met a chambermaid, and exclaimed:
"Oh, what shall I do! Where shall I go!"
She responded with naive serenity:
"If you have no choice, you might try a clothing-store!"
A certain foreign consul's lady was the acknowledged leader of fashion,
and every time she appeared in anything new or extraordinary, the ladies
in the vicinity made a raid on their husbands' purses and arrayed
themselves similarly. One man who had suffered considerably and growled
accordingly, was standing at the window when the shocks came, and the
next instant the consul's wife, just out of the bath, fled by with no
other apology for clothing than--a bath-towel! The sufferer rose
superior to the terrors of the earthquake, and said to his wife:
"Now that is something like! Get out your towel my dear!"
The plastering that fell from ceilings in San Francisco that day, would
have covered several acres of ground. For some days afterward, groups of
eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long
zig-zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground. Four feet of
the tops of three chimneys on one house were broken square off and turned
around in such a way as to completely stop the draft.
A crack a hundred feet long gaped open six inches wide in the middle of
one street and then shut together again with such force, as to ridge up
the meeting earth like a slender grave. A lady sitting in her rocking
and quaking parlor, saw the wall part at the ceiling, open and shut
twice, like a mouth, and then-drop the end of a brick on the floor like a
tooth. She was a woman easily disgusted with foolishness, and she arose
and went out of there. One lady who was coming down stairs was
astonished to see a bronze Hercules lean forward on its pedestal as if to
strike her with its club. They both reached the bottom of the flight at
the same time,--the woman insensible from the fright. Her child, born
some little time afterward, was club-footed. However--on second
thought,--if the reader sees any coincidence in this, he must do it at
his own risk.
The first shock brought down two or three huge organ-pipes in one of the
churches. The minister, with uplifted hands, was just closing the
services. He glanced up, hesitated, and said:
"However, we will omit the benediction!"--and the next instant there was
a vacancy in the atmosphere where he had stood.
After the first shock, an Oakland minister said:
"Keep your seats! There is no better place to die than this"--
And added, after the third:
"But outside is good enough!" He then skipped out at the back door.
Such another destruction of mantel ornaments and toilet bottles as the
earthquake created, San Francisco never saw before. There was hardly a
girl or a matron in the city but suffered losses of this kind. Suspended
pictures were thrown down, but oftener still, by a curious freak of the
earthquake's humor, they were whirled completely around with their faces
to the wall! There was great difference of opinion, at first, as to the
course or direction the earthquake traveled, but water that splashed out
of various tanks and buckets settled that. Thousands of people were made
so sea-sick by the rolling and pitching of floors and streets that they
were weak and bed-ridden for hours, and some few for even days
afterward.--Hardly an individual escaped nausea entirely.
The queer earthquake--episodes that formed the staple of San Francisco
gossip for the next week would fill a much larger book than this, and so
I will diverge from the subject.
By and by, in the due course of things, I picked up a copy of the
Enterprise one day, and fell under this cruel blow:
NEVADA MINES IN NEW YORK.--G. M. Marshall, Sheba Hurs and Amos H.
Rose, who left San Francisco last July for New York City, with ores
from mines in Pine Wood District, Humboldt County, and on the Reese
River range, have disposed of a mine containing six thousand feet
and called the Pine Mountains Consolidated, for the sum of
$3,000,000. The stamps on the deed, which is now on its way to
Humboldt County, from New York, for record, amounted to $3,000,
which is said to be the largest amount of stamps ever placed on one
document. A working capital of $1,000,000 has been paid into the
treasury, and machinery has already been purchased for a large
quartz mill, which will be put up as soon as possible. The stock in
this company is all full paid and entirely unassessable. The ores
of the mines in this district somewhat resemble those of the Sheba
mine in Humboldt. Sheba Hurst, the discoverer of the mines, with
his friends corralled all the best leads and all the land and timber
they desired before making public their whereabouts. Ores from
there, assayed in this city, showed them to be exceedingly rich in
silver and gold--silver predominating. There is an abundance of
wood and water in the District. We are glad to know that New York
capital has been enlisted in the development of the mines of this
region. Having seen the ores and assays, we are satisfied that the
mines of the District are very valuable--anything but wild-cat.
Once more native imbecility had carried the day, and I had lost a
million! It was the "blind lead" over again.
Let us not dwell on this miserable matter. If I were inventing these
things, I could be wonderfully humorous over them; but they are too true
to be talked of with hearty levity, even at this distant day. [True, and
yet not exactly as given in the above figures, possibly. I saw Marshall,
months afterward, and although he had plenty of money he did not claim to
have captured an entire million. In fact I gathered that he had not then
received $50,000. Beyond that figure his fortune appeared to consist of
uncertain vast expectations rather than prodigious certainties. However,
when the above item appeared in print I put full faith in it, and
incontinently wilted and went to seed under it.] Suffice it that I so
lost heart, and so yielded myself up to repinings and sighings and
foolish regrets, that I neglected my duties and became about worthless,
as a reporter for a brisk newspaper. And at last one of the proprietors
took me aside, with a charity I still remember with considerable respect,
and gave me an opportunity to resign my berth and so save myself the
disgrace of a dismissal.
CHAPTER LIX.
For a time I wrote literary screeds for the Golden Era. C. H. Webb had
established a very excellent literary weekly called the Californian, but
high merit was no guaranty of success; it languished, and he sold out to
three printers, and Bret Harte became editor at $20 a week, and I was
employed to contribute an article a week at $12. But the journal still
languished, and the printers sold out to Captain Ogden, a rich man and a
pleasant gentleman who chose to amuse himself with such an expensive
luxury without much caring about the cost of it. When he grew tired of
the novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a
peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these
things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs
that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble
into such a variety of queer vicissitudes in any other country.
For two months my sole occupation was avoiding acquaintances; for during
that time I did not earn a penny, or buy an article of any kind, or pay
my board. I became a very adept at "slinking." I slunk from back street
to back street, I slunk away from approaching faces that looked familiar,
I slunk to my meals, ate them humbly and with a mute apology for every
mouthful I robbed my generous landlady of, and at midnight, after
wanderings that were but slinkings away from cheerfulness and light, I
slunk to my bed. I felt meaner, and lowlier and more despicable than the
worms. During all this time I had but one piece of money--a silver ten
cent piece--and I held to it and would not spend it on any account, lest
the consciousness coming strong upon me that I was entirely penniless,
might suggest suicide. I had pawned every thing but the clothes I had
on; so I clung to my dime desperately, till it was smooth with handling.
However, I am forgetting. I did have one other occupation beside that of
"slinking." It was the entertaining of a collector (and being
entertained by him,) who had in his hands the Virginia banker's bill for
forty-six dollars which I had loaned my schoolmate, the "Prodigal." This
man used to call regularly once a week and dun me, and sometimes oftener.
He did it from sheer force of habit, for he knew he could get nothing.
He would get out his bill, calculate the interest for me, at five per
cent a month, and show me clearly that there was no attempt at fraud in
it and no mistakes; and then plead, and argue and dun with all his might
for any sum--any little trifle--even a dollar--even half a dollar, on
account. Then his duty was accomplished and his conscience free. He
immediately dropped the subject there always; got out a couple of cigars
and divided, put his feet in the window, and then we would have a long,
luxurious talk about everything and everybody, and he would furnish me a
world of curious dunning adventures out of the ample store in his memory.
By and by he would clap his hat on his head, shake hands and say briskly:
"Well, business is business--can't stay with you always!"--and was off in
a second.
The idea of pining for a dun! And yet I used to long for him to come,
and would get as uneasy as any mother if the day went by without his
visit, when I was expecting him. But he never collected that bill, at
last nor any part of it. I lived to pay it to the banker myself.
Misery loves company. Now and then at night, in out-of-the way, dimly
lighted places, I found myself happening on another child of misfortune.
He looked so seedy and forlorn, so homeless and friendless and forsaken,
that I yearned toward him as a brother. I wanted to claim kinship with
him and go about and enjoy our wretchedness together. The drawing toward
each other must have been mutual; at any rate we got to falling together
oftener, though still seemingly by accident; and although we did not
speak or evince any recognition, I think the dull anxiety passed out of
both of us when we saw each other, and then for several hours we would
idle along contentedly, wide apart, and glancing furtively in at home
lights and fireside gatherings, out of the night shadows, and very much
enjoying our dumb companionship.
Finally we spoke, and were inseparable after that. For our woes were
identical, almost. He had been a reporter too, and lost his berth, and
this was his experience, as nearly as I can recollect it. After losing
his berth he had gone down, down, down, with never a halt: from a
boarding house on Russian Hill to a boarding house in Kearney street;
from thence to Dupont; from thence to a low sailor den; and from thence
to lodgings in goods boxes and empty hogsheads near the wharves. Then;
for a while, he had gained a meagre living by sewing up bursted sacks of
grain on the piers; when that failed he had found food here and there as
chance threw it in his way. He had ceased to show his face in daylight,
now, for a reporter knows everybody, rich and poor, high and low, and
cannot well avoid familiar faces in the broad light of day.
This mendicant Blucher--I call him that for convenience--was a splendid
creature. He was full of hope, pluck and philosophy; he was well read
and a man of cultivated taste; he had a bright wit and was a master of
satire; his kindliness and his generous spirit made him royal in my eyes
and changed his curb-stone seat to a throne and his damaged hat to a
crown.
He had an adventure, once, which sticks fast in my memory as the most
pleasantly grotesque that ever touched my sympathies. He had been
without a penny for two months. He had shirked about obscure streets,
among friendly dim lights, till the thing had become second nature to
him. But at last he was driven abroad in daylight. The cause was
sufficient; he had not tasted food for forty-eight hours, and he could
not endure the misery of his hunger in idle hiding. He came along a back
street, glowering at the loaves in bake-shop windows, and feeling that he
could trade his life away for a morsel to eat. The sight of the bread
doubled his hunger; but it was good to look at it, any how, and imagine
what one might do if one only had it.
Presently, in the middle of the street he saw a shining spot--looked
again--did not, and could not, believe his eyes--turned away, to try
them, then looked again. It was a verity--no vain, hunger-inspired
delusion--it was a silver dime!
He snatched it--gloated over it; doubted it--bit it--found it genuine
--choked his heart down, and smothered a halleluiah. Then he looked
around--saw that nobody was looking at him--threw the dime down where it
was before--walked away a few steps, and approached again, pretending he
did not know it was there, so that he could re-enjoy the luxury of
finding it. He walked around it, viewing it from different points; then
sauntered about with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the signs
and now and then glancing at it and feeling the old thrill again.
Finally he took it up, and went away, fondling it in his pocket. He
idled through unfrequented streets, stopping in doorways and corners to
take it out and look at it. By and by he went home to his lodgings--an
empty queens-ware hogshead,--and employed himself till night trying to
make up his mind what to buy with it. But it was hard to do. To get the
most for it was the idea. He knew that at the Miner's Restaurant he
could get a plate of beans and a piece of bread for ten cents; or a
fish-ball and some few trifles, but they gave "no bread with one
fish-ball" there. At French Pete's he could get a veal cutlet, plain,
and some radishes and bread, for ten cents; or a cup of coffee--a pint at
least--and a slice of bread; but the slice was not thick enough by the
eighth of an inch, and sometimes they were still more criminal than that
in the cutting of it. At seven o'clock his hunger was wolfish; and still
his mind was not made up. He turned out and went up Merchant street,
still ciphering; and chewing a bit of stick, as is the way of starving
men.
He passed before the lights of Martin's restaurant, the most aristocratic
in the city, and stopped. It was a place where he had often dined, in
better days, and Martin knew him well. Standing aside, just out of the
range of the light, he worshiped the quails and steaks in the show
window, and imagined that may be the fairy times were not gone yet and
some prince in disguise would come along presently and tell him to go in
there and take whatever he wanted. He chewed his stick with a hungry
interest as he warmed to his subject. Just at this juncture he was
conscious of some one at his side, sure enough; and then a finger touched
his arm. He looked up, over his shoulder, and saw an apparition--a very
allegory of Hunger! It was a man six feet high, gaunt, unshaven, hung
with rags; with a haggard face and sunken cheeks, and eyes that pleaded
piteously. This phantom said:
"Come with me--please."
He locked his arm in Blucher's and walked up the street to where the
passengers were few and the light not strong, and then facing about, put
out his hands in a beseeching way, and said:
"Friend--stranger--look at me! Life is easy to you--you go about, placid
and content, as I did once, in my day--you have been in there, and eaten
your sumptuous supper, and picked your teeth, and hummed your tune, and
thought your pleasant thoughts, and said to yourself it is a good world
--but you've never suffered! You don't know what trouble is--you don't
know what misery is--nor hunger! Look at me! Stranger have pity on a
poor friendless, homeless dog! As God is my judge, I have not tasted
food for eight and forty hours!--look in my eyes and see if I lie! Give
me the least trifle in the world to keep me from starving--anything
--twenty-five cents! Do it, stranger--do it, please. It will be nothing
to you, but life to me. Do it, and I will go down on my knees and lick
the dust before you! I will kiss your footprints--I will worship the
very ground you walk on! Only twenty-five cents! I am famishing
--perishing--starving by inches! For God's sake don't desert me!"
Blucher was bewildered--and touched, too--stirred to the depths. He
reflected. Thought again. Then an idea struck him, and he said:
"Come with me."
He took the outcast's arm, walked him down to Martin's restaurant, seated
him at a marble table, placed the bill of fare before him, and said:
"Order what you want, friend. Charge it to me, Mr. Martin."
"All right, Mr. Blucher," said Martin.
Then Blucher stepped back and leaned against the counter and watched the
man stow away cargo after cargo of buckwheat cakes at seventy-five cents
a plate; cup after cup of coffee, and porter house steaks worth two
dollars apiece; and when six dollars and a half's worth of destruction
had been accomplished, and the stranger's hunger appeased, Blucher went
down to French Pete's, bought a veal cutlet plain, a slice of bread, and
three radishes, with his dime, and set to and feasted like a king!
Take the episode all around, it was as odd as any that can be culled from
the myriad curiosities of Californian life, perhaps.
CHAPTER LX.
By and by, an old friend of mine, a miner, came down from one of the
decayed mining camps of Tuolumne, California, and I went back with him.
We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five
other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet a
flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this
grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years
before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teeming
hive, the centre of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into
decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared--streets, dwellings, shops,
everything--and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth
and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The mere
handful of miners still remaining, had seen the town spring up spread,
grow and flourish in its pride; and they had seen it sicken and die, and
pass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their zest of
life. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and ceased
to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes toward
their early homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the world and
been forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs and
railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the
events that stirred the globe's great populations, dead to the common
interests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their kind.
It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholy
exile that fancy can imagine.--One of my associates in this locality, for
two or three months, was a man who had had a university education; but
now for eighteen years he had decayed there by inches, a bearded,
rough-clad, clay-stained miner, and at times, among his sighings and
soliloquizings, he unconsciously interjected vaguely remembered Latin and
Greek sentences--dead and musty tongues, meet vehicles for the thoughts
of one whose dreams were all of the past, whose life was a failure; a
tired man, burdened with the present, and indifferent to the future; a
man without ties, hopes, interests, waiting for rest and the end.
In that one little corner of California is found a species of mining
which is seldom or never mentioned in print. It is called "pocket
mining" and I am not aware that any of it is done outside of that little
corner. The gold is not evenly distributed through the surface dirt, as
in ordinary placer mines, but is collected in little spots, and they are
very wide apart and exceedingly hard to find, but when you do find one
you reap a rich and sudden harvest. There are not now more than twenty
pocket miners in that entire little region. I think I know every one of
them personally. I have known one of them to hunt patiently about the
hill-sides every day for eight months without finding gold enough to make
a snuff-box--his grocery bill running up relentlessly all the time--and
then find a pocket and take out of it two thousand dollars in two dips of
his shovel. I have known him to take out three thousand dollars in two
hours, and go and pay up every cent of his indebtedness, then enter on a
dazzling spree that finished the last of his treasure before the night
was gone. And the next day he bought his groceries on credit as usual,
and shouldered his pan and shovel and went off to the hills hunting
pockets again happy and content. This is the most fascinating of all the
different kinds of mining, and furnishes a very handsome percentage of
victims to the lunatic asylum.
Pocket hunting is an ingenious process. You take a spadeful of earth
from the hill-side and put it in a large tin pan and dissolve and wash it
gradually away till nothing is left but a teaspoonful of fine sediment.
Whatever gold was in that earth has remained, because, being the
heaviest, it has sought the bottom. Among the sediment you will find
half a dozen yellow particles no larger than pin-heads. You are
delighted. You move off to one side and wash another pan. If you find
gold again, you move to one side further, and wash a third pan. If you
find no gold this time, you are delighted again, because you know you are
on the right scent.
You lay an imaginary plan, shaped like a fan, with its handle up the
hill--for just where the end of the handle is, you argue that the rich
deposit lies hidden, whose vagrant grains of gold have escaped and been
washed down the hill, spreading farther and farther apart as they
wandered. And so you proceed up the hill, washing the earth and
narrowing your lines every time the absence of gold in the pan shows that
you are outside the spread of the fan; and at last, twenty yards up the
hill your lines have converged to a point--a single foot from that point
you cannot find any gold. Your breath comes short and quick, you are
feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you
pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down,
they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic
interest--and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth
and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of
gold. Sometimes that one spadeful is all--$500. Sometimes the nest
contains $10,000, and it takes you three or four days to get it all out.
The pocket-miners tell of one nest that yielded $60,000 and two men
exhausted it in two weeks, and then sold the ground for $10,000 to a
party who never got $300 out of it afterward.
The hogs are good pocket hunters. All the summer they root around the
bushes, and turn up a thousand little piles of dirt, and then the miners
long for the rains; for the rains beat upon these little piles and wash
them down and expose the gold, possibly right over a pocket. Two pockets
were found in this way by the same man in one day. One had $5,000 in it
and the other $8,000. That man could appreciate it, for he hadn't had a
cent for about a year.
In Tuolumne lived two miners who used to go to the neighboring village in
the afternoon and return every night with household supplies. Part of
the distance they traversed a trail, and nearly always sat down to rest
on a great boulder that lay beside the path. In the course of thirteen
years they had worn that boulder tolerably smooth, sitting on it. By and
by two vagrant Mexicans came along and occupied the seat. They began to
amuse themselves by chipping off flakes from the boulder with a
sledge-hammer. They examined one of these flakes and found it rich with
gold. That boulder paid them $800 afterward. But the aggravating
circumstance was that these "Greasers" knew that there must be more gold
where that boulder came from, and so they went panning up the hill and
found what was probably the richest pocket that region has yet produced.
It took three months to exhaust it, and it yielded $120,000. The two
American miners who used to sit on the boulder are poor yet, and they
take turn about in getting up early in the morning to curse those
Mexicans--and when it comes down to pure ornamental cursing, the native
American is gifted above the sons of men.
I have dwelt at some length upon this matter of pocket mining because it
is a subject that is seldom referred to in print, and therefore I judged
that it would have for the reader that interest which naturally attaches
to novelty.
CHAPTER LXI.
One of my comrades there--another of those victims of eighteen years of
unrequited toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits that
ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick
Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-House Gulch.--He was forty-six, gray as a
rat, earnest, thoughtful, slenderly educated, slouchily dressed and
clay-soiled, but his heart was finer metal than any gold his shovel ever
brought to light--than any, indeed, that ever was mined or minted.
Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to
mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women
and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they
must love something). And he always spoke of the strange sagacity of
that cat with the air of a man who believed in his secret heart that
there was something human about it--may be even supernatural.
I heard him talking about this animal once. He said:
"Gentlemen, I used to have a cat here, by the name of Tom Quartz, which
you'd a took an interest in I reckon--most any body would. I had him
here eight year--and he was the remarkablest cat I ever see. He was a
large gray one of the Tom specie, an' he had more hard, natchral sense
than any man in this camp--'n' a power of dignity--he wouldn't let the
Gov'ner of Californy be familiar with him. He never ketched a rat in his
life--'peared to be above it. He never cared for nothing but mining.
He knowed more about mining, that cat did, than any man I ever, ever see.
You couldn't tell him noth'n 'bout placer diggin's--'n' as for pocket
mining, why he was just born for it.
"He would dig out after me an' Jim when we went over the hills
prospect'n', and he would trot along behind us for as much as five mile,
if we went so fur. An' he had the best judgment about mining ground--why
you never see anything like it. When we went to work, he'd scatter a
glance around, 'n' if he didn't think much of the indications, he would
give a look as much as to say, 'Well, I'll have to get you to excuse me,'
'n' without another word he'd hyste his nose into the air 'n' shove for
home. But if the ground suited him, he would lay low 'n' keep dark till
the first pan was washed, 'n' then he would sidle up 'n' take a look, an'
if there was about six or seven grains of gold he was satisfied--he
didn't want no better prospect 'n' that--'n' then he would lay down on
our coats and snore like a steamboat till we'd struck the pocket, an'
then get up 'n' superintend. He was nearly lightnin' on superintending.
"Well, bye an' bye, up comes this yer quartz excitement. Every body was
into it--every body was pick'n' 'n' blast'n' instead of shovelin' dirt on
the hill side--every body was put'n' down a shaft instead of scrapin' the
surface. Noth'n' would do Jim, but we must tackle the ledges, too, 'n'
so we did. We commenced put'n' down a shaft, 'n' Tom Quartz he begin to
wonder what in the Dickens it was all about. He hadn't ever seen any
mining like that before, 'n' he was all upset, as you may say--he
couldn't come to a right understanding of it no way--it was too many for
him. He was down on it, too, you bet you--he was down on it powerful
--'n' always appeared to consider it the cussedest foolishness out. But
that cat, you know, was always agin new fangled arrangements--somehow he
never could abide'em. You know how it is with old habits. But by an' by
Tom Quartz begin to git sort of reconciled a little, though he never
could altogether understand that eternal sinkin' of a shaft an' never
pannin' out any thing. At last he got to comin' down in the shaft,
hisself, to try to cipher it out. An' when he'd git the blues, 'n' feel
kind o'scruffy, 'n' aggravated 'n' disgusted--knowin' as he did, that the
bills was runnin' up all the time an' we warn't makin' a cent--he would
curl up on a gunny sack in the corner an' go to sleep. Well, one day
when the shaft was down about eight foot, the rock got so hard that we
had to put in a blast--the first blast'n' we'd ever done since Tom Quartz
was born. An' then we lit the fuse 'n' clumb out 'n' got off 'bout fifty
yards--'n' forgot 'n' left Tom Quartz sound asleep on the gunny sack.
"In 'bout a minute we seen a puff of smoke bust up out of the hole, 'n'
then everything let go with an awful crash, 'n' about four million ton of
rocks 'n' dirt 'n' smoke 'n; splinters shot up 'bout a mile an' a half
into the air, an' by George, right in the dead centre of it was old Tom
Quartz a goin' end over end, an' a snortin' an' a sneez'n', an' a clawin'
an' a reachin' for things like all possessed. But it warn't no use, you
know, it warn't no use. An' that was the last we see of him for about
two minutes 'n' a half, an' then all of a sudden it begin to rain rocks
and rubbage, an' directly he come down ker-whop about ten foot off f'm
where we stood Well, I reckon he was p'raps the orneriest lookin' beast
you ever see. One ear was sot back on his neck, 'n' his tail was stove
up, 'n' his eye-winkers was swinged off, 'n' he was all blacked up with
powder an' smoke, an' all sloppy with mud 'n' slush f'm one end to the
other.
"Well sir, it warn't no use to try to apologize--we couldn't say a word.
He took a sort of a disgusted look at hisself, 'n' then he looked at us
--an' it was just exactly the same as if he had said--'Gents, may be you
think it's smart to take advantage of a cat that 'ain't had no experience
of quartz minin', but I think different'--an' then he turned on his heel
'n' marched off home without ever saying another word.
"That was jest his style. An' may be you won't believe it, but after
that you never see a cat so prejudiced agin quartz mining as what he was.
An' by an' bye when he did get to goin' down in the shaft agin, you'd 'a
been astonished at his sagacity. The minute we'd tetch off a blast 'n'
the fuse'd begin to sizzle, he'd give a look as much as to say: 'Well,
I'll have to git you to excuse me,' an' it was surpris'n' the way he'd
shin out of that hole 'n' go f'r a tree. Sagacity? It ain't no name for
it. 'Twas inspiration!"
I said, "Well, Mr. Baker, his prejudice against quartz-mining was
remarkable, considering how he came by it. Couldn't you ever cure him of
it?"
"Cure him! No! When Tom Quartz was sot once, he was always sot--and you
might a blowed him up as much as three million times 'n' you'd never a
broken him of his cussed prejudice agin quartz mining."
The affection and the pride that lit up Baker's face when he delivered
this tribute to the firmness of his humble friend of other days, will
always be a vivid memory with me.
At the end of two months we had never "struck" a pocket. We had panned
up and down the hillsides till they looked plowed like a field; we could
have put in a crop of grain, then, but there would have been no way to
get it to market. We got many good "prospects," but when the gold gave
out in the pan and we dug down, hoping and longing, we found only
emptiness--the pocket that should have been there was as barren as our
own.--At last we shouldered our pans and shovels and struck out over the
hills to try new localities. We prospected around Angel's Camp, in
Calaveras county, during three weeks, but had no success. Then we
wandered on foot among the mountains, sleeping under the trees at night,
for the weather was mild, but still we remained as centless as the last
rose of summer. That is a poor joke, but it is in pathetic harmony with
the circumstances, since we were so poor ourselves. In accordance with
the custom of the country, our door had always stood open and our board
welcome to tramping miners--they drifted along nearly every day, dumped
their paust shovels by the threshold and took "pot luck" with us--and now
on our own tramp we never found cold hospitality.
Our wanderings were wide and in many directions; and now I could give the
reader a vivid description of the Big Trees and the marvels of the Yo
Semite--but what has this reader done to me that I should persecute him?
I will deliver him into the hands of less conscientious tourists and take
his blessing. Let me be charitable, though I fail in all virtues else.
Note: Some of the phrases in the above are mining technicalities, purely,
and may be a little obscure to the general reader. In "placer diggings"
the gold is scattered all through the surface dirt; in "pocket" diggings
it is concentrated in one little spot; in "quartz" the gold is in a
solid, continuous vein of rock, enclosed between distinct walls of some
other kind of stone--and this is the most laborious and expensive of all
the different kinds of mining. "Prospecting" is hunting for a "placer";
"indications" are signs of its presence; "panning out" refers to the
washing process by which the grains of gold are separated from the dirt;
a "prospect" is what one finds in the first panful of dirt--and its value
determines whether it is a good or a bad prospect, and whether it is
worth while to tarry there or seek further.
CHAPTER LXII.
After a three months' absence, I found myself in San Francisco again,
without a cent. When my credit was about exhausted, (for I had become
too mean and lazy, now, to work on a morning paper, and there were no
vacancies on the evening journals,) I was created San Francisco
correspondent of the Enterprise, and at the end of five months I was out
of debt, but my interest in my work was gone; for my correspondence being
a daily one, without rest or respite, I got unspeakably tired of it.
I wanted another change. The vagabond instinct was strong upon me.
Fortune favored and I got a new berth and a delightful one. It was to go
down to the Sandwich Islands and write some letters for the Sacramento
Union, an excellent journal and liberal with employees.
We sailed in the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter. The almanac
called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromise
between spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became summer
altogether. We had some thirty passengers; among them a cheerful soul
by the name of Williams, and three sea-worn old whaleship captains going
down to join their vessels. These latter played euchre in the smoking
room day and night, drank astonishing quantities of raw whisky without
being in the least affected by it, and were the happiest people I think
I ever saw. And then there was "the old Admiral--" a retired whaleman.
He was a roaring, terrific combination of wind and lightning and thunder,
and earnest, whole-souled profanity. But nevertheless he was
tender-hearted as a girl. He was a raving, deafening, devastating
typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in the
centre where all comers were safe and at rest. Nobody could know the
"Admiral" without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think
no friend of his would know which to choose--to be cursed by him or
prayed for by a less efficient person.
His Title of "Admiral" was more strictly "official" than any ever worn by
a naval officer before or since, perhaps--for it was the voluntary
offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves
without any intermediate red tape--the people of the Sandwich Islands.
It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and
appreciation of his unpretending merit. And in testimony of the
genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag
should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wave
him God-speed in his going. From that time forth, whenever his ship was
signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea,
that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house and
the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord.
Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life. When I knew
him on board the Ajax, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed the
salt water sixty-one of them. For sixteen years he had gone in and out
of the harbor of Honolulu in command of a whaleship, and for sixteen more
had been captain of a San Francisco and Sandwich Island passenger packet
and had never had an accident or lost a vessel. The simple natives knew
him for a friend who never failed them, and regarded him as children
regard a father. It was a dangerous thing to oppress them when the
roaring Admiral was around.
Two years before I knew the Admiral, he had retired from the sea on a
competence, and had sworn a colossal nine-jointed oath that he would
"never go within smelling distance of the salt water again as long as he
lived." And he had conscientiously kept it. That is to say, he
considered he had kept it, and it would have been more than dangerous to
suggest to him, even in the gentlest way, that making eleven long sea
voyages, as a passenger, during the two years that had transpired since
he "retired," was only keeping the general spirit of it and not the
strict letter.
The Admiral knew only one narrow line of conduct to pursue in any and all
cases where there was a fight, and that was to shoulder his way straight
in without an inquiry as to the rights or the merits of it, and take the
part of the weaker side.--And this was the reason why he was always sure
to be present at the trial of any universally execrated criminal to
oppress and intimidate the jury with a vindictive pantomime of what he
would do to them if he ever caught them out of the box. And this was why
harried cats and outlawed dogs that knew him confidently took sanctuary
under his chair in time of trouble. In the beginning he was the most
frantic and bloodthirsty Union man that drew breath in the shadow of the
Flag; but the instant the Southerners began to go down before the sweep
of the Northern armies, he ran up the Confederate colors and from that
time till the end was a rampant and inexorable secessionist.
He hated intemperance with a more uncompromising animosity than any
individual I have ever met, of either sex; and he was never tired of
storming against it and beseeching friends and strangers alike to be wary
and drink with moderation. And yet if any creature had been guileless
enough to intimate that his absorbing nine gallons of "straight" whiskey
during our voyage was any fraction short of rigid or inflexible
abstemiousness, in that self-same moment the old man would have spun him
to the uttermost parts of the earth in the whirlwind of his wrath. Mind,
I am not saying his whisky ever affected his head or his legs, for it did
not, in even the slightest degree. He was a capacious container, but he
did not hold enough for that. He took a level tumblerful of whisky every
morning before he put his clothes on--"to sweeten his bilgewater," he
said.--He took another after he got the most of his clothes on, "to
settle his mind and give him his bearings." He then shaved, and put on a
clean shirt; after which he recited the Lord's Prayer in a fervent,
thundering bass that shook the ship to her kelson and suspended all
conversation in the main cabin. Then, at this stage, being invariably
"by the head," or "by the stern," or "listed to port or starboard," he
took one more to "put him on an even keel so that he would mind his
hellum and not miss stays and go about, every time he came up in the
wind."--And now, his state-room door swung open and the sun of his
benignant face beamed redly out upon men and women and children, and he
roared his "Shipmets a'hoy!" in a way that was calculated to wake the
dead and precipitate the final resurrection; and forth he strode, a
picture to look at and a presence to enforce attention. Stalwart and
portly; not a gray hair; broadbrimmed slouch hat; semi-sailor toggery of
blue navy flannel--roomy and ample; a stately expanse of shirt-front and
a liberal amount of black silk neck-cloth tied with a sailor knot; large
chain and imposing seals impending from his fob; awe-inspiring feet, and
"a hand like the hand of Providence," as his whaling brethren expressed
it; wrist-bands and sleeves pushed back half way to the elbow, out of
respect for the warm weather, and exposing hairy arms, gaudy with red and
blue anchors, ships, and goddesses of liberty tattooed in India ink.
But these details were only secondary matters--his face was the lodestone
that chained the eye. It was a sultry disk, glowing determinedly out
through a weather beaten mask of mahogany, and studded with warts, seamed
with scars, "blazed" all over with unfailing fresh slips of the razor;
and with cheery eyes, under shaggy brows, contemplating the world from
over the back of a gnarled crag of a nose that loomed vast and lonely out
of the undulating immensity that spread away from its foundations.
At his heels frisked the darling of his bachelor estate, his terrier
"Fan," a creature no larger than a squirrel. The main part of his daily
life was occupied in looking after "Fan," in a motherly way, and
doctoring her for a hundred ailments which existed only in his
imagination.
The Admiral seldom read newspapers; and when he did he never believed
anything they said. He read nothing, and believed in nothing, but "The
Old Guard," a secession periodical published in New York. He carried a
dozen copies of it with him, always, and referred to them for all
required information. If it was not there, he supplied it himself, out
of a bountiful fancy, inventing history, names, dates, and every thing
else necessary to make his point good in an argument. Consequently he
was a formidable antagonist in a dispute. Whenever he swung clear of the
record and began to create history, the enemy was helpless and had to
surrender. Indeed, the enemy could not keep from betraying some little
spark of indignation at his manufactured history--and when it came to
indignation, that was the Admiral's very "best hold." He was always
ready for a political argument, and if nobody started one he would do it
himself. With his third retort his temper would begin to rise, and
within five minutes he would be blowing a gale, and within fifteen his
smoking-room audience would be utterly stormed away and the old man left
solitary and alone, banging the table with his fist, kicking the chairs,
and roaring a hurricane of profanity. It got so, after a while, that
whenever the Admiral approached, with politics in his eye, the passengers
would drop out with quiet accord, afraid to meet him; and he would camp
on a deserted field.
But he found his match at last, and before a full company. At one time
or another, everybody had entered the lists against him and been routed,
except the quiet passenger Williams. He had never been able to get an
expression of opinion out of him on politics. But now, just as the
Admiral drew near the door and the company were about to slip out,
Williams said:
"Admiral, are you certain about that circumstance concerning the
clergymen you mentioned the other day?"--referring to a piece of the
Admiral's manufactured history.
Every one was amazed at the man's rashness. The idea of deliberately
inviting annihilation was a thing incomprehensible. The retreat came to
a halt; then everybody sat down again wondering, to await the upshot of
it. The Admiral himself was as surprised as any one. He paused in the
door, with his red handkerchief half raised to his sweating face, and
contemplated the daring reptile in the corner.
"Certain of it? Am I certain of it? Do you think I've been lying about
it? What do you take me for? Anybody that don't know that circumstance,
don't know anything; a child ought to know it. Read up your history!
Read it up-----, and don't come asking a man if he's certain about a bit
of ABC stuff that the very southern niggers know all about."
Here the Admiral's fires began to wax hot, the atmosphere thickened, the
coming earthquake rumbled, he began to thunder and lighten. Within three
minutes his volcano was in full irruption and he was discharging flames
and ashes of indignation, belching black volumes of foul history aloft,
and vomiting red-hot torrents of profanity from his crater. Meantime
Williams sat silent, and apparently deeply and earnestly interested in
what the old man was saying. By and by, when the lull came, he said in
the most deferential way, and with the gratified air of a man who has had
a mystery cleared up which had been puzzling him uncomfortably:
"Now I understand it. I always thought I knew that piece of history well
enough, but was still afraid to trust it, because there was not that
convincing particularity about it that one likes to have in history; but
when you mentioned every name, the other day, and every date, and every
little circumstance, in their just order and sequence, I said to myself,
this sounds something like--this is history--this is putting it in a
shape that gives a man confidence; and I said to myself afterward, I will
just ask the Admiral if he is perfectly certain about the details, and if
he is I will come out and thank him for clearing this matter up for me.
And that is what I want to do now--for until you set that matter right it
was nothing but just a confusion in my mind, without head or tail to it."
Nobody ever saw the Admiral look so mollified before, and so pleased.
Nobody had ever received his bogus history as gospel before; its
genuineness had always been called in question either by words or looks;
but here was a man that not only swallowed it all down, but was grateful
for the dose. He was taken a back; he hardly knew what to say; even his
profanity failed him. Now, Williams continued, modestly and earnestly:
"But Admiral, in saying that this was the first stone thrown, and that
this precipitated the war, you have overlooked a circumstance which you
are perfectly familiar with, but which has escaped your memory. Now I
grant you that what you have stated is correct in every detail--to wit:
that on the 16th of October, 1860, two Massachusetts clergymen, named
Waite and Granger, went in disguise to the house of John Moody, in
Rockport, at dead of night, and dragged forth two southern women and
their two little children, and after tarring and feathering them conveyed
them to Boston and burned them alive in the State House square; and I
also grant your proposition that this deed is what led to the secession
of South Carolina on the 20th of December following. Very well." [Here
the company were pleasantly surprised to hear Williams proceed to come
back at the Admiral with his own invincible weapon--clean, pure,
manufactured history, without a word of truth in it.] "Very well, I say.
But Admiral, why overlook the Willis and Morgan case in South Carolina?
You are too well informed a man not to know all about that circumstance.
Your arguments and your conversations have shown you to be intimately
conversant with every detail of this national quarrel. You develop
matters of history every day that show plainly that you are no smatterer
in it, content to nibble about the surface, but a man who has searched
the depths and possessed yourself of everything that has a bearing upon
the great question. Therefore, let me just recall to your mind that
Willis and Morgan case--though I see by your face that the whole thing is
already passing through your memory at this moment. On the 12th of
August, 1860, two months before the Waite and Granger affair, two South
Carolina clergymen, named John H. Morgan and Winthrop L. Willis, one a
Methodist and the other an Old School Baptist, disguised themselves, and
went at midnight to the house of a planter named Thompson--Archibald F.
Thompson, Vice President under Thomas Jefferson,--and took thence, at
midnight, his widowed aunt, (a Northern woman,) and her adopted child, an
orphan--named Mortimer Highie, afflicted with epilepsy and suffering at
the time from white swelling on one of his legs, and compelled to walk on
crutches in consequence; and the two ministers, in spite of the pleadings
of the victims, dragged them to the bush, tarred and feathered them, and
afterward burned them at the stake in the city of Charleston. You
remember perfectly well what a stir it made; you remember perfectly well
that even the Charleston Courier stigmatized the act as being unpleasant,
of questionable propriety, and scarcely justifiable, and likewise that it
would not be matter of surprise if retaliation ensued. And you remember
also, that this thing was the cause of the Massachusetts outrage. Who,
indeed, were the two Massachusetts ministers? and who were the two
Southern women they burned? I do not need to remind you, Admiral, with
your intimate knowledge of history, that Waite was the nephew of the
woman burned in Charleston; that Granger was her cousin in the second
degree, and that the woman they burned in Boston was the wife of John H.
Morgan, and the still loved but divorced wife of Winthrop L. Willis.
Now, Admiral, it is only fair that you should acknowledge that the first
provocation came from the Southern preachers and that the Northern ones
were justified in retaliating. In your arguments you never yet have
shown the least disposition to withhold a just verdict or be in anywise
unfair, when authoritative history condemned your position, and therefore
I have no hesitation in asking you to take the original blame from the
Massachusetts ministers, in this matter, and transfer it to the South
Carolina clergymen where it justly belongs."
The Admiral was conquered. This sweet spoken creature who swallowed his
fraudulent history as if it were the bread of life; basked in his furious
blasphemy as if it were generous sunshine; found only calm, even-handed
justice in his rampart partisanship; and flooded him with invented
history so sugarcoated with flattery and deference that there was no
rejecting it, was "too many" for him. He stammered some awkward, profane
sentences about the-----Willis and Morgan business having escaped his
memory, but that he "remembered it now," and then, under pretence of
giving Fan some medicine for an imaginary cough, drew out of the battle
and went away, a vanquished man. Then cheers and laughter went up, and
Williams, the ship's benefactor was a hero. The news went about the
vessel, champagne was ordered, and enthusiastic reception instituted in
the smoking room, and everybody flocked thither to shake hands with the
conqueror. The wheelman said afterward, that the Admiral stood up behind
the pilot house and "ripped and cursed all to himself" till he loosened
the smokestack guys and becalmed the mainsail.
The Admiral's power was broken. After that, if he began argument,
somebody would bring Williams, and the old man would grow weak and begin
to quiet down at once. And as soon as he was done, Williams in his
dulcet, insinuating way, would invent some history (referring for proof,
to the old man's own excellent memory and to copies of "The Old Guard"
known not to be in his possession) that would turn the tables completely
and leave the Admiral all abroad and helpless. By and by he came to so
dread Williams and his gilded tongue that he would stop talking when he
saw him approach, and finally ceased to mention politics altogether, and
from that time forward there was entire peace and serenity in the ship.
CHAPTER LXIII.
On a certain bright morning the Islands hove in sight, lying low on the
lonely sea, and everybody climbed to the upper deck to look. After two
thousand miles of watery solitude the vision was a welcome one. As we
approached, the imposing promontory of Diamond Head rose up out of the
ocean its rugged front softened by the hazy distance, and presently the
details of the land began to make themselves manifest: first the line of
beach; then the plumed coacoanut trees of the tropics; then cabins of the
natives; then the white town of Honolulu, said to contain between twelve
and fifteen thousand inhabitants spread over a dead level; with streets
from twenty to thirty feet wide, solid and level as a floor, most of them
straight as a line and few as crooked as a corkscrew.
The further I traveled through the town the better I liked it.
Every step revealed a new contrast--disclosed something I was
unaccustomed to. In place of the grand mud-colored brown fronts of
San Francisco, I saw dwellings built of straw, adobies, and cream-colored
pebble-and-shell-conglomerated coral, cut into oblong blocks and laid in
cement; also a great number of neat white cottages, with green
window-shutters; in place of front yards like billiard-tables with iron
fences around them, I saw these homes surrounded by ample yards, thickly
clad with green grass, and shaded by tall trees, through whose dense
foliage the sun could scarcely penetrate; in place of the customary
geranium, calla lily, etc., languishing in dust and general debility, I
saw luxurious banks and thickets of flowers, fresh as a meadow after a
rain, and glowing with the richest dyes; in place of the dingy horrors of
San Francisco's pleasure grove, the "Willows," I saw huge-bodied,
wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance
--trees that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand
alone without being tied to green poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling
around in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of
distortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their
transparent prison houses, I saw cats--Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats,
long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed
cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats,
striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual
cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of
cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of
them sleek, fat, lazy and sound asleep. I looked on a multitude of
people, some white, in white coats, vests, pantaloons, even white cloth
shoes, made snowy with chalk duly laid on every morning; but the majority
of the people were almost as dark as negroes--women with comely features,
fine black eyes, rounded forms, inclining to the voluptuous, clad in a
single bright red or white garment that fell free and unconfined from
shoulder to heel, long black hair falling loose, gypsy hats, encircled
with wreaths of natural flowers of a brilliant carmine tint; plenty of
dark men in various costumes, and some with nothing on but a battered
stove-pipe hat tilted on the nose, and a very scant breech-clout;
--certain smoke-dried children were clothed in nothing but sunshine
--a very neat fitting and picturesque apparel indeed.
In place of roughs and rowdies staring and blackguarding on the corners,
I saw long-haired, saddle-colored Sandwich Island maidens sitting on the
ground in the shade of corner houses, gazing indolently at whatever or
whoever happened along; instead of wretched cobble-stone pavements, I
walked on a firm foundation of coral, built up from the bottom of the sea
by the absurd but persevering insect of that name, with a light layer of
lava and cinders overlying the coral, belched up out of fathomless
perdition long ago through the seared and blackened crater that stands
dead and harmless in the distance now; instead of cramped and crowded
street-cars, I met dusky native women sweeping by, free as the wind, on
fleet horses and astride, with gaudy riding-sashes, streaming like
banners behind them; instead of the combined stenches of Chinadom and
Brannan street slaughter-houses, I breathed the balmy fragrance of
jessamine, oleander, and the Pride of India; in place of the hurry and
bustle and noisy confusion of San Francisco, I moved in the midst of a
Summer calm as tranquil as dawn in the Garden of Eden; in place of the
Golden City's skirting sand hills and the placid bay, I saw on the one
side a frame-work of tall, precipitous mountains close at hand, clad in
refreshing green, and cleft by deep, cool, chasm-like valleys--and in
front the grand sweep of the ocean; a brilliant, transparent green near
the shore, bound and bordered by a long white line of foamy spray dashing
against the reef, and further out the dead blue water of the deep sea,
flecked with "white caps," and in the far horizon a single, lonely sail
--a mere accent-mark to emphasize a slumberous calm and a solitude that
were without sound or limit. When the sun sunk down--the one intruder
from other realms and persistent in suggestions of them--it was tranced
luxury to sit in the perfumed air and forget that there was any world but
these enchanted islands.
It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream--till you got a bite.
A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and
kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or
brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in future. Then
came an adjournment to the bed-chamber and the pastime of writing up the
day's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the
other--a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy
approaching,--a hairy tarantula on stilts--why not set the spittoon on
him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous
idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade
for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough
to burn a hole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a
resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait,
and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in
under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully
on the floor till morning. Meantime it is comforting to curse the
tropics in occasional wakeful intervals.
We had an abundance of fruit in Honolulu, of course. Oranges,
pine-apples, bananas, strawberries, lemons, limes, mangoes, guavas,
melons, and a rare and curious luxury called the chirimoya, which is
deliciousness itself. Then there is the tamarind. I thought tamarinds
were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and
it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my
lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my
sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours.
They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them
a "wire edge" that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said "no, it
will come off when the enamel does"--which was comforting, at any rate.
I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds--but they only eat
them once.
CHAPTER LXIV.
In my diary of our third day in Honolulu, I find this:
I am probably the most sensitive man in Hawaii to-night--especially about
sitting down in the presence of my betters. I have ridden fifteen or
twenty miles on horse-back since 5 P.M. and to tell the honest truth, I
have a delicacy about sitting down at all.
An excursion to Diamond Head and the King's Coacoanut Grove was planned
to-day--time, 4:30 P.M.--the party to consist of half a dozen gentlemen
and three ladies. They all started at the appointed hour except myself.
I was at the Government prison, (with Captain Fish and another
whaleship-skipper, Captain Phillips,) and got so interested in its
examination that I did not notice how quickly the time was passing.
Somebody remarked that it was twenty minutes past five o'clock, and that
woke me up. It was a fortunate circumstance that Captain Phillips was
along with his "turn out," as he calls a top-buggy that Captain Cook
brought here in 1778, and a horse that was here when Captain Cook came.
Captain Phillips takes a just pride in his driving and in the speed of
his horse, and to his passion for displaying them I owe it that we were
only sixteen minutes coming from the prison to the American Hotel--a
distance which has been estimated to be over half a mile. But it took
some fearful driving. The Captain's whip came down fast, and the blows
started so much dust out of the horse's hide that during the last half of
the journey we rode through an impenetrable fog, and ran by a pocket
compass in the hands of Captain Fish, a whaler of twenty-six years
experience, who sat there through the perilous voyage as self-possessed
as if he had been on the euchre-deck of his own ship, and calmly said,
"Port your helm--port," from time to time, and "Hold her a little free
--steady--so--so," and "Luff--hard down to starboard!" and never once
lost his presence of mind or betrayed the least anxiety by voice or
manner. When we came to anchor at last, and Captain Phillips looked at
his watch and said, "Sixteen minutes--I told you it was in her! that's
over three miles an hour!" I could see he felt entitled to a compliment,
and so I said I had never seen lightning go like that horse. And I never
had.
The landlord of the American said the party had been gone nearly an hour,
but that he could give me my choice of several horses that could overtake
them. I said, never mind--I preferred a safe horse to a fast one--I
would like to have an excessively gentle horse--a horse with no spirit
whatever--a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five minutes I
was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to
label him "This is a horse," and so if the public took him for a sheep I
cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I could
see that he had as many fine points as any man's horse, and so I hung my
hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration from
my face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu" (pronounced
O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whip
nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He resisted
argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of
that gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street.
I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards he
crossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen gates, and in
the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cave
the top of my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration.
He abandoned the gate business after that and went along peaceably
enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance,
and it soon began to fill me with apprehension. I said to my self, this
creature is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other--no
horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing just
for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more uneasy I
became, until the suspense became almost unbearable and I dismounted to
see if there was anything wild in his eye--for I had heard that the eye
of this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive.
I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when I
found that he was only asleep. I woke him up and started him into a
faster walk, and then the villainy of his nature came out again. He
tried to climb over a stone wall, five or six feet high. I saw that I
must apply force to this horse, and that I might as well begin first as
last. I plucked a stout switch from a tamarind tree, and the moment he
saw it, he surrendered. He broke into a convulsive sort of a canter,
which had three short steps in it and one long one, and reminded me
alternately of the clattering shake of the great earthquake, and the
sweeping plunging of the Ajax in a storm.
And now there can be no fitter occasion than the present to pronounce a
left-handed blessing upon the man who invented the American saddle.
There is no seat to speak of about it--one might as well sit in a shovel
--and the stirrups are nothing but an ornamental nuisance. If I were to
write down here all the abuse I expended on those stirrups, it would make
a large book, even without pictures. Sometimes I got one foot so far
through, that the stirrup partook of the nature of an anklet; sometimes
both feet were through, and I was handcuffed by the legs; and sometimes
my feet got clear out and left the stirrups wildly dangling about my
shins. Even when I was in proper position and carefully balanced upon
the balls of my feet, there was no comfort in it, on account of my
nervous dread that they were going to slip one way or the other in a
moment. But the subject is too exasperating to write about.
A mile and a half from town, I came to a grove of tall cocoanut trees,
with clean, branchless stems reaching straight up sixty or seventy feet
and topped with a spray of green foliage sheltering clusters of
cocoa-nuts--not more picturesque than a forest of collossal ragged
parasols, with bunches of magnified grapes under them, would be.
I once heard a gouty northern invalid say that a cocoanut tree might be
poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by
lightning. I think that describes it better than a picture--and yet,
without any question, there is something fascinating about a cocoa-nut
tree--and graceful, too.
About a dozen cottages, some frame and the others of native grass,
nestled sleepily in the shade here and there. The grass cabins are of a
grayish color, are shaped much like our own cottages, only with higher
and steeper roofs usually, and are made of some kind of weed strongly
bound together in bundles. The roofs are very thick, and so are the
walls; the latter have square holes in them for windows. At a little
distance these cabins have a furry appearance, as if they might be made
of bear skins. They are very cool and pleasant inside. The King's flag
was flying from the roof of one of the cottages, and His Majesty was
probably within. He owns the whole concern thereabouts, and passes his
time there frequently, on sultry days "laying off." The spot is called
"The King's Grove."
Near by is an interesting ruin--the meagre remains of an ancient heathen
temple--a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old
bygone days when the simple child of nature, yielding momentarily to sin
when sorely tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had
shown it him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his
grandmother as an atoning sacrifice--in those old days when the luckless
sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodical
happiness as long as his relations held out; long, long before the
missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make them
permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a
place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there; and showed
the poor native how dreary a place perdition is and what unnecessarily
liberal facilities there are for going to it; showed him how, in his
ignorance he had gone and fooled away all his kinfolks to no purpose;
showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty cents to buy
food for next day with, as compared with fishing for pastime and lolling
in the shade through eternal Summer, and eating of the bounty that nobody
labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to think of the multitudes
who have gone to their graves in this beautiful island and never knew
there was a hell!
This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was simply a
roofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and seventy wide
--nothing but naked walls, very thick, but not much higher than a man's
head. They will last for ages no doubt, if left unmolested. Its three
altars and other sacred appurtenances have crumbled and passed away years
ago. It is said that in the old times thousands of human beings were
slaughtered here, in the presence of naked and howling savages. If these
mute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they
could describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massed
forms straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces lit up by
the sacrificial fires; of the background of ghostly trees; of the dark
pyramid of Diamond Head standing sentinel over the uncanny scene, and the
peaceful moon looking down upon it through rifts in the cloud-rack!
When Kamehameha (pronounced Ka-may-ha-may-ah) the Great--who was a sort
of a Napoleon in military genius and uniform success--invaded this island
of Oahu three quarters of a century ago, and exterminated the army sent
to oppose him, and took full and final possession of the country, he
searched out the dead body of the King of Oahu, and those of the
principal chiefs, and impaled their heads on the walls of this temple.
Those were savage times when this old slaughter-house was in its prime.
The King and the chiefs ruled the common herd with a rod of iron; made
them gather all the provisions the masters needed; build all the houses
and temples; stand all the expenses, of whatever kind; take kicks and
cuffs for thanks; drag out lives well flavored with misery, and then
suffer death for trifling offences or yield up their lives on the
sacrificial altars to purchase favors from the gods for their hard
rulers. The missionaries have clothed them, educated them, broken up the
tyrannous authority of their chiefs, and given them freedom and the right
to enjoy whatever their hands and brains produce with equal laws for all,
and punishment for all alike who transgress them. The contrast is so
strong--the benefit conferred upon this people by the missionaries is so
prominent, so palpable and so unquestionable, that the frankest
compliment I can pay them, and the best, is simply to point to the
condition of the Sandwich Islanders of Captain Cook's time, and their
condition to-day.
Their work speaks for itself.
CHAPTER LXV.
By and by, after a rugged climb, we halted on the summit of a hill which
commanded a far-reaching view. The moon rose and flooded mountain and
valley and ocean with a mellow radiance, and out of the shadows of the
foliage the distant lights of Honolulu glinted like an encampment of
fireflies. The air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers. The halt
was brief.--Gayly laughing and talking, the party galloped on, and I
clung to the pommel and cantered after. Presently we came to a place
where no grass grew--a wide expanse of deep sand. They said it was an
old battle ground. All around everywhere, not three feet apart, the
bleached bones of men gleamed white in the moonlight. We picked up a lot
of them for mementoes. I got quite a number of arm bones and leg bones
--of great chiefs, may be, who had fought savagely in that fearful battle
in the old days, when blood flowed like wine where we now stood--and wore
the choicest of them out on Oahu afterward, trying to make him go. All
sorts of bones could be found except skulls; but a citizen said,
irreverently, that there had been an unusual number of "skull-hunters"
there lately--a species of sportsmen I had never heard of before.
Nothing whatever is known about this place--its story is a secret that
will never be revealed. The oldest natives make no pretense of being
possessed of its history. They say these bones were here when they were
children. They were here when their grandfathers were children--but how
they came here, they can only conjecture. Many people believe this spot
to be an ancient battle-ground, and it is usual to call it so; and they
believe that these skeletons have lain for ages just where their
proprietors fell in the great fight. Other people believe that
Kamehameha I. fought his first battle here. On this point, I have heard
a story, which may have been taken from one of the numerous books which
have been written concerning these islands--I do not know where the
narrator got it. He said that when Kamehameha (who was at first merely a
subordinate chief on the island of Hawaii), landed here, he brought a
large army with him, and encamped at Waikiki. The Oahuans marched
against him, and so confident were they of success that they readily
acceded to a demand of their priests that they should draw a line where
these bones now lie, and take an oath that, if forced to retreat at all,
they would never retreat beyond this boundary. The priests told them
that death and everlasting punishment would overtake any who violated the
oath, and the march was resumed. Kamehameha drove them back step by
step; the priests fought in the front rank and exhorted them both by
voice and inspiriting example to remember their oath--to die, if need be,
but never cross the fatal line. The struggle was manfully maintained,
but at last the chief priest fell, pierced to the heart with a spear, and
the unlucky omen fell like a blight upon the brave souls at his back;
with a triumphant shout the invaders pressed forward--the line was
crossed--the offended gods deserted the despairing army, and, accepting
the doom their perjury had brought upon them, they broke and fled over
the plain where Honolulu stands now--up the beautiful Nuuanu Valley
--paused a moment, hemmed in by precipitous mountains on either hand and
the frightful precipice of the Pari in front, and then were driven over
--a sheer plunge of six hundred feet!
The story is pretty enough, but Mr. Jarves' excellent history says the
Oahuans were intrenched in Nuuanu Valley; that Kamehameha ousted them,
routed them, pursued them up the valley and drove them over the
precipice. He makes no mention of our bone-yard at all in his book.
Impressed by the profound silence and repose that rested over the
beautiful landscape, and being, as usual, in the rear, I gave voice to my
thoughts. I said:
"What a picture is here slumbering in the solemn glory of the moon! How
strong the rugged outlines of the dead volcano stand out against the
clear sky! What a snowy fringe marks the bursting of the surf over the
long, curved reef! How calmly the dim city sleeps yonder in the plain!
How soft the shadows lie upon the stately mountains that border the
dream-haunted Mauoa Valley! What a grand pyramid of billowy clouds
towers above the storied Pari! How the grim warriors of the past seem
flocking in ghostly squadrons to their ancient battlefield again--how the
wails of the dying well up from the--"
At this point the horse called Oahu sat down in the sand. Sat down to
listen, I suppose. Never mind what he heard, I stopped apostrophising
and convinced him that I was not a man to allow contempt of Court on the
part of a horse. I broke the back-bone of a Chief over his rump and set
out to join the cavalcade again.
Very considerably fagged out we arrived in town at 9 o'clock at night,
myself in the lead--for when my horse finally came to understand that he
was homeward bound and hadn't far to go, he turned his attention strictly
to business.
This is a good time to drop in a paragraph of information. There is no
regular livery stable in Honolulu, or, indeed, in any part of the Kingdom
of Hawaii; therefore unless you are acquainted with wealthy residents
(who all have good horses), you must hire animals of the wretchedest
description from the Kanakas. (i.e. natives.) Any horse you hire, even
though it be from a white man, is not often of much account, because it
will be brought in for you from some ranch, and has necessarily been
leading a hard life. If the Kanakas who have been caring for him
(inveterate riders they are) have not ridden him half to death every day
themselves, you can depend upon it they have been doing the same thing by
proxy, by clandestinely hiring him out. At least, so I am informed. The
result is, that no horse has a chance to eat, drink, rest, recuperate, or
look well or feel well, and so strangers go about the Islands mounted as
I was to-day.
In hiring a horse from a Kanaka, you must have all your eyes about you,
because you can rest satisfied that you are dealing with a shrewd
unprincipled rascal. You may leave your door open and your trunk
unlocked as long as you please, and he will not meddle with your
property; he has no important vices and no inclination to commit robbery
on a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business,
he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This traits is
characteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will
overcharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night
(anybody's--may be the King's, if the royal steed be in convenient view),
and bring you the mate to my Oahu in the morning, and contend that it is
the same animal. If you make trouble, he will get out by saying it was
not himself who made the bargain with you, but his brother, "who went out
in the country this morning." They have always got a "brother" to shift
the responsibility upon. A victim said to one of these fellows one day:
"But I know I hired the horse of you, because I noticed that scar on your
cheek."
The reply was not bad: "Oh, yes--yes--my brother all same--we twins!"
A friend of mine, J. Smith, hired a horse yesterday, the Kanaka
warranting him to be in excellent condition.
Smith had a saddle and blanket of his own, and he ordered the Kanaka to
put these on the horse. The Kanaka protested that he was perfectly
willing to trust the gentleman with the saddle that was already on the
animal, but Smith refused to use it. The change was made; then Smith
noticed that the Kanaka had only changed the saddles, and had left the
original blanket on the horse; he said he forgot to change the blankets,
and so, to cut the bother short, Smith mounted and rode away. The horse
went lame a mile from town, and afterward got to cutting up some
extraordinary capers. Smith got down and took off the saddle, but the
blanket stuck fast to the horse--glued to a procession of raw places.
The Kanaka's mysterious conduct stood explained.
Another friend of mine bought a pretty good horse from a native, a day or
two ago, after a tolerably thorough examination of the animal. He
discovered today that the horse was as blind as a bat, in one eye. He
meant to have examined that eye, and came home with a general notion that
he had done it; but he remembers now that every time he made the attempt
his attention was called to something else by his victimizer.
One more instance, and then I will pass to something else. I am informed
that when a certain Mr. L., a visiting stranger, was here, he bought a
pair of very respectable-looking match horses from a native. They were
in a little stable with a partition through the middle of it--one horse
in each apartment. Mr. L. examined one of them critically through a
window (the Kanaka's "brother" having gone to the country with the key),
and then went around the house and examined the other through a window on
the other side. He said it was the neatest match he had ever seen, and
paid for the horses on the spot. Whereupon the Kanaka departed to join
his brother in the country. The fellow had shamefully swindled L. There
was only one "match" horse, and he had examined his starboard side
through one window and his port side through another! I decline to
believe this story, but I give it because it is worth something as a
fanciful illustration of a fixed fact--namely, that the Kanaka
horse-jockey is fertile in invention and elastic in conscience.
You can buy a pretty good horse for forty or fifty dollars, and a good
enough horse for all practical purposes for two dollars and a half. I
estimate "Oahu" to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five
cents. A good deal better animal than he is was sold here day before
yesterday for a dollar and seventy-five cents, and sold again to-day for
two dollars and twenty-five cents; Williams bought a handsome and lively
little pony yesterday for ten dollars; and about the best common horse on
the island (and he is a really good one) sold yesterday, with Mexican
saddle and bridle, for seventy dollars--a horse which is well and widely
known, and greatly respected for his speed, good disposition and
everlasting bottom.
You give your horse a little grain once a day; it comes from San
Francisco, and is worth about two cents a pound; and you give him as much
hay as he wants; it is cut and brought to the market by natives, and is
not very good it is baled into long, round bundles, about the size of a
large man; one of them is stuck by the middle on each end of a six foot
pole, and the Kanaka shoulders the pole and walks about the streets
between the upright bales in search of customers. These hay bales, thus
carried, have a general resemblance to a colossal capital 'H.'
The hay-bundles cost twenty-five cents apiece, and one will last a horse
about a day. You can get a horse for a song, a week's hay for another
song, and you can turn your animal loose among the luxuriant grass in
your neighbor's broad front yard without a song at all--you do it at
midnight, and stable the beast again before morning. You have been at no
expense thus far, but when you come to buy a saddle and bridle they will
cost you from twenty to thirty-five dollars. You can hire a horse,
saddle and bridle at from seven to ten dollars a week, and the owner will
take care of them at his own expense.
It is time to close this day's record--bed time. As I prepare for sleep,
a rich voice rises out of the still night, and, far as this ocean rock is
toward the ends of the earth, I recognize a familiar home air. But the
words seem somewhat out of joint:
"Waikiki lantoni oe Kaa hooly hooly wawhoo."
Translated, that means "When we were marching through Georgia."
CHAPTER LXVI.
Passing through the market place we saw that feature of Honolulu under
its most favorable auspices--that is, in the full glory of Saturday
afternoon, which is a festive day with the natives. The native girls by
twos and threes and parties of a dozen, and sometimes in whole platoons
and companies, went cantering up and down the neighboring streets astride
of fleet but homely horses, and with their gaudy riding habits streaming
like banners behind them. Such a troop of free and easy riders, in their
natural home, the saddle, makes a gay and graceful spectacle. The riding
habit I speak of is simply a long, broad scarf, like a tavern table cloth
brilliantly colored, wrapped around the loins once, then apparently
passed between the limbs and each end thrown backward over the same, and
floating and flapping behind on both sides beyond the horse's tail like a
couple of fancy flags; then, slipping the stirrup-irons between her toes,
the girl throws her chest for ward, sits up like a Major General and goes
sweeping by like the wind.
The girls put on all the finery they can on Saturday afternoon--fine
black silk robes; flowing red ones that nearly put your eyes out; others
as white as snow; still others that discount the rainbow; and they wear
their hair in nets, and trim their jaunty hats with fresh flowers, and
encircle their dusky throats with home-made necklaces of the brilliant
vermillion-tinted blossom of the ohia; and they fill the markets and the
adjacent street with their bright presences, and smell like a rag factory
on fire with their offensive cocoanut oil.
Occasionally you see a heathen from the sunny isles away down in the
South Seas, with his face and neck tatooed till he looks like the
customary mendicant from Washoe who has been blown up in a mine. Some
are tattooed a dead blue color down to the upper lip--masked, as it were
--leaving the natural light yellow skin of Micronesia unstained from
thence down; some with broad marks drawn down from hair to neck, on both
sides of the face, and a strip of the original yellow skin, two inches
wide, down the center--a gridiron with a spoke broken out; and some with
the entire face discolored with the popular mortification tint, relieved
only by one or two thin, wavy threads of natural yellow running across
the face from ear to ear, and eyes twinkling out of this darkness, from
under shadowing hat-brims, like stars in the dark of the moon.
Moving among the stirring crowds, you come to the poi merchants,
squatting in the shade on their hams, in true native fashion, and
surrounded by purchasers. (The Sandwich Islanders always squat on their
hams, and who knows but they may be the old original "ham sandwiches?"
The thought is pregnant with interest.) The poi looks like common flour
paste, and is kept in large bowls formed of a species of gourd, and
capable of holding from one to three or four gallons. Poi is the chief
article of food among the natives, and is prepared from the taro plant.
The taro root looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweet
potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When
boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas
bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix
water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment,
and then it is poi--and an unseductive mixture it is, almost tasteless
before it ferments and too sour for a luxury afterward. But nothing is
more nutritious. When solely used, however, it produces acrid humors, a
fact which sufficiently accounts for the humorous character of the
Kanakas. I think there must be as much of a knack in handling poi as
there is in eating with chopsticks. The forefinger is thrust into the
mess and stirred quickly round several times and drawn as quickly out,
thickly coated, just as it it were poulticed; the head is thrown back,
the finger inserted in the mouth and the delicacy stripped off and
swallowed--the eye closing gently, meanwhile, in a languid sort of
ecstasy. Many a different finger goes into the same bowl and many a
different kind of dirt and shade and quality of flavor is added to the
virtues of its contents.
Around a small shanty was collected a crowd of natives buying the awa
root. It is said that but for the use of this root the destruction of
the people in former times by certain imported diseases would have been
far greater than it was, and by others it is said that this is merely a
fancy. All agree that poi will rejuvenate a man who is used up and his
vitality almost annihilated by hard drinking, and that in some kinds of
diseases it will restore health after all medicines have failed; but all
are not willing to allow to the awa the virtues claimed for it. The
natives manufacture an intoxicating drink from it which is fearful in its
effects when persistently indulged in. It covers the body with dry,
white scales, inflames the eyes, and causes premature decripitude.
Although the man before whose establishment we stopped has to pay a
Government license of eight hundred dollars a year for the exclusive
right to sell awa root, it is said that he makes a small fortune every
twelve-month; while saloon keepers, who pay a thousand dollars a year for
the privilege of retailing whiskey, etc., only make a bare living.
We found the fish market crowded; for the native is very fond of fish,
and eats the article raw and alive! Let us change the subject.
In old times here Saturday was a grand gala day indeed. All the native
population of the town forsook their labors, and those of the surrounding
country journeyed to the city. Then the white folks had to stay indoors,
for every street was so packed with charging cavaliers and cavalieresses
that it was next to impossible to thread one's way through the cavalcades
without getting crippled.
At night they feasted and the girls danced the lascivious hula hula--a
dance that is said to exhibit the very perfection of educated notion of
limb and arm, hand, head and body, and the exactest uniformity of
movement and accuracy of "time." It was performed by a circle of girls
with no raiment on them to speak of, who went through an infinite variety
of motions and figures without prompting, and yet so true was their
"time," and in such perfect concert did they move that when they were
placed in a straight line, hands, arms, bodies, limbs and heads waved,
swayed, gesticulated, bowed, stooped, whirled, squirmed, twisted and
undulated as if they were part and parcel of a single individual; and it
was difficult to believe they were not moved in a body by some exquisite
piece of mechanism.
Of late years, however, Saturday has lost most of its quondam gala
features. This weekly stampede of the natives interfered too much with
labor and the interests of the white folks, and by sticking in a law
here, and preaching a sermon there, and by various other means, they
gradually broke it up. The demoralizing hula hula was forbidden to be
performed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence of few
spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities and
the payment of ten dollars for the same. There are few girls now-a-days
able to dance this ancient national dance in the highest perfection of
the art.
The missionaries have christianized and educated all the natives. They
all belong to the Church, and there is not one of them, above the age of
eight years, but can read and write with facility in the native tongue.
It is the most universally educated race of people outside of China.
They have any quantity of books, printed in the Kanaka language, and all
the natives are fond of reading. They are inveterate church-goers
--nothing can keep them away. All this ameliorating cultivation has at
last built up in the native women a profound respect for chastity--in
other people. Perhaps that is enough to say on that head. The national
sin will die out when the race does, but perhaps not earlier.--But
doubtless this purifying is not far off, when we reflect that contact
with civilization and the whites has reduced the native population from
four hundred thousand (Captain Cook's estimate,) to fifty-five thousand
in something over eighty years!
Society is a queer medley in this notable missionary, whaling and
governmental centre. If you get into conversation with a stranger and
experience that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are
treading on by finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike
out boldly and address him as "Captain." Watch him narrowly, and if you
see by his countenance that you are on the wrong tack, ask him where he
preaches. It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of
a whaler. I am now personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and
ninety-six missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the
population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile
foreigners and their families, and the final fourth is made up of high
officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats
enough for three apiece all around.
A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs the other day, and said:
"Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no
doubt?"
"No, I don't. I'm not a preacher."
"Really, I beg your pardon, Captain. I trust you had a good season. How
much oil"--
"Oil? What do you take me for? I'm not a whaler."
"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency.
"Major General in the household troops, no doubt? Minister of the
Interior, likely? Secretary of war? First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber?
Commissioner of the Royal"--
"Stuff! I'm no official. I'm not connected in any way with the
Government."
"Bless my life! Then, who the mischief are you? what the mischief are
you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did you
come from?"
"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived
from America."
"No? Not a missionary! Not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's
Government! not even Secretary of the Navy! Ah, Heaven! it is too
blissful to be true; alas, I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest
countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable
of--of--anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse
these tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like
this, and"--
Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied
this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved. I
shed a few tears on him and kissed him for his mother. I then took what
small change he had and "shoved".
CHAPTER LXVII.
I still quote from my journal:
I found the national Legislature to consist of half a dozen white men and
some thirty or forty natives. It was a dark assemblage. The nobles and
Ministers (about a dozen of them altogether) occupied the extreme left of
the hall, with David Kalakaua (the King's Chamberlain) and Prince William
at the head. The President of the Assembly, His Royal Highness M.
Kekuanaoa, [Kekuanaoa is not of the blood royal. He derives his princely
rank from his wife, who was a daughter of Kamehameha the Great. Under
other monarchies the male line takes precedence of the female in tracing
genealogies, but here the opposite is the case--the female line takes
precedence. Their reason for this is exceedingly sensible, and I
recommend it to the aristocracy of Europe: They say it is easy to know
who a man's mother was, but, etc., etc.] and the Vice President (the
latter a white man,) sat in the pulpit, if I may so term it.
The President is the King's father. He is an erect, strongly built,
massive featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of
age or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth coat
and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust or blemish upon
them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is a man of
noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior under
that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century ago. A
knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this: "This man,
naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand, has charged
at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of savages more
than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter and carnage;
has worshipped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen hundreds of
his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to wooden idols, at
a time when no missionary's foot had ever pressed this soil, and he had
never heard of the white man's God; has believed his enemy could secretly
pray him to death; has seen the day, in his childhood, when it was a
crime punishable by death for a man to eat with his wife, or for a
plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the King--and now look at him; an
educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a high-minded, elegant
gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who has been the honored
guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in holding the reins of an
enlightened government, and well versed in the politics of his country
and in general, practical information. Look at him, sitting there
presiding over the deliberations of a legislative body, among whom are
white men--a grave, dignified, statesmanlike personage, and as seemingly
natural and fitted to the place as if he had been born in it and had
never been out of it in his life time. How the experiences of this old
man's eventful life shame the cheap inventions of romance!"
The christianizing of the natives has hardly even weakened some of their
barbarian superstitions, much less destroyed them. I have just referred
to one of these. It is still a popular belief that if your enemy can get
hold of any article belonging to you he can get down on his knees over it
and pray you to death. Therefore many a native gives up and dies merely
because he imagines that some enemy is putting him through a course of
damaging prayer. This praying an individual to death seems absurd enough
at a first glance, but then when we call to mind some of the pulpit
efforts of certain of our own ministers the thing looks plausible.
In former times, among the Islanders, not only a plurality of wives was
customary, but a plurality of husbands likewise. Some native women of
noble rank had as many as six husbands. A woman thus supplied did not
reside with all her husbands at once, but lived several months with each
in turn. An understood sign hung at her door during these months. When
the sign was taken down, it meant "NEXT."
In those days woman was rigidly taught to "know her place." Her place
was to do all the work, take all the cuffs, provide all the food, and
content herself with what was left after her lord had finished his
dinner. She was not only forbidden, by ancient law, and under penalty of
death, to eat with her husband or enter a canoe, but was debarred, under
the same penalty, from eating bananas, pine-apples, oranges and other
choice fruits at any time or in any place. She had to confine herself
pretty strictly to "poi" and hard work. These poor ignorant heathen seem
to have had a sort of groping idea of what came of woman eating fruit in
the garden of Eden, and they did not choose to take any more chances.
But the missionaries broke up this satisfactory arrangement of things.
They liberated woman and made her the equal of man.
The natives had a romantic fashion of burying some of their children
alive when the family became larger than necessary. The missionaries
interfered in this matter too, and stopped it.
To this day the natives are able to lie down and die whenever they want
to, whether there is anything the matter with them or not. If a Kanaka
takes a notion to die, that is the end of him; nobody can persuade him to
hold on; all the doctors in the world could not save him.
A luxury which they enjoy more than anything else, is a large funeral.
If a person wants to get rid of a troublesome native, it is only
necessary to promise him a fine funeral and name the hour and he will be
on hand to the minute--at least his remains will.
All the natives are Christians, now, but many of them still desert to the
Great Shark God for temporary succor in time of trouble. An irruption of
the great volcano of Kilauea, or an earthquake, always brings a deal of
latent loyalty to the Great Shark God to the surface. It is common
report that the King, educated, cultivated and refined Christian
gentleman as he undoubtedly is, still turns to the idols of his fathers
for help when disaster threatens. A planter caught a shark, and one of
his christianized natives testified his emancipation from the thrall of
ancient superstition by assisting to dissect the shark after a fashion
forbidden by his abandoned creed. But remorse shortly began to torture
him. He grew moody and sought solitude; brooded over his sin, refused
food, and finally said he must die and ought to die, for he had sinned
against the Great Shark God and could never know peace any more. He was
proof against persuasion and ridicule, and in the course of a day or two
took to his bed and died, although he showed no symptom of disease.
His young daughter followed his lead and suffered a like fate within the
week. Superstition is ingrained in the native blood and bone and it is
only natural that it should crop out in time of distress. Wherever one
goes in the Islands, he will find small piles of stones by the wayside,
covered with leafy offerings, placed there by the natives to appease evil
spirits or honor local deities belonging to the mythology of former days.
In the rural districts of any of the Islands, the traveler hourly comes
upon parties of dusky maidens bathing in the streams or in the sea
without any clothing on and exhibiting no very intemperate zeal in the
matter of hiding their nakedness. When the missionaries first took up
their residence in Honolulu, the native women would pay their families
frequent friendly visits, day by day, not even clothed with a blush.
It was found a hard matter to convince them that this was rather
indelicate. Finally the missionaries provided them with long, loose
calico robes, and that ended the difficulty--for the women would troop
through the town, stark naked, with their robes folded under their arms,
march to the missionary houses and then proceed to dress!--The natives
soon manifested a strong proclivity for clothing, but it was shortly
apparent that they only wanted it for grandeur. The missionaries
imported a quantity of hats, bonnets, and other male and female wearing
apparel, instituted a general distribution, and begged the people not to
come to church naked, next Sunday, as usual. And they did not; but the
national spirit of unselfishness led them to divide up with neighbors who
were not at the distribution, and next Sabbath the poor preachers could
hardly keep countenance before their vast congregations. In the midst of
the reading of a hymn a brown, stately dame would sweep up the aisle with
a world of airs, with nothing in the world on but a "stovepipe" hat and a
pair of cheap gloves; another dame would follow, tricked out in a man's
shirt, and nothing else; another one would enter with a flourish, with
simply the sleeves of a bright calico dress tied around her waist and the
rest of the garment dragging behind like a peacock's tail off duty; a
stately "buck" Kanaka would stalk in with a woman's bonnet on, wrong side
before--only this, and nothing more; after him would stride his fellow,
with the legs of a pair of pantaloons tied around his neck, the rest of
his person untrammeled; in his rear would come another gentleman simply
gotten up in a fiery neck-tie and a striped vest.
The poor creatures were beaming with complacency and wholly unconscious
of any absurdity in their appearance. They gazed at each other with
happy admiration, and it was plain to see that the young girls were
taking note of what each other had on, as naturally as if they had always
lived in a land of Bibles and knew what churches were made for; here was
the evidence of a dawning civilization. The spectacle which the
congregation presented was so extraordinary and withal so moving, that
the missionaries found it difficult to keep to the text and go on with
the services; and by and by when the simple children of the sun began a
general swapping of garments in open meeting and produced some
irresistibly grotesque effects in the course of re-dressing, there was
nothing for it but to cut the thing short with the benediction and
dismiss the fantastic assemblage.
In our country, children play "keep house;" and in the same high-sounding
but miniature way the grown folk here, with the poor little material of
slender territory and meagre population, play "empire." There is his
royal Majesty the King, with a New York detective's income of thirty or
thirty-five thousand dollars a year from the "royal civil list" and the
"royal domain." He lives in a two-story frame "palace."
And there is the "royal family"--the customary hive of royal brothers,
sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual to monarchy,
--all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all bearing such titles as
his or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of them
can carry their royal splendors far enough to ride in carriages, however;
they sport the economical Kanaka horse or "hoof it" with the plebeians.
Then there is his Excellency the "royal Chamberlain"--a sinecure, for his
majesty dresses himself with his own hands, except when he is ruralizing
at Waikiki and then he requires no dressing.
Next we have his Excellency the Commander-in-chief of the Household
Troops, whose forces consist of about the number of soldiers usually
placed under a corporal in other lands.
Next comes the royal Steward and the Grand Equerry in Waiting--high
dignitaries with modest salaries and little to do.
Then we have his Excellency the First Gentleman of the Bed-chamber--an
office as easy as it is magnificent.
Next we come to his Excellency the Prime Minister, a renegade American
from New Hampshire, all jaw, vanity, bombast and ignorance, a lawyer of
"shyster" calibre, a fraud by nature, a humble worshipper of the sceptre
above him, a reptile never tired of sneering at the land of his birth or
glorifying the ten-acre kingdom that has adopted him--salary, $4,000 a
year, vast consequence, and no perquisites.
Then we have his Excellency the Imperial Minister of Finance, who handles
a million dollars of public money a year, sends in his annual "budget"
with great ceremony, talks prodigiously of "finance," suggests imposing
schemes for paying off the "national debt" (of $150,000,) and does it all
for $4,000 a year and unimaginable glory.
Next we have his Excellency the Minister of War, who holds sway over the
royal armies--they consist of two hundred and thirty uniformed Kanakas,
mostly Brigadier Generals, and if the country ever gets into trouble with
a foreign power we shall probably hear from them. I knew an American
whose copper-plate visiting card bore this impressive legend:
"Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Infantry." To say that he was proud of
this distinction is stating it but tamely. The Minister of War has also
in his charge some venerable swivels on Punch-Bowl Hill wherewith royal
salutes are fired when foreign vessels of war enter the port.
Next comes his Excellency the Minister of the Navy--a nabob who rules the
"royal fleet," (a steam-tug and a sixty-ton schooner.)
And next comes his Grace the Lord Bishop of Honolulu, the chief dignitary
of the "Established Church"--for when the American Presbyterian
missionaries had completed the reduction of the nation to a compact
condition of Christianity, native royalty stepped in and erected the
grand dignity of an "Established (Episcopal) Church" over it, and
imported a cheap ready-made Bishop from England to take charge. The
chagrin of the missionaries has never been comprehensively expressed, to
this day, profanity not being admissible.
Next comes his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction.
Next, their Excellencies the Governors of Oahu, Hawaii, etc., and after
them a string of High Sheriffs and other small fry too numerous for
computation.
Then there are their Excellencies the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French; her
British Majesty's Minister; the Minister Resident, of the United States;
and some six or eight representatives of other foreign nations, all with
sounding titles, imposing dignity and prodigious but economical state.
Imagine all this grandeur in a play-house "kingdom" whose population
falls absolutely short of sixty thousand souls!
The people are so accustomed to nine-jointed titles and colossal magnates
that a foreign prince makes very little more stir in Honolulu than a
Western Congressman does in New York.
And let it be borne in mind that there is a strictly defined "court
costume" of so "stunning" a nature that it would make the clown in a
circus look tame and commonplace by comparison; and each Hawaiian
official dignitary has a gorgeous vari-colored, gold-laced uniform
peculiar to his office--no two of them are alike, and it is hard to tell
which one is the "loudest." The King had a "drawing-room" at stated
intervals, like other monarchs, and when these varied uniforms congregate
there--weak-eyed people have to contemplate the spectacle through smoked
glass. Is there not a gratifying contrast between this latter-day
exhibition and the one the ancestors of some of these magnates afforded
the missionaries the Sunday after the old-time distribution of clothing?
Behold what religion and civilization have wrought!
CHAPTER LXVIII.
While I was in Honolulu I witnessed the ceremonious funeral of the King's
sister, her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria. According to the royal
custom, the remains had lain in state at the palace thirty days, watched
day and night by a guard of honor. And during all that time a great
multitude of natives from the several islands had kept the palace grounds
well crowded and had made the place a pandemonium every night with their
howlings and wailings, beating of tom-toms and dancing of the (at other
times) forbidden "hula-hula" by half-clad maidens to the music of songs
of questionable decency chanted in honor of the deceased. The printed
programme of the funeral procession interested me at the time; and after
what I have just said of Hawaiian grandiloquence in the matter of
"playing empire," I am persuaded that a perusal of it may interest the
reader:
After reading the long list of dignitaries, etc., and remembering
the sparseness of the population, one is almost inclined to wonder
where the material for that portion of the procession devoted to
"Hawaiian Population Generally" is going to be procured:
Undertaker.
Royal School. Kawaiahao School. Roman Catholic School. Maemae School.
Honolulu Fire Department.
Mechanics' Benefit Union.
Attending Physicians.
Knonohikis (Superintendents) of the Crown Lands, Konohikis of the Private
Lands of His Majesty Konohikis of the Private Lands of Her late Royal
Highness.
Governor of Oahu and Staff.
Hulumanu (Military Company).
Household Troops.
The Prince of Hawaii's Own (Military Company).
The King's household servants.
Servants of Her late Royal Highness.
Protestant Clergy. The Clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.
His Lordship Louis Maigret, The Right Rev. Bishop of Arathea,
Vicar-Apostolic of the Hawaiian Islands.
The Clergy of the Hawaiian Reformed Catholic Church.
His Lordship the Right Rev. Bishop of Honolulu.
Her Majesty Queen Emma's Carriage.
His Majesty's Staff.
Carriage of Her late Royal Highness.
Carriage of Her Majesty the Queen Dowager.
The King's Chancellor.
Cabinet Ministers.
His Excellency the Minister Resident of the United States.
H. B. M's Commissioner.
H. B. M's Acting Commissioner.
Judges of Supreme Court.
Privy Councillors.
Members of Legislative Assembly.
Consular Corps.
Circuit Judges.
Clerks of Government Departments.
Members of the Bar.
Collector General, Custom-house Officers and Officers of the Customs.
Marshal and Sheriffs of the different Islands.
King's Yeomanry.
Foreign Residents.
Ahahui Kaahumanu.
Hawaiian Population Generally.
Hawaiian Cavalry.
Police Force.
I resume my journal at the point where the procession arrived at the
royal mausoleum:
As the procession filed through the gate, the military deployed
handsomely to the right and left and formed an avenue through which
the long column of mourners passed to the tomb. The coffin was
borne through the door of the mausoleum, followed by the King and
his chiefs, the great officers of the kingdom, foreign Consuls,
Embassadors and distinguished guests (Burlingame and General Van
Valkenburgh). Several of the kahilis were then fastened to a
frame-work in front of the tomb, there to remain until they decay
and fall to pieces, or, forestalling this, until another scion of
royalty dies. At this point of the proceedings the multitude set
up such a heart-broken wailing as I hope never to hear again.
The soldiers fired three volleys of musketry--the wailing being
previously silenced to permit of the guns being heard. His Highness
Prince William, in a showy military uniform (the "true prince," this
--scion of the house over-thrown by the present dynasty--he was formerly
betrothed to the Princess but was not allowed to marry her), stood guard
and paced back and forth within the door. The privileged few who
followed the coffin into the mausoleum remained sometime, but the King
soon came out and stood in the door and near one side of it. A stranger
could have guessed his rank (although he was so simply and
unpretentiously dressed) by the profound deference paid him by all
persons in his vicinity; by seeing his high officers receive his quiet
orders and suggestions with bowed and uncovered heads; and by observing
how careful those persons who came out of the mausoleum were to avoid
"crowding" him (although there was room enough in the doorway for a wagon
to pass, for that matter); how respectfully they edged out sideways,
scraping their backs against the wall and always presenting a front view
of their persons to his Majesty, and never putting their hats on until
they were well out of the royal presence.
He was dressed entirely in black--dress-coat and silk hat--and looked
rather democratic in the midst of the showy uniforms about him. On his
breast he wore a large gold star, which was half hidden by the lapel of
his coat. He remained at the door a half hour, and occasionally gave an
order to the men who were erecting the kahilis [Ranks of long-handled
mops made of gaudy feathers--sacred to royalty. They are stuck in the
ground around the tomb and left there.] before the tomb. He had the
good taste to make one of them substitute black crape for the ordinary
hempen rope he was about to tie one of them to the frame-work with.
Finally he entered his carriage and drove away, and the populace shortly
began to drop into his wake. While he was in view there was but one man
who attracted more attention than himself, and that was Harris (the
Yankee Prime Minister). This feeble personage had crape enough around
his hat to express the grief of an entire nation, and as usual he
neglected no opportunity of making himself conspicuous and exciting the
admiration of the simple Kanakas. Oh! noble ambition of this modern
Richelieu!
It is interesting to contrast the funeral ceremonies of the Princess
Victoria with those of her noted ancestor Kamehameha the Conqueror, who
died fifty years ago--in 1819, the year before the first missionaries
came.
"On the 8th of May, 1819, at the age of sixty-six, he died, as he
had lived, in the faith of his country. It was his misfortune not
to have come in contact with men who could have rightly influenced
his religious aspirations. Judged by his advantages and compared
with the most eminent of his countrymen he may be justly styled not
only great, but good. To this day his memory warms the heart and
elevates the national feelings of Hawaiians. They are proud of
their old warrior King; they love his name; his deeds form their
historical age; and an enthusiasm everywhere prevails, shared even
by foreigners who knew his worth, that constitutes the firmest
pillar of the throne of his dynasty.
"In lieu of human victims (the custom of that age), a sacrifice of
three hundred dogs attended his obsequies--no mean holocaust when
their national value and the estimation in which they were held are
considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while,
were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final
resting place is now lost. There was a proverb current among the
common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they
made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they
vented their abhorrence of his memory in bitter execrations."
The account of the circumstances of his death, as written by the native
historians, is full of minute detail, but there is scarcely a line of it
which does not mention or illustrate some by-gone custom of the country.
In this respect it is the most comprehensive document I have yet met
with. I will quote it entire:
"When Kamehameha was dangerously sick, and the priests were unable
to cure him, they said: 'Be of good courage and build a house for
the god' (his own private god or idol), that thou mayest recover.'
The chiefs corroborated this advice of the priests, and a place of
worship was prepared for Kukailimoku, and consecrated in the
evening. They proposed also to the King, with a view to prolong his
life, that human victims should be sacrificed to his deity; upon
which the greater part of the people absconded through fear of
death, and concealed themselves in hiding places till the tabu [Tabu
(pronounced tah-boo,) means prohibition (we have borrowed it,) or
sacred. The tabu was sometimes permanent, sometimes temporary; and
the person or thing placed under tabu was for the time being sacred
to the purpose for which it was set apart. In the above case the
victims selected under the tabu would be sacred to the sacrifice]
in which destruction impended, was past. It is doubtful whether
Kamehameha approved of the plan of the chiefs and priests to
sacrifice men, as he was known to say, 'The men are sacred for the
King;' meaning that they were for the service of his successor.
This information was derived from Liholiho, his son.
"After this, his sickness increased to such a degree that he had not
strength to turn himself in his bed. When another season,
consecrated for worship at the new temple (heiau) arrived, he said
to his son, Liholiho, 'Go thou and make supplication to thy god; I
am not able to go, and will offer my prayers at home.' When his
devotions to his feathered god, Kukailimoku, were concluded, a
certain religiously disposed individual, who had a bird god,
suggested to the King that through its influence his sickness might
be removed. The name of this god was Pua; its body was made of a
bird, now eaten by the Hawaiians, and called in their language alae.
Kamehameha was willing that a trial should be made, and two houses
were constructed to facilitate the experiment; but while dwelling in
them he became so very weak as not to receive food. After lying
there three days, his wives, children and chiefs, perceiving that he
was very low, returned him to his own house. In the evening he was
carried to the eating house, where he took a little food in his
mouth which he did not swallow; also a cup of water. The chiefs
requested him to give them his counsel; but he made no reply, and
was carried back to the dwelling house; but when near midnight--ten
o'clock, perhaps--he was carried again to the place to eat; but, as
before, he merely tasted of what was presented to him. Then
Kaikioewa addressed him thus: 'Here we all are, your younger
brethren, your son Liholiho and your foreigner; impart to us your
dying charge, that Liholiho and Kaahumanu may hear.' Then Kamehameha
inquired, 'What do you say?' Kaikioewa repeated, 'Your counsels for
us.'
"He then said, 'Move on in my good way and--.' He could proceed no
further. The foreigner, Mr. Young, embraced and kissed him.
Hoapili also embraced him, whispering something in his ear, after
which he was taken back to the house. About twelve he was carried
once more to the house for eating, into which his head entered,
while his body was in the dwelling house immediately adjoining. It
should be remarked that this frequent carrying of a sick chief from
one house to another resulted from the tabu system, then in force.
There were at that time six houses (huts) connected with an
establishment--one was for worship, one for the men to eat in, an
eating house for the women, a house to sleep in, a house in which to
manufacture kapa (native cloth) and one where, at certain intervals,
the women might dwell in seclusion.
"The sick was once more taken to his house, when he expired; this
was at two o'clock, a circumstance from which Leleiohoku derived his
name. As he breathed his last, Kalaimoku came to the eating house
to order those in it to go out. There were two aged persons thus
directed to depart; one went, the other remained on account of love
to the King, by whom he had formerly been kindly sustained. The
children also were sent away. Then Kalaimoku came to the house, and
the chiefs had a consultation. One of them spoke thus: 'This is my
thought--we will eat him raw. [This sounds suspicious, in view of
the fact that all Sandwich Island historians, white and black,
protest that cannibalism never existed in the islands. However,
since they only proposed to "eat him raw" we "won't count that".
But it would certainly have been cannibalism if they had cooked
him.--M. T.] Kaahumanu (one of the dead King's widows) replied,
'Perhaps his body is not at our disposal; that is more properly with
his successor. Our part in him--his breath--has departed; his
remains will be disposed of by Liholiho.'
"After this conversation the body was taken into the consecrated
house for the performance of the proper rites by the priest and the
new King. The name of this ceremony is uko; and when the sacred hog
was baked the priest offered it to the dead body, and it became a
god, the King at the same time repeating the customary prayers.
"Then the priest, addressing himself to the King and chiefs, said:
'I will now make known to you the rules to be observed respecting
persons to be sacrificed on the burial of this body. If you obtain
one man before the corpse is removed, one will be sufficient; but
after it leaves this house four will be required. If delayed until
we carry the corpse to the grave there must be ten; but after it is
deposited in the grave there must be fifteen. To-morrow morning
there will be a tabu, and, if the sacrifice be delayed until that
time, forty men must die.'
"Then the high priest, Hewahewa, inquired of the chiefs, 'Where
shall be the residence of King Liholiho?' They replied, 'Where,
indeed? You, of all men, ought to know.' Then the priest observed,
'There are two suitable places; one is Kau, the other is Kohala.'
The chiefs preferred the latter, as it was more thickly inhabited.
The priest added, 'These are proper places for the King's residence;
but he must not remain in Kona, for it is polluted.' This was
agreed to. It was now break of day. As he was being carried to the
place of burial the people perceived that their King was dead, and
they wailed. When the corpse was removed from the house to the
tomb, a distance of one chain, the procession was met by a certain
man who was ardently attached to the deceased. He leaped upon the
chiefs who were carrying the King's body; he desired to die with him
on account of his love. The chiefs drove him away. He persisted in
making numerous attempts, which were unavailing. Kalaimoka also had
it in his heart to die with him, but was prevented by Hookio.
"The morning following Kamehameha's death, Liholiho and his train
departed for Kohala, according to the suggestions of the priest, to
avoid the defilement occasioned by the dead. At this time if a
chief died the land was polluted, and the heirs sought a residence
in another part of the country until the corpse was dissected and
the bones tied in a bundle, which being done, the season of
defilement terminated. If the deceased were not a chief, the house
only was defiled which became pure again on the burial of the body.
Such were the laws on this subject.
"On the morning on which Liholiho sailed in his canoe for Kohala,
the chiefs and people mourned after their manner on occasion of a
chief's death, conducting themselves like madmen and like beasts.
Their conduct was such as to forbid description; The priests, also,
put into action the sorcery apparatus, that the person who had
prayed the King to death might die; for it was not believed that
Kamehameha's departure was the effect either of sickness or old age.
When the sorcerers set up by their fire-places sticks with a strip
of kapa flying at the top, the chief Keeaumoku, Kaahumaun's brother,
came in a state of intoxication and broke the flag-staff of the
sorcerers, from which it was inferred that Kaahumanu and her friends
had been instrumental in the King's death. On this account they
were subjected to abuse."
You have the contrast, now, and a strange one it is. This great Queen,
Kaahumanu, who was "subjected to abuse" during the frightful orgies that
followed the King's death, in accordance with ancient custom, afterward
became a devout Christian and a steadfast and powerful friend of the
missionaries.
Dogs were, and still are, reared and fattened for food, by the natives
--hence the reference to their value in one of the above paragraphs.
Forty years ago it was the custom in the Islands to suspend all law for a
certain number of days after the death of a royal personage; and then a
saturnalia ensued which one may picture to himself after a fashion, but
not in the full horror of the reality. The people shaved their heads,
knocked out a tooth or two, plucked out an eye sometimes, cut, bruised,
mutilated or burned their flesh, got drunk, burned each other's huts,
maimed or murdered one another according to the caprice of the moment,
and both sexes gave themselves up to brutal and unbridled licentiousness.
And after it all, came a torpor from which the nation slowly emerged
bewildered and dazed, as if from a hideous half-remembered nightmare.
They were not the salt of the earth, those "gentle children of the sun."
The natives still keep up an old custom of theirs which cannot be
comforting to an invalid. When they think a sick friend is going to die,
a couple of dozen neighbors surround his hut and keep up a deafening
wailing night and day till he either dies or gets well. No doubt this
arrangement has helped many a subject to a shroud before his appointed
time.
They surround a hut and wail in the same heart-broken way when its
occupant returns from a journey. This is their dismal idea of a welcome.
A very little of it would go a great way with most of us.
CHAPTER LXIX.
Bound for Hawaii (a hundred and fifty miles distant,) to visit the great
volcano and behold the other notable things which distinguish that island
above the remainder of the group, we sailed from Honolulu on a certain
Saturday afternoon, in the good schooner Boomerang.
The Boomerang was about as long as two street cars, and about as wide as
one. She was so small (though she was larger than the majority of the
inter-island coasters) that when I stood on her deck I felt but little
smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes must have felt when he had a
man-of-war under him. I could reach the water when she lay over under a
strong breeze. When the Captain and my comrade (a Mr. Billings), myself
and four other persons were all assembled on the little after portion of
the deck which is sacred to the cabin passengers, it was full--there was
not room for any more quality folks. Another section of the deck, twice
as large as ours, was full of natives of both sexes, with their customary
dogs, mats, blankets, pipes, calabashes of poi, fleas, and other luxuries
and baggage of minor importance. As soon as we set sail the natives all
lay down on the deck as thick as negroes in a slave-pen, and smoked,
conversed, and spit on each other, and were truly sociable.
The little low-ceiled cabin below was rather larger than a hearse, and as
dark as a vault. It had two coffins on each side--I mean two bunks.
A small table, capable of accommodating three persons at dinner, stood
against the forward bulkhead, and over it hung the dingiest whale oil
lantern that ever peopled the obscurity of a dungeon with ghostly shapes.
The floor room unoccupied was not extensive. One might swing a cat in
it, perhaps, but not a long cat. The hold forward of the bulkhead had
but little freight in it, and from morning till night a portly old
rooster, with a voice like Baalam's ass, and the same disposition to use
it, strutted up and down in that part of the vessel and crowed. He
usually took dinner at six o'clock, and then, after an hour devoted to
meditation, he mounted a barrel and crowed a good part of the night.
He got hoarser all the time, but he scorned to allow any personal
consideration to interfere with his duty, and kept up his labors in
defiance of threatened diphtheria.
Sleeping was out of the question when he was on watch. He was a source
of genuine aggravation and annoyance. It was worse than useless to shout
at him or apply offensive epithets to him--he only took these things for
applause, and strained himself to make more noise. Occasionally, during
the day, I threw potatoes at him through an aperture in the bulkhead, but
he only dodged and went on crowing.
The first night, as I lay in my coffin, idly watching the dim lamp
swinging to the rolling of the ship, and snuffing the nauseous odors of
bilge water, I felt something gallop over me. I turned out promptly.
However, I turned in again when I found it was only a rat. Presently
something galloped over me once more. I knew it was not a rat this time,
and I thought it might be a centipede, because the Captain had killed one
on deck in the afternoon. I turned out. The first glance at the pillow
showed me repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches as
large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery,
malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and
appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that
these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe
nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay
down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward
a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few
moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas
were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder,
and taking a bite every time they struck. I was beginning to feel really
annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island
schooner life. There is no such thing as keeping a vessel in elegant
condition, when she carries molasses and Kanakas.
It was compensation for my sufferings to come unexpectedly upon so
beautiful a scene as met my eye--to step suddenly out of the sepulchral
gloom of the cabin and stand under the strong light of the moon--in the
centre, as it were, of a glittering sea of liquid silver--to see the
broad sails straining in the gale, the ship heeled over on her side, the
angry foam hissing past her lee bulwarks, and sparkling sheets of spray
dashing high over her bows and raining upon her decks; to brace myself
and hang fast to the first object that presented itself, with hat jammed
down and coat tails whipping in the breeze, and feel that exhilaration
that thrills in one's hair and quivers down his back bone when he knows
that every inch of canvas is drawing and the vessel cleaving through the
waves at her utmost speed. There was no darkness, no dimness, no
obscurity there. All was brightness, every object was vividly defined.
Every prostrate Kanaka; every coil of rope; every calabash of poi; every
puppy; every seam in the flooring; every bolthead; every object; however
minute, showed sharp and distinct in its every outline; and the shadow of
the broad mainsail lay black as a pall upon the deck, leaving Billings's
white upturned face glorified and his body in a total eclipse.
Monday morning we were close to the island of Hawaii. Two of its high
mountains were in view--Mauna Loa and Hualaiai.
The latter is an imposing peak, but being only ten thousand feet high is
seldom mentioned or heard of. Mauna Loa is said to be sixteen thousand
feet high. The rays of glittering snow and ice, that clasped its summit
like a claw, looked refreshing when viewed from the blistering climate we
were in. One could stand on that mountain (wrapped up in blankets and
furs to keep warm), and while he nibbled a snowball or an icicle to
quench his thirst he could look down the long sweep of its sides and see
spots where plants are growing that grow only where the bitter cold of
Winter prevails; lower down he could see sections devoted to production
that thrive in the temperate zone alone; and at the bottom of the
mountain he could see the home of the tufted cocoa-palms and other
species of vegetation that grow only in the sultry atmosphere of eternal
Summer. He could see all the climes of the world at a single glance of
the eye, and that glance would only pass over a distance of four or five
miles as the bird flies!
By and by we took boat and went ashore at Kailua, designing to ride
horseback through the pleasant orange and coffee region of Kona, and
rejoin the vessel at a point some leagues distant. This journey is well
worth taking. The trail passes along on high ground--say a thousand feet
above sea level--and usually about a mile distant from the ocean, which
is always in sight, save that occasionally you find yourself buried in
the forest in the midst of a rank tropical vegetation and a dense growth
of trees, whose great bows overarch the road and shut out sun and sea and
everything, and leave you in a dim, shady tunnel, haunted with invisible
singing birds and fragrant with the odor of flowers. It was pleasant to
ride occasionally in the warm sun, and feast the eye upon the
ever-changing panorama of the forest (beyond and below us), with its many
tints, its softened lights and shadows, its billowy undulations sweeping
gently down from the mountain to the sea. It was pleasant also, at
intervals, to leave the sultry sun and pass into the cool, green depths
of this forest and indulge in sentimental reflections under the
inspiration of its brooding twilight and its whispering foliage.
We rode through one orange grove that had ten thousand tree in it!
They were all laden with fruit.
At one farmhouse we got some large peaches of excellent flavor.
This fruit, as a general thing, does not do well in the Sandwich Islands.
It takes a sort of almond shape, and is small and bitter. It needs
frost, they say, and perhaps it does; if this be so, it will have a good
opportunity to go on needing it, as it will not be likely to get it.
The trees from which the fine fruit I have spoken of, came, had been
planted and replanted sixteen times, and to this treatment the proprietor
of the orchard attributed his-success.
We passed several sugar plantations--new ones and not very extensive.
The crops were, in most cases, third rattoons. [NOTE.--The first crop is
called "plant cane;" subsequent crops which spring from the original
roots, without replanting, are called "rattoons."] Almost everywhere on
the island of Hawaii sugar-cane matures in twelve months, both rattoons
and plant, and although it ought to be taken off as soon as it tassels,
no doubt, it is not absolutely necessary to do it until about four months
afterward. In Kona, the average yield of an acre of ground is two tons
of sugar, they say. This is only a moderate yield for these islands, but
would be astounding for Louisiana and most other sugar growing countries.
The plantations in Kona being on pretty high ground--up among the light
and frequent rains--no irrigation whatever is required.
CHAPTER LXX.
We stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves and
refresh the horses. We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemen
present; but there was one person, a middle aged man, with an absent look
in his face, who simply glanced up, gave us good-day and lapsed again
into the meditations which our coming had interrupted. The planters
whispered us not to mind him--crazy. They said he was in the Islands for
his health; was a preacher; his home, Michigan. They said that if he
woke up presently and fell to talking about a correspondence which he had
some time held with Mr. Greeley about a trifle of some kind, we must
humor him and listen with interest; and we must humor his fancy that this
correspondence was the talk of the world.
It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness had
nothing vicious in it. He looked pale, and a little worn, as if with
perplexing thought and anxiety of mind. He sat a long time, looking at
the floor, and at intervals muttering to himself and nodding his head
acquiescingly or shaking it in mild protest. He was lost in his thought,
or in his memories. We continued our talk with the planters, branching
from subject to subject. But at last the word "circumstance," casually
dropped, in the course of conversation, attracted his attention and
brought an eager look into his countenance. He faced about in his chair
and said:
"Circumstance? What circumstance? Ah, I know--I know too well. So you
have heard of it too." [With a sigh.] "Well, no matter--all the world
has heard of it. All the world. The whole world. It is a large world,
too, for a thing to travel so far in--now isn't it? Yes, yes--the
Greeley correspondence with Erickson has created the saddest and
bitterest controversy on both sides of the ocean--and still they keep it
up! It makes us famous, but at what a sorrowful sacrifice! I was so
sorry when I heard that it had caused that bloody and distressful war
over there in Italy. It was little comfort to me, after so much
bloodshed, to know that the victors sided with me, and the vanquished
with Greeley.--It is little comfort to know that Horace Greeley is
responsible for the battle of Sadowa, and not me.
"Queen Victoria wrote me that she felt just as I did about it--she said
that as much as she was opposed to Greeley and the spirit he showed in
the correspondence with me, she would not have had Sadowa happen for
hundreds of dollars. I can show you her letter, if you would like to see
it. But gentlemen, much as you may think you know about that unhappy
correspondence, you cannot know the straight of it till you hear it from
my lips. It has always been garbled in the journals, and even in
history. Yes, even in history--think of it! Let me--please let me, give
you the matter, exactly as it occurred. I truly will not abuse your
confidence."
Then he leaned forward, all interest, all earnestness, and told his
story--and told it appealingly, too, and yet in the simplest and most
unpretentious way; indeed, in such a way as to suggest to one, all the
time, that this was a faithful, honorable witness, giving evidence in the
sacred interest of justice, and under oath. He said:
"Mrs. Beazeley--Mrs. Jackson Beazeley, widow, of the village of
Campbellton, Kansas,--wrote me about a matter which was near her heart
--a matter which many might think trivial, but to her it was a thing of
deep concern. I was living in Michigan, then--serving in the ministry.
She was, and is, an estimable woman--a woman to whom poverty and hardship
have proven incentives to industry, in place of discouragements.
Her only treasure was her son William, a youth just verging upon manhood;
religious, amiable, and sincerely attached to agriculture. He was the
widow's comfort and her pride. And so, moved by her love for him, she
wrote me about a matter, as I have said before, which lay near her heart
--because it lay near her boy's. She desired me to confer with
Mr. Greeley about turnips. Turnips were the dream of her child's young
ambition. While other youths were frittering away in frivolous
amusements the precious years of budding vigor which God had given them
for useful preparation, this boy was patiently enriching his mind with
information concerning turnips. The sentiment which he felt toward the
turnip was akin to adoration. He could not think of the turnip without
emotion; he could not speak of it calmly; he could not contemplate it
without exaltation. He could not eat it without shedding tears. All the
poetry in his sensitive nature was in sympathy with the gracious
vegetable. With the earliest pipe of dawn he sought his patch, and when
the curtaining night drove him from it he shut himself up with his books
and garnered statistics till sleep overcame him. On rainy days he sat
and talked hours together with his mother about turnips. When company
came, he made it his loving duty to put aside everything else and
converse with them all the day long of his great joy in the turnip.
"And yet, was this joy rounded and complete? Was there no secret alloy of
unhappiness in it? Alas, there was. There was a canker gnawing at his
heart; the noblest inspiration of his soul eluded his endeavor--viz: he
could not make of the turnip a climbing vine. Months went by; the bloom
forsook his cheek, the fire faded out of his eye; sighings and
abstraction usurped the place of smiles and cheerful converse. But a
watchful eye noted these things and in time a motherly sympathy unsealed
the secret. Hence the letter to me. She pleaded for attention--she said
her boy was dying by inches.
"I was a stranger to Mr. Greeley, but what of that? The matter was
urgent. I wrote and begged him to solve the difficult problem if
possible and save the student's life. My interest grew, until it partook
of the anxiety of the mother. I waited in much suspense.--At last the
answer came.
"I found that I could not read it readily, the handwriting being
unfamiliar and my emotions somewhat wrought up. It seemed to refer in
part to the boy's case, but chiefly to other and irrelevant matters--such
as paving-stones, electricity, oysters, and something which I took to be
'absolution' or 'agrarianism,' I could not be certain which; still, these
appeared to be simply casual mentions, nothing more; friendly in spirit,
without doubt, but lacking the connection or coherence necessary to make
them useful.--I judged that my understanding was affected by my feelings,
and so laid the letter away till morning.
"In the morning I read it again, but with difficulty and uncertainty
still, for I had lost some little rest and my mental vision seemed
clouded. The note was more connected, now, but did not meet the
emergency it was expected to meet. It was too discursive. It appeared
to read as follows, though I was not certain of some of the words:
"Polygamy dissembles majesty; extracts redeem polarity; causes
hitherto exist. Ovations pursue wisdom, or warts inherit and
condemn. Boston, botany, cakes, folony undertakes, but who shall
allay? We fear not. Yrxwly,
HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
"But there did not seem to be a word about turnips. There seemed to be
no suggestion as to how they might be made to grow like vines. There was
not even a reference to the Beazeleys. I slept upon the matter; I ate no
supper, neither any breakfast next morning. So I resumed my work with a
brain refreshed, and was very hopeful. Now the letter took a different
aspect-all save the signature, which latter I judged to be only a
harmless affectation of Hebrew. The epistle was necessarily from Mr.
Greeley, for it bore the printed heading of The Tribune, and I had
written to no one else there. The letter, I say, had taken a different
aspect, but still its language was eccentric and avoided the issue. It
now appeared to say:
"Bolivia extemporizes mackerel; borax esteems polygamy; sausages
wither in the east. Creation perdu, is done; for woes inherent one
can damn. Buttons, buttons, corks, geology underrates but we shall
allay. My beer's out. Yrxwly,
HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
"I was evidently overworked. My comprehension was impaired. Therefore I
gave two days to recreation, and then returned to my task greatly
refreshed. The letter now took this form:
"Poultices do sometimes choke swine; tulips reduce posterity; causes
leather to resist. Our notions empower wisdom, her let's afford
while we can. Butter but any cakes, fill any undertaker, we'll wean
him from his filly. We feel hot.
Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
"I was still not satisfied. These generalities did not meet the
question. They were crisp, and vigorous, and delivered with a confidence
that almost compelled conviction; but at such a time as this, with a
human life at stake, they seemed inappropriate, worldly, and in bad
taste. At any other time I would have been not only glad, but proud, to
receive from a man like Mr. Greeley a letter of this kind, and would have
studied it earnestly and tried to improve myself all I could; but now,
with that poor boy in his far home languishing for relief, I had no heart
for learning.
"Three days passed by, and I read the note again. Again its tenor had
changed. It now appeared to say:
"Potations do sometimes wake wines; turnips restrain passion; causes
necessary to state. Infest the poor widow; her lord's effects will
be void. But dirt, bathing, etc., etc., followed unfairly, will
worm him from his folly--so swear not.
Yrxwly, HEVACE EVEELOJ.'
"This was more like it. But I was unable to proceed. I was too much
worn. The word 'turnips' brought temporary joy and encouragement, but my
strength was so much impaired, and the delay might be so perilous for the
boy, that I relinquished the idea of pursuing the translation further,
and resolved to do what I ought to have done at first. I sat down and
wrote Mr. Greeley as follows:
"DEAR SIR: I fear I do not entirely comprehend your kind note. It
cannot be possible, Sir, that 'turnips restrain passion'--at least
the study or contemplation of turnips cannot--for it is this very
employment that has scorched our poor friend's mind and sapped his
bodily strength.--But if they do restrain it, will you bear with us
a little further and explain how they should be prepared? I observe
that you say 'causes necessary to state,' but you have omitted to
state them.
"Under a misapprehension, you seem to attribute to me interested
motives in this matter--to call it by no harsher term. But I assure
you, dear sir, that if I seem to be 'infesting the widow,' it is all
seeming, and void of reality. It is from no seeking of mine that I
am in this position. She asked me, herself, to write you. I never
have infested her--indeed I scarcely know her. I do not infest
anybody. I try to go along, in my humble way, doing as near right
as I can, never harming anybody, and never throwing out
insinuations. As for 'her lord and his effects,' they are of no
interest to me. I trust I have effects enough of my own--shall
endeavor to get along with them, at any rate, and not go mousing
around to get hold of somebody's that are 'void.' But do you not
see?--this woman is a widow--she has no 'lord.' He is dead--or
pretended to be, when they buried him. Therefore, no amount of
'dirt, bathing,' etc., etc., howsoever 'unfairly followed' will be
likely to 'worm him from his folly'--if being dead and a ghost is
'folly.' Your closing remark is as unkind as it was uncalled for;
and if report says true you might have applied it to yourself, sir,
with more point and less impropriety.
Very Truly Yours, SIMON ERICKSON.
"In the course of a few days, Mr. Greely did what would have saved a
world of trouble, and much mental and bodily suffering and
misunderstanding, if he had done it sooner. To wit, he sent an
intelligible rescript or translation of his original note, made in a
plain hand by his clerk. Then the mystery cleared, and I saw that his
heart had been right, all the time. I will recite the note in its
clarified form:
[Translation.]
'Potatoes do sometimes make vines; turnips remain passive: cause
unnecessary to state. Inform the poor widow her lad's efforts will
be vain. But diet, bathing, etc. etc., followed uniformly, will
wean him from his folly--so fear not.
Yours, HORACE GREELEY.'
"But alas, it was too late, gentlemen--too late. The criminal delay had
done its work--young Beazely was no more. His spirit had taken its
flight to a land where all anxieties shall be charmed away, all desires
gratified, all ambitions realized. Poor lad, they laid him to his rest
with a turnip in each hand."
So ended Erickson, and lapsed again into nodding, mumbling, and
abstraction. The company broke up, and left him so.... But they did not
say what drove him crazy. In the momentary confusion, I forgot to ask.
CHAPTER LXXI.
At four o'clock in the afternoon we were winding down a mountain of
dreary and desolate lava to the sea, and closing our pleasant land
journey. This lava is the accumulation of ages; one torrent of fire
after another has rolled down here in old times, and built up the island
structure higher and higher. Underneath, it is honey-combed with caves;
it would be of no use to dig wells in such a place; they would not hold
water--you would not find any for them to hold, for that matter.
Consequently, the planters depend upon cisterns.
The last lava flow occurred here so long ago that there are none now
living who witnessed it. In one place it enclosed and burned down a
grove of cocoa-nut trees, and the holes in the lava where the trunks
stood are still visible; their sides retain the impression of the bark;
the trees fell upon the burning river, and becoming partly submerged,
left in it the perfect counterpart of every knot and branch and leaf,
and even nut, for curiosity seekers of a long distant day to gaze upon
and wonder at.
There were doubtless plenty of Kanaka sentinels on guard hereabouts at
that time, but they did not leave casts of their figures in the lava as
the Roman sentinels at Herculaneum and Pompeii did. It is a pity it is
so, because such things are so interesting; but so it is. They probably
went away. They went away early, perhaps. However, they had their
merits; the Romans exhibited the higher pluck, but the Kanakas showed the
sounder judgment.
Shortly we came in sight of that spot whose history is so familiar to
every school-boy in the wide world--Kealakekua Bay--the place where
Captain Cook, the great circumnavigator, was killed by the natives,
nearly a hundred years ago. The setting sun was flaming upon it, a
Summer shower was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent
rainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of these
and for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor.
Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery
the Rainbow Islands? These charming spectacles are present to you at
every turn; they are common in all the islands; they are visible every
day, and frequently at night also--not the silvery bow we see once in an
age in the States, by moonlight, but barred with all bright and beautiful
colors, like the children of the sun and rain. I saw one of them a few
nights ago. What the sailors call "raindogs"--little patches of rainbow
--are often seen drifting about the heavens in these latitudes, like
stained cathedral windows.
Kealakekua Bay is a little curve like the last kink of a snail-shell,
winding deep into the land, seemingly not more than a mile wide from
shore to shore. It is bounded on one side--where the murder was done--by
a little flat plain, on which stands a cocoanut grove and some ruined
houses; a steep wall of lava, a thousand feet high at the upper end and
three or four hundred at the lower, comes down from the mountain and
bounds the inner extremity of it. From this wall the place takes its
name, Kealakekua, which in the native tongue signifies "The Pathway of
the Gods." They say, (and still believe, in spite of their liberal
education in Christianity), that the great god Lono, who used to live
upon the hillside, always traveled that causeway when urgent business
connected with heavenly affairs called him down to the seashore in a
hurry.
As the red sun looked across the placid ocean through the tall, clean
stems of the cocoanut trees, like a blooming whiskey bloat through the
bars of a city prison, I went and stood in the edge of the water on the
flat rock pressed by Captain Cook's feet when the blow was dealt which
took away his life, and tried to picture in my mind the doomed man
struggling in the midst of the multitude of exasperated savages--the men
in the ship crowding to the vessel's side and gazing in anxious dismay
toward the shore--the--but I discovered that I could not do it.
It was growing dark, the rain began to fall, we could see that the
distant Boomerang was helplessly becalmed at sea, and so I adjourned to
the cheerless little box of a warehouse and sat down to smoke and think,
and wish the ship would make the land--for we had not eaten much for ten
hours and were viciously hungry.
Plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's
assassination, and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide.
Wherever he went among the islands, he was cordially received and
welcomed by the inhabitants, and his ships lavishly supplied with all
manner of food. He returned these kindnesses with insult and
ill-treatment. Perceiving that the people took him for the long vanished
and lamented god Lono, he encouraged them in the delusion for the sake of
the limitless power it gave him; but during the famous disturbance at
this spot, and while he and his comrades were surrounded by fifteen
thousand maddened savages, he received a hurt and betrayed his earthly
origin with a groan. It was his death-warrant. Instantly a shout went
up: "He groans!--he is not a god!" So they closed in upon him and
dispatched him.
His flesh was stripped from the bones and burned (except nine pounds of
it which were sent on board the ships). The heart was hung up in a
native hut, where it was found and eaten by three children, who mistook
it for the heart of a dog. One of these children grew to be a very old
man, and died in Honolulu a few years ago. Some of Cook's bones were
recovered and consigned to the deep by the officers of the ships.
Small blame should attach to the natives for the killing of Cook.
They treated him well. In return, he abused them. He and his men
inflicted bodily injury upon many of them at different times, and killed
at least three of them before they offered any proportionate retaliation.
Near the shore we found "Cook's Monument"--only a cocoanut stump, four
feet high and about a foot in diameter at the butt. It had lava boulders
piled around its base to hold it up and keep it in its place, and it was
entirely sheathed over, from top to bottom, with rough, discolored sheets
of copper, such as ships' bottoms are coppered with. Each sheet had a
rude inscription scratched upon it--with a nail, apparently--and in every
case the execution was wretched. Most of these merely recorded the
visits of British naval commanders to the spot, but one of them bore this
legend:
"Near this spot fell
CAPTAIN JAMES COOK,
The Distinguished Circumnavigator,
Who Discovered these Islands
A. D. 1778."
After Cook's murder, his second in command, on board the ship, opened
fire upon the swarms of natives on the beach, and one of his cannon balls
cut this cocoanut tree short off and left this monumental stump standing.
It looked sad and lonely enough to us, out there in the rainy twilight.
But there is no other monument to Captain Cook. True, up on the mountain
side we had passed by a large inclosure like an ample hog-pen, built of
lava blocks, which marks the spot where Cook's flesh was stripped from
his bones and burned; but this is not properly a monument since it was
erected by the natives themselves, and less to do honor to the
circumnavigator than for the sake of convenience in roasting him.
A thing like a guide-board was elevated above this pen on a tall pole,
and formerly there was an inscription upon it describing the memorable
occurrence that had there taken place; but the sun and the wind have long
ago so defaced it as to render it illegible.
Toward midnight a fine breeze sprang up and the schooner soon worked
herself into the bay and cast anchor. The boat came ashore for us, and
in a little while the clouds and the rain were all gone. The moon was
beaming tranquilly down on land and sea, and we two were stretched upon
the deck sleeping the refreshing sleep and dreaming the happy dreams that
are only vouchsafed to the weary and the innocent.
CHAPTER LXXII.
In the breezy morning we went ashore and visited the ruined temple of the
last god Lono. The high chief cook of this temple--the priest who
presided over it and roasted the human sacrifices--was uncle to Obookia,
and at one time that youth was an apprentice-priest under him. Obookia
was a young native of fine mind, who, together with three other native
boys, was taken to New England by the captain of a whaleship during the
reign of Kamehameha I, and they were the means of attracting the
attention of the religious world to their country. This resulted in the
sending of missionaries there. And this Obookia was the very same
sensitive savage who sat down on the church steps and wept because his
people did not have the Bible. That incident has been very elaborately
painted in many a charming Sunday School book--aye, and told so
plaintively and so tenderly that I have cried over it in Sunday School
myself, on general principles, although at a time when I did not know
much and could not understand why the people of the Sandwich Islands
needed to worry so much about it as long as they did not know there was a
Bible at all.
Obookia was converted and educated, and was to have returned to his
native land with the first missionaries, had he lived. The other native
youths made the voyage, and two of them did good service, but the third,
William Kanui, fell from grace afterward, for a time, and when the gold
excitement broke out in California he journeyed thither and went to
mining, although he was fifty years old. He succeeded pretty well, but
the failure of Page, Bacon & Co. relieved him of six thousand dollars,
and then, to all intents and purposes, he was a bankrupt in his old age
and he resumed service in the pulpit again. He died in Honolulu in 1864.
Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to
the mountain top, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times--so sacred
that if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it it was
judicious for him to make his will, because his time had come. He might
go around it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkled
with pagan temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of
logs of wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain--and with
fine sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side
that if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be
likely to get it every time. You would seldom get to your Amen before
you would have to hoist your umbrella.
And there was a large temple near at hand which was built in a single
night, in the midst of storm and thunder and rain, by the ghastly hands
of dead men! Tradition says that by the weird glare of the lightning a
noiseless multitude of phantoms were seen at their strange labor far up
the mountain side at dead of night--flitting hither and thither and
bearing great lava-blocks clasped in their nerveless fingers--appearing
and disappearing as the pallid lustre fell upon their forms and faded
away again. Even to this day, it is said, the natives hold this dread
structure in awe and reverence, and will not pass by it in the night.
At noon I observed a bevy of nude native young ladies bathing in the sea,
and went and sat down on their clothes to keep them from being stolen.
I begged them to come out, for the sea was rising and I was satisfied
that they were running some risk. But they were not afraid, and
presently went on with their sport. They were finished swimmers and
divers, and enjoyed themselves to the last degree.
They swam races, splashed and ducked and tumbled each other about, and
filled the air with their laughter. It is said that the first thing an
Islander learns is how to swim; learning to walk being a matter of
smaller consequence, comes afterward. One hears tales of native men and
women swimming ashore from vessels many miles at sea--more miles, indeed,
than I dare vouch for or even mention. And they tell of a native diver
who went down in thirty or forty-foot waters and brought up an anvil!
I think he swallowed the anvil afterward, if my memory serves me.
However I will not urge this point.
I have spoken, several times, of the god Lono--I may as well furnish two
or three sentences concerning him.
The idol the natives worshipped for him was a slender, unornamented staff
twelve feet long. Tradition says he was a favorite god on the Island of
Hawaii--a great king who had been deified for meritorious services--just
our own fashion of rewarding heroes, with the difference that we would
have made him a Postmaster instead of a god, no doubt. In an angry
moment he slew his wife, a goddess named Kaikilani Aiii. Remorse of
conscience drove him mad, and tradition presents us the singular
spectacle of a god traveling "on the shoulder;" for in his gnawing grief
he wandered about from place to place boxing and wrestling with all whom
he met. Of course this pastime soon lost its novelty, inasmuch as it
must necessarily have been the case that when so powerful a deity sent a
frail human opponent "to grass" he never came back any more. Therefore,
he instituted games called makahiki, and ordered that they should be held
in his honor, and then sailed for foreign lands on a three-cornered raft,
stating that he would return some day--and that was the last of Lono.
He was never seen any more; his raft got swamped, perhaps. But the
people always expected his return, and thus they were easily led to
accept Captain Cook as the restored god.
Some of the old natives believed Cook was Lono to the day of their death;
but many did not, for they could not understand how he could die if he
was a god.
Only a mile or so from Kealakekua Bay is a spot of historic interest--the
place where the last battle was fought for idolatry. Of course we
visited it, and came away as wise as most people do who go and gaze upon
such mementoes of the past when in an unreflective mood.
While the first missionaries were on their way around the Horn, the
idolatrous customs which had obtained in the island, as far back as
tradition reached were suddenly broken up. Old Kamehameha I., was dead,
and his son, Liholiho, the new King was a free liver, a roystering,
dissolute fellow, and hated the restraints of the ancient tabu. His
assistant in the Government, Kaahumanu, the Queen dowager, was proud and
high-spirited, and hated the tabu because it restricted the privileges of
her sex and degraded all women very nearly to the level of brutes.
So the case stood. Liholiho had half a mind to put his foot down,
Kaahumahu had a whole mind to badger him into doing it, and whiskey did
the rest. It was probably the rest. It was probably the first time
whiskey ever prominently figured as an aid to civilization. Liholiho
came up to Kailua as drunk as a piper, and attended a great feast; the
determined Queen spurred his drunken courage up to a reckless pitch, and
then, while all the multitude stared in blank dismay, he moved
deliberately forward and sat down with the women!
They saw him eat from the same vessel with them, and were appalled!
Terrible moments drifted slowly by, and still the King ate, still he
lived, still the lightnings of the insulted gods were withheld!
Then conviction came like a revelation--the superstitions of a hundred
generations passed from before the people like a cloud, and a shout went
up, "the tabu is broken! the tabu is broken!"
Thus did King Liholiho and his dreadful whiskey preach the first sermon
and prepare the way for the new gospel that was speeding southward over
the waves of the Atlantic.
The tabu broken and destruction failing to follow the awful sacrilege,
the people, with that childlike precipitancy which has always
characterized them, jumped to the conclusion that their gods were a weak
and wretched swindle, just as they formerly jumped to the conclusion that
Captain Cook was no god, merely because he groaned, and promptly killed
him without stopping to inquire whether a god might not groan as well as
a man if it suited his convenience to do it; and satisfied that the idols
were powerless to protect themselves they went to work at once and pulled
them down--hacked them to pieces--applied the torch--annihilated them!
The pagan priests were furious. And well they might be; they had held
the fattest offices in the land, and now they were beggared; they had
been great--they had stood above the chiefs--and now they were vagabonds.
They raised a revolt; they scared a number of people into joining their
standard, and Bekuokalani, an ambitious offshoot of royalty, was easily
persuaded to become their leader.
In the first skirmish the idolaters triumphed over the royal army sent
against them, and full of confidence they resolved to march upon Kailua.
The King sent an envoy to try and conciliate them, and came very near
being an envoy short by the operation; the savages not only refused to
listen to him, but wanted to kill him. So the King sent his men forth
under Major General Kalaimoku and the two host met a Kuamoo. The battle
was long and fierce--men and women fighting side by side, as was the
custom--and when the day was done the rebels were flying in every
direction in hopeless panic, and idolatry and the tabu were dead in the
land!
The royalists marched gayly home to Kailua glorifying the new
dispensation. "There is no power in the gods," said they; "they are a
vanity and a lie. The army with idols was weak; the army without idols
was strong and victorious!"
The nation was without a religion.
The missionary ship arrived in safety shortly afterward, timed by
providential exactness to meet the emergency, and the Gospel was planted
as in a virgin soil.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
At noon, we hired a Kanaka to take us down to the ancient ruins at
Honaunan in his canoe--price two dollars--reasonable enough, for a sea
voyage of eight miles, counting both ways.
The native canoe is an irresponsible looking contrivance. I cannot think
of anything to liken it to but a boy's sled runner hollowed out, and that
does not quite convey the correct idea. It is about fifteen feet long,
high and pointed at both ends, is a foot and a half or two feet deep, and
so narrow that if you wedged a fat man into it you might not get him out
again. It sits on top of the water like a duck, but it has an outrigger
and does not upset easily, if you keep still. This outrigger is formed
of two long bent sticks like plow handles, which project from one side,
and to their outer ends is bound a curved beam composed of an extremely
light wood, which skims along the surface of the water and thus saves you
from an upset on that side, while the outrigger's weight is not so easily
lifted as to make an upset on the other side a thing to be greatly
feared. Still, until one gets used to sitting perched upon this
knifeblade, he is apt to reason within himself that it would be more
comfortable if there were just an outrigger or so on the other side also.
I had the bow seat, and Billings sat amidships and faced the Kanaka, who
occupied the stern of the craft and did the paddling. With the first
stroke the trim shell of a thing shot out from the shore like an arrow.
There was not much to see. While we were on the shallow water of the
reef, it was pastime to look down into the limpid depths at the large
bunches of branching coral--the unique shrubbery of the sea. We lost
that, though, when we got out into the dead blue water of the deep.
But we had the picture of the surf, then, dashing angrily against the
crag-bound shore and sending a foaming spray high into the air.
There was interest in this beetling border, too, for it was honey-combed
with quaint caves and arches and tunnels, and had a rude semblance of the
dilapidated architecture of ruined keeps and castles rising out of the
restless sea. When this novelty ceased to be a novelty, we turned our
eyes shoreward and gazed at the long mountain with its rich green forests
stretching up into the curtaining clouds, and at the specks of houses in
the rearward distance and the diminished schooner riding sleepily at
anchor. And when these grew tiresome we dashed boldly into the midst of
a school of huge, beastly porpoises engaged at their eternal game of
arching over a wave and disappearing, and then doing it over again and
keeping it up--always circling over, in that way, like so many
well-submerged wheels. But the porpoises wheeled themselves away, and
then we were thrown upon our own resources. It did not take many minutes
to discover that the sun was blazing like a bonfire, and that the weather
was of a melting temperature. It had a drowsing effect, too. In one
place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and
all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing.
Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea, (taking
a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly
prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his
board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would
come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning
express train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried
surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the
board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the
connection myself.--The board struck the shore in three quarters of a
second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time,
with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master
the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.
At the end of an hour, we had made the four miles, and landed on a level
point of land, upon which was a wide extent of old ruins, with many a
tall cocoanut tree growing among them. Here was the ancient City of
Refuge--a vast inclosure, whose stone walls were twenty feet thick at the
base, and fifteen feet high; an oblong square, a thousand and forty feet
one way and a fraction under seven hundred the other. Within this
inclosure, in early times, has been three rude temples; each two hundred
and ten feet long by one hundred wide, and thirteen high.
In those days, if a man killed another anywhere on the island the
relatives were privileged to take the murderer's life; and then a chase
for life and liberty began--the outlawed criminal flying through pathless
forests and over mountain and plain, with his hopes fixed upon the
protecting walls of the City of Refuge, and the avenger of blood
following hotly after him!
Sometimes the race was kept up to the very gates of the temple, and the
panting pair sped through long files of excited natives, who watched the
contest with flashing eye and dilated nostril, encouraging the hunted
refugee with sharp, inspiriting ejaculations, and sending up a ringing
shout of exultation when the saving gates closed upon him and the cheated
pursuer sank exhausted at the threshold. But sometimes the flying
criminal fell under the hand of the avenger at the very door, when one
more brave stride, one more brief second of time would have brought his
feet upon the sacred ground and barred him against all harm. Where did
these isolated pagans get this idea of a City of Refuge--this ancient
Oriental custom?
This old sanctuary was sacred to all--even to rebels in arms and invading
armies. Once within its walls, and confession made to the priest and
absolution obtained, the wretch with a price upon his head could go forth
without fear and without danger--he was tabu, and to harm him was death.
The routed rebels in the lost battle for idolatry fled to this place to
claim sanctuary, and many were thus saved.
Close to the corner of the great inclosure is a round structure of stone,
some six or eight feet high, with a level top about ten or twelve in
diameter. This was the place of execution. A high palisade of cocoanut
piles shut out the cruel scenes from the vulgar multitude. Here
criminals were killed, the flesh stripped from the bones and burned, and
the bones secreted in holes in the body of the structure. If the man had
been guilty of a high crime, the entire corpse was burned.
The walls of the temple are a study. The same food for speculation that
is offered the visitor to the Pyramids of Egypt he will find here--the
mystery of how they were constructed by a people unacquainted with
science and mechanics. The natives have no invention of their own for
hoisting heavy weights, they had no beasts of burden, and they have never
even shown any knowledge of the properties of the lever. Yet some of the
lava blocks quarried out, brought over rough, broken ground, and built
into this wall, six or seven feet from the ground, are of prodigious size
and would weigh tons. How did they transport and how raise them?
Both the inner and outer surfaces of the walls present a smooth front and
are very creditable specimens of masonry. The blocks are of all manner
of shapes and sizes, but yet are fitted together with the neatest
exactness. The gradual narrowing of the wall from the base upward is
accurately preserved.
No cement was used, but the edifice is firm and compact and is capable of
resisting storm and decay for centuries. Who built this temple, and how
was it built, and when, are mysteries that may never be unraveled.
Outside of these ancient walls lies a sort of coffin-shaped stone eleven
feet four inches long and three feet square at the small end (it would
weigh a few thousand pounds), which the high chief who held sway over
this district many centuries ago brought thither on his shoulder one day
to use as a lounge! This circumstance is established by the most
reliable traditions. He used to lie down on it, in his indolent way, and
keep an eye on his subjects at work for him and see that there was no
"soldiering" done. And no doubt there was not any done to speak of,
because he was a man of that sort of build that incites to attention to
business on the part of an employee.
He was fourteen or fifteen feet high. When he stretched himself at full
length on his lounge, his legs hung down over the end, and when he snored
he woke the dead. These facts are all attested by irrefragable
tradition.
On the other side of the temple is a monstrous seven-ton rock, eleven
feet long, seven feet wide and three feet thick. It is raised a foot or
a foot and a half above the ground, and rests upon half a dozen little
stony pedestals. The same old fourteen-footer brought it down from the
mountain, merely for fun (he had his own notions about fun), and propped
it up as we find it now and as others may find it a century hence, for it
would take a score of horses to budge it from its position. They say
that fifty or sixty years ago the proud Queen Kaahumanu used to fly to
this rock for safety, whenever she had been making trouble with her
fierce husband, and hide under it until his wrath was appeased. But
these Kanakas will lie, and this statement is one of their ablest
efforts--for Kaahumanu was six feet high--she was bulky--she was built
like an ox--and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock
than she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What
could she gain by it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by
a savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high
spirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour's repose
under that rock would.
We walked a mile over a raised macadamized road of uniform width; a road
paved with flat stones and exhibiting in its every detail a considerable
degree of engineering skill. Some say that that wise old pagan,
Kamehameha I planned and built it, but others say it was built so long
before his time that the knowledge of who constructed it has passed out
of the traditions. In either case, however, as the handiwork of an
untaught and degraded race it is a thing of pleasing interest. The
stones are worn and smooth, and pushed apart in places, so that the road
has the exact appearance of those ancient paved highways leading out of
Rome which one sees in pictures.
The object of our tramp was to visit a great natural curiosity at the
base of the foothills--a congealed cascade of lava. Some old forgotten
volcanic eruption sent its broad river of fire down the mountain side
here, and it poured down in a great torrent from an overhanging bluff
some fifty feet high to the ground below. The flaming torrent cooled in
the winds from the sea, and remains there to-day, all seamed, and frothed
and rippled a petrified Niagara. It is very picturesque, and withal so
natural that one might almost imagine it still flowed. A smaller stream
trickled over the cliff and built up an isolated pyramid about thirty
feet high, which has the semblance of a mass of large gnarled and knotted
vines and roots and stems intricately twisted and woven together.
We passed in behind the cascade and the pyramid, and found the bluff
pierced by several cavernous tunnels, whose crooked courses we followed a
long distance.
Two of these winding tunnels stand as proof of Nature's mining abilities.
Their floors are level, they are seven feet wide, and their roofs are
gently arched. Their height is not uniform, however. We passed through
one a hundred feet long, which leads through a spur of the hill and opens
out well up in the sheer wall of a precipice whose foot rests in the
waves of the sea. It is a commodious tunnel, except that there are
occasional places in it where one must stoop to pass under. The roof is
lava, of course, and is thickly studded with little lava-pointed icicles
an inch long, which hardened as they dripped. They project as closely
together as the iron teeth of a corn-sheller, and if one will stand up
straight and walk any distance there, he can get his hair combed free of
charge.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
We got back to the schooner in good time, and then sailed down to Kau,
where we disembarked and took final leave of the vessel. Next day we
bought horses and bent our way over the summer-clad mountain-terraces,
toward the great volcano of Kilauea (Ke-low-way-ah). We made nearly a
two days' journey of it, but that was on account of laziness. Toward
sunset on the second day, we reached an elevation of some four thousand
feet above sea level, and as we picked our careful way through billowy
wastes of lava long generations ago stricken dead and cold in the climax
of its tossing fury, we began to come upon signs of the near presence of
the volcano--signs in the nature of ragged fissures that discharged jets
of sulphurous vapor into the air, hot from the molten ocean down in the
bowels of the mountain.
Shortly the crater came into view. I have seen Vesuvius since, but it
was a mere toy, a child's volcano, a soup-kettle, compared to this.
Mount Vesuvius is a shapely cone thirty-six hundred feet high; its crater
an inverted cone only three hundred feet deep, and not more than a
thousand feet in diameter, if as much as that; its fires meagre, modest,
and docile.--But here was a vast, perpendicular, walled cellar, nine
hundred feet deep in some places, thirteen hundred in others,
level-floored, and ten miles in circumference! Here was a yawning pit
upon whose floor the armies of Russia could camp, and have room to spare.
Perched upon the edge of the crater, at the opposite end from where we
stood, was a small look-out house--say three miles away. It assisted us,
by comparison, to comprehend and appreciate the great depth of the basin
--it looked like a tiny martin-box clinging at the eaves of a cathedral.
After some little time spent in resting and looking and ciphering, we
hurried on to the hotel.
By the path it is half a mile from the Volcano House to the
lookout-house. After a hearty supper we waited until it was thoroughly
dark and then started to the crater. The first glance in that direction
revealed a scene of wild beauty. There was a heavy fog over the crater
and it was splendidly illuminated by the glare from the fires below. The
illumination was two miles wide and a mile high, perhaps; and if you
ever, on a dark night and at a distance beheld the light from thirty or
forty blocks of distant buildings all on fire at once, reflected strongly
against over-hanging clouds, you can form a fair idea of what this looked
like.
A colossal column of cloud towered to a great height in the air
immediately above the crater, and the outer swell of every one of its
vast folds was dyed with a rich crimson luster, which was subdued to a
pale rose tint in the depressions between. It glowed like a muffled
torch and stretched upward to a dizzy height toward the zenith. I
thought it just possible that its like had not been seen since the
children of Israel wandered on their long march through the desert so
many centuries ago over a path illuminated by the mysterious "pillar of
fire." And I was sure that I now had a vivid conception of what the
majestic "pillar of fire" was like, which almost amounted to a
revelation.
Arrived at the little thatched lookout house, we rested our elbows on the
railing in front and looked abroad over the wide crater and down over the
sheer precipice at the seething fires beneath us. The view was a
startling improvement on my daylight experience. I turned to see the
effect on the balance of the company and found the reddest-faced set of
men I almost ever saw. In the strong light every countenance glowed like
red-hot iron, every shoulder was suffused with crimson and shaded
rearward into dingy, shapeless obscurity! The place below looked like
the infernal regions and these men like half-cooled devils just come up
on a furlough.
I turned my eyes upon the volcano again. The "cellar" was tolerably well
lighted up. For a mile and a half in front of us and half a mile on
either side, the floor of the abyss was magnificently illuminated; beyond
these limits the mists hung down their gauzy curtains and cast a
deceptive gloom over all that made the twinkling fires in the remote
corners of the crater seem countless leagues removed--made them seem like
the camp-fires of a great army far away. Here was room for the
imagination to work! You could imagine those lights the width of a
continent away--and that hidden under the intervening darkness were
hills, and winding rivers, and weary wastes of plain and desert--and even
then the tremendous vista stretched on, and on, and on!--to the fires and
far beyond! You could not compass it--it was the idea of eternity made
tangible--and the longest end of it made visible to the naked eye!
The greater part of the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as
ink, and apparently smooth and level; but over a mile square of it was
ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of
liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! It looked like a colossal railroad
map of the State of Massachusetts done in chain lightning on a midnight
sky. Imagine it--imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled
net-work of angry fire!
Here and there were gleaming holes a hundred feet in diameter, broken in
the dark crust, and in them the melted lava--the color a dazzling white
just tinged with yellow--was boiling and surging furiously; and from
these holes branched numberless bright torrents in many directions, like
the spokes of a wheel, and kept a tolerably straight course for a while
and then swept round in huge rainbow curves, or made a long succession of
sharp worm-fence angles, which looked precisely like the fiercest jagged
lightning. These streams met other streams, and they mingled with and
crossed and recrossed each other in every conceivable direction, like
skate tracks on a popular skating ground. Sometimes streams twenty or
thirty feet wide flowed from the holes to some distance without dividing
--and through the opera-glasses we could see that they ran down small,
steep hills and were genuine cataracts of fire, white at their source,
but soon cooling and turning to the richest red, grained with alternate
lines of black and gold. Every now and then masses of the dark crust
broke away and floated slowly down these streams like rafts down a river.
Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crust broke
through--split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousand feet
long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the
cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice
when a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the
crimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the "thaw" maintained a ruddy
glow for a while, but shortly cooled and became black and level again.
During a "thaw," every dismembered cake was marked by a glittering white
border which was superbly shaded inward by aurora borealis rays, which
were a flaming yellow where they joined the white border, and from thence
toward their points tapered into glowing crimson, then into a rich, pale
carmine, and finally into a faint blush that held its own a moment and
then dimmed and turned black. Some of the streams preferred to mingle
together in a tangle of fantastic circles, and then they looked something
like the confusion of ropes one sees on a ship's deck when she has just
taken in sail and dropped anchor--provided one can imagine those ropes on
fire.
Through the glasses, the little fountains scattered about looked very
beautiful. They boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged
sprays of stringy red fire--of about the consistency of mush, for
instance--from ten to fifteen feet into the air, along with a shower of
brilliant white sparks--a quaint and unnatural mingling of gouts of blood
and snow-flakes!
We had circles and serpents and streaks of lightning all twined and
wreathed and tied together, without a break throughout an area more than
a mile square (that amount of ground was covered, though it was not
strictly "square"), and it was with a feeling of placid exultation that
we reflected that many years had elapsed since any visitor had seen such
a splendid display--since any visitor had seen anything more than the now
snubbed and insignificant "North" and "South" lakes in action. We had
been reading old files of Hawaiian newspapers and the "Record Book" at
the Volcano House, and were posted.
I could see the North Lake lying out on the black floor away off in the
outer edge of our panorama, and knitted to it by a web-work of lava
streams. In its individual capacity it looked very little more
respectable than a schoolhouse on fire. True, it was about nine hundred
feet long and two or three hundred wide, but then, under the present
circumstances, it necessarily appeared rather insignificant, and besides
it was so distant from us.
I forgot to say that the noise made by the bubbling lava is not great,
heard as we heard it from our lofty perch. It makes three distinct
sounds--a rushing, a hissing, and a coughing or puffing sound; and if you
stand on the brink and close your eyes it is no trick at all to imagine
that you are sweeping down a river on a large low-pressure steamer, and
that you hear the hissing of the steam about her boilers, the puffing
from her escape-pipes and the churning rush of the water abaft her
wheels. The smell of sulphur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner.
We left the lookout house at ten o'clock in a half cooked condition,
because of the heat from Pele's furnaces, and wrapping up in blankets,
for the night was cold, we returned to our Hotel.
CHAPTER LXXV.
The next night was appointed for a visit to the bottom of the crater, for
we desired to traverse its floor and see the "North Lake" (of fire) which
lay two miles away, toward the further wall. After dark half a dozen of
us set out, with lanterns and native guides, and climbed down a crazy,
thousand-foot pathway in a crevice fractured in the crater wall, and
reached the bottom in safety.
The irruption of the previous evening had spent its force and the floor
looked black and cold; but when we ran out upon it we found it hot yet,
to the feet, and it was likewise riven with crevices which revealed the
underlying fires gleaming vindictively. A neighboring cauldron was
threatening to overflow, and this added to the dubiousness of the
situation. So the native guides refused to continue the venture, and
then every body deserted except a stranger named Marlette. He said he
had been in the crater a dozen times in daylight and believed he could
find his way through it at night. He thought that a run of three hundred
yards would carry us over the hottest part of the floor and leave us our
shoe-soles. His pluck gave me back-bone. We took one lantern and
instructed the guides to hang the other to the roof of the look-out house
to serve as a beacon for us in case we got lost, and then the party
started back up the precipice and Marlette and I made our run.
We skipped over the hot floor and over the red crevices with brisk
dispatch and reached the cold lava safe but with pretty warm feet. Then
we took things leisurely and comfortably, jumping tolerably wide and
probably bottomless chasms, and threading our way through picturesque
lava upheavals with considerable confidence. When we got fairly away
from the cauldrons of boiling fire, we seemed to be in a gloomy desert,
and a suffocatingly dark one, surrounded by dim walls that seemed to
tower to the sky. The only cheerful objects were the glinting stars high
overhead.
By and by Marlette shouted "Stop!" I never stopped quicker in my life.
I asked what the matter was. He said we were out of the path. He said
we must not try to go on till we found it again, for we were surrounded
with beds of rotten lava through which we could easily break and plunge
down a thousand feet. I thought eight hundred would answer for me, and
was about to say so when Marlette partly proved his statement by
accidentally crushing through and disappearing to his arm-pits.
He got out and we hunted for the path with the lantern. He said there
was only one path and that it was but vaguely defined. We could not find
it. The lava surface was all alike in the lantern light. But he was an
ingenious man. He said it was not the lantern that had informed him that
we were out of the path, but his feet. He had noticed a crisp grinding
of fine lava-needles under his feet, and some instinct reminded him that
in the path these were all worn away. So he put the lantern behind him,
and began to search with his boots instead of his eyes. It was good
sagacity. The first time his foot touched a surface that did not grind
under it he announced that the trail was found again; and after that we
kept up a sharp listening for the rasping sound and it always warned us
in time.
It was a long tramp, but an exciting one. We reached the North Lake
between ten and eleven o'clock, and sat down on a huge overhanging
lava-shelf, tired but satisfied. The spectacle presented was worth
coming double the distance to see. Under us, and stretching away before
us, was a heaving sea of molten fire of seemingly limitless extent. The
glare from it was so blinding that it was some time before we could bear
to look upon it steadily.
It was like gazing at the sun at noon-day, except that the glare was not
quite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lake
were nearly white-hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feet
high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and
gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden--a ceaseless
bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable
splendor. The mere distant jets, sparkling up through an intervening
gossamer veil of vapor, seemed miles away; and the further the curving
ranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful they
appeared.
Now and then the surging bosom of the lake under our noses would calm
down ominously and seem to be gathering strength for an enterprise; and
then all of a sudden a red dome of lava of the bulk of an ordinary
dwelling would heave itself aloft like an escaping balloon, then burst
asunder, and out of its heart would flit a pale-green film of vapor, and
float upward and vanish in the darkness--a released soul soaring homeward
from captivity with the damned, no doubt. The crashing plunge of the
ruined dome into the lake again would send a world of seething billows
lashing against the shores and shaking the foundations of our perch. By
and by, a loosened mass of the hanging shelf we sat on tumbled into the
lake, jarring the surroundings like an earthquake and delivering a
suggestion that may have been intended for a hint, and may not. We did
not wait to see.
We got lost again on our way back, and were more than an hour hunting for
the path. We were where we could see the beacon lantern at the look-out
house at the time, but thought it was a star and paid no attention to it.
We reached the hotel at two o'clock in the morning pretty well fagged
out.
Kilauea never overflows its vast crater, but bursts a passage for its
lava through the mountain side when relief is necessary, and then the
destruction is fearful. About 1840 it rent its overburdened stomach and
sent a broad river of fire careering down to the sea, which swept away
forests, huts, plantations and every thing else that lay in its path.
The stream was five miles broad, in places, and two hundred feet deep,
and the distance it traveled was forty miles. It tore up and bore away
acre-patches of land on its bosom like rafts--rocks, trees and all
intact. At night the red glare was visible a hundred miles at sea; and
at a distance of forty miles fine print could be read at midnight. The
atmosphere was poisoned with sulphurous vapors and choked with falling
ashes, pumice stones and cinders; countless columns of smoke rose up and
blended together in a tumbled canopy that hid the heavens and glowed with
a ruddy flush reflected from the fires below; here and there jets of lava
sprung hundreds of feet into the air and burst into rocket-sprays that
returned to earth in a crimson rain; and all the while the laboring
mountain shook with Nature's great palsy and voiced its distress in
moanings and the muffled booming of subterranean thunders.
Fishes were killed for twenty miles along the shore, where the lava
entered the sea. The earthquakes caused some loss of human life, and a
prodigious tidal wave swept inland, carrying every thing before it and
drowning a number of natives. The devastation consummated along the
route traversed by the river of lava was complete and incalculable. Only
a Pompeii and a Herculaneum were needed at the foot of Kilauea to make
the story of the irruption immortal.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
We rode horseback all around the island of Hawaii (the crooked road
making the distance two hundred miles), and enjoyed the journey very
much. We were more than a week making the trip, because our Kanaka
horses would not go by a house or a hut without stopping--whip and spur
could not alter their minds about it, and so we finally found that it
economized time to let them have their way. Upon inquiry the mystery was
explained: the natives are such thorough-going gossips that they never
pass a house without stopping to swap news, and consequently their horses
learn to regard that sort of thing as an essential part of the whole duty
of man, and his salvation not to be compassed without it. However, at a
former crisis of my life I had once taken an aristocratic young lady out
driving, behind a horse that had just retired from a long and honorable
career as the moving impulse of a milk wagon, and so this present
experience awoke a reminiscent sadness in me in place of the exasperation
more natural to the occasion. I remembered how helpless I was that day,
and how humiliated; how ashamed I was of having intimated to the girl
that I had always owned the horse and was accustomed to grandeur; how
hard I tried to appear easy, and even vivacious, under suffering that was
consuming my vitals; how placidly and maliciously the girl smiled, and
kept on smiling, while my hot blushes baked themselves into a permanent
blood-pudding in my face; how the horse ambled from one side of the
street to the other and waited complacently before every third house two
minutes and a quarter while I belabored his back and reviled him in my
heart; how I tried to keep him from turning corners and failed; how I
moved heaven and earth to get him out of town, and did not succeed; how
he traversed the entire settlement and delivered imaginary milk at a
hundred and sixty-two different domiciles, and how he finally brought up
at a dairy depot and refused to budge further, thus rounding and
completing the revealment of what the plebeian service of his life had
been; how, in eloquent silence, I walked the girl home, and how, when I
took leave of her, her parting remark scorched my soul and appeared to
blister me all over: she said that my horse was a fine, capable animal,
and I must have taken great comfort in him in my time--but that if I
would take along some milk-tickets next time, and appear to deliver them
at the various halting places, it might expedite his movements a little.
There was a coolness between us after that.
In one place in the island of Hawaii, we saw a laced and ruffled cataract
of limpid water leaping from a sheer precipice fifteen hundred feet high;
but that sort of scenery finds its stanchest ally in the arithmetic
rather than in spectacular effect. If one desires to be so stirred by a
poem of Nature wrought in the happily commingled graces of picturesque
rocks, glimpsed distances, foliage, color, shifting lights and shadows,
and failing water, that the tears almost come into his eyes so potent is
the charm exerted, he need not go away from America to enjoy such an
experience. The Rainbow Fall, in Watkins Glen (N.Y.), on the Erie
railway, is an example. It would recede into pitiable insignificance if
the callous tourist drew on arithmetic on it; but left to compete for the
honors simply on scenic grace and beauty--the grand, the august and the
sublime being barred the contest--it could challenge the old world and
the new to produce its peer.
In one locality, on our journey, we saw some horses that had been born
and reared on top of the mountains, above the range of running water, and
consequently they had never drank that fluid in their lives, but had been
always accustomed to quenching their thirst by eating dew-laden or
shower-wetted leaves. And now it was destructively funny to see them
sniff suspiciously at a pail of water, and then put in their noses and
try to take a bite out of the fluid, as if it were a solid. Finding it
liquid, they would snatch away their heads and fall to trembling,
snorting and showing other evidences of fright. When they became
convinced at last that the water was friendly and harmless, they thrust
in their noses up to their eyes, brought out a mouthful of water, and
proceeded to chew it complacently. We saw a man coax, kick and spur one
of them five or ten minutes before he could make it cross a running
stream. It spread its nostrils, distended its eyes and trembled all
over, just as horses customarily do in the presence of a serpent--and for
aught I know it thought the crawling stream was a serpent.
In due course of time our journey came to an end at Kawaehae (usually
pronounced To-a-hi--and before we find fault with this elaborate
orthographical method of arriving at such an unostentatious result, let
us lop off the ugh from our word "though"). I made this horseback trip
on a mule. I paid ten dollars for him at Kau (Kah-oo), added four to get
him shod, rode him two hundred miles, and then sold him for fifteen
dollars. I mark the circumstance with a white stone (in the absence of
chalk--for I never saw a white stone that a body could mark anything
with, though out of respect for the ancients I have tried it often
enough); for up to that day and date it was the first strictly commercial
transaction I had ever entered into, and come out winner. We returned to
Honolulu, and from thence sailed to the island of Maui, and spent several
weeks there very pleasantly. I still remember, with a sense of indolent
luxury, a picnicing excursion up a romantic gorge there, called the Iao
Valley. The trail lay along the edge of a brawling stream in the bottom
of the gorge--a shady route, for it was well roofed with the verdant
domes of forest trees. Through openings in the foliage we glimpsed
picturesque scenery that revealed ceaseless changes and new charms with
every step of our progress. Perpendicular walls from one to three
thousand feet high guarded the way, and were sumptuously plumed with
varied foliage, in places, and in places swathed in waving ferns.
Passing shreds of cloud trailed their shadows across these shining
fronts, mottling them with blots; billowy masses of white vapor hid the
turreted summits, and far above the vapor swelled a background of
gleaming green crags and cones that came and went, through the veiling
mists, like islands drifting in a fog; sometimes the cloudy curtain
descended till half the canon wall was hidden, then shredded gradually
away till only airy glimpses of the ferny front appeared through it--then
swept aloft and left it glorified in the sun again. Now and then, as our
position changed, rocky bastions swung out from the wall, a mimic ruin of
castellated ramparts and crumbling towers clothed with mosses and hung
with garlands of swaying vines, and as we moved on they swung back again
and hid themselves once more in the foliage. Presently a verdure-clad
needle of stone, a thousand feet high, stepped out from behind a corner,
and mounted guard over the mysteries of the valley. It seemed to me that
if Captain Cook needed a monument, here was one ready made--therefore,
why not put up his sign here, and sell out the venerable cocoanut stump?
But the chief pride of Maui is her dead volcano of Haleakala--which
means, translated, "the house of the sun." We climbed a thousand feet up
the side of this isolated colossus one afternoon; then camped, and next
day climbed the remaining nine thousand feet, and anchored on the summit,
where we built a fire and froze and roasted by turns, all night. With
the first pallor of dawn we got up and saw things that were new to us.
Mounted on a commanding pinnacle, we watched Nature work her silent
wonders. The sea was spread abroad on every hand, its tumbled surface
seeming only wrinkled and dimpled in the distance. A broad valley below
appeared like an ample checker-board, its velvety green sugar plantations
alternating with dun squares of barrenness and groves of trees diminished
to mossy tufts. Beyond the valley were mountains picturesquely grouped
together; but bear in mind, we fancied that we were looking up at these
things--not down. We seemed to sit in the bottom of a symmetrical bowl
ten thousand feet deep, with the valley and the skirting sea lifted away
into the sky above us! It was curious; and not only curious, but
aggravating; for it was having our trouble all for nothing, to climb ten
thousand feet toward heaven and then have to look up at our scenery.
However, we had to be content with it and make the best of it; for, all
we could do we could not coax our landscape down out of the clouds.
Formerly, when I had read an article in which Poe treated of this
singular fraud perpetrated upon the eye by isolated great altitudes,
I had looked upon the matter as an invention of his own fancy.
I have spoken of the outside view--but we had an inside one, too. That
was the yawning dead crater, into which we now and then tumbled rocks,
half as large as a barrel, from our perch, and saw them go careering down
the almost perpendicular sides, bounding three hundred feet at a jump;
kicking up cast-clouds wherever they struck; diminishing to our view as
they sped farther into distance; growing invisible, finally, and only
betraying their course by faint little puffs of dust; and coming to a
halt at last in the bottom of the abyss, two thousand five hundred feet
down from where they started! It was magnificent sport. We wore
ourselves out at it.
The crater of Vesuvius, as I have before remarked, is a modest pit about
a thousand feet deep and three thousand in circumference; that of Kilauea
is somewhat deeper, and ten miles in circumference. But what are either
of them compared to the vacant stomach of Haleakala? I will not offer
any figures of my own, but give official ones--those of Commander Wilkes,
U.S.N., who surveyed it and testifies that it is twenty-seven miles in
circumference! If it had a level bottom it would make a fine site for a
city like London. It must have afforded a spectacle worth contemplating
in the old days when its furnaces gave full rein to their anger.
Presently vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea and
the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing
squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves solidly
together, a thousand feet under us, and totally shut out land and ocean
--not a vestige of anything was left in view but just a little of the rim
of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon we sat (for a
ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts without had drifted
through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round and round, and
gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was stored to the
brim with a fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and silence
reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor
stretched without a break--not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow
creases between, and with here and there stately piles of vapory
architecture lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain--some near
at hand, some in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony
of the remote solitudes. There was little conversation, for the
impressive scene overawed speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected of
the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a
vanished world.
While the hush yet brooded, the messengers of the coming resurrection
appeared in the East. A growing warmth suffused the horizon, and soon
the sun emerged and looked out over the cloud-waste, flinging bars of
ruddy light across it, staining its folds and billow-caps with blushes,
purpling the shaded troughs between, and glorifying the massy
vapor-palaces and cathedrals with a wasteful splendor of all blendings
and combinations of rich coloring.
It was the sublimest spectacle I ever witnessed, and I think the memory
of it will remain with me always.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
I stumbled upon one curious character in the Island of Mani. He became a
sore annoyance to me in the course of time. My first glimpse of him was
in a sort of public room in the town of Lahaina. He occupied a chair at
the opposite side of the apartment, and sat eyeing our party with
interest for some minutes, and listening as critically to what we were
saying as if he fancied we were talking to him and expecting him to
reply. I thought it very sociable in a stranger. Presently, in the
course of conversation, I made a statement bearing upon the subject under
discussion--and I made it with due modesty, for there was nothing
extraordinary about it, and it was only put forth in illustration of a
point at issue. I had barely finished when this person spoke out with
rapid utterance and feverish anxiety:
"Oh, that was certainly remarkable, after a fashion, but you ought to
have seen my chimney--you ought to have seen my chimney, sir! Smoke!
I wish I may hang if--Mr. Jones, you remember that chimney--you must
remember that chimney! No, no--I recollect, now, you warn't living on
this side of the island then. But I am telling you nothing but the
truth, and I wish I may never draw another breath if that chimney didn't
smoke so that the smoke actually got caked in it and I had to dig it out
with a pickaxe! You may smile, gentlemen, but the High Sheriff's got a
hunk of it which I dug out before his eyes, and so it's perfectly easy
for you to go and examine for yourselves."
The interruption broke up the conversation, which had already begun to
lag, and we presently hired some natives and an out-rigger canoe or two,
and went out to overlook a grand surf-bathing contest.
Two weeks after this, while talking in a company, I looked up and
detected this same man boring through and through me with his intense
eye, and noted again his twitching muscles and his feverish anxiety to
speak. The moment I paused, he said:
"Beg your pardon, sir, beg your pardon, but it can only be considered
remarkable when brought into strong outline by isolation. Sir,
contrasted with a circumstance which occurred in my own experience, it
instantly becomes commonplace. No, not that--for I will not speak so
discourteously of any experience in the career of a stranger and a
gentleman--but I am obliged to say that you could not, and you would not
ever again refer to this tree as a large one, if you could behold, as I
have, the great Yakmatack tree, in the island of Ounaska, sea of
Kamtchatka--a tree, sir, not one inch less than four hundred and fifteen
feet in solid diameter!--and I wish I may die in a minute if it isn't so!
Oh, you needn't look so questioning, gentlemen; here's old Cap Saltmarsh
can say whether I know what I'm talking about or not. I showed him the
tree."
Captain Saltmarsh--"Come, now, cat your anchor, lad--you're heaving too
taut. You promised to show me that stunner, and I walked more than
eleven mile with you through the cussedest jungle I ever see, a hunting
for it; but the tree you showed me finally warn't as big around as a beer
cask, and you know that your own self, Markiss."
"Hear the man talk! Of course the tree was reduced that way, but didn't
I explain it? Answer me, didn't I? Didn't I say I wished you could have
seen it when I first saw it? When you got up on your ear and called me
names, and said I had brought you eleven miles to look at a sapling,
didn't I explain to you that all the whale-ships in the North Seas had
been wooding off of it for more than twenty-seven years? And did you
s'pose the tree could last for-ever, con-found it? I don't see why you
want to keep back things that way, and try to injure a person that's
never done you any harm."
Somehow this man's presence made me uncomfortable, and I was glad when a
native arrived at that moment to say that Muckawow, the most
companionable and luxurious among the rude war-chiefs of the Islands,
desired us to come over and help him enjoy a missionary whom he had found
trespassing on his grounds.
I think it was about ten days afterward that, as I finished a statement I
was making for the instruction of a group of friends and acquaintances,
and which made no pretence of being extraordinary, a familiar voice
chimed instantly in on the heels of my last word, and said:
"But, my dear sir, there was nothing remarkable about that horse, or the
circumstance either--nothing in the world! I mean no sort of offence
when I say it, sir, but you really do not know anything whatever about
speed. Bless your heart, if you could only have seen my mare Margaretta;
there was a beast!--there was lightning for you! Trot! Trot is no name
for it--she flew! How she could whirl a buggy along! I started her out
once, sir--Colonel Bilgewater, you recollect that animal perfectly well
--I started her out about thirty or thirty-five yards ahead of the
awfullest storm I ever saw in my life, and it chased us upwards of
eighteen miles! It did, by the everlasting hills! And I'm telling you
nothing but the unvarnished truth when I say that not one single drop of
rain fell on me--not a single drop, sir! And I swear to it! But my dog
was a-swimming behind the wagon all the way!"
For a week or two I stayed mostly within doors, for I seemed to meet this
person everywhere, and he had become utterly hateful to me. But one
evening I dropped in on Captain Perkins and his friends, and we had a
sociable time. About ten o'clock I chanced to be talking about a
merchant friend of mine, and without really intending it, the remark
slipped out that he was a little mean and parsimonious about paying his
workmen. Instantly, through the steam of a hot whiskey punch on the
opposite side of the room, a remembered voice shot--and for a moment I
trembled on the imminent verge of profanity:
"Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a
surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant of
the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as
unborn twins! You don't know anything about it! It is pitiable to see
you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such an
enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance is
perfectly humiliating! Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in the
eye. John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the
State of Mississippi--boyhood friend of mine--bosom comrade in later
years. Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now. John James
Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in California to do
some blasting for them--the "Incorporated Company of Mean Men," the boys
used to call it.
"Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awful
blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an iron
crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark and
fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a skyrocket,
him and his crowbar! Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higher
and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a boy--and he kept going
on up higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger than a doll--and
he kept on going up higher and higher, till he didn't look any bigger
than a little small bee--and then he went out of sight! Presently he
came in sight again, looking like a little small bee--and he came along
down further and further, till he looked as big as a doll again--and down
further and further, till he was as big as a boy again--and further and
further, till he was a full-sized man once more; and then him and his
crowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit right exactly in the same old
tracks and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming down, and r-ramming down
again, just the same as if nothing had happened! Now do you know, that
poor cuss warn't gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that Incorporated
Company of Mean Men DOCKED HIM FOR THE LOST TIME!"
I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home. And on
my diary I entered "another night spoiled" by this offensive loafer.
And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company. And
the very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the Island.
Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar.
The line of points represents an interval of years. At the end of which
time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly
and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons. The man
Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the
doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his
breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends to
suspect no innocent person of having any thing to do with his death, for
that it was the work of his own hands entirely. Yet the jury brought in
the astounding verdict that deceased came to his death "by the hands of
some person or persons unknown!" They explained that the perfectly
undeviating consistency of Markiss's character for thirty years towered
aloft as colossal and indestructible testimony, that whatever statement
he chose to make was entitled to instant and unquestioning acceptance as
a lie. And they furthermore stated their belief that he was not dead,
and instanced the strong circumstantial evidence of his own word that he
was dead--and beseeched the coroner to delay the funeral as long as
possible, which was done. And so in the tropical climate of Lahaina the
coffin stood open for seven days, and then even the loyal jury gave him
up. But they sat on him again, and changed their verdict to "suicide
induced by mental aberration"--because, said they, with penetration, "he
said he was dead, and he was dead; and would he have told the truth if he
had been in his right mind? No, sir."
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
After half a year's luxurious vagrancy in the islands, I took shipping in
a sailing vessel, and regretfully returned to San Francisco--a voyage in
every way delightful, but without an incident: unless lying two long
weeks in a dead calm, eighteen hundred miles from the nearest land, may
rank as an incident. Schools of whales grew so tame that day after day
they played about the ship among the porpoises and the sharks without the
least apparent fear of us, and we pelted them with empty bottles for lack
of better sport. Twenty-four hours afterward these bottles would be
still lying on the glassy water under our noses, showing that the ship
had not moved out of her place in all that time. The calm was absolutely
breathless, and the surface of the sea absolutely without a wrinkle.
For a whole day and part of a night we lay so close to another ship that
had drifted to our vicinity, that we carried on conversations with her
passengers, introduced each other by name, and became pretty intimately
acquainted with people we had never heard of before, and have never heard
of since. This was the only vessel we saw during the whole lonely
voyage. We had fifteen passengers, and to show how hard pressed they
were at last for occupation and amusement, I will mention that the
gentlemen gave a good part of their time every day, during the calm, to
trying to sit on an empty champagne bottle (lying on its side), and
thread a needle without touching their heels to the deck, or falling
over; and the ladies sat in the shade of the mainsail, and watched the
enterprise with absorbing interest. We were at sea five Sundays; and
yet, but for the almanac, we never would have known but that all the
other days were Sundays too.
I was home again, in San Francisco, without means and without employment.
I tortured my brain for a saving scheme of some kind, and at last a
public lecture occurred to me! I sat down and wrote one, in a fever of
hopeful anticipation. I showed it to several friends, but they all shook
their heads. They said nobody would come to hear me, and I would make a
humiliating failure of it.
They said that as I had never spoken in public, I would break down in the
delivery, anyhow. I was disconsolate now. But at last an editor slapped
me on the back and told me to "go ahead." He said, "Take the largest
house in town, and charge a dollar a ticket." The audacity of the
proposition was charming; it seemed fraught with practical worldly
wisdom, however. The proprietor of the several theatres endorsed the
advice, and said I might have his handsome new opera-house at half price
--fifty dollars. In sheer desperation I took it--on credit, for
sufficient reasons. In three days I did a hundred and fifty dollars'
worth of printing and advertising, and was the most distressed and
frightened creature on the Pacific coast. I could not sleep--who could,
under such circumstances? For other people there was facetiousness in
the last line of my posters, but to me it was plaintive with a pang when
I wrote it:
"Doors open at 7 1/2. The trouble will begin at 8."
That line has done good service since. Showmen have borrowed it
frequently. I have even seen it appended to a newspaper advertisement
reminding school pupils in vacation what time next term would begin. As
those three days of suspense dragged by, I grew more and more unhappy.
I had sold two hundred tickets among my personal friends, but I feared
they might not come. My lecture, which had seemed "humorous" to me, at
first, grew steadily more and more dreary, till not a vestige of fun
seemed left, and I grieved that I could not bring a coffin on the stage
and turn the thing into a funeral. I was so panic-stricken, at last,
that I went to three old friends, giants in stature, cordial by nature,
and stormy-voiced, and said:
"This thing is going to be a failure; the jokes in it are so dim that
nobody will ever see them; I would like to have you sit in the parquette,
and help me through."
They said they would. Then I went to the wife of a popular citizen, and
said that if she was willing to do me a very great kindness, I would be
glad if she and her husband would sit prominently in the left-hand
stage-box, where the whole house could see them. I explained that I
should need help, and would turn toward her and smile, as a signal, when
I had been delivered of an obscure joke--"and then," I added, "don't wait
to investigate, but respond!"
She promised. Down the street I met a man I never had seen before. He
had been drinking, and was beaming with smiles and good nature. He said:
"My name's Sawyer. You don't know me, but that don't matter. I haven't
got a cent, but if you knew how bad I wanted to laugh, you'd give me a
ticket. Come, now, what do you say?"
"Is your laugh hung on a hair-trigger?--that is, is it critical, or can
you get it off easy?"
My drawling infirmity of speech so affected him that he laughed a
specimen or two that struck me as being about the article I wanted, and I
gave him a ticket, and appointed him to sit in the second circle, in the
centre, and be responsible for that division of the house. I gave him
minute instructions about how to detect indistinct jokes, and then went
away, and left him chuckling placidly over the novelty of the idea.
I ate nothing on the last of the three eventful days--I only suffered.
I had advertised that on this third day the box-office would be opened
for the sale of reserved seats. I crept down to the theater at four in
the afternoon to see if any sales had been made. The ticket seller was
gone, the box-office was locked up. I had to swallow suddenly, or my
heart would have got out. "No sales," I said to myself; "I might have
known it." I thought of suicide, pretended illness, flight. I thought
of these things in earnest, for I was very miserable and scared. But of
course I had to drive them away, and prepare to meet my fate. I could
not wait for half-past seven--I wanted to face the horror, and end it
--the feeling of many a man doomed to hang, no doubt. I went down back
streets at six o'clock, and entered the theatre by the back door.
I stumbled my way in the dark among the ranks of canvas scenery, and
stood on the stage. The house was gloomy and silent, and its emptiness
depressing. I went into the dark among the scenes again, and for an hour
and a half gave myself up to the horrors, wholly unconscious of
everything else. Then I heard a murmur; it rose higher and higher, and
ended in a crash, mingled with cheers. It made my hair raise, it was so
close to me, and so loud.
There was a pause, and then another; presently came a third, and before I
well knew what I was about, I was in the middle of the stage, staring at
a sea of faces, bewildered by the fierce glare of the lights, and quaking
in every limb with a terror that seemed like to take my life away. The
house was full, aisles and all!
The tumult in my heart and brain and legs continued a full minute before
I could gain any command over myself. Then I recognized the charity and
the friendliness in the faces before me, and little by little my fright
melted away, and I began to talk Within three or four minutes I was
comfortable, and even content. My three chief allies, with three
auxiliaries, were on hand, in the parquette, all sitting together, all
armed with bludgeons, and all ready to make an onslaught upon the
feeblest joke that might show its head. And whenever a joke did fall,
their bludgeons came down and their faces seemed to split from ear to
ear.
Sawyer, whose hearty countenance was seen looming redly in the centre of
the second circle, took it up, and the house was carried handsomely.
Inferior jokes never fared so royally before. Presently I delivered a
bit of serious matter with impressive unction (it was my pet), and the
audience listened with an absorbed hush that gratified me more than any
applause; and as I dropped the last word of the clause, I happened to
turn and catch Mrs.--'s intent and waiting eye; my conversation with her
flashed upon me, and in spite of all I could do I smiled. She took it
for the signal, and promptly delivered a mellow laugh that touched off
the whole audience; and the explosion that followed was the triumph of
the evening. I thought that that honest man Sawyer would choke himself;
and as for the bludgeons, they performed like pile-drivers. But my poor
little morsel of pathos was ruined. It was taken in good faith as an
intentional joke, and the prize one of the entertainment, and I wisely
let it go at that.
All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite returned; I had a
abundance of money. All's well that ends well.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the field
all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in
the Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took an old
personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we
roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it.
Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed
within two miles of the town. The daring act was committed just at dawn,
by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented
revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a
general dismount. Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took their
watches and every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder and blew up
the express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of the
robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous
manner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived.
The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate "divide"
and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I stopped
to talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven. The "divide"
was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twenty
midnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and stepped
out on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our
backs, and the night closed down gloomy and dismal. A sharp wind swept
the place, too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through.
"I tell you I don't like this place at night," said Mike the agent.
"Well, don't speak so loud," I said. "You needn't remind anybody that we
are here."
Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia--a
man, evidently. He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him
pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that he
had a mask on and was holding something in my face--I heard a click-click
and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside with
my hand and said:
"Don't!"
He ejaculated sharply:
"Your watch! Your money!"
I said:
"You can have them with pleasure--but take the pistol away from my face,
please. It makes me shiver."
"No remarks! Hand out your money!"
"Certainly--I--"
"Put up your hands! Don't you go for a weapon! Put 'em up! Higher!"
I held them above my head.
A pause. Then:
"Are you going to hand out your money or not?"
I dropped my hands to my pockets and said:
Certainly! I--"
"Put up your hands! Do you want your head blown off? Higher!"
I put them above my head again.
Another pause.
Are you going to hand out your money or not? Ah-ah--again? Put up your
hands! By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad!"
"Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you. You tell me to give up
my money, and when I reach for it you tell me to put up my hands. If you
would only--. Oh, now--don't! All six of you at me! That other man
will get away while.--Now please take some of those revolvers out of my
face--do, if you please! Every time one of them clicks, my liver comes
up into my throat! If you have a mother--any of you--or if any of you
have ever had a mother--or a--grandmother--or a--"
"Cheese it! Will you give up your money, or have we got to--. There
--there--none of that! Put up your hands!"
"Gentlemen--I know you are gentlemen by your--"
"Silence! If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times and
places more fitting. This is a serious business."
"You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in my
time were comedies compared to it. Now I think--"
"Curse your palaver! Your money!--your money!--your money! Hold!--put
up your hands!"
"Gentlemen, listen to reason. You see how I am situated--now don't put
those pistols so close--I smell the powder.
"You see how I am situated. If I had four hands--so that I could hold up
two and--"
"Throttle him! Gag him! Kill him!"
"Gentlemen, don't! Nobody's watching the other fellow. Why don't some
of you--. Ouch! Take it away, please!
"Gentlemen, you see that I've got to hold up my hands; and so I can't take
out my money--but if you'll be so kind as to take it out for me, I will
do as much for you some--"
"Search him Beauregard--and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick, if he wags
it again. Help Beauregard, Stonewall."
Then three of them, with the small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike and
fell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy tortured
me to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebel
brother-generals of the South, but, considering the order they had
received, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything had
been taken from me,--watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of small
value,--I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands into my
empty pockets and began an inoffensive jig to warm my feet and stir up
some latent courage--but instantly all pistols were at my head, and the
order came again:
They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands
above his head, too, and then the chief highwayman said:
"Beauregard, hide behind that boulder; Phil Sheridan, you hide behind
that other one; Stonewall Jackson, put yourself behind that sage-bush
there. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they take down
their hands within ten minutes, or move a single peg, let them have it!"
Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the
other three disappeared down the road toward Virginia.
It was depressingly still, and miserably cold. Now this whole thing was
a practical joke, and the robbers were personal friends of ours in
disguise, and twenty more lay hidden within ten feet of us during the
whole operation, listening. Mike knew all this, and was in the joke, but
I suspected nothing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine.
When we had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like a
couple of idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches,
Mike's interest in the joke began to wane. He said:
"The time's up, now, aint it?"
"No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with these bloody
savages?"
Presently Mike said:
"Now the time's up, anyway. I'm freezing."
"Well freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket.
Maybe the time is up, but how do we know?--got no watch to tell by.
I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here fifteen
minutes or die. Don't you move."
So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract.
When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold and
fatigue, and when we went sneaking off, the dread I was in that the time
might not yet be up and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was not
sufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that racked my
stiffened body.
The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke upon
themselves; for they had waited for me on the cold hill-top two full
hours before I came, and there was very little fun in that; they were so
chilled that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. Moreover,
I never had a thought that they would kill me to get money which it was
so perfectly easy to get without any such folly, and so they did not
really frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the trouble
they had taken. I was only afraid that their weapons would go off
accidentally. Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that no
blood would be intentionally spilled. They were not smart; they ought to
have sent only one highwayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if they
desired to see the author of this volume climb a tree.
However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of the
joke at last; and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen; for the
chilly exposure on the "divide" while I was in a perspiration gave me a
cold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept my hands
idle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor's bills.
Since then I play no practical jokes on people and generally lose my
temper when one is played upon me.
When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japan
and thence westward around the world; but a desire to see home again
changed my mind, and I took a berth in the steamship, bade good-bye to
the friendliest land and livest, heartiest community on our continent,
and came by the way of the Isthmus to New York--a trip that was not much
of a pic-nic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passage
and we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home a
dreary place after my long absence; for half the children I had known
were now wearing whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people I
had been acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous and
happy--some of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, and
the rest had been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I went
away and joined the famous Quaker City European Excursion and carried my
tears to foreign lands.
Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a "pleasure trip" to the
silver mines of Nevada which had originally been intended to occupy only
three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that.
MORAL.
If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to
it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account,
stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are "no
account," go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you
want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to
be a nuisance to them--if the people you go among suffer by the
operation.
APPENDIX. A.
BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY.
Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full of
stir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to the
end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the
country to the other, and the result is that for years they have hated
all "Gentiles" indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith,
the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was driven
from State to State with his mysterious copperplates and the miraculous
stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted his
"church" in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began to
persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and worked
hard. He arrested desertion. He did more--he added converts in the
midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren.
He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He shortly fought
his way to a higher post and a more powerful--President of the Twelve.
The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settled
in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out and
they retreated to Nauvoo, Illinois. They prospered there, and built a
temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achieved
some celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with a
tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe.
But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors.
All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy and
repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail; the people of the
neighborhood, on both sides of the Mississippi, claimed that polygamy was
practised by the Mormons, and not only polygamy but a little of
everything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England,
where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him
several hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the
brethren augmented with every move he made. Finally Nauvoo was invaded
by the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormon
named Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government,
in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But a
greater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hour
and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will,
hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more.
He launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples; and he
pronounced Rigdon's "prophecies" emanations from the devil, and ended by
"handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand
years"--probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people
recognized their master. They straightway elected Brigham Young
President, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their
devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast--a quality
which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed.
He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved.
By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects, turned
their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, and
on a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful procession across the
frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burning
temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired! They camped,
several days afterward, on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want,
hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and many
succumbed and died--martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have
been. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a small
party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposely
choosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the
hated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved his
people there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall
again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to the
enemy--the United States! In 1849 the Mormons organized a "free and
independent" government and erected the "State of Deseret," with Brigham
Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed
it and created the "Territory of Utah" out of the same accumulation of
mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation,--but made Brigham
Governor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains
to California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the church
remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger,
thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the
Mormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst for
gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations
was not able to entice them! That was the final test. An experiment
that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it
somewhere.
Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last
things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in
the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet
Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities,
emoluments and authorities, upon "President Brigham Young!" The people
accepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's power
was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward he
openly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a
"revelation" which he pretended had been received nine years before by
Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as denouncing polygamy to
the day of his death.
Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small beginning and
steady progress of his official grandeur. He had served successively as
a disciple in the ranks; home missionary; foreign missionary; editor and
publisher; Apostle; President of the Board of Apostles; President of all
Mormondom, civil and ecclesiastical; successor to the great Joseph by the
will of heaven; "prophet," "seer," "revelator." There was but one
dignity higher which he could aspire to, and he reached out modestly and
took that--he proclaimed himself a God!
He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he
will be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and
princesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with their
families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of
their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to
accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in
the next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children
for him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and
his heavenly status advanced accordingly.
Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always been
ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with
the world and its ways; and let it be borne in mind that the wives of
these Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children
likely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction; and then let it
be remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven,
driven, driven, relentlessly! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed,
despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither they
journeyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes
with their lamentations and marking the long way with graves of their
dead--and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in
the way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be the
true one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not be
hard to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear our
people and our government.
That hatred has "fed fat its ancient grudge" ever since Mormon Utah
developed into a self-supporting realm and the church waxed rich and
strong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom was
for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by
appointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon
localities, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his
dominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to go
across the plains and put these gentlemen in office. And after they were
in office they were as helpless as so many stone images. They made laws
which nobody minded and which could not be executed. The federal judges
opened court in a land filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday
spectacles for insolent crowds to gape at--for there was nothing to try,
nothing to do nothing on the dockets! And if a Gentile brought a suit,
the Mormon jury would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict,
and when the judgment of the court was rendered no Mormon cared for it
and no officer could execute it. Our Presidents shipped one cargo of
officials after another to Utah, but the result was always the same--they
sat in a blight for awhile they fairly feasted on scowls and insults day
by day, they saw every attempt to do their official duties find its
reward in darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings of
a more and more dismal nature--and at last they either succumbed and
became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and
discomforted beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a brave
officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant
Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place.
In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah.
And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge!
--two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky
comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the
dictionary. Simply (if for nothing else) for the variety they would have
made in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility and
helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together in
Utah.
Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorial
record. The Territorial government established there had been a hopeless
failure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He was
an absolute monarch--a monarch who defied our President--a monarch who
laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital--a monarch who
received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United
States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth
calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives.
B.
THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.
The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long--and which they
consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves
--they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almost
forgotten "Mountain Meadows massacre" was their work. It was very famous
in its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A few items
will refresh the reader's memory. A great emigrant train from Missouri
and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormons
joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their
escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the
Mormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one hundred
and fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part from Arkansas, where a
noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part from
Missouri, a State remembered with execrations as a bitter persecutor of
the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here were
substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers.
And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules and
other property--and how could the Mormons consistently keep up their
coveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the "spoil"
of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly "delivered it into their
hand?"
Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, "The Mormon
Prophet," it transpired that--
"A 'revelation' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, was
dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee
(adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the forces they
could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read the
revelation), attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of the
Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale; and
if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians as
their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be
neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in
sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the
mandate of Almighty God."
The command of the "revelation" was faithfully obeyed. A large party of
Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of
emigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and
made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses
of their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for
five days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the
sort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of Utah
affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them.
At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They
retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed civilized apparel,
washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to
the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants
saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with
cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt,
they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag
of truce!
The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight and
Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a
term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from
Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next
proceeded:
"They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented
them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the
matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having
(apparently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages;
which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving
everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon
bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the
settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of
saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and
subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were
marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the
Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about
a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost
all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who
fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before
they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two
or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid
of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all
the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the
eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of
September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and
bloody murders known in our history."
The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one
hundred and twenty.
With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and proceeded
to make Mormondom answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it must
have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and
his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory,
deriding them by turns, and by turns "breathing threatenings and
slaughter!"
An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of
the occasion:
"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson;
but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while
threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the
U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.
"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged
with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committing
magistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made
arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the
saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom
was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping
to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were
being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many
murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight
years."
Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in his
work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this
massacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferred
gratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use
them. But Cumming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious
pretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands
of justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his
protest against the use of the U.S. troops in aid of Cradlebaugh's
proceedings.
Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with
the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony--and the
summary is concise, accurate and reliable:
"For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of
Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated
and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fasten
conviction upon them by 'confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:'
"1. The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shown
by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U.S. Marshall Rodgers.
"2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his
Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make any
allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the
occurrence
"3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the Mormon
Church and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a
judicial investigation.
"4. The failure of the Deseret News, the Church organ, and the only
paper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre until
several months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engaged
in it.
"5. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre.
"6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in possession
of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after the
massacre.
"7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of the
massacre: these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh and
Rodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J. Forney, who was,
in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To all
these were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians.
"8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who was sent in
the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road to
California and to inquire into Indian depredations."
C.
CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED
If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill,
Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired
gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever there was an
oyster that fancied itself a whale; or a jack-o'lantern, confined to a
swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit; or a
summer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand.
Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks the
world listens; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look;
and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature? When I met
Conrad, he was "Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office"--and he was
not only its Superintendent, but its entire force. And he was a street
preacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention, whereby he
expected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here latterly
he has entered journalism; and his journalism is what it might be
expected to be: colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye. It is extravagant
grandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double letter
sheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, all
alone; but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block
and employs a thousand men.
[Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people
mercilessly in his little "People's Tribune," and got himself into
trouble. Straightway he airs the affair in the "Territorial Enterprise,"
in a communication over his own signature, and I propose to reproduce it
here, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor. Long as
it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen of
journalistic literature the history of America can furnish, perhaps:]
From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1870.
SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENTERPRISE: Months ago, when Mr. Sutro incidentally
exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others roused me to
protest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that any
attempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative action,
aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey County, must
entail upon me (a) business ruin, (b) the burden of all its costs, (c)
personal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then (d)
assassination, and after all nothing would be effected.
YOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING.
In large part at least your prophecies have been fulfilled, for (a)
assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office (of
which I am superintendent), in consequence of my publications, has been
taken elsewhere, so the President of one of the companies assures me.
With no reason assigned, other work has been taken away. With but one or
two important exceptions, our assay business now consists simply of the
gleanings of the vicinity. (b) Though my own personal donations to the
People's Tribune Association have already exceeded $1,500, outside of our
own numbers we have received (in money) less than $300 as contributions
and subscriptions for the journal. (c) On Thursday last, on the main
street in Gold Hill, near noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned,
by a powerful blow I was felled to the ground, and while down I was
kicked by a man who it would seem had been led to believe that I had
spoken derogatorily of him. By whom he was so induced to believe I am as
yet unable to say. On Saturday last I was again assailed and beaten by a
man who first informed me why he did so, and who persisted in making his
assault even after the erroneous impression under which he also was at
first laboring had been clearly and repeatedly pointed out. This same
man, after failing through intimidation to elicit from me the names of
our editorial contributors, against giving which he knew me to be
pledged, beat himself weary upon me with a raw hide, I not resisting, and
then pantingly threatened me with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if ever
again I should introduce his name into print, and who but a few minutes
before his attack upon me assured me that the only reason I was
"permitted" to reach home alive on Wednesday evening last (at which time
the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE was issued) was, that he deems me only half-witted,
and be it remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kicked
by a man who seemed to be prepared for flight.
[He sees doom impending:]
WHEN WILL THE CIRCLE JOIN?
How long before the whole of your prophecy will be fulfilled I cannot
say, but under the shadow of so much fulfillment in so short a time, and
with such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponents
of the San Francisco mining-ring staring me and this whole community
defiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do you
blame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall ever
write for the Press, especially when a sense alike of personal
self-respect, of duty to this money-oppressed and fear-ridden community,
and of American fealty to the spirit of true Liberty all command me, and
each more loudly than love of life itself, to declare the name of that
prominent man to be JOHN B. WINTERS, President of the Yellow Jacket
Company, a political aspirant and a military General? The name of his
partially duped accomplice and abettor in this last marvelous assault, is
no other than PHILIP LYNCH, Editor and Proprietor of the Gold Hill News.
Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters, on
Saturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to afford
your readers, so much do I deplore clinching (by publicity) a serious
mistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and not
self-wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at the
time and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am far
from sure that I should not have given him space for repentance before
exposing him, were it not that he himself has so far exposed the matter
as to make it the common talk of the town that he has horsewhipped me.
That fact having been made public, all the facts in connection need to be
also, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with many
would be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim in
publishing the article, or else that my "non-combatant" principles are
but a convenient cloak alike of physical and moral cowardice. I
therefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful picture of this
whole affair, but shall forbear all comments, presuming that the editors
of our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely and fittingly
upon this subject in our next number, whether I shall then be dead or
living, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend, the
publication of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. [The "non-combatant" sticks to
principle, but takes along a friend or two of a conveniently different
stripe:]
THE TRAP SET.
On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to the Gold Hill
Assay Office that he desired to see me at the Yellow Jacket office.
Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view of his own
recent discourtesies to me there alike as a publisher and as a
stockholder in the Yellow Jacket mine, and though it seemed to me more
like a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another for
a favor, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to the
betterment of mining matters in Nevada might arise from it, I felt
strongly inclined to overlook what possibly was simply an oversight in
courtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruised
and beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution was
somewhat aroused. Moreover I remembered sensitively his contemptuousness
of manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt it
needful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he would
not dare to treat with incivility, and whose presence with me might
secure exemption from insult. Accordingly I asked a neighbor to
accompany me.
THE TRAP ALMOST DETECTED.
Although I was not then aware of this fact, it would seem that previous
to my request this same neighbor had heard Dr. Zabriskie state publicly
in a saloon, that Mr. Winters had told him he had decided either to kill
or to horsewhip me, but had not finally decided on which. My neighbor,
therefore, felt unwilling to go down with me until he had first called on
Mr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him a visit. From that interview
he assured me that he gathered the impression that he did not believe I
would have any difficulty with Mr. Winters, and that he (Winters) would
call on me at four o'clock in my own office.
MY OWN PRECAUTIONS.
As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon, and as I desired to
converse with him about the previous assault, I invited him to my office,
and he came. Although a half hour had passed beyond four o'clock, Mr.
Winters had not called, and we both of us began preparing to go home.
Just then, Philip Lynch, Publisher of the Gold Hill News, came in and
said, blandly and cheerily, as if bringing good news:
"Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you."
I replied, "Indeed! Why he sent me word that he would call on me here
this afternoon at four o'clock!"
"O, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now, he's in my office,
and that will do as well--come on in, Winters wants to consult with you
alone. He's got something to say to you."
Though slightly uneasy at this change of programme, yet believing that in
an editor's house I ought to be safe, and anyhow that I would be within
hail of the street, I hurriedly, and but partially whispered my dim
apprehensions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep near
enough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do so
while waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my voice
or thought I had need of protection.
On reaching the editorial part of the News office, which viewed from the
street is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings arose.
Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have invited
Sheriff Cummings in, but as Lynch went down stairs, he said: "This way,
Wiegand--it's best to be private," or some such remark.
[I do not desire to strain the reader's fancy, hurtfully, and yet it
would be a favor to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle, or
the duelling ground or at the head of a vigilance committee--M. T.:]
I followed, and without Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never do
or will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come to
feel I must fight a duel, or to join and aid in the ranks of a necessary
Vigilance Committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake. Following
was entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be caught
should expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to come
will prove.
Traps commonly are not set for benevolence.
[His body-guard is shut out:]
THE TRAP INSIDE.
I followed Lynch down stairs. At their foot a door to the left opened
into a small room. From that room another door opened into yet another
room, and once entered I found myself inveigled into what many will ever
henceforth regard as a private subterranean Gold Hill den, admirably
adapted in proper hands to the purposes of murder, raw or disguised, for
from it, with both or even one door closed, when too late, I saw that I
could not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from it, BY VIOLENCE AND BY
FORCE, I was prevented from making a peaceable exit, when I thought I saw
the studious object of this "consultation" was no other than to compass
my killing, in the presence of Philip Lynch as a witness, as soon as by
insult a proverbially excitable man should be exasperated to the point of
assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his
well known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would be
compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegand
in "self-defence." But I am going too fast.
OUR HOST.
Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time (say a little short of
an hour), but three times he left the room. His testimony, therefore,
would be available only as to the bulk of what transpired. On entering
this carpeted den I was invited to a seat near one corner of the room.
Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B. Winters sat (at first) near
the door, and began his remarks essentially as follows:
"I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and white, of
those damnably false charges which you have preferred against me in
that---infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must declare yourself their
author, that you published them knowing them to be false, and that your
motives were malicious."
"Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand an
enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or
coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at your
request."
"Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I am
here for a very different purpose."
"Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong
excitement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or call
in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outside
the door."
"No, you won't, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not.
Here you are my man, and I'll tell you why! Months ago you put your
property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it
on prosecution for libel."
"It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personal
property, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly to escape
ruin through possible libel suits."
"Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, may
God help your soul if you DON'T make precisely such a retraction as I
have demanded. I've got you now, and by--before you can get out of this
room you've got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I have
demanded, and before you go, anyhow--you---low-lived--lying---, I'll
teach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law; and, by--,
Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you've got in the world besides,
can't save you, you---, etc.! No, sir. I'm alone now, and I'm prepared
to be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by you as I
have been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges,
not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I am
not personally known and may be injured."
I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly implied
threat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified
me, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possible
pitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other than one of
seeming concession to his demands would only be fuel to a raging fire,
so I replied:
"Well, if I've got to sign--," and then I paused some time. Resuming,
I said, "But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see you
are laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not to
inflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you will
only point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as
'charges' what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such.
Show me the charges, and I will try, at all events; and if it becomes
plain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can be
nothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand a
retraction. You should beware of making so serious a mistake, for
however honest a man may be, every one is liable to misapprehend.
Besides you assume that I am the author of some certain article which you
have not pointed out. It is hasty to do so."
He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a TRIBUNE article, headed
"What's the Matter with Yellow Jacket?" saying "That's what I refer to."
To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper
and looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped,
cooling. I then resumed saying, "As I supposed. I do not admit having
written that article, nor have you any right to assume so important a
point, and then base important action upon your assumption. You might
deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, I
notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any
article would be given without the consent of the writer. I therefore
cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it."
"If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?"
"I must decline to say."
"Then, by--, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly."
"Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice
is, that you regard them as 'charges' at all, when their context, both at
their beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them:
'Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think MIGHT result in
showing some of the following points.' Then follow eleven specifications,
and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation
'might EXONERATE those who are generally believed guilty.' You see,
therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this
you seem to have overlooked."
While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in
such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider
candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that
they were charges, and "By--," he would make me take them back as
charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then
appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling his
attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted.
He replied, "if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations,"
whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such
as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did
write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in
my face with more cursings and epithets.
When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to
rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he did
every other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminent
danger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than that
after the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely to
himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me.
This fact it was, which more than anything else, convinced me that by
plan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters' hands, and
that he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being afoot, which he
possessed. Moreover, I then became convinced, that Philip Lynch (and for
what reason I wondered) would do absolutely nothing to protect me in his
own house. I realized then the situation thoroughly. I had found it
equally vain to protest or argue, and I would make no unmanly appeal for
pity, still less apologize. Yet my life had been by the plainest
possible implication threatened. I was a weak man. I was unarmed. I
was helplessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably armed. Lynch was
the only "witness." The statements demanded, if given and not explained,
would utterly sink me in my own self-respect, in my family's eyes, and in
the eyes of the community. On the other hand, should I give the author's
name how could I ever expect that confidence of the People which I should
no longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my life
than the life of the real author to his friends. Yet life seemed dear
and each minute that remained seemed precious if not solemn. I sincerely
trust that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none with
families, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to death
while obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, viz.: What
should I do--I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is, "alone."
[The reader is requested not to skip the following.--M. T.:]
STRATEGY AND MESMERISM.
To gain time for further reflection, and hoping that by a seeming
acquiescence I might regain my personal liberty, at least till I could
give an alarm, or take advantage of some momentary inadvertence of
Winters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I resolved to write a
certain kind of retraction, but previously had inwardly decided:
First.--That I would studiously avoid every action which might be
construed into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infuriated man, no
matter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed to me
that this great excess of compound profanity, foulness and epithet must
be more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must have some object.
"Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." Therefore,
as before without thought, I thereafter by intent kept my hands away from
my pockets, and generally in sight and spread upon my knees.
Second.--I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which could
possibly be construed into aggression.
Third.--I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and suppress
indignation. To do this, I must govern my spirit. To do that, by force
of imagination I was obliged like actors on the boards to resolve myself
into an unnatural mental state and see all things through the eyes of an
assumed character.
Fourth.--I resolved to try on Winters, silently, and unconsciously to
himself a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of people,
and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over the lower
animals.
Does any one smile at these last counts? God save you from ever being
obliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you having
but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force
unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of
will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may
help you; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of
power coming into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters was
correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he
would not even have struck me.
It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That
time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first
wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me,
my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact
it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters' mind. When it was
finished, I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first draft
it should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any material
change.
COPY.
To Philip Lynch, Editor of the Gold Hill News: I learn that Gen. John B.
Winters believes the following (pasted on) clipping from the PEOPLE'S
TRIBUNE of January to contain distinct charges of mine against him
personally, and that as such he desires me to retract them unqualifiedly.
In compliance with his request, permit me to say that, although Mr.
Winters and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong feelings
in the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those "charges" (if
such they are) to be true, and I hope that a critical examination would
altogether disprove them.
CONRAD WIEGAND.
Gold Hill, January 15, 1870.
I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr.
Winters said:
"That's not satisfactory, and it won't do;" and then addressing himself
to Mr. Lynch, he further said: "How does it strike you?"
"Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything."
"Nor do I," said Winters; "in fact, I regard it as adding insult to
injury. Mr. Wiegand you've got to do better than that. You are not the
man who can pull wool over my eyes."
"That, sir, is the only retraction I can write."
"No it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do it at your
peril, for I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life, and, by--,
sir, I don't pledge myself to spare you even that inch either. I want
you to understand I have asked you for a very different paper, and that
paper you've got to sign."
"Mr. Winters, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you, but, at
the same time, it is utterly impossible for me to write any other paper
than that which I have written. If you are resolved to compel me to sign
something, Philip Lynch's hand must write at your dictation, and if, when
written, I can sign it I will do so, but such a document as you say you
must have from me, I never can sign. I mean what I say."
"Well, sir, what's to be done must be done quickly, for I've been here
long enough already. I'll put the thing in another shape (and then
pointing to the paper); don't you know those charges to be false?"
"I do not."
"Do you know them to be true?"
"Of my own personal knowledge I do not."
"Why then did you print them?"
"Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, but
pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of a
correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable."
"Don't you know that I know they are false?"
"If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an
investigation."
"And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything you may
choose to write and print?"
To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said:
"Come, now, we've talked about the matter long enough. I want your final
answer--did you write that article or not?"
"I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it."
"Did you not see it before it was printed?"
"Most certainly, sir."
"And did you deem it a fit thing to publish?"
"Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance.
Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication I
assume full, sole and personal responsibility."
"And do you then retract it or not?"
"Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demanded
must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies,
then I ask a few minutes for prayer."
"Prayer!---you, this is not your hour for prayer--your time to pray was
when you were writing those--lying charges. Will you sign or not?"
"You already have my answer."
"What! do you still refuse?"
"I do, sir."
"Take that, then," and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drew
only a rawhide instead of what I expected--a bludgeon or pistol. With
it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downwards, as if to tear it
off, and afterwards on the side of the head. As he moved away to get a
better chance for a more effective shot, for the first time I gained a
chance under peril to rise, and I did so pitying him from the very bottom
of my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, power
and nobility could, by the temptations of this State, and by unfortunate
associations and aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in such
brutality anything which he could call satisfaction--but the great hope
for us all is in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, will
yet be able to comprehend my feelings.
He continued to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely weary,
exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of
non-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defend
my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from
the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and my
clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now hides all
remaining traces.
When I supposed he was through, taking the butt end of his weapon and
shaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, of
more yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introduce
his name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he would
cut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send me home
to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to all
low-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to injure their
good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his
implement would not be a whip but a knife.
When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, he
left the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming: "The man is mad
--he is utterly mad--this step is his ruin--it is a mistake--it would be
ungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage I have here received, to
expose him, at least until he has had an opportunity to reflect upon the
matter. I shall be in no haste."
"Winters is very mad just now," replied Mr. Lynch, "but when he is
himself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he told me the
reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of a
beating in the sight of others."
I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of
having been privy in advance to Mr. Winters' intentions whatever they may
have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but I
leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for
inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his
own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is
verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon the
street.
While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly
true respecting this most remarkable assault:
First--The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as
in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the
Penitentiary for libel. This, however, seems unlikely, because any
statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law or
could be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted so
badly must have been desired for some other purpose.
Second--The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that I
shrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at the
earliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do
all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up
that aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of
true freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer this
hypothesis as a "charge," I feel that as an American citizen I still have
a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon
and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault
(especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any other
apparent enormity. I give the matter simply as a suggestion which may
explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should
represent, a well ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysterious
fact. The scheme of the assault may have been:
First--To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after
making actual though not legal threats against my life.
Second--To imply that I could save my life only by writing or signing
certain specific statements which if not subsequently explained would
eternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my family
to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of the
rich.
Third--To blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby preventing
me from making any subsequent explanation such as could remove the
infamy.
Fourth--Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by John
B. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would bring
him in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B. Winters'
mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when that
refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death.
The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only spared
my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that at
first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive; and why I
was allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other invisible
influence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, the
more probable as true does this horrible interpretation become.
The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters and
to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both
verbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to
appear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to this
community, and to the entire independent press of America and Great
Britain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has
pronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of
some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received the
erroneous telegrams?]
Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the
publication of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (with
his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) to
resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it.
Notwithstanding I bear him no ill will; and if W. C. Ralston and William
Sharon, and other members of the San Francisco mining and milling Ring
feel that he above all other men in this State and California is the most
fitting man to supervise and control Yellow Jacket matters, until I am
able to vote more than half their stock I presume he will be retained to
grace his present post.
Meantime, I cordially invite all who know of any sort of important
villainy which only can be cured by exposure (and who would expose it if
they felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats), to
communicate with the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE; for until I am murdered, so long
as I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my efforts at
least to revive the liberties of the State, to curb oppression, and to
benefit man's world and God's earth.
CONRAD WIEGAND.
[It does seem a pity that the Sheriff was shut out, since the good sense
of a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to teach them
that the merited castigation of this weak, half-witted child was a thing
that ought to have been done in the street, where the poor thing could
have a chance to run. When a journalist maligns a citizen, or attacks
his good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to be thrashed for it,
even if he is a "non-combatant" weakling; but a generous adversary would
at least allow such a lamb the use of his legs at such a time.--M. T.]
End of Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THE GILDED AGE
A Tale of Today
by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
1873
PREFACE.
This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was
not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's;
it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle
hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is
submitted without the usual apologies.
It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society;
and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the
imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where
there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth,
where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all
honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity
and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic,
there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have
constructed out of an ideal commonwealth.
No apology is needed for following the learned custom of placing
attractive scraps of literature at the heads of our chapters. It has
been truly observed by Wagner that such headings, with their vague
suggestions of the matter which is to follow them, pleasantly inflame the
reader's interest without wholly satisfying his curiosity, and we will
hope that it may be found to be so in the present case.
Our quotations are set in a vast number of tongues; this is done for the
reason that very few foreign nations among whom the book will circulate
can read in any language but their own; whereas we do not write for a
particular class or sect or nation, but to take in the whole world.
We do not object to criticism; and we do not expect that the critic will
read the book before writing a notice of it: We do not even expect the
reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it. No, we have no
anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. But if the
Jupiter, Who passes his opinion on the novel, ever happens to peruse it
in some weary moment of his subsequent life, we hope that he will not be
the victim of a remorse bitter but too late.
One word more. This is--what it pretends to be a joint production, in
the conception of the story, the exposition of the characters, and in its
literal composition. There is scarcely a chapter that does not bear the
marks of the two writers of the book. S. L. C.
C. D. W.
[Etext Editor's Note: The following chapters were written by Mark Twain:
1-11, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32-34, 36, 37, 42, 43, 45, 51-53, 57, 59-62;
and portions of 35, 49, and 56. See Twain's letter to Dr. John Brown
Feb. 28, 1874 D.W.]
CHAPTER I.
June 18--. Squire Hawkins sat upon the pyramid of large blocks, called
the "stile," in front of his house, contemplating the morning.
The locality was Obedstown, East Tennessee. You would not know that
Obedstown stood on the top of a mountain, for there was nothing about the
landscape to indicate it--but it did: a mountain that stretched abroad
over whole counties, and rose very gradually. The district was called
the "Knobs of East Tennessee," and had a reputation like Nazareth, as far
as turning out any good thing was concerned.
The Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of decay; two or
three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold, and lifted their heads
sadly whenever Mrs. Hawkins or the children stepped in and out over their
bodies. Rubbish was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood
near the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and a
gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the exertion was
overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to rest. There was an
ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot, for soft-soap-boiling, near it.
This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the other fourteen
houses were scattered about among the tall pine trees and among the
corn-fields in such a way that a man might stand in the midst of the city
and not know but that he was in the country if he only depended on his
eyes for information.
"Squire" Hawkins got his title from being postmaster of Obedstown--not
that the title properly belonged to the office, but because in those
regions the chief citizens always must have titles of some sort, and so
the usual courtesy had been extended to Hawkins. The mail was monthly,
and sometimes amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single
delivery. Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's whole
month, though, and therefore he "kept store" in the intervals.
The Squire was contemplating the morning. It was balmy and tranquil,
the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor of flowers, the murmur of
bees was in the air, there was everywhere that suggestion of repose that
summer woodlands bring to the senses, and the vague, pleasurable
melancholy that such a time and such surroundings inspire.
Presently the United States mail arrived, on horseback. There was but
one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who
carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in
a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help.
As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or
yellow--here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and
sometimes two--yarn ones knitted at home,--some wore vests, but few wore
coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather
picturesque than otherwise, for they were made of tolerably fanciful
patterns of calico--a fashion which prevails thereto this day among those
of the community who have tastes above the common level and are able to
afford style. Every individual arrived with his hands in his pockets;
a hand came out occasionally for a purpose, but it always went back again
after service; and if it was the head that was served, just the cant that
the dilapidated straw hat got by being uplifted and rooted under, was
retained until the next call altered the inclination; many' hats were
present, but none were erect and no two were canted just alike. We are
speaking impartially of men, youths and boys. And we are also speaking
of these three estates when we say that every individual was either
chewing natural leaf tobacco prepared on his own premises, or smoking the
same in a corn-cob pipe. Few of the men wore whiskers; none wore
moustaches; some had a thick jungle of hair under the chin and hiding the
throat--the only pattern recognized there as being the correct thing in
whiskers; but no part of any individual's face had seen a razor for a
week.
These neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail carrier
reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began to show itself,
and one after another they climbed up and occupied the top rail of the
fence, hump-shouldered and grave, like a company of buzzards assembled
for supper and listening for the death-rattle. Old Damrell said:
"Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?"
"Cain't tell for sartin; some thinks he's gwyne to be 'long toreckly,
and some thinks 'e hain't. Russ Mosely he tote ole Hanks he mought git
to Obeds tomorrer or nex' day he reckoned."
"Well, I wisht I knowed. I got a 'prime sow and pigs in the, cote-house,
and I hain't got no place for to put 'em. If the jedge is a gwyne to
hold cote, I got to roust 'em out, I reckon. But tomorrer'll do, I
'spect."
The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato
and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away.
One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice
and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim and faultless accuracy.
"What's a stirrin', down 'bout the Forks?" continued Old Damrell.
"Well, I dunno, skasely. Ole, Drake Higgins he's ben down to Shelby las'
week. Tuck his crap down; couldn't git shet o' the most uv it; hit
wasn't no time for to sell, he say, so he 'fotch it back agin, 'lowin' to
wait tell fall. Talks 'bout goin' to Mozouri--lots uv 'ems talkin'
that-away down thar, Ole Higgins say. Cain't make a livin' here no mo',
sich times as these. Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n' married a
high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an' he's come back to the
Forks with jist a hell's-mint o' whoop-jamboree notions, folks says.
He's tuck an' fixed up the ole house like they does in Kaintuck, he say,
an' tha's ben folks come cler from Turpentine for to see it. He's tuck
an gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'."
"What's plasterin'?"
"I dono. Hit's what he calls it. 'Ole Mam Higgins, she tole me.
She say she wasn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a dern hole like a hog.
Says it's mud, or some sich kind o' nastiness that sticks on n' covers up
everything. Plarsterin', Si calls it."
This marvel was discussed at considerable length; and almost with
animation. But presently there was a dog-fight over in the neighborhood
of the blacksmith shop, and the visitors slid off their perch like so
many turtles and strode to the battle-field with an interest bordering on
eagerness. The Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed,
and sat long in meditation. At intervals he said:
"Missouri. Missouri. Well, well, well, everything is so uncertain."
At last he said:
"I believe I'll do it.--A man will just rot, here. My house my yard,
everything around me, in fact, shows' that I am becoming one of these
cattle--and I used to be thrifty in other times."
He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him
seem older. He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was
the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of
beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went
into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple
pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of
his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was
sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and
trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through
the middle--for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings
made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro woman was busy
cooking, at a vast fire-place. Shiftlessness and poverty reigned in the
place.
"Nancy, I've made up my mind. The world is done with me, and perhaps I
ought to be done with it. But no matter--I can wait. I am going to
Missouri. I won't stay in this dead country and decay with it. I've had
it on my mind sometime. I'm going to sell out here for whatever I can
get, and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in it and
start."
"Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si. And the children can't be any
worse off in Missouri than, they are here, I reckon."
Motioning his wife to a private conference in their own room, Hawkins
said: "No, they'll be better off. I've looked out for them, Nancy," and
his face lighted. "Do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence
that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county
--think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy, enormous
don't express it--the word's too tame! I tell your Nancy----"
"For goodness sake, Si----"
"Wait, Nancy, wait--let me finish--I've been secretly bailing and fuming
with this grand inspiration for weeks, and I must talk or I'll burst!
I haven't whispered to a soul--not a word--have had my countenance under
lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these
animals here how to discern the gold mine that's glaring under their
noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the
family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly--five or ten dollars
--the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now,
but some day people wild be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty
dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to" [here he
dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that
there were no eavesdroppers,] "a thousand dollars an acre!
"Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it's so. You and I may not
see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I tell you; they'll see it.
Nancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them--of
course you did. You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call
them lies and humbugs,--but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a
reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they
are now. They're going to make a revolution in this world's affairs that
will make men dizzy to contemplate. I've been watching--I've been
watching while some people slept, and I know what's coming.
"Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come up that little
Turkey river to within twenty miles of this land of ours--and in high
water they'll come right to it! And this is not all, Nancy--it isn't
even half! There's a bigger wonder--the railroad! These worms here have
never even heard of it--and when they do they'll not believe in it.
But it's another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground twenty miles an
hour--heavens and earth, think of that, Nancy! Twenty miles an hour.
It makes a main's brain whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our
graves, there'll be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles--all the way
down from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans--and its got
to run within thirty miles of this land--may be even touch a corner of
it. Well; do you know, they've quit burning wood in some places in the
Eastern States? And what do you suppose they burn? Coal!" [He bent over
and whispered again:] "There's world--worlds of it on this land! You
know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the branch?--well,
that's it. You've taken it for rocks; so has every body here; and
they've built little dams and such things with it. One man was going to
build a chimney out of it. Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet!
Why, it might have caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was
too crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore--splendid
yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There's fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore
on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a
smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull
eyes opened. And then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's
mountains of iron ore here, Nancy--whole mountains of it. I wouldn't
take any chances. I just stuck by him--I haunted him--I never let him
alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the
chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests, wheat land, corn land,
iron, copper, coal-wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats!
We'll never see the day, Nancy--never in the world---never, never, never,
child. We've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and
poverty, all hopeless and forlorn--but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy!
They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and
worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah,
well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the
steamboat, and say, 'This one little spot shall not be touched--this
hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for
us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the
hills!'"
"You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman
to be the wife of such a man"--and the tears stood in her eyes when she
said it. "We will go to Missouri. You are out of your place, here,
among these groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where
you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak--not
stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue. I would go
anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you I would rather my body
would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this
lonely land."
"Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve, Nancy. Far from
it. I have a letter from Beriah Sellers--just came this day. A letter
that--I'll read you a line from it!"
He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy's face
--there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. A procession of
disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind. Saying nothing
aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them,
then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together;
sighed, nodded, smiled--occasionally paused, shook her head. This
pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which
had something of this shape:
"I was afraid of it--was afraid of it. Trying to make our fortune in
Virginia, Beriah Sellers nearly ruined us and we had to settle in
Kentucky and start over again. Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he
crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune
here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's an honest
soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid
he's too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances
with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something
does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he
was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband, for I do think
that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can out-talk a
machine. He'll make anybody believe in that notion that'll listen to him
ten minutes--why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe
in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his
eyes tally and watch his hands explain. What a head he has got! When he
got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in
Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to
have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them,
away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made
stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day
--it was somehow that way--mercy how the man would have made money!
Negroes would have gone up to four prices. But after he'd spent money
and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all
contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn't get
the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky,
when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a
perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at
a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business,
why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and
hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the
doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel. Oceans of money in it
--anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull
out--and then when they put the new cog wheel in they'd overlooked
something somewhere and it wasn't any use--the troublesome thing wouldn't
go. That notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the
world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it with the
curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors were about. The
man did honestly believe there was a fortune in that black gummy oil that
stews out of the bank Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it
was like water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about that;
and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnati with his lamp that he
got made, that time he got a house full of rich speculators to see him
exhibit only in the middle of his speech it let go and almost blew the
heads off the whole crowd. I haven't got over grieving for the money
that cost yet. I am sorry enough Beriah Sellers is in Missouri, now, but
I was glad when he went. I wonder what his letter says. But of course
it's cheerful; he's never down-hearted--never had any trouble in his
life--didn't know it if he had. It's always sunrise with that man, and
fine and blazing, at that--never gets noon; though--leaves off and rises
again. Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well--but I do
dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of
coarse. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins--it always takes her a week
to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come
with the letter, now."
And he did:
"Widow Hopkins kept me--I haven't any patience with such tedious people.
Now listen, Nancy--just listen at this:
"'Come right along to Missouri! Don't wait and worry about a good
price but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you
might be too late. Throw away your traps, if necessary, and come
empty-handed. You'll never regret it. It's the grandest country
--the loveliest land--the purest atmosphere--I can't describe it; no
pen can do it justice. And it's filling up, every day--people
coming from everywhere. I've got the biggest scheme on earth--and
I'll take you in; I'll take in every friend I've got that's ever
stood by me, for there's enough for all, and to spare. Mum's the
word--don't whisper--keep yourself to yourself. You'll see! Come!
--rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!'
"It's the same old boy, Nancy, jest the same old boy--ain't he?"
"Yes, I think there's a little of the old sound about his voice yet.
I suppose you--you'll still go, Si?"
"Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy. It's all a chance, of course, and,
chances haven't been kind to us, I'll admit--but whatever comes, old
wife, they're provided for. Thank God for that!"
"Amen," came low and earnestly.
And with an activity and a suddenness that bewildered Obedstown and
almost took its breath away, the Hawkinses hurried through with their
arrangements in four short months and flitted out into the great
mysterious blank that lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.
CHAPTER II.
Toward the close of the third day's journey the wayfarers were just
beginning to think of camping, when they came upon a log cabin in the
woods. Hawkins drew rein and entered the yard. A boy about ten years
old was sitting in the cabin door with his face bowed in his hands.
Hawkins approached, expecting his footfall to attract attention, but it
did not. He halted a moment, and then said:
"Come, come, little chap, you mustn't be going to sleep before sundown"
With a tired expression the small face came up out of the hands,--a face
down which tears were flowing.
"Ah, I'm sorry I spoke so, my boy. Tell me--is anything the matter?"
The boy signified with a scarcely perceptible gesture that the trouble
was in the, house, and made room for Hawkins to pass. Then he put his
face in his hands again and rocked himself about as one suffering a grief
that is too deep to find help in moan or groan or outcry. Hawkins
stepped within. It was a poverty stricken place. Six or eight
middle-aged country people of both sexes were grouped about an object in
the middle of the room; they were noiselessly busy and they talked in
whispers when they spoke. Hawkins uncovered and approached. A coffin
stood upon two backless chairs. These neighbors had just finished
disposing the body of a woman in it--a woman with a careworn, gentle face
that had more the look of sleep about it than of death. An old lady
motioned, toward the door and said to Hawkins in a whisper:
"His mother, po' thing. Died of the fever, last night. Tha warn't no
sich thing as saving of her. But it's better for her--better for her.
Husband and the other two children died in the spring, and she hain't
ever hilt up her head sence. She jest went around broken-hearted like,
and never took no intrust in anything but Clay--that's the boy thar.
She jest worshiped Clay--and Clay he worshiped her. They didn't 'pear to
live at all, only when they was together, looking at each other, loving
one another. She's ben sick three weeks; and if you believe me that
child has worked, and kep' the run of the med'cin, and the times of
giving it, and sot up nights and nussed her, and tried to keep up her
sperits, the same as a grown-up person. And last night when she kep' a
sinking and sinking, and turned away her head and didn't know him no mo',
it was fitten to make a body's heart break to see him climb onto the bed
and lay his cheek agin hern and call her so pitiful and she not answer.
But bymeby she roused up, like, and looked around wild, and then she see
him, and she made a great cry and snatched him to her breast and hilt him
close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po'
strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, and her arms
sort o' drooped away and then we see she was gone, po' creetur. And
Clay, he--Oh, the po' motherless thing--I cain't talk abort it--I cain't
bear to talk about it."
Clay had disappeared from the door; but he came in, now, and the
neighbors reverently fell apart and made way for him. He leaned upon the
open coffin and let his tears course silently. Then he put out his small
hand and smoothed the hair and stroked the dead face lovingly. After a
bit he brought his other hand up from behind him and laid three or four
fresh wild flowers upon the breast, bent over and kissed the unresponsive
lips time and time again, and then turned away and went out of the house
without looking at any of the company. The old lady said to Hawkins:
"She always loved that kind o' flowers. He fetched 'em for her every
morning, and she always kissed him. They was from away north somers--she
kep' school when she fust come. Goodness knows what's to become o' that
po' boy. No father, no mother, no kin folks of no kind. Nobody to go
to, nobody that k'yers for him--and all of us is so put to it for to get
along and families so large."
Hawkins understood. All, eyes were turned inquiringly upon him. He
said:
"Friends, I am not very well provided for, myself, but still I would not
turn my back on a homeless orphan. If he will go with me I will give him
a home, and loving regard--I will do for him as I would have another do
for a child of my own in misfortune."
One after another the people stepped forward and wrung the stranger's
hand with cordial good will, and their eyes looked all that their hands
could not express or their lips speak.
"Said like a true man," said one.
"You was a stranger to me a minute ago, but you ain't now," said another.
"It's bread cast upon the waters--it'll return after many days," said the
old lady whom we have heard speak before.
"You got to camp in my house as long as you hang out here," said one.
"If tha hain't room for you and yourn my tribe'll turn out and camp in
the hay loft."
A few minutes afterward, while the preparations for the funeral were
being concluded, Mr. Hawkins arrived at his wagon leading his little waif
by the hand, and told his wife all that had happened, and asked her if he
had done right in giving to her and to himself this new care? She said:
"If you've done wrong, Si Hawkins, it's a wrong that will shine brighter
at the judgment day than the rights that many' a man has done before you.
And there isn't any compliment you can pay me equal to doing a thing like
this and finishing it up, just taking it for granted that I'll be willing
to it. Willing? Come to me; you poor motherless boy, and let me take
your grief and help you carry it."
When the child awoke in the morning, it was as if from a troubled dream.
But slowly the confusion in his mind took form, and he remembered his
great loss; the beloved form in the coffin; his talk with a generous
stranger who offered him a home; the funeral, where the stranger's wife
held him by the hand at the grave, and cried with him and comforted him;
and he remembered how this, new mother tucked him in his bed in the
neighboring farm house, and coaxed him to talk about his troubles, and
then heard him say his prayers and kissed him good night, and left him
with the soreness in his heart almost healed and his bruised spirit at
rest.
And now the new mother came again, and helped him to dress, and combed
his hair, and drew his mind away by degrees from the dismal yesterday,
by telling him about the wonderful journey he was going to take and the
strange things he was going to see. And after breakfast they two went
alone to the grave, and his heart went out to his new friend and his
untaught eloquence poured the praises of his buried idol into her ears
without let or hindrance. Together they planted roses by the headboard
and strewed wild flowers upon the grave; and then together they went
away, hand in hand, and left the dead to the long sleep that heals all
heart-aches and ends all sorrows.
CHAPTER III.
Whatever the lagging dragging journey may have been to the rest of the
emigrants, it was a wonder and delight to the children, a world of
enchantment; and they believed it to be peopled with the mysterious
dwarfs and giants and goblins that figured in the tales the negro slaves
were in the habit of telling them nightly by the shuddering light of the
kitchen fire.
At the end of nearly a week of travel, the party went into camp near a
shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry
Mississippi. The river astonished the children beyond measure. Its
mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight,
and the vague riband of trees on the further shore, the verge of a
continent which surely none but they had ever seen before.
"Uncle Dan'l"(colored,) aged 40; his wife, "aunt Jinny," aged 30, "Young
Miss" Emily Hawkins, "Young Mars" Washington Hawkins and "Young Mars"
Clay, the new member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after
supper, and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it. The moon
rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the
sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep
silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than
broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled
crash of a raving bank in the distance.
The little company assembled on the log were all children (at least in
simplicity and broad and comprehensive ignorance,) and the remarks they
made about the river were in keeping with the character; and so awed were
they by the grandeur and the solemnity of the scene before then, and by
their belief that the air was filled with invisible spirits and that the
faint zephyrs were caused by their passing wings, that all their talk
took to itself a tinge of the supernatural, and their voices were subdued
to a low and reverent tone. Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed:
"Chil'en, dah's sum fin a comin!"
All crowded close together and every heart beat faster.
Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger.
A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape
that jetted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce
eye of fire shot out froth behind the cape and sent a long brilliant
pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and
louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and
still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from
its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled
with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness.
Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with
spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the
monster like a torchlight procession.
"What is it! Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan'l!"
With deep solemnity the answer came:
"It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!"
It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling, in a
moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and
stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's
voice lifted up its supplications:
"O Lord', we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de
bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, we ain't ready
--let dese po' chilen hab one mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole
niggah if you's, got to hab somebody.--Good Lord, good deah Lord, we
don't know whah you's a gwyne to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on,
but we knows by de way you's a comin', we knows by de way you's a tiltin'
along in yo' charyot o' fiah dat some po' sinner's a gwyne to ketch it.
But good Lord, dose chilen don't b'long heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah
dey don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't
'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't
like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin' kindness for to
take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sick little chil'en as dose is when dey's so
many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down
dah. Oh, Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away
f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole
niggah. HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord,
de ole----"
The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not
twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst
forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child
under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at
his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness
and shouted, (but rather feebly:)
"Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!"
There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise and
the comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had gone
by, for its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious
reconnaissance in the direction of the log. Sure enough "the Lord" was
just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while they looked
the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by degrees and
presently ceased altogether.
"H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah.
Dis Chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat
prah? Dat's it. Dat's it!"
"Uncle Dan'l, do you reckon it was the prayer that saved us?" said Clay.
"Does I reckon? Don't I know it! Whah was yo' eyes? Warn't de Lord
jes' a cumin' chow! chow! CHOW! an' a goin' on turrible--an' do de
Lord carry on dat way 'dout dey's sumfin don't suit him? An' warn't he a
lookin' right at dis gang heah, an' warn't he jes' a reachin' for 'em?
An' d'you spec' he gwyne to let 'em off 'dout somebody ast him to do it?
No indeedy!"
"Do you reckon he saw, us, Uncle Dan'l?
"De law sakes, Chile, didn't I see him a lookin' at us?".
"Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan'l?"
"No sah! When a man is 'gaged in prah, he ain't fraid o' nuffin--dey
can't nuffin tetch him."
"Well what did you run for?"
"Well, I--I--mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit,
he do-no, what he's 'bout--no sah; dat man do-no what he's 'bout. You
mout take an' tah de head off'n dat man an' he wouldn't scasely fine it
out. Date's de Hebrew chil'en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt
considable--ob coase dey was; but dey didn't know nuffin 'bout it--heal
right up agin; if dey'd ben gals dey'd missed dey long haah, (hair,)
maybe, but dey wouldn't felt de burn."
"I don't know but what they were girls. I think they were."
"Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat. Sometimes a body can't tell
whedder you's a sayin' what you means or whedder you's a sayin' what you
don't mean, 'case you says 'em bofe de same way."
"But how should I know whether they were boys or girls?"
"Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don't de Good Book say? 'Sides, don't it
call 'em de HE-brew chil'en? If dey was gals wouldn't dey be de SHE-brew
chil'en? Some people dat kin read don't 'pear to take no notice when dey
do read."
"Well, Uncle Dan'l, I think that-----My! here comes another one up the
river! There can't be two!"
"We gone dis time--we done gone dis time, sho'! Dey ain't two, mars
Clay--days de same one. De Lord kin 'pear eberywhah in a second.
Goodness, how do fiah and de smoke do belch up! Dat mean business,
honey. He comin' now like he fo'got sumfin. Come 'long, chil'en, time
you's gwyne to roos'. Go 'long wid you--ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in de
woods to rastle in prah--de ole nigger gwyne to do what he kin to sabe
you agin"
He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted,
himself, if the Lord heard him when He went by.
CHAPTER IV.
--Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God,
satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper
him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be 'sui juris'
he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since
many that go far abroad, return not home. (This good and Christian
Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons before his
Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.)
Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small steamboat,
with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the
stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river.
The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out
that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the
night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They
started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss,
and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The
shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery to
them.
But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors,
and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal progress
through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of their
rosiest wonder-dreams. They sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot
house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of
the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat fought the
mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and remote from
both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the dead water and the
helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were
swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of
leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river
every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus
escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high
"bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed
it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head--and
then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt"
the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her
bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under
way, and in this instant she leaned far over on her side, shied from the
bar and fled square away from the danger like a frightened thing--and the
pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her
nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of
tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a
little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go
plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the
island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water
she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared
in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in
soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles
and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found
shoal water, going out at the head of those "chutes" or crossing the
river, and then a deck-hand stood on the bow and hove the lead, while the
boat slowed down and moved cautiously; sometimes she stopped a moment at
a landing and took on some freight or a passenger while a crowd of
slouchy white men and negroes stood on the bank and looked sleepily on
with their hands in their pantaloons pockets,--of course--for they never
took them out except to stretch, and when they did this they squirmed
about and reached their fists up into the air and lifted themselves on
tip-toe in an ecstasy of enjoyment.
When the sun went down it turned all the broad river to a national banner
laid in gleaming bars of gold and purple and crimson; and in time these
glories faded out in the twilight and left the fairy archipelagoes
reflecting their fringing foliage in the steely mirror of the stream.
At night the boat forged on through the deep solitudes of the river,
hardly ever discovering a light to testify to a human presence--mile
after mile and league after league the vast bends were guarded by
unbroken walls of forest that had never been disturbed by the voice or
the foot-fall of man or felt the edge of his sacrilegious axe.
An hour after supper the moon came up, and Clay and Washington ascended
to the hurricane deck to revel again in their new realm of enchantment.
They ran races up and down the deck; climbed about the bell; made friends
with the passenger-dogs chained under the lifeboat; tried to make friends
with a passenger-bear fastened to the verge-staff but were not
encouraged; "skinned the cat" on the hog-chains; in a word, exhausted the
amusement-possibilities of the deck. Then they looked wistfully up at
the pilot house, and finally, little by little, Clay ventured up there,
followed diffidently by Washington. The pilot turned presently to "get
his stern-marks," saw the lads and invited them in. Now their happiness
was complete. This cosy little house, built entirely of glass and
commanding a marvelous prospect in every direction was a magician's
throne to them and their enjoyment of the place was simply boundless.
They sat them down on a high bench and looked miles ahead and saw the
wooded capes fold back and reveal the bends beyond; and they looked miles
to the rear and saw the silvery highway diminish its breadth by degrees
and close itself together in the distance. Presently the pilot said:
"By George, yonder comes the Amaranth!"
A spark appeared, close to the water, several miles down the river. The
pilot took his glass and looked at it steadily for a moment, and said,
chiefly to himself:
"It can't be the Blue Wing. She couldn't pick us up this way. It's the
Amaranth, sure!"
He bent over a speaking tube and said:
"Who's on watch down there?"
A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube in answer:
"I am. Second engineer."
"Good! You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry--the Amaranth's just
turned the point--and she's just a--humping herself, too!"
The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward, jerked it
twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell responded. A voice out on
the deck shouted:
"Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!"
"No, I don't want the lead," said the pilot, "I want you. Roust out the
old man--tell him the Amaranth's coming. And go and call Jim--tell him."
"Aye-aye, sir!"
The "old man" was the captain--he is always called so, on steamboats and
ships; "Jim" was the other pilot. Within two minutes both of these men
were flying up the pilothouse stairway, three steps at a jump. Jim was
in his shirt sleeves,--with his coat and vest on his arm. He said:
"I was just turning in. Where's the glass"
He took it and looked:
"Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff--it's the Amaranth,
dead sure!"
The captain took a good long look, and only said:
"Damnation!"
George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck:
"How's she loaded?"
"Two inches by the head, sir."
"'T ain't enough!"
The captain shouted, now:
"Call the mate. Tell him to call all hands and get a lot of that sugar
forrard--put her ten inches by the head. Lively, now!"
"Aye-aye, sir."
A riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below, presently, and
the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed that she was getting "down by
the head."
The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short, sharp sentences,
low and earnestly. As their excitement rose, their voices went down.
As fast as one of them put down the spy-glass another took it up--but
always with a studied air of calmness. Each time the verdict was:
"She's a gaining!"
The captain spoke through the tube:
"What steam are You carrying?"
"A hundred and forty-two, sir! But she's getting hotter and hotter all
the time."
The boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a monster in pain.
Both pilots were at work now, one on each side of the wheel, with their
coats and vests off, their bosoms and collars wide open and the
perspiration flowing down heir faces. They were holding the boat so
close to the shore that the willows swept the guards almost from stem to
stern.
"Stand by!" whispered George.
"All ready!" said Jim, under his breath.
"Let her come!"
The boat sprang away, from the bank like a deer, and darted in a long
diagonal toward the other shore. She closed in again and thrashed her
fierce way along the willows as before. The captain put down the glass:
"Lord how she walks up on us! I do hate to be beat!"
"Jim," said George, looking straight ahead, watching the slightest yawing
of the boat and promptly meeting it with the wheel, "how'll it do to try
Murderer's Chute?"
"Well, it's--it's taking chances. How was the cottonwood stump on the
false point below Boardman's Island this morning?"
"Water just touching the roots."
"Well it's pretty close work. That gives six feet scant in the head of
Murderer's Chute. We can just barely rub through if we hit it exactly
right. But it's worth trying. She don't dare tackle it!"--meaning the
Amaranth.
In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a crooked creek,
and the Amaranth's approaching lights were shut out in a moment. Not a
whisper was uttered, now, but the three men stared ahead into the shadows
and two of them spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness
while the steamer tore along. The chute seemed to come to an end every
fifty yards, but always opened out in time. Now the head of it was at
hand. George tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to
their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and
were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck:
"No-o bottom!"
"De-e-p four!"
"Half three!"
"Quarter three!"
"Mark under wa-a-ter three!"
"Half twain!"
"Quarter twain!-----"
Davis pulled a couple of ropes--there was a jingling of small bells far
below, the boat's speed slackened, and the pent steam began to whistle
and the gauge-cocks to scream:
"By the mark twain!"
"Quar--ter--her--er--less twain!"
"Eight and a half!"
"Eight feet!"
"Seven-ana-half!"
Another jingling of little bells and the wheels ceased turning
altogether. The whistling of the steam was something frightful now--it
almost drowned all other noises.
"Stand by to meet her!"
George had the wheel hard down and was standing on a spoke.
"All ready!"
The, boat hesitated seemed to hold her breath, as did the captain and
pilots--and then she began to fall away to starboard and every eye
lighted:
"Now then!--meet her! meet her! Snatch her!"
The wheel flew to port so fast that the spokes blended into a spider-web
--the swing of the boat subsided--she steadied herself----
"Seven feet!"
"Sev--six and a half!"
"Six feet! Six f----"
Bang! She hit the bottom! George shouted through the tube:
"Spread her wide open! Whale it at her!"
Pow-wow-chow! The escape-pipes belched snowy pillars of steam aloft, the
boat ground and surged and trembled--and slid over into----
"M-a-r-k twain!"
"Quarter-her----"
"Tap! tap! tap!" (to signify "Lay in the leads")
And away she went, flying up the willow shore, with the whole silver sea
of the Mississippi stretching abroad on every hand.
No Amaranth in sight!
"Ha-ha, boys, we took a couple of tricks that time!" said the captain.
And just at that moment a red glare appeared in the head of the chute and
the Amaranth came springing after them!
"Well, I swear!"
"Jim, what is the meaning of that?"
"I'll tell you what's the meaning of it. That hail we had at Napoleon
was Wash Hastings, wanting to come to Cairo--and we didn't stop. He's in
that pilot house, now, showing those mud turtles how to hunt for easy
water."
"That's it! I thought it wasn't any slouch that was running that middle
bar in Hog-eye Bend. If it's Wash Hastings--well, what he don't know
about the river ain't worth knowing--a regular gold-leaf, kid-glove,
diamond breastpin pilot Wash Hastings is. We won't take any tricks off
of him, old man!"
"I wish I'd a stopped for him, that's all."
The Amaranth was within three hundred yards of the Boreas, and still
gaining. The "old man" spoke through the tube:
"What is she-carrying now?"
"A hundred and sixty-five, sir!"
"How's your wood?"
"Pine all out-cypress half gone-eating up cotton-wood like pie!"
"Break into that rosin on the main deck-pile it in, the boat can pay for
it!"
Soon the boat was plunging and quivering and screaming more madly than
ever. But the Amaranth's head was almost abreast the Boreas's stern:
"How's your steam, now, Harry?"
"Hundred and eighty-two, sir!"
"Break up the casks of bacon in the forrard hold! Pile it in! Levy on
that turpentine in the fantail-drench every stick of wood with it!"
The boat was a moving earthquake by this time:
"How is she now?"
"A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling!--water, below the middle
gauge-cocks!--carrying every pound she can stand!--nigger roosting on the
safety-valve!"
"Good! How's your draft?"
"Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into the furnace he
goes out the chimney, with it!"
The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted the Boreas's
wheel-house--climbed along inch by inch till her chimneys breasted it
--crept along, further and further, till the boats were wheel to wheel
--and then they, closed up with a heavy jolt and locked together tight
and fast in the middle of the big river under the flooding moonlight! A
roar and a hurrah went up from the crowded decks of both steamers--all
hands rushed to the guards to look and shout and gesticulate--the weight
careened the vessels over toward each other--officers flew hither and
thither cursing and storming, trying to drive the people amidships--both
captains were leaning over their railings shaking their fists, swearing
and threatening--black volumes of smoke rolled up and canopied the
scene,--delivering a rain of sparks upon the vessels--two pistol shots
rang out, and both captains dodged unhurt and the packed masses of
passengers surged back and fell apart while the shrieks of women and
children soared above the intolerable din----
And then there was a booming roar, a thundering crash, and the riddled
Amaranth dropped loose from her hold and drifted helplessly away!
Instantly the fire-doors of the Boreas were thrown open and the men began
dashing buckets of water into the furnaces--for it would have been death
and destruction to stop the engines with such a head of steam on.
As soon as possible the Boreas dropped down to the floating wreck and
took off the dead, the wounded and the unhurt--at least all that could be
got at, for the whole forward half of the boat was a shapeless ruin, with
the great chimneys lying crossed on top of it, and underneath were a
dozen victims imprisoned alive and wailing for help. While men with axes
worked with might and main to free these poor fellows, the Boreas's boats
went about, picking up stragglers from the river.
And now a new horror presented itself. The wreck took fire from the
dismantled furnaces! Never did men work with a heartier will than did
those stalwart braves with the axes. But it was of no use. The fire ate
its way steadily, despising the bucket brigade that fought it. It
scorched the clothes, it singed the hair of the axemen--it drove them
back, foot by foot-inch by inch--they wavered, struck a final blow in the
teeth of the enemy, and surrendered. And as they fell back they heard
prisoned voices saying:
"Don't leave us! Don't desert us! Don't, don't do it!"
And one poor fellow said:
"I am Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St.
Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed
in an instant and never knew what hurt me--though God knows I've neither
scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this
with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys--we've all got to come
to it at last, anyway!"
The Boreas stood away out of danger, and the ruined steamer went drifting
down the stream an island of wreathing and climbing flame that vomited
clouds of smoke from time to time, and glared more fiercely and sent its
luminous tongues higher and higher after each emission. A shriek at
intervals told of a captive that had met his doom. The wreck lodged upon
a sandbar, and when the Boreas turned the next point on her upward
journey it was still burning with scarcely abated fury.
When the boys came down into the main saloon of the Boreas, they saw a
pitiful sight and heard a world of pitiful sounds. Eleven poor creatures
lay dead and forty more lay moaning, or pleading or screaming, while a
score of Good Samaritans moved among them doing what they could to
relieve their sufferings; bathing their chinless faces and bodies with
linseed oil and lime water and covering the places with bulging masses of
raw cotton that gave to every face and form a dreadful and unhuman
aspect.
A little wee French midshipman of fourteen lay fearfully injured, but
never uttered a sound till a physician of Memphis was about to dress his
hurts. Then he said:
"Can I get well? You need not be afraid to tell me."
"No--I--I am afraid you can not."
"Then do not waste your time with me--help those that can get well."
"But----"
"Help those that can get well! It is, not for me to be a girl. I carry
the blood of eleven generations of soldiers in my veins!"
The physician--himself a man who had seen service in the navy in his
time--touched his hat to this little hero, and passed on.
The head engineer of the Amaranth, a grand specimen of physical manhood,
struggled to his feet a ghastly spectacle and strode toward his brother,
the second engineer, who was unhurt. He said:
"You were on watch. You were boss. You would not listen to me when I
begged you to reduce your steam. Take that!--take it to my wife and tell
her it comes from me by the hand of my murderer! Take it--and take my
curse with it to blister your heart a hundred years--and may you live so
long!"
And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh and skin with it,
threw it down and fell dead!
But these things must not be dwelt upon. The Boreas landed her dreadful
cargo at the next large town and delivered it over to a multitude of
eager hands and warm southern hearts--a cargo amounting by this time to
39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies. And with these she delivered a
list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the
scene of the disaster.
A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry
they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar
to our ears all the days of our lives--"NOBODY TO BLAME."
**[The incidents of the explosion are not invented. They happened just
as they are told.--The Authors.]
CHAPTER V.
Il veut faire secher de la neige au four et la vendre pour du sel blanc.
When the Boreas backed away from the land to continue her voyage up the
river, the Hawkinses were richer by twenty-four hours of experience in
the contemplation of human suffering and in learning through honest hard
work how to relieve it. And they were richer in another way also.
In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed
girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling
through the throng in the Boreas' saloon calling her mother and father,
but no one answered. Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her
and she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took refuge with
him. He petted her, listened to her troubles, and said he would find her
friends for her. Then he put her in a state-room with his children and
told them to be kind to her (the adults of his party were all busy with
the wounded) and straightway began his search.
It was fruitless. But all day he and his wife made inquiries, and hoped
against hope. All that they could learn was that the child and her
parents came on board at New Orleans, where they had just arrived in a
vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people from the Atlantic States;
that the family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura. This was
all. The parents had not been seen since the explosion. The child's
manners were those of a little lady, and her clothes were daintier and
finer than any Mrs. Hawkins had ever seen before.
As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so piteously for
her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses that the moanings and the
wailings of the mutilated men and women in the saloon did not so strain
at their heart-strings as the sufferings of this little desolate
creature. They tried hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love
her; they could not help it, seeing how she clung, to them and put her
arms about their necks and found-no solace but in their kind eyes and
comforting words: There was a question in both their hearts--a question
that rose up and asserted itself with more and more pertinacity as the
hours wore on--but both hesitated to give it voice--both kept silence
--and--waited. But a time came at last when the matter would bear delay
no longer. The boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded were being
conveyed to the shore. The tired child was asleep in the arms of Mrs.
Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins came into their presence and stood without
speaking. His eyes met his wife's; then both looked at the child--and as
they looked it stirred in its sleep and nestled closer; an expression of
contentment and peace settled upon its face that touched the
mother-heart; and when the eyes of husband and wife met again, the
question was asked and answered.
When the Boreas had journeyed some four hundred miles from the time the
Hawkinses joined her, a long rank of steamboats was sighted, packed side
by side at a wharf like sardines, in a box, and above and beyond them
rose the domes and steeples and general architectural confusion of a
city--a city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over it.
This was St. Louis. The children of the Hawkins family were playing
about the hurricane deck, and the father and mother were sitting in the
lee of the pilot house essaying to keep order and not greatly grieved
that they were not succeeding.
"They're worth all the trouble they are, Nancy."
"Yes, and more, Si."
"I believe you! You wouldn't sell one of them at a good round figure?"
"Not for all the money in the bank, Si."
"My own sentiments every time. It is true we are not rich--but still you
are not sorry---you haven't any misgivings about the additions?"
"No. God will provide"
"Amen. And so you wouldn't even part with Clay? Or Laura!"
"Not for anything in the world. I love them just the same as I love my
own: They pet me and spoil me even more than the others do, I think.
I reckon we'll get along, Si."
"Oh yes, it will all come out right, old mother. I wouldn't be afraid to
adopt a thousand children if I wanted to, for there's that Tennessee
Land, you know--enough to make an army of them rich. A whole army,
Nancy! You and I will never see the day, but these little chaps will.
Indeed they will. One of these days it will be the rich Miss Emily
Hawkins--and the wealthy Miss Laura Van Brunt Hawkins--and the Hon.
George Washington Hawkins, millionaire--and Gov. Henry Clay Hawkins,
millionaire! That is the way the world will word it! Don't let's ever
fret about the children, Nancy--never in the world. They're all right.
Nancy, there's oceans and oceans of money in that land--mark my words!"
The children had stopped playing, for the moment, and drawn near to
listen. Hawkins said:
"Washington, my boy, what will you do when you get to be one of the
richest men in the world?"
"I don't know, father. Sometimes I think I'll have a balloon and go up
in the air; and sometimes I think I'll have ever so many books; and
sometimes I think I'll have ever so many weathercocks and water-wheels;
or have a machine like that one you and Colonel Sellers bought; and
sometimes I think I'll have--well, somehow I don't know--somehow I ain't
certain; maybe I'll get a steamboat first."
"The same old chap!--always just a little bit divided about things.--And
what will you do when you get to be one of the richest men in the world,
Clay?"
"I don't know, sir. My mother--my other mother that's gone away--she
always told me to work along and not be much expecting to get rich, and
then I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't get rich. And so I reckon
it's better for me to wait till I get rich, and then by that time maybe
I'll know what I'll want--but I don't now, sir."
"Careful old head!--Governor Henry Clay Hawkins!--that's what you'll be,
Clay, one of these days. Wise old head! weighty old head! Go on, now,
and play--all of you. It's a prime lot, Nancy; as the Obedstown folk say
about their hogs."
A smaller steamboat received the Hawkinses and their fortunes, and bore
them a hundred and thirty miles still higher up the Mississippi, and
landed them at a little tumble-down village on the Missouri shore in the
twilight of a mellow October day.
The next morning they harnessed up their team and for two days they
wended slowly into the interior through almost roadless and uninhabited
forest solitudes. And when for the last time they pitched their tents,
metaphorically speaking, it was at the goal of their hopes, their new
home.
By the muddy roadside stood a new log cabin, one story high--the store;
clustered in the neighborhood were ten or twelve more cabins, some new,
some old.
In the sad light of the departing day the place looked homeless enough.
Two or three coatless young men sat in front of the store on a dry-goods
box, and whittled it with their knives, kicked it with their vast boots,
and shot tobacco-juice at various marks. Several ragged negroes leaned
comfortably against the posts of the awning and contemplated the arrival
of the wayfarers with lazy curiosity. All these people presently managed
to drag themselves to the vicinity of the Hawkins' wagon, and there they
took up permanent positions, hands in pockets and resting on one leg; and
thus anchored they proceeded to look and enjoy. Vagrant dogs came
wagging around and making inquiries of Hawkins's dog, which were not
satisfactory and they made war on him in concert. This would have
interested the citizens but it was too many on one to amount to anything
as a fight, and so they commanded the peace and the foreign dog coiled
his tail and took sanctuary under the wagon. Slatternly negro girls and
women slouched along with pails deftly balanced on their heads, and
joined the group and stared. Little half dressed white boys, and little
negro boys with nothing whatever on but tow-linen shirts with a fine
southern exposure, came from various directions and stood with their
hands locked together behind them and aided in the inspection. The rest
of the population were laying down their employments and getting ready to
come, when a man burst through the assemblage and seized the new-comers
by the hands in a frenzy of welcome, and exclaimed--indeed almost
shouted:
"Well who could have believed it! Now is it you sure enough--turn
around! hold up your heads! I want to look at you good! Well, well,
well, it does seem most too good to be true, I declare! Lord, I'm so
glad to see you! Does a body's whole soul good to look at you! Shake
hands again! Keep on shaking hands! Goodness gracious alive. What will
my wife say?--Oh yes indeed, it's so!--married only last week--lovely,
perfectly lovely creature, the noblest woman that ever--you'll like her,
Nancy! Like her? Lord bless me you'll love her--you'll dote on her
--you'll be twins! Well, well, well, let me look at you again! Same old
--why bless my life it was only jest this very morning that my wife says,
'Colonel'--she will call me Colonel spite of everything I can do--she
says 'Colonel, something tells me somebody's coming!' and sure enough
here you are, the last people on earth a body could have expected.
Why she'll think she's a prophetess--and hanged if I don't think so too
--and you know there ain't any, country but what a prophet's an honor to,
as the proverb says. Lord bless me and here's the children, too!
Washington, Emily, don't you know me? Come, give us a kiss. Won't I fix
you, though!--ponies, cows, dogs, everything you can think of that'll
delight a child's heart-and--Why how's this? Little strangers? Well
you won't be any strangers here, I can tell you. Bless your souls we'll
make you think you never was at home before--'deed and 'deed we will,
I can tell you! Come, now, bundle right along with me. You can't
glorify any hearth stone but mine in this camp, you know--can't eat
anybody's bread but mine--can't do anything but just make yourselves
perfectly at home and comfortable, and spread yourselves out and rest!
You hear me! Here--Jim, Tom, Pete, Jake, fly around! Take that team to
my place--put the wagon in my lot--put the horses under the shed, and get
out hay and oats and fill them up! Ain't any hay and oats? Well get
some--have it charged to me--come, spin around, now! Now, Hawkins, the
procession's ready; mark time, by the left flank, forward-march!"
And the Colonel took the lead, with Laura astride his neck, and the
newly-inspired and very grateful immigrants picked up their tired limbs
with quite a spring in them and dropped into his wake.
Presently they were ranged about an old-time fire-place whose blazing
logs sent out rather an unnecessary amount of heat, but that was no
matter-supper was needed, and to have it, it had to be cooked. This
apartment was the family bedroom, parlor, library and kitchen, all in
one. The matronly little wife of the Colonel moved hither and thither
and in and out with her pots and pans in her hands', happiness in her
heart and a world of admiration of her husband in her eyes. And when at
last she had spread the cloth and loaded it with hot corn bread, fried
chickens, bacon, buttermilk, coffee, and all manner of country luxuries,
Col. Sellers modified his harangue and for a moment throttled it down to
the orthodox pitch for a blessing, and then instantly burst forth again
as from a parenthesis and clattered on with might and main till every
stomach in the party was laden with all it could carry. And when the
new-comers ascended the ladder to their comfortable feather beds on the
second floor--to wit the garret--Mrs. Hawkins was obliged to say:
"Hang the fellow, I do believe he has gone wilder than ever, but still a
body can't help liking him if they would--and what is more, they don't
ever want to try when they see his eyes and hear him talk."
Within a week or two the Hawkinses were comfortably domiciled in a new
log house, and were beginning to feel at home. The children were put to
school; at least it was what passed for a school in those days: a place
where tender young humanity devoted itself for eight or ten hours a day
to learning incomprehensible rubbish by heart out of books and reciting
it by rote, like parrots; so that a finished education consisted simply
of a permanent headache and the ability to read without stopping to spell
the words or take breath. Hawkins bought out the village store for a
song and proceeded to reap the profits, which amounted to but little more
than another song.
The wonderful speculation hinted at by Col. Sellers in his letter turned
out to be the raising of mules for the Southern market; and really it
promised very well. The young stock cost but a trifle, the rearing but
another trifle, and so Hawkins was easily persuaded to embark his slender
means in the enterprise and turn over the keep and care of the animals to
Sellers and Uncle Dan'l.
All went well: Business prospered little by little. Hawkins even built a
new house, made it two full stories high and put a lightning rod on it.
People came two or three miles to look at it. But they knew that the rod
attracted the lightning, and so they gave the place a wide berth in a
storm, for they were familiar with marksmanship and doubted if the
lightning could hit that small stick at a distance of a mile and a half
oftener than once in a hundred and fifty times. Hawkins fitted out his
house with "store" furniture from St. Louis, and the fame of its
magnificence went abroad in the land. Even the parlor carpet was from
St. Louis--though the other rooms were clothed in the "rag" carpeting of
the country. Hawkins put up the first "paling" fence that had ever
adorned the village; and he did not stop there, but whitewashed it.
His oil-cloth window-curtains had noble pictures on them of castles such
as had never been seen anywhere in the world but on window-curtains.
Hawkins enjoyed the admiration these prodigies compelled, but he always
smiled to think how poor and, cheap they were, compared to what the
Hawkins mansion would display in a future day after the Tennessee Land
should have borne its minted fruit. Even Washington observed, once, that
when the Tennessee Land was sold he would have a "store" carpet in his
and Clay's room like the one in the parlor. This pleased Hawkins, but it
troubled his wife. It did not seem wise, to her, to put one's entire
earthly trust in the Tennessee Land and never think of doing any work.
Hawkins took a weekly Philadelphia newspaper and a semi-weekly St. Louis
journal--almost the only papers that came to the village, though Godey's
Lady's Book found a good market there and was regarded as the perfection
of polite literature by some of the ablest critics in the place. Perhaps
it is only fair to explain that we are writing of a by gone age--some
twenty or thirty years ago. In the two newspapers referred to lay the
secret of Hawkins's growing prosperity. They kept him informed of the
condition of the crops south and east, and thus he knew which articles
were likely to be in demand and which articles were likely to be
unsalable, weeks and even months in advance of the simple folk about him.
As the months went by he came to be regarded as a wonderfully lucky man.
It did not occur to the citizens that brains were at the bottom of his
luck.
His title of "Squire" came into vogue again, but only for a season; for,
as his wealth and popularity augmented, that title, by imperceptible
stages, grew up into "Judge;" indeed' it bade fair to swell into
"General" bye and bye. All strangers of consequence who visited the
village gravitated to the Hawkins Mansion and became guests of the
"Judge."
Hawkins had learned to like the people of his section very much. They
were uncouth and not cultivated, and not particularly industrious; but
they were honest and straightforward, and their virtuous ways commanded
respect. Their patriotism was strong, their pride in the flag was of the
old fashioned pattern, their love of country amounted to idolatry.
Whoever dragged the national honor in the dirt won their deathless
hatred. They still cursed Benedict Arnold as if he were a personal
friend who had broken faith--but a week gone by.
CHAPTER VI.
We skip ten years and this history finds certain changes to record.
Judge Hawkins and Col. Sellers have made and lost two or three moderate
fortunes in the meantime and are now pinched by poverty. Sellers has two
pairs of twins and four extras. In Hawkins's family are six children of
his own and two adopted ones. From time to time, as fortune smiled, the
elder children got the benefit of it, spending the lucky seasons at
excellent schools in St. Louis and the unlucky ones at home in the
chafing discomfort of straightened circumstances.
Neither the Hawkins children nor the world that knew them ever supposed
that one of the girls was of alien blood and parentage: Such difference
as existed between Laura and Emily is not uncommon in a family. The
girls had grown up as sisters, and they were both too young at the time
of the fearful accident on the Mississippi to know that it was that which
had thrown their lives together.
And yet any one who had known the secret of Laura's birth and had seen
her during these passing years, say at the happy age of twelve or
thirteen, would have fancied that he knew the reason why she was more
winsome than her school companion.
Philosophers dispute whether it is the promise of what she will be in
the careless school-girl, that makes her attractive, the undeveloped
maidenhood, or the mere natural, careless sweetness of childhood.
If Laura at twelve was beginning to be a beauty, the thought of it had
never entered her head. No, indeed. Her mind wad filled with more
important thoughts. To her simple school-girl dress she was beginning to
add those mysterious little adornments of ribbon-knots and ear-rings,
which were the subject of earnest consultations with her grown friends.
When she tripped down the street on a summer's day with her dainty hands
propped into the ribbon-broidered pockets of her apron, and elbows
consequently more or less akimbo with her wide Leghorn hat flapping down
and hiding her face one moment and blowing straight up against her fore
head the next and making its revealment of fresh young beauty; with all
her pretty girlish airs and graces in full play, and that sweet ignorance
of care and that atmosphere of innocence and purity all about her that
belong to her gracious time of life, indeed she was a vision to warm the
coldest heart and bless and cheer the saddest.
Willful, generous, forgiving, imperious, affectionate, improvident,
bewitching, in short--was Laura at this period. Could she have remained
there, this history would not need to be written. But Laura had grown to
be almost a woman in these few years, to the end of which we have now
come--years which had seen Judge Hawkins pass through so many trials.
When the judge's first bankruptcy came upon him, a homely human angel
intruded upon him with an offer of $1,500 for the Tennessee Land. Mrs.
Hawkins said take it. It was a grievous temptation, but the judge
withstood it. He said the land was for the children--he could not rob
them of their future millions for so paltry a sum. When the second
blight fell upon him, another angel appeared and offered $3,000 for the
land. He was in such deep distress that he allowed his wife to persuade
him to let the papers be drawn; but when his children came into his
presence in their poor apparel, he felt like a traitor and refused to
sign.
But now he was down again, and deeper in the mire than ever. He paced
the floor all day, he scarcely slept at night. He blushed even to
acknowledge it to himself, but treason was in his mind--he was
meditating, at last, the sale of the land. Mrs. Hawkins stepped into the
room. He had not spoken a word, but he felt as guilty as if she had
caught him in some shameful act. She said:
"Si, I do not know what we are going to do. The children are not fit to
be seen, their clothes are in such a state. But there's something more
serious still.--There is scarcely a bite in the house to eat"
"Why, Nancy, go to Johnson----."
"Johnson indeed! You took that man's part when he hadn't a friend in the
world, and you built him up and made him rich. And here's the result of
it: He lives in our fine house, and we live in his miserable log cabin.
He has hinted to our children that he would rather they wouldn't come
about his yard to play with his children,--which I can bear, and bear
easy enough, for they're not a sort we want to associate with much--but
what I can't bear with any quietness at all, is his telling Franky our
bill was running pretty high this morning when I sent him for some meal
--and that was all he said, too--didn't give him the meal--turned off and
went to talking with the Hargrave girls about some stuff they wanted to
cheapen."
"Nancy, this is astounding!"
"And so it is, I warrant you. I've kept still, Si, as long as ever I
could. Things have been getting worse and worse, and worse and worse,
every single day; I don't go out of the house, I feel so down; but you
had trouble enough, and I wouldn't say a word--and I wouldn't say a word
now, only things have got so bad that I don't know what to do, nor where
to turn." And she gave way and put her face in her hands and cried.
"Poor child, don't grieve so. I never thought that of Johnson. I am
clear at my wit's end. I don't know what in the world to do. Now if
somebody would come along and offer $3,000--Uh, if somebody only would
come along and offer $3,000 for that Tennessee Land."
"You'd sell it, S!" said Mrs. Hawkins excitedly.
"Try me!"
Mrs. Hawkins was out of the room in a moment. Within a minute she was
back again with a business-looking stranger, whom she seated, and then
she took her leave again. Hawkins said to himself, "How can a man ever
lose faith? When the blackest hour comes, Providence always comes with
it--ah, this is the very timeliest help that ever poor harried devil had;
if this blessed man offers but a thousand I'll embrace him like a
brother!"
The stranger said:
"I am aware that you own 75,000 acres, of land in East Tennessee, and
without sacrificing your time, I will come to the point at once. I am
agent of an iron manufacturing company, and they empower me to offer you
ten thousand dollars for that land."
Hawkins's heart bounded within him. His whole frame was racked and
wrenched with fettered hurrahs. His first impulse was to shout "Done!
and God bless the iron company, too!"
But a something flitted through his mind, and his opened lips uttered
nothing. The enthusiasm faded away from his eyes, and the look of a man
who is thinking took its place. Presently, in a hesitating, undecided
way, he said:
"Well, I--it don't seem quite enough. That--that is a very valuable
property--very valuable. It's brim full of iron-ore, sir--brim full of
it! And copper, coal,--everything--everything you can think of! Now,
I'll tell you what I'll, do. I'll reserve everything except the iron,
and I'll sell them the iron property for $15,000 cash, I to go in with
them and own an undivided interest of one-half the concern--or the stock,
as you may say. I'm out of business, and I'd just as soon help run the
thing as not. Now how does that strike you?"
"Well, I am only an agent of these people, who are friends of mine, and
I am not even paid for my services. To tell you the truth, I have tried
to persuade them not to go into the thing; and I have come square out
with their offer, without throwing out any feelers--and I did it in the
hope that you would refuse. A man pretty much always refuses another
man's first offer, no matter what it is. But I have performed my duty,
and will take pleasure in telling them what you say."
He was about to rise. Hawkins said,
"Wait a bit."
Hawkins thought again. And the substance of his thought was: "This
is a deep man; this is a very deep man; I don't like his candor; your
ostentatiously candid business man's a deep fox--always a deep fox;
this man's that iron company himself--that's what he is; he wants that
property, too; I am not so blind but I can see that; he don't want the
company to go into this thing--O, that's very good; yes, that's very
good indeed--stuff! he'll be back here tomorrow, sure, and take my offer;
take it? I'll risk anything he is suffering to take it now; here--I must
mind what I'm about. What has started this sudden excitement about iron?
I wonder what is in the wind? just as sure as I'm alive this moment,
there's something tremendous stirring in iron speculation" [here Hawkins
got up and began to pace the floor with excited eyes and with gesturing
hands]--"something enormous going on in iron, without the shadow of a
doubt, and here I sit mousing in the dark and never knowing anything
about it; great heaven, what an escape I've made! this underhanded
mercenary creature might have taken me up--and ruined me! but I have
escaped, and I warrant me I'll not put my foot into--"
He stopped and turned toward the stranger; saying:
"I have made you a proposition, you have not accepted it, and I desire
that you will consider that I have made none. At the same time my
conscience will not allow me to--. Please alter the figures I named to
thirty thousand dollars, if you will, and let the proposition go to the
company--I will stick to it if it breaks my heart!" The stranger looked
amused, and there was a pretty well defined touch of surprise in his
expression, too, but Hawkins never noticed it. Indeed he scarcely
noticed anything or knew what he was about. The man left; Hawkins flung
himself into a chair; thought a few moments, then glanced around, looked
frightened, sprang to the door----
"Too late--too late! He's gone! Fool that I am! always a fool! Thirty
thousand--ass that I am! Oh, why didn't I say fifty thousand!"
He plunged his hands into his hair and leaned his elbows on his knees,
and fell to rocking himself back and forth in anguish. Mrs. Hawkins
sprang in, beaming:
"Well, Si?"
"Oh, con-found the con-founded--con-found it, Nancy. I've gone and done
it, now!"
"Done what Si for mercy's sake!"
"Done everything! Ruined everything!"
"Tell me, tell me, tell me! Don't keep a body in such suspense. Didn't
he buy, after all? Didn't he make an offer?"
Offer? He offered $10,000 for our land, and----"
"Thank the good providence from the very bottom of my heart of hearts!
What sort of ruin do you call that, Si!"
"Nancy, do you suppose I listened to such a preposterous proposition?
No! Thank fortune I'm not a simpleton! I saw through the pretty scheme
in a second. It's a vast iron speculation!--millions upon millions in
it! But fool as I am I told him he could have half the iron property for
thirty thousand--and if I only had him back here he couldn't touch it for
a cent less than a quarter of a million!"
Mrs. Hawkins looked up white and despairing:
"You threw away this chance, you let this man go, and we in this awful
trouble? You don't mean it, you can't mean it!"
"Throw it away? Catch me at it! Why woman, do you suppose that man
don't know what he is about? Bless you, he'll be back fast enough
to-morrow."
"Never, never, never. He never will comeback. I don't know what is to
become of us. I don't know what in the world is to become of us."
A shade of uneasiness came into Hawkins's face. He said:
"Why, Nancy, you--you can't believe what you are saying."
"Believe it, indeed? I know it, Si. And I know that we haven't a cent
in the world, and we've sent ten thousand dollars a-begging."
"Nancy, you frighten me. Now could that man--is it possible that I
--hanged if I don't believe I have missed a chance! Don't grieve, Nancy,
don't grieve. I'll go right after him. I'll take--I'll take--what a
fool I am!--I'll take anything he'll give!"
The next instant he left the house on a run. But the man was no longer
in the town. Nobody knew where he belonged or whither he had gone.
Hawkins came slowly back, watching wistfully but hopelessly for the
stranger, and lowering his price steadily with his sinking heart. And
when his foot finally pressed his own threshold, the value he held the
entire Tennessee property at was five hundred dollars--two hundred down
and the rest in three equal annual payments, without interest.
There was a sad gathering at the Hawkins fireside the next night. All
the children were present but Clay. Mr. Hawkins said:
"Washington, we seem to be hopelessly fallen, hopelessly involved. I am
ready to give up. I do not know where to turn--I never have been down so
low before, I never have seen things so dismal. There are many mouths to
feed; Clay is at work; we must lose you, also, for a little while, my
boy. But it will not be long--the Tennessee land----"
He stopped, and was conscious of a blush. There was silence for a
moment, and then Washington--now a lank, dreamy-eyed stripling between
twenty-two and twenty-three years of age--said:
"If Col. Sellers would come for me, I would go and stay with him a while,
till the Tennessee land is sold. He has often wanted me to come, ever
since he moved to Hawkeye."
"I'm afraid he can't well come for you, Washington. From what I can
hear--not from him of course, but from others--he is not far from as bad
off as we are--and his family is as large, too. He might find something
for you to do, maybe, but you'd better try to get to him yourself,
Washington--it's only thirty miles."
"But how can I, father? There's no stage or anything."
"And if there were, stages require money. A stage goes from Swansea,
five miles from here. But it would be cheaper to walk."
"Father, they must know you there, and no doubt they would credit you in
a moment, for a little stage ride like that. Couldn't you write and ask
them?"
"Couldn't you, Washington--seeing it's you that wants the ride? And what
do you think you'll do, Washington, when you get to Hawkeye? Finish your
invention for making window-glass opaque?"
"No, sir, I have given that up. I almost knew I could do it, but it was
so tedious and troublesome I quit it."
"I was afraid of it, my boy. Then I suppose you'll finish your plan of
coloring hen's eggs by feeding a peculiar diet to the hen?"
"No, sir. I believe I have found out the stuff that will do it, but it
kills the hen; so I have dropped that for the present, though I can take
it up again some day when I learn how to manage the mixture better."
"Well, what have you got on hand--anything?"
"Yes, sir, three or four things. I think they are all good and can all
be done, but they are tiresome, and besides they require money. But as
soon as the land is sold----"
"Emily, were you about to say something?" said Hawkins.
Yes, sir. If you are willing, I will go to St. Louis. That will make
another mouth less to feed. Mrs. Buckner has always wanted me to come."
"But the money, child?"
"Why I think she would send it, if you would write her--and I know she
would wait for her pay till----"
"Come, Laura, let's hear from you, my girl."
Emily and Laura were about the same age--between seventeen and eighteen.
Emily was fair and pretty, girlish and diffident--blue eyes and light
hair. Laura had a proud bearing, and a somewhat mature look; she had
fine, clean-cut features, her complexion was pure white and contrasted
vividly with her black hair and eyes; she was not what one calls pretty
--she was beautiful. She said:
"I will go to St. Louis, too, sir. I will find a way to get there.
I will make a way. And I will find a way to help myself along, and do
what I can to help the rest, too."
She spoke it like a princess. Mrs. Hawkins smiled proudly and kissed
her, saying in a tone of fond reproof:
"So one of my girls is going to turn out and work for her living! It's
like your pluck and spirit, child, but we will hope that we haven't got
quite down to that, yet."
The girl's eyes beamed affection under her mother's caress. Then she
straightened up, folded her white hands in her lap and became a splendid
ice-berg. Clay's dog put up his brown nose for a little attention, and
got it. He retired under the table with an apologetic yelp, which did
not affect the iceberg.
Judge Hawkins had written and asked Clay to return home and consult with
him upon family affairs. He arrived the evening after this conversation,
and the whole household gave him a rapturous welcome. He brought sadly
needed help with him, consisting of the savings of a year and a half of
work--nearly two hundred dollars in money.
It was a ray of sunshine which (to this easy household) was the earnest
of a clearing sky.
Bright and early in the morning the family were astir, and all were busy
preparing Washington for his journey--at least all but Washington
himself, who sat apart, steeped in a reverie. When the time for his
departure came, it was easy to see how fondly all loved him and how hard
it was to let him go, notwithstanding they had often seen him go before,
in his St. Louis schooling days. In the most matter-of-course way they
had borne the burden of getting him ready for his trip, never seeming to
think of his helping in the matter; in the same matter-of-course way Clay
had hired a horse and cart; and now that the good-byes were ended he
bundled Washington's baggage in and drove away with the exile.
At Swansea Clay paid his stage fare, stowed him away in the vehicle, and
saw him off. Then he returned home and reported progress, like a
committee of the whole.
Clay remained at home several days. He held many consultations with his
mother upon the financial condition of the family, and talked once with
his father upon the same subject, but only once. He found a change in
that quarter which was distressing; years of fluctuating fortune had done
their work; each reverse had weakened the father's spirit and impaired
his energies; his last misfortune seemed to have left hope and ambition
dead within him; he had no projects, formed no plans--evidently he was a
vanquished man. He looked worn and tired. He inquired into Clay's
affairs and prospects, and when he found that Clay was doing pretty well
and was likely to do still better, it was plain that he resigned himself
with easy facility to look to the son for a support; and he said, "Keep
yourself informed of poor Washington's condition and movements, and help
him along all you can, Clay."
The younger children, also, seemed relieved of all fears and distresses,
and very ready and willing to look to Clay for a livelihood. Within
three days a general tranquility and satisfaction reigned in the
household. Clay's hundred and eighty or ninety, dollars had worked a
wonder. The family were as contented, now, and as free from care as they
could have been with a fortune. It was well that Mrs. Hawkins held the
purse otherwise the treasure would have lasted but a very little while.
It took but a trifle to pay Hawkins's outstanding obligations, for he had
always had a horror of debt.
When Clay bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of
his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father's
family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe
at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a
free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had
broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for him.
The younger children were born and educated dependents. They had never
been taught to do anything for themselves, and it did not seem to occur
to them to make an attempt now.
The girls would not have been permitted to work for a living under any
circumstances whatever. It was a southern family, and of good blood;
and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household
to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the
suspicion of being a lunatic.
CHAPTER VII.
Via, Pecunia! when she's run and gone
And fled, and dead, then will I fetch her again
With aqua vita, out of an old hogshead!
While there are lees of wine, or dregs of beer,
I'll never want her! Coin her out of cobwebs,
Dust, but I'll have her! raise wool upon egg-shells,
Sir, and make grass grow out of marrow-bones,
To make her come!
B. Jonson.
Bearing Washington Hawkins and his fortunes, the stage-coach tore out of
Swansea at a fearful gait, with horn tooting gaily and half the town
admiring from doors and windows. But it did not tear any more after it
got to the outskirts; it dragged along stupidly enough, then--till it
came in sight of the next hamlet; and then the bugle tooted gaily again
and again the vehicle went tearing by the horses. This sort of conduct
marked every entry to a station and every exit from it; and so in those
days children grew up with the idea that stage-coaches always tore and
always tooted; but they also grew up with the idea that pirates went into
action in their Sunday clothes, carrying the black flag in one hand and
pistolling people with the other, merely because they were so represented
in the pictures--but these illusions vanished when later years brought
their disenchanting wisdom. They learned then that the stagecoach is but
a poor, plodding, vulgar thing in the solitudes of the highway; and that
the pirate is only a seedy, unfantastic "rough," when he is out of the
pictures.
Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a
perfectly triumphant ostentation--which was natural and proper, for
Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri. Washington,
very stiff and tired and hungry, climbed out, and wondered how he was to
proceed now. But his difficulty was quickly solved. Col. Sellers came
down the street on a run and arrived panting for breath. He said:
"Lord bless you--I'm glad to see you, Washington--perfectly delighted to
see you, my boy! I got your message. Been on the look-out for you.
Heard the stage horn, but had a party I couldn't shake off--man that's
got an enormous thing on hand--wants me to put some capital into it--and
I tell you, my boy, I could do worse, I could do a deal worse. No, now,
let that luggage alone; I'll fix that. Here, Jerry, got anything to do?
All right-shoulder this plunder and follow me. Come along, Washington.
Lord I'm glad to see you! Wife and the children are just perishing to
look at you. Bless you, they won't know you, you've grown so. Folks all
well, I suppose? That's good--glad to hear that. We're always going to
run down and see them, but I'm into so many operations, and they're not
things a man feels like trusting to other people, and so somehow we keep
putting it off. Fortunes in them! Good gracious, it's the country to
pile up wealth in! Here we are--here's where the Sellers dynasty hangs
out. Hump it on the door-step, Jerry--the blackest niggro in the State,
Washington, but got a good heart--mighty likely boy, is Jerry. And now I
suppose you've got to have ten cents, Jerry. That's all right--when a
man works for me--when a man--in the other pocket, I reckon--when a man
--why, where the mischief as that portmonnaie!--when a--well now that's
odd--Oh, now I remember, must have left it at the bank; and b'George I've
left my check-book, too--Polly says I ought to have a nurse--well, no
matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you've got--ah, thanks. Now
clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an
hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke--pretty fair. Here he is, Polly!
Washington's come, children! come now, don't eat him up--finish him in
the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the
son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si Hawkins has been a good
friend to me, and I believe I can say that whenever I've had a chance to
put him into a good thing I've done it, and done it pretty cheerfully,
too. I put him into that sugar speculation--what a grand thing that was,
if we hadn't held on too long!"
True enough; but holding on too long had utterly ruined both of them;
and the saddest part of it was, that they never had had so much money to
lose before, for Sellers's sale of their mule crop that year in New
Orleans had been a great financial success. If he had kept out of sugar
and gone back home content to stick to mules it would have been a happy
wisdom. As it was, he managed to kill two birds with one stone--that is
to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he
had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that
laid the golden egg--which is but a figurative expression and will be so
understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the
mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property
by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins hearts been torn to see
Uncle Dan'l and his wife pass from the auction-block into the hands of a
negro trader and depart for the remote South to be seen no more by the
family. It had seemed like seeing their own flesh and blood sold into
banishment.
Washington was greatly pleased with the Sellers mansion. It was a
two-story-and-a-half brick, and much more stylish than any of its
neighbors. He was borne to the family sitting room in triumph by the
swarm of little Sellerses, the parents following with their arms about
each other's waists.
The whole family were poorly and cheaply dressed; and the clothing,
although neat and clean, showed many evidences of having seen long
service. The Colonel's "stovepipe" hat was napless and shiny with much
polishing, but nevertheless it had an almost convincing expression about
it of having been just purchased new. The rest of his clothing was
napless and shiny, too, but it had the air of being entirely satisfied
with itself and blandly sorry for other people's clothes. It was growing
rather dark in the house, and the evening air was chilly, too. Sellers
said:
"Lay off your overcoat, Washington, and draw up to the stove and make
yourself at home--just consider yourself under your own shingles my boy
--I'll have a fire going, in a jiffy. Light the lamp, Polly, dear, and
let's have things cheerful just as glad to see you, Washington, as if
you'd been lost a century and we'd found you again!"
By this time the Colonel was conveying a lighted match into a poor little
stove. Then he propped the stove door to its place by leaning the poker
against it, for the hinges had retired from business. This door framed
a small square of isinglass, which now warmed up with a faint glow.
Mrs. Sellers lit a cheap, showy lamp, which dissipated a good deal of the
gloom, and then everybody gathered into the light and took the stove into
close companionship.
The children climbed all over Sellers, fondled him, petted him, and were
lavishly petted in return. Out from this tugging, laughing, chattering
disguise of legs and arms and little faces, the Colonel's voice worked
its way and his tireless tongue ran blithely on without interruption;
and the purring little wife, diligent with her knitting, sat near at hand
and looked happy and proud and grateful; and she listened as one who
listens to oracles and, gospels and whose grateful soul is being
refreshed with the bread of life. Bye and bye the children quieted down
to listen; clustered about their father, and resting their elbows on his
legs, they hung upon his words as if he were uttering the music of the
spheres.
A dreary old hair-cloth sofa against the wall; a few damaged chairs; the
small table the lamp stood on; the crippled stove--these things
constituted the furniture of the room. There was no carpet on the floor;
on the wall were occasional square-shaped interruptions of the general
tint of the plaster which betrayed that there used to be pictures in the
house--but there were none now. There were no mantel ornaments, unless
one might bring himself to regard as an ornament a clock which never came
within fifteen strokes of striking the right time, and whose hands always
hitched together at twenty-two minutes past anything and traveled in
company the rest of the way home.
"Remarkable clock!" said Sellers, and got up and wound it. "I've been
offered--well, I wouldn't expect you to believe what I've been offered
for that clock. Old Gov. Hager never sees me but he says, 'Come, now,
Colonel, name your price--I must have that clock!' But my goodness I'd
as soon think of selling my wife. As I was saying to ---- silence in the
court, now, she's begun to strike! You can't talk against her--you have
to just be patient and hold up till she's said her say. Ah well, as I
was saying, when--she's beginning again! Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one,
twenty-two, twen----ah, that's all.--Yes, as I was saying to old Judge
----go it, old girl, don't mind me.--Now how is that?----isn't that a
good, spirited tone? She can wake the dead! Sleep? Why you might as
well try to sleep in a thunder-factory. Now just listen at that. She'll
strike a hundred and fifty, now, without stopping,--you'll see. There
ain't another clock like that in Christendom."
Washington hoped that this might be true, for the din was distracting
--though the family, one and all, seemed filled with joy; and the more the
clock "buckled down to her work" as the Colonel expressed it, and the
more insupportable the clatter became, the more enchanted they all
appeared to be. When there was silence, Mrs Sellers lifted upon
Washington a face that beamed with a childlike pride, and said:
"It belonged to his grandmother."
The look and the tone were a plain call for admiring surprise, and
therefore Washington said (it was the only thing that offered itself at
the moment:)
"Indeed!"
"Yes, it did, didn't it father!" exclaimed one of the twins. "She was my
great-grandmother--and George's too; wasn't she, father! You never saw
her, but Sis has seen her, when Sis was a baby-didn't you, Sis! Sis has
seen her most a hundred times. She was awful deef--she's dead, now.
Aint she, father!"
All the children chimed in, now, with one general Babel of information
about deceased--nobody offering to read the riot act or seeming to
discountenance the insurrection or disapprove of it in any way--but the
head twin drowned all the turmoil and held his own against the field:
"It's our clock, now--and it's got wheels inside of it, and a thing that
flutters every time she strikes--don't it, father! Great-grandmother
died before hardly any of us was born--she was an Old-School Baptist and
had warts all over her--you ask father if she didn't. She had an uncle
once that was bald-headed and used to have fits; he wasn't our uncle,
I don't know what he was to us--some kin or another I reckon--father's
seen him a thousand times--hain't you, father! We used to have a calf
that et apples and just chawed up dishrags like nothing, and if you stay
here you'll see lots of funerals--won't he, Sis! Did you ever see a
house afire? I have! Once me and Jim Terry----"
But Sellers began to speak now, and the storm ceased. He began to tell
about an enormous speculation he was thinking of embarking some capital
in--a speculation which some London bankers had been over to consult with
him about--and soon he was building glittering pyramids of coin, and
Washington was presently growing opulent under the magic of his
eloquence. But at the same time Washington was not able to ignore the
cold entirely. He was nearly as close to the stove as he could get,
and yet he could not persuade himself, that he felt the slightest heat,
notwithstanding the isinglass' door was still gently and serenely
glowing. He tried to get a trifle closer to the stove, and the
consequence was, he tripped the supporting poker and the stove-door
tumbled to the floor. And then there was a revelation--there was nothing
in the stove but a lighted tallow-candle! The poor youth blushed and
felt as if he must die with shame. But the Colonel was only
disconcerted for a moment--he straightway found his voice again:
"A little idea of my own, Washington--one of the greatest things in the
world! You must write and tell your father about it--don't forget that,
now. I have been reading up some European Scientific reports--friend of
mine, Count Fugier, sent them to me--sends me all sorts of things from
Paris--he thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the
Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came
to the conclusion that it was a nonconductor or something like that,
and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous
organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any
tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless you I saw in a moment what
was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!--no more slow
torture and certain death for me, sir. What you want is the appearance
of heat, not the heat itself--that's the idea. Well how to do it was the
next thing. I just put my head, to work, pegged away, a couple of days,
and here you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can't any more start a case of
rheumatism in this house than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy!
Stove with a candle in it and a transparent door--that's it--it has been
the salvation of this family. Don't you fail to write your father about
it, Washington. And tell him the idea is mine--I'm no more conceited
than most people, I reckon, but you know it is human nature for a man to
want credit for a thing like that."
Washington said with his blue lips that he would, but he said in his
secret heart that he would promote no such iniquity. He tried to believe
in the healthfulness of the invention, and succeeded tolerably well;
but after all he could not feel that good health in a frozen, body was
any real improvement on the rheumatism.
CHAPTER VIII.
--Whan pe horde is thynne, as of seruyse,
Nought replenesshed with grete diuersite
Of mete & drinke, good chere may then suffise
With honest talkyng----
The Book of Curtesye.
MAMMON. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot on shore
In Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru:
And there within, sir, are the golden mines,
Great Solomon's Ophir!----
B. Jonson
The supper at Col. Sellers's was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but it
improved on acquaintance. That is to say, that what Washington regarded
at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became awe-inspiring
agricultural productions that had been reared in some ducal garden beyond
the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself, who had sent them to
Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be grown in only one favored
locality in the earth and only a favored few could get it; the Rio
coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the taste, took to itself an
improved flavor when Washington was told to drink it slowly and not hurry
what should be a lingering luxury in order to be fully appreciated--it
was from the private stores of a Brazilian nobleman with an
unrememberable name. The Colonel's tongue was a magician's wand that
turned dried apples into figs and water into wine as easily as it could
change a hovel into a palace and present poverty into imminent future
riches.
Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless room and woke up in a
palace in the morning; at least the palace lingered during the moment
that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings--and then it
disappeared and he recognized that the Colonel's inspiring talk had been
influencing his dreams. Fatigue had made him sleep late; when he entered
the sitting room he noticed that the old hair-cloth sofa was absent; when
he sat down to breakfast the Colonel tossed six or seven dollars in bills
on the table, counted them over, said he was a little short and must call
upon his banker; then returned the bills to his wallet with the
indifferent air of a man who is used to money. The breakfast was not an
improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up and transformed
it into an oriental feast. Bye and bye, he said:
"I intend to look out for you, Washington, my boy. I hunted up a place
for you yesterday, but I am not referring to that,--now--that is a mere
livelihood--mere bread and butter; but when I say I mean to look out for
you I mean something very different. I mean to put things in your way
than will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I'll put you in a way
to make more money than you'll ever know what to do with. You'll be
right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up. I've
got some prodigious operations on foot; but I'm keeping quiet; mum's the
word; your old hand don't go around pow-wowing and letting everybody see
his k'yards and find out his little game. But all in good time,
Washington, all in good time. You'll see. Now there's an operation in
corn that looks well. Some New York men are trying to get me to go into
it--buy up all the growing crops and just boss the market when they
mature--ah I tell you it's a great thing. And it only costs a trifle;
two millions or two and a half will do it. I haven't exactly promised
yet--there's no hurry--the more indifferent I seem, you know, the more
anxious those fellows will get. And then there is the hog speculation
--that's bigger still. We've got quiet men at work," [he was very
impressive here,] "mousing around, to get propositions out of all the
farmers in the whole west and northwest for the hog crop, and other
agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the
manufactories--and don't you see, if we can get all the hogs and all the
slaughter horses into our hands on the dead quiet--whew! it would take
three ships to carry the money.--I've looked into the thing--calculated
all the chances for and all the chances against, and though I shake my
head and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently, I've got my mind made
up that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions, that's the
horse to put up money on! Why Washington--but what's the use of talking
about it--any man can see that there's whole Atlantic oceans of cash in
it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But there's a bigger thing than that, yes
bigger----"
"Why Colonel, you can't want anything bigger!" said Washington, his eyes
blazing. "Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations--I
only wish I had money--I wish I wasn't cramped and kept down and fettered
with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight!
Oh, it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don't throw away those things
--they are so splendid and I can see how sure they are. Don't throw them
away for something still better and maybe fail in it! I wouldn't,
Colonel. I would stick to these. I wish father were here and were his
old self again--Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are.
Colonel; you can't improve on these--no man can improve on them!"
A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel's features, and he
leaned over the table with the air of a man who is "going to show you"
and do it without the least trouble:
"Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing. They look large of
course--they look large to a novice, but to a man who has been all his
life accustomed to large operations--shaw! They're well enough to while
away an idle hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a
trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting for
something to do, but--now just listen a moment--just let me give you an
idea of what we old veterans of commerce call 'business.' Here's the
Rothschild's proposition--this is between you and me, you understand----"
Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes
said, "Yes, yes--hurry--I understand----"
----"for I wouldn't have it get out for a fortune. They want me to go in
with them on the sly--agent was here two weeks ago about it--go in on the
sly" [voice down to an impressive whisper, now,] "and buy up a hundred
and thirteen wild cat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois and
Missouri--notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount now--average
discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent--buy them all
up, you see, and then all of a sudden let the cat out of the bag! Whiz!
the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a tremendous
premium before you could turn a handspring--profit on the speculation not
a dollar less than forty millions!" [An eloquent pause, while the
marvelous vision settled into W.'s focus.] "Where's your hogs now?
Why my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front door-steps
and peddle banks like lucifer matches!"
Washington finally got his breath and said:
"Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn't these things have happened
in father's day? And I--it's of no use--they simply lie before my face
and mock me. There is nothing for me but to stand helpless and see other
people reap the astonishing harvest."
"Never mind, Washington, don't you worry. I'll fix you. There's plenty
of chances. How much money have you got?"
In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not keep from
blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the
world.
"Well, all right--don't despair. Other people have been obliged to begin
with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us
both, all in good time. Keep your money close and add to it. I'll make
it breed. I've been experimenting (to pass away the time), on a little
preparation for curing sore eyes--a kind of decoction nine-tenths water
and the other tenth drugs that don't cost more than a dollar a barrel;
I'm still experimenting; there's one ingredient wanted yet to perfect the
thing, and somehow I can't just manage to hit upon the thing that's
necessary, and I don't dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I'm
progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with the
fame of Beriah Sellers' Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment and
Salvation for Sore Eyes--the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles
fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for
the two sizes.
"The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in Missouri, seven
thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four thousand in Kentucky,
six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five thousand in the rest of the
country. Total, fifty five thousand bottles; profit clear of all
expenses, twenty thousand dollars at the very lowest calculation. All
the capital needed is to manufacture the first two thousand bottles
--say a hundred and fifty dollars--then the money would begin to flow in.
The second year, sales would reach 200,000 bottles--clear profit, say,
$75,000--and in the meantime the great factory would be building in St.
Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year we could, easily sell
1,000,000 bottles in the United States and----"
"O, splendid!" said Washington. "Let's commence right away--let's----"
"----1,000,000 bottles in the United States--profit at least $350,000
--and then it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the real
idea of the business."
"The real idea of it! Ain't $350,000 a year a pretty real----"
"Stuff! Why what an infant you are, Washington--what a guileless,
short-sighted, easily-contented innocent you, are, my poor little
country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for
the poor crumbs a body might pick up in this country? Now do I look like
a man who----does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in
trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the common
herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now you know that that
is not me--couldn't be me. You ought to know that if I throw my time and
abilities into a patent medicine, it's a patent medicine whose field of
operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming nations that
inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an eye-water
country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway that you've
got to cross to get to the true eye-water market! Why, Washington, in
the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the desert; every
square mile of ground upholds its thousands upon thousands of struggling
human creatures--and every separate and individual devil of them's got
the ophthalmia! It's as natural to them as noses are--and sin. It's
born with them, it stays with them, it's all that some of them have left
when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the orient and what
will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in Constantinople and
our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and warehouses in Cairo,
Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking, Bangkok, Delhi,
Bombay--and Calcutta! Annual income--well, God only knows how many
millions and millions apiece!"
Washington was so dazed, so bewildered--his heart and his eyes had
wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such
avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly down
before him, that he was now as one who has been whirling round and round
for a time, and, stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still
whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the
Sellers family cooled down and crystalized into shape, and the poor room
lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his voice
and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water; and he
got his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the Colonel--pleaded
with him to take it--implored him to do it. But the Colonel would not;
said he would not need the capital (in his native magnificent way he
called that eighteen dollars Capital) till the eye-water was an
accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind, though, by
promising that he would call for it just as soon as the invention was
finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but just they two
should be admitted to a share in the speculation.
When Washington left the breakfast table he could have worshiped that
man. Washington was one of that kind of people whose hopes are in the
very, clouds one day and in the gutter the next. He walked on air, now.
The Colonel was ready to take him around and introduce him to the
employment he had found for him, but Washington begged for a few moments
in which to write home; with his kind of people, to ride to-day's new
interest to death and put off yesterday's till another time, is nature
itself. He ran up stairs and wrote glowingly, enthusiastically, to his
mother about the hogs and the corn, the banks and the eye-water--and
added a few inconsequential millions to each project. And he said that
people little dreamed what a man Col. Sellers was, and that the world
would open its eyes when it found out. And he closed his letter thus:
"So make yourself perfectly easy, mother-in a little while you shall have
everything you want, and more. I am not likely to stint you in anything,
I fancy. This money will not be for me, alone, but for all of us.
I want all to share alike; and there is going to be far more for each
than one person can spend. Break it to father cautiously--you understand
the need of that--break it to him cautiously, for he has had such cruel
hard fortune, and is so stricken by it that great good news might
prostrate him more surely than even bad, for he is used to the bad but
is grown sadly unaccustomed to the other. Tell Laura--tell all the
children. And write to Clay about it if he is not with you yet. You may
tell Clay that whatever I get he can freely share in-freely. He knows
that that is true--there will be no need that I should swear to that to
make him believe it. Good-bye--and mind what I say: Rest perfectly easy,
one and all of you, for our troubles are nearly at an end."
Poor lad, he could not know that his mother would cry some loving,
compassionate tears over his letter and put off the family with a
synopsis of its contents which conveyed a deal of love to then but not
much idea of his prospects or projects. And he never dreamed that such a
joyful letter could sadden her and fill her night with sighs, and
troubled thoughts, and bodings of the future, instead of filling it with
peace and blessing it with restful sleep.
When the letter was done, Washington and the Colonel sallied forth, and
as they walked along Washington learned what he was to be. He was to be
a clerk in a real estate office. Instantly the fickle youth's dreams
forsook the magic eye-water and flew back to the Tennessee Land. And the
gorgeous possibilities of that great domain straightway began to occupy
his imagination to such a degree that he could scarcely manage to keep
even enough of his attention upon the Colonel's talk to retain the
general run of what he was saying. He was glad it was a real estate
office--he was a made man now, sure.
The Colonel said that General Boswell was a rich man and had a good and
growing business; and that Washington's work world be light and he would
get forty dollars a month and be boarded and lodged in the General's
family--which was as good as ten dollars more; and even better, for he
could not live as well even at the "City Hotel" as he would there, and
yet the hotel charged fifteen dollars a month where a man had a good
room.
General Boswell was in his office; a comfortable looking place, with
plenty of outline maps hanging about the walls and in the windows, and
a spectacled man was marking out another one on a long table. The office
was in the principal street. The General received Washington with a
kindly but reserved politeness. Washington rather liked his looks.
He was about fifty years old, dignified, well preserved and well dressed.
After the Colonel took his leave, the General talked a while with
Washington--his talk consisting chiefly of instructions about the
clerical duties of the place. He seemed satisfied as to Washington's
ability to take care of the books, he was evidently a pretty fair
theoretical bookkeeper, and experience would soon harden theory into
practice. By and by dinner-time came, and the two walked to the
General's house; and now Washington noticed an instinct in himself that
moved him to keep not in the General's rear, exactly, but yet not at his
side--somehow the old gentleman's dignity and reserve did not inspire
familiarity.
CHAPTER IX
Washington dreamed his way along the street, his fancy flitting from
grain to hogs, from hogs to banks, from banks to eyewater, from eye-water
to Tennessee Land, and lingering but a feverish moment upon each of these
fascinations. He was conscious of but one outward thing, to wit, the
General, and he was really not vividly conscious of him.
Arrived at the finest dwelling in the town, they entered it and were at
home. Washington was introduced to Mrs. Boswell, and his imagination was
on the point of flitting into the vapory realms of speculation again,
when a lovely girl of sixteen or seventeen came in. This vision swept
Washington's mind clear of its chaos of glittering rubbish in an instant.
Beauty had fascinated him before; many times he had been in love even for
weeks at a time with the same object but his heart had never suffered so
sudden and so fierce an assault as this, within his recollection.
Louise Boswell occupied his mind and drifted among his multiplication
tables all the afternoon. He was constantly catching himself in a
reverie--reveries made up of recalling how she looked when she first
burst upon him; how her voice thrilled him when she first spoke; how
charmed the very air seemed by her presence. Blissful as the afternoon
was, delivered up to such a revel as this, it seemed an eternity, so
impatient was he to see the girl again. Other afternoons like it
followed. Washington plunged into this love affair as he plunged into
everything else--upon impulse and without reflection. As the days went
by it seemed plain that he was growing in favor with Louise,--not
sweepingly so, but yet perceptibly, he fancied. His attentions to her
troubled her father and mother a little, and they warned Louise, without
stating particulars or making allusions to any special person, that a
girl was sure to make a mistake who allowed herself to marry anybody but
a man who could support her well.
Some instinct taught Washington that his present lack of money would be
an obstruction, though possibly not a bar, to his hopes, and straightway
his poverty became a torture to him which cast all his former sufferings
under that held into the shade. He longed for riches now as he had ever
longed for them before.
He had been once or twice to dine with Col. Sellers, and had been
discouraged to note that the Colonel's bill of fare was falling off both
in quantity and quality--a sign, he feared, that the lacking ingredient
in the eye-water still remained undiscovered--though Sellers always
explained that these changes in the family diet had been ordered by the
doctor, or suggested by some new scientific work the Colonel had stumbled
upon. But it always turned out that the lacking ingredient was still
lacking--though it always appeared, at the same time, that the Colonel
was right on its heels.
Every time the Colonel came into the real estate office Washington's
heart bounded and his eyes lighted with hope, but it always turned out
that the Colonel was merely on the scent of some vast, undefined landed
speculation--although he was customarily able to say that he was nearer
to the all-necessary ingredient than ever, and could almost name the hour
when success would dawn. And then Washington's heart world sink again
and a sigh would tell when it touched bottom.
About this time a letter came, saying that Judge Hawkins had been ailing
for a fortnight, and was now considered to be seriously ill. It was
thought best that Washington should come home. The news filled him with
grief, for he loved and honored his father; the Boswells were touched by
the youth's sorrow, and even the General unbent and said encouraging
things to him.--There was balm in this; but when Louise bade him
good-bye, and shook his hand and said, "Don't be cast down--it will all
come out right--I know it will all come out right," it seemed a blessed
thing to be in misfortune, and the tears that welled up to his eyes were
the messengers of an adoring and a grateful heart; and when the girl saw
them and answering tears came into her own eyes, Washington could hardly
contain the excess of happiness that poured into the cavities of his
breast that were so lately stored to the roof with grief.
All the way home he nursed his woe and exalted it. He pictured himself
as she must be picturing him: a noble, struggling young spirit persecuted
by misfortune, but bravely and patiently waiting in the shadow of a dread
calamity and preparing to meet the blow as became one who was all too
used to hard fortune and the pitiless buffetings of fate. These thoughts
made him weep, and weep more broken-heartedly than ever; and be wished
that she could see his sufferings now.
There was nothing significant in the fact that Louise, dreamy and
distraught, stood at her bedroom bureau that night, scribbling
"Washington" here and there over a sheet of paper. But there was
something significant in the fact that she scratched the word out every
time she wrote it; examined the erasure critically to see if anybody
could guess at what the word had been; then buried it under a maze of
obliterating lines; and finally, as if still unsatisfied, burned the
paper.
When Washington reached home, he recognized at once how serious his
father's case was. The darkened room, the labored breathing and
occasional moanings of the patient, the tip-toeing of the attendants and
their whispered consultations, were full of sad meaning. For three or
four nights Mrs. Hawkins and Laura had been watching by the bedside; Clay
had arrived, preceding Washington by one day, and he was now added to the
corps of watchers. Mr. Hawkins would have none but these three, though
neighborly assistance was offered by old friends. From this time forth
three-hour watches were instituted, and day and night the watchers kept
their vigils. By degrees Laura and her mother began to show wear, but
neither of them would yield a minute of their tasks to Clay. He ventured
once to let the midnight hour pass without calling Laura, but he ventured
no more; there was that about her rebuke when he tried to explain, that
taught him that to let her sleep when she might be ministering to her
father's needs, was to rob her of moments that were priceless in her
eyes; he perceived that she regarded it as a privilege to watch, not a
burden. And, he had noticed, also, that when midnight struck, the
patient turned his eyes toward the door, with an expectancy in them which
presently grew into a longing but brightened into contentment as soon
as the door opened and Laura appeared. And he did not need Laura's
rebuke when he heard his father say:
"Clay is good, and you are tired, poor child; but I wanted you so."
"Clay is not good, father--he did not call me. I would not have treated
him so. How could you do it, Clay?"
Clay begged forgiveness and promised not to break faith again; and as he
betook him to his bed, he said to himself: "It's a steadfast little
soul; whoever thinks he is doing the Duchess a kindness by intimating
that she is not sufficient for any undertaking she puts her hand to,
makes a mistake; and if I did not know it before, I know now that there
are surer ways of pleasing her than by trying to lighten her labor when
that labor consists in wearing herself out for the sake of a person she
loves."
A week drifted by, and all the while the patient sank lower and lower.
The night drew on that was to end all suspense. It was a wintry one.
The darkness gathered, the snow was falling, the wind wailed plaintively
about the house or shook it with fitful gusts. The doctor had paid his
last visit and gone away with that dismal remark to the nearest friend of
the family that he "believed there was nothing more that he could do"
--a remark which is always overheard by some one it is not meant for and
strikes a lingering half-conscious hope dead with a withering shock;
the medicine phials had been removed from the bedside and put out of
sight, and all things made orderly and meet for the solemn event that was
impending; the patient, with closed eyes, lay scarcely breathing; the
watchers sat by and wiped the gathering damps from his forehead while the
silent tears flowed down their faces; the deep hush was only interrupted
by sobs from the children, grouped about the bed.
After a time--it was toward midnight now--Mr. Hawkins roused out of a
doze, looked about him and was evidently trying to speak. Instantly
Laura lifted his head and in a failing voice he said, while something of
the old light shone in his eyes:
"Wife--children--come nearer--nearer. The darkness grows. Let me see
you all, once more."
The group closed together at the bedside, and their tears and sobs came
now without restraint.
"I am leaving you in cruel poverty. I have been--so foolish--so
short-sighted. But courage! A better day is--is coming. Never lose
sight of the Tennessee Land! Be wary. There is wealth stored up for you
there --wealth that is boundless! The children shall hold up their heads
with the best in the land, yet. Where are the papers?--Have you got the
papers safe? Show them--show them to me!"
Under his strong excitement his voice had gathered power and his last
sentences were spoken with scarcely a perceptible halt or hindrance.
With an effort he had raised himself almost without assistance to a
sitting posture. But now the fire faded out of his eyes and be fell back
exhausted. The papers were brought and held before him, and the
answering smile that flitted across his face showed that he was
satisfied. He closed his eyes, and the signs of approaching dissolution
multiplied rapidly. He lay almost motionless for a little while, then
suddenly partly raised his head and looked about him as one who peers
into a dim uncertain light. He muttered:
"Gone? No--I see you--still. It is--it is-over. But you are--safe.
Safe. The Ten-----"
The voice died out in a whisper; the sentence was never finished. The
emaciated fingers began to pick at the coverlet, a fatal sign. After a
time there were no sounds but the cries of the mourners within and the
gusty turmoil of the wind without. Laura had bent down and kissed her
father's lips as the spirit left the body; but she did not sob, or utter
any ejaculation; her tears flowed silently. Then she closed the dead
eyes, and crossed the hands upon the breast; after a season, she kissed
the forehead reverently, drew the sheet up over the face, and then walked
apart and sat down with the look of one who is done with life and has no
further interest in its joys and sorrows, its hopes or its ambitions.
Clay buried his face in the coverlet of the bed; when the other children
and the mother realized that death was indeed come at last, they threw
themselves into each others' arms and gave way to a frenzy of grief.
CHAPTER X.
Only two or three days had elapsed since the funeral, when something
happened which was to change the drift of Laura's life somewhat, and
influence in a greater or lesser degree the formation of her character.
Major Lackland had once been a man of note in the State--a man of
extraordinary natural ability and as extraordinary learning. He had been
universally trusted and honored in his day, but had finally, fallen into
misfortune; while serving his third term in Congress, and while upon the
point of being elevated to the Senate--which was considered the summit of
earthly aggrandizement in those days--he had yielded to temptation, when
in distress for money wherewith to save his estate; and sold his vote.
His crime was discovered, and his fall followed instantly. Nothing could
reinstate him in the confidence of the people, his ruin was
irretrievable--his disgrace complete. All doors were closed against him,
all men avoided him. After years of skulking retirement and dissipation,
death had relieved him of his troubles at last, and his funeral followed
close upon that of Mr. Hawkins. He died as he had latterly lived--wholly
alone and friendless. He had no relatives--or if he had they did not
acknowledge him. The coroner's jury found certain memoranda upon his
body and about the premises which revealed a fact not suspected by the
villagers before-viz., that Laura was not the child of Mr. and Mrs.
Hawkins.
The gossips were soon at work. They were but little hampered by the fact
that the memoranda referred to betrayed nothing but the bare circumstance
that Laura's real parents were unknown, and stopped there. So far from
being hampered by this, the gossips seemed to gain all the more freedom
from it. They supplied all the missing information themselves, they
filled up all the blanks. The town soon teemed with histories of Laura's
origin and secret history, no two versions precisely alike, but all
elaborate, exhaustive, mysterious and interesting, and all agreeing in
one vital particular-to-wit, that there was a suspicious cloud about her
birth, not to say a disreputable one.
Laura began to encounter cold looks, averted eyes and peculiar nods and
gestures which perplexed her beyond measure; but presently the pervading
gossip found its way to her, and she understood them--then. Her pride
was stung. She was astonished, and at first incredulous. She was about
to ask her mother if there was any truth in these reports, but upon
second thought held her peace. She soon gathered that Major Lackland's
memoranda seemed to refer to letters which had passed between himself and
Judge Hawkins. She shaped her course without difficulty the day that
that hint reached her.
That night she sat in her room till all was still, and then she stole
into the garret and began a search. She rummaged long among boxes of
musty papers relating to business matters of no, interest to her, but at
last she found several bundles of letters. One bundle was marked
"private," and in that she found what she wanted. She selected six or
eight letters from the package and began to devour their contents,
heedless of the cold.
By the dates, these letters were from five to seven years old. They were
all from Major Lackland to Mr. Hawkins. The substance of them was, that
some one in the east had been inquiring of Major Lackland about a lost
child and its parents, and that it was conjectured that the child might
be Laura.
Evidently some of the letters were missing, for the name of the
inquirer was not mentioned; there was a casual reference to "this
handsome-featured aristocratic gentleman," as if the reader and the
writer were accustomed to speak of him and knew who was meant.
In one letter the Major said he agreed with Mr. Hawkins that the inquirer
seemed not altogether on the wrong track; but he also agreed that it
would be best to keep quiet until more convincing developments were
forthcoming.
Another letter said that "the poor soul broke completely down when be saw
Laura's picture, and declared it must be she."
Still another said:
"He seems entirely alone in the world, and his heart is so wrapped
up in this thing that I believe that if it proved a false hope, it
would kill him; I have persuaded him to wait a little while and go
west when I go."
Another letter had this paragraph in it:
"He is better one day and worse the next, and is out of his mind a
good deal of the time. Lately his case has developed a something
which is a wonder to the hired nurses, but which will not be much of
a marvel to you if you have read medical philosophy much. It is
this: his lost memory returns to him when he is delirious, and goes
away again when he is himself-just as old Canada Joe used to talk
the French patois of his boyhood in the delirium of typhus fever,
though he could not do it when his mind was clear. Now this poor
gentleman's memory has always broken down before he reached the
explosion of the steamer; he could only remember starting up the
river with his wife and child, and he had an idea that there was a
race, but he was not certain; he could not name the boat he was on;
there was a dead blank of a month or more that supplied not an item
to his recollection. It was not for me to assist him, of course.
But now in his delirium it all comes out: the names of the boats,
every incident of the explosion, and likewise the details of his
astonishing escape--that is, up to where, just as a yawl-boat was
approaching him (he was clinging to the starboard wheel of the
burning wreck at the time), a falling timber struck him on the head.
But I will write out his wonderful escape in full to-morrow or next
day. Of course the physicians will not let me tell him now that our
Laura is indeed his child--that must come later, when his health is
thoroughly restored. His case is not considered dangerous at all;
he will recover presently, the doctors say. But they insist that he
must travel a little when he gets well--they recommend a short sea
voyage, and they say he can be persuaded to try it if we continue to
keep him in ignorance and promise to let him see L. as soon as he
returns."
The letter that bore the latest date of all, contained this clause:
"It is the most unaccountable thing in the world; the mystery
remains as impenetrable as ever; I have hunted high and low for him,
and inquired of everybody, but in vain; all trace of him ends at
that hotel in New York; I never have seen or heard of him since,
up to this day; he could hardly have sailed, for his name does not
appear upon the books of any shipping office in New York or Boston
or Baltimore. How fortunate it seems, now, that we kept this thing
to ourselves; Laura still has a father in you, and it is better for
her that we drop this subject here forever."
That was all. Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave
Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or
forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in
his walk--it was not stated which leg was defective. And this indistinct
shadow represented her father. She made an exhaustive search for the
missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she
doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same
fate if Mr. Hawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind
was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation
when he received them.
She sat long, with the letters in her lap, thinking--and unconsciously
freezing. She felt like a lost person who has traveled down a long lane
in good hope of escape, and, just as the night descends finds his
progress barred by a bridge-less river whose further shore, if it has
one, is lost in the darkness. If she could only have found these letters
a month sooner! That was her thought. But now the dead had carried
their secrets with them. A dreary, melancholy settled down upon her.
An undefined sense of injury crept into her heart. She grew very
miserable.
She had just reached the romantic age--the age when there is a sad
sweetness, a dismal comfort to a girl to find out that there is a mystery
connected with her birth, which no other piece of good luck can afford.
She had more than her rightful share of practical good sense, but still
she was human; and to be human is to have one's little modicum of romance
secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of
one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of his
heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of
his admiration and raise up others in their stead that seem greater.
The recent wearing days and nights of watching, and the wasting grief
that had possessed her, combined with the profound depression that
naturally came with the reaction of idleness, made Laura peculiarly
susceptible at this time to romantic impressions. She was a heroine,
now, with a mysterious father somewhere. She could not really tell
whether she wanted to find him and spoil it all or not; but still all the
traditions of romance pointed to the making the attempt as the usual and
necessary, course to follow; therefore she would some day begin the
search when opportunity should offer.
Now a former thought struck her--she would speak to Mrs. Hawkins.
And naturally enough Mrs. Hawkins appeared on the stage at that moment.
She said she knew all--she knew that Laura had discovered the secret that
Mr. Hawkins, the elder children, Col. Sellers and herself had kept so
long and so faithfully; and she cried and said that now that troubles had
begun they would never end; her daughter's love would wean itself away
from her and her heart would break. Her grief so wrought upon Laura that
the girl almost forgot her own troubles for the moment in her compassion
for her mother's distress. Finally Mrs. Hawkins said:
"Speak to me, child--do not forsake me. Forget all this miserable talk.
Say I am your mother!--I have loved you so long, and there is no other.
I am your mother, in the sight of God, and nothing shall ever take you
from me!"
All barriers fell, before this appeal. Laura put her arms about her
mother's neck and said:
"You are my mother, and always shall be. We will be as we have always
been; and neither this foolish talk nor any other thing shall part us or
make us less to each other than we are this hour."
There was no longer any sense of separation or estrangement between them.
Indeed their love seemed more perfect now than it had ever been before.
By and by they went down stairs and sat by the fire and talked long and
earnestly about Laura's history and the letters. But it transpired that
Mrs. Hawkins had never known of this correspondence between her husband
and Major Lackland. With his usual consideration for his wife, Mr.
Hawkins had shielded her from the worry the matter would have caused her.
Laura went to bed at last with a mind that had gained largely in
tranquility and had lost correspondingly in morbid romantic exaltation.
She was pensive, the next day, and subdued; but that was not matter for
remark, for she did not differ from the mournful friends about her in
that respect. Clay and Washington were the same loving and admiring
brothers now that they had always been. The great secret was new to some
of the younger children, but their love suffered no change under the
wonderful revelation.
It is barely possible that things might have presently settled down into
their old rut and the mystery have lost the bulk of its romantic
sublimity in Laura's eyes, if the village gossips could have quieted
down. But they could not quiet down and they did not. Day after day
they called at the house, ostensibly upon visits of condolence, and they
pumped away at the mother and the children without seeming to know that
their questionings were in bad taste. They meant no harm they only
wanted to know. Villagers always want to know.
The family fought shy of the questionings, and of course that was high
testimony "if the Duchess was respectably born, why didn't they come out
and prove it?--why did they, stick to that poor thin story about picking
her up out of a steamboat explosion?"
Under this ceaseless persecution, Laura's morbid self-communing was
renewed. At night the day's contribution of detraction, innuendo and
malicious conjecture would be canvassed in her mind, and then she would
drift into a course of thinking. As her thoughts ran on, the indignant
tears would spring to her eyes, and she would spit out fierce little
ejaculations at intervals. But finally she would grow calmer and say
some comforting disdainful thing--something like this:
"But who are they?--Animals! What are their opinions to me? Let them
talk--I will not stoop to be affected by it. I could hate----.
Nonsense--nobody I care for or in any way respect is changed toward me,
I fancy."
She may have supposed she was thinking of many individuals, but it was
not so--she was thinking of only one. And her heart warmed somewhat,
too, the while. One day a friend overheard a conversation like this:
--and naturally came and told her all about it:
"Ned, they say you don't go there any more. How is that?"
"Well, I don't; but I tell you it's not because I don't want to and it's
not because I think it is any matter who her father was or who he wasn't,
either; it's only on account of this talk, talk, talk. I think she is a
fine girl every way, and so would you if you knew her as well as I do;
but you know how it is when a girl once gets talked about--it's all up
with her--the world won't ever let her alone, after that."
The only comment Laura made upon this revelation, was:
"Then it appears that if this trouble had not occurred I could have had
the happiness of Mr. Ned Thurston's serious attentions. He is well
favored in person, and well liked, too, I believe, and comes of one of
the first families of the village. He is prosperous, too, I hear; has
been a doctor a year, now, and has had two patients--no, three, I think;
yes, it was three. I attended their funerals. Well, other people have
hoped and been disappointed; I am not alone in that. I wish you could
stay to dinner, Maria--we are going to have sausages; and besides,
I wanted to talk to you about Hawkeye and make you promise to come and
see us when we are settled there."
But Maria could not stay. She had come to mingle romantic tears with
Laura's over the lover's defection and had found herself dealing with a
heart that could not rise to an appreciation of affliction because its
interest was all centred in sausages.
But as soon as Maria was gone, Laura stamped her expressive foot and
said:
"The coward! Are all books lies? I thought he would fly to the front,
and be brave and noble, and stand up for me against all the world, and
defy my enemies, and wither these gossips with his scorn! Poor crawling
thing, let him go. I do begin to despise thin world!"
She lapsed into thought. Presently she said:
"If the time ever comes, and I get a chance, Oh, I'll----"
She could not find a word that was strong enough, perhaps. By and by she
said:
"Well, I am glad of it--I'm glad of it. I never cared anything for him
anyway!"
And then, with small consistency, she cried a little, and patted her foot
more indignantly than ever.
CHAPTER XI
Two months had gone by and the Hawkins family were domiciled in Hawkeye.
Washington was at work in the real estate office again, and was
alternately in paradise or the other place just as it happened that
Louise was gracious to him or seemingly indifferent--because indifference
or preoccupation could mean nothing else than that she was thinking of
some other young person. Col. Sellers had asked him several times, to
dine with him, when he first returned to Hawkeye, but Washington, for no
particular reason, had not accepted. No particular reason except one
which he preferred to keep to himself--viz. that he could not bear to be
away from Louise. It occurred to him, now, that the Colonel had not
invited him lately--could he be offended? He resolved to go that very
day, and give the Colonel a pleasant surprise. It was a good idea;
especially as Louise had absented herself from breakfast that morning,
and torn his heart; he would tear hers, now, and let her see how it felt.
The Sellers family were just starting to dinner when Washington burst
upon them with his surprise. For an instant the Colonel looked
nonplussed, and just a bit uncomfortable; and Mrs. Sellers looked
actually distressed; but the next moment the head of the house was
himself again, and exclaimed:
"All right, my boy, all right--always glad to see you--always glad to
hear your voice and take you by the hand. Don't wait for special
invitations--that's all nonsense among friends. Just come whenever you
can, and come as often as you can--the oftener the better. You can't
please us any better than that, Washington; the little woman will tell
you so herself. We don't pretend to style. Plain folks, you know--plain
folks. Just a plain family dinner, but such as it is, our friends are
always welcome, I reckon you know that yourself, Washington. Run along,
children, run along; Lafayette,--[**In those old days the average man
called his children after his most revered literary and historical idols;
consequently there was hardly a family, at least in the West, but had a
Washington in it--and also a Lafayette, a Franklin, and six or eight
sounding names from Byron, Scott, and the Bible, if the offspring held
out. To visit such a family, was to find one's self confronted by a
congress made up of representatives of the imperial myths and the
majestic dead of all the ages. There was something thrilling about it,
to a stranger, not to say awe inspiring.]--stand off the cat's tail,
child, can't you see what you're doing?--Come, come, come, Roderick Dhu,
it isn't nice for little boys to hang onto young gentlemen's coat tails
--but never mind him, Washington, he's full of spirits and don't mean any
harm. Children will be children, you know. Take the chair next to Mrs.
Sellers, Washington--tut, tut, Marie Antoinette, let your brother have
the fork if he wants it, you are bigger than he is."
Washington contemplated the banquet, and wondered if he were in his right
mind. Was this the plain family dinner? And was it all present? It was
soon apparent that this was indeed the dinner: it was all on the table:
it consisted of abundance of clear, fresh water, and a basin of raw
turnips--nothing more.
Washington stole a glance at Mrs. Sellers's face, and would have given
the world, the next moment, if he could have spared her that. The poor
woman's face was crimson, and the tears stood in her eyes. Washington
did not know what to do. He wished he had never come there and spied out
this cruel poverty and brought pain to that poor little lady's heart and
shame to her cheek; but he was there, and there was no escape. Col.
Sellers hitched back his coat sleeves airily from his wrists as who
should say "Now for solid enjoyment!" seized a fork, flourished it and
began to harpoon turnips and deposit them in the plates before him "Let
me help you, Washington--Lafayette pass this plate Washington--ah, well,
well, my boy, things are looking pretty bright, now, I tell you.
Speculation--my! the whole atmosphere's full of money. I would'nt take
three fortunes for one little operation I've got on hand now--have
anything from the casters? No? Well, you're right, you're right. Some
people like mustard with turnips, but--now there was Baron Poniatowski
--Lord, but that man did know how to live!--true Russian you know, Russian
to the back bone; I say to my wife, give me a Russian every time, for a
table comrade. The Baron used to say, 'Take mustard, Sellers, try the
mustard,--a man can't know what turnips are in perfection without,
mustard,' but I always said, 'No, Baron, I'm a plain man and I want my
food plain--none of your embellishments for Beriah Sellers--no made
dishes for me! And it's the best way--high living kills more than it
cures in this world, you can rest assured of that.--Yes indeed,
Washington, I've got one little operation on hand that--take some more
water--help yourself, won't you?--help yourself, there's plenty of it.
--You'll find it pretty good, I guess. How does that fruit strike you?"
Washington said he did not know that he had ever tasted better. He did
not add that he detested turnips even when they were cooked loathed them
in their natural state. No, he kept this to himself, and praised the
turnips to the peril of his soul.
"I thought you'd like them. Examine them--examine them--they'll bear it.
See how perfectly firm and juicy they are--they can't start any like them
in this part of the country, I can tell you. These are from New Jersey
--I imported them myself. They cost like sin, too; but lord bless me,
I go in for having the best of a thing, even if it does cost a little
more--it's the best economy, in the long run. These are the Early
Malcolm--it's a turnip that can't be produced except in just one orchard,
and the supply never is up to the demand. Take some more water,
Washington--you can't drink too much water with fruit--all the doctors
say that. The plague can't come where this article is, my boy!"
"Plague? What plague?"
"What plague, indeed? Why the Asiatic plague that nearly depopulated
London a couple of centuries ago."
"But how does that concern us? There is no plague here, I reckon."
"Sh! I've let it out! Well, never mind--just keep it to yourself.
Perhaps I oughtn't said anything, but its bound to come out sooner or
later, so what is the odds? Old McDowells wouldn't like me to--to
--bother it all, I'll jest tell the whole thing and let it go. You see,
I've been down to St. Louis, and I happened to run across old Dr.
McDowells--thinks the world of me, does the doctor. He's a man that
keeps himself to himself, and well he may, for he knows that he's got a
reputation that covers the whole earth--he won't condescend to open
himself out to many people, but lord bless you, he and I are just like
brothers; he won't let me go to a hotel when I'm in the city--says I'm
the only man that's company to him, and I don't know but there's some
truth in it, too, because although I never like to glorify myself and
make a great to-do over what I am or what I can do or what I know,
I don't mind saying here among friends that I am better read up in most
sciences, maybe, than the general run of professional men in these days.
Well, the other day he let me into a little secret, strictly on the
quiet, about this matter of the plague.
"You see it's booming right along in our direction--follows the Gulf
Stream, you know, just as all those epidemics do, and within three months
it will be just waltzing through this land like a whirlwind! And whoever
it touches can make his will and contract for the funeral. Well you
can't cure it, you know, but you can prevent it. How? Turnips! that's
it! Turnips and water! Nothing like it in the world, old McDowells
says, just fill yourself up two or three times a day, and you can snap
your fingers at the plague. Sh!--keep mum, but just you confine yourself
to that diet and you're all right. I wouldn't have old McDowells know
that I told about it for anything--he never would speak to me again.
Take some more water, Washington--the more water you drink, the better.
Here, let me give you some more of the turnips. No, no, no, now, I
insist. There, now. Absorb those. They're, mighty sustaining--brim
full of nutriment--all the medical books say so. Just eat from four to
seven good-sized turnips at a meal, and drink from a pint and a half to a
quart of water, and then just sit around a couple of hours and let them
ferment. You'll feel like a fighting cock next day."
Fifteen or twenty minutes later the Colonel's tongue was still chattering
away--he had piled up several future fortunes out of several incipient
"operations" which he had blundered into within the past week, and was
now soaring along through some brilliant expectations born of late
promising experiments upon the lacking ingredient of the eye-water.
And at such a time Washington ought to have been a rapt and enthusiastic
listener, but he was not, for two matters disturbed his mind and
distracted his attention. One was, that he discovered, to his confusion
and shame, that in allowing himself to be helped a second time to the
turnips, he had robbed those hungry children. He had not needed the
dreadful "fruit," and had not wanted it; and when he saw the pathetic
sorrow in their faces when they asked for more and there was no more to
give them, he hated himself for his stupidity and pitied the famishing
young things with all his heart. The other matter that disturbed him was
the dire inflation that had begun in his stomach. It grew and grew, it
became more and more insupportable. Evidently the turnips were
"fermenting." He forced himself to sit still as long as he could, but
his anguish conquered him at last.
He rose in the midst of the Colonel's talk and excused himself on the
plea of a previous engagement. The Colonel followed him to the door,
promising over and over again that he would use his influence to get some
of the Early Malcolms for him, and insisting that he should not be such a
stranger but come and take pot-luck with him every chance he got.
Washington was glad enough to get away and feel free again. He
immediately bent his steps toward home.
In bed he passed an hour that threatened to turn his hair gray, and then
a blessed calm settled down upon him that filled his heart with
gratitude. Weak and languid, he made shift to turn himself about and
seek rest and sleep; and as his soul hovered upon the brink of
unconciousness, he heaved a long, deep sigh, and said to himself that in
his heart he had cursed the Colonel's preventive of rheumatism, before,
and now let the plague come if it must--he was done with preventives;
if ever any man beguiled him with turnips and water again, let him die
the death.
If he dreamed at all that night, no gossiping spirit disturbed his
visions to whisper in his ear of certain matters just then in bud in the
East, more than a thousand miles away that after the lapse of a few years
would develop influences which would profoundly affect the fate and
fortunes of the Hawkins family.
CHAPTER XII
"Oh, it's easy enough to make a fortune," Henry said.
"It seems to be easier than it is, I begin to think," replied Philip.
"Well, why don't you go into something? You'll never dig it out of the
Astor Library."
If there be any place and time in the world where and when it seems easy
to "go into something" it is in Broadway on a spring morning, when one is
walking city-ward, and has before him the long lines of palace-shops with
an occasional spire seen through the soft haze that lies over the lower
town, and hears the roar and hum of its multitudinous traffic.
To the young American, here or elsewhere, the paths to fortune are
innumerable and all open; there is invitation in the air and success in
all his wide horizon. He is embarrassed which to choose, and is not
unlikely to waste years in dallying with his chances, before giving
himself to the serious tug and strain of a single object. He has no
traditions to bind him or guide him, and his impulse is to break away
from the occupation his father has followed, and make a new way for
himself.
Philip Sterling used to say that if he should seriously set himself for
ten years to any one of the dozen projects that were in his brain, he
felt that he could be a rich man. He wanted to be rich, he had a sincere
desire for a fortune, but for some unaccountable reason he hesitated
about addressing himself to the narrow work of getting it. He never
walked Broadway, a part of its tide of abundant shifting life, without
feeling something of the flush of wealth, and unconsciously taking the
elastic step of one well-to-do in this prosperous world.
Especially at night in the crowded theatre--Philip was too young to
remember the old Chambers' Street box, where the serious Burton led his
hilarious and pagan crew--in the intervals of the screaming comedy, when
the orchestra scraped and grunted and tooted its dissolute tunes, the
world seemed full of opportunities to Philip, and his heart exulted with
a conscious ability to take any of its prizes he chose to pluck.
Perhaps it was the swimming ease of the acting, on the stage, where
virtue had its reward in three easy acts, perhaps it was the excessive
light of the house, or the music, or the buzz of the excited talk between
acts, perhaps it was youth which believed everything, but for some reason
while Philip was at the theatre he had the utmost confidence in life and
his ready victory in it.
Delightful illusion of paint and tinsel and silk attire, of cheap
sentiment and high and mighty dialogue! Will there not always be rosin
enough for the squeaking fiddle-bow?
Do we not all like the maudlin hero, who is sneaking round the right
entrance, in wait to steal the pretty wife of his rich and tyrannical
neighbor from the paste-board cottage at the left entrance? and when he
advances down to the foot-lights and defiantly informs the audience that,
"he who lays his hand on a woman except in the way of kindness," do we
not all applaud so as to drown the rest of the sentence?
Philip never was fortunate enough to hear what would become of a man who
should lay his hand on a woman with the exception named; but he learned
afterwards that the woman who lays her hand on a man, without any
exception whatsoever, is always acquitted by the jury.
The fact was, though Philip Sterling did not know it, that he wanted
several other things quite as much as he wanted wealth. The modest
fellow would have liked fame thrust upon him for some worthy achievement;
it might be for a book, or for the skillful management of some great
newspaper, or for some daring expedition like that of Lt. Strain or Dr.
Kane. He was unable to decide exactly what it should be. Sometimes he
thought he would like to stand in a conspicuous pulpit and humbly preach
the gospel of repentance; and it even crossed his mind that it would be
noble to give himself to a missionary life to some benighted region,
where the date-palm grows, and the nightingale's voice is in tune, and
the bul-bul sings on the off nights. If he were good enough he would
attach himself to that company of young men in the Theological Seminary,
who were seeing New York life in preparation for the ministry.
Philip was a New England boy and had graduated at Yale; he had not
carried off with him all the learning of that venerable institution, but
he knew some things that were not in the regular course of study. A very
good use of the English language and considerable knowledge of its
literature was one of them; he could sing a song very well, not in time
to be sure, but with enthusiasm; he could make a magnetic speech at a
moment's notice in the class room, the debating society, or upon any
fence or dry-goods box that was convenient; he could lift himself by one
arm, and do the giant swing in the gymnasium; he could strike out from
his left shoulder; he could handle an oar like a professional and pull
stroke in a winning race. Philip had a good appetite, a sunny temper,
and a clear hearty laugh. He had brown hair, hazel eyes set wide apart,
a broad but not high forehead, and a fresh winning face. He was six feet
high, with broad shoulders, long legs and a swinging gait; one of those
loose-jointed, capable fellows, who saunter into the world with a free
air and usually make a stir in whatever company they enter.
After he left college Philip took the advice of friends and read law.
Law seemed to him well enough as a science, but he never could discover a
practical case where it appeared to him worth while to go to law, and all
the clients who stopped with this new clerk in the ante-room of the law
office where he was writing, Philip invariably advised to settle--no
matter how, but settle--greatly to the disgust of his employer, who knew
that justice between man and man could only be attained by the recognized
processes, with the attendant fees. Besides Philip hated the copying of
pleadings, and he was certain that a life of "whereases" and "aforesaids"
and whipping the devil round the stump, would be intolerable.
[Note: these few paragraphs are nearly an autobiography of the life of
Charles Dudley Warner whose contributions to the story start here with
Chapter XII. D.W.]
His pen therefore, and whereas, and not as aforesaid, strayed off into
other scribbling. In an unfortunate hour, he had two or three papers
accepted by first-class magazines, at three dollars the printed page,
and, behold, his vocation was open to him. He would make his mark in
literature.
Life has no moment so sweet as that in which a young man believes himself
called into the immortal ranks of the masters of literature. It is such
a noble ambition, that it is a pity it has usually such a shallow
foundation.
At the time of this history, Philip had gone to New York for a career.
With his talent he thought he should have little difficulty in getting an
editorial position upon a metropolitan newspaper; not that he knew
anything about news paper work, or had the least idea of journalism; he
knew he was not fitted for the technicalities of the subordinate
departments, but he could write leaders with perfect ease, he was sure.
The drudgery of the newspaper office was too distaste ful, and besides it
would be beneath the dignity of a graduate and a successful magazine
writer. He wanted to begin at the top of the ladder.
To his surprise he found that every situation in the editorial department
of the journals was full, always had been full, was always likely to be
full. It seemed to him that the newspaper managers didn't want genius,
but mere plodding and grubbing. Philip therefore read diligently in the
Astor library, planned literary works that should compel attention, and
nursed his genius. He had no friend wise enough to tell him to step into
the Dorking Convention, then in session, make a sketch of the men and
women on the platform, and take it to the editor of the Daily Grapevine,
and see what he could get a line for it.
One day he had an offer from some country friends, who believed in him,
to take charge of a provincial daily newspaper, and he went to consult
Mr. Gringo--Gringo who years ago managed the Atlas--about taking the
situation.
"Take it of course," says Gringo, take anything that offers, why not?"
"But they want me to make it an opposition paper."
"Well, make it that. That party is going to succeed, it's going to elect
the next president."
"I don't believe it," said Philip, stoutly, "its wrong in principle, and
it ought not to succeed, but I don't see how I can go for a thing I don't
believe in."
"O, very well," said Gringo, turning away with a shade of contempt,
"you'll find if you are going into literature and newspaper work that you
can't afford a conscience like that."
But Philip did afford it, and he wrote, thanking his friends, and
declining because he said the political scheme would fail, and ought to
fail. And he went back to his books and to his waiting for an opening
large enough for his dignified entrance into the literary world.
It was in this time of rather impatient waiting that Philip was one
morning walking down Broadway with Henry Brierly. He frequently
accompanied Henry part way down town to what the latter called his office
in Broad Street, to which he went, or pretended to go, with regularity
every day. It was evident to the most casual acquaintance that he was a
man of affairs, and that his time was engrossed in the largest sort of
operations, about which there was a mysterious air. His liability to be
suddenly summoned to Washington, or Boston or Montreal or even to
Liverpool was always imminent. He never was so summoned, but none of his
acquaintances would have been surprised to hear any day that he had gone
to Panama or Peoria, or to hear from him that he had bought the Bank of
Commerce.
The two were intimate at that time,--they had been class, mates--and saw
a great deal of each other. Indeed, they lived together in Ninth Street,
in a boarding-house, there, which had the honor of lodging and partially
feeding several other young fellows of like kidney, who have since gone
their several ways into fame or into obscurity.
It was during the morning walk to which reference has been made that
Henry Brierly suddenly said, "Philip, how would you like to go to
St. Jo?"
"I think I should like it of all things," replied Philip, with some
hesitation, "but what for."
"Oh, it's a big operation. We are going, a lot of us, railroad men,
engineers, contractors. You know my uncle is a great railroad man. I've
no doubt I can get you a chance to go if you'll go."
"But in what capacity would I go?"
"Well, I'm going as an engineer. You can go as one."
"I don't know an engine from a coal cart."
"Field engineer, civil engineer. You can begin by carrying a rod, and
putting down the figures. It's easy enough. I'll show you about that.
We'll get Trautwine and some of those books."
"Yes, but what is it for, what is it all about?"
"Why don't you see? We lay out a line, spot the good land, enter it up,
know where the stations are to be, spot them, buy lots; there's heaps of
money in it. We wouldn't engineer long."
"When do you go?" was Philip's next question, after some moments of
silence.
"To-morrow. Is that too soon?"
"No, its not too soon. I've been ready to go anywhere for six months.
The fact is, Henry, that I'm about tired of trying to force myself into
things, and am quite willing to try floating with the stream for a while,
and see where I will land. This seems like a providential call; it's
sudden enough."
The two young men who were by this time full of the adventure, went down
to the Wall street office of Henry's uncle and had a talk with that wily
operator. The uncle knew Philip very well, and was pleased with his
frank enthusiasm, and willing enough to give him a trial in the western
venture. It was settled therefore, in the prompt way in which things are
settled in New York, that they would start with the rest of the company
next morning for the west.
On the way up town these adventurers bought books on engineering, and
suits of India-rubber, which they supposed they would need in a new and
probably damp country, and many other things which nobody ever needed
anywhere.
The night was spent in packing up and writing letters, for Philip would
not take such an important step without informing his friends. If they
disapprove, thought he, I've done my duty by letting them know. Happy
youth, that is ready to pack its valise, and start for Cathay on an
hour's notice.
"By the way," calls out Philip from his bed-room, to Henry, "where is
St. Jo.?"
"Why, it's in Missouri somewhere, on the frontier I think. We'll get a
map."
"Never mind the map. We will find the place itself. I was afraid it was
nearer home."
Philip wrote a long letter, first of all, to his mother, full of love and
glowing anticipations of his new opening. He wouldn't bother her with
business details, but he hoped that the day was not far off when she
would see him return, with a moderate fortune, and something to add to
the comfort of her advancing years.
To his uncle he said that he had made an arrangement with some New York
capitalists to go to Missouri, in a land and railroad operation, which
would at least give him a knowledge of the world and not unlikely offer
him a business opening. He knew his uncle would be glad to hear that he
had at last turned his thoughts to a practical matter.
It was to Ruth Bolton that Philip wrote last. He might never see her
again; he went to seek his fortune. He well knew the perils of the
frontier, the savage state of society, the lurking Indians and the
dangers of fever. But there was no real danger to a person who took care
of himself. Might he write to her often and, tell her of his life.
If he returned with a fortune, perhaps and perhaps. If he was
unsuccessful, or if he never returned--perhaps it would be as well.
No time or distance, however, would ever lessen his interest in her. He
would say good-night, but not good-bye.
In the soft beginning of a Spring morning, long before New York had
breakfasted, while yet the air of expectation hung about the wharves of
the metropolis, our young adventurers made their way to the Jersey City
railway station of the Erie road, to begin the long, swinging, crooked
journey, over what a writer of a former day called a causeway of cracked
rails and cows, to the West.
CHAPTER XIII.
What ever to say be toke in his entente,
his langage was so fayer & pertynante,
yt semeth unto manys herying not only the worde,
but veryly the thyng.
Caxton's Book of Curtesye.
In the party of which our travelers found themselves members, was Duff
Brown, the great railroad contractor, and subsequently a well-known
member of Congress; a bluff, jovial Bost'n man, thick-set, close shaven,
with a heavy jaw and a low forehead--a very pleasant man if you were not
in his way. He had government contracts also, custom houses and dry
docks, from Portland to New Orleans, and managed to get out of congress,
in appropriations, about weight for weight of gold for the stone
furnished.
Associated with him, and also of this party, was Rodney Schaick, a sleek
New York broker, a man as prominent in the church as in the stock
exchange, dainty in his dress, smooth of speech, the necessary complement
of Duff Brown in any enterprise that needed assurance and adroitness.
It would be difficult to find a pleasanter traveling party one that shook
off more readily the artificial restraints of Puritanic strictness, and
took the world with good-natured allowance. Money was plenty for every
attainable luxury, and there seemed to be no doubt that its supply would
continue, and that fortunes were about to be made without a great deal of
toil. Even Philip soon caught the prevailing spirit; Barry did not need
any inoculation, he always talked in six figures. It was as natural for
the dear boy to be rich as it is for most people to be poor.
The elders of the party were not long in discovering the fact, which
almost all travelers to the west soon find out; that the water was poor.
It must have been by a lucky premonition of this that they all had brandy
flasks with which to qualify the water of the country; and it was no
doubt from an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned that they
kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and changing fluid,
as they passed along, with the contents of the flasks, thus saving their
lives hour by hour. Philip learned afterwards that temperance and the
strict observance of Sunday and a certain gravity of deportment are
geographical habits, which people do not usually carry with them away
from home.
Our travelers stopped in Chicago long enough to see that they could make
their fortunes there in two week's tine, but it did not seem worth while;
the west was more attractive; the further one went the wider the
opportunities opened.
They took railroad to Alton and the steamboat from there to St. Louis,
for the change and to have a glimpse of the river.
"Isn't this jolly?" cried Henry, dancing out of the barber's room, and
coming down the deck with a one, two, three step, shaven, curled and
perfumed after his usual exquisite fashion.
"What's jolly?" asked Philip, looking out upon the dreary and monotonous
waste through which the shaking steamboat was coughing its way.
"Why, the whole thing; it's immense I can tell you. I wouldn't give that
to be guaranteed a hundred thousand cold cash in a year's time."
"Where's Mr. Brown?"
"He is in the saloon, playing poker with Schaick and that long haired
party with the striped trousers, who scrambled aboard when the stage
plank was half hauled in, and the big Delegate to Congress from out
west."
"That's a fine looking fellow, that delegate, with his glossy, black
whiskers; looks like a Washington man; I shouldn't think he'd be at
poker."
"Oh, its only five cent ante, just to make it interesting, the Delegate
said."
"But I shouldn't think a representative in Congress would play poker any
way in a public steamboat."
"Nonsense, you've got to pass the time. I tried a hand myself, but those
old fellows are too many for me. The Delegate knows all the points.
I'd bet a hundred dollars he will ante his way right into the United
States Senate when his territory comes in. He's got the cheek for it."
"He has the grave and thoughtful manner of expectoration of a public man,
for one thing," added Philip.
"Harry," said Philip, after a pause, "what have you got on those big
boots for; do you expect to wade ashore?"
"I'm breaking 'em in."
The fact was Harry had got himself up in what he thought a proper costume
for a new country, and was in appearance a sort of compromise between a
dandy of Broadway and a backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, fresh
complexion, silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as
a fashion plate. He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway coat,
an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern belt round his
waist, and top-boots of soft leather, well polished, that came above his
knees and required a string attached to his belt to keep them up. The
light hearted fellow gloried in these shining encasements of his well
shaped legs, and told Philip that they were a perfect protection against
prairie rattle-snakes, which never strike above the knee.
The landscape still wore an almost wintry appearance when our travelers
left Chicago. It was a genial spring day when they landed at St. Louis;
the birds were singing, the blossoms of peach trees in city garden plots,
made the air sweet, and in the roar and tumult on the long river levee
they found an excitement that accorded with their own hopeful
anticipations.
The party went to the Southern Hotel, where the great Duff Brown was very
well known, and indeed was a man of so much importance that even the
office clerk was respectful to him. He might have respected in him also
a certain vulgar swagger and insolence of money, which the clerk greatly
admired.
The young fellows liked the house and liked the city; it seemed to them a
mighty free and hospitable town. Coming from the East they were struck
with many peculiarities. Everybody smoked in the streets, for one thing,
they noticed; everybody "took a drink" in an open manner whenever he
wished to do so or was asked, as if the habit needed no concealment or
apology. In the evening when they walked about they found people sitting
on the door-steps of their dwellings, in a manner not usual in a northern
city; in front of some of the hotels and saloons the side walks were
filled with chairs and benches--Paris fashion, said Harry--upon which
people lounged in these warm spring evenings, smoking, always smoking;
and the clink of glasses and of billiard balls was in the air. It was
delightful.
Harry at once found on landing that his back-woods custom would not be
needed in St. Louis, and that, in fact, he had need of all the resources
of his wardrobe to keep even with the young swells of the town. But this
did not much matter, for Harry was always superior to his clothes.
As they were likely to be detained some time in the city, Harry told
Philip that he was going to improve his time. And he did. It was an
encouragement to any industrious man to see this young fellow rise,
carefully dress himself, eat his breakfast deliberately, smoke his cigar
tranquilly, and then repair to his room, to what he called his work, with
a grave and occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness.
Harry would take off his coat, remove his cravat, roll up his
shirt-sleeves, give his curly hair the right touch before the glass, get
out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments, his drawing paper,
his profile paper, open the book of logarithms, mix his India ink,
sharpen his pencils, light a cigar, and sit down at the table to "lay out
a line," with the most grave notion that he was mastering the details of
engineering. He would spend half a day in these preparations without
ever working out a problem or having the faintest conception of the use
of lines or logarithms. And when he had finished, he had the most
cheerful confidence that he had done a good day's work.
It made no difference, however, whether Harry was in his room in a hotel
or in a tent, Philip soon found, he was just the same. In camp he would
get himself, up in the most elaborate toilet at his command, polish his
long boots to the top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or
longer, if anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his brows,
and "working" at engineering; and if a crowd of gaping rustics were
looking on all the while it was perfectly satisfactory to him.
"You see," he says to Philip one morning at the hotel when he was thus
engaged, "I want to get the theory of this thing, so that I can have a
check on the engineers."
"I thought you were going to be an engineer yourself," queried Philip.
"Not many times, if the court knows herself. There's better game. Brown
and Schaick have, or will have, the control for the whole line of the
Salt Lick Pacific Extension, forty thousand dollars a mile over the
prairie, with extra for hard-pan--and it'll be pretty much all hardpan
I can tell you; besides every alternate section of land on this line.
There's millions in the job. I'm to have the sub-contract for the first
fifty miles, and you can bet it's a soft thing."
"I'll tell you what you do, Philip," continued Larry, in a burst of
generosity, "if I don't get you into my contract, you'll be with the
engineers, and you jest stick a stake at the first ground marked for a
depot, buy the land of the farmer before he knows where the depot will
be, and we'll turn a hundred or so on that. I'll advance the money for
the payments, and you can sell the lots. Schaick is going to let me have
ten thousand just for a flyer in such operations."
"But that's a good deal of money."
"Wait till you are used to handling money. I didn't come out here for a
bagatelle. My uncle wanted me to stay East and go in on the Mobile
custom house, work up the Washington end of it; he said there was a
fortune in it for a smart young fellow, but I preferred to take the
chances out here. Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett and Fanshaw
to go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten
thousand?"
"Why didn't you take it ?" asked Philip, to whom a salary of two thousand
would have seemed wealth, before he started on this journey.
"Take it? I'd rather operate on my own hook;" said Harry, in his most
airy manner.
A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip and Harry made
the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman, whom they had frequently
seen before about the hotel corridors, and passed a casual word with. He
had the air of a man of business, and was evidently a person of
importance.
The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more substantial
form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the gentleman himself, and
occurred in this wise. Meeting the two friends in the lobby one evening,
he asked them to give him the time, and added:
"Excuse me, gentlemen--strangers in St. Louis? Ah, yes-yes. From the
East, perhaps? Ah; just so, just so. Eastern born myself--Virginia.
Sellers is my name--Beriah Sellers.
"Ah! by the way--New York, did you say? That reminds me; just met some
gentlemen from your State, a week or two ago--very prominent gentlemen
--in public life they are; you must know them, without doubt. Let me see
--let me see. Curious those names have escaped me. I know they were from
your State, because I remember afterward my old friend Governor Shackleby
said to me--fine man, is the Governor--one of the finest men our country
has produced--said he, 'Colonel, how did you like those New York
gentlemen?--not many such men in the world,--Colonel Sellers,' said the
Governor--yes, it was New York he said--I remember it distinctly.
I can't recall those names, somehow. But no matter. Stopping here,
gentlemen--stopping at the Southern?"
In shaping their reply in their minds, the title "Mr." had a place in it;
but when their turn had arrived to speak, the title "Colonel" came from
their lips instead.
They said yes, they were abiding at the Southern, and thought it a very
good house.
"Yes, yes, the Southern is fair. I myself go to the Planter's, old,
aristocratic house. We Southern gentlemen don't change our ways, you
know. I always make it my home there when I run down from Hawkeye--my
plantation is in Hawkeye, a little up in the country. You should know
the Planter's."
Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel that had been
so famous in its day--a cheerful hostelrie, Philip said it must have been
where duels were fought there across the dining-room table.
"You may believe it, sir, an uncommonly pleasant lodging. Shall we
walk?"
And the three strolled along the streets, the Colonel talking all
the way in the most liberal and friendly manner, and with a frank
open-heartedness that inspired confidence.
"Yes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West--a great country,
gentlemen. The place for a young fellow of spirit to pick up a fortune,
simply pick it up, it's lying round loose here. Not a day that I don't
put aside an opportunity; too busy to look into it. Management of my own
property takes my time. First visit? Looking for an opening?"
"Yes, looking around," replied Harry.
"Ah, here we are. You'd rather sit here in front than go to my
apartments? So had I. An opening eh?"
The Colonel's eyes twinkled. "Ah, just so. The country is opening up,
all we want is capital to develop it. Slap down the rails and bring the
land into market. The richest land on God Almighty's footstool is lying
right out there. If I had my capital free I could plant it for
millions."
"I suppose your capital is largely in your plantation?" asked Philip.
"Well, partly, sir, partly. I'm down here now with reference to a little
operation--a little side thing merely. By the way gentlemen, excuse the
liberty, but it's about my usual time"--
The Colonel paused, but as no movement of his acquaintances followed this
plain remark, he added, in an explanatory manner,
"I'm rather particular about the exact time--have to be in this climate."
Even this open declaration of his hospitable intention not being
understood the Colonel politely said,
"Gentlemen, will you take something?"
Col. Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth street under the hotel,
and the young gentlemen fell into the custom of the country.
"Not that," said the Colonel to the bar-keeper, who shoved along the
counter a bottle of apparently corn-whiskey, as if he had done it before
on the same order; "not that," with a wave of the hand. "That Otard if
you please. Yes. Never take an inferior liquor, gentlemen, not in the
evening, in this climate. There. That's the stuff. My respects!"
The hospitable gentleman, having disposed of his liquor, remarking that
it was not quite the thing--"when a man has his own cellar to go to, he
is apt to get a little fastidious about his liquors"--called for cigars.
But the brand offered did not suit him; he motioned the box away, and
asked for some particular Havana's, those in separate wrappers.
"I always smoke this sort, gentlemen; they are a little more expensive,
but you'll learn, in this climate, that you'd better not economize on
poor cigars"
Having imparted this valuable piece of information, the Colonel lighted
the fragrant cigar with satisfaction, and then carelessly put his fingers
into his right vest pocket. That movement being without result, with a
shade of disappointment on his face, he felt in his left vest pocket.
Not finding anything there, he looked up with a serious and annoyed air,
anxiously slapped his right pantaloon's pocket, and then his left, and
exclaimed,
"By George, that's annoying. By George, that's mortifying. Never had
anything of that kind happen to me before. I've left my pocket-book.
Hold! Here's a bill, after all. No, thunder, it's a receipt."
"Allow me," said Philip, seeing how seriously the Colonel was annoyed,
and taking out his purse.
The Colonel protested he couldn't think of it, and muttered something to
the barkeeper about "hanging it up," but the vender of exhilaration made
no sign, and Philip had the privilege of paying the costly shot; Col.
Sellers profusely apologizing and claiming the right "next time, next
time."
As soon as Beriah Sellers had bade his friends good night and seen them
depart, he did not retire apartments in the Planter's, but took his way
to his lodgings with a friend in a distant part of the city.
CHAPTER XIV.
The letter that Philip Sterling wrote to Ruth Bolton, on the evening of
setting out to seek his fortune in the west, found that young lady in her
own father's house in Philadelphia. It was one of the pleasantest of the
many charming suburban houses in that hospitable city, which is
territorially one of the largest cities in the world, and only prevented
from becoming the convenient metropolis of the country by the intrusive
strip of Camden and Amboy sand which shuts it off from the Atlantic
ocean. It is a city of steady thrift, the arms of which might well be
the deliberate but delicious terrapin that imparts such a royal flavor to
its feasts.
It was a spring morning, and perhaps it was the influence of it that made
Ruth a little restless, satisfied neither with the out-doors nor the
in-doors. Her sisters had gone to the city to show some country visitors
Independence Hall, Girard College and Fairmount Water Works and Park,
four objects which Americans cannot die peacefully, even in Naples,
without having seen. But Ruth confessed that she was tired of them, and
also of the Mint. She was tired of other things. She tried this morning
an air or two upon the piano, sang a simple song in a sweet but slightly
metallic voice, and then seating herself by the open window, read
Philip's letter. Was she thinking about Philip, as she gazed across the
fresh lawn over the tree tops to the Chelton Hills, or of that world
which his entrance, into her tradition-bound life had been one of the
means of opening to her? Whatever she thought, she was not idly musing,
as one might see by the expression of her face. After a time she took
up a book; it was a medical work, and to all appearance about as
interesting to a girl of eighteen as the statutes at large; but her face
was soon aglow over its pages, and she was so absorbed in it that she did
not notice the entrance of her mother at the open door.
"Ruth?"
"Well, mother," said the young student, looking up, with a shade of
impatience.
"I wanted to talk with thee a little about thy plans."
"Mother; thee knows I couldn't stand it at Westfield; the school stifled
me, it's a place to turn young people into dried fruit."
"I know," said Margaret Bolton, with a half anxious smile, thee chafes
against all the ways of Friends, but what will thee do? Why is thee so
discontented?"
"If I must say it, mother, I want to go away, and get out of this dead
level."
With a look half of pain and half of pity, her mother answered, "I am
sure thee is little interfered with; thee dresses as thee will, and goes
where thee pleases, to any church thee likes, and thee has music. I had
a visit yesterday from the society's committee by way of discipline,
because we have a piano in the house, which is against the rules."
"I hope thee told the elders that father and I are responsible for the
piano, and that, much as thee loves music, thee is never in the room when
it is played. Fortunately father is already out of meeting, so they
can't discipline him. I heard father tell cousin Abner that he was
whipped so often for whistling when he was a boy that he was determined
to have what compensation he could get now."
"Thy ways greatly try me, Ruth, and all thy relations. I desire thy
happiness first of all, but thee is starting out on a dangerous path.
Is thy father willing thee should go away to a school of the world's
people?"
"I have not asked him," Ruth replied with a look that might imply that
she was one of those determined little bodies who first made up her own
mind and then compelled others to make up theirs in accordance with hers.
"And when thee has got the education thee wants, and lost all relish for
the society of thy friends and the ways of thy ancestors, what then?"
Ruth turned square round to her mother, and with an impassive face and
not the slightest change of tone, said,
"Mother, I'm going to study medicine?"
Margaret Bolton almost lost for a moment her habitual placidity.
"Thee, study medicine! A slight frail girl like thee, study medicine!
Does thee think thee could stand it six months? And the lectures,
and the dissecting rooms, has thee thought of the dissecting rooms?"
"Mother," said Ruth calmly, "I have thought it all over. I know I can go
through the whole, clinics, dissecting room and all. Does thee think I
lack nerve? What is there to fear in a person dead more than in a person
living?"
"But thy health and strength, child; thee can never stand the severe
application. And, besides, suppose thee does learn medicine?"
"I will practice it."
"Here?"
"Here."
"Where thee and thy family are known?"
"If I can get patients."
"I hope at least, Ruth, thee will let us know when thee opens an office,"
said her mother, with an approach to sarcasm that she rarely indulged in,
as she rose and left the room.
Ruth sat quite still for a tine, with face intent and flushed. It was
out now. She had begun her open battle.
The sight-seers returned in high spirits from the city. Was there any
building in Greece to compare with Girard College, was there ever such a
magnificent pile of stone devised for the shelter of poor orphans? Think
of the stone shingles of the roof eight inches thick! Ruth asked the
enthusiasts if they would like to live in such a sounding mausoleum, with
its great halls and echoing rooms, and no comfortable place in it for the
accommodation of any body? If they were orphans, would they like to be
brought up in a Grecian temple?
And then there was Broad street! Wasn't it the broadest and the longest
street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was
Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end,
or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.
But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor
the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always
signing the Declaration; impressed the visitors so much as the splendors
of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street.
The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the
Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious
event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more
worldly circles.
"Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?" asked one of the girls.
"I have nothing to wear," replied that demure person. "If thee wants to
see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the
true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting. Any departure from
either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied
mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new
bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won't see there a
sweeter woman than mother."
"And thee won't go?"
"Why should I? I've been again and again. If I go to Meeting at all I
like best to sit in the quiet old house in Germantown, where the windows
are all open and I can see the trees, and hear the stir of the leaves.
It's such a crush at the Yearly Meeting at Arch Street, and then there's
the row of sleek-looking young men who line the curbstone and stare at us
as we come out. No, I don't feel at home there."
That evening Ruth and her father sat late by the drawing-room fire, as
they were quite apt to do at night. It was always a time of confidences.
"Thee has another letter from young Sterling," said Eli Bolton.
"Yes. Philip has gone to the far west."
"How far?"
"He doesn't say, but it's on the frontier, and on the map everything
beyond it is marked 'Indians' and 'desert,' and looks as desolate as a
Wednesday Meeting."
"Humph. It was time for him to do something. Is he going to start a
daily newspaper among the Kick-a-poos?"
"Father, thee's unjust to Philip. He's going into business."
"What sort of business can a young man go into without capital?"
"He doesn't say exactly what it is," said Ruth a little dubiously, "but
it's something about land and railroads, and thee knows, father, that
fortunes are made nobody knows exactly how, in a new country."
"I should think so, you innocent puss, and in an old one too. But Philip
is honest, and he has talent enough, if he will stop scribbling, to make
his way. But thee may as well take care of theeself, Ruth, and not go
dawdling along with a young man in his adventures, until thy own mind is
a little more settled what thee wants."
This excellent advice did not seem to impress Ruth greatly, for she was
looking away with that abstraction of vision which often came into her
grey eyes, and at length she exclaimed, with a sort of impatience,
"I wish I could go west, or south, or somewhere. What a box women are
put into, measured for it, and put in young; if we go anywhere it's in a
box, veiled and pinioned and shut in by disabilities. Father, I should
like to break things and get loose!"
What a sweet-voiced little innocent, it was to be sure.
"Thee will no doubt break things enough when thy time comes, child; women
always have; but what does thee want now that thee hasn't?"
"I want to be something, to make myself something, to do something. Why
should I rust, and be stupid, and sit in inaction because I am a girl?
What would happen to me if thee should lose thy property and die? What
one useful thing could I do for a living, for the support of mother and
the children? And if I had a fortune, would thee want me to lead a
useless life?"
"Has thy mother led a useless life?"
"Somewhat that depends upon whether her children amount to anything,"
retorted the sharp little disputant. "What's the good, father, of a
series of human beings who don't advance any?"
Friend Eli, who had long ago laid aside the Quaker dress, and was out of
Meeting, and who in fact after a youth of doubt could not yet define his
belief, nevertheless looked with some wonder at this fierce young eagle
of his, hatched in a Friend's dove-cote. But he only said,
"Has thee consulted thy mother about a career, I suppose it is a career
thee wants?"
Ruth did not reply directly; she complained that her mother didn't
understand her. But that wise and placid woman understood the sweet
rebel a great deal better than Ruth understood herself. She also had a
history, possibly, and had sometime beaten her young wings against the
cage of custom, and indulged in dreams of a new social order, and had
passed through that fiery period when it seems possible for one mind,
which has not yet tried its limits, to break up and re-arrange the world.
Ruth replied to Philip's letter in due time and in the most cordial and
unsentimental manner. Philip liked the letter, as he did everything she
did; but he had a dim notion that there was more about herself in the
letter than about him. He took it with him from the Southern Hotel, when
he went to walk, and read it over and again in an unfrequented street as
he stumbled along. The rather common-place and unformed hand-writing
seemed to him peculiar and characteristic, different from that of any
other woman.
Ruth was glad to hear that Philip had made a push into the world, and she
was sure that his talent and courage would make a way for him. She
should pray for his success at any rate, and especially that the Indians,
in St. Louis, would not take his scalp.
Philip looked rather dubious at this sentence, and wished that he had
written nothing about Indians.
CHAPTER XV.
Eli Bolton and his wife talked over Ruth's case, as they had often done
before, with no little anxiety. Alone of all their children she was
impatient of the restraints and monotony of the Friends' Society, and
wholly indisposed to accept the "inner light" as a guide into a life of
acceptance and inaction. When Margaret told her husband of Ruth's newest
project, he did not exhibit so much surprise as she hoped for. In fact
he said that he did not see why a woman should not enter the medical
profession if she felt a call to it.
"But," said Margaret, "consider her total inexperience of the world, and
her frail health. Can such a slight little body endure the ordeal of the
preparation for, or the strain of, the practice of the profession?"
"Did thee ever think, Margaret, whether, she can endure being thwarted in
an, object on which she has so set her heart, as she has on this? Thee
has trained her thyself at home, in her enfeebled childhood, and thee
knows how strong her will is, and what she has been able to accomplish in
self-culture by the simple force of her determination. She never will be
satisfied until she has tried her own strength."
"I wish," said Margaret, with an inconsequence that is not exclusively
feminine, "that she were in the way to fall in love and marry by and by.
I think that would cure her of some of her notions. I am not sure but if
she went away, to some distant school, into an entirely new life, her
thoughts would be diverted."
Eli Bolton almost laughed as he regarded his wife, with eyes that never
looked at her except fondly, and replied,
"Perhaps thee remembers that thee had notions also, before we were
married, and before thee became a member of Meeting. I think Ruth comes
honestly by certain tendencies which thee has hidden under the Friend's
dress."
Margaret could not say no to this, and while she paused, it was evident
that memory was busy with suggestions to shake her present opinions.
"Why not let Ruth try the study for a time," suggested Eli; "there is a
fair beginning of a Woman's Medical College in the city. Quite likely
she will soon find that she needs first a more general culture, and fall,
in with thy wish that she should see more of the world at some large
school."
There really seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Margaret consented
at length without approving. And it was agreed that Ruth, in order to
spare her fatigue, should take lodgings with friends near the college and
make a trial in the pursuit of that science to which we all owe our
lives, and sometimes as by a miracle of escape.
That day Mr. Bolton brought home a stranger to dinner, Mr. Bigler of the
great firm of Pennybacker, Bigler & Small, railroad contractors. He was
always bringing home somebody, who had a scheme; to build a road, or open
a mine, or plant a swamp with cane to grow paper-stock, or found a
hospital, or invest in a patent shad-bone separator, or start a college
somewhere on the frontier, contiguous to a land speculation.
The Bolton house was a sort of hotel for this kind of people. They were
always coming. Ruth had known them from childhood, and she used to say
that her father attracted them as naturally as a sugar hogshead does
flies. Ruth had an idea that a large portion of the world lived by
getting the rest of the world into schemes. Mr. Bolton never could say
"no" to any of them, not even, said Ruth again, to the society for
stamping oyster shells with scripture texts before they were sold at
retail.
Mr. Bigler's plan this time, about which he talked loudly, with his mouth
full, all dinner time, was the building of the Tunkhannock, Rattlesnake
and Young-womans-town railroad, which would not only be a great highway to
the west, but would open to market inexhaustible coal-fields and untold
millions of lumber. The plan of operations was very simple.
"We'll buy the lands," explained he, "on long time, backed by the notes
of good men; and then mortgage them for money enough to get the road well
on. Then get the towns on the line to issue their bonds for stock, and
sell their bonds for enough to complete the road, and partly stock it,
especially if we mortgage each section as we complete it. We can then
sell the rest of the stock on the prospect of the business of the road
through an improved country, and also sell the lands at a big advance,
on the strength of the road. All we want," continued Mr. Bigler in his
frank manner, "is a few thousand dollars to start the surveys, and
arrange things in the legislature. There is some parties will have to be
seen, who might make us trouble."
"It will take a good deal of money to start the enterprise," remarked Mr.
Bolton, who knew very well what "seeing" a Pennsylvania Legislature
meant, but was too polite to tell Mr. Bigler what he thought of him,
while he was his guest; "what security would one have for it?"
Mr. Bigler smiled a hard kind of smile, and said, "You'd be inside, Mr.
Bolton, and you'd have the first chance in the deal."
This was rather unintelligible to Ruth, who was nevertheless somewhat
amused by the study of a type of character she had seen before.
At length she interrupted the conversation by asking,
"You'd sell the stock, I suppose, Mr. Bigler, to anybody who was
attracted by the prospectus?"
"O, certainly, serve all alike," said Mr. Bigler, now noticing Ruth for
the first time, and a little puzzled by the serene, intelligent face that
was turned towards him.
"Well, what would become of the poor people who had been led to put their
little money into the speculation, when you got out of it and left it
half way?"
It would be no more true to say of Mr. Bigler that he was or could be
embarrassed, than to say that a brass counterfeit dollar-piece would
change color when refused; the question annoyed him a little, in Mr.
Bolton's presence.
"Why, yes, Miss, of course, in a great enterprise for the benefit of the
community there will little things occur, which, which--and, of course,
the poor ought to be looked to; I tell my wife, that the poor must be
looked to; if you can tell who are poor--there's so many impostors. And
then, there's so many poor in the legislature to be looked after," said
the contractor with a sort of a chuckle, "isn't that so, Mr. Bolton?"
Eli Bolton replied that he never had much to do with the legislature.
"Yes," continued this public benefactor, "an uncommon poor lot this year,
uncommon. Consequently an expensive lot. The fact is, Mr. Bolton, that
the price is raised so high on United States Senator now, that it affects
the whole market; you can't get any public improvement through on
reasonable terms. Simony is what I call it, Simony," repeated Mr.
Bigler, as if he had said a good thing.
Mr. Bigler went on and gave some very interesting details of the intimate
connection between railroads and politics, and thoroughly entertained
himself all dinner time, and as much disgusted Ruth, who asked no more
questions, and her father who replied in monosyllables:
"I wish," said Ruth to her father, after the guest had gone, "that you
wouldn't bring home any more such horrid men. Do all men who wear big
diamond breast-pins, flourish their knives at table, and use bad grammar,
and cheat?"
"O, child, thee mustn't be too observing. Mr. Bigler is one of the most
important men in the state; nobody has more influence at Harrisburg.
I don't like him any more than thee does, but I'd better lend him a
little money than to have his ill will."
"Father, I think thee'd better have his ill-will than his company. Is it
true that he gave money to help build the pretty little church of
St. James the Less, and that he is, one of the vestrymen?"
"Yes. He is not such a bad fellow. One of the men in Third street asked
him the other day, whether his was a high church or a low church? Bigler
said he didn't know; he'd been in it once, and he could touch the ceiling
in the side aisle with his hand."
"I think he's just horrid," was Ruth's final summary of him, after the
manner of the swift judgment of women, with no consideration of the
extenuating circumstances. Mr. Bigler had no idea that he had not made a
good impression on the whole family; he certainly intended to be
agreeable. Margaret agreed with her daughter, and though she never said
anything to such people, she was grateful to Ruth for sticking at least
one pin into him.
Such was the serenity of the Bolton household that a stranger in it would
never have suspected there was any opposition to Ruth's going to the
Medical School. And she went quietly to take her residence in town, and
began her attendance of the lectures, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world. She did not heed, if she heard, the busy and
wondering gossip of relations and acquaintances, gossip that has no less
currency among the Friends than elsewhere because it is whispered slyly
and creeps about in an undertone.
Ruth was absorbed, and for the first time in her life thoroughly happy;
happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the
investigation that broadened its field day by day. She was in high
spirits when she came home to spend First Days; the house was full of her
gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never
go away again. But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the
sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling
eyes, and, as well, the serious air of determination and endurance in her
face at unguarded moments.
The college was a small one and it sustained itself not without
difficulty in this city, which is so conservative, and is yet the origin
of so many radical movements. There were not more than a dozen
attendants on the lectures all together, so that the enterprise had the
air of an experiment, and the fascination of pioneering for those engaged
in it. There was one woman physician driving about town in her carriage,
attacking the most violent diseases in all quarters with persistent
courage, like a modern Bellona in her war chariot, who was popularly
supposed to gather in fees to the amount ten to twenty thousand dollars a
year. Perhaps some of these students looked forward to the near day when
they would support such a practice and a husband besides, but it is
unknown that any of them ever went further than practice in hospitals and
in their own nurseries, and it is feared that some of them were quite as
ready as their sisters, in emergencies, to "call a man."
If Ruth had any exaggerated expectations of a professional life, she kept
them to herself, and was known to her fellows of the class simply as a
cheerful, sincere student, eager in her investigations, and never
impatient at anything, except an insinuation that women had not as much
mental capacity for science as men.
"They really say," said one young Quaker sprig to another youth of his
age, "that Ruth Bolton is really going to be a saw-bones, attends
lectures, cuts up bodies, and all that. She's cool enough for a surgeon,
anyway." He spoke feelingly, for he had very likely been weighed in
Ruth's calm eyes sometime, and thoroughly scared by the little laugh that
accompanied a puzzling reply to one of his conversational nothings. Such
young gentlemen, at this time, did not come very distinctly into Ruth's
horizon, except as amusing circumstances.
About the details of her student life, Ruth said very little to her
friends, but they had reason to know, afterwards, that it required all
her nerve and the almost complete exhaustion of her physical strength,
to carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached
portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating
room--dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles and
nerves--an occupation which had not much more savor of death in it than
the analysis of a portion of a plant out of which the life went when it
was plucked up by the roots. Custom inures the most sensitive persons to
that which is at first most repellant; and in the late war we saw the
most delicate women, who could not at home endure the sight of blood,
become so used to scenes of carnage, that they walked the hospitals and
the margins of battle-fields, amid the poor remnants of torn humanity,
with as perfect self-possession as if they were strolling in a flower
garden.
It happened that Ruth was one evening deep in a line of investigation
which she could not finish or understand without demonstration, and so
eager was she in it, that it seemed as if she could not wait till the
next day. She, therefore, persuaded a fellow student, who was reading
that evening with her, to go down to the dissecting room of the college,
and ascertain what they wanted to know by an hour's work there. Perhaps,
also, Ruth wanted to test her own nerve, and to see whether the power of
association was stronger in her mind than her own will.
The janitor of the shabby and comfortless old building admitted the
girls, not without suspicion, and gave them lighted candles, which they
would need, without other remark than "there's a new one, Miss," as the
girls went up the broad stairs.
They climbed to the third story, and paused before a door, which they
unlocked, and which admitted them into a long apartment, with a row of
windows on one side and one at the end. The room was without light, save
from the stars and the candles the girls carried, which revealed to them
dimly two long and several small tables, a few benches and chairs, a
couple of skeletons hanging on the wall, a sink, and cloth-covered heaps
of something upon the tables here and there.
The windows were open, and the cool night wind came in strong enough to
flutter a white covering now and then, and to shake the loose casements.
But all the sweet odors of the night could not take from the room a faint
suggestion of mortality.
The young ladies paused a moment. The room itself was familiar enough,
but night makes almost any chamber eerie, and especially such a room of
detention as this where the mortal parts of the unburied might--almost be
supposed to be, visited, on the sighing night winds, by the wandering
spirits of their late tenants.
Opposite and at some distance across the roofs of lower buildings, the
girls saw a tall edifice, the long upper story of which seemed to be a
dancing hall. The windows of that were also open, and through them they
heard the scream of the jiggered and tortured violin, and the pump, pump
of the oboe, and saw the moving shapes of men and women in quick
transition, and heard the prompter's drawl.
"I wonder," said Ruth, "what the girls dancing there would think if they
saw us, or knew that there was such a room as this so near them."
She did not speak very loud, and, perhaps unconsciously, the girls drew
near to each other as they approached the long table in the centre of the
room. A straight object lay upon it, covered with a sheet. This was
doubtless "the new one" of which the janitor spoke. Ruth advanced, and
with a not very steady hand lifted the white covering from the upper part
of the figure and turned it down. Both the girls started. It was a
negro. The black face seemed to defy the pallor of death, and asserted
an ugly life-likeness that was frightful.
Ruth was as pale as the white sheet, and her comrade whispered, "Come
away, Ruth, it is awful."
Perhaps it was the wavering light of the candles, perhaps it was only the
agony from a death of pain, but the repulsive black face seemed to wear a
scowl that said, "Haven't you yet done with the outcast, persecuted black
man, but you must now haul him from his grave, and send even your women
to dismember his body?"
Who is this dead man, one of thousands who died yesterday, and will be
dust anon, to protest that science shall not turn his worthless carcass
to some account?
Ruth could have had no such thought, for with a pity in her sweet face,
that for the moment overcame fear and disgust, she reverently replaced
the covering, and went away to her own table, as her companion did to
hers. And there for an hour they worked at their several problems,
without speaking, but not without an awe of the presence there, "the new
one," and not without an awful sense of life itself, as they heard the
pulsations of the music and the light laughter from the dancing-hall.
When, at length, they went away, and locked the dreadful room behind
them, and came out into the street, where people were passing, they, for
the first time, realized, in the relief they felt, what a nervous strain
they had been under.
CHAPTER XVI.
While Ruth was thus absorbed in her new occupation, and the spring was
wearing away, Philip and his friends were still detained at the Southern
Hotel. The great contractors had concluded their business with the state
and railroad officials and with the lesser contractors, and departed for
the East. But the serious illness of one of the engineers kept Philip
and Henry in the city and occupied in alternate watchings.
Philip wrote to Ruth of the new acquaintance they had made, Col. Sellers,
an enthusiastic and hospitable gentleman, very much interested in the
development of the country, and in their success. They had not had an
opportunity to visit at his place "up in the country" yet, but the
Colonel often dined with them, and in confidence, confided to them his
projects, and seemed to take a great liking to them, especially to his
friend Harry. It was true that he never seemed to have ready money,
but he was engaged in very large operations.
The correspondence was not very brisk between these two young persons,
so differently occupied; for though Philip wrote long letters, he got
brief ones in reply, full of sharp little observations however, such as
one concerning Col. Sellers, namely, that such men dined at their house
every week.
Ruth's proposed occupation astonished Philip immensely, but while he
argued it and discussed it, he did not dare hint to her his fear that it
would interfere with his most cherished plans. He too sincerely
respected Ruth's judgment to make any protest, however, and he would have
defended her course against the world.
This enforced waiting at St. Louis was very irksome to Philip. His money
was running away, for one thing, and he longed to get into the field,
and see for himself what chance there was for a fortune or even an
occupation. The contractors had given the young men leave to join the
engineer corps as soon as they could, but otherwise had made no provision
for them, and in fact had left them with only the most indefinite
expectations of something large in the future.
Harry was entirely happy; in his circumstances. He very soon knew
everybody, from the governor of the state down to the waiters at the
hotel. He had the Wall street slang at his tongue's end; he always
talked like a capitalist, and entered with enthusiasm into all the land
and railway schemes with which the air was thick.
Col. Sellers and Harry talked together by the hour and by the day. Harry
informed his new friend that he was going out with the engineer corps of
the Salt Lick Pacific Extension, but that wasn't his real business.
"I'm to have, with another party," said Harry, "a big contract in the
road, as soon as it is let; and, meantime, I'm with the engineers to spy
out the best land and the depot sites."
"It's everything," suggested' the Colonel, "in knowing where to invest.
I've known people throwaway their money because they were too
consequential to take Sellers' advice. Others, again, have made their
pile on taking it. I've looked over the ground; I've been studying it
for twenty years. You can't put your finger on a spot in the map of
Missouri that I don't know as if I'd made it. When you want to place
anything," continued the Colonel, confidently, "just let Beriah Sellers
know. That's all."
"Oh, I haven't got much in ready money I can lay my hands on now, but if
a fellow could do anything with fifteen or twenty thousand dollars,
as a beginning, I shall draw for that when I see the right opening."
"Well, that's something, that's something, fifteen or twenty thousand
dollars, say twenty--as an advance," said the Colonel reflectively, as if
turning over his mind for a project that could be entered on with such a
trifling sum.
"I'll tell you what it is--but only to you Mr. Brierly, only to you,
mind; I've got a little project that I've been keeping. It looks small,
looks small on paper, but it's got a big future. What should you say,
sir, to a city, built up like the rod of Aladdin had touched it, built up
in two years, where now you wouldn't expect it any more than you'd expect
a light-house on the top of Pilot Knob? and you could own the land! It
can be done, sir. It can be done!"
The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his
knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, "The Salt Lick
Pacific Extension is going to run through Stone's Landing! The Almighty
never laid out a cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it's the
natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco."
"What makes you think the road will go there? It's twenty miles, on the
map, off the straight line of the road?"
"You can't tell what is the straight line till the engineers have been
over it. Between us, I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division
engineer. He understands the wants of Stone's Landing, and the claims of
the inhabitants--who are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for
--the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and
if, he don't run this to Stone's Landing he'll be damned! You ought to
know Jeff; he's one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western
country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom
of a glass."
The recommendation was not undeserved. There was nothing that Jeff
wouldn't do, to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with
him, to winging him in a duel. When he understood from Col. Sellers.
how the land lay at Stone's Landing, he cordially shook hands with that
gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, "Why, God bless my
soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman to another is 'nuff
ced.' There's Stone's Landing been waiting for a railroad more than four
thousand years, and damme if she shan't have it."
Philip had not so much faith as Harry in Stone's Landing, when the latter
opened the project to him, but Harry talked about it as if he already
owned that incipient city.
Harry thoroughly believed in all his projects and inventions, and lived
day by day in their golden atmosphere. Everybody liked the young fellow,
for how could they help liking one of such engaging manners and large
fortune? The waiters at the hotel would do more for him than for any
other guest, and he made a great many acquaintances among the people of
St. Louis, who liked his sensible and liberal views about the development
of the western country, and about St. Louis. He said it ought to be the
national capital. Harry made partial arrangements with several of the
merchants for furnishing supplies for his contract on the Salt Lick
Pacific Extension; consulted the maps with the engineers, and went over
the profiles with the contractors, figuring out estimates for bids.
He was exceedingly busy with those things when he was not at the bedside
of his sick acquaintance, or arranging the details of his speculation
with Col. Sellers.
Meantime the days went along and the weeks, and the money in Harry's
pocket got lower and lower. He was just as liberal with what he had as
before, indeed it was his nature to be free with his money or with that
of others, and he could lend or spend a dollar with an air that made it
seem like ten. At length, at the end of one week, when his hotel bill
was presented, Harry found not a cent in his pocket to meet it. He
carelessly remarked to the landlord that he was not that day in funds,
but he would draw on New York, and he sat down and wrote to the
contractors in that city a glowing letter about the prospects of the
road, and asked them to advance a hundred or two, until he got at work.
No reply came. He wrote again, in an unoffended business like tone,
suggesting that he had better draw at three days. A short answer came to
this, simply saying that money was very tight in Wall street just then,
and that he had better join the engineer corps as soon as he could.
But the bill had to be paid, and Harry took it to Philip, and asked him
if he thought he hadn't better draw on his uncle. Philip had not much
faith in Harry's power of "drawing," and told him that he would pay the
bill himself. Whereupon Harry dismissed the matter then and thereafter
from his thoughts, and, like a light-hearted good fellow as he was, gave
himself no more trouble about his board-bills. Philip paid them, swollen
as they were with a monstrous list of extras; but he seriously counted
the diminishing bulk of his own hoard, which was all the money he had in
the world. Had he not tacitly agreed to share with Harry to the last in
this adventure, and would not the generous fellow divide; with him if he,
Philip, were in want and Harry had anything?
The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer, who
lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow but an
"acclimated" man. Everybody said he was "acclimated" now, and said it
cheerfully. What it is to be acclimated to western fevers no two persons
exactly agree.
Some say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some malignant
type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort of initiation,
like that into the Odd Fellows, which renders one liable to his regular
dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of
taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of
whiskey and assafoetida, out of the acclimation jug.
Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked Senator Atchison,
then acting Vice-President: of the United States, about the possibility
of acclimation; he thought the opinion of the second officer of our great
government would be, valuable on this point. They were sitting together
on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our
democratic habits.
"I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country?"
"Well," said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his
wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop
quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial
deliberation, "I think I have. I've been here twenty-five years, and
dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate
and distinct earthquakes, one a year. The niggro is the only person who
can stand the fever and ague of this region."
The convalescence of the engineer was the signal for breaking up quarters
at St. Louis, and the young fortune-hunters started up the river in good
spirits. It was only the second time either of them had been upon a
Mississippi steamboat, and nearly everything they saw had the charm of
novelty. Col. Sellers was at the landing to bid thorn good-bye.
"I shall send you up that basket of champagne by the next boat; no, no;
no thanks; you'll find it not bad in camp," he cried out as the plank was
hauled in. "My respects to Thompson. Tell him to sight for Stone's.
Let me know, Mr. Brierly, when you are ready to locate; I'll come over
from Hawkeye. Goodbye."
And the last the young fellows saw of the Colonel, he was waving his hat,
and beaming prosperity and good luck.
The voyage was delightful, and was not long enough to become monotonous.
The travelers scarcely had time indeed to get accustomed to the splendors
of the great saloon where the tables were spread for meals, a marvel of
paint and gilding, its ceiling hung with fancifully cut tissue-paper of
many colors, festooned and arranged in endless patterns. The whole was
more beautiful than a barber's shop. The printed bill of fare at dinner
was longer and more varied, the proprietors justly boasted, than that of
any hotel in New York. It must have been the work of an author of talent
and imagination, and it surely was not his fault if the dinner itself was
to a certain extent a delusion, and if the guests got something that
tasted pretty much the same whatever dish they ordered; nor was it his
fault if a general flavor of rose in all the dessert dishes suggested
that they hid passed through the barber's saloon on their way from the
kitchen.
The travelers landed at a little settlement on the left bank, and at once
took horses for the camp in the interior, carrying their clothes and
blankets strapped behind the saddles. Harry was dressed as we have seen
him once before, and his long and shining boots attracted not a little
the attention of the few persons they met on the road, and especially of
the bright faced wenches who lightly stepped along the highway,
picturesque in their colored kerchiefs, carrying light baskets, or riding
upon mules and balancing before them a heavier load.
Harry sang fragments of operas and talked abort their fortune. Philip
even was excited by the sense of freedom and adventure, and the beauty of
the landscape. The prairie, with its new grass and unending acres of
brilliant flowers--chiefly the innumerable varieties of phlox-bore the
look of years of cultivation, and the occasional open groves of white
oaks gave it a park-like appearance. It was hardly unreasonable to
expect to see at any moment, the gables and square windows of an
Elizabethan mansion in one of the well kept groves.
Towards sunset of the third day, when the young gentlemen thought they
ought to be near the town of Magnolia, near which they had been directed
to find the engineers' camp, they descried a log house and drew up before
it to enquire the way. Half the building was store, and half was
dwelling house. At the door of the latter stood a regress with a bright
turban on her head, to whom Philip called,
"Can you tell me, auntie, how far it is to the town of Magnolia?"
"Why, bress you chile," laughed the woman, "you's dere now."
It was true. This log horse was the compactly built town, and all
creation was its suburbs. The engineers' camp was only two or three
miles distant.
"You's boun' to find it," directed auntie, "if you don't keah nuffin
'bout de road, and go fo' de sun-down."
A brisk gallop brought the riders in sight of the twinkling light of the
camp, just as the stars came out. It lay in a little hollow, where a
small stream ran through a sparse grove of young white oaks. A half
dozen tents were pitched under the trees, horses and oxen were corraled
at a little distance, and a group of men sat on camp stools or lay on
blankets about a bright fire. The twang of a banjo became audible as
they drew nearer, and they saw a couple of negroes, from some neighboring
plantation, "breaking down" a juba in approved style, amid the "hi, hi's"
of the spectators.
Mr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable engineer, gave
the travelers a hearty welcome, offered them ground room in his own tent,
ordered supper, and set out a small jug, a drop from which he declared
necessary on account of the chill of the evening.
"I never saw an Eastern man," said Jeff, "who knew how to drink from a
jug with one hand. It's as easy as lying. So." He grasped the handle
with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his
lips to the nozzle. It was an act as graceful as it was simple.
"Besides," said Mr. Thompson, setting it down, "it puts every man on his
honor as to quantity."
Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o'clock everybody
was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked awhile at his
table over his field-book, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door
and sang, in a strong and not unmelodious tenor, the Star Spangled Banner
from beginning to end. It proved to be his nightly practice to let off
the unexpended seam of his conversational powers, in the words of this
stirring song.
It was a long time before Philip got to sleep. He saw the fire light,
he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the
stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which
followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed
he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and
heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had
ever slept on the ground.
CHAPTER XVII.
----"We have view'd it,
And measur'd it within all, by the scale
The richest tract of land, love, in the kingdom!
There will be made seventeen or eighteeen millions,
Or more, as't may be handled!"
The Devil is an Ass.
Nobody dressed more like an engineer than Mr. Henry Brierly. The
completeness of his appointments was the envy of the corps, and the gay
fellow himself was the admiration of the camp servants, axemen, teamsters
and cooks.
"I reckon you didn't git them boots no wher's this side o' Sent Louis?"
queried the tall Missouri youth who acted as commissariy's assistant.
"No, New York."
"Yas, I've heern o' New York," continued the butternut lad, attentively
studying each item of Harry's dress, and endeavoring to cover his design
with interesting conversation. "'N there's Massachusetts.",
"It's not far off."
"I've heern Massachusetts was a-----of a place. Les, see, what state's
Massachusetts in?"
"Massachusetts," kindly replied Harry, "is in the state of Boston."
"Abolish'n wan't it? They must a cost right smart," referring to the
boots.
Harry shouldered his rod and went to the field, tramped over the prairie
by day, and figured up results at night, with the utmost cheerfulness and
industry, and plotted the line on the profile paper, without, however,
the least idea of engineering practical or theoretical. Perhaps there
was not a great deal of scientific knowledge in the entire corps, nor was
very much needed. They were making, what is called a preliminary survey,
and the chief object of a preliminary survey was to get up an excitement
about the road, to interest every town in that part of the state in it,
under the belief that the road would run through it, and to get the aid
of every planter upon the prospect that a station would be on his land.
Mr. Jeff Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for
this work. He did not bother himself much about details or
practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the
top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town
site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In
his own language he "just went booming."
This course gave Harry an opportunity, as he said, to learn the practical
details of engineering, and it gave Philip a chance to see the country,
and to judge for himself what prospect of a fortune it offered. Both he
and Harry got the "refusal" of more than one plantation as they went
along, and wrote urgent letters to their eastern correspondents, upon the
beauty of the land and the certainty that it would quadruple in value as
soon as the road was finally located. It seemed strange to them that
capitalists did not flock out there and secure this land.
They had not been in the field over two weeks when Harry wrote to his
friend Col. Sellers that he'd better be on the move, for the line was
certain to go to Stone's Landing. Any one who looked at the line on the
map, as it was laid down from day to day, would have been uncertain which
way it was going; but Jeff had declared that in his judgment the only
practicable route from the point they then stood on was to follow the
divide to Stone's Landing, and it was generally understood that that town
would be the next one hit.
"We'll make it, boys," said the chief, "if we have to go in a balloon."
And make it they did In less than a week, this indomitable engineer had
carried his moving caravan over slues and branches, across bottoms and
along divides, and pitched his tents in the very heart of the city of
Stone's Landing.
"Well, I'll be dashed," was heard the cheery voice of Mr. Thompson, as he
stepped outside the tent door at sunrise next morning. "If this don't
get me. I say, yon, Grayson, get out your sighting iron and see if you
can find old Sellers' town. Blame me if we wouldn't have run plumb by it
if twilight had held on a little longer. Oh! Sterling, Brierly, get up
and see the city. There's a steamboat just coming round the bend." And
Jeff roared with laughter. "The mayor'll be round here to breakfast."
The fellows turned out of the tents, rubbing their eyes, and stared about
them. They were camped on the second bench of the narrow bottom of a
crooked, sluggish stream, that was some five rods wide in the present
good stage of water. Before them were a dozen log cabins, with stick and
mud chimneys, irregularly disposed on either side of a not very well
defined road, which did not seem to know its own mind exactly, and, after
straggling through the town, wandered off over the rolling prairie in an
uncertain way, as if it had started for nowhere and was quite likely to
reach its destination. Just as it left the town, however, it was cheered
and assisted by a guide-board, upon which was the legend "10 Mils to
Hawkeye."
The road had never been made except by the travel over it, and at this
season--the rainy June--it was a way of ruts cut in the black soil, and
of fathomless mud-holes. In the principal street of the city, it had
received more attention; for hogs; great and small, rooted about in it
and wallowed in it, turning the street into a liquid quagmire which could
only be crossed on pieces of plank thrown here and there.
About the chief cabin, which was the store and grocery of this mart of
trade, the mud was more liquid than elsewhere, and the rude platform in
front of it and the dry-goods boxes mounted thereon were places of refuge
for all the loafers of the place. Down by the stream was a dilapidated
building which served for a hemp warehouse, and a shaky wharf extended
out from it, into the water. In fact a flat-boat was there moored by it,
it's setting poles lying across the gunwales. Above the town the stream
was crossed by a crazy wooden bridge, the supports of which leaned all
ways in the soggy soil; the absence of a plank here and there in the
flooring made the crossing of the bridge faster than a walk an offense
not necessary to be prohibited by law.
"This, gentlemen," said Jeff, "is Columbus River, alias Goose Run. If it
was widened, and deepened, and straightened, and made, long enough, it
would be one of the finest rivers in the western country."
As the sun rose and sent his level beams along the stream, the thin
stratum of mist, or malaria, rose also and dispersed, but the light was
not able to enliven the dull water nor give any hint of its apparently
fathomless depth. Venerable mud-turtles crawled up and roosted upon the
old logs in the stream, their backs glistening in the sun, the first
inhabitants of the metropolis to begin the active business of the day.
It was not long, however, before smoke began to issue from the city
chimneys; and before the engineers, had finished their breakfast they
were the object of the curious inspection of six or eight boys and men,
who lounged into the camp and gazed about them with languid interest,
their hands in their pockets every one.
"Good morning; gentlemen," called out the chief engineer, from the table.
"Good mawning," drawled out the spokesman of the party. "I allow
thish-yers the railroad, I heern it was a-comin'."
"Yes, this is the railroad; all but the rails and the ironhorse."
"I reckon you kin git all the rails you want oaten my white oak timber
over, thar," replied the first speaker, who appeared to be a man of
property and willing to strike up a trade.
"You'll have to negotiate with the contractors about the rails, sir,"
said Jeff; "here's Mr. Brierly, I've no doubt would like to buy your
rails when the time comes."
"O," said the man, "I thought maybe you'd fetch the whole bilin along
with you. But if you want rails, I've got em, haint I Eph."
"Heaps," said Eph, without taking his eyes off the group at the table.
"Well," said Mr. Thompson, rising from his seat and moving towards his
tent, "the railroad has come to Stone's Landing, sure; I move we take a
drink on it all round."
The proposal met with universal favor. Jeff gave prosperity to Stone's
Landing and navigation to Goose Run, and the toast was washed down with
gusto, in the simple fluid of corn; and with the return compliment that a
rail road was a good thing, and that Jeff Thompson was no slouch.
About ten o'clock a horse and wagon was descried making a slow approach
to the camp over the prairie. As it drew near, the wagon was seen to
contain a portly gentleman, who hitched impatiently forward on his seat,
shook the reins and gently touched up his horse, in the vain attempt to
communicate his own energy to that dull beast, and looked eagerly at the
tents. When the conveyance at length drew up to Mr. Thompson's door,
the gentleman descended with great deliberation, straightened himself up,
rubbed his hands, and beaming satisfaction from every part of his radiant
frame, advanced to the group that was gathered to welcome him, and which
had saluted him by name as soon as he came within hearing.
"Welcome to Napoleon, gentlemen, welcome. I am proud to see you here
Mr. Thompson. You are, looking well Mr. Sterling. This is the country,
sir. Right glad to see you Mr. Brierly. You got that basket of
champagne? No? Those blasted river thieves! I'll never send anything
more by 'em. The best brand, Roederer. The last I had in my cellar,
from a lot sent me by Sir George Gore--took him out on a buffalo hunt,
when he visited our, country. Is always sending me some trifle. You
haven't looked about any yet, gentlemen? It's in the rough yet, in the
rough. Those buildings will all have to come down. That's the place for
the public square, Court House, hotels, churches, jail--all that sort of
thing. About where we stand, the deepo. How does that strike your
engineering eye, Mr. Thompson? Down yonder the business streets, running
to the wharves. The University up there, on rising ground, sightly
place, see the river for miles. That's Columbus river, only forty-nine
miles to the Missouri. You see what it is, placid, steady, no current to
interfere with navigation, wants widening in places and dredging, dredge
out the harbor and raise a levee in front of the town; made by nature on
purpose for a mart. Look at all this country, not another building
within ten miles, no other navigable stream, lay of the land points right
here; hemp, tobacco, corn, must come here. The railroad will do it,
Napoleon won't know itself in a year."
"Don't now evidently," said Philip aside to Harry. "Have you breakfasted
Colonel?"
"Hastily. Cup of coffee. Can't trust any coffee I don't import myself.
But I put up a basket of provisions,--wife would put in a few delicacies,
women always will, and a half dozen of that Burgundy, I was telling you
of Mr. Briefly. By the way, you never got to dine with me." And the
Colonel strode away to the wagon and looked under the seat for the
basket.
Apparently it was not there. For the Colonel raised up the flap, looked
in front and behind, and then exclaimed,
"Confound it. That comes of not doing a thing yourself. I trusted to
the women folks to set that basket in the wagon, and it ain't there."
The camp cook speedily prepared a savory breakfast for the Colonel,
broiled chicken, eggs, corn-bread, and coffee, to which he did ample
justice, and topped off with a drop of Old Bourbon, from Mr. Thompson's
private store, a brand which he said he knew well, he should think it
came from his own sideboard.
While the engineer corps went to the field, to run back a couple of miles
and ascertain, approximately, if a road could ever get down to the
Landing, and to sight ahead across the Run, and see if it could ever get
out again, Col. Sellers and Harry sat down and began to roughly map out
the city of Napoleon on a large piece of drawing paper.
"I've got the refusal of a mile square here," said the Colonel, "in our
names, for a year, with a quarter interest reserved for the four owners."
They laid out the town liberally, not lacking room, leaving space for the
railroad to come in, and for the river as it was to be when improved.
The engineers reported that the railroad could come in, by taking a
little sweep and crossing the stream on a high bridge, but the grades
would be steep. Col. Sellers said he didn't care so much about the
grades, if the road could only be made to reach the elevators on the
river. The next day Mr. Thompson made a hasty survey of the stream for a
mile or two, so that the Colonel and Harry were enabled to show on their
map how nobly that would accommodate the city. Jeff took a little
writing from the Colonel and Harry for a prospective share but Philip
declined to join in, saying that he had no money, and didn't want to make
engagements he couldn't fulfill.
The next morning the camp moved on, followed till it was out of sight by
the listless eyes of the group in front of the store, one of whom
remarked that, "he'd be doggoned if he ever expected to see that railroad
any mo'."
Harry went with the Colonel to Hawkeye to complete their arrangements, a
part of which was the preparation of a petition to congress for the
improvement of the navigation of Columbus River.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Eight years have passed since the death of Mr. Hawkins. Eight years are
not many in the life of a nation or the history of a state, but they
maybe years of destiny that shall fix the current of the century
following. Such years were those that followed the little scrimmage on
Lexington Common. Such years were those that followed the double-shotted
demand for the surrender of Fort Sumter. History is never done with
inquiring of these years, and summoning witnesses about them, and trying
to understand their significance.
The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that
were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the
social life of half the country, and wrought so profoundly upon the
entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of
two or three generations.
As we are accustomed to interpret the economy of providence, the life of
the individual is as nothing to that of the nation or the race; but who
can say, in the broader view and the more intelligent weight of values,
that the life of one man is not more than that of a nationality, and that
there is not a tribunal where the tragedy of one human soul shall not
seem more significant than the overturning of any human institution
whatever?
When one thinks of the tremendous forces of the upper and the nether
world which play for the mastery of the soul of a woman during the few
years in which she passes from plastic girlhood to the ripe maturity of
womanhood, he may well stand in awe before the momentous drama.
What capacities she has of purity, tenderness, goodness; what capacities
of vileness, bitterness and evil. Nature must needs be lavish with the
mother and creator of men, and centre in her all the possibilities of
life. And a few critical years can decide whether her life is to be full
of sweetness and light, whether she is to be the vestal of a holy temple,
or whether she will be the fallen priestess of a desecrated shrine.
There are women, it is true, who seem to be capable neither of rising
much nor of falling much, and whom a conventional life saves from any
special development of character.
But Laura was not one of them. She had the fatal gift of beauty, and
that more fatal gift which does not always accompany mere beauty, the
power of fascination, a power that may, indeed, exist without beauty.
She had will, and pride and courage and ambition, and she was left to be
very much her own guide at the age when romance comes to the aid of
passion, and when the awakening powers of her vigorous mind had little
object on which to discipline themselves.
The tremendous conflict that was fought in this girl's soul none of those
about her knew, and very few knew that her life had in it anything
unusual or romantic or strange.
Those were troublous days in Hawkeye as well as in most other Missouri
towns, days of confusion, when between Unionist and Confederate
occupations, sudden maraudings and bush-whackings and raids, individuals
escaped observation or comment in actions that would have filled the town
with scandal in quiet times.
Fortunately we only need to deal with Laura's life at this period
historically, and look back upon such portions of it as will serve to
reveal the woman as she was at the time of the arrival of Mr. Harry
Brierly in Hawkeye.
The Hawkins family were settled there, and had a hard enough struggle
with poverty and the necessity of keeping up appearances in accord with
their own family pride and the large expectations they secretly cherished
of a fortune in the Knobs of East Tennessee. How pinched they were
perhaps no one knew but Clay, to whom they looked for almost their whole
support. Washington had been in Hawkeye off and on, attracted away
occasionally by some tremendous speculation, from which he invariably
returned to Gen. Boswell's office as poor as he went. He was the
inventor of no one knew how many useless contrivances, which were not
worth patenting, and his years had been passed in dreaming and planning
to no purpose; until he was now a man of about thirty, without a
profession or a permanent occupation, a tall, brown-haired, dreamy person
of the best intentions and the frailest resolution. Probably however
the, eight years had been happier to him than to any others in his
circle, for the time had been mostly spent in a blissful dream of the
coming of enormous wealth.
He went out with a company from Hawkeye to the war, and was not wanting
in courage, but he would have been a better soldier if he had been less
engaged in contrivances for circumventing the enemy by strategy unknown
to the books.
It happened to him to be captured in one of his self-appointed
expeditions, but the federal colonel released him, after a short
examination, satisfied that he could most injure the confederate forces
opposed to the Unionists by returning him to his regiment. Col. Sellers
was of course a prominent man during the war. He was captain of the home
guards in Hawkeye, and he never left home except upon one occasion, when
on the strength of a rumor, he executed a flank movement and fortified
Stone's Landing, a place which no one unacquainted with the country would
be likely to find.
"Gad," said the Colonel afterwards, "the Landing is the key to upper
Missouri, and it is the only place the enemy never captured. If other
places had been defended as well as that was, the result would have been
different, sir."
The Colonel had his own theories about war as he had in other things.
If everybody had stayed at home as he did, he said, the South never would
have been conquered. For what would there have been to conquer? Mr.
Jeff Davis was constantly writing him to take command of a corps in the
confederate army, but Col. Sellers said, no, his duty was at home. And
he was by no means idle. He was the inventor of the famous air torpedo,
which came very near destroying the Union armies in Missouri, and the
city of St. Louis itself.
His plan was to fill a torpedo with Greek fire and poisonous and deadly
missiles, attach it to a balloon, and then let it sail away over the
hostile camp and explode at the right moment, when the time-fuse burned
out. He intended to use this invention in the capture of St. Louis,
exploding his torpedoes over the city, and raining destruction upon it
until the army of occupation would gladly capitulate. He was unable to
procure the Greek fire, but he constructed a vicious torpedo which would
have answered the purpose, but the first one prematurely exploded in his
wood-house, blowing it clean away, and setting fire to his house. The
neighbors helped him put out the conflagration, but they discouraged any
more experiments of that sort.
The patriotic old gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many
explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot
the exact spots of danger, that people were afraid to travel the
highways, and used to come to town across the fields, The Colonel's motto
was, "Millions for defence but not one cent for tribute."
When Laura came to Hawkeye she might have forgotten the annoyances of the
gossips of Murpheysburg and have out lived the bitterness that was
growing in her heart, if she had been thrown less upon herself, or if the
surroundings of her life had been more congenial and helpful. But she
had little society, less and less as she grew older that was congenial to
her, and her mind preyed upon itself; and the mystery of her birth at
once chagrined her and raised in her the most extravagant expectations.
She was proud and she felt the sting of poverty. She could not but be
conscious of her beauty also, and she was vain of that, and came to take
a sort of delight in the exercise of her fascinations upon the rather
loutish young men who came in her way and whom she despised.
There was another world opened to her--a world of books. But it was not
the best world of that sort, for the small libraries she had access to in
Hawkeye were decidedly miscellaneous, and largely made up of romances and
fictions which fed her imagination with the most exaggerated notions of
life, and showed her men and women in a very false sort of heroism. From
these stories she learned what a woman of keen intellect and some culture
joined to beauty and fascination of manner, might expect to accomplish in
society as she read of it; and along with these ideas she imbibed other
very crude ones in regard to the emancipation of woman.
There were also other books-histories, biographies of distinguished
people, travels in far lands, poems, especially those of Byron, Scott and
Shelley and Moore, which she eagerly absorbed, and appropriated therefrom
what was to her liking. Nobody in Hawkeye had read so much or, after a
fashion, studied so diligently as Laura. She passed for an accomplished
girl, and no doubt thought herself one, as she was, judged by any
standard near her.
During the war there came to Hawkeye a confederate officer, Col. Selby,
who was stationed there for a time, in command of that district. He was
a handsome, soldierly man of thirty years, a graduate of the University
of Virginia, and of distinguished family, if his story might be believed,
and, it was evident, a man of the world and of extensive travel and
adventure.
To find in such an out of the way country place a woman like Laura was a
piece of good luck upon which Col. Selby congratulated himself. He was
studiously polite to her and treated her with a consideration to which
she was unaccustomed. She had read of such men, but she had never seen
one before, one so high-bred, so noble in sentiment, so entertaining in
conversation, so engaging in manner.
It is a long story; unfortunately it is an old story, and it need not be
dwelt on. Laura loved him, and believed that his love for her was as
pure and deep as her own. She worshipped him and would have counted her
life a little thing to give him, if he would only love her and let her
feed the hunger of her heart upon him.
The passion possessed her whole being, and lifted her up, till she seemed
to walk on air. It was all true, then, the romances she had read, the
bliss of love she had dreamed of. Why had she never noticed before how
blithesome the world was, how jocund with love; the birds sang it, the
trees whispered it to her as she passed, the very flowers beneath her
feet strewed the way as for a bridal march.
When the Colonel went away they were engaged to be married, as soon as he
could make certain arrangements which he represented to be necessary, and
quit the army. He wrote to her from Harding, a small town in the
southwest corner of the state, saying that he should be held in the
service longer than he had expected, but that it would not be more than a
few months, then he should be at liberty to take her to Chicago where he
had property, and should have business, either now or as soon as the war
was over, which he thought could not last long. Meantime why should they
be separated? He was established in comfortable quarters, and if she
could find company and join him, they would be married, and gain so many
more months of happiness.
Was woman ever prudent when she loved? Laura went to Harding, the
neighbors supposed to nurse Washington who had fallen ill there.
Her engagement was, of course, known in Hawkeye, and was indeed a matter
of pride to her family. Mrs. Hawkins would have told the first inquirer
that. Laura had gone to be married; but Laura had cautioned her; she did
not want to be thought of, she said, as going in search of a husband; let
the news come back after she was married.
So she traveled to Harding on the pretence we have mentioned, and was
married. She was married, but something must have happened on that very
day or the next that alarmed her. Washington did not know then or after
what it was, but Laura bound him not to send news of her marriage to
Hawkeye yet, and to enjoin her mother not to speak of it. Whatever cruel
suspicion or nameless dread this was, Laura tried bravely to put it away,
and not let it cloud her happiness.
Communication that summer, as may be imagined, was neither regular nor
frequent between the remote confederate camp at Harding and Hawkeye, and
Laura was in a measure lost sight of--indeed, everyone had troubles
enough of his own without borrowing from his neighbors.
Laura had given herself utterly to her husband, and if he had faults, if
he was selfish, if he was sometimes coarse, if he was dissipated, she did
not or would not see it. It was the passion of her life, the time when
her whole nature went to flood tide and swept away all barriers. Was her
husband ever cold or indifferent? She shut her eyes to everything but
her sense of possession of her idol.
Three months passed. One morning her husband informed her that he had
been ordered South, and must go within two hours.
"I can be ready," said Laura, cheerfully.
"But I can't take you. You must go back to Hawkeye."
"Can't-take-me?" Laura asked, with wonder in her eyes. "I can't live
without you. You said-----"
"O bother what I said,"--and the Colonel took up his sword to buckle it
on, and then continued coolly, "the fact is Laura, our romance is played
out."
Laura heard, but she did not comprehend. She caught his arm and cried,
"George, how can you joke so cruelly? I will go any where with you.
I will wait any where. I can't go back to Hawkeye."
"Well, go where you like. Perhaps," continued he with a sneer, "you
would do as well to wait here, for another colonel."
Laura's brain whirled. She did not yet comprehend. "What does this
mean? Where are you going?"
"It means," said the officer, in measured words, "that you haven't
anything to show for a legal marriage, and that I am going to New
Orleans."
"It's a lie, George, it's a lie. I am your wife. I shall go. I shall
follow you to New Orleans."
"Perhaps my wife might not like it!"
Laura raised her head, her eyes flamed with fire, she tried to utter a
cry, and fell senseless on the floor.
When she came to herself the Colonel was gone. Washington Hawkins stood
at her bedside. Did she come to herself? Was there anything left in her
heart but hate and bitterness, a sense of an infamous wrong at the hands
of the only man she had ever loved?
She returned to Hawkeye. With the exception of Washington and his
mother, no one knew what had happened. The neighbors supposed that the
engagement with Col. Selby had fallen through. Laura was ill for a long
time, but she recovered; she had that resolution in her that could
conquer death almost. And with her health came back her beauty, and an
added fascination, a something that might be mistaken for sadness. Is
there a beauty in the knowledge of evil, a beauty that shines out in the
face of a person whose inward life is transformed by some terrible
experience? Is the pathos in the eyes of the Beatrice Cenci from her
guilt or her innocence?
Laura was not much changed. The lovely woman had a devil in her heart.
That was all.
CHAPTER XIX.
Mr. Harry Brierly drew his pay as an engineer while he was living at the
City Hotel in Hawkeye. Mr. Thompson had been kind enough to say that it
didn't make any difference whether he was with the corps or not; and
although Harry protested to the Colonel daily and to Washington Hawkins
that he must go back at once to the line and superintend the lay-out with
reference to his contract, yet he did not go, but wrote instead long
letters to Philip, instructing him to keep his eye out, and to let him
know when any difficulty occurred that required his presence.
Meantime Harry blossomed out in the society of Hawkeye, as he did in any
society where fortune cast him and he had the slightest opportunity to
expand. Indeed the talents of a rich and accomplished young fellow like
Harry were not likely to go unappreciated in such a place. A land
operator, engaged in vast speculations, a favorite in the select circles
of New York, in correspondence with brokers and bankers, intimate with
public men at Washington, one who could play the guitar and touch the
banjo lightly, and who had an eye for a pretty girl, and knew the
language of flattery, was welcome everywhere in Hawkeye. Even Miss Laura
Hawkins thought it worth while to use her fascinations upon him, and to
endeavor to entangle the volatile fellow in the meshes of her
attractions.
"Gad," says Harry to the Colonel, "she's a superb creature, she'd make a
stir in New York, money or no money. There are men I know would give her
a railroad or an opera house, or whatever she wanted--at least they'd
promise."
Harry had a way of looking at women as he looked at anything else in the
world he wanted, and he half resolved to appropriate Miss Laura, during
his stay in Hawkeye. Perhaps the Colonel divined his thoughts, or was
offended at Harry's talk, for he replied,
"No nonsense, Mr. Brierly. Nonsense won't do in Hawkeye, not with my
friends. The Hawkins' blood is good blood, all the way from Tennessee.
The Hawkinses are under the weather now, but their Tennessee property is
millions when it comes into market."
"Of course, Colonel. Not the least offense intended. But you can see
she is a fascinating woman. I was only thinking, as to this
appropriation, now, what such a woman could do in Washington. All
correct, too, all correct. Common thing, I assure you in Washington; the
wives of senators, representatives, cabinet officers, all sorts of wives,
and some who are not wives, use their influence. You want an
appointment? Do you go to Senator X? Not much. You get on the right
side of his wife. Is it an appropriation? You'd go 'straight to the
Committee, or to the Interior office, I suppose? You'd learn better than
that. It takes a woman to get any thing through the Land Office: I tell
you, Miss Laura would fascinate an appropriation right through the Senate
and the House of Representatives in one session, if she was in
Washington, as your friend, Colonel, of course as your friend."
"Would you have her sign our petition?" asked the Colonel, innocently.
Harry laughed. "Women don't get anything by petitioning Congress; nobody
does, that's for form. Petitions are referred somewhere, and that's the
last of them; you can't refer a handsome woman so easily, when she is
present. They prefer 'em mostly."
The petition however was elaborately drawn up, with a glowing description
of Napoleon and the adjacent country, and a statement of the absolute
necessity to the prosperity of that region and of one of the stations on
the great through route to the Pacific, of the, immediate improvement of
Columbus River; to this was appended a map of the city and a survey of
the river. It was signed by all the people at Stone's Landing who could
write their names, by Col. Beriah Sellers, and the Colonel agreed to have
the names headed by all the senators and representatives from the state
and by a sprinkling of ex-governors and ex-members of congress. When
completed it was a formidable document. Its preparation and that of more
minute plots of the new city consumed the valuable time of Sellers and
Harry for many weeks, and served to keep them both in the highest
spirits.
In the eyes of Washington Hawkins, Harry was a superior being, a man who
was able to bring things to pass in a way that excited his enthusiasm.
He never tired of listening to his stories of what he had done and of
what he was going to do. As for Washington, Harry thought he was a man
of ability and comprehension, but "too visionary," he told the Colonel.
The Colonel said he might be right, but he had never noticed anything
visionary about him.
"He's got his plans, sir. God bless my soul, at his age, I was full of
plans. But experience sobers a man, I never touch any thing now that
hasn't been weighed in my judgment; and when Beriah Sellers puts his
judgment on a thing, there it is."
Whatever might have been Harry's intentions with regard to Laura, he saw
more and more of her every day, until he got to be restless and nervous
when he was not with her.
That consummate artist in passion allowed him to believe that the
fascination was mainly on his side, and so worked upon his vanity, while
inflaming his ardor, that he scarcely knew what he was about. Her
coolness and coyness were even made to appear the simple precautions of a
modest timidity, and attracted him even more than the little tendernesses
into which she was occasionally surprised. He could never be away from
her long, day or evening; and in a short time their intimacy was the town
talk. She played with him so adroitly that Harry thought she was
absorbed in love for him, and yet he was amazed that he did not get on
faster in his conquest.
And when he thought of it, he was piqued as well. A country girl, poor
enough, that was evident; living with her family in a cheap and most
unattractive frame house, such as carpenters build in America, scantily
furnished and unadorned; without the adventitious aids of dress or jewels
or the fine manners of society--Harry couldn't understand it. But she
fascinated him, and held him just beyond the line of absolute familiarity
at the same time. While he was with her she made him forget that the
Hawkins' house was nothing but a wooden tenement, with four small square
rooms on the ground floor and a half story; it might have been a palace
for aught he knew.
Perhaps Laura was older than Harry. She was, at any rate, at that ripe
age when beauty in woman seems more solid than in the budding period of
girlhood, and she had come to understand her powers perfectly, and to
know exactly how much of the susceptibility and archness of the girl it
was profitable to retain. She saw that many women, with the best
intentions, make a mistake of carrying too much girlishness into
womanhood. Such a woman would have attracted Harry at any time, but only
a woman with a cool brain and exquisite art could have made him lose his
head in this way; for Harry thought himself a man of the world. The
young fellow never dreamed that he was merely being experimented on; he
was to her a man of another society and another culture, different from
that she had any knowledge of except in books, and she was not unwilling
to try on him the fascinations of her mind and person.
For Laura had her dreams. She detested the narrow limits in which her
lot was cast, she hated poverty. Much of her reading had been of modern
works of fiction, written by her own sex, which had revealed to her
something of her own powers and given her indeed, an exaggerated notion
of the influence, the wealth, the position a woman may attain who has
beauty and talent and ambition and a little culture, and is not too
scrupulous in the use of them. She wanted to be rich, she wanted luxury,
she wanted men at her feet, her slaves, and she had not--thanks to some
of the novels she had read--the nicest discrimination between notoriety
and reputation; perhaps she did not know how fatal notoriety usually is
to the bloom of womanhood.
With the other Hawkins children Laura had been brought up in the belief
that they had inherited a fortune in the Tennessee Lands. She did not by
any means share all the delusion of the family; but her brain was not
seldom busy with schemes about it. Washington seemed to her only to
dream of it and to be willing to wait for its riches to fall upon him in
a golden shower; but she was impatient, and wished she were a man to take
hold of the business.
"You men must enjoy your schemes and your activity and liberty to go
about the world," she said to Harry one day, when he had been talking of
New York and Washington and his incessant engagements.
"Oh, yes," replied that martyr to business, "it's all well enough, if you
don't have too much of it, but it only has one object."
"What is that?"
"If a woman doesn't know, it's useless to tell her. What do you suppose
I am staying in Hawkeye for, week after week, when I ought to be with my
corps?"
"I suppose it's your business with Col. Sellers about Napoleon, you've
always told me so," answered Laura, with a look intended to contradict
her words.
"And now I tell you that is all arranged, I suppose you'll tell me I
ought to go?"
"Harry!" exclaimed Laura, touching his arm and letting her pretty hand
rest there a moment. "Why should I want you to go away? The only person
in Hawkeye who understands me."
"But you refuse to understand me," replied Harry, flattered but still
petulant. "You are like an iceberg, when we are alone."
Laura looked up with wonder in her great eyes, and something like a blush
suffusing her face, followed by a look of langour that penetrated Harry's
heart as if it had been longing.
"Did I ever show any want of confidence in you, Harry?" And she gave him
her hand, which Harry pressed with effusion--something in her manner told
him that he must be content with that favor.
It was always so. She excited his hopes and denied him, inflamed his
passion and restrained it, and wound him in her toils day by day. To
what purpose? It was keen delight to Laura to prove that she had power
over men.
Laura liked to hear about life at the east, and especially about the
luxurious society in which Mr. Brierly moved when he was at home. It
pleased her imagination to fancy herself a queen in it.
"You should be a winter in Washington," Harry said.
"But I have no acquaintances there."
"Don't know any of the families of the congressmen? They like to have a
pretty woman staying with them."
"Not one."
"Suppose Col. Sellers should, have business there; say, about this
Columbus River appropriation?"
"Sellers!" and Laura laughed.
"You needn't laugh. Queerer things have happened. Sellers knows
everybody from Missouri, and from the West, too, for that matter. He'd
introduce you to Washington life quick enough. It doesn't need a crowbar
to break your way into society there as it does in Philadelphia. It's
democratic, Washington is. Money or beauty will open any door. If I
were a handsome woman, I shouldn't want any better place than the capital
to pick up a prince or a fortune."
"Thank you," replied Laura. "But I prefer the quiet of home, and the
love of those I know;" and her face wore a look of sweet contentment and
unworldliness that finished Mr. Harry Brierly for the day.
Nevertheless, the hint that Harry had dropped fell upon good ground, and
bore fruit an hundred fold; it worked in her mind until she had built up
a plan on it, and almost a career for herself. Why not, she said, why
shouldn't I do as other women have done? She took the first opportunity
to see Col. Sellers, and to sound him about the Washington visit. How
was he getting on with his navigation scheme, would it be likely to take
him from home to Jefferson City; or to Washington, perhaps?
"Well, maybe. If the people of Napoleon want me to go to Washington, and
look after that matter, I might tear myself from my home. It's been
suggested to me, but--not a word of it to Mrs. Sellers and the children.
Maybe they wouldn't like to think of their father in Washington. But
Dilworthy, Senator Dilworthy, says to me, 'Colonel, you are the man, you
could influence more votes than any one else on such a measure, an old
settler, a man of the people, you know the wants of Missouri; you've a
respect for religion too, says he, and know how the cause of the gospel
goes with improvements: Which is true enough, Miss Laura, and hasn't been
enough thought of in connection with Napoleon. He's an able man,
Dilworthy, and a good man. A man has got to be good to succeed as he
has. He's only been in Congress a few years, and he must be worth a
million. First thing in the morning when he stayed with me he asked
about family prayers, whether we had 'em before or after breakfast.
I hated to disappoint the Senator, but I had to out with it, tell him we
didn't have 'em, not steady. He said he understood, business
interruptions and all that, some men were well enough without, but as for
him he never neglected the ordinances of religion. He doubted if the
Columbus River appropriation would succeed if we did not invoke the
Divine Blessing on it."
Perhaps it is unnecessary to say to the reader that Senator Dilworthy had
not stayed with Col. Sellers while he was in Hawkeye; this visit to his
house being only one of the Colonel's hallucinations--one of those
instant creations of his fertile fancy, which were always flashing into
his brain and out of his mouth in the course of any conversation and
without interrupting the flow of it.
During the summer Philip rode across the country and made a short visit
in Hawkeye, giving Harry an opportunity to show him the progress that he
and the Colonel had made in their operation at Stone's Landing, to
introduce him also to Laura, and to borrow a little money when he
departed. Harry bragged about his conquest, as was his habit, and took
Philip round to see his western prize.
Laura received Mr. Philip with a courtesy and a slight hauteur that
rather surprised and not a little interested him. He saw at once that
she was older than Harry, and soon made up his mind that she was leading
his friend a country dance to which he was unaccustomed. At least he
thought he saw that, and half hinted as much to Harry, who flared up at
once; but on a second visit Philip was not so sure, the young lady was
certainly kind and friendly and almost confiding with Harry, and treated
Philip with the greatest consideration. She deferred to his opinions,
and listened attentively when he talked, and in time met his frank manner
with an equal frankness, so that he was quite convinced that whatever she
might feel towards Harry, she was sincere with him. Perhaps his manly
way did win her liking. Perhaps in her mind, she compared him with
Harry, and recognized in him a man to whom a woman might give her whole
soul, recklessly and with little care if she lost it. Philip was not
invincible to her beauty nor to the intellectual charm of her presence.
The week seemed very short that he passed in Hawkeye, and when he bade
Laura good by, he seemed to have known her a year.
"We shall see you again, Mr. Sterling," she said as she gave him her
hand, with just a shade of sadness in her handsome eyes.
And when he turned away she followed him with a look that might have
disturbed his serenity, if he had not at the moment had a little square
letter in his breast pocket, dated at Philadelphia, and signed "Ruth."
CHAPTER XX.
The visit of Senator Abner Dilworthy was an event in Hawkeye. When a
Senator, whose place is in Washington moving among the Great and guiding
the destinies of the nation, condescends to mingle among the people and
accept the hospitalities of such a place as Hawkeye, the honor is not
considered a light one. All, parties are flattered by it and politics
are forgotten in the presence of one so distinguished among his fellows.
Senator Dilworthy, who was from a neighboring state, had been a Unionist
in the darkest days of his country, and had thriven by it, but was that
any reason why Col. Sellers, who had been a confederate and had not
thriven by it, should give him the cold shoulder?
The Senator was the guest of his old friend Gen. Boswell, but it almost
appeared that he was indebted to Col. Sellers for the unreserved
hospitalities of the town. It was the large hearted Colonel who, in a
manner, gave him the freedom of the city.
"You are known here, sir," said the Colonel, "and Hawkeye is proud of
you. You will find every door open, and a welcome at every hearthstone.
I should insist upon your going to my house, if you were not claimed by
your older friend Gen. Boswell. But you will mingle with our people, and
you will see here developments that will surprise you."
The Colonel was so profuse in his hospitality that he must have made the
impression upon himself that he had entertained the Senator at his own
mansion during his stay; at any rate, he afterwards always spoke of him
as his guest, and not seldom referred to the Senator's relish of certain
viands on his table. He did, in fact, press him to dine upon the morning
of the day the Senator was going away.
Senator Dilworthy was large and portly, though not tall--a pleasant
spoken man, a popular man with the people.
He took a lively interest in the town and all the surrounding country,
and made many inquiries as to the progress of agriculture, of education,
and of religion, and especially as to the condition of the emancipated
race.
"Providence," he said, "has placed them in our hands, and although you
and I, General, might have chosen a different destiny for them, under the
Constitution, yet Providence knows best."
"You can't do much with 'em," interrupted Col. Sellers. "They are a
speculating race, sir, disinclined to work for white folks without
security, planning how to live by only working for themselves. Idle,
sir, there's my garden just a ruin of weeds. Nothing practical in 'em."
"There is some truth in your observation, Colonel, but you must educate
them."
"You educate the niggro and you make him more speculating than he was
before. If he won't stick to any industry except for himself now, what
will he do then?"
"But, Colonel, the negro when educated will be more able to make his
speculations fruitful."
"Never, sir, never. He would only have a wider scope to injure himself.
A niggro has no grasp, sir. Now, a white man can conceive great
operations, and carry them out; a niggro can't."
"Still," replied the Senator, "granting that he might injure himself in a
worldly point of view, his elevation through education would multiply his
chances for the hereafter--which is the important thing after all,
Colonel. And no matter what the result is, we must fulfill our duty by
this being."
"I'd elevate his soul," promptly responded the Colonel; "that's just it;
you can't make his soul too immortal, but I wouldn't touch him, himself.
Yes, sir! make his soul immortal, but don't disturb the niggro as he
is."
Of course one of the entertainments offered the Senator was a public
reception, held in the court house, at which he made a speech to his
fellow citizens. Col. Sellers was master of ceremonies. He escorted the
band from the city hotel to Gen. Boswell's; he marshalled the procession
of Masons, of Odd Fellows, and of Firemen, the Good Templars, the Sons of
Temperance, the Cadets of Temperance, the Daughters of Rebecca, the
Sunday School children, and citizens generally, which followed the
Senator to the court house; he bustled about the room long after every
one else was seated, and loudly cried "Order!" in the dead silence which
preceded the introduction of the Senator by Gen. Boswell. The occasion
was one to call out his finest powers of personal appearance, and one he
long dwelt on with pleasure.
This not being an edition of the Congressional Globe it is impossible to
give Senator Dilworthy's speech in full. He began somewhat as follows:
"Fellow citizens: It gives me great pleasure to thus meet and mingle with
you, to lay aside for a moment the heavy duties of an official and
burdensome station, and confer in familiar converse with my friends in
your great state. The good opinion of my fellow citizens of all sections
is the sweetest solace in all my anxieties. I look forward with longing
to the time when I can lay aside the cares of office--" ["dam sight,"
shouted a tipsy fellow near the door. Cries of "put him out."]
"My friends, do not remove him. Let the misguided man stay. I see that
he is a victim of that evil which is swallowing up public virtue and
sapping the foundation of society. As I was saying, when I can lay down
the cares of office and retire to the sweets of private life in some such
sweet, peaceful, intelligent, wide-awake and patriotic place as Hawkeye
(applause). I have traveled much, I have seen all parts of our glorious
union, but I have never seen a lovelier village than yours, or one that
has more signs of commercial and industrial and religious prosperity
--(more applause)."
The Senator then launched into a sketch of our great country, and dwelt
for an hour or more upon its prosperity and the dangers which threatened
it.
He then touched reverently upon the institutions of religion, and upon
the necessity of private purity, if we were to have any public morality.
"I trust," he said, "that there are children within the sound of my
voice," and after some remarks to them, the Senator closed with an
apostrophe to "the genius of American Liberty, walking with the Sunday
School in one hand and Temperance in the other up the glorified steps of
the National Capitol."
Col. Sellers did not of course lose the opportunity to impress upon so
influential a person as the Senator the desirability of improving the
navigation of Columbus river. He and Mr. Brierly took the Senator over
to Napoleon and opened to him their plan. It was a plan that the Senator
could understand without a great deal of explanation, for he seemed to be
familiar with the like improvements elsewhere. When, however, they
reached Stone's Landing the Senator looked about him and inquired,
"Is this Napoleon?"
"This is the nucleus, the nucleus," said the Colonel, unrolling his map.
"Here is the deepo, the church, the City Hall and so on."
"Ah, I see. How far from here is Columbus River? Does that stream
empty----"
"That, why, that's Goose Run. Thar ain't no Columbus, thout'n it's over
to Hawkeye," interrupted one of the citizens, who had come out to stare
at the strangers. "A railroad come here last summer, but it haint been
here no mo'."
"Yes, sir," the Colonel hastened to explain, "in the old records
Columbus River is called Goose Run. You see how it sweeps round the
town--forty-nine miles to the Missouri; sloop navigation all the way
pretty much, drains this whole country; when it's improved steamboats
will run right up here. It's got to be enlarged, deepened. You see by
the map. Columbus River. This country must have water communication!"
"You'll want a considerable appropriation, Col. Sellers.
"I should say a million; is that your figure Mr. Brierly."
"According to our surveys," said Harry, "a million would do it; a million
spent on the river would make Napoleon worth two millions at least."
"I see," nodded the Senator. "But you'd better begin by asking only for
two or three hundred thousand, the usual way. You can begin to sell town
lots on that appropriation you know."
The Senator, himself, to do him justice, was not very much interested in
the country or the stream, but he favored the appropriation, and he gave
the Colonel and Mr. Brierly to and understand that he would endeavor to
get it through. Harry, who thought he was shrewd and understood
Washington, suggested an interest.
But he saw that the Senator was wounded by the suggestion.
"You will offend me by repeating such an observation," he said.
"Whatever I do will be for the public interest. It will require a
portion of the appropriation for necessary expenses, and I am sorry to
say that there are members who will have to be seen. But you can reckon
upon my humble services."
This aspect of the subject was not again alluded to. The Senator
possessed himself of the facts, not from his observation of the ground,
but from the lips of Col. Sellers, and laid the appropriation scheme away
among his other plans for benefiting the public.
It was on this visit also that the Senator made the acquaintance of Mr.
Washington Hawkins, and was greatly taken with his innocence, his
guileless manner and perhaps with his ready adaptability to enter upon
any plan proposed.
Col. Sellers was pleased to see this interest that Washington had
awakened, especially since it was likely to further his expectations with
regard to the Tennessee lands; the Senator having remarked to the
Colonel, that he delighted to help any deserving young man, when the
promotion of a private advantage could at the same time be made to
contribute to the general good. And he did not doubt that this was an
opportunity of that kind.
The result of several conferences with Washington was that the Senator
proposed that he should go to Washington with him and become his private
secretary and the secretary of his committee; a proposal which was
eagerly accepted.
The Senator spent Sunday in Hawkeye and attended church. He cheered the
heart of the worthy and zealous minister by an expression of his sympathy
in his labors, and by many inquiries in regard to the religious state of
the region. It was not a very promising state, and the good man felt how
much lighter his task would be, if he had the aid of such a man as
Senator Dilworthy.
"I am glad to see, my dear sir," said the Senator, "that you give them
the doctrines. It is owing to a neglect of the doctrines, that there is
such a fearful falling away in the country. I wish that we might have
you in Washington--as chaplain, now, in the senate."
The good man could not but be a little flattered, and if sometimes,
thereafter, in his discouraging work, he allowed the thought that he
might perhaps be called to Washington as chaplain of the Senate, to cheer
him, who can wonder. The Senator's commendation at least did one service
for him, it elevated him in the opinion of Hawkeye.
Laura was at church alone that day, and Mr. Brierly walked home with her.
A part of their way lay with that of General Boswell and Senator
Dilworthy, and introductions were made. Laura had her own reasons for
wishing to know the Senator, and the Senator was not a man who could be
called indifferent to charms such as hers. That meek young lady so
commended herself to him in the short walk, that he announced his
intentions of paying his respects to her the next day, an intention which
Harry received glumly; and when the Senator was out of hearing he called
him "an old fool."
"Fie," said Laura, "I do believe you are jealous, Harry. He is a very
pleasant man. He said you were a young man of great promise."
The Senator did call next day, and the result of his visit was that he
was confirmed in his impression that there was something about him very
attractive to ladies. He saw Laura again and again daring his stay, and
felt more and more the subtle influence of her feminine beauty, which
every man felt who came near her.
Harry was beside himself with rage while the Senator remained in town;
he declared that women were always ready to drop any man for higher game;
and he attributed his own ill-luck to the Senator's appearance. The
fellow was in fact crazy about her beauty and ready to beat his brains
out in chagrin. Perhaps Laura enjoyed his torment, but she soothed him
with blandishments that increased his ardor, and she smiled to herself to
think that he had, with all his protestations of love, never spoken of
marriage. Probably the vivacious fellow never had thought of it. At any
rate when he at length went away from Hawkeye he was no nearer it. But
there was no telling to what desperate lengths his passion might not
carry him.
Laura bade him good bye with tender regret, which, however, did not
disturb her peace or interfere with her plans. The visit of Senator
Dilworthy had become of more importance to her, and it by and by bore the
fruit she longed for, in an invitation to visit his family in the
National Capital during the winter session of Congress.
CHAPTER XXI.
O lift your natures up:
Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls,
Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed;
Drink deep until the habits of the slave,
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite
And slander, die.
The Princess.
Whether medicine is a science, or only an empirical method of getting a
living out of the ignorance of the human race, Ruth found before her
first term was over at the medical school that there were other things
she needed to know quite as much as that which is taught in medical
books, and that she could never satisfy her aspirations without more
general culture.
"Does your doctor know any thing--I don't mean about medicine, but about
things in general, is he a man of information and good sense?" once asked
an old practitioner. "If he doesn't know any thing but medicine the
chance is he doesn't know that:"
The close application to her special study was beginning to tell upon
Ruth's delicate health also, and the summer brought with it only
weariness and indisposition for any mental effort.
In this condition of mind and body the quiet of her home and the
unexciting companionship of those about her were more than ever tiresome.
She followed with more interest Philip's sparkling account of his life
in the west, and longed for his experiences, and to know some of those
people of a world so different from here, who alternately amused and
displeased him. He at least was learning the world, the good and the bad
of it, as must happen to every one who accomplishes anything in it.
But what, Ruth wrote, could a woman do, tied up by custom, and cast into
particular circumstances out of which it was almost impossible to
extricate herself? Philip thought that he would go some day and
extricate Ruth, but he did not write that, for he had the instinct to
know that this was not the extrication she dreamed of, and that she must
find out by her own experience what her heart really wanted.
Philip was not a philosopher, to be sure, but he had the old fashioned
notion, that whatever a woman's theories of life might be, she would come
round to matrimony, only give her time. He could indeed recall to mind
one woman--and he never knew a nobler--whose whole soul was devoted and
who believed that her life was consecrated to a certain benevolent
project in singleness of life, who yielded to the touch of matrimony, as
an icicle yields to a sunbeam.
Neither at home nor elsewhere did Ruth utter any complaint, or admit any
weariness or doubt of her ability to pursue the path she had marked out
for herself. But her mother saw clearly enough her struggle with
infirmity, and was not deceived by either her gaiety or by the cheerful
composure which she carried into all the ordinary duties that fell to
her. She saw plainly enough that Ruth needed an entire change of scene
and of occupation, and perhaps she believed that such a change, with the
knowledge of the world it would bring, would divert Ruth from a course
for which she felt she was physically entirely unfitted.
It therefore suited the wishes of all concerned, when autumn came, that
Ruth should go away to school. She selected a large New England
Seminary, of which she had often heard Philip speak, which was attended
by both sexes and offered almost collegiate advantages of education.
Thither she went in September, and began for the second time in the year
a life new to her.
The Seminary was the chief feature of Fallkill, a village of two to three
thousand inhabitants. It was a prosperous school, with three hundred
students, a large corps of teachers, men and women, and with a venerable
rusty row of academic buildings on the shaded square of the town. The
students lodged and boarded in private families in the place, and so it
came about that while the school did a great deal to support the town,
the town gave the students society and the sweet influences of home life.
It is at least respectful to say that the influences of home life are
sweet.
Ruth's home, by the intervention of Philip, was in a family--one of the
rare exceptions in life or in fiction--that had never known better days.
The Montagues, it is perhaps well to say, had intended to come over in
the Mayflower, but were detained at Delft Haven by the illness of a
child. They came over to Massachusetts Bay in another vessel, and thus
escaped the onus of that brevet nobility under which the successors of
the Mayflower Pilgrims have descended. Having no factitious weight of
dignity to carry, the Montagues steadily improved their condition from
the day they landed, and they were never more vigorous or prosperous than
at the date of this narrative. With character compacted by the rigid
Puritan discipline of more than two centuries, they had retained its
strength and purity and thrown off its narrowness, and were now
blossoming under the generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague,
a lawyer who had retired from the practice of his profession except in
rare cases, dwelt in a square old fashioned New England mansion a quarter
of a mile away from the green. It was called a mansion because it stood
alone with ample fields about it, and had an avenue of trees leading to
it from the road, and on the west commanded a view of a pretty little
lake with gentle slopes and nodding were now blossoming under the
generous modern influences. Squire Oliver Montague, a lawyer who
had retired from the practice of his profession except in rare cases,
dwelt in a square old fashioned New England groves. But it was just
a plain, roomy house, capable of extending to many guests an
unpretending hospitality.
The family consisted of the Squire and his wife, a son and a daughter
married and not at home, a son in college at Cambridge, another son at
the Seminary, and a daughter Alice, who was a year or more older than
Ruth. Having only riches enough to be able to gratify reasonable
desires, and yet make their gratifications always a novelty and a
pleasure, the family occupied that just mean in life which is so rarely
attained, and still more rarely enjoyed without discontent.
If Ruth did not find so much luxury in the house as in her own home,
there were evidences of culture, of intellectual activity and of a zest
in the affairs of all the world, which greatly impressed her. Every room
had its book-cases or book-shelves, and was more or less a library; upon
every table was liable to be a litter of new books, fresh periodicals and
daily newspapers. There were plants in the sunny windows and some choice
engravings on the walls, with bits of color in oil or water-colors;
the piano was sure to be open and strewn with music; and there were
photographs and little souvenirs here and there of foreign travel.
An absence of any "what-pots" in the corners with rows of cheerful
shells, and Hindoo gods, and Chinese idols, and nests of use less boxes
of lacquered wood, might be taken as denoting a languidness in the family
concerning foreign missions, but perhaps unjustly.
At any rate the life of the world flowed freely into this hospitable
house, and there was always so much talk there of the news of the day,
of the new books and of authors, of Boston radicalism and New York
civilization, and the virtue of Congress, that small gossip stood a very
poor chance.
All this was in many ways so new to Ruth that she seemed to have passed
into another world, in which she experienced a freedom and a mental
exhilaration unknown to her before. Under this influence she entered
upon her studies with keen enjoyment, finding for a time all the
relaxation she needed, in the charming social life at the Montague house.
It is strange, she wrote to Philip, in one of her occasional letters,
that you never told me more about this delightful family, and scarcely
mentioned Alice who is the life of it, just the noblest girl, unselfish,
knows how to do so many things, with lots of talent, with a dry humor,
and an odd way of looking at things, and yet quiet and even serious
often--one of your "capable" New England girls. We shall be great
friends. It had never occurred to Philip that there was any thing
extraordinary about the family that needed mention. He knew dozens of
girls like Alice, he thought to himself, but only one like Ruth.
Good friends the two girls were from the beginning. Ruth was a study to
Alice; the product of a culture entirely foreign to her experience, so
much a child in some things, so much a woman in others; and Ruth in turn,
it must be confessed, probing Alice sometimes with her serious grey eyes,
wondered what her object in life was, and whether she had any purpose
beyond living as she now saw her. For she could scarcely conceive of a
life that should not be devoted to the accomplishment of some definite
work, and she had-no doubt that in her own case everything else would
yield to the professional career she had marked out.
"So you know Philip Sterling," said Ruth one day as the girls sat at
their sewing. Ruth never embroidered, and never sewed when she could
avoid it. Bless her.
"Oh yes, we are old friends. Philip used to come to Fallkill often while
he was in college. He was once rusticated here for a term."
"Rusticated?"
"Suspended for some College scrape. He was a great favorite here.
Father and he were famous friends. Father said that Philip had no end of
nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a
royal good fellow and would come out all right."
"Did you think he was fickle?"
"Why, I never thought whether he was or not," replied Alice looking up.
"I suppose he was always in love with some girl or another, as college
boys are. He used to make me his confidant now and then, and be terribly
in the dumps."
"Why did he come to you?" pursued Ruth you were younger than he."
"I'm sure I don't know. He was at our house a good deal. Once at a
picnic by the lake, at the risk of his own life, he saved sister Millie
from drowning, and we all liked to have him here. Perhaps he thought as
he had saved one sister, the other ought to help him when he was in
trouble. I don't know."
The fact was that Alice was a person who invited confidences, because she
never betrayed them, and gave abundant sympathy in return. There are
persons, whom we all know, to whom human confidences, troubles and
heart-aches flow as naturally its streams to a placid lake.
This is not a history of Fallkill, nor of the Montague family, worthy as
both are of that honor, and this narrative cannot be diverted into long
loitering with them. If the reader visits the village to-day, he will
doubtless be pointed out the Montague dwelling, where Ruth lived, the
cross-lots path she traversed to the Seminary, and the venerable chapel
with its cracked bell.
In the little society of the place, the Quaker girl was a favorite, and
no considerable social gathering or pleasure party was thought complete
without her. There was something in this seemingly transparent and yet
deep character, in her childlike gaiety and enjoyment of the society
about her, and in her not seldom absorption in herself, that would have
made her long remembered there if no events had subsequently occurred to
recall her to mind.
To the surprise of Alice, Ruth took to the small gaieties of the village
with a zest of enjoyment that seemed foreign to one who had devoted her
life to a serious profession from the highest motives. Alice liked
society well enough, she thought, but there was nothing exciting in that
of Fallkill, nor anything novel in the attentions of the well-bred young
gentlemen one met in it. It must have worn a different aspect to Ruth,
for she entered into its pleasures at first with curiosity, and then with
interest and finally with a kind of staid abandon that no one would have
deemed possible for her. Parties, picnics, rowing-matches, moonlight
strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods,--Alice declared that
it was a whirl of dissipation. The fondness of Ruth, which was scarcely
disguised, for the company of agreeable young fellows, who talked
nothings, gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter.
"Do you look upon them as I subjects, dear?" she would ask.
And Ruth laughed her merriest laugh, and then looked sober again.
Perhaps she was thinking, after all, whether she knew herself.
If you should rear a duck in the heart of the Sahara, no doubt it would
swim if you brought it to the Nile.
Surely no one would have predicted when Ruth left Philadelphia that she
would become absorbed to this extent, and so happy, in a life so unlike
that she thought she desired. But no one can tell how a woman will act
under any circumstances. The reason novelists nearly always fail in
depicting women when they make them act, is that they let them do what
they have observed some woman has done at sometime or another. And that
is where they make a mistake; for a woman will never do again what has
been done before. It is this uncertainty that causes women, considered
as materials for fiction, to be so interesting to themselves and to
others.
As the fall went on and the winter, Ruth did not distinguish herself
greatly at the Fallkill Seminary as a student, a fact that apparently
gave her no anxiety, and did not diminish her enjoyment of a new sort of
power which had awakened within her.
CHAPTER XXII.
In mid-winter, an event occurred of unusual interest to the inhabitants
of the Montague house, and to the friends of the young ladies who sought
their society.
This was the arrival at the Sassacua Hotel of two young gentlemen from
the west.
It is the fashion in New England to give Indian names to the public
houses, not that the late lamented savage knew how to keep a hotel, but
that his warlike name may impress the traveler who humbly craves shelter
there, and make him grateful to the noble and gentlemanly clerk if he is
allowed to depart with his scalp safe.
The two young gentlemen were neither students for the Fallkill Seminary,
nor lecturers on physiology, nor yet life assurance solicitors, three
suppositions that almost exhausted the guessing power of the people at
the hotel in respect to the names of "Philip Sterling and Henry Brierly,
Missouri," on the register. They were handsome enough fellows, that was
evident, browned by out-door exposure, and with a free and lordly way
about them that almost awed the hotel clerk himself. Indeed, he very
soon set down Mr. Brierly as a gentleman of large fortune, with enormous
interests on his shoulders. Harry had a way of casually mentioning
western investments, through lines, the freighting business, and the
route through the Indian territory to Lower California, which was
calculated to give an importance to his lightest word.
"You've a pleasant town here, sir, and the most comfortable looking hotel
I've seen out of New York," said Harry to the clerk; "we shall stay here
a few days if you can give us a roomy suite of apartments."
Harry usually had the best of everything, wherever he went, as such
fellows always do have in this accommodating world. Philip would have
been quite content with less expensive quarters, but there was no
resisting Harry's generosity in such matters.
Railroad surveying and real-estate operations were at a standstill during
the winter in Missouri, and the young men had taken advantage of the lull
to come east, Philip to see if there was any disposition in his friends,
the railway contractors, to give him a share in the Salt Lick Union
Pacific Extension, and Harry to open out to his uncle the prospects of
the new city at Stone's Landing, and to procure congressional
appropriations for the harbor and for making Goose Run navigable. Harry
had with him a map of that noble stream and of the harbor, with a perfect
net-work of railroads centering in it, pictures of wharves, crowded with
steamboats, and of huge grain-elevators on the bank, all of which grew
out of the combined imaginations of Col. Sellers and Mr. Brierly. The
Colonel had entire confidence in Harry's influence with Wall street, and
with congressmen, to bring about the consummation of their scheme, and he
waited his return in the empty house at Hawkeye, feeding his pinched
family upon the most gorgeous expectations with a reckless prodigality.
"Don't let 'em into the thing more than is necessary," says the Colonel
to Harry; "give 'em a small interest; a lot apiece in the suburbs of the
Landing ought to do a congressman, but I reckon you'll have to mortgage a
part of the city itself to the brokers."
Harry did not find that eagerness to lend money on Stone's Landing in
Wall street which Col. Sellers had expected, (it had seen too many such
maps as he exhibited), although his uncle and some of the brokers looked
with more favor on the appropriation for improving the navigation of
Columbus River, and were not disinclined to form a company for that
purpose. An appropriation was a tangible thing, if you could get hold of
it, and it made little difference what it was appropriated for, so long
as you got hold of it.
Pending these weighty negotiations, Philip has persuaded Harry to take a
little run up to Fallkill, a not difficult task, for that young man would
at any time have turned his back upon all the land in the West at sight
of a new and pretty face, and he had, it must be confessed, a facility in
love making which made it not at all an interference with the more
serious business of life. He could not, to be sure, conceive how Philip
could be interested in a young lady who was studying medicine, but he had
no objection to going, for he did not doubt that there were other girls
in Fallkill who were worth a week's attention.
The young men were received at the house of the Montagues with the
hospitality which never failed there.
"We are glad to see you again," exclaimed the Squire heartily, "you are
welcome Mr. Brierly, any friend of Phil's is welcome at our house"
"It's more like home to me, than any place except my own home," cried
Philip, as he looked about the cheerful house and went through a general
hand-shaking.
"It's a long time, though, since you have been here to say so," Alice
said, with her father's frankness of manner; "and I suspect we owe the
visit now to your sudden interest in the Fallkill Seminary."
Philip's color came, as it had an awkward way of doing in his tell-tale
face, but before he could stammer a reply, Harry came in with,
"That accounts for Phil's wish to build a Seminary at Stone's Landing,
our place in Missouri, when Col. Sellers insisted it should be a
University. Phil appears to have a weakness for Seminaries."
"It would have been better for your friend Sellers," retorted Philip,
"if he had had a weakness for district schools. Col. Sellers, Miss
Alice, is a great friend of Harry's, who is always trying to build a
house by beginning at the top."
"I suppose it's as easy to build a University on paper as a Seminary, and
it looks better," was Harry's reflection; at which the Squire laughed,
and said he quite agreed with him. The old gentleman understood Stone's
Landing a good deal better than he would have done after an hour's talk
with either of it's expectant proprietors.
At this moment, and while Philip was trying to frame a question that he
found it exceedingly difficult to put into words, the door opened
quietly, and Ruth entered. Taking in the, group with a quick glance, her
eye lighted up, and with a merry smile she advanced and shook hands with
Philip. She was so unconstrained and sincerely cordial, that it made
that hero of the west feel somehow young, and very ill at ease.
For months and months he had thought of this meeting and pictured it to
himself a hundred times, but he had never imagined it would be like this.
He should meet Ruth unexpectedly, as she was walking alone from the
school, perhaps, or entering the room where he was waiting for her, and
she would cry "Oh! Phil," and then check herself, and perhaps blush, and
Philip calm but eager and enthusiastic, would reassure her by his warm
manner, and he would take her hand impressively, and she would look up
timidly, and, after his' long absence, perhaps he would be permitted to
Good heavens, how many times he had come to this point, and wondered if
it could happen so. Well, well; he had never supposed that he should be
the one embarrassed, and above all by a sincere and cordial welcome.
"We heard you were at the Sassacus House," were Ruth's first words; "and
this I suppose is your friend?"
"I beg your pardon," Philip at length blundered out, "this is Mr. Brierly
of whom I have written you."
And Ruth welcomed Harry with a friendliness that Philip thought was due
to his friend, to be sure, but which seemed to him too level with her
reception of himself, but which Harry received as his due from the other
sex.
Questions were asked about the journey and about the West, and the
conversation became a general one, until Philip at length found himself
talking with the Squire in relation to land and railroads and things he
couldn't keep his mind on especially as he heard Ruth and Harry in an
animated discourse, and caught the words "New York," and "opera," and
"reception," and knew that Harry was giving his imagination full range in
the world of fashion.
Harry knew all about the opera, green room and all (at least he said so)
and knew a good many of the operas and could make very entertaining
stories of their plots, telling how the soprano came in here, and the
basso here, humming the beginning of their airs--tum-ti-tum-ti-ti
--suggesting the profound dissatisfaction of the basso recitative--down
--among--the--dead--men--and touching off the whole with an airy grace
quite captivating; though he couldn't have sung a single air through to
save himself, and he hadn't an ear to know whether it was sung correctly.
All the same he doted on the opera, and kept a box there, into which he
lounged occasionally to hear a favorite scene and meet his society
friends.
If Ruth was ever in the city he should be happy to place his box at the
disposal of Ruth and her friends. Needless to say that she was delighted
with the offer.
When she told Philip of it, that discreet young fellow only smiled, and
said that he hoped she would be fortunate enough to be in New York some
evening when Harry had not already given the use of his private box to
some other friend.
The Squire pressed the visitors to let him send for their trunks and
urged them to stay at his house, and Alice joined in the invitation, but
Philip had reasons for declining. They staid to supper, however, and in;
the evening Philip had a long talk apart with Ruth, a delightful hour to
him, in which she spoke freely of herself as of old, of her studies at
Philadelphia and of her plans, and she entered into his adventures and
prospects in the West with a genuine and almost sisterly interest; an
interest, however, which did not exactly satisfy Philip--it was too
general and not personal enough to suit him. And with all her freedom in
speaking of her own hopes, Philip could not, detect any reference to
himself in them; whereas he never undertook anything that he did not
think of Ruth in connection with it, he never made a plan that had not
reference to her, and he never thought of anything as complete if she
could not share it. Fortune, reputation these had no value to him except
in Ruth's eyes, and there were times when it seemed to him that if Ruth
was not on this earth, he should plunge off into some remote wilderness
and live in a purposeless seclusion.
"I hoped," said Philip; "to get a little start in connection with this
new railroad, and make a little money, so that I could came east and
engage in something more suited to my tastes. I shouldn't like to live
in the West. Would you?
"It never occurred to me whether I would or not," was the unembarrassed
reply. "One of our graduates went to Chicago, and has a nice practice
there. I don't know where I shall go. It would mortify mother
dreadfully to have me driving about Philadelphia in a doctor's gig."
Philip laughed at the idea of it. "And does it seem as necessary to you
to do it as it did before you came to Fallkill?"
It was a home question, and went deeper than Philip knew, for Ruth at
once thought of practicing her profession among the young gentlemen and
ladies of her acquaintance in the village; but she was reluctant to admit
to herself that her notions of a career had undergone any change.
"Oh, I don't think I should come to Fallkill to practice, but I must do
something when I am through school; and why not medicine?"
Philip would like to have explained why not, but the explanation would be
of no use if it were not already obvious to Ruth.
Harry was equally in his element whether instructing Squire Montague
about the investment of capital in Missouri, the improvement of Columbus
River, the project he and some gentlemen in New York had for making a
shorter Pacific connection with the Mississippi than the present one; or
diverting Mrs. Montague with his experience in cooking in camp; or
drawing for Miss Alice an amusing picture of the social contrasts of New
England and the border where he had been. Harry was a very entertaining
fellow, having his imagination to help his memory, and telling his
stories as if he believed them--as perhaps he did. Alice was greatly
amused with Harry and listened so seriously to his romancing that he
exceeded his usual limits. Chance allusions to his bachelor
establishment in town and the place of his family on the Hudson, could
not have been made by a millionaire, more naturally.
"I should think," queried Alice, "you would rather stay in New York than
to try the rough life at the West you have been speaking of."
"Oh, adventure," says Harry, "I get tired of New York. And besides I
got involved in some operations that I had to see through. Parties in
New York only last week wanted me to go down into Arizona in a big
diamond interest. I told them, no, no speculation for me. I've got my
interests in Missouri; and I wouldn't leave Philip, as long as he stays
there."
When the young gentlemen were on their way back to the hotel, Mr. Philip,
who was not in very good humor, broke out,
"What the deuce, Harry, did you go on in that style to the Montagues
for?"
"Go on?" cried Harry. "Why shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening?
And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it
make about the mood and tense of a mere verb? Didn't uncle tell me only
last Saturday, that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for
diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good impression as a poor one."
"Nonsense. You'll get to believing your own romancing by and by."
"Well, you'll see. When Sellers and I get that appropriation, I'll show
you an establishment in town and another on the Hudson and a box at the
opera."
"Yes, it will be like Col. Sellers' plantation at Hawkeye. Did you ever
see that?"
"Now, don't be cross, Phil. She's just superb, that little woman. You
never told me."
"Who's just superb?" growled Philip, fancying this turn of the
conversation less than the other.
"Well, Mrs. Montague, if you must know." And Harry stopped to light a
cigar, and then puffed on in silence. The little quarrel didn't last
over night, for Harry never appeared to cherish any ill-will half a
second, and Philip was too sensible to continue a row about nothing; and
he had invited Harry to come with him.
The young gentlemen stayed in Fallkill a week, and were every day at the
Montagues, and took part in the winter gaieties of the village. There
were parties here and there to which the friends of Ruth and the
Montagues were of course invited, and Harry in the generosity of his
nature, gave in return a little supper at the hotel, very simple indeed,
with dancing in the hall, and some refreshments passed round. And Philip
found the whole thing in the bill when he came to pay it.
Before the week was over Philip thought he had a new light on the
character of Ruth. Her absorption in the small gaieties of the society
there surprised him. He had few opportunities for serious conversation
with her. There was always some butterfly or another flitting about,
and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth
laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness--she declared he
was getting to be grim and unsocial. He talked indeed more with Alice
than with Ruth, and scarcely concealed from her the trouble that was in
his mind. It needed, in fact, no word from him, for she saw clearly
enough what was going forward, and knew her sex well enough to know there
was no remedy for it but time.
"Ruth is a dear girl, Philip, and has as much firmness of purpose as
ever, but don't you see she has just discovered that she is fond of
society? Don't you let her see you are selfish about it, is my advice."
The last evening they were to spend in Fallkill, they were at the
Montagues, and Philip hoped that he would find Ruth in a different mood.
But she was never more gay, and there was a spice of mischief in her eye
and in her laugh. "Confound it," said Philip to himself, "she's in a
perfect twitter."
He would have liked to quarrel with her, and fling himself out of the
house in tragedy style, going perhaps so far as to blindly wander off
miles into the country and bathe his throbbing brow in the chilling rain
of the stars, as people do in novels; but he had no opportunity. For
Ruth was as serenely unconscious of mischief as women can be at times,
and fascinated him more than ever with her little demurenesses and
half-confidences. She even said "Thee" to him once in reproach for a
cutting speech he began. And the sweet little word made his heart beat
like a trip-hammer, for never in all her life had she said "thee" to him
before.
Was she fascinated with Harry's careless 'bon homie' and gay assurance?
Both chatted away in high spirits, and made the evening whirl along in
the most mirthful manner. Ruth sang for Harry, and that young gentleman
turned the leaves for her at the piano, and put in a bass note now and
then where he thought it would tell.
Yes, it was a merry evening, and Philip was heartily glad when it was
over, and the long leave-taking with the family was through with.
"Farewell Philip. Good night Mr. Brierly," Ruth's clear voice sounded
after them as they went down the walk.
And she spoke Harry's name last, thought Philip.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"O see ye not yon narrow road
So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.
"And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the road to Heaven."
Thomas the Rhymer.
Phillip and Harry reached New York in very different states of mind.
Harry was buoyant. He found a letter from Col. Sellers urging him to go
to Washington and confer with Senator Dilworthy. The petition was in his
hands.
It had been signed by everybody of any importance in Missouri, and would
be presented immediately.
"I should go on myself," wrote the Colonel, "but I am engaged in the
invention of a process for lighting such a city as St. Louis by means of
water; just attach my machine to the water-pipes anywhere and the
decomposition of the fluid begins, and you will have floods of light for
the mere cost of the machine. I've nearly got the lighting part, but I
want to attach to it a heating, cooking, washing and ironing apparatus.
It's going to be the great thing, but we'd better keep this appropriation
going while I am perfecting it."
Harry took letters to several congressmen from his uncle and from Mr.
Duff Brown, each of whom had an extensive acquaintance in both houses
where they were well known as men engaged in large private operations for
the public good and men, besides, who, in the slang of the day,
understood the virtues of "addition, division and silence."
Senator Dilworthy introduced the petition into the Senate with the remark
that he knew, personally, the signers of it, that they were men
interested; it was true, in the improvement of the country, but he
believed without any selfish motive, and that so far as he knew the
signers were loyal. It pleased him to see upon the roll the names of
many colored citizens, and it must rejoice every friend of humanity to
know that this lately emancipated race were intelligently taking part in
the development of the resources of their native land. He moved the
reference of the petition to the proper committee.
Senator Dilworthy introduced his young friend to influential members,
as a person who was very well informed about the Salt Lick Extension of
the Pacific, and was one of the Engineers who had made a careful survey
of Columbus River; and left him to exhibit his maps and plans and to show
the connection between the public treasury, the city of Napoleon and
legislation for the benefit off the whole country.
Harry was the guest of Senator Dilworthy. There was scarcely any good
movement in which the Senator was not interested. His house was open to
all the laborers in the field of total abstinence, and much of his time
was taken up in attending the meetings of this cause. He had a Bible
class in the Sunday school of the church which he attended, and he
suggested to Harry that he might take a class during the time he remained
in Washington, Mr. Washington Hawkins had a class. Harry asked the
Senator if there was a class of young ladies for him to teach, and after
that the Senator did not press the subject.
Philip, if the truth must be told, was not well satisfied with his
western prospects, nor altogether with the people he had fallen in with.
The railroad contractors held out large but rather indefinite promises.
Opportunities for a fortune he did not doubt existed in Missouri, but for
himself he saw no better means for livelihood than the mastery of the
profession he had rather thoughtlessly entered upon. During the summer
he had made considerable practical advance in the science of engineering;
he had been diligent, and made himself to a certain extent necessary to
the work he was engaged on. The contractors called him into their
consultations frequently, as to the character of the country he had been
over, and the cost of constructing the road, the nature of the work, etc.
Still Philip felt that if he was going to make either reputation or money
as an engineer, he had a great deal of hard study before him, and it is
to his credit that he did not shrink from it. While Harry was in
Washington dancing attendance upon the national legislature and making
the acquaintance of the vast lobby that encircled it, Philip devoted
himself day and night, with an energy and a concentration he was capable
of, to the learning and theory of his profession, and to the science of
railroad building. He wrote some papers at this time for the "Plow, the
Loom and the Anvil," upon the strength of materials, and especially upon
bridge-building, which attracted considerable attention, and were copied
into the English "Practical Magazine." They served at any rate to raise
Philip in the opinion of his friends the contractors, for practical men
have a certain superstitious estimation of ability with the pen, and
though they may a little despise the talent, they are quite ready to make
use of it.
Philip sent copies of his performances to Ruth's father and to other
gentlemen whose good opinion he coveted, but he did not rest upon his
laurels. Indeed, so diligently had he applied himself, that when it came
time for him to return to the West, he felt himself, at least in theory,
competent to take charge of a division in the field.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The capital of the Great Republic was a new world to country-bred
Washington Hawkins. St. Louis was a greater city, but its floating.
population did not hail from great distances, and so it had the general
family aspect of the permanent population; but Washington gathered its
people from the four winds of heaven, and so the manners, the faces and
the fashions there, presented a variety that was infinite. Washington
had never been in "society" in St. Louis, and he knew nothing of the ways
of its wealthier citizens and had never inspected one of their dwellings.
Consequently, everything in the nature of modern fashion and grandeur was
a new and wonderful revelation to him.
Washington is an interesting city to any of us. It seems to become more
and more interesting the oftener we visit it. Perhaps the reader has
never been there? Very well. You arrive either at night, rather too
late to do anything or see anything until morning, or you arrive so early
in the morning that you consider it best to go to your hotel and sleep an
hour or two while the sun bothers along over the Atlantic. You cannot
well arrive at a pleasant intermediate hour, because the railway
corporation that keeps the keys of the only door that leads into the town
or out of it take care of that. You arrive in tolerably good spirits,
because it is only thirty-eight miles from Baltimore to the capital, and
so you have only been insulted three times (provided you are not in a
sleeping car--the average is higher there): once when you renewed your
ticket after stopping over in Baltimore, once when you were about to
enter the "ladies' car" without knowing it was a lady's car, and once
When you asked the conductor at what hour you would reach Washington.
You are assailed by a long rank of hackmen who shake their whips in your
face as you step out upon the sidewalk; you enter what they regard as a
"carriage," in the capital, and you wonder why they do not take it out of
service and put it in the museum: we have few enough antiquities, and
it is little to our credit that we make scarcely any effort to preserve
the few we have. You reach your hotel, presently--and here let us draw
the curtain of charity--because of course you have gone to the wrong one.
You being a stranger, how could you do otherwise? There are a hundred
and eighteen bad hotels, and only one good one. The most renowned and
popular hotel of them all is perhaps the worst one known to history.
It is winter, and night. When you arrived, it was snowing. When you
reached the hotel, it was sleeting. When you went to bed, it was
raining. During the night it froze hard, and the wind blew some chimneys
down. When you got up in the morning, it was foggy. When you finished
your breakfast at ten o'clock and went out, the sunshine was brilliant,
the weather balmy and delicious, and the mud and slush deep and
all-pervading. You will like the climate when you get used to it.
You naturally wish to view the city; so you take an umbrella, an
overcoat, and a fan, and go forth. The prominent features you soon
locate and get familiar with; first you glimpse the ornamental upper
works of a long, snowy palace projecting above a grove of trees, and a
tall, graceful white dome with a statue on it surmounting the palace and
pleasantly contrasting with the background of blue sky. That building is
the capitol; gossips will tell you that by the original estimates it was
to cost $12,000,000, and that the government did come within $21,200,000
of building it for that sum.
You stand at the back of the capitol to treat yourself to a view, and it
is a very noble one. You understand, the capitol stands upon the verge
of a high piece of table land, a fine commanding position, and its front
looks out over this noble situation for a city--but it don't see it, for
the reason that when the capitol extension was decided upon, the property
owners at once advanced their prices to such inhuman figures that the
people went down and built the city in the muddy low marsh behind the
temple of liberty; so now the lordly front of the building, with, its
imposing colonades, its, projecting, graceful wings, its, picturesque
groups of statuary, and its long terraced ranges of steps, flowing down
in white marble waves to the ground, merely looks out upon a sorrowful
little desert of cheap boarding houses.
So you observe, that you take your view from the back of the capitol.
And yet not from the airy outlooks of the dome, by the way, because to
get there you must pass through the great rotunda: and to do that, you
would have to see the marvelous Historical Paintings that hang there,
and the bas-reliefs--and what have you done that you should suffer thus?
And besides, you might have to pass through the old part of the building,
and you could not help seeing Mr. Lincoln, as petrified by a young lady
artist for $10,000--and you might take his marble emancipation
proclamation, which he holds out in his hand and contemplates, for a
folded napkin; and you might conceive from his expression and his
attitude, that he is finding fault with the washing. Which is not the
case. Nobody knows what is the matter with him; but everybody feels for
him. Well, you ought not to go into the dome anyhow, because it would be
utterly impossible to go up there without seeing the frescoes in it--and
why should you be interested in the delirium tremens of art?
The capitol is a very noble and a very beautiful building, both within
and without, but you need not examine it now. Still, if you greatly
prefer going into the dome, go. Now your general glance gives you
picturesque stretches of gleaming water, on your left, with a sail here
and there and a lunatic asylum on shore; over beyond the water, on a
distant elevation, you see a squat yellow temple which your eye dwells
upon lovingly through a blur of unmanly moisture, for it recalls your
lost boyhood and the Parthenons done in molasses candy which made it
blest and beautiful. Still in the distance, but on this side of the
water and close to its edge, the Monument to the Father of his Country
towers out of the mud--sacred soil is the, customary term. It has the
aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off. The skeleton of a
decaying scaffolding lingers about its summit, and tradition says that
the spirit of Washington often comes down and sits on those rafters to
enjoy this tribute of respect which the nation has reared as the symbol
of its unappeasable gratitude. The Monument is to be finished, some day,
and at that time our Washington will have risen still higher in the
nation's veneration, and will be known as the Great-Great-Grandfather of
his Country. The memorial Chimney stands in a quiet pastoral locality
that is full of reposeful expression. With a glass you can see the
cow-sheds about its base, and the contented sheep nimbling pebbles in the
desert solitudes that surround it, and the tired pigs dozing in the holy
calm of its protecting shadow.
Now you wrench your gaze loose, and you look down in front of you and see
the broad Pennsylvania Avenue stretching straight ahead for a mile or
more till it brings up against the iron fence in front of a pillared
granite pile, the Treasury building-an edifice that would command respect
in any capital. The stores and hotels that wall in this broad avenue are
mean, and cheap, and dingy, and are better left without comment. Beyond
the Treasury is a fine large white barn, with wide unhandsome grounds
about it. The President lives there. It is ugly enough outside, but
that is nothing to what it is inside. Dreariness, flimsiness, bad taste
reduced to mathematical completeness is what the inside offers to the
eye, if it remains yet what it always has been.
The front and right hand views give you the city at large. It is a wide
stretch of cheap little brick houses, with here and there a noble
architectural pile lifting itself out of the midst-government buildings,
these. If the thaw is still going on when you come down and go about
town, you will wonder at the short-sightedness of the city fathers, when
you come to inspect the streets, in that they do not dilute the mud a
little more and use them for canals.
If you inquire around a little, you will find that there are more
boardinghouses to the square acre in Washington than there are in any
other city in the land, perhaps. If you apply for a home in one of them,
it will seem odd to you to have the landlady inspect you with a severe
eye and then ask you if you are a member of Congress. Perhaps, just as a
pleasantry, you will say yes. And then she will tell you that she is
"full." Then you show her her advertisement in the morning paper, and
there she stands, convicted and ashamed. She will try to blush, and it
will be only polite in you to take the effort for the deed. She shows
you her rooms, now, and lets you take one--but she makes you pay in
advance for it. That is what you will get for pretending to be a member
of Congress. If you had been content to be merely a private citizen,
your trunk would have been sufficient security for your board. If you
are curious and inquire into this thing, the chances are that your
landlady will be ill-natured enough to say that the person and property
of a Congressman are exempt from arrest or detention, and that with the
tears in her eyes she has seen several of the people's representatives
walk off to their several States and Territories carrying her unreceipted
board bills in their pockets for keepsakes. And before you have been in
Washington many weeks you will be mean enough to believe her, too.
Of course you contrive to see everything and find out everything. And
one of the first and most startling things you find out is, that every
individual you encounter in the City of Washington almost--and certainly
every separate and distinct individual in the public employment, from the
highest bureau chief, clear down to the maid who scrubs Department halls,
the night watchmen of the public buildings and the darkey boy who
purifies the Department spittoons--represents Political Influence.
Unless you can get the ear of a Senator, or a Congressman, or a Chief of
a Bureau or Department, and persuade him to use his "influence" in your
behalf, you cannot get an employment of the most trivial nature in
Washington. Mere merit, fitness and capability, are useless baggage to
you without "influence." The population of Washington consists pretty
much entirely of government employee and the people who board them.
There are thousands of these employees, and they have gathered there from
every corner of the Union and got their berths through the intercession
(command is nearer the word) of the Senators and Representatives of their
respective States. It would be an odd circumstance to see a girl get
employment at three or four dollars a week in one of the great public
cribs without any political grandee to back her, but merely because she
was worthy, and competent, and a good citizen of a free country that
"treats all persons alike." Washington would be mildly thunderstruck at
such a thing as that. If you are a member of Congress, (no offence,) and
one of your constituents who doesn't know anything, and does not want to
go into the bother of learning something, and has no money, and no
employment, and can't earn a living, comes besieging you for help, do you
say, "Come, my friend, if your services were valuable you could get
employment elsewhere--don't want you here?" Oh, no: You take him to a
Department and say, "Here, give this person something to pass away the
time at--and a salary"--and the thing is done. You throw him on his
country. He is his country's child, let his country support him. There
is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent
National Asylum for the Helpless.
The wages received by this great hive of employees are placed at the
liberal figure meet and just for skilled and competent labor. Such of
them as are immediately employed about the two Houses of Congress, are
not only liberally paid also, but are remembered in the customary Extra
Compensation bill which slides neatly through, annually, with the general
grab that signalizes the last night of a session, and thus twenty per
cent. is added to their wages, for--for fun, no doubt.
Washington Hawkins' new life was an unceasing delight to him. Senator
Dilworthy lived sumptuously, and Washington's quarters were charming
--gas; running water, hot and cold; bath-room, coal-fires, rich carpets,
beautiful pictures on the walls; books on religion, temperance, public
charities and financial schemes; trim colored servants, dainty food
--everything a body could wish for. And as for stationery, there was no
end to it; the government furnished it; postage stamps were not needed
--the Senator's frank could convey a horse through the mails, if necessary.
And then he saw such dazzling company. Renowned generals and admirals
who had seemed but colossal myths when he was in the far west, went in
and out before him or sat at the Senator's table, solidified into
palpable flesh and blood; famous statesmen crossed his path daily; that
once rare and awe-inspiring being, a Congressman, was become a common
spectacle--a spectacle so common, indeed, that he could contemplate it
without excitement, even without embarrassment; foreign ministers were
visible to the naked eye at happy intervals; he had looked upon the
President himself, and lived. And more; this world of enchantment teemed
with speculation--the whole atmosphere was thick with hand that indeed
was Washington Hawkins' native air; none other refreshed his lungs so
gratefully. He had found paradise at last.
The more he saw of his chief the Senator, the more he honored him, and
the more conspicuously the moral grandeur of his character appeared to
stand out. To possess the friendship and the kindly interest of such a
man, Washington said in a letter to Louise, was a happy fortune for a
young man whose career had been so impeded and so clouded as his.
The weeks drifted by;--Harry Brierly flirted, danced, added lustre
to the brilliant Senatorial receptions, and diligently "buzzed" and
"button-holed" Congressmen in the interest of the Columbus River scheme;
meantime Senator Dilworthy labored hard in the same interest--and in
others of equal national importance. Harry wrote frequently to Sellers,
and always encouragingly; and from these letters it was easy to see that
Harry was a pet with all Washington, and was likely to carry the thing
through; that the assistance rendered him by "old Dilworthy" was pretty
fair--pretty fair; "and every little helps, you know," said Harry.
Washington wrote Sellers officially, now and then. In one of his letters
it appeared that whereas no member of the House committee favored the
scheme at first, there was now needed but one more vote to compass a
majority report. Closing sentence:
"Providence seems to further our efforts."
(Signed,) "ABNER DILWORTHY, U. S. S.,
per WASHINGTON HAWKINS, P. S."
At the end of a week, Washington was able to send the happy news,
officially, as usual,--that the needed vote had been added and the bill
favorably reported from the Committee. Other letters recorded its perils
in Committee of the whole, and by and by its victory, by just the skin of
its teeth, on third reading and final passage. Then came letters telling
of Mr. Dilworthy's struggles with a stubborn majority in his own
Committee in the Senate; of how these gentlemen succumbed, one by one,
till a majority was secured.
Then there was a hiatus. Washington watched every move on the board, and
he was in a good position to do this, for he was clerk of this committee,
and also one other. He received no salary as private secretary, but
these two clerkships, procured by his benefactor, paid him an aggregate
of twelve dollars a day, without counting the twenty percent extra
compensation which would of course be voted to him on the last night of
the session.
He saw the bill go into Committee of the whole and struggle for its life
again, and finally worry through. In the fullness of time he noted its
second reading, and by and by the day arrived when the grand ordeal came,
and it was put upon its final passage. Washington listened with bated
breath to the "Aye!" "No!" "No!" "Aye!" of the voters, for a few dread
minutes, and then could bear the suspense no longer. He ran down from
the gallery and hurried home to wait.
At the end of two or three hours the Senator arrived in the bosom of his
family, and dinner was waiting. Washington sprang forward, with the
eager question on his lips, and the Senator said:
"We may rejoice freely, now, my son--Providence has crowned our efforts
with success."
CHAPTER XXV.
Washington sent grand good news to Col. Sellers that night. To Louise he
wrote:
"It is beautiful to hear him talk when his heart is full of thankfulness
for some manifestation of the Divine favor. You shall know him, some day
my Louise, and knowing him you will honor him, as I do."
Harry wrote:
"I pulled it through, Colonel, but it was a tough job, there is no
question about that. There was not a friend to the measure in the House
committee when I began, and not a friend in the Senate committee except
old Dil himself, but they were all fixed for a majority report when I
hauled off my forces. Everybody here says you can't get a thing like
this through Congress without buying committees for straight-out cash on
delivery, but I think I've taught them a thing or two--if I could only
make them believe it. When I tell the old residenters that this thing
went through without buying a vote or making a promise, they say, 'That's
rather too thin.' And when I say thin or not thin it's a fact, anyway,
they say, 'Come, now, but do you really believe that?' and when I say I
don't believe anything about it, I know it, they smile and say, 'Well,
you are pretty innocent, or pretty blind, one or the other--there's no
getting around that.' Why they really do believe that votes have been
bought--they do indeed. But let them keep on thinking so. I have found
out that if a man knows how to talk to women, and has a little gift in
the way of argument with men, he can afford to play for an appropriation
against a money bag and give the money bag odds in the game. We've raked
in $200,000 of Uncle Sam's money, say what they will--and there is more
where this came from, when we want it, and I rather fancy I am the person
that can go in and occupy it, too, if I do say it myself, that shouldn't,
perhaps. I'll be with you within a week. Scare up all the men you can,
and put them to work at once. When I get there I propose to make things
hum." The great news lifted Sellers into the clouds. He went to work on
the instant. He flew hither and thither making contracts, engaging men,
and steeping his soul in the ecstasies of business. He was the happiest
man in Missouri. And Louise was the happiest woman; for presently came a
letter from Washington which said:
"Rejoice with me, for the long agony is over! We have waited patiently
and faithfully, all these years, and now at last the reward is at hand.
A man is to pay our family $40,000 for the Tennessee Land! It is but a
little sum compared to what we could get by waiting, but I do so long to
see the day when I can call you my own, that I have said to myself,
better take this and enjoy life in a humble way than wear out our best
days in this miserable separation. Besides, I can put this money into
operations here that will increase it a hundred fold, yes, a thousand
fold, in a few months. The air is full of such chances, and I know our
family would consent in a moment that I should put in their shares with
mine. Without a doubt we shall be worth half a million dollars in a year
from this time--I put it at the very lowest figure, because it is always
best to be on the safe side--half a million at the very lowest
calculation, and then your father will give his consent and we can marry
at last. Oh, that will be a glorious day. Tell our friends the good
news--I want all to share it."
And she did tell her father and mother, but they said, let it be kept
still for the present. The careful father also told her to write
Washington and warn him not to speculate with the money, but to wait a
little and advise with one or two wise old heads. She did this. And she
managed to keep the good news to herself, though it would seem that the
most careless observer might have seen by her springing step and her
radiant countenance that some fine piece of good fortune had descended
upon her.
Harry joined the Colonel at Stone's Landing, and that dead place sprang
into sudden life. A swarm of men were hard at work, and the dull air was
filled with the cheery music of labor. Harry had been constituted
engineer-in-general, and he threw the full strength of his powers into
his work. He moved among his hirelings like a king. Authority seemed to
invest him with a new splendor. Col. Sellers, as general superintendent
of a great public enterprise, was all that a mere human being could be
--and more. These two grandees went at their imposing "improvement" with
the air of men who had been charged with the work of altering the
foundations of the globe.
They turned their first attention to straightening the river just above
the Landing, where it made a deep bend, and where the maps and plans
showed that the process of straightening would not only shorten distance
but increase the "fall." They started a cut-off canal across the
peninsula formed by the bend, and such another tearing up of the earth
and slopping around in the mud as followed the order to the men, had
never been seen in that region before. There was such a panic among the
turtles that at the end of six hours there was not one to be found within
three miles of Stone's Landing. They took the young and the aged, the
decrepit and the sick upon their backs and left for tide-water in
disorderly procession, the tadpoles following and the bull-frogs bringing
up the rear.
Saturday night came, but the men were obliged to wait, because the
appropriation had not come. Harry said he had written to hurry up the
money and it would be along presently. So the work continued, on Monday.
Stone's Landing was making quite a stir in the vicinity, by this time.
Sellers threw a lot or two on the market, "as a feeler," and they sold
well. He re-clothed his family, laid in a good stock of provisions, and
still had money left. He started a bank account, in a small way--and
mentioned the deposit casually to friends; and to strangers, too; to
everybody, in fact; but not as a new thing--on the contrary, as a matter
of life-long standing. He could not keep from buying trifles every day
that were not wholly necessary, it was such a gaudy thing to get out his
bank-book and draw a check, instead of using his old customary formula,
"Charge it" Harry sold a lot or two, also--and had a dinner party or two
at Hawkeye and a general good time with the money. Both men held on
pretty strenuously for the coming big prices, however.
At the end of a month things were looking bad. Harry had besieged the
New York headquarters of the Columbus River Slack-water Navigation
Company with demands, then commands, and finally appeals, but to no
purpose; the appropriation did not come; the letters were not even
answered. The workmen were clamorous, now. The Colonel and Harry
retired to consult.
"What's to be done?" said the Colonel.
"Hang'd if I know."
"Company say anything?"
"Not a word."
"You telegraphed yesterday?"
Yes, and the day before, too."
"No answer?"
"None-confound them!"
Then there was a long pause. Finally both spoke at once:
"I've got it!"
"I've got it!"
"What's yours?" said Harry.
"Give the boys thirty-day orders on the Company for the back pay."
"That's it-that's my own idea to a dot. But then--but then----"
"Yes, I know," said the Colonel; "I know they can't wait for the orders
to go to New York and be cashed, but what's the reason they can't get
them discounted in Hawkeye?"
"Of course they can. That solves the difficulty. Everybody knows the
appropriation's been made and the Company's perfectly good."
So the orders were given and the men appeased, though they grumbled a
little at first. The orders went well enough for groceries and such
things at a fair discount, and the work danced along gaily for a time.
Two or three purchasers put up frame houses at the Landing and moved in,
and of course a far-sighted but easy-going journeyman printer wandered
along and started the "Napoleon Weekly Telegraph and Literary
Repository"--a paper with a Latin motto from the Unabridged dictionary,
and plenty of "fat" conversational tales and double-leaded poetry--all
for two dollars a year, strictly in advance. Of course the merchants
forwarded the orders at once to New York--and never heard of them again.
At the end of some weeks Harry's orders were a drug in the market--nobody
would take them at any discount whatever. The second month closed with a
riot.--Sellers was absent at the time, and Harry began an active absence
himself with the mob at his heels. But being on horseback, he had the
advantage. He did not tarry in Hawkeye, but went on, thus missing
several appointments with creditors. He was far on his flight eastward,
and well out of danger when the next morning dawned. He telegraphed the
Colonel to go down and quiet the laborers--he was bound east for money
--everything would be right in a week--tell the men so--tell them to rely
on him and not be afraid.
Sellers found the mob quiet enough when he reached the Landing.
They had gutted the Navigation office, then piled the beautiful engraved
stock-books and things in the middle of the floor and enjoyed the bonfire
while it lasted. They had a liking for the Colonel, but still they had
some idea of hanging him, as a sort of make-shift that might answer,
after a fashion, in place of more satisfactory game.
But they made the mistake of waiting to hear what he had to say first.
Within fifteen minutes his tongue had done its work and they were all
rich men.--He gave every one of them a lot in the suburbs of the city of
Stone's Landing, within a mile and a half of the future post office and
railway station, and they promised to resume work as soon as Harry got
east and started the money along. Now things were blooming and pleasant
again, but the men had no money, and nothing to live on. The Colonel
divided with them the money he still had in bank--an act which had
nothing surprising about it because he was generally ready to divide
whatever he had with anybody that wanted it, and it was owing to this
very trait that his family spent their days in poverty and at times were
pinched with famine.
When the men's minds had cooled and Sellers was gone, they hated
themselves for letting him beguile them with fine speeches, but it was
too late, now--they agreed to hang him another time--such time as
Providence should appoint.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Rumors of Ruth's frivolity and worldliness at Fallkill traveled to
Philadelphia in due time, and occasioned no little undertalk among the
Bolton relatives.
Hannah Shoecraft told another, cousin that, for her part, she never
believed that Ruth had so much more "mind" than other people; and Cousin
Hulda added that she always thought Ruth was fond of admiration, and that
was the reason she was unwilling to wear plain clothes and attend
Meeting. The story that Ruth was "engaged" to a young gentleman of
fortune in Fallkill came with the other news, and helped to give point to
the little satirical remarks that went round about Ruth's desire to be a
doctor!
Margaret Bolton was too wise to be either surprised or alarmed by these
rumors. They might be true; she knew a woman's nature too well to think
them improbable, but she also knew how steadfast Ruth was in her
purposes, and that, as a brook breaks into ripples and eddies and dances
and sports by the way, and yet keeps on to the sea, it was in Ruth's
nature to give back cheerful answer to the solicitations of friendliness
and pleasure, to appear idly delaying even, and sporting in the sunshine,
while the current of her resolution flowed steadily on.
That Ruth had this delight in the mere surface play of life that she
could, for instance, be interested in that somewhat serious by-play
called "flirtation," or take any delight in the exercise of those little
arts of pleasing and winning which are none the less genuine and charming
because they are not intellectual, Ruth, herself, had never suspected
until she went to Fallkill. She had believed it her duty to subdue her
gaiety of temperament, and let nothing divert her from what are called
serious pursuits: In her limited experience she brought everything to the
judgment of her own conscience, and settled the affairs of all the world
in her own serene judgment hall. Perhaps her mother saw this, and saw
also that there was nothing in the Friends' society to prevent her from
growing more and more opinionated.
When Ruth returned to Philadelphia, it must be confessed--though it would
not have been by her--that a medical career did seem a little less
necessary for her than formerly; and coming back in a glow of triumph, as
it were, and in the consciousness of the freedom and life in a lively
society and in new and sympathetic friendship, she anticipated pleasure
in an attempt to break up the stiffness and levelness of the society at
home, and infusing into it something of the motion and sparkle which were
so agreeable at Fallkill. She expected visits from her new friends, she
would have company, the new books and the periodicals about which all the
world was talking, and, in short, she would have life.
For a little while she lived in this atmosphere which she had brought
with her. Her mother was delighted with this change in her, with the
improvement in her health and the interest she exhibited in home affairs.
Her father enjoyed the society of his favorite daughter as he did few
things besides; he liked her mirthful and teasing ways, and not less a
keen battle over something she had read. He had been a great reader all
his life, and a remarkable memory had stored his mind with encyclopaedic
information. It was one of Ruth's delights to cram herself with some out
of the way subject and endeavor to catch her father; but she almost
always failed. Mr. Bolton liked company, a house full of it, and the
mirth of young people, and he would have willingly entered into any
revolutionary plans Ruth might have suggested in relation to Friends'
society.
But custom and the fixed order are stronger than the most enthusiastic
and rebellious young lady, as Ruth very soon found. In spite of all her
brave efforts, her frequent correspondence, and her determined animation,
her books and her music, she found herself settling into the clutches of
the old monotony, and as she realized the hopelessness of her endeavors,
the medical scheme took new hold of her, and seemed to her the only
method of escape.
"Mother, thee does not know how different it is in Fallkill, how much
more interesting the people are one meets, how much more life there is."
"But thee will find the world, child, pretty much all the same, when thee
knows it better. I thought once as thee does now, and had as little
thought of being a Friend as thee has. Perhaps when thee has seen more,
thee will better appreciate a quiet life."
"Thee married young. I shall not marry young, and perhaps not at all,"
said Ruth, with a look of vast experience.
"Perhaps thee doesn't know thee own mind; I have known persons of thy
age who did not. Did thee see anybody whom thee would like to live with
always in Fallkill?"
"Not always," replied Ruth with a little laugh. "Mother, I think I
wouldn't say 'always' to any one until I have a profession and am as
independent as he is. Then my love would be a free act, and not in any
way a necessity."
Margaret Bolton smiled at this new-fangled philosophy. "Thee will find
that love, Ruth, is a thing thee won't reason about, when it comes, nor
make any bargains about. Thee wrote that Philip Sterling was at
Fallkill."
"Yes, and Henry Brierly, a friend of his; a very amusing young fellow and
not so serious-minded as Philip, but a bit of a fop maybe."
"And thee preferred the fop to the serious-minded?"
"I didn't prefer anybody; but Henry Brierly was good company, which
Philip wasn't always."
"Did thee know thee father had been in correspondence with Philip?"
Ruth looked up surprised and with a plain question in her eyes.
"Oh, it's not about thee."
"What then?" and if there was any shade of disappointment in her tone,
probably Ruth herself did not know it.
"It's about some land up in the country. That man Bigler has got father
into another speculation."
"That odious man! Why will father have anything to do with him? Is it
that railroad?"
"Yes. Father advanced money and took land as security, and whatever has
gone with the money and the bonds, he has on his hands a large tract of
wild land."
"And what has Philip to do with that?"
"It has good timber, if it could ever be got out, and father says that
there must be coal in it; it's in a coal region. He wants Philip to
survey it, and examine it for indications of coal."
"It's another of father's fortunes, I suppose," said Ruth. "He has put
away so many fortunes for us that I'm afraid we never shall find them."
Ruth was interested in it nevertheless, and perhaps mainly because Philip
was to be connected with the enterprise. Mr. Bigler came to dinner with
her father next day, and talked a great deal about Mr. Bolton's
magnificent tract of land, extolled the sagacity that led him to secure
such a property, and led the talk along to another railroad which would
open a northern communication to this very land.
"Pennybacker says it's full of coal, he's no doubt of it, and a railroad
to strike the Erie would make it a fortune."
"Suppose you take the land and work the thing up, Mr. Bigler; you may
have the tract for three dollars an acre."
"You'd throw it away, then," replied Mr. Bigler, "and I'm not the man to
take advantage of a friend. But if you'll put a mortgage on it for the
northern road, I wouldn't mind taking an interest, if Pennybacker is
willing; but Pennybacker, you know, don't go much on land, he sticks to
the legislature." And Mr. Bigler laughed.
When Mr. Bigler had gone, Ruth asked her father about Philip's connection
with the land scheme.
"There's nothing definite," said Mr. Bolton. "Philip is showing aptitude
for his profession. I hear the best reports of him in New York, though
those sharpers don't 'intend to do anything but use him. I've written
and offered him employment in surveying and examining the land. We want
to know what it is. And if there is anything in it that his enterprise
can dig out, he shall have an interest. I should be glad to give the
young fellow a lift."
All his life Eli Bolton had been giving young fellows a lift, and
shouldering the loses when things turned out unfortunately. His ledger,
take-it-altogether, would not show a balance on the right side; but
perhaps the losses on his books will turn out to be credits in a world
where accounts are kept on a different basis. The left hand of the
ledger will appear the right, looked at from the other side.
Philip, wrote to Ruth rather a comical account of the bursting up of the
city of Napoleon and the navigation improvement scheme, of Harry's flight
and the Colonel's discomfiture. Harry left in such a hurry that he
hadn't even time to bid Miss Laura Hawkins good-bye, but he had no doubt
that Harry would console himself with the next pretty face he saw
--a remark which was thrown in for Ruth's benefit. Col. Sellers had in all
probability, by this time, some other equally brilliant speculation in
his brain.
As to the railroad, Philip had made up his mind that it was merely kept
on foot for speculative purposes in Wall street, and he was about to quit
it. Would Ruth be glad to hear, he wondered, that he was coming East?
For he was coming, in spite of a letter from Harry in New York, advising
him to hold on until he had made some arrangements in regard to
contracts, he to be a little careful about Sellers, who was somewhat
visionary, Harry said.
The summer went on without much excitement for Ruth. She kept up a
correspondence with Alice, who promised a visit in the fall, she read,
she earnestly tried to interest herself in home affairs and such people
as came to the house; but she found herself falling more and more into
reveries, and growing weary of things as they were. She felt that
everybody might become in time like two relatives from a Shaker
establishment in Ohio, who visited the Boltons about this time, a father
and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners. The son; however,
who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father;
he always addressed his parent as "Brother Plum," and bore himself,
altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in
his chair. Both father and son wore the long, single breasted collarless
coats of their society, without buttons, before or behind, but with a row
of hooks and eyes on either side in front. It was Ruth's suggestion that
the coats would be improved by a single hook and eye sewed on in the
small of the back where the buttons usually are.
Amusing as this Shaker caricature of the Friends was, it oppressed Ruth
beyond measure; and increased her feeling of being stifled.
It was a most unreasonable feeling. No home could be pleasanter than
Ruth's. The house, a little out of the city; was one of those elegant
country residences which so much charm visitors to the suburbs of
Philadelphia. A modern dwelling and luxurious in everything that wealth
could suggest for comfort, it stood in the midst of exquisitely kept
lawns, with groups of trees, parterres of flowers massed in colors, with
greenhouse, grapery and garden; and on one side, the garden sloped away
in undulations to a shallow brook that ran over a pebbly bottom and sang
under forest trees. The country about teas the perfection of cultivated
landscape, dotted with cottages, and stately mansions of Revolutionary
date, and sweet as an English country-side, whether seen in the soft
bloom of May or in the mellow ripeness of late October.
It needed only the peace of the mind within, to make it a paradise.
One riding by on the Old Germantown road, and seeing a young girl
swinging in the hammock on the piazza and, intent upon some volume of old
poetry or the latest novel, would no doubt have envied a life so idyllic.
He could not have imagined that the young girl was reading a volume of
reports of clinics and longing to be elsewhere.
Ruth could not have been more discontented if all the wealth about her
had been as unsubstantial as a dream. Perhaps she so thought it.
"I feel," she once said to her father, "as if I were living in a house of
cards."
"And thee would like to turn it into a hospital?"
"No. But tell me father," continued Ruth, not to be put off, "is thee
still going on with that Bigler and those other men who come here and
entice thee?"
Mr. Bolton smiled, as men do when they talk with women about "business"
"Such men have their uses, Ruth. They keep the world active, and I owe a
great many of my best operations to such men. Who knows, Ruth, but this
new land purchase, which I confess I yielded a little too much to Bigler
in, may not turn out a fortune for thee and the rest of the children?"
"Ah, father, thee sees every thing in a rose-colored light. I do believe
thee wouldn't have so readily allowed me to begin the study of medicine,
if it hadn't had the novelty of an experiment to thee."
"And is thee satisfied with it?"
"If thee means, if I have had enough of it, no. I just begin to see what
I can do in it, and what a noble profession it is for a woman. Would
thee have me sit here like a bird on a bough and wait for somebody to
come and put me in a cage?"
Mr. Bolton was not sorry to divert the talk from his own affairs, and he
did not think it worth while to tell his family of a performance that
very day which was entirely characteristic of him.
Ruth might well say that she felt as if she were living in a house of
cards, although the Bolton household had no idea of the number of perils
that hovered over them, any more than thousands of families in America
have of the business risks and contingences upon which their prosperity
and luxury hang.
A sudden call upon Mr. Bolton for a large sum of money, which must be
forthcoming at once, had found him in the midst of a dozen ventures, from
no one of which a dollar could be realized. It was in vain that he
applied to his business acquaintances and friends; it was a period of
sudden panic and no money. "A hundred thousand! Mr. Bolton," said
Plumly. "Good God, if you should ask me for ten, I shouldn't know where
to get it."
And yet that day Mr. Small (Pennybacker, Bigler and Small) came to Mr.
Bolton with a piteous story of ruin in a coal operation, if he could not
raise ten thousand dollars. Only ten, and he was sure of a fortune.
Without it he was a beggar. Mr. Bolton had already Small's notes for a
large amount in his safe, labeled "doubtful;" he had helped him again and
again, and always with the same result. But Mr. Small spoke with a
faltering voice of his family, his daughter in school, his wife ignorant
of his calamity, and drew such a picture of their agony, that Mr. Bolton
put by his own more pressing necessity, and devoted the day to scraping
together, here and there, ten thousand dollars for this brazen beggar,
who had never kept a promise to him nor paid a debt.
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that
this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon
human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a
whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar
newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished
speculator in lands and mines this remark:--"I wasn't worth a cent two
years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars."
CHAPTER XXVII.
It was a hard blow to poor Sellers to see the work on his darling
enterprise stop, and the noise and bustle and confusion that had been
such refreshment to his soul, sicken and die out. It was hard to come
down to humdrum ordinary life again after being a General Superintendent
and the most conspicuous man in the community. It was sad to see his
name disappear from the newspapers; sadder still to see it resurrected at
intervals, shorn of its aforetime gaudy gear of compliments and clothed
on with rhetorical tar and feathers.
But his friends suffered more on his account than he did. He was a cork
that could not be kept under the water many moments at a time.
He had to bolster up his wife's spirits every now and then. On one of
these occasions he said:
"It's all right, my dear, all right; it will all come right in a little
while. There's $200,000 coming, and that will set things booming again:
Harry seems to be having some difficulty, but that's to be expected--you
can't move these big operations to the tune of Fisher's Hornpipe, you
know. But Harry will get it started along presently, and then you'll
see! I expect the news every day now."
"But Beriah, you've been expecting it every day, all along, haven't you?"
"Well, yes; yes--I don't know but I have. But anyway, the longer it's
delayed, the nearer it grows to the time when it will start--same as
every day you live brings you nearer to--nearer--"
"The grave?"
"Well, no--not that exactly; but you can't understand these things, Polly
dear--women haven't much head for business, you know. You make yourself
perfectly comfortable, old lady, and you'll see how we'll trot this right
along. Why bless you, let the appropriation lag, if it wants to--that's
no great matter--there's a bigger thing than that."
"Bigger than $200,000, Beriah?"
"Bigger, child?--why, what's $200,000? Pocket money! Mere pocket money!
Look at the railroad! Did you forget the railroad? It ain't many months
till spring; it will be coming right along, and the railroad swimming
right along behind it. Where'll it be by the middle of summer? Just
stop and fancy a moment--just think a little--don't anything suggest
itself? Bless your heart, you dear women live right in the present all
the time--but a man, why a man lives----
"In the future, Beriah? But don't we live in the future most too much,
Beriah? We do somehow seem to manage to live on next year's crop of corn
and potatoes as a general thing while this year is still dragging along,
but sometimes it's not a robust diet,--Beriah. But don't look that way,
dear--don't mind what I say. I don't mean to fret, I don't mean to
worry; and I don't, once a month, do I, dear? But when I get a little
low and feel bad, I get a bit troubled and worrisome, but it don't mean
anything in the world. It passes right away. I know you're doing all
you can, and I don't want to seem repining and ungrateful--for I'm not,
Beriah--you know I'm not, don't you?"
"Lord bless you, child, I know you are the very best little woman that
ever lived--that ever lived on the whole face of the Earth! And I know
that I would be a dog not to work for you and think for you and scheme
for you with all my might. And I'll bring things all right yet, honey
--cheer up and don't you fear. The railroad----"
"Oh, I had forgotten the railroad, dear, but when a body gets blue, a
body forgets everything. Yes, the railroad--tell me about the railroad."
"Aha, my girl, don't you see? Things ain't so dark, are they? Now I
didn't forget the railroad. Now just think for a moment--just figure up
a little on the future dead moral certainties. For instance, call this
waiter St. Louis.
"And we'll lay this fork (representing the railroad) from St. Louis to
this potato, which is Slouchburg:
"Then with this carving knife we'll continue the railroad from Slouchburg
to Doodleville, shown by the black pepper:
"Then we run along the--yes--the comb--to the tumbler that's Brimstone:
"Thence by the pipe to Belshazzar, which is the salt-cellar:
"Thence to, to--that quill--Catfish--hand me the pincushion, Marie
Antoinette:
"Thence right along these shears to this horse, Babylon:
"Then by the spoon to Bloody Run--thank you, the ink:
"Thence to Hail Columbia--snuffers, Polly, please move that cup and
saucer close up, that's Hail Columbia:
"Then--let me open my knife--to Hark-from-the-Tomb, where we'll put
the candle-stick--only a little distance from Hail Columbia to
Hark-from-the-Tomb--down-grade all the way.
"And there we strike Columbus River--pass me two or throe skeins of
thread to stand for the river; the sugar bowl will do for Hawkeye, and
the rat trap for Stone's Landing-Napoleon, I mean--and you can see how
much better Napoleon is located than Hawkeye. Now here you are with your
railroad complete, and showing its continuation to Hallelujah and thence
to Corruptionville.
"Now then-them you are! It's a beautiful road, beautiful. Jeff Thompson
can out-engineer any civil engineer that ever sighted through an aneroid,
or a theodolite, or whatever they call it--he calls it sometimes one and
sometimes the other just whichever levels off his sentence neatest, I
reckon. But ain't it a ripping toad, though? I tell you, it'll make a
stir when it gets along. Just see what a country it goes through.
There's your onions at Slouchburg--noblest onion country that graces
God's footstool; and there's your turnip country all around Doodleville
--bless my life, what fortunes are going to be made there when they get
that contrivance perfected for extracting olive oil out of turnips--if
there's any in them; and I reckon there is, because Congress has made an
appropriation of money to test the thing, and they wouldn't have done
that just on conjecture, of course. And now we come to the Brimstone
region--cattle raised there till you can't rest--and corn, and all that
sort of thing. Then you've got a little stretch along through Belshazzar
that don't produce anything now--at least nothing but rocks--but
irrigation will fetch it. Then from Catfish to Babylon it's a little
swampy, but there's dead loads of peat down under there somewhere. Next
is the Bloody Run and Hail Columbia country--tobacco enough can be raised
there to support two such railroads. Next is the sassparilla region.
I reckon there's enough of that truck along in there on the line of the
pocket-knife, from Hail Columbia to Hark-from-the Tomb to fat up all the
consumptives in all the hospitals from Halifax to the Holy Land. It just
grows like weeds! I've got a little belt of sassparilla land in there
just tucked away unobstrusively waiting for my little Universal
Expectorant to get into shape in my head. And I'll fix that, you know.
One of these days I'll have all the nations of the earth expecto--"
"But Beriah, dear--"
"Don't interrupt me; Polly--I don't want you to lose the run of the map
--well, take your toy-horse, James Fitz-James, if you must have it--and run
along with you. Here, now--the soap will do for Babylon. Let me see
--where was I? Oh yes--now we run down to Stone's Lan--Napoleon--now we
run down to Napoleon. Beautiful road. Look at that, now. Perfectly
straight line-straight as the way to the grave. And see where it leaves
Hawkeye-clear out in the cold, my dear, clear out in the cold. That
town's as bound to die as--well if I owned it I'd get its obituary ready,
now, and notify the mourners. Polly, mark my words--in three years from
this, Hawkeye'll be a howling wilderness. You'll see. And just look at
that river--noblest stream that meanders over the thirsty earth!
--calmest, gentlest artery that refreshes her weary bosom! Railroad
goes all over it and all through it--wades right along on stilts.
Seventeen bridges in three miles and a half--forty-nine bridges from
Hark-from-the-Tomb to Stone's Landing altogether--forty nine bridges, and
culverts enough to culvert creation itself! Hadn't skeins of thread
enough to represent them all--but you get an idea--perfect trestle-work
of bridges for seventy two miles: Jeff Thompson and I fixed all that, you
know; he's to get the contracts and I'm to put them through on the
divide. Just oceans of money in those bridges. It's the only part of
the railroad I'm interested in,--down along the line--and it's all I
want, too. It's enough, I should judge. Now here we are at Napoleon.
Good enough country plenty good enough--all it wants is population.
That's all right--that will come. And it's no bad country now for
calmness and solitude, I can tell you--though there's no money in that,
of course. No money, but a man wants rest, a man wants peace--a man
don't want to rip and tear around all the time. And here we go, now,
just as straight as a string for Hallelujah--it's a beautiful angle
--handsome up grade all the way --and then away you go to Corruptionville,
the gaudiest country for early carrots and cauliflowers that ever--good
missionary field, too. There ain't such another missionary field outside
the jungles of Central Africa. And patriotic?--why they named it after
Congress itself. Oh, I warn you, my dear, there's a good time coming,
and it'll be right along before you know what you're about, too. That
railroad's fetching it. You see what it is as far as I've got, and if I
had enough bottles and soap and boot-jacks and such things to carry it
along to where it joins onto the Union Pacific, fourteen hundred miles
from here, I should exhibit to you in that little internal improvement a
spectacle of inconceivable sublimity. So, don't you see? We've got the
rail road to fall back on; and in the meantime, what are we worrying
about that $200,000 appropriation for? That's all right. I'd be willing
to bet anything that the very next letter that comes from Harry will--"
The eldest boy entered just in the nick of time and brought a letter,
warm from the post-office.
"Things do look bright, after all, Beriah. I'm sorry I was blue, but it
did seem as if everything had been going against us for whole ages. Open
the letter--open it quick, and let's know all about it before we stir out
of our places. I am all in a fidget to know what it says."
The letter was opened, without any unnecessary delay.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Whatever may have been the language of Harry's letter to the Colonel,
the information it conveyed was condensed or expanded, one or the other,
from the following episode of his visit to New York:
He called, with official importance in his mien, at No.-- Wall street,
where a great gilt sign betokened the presence of the head-quarters of
the "Columbus River Slack-Water Navigation Company." He entered and
gave a dressy porter his card, and was requested to wait a moment in a
sort of ante-room. The porter returned in a minute; and asked whom he
would like to see?
"The president of the company, of course."
"He is busy with some gentlemen, sir; says he will be done with them
directly."
That a copper-plate card with "Engineer-in-Chief" on it should be
received with such tranquility as this, annoyed Mr. Brierly not a little.
But he had to submit. Indeed his annoyance had time to augment a good
deal; for he was allowed to cool his heels a frill half hour in the
ante-room before those gentlemen emerged and he was ushered into the
presence. He found a stately dignitary occupying a very official chair
behind a long green morocco-covered table, in a room with sumptuously
carpeted and furnished, and well garnished with pictures.
"Good morning, sir; take a seat--take a seat."
"Thank you sir," said Harry, throwing as much chill into his manner as
his ruffled dignity prompted.
"We perceive by your reports and the reports of the Chief Superintendent,
that you have been making gratifying progress with the work.--We are all
very much pleased."
"Indeed? We did not discover it from your letters--which we have not
received; nor by the treatment our drafts have met with--which were not
honored; nor by the reception of any part of the appropriation, no part
of it having come to hand."
"Why, my dear Mr. Brierly, there must be some mistake, I am sure we wrote
you and also Mr. Sellers, recently--when my clerk comes he will show
copies--letters informing you of the ten per cent. assessment."
"Oh, certainly, we got those letters. But what we wanted was money to
carry on the work--money to pay the men."
"Certainly, certainly--true enough--but we credited you both for a large
part of your assessments--I am sure that was in our letters."
"Of course that was in--I remember that."
"Ah, very well then. Now we begin to understand each other."
"Well, I don't see that we do. There's two months' wages due the men,
and----"
"How? Haven't you paid the men?"
"Paid them! How are we going to pay them when you don't honor our
drafts?"
"Why, my dear sir, I cannot see how you can find any fault with us. I am
sure we have acted in a perfectly straight forward business way.--Now let
us look at the thing a moment. You subscribed for 100 shares of the
capital stock, at $1,000 a share, I believe?"
"Yes, sir, I did."
"And Mr. Sellers took a like amount?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very well. No concern can get along without money. We levied a ten per
cent. assessment. It was the original understanding that you and Mr.
Sellers were to have the positions you now hold, with salaries of $600 a
month each, while in active service. You were duly elected to these
places, and you accepted them. Am I right?"
"Certainly."
"Very well. You were given your instructions and put to work. By your
reports it appears that you have expended the sum of $9,610 upon the said
work. Two months salary to you two officers amounts altogether to
$2,400--about one-eighth of your ten per cent. assessment, you see; which
leaves you in debt to the company for the other seven-eighths of the
assessment--viz, something over $8,000 apiece. Now instead of requiring
you to forward this aggregate of $16,000 or $17,000 to New York, the
company voted unanimously to let you pay it over to the contractors,
laborers from time to time, and give you credit on the books for it.
And they did it without a murmur, too, for they were pleased with the
progress you had made, and were glad to pay you that little compliment
--and a very neat one it was, too, I am sure. The work you did fell short
of $10,000, a trifle. Let me see--$9,640 from $20,000 salary $2;400
added--ah yes, the balance due the company from yourself and Mr. Sellers
is $7,960, which I will take the responsibility of allowing to stand for
the present, unless you prefer to draw a check now, and thus----"
"Confound it, do you mean to say that instead of the company owing us
$2,400, we owe the company $7,960?"
"Well, yes."
"And that we owe the men and the contractors nearly ten thousand dollars
besides?"
"Owe them! Oh bless my soul, you can't mean that you have not paid these
people?"
"But I do mean it!"
The president rose and walked the floor like a man in bodily pain. His
brows contracted, he put his hand up and clasped his forehead, and kept
saying, "Oh, it is, too bad, too bad, too bad! Oh, it is bound to be
found out--nothing can prevent it--nothing!"
Then he threw himself into his chair and said:
"My dear Mr. Brierson, this is dreadful--perfectly dreadful. It will be
found out. It is bound to tarnish the good name of the company; our
credit will be seriously, most seriously impaired. How could you be so
thoughtless--the men ought to have been paid though it beggared us all!"
"They ought, ought they? Then why the devil--my name is not Bryerson, by
the way--why the mischief didn't the compa--why what in the nation ever
became of the appropriation? Where is that appropriation?--if a
stockholder may make so bold as to ask."
The appropriation?--that paltry $200,000, do you mean?"
"Of course--but I didn't know that $200,000 was so very paltry. Though I
grant, of course, that it is not a large sum, strictly speaking. But
where is it?"
"My dear sir, you surprise me. You surely cannot have had a large
acquaintance with this sort of thing. Otherwise you would not have
expected much of a result from a mere INITIAL appropriation like that.
It was never intended for anything but a mere nest egg for the future and
real appropriations to cluster around."
"Indeed? Well, was it a myth, or was it a reality? Whatever become of
it?"
"Why the--matter is simple enough. A Congressional appropriation costs
money. Just reflect, for instance--a majority of the House Committee,
say $10,000 apiece--$40,000; a majority of the Senate Committee, the same
each--say $40,000; a little extra to one or two chairman of one or two
such committees, say $10,000 each--$20,000; and there's $100,000 of the
money gone, to begin with. Then, seven male lobbyists, at $3,000 each
--$21,000; one female lobbyist, $10,000; a high moral Congressman or
Senator here and there--the high moral ones cost more, because they.
give tone to a measure--say ten of these at $3,000 each, is $30,000; then
a lot of small-fry country members who won't vote for anything whatever
without pay--say twenty at $500 apiece, is $10,000; a lot of dinners to
members--say $10,000 altogether; lot of jimcracks for Congressmen's wives
and children--those go a long way--you can't sped too much money in that
line--well, those things cost in a lump, say $10,000--along there
somewhere; and then comes your printed documents--your maps, your tinted
engravings, your pamphlets, your illuminated show cards, your
advertisements in a hundred and fifty papers at ever so much a line
--because you've got to keep the papers all light or you are gone up, you
know. Oh, my dear sir, printing bills are destruction itself. Ours so
far amount to--let me see--10; 52; 22; 13;--and then there's 11; 14; 33
--well, never mind the details, the total in clean numbers foots up
$118,254.42 thus far!"
"What!"
"Oh, yes indeed. Printing's no bagatelle, I can tell you. And then
there's your contributions, as a company, to Chicago fires and Boston
fires, and orphan asylums and all that sort of thing--head the list, you
see, with the company's full name and a thousand dollars set opposite
--great card, sir--one of the finest advertisements in the world--the
preachers mention it in the pulpit when it's a religious charity--one of
the happiest advertisements in the world is your benevolent donation.
Ours have amounted to sixteen thousand dollars and some cents up to this
time."
"Good heavens!"
"Oh, yes. Perhaps the biggest thing we've done in the advertising line
was to get an officer of the U. S. government, of perfectly Himmalayan
official altitude, to write up our little internal improvement for a
religious paper of enormous circulation--I tell you that makes our bonds
go handsomely among the pious poor. Your religious paper is by far the
best vehicle for a thing of this kind, because they'll 'lead' your
article and put it right in the midst of the reading matter; and if it's
got a few Scripture quotations in it, and some temperance platitudes and
a bit of gush here and there about Sunday Schools, and a sentimental
snuffle now and then about 'God's precious ones, the honest hard-handed
poor,' it works the nation like a charm, my dear sir, and never a man
suspects that it is an advertisement; but your secular paper sticks you
right into the advertising columns and of course you don't take a trick.
Give me a religious paper to advertise in, every time; and if you'll just
look at their advertising pages, you'll observe that other people think a
good deal as I do--especially people who have got little financial
schemes to make everybody rich with. Of course I mean your great big
metropolitan religious papers that know how to serve God and make money
at the same time--that's your sort, sir, that's your sort--a religious
paper that isn't run to make money is no use to us, sir, as an
advertising medium--no use to anybody--in our line of business. I guess
our next best dodge was sending a pleasure trip of newspaper reporters
out to Napoleon. Never paid them a cent; just filled them up with
champagne and the fat of the land, put pen, ink and paper before them
while they were red-hot, and bless your soul when you come to read their
letters you'd have supposed they'd been to heaven. And if a sentimental
squeamishness held one or two of them back from taking a less rosy view
of Napoleon, our hospitalities tied his tongue, at least, and he said
nothing at all and so did us no harm. Let me see--have I stated all the
expenses I've been at? No, I was near forgetting one or two items.
There's your official salaries--you can't get good men for nothing.
Salaries cost pretty lively. And then there's your big high-sounding
millionaire names stuck into your advertisements as stockholders--another
card, that--and they are stockholders, too, but you have to give them the
stock and non-assessable at that--so they're an expensive lot. Very,
very expensive thing, take it all around, is a big internal improvement
concern--but you see that yourself, Mr. Bryerman--you see that, yourself,
sir."
"But look here. I think you are a little mistaken about it's ever having
cost anything for Congressional votes. I happen to know something about
that. I've let you say your say--now let me say mine. I don't wish to
seem to throw any suspicion on anybody's statements, because we are all
liable to be mistaken. But how would it strike you if I were to say that
I was in Washington all the time this bill was pending? and what if I
added that I put the measure through myself? Yes, sir, I did that little
thing. And moreover, I never paid a dollar for any man's vote and never
promised one. There are some ways of doing a thing that are as good as
others which other people don't happen to think about, or don't have the
knack of succeeding in, if they do happen to think of them. My dear sir,
I am obliged to knock some of your expenses in the head--for never a cent
was paid a Congressman or Senator on the part of this Navigation Company."
The president smiled blandly, even sweetly, all through this harangue,
and then said:
"Is that so?"
"Every word of it."
"Well it does seem to alter the complexion of things a little. You are
acquainted with the members down there, of course, else you could not
have worked to such advantage?"
"I know them all, sir. I know their wives, their children, their babies
--I even made it a point to be on good terms with their lackeys. I know
every Congressman well--even familiarly."
"Very good. Do you know any of their signatures? Do you know their
handwriting?"
"Why I know their handwriting as well as I know my own--have had
correspondence enough with them, I should think. And their signatures
--why I can tell their initials, even."
The president went to a private safe, unlocked it and got out some
letters and certain slips of paper. Then he said:
"Now here, for instance; do you believe that that is a genuine letter?
Do you know this signature here?--and this one? Do you know who those
initials represent--and are they forgeries?"
Harry was stupefied. There were things there that made his brain swim.
Presently, at the bottom of one of the letters he saw a signature that
restored his equilibrium; it even brought the sunshine of a smile to his
face.
The president said:
"That one amuses you. You never suspected him?"
"Of course I ought to have suspected him, but I don't believe it ever
really occurred to me. Well, well, well--how did you ever have the nerve
to approach him, of all others?"
"Why my friend, we never think of accomplishing anything without his
help. He is our mainstay. But how do those letters strike you?"
"They strike me dumb! What a stone-blind idiot I have been!"
"Well, take it all around, I suppose you had a pleasant time in
Washington," said the president, gathering up the letters; "of course you
must have had. Very few men could go there and get a money bill through
without buying a single"
"Come, now, Mr. President, that's plenty of that! I take back everything
I said on that head. I'm a wiser man to-day than I was yesterday, I can
tell you."
"I think you are. In fact I am satisfied you are. But now I showed you
these things in confidence, you understand. Mention facts as much as you
want to, but don't mention names to anybody. I can depend on you for
that, can't I?"
"Oh, of course. I understand the necessity of that. I will not betray
the names. But to go back a bit, it begins to look as if you never saw
any of that appropriation at all?"
"We saw nearly ten thousand dollars of it--and that was all. Several of
us took turns at log-rolling in Washington, and if we had charged
anything for that service, none of that $10,000 would ever have reached
New York."
"If you hadn't levied the assessment you would have been in a close place
I judge?"
"Close? Have you figured up the total of the disbursements I told you
of?"
"No, I didn't think of that."
"Well, lets see:
Spent in Washington, say, ........... $191,000
Printing, advertising, etc., say .... $118,000
Charity, say, ....................... $16,000
Total, ............... $325,000
The money to do that with, comes from
--Appropriation, ...................... $200,000
Ten per cent. assessment on capital of
$1,000,000 ..................... $100,000
Total, ............... $300,000
"Which leaves us in debt some $25,000 at this moment. Salaries of home
officers are still going on; also printing and advertising. Next month
will show a state of things!"
"And then--burst up, I suppose?"
"By no means. Levy another assessment"
"Oh, I see. That's dismal."
"By no means."
"Why isn't it? What's the road out?"
"Another appropriation, don't you see?"
"Bother the appropriations. They cost more than they come to."
"Not the next one. We'll call for half a million--get it and go for a
million the very next month."--"Yes, but the cost of it!"
The president smiled, and patted his secret letters affectionately. He
said:
"All these people are in the next Congress. We shan't have to pay them a
cent. And what is more, they will work like beavers for us--perhaps it
might be to their advantage."
Harry reflected profoundly a while. Then he said:
"We send many missionaries to lift up the benighted races of other lands.
How much cheaper and better it would be if those people could only come
here and drink of our civilization at its fountain head."
"I perfectly agree with you, Mr. Beverly. Must you go? Well, good
morning. Look in, when you are passing; and whenever I can give you any
information about our affairs and pro'spects, I shall be glad to do it."
Harry's letter was not a long one, but it contained at least the
calamitous figures that came out in the above conversation. The Colonel
found himself in a rather uncomfortable place--no $1,200 salary
forthcoming; and himself held responsible for half of the $9,640 due the
workmen, to say nothing of being in debt to the company to the extent of
nearly $4,000. Polly's heart was nearly broken; the "blues" returned in
fearful force, and she had to go out of the room to hide the tears that
nothing could keep back now.
There was mourning in another quarter, too, for Louise had a letter.
Washington had refused, at the last moment, to take $40,000 for the
Tennessee Land, and had demanded $150,000! So the trade fell through,
and now Washington was wailing because he had been so foolish. But he
wrote that his man might probably return to the city soon, and then he
meant to sell to him, sure, even if he had to take $10,000. Louise had a
good cry-several of them, indeed--and the family charitably forebore to
make any comments that would increase her grief.
Spring blossomed, summer came, dragged its hot weeks by, and the
Colonel's spirits rose, day by day, for the railroad was making good
progress. But by and by something happened. Hawkeye had always declined
to subscribe anything toward the railway, imagining that her large
business would be a sufficient compulsory influence; but now Hawkeye was
frightened; and before Col. Sellers knew what he was about, Hawkeye, in a
panic, had rushed to the front and subscribed such a sum that Napoleon's
attractions suddenly sank into insignificance and the railroad concluded
to follow a comparatively straight coarse instead of going miles out of
its way to build up a metropolis in the muddy desert of Stone's Landing.
The thunderbolt fell. After all the Colonel's deep planning; after all
his brain work and tongue work in drawing public attention to his pet
project and enlisting interest in it; after all his faithful hard toil
with his hands, and running hither and thither on his busy feet; after
all his high hopes and splendid prophecies, the fates had turned their
backs on him at last, and all in a moment his air-castles crumbled to
ruins abort him. Hawkeye rose from her fright triumphant and rejoicing,
and down went Stone's Landing! One by one its meagre parcel of
inhabitants packed up and moved away, as the summer waned and fall
approached. Town lots were no longer salable, traffic ceased, a deadly
lethargy fell upon the place once more, the "Weekly Telegraph" faded into
an early grave, the wary tadpole returned from exile, the bullfrog
resumed his ancient song, the tranquil turtle sunned his back upon bank
and log and drowsed his grateful life away as in the old sweet days of
yore.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Philip Sterling was on his way to Ilium, in the state of Pennsylvania.
Ilium was the railway station nearest to the tract of wild land which
Mr. Bolton had commissioned him to examine.
On the last day of the journey as the railway train Philip was on was
leaving a large city, a lady timidly entered the drawing-room car, and
hesitatingly took a chair that was at the moment unoccupied. Philip saw
from the window that a gentleman had put her upon the car just as it was
starting. In a few moments the conductor entered, and without waiting an
explanation, said roughly to the lady,
"Now you can't sit there. That seat's taken. Go into the other car."
"I did not intend to take the seat," said the lady rising, "I only sat
down a moment till the conductor should come and give me a seat."
"There aint any. Car's full. You'll have to leave."
"But, sir," said the lady, appealingly, "I thought--"
"Can't help what you thought--you must go into the other car."
"The train is going very fast, let me stand here till we stop."
"The lady can have my seat," cried Philip, springing up.
The conductor turned towards Philip, and coolly and deliberately surveyed
him from head to foot, with contempt in every line of his face, turned
his back upon him without a word, and said to the lady,
"Come, I've got no time to talk. You must go now."
The lady, entirely disconcerted by such rudeness, and frightened, moved
towards the door, opened it and stepped out. The train was swinging
along at a rapid rate, jarring from side to side; the step was a long one
between the cars and there was no protecting grating. The lady attempted
it, but lost her balance, in the wind and the motion of the car, and
fell! She would inevitably have gone down under the wheels, if Philip,
who had swiftly followed her, had not caught her arm and drawn her up.
He then assisted her across, found her a seat, received her bewildered
thanks, and returned to his car.
The conductor was still there, taking his tickets, and growling something
about imposition. Philip marched up to him, and burst out with,
"You are a brute, an infernal brute, to treat a woman that way."
"Perhaps you'd like to make a fuss about it," sneered the conductor.
Philip's reply was a blow, given so suddenly and planted so squarely in
the conductor's face, that it sent him reeling over a fat passenger, who
was looking up in mild wonder that any one should dare to dispute with a
conductor, and against the side of the car.
He recovered himself, reached the bell rope, "Damn you, I'll learn you,"
stepped to the door and called a couple of brakemen, and then, as the
speed slackened; roared out,
"Get off this train."
"I shall not get off. I have as much right here as you."
"We'll see," said the conductor, advancing with the brakemen. The
passengers protested, and some of them said to each other, "That's too
bad," as they always do in such cases, but none of them offered to take a
hand with Philip. The men seized him, wrenched him from his seat,
dragged him along the aisle, tearing his clothes, thrust him from the
car, and, then flung his carpet-bag, overcoat and umbrella after him.
And the train went on.
The conductor, red in the face and puffing from his exertion, swaggered
through the car, muttering "Puppy, I'll learn him." The passengers, when
he had gone, were loud in their indignation, and talked about signing a
protest, but they did nothing more than talk.
The next morning the Hooverville Patriot and Clarion had this "item":--
SLIGHTUALLY OVERBOARD.
"We learn that as the down noon express was leaving H---- yesterday
a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the
already full palatial car. Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to
be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was
full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go
into the car where she belonged. Thereupon a young sprig, from the
East, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began to sass the
conductor with his chin music. That gentleman delivered the young
aspirant for a muss one of his elegant little left-handers, which so
astonished him that he began to feel for his shooter. Whereupon Mr.
Slum gently raised the youth, carried him forth, and set him down
just outside the car to cool off. Whether the young blood has yet
made his way out of Bascom's swamp, we have not learned. Conductor
Slum is one of the most gentlemanly and efficient officers on the
road; but he ain't trifled with, not much. We learn that the
company have put a new engine on the seven o'clock train, and newly
upholstered the drawing-room car throughout. It spares no effort
for the comfort of the traveling public."
Philip never had been before in Bascom's swamp, and there was nothing
inviting in it to detain him. After the train got out of the way he
crawled out of the briars and the mud, and got upon the track. He was
somewhat bruised, but he was too angry to mind that. He plodded along
over the ties in a very hot condition of mind and body. In the scuffle,
his railway check had disappeared, and he grimly wondered, as he noticed
the loss, if the company would permit him to walk over their track if
they should know he hadn't a ticket.
Philip had to walk some five miles before he reached a little station,
where he could wait for a train, and he had ample time for reflection.
At first he was full of vengeance on the company. He would sue it. He
would make it pay roundly. But then it occurred to him that he did not
know the name of a witness he could summon, and that a personal fight
against a railway corporation was about the most hopeless in the world.
He then thought he would seek out that conductor, lie in wait for him at
some station, and thrash him, or get thrashed himself.
But as he got cooler, that did not seem to him a project worthy of a
gentleman exactly. Was it possible for a gentleman to get even with such
a fellow as that conductor on the letter's own plane? And when he came
to this point, he began to ask himself, if he had not acted very much
like a fool. He didn't regret striking the fellow--he hoped he had left
a mark on him. But, after all, was that the best way? Here was he,
Philip Sterling, calling himself a gentleman, in a brawl with a vulgar
conductor, about a woman he had never seen before. Why should he have
put himself in such a ridiculous position? Wasn't it enough to have
offered the lady his seat, to have rescued her from an accident, perhaps
from death? Suppose he had simply said to the conductor, "Sir, your
conduct is brutal, I shall report you." The passengers, who saw the
affair, might have joined in a report against the conductor, and he might
really have accomplished something. And, now! Philip looked at leis
torn clothes, and thought with disgust of his haste in getting into a
fight with such an autocrat.
At the little station where Philip waited for the next train, he met a
man--who turned out to be a justice of the peace in that neighborhood,
and told him his adventure. He was a kindly sort of man, and seemed very
much interested.
"Dum 'em," said he, when he had heard the story.
"Do you think any thing can be done, sir?"
"Wal, I guess tain't no use. I hain't a mite of doubt of every word you
say. But suin's no use. The railroad company owns all these people
along here, and the judges on the bench too. Spiled your clothes! Wal,
'least said's soonest mended.' You haint no chance with the company."
When next morning, he read the humorous account in the Patriot and
Clarion, he saw still more clearly what chance he would have had before
the public in a fight with the railroad company.
Still Philip's conscience told him that it was his plain duty to carry
the matter into the courts, even with the certainty of defeat.
He confessed that neither he nor any citizen had a right to consult his
own feelings or conscience in a case where a law of the land had been
violated before his own eyes. He confessed that every citizen's first
duty in such case is to put aside his own business and devote his time
and his best efforts to seeing that the infraction is promptly punished;
and he knew that no country can be well governed unless its citizens as
a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians
of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its
execution, nothing more. As a finality he was obliged to confess that he
was a bad citizen, and also that the general laxity of the time, and the
absence of a sense of duty toward any part of the community but the
individual himself were ingrained in him, am he was no better than the
rest of the people.
The result of this little adventure was that Philip did not reach Ilium
till daylight the next morning, when he descended sleepy and sore, from a
way train, and looked about him. Ilium was in a narrow mountain gorge,
through which a rapid stream ran. It consisted of the plank platform on
which he stood, a wooden house, half painted, with a dirty piazza
(unroofed) in front, and a sign board hung on a slanting pole--bearing
the legend, "Hotel. P. Dusenheimer," a sawmill further down the stream,
a blacksmith-shop, and a store, and three or four unpainted dwellings of
the slab variety.
As Philip approached the hotel he saw what appeared to be a wild beast
crouching on the piazza. It did not stir, however, and he soon found
that it was only a stuffed skin. This cheerful invitation to the tavern
was the remains of a huge panther which had been killed in the region a
few weeks before. Philip examined his ugly visage and strong crooked
fore-arm, as he was waiting admittance, having pounded upon the door.
"Yait a bit. I'll shoost--put on my trowsers," shouted a voice from the
window, and the door was soon opened by the yawning landlord.
"Morgen! Didn't hear d' drain oncet. Dem boys geeps me up zo spate.
Gom right in."
Philip was shown into a dirty bar-room. It was a small room, with a
stove in the middle, set in a long shallow box of sand, for the benefit
of the "spitters," a bar across one end--a mere counter with a sliding
glass-case behind it containing a few bottles having ambitious labels,
and a wash-sink in one corner. On the walls were the bright yellow and
black handbills of a traveling circus, with pictures of acrobats in human
pyramids, horses flying in long leaps through the air, and sylph-like
women in a paradisaic costume, balancing themselves upon the tips of
their toes on the bare backs of frantic and plunging steeds, and kissing
their hands to the spectators meanwhile.
As Philip did not desire a room at that hour, he was invited to wash
himself at the nasty sink, a feat somewhat easier than drying his face,
for the towel that hung in a roller over the sink was evidently as much a
fixture as the sink itself, and belonged, like the suspended brush and
comb, to the traveling public. Philip managed to complete his toilet by
the use of his pocket-handkerchief, and declining the hospitality of the
landlord, implied in the remark, "You won'd dake notin'?" he went into
the open air to wait for breakfast.
The country he saw was wild but not picturesque. The mountain before him
might be eight hundred feet high, and was only a portion of a long
unbroken range, savagely wooded, which followed the stream. Behind the
hotel, and across the brawling brook, was another level-topped, wooded
range exactly like it. Ilium itself, seen at a glance, was old enough to
be dilapidated, and if it had gained anything by being made a wood and
water station of the new railroad, it was only a new sort of grime and
rawness. P. Dusenheimer, standing in the door of his uninviting
groggery, when the trains stopped for water; never received from the
traveling public any patronage except facetious remarks upon his personal
appearance. Perhaps a thousand times he had heard the remark, "Ilium
fuit," followed in most instances by a hail to himself as "AEneas," with
the inquiry "Where is old Anchises?" At first he had replied, "Dere
ain't no such man;" but irritated by its senseless repetition, he had
latterly dropped into the formula of, "You be dam."
Philip was recalled from the contemplation of Ilium by the rolling and
growling of the gong within the hotel, the din and clamor increasing till
the house was apparently unable to contain it; when it burst out of the
front door and informed the world that breakfast was on the table.
The dining room was long, low and narrow, and a narrow table extended its
whole length. Upon this was spread a cloth which from appearance might
have been as long in use as the towel in the barroom. Upon the table was
the usual service, the heavy, much nicked stone ware, the row of plated
and rusty castors, the sugar bowls with the zinc tea-spoons sticking up
in them, the piles of yellow biscuits, the discouraged-looking plates of
butter. The landlord waited, and Philip was pleased to observe the
change in his manner. In the barroom he was the conciliatory landlord.
Standing behind his guests at table, he had an air of peremptory
patronage, and the voice in which he shot out the inquiry, as he seized
Philip's plate, "Beefsteak or liver?" quite took away Philip's power of
choice. He begged for a glass of milk, after trying that green hued
compound called coffee, and made his breakfast out of that and some hard
crackers which seemed to have been imported into Ilium before the
introduction of the iron horse, and to have withstood a ten years siege
of regular boarders, Greeks and others.
The land that Philip had come to look at was at least five miles distant
from Ilium station. A corner of it touched the railroad, but the rest
was pretty much an unbroken wilderness, eight or ten thousand acres of
rough country, most of it such a mountain range as he saw at Ilium.
His first step was to hire three woodsmen to accompany him. By their
help he built a log hut, and established a camp on the land, and then
began his explorations, mapping down his survey as he went along, noting
the timber, and the lay of the land, and making superficial observations
as to the prospect of coal.
The landlord at Ilium endeavored to persuade Philip to hire the services
of a witch-hazel professor of that region, who could walk over the land
with his wand and tell him infallibly whether it contained coal, and
exactly where the strata ran. But Philip preferred to trust to his own
study of the country, and his knowledge of the geological formation.
He spent a month in traveling over the land and making calculations;
and made up his mind that a fine vein of coal ran through the mountain
about a mile from the railroad, and that the place to run in a tunnel was
half way towards its summit.
Acting with his usual promptness, Philip, with the consent of Mr. Bolton,
broke ground there at once, and, before snow came, had some rude
buildings up, and was ready for active operations in the spring. It was
true that there were no outcroppings of coal at the place, and the people
at Ilium said he "mought as well dig for plug terbaccer there;" but
Philip had great faith in the uniformity of nature's operations in ages
past, and he had no doubt that he should strike at this spot the rich
vein that had made the fortune of the Golden Briar Company.
CHAPTER XXX.
Once more Louise had good news from her Washington--Senator Dilworthy was
going to sell the Tennessee Land to the government! Louise told Laura in
confidence. She had told her parents, too, and also several bosom
friends; but all of these people had simply looked sad when they heard
the news, except Laura. Laura's face suddenly brightened under it--only
for an instant, it is true, but poor Louise was grateful for even that
fleeting ray of encouragement. When next Laura was alone, she fell into
a train of thought something like this:
"If the Senator has really taken hold of this matter, I may look for that
invitation to his house at, any moment. I am perishing to go! I do long
to know whether I am only simply a large-sized pigmy among these pigmies
here, who tumble over so easily when one strikes them, or whether I am
really--." Her thoughts drifted into other channels, for a season.
Then she continued:-- "He said I could be useful in the great cause of
philanthropy, and help in the blessed work of uplifting the poor and the
ignorant, if he found it feasible to take hold of our Land. Well, that
is neither here nor there; what I want, is to go to Washington and find
out what I am. I want money, too; and if one may judge by what she
hears, there are chances there for a--." For a fascinating woman, she
was going to say, perhaps, but she did not.
Along in the fall the invitation came, sure enough. It came officially
through brother Washington, the private Secretary, who appended a
postscript that was brimming with delight over the prospect of seeing the
Duchess again. He said it would be happiness enough to look upon her
face once more--it would be almost too much happiness when to it was
added the fact that she would bring messages with her that were fresh
from Louise's lips.
In Washington's letter were several important enclosures. For instance,
there was the Senator's check for $2,000--"to buy suitable clothing in
New York with!" It was a loan to be refunded when the Land was sold.
Two thousand--this was fine indeed. Louise's father was called rich, but
Laura doubted if Louise had ever had $400 worth of new clothing at one
time in her life. With the check came two through tickets--good on the
railroad from Hawkeye to Washington via New York--and they were
"dead-head" tickets, too, which had been given to Senator Dilworthy by
the railway companies. Senators and representatives were paid thousands
of dollars by the government for traveling expenses, but they always
traveled "deadhead" both ways, and then did as any honorable, high-minded
men would naturally do--declined to receive the mileage tendered them by
the government. The Senator had plenty of railway passes, and could.
easily spare two to Laura--one for herself and one for a male escort.
Washington suggested that she get some old friend of the family to come
with her, and said the Senator would "deadhead" him home again as soon as
he had grown tired, of the sights of the capital. Laura thought the
thing over. At first she was pleased with the idea, but presently she
began to feel differently about it. Finally she said, "No, our staid,
steady-going Hawkeye friends' notions and mine differ about some things
--they respect me, now, and I respect them--better leave it so--I will go
alone; I am not afraid to travel by myself." And so communing with
herself, she left the house for an afternoon walk.
Almost at the door she met Col. Sellers. She told him about her
invitation to Washington.
"Bless me!" said the Colonel. "I have about made up my mind to go there
myself. You see we've got to get another appropriation through, and the
Company want me to come east and put it through Congress. Harry's there,
and he'll do what he can, of course; and Harry's a good fellow and always
does the very best he knows how, but then he's young--rather young for
some parts of such work, you know--and besides he talks too much, talks a
good deal too much; and sometimes he appears to be a little bit
visionary, too, I think the worst thing in the world for a business man.
A man like that always exposes his cards, sooner or later. This sort of
thing wants an old, quiet, steady hand--wants an old cool head, you know,
that knows men, through and through, and is used to large operations.
I'm expecting my salary, and also some dividends from the company, and if
they get along in time, I'll go along with you Laura--take you under my
wing--you mustn't travel alone. Lord I wish I had the money right now.
--But there'll be plenty soon--plenty."
Laura reasoned with herself that if the kindly, simple-hearted Colonel
was going anyhow, what could she gain by traveling alone and throwing
away his company? So she told him she accepted his offer gladly,
gratefully. She said it would be the greatest of favors if he would go
with her and protect her--not at his own expense as far as railway fares
were concerned, of course; she could not expect him to put himself to so
much trouble for her and pay his fare besides. But he wouldn't hear of
her paying his fare--it would be only a pleasure to him to serve her.
Laura insisted on furnishing the tickets; and finally, when argument
failed, she said the tickets cost neither her nor any one else a cent
--she had two of them--she needed but one--and if he would not take the
other she would not go with him. That settled the matter. He took the
ticket. Laura was glad that she had the check for new clothing, for she
felt very certain of being able to get the Colonel to borrow a little of
the money to pay hotel bills with, here and there.
She wrote Washington to look for her and Col. Sellers toward the end of
November; and at about the time set the two travelers arrived safe in the
capital of the nation, sure enough.
CHAPTER XXXI
She the, gracious lady, yet no paines did spare
To doe him ease, or doe him remedy:
Many restoratives of vertues rare
And costly cordialles she did apply,
To mitigate his stubborne malady.
Spenser's Faerie Queens.
Mr. Henry Brierly was exceedingly busy in New York, so he wrote Col.
Sellers, but he would drop everything and go to Washington.
The Colonel believed that Harry was the prince of lobbyists, a little too
sanguine, may be, and given to speculation, but, then, he knew everybody;
the Columbus River navigation scheme was, got through almost entirely by
his aid. He was needed now to help through another scheme, a benevolent
scheme in which Col. Sellers, through the Hawkinses, had a deep interest.
"I don't care, you know," he wrote to Harry, "so much about the niggroes.
But if the government will buy this land, it will set up the Hawkins
family--make Laura an heiress--and I shouldn't wonder if Beriah Sellers
would set up his carriage again. Dilworthy looks at it different,
of course. He's all for philanthropy, for benefiting the colored race.
There's old Balsam, was in the Interior--used to be the Rev. Orson Balsam
of Iowa--he's made the riffle on the Injun; great Injun pacificator and
land dealer. Balaam'a got the Injun to himself, and I suppose that
Senator Dilworthy feels that there is nothing left him but the colored
man. I do reckon he is the best friend the colored man has got in
Washington."
Though Harry was in a hurry to reach Washington, he stopped in
Philadelphia; and prolonged his visit day after day, greatly to the
detriment of his business both in New York and Washington. The society
at the Bolton's might have been a valid excuse for neglecting business
much more important than his. Philip was there; he was a partner with
Mr. Bolton now in the new coal venture, concerning which there was much
to be arranged in preparation for the Spring work, and Philip lingered
week after week in the hospitable house. Alice was making a winter
visit. Ruth only went to town twice a week to attend lectures, and the
household was quite to Mr. Bolton's taste, for he liked the cheer of
company and something going on evenings. Harry was cordially asked to
bring his traveling-bag there, and he did not need urging to do so.
Not even the thought of seeing Laura at the capital made him restless in
the society of the two young ladies; two birds in hand are worth one in
the bush certainly.
Philip was at home--he sometimes wished he were not so much so. He felt
that too much or not enough was taken for granted. Ruth had met him,
when he first came, with a cordial frankness, and her manner continued
entirely unrestrained. She neither sought his company nor avoided it,
and this perfectly level treatment irritated him more than any other
could have done. It was impossible to advance much in love-making with
one who offered no obstacles, had no concealments and no embarrassments,
and whom any approach to sentimentality would be quite likely to set into
a fit of laughter.
"Why, Phil," she would say, "what puts you in the dumps to day? You are
as solemn as the upper bench in Meeting. I shall have to call Alice to
raise your spirits; my presence seems to depress you."
"It's not your presence, but your absence when you are present," began
Philip, dolefully, with the idea that he was saying a rather deep thing.
"But you won't understand me."
"No, I confess I cannot. If you really are so low, as to think I am
absent when I am present, it's a frightful case of aberration; I shall
ask father to bring out Dr. Jackson. Does Alice appear to be present
when she is absent?"
"Alice has some human feeling, anyway. She cares for something besides
musty books and dry bones. I think, Ruth, when I die," said Philip,
intending to be very grim and sarcastic, "I'll leave you my skeleton.
You might like that."
"It might be more cheerful than you are at times," Ruth replied with a
laugh. "But you mustn't do it without consulting Alice. She might not.
like it."
"I don't know why you should bring Alice up on every occasion. Do you
think I am in love with her?"
"Bless you, no. It never entered my head. Are you? The thought of
Philip Sterling in love is too comical. I thought you were only in love
with the Ilium coal mine, which you and father talk about half the time."
This is a specimen of Philip's wooing. Confound the girl, he would say
to himself, why does she never tease Harry and that young Shepley who
comes here?
How differently Alice treated him. She at least never mocked him, and it
was a relief to talk with one who had some sympathy with him. And he did
talk to her, by the hour, about Ruth. The blundering fellow poured all
his doubts and anxieties into her ear, as if she had been the impassive
occupant of one of those little wooden confessionals in the Cathedral on
Logan Square. Has, a confessor, if she is young and pretty, any feeling?
Does it mend the matter by calling her your sister?
Philip called Alice his good sister, and talked to her about love and
marriage, meaning Ruth, as if sisters could by no possibility have any
personal concern in such things. Did Ruth ever speak of him? Did she
think Ruth cared for him? Did Ruth care for anybody at Fallkill? Did
she care for anything except her profession? And so on.
Alice was loyal to Ruth, and if she knew anything she did not betray her
friend. She did not, at any rate, give Philip too much encouragement.
What woman, under the circumstances, would?
"I can tell you one thing, Philip," she said, "if ever Ruth Bolton loves,
it will be with her whole soul, in a depth of passion that will sweep
everything before it and surprise even herself."
A remark that did not much console Philip, who imagined that only some
grand heroism could unlock the sweetness of such a heart; and Philip
feared that he wasn't a hero. He did not know out of what materials a
woman can construct a hero, when she is in the creative mood.
Harry skipped into this society with his usual lightness and gaiety.
His good nature was inexhaustible, and though he liked to relate his own
exploits, he had a little tact in adapting himself to the tastes of his
hearers. He was not long in finding out that Alice liked to hear about
Philip, and Harry launched out into the career of his friend in the West,
with a prodigality of invention that would have astonished the chief
actor. He was the most generous fellow in the world, and picturesque
conversation was the one thing in which he never was bankrupt. With Mr.
Bolton he was the serious man of business, enjoying the confidence of
many of the monied men in New York, whom Mr. Bolton knew, and engaged
with them in railway schemes and government contracts. Philip, who had
so long known Harry, never could make up his mind that Harry did not
himself believe that he was a chief actor in all these large operations
of which he talked so much.
Harry did not neglect to endeavor to make himself agreeable to Mrs.
Bolton, by paying great attention to the children, and by professing the
warmest interest in the Friends' faith. It always seemed to him the most
peaceful religion; he thought it must be much easier to live by an
internal light than by a lot of outward rules; he had a dear Quaker aunt
in Providence of whom Mrs. Bolton constantly reminded him. He insisted
upon going with Mrs. Bolton and the children to the Friends Meeting on
First Day, when Ruth and Alice and Philip, "world's people," went to a
church in town, and he sat through the hour of silence with his hat on,
in most exemplary patience. In short, this amazing actor succeeded so
well with Mrs. Bolton, that she said to Philip one day,
"Thy friend, Henry Brierly, appears to be a very worldly minded young
man. Does he believe in anything?"
"Oh, yes," said Philip laughing, "he believes in more things than any
other person I ever saw."
To Ruth, Harry seemed to be very congenial. He was never moody for one
thing, but lent himself with alacrity to whatever her fancy was. He was
gay or grave as the need might be. No one apparently could enter more
fully into her plans for an independent career.
"My father," said Harry, "was bred a physician, and practiced a little
before he went into Wall street. I always had a leaning to the study.
There was a skeleton hanging in the closet of my father's study when I
was a boy, that I used to dress up in old clothes. Oh, I got quite
familiar with the human frame."
"You must have," said Philip. "Was that where you learned to play the
bones? He is a master of those musical instruments, Ruth; he plays well
enough to go on the stage."
"Philip hates science of any kind, and steady application," retorted
Harry. He didn't fancy Philip's banter, and when the latter had gone
out, and Ruth asked,
"Why don't you take up medicine, Mr. Brierly?"
Harry said, "I have it in mind. I believe I would begin attending
lectures this winter if it weren't for being wanted in Washington. But
medicine is particularly women's province."
"Why so?" asked Ruth, rather amused.
"Well, the treatment of disease is a good deal a matter of sympathy.
A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything,
really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man."
"You are very complimentary to my sex."
"But," said Harry frankly; "I should want to choose my doctor; an ugly
woman would ruin me, the disease would be sure to strike in and kill me
at sight of her. I think a pretty physician, with engaging manners,
would coax a fellow to live through almost anything."
"I am afraid you are a scoffer, Mr. Brierly."
"On the contrary, I am quite sincere. Wasn't it old what's his name?
that said only the beautiful is useful?"
Whether Ruth was anything more than diverted with Harry's company; Philip
could not determine. He scorned at any rate to advance his own interest
by any disparaging communications about Harry, both because he could not
help liking the fellow himself, and because he may have known that he
could not more surely create a sympathy for him in Ruth's mind. That
Ruth was in no danger of any serious impression he felt pretty sure,
felt certain of it when he reflected upon her severe occupation with her
profession. Hang it, he would say to himself, she is nothing but pure
intellect anyway. And he only felt uncertain of it when she was in one
of her moods of raillery, with mocking mischief in her eyes. At such
times she seemed to prefer Harry's society to his. When Philip was
miserable about this, he always took refuge with Alice, who was never
moody, and who generally laughed him out of his sentimental nonsense.
He felt at his ease with Alice, and was never in want of something to
talk about; and he could not account for the fact that he was so often
dull with Ruth, with whom, of all persons in the world, he wanted to
appear at his best.
Harry was entirely satisfied with his own situation. A bird of passage
is always at its ease, having no house to build, and no responsibility.
He talked freely with Philip about Ruth, an almighty fine girl, he said,
but what the deuce she wanted to study medicine for, he couldn't see.
There was a concert one night at the Musical Fund Hall and the four had
arranged to go in and return by the Germantown cars. It was Philip's
plan, who had engaged the seats, and promised himself an evening with
Ruth, walking with her, sitting by her in the hall, and enjoying the
feeling of protecting that a man always has of a woman in a public place.
He was fond of music, too, in a sympathetic way; at least, he knew that
Ruth's delight in it would be enough for him.
Perhaps he meant to take advantage of the occasion to say some very
serious things. His love for Ruth was no secret to Mrs. Bolton, and he
felt almost sure that he should have no opposition in the family. Mrs.
Bolton had been cautious in what she said, but Philip inferred everything
from her reply to his own questions, one day, "Has thee ever spoken thy
mind to Ruth?"
Why shouldn't he speak his mind, and end his doubts? Ruth had been more
tricksy than usual that day, and in a flow of spirits quite inconsistent,
it would seem, in a young lady devoted to grave studies.
Had Ruth a premonition of Philip's intention, in his manner? It may be,
for when the girls came down stairs, ready to walk to the cars; and met
Philip and Harry in the hall, Ruth said, laughing,
"The two tallest must walk together" and before Philip knew how it
happened Ruth had taken Harry's arm, and his evening was spoiled. He had
too much politeness and good sense and kindness to show in his manner
that he was hit. So he said to Harry,
"That's your disadvantage in being short." And he gave Alice no reason
to feel during the evening that she would not have been his first choice
for the excursion. But he was none the less chagrined, and not a little
angry at the turn the affair took.
The Hall was crowded with the fashion of the town. The concert was one
of those fragmentary drearinesses that people endure because they are
fashionable; tours de force on the piano, and fragments from operas,
which have no meaning without the setting, with weary pauses of waiting
between; there is the comic basso who is so amusing and on such familiar
terms with the audience, and always sings the Barber; the attitudinizing
tenor, with his languishing "Oh, Summer Night;" the soprano with her
"Batti Batti," who warbles and trills and runs and fetches her breath,
and ends with a noble scream that brings down a tempest of applause in
the midst of which she backs off the stage smiling and bowing. It was
this sort of concert, and Philip was thinking that it was the most stupid
one he ever sat through, when just as the soprano was in the midst of
that touching ballad, "Comin' thro' the Rye" (the soprano always sings
"Comin' thro' the Rye" on an encore)--the Black Swan used to make it
irresistible, Philip remembered, with her arch, "If a body kiss a body"
there was a cry of "Fire!"
The hall is long and narrow, and there is only one place of egress.
Instantly the audience was on its feet, and a rush began for the door.
Men shouted, women screamed, and panic seized the swaying mass.
A second's thought would have convinced every one that getting out was
impossible, and that the only effect of a rush would be to crash people
to death. But a second's thought was not given. A few cried:
"Sit down, sit down," but the mass was turned towards the door. Women
were down and trampled on in the aisles, and stout men, utterly lost to
self-control, were mounting the benches, as if to run a race over the
mass to the entrance.
Philip who had forced the girls to keep their seats saw, in a flash, the
new danger, and sprang to avert it. In a second more those infuriated
men would be over the benches and crushing Ruth and Alice under their
boots. He leaped upon the bench in front of them and struck out before
him with all his might, felling one man who was rushing on him, and
checking for an instant the movement, or rather parting it, and causing
it to flow on either side of him. But it was only for an instant; the
pressure behind was too great, and, the next Philip was dashed backwards
over the seat.
And yet that instant of arrest had probably saved the girls, for as
Philip fell, the orchestra struck up "Yankee Doodle" in the liveliest
manner. The familiar tune caught the ear of the mass, which paused in
wonder, and gave the conductor's voice a chance to be heard--"It's a
false alarm!"
The tumult was over in a minute, and the next, laughter was heard, and
not a few said, "I knew it wasn't anything." "What fools people are at
such a time."
The concert was over, however. A good many people were hurt, some of
them seriously, and among them Philip Sterling was found bent across the
seat, insensible, with his left arm hanging limp and a bleeding wound on
his head.
When he was carried into the air he revived, and said it was nothing.
A surgeon was called, and it was thought best to drive at once to the
Bolton's, the surgeon supporting Philip, who did not speak the whole way.
His arm was set and his head dressed, and the surgeon said he would come
round all right in his mind by morning; he was very weak. Alice who was
not much frightened while the panic lasted in the hall, was very much
unnerved by seeing Philip so pale and bloody. Ruth assisted the surgeon
with the utmost coolness and with skillful hands helped to dress Philip's
wounds. And there was a certain intentness and fierce energy in what she
did that might have revealed something to Philip if he had been in his
senses.
But he was not, or he would not have murmured "Let Alice do it, she is
not too tall."
It was Ruth's first case.
CHAPTER, XXXII.
Washington's delight in his beautiful sister was measureless. He said
that she had always been the queenliest creature in the land, but that
she was only commonplace before, compared to what she was now, so
extraordinary was the improvement wrought by rich fashionable attire.
"But your criticisms are too full of brotherly partiality to be depended
on, Washington. Other people will judge differently."
"Indeed they won't. You'll see. There will never be a woman in
Washington that can compare with you. You'll be famous within a
fortnight, Laura. Everybody will want to know you. You wait--you'll
see."
Laura wished in her heart that the prophecy might come true; and
privately she even believed it might--for she had brought all the women
whom she had seen since she left home under sharp inspection, and the
result had not been unsatisfactory to her.
During a week or two Washington drove about the city every day with her
and familiarized her with all of its salient features. She was beginning
to feel very much at home with the town itself, and she was also fast
acquiring ease with the distinguished people she met at the Dilworthy
table, and losing what little of country timidity she had brought with
her from Hawkeye. She noticed with secret pleasure the little start of
admiration that always manifested itself in the faces of the guests when
she entered the drawing-room arrayed in evening costume: she took
comforting note of the fact that these guests directed a very liberal
share of their conversation toward her; she observed with surprise, that
famous statesmen and soldiers did not talk like gods, as a general thing,
but said rather commonplace things for the most part; and she was filled
with gratification to discover that she, on the contrary, was making a
good many shrewd speeches and now and then a really brilliant one, and
furthermore, that they were beginning to be repeated in social circles
about the town.
Congress began its sittings, and every day or two Washington escorted her
to the galleries set apart for lady members of the households of Senators
and Representatives. Here was a larger field and a wider competition,
but still she saw that many eyes were uplifted toward her face, and that
first one person and then another called a neighbor's attention to her;
she was not too dull to perceive that the speeches of some of the younger
statesmen were delivered about as much and perhaps more at her than to
the presiding officer; and she was not sorry to see that the dapper young
Senator from Iowa came at once and stood in the open space before the
president's desk to exhibit his feet as soon as she entered the gallery,
whereas she had early learned from common report that his usual custom
was to prop them on his desk and enjoy them himself with a selfish
disregard of other people's longings.
Invitations began to flow in upon her and soon she was fairly "in
society." "The season" was now in full bloom, and the first select
reception was at hand that is to say, a reception confined to invited
guests. Senator Dilworthy had become well convinced; by this time, that
his judgment of the country-bred Missouri girl had not deceived him--it
was plain that she was going to be a peerless missionary in the field of
labor he designed her for, and therefore it would be perfectly safe and
likewise judicious to send her forth well panoplied for her work.--So he
had added new and still richer costumes to her wardrobe, and assisted
their attractions with costly jewelry-loans on the future land sale.
This first select reception took place at a cabinet minister's--or rather
a cabinet secretary's mansion. When Laura and the Senator arrived, about
half past nine or ten in the evening, the place was already pretty well
crowded, and the white-gloved negro servant at the door was still
receiving streams of guests.--The drawing-rooms were brilliant with
gaslight, and as hot as ovens. The host and hostess stood just within
the door of entrance; Laura was presented, and then she passed on into
the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and
white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen and wherever she moved
she was followed by a buzz of admiration that was grateful to all her
senses--so grateful, indeed, that her white face was tinged and its
beauty heightened by a perceptible suffusion of color. She caught such
remarks as, "Who is she?" "Superb woman!" "That is the new beauty from
the west," etc., etc.
Whenever she halted, she was presently surrounded by Ministers, Generals,
Congressmen, and all manner of aristocratic, people. Introductions
followed, and then the usual original question, "How do you like
Washington, Miss Hawkins?" supplemented by that other usual original
question, "Is this your first visit?"
These two exciting topics being exhausted, conversation generally drifted
into calmer channels, only to be interrupted at frequent intervals by new
introductions and new inquiries as to how Laura liked the capital and
whether it was her first visit or not. And thus for an hour or more the
Duchess moved through the crush in a rapture of happiness, for her doubts
were dead and gone, now she knew she could conquer here. A familiar face
appeared in the midst of the multitude and Harry Brierly fought his
difficult way to her side, his eyes shouting their gratification, so to
speak:
"Oh, this is a happiness! Tell me, my dear Miss Hawkins--"
"Sh! I know what you are going to ask. I do like Washington--I like it
ever so much!"
"No, but I was going to ask--"
"Yes, I am coming to it, coming to it as fast as I can. It is my first
visit. I think you should know that yourself."
And straightway a wave of the crowd swept her beyond his reach.
"Now what can the girl mean? Of course she likes Washington--I'm not
such a dummy as to have to ask her that. And as to its being her first
visit, why bang it, she knows that I knew it was. Does she think I have
turned idiot? Curious girl, anyway. But how they do swarm about her!
She is the reigning belle of Washington after this night. She'll know
five hundred of the heaviest guns in the town before this night's
nonsense is over. And this isn't even the beginning. Just as I used to
say--she'll be a card in the matter of--yes sir! She shall turn the
men's heads and I'll turn the women's! What a team that will be in
politics here. I wouldn't take a quarter of a million for what I can do
in this present session--no indeed I wouldn't. Now, here--I don't
altogether like this. That insignificant secretary of legation is--why,
she's smiling on him as if he--and now on the Admiral! Now she's
illuminating that, stuffy Congressman from Massachusetts--vulgar
ungrammatcal shovel-maker--greasy knave of spades. I don't like this
sort of thing. She doesn't appear to be much distressed about me--she
hasn't looked this way once. All right, my bird of Paradise, if it suits
you, go on. But I think I know your sex. I'll go to smiling around a
little, too, and see what effect that will have on you"
And he did "smile around a little," and got as near to her as he could to
watch the effect, but the scheme was a failure--he could not get her
attention. She seemed wholly unconscious of him, and so he could not
flirt with any spirit; he could only talk disjointedly; he could not keep
his eyes on the charmers he talked to; he grew irritable, jealous, and
very, unhappy. He gave up his enterprise, leaned his shoulder against a
fluted pilaster and pouted while he kept watch upon Laura's every
movement. His other shoulder stole the bloom from many a lovely cheek
that brushed him in the surging crush, but he noted it not. He was too
busy cursing himself inwardly for being an egotistical imbecile. An hour
ago he had thought to take this country lass under his protection and
show her "life" and enjoy her wonder and delight--and here she was,
immersed in the marvel up to her eyes, and just a trifle more at home in
it than he was himself. And now his angry comments ran on again:
"Now she's sweetening old Brother Balaam; and he--well he is inviting her
to the Congressional prayer-meeting, no doubt--better let old Dilworthy
alone to see that she doesn't overlook that. And now its Splurge, of New
York; and now its Batters of New Hampshire--and now the Vice President!
Well I may as well adjourn. I've got enough."
But he hadn't. He got as far as the door--and then struggled back to
take one more look, hating himself all the while for his weakness.
Toward midnight, when supper was announced, the crowd thronged to the
supper room where a long table was decked out with what seemed a rare
repast, but which consisted of things better calculated to feast the eye
than the appetite. The ladies were soon seated in files along the wall,
and in groups here and there, and the colored waiters filled the plates
and glasses and the, male guests moved hither and thither conveying them
to the privileged sex.
Harry took an ice and stood up by the table with other gentlemen, and
listened to the buzz of conversation while he ate.
From these remarks he learned a good deal about Laura that was news to
him. For instance, that she was of a distinguished western family; that
she was highly educated; that she was very rich and a great landed
heiress; that she was not a professor of religion, and yet was a
Christian in the truest and best sense of the word, for her whole heart
was devoted to the accomplishment of a great and noble enterprise--none
other than the sacrificing of her landed estates to the uplifting of the
down-trodden negro and the turning of his erring feet into the way of
light and righteousness. Harry observed that as soon as one listener had
absorbed the story, he turned about and delivered it to his next neighbor
and the latter individual straightway passed it on. And thus he saw it
travel the round of the gentlemen and overflow rearward among the ladies.
He could not trace it backward to its fountain head, and so he could not
tell who it was that started it.
One thing annoyed Harry a great deal; and that was the reflection that he
might have been in Washington days and days ago and thrown his
fascinations about Laura with permanent effect while she was new and
strange to the capital, instead of dawdling in Philadelphia to no
purpose. He feared he had "missed a trick," as he expressed it.
He only found one little opportunity of speaking again with Laura before
the evening's festivities ended, and then, for the first time in years,
his airy self-complacency failed him, his tongue's easy confidence
forsook it in a great measure, and he was conscious of an unheroic
timidity. He was glad to get away and find a place where he could
despise himself in private and try to grow his clipped plumes again.
When Laura reached home she was tired but exultant, and Senator Dilworthy
was pleased and satisfied. He called Laura "my daughter," next morning,
and gave her some "pin money," as he termed it, and she sent a hundred
and fifty dollars of it to her mother and loaned a trifle to Col.
Sellers. Then the Senator had a long private conference with Laura, and
unfolded certain plans of his for the good of the country, and religion,
and the poor, and temperance, and showed her how she could assist him in
developing these worthy and noble enterprises.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Laura soon discovered that there were three distinct aristocracies in
Washington. One of these, (nick-named the Antiques,) consisted of
cultivated, high-bred old families who looked back with pride upon an
ancestry that had been always great in the nation's councils and its wars
from the birth of the republic downward. Into this select circle it was
difficult to gain admission. No. 2 was the aristocracy of the middle
ground--of which, more anon. No. 3 lay beyond; of it we will say a word
here. We will call it the Aristocracy of the Parvenus--as, indeed, the
general public did. Official position, no matter how obtained, entitled
a man to a place in it, and carried his family with him, no matter whence
they sprang. Great wealth gave a man a still higher and nobler place in
it than did official position. If this wealth had been acquired by
conspicuous ingenuity, with just a pleasant little spice of illegality
about it, all the better. This aristocracy was "fast," and not averse to
ostentation.
The aristocracy of the Antiques ignored the aristocracy of the Parvenus;
the Parvenus laughed at the Antiques, (and secretly envied them.)
There were certain important "society" customs which one in Laura's
position needed to understand. For instance, when a lady of any
prominence comes to one of our cities and takes up her residence, all the
ladies of her grade favor her in turn with an initial call, giving their
cards to the servant at the door by way of introduction. They come
singly, sometimes; sometimes in couples; and always in elaborate full
dress. They talk two minutes and a quarter and then go. If the lady
receiving the call desires a further acquaintance, she must return the
visit within two weeks; to neglect it beyond that time means "let the
matter drop." But if she does return the visit within two weeks, it then
becomes the other party's privilege to continue the acquaintance or drop
it. She signifies her willingness to continue it by calling again any
time within twelve-months; after that, if the parties go on calling upon
each other once a year, in our large cities, that is sufficient, and the
acquaintanceship holds good. The thing goes along smoothly, now.
The annual visits are made and returned with peaceful regularity and
bland satisfaction, although it is not necessary that the two ladies
shall actually see each other oftener than once every few years. Their
cards preserve the intimacy and keep the acquaintanceship intact.
For instance, Mrs. A. pays her annual visit, sits in her carriage and
sends in her card with the lower right hand corner turned down, which
signifies that she has "called in person;" Mrs. B: sends down word that
she is "engaged" or "wishes to be excused"--or if she is a Parvenu and
low-bred, she perhaps sends word that she is "not at home." Very good;
Mrs. A. drives, on happy and content. If Mrs. A.'s daughter marries,
or a child is born to the family, Mrs. B. calls, sends in her card with
the upper left hand corner turned down, and then goes along about her
affairs--for that inverted corner means "Congratulations." If Mrs. B.'s
husband falls downstairs and breaks his neck, Mrs. A. calls, leaves her
card with the upper right hand corner turned down, and then takes her
departure; this corner means "Condolence." It is very necessary to get
the corners right, else one may unintentionally condole with a friend on
a wedding or congratulate her upon a funeral. If either lady is about to
leave the city, she goes to the other's house and leaves her card with
"P. P. C." engraved under the name--which signifies, "Pay Parting Call."
But enough of etiquette. Laura was early instructed in the mysteries of
society life by a competent mentor, and thus was preserved from
troublesome mistakes.
The first fashionable call she received from a member of the ancient
nobility, otherwise the Antiques, was of a pattern with all she received
from that limb of the aristocracy afterward. This call was paid by Mrs.
Major-General Fulke-Fulkerson and daughter. They drove up at one in the
afternoon in a rather antiquated vehicle with a faded coat of arms on the
panels, an aged white-wooled negro coachman on the box and a younger
darkey beside him--the footman. Both of these servants were dressed in
dull brown livery that had seen considerable service.
The ladies entered the drawing-room in full character; that is to say,
with Elizabethan stateliness on the part of the dowager, and an easy
grace and dignity on the part of the young lady that had a nameless
something about it that suggested conscious superiority. The dresses of
both ladies were exceedingly rich, as to material, but as notably modest
as to color and ornament. All parties having seated themselves, the
dowager delivered herself of a remark that was not unusual in its form,
and yet it came from her lips with the impressiveness of Scripture:
"The weather has been unpropitious of late, Miss Hawkins."
"It has indeed," said Laura. "The climate seems to be variable."
"It is its nature of old, here," said the daughter--stating it apparently
as a fact, only, and by her manner waving aside all personal
responsibility on account of it. "Is it not so, mamma?"
"Quite so, my child. Do you like winter, Miss Hawkins?" She said "like"
as if she had, an idea that its dictionary meaning was "approve of."
"Not as well as summer--though I think all seasons have their charms."
"It is a very just remark. The general held similar views. He
considered snow in winter proper; sultriness in summer legitimate; frosts
in the autumn the same, and rains in spring not objectionable. He was
not an exacting man. And I call to mind now that he always admired
thunder. You remember, child, your father always admired thunder?"
"He adored it."
"No doubt it reminded him of battle," said Laura.
"Yes, I think perhaps it did. He had a great respect for Nature.
He often said there was something striking about the ocean. You remember
his saying that, daughter?"
"Yes, often, Mother. I remember it very well."
"And hurricanes... He took a great interest in hurricanes. And animals.
Dogs, especially--hunting dogs. Also comets. I think we all have our
predilections. I think it is this that gives variety to our tastes."
Laura coincided with this view.
"Do you find it hard and lonely to be so far from your home and friends,
Miss Hawkins?"
"I do find it depressing sometimes, but then there is so much about me
here that is novel and interesting that my days are made up more of
sunshine than shadow."
"Washington is not a dull city in the season," said the young lady.
"We have some very good society indeed, and one need not be at a loss for
means to pass the time pleasantly. Are you fond of watering-places, Miss
Hawkins?"
"I have really had no experience of them, but I have always felt a strong
desire to see something of fashionable watering-place life."
"We of Washington are unfortunately situated in that respect," said the
dowager. "It is a tedious distance to Newport. But there is no help for
it."
Laura said to herself, "Long Branch and Cape May are nearer than Newport;
doubtless these places are low; I'll feel my way a little and see." Then
she said aloud:
"Why I thought that Long Branch--"
There was no need to "feel" any further--there was that in both faces
before her which made that truth apparent. The dowager said:
"Nobody goes there, Miss Hawkins--at least only persons of no position in
society. And the President." She added that with tranquility.
"Newport is damp, and cold, and windy and excessively disagreeable," said
the daughter, "but it is very select. One cannot be fastidious about
minor matters when one has no choice."
The visit had spun out nearly three minutes, now. Both ladies rose with
grave dignity, conferred upon Laura a formal invitation to call, aid then
retired from the conference. Laura remained in the drawing-room and left
them to pilot themselves out of the house--an inhospitable thing,
it seemed to her, but then she was following her instructions. She
stood, steeped in reverie, a while, and then she said:
"I think I could always enjoy icebergs--as scenery but not as company."
Still, she knew these two people by reputation, and was aware that they
were not ice-bergs when they were in their own waters and amid their
legitimate surroundings, but on the contrary were people to be respected
for their stainless characters and esteemed for their social virtues and
their benevolent impulses. She thought it a pity that they had to be
such changed and dreary creatures on occasions of state.
The first call Laura received from the other extremity of the Washington
aristocracy followed close upon the heels of the one we have just been
describing. The callers this time were the Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins,
the Hon. Mrs. Patrique Oreille (pronounced O-relay,) Miss Bridget
(pronounced Breezhay) Oreille, Mrs. Peter Gashly, Miss Gashly, and Miss
Emmeline Gashly.
The three carriages arrived at the same moment from different directions.
They were new and wonderfully shiny, and the brasses on the harness were
highly polished and bore complicated monograms. There were showy coats
of arms, too, with Latin mottoes. The coachmen and footmen were clad in
bright new livery, of striking colors, and they had black rosettes with
shaving-brushes projecting above them, on the sides of their stove-pipe
hats.
When the visitors swept into the drawing-room they filled the place with
a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumer's. Their costumes,
as to architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were
rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels--chiefly diamonds. It would
have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these
women.
The Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant
territory--a gentleman who had kept the principal "saloon," and sold the
best whiskey in the principal village in his wilderness, and so, of
course, was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its
fittest representative.
He was a man of paramount influence at home, for he was public spirited,
he was chief of the fire department, he had an admirable command of
profane language, and had killed several "parties." His shirt fronts
were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could
lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a
white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a
pound; the gold in his finger ring was worth forty five dollars; he wore
a diamond cluster-pin and he parted his hair behind. He had always been,
regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory, and it was
conceded by all that no man thereabouts was anywhere near his equal in
the telling of an obscene story except the venerable white-haired
governor himself. The Hon. Higgins had not come to serve his country in
Washington for nothing. The appropriation which he had engineered
through Congress for the maintenance, of the Indians in his Territory
would have made all those savages rich if it had ever got to them.
The Hon. Mrs. Higgins was a picturesque woman, and a fluent talker, and
she held a tolerably high station among the Parvenus. Her English was
fair enough, as a general thing--though, being of New York origin, she
had the fashion peculiar to many natives of that city of pronouncing saw
and law as if they were spelt sawr and lawr.
Petroleum was the agent that had suddenly transformed the Gashlys from
modest hard-working country village folk into "loud" aristocrats and
ornaments of the city.
The Hon. Patrique Oreille was a wealthy Frenchman from Cork. Not that he
was wealthy when he first came from Cork, but just the reverse. When he
first landed in New York with his wife, he had only halted at Castle
Garden for a few minutes to receive and exhibit papers showing that he
had resided in this country two years--and then he voted the democratic
ticket and went up town to hunt a house. He found one and then went to
work as assistant to an architect and builder, carrying a hod all day and
studying politics evenings. Industry and economy soon enabled him to
start a low rum shop in a foul locality, and this gave him political
influence. In our country it is always our first care to see that our
people have the opportunity of voting for their choice of men to
represent and govern them--we do not permit our great officials to
appoint the little officials. We prefer to have so tremendous a power as
that in our own hands. We hold it safest to elect our judges and
everybody else. In our cities, the ward meetings elect delegates to the
nominating conventions and instruct them whom to nominate. The publicans
and their retainers rule the ward meetings (for every body else hates the
worry of politics and stays at home); the delegates from the ward
meetings organize as a nominating convention and make up a list of
candidates--one convention offering a democratic and another a republican
list of incorruptibles; and then the great meek public come forward at
the proper time and make unhampered choice and bless Heaven that they
live in a free land where no form of despotism can ever intrude.
Patrick O'Riley (as his name then stood) created friends and influence
very, fast, for he was always on hand at the police courts to give straw
bail for his customers or establish an alibi for them in case they had
been beating anybody to death on his premises. Consequently he presently
became a political leader, and was elected to a petty office under the
city government. Out of a meager salary he soon saved money enough to
open quite a stylish liquor saloon higher up town, with a faro bank
attached and plenty of capital to conduct it with. This gave him fame
and great respectability. The position of alderman was forced upon him,
and it was just the same as presenting him a gold mine. He had fine
horses and carriages, now, and closed up his whiskey mill.
By and by he became a large contractor for city work, and was a bosom
friend of the great and good Wm. M. Weed himself, who had stolen
$20,600,000 from the city and was a man so envied, so honored,--so
adored, indeed, that when the sheriff went to his office to arrest him as
a felon, that sheriff blushed and apologized, and one of the illustrated
papers made a picture of the scene and spoke of the matter in such a way
as to show that the editor regretted that the offense of an arrest had
been offered to so exalted a personage as Mr. Weed.
Mr. O'Riley furnished shingle nails to, the new Court House at three
thousand dollars a keg, and eighteen gross of 60-cent thermometers at
fifteen hundred dollars a dozen; the controller and the board of audit
passed the bills, and a mayor, who was simply ignorant but not criminal,
signed them. When they were paid, Mr. O'Riley's admirers gave him a
solitaire diamond pin of the size of a filbert, in imitation of the
liberality of Mr. Weed's friends, and then Mr. O'Riley retired from
active service and amused himself with buying real estate at enormous
figures and holding it in other people's names. By and by the newspapers
came out with exposures and called Weed and O'Riley "thieves,"--whereupon
the people rose as one man (voting repeatedly) and elected the two
gentlemen to their proper theatre of action, the New York legislature.
The newspapers clamored, and the courts proceeded to try the new
legislators for their small irregularities. Our admirable jury system
enabled the persecuted ex-officials to secure a jury of nine gentlemen
from a neighboring asylum and three graduates from Sing-Sing, and
presently they walked forth with characters vindicated. The legislature
was called upon to spew them forth--a thing which the legislature
declined to do. It was like asking children to repudiate their own
father. It was a legislature of the modern pattern.
Being now wealthy and distinguished, Mr. O'Riley, still bearing the
legislative "Hon." attached to his name (for titles never die in America,
although we do take a republican pride in poking fun at such trifles),
sailed for Europe with his family. They traveled all about, turning
their noses up at every thing, and not finding it a difficult thing to
do, either, because nature had originally given those features a cast in
that direction; and finally they established themselves in Paris, that
Paradise of Americans of their sort.--They staid there two years and
learned to speak English with a foreign accent--not that it hadn't always
had a foreign accent (which was indeed the case) but now the nature of it
was changed. Finally they returned home and became ultra fashionables.
They landed here as the Hon. Patrique Oreille and family, and so are
known unto this day.
Laura provided seats for her visitors and they immediately launched forth
into a breezy, sparkling conversation with that easy confidence which is
to be found only among persons accustomed to high life.
"I've been intending to call sooner, Miss Hawkins," said the Hon. Mrs.
Oreille, "but the weather's been so horrid. How do you like Washington?"
Laura liked it very well indeed.
Mrs. Gashly--"Is it your first visit?"
Yea, it was her first.
All--"Indeed?"
Mrs. Oreille--"I'm afraid you'll despise the weather, Miss Hawkins.
It's perfectly awful. It always is. I tell Mr. Oreille I can't and
I won't put up with any such a climate. If we were obliged to do it,
I wouldn't mind it; but we are not obliged to, and so I don't see the use
of it. Sometimes its real pitiful the way the childern pine for Parry
--don't look so sad, Bridget, 'ma chere'--poor child, she can't hear Parry
mentioned without getting the blues."
Mrs. Gashly--"Well I should think so, Mrs. Oreille. A body lives in
Paris, but a body, only stays here. I dote on Paris; I'd druther scrimp
along on ten thousand dollars a year there, than suffer and worry here on
a real decent income."
Miss Gashly--"Well then, I wish you'd take us back, mother; I'm sure I
hate this stoopid country enough, even if it is our dear native land."
Miss Emmeline Gashly--"What and leave poor Johnny Peterson behind?" [An
airy genial laugh applauded this sally].
Miss Gashly--"Sister, I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself!"
Miss Emmeline--"Oh, you needn't ruffle your feathers so: I was only
joking. He don't mean anything by coming to, the house every evening
--only comes to see mother. Of course that's all!" [General laughter].
Miss G. prettily confused--"Emmeline, how can you!"
Mrs. G.--"Let your sister alone, Emmeline. I never saw such a tease!"
Mrs. Oreille--"What lovely corals you have, Miss Hawkins! Just look at
them, Bridget, dear. I've a great passion for corals--it's a pity
they're getting a little common. I have some elegant ones--not as
elegant as yours, though--but of course I don't wear them now."
Laura--"I suppose they are rather common, but still I have a great
affection for these, because they were given to me by a dear old friend
of our family named Murphy. He was a very charming man, but very
eccentric. We always supposed he was an Irishman, but after be got rich
he went abroad for a year or two, and when he came back you would have
been amused to see how interested he was in a potato. He asked what it
was! Now you know that when Providence shapes a mouth especially for the
accommodation of a potato you can detect that fact at a glance when that
mouth is in repose--foreign travel can never remove that sign. But he
was a very delightful gentleman, and his little foible did not hurt him
at all. We all have our shams--I suppose there is a sham somewhere about
every individual, if we could manage to ferret it out. I would so like
to go to France. I suppose our society here compares very favorably with
French society does it not, Mrs. Oreille?"
Mrs. O.--"Not by any means, Miss Hawkins! French society is much more
elegant--much more so."
Laura--"I am sorry to hear that. I suppose ours has deteriorated of
late."
Mrs. O.--"Very much indeed. There are people in society here that have
really no more money to live on than what some of us pay for servant
hire. Still I won't say but what some of them are very good people--and
respectable, too."
Laura--"The old families seem to be holding themselves aloof, from what I
hear. I suppose you seldom meet in society now, the people you used to
be familiar with twelve or fifteen years ago?"
Mrs. O.--"Oh, no-hardly ever."
Mr. O'Riley kept his first rum-mill and protected his customers from the
law in those days, and this turn of the conversation was rather
uncomfortable to madame than otherwise.
Hon. Mrs. Higgins--"Is Francois' health good now, Mrs. Oreille?"
Mrs. O.--(Thankful for the intervention)--"Not very. A body couldn't
expect it. He was always delicate--especially his lungs--and this odious
climate tells on him strong, now, after Parry, which is so mild."
Mrs. H:--"I should think so. Husband says Percy'll die if he don't have
a change; and so I'm going to swap round a little and see what can be
done. I saw a lady from Florida last week, and she recommended Key West.
I told her Percy couldn't abide winds, as he was threatened with a
pulmonary affection, and then she said try St. Augustine. It's an awful
distance--ten or twelve hundred mile, they say but then in a case of this
kind--a body can't stand back for trouble, you know."
Mrs. O.--"No, of course that's off. If Francois don't get better soon
we've got to look out for some other place, or else Europe. We've
thought some of the Hot Springs, but I don't know. It's a great
responsibility and a body wants to go cautious. Is Hildebrand about
again, Mrs. Gashly?"
Mrs. G.--"Yes, but that's about all. It was indigestion, you know, and
it looks as if it was chronic. And you know I do dread dyspepsia. We've
all been worried a good deal about him. The doctor recommended baked
apple and spoiled meat, and I think it done him good. It's about the
only thing that will stay on his stomach now-a-days. We have Dr. Shovel
now. Who's your doctor, Mrs. Higgins?"
Mrs. H.--"Well, we had Dr. Spooner a good while, but he runs so much to
emetics, which I think are weakening, that we changed off and took Dr.
Leathers. We like him very much. He has a fine European reputation,
too. The first thing he suggested for Percy was to have him taken out in
the back yard for an airing, every afternoon, with nothing at all on."
Mrs. O. and Mrs. G.--"What!"
Mrs. H.--"As true as I'm sitting here. And it actually helped him for
two or three days; it did indeed. But after that the doctor said it
seemed to be too severe and so he has fell back on hot foot-baths at
night and cold showers in the morning. But I don't think there, can be
any good sound help for him in such a climate as this. I believe we are
going to lose him if we don't make a change."
Mrs. O. "I suppose you heard of the fright we had two weeks ago last
Saturday? No? Why that is strange--but come to remember, you've all
been away to Richmond. Francois tumbled from the sky light--in the
second-story hall clean down to the first floor--"
Everybody--"Mercy!"
Mrs. O.--"Yes indeed--and broke two of his ribs--"
Everybody--"What!"
Mrs. O. "Just as true as you live. First we thought he must be injured
internally. It was fifteen minutes past 8 in the evening. Of course we
were all distracted in a moment--everybody was flying everywhere, and
nobody doing anything worth anything. By and by I flung out next door
and dragged in Dr. Sprague; President of the Medical University no time
to go for our own doctor of course--and the minute he saw Francois he
said, 'Send for your own physician, madam;' said it as cross as a bear,
too, and turned right on his heel, and cleared out without doing a
thing!"
Everybody--"The mean, contemptible brute!"
Mrs. O--"Well you may say it. I was nearly out of my wits by this time.
But we hurried off the servants after our own doctor and telegraphed
mother--she was in New York and rushed down on the first train; and when
the doctor got there, lo and behold you he found Francois had broke one
of his legs, too!"
Everybody--"Goodness!"
Mrs. O.--"Yes. So he set his leg and bandaged it up, and fixed his ribs
and gave him a dose of something to quiet down his excitement and put him
to sleep--poor thing he was trembling and frightened to death and it was
pitiful to see him. We had him in my bed--Mr. Oreille slept in the guest
room and I laid down beside Francois--but not to sleep bless you no.
Bridget and I set up all night, and the doctor staid till two in the
morning, bless his old heart.--When mother got there she was so used up
with anxiety, that she had to go to bed and have the doctor; but when she
found that Francois was not in immediate danger she rallied, and by night
she was able to take a watch herself. Well for three days and nights we
three never left that bedside only to take an hour's nap at a time.
And then the doctor said Francois was out of danger and if ever there was
a thankful set, in this world, it was us."
Laura's respect for these, women had augmented during this conversation,
naturally enough; affection and devotion are qualities that are able to
adorn and render beautiful a character that is otherwise unattractive,
and even repulsive.
Mrs. Gashly--"I do believe I would a died if I had been in your place,
Mrs. Oreille. The time Hildebrand was so low with the pneumonia Emmeline
and me were all, alone with him most of the time and we never took a
minute's sleep for as much as two days, and nights. It was at Newport
and we wouldn't trust hired nurses. One afternoon he had a fit, and
jumped up and run out on the portico of the hotel with nothing in the
world on and the wind a blowing liken ice and we after him scared to
death; and when the ladies and gentlemen saw that he had a fit, every
lady scattered for her room and not a gentleman lifted his hand to help,
the wretches! Well after that his life hung by a thread for as much as
ten days, and the minute he was out of danger Emmeline and me just went
to bed sick and worn out. I never want to pass through such a time
again. Poor dear Francois--which leg did he break, Mrs. Oreille!"
Mrs. O.--"It was his right hand hind leg. Jump down, Francois dear, and
show the ladies what a cruel limp you've got yet."
Francois demurred, but being coaxed and delivered gently upon the floor,
he performed very satisfactorily, with his "right hand hind leg" in the
air. All were affected--even Laura--but hers was an affection of the
stomach. The country-bred girl had not suspected that the little whining
ten-ounce black and tan reptile, clad in a red embroidered pigmy blanket
and reposing in Mrs. Oreille's lap all through the visit was the
individual whose sufferings had been stirring the dormant generosities of
her nature. She said:
"Poor little creature! You might have lost him!"
Mrs. O.--"O pray don't mention it, Miss Hawkins--it gives me such a
turn!"
Laura--"And Hildebrand and Percy--are they-are they like this one?"
Mrs. G.--"No, Hilly has considerable Skye blood in him, I believe."
Mrs. H.--"Percy's the same, only he is two months and ten days older and
has his ears cropped. His father, Martin Farquhar Tupper, was sickly,
and died young, but he was the sweetest disposition.--His mother had
heart disease but was very gentle and resigned, and a wonderful ratter."
--[** As impossible and exasperating as this conversation may sound to a
person who is not an idiot, it is scarcely in any respect an exaggeration
of one which one of us actually listened to in an American drawing room
--otherwise we could not venture to put such a chapter into a book which,
professes to deal with social possibilities.--THE AUTHORS.]
So carried away had the visitors become by their interest attaching to
this discussion of family matters, that their stay had been prolonged to
a very improper and unfashionable length; but they suddenly recollected
themselves now and took their departure.
Laura's scorn was boundless. The more she thought of these people and
their extraordinary talk, the more offensive they seemed to her; and yet
she confessed that if one must choose between the two extreme
aristocracies it might be best, on the whole, looking at things from a
strictly business point of view, to herd with the Parvenus; she was in
Washington solely to compass a certain matter and to do it at any cost,
and these people might be useful to her, while it was plain that her
purposes and her schemes for pushing them would not find favor in the
eyes of the Antiques. If it came to choice--and it might come to that,
sooner or later--she believed she could come to a decision without much
difficulty or many pangs.
But the best aristocracy of the three Washington castes, and really the
most powerful, by far, was that of the Middle Ground: It was made up of
the families of public men from nearly every state in the Union--men who
held positions in both the executive and legislative branches of the
government, and whose characters had been for years blemishless, both at
home and at the capital. These gentlemen and their households were
unostentatious people; they were educated and refined; they troubled
themselves but little about the two other orders of nobility, but moved
serenely in their wide orbit, confident in their own strength and well
aware of the potency of their influence. They had no troublesome
appearances to keep up, no rivalries which they cared to distress
themselves about, no jealousies to fret over. They could afford to mind
their own affairs and leave other combinations to do the same or do
otherwise, just as they chose. They were people who were beyond
reproach, and that was sufficient.
Senator Dilworthy never came into collision with any of these factions.
He labored for them all and with them all. He said that all men were
brethren and all were entitled to the honest unselfish help and
countenance of a Christian laborer in the public vineyard.
Laura concluded, after reflection, to let circumstances determine the
course it might be best for her to pursue as regarded the several
aristocracies.
Now it might occur to the reader that perhaps Laura had been somewhat
rudely suggestive in her remarks to Mrs. Oreille when the subject of
corals was under discussion, but it did not occur to Laura herself.
She was not a person of exaggerated refinement; indeed, the society and
the influences that had formed her character had not been of a nature
calculated to make her so; she thought that "give and take was fair
play," and that to parry an offensive thrust with a sarcasm was a neat
and legitimate thing to do. She some times talked to people in a way
which some ladies would consider, actually shocking; but Laura rather
prided herself upon some of her exploits of that character. We are sorry
we cannot make her a faultless heroine; but we cannot, for the reason
that she was human.
She considered herself a superior conversationist. Long ago, when the
possibility had first been brought before her mind that some day she
might move in Washington society, she had recognized the fact that
practiced conversational powers would be a necessary weapon in that
field; she had also recognized the fact that since her dealings there
must be mainly with men, and men whom she supposed to be exceptionally
cultivated and able, she would need heavier shot in her magazine than
mere brilliant "society" nothings; whereupon she had at once entered upon
a tireless and elaborate course of reading, and had never since ceased to
devote every unoccupied moment to this sort of preparation. Having now
acquired a happy smattering of various information, she used it with good
effect--she passed for a singularly well informed woman in Washington.
The quality of her literary tastes had necessarily undergone constant
improvement under this regimen, and as necessarily, also; the duality of
her language had improved, though it cannot be denied that now and then
her former condition of life betrayed itself in just perceptible
inelegancies of expression and lapses of grammar.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
When Laura had been in Washington three months, she was still the same
person, in one respect, that she was when she first arrived there--that
is to say, she still bore the name of Laura Hawkins. Otherwise she was
perceptibly changed.--
She had arrived in a state of grievous uncertainty as to what manner of
woman she was, physically and intellectually, as compared with eastern
women; she was well satisfied, now, that her beauty was confessed, her
mind a grade above the average, and her powers of fascination rather
extraordinary. So she, was at ease upon those points. When she arrived,
she was possessed of habits of economy and not possessed of money; now
she dressed elaborately, gave but little thought to the cost of things,
and was very well fortified financially. She kept her mother and
Washington freely supplied with money, and did the same by Col. Sellers
--who always insisted upon giving his note for loans--with interest; he was
rigid upon that; she must take interest; and one of the Colonel's
greatest satisfactions was to go over his accounts and note what a
handsome sum this accruing interest amounted to, and what a comfortable
though modest support it would yield Laura in case reverses should
overtake her.
In truth he could not help feeling that he was an efficient shield for
her against poverty; and so, if her expensive ways ever troubled him for
a brief moment, he presently dismissed the thought and said to himself,
"Let her go on--even if she loses everything she is still safe--this
interest will always afford her a good easy income."
Laura was on excellent terms with a great many members of Congress, and
there was an undercurrent of suspicion in some quarters that she was one
of that detested class known as "lobbyists;" but what belle could escape
slander in such a city? Fairminded people declined to condemn her on
mere suspicion, and so the injurious talk made no very damaging headway.
She was very gay, now, and very celebrated, and she might well expect to
be assailed by many kinds of gossip. She was growing used to celebrity,
and could already sit calm and seemingly unconscious, under the fire of
fifty lorgnettes in a theatre, or even overhear the low voice "That's
she!" as she passed along the street without betraying annoyance.
The whole air was full of a vague vast scheme which was to eventuate in
filling Laura's pockets with millions of money; some had one idea of the
scheme, and some another, but nobody had any exact knowledge upon the
subject. All that any one felt sure about, was that Laura's landed
estates were princely in value and extent, and that the government was
anxious to get hold of them for public purposes, and that Laura was
willing to make the sale but not at all anxious about the matter and not
at all in a hurry. It was whispered that Senator Dilworthy was a
stumbling block in the way of an immediate sale, because he was resolved
that the government should not have the lands except with the
understanding that they should be devoted to the uplifting of the negro
race; Laura did not care what they were devoted to, it was said, (a world
of very different gossip to the contrary notwithstanding,) but there were
several other heirs and they would be guided entirely by the Senator's
wishes; and finally, many people averred that while it would be easy to
sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the negro, by
resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes, Senator Dilworthy
was unwilling to have so noble a charity sullied by any taint of
corruption--he was resolved that not a vote should be bought. Nobody
could get anything definite from Laura about these matters, and so gossip
had to feed itself chiefly upon guesses. But the effect of it all was,
that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and likely to be vastly more
so in a little while. Consequently she was much courted and as much
envied: Her wealth attracted many suitors. Perhaps they came to worship
her riches, but they remained to worship her. Some of the noblest men of
the time succumbed to her fascinations. She frowned upon no lover when
he made his first advances, but by and by when she was hopelessly
enthralled, he learned from her own lips that she had formed a resolution
never to marry. Then he would go away hating and cursing the whole sex,
and she would calmly add his scalp to her string, while she mused upon
the bitter day that Col. Selby trampled her love and her pride in the
dust. In time it came to be said that her way was paved with broken
hearts.
Poor Washington gradually woke up to the fact that he too was an
intellectual marvel as well as his gifted sister. He could not conceive
how it had come about (it did not occur to him that the gossip about his
family's great wealth had any thing to do with it). He could not account
for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the
fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged
into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were
one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a
self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd
daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party or a reception he would find
himself the centre of interest, and feel unutterably uncomfortable in the
discovery. Being obliged to say something, he would mine his brain and
put in a blast and when the smoke and flying debris had cleared away the
result would be what seemed to him but a poor little intellectual clod of
dirt or two, and then he would be astonished to see everybody as lost in
admiration as if he had brought up a ton or two of virgin gold. Every
remark he made delighted his hearers and compelled their applause; he
overheard people say he was exceedingly bright--they were chiefly mammas
and marriageable young ladies. He found that some of his good things
were being repeated about the town. Whenever he heard of an instance of
this kind, he would keep that particular remark in mind and analyze it at
home in private. At first he could not see that the remark was anything
better than a parrot might originate; but by and by he began to feel that
perhaps he underrated his powers; and after that he used to analyze his
good things with a deal of comfort, and find in them a brilliancy which
would have been unapparent to him in earlier days--and then he would make
a note, of that good thing and say it again the first time he found
himself in a new company. Presently he had saved up quite a repertoire
of brilliancies; and after that he confined himself to repeating these
and ceased to originate any more, lest he might injure his reputation by
an unlucky effort.
He was constantly having young ladies thrust upon his notice at
receptions, or left upon his hands at parties, and in time he began to
feel that he was being deliberately persecuted in this way; and after
that he could not enjoy society because of his constant dread of these
female ambushes and surprises. He was distressed to find that nearly
every time he showed a young lady a polite attention he was straightway
reported to be engaged to her; and as some of these reports got into the
newspapers occasionally, he had to keep writing to Louise that they were
lies and she must believe in him and not mind them or allow them to
grieve her.
Washington was as much in the dark as anybody with regard to the great
wealth that was hovering in the air and seemingly on the point of
tumbling into the family pocket. Laura would give him no satisfaction.
All she would say, was:
"Wait. Be patient. You will see."
"But will it be soon, Laura?"
"It will not be very long, I think."
"But what makes you think so?"
"I have reasons--and good ones. Just wait, and be patient."
"But is it going to be as much as people say it is?"
"What do they say it is?"
"Oh, ever so much. Millions!"
"Yes, it will be a great sum."
"But how great, Laura? Will it be millions?"
"Yes, you may call it that. Yes, it will be millions. There, now--does
that satisfy you?"
"Splendid! I can wait. I can wait patiently--ever so patiently. Once I
was near selling the land for twenty thousand dollars; once for thirty
thousand dollars; once after that for seven thousand dollars; and once
for forty thousand dollars--but something always told me not to do it.
What a fool I would have been to sell it for such a beggarly trifle! It
is the land that's to bring the money, isn't it Laura? You can tell me
that much, can't you?"
"Yes, I don't mind saying that much. It is the land.
"But mind--don't ever hint that you got it from me. Don't mention me in
the matter at all, Washington."
"All right--I won't. Millions! Isn't it splendid! I mean to look
around for a building lot; a lot with fine ornamental shrubbery and all
that sort of thing. I will do it to-day. And I might as well see an
architect, too, and get him to go to work at a plan for a house. I don't
intend to spare and expense; I mean to have the noblest house that money
can build." Then after a pause--he did not notice Laura's smiles "Laura,
would you lay the main hall in encaustic tiles, or just in fancy patterns
of hard wood?"
Laura laughed a good old-fashioned laugh that had more of her former
natural self about it than any sound that had issued from her mouth in
many weeks. She said:
"You don't change, Washington. You still begin to squander a fortune
right and left the instant you hear of it in the distance; you never wait
till the foremost dollar of it arrives within a hundred miles of you,"
--and she kissed her brother good bye and left him weltering in his dreams,
so to speak.
He got up and walked the floor feverishly during two hours; and when he
sat down he had married Louise, built a house, reared a family, married
them off, spent upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars on mere
luxuries, and died worth twelve millions.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Laura went down stairs, knocked at/the study door, and entered, scarcely
waiting for the response. Senator Dilworthy was alone--with an open
Bible in his hand, upside down. Laura smiled, and said, forgetting her
acquired correctness of speech,
"It is only me."
"Ah, come in, sit down," and the Senator closed the book and laid it
down. "I wanted to see you. Time to report progress from the committee
of the whole," and the Senator beamed with his own congressional wit.
"In the committee of the whole things are working very well. We have
made ever so much progress in a week. I believe that you and I together
could run this government beautifully, uncle."
The Senator beamed again. He liked to be called "uncle" by this
beautiful woman.
"Did you see Hopperson last night after the congressional prayer
meeting?"
"Yes. He came. He's a kind of--"
"Eh? he is one of my friends, Laura. He's a fine man, a very fine man.
I don't know any man in congress I'd sooner go to for help in any
Christian work. What did he say?"
"Oh, he beat around a little. He said he should like to help the negro,
his heart went out to the negro, and all that--plenty of them say that
but he was a little afraid of the Tennessee Land bill; if Senator
Dilworthy wasn't in it, he should suspect there was a fraud on the
government."
"He said that, did he?"
"Yes. And he said he felt he couldn't vote for it. He was shy."
"Not shy, child, cautious. He's a very cautious man. I have been with
him a great deal on conference committees. He wants reasons, good ones.
Didn't you show him he was in error about the bill?"
"I did. I went over the whole thing. I had to tell him some of the side
arrangements, some of the--"
"You didn't mention me?"
"Oh, no. I told him you were daft about the negro and the philanthropy
part of it, as you are."
"Daft is a little strong, Laura. But you know that I wouldn't touch this
bill if it were not for the public good, and for the good of the colored
race; much as I am interested in the heirs of this property, and would
like to have them succeed."
Laura looked a little incredulous, and the Senator proceeded.
"Don't misunderstand me, I don't deny that it is for the interest of all
of us that this bill should go through, and it will. I have no
concealments from you. But I have one principle in my public life, which
I should like you to keep in mind; it has always been my guide. I never
push a private interest if it is not Justified and ennobled by some
larger public good. I doubt Christian would be justified in working for
his own salvation if it was not to aid in the salvation of his fellow
men."
The Senator spoke with feeling, and then added,
"I hope you showed Hopperson that our motives were pure?"
"Yes, and he seemed to have a new light on the measure: I think will vote
for it."
"I hope so; his name will give tone and strength to it. I knew you would
only have to show him that it was just and pure, in order to secure his
cordial support."
"I think I convinced him. Yes, I am perfectly sure he will vote right
now."
"That's good, that's good," said the Senator; smiling, and rubbing his
hands. "Is there anything more?"
"You'll find some changes in that I guess," handing the Senator a printed
list of names. "Those checked off are all right."
"Ah--'m--'m," running his eye down the list. "That's encouraging. What
is the 'C' before some of the names, and the 'B. B.'?"
"Those are my private marks. That 'C' stands for 'convinced,' with
argument. The 'B. B.' is a general sign for a relative. You see it
stands before three of the Hon. Committee. I expect to see the chairman
of the committee to-day, Mr. Buckstone."
"So, you must, he ought to be seen without any delay. Buckstone is a
worldly sort of a fellow, but he has charitable impulses. If we secure
him we shall have a favorable report by the committee, and it will be a
great thing to be able to state that fact quietly where it will do good."
"Oh, I saw Senator Balloon"
"He will help us, I suppose? Balloon is a whole-hearted fellow. I can't
help loving that man, for all his drollery and waggishness. He puts on
an air of levity sometimes, but there aint a man in the senate knows the
scriptures as he does. He did not make any objections?"
"Not exactly, he said--shall I tell you what he said?" asked Laura
glancing furtively at him.
"Certainly."
"He said he had no doubt it was a good thing; if Senator Dilworthy was in
it, it would pay to look into it."
The Senator laughed, but rather feebly, and said, "Balloon is always full
of his jokes."
"I explained it to him. He said it was all right, he only wanted a word
with you,", continued Laura. "He is a handsome old gentleman, and he is
gallant for an old man."
"My daughter," said the Senator, with a grave look, "I trust there was
nothing free in his manner?"
"Free?" repeated Laura, with indignation in her face. "With me!"
"There, there, child. I meant nothing, Balloon talks a little freely
sometimes, with men. But he is right at heart. His term expires next
year and I fear we shall lose him."
"He seemed to be packing the day I was there. His rooms were full of dry
goods boxes, into which his servant was crowding all manner of old
clothes and stuff: I suppose he will paint 'Pub. Docs' on them and frank
them home. That's good economy, isn't it?"
"Yes, yes, but child, all Congressmen do that. It may not be strictly
honest, indeed it is not unless he had some public documents mixed in
with the clothes."
"It's a funny world. Good-bye, uncle. I'm going to see that chairman."
And humming a cheery opera air, she departed to her room to dress for
going out. Before she did that, however, she took out her note book and
was soon deep in its contents; marking, dashing, erasing, figuring, and
talking to herself.
"Free! I wonder what Dilworthy does think of me anyway? One . . .
two. . .eight . . . seventeen . . . twenty-one,. . 'm'm . . .
it takes a heap for a majority. Wouldn't Dilworthy open his eyes if he
knew some of the things Balloon did say to me. There. . . .
Hopperson's influence ought to count twenty . . . the sanctimonious
old curmudgeon. Son-in-law. . . . sinecure in the negro institution
. . . .That about gauges him . . . The three committeemen . . . .
sons-in-law. Nothing like a son-in-law here in Washington or a brother-
in-law . . . And everybody has 'em . . . Let's see: . . . sixty-
one. . . . with places . . . twenty-five . . . persuaded--it is
getting on; . . . . we'll have two-thirds of Congress in time . . .
Dilworthy must surely know I understand him. Uncle Dilworthy . . . .
Uncle Balloon!--Tells very amusing stories . . . when ladies are not
present . . . I should think so . . . .'m . . . 'm. Eighty-five.
There. I must find that chairman. Queer. . . . Buckstone acts . .
Seemed to be in love . . . . . I was sure of it. He promised to
come here. . . and he hasn't. . . Strange. Very strange . . . .
I must chance to meet him to-day."
Laura dressed and went out, thinking she was perhaps too early for Mr.
Buckstone to come from the house, but as he lodged near the bookstore she
would drop in there and keep a look out for him.
While Laura is on her errand to find Mr. Buckstone, it may not be out of
the way to remark that she knew quite as much of Washington life as
Senator Dilworthy gave her credit for, and more than she thought proper
to tell him. She was acquainted by this time with a good many of the
young fellows of Newspaper Row; and exchanged gossip with them to their
mutual advantage.
They were always talking in the Row, everlastingly gossiping, bantering
and sarcastically praising things, and going on in a style which was a
curious commingling of earnest and persiflage. Col. Sellers liked this
talk amazingly, though he was sometimes a little at sea in it--and
perhaps that didn't lessen the relish of the conversation to the
correspondents.
It seems that they had got hold of the dry-goods box packing story about
Balloon, one day, and were talking it over when the Colonel came in.
The Colonel wanted to know all about it, and Hicks told him. And then
Hicks went on, with a serious air,
"Colonel, if you register a letter, it means that it is of value, doesn't
it? And if you pay fifteen cents for registering it, the government will
have to take extra care of it and even pay you back its full value if it
is lost. Isn't that so?"
"Yes. I suppose it's so.".
"Well Senator Balloon put fifteen cents worth of stamps on each of those
seven huge boxes of old clothes, and shipped that ton of second-hand
rubbish, old boots and pantaloons and what not through the mails as
registered matter! It was an ingenious thing and it had a genuine touch
of humor about it, too. I think there is more real: talent among our
public men of to-day than there was among those of old times--a far more
fertile fancy, a much happier ingenuity. Now, Colonel, can you picture
Jefferson, or Washington or John Adams franking their wardrobes through
the mails and adding the facetious idea of making the government
responsible for the cargo for the sum of one dollar and five cents?
Statesmen were dull creatures in those days. I have a much greater
admiration for Senator Balloon."
"Yes, Balloon is a man of parts, there is no denying it"
"I think so. He is spoken of for the post of Minister to China, or
Austria, and I hope will be appointed. What we want abroad is good
examples of the national character.
"John Jay and Benjamin Franklin were well enough in their day, but the
nation has made progress since then. Balloon is a man we know and can
depend on to be true to himself."
"Yes, and Balloon has had a good deal of public experience. He is an old
friend of mine. He was governor of one of the territories a while, and
was very satisfactory."
"Indeed he was. He was ex-officio Indian agent, too. Many a man would
have taken the Indian appropriation and devoted the money to feeding and
clothing the helpless savages, whose land had been taken from them by the
white man in the interests of civilization; but Balloon knew their needs
better. He built a government saw-mill on the reservation with the
money, and the lumber sold for enormous prices--a relative of his did all
the work free of charge--that is to say he charged nothing more than the
lumber world bring." "But the poor Injuns--not that I care much for
Injuns--what did he do for them?"
"Gave them the outside slabs to fence in the reservation with. Governor
Balloon was nothing less than a father to the poor Indians. But Balloon
is not alone, we have many truly noble statesmen in our country's service
like Balloon. The Senate is full of them. Don't you think so Colonel?"
"Well, I dunno. I honor my country's public servants as much as any one
can. I meet them, Sir, every day, and the more I see of them the more I
esteem them and the more grateful I am that our institutions give us the
opportunity of securing their services. Few lands are so blest."
"That is true, Colonel. To be sure you can buy now and then a Senator or
a Representative but they do not know it is wrong, and so they are not
ashamed of it. They are gentle, and confiding and childlike, and in my
opinion these are qualities that ennoble them far more than any amount of
sinful sagacity could. I quite agree with you, Col. Sellers."
"Well"--hesitated the, Colonel--"I am afraid some of them do buy their
seats--yes, I am afraid they do--but as Senator Dilworthy himself said to
me, it is sinful,--it is very wrong--it is shameful; Heaven protect me
from such a charge. That is what Dilworthy said. And yet when you come
to look at it you cannot deny that we would have to go without the
services of some of our ablest men, sir, if the country were opposed to
--to--bribery. It is a harsh term. I do not like to use it."
The Colonel interrupted himself at this point to meet an engagement with
the Austrian minister, and took his leave with his usual courtly bow.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
In due time Laura alighted at the book store, and began to look at the
titles of the handsome array of books on the counter. A dapper clerk of
perhaps nineteen or twenty years, with hair accurately parted and
surprisingly slick, came bustling up and leaned over with a pretty smile
and an affable--
"Can I--was there any particular book you wished to see?"
"Have you Taine's England?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Taine's Notes on England."
The young gentleman scratched the side of his nose with a cedar pencil
which he took down from its bracket on the side of his head, and
reflected a moment:
"Ah--I see," [with a bright smile]--"Train, you mean--not Taine. George
Francis Train. No, ma'm we--"
"I mean Taine--if I may take the liberty."
The clerk reflected again--then:
"Taine . . . . Taine . . . . Is it hymns?"
"No, it isn't hymns. It is a volume that is making a deal of talk just
now, and is very widely known--except among parties who sell it."
The clerk glanced at her face to see if a sarcasm might not lurk
somewhere in that obscure speech, but the gentle simplicity of the
beautiful eyes that met his, banished that suspicion. He went away and
conferred with the proprietor. Both appeared to be non-plussed. They
thought and talked, and talked and thought by turns. Then both came
forward and the proprietor said:
"Is it an American book, ma'm?"
"No, it is an American reprint of an English translation."
"Oh! Yes--yes--I remember, now. We are expecting it every day. It
isn't out yet."
"I think you must be mistaken, because you advertised it a week ago."
"Why no--can that be so?"
"Yes, I am sure of it. And besides, here is the book itself, on the
counter."
She bought it and the proprietor retired from the field. Then she asked
the clerk for the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table--and was pained to see
the admiration her beauty had inspired in him fade out of his face.
He said with cold dignity, that cook books were somewhat out of their
line, but he would order it if she desired it. She said, no, never mind.
Then she fell to conning the titles again, finding a delight in the
inspection of the Hawthornes, the Longfellows, the Tennysons, and other
favorites of her idle hours. Meantime the clerk's eyes were busy, and no
doubt his admiration was returning again--or may be he was only gauging
her probable literary tastes by some sagacious system of admeasurement
only known to his guild. Now he began to "assist" her in making a
selection; but his efforts met with no success--indeed they only annoyed
her and unpleasantly interrupted her meditations. Presently, while she
was holding a copy of "Venetian Life" in her hand and running over a
familiar passage here and there, the clerk said, briskly, snatching up a
paper-covered volume and striking the counter a smart blow with it to
dislodge the dust:
"Now here is a work that we've sold a lot of. Everybody that's read it
likes it"--and he intruded it under her nose; "it's a book that I can
recommend--'The Pirate's Doom, or the Last of the Buccaneers.' I think
it's one of the best things that's come out this season."
Laura pushed it gently aside her hand and went on and went on filching
from "Venetian Life."
"I believe I do not want it," she said.
The clerk hunted around awhile, glancing at one title and then another,
but apparently not finding what he wanted.
However, he succeeded at last. Said he:
"Have you ever read this, ma'm? I am sure you'll like it. It's by the
author of 'The Hooligans of Hackensack.' It is full of love troubles and
mysteries and all sorts of such things. The heroine strangles her own
mother. Just glance at the title please,--'Gonderil the Vampire, or The
Dance of Death.' And here is 'The Jokist's Own Treasury, or, The Phunny
Phellow's Bosom Phriend.' The funniest thing!--I've read it four times,
ma'm, and I can laugh at the very sight of it yet. And 'Gonderil,'
--I assure you it is the most splendid book I ever read. I know you will
like these books, ma'm, because I've read them myself and I know what
they are."
"Oh, I was perplexed--but I see how it is, now. You must have thought
I asked you to tell me what sort of books I wanted--for I am apt to say
things which I don't really mean, when I am absent minded. I suppose I
did ask you, didn't I?"
"No ma'm,--but I--"
"Yes, I must have done it, else you would not have offered your services,
for fear it might be rude. But don't be troubled--it was all my fault.
I ought not to have been so heedless--I ought not to have asked you."
"But you didn't ask me, ma'm. We always help customers all we can.
You see our experience--living right among books all the time--that sort
of thing makes us able to help a customer make a selection, you know."
"Now does it, indeed? It is part of your business, then?"
"Yes'm, we always help."
"How good it is of you. Some people would think it rather obtrusive,
perhaps, but I don't--I think it is real kindness--even charity. Some
people jump to conclusions without any thought--you have noticed that?"
"O yes," said the clerk, a little perplexed as to whether to feel
comfortable or the reverse; "Oh yes, indeed, I've often noticed that,
ma'm."
"Yes, they jump to conclusions with an absurd heedlessness. Now some
people would think it odd that because you, with the budding tastes and
the innocent enthusiasms natural to your time of life, enjoyed the
Vampires and the volume of nursery jokes, you should imagine that an
older person would delight in them too--but I do not think it odd at all.
I think it natural--perfectly natural in you. And kind, too. You look
like a person who not only finds a deep pleasure in any little thing in
the way of literature that strikes you forcibly, but is willing and glad
to share that pleasure with others--and that, I think, is noble and
admirable--very noble and admirable. I think we ought all--to share our
pleasures with others, and do what we can to make each other happy, do
not you?"
"Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. Yes, you are quite right, ma'm."
But he was getting unmistakably uncomfortable, now, notwithstanding
Laura's confiding sociability and almost affectionate tone.
"Yes, indeed. Many people would think that what a bookseller--or perhaps
his clerk--knows about literature as literature, in contradistinction to
its character as merchandise, would hardly, be of much assistance to a
person--that is, to an adult, of course--in the selection of food for the
mind--except of course wrapping paper, or twine, or wafers, or something
like that--but I never feel that way. I feel that whatever service you
offer me, you offer with a good heart, and I am as grateful for it as if
it were the greatest boon to me. And it is useful to me--it is bound to
be so. It cannot be otherwise. If you show me a book which you have
read--not skimmed over or merely glanced at, but read--and you tell me
that you enjoyed it and that you could read it three or four times, then
I know what book I want--"
"Thank you!--th--"
--"to avoid. Yes indeed. I think that no information ever comes amiss
in this world. Once or twice I have traveled in the cars--and there you
know, the peanut boy always measures you with his eye, and hands you out
a book of murders if you are fond of theology; or Tupper or a dictionary
or T. S. Arthur if you are fond of poetry; or he hands you a volume of
distressing jokes or a copy of the American Miscellany if you
particularly dislike that sort of literary fatty degeneration of the
heart--just for the world like a pleasant spoken well-meaning gentleman
in any, bookstore. But here I am running on as if business men had
nothing to do but listen to women talk. You must pardon me, for I was
not thinking.--And you must let me thank you again for helping me.
I read a good deal, and shall be in nearly every day and I would be sorry
to have you think me a customer who talks too much and buys too little.
Might I ask you to give me the time? Ah-two-twenty-two. Thank you
very much. I will set mine while I have the opportunity."
But she could not get her watch open, apparently. She tried, and tried
again. Then the clerk, trembling at his own audacity, begged to be
allowed to assist. She allowed him. He succeeded, and was radiant under
the sweet influences of her pleased face and her seductively worded
acknowledgements with gratification. Then he gave her the exact time
again, and anxiously watched her turn the hands slowly till they reached
the precise spot without accident or loss of life, and then he looked as
happy as a man who had helped a fellow being through a momentous
undertaking, and was grateful to know that he had not lived in vain.
Laura thanked him once more. The words were music to his ear; but what
were they compared to the ravishing smile with which she flooded his
whole system? When she bowed her adieu and turned away, he was no longer
suffering torture in the pillory where she had had him trussed up during
so many distressing moments, but he belonged to the list of her conquests
and was a flattered and happy thrall, with the dawn-light of love
breaking over the eastern elevations of his heart.
It was about the hour, now, for the chairman of the House Committee on
Benevolent Appropriations to make his appearance, and Laura stepped to
the door to reconnoiter. She glanced up the street, and sure enough--
CHAPTER XXXVII.
That Chairman was nowhere in sight. Such disappointments seldom occur in
novels, but are always happening in real life.
She was obliged to make a new plan. She sent him a note, and asked him
to call in the evening--which he did.
She received the Hon. Mr. Buckstone with a sunny smile, and said:
"I don't know how I ever dared to send you a note, Mr. Buckstone, for you
have the reputation of not being very partial to our sex."
"Why I am sure my, reputation does me wrong, then, Miss Hawkins. I have
been married once--is that nothing in my favor?"
"Oh, yes--that is, it may be and it may not be. If you have known what
perfection is in woman, it is fair to argue that inferiority cannot
interest you now."
"Even if that were the case it could not affect you, Miss Hawkins," said
the chairman gallantly. "Fame does not place you in the list of ladies
who rank below perfection." This happy speech delighted Mr. Buckstone as
much as it seemed to delight Laura. But it did not confuse him as much
as it apparently did her.
"I wish in all sincerity that I could be worthy of such a felicitous
compliment as that. But I am a woman, and so I am gratified for it just
as it is, and would not have it altered."
"But it is not merely a compliment--that is, an empty complement--it is
the truth. All men will endorse that."
Laura looked pleased, and said:
"It is very kind of you to say it. It is a distinction indeed, for a
country-bred girl like me to be so spoken of by people of brains and
culture. You are so kind that I know you will pardon my putting you to
the trouble to come this evening."
"Indeed it was no trouble. It was a pleasure. I am alone in the world
since I lost my wife, and I often long for the society of your sex, Miss
Hawkins, notwithstanding what people may say to the contrary."
"It is pleasant to hear you say that. I am sure it must be so. If I
feel lonely at times, because of my exile from old friends, although
surrounded by new ones who are already very dear to me, how much more
lonely must you feel, bereft as you are, and with no wholesome relief
from the cares of state that weigh you down. For your own sake, as well
as for the sake of others, you ought to go into society oftener.
I seldom see you at a reception, and when I do you do not usually give me
very, much of your attention"
"I never imagined that you wished it or I would have been very glad to
make myself happy in that way.--But one seldom gets an opportunity to say
more than a sentence to you in a place like that. You are always the
centre of a group--a fact which you may have noticed yourself. But if
one might come here--"
"Indeed you would always find a hearty welcome, Mr. Buckstone. I have
often wished you would come and tell me more about Cairo and the
Pyramids, as you once promised me you would."
"Why, do you remember that yet, Miss Hawkins? I thought ladies' memories
were more fickle than that."
"Oh, they are not so fickle as gentlemen's promises. And besides, if I
had been inclined to forget, I--did you not give me something by way of a
remembrancer?"
"Did I?"
"Think."
"It does seem to me that I did; but I have forgotten what it was now."
"Never, never call a lady's memory fickle again! Do you recognize this?"
"A little spray of box! I am beaten--I surrender. But have you kept
that all this time?"
Laura's confusion was very, pretty. She tried to hide it, but the more
she tried the more manifest it became and withal the more captivating to
look upon. Presently she threw the spray of box from her with an annoyed
air, and said:
"I forgot myself. I have been very foolish. I beg that you will forget
this absurd thing."
Mr. Buckstone picked up the spray, and sitting down by Laura's side on
the sofa, said:
"Please let me keep it, Miss Hawkins. I set a very high value upon it
now."
"Give it to me, Mr. Buckstone, and do not speak so. I have been
sufficiently punished for my thoughtlessness. You cannot take pleasure
in adding to my distress. Please give it to me."
"Indeed I do not wish to distress you. But do not consider the matter so
gravely; you have done yourself no wrong. You probably forgot that you
had it; but if you had given it to me I would have kept it--and not
forgotten it."
"Do not talk so, Mr. Buckstone. Give it to me, please, and forget the
matter."
"It would not be kind to refuse, since it troubles you so, and so I
restore it. But if you would give me part of it and keep the rest--"
"So that you might have something to remind you of me when you wished to
laugh at my foolishness?"
"Oh, by no means, no! Simply that I might remember that I had once
assisted to discomfort you, and be reminded to do so no more."
Laura looked up, and scanned his face a moment. She was about to break
the twig, but she hesitated and said:
"If I were sure that you--" She threw the spray away, and continued:
"This is silly! We will change the subject. No, do not insist--I must
have my way in this."
Then Mr. Buckstone drew off his forces and proceeded to make a wily
advance upon the fortress under cover of carefully--contrived artifices
and stratagems of war. But he contended with an alert and suspicious
enemy; and so at the end of two hours it was manifest to him that he had
made but little progress. Still, he had made some; he was sure of that.
Laura sat alone and communed with herself;
"He is fairly hooked, poor thing. I can play him at my leisure and land
him when I choose. He was all ready to be caught, days and days ago
--I saw that, very well. He will vote for our bill--no fear about that;
and moreover he will work for it, too, before I am done with him. If he
had a woman's eyes he would have noticed that the spray of box had grown
three inches since he first gave it to me, but a man never sees anything
and never suspects. If I had shown him a whole bush he would have
thought it was the same. Well, it is a good night's work: the committee
is safe. But this is a desperate game I am playing in these days
--a wearing, sordid, heartless game. If I lose, I lose everything--even
myself. And if I win the game, will it be worth its cost after all?
I do not know. Sometimes I doubt. Sometimes I half wish I had not
begun. But no matter; I have begun, and I will never turn back; never
while I live."
Mr. Buckstone indulged in a reverie as he walked homeward:
"She is shrewd and deep, and plays her cards with considerable
discretion--but she will lose, for all that. There is no hurry; I shall
come out winner, all in good time. She is the most beautiful woman in
the world; and she surpassed herself to-night. I suppose I must vote for
that bill, in the end maybe; but that is not a matter of much consequence
the government can stand it. She is bent on capturing me, that is plain;
but she will find by and by that what she took for a sleeping garrison
was an ambuscade."
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Now this surprising news caus'd her fall in 'a trance,
Life as she were dead, no limbs she could advance,
Then her dear brother came, her from the ground he took
And she spake up and said, O my poor heart is broke.
The Barnardcastle Tragedy.
"Don't you think he is distinguished looking?"
"What! That gawky looking person, with Miss Hawkins?"
"There. He's just speaking to Mrs. Schoonmaker. Such high-bred
negligence and unconsciousness. Nothing studied. See his fine eyes."
"Very. They are moving this way now. Maybe he is coming here. But he
looks as helpless as a rag baby. Who is he, Blanche?"
"Who is he? And you've been here a week, Grace, and don't know? He's
the catch of the season. That's Washington Hawkins--her brother."
"No, is it?"
"Very old family, old Kentucky family I believe. He's got enormous
landed property in Tennessee, I think. The family lost everything,
slaves and that sort of thing, you know, in the war. But they have a
great deal of land, minerals, mines and all that. Mr. Hawkins and his
sister too are very much interested in the amelioration of the condition
of the colored race; they have some plan, with Senator Dilworthy, to
convert a large part of their property to something another for the
freedmen."
"You don't say so? I thought he was some guy from Pennsylvania. But he
is different from others. Probably he has lived all his life on his
plantation."
It was a day reception of Mrs. Representative Schoonmaker, a sweet woman,
of simple and sincere manners. Her house was one of the most popular in
Washington. There was less ostentation there than in some others, and
people liked to go where the atmosphere reminded them of the peace and
purity of home. Mrs. Schoonmaker was as natural and unaffected in
Washington society as she was in her own New York house, and kept up the
spirit of home-life there, with her husband and children. And that was
the reason, probably, why people of refinement liked to go there.
Washington is a microcosm, and one can suit himself with any sort of
society within a radius of a mile. To a large portion of the people who
frequent Washington or dwell where, the ultra fashion, the shoddy, the
jobbery are as utterly distasteful as they would he in a refined New
England City. Schoonmaker was not exactly a leader in the House, but he
was greatly respected for his fine talents and his honesty. No one would
have thought of offering to carry National Improvement Directors Relief
stock for him.
These day receptions were attended by more women than men, and those
interested in the problem might have studied the costumes of the ladies
present, in view of this fact, to discover whether women dress more for
the eyes of women or for effect upon men. It is a very important
problem, and has been a good deal discussed, and its solution would form
one fixed, philosophical basis, upon which to estimate woman's character.
We are inclined to take a medium ground, and aver that woman dresses to
please herself, and in obedience to a law of her own nature.
"They are coming this way," said Blanche. People who made way for them
to pass, turned to look at them. Washington began to feel that the eyes
of the public were on him also, and his eyes rolled about, now towards
the ceiling, now towards the floor, in an effort to look unconscious.
"Good morning, Miss Hawkins. Delighted. Mr. Hawkins. My friend, Miss
Medlar."
Mr. Hawkins, who was endeavoring to square himself for a bow, put his
foot through the train of Mrs. Senator Poplin, who looked round with a
scowl, which turned into a smile as she saw who it was. In extricating
himself, Mr. Hawkins, who had the care of his hat as well as the
introduction on his mind, shambled against Miss Blanche, who said pardon,
with the prettiest accent, as if the awkwardness were her own. And Mr.
Hawkins righted himself.
"Don't you find it very warm to-day, Mr. Hawkins?" said Blanche, by way
of a remark.
"It's awful hot," said Washington.
"It's warm for the season," continued Blanche pleasantly. "But I suppose
you are accustomed to it," she added, with a general idea that the
thermometer always stands at 90 deg. in all parts of the late slave
states. "Washington weather generally cannot be very congenial to you?"
"It's congenial," said Washington brightening up, "when it's not
congealed."
"That's very good. Did you hear, Grace, Mr. Hawkins says it's congenial
when it's not congealed."
"What is, dear?" said Grace, who was talking with Laura.
The conversation was now finely under way. Washington launched out an
observation of his own.
"Did you see those Japs, Miss Leavitt?"
"Oh, yes, aren't they queer. But so high-bred, so picturesque. Do you
think that color makes any difference, Mr. Hawkins? I used to be so
prejudiced against color."
"Did you? I never was. I used to think my old mammy was handsome."
"How interesting your life must have been! I should like to hear about
it."
Washington was about settling himself into his narrative style,
when Mrs. Gen. McFingal caught his eye.
"Have you been at the Capitol to-day, Mr. Hawkins?"
Washington had not. "Is anything uncommon going on?"
"They say it was very exciting. The Alabama business you know.
Gen. Sutler, of Massachusetts, defied England, and they say he wants
war."
"He wants to make himself conspicuous more like," said Laura.
"He always, you have noticed, talks with one eye on the gallery, while
the other is on the speaker."
"Well, my husband says, its nonsense to talk of war, and wicked.
He knows what war is. If we do have war, I hope it will be for the
patriots of Cuba. Don't you think we want Cuba, Mr. Hawkins?"
"I think we want it bad," said Washington. "And Santo Domingo. Senator
Dilworthy says, we are bound to extend our religion over the isles of the
sea. We've got to round out our territory, and--"
Washington's further observations were broken off by Laura, who whisked
him off to another part of the room, and reminded him that they must make
their adieux.
"How stupid and tiresome these people are," she said. "Let's go."
They were turning to say good-by to the hostess, when Laura's attention
was arrested by the sight of a gentleman who was just speaking to Mrs.
Schoonmaker. For a second her heart stopped beating. He was a handsome
man of forty and perhaps more, with grayish hair and whiskers, and he
walked with a cane, as if he were slightly lame. He might be less than
forty, for his face was worn into hard lines, and he was pale.
No. It could not be, she said to herself. It is only a resemblance.
But as the gentleman turned and she saw his full face, Laura put out her
hand and clutched Washington's arm to prevent herself from falling.
Washington, who was not minding anything, as usual, looked 'round in
wonder. Laura's eyes were blazing fire and hatred; he had never seen her
look so before; and her face, was livid.
"Why, what is it, sis? Your face is as white as paper."
"It's he, it's he. Come, come," and she dragged him away.
"It's who?" asked Washington, when they had gained the carriage.
"It's nobody, it's nothing. Did I say he? I was faint with the heat.
Don't mention it. Don't you speak of it," she added earnestly, grasping
his arm.
When she had gained her room she went to the glass and saw a pallid and
haggard face.
"My God," she cried, "this will never do. I should have killed him, if I
could. The scoundrel still lives, and dares to come here. I ought to
kill him. He has no right to live. How I hate him. And yet I loved
him. Oh heavens, how I did love that man. And why didn't he kill me?
He might better. He did kill all that was good in me. Oh, but he shall
not escape. He shall not escape this time. He may have forgotten. He
will find that a woman's hate doesn't forget. The law? What would the
law do but protect him and make me an outcast? How all Washington would
gather up its virtuous skirts and avoid me, if it knew. I wonder if he
hates me as I do him?"
So Laura raved, in tears and in rage by turns, tossed in a tumult of
passion, which she gave way to with little effort to control.
A servant came to summon her to dinner. She had a headache. The hour
came for the President's reception. She had a raving headache, and the
Senator must go without her.
That night of agony was like another night she recalled. How vividly it
all came back to her. And at that time she remembered she thought she
might be mistaken. He might come back to her. Perhaps he loved her,
a little, after all. Now, she knew he did not. Now, she knew he was a
cold-blooded scoundrel, without pity. Never a word in all these years.
She had hoped he was dead. Did his wife live, she wondered. She caught
at that--and it gave a new current to her thoughts. Perhaps, after all
--she must see him. She could not live without seeing him. Would he smile
as in the old days when she loved him so; or would he sneer as when she
last saw him? If be looked so, she hated him. If he should call her
"Laura, darling," and look SO! She must find him. She must end her
doubts.
Laura kept her room for two days, on one excuse and another--a nervous
headache, a cold--to the great anxiety of the Senator's household.
Callers, who went away, said she had been too gay--they did not say
"fast," though some of them may have thought it. One so conspicuous and
successful in society as Laura could not be out of the way two days,
without remarks being made, and not all of them complimentary.
When she came down she appeared as usual, a little pale may be, but
unchanged in manner. If there were any deepened lines about the eyes
they had been concealed. Her course of action was quite determined.
At breakfast she asked if any one had heard any unusual noise during the
night? Nobody had. Washington never heard any noise of any kind after
his eyes were shut. Some people thought he never did when they were open
either.
Senator Dilworthy said he had come in late. He was detained in a little
consultation after the Congressional prayer meeting. Perhaps it was his
entrance.
No, Laura said. She heard that. It was later. She might have been
nervous, but she fancied somebody was trying to get into the house.
Mr. Brierly humorously suggested that it might be, as none of the members
were occupied in night session.
The Senator frowned, and said he did not like to hear that kind of
newspaper slang. There might be burglars about.
Laura said that very likely it was only her nervousness. But she thought
she world feel safer if Washington would let her take one of his pistols.
Washington brought her one of his revolvers, and instructed her in the
art of loading and firing it.
During the morning Laura drove down to Mrs. Schoonmaker's to pay a
friendly call.
"Your receptions are always delightful," she said to that lady, "the
pleasant people all seem to come here."
"It's pleasant to hear you say so, Miss Hawkins. I believe my friends
like to come here. Though society in Washington is mixed; we have a
little of everything."
"I suppose, though, you don't see much of the old rebel element?" said
Laura with a smile.
If this seemed to Mrs. Schoonmaker a singular remark for a lady to make,
who was meeting "rebels" in society every day, she did not express it in
any way, but only said,
"You know we don't say 'rebel' anymore. Before we came to Washington I
thought rebels would look unlike other people. I find we are very much
alike, and that kindness and good nature wear away prejudice. And then
you know there are all sorts of common interests. My husband sometimes
says that he doesn't see but confederates are just as eager to get at the
treasury as Unionists. You know that Mr. Schoonmaker is on the
appropriations."
"Does he know many Southerners?"
"Oh, yes. There were several at my reception the other day. Among
others a confederate Colonel--a stranger--handsome man with gray hair,
probably you didn't notice him, uses a cane in walking. A very agreeable
man. I wondered why he called. When my husband came home and looked
over the cards, he said he had a cotton claim. A real southerner.
Perhaps you might know him if I could think of his name. Yes, here's his
card--Louisiana."
Laura took the card, looked at it intently till she was sure of the
address, and then laid it down, with,
"No, he is no friend of ours."
That afternoon, Laura wrote and dispatched the following note. It was in
a round hand, unlike her flowing style, and it was directed to a number
and street in Georgetown:--
"A Lady at Senator Dilworthy's would like to see Col. George Selby,
on business connected with the Cotton Claims. Can he call Wednesday
at three o'clock P. M.?"
On Wednesday at 3 P. M, no one of the family was likely to be in the
house except Laura.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Col. Selby had just come to Washington, and taken lodgings in Georgetown.
His business was to get pay for some cotton that was destroyed during the
war. There were many others in Washington on the same errand, some of
them with claims as difficult to establish as his. A concert of action
was necessary, and he was not, therefore, at all surprised to receive the
note from a lady asking him to call at Senator Dilworthy's.
At a little after three on Wednesday he rang the bell of the Senator's
residence. It was a handsome mansion on the Square opposite the
President's house. The owner must be a man of great wealth, the Colonel
thought; perhaps, who knows, said he with a smile, he may have got some
of my cotton in exchange for salt and quinine after the capture of New
Orleans. As this thought passed through his mind he was looking at the
remarkable figure of the Hero of New Orleans, holding itself by main
strength from sliding off the back of the rearing bronze horse, and
lifting its hat in the manner of one who acknowledges the playing of that
martial air: "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!" "Gad," said the Colonel
to himself, "Old Hickory ought to get down and give his seat to Gen.
Sutler--but they'd have to tie him on."
Laura was in the drawing room. She heard the bell, she heard the steps
in the hall, and the emphatic thud of the supporting cane. She had risen
from her chair and was leaning against the piano, pressing her left hand
against the violent beating of her heart. The door opened and the
Colonel entered, standing in the full light of the opposite window.
Laura was more in the shadow and stood for an instant, long enough for
the Colonel to make the inward observation that she was a magnificent
Woman. She then advanced a step.
"Col. Selby, is it not?"
The Colonel staggered back, caught himself by a chair, and turned towards
her a look of terror.
"Laura? My God!"
"Yes, your wife!"
"Oh, no, it can't be. How came you here? I thought you were--"
"You thought I was dead? You thought you were rid of me? Not so long as
you live, Col. Selby, not so long as you live;" Laura in her passion was
hurried on to say.
No man had ever accused Col. Selby of cowardice. But he was a coward
before this woman. May be he was not the man he once was. Where was his
coolness? Where was his sneering, imperturbable manner, with which he
could have met, and would have met, any woman he had wronged, if he had
only been forewarned. He felt now that he must temporize, that he must
gain time. There was danger in Laura's tone. There was something
frightful in her calmness. Her steady eyes seemed to devour him.
"You have ruined my life," she said; "and I was so young, so ignorant,
and loved you so. You betrayed me, and left me mocking me and trampling
me into the dust, a soiled cast-off. You might better have killed me
then. Then I should not have hated you."
"Laura," said the Colonel, nerving himself, but still pale, and speaking
appealingly, "don't say that. Reproach me. I deserve it. I was a
scoundrel. I was everything monstrous. But your beauty made me crazy.
You are right. I was a brute in leaving you as I did. But what could I
do? I was married, and--"
"And your wife still lives?" asked Laura, bending a little forward in her
eagerness.
The Colonel noticed the action, and he almost said "no," but he thought
of the folly of attempting concealment.
"Yes. She is here."
What little color had wandered back into Laura's face forsook it again.
Her heart stood still, her strength seemed going from her limbs. Her
last hope was gone. The room swam before her for a moment, and the
Colonel stepped towards her, but she waved him back, as hot anger again
coursed through her veins, and said,
"And you dare come with her, here, and tell me of it, here and mock me
with it! And you think I will have it; George? You think I will let you
live with that woman? You think I am as powerless as that day I fell
dead at your feet?"
She raged now. She was in a tempest of excitement. And she advanced
towards him with a threatening mien. She would kill me if she could,
thought the Colonel; but he thought at the same moment, how beautiful she
is. He had recovered his head now. She was lovely when he knew her,
then a simple country girl, Now she was dazzling, in the fullness of ripe
womanhood, a superb creature, with all the fascination that a woman of
the world has for such a man as Col. Selby. Nothing of this was lost on
him. He stepped quickly to her, grasped both her hands in his, and said,
"Laura, stop! think! Suppose I loved you yet! Suppose I hated my fate!
What can I do? I am broken by the war. I have lost everything almost.
I had as lief be dead and done with it."
The Colonel spoke with a low remembered voice that thrilled through
Laura. He was looking into her eyes as he had looked in those old days,
when no birds of all those that sang in the groves where they walked sang
a note of warning. He was wounded. He had been punished. Her strength
forsook her with her rage, and she sank upon a chair, sobbing,
"Oh! my God, I thought I hated him!"
The Colonel knelt beside her. He took her hand and she let him keep it.
She, looked down into his face, with a pitiable tenderness, and said in a
weak voice.
"And you do love me a little?"
The Colonel vowed and protested. He kissed her hand and her lips. He
swore his false soul into perdition.
She wanted love, this woman. Was not her love for George Selby deeper
than any other woman's could be? Had she not a right to him? Did he
not belong to her by virtue of her overmastering passion? His wife--she
was not his wife, except by the law. She could not be. Even with the
law she could have no right to stand between two souls that were one.
It was an infamous condition in society that George should be tied to
her.
Laura thought this, believed it; because she desired to believe it. She
came to it as an original propositions founded an the requirements of her
own nature. She may have heard, doubtless she had, similar theories that
were prevalent at that day, theories of the tyranny of marriage and of
the freedom of marriage. She had even heard women lecturers say, that
marriage should only continue so long as it pleased either party to it
--for a year, or a month, or a day. She had not given much heed to this,
but she saw its justice now in a dash of revealing desire. It must be
right. God would not have permitted her to love George Selby as she did,
and him to love her, if it was right for society to raise up a barrier
between them. He belonged to her. Had he not confessed it himself?
Not even the religious atmosphere of Senator Dilworthy's house had been
sufficient to instill into Laura that deep Christian principle which had
been somehow omitted in her training. Indeed in that very house had she
not heard women, prominent before the country and besieging Congress,
utter sentiments that fully justified the course she was marking out for
herself.
They were seated now, side by side, talking with more calmness. Laura
was happy, or thought she was. But it was that feverish sort of
happiness which is snatched out of the black shadow of falsehood, and is
at the moment recognized as fleeting and perilous, and indulged
tremblingly. She loved. She was loved. That is happiness certainly.
And the black past and the troubled present and the uncertain future
could not snatch that from her.
What did they say as they sat there? What nothings do people usually say
in such circumstances, even if they are three-score and ten? It was
enough for Laura to hear his voice and be near him. It was enough for
him to be near her, and avoid committing himself as much as he could.
Enough for him was the present also. Had there not always been some way
out of such scrapes?
And yet Laura could not be quite content without prying into tomorrow.
How could the Colonel manage to free himself from his wife? Would it be
long? Could he not go into some State where it would not take much time?
He could not say exactly. That they must think of. That they must talk
over. And so on. Did this seem like a damnable plot to Laura against
the life, maybe, of a sister, a woman like herself? Probably not.
It was right that this man should be hers, and there were some obstacles
in the way. That was all. There are as good reasons for bad actions as
for good ones,--to those who commit them. When one has broken the tenth
commandment, the others are not of much account.
Was it unnatural, therefore, that when George Selby departed, Laura
should watch him from the window, with an almost joyful heart as he went
down the sunny square? "I shall see him to-morrow," she said, "and the
next day, and the next. He is mine now."
"Damn the woman," said the Colonel as he picked his way down the steps.
"Or," he added, as his thoughts took a new turn, "I wish my wife was in
New Orleans."
CHAPTER XL.
Open your ears; for which of you will stop,
The vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?
I, from the orient to the drooping west,
Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold
The acts commenced on this ball of earth:
Upon my tongues continual slanders ride;
The which in every, language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
King Henry IV.
As may be readily believed, Col. Beriah Sellers was by this time one of
the best known men in Washington. For the first time in his life his
talents had a fair field.
He was now at the centre of the manufacture of gigantic schemes,
of speculations of all sorts, of political and social gossip.
The atmosphere was full of little and big rumors and of vast, undefined
expectations. Everybody was in haste, too, to push on his private plan,
and feverish in his haste, as if in constant apprehension that tomorrow
would be Judgment Day. Work while Congress is in session, said the
uneasy spirit, for in the recess there is no work and no device.
The Colonel enjoyed this bustle and confusion amazingly; he thrived in
the air of-indefinite expectation. All his own schemes took larger shape
and more misty and majestic proportions; and in this congenial air, the
Colonel seemed even to himself to expand into something large and
mysterious. If he respected himself before, he almost worshipped Beriah
Sellers now, as a superior being. If he could have chosen an official
position out of the highest, he would have been embarrassed in the
selection. The presidency of the republic seemed too limited and cramped
in the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of
the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a
position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible
omniscience of the Special Correspondent.
Col. Sellers knew the President very well, and had access to his presence
when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room. The
President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a
refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business
and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and
the distribution of patronage. The Colonel was as much a lover of
farming and of horses as Thomas Jefferson was. He talked to the
President by the hour about his magnificent stud, and his plantation at
Hawkeye, a kind of principality--he represented it. He urged the
President to pay him a visit during the recess, and see his stock farm.
"The President's table is well enough," he used to say, to the loafers
who gathered about him at Willard's, "well enough for a man on a salary,
but God bless my soul, I should like him to see a little old-fashioned
hospitality--open house, you know. A person seeing me at home might
think I paid no attention to what was in the house, just let things flow
in and out. He'd be mistaken. What I look to is quality, sir. The
President has variety enough, but the quality! Vegetables of course you
can't expect here. I'm very particular about mine. Take celery, now
--there's only one spot in this country where celery will grow. But I an
surprised about the wines. I should think they were manufactured in the
New York Custom House. I must send the President some from my cellar.
I was really mortified the other day at dinner to see Blacque Bey leave
his standing in the glasses."
When the Colonel first came to Washington he had thoughts of taking the
mission to Constantinople, in order to be on the spot to look after the
dissemination, of his Eye Water, but as that invention; was not yet quite
ready, the project shrank a little in the presence of vaster schemes.
Besides he felt that he could do the country more good by remaining at
home. He was one of the Southerners who were constantly quoted as
heartily "accepting the situation."
"I'm whipped," he used to say with a jolly laugh, "the government was too
many for me; I'm cleaned out, done for, except my plantation and private
mansion. We played for a big thing, and lost it, and I don't whine, for
one. I go for putting the old flag on all the vacant lots. I said to
the President, says I, 'Grant, why don't you take Santo Domingo, annex
the whole thing, and settle the bill afterwards. That's my way. I'd,
take the job to manage Congress. The South would come into it. You've
got to conciliate the South, consolidate the two debts, pay 'em off in
greenbacks, and go ahead. That's my notion. Boutwell's got the right
notion about the value of paper, but he lacks courage. I should like to
run the treasury department about six months. I'd make things plenty,
and business look up.'"
The Colonel had access to the departments. He knew all the senators and
representatives, and especially, the lobby. He was consequently a great
favorite in Newspaper Row, and was often lounging in the offices there,
dropping bits of private, official information, which were immediately,
caught up and telegraphed all over the country. But it need to surprise
even the Colonel when he read it, it was embellished to that degree that
he hardly recognized it, and the hint was not lost on him. He began to
exaggerate his heretofore simple conversation to suit the newspaper
demand.
People used to wonder in the winters of 187- and 187-, where the
"Specials" got that remarkable information with which they every morning
surprised the country, revealing the most secret intentions of the
President and his cabinet, the private thoughts of political leaders,
the hidden meaning of every movement. This information was furnished by
Col. Sellers.
When he was asked, afterwards, about the stolen copy of the Alabama
Treaty which got into the "New York Tribune," he only looked mysterious,
and said that neither he nor Senator Dilworthy knew anything about it.
But those whom he was in the habit of meeting occasionally felt almost
certain that he did know.
It must not be supposed that the Colonel in his general patriotic labors
neglected his own affairs. The Columbus River Navigation Scheme absorbed
only a part of his time, so he was enabled to throw quite a strong
reserve force of energy into the Tennessee Land plan, a vast enterprise
commensurate with his abilities, and in the prosecution of which he was
greatly aided by Mr. Henry Brierly, who was buzzing about the capitol and
the hotels day and night, and making capital for it in some mysterious
way.
"We must create, a public opinion," said Senator Dilworthy. "My only
interest in it is a public one, and if the country wants the institution,
Congress will have to yield."
It may have been after a conversation between the Colonel and Senator
Dilworthy that the following special despatch was sent to a New York
newspaper:
"We understand that a philanthropic plan is on foot in relation to
the colored race that will, if successful, revolutionize the whole
character of southern industry. An experimental institution is in
contemplation in Tennessee which will do for that state what the
Industrial School at Zurich did for Switzerland. We learn that
approaches have been made to the heirs of the late Hon. Silas
Hawkins of Missouri, in reference to a lease of a portion of their
valuable property in East Tennessee. Senator Dilworthy, it is
understood, is inflexibly opposed to any arrangement that will not
give the government absolute control. Private interests must give
way to the public good. It is to be hoped that Col. Sellers, who
represents the heirs, will be led to see the matter in this light."
When Washington Hawkins read this despatch, he went to the Colonel in
some anxiety. He was for a lease, he didn't want to surrender anything.
What did he think the government would offer? Two millions?
"May be three, may be four," said the Colonel, "it's worth more than the
bank of England."
"If they will not lease," said Washington, "let 'em make it two millions
for an undivided half. I'm not going to throw it away, not the whole of
it."
Harry told the Colonel that they must drive the thing through, he
couldn't be dallying round Washington when Spring opened. Phil wanted
him, Phil had a great thing on hand up in Pennsylvania.
"What is that?" inquired the Colonel, always ready to interest himself in
anything large.
"A mountain of coal; that's all. He's going to run a tunnel into it in
the Spring."
"Does he want any capital?", asked the Colonel, in the tone of a man who
is given to calculating carefully before he makes an investment.
"No. Old man Bolton's behind him. He has capital, but I judged that he
wanted my experience in starting."
"If he wants me, tell him I'll come, after Congress adjourns. I should
like to give him a little lift. He lacks enterprise--now, about that
Columbus River. He doesn't see his chances. But he's a good fellow, and
you can tell him that Sellers won't go back on him."
"By the way," asked Harry, "who is that rather handsome party that's
hanging 'round Laura? I see him with her everywhere, at the Capitol, in
the horse cars, and he comes to Dilworthy's. If he weren't lame, I
should think he was going to run off with her."
"Oh, that's nothing. Laura knows her business. He has a cotton claim.
Used to be at Hawkeye during the war.
"Selby's his name, was a Colonel. Got a wife and family.
Very respectable people, the Selby's."
"Well, that's all right," said Harry, "if it's business. But if a woman
looked at me as I've seen her at Selby, I should understand it. And it's
talked about, I can tell you."
Jealousy had no doubt sharpened this young gentleman's observation.
Laura could not have treated him with more lofty condescension if she had
been the Queen of Sheba, on a royal visit to the great republic. And he
resented it, and was "huffy" when he was with her, and ran her errands,
and brought her gossip, and bragged of his intimacy with the lovely
creature among the fellows at Newspaper Row.
Laura's life was rushing on now in the full stream of intrigue and
fashionable dissipation. She was conspicuous at the balls of the fastest
set, and was suspected of being present at those doubtful suppers that
began late and ended early. If Senator Dilworthy remonstrated about
appearances, she had a way of silencing him. Perhaps she had some hold
on him, perhaps she was necessary to his plan for ameliorating the
condition the tube colored race.
She saw Col. Selby, when the public knew and when it did not know.
She would see him, whatever excuses he made, and however he avoided her.
She was urged on by a fever of love and hatred and jealousy, which
alternately possessed her. Sometimes she petted him, and coaxed him and
tried all her fascinations. And again she threatened him and reproached
him. What was he doing? Why had he taken no steps to free himself?
Why didn't he send his wife home? She should have money soon.
They could go to Europe--anywhere. What did she care for talk?
And he promised, and lied, and invented fresh excuses for delay, like a
cowardly gambler and roue as he was, fearing to break with her, and half
the time unwilling to give her up.
"That woman doesn't know what fear is," he said to himself, "and she
watches me like a hawk."
He told his wife that this woman was a lobbyist, whom he had to tolerate
and use in getting through his claims, and that he should pay her and
have done with her, when he succeeded.
CHAPTER XLI.
Henry Brierly was at the Dilworthy's constantly and on such terms of
intimacy that he came and went without question. The Senator was not an
inhospitable man, he liked to have guests in his house, and Harry's gay
humor and rattling way entertained him; for even the most devout men and
busy statesmen must have hours of relaxation.
Harry himself believed that he was of great service in the University
business, and that the success of the scheme depended upon him to a great
degree. He spent many hours in talking it over with the Senator after
dinner. He went so far as to consider whether it would be worth his
while to take the professorship of civil engineering in the new
institution.
But it was not the Senator's society nor his dinners--at which this
scapegrace remarked that there was too much grace and too little wine
--which attracted him to the horse. The fact was the poor fellow hung
around there day after day for the chance of seeing Laura for five
minutes at a time. For her presence at dinner he would endure the long
bore of the Senator's talk afterwards, while Laura was off at some
assembly, or excused herself on the plea of fatigue. Now and then he
accompanied her to some reception, and rarely, on off nights, he was
blessed with her company in the parlor, when he sang, and was chatty and
vivacious and performed a hundred little tricks of imitation and
ventriloquism, and made himself as entertaining as a man could be.
It puzzled him not a little that all his fascinations seemed to go for so
little with Laura; it was beyond his experience with women. Sometimes
Laura was exceedingly kind and petted him a little, and took the trouble
to exert her powers of pleasing, and to entangle him deeper and deeper.
But this, it angered him afterwards to think, was in private; in public
she was beyond his reach, and never gave occasion to the suspicion that
she had any affair with him. He was never permitted to achieve the
dignity of a serious flirtation with her in public.
"Why do you treat me so?" he once said, reproachfully.
"Treat you how?" asked Laura in a sweet voice, lifting her eyebrows.
"You know well enough. You let other fellows monopolize you in society,
and you are as indifferent to me as if we were strangers."
"Can I help it if they are attentive, can I be rude? But we are such old
friends, Mr. Brierly, that I didn't suppose you would be jealous."
"I think I must be a very old friend, then, by your conduct towards me.
By the same rule I should judge that Col. Selby must be very new."
Laura looked up quickly, as if about to return an indignant answer to
such impertinence, but she only said, "Well, what of Col. Selby,
sauce-box?"
"Nothing, probably, you'll care for. Your being with him so much is the
town talk, that's all?"
"What do people say?" asked Laura calmly.
"Oh, they say a good many things. You are offended, though, to have me
speak of it?"
"Not in the least. You are my true friend. I feel that I can trust you.
You wouldn't deceive me, Harry?" throwing into her eyes a look of trust
and tenderness that melted away all his petulance and distrust. "What do
they say?"
"Some say that you've lost your head about him; others that you don't
care any more for him than you do for a dozen others, but that he is
completely fascinated with you and about to desert his wife; and others
say it is nonsense to suppose you would entangle yourself with a married
man, and that your intimacy only arises from the matter of the cotton,
claims, for which he wants your influence with Dilworthy. But you know
everybody is talked about more or less in Washington. I shouldn't care;
but I wish you wouldn't have so much to do with Selby, Laura," continued
Harry, fancying that he was now upon such terms that his, advice, would
be heeded.
"And you believed these slanders?"
"I don't believe anything against you, Laura, but Col. Selby does not
mean you any good. I know you wouldn't be seen with him if you knew his
reputation."
"Do you know him?" Laura asked, as indifferently as she could.
"Only a little. I was at his lodgings' in Georgetown a day or two ago,
with Col. Sellers. Sellers wanted to talk with him about some patent
remedy he has, Eye Water, or something of that sort, which he wants to
introduce into Europe. Selby is going abroad very soon."
Laura started; in spite of her self-control.
"And his wife!--Does he take his family? Did you see his wife?"
"Yes. A dark little woman, rather worn--must have been pretty once
though. Has three or four children, one of them a baby. They'll all
go of course. She said she should be glad enough to get away from
Washington. You know Selby has got his claim allowed, and they say he
has had a run, of luck lately at Morrissey's."
Laura heard all this in a kind of stupor, looking straight at Harry,
without seeing him. Is it possible, she was thinking, that this base
wretch, after, all his promises, will take his wife and children and
leave me? Is it possible the town is saying all these things about me?
And a look of bitterness coming into her face--does the fool think he can
escape so?
"You are angry with me, Laura," said Harry, not comprehending in the
least what was going on in her mind.
"Angry?" she said, forcing herself to come back to his presence.
"With you? Oh no. I'm angry with the cruel world, which, pursues an
independent woman as it never does a man. I'm grateful to you Harry;
I'm grateful to you for telling me of that odious man."
And she rose from her chair and gave him her pretty hand, which the silly
fellow took, and kissed and clung to. And he said many silly things,
before she disengaged herself gently, and left him, saying it was time to
dress, for dinner.
And Harry went away, excited, and a little hopeful, but only a little.
The happiness was only a gleam, which departed and left him thoroughly,
miserable. She never would love him, and she was going to the devil,
besides. He couldn't shut his eyes to what he saw, nor his ears to what
he heard of her.
What had come over this thrilling young lady-killer? It was a pity to see
such a gay butterfly broken on a wheel. Was there something good in him,
after all, that had been touched? He was in fact madly in love with this
woman.
It is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy
one. It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough. If he
deserved punishment, what more would you have? Perhaps this love was
kindling a new heroism in him.
He saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did
not believe the worst he heard of her. He loved her too passionately to
credit that for a moment. And it seemed to him that if he could compel
her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him,
and that he could save her. His love was so far ennobled, and become a
very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye. Whether he ever
thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up
himself, is doubtful. Such a pitch of virtue does not occur often in
real life, especially in such natures as Harry's, whose generosity and
unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or
principles.
He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter,
pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her
as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks
she ran of compromising herself in many ways.
Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other
days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the
thought, "They are all alike."
Harry was in the habit of writing to Philip freely, and boasting also
about his doings, as he could not help doing and remain himself.
Mixed up with his own exploits, and his daily triumphs as a lobbyist,
especially in the matter of the new University, in which Harry was to
have something handsome, were amusing sketches of Washington society,
hints about Dilworthy, stories about Col. Sellers, who had become a
well-known character, and wise remarks upon the machinery of private
legislation for the public-good, which greatly entertained Philip in his
convalescence.
Laura's name occurred very often in these letters, at first in casual
mention as the belle of the season, carrying everything before her with
her wit and beauty, and then more seriously, as if Harry did not exactly
like so much general admiration of her, and was a little nettled by her
treatment of him.
This was so different from Harry's usual tone about women, that Philip
wondered a good deal over it. Could it be possible that he was seriously
affected? Then came stories about Laura, town talk, gossip which Harry
denied the truth of indignantly; but he was evidently uneasy, and at
length wrote in such miserable spirits that Philip asked him squarely
what the trouble was; was he in love?
Upon this, Harry made a clean breast of it, and told Philip all he knew
about the Selby affair, and Laura's treatment of him, sometimes
encouraging him--and then throwing him off, and finally his belief that
she would go, to the bad if something was not done to arouse her from her
infatuation. He wished Philip was in Washington. He knew Laura, and she
had a great respect for his character, his opinions, his judgment.
Perhaps he, as an uninterested person whom she would have some
confidence, and as one of the public, could say some thing to her that
would show her where she stood.
Philip saw the situation clearly enough. Of Laura he knew not much,
except that she was a woman of uncommon fascination, and he thought from
what he had seen of her in Hawkeye, her conduct towards him and towards
Harry, of not too much principle. Of course he knew nothing of her
history; he knew nothing seriously against her, and if Harry was
desperately enamored of her, why should he not win her if he could.
If, however, she had already become what Harry uneasily felt she might
become, was it not his duty to go to the rescue of his friend and try to
save him from any rash act on account of a woman that might prove to be
entirely unworthy of him; for trifler and visionary as he was, Harry
deserved a better fate than this.
Philip determined to go to Washington and see for himself. He had other
reasons also. He began to know enough of Mr. Bolton's affairs to be
uneasy. Pennybacker had been there several times during the winter, and
he suspected that he was involving Mr. Bolton in some doubtful scheme.
Pennybacker was in Washington, and Philip thought he might perhaps find
out something about him, and his plans, that would be of service to Mr.
Bolton.
Philip had enjoyed his winter very well, for a man with his arm broken
and his head smashed. With two such nurses as Ruth and Alice, illness
seemed to him rather a nice holiday, and every moment of his
convalescence had been precious and all too fleeting. With a young
fellow of the habits of Philip, such injuries cannot be counted on to
tarry long, even for the purpose of love-making, and Philip found himself
getting strong with even disagreeable rapidity.
During his first weeks of pain and weakness, Ruth was unceasing in her
ministrations; she quietly took charge of him, and with a gentle firmness
resisted all attempts of Alice or any one else to share to any great
extent the burden with her. She was clear, decisive and peremptory in
whatever she did; but often when Philip, opened his eyes in those first
days of suffering and found her standing by his bedside, he saw a look of
tenderness in her anxious face that quickened his already feverish pulse,
a look that, remained in his heart long after he closed his eyes.
Sometimes he felt her hand on his forehead, and did not open his eyes for
fear she world take it away. He watched for her coming to his chamber;
he could distinguish her light footstep from all others. If this is what
is meant by women practicing medicine, thought Philip to himself, I like
it.
"Ruth," said he one day when he was getting to be quite himself,
"I believe in it?"
"Believe in what?"
"Why, in women physicians."
"Then, I'd better call in Mrs. Dr. Longstreet."
"Oh, no. One will do, one at a time. I think I should be well tomorrow,
if I thought I should never have any other."
"Thy physician thinks thee mustn't talk, Philip," said Ruth putting her
finger on his lips.
"But, Ruth, I want to tell you that I should wish I never had got well
if--"
"There, there, thee must not talk. Thee is wandering again," and Ruth
closed his lips, with a smile on her own that broadened into a merry
laugh as she ran away.
Philip was not weary, however, of making these attempts, he rather
enjoyed it. But whenever he inclined to be sentimental, Ruth would cut
him off, with some such gravely conceived speech as, "Does thee think
that thy physician will take advantage of the condition of a man who is
as weak as thee is? I will call Alice, if thee has any dying confessions
to make."
As Philip convalesced, Alice more and more took Ruth's place as his
entertainer, and read to him by the hour, when he did not want to talk
--to talk about Ruth, as he did a good deal of the time. Nor was this
altogether unsatisfactory to Philip. He was always happy and contented
with Alice. She was the most restful person he knew. Better informed
than Ruth and with a much more varied culture, and bright and
sympathetic, he was never weary of her company, if he was not greatly
excited by it. She had upon his mind that peaceful influence that Mrs.
Bolton had when, occasionally, she sat by his bedside with her work.
Some people have this influence, which is like an emanation. They bring
peace to a house, they diffuse serene content in a room full of mixed
company, though they may say very little, and are apparently, unconscious
of their own power.
Not that Philip did not long for Ruth's presence all the same. Since he
was well enough to be about the house, she was busy again with her
studies. Now and then her teasing humor came again. She always had a
playful shield against his sentiment. Philip used sometimes to declare
that she had no sentiment; and then he doubted if he should be pleased
with her after all if she were at all sentimental; and he rejoiced that
she had, in such matters what he called the airy grace of sanity. She
was the most gay serious person he ever saw.
Perhaps he waw not so much at rest or so contented with her as with
Alice. But then he loved her. And what have rest and contentment to do
with love?
CHAPTER XLII
Mr. Buckstone's campaign was brief--much briefer than he supposed it
would be. He began it purposing to win Laura without being won himself;
but his experience was that of all who had fought on that field before
him; he diligently continued his effort to win her, but he presently
found that while as yet he could not feel entirely certain of having won
her, it was very manifest that she had won him. He had made an able
fight, brief as it was, and that at least was to his credit. He was in
good company, now; he walked in a leash of conspicuous captives. These
unfortunates followed Laura helplessly, for whenever she took a prisoner
he remained her slave henceforth. Sometimes they chafed in their
bondage; sometimes they tore themselves free and said their serfdom was
ended; but sooner or later they always came back penitent and worshiping.
Laura pursued her usual course: she encouraged Mr. Buckstone by turns,
and by turns she harassed him; she exalted him to the clouds at one time,
and at another she dragged him down again. She constituted him chief
champion of the Knobs University bill, and he accepted the position, at
first reluctantly, but later as a valued means of serving her--he even
came to look upon it as a piece of great good fortune, since it brought
him into such frequent contact with her.
Through him she learned that the Hon. Mr. Trollop was a bitter enemy of
her bill. He urged her not to attempt to influence Mr. Trollop in any
way, and explained that whatever she might attempt in that direction
would surely be used against her and with damaging effect.
She at first said she knew Mr. Trollop, "and was aware that he had a
Blank-Blank;"--[**Her private figure of speech for Brother--or
Son-in-law]--but Mr. Buckstone said that he was not able to conceive what
so curious a phrase as Blank-Blank might mean, and had no wish to pry
into the matter, since it was probably private, he "would nevertheless
venture the blind assertion that nothing would answer in this particular
case and during this particular session but to be exceedingly wary and
keep clear away from Mr. Trollop; any other course would be fatal."
It seemed that nothing could be done. Laura was seriously troubled.
Everything was looking well, and yet it was plain that one vigorous and
determined enemy might eventually succeed in overthrowing all her plans.
A suggestion came into her mind presently and she said:
"Can't you fight against his great Pension bill and, bring him to terms?"
"Oh, never; he and I are sworn brothers on that measure; we work in
harness and are very loving--I do everything I possibly can for him
there. But I work with might and main against his Immigration bill,
--as pertinaciously and as vindictively, indeed, as he works against our
University. We hate each other through half a conversation and are all
affection through the other half. We understand each other. He is an
admirable worker outside the capitol; he will do more for the Pension
bill than any other man could do; I wish he would make the great speech
on it which he wants to make--and then I would make another and we would
be safe."
"Well if he wants to make a great speech why doesn't he do it?"
Visitors interrupted the conversation and Mr. Buckstone took his leave.
It was not of the least moment to Laura that her question had not been
answered, inasmuch as it concerned a thing which did not interest her;
and yet, human being like, she thought she would have liked to know.
An opportunity occurring presently, she put the same question to another
person and got an answer that satisfied her. She pondered a good while
that night, after she had gone to bed, and when she finally turned over,
to, go to sleep, she had thought out a new scheme. The next evening at
Mrs. Gloverson's party, she said to Mr. Buckstone:
"I want Mr. Trollop to make his great speech on the Pension bill."
"Do you? But you remember I was interrupted, and did not explain
to you--"
"Never mind, I know. You must' make him make that speech. I very.
particularly desire, it."
"Oh, it is easy, to say make him do it, but how am I to make him!"
"It is perfectly easy; I have thought it all out."
She then went into the details. At length Mr. Buckstone said:
"I see now. I can manage it, I am sure. Indeed I wonder he never
thought of it himself--there are no end of precedents. But how is this
going to benefit you, after I have managed it? There is where the
mystery lies."
"But I will take care of that. It will benefit me a great deal."
"I only wish I could see how; it is the oddest freak. You seem to go the
furthest around to get at a thing--but you are in earnest, aren't you?"
"Yes I am, indeed."
"Very well, I will do it--but why not tell me how you imagine it is going
to help you?"
"I will, by and by.--Now there is nobody talking to him. Go straight and
do it, there's a good fellow."
A moment or two later the two sworn friends of the Pension bill were
talking together, earnestly, and seemingly unconscious of the moving
throng about them. They talked an hour, and then Mr. Buckstone came back
and said:
"He hardly fancied it at first, but he fell in love with it after a bit.
And we have made a compact, too. I am to keep his secret and he is to
spare me, in future, when he gets ready to denounce the supporters of the
University bill--and I can easily believe he will keep his word on this
occasion."
A fortnight elapsed, and the University bill had gathered to itself many
friends, meantime. Senator Dilworthy began to think the harvest was
ripe. He conferred with Laura privately. She was able to tell him
exactly how the House would vote. There was a majority--the bill would
pass, unless weak members got frightened at the last, and deserted--a
thing pretty likely to occur. The Senator said:
"I wish we had one more good strong man. Now Trollop ought to be on our
side, for he is a friend of the negro. But he is against us, and is our
bitterest opponent. If he would simply vote No, but keep quiet and not
molest us, I would feel perfectly cheerful and content. But perhaps
there is no use in thinking of that."
"Why I laid a little plan for his benefit two weeks ago. I think he will
be tractable, maybe. He is to come here tonight."
"Look out for him, my child! He means mischief, sure. It is said that
he claims to know of improper practices having been used in the interest
of this bill, and he thinks be sees a chance to make a great sensation
when the bill comes up. Be wary. Be very, very careful, my dear.
Do your very-ablest talking, now. You can convince a man of anything,
when you try. You must convince him that if anything improper has been
done, you at least are ignorant of it and sorry for it. And if you could
only persuade him out of his hostility to the bill, too--but don't overdo
the thing; don't seem too anxious, dear."
"I won't; I'll be ever so careful. I'll talk as sweetly to him as if he
were my own child! You may trust me--indeed you may."
The door-bell rang.
"That is the gentleman now," said Laura. Senator Dilworthy retired to
his study.
Laura welcomed Mr. Trollop, a grave, carefully dressed and very
respectable looking man, with a bald head, standing collar and old
fashioned watch seals.
"Promptness is a virtue, Mr. Trollop, and I perceive that you have it.
You are always prompt with me."
"I always meet my engagements, of every kind, Miss Hawkins."
"It is a quality which is rarer in the world than it has been, I believe.
I wished to see you on business, Mr. Trollop."
"I judged so. What can I do for you?"
"You know my bill--the Knobs University bill?"
"Ah, I believe it is your bill. I had forgotten. Yes, I know the bill."
"Well, would you mind telling me your opinion of it?"
"Indeed, since you seem to ask it without reserve, I am obliged to say
that I do not regard it favorably. I have not seen the bill itself, but
from what I can hear, it--it--well, it has a bad look about it. It--"
"Speak it out--never fear."
"Well, it--they say it contemplates a fraud upon the government."
"Well?" said Laura tranquilly.
"Well! I say 'Well?' too."
"Well, suppose it were a fraud--which I feel able to deny--would it be
the first one?"
"You take a body's breath away! Would you--did you wish me to vote for
it? Was that what you wanted to see me about?"
"Your instinct is correct. I did want you--I do want you to vote for
it."
"Vote for a fr--for a measure which is generally believed to be at least
questionable? I am afraid we cannot come to an understanding, Miss
Hawkins."
"No, I am afraid not--if you have resumed your principles, Mr. Trollop."
"Did you send for we merely to insult me? It is time for me to take my
leave, Miss Hawkins."
"No-wait a moment. Don't be offended at a trifle. Do not be offish and
unsociable. The Steamship Subsidy bill was a fraud on the government.
You voted for it, Mr. Trollop, though you always opposed the measure
until after you had an interview one evening with a certain Mrs. McCarter
at her house. She was my agent. She was acting for me. Ah, that is
right--sit down again. You can be sociable, easily enough if you have a
mind to. Well? I am waiting. Have you nothing to say?"
"Miss Hawkins, I voted for that bill because when I came to examine into
it--"
"Ah yes. When you came to examine into it. Well, I only want you to
examine into my bill. Mr. Trollop, you would not sell your vote on that
subsidy bill--which was perfectly right--but you accepted of some
of the stock, with the understanding that it was to stand in your
brother-in-law's name."
"There is no pr--I mean, this is, utterly groundless, Miss Hawkins." But
the gentleman seemed somewhat uneasy, nevertheless.
"Well, not entirely so, perhaps. I and a person whom we will call Miss
Blank (never mind the real name,) were in a closet at your elbow all the
while."
Mr. Trollop winced--then he said with dignity:
"Miss Hawkins is it possible that you were capable of such a thing as
that?"
"It was bad; I confess that. It was bad. Almost as bad as selling one's
vote for--but I forget; you did not sell your vote--you only accepted a
little trifle, a small token of esteem, for your brother-in-law. Oh, let
us come out and be frank with each other: I know you, Mr. Trollop.
I have met you on business three or four times; true, I never offered to
corrupt your principles--never hinted such a thing; but always when I had
finished sounding you, I manipulated you through an agent. Let us be
frank. Wear this comely disguise of virtue before the public--it will
count there; but here it is out of place. My dear sir, by and by there
is going to be an investigation into that National Internal Improvement
Directors' Relief Measure of a few years ago, and you know very well that
you will be a crippled man, as likely as not, when it is completed."
"It cannot be shown that a man is a knave merely for owning that stock.
I am not distressed about the National Improvement Relief Measure."
"Oh indeed I am not trying to distress you. I only wished, to make good
my assertion that I knew you. Several of you gentlemen bought of that
stack (without paying a penny down) received dividends from it, (think of
the happy idea of receiving dividends, and very large ones, too, from
stock one hasn't paid for!) and all the while your names never appeared
in the transaction; if ever you took the stock at all, you took it in
other people's names. Now you see, you had to know one of two things;
namely, you either knew that the idea of all this preposterous generosity
was to bribe you into future legislative friendship, or you didn't know
it. That is to say, you had to be either a knave or a--well, a fool
--there was no middle ground. You are not a fool, Mr. Trollop."
"Miss Hawking you flatter me. But seriously, you do not forget that some
of the best and purest men in Congress took that stock in that way?"
"Did Senator Bland?"
"Well, no--I believe not."
"Of course you believe not. Do you suppose he was ever approached, on
the subject?"
"Perhaps not."
"If you had approached him, for instance, fortified with the fact that
some of the best men in Congress, and the purest, etc., etc.; what would
have been the result?"
"Well, what WOULD have been the result?"
"He would have shown you the door! For Mr. Blank is neither a knave nor
a fool. There are other men in the Senate and the House whom no one
would have been hardy enough to approach with that Relief Stock in that
peculiarly generous way, but they are not of the class that you regard as
the best and purest. No, I say I know you Mr. Trollop. That is to say,
one may suggest a thing to Mr. Trollop which it would not do to suggest
to Mr. Blank. Mr. Trollop, you are pledged to support the Indigent
Congressmen's Retroactive Appropriation which is to come up, either in
this or the next session. You do not deny that, even in public. The man
that will vote for that bill will break the eighth commandment in any
other way, sir!"
"But he will not vote for your corrupt measure, nevertheless, madam!"
exclaimed Mr. Trollop, rising from his seat in a passion.
"Ah, but he will. Sit down again, and let me explain why. Oh, come,
don't behave so. It is very unpleasant. Now be good, and you shall
have, the missing page of your great speech. Here it is!"--and she
displayed a sheet of manuscript.
Mr. Trollop turned immediately back from the threshold. It might have
been gladness that flashed into his face; it might have been something
else; but at any rate there was much astonishment mixed with it.
"Good! Where did you get it? Give it me!"
"Now there is no hurry. Sit down; sit down and let us talk and be
friendly."
The gentleman wavered. Then he said:
"No, this is only a subterfuge. I will go. It is not the missing page."
Laura tore off a couple of lines from the bottom of the sheet.
"Now," she said, "you will know whether this is the handwriting or not.
You know it is the handwriting. Now if you will listen, you will know
that this must be the list of statistics which was to be the 'nub' of
your great effort, and the accompanying blast the beginning of the burst
of eloquence which was continued on the next page--and you will recognize
that there was where you broke down."
She read the page. Mr. Trollop said:
"This is perfectly astounding. Still, what is all this to me? It is
nothing. It does not concern me. The speech is made, and there an end.
I did break down for a moment, and in a rather uncomfortable place, since
I had led up to those statistics with some grandeur; the hiatus was
pleasanter to the House and the galleries than it was to me. But it is
no matter now. A week has passed; the jests about it ceased three or
four days ago. The, whole thing is a matter of indifference to me, Miss
Hawkins."
"But you apologized; and promised the statistics for next day. Why
didn't you keep your promise."
"The matter was not of sufficient consequence. The time was gone by to
produce an effect with them."
"But I hear that other friends of the Soldiers' Pension Bill desire them
very much. I think you ought to let them have them."
"Miss Hawkins, this silly blunder of my copyist evidently has more
interest for you than it has for me. I will send my private secretary to
you and let him discuss the subject with you at length."
"Did he copy your speech for you?"
"Of course he did. Why all these questions? Tell me--how did you get
hold of that page of manuscript? That is the only thing that stirs a
passing interest in my mind."
"I'm coming to that." Then she said, much as if she were talking to
herself: "It does seem like taking a deal of unnecessary pains, for a
body to hire another body to construct a great speech for him and then go
and get still another body to copy it before it can be read in the
House."
"Miss Hawkins, what do yo mean by such talk as that?"
"Why I am sure I mean no harm--no harm to anybody in the world. I am
certain that I overheard the Hon. Mr. Buckstone either promise to write
your great speech for you or else get some other competent person to do
it."
"This is perfectly absurd, madam, perfectly absurd!" and Mr. Trollop
affected a laugh of derision.
"Why, the thing has occurred before now. I mean that I have heard that
Congressmen have sometimes hired literary grubs to build speeches for
them.--Now didn't I overhear a conversation like that I spoke of?"
"Pshaw! Why of course you may have overheard some such jesting nonsense.
But would one be in earnest about so farcical a thing?"
"Well if it was only a joke, why did you make a serious matter of it?
Why did you get the speech written for you, and then read it in the House
without ever having it copied?"
Mr. Trollop did not laugh this time; he seemed seriously perplexed. He
said:
"Come, play out your jest, Miss Hawkins. I can't understand what you are
contriving--but it seems to entertain you--so please, go on."
"I will, I assure you; but I hope to make the matter entertaining to you,
too. Your private secretary never copied your speech."
"Indeed? Really you seem to know my affairs better than I do myself."
"I believe I do. You can't name your own amanuensis, Mr. Trollop."
"That is sad, indeed. Perhaps Miss Hawkins can?"
"Yes, I can. I wrote your speech myself, and you read it from my
manuscript. There, now!"
Mr. Trollop did not spring to his feet and smite his brow with his hand
while a cold sweat broke out all over him and the color forsook his face
--no, he only said, "Good God!" and looked greatly astonished.
Laura handed him her commonplace-book and called his attention to the
fact that the handwriting there and the handwriting of this speech were
the same. He was shortly convinced. He laid the book aside and said,
composedly:
"Well, the wonderful tragedy is done, and it transpires that I am
indebted to you for my late eloquence. What of it? What was all this
for and what does it amount to after all? What do you propose to do
about it?"
"Oh nothing. It is only a bit of pleasantry. When I overheard that
conversation I took an early opportunity to ask Mr. Buckstone if he knew
of anybody who might want a speech written--I had a friend, and so forth
and so on. I was the friend, myself; I thought I might do you a good
turn then and depend on you to do me one by and by. I never let Mr.
Buckstone have the speech till the last moment, and when you hurried off
to the House with it, you did not know there was a missing page, of
course, but I did.
"And now perhaps you think that if I refuse to support your bill, you
will make a grand exposure?"
"Well I had not thought of that. I only kept back the page for the mere
fun of the thing; but since you mention it, I don't know but I might do
something if I were angry."
"My dear Miss Hawkins, if you were to give out that you composed my
speech, you know very well that people would say it was only your
raillery, your fondness for putting a victim in the pillory and amusing
the public at his expense. It is too flimsy, Miss Hawkins, for a person
of your fine inventive talent--contrive an abler device than that.
Come!"
"It is easily done, Mr. Trollop. I will hire a man, and pin this page on
his breast, and label it, 'The Missing Fragment of the Hon. Mr. Trollop's
Great Speech--which speech was written and composed by Miss Laura Hawkins
under a secret understanding for one hundred dollars--and the money has
not been paid.' And I will pin round about it notes in my handwriting,
which I will procure from prominent friends of mine for the occasion;
also your printed speech in the Globe, showing the connection between its
bracketed hiatus and my Fragment; and I give you my word of honor that I
will stand that human bulletin board in the rotunda of the capitol and
make him stay there a week! You see you are premature, Mr. Trollop, the
wonderful tragedy is not done yet, by any means. Come, now, doesn't it
improve?"
Mr Trollop opened his eyes rather widely at this novel aspect of the
case. He got up and walked the floor and gave himself a moment for
reflection. Then he stopped and studied Laura's face a while, and ended
by saying:
"Well, I am obliged to believe you would be reckless enough to do that."
"Then don't put me to the test, Mr. Trollop. But let's drop the matter.
I have had my joke and you've borne the infliction becomingly enough.
It spoils a jest to harp on it after one has had one's laugh. I would
much rather talk about my bill."
"So would I, now, my clandestine amanuensis. Compared with some other
subjects, even your bill is a pleasant topic to discuss."
"Very good indeed! I thought. I could persuade you. Now I am sure you
will be generous to the poor negro and vote for that bill."
"Yes, I feel more tenderly toward the oppressed colored man than I did.
Shall we bury the hatchet and be good friends and respect each other's
little secrets, on condition that I vote Aye on the measure?"
"With all my heart, Mr. Trollop. I give you my word of that."
"It is a bargain. But isn't there something else you could give me,
too?"
Laura looked at him inquiringly a moment, and then she comprehended.
"Oh, yes! You may have it now. I haven't any, more use for it." She
picked up the page of manuscript, but she reconsidered her intention of
handing it to him, and said, "But never mind; I will keep it close; no
one shall see it; you shall have it as soon as your vote is recorded."
Mr. Trollop looked disappointed. But presently made his adieux, and had
got as far as the hall, when something occurred to Laura. She said to
herself, "I don't simply want his vote under compulsion--he might vote
aye, but work against the bill in secret, for revenge; that man is
unscrupulous enough to do anything. I must have his hearty co-operation
as well as his vote. There is only one way to get that."
She called him back, and said:
"I value your vote, Mr. Trollop, but I value your influence more. You
are able to help a measure along in many ways, if you choose. I want to
ask you to work for the bill as well as vote for it."
"It takes so much of one's time, Miss Hawkins--and time is money, you
know."
"Yes, I know it is--especially in Congress. Now there is no use in you
and I dealing in pretenses and going at matters in round-about ways.
We know each other--disguises are nonsense. Let us be plain. I will
make it an object to you to work for the bill."
"Don't make it unnecessarily plain, please. There are little proprieties
that are best preserved. What do you propose?"
"Well, this." She mentioned the names of several prominent Congressmen.
"Now," said she, "these gentlemen are to vote and work for the bill,
simply out of love for the negro--and out of pure generosity I have put
in a relative of each as a member of the University incorporation. They
will handle a million or so of money, officially, but will receive no
salaries. A larger number of statesmen are to, vote and work for the
bill--also out of love for the negro--gentlemen of but moderate
influence, these--and out of pure generosity I am to see that relatives
of theirs have positions in the University, with salaries, and good ones,
too. You will vote and work for the bill, from mere affection for the
negro, and I desire to testify my gratitude becomingly. Make free
choice. Have you any friend whom you would like to present with a
salaried or unsalaried position in our institution?"
"Well, I have a brother-in-law--"
"That same old brother-in-law, you good unselfish provider! I have heard
of him often, through my agents. How regularly he does 'turn up,' to be
sure. He could deal with those millions virtuously, and withal with
ability, too--but of course you would rather he had a salaried position?"
"Oh, no," said the gentleman, facetiously, "we are very humble, very
humble in our desires; we want no money; we labor solely, for our country
and require no reward but the luxury of an applauding conscience. Make
him one of those poor hard working unsalaried corporators and let him do
every body good with those millions--and go hungry himself! I will try
to exert a little influence in favor of the bill."
Arrived at home, Mr. Trollop sat down and thought it all over--something
after this fashion: it is about the shape it might have taken if he had
spoken it aloud.
"My reputation is getting a little damaged, and I meant to clear it up
brilliantly with an exposure of this bill at the supreme moment, and ride
back into Congress on the eclat of it; and if I had that bit of
manuscript, I would do it yet. It would be more money in my pocket in
the end, than my brother-in-law will get out of that incorporatorship,
fat as it is. But that sheet of paper is out of my reach--she will never
let that get out of her hands. And what a mountain it is! It blocks up
my road, completely. She was going to hand it to me, once. Why didn't
she! Must be a deep woman. Deep devil! That is what she is;
a beautiful devil--and perfectly fearless, too. The idea of her pinning
that paper on a man and standing him up in the rotunda looks absurd at a
first glance. But she would do it! She is capable of doing anything.
I went there hoping she would try to bribe me--good solid capital that
would be in the exposure. Well, my prayer was answered; she did try to
bribe me; and I made the best of a bad bargain and let her. I am
check-mated. I must contrive something fresh to get back to Congress on.
Very well; a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; I will work for
the bill--the incorporatorship will be a very good thing."
As soon as Mr. Trollop had taken his leave, Laura ran to Senator
Dilworthy and began to speak, but he interrupted her and said
distressfully, without even turning from his writing to look at her:
"Only half an hour! You gave it up early, child. However, it was best,
it was best--I'm sure it was best--and safest."
"Give it up! I!"
The Senator sprang up, all aglow:
"My child, you can't mean that you--"
"I've made him promise on honor to think about a compromise tonight and
come and tell me his decision in the morning."
"Good! There's hope yet that--"
Nonsense, uncle. I've made him engage to let the Tennessee Land bill
utterly alone!"
"Impossible! You--"
"I've made him promise to vote with us!"
"INCREDIBLE! Abso--"
"I've made him swear that he'll work for us!"
"PRE - - - POSTEROUS!--Utterly pre--break a window, child, before I
suffocate!"
"No matter, it's true anyway. Now we can march into Congress with drums
beating and colors flying!"
"Well--well--well. I'm sadly bewildered, sadly bewildered. I can't
understand it at all--the most extraordinary woman that ever--it's a
great day, it's a great day. There--there--let me put my hand in
benediction on this precious head. Ah, my child, the poor negro will
bless--"
"Oh bother the poor negro, uncle! Put it in your speech. Good-night,
good-bye--we'll marshal our forces and march with the dawn!"
Laura reflected a while, when she was alone, and then fell to laughing,
peacefully.
"Everybody works for me,"--so ran her thought. "It was a good idea to
make Buckstone lead Mr. Trollop on to get a great speech written for him;
and it was a happy part of the same idea for me to copy the speech after
Mr. Buckstone had written it, and then keep back a page. Mr. B. was
very complimentary to me when Trollop's break-down in the House showed
him the object of my mysterious scheme; I think he will say, still finer
things when I tell him the triumph the sequel to it has gained for us.
"But what a coward the man was, to believe I would have exposed that page
in the rotunda, and so exposed myself. However, I don't know--I don't
know. I will think a moment. Suppose he voted no; suppose the bill
failed; that is to suppose this stupendous game lost forever, that I have
played so desperately for; suppose people came around pitying me--odious!
And he could have saved me by his single voice. Yes, I would have
exposed him! What would I care for the talk that that would have made
about me when I was gone to Europe with Selby and all the world was busy
with my history and my dishonor? It would be almost happiness to spite
somebody at such a time."
CHAPTER XLIII.
The very next day, sure enough, the campaign opened. In due course, the
Speaker of the House reached that Order of Business which is termed
"Notices of Bills," and then the Hon. Mr. Buckstone rose in his place and
gave notice of a bill "To Found and Incorporate the Knobs Industrial
University," and then sat down without saying anything further. The busy
gentlemen in the reporters' gallery jotted a line in their note-books,
ran to the telegraphic desk in a room which communicated with their own
writing-parlor, and then hurried back to their places in the gallery; and
by the time they had resumed their seats, the line which they had
delivered to the operator had been read in telegraphic offices in towns
and cities hundreds of miles away. It was distinguished by frankness of
language as well as by brevity:
"The child is born. Buckstone gives notice of the thieving Knobs
University job. It is said the noses have been counted and enough votes
have been bought to pass it."
For some time the correspondents had been posting their several journals
upon the alleged disreputable nature of the bill, and furnishing daily
reports of the Washington gossip concerning it. So the next morning,
nearly every newspaper of character in the land assailed the measure and
hurled broadsides of invective at Mr. Buckstone. The Washington papers
were more respectful, as usual--and conciliatory, also, as usual. They
generally supported measures, when it was possible; but when they could
not they "deprecated" violent expressions of opinion in other
journalistic quarters.
They always deprecated, when there was trouble ahead. However, 'The
Washington Daily Love-Feast' hailed the bill with warm approbation. This
was Senator Balaam's paper--or rather, "Brother" Balaam, as he was
popularly called, for he had been a clergyman, in his day; and he himself
and all that he did still emitted an odor of sanctity now that he had
diverged into journalism and politics. He was a power in the
Congressional prayer meeting, and in all movements that looked to the
spread of religion and temperance.
His paper supported the new bill with gushing affection; it was a noble
measure; it was a just measure; it was a generous measure; it was a pure
measure, and that surely should recommend it in these corrupt times; and
finally, if the nature of the bill were not known at all, the 'Love
Feast' would support it anyway, and unhesitatingly, for the fact that
Senator Dilworthy was the originator of the measure was a guaranty that
it contemplated a worthy and righteous work.
Senator Dilworthy was so anxious to know what the New York papers would
say about the bill; that he had arranged to have synopses of their
editorials telegraphed to him; he could not wait for the papers
themselves to crawl along down to Washington by a mail train which has
never run over a cow since the road was built; for the reason that it has
never been able to overtake one. It carries the usual "cow-catcher" in
front of the locomotive, but this is mere ostentation. It ought to be
attached to the rear car, where it could do some good; but instead, no
provision is made there for the protection of the traveling public, and
hence it is not a matter of surprise that cows so frequently climb aboard
that train and among the passengers.
The Senator read his dispatches aloud at the breakfast table. Laura was
troubled beyond measure at their tone, and said that that sort of comment
would defeat the bill; but the Senator said:
"Oh, not at all, not at all, my child. It is just what we want.
Persecution is the one thing needful, now--all the other forces are
secured. Give us newspaper persecution enough, and we are safe.
Vigorous persecution will alone carry a bill sometimes, dear; and when
you start with a strong vote in the first place, persecution comes in
with double effect. It scares off some of the weak supporters, true,
but it soon turns strong ones into stubborn ones. And then, presently,
it changes the tide of public opinion. The great public is weak-minded;
the great public is sentimental; the great public always turns around and
weeps for an odious murderer, and prays for-him, and carries flowers to
his prison and besieges the governor with appeals to his clemency, as
soon as the papers begin to howl for that man's blood.--In a word, the
great putty-hearted public loves to 'gush,' and there is no such darling
opportunity to gush as a case of persecution affords."
"Well, uncle, dear; if your theory is right, let us go into raptures,
for nobody can ask a heartier persecution than these editorials are
furnishing."
"I am not so sure of that, my daughter. I don't entirely like the tone
of some of these remarks. They lack vim, they lack venom. Here is one
calls it a 'questionable measure.' Bah, there is no strength in that.
This one is better; it calls it 'highway robbery.' That sounds something
like. But now this one seems satisfied to call it an 'iniquitous
scheme'. 'Iniquitous' does not exasperate anybody; it is weak--puerile.
The ignorant will imagine it to be intended for a compliment. But this
other one--the one I read last--has the true ring: 'This vile, dirty
effort to rob the public treasury, by the kites and vultures that now
infest the filthy den called Congress'--that is admirable, admirable!
We must have more of that sort. But it will come--no fear of that;
they're not warmed up, yet. A week from now you'll see."
"Uncle, you and Brother Balaam are bosom friends--why don't you get his
paper to persecute us, too?"
"It isn't worth while, my, daughter. His support doesn't hurt a bill.
Nobody reads his editorials but himself. But I wish the New York papers
would talk a little plainer. It is annoying to have to wait a week for
them to warm up. I expected better things at their hands--and time is
precious, now."
At the proper hour, according to his previous notice, Mr. Buckstone duly
introduced his bill entitled "An Act to Found and Incorporate the Knobs
Industrial University," moved its proper reference, and sat down.
The Speaker of the House rattled off this observation:
"'Fnobjectionbilltakuzhlcoixrssoreferred!'"
Habitues of the House comprehended that this long, lightning-heeled word
signified that if there was no objection, the bill would take the
customary course of a measure of its nature, and be referred to the
Committee on Benevolent Appropriations, and that it was accordingly so
referred. Strangers merely supposed that the Speaker was taking a gargle
for some affection of the throat.
The reporters immediately telegraphed the introduction of the bill.--And
they added:
"The assertion that the bill will pass was premature. It is said
that many favorers of it will desert when the storm breaks upon them
from the public press."
The storm came, and during ten days it waxed more and more violent day by
day. The great "Negro University Swindle" became the one absorbing topic
of conversation throughout the Union. Individuals denounced it, journals
denounced it, public meetings denounced it, the pictorial papers
caricatured its friends, the whole nation seemed to be growing frantic
over it. Meantime the Washington correspondents were sending such
telegrams as these abroad in the land; Under date of--
SATURDAY. "Congressmen Jex and Fluke are wavering; it is believed they
will desert the execrable bill."
MONDAY. "Jex and Fluke have deserted!"
THURSDAY. "Tubbs and Huffy left the sinking ship last night"
Later on:
"Three desertions. The University thieves are getting scared, though
they will not own it."
Later:
"The leaders are growing stubborn--they swear they can carry it, but it
is now almost certain that they no longer have a majority!"
After a day or two of reluctant and ambiguous telegrams:
"Public sentiment seems changing, a trifle in favor of the bill
--but only a trifle."
And still later:
"It is whispered that the Hon. Mr. Trollop has gone over to the pirates.
It is probably a canard. Mr. Trollop has all along been the bravest and
most efficient champion of virtue and the people against the bill, and
the report is without doubt a shameless invention."
Next day:
"With characteristic treachery, the truckling and pusillanimous reptile,
Crippled-Speech Trollop, has gone over to the enemy. It is contended,
now, that he has been a friend to the bill, in secret, since the day it
was introduced, and has had bankable reasons for being so; but he himself
declares that he has gone over because the malignant persecution of the
bill by the newspapers caused him to study its provisions with more care
than he had previously done, and this close examination revealed the fact
that the measure is one in every way worthy of support. (Pretty thin!)
It cannot be denied that this desertion has had a damaging effect. Jex
and Fluke have returned to their iniquitous allegiance, with six or eight
others of lesser calibre, and it is reported and believed that Tubbs and
Huffy are ready to go back. It is feared that the University swindle is
stronger to-day than it has ever been before."
Later-midnight:
"It is said that the committee will report the bill back to-morrow. Both
sides are marshaling their forces, and the fight on this bill is
evidently going to be the hottest of the session.--All Washington is
boiling."
CHAPTER XLIV.
"It's easy enough for another fellow to talk," said Harry, despondingly,
after he had put Philip in possession of his view of the case. "It's
easy enough to say 'give her up,' if you don't care for her. What am I
going to do to give her up?"
It seemed to Harry that it was a situation requiring some active
measures. He couldn't realize that he had fallen hopelessly in love
without some rights accruing to him for the possession of the object of
his passion. Quiet resignation under relinquishment of any thing he
wanted was not in his line. And when it appeared to him that his
surrender of Laura would be the withdrawal of the one barrier that kept
her from ruin, it was unreasonable to expect that he could see how to
give her up.
Harry had the most buoyant confidence in his own projects always; he saw
everything connected with himself in a large way and in rosy lines. This
predominance of the imagination over the judgment gave that appearance of
exaggeration to his conversation and to his communications with regard to
himself, which sometimes conveyed the impression that he was not speaking
the truth. His acquaintances had been known to say that they invariably
allowed a half for shrinkage in his statements, and held the other half
under advisement for confirmation.
Philip in this case could not tell from Harry's story exactly how much
encouragement Laura had given him, nor what hopes he might justly have of
winning her. He had never seen him desponding before. The "brag"
appeared to be all taken out of him, and his airy manner only asserted
itself now and then in a comical imitation of its old self.
Philip wanted time to look about him before he decided what to do.
He was not familiar with Washington, and it was difficult to adjust his
feelings and perceptions to its peculiarities. Coming out of the sweet
sanity of the Bolton household, this was by contrast the maddest Vanity
Fair one could conceive. It seemed to him a feverish, unhealthy
atmosphere in which lunacy would be easily developed. He fancied that
everybody attached to himself an exaggerated importance, from the fact of
being at the national capital, the center of political influence, the
fountain of patronage, preferment, jobs and opportunities.
People were introduced to each other as from this or that state, not from
cities or towns, and this gave a largeness to their representative
feeling. All the women talked politics as naturally and glibly as they
talk fashion or literature elsewhere. There was always some exciting
topic at the Capitol, or some huge slander was rising up like a miasmatic
exhalation from the Potomac, threatening to settle no one knew exactly
where. Every other person was an aspirant for a place, or, if he had
one, for a better place, or more pay; almost every other one had some
claim or interest or remedy to urge; even the women were all advocates
for the advancement of some person, and they violently espoused or
denounced this or that measure as it would affect some relative,
acquaintance or friend.
Love, travel, even death itself, waited on the chances of the dies daily
thrown in the two Houses, and the committee rooms there. If the measure
went through, love could afford to ripen into marriage, and longing for
foreign travel would have fruition; and it must have been only eternal
hope springing in the breast that kept alive numerous old claimants who
for years and years had besieged the doors of Congress, and who looked as
if they needed not so much an appropriation of money as six feet of
ground. And those who stood so long waiting for success to bring them
death were usually those who had a just claim.
Representing states and talking of national and even international
affairs, as familiarly as neighbors at home talk of poor crops and the
extravagance of their ministers, was likely at first to impose upon
Philip as to the importance of the people gathered here.
There was a little newspaper editor from Phil's native town, the
assistant on a Peddletonian weekly, who made his little annual joke about
the "first egg laid on our table," and who was the menial of every
tradesman in the village and under bonds to him for frequent "puffs,"
except the undertaker, about whose employment he was recklessly
facetious. In Washington he was an important man, correspondent, and
clerk of two house committees, a "worker" in politics, and a confident
critic of every woman and every man in Washington. He would be a consul
no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was
ignorant--though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might
have been a consul at home. His easy familiarity with great men was
beautiful to see, and when Philip learned what a tremendous underground
influence this little ignoramus had, he no longer wondered at the queer
appointments and the queerer legislation.
Philip was not long in discovering that people in Washington did not
differ much from other people; they had the same meannesses,
generosities, and tastes: A Washington boarding house had the odor of a
boarding house the world over.
Col. Sellers was as unchanged as any one Philip saw whom he had known
elsewhere. Washington appeared to be the native element of this man.
His pretentions were equal to any he encountered there. He saw nothing
in its society that equalled that of Hawkeye, he sat down to no table
that could not be unfavorably contrasted with his own at home; the most
airy scheme inflated in the hot air of the capital only reached in
magnitude some of his lesser fancies, the by-play of his constructive
imagination.
"The country is getting along very well," he said to Philip, "but our
public men are too timid. What we want is more money. I've told
Boutwell so. Talk about basing the currency on gold; you might as well
base it on pork. Gold is only one product. Base it on everything!
You've got to do something for the West. How am I to move my crops?
We must have improvements. Grant's got the idea. We want a canal from
the James River to the Mississippi. Government ought to build it."
It was difficult to get the Colonel off from these large themes when he
was once started, but Philip brought the conversation round to Laura and
her reputation in the City.
"No," he said, "I haven't noticed much. We've been so busy about this
University. It will make Laura rich with the rest of us, and she has
done nearly as much as if she were a man. She has great talent, and will
make a big match. I see the foreign ministers and that sort after her.
Yes, there is talk, always will be about a pretty woman so much in public
as she is. Tough stories come to me, but I put'em away. 'Taint likely
one of Si Hawkins's children would do that--for she is the same as a
child of his. I told her, though, to go slow," added the Colonel, as if
that mysterious admonition from him would set everything right.
"Do you know anything about a Col. Selby?"
"Know all about him. Fine fellow. But he's got a wife; and I told him,
as a friend, he'd better sheer off from Laura. I reckon he thought
better of it and did."
But Philip was not long in learning the truth. Courted as Laura was by a
certain class and still admitted into society, that, nevertheless, buzzed
with disreputable stories about her, she had lost character with the best
people. Her intimacy with Selby was open gossip, and there were winks
and thrustings of the tongue in any group of men when she passed by.
It was clear enough that Harry's delusion must be broken up, and that no
such feeble obstacle as his passion could interpose would turn Laura from
her fate. Philip determined to see her, and put himself in possession of
the truth, as he suspected it, in order to show Harry his folly.
Laura, after her last conversation with Harry, had a new sense of her
position. She had noticed before the signs of a change in manner towards
her, a little less respect perhaps from men, and an avoidance by women.
She had attributed this latter partly to jealousy of her, for no one is
willing to acknowledge a fault in himself when a more agreeable motive
can be found for the estrangement of his acquaintances. But now, if
society had turned on her, she would defy it. It was not in her nature
to shrink. She knew she had been wronged, and she knew that she had no
remedy.
What she heard of Col. Selby's proposed departure alarmed her more than
anything else, and she calmly determined that if he was deceiving her the
second time it should be the last. Let society finish the tragedy if it
liked; she was indifferent what came after. At the first opportunity,
she charged Selby with his intention to abandon her. He unblushingly
denied it.
He had not thought of going to Europe. He had only been amusing himself
with Sellers' schemes. He swore that as soon as she succeeded with her
bill, he would fly with her to any part of the world.
She did not quite believe him, for she saw that he feared her, and she
began to suspect that his were the protestations of a coward to gain
time. But she showed him no doubts.
She only watched his movements day by day, and always held herself ready
to act promptly.
When Philip came into the presence of this attractive woman, he could not
realize that she was the subject of all the scandal he had heard. She
received him with quite the old Hawkeye openness and cordiality, and fell
to talking at once of their little acquaintance there; and it seemed
impossible that he could ever say to her what he had come determined to
say. Such a man as Philip has only one standard by which to judge women.
Laura recognized that fact no doubt. The better part of her woman's
nature saw it. Such a man might, years ago, not now, have changed her
nature, and made the issue of her life so different, even after her cruel
abandonment. She had a dim feeling of this, and she would like now to
stand well with him. The spark of truth and honor that was left in her
was elicited by his presence. It was this influence that governed her
conduct in this interview.
"I have come," said Philip in his direct manner, "from my friend
Mr. Brierly. You are not ignorant of his feeling towards you?"
"Perhaps not."
"But perhaps you do not know, you who have so much admiration, how
sincere and overmastering his love is for you?" Philip would not have
spoken so plainly, if he had in mind anything except to draw from Laura
something that would end Harry's passion.
"And is sincere love so rare, Mr. Sterling?" asked Laura, moving her foot
a little, and speaking with a shade of sarcasm.
"Perhaps not in Washington," replied Philip,--tempted into a similar
tone. "Excuse my bluntness," he continued, "but would the knowledge of
his love; would his devotion, make any difference to you in your
Washington life?"
"In respect to what?" asked Laura quickly.
"Well, to others. I won't equivocate--to Col. Selby?"
Laura's face flushed with anger, or shame; she looked steadily at Philip
and began,
"By what right, sir,--"
"By the right of friendship," interrupted Philip stoutly. "It may matter
little to you. It is everything to him. He has a Quixotic notion that
you would turn back from what is before you for his sake. You cannot be
ignorant of what all the city is talking of." Philip said this
determinedly and with some bitterness.
It was a full minute before Laura spoke. Both had risen, Philip as if to
go, and Laura in suppressed excitement. When she spoke her voice was
very unsteady, and she looked down.
"Yes, I know. I perfectly understand what you mean. Mr. Brierly is
nothing--simply nothing. He is a moth singed, that is all--the trifler
with women thought he was a wasp. I have no pity for him, not the least.
You may tell him not to make a fool of himself, and to keep away. I say
this on your account, not his. You are not like him. It is enough for
me that you want it so. Mr. Sterling," she continued, looking up; and
there were tears in her eyes that contradicted the hardness of her
language, "you might not pity him if you knew my history; perhaps you
would not wonder at some things you hear. No; it is useless to ask me
why it must be so. You can't make a life over--society wouldn't let you
if you would--and mine must be lived as it is. There, sir, I'm not
offended; but it is useless for you to say anything more."
Philip went away with his heart lightened about Harry, but profoundly
saddened by the glimpse of what this woman might have been. He told
Harry all that was necessary of the conversation--she was bent on going
her own way, he had not the ghost of a chance--he was a fool, she had
said, for thinking he had.
And Harry accepted it meekly, and made up his own mind that Philip didn't
know much about women.
CHAPTER XLV.
The galleries of the House were packed, on the momentous day, not because
the reporting of an important bill back by a committee was a thing to be
excited about, if the bill were going to take the ordinary course
afterward; it would be like getting excited over the empaneling of a
coroner's jury in a murder case, instead of saving up one's emotions for
the grander occasion of the hanging of the accused, two years later,
after all the tedious forms of law had been gone through with.
But suppose you understand that this coroner's jury is going to turn out
to be a vigilance committee in disguise, who will hear testimony for an
hour and then hang the murderer on the spot? That puts a different
aspect upon the matter. Now it was whispered that the legitimate forms
of procedure usual in the House, and which keep a bill hanging along for
days and even weeks, before it is finally passed upon, were going to be
overruled, in this case, and short work made of the, measure; and so,
what was beginning as a mere inquest might, torn out to be something very
different.
In the course of the day's business the Order of "Reports of Committees"
was finally reached and when the weary crowds heard that glad
announcement issue from the Speaker's lips they ceased to fret at the
dragging delay, and plucked up spirit. The Chairman of the Committee on
Benevolent Appropriations rose and made his report, and just then a
blue-uniformed brass-mounted little page put a note into his hand.
It was from Senator Dilworthy, who had appeared upon the floor of the
House for a moment and flitted away again:
"Everybody expects a grand assault in force; no doubt you believe,
as I certainly do, that it is the thing to do; we are strong, and
everything is hot for the contest. Trollop's espousal of our cause
has immensely helped us and we grow in power constantly. Ten of the
opposition were called away from town about noon,(but--so it is
said--only for one day). Six others are sick, but expect to be
about again tomorrow or next day, a friend tells me. A bold
onslaught is worth trying. Go for a suspension of the rules! You
will find we can swing a two-thirds vote--I am perfectly satisfied
of it. The Lord's truth will prevail.
"DILWORTHY."
Mr. Buckstone had reported the bills from his committee, one by one,
leaving the bill to the last. When the House had voted upon the
acceptance or rejection of the report upon all but it, and the question
now being upon its disposal--Mr. Buckstone begged that the House would
give its attention to a few remarks which he desired to make. His
committee had instructed him to report the bill favorably; he wished to
explain the nature of the measure, and thus justify the committee's
action; the hostility roused by the press would then disappear, and the
bill would shine forth in its true and noble character. He said that its
provisions were simple. It incorporated the Knobs Industrial University,
locating it in East Tennessee, declaring it open to all persons without
distinction of sex, color or religion, and committing its management to a
board of perpetual trustees, with power to fill vacancies in their own
number. It provided for the erection of certain buildings for the
University, dormitories, lecture-halls, museums, libraries, laboratories,
work-shops, furnaces, and mills. It provided also for the purchase of
sixty-five thousand acres of land, (fully described) for the purposes of
the University, in the Knobs of East Tennessee. And it appropriated
[blank] dollars for the purchase of the Land, which should be the
property of the national trustees in trust for the uses named.
Every effort had been made to secure the refusal of the whole amount of
the property of the Hawkins heirs in the Knobs, some seventy-five
thousand acres Mr. Buckstone said. But Mr. Washington Hawkins (one of
the heirs) objected. He was, indeed, very reluctant to sell any part of
the land at any price; and indeed--this reluctance was justifiable when
one considers how constantly and how greatly the property is rising in
value.
What the South needed, continued Mr. Buckstone, was skilled labor.
Without that it would be unable to develop its mines, build its roads,
work to advantage and without great waste its fruitful land, establish
manufactures or enter upon a prosperous industrial career. Its laborers
were almost altogether unskilled. Change them into intelligent, trained
workmen, and you increased at once the capital, the resources of the
entire south, which would enter upon a prosperity hitherto unknown.
In five years the increase in local wealth would not only reimburse the
government for the outlay in this appropriation, but pour untold wealth
into the treasury.
This was the material view, and the least important in the honorable
gentleman's opinion. [Here he referred to some notes furnished him by
Senator Dilworthy, and then continued.] God had given us the care of
these colored millions. What account should we render to Him of our
stewardship? We had made them free. Should we leave them ignorant?
We had cast them upon their own resources. Should we leave them without
tools? We could not tell what the intentions of Providence are in regard
to these peculiar people, but our duty was plain. The Knobs Industrial
University would be a vast school of modern science and practice, worthy
of a great nation. It would combine the advantages of Zurich, Freiburg,
Creuzot and the Sheffield Scientific. Providence had apparently reserved
and set apart the Knobs of East Tennessee for this purpose. What else
were they for? Was it not wonderful that for more than thirty years,
over a generation, the choicest portion of them had remained in one
family, untouched, as if, separated for some great use!
It might be asked why the government should buy this land, when it had
millions of yes, more than the railroad companies desired, which, it
might devote to this purpose? He answered, that the government had no
such tract of land as this. It had nothing comparable to it for the
purposes of the University: This was to be a school of mining, of
engineering, of the working of metals, of chemistry, zoology, botany,
manufactures, agriculture, in short of all the complicated industries
that make a state great. There was no place for the location of such a
school like the Knobs of East Tennessee. The hills abounded in metals of
all sorts, iron in all its combinations, copper, bismuth, gold and silver
in small quantities, platinum he--believed, tin, aluminium; it was
covered with forests and strange plants; in the woods were found the
coon, the opossum, the fox, the deer and many other animals who roamed in
the domain of natural history; coal existed in enormous quantity and no
doubt oil; it was such a place for the practice of agricultural
experiments that any student who had been successful there would have an
easy task in any other portion of the country.
No place offered equal facilities for experiments in mining, metallurgy,
engineering. He expected to live to see the day, when the youth of the
south would resort to its mines, its workshops, its laboratories, its
furnaces and factories for practical instruction in all the great
industrial pursuits.
A noisy and rather ill-natured debate followed, now, and lasted hour
after hour. The friends of the bill were instructed by the leaders to
make no effort to check it; it was deemed better strategy to tire out the
opposition; it was decided to vote down every proposition to adjourn, and
so continue the sitting into the night; opponents might desert, then, one
by one and weaken their party, for they had no personal stake in the
bill.
Sunset came, and still the fight went on; the gas was lit, the crowd in
the galleries began to thin, but the contest continued; the crowd
returned, by and by, with hunger and thirst appeased, and aggravated the
hungry and thirsty House by looking contented and comfortable; but still
the wrangle lost nothing of its bitterness. Recesses were moved
plaintively by the opposition, and invariably voted down by the
University army.
At midnight the House presented a spectacle calculated to interest a
stranger. The great galleries were still thronged--though only with men,
now; the bright colors that had made them look like hanging gardens were
gone, with the ladies. The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by
one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body
cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull
speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but
there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters'
waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping on the 'qui vive' for the
general irruption of the Congressional volcano that must come when the
time was ripe for it. Senator Dilworthy and Philip were in the
Diplomatic Gallery; Washington sat in the public gallery, and Col.
Sellers was, not far away. The Colonel had been flying about the
corridors and button-holing Congressmen all the evening, and believed
that he had accomplished a world of valuable service; but fatigue was
telling upon him, now, and he was quiet and speechless--for once. Below,
a few Senators lounged upon the sofas set apart for visitors, and talked
with idle Congressmen. A dreary member was speaking; the presiding
officer was nodding; here and there little knots of members stood in the
aisles, whispering together; all about the House others sat in all the
various attitudes that express weariness; some, tilted back, had one or
more legs disposed upon their desks; some sharpened pencils indolently;
some scribbled aimlessly; some yawned and stretched; a great many lay
upon their breasts upon the desks, sound asleep and gently snoring.
The flooding gaslight from the fancifully wrought roof poured down upon
the tranquil scene. Hardly a sound disturbed the stillness, save the
monotonous eloquence of the gentleman who occupied the floor. Now and
then a warrior of the opposition broke down under the pressure, gave it
up, and went home.
Mr. Buckstone began to think it might be safe, now, to "proceed to
business." He consulted with Trollop and one or two others. Senator
Dilworthy descended to the floor of the House and they went to meet him.
After a brief comparison of notes, the Congressmen sought their seats and
sent pages about the House with messages to friends. These latter
instantly roused up, yawned, and began to look alert. The moment the
floor was unoccupied, Mr. Buckstone rose, with an injured look, and said
it was evident that the opponents of the bill were merely talking against
time, hoping in this unbecoming way to tire out the friends of the
measure and so defeat it. Such conduct might be respectable enough in a
village debating society, but it was trivial among statesmen, it was out
of place in so august an assemblage as the House of Representatives of
the United States. The friends of the bill had been not only willing
that its opponents should express their opinions, but had strongly
desired it. They courted the fullest and freest discussion; but it
seemed to him that this fairness was but illy appreciated, since
gentlemen were capable of taking advantage of it for selfish and unworthy
ends. This trifling had gone far enough. He called for the question.
The instant Mr. Buckstone sat down, the storm burst forth. A dozen
gentlemen sprang to their feet.
"Mr. Speaker!"
"Mr. Speaker!"
"Mr. Speaker!"
"Order! Order! Order! Question! Question!"
The sharp blows of the Speaker's gavel rose above the din.
The "previous question," that hated gag, was moved and carried. All
debate came to a sudden end, of course. Triumph No. 1.
Then the vote was taken on the adoption of the report and it carried by a
surprising majority.
Mr. Buckstone got the floor again and moved that the rules be suspended
and the bill read a first time.
Mr. Trollop--"Second the motion!"
The Speaker--"It is moved and--"
Clamor of Voices. "Move we adjourn! Second the motion! Adjourn!
Adjourn! Order! Order!"
The Speaker, (after using his gavel vigorously)--"It is moved and
seconded that the House do now adjourn. All those in favor--"
Voices--"Division! Division! Ayes and nays! Ayes and nays!"
It was decided to vote upon the adjournment by ayes and nays. This was
in earnest. The excitement was furious. The galleries were in commotion
in an instant, the reporters swarmed to their places. Idling members of
the House flocked to their seats, nervous gentlemen sprang to their feet,
pages flew hither and thither, life and animation were visible
everywhere, all the long ranks of faces in the building were kindled.
"This thing decides it!" thought Mr. Buckstone; "but let the fight
proceed."
The voting began, and every sound ceased but the calling if the names
and the "Aye!" "No!" "No!" "Aye!" of the responses. There was not a
movement in the House; the people seemed to hold their breath.
The voting ceased, and then there was an interval of dead silence while
the clerk made up his count. There was a two-thirds vote on the
University side--and two over.
The Speaker--"The rules are suspended, the motion is carried--first
reading of the bill!"
By one impulse the galleries broke forth into stormy applause, and even
some of the members of the House were not wholly able to restrain their
feelings. The Speaker's gavel came to the rescue and his clear voice
followed:
"Order, gentlemen--! The House will come to order! If spectators offend
again, the Sergeant-at-arms will clear the galleries!"
Then he cast his eyes aloft and gazed at some object attentively for a
moment. All eyes followed the direction of the Speaker's, and then there
was a general titter. The Speaker said:
"Let the Sergeant-at Arms inform the gentleman that his conduct is an
infringement of the dignity of the House--and one which is not warranted
by the state of the weather." Poor Sellers was the culprit. He sat in
the front seat of the gallery, with his arms and his tired body
overflowing the balustrade--sound asleep, dead to all excitements, all
disturbances. The fluctuations of the Washington weather had influenced
his dreams, perhaps, for during the recent tempest of applause he had
hoisted his gingham umbrella, and calmly gone on with his slumbers.
Washington Hawkins had seen the act, but was not near enough at hand to
save his friend, and no one who was near enough desired to spoil the
effect. But a neighbor stirred up the Colonel, now that the House had
its eye upon him, and the great speculator furled his tent like the Arab.
He said:
"Bless my soul, I'm so absent-minded when I, get to thinking! I never
wear an umbrella in the house--did anybody 'notice it'? What-asleep?
Indeed? And did you wake me sir? Thank you--thank you very much indeed.
It might have fallen out of my hands and been injured. Admirable
article, sir--present from a friend in Hong Kong; one doesn't come across
silk like that in this country--it's the real--Young Hyson, I'm told."
By this time the incident was forgotten, for the House was at war again.
Victory was almost in sight, now, and the friends of the bill threw
themselves into their work with enthusiasm. They soon moved and carried
its second reading, and after a strong, sharp fight, carried a motion to
go into Committee of the whole. The Speaker left his place, of course,
and a chairman was appointed.
Now the contest raged hotter than ever--for the authority that compels
order when the House sits as a House, is greatly diminished when it sits
as Committee. The main fight came upon the filling of the blanks with
the sum to be appropriated for the purchase of the land, of course.
Buckstone--"Mr. Chairman, I move you, sir, that the words 'three millions
of' be inserted."
Mr. Hadley--"Mr. Chairman, I move that the words two and a half dollars
be inserted."
Mr. Clawson--"Mr. Chairman, I move the insertion of the words five and
twenty cents, as representing the true value of this barren and isolated
tract of desolation."
The question, according to rule, was taken upon the smallest sum first.
It was lost.
Then upon the nest smallest sum. Lost, also.
And then upon the three millions. After a vigorous battle that lasted a
considerable time, this motion was carried.
Then, clause by clause the bill was read, discussed, and amended in
trifling particulars, and now the Committee rose and reported.
The moment the House had resumed its functions and received the report,
Mr. Buckstone moved and carried the third reading of the bill.
The same bitter war over the sum to be paid was fought over again, and
now that the ayes and nays could be called and placed on record, every
man was compelled to vote by name on the three millions, and indeed on
every paragraph of the bill from the enacting clause straight through.
But as before, the friends of the measure stood firm and voted in a solid
body every time, and so did its enemies.
The supreme moment was come, now, but so sure was the result that not
even a voice was raised to interpose an adjournment. The enemy were
totally demoralized. The bill was put upon its final passage almost
without dissent, and the calling of the ayes and nays began. When it was
ended the triumph was complete--the two-thirds vote held good, and a veto
was impossible, as far as the House was concerned!
Mr. Buckstone resolved that now that the nail was driven home, he would
clinch it on the other side and make it stay forever. He moved a
reconsideration of the vote by which the bill had passed. The motion was
lost, of course, and the great Industrial University act was an
accomplished fact as far as it was in the power of the House of
Representatives to make it so.
There was no need to move an adjournment. The instant the last motion
was decided, the enemies of the University rose and flocked out of the
Hall, talking angrily, and its friends flocked after them jubilant and
congratulatory. The galleries disgorged their burden, and presently the
house was silent and deserted.
When Col. Sellers and Washington stepped out of the building they were
surprised to find that the daylight was old and the sun well up. Said
the Colonel:
"Give me your hand, my boy! You're all right at last! You're a
millionaire! At least you're going to be. The thing is dead sure.
Don't you bother about the Senate. Leave me and Dilworthy to take care
of that. Run along home, now, and tell Laura. Lord, it's magnificent
news--perfectly magnificent! Run, now. I'll telegraph my wife. She
must come here and help me build a house. Everything's all right now!"
Washington was so dazed by his good fortune and so bewildered by the
gaudy pageant of dreams that was already trailing its long ranks through
his brain, that he wandered he knew not where, and so loitered by the way
that when at last he reached home he woke to a sudden annoyance in the
fact that his news must be old to Laura, now, for of course Senator
Dilworthy must have already been home and told her an hour before. He
knocked at her door, but there was no answer.
"That is like the Duchess," said he. "Always cool; a body can't excite
her-can't keep her excited, anyway. Now she has gone off to sleep again,
as comfortably as if she were used to picking up a million dollars every
day or two"
Then he vent to bed. But he could not sleep; so he got up and wrote a
long, rapturous letter to Louise, and another to his mother. And he
closed both to much the same effect:
"Laura will be queen of America, now, and she will be applauded, and
honored and petted by the whole nation. Her name will be in every
one's mouth more than ever, and how they will court her and quote
her bright speeches. And mine, too, I suppose; though they do that
more already, than they really seem to deserve. Oh, the world is so
bright, now, and so cheery; the clouds are all gone, our long
struggle is ended, our, troubles are all over. Nothing can ever
make us unhappy any more. You dear faithful ones will have the
reward of your patient waiting now. How father's Wisdom is proven
at last! And how I repent me, that there have been times when I
lost faith and said, the blessing he stored up for us a tedious
generation ago was but a long-drawn curse, a blight upon us all.
But everything is well, now--we are done with poverty, sad toil,
weariness and heart-break; all the world is filled with sunshine."
CHAPTER XLVI.
Philip left the capitol and walked up Pennsylvania Avenue in company with
Senator Dilworthy. It was a bright spring morning, the air was soft and
inspiring; in the deepening wayside green, the pink flush of the
blossoming peach trees, the soft suffusion on the heights of Arlington,
and the breath of the warm south wind was apparent, the annual miracle of
the resurrection of the earth.
The Senator took off his hat and seemed to open his soul to the sweet
influences of the morning. After the heat and noise of the chamber,
under its dull gas-illuminated glass canopy, and the all night struggle
of passion and feverish excitement there, the open, tranquil world seemed
like Heaven. The Senator was not in an exultant mood, but rather in a
condition of holy joy, befitting a Christian statesman whose benevolent
plans Providence has made its own and stamped with approval. The great
battle had been fought, but the measure had still to encounter the
scrutiny of the Senate, and Providence sometimes acts differently in the
two Houses. Still the Senator was tranquil, for he knew that there is an
esprit de corps in the Senate which does not exist in the House, the
effect of which is to make the members complaisant towards the projects
of each other, and to extend a mutual aid which in a more vulgar body
would be called "log-rolling."
"It is, under Providence, a good night's work, Mr. Sterling. The
government has founded an institution which will remove half the
difficulty from the southern problem. And it is a good thing for the
Hawkins heirs, a very good thing. Laura will be almost a millionaire."
"Do you think, Mr. Dilworthy, that the Hawkinses will get much of the
money?" asked Philip innocently, remembering the fate of the Columbus
River appropriation.
The Senator looked at his companion scrutinizingly for a moment to see if
he meant any thing personal, and then replied,
"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. I have had their interests greatly at heart.
There will of course be a few expenses, but the widow and orphans will
realize all that Mr. Hawkins, dreamed of for them."
The birds were singing as they crossed the Presidential Square, now
bright with its green turf and tender foliage. After the two had gained
the steps of the Senator's house they stood a moment, looking upon the
lovely prospect:
"It is like the peace of God," said the Senator devoutly.
Entering the house, the Senator called a servant and said, "Tell Miss
Laura that we are waiting to see her. I ought to have sent a messenger
on horseback half an hour ago," he added to Philip, "she will be
transported with our victory. You must stop to breakfast, and see the
excitement." The servant soon came back, with a wondering look and
reported,
"Miss Laura ain't dah, sah. I reckon she hain't been dah all night!"
The Senator and Philip both started up. In Laura's room there were the
marks of a confused and hasty departure, drawers half open, little
articles strewn on the floor. The bed had not been disturbed. Upon
inquiry it appeared that Laura had not been at dinner, excusing herself
to Mrs. Dilworthy on the plea of a violent headache; that she made a
request to the servants that she might not be disturbed.
The Senator was astounded. Philip thought at once of Col. Selby. Could
Laura have run away with him? The Senator thought not. In fact it could
not be. Gen. Leffenwell, the member from New Orleans, had casually told
him at the house last night that Selby and his family went to New York
yesterday morning and were to sail for Europe to-day.
Philip had another idea which, he did not mention. He seized his hat,
and saying that he would go and see what he could learn, ran to the
lodgings of Harry; whom he had not seen since yesterday afternoon, when
he left him to go to the House.
Harry was not in. He had gone out with a hand-bag before six o'clock
yesterday, saying that he had to go to New York, but should return next
day. In Harry's-room on the table Philip found this note:
"Dear Mr. Brierly:--Can you meet me at the six o'clock train,
and be my escort to New York? I have to go about this
University bill, the vote of an absent member we must have
here, Senator Dilworthy cannot go.
Yours, L. H."
"Confound it," said Phillip, "the noodle has fallen into her trap. And
she promised she would let him alone."
He only stopped to send a note to Senator Dilworthy, telling him what he
had found, and that he should go at once to New York, and then hastened
to the railway station. He had to wait an hour for a train, and when it
did start it seemed to go at a snail's pace.
Philip was devoured with anxiety. Where could they, have gone? What was
Laura's object in taking Harry? Had the flight anything to do with
Selby? Would Harry be such a fool as to be dragged into some public
scandal?
It seemed as if the train would never reach Baltimore. Then there was a
long delay at Havre de Grace. A hot box had to be cooled at Wilmington.
Would it never get on? Only in passing around the city of Philadelphia
did the train not seem to go slow. Philip stood upon the platform and
watched for the Boltons' house, fancied he could distinguish its roof
among the trees, and wondered how Ruth would feel if she knew he was so
near her.
Then came Jersey, everlasting Jersey, stupid irritating Jersey, where the
passengers are always asking which line they are on, and where they are
to come out, and whether they have yet reached Elizabeth. Launched into
Jersey, one has a vague notion that he is on many lines and no one in
particular, and that he is liable at any moment to come to Elizabeth.
He has no notion what Elizabeth is, and always resolves that the next
time he goes that way, he will look out of the window and see what it is
like; but he never does. Or if he does, he probably finds that it is
Princeton or something of that sort. He gets annoyed, and never can see
the use of having different names for stations in Jersey. By and by.
there is Newark, three or four Newarks apparently; then marshes; then
long rock cuttings devoted to the advertisements of 'patent medicines and
ready-made, clothing, and New York tonics for Jersey agues, and Jersey
City is reached.
On the ferry-boat Philip bought an evening paper from a boy crying
"'Ere's the Evening Gram, all about the murder," and with breathless
haste--ran his eyes over the following:
SHOCKING MURDER!!!
TRAGEDY IN HIGH LIFE!! A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN SHOOTS A DISTINGUISHED
CONFEDERATE SOLDIER AT THE SOUTHERN HOTEL!!! JEALOUSY THE CAUSE!!!
This morning occurred another of those shocking murders which have
become the almost daily food of the newspapers, the direct result of
the socialistic doctrines and woman's rights agitations, which have
made every woman the avenger of her own wrongs, and all society the
hunting ground for her victims.
About nine o'clock a lady deliberately shot a man dead in the public
parlor of the Southern Hotel, coolly remarking, as she threw down
her revolver and permitted herself to be taken into custody, "He
brought it on himself." Our reporters were immediately dispatched
to the scene of the tragedy, and gathered the following particulars.
Yesterday afternoon arrived at the hotel from Washington, Col.
George Selby and family, who had taken passage and were to sail at
noon to-day in the steamer Scotia for England. The Colonel was a
handsome man about forty, a gentleman Of wealth and high social
position, a resident of New Orleans. He served with distinction in
the confederate army, and received a wound in the leg from which he
has never entirely recovered, being obliged to use a cane in
locomotion.
This morning at about nine o'clock, a lady, accompanied by a
gentleman, called at the office Of the hotel and asked for Col.
Selby. The Colonel was at breakfast. Would the clerk tell him that
a lady and gentleman wished to see him for a moment in the parlor?
The clerk says that the gentleman asked her, "What do you want to
see him for?" and that she replied, "He is going to Europe, and I
ought to just say good by."
Col. Selby was informed; and the lady and gentleman were shown to
the parlor, in which were at the time three or four other persons.
Five minutes after two shots were fired in quick succession, and
there was a rush to the parlor from which the reports came.
Col. Selby was found lying on the floor, bleeding, but not dead.
Two gentlemen, who had just come in, had seized the lady, who made
no resistance, and she was at once given in charge of a police
officer who arrived. The persons who were in the parlor agree
substantially as to what occurred. They had happened to be looking
towards the door when the man--Col. Selby--entered with his cane,
and they looked at him, because he stopped as if surprised and
frightened, and made a backward movement. At the same moment the
lady in the bonnet advanced towards him and said something like,
"George, will you go with me?" He replied, throwing up his hand and
retreating, "My God I can't, don't fire," and the next instants two
shots were heard and he fell. The lady appeared to be beside
herself with rage or excitement, and trembled very much when the
gentlemen took hold of her; it was to them she said, "He brought it
on himself."
Col. Selby was carried at once to his room and Dr. Puffer, the
eminent surgeon was sent for. It was found that he was shot through
the breast and through the abdomen. Other aid was summoned, but the
wounds were mortal, and Col Selby expired in an hour, in pain, but
his mind was clear to the last and he made a full deposition. The
substance of it was that his murderess is a Miss Laura Hawkins, whom
he had known at Washington as a lobbyist and had some business with
her. She had followed him with her attentions and solicitations,
and had endeavored to make him desert his wife and go to Europe with
her. When he resisted and avoided her she had threatened him. Only
the day before he left Washington she had declared that he should
never go out of the city alive without her.
It seems to have been a deliberate and premeditated murder, the
woman following him to Washington on purpose to commit it.
We learn that the, murderess, who is a woman of dazzling and
transcendent beauty and about twenty six or seven, is a niece of
Senator Dilworthy at whose house she has been spending the winter.
She belongs to a high Southern family, and has the reputation of
being an heiress. Like some other great beauties and belles in
Washington however there have been whispers that she had something
to do with the lobby. If we mistake not we have heard her name
mentioned in connection with the sale of the Tennessee Lands to the
Knobs University, the bill for which passed the House last night.
Her companion is Mr. Harry Brierly, a New York dandy, who has been
in Washington. His connection with her and with this tragedy is not
known, but he was also taken into custody, and will be detained at
least as a witness.
P. S. One of the persons present in the parlor says that after
Laura Hawkins had fired twice, she turned the pistol towards
herself, but that Brierly sprung and caught it from her hand, and
that it was he who threw it on the floor.
Further particulars with full biographies of all the parties in our
next edition.
Philip hastened at once to the Southern Hotel, where he found still a
great state of excitement, and a thousand different and exaggerated
stories passing from mouth to mouth. The witnesses of the event had told
it over so many time that they had worked it up into a most dramatic
scene, and embellished it with whatever could heighten its awfulness.
Outsiders had taken up invention also. The Colonel's wife had gone
insane, they said. The children had rushed into the parlor and rolled
themselves in their father's blood. The hotel clerk said that he noticed
there was murder in the woman's eye when he saw her. A person who had
met the woman on the stairs felt a creeping sensation. Some thought
Brierly was an accomplice, and that he had set the woman on to kill his
rival. Some said the woman showed the calmness and indifference of
insanity.
Philip learned that Harry and Laura had both been taken to the city
prison, and he went there; but he was not admitted. Not being a
newspaper reporter, he could not see either of them that night; but the
officer questioned him suspiciously and asked him who he was. He might
perhaps see Brierly in the morning.
The latest editions of the evening papers had the result of the inquest.
It was a plain enough case for the jury, but they sat over it a long
time, listening to the wrangling of the physicians. Dr. Puffer insisted
that the man died from the effects of the wound in the chest. Dr. Dobb
as strongly insisted that the wound in the abdomen caused death. Dr.
Golightly suggested that in his opinion death ensued from a complication
of the two wounds and perhaps other causes. He examined the table
waiter, as to whether Col. Selby ate any breakfast, and what he ate, and
if he had any appetite.
The jury finally threw themselves back upon the indisputable fact that
Selby was dead, that either wound would have killed him (admitted by the
doctors), and rendered a verdict that he died from pistol-shot wounds
inflicted by a pistol in the hands of Laura Hawkins.
The morning papers blazed with big type, and overflowed with details of
the murder. The accounts in the evening papers were only the premonitory
drops to this mighty shower. The scene was dramatically worked up in
column after column. There were sketches, biographical and historical.
There were long "specials" from Washington, giving a full history of
Laura's career there, with the names of men with whom she was said to be
intimate, a description of Senator Dilworthy's residence and of his
family, and of Laura's room in his house, and a sketch of the Senator's
appearance and what he said. There was a great deal about her beauty,
her accomplishments and her brilliant position in society, and her
doubtful position in society. There was also an interview with Col.
Sellers and another with Washington Hawkins, the brother of the
murderess. One journal had a long dispatch from Hawkeye, reporting the
excitement in that quiet village and the reception of the awful
intelligence.
All the parties had been "interviewed." There were reports of
conversations with the clerk at the hotel; with the call-boy; with the
waiter at table with all the witnesses, with the policeman, with the
landlord (who wanted it understood that nothing of that sort had ever
happened in his house before, although it had always been frequented by
the best Southern society,) and with Mrs. Col. Selby. There were
diagrams illustrating the scene of the shooting, and views of the hotel
and street, and portraits of the parties. There were three minute and
different statements from the doctors about the wounds, so technically
worded that nobody could understand them. Harry and Laura had also been
"interviewed" and there was a statement from Philip himself, which a
reporter had knocked him up out of bed at midnight to give, though how he
found him, Philip never could conjecture.
What some of the journals lacked in suitable length for the occasion,
they made up in encyclopaedic information about other similar murders and
shootings.
The statement from Laura was not full, in fact it was fragmentary, and
consisted of nine parts of, the reporter's valuable observations to one
of Laura's, and it was, as the reporter significantly remarked,
"incoherent", but it appeared that Laura claimed to be Selby's wife,
or to have been his wife, that he had deserted her and betrayed her, and
that she was going to follow him to Europe. When the reporter asked:
"What made you shoot him Miss. Hawkins?"
Laura's only reply was, very simply,
"Did I shoot him? Do they say I shot him?". And she would say no more.
The news of the murder was made the excitement of the day. Talk of it
filled the town. The facts reported were scrutinized, the standing of
the parties was discussed, the dozen different theories of the motive,
broached in the newspapers, were disputed over.
During the night subtle electricity had carried the tale over all the
wires of the continent and under the sea; and in all villages and towns
of the Union, from the. Atlantic to the territories, and away up and
down the Pacific slope, and as far as London and Paris and Berlin, that
morning the name of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and millions of
people, while the owner of it--the sweet child of years ago, the
beautiful queen of Washington drawing rooms--sat shivering on her cot-bed
in the darkness of a damp cell in the Tombs.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Philip's first effort was to get Harry out of the Tombs. He gained
permission to see him, in the presence of an officer, during the day,
and he found that hero very much cast down.
"I never intended to come to such a place as this, old fellow," he said
to Philip; "it's no place for a gentleman, they've no idea how to treat a
gentleman. Look at that provender," pointing to his uneaten prison
ration. "They tell me I am detained as a witness, and I passed the night
among a lot of cut-throats and dirty rascals--a pretty witness I'd be in
a month spent in such company."
"But what under heavens," asked Philip, "induced you to come to New York
with Laura! What was it for?"
"What for? Why, she wanted me to come. I didn't know anything about
that cursed Selby. She said it was lobby business for the University.
I'd no idea what she was dragging me into that confounded hotel for.
I suppose she knew that the Southerners all go there, and thought she'd
find her man. Oh! Lord, I wish I'd taken your advice. You might as
well murder somebody and have the credit of it, as get into the
newspapers the way I have. She's pure devil, that girl. You ought to
have seen how sweet she was on me; what an ass I am."
"Well, I'm not going to dispute a poor, prisoner. But the first thing is
to get you out of this. I've brought the note Laura wrote you, for one
thing, and I've seen your uncle, and explained the truth of the case to
him. He will be here soon."
Harry's uncle came, with; other friends, and in the course of the day
made such a showing to the authorities that Harry was released, on giving
bonds to appear as a witness when wanted. His spirits rose with their
usual elasticity as soon as he was out of Centre Street, and he insisted
on giving Philip and his friends a royal supper at Delmonico's, an excess
which was perhaps excusable in the rebound of his feelings, and which was
committed with his usual reckless generosity. Harry ordered, the supper,
and it is perhaps needless to say, that Philip paid the bill.
Neither of the young men felt like attempting to see Laura that day,
and she saw no company except the newspaper reporters, until the arrival
of Col. Sellers and Washington Hawkins, who had hastened to New York
with all speed.
They found Laura in a cell in the upper tier of the women's department.
The cell was somewhat larger than those in the men's department, and
might be eight feet by ten square, perhaps a little longer. It was of
stone, floor and all, and tile roof was oven shaped. A narrow slit in
the roof admitted sufficient light, and was the only means of
ventilation; when the window was opened there was nothing to prevent the
rain coming in. The only means of heating being from the corridor, when
the door was ajar, the cell was chilly and at this time damp. It was
whitewashed and clean, but it had a slight jail odor; its only furniture
was a narrow iron bedstead, with a tick of straw and some blankets, not
too clean.
When Col. Sellers was conducted to this cell by the matron and looked
in, his emotions quite overcame him, the tears rolled down his cheeks and
his voice trembled so that he could hardly speak. Washington was unable
to say anything; he looked from Laura to the miserable creatures who were
walking in the corridor with unutterable disgust. Laura was alone calm
and self-contained, though she was not unmoved by the sight of the grief
of her friends.
"Are you comfortable, Laura?" was the first word the Colonel could get
out.
"You see," she replied. "I can't say it's exactly comfortable."
"Are you cold?"
"It is pretty chilly. The stone floor is like ice. It chills me through
to step on it. I have to sit on the bed."
"Poor thing, poor thing. And can you eat any thing?"
"No, I am not hungry. I don't know that I could eat any thing, I can't
eat that."
"Oh dear," continued the Colonel, "it's dreadful. But cheer up, dear,
cheer up;" and the Colonel broke down entirely.
"But," he went on, "we'll stand by you. We'll do everything for you.
I know you couldn't have meant to do it, it must have been insanity, you
know, or something of that sort. You never did anything of the sort
before."
Laura smiled very faintly and said,
"Yes, it was something of that sort. It's all a whirl. He was a
villain; you don't know."
"I'd rather have killed him myself, in a duel you know, all fair. I wish
I had. But don't you be down. We'll get you the best counsel, the
lawyers in New York can do anything; I've read of cases. But you must be
comfortable now. We've brought some of your clothes, at the hotel. What
else, can we get for you?"
Laura suggested that she would like some sheets for her bed, a piece of
carpet to step on, and her meals sent in; and some books and writing
materials if it was allowed. The Colonel and Washington promised to
procure all these things, and then took their sorrowful leave, a great
deal more affected than the criminal was, apparently, by her situation.
The colonel told the matron as he went away that if she would look to
Laura's comfort a little it shouldn't be the worse for her; and to the
turnkey who let them out he patronizingly said,
"You've got a big establishment here, a credit to the city. I've got a
friend in there--I shall see you again, sir."
By the next day something more of Laura's own story began to appear in
the newspapers, colored and heightened by reporters' rhetoric. Some of
them cast a lurid light upon the Colonel's career, and represented his
victim as a beautiful avenger of her murdered innocence; and others
pictured her as his willing paramour and pitiless slayer. Her
communications to the reporters were stopped by her lawyers as soon as
they were retained and visited her, but this fact did not prevent--it may
have facilitated--the appearance of casual paragraphs here and there
which were likely to beget popular sympathy for the poor girl.
The occasion did not pass without "improvement" by the leading journals;
and Philip preserved the editorial comments of three or four of them
which pleased him most. These he used to read aloud to his friends
afterwards and ask them to guess from which journal each of them had been
cut. One began in this simple manner:--
History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of
the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken
fragments of antique legends. Washington is not Corinth, and Lais,
the beautiful daughter of Timandra, might not have been the
prototype of the ravishing Laura, daughter of the plebeian house of
Hawkins; but the orators add statesmen who were the purchasers of
the favors of the one, may have been as incorruptible as the
Republican statesmen who learned how to love and how to vote from
the sweet lips of the Washington lobbyist; and perhaps the modern
Lais would never have departed from the national Capital if there
had been there even one republican Xenocrates who resisted her
blandishments. But here the parallel: fails. Lais, wandering away
with the youth Rippostratus, is slain by the women who are jealous
of her charms. Laura, straying into her Thessaly with the youth
Brierly, slays her other lover and becomes the champion of the
wrongs of her sex.
Another journal began its editorial with less lyrical beauty, but with
equal force. It closed as follows:--
With Laura Hawkins, fair, fascinating and fatal, and with the
dissolute Colonel of a lost cause, who has reaped the harvest he
sowed, we have nothing to do. But as the curtain rises on this
awful tragedy, we catch a glimpse of the society at the capital
under this Administration, which we cannot contemplate without alarm
for the fate of the Republic.
A third newspaper took up the subject in a different tone. It said:--
Our repeated predictions are verified. The pernicious doctrines
which we have announced as prevailing in American society have been
again illustrated. The name of the city is becoming a reproach.
We may have done something in averting its ruin in our resolute
exposure of the Great Frauds; we shall not be deterred from
insisting that the outraged laws for the protection of human life
shall be vindicated now, so that a person can walk the streets or
enter the public houses, at least in the day-time, without the risk
of a bullet through his brain.
A fourth journal began its remarks as follows:--
The fullness with which we present our readers this morning the
details of the Selby-Hawkins homicide is a miracle of modern
journalism. Subsequent investigation can do little to fill out the
picture. It is the old story. A beautiful woman shoots her
absconding lover in cold-blood; and we shall doubtless learn in due
time that if she was not as mad as a hare in this month of March,
she was at least laboring under what is termed "momentary insanity."
It would not be too much to say that upon the first publication of the
facts of the tragedy, there was an almost universal feeling of rage
against the murderess in the Tombs, and that reports of her beauty only
heightened the indignation. It was as if she presumed upon that and upon
her sex, to defy the law; and there was a fervent, hope that the law
would take its plain course.
Yet Laura was not without friends, and some of them very influential too.
She had in keeping a great many secrets and a great many reputations,
perhaps. Who shall set himself up to judge human motives. Why, indeed,
might we not feel pity for a woman whose brilliant career had been so
suddenly extinguished in misfortune and crime? Those who had known her
so well in Washington might find it impossible to believe that the
fascinating woman could have had murder in her heart, and would readily
give ear to the current sentimentality about the temporary aberration of
mind under the stress of personal calamity.
Senator Dilworthy, was greatly shocked, of course, but he was full of
charity for the erring.
"We shall all need mercy," he said. "Laura as an inmate of my family was
a most exemplary female, amiable, affectionate and truthful, perhaps too
fond of gaiety, and neglectful of the externals of religion, but a woman
of principle. She may have had experiences of which I am ignorant, but
she could not have gone to this extremity if she had been in her own
right mind."
To the Senator's credit be it said, he was willing to help Laura and her
family in this dreadful trial. She, herself, was not without money, for
the Washington lobbyist is not seldom more fortunate than the Washington
claimant, and she was able to procure a good many luxuries to mitigate
the severity of her prison life. It enabled her also to have her own
family near her, and to see some of them daily. The tender solicitude of
her mother, her childlike grief, and her firm belief in the real
guiltlessness of her daughter, touched even the custodians of the Tombs
who are enured to scenes of pathos.
Mrs. Hawkins had hastened to her daughter as soon as she received money
for the journey. She had no reproaches, she had only tenderness and
pity. She could not shut out the dreadful facts of the case, but it had
been enough for her that Laura had said, in their first interview,
"mother, I did not know what I was doing." She obtained lodgings near,
the prison and devoted her life to her daughter, as if she had been
really her own child. She would have remained in the prison day and
night if it had been permitted. She was aged and feeble, but this great
necessity seemed to give her new life.
The pathetic story of the old lady's ministrations, and her simplicity
and faith, also got into the newspapers in time, and probably added to
the pathos of this wrecked woman's fate, which was beginning to be felt
by the public. It was certain that she had champions who thought that
her wrongs ought to be placed against her crime, and expressions of this
feeling came to her in various ways. Visitors came to see her, and gifts
of fruit and flowers were sent, which brought some cheer into her hard
and gloomy cell.
Laura had declined to see either Philip or Harry, somewhat to the
former's relief, who had a notion that she would necessarily feel
humiliated by seeing him after breaking faith with him, but to the
discomfiture of Harry, who still felt her fascination, and thought her
refusal heartless. He told Philip that of course he had got through with
such a woman, but he wanted to see her.
Philip, to keep him from some new foolishness, persuaded him to go with
him to Philadelphia; and, give his valuable services in the mining
operations at Ilium.
The law took its course with Laura. She was indicted for murder in the
first degree and held for trial at the summer term. The two most
distinguished criminal lawyers in the city had been retained for her
defence, and to that the resolute woman devoted her days with a courage
that rose as she consulted with her counsel and understood the methods of
criminal procedure in New York.
She was greatly depressed, however, by the news from Washington.
Congress adjourned and her bill had failed to pass the Senate. It must
wait for the next session.
CHAPTER XLVIII
It had been a bad winter, somehow, for the firm of Pennybacker, Bigler
and Small. These celebrated contractors usually made more money during
the session of the legislature at Harrisburg than upon all their summer
work, and this winter had been unfruitful. It was unaccountable to
Bigler.
"You see, Mr. Bolton," he said, and Philip was present at the
conversation, "it puts us all out. It looks as if politics was played
out. We'd counted on the year of Simon's re-election. And, now, he's
reelected, and I've yet to see the first man who's the better for it."
"You don't mean to say," asked Philip, "that he went in without paying
anything?"
"Not a cent, not a dash cent, as I can hear," repeated Mr. Bigler,
indignantly. "I call it a swindle on the state. How it was done gets
me. I never saw such a tight time for money in Harrisburg."
"Were there no combinations, no railroad jobs, no mining schemes put
through in connection with the election?
"Not that I knew," said Bigler, shaking his head in disgust. "In fact it
was openly said, that there was no money in the election. It's perfectly
unheard of."
"Perhaps," suggested Philip, "it was effected on what the insurance
companies call the 'endowment,' or the 'paid up' plan, by which a policy
is secured after a certain time without further payment."
"You think then," said Mr. Bolton smiling, "that a liberal and sagacious
politician might own a legislature after a time, and not be bothered with
keeping up his payments?"
"Whatever it is," interrupted Mr. Bigler, "it's devilish ingenious and
goes ahead of my calculations; it's cleaned me out, when I thought we had
a dead sure thing. I tell you what it is, gentlemen, I shall go in for
reform. Things have got pretty mixed when a legislature will give away a
United States senatorship."
It was melancholy, but Mr. Bigler was not a man to be crushed by one
misfortune, or to lose his confidence in human nature, on one exhibition
of apparent honesty. He was already on his feet again, or would be if
Mr. Bolton could tide him over shoal water for ninety days.
"We've got something with money in it," he explained to Mr. Bolton,
"got hold of it by good luck. We've got the entire contract for Dobson's
Patent Pavement for the city of Mobile. See here."
Mr. Bigler made some figures; contract so; much, cost of work and
materials so much, profits so much. At the end of three months the city
would owe the company three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars-two
hundred thousand of that would be profits. The whole job was worth at
least a million to the company--it might be more. There could be no
mistake in these figures; here was the contract, Mr. Bolton knew what
materials were worth and what the labor would cost.
Mr. Bolton knew perfectly well from sore experience that there was always
a mistake in figures when Bigler or Small made them, and he knew that he
ought to send the fellow about his business. Instead of that, he let him
talk.
They only wanted to raise fifty thousand dollars to carry on the
contract--that expended they would have city bonds. Mr. Bolton said he
hadn't the money. But Bigler could raise it on his name. Mr. Bolton
said he had no right to put his family to that risk. But the entire
contract could be assigned to him--the security was ample--it was a
fortune to him if it was forfeited. Besides Mr. Bigler had been
unfortunate, he didn't know where to look for the necessaries of life for
his family. If he could only have one more chance, he was sure he could
right himself. He begged for it.
And Mr. Bolton yielded. He could never refuse such appeals. If he had
befriended a man once and been cheated by him, that man appeared to have
a claim upon him forever. He shrank, however, from telling his wife what
he had done on this occasion, for he knew that if any person was more
odious than Small to his family it was Bigler.
"Philip tells me," Mrs. Bolton said that evening, "that the man Bigler
has been with thee again to-day. I hope thee will have nothing more to
do with him."
"He has been very unfortunate," replied Mr. Bolton, uneasily.
"He is always unfortunate, and he is always getting thee into trouble.
But thee didn't listen to him again?"
"Well, mother, his family is in want, and I lent him my name--but I took
ample security. The worst that can happen will be a little
inconvenience."
Mrs. Bolton looked grave and anxious, but she did not complain or
remonstrate; she knew what a "little inconvenience" meant, but she knew
there was no help for it. If Mr. Bolton had been on his way to market to
buy a dinner for his family with the only dollar he had in the world in
his pocket, he would have given it to a chance beggar who asked him for
it. Mrs. Bolton only asked (and the question showed that she was no mere
provident than her husband where her heart was interested),
"But has thee provided money for Philip to use in opening the coal mine?"
"Yes, I have set apart as much as it ought to cost to open the mine,
as much as we can afford to lose if no coal is found. Philip has the
control of it, as equal partner in the venture, deducting the capital
invested. He has great confidence in his success, and I hope for his
sake he won't be disappointed."
Philip could not but feel that he was treated very much like one of the
Bolton-family--by all except Ruth. His mother, when he went home after
his recovery from his accident, had affected to be very jealous of Mrs.
Bolton, about whom and Ruth she asked a thousand questions
--an affectation of jealousy which no doubt concealed a real heartache,
which comes to every mother when her son goes out into the world and
forms new ties. And to Mrs. Sterling; a widow, living on a small income
in a remote Massachusetts village, Philadelphia was a city of many
splendors. All its inhabitants seemed highly favored, dwelling in ease
and surrounded by superior advantages. Some of her neighbors had
relations living in Philadelphia, and it seemed to them somehow a
guarantee of respectability to have relations in Philadelphia.
Mrs. Sterling was not sorry to have Philip make his way among such
well-to-do people, and she was sure that no good fortune could be too
good for his deserts.
"So, sir," said Ruth, when Philip came from New York, "you have been
assisting in a pretty tragedy. I saw your name in the papers. Is this
woman a specimen of your western friends?"
"My only assistance," replied Philip, a little annoyed, was in trying to
keep Harry out of a bad scrape, and I failed after all. He walked into
her trap, and he has been punished for it. I'm going to take him up to
Ilium to see if he won't work steadily at one thing, and quit his
nonsense."
"Is she as beautiful as the newspapers say she is?"
"I don't know, she has a kind of beauty--she is not like--'
"Not like Alice?"
"Well, she is brilliant; she was called the handsomest woman in
Washington--dashing, you know, and sarcastic and witty. Ruth, do you
believe a woman ever becomes a devil?"
"Men do, and I don't know why women shouldn't. But I never saw one."
"Well, Laura Hawkins comes very near it. But it is dreadful to think of
her fate."
"Why, do you suppose they will hang a woman? Do you suppose they will be
so barbarous as that?"
"I wasn't thinking of that--it's doubtful if a New York jury would find a
woman guilty of any such crime. But to think of her life if she is
acquitted."
"It is dreadful," said Ruth, thoughtfully, "but the worst of it is that
you men do not want women educated to do anything, to be able to earn an
honest living by their own exertions. They are educated as if they were
always to be petted and supported, and there was never to be any such
thing as misfortune. I suppose, now, that you would all choose to have
me stay idly at home, and give up my profession."
"Oh, no," said Philip, earnestly, "I respect your resolution. But,
Ruth, do you think you would be happier or do more good in following your
profession than in having a home of your own?"
"What is to hinder having a home of my, own?"
"Nothing, perhaps, only you never would be in it--you would be away day
and night, if you had any practice; and what sort of a home would that
make for your husband?"
"What sort of a home is it for the wife whose husband is always away
riding about in his doctor's gig?"
"Ah, you know that is not fair. The woman makes the home."
Philip and Ruth often had this sort of discussion, to which Philip was
always trying to give a personal turn. He was now about to go to Ilium
for the season, and he did not like to go without some assurance from
Ruth that she might perhaps love him some day; when he was worthy of it,
and when he could offer her something better than a partnership in his
poverty.
"I should work with a great deal better heart, Ruth," he said the morning
he was taking leave, "if I knew you cared for me a little."
Ruth was looking down; the color came faintly to her cheeks, and she
hesitated. She needn't be looking down, he thought, for she was ever so
much shorter than tall Philip.
"It's not much of a place, Ilium," Philip went on, as if a little
geographical remark would fit in here as well as anything else, "and I
shall have plenty of time to think over the responsibility I have taken,
and--" his observation did not seem to be coming out any where.
But Ruth looked up, and there was a light in her eyes that quickened
Phil's pulse. She took his hand, and said with serious sweetness:
"Thee mustn't lose heart, Philip." And then she added, in another mood,
"Thee knows I graduate in the summer and shall have my diploma. And if
any thing happens--mines explode sometimes--thee can send for me.
Farewell."
The opening of the Ilium coal mine was begun with energy, but without
many omens of success. Philip was running a tunnel into the breast of
the mountain, in faith that the coal stratum ran there as it ought to.
How far he must go in he believed he knew, but no one could tell exactly.
Some of the miners said that they should probably go through the
mountain, and that the hole could be used for a railway tunnel. The
mining camp was a busy place at any rate. Quite a settlement of board
and log shanties had gone up, with a blacksmith shop, a small machine
shop, and a temporary store for supplying the wants of the workmen.
Philip and Harry pitched a commodious tent, and lived in the full
enjoyment of the free life.
There is no difficulty in digging a bole in the ground, if you have money
enough to pay for the digging, but those who try this sort of work are
always surprised at the large amount of money necessary to make a small
hole. The earth is never willing to yield one product, hidden in her
bosom, without an equivalent for it. And when a person asks of her coal,
she is quite apt to require gold in exchange.
It was exciting work for all concerned in it. As the tunnel advanced
into the rock every day promised to be the golden day. This very blast
might disclose the treasure.
The work went on week after week, and at length during the night as well
as the daytime. Gangs relieved each other, and the tunnel was every
hour, inch by inch and foot by foot, crawling into the mountain. Philip
was on the stretch of hope and excitement. Every pay day he saw his
funds melting away, and still there was only the faintest show of what
the miners call "signs."
The life suited Harry, whose buoyant hopefulness was never disturbed.
He made endless calculations, which nobody could understand, of the
probable position of the vein. He stood about among the workmen with the
busiest air. When he was down at Ilium he called himself the engineer of
the works, and he used to spend hours smoking his pipe with the Dutch
landlord on the hotel porch, and astonishing the idlers there with the
stories of his railroad operations in Missouri. He talked with the
landlord, too, about enlarging his hotel, and about buying some village
lots, in the prospect of a rise, when the mine was opened. He taught the
Dutchman how to mix a great many cooling drinks for the summer time, and
had a bill at the hotel, the growing length of which Mr. Dusenheimer
contemplated with pleasant anticipations. Mr. Brierly was a very useful
and cheering person wherever he went.
Midsummer arrived: Philip could report to Mr. Bolton only progress, and
this was not a cheerful message for him to send to Philadelphia in reply
to inquiries that he thought became more and more anxious. Philip
himself was a prey to the constant fear that the money would give out
before the coal was struck.
At this time Harry was summoned to New York, to attend the trial of Laura
Hawkins. It was possible that Philip would have to go also, her lawyer
wrote, but they hoped for a postponement. There was important evidence
that they could not yet obtain, and he hoped the judge would not force
them to a trial unprepared. There were many reasons for a delay, reasons
which of course are never mentioned, but which it would seem that a New
York judge sometimes must understand, when he grants a postponement upon
a motion that seems to the public altogether inadequate.
Harry went, but he soon came back. The trial was put off. Every week we
can gain, said the learned counsel, Braham, improves our chances. The
popular rage never lasts long.
CHAPTER XLIX.
"We've struck it!"
This was the announcement at the tent door that woke Philip out of a
sound sleep at dead of night, and shook all the sleepiness out of him in
a trice.
"What! Where is it? When? Coal? Let me see it. What quality is it?"
were some of the rapid questions that Philip poured out as he hurriedly
dressed. "Harry, wake up, my boy, the coal train is coming. Struck it,
eh? Let's see?"
The foreman put down his lantern, and handed Philip a black lump. There
was no mistake about it, it was the hard, shining anthracite, and its
freshly fractured surface, glistened in the light like polished steel.
Diamond never shone with such lustre in the eyes of Philip.
Harry was exuberant, but Philip's natural caution found expression in his
next remark.
"Now, Roberts, you are sure about this?"
"What--sure that it's coal?"
"O, no, sure that it's the main vein."
"Well, yes. We took it to be that"
"Did you from the first?"
"I can't say we did at first. No, we didn't. Most of the indications
were there, but not all of them, not all of them. So we thought we'd
prospect a bit."
"Well?"
"It was tolerable thick, and looked as if it might be the vein--looked as
if it ought to be the vein. Then we went down on it a little. Looked
better all the time."
"When did you strike it?"
"About ten o'clock."
"Then you've been prospecting about four hours."
"Yes, been sinking on it something over four hours."
"I'm afraid you couldn't go down very far in four hours--could you?"
"O yes--it's a good deal broke up, nothing but picking and gadding
stuff."
"Well, it does look encouraging, sure enough--but then the lacking
indications--"
"I'd rather we had them, Mr. Sterling, but I've seen more than one good
permanent mine struck without 'em in my time."
"Well, that is encouraging too."
"Yes, there was the Union, the Alabama and the Black Mohawk--all good,
sound mines, you know--all just exactly like this one when we first
struck them."
"Well, I begin to feel a good deal more easy. I guess we've really got
it. I remember hearing them tell about the Black Mohawk."
"I'm free to say that I believe it, and the men all think so too. They
are all old hands at this business."
"Come Harry, let's go up and look at it, just for the comfort of it,"
said Philip. They came back in the course of an hour, satisfied and
happy.
There was no more sleep for them that night. They lit their pipes, put a
specimen of the coal on the table, and made it a kind of loadstone of
thought and conversation.
"Of course," said Harry, "there will have to be a branch track built, and
a 'switch-back' up the hill."
"Yes, there will be no trouble about getting the money for that now. We
could sell-out tomorrow for a handsome sum. That sort of coal doesn't go
begging within a mile of a rail-road. I wonder if Mr. Bolton' would
rather sell out or work it?"
"Oh, work it," says Harry, "probably the whole mountain is coal now
you've got to it."
"Possibly it might not be much of a vein after all," suggested Philip.
"Possibly it is; I'll bet it's forty feet thick. I told you. I knew the
sort of thing as soon as I put my eyes on it."
Philip's next thought was to write to his friends and announce their good
fortune. To Mr. Bolton he wrote a short, business letter, as calm as he
could make it. They had found coal of excellent quality, but they could
not yet tell with absolute certainty what the vein was. The prospecting
was still going on. Philip also wrote to Ruth; but though this letter
may have glowed, it was not with the heat of burning anthracite. He
needed no artificial heat to warm his pen and kindle his ardor when he
sat down to write to Ruth. But it must be confessed that the words never
flowed so easily before, and he ran on for an hour disporting in all the
extravagance of his imagination. When Ruth read it, she doubted if the
fellow had not gone out of his senses. And it was not until she reached
the postscript that she discovered the cause of the exhilaration.
"P. S.--We have found coal."
The news couldn't have come to Mr. Bolton in better time. He had never
been so sorely pressed. A dozen schemes which he had in hand, any one
of which might turn up a fortune, all languished, and each needed just
a little more, money to save that which had been invested. He hadn't
a piece of real estate that was not covered with mortgages, even to the
wild tract which Philip was experimenting on, and which had, no
marketable value above the incumbrance on it.
He had come home that day early, unusually dejected.
"I am afraid," he said to his wife, "that we shall have to give up our
house. I don't care for myself, but for thee and the children."
"That will be the least of misfortunes," said Mrs. Bolton, cheerfully,
"if thee can clear thyself from debt and anxiety, which is wearing thee
out, we can live any where. Thee knows we were never happier than when
we were in a much humbler home."
"The truth is, Margaret, that affair of Bigler and Small's has come on me
just when I couldn't stand another ounce. They have made another failure
of it. I might have known they would; and the sharpers, or fools, I
don't know which, have contrived to involve me for three times as much as
the first obligation. The security is in my hands, but it is good for
nothing to me. I have not the money to do anything with the contract."
Ruth heard this dismal news without great surprise. She had long felt
that they were living on a volcano, that might go in to active operation
at any hour. Inheriting from her father an active brain and the courage
to undertake new things, she had little of his sanguine temperament which
blinds one to difficulties and possible failures. She had little
confidence in the many schemes which had been about to lift her father
out of all his embarrassments and into great wealth, ever since she was
a child; as she grew older, she rather wondered that they were as
prosperous as they seemed to be, and that they did not all go to smash
amid so many brilliant projects. She was nothing but a woman, and did
not know how much of the business prosperity of the world is only a,
bubble of credit and speculation, one scheme helping to float another
which is no better than it, and the whole liable to come to naught and
confusion as soon as the busy brain that conceived them ceases its power
to devise, or when some accident produces a sudden panic.
"Perhaps, I shall be the stay of the family, yet," said Ruth, with an
approach to gaiety; "When we move into a little house in town, will thee
let me put a little sign on the door: DR. RUTH BOLTON?"
"Mrs. Dr. Longstreet, thee knows, has a great income."
"Who will pay for the sign, Ruth?" asked Mr. Bolton.
A servant entered with the afternoon mail from the office. Mr. Bolton
took his letters listlessly, dreading to open them. He knew well what
they contained, new difficulties, more urgent demands fox money.
"Oh, here is one from Philip. Poor fellow. I shall feel his
disappointment as much as my own bad luck. It is hard to bear when one
is young."
He opened the letter and read. As he read his face lightened, and he
fetched such a sigh of relief, that Mrs. Bolton and Ruth both exclaimed.
"Read that," he cried, "Philip has found coal!"
The world was changed in a moment. One little sentence had done it.
There was no more trouble. Philip had found coal. That meant relief.
That meant fortune. A great weight was taken off, and the spirits of the
whole household rose magically. Good Money! beautiful demon of Money,
what an enchanter thou art! Ruth felt that she was of less consequence
in the household, now that Philip had found Coal, and perhaps she was not
sorry to feel so.
Mr. Bolton was ten years younger the next morning. He went into the
city, and showed his letter on change. It was the sort of news his
friends were quite willing to listen to. They took a new interest in
him. If it was confirmed, Bolton would come right up again. There would
be no difficulty about his getting all the money he wanted. The money
market did not seem to be half so tight as it was the day before.
Mr. Bolton spent a very pleasant day in his office, and went home
revolving some new plans, and the execution of some projects he had long
been prevented from entering upon by the lack of money.
The day had been spent by Philip in no less excitement. By daylight,
with Philip's letters to the mail, word had gone down to Ilium that coal
had been found, and very early a crowd of eager spectators had come up to
see for themselves.
The "prospecting" continued day and night for upwards of a week, and
during the first four or five days the indications grew more and more
promising, and the telegrams and letters kept Mr. Bolton duly posted.
But at last a change came, and the promises began to fail with alarming
rapidity. In the end it was demonstrated without the possibility of a
doubt that the great "find" was nothing but a worthless seam.
Philip was cast down, all the more so because he had been so foolish as
to send the news to Philadelphia before he knew what he was writing
about. And now he must contradict it. "It turns out to be only a mere
seam," he wrote, "but we look upon it as an indication of better further
in."
Alas! Mr. Bolton's affairs could not wait for "indications." The future
might have a great deal in store, but the present was black and hopeless.
It was doubtful if any sacrifice could save him from ruin. Yet sacrifice
he must make, and that instantly, in the hope of saving something from
the wreck of his fortune.
His lovely country home must go. That would bring the most ready money.
The house that he had built with loving thought for each one of his
family, as he planned its luxurious apartments and adorned it; the
grounds that he had laid out, with so much delight in following the
tastes of his wife, with whom the country, the cultivation of rare trees
and flowers, the care of garden and lawn and conservatories were a
passion almost; this home, which he had hoped his children would enjoy
long after he had done with it, must go.
The family bore the sacrifice better than he did. They declared in fact
--women are such hypocrites--that they quite enjoyed the city (it was in
August) after living so long in the country, that it was a thousand tunes
more convenient in every respect; Mrs. Bolton said it was a relief from
the worry of a large establishment, and Ruth reminded her father that she
should have had to come to town anyway before long.
Mr. Bolton was relieved, exactly as a water-logged ship is lightened by
throwing overboard the most valuable portion of the cargo--but the leak
was not stopped. Indeed his credit was injured instead of helped by the
prudent step be had taken. It was regarded as a sure evidence of his
embarrassment, and it was much more difficult for him to obtain help than
if he had, instead of retrenching, launched into some new speculation.
Philip was greatly troubled, and exaggerated his own share in the
bringing about of the calamity.
"You must not look at it so!" Mr. Bolton wrote him. "You have neither
helped nor hindered--but you know you may help by and by. It would have
all happened just so, if we had never begun to dig that hole. That is
only a drop. Work away. I still have hope that something will occur to
relieve me. At any rate we must not give up the mine, so long as we have
any show."
Alas! the relief did not come. New misfortunes came instead. When the
extent of the Bigler swindle was disclosed there was no more hope that
Mr. Bolton could extricate himself, and he had, as an honest man, no
resource except to surrender all his property for the benefit of his
creditors.
The Autumn came and found Philip working with diminished force but still
with hope. He had again and again been encouraged by good "indications,"
but he had again and again been disappointed. He could not go on much
longer, and almost everybody except himself had thought it was useless to
go on as long as he had been doing.
When the news came of Mr. Bolton's failure, of course the work stopped.
The men were discharged, the tools were housed, the hopeful noise of
pickman and driver ceased, and the mining camp had that desolate and
mournful aspect which always hovers over a frustrated enterprise.
Philip sat down amid the ruins, and almost wished he were buried in them.
How distant Ruth was now from him, now, when she might need him most.
How changed was all the Philadelphia world, which had hitherto stood for
the exemplification of happiness and prosperity.
He still had faith that there was coal in that mountain. He made
a picture of himself living there a hermit in a shanty by the tunnel,
digging away with solitary pick and wheelbarrow, day after day and year
after year, until he grew gray and aged, and was known in all that region
as the old man of the mountain. Perhaps some day--he felt it must be so
some day--he should strike coal. But what if he did? Who would be alive
to care for it then? What would he care for it then? No, a man wants
riches in his youth, when the world is fresh to him. He wondered why
Providence could not have reversed the usual process, and let the
majority of men begin with wealth and gradually spend it, and die poor
when they no longer needed it.
Harry went back to the city. It was evident that his services were no
longer needed. Indeed, he had letters from his uncle, which he did not
read to Philip, desiring him to go to San Francisco to look after some
government contracts in the harbor there.
Philip had to look about him for something to do; he was like Adam;
the world was all before him whereto choose. He made, before he went
elsewhere, a somewhat painful visit to Philadelphia, painful but yet not
without its sweetnesses. The family had never shown him so much
affection before; they all seemed to think his disappointment of more
importance than their own misfortune. And there was that in Ruth's
manner--in what she gave him and what she withheld--that would have made
a hero of a very much less promising character than Philip Sterling.
Among the assets of the Bolton property, the Ilium tract was sold, and
Philip bought it in at the vendue, for a song, for no one cared to even
undertake the mortgage on it except himself. He went away the owner of
it, and had ample time before he reached home in November, to calculate
how much poorer he was by possessing it.
CHAPTER L.
It is impossible for the historian, with even the best intentions,
to control events or compel the persons of his narrative to act wisely
or to be successful. It is easy to see how things might have been better
managed; a very little change here and there would have made a very,
different history of this one now in hand.
If Philip had adopted some regular profession, even some trade, he might
now be a prosperous editor or a conscientious plumber, or an honest
lawyer, and have borrowed money at the saving's bank and built a cottage,
and be now furnishing it for the occupancy of Ruth and himself. Instead
of this, with only a smattering of civil engineering, he is at his
mother's house, fretting and fuming over his ill-luck, and the hardness
and, dishonesty of men, and thinking of nothing but how to get the coal
out of the Ilium hills.
If Senator Dilworthy had not made that visit to Hawkeye, the Hawkins
family and Col. Sellers would not now be dancing attendance upon
Congress, and endeavoring to tempt that immaculate body into one of those
appropriations, for the benefit of its members, which the members find it
so difficult to explain to their constituents; and Laura would not be
lying in the Tombs, awaiting her trial for murder, and doing her best,
by the help of able counsel, to corrupt the pure fountain of criminal
procedure in New York.
If Henry Brierly had been blown up on the first Mississippi steamboat he
set foot on, as the chances were that he would be, he and Col. Sellers
never would have gone into the Columbus Navigation scheme, and probably
never into the East Tennessee Land scheme, and he would not now be
detained in New York from very important business operations on the
Pacific coast, for the sole purpose of giving evidence to convict of
murder the only woman he ever loved half as much as he loves himself.
If Mr. Bolton had said the little word "no" to Mr. Bigler, Alice Montague
might now be spending the winter in Philadelphia, and Philip also
(waiting to resume his mining operations in the spring); and Ruth would
not be an assistant in a Philadelphia hospital, taxing her strength with
arduous routine duties, day by day, in order to lighten a little the
burdens that weigh upon her unfortunate family.
It is altogether a bad business. An honest historian, who had progressed
thus far, and traced everything to such a condition of disaster and
suspension, might well be justified in ending his narrative and writing
--"after this the deluge." His only consolation would be in the reflection
that he was not responsible for either characters or events.
And the most annoying thought is that a little money, judiciously
applied, would relieve the burdens and anxieties of most of these people;
but affairs seem to be so arranged that money is most difficult to get
when people need it most.
A little of what Mr. Bolton has weakly given to unworthy people would now
establish his family in a sort of comfort, and relieve Ruth of the
excessive toil for which she inherited no adequate physical vigor.
A little money would make a prince of Col. Sellers; and a little more
would calm the anxiety of Washington Hawkins about Laura, for however the
trial ended, he could feel sure of extricating her in the end. And if
Philip had a little money he could unlock the stone door in the mountain
whence would issue a stream of shining riches. It needs a golden wand to
strike that rock. If the Knobs University bill could only go through,
what a change would be wrought in the condition of most of the persons in
this history. Even Philip himself would feel the good effects of it;
for Harry would have something and Col. Sellers would have something;
and have not both these cautious people expressed a determination to take
an interest in the Ilium mine when they catch their larks?
Philip could not resist the inclination to pay a visit to Fallkill. He
had not been at the Montague's since the time he saw Ruth there, and he
wanted to consult the Squire about an occupation. He was determined now
to waste no more time in waiting on Providence, but to go to work at
something, if it were nothing better, than teaching in the Fallkill
Seminary, or digging clams on Hingham beach. Perhaps he could read law
in Squire Montague's office while earning his bread as a teacher in the
Seminary.
It was not altogether Philip's fault, let us own, that he was in this
position. There are many young men like him in American society, of his
age, opportunities, education and abilities, who have really been
educated for nothing and have let themselves drift, in the hope that they
will find somehow, and by some sudden turn of good luck, the golden road
to fortune. He was not idle or lazy, he had energy and a disposition to
carve his own way. But he was born into a time when all young men of his
age caught the fever of speculation, and expected to get on in the world
by the omission of some of the regular processes which have been
appointed from of old. And examples were not wanting to encourage him.
He saw people, all around him, poor yesterday, rich to-day, who had come
into sudden opulence by some means which they could not have classified
among any of the regular occupations of life. A war would give such a
fellow a career and very likely fame. He might have been a "railroad
man," or a politician, or a land speculator, or one of those mysterious
people who travel free on all rail-roads and steamboats, and are
continually crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, driven day and night
about nobody knows what, and make a great deal of money by so doing.
Probably, at last, he sometimes thought with a whimsical smile, he should
end by being an insurance agent, and asking people to insure their lives
for his benefit.
Possibly Philip did not think how much the attractions of Fallkill were
increased by the presence of Alice there. He had known her so long, she
had somehow grown into his life by habit, that he would expect the
pleasure of her society without thinking mach about it. Latterly he
never thought of her without thinking of Ruth, and if he gave the subject
any attention, it was probably in an undefined consciousness that, he had
her sympathy in his love, and that she was always willing to hear him
talk about it. If he ever wondered that Alice herself was not in love
and never spoke of the possibility of her own marriage, it was a
transient thought for love did not seem necessary, exactly, to one so
calm and evenly balanced and with so many resources in her herself.
Whatever her thoughts may have been they were unknown to Philip, as they
are to these historians; if she was seeming to be what she was not, and
carrying a burden heavier than any one else carried, because she had to
bear it alone, she was only doing what thousands of women do, with a
self-renunciation and heroism, of which men, impatient and complaining,
have no conception. Have not these big babies with beards filled all
literature with their outcries, their griefs and their lamentations? It
is always the gentle sex which is hard and cruel and fickle and
implacable.
"Do you think you would be contented to live in Fallkill, and attend the
county Court?" asked Alice, when Philip had opened the budget of his new
programme.
"Perhaps not always," said Philip, "I might go and practice in Boston
maybe, or go to Chicago."
"Or you might get elected to Congress."
Philip looked at Alice to see if she was in earnest and not chaffing him.
Her face was quite sober. Alice was one of those patriotic women in the
rural districts, who think men are still selected for Congress on account
of qualifications for the office.
"No," said Philip, "the chances are that a man cannot get into congress
now without resorting to arts and means that should render hint unfit to
go there; of course there are exceptions; but do you know that I could
not go into politics if I were a lawyer, without losing standing somewhat
in my profession, and without raising at least a suspicion of my
intentions and unselfishness? Why, it is telegraphed all over the
country and commented on as something wonderful if a congressman votes
honestly and unselfishly and refuses to take advantage of his position to
steal from the government."
"But," insisted Alice, "I should think it a noble ambition to go to
congress, if it is so bad, and help reform it. I don't believe it is as
corrupt as the English parliament used to be, if there is any truth in
the novels, and I suppose that is reformed."
"I'm sure I don't know where the reform is to begin. I've seen a
perfectly capable, honest man, time and again, run against an illiterate
trickster, and get beaten. I suppose if the people wanted decent members
of congress they would elect them. Perhaps," continued Philip with a
smile, "the women will have to vote."
"Well, I should be willing to, if it were a necessity, just as I would go
to war and do what I could, if the country couldn't be saved otherwise,"
said Alice, with a spirit that surprised Philip, well as he thought he
knew her. "If I were a young gentleman in these times--"
Philip laughed outright. "It's just what Ruth used to say, 'if she were
a man.' I wonder if all the young ladies are contemplating a change of
sex."
"No, only a changed sex," retorted Alice; "we contemplate for the most
part young men who don't care for anything they ought to care for."
"Well," said Philip, looking humble, "I care for some things, you and
Ruth for instance; perhaps I ought not to. Perhaps I ought to care for
Congress and that sort of thing."
"Don't be a goose, Philip. I heard from Ruth yesterday."
"Can I see her letter?"
"No, indeed. But I am afraid her hard work is telling on her, together
with her anxiety about her father."
"Do you think, Alice," asked Philip with one of those selfish thoughts
that are not seldom mixed with real love, "that Ruth prefers her
profession to--to marriage?"
"Philip," exclaimed Alice, rising to quit the room, and speaking
hurriedly as if the words were forced from her, "you are as blind as a
bat; Ruth would cut off her right hand for you this minute."
Philip never noticed that Alice's face was flushed and that her voice was
unsteady; he only thought of the delicious words he had heard. And the
poor girl, loyal to Ruth, loyal to Philip, went straight to her room,
locked the door, threw herself on the bed and sobbed as if her heart
world break. And then she prayed that her Father in Heaven would give
her strength. And after a time she was calm again, and went to her
bureau drawer and took from a hiding place a little piece of paper,
yellow with age. Upon it was pinned a four-leaved clover, dry and yellow
also. She looked long at this foolish memento. Under the clover leaf
was written in a school-girl's hand--"Philip, June, 186-."
Squire Montague thought very well of Philip's proposal. It would have
been better if he had begun the study of the law as soon as he left
college, but it was not too late now, and besides he had gathered some
knowledge of the world.
"But," asked the Squire, "do you mean to abandon your land in
Pennsylvania?" This track of land seemed an immense possible fortune to
this New England lawyer-farmer. Hasn't it good timber, and doesn't the
railroad almost touch it?"
"I can't do anything with it now. Perhaps I can sometime."
"What is your reason for supposing that there is coal there?"
"The opinion of the best geologist I could consult, my own observation
of the country, and the little veins of it we found. I feel certain it
is there. I shall find it some day. I know it. If I can only keep the
land till I make money enough to try again."
Philip took from his pocket a map of the anthracite coal region, and
pointed out the position of the Ilium mountain which he had begun to
tunnel.
"Doesn't it look like it?"
"It certainly does," said the Squire, very much interested. It is not
unusual for a quiet country gentleman to be more taken with such a
venture than a speculator who, has had more experience in its
uncertainty. It was astonishing how many New England clergymen, in the
time of the petroleum excitement, took chances in oil. The Wall street
brokers are said to do a good deal of small business for country
clergymen, who are moved no doubt with the laudable desire of purifying
the New York stock board.
"I don't see that there is much risk," said the Squire, at length.
"The timber is worth more than the mortgage; and if that coal seam does
run there, it's a magnificent fortune. Would you like to try it again in
the spring, Phil?"
Like to try it! If he could have a little help, he would work himself,
with pick and barrow, and live on a crust. Only give him one more
chance.
And this is how it came about that the cautious old Squire Montague was
drawn into this young fellow's speculation, and began to have his serene
old age disturbed by anxieties and by the hope of a great stroke of luck.
"To be sure, I only care about it for the boy," he said. The Squire was
like everybody else; sooner or later he must "take a chance."
It is probably on account of the lack of enterprise in women that they
are not so fond of stock speculations and mine ventures as men. It is
only when woman becomes demoralized that she takes to any sort of
gambling. Neither Alice nor Ruth were much elated with the prospect of
Philip's renewal of his mining enterprise.
But Philip was exultant. He wrote to Ruth as if his fortune were already
made, and as if the clouds that lowered over the house of Bolton were
already in the deep bosom of a coal mine buried. Towards spring he went
to Philadelphia with his plans all matured for a new campaign. His
enthusiasm was irresistible.
"Philip has come, Philip has come," cried the children, as if some great
good had again come into the household; and the refrain even sang itself
over in Ruth's heart as she went the weary hospital rounds. Mr. Bolton
felt more courage than he had had in months, at the sight of his manly
face and the sound of his cheery voice.
Ruth's course was vindicated now, and it certainly did not become Philip,
who had nothing to offer but a future chance against the visible result
of her determination and industry, to open an argument with her. Ruth
was never more certain that she was right and that she was sufficient
unto herself. She, may be, did not much heed the still small voice that
sang in her maiden heart as she went about her work, and which lightened
it and made it easy, "Philip has come."
"I am glad for father's sake," she said to Philip, that thee has come.
"I can see that he depends greatly upon what thee can do. He thinks women
won't hold out long," added Ruth with the smile that Philip never exactly
understood.
"And aren't you tired sometimes of the struggle?"
"Tired? Yes, everybody is tired I suppose. But it is a glorious
profession. And would you want me to be dependent, Philip?"
"Well, yes, a little," said Philip, feeling his way towards what he
wanted to say.
"On what, for instance, just now?" asked Ruth, a little maliciously
Philip thought.
"Why, on----" he couldn't quite say it, for it occurred to him that he was
a poor stick for any body to lean on in the present state of his fortune,
and that the woman before him was at least as independent as he was.
"I don't mean depend," he began again. "But I love you, that's all. Am
I nothing--to you?" And Philip looked a little defiant, and as if he had
said something that ought to brush away all the sophistries of obligation
on either side, between man and woman.
Perhaps Ruth saw this. Perhaps she saw that her own theories of a
certain equality of power, which ought to precede a union of two hearts,
might be pushed too far. Perhaps she had felt sometimes her own weakness
and the need after all of so dear a sympathy and so tender an interest
confessed, as that which Philip could give. Whatever moved her--the
riddle is as old as creation--she simply looked up to Philip and said in
a low voice, "Everything."
And Philip clasping both her hands in his, and looking down into her
eyes, which drank in all his tenderness with the thirst of a true woman's
nature--
"Oh! Philip, come out here," shouted young Eli, throwing the door wide
open.
And Ruth escaped away to her room, her heart singing again, and now as if
it would burst for joy, "Philip has come."
That night Philip received a dispatch from Harry--"The trial begins
tomorrow."
CHAPTER, LI
December 18--, found Washington Hawkins and Col. Sellers once more at the
capitol of the nation, standing guard over the University bill. The
former gentleman was despondent, the latter hopeful. Washington's
distress of mind was chiefly on Laura's account. The court would soon
sit to try her, case, he said, and consequently a great deal of ready
money would be needed in the engineering of it. The University bill was
sure to pass this, time, and that would make money plenty, but might not
the, help come too late? Congress had only just assembled, and delays
were to be feared.
"Well," said the Colonel, "I don't know but you are more or less right,
there. Now let's figure up a little on, the preliminaries. I think
Congress always tries to do as near right as it can, according to its
lights. A man can't ask any fairer, than that. The first preliminary it
always starts out on, is, to clean itself, so to speak. It will arraign
two or three dozen of its members, or maybe four or five dozen, for
taking bribes to vote for this and that and the other bill last winter."
"It goes up into the dozens, does it?"
"Well, yes; in a free country likes ours, where any man can run for
Congress and anybody can vote for him, you can't expect immortal purity
all the time--it ain't in nature. Sixty or eighty or a hundred and fifty
people are bound to get in who are not angels in disguise, as young Hicks
the correspondent says; but still it is a very good average; very good
indeed. As long as it averages as well as that, I think we can feel very
well satisfied. Even in these days, when people growl so much and the
newspapers are so out of patience, there is still a very respectable
minority of honest men in Congress."
"Why a respectable minority of honest men can't do any good, Colonel."
"Oh, yes it can, too"
"Why, how?"
"Oh, in many ways, many ways."
"But what are the ways?"
"Well--I don't know--it is a question that requires time; a body can't
answer every question right off-hand. But it does do good. I am
satisfied of that."
"All right, then; grant that it does good; go on with the preliminaries."
"That is what I am coming to. First, as I said, they will try a lot of
members for taking money for votes. That will take four weeks."
"Yes, that's like last year; and it is a sheer waste of the time for
which the nation pays those men to work--that is what that is. And it
pinches when a body's got a bill waiting."
"A waste of time, to purify the fountain of public law? Well, I never
heard anybody express an idea like that before. But if it were, it would
still be the fault of the minority, for the majority don't institute
these proceedings. There is where that minority becomes an obstruction
--but still one can't say it is on the wrong side.--Well, after they have
finished the bribery cases, they will take up cases of members who have
bought their seats with money. That will take another four weeks."
"Very good; go on. You have accounted for two-thirds of the session."
"Next they will try each other for various smaller irregularities, like
the sale of appointments to West Point cadetships, and that sort of
thing--mere trifling pocket-money enterprises that might better, be
passed over in silence, perhaps, but then one of our Congresses can never
rest easy till it has thoroughly purified itself of all blemishes--and
that is a thing to be applauded."
"How long does it take to disinfect itself of these minor impurities?"
"Well, about two weeks, generally."
"So Congress always lies helpless in quarantine ten weeks of a session.
That's encouraging. Colonel, poor Laura will never get any benefit from
our bill. Her trial will be over before Congress has half purified
itself.--And doesn't it occur to you that by the time it has expelled all
its impure members there, may not be enough members left to do business
legally?"
"Why I did not say Congress would expel anybody."
"Well won't it expel anybody?"
"Not necessarily. Did it last year? It never does. That would not be
regular."
"Then why waste all the session in that tomfoolery of trying members?"
"It is usual; it is customary; the country requires it."
"Then the country is a fool, I think."
"Oh, no. The country thinks somebody is going to be expelled."
"Well, when nobody is expelled, what does the country think then?"
"By that time, the thing has strung out so long that the country is sick
and tired of it and glad to have a change on any terms. But all that
inquiry is not lost. It has a good moral effect."
"Who does it have a good moral effect on?"
"Well--I don't know. On foreign countries, I think. We have always been
under the gaze of foreign countries. There is no country in the world,
sir, that pursues corruption as inveterately as we do. There is no
country in the world whose representatives try each other as much as ours
do, or stick to it as long on a stretch. I think there is something
great in being a model for the whole civilized world, Washington"
"You don't mean a model; you mean an example."
"Well, it's all the same; it's just the same thing. It shows that a man
can't be corrupt in this country without sweating for it, I can tell you
that."
"Hang it, Colonel, you just said we never punish anybody for villainous
practices."
"But good God we try them, don't we! Is it nothing to show a disposition
to sift things and bring people to a strict account? I tell you it has
its effect."
"Oh, bother the effect!--What is it they do do? How do they proceed?
You know perfectly well--and it is all bosh, too. Come, now, how do they
proceed?"
"Why they proceed right and regular--and it ain't bosh, Washington, it
ain't bosh. They appoint a committee to investigate, and that committee
hears evidence three weeks, and all the witnesses on one side swear that
the accused took money or stock or something for his vote. Then the
accused stands up and testifies that he may have done it, but he was
receiving and handling a good deal of money at the time and he doesn't
remember this particular circumstance--at least with sufficient
distinctness to enable him to grasp it tangibly. So of course the thing
is not proven--and that is what they say in the verdict. They don't
acquit, they don't condemn. They just say, 'Charge not proven.' It
leaves the accused is a kind of a shaky condition before the country,
it purifies Congress, it satisfies everybody, and it doesn't seriously
hurt anybody. It has taken a long time to perfect our system, but it is
the most admirable in the world, now."
"So one of those long stupid investigations always turns out in that lame
silly way. Yes, you are correct. I thought maybe you viewed the matter
differently from other people. Do you think a Congress of ours could
convict the devil of anything if he were a member?"
"My dear boy, don't let these damaging delays prejudice you against
Congress. Don't use such strong language; you talk like a newspaper.
Congress has inflicted frightful punishments on its members--now you know
that. When they tried Mr. Fairoaks, and a cloud of witnesses proved him
to be--well, you know what they proved him to be--and his own testimony
and his own confessions gave him the same character, what did Congress do
then?--come!"
"Well, what did Congress do?"
"You know what Congress did, Washington. Congress intimated plainly
enough, that they considered him almost a stain upon their body; and
without waiting ten days, hardly, to think the thing over, the rose up
and hurled at him a resolution declaring that they disapproved of his
conduct! Now you know that, Washington."
"It was a terrific thing--there is no denying that. If he had been
proven guilty of theft, arson, licentiousness, infanticide, and defiling
graves, I believe they would have suspended him for two days."
"You can depend on it, Washington. Congress is vindictive, Congress is
savage, sir, when it gets waked up once. It will go to any length to
vindicate its honor at such a time."
"Ah well, we have talked the morning through, just as usual in these
tiresome days of waiting, and we have reached the same old result; that
is to say, we are no better off than when we began. The land bill is
just as far away as ever, and the trial is closer at hand. Let's give up
everything and die."
"Die and leave the Duchess to fight it out all alone? Oh, no, that won't
do. Come, now, don't talk so. It is all going to come out right. Now
you'll see."
"It never will, Colonel, never in the world. Something tells me that.
I get more tired and more despondent every day. I don't see any hope;
life is only just a trouble. I am so miserable, these days!"
The Colonel made Washington get up and walk the floor with him, arm in
arm. The good old speculator wanted to comfort him, but he hardly knew
how to go about it. He made many attempts, but they were lame; they
lacked spirit; the words were encouraging; but they were only words--he
could not get any heart into them. He could not always warm up, now,
with the old Hawkeye fervor. By and by his lips trembled and his voice
got unsteady. He said:
"Don't give up the ship, my boy--don't do it. The wind's bound to fetch
around and set in our favor. I know it."
And the prospect was so cheerful that he wept. Then he blew a
trumpet-blast that started the meshes of his handkerchief, and said in
almost his breezy old-time way:
"Lord bless us, this is all nonsense! Night doesn't last always; day has
got to break some time or other. Every silver lining has a cloud behind
it, as the poet says; and that remark has always cheered me; though
--I never could see any meaning to it. Everybody uses it, though, and
everybody gets comfort out of it. I wish they would start something
fresh. Come, now, let's cheer up; there's been as good fish in the sea
as there are now. It shall never be said that Beriah Sellers
--Come in?"
It was the telegraph boy. The Colonel reached for the message and
devoured its contents:
"I said it! Never give up the ship! The trial's, postponed till
February, and we'll save the child yet. Bless my life, what lawyers
they, have in New-York! Give them money to fight with; and the ghost of
an excuse, and they: would manage to postpone anything in this world,
unless it might be the millennium or something like that. Now for work
again my boy. The trial will last to the middle of March, sure; Congress
ends the fourth of March. Within three days of the end of the session
they will be done putting through the preliminaries then they will be
ready for national business: Our bill will go through in forty-eight
hours, then, and we'll telegraph a million dollar's to the jury--to the
lawyers, I mean--and the verdict of the jury will be 'Accidental murder
resulting from justifiable insanity'--or something to, that effect,
something to that effect.--Everything is dead sure, now. Come, what is
the matter? What are you wilting down like that, for? You mustn't be a
girl, you know."
"Oh, Colonel, I am become so used to troubles, so used to failures,
disappointments, hard luck of all kinds, that a little good news breaks
me right down. Everything has been so hopeless that now I can't stand
good news at all. It is too good to be true, anyway. Don't you see how
our bad luck has worked on me? My hair is getting gray, and many nights
I don't sleep at all. I wish it was all over and we could rest. I wish
we could lie, down and just forget everything, and let it all be just a
dream that is done and can't come back to trouble us any more. I am so
tired."
"Ah, poor child, don't talk like that-cheer up--there's daylight ahead.
Don't give, up. You'll have Laura again, and--Louise, and your mother,
and oceans and oceans of money--and then you can go away, ever so far
away somewhere, if you want to, and forget all about this infernal place.
And by George I'll go with you! I'll go with you--now there's my word on
it. Cheer up. I'll run out and tell the friends the news."
And he wrung Washington's hand and was about to hurry away when his
companion, in a burst of grateful admiration said:
"I think you are the best soul and the noblest I ever knew, Colonel
Sellers! and if the people only knew you as I do, you would not be
tagging around here a nameless man--you would be in Congress."
The gladness died out of the Colonel's face, and he laid his hand upon
Washington's shoulder and said gravely:
"I have always been a friend of your family, Washington, and I think I
have always tried to do right as between man and man, according to my
lights. Now I don't think there has ever been anything in my conduct
that should make you feel Justified in saying a thing like that."
He turned, then, and walked slowly out, leaving Washington abashed and
somewhat bewildered. When Washington had presently got his thoughts into
line again, he said to himself, "Why, honestly, I only meant to
compliment him--indeed I would not have hurt him for the world."
CHAPTER LII.
The weeks drifted by monotonously enough, now. The "preliminaries"
continued to drag along in Congress, and life was a dull suspense to
Sellers and Washington, a weary waiting which might have broken their
hearts, maybe, but for the relieving change which they got out of am
occasional visit to New York to see Laura. Standing guard in Washington
or anywhere else is not an exciting business in time of peace, but
standing guard was all that the two friends had to do; all that was
needed of them was that they should be on hand and ready for any
emergency that might come up. There was no work to do; that was all
finished; this was but the second session of the last winter's Congress,
and its action on the bill could have but one result--its passage. The
house must do its work over again, of course, but the same membership was
there to see that it did it.--The Senate was secure--Senator Dilworthy
was able to put all doubts to rest on that head. Indeed it was no secret
in Washington that a two-thirds vote in the Senate was ready and waiting
to be cast for the University bill as soon as it should come before that
body.
Washington did not take part in the gaieties of "the season," as he had
done the previous winter. He had lost his interest in such things; he
was oppressed with cares, now. Senator Dilworthy said to Washington that
an humble deportment, under punishment, was best, and that there was but
one way in which the troubled heart might find perfect repose and peace.
The suggestion found a response in Washington's breast, and the Senator
saw the sign of it in his face.
From that moment one could find the youth with the Senator even oftener
than with Col. Sellers. When the statesman presided at great temperance
meetings, he placed Washington in the front rank of impressive
dignitaries that gave tone to the occasion and pomp to the platform.
His bald headed surroundings made the youth the more conspicuous.
When the statesman made remarks in these meetings, he not infrequently
alluded with effect to the encouraging spectacle of one of the wealthiest
and most brilliant young favorites of society forsaking the light
vanities of that butterfly existence to nobly and self-sacrificingly
devote his talents and his riches to the cause of saving his hapless
fellow creatures from shame and misery here and eternal regret hereafter.
At the prayer meetings the Senator always brought Washington up the aisle
on his arm and seated him prominently; in his prayers he referred to him
in the cant terms which the Senator employed, perhaps unconsciously, and
mistook, maybe, for religion, and in other ways brought him into notice.
He had him out at gatherings for the benefit of the negro, gatherings for
the benefit of the Indian, gatherings for the benefit of the heathen in
distant lands. He had him out time and again, before Sunday Schools,
as an example for emulation. Upon all these occasions the Senator made
casual references to many benevolent enterprises which his ardent young
friend was planning against the day when the passage of the University
bill should make his means available for the amelioration of the
condition of the unfortunate among his fellow men of all nations and all.
climes. Thus as the weeks rolled on Washington grew up, into an imposing
lion once more, but a lion that roamed the peaceful fields of religion
and temperance, and revisited the glittering domain of fashion no more.
A great moral influence was thus brought, to bear in favor of the bill;
the weightiest of friends flocked to its standard; its most energetic
enemies said it was useless to fight longer; they had tacitly surrendered
while as yet the day of battle was not come.
CHAPTER LIII.
The session was drawing toward its close. Senator Dilworthy thought he
would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them
look at him. The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to
the United States Senate, was already in session. Mr. Dilworthy
considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking
man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to
persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to
be well worth taking. The University bill was safe, now; he could leave
it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer.
But there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching
--a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling,
uncomfortable malcontent--a person who was stolidly opposed to reform,
and progress and him,--a person who, he feared, had been bought with
money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth's welfare and its
politics' purity.
"If this person Noble," said Mr. Dilworthy, in a little speech at a
dinner party given him by some of his admirers, "merely desired to
sacrifice me.--I would willingly offer up my political life on the altar
of my dear State's weal, I would be glad and grateful to do it; but when
he makes of me but a cloak to hide his deeper designs, when he proposes
to strike through me at the heart of my beloved State, all the lion in me
is roused--and I say here I stand, solitary and alone, but unflinching,
unquailing, thrice armed with my sacred trust; and whoso passes, to do
evil to this fair domain that looks to me for protection, must do so over
my dead body."
He further said that if this Noble were a pure man, and merely misguided,
he could bear it, but that he should succeed in his wicked designs
through, a base use of money would leave a blot upon his State which
would work untold evil to the morals of the people, and that he would not
suffer; the public morals must not be contaminated. He would seek this
man Noble; he would argue, he would persuade, he would appeal to his
honor.
When he arrived on the ground he found his friends unterrified; they were
standing firmly by him and were full of courage. Noble was working hard,
too, but matters were against him, he was not making much progress.
Mr. Dilworthy took an early opportunity to send for Mr. Noble; he had a
midnight interview with him, and urged him to forsake his evil ways; he
begged him to come again and again, which he did. He finally sent the
man away at 3 o'clock one morning; and when he was gone, Mr. Dilworthy
said to himself,
"I feel a good deal relieved, now, a great deal relieved."
The Senator now turned his attention to matters touching the souls of his
people. He appeared in church; he took a leading part in prayer
meetings; he met and encouraged the temperance societies; he graced the
sewing circles of the ladies with his presence, and even took a needle
now and then and made a stitch or two upon a calico shirt for some poor
Bibleless pagan of the South Seas, and this act enchanted the ladies,
who regarded the garments thus honored as in a manner sanctified.
The Senator wrought in Bible classes, and nothing could keep him away
from the Sunday Schools--neither sickness nor storms nor weariness.
He even traveled a tedious thirty miles in a poor little rickety
stagecoach to comply with the desire of the miserable hamlet of
Cattleville that he would let its Sunday School look upon him.
All the town was assembled at the stage office when he arrived,
two bonfires were burning, and a battery of anvils was popping exultant
broadsides; for a United States Senator was a sort of god in the
understanding of these people who never had seen any creature mightier
than a county judge. To them a United States Senator was a vast, vague
colossus, an awe inspiring unreality.
Next day everybody was at the village church a full half hour before time
for Sunday School to open; ranchmen and farmers had come with their
families from five miles around, all eager to get a glimpse of the great
man--the man who had been to Washington; the man who had seen the
President of the United States, and had even talked with him; the man who
had seen the actual Washington Monument--perhaps touched it with his
hands.
When the Senator arrived the Church was crowded, the windows were full,
the aisles were packed, so was the vestibule, and so indeed was the yard
in front of the building. As he worked his way through to the pulpit on
the arm of the minister and followed by the envied officials of the
village, every neck was stretched and, every eye twisted around
intervening obstructions to get a glimpse. Elderly people directed each
other's attention and, said, "There! that's him, with the grand, noble
forehead!" Boys nudged each other and said, "Hi, Johnny, here he is,
there, that's him, with the peeled head!"
The Senator took his seat in the pulpit, with the minister' on one side
of him and the Superintendent of the Sunday School on the other.
The town dignitaries sat in an impressive row within the altar railings
below. The Sunday School children occupied ten of the front benches.
dressed in their best and most uncomfortable clothes, and with hair
combed and faces too clean to feel natural. So awed were they by the
presence of a living United States Senator, that during three minutes not
a "spit ball" was thrown. After that they began to come to themselves by
degrees, and presently the spell was wholly gone and they were reciting
verses and pulling hair.
The usual Sunday School exercises were hurried through, and then the
minister, got up and bored the house with a speech built on the customary
Sunday School plan; then the Superintendent put in his oar; then the town
dignitaries had their say. They all made complimentary reference to
"their friend the, Senator," and told what a great and illustrious man he
was and what he had done for his country and for religion and temperance,
and exhorted the little boys to be good and diligent and try to become
like him some day. The speakers won the deathless hatred of the house by
these delays, but at last there was an end and hope revived; inspiration
was about to find utterance.
Senator Dilworthy rose and beamed upon the assemblage for a full minute
in silence. Then he smiled with an access of sweetness upon the children
and began:
"My little friends--for I hope that all these bright-faced little people
are my friends and will let me be their friend--my little friends, I have
traveled much, I have been in many cities and many States, everywhere in
our great and noble country, and by the blessing of Providence I have
been permitted to see many gatherings like this--but I am proud, I am
truly proud to say that I never have looked upon so much intelligence,
so much grace, such sweetness of disposition as I see in the charming
young countenances I see before me at this moment. I have been asking
myself as I sat here, Where am I? Am I in some far-off monarchy, looking
upon little princes and princesses? No. Am I in some populous centre of
my own country, where the choicest children of the land have been
selected and brought together as at a fair for a prize? No. Am I in
some strange foreign clime where the children are marvels that we know
not of? No. Then where am I? Yes--where am I? I am in a simple,
remote, unpretending settlement of my own dear State, and these are the
children of the noble and virtuous men who have made me what I am!
My soul is lost in wonder at the thought! And I humbly thank Him to whom
we are but as worms of the dust, that he has been pleased to call me to
serve such men! Earth has no higher, no grander position for me. Let
kings and emperors keep their tinsel crowns, I want them not; my heart is
here!
"Again I thought, Is this a theatre? No. Is it a concert or a gilded
opera? No. Is it some other vain, brilliant, beautiful temple of
soul-staining amusement and hilarity? No. Then what is it? What did
my consciousness reply? I ask you, my little friends, What did my
consciousness reply? It replied, It is the temple of the Lord! Ah,
think of that, now. I could hardly keep the tears back, I was so
grateful. Oh, how beautiful it is to see these ranks of sunny little
faces assembled here to learn the way of life; to learn to be good; to
learn to be useful; to learn to be pious; to learn to be great and
glorious men and women; to learn to be props and pillars of the State and
shining lights in the councils and the households of the nation; to be
bearers of the banner and soldiers of the cross in the rude campaigns of
life, and raptured souls in the happy fields of Paradise hereafter.
"Children, honor your parents and be grateful to them for providing for
you the precious privileges of a Sunday School.
"Now my dear little friends, sit up straight and pretty--there, that's
it--and give me your attention and let me tell you about a poor little
Sunday School scholar I once knew.--He lived in the far west, and his
parents were poor. They could not give him a costly education; but they
were good and wise and they sent him to the Sunday School. He loved the
Sunday School. I hope you love your Sunday School--ah, I see by your
faces that you do! That is right!
"Well, this poor little boy was always in his place when the bell rang,
and he always knew his lesson; for his teachers wanted him to learn and
he loved his teachers dearly. Always love your teachers, my children,
for they love you more than you can know, now. He would not let bad boys
persuade him to go to play on Sunday. There was one little bad boy who
was always trying to persuade him, but he never could.
"So this poor little boy grew up to be a man, and had to go out in the
world, far from home and friends to earn his living. Temptations lay all
about him, and sometimes he was about to yield, but he would think of
some precious lesson he learned in his Sunday School a long time ago, and
that would save him. By and by he was elected to the legislature--Then
he did everything he could for Sunday Schools. He got laws passed for
them; he got Sunday Schools established wherever he could.
"And by and by the people made him governor--and he said it was all owing
to the Sunday School.
"After a while the people elected him a Representative to the Congress of
the United States, and he grew very famous.--Now temptations assailed him
on every hand. People tried to get him to drink wine; to dance, to go to
theatres; they even tried to buy his vote; but no, the memory of his
Sunday School saved him from all harm; he remembered the fate of the bad
little boy who used to try to get him to play on Sunday, and who grew up
and became a drunkard and was hanged. He remembered that, and was glad
he never yielded and played on Sunday.
"Well, at last, what do you think happened? Why the people gave him a
towering, illustrious position, a grand, imposing position. And what do
you think it was? What should you say it was, children? It was Senator
of the United States! That poor little boy that loved his Sunday School
became that man. That man stands before you! All that he is, he owes to
the Sunday School.
"My precious children, love your parents, love your teachers, love your
Sunday School, be pious, be obedient, be honest, be diligent, and then
you will succeed in life and be honored of all men. Above all things,
my children, be honest. Above all things be pure-minded as the snow.
Let us join in prayer."
When Senator Dilworthy departed from Cattleville, he left three dozen
boys behind him arranging a campaign of life whose objective point was
the United States Senate.
When be arrived at the State capital at midnight Mr. Noble came and held
a three-hours' conference with him, and then as he was about leaving
said:
"I've worked hard, and I've got them at last. Six of them haven't got
quite back-bone enough to slew around and come right out for you on the
first ballot to-morrow; but they're going to vote against you on the
first for the sake of appearances, and then come out for you all in a
body on the second--I've fixed all that! By supper time to-morrow you'll
be re-elected. You can go to bed and sleep easy on that."
After Mr. Noble was gone, the Senator said:
"Well, to bring about a complexion of things like this was worth coming
West for."
CHAPTER LIV.
The case of the State of New York against Laura Hawkins was finally set
down for trial on the 15th day of February, less than a year after the
shooting of George Selby.
If the public had almost forgotten the existence of Laura and her crime,
they were reminded of all the details of the murder by the newspapers,
which for some days had been announcing the approaching trial. But they
had not forgotten. The sex, the age, the beauty of the prisoner; her
high social position in Washington, the unparalleled calmness with which
the crime was committed had all conspired to fix the event in the public
mind, although nearly three hundred and sixty-five subsequent murders had
occurred to vary the monotony of metropolitan life.
No, the public read from time to time of the lovely prisoner, languishing
in the city prison, the tortured victim of the law's delay; and as the
months went by it was natural that the horror of her crime should become
a little indistinct in memory, while the heroine of it should be invested
with a sort of sentimental interest. Perhaps her counsel had calculated
on this. Perhaps it was by their advice that Laura had interested
herself in the unfortunate criminals who shared her prison confinement,
and had done not a little to relieve, from her own purse, the necessities
of some of the poor creatures. That she had done this, the public read
in the journals of the day, and the simple announcement cast a softening
light upon her character.
The court room was crowded at an early hour, before the arrival of
judges, lawyers and prisoner. There is no enjoyment so keen to certain
minds as that of looking upon the slow torture of a human being on trial
for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human
ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers
in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such
subtlety, acumen, address, eloquence.
All the conditions of intense excitement meet in a murder trial. The
awful issue at stake gives significance to the lightest word or look.
How the quick eyes of the spectators rove from the stolid jury to the
keen lawyers, the impassive judge, the anxious prisoner. Nothing is
lost of the sharp wrangle of the counsel on points of law, the measured
decision's of the bench; the duels between the attorneys and the
witnesses. The crowd sways with the rise and fall of the shifting,
testimony, in sympathetic interest, and hangs upon the dicta of the
judge in breathless silence. It speedily takes sides for or against
the accused, and recognizes as quickly its favorites among the lawyers.
Nothing delights it more than the sharp retort of a witness and the
discomfiture of an obnoxious attorney. A joke, even if it be a lame,
one, is no where so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder
trial.
Within the bar the young lawyers and the privileged hangers-on filled all
the chairs except those reserved at the table for those engaged in the
case. Without, the throng occupied all the seats, the window ledges and
the standing room. The atmosphere was already something horrible.
It was the peculiar odor of a criminal court, as if it were tainted by
the presence, in different persons, of all the crimes that men and women
can commit.
There was a little stir when the Prosecuting Attorney, with two
assistants, made his way in, seated himself at the table, and spread his
papers before him. There was more stir when the counsel of the defense
appeared. They were Mr. Braham, the senior, and Mr. Quiggle and Mr.
O'Keefe, the juniors.
Everybody in the court room knew Mr. Braham, the great criminal lawyer,
and he was not unaware that he was the object of all eyes as he moved to
his place, bowing to his friends in the bar. A large but rather spare
man, with broad shoulders and a massive head, covered with chestnut curls
which fell down upon his coat collar and which he had a habit of shaking
as a lion is supposed to shake his mane. His face was clean shaven,
and he had a wide mouth and rather small dark eyes, set quite too near
together: Mr. Braham wore a brown frock coat buttoned across his breast,
with a rose-bud in the upper buttonhole, and light pantaloons.
A diamond stud was seen to flash from his bosom; and as he seated himself
and drew off his gloves a heavy seal ring was displayed upon his white
left hand. Mr. Braham having seated himself, deliberately surveyed the
entire house, made a remark to one of his assistants, and then taking an
ivory-handled knife from his pocket began to pare his finger nails,
rocking his chair backwards and forwards slowly.
A moment later Judge O'Shaunnessy entered at the rear door and took his
seat in one of the chairs behind the bench; a gentleman in black
broadcloth, with sandy hair, inclined to curl, a round; reddish and
rather jovial face, sharp rather than intellectual, and with a
self-sufficient air. His career had nothing remarkable in it. He was
descended from a long line of Irish Kings, and he was the first one of
them who had ever come into his kingdom--the kingdom of such being the
city of New York. He had, in fact, descended so far and so low that he
found himself, when a boy, a sort of street Arab in that city; but he had
ambition and native shrewdness, and he speedily took to boot-polishing,
and newspaper hawking, became the office and errand boy of a law firm,
picked up knowledge enough to get some employment in police courts, was
admitted to the bar, became a rising young politician, went to the
legislature, and was finally elected to the bench which he now honored.
In this democratic country he was obliged to conceal his royalty under
a plebeian aspect. Judge O'Shaunnessy never had a lucrative practice nor
a large salary but he had prudently laid away money-believing that
a dependant judge can never be impartial--and he had lands and houses
to the value of three or four hundred thousand dollars. Had he not
helped to build and furnish this very Court House? Did he not know that
the very "spittoon" which his judgeship used cost the city the sum of one
thousand dollars?
As soon as the judge was seated, the court was opened, with the "oi yis,
oi yis" of the officer in his native language, the case called, and the
sheriff was directed to bring in the prisoner. In the midst of a
profound hush Laura entered, leaning on the arm of the officer, and was
conducted to a seat by her counsel. She was followed by her mother and
by Washington Hawkins, who were given seats near her.
Laura was very pale, but this pallor heightened the lustre of her large
eyes and gave a touching sadness to her expressive face. She was dressed
in simple black, with exquisite taste, and without an ornament. The thin
lace vail which partially covered her face did not so much conceal as
heighten her beauty. She would not have entered a drawing room with more
self-poise, nor a church with more haughty humility. There was in her
manner or face neither shame nor boldness, and when she took her seat in
fall view of half the spectators, her eyes were downcast. A murmur of
admiration ran through the room. The newspaper reporters made their
pencils fly. Mr. Braham again swept his eyes over the house as if in
approval. When Laura at length raised her eyes a little, she saw Philip
and Harry within the bar, but she gave no token of recognition.
The clerk then read the indictment, which was in the usual form. It
charged Laura Hawkins, in effect, with the premeditated murder of George
Selby, by shooting him with a pistol, with a revolver, shotgun, rifle,
repeater, breech-loader, cannon, six-shooter, with a gun, or some other,
weapon; with killing him with a slung-shot, a bludgeon, carving knife,
bowie knife, pen knife, rolling pin, car, hook, dagger, hair pin, with a
hammer, with a screw-driver; with a nail, and with all other weapons and
utensils whatsoever, at the Southern hotel and in all other hotels and
places wheresoever, on the thirteenth day of March and all other days of
the Christian era wheresoever.
Laura stood while the long indictment was read; and at the end, in
response to the inquiry, of the judge, she said in a clear, low voice;
"Not guilty." She sat down and the court proceeded to impanel a jury.
The first man called was Michael Lanigan, saloon keeper.
"Have you formed or expressed any opinion on this case, and do you know
any of the parties?"
"Not any," said Mr. Lanigan.
"Have you any conscientious objections to capital punishment?"
"No, sir, not to my knowledge."
"Have you read anything about this case?"
"To be sure, I read the papers, y'r Honor."
Objected to by Mr. Braham, for cause, and discharged.
Patrick Coughlin.
"What is your business?"
"Well--I haven't got any particular business."
"Haven't any particular business, eh? Well, what's your general
business? What do you do for a living?"
"I own some terriers, sir."
"Own some terriers, eh? Keep a rat pit?"
"Gentlemen comes there to have a little sport. I never fit 'em, sir."
"Oh, I see--you are probably the amusement committee of the city council.
Have you ever heard of this case?"
"Not till this morning, sir."
"Can you read?"
"Not fine print, y'r Honor."
The man was about to be sworn, when Mr. Braham asked,
"Could your father read?"
"The old gentleman was mighty handy at that, sir."
Mr. Braham submitted that the man was disqualified Judge thought not.
Point argued. Challenged peremptorily, and set aside.
Ethan Dobb, cart-driver.
"Can you read?"
"Yes, but haven't a habit of it."
"Have you heard of this case?"
"I think so--but it might be another. I have no opinion about it."
Dist. A. "Tha--tha--there! Hold on a bit? Did anybody tell you to say
you had no opinion about it?"
"N--n--o, sir."
Take care now, take care. Then what suggested it to you to volunteer
that remark?"
"They've always asked that, when I was on juries."
All right, then. Have you any conscientious scruples about capital
punishment?"
"Any which?"
"Would you object to finding a person guilty--of murder on evidence?"
"I might, sir, if I thought he wan't guilty."
The district attorney thought he saw a point.
"Would this feeling rather incline you against a capital conviction?"
The juror said he hadn't any feeling, and didn't know any of the parties.
Accepted and sworn.
Dennis Lafin, laborer. Have neither formed nor expressed an opinion.
Never had heard of the case. Believed in hangin' for them that deserved
it. Could read if it was necessary.
Mr. Braham objected. The man was evidently bloody minded. Challenged
peremptorily.
Larry O'Toole, contractor. A showily dressed man of the style known as
"vulgar genteel," had a sharp eye and a ready tongue. Had read the
newspaper reports of the case, but they made no impression on him.
Should be governed by the evidence. Knew no reason why he could not be
an impartial juror.
Question by District Attorney.
"How is it that the reports made no impression on you?"
"Never believe anything I see in the newspapers."
(Laughter from the crowd, approving smiles from his Honor and Mr.
Braham.) Juror sworn in. Mr. Braham whispered to O'Keefe, "that's the
man."
Avery Hicks, pea-nut peddler. Did he ever hear of this case? The man
shook his head.
"Can you read?"
"No." "Any scruples about capital punishment?"
"No."
He was about to be sworn, when the district attorney turning to him
carelessly, remarked,
"Understand the nature of an oath?"
"Outside," said the man, pointing to the door.
"I say, do you know what an oath is?"
"Five cents," explained the man.
"Do you mean to insult me?" roared the prosecuting officer. "Are you an
idiot?"
"Fresh baked. I'm deefe. I don't hear a word you say."
The man was discharged. "He wouldn't have made a bad juror, though,"
whispered Braham. "I saw him looking at the prisoner sympathizingly.
That's a point you want to watch for."
The result of the whole day's work was the selection of only two jurors.
These however were satisfactory to Mr. Braham. He had kept off all those
he did not know. No one knew better than this great criminal lawyer that
the battle was fought on the selection of the jury. The subsequent
examination of witnesses, the eloquence expended on the jury are all for
effect outside. At least that is the theory of Mr. Braham. But human
nature is a queer thing, he admits; sometimes jurors are unaccountably
swayed, be as careful as you can in choosing them.
It was four weary days before this jury was made up, but when it was
finally complete, it did great credit to the counsel for the defence.
So far as Mr. Braham knew, only two could read, one of whom was the
foreman, Mr. Braham's friend, the showy contractor. Low foreheads and
heavy faces they all had; some had a look of animal cunning, while the
most were only stupid. The entire panel formed that boasted heritage
commonly described as the "bulwark of our liberties."
The District Attorney, Mr. McFlinn, opened the case for the state. He
spoke with only the slightest accent, one that had been inherited but not
cultivated. He contented himself with a brief statement of the case.
The state would prove that Laura Hawkins, the prisoner at the bar, a
fiend in the form of a beautiful woman, shot dead George Selby, a
Southern gentleman, at the, time and place described. That the murder
was in cold blood, deliberate and without provocation; that it had been
long premeditated and threatened; that she had followed the deceased-from
Washington to commit it. All this would be proved by unimpeachable
witnesses. The attorney added that the duty of the jury, however painful
it might be, would be plain and simple. They were citizens, husbands,
perhaps fathers. They knew how insecure life had become in the
metropolis. Tomorrow our own wives might be widows, their own children
orphans, like the bereaved family in yonder hotel, deprived of husband
and father by the jealous hand of some murderous female. The attorney
sat down, and the clerk called?"
"Henry Brierly."
CHAPTER LV.
Henry Brierly took the stand. Requested by the District Attorney to tell
the jury all he knew about the killing, he narrated the circumstances
substantially as the reader already knows them.
He accompanied Miss Hawkins to New York at her request, supposing she was
coming in relation to a bill then pending in Congress, to secure the
attendance of absent members. Her note to him was here shown. She
appeared to be very much excited at the Washington station. After she
had asked the conductor several questions, he heard her say, "He can't
escape." Witness asked her "Who?" and she replied "Nobody." Did not see
her during the night. They traveled in a sleeping car. In the morning
she appeared not to have slept, said she had a headache. In crossing the
ferry she asked him about the shipping in sight; he pointed out where the
Cunarders lay when in port. They took a cup of coffee that morning at a
restaurant. She said she was anxious to reach the Southern Hotel where
Mr. Simons, one of the absent members, was staying, before he went out.
She was entirely self-possessed, and beyond unusual excitement did not
act unnaturally. After she had fired twice at Col. Selby, she turned the
pistol towards her own breast, and witness snatched it from her. She had
seen a great deal with Selby in Washington, appeared to be infatuated
with him.
(Cross-examined by Mr. Braham.) "Mist-er.....er Brierly!" (Mr. Braham had
in perfection this lawyer's trick of annoying a witness, by drawling out
the "Mister," as if unable to recall the name, until the witness is
sufficiently aggravated, and then suddenly, with a rising inflection,
flinging his name at him with startling unexpectedness.) "Mist-er.....er
Brierly! What is your occupation?"
"Civil Engineer, sir."
"Ah, civil engineer, (with a glance at the jury). Following that
occupation with Miss Hawkins?" (Smiles by the jury).
"No, sir," said Harry, reddening.
"How long have you known the prisoner?"
"Two years, sir. I made her acquaintance in Hawkeye, Missouri."
"M.....m...m. Mist-er.....er Brierly! Were you not a lover of Miss
Hawkins?"
Objected to. "I submit, your Honor, that I have the right to establish
the relation of this unwilling witness to the prisoner." Admitted.
"Well, sir," said Harry hesitatingly, "we were friends."
"You act like a friend!" (sarcastically.) The jury were beginning to hate
this neatly dressed young sprig. "Mister......er....Brierly! Didn't
Miss Hawkins refuse you?"
Harry blushed and stammered and looked at the judge. "You must answer,
sir," said His Honor.
"She--she--didn't accept me."
"No. I should think not. Brierly do you dare tell the jury that you had
not an interest in the removal of your rival, Col. Selby?" roared Mr.
Braham in a voice of thunder.
"Nothing like this, sir, nothing like this," protested the witness.
"That's all, sir," said Mr. Braham severely.
"One word," said the District Attorney. "Had you the least suspicion of
the prisoner's intention, up to the moment of the shooting?"
"Not the least," answered Harry earnestly.
"Of course not, of course-not," nodded Mr. Braham to the jury.
The prosecution then put upon the stand the other witnesses of the
shooting at the hotel, and the clerk and the attending physicians. The
fact of the homicide was clearly established. Nothing new was elicited,
except from the clerk, in reply to a question by Mr. Braham, the fact
that when the prisoner enquired for Col. Selby she appeared excited and
there was a wild look in her eyes.
The dying deposition of Col. Selby was then produced. It set forth
Laura's threats, but there was a significant addition to it, which the
newspaper report did not have. It seemed that after the deposition was
taken as reported, the Colonel was told for the first time by his
physicians that his wounds were mortal. He appeared to be in great
mental agony and fear; and said he had not finished his deposition.
He added, with great difficulty and long pauses these words. "I--have
--not--told--all. I must tell--put--it--down--I--wronged--her. Years
--ago--I--can't see--O--God--I--deserved----" That was all. He fainted
and did not revive again.
The Washington railway conductor testified that the prisoner had asked
him if a gentleman and his family went out on the evening train,
describing the persons he had since learned were Col. Selby and family.
Susan Cullum, colored servant at Senator Dilworthy's, was sworn. Knew
Col. Selby. Had seen him come to the house often, and be alone in the
parlor with Miss Hawkins. He came the day but one before he was shot.
She let him in. He appeared flustered like. She heard talking in the
parlor, I peared like it was quarrelin'. Was afeared sumfin' was wrong:
Just put her ear to--the--keyhole of the back parlor-door. Heard a man's
voice, "I--can't--I can't, Good God," quite beggin' like. Heard--young
Miss' voice, "Take your choice, then. If you 'bandon me, you knows what
to 'spect." Then he rushes outen the house, I goes in--and I says,
"Missis did you ring?" She was a standin' like a tiger, her eyes
flashin'. I come right out.
This was the substance of Susan's testimony, which was not shaken in the
least by severe cross-examination. In reply to Mr. Braham's question, if
the prisoner did not look insane, Susan said, "Lord; no, sir, just mad as
a hawnet."
Washington Hawkins was sworn. The pistol, identified by the officer as
the one used in the homicide, was produced Washington admitted that it
was his. She had asked him for it one morning, saying she thought she
had heard burglars the night before. Admitted that he never had heard
burglars in the house. Had anything unusual happened just before that.
Nothing that he remembered. Did he accompany her to a reception at Mrs.
Shoonmaker's a day or two before? Yes. What occurred? Little by little
it was dragged out of the witness that Laura had behaved strangely there,
appeared to be sick, and he had taken her home. Upon being pushed he
admitted that she had afterwards confessed that she saw Selby there.
And Washington volunteered the statement that Selby, was a black-hearted
villain.
The District Attorney said, with some annoyance; "There--there! That will
do."
The defence declined to examine Mr. Hawkins at present. The case for the
prosecution was closed. Of the murder there could not be the least
doubt, or that the prisoner followed the deceased to New York with a
murderous intent: On the evidence the jury must convict, and might do so
without leaving their seats. This was the condition of the case
two days after the jury had been selected. A week had passed since the
trial opened; and a Sunday had intervened.
The public who read the reports of the evidence saw no chance for the
prisoner's escape. The crowd of spectators who had watched the trial
were moved with the most profound sympathy for Laura.
Mr. Braham opened the case for the defence. His manner was subdued, and
he spoke in so low a voice that it was only by reason of perfect silence
in the court room that he could be heard. He spoke very distinctly,
however, and if his nationality could be discovered in his speech it was
only in a certain richness and breadth of tone.
He began by saying that he trembled at the responsibility he had
undertaken; and he should, altogether despair, if he did not see before
him a jury of twelve men of rare intelligence, whose acute minds would
unravel all the sophistries of the prosecution, men with a sense, of
honor, which would revolt at the remorseless persecution of this hunted
woman by the state, men with hearts to feel for the wrongs of which she
was the victim. Far be it from him to cast any suspicion upon the
motives of the able, eloquent and ingenious lawyers of the state; they
act officially; their business is to convict. It is our business,
gentlemen, to see that justice is done.
"It is my duty, gentlemen, to untold to you one of the most affecting
dramas in all, the history of misfortune. I shall have to show you a
life, the sport of fate and circumstances, hurried along through shifting
storm and sun, bright with trusting innocence and anon black with
heartless villainy, a career which moves on in love and desertion and
anguish, always hovered over by the dark spectre of INSANITY--an insanity
hereditary and induced by mental torture,--until it ends, if end it must
in your verdict, by one of those fearful accidents, which are inscrutable
to men and of which God alone knows the secret.
"Gentlemen, I, shall ask you to go with me away from this court room and
its minions of the law, away from the scene of this tragedy, to a
distant, I wish I could say a happier day. The story I have to tell is
of a lovely little girl, with sunny hair and laughing eyes, traveling
with her parents, evidently people of wealth and refinement, upon a
Mississippi steamboat. There is an explosion, one of those terrible
catastrophes which leave the imprint of an unsettled mind upon the
survivors. Hundreds of mangled remains are sent into eternity. When the
wreck is cleared away this sweet little girl is found among the panic
stricken survivors in the midst of a scene of horror enough to turn the
steadiest brain. Her parents have disappeared. Search even for their
bodies is in vain. The bewildered, stricken child--who can say what
changes the fearful event wrought in her tender brain--clings to the
first person who shows her sympathy. It is Mrs. Hawkins, this good lady
who is still her loving friend. Laura is adopted into the Hawkins
family. Perhaps she forgets in time that she is not their child. She is
an orphan. No, gentlemen, I will not deceive you, she is not an orphan.
Worse than that. There comes another day of agony. She knows that her
father lives. Who is he, where is he? Alas, I cannot tell you. Through
the scenes of this painful history he flits here and there a lunatic!
If he, seeks his daughter, it is the purposeless search of a lunatic, as
one who wanders bereft of reason, crying where is my child? Laura seeks
her father. In vain just as she is about to find him, again and again-he
disappears, he is gone, he vanishes.
"But this is only the prologue to the tragedy. Bear with me while I
relate it. (Mr. Braham takes out a handkerchief, unfolds it slowly;
crashes it in his nervous hand, and throws it on the table). Laura grew
up in her humble southern home, a beautiful creature, the joy, of the
house, the pride of the neighborhood, the loveliest flower in all the
sunny south. She might yet have been happy; she was happy. But the
destroyer came into this paradise. He plucked the sweetest bud that grew
there, and having enjoyed its odor, trampled it in the mire beneath his
feet. George Selby, the deceased, a handsome, accomplished Confederate
Colonel, was this human fiend. He deceived her with a mock marriage;
after some months he brutally, abandoned her, and spurned her as if she
were a contemptible thing; all the time he had a wife in New Orleans.
Laura was crushed. For weeks, as I shall show you by the testimony of
her adopted mother and brother, she hovered over death in delirium.
Gentlemen, did she ever emerge from this delirium? I shall show you that
when she recovered her health, her mind was changed, she was not what she
had been. You can judge yourselves whether the tottering reason ever
recovered its throne.
"Years pass. She is in Washington, apparently the happy favorite of a
brilliant society. Her family have become enormously rich by one of
those sudden turns, in fortune that the inhabitants of America are
familiar with--the discovery of immense mineral wealth in some wild lands
owned by them. She is engaged in a vast philanthropic scheme for the
benefit of the poor, by, the use of this wealth. But, alas, even here
and now, the same, relentless fate pursued her. The villain Selby
appears again upon the scene, as if on purpose to complete the ruin of
her life. He appeared to taunt her with her dishonor, he threatened
exposure if she did not become again the mistress of his passion.
Gentlemen, do you wonder if this woman, thus pursued, lost her reason,
was beside herself with fear, and that her wrongs preyed upon her mind
until she was no longer responsible for her acts? I turn away my head as
one who would not willingly look even upon the just vengeance of Heaven.
(Mr. Braham paused as if overcome by his emotions. Mrs. Hawkins and
Washington were in tears, as were many of the spectators also. The jury
looked scared.)
"Gentlemen, in this condition of affairs it needed but a spark--I do not
say a suggestion, I do not say a hint--from this butterfly Brierly; this
rejected rival, to cause the explosion. I make no charges, but if this
woman was in her right mind when she fled from Washington and reached
this city in company--with Brierly, then I do not know what insanity is."
When Mr. Braham sat down, he felt that he had the jury with him. A burst
of applause followed, which the officer promptly, suppressed. Laura,
with tears in her eyes, turned a grateful look upon her counsel. All the
women among the spectators saw the tears and wept also. They thought as
they also looked at Mr. Braham; how handsome he is!
Mrs. Hawkins took the stand. She was somewhat confused to be the target
of so many, eyes, but her honest and good face at once told in Laura's
favor.
"Mrs. Hawkins," said Mr. Braham, "will you' be kind enough to state the
circumstances of your finding Laura?"
"I object," said Mr. McFlinn; rising to his feet. "This has nothing
whatever to do with the case, your honor. I am surprised at it, even
after the extraordinary speech of my learned friend."
"How do you propose to connect it, Mr. Braham?" asked the judge.
"If it please the court," said Mr. Braham, rising impressively, "your
Honor has permitted the prosecution, and I have submitted without a word;
to go into the most extraordinary testimony to establish a motive. Are
we to be shut out from showing that the motive attributed to us could not
by reason of certain mental conditions exist? I purpose, may, it please
your Honor, to show the cause and the origin of an aberration of mind,
to follow it up, with other like evidence, connecting it with the very
moment of the homicide, showing a condition of the intellect, of the
prisoner that precludes responsibility."
"The State must insist upon its objections," said the District Attorney.
"The purpose evidently is to open the door to a mass of irrelevant
testimony, the object of which is to produce an effect upon the jury your
Honor well understands."
"Perhaps," suggested the judge, "the court ought to hear the testimony,
and exclude it afterwards, if it is irrelevant."
"Will your honor hear argument on that!"
"Certainly."
And argument his honor did hear, or pretend to, for two whole days,
from all the counsel in turn, in the course of which the lawyers read
contradictory decisions enough to perfectly establish both sides, from
volume after volume, whole libraries in fact, until no mortal man could
say what the rules were. The question of insanity in all its legal
aspects was of course drawn into the discussion, and its application
affirmed and denied. The case was felt to turn upon the admission or
rejection of this evidence. It was a sort of test trial of strength
between the lawyers. At the end the judge decided to admit the
testimony, as the judge usually does in such cases, after a sufficient
waste of time in what are called arguments.
Mrs. Hawkins was allowed to go on.
CHAPTER LVI.
Mrs. Hawkins slowly and conscientiously, as if every detail of her family
history was important, told the story of the steamboat explosion, of the
finding and adoption of Laura. Silas, that its Mr. Hawkins, and she
always loved Laura, as if she had been their own, child.
She then narrated the circumstances of Laura's supposed marriage, her
abandonment and long illness, in a manner that touched all hearts. Laura
had been a different woman since then.
Cross-examined. At the time of first finding Laura on the steamboat,
did she notice that Laura's mind was at all deranged? She couldn't say
that she did. After the recovery of Laura from her long illness, did
Mrs. Hawkins think there, were any signs of insanity about her? Witness
confessed that she did not think of it then.
Re-Direct examination. "But she was different after that?"
"O, yes, sir."
Washington Hawkins corroborated his mother's testimony as to Laura's
connection with Col. Selby. He was at Harding during the time of her
living there with him. After Col. Selby's desertion she was almost dead,
never appeared to know anything rightly for weeks. He added that he
never saw such a scoundrel as Selby. (Checked by District attorney.)
Had he noticed any change in, Laura after her illness? Oh, yes.
Whenever, any allusion was made that might recall Selby to mind, she
looked awful--as if she could kill him.
"You mean," said Mr. Braham, "that there was an unnatural, insane gleam
in her eyes?"
"Yes, certainly," said Washington in confusion.
All this was objected to by the district attorney, but it was got before
the jury, and Mr. Braham did not care how much it was ruled out after
that.
"Beriah Sellers was the next witness called. The Colonel made his way to
the stand with majestic, yet bland deliberation. Having taken the oath
and kissed the Bible with a smack intended to show his great respect for
that book, he bowed to his Honor with dignity, to the jury with
familiarity, and then turned to the lawyers and stood in an attitude of
superior attention.
"Mr. Sellers, I believe?" began Mr. Braham.
"Beriah Sellers, Missouri," was the courteous acknowledgment that the
lawyer was correct.
"Mr. Sellers; you know the parties here, you are a friend of the family?"
"Know them all, from infancy, sir. It was me, sir, that induced Silas
Hawkins, Judge Hawkins, to come to Missouri, and make his fortune.
It was by my advice and in company with me, sir, that he went into the
operation of--"
"Yes, yes. Mr. Sellers, did you know a Major Lackland?"
"Knew him, well, sir, knew him and honored him, sir. He was one of the
most remarkable men of our country, sir. A member of congress. He was
often at my mansion sir, for weeks. He used to say to me, 'Col. Sellers,
if you would go into politics, if I had you for a colleague, we should
show Calhoun and Webster that the brain of the country didn't lie east of
the Alleganies. But I said--"
"Yes, yes. I believe Major Lackland is not living, Colonel?"
There was an almost imperceptible sense of pleasure betrayed in the
Colonel's face at this prompt acknowledgment of his title.
"Bless you, no. Died years ago, a miserable death, sir, a ruined man,
a poor sot. He was suspected of selling his vote in Congress, and
probably he did; the disgrace killed' him, he was an outcast, sir,
loathed by himself and by his constituents. And I think; sir"----
The Judge. "You will confine yourself, Col. Sellers to the questions of
the counsel."
"Of course, your honor. This," continued the Colonel in confidential
explanation, "was twenty years ago. I shouldn't have thought of referring
to such a trifling circumstance now. If I remember rightly, sir"--
A bundle of letters was here handed to the witness.
"Do you recognize, that hand-writing?"
"As if it was my own, sir. It's Major Lackland's. I was knowing to these
letters when Judge Hawkins received them. [The Colonel's memory was a
little at fault here. Mr. Hawkins had never gone into detail's with him
on this subject.] He used to show them to me, and say, 'Col, Sellers
you've a mind to untangle this sort of thing.' Lord, how everything
comes back to me. Laura was a little thing then. 'The Judge and I were
just laying our plans to buy the Pilot Knob, and--"
"Colonel, one moment. Your Honor, we put these letters in evidence."
The letters were a portion of the correspondence of Major Lackland with
Silas Hawkins; parts of them were missing and important letters were
referred to that were not here. They related, as the reader knows, to
Laura's father. Lackland had come upon the track of a man who was
searching for a lost child in a Mississippi steamboat explosion years
before. The man was lame in one leg, and appeared to be flitting from
place to place. It seemed that Major Lackland got so close track of him
that he was able to describe his personal appearance and learn his name.
But the letter containing these particulars was lost. Once he heard of
him at a hotel in Washington; but the man departed, leaving an empty
trunk, the day before the major went there. There was something very
mysterious in all his movements.
Col. Sellers, continuing his testimony, said that he saw this lost
letter, but could not now recall the name. Search for the supposed
father had been continued by Lackland, Hawkins and himself for several
years, but Laura was not informed of it till after the death of Hawkins,
for fear of raising false hopes in her mind.
Here the Distract Attorney arose and said,
"Your Honor, I must positively object to letting the witness wander off
into all these irrelevant details."
Mr. Braham. "I submit your honor, that we cannot be interrupted in this
manner we have suffered the state to have full swing. Now here is a
witness, who has known the prisoner from infancy, and is competent to
testify upon the one point vital to her safety. Evidently he is a
gentleman of character, and his knowledge of the case cannot be shut out
without increasing the aspect of persecution which the State's attitude
towards the prisoner already has assumed."
The wrangle continued, waxing hotter and hotter. The Colonel seeing the
attention of the counsel and Court entirely withdrawn from him, thought
he perceived here his opportunity, turning and beaming upon the jury, he
began simply to talk, but as the grandeur of his position grew upon him
--talk broadened unconsciously into an oratorical vein.
"You see how she was situated, gentlemen; poor child, it might have
broken her, heart to let her mind get to running on such a thing as that.
You see, from what we could make out her father was lame in the left leg
and had a deep scar on his left forehead. And so ever since the day she
found out she had another father, she never could, run across a lame
stranger without being taken all over with a shiver, and almost fainting
where she, stood. And the next minute she would go right after that man.
Once she stumbled on a stranger with a game leg; and she was the most
grateful thing in this world--but it was the wrong leg, and it was days
and days before she could leave her bed. Once she found a man with a scar
on his forehead and she was just going to throw herself into his arms,`
but he stepped out just then, and there wasn't anything the matter with
his legs. Time and time again, gentlemen of the jury, has this poor
suffering orphan flung herself on her knees with all her heart's
gratitude in her eyes before some scarred and crippled veteran, but
always, always to be disappointed, always to be plunged into new
despair--if his legs were right his scar was wrong, if his scar was right
his legs were wrong. Never could find a man that would fill the bill.
Gentlemen of the jury; you have hearts, you have feelings, you have warm
human sympathies; you can feel for this poor suffering child. Gentlemen
of the jury, if I had time, if I had the opportunity, if I might be
permitted to go on and tell you the thousands and thousands and thousands
of mutilated strangers this poor girl has started out of cover, and
hunted from city to city, from state to state, from continent to
continent, till she has run them down and found they wan't the ones; I
know your hearts--"
By this time the Colonel had become so warmed up, that his voice, had
reached a pitch above that of the contending counsel; the lawyers
suddenly stopped, and they and the Judge turned towards the Colonel and
remained far several seconds too surprised at this novel exhibition to
speak. In this interval of silence, an appreciation of the situation
gradually stole over the, audience, and an explosion of laughter
followed, in which even the Court and the bar could hardly keep from
joining.
Sheriff. "Order in the Court."
The Judge. "The witness will confine his remarks to answers to
questions."
The Colonel turned courteously to the Judge and said,
"Certainly, your Honor--certainly. I am not well acquainted with the
forms of procedure in the courts of New York, but in the West, sir, in
the West--"
The Judge. "There, there, that will do, that will do!
"You see, your Honor, there were no questions asked me, and I thought I
would take advantage of the lull in the proceedings to explain to the,
jury a very significant train of--"
The Judge. "That will DO sir! Proceed Mr. Braham."
"Col. Sellers, have you any, reason to suppose that this man is still
living?"
"Every reason, sir, every reason.
"State why"
"I have never heard of his death, sir. It has never come to my
knowledge. In fact, sir, as I once said to Governor--"
"Will you state to the jury what has been the effect of the knowledge of
this wandering and evidently unsettled being, supposed to be her father,
upon the mind of Miss Hawkins for so many years!"
Question objected to. Question ruled out.
Cross-examined. "Major Sellers, what is your occupation?"
The Colonel looked about him loftily, as if casting in his mind what
would be the proper occupation of a person of such multifarious interests
and then said with dignity:
"A gentleman, sir. My father used to always say, sir"--
"Capt. Sellers, did you; ever see this man, this supposed father?"
"No, Sir. But upon one occasion, old Senator Thompson said to me, its my
opinion, Colonel Sellers"--
"Did you ever see any body who had seen him?"
"No, sir: It was reported around at one time, that"--
"That is all."
The defense then sent a day in the examination of medical experts in
insanity who testified, on the evidence heard, that sufficient causes had
occurred to produce an insane mind in the prisoner. Numerous cases were
cited to sustain this opinion. There was such a thing as momentary
insanity, in which the person, otherwise rational to all appearances,
was for the time actually bereft of reason, and not responsible for his
acts. The causes of this momentary possession could often be found in
the person's life. [It afterwards came out that the chief expert for the
defense, was paid a thousand dollars for looking into the case.]
The prosecution consumed another day in the examination of experts
refuting the notion of insanity. These causes might have produced
insanity, but there was no evidence that they have produced it in this
case, or that the prisoner was not at the time of the commission of the
crime in full possession of her ordinary faculties.
The trial had now lasted two weeks. It required four days now for the
lawyers to "sum up." These arguments of the counsel were very important
to their friends, and greatly enhanced their reputation at the bar but
they have small interest to us. Mr. Braham in his closing speech
surpassed himself; his effort is still remembered as the greatest in the
criminal annals of New York.
Mr. Braham re-drew for the jury the picture, of Laura's early life; he
dwelt long upon that painful episode of the pretended marriage and the
desertion. Col. Selby, he said, belonged, gentlemen; to what is called
the "upper classes:" It is the privilege of the "upper classes" to prey
upon the sons and daughters of the people. The Hawkins family, though
allied to the best blood of the South, were at the time in humble
circumstances. He commented upon her parentage. Perhaps her agonized
father, in his intervals of sanity, was still searching for his lost
daughter. Would he one day hear that she had died a felon's death?
Society had pursued her, fate had pursued her, and in a moment of
delirium she had turned and defied fate and society. He dwelt upon the
admission of base wrong in Col. Selby's dying statement. He drew a
vivid, picture of the villain at last overtaken by the vengeance of
Heaven. Would the jury say that this retributive justice, inflicted by
an outraged, and deluded woman, rendered irrational by the most cruel
wrongs, was in the nature of a foul, premeditated murder? "Gentlemen;
it is enough for me to look upon the life of this most beautiful and
accomplished of her sex, blasted by the heartless villainy of man,
without seeing, at the-end of it; the horrible spectacle of a gibbet.
Gentlemen, we are all human, we have all sinned, we all have need of
mercy. But I do not ask mercy of you who are the guardians of society
and of the poor waifs, its sometimes wronged victims; I ask only that
justice which you and I shall need in that last, dreadful hour, when
death will be robbed of half its terrors if we can reflect that we have
never wronged a human being. Gentlemen, the life of this lovely and once
happy girl, this now stricken woman, is in your hands."
The jury were risibly affected. Half the court room was in tears. If a
vote of both spectators and jury could have been taken then, the verdict
would have been, "let her go, she has suffered enough."
But the district attorney had the closing argument. Calmly and without
malice or excitement he reviewed the testimony. As the cold facts were
unrolled, fear settled upon the listeners. There was no escape from the
murder or its premeditation. Laura's character as a lobbyist in
Washington which had been made to appear incidentally in the evidence was
also against her: the whole body of the testimony of the defense was
shown to be irrelevant, introduced only to excite sympathy, and not
giving a color of probability to the absurd supposition of insanity.
The attorney then dwelt upon, the insecurity of life in the city, and the
growing immunity with which women committed murders. Mr. McFlinn made a
very able speech; convincing the reason without touching the feelings.
The Judge in his charge reviewed the, testimony with great show of
impartiality. He ended by saying that the verdict must be acquittal or
murder in the first, degree. If you find that the prisoner committed a
homicide, in possession of her reason and with premeditation, your
verdict will be accordingly. If you find she was not in her right mind,
that she was the victim of insanity, hereditary or momentary, as it has
been explained, your verdict will take that into account.
As the Judge finished his charge, the spectators anxiously watched the
faces of the jury. It was not a remunerative study. In the court room
the general feeling was in favor of Laura, but whether this feeling
extended to the jury, their stolid faces did not reveal. The public
outside hoped for a conviction, as it always does; it wanted an example;
the newspapers trusted the jury would have the courage to do its duty.
When Laura was convicted, then the public would tern around and abuse the
governor if he did; not pardon her.
The jury went out. Mr. Braham preserved his serene confidence, but
Laura's friends were dispirited. Washington and Col. Sellers had been
obliged to go to Washington, and they had departed under the unspoken
fear the verdict would be unfavorable, a disagreement was the best they
could hope for, and money was needed. The necessity of the passage of
the University bill was now imperative.
The Court waited, for, some time, but the jury gave no signs of coming
in. Mr. Braham said it was extraordinary. The Court then took a recess
for a couple of hours. Upon again coming in, word was brought that the
jury had not yet agreed.
But the, jury, had a question. The point upon which, they wanted
instruction was this. They wanted to know if Col. Sellers was related to
the Hawkins family. The court then adjourned till morning.
Mr. Braham, who was in something of a pet, remarked to Mr. O'Toole that
they must have been deceived, that juryman with the broken nose could
read!
CHAPTER LVII.
The momentous day was at hand--a day that promised to make or mar the
fortunes of Hawkins family for all time. Washington Hawkins and Col.
Sellers were both up early, for neither of them could sleep. Congress
was expiring, and was passing bill after bill as if they were gasps and
each likely to be its last. The University was on file for its third
reading this day, and to-morrow Washington would be a millionaire and
Sellers no longer, impecunious but this day, also, or at farthest the
next, the jury in Laura's Case would come to a decision of some kind or
other--they would find her guilty, Washington secretly feared, and then
the care and the trouble would all come back again, and these would be
wearing months of besieging judges for new trials; on this day, also, the
re-election of Mr. Dilworthy to the Senate would take place. So
Washington's mind was in a state of turmoil; there were more interests at
stake than it could handle with serenity. He exulted when he thought of
his millions; he was filled with dread when he thought of Laura. But
Sellers was excited and happy. He said:
"Everything is going right, everything's going perfectly right. Pretty
soon the telegrams will begin to rattle in, and then you'll see, my boy.
Let the jury do what they please; what difference is it going to make?
To-morrow we can send a million to New York and set the lawyers at work
on the judges; bless your heart they will go before judge after judge and
exhort and beseech and pray and shed tears. They always do; and they
always win, too. And they will win this time. They will get a writ of
habeas corpus, and a stay of proceedings, and a supersedeas, and a new
trial and a nolle prosequi, and there you are! That's the routine, and
it's no trick at all to a New York lawyer. That's the regular routine
--everything's red tape and routine in the law, you see; it's all Greek
to you, of course, but to a man who is acquainted with those things it's
mere--I'll explain it to you sometime. Everything's going to glide right
along easy and comfortable now. You'll see, Washington, you'll see how
it will be. And then, let me think ..... Dilwortby will be elected
to-day, and by day, after to-morrow night be will be in New York ready to
put in his shovel--and you haven't lived in Washington all this time not
to know that the people who walk right by a Senator whose term is up
without hardly seeing him will be down at the deepo to say 'Welcome back
and God bless you; Senator, I'm glad to see you, sir!' when he comes
along back re-elected, you know. Well, you see, his influence was
naturally running low when he left here, but now he has got a new
six-years' start, and his suggestions will simply just weigh a couple of
tons a-piece day after tomorrow. Lord bless you he could rattle through
that habeas corpus and supersedeas and all those things for Laura all by
himself if he wanted to, when he gets back."
"I hadn't thought of that," said Washington, brightening, but it is so.
A newly-elected Senator is a power, I know that."
"Yes indeed he is.--Why it, is just human nature. Look at me. When we
first came here, I was Mr. Sellers, and Major Sellers, Captain Sellers,
but nobody could ever get it right, somehow; but the minute our bill
went, through the House, I was Col. Sellers every time. And nobody could
do enough for me, and whatever I said was wonderful, Sir, it was always
wonderful; I never seemed to say any flat things at all. It was Colonel,
won't you come and dine with us; and Colonel why don't we ever see you at
our house; and the Colonel says this; and the Colonel says that; and we
know such-and-such is so-and-so because my husband heard Col. Sellers say
so. Don't you see? Well, the Senate adjourned and left our bill high,
and dry, and I'll be hanged if I warn't Old Sellers from that day, till
our bill passed the House again last week. Now I'm the Colonel again;
and if I were to eat all the dinners I am invited to, I reckon I'd wear
my teeth down level with my gums in a couple of weeks."
"Well I do wonder what you will be to-morrow; Colonel, after the
President signs the bill!"
"General, sir?--General, without a doubt. Yes, sir, tomorrow it will be
General, let me congratulate you, sir; General, you've done a great work,
sir;--you've done a great work for the niggro; Gentlemen allow me the
honor to introduce my friend General Sellers, the humane friend of the
niggro. Lord bless me; you'll' see the newspapers say, General Sellers
and servants arrived in the city last night and is stopping at the Fifth
Avenue; and General Sellers has accepted a reception and banquet by the
Cosmopolitan Club; you'll see the General's opinions quoted, too
--and what the General has to say about the propriety of a new trial and
a habeas corpus for the unfortunate Miss Hawkins will not be without
weight in influential quarters, I can tell you."
"And I want to be the first to shake your faithful old hand and salute
you with your new honors, and I want to do it now--General!" said
Washington, suiting the action to the word, and accompanying it with all
the meaning that a cordial grasp and eloquent eyes could give it.
The Colonel was touched; he was pleased and proud, too; his face answered
for that.
Not very long after breakfast the telegrams began to arrive. The first
was from Braham, and ran thus:
"We feel certain that the verdict will be rendered to-day. Be it
good or bad, let it find us ready to make the next move instantly,
whatever it may be:"
"That's the right talk," said Sellers. "That Graham's a wonderful man.
He was the only man there that really understood me; he told me so
himself, afterwards."
The next telegram was from Mr. Dilworthy:
"I have not only brought over the Great Invincible, but through him
a dozen more of the opposition. Shall be re-elected to-day by an
overwhelming majority."
"Good again!" said the Colonel. "That man's talent for organization is
something marvelous. He wanted me to go out there and engineer that
thing, but I said, No, Dilworthy, I must be on hand here,--both on
Laura's account and the bill's--but you've no trifling genius for
organization yourself, said I--and I was right. You go ahead, said I
--you can fix it--and so he has. But I claim no credit for that--if I
stiffened up his back-bone a little, I simply put him in the way to make
his fight--didn't undertake it myself. He has captured Noble--.
I consider that a splendid piece of diplomacy--Splendid, Sir!"
By and by came another dispatch from New York:
"Jury still out. Laura calm and firm as a statue. The report that the
jury have brought her in guilty is false and premature."
"Premature!" gasped Washington, turning white. "Then they all expect
that sort of a verdict, when it comes in."
And so did he; but he had not had courage enough to put it into words.
He had been preparing himself for the worst, but after all his
preparation the bare suggestion of the possibility of such a verdict
struck him cold as death.
The friends grew impatient, now; the telegrams did not come fast enough:
even the lightning could not keep up with their anxieties. They walked
the floor talking disjointedly and listening for the door-bell. Telegram
after telegram came. Still no result. By and by there was one which
contained a single line:
"Court now coming in after brief recess to hear verdict. Jury ready."
"Oh, I wish they would finish!" said Washington. "This suspense is
killing me by inches!"
Then came another telegram:
"Another hitch somewhere. Jury want a little more time and further
instructions."
"Well, well, well, this is trying," said the Colonel. And after a pause,
"No dispatch from Dilworthy for two hours, now. Even a dispatch from him
would be better than nothing, just to vary this thing."
They waited twenty minutes. It seemed twenty hours.
"Come!" said Washington. "I can't wait for the telegraph boy to come all
the way up here. Let's go down to Newspaper Row--meet him on the way."
While they were passing along the Avenue, they saw someone putting up a
great display-sheet on the bulletin board of a newspaper office, and an
eager crowd of men was collecting abort the place. Washington and the
Colonel ran to the spot and read this:
"Tremendous Sensation! Startling news from Saint's Rest! On first ballot
for U. S. Senator, when voting was about to begin, Mr. Noble rose in his
place and drew forth a package, walked forward and laid it on the
Speaker's desk, saying, 'This contains $7,000 in bank bills and was given
me by Senator Dilworthy in his bed-chamber at midnight last night to buy
--my vote for him--I wish the Speaker to count the money and retain it to
pay the expense of prosecuting this infamous traitor for bribery. The
whole legislature was stricken speechless with dismay and astonishment.
Noble further said that there were fifty members present with money in
their pockets, placed there by Dilworthy to buy their votes. Amidst
unparalleled excitement the ballot was now taken, and J. W. Smith elected
U. S. Senator; Dilworthy receiving not one vote! Noble promises damaging
exposures concerning Dilworthy and certain measures of his now pending in
Congress.
"Good heavens and earth!" exclaimed the Colonel.
"To the Capitol!" said Washington. "Fly!"
And they did fly. Long before they got there the newsboys were running
ahead of them with Extras, hot from the press, announcing the astounding
news.
Arrived in the gallery of the Senate, the friends saw a curious spectacle
very Senator held an Extra in his hand and looked as interested as if it
contained news of the destruction of the earth. Not a single member was
paying the least attention to the business of the hour.
The Secretary, in a loud voice, was just beginning to read the title of a
bill:
"House-Bill--No. 4,231,--An-Act-to-Found-and-Incorporate-the Knobs-
Industrial-University!--Read-first-and-second-time-considered-in-
committee-of-the-whole-ordered-engrossed and-passed-to-third-reading-and-
final passage!"
The President--"Third reading of the bill!"
The two friends shook in their shoes. Senators threw down their extras
and snatched a word or two with each other in whispers. Then the gavel
rapped to command silence while the names were called on the ayes and
nays. Washington grew paler and paler, weaker and weaker while the
lagging list progressed; and when it was finished, his head fell
helplessly forward on his arms. The fight was fought, the long struggle
was over, and he was a pauper. Not a man had voted for the bill!
Col. Sellers was bewildered and well nigh paralyzed, himself. But no man
could long consider his own troubles in the presence of such suffering as
Washington's. He got him up and supported him--almost carried him
indeed--out of the building and into a carriage. All the way home
Washington lay with his face against the Colonel's shoulder and merely
groaned and wept. The Colonel tried as well as he could under the dreary
circumstances to hearten him a little, but it was of no use. Washington
was past all hope of cheer, now. He only said:
"Oh, it is all over--it is all over for good, Colonel. We must beg our
bread, now. We never can get up again. It was our last chance, and it
is gone. They will hang Laura! My God they will hang her! Nothing can
save the poor girl now. Oh, I wish with all my soul they would hang me
instead!"
Arrived at home, Washington fell into a chair and buried his face in his
hands and gave full way to his misery. The Colonel did not know where to
turn nor what to do. The servant maid knocked at the door and passed in
a telegram, saying it had come while they were gone.
The Colonel tore it open and read with the voice of a man-of-war's
broadside:
"VERDICT OF JURY, NOT GUILTY AND LAURA IS FREE!"
CHAPTER LVIII.
The court room was packed on the morning on which the verdict of the jury
was expected, as it had been every day of the trial, and by the same
spectators, who had followed its progress with such intense interest.
There is a delicious moment of excitement which the frequenter of trials
well knows, and which he would not miss for the world. It is that
instant when the foreman of the jury stands up to give the verdict,
and before he has opened his fateful lips.
The court assembled and waited. It was an obstinate jury.
It even had another question--this intelligent jury--to ask the judge
this morning.
The question was this: "Were the doctors clear that the deceased had no
disease which might soon have carried him off, if he had not been shot?"
There was evidently one jury man who didn't want to waste life, and was
willing to stake a general average, as the jury always does in a civil
case, deciding not according to the evidence but reaching the verdict by
some occult mental process.
During the delay the spectators exhibited unexampled patience, finding
amusement and relief in the slightest movements of the court, the
prisoner and the lawyers. Mr. Braham divided with Laura the attention
of the house. Bets were made by the Sheriff's deputies on the verdict,
with large odds in favor of a disagreement.
It was afternoon when it was announced that the jury was coming in.
The reporters took their places and were all attention; the judge and
lawyers were in their seats; the crowd swayed and pushed in eager
expectancy, as the jury walked in and stood up in silence.
Judge. "Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your verdict?"
Foreman. "We have."
Judge. "What is it?"
Foreman. "NOT GUILTY."
A shout went up from the entire room and a tumult of cheering which the
court in vain attempted to quell. For a few moments all order was lost.
The spectators crowded within the bar and surrounded Laura who, calmer
than anyone else, was supporting her aged mother, who had almost fainted
from excess of joy.
And now occurred one of those beautiful incidents which no fiction-writer
would dare to imagine, a scene of touching pathos, creditable to our
fallen humanity. In the eyes of the women of the audience Mr. Braham was
the hero of the occasion; he had saved the life of the prisoner; and
besides he was such a handsome man. The women could not restrain their
long pent-up emotions. They threw themselves upon Mr. Braham in a
transport of gratitude; they kissed him again and again, the young as
well as the advanced in years, the married as well as the ardent single
women; they improved the opportunity with a touching self-sacrifice; in
the words of a newspaper of the day they "lavished him with kisses."
It was something sweet to do; and it would be sweet for a woman to
remember in after years, that she had kissed Braham! Mr. Braham himself
received these fond assaults with the gallantry of his nation, enduring
the ugly, and heartily paying back beauty in its own coin.
This beautiful scene is still known in New York as "the kissing of
Braham."
When the tumult of congratulation had a little spent itself, and order
was restored, Judge O'Shaunnessy said that it now became his duty to
provide for the proper custody and treatment of the acquitted. The
verdict of the jury having left no doubt that the woman was of an unsound
mind, with a kind of insanity dangerous to the safety of the community,
she could not be permitted to go at large. "In accordance with the
directions of the law in such cases," said the Judge, "and in obedience
to the dictates of a wise humanity, I hereby commit Laura Hawkins to the
care of the Superintendent of the State Hospital for Insane Criminals, to
be held in confinement until the State Commissioners on Insanity shall
order her discharge. Mr. Sheriff, you will attend at once to the
execution of this decree."
Laura was overwhelmed and terror-stricken. She had expected to walk
forth in freedom in a few moments. The revulsion was terrible. Her
mother appeared like one shaken with an ague fit. Laura insane! And
about to be locked up with madmen! She had never contemplated this.
Mr. Graham said he should move at once for a writ of 'habeas corpus'.
But the judge could not do less than his duty, the law must have its way.
As in the stupor of a sudden calamity, and not fully comprehending it,
Mrs. Hawkins saw Laura led away by the officer.
With little space for thought she was, rapidly driven to the railway
station, and conveyed to the Hospital for Lunatic Criminals. It was only
when she was within this vast and grim abode of madness that she realized
the horror of her situation. It was only when she was received by the
kind physician and read pity in his eyes, and saw his look of hopeless
incredulity when she attempted to tell him that she was not insane; it
was only when she passed through the ward to which she was consigned and
saw the horrible creatures, the victims of a double calamity, whose
dreadful faces she was hereafter to see daily, and was locked into the
small, bare room that was to be her home, that all her fortitude forsook
her. She sank upon the bed, as soon as she was left alone--she had been
searched by the matron--and tried to think. But her brain was in a
whirl. She recalled Braham's speech, she recalled the testimony
regarding her lunacy. She wondered if she were not mad; she felt that
she soon should be among these loathsome creatures. Better almost to
have died, than to slowly go mad in this confinement.
--We beg the reader's pardon. This is not history, which has just been
written. It is really what would have occurred if this were a novel.
If this were a work of fiction, we should not dare to dispose of Laura
otherwise. True art and any attention to dramatic proprieties required
it. The novelist who would turn loose upon society an insane murderess
could not escape condemnation. Besides, the safety of society, the
decencies of criminal procedure, what we call our modern civilization,
all would demand that Laura should be disposed of in the manner we have
described. Foreigners, who read this sad story, will be unable to
understand any other termination of it.
But this is history and not fiction. There is no such law or custom as
that to which his Honor is supposed to have referred; Judge O'Shaunnessy
would not probably pay any attention to it if there were. There is no
Hospital for Insane Criminals; there is no State commission of lunacy.
What actually occurred when the tumult in the court room had subsided the
sagacious reader will now learn.
Laura left the court room, accompanied by her mother and other friends,
amid the congratulations of those assembled, and was cheered as she
entered a carriage, and drove away. How sweet was the sunlight, how
exhilarating the sense of freedom! Were not these following cheers the
expression of popular approval and affection? Was she not the heroine of
the hour?
It was with a feeling of triumph that Laura reached her hotel, a scornful
feeling of victory over society with its own weapons.
Mrs. Hawkins shared not at all in this feeling; she was broken with the
disgrace and the long anxiety.
"Thank God, Laura," she said, "it is over. Now we will go away from this
hateful city. Let us go home at once."
"Mother," replied Laura, speaking with some tenderness, "I cannot go with
you. There, don't cry, I cannot go back to that life."
Mrs. Hawkins was sobbing. This was more cruel than anything else, for
she had a dim notion of what it would be to leave Laura to herself.
"No, mother, you have been everything to me. You know how dearly I love
you. But I cannot go back."
A boy brought in a telegraphic despatch. Laura took it and read:
"The bill is lost. Dilworthy ruined. (Signed) WASHINGTON."
For a moment the words swam before her eyes. The next her eyes flashed
fire as she handed the dispatch to her m other and bitterly said,
"The world is against me. Well, let it be, let it. I am against it."
"This is a cruel disappointment," said Mrs. Hawkins, to whom one grief
more or less did not much matter now, "to you and, Washington; but we
must humbly bear it."
"Bear it;" replied Laura scornfully, "I've all my life borne it, and fate
has thwarted me at every step."
A servant came to the door to say that there was a gentleman below who
wished to speak with Miss Hawkins. "J. Adolphe Griller" was the name
Laura read on the card. "I do not know such a person. He probably comes
from Washington. Send him up."
Mr. Griller entered. He was a small man, slovenly in dress, his tone
confidential, his manner wholly void of animation, all his features below
the forehead protruding--particularly the apple of his throat--hair
without a kink in it, a hand with no grip, a meek, hang-dog countenance.
a falsehood done in flesh and blood; for while every visible sign about
him proclaimed him a poor, witless, useless weakling, the truth was that
he had the brains to plan great enterprises and the pluck to carry them
through. That was his reputation, and it was a deserved one. He softly
said:
"I called to see you on business, Miss Hawkins. You have my card?"
Laura bowed.
Mr. Griller continued to purr, as softly as before.
"I will proceed to business. I am a business man. I am a lecture-agent,
Miss Hawkins, and as soon as I saw that you were acquitted, it occurred
to me that an early interview would be mutually beneficial."
"I don't understand you, sir," said Laura coldly.
"No? You see, Miss Hawkins, this is your opportunity. If you will enter
the lecture field under good auspices, you will carry everything before
you."
"But, sir, I never lectured, I haven't any lecture, I don't know anything
about it."
"Ah, madam, that makes no difference--no real difference. It is not
necessary to be able to lecture in order to go into the lecture tour.
If ones name is celebrated all over the land, especially, and, if she is
also beautiful, she is certain to draw large audiences."
"But what should I lecture about?" asked Laura, beginning in spite of
herself to be a little interested as well as amused.
"Oh, why; woman--something about woman, I should say; the marriage
relation, woman's fate, anything of that sort. Call it The Revelations
of a Woman's Life; now, there's a good title. I wouldn't want any better
title than that. I'm prepared to make you an offer, Miss Hawkins,
a liberal offer,--twelve thousand dollars for thirty nights."
Laura thought. She hesitated. Why not? It would give her employment,
money. She must do something.
"I will think of it, and let you know soon. But still, there is very
little likelihood that I--however, we will not discuss it further now."
"Remember, that the sooner we get to work the better, Miss Hawkins,
public curiosity is so fickle. Good day, madam."
The close of the trial released Mr. Harry Brierly and left him free to
depart upon his long talked of Pacific-coast mission. He was very
mysterious about it, even to Philip.
"It's confidential, old boy," he said, "a little scheme we have hatched
up. I don't mind telling you that it's a good deal bigger thing than
that in Missouri, and a sure thing. I wouldn't take a half a million
just for my share. And it will open something for you, Phil. You will
hear from me."
Philip did hear, from Harry a few months afterward. Everything promised
splendidly, but there was a little delay. Could Phil let him have a
hundred, say, for ninety days?
Philip himself hastened to Philadelphia, and, as soon as the spring
opened, to the mine at Ilium, and began transforming the loan he had
received from Squire Montague into laborers' wages. He was haunted with
many anxieties; in the first place, Ruth was overtaxing her strength in
her hospital labors, and Philip felt as if he must move heaven and earth
to save her from such toil and suffering. His increased pecuniary
obligation oppressed him. It seemed to him also that he had been one
cause of the misfortune to the Bolton family, and that he was dragging
into loss and ruin everybody who associated with him. He worked on day
after day and week after week, with a feverish anxiety.
It would be wicked, thought Philip, and impious, to pray for luck; he
felt that perhaps he ought not to ask a blessing upon the sort of labor
that was only a venture; but yet in that daily petition, which this very
faulty and not very consistent young Christian gentleman put up, he
prayed earnestly enough for Ruth and for the Boltons and for those whom
he loved and who trusted in him, and that his life might not be a
misfortune to them and a failure to himself.
Since this young fellow went out into the world from his New England
home, he had done some things that he would rather his mother should not
know, things maybe that he would shrink from telling Ruth. At a certain
green age young gentlemen are sometimes afraid of being called milksops,
and Philip's associates had not always been the most select, such as
these historians would have chosen for him, or whom at a later, period he
would have chosen for himself. It seemed inexplicable, for instance,
that his life should have been thrown so much with his college
acquaintance, Henry Brierly.
Yet, this was true of Philip, that in whatever company he had been he had
never been ashamed to stand up for the principles he learned from his
mother, and neither raillery nor looks of wonder turned him from that
daily habit had learned at his mother's knees.--Even flippant Harry
respected this, and perhaps it was one of the reasons why Harry and all
who knew Philip trusted him implicitly. And yet it must be confessed
that Philip did not convey the impression to the world of a very serious
young man, or of a man who might not rather easily fall into temptation.
One looking for a real hero would have to go elsewhere.
The parting between Laura and her mother was exceedingly painful to both.
It was as if two friends parted on a wide plain, the one to journey
towards the setting and the other towards the rising sun, each
comprehending that every, step henceforth must separate their lives,
wider and wider.
CHAPTER LIX.
When Mr. Noble's bombshell fell, in Senator Dilworthy's camp, the
statesman was disconcerted for a moment. For a moment; that was all.
The next moment he was calmly up and doing. From the centre of our
country to its circumference, nothing was talked of but Mr. Noble's
terrible revelation, and the people were furious. Mind, they were not
furious because bribery was uncommon in our public life, but merely
because here was another case. Perhaps it did not occur to the nation of
good and worthy people that while they continued to sit comfortably at
home and leave the true source of our political power (the "primaries,")
in the hands of saloon-keepers, dog-fanciers and hod-carriers, they could
go on expecting "another" case of this kind, and even dozens and hundreds
of them, and never be disappointed. However, they may have thought that
to sit at home and grumble would some day right the evil.
Yes, the nation was excited, but Senator Dilworthy was calm--what was
left of him after the explosion of the shell. Calm, and up and doing.
What did he do first? What would you do first, after you had tomahawked
your mother at the breakfast table for putting too much sugar in your
coffee? You would "ask for a suspension of public opinion." That is
what Senator Dilworthy did. It is the custom. He got the usual amount
of suspension. Far and wide he was called a thief, a briber, a promoter
of steamship subsidies, railway swindles, robberies of the government in
all possible forms and fashions. Newspapers and everybody else called
him a pious hypocrite, a sleek, oily fraud, a reptile who manipulated
temperance movements, prayer meetings, Sunday schools, public charities,
missionary enterprises, all for his private benefit. And as these
charges were backed up by what seemed to be good and sufficient,
evidence, they were believed with national unanimity.
Then Mr. Dilworthy made another move. He moved instantly to Washington
and "demanded an investigation." Even this could not pass without,
comment. Many papers used language to this effect:
"Senator Dilworthy's remains have demanded an investigation. This
sounds fine and bold and innocent; but when we reflect that they
demand it at the hands of the Senate of the United States, it simply
becomes matter for derision. One might as well set the gentlemen
detained in the public prisons to trying each other. This
investigation is likely to be like all other Senatorial
investigations--amusing but not useful. Query. Why does the Senate
still stick to this pompous word, 'Investigation?' One does not
blindfold one's self in order to investigate an object."
Mr. Dilworthy appeared in his place in the Senate and offered a
resolution appointing a committee to investigate his case. It carried,
of course, and the committee was appointed. Straightway the newspapers
said:
"Under the guise of appointing a committee to investigate the late
Mr. Dilworthy, the Senate yesterday appointed a committee to
investigate his accuser, Mr. Noble. This is the exact spirit and
meaning of the resolution, and the committee cannot try anybody but
Mr. Noble without overstepping its authority. That Dilworthy had
the effrontery to offer such a resolution will surprise no one, and
that the Senate could entertain it without blushing and pass it
without shame will surprise no one. We are now reminded of a note
which we have received from the notorious burglar Murphy, in which
he finds fault with a statement of ours to the effect that he had
served one term in the penitentiary and also one in the U. S.
Senate. He says, 'The latter statement is untrue and does me great
injustice.' After an unconscious sarcasm like that, further comment
is unnecessary."
And yet the Senate was roused by the Dilworthy trouble. Many speeches
were made. One Senator (who was accused in the public prints of selling
his chances of re-election to his opponent for $50,000 and had not yet
denied the charge) said that, "the presence in the Capital of such a
creature as this man Noble, to testify against a brother member of their
body, was an insult to the Senate."
Another Senator said, "Let the investigation go on and let it make an
example of this man Noble; let it teach him and men like him that they
could not attack the reputation of a United States-Senator with
impunity."
Another said he was glad the investigation was to be had, for it was high
time that the Senate should crush some cur like this man Noble, and thus
show his kind that it was able and resolved to uphold its ancient
dignity.
A by-stander laughed, at this finely delivered peroration; and said:
"Why, this is the Senator who franked his, baggage home through the mails
last week-registered, at that. However, perhaps he was merely engaged in
'upholding the ancient dignity of the Senate,'--then."
"No, the modern dignity of it," said another by-stander. "It don't
resemble its ancient dignity but it fits its modern style like a glove."
There being no law against making offensive remarks about U. S.
Senators, this conversation, and others like it, continued without let or
hindrance. But our business is with the investigating committee.
Mr. Noble appeared before the Committee of the Senate; and testified to
the following effect:
He said that he was a member of the State legislature of the
Happy-Land-of-Canaan; that on the --- day of ------ he assembled himself
together at the city of Saint's Rest, the capital of the State, along
with his brother legislators; that he was known to be a political enemy
of Mr. Dilworthy and bitterly opposed to his re-election; that Mr.
Dilworthy came to Saint's Rest and reported to be buying pledges of votes
with money; that the said Dilworthy sent for him to come to his room in
the hotel at night, and he went; was introduced to Mr. Dilworthy; called
two or three times afterward at Dilworthy's request--usually after
midnight; Mr. Dilworthy urged him to vote for him Noble declined;
Dilworthy argued; said he was bound to be elected, and could then ruin
him (Noble) if he voted no; said he had every railway and every public
office and stronghold of political power in the State under his thumb,
and could set up or pull down any man he chose; gave instances showing
where and how he had used this power; if Noble would vote for him he
would make him a Representative in Congress; Noble still declined to
vote, and said he did not believe Dilworthy was going to be elected;
Dilworthy showed a list of men who would vote for him--a majority of the
legislature; gave further proofs of his power by telling Noble everything
the opposing party had done or said in secret caucus; claimed that his
spies reported everything to him, and that--
Here a member of the Committee objected that this evidence was irrelevant
and also in opposition to the spirit of the Committee's instructions,
because if these things reflected upon any one it was upon Mr. Dilworthy.
The chairman said, let the person proceed with his statement--the
Committee could exclude evidence that did not bear upon the case.
Mr. Noble continued. He said that his party would cast him out if he
voted for Mr, Dilworthy; Dilwortby said that that would inure to his
benefit because he would then be a recognized friend of his (Dilworthy's)
and he could consistently exalt him politically and make his fortune;
Noble said he was poor, and it was hard to tempt him so; Dilworthy said
he would fix that; he said, "Tell, me what you want, and say you will vote
for me;" Noble could not say; Dilworthy said "I will give you $5,000."
A Committee man said, impatiently, that this stuff was all outside the
case, and valuable time was being wasted; this was all, a plain
reflection upon a brother Senator. The Chairman said it was the quickest
way to proceed, and the evidence need have no weight.
Mr. Noble continued. He said he told Dilworthy that $5,000 was not much
to pay for a man's honor, character and everything that was worth having;
Dilworthy said he was surprised; he considered $5,000 a fortune--for some
men; asked what Noble's figure was; Noble said he could not think $10,000
too little; Dilworthy said it was a great deal too much; he would not do
it for any other man, but he had conceived a liking for Noble, and where
he liked a man his heart yearned to help him; he was aware that Noble was
poor, and had a family to support, and that he bore an unblemished
reputation at home; for such a man and such a man's influence he could do
much, and feel that to help such a man would be an act that would have
its reward; the struggles of the poor always touched him; he believed
that Noble would make a good use of this money and that it would cheer
many a sad heart and needy home; he would give the, $10,000; all he
desired in return was that when the balloting began, Noble should cast
his vote for him and should explain to the legislature that upon looking
into the charges against Mr. Dilworthy of bribery, corruption, and
forwarding stealing measures in Congress he had found them to be base
calumnies upon a man whose motives were pure and whose character was
stainless; he then took from his pocket $2,000 in bank bills and handed
them to Noble, and got another package containing $5,000 out of his trunk
and gave to him also. He----
A Committee man jumped up, and said:
"At last, Mr. Chairman, this shameless person has arrived at the point.
This is sufficient and conclusive. By his own confession he has received
a bribe, and did it deliberately.
"This is a grave offense, and cannot be passed over in silence, sir. By
the terms of our instructions we can now proceed to mete out to him such
punishment as is meet for one who has maliciously brought disrespect upon
a Senator of the United States. We have no need to hear the rest of his
evidence."
The Chairman said it would be better and more regular to proceed with the
investigation according to the usual forms. A note would be made of
Mr. Noble's admission.
Mr. Noble continued. He said that it was now far past midnight; that he
took his leave and went straight to certain legislators, told them
everything, made them count the money, and also told them of the exposure
he would make in joint convention; he made that exposure, as all the
world knew. The rest of the $10,000 was to be paid the day after
Dilworthy was elected.
Senator Dilworthy was now asked to take the stand and tell what he knew
about the man Noble. The Senator wiped his mouth with his handkerchief,
adjusted his white cravat, and said that but for the fact that public
morality required an example, for the warning of future Nobles, he would
beg that in Christian charity this poor misguided creature might be
forgiven and set free. He said that it was but too evident that this
person had approached him in the hope of obtaining a bribe; he had
intruded himself time and again, and always with moving stories of his
poverty. Mr. Dilworthy said that his heart had bled for him--insomuch
that he had several times been on the point of trying to get some one to
do something for him. Some instinct had told him from the beginning that
this was a bad man, an evil-minded man, but his inexperience of such had
blinded him to his real motives, and hence he had never dreamed that his
object was to undermine the purity of a United States Senator.
He regretted that it was plain, now, that such was the man's object and
that punishment could not with safety to the Senate's honor be withheld.
He grieved to say that one of those mysterious dispensations of an
inscrutable Providence which are decreed from time to time by His wisdom
and for His righteous, purposes, had given this conspirator's tale a
color of plausibility,--but this would soon disappear under the clear
light of truth which would now be thrown upon the case.
It so happened, (said the Senator,) that about the time in question, a
poor young friend of mine, living in a distant town of my State, wished
to establish a bank; he asked me to lend him the necessary money; I said
I had no, money just then, but world try to borrow it. The day before
the election a friend said to me that my election expenses must be very
large specially my hotel bills, and offered to lend me some money.
Remembering my young, friend, I said I would like a few thousands now,
and a few more by and by; whereupon he gave me two packages of bills said
to contain $2,000 and $5,000 respectively; I did not open the packages or
count the money; I did not give any note or receipt for the same; I made
no memorandum of the transaction, and neither did my friend. That night
this evil man Noble came troubling me again: I could not rid myself of
him, though my time was very precious. He mentioned my young friend and
said he was very anxious to have the $7000 now to begin his banking
operations with, and could wait a while for the rest. Noble wished to
get the money and take it to him. I finally gave him the two packages of
bills; I took no note or receipt from him, and made no memorandum of the
matter. I no more look for duplicity and deception in another man than I
would look for it in myself. I never thought of this man again until I
was overwhelmed the next day by learning what a shameful use he had made
of the confidence I had reposed in him and the money I had entrusted to
his care. This is all, gentlemen. To the absolute truth of every detail
of my statement I solemnly swear, and I call Him to witness who is the
Truth and the loving Father of all whose lips abhor false speaking; I
pledge my honor as a Senator, that I have spoken but the truth. May God
forgive this wicked man as I do.
Mr. Noble--"Senator Dilworthy, your bank account shows that up to that
day, and even on that very day, you conducted all your financial business
through the medium of checks instead of bills, and so kept careful record
of every moneyed transaction. Why did you deal in bank bills on this
particular occasion?"
The Chairman--"The gentleman will please to remember that the Committee
is conducting this investigation."
Mr. Noble--"Then will the Committee ask the question?"
The Chairman--"The Committee will--when it desires to know."
Mr. Noble--"Which will not be daring this century perhaps."
The Chairman--"Another remark like that, sir, will procure you the
attentions of the Sergeant-at-arms."
Mr. Noble--"D--n the Sergeant-at-arms, and the Committee too!"
Several Committeemen--"Mr. Chairman, this is Contempt!"
Mr. Noble--"Contempt of whom?"
"Of the Committee! Of the Senate of the United States!"
Mr. Noble--"Then I am become the acknowledged representative of a nation.
You know as well as I do that the whole nation hold as much as
three-fifths of the United States Senate in entire contempt.--Three-fifths
of you are Dilworthys."
The Sergeant-at-arms very soon put a quietus upon the observations of the
representative of the nation, and convinced him that he was not, in the
over-free atmosphere of his Happy-Land-of-Canaan:
The statement of Senator Dilworthy naturally carried conviction to the
minds of the committee.--It was close, logical, unanswerable; it bore
many internal evidences of its, truth. For instance, it is customary in
all countries for business men to loan large sums of money in bank bills
instead of checks. It is customary for the lender to make no memorandum
of the transaction. It is customary, for the borrower to receive the
money without making a memorandum of it, or giving a note or a receipt
for it's use--the borrower is not likely to die or forget about it.
It is customary to lend nearly anybody money to start a bank with
especially if you have not the money to lend him and have to borrow it
for the purpose. It is customary to carry large sums of money in bank
bills about your person or in your trunk. It is customary to hand a
large sure in bank bills to a man you have just been introduced to (if he
asks you to do it,) to be conveyed to a distant town and delivered to
another party. It is not customary to make a memorandum of this
transaction; it is not customary for the conveyor to give a note or a
receipt for the money; it is not customary to require that he shall get a
note or a receipt from the man he is to convey it to in the distant town.
It would be at least singular in you to say to the proposed conveyor,
"You might be robbed; I will deposit the money in a bank and send a check
for it to my friend through the mail."
Very well. It being plain that Senator Dilworthy's statement was rigidly
true, and this fact being strengthened by his adding to it the support of
"his honor as a Senator," the Committee rendered a verdict of "Not proven
that a bribe had been offered and accepted." This in a manner exonerated
Noble and let him escape.
The Committee made its report to the Senate, and that body proceeded to
consider its acceptance. One Senator indeed, several Senators--objected
that the Committee had failed of its duty; they had proved this man Noble
guilty of nothing, they had meted out no punishment to him; if the report
were accepted, he would go forth free and scathless, glorying in his
crime, and it would be a tacit admission that any blackguard could insult
the Senate of the United States and conspire against the sacred
reputation of its members with impunity; the Senate owed it to the
upholding of its ancient dignity to make an example of this man Noble
--he should be crushed.
An elderly Senator got up and took another view of the case. This was a
Senator of the worn-out and obsolete pattern; a man still lingering among
the cobwebs of the past, and behind the spirit of the age. He said that
there seemed to be a curious misunderstanding of the case. Gentlemen
seemed exceedingly anxious to preserve and maintain the honor and dignity
of the Senate.
Was this to be done by trying an obscure adventurer for attempting to
trap a Senator into bribing him? Or would not the truer way be to find
out whether the Senator was capable of being entrapped into so shameless
an act, and then try him? Why, of course. Now the whole idea of the
Senate seemed to be to shield the Senator and turn inquiry away from him.
The true way to uphold the honor of the Senate was to have none but
honorable men in its body. If this Senator had yielded to temptation and
had offered a bribe, he was a soiled man and ought to be instantly
expelled; therefore he wanted the Senator tried, and not in the usual
namby-pamby way, but in good earnest. He wanted to know the truth of
this matter. For himself, he believed that the guilt of Senator
Dilworthy was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; and he considered
that in trifling with his case and shirking it the Senate was doing a
shameful and cowardly thing--a thing which suggested that in its
willingness to sit longer in the company of such a man, it was
acknowledging that it was itself of a kind with him and was therefore not
dishonored by his presence. He desired that a rigid examination be made
into Senator Dilworthy's case, and that it be continued clear into the
approaching extra session if need be. There was no dodging this thing
with the lame excuse of want of time.
In reply, an honorable Senator said that he thought it would be as well
to drop the matter and accept the Committee's report. He said with some
jocularity that the more one agitated this thing, the worse it was for
the agitator. He was not able to deny that he believed Senator Dilworthy
to be guilty--but what then? Was it such an extraordinary case? For his
part, even allowing the Senator to be guilty, he did not think his
continued presence during the few remaining days of the Session would
contaminate the Senate to a dreadful degree. [This humorous sally was
received with smiling admiration--notwithstanding it was not wholly new,
having originated with the Massachusetts General in the House a day or
two before, upon the occasion of the proposed expulsion of a member for
selling his vote for money.]
The Senate recognized the fact that it could not be contaminated by
sitting a few days longer with Senator Dilworthy, and so it accepted the
committee's report and dropped the unimportant matter.
Mr. Dilworthy occupied his seat to the last hour of the session. He said
that his people had reposed a trust in him, and it was not for him to
desert them. He would remain at his post till he perished, if need be.
His voice was lifted up and his vote cast for the last time, in support
of an ingenious measure contrived by the General from Massachusetts
whereby the President's salary was proposed to be doubled and every
Congressman paid several thousand dollars extra for work previously done,
under an accepted contract, and already paid for once and receipted for.
Senator Dilworthy was offered a grand ovation by his friends at home, who
said that their affection for him and their confidence in him were in no
wise impaired by the persecutions that had pursued him, and that he was
still good enough for them.
--[The $7,000 left by Mr. Noble with his state legislature was placed in
safe keeping to await the claim of the legitimate owner. Senator
Dilworthy made one little effort through his protege the embryo banker
to recover it, but there being no notes of hand or, other memoranda to
support the claim, it failed. The moral of which is, that when one loans
money to start a bank with, one ought to take the party's written
acknowledgment of the fact.]
CHAPTER LX.
For some days Laura had been a free woman once more. During this time,
she had experienced--first, two or three days of triumph, excitement,
congratulations, a sort of sunburst of gladness, after a long night of
gloom and anxiety; then two or three days of calming down, by degrees
--a receding of tides, a quieting of the storm-wash to a murmurous
surf-beat, a diminishing of devastating winds to a refrain that bore the
spirit of a truce-days given to solitude, rest, self-communion, and the
reasoning of herself into a realization of the fact that she was actually
done with bolts and bars, prison, horrors and impending, death; then came
a day whose hours filed slowly by her, each laden with some remnant,
some remaining fragment of the dreadful time so lately ended--a day
which, closing at last, left the past a fading shore behind her and
turned her eyes toward the broad sea of the future. So speedily do we
put the dead away and come back to our place in the ranks to march in the
pilgrimage of life again.
And now the sun rose once more and ushered in the first day of what Laura
comprehended and accepted as a new life.
The past had sunk below the horizon, and existed no more for her;
she was done with it for all time. She was gazing out over the trackless
expanses of the future, now, with troubled eyes. Life must be begun
again--at eight and twenty years of age. And where to begin? The page
was blank, and waiting for its first record; so this was indeed a
momentous day.
Her thoughts drifted back, stage by stage, over her career. As far as
the long highway receded over the plain of her life, it was lined with
the gilded and pillared splendors of her ambition all crumbled to ruin
and ivy-grown; every milestone marked a disaster; there was no green spot
remaining anywhere in memory of a hope that had found its fruition; the
unresponsive earth had uttered no voice of flowers in testimony that one
who was blest had gone that road.
Her life had been a failure. That was plain, she said. No more of that.
She would now look the future in the face; she would mark her course upon
the chart of life, and follow it; follow it without swerving, through
rocks and shoals, through storm and calm, to a haven of rest and peace or
shipwreck. Let the end be what it might, she would mark her course now
--to-day--and follow it.
On her table lay six or seven notes. They were from lovers; from some of
the prominent names in the land; men whose devotion had survived even the
grisly revealments of her character which the courts had uncurtained;
men who knew her now, just as she was, and yet pleaded as for their lives
for the dear privilege of calling the murderess wife.
As she read these passionate, these worshiping, these supplicating
missives, the woman in her nature confessed itself; a strong yearning
came upon her to lay her head upon a loyal breast and find rest from the
conflict of life, solace for her griefs, the healing of love for her
bruised heart.
With her forehead resting upon her hand, she sat thinking, thinking,
while the unheeded moments winged their flight. It was one of those
mornings in early spring when nature seems just stirring to a half
consciousness out of a long, exhausting lethargy; when the first faint
balmy airs go wandering about, whispering the secret of the coming
change; when the abused brown grass, newly relieved of snow, seems
considering whether it can be worth the trouble and worry of contriving
its green raiment again only to fight the inevitable fight with the
implacable winter and be vanquished and buried once more; when the sun
shines out and a few birds venture forth and lift up a forgotten song;
when a strange stillness and suspense pervades the waiting air. It is a
time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the
past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the
future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague
longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote
solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of
struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.
It was into such a mood as this that Laura had drifted from the musings
which the letters of her lovers had called up. Now she lifted her head
and noted with surprise how the day had wasted. She thrust the letters
aside, rose up and went and stood at the window. But she was soon
thinking again, and was only gazing into vacancy.
By and by she turned; her countenance had cleared; the dreamy look was
gone out of her face, all indecision had vanished; the poise of her head
and the firm set of her lips told that her resolution was formed.
She moved toward the table with all the old dignity in her carriage,
and all the old pride in her mien. She took up each letter in its turn,
touched a match to it and watched it slowly consume to ashes. Then she
said:
"I have landed upon a foreign shore, and burned my ships behind me.
These letters were the last thing that held me in sympathy with any
remnant or belonging of the old life. Henceforth that life and all that
appertains to it are as dead to me and as far removed from me as if I
were become a denizen of another world."
She said that love was not for her--the time that it could have satisfied
her heart was gone by and could not return; the opportunity was lost,
nothing could restore it. She said there could be no love without
respect, and she would only despise a man who could content himself with
a thing like her. Love, she said, was a woman's first necessity: love
being forfeited; there was but one thing left that could give a passing
zest to a wasted life, and that was fame, admiration, the applause of the
multitude.
And so her resolution was taken. She would turn to that final resort of
the disappointed of her sex, the lecture platform. She would array
herself in fine attire, she would adorn herself with jewels, and stand in
her isolated magnificence before massed, audiences and enchant them with
her eloquence and amaze them with her unapproachable beauty. She would
move from city to city like a queen of romance, leaving marveling
multitudes behind her and impatient multitudes awaiting her coming.
Her life, during one hour of each day, upon the platform, would be a
rapturous intoxication--and when the curtain fell; and the lights were
out, and the people gone, to nestle in their homes and forget her, she
would find in sleep oblivion of her homelessness, if she could, if not
she would brave out the night in solitude and wait for the next day's
hour of ecstasy.
So, to take up life and begin again was no great evil. She saw her way.
She would be brave and strong; she would make the best of, what was left
for her among the possibilities.
She sent for the lecture agent, and matters were soon arranged.
Straightway, all the papers were filled with her name, and all the dead
walls flamed with it. The papers called down imprecations upon her head;
they reviled her without stint; they wondered if all sense of decency was
dead in this shameless murderess, this brazen lobbyist, this heartless
seducer of the affections of weak and misguided men; they implored the
people, for the sake of their pure wives, their sinless daughters, for
the sake of decency, for the sake of public morals, to give this wretched
creature such a rebuke as should be an all-sufficient evidence to her and
to such as her, that there was a limit where the flaunting of their foul
acts and opinions before the world must stop; certain of them, with a
higher art, and to her a finer cruelty, a sharper torture, uttered no
abuse, but always spoke of her in terms of mocking eulogy and ironical
admiration. Everybody talked about the new wonder, canvassed the theme
of her proposed discourse, and marveled how she would handle it.
Laura's few friends wrote to her or came and talked with her, and pleaded
with her to retire while it was yet time, and not attempt to face the
gathering storm. But it was fruitless. She was stung to the quick by
the comments of the newspapers; her spirit was roused, her ambition was
towering, now. She was more determined than ever. She would show these
people what a hunted and persecuted woman could do.
The eventful night came. Laura arrived before the great lecture hall in
a close carriage within five minutes of the time set for the lecture to
begin. When she stepped out of the vehicle her heart beat fast and her
eyes flashed with exultation: the whole street was packed with people,
and she could hardly force her way to the hall! She reached the
ante-room, threw off her wraps and placed herself before the
dressing-glass. She turned herself this way and that--everything was
satisfactory, her attire was perfect. She smoothed her hair, rearranged
a jewel here and there, and all the while her heart sang within her, and
her face was radiant. She had not been so happy for ages and ages, it
seemed to her. Oh, no, she had never been so overwhelmingly grateful and
happy in her whole life before. The lecture agent appeared at the door.
She waved him away and said:
"Do not disturb me. I want no introduction. And do not fear for me; the
moment the hands point to eight I will step upon the platform."
He disappeared. She held her watch before her. She was so impatient
that the second-hand seemed whole tedious minutes dragging its way around
the circle. At last the supreme moment came, and with head erect and the
bearing of an empress she swept through the door and stood upon the
stage. Her eyes fell upon only a vast, brilliant emptiness--there were
not forty people in the house! There were only a handful of coarse men
and ten or twelve still coarser women, lolling upon the benches and
scattered about singly and in couples.
Her pulses stood still, her limbs quaked, the gladness went out of her
face. There was a moment of silence, and then a brutal laugh and an
explosion of cat-calls and hisses saluted her from the audience. The
clamor grew stronger and louder, and insulting speeches were shouted at
her. A half-intoxicated man rose up and threw something, which missed
her but bespattered a chair at her side, and this evoked an outburst of
laughter and boisterous admiration. She was bewildered, her strength was
forsaking her. She reeled away from the platform, reached the ante-room,
and dropped helpless upon a sofa. The lecture agent ran in, with a
hurried question upon his lips; but she put forth her hands, and with the
tears raining from her eyes, said:
"Oh, do not speak! Take me away-please take me away, out of this.
dreadful place! Oh, this is like all my life--failure, disappointment,
misery--always misery, always failure. What have I done, to be so
pursued! Take me away, I beg of you, I implore you!"
Upon the pavement she was hustled by the mob, the surging masses roared
her name and accompanied it with every species of insulting epithet;
they thronged after the carriage, hooting, jeering, cursing, and even
assailing the vehicle with missiles. A stone crushed through a blind,
wounding Laura's forehead, and so stunning her that she hardly knew what
further transpired during her flight.
It was long before her faculties were wholly restored, and then she found
herself lying on the floor by a sofa in her own sitting-room, and alone.
So she supposed she must have sat down upon the sofa and afterward
fallen. She raised herself up, with difficulty, for the air was chilly
and her limbs were stiff. She turned up the gas and sought the glass.
She hardly knew herself, so worn and old she looked, and so marred with
blood were her features. The night was far spent, and a dead stillness
reigned. She sat down by her table, leaned her elbows upon it and put
her face in her hands.
Her thoughts wandered back over her old life again and her tears flowed
unrestrained. Her pride was humbled, her spirit was broken. Her memory
found but one resting place; it lingered about her young girlhood with a
caressing regret; it dwelt upon it as the one brief interval of her life
that bore no curse. She saw herself again in the budding grace of her
twelve years, decked in her dainty pride of ribbons, consorting with the
bees and the butterflies, believing in fairies, holding confidential
converse with the flowers, busying herself all day long with airy trifles
that were as weighty to her as the affairs that tax the brains of
diplomats and emperors. She was without sin, then, and unacquainted with
grief; the world was full of sunshine and her heart was full of music.
From that--to this!
"If I could only die!" she said. "If I could only go back, and be as I
was then, for one hour--and hold my father's hand in mine again, and see
all the household about me, as in that old innocent time--and then die!
My God, I am humbled, my pride is all gone, my stubborn heart repents
--have pity!"
When the spring morning dawned, the form still sat there, the elbows
resting upon the table and the face upon the hands. All day long the
figure sat there, the sunshine enriching its costly raiment and flashing
from its jewels; twilight came, and presently the stars, but still the
figure remained; the moon found it there still, and framed the picture
with the shadow of the window sash, and flooded, it with mellow light; by
and by the darkness swallowed it up, and later the gray dawn revealed it
again; the new day grew toward its prime, and still the forlorn presence
was undisturbed.
But now the keepers of the house had become uneasy; their periodical
knockings still finding no response, they burst open the door.
The jury of inquest found that death had resulted from heart disease, and
was instant and painless. That was all. Merely heart disease.
CHAPTER LXI.
Clay Hawkins, years gone by, had yielded, after many a struggle, to the
migratory and speculative instinct of our age and our people, and had
wandered further and further westward upon trading ventures. Settling
finally in Melbourne, Australia, he ceased to roam, became a steady-going
substantial merchant, and prospered greatly. His life lay beyond the
theatre of this tale.
His remittances had supported the Hawkins family, entirely, from the time
of his father's death until latterly when Laura by her efforts in
Washington had been able to assist in this work. Clay was away on a long
absence in some of the eastward islands when Laura's troubles began,
trying (and almost in vain,) to arrange certain interests which had
become disordered through a dishonest agent, and consequently he knew
nothing of the murder till he returned and read his letters and papers.
His natural impulse was to hurry to the States and save his sister if
possible, for he loved her with a deep and abiding affection. His
business was so crippled now, and so deranged, that to leave it would be
ruin; therefore he sold out at a sacrifice that left him considerably
reduced in worldly possessions, and began his voyage to San Francisco.
Arrived there, he perceived by the newspapers that the trial was near its
close. At Salt Lake later telegrams told him of the acquittal, and his
gratitude was boundless--so boundless, indeed, that sleep was driven from
his eyes by the pleasurable excitement almost as effectually as preceding
weeks of anxiety had done it. He shaped his course straight for Hawkeye,
now, and his meeting with his mother and the rest of the household was
joyful--albeit he had been away so long that he seemed almost a stranger
in his own home.
But the greetings and congratulations were hardly finished when all the
journals in the land clamored the news of Laura's miserable death.
Mrs. Hawkins was prostrated by this last blow, and it was well that Clay
was at her side to stay her with comforting words and take upon himself
the ordering of the household with its burden of labors and cares.
Washington Hawkins had scarcely more than entered upon that decade which
carries one to the full blossom of manhood which we term the beginning:
of middle age, and yet a brief sojourn at the capital of the nation had
made him old. His hair was already turning gray when the late session of
Congress began its sittings; it grew grayer still, and rapidly, after the
memorable day that saw Laura proclaimed a murderess; it waxed grayer and
still grayer during the lagging suspense that succeeded it and after the
crash which ruined his last hope--the failure of his bill in the Senate
and the destruction of its champion, Dilworthy. A few days later, when
he stood uncovered while the last prayer was pronounced over Laura's
grave, his hair was whiter and his face hardly less old than the
venerable minister's whose words were sounding in his ears.
A week after this, he was sitting in a double-bedded room in a cheap
boarding house in Washington, with Col. Sellers. The two had been living
together lately, and this mutual cavern of theirs the Colonel sometimes
referred to as their "premises" and sometimes as their "apartments"--more
particularly when conversing with persons outside. A canvas-covered
modern trunk, marked "G. W. H." stood on end by the door, strapped and
ready for a journey; on it lay a small morocco satchel, also marked "G.
W. H." There was another trunk close by--a worn, and scarred, and
ancient hair relic, with "B. S." wrought in brass nails on its top;
on it lay a pair of saddle-bags that probably knew more about the last
century than they could tell. Washington got up and walked the floor a
while in a restless sort of way, and finally was about to sit down on the
hair trunk.
"Stop, don't sit down on that!" exclaimed the Colonel: "There, now that's
all right--the chair's better. I couldn't get another trunk like that
--not another like it in America, I reckon."
"I am afraid not," said Washington, with a faint attempt at a smile.
"No indeed; the man is dead that made that trunk and that saddle-bags."
"Are his great-grand-children still living?" said Washington, with levity
only in the words, not in the tone.
"Well, I don't know--I hadn't thought of that--but anyway they can't make
trunks and saddle-bags like that, if they are--no man can," said the
Colonel with honest simplicity. "Wife didn't like to see me going off
with that trunk--she said it was nearly certain to be stolen."
"Why?"
"Why? Why, aren't trunks always being stolen?"
"Well, yes--some kinds of trunks are."
"Very well, then; this is some kind of a trunk--and an almighty rare
kind, too."
"Yes, I believe it is."
"Well, then, why shouldn't a man want to steal it if he got a chance?"
"Indeed I don't know.--Why should he?"
"Washington, I never heard anybody talk like you. Suppose you were a
thief, and that trunk was lying around and nobody watching--wouldn't you
steal it? Come, now, answer fair--wouldn't you steal it?
"Well, now, since you corner me, I would take it,--but I wouldn't
consider it stealing.
"You wouldn't! Well, that beats me. Now what would you call stealing?"
"Why, taking property is stealing."
"Property! Now what a way to talk that is: What do you suppose that
trunk is worth?"
"Is it in good repair?"
"Perfect. Hair rubbed off a little, but the main structure is perfectly
sound."
"Does it leak anywhere?"
"Leak? Do you want to carry water in it? What do you mean by does it
leak?"
"Why--a--do the clothes fall out of it when it is--when it is
stationary?"
"Confound it, Washington, you are trying to make fun of me. I don't know
what has got into you to-day; you act mighty curious. What is the matter
with you?"
"Well, I'll tell you, old friend. I am almost happy. I am, indeed.
It wasn't Clay's telegram that hurried me up so and got me ready to start
with you. It was a letter from Louise."
"Good! What is it? What does she say?"
"She says come home--her father has consented, at last."
"My boy, I want to congratulate you; I want to shake you by the hand!
It's a long turn that has no lane at the end of it, as the proverb says,
or somehow that way. You'll be happy yet, and Beriah Sellers will be
there to see, thank God!"
"I believe it. General Boswell is pretty nearly a poor man, now. The
railroad that was going to build up Hawkeye made short work of him, along
with the rest. He isn't so opposed to a son-in-law without a fortune,
now."
"Without a fortune, indeed! Why that Tennessee Land--"
"Never mind the Tennessee Land, Colonel. I am done with that, forever
and forever--"
"Why no! You can't mean to say--"
"My father, away back yonder, years ago, bought it for a blessing for his
children, and--"
"Indeed he did! Si Hawkins said to me--"
"It proved a curse to him as long as he lived, and never a curse like it
was inflicted upon any man's heirs--"
"I'm bound to say there's more or less truth--"
"It began to curse me when I was a baby, and it has cursed every hour of
my life to this day--"
"Lord, lord, but it's so! Time and again my wife--"
"I depended on it all through my boyhood and never tried to do an honest
stroke of work for my living--"
"Right again--but then you--"
"I have chased it years and years as children chase butterflies. We
might all have been prosperous, now; we might all have been happy, all
these heart-breaking years, if we had accepted our poverty at first and
gone contentedly to work and built up our own wealth by our own toil and
sweat--"
"It's so, it's so; bless my soul, how often I've told Si Hawkins--"
"Instead of that, we have suffered more than the damned themselves
suffer! I loved my father, and I honor his memory and recognize his good
intentions; but I grieve for his mistaken ideas of conferring happiness
upon his children. I am going to begin my life over again, and begin it
and end it with good solid work! I'll leave my children no Tennessee
Land!"
"Spoken like a man, sir, spoken like a man! Your hand, again my boy!
And always remember that when a word of advice from Beriah Sellers can
help, it is at your service. I'm going to begin again, too!"
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir. I've seen enough to show me where my mistake was. The law is
what I was born for. I shall begin the study of the law. Heavens and
earth, but that Brabant's a wonderful man--a wonderful man sir! Such a
head! And such a way with him! But I could see that he was jealous of
me. The little licks I got in in the course of my argument before the
jury--"
"Your argument! Why, you were a witness."
"Oh, yes, to the popular eye, to the popular eye--but I knew when I was
dropping information and when I was letting drive at the court with an
insidious argument. But the court knew it, bless you, and weakened every
time! And Brabant knew it. I just reminded him of it in a quiet way,
and its final result, and he said in a whisper, 'You did it, Colonel, you
did it, sir--but keep it mum for my sake; and I'll tell you what you do,'
says he, 'you go into the law, Col. Sellers--go into the law, sir; that's
your native element!' And into the law the subscriber is going. There's
worlds of money in it!--whole worlds of money! Practice first in
Hawkeye, then in Jefferson, then in St. Louis, then in New York! In the
metropolis of the western world! Climb, and climb, and climb--and wind
up on the Supreme bench. Beriah Sellers, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States, sir! A made man for all time and eternity!
That's the way I block it out, sir--and it's as clear as day--clear as
the rosy-morn!"
Washington had heard little of this. The first reference to Laura's
trial had brought the old dejection to his face again, and he stood
gazing out of the window at nothing, lost in reverie.
There was a knock-the postman handed in a letter. It was from Obedstown.
East Tennessee, and was for Washington. He opened it. There was a note
saying that enclosed he would please find a bill for the current year's
taxes on the 75,000 acres of Tennessee Land belonging to the estate of
Silas Hawkins, deceased, and added that the money must be paid within
sixty days or the land would be sold at public auction for the taxes, as
provided by law. The bill was for $180--something more than twice the
market value of the land, perhaps.
Washington hesitated. Doubts flitted through his mind. The old instinct
came upon him to cling to the land just a little longer and give it one
more chance. He walked the floor feverishly, his mind tortured by
indecision. Presently he stopped, took out his pocket book and counted
his money. Two hundred and thirty dollars--it was all he had in the
world.
"One hundred and eighty . . . . . . . from two hundred and
thirty," he said to himself. "Fifty left . . . . . . It is enough
to get me home . . . .. . . Shall I do it, or shall I not? . . .
. . . . I wish I had somebody to decide for me."
The pocket book lay open in his hand, with Louise's small letter in view.
His eye fell upon that, and it decided him.
"It shall go for taxes," he said, "and never tempt me or mine any more!"
He opened the window and stood there tearing the tax bill to bits and
watching the breeze waft them away, till all were gone.
"The spell is broken, the life-long curse is ended!" he said. "Let us
go."
The baggage wagon had arrived; five minutes later the two friends were
mounted upon their luggage in it, and rattling off toward the station,
the Colonel endeavoring to sing "Homeward Bound," a song whose words he
knew, but whose tune, as he rendered it, was a trial to auditors.
CHAPTER LXII
Philip Sterling's circumstances were becoming straightened. The prospect
was gloomy. His long siege of unproductive labor was beginning to tell
upon his spirits; but what told still more upon them was the undeniable
fact that the promise of ultimate success diminished every day, now.
That is to say, the tunnel had reached a point in the hill which was
considerably beyond where the coal vein should pass (according to all his
calculations) if there were a coal vein there; and so, every foot that
the tunnel now progressed seemed to carry it further away from the object
of the search.
Sometimes he ventured to hope that he had made a mistake in estimating
the direction which the vein should naturally take after crossing the
valley and entering the hill. Upon such occasions he would go into the
nearest mine on the vein he was hunting for, and once more get the
bearings of the deposit and mark out its probable course; but the result
was the same every time; his tunnel had manifestly pierced beyond the
natural point of junction; and then his, spirits fell a little lower.
His men had already lost faith, and he often overheard them saying it was
perfectly plain that there was no coal in the hill.
Foremen and laborers from neighboring mines, and no end of experienced
loafers from the village, visited the tunnel from time to time, and their
verdicts were always the same and always disheartening--"No coal in that
hill." Now and then Philip would sit down and think it all over and
wonder what the mystery meant; then he would go into the tunnel and ask
the men if there were no signs yet? None--always "none."
He would bring out a piece of rock and examine it, and say to himself,
"It is limestone--it has crinoids and corals in it--the rock is right"
Then he would throw it down with a sigh, and say, "But that is nothing;
where coal is, limestone with these fossils in it is pretty certain to
lie against its foot casing; but it does not necessarily follow that
where this peculiar rock is coal must lie above it or beyond it; this
sign is not sufficient."
The thought usually followed:--"There is one infallible sign--if I could
only strike that!"
Three or four tines in as many weeks he said to himself, "Am I a
visionary? I must be a visionary; everybody is in these days; everybody
chases butterflies: everybody seeks sudden fortune and will not lay one
up by slow toil. This is not right, I will discharge the men and go at
some honest work. There is no coal here. What a fool I have been; I
will give it up."
But he never could do it. A half hour of profound thinking always
followed; and at the end of it he was sure to get up and straighten
himself and say: "There is coal there; I will not give it up; and coal
or no coal I will drive the tunnel clear through the hill; I will not
surrender while I am alive."
He never thought of asking Mr. Montague for more money. He said there
was now but one chance of finding coal against nine hundred and ninety
nine that he would not find it, and so it would be wrong in him to make
the request and foolish in Mr. Montague to grant it.
He had been working three shifts of men. Finally, the settling of a
weekly account exhausted his means. He could not afford to run in debt,
and therefore he gave the men their discharge. They came into his cabin
presently, where he sat with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his
hands--the picture of discouragement and their spokesman said:
"Mr. Sterling, when Tim was down a week with his fall you kept him on
half-wages and it was a mighty help to his family; whenever any of us was
in trouble you've done what you could to help us out; you've acted fair
and square with us every time, and I reckon we are men and know a man
when we see him. We haven't got any faith in that hill, but we have a
respect for a man that's got the pluck that you've showed; you've fought
a good fight, with everybody agin you and if we had grub to go on, I'm
d---d if we wouldn't stand by you till the cows come home! That is what
the boys say. Now we want to put in one parting blast for luck. We want
to work three days more; if we don't find anything, we won't bring in no
bill against you. That is what we've come to say."
Philip was touched. If he had had money enough to buy three days' "grub"
he would have accepted the generous offer, but as it was, he could not
consent to be less magnanimous than the men, and so he declined in a
manly speech; shook hands all around and resumed his solitary communings.
The men went back to the tunnel and "put in a parting blast for luck"
anyhow. They did a full day's work and then took their leave. They
called at his cabin and gave him good-bye, but were not able to tell him
their day's effort had given things a mere promising look.
The next day Philip sold all the tools but two or three sets; he also
sold one of the now deserted cabins as old, lumber, together with its
domestic wares; and made up his mind that he would buy, provisions with
the trifle of money thus gained and continue his work alone. About the
middle of the after noon he put on his roughest clothes and went to the
tunnel. He lit a candle and groped his way in. Presently he heard the
sound of a pick or a drill, and wondered, what it meant. A spark of light
now appeared in the far end of the tunnel, and when he arrived there he
found the man Tim at work. Tim said:
"I'm to have a job in the Golden Brier mine by and by--in a week or ten
days--and I'm going to work here till then. A man might as well be at
some thing, and besides I consider that I owe you what you paid me when I
was laid up."
Philip said, Oh, no, he didn't owe anything; but Tim persisted, and then
Philip said he had a little provision now, and would share. So for
several days Philip held the drill and Tim did the striking. At first
Philip was impatient to see the result of every blast, and was always
back and peering among the smoke the moment after the explosion. But
there was never any encouraging result; and therefore he finally lost
almost all interest, and hardly troubled himself to inspect results at
all. He simply labored on, stubbornly and with little hope.
Tim staid with him till the last moment, and then took up his job at the
Golden Brier, apparently as depressed by the continued barrenness of
their mutual labors as Philip was himself. After that, Philip fought his
battle alone, day after day, and slow work it was; he could scarcely see
that he made any progress.
Late one afternoon he finished drilling a hole which he had been at work
at for more than two hours; he swabbed it out, and poured in the powder
and inserted the fuse; then filled up the rest of the hole with dirt and
small fragments of stone; tamped it down firmly, touched his candle to
the fuse, and ran. By and by the I dull report came, and he was about to
walk back mechanically and see what was accomplished; but he halted;
presently turned on his heel and thought, rather than said:
"No, this is useless, this is absurd. If I found anything it would only
be one of those little aggravating seams of coal which doesn't mean
anything, and--"
By this time he was walking out of the tunnel. His thought ran on:
"I am conquered . . . . . . I am out of provisions, out of money.
. . . . I have got to give it up . . . . . . All this hard work
lost! But I am not conquered! I will go and work for money, and come
back and have another fight with fate. Ah me, it may be years, it may,
be years."
Arrived at the mouth of the tunnel, he threw his coat upon the ground,
sat down on, a stone, and his eye sought the westering sun and dwelt upon
the charming landscape which stretched its woody ridges, wave upon wave,
to the golden horizon.
Something was taking place at his feet which did not attract his
attention.
His reverie continued, and its burden grew more and more gloomy.
Presently he rose up and, cast a look far away toward the valley, and his
thoughts took a new direction:
"There it is! How good it looks! But down there is not up here. Well,
I will go home and pack up--there is nothing else to do"
He moved off moodily toward his cabin. He had gone some distance before
he thought of his coat; then he was about to turn back, but he smiled at
the thought, and continued his journey--such a coat as that could be of
little use in a civilized land; a little further on, he remembered that
there were some papers of value in one of the pockets of the relic, and
then with a penitent ejaculation he turned back picked up the coat and
put it on.
He made a dozen steps, and then stopped very suddenly. He stood still a
moment, as one who is trying to believe something and cannot. He put a
hand up over his shoulder and felt his back, and a great thrill shot
through him. He grasped the skirt of the coat impulsively and another
thrill followed. He snatched the coat from his back, glanced at it,
threw it from him and flew back to the tunnel. He sought the spot where
the coat had lain--he had to look close, for the light was waning--then
to make sure, he put his hand to the ground and a little stream of water
swept against his fingers:
"Thank God, I've struck it at last!"
He lit a candle and ran into the tunnel; he picked up a piece of rubbish
cast out by the last blast, and said:
"This clayey stuff is what I've longed for--I know what is behind it."
He swung his pick with hearty good will till long after the darkness had
gathered upon the earth, and when he trudged home at length he knew he
had a coal vein and that it was seven feet thick from wall to wall.
He found a yellow envelope lying on his rickety table, and recognized
that it was of a family sacred to the transmission of telegrams.
He opened it, read it, crushed it in his hand and threw it down. It
simply said:
"Ruth is very ill."
CHAPTER LXIII.
It was evening when Philip took the cars at the Ilium station. The news
of, his success had preceded him, and while he waited for the train, he
was the center of a group of eager questioners, who asked him a hundred
things about the mine, and magnified his good fortune. There was no
mistake this time.
Philip, in luck, had become suddenly a person of consideration, whose
speech was freighted with meaning, whose looks were all significant.
The words of the proprietor of a rich coal mine have a golden sound,
and his common sayings are repeated as if they were solid wisdom.
Philip wished to be alone; his good fortune at this moment seemed an
empty mockery, one of those sarcasms of fate, such as that which spreads
a dainty banquet for the man who has no appetite. He had longed for
success principally for Ruth's sake; and perhaps now, at this very moment
of his triumph, she was dying.
"Shust what I said, Mister Sederling," the landlord of the Ilium hotel
kept repeating. "I dold Jake Schmidt he find him dere shust so sure as
noting."
"You ought to have taken a share, Mr. Dusenheimer," said Philip.
"Yaas, I know. But d'old woman, she say 'You sticks to your pisiness.
So I sticks to 'em. Und I makes noting. Dat Mister Prierly, he don't
never come back here no more, ain't it?"
"Why?" asked Philip.
"Vell, dere is so many peers, and so many oder dhrinks, I got 'em all set
down, ven he coomes back."
It was a long night for Philip, and a restless one. At any other time
the swing of the cars would have lulled him to sleep, and the rattle and
clank of wheels and rails, the roar of the whirling iron would have only
been cheerful reminders of swift and safe travel. Now they were voices
of warning and taunting; and instead of going rapidly the train seemed to
crawl at a snail's pace. And it not only crawled, but it frequently
stopped; and when it stopped it stood dead still and there was an ominous
silence. Was anything the matter, he wondered. Only a station probably.
Perhaps, he thought, a telegraphic station. And then he listened
eagerly. Would the conductor open the door and ask for Philip Sterling,
and hand him a fatal dispatch?
How long they seemed to wait. And then slowly beginning to move, they
were off again, shaking, pounding, screaming through the night. He drew
his curtain from time to time and looked out. There was the lurid sky
line of the wooded range along the base of which they were crawling.
There was the Susquehannah, gleaming in the moon-light. There was a
stretch of level valley with silent farm houses, the occupants all at
rest, without trouble, without anxiety. There was a church, a graveyard,
a mill, a village; and now, without pause or fear, the train had mounted
a trestle-work high in air and was creeping along the top of it while a
swift torrent foamed a hundred feet below.
What would the morning bring? Even while he was flying to her, her gentle
spirit might have gone on another flight, whither he could not follow
her. He was full of foreboding. He fell at length into a restless doze.
There was a noise in his ears as of a rushing torrent when a stream is
swollen by a freshet in the spring. It was like the breaking up of life;
he was struggling in the consciousness of coming death: when Ruth stood
by his side, clothed in white, with a face like that of an angel,
radiant, smiling, pointing to the sky, and saying, "Come." He awoke with
a cry--the train was roaring through a bridge, and it shot out into
daylight.
When morning came the train was industriously toiling along through the
fat lands of Lancaster, with its broad farms of corn and wheat, its mean
houses of stone, its vast barns and granaries, built as if, for storing
the riches of Heliogabalus. Then came the smiling fields of Chester,
with their English green, and soon the county of Philadelphia itself, and
the increasing signs of the approach to a great city. Long trains of
coal cars, laden and unladen, stood upon sidings; the tracks of other
roads were crossed; the smoke of other locomotives was seen on parallel
lines; factories multiplied; streets appeared; the noise of a busy city
began to fill the air;--and with a slower and slower clank on the
connecting rails and interlacing switches the train rolled into the
station and stood still.
It was a hot August morning. The broad streets glowed in the sun, and
the white-shuttered houses stared at the hot thoroughfares like closed
bakers' ovens set along the highway. Philip was oppressed with the heavy
air; the sweltering city lay as in a swoon. Taking a street car, he rode
away to the northern part of the city, the newer portion, formerly the
district of Spring Garden, for in this the Boltons now lived, in a small
brick house, befitting their altered fortunes.
He could scarcely restrain his impatience when he came in sight of the
house. The window shutters were not "bowed"; thank God, for that. Ruth
was still living, then. He ran up the steps and rang. Mrs. Bolton met
him at the door.
"Thee is very welcome, Philip."
"And Ruth?"
"She is very ill, but quieter than, she has been, and the fever is a
little abating. The most dangerous time will be when the fever leaves
her. The doctor fears she will not have strength enough to rally from
it. Yes, thee can see her."
Mrs. Bolton led the way to the little chamber where Ruth lay. "Oh,"
said her mother, "if she were only in her cool and spacious room in our
old home. She says that seems like heaven."
Mr. Bolton sat by Ruth's bedside, and he rose and silently pressed
Philip's hand. The room had but one window; that was wide open to admit
the air, but the air that came in was hot and lifeless. Upon the table
stood a vase of flowers. Ruth's eyes were closed; her cheeks were
flushed with fever, and she moved her head restlessly as if in pain.
"Ruth," said her mother, bending over her, "Philip is here."
Ruth's eyes unclosed, there was a gleam of recognition in them, there was
an attempt at a smile upon her face, and she tried to raise her thin
hand, as Philip touched her forehead with his lips; and he heard her
murmur,
"Dear Phil."
There was nothing to be done but to watch and wait for the cruel fever to
burn itself out. Dr. Longstreet told Philip that the fever had
undoubtedly been contracted in the hospital, but it was not malignant,
and would be little dangerous if Ruth were not so worn down with work,
or if she had a less delicate constitution.
"It is only her indomitable will that has kept her up for weeks. And if
that should leave her now, there will be no hope. You can do more for
her now, sir, than I can?"
"How?" asked Philip eagerly.
"Your presence, more than anything else, will inspire her with the desire
to live."
When the fever turned, Ruth was in a very critical condition. For two
days her life was like the fluttering of a lighted candle in the wind.
Philip was constantly by her side, and she seemed to be conscious of his
presence, and to cling to him, as one borne away by a swift stream clings
to a stretched-out hand from the shore. If he was absent a moment her
restless eyes sought something they were disappointed not to find.
Philip so yearned to bring her back to life, he willed it so strongly and
passionately, that his will appeared to affect hers and she seemed slowly
to draw life from his.
After two days of this struggle with the grasping enemy, it was evident
to Dr. Longstreet that Ruth's will was beginning to issue its orders to
her body with some force, and that strength was slowly coming back.
In another day there was a decided improvement. As Philip sat holding
her weak hand and watching the least sign of resolution in her face, Ruth
was able to whisper,
"I so want to live, for you, Phil!"
"You will; darling, you must," said Philip in a tone of faith and courage
that carried a thrill of determination--of command--along all her nerves.
Slowly Philip drew her back to life. Slowly she came back, as one
willing but well nigh helpless. It was new for Ruth to feel this
dependence on another's nature, to consciously draw strength of will from
the will of another. It was a new but a dear joy, to be lifted up and
carried back into the happy world, which was now all aglow with the light
of love; to be lifted and carried by the one she loved more than her own
life.
"Sweetheart," she said to Philip, "I would not have cared to come back
but for thy love."
"Not for thy profession?"
"Oh, thee may be glad enough of that some day, when thy coal bed is dug
out and thee and father are in the air again."
When Ruth was able to ride she was taken into the country, for the pure
air was necessary to her speedy recovery. The family went with her.
Philip could not be spared from her side, and Mr. Bolton had gone up to
Ilium to look into that wonderful coal mine and to make arrangements for
developing it, and bringing its wealth to market. Philip had insisted on
re-conveying the Ilium property to Mr. Bolton, retaining only the share
originally contemplated for himself, and Mr. Bolton, therefore, once
more found himself engaged in business and a person of some consequence
in Third street. The mine turned out even better than was at first
hoped, and would, if judiciously managed, be a fortune to them all.
This also seemed to be the opinion of Mr. Bigler, who heard of it as soon
as anybody, and, with the impudence of his class called upon Mr. Bolton
for a little aid in a patent car-wheel he had bought an interest in.
That rascal, Small, he said, had swindled him out of all he had.
Mr. Bolton told him he was very sorry, and recommended him to sue Small.
Mr. Small also came with a similar story about Mr. Bigler; and Mr.
Bolton had the grace to give him like advice. And he added, "If you and
Bigler will procure the indictment of each other, you may have the
satisfaction of putting each other in the penitentiary for the forgery of
my acceptances."
Bigler and Small did not quarrel however. They both attacked Mr. Bolton
behind his back as a swindler, and circulated the story that he had made
a fortune by failing.
In the pure air of the highlands, amid the golden glories of ripening
September, Ruth rapidly came back to health. How beautiful the world is
to an invalid, whose senses are all clarified, who has been so near the
world of spirits that she is sensitive to the finest influences, and
whose frame responds with a thrill to the subtlest ministrations of
soothing nature. Mere life is a luxury, and the color of the grass, of
the flowers, of the sky, the wind in the trees, the outlines of the
horizon, the forms of clouds, all give a pleasure as exquisite as the
sweetest music to the ear famishing for it. The world was all new and
fresh to Ruth, as if it had just been created for her, and love filled
it, till her heart was overflowing with happiness.
It was golden September also at Fallkill. And Alice sat by the open
window in her room at home, looking out upon the meadows where the
laborers were cutting the second crop of clover. The fragrance of it
floated to her nostrils. Perhaps she did not mind it. She was thinking.
She had just been writing to Ruth, and on the table before her was a
yellow piece of paper with a faded four-leaved clover pinned on it--only
a memory now. In her letter to Ruth she had poured out her heartiest
blessings upon them both, with her dear love forever and forever.
"Thank God," she said, "they will never know"
They never would know. And the world never knows how many women there
are like Alice, whose sweet but lonely lives of self-sacrifice, gentle,
faithful, loving souls, bless it continually.
"She is a dear girl," said Philip, when Ruth showed him the letter.
"Yes, Phil, and we can spare a great deal of love for her, our own lives
are so full."
APPENDIX.
Perhaps some apology to the reader is necessary in view of our failure to
find Laura's father. We supposed, from the ease with which lost persons
are found in novels, that it would not be difficult. But it was; indeed,
it was impossible; and therefore the portions of the narrative containing
the record of the search have been stricken out. Not because they were
not interesting--for they were; but inasmuch as the man was not found,
after all, it did not seem wise to harass and excite the reader to no
purpose.
THE AUTHORS
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gilded Age, Complete
by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS:
Preface
My Watch
Political Economy
The Jumping Frog
Journalism In Tennessee
The Story Of The Bad Little Boy
The Story Of The Good Little Boy
A Couple Of Poems By Twain And Moore
Niagara
Answers To Correspondents
To Raise Poultry
Experience Of The Mcwilliamses With Membranous Croup
My First Literary Venture
How The Author Was Sold In Newark
The Office Bore
Johnny Greer
The Facts In The Case Of The Great Beef Contract
The Case Of George Fisher
Disgraceful Persecution Of A Boy
The Judges "Spirited Woman"
Information Wanted
Some Learned Fables, For Good Old Boys And Girls
My Late Senatorial Secretaryship
A Fashion Item
Riley-Newspaper Correspondent
A Fine Old Man
Science Vs. Luck
The Late Benjamin Franklin
Mr. Bloke's Item
A Medieval Romance
Petition Concerning Copyright
After-Dinner Speech
Lionizing Murderers
A New Crime
A Curious Dream
A True Story
The Siamese Twins
Speech At The Scottish Banquet In London
A Ghost Story
The Capitoline Venus
Speech On Accident Insurance
John Chinaman In New York
How I Edited An Agricultural Paper
The Petrified Man
My Bloody Massacre
The Undertaker's Chat
Concerning Chambermaids
Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man
"After" Jenkins
About Barbers
"Party Cries" In Ireland
The Facts Concerning The Recent Resignation
History Repeats Itself
Honored As A Curiosity
First Interview With Artemus Ward
Cannibalism In The Cars
The Killing Of Julius Caesar "Localized"
The Widow's Protest
The Scriptural Panoramist
Curing A Cold
A Curious Pleasure Excursion
Running For Governor
A Mysterious Visit
PREFACE
I have scattered through this volume a mass of matter which has never
been in print before (such as "Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and
Girls," the "Jumping Frog restored to the English tongue after martyrdom
in the French," the "Membranous Croup" sketch, and many others which I
need not specify): not doing this in order to make an advertisement of
it, but because these things seemed instructive.
HARTFORD, 1875.
MARK TWAIN.
SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
MY WATCH--[Written about 1870.]
AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE
My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining,
and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come
to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to
consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one
night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized
messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set
the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart.
Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time,
and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to
set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow-regulator wants
pushing up." I tried to stop him--tried to make him understand that the
watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was
that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up
a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him
to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My
watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the
week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred
and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the
timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen
days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow,
while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent,
bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not
abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I
had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing.
He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open,
and then put a small dice-box into his eye and peered into its machinery.
He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating--come in a
week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down
to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by
trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch
strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest;
I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last
week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and
alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of
sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling
for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I went
to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited,
and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in
three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For
half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking
and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not
hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there
was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the
rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all
the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of
twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and
just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could
say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is
only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another
watchmaker. He said the king-bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was
nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the
king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger.
He repaired the king-bolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost
in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run
awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals.
And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my
breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker.
He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his
glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with
the hair-trigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well
now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut
together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would
travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail
of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing
repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the
mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works
needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my
timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after
working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let
go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would
straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their
individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate
spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next
twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang.
I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he
took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for
this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars
originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for
repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this
watchmaker an old acquaintance--a steamboat engineer of other days, and
not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just
as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with
the same confidence of manner.
He said:
"She makes too much steam-you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the
safety-valve!"
I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.
My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was,
a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good
watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what
became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers,
and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.
POLITICAL ECONOMY
Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest
men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the--
[Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me
down at the door. I went and confronted him, and asked to know his
business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething
political-economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get
tangled in their harness. And privately I wished the stranger was in the
bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him. I was all in a
fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he
was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, "Yes,
yes--go on--what about it?" He said there was nothing about it, in
particular--nothing except that he would like to put them up for me.
I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses
all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear
(to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an
offhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight
lightning-rods put up, but--The stranger started, and looked inquiringly
at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any
mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would
rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, "All right," and
started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me
back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many "points" I
wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality
of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used to the
exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and he
probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight
"points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod.
He said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot;
"coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would
stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and
"render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I said
apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did,
but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand.
Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do
it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration
of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they
never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods
since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along without
four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to
try. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job
he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So I got rid of
him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of
political-economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on
once more.]
richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and
their learning. The great lights of commercial jurisprudence,
international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages,
all civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to
Horace Greeley, have--
[Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further
with that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with
prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them
was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen
minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him--he so calm
and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was standing in the contemplative
attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose,
and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim
tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and
admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now there
was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, "I leave
it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than
eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" I said I had no present
recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in his
opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way
of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make
my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other
chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous 'coup d'oeil' a soothing
uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally
consequent upon the 'coup d'etat.'" I asked him if he learned to talk
out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere? He smiled pleasantly,
and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and that
nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his
conversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and
said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix
me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and
added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to
speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated
on--a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful hurry,
and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that I
could go on with my work. He said, "I could have put up those eight
rods, and marched off about my business--some men would have done it.
But no; I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die
before I'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house,
and for one I'll never stir out of my tracks till I've done as I would be
done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the
recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your--"
"There, now, there," I said, "put on the other eight--add five hundred
feet of spiral-twist--do anything and everything you want to do; but calm
your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them
with the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will
go to work again."
I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get
back to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the last
interruption; but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and may
venture to proceed again.]
wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have
found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and
smiling after every throw. The great Confucius said that he would
rather be a profound political economist than chief of police.
Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest
consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even
our own Greeley had said vaguely but forcibly that "Political--
[Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down in
a state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have
died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that
job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it
was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he
stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and
saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a
thunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal
interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen
lightning-rods--"Let us have peace!" I shrieked. "Put up a hundred and
fifty! Put some on the kitchen! Put a dozen on the barn! Put a couple
on the cow! Put one on the cook!--scatter them all over the persecuted
place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted
canebrake! Move! Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and
when you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods,
piston-rods--anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for
artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to
my lacerated soul!" Wholly unmoved--further than to smile sweetly--this
iron being simply turned back his wrist-bands daintily, and said he would
now proceed to hump himself. Well, all that was nearly three hours ago.
It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble
theme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it
is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of
all this world's philosophy.]
economy is heaven's best boon to man." When the loose but gifted
Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be
granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he
would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition,
not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy.
Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker,
Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even
imperial Homer, in the ninth book of the Iliad, has said:
Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,
Post mortem unum, ante bellum,
Hic facet hoc, ex-parte res,
Politicum e-conomico est.
The grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the
felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the
imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza,
and made it more celebrated than any that ever--
["Now, not a word out of you--not a single word. Just state your bill
and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these
premises. Nine hundred, dollars? Is that all? This check for the
amount will be honored at any respectable bank in America. What is that
multitude of people gathered in the street for? How?--'looking at the
lightning-rods!' Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods
before? Never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did I
understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this
popular ebullition of ignorance."]
THREE DAYS LATER.--We are all about worn out. For four-and-twenty hours
our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. The
theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and
commonplace compared with my lightning-rods. Our street was blocked
night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from
the country to see. It was a blessed relief on the second day when a
thunderstorm came up and the lightning began to "go for" my house, as the
historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so to
speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of
my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full,
windows, roof, and all. And well they might be, for all the falling
stars and Fourth-of-July fireworks of a generation, put together and
rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one
helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display
that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general
gloom of the storm.
By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven
hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of
those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot
into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the
thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates
was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in
the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly
accommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began.
For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out
of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a
billiard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever
dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an
end-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds
above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied
forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did
we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific
armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one
on the barn--and, behold, these remain there even unto this day. And
then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again.
I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not
continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled
enough in nerve and brain to resume it.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.--Parties having need of three thousand two
hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist
lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped
points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still
equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargains by addressing
the publisher.
THE JUMPING FROG [written about 1865]
IN ENGLISH. THEN IN FRENCH. THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED LANGUAGE
ONCE MORE BY PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL.
Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who
has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his
best to right himself. My attention has just beep called to an article
some three years old in a French Magazine entitled, 'Revue des Deux
Mondes' (Review of Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of "Les
Humoristes Americaines" (These Humorist Americans). I am one of these
humorists American dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making.
This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French,
where they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you start
into a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out alive or
not). It is a very good article and the writer says all manner of kind
and complimentary things about me--for which I am sure thank him with all
my heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one
unlucky experiment? What I refer to is this: he says my jumping Frog is
a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse
any one with laughter--and straightway proceeds to translate it into
French in order to prove to his nation that there is nothing so very
extravagantly funny about it. Just there is where my complaint
originates. He has not translated it at all; he has simply mixed it all
up; it is no more like the jumping Frog when he gets through with it than
I am like a meridian of longitude. But my mere assertion is not proof;
wherefore I print the French version, that all may see that I do not
speak falsely; furthermore, in order that even the unlettered may know my
injury and give me their compassion, I have been at infinite pains and
trouble to retranslate this French version back into English; and to tell
the truth I have well-nigh worn myself out at it, having scarcely rested
from my work during five days and nights. I cannot speak the French
language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I being
self-educated. I ask the reader to run his eye over the original English
version of the jumping Frog, and then read the French or my
retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the
grammar. I think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the French are
called a polished nation. If I had a boy that put sentences together as
they do, I would polish him to some purpose. Without further
introduction, the jumping Frog, as I originally wrote it, was as follows
[after it will be found the French version--(French version is deleted
from this edition)--, and after the latter my retranslation from the
French]
THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY [Pronounced Cal-e-va-ras]
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the
East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired
after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I
hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W.
Smiley is a myth that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he
on conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him
of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death
with some exasperating reminiscence him as long and as tedious as it
should be useless to me. If that was the design, it succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the
dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp Angel's, and I noticed that
he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness
and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up, and gave me
good day. I told him that a friend of mine had commissioned me to make
some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas
W. Smiley--Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who
he had heard was at one time resident of Angel's Camp. I added that if
Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley,
I would feel under many obligations to him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his
chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which
follows this paragraph. He never smiled he never frowned, he never
changed his voice from the gentle flowing key to which he tuned his
initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of
enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein
of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that,
so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny
about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired
its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in 'finesse.' I let him go
on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.
"Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le--well, there was a feller here, once
by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49--or maybe it was the
spring of '50--I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me
think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn't
finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the
curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever
see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't
he'd change sides. Any way that suited the other man would suit him any
way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky,
uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and
laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but
that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was
just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush or
you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd
bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a
chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a
fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a
camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he
judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was too, and a good
man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet
you how long it would take him to get to--to wherever he was going to,
and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but
what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the
road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about
him. Why, it never made no difference to him--he'd bet on any thing--the
dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good
while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning
he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was
considerable better--thank the Lord for his inf'nite mercy--and coming on
so smart that with the blessing of Prov'dence she'd get well yet; and
Smiley, before he thought, says, 'Well, I'll resk two-and-a-half she
don't anyway.'
"Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag,
but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than
that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and
always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something
of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start,
and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she
get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up,
and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and
sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust
and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her
nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near
as you could cipher it down.
"And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he
warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a
chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a
different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of
a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces.
And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him
over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson--which was the
name of the pup--Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was
satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--and the bets being doubled
and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up;
and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int
of his hind leg and freeze to it--not chaw, you understand, but only just
grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year.
Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once
that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a
circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money
was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a
minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the
door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter
discouraged-like and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got
shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was
broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind
legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight,
and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It was a good
pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if
he'd lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius--I know it,
because he hadn't no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to
reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them
circumstances if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when
I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out.
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats
and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't
fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog
one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so
he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn
that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a
little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in
the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple,
if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a
cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in
practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could
see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do
'most anything--and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster
down here on this floor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing
out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring
straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the
floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of
his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd
been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more
ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers
that had traveled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog
that ever they see.
"Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller
--a stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:
"'What might it be that you've got in the box?'
"And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog.'
"And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's HE good for.
"'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing,
I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.
"The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look,
and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says,
'I don't see no pints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog.'
"'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
resk forty dollars the he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
"And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad-like, 'Well,
I'm only a, stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog,
I'd bet you.
"And then Smiley says, 'That's all right--that's all right if you'll hold
my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' Any so the feller took the
box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to
wait.
"So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to himself and then
he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and
filled him full of quail-shot-filled him pretty near up to his chin--and
set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in
the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him
in, and give him to this feller and says:
"'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore paws
just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says,
'One-two-three--git' and him and the feller touches up the frogs from
behind, and the new frog hopped off lively but Dan'l give a heave, and
hysted up his shoulders---so-like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no
more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised,
and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was
of course.
"The Teller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at
the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and
says again, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no pints about
that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
"Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him
--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.' And he ketched Dan'l by the
nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why blame my cats if he don't
weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down and he belched out a double
handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man
--he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never
ketched him. And--"
[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up
to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said:
"Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to be
gone a second."
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of
the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much
information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started
away.
At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me
and recommenced:
"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no
tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and--"
However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about
the afflicted cow, but took my leave.
Now let the learned look upon this picture and say if iconoclasm can
further go:
[From the Revue des Deux Mondes, of July 15th, 1872.]
.......................
THE JUMPING FROG
"--Il y avait, une fois ici un individu connu sous le nom de Jim Smiley:
c'etait dans l'hiver de 49, peut-etre bien au printemps de 50, je ne me
reappelle pas exactement. Ce qui me fait croire que c'etait l'un ou
l'autre, c'est que je me souviens que le grand bief n'etait pas acheve
lorsqu'il arriva au camp pour la premiere fois, mais de toutes facons il
etait l'homme le plus friand de paris qui se put voir, pariant sur tout
ce qui se presentaat, quand il pouvait trouver un adversaire, et, quand
n'en trouvait pas il passait du cote oppose. Tout ce qui convenaiat
l'autre lui convenait; pourvu qu'il eut un pari, Smiley etait satisfait.
Et il avait une chance! une chance inouie: presque toujours il gagnait.
It faut dire qu'il etait toujours pret a'exposer, qu'on ne pouvait
mentionner la moindre chose sans que ce gaillard offrit de parier
la-dessus n'importe quoi et de prendre le cote que l'on voudrait, comme
je vous le disais tout a l'heure. S'il y avait des courses, vous le
trouviez riche ou ruine a la fin; s'il y avait un combat de chiens, il
apportait son enjeu; il l'apportait pour un combat de chats, pour un
combat de coqs;--parbleu! si vous aviez vu deux oiseaux sur une haie il
vous aurait offert de parier lequel s'envolerait le premier, et s'il y
aviat 'meeting' au camp, il venait parier regulierement pour le cure
Walker, qu'il jugeait etre le meilleur predicateur des environs, et qui
l'etait en effet, et un brave homme. Il aurai rencontre une punaise de
bois en chemin, qu'il aurait parie sur le temps qu'il lui faudrait pour
aller ou elle voudrait aller, et si vous l'aviez pris au mot, it aurait
suivi la punaise jusqu'au Mexique, sans se soucier d'aller si loin, ni du
temps qu'il y perdrait. Une fois la femme du cure Walker fut tres malade
pendant longtemps, il semblait qu'on ne la sauverait pas; mai un matin le
cure arrive, et Smiley lui demande comment ella va et il dit qu'elle est
bien mieux, grace a l'infinie misericorde tellement mieux qu'avec la
benediction de la Providence elle s'en tirerait, et voila que, sans y
penser, Smiley repond:--Eh bien! ye gage deux et demi qu'elle mourra tout
de meme.
"Ce Smiley avait une jument que les gars appelaient le bidet du quart
d'heure, mais seulement pour plaisanter, vous comprenez, parse que, bien
entendu, elle etait plus vite que ca! Et il avait coutume de gagner de
l'argent avec cette bete, quoi-qu'elle fut poussive, cornarde, toujours
prise d'asthme, de colique ou de consomption, ou de quelque chose
d'approchant. On lui donnait 2 ou 300 'yards' au depart, puffs on la
depassait sans peine; mais jamais a la fin elle ne manquait de
s'echauffer, de s'exasperer et elle arrivait, s'ecartant, se defendant,
ses jambes greles en l'ai devant les obstacles, quelquefois les evitant
et faisant avec cela plus de poussiare qu'aucun cheval, plus de bruit
surtout avec ses eternumens et reniflemens.---crac! elle arrivaat donc
toujour premiere d'une tete, aussi juste qu'on peut le mesurer. Et il
avait un petit bouledogue qui, a le voir, ne valait pas un sou; on aurait
cru que parier contre lui c'etait voler, tant il etait ordinaire; mais
aussitot les enjeux faits, il devenait un autre chien. Sa machoire
inferieure commencait a ressortir comme un gaillard d'avant, ses dents se
decouvcraient brillantes commes des fournaises, et un chien pouvait le
taquiner, l'exciter, le mordre, le jeter deux ou trois fois par-dessus
son epaule, Andre Jackson, c'etait le nom du chien, Andre Jackson prenait
cela tranquillement, comme s'il ne se fut jamais attendu a autre chose,
et quand les paris etaient doubles et redoubles contre lui, il vous
saisissait l'autre chien juste a l'articulation de la jambe de derriere,
et il ne la lachait plus, non pas qu'il la machat, vous concevez, mais il
s'y serait tenu pendu jusqu'a ce qu'on jetat l'eponge en l'air, fallut-il
attendre un an. Smiley gagnait toujours avec cette bete-la;
malheureusement ils ont fini par dresser un chien qui n'avait pas de
pattes de derriere, parce qu'on les avait sciees, et quand les choses
furent au point qu'il voulait, et qu'il en vint a se jeter sur son
morceau favori, le pauvre chien comprit en un instant qu'on s'etait moque
de lui, et que l'autre le tenait. Vous n'avez jamais vu personne avoir
l'air plus penaud et plus decourage; il ne fit aucun effort pour gagner
le combat et fut rudement secoue, de sorte que, regardant Smiley comme
pour lui dire:--Mon coeur est brise, c'est to faute; pourquoi m'avoir
livre a un chien qui n'a pas de pattes de derriere, puisque c'est par la
que je les bats?--il s'en alla en clopinant, et se coucha pour mourir.
Ah! c'etait un bon chien, cet Andre Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom,
s'il avait vecu, car il y avait de l'etoffe en lui, il avait du genie,
je la sais, bien que de grandes occasions lui aient manque; mais il est
impossible de supposer qu'un chien capable de se battre comme lui,
certaines circonstances etant donnees, ait manque de talent. Je me sens
triste toutes les fois que je pense a son dernier combat et au denoument
qu'il a eu. Eh bien! ce Smiley nourrissait des terriers a rats, et des
coqs combat, et des chats, et toute sorte de choses, au point qu'il etait
toujours en mesure de vous tenir tete, et qu'avec sa rage de paris on
n'avait plus de repos. Il attrapa un jour une grenouille et l'emporta
chez lui, disant qu'il pretendait faire son Education; vous me croirez si
vous voulez, mais pendant trois mois il n'a rien fait que lui apprendre a
sauter dans une cour retire de sa maison. Et je vous reponds qu'il avait
reussi. Il lui donnait un petit coup par derriere, et l'instant d'apres
vous voyiez la grenouille tourner en l'air comme un beignet au-dessus de
la poele, faire une culbute, quelquefois deux, lorsqu'elle etait bien
partie, et retomber sur ses pattes comme un chat. Il l'avait dressee
dans l'art de gober des mouches, er l'y exercait continuellement, si bien
qu'une mouche, du plus loin qu'elle apparaissait, etait une mouche
perdue. Smiley avait coutume de dire que tout ce qui manquait a une
grenouille, c'etait l'education, qu'avec l'education elle pouvait faire
presque tout, et je le crois. Tenez, je l'ai vu poser Daniel Webster la
sur se plancher,--Daniel Webster etait le nom de la grenouille,--et lui
chanter: Des mouches! Daniel, des mouches!--En un clin d'oeil, Daniel
avait bondi et saisi une mouche ici sur le comptoir, puis saute de
nouveau par terre, ou il restait vraiment a se gratter la tete avec sa
patte de derriere, comme s'il n'avait pas eu la moindre idee de sa
superiorite. Jamais vous n'avez grenouille vu de aussi modeste, aussi
naturelle, douee comme elle l'etait! Et quand il s'agissait de sauter
purement et simplement sur terrain plat, elle faisait plus de chemin en
un saut qu'aucune bete de son espece que vous puissiez connaitre. Sauter
a plat, c'etait son fort! Quand il s'agissait de cela, Smiley en tassait
les enjeux sur elle tant qu'il lui, restait un rouge liard. Il faut le
reconnaitre, Smiley etait monstrueusement fier de sa grenouille, et il en
avait le droit, car des gens qui avaient voyage, qui avaient tout vu,
disaient qu'on lui ferait injure de la comparer a une autre; de facon que
Smiley gardait Daniel dans une petite boite a claire-voie qu'il emportait
parfois a la Ville pour quelque pari.
"Un jour, un individu etranger au camp l'arrete aver sa boite et lui
dit:--Qu'est-ce que vous avez donc serre la dedans?
"Smiley dit d'un air indifferent:--Cela pourrait etre un perroquet ou un
serin, mais ce n'est rien de pareil, ce n'est qu'une grenouille.
"L'individu la prend, la regarde avec soin, la tourne d'un cote et de
l'autre puis il dit.--Tiens! en effet! A quoi estelle bonne?
"--Mon Dieu! repond Smiley, toujours d'un air degage, elle est bonne pour
une chose a mon avis, elle peut battre en sautant toute grenouille du
comte de Calaveras.
"L'individu reprend la boite, l'examine de nouveau longuement, et la rend
a Smiley en disant d'un air delibere:--Eh bien! je ne vois pas que cette
grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille.
"--Possible qua vous ne le voyiez pat, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous
entendiez en grenouilles, possible que vous ne vous y entendez point,
possible qua vous avez de l'experience, et possible que vous ne soyez
qu'un amateur. De toute maniere, je parie quarante dollars qu'elle
battra en sautant n'importe quelle grenouille du comte de Calaveras.
"L'individu reflechit one seconde et dit comma attriste:--Je ne suis
qu'un etranger ici, je n'ai pas de grenouille; mais, si j'en
avais une, je tiendrais le pari.
"--Fort bien! repond Smiley. Rien de plus facile. Si vous voulez tenir
ma boite one minute, j'irai vous chercher une grenouille.--Voile donc
l'individu qui garde la boite, qui met ses quarante dollars sur ceux de
Smiley et qui attend. Il attend assez longtemps, reflechissant tout
seul, et figurez-vous qu'il prend Daniel, lui ouvre la bouche de force at
avec une cuiller a the l'emplit de menu plomb de chasse, mail l'emplit
jusqu'au menton, puis il le pose par terre. Smiley pendant ce temps
etait a barboter dans une mare. Finalement il attrape une grenouille,
l'apporte cet individu et dit:--Maintenant, si vous etes pret, mettez-la
tout contra Daniel, avec leurs pattes de devant sur la meme ligne, et je
donnerai le signal; puis il ajoute:--Un, deux, trois, sautez!
"Lui et l'individu touchent leurs grenouilles par derriere, et la
grenouille neuve se met h sautiller, mais Daniel se souleve lourdement,
hausse les epaules ainsi, comma un Francais; a quoi bon? il ne pouvait
bouger, il etait plante solide comma une enclume, il n'avancait pas plus
que si on l'eut mis a l'ancre. Smiley fut surpris et degoute, mais il ne
se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu. L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en
va, et en s'en allant est-ce qu'il ne donna pas un coup de pouce
pardessus l'epaule, comma ca, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air
delibere:--Eh bien! je ne vois pas qua cette grenouille ait rien de muiex
qu'une autre.
"Smiley se gratta longtemps la tete, les yeux fixes Sur Daniel; jusqu'a
ce qu'enfin il dit:--je me demande comment diable il se fait qua cette
bite ait refuse, . . . Est-ce qu'elle aurait quelque chose? . . . On
croirait qu'elle est enflee.
"Il empoigne Daniel par la peau du coo, le souleve et dit:--Le loup me
croque, s'il ne pese pas cinq livres.
"Il le retourne, et le malheureux crache deux poignees de plomb. Quand
Smiley reconnut ce qui en etait, il fut comme fou. Vous le voyez d'ici
poser sa grenouille par terra et courir apres cet individu, mais il ne le
rattrapa jamais, et ...."
[Translation of the above back from the French:]
THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS
It there was one time here an individual known under the name of Jim
Smiley; it was in the winter of '89, possibly well at the spring of '50,
I no me recollect not exactly. This which me makes to believe that it
was the one or the other, it is that I shall remember that the grand
flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp for the first time, but
of all sides he was the man the most fond of to bet which one have seen,
betting upon all that which is presented, when he could find an
adversary; and when he not of it could not, he passed to the side
opposed. All that which convenienced to the other to him convenienced
also; seeing that he had a bet Smiley was satisfied. And he had a
chance! a chance even worthless; nearly always he gained. It must to say
that he was always near to himself expose, but one no could mention the
least thing without that this gaillard offered to bet the bottom, no
matter what, and to take the side that one him would, as I you it said
all at the hour (tout a l'heure). If it there was of races, you him find
rich or ruined at the end; if it, here is a combat of dogs, he bring his
bet; he himself laid always for a combat of cats, for a combat of cocks
--by-blue! If you have see two birds upon a fence, he you should have
offered of to bet which of those birds shall fly the first; and if there
is meeting at the camp (meeting au camp) he comes to bet regularly for
the cure Walker, which he judged to be the best predicator of the
neighborhood (predicateur des environs) and which he was in effect, and a
brave man. He would encounter a bug of wood in the road, whom he will
bet upon the time which he shall take to go where she would go--and if
you him have take at the word, he will follow the bug as far as Mexique,
without himself caring to go so far; neither of the time which he there
lost. One time the woman of the cure Walker is very sick during long
time, it seemed that one not her saved not; but one morning the cure
arrives, and Smiley him demanded how she goes, and he said that she is
well better, grace to the infinite misery (lui demande comment elle va,
et il dit qu'elle est bien mieux, grace a l'infinie misericorde) so much
better that with the benediction of the Providence she herself of it
would pull out (elle s'en tirerait); and behold that without there
thinking Smiley responds: "Well, I gage two-and-half that she will die
all of same."
This Smiley had an animal which the boys called the nag of the quarter of
hour, but solely for pleasantry, you comprehend, because, well
understand, she was more fast as that! [Now why that exclamation?--M. T.]
And it was custom of to gain of the silver with this beast,
notwithstanding she was poussive, cornarde, always taken of asthma, of
colics or of consumption, or something of approaching. One him would
give two or three hundred yards at the departure, then one him passed
without pain; but never at the last she not fail of herself echauffer,
of herself exasperate, and she arrives herself ecartant, se defendant,
her legs greles in the air before the obstacles, sometimes them elevating
and making with this more of dust than any horse, more of noise above
with his eternumens and reniflemens--crac! she arrives then always first
by one head, as just as one can it measure. And he had a small bulldog
(bouledogue!) who, to him see, no value, not a cent; one would believe
that to bet against him it was to steal, so much he was ordinary; but as
soon as the game made, she becomes another dog. Her jaw inferior
commence to project like a deck of before, his teeth themselves discover
brilliant like some furnaces, and a dog could him tackle (le taquiner),
him excite, him murder (le mordre), him throw two or three times over his
shoulder, Andre Jackson--this was the name of the dog--Andre Jackson
takes that tranquilly, as if he not himself was never expecting other
thing, and when the bets were doubled and redoubled against him, he you
seize the other dog just at the articulation of the leg of behind, and he
not it leave more, not that he it masticate, you conceive, but he himself
there shall be holding during until that one throws the sponge in the
air, must he wait a year. Smiley gained always with this beast-la;
unhappily they have finished by elevating a dog who no had not of feet of
behind, because one them had sawed; and when things were at the point
that he would, and that he came to himself throw upon his morsel
favorite, the poor dog comprehended in an instant that he himself was
deceived in him, and that the other dog him had. You no have never seen
person having the air more penaud and more discouraged; he not made no
effort to gain the combat, and was rudely shucked.
Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of
combat, and some pats, and all sorts of things; and with his rage of
betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him
imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to
make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months
he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter)
in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you respond that
he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant
after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make
one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall
upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to
gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised continually
--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a fly lost.
Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it was the
education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I him
believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this
plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, "Some
flies, Daniel, some fifes!"--in a flash of the eye Daniel 30
had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at
the earth, where he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his
behind foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his superiority.
Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was.
And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth,
she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species than you
can know. To jump plain-this was his strong. When he himself agitated
for that, Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him
remained a red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his
frog, and he of it was right, for some men who were traveled, who had all
seen, said that they to him would be injurious to him compare, to another
frog. Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried
bytimes to the village for some bet.
One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and
him said:
"What is this that you have them shut up there within?"
Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
"That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is
nothing of such, it not is but a frog."
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side
and from the other, then he said:
"Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?"
"My God!" respond Smiley, always with an air disengaged, "she is good for
one thing, to my notice (A mon avis), she can better in jumping (elle pent
battre en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras."
The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered
to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
"Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog." (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no
judge.--M. T.]
"Possible that you not it saw not," said Smiley, "possible that you--you
comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
an amateur. Of all manner (De toute maniere) I bet forty dollars that
she better in jumping no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras."
The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:
"I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had
one, I would embrace the bet."
"Strong well!" respond Smiley; "nothing of more facility. If you will
hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher)."
Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box, who puts his forty
dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attend). He
attended enough long times, reflecting all solely. And figure you that
he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him
fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him
puts by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp.
Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
said:
"Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel with their before feet
upon the same line, and I give the signal"--then he added: "One, two,
three--advance!"
Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new
put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the
shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? he not could budge, he
is planted solid like a church he not advance no more than if one him had
put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he no himself doubted not of the
turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu).
The individual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it
himself in going is it that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the
shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air
deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant
est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup d pouce par-dessus l'epaule, comme ga,
au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere):
"Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothin of better than another."
Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,
until that which at last he said:
"I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.
Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed."
He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:
"The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds:"
He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le
malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad.
He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he
not him caught never.
Such is the jumping Frog, to the distorted French eye. I claim that I
never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium
tremens in my life. And what has a poor foreigner like me done, to be
abused and misrepresented like this? When I say, "Well, I don't see no
pints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog," is it kind,
is it just, for this Frenchman to try to make it appear that I said, "Eh
bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog"?
I have no heart to write more. I never felt so about anything before.
HARTFORD, March, 1875.
JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE--[Written about 1871.]
The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a
correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--"While he was writing
the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and
punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was
saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange.
I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my
health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning
Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on
duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair
with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room
and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers
and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand,
sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door
hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black
cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and
neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing
collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends
hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and
trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his
locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was
concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the
exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee
Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of
interest.
I wrote as follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a
misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not
the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side.
On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points
along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it.
The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in
making the correction.
John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville
Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city
yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has
fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter
is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake
before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled
by incomplete election returns.
It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring
to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh
impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah
urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate
success.
I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,
alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He
ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was
easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said:
"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those
cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such
gruel as that? Give me the pen!"
I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow
through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was
in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window,
and marred the symmetry of my ear.
"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he
was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and
fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim,
who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was
me. Merely a finger shot off.
Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations.
Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the
explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did
no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my
teeth out.
"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.
I said I believed it was.
"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man
that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be
written."
I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations
till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as
follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently
endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another
of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most
glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack
railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side
originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings
which they regard as brains. They had better, swallow this lie if
they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding
they so richly deserve.
That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of
Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.
We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning
Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van
Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to
disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and
elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more
gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and
holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades
his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood,
calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.
Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a
poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed
of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a
newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who
edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary
imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense.
"Now that is the way to write--peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk
journalism gives me the fan-tods."
About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash,
and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range
--I began to feel in the way.
The chief said, "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him
for two days. He will be up now right away."
He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with
a dragoon revolver in his hand.
He said, "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this
mangy sheet?"
"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is
gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel
Blatherskite Tecumseh?"
"Right, Sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at
leisure we will begin."
"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual
Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin."
Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief
lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the
fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a
little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my
share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded
slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would
go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a
delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me
to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.
They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded,
and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again
with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark
that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally
wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to
say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the
way to the undertaker's and left.
The chief turned to me and said, "I am expecting company to dinner, and
shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof
and attend to the customers."
I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was
too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to
think of anything to say.
He continued, "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie will
call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be
along about four--kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you
have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give
the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in
the drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in
the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon,
downstairs. He advertises--we take it out in trade."
He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been
through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were
gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window.
Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took
the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill
of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson,
left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in
the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs,
politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their
weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of
steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief
arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then
ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one
either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up,
thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy,
with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all
was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I
sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around
us.
He said, "You'll like this place when you get used to it."
I said, "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write
to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned
the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that
sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a, man is liable
to interruption.
"You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the
public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as
it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much
as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like
to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel,
I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not
judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window
and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your
gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in
to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my
skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his
cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my
clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom
of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards
in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest
of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had
such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day. No; I like
you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the
customers, but you see I am not used to it. The Southern heart is too
impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The
paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences
your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean
journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of
editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for
breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at
these festivities. I came South for my health, I will go back on the
same errand, and suddenly. Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for
me."
After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the
hospital.
THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865]
Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim--though, if you will
notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James
in your Sunday-school books. It was strange, but still it was true, that
this one was called Jim.
He didn't have any sick mother, either--a sick mother who was pious and
had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at
rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt
that the world might be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone.
Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers,
who teach them to say, "Now, I lay me down," etc., and sing them to sleep
with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel
down by the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow.
He was named Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother
--no consumption, nor anything of that kind. She was rather stout than
otherwise, and she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's
account. She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss.
She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good night; on
the contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him.
Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped in
there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar,
so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a
terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to
whisper to him, "Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do
this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's
jam?" and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be
wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell
his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her
with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way
with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this
Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his
sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also,
and laughed, and observed "that the old woman would get up and snort"
when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing
anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying
himself. Everything about this boy was curious--everything turned out
differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the
books.
Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the
limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by
the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and
repent and become good. Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and
came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked
him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange
--nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled
backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and
bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women
with the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on.
Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books.
Once he stole the teacher's penknife, and, when he was afraid it would be
found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's
cap poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the
village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was
fond of his lessons, and infatuated with Sunday-school. And when the
knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed,
as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon
him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his
trembling shoulders, a white-haired, improbable justice of the peace did
not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike an attitude and say,
"Spare this noble boy--there stands the cowering culprit! I was passing
the school door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft
committed!" And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice
didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and
say such boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him come and make his
home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands,
and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household labors, and
have all the balance of the time to play and get forty cents a month, and
be happy. No it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't
happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to
make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad
of it because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on
them milksops." Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.
But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went
boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he
got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday and didn't get
struck by lightning. Why, you might look, and look, all through the
Sunday-school books from now till next Christmas, and you would never
come across anything like this. Oh, no; you would find that all the bad
boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned; and all the bad
boys who get caught out in storms when they are fishing on Sunday
infallibly get struck by lightning. Boats with bad boys in them always
upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the
Sabbath. How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.
This Jim bore a charmed life--that must have been the way of it. Nothing
could hurt him. He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of
tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his
trunk. He browsed around the cupboard after essence-of peppermint, and
didn't make a mistake and drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun
and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his
fingers off. He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist
when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer
days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that
redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He
ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself
sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet
churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and
gone to decay. Ah, no; he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into
the station-house the first thing.
And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them
all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and
rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his
native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the
legislature.
So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that
had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.
THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865]
Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens. He always
obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands
were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at
Sabbath-school. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment
told him it was the most profitable thing he could do. None of the other
boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely. He wouldn't
lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie,
and that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply
ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything.
He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he
wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to
take any interest in any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys
used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but
they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion. As I said before,
they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was "afflicted,"
and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm
to come to him.
This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his
greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the
good little boys they put in the Sunday-school book; he had every
confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive once;
but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he
read about a particularly good one he turned over quickly to the end to
see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles
and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good little boy always died
in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his
relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in
pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and
everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half
of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could
see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the
last chapter.
Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted
to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie
to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures
representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor
beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but
not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him
magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for
him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over the
head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, "Hi! hi!" as he
proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to
be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a lithe uncomfortable
sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He
loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about
being a Sunday-school-boo boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good.
He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good
as the boys in the books were he knew that none of them had ever been
able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in
a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out
before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral
in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book that
couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was
dying. So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best
he could under the circumstances--to live right, and hang on as long as
he could and have his dying speech all ready when his time came.
But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy; nothing
ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys
in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the
broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it
all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing
apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy
who fell out of a neighbor's apple tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out
of the tree, too, but he fell on him and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't
hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in
the books like it.
And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and
Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not
give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his
stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then
pretending to help him up. This was not in accordance with any of the
books. Jacob looked them all over to see.
One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any
place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet
him and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one
and was happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going
to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except
those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was
astonishing. He examined authorities, but he could not understand the
matter. It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it
acted very differently. Whatever this boy did he got into trouble. The
very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about
the most unprofitable things he could invest in.
Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys
starting off pleasuring in a sailboat. He was filled with consternation,
because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday
invariably got drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log
turned with him and slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty
soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh
start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks.
But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the
boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the
most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these
things in the books. He was perfectly dumfounded.
When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on
trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in
a book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good
little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could
hold on till his time was fully up. If everything else failed he had his
dying speech to fall back on.
He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go
to sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship-captain and made his
application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he
proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, "To Jacob Blivens, from
his affectionate teacher." But the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and
he said, "Oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he knew how to
wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him."
This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to
Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had
never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship-captains, and open
the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift it never had in
any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses.
This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according
to the authorities with him. At last, one day, when he was around
hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old
iron-foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which
they had tied together in long procession, and were going to ornament
with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails. Jacob's heart
was touched. He sat down on one of those cans (for he never minded
grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by
the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones. But just
at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad
boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began
one of those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always
commence with "Oh, sir!" in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good
or bad, ever starts a remark with "Oh, sir." But the alderman never
waited to hear the rest. He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him
around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and in
an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away
toward the sun with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after
him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a sign of that alderman or
that old iron-foundry left on the face of the earth; and, as for young
Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after
all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because,
although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an
adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four
townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out
whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred. You never saw a boy
scattered so.--[This glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating
newspaper item, whose author's name I would give if I knew it.--M. T.]
Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't
come out according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did
prospered except him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably
never be accounted for.
A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE--[Written about 1865]
THOSE EVENING BELLS
BY THOMAS MOORE
Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime.
Those joyous hours are passed away;
And many a heart that then was gay,
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.
And so 'twill be when I am gone
That tuneful peal will still ring on;
While other bards shall walk these dells,
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.
THOSE ANNUAL BILLS
BY MARK TWAIN
These annual bills! these annual bills!
How many a song their discord trills
Of "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
Since I was skinned by last year's lot!
Those joyous beans are passed away;
Those onions blithe, O where are they?
Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS
Your shades troop back in annual bills!
And so 'twill be when I'm aground
These yearly duns will still go round,
While other bards, with frantic quills,
Shall damn and damn these annual bills!
NIAGARA [ Written about 1871.]
Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are
excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for
fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even
equaled elsewhere. Because, in other localities, certain places in the
streams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as
good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and
so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can
depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this
state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the
public.
The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant
and none of them fatiguing. When you start out to "do" the Falls you
first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of
looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara
River. A railway "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had the
angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend a
staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of
the water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but
you will then be too late.
The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the
little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids--how first
one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the
other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard,
and where her planking began to break and part asunder--and how she did
finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of
traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen
minutes, I have really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary,
anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the
story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a
word or alter a sentence or a gesture.
Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between
the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and
the chances of having the railway-train overhead smashing down onto you.
Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together,
they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.
On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of
photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an
ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your
solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the
light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime
Niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the
native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime.
Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately
pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis or a couple of country
cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and
uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their
awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of
that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose
voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was
monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of small
reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's
unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages
after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood-relations, the
other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust.
There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display
one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a
sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.
When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are
satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new
Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave
of the Winds.
Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and
put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque,
but not beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight
of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long
after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before
it had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the
precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river.
We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons
shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung
with both hands--not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to.
Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier, and sprays
from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets
that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the
nature of groping. Nova a furious wind began to rush out from behind the
waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and
scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I
wanted to go home; but it was too late. We were almost under the
monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in
vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound.
In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and bewildered
by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy
tempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming,
roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears
before. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back.
The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything, the
flood poured down savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the
most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a
leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the
bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and
precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we
got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand
in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water,
and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully
in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it.
The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love
to read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of
his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and
forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately
metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky
maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements.
Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When I
found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork, and
stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human
beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and
bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion.
I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble
Red Man.
A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of
curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the
Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to
speak to them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over
to Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under a
tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore a slouch hat and
brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does the baneful
contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp
which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native
haunts. I addressed the relic as follows:
"Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy? Does the great
Speckled Thunder sigh for the war-path, or is his heart contented with
dreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest? Does the mighty
Sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to
make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? Speak, sublime
relic of bygone grandeur--venerable ruin, speak!"
The relic said:
"An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takon' for a dirty
Injin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil! By the piper
that played before Moses, I'll ate ye!"
I went away from there.
By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a
gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin
moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her.
She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family
resemblance to a clothes-pin, and was now boring a hole through his
abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment, and then addressed
her:
"Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the Laughing Tadpole
lonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race,
and the vanished glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wander
afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-
Lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she ought against
the paleface stranger?"
The maiden said:
"Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names? Lave this, or
I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!"
I adjourned from there also.
"Confound these Indians!" I said. "They told me they were tame; but, if
appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath."
I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I came
upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum
and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship:
"Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High
Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you!
You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, Roaring
Thundergust --you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyond
the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your
ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a
vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have
depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of
others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your
simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper.
Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and
tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the
picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of
the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the
purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their
mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!--and Red jacket! and Hole in the Day!--and
Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under my
banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--"
"Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Bang him!"
"Dhround him!"
It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash
in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--a
single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them
in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me.
They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave
me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like
a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to
injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.
About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest
caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get
loose. I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the
foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several
inches above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round and
round in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--each
round trip a half-mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four
times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.
At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe
in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the
other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind.
Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he
said:
"Got a match?"
"Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please."
"Not for Joe."
When I came round again, I said:
"Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will
you explain this singular conduct of yours?"
"With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can
wait for you. But I wish I had a match."
I said: "Take my place, and I'll go and get you one."
He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness
between us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea,
in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my
custom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side.
At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace
by yelling at people on shore for help. The judge fined me, but had the
advantage of him. My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloons
were with the Indians.
Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very critical condition. At least I
am lying anyway---critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but I
cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking
inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus far
he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others.
Upon regaining my right mind, I said:
"It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork and
moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?"
"Limerick, my son."
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS--[Written about 1865.]
"MORAL STATISTICIAN."--I don't want any of your statistics; I took your
whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You
are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much
his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he
wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal
practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of
wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. And you are always figuring out how
many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of
wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc. You never see more than one
side of the question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in
America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they
ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and
survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet
grow older and fatter all the time. And you never by to find out how
much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking
in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would
save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost
in a lifetime your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can
save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for
fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it
to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul. All the use that money
can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life;
therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use
of accumulating cash? It won't do for you say that you can use it to
better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in
supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who
have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you
stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and
hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor
wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you;
and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in
the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give
the revenue officer: full statement of your income. Now you know these
things yourself, don't you? Very well, then what is the use of your
stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What
is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In
a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying
to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are
yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"? Now I don't approve
of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a
particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so
I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same
man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of
smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your
reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor
stove.
"YOUNG AUTHOR."--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because
the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot
help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at least, not
with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair
usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be
all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply
good, middling-sized whales.
"SIMON WHEELER," Sonora.--The following simple and touching remarks and
accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region
of Sonora:
To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry
under the name and style of "He Done His Level Best," was one among
the whitest men I ever see, and it ain't every man that knowed him
that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is
busted and gone home to the States. He was here in an early day,
and he was the handyest man about takin' holt of anything that come
along you most ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, stirnn'
cretur, always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him
do anything by halvers. Preachin was his nateral gait, but he
warn't a man to lay back a twidle his thumbs because there didn't
happen to be nothin' do in his own especial line--no, sir, he was a
man who would meander forth and stir up something for hisself. His
last acts was to go his pile on "Kings-and" (calkatin' to fill, but
which he didn't fill), when there was a "flush" out agin him, and
naterally, you see, he went under. And so he was cleaned out as you
may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful but flat broke. I
knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this
humbly tribute to his gorgis abilities, you would greatly obleege
his onhappy friend.
HE DONE HIS LEVEL BEST
Was he a mining on the flat--
He done it with a zest;
Was he a leading of the choir--
He done his level best.
If he'd a reg'lar task to do,
He never took no rest;
Or if 'twas off-and-on-the same--
He done his level best.
If he was preachin' on his beat,
He'd tramp from east to west,
And north to south-in cold and heat
He done his level best.
He'd yank a sinner outen (Hades),**
And land him with the blest;
Then snatch a prayer'n waltz in again,
And do his level best.
**Here I have taken a slight liberty with the original MS. "Hades"
does not make such good meter as the other word of one syllable, but
it sounds better.
He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray,
And dance and drink and jest,
And lie and steal--all one to him--
He done his level best.
Whate'er this man was sot to do,
He done it with a zest;
No matter what his contract was,
HE'D DO HIS LEVEL BEST.
Verily, this man was gifted with "gorgis abilities," and it is a
happiness to me to embalm the memory of their luster in these columns.
If it were not that the poet crop is unusually large and rank in
California this year, I would encourage you to continue writing, Simon
Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you to enter
against so much opposition.
"PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR."--NO; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at
par.
"MELTON MOWBRAY," Dutch Flat.--This correspondent sends a lot of
doggerel, and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat. I
give a specimen verse:
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold;
And the sheen of his spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.**
**This piece of pleasantry, published in a San Francisco paper, was
mistaken by the country journals for seriousness, and many and loud
were the denunciations of the ignorance of author and editor, in not
knowing that the lines in question were "written by Byron."
There, that will do. That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it
won't do in the metropolis. It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like
butter milk gurgling from a jug. What the people ought to have is
something spirited--something like "Johnny Comes Marching Home." However
keep on practising, and you may succeed yet. There is genius in you, but
too much blubber.
"ST. CLAIR HIGGINS." Los Angeles.--"My life is a failure; I have
adored, wildly, madly, and she whom I love has turned coldly from me
and shed her affections upon another. What would you advise me to
do?"
You should set your affections on another also--or on several, if there
are enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former
flame unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the
happier a girl is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover
she has blighted. Don't allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as
that. The more cause that girl finds to regret that she did not marry
you, the more comfortable you will feel over it. It isn't poetical, but
it is mighty sound doctrine.
"ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"If it would take a cannon-ball
3 and 1/3 seconds to travel four miles, and 3 and 3/8 seconds to
travel the next four, and 3 and 5/8 to travel the next four, and if
its rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how
long would it take it to go fifteen hundred million miles?"
I don't know.
"AMBITIOUS LEARNER," Oakland.--Yes; you are right America was not
discovered by Alexander Selkirk.
"DISCARDED LOVER."--"I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha
Howard, and intended to marry her. Yet, during my temporary absence
at Benicia, last week, alas! she married Jones. Is my happiness to
be thus blasted for life? Have I no redress?"
Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on your side.
The intention and not the act constitutes crime--in other words,
constitutes the deed. If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend
it for an insult, it is an insult; but if you do it playfully, and
meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge a pistol
accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no
murder; but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him,
but fail utterly to do it, the law still holds that the intention
constituted the crime, and you are guilty of murder. Ergo, if you had
married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending to do it, you
would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of marriage
could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict
spirit of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and
didn't do it, you are married to her all the same--because, as I said
before, the intention constitutes the crime. It is as clear as day that
Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in taking a club and
mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a right to
protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have
another alternative--you were married to Edwitha first, because of your
deliberate intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in
subsequently marrying Jones. But there is another phase in this
complicated case: You intended to marry Edwitha, and consequently,
according to law, she is your wife--there is no getting around that; but
she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you are not
her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of
bigamy, because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all
very well as far as it goes--but then, don't you see, she had no other
husband when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of
bigamy. Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a
spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the
same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had
any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had
been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you
have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a
wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have
been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia
in the first place, while things were so mixed. And by this time I have
got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case
that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might
get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could take up
the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile,
perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed
at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the
faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any
comfort.
"ARTHUR AUGUSTUS."--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a
brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you
will hurt somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down,
take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever
pitch quoits? that is the idea. The practice of recklessly heaving
immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages,
from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very
reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just
after Signorina had finished that exquisite melody, "The Last Rose of
Summer," one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the
atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right,
it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail. Of course
that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the
target? A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as
you don't try to knock her down with it.
"YOUNG MOTHER."--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy
forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks
the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly,
but still she thinks it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all
honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the
home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed. But really, madam, when I
come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the
correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases.
A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded
as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short
years, no baby is competent to be a joy "forever." It pains me thus to
demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but
the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to
deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech.
I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot
hold out as a "joy" twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone "forever."
And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character
and appetite that have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here
a statement of this infant's operations (conceived, planned, and earned
out by itself, and without suggestion or assistance from its mother or
any one else), during a single day; and what I shall say can be
substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses.
It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then
it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on
its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment
and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work
--smashed up and ate the glass, and then swallowed the brass.
Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen
tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it took no
more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay
down on its back, and shoved five or six, inches of a silver-headed
whalebone cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its
mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of
the child with it. Then, being hungry for glass again, it broke up
several wine glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the fragments,
not minding a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper,
salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a
spoonful of salt, a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches
at each mouthful. (I will remark here that this thing of beauty likes
painted German lucifers, and eats all she can get of them; but she
prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment to our home
manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does, from one
who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and
water, and afterward ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the
suds as she had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow
familiarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over head. At odd times
during the day, when this joy forever happened to have nothing particular
on hand, she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down
off them, uniformly damaging her self in the operation. As young as she
is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being plain spoken in
other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all
strangers, male or female, with the same formula, "How do, Jim?"
Not being familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have
been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not strike any
one who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing. However, I
cannot believe that such is the case, and so I repeat that my report of
this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any one doubts it,
I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour
anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude
anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated
(merely stipulating that her preference for alighting on her head shall
be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high
enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction). But I find
I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will
reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty and joys
forever.
"ARITHMETICUS." Virginia, Nevada.--"I am an enthusiastic student of
mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress
constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities.
Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and
conchology?"
Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am
suffering death with a cold in the head. If you could have seen the
expression of scorn that darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was
instantly split from the center in every direction like a fractured
looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would have written that
disgraceful question. Conchology is a science which has nothing to do
with mathematics; it relates only to shells. At the same time, however,
a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks
eggs, is not, strictly speaking, a conchologist-a fine stroke of sarcasm
that, but it will be lost on such an unintellectual clam as you. Now
compare conchology and geometry together, and you will see what the
difference is, and your question will be answered. But don't torture me
with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid of my cold. I
feel the bitterest animosity toward you at this moment-bothering me in
this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort
pocket-handkerchiefs to atoms. If I had you in range of my nose now
I would blow your brains out.
TO RAISE POULTRY
--[Being a letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a
complimentary membership upon the author. Written about 1870.]
Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the
subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready
sympathy in my breast. Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study
with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of
seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of
raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer
matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty
night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. By the
time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry
than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very
chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes
ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow,
"remained to pray," when I passed by.
I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but
think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society. The two
methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in
the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other
for winter. In the one case you start out with a friend along about
eleven o'clock' on a summer's night (not later, because in some states
--especially in California and Oregon--chickens always rouse up just at
midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or
difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your
friend carries with him a sack. Arrived at the henroost (your
neighbor's, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one
and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag
without making any trouble about it. You then return home, either taking
the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall
dictate. N. B.--I have seen the time when it was eligible and
appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable
velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it.
In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your
friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you
carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived
at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot),
you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel, and then
raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot.
If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly
return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up
quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before
the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as
it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and
deliberately, committing suicide in the second degree. [But you enter
into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently not then.]
When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey voiced Shanghai rooster, you
do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must
choked, and choked effectually, too. It is the only good, certain way,
for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cordially interested in,
the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's
immediate attention to it too, whether it day or night.
The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one.
Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure and fifty a not uncommon price
for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a
half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or
never orders them for the workhouse. Still I have once or twice procured
as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon. The
best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and
raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the
birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around
promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and
keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a
bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles
of vertu about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally
bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night,
worth ninety cents.
But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject?
I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to
their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man
who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient
methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself.
I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred
upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my
good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily
penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising
poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o'clock.
EXPERIENCE OF THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP
[As related to the author of this book by Mr. McWilliams, a pleasant New
York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a journey.]
Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how
that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.]
was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called
Mrs. McWilliams's attention to little Penelope, and said:
"Darling, I wouldn't let that child be chewing that pine stick if I were
you."
"Precious, where is the harm in it?" said she, but at the same time
preparing to take away the stick for women cannot receive even the most
palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is married women.
I replied:
"Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a
child can eat."
My wife's hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned
itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said:
"Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do. Doctors all say
that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys."
"Ah--I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child's
kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had
recommended--"
"Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?"
"My love, you intimated it."
"The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind."
"Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said--"
"Bother what I said! I don't care what I did say. There isn't any harm
in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know
it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!"
"Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will
go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child
of mine shall want while I--"
"Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body
can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to
arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you are talking
about, and you never do."
"Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your
last remark which--"
However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had
taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a
face a white as a sheet:
"Oh, Mortimer, there's another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken."
"Membranous croup?"
"Membranous croup."
"Is there any hope for him?"
"None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!"
By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the
customary prayer at the mother's knee. In the midst of "Now I lay me
down to sleep," she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one
stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with
the activities which terror inspires.
She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our
bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with
her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put
up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams
said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to
have the symptoms in the night--and she blanched again, poor thing.
We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed
for ourselves in a room adjoining.
Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it
from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the
tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough
to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh
pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry.
We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and
Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help.
So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a
great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest
again.
Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on
there. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said:
"What can make Baby sleep so?"
I said:
"Why, my darling, Baby always sleeps like a graven image."
"I know. I know; but there's something peculiar about his sleep now.
He seems to--to--he seems to breathe so regularly. Oh, this is
dreadful."
"But, my dear, he always breathes regularly."
"Oh, I know it, but there's something frightful about it now. His nurse
is too young and inexperienced. Maria shall stay there with her, and be
on hand if anything happens."
"That is a good idea, but who will help you?"
"You can help me all I want. I wouldn't allow anybody to do anything but
myself, anyhow, at such a time as this."
I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch
and toil over our little patient all the weary night. But she reconciled
me to it. So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the
nursery.
Penelope coughed twice in her sleep.
"Oh, why don't that doctor come! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This
room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register-quick!"
I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and
wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child.
The coachman arrived from down-town now with the news that our physician
was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon
me, and said in a dead voice:
"There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. He never was sick
before. Never. We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer.
Time and time again I have told you so. Now you see the result. Our
child will never get well. Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I
never can forgive myself."
I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of words, that I
could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life.
"Mortimer! Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!"
Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed:
"The doctor must have sent medicines!"
I said:
"Certainly. They are here. I was only waiting for you to give me a
chance."
"Well do give them to me! Don't you know that every moment is precious
now? But what was the use in sending medicines, when he knows that the
disease is incurable?"
I said that while there was life there was hope.
"Hope! Mortimer, you know no more what you are talking about than the
child unborn. If you would--As I live, the directions say give one
teaspoonful once an hour! Once an hour!--as if we had a whole year
before us to save the child in! Mortimer, please hurry. Give the poor
perishing thing a tablespoonful, and try to be quick!"
"Why, my dear, a tablespoonful might--"
"Don't drive me frantic! . . . There, there, there, my precious, my
own; it's nasty bitter stuff, but it's good for Nelly--good for mother's
precious darling; and it will make her well. There, there, there, put
the little head on mamma's breast and go to sleep, and pretty soon--oh,
I know she can't live till morning! Mortimer, a tablespoonful every
half-hour will--Oh, the child needs belladonna, too; I know she does--and
aconite. Get them, Mortimer. Now do let me have my way. You know
nothing about these things."
We now went to bed, placing the crib close to my wife's pillow. All this
turmoil had worn upon me, and within two minutes I was something more
than half asleep. Mrs. McWilliams roused me:
"Darling, is that register turned on?"
"No."
"I thought as much. Please turn it on at once. This room is cold."
I turned it on, and presently fell asleep again. I was aroused once
more:
"Dearie, would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed? It is
nearer the register."
I moved it, but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child. I
dozed off once more, while my wife quieted the sufferer. But in a little
while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my
drowsiness:
"Mortimer, if we only had some goose grease--will you ring?"
I climbed dreamily out, and stepped on a cat, which responded with a
protest and would have got a convincing kick for it if a chair had not
got it instead.
"Now, Mortimer, why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child
again?"
"Because I want to see how much I am hurt, Caroline."
"Well, look at the chair, too--I have no doubt it is ruined. Poor cat,
suppose you had--"
"Now I am not going to suppose anything about the cat. It never would
have occurred if Maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to
these duties, which are in her line and are not in mine."
"Now, Mortimer, I should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like
that. It is a pity if you cannot do the few little things I ask of you
at such an awful time as this when our child--"
"There, there, I will do anything you want. But I can't raise anybody
with this bell. They're all gone to bed. Where is the goose grease?"
"On the mantelpiece in the nursery. If you'll step there and speak to
Maria--"
I fetched the goose grease and went to sleep again. Once more I was
called:
"Mortimer, I so hate to disturb you, but the room is still too cold for
me to try to apply this stuff. Would you mind lighting the fire? It is
all ready to touch a match to."
I dragged myself out and lit the fire, and then sat down disconsolate.
"Mortimer, don't sit there and catch your death of cold. Come to bed."
As I was stepping in she said:
"But wait a moment. Please give the child some more of the medicine."
Which I did. It was a medicine which made a child more or less lively;
so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it and grease it all
over with the goose oil. I was soon asleep once more, but once more I
had to get up.
"Mortimer, I feel a draft. I feel it distinctly. There is nothing so
bad for this disease as a draft. Please move the crib in front of the
fire."
I did it; and collided with the rug again, which I threw in the fire.
Mrs. McWilliams sprang out of bed and rescued it and we had some words.
I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request,
and constructed a flax-seed poultice. This was placed upon the child's
breast and left there to do its healing work.
A wood-fire is not a permanent thing. I got up every twenty minutes and
renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten
the times of giving the medicines by ten minutes, which was a great
satisfaction to her. Now and then, between times, I reorganized the
flax-seed poultices, and applied sinapisms and other sorts of blisters
where unoccupied places could be found upon the child. Well, toward
morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get
some more. I said:
"My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm
enough, with her extra clothing. Now mightn't we put on another layer of
poultices and--"
I did not finish, because I was interrupted. I lugged wood up from below
for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a
man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out. Just at
broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses
suddenly. My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping. As soon as she
could command her tongue she said:
"It is all over! All over! The child's perspiring! What shall we do?"
"Mercy, how you terrify me! I don't know what we ought to do. Maybe if
we scraped her and put her in the draft again--"
"Oh, idiot! There is not a moment to lose! Go for the doctor.
Go yourself. Tell him he must come, dead or alive."
I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at
the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me,
but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront.
Then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling
irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind
to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough
harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her
into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or
so.
"This child has no membranous croup," said he. "She has been chewing a
bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers
in her throat. They won't do her any hurt."
"No," said I, "I can well believe that. Indeed, the turpentine that is
in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to
children. My wife will tell you so."
But she did not. She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since
that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to.
Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity.
[Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams's, and so the
author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a
passing interest to the reader.]
MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE
I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually smart
child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper
scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in
the community. It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too. I was a
printer's "devil," and a progressive and aspiring one. My uncle had me
on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal journal, two dollars a year in advance
--five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and
unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be
gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the
paper judiciously. Ah! didn't I want to try! Higgins was the editor on
the rival paper. He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found
an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated that he could
not longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear Creek. The friend
ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back to shore. He had
concluded he wouldn't. The village was full of it for several days,
but Higgins did not suspect it. I thought this was a fine opportunity.
I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then
illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden
type with a jackknife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into
the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water
with a walking-stick. I thought it was desperately funny, and was
densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a
publication. Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other
worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting
matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece
of gratuitous rascality and "see him squirm."
I did it, putting the article into the form of a parody on the "Burial of
Sir John Moore"--and a pretty crude parody it was, too.
Then I lampooned two prominent citizens outrageously--not because they
had done anything to deserve, but merely because I thought it was my duty
to make the paper lively.
Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day, the
gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy. He was a simpering coxcomb of
the first water, and the "loudest" dressed man in the state. He was an
inveterate woman-killer. Every week he wrote lushy "poetry" for the
journal, about his newest conquest. His rhymes for my week were headed,
"To MARY IN H--l," meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course. But while
setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel by what I
regarded as a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and I compressed it into a
snappy footnote at the bottom--thus: "We will let this thing pass, just
this once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly
that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth when he
wants to commune with his friends in h--l, he must select some other
medium than the columns of this journal!"
The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so much
attention as those playful trifles of mine.
For once the Hannibal Journal was in demand--a novelty it had not
experienced before. The whole town was stirred. Higgins dropped in with
a double-barreled shotgun early in the forenoon. When he found that it
was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the damage, he simply
pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his situation that night
and left town for good. The tailor came with his goose and a pair of
shears; but he despised me, too, and departed for the South that night.
The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away
incensed at my insignificance. The country editor pranced in with a
war-whoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by
forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug store to wash
away all animosity in a friendly bumper of "Fahnestock's Vermifuge."
It was his little joke. My uncle was very angry when he got back
--unreasonably so, I thought, considering what an impetus I had given the
paper, and considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to
have been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so
wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head
shot off.
But he softened when he looked at the accounts and saw that I had
actually booked the unparalleled number of thirty-three new subscribers,
and had the vegetables to show for it, cordwood, cabbage, beans, and
unsalable turnips enough to run the family for two dears!
HOW THE AUTHOR WAS SOLD IN NEWARK--[Written about 1869.]
It is seldom pleasant to tell on oneself, but some times it is a sort of
relief to a man to make a confession. I wish to unburden my mind now,
and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to
bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour balm upon my
wounded heart. (I don't know what balm is, but I believe it is the
correct expression to use in this connection--never having seen any
balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young
gentlemen of the-----Society? I did at any rate. During the afternoon
of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred
to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to
have grown permanently bereft of all emotion. And with tears in his
eyes, this young man said, "Oh, if I could only see him laugh once more!
Oh, if I could only see him weep!" I was touched. I could never
withstand distress.
I said: "Bring him to my lecture. I'll start him for you."
"Oh, if you could but do it! If you could but do it, all our family
would bless you for evermore--for he is so very dear to us. Oh, my
benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those
parched orbs?"
I was profoundly moved. I said: "My son, bring the old party round.
I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there
is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that
will make him cry or kill him, one or the other." Then the young man
blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle. He placed him
in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on
him. I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him
with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes
into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed
up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and
behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and
sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started
a smile or a tear! Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of
moisture! I was astounded. I closed the lecture at last with one
despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of
supernatural atrocity full at him!
Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.
The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water,
and said: "What made you carry on so toward the last?"
I said: "I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the
second row."
And he said: "Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and
dumb, and as blind as a badger!"
Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger
and orphan like me? I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way
for him to do?
THE OFFICE BORE--[Written about 1869]
He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning.
And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his
work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the "Sanctum" door
and let him in. He lights one of the office pipes--not reflecting,
perhaps, that the editor may be one of those "stuck-up" people who would
as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem. Then he
begins to loll--for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life
away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight.
He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half
length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad,
and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the
floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the
arm of the chair. But it is still observable that with all his changes
of position, he never assumes the upright or a fraudful affectation of
dignity. From time to time he yawns, and stretches, and scratches
himself with a tranquil, mangy enjoyment, and now and then he grunts a
kind of stuffy, overfed grunt, which is full of animal contentment. At
rare and long intervals, however, he sighs a sigh that is the eloquent
expression of a secret confession, to wit "I am useless and a nuisance,
a cumberer of the earth." The bore and his comrades--for there are
usually from two to four on hand, day and night--mix into the
conversation when men come in to see the editors for a moment on
business; they hold noisy talks among themselves about politics in
particular, and all other subjects in general--even warming up, after a
fashion, sometimes, and seeming to take almost a real interest in what
they are discussing. They ruthlessly call an editor from his work with
such a remark as: "Did you see this, Smith, in the Gazette?" and proceed
to read the paragraph while the sufferer reins in his impatient pen and
listens; they often loll and sprawl round the office hour after hour,
swapping anecdotes and relating personal experiences to each other
--hairbreadth escapes, social encounters with distinguished men, election
reminiscences, sketches of odd characters, etc. And through all those
hours they never seem to comprehend that they are robbing the editors of
their time, and the public of journalistic excellence in next day's
paper. At other times they drowse, or dreamily pore over exchanges, or
droop limp and pensive over the chair-arms for an hour. Even this solemn
silence is small respite to the editor, for the next uncomfortable thing
to having people look over his shoulders, perhaps, is to have them sit by
in silence and listen to the scratching of his pen. If a body desires to
talk private business with one of the editors, he must call him outside,
for no hint milder than blasting-powder or nitroglycerin would be likely
to move the bores out of listening-distance. To have to sit and endure
the presence of a bore day after day; to feel your cheerful spirits begin
to sink as his footstep sounds on the stair, and utterly vanish away as
his tiresome form enters the door; to suffer through his anecdotes and
die slowly to his reminiscences; to feel always the fetters of his
clogging presence; to long hopelessly for one single day's privacy; to
note with a shudder, by and by, that to contemplate his funeral in fancy
has ceased to soothe, to imagine him undergoing in strict and fearful
detail the tortures of the ancient Inquisition has lost its power to
satisfy the heart, and that even to wish him millions and millions and
millions of miles in Tophet is able to bring only a fitful gleam of joy;
to have to endure all this, day after day, and week after week, and month
after month, is an affliction that transcends any other that men suffer.
Physical pain is pastime to it, and hanging a pleasure excursion.
JOHNNY GREER
"The church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath," said the
Sunday-school superintendent, "and all, as their eyes rested upon the
small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above the
stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every ear
as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble,
daring little Johnny Greer, when he saw the drowned body sweeping down
toward the deep part of the river whence the agonized parents never could
have recovered it in this world, gallantly sprang into the stream, and,
at the risk of his life, towed the corpse to shore, and held it fast till
help came and secured it. Johnny Greer was sitting just in front of me.
A ragged street-boy, with eager eye, turned upon him instantly, and said
in a hoarse whisper
"'No; but did you, though?'
"'Yes.'
"'Towed the carkiss ashore and saved it yo'self?'
"'Yes.'
"'Cracky! What did they give you?'
"'Nothing.'
"'W-h-a-t [with intense disgust]! D'you know what I'd 'a' done? I'd 'a'
anchored him out in the stream, and said, Five dollars, gents, or you
carn't have yo' nigger.'"
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT--[Written about 1867.]
In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what's here,
howsoever small, I have had in this matter--this matter which has so
exercised the public mind, engendered so much ill-feeling, and so filled
the newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and
extravagant comments.
The origin of this distressful thing was this--and I assert here that
every fact in the following resume can be amply proved by the official
records of the General Government.
John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey,
deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the 10th
day of October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of
thirty barrels of beef.
Very well.
He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington
Sherman had gone to Manassas; so he took the beef and followed him there,
but arrived too late; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to
Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta--but he never could overtake
him. At Atlanta he took a fresh start and followed him clear through his
march to the sea. He arrived too late again by a few days; but hearing
that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land,
he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel.
When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had
not sailed in the Quaker City, but had gone to the Plains to fight the
Indians. He returned to America and started for the Rocky Mountains.
After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had
got within four miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and
scalped, and the Indians got the beef. They got all of it but one
barrel. Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold
navigator partly fulfilled his contract. In his will, which he had kept
like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W.
Bartholomew W. made out the following bill, and then died:
THE UNITED STATES
In account with JOHN WILSON MACKENZIE, of New Jersey,
deceased, . . . . . . . . . . Dr.
To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, at $100, $3,000
To traveling expenses and transportation . . . . . 14,000
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $17,000
Rec'd Pay't.
He died then; but he left the contract to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to
collect it, but died before he got through. He left it to Barker J.
Allen, and he tried to collect it also. He did not survive. Barker J.
Allen left it to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got
along as far as the Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death, the great
Leveler, came all unsummoned, and foreclosed on him also. He left the
bill to a relative of his in Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who
lasted four weeks and two days, and made the best time on record, coming
within one of reaching the Twelfth Auditor. In his will he gave the
contract bill to his uncle, by the name of O-be-joyful Johnson. It was
too undermining for joyful. His last words were: "Weep not for me--I am
willing to go." And so he was, poor soul. Seven people inherited the
contract after that; but they all died. So it came into my hands at
last. It fell to me through a relative by the name of, Hubbard
--Bethlehem Hubbard, of Indiana. He had had a grudge against me for a
long time; but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me
everything, and, weeping, gave me the beef contract.
This ends the history of it up to the time that I succeeded to the
property. I will now endeavor to set myself straight before the nation
in everything that concerns my share in the matter. I took this beef
contract, and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the President
of the United States.
He said, "Well, sir, what can I do for you?"
I said, "Sire, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, John Wilson
Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased, contracted
with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total
of thirty barrels of beef--"
He stopped me there, and dismissed me from his presence--kindly, but
firmly. The next day called on the Secretary of State.
He said, "Well, sir?"
I said, "Your Royal Highness: on or about the 10th day of October, 1861,
John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased,
contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the
sum total of thirty barrels of beef--"
"That will do, sir--that will do; this office has nothing to do with
contracts for beef."
I was bowed out. I thought the matter all over and finally, the
following day, I visited the Secretary of the Navy, who said, "Speak
quickly, sir; do not keep me waiting."
I said, "Your Royal Highness, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861,
John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased,
contracted with the General Government to General Sherman the sum total
of thirty barrels of beef--"
Well, it was as far as I could get. He had nothing to do with beef
contracts for General Sherman either. I began to think it was a curious
kind of government. It looked somewhat as if they wanted to get out of
paying for that beef. The following day I went to the Secretary of the
Interior.
I said, "Your Imperial Highness, on or about the 10th day of October--"
"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you before. Go, take your
infamous beef contract out of this establishment. The Interior
Department has nothing whatever to do with subsistence for the army."
I went away. But I was exasperated now. I said I would haunt them;
I would infest every department of this iniquitous government till that
contract business was settled. I would collect that bill, or fall, as
fell my predecessors, trying. I assailed the Postmaster-General;
I besieged the Agricultural Department; I waylaid the Speaker of the
House of Representatives. They had nothing to do with army contracts for
beef. I moved upon the Commissioner of the Patent Office.
I said, "Your August Excellency, on or about--"
"Perdition! have you got here with your incendiary beef contract, at
last? We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear
sir."
"Oh, that is all very well--but somebody has got to pay for that beef.
It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll confiscate this old Patent Office
and everything in it."
"But, my dear sir--"
"It don't make any difference, sir. The Patent Office is liable for that
beef, I reckon; and, liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to
pay for it."
Never mind the details. It ended in a fight. The Patent Office won.
But I found out something to my advantage. I was told that the Treasury
Department was the proper place for me to go to. I went there. I waited
two hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the
Treasury.
I said, "Most noble, grave, and reverend Signor, on or about the 10th day
of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken--"
"That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you. Go to the First Auditor
of the Treasury."
I did so. He sent me to the Second Auditor. The Second Auditor sent me
to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the
Corn-Beef Division. This began to look like business. He examined his
books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract.
I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. He examined
his books and his loose papers, but with no success. I was encouraged.
During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division;
the next week I got through the Claims Department; the third week I began
and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the
Dead Reckoning Department. I finished that in three days. There was
only one place left for it now. I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds
and Ends. To his clerk, rather--he was not there himself. There were
sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there
were seven well-favored young clerks showing them how. The young women
smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and
all went merry as a marriage bell. Two or three clerks that were reading
the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody
said anything. However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from
Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the
very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I
passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division. I had got so
accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment
I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than
two, or maybe three, times.
So I stood there till I had changed four different times. Then I said to
one of the clerks who was reading:
"Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?"
"What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean? If you mean the Chief of the
Bureau, he is out."
"Will he visit the harem to-day?"
The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.
But I knew the ways of those clerks. I knew I was safe if he got through
before another New York mail arrived. He only had two more papers left.
After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I
wanted.
"Renowned and honored Imbecile: on or about--"
"You are the beef-contract man. Give me your papers."
He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends.
Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it--he found the
long lost record of that beef contract--he found the rock upon which so
many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply
moved. And yet I rejoiced--for I had survived. I said with emotion,
"Give it me. The government will settle now." He waved me back, and
said there was something yet to be done first.
"Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?" said he.
"Dead."
"When did he die?"
"He didn't die at all--he was killed."
"How?"
"Tomahawked."
"Who tomahawked him?"
"Why, an Indian, of course. You didn't suppose it was the superintendent
of a Sunday-school, did you?"
"No. An Indian, was it?"
"The same."
"Name of the Indian?"
"His name? I don't know his name."
"Must have his name. Who saw the tomahawking done?"
"I don't know."
"You were not present yourself, then?"
"Which you can see by my hair. I was absent.
"Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?"
"Because he certainly died at that time, and have every reason to believe
that he has been dead ever since. I know he has, in fact."
"We must have proofs. Have you got this Indian?"
"Of course not."
"Well, you must get him. Have you got the tomahawk?"
"I never thought of such a thing."
"You must get the tomahawk. You must produce the Indian and the
tomahawk. If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go
before the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting
your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to
receive the money and enjoy it. But that man's death must be proven.
However, I may as well tell you that the government will never pay that
transportation and those traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie.
It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers
captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an
appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine
barrels the Indians ate."
"Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn't certain!
After all Mackenzie's travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that
beef; after all his trials and tribulations and transportation; after the
slaughter of all those innocents that tried to collect that bill! Young
man, why didn't the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division tell me
this?"
"He didn't know anything about the genuineness of your claim."
"Why didn't the Second tell me? why didn't the, Third? why didn't all
those divisions and departments tell me?"
"None of them knew. We do things by routine here. You have followed the
routine and found out what you wanted to know. It is the best way.
It is the only way. It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very
certain."
"Yes, certain death. It has been, to the most of our tribe. I begin to
feel that I, too, am called."
"Young man, you love the bright creature yonder with the gentle blue eyes
and the steel pens behind her ears--I see it in your soft glances; you
wish to marry her--but you are poor. Here, hold out your hand--here is
the beef contract; go, take her and be happy Heaven bless you, my
children!"
This is all I know about the great beef contract that has created so much
talk in the community. The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died. I know
nothing further about the contract, or any one connected with it. I only
know that if a man lives long enough he can trace a thing through the
Circumlocution Office of Washington and find out, after much labor and
trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if
the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously
systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile
institution.
THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER
--[Some years ago, about 1867, when this was first published, few people
believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza. In these latter days
it seems hard to realize that there was ever a time when the robbing of
our government was a novelty. The very man who showed me where to find
the documents for this case was at that very time spending hundreds of
thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship concern, in the
effort to procure a subsidy for the company--a fact which was a long time
in coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent
Congressional investigation.]
This is history. It is not a wild extravaganza, like "John Wilson
Mackenzie's Great Beef Contract," but is a plain statement of facts and
circumstances with which the Congress of the United States has interested
itself from time to time during the long period of half a century.
I will not call this matter of George Fisher's a great deathless and
unrelenting swindle upon the government and people of the United States
--for it has never been so decided, and I hold that it is a grave and
solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs or call names when such is the
case--but will simply present the evidence and let the reader deduce his
own verdict. Then we shall do nobody injustice, and our consciences
shall be clear.
On or about the 1st day of September, 1813, the Creek war being then in
progress in Florida, the crops, herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher,
a citizen, were destroyed, either by the Indians or by the United States
troops in pursuit of them. By the terms of the law, if the Indians
destroyed the property, there was no relief for Fisher; but if the troops
destroyed it, the Government of the United States was debtor to Fisher
for the amount involved.
George Fisher must have considered that the Indians destroyed the
property, because, although he lived several years afterward, he does not
appear to have ever made any claim upon the government.
In the course of time Fisher died, and his widow married again.
And by and by, nearly twenty years after that dimly remembered raid upon
Fisher's corn-fields, the widow Fisher's new husband petitioned Congress
for pay for the property, and backed up the petition with many
depositions and affidavits which purported to prove that the troops,
and not the Indians, destroyed the property; that the troops, for some
inscrutable reason, deliberately burned down "houses" (or cabins) valued
at $600, the same belonging to a peaceable private citizen, and also
destroyed various other property belonging to the same citizen. But
Congress declined to believe that the troops were such idiots (after
overtaking and scattering a band of Indians proved to have been found
destroying Fisher's property) as to calmly continue the work of
destruction themselves; and make a complete job of what the Indians had
only commenced. So Congress denied the petition of the heirs of George
Fisher in 1832, and did not pay them a cent.
We hear no more from them officially until 1848, sixteen years after
their first attempt on the Treasury, and a full generation after the
death of the man whose fields were destroyed. The new generation of
Fisher heirs then came forward and put in a bill for damages. The Second
Auditor awarded them $8,873, being half the damage sustained by Fisher.
The Auditor said the testimony showed that at least half the destruction
was done by the Indians "before the troops started in pursuit," and of
course the government was not responsible for that half.
2. That was in April, 1848. In December, 1848, the heirs of George
Fisher, deceased, came forward and pleaded for a "revision" of their bill
of damages. The revision was made, but nothing new could be found in
their favor except an error of $100 in the former calculation. However,
in order to keep up the spirits of the Fisher family, the Auditor
concluded to go back and allow interest from the date of the first
petition (1832) to the date when the bill of damages was awarded. This
sent the Fishers home happy with sixteen years' interest on $8,873--the
same amounting to $8,997.94. Total, $17,870.94.
3. For an entire year the suffering Fisher family remained quiet--even
satisfied, after a fashion. Then they swooped down upon the government
with their wrongs once more. That old patriot, Attorney-General Toucey,
burrowed through the musty papers of the Fishers and discovered one more
chance for the desolate orphans--interest on that original award of
$8,873 from date of destruction of the property (1813) up to 1832!
Result, $110,004.89 for the indigent Fishers. So now we have: First,
$8,873 damages; second, interest on it from 1832 to 1848, $8997.94;
third, interest on it dated back to 1813, $10,004.89. Total, $27,875.83!
What better investment for a great-grandchild than to get the Indians to
burn a corn-field for him sixty or seventy years before his birth, and
plausibly lay it on lunatic United States troops?
4. Strange as it may seem, the Fishers let Congress alone for five
years--or, what is perhaps more likely, failed to make themselves heard
by Congress for that length of time. But at last, in 1854, they got a
hearing. They persuaded Congress to pass an act requiring the Auditor to
re-examine their case. But this time they stumbled upon the misfortune
of an honest Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. James Guthrie), and he
spoiled everything. He said in very plain language that the Fishers were
not only not entitled to another cent, but that those children of many
sorrows and acquainted with grief had been paid too much already.
5. Therefore another interval of rest and silent ensued-an interval
which lasted four years--viz till 1858. The "right man in the right
place" was then Secretary of War--John B. Floyd, of peculiar renown!
Here was a master intellect; here was the very man to succor the
suffering heirs of dead and forgotten Fisher. They came up from Florida
with a rush--a great tidal wave of Fishers freighted with the same old
musty documents about the same in immortal corn-fields of their ancestor.
They straight-way got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from
the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd. What did Floyd do? He said,
"IT WAS PROVED that the Indians destroyed everything they could before
the troops entered in pursuit." He considered, therefore, that what they
destroyed must have consisted of "the houses with all their contents, and
the liquor" (the most trifling part of the destruction, and set down at
only $3,200 all told), and that the government troops then drove them off
and calmly proceeded to destroy--
Two hundred and twenty acres of corn in the field, thirty-five acres of
wheat, and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock! [What a
singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd
--though not according to the Congress of 1832.]
So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that
$3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible
for the property destroyed by the troops--which property consisted of (I
quote from the printed United States Senate document):
Dollars
Corn at Bassett's Creek, ............... 3,000
Cattle, ................................ 5,000
Stock hogs, ............................ 1,050
Drove hogs, ............................ 1,204
Wheat, ................................. 350
Hides, ................................. 4,000
Corn on the Alabama River, ............. 3,500
Total, .............18,104
That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the "full value of the property
destroyed by the troops."
He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, TOGETHER WITH INTEREST FROM
1813. From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers
were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty
thousand dollars) was handed to then and again they retired to Florida in
a condition of temporary tranquillity. Their ancestor's farm had now
yielded them altogether nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash.
6. Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it? Does he suppose
those diffident Fishers we: satisfied? Let the evidence show. The
Fishers were quiet just two years. Then they came swarming up out of the
fertile swamps of Florida with their same old documents, and besieged
Congress once more. Congress capitulated on the 1st of June, 1860, and
instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again, and pay that bill.
A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr.
Floyd what amount was still due the emaciated Fishers. This clerk (I can
produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was apparently a
glaring and recent forgery in the paper; whereby a witness's testimony as
to the price of corn in Florida in 1813 was made to name double the
amount which that witness had originally specified as the price! The
clerk not only called his superior's attention to this thing, but in
making up his brief of the case called particular attention to it in
writing. That part of the brief never got before Congress, nor has
Congress ever yet had a hint of forgery existing among the Fisher papers.
Nevertheless, on the basis of the double prices (and totally ignoring the
clerk's assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a
recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that "the testimony,
particularly in regard to the corn crops, DEMANDS A MUCH HIGHER ALLOWANCE
than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself." So he estimates the
crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce),
and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two
dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty old books
and documents in the Congressional library to show just what the Fisher
testimony showed before the forgery--viz., that in the fall of 1813 corn
was only worth from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel. Having accomplished this,
what does Mr. Floyd do next? Mr. Floyd ("with an earnest desire to
execute truly the legislative will," as he piously remarks) goes to work
and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new
bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether puts no particle of the
destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of
charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whisky and
breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile
United States troops down to the very last item! And not only that, but
uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at "Bassett's Creek," and
uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the "Alabama
River." This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd's
figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed United States Senate
document):
The United States in account with the legal representatives
of George Fisher, deceased.
DOL.C
1813.--To 550 head of cattle, at 10 dollars, ............. 5,500.00
To 86 head of drove hogs, ......................... 1,204.00
To 350 head of stock hogs, ........................ 1,750.00
To 100 ACRES OF CORN ON BASSETT'S CREEK, .......... 6,000.00
To 8 barrels of whisky, ........................... 350.00
To 2 barrels of brandy, ........................... 280.00
To 1 barrel of rum, ............................... 70.00
To dry-goods and merchandise in store, ............ 1,100.00
To 35 acres of wheat, ............................. 350.00
To 2,000 hides, ................................... 4,000.00
To furs and hats in store, ........................ 600.00
To crockery ware in store, ........................ 100.00
To smith's and carpenter's tools, ................. 250.00
To houses burned and destroyed, ................... 600.00
To 4 dozen bottles of wine, ....................... 48.00
1814.--To 120 acres of corn on Alabama River, ............ 9,500.00
To crops of peas, fodder, etc. .................... 3,250.00
Total, ..........................34,952.00
To interest on $22,202, from July 1813
to November 1860, 47 years and 4 months, .......63,053.68
To interest on $12,750, from September
1814 to November 1860, 46 years and 2 months, ..35,317.50
Total, ........................ 133,323.18
He puts everything in this time. He does not even allow that the Indians
destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine.
When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in "gobbling," John B.
Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation.
Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to
George Fisher's implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the government
was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty-six thousand five hundred
and nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents, "which," Mr. Floyd
complacently remarks, "will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of
the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact."
But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just
at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their
money. The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the
resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Mr. Floyd had been ciphering.
Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to
give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army
and serve their country.
Were the heirs of George Fisher killed? No. They are back now at this
very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress through that blushing and
diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making payments again on
their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for corn and whisky
destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even
government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track
of it.
Now the above are facts. They are history. Any one who doubts it can
send to the Senate Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc.
No. 21, 36th Congress, 2d Session; and for S. Ex. Doc. No. 106, 41st
Congress, 2d Session, and satisfy himself. The whole case is set forth
in the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports.
It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together,
the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to
Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more
cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that
sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one fourth what the
government owed them on that fruitful corn-field), and as long as they
choose to come they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire
schemes before Congress. This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud
it is--which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is
being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and
sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States.
DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY
In San Francisco, the other day, "A well-dressed boy, on his way to
Sunday-school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning
Chinamen."
What a commentary is this upon human justice! What sad prominence it
gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak! San Francisco
has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor
boy. What had the child's education been? How should he suppose it was
wrong to stone a Chinaman? Before we side against him, along with
outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance--let us hear the
testimony for the defense.
He was a "well-dressed" boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and therefore
the chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people,
with just enough natural villainy in their composition to make them yearn
after the daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities
to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.
It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth of
California imposes an unlawful mining-tax upon John the foreigner, and
allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing--probably because
the degraded Mongol is at no expense for whisky, and the refined Celt
cannot exist without it.
It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of the
tax-gatherers--it would be unkind to say all of them--collect the tax
twice, instead of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely to
discourage Chinese immigration into the mines, it is a thing that is much
applauded, and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious.
It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a
sluice-box (by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans,
Portuguese, Irish, Hondurans, Peruvians, Chileans, etc., etc.), they make
him leave the camp; and when a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him.
It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast
Pacific coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts
of the people, that whenever any secret and mysterious crime is
committed, they say, "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall," and
go straightway and swing a Chinaman.
It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each
day's "local items," it would appear that the police of San Francisco
were either asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem
that the reporters were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the
virtue, the high effectiveness, and the dare-devil intrepidity of that
very police-making exultant mention of how "the Argus-eyed officer
So-and-so" captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing
chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; and how "the
gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one" quietly kept an eye on the movements
of an "unsuspecting, almond-eyed son of Confucius" (your reporter is
nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look.
of vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that
inscrutable being, the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval,
and captured him at last in the very act of placing his hands in a
suspicious manner upon a paper of tacks, left by the owner in an exposed
situation; and how one officer performed this prodigious thing, and
another officer that, and another the other--and pretty much every one of
these performances having for a dazzling central incident a Chinaman
guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate, whose misdemeanor
must be hurrahed into something enormous in order to keep the public from
noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean
time, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are.
It was in this way that the boy found out that the legislature, being
aware that the Constitution has made America, an asylum for the poor and
the oppressed of all nations, and that, therefore, the poor and oppressed
who fly to our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee,
made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing, must be vaccinated upon the
wharf, and pay to the state's appointed officer ten dollars for the
service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would be
glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents.
It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights
that any man was bound to respect; that he had no sorrows that any man
was bound to pity; that neither his life nor his liberty was worth the
purchase of a penny when a white man needed a scapegoat; that nobody
loved Chinamen, nobody befriended them, nobody spared them suffering when
it was convenient to inflict it; everybody, individuals, communities, the
majesty of the state itself, joined in hating, abusing, and persecuting
these humble strangers.
And, therefore, what could have been more natural than for this
sunny-hearted-boy, tripping along to Sunday-school, with his mind teeming
with freshly learned incentives to high and virtuous action, to say to
himself:
"Ah, there goes a Chinaman! God will not love me if I do not stone him."
And for this he was arrested and put in the city jail.
Everything conspired to teach him that it was a high and holy thing to
stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sooner attempts to do his duty than he is
punished for it--he, poor chap, who has been aware all his life that one
of the principal recreations of the police, out toward the Gold Refinery,
is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan
Street set their dogs on unoffending Chinamen, and make them flee for
their lives.
--[I have many such memories in my mind, but am thinking just at present
of one particular one, where the Brannan Street butchers set their dogs
on a Chinaman who was quietly passing with a basket of clothes on his
head; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, a butcher increased the
hilarity of the occasion by knocking some of the Chinaman's teeth down
his throat with half a brick. This incident sticks in my memory with a
more malevolent tenacity, perhaps, on account of the fact that I was in
the employ of a San Francisco journal at the time, and was not allowed to
publish it because it might offend some of the peculiar element that
subscribed for the paper.]
Keeping in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire "Pacific
coast" gives its youth, there is a very sublimity of incongruity in the
virtuous flourish with which the good city fathers of San Francisco
proclaim (as they have lately done) that "The police are positively
ordered to arrest all boys, of every description and wherever found, who
engage in assaulting Chinamen."
Still, let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its
inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad,
too. Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they
be of the small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their
performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items.
The new form for local items in San Francisco will now be: "The
ever-vigilant and efficient officer So-and-so succeeded, yesterday
afternoon, in arresting Master Tommy Jones, after a determined
resistance," etc., etc., followed by the customary statistics and final
hurrah, with its unconscious sarcasm: "We are happy in being able to
state that this is the forty-seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer
since the new ordinance went into effect. The most extraordinary
activity prevails in the police department. Nothing like it has been
seen since we can remember."
THE JUDGE'S "SPIRITED WOMAN"
"I was sitting here," said the judge, "in this old pulpit, holding court,
and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing
the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day,
and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious. None of us took
any interest in the trial except that nervous, uneasy devil of a Mexican
woman because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had
loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down
into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes;
and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer
lightning, occasionally. Well, I had my coat off and my heels up,
lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cabbage cigars the San
Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times;
and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and
whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner. Well,
the fact is, there warn't any interest in a murder trial then, because
the fellow was always brought in 'not guilty,' the jury expecting him to
do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight
and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him
without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every
gentleman in the community; for there warn't any carriages and liveries
then, and so the only 'style' there was, was to keep your private
graveyard. But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that
Spaniard; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a
minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for
the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by and by drop her
face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to
give up; but out she'd come again directly, and be as live and anxious as
ever. But when the jury announced the verdict--Not Guilty--and I told
the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she
appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says
she:
"'Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty that
murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little
children's, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the
law can do?'
"'The same,' says I.
"And then what do you reckon she did? Why, she turned on that smirking
Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a 'navy' and shot him dead in
open court!"
"That was spirited, I am willing to admit."
"Wasn't it, though?" said the judge admiringly.
"I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I adjourned court right on the
spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for
her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends.
Ah, she was a spirited wench!"
INFORMATION WANTED
"WASHINGTON, December 10, 1867.
"Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as
the government is going to purchase?"
It is an uncle of mine that wants to know. He is an industrious man and
well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but
more especially he wants to be quiet. He wishes to settle down, and be
quiet and unostentatious. He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but
he says he thinks things are unsettled there. He went there early with
an attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay
for the island. My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they
went ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took
all the money, not making any distinction between government money, which
was legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle's, which was his own
private property, and should have been respected. But he came home and
got some more and went back. And then he took the fever. There are
seven kinds of fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of
order by reason of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he
failed to cure the first fever, and then somehow he got the other six.
He is not a kind of man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and
always does what he thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed
when it appeared he was going to die.
But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it
in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it
over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his
patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to
find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to
Gibraltar.
Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be
out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain,
and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night
and shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up
with another man's property that he could not tell which were his
fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his
main object in going to St. Thomas was to be quiet. All that he wanted
was to settle down and be quiet.
He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground
again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time. He bought
a flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to
baking them. But luck appeared to be against him. A volcano shoved
itself through there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two
thousand feet in the air. It irritated him a good deal. He has been up
there, and he says the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't
get them down. At first, he thought maybe the government would get the
bricks down for him, because since government bought the island, it ought
to protect the property where a man has invested in good faith; but all
he wants is quiet, and so he is not going to apply for the subsidy he was
thinking about.
He went back there last week in a couple of ships of war, to prospect
around the coast for a safe place for a farm where he could be quiet;
but a great "tidal wave" came, and hoisted both of the ships out into one
of the interior counties, and he came near losing his life. So he has
given up prospecting in a ship, and is discouraged.
Well, now he don't know what to do. He has tried Alaska; but the bears
kept after him so much, and kept him so much on the jump, as it were,
that he had to leave the country. He could not be quiet there with those
bears prancing after him all the time. That is how he came to go to the
new island we have bought--St. Thomas. But he is getting to think St.
Thomas is not quiet enough for a man of his turn of mind, and that is why
he wishes me to find out if government is likely to buy some more islands
shortly. He has heard that government is thinking about buying Porto
Rico. If that is true, he wishes to try Porto Rico, if it is a quiet
place. How is Porto Rico for his style of man? Do you think the
government will buy it?
SOME LEARNED FABLES, FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
IN THREE PARTS
PART FIRST
HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD SENT OUT A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION
Once the creatures of the forest held a great convention and appointed a
commission consisting of the most illustrious scientists among them to go
forth, clear beyond the forest and out into the unknown and unexplored
world, to verify the truth of the matters already taught in their schools
and colleges and also to make discoveries. It was the most imposing
enterprise of the kind the nation had ever embarked in. True, the
government had once sent Dr. Bull Frog, with a picked crew, to hunt for a
northwesterly passage through the swamp to the right-hand corner of the
wood, and had since sent out many expeditions to hunt for Dr. Bull Frog;
but they never could find him, and so government finally gave him up and
ennobled his mother to show its gratitude for the services her son had
rendered to science. And once government sent Sir Grass Hopper to hunt
for the sources of the rill that emptied into the swamp; and afterward
sent out many expeditions to hunt for Sir Grass, and at last they were
successful--they found his body, but if he had discovered the sources
meantime, he did not let on. So government acted handsomely by deceased,
and many envied his funeral.
But these expeditions were trifles compared with the present one; for
this one comprised among its servants the very greatest among the
learned; and besides it was to go to the utterly unvisited regions
believed to lie beyond the mighty forest--as we have remarked before.
How the members were banqueted, and glorified, and talked about!
Everywhere that one of them showed himself, straightway there was a crowd
to gape and stare at him.
Finally they set off, and it was a sight to see the long procession of
dry-land Tortoises heavily laden with savants, scientific instruments,
Glow-Worms and Fire-Flies for signal service, provisions, Ants and
Tumble-Bugs to fetch and carry and delve, Spiders to carry the surveying
chain and do other engineering duty, and so forth and so on; and after
the Tortoises came another long train of ironclads--stately and spacious
Mud Turtles for marine transportation service; and from every Tortoise
and every Turtle flaunted a flaming gladiolus or other splendid banner;
at the head of the column a great band of Bumble-Bees, Mosquitoes,
Katy-Dids, and Crickets discoursed martial music; and the entire train
was under the escort and protection of twelve picked regiments of the
Army Worm.
At the end of three weeks the expedition emerged from the forest and
looked upon the great Unknown World. Their eyes were greeted with an
impressive spectacle. A vast level plain stretched before them, watered
by a sinuous stream; and beyond there towered up against the sky along
and lofty barrier of some kind, they did not know what. The Tumble-Bug
said he believed it was simply land tilted up on its edge, because he
knew he could see trees on it. But Professor Snail and the others said:
"You are hired to dig, sir--that is all. We need your muscle, not your
brains. When we want your opinion on scientific matters, we will hasten
to let you know. Your coolness is intolerable, too--loafing about here
meddling with august matters of learning, when the other laborers are
pitching camp. Go along and help handle the baggage."
The Tumble-Bug turned on his heel uncrushed, unabashed, observing to
himself, "If it isn't land tilted up, let me die the death of the
unrighteous."
Professor Bull Frog (nephew of the late explorer) said he believed the
ridge was the wall that inclosed the earth. He continued:
"Our fathers have left us much learning, but they had not traveled far,
and so we may count this a noble new discovery. We are safe for renown
now, even though our labors began and ended with this single achievement.
I wonder what this wall is built of? Can it be fungus? Fungus is an
honorable good thing to build a wall of."
Professor Snail adjusted his field-glass and examined the rampart
critically. Finally he said:
"'The fact that it is not diaphanous convinces me that it is a dense
vapor formed by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated
by refraction. A few endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but
it is not necessary. The thing is obvious."
So he shut up his glass and went into his shell to make a note of the
discovery of the world's end, and the nature of it.
"Profound mind!" said Professor Angle-Worm to Professor Field-Mouse;
"profound mind! nothing can long remain a mystery to that august brain."
Night drew on apace, the sentinel crickets were posted, the Glow-Worm and
Fire-Fly lamps were lighted, and the camp sank to silence and sleep.
After breakfast in the morning, the expedition moved on. About noon a
great avenue was reached, which had in it two endless parallel bars of
some kind of hard black substance, raised the height of the tallest Bull
Frog, above the general level. The scientists climbed up on these and
examined and tested them in various ways. They walked along them for a
great distance, but found no end and no break in them. They could arrive
at no decision. There was nothing in the records of science that
mentioned anything of this kind. But at last the bald and venerable
geographer, Professor Mud Turtle, a person who, born poor, and of a
drudging low family, had, by his own native force raised himself to the
headship of the geographers of his generation, said:
"'My friends, we have indeed made a discovery here. We have found in a
palpable, compact, and imperishable state what the wisest of our fathers
always regarded as a mere thing of the imagination. Humble yourselves,
my friends, for we stand in a majestic presence. These are parallels of
latitude!"
Every heart and every head was bowed, so awful, so sublime was the
magnitude of the discovery. Many shed tears.
The camp was pitched and the rest of the day given up to writing
voluminous accounts of the marvel, and correcting astronomical tables to
fit it. Toward midnight a demoniacal shriek was heard, then a clattering
and rumbling noise, and the next instant a vast terrific eye shot by,
with a long tail attached, and disappeared in the gloom, still uttering
triumphant shrieks.
The poor damp laborers were stricken to the heart with fright, and
stampeded for the high grass in a body. But not the scientists. They
had no superstitions. They calmly proceeded to exchange theories.
The ancient geographer's opinion was asked. He went into his shell and
deliberated long and profoundly. When he came out at last, they all knew
by his worshiping countenance that he brought light. Said he:
"Give thanks for this stupendous thing which we have been permitted to
witness. It is the Vernal Equinox!"
There were shoutings and great rejoicings.
"But," said the Angle-Worm, uncoiling after reflection, "this is dead
summer-time."
"Very well," said the Turtle, "we are far from our region; the season
differs with the difference of time between the two points."
"Ah, true: True enough. But it is night. How should the sun pass in
the night?"
"In these distant regions he doubtless passes always in the night at this
hour."
"Yes, doubtless that is true. But it being night, how is it that we
could see him?"
"It is a great mystery. I grant that. But I am persuaded that the
humidity of the atmosphere in these remote regions is such that particles
of daylight adhere to the disk and it was by aid of these that we were
enabled to see the sun in the dark."
This was deemed satisfactory, and due entry was made of the decision.
But about this moment those dreadful shriekings were heard again; again
the rumbling and thundering came speeding up out of the night; and once
more a flaming great eye flashed by and lost itself in gloom and
distance.
The camp laborers gave themselves up for lost. The savants were sorely
perplexed. Here was a marvel hard to account for. They thought and they
talked, they talked and they thought. Finally the learned and aged Lord
Grand-Daddy-Longlegs, who had been sitting in deep study, with his
slender limbs crossed and his stemmy arms folded, said:
"Deliver your opinions, brethren, and then I will tell my thought--for I
think I have solved this problem."
"So be it, good your lordship," piped the weak treble of the wrinkled and
withered Professor Woodlouse, "for we shall hear from your lordship's
lips naught but wisdom." [Here the speaker threw in a mess of trite,
threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and
philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of
the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other
dead languages.] "Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters
pertaining to astronomy at all, in such a presence as this, I who have
made it the business of my life to delve only among the riches of the
extinct languages and unearth the opulence of their ancient lore; but
still, as unacquainted as I am with the noble science of astronomy, I beg
with deference and humility to suggest that inasmuch as the last of these
wonderful apparitions proceeded in exactly the opposite direction from
that pursued by the first, which you decide to be the Vernal Equinox,
and greatly resembled it in all particulars, is it not possible, nay
certain, that this last is the Autumnal Equi--"
"O-o-o!" "O-o-o! go to bed! go to bed!" with annoyed derision from
everybody. So the poor old Woodlouse retreated out of sight, consumed
with shame.
Further discussion followed, and then the united voice of the commission
begged Lord Longlegs to speak. He said:
"Fellow-scientists, it is my belief that we have witnessed a thing which
has occurred in perfection but once before in the knowledge of created
beings. It is a phenomenon of inconceivable importance and interest,
view it as one may, but its interest to us is vastly heightened by an
added knowledge of its nature which no scholar has heretofore possessed
or even suspected. This great marvel which we have just witnessed,
fellow-savants (it almost takes my breath away), is nothing less than the
transit of Venus!"
Every scholar sprang to his feet pale with astonishment. Then ensued
tears, handshakings, frenzied embraces, and the most extravagant
jubilations of every sort. But by and by, as emotion began to retire
within bounds, and reflection to return to the front, the accomplished
Chief Inspector Lizard observed:
"But how is this? Venus should traverse the sun's surface, not the
earth's."
The arrow went home. It earned sorrow to the breast of every apostle of
learning there, for none could deny that this was a formidable criticism.
But tranquilly the venerable Duke crossed his limbs behind his ears and
said:
"My friend has touched the marrow of our mighty discovery. Yes--all that
have lived before us thought a transit of Venus consisted of a flight
across the sun's face; they thought it, they maintained it, they honestly
believed it, simple hearts, and were justified in it by the limitations
of their knowledge; but to us has been granted the inestimable boon of
proving that the transit occurs across the earth's face, for we have SEEN
it!"
The assembled wisdom sat in speechless adoration of this imperial
intellect. All doubts had instantly departed, like night before the
lightning.
The Tumble-Bug had just intruded, unnoticed. He now came reeling forward
among the scholars, familiarly slapping first one and then another on the
shoulder, saying "Nice ('ic) nice old boy!" and smiling a smile of
elaborate content. Arrived at a good position for speaking, he put his
left arm akimbo with his knuckles planted in his hip just under the edge
of his cut-away coat, bent his right leg, placing his toe on the ground
and resting his heel with easy grace against his left shin, puffed out
his aldermanic stomach, opened his lips, leaned his right elbow on
Inspector Lizard's shoulder, and--
But the shoulder was indignantly withdrawn and the hard-handed son of
toil went to earth. He floundered a bit, but came up smiling, arranged
his attitude with the same careful detail as before, only choosing
Professor Dogtick's shoulder for a support, opened his lips and--
Went to earth again. He presently scrambled up once more, still smiling,
made a loose effort to brush the dust off his coat and legs, but a smart
pass of his hand missed entirely, and the force of the unchecked impulse
stewed him suddenly around, twisted his legs together, and projected him,
limber and sprawling, into the lap of the Lord Longlegs. Two or three
scholars sprang forward, flung the low creature head over heels into a
corner, and reinstated the patrician, smoothing his ruffled dignity with
many soothing and regretful speeches. Professor Bull Frog roared out:
"No more of this, sirrah Tumble-Bug! Say your say and then get you about
your business with speed! Quick--what is your errand? Come move off a
trifle; you smell like a stable; what have you been at?"
"Please ('ic!) please your worship I chanced to light upon a find. But
no m(e-uck!) matter 'bout that. There's b('ic !) been another find
which--beg pardon, your honors, what was that th('ic!) thing that ripped
by here first?"
"It was the Vernal Equinox."
"Inf('ic!)fernal equinox. 'At's all right. D('ic !) Dunno him. What's
other one?"
"The transit of Venus.
"G('ic !) Got me again. No matter. Las' one dropped something."
"Ah, indeed! Good luck! Good news! Quick what is it?"
"M('ic!) Mosey out 'n' see. It'll pay."
No more votes were taken for four-and-twenty hours. Then the following
entry was made:
"The commission went in a body to view the find. It was found to consist
of a hard, smooth, huge object with a rounded summit surmounted by a
short upright projection resembling a section of a cabbage stalk divided
transversely. This projection was not solid, but was a hollow cylinder
plugged with a soft woody substance unknown to our region--that is, it
had been so plugged, but unfortunately this obstruction had been
heedlessly removed by Norway Rat, Chief of the Sappers and Miners, before
our arrival. The vast object before us, so mysteriously conveyed from
the glittering domains of space, was found to be hollow and nearly filled
with a pungent liquid of a brownish hue, like rainwater that has stood
for some time. And such a spectacle as met our view! Norway Rat was
perched upon the summit engaged in thrusting his tail into the
cylindrical projection, drawing it out dripping, permitting the
struggling multitude of laborers to suck the end of it, then straightway
reinserting it and delivering the fluid to the mob as before. Evidently
this liquor had strangely potent qualities; for all that partook of it
were immediately exalted with great and pleasurable emotions, and went
staggering about singing ribald songs, embracing, fighting, dancing,
discharging irruptions of profanity, and defying all authority. Around
us struggled a massed and uncontrolled mob--uncontrolled and likewise
uncontrollable, for the whole army, down to the very sentinels, were mad
like the rest, by reason of the drink. We were seized upon by these
reckless creatures, and within the hour we, even we, were
undistinguishable from the rest--the demoralization was complete and
universal. In time the camp wore itself out with its orgies and sank
into a stolid and pitiable stupor, in whose mysterious bonds rank was
forgotten and strange bedfellows made, our eyes, at the resurrection,
being blasted and our souls petrified with the incredible spectacle of
that intolerable stinking scavenger, the Tumble-Bug, and the illustrious
patrician my Lord Grand Daddy, Duke of Longlegs, lying soundly steeped in
sleep, and clasped lovingly in each other's arms, the like whereof hath
not been seen in all the ages that tradition compasseth, and doubtless
none shall ever in this world find faith to master the belief of it save
only we that have beheld the damnable and unholy vision. Thus
inscrutable be the ways of God, whose will be done!
"This day, by order, did the engineer-in-chief, Herr Spider, rig the
necessary tackle for the overturning of the vast reservoir, and so its
calamitous contents were discharged in a torrent upon the thirsty earth,
which drank it up, and now there is no more danger, we reserving but a
few drops for experiment and scrutiny, and to exhibit to the king and
subsequently preserve among the wonders of the museum. What this liquid
is has been determined. It is without question that fierce and most
destructive fluid called lightning. It was wrested, in its container,
from its storehouse in the clouds, by the resistless might of the flying
planet, and hurled at our feet as she sped by. An interesting discovery
here results. Which is, that lightning, kept to itself, is quiescent; it
is the assaulting contact of the thunderbolt that releases it from
captivity, ignites its awful fires, and so produces an instantaneous
combustion and explosion which spread disaster and desolation far and
wide in the earth."
After another day devoted to rest and recovery, the expedition proceeded
upon its way. Some days later it went into camp in a pleasant part of
the plain, and the savants sallied forth to see what they might find.
Their reward was at hand. Professor Bull Frog discovered a strange tree,
and called his comrades. They inspected it with profound interest. It
was very tall and straight, and wholly devoid of bark, limbs, or foliage.
By triangulation Lord Longlegs determined its altitude; Herr Spider
measured its circumference at the base and computed the circumference at
its top by a mathematical demonstration based upon the warrant furnished
by the uniform degree of its taper upward. It was considered a very
extraordinary find; and since it was a tree of a hitherto unknown
species, Professor Woodlouse gave it a name of a learned sound, being
none other than that of Professor Bull Frog translated into the ancient
Mastodon language, for it had always been the custom with discoverers to
perpetuate their names and honor themselves by this sort of connection
with their discoveries.
Now Professor Field-Mouse having placed his sensitive ear to the tree,
detected a rich, harmonious sound issuing from it. This surprising thing
was tested and enjoyed by each scholar in turn, and great was the
gladness and astonishment of all. Professor Woodlouse was requested to
add to and extend the tree's name so as to make it suggest the musical
quality it possessed--which he did, furnishing the addition Anthem
Singer, done into the Mastodon tongue.
By this time Professor Snail was making some telescopic inspections.
He discovered a great number of these trees, extending in a single rank,
with wide intervals between, as far as his instrument would carry, both
southward and northward. He also presently discovered that all these
trees were bound together, near their tops, by fourteen great ropes, one
above another, which ropes were continuous, from tree to tree, as far as
his vision could reach. This was surprising. Chief Engineer Spider ran
aloft and soon reported that these ropes were simply a web hung thereby
some colossal member of his own species, for he could see its prey
dangling here and there from the strands, in the shape of mighty shreds
and rags that had a woven look about their texture and were no doubt the
discarded skins of prodigious insects which had been caught and eaten.
And then he ran along one of the ropes to make a closer inspection, but
felt a smart sudden burn on the soles of his feet, accompanied by a
paralyzing shock, wherefore he let go and swung himself to the earth by a
thread of his own spinning, and advised all to hurry at once to camp,
lest the monster should appear and get as much interested in the savants
as they were in him and his works. So they departed with speed, making
notes about the gigantic web as they went. And that evening the
naturalist of the expedition built a beautiful model of the colossal
spider, having no need to see it in order to do this, because he had
picked up a fragment of its vertebra by the tree, and so knew exactly
what the creature looked like and what its habits and its preferences
were by this simple evidence alone. He built it with a tail, teeth,
fourteen legs, and a snout, and said it ate grass, cattle, pebbles, and
dirt with equal enthusiasm. This animal was regarded as a very precious
addition to science. It was hoped a dead one might be found to stuff.
Professor Woodlouse thought that he and his brother scholars, by lying
hid and being quiet, might maybe catch a live one. He was advised to try
it. Which was all the attention that was paid to his suggestion. The
conference ended with the naming the monster after the naturalist, since
he, after God, had created it.
"And improved it, mayhap," muttered the Tumble-Bug, who was intruding
again, according to his idle custom and his unappeasable curiosity.
END OF PART FIRST
SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
PART SECOND
HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD COMPLETED THEIR SCIENTIFIC LABORS
A week later the expedition camped in the midst of a collection of
wonderful curiosities. These were a sort of vast caverns of stone that
rose singly and in bunches out of the plain by the side of the river
which they had first seen when they emerged from the forest. These
caverns stood in long, straight rows on opposite sides of broad aisles
that were bordered with single ranks of trees. The summit of each cavern
sloped sharply both ways. Several horizontal rows of great square holes,
obstructed by a thin, shiny, transparent substance, pierced the frontage
of each cavern. Inside were caverns within caverns; and one might ascend
and visit these minor compartments by means of curious winding ways
consisting of continuous regular terraces raised one above another.
There were many huge, shapeless objects in each compartment which were
considered to have been living creatures at one time, though now the thin
brown skin was shrunken and loose, and rattled when disturbed. Spiders
were here in great number, and their cobwebs, stretched in all directions
and wreathing the great skinny dead together, were a pleasant spectacle,
since they inspired with life and wholesome cheer a scene which would
otherwise have brought to the mind only a sense of forsakenness and
desolation. Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain. They
were of a different nationality from those with the expedition, and their
language seemed but a musical, meaningless jargon. They were a timid,
gentle race, but ignorant, and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods.
The expedition detailed a great detachment of missionaries to teach them
the true religion, and in a week's time a precious work had been wrought
among those darkened creatures, not three families being by that time at
peace with each other or having a settled belief in any system of
religion whatever. This encouraged the expedition to establish a colony
of missionaries there permanently, that the work of grace might go on.
But let us not outrun our narrative. After close examination of the
fronts of the caverns, and much thinking and exchanging of theories, the
scientists determined the nature of these singular formations. They said
that each belonged mainly to the Old Red Sandstone period; that the
cavern fronts rose in innumerable and wonderfully regular strata high in
the air, each stratum about five frog-spans thick, and that in the
present discovery lay an overpowering refutation of all received geology;
for between every two layers of Old Red Sandstone reposed a thin layer of
decomposed limestone; so instead of there having been but one Old Red
Sandstone period there had certainly been not less than a hundred and
seventy-five! And by the same token it was plain that there had also
been a hundred and seventy-five floodings of the earth and depositings of
limestone strata! The unavoidable deduction from which pair of facts was
the overwhelming truth that the world, instead of being only two hundred
thousand years old, was older by millions upon millions of years! And
there was another curious thing: every stratum of Old Red Sandstone was
pierced and divided at mathematically regular intervals by vertical
strata of limestone. Up-shootings of igneous rock through fractures in
water formations were common; but here was the first instance where
water-formed rock had been so projected. It was a great and noble
discovery, and its value to science was considered to be inestimable.
A critical examination of some of the lower strata demonstrated the
presence of fossil ants and tumble-bugs (the latter accompanied by their
peculiar goods), and with high gratification the fact was enrolled upon
the scientific record; for this was proof that these vulgar laborers
belonged to the first and lowest orders of created beings, though at the
same time there was something repulsive in the reflection that the
perfect and exquisite creature of the modern uppermost order owed its
origin to such ignominious beings through the mysterious law of
Development of Species.
The Tumble-Bug, overhearing this discussion, said he was willing that the
parvenus of these new times should find what comfort they might in their
wise-drawn theories, since as far as he was concerned he was content to
be of the old first families and proud to point back to his place among
the old original aristocracy of the land.
"Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday's
veneering, since you like it," said he; "suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs
that they come of a race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the
solemn aisles of antiquity, and left their imperishable works embalmed in
the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the wasting centuries as they
file along the highway of Time!"
"Oh, take a walk!" said the chief of the expedition, with derision.
The summer passed, and winter approached. In and about many of the
caverns were what seemed to be inscriptions. Most of the scientists said
they were inscriptions, a few said they were not. The chief philologist,
Professor Woodlouse, maintained that they were writings, done in a
character utterly unknown to scholars, and in a language equally unknown.
He had early ordered his artists and draftsmen to make facsimiles of all
that were discovered; and had set himself about finding the key to the
hidden tongue. In this work he had followed the method which had always
been used by decipherers previously. That is to say, he placed a number
of copies of inscriptions before him and studied them both collectively
and in detail. To begin with, he placed the following copies together:
THE AMERICAN HOTEL. MEALS AT ALL HOURS.
THE SHADES. NO SMOKING.
BOATS FOR HIRE CHEAP UNION PRAYER MEETING, 6 P.M.
BILLIARDS. THE WATERSIDE JOURNAL.
THE A1 BARBER SHOP. TELEGRAPH OFFICE.
KEEP OFF THE GRASS. TRY BRANDRETH'S PILLS.
COTTAGES FOR RENT DURING THE WATERING SEASON.
FOR SALE CHEAP. FOR SALE CHEAP.
FOR SALE CHEAP. FOR SALE CHEAP.
At first it seemed to the professor that this was a sign-language, and
that each word was represented by a distinct sign; further examination
convinced him that it was a written language, and that every letter of
its alphabet was represented by a character of its own; and finally he
decided that it was a language which conveyed itself partly by letters,
and partly by signs or hieroglyphics. This conclusion was forced upon
him by the discovery of several specimens of the following nature:
He observed that certain inscriptions were met with in greater frequency
than others. Such as "FOR SALE CHEAP"; "BILLIARDS"; "S. T.--1860--X";
"KENO"; "ALE ON DRAUGHT." Naturally, then, these must be religious
maxims. But this idea was cast aside by and by, as the mystery of the
strange alphabet began to clear itself. In time, the professor was
enabled to translate several of the inscriptions with considerable
plausibility, though not to the perfect satisfaction of all the scholars.
Still, he made constant and encouraging progress.
Finally a cavern was discovered with these inscriptions upon it:
WATERSIDE MUSEUM.
Open at All Hours.
Admission 50 cents.
WONDERFUL COLLECTION OF
WAX-WORKS, ANCIENT FOSSILS,
ETC.
Professor Woodlouse affirmed that the word "Museum" was equivalent to the
phrase "lumgath molo," or "Burial Place." Upon entering, the scientists
were well astonished. But what they saw may be best conveyed in the
language of their own official report:
"Erect, in a row, were a sort of rigid great figures which struck us
instantly as belonging to the long extinct species of reptile called MAN,
described in our ancient records. This was a peculiarly gratifying
discovery, because of late times it has become fashionable to regard this
creature as a myth and a superstition, a work of the inventive
imaginations of our remote ancestors. But here, indeed, was Man,
perfectly preserved, in a fossil state. And this was his burial place,
as already ascertained by the inscription. And now it began to be
suspected that the caverns we had been inspecting had been his ancient
haunts in that old time that he roamed the earth--for upon the breast of
each of these tall fossils was an inscription in the character heretofore
noticed. One read, 'CAPTAIN KIDD THE PIRATE'; another, 'QUEEN VICTORIA';
another, 'ABE LINCOLN'; another, 'GEORGE WASHINGTON,' etc.
"With feverish interest we called for our ancient scientific records to
discover if perchance the description of Man there set down would tally
with the fossils before us. Professor Woodlouse read it aloud in its
quaint and musty phraseology, to wit:
"'In ye time of our fathers Man still walked ye earth, as by tradition we
know. It was a creature of exceeding great size, being compassed about
with a loose skin, sometimes of one color, sometimes of many, the which
it was able to cast at will; which being done, the hind legs were
discovered to be armed with short claws like to a mole's but broader, and
ye forelegs with fingers of a curious slimness and a length much more
prodigious than a frog's, armed also with broad talons for scratching in
ye earth for its food. It had a sort of feathers upon its head such as
hath a rat, but longer, and a beak suitable for seeking its food by ye
smell thereof. When it was stirred with happiness, it leaked water from
its eyes; and when it suffered or was sad, it manifested it with a
horrible hellish cackling clamor that was exceeding dreadful to hear and
made one long that it might rend itself and perish, and so end its
troubles. Two Mans being together, they uttered noises at each other
like this: "Haw-haw-haw--dam good, dam good," together with other sounds
of more or less likeness to these, wherefore ye poets conceived that they
talked, but poets be always ready to catch at any frantic folly, God he
knows. Sometimes this creature goeth about with a long stick ye which it
putteth to its face and bloweth fire and smoke through ye same with a
sudden and most damnable bruit and noise that doth fright its prey to
death, and so seizeth it in its talons and walketh away to its habitat,
consumed with a most fierce and devilish joy.'
"Now was the description set forth by our ancestors wonderfully indorsed
and confirmed by the fossils before us, as shall be seen. The specimen
marked 'Captain Kidd' was examined in detail. Upon its head and part of
its face was a sort of fur like that upon the tail of a horse. With
great labor its loose skin was removed, whereupon its body was discovered
to be of a polished white texture, thoroughly petrified. The straw it
had eaten, so many ages gone by, was still in its body, undigested--and
even in its legs.
"Surrounding these fossils were objects that would mean nothing to the
ignorant, but to the eye of science they were a revelation. They laid
bare the secrets of dead ages. These musty Memorials told us when Man
lived, and what were his habits. For here, side by side with Man, were
the evidences that he had lived in the earliest ages of creation, the
companion of the other low orders of life that belonged to that forgotten
time. Here was the fossil nautilus that sailed the primeval seas; here
was the skeleton of the mastodon, the ichthyosaurus, the cave-bear, the
prodigious elk. Here, also, were the charred bones of some of these
extinct animals and of the young of Man's own species, split lengthwise,
showing that to his taste the marrow was a toothsome luxury. It was
plain that Man had robbed those bones of their contents, since no
tooth-mark of any beast was upon them albeit the Tumble-Bug intruded the
remark that 'no beast could mark a bone with its teeth, anyway.' Here
were proofs that Man had vague, groveling notions of art; for this fact
was conveyed by certain things marked with the untranslatable words,
'FLINT HATCHETS, KNIVES, ARROW--HEADS, AND BONE ORNAMENTS OF PRIMEVAL
MAN.' Some of these seemed to be rude weapons chipped out of flint, and
in a secret place was found some more in process of construction, with
this untranslatable legend, on a thin, flimsy material, lying by:
"'Jones, if you don't want to be discharged from the Musseum, make
the next primeaveal weppons more careful--you couldn't even fool one
of these sleepy old syentific grannys from the Coledge with the last
ones. And mind you the animles you carved on some of the Bone
Ornaments is a blame sight too good for any primeaveal man that was
ever fooled.--Varnum, Manager.'
"Back of the burial place was a mass of ashes, showing that Man always
had a feast at a funeral--else why the ashes in such a place; and
showing, also, that he believed in God and the immortality of the soil
--else why these solemn ceremonies?
"To, sum up. We believe that Man had a written language. We know that
he indeed existed at one time, and is not a myth; also, that he was the
companion of the cave-bear, the mastodon, and other extinct species; that
he cooked and ate them and likewise the young of his own kind; also, that
he bore rude weapons, and knew something of art; that he imagined he had
a soul, and pleased himself with the fancy that it was immortal. But let
us not laugh; there may be creatures in existence to whom we and our
vanities and profundities may seem as ludicrous."
END OF PART SECOND
SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
PART THIRD
Near the margin of the great river the scientists presently found a huge,
shapely stone, with this inscription:
"In 1847, in the spring, the river overflowed its banks and covered
the whole township. The depth was from two to six feet. More than
900 head of cattle were lost, and many homes destroyed. The Mayor
ordered this memorial to be erected to perpetuate the event. God
spare us the repetition of it!"
With infinite trouble, Professor Woodlouse succeeded in making a
translation of this inscription, which was sent home, and straightway an
enormous excitement was created about it. It confirmed, in a remarkable
way, certain treasured traditions of the ancients. The translation was
slightly marred by one or two untranslatable words, but these did not
impair the general clearness of the meaning. It is here presented:
"One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven years ago, the (fires?)
descended and consumed the whole city. Only some nine hundred souls
were saved, all others destroyed. The (king?) commanded this stone
to be set up to . . . (untranslatable) . . . prevent the
repetition of it."
This was the first successful and satisfactory translation that had been
made of the mysterious character let behind him by extinct man, and it
gave Professor Woodlouse such reputation that at once every seat of
learning in his native land conferred a degree of the most illustrious
grade upon him, and it was believed that if he had been a soldier and had
turned his splendid talents to the extermination of a remote tribe of
reptiles, the king would have ennobled him and made him rich. And this,
too, was the origin of that school of scientists called Manologists,
whose specialty is the deciphering of the ancient records of the extinct
bird termed Man. [For it is now decided that Man was a bird and not a
reptile.] But Professor Woodlouse began and remained chief of these, for
it was granted that no translations were ever so free from error as his.
Others made mistakes he seemed incapable of it. Many a memorial of the
lost race was afterward found, but none ever attained to the renown and
veneration achieved by the "Mayoritish Stone" it being so called from the
word "Mayor" in it, which, being translated "King," "Mayoritish Stone"
was but another way of saying "King Stone."
Another time the expedition made a great "find." It was a vast round
flattish mass, ten frog-spans in diameter and five or six high.
Professor Snail put on his spectacles and examined it all around, and
then climbed up and inspected the top. He said:
"The result of my perlustration and perscontation of this isoperimetrical
protuberance is a belief at it is one of those rare and wonderful
creation left by the Mound Builders. The fact that this one is
lamellibranchiate in its formation, simply adds to its interest as being
possibly of a different kind from any we read of in the records of
science, but yet in no manner marring its authenticity. Let the
megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory
and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made
and learning gather new treasures."
Not a Tumble-Bug could be found on duty, so the Mound was excavated by a
working party of Ants. Nothing was discovered. This would have been a
great disappointment, had not the venerable Longlegs explained the
matter. He said:
"It is now plain to me that the mysterious and forgotten race of Mound
Builders did not always erect these edifices as mausoleums, else in this
case, as in all previous cases, their skeletons would be found here,
along with the rude implements which the creatures used in life. Is not
this manifest?"
"True! true!" from everybody.
"Then we have made a discovery of peculiar value here; a discovery which
greatly extends our knowledge of this creature in place of diminishing
it; a discovery which will add luster to the achievements of this
expedition and win for us the commendations of scholars everywhere.
For the absence of the customary relics here means nothing less than
this: The Mound Builder, instead of being the ignorant, savage reptile we
have been taught to consider him, was a creature of cultivation and high
intelligence, capable of not only appreciating worthy achievements of the
great and noble of his species, but of commemorating them!
Fellow-scholars, this stately Mound is not a sepulcher, it is a monument!"
A profound impression was produced by this.
But it was interrupted by rude and derisive laughter--and the Tumble-Bug
appeared.
"A monument!" quoth he. "A monument setup by a Mound Builder! Aye, so
it is! So it is, indeed, to the shrewd keen eye of science; but to an,
ignorant poor devil who has never seen a college, it is not a Monument,
strictly speaking, but is yet a most rich and noble property; and with
your worship's good permission I will proceed to manufacture it into
spheres of exceedings grace and--"
The Tumble-Bug was driven away with stripes, and the draftsmen of the
expedition were set to making views of the Monument from different
standpoints, while Professor Woodlouse, in a frenzy of scientific zeal,
traveled all over it and all around it hoping to find an inscription.
But if there had ever been one, it had decayed or been removed by some
vandal as a relic.
The views having been completed, it was now considered safe to load the
precious Monument itself upon the backs of four of the largest Tortoises
and send it home to the king's museum, which was done; and when it
arrived it was received with enormous Mat and escorted to its future
abiding-place by thousands of enthusiastic citizens, King Bullfrog XVI.
himself attending and condescending to sit enthroned upon it throughout
the progress.
The growing rigor of the weather was now admonishing the scientists to
close their labors for the present, so they made preparations to journey
homeward. But even their last day among the Caverns bore fruit; for one
of the scholars found in an out-of-the-way corner of the Museum or
"Burial Place" a most strange and extraordinary thing. It was nothing
less than a double Man-Bird lashed together breast to breast by a natural
ligament, and labeled with the untranslatable words, "Siamese Twins."
The official report concerning this thing closed thus:
"Wherefore it appears that there were in old times two distinct species
of this majestic fowl, the one being single and the other double. Nature
has a reason for all things. It is plain to the eye of science that the
Double-Man originally inhabited a region where dangers abounded; hence he
was paired together to the end that while one part slept the other might
watch; and likewise that, danger being discovered, there might always be
a double instead of a single power to oppose it. All honor to the
mystery-dispelling eye of godlike Science!"
And near the Double Man-Bird was found what was plainly an ancient record
of his, marked upon numberless sheets of a thin white substance and bound
together. Almost the first glance that Professor Woodlouse threw into it
revealed this following sentence, which he instantly translated and laid
before the scientists, in a tremble, and it uplifted every soul there
with exultation and astonishment:
"In truth it is believed by many that the lower animals reason and talk
together."
When the great official report of the expedition appeared, the above
sentence bore this comment:
"Then there are lower animals than Man! This remarkable passage can mean
nothing else. Man himself is extinct, but they may still exist. What
can they be? Where do they inhabit? One's enthusiasm bursts all bounds
in the contemplation of the brilliant field of discovery and
investigation here thrown open to science. We close our labors with the
humble prayer that your Majesty will immediately appoint a commission and
command it to rest not nor spare expense until the search for this
hitherto unsuspected race of the creatures of God shall be crowned with
success."
The expedition then journeyed homeward after its long absence and its
faithful endeavors, and was received with a mighty ovation by the whole
grateful country. There were vulgar, ignorant carpers, of course, as
there always are and always will be; and naturally one of these was the
obscene Tumble-Bug. He said that all he had learned by his travels was
that science only needed a spoonful of supposition to build a mountain of
demonstrated fact out of; and that for the future he meant to be content
with the knowledge that nature had made free to all creatures and not go
prying into the august secrets of the Deity.
MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP--[Written about 1867.]
I am not a private secretary to a senator any more I now. I held the
berth two months in security and in great cheerfulness of spirit, but my
bread began to return from over the waters then--that is to say, my works
came back and revealed themselves. I judged it best to resign. The way
of it was this. My employer sent for me one morning tolerably early,
and, as soon as I had finished inserting some conundrums clandestinely
into his last great speech upon finance, I entered the presence. There
was something portentous in his appearance. His cravat was untied, his
hair was in a state of disorder, and his countenance bore about it the
signs of a suppressed storm. He held a package of letters in his tense
grasp, and I knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in. He said:
"I thought you were worthy of confidence."
I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "I gave you a letter from certain of my constituents in the
State of Nevada, asking the establishment of a post-office at Baldwin's
Ranch, and told you to answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with
arguments which should persuade them that there was no real necessity for
as office at that place."
I felt easier. "Oh, if that is all, sir, I did do that."
"Yes, you did. I will read your answer for your own humiliation:
'WASHINGTON, Nov. 24
'Messrs. Smith, Jones, and others.
'GENTLEMEN: What the mischief do you suppose you want with a
post-office at Baldwin's Ranch? It would not do you any good.
If any letters came there, you couldn't read them, you know; and,
besides, such letters as ought to pass through, with money in them,
for other localities, would not be likely to get through, you must
perceive at once; and that would make trouble for us all. No, don't
bother about a post-office in your camp. I have your best interests
at heart, and feel that it would only be an ornamental folly. What
you want is a nice jail, you know--a nice, substantial jail and a
free school. These will be a lasting benefit to you. These will
make you really contented and happy. I will move in the matter at
once.
'Very truly, etc.,
Mark Twain,
'For James W. N------, U. S. Senator.'
"That is the way you answered that letter. Those people say they will
hang me, if I ever enter that district again; and I am perfectly
satisfied they will, too."
"Well, sir, I did not know I was doing any harm. I only wanted to
convince them."
"Ah. Well, you did convince them, I make no manner of doubt. Now, here
is another specimen. I gave you a petition from certain gentlemen of
Nevada, praying that I would get a bill through Congress incorporating
the Methodist Episcopal Church of the State of Nevada. I told you to
say, in reply, that the creation of such a law came more properly within
the province of the state legislature; and to endeavor to show them that,
in the present feebleness of the religious element in that new
commonwealth, the expediency of incorporating the church was
questionable. What did you write?
"'WASHINGTON, Nov. 24.
"'Rev. John Halifax and others.
"'GENTLEMEN: You will have to go to the state legislature about that
speculation of yours--Congress don't know anything about religion.
But don't you hurry to go there, either; because this thing you
propose to do out in that new country isn't expedient--in fact, it
is ridiculous. Your religious people there are too feeble, in
intellect, in morality, in piety in everything, pretty much. You
had better drop this--you can't make it work. You can't issue stock
on an incorporation like that--or if you could, it would only keep
you in trouble all the time. The other denominations would abuse
it, and "bear" it, and "sell it short," and break it down. They
would do with it just as they would with one of your silver-mines
out there--they would try to make all the world believe it was
"wildcat." You ought not to do anything that is calculated to bring
a sacred thing into disrepute. You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves that is what I think about it. You close your petition
with the words: "And we will ever pray." I think you had better you
need to do it.
"'Very truly, etc.,
"'MARK TWAIN,
"'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.'
"That luminous epistle finishes me with the religious element among my
constituents. But that my political murder might be made sure, some evil
instinct prompted me to hand you this memorial from the grave company of
elders composing the board of aldermen of the city of San Francisco, to
try your hand upon a, memorial praying that the city's right to the
water-lots upon the city front might be established by law of Congress.
I told you this was a dangerous matter to move in. I told you to write a
non-committal letter to the aldermen--an ambiguous letter--a letter that
should avoid, as far as possible, all real consideration and discussion
of the water-lot question. If there is any feeling left in you--any
shame--surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to
evoke it, when its words fall upon your ears:
'WASHINGTON, Nov. 27
'The Honorable Board of Aldermen, etc.
'GENTLEMEN: George Washington, the revered Father of his Country,
is dead. His long and brilliant career is closed, alas! forever.
He was greatly respected in this section of the country, and his
untimely decease cast a gloom over the whole community. He died on
the 14th day of December, 1799. He passed peacefully away from the
scene of his honors and his great achievements, the most lamented
hero and the best beloved that ever earth hath yielded unto Death.
At such a time as this, you speak of water-lots! what a lot was his!
'What is fame! Fame is an accident. Sir Isaac Newton discovered
an apple falling to the ground--a trivial discovery, truly, and one
which a million men had made before him--but his parents were
influential, and so they tortured that small circumstance into
something wonderful, and, lo! the simple world took up the shout
and, in almost the twinkling of an eye, that man was famous.
Treasure these thoughts.
'Poesy, sweet poesy, who shall estimate what the world owes to
thee!
"Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow--
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go."
"Jack and Gill went up the hill
To draw a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Gill came tumbling after."
'For simplicity, elegance of diction, and freedom from immoral
tendencies, I regard those two poems in the light of gems. They
are suited to all grades of intelligence, to every sphere of life
--to the field, to the nursery, to the guild. Especially should
no Board of Aldermen be without them.
'Venerable fossils! write again. Nothing improves one so much as
friendly correspondence. Write again--and if there is anything in
this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do
not be backward about explaining it. We shall always be happy to
hear you chirp.
'Very truly, etc.,
"'MARK TWAIN,
'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.'
"That is an atrocious, a ruinous epistle! Distraction!"
"Well, sir, I am really sorry if there is anything wrong about it--but
--but it appears to me to dodge the water-lot question."
"Dodge the mischief! Oh!--but never mind. As long as destruction must
come now, let it be complete. Let it be complete--let this last of your
performances, which I am about to read, make a finality of it. I am a
ruined man. I had my misgivings when I gave you the letter from
Humboldt, asking that the post route from Indian Gulch to Shakespeare Gap
and intermediate points be changed partly to the old Mormon trail. But I
told you it was a delicate question, and warned you to deal with it
deftly--to answer it dubiously, and leave them a little in the dark.
And your fatal imbecility impelled you to make this disastrous reply.
I should think you would stop your ears, if you are not dead to all
shame:
"'WASHINGTON, Nov. 30.
"'Messes. Perkins, Wagner, et at.
"'GENTLEMEN: It is a delicate question about this Indian trail, but,
handled with proper deftness and dubiousness, I doubt not we shall
succeed in some measure or otherwise, because the place where the
route leaves the Lassen Meadows, over beyond where those two Shawnee
chiefs, Dilapidated Vengeance and Biter-of-the-Clouds, were scalped
last winter, this being the favorite direction to some, but others
preferring something else in consequence of things, the Mormon trail
leaving Mosby's at three in the morning, and passing through Jaw
bone Flat to Blucher, and then down by Jug-Handle, the road passing
to the right of it, and naturally leaving it on the right, too, and
Dawson's on the left of the trail where it passes to the left of
said Dawson's and onward thence to Tomahawk, thus making the route
cheaper, easier of access to all who can get at it, and compassing
all the desirable objects so considered by others, and, therefore,
conferring the most good upon the greatest number, and,
consequently, I am encouraged to hope we shall. However, I shall be
ready, and happy, to afford you still further information upon the
subject, from time to time, as you may desire it and the Post-office
Department be enabled to furnish it to me.
"'Very truly, etc.,
"'MARK TWAIN,
"'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.'
"There--now what do you think of that?"
"Well, I don't know, sir. It--well, it appears to me--to be dubious
enough."
"Du--leave the house! I am a ruined man. Those Humboldt savages never
will forgive me for tangling their brains up with this inhuman letter.
I have lost the respect of the Methodist Church, the board of aldermen--"
"Well, I haven't anything to say about that, because I may have missed it
a little in their cases, but I was too many for the Baldwin's Ranch
people, General!"
"Leave the house! Leave it forever and forever, too."
I regarded that as a sort of covert intimation that my service could be
dispensed with, and so I resigned. I never will be a private secretary
to a senator again. You can't please that kind of people. They don't
know anything. They can't appreciate a party's efforts.
A FASHION ITEM--[Written about 1867.]
At General G----'s reception the other night, the most fashionably
dressed lady was Mrs. G. C. She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front
but with a good deal of rake to it--to the train, I mean; it was said to
be two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor
some little time after the woman was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white
bodice, cut bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with ruches; low neck,
with the inside handkerchief not visible, with white kid gloves. She had
on a pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up the midst of that
barren waste of neck and shoulders. Her hair was frizzled into a tangled
chaparral, forward of her ears, aft it was drawn together, and compactly
bound and plaited into a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was
canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously supported by a red velvet
crupper, whose forward extremity was made fast with a half-hitch around a
hairpin on the top of her head. Her whole top hamper was neat and
becoming. She had a beautiful complexion when she first came, but it
faded out by degrees in an unaccountable way. However, it is not lost
for good. I found the most of it on my shoulder afterward. (I stood
near the door when she squeezed out with the throng.) There were other
ladies present, but I only took notes of one as a specimen. I would
gladly enlarge upon the subject were I able to do it justice.
RILEY-NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT
One of the best men in Washington--or elsewhere--is RILEY, correspondent
of one of the great San Francisco dailies.
Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes
his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks
are about somebody else). But notwithstanding the possession of these
qualities, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizing
letter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthly
solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts,
which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial
character. He explains this curious thing by saying that his employers
sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times
he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks
which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not
understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to
convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something
of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and
cast into the stove. Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with
a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he
simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the
delight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only
a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and
reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy. Having seen Riley do
this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak. Often I have
laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow his
pen through it. He would say, "I had to write that or die; and I've got
to scratch it out or starve. They wouldn't stand it, you know."
I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw. We
lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8,
moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by
paying our board--a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous
in Washington. Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the
early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about his
baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins,
and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and
teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and
keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts--which
latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a
little money when people began to find fault because his translations
were too "free," a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to be
held responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, and
only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood.
Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position of
official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar with
the Chinese language, but did not know any English. And Riley used to
tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only
an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians,
and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all
his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated
out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their
allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become
an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but
a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the
Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again
and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came
home every time, and away they went with the northeast trades drifting
off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the
Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it
was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed
him; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so
fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under
foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at
last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant
of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the
other, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archives
along with it--and not only the archives and the populace, but some
eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they
diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at
thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the
province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.
Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets
anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and a
permanent reliable enemy. He will put himself to any amount of trouble
to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be
done for the helpless and the shiftless. And he knows how to do nearly
everything, too. He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring
that never goes dry. He stands always ready to help whoever needs help,
as far as he is able--and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap
and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and
sacrifice of time. This sort of men is rare.
Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying
quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back
side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating
joke. One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door
to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional
at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as
offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it
best to let her talk along and say nothing back--it was the only way to
keep her tears out of the gravy. Riley said there never was a funeral in
the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.
And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs
of woe--entirely brokenhearted. Everything she looked at reminded her of
that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the
coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail
that made our hair rise. Then she got to talking about deceased, and
kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through.
Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs:
"Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!--the poor old faithful
creature. For she was so faithful. Would you believe it, she had been a
servant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty seven
years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick! And, oh,
to think she should meet such a death at last!--a-sitting over the red
hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on
it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally
roasted to a crisp! Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked! I am
but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a
tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave--and Mr. Riley if you would
have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would
sort of describe the awful way in which she met her--"
"Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" said Riley, and never
smiled.
A FINE OLD MAN
John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo--one hundred and four years old
--recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks.
He is as cheerful and bright as any of these other old men that charge
around so persistently and tiresomely in the newspapers, and in every way
as remarkable.
Last November he walked five blocks in a rainstorm, without any shelter
but an umbrella, and cast his vote for Grant, remarking that he had voted
for forty-seven presidents--which was a lie.
His "second crop" of rich brown hair arrived from New York yesterday, and
he has a new set of teeth coming from Philadelphia.
He is to be married next week to a girl one hundred and two years old,
who still takes in washing.
They have been engaged eighty years, but their parents persistently
refused their consent until three days ago.
John Wagner is two years older than the Rhode Island veteran, and yet has
never tasted a drop of liquor in his life--unless-unless you count
whisky.
SCIENCE V.S. LUCK--[Written about 1867.]
At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K-----); the law was very
strict against what is termed "games of chance." About a dozen of the
boys were detected playing "seven up" or "old sledge" for money, and the
grand jury found a true bill against them. Jim Sturgis was retained to
defend them when the case came up, of course. The more he studied over
the matter, and looked into the evidence, the plainer it was that he must
lose a case at last--there was no getting around that painful fact.
Those boys had certainly been betting money on a game of chance. Even
public sympathy was roused in behalf of Sturgis. People said it was a
pity to see him mar his successful career with a big prominent case like
this, which must go against him.
But after several restless nights an inspired idea flashed upon Sturgis,
and he sprang out of bed delighted. He thought he saw his way through.
The next day he whispered around a little among his clients and a few
friends, and then when the case came up in court he acknowledged the
seven-up and the betting, and, as his sole defense, had the astounding
effrontery to put in the plea that old sledge was not a game of chance!
There was the broadest sort of a smile all over the faces of that
sophisticated audience. The judge smiled with the rest. But Sturgis
maintained a countenance whose earnestness was even severe. The opposite
counsel tried to ridicule him out of his position, and did not succeed.
The judge jested in a ponderous judicial way about the thing, but did not
move him. The matter was becoming grave. The judge lost a little of his
patience, and said the joke had gone far enough. Jim Sturgis said he
knew of no joke in the matter--his clients could not be punished for
indulging in what some people chose to consider a game of chance until it
was proven that it was a game of chance. Judge and counsel said that
would be an easy matter, and forthwith called Deacons Job, Peters, Burke,
and Johnson, and Dominies Wirt and Miggles, to testify; and they
unanimously and with strong feeling put down the legal quibble of Sturgis
by pronouncing that old sledge was a game of chance.
"What do you call it now?" said the judge.
"I call it a game of science!" retorted Sturgis; "and I'll prove it,
too!"
They saw his little game.
He brought in a cloud of witnesses, and produced an overwhelming mass of
testimony, to show that old sledge was not a game of chance but a game of
science.
Instead of being the simplest case in the world, it had somehow turned
out to be an excessively knotty one. The judge scratched his head over
it awhile, and said there was no way of coming to a determination,
because just as many men could be brought into court who would testify on
one side as could be found to testify on the other. But he said he was
willing to do the fair thing by all parties, and would act upon any
suggestion Mr. Sturgis would make for the solution of the difficulty.
Mr. Sturgis was on his feet in a second.
"Impanel a jury of six of each, Luck versus Science. Give them candles
and a couple of decks of cards. Send them into the jury-room, and just
abide by the result!"
There was no disputing the fairness of the proposition. The four deacons
and the two dominies were sworn in as the "chance" jurymen, and six
inveterate old seven-up professors were chosen to represent the "science"
side of the issue. They retired to the jury-room.
In about two hours Deacon Peters sent into court to borrow three dollars
from a friend. [Sensation.] In about two hours more Dominie Miggles
sent into court to borrow a "stake" from a friend. [Sensation.] During
the next three or four hours the other dominie and the other deacons sent
into court for small loans. And still the packed audience waited, for it
was a prodigious occasion in Bull's Corners, and one in which every
father of a family was necessarily interested.
The rest of the story can be told briefly. About daylight the jury came
in, and Deacon Job, the foreman, read the following:
VERDICT:
We, the jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John
Wheeler et al., have carefully considered the points of the case,
and tested the merits of the several theories advanced, and do
hereby unanimously decide that the game commonly known as old sledge
or seven-up is eminently a game of science and not of chance. In
demonstration whereof it is hereby and herein stated, iterated,
reiterated, set forth, and made manifest that, during the entire
night, the "chance" men never won a game or turned a jack, although
both feats were common and frequent to the opposition; and
furthermore, in support of this our verdict, we call attention to
the significant fact that the "chance" men are all busted, and the
"science" men have got the money. It is the deliberate opinion of
this jury, that the "chance" theory concerning seven-up is a
pernicious doctrine, and calculated to inflict untold suffering and
pecuniary loss upon any community that takes stock in it.
"That is the way that seven-up came to be set apart and particularized in
the statute-books of Kentucky as being a game not of chance but of
science, and therefore not punishable under the law," said Mr. K-----.
"That verdict is of record, and holds good to this day."
THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--[Written about 1870.]
["Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just
as well."--B. F.]
This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers. He was
twins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city of
Boston. These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon them
worded in accordance with the facts. The signs are considered well
enough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point out
the two birthplaces to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as often as
several times in the same day. The subject of this memoir was of a
vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention
of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising
generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were
contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys
forever--boys who might otherwise have been happy. It was in this spirit
that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reason
than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might
be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.
With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work
all day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the
light of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that
also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied
with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and
water, and studying astronomy at meal-time--a thing which has brought
affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's
pernicious biography.
His maxims were full of animosity toward boys. Nowadays a boy cannot
follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those
everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin, on the spot. If he buys
two cents' worth of peanuts, his father says, "Remember what Franklin has
said, my son--'A grout a day's a penny a year"'; and the comfort is all
gone out of those peanuts. If he wants to spin his top when he has done
work, his father quotes, "Procrastination is the thief of time." If he
does a virtuous action, he never gets anything for it, because "Virtue is
its own reward." And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his
natural rest, because Franklin, said once, in one of his inspired flights
of malignity:
Early to bed and early to rise
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on
such terms. The sorrow that that maxim has cost me, through my parents,
experimenting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is
my present state of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration.
My parents used to have me up before nine o'clock in the morning
sometimes when I was a boy. If they had let me take my natural rest
where would I have been now? Keeping store, no doubt, and respected by
all.
And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was!
In order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key
on the string and let on to be fishing for lightning. And a guileless
public would go home chirping about the "wisdom" and the "genius" of the
hoary Sabbath-breaker. If anybody caught him playing "mumblepeg" by
himself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be
ciphering out how the grass grew--as if it was any of his business.
My grandfather knew him well, and he says Franklin was always
fixed--always ready. If a body, during his old age, happened on him
unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud-pies, or sliding
on a cellar door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a maxim,
and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side
before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric. He was a hard lot.
He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the
clock. One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his
giving it his name.
He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first
time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four
rolls of bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it
critically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it.
To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the army
to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets.
He observed, with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well
under some circumstances, but that he doubted whether it could be used
with accuracy at a long range.
Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country,
and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such
a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up.
No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his,
which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that
had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel;
and also to snub his stove, and his military inspirations, his unseemly
endeavor to make himself conspicuous when he entered Philadelphia, and
his flying his kite and fooling away his time in all sorts of such ways
when he ought to have been foraging for soap-fat, or constructing
candles. I merely desired to do away with somewhat of the prevalent
calamitous idea among heads of families that Franklin acquired his great
genius by working for nothing, studying by moonlight, and getting up in
the night instead of waiting till morning like a Christian; and that this
program, rigidly inflicted, will make a Franklin of every father's fool.
It is time these gentlemen were finding out that these execrable
eccentricities of instinct and conduct are only the evidences of genius,
not the creators of it. I wish I had been the father of my parents long
enough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus prepare them to let
their son have an easier time of it. When I was a child I had to boil
soap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up early
and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do
everything just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a
Franklin some day. And here I am.
MR. BLOKE'S ITEM--[Written about 1865.]
Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked
into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with
an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance,
and, sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk,
and walked slowly out again. He paused a moment at the door, and seemed
struggling to command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak,
and then, nodding his head toward his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken
voice, "Friend of mine--oh! how sad!" and burst into tears. We were so
moved at his distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor
to comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late. The paper had
already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider the
publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope that to print
it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his sorrowing heart, we
stopped, the press at once and inserted it in our columns:
DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr.
William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was
leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual custom
for many years with the exception only of a short interval in the
spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries
received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly
placing himself directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and
shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must
inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking
its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and
rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence
of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence
notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so,
that she should be reconnoitering in another direction when
incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a
general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to
have stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious
resurrection, upwards of three years ago; aged eighty-six, being a
Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in
consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every single thing
she had in the world. But such is life. Let us all take warning by
this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves
that when we come to die we can do it. Let us place our hands upon
our heart, and say with earnestness and sincerity that from this day
forth we will beware of the intoxicating bowl.--'First Edition of
the Californian.'
The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his
hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket.
He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an
hour I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes
along. And he says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing
but a lot of distressing bash, and has no point to it, and no sense in
it, and no information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for
stopping the press to publish it.
Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If I had been as
unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told
Mr. Bloke that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour;
but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the
chance of doing something to modify his misery. I never read his item to
see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few
lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers. And what has my
kindness done for me? It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm
of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.
Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for
all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me.
I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a
first glance. However, I will peruse it once more.
I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more mixed than
ever.
I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it I
wish I may get my just deserts. It won't bear analysis. There are
things about it which I cannot understand at all. It don't say whatever
became of William Schuyler. It just says enough about him to get one
interested in his career, and then drops him. Who is William Schuyler,
anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in, and if he started
down-town at six o'clock, did he ever get there, and if he did, did
anything happen to him? Is he the individual that met with the
"distressing accident"? Considering the elaborate circumstantiality of
detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain
more information than it does. On the contrary, it is obscure and not
only obscure, but utterly incomprehensible. Was the breaking of Mr.
Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the "distressing accident" that
plunged Mr. Bloke into unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here
at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the
circumstance? Or did the "distressing accident" consist in the
destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times?
Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago
(albeit it does not appear that she died by accident)? In a word, what
did that "distressing accident" consist in? What did that driveling ass
of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting
and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him? And how the mischief could
he get run over by a horse that had already passed beyond him? And what
are we to take "warning" by? And how is this extraordinary chapter of
incomprehensibilities going to be a "lesson" to us? And, above all, what
has the intoxicating "bowl" got to do with it, anyhow? It is not stated
that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that his mother-in-law
drank, or that the horse drank wherefore, then, the reference to the
intoxicating bowl? It does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the
intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much
trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this.
absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility,
until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There
certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is
impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the
sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to request
that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's friends, he
will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me
to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to. I
had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the
verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such
production as the above.
A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
CHAPTER I
THE SECRET REVEALED.
It was night. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of
Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the
tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered. A secret
council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in
a chair of state meditating. Presently he, said, with a tender
accent:
"My daughter!"
A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail,
answered:
"Speak, father!"
"My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath
puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the
matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of
Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were
born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a son
were born to me. And further, in case no son, were born to either, but
only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich's daughter,
if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed,
if she retained a blameless name. And so I, and my old wife here, prayed
fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain. You were
born to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize slipping from my
grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had been so hopeful!
Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no
heir of either sex.
"'But hold,' I said, 'all is not lost.' A saving scheme had shot athwart
my brain. You were born at midnight. Only the leech, the nurse, and six
waiting-women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour had
sped. Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the
proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty
Brandenburgh! And well the secret has been kept. Your mother's own
sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing.
"When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich. We grieved,
but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural
enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she throve
--Heaven's malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe. For,
Ha-ha! have we not a son? And is not our son the future Duke? Our
well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?--for, woman of eight-and-twenty years
--as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you!
"Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother,
and he waxes feeble. The cares of state do tax him sore. Therefore he
wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke--in act, though not
yet in name. Your servitors are ready--you journey forth to-night.
"Now listen well. Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as
Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal
chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people,
SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your
judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the
throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that
your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to
make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life."
"Oh; my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie! Was it that I
might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights? Spare me, father,
spare your child!"
"What, huzzy! Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has
wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of
thine but ill accords with my humor.
"Betake thee to the Duke, instantly! And beware how thou meddlest with my
purpose!"
Let this suffice, of the conversation. It is enough for us to know that
the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl
availed nothing. They nor anything could move the stout old lord of
Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the
castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the
darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed, vassals and a brave
following of servants.
The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter's departure,
and then he turned to his sad wife and said:
"Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly. It is full three months since I
sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my
brother's daughter Constance. If he fail, we are not wholly safe; but if
he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though
ill-fortune should decree she never should be Duke!"
"My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well."
"Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak. To bed with ye, and dream of
Brandenburgh and grandeur!"
CHAPTER II.
FESTIVITY AND TEARS
Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the
brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with
military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes;
for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come. The old Duke's, heart
was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing
had won his love at once. The great halls of tie palace were thronged
with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did all
things seem, that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and giving
place to a comforting contentment.
But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature
was, transpiring. By a window stood the Duke's only child, the Lady
Constance. Her eyes were red and swollen, and full of tears. She was
alone. Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud:
"The villain Detzin is gone--has fled the dukedom! I could not believe
it at first, but alas! it is too true. And I loved him so. I dared to
love him though I knew the Duke my father would never let me wed him.
I loved him--but now I hate him! With all, my soul I hate him! Oh, what
is to become of me! I am lost, lost, lost! I shall go mad!"
CHAPTER III.
THE PLOT THICKENS.
Few months drifted by. All men published the praises of the young
Conrad's government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the
mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself
in his great office. The old Duke soon gave everything into his hands,
and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir
delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier.
It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men
as Conrad was, could not be otherwise than happy. But strange enough,
he was not. For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun
to love him! The love of, the rest of the world was happy fortune for
him, but this was freighted with danger! And he saw, moreover, that the
delighted Duke had discovered his daughter's passion likewise, and was
already dreaming of a marriage. Every day somewhat of the deep sadness
that had been in the princess' face faded away; every day hope and
animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles
visited the face that had been so troubled.
Conrad was appalled. He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to
the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own
sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace--when he was sorrowful
and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel. He now
began to avoid, his cousin. But this only made matters worse, for,
naturally enough, the more he avoided her, the more she cast herself in
his way. He marveled at this at first; and next it startled him. The
girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and
in all places, in the night as well as in the day. She seemed singularly
anxious. There was surely a mystery somewhere.
This could not go on forever. All the world was talking about it. The
Duke was beginning to look perplexed. Poor Conrad was becoming a very
ghost through dread and dire distress. One day as he was emerging from a
private ante-room attached to the picture gallery, Constance confronted
him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed:
"Oh, why, do you avoid me? What have I done--what have I said, to lose
your kind opinion of me--for, surely I had it once? Conrad, do not
despise me, but pity a tortured heart? I cannot,--cannot hold the words
unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD! There, despise
me if you must, but they would be uttered!"
Conrad was speechless. Constance hesitated a moment, and then,
misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she
flung her arms about his neck and said:
"You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you
will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'"
"Conrad groaned aloud. A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and
he trembled like an aspen. Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor
girl from him, and cried:
"You know not what you ask! It is forever and ever impossible!" And then
he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement.
A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was
crying and sobbing in his chamber. Both were in despair. Both save ruin
staring them in the face.
By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying:
"To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought
it was melting his cruel heart! I hate him! He spurned me--did this
man--he spurned me from him like a dog!"
CHAPTER IV
THE AWFUL REVELATION.
Time passed on. A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance
of the good Duke's daughter. She and Conrad were seen together no more
now. The Duke grieved at this. But as the weeks wore away, Conrad's
color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and
he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom.
Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace. It grew
louder; it spread farther. The gossips of the city got hold-of it. It
swept the dukedom. And this is what the whisper said:
"The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!"
When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice
around his head and shouted:
"Long live. Duke Conrad!--for lo, his crown is sure, from this day
forward! Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall
be rewarded!"
And he spread, the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no
soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to
celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein's
expense.
CHAPTER V.
THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE.
The trial was at hand. All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh
were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace. No space was
left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit.
Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the premier's chair, and on
either side sat the great judges of the realm. The old Duke had sternly
commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed, without favor,
and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted. His days were numbered.
Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the
misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did not
avail.
The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast.
The gladdest was in his father's. For, unknown to his daughter "Conrad,"
the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles,
triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house.
After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries
had followed, the venerable Lord Chief justice said:
"Prisoner, stand forth!"
The unhappy princess rose and stood unveiled before the vast multitude.
The Lord Chief Justice continued:
"Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been
charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth
unto a child; and by our ancient law the penalty is death, excepting in
one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord
Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give
heed."
Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the self-same moment
the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed
prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes. He opened his lips to speak,
but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly:
"Not there, your Grace, not there! It is not lawful to pronounce
judgment upon any of the ducal line SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!"
A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron
frame of his old father likewise. CONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED--dared he
profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear. But it must
be done. Wondering eyes were already upon him. They would be suspicious
eyes if he hesitated longer. He ascended the throne. Presently he
stretched forth the sceptre again, and said:
"Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of
Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me.
Give heed to my words. By the ancient law of the land, except you
produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner,
you must surely die. Embrace this opportunity--save yourself while yet
you may. Name the father of your child!"
A solemn hush fell upon the great court--a silence so profound that men
could hear their own hearts beat. Then the princess slowly turned, with
eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad,
said:
"Thou art the man!"
An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill to
Conrad's heart like the chill of death itself. What power on earth could
save him! To disprove the charge, he must reveal that he was a woman;
and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death! At one
and the same moment, he and his grim old father swooned and fell to, the
ground.
[The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in
this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.]
The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly
close place, that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her)
out of it again--and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole
business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers--or
else stay there. I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten
out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.
PETITION CONCERNING COPYRIGHT
TO THE HONORABLE THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:
Whereas, The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all, backed by the
Declaration of Independence; and
Whereas, Under our laws, the right of property in real estate is
perpetual; and
Whereas, Under our laws, the right of property in the literary result of
a citizen's intellectual labor is restricted to forty-two years; and
Whereas, Forty-two years seems an exceedingly just and righteous term,
and a sufficiently long one for the retention of property;
Therefore, Your petitioner, having the good of his country solely at
heart, humbly prays that "equal rights" and fair and equal treatment may
be meted out to all citizens, by the restriction of rights in all
property, real estate included, to the beneficent term of forty-two
years. Then shall all men bless your honorable body and be happy. And
for this will your petitioner ever pray.
MARK TWAIN.
A PARAGRAPH NOT ADDED TO THE PETITION
The charming absurdity of restricting property-rights in books to
forty-two years sticks prominently out in the fact that hardly any man's
books ever live forty-two years, or even the half of it; and so, for the
sake of getting a shabby advantage of the heirs of about one Scott or
Burns or Milton in a hundred years, the lawmakers of the "Great" Republic
are content to leave that poor little pilfering edict upon the
statute-books. It is like an emperor lying in wait to rob a Phenix's
nest, and waiting the necessary century to get the chance.
AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
[AT A FOURTH OF JULY GATHERING, IN LONDON, OF AMERICANS]
MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I thank you for the compliment
which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will
not afflict you with many words. It is pleasant to celebrate in this
peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment
which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to
a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors. It has taken nearly
a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and
mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished
at last. It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were
settled by arbitration instead of cannon. It is another great step when
England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention--as
usual. It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the
other day. And it warmed my heart more than I can tell, yesterday, when
I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman ordering an American sherry
cobbler of his own free will and accord--and not only that but with a
great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the
strawberries. With a common origin, a common language, a common
literature, a common religion and--common drinks, what is longer needful
to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of
brotherhood?
This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land. A great and
glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
a William M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
eight months by tiring them out--which is much better than uncivilized
slaughter, God knows. We have a criminal jury system which is superior
to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved
Cain. I think I can say,--and say with pride, that we have some
legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us
live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners. It only
destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
unnecessary people at crossings. The companies seriously regretted the
killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against
a railway company. But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion.
I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time. After an
accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative
of mine in a basket, with the remark, "Please state what figure you hold
him at--and return the basket." Now there couldn't be anything
friendlier than that.
But I must not stand here and brag all night. However, you won't mind a
body bragging a little about his country on the fourth of July. It is a
fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle. I will say only one more word
of brag--and a hopeful one. It is this. We have a form of government
which gives each man a fair chance and no favor. With us no individual
is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
contempt. Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the
condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of
a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all
political place was a matter of bargain and sale. There is hope for us
yet.
[At least the above is the speech which I was going to make, but our
minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the blessing, got up
and made a great long inconceivably dull harangue, and wound up by
saying that inasmuch as speech-making did not seem to exhilarate the
guests much, all further oratory would be dispensed with during the
evening, and we could just sit and talk privately to our
elbow-neighbors and have a good sociable time. It is known that in
consequence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches died in the
womb. The depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over
the banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
that were there. By that one thoughtless remark General Schenck
lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England. More than
one said that night, "And this is the sort of person that is sent to
represent us in a great sister empire!"]
LIONIZING MURDERERS
I had heard so much about the celebrated fortune-teller Madame-----, that
I went to see her yesterday. She has a dark complexion naturally, and
this effect is heightened by artificial aids which cost her nothing.
She wears curls--very black ones, and I had an impression that she gave
their native attractiveness a lift with rancid butter. She wears a
reddish check handkerchief, cast loosely around her neck, and it was
plain that her other one is slow getting back from the wash. I presume
she takes snuff. At any rate, something resembling it had lodged among
the hairs sprouting from her upper lip. I know she likes garlic--I knew
that as soon as she sighed. She looked at me searchingly for nearly a
minute, with her black eyes, and then said:
"It is enough. Come!"
She started down a very dark and dismal corridor--I stepping close after
her. Presently she stopped, and said that, as the way was so crooked and
dark, perhaps she had better get a light. But it seemed ungallant to
allow a woman to put herself to so much trouble for me, and so I said:
"It is not worth while, madam. If you will heave another sigh, I think I
can follow it."
So we got along all right. Arrived at her official and mysterious den,
she asked me to tell her the date of my birth, the exact hour of that
occurrence, and the color of my grandmother's hair. I answered as
accurately as I could. Then she said:
"Young man, summon your fortitude--do not tremble. I am about to reveal
the past."
"Information concerning the future would be, in a general way, more--"
"Silence! You have had much trouble, some joy, some good fortune, some
bad. Your great grandfather was hanged."
"That is a l--"
"Silence! Hanged sir. But it was not his fault. He could not help it."
"I am glad you do him justice."
"Ah--grieve, rather, that the jury did. He was hanged. His star crosses
yours in the fourth division, fifth sphere. Consequently you will be
hanged also."
"In view of this cheerful--"
"I must have silence. Yours was not, in the beginning, a criminal
nature, but circumstances changed it. At the age of nine you stole
sugar. At the age of fifteen you stole money. At twenty you stole
horses. At twenty-five you committed arson. At thirty, hardened in
crime, you became an editor. You are now a public lecturer. Worse
things are in store for you. You will be sent to Congress. Next, to the
penitentiary. Finally, happiness will come again--all will be well--you
will be hanged."
I was now in tears. It seemed hard enough to go to Congress; but to be
hanged--this was too sad, too dreadful. The woman seemed surprised at my
grief. I told her the thoughts that were in my mind. Then she comforted
me.
"Why, man," she said, "hold up your head--you have nothing to grieve
about. Listen.
--[In this paragraph the fortune-teller details the exact history of the
Pike-Brown assassination case in New Hampshire, from the succoring and
saving of the stranger Pike by the Browns, to the subsequent hanging and
coffining of that treacherous miscreant. She adds nothing, invents
nothing, exaggerates nothing (see any New England paper for November,
1869). This Pike-Brown case is selected merely as a type, to illustrate
a custom that prevails, not in New Hampshire alone, but in every state in
the Union--I mean the sentimental custom of visiting, petting,
glorifying, and snuffling over murderers like this Pike, from the day
they enter the jail under sentence of death until they swing from the
gallows. The following extract from the Temple Bar (1866) reveals the
fact that this custom is not confined to the United States.--"on December
31, 1841, a man named John Johnes, a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart,
Mary Hallam, the daughter of a respectable laborer, at Mansfield, in the
county of Nottingham. He was executed on March 23, 1842. He was a man
of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent fits of passion. The girl
declined his addresses, and he said if he did not have her no one else
should. After he had inflicted the first wound, which was not
immediately fatal, she begged for her life, but seeing him resolved,
asked for time to pray. He said that he would pray for both, and
completed the crime. The wounds were inflicted by a shoemaker's knife,
and her throat was cut barbarously. After this he dropped on his knees
some time, and prayed God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers.
He made no attempt to escape, and confessed the crime. After his
imprisonment he behaved in a most decorous manner; he won upon the good
opinion of the jail chaplain, and he was visited by the Bishop of
Lincoln. It does not appear that he expressed any contrition for the
crime, but seemed to pass away with triumphant certainty that he was
going to rejoin his victim in heaven. He was visited by some pious and
benevolent ladies of Nottingham, some of whom declared he was a child of
God, if ever there was one. One of the ladies sent him a while camellia
to wear at his execution."]
"You will live in New Hampshire. In your sharp need and distress the
Brown family will succor you--such of them as Pike the assassin left
alive. They will be benefactors to you. When you shall have grown fat
upon their bounty, and are grateful and happy, you will desire to make
some modest return for these things, and so you will go to the house some
night and brain the whole family with an ax. You will rob the dead
bodies of your benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living
among the rowdies and courtesans of Boston. Then you will, be arrested,
tried, condemned to be hanged, thrown into prison. Now is your happy
day. You will be converted--you will be converted just as soon as
every effort to compass pardon, commutation, or reprieve has failed--and
then!--Why, then, every morning and every afternoon, the best and purest
young ladies of the village will assemble in your cell and sing hymns.
This will show that assassination is respectable. Then you will write a
touching letter, in which you will forgive all those recent Browns. This
will excite the public admiration. No public can withstand magnanimity.
Next, they will take you to the scaffold, with great eclat, at the head
of an imposing procession composed of clergymen, officials, citizens
generally, and young ladies walking pensively two and two, and bearing
bouquets and immortelles. You will mount the scaffold, and while the
great concourse stand uncovered in your presence, you will read your
sappy little speech which the minister has written for you. And then, in
the midst of a grand and impressive silence, they will swing you into
per--Paradise, my son. There will not be a dry eye on the ground. You
will be a hero! Not a rough there but will envy you. Not a rough there
but will resolve to emulate you. And next, a great procession will
follow you to the tomb--will weep over your remains--the young ladies
will sing again the hymns made dear by sweet associations connected with
the jail, and, as a last tribute of affection, respect, and appreciation
of your many sterling qualities, they will walk two and two around your
bier, and strew wreaths of flowers on it. And lo! you are canonized.
Think of it, son-ingrate, assassin, robber of the dead, drunken brawler
among thieves and harlots in the slums of Boston one month, and the pet
of the pure and innocent daughters of the land the next! A bloody and
hateful devil--a bewept, bewailed, and sainted martyr--all in a month!
Fool!--so noble a fortune, and yet you sit here grieving!"
"No, madam," I said, "you do me wrong, you do, indeed. I am perfectly
satisfied. I did not know before that my great-grandfather was hanged,
but it is of no consequence. He has probably ceased to bother about it
by this time--and I have not commenced yet. I confess, madam, that I do
something in the way of editing and lecturing, but the other crimes you
mention have escaped my memory. Yet I must have committed them--you
would not deceive a stranger. But let the past be as it was, and let the
future be as it may--these are nothing. I have only cared for one thing.
I have always felt that I should be hanged some day, and somehow the
thought has annoyed me considerably; but if you can only assure me that I
shall be hanged in New Hampshire--"
"Not a shadow of a doubt!"
"Bless you, my benefactress!--excuse this embrace--you have removed a
great load from my breast. To be hanged in New Hampshire is happiness
--it leaves an honored name behind a man, and introduces him at once into
the best New Hampshire society in the other world."
I then took leave of the fortune-teller. But, seriously, is it well to
glorify a murderous villain on the scaffold, as Pike was glorified in New
Hampshire? Is it well to turn the penalty for a bloody crime into a
reward? Is it just to do it? Is, it safe?
A NEW CRIME
LEGISLATION NEEDED
This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of
the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in
history. For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two
years ago. Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive,
malignant, quarrelsome nature. He put a boy's eye out once, and never
was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it. He did many such
things. But at last he did something that was serious. He called at a
house just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to
the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured.
Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man
he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had
knocked him down. Such was the Baldwin case. The trial was long and
exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up. Men said this
spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and
now he should satisfy the law. But they were mistaken; Baldwin was
insane when he did the deed--they had not thought of that. By the
argument of counsel it was shown that at half past ten in the morning on
the day of the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven
hours and a half exactly. This just covered the case comfortably, and he
was acquitted. Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been
listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature
would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of
madness. Baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were
naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions
and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute.
The Baldwins were very wealthy. This same Baldwin had momentary fits of
insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had
grudges against. And on both these occasions the circumstances of the
killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and
treacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have been
hanged without the shadow of a doubt. As it was, it required all his
political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and
cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other.
One of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve
years. The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune,
to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanity
came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with
slugs.
Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania. Twice, in public, he
attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and
both times Feldner whipped him with his fists. Hackett was a vain,
wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem,
and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches. He
brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a
momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town,
waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with
his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which
he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck,
killing him instantly. The widow caught the limp form and eased it to
the earth. Both were drenched with blood. Hackett jocosely remarked to
her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the
artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again,
in case she wanted to. This remark, and another which he made to a
friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure
citizen simply an "eccentricity" instead of a crime, were shown to be
evidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment. The jury were
hardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as the
prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the
tranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right
mind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of Hackett's
wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the
very counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary
in the family, and Hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance.
Of course the jury then acquitted him. But it was a merciful providence
that Mrs. H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett would
certainly have been hanged.
However, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of
insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or
forty years. There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago.
The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her
mistress's bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife.
Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged
it with chairs and such things. Next she opened the feather beds, and
strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set
fire to the general wreck. She now took up the young child of the
murdered woman in her blood smeared hands and walked off, through the
snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off,
and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and
setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without
seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her
hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was
afraid those men had murdered her mistress! Afterward, by her own
confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had
always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the
murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the
burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not
the motive.
Now, the reader says, "Here comes that same old plea of insanity again."
But the reader has deceived himself this time. No such plea was offered
in her defense. The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor
with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged.
There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was
published some years ago. It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent
drivel from beginning to end; and so was his lengthy speech on the
scaffold afterward. For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to
disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her. He did
not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want
anybody else to do it. He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was
opposed to anybody else's escorting her. Upon one occasion he declined
to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait
for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the
escort. After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a
full year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted to
disfigure the young woman. It was a success. It was permanent. In
trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with her
parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its
comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and
she dropped dead. To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the
ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment. And so
he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her
own fault that she got killed. This idiot was hanged. The plea, of
insanity was not offered.
Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying
out. There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at any
rate. Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were
insane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a mate, it is
evidence that you are a lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of good
family and high social standing steals anything, they call it
kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum. If a person of high
standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with
strychnine or a bullet, "Temporary Aberration" is what was the trouble
with him.
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common
that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal
case that comes before the courts? And is it not so cheap, and so
common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the
newspaper mentions it?
And is it not curious to note how very often it wins acquittal for the
prisoner? Of late years it does not seem possible for a man to so
conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly
insane. If he talks about the stars, he is insane. If he appears
nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane. If he weeps
over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is
"not right." If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease,
preoccupied, and excited, he is, unquestionably insane.
Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against
insanity. There is where the true evil lies.
A CURIOUS DREAM
CONTAINING A MORAL
Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a
doorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, and the time of
night appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock. The weather was balmy
and delicious. There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep.
There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except
the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter
answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony
clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party.
In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and
moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of
its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray
gloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its
shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the
clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together,
and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was
surprised. Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any
speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another
one coming for I recognized his clack-clack. He had two-thirds of a
coffin on his shoulder, and some foot and head boards under his arm.
I mightily wanted, to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he
turned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting
grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone
when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy
half-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging
a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a
steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me,
saying:
"Ease this down for a fellow, will you?"
I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so
noticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May,
1839," as the date of his death. Deceased sat wearily down by me, and
wiped his os frontis with his major maxillary--chiefly from former habit
I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration.
"It is too bad, too bad," said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud
about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand. Then he put his
left foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his anklebone absently
with a rusty nail which he got out of his coffin.
"What is too bad, friend?"
"Oh, everything, everything. I almost wish I never had died."
"You surprise me. Why do you say this? Has anything gone wrong? What
is the matter?"
"Matter! Look at this shroud-rags. Look at this gravestone, all
battered up. Look at that disgraceful old coffin. All a man's property
going to ruin and destruction before his eyes, and ask him if anything is
wrong? Fire and brimstone!"
"Calm yourself, calm yourself," I said. "It is too bad--it is certainly
too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind such
matters situated as you are."
"Well, my dear sir, I do mind them. My pride is hurt, and my comfort is
impaired--destroyed, I might say. I will state my case--I will put it to
you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me," said
the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were
clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and
festive air very much at variance with the grave character of his
position in life--so to speak--and in prominent contrast with his
distressful mood.
"Proceed," said I.
"I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here,
in this street--there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go!
--third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with
a string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver
wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps it
polished--to think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, just
on account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity!"--and the
poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver
--for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling flesh
and cuticle. "I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty
years; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this old
tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep,
with a delicious sense upon me of being done with bother, and grief,
and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening with
comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the
startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away
to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home-delicious! My!
I wish you could try it to-night!" and out of my reverie deceased fetched
me a rattling slap with a bony hand.
"Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy. For it
was out in the country then--out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods,
and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capered
over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds
filled the tranquil solitude with music. Ah, it was worth ten years of a
man's life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good
neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the
best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the world of
us. They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were
always in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed,
and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or
decayed; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the
rose-bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the
walks clean and smooth and graveled. But that day is gone by. Our
descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a stately house
built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a
neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them
nests withal! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the
prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves
leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse and
strangers scoff at. See the difference between the old time and this
--for instance: Our graves are all caved in now; our head-boards have
rotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this way and that, with
one foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity; our monuments
lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; there be
no adornments any more--no roses, nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, nor
anything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old board
fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with
beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered till it
overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal
resting-place and invites yet more derision to it. And now we cannot
hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has
stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains
of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees
that stand, bored and weary of a city life, with their feet in our
coffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there.
I tell you it is disgraceful!
"You begin to comprehend--you begin to see how it is. While our
descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the
city, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together. Bless you,
there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak not one. Every
time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees
and sometimes we are wakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling down
the back of our necks. Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of
old graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of old
skeletons for the trees! Bless me, if you had gone along there some such
nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting
on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing
through our ribs! Many a time we have perched there for three or four
dreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy,
and borrowed each other's skulls to bail out our graves with--if you will
glance up in my mouth now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my
head-piece is half full of old dry sediment how top-heavy and stupid it
makes me sometimes! Yes, sir, many a time if you had happened to come
along just before the dawn you'd have caught us bailing out the graves
and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry. Why, I had an elegant
shroud stolen from there one morning--think a party by the name of Smith
took it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder--I think so
because the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check
shirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in
the new cemetery, he was the best-dressed corpse in the company--and it
is a significant fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an old
woman from here missed her coffin--she generally took it with her when
she went anywhere, because she was liable to take cold and bring on the
spasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to
the night air much. She was named Hotchkiss--Anna Matilda Hotchkiss--you
might know her? She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal
inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty
hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just
above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on
one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone--lost
in a fight has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of going
with: her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air has been pretty free
and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a
queensware crate in ruins--maybe you have met her?"
"God forbid!" I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not looking
for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard. But I
hastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, "I simply meant I had
not had the honor--for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a
friend of yours. You were saying that you were robbed--and it was a
shame, too--but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that
it was a costly one in its day. How did--"
A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and
shriveled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow
uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep,
sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired
his present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one. This
reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth,
because his facial expression was uncertain. Even with the most
elaborate care it was liable to miss fire. Smiling should especially be
avoided. What he might honestly consider a shining success was likely to
strike me in a very different light. I said I liked to see a skeleton
cheerful, even decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was a
skeleton's best hold.
"Yes, friend," said the poor skeleton, "the facts are just as I have
given them to you. Two of these old graveyards--the one that I resided
in and one further along have been deliberately neglected by our
descendants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer. Aside
from the osteological discomfort of it--and that is no light matter this
rainy weather--the present state of things is ruinous to property. We
have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly
destroyed.
"Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there
isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance--now that
is an absolute fact. I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box
mounted on an express-wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned,
silver-mounted burial-case, your monumental sort, that travel under black
plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots
--I mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such.
They are all about ruined. The most substantial people in our set, they
were. And now look at them--utterly used up and poverty-stricken. One
of the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for some
fresh shavings to put under his head. I tell you it speaks volumes, for
there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument. He
loves to read the inscription. He comes after a while to believe what it
says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after
night enjoying it. Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world
of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was
alive. I wish they were used more. Now I don't complain, but
confidentially I do think it was a little shabby in my descendants to
give me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone--and all the more that
there isn't a compliment on it. It used to have:
'GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD'
on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by and by I noticed that
whenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the
railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that,
and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied and
comfortable. So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools. But a
dead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument. Yonder goes half
a dozen of the Jarvises now, with the family monument along. And
Smithers and some hired specters went by with his awhile ago. Hello,
Higgins, good-by, old friend! That's Meredith Higgins--died in '44
--belongs to our set in the cemetery--fine old family--great-grand mother
was an Injun--I am on the most familiar terms with him he didn't hear me
was the reason he didn't answer me. And I am sorry, too, because I would
have liked to introduce you. You would admire him. He is the most
disjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever
saw, but he is full of fun. When he laughs it sounds like rasping two
stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like
raking a nail across a window-pane. Hey, Jones! That is old Columbus
Jones--shroud cost four hundred dollars entire trousseau, including
monument, twenty-seven hundred. This was in the spring of '26. It was
enormous style for those days. Dead people came all the way from the
Alleghanies to see his things--the party that occupied the grave next to
mine remembers it well. Now do you see that individual going along with
a piece of a head-board under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone,
and not a thing in the world on? That is Barstow Dalhousie, and next to
Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever
entered our cemetery. We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the
treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They open
new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy. They mend the
streets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us.
Look at that coffin of mine--yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of
furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this
city. You may have it if you want it--I can't afford to repair it.
Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining
along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any
receptacle of her species you ever tried. No thanks no, don't mention it
you have been civil to me, and I would give you all the property I have
got before I would seem ungrateful. Now this winding-sheet is a kind of
a sweet thing in its way, if you would like to--No? Well, just as you
say, but I wished to be fair and liberal there's nothing mean about me.
Good-by, friend, I must be going. I may have a good way to go to-night
--don't know. I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I am
on the emigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old
cemetery again. I will travel till I fiend respectable quarters, if I
have to hoof it to New Jersey. All the boys are going. It was decided
in public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sun
rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations. Such cemeteries
may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have
the honor to make these remarks. My opinion is the general opinion.
If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things before
they started. They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of
distaste. Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give me
a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog along with
them--mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to always
come out in six-horse hearses and all that sort of thing fifty years ago
when I walked these streets in daylight. Good-by, friend."
And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession,
dragging his damaged coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it
upon me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality. I suppose that
for as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by, laden with
their dismal effects, and all that time I sat pitying them. One or two
of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight
trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode
of travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various towns
and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it
and from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of them
never had existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real-estate
agencies at that. And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries
in these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as
to reverence for the dead.
This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my
sympathy for these homeless ones. And it all seeming real, and I not
knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that
had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very
sorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully,
and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject
and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress
their surviving friends. But this bland and stately remnant of a former
citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said:
"Do not let that disturb you. The community that can stand such
graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can
say about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them."
At that very moment a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished and
left not a shred or a bone behind. I awoke, and found myself lying with
my head out of the bed and "sagging" downward considerably--a position
favorable to dreaming dreams with morals in them, maybe, but not poetry.
NOTE.--The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept
in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is
leveled particularly and venomously at the next town.
A TRUE STORY
REPEATED WORD FOR WORD AS I HEARD IT--[Written about 1876]
It was summer-time, and twilight. We were sitting on the porch of the
farmhouse, on the summit of the hill, and "Aunt Rachel" was sitting
respectfully below our level, on the steps-for she was our Servant, and
colored. She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old,
but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated. She was a cheerful,
hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a
bird to sing. She was under fire now, as usual when the day was done.
That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy, and was enjoying it.
She would let off peal after of laughter, and then sit with her face in
her hands and shake with throes of enjoyment which she could no longer
get breath enough to express. It such a moment as this a thought
occurred to me, and I said:
"Aunt Rachel, how is it that you've lived sixty years and never had any
trouble?"
She stopped quaking. She paused, and there was moment of silence. She
turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a
smile her voice:
"Misto C-----, is you in 'arnest?"
It surprised me a good deal; and it sobered my manner and my speech, too.
I said:
"Why, I thought--that is, I meant--why, you can't have had any trouble.
I've never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn't a
laugh in it."
She faced fairly around now, and was full earnestness.
"Has I had any trouble? Misto C-----, I's gwyne to tell you, den I leave
it to you. I was bawn down 'mongst de slaves; I knows all 'bout slavery,
'case I ben one of 'em my own se'f. Well sah, my ole man--dat's my
husban'--he was lov an' kind to me, jist as kind as you is to yo' own
wife. An' we had chil'en--seven chil'en--an' loved dem chil'en jist de
same as you loves yo' chil'en. Dey was black, but de Lord can't make
chil'en so black but what dey mother loves 'em an' wouldn't give 'em up,
no, not for anything dat's in dis whole world.
"Well, sah, I was raised in ole Fo'ginny, but mother she was raised in
Maryland; an' my souls she was turrible when she'd git started! My lan!
but she'd make de fur fly! When she'd git into dem tantrums, she always
had one word dat she said. She'd straighten herse'f up an' put her fists
in her hips an' say, 'I want you to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in the
mash to be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!'
'Ca'se you see, dat's what folks dat's bawn in Maryland calls deyselves,
an' dey's proud of it. Well, dat was her word. I don't ever forgit it,
beca'se she said it so much, an' beca'se she said it one day when my
little Henry tore his wris' awful, and most busted 'is head, right up at
de top of his forehead, an' de niggers didn't fly aroun' fas' enough to
'tend to him. An' when dey talk' back at her, she up an' she says,
'Look-a-heah!' she says, 'I want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't
bawn in de mash be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's chickens,
I is!' an' den she clar' dat kitchen an' bandage' up de chile herse'f.
So I says dat word, too, when I's riled.
"Well, bymeby my ole mistis say she's broke, an she got to sell all de
niggers on de place. An' when I heah dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at
oction in Richmon', oh, de good gracious! I know what dat mean!"
Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now
she towered above us, black against the stars.
"Dey put chains on us an' put us on a stan' as high as dis po'ch--twenty
foot high--an' all de people stood aroun', crowds 'an' crowds. An' dey'd
come up dah an' look at us all roun', an' squeeze our arm, an' make us
git up an' walk, an' den say, Dis one too ole,' or 'Dis one lame,' or
'Dis one don't 'mount to much.' An' dey sole my ole man, an' took him
away, an' dey begin to sell my chil'en an' take dem away, an' I begin to
cry; an' de man say, 'Shet up yo' damn blubberin',' an' hit me on de mouf
wid his han'. An' when de las' one was gone but my little Henry, I grab'
him clost up to my breas' so, an' I ris up an' says, 'You sha'nt take him
away,' I says; 'I'll kill de man dat tetch him!' I says. But my little
Henry whisper an' say 'I gwyne to run away, an' den I work an' buy yo'
freedom' Oh, bless de chile, he always so good! But dey got him--dey got
him, de men did; but I took and tear de clo'es mos' off of 'em an' beat
'em over de head wid my chain; an' dey give it to me too, but I didn't
mine dat.
"Well, dah was my ole man gone, an' all my chil'en, all my seven chil'en
--an' six of 'em I hain't set eyes on ag'in to dis day, an' dat's
twenty-two year ago las' Easter. De man dat bought me b'long' in
Newbern, an' he took me dah. Well, bymeby de years roll on an' de waw
come. My marster he was a Confedrit colonel, an' I was his family's
cook. So when de Unions took dat town dey all run away an' lef' me all
by myse'f wid de other niggers in dat mons'us big house. So de big Union
officers move in dah, an' dey ask me would I cook for dem. 'Lord bless
you,' says I, 'dat what I's for.'
"Dey wa'n't no small-fry officers, mine you, de was de biggest dey is;
an' de way dey made dem sojers mosey roun'! De Gen'l he tole me to boss
dat kitchen; an' he say, 'If anybody come meddlin' wid you, you jist make
'em walk chalk; don't you be afeared,' he say; 'you's 'mong frens now.'
"Well, I thinks to myse'f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run
away, he'd make to de Norf, o' course. So one day I comes in dah whar de
big officers was, in de parlor, an' I drops a kurtchy, so, an' I up an'
tole 'em 'bout my Henry, dey a-listenin' to my troubles jist de same as
if I was white folks; an' I says, 'What I come for is beca'se if he got
away and got up Norf whar you gemmen comes from, you might 'a' seen him,
maybe, an' could tell me so as I could fine him ag'in; he was very
little, an' he had a sk-yar on his lef' wris' an' at de top of his
forehead.' Den dey look mournful, an' de Gen'l says, 'How long sence you
los' him?' an' I say, 'Thirteen year. Den de Gen'l say, 'He wouldn't be
little no mo' now--he's a man!'
"I never thought o' dat befo'! He was only dat little feller to me yit.
I never thought 'bout him growin' up an' bein' big. But I see it den.
None o' de gemmen had run acrost him, so dey couldn't do nothin' for me.
But all dat time, do' I didn't know it, my Henry was run off to de Norf,
years an' years, an' he was a barber, too, an' worked for hisse'f. An'
bymeby, when de waw come he ups an' he says: 'I's done barberin',' he
says, 'I's gwyne to fine my ole mammy, less'n she's dead.' So he sole
out an' went to whar dey was recruitin', an' hired hisse'f out to de
colonel for his servant an' den he went all froo de battles everywhah,
huntin' for his ole mammy; yes, indeedy, he'd hire to fust one officer
an' den another, tell he'd ransacked de whole Souf; but you see I didn't
know nuffin 'bout dis. How was I gwyne to know it?
"Well, one night we had a big sojer ball; de sojers dah at Newbern was
always havin' balls an' carryin' on. Dey had 'em in my kitchen, heaps o'
times, 'ca'se it was so big. Mine you, I was down on sich doin's;
beca'se my place was wid de officers, an' it rasp me to have dem common
sojers cavortin' roun' in my kitchen like dat. But I alway' stood aroun'
an kep' things straight, I did; an' sometimes dey'd git my dander up, an'
den I'd make 'em clar dat kitchen mine I tell you!
"Well, one night--it was a Friday night--dey comes a whole platoon f'm a
nigger ridgment da was on guard at de house--de house was head quarters,
you know-an' den I was jist a-bilin' mad? I was jist a-boomin'! I
swelled aroun', an swelled aroun'; I jist was a-itchin' for 'em to do
somefin for to start me. An' dey was a-waltzin' an a dancin'! my but dey
was havin' a time! an I jist a-swellin' an' a-swellin' up! Pooty soon,
'long comes sich a spruce young nigger a-sailin' down de room wid a
yaller wench roun' de wais'; an' roun an' roun' an roun' dey went, enough
to make a body drunk to look at 'em; an' when dey got abreas' o' me, dey
went to kin' o' balancin' aroun' fust on one leg an' den on t'other, an'
smilin' at my big red turban, an' makin' fun, an' I ups an' says 'Git
along wid you!--rubbage!' De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a
sudden, for 'bout a second but den he went to smilin' ag'in, same as he
was befo'. Well, 'bout dis time, in comes some niggers dat played music
and b'long' to de ban', an' dey never could git along widout puttin' on
airs. An de very fust air dey put on dat night, I lit into em! Dey
laughed, an' dat made me wuss. De res' o' de niggers got to laughin',
an' den my soul alive but I was hot! My eye was jist a-blazin'! I jist
straightened myself up so--jist as I is now, plum to de ceilin', mos'
--an' I digs my fists into my hips, an' I says, 'Look-a-heah!' I says, 'I
want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in de mash to be fool'
by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue hen's Chickens, I is!'--an' den I see
dat young man stan' a-starin' an' stiff, lookin' kin' o' up at de ceilin'
like he fo'got somefin, an' couldn't 'member it no mo'. Well, I jist
march' on dem niggers--so, lookin' like a gen'l--an' dey jist cave' away
befo' me an' out at de do'. An' as dis young man a-goin' out, I heah him
say to another nigger, 'Jim,' he says, 'you go 'long an' tell de cap'n I
be on han' 'bout eight o'clock in de mawnin'; dey's somefin on my mine,'
he says; 'I don't sleep no mo' dis night. You go 'long,' he says, 'an'
leave me by my own se'f.'
"Dis was 'bout one o'clock in de mawnin'. Well, 'bout seven, I was up
an' on han', gittin' de officers' breakfast. I was a-stoopin' down by de
stove jist so, same as if yo' foot was de stove--an' I'd opened de stove
do' wid my right han'--so, pushin' it back, jist as I pushes yo' foot
--an' I'd jist got de pan o' hot biscuits in my han' an' was 'bout to
raise up, when I see a black face come aroun' under mine, an' de eyes
a-lookin' up into mine, jist as I's a-lookin' up clost under yo' face
now; an' I jist stopped right dah, an' never budged! jist gazed an' gazed
so; an' de pan begin to tremble, an' all of a sudden I knowed! De pan
drop' on de flo' an' I grab his lef' han' an' shove back his sleeve--jist
so, as I's doin' to you--an' den I goes for his forehead an' push de hair
back so, an' 'Boy!' I says, 'if you an't my Henry, what is you doin' wid
dis welt on yo' wris' an' dat sk-yar on yo' forehead? De Lord God ob
heaven be praise', I got my own ag'in!'
"Oh no' Misto C-----, I hain't had no trouble. An' no joy!"
THE SIAMESE TWINS--[Written about 1868.]
I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures
solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning
them, which, belonging only to their private life, have never crept into
print. Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well
qualified for the task I have taken upon myself.
The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate indisposition,
and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and
eventful life. Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it
was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other's society to
that of any other persons. They nearly always played together; and, so
accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of
them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them
--satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother
somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. And yet these creatures were
ignorant and unlettered-barbarians themselves and the offspring of
barbarians, who knew not the light of philosophy and science. What a
withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its
quarrelings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers!
As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still
there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go
away from each other and dwell apart. They have even occupied the same
house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed
to even sleep together on any night since they were born. How surely do
the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us! The Twins always go
to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before
his brother. By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the
indoor work and Eng runs all the errands. This is because Eng likes to
go out; Chang's habits are sedentary. However, Chang always goes along.
Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his
brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on
condition that it should not "count." During the war they were strong
partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle--Eng
on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate. They took each other
prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly
balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled
to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive.
The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was
finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then
exchanging them. At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of
orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard-house, but Eng, in spite
of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding
he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother
from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody--the just reward
of faithfulness.
Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about something, and Chang
knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him, whereupon both
clinched and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy. The
bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do
it, and so allowed them to fight it out. In the end both were disabled,
and were carried to the hospital on one and the same shutter.
Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they
reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting. Both fell
in love with the same girl. Each tried to steal clandestine interviews
with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up.
By and by Eng saw, with distraction, that Chang had won the girl's
affections; and, from that day forth, he had to bear with the agony of
being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing. But with a
magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his fate, and
gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to
sunder his generous heart-strings. He sat from seven every evening until
two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness of the two lovers,
and to the concussion of hundreds of squandered kisses--for the privilege
of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand. But he
sat patiently, and waited, and gaped, and yawned, and stretched, and
longed for two o'clock to come. And he took long walks with the lovers
on moonlight evenings--sometimes traversing ten miles, notwithstanding he
was usually suffering from rheumatism. He is an inveterate smoker; but
he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was
painfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco. Eng cordially wanted them
married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the momentous
question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it
while Eng was by. However, on one occasion, after having walked some
sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from
sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered. The
lovers were married. All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the
noble brother-in-law. His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every
tongue. He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous
courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above
their heads, and said with impressive unction, "Bless ye, my children, I
will never desert ye!" and he kept his word. Fidelity like this is all
too rare in this cold world.
By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married
her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in
an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautiful to behold, and
is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civilization.
The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so close and so
refined that the feelings, the impulses, the emotions of the one are
instantly experienced by the other. When one is sick, the other is sick;
when one feels pain, the other feels it; when one is angered, the other's
temper takes fire. We have already seen with what happy facility they
both fell in love with the same girl. Now Chang is bitterly opposed to
all forms of intemperance, on principle; but Eng is the reverse--for,
while these men's feelings and emotions are so closely wedded, their
reasoning faculties are unfettered; their thoughts are free. Chang
belongs to the Good Templars, and is a hard--working, enthusiastic
supporter of all temperance reforms. But, to his bitter distress, every
now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too.
This unfortunate thing has been a great sorrow to Chang, for it almost
destroys his usefulness in his favorite field of effort. As sure as he
is to head a great temperance procession Eng ranges up alongside of him,
prompt to the minute, and drunk as a lord; but yet no more dismally and
hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop. And so the
two begin to hoot and yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good
Templars; and, of course, they break up the procession. It would be
manifestly wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the
Good Templars accept the untoward situation, and suffer in silence and
sorrow. They have officially and deliberately examined into the matter,
and find Chang blameless. They have taken the two brothers and filled
Chang full of warm water and sugar and Eng full of whisky, and in
twenty-five minutes it was not possible to tell which was the drunkest.
Both were as drunk as loons--and on hot whisky punches, by the smell of
their breath. Yet all the while Chang's moral principles were unsullied,
his conscience clear; and so all just men were forced to confess that he
was not morally, but only physically, drunk. By every right and by every
moral evidence the man was strictly sober; and, therefore, it caused his
friends all the more anguish to see him shake hands with the pump and try
to wind his watch with his night-key.
There is a moral in these solemn warnings--or, at least, a warning in
these solemn morals; one or the other. No matter, it is somehow. Let us
heed it; let us profit by it.
I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings,
but let what I have written suffice.
Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that
the ages of the Siamese Twins are respectively fifty-one and fifty-three
years.
SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON--[Written about 1872.]
On the anniversary festival of the Scottish Corporation of London on
Monday evening, in response to the toast of "The Ladies," MARK TWAIN
replied. The following is his speech as reported in the London Observer:
I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this
especial toast, to 'The Ladies,' or to women if you please, for that is
the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore
the more entitled to reverence [Laughter.] I have noticed that the
Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous
characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to
even the illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a 'lady,' but
speaks of her as a woman, [Laughter.] It is odd, but you will find it is
so. I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the toast
to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should
take precedence of all others--of the army, of the navy, of even royalty
itself perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in
this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general
health to all good women when you drink the health of the Queen of
England and the Princess of Wales. [Loud cheers.] I have in mind a poem
just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody. And what
an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast recalls the
verses to all our minds) when the most noble, the most gracious, the
purest, and sweetest of all poets says:
"Woman! O woman!--er--
Wom--"
[Laughter.] However, you remember the lines; and you remember how
feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up
before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman;
and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into
worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere
breath, mere words. And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet,
with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this
beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows
that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how
the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful,
so full of mournful retrospection. The lines run thus:
"Alas!--alas!--a--alas!
----Alas!--------alas!"
--and so on. [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken
together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that
human genius has ever brought forth--[laughter]--and I feel that if I
were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more
graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's
matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature
are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you shall
find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.
And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand. Who was more
patriotic than Joan of Arc? Who was braver? Who has given us a grander
instance of self-sacrificing devotion? Ah! you remember, you remember
well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over
us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo. [Much laughter.] Who does not
sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel? [Laughter.]
Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening
influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia? [Laughter.] Who can
join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when
he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed
in her modification of the Highland costume. [Roars of laughter.]
Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been
poets. As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will live.
And, not because she conquered George III. [laughter]--but because she
wrote those divine lines:
"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so."
[More laughter.] The story of the world is adorned with the names of
illustrious ones of our own sex--some of them sons of St. Andrew, too
--Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--[laughter]--the
gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli. [Great
laughter.] Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain
ranges of sublime women--the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey
Gamp; the list is endless--[laughter]--but I will not call the mighty
roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion,
luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving
worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes. [Cheers.]
Suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to
it such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale.
[Cheers.] Woman is all that she should be-gentle, patient, long
suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. It is her
blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage
the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend
the friendless in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home
in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune
that knock at its hospitable door. [Cheers.] And when I say, God bless
her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a
wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother, but in his heart will say,
Amen! [Loud and prolonged cheering.]
--[Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of England, had
just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and had made a
speech which gave rise to a world of discussion.]
A GHOST STORY
I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper
stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came. The place had
long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence.
I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead,
that first night I climbed up to my quarters. For the first time in my
life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of
the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and
clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the
darkness. A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before
it with a comforting sense of relief. For two hours I sat there,
thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning
half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy,
to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar
songs that nobody sings now. And as my reverie softened down to a sadder
and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail,
the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil
patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the
hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the
distance and left no sound behind.
The fire had burned low. A sense of loneliness crept over me. I arose
and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I
had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it
would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the
rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they
lulled me to sleep.
I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found
myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still.
All but my own heart--I could hear it beat. Presently the bedclothes
began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were
pulling them! I could not stir; I could not speak. Still the blankets
slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered. Then with a
great effort I seized them and drew them over my head. I waited,
listened, waited. Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay
torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At
last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and
held them with a strong grip. I waited. By and by I felt a faint tug,
and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain--it grew
stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time the
blankets slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of
the bed! Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead
than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room--the step of
an elephant, it seemed to me--it was not like anything human. But it was
moving from me--there was relief in that. I heard it approach the door
--pass out without moving bolt or lock--and wander away among the dismal
corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it
passed--and then silence reigned once more.
When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, "This is a dream--simply
a hideous dream." And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself
that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I
was happy again. I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the
locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh
welled in my heart and rippled from my lips. I took my pipe and lit it,
and was just sitting down before the fire, when-down went the pipe out of
my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid
breathing was cut short with a gasp! In the ashes on the hearth, side by
side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison
mine was but an infant's! Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant
tread was explained.
I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear. I lay a long
time, peering into the darkness, and listening.--Then I heard a grating
noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then
the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response
to the concussion. In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled
slamming of doors. I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in
and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs. Sometimes these
noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again. I heard the
clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the
clanking grew nearer--while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking
each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle
upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard
muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently;
and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I
became conscious that my chamber was invaded--that I was not alone.
I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings.
Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling
directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped
--two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered,
liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had--turned to gouts of
blood as they fell--I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I
saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating
bodiless in the air--floating a moment and then disappearing.
The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, anal a solemn
stillness followed. I waited and listened. I felt that I must have
light or die. I was weak with fear. I slowly raised myself toward a
sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand!
All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken
invalid. Then I heard the rustle of a garment it seemed to pass to the
door and go out.
When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble,
and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a
hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat
down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the
ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up
and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I
heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and
nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned.
The tread reached my very door and paused--the light had dwindled to a
sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The
door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and
presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched
it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its
cloudy folds took shape--an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and
last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy
housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed
above me!
All my misery vanished--for a child might know that no harm could come
with that benignant countenance. My cheerful spirits returned at once,
and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again. Never a
lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the
friendly giant. I said:
"Why, is it nobody but you? Do you know, I have been scared to death for
the last two or three hours? I am most honestly glad to see you. I wish
I had a chair--Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing--"
But it was too late. He was in it before I could stop him and down he
went--I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
"Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--"
Too late again. There was another crash, and another chair was resolved
into its original elements.
"Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at' all? Do you want to ruin
all the furniture on the place? Here, here, you petrified fool--"
But it was no use. Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed,
and it was a melancholy ruin.
"Now what sort of a way is that to do? First you come lumbering about
the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry
me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which
would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a
respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex,
you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
And why will you? You damage yourself as much as you do me. You have
broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with
chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better."
"Well, I will not break any more furniture. But what am I to do? I have
not had a chance to sit down for a century." And the tears came into his
eyes.
"Poor devil," I said, "I should not have been so harsh with you. And you
are an orphan, too, no doubt. But sit down on the floor here--nothing
else can stand your weight--and besides, we cannot be sociable with you
away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high
counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face." So he sat down
on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red
blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet
fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable. Then he crossed
his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed
bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.
"What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your
legs, that they are gouged up so?"
"Infernal chilblains--I caught them clear up to the back of my head,
roosting out there under Newell's farm. But I love the place; I love it
as one loves his old home. There is no peace for me like the peace I
feel when I am there."
We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked
tired, and spoke of it.
"Tired?" he said. "Well, I should think so. And now I will tell you all
about it, since you have treated me so well. I am the spirit of the
Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the
ghost of the Cardiff Giant. I can have no rest, no peace, till they have
given that poor body burial again. Now what was the most natural thing
for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish? Terrify them into it!
haunt the place where the body lay! So I haunted the museum night after
night. I even got other spirits to help me. But it did no good, for
nobody ever came to the museum at midnight. Then it occurred to me to
come over the way and haunt this place a little. I felt that if I ever
got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that
perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around
through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering,
tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost
worn out. But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my
energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness. But I am
tired out--entirely fagged out. Give me, I beseech you, give me some
hope!" I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
"This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur! Why you
poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing
--you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself--the real Cardiff
Giant is in Albany!--[A fact. The original fraud was ingeniously and
fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the "only genuine"
Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real
colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a
museum is Albany,]--Confound it, don't you know your own remains?"
I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation,
overspread a countenance before.
The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
"Honestly, is that true?"
"As true as I am sitting here."
He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood
irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands
where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping
his chin on his breast); and finally said:
"Well-I never felt so absurd before. The Petrified Man has sold
everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own
ghost! My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor
friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out. Think how you would
feel if you had made such an ass of yourself."
I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out
into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow
--and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my
bath-tub.
THE CAPITOLINE VENUS
CHAPTER I
[Scene-An Artist's Studio in Rome.]
"Oh, George, I do love you!"
"Bless your dear heart, Mary, I know that--why is your father so
obdurate?"
"George, he means well, but art is folly to him--he only understands
groceries. He thinks you would starve me."
"Confound his wisdom--it savors of inspiration. Why am I not a
money-making bowelless grocer, instead of a divinely gifted sculptor
with nothing to eat?"
"Do not despond, Georgy, dear--all his prejudices will fade away as soon
as you shall have acquired fifty thousand dol--"
"Fifty thousand demons! Child, I am in arrears for my board!"
CHAPTER II
[Scene-A Dwelling in Rome.]
"My dear sir, it is useless to talk. I haven't anything against you, but
I can't let my daughter marry a hash of love, art, and starvation--I
believe you have nothing else to offer."
"Sir, I am poor, I grant you. But is fame nothing? The Hon. Bellamy
Foodle of Arkansas says that my new statue of America, is a clever piece
of sculpture, and he is satisfied that my name will one day be famous."
"Bosh! What does that Arkansas ass know about it? Fame's nothing--the
market price of your marble scarecrow is the thing to look at. It took
you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars.
No, sir! Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter
--otherwise she marries young Simper. You have just six months to raise
the money in. Good morning, sir."
"Alas! Woe is me!"
CHAPTER III
[ Scene-The Studio.]
"Oh, John, friend of my boyhood, I am the unhappiest of men."
"You're a simpleton!"
"I have nothing left to love but my poor statue of America--and see, even
she has no sympathy for me in her cold marble countenance--so beautiful
and so heartless!"
"You're a dummy!"
"Oh, John!"
Oh, fudge! Didn't you say you had six months to raise the money in?"
"Don't deride my agony, John. If I had six centuries what good would it
do? How could it help a poor wretch without name, capital, or friends?"
"Idiot! Coward! Baby! Six months to raise the money in--and five will
do!"
"Are you insane?"
"Six months--an abundance. Leave it to me. I'll raise it."
"What do you mean, John? How on earth can you raise such a monstrous sum
for me?"
"Will you let that be my business, and not meddle? Will you leave the
thing in my hands? Will you swear to submit to whatever I do? Will you
pledge me to find no fault with my actions?"
"I am dizzy--bewildered--but I swear."
John took up a hammer and deliberately smashed the nose of America! He
made another pass and two of her fingers fell to the floor--another, and
part of an ear came away--another, and a row of toes was mangled and
dismembered--another, and the left leg, from the knee down, lay a
fragmentary ruin!
John put on his hat and departed.
George gazed speechless upon the battered and grotesque nightmare before
him for the space of thirty seconds, and then wilted to the floor and
went into convulsions.
John returned presently with a carriage, got the broken-hearted artist
and the broken-legged statue aboard, and drove off, whistling low and
tranquilly.
He left the artist at his lodgings, and drove off and disappeared down
the Via Quirinalis with the statue.
CHAPTER IV
[Scene--The Studio.]
"The six months will be up at two o'clock to-day! Oh, agony! My life is
blighted. I would that I were dead. I had no supper yesterday. I have
had no breakfast to-day. I dare not enter an eating-house. And hungry?
--don't mention it! My bootmaker duns me to death--my tailor duns me
--my landlord haunts me. I am miserable. I haven't seen John since that
awful day. She smiles on me tenderly when we meet in the great
thoroughfares, but her old flint of a father makes her look in the other
direction in short order. Now who is knocking at that door? Who is come
to persecute me? That malignant villain the bootmaker, I'll warrant.
Come in!"
"Ah, happiness attend your highness--Heaven be propitious to your grace!
I have brought my lord's new boots--ah, say nothing about the pay, there
is no hurry, none in the world. Shall be proud if my noble lord will
continue to honor me with his custom--ah, adieu!"
"Brought the boots himself! Don't wait his pay! Takes his leave with a
bow and a scrape fit to honor majesty withal! Desires a continuance of
my custom! Is the world coming to an end? Of all the--come in!"
"Pardon, signore, but I have brought your new suit of clothes for--"
"Come in!"
"A thousand pardons for this intrusion, your worship. But I have
prepared the beautiful suite of rooms below for you--this wretched den is
but ill suited to--"
"Come in!"
"I have called to say that your credit at our bank, some time since
unfortunately interrupted, is entirely and most satisfactorily restored,
and we shall be most happy if you will draw upon us for any--"
"COME IN!"
"My noble boy, she is yours! She'll be here in a moment! Take her
--marry her--love her--be happy!--God bless you both! Hip, hip, hur--"
"COME IN!!!!!"
"Oh, George, my own darling, we are saved!"
"Oh, Mary, my own darling, we are saved--but I'll swear I don't know why
nor how!"
CHAPTER V
[Scene-A Roman Cafe.]
One of a group of American gentlemen reads and translates from the weekly
edition of 'Il Slangwhanger di Roma' as follows:
WONDERFUL DISCOVERY--Some six months ago Signor John Smitthe, an American
gentleman now some years a resident of Rome, purchased for a trifle a
small piece of ground in the Campagna, just beyond the tomb of the Scipio
family, from the owner, a bankrupt relative of the Princess Borghese.
Mr. Smitthe afterward went to the Minister of the Public Records and had
the piece of ground transferred to a poor American artist named George
Arnold, explaining that he did it as payment and satisfaction for
pecuniary damage accidentally done by him long since upon property
belonging to Signor Arnold, and further observed that he would make
additional satisfaction by improving the ground for Signor A., at his own
charge and cost. Four weeks ago, while making some necessary excavations
upon the property, Signor Smitthe unearthed the most remarkable ancient
statue that has ever bees added to the opulent art treasures of Rome.
It was an exquisite figure of a woman, and though sadly stained by the
soil and the mold of ages, no eye can look unmoved upon its ravishing
beauty. The nose, the left leg from the knee down, an ear, and also the
toes of the right foot and two fingers of one of the hands were gone,
but otherwise the noble figure was in a remarkable state of preservation.
The government at once took military possession of the statue, and
appointed a commission of art-critics, antiquaries, and cardinal princes
of the church to assess its value and determine the remuneration that
must go to the owner of the ground in which it was found. The whole
affair was kept a profound secret until last night. In the mean time the
commission sat with closed doors and deliberated. Last night they
decided unanimously that the statue is a Venus, and the work of some
unknown but sublimely gifted artist of the third century before Christ.
They consider it the most faultless work of art the world has any
knowledge of.
At midnight they held a final conference and, decided that the Venus was
worth the enormous sum of ten million francs! In accordance with Roman
law and Roman usage, the government being half-owner in all works of art
found in the Campagna, the State has naught to do but pay five million
francs to Mr. Arnold and take permanent possession of the beautiful
statue. This morning the Venus will be removed to the Capitol, there to
remain, and at noon the commission will wait upon Signor Arnold with His
Holiness the Pope's order upon the Treasury for the princely sum of five
million francs is gold!
Chorus of Voices.--"Luck! It's no name for it!"
Another Voice.--"Gentlemen, I propose that we immediately form an
American joint-stock company for the purchase of lands and excavations of
statues here, with proper connections in Wall Street to bull and bear the
stock."
All.--"Agreed."
CHAPTER VI
[Scene--The Roman Capitol Ten Years Later.]
"Dearest Mary, this is the most celebrated statue in the world. This is
the renowned 'Capitoline Venus' you've heard so much about. Here she is
with her little blemishes 'restored' (that is, patched) by the most noted
Roman artists--and the mere fact that they did the humble patching of so
noble a creation will make their names illustrious while the world
stands. How strange it seems this place! The day before I last stood
here, ten happy years ago, I wasn't a rich man bless your soul, I hadn't
a cent. And yet I had a good deal to do with making Rome mistress of
this grandest work of ancient art the world contains."
"The worshiped, the illustrious Capitoline Venus--and what a sum she is
valued at! Ten millions of francs!"
"Yes--now she is."
"And oh, Georgy, how divinely beautiful she is!"
"Ah, yes but nothing to what she was before that blessed John Smith broke
her leg and battered her nose. Ingenious Smith!--gifted Smith!--noble
Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze
means? Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough. Will you never learn
to take care of the children!"
THE END
The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the
most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can
boast of. But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go
into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret
history of its origin to mar your bliss--and when you read about a
gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New
York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel--and if the Barnum
that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you
buy. Send him to the Pope!
[NOTE.--The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of
the "Petrified Giant" was the sensation of the day in the United States]
SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE
DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON
GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished
guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has
extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of
brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's Arms Company making the
destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens
paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating
their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades
taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our
guest first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of
hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he
is in sympathy with insurance and has been the means of making may other
men cast their sympathies in the same direction.
Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance
line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been
a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a
better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a
kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their
horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an
advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care
for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there
is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.
There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an
entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon
of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in
their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience
of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a
freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his
remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen
nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's
face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.
I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity
which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY--[The
speaker is a director of the company named.]--is an institution which is
peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it
his custom.
No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year
is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so
often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite
left him, he ceased to smile--life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago
I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit
in this land has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages
every day, and travels around on a shutter.
I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is
none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I
can say the same for the rest of the speakers.
JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK
As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New
York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a
sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their
heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks,
and a group had stopped to stare deliberately.
Is it not a shame that we, who prate so much about civilization and
humanity, are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as
this? Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to
see in such a being matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and
grave reflection? Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled
from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have
touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it?
Apparently not. Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of
culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked
roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling down his back; his
short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of
his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton,
tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy
blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from
head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or
his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless
Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what
distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his
heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific?
among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of
remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange
forest trees unknown to climes like ours? And now and then, rippling
among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar laughter and
half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly
faces of a bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen
this bronzed wanderer. In order that the group of idlers might be
touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his
pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on
the shoulder and said:
"Cheer up--don't be downhearted. It is not America that treats you in
this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the
humanity out of his heart. America has a broader hospitality for the
exiled and oppressed. America and Americans are always ready to help the
unfortunate. Money shall be raised--you shall go back to China you shall
see your friends again. What wages do they pay you here?"
"Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy,
barrin' the troublesome furrin clothes that's so expinsive."
The exile remains at his post. The New York tea merchants who need
picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.
HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER--[Written abort 1870.]
I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without
misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without
misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object.
The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I
accepted the terms he offered, and took his place.
The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the
week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with
some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice.
As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot
of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passageway, and I
heard one or two of them say: "That's him!" I was naturally pleased by
this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of
the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and
there in the street and over the way, watching me with interest. The
group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say,
"Look at his eye!" I pretended not to observe the notice I was
attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to
write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs,
and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door,
which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men,
whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both
plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised.
In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine
but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He
seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on
the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our
paper.
He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with
his handkerchief he said, "Are you the new editor?"
I said I was.
"Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?"
"No," I said; "this is my first attempt."
"Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?"
"No; I believe I have not."
"Some instinct told me so," said the old gentleman, putting on his
spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded
his paper into a convenient shape. "I wish to read you what must have
made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if
it was you that wrote it:
"'Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much
better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.'
"Now, what do you think of that? for I really suppose you wrote it?"
"Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no
doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are
spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition,
when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree--"
"Shake your grandmother! Turnips don't grow on trees!"
"Oh, they don't, don't they? Well, who said they did? The language was
intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows
anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine."
Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and
stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did
not know as much as a cow; and then went--out and banged the door after
him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased
about something. But not knowing what the trouble was, I could not be
any help to him.
Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks
hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the
hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted,
motionless, with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening
attitude. No sound was heard.
Still he listened. No sound. Then he turned the key in the door, and
came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching
distance of me, when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense
interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and
said:
"There, you wrote that. Read it to me--quick! Relieve me. I suffer."
I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the
relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out
of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful
moonlight over a desolate landscape:
The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it.
It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September.
In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch
out its young.
It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain.
Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his
corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of
August.
Concerning the pumpkin. This berry is a favorite with the natives
of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for
the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference
over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully
as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange
family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or
two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the
front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is
now generally conceded that, the pumpkin as a shade tree is a
failure.
Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to
spawn--
The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:
"There, there--that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have
read it just as I did, word, for word. But, stranger, when I first read
it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before,
notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I
believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have
heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know,
I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well
begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain,
and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several
people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want
him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along and make the
thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is
lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him sure,
as I went back. Good-by, sir, good-by; you have taken a great load off
my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural
articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-by, sir."
I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person
had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely
accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the
regular editor walked in! [I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to
Egypt as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand
in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.]
The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.
He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers
had made, and then said "This is a sad business--a very sad business.
There is the mucilage-bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a
spittoon, and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The
reputation of the paper is injured--and permanently, I fear. True, there
never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a
large edition or soared to such celebrity; but does one want to be famous
for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as
I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are
roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they
think you are crazy. And well they might after reading your editorials.
They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that
you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first
rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being
the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you
recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness
and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if
music be played to them was superfluous--entirely superfluous. Nothing
disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever
about music. Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the
acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have
graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw anything
like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of
commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy
this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no
more holiday--I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you
in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to
recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your
discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.' I want
you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday.
Oh! why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture?"
"Tell you, you corn-stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's
the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have
been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the
first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to
edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the
second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice
apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good
farming and no more. Who review the books? People who never wrote one.
Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest
opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticize the Indian
campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who
never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of
the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire
with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing
bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in
the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you--yam? Men, as a
general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line,
sensation, drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on
agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell
me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it
from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger
the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows
if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of
diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish
world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have
treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I
have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I
could make your paper of interest to all classes--and I have. I said I
could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had
two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class
of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in it, nor a
solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to
save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant.
Adios."
I then left.
THE PETRIFIED MAN
Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an
unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly
missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in
this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people
got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural
marvels. One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or
two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little
ridiculous. I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt
called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have our benignant,
fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the
petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire. But maybe it
was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of
it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkably
petrified man.
I had had a temporary falling out with Mr.----, the new coroner and
justice of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him
up a little at the same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine
pleasure with business. So I told, in patient, belief-compelling detail,
all about the finding of a petrified-man at Gravelly Ford (exactly a
hundred and twenty miles, over a breakneck mountain trail from where
---- lived); how all the savants of the immediate neighborhood had been to
examine it (it was notorious that there was not a living creature within
fifty miles of there, except a few starving Indians; some crippled
grasshoppers, and four or five buzzards out of meat and too feeble to get
away); how those savants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in
a state of complete petrifaction for over ten generations; and then, with
a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that
as soon as Mr.----heard the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule,
and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awful
five days' journey, through alkali, sage brush, peril of body, and
imminent starvation, to hold an inquest on this man that had been dead
and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years!
And then, my hand being "in," so to speak, I went on, with the same
unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that
deceased came to his death from protracted exposure. This only moved me
to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that
charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about
to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages
a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone
against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and
cemented him fast to the "bed-rock"; that the jury (they were all
silver-miners) canvassed the difficulty a moment, and then got out their
powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under him, in order to
blast him from his position, when Mr.----, "with that delicacy so
characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would be little
less than sacrilege to do such a thing."
From beginning to end the "Petrified Man" squib was a string of roaring
absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretense of truth that
even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of
believing in my own fraud. But I really had no desire to deceive
anybody, and no expectation of doing it. I depended on the way the
petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he was a swindle.
Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it
obscure--and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then
say his right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his
other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand
were spread apart; then talk about the back of his head a little, and
return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger;
then ramble off about something else, and by and by drift back again and
remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread like those of the
right. But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much; and so
all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the
article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and
comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's
hands.
As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my petrified Man
was a disheartening failure; for everybody received him in innocent good
faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down
the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to
the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had
produced. I was so disappointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme,
that at first I was angry, and did not like to think about it; but by and
by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and
guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satisfaction;
and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I
saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory,
state after state, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and
culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London
Lancet, my cup was full, and I said I was glad I had done it. I think
that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr.----'s
daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition of half a bushel
of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in them,
marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did
it for spite, not for fun.
He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And every day
during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never
quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if
he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the
Petrified Man in it. He could have accommodated a continent with them.
I hated-----in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased me.
I could not have gotten more real comfort out of him without killing him.
MY BLOODY MASSACRE
The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the
financial expedients of "cooking dividends," a thing which became
shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my
self-complacent simplicity I felt that the time had arrived for me to
rise up and be a reformer. I put this reformatory satire, in the shape
of a fearful "Massacre at Empire City." The San Francisco papers were
making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining
Company, whose directors had declared a "cooked" or false dividend, for
the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could
sell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under the
tumbling concern. And while abusing the Daney, those papers did not
forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and
invest in, sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley
Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the
Spring Valley cooked a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask of
an invented "bloody massacre," I stole upon the public unawares with my
scathing satire upon the dividend cooking system. In about half a column
of imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen hard murdered his wife
and nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the
bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the
result had been brought about by his having allowed himself to be
persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada
silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked
along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in
the world.
Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But I
made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting
that the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the
following distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly
well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently
he could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them "in his
splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest
between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," when even the very pickled oysters
that came on our tables knew that there was not a "dressed-stone mansion"
in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there being a "great pine
forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's," there wasn't a solitary
tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent
and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same
place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could
be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated
that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that
the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of
an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's
reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with
tremendous eclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy
and admiration of all beholders.
Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little
satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the
territory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and
they never finished their meal. There was something about those minutely
faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few people
that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my
reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary
table in the "Eagle Restaurant," and, as I unfolded the shred they used
to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two
stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about
their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the
Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper
folded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that
that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial
satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless
son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the
bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the
guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud.
Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to
take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the face
lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he
broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potato
cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it
occasionally; but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still
more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and
rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of
concentrated awe:
"Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if I
want any breakfast!"
And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend
departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied.
He never got down to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did.
They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor
little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre was like
following the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world's
attention to it.
The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine
occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by
all those telltale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the "great
pine forest," the "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then,
and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory
surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to
suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we
skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and
be happy.
THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT
"Now that corpse," said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of
deceased approvingly, was a brick-every way you took him he was a brick.
He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last
moments. Friends wanted metallic burial-case--nothing else would do.
I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time--anybody could see
that.
"Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch
out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.
Said he went more on room than style, anyway in a last final container.
"Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was
and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a
gaily thing as that in a little country-town like this. What did corpse
say?
"Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general
destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with
a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for the tomb, and
mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker. He warn't distressed any
more than you be--on the contrary, just as ca,'m and collected as a
hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to a body would find
it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral
character than a natty burial-case with a swell door-plate on it.
"Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've
tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like
that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you,
so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said
his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was
bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish to be kept
layin' around. You never see such a clear head as what he had--and so
ca,'m and so cool. Jist a hunk of brains--that is what he was.
Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's
head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain-fever a-raging in
one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't
affect it any more than an Injun Insurrection in Arizona affects the
Atlantic States.
"Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was
down on flummery--didn,'t want any procession--fill the hearse full of
mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most
down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, simpleminded
creature it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on
having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in
laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of
directions; then he had the minister stand up behind along box with a
table--cloth over it, to represent the coffin, and read his funeral
sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him
scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then
he made them trot out the choir, so's he could help them pick out the
tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,'
because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn
music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes
(because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just
laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all
over how much he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited,
and tried to join in, for, mind you, he was pretty proud of his abilities
in the singing line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just
going to spread himself his breath took a walk.
"I never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--a,
powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I
hain't got time to be palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and
mosey along with him; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him
into the hearse and meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't
pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but, if I
had my way, if I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the
hearse I'll be cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for
his comfort is little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to
deceive him or take advantage of him; and whatever a corpse trusts me to
do I'm a-going to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him
yaller and keep him for a keepsake--you hear me!"
He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a
hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a
healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any
occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many
months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that
impressed it.
CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS
Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the
curse of bachelordom! Because:
They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the
gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the
ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book
aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your
eyes.
When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the
morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but,
glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness,
they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the
pang their tyranny will cause you.
Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they
undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has
given you.
If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way,
they move the bed.
If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will
stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They
do it on purpose.
If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they
don't, and so they move it.
They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly
enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It
is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and
make wild sweeps for them in the dark with the bootjack, and swear.
They always put the matchbox in some other place. They hunt up a new
place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass
thing, where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that
glass thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself into trouble.
They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in in the
night you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in
the morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the
slop-bucket by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in
at midnight or thereabout, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you
will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will
disgust you. They like that.
No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay
there. They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is
their nature. And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and
contrary this way. They would die if they couldn't be villains.
They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on
the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire
with your valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap
that you are more down on than any other, and which you are gradually
wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains
you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because
they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old
place again every time. It does them good.
And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with
purloining the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a
hereafter? Absolutely nothing.
If you leave the key in the door for convenience' sake, they will carry
it down to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the
vile pretense of trying to protect your property from thieves; but
actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs
after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a
waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In
which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide.
They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus
destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up,
they don't come any more till next day.
They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out
of pure cussedness, and nothing else.
Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.
If I can get a bill through the legislature abolishing chambermaids, I
mean to do it.
AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN--[Written about 1865.]
The facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady
who lives in the beautiful city of San Jose; she is perfectly unknown to
me, and simply signs herself "Aurelia Maria," which may possibly be a
fictitious name. But no matter, the poor girl is almost heartbroken by
the misfortunes she has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting
counsels of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not
know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of
difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved. In this
dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my guidance and
instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a
statue. Hear her sad story:
She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all
the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named
Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior.
They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives,
and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to, be
characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of
humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became
infect with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered
from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his
comeliness gone forever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at
first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the
marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial.
The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge,
while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well
and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee.
Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love
triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to
reform.
And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the
premature discharge of a Fourth of July cannon, and within three months
he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was
almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply
grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she
did, that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of
reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her
tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose,
that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an
alarming depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she
resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little
longer.
Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed
it; Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of
his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering
that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected
of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken
off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did
her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not
discover that Breckinridge was to blame.
So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg.
It was a sad day for the poor girl when, she saw the surgeons reverently
bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience,
and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was
gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and
more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her
relatives and renewed her betrothal.
Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred.
There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That
man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers of New Jersey. He was hurrying
home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair forever, and in
that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had
spared his head.
At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She
still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling--she
still loves what is left of him but her parents are bitterly opposed to
the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and
she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably. "Now, what
should she do?" she asked with painful and anxious solicitude.
It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong
happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel
that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make
a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If
Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with
wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him
another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not
break his neck in the mean time, marry him and take the chances. It does
not seem to me that there is much risk, anyway, Aurelia, because if he
sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees
a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then
you are safe, married or single. If married, the wooden legs and such
other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow, and you see you
sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most
unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose
extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought
the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for
you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he
had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen
fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as
possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed
it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to
feel exasperated at him.
"AFTER" JENKINS
A grand affair of a ball--the Pioneers'--came off at the Occidental some
time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the
occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jerkins may
get an idea therefrom:
Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant 'pate de foie gras,' made expressly
for her, and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was
the center of attraction for the envy of all the ladies. Mrs. G. W. was
tastefully dressed in a 'tout ensemble,' and was greeted with deafening
applause wherever she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white kid
gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the
unpretending simplicity of her costume and caused her to be regarded with
absorbing interest by every one.
The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose
exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants
alike. How beautiful she was!
The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful
false teeth, and the 'bon jour' effect they naturally produced was
heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile.
Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress which is so
peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with
a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling
vivacity of her natural optic, and the steadfast attentiveness of her
placid glass eye, was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark.
Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace
with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and
accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited
the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.
ABOUT BARBERS
All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the
surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a
barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences
in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this
morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I
approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but
it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I
followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one
presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down,
hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the
remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair,
while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his
customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest.
When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to
solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket
for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to
anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were
pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers'
cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say "Next!" first,
my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the
culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through
his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single
instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling
into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that
enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell
him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.
I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck.
Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting,
silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who
are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the
iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time far a while
reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for
dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the
private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the
private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged
cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous
recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting
her grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful
canary and the distracting parrot that few barbers' shops are without.
Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated
papers that littered the foul center-table, and conned their
unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.
At last my turn came. A voice said "Next!" and I surrendered to--No. 2,
of course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry,
and it affected him as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved
up my head, and put a napkin under it. He plowed his fingers into my
collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and
suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed. He
explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style--better
have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I had
had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment,
and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him
promptly with a "You did!" I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up
his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to
get close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple. Then he
lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the
other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window
and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets
with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He
finished lathering, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand.
He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a
good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he
had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some
kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel
whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue
the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his
fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and
he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care,
plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an
accurate "Part" behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears
with nice exactness. In the mean time the lather was drying on my face,
and apparently eating into my vitals.
Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch
the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as
convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of
my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at
my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him
shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of
circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in
the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an
indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.
About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be
most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on
the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately
sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close
shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get
him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my
chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice
without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one
little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the
forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up
smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum,
and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human
being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping
with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face
in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next
he poked bay ruin into the cut place with his towel, then choked the
wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would
have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not
rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me
up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he
suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.
I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath
yesterday. I "had him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair
Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the
new perfume, "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me
some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of
his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.
He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise,
sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my
protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the
roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering
the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while
combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an
account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his
till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too
late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly
about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily
sang out "Next!"
This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting
over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral.
"PARTY CRIES" IN IRELAND
Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the
whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are
Protestants and the other half Catholics. Each party does all it can to
make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious
toward them. One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this
zeal. A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to
dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways
were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till
all the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that only
Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.
Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to
admonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not
with perfect success. It has decreed that irritating "party cries" shall
not be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty
shillings and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, one
sees these fines recorded. Last week a girl of twelve years old was
fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public
streets that she was "a Protestant." The usual cry is, "To hell with the
Pope!" or "To hell with the Protestants!" according to the utterer's
system of salvation.
One of Belfast's local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform
and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party
cry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way.
They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a
dark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, "To hell with!" "To hell
with!" The officer smelt a fine--informers get half.
"What's that you say?"
"To hell with!"
"To hell with who? To hell with what?"
"Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expansive for me!"
I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct,
is finely put in that.
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION
WASHINGTON, December, 1867.
I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, but
there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.
I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of
the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the
nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.
If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the
six days that I was connected with the government in an official
capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk of
that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play
billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had
met with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my
due. But I did not. Whenever I observed that the head of a department
was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried to
set him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it in
a single instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the
Secretary of the Navy, and said:
"Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but
skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, that
may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light.
If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is no
use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is too
expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval
officers--pleasure excursions that are in reason--pleasure excursions
that are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi
on a raft--"
You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had
committed a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap,
and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for
a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.
Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I
was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I
said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,
coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform
him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there
was a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and
give my attention strictly to my own business in future. My first
impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besides
himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.
I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at
all until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I had
not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.
I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him
I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of
General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his
method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought too
scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together--get them together
in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both
parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so
convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve
of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and
education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they
are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may
recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him
some time or other. It undermines his constitution; it strikes at the
foundation of his being. "Sir," I said, "the time has come when
blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a
spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!"
The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I
said I was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of
the Senate Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for
contempt of court, and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the
day.
I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get
along the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on
the Secretary of the Treasury. He said:
"What will you have?"
The question threw me off my guard. I said, "Rum punch."
He said: "If you have got any business here, sir, state it--and in as few
words as possible."
I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so
abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the
circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point. I now
went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant length
of his report. I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly
constructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no
sentiment no heroes, no plot, no pictures--not even wood-cuts. Nobody
would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin his
reputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeed
in literature he must throw more variety into his writings. He must
beware of dry detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was
derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums
distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it
more than all the internal revenue he could put into it. I said these
things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fell
into a violent passion. He even said I was an ass. He abused me in the
most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with
his business he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my
hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office,
and I did go. It was just like a new author. They always think they
know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book.
Nobody can tell them anything.
During the whole time that I was connected with the government it seemed
as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting
myself into trouble. And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what
I conceived to be for the good of my country. The sting of my wrongs may
have driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed to
me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of
the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very
beginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended but one
Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the government. That was
sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem
disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the
Cabinet had arrived. He said they had, and I entered. They were all
there; but nobody offered me a seat. They stared at me as if I had been
an intruder. The President said:
"Well, sir, who are you?"
I handed him my card, and he read: "The HON. MARK TWAIN, Clerk of the
Senate Committee on Conchology." Then he looked at me from head to foot,
as if he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury
said:
"This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and
conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac."
The Secretary of War said: "It is the same visionary that came to me
yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death,
and massacre the balance."
The Secretary of the Navy said: "I recognize this youth as the person who
has been interfering with my business time and again during the week. He
is distressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure
excursion, as he terms it. His proposition about some insane pleasure
excursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat."
I said: "Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit
upon every act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to
debar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation. No notice
whatever was sent to me to-day. It was only by the merest chance that I
learned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting. But let these
things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting or is it
not?"
The President said it was.
"Then," I said, "let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away
valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other's official
conduct."
The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said,
"Young man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of the
Congressional committees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the
doorkeepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem. Therefore, much as
we could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, we
cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The counsels of the nation must
proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, be
it balm to your sorrowing spirit that by deed and voice you did what in
you lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell."
These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the
servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in
the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative,
when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a
passion and said:
"Where have you been all day?"
I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a
Cabinet meeting.
"To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a
Cabinet meeting?"
I said I went there to consult--allowing for the sake of argument that he
was in any wise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and
ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on
bomb-shells, egg-shells, clamshells, and I don't know what all, connected
with conchology, and nobody had been able to find me.
This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's
back. I said, "Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six
dollars a day? If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate
Committee on Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of no
faction! Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or give
me death!"
From that hour I was no longer connected with the government. Snubbed by
the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman
of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast
far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my
bleeding country in the hour of her peril.
But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill:
The United States of America in account with
the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr.
To consultation with Secretary of War ............ $50
To consultation with Secretary of Navy ........... $50
To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury ... $50
Cabinet consultation ...................No charge.
To mileage to and from Jerusalem, via Egypt,
Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz,
14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile ............. $2,800
To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee
on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day ........... $36
Total .......................... $2,986
--[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go
back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I
can understand.]
Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six
dollars for clerkship salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me
to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked
in the margin "Not allowed." So, the dread alternative is embraced at
last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is lost.
I am done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who are
willing to be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them in the
departments who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting,
whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by the
heads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with the
government, and who actually stay in their offices day after day and
work! They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciously
show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at the
restaurant--but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of
little scraps from the newspapers into a scrapbook--sometimes as many as
eight or ten scraps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well
as he can. It is very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect.
Yet he only gets eighteen hundred dollars a year. With a brain like his,
that young man could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in some
other pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no--his heart is with his
country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrapbook left.
And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such
knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country,
and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year. What they
write has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when a
man has done his best for his country, should his country complain? Then
there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting,
and waiting for a vacancy--waiting patiently for a chance to help their
country out--and while they, are waiting, they only get barely two
thousand dollars a year for it. It is sad it is very, very sad. When a
member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employment
wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his
country, and gives him a clerkship in a department. And there that man
has to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation
that never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him--and all for two
thousand or three thousand dollars a year. When I shall have completed
my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement
of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that
there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half
enough pay.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has
sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat. The coincidence between my
own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so
remarkable that I cannot forbear publishing and commenting upon the
paragraph. The Sandwich Island paper says:
How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his
mother's influence:--'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have
never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to
gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games
that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking,
and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever
usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having
complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of
age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total
abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my
mother.'
I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own
moral career--after simply substituting a grandmother for a mother. How
well I remember my grandmother's asking me not to use tobacco, good old
soul! She said, "You're at it again, are you, you whelp? Now don't ever
let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll
blacksnake you within an inch of your life!" I have never touched it at
that hour of the morning from that time to the present day.
She asked me not to gamble. She whispered and said, "Put up those wicked
cards this minute!--two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other
fellow's got a flush!"
I never have gambled from that day to this--never once--without a "cold
deck" in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games
that are being played unless I deal myself.
When I was two years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a
resolution of total abstinence. That I have adhered to it and enjoyed
the beneficent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother.
I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.
HONORED AS A CURIOSITY
If you get into conversation with a stranger in Honolulu, and experience
that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are treading on by
finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out boldly and
address him as "Captain." Watch him narrowly, and if you see by his
countenance that you are on the wrong track, ask him where he preaches.
It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of a whaler.
I became personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six
missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the
population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile
foreigners and their families; and the final fourth is made up of high
officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats
enough for three apiece all around.
A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs one day, and said:
"Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no
doubt!"
"No, I don't. I'm not a preacher."
"Really, I beg your pardon, captain. I trust you had a good season. How
much oil--"
"Oil! Why, what do you take me for? I'm not a whaler."
"Oh! I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. Major-General in the
household troops, no doubt? Minister of the Interior, likely? Secretary
of War? First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? Commissioner of the Royal--"
"Stuff, man! I'm not connected in any way with the government."
"Bless my life! Then who the mischief are you? what the mischief are
you? and how the mischief did you get here? and where in thunder did you
come from?"
"I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived
from America."
"No! Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's
government! not even a Secretary of the Navy! Ah! Heaven! it is too
blissful to be true, alas! I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest
countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable
of--of anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these
tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this,
and--"
Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied
this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved.
I shed a few tears on him, and kissed him for his mother. I then took
what small change he had, and "shoved."
FIRST INTERVIEW WITH ARTEMUS WARD--[Written about 1870.]
I had never seen him before. He brought letters of introduction from
mutual friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted with
him. It was almost religion, there in the silver-mines, to precede such
a meal with whisky cocktails. Artemus, with the true cosmopolitan
instinct, always deferred to the customs of the country he was in, and so
he ordered three of those abominations. Hingston was present. I said I
would rather not drink a whisky cocktail. I said it would go right to my
head, and confuse me so that I would be in a helpless tangle in ten
minutes. I did not want to act like a lunatic before strangers. But
Artemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture under
protest, and felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorry
for. In a minute or two I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded.
I waited in great anxiety for the conversation to open, with a sort of
vague hope that my understanding would prove clear, after all, and my
misgivings groundless.
Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of
superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. He
said:
"Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it. You
have been here in Silver land--here in Nevada--two or three years, and,
of course, your position on the daily press has made it necessary for you
to go down in the mines and examine them carefully in detail, and
therefore you know all about the silver-mining business. Now what I want
to get at is--is, well, the way the deposits of ore are made, you know.
For instance. Now, as I understand it, the vein which contains the
silver is sandwiched in between casings of granite, and runs along the
ground, and sticks up like a curb stone. Well, take a vein forty feet
thick, for example, or eighty, for that matter, or even a hundred--say
you go down on it with a shaft, straight down, you know, or with what you
call 'incline' maybe you go down five hundred feet, or maybe you don't go
down but two hundred--anyway, you go down, and all the time this vein
grows narrower, when the casings come nearer or approach each other, you
may say--that is, when they do approach, which, of course, they do not
always do, particularly in cases where the nature of the formation is
such that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, and which
geology has failed to account for, although everything in that science
goes to prove that, all things being equal, it would if it did not, or
would not certainly if it did, and then, of course, they are. Do not you
think it is?"
I said to myself:
"Now I just knew how it would be--that whisky cocktail has done the
business for me; I don't understand any more than a clam."
And then I said aloud:
"I--I--that is--if you don't mind, would you--would you say that over
again? I ought--"
"Oh, certainly, certainly! You see I am very unfamiliar with the
subject, and perhaps I don't present my case clearly, but I--"
"No, no-no, no-you state it plain enough, but that cocktail has muddled
me a little. But I will no, I do understand for that matter; but I would
get the hang of it all the better if you went over it again-and I'll pay
better attention this time."
He said; "Why, what I was after was this."
[Here he became even more fearfully impressive than ever, and emphasized
each particular point by checking it off on his finger-ends.]
"This vein, or lode, or ledge, or whatever you call it, runs along
between two layers of granite, just the same as if it were a sandwich.
Very well. Now suppose you go down on that, say a thousand feet, or
maybe twelve hundred (it don't really matter) before you drift, and then
you start your drifts, some of them across the ledge, and others along
the length of it, where the sulphurets--I believe they call them
sulphurets, though why they should, considering that, so far as I can
see, the main dependence of a miner does not so lie, as some suppose, but
in which it cannot be successfully maintained, wherein the same should
not continue, while part and parcel of the same ore not committed to
either in the sense referred to, whereas, under different circumstances,
the most inexperienced among us could not detect it if it were, or might
overlook it if it did, or scorn the very idea of such a thing, even
though it were palpably demonstrated as such. Am I not right?"
I said, sorrowfully: "I feel ashamed of myself, Mr. Ward. I know I
ought to understand you perfectly well, but you see that treacherous
whisky cocktail has got into my head, and now I cannot understand even
the simplest proposition. I told you how it would be."
"Oh, don't mind it, don't mind it; the fault was my own, no doubt--though
I did think it clear enough for--"
"Don't say a word. Clear! Why, you stated it as clear as the sun to
anybody but an abject idiot; but it's that confounded cocktail that has
played the mischief."
"No; now don't say that. I'll begin it all over again, and--"
"Don't now--for goodness' sake, don't do anything of the kind, because I
tell you my head is in such a condition that I don't believe I could
understand the most trifling question a man could ask me.
"Now don't you be afraid. I'll put it so plain this time that you can't
help but get the hang of it. We will begin at the very beginning."
[Leaning far across the table, with determined impressiveness wrought
upon his every feature, and fingers prepared to keep tally of each point
enumerated; and I, leaning forward with painful interest, resolved to
comprehend or perish.] "You know the vein, the ledge, the thing that
contains the metal, whereby it constitutes the medium between all other
forces, whether of present or remote agencies, so brought to bear in
favor of the former against the latter, or the latter against the former
or all, or both, or compromising the relative differences existing within
the radius whence culminate the several degrees of similarity to which--"
I said: "Oh, hang my wooden head, it ain't any use!--it ain't any use to
try--I can't understand anything. The plainer you get it the more I
can't get the hang of it."
I heard a suspicious noise behind me, and turned in time to see Hingston
dodging behind a newspaper, and quaking with a gentle ecstasy of
laughter. I looked at Ward again, and he had thrown off his dread
solemnity and was laughing also. Then I saw that I had been sold--that I
had been made a victim of a swindle in the way of a string of plausibly
worded sentences that didn't mean anything under the sun. Artemus Ward
was one of the best fellows in the world, and one of the most
companionable. It has been said that he was not fluent in conversation,
but, with the above experience in my mind, I differ.
CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS--[Written abort 1867.]
I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at
Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about
forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat
down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an
hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly intelligent and entertaining.
When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask
questions about various public men, and about Congressional affairs; and
I saw very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly
familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to
the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and
Representatives in the Chambers of the national Legislature. Presently
two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other:
"Harris, if you'll do that for me, I'll never forget you, my boy."
My new comrade's eye lighted pleasantly. The words had touched upon a
happy memory, I thought. Then his face settled into thoughtfulness
--almost into gloom. He turned to me and said,
"Let me tell you a story; let me give you a secret chapter of my life
--a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its events
transpired. Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt
me."
I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure,
speaking sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always
with feeling and earnestness.
THE STRANGER'S NARRATIVE
"On the 19th of December, 1853, I started from St. Louis on the evening
train bound for Chicago. There were only twenty-four passengers, all
told. There were no ladies and no children. We were in excellent
spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed. The journey
bade fair to be a happy one; and no individual in the party, I think, had
even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo.
"At 11 P.m. it began to snow hard. Shortly after leaving the small
village of Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that
stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away toward
the jubilee Settlements. The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or
even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving
the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy
sea. The snow was deepening fast; and we knew, by the diminished speed
of the train, that the engine was plowing through it with steadily
increasing difficulty. Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes,
in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves
across the track. Conversation began to flag. Cheerfulness gave place
to grave concern. The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on
the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every
mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit.
"At two o'clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by
the ceasing of all motion about me. The appalling truth flashed upon me
instantly--we were captives in a snow-drift! 'All hands to the rescue!'
Every man sprang to obey. Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness,
the billowy snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the
consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us all.
Shovels, hands, boards--anything, everything that could displace snow,
was brought into instant requisition. It was a weird picture, that small
company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest
shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive's reflector.
"One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts.
The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away.
And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the
engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the
driving-wheel! With a free track before us we should still have been
helpless. We entered the car wearied with labor, and very sorrowful.
We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation. We
had no provisions whatever--in this lay our chief distress. We could not
freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender. This was our
only comfort. The discussion ended at last in accepting the
disheartening decision of the conductor, viz., that it would be death for
any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that.
We could not send for help, and even if we could it would not come. We
must submit, and await, as patiently as we might, succor or starvation!
I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary chill when those words
were uttered.
"Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there
about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the
blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled
themselves among the flickering shadows to think--to forget the present,
if they could--to sleep, if they might.
"The eternal night-it surely seemed eternal to us-wore its lagging hours
away at last, and the cold gray dawn broke in the east. As the light
grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one
after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his
forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out of the windows
upon the cheerless prospect. It was cheer less, indeed!-not a living
thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white
desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the
wind--a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above.
"All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much. Another
lingering dreary night--and hunger.
"Another dawning--another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger,
hopeless watching for succor that could not come. A night of restless
slumber, filled with dreams of feasting--wakings distressed with the
gnawings of hunger.
"The fourth day came and went--and the fifth! Five days of dreadful
imprisonment! A savage hunger looked out at every eye. There was in it
a sign of awful import--the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely
shaping itself in every heart--a something which no tongue dared yet to
frame into words.
"The sixth day passed--the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and
hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death. It must
out now! That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready
to leap from every lip at last! Nature had been taxed to the utmost--she
must yield. RICHARD H. GASTON of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale,
rose up. All knew what was coming. All prepared--every emotion, every
semblance of excitement--was smothered--only a calm, thoughtful
seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild.
"'Gentlemen: It cannot be delayed longer! The time is at hand! We must
determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!'
"MR. JOHN J. WILLIAMS of Illinois rose and said: 'Gentlemen--I nominate
the Rev. James Sawyer of Tennessee.'
"MR. Wm. R. ADAMS of Indiana said: 'I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote of New
York.'
"MR. CHARLES J. LANGDON: 'I nominate Mr. Samuel A. Bowen of St. Louis.'
"MR. SLOTE: 'Gentlemen--I desire to decline in favor of Mr. John A. Van
Nostrand, Jun., of New Jersey.'
"MR. GASTON: 'If there be no objection, the gentleman's desire will be
acceded to.'
"MR. VAN NOSTRAND objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected.
The resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and
refused upon the same grounds.
"MR. A. L. BASCOM of Ohio: 'I move that the nominations now close, and
that the House proceed to an election by ballot.'
"MR. SAWYER: 'Gentlemen--I protest earnestly against these proceedings.
They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming. I must beg to move
that they be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting
and proper officers to assist him, and then we can go on with the
business before us understandingly.'
"MR. BELL of Iowa: 'Gentlemen--I object. This is no time to stand upon
forms and ceremonious observances. For more than seven days we have been
without food. Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our
distress. I am satisfied with the nominations that have been made--every
gentleman present is, I believe--and I, for one, do not see why we should
not proceed at once to elect one or more of them. I wish to offer a
resolution--'
"MR. GASTON: 'It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under
the rules, thus bringing about the very delay you wish to avoid. The
gentleman from New Jersey--'
"MR. VAN NOSTRAND: 'Gentlemen--I am a stranger among you; I have not
sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a
delicacy--'
"MR. MORGAN Of Alabama (interrupting): 'I move the previous question.'
"The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course. The
motion to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr. Gaston was chosen
chairman, Mr. Blake, secretary, Messrs. Holcomb, Dyer, and Baldwin a
committee on nominations, and Mr. R. M. Howland, purveyor, to assist the
committee in making selections.
"A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little caucusing
followed. At the sound of the gavel the meeting reassembled, and the
committee reported in favor of Messrs. George Ferguson of Kentucky,
Lucien Herrman of Louisiana, and W. Messick of Colorado as candidates.
The report was accepted.
"MR. ROGERS of Missouri: 'Mr. President The report being properly before
the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr.
Herrman that of Mr. Lucius Harris of St. Louis, who is well and
honorably known to us all. I do not wish to be understood as casting the
least reflection upon the high character and standing of the gentleman
from Louisiana far from it. I respect and esteem him as much as any
gentleman here present possibly can; but none of us can be blind to the
fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here
than any among us--none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee
has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver
fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure
his own motives may be, has really less nutriment in him--'
"THE CHAIR: 'The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat. The Chair
cannot allow the integrity of the committee to be questioned save by the
regular course, under the rules. What action will the House take upon
the gentleman's motion?'
"MR. HALLIDAY of Virginia: 'I move to further amend the report by
substituting Mr. Harvey Davis of Oregon for Mr. Messick. It may be urged
by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have
rendered Mr. Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at
toughness? Is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles? Is this
a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance? No, gentlemen,
bulk is what we desire--substance, weight, bulk--these are the supreme
requisites now--not talent, not genius, not education. I insist upon my
motion.'
"MR. MORGAN (excitedly): 'Mr. Chairman--I do most strenuously object to
this amendment. The gentleman from Oregon is old, and furthermore is
bulky only in bone--not in flesh. I ask the gentleman from Virginia if
it is soup we want instead of solid sustenance? if he would delude us
with shadows? if he would mock our suffering with an Oregonian specter?
I ask him if he can look upon the anxious faces around him, if he can
gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the beating of our expectant
hearts, and still thrust this famine-stricken fraud upon us? I ask him
if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark
future, and still unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this ruin, this
tottering swindle, this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from
Oregon's hospitable shores? Never!' [Applause.]
"The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost. Mr.
Harris was substituted on the first amendment. The balloting then began.
Five ballots were held without a choice. On the sixth, Mr. Harris was
elected, all voting for him but himself. It was then moved that his
election should be ratified by acclamation, which was lost, in
consequence of his again voting against himself.
"MR. RADWAY moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates,
and go into an election for breakfast. This was carried.
"On the first ballot--there was a tie, half the members favoring one
candidate on account of his youth, and half favoring the other on account
of his superior size. The President gave the casting vote for the
latter, Mr. Messick. This decision created considerable dissatisfaction
among the friends of Mr. Ferguson, the defeated candidate, and there was
some talk of demanding a new ballot; but in the midst of it a motion to
adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once.
"The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson
faction from the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then,
when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr.
Harris was ready drove all thought of it to the winds.
"We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down
with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our
vision for seven torturing days. How changed we were from what we had
been a few short hours before! Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger,
feverish anxiety, desperation, then; thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep
for utterance now. That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful
life. The winds howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison house,
but they were powerless to distress us any more. I liked Harris. He
might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man
ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree
of satisfaction. Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored,
but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fiber, give me Harris.
Messick had his good points--I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish
to do it but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be,
sir--not a bit. Lean?--why, bless me!--and tough? Ah, he was very
tough! You could not imagine it--you could never imagine anything like
it."
"Do you mean to tell me that--"
"Do not interrupt me, please. After breakfast we elected a man by the
name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper. He was very good. I wrote his
wife so afterward. He was worthy of all praise. I shall always remember
Walker. He was a little rare, but very good. And then the next morning
we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I
ever sat down to handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages
fluently a perfect gentleman he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly
juicy. For supper we had that Oregon patriarch, and he was a fraud,
there is no question about it--old, scraggy, tough, nobody can picture
the reality. I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but I
will wait for another election. And Grimes of Illinois said, 'Gentlemen,
I will wait also. When you elect a man that has something to recommend
him, I shall be glad to join you again.' It soon became evident that
there was general dissatisfaction with Davis of Oregon, and so, to
preserve the good will that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had had
Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker of
Georgia was chosen. He was splendid! Well, well--after that we had
Doolittle, and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about
McElroy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two
Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he
was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an organ-grinder, and a
gentleman by the name of Buckminster--a poor stick of a vagabond that
wasn't any good for company and no account for breakfast. We were glad
we got him elected before relief came."
"And so the blessed relief did come at last?"
"Yes, it came one bright, sunny morning, just after election. John
Murphy was the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to
testify; but John Murphy came home with us, in the train that came to
succor us, and lived to marry the widow Harris--"
"Relict of--"
"Relict of our first choice. He married her, and is happy and respected
and prosperous yet. Ah, it was like a novel, sir--it was like a romance.
This is my stopping-place, sir; I must bid you goodby. Any time that you
can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to
have you. I like you, sir; I have conceived an affection for you.
I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir. Good day, sir,
and a pleasant journey."
He was gone. I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my
life. But in my soul I was glad he was gone. With all his gentleness of
manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye
upon me; and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and
that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly
stood still!
I was bewildered beyond description. I did not doubt his word; I could
not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness
of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my
thoughts into hopeless confusion. I saw the conductor looking at me.
I said, "Who is that man?"
"He was a member of Congress once, and a good one. But he got caught in
a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death. He got
so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of
something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three
months afterward. He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when
he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole
car-load of people he talks about. He would have finished the crowd by
this time, only he had to get out here. He has got their names as pat as
A B C. When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: 'Then
the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived; and there
being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no
objections offered, I resigned. Thus I am here.'"
I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to
the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a
bloodthirsty cannibal.
THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR "LOCALIZED"--[Written about 1865.]
Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the
Roman "Daily Evening Fasces," of the date of that tremendous occurrence.
Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as
gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing
them up with aggravating circumstantiality. He takes a living delight in
this labor of love--for such it is to him, especially if he knows that
all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one
that will contain the dreadful intelligence. A feeling of regret has
often come over me that I was not reporting in Rome when Caesar was
killed--reporting on an evening paper, and the only one in the city, and
getting at least twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this
most magnificent "item" that ever fell to the lot of the craft. Other
events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed so
peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite "item" of the present
day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high rank, fame, and
social and political standing of the actors in it.
However, as I was not permitted to report Caesar's assassination in the
regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to translate
the following able account of it from the original Latin of the Roman
Daily Evening Fasces of that date--second edition:
Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild excitement
yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody affrays which sicken
the heart and fill the soul with fear, while they inspire all thinking
men with forebodings for the future of a city where human life is held so
cheaply and the gravest laws are so openly set at defiance. As the
result of that affray, it is our painful duty, as public journalists, to
record the death of one of our most esteemed citizens--a man whose name
is known wherever this paper circulates, and where fame it has been our
pleasure and our privilege to extend, and also to protect from the tongue
of slander and falsehood, to the best of our poor ability. We refer to
Mr. J. Caesar, the Emperor-elect.
The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could determine them
from the conflicting statements of eye-witnesses, were about as
follows:-- The affair was an election row, of course. Nine-tenths of the
ghastly butcheries that disgrace the city nowadays grow out of the
bickerings and jealousies and animosities engendered by these accursed
elections. Rome would be the gainer by it if her very constables were
elected to serve a century; for in our experience we have never even been
able to choose a dog-pelter without celebrating the event with a dozen
knockdowns and a general cramming of the station-house with drunken
vagabonds overnight. It is said that when the immense majority for Caesar
at the polls in the market was declared the other day, and the crown was
offered to that gentleman, even his amazing unselfishness in refusing it
three times was not sufficient to save him from the whispered insults of
such men as Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other hirelings of the
disappointed candidate, hailing mostly from the Eleventh and Thirteenth
and other outside districts, who were overheard speaking ironically and
contemptuously of Mr. Caesar's conduct upon that occasion.
We are further informed that there are many among us who think they are
justified in believing that the assassination of Julius Caesar was a
put-up thing--a cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched by Marcus Brutus and a
lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only too faithfully according to
the program. Whether there be good grounds for this suspicion or not, we
leave to the people to judge for themselves, only asking that they will
read the following account of the sad occurrence carefully and
dispassionately before they render that judgment.
The Senate was already in session, and Caesar was coming down the street
toward the capitol, conversing with some personal friends, and followed,
as usual, by a large number of citizens. Just as he was passing in front
of Demosthenes and Thucydides' drug store, he was observing casually to a
gentleman, who, our informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides
of March were come. The reply was, "Yes, they are come, but not gone
yet." At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day,
and asked Caesar to read a schedule or a tract or something of the kind,
which he had brought for his perusal. Mr. Decius Brutus also said
something about an "humble suit" which he wanted read. Artexnidorus
begged that attention might be paid to his first, because it was of
personal consequence to Caesar. The latter replied that what concerned
himself should be read last, or words to that effect. Artemidorus begged
and beseeched him to read the paper instantly!--[Mark that: It is hinted
by William Shakespeare, who saw the beginning and the end of the
unfortunate affray, that this "schedule" was simply a note discovering to
Caesar that a plot was brewing to take his life.]--However, Caesar
shook him off, and refused to read any petition in the street. He then
entered the capitol, and the crowd followed him.
About this time the following conversation was overheard, and we consider
that, taken in connection with the events which succeeded it, it bears an
appalling significance: Mr. Papilius Lena remarked to George W. Cassias
(commonly known as the "Nobby Boy of the Third Ward"), a bruiser in the
pay of the Opposition, that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive;
and when Cassias asked "What enterprise?" he only closed his left eye
temporarily and said with simulated indifference, "Fare you well," and
sauntered toward Caesar. Marcus Brutus, who is suspected of being the
ringleader of the band that killed Caesar, asked what it was that Lena
had said. Cassias told him, and added in a low tone, "I fear our purpose
is discovered."
Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena, and a moment
after Cassias urged that lean and hungry vagrant, Casca, whose reputation
here is none of the best, to be sudden, for he feared prevention. He
then turned to Brutus, apparently much excited, and asked what should be
done, and swore that either he or Caesar would never turn back--he would
kill himself first. At this time Caesar was talking to some of the
back-country members about the approaching fall elections, and paying
little attention to what was going on around him. Billy Trebonius got
into conversation with the people's friend and Caesar's--Mark Antony--and
under some pretense or other got him away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca,
Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and others of the gang of infamous desperadoes
that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then
Metellus Cimber knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled
from banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and
refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request, first
Brutus and then Cassias begged for the return of the banished Publius;
but Caesar still refused. He said he could not be moved; that he was as
fixed as the North Star, and proceeded to speak in the most complimentary
terms of the firmness of that star and its steady character. Then he
said he was like it, and he believed he was the only man in the country
that was; therefore, since he was "constant" that Cimber should be
banished, he was also "constant" that he should stay banished, and he'd
be hanged if he didn't keep him so!
Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight, Casca sprang at
Caesar and struck him with a dirk, Caesar grabbing him by the arm with
his right hand, and launching a blow straight from the shoulder with his
left, that sent the reptile bleeding to the earth. He then backed up
against Pompey's statue, and squared himself to receive his assailants.
Cassias and Cimber and Cinna rushed, upon him with their daggers drawn,
and the former succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before
he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at
all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as many blows
of his powerful fist. By this time the Senate was in an indescribable
uproar; the throng of citizens is the lobbies had blockaded the doors in
their frantic efforts to escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms
and his assistants were struggling with the assassins, venerable senators
had cast aside their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches and
flying down the aisles in wild confusion toward the shelter of the
committee-rooms, and a thousand voices were shouting "Po-lice! Po-lice!"
in discordant tones that rose above the frightful din like shrieking
winds above the roaring of a tempest. And amid it all great Caesar stood
with his back against the statue, like a lion at bay, and fought his
assailants weaponless and hand to hand, with the defiant bearing and the
unwavering courage which he had shown before on many a bloody field.
Billy Trebonius and Caius Legarius struck him with their daggers and
fell, as their brother-conspirators before them had fallen. But at last,
when Caesar saw his old friend Brutus step forward armed with a murderous
knife, it is said he seemed utterly overpowered with grief and amazement,
and, dropping his invincible left arm by his side, he hid his face in the
folds of his mantle and received the treacherous blow without an effort
to stay the hand that gave it. He only said, "Et tu, Brute?" and fell
lifeless on the marble pavement.
We learn that the coat deceased had on when he was killed was the same
one he wore in his tent on the afternoon of the day he overcame the
Nervii, and that when it was removed from the corpse it was found to be
cut and gashed in no less than seven different places. There was nothing
in the pockets. It will be exhibited at the coroner's inquest, and will
be damning proof of the fact of the killing. These latter facts may be
relied on, as we get them from Mark Antony, whose position enables him to
learn every item of news connected with the one subject of absorbing
interest of-to-day.
LATER: While the coroner was summoning a jury, Mark Antony and other
friends of the late Caesar got hold of the body, and lugged it off to the
Forum, and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were making speeches over
it and raising such a row among the people that, as we go to press, the
chief of police is satisfied there is going to be a riot, and is taking
measures accordingly.
THE WIDOW'S PROTEST
One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the
banker's clerk) was there in Corning during the war. Dan Murphy enlisted
as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him, and when
a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was too heavy
work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a sutler. He
made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for him. She was
a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep money
when she got it. She didn't waste a penny.
On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank-account grew. She
grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working
life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and
without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering
so again. Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their
esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she
would like to have him embalmed and sent home; when you know the usual
custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then
inform his friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the
conclusion that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her
dead husband, and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that
the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to the widow.
She uttered a wild, sad wail that pierced every heart, and said,
"Sivinty-foive dollars for stooffin' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim
divils suppose I was goin' to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such
expinsive curiassities !"
The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.
THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST--[Written about 1866.]
"There was a fellow traveling around in that country," said Mr.
Nickerson, "with a moral-religious show--a sort of scriptural panorama
--and he hired a wooden-headed old slab to play the piano for him.
After the first night's performance the showman says:
"'My friend, you seem to know pretty much all the tunes there are, and
you worry along first rate. But then, didn't you notice that sometimes
last night the piece you happened to be playing was a little rough on the
proprieties, so to speak--didn't seem to jibe with the general gait of
the picture that was passing at the time, as it were--was a little
foreign to the subject, you know--as if you didn't either trump or follow
suit, you understand?'
"'Well, no,' the fellow said; 'he hadn't noticed, but it might be; he had
played along just as it came handy.'
"So they put it up that the simple old dummy was to keep his eye on the
panorama after that, and as soon as a stunning picture was reeled out he
was to fit it to a dot with a piece of music that would help the audience
to get the idea of the subject, and warm them up like a camp-meeting
revival. That sort of thing would corral their sympathies, the showman
said.
"There was a big audience that night-mostly middle-aged and old people
who belong to the church, and took a strong interest in Bible matters,
and the balance were pretty much young bucks and heifers--they always
come out strong on panoramas, you know, because it gives them a chance to
taste one another's complexions in the dark.
"Well, the showman began to swell himself up for his lecture, and the old
mud-Jobber tackled the piano and ran his fingers up and down once or
twice to see that she was all right, and the fellows behind the curtain
commenced to grind out the panorama. The showman balanced his weight on
his right foot, and propped his hands over his hips, and flung his eyes
over his shoulder at the scenery, and said:
"'Ladies and gentlemen, the painting now before you illustrates the
beautiful and touching parable of the Prodigal Son. Observe the happy
expression just breaking over the features of the poor, suffering youth
--so worn and weary with his long march; note also the ecstasy beaming
from the uplifted countenance of the aged father, and the joy that
sparkles in the eyes of the excited group of youths and maidens, and
seems ready to burst into the welcoming chorus from their lips. The
lesson, my friends, is as solemn and instructive as the story is tender
and beautiful.'
"The mud-Jobber was all ready, and when the second speech was finished,
struck up:
"Oh, we'll all get blind drunk
When Johnny comes marching home!
"Some of the people giggled, and some groaned a little. The showman
couldn't say a word; he looked at the pianist sharp, but he was all
lovely and serene--he didn't know there was anything out of gear.
"The panorama moved on, and the showman drummed up his grit and started
in fresh.
"'Ladies and gentlemen, the fine picture now unfolding itself to your
gaze exhibits one of the most notable events in Bible history--our
Saviour and His disciples upon the Sea of Galilee. How grand, how
awe-inspiring are the reflections which the subject invokes! What
sublimity of faith is revealed to us in this lesson from the sacred
writings! The Saviour rebukes the angry waves, and walks securely
upon the bosom of the deep!'
"All around the house they were whispering, 'Oh, how lovely, how
beautiful!' and the orchestra let himself out again:
"A life on the ocean wave,
And a home on the rolling deep!
"There was a good deal of honest snickering turned on this time, and
considerable groaning, and one or two old deacons got up and went out.
The showman grated his teeth, and cursed the piano man to himself; but
the fellow sat there like a knot on a log, and seemed to think he was
doing first-rate.
"After things got quiet the showman thought he would make one more
stagger at it, anyway, though his confidence was beginning to get mighty
shaky. The supes started the panorama grinding along again, and he says:
"'Ladies and gentlemen, this exquisite painting represents the raising of
Lazarus from the dead by our Saviour. The subject has been handled with
marvelous skill by the artist, and such touching sweetness and tenderness
of expression has he thrown into it that I have known peculiarly
sensitive persons to be even affected to tears by looking at it. Observe
the half-confused, half-inquiring look upon the countenance of the
awakened Lazarus. Observe, also, the attitude and expression of the
Saviour, who takes him gently by the sleeve of his shroud with one hand,
while He points with the other toward the distant city.'
"Before anybody could get off an opinion in the case the innocent old ass
at the piano struck up:
"Come rise up, William Ri-i-ley,
And go along with me!
"Whe-ew! All the solemn old flats got up in a huff to go, and everybody
else laughed till the windows rattled.
"The showman went down and grabbed the orchestra and shook him up and
says:
"'That lets you out, you know, you chowder-headed old clam. Go to the
doorkeeper and get your money, and cut your stick--vamose the ranch!
Ladies and gentlemen, circumstances over which I have no control compel
me prematurely to dismiss the house.'"
CURING A COLD--[Written about 1864]
It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public,
but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction,
their profit, their actual and tangible benefit. The latter is the sole
object of this article. If it prove the means of restoring to health one
solitary sufferer among my race, of lighting up once more the fire of
hope and joy in his faded eyes, or bringing back to his dead heart again
the quick, generous impulses of other days, I shall be amply rewarded for
my labor; my soul will be permeated with the sacred delight a Christian.
feels when he has done a good, unselfish deed.
Having led a pure and blameless life, I am justified in believing that no
man who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out of
fear that I am trying to deceive him. Let the public do itself the honor
to read my experience in doctoring a cold, as herein set forth, and then
follow in my footsteps.
When the White House was burned in Virginia City, I lost my home, my
happiness, my constitution, and my trunk. The loss of the two first
named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without
a mother, or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, to
remind you, by putting your soiled linen out of sight and taking your
boots down off the mantelpiece, that there are those who think about you
and care for you, is easily obtained. And I cared nothing for the loss
of my happiness, because, not being a poet, it could not be possible that
melancholy would abide with me long. But to lose a good constitution and
a better trunk were serious misfortunes. On the day of the fire my
constitution succumbed to a severe cold, caused by undue exertion in
getting ready to do something. I suffered to no purpose, too, because
the plan I was figuring at for the extinguishing of the fire was so
elaborate that I never got it completed until the middle of the following
week.
The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe my
feet in hot water and go to bed. I did so. Shortly afterward, another
friend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath. I did that
also. Within the hour, another friend assured me that it was policy to
"feed a cold and starve a fever." I had both. So I thought it best to
fill myself up for the cold, and then keep dark and let the fever starve
awhile.
In a case of, this kind, I seldom do things by halves; I ate pretty
heartily; I conferred my custom upon a stranger who had just opened his
restaurant that morning; he waited near me in respectful silence until I
had finished feeding my cold, when he inquired if the people about
Virginia City were much afflicted with colds? I told him I thought they
were. He then went out and took in his sign.
I started down toward the office, and on the way encountered another
bosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt-water, taken warm, would
come as near curing a cold as anything in the world. I hardly thought I
had room for it, but I tried it anyhow. The result was surprising. I
believed I had thrown up my immortal soul.
Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who are
troubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will see
the propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of it
as proved inefficient with me, and acting upon this conviction, I warn
them against warm salt-water. It may be a good enough remedy, but I
think it is too severe. If I had another cold in the head, and there
were no course left me but to take either an earthquake or a quart of
warm saltwater, I would take my chances on the earthquake.
After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and no
more good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefs
again and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the early
stages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived from
over the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the country
where doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerable
skill in the treatment of simple "family complaints." I knew she must
have had much experience, for she appeared to be a hundred and fifty
years old.
She mixed a decoction composed of molasses, aquafortis, turpentine, and
various other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of it
every fifteen minutes. I never took but one dose; that was enough; it
robbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of my
nature. Under its malign influence my brain conceived miracles of
meanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them; at that time, had
it not been that my strength had surrendered to a succession of assaults
from infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that I would have
tried to rob the graveyard. Like most other people, I often feel mean,
and act accordingly; but until I took that medicine I had never reveled
in such supernatural depravity, and felt proud of it. At the end of two
days I was ready to go to doctoring again. I took a few more unfailing
remedies, and finally drove my cold from my head to my lungs.
I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below zero; I conversed
in a thundering bass, two octaves below my natural tone; I could only
compass my regular nightly repose by coughing myself down to a state of
utter exhaustion, and then the moment I began to talk in my sleep, my
discordant voice woke me up again.
My case grew more and more serious every day. A Plain gin was
recommended; I took it. Then gin and molasses; I took that also. Then
gin and onions; I added the onions, and took all three. I detected no
particular result, however, except that I had acquired a breath like a
buzzard's.
I found I had to travel for my health. I went to Lake Bigler with my
reportorial comrade, Wilson. It is gratifying to me to reflect that we
traveled in considerable style; we went in the Pioneer coach, and my
friend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two excellent silk
handkerchiefs and a daguerreotype of his grandmother. We sailed and
hunted and fished and danced all day, and I doctored my cough all night.
By managing in this way, I made out to improve every hour in the
twenty-four. But my disease continued to grow worse.
A sheet-bath was recommended. I had never refused a remedy yet, and it
seemed poor policy to commence then; therefore I determined to take a
sheet-bath, notwithstanding I had no idea what sort of arrangement it
was. It was administered at midnight, and the weather was very frosty.
My breast and back were bared, and a sheet (there appeared to be a
thousand yards of it) soaked in ice-water, was wound around me until I
resembled a swab for a Columbiad.
It is a cruel expedient. When the chilly rag touches one's warm flesh,
it makes him start with sudden violence, and gasp for breath just as men
do in the death-agony. It froze the marrow in my bones and stopped the
beating of my heart. I thought my time had come.
Young Wilson said the circumstance reminded him of an anecdote about a
negro who was being baptized, and who slipped from the parson's grasp,
and came near being drowned. He floundered around, though, and finally
rose up out of the water considerably strangled and furiously angry, and
started ashore at once, spouting water like a whale, and remarking, with
great asperity, that "one o' dese days some gen'l'man's nigger gwyne to
get killed wid jis' such damn foolishness as dis!"
Never take a sheet-bath-never. Next to meeting a lady acquaintance who,
for reasons best known to herself, don't see you when she looks at you,
and don't know you when she does see you, it is the most uncomfortable
thing in the world.
But, as I was saying, when the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough,
a lady friend recommended the application of a mustard plaster to my
breast. I believe that would have cured me effectually, if it had not
been for young Wilson. When I went to bed, I put my mustard plaster
--which was a very gorgeous one, eighteen inches square--where I could
reach it when I was ready for it. But young Wilson got hungry in the
night, and here is food for the imagination.
After sojourning a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and,
besides the steam-baths, I took a lot of the vilest medicines that were
ever concocted. They would have cured me, but I had to go back to
Virginia City, where, notwithstanding the variety of new remedies I
absorbed every day, I managed to aggravate my disease by carelessness and
undue exposure.
I finally concluded to visit San Francisco, and the, first day I got
there a lady at the hotel told me to drink a quart of whisky every
twenty-four hours, and a friend up-town recommended precisely the same
course. Each advised me to take a quart; that made half a gallon. I did
it, and still live.
Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the consideration
of consumptive patients the variegated course of treatment I have lately
gone through. Let them try it; if it don't cure, it can't more than kill
them.
A CURIOUS PLEASURE EXCURSION
--[Published at the time of the "Comet Scare" in the summer of 1874]
[We have received the following advertisement, but, inasmuch as it
concerns a matter of deep and general interest, we feel fully justified
in inserting it in our reading-columns. We are confident that our
conduct in this regard needs only explanation, not apology.--Ed., N. Y.
Herald.]
ADVERTISEMENT
This is to inform the public that in connection with Mr. Barnum I have
leased the comet for a term, of years; and I desire also to solicit the
public patronage in favor of a beneficial enterprise which we have in
view.
We propose to fit up comfortable, and even luxurious, accommodations in
the comet for as many persons as will honor us with their patronage, and
make an extended excursion among the heavenly bodies. We shall prepare
1,000,000 state-rooms in the tail of the comet (with hot and cold water,
gas, looking-glass, parachute, umbrella, etc., in each), and shall
construct more if we meet with a sufficiently generous encouragement.
We shall have billiard-rooms, card-rooms, music-rooms, bowling-alleys and
many spacious theaters and free libraries; and on the main deck we
propose to have a driving park, with upward of 100,000 miles of roadway
in it. We shall publish daily newspapers also.
DEPARTURE OF THE COMET
The comet will leave New York at 10 P.M. on the 20th inst., and
therefore it will be desirable that the passengers be on board by eight
at the latest, to avoid confusion in getting under way. It is not known
whether passports will be necessary or not, but it is deemed best that
passengers provide them, and so guard against all contingencies. No dogs
will be allowed on board. This rule has been made in deference to the
existing state of feeling regarding these animals, and will be strictly
adhered to. The safety of the passengers will in all ways be jealously
looked to. A substantial iron railing will be put up all around the
comet, and no one will be allowed to go to the edge and look over unless
accompanied by either my partner or myself.
THE POSTAL SERVICE
will be of the completest character. Of course the telegraph, and the
telegraph only, will be employed; consequently friends occupying
state-rooms 20,000,000 and even 30,000,000 miles apart will be able to
send a message and receive a reply inside of eleven days. Night messages
will be half-rate. The whole of this vast postal system will be under
the personal superintendence of Mr. Hale of Maine. Meals served at all
hours. Meals served in staterooms charged extra.
Hostility is not apprehended from any great planet, but we have thought
it best to err on the safe side, and therefore have provided a proper
number of mortars, siege-guns, and boarding-pikes. History shows that
small, isolated communities, such as the people of remote islands, are
prone to be hostile to strangers, and so the same may be the case with
THE INHABITANTS OF STARS
of the tenth or twentieth magnitude. We shall in no case wantonly offend
the people of any star, but shall treat all alike with urbanity and
kindliness, never conducting ourselves toward an asteroid after a fashion
which we could not venture to assume toward Jupiter or Saturn. I repeat
that we shall not wantonly offend any star; but at the same time we shall
promptly resent any injury that may be done us, or any insolence offered
us, by parties or governments residing in any star in the firmament.
Although averse to the shedding of blood, we shall still hold this course
rigidly and fearlessly, not only toward single stars, but toward
constellations. We shall hope to leave a good impression of America
behind us in every nation we visit, from Venus to Uranus. And, at all
events, if we cannot inspire love we shall at least compel respect for
our country wherever we go. We shall take with us, free of charge,
A GREAT FORCE OF MISSIONARIES,
and shed the true light upon all the celestial orbs which, physically
aglow, are yet morally in darkness. Sunday-schools will be established
wherever practicable. Compulsory education will also be introduced.
The comet will visit Mars first, and proceed to Mercury, Jupiter, Venus,
and Saturn. Parties connected with the government of the District of
Columbia and with the former city government of New York, who may desire
to inspect the rings, will be allowed time and every facility. Every
star of prominent magnitude will be visited, and time allowed for
excursions to points of interest inland.
THE DOG STAR
has been stricken from the program. Much time will be spent in the Great
Bear, and, indeed, in every constellation of importance. So, also, with
the Sun and Moon and the Milky Pay, otherwise the Gulf Stream of the
Skies. Clothing suitable for wear in the sun should be provided. Our
program has been so arranged that we shall seldom go more than
100,000,000 of miles at a time without stopping at some star. This will
necessarily make the stoppages frequent and preserve the interest of the
tourist. Baggage checked through to any point on the route. Parties
desiring to make only a part of the proposed tour, and thus save expense,
may stop over at any star they choose and wait for the return voyage.
After visiting all the most celebrated stars and constellations in our
system and personally, inspecting the remotest sparks that even the most
powerful telescope can now detect in the firmament, we shall proceed with
good heart upon
A STUPENDOUS VOYAGE
of discovery among the countless whirling worlds that make turmoil in the
mighty wastes of space that stretch their solemn solitudes, their
unimaginable vastness billions upon billions of miles away beyond the
farthest verge of telescopic vision, till by comparison the little
sparkling vault we used to gaze at on Earth shall seem like a remembered
phosphorescent flash of spangles which some tropical voyager's prow
stirred into life for a single instant, and which ten thousand miles of
phosphorescent seas and tedious lapse of time had since diminished to an
incident utterly trivial in his recollection. Children occupying seats
at the first table will be charged full fare.
FIRST-CLASS FARE
from the Earth to Uranus, including visits to the Sun and Moon and all
the principal planets on the route, will be charged at the low rate of
$2 for every 50,000,000 miles of actual travel. A great reduction will
be made where parties wish to make the round trip. This comet is new and
in thorough repair and is now on her first voyage. She is confessedly
the fastest on the line. She makes 20,000,000 miles a day, with her
present facilities; but, with a picked American crew and good weather,
we are confident we can get 40,000,000 out of her. Still, we shall never
push her to a dangerous speed, and we shall rigidly prohibit racing with
other comets. Passengers desiring to diverge at any point or return will
be transferred to other comets. We make close connections at all
principal points with all reliable lines. Safety can be depended upon.
It is not to be denied that the heavens are infested with
OLD RAMSHACKLE COMETS
that have not been inspected or overhauled in 10,000 years, and which
ought long ago to have been destroyed or turned into hail-barges, but
with these we have no connection whatever. Steerage passengers not
allowed abaft the main hatch.
Complimentary round-trip tickets have been tendered to General Butler,
Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Richardson, and other eminent gentlemen, whose public
services have entitled them to the rest and relaxation of a voyage of
this kind. Parties desiring to make the round trip will have extra
accommodation. The entire voyage will be completed, and the passengers
landed in New York again, on the 14th of December, 1991. This is, at
least, forty years quicker than any other comet can do it in. Nearly all
the back-pay members contemplate making the round trip with us in case
their constituents will allow them a holiday. Every harmless amusement
will be allowed on board, but no pools permitted on the run of the comet
--no gambling of any kind. All fixed stars will be respected by us, but
such stars as seem, to need fixing we shall fix. If it makes trouble, we
shall be sorry, but firm.
Mr. Coggia having leased his comet to us, she will no longer be called by
his name, but by my partner's. N. B.--Passengers by paying double fare
will be entitled to a share in all the new stars, suns, moons, comets,
meteors, and magazines of thunder and lightning we may discover.
Patent-medicine people will take notice that
WE CARRY BULLETIN-BOARDS
and a paint-brush along for use in the constellations, and are open to
terms. Cremationists are reminded that we are going straight to--some
hot places--and are open to terms. To other parties our enterprise is a
pleasure excursion, but individually we mean business. We shall fly our
comet for all it is worth.
FOR FURTHER PARTICULARS,
or for freight or passage, apply on board, or to my partner, but not to
me, since I do not take charge of the comet until she is under way.
It is necessary, at a time like this, that my mind should not be burdened
with small business details.
MARK TWAIN.
RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR--[Written about 1870.]
A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New
York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an
independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage
over these gentlemen, and that was--good character. It was easy to see
by the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good
name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years
they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the
very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret,
there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps of my
happiness, and that was--the having to hear my name bandied about in
familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more
disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came
quick and sharp. She said:
You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed
of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend
what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see
if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a
public canvass with them.
It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night.
But, after all, I could not recede.
I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was looking
listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph,
and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.
PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a
candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to
be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin
China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor
native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch,
their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation.
Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose
suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?
I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge!
I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn't
know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was
crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at
all. The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more:
SIGNIFICANT.--Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively
silent about the Cochin China perjury.
[Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in
any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."]
Next came the Gazette, with this:
WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to
explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote
for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana
losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these
things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his
"trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to
give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and
feathered him, and rode him on a rail; and then advised him to leave
a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp.
Will he do this?
Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was
in Montana in my life.
[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, "Twain, the Montana
Thief."]
I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a
desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it.
One day this met my eye:
THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan,
Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty
Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's
vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble
standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is
a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact.
It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means
resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the
dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander.
When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the
innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven
to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful
vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony
of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better
of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer
bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and
no court punish the perpetrators of the deed).
The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed
with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the
"outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking
furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came,
and taking off such property as they could carry when they went.
And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered
Mr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even heard of him or
mentioned him up to that day and date.
[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always
referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]
The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:
A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a
blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night,
didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he
had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two
places--sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth,
and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried
hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did
not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned
creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A certain man
was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of
beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents
to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We
have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The
voice of the people demands in thunder tones, "WHO WAS THAT MAN?"
It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was
really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three
long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or
liquor or any kind.
[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw
myself, confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue
of that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that with
monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]
By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my
mail matter. This form was common:
How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which
was beging. POL. PRY.
And this:
There is things which you Have done which is unbeknowens to anybody
but me. You better trot out a few dots, to yours truly, or you'll
hear through the papers from
HANDY ANDY.
This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was
surfeited, if desirable.
Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale
bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of
blackmailing to me.
[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the Filthy
Corruptionist" and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."]
By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all
the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of
my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any
longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following
appeared in one of the papers the very next day:
BEHOLD THE MAN!--The independent candidate still maintains silence.
Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been
amply proved, and they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own
eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted.
Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous
Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your
incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your
Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him--ponder him well--and then say if
you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this
dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his
mouth in denial of any one of them!
There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep
humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless charges
and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the
very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity,
and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its
inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me
into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get
his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened.
This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused
of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food
for the foundling' hospital when I warden. I was wavering--wavering.
And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution
that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children,
of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush
onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and
call me PA!
I gave it up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal
to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the state of New York,
and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of
spirit signed it, "Truly yours, once a decent man, but now
"MARK TWAIN, LP., M.T., B.S., D.T., F.C., and L.E."
A MYSTERIOUS VISIT
The first notice that was taken of me when I "settled down" recently was
by a gentleman who said he was an assessor, and connected with the U. S.
Internal Revenue Department. I said I had never heard of his branch of
business before, but I was very glad to see him all the same. Would he
sit down? He sat down. I did not know anything particular to say, and
yet I felt that people who have arrived at the dignity of keeping house
must be conversational, must be easy and sociable in company. So, in
default of anything else to say, I asked him if he was opening his shop
in our neighborhood.
He said he was. [I did not wish to appear ignorant, but I had hoped he
would mention what he had for sale.]
I ventured to ask him "How was trade?" And he said "So-so."
I then said we would drop in, and if we liked his house as well as any
other, we would give him our custom.
He said he thought we would like his establishment well enough to confine
ourselves to it--said he never saw anybody who would go off and hunt up
another man in his line after trading with him once.
That sounded pretty complacent, but barring that natural expression of
villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
I do not know how it came about exactly, but gradually we appeared to
melt down and run together, conversationally speaking, and then
everything went along as comfortably as clockwork.
We talked, and talked, and talked--at least I did; and we laughed, and
laughed, and laughed--at least he did. But all the time I had my
presence of mind about me--I had my native shrewdness turned on "full
head," as the engineers say. I was determined to find out all about his
business in spite of his obscure answers--and I was determined I would
have it out of him without his suspecting what I was at. I meant to trap
him with a deep, deep ruse. I would tell him all about my own business,
and he would naturally so warm to me during this seductive burst of
confidence that he would forget himself, and tell me all about his
affairs before he suspected what I was about. I thought to myself, My
son, you little know what an old fox you are dealing with. I said:
"Now you never would guess what I made lecturing this winter and last
spring?"
"No--don't believe I could, to save me. Let me see--let me see. About
two thousand dollars, maybe? But no; no, sir, I know you couldn't have
made that much. Say seventeen hundred, maybe?"
"Ha! ha! I knew you couldn't. My lecturing receipts for last spring and
this winter were fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. What
do you think of that?"
"Why, it is amazing-perfectly amazing. I will make a note of it. And
you say even this wasn't all?"
"All! Why bless you, there was my income from the Daily Warwhoop for
four months--about--about--well, what should you say to about eight
thousand dollars, for instance?"
"Say! Why, I should say I should like to see myself rolling in just such
another ocean of affluence. Eight thousand! I'll make a note of it.
Why man!--and on top of all this am I to understand that you had still
more income?"
"Ha! ha! ha! Why, you're only in the suburbs of it, so to speak.
There's my book, The Innocents Abroad price $3.50 to $5, according to the
binding. Listen to me. Look me in the eye. During the last four months
and a half, saying nothing of sales before that, but just simply during
the four months and a half, we've sold ninety-five thousand copies of
that book. Ninety-five thousand! Think of it. Average four dollars a
copy, say. It's nearly four hundred thousand dollars, my son. I get
half."
"The suffering Moses! I'll set that down. Fourteen-seven-fifty
--eight--two hundred. Total, say--well, upon my word, the grand total is
about two hundred and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars! Is that
possible?"
"Possible! If there's any mistake it's the other way. Two hundred and
fourteen thousand, cash, is my income for this year if I know how to
cipher."
Then the gentleman got up to go. It came over me most uncomfortably that
maybe I had made my revelations for nothing, besides being flattered into
stretching them considerably by the stranger's astonished exclamations.
But no; at the last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope, and
said it contained his advertisement; and that I would find out all about
his business in it; and that he would be happy to have my custom-would,
in fact, be proud to have the custom of a man of such prodigious income;
and that he used to think there were several wealthy men in the city, but
when they came to trade with him he discovered that they barely had
enough to live on; and that, in truth, it had been such a weary, weary
age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked to him, and
touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing
me--in fact, would esteem it a great favor if I would let him embrace me.
This so pleased me that I did not try to resist, but allowed this
simple-hearted stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few
tranquilizing tears down the back of my neck. Then he went his way.
As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement. I studied it
attentively for four minutes. I then called up the cook, and said:
"Hold me while I faint! Let Marie turn the griddle-cakes."
By and by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum-mill on the corner and
hired an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and
give me a lift occasionally in the daytime when I came to a hard place.
Ah, what a miscreant he was! His "advertisement" was nothing in the
world but a wicked tax-return--a string of impertinent questions about
my private affairs, occupying the best part of four fools-cap pages of
fine print-questions, I may remark, gotten up with such marvelous
ingenuity that the oldest man in the world couldn't understand what the
most of them were driving at--questions, too, that were calculated to
make a man report about four times his actual income to keep from
swearing to a falsehood. I looked for a loophole, but there did not
appear to be any. Inquiry No. 1 covered my case as generously and as
amply as an umbrella could cover an ant-hill:
What were your profits, during the past year, from any trade,
business, or vocation, wherever carried on?
And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching
nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had
committed any burglary or highway robbery, or, by any arson or other
secret source of emolument had acquired property which was not enumerated
in my statement of income as set opposite to inquiry No. 1.
It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself.
It was very, very plain; and so I went out and hired another artist.
By working on my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an
income of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. By law, one
thousand dollars of this was exempt from income tax--the only relief I
could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean. At the legal five per
cent., I must pay to the government the sum of ten thousand six hundred
and fifty dollars, income tax!
[I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.]
I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose
table is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income,
as I have often noticed by the revenue returns; and to him I went for
advice in my distress. He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he
put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto!--I was a pauper! It was
the neatest thing that ever was. He did it simply by deftly manipulating
the bill of "DEDUCTIONS." He set down my "State, national, and municipal
taxes" at so much; my "losses by shipwreck; fire, etc.," at so much; my
"losses on sales of real estate"--on "live stock sold"--on "payments for
rent of homestead"--on "repairs, improvements, interest"--on "previously
taxed salary as an officer of the United States army, navy, revenue
service," and other things. He got astonishing "deductions" out of each
and every one of these matters--each and every one of them. And when he
was done he handed me the paper, and I saw at a glance that during the
year my income, in the way of profits, had been one thousand two hundred
and fifty dollars and forty cents.
"Now," said he, "the thousand dollars is exempt by law. What you want to
do is to go and swear this document in and pay tax on the two hundred and
fifty dollars."
[While he was making this speech his little boy Willie lifted a
two-dollar greenback out of his vest pocket and vanished with it, and I
would wager; anything that if my stranger were to call on that little boy
to-morrow he would make a false return of his income.]
"Do you," said I, "do you always work up the 'deductions' after this
fashion in your own case, sir?"
"Well, I should say so! If it weren't for those eleven saving clauses
under the head of 'Deductions' I should be beggared every year to support
this hateful and wicked, this extortionate and tyrannical government."
This gentleman stands away up among the very best of the solid men of the
city--the men of moral weight, of commercial integrity, of unimpeachable,
social spotlessness--and so I bowed to his example. I went down to the
revenue office, and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up
and swore to lie after lie, fraud after fraud, villainy after villainy,
till my soul was coated inches and inches thick with perjury, and my
self-respect gone for ever and ever.
But what of it? It is nothing more than thousands of the richest and
proudest, and most respected, honored, and courted men in America do
every year. And so I don't care. I am not ashamed. I shall simply,
for the present, talk little and eschew fire-proof gloves, lest I fall
into certain dreadful habits irrevocably.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches New and Old, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR
by Mark Twain
THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR AND OTHER WHIMSICAL SKETCHES
NOTE:
Most of the sketches in this volume were taken from a series the author
wrote for The Galaxy from May, 1870, to April, 1871. The rest appeared
in The Buffalo Express.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR
A MEMORY
INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA".
ABOUT SMELLS
A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES
DAN MURPHY
THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A.D. 1870
CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE
A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS
A ROYAL COMPLIMENT
THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC
THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE
OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC
THE EUROPEAN WAR
THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED
LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN
THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR
As soon as I had learned to speak the language a little, I became greatly
interested in the people and the system of government.
I found that the nation had at first tried universal suffrage pure and
simple, but had thrown that form aside because the result was not
satisfactory. It had seemed to deliver all power into the hands of the
ignorant and non-tax-paying classes; and of a necessity the responsible
offices were filled from these classes also.
A remedy was sought. The people believed they had found it; not in the
destruction of universal suffrage, but in the enlargement of it. It was
an odd idea, and ingenious. You must understand, the constitution gave
every man a vote; therefore that vote was a vested right, and could not
be taken away. But the constitution did not say that certain individuals
might not be given two votes, or ten! So an amendatory clause was
inserted in a quiet way; a clause which authorised the enlargement of the
suffrage in certain cases to be specified by statute. To offer to
"limit" the suffrage might have made instant trouble; the offer to
"enlarge" it had a pleasant aspect. But of course the newspapers soon
began to suspect; and then out they came! It was found, however, that
for once--and for the first time in the history of the republic
--property, character, and intellect were able to wield a political
influence; for once, money, virtue, and intelligence took a vital and a
united interest in a political question; for once these powers went to
the "primaries" in strong force; for once the best men in the nation were
put forward as candidates for that parliament whose business it should be
to enlarge the suffrage. The weightiest half of the press quickly joined
forces with the new movement, and left the other half to rail about the
proposed "destruction of the liberties" of the bottom layer of society,
the hitherto governing class of the community.
The victory was complete. The new law was framed and passed. Under it
every citizen, howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote,
so universal suffrage still reigned; but if a man possessed a good
common-school education and no money, he had two votes; a high-school
education gave him four; if he had property like wise, to the value of
three thousand 'sacos,' he wielded one more vote; for every fifty
thousand 'sacos' a man added to his property, he was entitled to another
vote; a university education entitled a man to nine votes, even though he
owned no property. Therefore, learning being more prevalent and more
easily acquired than riches, educated men became a wholesome check upon
wealthy men, since they could outvote them. Learning goes usually with
uprightness, broad views, and humanity; so the learned voters, possessing
the balance of power, became the vigilant and efficient protectors of the
great lower rank of society.
And now a curious thing developed itself--a sort of emulation, whose
object was voting power! Whereas formerly a man was honored only
according to the amount of money he possessed, his grandeur was measured
now by the number of votes he wielded. A man with only one vote was
conspicuously respectful to his neighbor who possessed three. And if he
was a man above the common-place, he was as conspicuously energetic in
his determination to acquire three for himself. This spirit of emulation
invaded all ranks. Votes based upon capital were commonly called
"mortal" votes, because they could be lost; those based upon learning
were called "immortal," because they were permanent, and because of their
customarily imperishable character they were naturally more valued than
the other sort. I say "customarily" for the reason that these votes were
not absolutely imperishable, since insanity could suspend them.
Under this system, gambling and speculation almost ceased in the
republic. A man honoured as the possessor of great voting power could
not afford to risk the loss of it upon a doubtful chance.
It was curious to observe the manners and customs which the enlargement
plan produced. Walking the street with a friend one day he delivered a
careless bow to a passer-by, and then remarked that that person possessed
only one vote and would probably never earn another; he was more
respectful to the next acquaintance he met; he explained that this salute
was a four-vote bow. I tried to "average" the importance of the people
he accosted after that, by the-nature of his bows, but my success was
only partial, because of the somewhat greater homage paid to the
immortals than to the mortals. My friend explained. He said there was
no law to regulate this thing, except that most powerful of all laws,
custom. Custom had created these varying bows, and in time they had
become easy and natural. At this moment he delivered himself of a very
profound salute, and then said, "Now there's a man who began life as a
shoemaker's apprentice, and without education; now he swings twenty-two
mortal votes and two immortal ones; he expects to pass a high-school
examination this year and climb a couple of votes higher among the
immortals; mighty valuable citizen."
By and by my friend met a venerable personage, and not only made him a
most elaborate bow, but also took off his hat. I took off mine, too,
with a mysterious awe. I was beginning to be infected.
"What grandee is that?"
"That is our most illustrious astronomer. He hasn't any money, but is
fearfully learned. Nine immortals is his political weight! He would
swing a hundred and fifty votes if our system were perfect."
"Is there any altitude of mere moneyed grandeur that you take off your
hat to?"
"No. Nine immortal votes is the only power we uncover for that is, in
civil life. Very great officials receive that mark of homage, of
course."
It was common to hear people admiringly mention men who had begun life on
the lower levels and in time achieved great voting-power. It was also
common to hear youths planning a future of ever so many votes for
themselves. I heard shrewd mammas speak of certain young men as good
"catches" because they possessed such-and-such a number of votes. I knew
of more than one case where an heiress was married to a youngster who had
but one vote; the argument being that he was gifted with such excellent
parts that in time he would acquire a good voting strength, and perhaps
in the long run be able to outvote his wife, if he had luck.
Competitive examinations were the rule and in all official grades. I
remarked that the questions asked the candidates were wild, intricate,
and often required a sort of knowledge not needed in the office sought.
"Can a fool or an ignoramus answer them?" asked the person I was talking
with.
"Certainly not."
"Well, you will not find any fools or ignoramuses among our officials."
I felt rather cornered, but made shift to say:
"But these questions cover a good deal more ground than is necessary."
"No matter; if candidates can answer these it is tolerably fair evidence
that they can answer nearly any other question you choose to ask them."
There were some things in Gondour which one could not shut his eyes to.
One was, that ignorance and incompetence had no place in the government.
Brains and property managed the state. A candidate for office must have
marked ability, education, and high character, or he stood no sort of
chance of election. If a hod-carrier possessed these, he could succeed;
but the mere fact that he was a hod-carrier could not elect him, as in
previous times.
It was now a very great honour to be in the parliament or in office;
under the old system such distinction had only brought suspicion upon a
man and made him a helpless mark for newspaper contempt and scurrility.
Officials did not need to steal now, their salaries being vast in
comparison with the pittances paid in the days when parliaments were
created by hod-carriers, who viewed official salaries from a hod-carrying
point of view and compelled that view to be respected by their obsequious
servants. Justice was wisely and rigidly administered; for a judge,
after once reaching his place through the specified line of promotions,
was a permanency during good behaviour. He was not obliged to modify his
judgments according to the effect they might have upon the temper of a
reigning political party.
The country was mainly governed by a ministry which went out with the
administration that created it. This was also the case with the chiefs
of the great departments. Minor officials ascended to their several
positions through well-earned promotions, and not by a jump from
gin-mills or the needy families and friends of members of parliament.
Good behaviour measured their terms of office.
The head of the governments the Grand Caliph, was elected for a term of
twenty years. I questioned the wisdom of this. I was answered that he
could do no harm, since the ministry and the parliament governed the
land, and he was liable to impeachment for misconduct. This great office
had twice been ably filled by women, women as aptly fitted for it as some
of the sceptred queens of history. Members of the cabinet, under many
administrations, had been women.
I found that the pardoning power was lodged in a court of pardons,
consisting of several great judges. Under the old regime, this important
power was vested in a single official, and he usually took care to have a
general jail delivery in time for the next election.
I inquired about public schools. There were plenty of them, and of free
colleges too. I inquired about compulsory education. This was received
with a smile, and the remark:
"When a man's child is able to make himself powerful and honoured
according to the amount of education he acquires, don't you suppose that
that parent will apply the compulsion himself? Our free schools and free
colleges require no law to fill them."
There was a loving pride of country about this person's way of speaking
which annoyed me. I had long been unused to the sound of it in my own.
The Gondour national airs were forever dinning in my ears; therefore I
was glad to leave that country and come back to my dear native land,
where one never hears that sort of music.
A MEMORY,
When I say that I never knew my austere father to be enamoured of but one
poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons who knew him
will easily believe me; when I say that I have never composed but one
poem in all the long third of a century that I have lived, persons who
know me will be sincerely grateful; and finally, when I say that the poem
which I composed was not the one which my father was enamoured of,
persons who may have known us both will not need to have this truth shot
into them with a mountain howitzer before they can receive it. My father
and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of
armed neutrality so to speak. At irregular intervals this neutrality was
broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be candid enough to say that the
breaking and the suffering were always divided up with strict
impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the breaking, and
I did the suffering. As a general thing I was a backward, cautious,
unadventurous boy; but I once jumped off a two-story table; another time
I gave an elephant a "plug" of tobacco and retired without waiting for an
answer; and still another time I pretended to be talking in my sleep, and
got off a portion of a very wretched original conundrum in the hearing of
my father. Let us not pry into the result; it was of no consequence to
any one but me.
But the poem I have referred to as attracting my father's attention and
achieving his favour was "Hiawatha." Some man who courted a sudden and
awful death presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in my own
senses until I saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold blood--saw
him open the book, and heard him read these following lines, with the
same inflectionless judicial frigidity with which he always read his
charge to the jury, or administered an oath to a witness:
"Take your bow,
O Hiawatha,
Take your arrows, jasper-headed,
Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,
And your mittens, Minjekahwan,
And your birch canoe for sailing,
And the oil of Mishe-Nama."
Presently my father took out of his breast pocket an imposing "Warranty
Deed," and fixed his eyes upon it and dropped into meditation. I knew
what it was. A Texan lady and gentleman had given my half-brother, Orrin
Johnson, a handsome property in a town in the North, in gratitude to him
for having saved their lives by an act of brilliant heroism.
By and by my father looked towards me and sighed. Then he said:
"If I had such a son as this poet, here were a subject worthier than the
traditions of these Indians."
"If you please, sir, where?"
"In this deed."
"Yes--in this very deed," said my father, throwing it on the table.
"There is more poetry, more romance, more sublimity, more splendid
imagery hidden away in that homely document than could be found in all
the traditions of all the savages that live."
"Indeed, sir? Could I--could I get it out, sir? Could I compose the
poem, sir, do you think?"
"You?"
I wilted.
Presently my father's face softened somewhat, and he said:
"Go and try. But mind, curb folly. No poetry at the expense of truth.
Keep strictly to the facts."
I said I would, and bowed myself out, and went upstairs.
"Hiawatha" kept droning in my head--and so did my father's remarks about
the sublimity and romance hidden in my subject, and also his injunction
to beware of wasteful and exuberant fancy. I noticed, just here, that I
had heedlessly brought the deed away with me; now at this moment came to
me one of those rare moods of daring recklessness, such as I referred to
a while ago. Without another thought, and in plain defiance of the fact
that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story of my
half-brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed
merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit. I took the
stupid "Warranty Deed" itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian blank
verse without altering or leaving out three words, and without
transposing six. It required loads of courage to go downstairs and face
my father with my performance. I started three or four times before I
finally got my pluck to where it would stick. But at last I said I would
go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it.
I stood up to begin, and he told me to come closer. I edged up a little,
but still left as much neutral ground between us as I thought he would
stand. Then I began. It would be useless for me to try to tell what
conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how they
grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness
descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his
hands began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the
strength ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me:
THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED
THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth
Day of November, in the year
Of our Lord one thousand eight
Hundred six-and-fifty,
Between Joanna S. E. Gray
And Philip Gray, her husband,
Of Salem City in the State
Of Texas, of the first part,
And O. B. Johnson, of the town
Of Austin, ditto, WITNESSETH:
That said party of first part,
For and in consideration
Of the sum of Twenty Thousand
Dollars, lawful money of
The U. S. of Americay,
To them in hand now paid by said
Party of the second part,
The due receipt whereof is here--
By confessed and acknowledg-ed
Having Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised,
Released and Aliened and Conveyed,
Confirmed, and by these presents do
Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise,
Alien, Release, Convey, and Con--
Firm unto the said aforesaid
Party of the second part,
And to his heirs and assigns
Forever and ever ALL
That certain lot or parcel of
LAND situate in city of
Dunkirk, County of Chautauqua,
And likewise furthermore in York State
Bounded and described, to-wit,
As follows, herein, namely
BEGINNING at the distance of
A hundred two-and-forty feet,
North-half-east, north-east-by north,
East-north-east and northerly
Of the northerly line of Mulligan street
On the westerly line of Brannigan street,
And running thence due northerly
On Brannigan street 200 feet,
Thence at right angles westerly,
North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west,
West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west,
About--
I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the looking-glass. I could
have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to,
but I took no interest in such things.
INTRODUCTORY TO "MEMORANDA"
In taking upon myself the burden of editing a department in THE GALAXY
magazine, I have been actuated by a conviction that I was needed, almost
imperatively, in this particular field of literature. I have long felt
that while the magazine literature of the day had much to recommend it,
it yet lacked stability, solidity, weight. It seemed plain to me that
too much space was given to poetry and romance, and not enough to
statistics and agriculture. This defect it shall be my earnest endeavour
to remedy. If I succeed, the simple consciousness that I have done a
good deed will be a sufficient reward.**--[**Together with salary.]
In this department of mine the public may always rely upon finding
exhaustive statistical tables concerning the finances of the country,
the ratio of births and deaths; the percentage of increase of population,
etc., etc.--in a word, everything in the realm of statistics that can
make existence bright and beautiful.
Also, in my department will always be found elaborate condensations of
the Patent Office Reports, wherein a faithful endeavour will at all times
be made to strip the nutritious facts bare of that effulgence of
imagination and sublimity of diction which too often mar the excellence
of those great works.**--[** N. B.--No other magazine in the country
makes a specialty of the Patent Office Reports.]
In my department will always be found ample excerpts from those able
dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for a long time been
contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for reasons
utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the
credit of composing.
And, finally, I call attention with pride to the fact that in my
department of the magazine the farmer will always find full market
reports, and also complete instructions about farming, even from the
grafting of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crop. I shall throw
a pathos into the subject of Agriculture that will surprise and delight
the world.
Such is my programme; and I am persuaded that by adhering to it with
fidelity I shall succeed in materially changing the character of this
magazine. Therefore I am emboldened to ask the assistance and
encouragement of all whose sympathies are with Progress and Reform.
In the other departments of the magazine will be found poetry, tales, and
other frothy trifles, and to these the reader can turn for relaxation
from time to time, and thus guard against overstraining the powers of his
mind.
M. T.
P. S.--1. I have not sold out of the "Buffalo Express," and shall not;
neither shall I stop writing for it. This remark seems necessary in a
business point of view.
2. These MEMORANDA are not a "humorous" department. I would not conduct
an exclusively and professedly humorous department for any one. I would
always prefer to have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible
remark, in case one occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged
to consider himself outraged. We cannot keep the same mood day after
day. I am liable, some day, to want to print my opinion on
jurisprudence, or Homeric poetry, or international law, and I shall do
it. It will be of small consequence to me whether the reader survive or
not. I shall never go straining after jokes when in a cheerless mood, so
long as the unhackneyed subject of international law is open to me.
I will leave all that straining to people who edit professedly and
inexorably "humorous" departments and publications.
3. I have chosen the general title of MEMORANDA for this department
because it is plain and simple, and makes no fraudulent promises. I can
print under it statistics, hotel arrivals, or anything that comes handy,
without violating faith with the reader.
4. Puns cannot be allowed a place in this department. Inoffensive
ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious imbecility will always
be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even the feeblest
humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no circumstances,
however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the
admission of that last--and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the
Pun.
ABOUT SMELLS
In a recent issue of the "Independent," the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, of
Brooklyn, has the following utterance on the subject of "Smells":
I have a good Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in
church, and a working man should enter the door at the other end,
would smell him instantly. My friend is not to blame for the
sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a pointer
for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog. The fact is,
if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing up of the
common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of
Christendom sick at their stomach. If you are going to kill the
church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with this
work of evangelization.
We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men in heaven; and
also a number of negroes, and Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and
Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly even some Spaniards and
Portuguese. All things are possible with God. We shall have all these
sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the
society of Dr. Talmage. Which is to say, we shall lose the company of
one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other
contribution Brooklyn could furnish. And what would eternal happiness be
without the Doctor? Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough
but would it be 'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him? St.
Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bare headed, and with a
coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with
scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should enjoy seeing
them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away
regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough,
but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn." I fear me that in the better
world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend."
For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and the keeper of
the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man, that
"friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by
emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff,
and immediately take his hat and ask to be excused.
To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of the same
material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in
the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere
between him and the Saviour's first disciples. It may be because here,
in the nineteenth century, Dr. T. has had advantages which Paul and
Peter and the others could not and did not have. There was a lack of
polish about them, and a looseness of etiquette, and a want of
exclusiveness, which one cannot help noticing. They healed the very
beggars, and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every
day. If the subject of these remarks had been chosen among the original
Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with the rest, because he
could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his comrades who came
from around the Sea of Galilee. He would have resigned his commission
with some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master,
if thou art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have
nothing to do with this work of evangelization." He is a disciple, and
makes that remark to the Master; the only difference is, that he makes it
in the nineteenth instead of the first century.
Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church? And does it ever occur that they
have no better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of
labourers and mechanics:
"Son of the Carpenter! receive
This humble work of mine?"
Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the Christian
character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even the
stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers
and wilts under an unsavoury smell? We are not prepared to believe so,
the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary notwithstanding.
A COUPLE OF SAD EXPERIENCES
When I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an
Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to
deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's
confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who
will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless
inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly
and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not
mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal
barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree
whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches
should spread abroad till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc. I
thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to
make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously
mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my
postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas!
right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that remark seems to
have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It
lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers
feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of
agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my
correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with
letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and
maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever
grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way
of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful,
and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).
Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in
fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of
the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and
the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at
second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write
a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in
perfect good faith by somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to
do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never
tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one
to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only
person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other
instances the "nub" or moral of the burlesque--if its object be to
enforce a truth--escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the
body of the burlesque itself. And very often this "moral" is tagged on
at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the
whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly
turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire
with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is
careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the
travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him a joked
and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his
knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques
and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I
tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly
palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak
the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in
America!
DAN MURPHY
One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the
banker's clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy
enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him,
and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was
too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a
sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for
him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to
keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary,
she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part
with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had
known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a
dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.
Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and
respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to
have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to
dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his
friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion
that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband,
and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for
embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild,
sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for
stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin'
to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"
The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.
THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A. D. 1870
Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the
customary universal round of the press:
A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional
site of the Garden of Eden.
As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:
Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.
It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest
achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away
about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart and
home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of that
happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our
ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel
trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of the
nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city
and an advanced civilisation.
A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension of
the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such a
spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers. Brooklyn is part and
parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance enough in the
entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," in
case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader calmly and
dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds,
pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling of
the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks,
ruffles, and plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable
patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood as "steeds,"
"destriers," and "chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble names
these meek old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed "Mohammed,"
"Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with
swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks,
morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir"
Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight,"
the "Knight of Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight
of Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn; and at
the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a
post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and
by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with
glory this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and
promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the
band playing three bars of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad
daylight. And let the reader remember, and also add to his picture, as
follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had shed the
most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at
least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient
privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which
naming had in reality been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process,
and long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in
person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the
county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious
things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two
yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it is true.
This was doubtless the first appearance of the "tournament" up here among
the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last. It will
be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia,
where, it is said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured,
maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is
accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while
they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history
exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; and an
ignoramus.
All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of Ashby
de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those worthies
were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous deeds of
that famous passage of arms? Nothing but a New York jury and the
insanity plea could save them from hanging, from the amiable
Bois-Guilbert and the pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless
ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their
first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day. The
doings of the so-called "chivalry" of the Middle Ages were absurd enough,
even when they were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and when their
surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage
peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel
decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick
lances, and with muffin-rings to represent the foe, and all in the midst
of the refinement and dignity of a carefully-developed modern
civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy.
Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation of one of
those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and
children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in
their European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land, to seize and
take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from "pollution."
CURIOUS RELIC FOR SALE
"For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows
and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe,
procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have
once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties
desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing,
can do so by calling upon Daniel S.. 119 and 121 William street, New
York"
As per advertisement in the "Herald." A curious old relic indeed, as I
had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long
drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my
memory--town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each
other and disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and
dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long
express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car
by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I
saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to
Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of
Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of
country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following
described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my
age, and a vanished time was restored to me September, 1867. It was a
flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and
brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and
our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which
still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the
rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose
himself for his usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the
black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted,
besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling,
wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had
swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the
earth, and blocked our horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the
animals' path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking,
beseeching, demanding "bucksheesh! bucksheesh! BUCKSHEESH!" We had
rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats
and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they
stopped to scramble for the largess. I was fervently thankful when we
had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left
them jawing and gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had seemingly
gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my
ears!
I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far
ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names
will do as well as any to represent the boys) were following close after
them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me,
and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me
--a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a
galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with
ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy creature with an invisible
shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other
clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a
venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came
within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.
I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human heart in it is going
to shoot me." I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to
touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown
off for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy
language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch
me with the butt-end of it?" There was wisdom in that view of it, and I
stopped to parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a
trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way,
was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more. I believe
he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had
one. He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe I ever saw--a dingy,
funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of
tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty
per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And
rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood
lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my
horse. I said I would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek,
a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won
upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most
unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was,
to be sure! It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse
iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to
loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the
half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.
I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon
as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I asked the
Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic
that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently
I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could make a
man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected
whiff from this pipe would do it." I smoked along till I found I was
beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one
pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off
my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing
through our caravan like a hurricane.
From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan,
Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and
enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany. But at the
end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over
the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that
Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at
night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was
perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together,
close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other
Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued
hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul
speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by
the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the
saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out
utterly. The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very distinct;
occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up;
now and then a horse sneezed. These things only emphasised the solemnity
and the stillness. Everybody got so listless that for once I and my
dreamer found ourselves in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and
I longed to keep the place forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy
cavalcade behind made me nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side,
right after the Arab. About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and
the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah
yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster. I gave it up then,
and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to
scold the Arab. I knew I had to take the rear again. In my sorrow I
unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort. As I touched the match
to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump
and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and--
"The suffering Moses!"
"Whew!"
"By George, who opened that graveyard?"
"Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!"
Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily
back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the
barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their
angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I
were alone with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and
don't to this day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and
fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying
in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at
last they were only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they
started gingerly forward to reconnoitre or shoot the Arab, as they
proposed to do--I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she
would carry seventy yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a
whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again.
I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed
the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast
emptied the saddles, almost. I never heard an Arab abused so in my life.
He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I
stood between him and certain death. The boys would have killed him if
they could have got by me.
By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe
--I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown
with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside the
Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little
gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a
long, glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of
the jug a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together
once more by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too--and
would have been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of
water. So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful,
and never said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in
the road. I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan
was drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought
I heard Dan say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or
else take him out and bury him somewhere." All the boys took a drink and
climbed down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us
draw the curtain upon this act.
..............................
Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from
that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the
benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present right.
I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he probably finds that
it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most
convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan
and I were roommates in all that long "Quaker City" voyage, and whenever
I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that
pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his
clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a
minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and
cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?
A REMINISCENCE OF THE BACK SETTLEMENTS
"Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of the
deceased approvingly] was a brick--every way you took him he was a brick.
He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last
moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case--nothing else would do.
I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time anybody could see that.
Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch
out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.
Said he went more on room than style, any way, in the last final
container. Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying
who he was and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust
out such a gaily thing as that in a little country town like this. What
did corpse say? Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address
and general destination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil
plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for
the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him skip along. He warn't
distressed any more than you be--on the contrary just as carm and
collected as a hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to,
a body would find it considerable better to attract attention by a
picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell
doorplate on it. Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like
that 'n any I've tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in
buryin' a man like that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated.
Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly
satisfied; said his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them
preparations was bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't
wish to be kept layin' round. You never see such a clear head as what he
had--and so carm and so cool. Just a hunk of brains that is what he was.
Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's
head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain fever a-raging in
one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't
affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the
Atlantic States. Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but
corpse said he was down on flummery--didn't want any procession--fill the
hearse full of mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind.
He was the most down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful,
simple-minded creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that. He
was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid
comfort in laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a
whole raft of directions; then he had a minister stand up behind a long
box with a tablecloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying
'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him scratch out every
bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot
out the choir so's he could help them pick out the tunes for the
occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' because he'd
always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn music made him
sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all
loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as
happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he
enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited; and tried to join
in, for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing
line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread
himself, his breath took a walk. I never see a man snuffed out so
sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--it was a powerful loss to this poor
little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I hain't got time to be
palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and mosey along with' him;
and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and
meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't pay no attention to
dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but if I had my way, if I
didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse, I'll be
cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for his comfort is
a little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to deceive him or
take advantage of him--and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I'm a-going
to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him yaller and keep
him for a keepsake--you hear me!"
He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a
hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a
healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any
occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many
months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that
impressed it.
A ROYAL COMPLIMENT
The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now be
offered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal,
who is but five years of age. The Spaniards have hunted through all
the nations of Europe for a King. They tried to get a Portuguese in
the person of Dom-Luis, who is an old ex-monarch; they tried to get
an Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel's young son, the Duke of
Genoa; they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who
is an octogenarian. Some of them desired a French Bourbon,
Montpensier; some of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias;
some of them an English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria.
They have just tried to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have
thought it better to give him up than take a war along with him.
It is a long time since we first suggested to them to try an
American ruler. We can offer them a large number of able and
experienced sovereigns to pick from--men skilled in statesmanship,
versed in the science of government, and adepts in all the arts of
administration--men who could wear the crown with dignity and rule
the kingdom at a reasonable expense.
There is not the least danger of Napoleon threatening them if they
take an American sovereign; in fact, we have no doubt he would be
pleased to support such a candidature. We are unwilling to mention
names--though we have a man in our eye whom we wish they had in
theirs.--New York Tribune.
It would be but an ostentation of modesty to permit such a pointed
reference to myself to pass unnoticed. This is the second time that 'The
Tribune' (no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and
the world at large) has done me the great and unusual honour to propose
me as a fit person to fill the Spanish throne. Why 'The Tribune' should
single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher
political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve. Beyond a
somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration
for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no merit
that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction. I cannot
deny that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me. I am
proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory at
Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic
ocean; and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke
of Wellington down to Don Caesar de Bazan. However, these little graces
of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy than serviceable.
In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me--and the indications
unquestionably are that it will be--I shall feel it necessary to have
certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand. For
instance: My salary must be paid quarterly in advance. In these
unsettled times it will not do to trust. If Isabella had adopted this
plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the
simple reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of a
royal salary in advance, and of course they could not have discharged her
until they had squared up with her. My salary must be paid in gold; when
greenbacks are fresh in a country, they are too fluctuating. My salary
has got to be put at the ruling market rate; I am not going to cut under
on the trade, and they are not going to trail me a long way from home and
then practise on my ignorance and play me for a royal North Adams
Chinaman, by any means. As I understand it, imported kings generally get
five millions a year and house-rent free. Young George of Greece gets
that. As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to take the
national note for considerable; but even with things in that sort of
shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to
eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give
bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there while
he is learning his trade. England is the place for that. Fifty thousand
dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is born, and
this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more and more
indispensable to his country. Look at Prince Arthur. At first he only
got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he can dance,
there is simply no telling what wages he gets.
I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and
endeavour to get along with less quarantine. Do you know, Spain keeps
her ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year,
because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the
plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the
rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more
than a great and enlightened civilisation minds freckles. Soap would
soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers. The reason
arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so much
of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently buried
with them.
I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to the
rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit to be City
Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble,
is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they are
armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and
demonstrative kind.
I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen
Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to
Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she
has been chaste enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.
I should also require that--
I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The Tribune" did not
mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care two cents.
THE APPROACHING EPIDEMIC
One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not
awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to the
fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death all
next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for a
pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with
"readings" from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who
have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by
his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred
reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter. The
lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already the
signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are
wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:
"Reminiscences of Dickens." A lecture. By John Smith, who heard him
read eight times.
"Remembrances of Charles Dickens." A lecture. By John Jones, who saw
him once in a street car and twice in a barber shop.
"Recollections of Mr. Dickens." A lecture. By John Brown, who gained a
wide fame by writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies
upon the great author's public readings; and who shook hands with the
great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several
times.
"Readings from Dickens." By John White, who has the great delineator's
style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this
country and made these things a study, always practising each reading
before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips.
Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he
saw Mr. Dickens smoke. This Relic is kept in a solid silver box made
purposely for it.
"Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist." A popular lecture. By John
Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel,
New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the
audience a fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author
tasted in this country.
"Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch."
A lecture. By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who still wears,
and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the clasp of
Dickens. Only Death shall remove it.
"Readings from Dickens." By Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for
him.
"Familiar Talks with the Great Author." A narrative lecture. By John
Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.
And so forth, and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a
"Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have a hearing; and
the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;" and the lady
to whom Charles Dickens "granted the hospitalities of his umbrella during
a storm;" and the person who "possesses a hole which once belonged in a
handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens." Be patient and long-suffering,
good people, for even this does not fill up the measure of what you must
endure next winter. There is no creature in all this land who has had
any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens, however slight or
trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and inflict his
testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is fatal to be
noticed by greatness.
THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE
I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able to
make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable
Tone-Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do
but sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper,
Horace Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on
obscure lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would
otherwise clack eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences
into respectful hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas
and isms. That is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my
gray hairs. Let me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old
Red Sandstone Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice
a week, and be so reported, and my happiness will be complete. Those men
have been my envy for long, long time. And no memories of my life are so
pleasant as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the
Tone-imparting service. I can recollect that first time I ever saw them
on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday.
Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas
Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between
them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the
state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great day,
that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that Broadway
was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the
City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was
at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the
sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace Greeley occupied one side
of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the
other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs,
but I have forgotten their names now. Horace Greeley, gray-haired and
beaming, was in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the
breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty
sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black
little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two
gallant long ribbons. Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on
benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made
him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the
honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously
representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper was dressed as a
general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike. I
neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors
in whose aid the ball was given had just been sent in from Boston--this
was during the war of 1812. At the grand national reception of
Lafayette, in 1824, Horace Greeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to
the left. The other Tone-imparters of the day are sleeping the sleep of
the just now. I was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,
and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of
French liberty, in 1848. Then I never saw them any more until here
lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I run down
every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and
several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the platform;"
and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the phonographic
report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other
distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,
"Thank God, I was present." Thus I have been enabled to see these
substantial old friends of mine sit on the platform and give tone to
lectures on anatomy, and lectures on agriculture, and lectures on
stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on chemistry, on miscegenation,
on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?" on veterinary matters, on all
kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics; and have seen them give
tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese Twins, the Great
Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs. Whenever somebody
is to lecture on a subject not of general interest, I know that my
venerated Remains of the Old Red Sandstone Period will be on the
platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom nobody has heard of
before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the real
benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they
will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and
whenever any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or
politics is to be sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that
these intrepid old heroes will be on the platform too, in the interest of
full and free discussion, and to crush down all narrower and less
generous souls with the solid dead weight of their awful respectability.
And let us all remember that while these inveterate and imperishable
presiders (if you please) appear on the platform every night in the year
as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's or Chickering's,
and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable merit and
obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this
inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of
great progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or
countenance.
OUR PRECIOUS LUNATIC
[From the Buffalo Express, Saturday, May 14, 1870.]
New YORK, May 10.
The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and fifty minutes.
A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence and a
stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast multitude of human beings
packed together there, that when some one far away among the throng under
the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a smothered little cough it
startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did it grate upon the
pulseless air. At that imposing moment the bang of a door was heard,
then the shuffle of approaching feet, and then a sort of surging and
swaying disorder among the heads at the entrance from the jury-room told
them that the Twelve were coming. Presently all was silent again, and
the foreman of the jury rose and said:
"Your Honor and Gentleman: We, the jury charged with the duty of
determining whether the prisoner at the bar, Daniel McFarland, has been
guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed man and shooting him
to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad but
irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent
entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely:
"That the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, is insane as above described.
Because:
"1. His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and
frequently killed people who were distasteful to him. Hence, insanity is
hereditary in the family.
"2. For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support his
family. Strong circumstantial evidence of insanity.
"3. For nine years he made of his home, as a general thing, a poor-house;
sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently the
den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as
ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman. These be evidences of
insanity.
"4. He once took his young unmarried sister-in-law to the museum; while
there his hereditary insanity came upon him to such a degree that he
hiccupped and staggered; and afterward, on the way home, even made love
to the young girl he was protecting. These are the acts of a person not
in his right mind.
"5. For a good while his sufferings were so great that he had to submit
to the inconvenience of having his wife give public readings for the
family support; and at times, when he handed these shameful earnings to
the barkeeper, his haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could
hardly stand without leaning against something. At such times he has
been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted to utter
inefficiency. Inattention of this nature is not the act of a Democrat
unafflicted in mind.
"6. He never spared expense in making his wife comfortable during her
occasional confinements. Her father is able to testify to this. There
was always an element of unsoundness about the prisoner's generosities
that is very suggestive at this time and before this court.
"7. Two years ago the prisoner came fearlessly up behind Richardson in
the dark, and shot him in the leg. The prisoner's brave and protracted
defiance of an adversity that for years had left him little to depend
upon for support but a wife who sometimes earned scarcely anything for
weeks at a time, is evidence that he would have appeared in front of
Richardson and shot him in the stomach if he had not been insane at the
time of the shooting.
"8. Fourteen months ago the prisoner told Archibald Smith that he was
going to kill Richardson. This is insanity.
"9. Twelve months ago he told Marshall P. Jones that he was going to kill
Richardson. Insanity.
"10. Nine months ago he was lurking about Richardson's home in New
Jersey, and said he was going to kill Richardson. Insanity.
"11. Seven months ago he showed a pistol to Seth Brown and said that that
was for Richardson. He said Brown testified that at that time it seemed
plain that something was the matter with McFarland, for he crossed the
street diagonally nine times in fifty yards, apparently without any
settled reason for doing so, and finally fell in the gutter and went to
sleep. He remarked at the time that McFarland acted strange--believed he
was insane. Upon hearing Brown's evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed
at once that McFarland was insane.
"12. Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his
customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was
going to kill Richardson the first time an opportunity offered. Evidence
of insanity.
"13. Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the time
of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer.
Almost indubitable evidence of insanity. And--
"14. It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance, the
prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and
without warning, and shot him dead. This is manifest insanity.
Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if he had been sane
at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind.
"15. There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show that
an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that
five minutes after it he was EXCITED. Thus the accumulating conjectures
and evidences of insanity culminate in this sublime and unimpeachable
proof of it. Therefore--
"Your Honor and Gentlemen--We the jury pronounce the said Daniel McFarland
INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE."
The scene that ensued almost defies description. Hats, handkerchiefs and
bonnets were frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom,
and three tremendous cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the
court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss
the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a
congratulatory shake--but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a
maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his
friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing
rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered
bodies, till nearly a hundred citizens were reduced to mere quivering
heaps of fleshy odds and ends and crimson rags, was like nothing in this
world but the exultant frenzy of a plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a
steam machine when it snatches a human being and spins him and whirls him
till he shreds away to nothingness like a "Four o'clock" before the
breath of a child.
The destruction was awful. It is said that within the space of eight
minutes McFarland killed and crippled some six score persons and tore
down a large portion of the City Hall building, carrying away and casting
into Broadway six or seven marble columns fifty-four feet long and
weighing nearly two tons each. But he was finally captured and sent in
chains to the lunatic asylum for life.
(By late telegrams it appears that this is a mistake.--Editor Express.)
But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to be told. And
that is, that McFarland's most intimate friends believe that the very
next time that it ever occurred to him that the insanity plea was not a
mere politic pretense, was when the verdict came in. They think that the
startling thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men,
able to comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath
that he was a lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he
UNQUESTIONABLY WAS INSANE!
Possibly that was really the way of it. It is dreadful to think that
maybe the most awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of
reason, was precipitated upon this poor prisoner's head by a jury that
could have hanged him instead, and so done him a mercy and his country a
service.
POSTSCRIPT-LATER
May 11--I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a thing, and yet
it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the dangerous
lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would do,
and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT
LIBERTY. Comment is unnecessary. M. T.
THE EUROPEAN WARS--[From the Buffalo Express, July 25, 1870.]
First Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR!!!
NO BATTLE YET!!!
HOSTILITIES IMMINENT!!!
TREMENDOUS EXCITEMENT.
AUSTRIA ARMING!
BERLIN, Tuesday.
No battle has been fought yet. But hostilities may burst forth any week.
There is tremendous excitement here over news from the front that two
companies of French soldiers are assembling there.
It is rumoured that Austria is arming--what with, is not known.
.......................
Second Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR
NO BATTLE YET!
FIGHTING IMMINENT.
AWFUL EXCITEMENT.
RUSSIA SIDES WITH PRUSSIA!
ENGLAND NEUTRAL!!
AUSTRIA NOT ARMING.
BERLIN, Wednesday.
No battle has been fought yet. However, all thoughtful men feel that the
land may be drenched with blood before the Summer is over.
There is an awful excitement here over the rumour that two companies of
Prussian troops have concentrated on the border. German confidence
remains unshaken!!
There is news to the effect that Russia espouses the cause of Prussia and
will bring 4,000,000 men to the field.
England proclaims strict neutrality.
The report that Austria is arming needs confirmation.
.........................
Third Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR
NO BATTLE YET!
BLOODSHED IMMINENT!!
ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT!!
INVASION OF PRUSSIA!!
INVASION OF FRANCE!!
RUSSIA SIDES WITH FRANCE.
ENGLAND STILL NEUTRAL!
FIRING HEARD!
THE EMPEROR TO TAKE COMMAND.
PARIS, Thursday.
No battle has been fought yet. But Field Marshal McMahon telegraphs thus
to the Emperor:
"If the Frinch army survoives until Christmas there'll be throuble.
Forninst this fact it would be sagacious if the divil wint the rounds of
his establishment to prepare for the occasion, and tuk the precaution to
warrum up the Prussian depairtment a bit agin the day.
MIKE."
There is an enormous state of excitement here over news from the front to
the effect that yesterday France and Prussia were simultaneously invaded
by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled on the border. Both
armies conducted their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for
each other on opposite sides of the border.
Russia espouses the cause of France. She will bring 200,000 men to the
field.
England continues to remain neutral.
Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg, and for a
while the excitement was intense. However the people reflected that the
country in that direction is uninhabitable, and impassable by anything
but birds, they became quiet again.
The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense enthusiasm. He
will lead them in person, when they return.
.....................
Fourth Day
THE EUROPEAN WAR!
NO BATTLE YET!!
THE TROOPS GROWING OLD!
BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT!
PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT!
THE INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED
AND THE INVADERS SAFE!
RUSSIA SIDES WITH BOTH SIDES
ENGLAND WILL FIGHT BOTH!
LONDON, Friday.
No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous soldiers are
gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most
serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there
will be bloodshed in this war yet.
The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on. In Prussia, per Prussian
telegrams, though contradicted from France. In France, per French
telegrams, though contradicted from Prussia.
The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent success. The military
failed to find the French, but made good their return to Prussia without
the loss of a single man. The French invasion of Prussia is also
demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement. The
army failed to find the Prussians, but made good their return to the
Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded as much as they wanted
to.
There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will side with
both sides.
Also from England--she will fight both sides.
....................
LONDON, Thursday evening.
I rushed over too soon. I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and
wait until the war begins. M. T.
THE WILD MAN INTERVIEWED
[From the Buffalo Express, September 18, 1869.]
There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild man" out there in
the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my duty to go out and
interview him. There was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic
about the creature and his strange actions, according to the newspaper
reports. He was represented as being hairy, long-armed, and of great
strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men, but appearing
suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with a club,
but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of
eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or
character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild
beast, but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never
uttering articulate sounds.
Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted him. I felt that the story of
his life must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and
exile--a story of man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I
longed to persuade the secret from him.
.....................
"Since you say you are a member of the press," said the wild man, "I am
willing to tell you all you wish to know. Bye and bye you will
comprehend why it is that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man
when I have so studiously avoided conversation with other people. I will
now unfold my strange story. I was born with the world we live upon,
almost. I am the son of Cain."
"What?"
"I was present when the flood was announced."
"Which?"
"I am the father of the Wandering Jew."
"Sir?"
I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes, but keeping a
wary eye on him all the while. He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed:
"When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I see many a
glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory. And oh, the leagues
I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events I have helped to
emphasise! I was at the assassination of Caesar. I marched upon Mecca
with Mahomet. I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey when he
planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem. I--"
"One moment, please. Have you given these items to any other journal?
Can I--"
"Silence. I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst
upon his vision. I saw Charles I beheaded. I was in London when the
Gunpowder Plot was discovered. I was present at the trial of Warren
Hastings. I was on American soil when the battle of Lexington was fought
when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered
--When Washington died. I entered Paris with Napoleon after Elba. I was
present when you mounted your guns and manned your fleets for the war of
1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond fell--when the
President's life was taken. In all the ages I have helped to celebrate
the triumphs of genius, the achievements of arms, the havoc of storm,
fire, pestilence, famine."
"Your career has been a stirring one. Might I ask how you came to locate
in these dull Kansas woods, when you have been so accustomed to
excitement during what I might term so protracted a period, not to put
too fine a point on it?"
"Listen. Once I was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious"
(here he heaved a sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but
in these degenerate days I am become the slave of quack doctors and
newspapers. I am driven from pillar to post and hurried up and down,
sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences with
cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character
at the behest of some driving journal. I attended to that Ocean Bank
robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested from finishing up the
pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad; immediately I was
spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of the New York
papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire; next to
raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had begun
to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this
howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull
down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play
'Wild Man' generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy
newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am
described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me--and all to
gratify this quill-driving scum of the earth!"
"Poor old carpet bagger!"
"I have been served infamously, often, in modern and semi-modern times.
I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent history, and to
perpetrate all sorts of humbugs. I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I
moped in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron
Mask; I poked around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians,
a solemn French idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the
gaping world might wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played
sea-serpent off Nahant, and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums;
I have interviewed politicians for the Sun, worked up all manner of
miracles for the Herald, ciphered up election returns for the World,
and thundered Political Economy through the Tribune. I have done all the
extravagant things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done
them well, and this is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas without a
shirt!"
"Mysterious being, a light dawns vaguely upon me--it grows apace--what
--what is your name."
"SENSATION!"
"Hence, horrible shape!"
It spoke again:
"Oh pitiless fate, my destiny hounds me once more. I am called. I go.
Alas, is there no rest for me?"
In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and refine, and his
form to assume a more human grace and symmetry. His club changed to a
spade, and he shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and
shedding tears.
"Whither, poor shade?"
"TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!"
Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the sad spirit
shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and
disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.
All of which is in strict accordance with the facts.
M. T.
LAST WORDS OF GREAT MEN--[From the Buffalo Express, September 11, 1889.]
Marshal Neil's last words were: "L'armee fran-caise!" (The French
army.)--Exchange.
What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career with a
plagiarism in his mouth. Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee."
(Head of the army.) Neither of those remarks amounts to anything as
"last words," and reflect little credit upon the utterers.
A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is
about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and
take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a
thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit
at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest
gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. No--a man is apt to be too
much fagged and exhausted, both in body and mind, at such a time, to be
reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say, he cannot think of to
save him; and besides there are his weeping friends bothering around;
and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his last gasp
before he is expecting to. A man cannot always expect to think of a
natty thing to say under such circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic
ostentation to put it off. There is hardly a case on record where a man
came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case
where a man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch
of it and go out of the world feeling absurd.
Now there was Daniel Webster. Nobody could tell him anything. He was
not afraid. He could do something neat when the time came. And how did
it turn out? Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then all the
relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till at
last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went.
Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he might as well
have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such a
failure of it as that. A week before that fifteen minutes of calm
reflection would have enabled that man to contrive some last words that
would have been a credit to himself and a comfort to his family for
generations to come.
And there was John Quincy Adams. Relying on his splendid abilities and
his coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment
to carry him through, and what was the result? Death smote him in the
House of Representatives, and he observed, casually, "This is the last of
earth." The last of earth! Why "the last of earth" when there was so
much more left? If he had said it was the last rose of summer or the
last run of shad, it would have had as much point in it. What he meant
to say was, "Adam was the first and Adams is the last of earth," but he
put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with that unmeaning
observation on his lips.
And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee." That don't mean anything.
Taken by itself, "Head of the army," is no more important than "Head of
the police." And yet that was a man who could have said a good thing if
he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while. Marshal Neil,
with half a century at his disposal, could not dash off anything better
in his last moments than a poor plagiarism of another man's words, which
were not worth plagiarizing in the first place. "The French army."
Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly flat utterly pointless. But if he had
closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it
lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into
his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction
all the rest of his life. I do wish our great men would quit saying
these flat things just at the moment they die. Let us have their
next-to-the-last words for a while, and see if we cannot patch up from
them something that will be more satisfactory.
The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the time.
But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties who took the
trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we immediately
notice a happy difference in the result.
There was Chesterfield. Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life to
build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of
speech and manners the world has ever seen. And could you suppose he
failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic "last words," in
the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail of such a reputation
and clinching on the other side for ever? Not he. He prepared himself.
He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his pulse. He awaited his
chance. And at last, when he knew his time was come, he pretended to
think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his throat
emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin around,
John, and get the gentleman a chair." And so he died, amid thunders of
applause.
Next we have Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's
quaint sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up
at nights reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and
snappy maxims that had a nice, varnished, original look in their
regimentals; who said, "Virtue is its own reward;" who said,
"Procrastination is the thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for
no man" and "Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin,
the Josh Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the
latter transcends him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short
of him in correctness of orthography. What sort of tactics did Franklin
pursue? He pondered over his last words for as much as two weeks, and
then when the time came, he said, "None but the brave deserve the fair,"
and died happy. He could not have said a sweeter thing if he had lived
till he was an idiot.
Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of anything to say,
at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady Byron--tell Harriet
Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready and said, "England
expects every man to do his duty!" and went off with splendid eclat.
And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a felicitous
closing remark. For instance:
Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are marching."
Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if you
please."
The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and could get no further.
Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders."
Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your whetstone a
moment, please?" though what for is not clear.
John Smith said, "Alas, I am the last of my race."
Queen Elizabeth said, "Oh, I would give my kingdom for one moment more
--I have forgotten my last words."
And Red Jacket, the noblest Indian brave that ever wielded a tomahawk in
defence of a friendless and persecuted race, expired with these touching
words upon his lips, "Wawkawampanoosucwinnebayowallazvsagamoresa-
skatchewan." There was not a dry eye in the wigwam.
Let not this lesson be lost upon our public men. Let them take a healthy
moment for preparation, and contrive some last words that shall be neat
and to the point. Let Louis Napoleon say,
"I am content to follow my uncle--still, I do not wish to improve upon
his last word. Put me down for 'Tete d'armee.'"
And Garret Davis, "Let me recite the unabridged dictionary."
And H. G., "I desire, now, to say a few words on political economy."
And Mr. Bergh, "Only take part of me at a time, if the load will be
fatiguing to the hearse horses."
And Andrew Johnson, "I have been an alderman, Member of Congress,
Governor, Senator, Pres--adieu, you know the rest."
And Seward., "Alas!-ka."
And Grant, "O."
All of which is respectfully submitted, with the most honorable
intentions.
M. T.
P. S.--I am obliged to leave out the illustrations. The artist finds it
impossible to make a picture of people's last words.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Curious Republic of Gondour and
Other Whimsical Sketches, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
1601
by Mark Twain
MARK TWAIN'S
[Date, 1601]
Conversation
As it was by the Social Fireside
in the Time of the Tudors
INTRODUCTION
"Born irreverent," scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, "--like all
other people I have ever known or heard of--I am hoping to remain so
while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of."
--[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, in the collection of the
F. J. Meine]
Mark Twain was just as irreverent as he dared be, and 1601 reveals his
richest expression of sovereign contempt for overstuffed language,
genteel literature, and conventional idiocies. Later, when a magazine
editor apostrophized, "O that we had a Rabelais!" Mark impishly and
anonymously--submitted 1601; and that same editor, a praiser of Rabelais,
scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others,
Mark Twain, the "bad boy" of American literature, revealed his huge
delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was
always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted
him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could
stir up in the world.
WHO WROTE 1601?
The correct and complete title of 1601, as first issued, was: [Date,
1601.] 'Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of
the Tudors.' For many years after its anonymous first issue in 1880,
its authorship was variously conjectured and widely disputed. In Boston,
William T. Ball, one of the leading theatrical critics during the late
90's, asserted that it was originally written by an English actor (name
not divulged) who gave it to him. Ball's original, it was said, looked
like a newspaper strip in the way it was printed, and may indeed have
been a proof pulled in some newspaper office. In St. Louis, William
Marion Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, had seen this famous tour
de force circulated in the early 80's in galley-proof form; he first
learned from Eugene Field that it was from the pen of Mark Twain.
"Many people," said Reedy, "thought the thing was done by Field and
attributed, as a joke, to Mark Twain. Field had a perfect genius for
that sort of thing, as many extant specimens attest, and for that sort of
practical joke; but to my thinking the humor of the piece is too mellow
--not hard and bright and bitter--to be Eugene Field's." Reedy's opinion
hits off the fundamental difference between these two great humorists;
one half suspects that Reedy was thinking of Field's French Crisis.
But Twain first claimed his bantling from the fog of anonymity in 1906,
in a letter addressed to Mr. Charles Orr, librarian of Case Library,
Cleveland. Said Clemens, in the course of his letter, dated July 30,
1906, from Dublin, New Hampshire:
"The title of the piece is 1601. The piece is a supposititious
conversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth's closet in that year,
between the Queen, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchess
of Bilgewater, and one or two others, and is not, as John Hay mistakenly
supposes, a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to
the sober and chaste Elizabeth's time; if there is a decent word findable
in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure you that it is
not printed in my published writings."
TWITTING THE REV. JOSEPH TWICHELL
The circumstances of how 1601 came to be written have since been
officially revealed by Albert Bigelow Paine in 'Mark Twain,
A Bibliography' (1912), and in the publication of Mark Twain's Notebook
(1935).
1601 was written during the summer of 1876 when the Clemens family had
retreated to Quarry Farm in Elmira County, New York. Here Mrs. Clemens
enjoyed relief from social obligations, the children romped over the
countryside, and Mark retired to his octagonal study, which, perched high
on the hill, looked out upon the valley below. It was in the famous
summer of 1876, too, that Mark was putting the finishing touches to Tom
Sawyer. Before the close of the same year he had already begun work on
'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', published in 1885. It is
interesting to note the use of the title, the "Duke of Bilgewater," in
Huck Finn when the "Duchess of Bilgewater" had already made her
appearance in 1601. Sandwiched between his two great masterpieces, Tom
Sawyer and Huck Finn, the writing of 1601 was indeed a strange interlude.
During this prolific period Mark wrote many minor items, most of them
rejected by Howells, and read extensively in one of his favorite books,
Pepys' Diary. Like many another writer Mark was captivated by Pepys'
style and spirit, and "he determined," says Albert Bigelow Paine in his
'Mark Twain, A Biography', "to try his hand on an imaginary record of
conversation and court manners of a bygone day, written in the phrase of
the period. The result was 'Fireside Conversation in the Time of Queen
Elizabeth', or as he later called it, '1601'. The 'conversation'
recorded by a supposed Pepys of that period, was written with all the
outspoken coarseness and nakedness of that rank day, when fireside
sociabilities were limited only to the loosened fancy, vocabulary, and
physical performance, and not by any bounds of convention."
"It was written as a letter," continues Paine, "to that robust divine,
Rev. Joseph Twichell, who, unlike Howells, had no scruples about Mark's
'Elizabethan breadth of parlance.'"
The Rev. Joseph Twichell, Mark's most intimate friend for over forty
years, was pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church of Hartford,
which Mark facetiously called the "Church of the Holy Speculators,"
because of its wealthy parishioners. Here Mark had first met "Joe" at a
social, and their meeting ripened into a glorious, life long friendship.
Twichell was a man of about Mark's own age, a profound scholar, a devout
Christian, "yet a man with an exuberant sense of humor, and a profound
understanding of the frailties of mankind." The Rev. Mr. Twichell
performed the marriage ceremony for Mark Twain and solemnized the births
of his children; "Joe," his friend, counseled him on literary as well as
personal matters for the remainder of Mark's life. It is important to
catch this brief glimpse of the man for whom this masterpiece was
written, for without it one can not fully understand the spirit in which
1601 was written, or the keen enjoyment which Mark and "Joe" derived from
it.
"SAVE ME ONE."
The story of the first issue of 1601 is one of finesse, state diplomacy,
and surreptitious printing.
The Rev. "Joe" Twichell, for whose delectation the piece had been
written, apparently had pocketed the document for four long years. Then,
in 1880, it came into the hands of John Hay, later Secretary of State,
presumably sent to him by Mark Twain. Hay pronounced the sketch a
masterpiece, and wrote immediately to his old Cleveland friend, Alexander
Gunn, prince of connoisseurs in art and literature. The following
correspondence reveals the fine diplomacy which made the name of John Hay
known throughout the world.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Washington
June 21, 1880.
Dear Gunn:
Are you in Cleveland for all this week? If you will say yes by return
mail, I have a masterpiece to submit to your consideration which is only
in my hands for a few days.
Yours, very much worritted by the depravity of Christendom,
Hay
The second letter discloses Hay's own high opinion of the effort and his
deep concern for its safety.
June 24, 1880
My dear Gunn:
Here it is. It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bring
back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan
standard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anything
so classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The
Globe has not yet recovered from Downey's inroad, and they won't touch
it.
I send it to you as one of the few lingering relics of that race of
appreciative critics, who know a good thing when they see it.
Read it with reverence and gratitude and send it back to me; for Mark is
impatient to see once more his wandering offspring.
Yours,
Hay.
In his third letter one can almost hear Hay's chuckle in the certainty
that his diplomatic, if somewhat wicked, suggestion would bear fruit.
Washington, D. C.
July 7, 1880
My dear Gunn:
I have your letter, and the proposition which you make to pull a few
proofs of the masterpiece is highly attractive, and of course highly
immoral. I cannot properly consent to it, and I am afraid the great many
would think I was taking an unfair advantage of his confidence. Please
send back the document as soon as you can, and if, in spite of my
prohibition, you take these proofs, save me one.
Very truly yours,
John Hay.
Thus was this Elizabethan dialogue poured into the moulds of cold type.
According to Merle Johnson, Mark Twain's bibliographer, it was issued in
pamphlet form, without wrappers or covers; there were 8 pages of text and
the pamphlet measured 7 by 8 1/2 inches. Only four copies are believed to
have been printed, one for Hay, one for Gunn, and two for Twain.
"In the matter of humor," wrote Clemens, referring to Hay's delicious
notes, "what an unsurpassable touch John Hay had!"
HUMOR AT WEST POINT
The first printing of 1601 in actual book form was "Donne at ye Academie
Press," in 1882, West Point, New York, under the supervision of Lieut. C.
E. S. Wood, then adjutant of the U. S. Military Academy.
In 1882 Mark Twain and Joe Twichell visited their friend Lieut. Wood at
West Point, where they learned that Wood, as Adjutant, had under his
control a small printing establishment. On Mark's return to Hartford,
Wood received a letter asking if he would do Mark a great favor by
printing something he had written, which he did not care to entrust to
the ordinary printer. Wood replied that he would be glad to oblige.
On April 3, 1882, Mark sent the manuscript:
"I enclose the original of 1603 [sic] as you suggest. I am afraid there
are errors in it, also, heedlessness in antiquated spelling--e's stuck on
often at end of words where they are not strickly necessary, etc.....
I would go through the manuscript but I am too much driven just now, and
it is not important anyway. I wish you would do me the kindness to make
any and all corrections that suggest themselves to you.
"Sincerely yours,
"S. L. Clemens."
Charles Erskine Scott Wood recalled in a foreword, which he wrote for the
limited edition of 1601 issued by the Grabhorn Press, how he felt when he
first saw the original manuscript. "When I read it," writes Wood,
"I felt that the character of it would be carried a little better by a
printing which pretended to the eye that it was contemporaneous with the
pretended 'conversation.'
"I wrote Mark that for literary effect I thought there should be a
species of forgery, though of course there was no effort to actually
deceive a scholar. Mark answered that I might do as I liked;--that his
only object was to secure a number of copies, as the demand for it was
becoming burdensome, but he would be very grateful for any interest I
brought to the doing.
"Well, Tucker [foreman of the printing shop] and I soaked some handmade
linen paper in weak coffee, put it as a wet bundle into a warm room to
mildew, dried it to a dampness approved by Tucker and he printed the
'copy' on a hand press. I had special punches cut for such Elizabethan
abbreviations as the a, e, o and u, when followed by m or n--and for the
(commonly and stupidly pronounced ye).
"The only editing I did was as to the spelling and a few old English
words introduced. The spelling, if I remember correctly, is mine, but
the text is exactly as written by Mark. I wrote asking his view of
making the spelling of the period and he was enthusiastic--telling me to
do whatever I thought best and he was greatly pleased with the result."
Thus was printed in a de luxe edition of fifty copies the most curious
masterpiece of American humor, at one of America's most dignified
institutions, the United States Military Academy at West Point.
"1601 was so be-praised by the archaeological scholars of a quarter of a
century ago," wrote Clemens in his letter to Charles Orr, "that I was
rather inordinately vain of it. At that time it had been privately
printed in several countries, among them Japan. A sumptuous edition on
large paper, rough-edged, was made by Lieut. C. E. S. Wood at West Point
--an edition of 50 copies--and distributed among popes and kings and such
people. In England copies of that issue were worth twenty guineas when I
was there six years ago, and none to be had."
FROM THE DEPTHS
Mark Twain's irreverence should not be misinterpreted: it was an
irreverence which bubbled up from a deep, passionate insight into the
well-springs of human nature. In 1601, as in 'The Man That Corrupted
Hadleyburg,' and in 'The Mysterious Stranger,' he tore the masks off
human beings and left them cringing before the public view. With the
deftness of a master surgeon Clemens dealt with human emotions and
delighted in exposing human nature in the raw.
The spirit and the language of the Fireside Conversation were rooted deep
in Mark Twain's nature and in his life, as C. E. S. Wood, who printed
1601 at West Point, has pertinently observed,
"If I made a guess as to the intellectual ferment out of which 1601 rose
I would say that Mark's intellectual structure and subconscious graining
was from Anglo-Saxons as primitive as the common man of the Tudor period.
He came from the banks of the Mississippi--from the flatboatmen, pilots,
roustabouts, farmers and village folk of a rude, primitive people--as
Lincoln did.
"He was finished in the mining camps of the West among stage drivers,
gamblers and the men of '49. The simple roughness of a frontier people
was in his blood and brain.
"Words vulgar and offensive to other ears were a common language to him.
Anyone who ever knew Mark heard him use them freely, forcibly,
picturesquely in his unrestrained conversation. Such language is
forcible as all primitive words are. Refinement seems to make for
weakness--or let us say a cutting edge--but the old vulgar monosyllabic
words bit like the blow of a pioneer's ax--and Mark was like that. Then
I think 1601 came out of Mark's instinctive humor, satire and hatred of
puritanism. But there is more than this; with all its humor there is a
sense of real delight in what may be called obscenity for its own sake.
Whitman and the Bible are no more obscene than Nature herself--no more
obscene than a manure pile, out of which come roses and cherries. Every
word used in 1601 was used by our own rude pioneers as a part of their
vocabulary--and no word was ever invented by man with obscene intent, but
only as language to express his meaning. No act of nature is obscene in
itself--but when such words and acts are dragged in for an ulterior
purpose they become offensive, as everything out of place is offensive.
I think he delighted, too, in shocking--giving resounding slaps on what
Chaucer would quite simply call 'the bare erse.'"
Quite aside from this Chaucerian "erse" slapping, Clemens had also a
semi-serious purpose, that of reproducing a past time as he saw it in
Shakespeare, Dekker, Jonson, and other writers of the Elizabethan era.
Fireside Conversation was an exercise in scholarship illumined by a keen
sense of character. It was made especially effective by the artistic
arrangement of widely-gathered material into a compressed picture of a
phase of the manners and even the minds of the men and women "in the
spacious times of great Elizabeth."
Mark Twain made of 1601 a very smart and fascinating performance, carried
over almost to grotesqueness just to show it was not done for mere
delight in the frank naturalism of the functions with which it deals.
That Mark Twain had made considerable study of this frankness is apparent
from chapter four of 'A Yankee At King Arthur's Court,' where he refers
to the conversation at the famous Round Table thus:
"Many of the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great
assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen of the land would have made
a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey the idea.
However, I had read Tom Jones and Roderick Random and other books of that
kind and knew that the highest and first ladies and gentlemen in England
had remained little or no cleaner in their talk, and in the morals and
conduct which such talk implies, clear up to one hundred years ago; in
fact clear into our own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly
speaking, the earliest samples of the real lady and the real gentleman
discoverable in English history,--or in European history, for that
matter--may be said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter
[Scott] instead of putting the conversation into the mouths of his
characters, had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We
should have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena
which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the unconsciously
indelicate all things are delicate."
Mark Twain's interest in history and in the depiction of historical
periods and characters is revealed through his fondness for historical
reading in preference to fiction, and through his other historical
writings. Even in the hilarious, youthful days in San Francisco, Paine
reports that "Clemens, however, was never quite ready for sleep. Then,
as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose
himself in English or French history until his sleep conquered." Paine
tells us, too, that Lecky's 'European Morals' was an old favorite.
The notes to 'The Prince and the Pauper' show again how carefully Clemens
examined his historical background, and his interest in these materials.
Some of the more important sources are noted: Hume's 'History of
England', Timbs' 'Curiosities of London', J. Hammond Trumbull's 'Blue
Laws, True and False'. Apparently Mark Twain relished it, for as Bernard
DeVoto points out, "The book is always Mark Twain. Its parodies of Tudor
speech lapse sometimes into a callow satisfaction in that idiom--Mark
hugely enjoys his nathlesses and beshrews and marrys." The writing of
1601 foreshadows his fondness for this treatment.
"Do you suppose the liberties and the Brawn of These States have to
do only with delicate lady-words? with gloved gentleman words"
Walt Whitman, 'An American Primer'.
Although 1601 was not matched by any similar sketch in his published
works, it was representative of Mark Twain the man. He was no emaciated
literary tea-tosser. Bronzed and weatherbeaten son of the West, Mark was
a man's man, and that significant fact is emphasized by the several
phases of Mark's rich life as steamboat pilot, printer, miner, and
frontier journalist.
On the Virginia City Enterprise Mark learned from editor R. M. Daggett
that "when it was necessary to call a man names, there were no expletives
too long or too expressive to be hurled in rapid succession to emphasize
the utter want of character of the man assailed.... There were
typesetters there who could hurl anathemas at bad copy which would have
frightened a Bengal tiger. The news editor could damn a mutilated
dispatch in twenty-four languages."
In San Francisco in the sizzling sixties we catch a glimpse of Mark Twain
and his buddy, Steve Gillis, pausing in doorways to sing "The Doleful
Ballad of the Neglected Lover," an old piece of uncollected erotica.
One morning, when a dog began to howl, Steve awoke "to find his room-mate
standing in the door that opened out into a back garden, holding a big
revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement," relates Paine in
his Biography.
"'Come here, Steve,' he said. 'I'm so chilled through I can't get a bead
on him.'
"'Sam,' said Steve, 'don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily
kill him at any range with your profanity.'
"Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain let go such a scorching, singeing
blast that the brute's owner sold him the next day for a Mexican hairless
dog."
Nor did Mark's "geysers of profanity" cease spouting after these gay and
youthful days in San Francisco. With Clemens it may truly be said that
profanity was an art--a pyrotechnic art that entertained nations.
"It was my duty to keep buttons on his shirts," recalled Katy Leary,
life-long housekeeper and friend in the Clemens menage, "and he'd swear
something terrible if I didn't. If he found a shirt in his drawer
without a button on, he'd take every single shirt out of that drawer and
throw them right out of the window, rain or shine--out of the bathroom
window they'd go. I used to look out every morning to see the
snowflakes--anything white. Out they'd fly.... Oh! he'd swear at
anything when he was on a rampage. He'd swear at his razor if it didn't
cut right, and Mrs. Clemens used to send me around to the bathroom door
sometimes to knock and ask him what was the matter. Well, I'd go and
knock; I'd say, 'Mrs. Clemens wants to know what's the matter.' And
then he'd say to me (kind of low) in a whisper like, 'Did she hear me
Katy?' 'Yes,' I'd say, 'every word.' Oh, well, he was ashamed then, he
was afraid of getting scolded for swearing like that, because Mrs.
Clemens hated swearing." But his swearing never seemed really bad to
Katy Leary, "It was sort of funny, and a part of him, somehow," she said.
"Sort of amusing it was--and gay--not like real swearing, 'cause he swore
like an angel."
In his later years at Stormfield Mark loved to play his favorite
billiards. "It was sometimes a wonderful and fearsome thing to watch Mr.
Clemens play billiards," relates Elizabeth Wallace. "He loved the game,
and he loved to win, but he occasionally made a very bad stroke, and then
the varied, picturesque, and unorthodox vocabulary, acquired in his more
youthful years, was the only thing that gave him comfort. Gently,
slowly, with no profane inflexions of voice, but irresistibly as though
they had the headwaters of the Mississippi for their source, came this
stream of unholy adjectives and choice expletives."
Mark's vocabulary ran the whole gamut of life itself. In Paris, in his
appearance in 1879 before the Stomach Club, a jolly lot of gay wags,
Mark's address, reports Paine, "obtained a wide celebrity among the clubs
of the world, though no line of it, not even its title, has ever found
its way into published literature." It is rumored to have been called
"Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism."
In Berlin, Mark asked Henry W. Fisher to accompany him on an exploration
of the Berlin Royal Library, where the librarian, having learned that
Clemens had been the Kaiser's guest at dinner, opened the secret treasure
chests for the famous visitor. One of these guarded treasures was a
volume of grossly indecent verses by Voltaire, addressed to Frederick the
Great. "Too much is enough," Mark is reported to have said, when Fisher
translated some of the verses, "I would blush to remember any of these
stanzas except to tell Krafft-Ebing about them when I get to Vienna."
When Fisher had finished copying a verse for him Mark put it into his
pocket, saying, "Livy [Mark's wife, Olivia] is so busy mispronouncing
German these days she can't even attempt to get at this."
In his letters, too, Howells observed, "He had the Southwestern, the
Lincolnian, the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose one
ought not to call coarse without calling one's self prudish; and I was
often hiding away in discreet holes and corners the letters in which he
had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion; I could not bear
to burn them, and I could not, after the first reading, quite bear to
look at them. I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying that
in it he was Shakespearean."
"With a nigger squat on her safety-valve"
John Hay, Pike County Ballads.
"Is there any other explanation," asks Van Wyck Brooks, "'of his
Elizabethan breadth of parlance?' Mr. Howells confesses that he
sometimes blushed over Mark Twain's letters, that there were some which,
to the very day when he wrote his eulogy on his dead friend, he could not
bear to reread. Perhaps if he had not so insisted, in former years,
while going over Mark Twain's proofs, upon 'having that swearing out in
an instant,' he would never had had cause to suffer from his having
'loosed his bold fancy to stoop on rank suggestion.' Mark Twain's verbal
Rabelaisianism was obviously the expression of that vital sap which, not
having been permitted to inform his work, had been driven inward and left
thereto ferment. No wonder he was always indulging in orgies of
forbidden words. Consider the famous book, 1601, that fireside
conversation in the time of Queen Elizabeth: is there any obsolete verbal
indecency in the English language that Mark Twain has not painstakingly
resurrected and assembled there? He, whose blood was in constant ferment
and who could not contain within the narrow bonds that had been set for
him the roitous exuberance of his nature, had to have an escape-valve,
and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaningless obscenity--the
waste of a priceless psychic material!" Thus, Brooks lumps 1601 with
Mark Twain's "bawdry," and interprets it simply as another indication of
frustration.
FIGS FOR FIG LEAVES!
Of course, the writing of such a piece as 1601 raised the question of
freedom of expression for the creative artist.
Although little discussed at that time, it was a question which intensely
interested Mark, and for a fuller appreciation of Mark's position one
must keep in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had
been nothing like it before in American literature; there had appeared no
Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian England was gushing
Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cult of the Brahmins
of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm of the Atlantic. Louisa
May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, and Little Men in 1871. In
1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the
lily in the Gilded Age.
In 1880 Mark took a few pot shots at license in Art and Literature in his
Tramp Abroad, "I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is
allowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times--but the
privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed
within the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet could
portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have
plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed
to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech.
But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject;
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every
pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has
been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent
nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing
it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing
about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid
marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and
ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.
"At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of
a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime--they
hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatures have been
thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious
generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery
that exists in the world.... and there, against the wall, without
obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the
vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus. It
isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it is the
attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the
attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, for
anybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls
stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly
at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic
interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear the unreflecting
average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all
that.
"In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage,
oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerable suffering
--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas every day and
publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for they are innocent,
they are inoffensive, being works of art. But suppose a literary artist
ventured to go into a painstaking and elaborate description of one of
these grisly things--the critics would skin him alive. Well, let it go,
it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost
hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores and the
consistencies of it--I haven't got time."
PROFESSOR SCENTS PORNOGRAPHY
Unfortunately, 1601 has recently been tagged by Professor Edward
Wagenknecht as "the most famous piece of pornography in American
literature." Like many another uninformed, Prof. W. is like the little
boy who is shocked to see "naughty" words chalked on the back fence,
and thinks they are pornography. The initiated, after years of wading
through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference
between filthy filth and funny "filth." Dirt for dirt's sake is
something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has
pointed out, is distinguished by the "leer of the sensualist."
"The words which are criticised as dirty," observed justice John M.
Woolsey in the United States District Court of New York, lifting the ban
on Ulysses by James Joyce, "are old Saxon words known to almost all men
and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally
and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life, physical
and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe." Neither was there
"pornographic intent," according to justice Woolsey, nor was Ulysses
obscene within the legal definition of that word.
"The meaning of the word 'obscene,'" the Justice indicated, "as legally
defined by the courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to
sexually impure and lustful thoughts.
"Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and
thoughts must be tested by the court's opinion as to its effect on a
person with average sex instincts--what the French would call 'l'homme
moyen sensuel'--who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the same role
of hypothetical reagent as does the 'reasonable man' in the law of torts
and 'the learned man in the art' on questions of invention in patent
law."
Obviously, it is ridiculous to say that the "leer of the sensualist"
lurks in the pages of Mark Twain's 1601.
DROLL STORY
"In a way," observed William Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole
works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the
privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed,
an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in
the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from
Shakespeare's urn. It is humor or fun such as one expects, let us say,
from the peasants of Thomas Hardy, outside of Hardy's books. And, though
it be filthy, it yet hath a splendor of mere animalism of good spirits...
I would say it is scatalogical rather than erotic, save for one touch
toward the end. Indeed, it seems more of Rabelais than of Boccaccio or
Masuccio or Aretino--is brutally British rather than lasciviously
latinate, as to the subjects, but sumptuous as regards the language."
Immediately upon first reading, John Hay, later Secretary of State, had
proclaimed 1601 a masterpiece. Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain's
biographer, likewise acknowledged its greatness, when he said, "1601 is a
genuine classic, as classics of that sort go. It is better than the
gross obscenities of Rabelais, and perhaps in some day to come, the taste
that justified Gargantua and the Decameron will give this literary
refugee shelter and setting among the more conventional writing of Mark
Twain. Human taste is a curious thing; delicacy is purely a matter of
environment and point of view."
"It depends on who writes a thing whether it is coarse or not," wrote
Clemens in his notebook in 1879. "I built a conversation which could
have happened--I used words such as were used at that time--1601. I sent
it anonymously to a magazine, and how the editor abused it and the
sender!"
But that man was a praiser of Rabelais and had been saying, 'O that we
had a Rabelais!' I judged that I could furnish him one.
"Then I took it to one of the greatest, best and most learned of Divines
[Rev. Joseph H. Twichell] and read it to him. He came within an ace of
killing himself with laughter (for between you and me the thing was
dreadfully funny. I don't often write anything that I laugh at myself,
but I can hardly think of that thing without laughing). That old Divine
said it was a piece of the finest kind of literary art--and David Gray of
the Buffalo Courier said it ought to be printed privately and left behind
me when I died, and then my fame as a literary artist would last."
FRANKLIN J. MEINE
THE FIRST PRINTING
Verbatim Reprint
[Date, 1601.]
CONVERSATION, AS IT WAS BY THE SOCIAL FIRESIDE, IN THE TIME OF THE
TUDORS.
[Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the
Pepys of that day, the same being Queen Elizabeth's cup-bearer. He is
supposed to be of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these
literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath, to see the queen
stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels that his nobility
is defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay
there till her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.]
YESTERNIGHT
toke her maiste ye queene a fantasie such as she sometimes hath, and had
to her closet certain that doe write playes, bokes, and such like, these
being my lord Bacon, his worship Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr. Ben Jonson, and
ye child Francis Beaumonte, which being but sixteen, hath yet turned his
hand to ye doing of ye Lattin masters into our Englishe tong, with grete
discretion and much applaus. Also came with these ye famous Shaxpur. A
righte straunge mixing truly of mighty blode with mean, ye more in
especial since ye queenes grace was present, as likewise these following,
to wit: Ye Duchess of Bilgewater, twenty-two yeres of age; ye Countesse
of Granby, twenty-six; her doter, ye Lady Helen, fifteen; as also these
two maides of honor, to-wit, ye Lady Margery Boothy, sixty-five, and ye
Lady Alice Dilberry, turned seventy, she being two yeres ye queenes
graces elder.
I being her maites cup-bearer, had no choice but to remaine and beholde
rank forgot, and ye high holde converse wh ye low as uppon equal termes,
a grete scandal did ye world heare thereof.
In ye heat of ye talk it befel yt one did breake wind, yielding an
exceding mightie and distresfull stink, whereat all did laugh full sore,
and then--
Ye Queene.--Verily in mine eight and sixty yeres have I not heard the
fellow to this fart. Meseemeth, by ye grete sound and clamour of it, it
was male; yet ye belly it did lurk behinde shoulde now fall lean and flat
against ye spine of him yt hath bene delivered of so stately and so waste
a bulk, where as ye guts of them yt doe quiff-splitters bear, stand
comely still and rounde. Prithee let ye author confess ye offspring.
Will my Lady Alice testify?
Lady Alice.--Good your grace, an' I had room for such a thundergust
within mine ancient bowels, 'tis not in reason I coulde discharge ye same
and live to thank God for yt He did choose handmaid so humble whereby to
shew his power. Nay, 'tis not I yt have broughte forth this rich
o'ermastering fog, this fragrant gloom, so pray you seeke ye further.
Ye Queene.--Mayhap ye Lady Margery hath done ye companie this favor?
Lady Margery.--So please you madam, my limbs are feeble wh ye weighte and
drouth of five and sixty winters, and it behoveth yt I be tender unto
them. In ye good providence of God, an' I had contained this wonder,
forsoothe wolde I have gi'en 'ye whole evening of my sinking life to ye
dribbling of it forth, with trembling and uneasy soul, not launched it
sudden in its matchless might, taking mine own life with violence,
rending my weak frame like rotten rags. It was not I, your maisty.
Ye Queene.--O' God's name, who hath favored us? Hath it come to pass yt
a fart shall fart itself? Not such a one as this, I trow. Young Master
Beaumont--but no; 'twould have wafted him to heaven like down of goose's
boddy. 'Twas not ye little Lady Helen--nay, ne'er blush, my child;
thoul't tickle thy tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak before
thou learnest to blow a harricane like this. Wasn't you, my learned and
ingenious Jonson?
Jonson.--So fell a blast hath ne'er mine ears saluted, nor yet a stench
so all-pervading and immortal. 'Twas not a novice did it, good your
maisty, but one of veteran experience--else hadde he failed of
confidence. In sooth it was not I.
Ye Queene.--My lord Bacon?
Lord Bacon.-Not from my leane entrailes hath this prodigy burst forth, so
please your grace. Naught doth so befit ye grete as grete performance;
and haply shall ye finde yt 'tis not from mediocrity this miracle hath
issued.
[Tho' ye subjoct be but a fart, yet will this tedious sink of learning
pondrously phillosophize. Meantime did the foul and deadly stink pervade
all places to that degree, yt never smelt I ye like, yet dare I not to
leave ye presence, albeit I was like to suffocate.]
Ye Queene.--What saith ye worshipful Master Shaxpur?
Shaxpur.--In the great hand of God I stand and so proclaim mine
innocence. Though ye sinless hosts of heaven had foretold ye coming of
this most desolating breath, proclaiming it a work of uninspired man, its
quaking thunders, its firmament-clogging rottenness his own achievement
in due course of nature, yet had not I believed it; but had said the pit
itself hath furnished forth the stink, and heaven's artillery hath shook
the globe in admiration of it.
[Then was there a silence, and each did turn him toward the worshipful
Sr Walter Ralegh, that browned, embattled, bloody swashbuckler, who
rising up did smile, and simpering say,]
Sr W.--Most gracious maisty, 'twas I that did it, but indeed it was so
poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, yt in
sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine in so august a presence.
It was nothing--less than nothing, madam--I did it but to clear my nether
throat; but had I come prepared, then had I delivered something worthy.
Bear with me, please your grace, till I can make amends.
[Then delivered he himself of such a godless and rock-shivering blast
that all were fain to stop their ears, and following it did come so dense
and foul a stink that that which went before did seem a poor and trifling
thing beside it. Then saith he, feigning that he blushed and was
confused, I perceive that I am weak to-day, and cannot justice do unto my
powers; and sat him down as who should say, There, it is not much yet he
that hath an arse to spare, let him fellow that, an' he think he can. By
God, an' I were ye queene, I would e'en tip this swaggering braggart out
o' the court, and let him air his grandeurs and break his intolerable
wind before ye deaf and such as suffocation pleaseth.]
Then fell they to talk about ye manners and customs of many peoples, and
Master Shaxpur spake of ye boke of ye sieur Michael de Montaine, wherein
was mention of ye custom of widows of Perigord to wear uppon ye
headdress, in sign of widowhood, a jewel in ye similitude of a man's
member wilted and limber, whereat ye queene did laugh and say widows in
England doe wear prickes too, but betwixt the thighs, and not wilted
neither, till coition hath done that office for them. Master Shaxpur did
likewise observe how yt ye sieur de Montaine hath also spoken of a
certain emperor of such mighty prowess that he did take ten maidenheddes
in ye compass of a single night, ye while his empress did entertain two
and twenty lusty knights between her sheetes, yet was not satisfied;
whereat ye merrie Countess Granby saith a ram is yet ye emperor's
superior, sith he wil tup above a hundred yewes 'twixt sun and sun; and
after, if he can have none more to shag, will masturbate until he hath
enrich'd whole acres with his seed.
Then spake ye damned windmill, Sr Walter, of a people in ye uttermost
parts of America, yt capulate not until they be five and thirty yeres of
age, ye women being eight and twenty, and do it then but once in seven
yeres.
Ye Queene.--How doth that like my little Lady Helen? Shall we send thee
thither and preserve thy belly?
Lady Helen.--Please your highnesses grace, mine old nurse hath told me
there are more ways of serving God than by locking the thighs together;
yet am I willing to serve him yt way too, sith your highnesses grace hath
set ye ensample.
Ye Queene.--God' wowndes a good answer, childe.
Lady Alice.--Mayhap 'twill weaken when ye hair sprouts below ye navel.
Lady Helen.--Nay, it sprouted two yeres syne; I can scarce more than
cover it with my hand now.
Ye Queene.--Hear Ye that, my little Beaumonte? Have ye not a little
birde about ye that stirs at hearing tell of so sweete a neste?
Beaumonte.--'Tis not insensible, illustrious madam; but mousing owls and
bats of low degree may not aspire to bliss so whelming and ecstatic as is
found in ye downy nests of birdes of Paradise.
Ye Queene.--By ye gullet of God, 'tis a neat-turned compliment. With
such a tongue as thine, lad, thou'lt spread the ivory thighs of many a
willing maide in thy good time, an' thy cod-piece be as handy as thy
speeche.
Then spake ye queene of how she met old Rabelais when she was turned of
fifteen, and he did tell her of a man his father knew that had a double
pair of bollocks, whereon a controversy followed as concerning the most
just way to spell the word, ye contention running high betwixt ye learned
Bacon and ye ingenious Jonson, until at last ye old Lady Margery,
wearying of it all, saith, 'Gentles, what mattereth it how ye shall spell
the word? I warrant Ye when ye use your bollocks ye shall not think of
it; and my Lady Granby, be ye content; let the spelling be, ye shall
enjoy the beating of them on your buttocks just the same, I trow. Before
I had gained my fourteenth year I had learnt that them that would explore
a cunt stop'd not to consider the spelling o't.'
Sr W.--In sooth, when a shift's turned up, delay is meet for naught but
dalliance. Boccaccio hath a story of a priest that did beguile a maid
into his cell, then knelt him in a corner to pray for grace to be rightly
thankful for this tender maidenhead ye Lord had sent him; but ye abbot,
spying through ye key-hole, did see a tuft of brownish hair with fair
white flesh about it, wherefore when ye priest's prayer was done, his
chance was gone, forasmuch as ye little maid had but ye one cunt, and
that was already occupied to her content.
Then conversed they of religion, and ye mightie work ye old dead Luther
did doe by ye grace of God. Then next about poetry, and Master Shaxpur
did rede a part of his King Henry IV., ye which, it seemeth unto me,
is not of ye value of an arsefull of ashes, yet they praised it bravely,
one and all.
Ye same did rede a portion of his "Venus and Adonis," to their prodigious
admiration, whereas I, being sleepy and fatigued withal, did deme it but
paltry stuff, and was the more discomforted in that ye blody bucanier had
got his wind again, and did turn his mind to farting with such villain
zeal that presently I was like to choke once more. God damn this windy
ruffian and all his breed. I wolde that hell mighte get him.
They talked about ye wonderful defense which old Sr. Nicholas Throgmorton
did make for himself before ye judges in ye time of Mary; which was
unlucky matter to broach, sith it fetched out ye quene with a 'Pity yt
he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his doter's
maidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed.' And ye quene did give ye damn'd
Sr. Walter a look yt made hym wince--for she hath not forgot he was her
own lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; 'twas
not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in
a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe
to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless;
behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child
when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater
roger'd by four lords before she had a husband? Was not ye little Lady
Helen born on her mother's wedding-day? And, beholde, were not ye Lady
Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye
cradle?
In time came they to discourse of Cervantes, and of the new painter,
Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty-wrought
phrases from the ladies now, one or two of them being, in other days,
pupils of that poor ass, Lille, himself; and I marked how that Jonson and
Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not
in the presence, the queene's grace being ye very flower of ye Euphuists
herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring
it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can
abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quene waxed
uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady
Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite
exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was
done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O
shit!' Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde
foolish bitche.
Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingenious
Margrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to suffer
rape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save her
maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thy
holy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would
not rise again.
FOOTNOTES
To Frivolity
The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that Twain must have given
the subject considerable thought. The author was careful to speak only
of men who conceivably might have been in the Virgin Queen's closet and
engaged in discourse with her.
THE CHARACTERS
At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old. She speaks of
having talked to "old Rabelais" in her youth. This might have been
possible as Rabelais died in 1552, when the Queen was 19 years old.
Among those in the party were Shakespeare, at that time 37 years old; Ben
Jonson, 27; and Sir Walter Raleigh, 49. Beaumont at the time was 17, not
16. He was admitted as a member of the Inner Temple in 1600, and his
first translations, those from Ovid, were first published in 1602.
Therefore, if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither by age
nor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible to attend such a gathering
of august personages in the year 1601; but the point is unimportant.
THE ELIZABETHAN WRITERS
In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne's Essays. These were
first published in 1580 and successive editions were issued in the years
following, the third volume being published in 1588. "In England
Montaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph of
Shakespeare in a copy of Florio's translation showed his study of the
Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, and
especially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand the poet
was acquainted with the essayist." (Encyclopedia Brittanica.)
The company at the Queen's fireside discoursed of Lilly (or Lyly),
English dramatist and novelist of the Elizabethan era, whose novel,
Euphues, published in two parts, 'Euphues', or the 'Anatomy of Wit'
(1579) and 'Euphues and His England' (1580) was a literary sensation.
It is said to have influenced literary style for more than a quarter of a
century, and traces of its influence are found in Shakespeare. (Columbia
Encyclopedia).
The introduction of Ben Jonson into the party was wholly appropriate,
if one may call to witness some of Jonson's writings. The subject under
discussion was one that Jonson was acquainted with, in The Alchemist:
Act. I, Scene I,
FACE: Believe't I will.
SUBTLE: Thy worst. I fart at thee.
DOL COMMON: Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen, for love----
Act. 2, Scene I,
SIR EPICURE MAMMON: ....and then my poets, the same that writ so subtly
of the fart, whom I shall entertain still for that subject and again in
Bartholomew Fair
NIGHTENGALE: (sings a ballad)
Hear for your love, and buy for your money.
A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney.
A preservative again' the punk's evil.
Another goose-green starch, and the devil.
A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter
The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters.
What is't you buy?
The windmill blown down by the witche's fart,
Or Saint George, that, O! did break the dragon's heart.
GOOD OLD ENGLISH CUSTOM
That certain types of English society have not changed materially in
their freedom toward breaking wind in public can be noticed in some
comparatively recent literature. Frank Harris in My Life, Vol. 2,
Ch. XIII, tells of Lady Marriott, wife of a judge Advocate General,
being compelled to leave her own table, at which she was entertaining Sir
Robert Fowler, then the Lord Mayor of London, because of the suffocating
and nauseating odors there. He also tells of an instance in parliament,
and of a rather brilliant bon mot spoken upon that occasion.
"While Fowler was speaking Finch-Hatton had shewn signs of restlessness;
towards the end of the speech he had moved some three yards away from the
Baronet. As soon as Fowler sat down Finch-Hatton sprang up holding his
handkerchief to his nose:
"'Mr. Speaker,' he began, and was at once acknowledged by the Speaker,
for it was a maiden speech, and as such was entitled to precedence by the
courteous custom of the House, 'I know why the Right Honourable Member
from the City did not conclude his speech with a proposal. The only way
to conclude such a speech appropriately would be with a motion!'"
AEOLIAN CREPITATIONS
But society had apparently degenerated sadly in modern times, and even in
the era of Elizabeth, for at an earlier date it was a serious--nay,
capital--offense to break wind in the presence of majesty. The Emperor
Claudius, hearing that one who had suppressed the urge while paying him
court had suffered greatly thereby, "intended to issue an edict, allowing
to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distension
occasioned by flatulence:"
Martial, too (Book XII, Epigram LXXVII), tells of the embarrassment of
one who broke wind while praying in the Capitol,
"One day, while standing upright, addressing his prayers to Jupiter,
Aethon farted in the Capitol. Men laughed, but the Father of the Gods,
offended, condemned the guilty one to dine at home for three nights.
Since that time, miserable Aethon, when he wishes to enter the Capitol,
goes first to Paterclius' privies and farts ten or twenty times. Yet, in
spite of this precautionary crepitation, he salutes Jove with constricted
buttocks." Martial also (Book IV, Epigram LXXX), ridicules a woman who
was subject to the habit, saying,
"Your Bassa, Fabullus, has always a child at her side, calling it her
darling and her plaything; and yet--more wonder--she does not care for
children. What is the reason then. Bassa is apt to fart. (For which
she could blame the unsuspecting infant.)"
The tale is told, too, of a certain woman who performed an aeolian
crepitation at a dinner attended by the witty Monsignieur Dupanloup,
Bishop of Orleans, and that when, to cover up her lapse, she began to
scrape her feet upon the floor, and to make similar noises, the Bishop
said, "Do not trouble to find a rhyme, Madam!"
Nay, worthier names than those of any yet mentioned have discussed the
matter. Herodotus tells of one such which was the precursor to the fall
of an empire and a change of dynasty--that which Amasis discharges while
on horseback, and bids the envoy of Apries, King of Egypt, catch and
deliver to his royal master. Even the exact manner and posture of
Amasis, author of this insult, is described.
St. Augustine (The City of God, XIV:24) cites the instance of a man who
could command his rear trumpet to sound at will, which his learned
commentator fortifies with the example of one who could do so in tune!
Benjamin Franklin, in his "Letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels" has
canvassed suggested remedies for alleviating the stench attendant upon
these discharges:
"My Prize Question therefore should be: To discover some Drug, wholesome
and--not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that
shall render the natural discharges of Wind from our Bodies not only
inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes.
"That this is not a Chimerical Project & altogether impossible, may
appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of
means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale Flesh,
especially with much Addition of Onions, shall be able to afford a stink
that no Company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on
Vegetables only, shall have that Breath so pure as to be insensible of
the most delicate Noses; and if he can manage so as to avoid the Report,
he may anywhere give vent to his Griefs, unnoticed. But as there are
many to whom an entire Vegetable Diet would be inconvenient, & as a
little quick Lime thrown into a Jakes will correct the amazing Quantity
of fetid Air arising from the vast Mass of putrid Matter contained in
such Places, and render it pleasing to the Smell, who knows but that a
little Powder of Lime (or some other equivalent) taken in our Food, or
perhaps a Glass of Lime Water drank at Dinner, may have the same Effect
on the Air produced in and issuing from our Bowels?"
One curious commentary on the text is that Elizabeth should be so fond of
investigating into the authorship of the exhalation in question, when she
was inordinately fond of strong and sweet perfumes; in fact, she was
responsible for the tremendous increase in importations of scents into
England during her reign.
"YE BOKE OF YE SIEUR MICHAEL DE MONTAINE"
There is a curious admixture of error and misunderstanding in this part
of the sketch. In the first place, the story is borrowed from Montaigne,
where it is told inaccurately, and then further corrupted in the telling.
It was not the good widows of Perigord who wore the phallus upon their
coifs; it was the young married women, of the district near Montaigne's
home, who paraded it to view upon their foreheads, as a symbol, says our
essayist, "of the joy they derived therefrom." If they became widows,
they reversed its position, and covered it up with the rest of their
head-dress.
The "emperor" mentioned was not an emperor; he was Procolus, a native of
Albengue, on the Genoese coast, who, with Bonosus, led the unsuccessful
rebellion in Gaul against Emperor Probus. Even so keen a commentator as
Cotton has failed to note the error.
The empress (Montaigne does not say "his empress") was Messalina, third
wife of the Emperor Claudius, who was uncle of Caligula and foster-father
to Nero. Furthermore, in her case the charge is that she copulated with
twenty-five in a single night, and not twenty-two, as appears in the
text. Montaigne is right in his statistics, if original sources are
correct, whereas the author erred in transcribing the incident.
As for Proculus, it has been noted that he was associated with Bonosus,
who was as renowned in the field of Bacchus as was Proculus in that of
Venus (Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). The feat of
Proculus is told in his own words, in Vopiscus, (Hist. Augustine, p. 246)
where he recounts having captured one hundred Sarmatian virgins, and
unmaidened ten of them in one night, together with the happenings
subsequent thereto.
Concerning Messalina, there appears to be no question but that she was a
nymphomaniac, and that, while Empress of Rome, she participated in some
fearful debaucheries. The question is what to believe, for much that we
have heard about her is almost certainly apocryphal.
The author from whom Montaigne took his facts is the elder Pliny, who,
in his Natural History, Book X, Chapter 83, says, "Other animals become
sated with veneral pleasures; man hardly knows any satiety. Messalina,
the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of an
empress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the
most notorious women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute;
and the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day,
at the twenty-fifth embrace."
But Pliny, notwithstanding his great attainments, was often a retailer of
stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writer who
heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in the
Annals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlier
days of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as he may be, is little more
than an anecdotist. Juvenal, another of her detractors, is a prejudiced
witness, for he started out to satirize female vice, and naturally aimed
at high places. Dio also tells of Messalina's misdeeds, but his work is
under the same limitations as that of Suetonius. Furthermore, none but
Pliny mentions the excess under consideration.
However, "where there is much smoke there must be a little fire," and
based upon the superimposed testimony of the writers of the period, there
appears little doubt but that Messalina was a nymphomaniac, that she
prostituted herself in the public stews, naked, and with gilded nipples,
and that she did actually marry her chief adulterer, Silius, while
Claudius was absent at Ostia, and that the wedding was consummated in the
presence of a concourse of witnesses. This was "the straw that broke the
camel's back." Claudius hastened back to Rome, Silius was dispatched,
and Messalina, lacking the will-power to destroy herself, was killed when
an officer ran a sword through her abdomen, just as it appeared that
Claudius was about to relent.
"THEN SPAKE YE DAMNED WINDMILL, SIR WALTER"
Raleigh is thoroughly in character here; this observation is quite in
keeping with the general veracity of his account of his travels in
Guiana, one of the most mendacious accounts of adventure ever told.
Naturally, the scholarly researches of Westermarck have failed to
discover this people; perhaps Lady Helen might best be protected among
the Jibaros of Ecuador, where the men marry when approaching forty.
Ben Jonson in his Conversations observed "That Sr. W. Raughlye esteemed
more of fame than of conscience."
YE VIRGIN QUEENE
Grave historians have debated for centuries the pretensions of Elizabeth
to the title, "The Virgin Queen," and it is utterly impossible to dispose
of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appears to be in
the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attending the
marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, and Elizabeth
finally announced that she would become wedded to the English nation,
and she wore a ring in token thereof until her death. However, more or
less open liaisons with Essex and Leicester, as well as a host of lesser
courtiers, her ardent temperament, and her imperious temper, are
indications that cannot be denied in determining any estimate upon the
point in question.
Ben Jonson in his Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden
says,
"Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass;
they painted her, and sometymes would vermillion her nose. She had
allwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and
she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herself
fortunate. That she had a membrana on her, which made her uncapable of
man, though for her delight she tried many. At the comming over of
Monsieur, there was a French Chirurgion who took in hand to cut it, yett
fear stayed her, and his death."
It was a subject which again intrigued Clemens when he was abroad with
W. H. Fisher, whom Mark employed to "nose up" everything pertaining to
Queen Elizabeth's manly character.
"'BOCCACCIO HATH A STORY"
The author does not pay any great compliment to Raleigh's memory here.
There is no such tale in all Boccaccio. The nearest related incident
forms the subject matter of Dineo's novel (the fourth) of the First day
of the Decameron.
OLD SR. NICHOLAS THROGMORTON
The incident referred to appears to be Sir Nicholas Throgmorton's trial
for complicity in the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey Queen of England,
a charge of which he was acquitted. This so angered Queen Mary that she
imprisoned him in the Tower, and fined the jurors from one to two
thousand pounds each. Her action terrified succeeding juries, so that
Sir Nicholas's brother was condemned on no stronger evidence than that
which had failed to prevail before. While Sir Nicholas's defense may
have been brilliant, it must be admitted that the evidence was weak.
He was later released from the Tower, and under Elizabeth was one of a
group of commissioners sent by that princess into Scotland, to foment
trouble with Mary, Queen of Scots. When the attempt became known,
Elizabeth repudiated the acts of her agents, but Sir Nicholas, having
anticipated this possibility, had sufficient foresight to secure
endorsement of his plan by the Council, and so outwitted Elizabeth, who
was playing a two-faced role, and Cecil, one of the greatest statesmen
who ever held the post of principal minister. Perhaps it was this
incident to which the company referred, which might in part explain
Elizabeth's rejoinder. However, he had been restored to confidence ere
this, and had served as ambassador to France.
"TO SAVE HIS DOTER'S MAIDENHEDDE"
Elizabeth Throckmorton (or Throgmorton), daughter of Sir Nicholas, was
one of Elizabeth's maids of honor. When it was learned that she had been
debauched by Raleigh, Sir Walter was recalled from his command at sea by
the Queen, and compelled to marry the girl. This was not "in that olde
daie," as the text has it, for it happened only eight years before the
date of this purported "conversation," when Elizabeth was sixty years
old.
PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
The various printings of 1601 reveal how Mark Twain's 'Fireside
Conversation' has become a part of the American printer's lore. But more
important, its many printings indicate that it has become a popular bit
of American folklore, particularly for men and women who have a feeling
for Mark Twain. Apparently it appeals to the typographer, who devotes to
it his worthy art, as well as to the job printer, who may pull a crudely
printed proof. The gay procession of curious printings of 1601 is unique
in the history of American printing.
Indeed, the story of the various printings of 1601 is almost legendary.
In the days of the "jour." printer, so I am told, well-thumbed copies
were carried from print shop to print shop. For more than a quarter
century now it has been one of the chief sources of enjoyment for
printers' devils; and many a young rascal has learned about life from
this Fireside Conversation. It has been printed all over the country,
and if report is to be believed, in foreign countries as well. Because
of the many surreptitious and anonymous printings it is exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible, to compile a complete bibliography. Many
printings lack the name of the publisher, the printer, the place or date
of printing. In many instances some of the data, through the patient
questioning of fellow collectors, has been obtained and supplied.
1. [Date, 1601.] Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the
Time of the Tudors.
DESCRIPTION: Pamphlet, pp. [ 1 ]-8, without wrappers or cover, measuring
7x8 inches. The title is Set in caps. and small caps.
The excessively rare first printing, printed in Cleveland, 1880, at the
instance of Alexander Gunn, friend of John Hay. Only four copies are
believed to have been printed, of which, it is said now, the only known
copy is located in the Willard S. Morse collection.
2. Date 1601. Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the
time of the Tudors.
(Mem.--The following is supposed to be an extract from the diary of the
Pepys of that day, the same being cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth. It is
supposed that he is of ancient and noble lineage; that he despises these
literary canaille; that his soul consumes with wrath to see the Queen
stooping to talk with such; and that the old man feels his nobility
defiled by contact with Shakespeare, etc., and yet he has got to stay
there till Her Majesty chooses to dismiss him.)
DESCRIPTION: Title as above, verso blank; pp. [i]-xi, text; verso p. xi
blank. About 8 x 10 inches, printed on handmade linen paper soaked in
weak coffee, wrappers. The title is set in caps and small caps.
COLOPHON: at the foot of p. xi: Done Att Ye Academie Preffe; M DCCC LXXX
II.
The privately printed West Point edition, the first printing of the text
authorized by Mark Twain, of which but fifty copies were printed. The
story of this printing is fully told in the Introduction.
3. Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The
Tudors from Ye Diary of Ye Cupbearer to her Maisty Queen Elizabeth.
[design] Imprinted by Ye Puritan Press At Ye Sign of Ye Jolly Virgin
1601.
DESCRIPTION: 2 blank leaves; p. [i] blank, p. [ii] fronds., p. [iii]
title [as above], p. [iv] "Mem.", pp. 1-[25] text, I blank leaf. 4 3/4
by 6 1/4 inches, printed in a modern version of the Caxton black letter
type, on M.B.M. French handmade paper. The frontispiece, a woodcut by
A. E. Curtis, is a portrait of the cup-bearer. Bound in buff-grey
boards, buckram back. Cover title reads, in pale red ink, Caxton type,
Conversation As It Was By The Social Fire-side In The Time Of The Tudors.
[The Byway Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1901, 120 copies.]
Probably the first published edition.
Later, in 1916, a facsimile edition of this printing was published in
Chicago from plates.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 1601, by Mark Twain
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT CARNIVAL OF CRIME IN CONNECTICUT
by Mark Twain
I was feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match to my cigar, and just
then the morning's mail was handed in. The first superscription I
glanced at was in a handwriting that sent a thrill of pleasure through
and through me. It was Aunt Mary's; and she was the person I loved and
honored most in all the world, outside of my own household. She had been
my boyhood's idol; maturity, which is fatal to so many enchantments, had
not been able to dislodge her from her pedestal; no, it had only
justified her right to be there, and placed her dethronement permanently
among the impossibilities. To show how strong her influence over me was,
I will observe that long after everybody else's "do-stop-smoking" had
ceased to affect me in the slightest degree, Aunt Mary could still stir
my torpid conscience into faint signs of life when she touched upon the
matter. But all things have their limit in this world. A happy day came
at last, when even Aunt Mary's words could no longer move me. I was not
merely glad to see that day arrive; I was more than glad--I was grateful;
for when its sun had set, the one alloy that was able to mar my enjoyment
of my aunt's society was gone. The remainder of her stay with us that
winter was in every way a delight. Of course she pleaded with me just as
earnestly as ever, after that blessed day, to quit my pernicious habit,
but to no purpose whatever; the moment she opened the subject I at once
became calmly, peacefully, contentedly indifferent--absolutely,
adamantinely indifferent. Consequently the closing weeks of that
memorable visit melted away as pleasantly as a dream, they were so
freighted for me with tranquil satisfaction. I could not have enjoyed my
pet vice more if my gentle tormentor had been a smoker herself, and an
advocate of the practice. Well, the sight of her handwriting reminded me
that I way getting very hungry to see her again. I easily guessed what I
should find in her letter. I opened it. Good! just as I expected; she
was coming! Coming this very day, too, and by the morning train; I might
expect her any moment.
I said to myself, "I am thoroughly happy and content now. If my most
pitiless enemy could appear before me at this moment, I would freely
right any wrong I may have done him."
Straightway the door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered. He
was not more than two feet high. He seemed to be about forty years old.
Every feature and every inch of him was a trifle out of shape; and so,
while one could not put his finger upon any particular part and say,
"This is a conspicuous deformity," the spectator perceived that this
little person was a deformity as a whole--a vague, general, evenly
blended, nicely adjusted deformity. There was a fox-like cunning in the
face and the sharp little eyes, and also alertness and malice. And yet,
this vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and
ill-defined resemblance to me! It was dully perceptible in the mean
form, the countenance, and even the clothes, gestures, manner, and
attitudes of the creature. He was a farfetched, dim suggestion of a
burlesque upon me, a caricature of me in little. One thing about him
struck me forcibly and most unpleasantly: he was covered all over with a
fuzzy, greenish mold, such as one sometimes sees upon mildewed bread.
The sight of it was nauseating.
He stepped along with a chipper air, and flung himself into a doll's
chair in a very free-and-easy way, without waiting to be asked. He
tossed his hat into the waste-basket. He picked up my old chalk pipe
from the floor, gave the stem a wipe or two on his knee, filled the bowl
from the tobacco-box at his side, and said to me in a tone of pert
command:
"Gimme a match!"
I blushed to the roots of my hair; partly with indignation, but mainly
because it somehow seemed to me that this whole performance was very like
an exaggeration of conduct which I myself had sometimes been guilty of in
my intercourse with familiar friends--but never, never with strangers, I
observed to myself. I wanted to kick the pygmy into the fire, but some
incomprehensible sense of being legally and legitimately under his
authority forced me to obey his order. He applied the match to the pipe,
took a contemplative whiff or two, and remarked, in an irritatingly
familiar way:
"Seems to me it's devilish odd weather for this time of year."
I flushed again, and in anger and humiliation as before; for the language
was hardly an exaggeration of some that I have uttered in my day, and
moreover was delivered in a tone of voice and with an exasperating drawl
that had the seeming of a deliberate travesty of my style. Now there is
nothing I am quite so sensitive about as a mocking imitation of my
drawling infirmity of speech. I spoke up sharply and said:
"Look here, you miserable ash-cat! you will have to give a little more
attention to your manners, or I will throw you out of the window!"
The manikin smiled a smile of malicious content and security, puffed a
whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me, and said, with a still more
elaborate drawl:
"Come--go gently now; don't put on too many airs with your betters."
This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me, too,
for a moment. The pygmy contemplated me awhile with his weasel eyes,
and then said, in a peculiarly sneering way:
"You turned a tramp away from your door this morning."
I said crustily:
"Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. How do you know?"
"Well, I know. It isn't any matter how I know."
"Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door--what of it?"
"Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied to him."
"I didn't! That is, I--"
"Yes, but you did; you lied to him."
I felt a guilty pang--in truth, I had felt it forty times before that
tramp had traveled a block from my door--but still I resolved to make a
show of feeling slandered; so I said:
"This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp--"
"There--wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him.
You said the cook was gone down-town and there was nothing left from
breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door, and plenty
of provisions behind her."
This astonishing accuracy silenced me; and it filled me with wondering
speculations, too, as to how this cub could have got his information.
Of course he could have culled the conversation from the tramp, but by
what sort of magic had he contrived to find out about the concealed cook?
Now the dwarf spoke again:
"It was rather pitiful, rather small, in you to refuse to read that poor
young woman's manuscript the other day, and give her an opinion as to its
literary value; and she had come so far, too, and so hopefully. Now
wasn't it?"
I felt like a cur! And I had felt so every time the thing had recurred
to my mind, I may as well confess. I flushed hotly and said:
"Look here, have you nothing better to do than prowl around prying into
other people's business? Did that girl tell you that?"
"Never mind whether she did or not. The main thing is, you did that
contemptible thing. And you felt ashamed of it afterward. Aha! you feel
ashamed of it now!"
This was a sort of devilish glee. With fiery earnestness I responded:
"I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent
to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's
verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose
it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the
way for its infliction upon the world: I said that the great public was
the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort,
and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the
outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's
decision anyway."
"Yes, you said all that. So you did, you juggling, small-souled
shuffler! And yet when the happy hopefulness faded out of that poor
girl's face, when you saw her furtively slip beneath her shawl the scroll
she had so patiently and honestly scribbled at--so ashamed of her darling
now, so proud of it before--when you saw the gladness go out of her eyes
and the tears come there, when she crept away so humbly who had come
so--"
"Oh, peace! peace! peace! Blister your merciless tongue, haven't all
these thoughts tortured me enough without your coming here to fetch them
back again!"
Remorse! remorse! It seemed to me that it would eat the very heart out
of me! And yet that small fiend only sat there leering at me with joy
and contempt, and placidly chuckling. Presently he began to speak again.
Every sentence was an accusation, and every accusation a truth. Every
clause was freighted with sarcasm and derision, every slow-dropping word
burned like vitriol. The dwarf reminded me of times when I had flown at
my children in anger and punished them for faults which a little inquiry
would have taught me that others, and not they, had committed.
He reminded me of how I had disloyally allowed old friends to be traduced
in my hearing, and been too craven to utter a word in their defense.
He reminded me of many dishonest things which I had done; of many which I
had procured to be done by children and other irresponsible persons; of
some which I had planned, thought upon, and longed to do, and been kept
from the performance by fear of consequences only. With exquisite
cruelty he recalled to my mind, item by item, wrongs and unkindnesses I
had inflicted and humiliations I had put upon friends since dead, "who
died thinking of those injuries, maybe, and grieving over them," he
added, by way of poison to the stab.
"For instance," said he, "take the case of your younger brother, when you
two were boys together, many a long year ago. He always lovingly trusted
in you with a fidelity that your manifold treacheries were not able to
shake. He followed you about like a dog, content to suffer wrong and
abuse if he might only be with you; patient under these injuries so long
as it was your hand that inflicted them. The latest picture you have of
him in health and strength must be such a comfort to you! You pledged
your honor that if he would let you blindfold him no harm should come to
him; and then, giggling and choking over the rare fun of the joke, you
led him to a brook thinly glazed with ice, and pushed him in; and how you
did laugh! Man, you will never forget the gentle, reproachful look he
gave you as he struggled shivering out, if you live a thousand years!
Oh! you see it now, you see it now!"
"Beast, I have seen it a million times, and shall see it a million more!
and may you rot away piecemeal, and suffer till doomsday what I suffer
now, for bringing it back to me again!"
The dwarf chuckled contentedly, and went on with his accusing history of
my career. I dropped into a moody, vengeful state, and suffered in
silence under the merciless lash. At last this remark of his gave me a
sudden rouse:
"Two months ago, on a Tuesday, you woke up, away in the night, and fell
to thinking, with shame, about a peculiarly mean and pitiful act of yours
toward a poor ignorant Indian in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains in the
winter of eighteen hundred and--"
"Stop a moment, devil! Stop! Do you mean to tell me that even my very
thoughts are not hidden from you?"
"It seems to look like that. Didn't you think the thoughts I have just
mentioned?"
"If I didn't, I wish I may never breathe again! Look here, friend--look
me in the eye. Who are you?"
"Well, who do you think?"
"I think you are Satan himself. I think you are the devil."
"No."
"No? Then who can you be?"
"Would you really like to know?"
"Indeed I would."
"Well, I am your Conscience!"
In an instant I was in a blaze of joy and exultation. I sprang at the
creature, roaring:
"Curse you, I have wished a hundred million times that you were tangible,
and that I could get my hands on your throat once! Oh, but I will wreak
a deadly vengeance on--"
Folly! Lightning does not move more quickly than my Conscience did!
He darted aloft so suddenly that in the moment my fingers clutched the
empty air he was already perched on the top of the high bookcase, with
his thumb at his nose in token of derision. I flung the poker at him,
and missed. I fired the bootjack. In a blind rage I flew from place to
place, and snatched and hurled any missile that came handy; the storm of
books, inkstands, and chunks of coal gloomed the air and beat about the
manikin's perch relentlessly, but all to no purpose; the nimble figure
dodged every shot; and not only that, but burst into a cackle of
sarcastic and triumphant laughter as I sat down exhausted. While I
puffed and gasped with fatigue and excitement, my Conscience talked to
this effect:
"My good slave, you are curiously witless--no, I mean characteristically
so. In truth, you are always consistent, always yourself, always an ass.
Other wise it must have occurred to you that if you attempted this murder
with a sad heart and a heavy conscience, I would droop under the
burdening in influence instantly. Fool, I should have weighed a ton, and
could not have budged from the floor; but instead, you are so cheerfully
anxious to kill me that your conscience is as light as a feather; hence I
am away up here out of your reach. I can almost respect a mere ordinary
sort of fool; but you pah!"
I would have given anything, then, to be heavyhearted, so that I could
get this person down from there and take his life, but I could no more be
heavy-hearted over such a desire than I could have sorrowed over its
accomplishment. So I could only look longingly up at my master, and rave
at the ill luck that denied me a heavy conscience the one only time that
I had ever wanted such a thing in my life. By and by I got to musing
over the hour's strange adventure, and of course my human curiosity began
to work. I set myself to framing in my mind some questions for this
fiend to answer. Just then one of my boys entered, leaving the door open
behind him, and exclaimed:
"My! what has been going on here? The bookcase is all one riddle of--"
I sprang up in consternation, and shouted:
"Out of this! Hurry! jump! Fly! Shut the door! Quick, or my
Conscience will get away!"
The door slammed to, and I locked it. I glanced up and was grateful, to
the bottom of my heart, to see that my owner was still my prisoner. I
said:
"Hang you, I might have lost you! Children are the heedlessest
creatures. But look here, friend, the boy did not seem to notice you at
all; how is that?"
"For a very good reason. I am invisible to all but you."
I made a mental note of that piece of information with a good deal of
satisfaction. I could kill this miscreant now, if I got a chance, and no
one would know it. But this very reflection made me so lighthearted that
my Conscience could hardly keep his seat, but was like to float aloft
toward the ceiling like a toy balloon. I said, presently:
"Come, my Conscience, let us be friendly. Let us fly a flag of truce for
a while. I am suffering to ask you some questions."
"Very well. Begin."
"Well, then, in the first place, why were you never visible to me
before?"
"Because you never asked to see me before; that is, you never asked in
the right spirit and the proper form before. You were just in the right
spirit this time, and when you called for your most pitiless enemy I was
that person by a very large majority, though you did not suspect it."
"Well, did that remark of mine turn you into flesh and blood?"
"No. It only made me visible to you. I am unsubstantial, just as other
spirits are."
This remark prodded me with a sharp misgiving.
If he was unsubstantial, how was I going to kill him? But I dissembled,
and said persuasively:
"Conscience, it isn't sociable of you to keep at such a distance. Come
down and take another smoke."
This was answered with a look that was full of derision, and with this
observation added:
"Come where you can get at me and kill me? The invitation is declined
with thanks."
"All right," said I to myself; "so it seems a spirit can be killed, after
all; there will be one spirit lacking in this world, presently, or I lose
my guess." Then I said aloud:
"Friend--"
"There; wait a bit. I am not your friend. I am your enemy; I am not
your equal, I am your master, Call me 'my lord,' if you please. You are
too familiar."
"I don't like such titles. I am willing to call you, sir. That is as
far as--"
"We will have no argument about this. Just obey, that is all. Go on
with your chatter."
"Very well, my lord--since nothing but my lord will suit you--I was going
to ask you how long you will be visible to me?"
"Always!"
I broke out with strong indignation: "This is simply an outrage. That is
what I think of it! You have dogged, and dogged, and dogged me, all the
days of my life, invisible. That was misery enough, now to have such a
looking thing as you tagging after me like another shadow all the rest of
my day is an intolerable prospect. You have my opinion my lord, make the
most of it."
"My lad, there was never so pleased a conscience in this world as I was
when you made me visible. It gives me an inconceivable advantage. Now I
can look you straight in the eye, and call you names, and leer at you,
jeer at you, sneer at you; and you know what eloquence there is in
visible gesture and expression, more especially when the effect is
heightened by audible speech. I shall always address you henceforth in
your o-w-n s-n-i-v-e-l-i-n-g d-r-a-w-l--baby!"
I let fly with the coal-hod. No result. My lord said:
"Come, come! Remember the flag of truce!"
"Ah, I forgot that. I will try to be civil; and you try it, too, for a
novelty. The idea of a civil conscience! It is a good joke; an
excellent joke. All the consciences I have ever heard of were nagging,
badgering, fault-finding, execrable savages! Yes; and always in a sweat
about some poor little insignificant trifle or other--destruction catch
the lot of them, I say! I would trade mine for the smallpox and seven
kinds of consumption, and be glad of the chance. Now tell me, why is it
that a conscience can't haul a man over the coals once, for an offense,
and then let him alone? Why is it that it wants to keep on pegging at
him, day and night and night and day, week in and week out, forever and
ever, about the same old thing? There is no sense in that, and no reason
in it. I think a conscience that will act like that is meaner than the
very dirt itself."
"Well, WE like it; that suffices."
"Do you do it with the honest intent to improve a man?"
That question produced a sarcastic smile, and this reply:
"No, sir. Excuse me. We do it simply because it is 'business.' It is
our trade. The purpose of it is to improve the man, but we are merely
disinterested agents. We are appointed by authority, and haven't
anything to say in the matter. We obey orders and leave the consequences
where they belong. But I am willing to admit this much: we do crowd the
orders a trifle when we get a chance, which is most of the time.
We enjoy it. We are instructed to remind a man a few times of an error;
and I don't mind acknowledging that we try to give pretty good measure.
And when we get hold of a man of a peculiarly sensitive nature, oh, but
we do haze him! I have consciences to come all the way from China and
Russia to see a person of that kind put through his paces, on a special
occasion. Why, I knew a man of that sort who had accidentally crippled a
mulatto baby; the news went abroad, and I wish you may never commit
another sin if the consciences didn't flock from all over the earth to
enjoy the fun and help his master exorcise him. That man walked the
floor in torture for forty-eight hours, without eating or sleeping, and
then blew his brains out. The child was perfectly well again in three
weeks."
"Well, you are a precious crew, not to put it too strong. I think I
begin to see now why you have always been a trifle inconsistent with me.
In your anxiety to get all the juice you can out of a sin, you make a man
repent of it in three or four different ways. For instance, you found
fault with me for lying to that tramp, and I suffered over that. But it
was only yesterday that I told a tramp the square truth, to wit, that,
it being regarded as bad citizenship to encourage vagrancy, I would give
him nothing. What did you do then: Why, you made me say to myself, 'Ah,
it would have been so much kinder and more blameless to ease him off with
a little white lie, and send him away feeling that if he could not have
bread, the gentle treatment was at least something to be grateful for!'
Well, I suffered all day about that. Three days before I had fed a
tramp, and fed him freely, supposing it a virtuous act. Straight off you
said, 'Oh, false citizen, to have fed a tramp!' and I suffered as usual.
I gave a tramp work; you objected to it--after the contract was made,
of course; you never speak up beforehand. Next, I refused a tramp work;
you objected to that. Next, I proposed to kill a tramp; you kept me
awake all night, oozing remorse at every pore. Sure I was going to be
right this time, I sent the next tramp away with my benediction; and I
wish you may live as long as I do, if you didn't make me smart all night
again because I didn't kill him. Is there any way of satisfying that
malignant invention which is called a conscience?"
"Ha, ha! this is luxury! Go on!"
"But come, now, answer me that question. Is there any way?"
"Well, none that I propose to tell you, my son. Ass! I don't care what
act you may turn your hand to, I can straightway whisper a word in your
ear and make you think you have committed a dreadful meanness. It is my
business--and my joy--to make you repent of everything you do. If I have
fooled away any opportunities it was not intentional; I beg to assure you
it was not intentional!"
"Don't worry; you haven't missed a trick that I know of. I never did a
thing in all my life, virtuous or otherwise, that I didn't repent of in
twenty-four hours. In church last Sunday I listened to a charity sermon.
My first impulse was to give three hundred and fifty dollars; I repented
of that and reduced it a hundred; repented of that and reduced it another
hundred; repented of that and reduced it another hundred; repented of
that and reduced the remaining fifty to twenty-five; repented of that and
came down to fifteen; repented of that and dropped to two dollars and a
half; when the plate came around at last, I repented once more and
contributed ten cents. Well, when I got home, I did wish to goodness I
had that ten cents back again! You never did let me get through a
charity sermon without having something to sweat about."
"Oh, and I never shall, I never shall. You can always depend on me."
"I think so. Many and many's the restless night I've wanted to take you
by the neck. If I could only get hold of you now!"
"Yes, no doubt. But I am not an ass; I am only the saddle of an ass.
But go on, go on. You entertain me more than I like to confess."
I am glad of that. (You will not mind my lying a little, to keep in
practice.) Look here; not to be too personal, I think you are about the
shabbiest and most contemptible little shriveled-up reptile that can be
imagined. I am grateful enough that you are invisible to other people,
for I should die with shame to be seen with such a mildewed monkey of a
conscience as you are. Now if you were five or six feet high, and--"
"Oh, come! who is to blame?"
"I don't know."
"Why, you are; nobody else."
"Confound you, I wasn't consulted about your personal appearance."
"I don't care, you had a good deal to do with it, nevertheless. When you
were eight or nine years old, I was seven feet high, and as pretty as a
picture."
"I wish you had died young! So you have grown the wrong way, have you?"
"Some of us grow one way and some the other. You had a large conscience
once; if you've a small conscience now I reckon there are reasons for it.
However, both of us are to blame, you and I. You see, you used to be
conscientious about a great many things; morbidly so, I may say. It was
a great many years ago. You probably do not remember it now. Well,
I took a great interest in my work, and I so enjoyed the anguish which
certain pet sins of yours afflicted you with that I kept pelting at you
until I rather overdid the matter. You began to rebel. Of course I
began to lose ground, then, and shrivel a little--diminish in stature,
get moldy, and grow deformed. The more I weakened, the more stubbornly
you fastened on to those particular sins; till at last the places on my
person that represent those vices became as callous as shark-skin. Take
smoking, for instance. I played that card a little too long, and I lost.
When people plead with you at this late day to quit that vice, that old
callous place seems to enlarge and cover me all over like a shirt of
mail. It exerts a mysterious, smothering effect; and presently I, your
faithful hater, your devoted Conscience, go sound asleep! Sound? It is
no name for it. I couldn't hear it thunder at such a time. You have
some few other vices--perhaps eighty, or maybe ninety--that affect me in
much the same way."
"This is flattering; you must be asleep a good part of your time."
"Yes, of late years. I should be asleep all the time but for the help I
get."
"Who helps you?"
"Other consciences. Whenever a person whose conscience I am acquainted
with tries to plead with you about the vices you are callous to, I get my
friend to give his client a pang concerning some villainy of his own,
and that shuts off his meddling and starts him off to hunt personal
consolation. My field of usefulness is about trimmed down to tramps,
budding authoresses, and that line of goods now; but don't you worry
--I'll harry you on theirs while they last! Just you put your trust in
me."
"I think I can. But if you had only been good enough to mention these
facts some thirty years ago, I should have turned my particular attention
to sin, and I think that by this time I should not only have had you
pretty permanently asleep on the entire list of human vices, but reduced
to the size of a homeopathic pill, at that. That is about the style of
conscience I am pining for. If I only had you shrunk you down to a
homeopathic pill, and could get my hands on you, would I put you in a
glass case for a keepsake? No, sir. I would give you to a yellow dog!
That is where you ought to be--you and all your tribe. You are not fit
to be in society, in my opinion. Now another question. Do you know a
good many consciences in this section?"
"Plenty of them."
"I would give anything to see some of them! Could you bring them here?
And would they be visible to me?"
"Certainly not."
"I suppose I ought to have known that without asking. But no matter, you
can describe them. Tell me about my neighbor Thompson's conscience,
please."
"Very well. I know him intimately; have known him many years. I knew
him when he was eleven feet high and of a faultless figure. But he is
very pasty and tough and misshapen now, and hardly ever interests himself
about anything. As to his present size--well, he sleeps in a cigar-box."
"Likely enough. There are few smaller, meaner men in this region than
Hugh Thompson. Do you know Robinson's conscience?"
"Yes. He is a shade under four and a half feet high; used to be a blond;
is a brunette now, but still shapely and comely."
"Well, Robinson is a good fellow. Do you know Tom Smith's conscience?"
"I have known him from childhood. He was thirteen inches high, and
rather sluggish, when he was two years old--as nearly all of us are at
that age. He is thirty-seven feet high now, and the stateliest figure in
America. His legs are still racked with growing-pains, but he has a good
time, nevertheless. Never sleeps. He is the most active and energetic
member of the New England Conscience Club; is president of it. Night and
day you can find him pegging away at Smith, panting with his labor,
sleeves rolled up, countenance all alive with enjoyment. He has got his
victim splendidly dragooned now. He can make poor Smith imagine that the
most innocent little thing he does is an odious sin; and then he sets to
work and almost tortures the soul out of him about it."
"Smith is the noblest man in all this section, and the purest; and yet is
always breaking his heart because he cannot be good! Only a conscience
could find pleasure in heaping agony upon a spirit like that. Do you
know my aunt Mary's conscience?"
"I have seen her at a distance, but am not acquainted with her. She
lives in the open air altogether, because no door is large enough to
admit her."
"I can believe that. Let me see. Do you know the conscience of that
publisher who once stole some sketches of mine for a 'series' of his, and
then left me to pay the law expenses I had to incur in order to choke him
off?"
"Yes. He has a wide fame. He was exhibited, a month ago, with some
other antiquities, for the benefit of a recent Member of the Cabinet's
conscience that was starving in exile. Tickets and fares were high, but
I traveled for nothing by pretending to be the conscience of an editor,
and got in for half-price by representing myself to be the conscience of
a clergyman. However, the publisher's conscience, which was to have been
the main feature of the entertainment, was a failure--as an exhibition.
He was there, but what of that? The management had provided a microscope
with a magnifying power of only thirty thousand diameters, and so nobody
got to see him, after all. There was great and general dissatisfaction,
of course, but--"
Just here there was an eager footstep on the stair; I opened the door,
and my aunt Mary burst into the room. It was a joyful meeting and a
cheery bombardment of questions and answers concerning family matters
ensued. By and by my aunt said:
"But I am going to abuse you a little now. You promised me, the day I
saw you last, that you would look after the needs of the poor family
around the corner as faithfully as I had done it myself. Well, I found
out by accident that you failed of your promise. Was that right?"
In simple truth, I never had thought of that family a second time! And
now such a splintering pang of guilt shot through me! I glanced up at my
Conscience. Plainly, my heavy heart was affecting him. His body was
drooping forward; he seemed about to fall from the bookcase. My aunt
continued:
"And think how you have neglected my poor protege at the almshouse, you
dear, hard-hearted promise-breaker!" I blushed scarlet, and my tongue
was tied. As the sense of my guilty negligence waxed sharper and
stronger, my Conscience began to sway heavily back and forth; and when my
aunt, after a little pause, said in a grieved tone, "Since you never once
went to see her, maybe it will not distress you now to know that that
poor child died, months ago, utterly friendless and forsaken!"
My Conscience could no longer bear up under the weight of my sufferings,
but tumbled headlong from his high perch and struck the floor with a
dull, leaden thump. He lay there writhing with pain and quaking with
apprehension, but straining every muscle in frantic efforts to get up.
In a fever of expectancy I sprang to the door, locked it, placed my back
against it, and bent a watchful gaze upon my struggling master. Already
my fingers were itching to begin their murderous work.
"Oh, what can be the matter!" exclaimed by aunt, shrinking from me, and
following with her frightened eyes the direction of mine. My breath was
coming in short, quick gasps now, and my excitement was almost
uncontrollable. My aunt cried out:
"Oh, do not look so! You appal me! Oh, what can the matter be? What is
it you see? Why do you stare so? Why do you work your fingers like
that?"
"Peace, woman!" I said, in a hoarse whisper. "Look elsewhere; pay no
attention to me; it is nothing--nothing. I am often this way. It will
pass in a moment. It comes from smoking too much."
My injured lord was up, wild-eyed with terror, and trying to hobble
toward the door. I could hardly breathe, I was so wrought up. My aunt
wrung her hands, and said:
"Oh, I knew how it would be; I knew it would come to this at last!
Oh, I implore you to crush out that fatal habit while it may yet be time!
You must not, you shall not be deaf to my supplications longer!"
My struggling Conscience showed sudden signs of weariness! "Oh, promise
me you will throw off this hateful slavery of tobacco!" My Conscience
began to reel drowsily, and grope with his hands--enchanting spectacle!
"I beg you, I beseech you, I implore you! Your reason is deserting you!
There is madness in your eye! It flames with frenzy! Oh, hear me, hear
me, and be saved! See, I plead with you on my very knees!" As she sank
before me my Conscience reeled again, and then drooped languidly to the
floor, blinking toward me a last supplication for mercy, with heavy eyes.
"Oh, promise, or you are lost! Promise, and be redeemed! Promise!
Promise and live!" With a long-drawn sigh my conquered Conscience closed
his eyes and fell fast asleep!
With an exultant shout I sprang past my aunt, and in an instant I had my
lifelong foe by the throat. After so many years of waiting and longing,
he was mine at last. I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent the
fragments to bits. I cast the bleeding rubbish into the fire, and drew
into my nostrils the grateful incense of my burnt-offering. At last, and
forever, my Conscience was dead!
I was a free man! I turned upon my poor aunt, who was almost petrified
with terror, and shouted:
"Out of this with your paupers, your charities, your reforms, your
pestilent morals! You behold before you a man whose life-conflict is
done, whose soul is at peace; a man whose heart is dead to sorrow, dead
to suffering, dead to remorse; a man WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE! In my joy I
spare you, though I could throttle you and never feel a pang! Fly!"
She fled. Since that day my life is all bliss. Bliss, unalloyed bliss.
Nothing in all the world could persuade me to have a conscience again.
I settled all my old outstanding scores, and began the world anew.
I killed thirty-eight persons during the first two weeks--all of them on
account of ancient grudges. I burned a dwelling that interrupted my
view. I swindled a widow and some orphans out of their last cow, which
is a very good one, though not thoroughbred, I believe. I have also
committed scores of crimes, of various kinds, and have enjoyed my work
exceedingly, whereas it would formerly have broken my heart and turned my
hair gray, I have no doubt.
In conclusion, I wish to state, by way of advertisement, that medical
colleges desiring assorted tramps for scientific purposes, either by the
gross, by cord measurement, or per ton, will do well to examine the lot
in my cellar before purchasing elsewhere, as these were all selected and
prepared by myself, and can be had at a low rate, because I wish to
clear, out my stock and get ready for the spring trade.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Facts Concerning The Recent
Carnival Of Crime In Connecticut, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
BY
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
P R E F A C E
MOST of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or
two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were
schoolmates of mine. Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but
not from an individual--he is a combination of the characteristics of
three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of
architecture.
The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children
and slaves in the West at the period of this story--that is to say,
thirty or forty years ago.
Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and
girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account,
for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what
they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked,
and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in.
THE AUTHOR.
HARTFORD, 1876.
T O M S A W Y E R
CHAPTER I
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the
room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her
state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not
service--she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"
She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom.
So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and
shouted:
"Y-o-u-u TOM!"
There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to
seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.
"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What IS that
truck?"
"I don't know, aunt."
"Well, I know. It's jam--that's what it is. Forty times I've said if
you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that switch."
The switch hovered in the air--the peril was desperate--
"My! Look behind you, aunt!"
The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The
lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and
disappeared over it.
His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle
laugh.
"Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks
enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old
fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks,
as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days,
and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how
long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he
can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down
again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy,
and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile
the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for
us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my
own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash
him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so,
and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man
that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the
Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, *
and [* Southwestern for "afternoon"] I'll just be obleeged to make him
work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work
Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more
than he hates anything else, and I've GOT to do some of my duty by him,
or I'll be the ruination of the child."
Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home
barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's
wood and split the kindlings before supper--at least he was there in
time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the
work. Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already
through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a
quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways.
While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity
offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and
very deep--for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like
many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she
was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she
loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low
cunning. Said she:
"Tom, it was middling warm in school, warn't it?"
"Yes'm."
"Powerful warm, warn't it?"
"Yes'm."
"Didn't you want to go in a-swimming, Tom?"
A bit of a scare shot through Tom--a touch of uncomfortable suspicion.
He searched Aunt Polly's face, but it told him nothing. So he said:
"No'm--well, not very much."
The old lady reached out her hand and felt Tom's shirt, and said:
"But you ain't too warm now, though." And it flattered her to reflect
that she had discovered that the shirt was dry without anybody knowing
that that was what she had in her mind. But in spite of her, Tom knew
where the wind lay, now. So he forestalled what might be the next move:
"Some of us pumped on our heads--mine's damp yet. See?"
Aunt Polly was vexed to think she had overlooked that bit of
circumstantial evidence, and missed a trick. Then she had a new
inspiration:
"Tom, you didn't have to undo your shirt collar where I sewed it, to
pump on your head, did you? Unbutton your jacket!"
The trouble vanished out of Tom's face. He opened his jacket. His
shirt collar was securely sewed.
"Bother! Well, go 'long with you. I'd made sure you'd played hookey
and been a-swimming. But I forgive ye, Tom. I reckon you're a kind of a
singed cat, as the saying is--better'n you look. THIS time."
She was half sorry her sagacity had miscarried, and half glad that Tom
had stumbled into obedient conduct for once.
But Sidney said:
"Well, now, if I didn't think you sewed his collar with white thread,
but it's black."
"Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!"
But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said:
"Siddy, I'll lick you for that."
In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into
the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them--one needle
carried white thread and the other black. He said:
"She'd never noticed if it hadn't been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes
she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to
geeminy she'd stick to one or t'other--I can't keep the run of 'em. But
I bet you I'll lam Sid for that. I'll learn him!"
He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very
well though--and loathed him.
Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles.
Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him
than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore
them down and drove them out of his mind for the time--just as men's
misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This
new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just
acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed.
It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble,
produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short
intervals in the midst of the music--the reader probably remembers how
to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave
him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full
of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an
astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet--no doubt, as far as
strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with
the boy, not the astronomer.
The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom
checked his whistle. A stranger was before him--a boy a shade larger
than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive
curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy
was well dressed, too--well dressed on a week-day. This was simply
astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth
roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes
on--and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of
ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom's vitals. The
more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his
nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed
to him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved--but
only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all
the time. Finally Tom said:
"I can lick you!"
"I'd like to see you try it."
"Well, I can do it."
"No you can't, either."
"Yes I can."
"No you can't."
"I can."
"You can't."
"Can!"
"Can't!"
An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said:
"What's your name?"
"'Tisn't any of your business, maybe."
"Well I 'low I'll MAKE it my business."
"Well why don't you?"
"If you say much, I will."
"Much--much--MUCH. There now."
"Oh, you think you're mighty smart, DON'T you? I could lick you with
one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to."
"Well why don't you DO it? You SAY you can do it."
"Well I WILL, if you fool with me."
"Oh yes--I've seen whole families in the same fix."
"Smarty! You think you're SOME, now, DON'T you? Oh, what a hat!"
"You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it
off--and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs."
"You're a liar!"
"You're another."
"You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up."
"Aw--take a walk!"
"Say--if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a
rock off'n your head."
"Oh, of COURSE you will."
"Well I WILL."
"Well why don't you DO it then? What do you keep SAYING you will for?
Why don't you DO it? It's because you're afraid."
"I AIN'T afraid."
"You are."
"I ain't."
"You are."
Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently
they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:
"Get away from here!"
"Go away yourself!"
"I won't."
"I won't either."
So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and
both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with
hate. But neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both
were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution,
and Tom said:
"You're a coward and a pup. I'll tell my big brother on you, and he
can thrash you with his little finger, and I'll make him do it, too."
"What do I care for your big brother? I've got a brother that's bigger
than he is--and what's more, he can throw him over that fence, too."
[Both brothers were imaginary.]
"That's a lie."
"YOUR saying so don't make it so."
Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said:
"I dare you to step over that, and I'll lick you till you can't stand
up. Anybody that'll take a dare will steal sheep."
The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:
"Now you said you'd do it, now let's see you do it."
"Don't you crowd me now; you better look out."
"Well, you SAID you'd do it--why don't you do it?"
"By jingo! for two cents I WILL do it."
The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out
with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys
were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and
for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other's hair and
clothes, punched and scratched each other's nose, and covered
themselves with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and
through the fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and
pounding him with his fists. "Holler 'nuff!" said he.
The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying--mainly from rage.
"Holler 'nuff!"--and the pounding went on.
At last the stranger got out a smothered "'Nuff!" and Tom let him up
and said:
"Now that'll learn you. Better look out who you're fooling with next
time."
The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing,
snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and
threatening what he would do to Tom the "next time he caught him out."
To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and
as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw
it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like
an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he
lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the
enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the
window and declined. At last the enemy's mother appeared, and called
Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went
away; but he said he "'lowed" to "lay" for that boy.
He got home pretty late that night, and when he climbed cautiously in
at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt;
and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn
his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine in
its firmness.
CHAPTER II
SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from
the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at
the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling,
fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only
a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of
water under an hour--and even then somebody generally had to go after
him. Tom said:
"Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some."
Jim shook his head and said:
"Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis
water an' not stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars
Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend
to my own business--she 'lowed SHE'D 'tend to de whitewashin'."
"Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always
talks. Gimme the bucket--I won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't
ever know."
"Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n
me. 'Deed she would."
"SHE! She never licks anybody--whacks 'em over the head with her
thimble--and who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don't hurt--anyways it don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you
a marvel. I'll give you a white alley!"
Jim began to waver.
"White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw."
"My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful
'fraid ole missis--"
"And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe."
Jim was only human--this attraction was too much for him. He put down
his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was
flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field
with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.
But Tom's energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work--the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it--bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an
exchange of WORK, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an
hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his
pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark
and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a
great, magnificent inspiration.
He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently--the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump--proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious
pomp and circumstance--for he was personating the Big Missouri, and
considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and
captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself
standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:
"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he
drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.
"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and
stiffened down his sides.
"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles--for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.
"Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-lingling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!"
The left hand began to describe circles.
"Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead
on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! LIVELY now!
Come--out with your spring-line--what're you about there! Take a turn
round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now--let her
go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH'T! S'H'T! SH'T!"
(trying the gauge-cocks).
Tom went on whitewashing--paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben
stared a moment and then said: "Hi-YI! YOU'RE up a stump, ain't you!"
No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom's mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:
"Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
"Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."
"Say--I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of
course you'd druther WORK--wouldn't you? Course you would!"
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
"What do you call work?"
"Why, ain't THAT work?"
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:
"Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer."
"Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you LIKE it?"
The brush continued to move.
"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get
a chance to whitewash a fence every day?"
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom
swept his brush daintily back and forth--stepped back to note the
effect--added a touch here and there--criticised the effect again--Ben
watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more
absorbed. Presently he said:
"Say, Tom, let ME whitewash a little."
Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:
"No--no--I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's
awful particular about this fence--right here on the street, you know
--but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and SHE wouldn't. Yes,
she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very
careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two
thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done."
"No--is that so? Oh come, now--lemme just try. Only just a little--I'd
let YOU, if you was me, Tom."
"Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly--well, Jim wanted to
do it, but she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't
let Sid. Now don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this
fence and anything was to happen to it--"
"Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say--I'll give
you the core of my apple."
"Well, here--No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard--"
"I'll give you ALL of it!"
Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in
the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for
a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with--and so on, and so on,
hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being
a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling
in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles,
part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a
spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk,
a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six
fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a
dog-collar--but no dog--the handle of a knife, four pieces of
orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.
He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while--plenty of company
--and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out
of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He
had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely,
that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only
necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great
and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do,
and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And
this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers
or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or
climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in
England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles
on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them
considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service,
that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place
in his worldly circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to
report.
CHAPTER III
TOM presented himself before Aunt Polly, who was sitting by an open
window in a pleasant rearward apartment, which was bedroom,
breakfast-room, dining-room, and library, combined. The balmy summer
air, the restful quiet, the odor of the flowers, and the drowsing murmur
of the bees had had their effect, and she was nodding over her knitting
--for she had no company but the cat, and it was asleep in her lap. Her
spectacles were propped up on her gray head for safety. She had thought
that of course Tom had deserted long ago, and she wondered at seeing him
place himself in her power again in this intrepid way. He said: "Mayn't
I go and play now, aunt?"
"What, a'ready? How much have you done?"
"It's all done, aunt."
"Tom, don't lie to me--I can't bear it."
"I ain't, aunt; it IS all done."
Aunt Polly placed small trust in such evidence. She went out to see
for herself; and she would have been content to find twenty per cent.
of Tom's statement true. When she found the entire fence whitewashed,
and not only whitewashed but elaborately coated and recoated, and even
a streak added to the ground, her astonishment was almost unspeakable.
She said:
"Well, I never! There's no getting round it, you can work when you're
a mind to, Tom." And then she diluted the compliment by adding, "But
it's powerful seldom you're a mind to, I'm bound to say. Well, go 'long
and play; but mind you get back some time in a week, or I'll tan you."
She was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took
him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to
him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a
treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.
And while she closed with a happy Scriptural flourish, he "hooked" a
doughnut.
Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway
that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and
the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a
hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties
and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect,
and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general
thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at
peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his
black thread and getting him into trouble.
Tom skirted the block, and came round into a muddy alley that led by
the back of his aunt's cow-stable. He presently got safely beyond the
reach of capture and punishment, and hastened toward the public square
of the village, where two "military" companies of boys had met for
conflict, according to previous appointment. Tom was General of one of
these armies, Joe Harper (a bosom friend) General of the other. These
two great commanders did not condescend to fight in person--that being
better suited to the still smaller fry--but sat together on an eminence
and conducted the field operations by orders delivered through
aides-de-camp. Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and
hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged,
the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the
necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and
marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.
As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new
girl in the garden--a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair
plaited into two long-tails, white summer frock and embroidered
pantalettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a
memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction;
he had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor
little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest
boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is
done.
He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she
had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present,
and began to "show off" in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to
win her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some
time; but by-and-by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous
gymnastic performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl
was wending her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and
leaned on it, grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet awhile longer.
She halted a moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom
heaved a great sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face
lit up, right away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment
before she disappeared.
The boy ran around and stopped within a foot or two of the flower, and
then shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look down street as if
he had discovered something of interest going on in that direction.
Presently he picked up a straw and began trying to balance it on his
nose, with his head tilted far back; and as he moved from side to side,
in his efforts, he edged nearer and nearer toward the pansy; finally
his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he
hopped away with the treasure and disappeared round the corner. But
only for a minute--only while he could button the flower inside his
jacket, next his heart--or next his stomach, possibly, for he was not
much posted in anatomy, and not hypercritical, anyway.
He returned, now, and hung about the fence till nightfall, "showing
off," as before; but the girl never exhibited herself again, though Tom
comforted himself a little with the hope that she had been near some
window, meantime, and been aware of his attentions. Finally he strode
home reluctantly, with his poor head full of visions.
All through supper his spirits were so high that his aunt wondered
"what had got into the child." He took a good scolding about clodding
Sid, and did not seem to mind it in the least. He tried to steal sugar
under his aunt's very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said:
"Aunt, you don't whack Sid when he takes it."
"Well, Sid don't torment a body the way you do. You'd be always into
that sugar if I warn't watching you."
Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his
immunity, reached for the sugar-bowl--a sort of glorying over Tom which
was wellnigh unbearable. But Sid's fingers slipped and the bowl dropped
and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even
controlled his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would
not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly
still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and
there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model
"catch it." He was so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold
himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck
discharging lightnings of wrath from over her spectacles. He said to
himself, "Now it's coming!" And the next instant he was sprawling on
the floor! The potent palm was uplifted to strike again when Tom cried
out:
"Hold on, now, what 'er you belting ME for?--Sid broke it!"
Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But
when she got her tongue again, she only said:
"Umf! Well, you didn't get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some
other audacious mischief when I wasn't around, like enough."
Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something
kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a
confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that.
So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart.
Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart
his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the
consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice
of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then,
through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured
himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching
one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and
die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured
himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and
his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how
her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back
her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would lie
there cold and white and make no sign--a poor little sufferer, whose
griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings with the pathos
of these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to
choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he
winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a
luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear
to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it;
it was too sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin
Mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an
age-long visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in
clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in
at the other.
He wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys, and sought
desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. A log raft in the
river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and
contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while,
that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without
undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature. Then he thought
of his flower. He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily
increased his dismal felicity. He wondered if she would pity him if she
knew? Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms
around his neck and comfort him? Or would she turn coldly away like all
the hollow world? This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable
suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it
up in new and varied lights, till he wore it threadbare. At last he
rose up sighing and departed in the darkness.
About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street
to where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell
upon his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the
curtain of a second-story window. Was the sacred presence there? He
climbed the fence, threaded his stealthy way through the plants, till
he stood under that window; he looked up at it long, and with emotion;
then he laid him down on the ground under it, disposing himself upon
his back, with his hands clasped upon his breast and holding his poor
wilted flower. And thus he would die--out in the cold world, with no
shelter over his homeless head, no friendly hand to wipe the
death-damps from his brow, no loving face to bend pityingly over him
when the great agony came. And thus SHE would see him when she looked
out upon the glad morning, and oh! would she drop one little tear upon
his poor, lifeless form, would she heave one little sigh to see a bright
young life so rudely blighted, so untimely cut down?
The window went up, a maid-servant's discordant voice profaned the
holy calm, and a deluge of water drenched the prone martyr's remains!
The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort. There was a whiz
as of a missile in the air, mingled with the murmur of a curse, a sound
as of shivering glass followed, and a small, vague form went over the
fence and shot away in the gloom.
Not long after, as Tom, all undressed for bed, was surveying his
drenched garments by the light of a tallow dip, Sid woke up; but if he
had any dim idea of making any "references to allusions," he thought
better of it and held his peace, for there was danger in Tom's eye.
Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made
mental note of the omission.
CHAPTER IV
THE sun rose upon a tranquil world, and beamed down upon the peaceful
village like a benediction. Breakfast over, Aunt Polly had family
worship: it began with a prayer built from the ground up of solid
courses of Scriptural quotations, welded together with a thin mortar of
originality; and from the summit of this she delivered a grim chapter
of the Mosaic Law, as from Sinai.
Then Tom girded up his loins, so to speak, and went to work to "get
his verses." Sid had learned his lesson days before. Tom bent all his
energies to the memorizing of five verses, and he chose part of the
Sermon on the Mount, because he could find no verses that were shorter.
At the end of half an hour Tom had a vague general idea of his lesson,
but no more, for his mind was traversing the whole field of human
thought, and his hands were busy with distracting recreations. Mary
took his book to hear him recite, and he tried to find his way through
the fog:
"Blessed are the--a--a--"
"Poor"--
"Yes--poor; blessed are the poor--a--a--"
"In spirit--"
"In spirit; blessed are the poor in spirit, for they--they--"
"THEIRS--"
"For THEIRS. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they--they--"
"Sh--"
"For they--a--"
"S, H, A--"
"For they S, H--Oh, I don't know what it is!"
"SHALL!"
"Oh, SHALL! for they shall--for they shall--a--a--shall mourn--a--a--
blessed are they that shall--they that--a--they that shall mourn, for
they shall--a--shall WHAT? Why don't you tell me, Mary?--what do you
want to be so mean for?"
"Oh, Tom, you poor thick-headed thing, I'm not teasing you. I wouldn't
do that. You must go and learn it again. Don't you be discouraged, Tom,
you'll manage it--and if you do, I'll give you something ever so nice.
There, now, that's a good boy."
"All right! What is it, Mary, tell me what it is."
"Never you mind, Tom. You know if I say it's nice, it is nice."
"You bet you that's so, Mary. All right, I'll tackle it again."
And he did "tackle it again"--and under the double pressure of
curiosity and prospective gain he did it with such spirit that he
accomplished a shining success. Mary gave him a brand-new "Barlow"
knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that
swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would
not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was
inconceivable grandeur in that--though where the Western boys ever got
the idea that such a weapon could possibly be counterfeited to its
injury is an imposing mystery and will always remain so, perhaps. Tom
contrived to scarify the cupboard with it, and was arranging to begin
on the bureau, when he was called off to dress for Sunday-school.
Mary gave him a tin basin of water and a piece of soap, and he went
outside the door and set the basin on a little bench there; then he
dipped the soap in the water and laid it down; turned up his sleeves;
poured out the water on the ground, gently, and then entered the
kitchen and began to wipe his face diligently on the towel behind the
door. But Mary removed the towel and said:
"Now ain't you ashamed, Tom. You mustn't be so bad. Water won't hurt
you."
Tom was a trifle disconcerted. The basin was refilled, and this time
he stood over it a little while, gathering resolution; took in a big
breath and began. When he entered the kitchen presently, with both eyes
shut and groping for the towel with his hands, an honorable testimony
of suds and water was dripping from his face. But when he emerged from
the towel, he was not yet satisfactory, for the clean territory stopped
short at his chin and his jaws, like a mask; below and beyond this line
there was a dark expanse of unirrigated soil that spread downward in
front and backward around his neck. Mary took him in hand, and when she
was done with him he was a man and a brother, without distinction of
color, and his saturated hair was neatly brushed, and its short curls
wrought into a dainty and symmetrical general effect. [He privately
smoothed out the curls, with labor and difficulty, and plastered his
hair close down to his head; for he held curls to be effeminate, and
his own filled his life with bitterness.] Then Mary got out a suit of
his clothing that had been used only on Sundays during two years--they
were simply called his "other clothes"--and so by that we know the
size of his wardrobe. The girl "put him to rights" after he had dressed
himself; she buttoned his neat roundabout up to his chin, turned his
vast shirt collar down over his shoulders, brushed him off and crowned
him with his speckled straw hat. He now looked exceedingly improved and
uncomfortable. He was fully as uncomfortable as he looked; for there
was a restraint about whole clothes and cleanliness that galled him. He
hoped that Mary would forget his shoes, but the hope was blighted; she
coated them thoroughly with tallow, as was the custom, and brought them
out. He lost his temper and said he was always being made to do
everything he didn't want to do. But Mary said, persuasively:
"Please, Tom--that's a good boy."
So he got into the shoes snarling. Mary was soon ready, and the three
children set out for Sunday-school--a place that Tom hated with his
whole heart; but Sid and Mary were fond of it.
Sabbath-school hours were from nine to half-past ten; and then church
service. Two of the children always remained for the sermon
voluntarily, and the other always remained too--for stronger reasons.
The church's high-backed, uncushioned pews would seat about three
hundred persons; the edifice was but a small, plain affair, with a sort
of pine board tree-box on top of it for a steeple. At the door Tom
dropped back a step and accosted a Sunday-dressed comrade:
"Say, Billy, got a yaller ticket?"
"Yes."
"What'll you take for her?"
"What'll you give?"
"Piece of lickrish and a fish-hook."
"Less see 'em."
Tom exhibited. They were satisfactory, and the property changed hands.
Then Tom traded a couple of white alleys for three red tickets, and
some small trifle or other for a couple of blue ones. He waylaid other
boys as they came, and went on buying tickets of various colors ten or
fifteen minutes longer. He entered the church, now, with a swarm of
clean and noisy boys and girls, proceeded to his seat and started a
quarrel with the first boy that came handy. The teacher, a grave,
elderly man, interfered; then turned his back a moment and Tom pulled a
boy's hair in the next bench, and was absorbed in his book when the boy
turned around; stuck a pin in another boy, presently, in order to hear
him say "Ouch!" and got a new reprimand from his teacher. Tom's whole
class were of a pattern--restless, noisy, and troublesome. When they
came to recite their lessons, not one of them knew his verses
perfectly, but had to be prompted all along. However, they worried
through, and each got his reward--in small blue tickets, each with a
passage of Scripture on it; each blue ticket was pay for two verses of
the recitation. Ten blue tickets equalled a red one, and could be
exchanged for it; ten red tickets equalled a yellow one; for ten yellow
tickets the superintendent gave a very plainly bound Bible (worth forty
cents in those easy times) to the pupil. How many of my readers would
have the industry and application to memorize two thousand verses, even
for a Dore Bible? And yet Mary had acquired two Bibles in this way--it
was the patient work of two years--and a boy of German parentage had
won four or five. He once recited three thousand verses without
stopping; but the strain upon his mental faculties was too great, and
he was little better than an idiot from that day forth--a grievous
misfortune for the school, for on great occasions, before company, the
superintendent (as Tom expressed it) had always made this boy come out
and "spread himself." Only the older pupils managed to keep their
tickets and stick to their tedious work long enough to get a Bible, and
so the delivery of one of these prizes was a rare and noteworthy
circumstance; the successful pupil was so great and conspicuous for
that day that on the spot every scholar's heart was fired with a fresh
ambition that often lasted a couple of weeks. It is possible that Tom's
mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes, but
unquestionably his entire being had for many a day longed for the glory
and the eclat that came with it.
In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with
a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its
leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent
makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as
necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer
who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert
--though why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of
music is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a
slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair;
he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his
ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his
mouth--a fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning
of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped
on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note,
and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the
fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners--an effect patiently and
laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes
pressed against a wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest
of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred
things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly
matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had
acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He
began after this fashion:
"Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty
as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There
--that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see
one little girl who is looking out of the window--I am afraid she
thinks I am out there somewhere--perhaps up in one of the trees making
a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you
how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces
assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good." And
so forth and so on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the
oration. It was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar
to us all.
The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights
and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings
and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases
of isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every
sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters' voice, and
the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent
gratitude.
A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which
was more or less rare--the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher,
accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged
gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless
the latter's wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless
and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too--he could
not meet Amy Lawrence's eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But
when he saw this small new-comer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in
a moment. The next moment he was "showing off" with all his might
--cuffing boys, pulling hair, making faces--in a word, using every art
that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. His
exaltation had but one alloy--the memory of his humiliation in this
angel's garden--and that record in sand was fast washing out, under
the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now.
The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr.
Walters' speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The
middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage--no less a one
than the county judge--altogether the most august creation these
children had ever looked upon--and they wondered what kind of material
he was made of--and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half
afraid he might, too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away--so
he had travelled, and seen the world--these very eyes had looked upon
the county court-house--which was said to have a tin roof. The awe
which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence
and the ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher,
brother of their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to
be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. It would
have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings:
"Look at him, Jim! He's a going up there. Say--look! he's a going to
shake hands with him--he IS shaking hands with him! By jings, don't you
wish you was Jeff?"
Mr. Walters fell to "showing off," with all sorts of official
bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments,
discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a
target. The librarian "showed off"--running hither and thither with his
arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that
insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers "showed off"
--bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting
pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones
lovingly. The young gentlemen teachers "showed off" with small
scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to
discipline--and most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up
at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had
to be done over again two or three times (with much seeming vexation).
The little girls "showed off" in various ways, and the little boys
"showed off" with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads
and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and
beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself
in the sun of his own grandeur--for he was "showing off," too.
There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters' ecstasy
complete, and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a
prodigy. Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough
--he had been around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given
worlds, now, to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.
And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward
with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and
demanded a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters
was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten
years. But there was no getting around it--here were the certified
checks, and they were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated
to a place with the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was
announced from headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the
decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero
up to the judicial one's altitude, and the school had two marvels to
gaze upon in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy--but
those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too
late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by
trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling
whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes
of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass.
The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the
superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked
somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow's instinct taught him
that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light,
perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two
thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises--a dozen would
strain his capacity, without a doubt.
Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in
her face--but he wouldn't look. She wondered; then she was just a grain
troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went--came again; she watched;
a furtive glance told her worlds--and then her heart broke, and she was
jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom
most of all (she thought).
Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath
would hardly come, his heart quaked--partly because of the awful
greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would
have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The
Judge put his hand on Tom's head and called him a fine little man, and
asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out:
"Tom."
"Oh, no, not Tom--it is--"
"Thomas."
"Ah, that's it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That's very
well. But you've another one I daresay, and you'll tell it to me, won't
you?"
"Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas," said Walters, "and say
sir. You mustn't forget your manners."
"Thomas Sawyer--sir."
"That's it! That's a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow.
Two thousand verses is a great many--very, very great many. And you
never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for
knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it's what
makes great men and good men; you'll be a great man and a good man
yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you'll look back and say, It's all
owing to the precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood--it's all
owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn--it's all owing to
the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and
gave me a beautiful Bible--a splendid elegant Bible--to keep and have
it all for my own, always--it's all owing to right bringing up! That is
what you will say, Thomas--and you wouldn't take any money for those
two thousand verses--no indeed you wouldn't. And now you wouldn't mind
telling me and this lady some of the things you've learned--no, I know
you wouldn't--for we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no
doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. Won't you tell us
the names of the first two that were appointed?"
Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed,
now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters' heart sank within him. He said to
himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest
question--why DID the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up
and say:
"Answer the gentleman, Thomas--don't be afraid."
Tom still hung fire.
"Now I know you'll tell me," said the lady. "The names of the first
two disciples were--"
"DAVID AND GOLIAH!"
Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.
CHAPTER V
ABOUT half-past ten the cracked bell of the small church began to
ring, and presently the people began to gather for the morning sermon.
The Sunday-school children distributed themselves about the house and
occupied pews with their parents, so as to be under supervision. Aunt
Polly came, and Tom and Sid and Mary sat with her--Tom being placed
next the aisle, in order that he might be as far away from the open
window and the seductive outside summer scenes as possible. The crowd
filed up the aisles: the aged and needy postmaster, who had seen better
days; the mayor and his wife--for they had a mayor there, among other
unnecessaries; the justice of the peace; the widow Douglass, fair,
smart, and forty, a generous, good-hearted soul and well-to-do, her
hill mansion the only palace in the town, and the most hospitable and
much the most lavish in the matter of festivities that St. Petersburg
could boast; the bent and venerable Major and Mrs. Ward; lawyer
Riverson, the new notable from a distance; next the belle of the
village, followed by a troop of lawn-clad and ribbon-decked young
heart-breakers; then all the young clerks in town in a body--for they
had stood in the vestibule sucking their cane-heads, a circling wall of
oiled and simpering admirers, till the last girl had run their gantlet;
and last of all came the Model Boy, Willie Mufferson, taking as heedful
care of his mother as if she were cut glass. He always brought his
mother to church, and was the pride of all the matrons. The boys all
hated him, he was so good. And besides, he had been "thrown up to them"
so much. His white handkerchief was hanging out of his pocket behind, as
usual on Sundays--accidentally. Tom had no handkerchief, and he looked
upon boys who had as snobs.
The congregation being fully assembled, now, the bell rang once more,
to warn laggards and stragglers, and then a solemn hush fell upon the
church which was only broken by the tittering and whispering of the
choir in the gallery. The choir always tittered and whispered all
through service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred,
but I have forgotten where it was, now. It was a great many years ago,
and I can scarcely remember anything about it, but I think it was in
some foreign country.
The minister gave out the hymn, and read it through with a relish, in
a peculiar style which was much admired in that part of the country.
His voice began on a medium key and climbed steadily up till it reached
a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost
word and then plunged down as if from a spring-board:
Shall I be car-ri-ed toe the skies, on flow'ry BEDS of ease,
Whilst others fight to win the prize, and sail thro' BLOODY seas?
He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church "sociables" he was
always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies
would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps,
and "wall" their eyes, and shake their heads, as much as to say, "Words
cannot express it; it is too beautiful, TOO beautiful for this mortal
earth."
After the hymn had been sung, the Rev. Mr. Sprague turned himself into
a bulletin-board, and read off "notices" of meetings and societies and
things till it seemed that the list would stretch out to the crack of
doom--a queer custom which is still kept up in America, even in cities,
away here in this age of abundant newspapers. Often, the less there is
to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.
And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went
into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the
church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself;
for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United
States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the
President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed
by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of
European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light
and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear
withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with
a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace
and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a
grateful harvest of good. Amen.
There was a rustling of dresses, and the standing congregation sat
down. The boy whose history this book relates did not enjoy the prayer,
he only endured it--if he even did that much. He was restive all
through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously
--for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the
clergyman's regular route over it--and when a little trifle of new
matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature
resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly. In the
midst of the prayer a fly had lit on the back of the pew in front of
him and tortured his spirit by calmly rubbing its hands together,
embracing its head with its arms, and polishing it so vigorously that
it seemed to almost part company with the body, and the slender thread
of a neck was exposed to view; scraping its wings with its hind legs
and smoothing them to its body as if they had been coat-tails; going
through its whole toilet as tranquilly as if it knew it was perfectly
safe. As indeed it was; for as sorely as Tom's hands itched to grab for
it they did not dare--he believed his soul would be instantly destroyed
if he did such a thing while the prayer was going on. But with the
closing sentence his hand began to curve and steal forward; and the
instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt
detected the act and made him let it go.
The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through
an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod
--and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone
and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be
hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after
church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew
anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really
interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving
picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the
millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a
little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of
the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the
conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking
nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he
wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion.
Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed.
Presently he bethought him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was
a large black beetle with formidable jaws--a "pinchbug," he called it.
It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to
take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went
floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger
went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless
legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was
safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found
relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle
dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and
the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle;
the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked
around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again;
grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a
gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another;
began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle
between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last,
and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by
little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There
was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a
couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring
spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind
fans and handkerchiefs, and Tom was entirely happy. The dog looked
foolish, and probably felt so; but there was resentment in his heart,
too, and a craving for revenge. So he went to the beetle and began a
wary attack on it again; jumping at it from every point of a circle,
lighting with his fore-paws within an inch of the creature, making even
closer snatches at it with his teeth, and jerking his head till his
ears flapped again. But he grew tired once more, after a while; tried
to amuse himself with a fly but found no relief; followed an ant
around, with his nose close to the floor, and quickly wearied of that;
yawned, sighed, forgot the beetle entirely, and sat down on it. Then
there was a wild yelp of agony and the poodle went sailing up the
aisle; the yelps continued, and so did the dog; he crossed the house in
front of the altar; he flew down the other aisle; he crossed before the
doors; he clamored up the home-stretch; his anguish grew with his
progress, till presently he was but a woolly comet moving in its orbit
with the gleam and the speed of light. At last the frantic sufferer
sheered from its course, and sprang into its master's lap; he flung it
out of the window, and the voice of distress quickly thinned away and
died in the distance.
By this time the whole church was red-faced and suffocating with
suppressed laughter, and the sermon had come to a dead standstill. The
discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all
possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest
sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of
unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor
parson had said a rarely facetious thing. It was a genuine relief to
the whole congregation when the ordeal was over and the benediction
pronounced.
Tom Sawyer went home quite cheerful, thinking to himself that there
was some satisfaction about divine service when there was a bit of
variety in it. He had but one marring thought; he was willing that the
dog should play with his pinchbug, but he did not think it was upright
in him to carry it off.
CHAPTER VI
MONDAY morning found Tom Sawyer miserable. Monday morning always found
him so--because it began another week's slow suffering in school. He
generally began that day with wishing he had had no intervening
holiday, it made the going into captivity and fetters again so much
more odious.
Tom lay thinking. Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was
sick; then he could stay home from school. Here was a vague
possibility. He canvassed his system. No ailment was found, and he
investigated again. This time he thought he could detect colicky
symptoms, and he began to encourage them with considerable hope. But
they soon grew feeble, and presently died wholly away. He reflected
further. Suddenly he discovered something. One of his upper front teeth
was loose. This was lucky; he was about to begin to groan, as a
"starter," as he called it, when it occurred to him that if he came
into court with that argument, his aunt would pull it out, and that
would hurt. So he thought he would hold the tooth in reserve for the
present, and seek further. Nothing offered for some little time, and
then he remembered hearing the doctor tell about a certain thing that
laid up a patient for two or three weeks and threatened to make him
lose a finger. So the boy eagerly drew his sore toe from under the
sheet and held it up for inspection. But now he did not know the
necessary symptoms. However, it seemed well worth while to chance it,
so he fell to groaning with considerable spirit.
But Sid slept on unconscious.
Tom groaned louder, and fancied that he began to feel pain in the toe.
No result from Sid.
Tom was panting with his exertions by this time. He took a rest and
then swelled himself up and fetched a succession of admirable groans.
Sid snored on.
Tom was aggravated. He said, "Sid, Sid!" and shook him. This course
worked well, and Tom began to groan again. Sid yawned, stretched, then
brought himself up on his elbow with a snort, and began to stare at
Tom. Tom went on groaning. Sid said:
"Tom! Say, Tom!" [No response.] "Here, Tom! TOM! What is the matter,
Tom?" And he shook him and looked in his face anxiously.
Tom moaned out:
"Oh, don't, Sid. Don't joggle me."
"Why, what's the matter, Tom? I must call auntie."
"No--never mind. It'll be over by and by, maybe. Don't call anybody."
"But I must! DON'T groan so, Tom, it's awful. How long you been this
way?"
"Hours. Ouch! Oh, don't stir so, Sid, you'll kill me."
"Tom, why didn't you wake me sooner? Oh, Tom, DON'T! It makes my
flesh crawl to hear you. Tom, what is the matter?"
"I forgive you everything, Sid. [Groan.] Everything you've ever done
to me. When I'm gone--"
"Oh, Tom, you ain't dying, are you? Don't, Tom--oh, don't. Maybe--"
"I forgive everybody, Sid. [Groan.] Tell 'em so, Sid. And Sid, you
give my window-sash and my cat with one eye to that new girl that's
come to town, and tell her--"
But Sid had snatched his clothes and gone. Tom was suffering in
reality, now, so handsomely was his imagination working, and so his
groans had gathered quite a genuine tone.
Sid flew down-stairs and said:
"Oh, Aunt Polly, come! Tom's dying!"
"Dying!"
"Yes'm. Don't wait--come quick!"
"Rubbage! I don't believe it!"
But she fled up-stairs, nevertheless, with Sid and Mary at her heels.
And her face grew white, too, and her lip trembled. When she reached
the bedside she gasped out:
"You, Tom! Tom, what's the matter with you?"
"Oh, auntie, I'm--"
"What's the matter with you--what is the matter with you, child?"
"Oh, auntie, my sore toe's mortified!"
The old lady sank down into a chair and laughed a little, then cried a
little, then did both together. This restored her and she said:
"Tom, what a turn you did give me. Now you shut up that nonsense and
climb out of this."
The groans ceased and the pain vanished from the toe. The boy felt a
little foolish, and he said:
"Aunt Polly, it SEEMED mortified, and it hurt so I never minded my
tooth at all."
"Your tooth, indeed! What's the matter with your tooth?"
"One of them's loose, and it aches perfectly awful."
"There, there, now, don't begin that groaning again. Open your mouth.
Well--your tooth IS loose, but you're not going to die about that.
Mary, get me a silk thread, and a chunk of fire out of the kitchen."
Tom said:
"Oh, please, auntie, don't pull it out. It don't hurt any more. I wish
I may never stir if it does. Please don't, auntie. I don't want to stay
home from school."
"Oh, you don't, don't you? So all this row was because you thought
you'd get to stay home from school and go a-fishing? Tom, Tom, I love
you so, and you seem to try every way you can to break my old heart
with your outrageousness." By this time the dental instruments were
ready. The old lady made one end of the silk thread fast to Tom's tooth
with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the
chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The
tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now.
But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school
after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in
his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and
admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the
exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of
fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly
without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and
he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to
spit like Tom Sawyer; but another boy said, "Sour grapes!" and he
wandered away a dismantled hero.
Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry
Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and
dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless
and vulgar and bad--and because all their children admired him so, and
delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like
him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied
Huckleberry his gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders
not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance.
Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown
men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat
was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat,
when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons
far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat
of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs
dragged in the dirt when not rolled up.
Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring
and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor
put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything
that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every
harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.
Tom hailed the romantic outcast:
"Hello, Huckleberry!"
"Hello yourself, and see how you like it."
"What's that you got?"
"Dead cat."
"Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him ?"
"Bought him off'n a boy."
"What did you give?"
"I give a blue ticket and a bladder that I got at the slaughter-house."
"Where'd you get the blue ticket?"
"Bought it off'n Ben Rogers two weeks ago for a hoop-stick."
"Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?"
"Good for? Cure warts with."
"No! Is that so? I know something that's better."
"I bet you don't. What is it?"
"Why, spunk-water."
"Spunk-water! I wouldn't give a dern for spunk-water."
"You wouldn't, wouldn't you? D'you ever try it?"
"No, I hain't. But Bob Tanner did."
"Who told you so!"
"Why, he told Jeff Thatcher, and Jeff told Johnny Baker, and Johnny
told Jim Hollis, and Jim told Ben Rogers, and Ben told a nigger, and
the nigger told me. There now!"
"Well, what of it? They'll all lie. Leastways all but the nigger. I
don't know HIM. But I never see a nigger that WOULDN'T lie. Shucks! Now
you tell me how Bob Tanner done it, Huck."
"Why, he took and dipped his hand in a rotten stump where the
rain-water was."
"In the daytime?"
"Certainly."
"With his face to the stump?"
"Yes. Least I reckon so."
"Did he say anything?"
"I don't reckon he did. I don't know."
"Aha! Talk about trying to cure warts with spunk-water such a blame
fool way as that! Why, that ain't a-going to do any good. You got to go
all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a
spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you back up against the
stump and jam your hand in and say:
'Barley-corn, barley-corn, injun-meal shorts,
Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts,'
and then walk away quick, eleven steps, with your eyes shut, and then
turn around three times and walk home without speaking to anybody.
Because if you speak the charm's busted."
"Well, that sounds like a good way; but that ain't the way Bob Tanner
done."
"No, sir, you can bet he didn't, becuz he's the wartiest boy in this
town; and he wouldn't have a wart on him if he'd knowed how to work
spunk-water. I've took off thousands of warts off of my hands that way,
Huck. I play with frogs so much that I've always got considerable many
warts. Sometimes I take 'em off with a bean."
"Yes, bean's good. I've done that."
"Have you? What's your way?"
"You take and split the bean, and cut the wart so as to get some
blood, and then you put the blood on one piece of the bean and take and
dig a hole and bury it 'bout midnight at the crossroads in the dark of
the moon, and then you burn up the rest of the bean. You see that piece
that's got the blood on it will keep drawing and drawing, trying to
fetch the other piece to it, and so that helps the blood to draw the
wart, and pretty soon off she comes."
"Yes, that's it, Huck--that's it; though when you're burying it if you
say 'Down bean; off wart; come no more to bother me!' it's better.
That's the way Joe Harper does, and he's been nearly to Coonville and
most everywheres. But say--how do you cure 'em with dead cats?"
"Why, you take your cat and go and get in the graveyard 'long about
midnight when somebody that was wicked has been buried; and when it's
midnight a devil will come, or maybe two or three, but you can't see
'em, you can only hear something like the wind, or maybe hear 'em talk;
and when they're taking that feller away, you heave your cat after 'em
and say, 'Devil follow corpse, cat follow devil, warts follow cat, I'm
done with ye!' That'll fetch ANY wart."
"Sounds right. D'you ever try it, Huck?"
"No, but old Mother Hopkins told me."
"Well, I reckon it's so, then. Becuz they say she's a witch."
"Say! Why, Tom, I KNOW she is. She witched pap. Pap says so his own
self. He come along one day, and he see she was a-witching him, so he
took up a rock, and if she hadn't dodged, he'd a got her. Well, that
very night he rolled off'n a shed wher' he was a layin drunk, and broke
his arm."
"Why, that's awful. How did he know she was a-witching him?"
"Lord, pap can tell, easy. Pap says when they keep looking at you
right stiddy, they're a-witching you. Specially if they mumble. Becuz
when they mumble they're saying the Lord's Prayer backards."
"Say, Hucky, when you going to try the cat?"
"To-night. I reckon they'll come after old Hoss Williams to-night."
"But they buried him Saturday. Didn't they get him Saturday night?"
"Why, how you talk! How could their charms work till midnight?--and
THEN it's Sunday. Devils don't slosh around much of a Sunday, I don't
reckon."
"I never thought of that. That's so. Lemme go with you?"
"Of course--if you ain't afeard."
"Afeard! 'Tain't likely. Will you meow?"
"Yes--and you meow back, if you get a chance. Last time, you kep' me
a-meowing around till old Hays went to throwing rocks at me and says
'Dern that cat!' and so I hove a brick through his window--but don't
you tell."
"I won't. I couldn't meow that night, becuz auntie was watching me,
but I'll meow this time. Say--what's that?"
"Nothing but a tick."
"Where'd you get him?"
"Out in the woods."
"What'll you take for him?"
"I don't know. I don't want to sell him."
"All right. It's a mighty small tick, anyway."
"Oh, anybody can run a tick down that don't belong to them. I'm
satisfied with it. It's a good enough tick for me."
"Sho, there's ticks a plenty. I could have a thousand of 'em if I
wanted to."
"Well, why don't you? Becuz you know mighty well you can't. This is a
pretty early tick, I reckon. It's the first one I've seen this year."
"Say, Huck--I'll give you my tooth for him."
"Less see it."
Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry
viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said:
"Is it genuwyne?"
Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy.
"Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade."
Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been
the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier
than before.
When Tom reached the little isolated frame schoolhouse, he strode in
briskly, with the manner of one who had come with all honest speed.
He hung his hat on a peg and flung himself into his seat with
business-like alacrity. The master, throned on high in his great
splint-bottom arm-chair, was dozing, lulled by the drowsy hum of study.
The interruption roused him.
"Thomas Sawyer!"
Tom knew that when his name was pronounced in full, it meant trouble.
"Sir!"
"Come up here. Now, sir, why are you late again, as usual?"
Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of
yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric
sympathy of love; and by that form was THE ONLY VACANT PLACE on the
girls' side of the schoolhouse. He instantly said:
"I STOPPED TO TALK WITH HUCKLEBERRY FINN!"
The master's pulse stood still, and he stared helplessly. The buzz of
study ceased. The pupils wondered if this foolhardy boy had lost his
mind. The master said:
"You--you did what?"
"Stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn."
There was no mistaking the words.
"Thomas Sawyer, this is the most astounding confession I have ever
listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take off your
jacket."
The master's arm performed until it was tired and the stock of
switches notably diminished. Then the order followed:
"Now, sir, go and sit with the girls! And let this be a warning to you."
The titter that rippled around the room appeared to abash the boy, but
in reality that result was caused rather more by his worshipful awe of
his unknown idol and the dread pleasure that lay in his high good
fortune. He sat down upon the end of the pine bench and the girl
hitched herself away from him with a toss of her head. Nudges and winks
and whispers traversed the room, but Tom sat still, with his arms upon
the long, low desk before him, and seemed to study his book.
By and by attention ceased from him, and the accustomed school murmur
rose upon the dull air once more. Presently the boy began to steal
furtive glances at the girl. She observed it, "made a mouth" at him and
gave him the back of her head for the space of a minute. When she
cautiously faced around again, a peach lay before her. She thrust it
away. Tom gently put it back. She thrust it away again, but with less
animosity. Tom patiently returned it to its place. Then she let it
remain. Tom scrawled on his slate, "Please take it--I got more." The
girl glanced at the words, but made no sign. Now the boy began to draw
something on the slate, hiding his work with his left hand. For a time
the girl refused to notice; but her human curiosity presently began to
manifest itself by hardly perceptible signs. The boy worked on,
apparently unconscious. The girl made a sort of noncommittal attempt to
see, but the boy did not betray that he was aware of it. At last she
gave in and hesitatingly whispered:
"Let me see it."
Tom partly uncovered a dismal caricature of a house with two gable
ends to it and a corkscrew of smoke issuing from the chimney. Then the
girl's interest began to fasten itself upon the work and she forgot
everything else. When it was finished, she gazed a moment, then
whispered:
"It's nice--make a man."
The artist erected a man in the front yard, that resembled a derrick.
He could have stepped over the house; but the girl was not
hypercritical; she was satisfied with the monster, and whispered:
"It's a beautiful man--now make me coming along."
Tom drew an hour-glass with a full moon and straw limbs to it and
armed the spreading fingers with a portentous fan. The girl said:
"It's ever so nice--I wish I could draw."
"It's easy," whispered Tom, "I'll learn you."
"Oh, will you? When?"
"At noon. Do you go home to dinner?"
"I'll stay if you will."
"Good--that's a whack. What's your name?"
"Becky Thatcher. What's yours? Oh, I know. It's Thomas Sawyer."
"That's the name they lick me by. I'm Tom when I'm good. You call me
Tom, will you?"
"Yes."
Now Tom began to scrawl something on the slate, hiding the words from
the girl. But she was not backward this time. She begged to see. Tom
said:
"Oh, it ain't anything."
"Yes it is."
"No it ain't. You don't want to see."
"Yes I do, indeed I do. Please let me."
"You'll tell."
"No I won't--deed and deed and double deed won't."
"You won't tell anybody at all? Ever, as long as you live?"
"No, I won't ever tell ANYbody. Now let me."
"Oh, YOU don't want to see!"
"Now that you treat me so, I WILL see." And she put her small hand
upon his and a little scuffle ensued, Tom pretending to resist in
earnest but letting his hand slip by degrees till these words were
revealed: "I LOVE YOU."
"Oh, you bad thing!" And she hit his hand a smart rap, but reddened
and looked pleased, nevertheless.
Just at this juncture the boy felt a slow, fateful grip closing on his
ear, and a steady lifting impulse. In that vise he was borne across the
house and deposited in his own seat, under a peppering fire of giggles
from the whole school. Then the master stood over him during a few
awful moments, and finally moved away to his throne without saying a
word. But although Tom's ear tingled, his heart was jubilant.
As the school quieted down Tom made an honest effort to study, but the
turmoil within him was too great. In turn he took his place in the
reading class and made a botch of it; then in the geography class and
turned lakes into mountains, mountains into rivers, and rivers into
continents, till chaos was come again; then in the spelling class, and
got "turned down," by a succession of mere baby words, till he brought
up at the foot and yielded up the pewter medal which he had worn with
ostentation for months.
CHAPTER VII
THE harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his
ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It
seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was
utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of
sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying
scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees.
Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green
sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of
distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other
living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's
heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to
pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face
lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know
it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the
tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed
with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it
was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned
him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction.
Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and
now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an
instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn
friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a
pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner.
The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were
interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of
the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the
middle of it from top to bottom.
"Now," said he, "as long as he is on your side you can stir him up and
I'll let him alone; but if you let him get away and get on my side,
you're to leave him alone as long as I can keep him from crossing over."
"All right, go ahead; start him up."
The tick escaped from Tom, presently, and crossed the equator. Joe
harassed him awhile, and then he got away and crossed back again. This
change of base occurred often. While one boy was worrying the tick with
absorbing interest, the other would look on with interest as strong,
the two heads bowed together over the slate, and the two souls dead to
all things else. At last luck seemed to settle and abide with Joe. The
tick tried this, that, and the other course, and got as excited and as
anxious as the boys themselves, but time and again just as he would
have victory in his very grasp, so to speak, and Tom's fingers would be
twitching to begin, Joe's pin would deftly head him off, and keep
possession. At last Tom could stand it no longer. The temptation was
too strong. So he reached out and lent a hand with his pin. Joe was
angry in a moment. Said he:
"Tom, you let him alone."
"I only just want to stir him up a little, Joe."
"No, sir, it ain't fair; you just let him alone."
"Blame it, I ain't going to stir him much."
"Let him alone, I tell you."
"I won't!"
"You shall--he's on my side of the line."
"Look here, Joe Harper, whose is that tick?"
"I don't care whose tick he is--he's on my side of the line, and you
sha'n't touch him."
"Well, I'll just bet I will, though. He's my tick and I'll do what I
blame please with him, or die!"
A tremendous whack came down on Tom's shoulders, and its duplicate on
Joe's; and for the space of two minutes the dust continued to fly from
the two jackets and the whole school to enjoy it. The boys had been too
absorbed to notice the hush that had stolen upon the school awhile
before when the master came tiptoeing down the room and stood over
them. He had contemplated a good part of the performance before he
contributed his bit of variety to it.
When school broke up at noon, Tom flew to Becky Thatcher, and
whispered in her ear:
"Put on your bonnet and let on you're going home; and when you get to
the corner, give the rest of 'em the slip, and turn down through the
lane and come back. I'll go the other way and come it over 'em the same
way."
So the one went off with one group of scholars, and the other with
another. In a little while the two met at the bottom of the lane, and
when they reached the school they had it all to themselves. Then they
sat together, with a slate before them, and Tom gave Becky the pencil
and held her hand in his, guiding it, and so created another surprising
house. When the interest in art began to wane, the two fell to talking.
Tom was swimming in bliss. He said:
"Do you love rats?"
"No! I hate them!"
"Well, I do, too--LIVE ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your
head with a string."
"No, I don't care for rats much, anyway. What I like is chewing-gum."
"Oh, I should say so! I wish I had some now."
"Do you? I've got some. I'll let you chew it awhile, but you must give
it back to me."
That was agreeable, so they chewed it turn about, and dangled their
legs against the bench in excess of contentment.
"Was you ever at a circus?" said Tom.
"Yes, and my pa's going to take me again some time, if I'm good."
"I been to the circus three or four times--lots of times. Church ain't
shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time.
I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up."
"Oh, are you! That will be nice. They're so lovely, all spotted up."
"Yes, that's so. And they get slathers of money--most a dollar a day,
Ben Rogers says. Say, Becky, was you ever engaged?"
"What's that?"
"Why, engaged to be married."
"No."
"Would you like to?"
"I reckon so. I don't know. What is it like?"
"Like? Why it ain't like anything. You only just tell a boy you won't
ever have anybody but him, ever ever ever, and then you kiss and that's
all. Anybody can do it."
"Kiss? What do you kiss for?"
"Why, that, you know, is to--well, they always do that."
"Everybody?"
"Why, yes, everybody that's in love with each other. Do you remember
what I wrote on the slate?"
"Ye--yes."
"What was it?"
"I sha'n't tell you."
"Shall I tell YOU?"
"Ye--yes--but some other time."
"No, now."
"No, not now--to-morrow."
"Oh, no, NOW. Please, Becky--I'll whisper it, I'll whisper it ever so
easy."
Becky hesitating, Tom took silence for consent, and passed his arm
about her waist and whispered the tale ever so softly, with his mouth
close to her ear. And then he added:
"Now you whisper it to me--just the same."
She resisted, for a while, and then said:
"You turn your face away so you can't see, and then I will. But you
mustn't ever tell anybody--WILL you, Tom? Now you won't, WILL you?"
"No, indeed, indeed I won't. Now, Becky."
He turned his face away. She bent timidly around till her breath
stirred his curls and whispered, "I--love--you!"
Then she sprang away and ran around and around the desks and benches,
with Tom after her, and took refuge in a corner at last, with her
little white apron to her face. Tom clasped her about her neck and
pleaded:
"Now, Becky, it's all done--all over but the kiss. Don't you be afraid
of that--it ain't anything at all. Please, Becky." And he tugged at her
apron and the hands.
By and by she gave up, and let her hands drop; her face, all glowing
with the struggle, came up and submitted. Tom kissed the red lips and
said:
"Now it's all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain't
ever to love anybody but me, and you ain't ever to marry anybody but
me, ever never and forever. Will you?"
"No, I'll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I'll never marry
anybody but you--and you ain't to ever marry anybody but me, either."
"Certainly. Of course. That's PART of it. And always coming to school
or when we're going home, you're to walk with me, when there ain't
anybody looking--and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because
that's the way you do when you're engaged."
"It's so nice. I never heard of it before."
"Oh, it's ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence--"
The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.
"Oh, Tom! Then I ain't the first you've ever been engaged to!"
The child began to cry. Tom said:
"Oh, don't cry, Becky, I don't care for her any more."
"Yes, you do, Tom--you know you do."
Tom tried to put his arm about her neck, but she pushed him away and
turned her face to the wall, and went on crying. Tom tried again, with
soothing words in his mouth, and was repulsed again. Then his pride was
up, and he strode away and went outside. He stood about, restless and
uneasy, for a while, glancing at the door, every now and then, hoping
she would repent and come to find him. But she did not. Then he began
to feel badly and fear that he was in the wrong. It was a hard struggle
with him to make new advances, now, but he nerved himself to it and
entered. She was still standing back there in the corner, sobbing, with
her face to the wall. Tom's heart smote him. He went to her and stood a
moment, not knowing exactly how to proceed. Then he said hesitatingly:
"Becky, I--I don't care for anybody but you."
No reply--but sobs.
"Becky"--pleadingly. "Becky, won't you say something?"
More sobs.
Tom got out his chiefest jewel, a brass knob from the top of an
andiron, and passed it around her so that she could see it, and said:
"Please, Becky, won't you take it?"
She struck it to the floor. Then Tom marched out of the house and over
the hills and far away, to return to school no more that day. Presently
Becky began to suspect. She ran to the door; he was not in sight; she
flew around to the play-yard; he was not there. Then she called:
"Tom! Come back, Tom!"
She listened intently, but there was no answer. She had no companions
but silence and loneliness. So she sat down to cry again and upbraid
herself; and by this time the scholars began to gather again, and she
had to hide her griefs and still her broken heart and take up the cross
of a long, dreary, aching afternoon, with none among the strangers
about her to exchange sorrows with.
CHAPTER VIII
TOM dodged hither and thither through lanes until he was well out of
the track of returning scholars, and then fell into a moody jog. He
crossed a small "branch" two or three times, because of a prevailing
juvenile superstition that to cross water baffled pursuit. Half an hour
later he was disappearing behind the Douglas mansion on the summit of
Cardiff Hill, and the schoolhouse was hardly distinguishable away off
in the valley behind him. He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless
way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading
oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had
even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was
broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a
woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense
of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in
melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He
sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands,
meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble, at best, and
he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released; it must be
very peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream forever and
ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the
grass and the flowers over the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve
about, ever any more. If he only had a clean Sunday-school record he
could be willing to go, and be done with it all. Now as to this girl.
What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world, and been
treated like a dog--like a very dog. She would be sorry some day--maybe
when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die TEMPORARILY!
But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one
constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift
insensibly back into the concerns of this life again. What if he turned
his back, now, and disappeared mysteriously? What if he went away--ever
so far away, into unknown countries beyond the seas--and never came
back any more! How would she feel then! The idea of being a clown
recurred to him now, only to fill him with disgust. For frivolity and
jokes and spotted tights were an offense, when they intruded themselves
upon a spirit that was exalted into the vague august realm of the
romantic. No, he would be a soldier, and return after long years, all
war-worn and illustrious. No--better still, he would join the Indians,
and hunt buffaloes and go on the warpath in the mountain ranges and the
trackless great plains of the Far West, and away in the future come
back a great chief, bristling with feathers, hideous with paint, and
prance into Sunday-school, some drowsy summer morning, with a
bloodcurdling war-whoop, and sear the eyeballs of all his companions
with unappeasable envy. But no, there was something gaudier even than
this. He would be a pirate! That was it! NOW his future lay plain
before him, and glowing with unimaginable splendor. How his name would
fill the world, and make people shudder! How gloriously he would go
plowing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the
Spirit of the Storm, with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And at
the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village
and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet
doublet and trunks, his great jack-boots, his crimson sash, his belt
bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutlass at his side, his
slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull
and crossbones on it, and hear with swelling ecstasy the whisperings,
"It's Tom Sawyer the Pirate!--the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!"
Yes, it was settled; his career was determined. He would run away from
home and enter upon it. He would start the very next morning. Therefore
he must now begin to get ready. He would collect his resources
together. He went to a rotten log near at hand and began to dig under
one end of it with his Barlow knife. He soon struck wood that sounded
hollow. He put his hand there and uttered this incantation impressively:
"What hasn't come here, come! What's here, stay here!"
Then he scraped away the dirt, and exposed a pine shingle. He took it
up and disclosed a shapely little treasure-house whose bottom and sides
were of shingles. In it lay a marble. Tom's astonishment was boundless!
He scratched his head with a perplexed air, and said:
"Well, that beats anything!"
Then he tossed the marble away pettishly, and stood cogitating. The
truth was, that a superstition of his had failed, here, which he and
all his comrades had always looked upon as infallible. If you buried a
marble with certain necessary incantations, and left it alone a
fortnight, and then opened the place with the incantation he had just
used, you would find that all the marbles you had ever lost had
gathered themselves together there, meantime, no matter how widely they
had been separated. But now, this thing had actually and unquestionably
failed. Tom's whole structure of faith was shaken to its foundations.
He had many a time heard of this thing succeeding but never of its
failing before. It did not occur to him that he had tried it several
times before, himself, but could never find the hiding-places
afterward. He puzzled over the matter some time, and finally decided
that some witch had interfered and broken the charm. He thought he
would satisfy himself on that point; so he searched around till he
found a small sandy spot with a little funnel-shaped depression in it.
He laid himself down and put his mouth close to this depression and
called--
"Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know! Doodle-bug,
doodle-bug, tell me what I want to know!"
The sand began to work, and presently a small black bug appeared for a
second and then darted under again in a fright.
"He dasn't tell! So it WAS a witch that done it. I just knowed it."
He well knew the futility of trying to contend against witches, so he
gave up discouraged. But it occurred to him that he might as well have
the marble he had just thrown away, and therefore he went and made a
patient search for it. But he could not find it. Now he went back to
his treasure-house and carefully placed himself just as he had been
standing when he tossed the marble away; then he took another marble
from his pocket and tossed it in the same way, saying:
"Brother, go find your brother!"
He watched where it stopped, and went there and looked. But it must
have fallen short or gone too far; so he tried twice more. The last
repetition was successful. The two marbles lay within a foot of each
other.
Just here the blast of a toy tin trumpet came faintly down the green
aisles of the forest. Tom flung off his jacket and trousers, turned a
suspender into a belt, raked away some brush behind the rotten log,
disclosing a rude bow and arrow, a lath sword and a tin trumpet, and in
a moment had seized these things and bounded away, barelegged, with
fluttering shirt. He presently halted under a great elm, blew an
answering blast, and then began to tiptoe and look warily out, this way
and that. He said cautiously--to an imaginary company:
"Hold, my merry men! Keep hid till I blow."
Now appeared Joe Harper, as airily clad and elaborately armed as Tom.
Tom called:
"Hold! Who comes here into Sherwood Forest without my pass?"
"Guy of Guisborne wants no man's pass. Who art thou that--that--"
"Dares to hold such language," said Tom, prompting--for they talked
"by the book," from memory.
"Who art thou that dares to hold such language?"
"I, indeed! I am Robin Hood, as thy caitiff carcase soon shall know."
"Then art thou indeed that famous outlaw? Right gladly will I dispute
with thee the passes of the merry wood. Have at thee!"
They took their lath swords, dumped their other traps on the ground,
struck a fencing attitude, foot to foot, and began a grave, careful
combat, "two up and two down." Presently Tom said:
"Now, if you've got the hang, go it lively!"
So they "went it lively," panting and perspiring with the work. By and
by Tom shouted:
"Fall! fall! Why don't you fall?"
"I sha'n't! Why don't you fall yourself? You're getting the worst of
it."
"Why, that ain't anything. I can't fall; that ain't the way it is in
the book. The book says, 'Then with one back-handed stroke he slew poor
Guy of Guisborne.' You're to turn around and let me hit you in the
back."
There was no getting around the authorities, so Joe turned, received
the whack and fell.
"Now," said Joe, getting up, "you got to let me kill YOU. That's fair."
"Why, I can't do that, it ain't in the book."
"Well, it's blamed mean--that's all."
"Well, say, Joe, you can be Friar Tuck or Much the miller's son, and
lam me with a quarter-staff; or I'll be the Sheriff of Nottingham and
you be Robin Hood a little while and kill me."
This was satisfactory, and so these adventures were carried out. Then
Tom became Robin Hood again, and was allowed by the treacherous nun to
bleed his strength away through his neglected wound. And at last Joe,
representing a whole tribe of weeping outlaws, dragged him sadly forth,
gave his bow into his feeble hands, and Tom said, "Where this arrow
falls, there bury poor Robin Hood under the greenwood tree." Then he
shot the arrow and fell back and would have died, but he lit on a
nettle and sprang up too gaily for a corpse.
The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off
grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern
civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss.
They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than
President of the United States forever.
CHAPTER IX
AT half-past nine, that night, Tom and Sid were sent to bed, as usual.
They said their prayers, and Sid was soon asleep. Tom lay awake and
waited, in restless impatience. When it seemed to him that it must be
nearly daylight, he heard the clock strike ten! This was despair. He
would have tossed and fidgeted, as his nerves demanded, but he was
afraid he might wake Sid. So he lay still, and stared up into the dark.
Everything was dismally still. By and by, out of the stillness, little,
scarcely perceptible noises began to emphasize themselves. The ticking
of the clock began to bring itself into notice. Old beams began to
crack mysteriously. The stairs creaked faintly. Evidently spirits were
abroad. A measured, muffled snore issued from Aunt Polly's chamber. And
now the tiresome chirping of a cricket that no human ingenuity could
locate, began. Next the ghastly ticking of a deathwatch in the wall at
the bed's head made Tom shudder--it meant that somebody's days were
numbered. Then the howl of a far-off dog rose on the night air, and was
answered by a fainter howl from a remoter distance. Tom was in an
agony. At last he was satisfied that time had ceased and eternity
begun; he began to doze, in spite of himself; the clock chimed eleven,
but he did not hear it. And then there came, mingling with his
half-formed dreams, a most melancholy caterwauling. The raising of a
neighboring window disturbed him. A cry of "Scat! you devil!" and the
crash of an empty bottle against the back of his aunt's woodshed
brought him wide awake, and a single minute later he was dressed and
out of the window and creeping along the roof of the "ell" on all
fours. He "meow'd" with caution once or twice, as he went; then jumped
to the roof of the woodshed and thence to the ground. Huckleberry Finn
was there, with his dead cat. The boys moved off and disappeared in the
gloom. At the end of half an hour they were wading through the tall
grass of the graveyard.
It was a graveyard of the old-fashioned Western kind. It was on a
hill, about a mile and a half from the village. It had a crazy board
fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of
the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the
whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a
tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over
the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "Sacred to the memory
of" So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer
have been read, on the most of them, now, even if there had been light.
A faint wind moaned through the trees, and Tom feared it might be the
spirits of the dead, complaining at being disturbed. The boys talked
little, and only under their breath, for the time and the place and the
pervading solemnity and silence oppressed their spirits. They found the
sharp new heap they were seeking, and ensconced themselves within the
protection of three great elms that grew in a bunch within a few feet
of the grave.
Then they waited in silence for what seemed a long time. The hooting
of a distant owl was all the sound that troubled the dead stillness.
Tom's reflections grew oppressive. He must force some talk. So he said
in a whisper:
"Hucky, do you believe the dead people like it for us to be here?"
Huckleberry whispered:
"I wisht I knowed. It's awful solemn like, AIN'T it?"
"I bet it is."
There was a considerable pause, while the boys canvassed this matter
inwardly. Then Tom whispered:
"Say, Hucky--do you reckon Hoss Williams hears us talking?"
"O' course he does. Least his sperrit does."
Tom, after a pause:
"I wish I'd said Mister Williams. But I never meant any harm.
Everybody calls him Hoss."
"A body can't be too partic'lar how they talk 'bout these-yer dead
people, Tom."
This was a damper, and conversation died again.
Presently Tom seized his comrade's arm and said:
"Sh!"
"What is it, Tom?" And the two clung together with beating hearts.
"Sh! There 'tis again! Didn't you hear it?"
"I--"
"There! Now you hear it."
"Lord, Tom, they're coming! They're coming, sure. What'll we do?"
"I dono. Think they'll see us?"
"Oh, Tom, they can see in the dark, same as cats. I wisht I hadn't
come."
"Oh, don't be afeard. I don't believe they'll bother us. We ain't
doing any harm. If we keep perfectly still, maybe they won't notice us
at all."
"I'll try to, Tom, but, Lord, I'm all of a shiver."
"Listen!"
The boys bent their heads together and scarcely breathed. A muffled
sound of voices floated up from the far end of the graveyard.
"Look! See there!" whispered Tom. "What is it?"
"It's devil-fire. Oh, Tom, this is awful."
Some vague figures approached through the gloom, swinging an
old-fashioned tin lantern that freckled the ground with innumerable
little spangles of light. Presently Huckleberry whispered with a
shudder:
"It's the devils sure enough. Three of 'em! Lordy, Tom, we're goners!
Can you pray?"
"I'll try, but don't you be afeard. They ain't going to hurt us. 'Now
I lay me down to sleep, I--'"
"Sh!"
"What is it, Huck?"
"They're HUMANS! One of 'em is, anyway. One of 'em's old Muff Potter's
voice."
"No--'tain't so, is it?"
"I bet I know it. Don't you stir nor budge. He ain't sharp enough to
notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely--blamed old rip!"
"All right, I'll keep still. Now they're stuck. Can't find it. Here
they come again. Now they're hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot!
They're p'inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o' them
voices; it's Injun Joe."
"That's so--that murderin' half-breed! I'd druther they was devils a
dern sight. What kin they be up to?"
The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the
grave and stood within a few feet of the boys' hiding-place.
"Here it is," said the third voice; and the owner of it held the
lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson.
Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a
couple of shovels on it. They cast down their load and began to open
the grave. The doctor put the lantern at the head of the grave and came
and sat down with his back against one of the elm trees. He was so
close the boys could have touched him.
"Hurry, men!" he said, in a low voice; "the moon might come out at any
moment."
They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was
no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight
of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck
upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or
two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid
with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the
ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid
face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered
with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a
large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then
said:
"Now the cussed thing's ready, Sawbones, and you'll just out with
another five, or here she stays."
"That's the talk!" said Injun Joe.
"Look here, what does this mean?" said the doctor. "You required your
pay in advance, and I've paid you."
"Yes, and you done more than that," said Injun Joe, approaching the
doctor, who was now standing. "Five years ago you drove me away from
your father's kitchen one night, when I come to ask for something to
eat, and you said I warn't there for any good; and when I swore I'd get
even with you if it took a hundred years, your father had me jailed for
a vagrant. Did you think I'd forget? The Injun blood ain't in me for
nothing. And now I've GOT you, and you got to SETTLE, you know!"
He was threatening the doctor, with his fist in his face, by this
time. The doctor struck out suddenly and stretched the ruffian on the
ground. Potter dropped his knife, and exclaimed:
"Here, now, don't you hit my pard!" and the next moment he had
grappled with the doctor and the two were struggling with might and
main, trampling the grass and tearing the ground with their heels.
Injun Joe sprang to his feet, his eyes flaming with passion, snatched
up Potter's knife, and went creeping, catlike and stooping, round and
round about the combatants, seeking an opportunity. All at once the
doctor flung himself free, seized the heavy headboard of Williams'
grave and felled Potter to the earth with it--and in the same instant
the half-breed saw his chance and drove the knife to the hilt in the
young man's breast. He reeled and fell partly upon Potter, flooding him
with his blood, and in the same moment the clouds blotted out the
dreadful spectacle and the two frightened boys went speeding away in
the dark.
Presently, when the moon emerged again, Injun Joe was standing over
the two forms, contemplating them. The doctor murmured inarticulately,
gave a long gasp or two and was still. The half-breed muttered:
"THAT score is settled--damn you."
Then he robbed the body. After which he put the fatal knife in
Potter's open right hand, and sat down on the dismantled coffin. Three
--four--five minutes passed, and then Potter began to stir and moan. His
hand closed upon the knife; he raised it, glanced at it, and let it
fall, with a shudder. Then he sat up, pushing the body from him, and
gazed at it, and then around him, confusedly. His eyes met Joe's.
"Lord, how is this, Joe?" he said.
"It's a dirty business," said Joe, without moving.
"What did you do it for?"
"I! I never done it!"
"Look here! That kind of talk won't wash."
Potter trembled and grew white.
"I thought I'd got sober. I'd no business to drink to-night. But it's
in my head yet--worse'n when we started here. I'm all in a muddle;
can't recollect anything of it, hardly. Tell me, Joe--HONEST, now, old
feller--did I do it? Joe, I never meant to--'pon my soul and honor, I
never meant to, Joe. Tell me how it was, Joe. Oh, it's awful--and him
so young and promising."
"Why, you two was scuffling, and he fetched you one with the headboard
and you fell flat; and then up you come, all reeling and staggering
like, and snatched the knife and jammed it into him, just as he fetched
you another awful clip--and here you've laid, as dead as a wedge til
now."
"Oh, I didn't know what I was a-doing. I wish I may die this minute if
I did. It was all on account of the whiskey and the excitement, I
reckon. I never used a weepon in my life before, Joe. I've fought, but
never with weepons. They'll all say that. Joe, don't tell! Say you
won't tell, Joe--that's a good feller. I always liked you, Joe, and
stood up for you, too. Don't you remember? You WON'T tell, WILL you,
Joe?" And the poor creature dropped on his knees before the stolid
murderer, and clasped his appealing hands.
"No, you've always been fair and square with me, Muff Potter, and I
won't go back on you. There, now, that's as fair as a man can say."
"Oh, Joe, you're an angel. I'll bless you for this the longest day I
live." And Potter began to cry.
"Come, now, that's enough of that. This ain't any time for blubbering.
You be off yonder way and I'll go this. Move, now, and don't leave any
tracks behind you."
Potter started on a trot that quickly increased to a run. The
half-breed stood looking after him. He muttered:
"If he's as much stunned with the lick and fuddled with the rum as he
had the look of being, he won't think of the knife till he's gone so
far he'll be afraid to come back after it to such a place by himself
--chicken-heart!"
Two or three minutes later the murdered man, the blanketed corpse, the
lidless coffin, and the open grave were under no inspection but the
moon's. The stillness was complete again, too.
CHAPTER X
THE two boys flew on and on, toward the village, speechless with
horror. They glanced backward over their shoulders from time to time,
apprehensively, as if they feared they might be followed. Every stump
that started up in their path seemed a man and an enemy, and made them
catch their breath; and as they sped by some outlying cottages that lay
near the village, the barking of the aroused watch-dogs seemed to give
wings to their feet.
"If we can only get to the old tannery before we break down!"
whispered Tom, in short catches between breaths. "I can't stand it much
longer."
Huckleberry's hard pantings were his only reply, and the boys fixed
their eyes on the goal of their hopes and bent to their work to win it.
They gained steadily on it, and at last, breast to breast, they burst
through the open door and fell grateful and exhausted in the sheltering
shadows beyond. By and by their pulses slowed down, and Tom whispered:
"Huckleberry, what do you reckon'll come of this?"
"If Doctor Robinson dies, I reckon hanging'll come of it."
"Do you though?"
"Why, I KNOW it, Tom."
Tom thought a while, then he said:
"Who'll tell? We?"
"What are you talking about? S'pose something happened and Injun Joe
DIDN'T hang? Why, he'd kill us some time or other, just as dead sure as
we're a laying here."
"That's just what I was thinking to myself, Huck."
"If anybody tells, let Muff Potter do it, if he's fool enough. He's
generally drunk enough."
Tom said nothing--went on thinking. Presently he whispered:
"Huck, Muff Potter don't know it. How can he tell?"
"What's the reason he don't know it?"
"Because he'd just got that whack when Injun Joe done it. D'you reckon
he could see anything? D'you reckon he knowed anything?"
"By hokey, that's so, Tom!"
"And besides, look-a-here--maybe that whack done for HIM!"
"No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and
besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt
him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so,
his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a
man was dead sober, I reckon maybe that whack might fetch him; I dono."
After another reflective silence, Tom said:
"Hucky, you sure you can keep mum?"
"Tom, we GOT to keep mum. You know that. That Injun devil wouldn't
make any more of drownding us than a couple of cats, if we was to
squeak 'bout this and they didn't hang him. Now, look-a-here, Tom, less
take and swear to one another--that's what we got to do--swear to keep
mum."
"I'm agreed. It's the best thing. Would you just hold hands and swear
that we--"
"Oh no, that wouldn't do for this. That's good enough for little
rubbishy common things--specially with gals, cuz THEY go back on you
anyway, and blab if they get in a huff--but there orter be writing
'bout a big thing like this. And blood."
Tom's whole being applauded this idea. It was deep, and dark, and
awful; the hour, the circumstances, the surroundings, were in keeping
with it. He picked up a clean pine shingle that lay in the moonlight,
took a little fragment of "red keel" out of his pocket, got the moon on
his work, and painfully scrawled these lines, emphasizing each slow
down-stroke by clamping his tongue between his teeth, and letting up
the pressure on the up-strokes. [See next page.]
"Huck Finn and
Tom Sawyer swears
they will keep mum
about This and They
wish They may Drop
down dead in Their
Tracks if They ever
Tell and Rot."
Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing,
and the sublimity of his language. He at once took a pin from his lapel
and was going to prick his flesh, but Tom said:
"Hold on! Don't do that. A pin's brass. It might have verdigrease on
it."
"What's verdigrease?"
"It's p'ison. That's what it is. You just swaller some of it once
--you'll see."
So Tom unwound the thread from one of his needles, and each boy
pricked the ball of his thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. In
time, after many squeezes, Tom managed to sign his initials, using the
ball of his little finger for a pen. Then he showed Huckleberry how to
make an H and an F, and the oath was complete. They buried the shingle
close to the wall, with some dismal ceremonies and incantations, and
the fetters that bound their tongues were considered to be locked and
the key thrown away.
A figure crept stealthily through a break in the other end of the
ruined building, now, but they did not notice it.
"Tom," whispered Huckleberry, "does this keep us from EVER telling
--ALWAYS?"
"Of course it does. It don't make any difference WHAT happens, we got
to keep mum. We'd drop down dead--don't YOU know that?"
"Yes, I reckon that's so."
They continued to whisper for some little time. Presently a dog set up
a long, lugubrious howl just outside--within ten feet of them. The boys
clasped each other suddenly, in an agony of fright.
"Which of us does he mean?" gasped Huckleberry.
"I dono--peep through the crack. Quick!"
"No, YOU, Tom!"
"I can't--I can't DO it, Huck!"
"Please, Tom. There 'tis again!"
"Oh, lordy, I'm thankful!" whispered Tom. "I know his voice. It's Bull
Harbison." *
[* If Mr. Harbison owned a slave named Bull, Tom would have spoken of
him as "Harbison's Bull," but a son or a dog of that name was "Bull
Harbison."]
"Oh, that's good--I tell you, Tom, I was most scared to death; I'd a
bet anything it was a STRAY dog."
The dog howled again. The boys' hearts sank once more.
"Oh, my! that ain't no Bull Harbison!" whispered Huckleberry. "DO, Tom!"
Tom, quaking with fear, yielded, and put his eye to the crack. His
whisper was hardly audible when he said:
"Oh, Huck, IT S A STRAY DOG!"
"Quick, Tom, quick! Who does he mean?"
"Huck, he must mean us both--we're right together."
"Oh, Tom, I reckon we're goners. I reckon there ain't no mistake 'bout
where I'LL go to. I been so wicked."
"Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a
feller's told NOT to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I'd a tried
--but no, I wouldn't, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay
I'll just WALLER in Sunday-schools!" And Tom began to snuffle a little.
"YOU bad!" and Huckleberry began to snuffle too. "Consound it, Tom
Sawyer, you're just old pie, 'longside o' what I am. Oh, LORDY, lordy,
lordy, I wisht I only had half your chance."
Tom choked off and whispered:
"Look, Hucky, look! He's got his BACK to us!"
Hucky looked, with joy in his heart.
"Well, he has, by jingoes! Did he before?"
"Yes, he did. But I, like a fool, never thought. Oh, this is bully,
you know. NOW who can he mean?"
The howling stopped. Tom pricked up his ears.
"Sh! What's that?" he whispered.
"Sounds like--like hogs grunting. No--it's somebody snoring, Tom."
"That IS it! Where 'bouts is it, Huck?"
"I bleeve it's down at 'tother end. Sounds so, anyway. Pap used to
sleep there, sometimes, 'long with the hogs, but laws bless you, he
just lifts things when HE snores. Besides, I reckon he ain't ever
coming back to this town any more."
The spirit of adventure rose in the boys' souls once more.
"Hucky, do you das't to go if I lead?"
"I don't like to, much. Tom, s'pose it's Injun Joe!"
Tom quailed. But presently the temptation rose up strong again and the
boys agreed to try, with the understanding that they would take to
their heels if the snoring stopped. So they went tiptoeing stealthily
down, the one behind the other. When they had got to within five steps
of the snorer, Tom stepped on a stick, and it broke with a sharp snap.
The man moaned, writhed a little, and his face came into the moonlight.
It was Muff Potter. The boys' hearts had stood still, and their hopes
too, when the man moved, but their fears passed away now. They tiptoed
out, through the broken weather-boarding, and stopped at a little
distance to exchange a parting word. That long, lugubrious howl rose on
the night air again! They turned and saw the strange dog standing
within a few feet of where Potter was lying, and FACING Potter, with
his nose pointing heavenward.
"Oh, geeminy, it's HIM!" exclaimed both boys, in a breath.
"Say, Tom--they say a stray dog come howling around Johnny Miller's
house, 'bout midnight, as much as two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill
come in and lit on the banisters and sung, the very same evening; and
there ain't anybody dead there yet."
"Well, I know that. And suppose there ain't. Didn't Gracie Miller fall
in the kitchen fire and burn herself terrible the very next Saturday?"
"Yes, but she ain't DEAD. And what's more, she's getting better, too."
"All right, you wait and see. She's a goner, just as dead sure as Muff
Potter's a goner. That's what the niggers say, and they know all about
these kind of things, Huck."
Then they separated, cogitating. When Tom crept in at his bedroom
window the night was almost spent. He undressed with excessive caution,
and fell asleep congratulating himself that nobody knew of his
escapade. He was not aware that the gently-snoring Sid was awake, and
had been so for an hour.
When Tom awoke, Sid was dressed and gone. There was a late look in the
light, a late sense in the atmosphere. He was startled. Why had he not
been called--persecuted till he was up, as usual? The thought filled
him with bodings. Within five minutes he was dressed and down-stairs,
feeling sore and drowsy. The family were still at table, but they had
finished breakfast. There was no voice of rebuke; but there were
averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a
chill to the culprit's heart. He sat down and tried to seem gay, but it
was up-hill work; it roused no smile, no response, and he lapsed into
silence and let his heart sink down to the depths.
After breakfast his aunt took him aside, and Tom almost brightened in
the hope that he was going to be flogged; but it was not so. His aunt
wept over him and asked him how he could go and break her old heart so;
and finally told him to go on, and ruin himself and bring her gray
hairs with sorrow to the grave, for it was no use for her to try any
more. This was worse than a thousand whippings, and Tom's heart was
sorer now than his body. He cried, he pleaded for forgiveness, promised
to reform over and over again, and then received his dismissal, feeling
that he had won but an imperfect forgiveness and established but a
feeble confidence.
He left the presence too miserable to even feel revengeful toward Sid;
and so the latter's prompt retreat through the back gate was
unnecessary. He moped to school gloomy and sad, and took his flogging,
along with Joe Harper, for playing hookey the day before, with the air
of one whose heart was busy with heavier woes and wholly dead to
trifles. Then he betook himself to his seat, rested his elbows on his
desk and his jaws in his hands, and stared at the wall with the stony
stare of suffering that has reached the limit and can no further go.
His elbow was pressing against some hard substance. After a long time
he slowly and sadly changed his position, and took up this object with
a sigh. It was in a paper. He unrolled it. A long, lingering, colossal
sigh followed, and his heart broke. It was his brass andiron knob!
This final feather broke the camel's back.
CHAPTER XI
CLOSE upon the hour of noon the whole village was suddenly electrified
with the ghastly news. No need of the as yet undreamed-of telegraph;
the tale flew from man to man, from group to group, from house to
house, with little less than telegraphic speed. Of course the
schoolmaster gave holiday for that afternoon; the town would have
thought strangely of him if he had not.
A gory knife had been found close to the murdered man, and it had been
recognized by somebody as belonging to Muff Potter--so the story ran.
And it was said that a belated citizen had come upon Potter washing
himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and
that Potter had at once sneaked off--suspicious circumstances,
especially the washing which was not a habit with Potter. It was also
said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" (the public
are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a
verdict), but that he could not be found. Horsemen had departed down
all the roads in every direction, and the Sheriff "was confident" that
he would be captured before night.
All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak
vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a
thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful,
unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place,
he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal
spectacle. It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody
pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both
looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything
in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the
grisly spectacle before them.
"Poor fellow!" "Poor young fellow!" "This ought to be a lesson to
grave robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" This
was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment; His
hand is here."
Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid
face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle,
and voices shouted, "It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!"
"Who? Who?" from twenty voices.
"Muff Potter!"
"Hallo, he's stopped!--Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!"
People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't
trying to get away--he only looked doubtful and perplexed.
"Infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a
quiet look at his work, I reckon--didn't expect any company."
The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through,
ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was
haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood
before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face
in his hands and burst into tears.
"I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor I never
done it."
"Who's accused you?" shouted a voice.
This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked
around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe,
and exclaimed:
"Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never--"
"Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff.
Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to
the ground. Then he said:
"Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get--" He shuddered;
then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "Tell
'em, Joe, tell 'em--it ain't any use any more."
Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the
stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every
moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head,
and wondering to see how long the stroke was delayed. And when he had
finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to
break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and
vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and
it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that.
"Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody
said.
"I couldn't help it--I couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to
run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell
to sobbing again.
Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes
afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the
lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe
had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to them, the most
balefully interesting object they had ever looked upon, and they could
not take their fascinated eyes from his face.
They inwardly resolved to watch him nights, when opportunity should
offer, in the hope of getting a glimpse of his dread master.
Injun Joe helped to raise the body of the murdered man and put it in a
wagon for removal; and it was whispered through the shuddering crowd
that the wound bled a little! The boys thought that this happy
circumstance would turn suspicion in the right direction; but they were
disappointed, for more than one villager remarked:
"It was within three feet of Muff Potter when it done it."
Tom's fearful secret and gnawing conscience disturbed his sleep for as
much as a week after this; and at breakfast one morning Sid said:
"Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me
awake half the time."
Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.
"It's a bad sign," said Aunt Polly, gravely. "What you got on your
mind, Tom?"
"Nothing. Nothing 't I know of." But the boy's hand shook so that he
spilled his coffee.
"And you do talk such stuff," Sid said. "Last night you said, 'It's
blood, it's blood, that's what it is!' You said that over and over. And
you said, 'Don't torment me so--I'll tell!' Tell WHAT? What is it
you'll tell?"
Everything was swimming before Tom. There is no telling what might
have happened, now, but luckily the concern passed out of Aunt Polly's
face and she came to Tom's relief without knowing it. She said:
"Sho! It's that dreadful murder. I dream about it most every night
myself. Sometimes I dream it's me that done it."
Mary said she had been affected much the same way. Sid seemed
satisfied. Tom got out of the presence as quick as he plausibly could,
and after that he complained of toothache for a week, and tied up his
jaws every night. He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and
frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow
listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage
back to its place again. Tom's distress of mind wore off gradually and
the toothache grew irksome and was discarded. If Sid really managed to
make anything out of Tom's disjointed mutterings, he kept it to himself.
It seemed to Tom that his schoolmates never would get done holding
inquests on dead cats, and thus keeping his trouble present to his
mind. Sid noticed that Tom never was coroner at one of these inquiries,
though it had been his habit to take the lead in all new enterprises;
he noticed, too, that Tom never acted as a witness--and that was
strange; and Sid did not overlook the fact that Tom even showed a
marked aversion to these inquests, and always avoided them when he
could. Sid marvelled, but said nothing. However, even inquests went out
of vogue at last, and ceased to torture Tom's conscience.
Every day or two, during this time of sorrow, Tom watched his
opportunity and went to the little grated jail-window and smuggled such
small comforts through to the "murderer" as he could get hold of. The
jail was a trifling little brick den that stood in a marsh at the edge
of the village, and no guards were afforded for it; indeed, it was
seldom occupied. These offerings greatly helped to ease Tom's
conscience.
The villagers had a strong desire to tar-and-feather Injun Joe and
ride him on a rail, for body-snatching, but so formidable was his
character that nobody could be found who was willing to take the lead
in the matter, so it was dropped. He had been careful to begin both of
his inquest-statements with the fight, without confessing the
grave-robbery that preceded it; therefore it was deemed wisest not
to try the case in the courts at present.
CHAPTER XII
ONE of the reasons why Tom's mind had drifted away from its secret
troubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest
itself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had
struggled with his pride a few days, and tried to "whistle her down the
wind," but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father's
house, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she
should die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an
interest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there
was nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat;
there was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to
try all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who are
infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of
producing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in
these things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a
fever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing,
but on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the
"Health" periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance
they were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the "rot" they
contained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up,
and what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and
what frame of mind to keep one's self in, and what sort of clothing to
wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her
health-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they
had recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest
as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered
together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed
with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with
"hell following after." But she never suspected that she was not an
angel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering
neighbors.
The water treatment was new, now, and Tom's low condition was a
windfall to her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him
up in the woodshed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then
she scrubbed him down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to;
then she rolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets
till she sweated his soul clean and "the yellow stains of it came
through his pores"--as Tom said.
Yet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy
and pale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths,
and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to
assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She
calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every
day with quack cure-alls.
Tom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase
filled the old lady's heart with consternation. This indifference must
be broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first
time. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with
gratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water
treatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer. She
gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the
result. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;
for the "indifference" was broken up. The boy could not have shown a
wilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.
Tom felt that it was time to wake up; this sort of life might be
romantic enough, in his blighted condition, but it was getting to have
too little sentiment and too much distracting variety about it. So he
thought over various plans for relief, and finally hit pon that of
professing to be fond of Pain-killer. He asked for it so often that he
became a nuisance, and his aunt ended by telling him to help himself
and quit bothering her. If it had been Sid, she would have had no
misgivings to alloy her delight; but since it was Tom, she watched the
bottle clandestinely. She found that the medicine did really diminish,
but it did not occur to her that the boy was mending the health of a
crack in the sitting-room floor with it.
One day Tom was in the act of dosing the crack when his aunt's yellow
cat came along, purring, eying the teaspoon avariciously, and begging
for a taste. Tom said:
"Don't ask for it unless you want it, Peter."
But Peter signified that he did want it.
"You better make sure."
Peter was sure.
"Now you've asked for it, and I'll give it to you, because there ain't
anything mean about me; but if you find you don't like it, you mustn't
blame anybody but your own self."
Peter was agreeable. So Tom pried his mouth open and poured down the
Pain-killer. Peter sprang a couple of yards in the air, and then
delivered a war-whoop and set off round and round the room, banging
against furniture, upsetting flower-pots, and making general havoc.
Next he rose on his hind feet and pranced around, in a frenzy of
enjoyment, with his head over his shoulder and his voice proclaiming
his unappeasable happiness. Then he went tearing around the house again
spreading chaos and destruction in his path. Aunt Polly entered in time
to see him throw a few double summersets, deliver a final mighty
hurrah, and sail through the open window, carrying the rest of the
flower-pots with him. The old lady stood petrified with astonishment,
peering over her glasses; Tom lay on the floor expiring with laughter.
"Tom, what on earth ails that cat?"
"I don't know, aunt," gasped the boy.
"Why, I never see anything like it. What did make him act so?"
"Deed I don't know, Aunt Polly; cats always act so when they're having
a good time."
"They do, do they?" There was something in the tone that made Tom
apprehensive.
"Yes'm. That is, I believe they do."
"You DO?"
"Yes'm."
The old lady was bending down, Tom watching, with interest emphasized
by anxiety. Too late he divined her "drift." The handle of the telltale
teaspoon was visible under the bed-valance. Aunt Polly took it, held it
up. Tom winced, and dropped his eyes. Aunt Polly raised him by the
usual handle--his ear--and cracked his head soundly with her thimble.
"Now, sir, what did you want to treat that poor dumb beast so, for?"
"I done it out of pity for him--because he hadn't any aunt."
"Hadn't any aunt!--you numskull. What has that got to do with it?"
"Heaps. Because if he'd had one she'd a burnt him out herself! She'd a
roasted his bowels out of him 'thout any more feeling than if he was a
human!"
Aunt Polly felt a sudden pang of remorse. This was putting the thing
in a new light; what was cruelty to a cat MIGHT be cruelty to a boy,
too. She began to soften; she felt sorry. Her eyes watered a little,
and she put her hand on Tom's head and said gently:
"I was meaning for the best, Tom. And, Tom, it DID do you good."
Tom looked up in her face with just a perceptible twinkle peeping
through his gravity.
"I know you was meaning for the best, aunty, and so was I with Peter.
It done HIM good, too. I never see him get around so since--"
"Oh, go 'long with you, Tom, before you aggravate me again. And you
try and see if you can't be a good boy, for once, and you needn't take
any more medicine."
Tom reached school ahead of time. It was noticed that this strange
thing had been occurring every day latterly. And now, as usual of late,
he hung about the gate of the schoolyard instead of playing with his
comrades. He was sick, he said, and he looked it. He tried to seem to
be looking everywhere but whither he really was looking--down the road.
Presently Jeff Thatcher hove in sight, and Tom's face lighted; he gazed
a moment, and then turned sorrowfully away. When Jeff arrived, Tom
accosted him; and "led up" warily to opportunities for remark about
Becky, but the giddy lad never could see the bait. Tom watched and
watched, hoping whenever a frisking frock came in sight, and hating the
owner of it as soon as he saw she was not the right one. At last frocks
ceased to appear, and he dropped hopelessly into the dumps; he entered
the empty schoolhouse and sat down to suffer. Then one more frock
passed in at the gate, and Tom's heart gave a great bound. The next
instant he was out, and "going on" like an Indian; yelling, laughing,
chasing boys, jumping over the fence at risk of life and limb, throwing
handsprings, standing on his head--doing all the heroic things he could
conceive of, and keeping a furtive eye out, all the while, to see if
Becky Thatcher was noticing. But she seemed to be unconscious of it
all; she never looked. Could it be possible that she was not aware that
he was there? He carried his exploits to her immediate vicinity; came
war-whooping around, snatched a boy's cap, hurled it to the roof of the
schoolhouse, broke through a group of boys, tumbling them in every
direction, and fell sprawling, himself, under Becky's nose, almost
upsetting her--and she turned, with her nose in the air, and he heard
her say: "Mf! some people think they're mighty smart--always showing
off!"
Tom's cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed
and crestfallen.
CHAPTER XIII
TOM'S mind was made up now. He was gloomy and desperate. He was a
forsaken, friendless boy, he said; nobody loved him; when they found
out what they had driven him to, perhaps they would be sorry; he had
tried to do right and get along, but they would not let him; since
nothing would do them but to be rid of him, let it be so; and let them
blame HIM for the consequences--why shouldn't they? What right had the
friendless to complain? Yes, they had forced him to it at last: he
would lead a life of crime. There was no choice.
By this time he was far down Meadow Lane, and the bell for school to
"take up" tinkled faintly upon his ear. He sobbed, now, to think he
should never, never hear that old familiar sound any more--it was very
hard, but it was forced on him; since he was driven out into the cold
world, he must submit--but he forgave them. Then the sobs came thick
and fast.
Just at this point he met his soul's sworn comrade, Joe Harper
--hard-eyed, and with evidently a great and dismal purpose in his heart.
Plainly here were "two souls with but a single thought." Tom, wiping
his eyes with his sleeve, began to blubber out something about a
resolution to escape from hard usage and lack of sympathy at home by
roaming abroad into the great world never to return; and ended by
hoping that Joe would not forget him.
But it transpired that this was a request which Joe had just been
going to make of Tom, and had come to hunt him up for that purpose. His
mother had whipped him for drinking some cream which he had never
tasted and knew nothing about; it was plain that she was tired of him
and wished him to go; if she felt that way, there was nothing for him
to do but succumb; he hoped she would be happy, and never regret having
driven her poor boy out into the unfeeling world to suffer and die.
As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to
stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death
relieved them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans.
Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and
dying, some time, of cold and want and grief; but after listening to
Tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a
life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.
Three miles below St. Petersburg, at a point where the Mississippi
River was a trifle over a mile wide, there was a long, narrow, wooded
island, with a shallow bar at the head of it, and this offered well as
a rendezvous. It was not inhabited; it lay far over toward the further
shore, abreast a dense and almost wholly unpeopled forest. So Jackson's
Island was chosen. Who were to be the subjects of their piracies was a
matter that did not occur to them. Then they hunted up Huckleberry
Finn, and he joined them promptly, for all careers were one to him; he
was indifferent. They presently separated to meet at a lonely spot on
the river-bank two miles above the village at the favorite hour--which
was midnight. There was a small log raft there which they meant to
capture. Each would bring hooks and lines, and such provision as he
could steal in the most dark and mysterious way--as became outlaws. And
before the afternoon was done, they had all managed to enjoy the sweet
glory of spreading the fact that pretty soon the town would "hear
something." All who got this vague hint were cautioned to "be mum and
wait."
About midnight Tom arrived with a boiled ham and a few trifles,
and stopped in a dense undergrowth on a small bluff overlooking the
meeting-place. It was starlight, and very still. The mighty river lay
like an ocean at rest. Tom listened a moment, but no sound disturbed the
quiet. Then he gave a low, distinct whistle. It was answered from under
the bluff. Tom whistled twice more; these signals were answered in the
same way. Then a guarded voice said:
"Who goes there?"
"Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. Name your names."
"Huck Finn the Red-Handed, and Joe Harper the Terror of the Seas." Tom
had furnished these titles, from his favorite literature.
"'Tis well. Give the countersign."
Two hoarse whispers delivered the same awful word simultaneously to
the brooding night:
"BLOOD!"
Then Tom tumbled his ham over the bluff and let himself down after it,
tearing both skin and clothes to some extent in the effort. There was
an easy, comfortable path along the shore under the bluff, but it
lacked the advantages of difficulty and danger so valued by a pirate.
The Terror of the Seas had brought a side of bacon, and had about worn
himself out with getting it there. Finn the Red-Handed had stolen a
skillet and a quantity of half-cured leaf tobacco, and had also brought
a few corn-cobs to make pipes with. But none of the pirates smoked or
"chewed" but himself. The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main said it
would never do to start without some fire. That was a wise thought;
matches were hardly known there in that day. They saw a fire
smouldering upon a great raft a hundred yards above, and they went
stealthily thither and helped themselves to a chunk. They made an
imposing adventure of it, saying, "Hist!" every now and then, and
suddenly halting with finger on lip; moving with hands on imaginary
dagger-hilts; and giving orders in dismal whispers that if "the foe"
stirred, to "let him have it to the hilt," because "dead men tell no
tales." They knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the
village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no
excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way.
They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and
Joe at the forward. Tom stood amidships, gloomy-browed, and with folded
arms, and gave his orders in a low, stern whisper:
"Luff, and bring her to the wind!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Steady, steady-y-y-y!"
"Steady it is, sir!"
"Let her go off a point!"
"Point it is, sir!"
As the boys steadily and monotonously drove the raft toward mid-stream
it was no doubt understood that these orders were given only for
"style," and were not intended to mean anything in particular.
"What sail's she carrying?"
"Courses, tops'ls, and flying-jib, sir."
"Send the r'yals up! Lay out aloft, there, half a dozen of ye
--foretopmaststuns'l! Lively, now!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Shake out that maintogalans'l! Sheets and braces! NOW my hearties!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Hellum-a-lee--hard a port! Stand by to meet her when she comes! Port,
port! NOW, men! With a will! Stead-y-y-y!"
"Steady it is, sir!"
The raft drew beyond the middle of the river; the boys pointed her
head right, and then lay on their oars. The river was not high, so
there was not more than a two or three mile current. Hardly a word was
said during the next three-quarters of an hour. Now the raft was
passing before the distant town. Two or three glimmering lights showed
where it lay, peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of
star-gemmed water, unconscious of the tremendous event that was happening.
The Black Avenger stood still with folded arms, "looking his last" upon
the scene of his former joys and his later sufferings, and wishing
"she" could see him now, abroad on the wild sea, facing peril and death
with dauntless heart, going to his doom with a grim smile on his lips.
It was but a small strain on his imagination to remove Jackson's Island
beyond eyeshot of the village, and so he "looked his last" with a
broken and satisfied heart. The other pirates were looking their last,
too; and they all looked so long that they came near letting the
current drift them out of the range of the island. But they discovered
the danger in time, and made shift to avert it. About two o'clock in
the morning the raft grounded on the bar two hundred yards above the
head of the island, and they waded back and forth until they had landed
their freight. Part of the little raft's belongings consisted of an old
sail, and this they spread over a nook in the bushes for a tent to
shelter their provisions; but they themselves would sleep in the open
air in good weather, as became outlaws.
They built a fire against the side of a great log twenty or thirty
steps within the sombre depths of the forest, and then cooked some
bacon in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn "pone"
stock they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that
wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited
island, far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would
return to civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw
its ruddy glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple,
and upon the varnished foliage and festooning vines.
When the last crisp slice of bacon was gone, and the last allowance of
corn pone devoured, the boys stretched themselves out on the grass,
filled with contentment. They could have found a cooler place, but they
would not deny themselves such a romantic feature as the roasting
camp-fire.
"AIN'T it gay?" said Joe.
"It's NUTS!" said Tom. "What would the boys say if they could see us?"
"Say? Well, they'd just die to be here--hey, Hucky!"
"I reckon so," said Huckleberry; "anyways, I'm suited. I don't want
nothing better'n this. I don't ever get enough to eat, gen'ally--and
here they can't come and pick at a feller and bullyrag him so."
"It's just the life for me," said Tom. "You don't have to get up,
mornings, and you don't have to go to school, and wash, and all that
blame foolishness. You see a pirate don't have to do ANYTHING, Joe,
when he's ashore, but a hermit HE has to be praying considerable, and
then he don't have any fun, anyway, all by himself that way."
"Oh yes, that's so," said Joe, "but I hadn't thought much about it,
you know. I'd a good deal rather be a pirate, now that I've tried it."
"You see," said Tom, "people don't go much on hermits, nowadays, like
they used to in old times, but a pirate's always respected. And a
hermit's got to sleep on the hardest place he can find, and put
sackcloth and ashes on his head, and stand out in the rain, and--"
"What does he put sackcloth and ashes on his head for?" inquired Huck.
"I dono. But they've GOT to do it. Hermits always do. You'd have to do
that if you was a hermit."
"Dern'd if I would," said Huck.
"Well, what would you do?"
"I dono. But I wouldn't do that."
"Why, Huck, you'd HAVE to. How'd you get around it?"
"Why, I just wouldn't stand it. I'd run away."
"Run away! Well, you WOULD be a nice old slouch of a hermit. You'd be
a disgrace."
The Red-Handed made no response, being better employed. He had
finished gouging out a cob, and now he fitted a weed stem to it, loaded
it with tobacco, and was pressing a coal to the charge and blowing a
cloud of fragrant smoke--he was in the full bloom of luxurious
contentment. The other pirates envied him this majestic vice, and
secretly resolved to acquire it shortly. Presently Huck said:
"What does pirates have to do?"
Tom said:
"Oh, they have just a bully time--take ships and burn them, and get
the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's
ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships--make
'em walk a plank."
"And they carry the women to the island," said Joe; "they don't kill
the women."
"No," assented Tom, "they don't kill the women--they're too noble. And
the women's always beautiful, too.
"And don't they wear the bulliest clothes! Oh no! All gold and silver
and di'monds," said Joe, with enthusiasm.
"Who?" said Huck.
"Why, the pirates."
Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly.
"I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a
regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't got none but these."
But the other boys told him the fine clothes would come fast enough,
after they should have begun their adventures. They made him understand
that his poor rags would do to begin with, though it was customary for
wealthy pirates to start with a proper wardrobe.
Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the
weary. The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main
had more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers
inwardly, and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority
to make them kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to
say them at all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as
that, lest they might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from
heaven. Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge
of sleep--but an intruder came, now, that would not "down." It was
conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing
wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then
the real torture came. They tried to argue it away by reminding
conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of
times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin
plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no
getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only
"hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain
simple stealing--and there was a command against that in the Bible. So
they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business,
their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.
Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent
pirates fell peacefully to sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the
cool gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in
the deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred;
not a sound obtruded upon great Nature's meditation. Beaded dewdrops
stood upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the
fire, and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe
and Huck still slept.
Now, far away in the woods a bird called; another answered; presently
the hammering of a woodpecker was heard. Gradually the cool dim gray of
the morning whitened, and as gradually sounds multiplied and life
manifested itself. The marvel of Nature shaking off sleep and going to
work unfolded itself to the musing boy. A little green worm came
crawling over a dewy leaf, lifting two-thirds of his body into the air
from time to time and "sniffing around," then proceeding again--for he
was measuring, Tom said; and when the worm approached him, of its own
accord, he sat as still as a stone, with his hopes rising and falling,
by turns, as the creature still came toward him or seemed inclined to
go elsewhere; and when at last it considered a painful moment with its
curved body in the air and then came decisively down upon Tom's leg and
began a journey over him, his whole heart was glad--for that meant that
he was going to have a new suit of clothes--without the shadow of a
doubt a gaudy piratical uniform. Now a procession of ants appeared,
from nowhere in particular, and went about their labors; one struggled
manfully by with a dead spider five times as big as itself in its arms,
and lugged it straight up a tree-trunk. A brown spotted lady-bug
climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to
it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire,
your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it
--which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was
credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its
simplicity more than once. A tumblebug came next, heaving sturdily at
its ball, and Tom touched the creature, to see it shut its legs against
its body and pretend to be dead. The birds were fairly rioting by this
time. A catbird, the Northern mocker, lit in a tree over Tom's head,
and trilled out her imitations of her neighbors in a rapture of
enjoyment; then a shrill jay swept down, a flash of blue flame, and
stopped on a twig almost within the boy's reach, cocked his head to one
side and eyed the strangers with a consuming curiosity; a gray squirrel
and a big fellow of the "fox" kind came skurrying along, sitting up at
intervals to inspect and chatter at the boys, for the wild things had
probably never seen a human being before and scarcely knew whether to
be afraid or not. All Nature was wide awake and stirring, now; long
lances of sunlight pierced down through the dense foliage far and near,
and a few butterflies came fluttering upon the scene.
Tom stirred up the other pirates and they all clattered away with a
shout, and in a minute or two were stripped and chasing after and
tumbling over each other in the shallow limpid water of the white
sandbar. They felt no longing for the little village sleeping in the
distance beyond the majestic waste of water. A vagrant current or a
slight rise in the river had carried off their raft, but this only
gratified them, since its going was something like burning the bridge
between them and civilization.
They came back to camp wonderfully refreshed, glad-hearted, and
ravenous; and they soon had the camp-fire blazing up again. Huck found
a spring of clear cold water close by, and the boys made cups of broad
oak or hickory leaves, and felt that water, sweetened with such a
wildwood charm as that, would be a good enough substitute for coffee.
While Joe was slicing bacon for breakfast, Tom and Huck asked him to
hold on a minute; they stepped to a promising nook in the river-bank
and threw in their lines; almost immediately they had reward. Joe had
not had time to get impatient before they were back again with some
handsome bass, a couple of sun-perch and a small catfish--provisions
enough for quite a family. They fried the fish with the bacon, and were
astonished; for no fish had ever seemed so delicious before. They did
not know that the quicker a fresh-water fish is on the fire after he is
caught the better he is; and they reflected little upon what a sauce
open-air sleeping, open-air exercise, bathing, and a large ingredient
of hunger make, too.
They lay around in the shade, after breakfast, while Huck had a smoke,
and then went off through the woods on an exploring expedition. They
tramped gayly along, over decaying logs, through tangled underbrush,
among solemn monarchs of the forest, hung from their crowns to the
ground with a drooping regalia of grape-vines. Now and then they came
upon snug nooks carpeted with grass and jeweled with flowers.
They found plenty of things to be delighted with, but nothing to be
astonished at. They discovered that the island was about three miles
long and a quarter of a mile wide, and that the shore it lay closest to
was only separated from it by a narrow channel hardly two hundred yards
wide. They took a swim about every hour, so it was close upon the
middle of the afternoon when they got back to camp. They were too
hungry to stop to fish, but they fared sumptuously upon cold ham, and
then threw themselves down in the shade to talk. But the talk soon
began to drag, and then died. The stillness, the solemnity that brooded
in the woods, and the sense of loneliness, began to tell upon the
spirits of the boys. They fell to thinking. A sort of undefined longing
crept upon them. This took dim shape, presently--it was budding
homesickness. Even Finn the Red-Handed was dreaming of his doorsteps
and empty hogsheads. But they were all ashamed of their weakness, and
none was brave enough to speak his thought.
For some time, now, the boys had been dully conscious of a peculiar
sound in the distance, just as one sometimes is of the ticking of a
clock which he takes no distinct note of. But now this mysterious sound
became more pronounced, and forced a recognition. The boys started,
glanced at each other, and then each assumed a listening attitude.
There was a long silence, profound and unbroken; then a deep, sullen
boom came floating down out of the distance.
"What is it!" exclaimed Joe, under his breath.
"I wonder," said Tom in a whisper.
"'Tain't thunder," said Huckleberry, in an awed tone, "becuz thunder--"
"Hark!" said Tom. "Listen--don't talk."
They waited a time that seemed an age, and then the same muffled boom
troubled the solemn hush.
"Let's go and see."
They sprang to their feet and hurried to the shore toward the town.
They parted the bushes on the bank and peered out over the water. The
little steam ferryboat was about a mile below the village, drifting
with the current. Her broad deck seemed crowded with people. There were
a great many skiffs rowing about or floating with the stream in the
neighborhood of the ferryboat, but the boys could not determine what
the men in them were doing. Presently a great jet of white smoke burst
from the ferryboat's side, and as it expanded and rose in a lazy cloud,
that same dull throb of sound was borne to the listeners again.
"I know now!" exclaimed Tom; "somebody's drownded!"
"That's it!" said Huck; "they done that last summer, when Bill Turner
got drownded; they shoot a cannon over the water, and that makes him
come up to the top. Yes, and they take loaves of bread and put
quicksilver in 'em and set 'em afloat, and wherever there's anybody
that's drownded, they'll float right there and stop."
"Yes, I've heard about that," said Joe. "I wonder what makes the bread
do that."
"Oh, it ain't the bread, so much," said Tom; "I reckon it's mostly
what they SAY over it before they start it out."
"But they don't say anything over it," said Huck. "I've seen 'em and
they don't."
"Well, that's funny," said Tom. "But maybe they say it to themselves.
Of COURSE they do. Anybody might know that."
The other boys agreed that there was reason in what Tom said, because
an ignorant lump of bread, uninstructed by an incantation, could not be
expected to act very intelligently when set upon an errand of such
gravity.
"By jings, I wish I was over there, now," said Joe.
"I do too" said Huck "I'd give heaps to know who it is."
The boys still listened and watched. Presently a revealing thought
flashed through Tom's mind, and he exclaimed:
"Boys, I know who's drownded--it's us!"
They felt like heroes in an instant. Here was a gorgeous triumph; they
were missed; they were mourned; hearts were breaking on their account;
tears were being shed; accusing memories of unkindness to these poor
lost lads were rising up, and unavailing regrets and remorse were being
indulged; and best of all, the departed were the talk of the whole
town, and the envy of all the boys, as far as this dazzling notoriety
was concerned. This was fine. It was worth while to be a pirate, after
all.
As twilight drew on, the ferryboat went back to her accustomed
business and the skiffs disappeared. The pirates returned to camp. They
were jubilant with vanity over their new grandeur and the illustrious
trouble they were making. They caught fish, cooked supper and ate it,
and then fell to guessing at what the village was thinking and saying
about them; and the pictures they drew of the public distress on their
account were gratifying to look upon--from their point of view. But
when the shadows of night closed them in, they gradually ceased to
talk, and sat gazing into the fire, with their minds evidently
wandering elsewhere. The excitement was gone, now, and Tom and Joe
could not keep back thoughts of certain persons at home who were not
enjoying this fine frolic as much as they were. Misgivings came; they
grew troubled and unhappy; a sigh or two escaped, unawares. By and by
Joe timidly ventured upon a roundabout "feeler" as to how the others
might look upon a return to civilization--not right now, but--
Tom withered him with derision! Huck, being uncommitted as yet, joined
in with Tom, and the waverer quickly "explained," and was glad to get
out of the scrape with as little taint of chicken-hearted homesickness
clinging to his garments as he could. Mutiny was effectually laid to
rest for the moment.
As the night deepened, Huck began to nod, and presently to snore. Joe
followed next. Tom lay upon his elbow motionless, for some time,
watching the two intently. At last he got up cautiously, on his knees,
and went searching among the grass and the flickering reflections flung
by the camp-fire. He picked up and inspected several large
semi-cylinders of the thin white bark of a sycamore, and finally chose
two which seemed to suit him. Then he knelt by the fire and painfully
wrote something upon each of these with his "red keel"; one he rolled up
and put in his jacket pocket, and the other he put in Joe's hat and
removed it to a little distance from the owner. And he also put into the
hat certain schoolboy treasures of almost inestimable value--among them
a lump of chalk, an India-rubber ball, three fishhooks, and one of that
kind of marbles known as a "sure 'nough crystal." Then he tiptoed his
way cautiously among the trees till he felt that he was out of hearing,
and straightway broke into a keen run in the direction of the sandbar.
CHAPTER XV
A FEW minutes later Tom was in the shoal water of the bar, wading
toward the Illinois shore. Before the depth reached his middle he was
half-way over; the current would permit no more wading, now, so he
struck out confidently to swim the remaining hundred yards. He swam
quartering upstream, but still was swept downward rather faster than he
had expected. However, he reached the shore finally, and drifted along
till he found a low place and drew himself out. He put his hand on his
jacket pocket, found his piece of bark safe, and then struck through
the woods, following the shore, with streaming garments. Shortly before
ten o'clock he came out into an open place opposite the village, and
saw the ferryboat lying in the shadow of the trees and the high bank.
Everything was quiet under the blinking stars. He crept down the bank,
watching with all his eyes, slipped into the water, swam three or four
strokes and climbed into the skiff that did "yawl" duty at the boat's
stern. He laid himself down under the thwarts and waited, panting.
Presently the cracked bell tapped and a voice gave the order to "cast
off." A minute or two later the skiff's head was standing high up,
against the boat's swell, and the voyage was begun. Tom felt happy in
his success, for he knew it was the boat's last trip for the night. At
the end of a long twelve or fifteen minutes the wheels stopped, and Tom
slipped overboard and swam ashore in the dusk, landing fifty yards
downstream, out of danger of possible stragglers.
He flew along unfrequented alleys, and shortly found himself at his
aunt's back fence. He climbed over, approached the "ell," and looked in
at the sitting-room window, for a light was burning there. There sat
Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, and Joe Harper's mother, grouped together,
talking. They were by the bed, and the bed was between them and the
door. Tom went to the door and began to softly lift the latch; then he
pressed gently and the door yielded a crack; he continued pushing
cautiously, and quaking every time it creaked, till he judged he might
squeeze through on his knees; so he put his head through and began,
warily.
"What makes the candle blow so?" said Aunt Polly. Tom hurried up.
"Why, that door's open, I believe. Why, of course it is. No end of
strange things now. Go 'long and shut it, Sid."
Tom disappeared under the bed just in time. He lay and "breathed"
himself for a time, and then crept to where he could almost touch his
aunt's foot.
"But as I was saying," said Aunt Polly, "he warn't BAD, so to say
--only mischEEvous. Only just giddy, and harum-scarum, you know. He
warn't any more responsible than a colt. HE never meant any harm, and
he was the best-hearted boy that ever was"--and she began to cry.
"It was just so with my Joe--always full of his devilment, and up to
every kind of mischief, but he was just as unselfish and kind as he
could be--and laws bless me, to think I went and whipped him for taking
that cream, never once recollecting that I throwed it out myself
because it was sour, and I never to see him again in this world, never,
never, never, poor abused boy!" And Mrs. Harper sobbed as if her heart
would break.
"I hope Tom's better off where he is," said Sid, "but if he'd been
better in some ways--"
"SID!" Tom felt the glare of the old lady's eye, though he could not
see it. "Not a word against my Tom, now that he's gone! God'll take
care of HIM--never you trouble YOURself, sir! Oh, Mrs. Harper, I don't
know how to give him up! I don't know how to give him up! He was such a
comfort to me, although he tormented my old heart out of me, 'most."
"The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away--Blessed be the name of
the Lord! But it's so hard--Oh, it's so hard! Only last Saturday my
Joe busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him
sprawling. Little did I know then, how soon--Oh, if it was to do over
again I'd hug him and bless him for it."
"Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just
exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took
and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur
would tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom's head
with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he's out of all his
troubles now. And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach--"
But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely
down. Tom was snuffling, now, himself--and more in pity of himself than
anybody else. He could hear Mary crying, and putting in a kindly word
for him from time to time. He began to have a nobler opinion of himself
than ever before. Still, he was sufficiently touched by his aunt's
grief to long to rush out from under the bed and overwhelm her with
joy--and the theatrical gorgeousness of the thing appealed strongly to
his nature, too, but he resisted and lay still.
He went on listening, and gathered by odds and ends that it was
conjectured at first that the boys had got drowned while taking a swim;
then the small raft had been missed; next, certain boys said the
missing lads had promised that the village should "hear something"
soon; the wise-heads had "put this and that together" and decided that
the lads had gone off on that raft and would turn up at the next town
below, presently; but toward noon the raft had been found, lodged
against the Missouri shore some five or six miles below the village
--and then hope perished; they must be drowned, else hunger would have
driven them home by nightfall if not sooner. It was believed that the
search for the bodies had been a fruitless effort merely because the
drowning must have occurred in mid-channel, since the boys, being good
swimmers, would otherwise have escaped to shore. This was Wednesday
night. If the bodies continued missing until Sunday, all hope would be
given over, and the funerals would be preached on that morning. Tom
shuddered.
Mrs. Harper gave a sobbing good-night and turned to go. Then with a
mutual impulse the two bereaved women flung themselves into each
other's arms and had a good, consoling cry, and then parted. Aunt Polly
was tender far beyond her wont, in her good-night to Sid and Mary. Sid
snuffled a bit and Mary went off crying with all her heart.
Aunt Polly knelt down and prayed for Tom so touchingly, so
appealingly, and with such measureless love in her words and her old
trembling voice, that he was weltering in tears again, long before she
was through.
He had to keep still long after she went to bed, for she kept making
broken-hearted ejaculations from time to time, tossing unrestfully, and
turning over. But at last she was still, only moaning a little in her
sleep. Now the boy stole out, rose gradually by the bedside, shaded the
candle-light with his hand, and stood regarding her. His heart was full
of pity for her. He took out his sycamore scroll and placed it by the
candle. But something occurred to him, and he lingered considering. His
face lighted with a happy solution of his thought; he put the bark
hastily in his pocket. Then he bent over and kissed the faded lips, and
straightway made his stealthy exit, latching the door behind him.
He threaded his way back to the ferry landing, found nobody at large
there, and walked boldly on board the boat, for he knew she was
tenantless except that there was a watchman, who always turned in and
slept like a graven image. He untied the skiff at the stern, slipped
into it, and was soon rowing cautiously upstream. When he had pulled a
mile above the village, he started quartering across and bent himself
stoutly to his work. He hit the landing on the other side neatly, for
this was a familiar bit of work to him. He was moved to capture the
skiff, arguing that it might be considered a ship and therefore
legitimate prey for a pirate, but he knew a thorough search would be
made for it and that might end in revelations. So he stepped ashore and
entered the woods.
He sat down and took a long rest, torturing himself meanwhile to keep
awake, and then started warily down the home-stretch. The night was far
spent. It was broad daylight before he found himself fairly abreast the
island bar. He rested again until the sun was well up and gilding the
great river with its splendor, and then he plunged into the stream. A
little later he paused, dripping, upon the threshold of the camp, and
heard Joe say:
"No, Tom's true-blue, Huck, and he'll come back. He won't desert. He
knows that would be a disgrace to a pirate, and Tom's too proud for
that sort of thing. He's up to something or other. Now I wonder what?"
"Well, the things is ours, anyway, ain't they?"
Pretty near, but not yet, Huck. The writing says they are if he ain't
back here to breakfast."
"Which he is!" exclaimed Tom, with fine dramatic effect, stepping
grandly into camp.
A sumptuous breakfast of bacon and fish was shortly provided, and as
the boys set to work upon it, Tom recounted (and adorned) his
adventures. They were a vain and boastful company of heroes when the
tale was done. Then Tom hid himself away in a shady nook to sleep till
noon, and the other pirates got ready to fish and explore.
CHAPTER XVI
AFTER dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the
bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a
soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands.
Sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They
were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an English
walnut. They had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on
Friday morning.
After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and
chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until
they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal
water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their
legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun.
And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each
other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with
averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and
struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all
went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing,
sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time.
When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the
dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by
and by break for the water again and go through the original
performance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked
skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very fairly; so they drew a
ring in the sand and had a circus--with three clowns in it, for none
would yield this proudest post to his neighbor.
Next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ring-taw" and
"keeps" till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another
swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off
his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his
ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the
protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he
had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to
rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell
to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay
drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with
his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his
weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He
erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving
the other boys together and joining them.
But Joe's spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so
homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay
very near the surface. Huck was melancholy, too. Tom was downhearted,
but tried hard not to show it. He had a secret which he was not ready
to tell, yet, but if this mutinous depression was not broken up soon,
he would have to bring it out. He said, with a great show of
cheerfulness:
"I bet there's been pirates on this island before, boys. We'll explore
it again. They've hid treasures here somewhere. How'd you feel to light
on a rotten chest full of gold and silver--hey?"
But it roused only faint enthusiasm, which faded out, with no reply.
Tom tried one or two other seductions; but they failed, too. It was
discouraging work. Joe sat poking up the sand with a stick and looking
very gloomy. Finally he said:
"Oh, boys, let's give it up. I want to go home. It's so lonesome."
"Oh no, Joe, you'll feel better by and by," said Tom. "Just think of
the fishing that's here."
"I don't care for fishing. I want to go home."
"But, Joe, there ain't such another swimming-place anywhere."
"Swimming's no good. I don't seem to care for it, somehow, when there
ain't anybody to say I sha'n't go in. I mean to go home."
"Oh, shucks! Baby! You want to see your mother, I reckon."
"Yes, I DO want to see my mother--and you would, too, if you had one.
I ain't any more baby than you are." And Joe snuffled a little.
"Well, we'll let the cry-baby go home to his mother, won't we, Huck?
Poor thing--does it want to see its mother? And so it shall. You like
it here, don't you, Huck? We'll stay, won't we?"
Huck said, "Y-e-s"--without any heart in it.
"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live," said Joe, rising.
"There now!" And he moved moodily away and began to dress himself.
"Who cares!" said Tom. "Nobody wants you to. Go 'long home and get
laughed at. Oh, you're a nice pirate. Huck and me ain't cry-babies.
We'll stay, won't we, Huck? Let him go if he wants to. I reckon we can
get along without him, per'aps."
But Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and was alarmed to see Joe go
sullenly on with his dressing. And then it was discomforting to see
Huck eying Joe's preparations so wistfully, and keeping up such an
ominous silence. Presently, without a parting word, Joe began to wade
off toward the Illinois shore. Tom's heart began to sink. He glanced at
Huck. Huck could not bear the look, and dropped his eyes. Then he said:
"I want to go, too, Tom. It was getting so lonesome anyway, and now
it'll be worse. Let's us go, too, Tom."
"I won't! You can all go, if you want to. I mean to stay."
"Tom, I better go."
"Well, go 'long--who's hendering you."
Huck began to pick up his scattered clothes. He said:
"Tom, I wisht you'd come, too. Now you think it over. We'll wait for
you when we get to shore."
"Well, you'll wait a blame long time, that's all."
Huck started sorrowfully away, and Tom stood looking after him, with a
strong desire tugging at his heart to yield his pride and go along too.
He hoped the boys would stop, but they still waded slowly on. It
suddenly dawned on Tom that it was become very lonely and still. He
made one final struggle with his pride, and then darted after his
comrades, yelling:
"Wait! Wait! I want to tell you something!"
They presently stopped and turned around. When he got to where they
were, he began unfolding his secret, and they listened moodily till at
last they saw the "point" he was driving at, and then they set up a
war-whoop of applause and said it was "splendid!" and said if he had
told them at first, they wouldn't have started away. He made a plausible
excuse; but his real reason had been the fear that not even the secret
would keep them with him any very great length of time, and so he had
meant to hold it in reserve as a last seduction.
The lads came gayly back and went at their sports again with a will,
chattering all the time about Tom's stupendous plan and admiring the
genius of it. After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to
learn to smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to
try, too. So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never
smoked anything before but cigars made of grape-vine, and they "bit"
the tongue, and were not considered manly anyway.
Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff,
charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant
taste, and they gagged a little, but Tom said:
"Why, it's just as easy! If I'd a knowed this was all, I'd a learnt
long ago."
"So would I," said Joe. "It's just nothing."
"Why, many a time I've looked at people smoking, and thought well I
wish I could do that; but I never thought I could," said Tom.
"That's just the way with me, hain't it, Huck? You've heard me talk
just that way--haven't you, Huck? I'll leave it to Huck if I haven't."
"Yes--heaps of times," said Huck.
"Well, I have too," said Tom; "oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the
slaughter-house. Don't you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and
Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don't you remember,
Huck, 'bout me saying that?"
"Yes, that's so," said Huck. "That was the day after I lost a white
alley. No, 'twas the day before."
"There--I told you so," said Tom. "Huck recollects it."
"I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day," said Joe. "I don't feel
sick."
"Neither do I," said Tom. "I could smoke it all day. But I bet you
Jeff Thatcher couldn't."
"Jeff Thatcher! Why, he'd keel over just with two draws. Just let him
try it once. HE'D see!"
"I bet he would. And Johnny Miller--I wish could see Johnny Miller
tackle it once."
"Oh, don't I!" said Joe. "Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn't any
more do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch HIM."
"'Deed it would, Joe. Say--I wish the boys could see us now."
"So do I."
"Say--boys, don't say anything about it, and some time when they're
around, I'll come up to you and say, 'Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.'
And you'll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn't anything, you'll
say, 'Yes, I got my OLD pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain't
very good.' And I'll say, 'Oh, that's all right, if it's STRONG
enough.' And then you'll out with the pipes, and we'll light up just as
ca'm, and then just see 'em look!"
"By jings, that'll be gay, Tom! I wish it was NOW!"
"So do I! And when we tell 'em we learned when we was off pirating,
won't they wish they'd been along?"
"Oh, I reckon not! I'll just BET they will!"
So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow
disjointed. The silences widened; the expectoration marvellously
increased. Every pore inside the boys' cheeks became a spouting
fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues
fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their
throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings
followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable,
now. Joe's pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom's followed.
Both fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might
and main. Joe said feebly:
"I've lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it."
Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:
"I'll help you. You go over that way and I'll hunt around by the
spring. No, you needn't come, Huck--we can find it."
So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome,
and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both
very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they
had had any trouble they had got rid of it.
They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look,
and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare
theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very well--something they
ate at dinner had disagreed with them.
About midnight Joe awoke, and called the boys. There was a brooding
oppressiveness in the air that seemed to bode something. The boys
huddled themselves together and sought the friendly companionship of
the fire, though the dull dead heat of the breathless atmosphere was
stifling. They sat still, intent and waiting. The solemn hush
continued. Beyond the light of the fire everything was swallowed up in
the blackness of darkness. Presently there came a quivering glow that
vaguely revealed the foliage for a moment and then vanished. By and by
another came, a little stronger. Then another. Then a faint moan came
sighing through the branches of the forest and the boys felt a fleeting
breath upon their cheeks, and shuddered with the fancy that the Spirit
of the Night had gone by. There was a pause. Now a weird flash turned
night into day and showed every little grass-blade, separate and
distinct, that grew about their feet. And it showed three white,
startled faces, too. A deep peal of thunder went rolling and tumbling
down the heavens and lost itself in sullen rumblings in the distance. A
sweep of chilly air passed by, rustling all the leaves and snowing the
flaky ashes broadcast about the fire. Another fierce glare lit up the
forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the tree-tops
right over the boys' heads. They clung together in terror, in the thick
gloom that followed. A few big rain-drops fell pattering upon the
leaves.
"Quick! boys, go for the tent!" exclaimed Tom.
They sprang away, stumbling over roots and among vines in the dark, no
two plunging in the same direction. A furious blast roared through the
trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after
another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a
drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets
along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring
wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly.
However, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under
the tent, cold, scared, and streaming with water; but to have company
in misery seemed something to be grateful for. They could not talk, the
old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have
allowed them. The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the
sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast.
The boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and
bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river-bank.
Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of
lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in
clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy
river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim
outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the
drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while
some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger
growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting
explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm
culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island
to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and
deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a
wild night for homeless young heads to be out in.
But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker
and weaker threatenings and grumblings, and peace resumed her sway. The
boys went back to camp, a good deal awed; but they found there was
still something to be thankful for, because the great sycamore, the
shelter of their beds, was a ruin, now, blasted by the lightnings, and
they were not under it when the catastrophe happened.
Everything in camp was drenched, the camp-fire as well; for they were
but heedless lads, like their generation, and had made no provision
against rain. Here was matter for dismay, for they were soaked through
and chilled. They were eloquent in their distress; but they presently
discovered that the fire had eaten so far up under the great log it had
been built against (where it curved upward and separated itself from
the ground), that a handbreadth or so of it had escaped wetting; so
they patiently wrought until, with shreds and bark gathered from the
under sides of sheltered logs, they coaxed the fire to burn again. Then
they piled on great dead boughs till they had a roaring furnace, and
were glad-hearted once more. They dried their boiled ham and had a
feast, and after that they sat by the fire and expanded and glorified
their midnight adventure until morning, for there was not a dry spot to
sleep on, anywhere around.
As the sun began to steal in upon the boys, drowsiness came over them,
and they went out on the sandbar and lay down to sleep. They got
scorched out by and by, and drearily set about getting breakfast. After
the meal they felt rusty, and stiff-jointed, and a little homesick once
more. Tom saw the signs, and fell to cheering up the pirates as well as
he could. But they cared nothing for marbles, or circus, or swimming,
or anything. He reminded them of the imposing secret, and raised a ray
of cheer. While it lasted, he got them interested in a new device. This
was to knock off being pirates, for a while, and be Indians for a
change. They were attracted by this idea; so it was not long before
they were stripped, and striped from head to heel with black mud, like
so many zebras--all of them chiefs, of course--and then they went
tearing through the woods to attack an English settlement.
By and by they separated into three hostile tribes, and darted upon
each other from ambush with dreadful war-whoops, and killed and scalped
each other by thousands. It was a gory day. Consequently it was an
extremely satisfactory one.
They assembled in camp toward supper-time, hungry and happy; but now a
difficulty arose--hostile Indians could not break the bread of
hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple
impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other
process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished
they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with
such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the pipe
and took their whiff as it passed, in due form.
And behold, they were glad they had gone into savagery, for they had
gained something; they found that they could now smoke a little without
having to go and hunt for a lost knife; they did not get sick enough to
be seriously uncomfortable. They were not likely to fool away this high
promise for lack of effort. No, they practised cautiously, after
supper, with right fair success, and so they spent a jubilant evening.
They were prouder and happier in their new acquirement than they would
have been in the scalping and skinning of the Six Nations. We will
leave them to smoke and chatter and brag, since we have no further use
for them at present.
CHAPTER XVII
BUT there was no hilarity in the little town that same tranquil
Saturday afternoon. The Harpers, and Aunt Polly's family, were being
put into mourning, with great grief and many tears. An unusual quiet
possessed the village, although it was ordinarily quiet enough, in all
conscience. The villagers conducted their concerns with an absent air,
and talked little; but they sighed often. The Saturday holiday seemed a
burden to the children. They had no heart in their sports, and
gradually gave them up.
In the afternoon Becky Thatcher found herself moping about the
deserted schoolhouse yard, and feeling very melancholy. But she found
nothing there to comfort her. She soliloquized:
"Oh, if I only had a brass andiron-knob again! But I haven't got
anything now to remember him by." And she choked back a little sob.
Presently she stopped, and said to herself:
"It was right here. Oh, if it was to do over again, I wouldn't say
that--I wouldn't say it for the whole world. But he's gone now; I'll
never, never, never see him any more."
This thought broke her down, and she wandered away, with tears rolling
down her cheeks. Then quite a group of boys and girls--playmates of
Tom's and Joe's--came by, and stood looking over the paling fence and
talking in reverent tones of how Tom did so-and-so the last time they
saw him, and how Joe said this and that small trifle (pregnant with
awful prophecy, as they could easily see now!)--and each speaker
pointed out the exact spot where the lost lads stood at the time, and
then added something like "and I was a-standing just so--just as I am
now, and as if you was him--I was as close as that--and he smiled, just
this way--and then something seemed to go all over me, like--awful, you
know--and I never thought what it meant, of course, but I can see now!"
Then there was a dispute about who saw the dead boys last in life, and
many claimed that dismal distinction, and offered evidences, more or
less tampered with by the witness; and when it was ultimately decided
who DID see the departed last, and exchanged the last words with them,
the lucky parties took upon themselves a sort of sacred importance, and
were gaped at and envied by all the rest. One poor chap, who had no
other grandeur to offer, said with tolerably manifest pride in the
remembrance:
"Well, Tom Sawyer he licked me once."
But that bid for glory was a failure. Most of the boys could say that,
and so that cheapened the distinction too much. The group loitered
away, still recalling memories of the lost heroes, in awed voices.
When the Sunday-school hour was finished, the next morning, the bell
began to toll, instead of ringing in the usual way. It was a very still
Sabbath, and the mournful sound seemed in keeping with the musing hush
that lay upon nature. The villagers began to gather, loitering a moment
in the vestibule to converse in whispers about the sad event. But there
was no whispering in the house; only the funereal rustling of dresses
as the women gathered to their seats disturbed the silence there. None
could remember when the little church had been so full before. There
was finally a waiting pause, an expectant dumbness, and then Aunt Polly
entered, followed by Sid and Mary, and they by the Harper family, all
in deep black, and the whole congregation, the old minister as well,
rose reverently and stood until the mourners were seated in the front
pew. There was another communing silence, broken at intervals by
muffled sobs, and then the minister spread his hands abroad and prayed.
A moving hymn was sung, and the text followed: "I am the Resurrection
and the Life."
As the service proceeded, the clergyman drew such pictures of the
graces, the winning ways, and the rare promise of the lost lads that
every soul there, thinking he recognized these pictures, felt a pang in
remembering that he had persistently blinded himself to them always
before, and had as persistently seen only faults and flaws in the poor
boys. The minister related many a touching incident in the lives of the
departed, too, which illustrated their sweet, generous natures, and the
people could easily see, now, how noble and beautiful those episodes
were, and remembered with grief that at the time they occurred they had
seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide. The
congregation became more and more moved, as the pathetic tale went on,
till at last the whole company broke down and joined the weeping
mourners in a chorus of anguished sobs, the preacher himself giving way
to his feelings, and crying in the pulpit.
There was a rustle in the gallery, which nobody noticed; a moment
later the church door creaked; the minister raised his streaming eyes
above his handkerchief, and stood transfixed! First one and then
another pair of eyes followed the minister's, and then almost with one
impulse the congregation rose and stared while the three dead boys came
marching up the aisle, Tom in the lead, Joe next, and Huck, a ruin of
drooping rags, sneaking sheepishly in the rear! They had been hid in
the unused gallery listening to their own funeral sermon!
Aunt Polly, Mary, and the Harpers threw themselves upon their restored
ones, smothered them with kisses and poured out thanksgivings, while
poor Huck stood abashed and uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to
do or where to hide from so many unwelcoming eyes. He wavered, and
started to slink away, but Tom seized him and said:
"Aunt Polly, it ain't fair. Somebody's got to be glad to see Huck."
"And so they shall. I'm glad to see him, poor motherless thing!" And
the loving attentions Aunt Polly lavished upon him were the one thing
capable of making him more uncomfortable than he was before.
Suddenly the minister shouted at the top of his voice: "Praise God
from whom all blessings flow--SING!--and put your hearts in it!"
And they did. Old Hundred swelled up with a triumphant burst, and
while it shook the rafters Tom Sawyer the Pirate looked around upon the
envying juveniles about him and confessed in his heart that this was
the proudest moment of his life.
As the "sold" congregation trooped out they said they would almost be
willing to be made ridiculous again to hear Old Hundred sung like that
once more.
Tom got more cuffs and kisses that day--according to Aunt Polly's
varying moods--than he had earned before in a year; and he hardly knew
which expressed the most gratefulness to God and affection for himself.
CHAPTER XVIII
THAT was Tom's great secret--the scheme to return home with his
brother pirates and attend their own funerals. They had paddled over to
the Missouri shore on a log, at dusk on Saturday, landing five or six
miles below the village; they had slept in the woods at the edge of the
town till nearly daylight, and had then crept through back lanes and
alleys and finished their sleep in the gallery of the church among a
chaos of invalided benches.
At breakfast, Monday morning, Aunt Polly and Mary were very loving to
Tom, and very attentive to his wants. There was an unusual amount of
talk. In the course of it Aunt Polly said:
"Well, I don't say it wasn't a fine joke, Tom, to keep everybody
suffering 'most a week so you boys had a good time, but it is a pity
you could be so hard-hearted as to let me suffer so. If you could come
over on a log to go to your funeral, you could have come over and give
me a hint some way that you warn't dead, but only run off."
"Yes, you could have done that, Tom," said Mary; "and I believe you
would if you had thought of it."
"Would you, Tom?" said Aunt Polly, her face lighting wistfully. "Say,
now, would you, if you'd thought of it?"
"I--well, I don't know. 'Twould 'a' spoiled everything."
"Tom, I hoped you loved me that much," said Aunt Polly, with a grieved
tone that discomforted the boy. "It would have been something if you'd
cared enough to THINK of it, even if you didn't DO it."
"Now, auntie, that ain't any harm," pleaded Mary; "it's only Tom's
giddy way--he is always in such a rush that he never thinks of
anything."
"More's the pity. Sid would have thought. And Sid would have come and
DONE it, too. Tom, you'll look back, some day, when it's too late, and
wish you'd cared a little more for me when it would have cost you so
little."
"Now, auntie, you know I do care for you," said Tom.
"I'd know it better if you acted more like it."
"I wish now I'd thought," said Tom, with a repentant tone; "but I
dreamt about you, anyway. That's something, ain't it?"
"It ain't much--a cat does that much--but it's better than nothing.
What did you dream?"
"Why, Wednesday night I dreamt that you was sitting over there by the
bed, and Sid was sitting by the woodbox, and Mary next to him."
"Well, so we did. So we always do. I'm glad your dreams could take
even that much trouble about us."
"And I dreamt that Joe Harper's mother was here."
"Why, she was here! Did you dream any more?"
"Oh, lots. But it's so dim, now."
"Well, try to recollect--can't you?"
"Somehow it seems to me that the wind--the wind blowed the--the--"
"Try harder, Tom! The wind did blow something. Come!"
Tom pressed his fingers on his forehead an anxious minute, and then
said:
"I've got it now! I've got it now! It blowed the candle!"
"Mercy on us! Go on, Tom--go on!"
"And it seems to me that you said, 'Why, I believe that that door--'"
"Go ON, Tom!"
"Just let me study a moment--just a moment. Oh, yes--you said you
believed the door was open."
"As I'm sitting here, I did! Didn't I, Mary! Go on!"
"And then--and then--well I won't be certain, but it seems like as if
you made Sid go and--and--"
"Well? Well? What did I make him do, Tom? What did I make him do?"
"You made him--you--Oh, you made him shut it."
"Well, for the land's sake! I never heard the beat of that in all my
days! Don't tell ME there ain't anything in dreams, any more. Sereny
Harper shall know of this before I'm an hour older. I'd like to see her
get around THIS with her rubbage 'bout superstition. Go on, Tom!"
"Oh, it's all getting just as bright as day, now. Next you said I
warn't BAD, only mischeevous and harum-scarum, and not any more
responsible than--than--I think it was a colt, or something."
"And so it was! Well, goodness gracious! Go on, Tom!"
"And then you began to cry."
"So I did. So I did. Not the first time, neither. And then--"
"Then Mrs. Harper she began to cry, and said Joe was just the same,
and she wished she hadn't whipped him for taking cream when she'd
throwed it out her own self--"
"Tom! The sperrit was upon you! You was a prophesying--that's what you
was doing! Land alive, go on, Tom!"
"Then Sid he said--he said--"
"I don't think I said anything," said Sid.
"Yes you did, Sid," said Mary.
"Shut your heads and let Tom go on! What did he say, Tom?"
"He said--I THINK he said he hoped I was better off where I was gone
to, but if I'd been better sometimes--"
"THERE, d'you hear that! It was his very words!"
"And you shut him up sharp."
"I lay I did! There must 'a' been an angel there. There WAS an angel
there, somewheres!"
"And Mrs. Harper told about Joe scaring her with a firecracker, and
you told about Peter and the Painkiller--"
"Just as true as I live!"
"And then there was a whole lot of talk 'bout dragging the river for
us, and 'bout having the funeral Sunday, and then you and old Miss
Harper hugged and cried, and she went."
"It happened just so! It happened just so, as sure as I'm a-sitting in
these very tracks. Tom, you couldn't told it more like if you'd 'a'
seen it! And then what? Go on, Tom!"
"Then I thought you prayed for me--and I could see you and hear every
word you said. And you went to bed, and I was so sorry that I took and
wrote on a piece of sycamore bark, 'We ain't dead--we are only off
being pirates,' and put it on the table by the candle; and then you
looked so good, laying there asleep, that I thought I went and leaned
over and kissed you on the lips."
"Did you, Tom, DID you! I just forgive you everything for that!" And
she seized the boy in a crushing embrace that made him feel like the
guiltiest of villains.
"It was very kind, even though it was only a--dream," Sid soliloquized
just audibly.
"Shut up, Sid! A body does just the same in a dream as he'd do if he
was awake. Here's a big Milum apple I've been saving for you, Tom, if
you was ever found again--now go 'long to school. I'm thankful to the
good God and Father of us all I've got you back, that's long-suffering
and merciful to them that believe on Him and keep His word, though
goodness knows I'm unworthy of it, but if only the worthy ones got His
blessings and had His hand to help them over the rough places, there's
few enough would smile here or ever enter into His rest when the long
night comes. Go 'long Sid, Mary, Tom--take yourselves off--you've
hendered me long enough."
The children left for school, and the old lady to call on Mrs. Harper
and vanquish her realism with Tom's marvellous dream. Sid had better
judgment than to utter the thought that was in his mind as he left the
house. It was this: "Pretty thin--as long a dream as that, without any
mistakes in it!"
What a hero Tom was become, now! He did not go skipping and prancing,
but moved with a dignified swagger as became a pirate who felt that the
public eye was on him. And indeed it was; he tried not to seem to see
the looks or hear the remarks as he passed along, but they were food
and drink to him. Smaller boys than himself flocked at his heels, as
proud to be seen with him, and tolerated by him, as if he had been the
drummer at the head of a procession or the elephant leading a menagerie
into town. Boys of his own size pretended not to know he had been away
at all; but they were consuming with envy, nevertheless. They would
have given anything to have that swarthy suntanned skin of his, and his
glittering notoriety; and Tom would not have parted with either for a
circus.
At school the children made so much of him and of Joe, and delivered
such eloquent admiration from their eyes, that the two heroes were not
long in becoming insufferably "stuck-up." They began to tell their
adventures to hungry listeners--but they only began; it was not a thing
likely to have an end, with imaginations like theirs to furnish
material. And finally, when they got out their pipes and went serenely
puffing around, the very summit of glory was reached.
Tom decided that he could be independent of Becky Thatcher now. Glory
was sufficient. He would live for glory. Now that he was distinguished,
maybe she would be wanting to "make up." Well, let her--she should see
that he could be as indifferent as some other people. Presently she
arrived. Tom pretended not to see her. He moved away and joined a group
of boys and girls and began to talk. Soon he observed that she was
tripping gayly back and forth with flushed face and dancing eyes,
pretending to be busy chasing schoolmates, and screaming with laughter
when she made a capture; but he noticed that she always made her
captures in his vicinity, and that she seemed to cast a conscious eye
in his direction at such times, too. It gratified all the vicious
vanity that was in him; and so, instead of winning him, it only "set
him up" the more and made him the more diligent to avoid betraying that
he knew she was about. Presently she gave over skylarking, and moved
irresolutely about, sighing once or twice and glancing furtively and
wistfully toward Tom. Then she observed that now Tom was talking more
particularly to Amy Lawrence than to any one else. She felt a sharp
pang and grew disturbed and uneasy at once. She tried to go away, but
her feet were treacherous, and carried her to the group instead. She
said to a girl almost at Tom's elbow--with sham vivacity:
"Why, Mary Austin! you bad girl, why didn't you come to Sunday-school?"
"I did come--didn't you see me?"
"Why, no! Did you? Where did you sit?"
"I was in Miss Peters' class, where I always go. I saw YOU."
"Did you? Why, it's funny I didn't see you. I wanted to tell you about
the picnic."
"Oh, that's jolly. Who's going to give it?"
"My ma's going to let me have one."
"Oh, goody; I hope she'll let ME come."
"Well, she will. The picnic's for me. She'll let anybody come that I
want, and I want you."
"That's ever so nice. When is it going to be?"
"By and by. Maybe about vacation."
"Oh, won't it be fun! You going to have all the girls and boys?"
"Yes, every one that's friends to me--or wants to be"; and she glanced
ever so furtively at Tom, but he talked right along to Amy Lawrence
about the terrible storm on the island, and how the lightning tore the
great sycamore tree "all to flinders" while he was "standing within
three feet of it."
"Oh, may I come?" said Grace Miller.
"Yes."
"And me?" said Sally Rogers.
"Yes."
"And me, too?" said Susy Harper. "And Joe?"
"Yes."
And so on, with clapping of joyful hands till all the group had begged
for invitations but Tom and Amy. Then Tom turned coolly away, still
talking, and took Amy with him. Becky's lips trembled and the tears
came to her eyes; she hid these signs with a forced gayety and went on
chattering, but the life had gone out of the picnic, now, and out of
everything else; she got away as soon as she could and hid herself and
had what her sex call "a good cry." Then she sat moody, with wounded
pride, till the bell rang. She roused up, now, with a vindictive cast
in her eye, and gave her plaited tails a shake and said she knew what
SHE'D do.
At recess Tom continued his flirtation with Amy with jubilant
self-satisfaction. And he kept drifting about to find Becky and lacerate
her with the performance. At last he spied her, but there was a sudden
falling of his mercury. She was sitting cosily on a little bench behind
the schoolhouse looking at a picture-book with Alfred Temple--and so
absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book,
that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides.
Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for
throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He
called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He
wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked,
for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He
did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he
could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as
otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the schoolhouse, again and
again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could
not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that
Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the
living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her
fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered.
Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to
attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in
vain--the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't I ever
going to get rid of her?" At last he must be attending to those
things--and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school
let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it.
"Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole
town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is
aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw
this town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch
you out! I'll just take and--"
And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy
--pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You
holler 'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the
imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction.
Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of
Amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the
other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but
as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph
began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness
followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her
ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she
grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When
poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, he did not know how, kept
exclaiming: "Oh, here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience
at last, and said, "Oh, don't bother me! I don't care for them!" and
burst into tears, and got up and walked away.
Alfred dropped alongside and was going to try to comfort her, but she
said:
"Go away and leave me alone, can't you! I hate you!"
So the boy halted, wondering what he could have done--for she had said
she would look at pictures all through the nooning--and she walked on,
crying. Then Alfred went musing into the deserted schoolhouse. He was
humiliated and angry. He easily guessed his way to the truth--the girl
had simply made a convenience of him to vent her spite upon Tom Sawyer.
He was far from hating Tom the less when this thought occurred to him.
He wished there was some way to get that boy into trouble without much
risk to himself. Tom's spelling-book fell under his eye. Here was his
opportunity. He gratefully opened to the lesson for the afternoon and
poured ink upon the page.
Becky, glancing in at a window behind him at the moment, saw the act,
and moved on, without discovering herself. She started homeward, now,
intending to find Tom and tell him; Tom would be thankful and their
troubles would be healed. Before she was half way home, however, she
had changed her mind. The thought of Tom's treatment of her when she
was talking about her picnic came scorching back and filled her with
shame. She resolved to let him get whipped on the damaged
spelling-book's account, and to hate him forever, into the bargain.
CHAPTER XIX
TOM arrived at home in a dreary mood, and the first thing his aunt
said to him showed him that he had brought his sorrows to an
unpromising market:
"Tom, I've a notion to skin you alive!"
"Auntie, what have I done?"
"Well, you've done enough. Here I go over to Sereny Harper, like an
old softy, expecting I'm going to make her believe all that rubbage
about that dream, when lo and behold you she'd found out from Joe that
you was over here and heard all the talk we had that night. Tom, I
don't know what is to become of a boy that will act like that. It makes
me feel so bad to think you could let me go to Sereny Harper and make
such a fool of myself and never say a word."
This was a new aspect of the thing. His smartness of the morning had
seemed to Tom a good joke before, and very ingenious. It merely looked
mean and shabby now. He hung his head and could not think of anything
to say for a moment. Then he said:
"Auntie, I wish I hadn't done it--but I didn't think."
"Oh, child, you never think. You never think of anything but your own
selfishness. You could think to come all the way over here from
Jackson's Island in the night to laugh at our troubles, and you could
think to fool me with a lie about a dream; but you couldn't ever think
to pity us and save us from sorrow."
"Auntie, I know now it was mean, but I didn't mean to be mean. I
didn't, honest. And besides, I didn't come over here to laugh at you
that night."
"What did you come for, then?"
"It was to tell you not to be uneasy about us, because we hadn't got
drownded."
"Tom, Tom, I would be the thankfullest soul in this world if I could
believe you ever had as good a thought as that, but you know you never
did--and I know it, Tom."
"Indeed and 'deed I did, auntie--I wish I may never stir if I didn't."
"Oh, Tom, don't lie--don't do it. It only makes things a hundred times
worse."
"It ain't a lie, auntie; it's the truth. I wanted to keep you from
grieving--that was all that made me come."
"I'd give the whole world to believe that--it would cover up a power
of sins, Tom. I'd 'most be glad you'd run off and acted so bad. But it
ain't reasonable; because, why didn't you tell me, child?"
"Why, you see, when you got to talking about the funeral, I just got
all full of the idea of our coming and hiding in the church, and I
couldn't somehow bear to spoil it. So I just put the bark back in my
pocket and kept mum."
"What bark?"
"The bark I had wrote on to tell you we'd gone pirating. I wish, now,
you'd waked up when I kissed you--I do, honest."
The hard lines in his aunt's face relaxed and a sudden tenderness
dawned in her eyes.
"DID you kiss me, Tom?"
"Why, yes, I did."
"Are you sure you did, Tom?"
"Why, yes, I did, auntie--certain sure."
"What did you kiss me for, Tom?"
"Because I loved you so, and you laid there moaning and I was so sorry."
The words sounded like truth. The old lady could not hide a tremor in
her voice when she said:
"Kiss me again, Tom!--and be off with you to school, now, and don't
bother me any more."
The moment he was gone, she ran to a closet and got out the ruin of a
jacket which Tom had gone pirating in. Then she stopped, with it in her
hand, and said to herself:
"No, I don't dare. Poor boy, I reckon he's lied about it--but it's a
blessed, blessed lie, there's such a comfort come from it. I hope the
Lord--I KNOW the Lord will forgive him, because it was such
goodheartedness in him to tell it. But I don't want to find out it's a
lie. I won't look."
She put the jacket away, and stood by musing a minute. Twice she put
out her hand to take the garment again, and twice she refrained. Once
more she ventured, and this time she fortified herself with the
thought: "It's a good lie--it's a good lie--I won't let it grieve me."
So she sought the jacket pocket. A moment later she was reading Tom's
piece of bark through flowing tears and saying: "I could forgive the
boy, now, if he'd committed a million sins!"
CHAPTER XX
THERE was something about Aunt Polly's manner, when she kissed Tom,
that swept away his low spirits and made him lighthearted and happy
again. He started to school and had the luck of coming upon Becky
Thatcher at the head of Meadow Lane. His mood always determined his
manner. Without a moment's hesitation he ran to her and said:
"I acted mighty mean to-day, Becky, and I'm so sorry. I won't ever,
ever do that way again, as long as ever I live--please make up, won't
you?"
The girl stopped and looked him scornfully in the face:
"I'll thank you to keep yourself TO yourself, Mr. Thomas Sawyer. I'll
never speak to you again."
She tossed her head and passed on. Tom was so stunned that he had not
even presence of mind enough to say "Who cares, Miss Smarty?" until the
right time to say it had gone by. So he said nothing. But he was in a
fine rage, nevertheless. He moped into the schoolyard wishing she were
a boy, and imagining how he would trounce her if she were. He presently
encountered her and delivered a stinging remark as he passed. She
hurled one in return, and the angry breach was complete. It seemed to
Becky, in her hot resentment, that she could hardly wait for school to
"take in," she was so impatient to see Tom flogged for the injured
spelling-book. If she had had any lingering notion of exposing Alfred
Temple, Tom's offensive fling had driven it entirely away.
Poor girl, she did not know how fast she was nearing trouble herself.
The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied
ambition. The darling of his desires was, to be a doctor, but poverty
had decreed that he should be nothing higher than a village
schoolmaster. Every day he took a mysterious book out of his desk and
absorbed himself in it at times when no classes were reciting. He kept
that book under lock and key. There was not an urchin in school but was
perishing to have a glimpse of it, but the chance never came. Every boy
and girl had a theory about the nature of that book; but no two
theories were alike, and there was no way of getting at the facts in
the case. Now, as Becky was passing by the desk, which stood near the
door, she noticed that the key was in the lock! It was a precious
moment. She glanced around; found herself alone, and the next instant
she had the book in her hands. The title-page--Professor Somebody's
ANATOMY--carried no information to her mind; so she began to turn the
leaves. She came at once upon a handsomely engraved and colored
frontispiece--a human figure, stark naked. At that moment a shadow fell
on the page and Tom Sawyer stepped in at the door and caught a glimpse
of the picture. Becky snatched at the book to close it, and had the
hard luck to tear the pictured page half down the middle. She thrust
the volume into the desk, turned the key, and burst out crying with
shame and vexation.
"Tom Sawyer, you are just as mean as you can be, to sneak up on a
person and look at what they're looking at."
"How could I know you was looking at anything?"
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom Sawyer; you know you're
going to tell on me, and oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! I'll be
whipped, and I never was whipped in school."
Then she stamped her little foot and said:
"BE so mean if you want to! I know something that's going to happen.
You just wait and you'll see! Hateful, hateful, hateful!"--and she
flung out of the house with a new explosion of crying.
Tom stood still, rather flustered by this onslaught. Presently he said
to himself:
"What a curious kind of a fool a girl is! Never been licked in school!
Shucks! What's a licking! That's just like a girl--they're so
thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. Well, of course I ain't going to tell
old Dobbins on this little fool, because there's other ways of getting
even on her, that ain't so mean; but what of it? Old Dobbins will ask
who it was tore his book. Nobody'll answer. Then he'll do just the way
he always does--ask first one and then t'other, and when he comes to the
right girl he'll know it, without any telling. Girls' faces always tell
on them. They ain't got any backbone. She'll get licked. Well, it's a
kind of a tight place for Becky Thatcher, because there ain't any way
out of it." Tom conned the thing a moment longer, and then added: "All
right, though; she'd like to see me in just such a fix--let her sweat it
out!"
Tom joined the mob of skylarking scholars outside. In a few moments
the master arrived and school "took in." Tom did not feel a strong
interest in his studies. Every time he stole a glance at the girls'
side of the room Becky's face troubled him. Considering all things, he
did not want to pity her, and yet it was all he could do to help it. He
could get up no exultation that was really worthy the name. Presently
the spelling-book discovery was made, and Tom's mind was entirely full
of his own matters for a while after that. Becky roused up from her
lethargy of distress and showed good interest in the proceedings. She
did not expect that Tom could get out of his trouble by denying that he
spilt the ink on the book himself; and she was right. The denial only
seemed to make the thing worse for Tom. Becky supposed she would be
glad of that, and she tried to believe she was glad of it, but she
found she was not certain. When the worst came to the worst, she had an
impulse to get up and tell on Alfred Temple, but she made an effort and
forced herself to keep still--because, said she to herself, "he'll tell
about me tearing the picture sure. I wouldn't say a word, not to save
his life!"
Tom took his whipping and went back to his seat not at all
broken-hearted, for he thought it was possible that he had unknowingly
upset the ink on the spelling-book himself, in some skylarking bout--he
had denied it for form's sake and because it was custom, and had stuck
to the denial from principle.
A whole hour drifted by, the master sat nodding in his throne, the air
was drowsy with the hum of study. By and by, Mr. Dobbins straightened
himself up, yawned, then unlocked his desk, and reached for his book,
but seemed undecided whether to take it out or leave it. Most of the
pupils glanced up languidly, but there were two among them that watched
his movements with intent eyes. Mr. Dobbins fingered his book absently
for a while, then took it out and settled himself in his chair to read!
Tom shot a glance at Becky. He had seen a hunted and helpless rabbit
look as she did, with a gun levelled at its head. Instantly he forgot
his quarrel with her. Quick--something must be done! done in a flash,
too! But the very imminence of the emergency paralyzed his invention.
Good!--he had an inspiration! He would run and snatch the book, spring
through the door and fly. But his resolution shook for one little
instant, and the chance was lost--the master opened the volume. If Tom
only had the wasted opportunity back again! Too late. There was no help
for Becky now, he said. The next moment the master faced the school.
Every eye sank under his gaze. There was that in it which smote even
the innocent with fear. There was silence while one might count ten
--the master was gathering his wrath. Then he spoke: "Who tore this book?"
There was not a sound. One could have heard a pin drop. The stillness
continued; the master searched face after face for signs of guilt.
"Benjamin Rogers, did you tear this book?"
A denial. Another pause.
"Joseph Harper, did you?"
Another denial. Tom's uneasiness grew more and more intense under the
slow torture of these proceedings. The master scanned the ranks of
boys--considered a while, then turned to the girls:
"Amy Lawrence?"
A shake of the head.
"Gracie Miller?"
The same sign.
"Susan Harper, did you do this?"
Another negative. The next girl was Becky Thatcher. Tom was trembling
from head to foot with excitement and a sense of the hopelessness of
the situation.
"Rebecca Thatcher" [Tom glanced at her face--it was white with terror]
--"did you tear--no, look me in the face" [her hands rose in appeal]
--"did you tear this book?"
A thought shot like lightning through Tom's brain. He sprang to his
feet and shouted--"I done it!"
The school stared in perplexity at this incredible folly. Tom stood a
moment, to gather his dismembered faculties; and when he stepped
forward to go to his punishment the surprise, the gratitude, the
adoration that shone upon him out of poor Becky's eyes seemed pay
enough for a hundred floggings. Inspired by the splendor of his own
act, he took without an outcry the most merciless flaying that even Mr.
Dobbins had ever administered; and also received with indifference the
added cruelty of a command to remain two hours after school should be
dismissed--for he knew who would wait for him outside till his
captivity was done, and not count the tedious time as loss, either.
Tom went to bed that night planning vengeance against Alfred Temple;
for with shame and repentance Becky had told him all, not forgetting
her own treachery; but even the longing for vengeance had to give way,
soon, to pleasanter musings, and he fell asleep at last with Becky's
latest words lingering dreamily in his ear--
"Tom, how COULD you be so noble!"
CHAPTER XXI
VACATION was approaching. The schoolmaster, always severe, grew
severer and more exacting than ever, for he wanted the school to make a
good showing on "Examination" day. His rod and his ferule were seldom
idle now--at least among the smaller pupils. Only the biggest boys, and
young ladies of eighteen and twenty, escaped lashing. Mr. Dobbins'
lashings were very vigorous ones, too; for although he carried, under
his wig, a perfectly bald and shiny head, he had only reached middle
age, and there was no sign of feebleness in his muscle. As the great
day approached, all the tyranny that was in him came to the surface; he
seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in punishing the least
shortcomings. The consequence was, that the smaller boys spent their
days in terror and suffering and their nights in plotting revenge. They
threw away no opportunity to do the master a mischief. But he kept
ahead all the time. The retribution that followed every vengeful
success was so sweeping and majestic that the boys always retired from
the field badly worsted. At last they conspired together and hit upon a
plan that promised a dazzling victory. They swore in the sign-painter's
boy, told him the scheme, and asked his help. He had his own reasons
for being delighted, for the master boarded in his father's family and
had given the boy ample cause to hate him. The master's wife would go
on a visit to the country in a few days, and there would be nothing to
interfere with the plan; the master always prepared himself for great
occasions by getting pretty well fuddled, and the sign-painter's boy
said that when the dominie had reached the proper condition on
Examination Evening he would "manage the thing" while he napped in his
chair; then he would have him awakened at the right time and hurried
away to school.
In the fulness of time the interesting occasion arrived. At eight in
the evening the schoolhouse was brilliantly lighted, and adorned with
wreaths and festoons of foliage and flowers. The master sat throned in
his great chair upon a raised platform, with his blackboard behind him.
He was looking tolerably mellow. Three rows of benches on each side and
six rows in front of him were occupied by the dignitaries of the town
and by the parents of the pupils. To his left, back of the rows of
citizens, was a spacious temporary platform upon which were seated the
scholars who were to take part in the exercises of the evening; rows of
small boys, washed and dressed to an intolerable state of discomfort;
rows of gawky big boys; snowbanks of girls and young ladies clad in
lawn and muslin and conspicuously conscious of their bare arms, their
grandmothers' ancient trinkets, their bits of pink and blue ribbon and
the flowers in their hair. All the rest of the house was filled with
non-participating scholars.
The exercises began. A very little boy stood up and sheepishly
recited, "You'd scarce expect one of my age to speak in public on the
stage," etc.--accompanying himself with the painfully exact and
spasmodic gestures which a machine might have used--supposing the
machine to be a trifle out of order. But he got through safely, though
cruelly scared, and got a fine round of applause when he made his
manufactured bow and retired.
A little shamefaced girl lisped, "Mary had a little lamb," etc.,
performed a compassion-inspiring curtsy, got her meed of applause, and
sat down flushed and happy.
Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into
the unquenchable and indestructible "Give me liberty or give me death"
speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the
middle of it. A ghastly stage-fright seized him, his legs quaked under
him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the
house but he had the house's silence, too, which was even worse than
its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom
struggled awhile and then retired, utterly defeated. There was a weak
attempt at applause, but it died early.
"The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck" followed; also "The Assyrian Came
Down," and other declamatory gems. Then there were reading exercises,
and a spelling fight. The meagre Latin class recited with honor. The
prime feature of the evening was in order, now--original "compositions"
by the young ladies. Each in her turn stepped forward to the edge of
the platform, cleared her throat, held up her manuscript (tied with
dainty ribbon), and proceeded to read, with labored attention to
"expression" and punctuation. The themes were the same that had been
illuminated upon similar occasions by their mothers before them, their
grandmothers, and doubtless all their ancestors in the female line
clear back to the Crusades. "Friendship" was one; "Memories of Other
Days"; "Religion in History"; "Dream Land"; "The Advantages of
Culture"; "Forms of Political Government Compared and Contrasted";
"Melancholy"; "Filial Love"; "Heart Longings," etc., etc.
A prevalent feature in these compositions was a nursed and petted
melancholy; another was a wasteful and opulent gush of "fine language";
another was a tendency to lug in by the ears particularly prized words
and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that
conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable
sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one
of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort
was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and
religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring
insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the
banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient
to-day; it never will be sufficient while the world stands, perhaps.
There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel
obliged to close their compositions with a sermon; and you will find
that the sermon of the most frivolous and the least religious girl in
the school is always the longest and the most relentlessly pious. But
enough of this. Homely truth is unpalatable.
Let us return to the "Examination." The first composition that was
read was one entitled "Is this, then, Life?" Perhaps the reader can
endure an extract from it:
"In the common walks of life, with what delightful
emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some
anticipated scene of festivity! Imagination is busy
sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the
voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the
festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her
graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling
through the mazes of the joyous dance; her eye is
brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly.
"In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by,
and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into
the Elysian world, of which she has had such bright
dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to
her enchanted vision! Each new scene is more charming
than the last. But after a while she finds that
beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity, the
flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates
harshly upon her ear; the ball-room has lost its
charms; and with wasted health and imbittered heart,
she turns away with the conviction that earthly
pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of the soul!"
And so forth and so on. There was a buzz of gratification from time to
time during the reading, accompanied by whispered ejaculations of "How
sweet!" "How eloquent!" "So true!" etc., and after the thing had closed
with a peculiarly afflicting sermon the applause was enthusiastic.
Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting"
paleness that comes of pills and indigestion, and read a "poem." Two
stanzas of it will do:
"A MISSOURI MAIDEN'S FAREWELL TO ALABAMA
"Alabama, good-bye! I love thee well!
But yet for a while do I leave thee now!
Sad, yes, sad thoughts of thee my heart doth swell,
And burning recollections throng my brow!
For I have wandered through thy flowery woods;
Have roamed and read near Tallapoosa's stream;
Have listened to Tallassee's warring floods,
And wooed on Coosa's side Aurora's beam.
"Yet shame I not to bear an o'er-full heart,
Nor blush to turn behind my tearful eyes;
'Tis from no stranger land I now must part,
'Tis to no strangers left I yield these sighs.
Welcome and home were mine within this State,
Whose vales I leave--whose spires fade fast from me
And cold must be mine eyes, and heart, and tete,
When, dear Alabama! they turn cold on thee!"
There were very few there who knew what "tete" meant, but the poem was
very satisfactory, nevertheless.
Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young
lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and
began to read in a measured, solemn tone:
"A VISION
"Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the
throne on high not a single star quivered; but
the deep intonations of the heavy thunder
constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the
terrific lightning revelled in angry mood
through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming
to scorn the power exerted over its terror by
the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous
winds unanimously came forth from their mystic
homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by
their aid the wildness of the scene.
"At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human
sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof,
"'My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter
and guide--My joy in grief, my second bliss
in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of
those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks
of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a
queen of beauty unadorned save by her own
transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it
failed to make even a sound, and but for the
magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as
other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided
away un-perceived--unsought. A strange sadness
rested upon her features, like icy tears upon
the robe of December, as she pointed to the
contending elements without, and bade me contemplate
the two beings presented."
This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with
a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took
the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest
effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the
prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it
was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that
Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it.
It may be remarked, in passing, that the number of compositions in
which the word "beauteous" was over-fondled, and human experience
referred to as "life's page," was up to the usual average.
Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair
aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of
America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he
made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered
titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set
himself to right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only
distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced.
He threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not
to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon
him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it
even manifestly increased. And well it might. There was a garret above,
pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle
came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag
tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly
descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung
downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher
and higher--the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's
head--down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her
desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an
instant with her trophy still in her possession! And how the light did
blaze abroad from the master's bald pate--for the sign-painter's boy
had GILDED it!
That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.
NOTE:--The pretended "compositions" quoted in
this chapter are taken without alteration from a
volume entitled "Prose and Poetry, by a Western
Lady"--but they are exactly and precisely after
the schoolgirl pattern, and hence are much
happier than any mere imitations could be.
CHAPTER XXII
TOM joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by
the showy character of their "regalia." He promised to abstain from
smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he
found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the
surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very
thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and
swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a
chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing
from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up
--gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--and
fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was
apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral, since
he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned
about the Judge's condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his
hopes ran high--so high that he would venture to get out his regalia
and practise before the looking-glass. But the Judge had a most
discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the
mend--and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of
injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once--and that night the
Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would never
trust a man like that again.
The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated
to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again, however
--there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but found
to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could,
took the desire away, and the charm of it.
Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning
to hang a little heavily on his hands.
He attempted a diary--but nothing happened during three days, and so
he abandoned it.
The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were
happy for two days.
Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense a failure, for it rained
hard, there was no procession in consequence, and the greatest man in
the world (as Tom supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United States
Senator, proved an overwhelming disappointment--for he was not
twenty-five feet high, nor even anywhere in the neighborhood of it.
A circus came. The boys played circus for three days afterward in
tents made of rag carpeting--admission, three pins for boys, two for
girls--and then circusing was abandoned.
A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and went again and left the
village duller and drearier than ever.
There were some boys-and-girls' parties, but they were so few and so
delightful that they only made the aching voids between ache the harder.
Becky Thatcher was gone to her Constantinople home to stay with her
parents during vacation--so there was no bright side to life anywhere.
The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very
cancer for permanency and pain.
Then came the measles.
During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its
happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got
upon his feet at last and moved feebly down-town, a melancholy change
had come over everything and every creature. There had been a
"revival," and everybody had "got religion," not only the adults, but
even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the
sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him
everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly
away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him
visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who
called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a
warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression;
and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of
Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his
heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all
the town was lost, forever and forever.
And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain,
awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his
head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his
doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was
about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above
to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might
have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a
battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the
getting up such an expensive thunderstorm as this to knock the turf
from under an insect like himself.
By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its
object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His
second was to wait--for there might not be any more storms.
The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks
he spent on his back this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad
at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how
lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted
listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a
juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her
victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a
stolen melon. Poor lads! they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse.
CHAPTER XXIII
AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred--and vigorously: the murder
trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village
talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to
the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and
fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his
hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of
knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be
comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver
all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him.
It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to
divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he
wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained discreet.
"Huck, have you ever told anybody about--that?"
"'Bout what?"
"You know what."
"Oh--'course I haven't."
"Never a word?"
"Never a solitary word, so help me. What makes you ask?"
"Well, I was afeard."
"Why, Tom Sawyer, we wouldn't be alive two days if that got found out.
YOU know that."
Tom felt more comfortable. After a pause:
"Huck, they couldn't anybody get you to tell, could they?"
"Get me to tell? Why, if I wanted that half-breed devil to drownd me
they could get me to tell. They ain't no different way."
"Well, that's all right, then. I reckon we're safe as long as we keep
mum. But let's swear again, anyway. It's more surer."
"I'm agreed."
So they swore again with dread solemnities.
"What is the talk around, Huck? I've heard a power of it."
"Talk? Well, it's just Muff Potter, Muff Potter, Muff Potter all the
time. It keeps me in a sweat, constant, so's I want to hide som'ers."
"That's just the same way they go on round me. I reckon he's a goner.
Don't you feel sorry for him, sometimes?"
"Most always--most always. He ain't no account; but then he hain't
ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money
to get drunk on--and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do
that--leastways most of us--preachers and such like. But he's kind of
good--he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two;
and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck."
"Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my
line. I wish we could get him out of there."
"My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any
good; they'd ketch him again."
"Yes--so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the
dickens when he never done--that."
"I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking
villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before."
"Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he
was to get free they'd lynch him."
"And they'd do it, too."
The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the
twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood
of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that
something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But
nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in
this luckless captive.
The boys did as they had often done before--went to the cell grating
and gave Potter some tobacco and matches. He was on the ground floor
and there were no guards.
His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences
before--it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and
treacherous to the last degree when Potter said:
"You've been mighty good to me, boys--better'n anybody else in this
town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I,
'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the
good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've
all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't, and Huck
don't--THEY don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well,
boys, I done an awful thing--drunk and crazy at the time--that's the
only way I account for it--and now I got to swing for it, and it's
right. Right, and BEST, too, I reckon--hope so, anyway. Well, we won't
talk about that. I don't want to make YOU feel bad; you've befriended
me. But what I want to say, is, don't YOU ever get drunk--then you won't
ever get here. Stand a litter furder west--so--that's it; it's a prime
comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of
trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly
faces--good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me
touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands--yourn'll come through the bars, but
mine's too big. Little hands, and weak--but they've helped Muff Potter
a power, and they'd help him more if they could."
Tom went home miserable, and his dreams that night were full of
horrors. The next day and the day after, he hung about the court-room,
drawn by an almost irresistible impulse to go in, but forcing himself
to stay out. Huck was having the same experience. They studiously
avoided each other. Each wandered away, from time to time, but the same
dismal fascination always brought them back presently. Tom kept his
ears open when idlers sauntered out of the court-room, but invariably
heard distressing news--the toils were closing more and more
relentlessly around poor Potter. At the end of the second day the
village talk was to the effect that Injun Joe's evidence stood firm and
unshaken, and that there was not the slightest question as to what the
jury's verdict would be.
Tom was out late, that night, and came to bed through the window. He
was in a tremendous state of excitement. It was hours before he got to
sleep. All the village flocked to the court-house the next morning, for
this was to be the great day. Both sexes were about equally represented
in the packed audience. After a long wait the jury filed in and took
their places; shortly afterward, Potter, pale and haggard, timid and
hopeless, was brought in, with chains upon him, and seated where all
the curious eyes could stare at him; no less conspicuous was Injun Joe,
stolid as ever. There was another pause, and then the judge arrived and
the sheriff proclaimed the opening of the court. The usual whisperings
among the lawyers and gathering together of papers followed. These
details and accompanying delays worked up an atmosphere of preparation
that was as impressive as it was fascinating.
Now a witness was called who testified that he found Muff Potter
washing in the brook, at an early hour of the morning that the murder
was discovered, and that he immediately sneaked away. After some
further questioning, counsel for the prosecution said:
"Take the witness."
The prisoner raised his eyes for a moment, but dropped them again when
his own counsel said:
"I have no questions to ask him."
The next witness proved the finding of the knife near the corpse.
Counsel for the prosecution said:
"Take the witness."
"I have no questions to ask him," Potter's lawyer replied.
A third witness swore he had often seen the knife in Potter's
possession.
"Take the witness."
Counsel for Potter declined to question him. The faces of the audience
began to betray annoyance. Did this attorney mean to throw away his
client's life without an effort?
Several witnesses deposed concerning Potter's guilty behavior when
brought to the scene of the murder. They were allowed to leave the
stand without being cross-questioned.
Every detail of the damaging circumstances that occurred in the
graveyard upon that morning which all present remembered so well was
brought out by credible witnesses, but none of them were cross-examined
by Potter's lawyer. The perplexity and dissatisfaction of the house
expressed itself in murmurs and provoked a reproof from the bench.
Counsel for the prosecution now said:
"By the oaths of citizens whose simple word is above suspicion, we
have fastened this awful crime, beyond all possibility of question,
upon the unhappy prisoner at the bar. We rest our case here."
A groan escaped from poor Potter, and he put his face in his hands and
rocked his body softly to and fro, while a painful silence reigned in
the court-room. Many men were moved, and many women's compassion
testified itself in tears. Counsel for the defence rose and said:
"Your honor, in our remarks at the opening of this trial, we
foreshadowed our purpose to prove that our client did this fearful deed
while under the influence of a blind and irresponsible delirium
produced by drink. We have changed our mind. We shall not offer that
plea." [Then to the clerk:] "Call Thomas Sawyer!"
A puzzled amazement awoke in every face in the house, not even
excepting Potter's. Every eye fastened itself with wondering interest
upon Tom as he rose and took his place upon the stand. The boy looked
wild enough, for he was badly scared. The oath was administered.
"Thomas Sawyer, where were you on the seventeenth of June, about the
hour of midnight?"
Tom glanced at Injun Joe's iron face and his tongue failed him. The
audience listened breathless, but the words refused to come. After a
few moments, however, the boy got a little of his strength back, and
managed to put enough of it into his voice to make part of the house
hear:
"In the graveyard!"
"A little bit louder, please. Don't be afraid. You were--"
"In the graveyard."
A contemptuous smile flitted across Injun Joe's face.
"Were you anywhere near Horse Williams' grave?"
"Yes, sir."
"Speak up--just a trifle louder. How near were you?"
"Near as I am to you."
"Were you hidden, or not?"
"I was hid."
"Where?"
"Behind the elms that's on the edge of the grave."
Injun Joe gave a barely perceptible start.
"Any one with you?"
"Yes, sir. I went there with--"
"Wait--wait a moment. Never mind mentioning your companion's name. We
will produce him at the proper time. Did you carry anything there with
you."
Tom hesitated and looked confused.
"Speak out, my boy--don't be diffident. The truth is always
respectable. What did you take there?"
"Only a--a--dead cat."
There was a ripple of mirth, which the court checked.
"We will produce the skeleton of that cat. Now, my boy, tell us
everything that occurred--tell it in your own way--don't skip anything,
and don't be afraid."
Tom began--hesitatingly at first, but as he warmed to his subject his
words flowed more and more easily; in a little while every sound ceased
but his own voice; every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips
and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of
time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale. The strain upon
pent emotion reached its climax when the boy said:
"--and as the doctor fetched the board around and Muff Potter fell,
Injun Joe jumped with the knife and--"
Crash! Quick as lightning the half-breed sprang for a window, tore his
way through all opposers, and was gone!
CHAPTER XXIV
TOM was a glittering hero once more--the pet of the old, the envy of
the young. His name even went into immortal print, for the village
paper magnified him. There were some that believed he would be
President, yet, if he escaped hanging.
As usual, the fickle, unreasoning world took Muff Potter to its bosom
and fondled him as lavishly as it had abused him before. But that sort
of conduct is to the world's credit; therefore it is not well to find
fault with it.
Tom's days were days of splendor and exultation to him, but his nights
were seasons of horror. Injun Joe infested all his dreams, and always
with doom in his eye. Hardly any temptation could persuade the boy to
stir abroad after nightfall. Poor Huck was in the same state of
wretchedness and terror, for Tom had told the whole story to the lawyer
the night before the great day of the trial, and Huck was sore afraid
that his share in the business might leak out, yet, notwithstanding
Injun Joe's flight had saved him the suffering of testifying in court.
The poor fellow had got the attorney to promise secrecy, but what of
that? Since Tom's harassed conscience had managed to drive him to the
lawyer's house by night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been
sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's
confidence in the human race was well-nigh obliterated.
Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly
he wished he had sealed up his tongue.
Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured; the
other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw
a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse.
Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun
Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a
detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head,
looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of
that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he "found a clew." But you
can't hang a "clew" for murder, and so after that detective had got
through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before.
The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened
weight of apprehension.
CHAPTER XXV
THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has
a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This
desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe
Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone
fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck
would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to
him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a
hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no
capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time
which is not money. "Where'll we dig?" said Huck.
"Oh, most anywhere."
"Why, is it hid all around?"
"No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck
--sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a
limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but
mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses."
"Who hides it?"
"Why, robbers, of course--who'd you reckon? Sunday-school
sup'rintendents?"
"I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have
a good time."
"So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and
leave it there."
"Don't they come after it any more?"
"No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or
else they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by
and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the
marks--a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's
mostly signs and hy'roglyphics."
"HyroQwhich?"
"Hy'roglyphics--pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean
anything."
"Have you got one of them papers, Tom?"
"No."
"Well then, how you going to find the marks?"
"I don't want any marks. They always bury it under a ha'nted house or
on an island, or under a dead tree that's got one limb sticking out.
Well, we've tried Jackson's Island a little, and we can try it again
some time; and there's the old ha'nted house up the Still-House branch,
and there's lots of dead-limb trees--dead loads of 'em."
"Is it under all of them?"
"How you talk! No!"
"Then how you going to know which one to go for?"
"Go for all of 'em!"
"Why, Tom, it'll take all summer."
"Well, what of that? Suppose you find a brass pot with a hundred
dollars in it, all rusty and gray, or rotten chest full of di'monds.
How's that?"
Huck's eyes glowed.
"That's bully. Plenty bully enough for me. Just you gimme the hundred
dollars and I don't want no di'monds."
"All right. But I bet you I ain't going to throw off on di'monds. Some
of 'em's worth twenty dollars apiece--there ain't any, hardly, but's
worth six bits or a dollar."
"No! Is that so?"
"Cert'nly--anybody'll tell you so. Hain't you ever seen one, Huck?"
"Not as I remember."
"Oh, kings have slathers of them."
"Well, I don' know no kings, Tom."
"I reckon you don't. But if you was to go to Europe you'd see a raft
of 'em hopping around."
"Do they hop?"
"Hop?--your granny! No!"
"Well, what did you say they did, for?"
"Shucks, I only meant you'd SEE 'em--not hopping, of course--what do
they want to hop for?--but I mean you'd just see 'em--scattered around,
you know, in a kind of a general way. Like that old humpbacked Richard."
"Richard? What's his other name?"
"He didn't have any other name. Kings don't have any but a given name."
"No?"
"But they don't."
"Well, if they like it, Tom, all right; but I don't want to be a king
and have only just a given name, like a nigger. But say--where you
going to dig first?"
"Well, I don't know. S'pose we tackle that old dead-limb tree on the
hill t'other side of Still-House branch?"
"I'm agreed."
So they got a crippled pick and a shovel, and set out on their
three-mile tramp. They arrived hot and panting, and threw themselves
down in the shade of a neighboring elm to rest and have a smoke.
"I like this," said Tom.
"So do I."
"Say, Huck, if we find a treasure here, what you going to do with your
share?"
"Well, I'll have pie and a glass of soda every day, and I'll go to
every circus that comes along. I bet I'll have a gay time."
"Well, ain't you going to save any of it?"
"Save it? What for?"
"Why, so as to have something to live on, by and by."
"Oh, that ain't any use. Pap would come back to thish-yer town some
day and get his claws on it if I didn't hurry up, and I tell you he'd
clean it out pretty quick. What you going to do with yourn, Tom?"
"I'm going to buy a new drum, and a sure-'nough sword, and a red
necktie and a bull pup, and get married."
"Married!"
"That's it."
"Tom, you--why, you ain't in your right mind."
"Wait--you'll see."
"Well, that's the foolishest thing you could do. Look at pap and my
mother. Fight! Why, they used to fight all the time. I remember, mighty
well."
"That ain't anything. The girl I'm going to marry won't fight."
"Tom, I reckon they're all alike. They'll all comb a body. Now you
better think 'bout this awhile. I tell you you better. What's the name
of the gal?"
"It ain't a gal at all--it's a girl."
"It's all the same, I reckon; some says gal, some says girl--both's
right, like enough. Anyway, what's her name, Tom?"
"I'll tell you some time--not now."
"All right--that'll do. Only if you get married I'll be more lonesomer
than ever."
"No you won't. You'll come and live with me. Now stir out of this and
we'll go to digging."
They worked and sweated for half an hour. No result. They toiled
another half-hour. Still no result. Huck said:
"Do they always bury it as deep as this?"
"Sometimes--not always. Not generally. I reckon we haven't got the
right place."
So they chose a new spot and began again. The labor dragged a little,
but still they made progress. They pegged away in silence for some
time. Finally Huck leaned on his shovel, swabbed the beaded drops from
his brow with his sleeve, and said:
"Where you going to dig next, after we get this one?"
"I reckon maybe we'll tackle the old tree that's over yonder on
Cardiff Hill back of the widow's."
"I reckon that'll be a good one. But won't the widow take it away from
us, Tom? It's on her land."
"SHE take it away! Maybe she'd like to try it once. Whoever finds one
of these hid treasures, it belongs to him. It don't make any difference
whose land it's on."
That was satisfactory. The work went on. By and by Huck said:
"Blame it, we must be in the wrong place again. What do you think?"
"It is mighty curious, Huck. I don't understand it. Sometimes witches
interfere. I reckon maybe that's what's the trouble now."
"Shucks! Witches ain't got no power in the daytime."
"Well, that's so. I didn't think of that. Oh, I know what the matter
is! What a blamed lot of fools we are! You got to find out where the
shadow of the limb falls at midnight, and that's where you dig!"
"Then consound it, we've fooled away all this work for nothing. Now
hang it all, we got to come back in the night. It's an awful long way.
Can you get out?"
"I bet I will. We've got to do it to-night, too, because if somebody
sees these holes they'll know in a minute what's here and they'll go
for it."
"Well, I'll come around and maow to-night."
"All right. Let's hide the tools in the bushes."
The boys were there that night, about the appointed time. They sat in
the shadow waiting. It was a lonely place, and an hour made solemn by
old traditions. Spirits whispered in the rustling leaves, ghosts lurked
in the murky nooks, the deep baying of a hound floated up out of the
distance, an owl answered with his sepulchral note. The boys were
subdued by these solemnities, and talked little. By and by they judged
that twelve had come; they marked where the shadow fell, and began to
dig. Their hopes commenced to rise. Their interest grew stronger, and
their industry kept pace with it. The hole deepened and still deepened,
but every time their hearts jumped to hear the pick strike upon
something, they only suffered a new disappointment. It was only a stone
or a chunk. At last Tom said:
"It ain't any use, Huck, we're wrong again."
"Well, but we CAN'T be wrong. We spotted the shadder to a dot."
"I know it, but then there's another thing."
"What's that?".
"Why, we only guessed at the time. Like enough it was too late or too
early."
Huck dropped his shovel.
"That's it," said he. "That's the very trouble. We got to give this
one up. We can't ever tell the right time, and besides this kind of
thing's too awful, here this time of night with witches and ghosts
a-fluttering around so. I feel as if something's behind me all the time;
and I'm afeard to turn around, becuz maybe there's others in front
a-waiting for a chance. I been creeping all over, ever since I got here."
"Well, I've been pretty much so, too, Huck. They most always put in a
dead man when they bury a treasure under a tree, to look out for it."
"Lordy!"
"Yes, they do. I've always heard that."
"Tom, I don't like to fool around much where there's dead people. A
body's bound to get into trouble with 'em, sure."
"I don't like to stir 'em up, either. S'pose this one here was to
stick his skull out and say something!"
"Don't Tom! It's awful."
"Well, it just is. Huck, I don't feel comfortable a bit."
"Say, Tom, let's give this place up, and try somewheres else."
"All right, I reckon we better."
"What'll it be?"
Tom considered awhile; and then said:
"The ha'nted house. That's it!"
"Blame it, I don't like ha'nted houses, Tom. Why, they're a dern sight
worse'n dead people. Dead people might talk, maybe, but they don't come
sliding around in a shroud, when you ain't noticing, and peep over your
shoulder all of a sudden and grit their teeth, the way a ghost does. I
couldn't stand such a thing as that, Tom--nobody could."
"Yes, but, Huck, ghosts don't travel around only at night. They won't
hender us from digging there in the daytime."
"Well, that's so. But you know mighty well people don't go about that
ha'nted house in the day nor the night."
"Well, that's mostly because they don't like to go where a man's been
murdered, anyway--but nothing's ever been seen around that house except
in the night--just some blue lights slipping by the windows--no regular
ghosts."
"Well, where you see one of them blue lights flickering around, Tom,
you can bet there's a ghost mighty close behind it. It stands to
reason. Becuz you know that they don't anybody but ghosts use 'em."
"Yes, that's so. But anyway they don't come around in the daytime, so
what's the use of our being afeard?"
"Well, all right. We'll tackle the ha'nted house if you say so--but I
reckon it's taking chances."
They had started down the hill by this time. There in the middle of
the moonlit valley below them stood the "ha'nted" house, utterly
isolated, its fences gone long ago, rank weeds smothering the very
doorsteps, the chimney crumbled to ruin, the window-sashes vacant, a
corner of the roof caved in. The boys gazed awhile, half expecting to
see a blue light flit past a window; then talking in a low tone, as
befitted the time and the circumstances, they struck far off to the
right, to give the haunted house a wide berth, and took their way
homeward through the woods that adorned the rearward side of Cardiff
Hill.
CHAPTER XXVI
ABOUT noon the next day the boys arrived at the dead tree; they had
come for their tools. Tom was impatient to go to the haunted house;
Huck was measurably so, also--but suddenly said:
"Lookyhere, Tom, do you know what day it is?"
Tom mentally ran over the days of the week, and then quickly lifted
his eyes with a startled look in them--
"My! I never once thought of it, Huck!"
"Well, I didn't neither, but all at once it popped onto me that it was
Friday."
"Blame it, a body can't be too careful, Huck. We might 'a' got into an
awful scrape, tackling such a thing on a Friday."
"MIGHT! Better say we WOULD! There's some lucky days, maybe, but
Friday ain't."
"Any fool knows that. I don't reckon YOU was the first that found it
out, Huck."
"Well, I never said I was, did I? And Friday ain't all, neither. I had
a rotten bad dream last night--dreampt about rats."
"No! Sure sign of trouble. Did they fight?"
"No."
"Well, that's good, Huck. When they don't fight it's only a sign that
there's trouble around, you know. All we got to do is to look mighty
sharp and keep out of it. We'll drop this thing for to-day, and play.
Do you know Robin Hood, Huck?"
"No. Who's Robin Hood?"
"Why, he was one of the greatest men that was ever in England--and the
best. He was a robber."
"Cracky, I wisht I was. Who did he rob?"
"Only sheriffs and bishops and rich people and kings, and such like.
But he never bothered the poor. He loved 'em. He always divided up with
'em perfectly square."
"Well, he must 'a' been a brick."
"I bet you he was, Huck. Oh, he was the noblest man that ever was.
They ain't any such men now, I can tell you. He could lick any man in
England, with one hand tied behind him; and he could take his yew bow
and plug a ten-cent piece every time, a mile and a half."
"What's a YEW bow?"
"I don't know. It's some kind of a bow, of course. And if he hit that
dime only on the edge he would set down and cry--and curse. But we'll
play Robin Hood--it's nobby fun. I'll learn you."
"I'm agreed."
So they played Robin Hood all the afternoon, now and then casting a
yearning eye down upon the haunted house and passing a remark about the
morrow's prospects and possibilities there. As the sun began to sink
into the west they took their way homeward athwart the long shadows of
the trees and soon were buried from sight in the forests of Cardiff
Hill.
On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again.
They had a smoke and a chat in the shade, and then dug a little in
their last hole, not with great hope, but merely because Tom said there
were so many cases where people had given up a treasure after getting
down within six inches of it, and then somebody else had come along and
turned it up with a single thrust of a shovel. The thing failed this
time, however, so the boys shouldered their tools and went away feeling
that they had not trifled with fortune, but had fulfilled all the
requirements that belong to the business of treasure-hunting.
When they reached the haunted house there was something so weird and
grisly about the dead silence that reigned there under the baking sun,
and something so depressing about the loneliness and desolation of the
place, that they were afraid, for a moment, to venture in. Then they
crept to the door and took a trembling peep. They saw a weed-grown,
floorless room, unplastered, an ancient fireplace, vacant windows, a
ruinous staircase; and here, there, and everywhere hung ragged and
abandoned cobwebs. They presently entered, softly, with quickened
pulses, talking in whispers, ears alert to catch the slightest sound,
and muscles tense and ready for instant retreat.
In a little while familiarity modified their fears and they gave the
place a critical and interested examination, rather admiring their own
boldness, and wondering at it, too. Next they wanted to look up-stairs.
This was something like cutting off retreat, but they got to daring
each other, and of course there could be but one result--they threw
their tools into a corner and made the ascent. Up there were the same
signs of decay. In one corner they found a closet that promised
mystery, but the promise was a fraud--there was nothing in it. Their
courage was up now and well in hand. They were about to go down and
begin work when--
"Sh!" said Tom.
"What is it?" whispered Huck, blanching with fright.
"Sh! ... There! ... Hear it?"
"Yes! ... Oh, my! Let's run!"
"Keep still! Don't you budge! They're coming right toward the door."
The boys stretched themselves upon the floor with their eyes to
knot-holes in the planking, and lay waiting, in a misery of fear.
"They've stopped.... No--coming.... Here they are. Don't whisper
another word, Huck. My goodness, I wish I was out of this!"
Two men entered. Each boy said to himself: "There's the old deaf and
dumb Spaniard that's been about town once or twice lately--never saw
t'other man before."
"T'other" was a ragged, unkempt creature, with nothing very pleasant
in his face. The Spaniard was wrapped in a serape; he had bushy white
whiskers; long white hair flowed from under his sombrero, and he wore
green goggles. When they came in, "t'other" was talking in a low voice;
they sat down on the ground, facing the door, with their backs to the
wall, and the speaker continued his remarks. His manner became less
guarded and his words more distinct as he proceeded:
"No," said he, "I've thought it all over, and I don't like it. It's
dangerous."
"Dangerous!" grunted the "deaf and dumb" Spaniard--to the vast
surprise of the boys. "Milksop!"
This voice made the boys gasp and quake. It was Injun Joe's! There was
silence for some time. Then Joe said:
"What's any more dangerous than that job up yonder--but nothing's come
of it."
"That's different. Away up the river so, and not another house about.
'Twon't ever be known that we tried, anyway, long as we didn't succeed."
"Well, what's more dangerous than coming here in the daytime!--anybody
would suspicion us that saw us."
"I know that. But there warn't any other place as handy after that
fool of a job. I want to quit this shanty. I wanted to yesterday, only
it warn't any use trying to stir out of here, with those infernal boys
playing over there on the hill right in full view."
"Those infernal boys" quaked again under the inspiration of this
remark, and thought how lucky it was that they had remembered it was
Friday and concluded to wait a day. They wished in their hearts they
had waited a year.
The two men got out some food and made a luncheon. After a long and
thoughtful silence, Injun Joe said:
"Look here, lad--you go back up the river where you belong. Wait there
till you hear from me. I'll take the chances on dropping into this town
just once more, for a look. We'll do that 'dangerous' job after I've
spied around a little and think things look well for it. Then for
Texas! We'll leg it together!"
This was satisfactory. Both men presently fell to yawning, and Injun
Joe said:
"I'm dead for sleep! It's your turn to watch."
He curled down in the weeds and soon began to snore. His comrade
stirred him once or twice and he became quiet. Presently the watcher
began to nod; his head drooped lower and lower, both men began to snore
now.
The boys drew a long, grateful breath. Tom whispered:
"Now's our chance--come!"
Huck said:
"I can't--I'd die if they was to wake."
Tom urged--Huck held back. At last Tom rose slowly and softly, and
started alone. But the first step he made wrung such a hideous creak
from the crazy floor that he sank down almost dead with fright. He
never made a second attempt. The boys lay there counting the dragging
moments till it seemed to them that time must be done and eternity
growing gray; and then they were grateful to note that at last the sun
was setting.
Now one snore ceased. Injun Joe sat up, stared around--smiled grimly
upon his comrade, whose head was drooping upon his knees--stirred him
up with his foot and said:
"Here! YOU'RE a watchman, ain't you! All right, though--nothing's
happened."
"My! have I been asleep?"
"Oh, partly, partly. Nearly time for us to be moving, pard. What'll we
do with what little swag we've got left?"
"I don't know--leave it here as we've always done, I reckon. No use to
take it away till we start south. Six hundred and fifty in silver's
something to carry."
"Well--all right--it won't matter to come here once more."
"No--but I'd say come in the night as we used to do--it's better."
"Yes: but look here; it may be a good while before I get the right
chance at that job; accidents might happen; 'tain't in such a very good
place; we'll just regularly bury it--and bury it deep."
"Good idea," said the comrade, who walked across the room, knelt down,
raised one of the rearward hearth-stones and took out a bag that
jingled pleasantly. He subtracted from it twenty or thirty dollars for
himself and as much for Injun Joe, and passed the bag to the latter,
who was on his knees in the corner, now, digging with his bowie-knife.
The boys forgot all their fears, all their miseries in an instant.
With gloating eyes they watched every movement. Luck!--the splendor of
it was beyond all imagination! Six hundred dollars was money enough to
make half a dozen boys rich! Here was treasure-hunting under the
happiest auspices--there would not be any bothersome uncertainty as to
where to dig. They nudged each other every moment--eloquent nudges and
easily understood, for they simply meant--"Oh, but ain't you glad NOW
we're here!"
Joe's knife struck upon something.
"Hello!" said he.
"What is it?" said his comrade.
"Half-rotten plank--no, it's a box, I believe. Here--bear a hand and
we'll see what it's here for. Never mind, I've broke a hole."
He reached his hand in and drew it out--
"Man, it's money!"
The two men examined the handful of coins. They were gold. The boys
above were as excited as themselves, and as delighted.
Joe's comrade said:
"We'll make quick work of this. There's an old rusty pick over amongst
the weeds in the corner the other side of the fireplace--I saw it a
minute ago."
He ran and brought the boys' pick and shovel. Injun Joe took the pick,
looked it over critically, shook his head, muttered something to
himself, and then began to use it. The box was soon unearthed. It was
not very large; it was iron bound and had been very strong before the
slow years had injured it. The men contemplated the treasure awhile in
blissful silence.
"Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe.
"'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one
summer," the stranger observed.
"I know it," said Injun Joe; "and this looks like it, I should say."
"Now you won't need to do that job."
The half-breed frowned. Said he:
"You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't
robbery altogether--it's REVENGE!" and a wicked light flamed in his
eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished--then Texas. Go
home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me."
"Well--if you say so; what'll we do with this--bury it again?"
"Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] NO! by the great Sachem, no!
[Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh
earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What
business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth
on them? Who brought them here--and where are they gone? Have you heard
anybody?--seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and
see the ground disturbed? Not exactly--not exactly. We'll take it to my
den."
"Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number
One?"
"No--Number Two--under the cross. The other place is bad--too common."
"All right. It's nearly dark enough to start."
Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously
peeping out. Presently he said:
"Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be
up-stairs?"
The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife,
halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The
boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came
creaking up the stairs--the intolerable distress of the situation woke
the stricken resolution of the lads--they were about to spring for the
closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers and Injun Joe landed
on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered
himself up cursing, and his comrade said:
"Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up
there, let them STAY there--who cares? If they want to jump down, now,
and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes
--and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my
opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and
took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running
yet."
Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight
was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving.
Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening
twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box.
Tom and Huck rose up, weak but vastly relieved, and stared after them
through the chinks between the logs of the house. Follow? Not they.
They were content to reach ground again without broken necks, and take
the townward track over the hill. They did not talk much. They were too
much absorbed in hating themselves--hating the ill luck that made them
take the spade and the pick there. But for that, Injun Joe never would
have suspected. He would have hidden the silver with the gold to wait
there till his "revenge" was satisfied, and then he would have had the
misfortune to find that money turn up missing. Bitter, bitter luck that
the tools were ever brought there!
They resolved to keep a lookout for that Spaniard when he should come
to town spying out for chances to do his revengeful job, and follow him
to "Number Two," wherever that might be. Then a ghastly thought
occurred to Tom.
"Revenge? What if he means US, Huck!"
"Oh, don't!" said Huck, nearly fainting.
They talked it all over, and as they entered town they agreed to
believe that he might possibly mean somebody else--at least that he
might at least mean nobody but Tom, since only Tom had testified.
Very, very small comfort it was to Tom to be alone in danger! Company
would be a palpable improvement, he thought.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE adventure of the day mightily tormented Tom's dreams that night.
Four times he had his hands on that rich treasure and four times it
wasted to nothingness in his fingers as sleep forsook him and
wakefulness brought back the hard reality of his misfortune. As he lay
in the early morning recalling the incidents of his great adventure, he
noticed that they seemed curiously subdued and far away--somewhat as if
they had happened in another world, or in a time long gone by. Then it
occurred to him that the great adventure itself must be a dream! There
was one very strong argument in favor of this idea--namely, that the
quantity of coin he had seen was too vast to be real. He had never seen
as much as fifty dollars in one mass before, and he was like all boys
of his age and station in life, in that he imagined that all references
to "hundreds" and "thousands" were mere fanciful forms of speech, and
that no such sums really existed in the world. He never had supposed
for a moment that so large a sum as a hundred dollars was to be found
in actual money in any one's possession. If his notions of hidden
treasure had been analyzed, they would have been found to consist of a
handful of real dimes and a bushel of vague, splendid, ungraspable
dollars.
But the incidents of his adventure grew sensibly sharper and clearer
under the attrition of thinking them over, and so he presently found
himself leaning to the impression that the thing might not have been a
dream, after all. This uncertainty must be swept away. He would snatch
a hurried breakfast and go and find Huck. Huck was sitting on the
gunwale of a flatboat, listlessly dangling his feet in the water and
looking very melancholy. Tom concluded to let Huck lead up to the
subject. If he did not do it, then the adventure would be proved to
have been only a dream.
"Hello, Huck!"
"Hello, yourself."
Silence, for a minute.
"Tom, if we'd 'a' left the blame tools at the dead tree, we'd 'a' got
the money. Oh, ain't it awful!"
"'Tain't a dream, then, 'tain't a dream! Somehow I most wish it was.
Dog'd if I don't, Huck."
"What ain't a dream?"
"Oh, that thing yesterday. I been half thinking it was."
"Dream! If them stairs hadn't broke down you'd 'a' seen how much dream
it was! I've had dreams enough all night--with that patch-eyed Spanish
devil going for me all through 'em--rot him!"
"No, not rot him. FIND him! Track the money!"
"Tom, we'll never find him. A feller don't have only one chance for
such a pile--and that one's lost. I'd feel mighty shaky if I was to see
him, anyway."
"Well, so'd I; but I'd like to see him, anyway--and track him out--to
his Number Two."
"Number Two--yes, that's it. I been thinking 'bout that. But I can't
make nothing out of it. What do you reckon it is?"
"I dono. It's too deep. Say, Huck--maybe it's the number of a house!"
"Goody! ... No, Tom, that ain't it. If it is, it ain't in this
one-horse town. They ain't no numbers here."
"Well, that's so. Lemme think a minute. Here--it's the number of a
room--in a tavern, you know!"
"Oh, that's the trick! They ain't only two taverns. We can find out
quick."
"You stay here, Huck, till I come."
Tom was off at once. He did not care to have Huck's company in public
places. He was gone half an hour. He found that in the best tavern, No.
2 had long been occupied by a young lawyer, and was still so occupied.
In the less ostentatious house, No. 2 was a mystery. The
tavern-keeper's young son said it was kept locked all the time, and he
never saw anybody go into it or come out of it except at night; he did
not know any particular reason for this state of things; had had some
little curiosity, but it was rather feeble; had made the most of the
mystery by entertaining himself with the idea that that room was
"ha'nted"; had noticed that there was a light in there the night before.
"That's what I've found out, Huck. I reckon that's the very No. 2
we're after."
"I reckon it is, Tom. Now what you going to do?"
"Lemme think."
Tom thought a long time. Then he said:
"I'll tell you. The back door of that No. 2 is the door that comes out
into that little close alley between the tavern and the old rattle trap
of a brick store. Now you get hold of all the door-keys you can find,
and I'll nip all of auntie's, and the first dark night we'll go there
and try 'em. And mind you, keep a lookout for Injun Joe, because he
said he was going to drop into town and spy around once more for a
chance to get his revenge. If you see him, you just follow him; and if
he don't go to that No. 2, that ain't the place."
"Lordy, I don't want to foller him by myself!"
"Why, it'll be night, sure. He mightn't ever see you--and if he did,
maybe he'd never think anything."
"Well, if it's pretty dark I reckon I'll track him. I dono--I dono.
I'll try."
"You bet I'll follow him, if it's dark, Huck. Why, he might 'a' found
out he couldn't get his revenge, and be going right after that money."
"It's so, Tom, it's so. I'll foller him; I will, by jingoes!"
"Now you're TALKING! Don't you ever weaken, Huck, and I won't."
CHAPTER XXVIII
THAT night Tom and Huck were ready for their adventure. They hung
about the neighborhood of the tavern until after nine, one watching the
alley at a distance and the other the tavern door. Nobody entered the
alley or left it; nobody resembling the Spaniard entered or left the
tavern door. The night promised to be a fair one; so Tom went home with
the understanding that if a considerable degree of darkness came on,
Huck was to come and "maow," whereupon he would slip out and try the
keys. But the night remained clear, and Huck closed his watch and
retired to bed in an empty sugar hogshead about twelve.
Tuesday the boys had the same ill luck. Also Wednesday. But Thursday
night promised better. Tom slipped out in good season with his aunt's
old tin lantern, and a large towel to blindfold it with. He hid the
lantern in Huck's sugar hogshead and the watch began. An hour before
midnight the tavern closed up and its lights (the only ones
thereabouts) were put out. No Spaniard had been seen. Nobody had
entered or left the alley. Everything was auspicious. The blackness of
darkness reigned, the perfect stillness was interrupted only by
occasional mutterings of distant thunder.
Tom got his lantern, lit it in the hogshead, wrapped it closely in the
towel, and the two adventurers crept in the gloom toward the tavern.
Huck stood sentry and Tom felt his way into the alley. Then there was a
season of waiting anxiety that weighed upon Huck's spirits like a
mountain. He began to wish he could see a flash from the lantern--it
would frighten him, but it would at least tell him that Tom was alive
yet. It seemed hours since Tom had disappeared. Surely he must have
fainted; maybe he was dead; maybe his heart had burst under terror and
excitement. In his uneasiness Huck found himself drawing closer and
closer to the alley; fearing all sorts of dreadful things, and
momentarily expecting some catastrophe to happen that would take away
his breath. There was not much to take away, for he seemed only able to
inhale it by thimblefuls, and his heart would soon wear itself out, the
way it was beating. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Tom came
tearing by him: "Run!" said he; "run, for your life!"
He needn't have repeated it; once was enough; Huck was making thirty
or forty miles an hour before the repetition was uttered. The boys
never stopped till they reached the shed of a deserted slaughter-house
at the lower end of the village. Just as they got within its shelter
the storm burst and the rain poured down. As soon as Tom got his breath
he said:
"Huck, it was awful! I tried two of the keys, just as soft as I could;
but they seemed to make such a power of racket that I couldn't hardly
get my breath I was so scared. They wouldn't turn in the lock, either.
Well, without noticing what I was doing, I took hold of the knob, and
open comes the door! It warn't locked! I hopped in, and shook off the
towel, and, GREAT CAESAR'S GHOST!"
"What!--what'd you see, Tom?"
"Huck, I most stepped onto Injun Joe's hand!"
"No!"
"Yes! He was lying there, sound asleep on the floor, with his old
patch on his eye and his arms spread out."
"Lordy, what did you do? Did he wake up?"
"No, never budged. Drunk, I reckon. I just grabbed that towel and
started!"
"I'd never 'a' thought of the towel, I bet!"
"Well, I would. My aunt would make me mighty sick if I lost it."
"Say, Tom, did you see that box?"
"Huck, I didn't wait to look around. I didn't see the box, I didn't
see the cross. I didn't see anything but a bottle and a tin cup on the
floor by Injun Joe; yes, I saw two barrels and lots more bottles in the
room. Don't you see, now, what's the matter with that ha'nted room?"
"How?"
"Why, it's ha'nted with whiskey! Maybe ALL the Temperance Taverns have
got a ha'nted room, hey, Huck?"
"Well, I reckon maybe that's so. Who'd 'a' thought such a thing? But
say, Tom, now's a mighty good time to get that box, if Injun Joe's
drunk."
"It is, that! You try it!"
Huck shuddered.
"Well, no--I reckon not."
"And I reckon not, Huck. Only one bottle alongside of Injun Joe ain't
enough. If there'd been three, he'd be drunk enough and I'd do it."
There was a long pause for reflection, and then Tom said:
"Lookyhere, Huck, less not try that thing any more till we know Injun
Joe's not in there. It's too scary. Now, if we watch every night, we'll
be dead sure to see him go out, some time or other, and then we'll
snatch that box quicker'n lightning."
"Well, I'm agreed. I'll watch the whole night long, and I'll do it
every night, too, if you'll do the other part of the job."
"All right, I will. All you got to do is to trot up Hooper Street a
block and maow--and if I'm asleep, you throw some gravel at the window
and that'll fetch me."
"Agreed, and good as wheat!"
"Now, Huck, the storm's over, and I'll go home. It'll begin to be
daylight in a couple of hours. You go back and watch that long, will
you?"
"I said I would, Tom, and I will. I'll ha'nt that tavern every night
for a year! I'll sleep all day and I'll stand watch all night."
"That's all right. Now, where you going to sleep?"
"In Ben Rogers' hayloft. He lets me, and so does his pap's nigger man,
Uncle Jake. I tote water for Uncle Jake whenever he wants me to, and
any time I ask him he gives me a little something to eat if he can
spare it. That's a mighty good nigger, Tom. He likes me, becuz I don't
ever act as if I was above him. Sometime I've set right down and eat
WITH him. But you needn't tell that. A body's got to do things when
he's awful hungry he wouldn't want to do as a steady thing."
"Well, if I don't want you in the daytime, I'll let you sleep. I won't
come bothering around. Any time you see something's up, in the night,
just skip right around and maow."
CHAPTER XXIX
THE first thing Tom heard on Friday morning was a glad piece of news
--Judge Thatcher's family had come back to town the night before. Both
Injun Joe and the treasure sunk into secondary importance for a moment,
and Becky took the chief place in the boy's interest. He saw her and
they had an exhausting good time playing "hi-spy" and "gully-keeper"
with a crowd of their school-mates. The day was completed and crowned
in a peculiarly satisfactory way: Becky teased her mother to appoint
the next day for the long-promised and long-delayed picnic, and she
consented. The child's delight was boundless; and Tom's not more
moderate. The invitations were sent out before sunset, and straightway
the young folks of the village were thrown into a fever of preparation
and pleasurable anticipation. Tom's excitement enabled him to keep
awake until a pretty late hour, and he had good hopes of hearing Huck's
"maow," and of having his treasure to astonish Becky and the picnickers
with, next day; but he was disappointed. No signal came that night.
Morning came, eventually, and by ten or eleven o'clock a giddy and
rollicking company were gathered at Judge Thatcher's, and everything
was ready for a start. It was not the custom for elderly people to mar
the picnics with their presence. The children were considered safe
enough under the wings of a few young ladies of eighteen and a few
young gentlemen of twenty-three or thereabouts. The old steam ferryboat
was chartered for the occasion; presently the gay throng filed up the
main street laden with provision-baskets. Sid was sick and had to miss
the fun; Mary remained at home to entertain him. The last thing Mrs.
Thatcher said to Becky, was:
"You'll not get back till late. Perhaps you'd better stay all night
with some of the girls that live near the ferry-landing, child."
"Then I'll stay with Susy Harper, mamma."
"Very well. And mind and behave yourself and don't be any trouble."
Presently, as they tripped along, Tom said to Becky:
"Say--I'll tell you what we'll do. 'Stead of going to Joe Harper's
we'll climb right up the hill and stop at the Widow Douglas'. She'll
have ice-cream! She has it most every day--dead loads of it. And she'll
be awful glad to have us."
"Oh, that will be fun!"
Then Becky reflected a moment and said:
"But what will mamma say?"
"How'll she ever know?"
The girl turned the idea over in her mind, and said reluctantly:
"I reckon it's wrong--but--"
"But shucks! Your mother won't know, and so what's the harm? All she
wants is that you'll be safe; and I bet you she'd 'a' said go there if
she'd 'a' thought of it. I know she would!"
The Widow Douglas' splendid hospitality was a tempting bait. It and
Tom's persuasions presently carried the day. So it was decided to say
nothing anybody about the night's programme. Presently it occurred to
Tom that maybe Huck might come this very night and give the signal. The
thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. Still he
could not bear to give up the fun at Widow Douglas'. And why should he
give it up, he reasoned--the signal did not come the night before, so
why should it be any more likely to come to-night? The sure fun of the
evening outweighed the uncertain treasure; and, boy-like, he determined
to yield to the stronger inclination and not allow himself to think of
the box of money another time that day.
Three miles below town the ferryboat stopped at the mouth of a woody
hollow and tied up. The crowd swarmed ashore and soon the forest
distances and craggy heights echoed far and near with shoutings and
laughter. All the different ways of getting hot and tired were gone
through with, and by-and-by the rovers straggled back to camp fortified
with responsible appetites, and then the destruction of the good things
began. After the feast there was a refreshing season of rest and chat
in the shade of spreading oaks. By-and-by somebody shouted:
"Who's ready for the cave?"
Everybody was. Bundles of candles were procured, and straightway there
was a general scamper up the hill. The mouth of the cave was up the
hillside--an opening shaped like a letter A. Its massive oaken door
stood unbarred. Within was a small chamber, chilly as an ice-house, and
walled by Nature with solid limestone that was dewy with a cold sweat.
It was romantic and mysterious to stand here in the deep gloom and look
out upon the green valley shining in the sun. But the impressiveness of
the situation quickly wore off, and the romping began again. The moment
a candle was lighted there was a general rush upon the owner of it; a
struggle and a gallant defence followed, but the candle was soon
knocked down or blown out, and then there was a glad clamor of laughter
and a new chase. But all things have an end. By-and-by the procession
went filing down the steep descent of the main avenue, the flickering
rank of lights dimly revealing the lofty walls of rock almost to their
point of junction sixty feet overhead. This main avenue was not more
than eight or ten feet wide. Every few steps other lofty and still
narrower crevices branched from it on either hand--for McDougal's cave
was but a vast labyrinth of crooked aisles that ran into each other and
out again and led nowhere. It was said that one might wander days and
nights together through its intricate tangle of rifts and chasms, and
never find the end of the cave; and that he might go down, and down,
and still down, into the earth, and it was just the same--labyrinth
under labyrinth, and no end to any of them. No man "knew" the cave.
That was an impossible thing. Most of the young men knew a portion of
it, and it was not customary to venture much beyond this known portion.
Tom Sawyer knew as much of the cave as any one.
The procession moved along the main avenue some three-quarters of a
mile, and then groups and couples began to slip aside into branch
avenues, fly along the dismal corridors, and take each other by
surprise at points where the corridors joined again. Parties were able
to elude each other for the space of half an hour without going beyond
the "known" ground.
By-and-by, one group after another came straggling back to the mouth
of the cave, panting, hilarious, smeared from head to foot with tallow
drippings, daubed with clay, and entirely delighted with the success of
the day. Then they were astonished to find that they had been taking no
note of time and that night was about at hand. The clanging bell had
been calling for half an hour. However, this sort of close to the day's
adventures was romantic and therefore satisfactory. When the ferryboat
with her wild freight pushed into the stream, nobody cared sixpence for
the wasted time but the captain of the craft.
Huck was already upon his watch when the ferryboat's lights went
glinting past the wharf. He heard no noise on board, for the young
people were as subdued and still as people usually are who are nearly
tired to death. He wondered what boat it was, and why she did not stop
at the wharf--and then he dropped her out of his mind and put his
attention upon his business. The night was growing cloudy and dark. Ten
o'clock came, and the noise of vehicles ceased, scattered lights began
to wink out, all straggling foot-passengers disappeared, the village
betook itself to its slumbers and left the small watcher alone with the
silence and the ghosts. Eleven o'clock came, and the tavern lights were
put out; darkness everywhere, now. Huck waited what seemed a weary long
time, but nothing happened. His faith was weakening. Was there any use?
Was there really any use? Why not give it up and turn in?
A noise fell upon his ear. He was all attention in an instant. The
alley door closed softly. He sprang to the corner of the brick store.
The next moment two men brushed by him, and one seemed to have
something under his arm. It must be that box! So they were going to
remove the treasure. Why call Tom now? It would be absurd--the men
would get away with the box and never be found again. No, he would
stick to their wake and follow them; he would trust to the darkness for
security from discovery. So communing with himself, Huck stepped out
and glided along behind the men, cat-like, with bare feet, allowing
them to keep just far enough ahead not to be invisible.
They moved up the river street three blocks, then turned to the left
up a cross-street. They went straight ahead, then, until they came to
the path that led up Cardiff Hill; this they took. They passed by the
old Welshman's house, half-way up the hill, without hesitating, and
still climbed upward. Good, thought Huck, they will bury it in the old
quarry. But they never stopped at the quarry. They passed on, up the
summit. They plunged into the narrow path between the tall sumach
bushes, and were at once hidden in the gloom. Huck closed up and
shortened his distance, now, for they would never be able to see him.
He trotted along awhile; then slackened his pace, fearing he was
gaining too fast; moved on a piece, then stopped altogether; listened;
no sound; none, save that he seemed to hear the beating of his own
heart. The hooting of an owl came over the hill--ominous sound! But no
footsteps. Heavens, was everything lost! He was about to spring with
winged feet, when a man cleared his throat not four feet from him!
Huck's heart shot into his throat, but he swallowed it again; and then
he stood there shaking as if a dozen agues had taken charge of him at
once, and so weak that he thought he must surely fall to the ground. He
knew where he was. He knew he was within five steps of the stile
leading into Widow Douglas' grounds. Very well, he thought, let them
bury it there; it won't be hard to find.
Now there was a voice--a very low voice--Injun Joe's:
"Damn her, maybe she's got company--there's lights, late as it is."
"I can't see any."
This was that stranger's voice--the stranger of the haunted house. A
deadly chill went to Huck's heart--this, then, was the "revenge" job!
His thought was, to fly. Then he remembered that the Widow Douglas had
been kind to him more than once, and maybe these men were going to
murder her. He wished he dared venture to warn her; but he knew he
didn't dare--they might come and catch him. He thought all this and
more in the moment that elapsed between the stranger's remark and Injun
Joe's next--which was--
"Because the bush is in your way. Now--this way--now you see, don't
you?"
"Yes. Well, there IS company there, I reckon. Better give it up."
"Give it up, and I just leaving this country forever! Give it up and
maybe never have another chance. I tell you again, as I've told you
before, I don't care for her swag--you may have it. But her husband was
rough on me--many times he was rough on me--and mainly he was the
justice of the peace that jugged me for a vagrant. And that ain't all.
It ain't a millionth part of it! He had me HORSEWHIPPED!--horsewhipped
in front of the jail, like a nigger!--with all the town looking on!
HORSEWHIPPED!--do you understand? He took advantage of me and died. But
I'll take it out of HER."
"Oh, don't kill her! Don't do that!"
"Kill? Who said anything about killing? I would kill HIM if he was
here; but not her. When you want to get revenge on a woman you don't
kill her--bosh! you go for her looks. You slit her nostrils--you notch
her ears like a sow!"
"By God, that's--"
"Keep your opinion to yourself! It will be safest for you. I'll tie
her to the bed. If she bleeds to death, is that my fault? I'll not cry,
if she does. My friend, you'll help me in this thing--for MY sake
--that's why you're here--I mightn't be able alone. If you flinch, I'll
kill you. Do you understand that? And if I have to kill you, I'll kill
her--and then I reckon nobody'll ever know much about who done this
business."
"Well, if it's got to be done, let's get at it. The quicker the
better--I'm all in a shiver."
"Do it NOW? And company there? Look here--I'll get suspicious of you,
first thing you know. No--we'll wait till the lights are out--there's
no hurry."
Huck felt that a silence was going to ensue--a thing still more awful
than any amount of murderous talk; so he held his breath and stepped
gingerly back; planted his foot carefully and firmly, after balancing,
one-legged, in a precarious way and almost toppling over, first on one
side and then on the other. He took another step back, with the same
elaboration and the same risks; then another and another, and--a twig
snapped under his foot! His breath stopped and he listened. There was
no sound--the stillness was perfect. His gratitude was measureless. Now
he turned in his tracks, between the walls of sumach bushes--turned
himself as carefully as if he were a ship--and then stepped quickly but
cautiously along. When he emerged at the quarry he felt secure, and so
he picked up his nimble heels and flew. Down, down he sped, till he
reached the Welshman's. He banged at the door, and presently the heads
of the old man and his two stalwart sons were thrust from windows.
"What's the row there? Who's banging? What do you want?"
"Let me in--quick! I'll tell everything."
"Why, who are you?"
"Huckleberry Finn--quick, let me in!"
"Huckleberry Finn, indeed! It ain't a name to open many doors, I
judge! But let him in, lads, and let's see what's the trouble."
"Please don't ever tell I told you," were Huck's first words when he
got in. "Please don't--I'd be killed, sure--but the widow's been good
friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell--I WILL tell if you'll
promise you won't ever say it was me."
"By George, he HAS got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!"
exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad."
Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the
hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in
their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great
bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence,
and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry.
Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill
as fast as his legs could carry him.
CHAPTER XXX
AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck
came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door.
The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a
hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call
came from a window:
"Who's there!"
Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone:
"Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!"
"It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad!--and welcome!"
These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the
pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing
word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly
unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his
brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves.
"Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be
ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too
--make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and
stop here last night."
"I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the
pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz
I wanted to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I
didn't want to run across them devils, even if they was dead."
"Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it--but
there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they
ain't dead, lad--we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right
where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along
on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them--dark as a cellar
that sumach path was--and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It
was the meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no use
--'twas bound to come, and it did come! I was in the lead with my pistol
raised, and when the sneeze started those scoundrels a-rustling to get
out of the path, I sung out, 'Fire boys!' and blazed away at the place
where the rustling was. So did the boys. But they were off in a jiffy,
those villains, and we after them, down through the woods. I judge we
never touched them. They fired a shot apiece as they started, but their
bullets whizzed by and didn't do us any harm. As soon as we lost the
sound of their feet we quit chasing, and went down and stirred up the
constables. They got a posse together, and went off to guard the river
bank, and as soon as it is light the sheriff and a gang are going to
beat up the woods. My boys will be with them presently. I wish we had
some sort of description of those rascals--'twould help a good deal.
But you couldn't see what they were like, in the dark, lad, I suppose?"
"Oh yes; I saw them down-town and follered them."
"Splendid! Describe them--describe them, my boy!"
"One's the old deaf and dumb Spaniard that's ben around here once or
twice, and t'other's a mean-looking, ragged--"
"That's enough, lad, we know the men! Happened on them in the woods
back of the widow's one day, and they slunk away. Off with you, boys,
and tell the sheriff--get your breakfast to-morrow morning!"
The Welshman's sons departed at once. As they were leaving the room
Huck sprang up and exclaimed:
"Oh, please don't tell ANYbody it was me that blowed on them! Oh,
please!"
"All right if you say it, Huck, but you ought to have the credit of
what you did."
"Oh no, no! Please don't tell!"
When the young men were gone, the old Welshman said:
"They won't tell--and I won't. But why don't you want it known?"
Huck would not explain, further than to say that he already knew too
much about one of those men and would not have the man know that he
knew anything against him for the whole world--he would be killed for
knowing it, sure.
The old man promised secrecy once more, and said:
"How did you come to follow these fellows, lad? Were they looking
suspicious?"
Huck was silent while he framed a duly cautious reply. Then he said:
"Well, you see, I'm a kind of a hard lot,--least everybody says so,
and I don't see nothing agin it--and sometimes I can't sleep much, on
account of thinking about it and sort of trying to strike out a new way
of doing. That was the way of it last night. I couldn't sleep, and so I
come along up-street 'bout midnight, a-turning it all over, and when I
got to that old shackly brick store by the Temperance Tavern, I backed
up agin the wall to have another think. Well, just then along comes
these two chaps slipping along close by me, with something under their
arm, and I reckoned they'd stole it. One was a-smoking, and t'other one
wanted a light; so they stopped right before me and the cigars lit up
their faces and I see that the big one was the deaf and dumb Spaniard,
by his white whiskers and the patch on his eye, and t'other one was a
rusty, ragged-looking devil."
"Could you see the rags by the light of the cigars?"
This staggered Huck for a moment. Then he said:
"Well, I don't know--but somehow it seems as if I did."
"Then they went on, and you--"
"Follered 'em--yes. That was it. I wanted to see what was up--they
sneaked along so. I dogged 'em to the widder's stile, and stood in the
dark and heard the ragged one beg for the widder, and the Spaniard
swear he'd spile her looks just as I told you and your two--"
"What! The DEAF AND DUMB man said all that!"
Huck had made another terrible mistake! He was trying his best to keep
the old man from getting the faintest hint of who the Spaniard might
be, and yet his tongue seemed determined to get him into trouble in
spite of all he could do. He made several efforts to creep out of his
scrape, but the old man's eye was upon him and he made blunder after
blunder. Presently the Welshman said:
"My boy, don't be afraid of me. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your head
for all the world. No--I'd protect you--I'd protect you. This Spaniard
is not deaf and dumb; you've let that slip without intending it; you
can't cover that up now. You know something about that Spaniard that
you want to keep dark. Now trust me--tell me what it is, and trust me
--I won't betray you."
Huck looked into the old man's honest eyes a moment, then bent over
and whispered in his ear:
"'Tain't a Spaniard--it's Injun Joe!"
The Welshman almost jumped out of his chair. In a moment he said:
"It's all plain enough, now. When you talked about notching ears and
slitting noses I judged that that was your own embellishment, because
white men don't take that sort of revenge. But an Injun! That's a
different matter altogether."
During breakfast the talk went on, and in the course of it the old man
said that the last thing which he and his sons had done, before going
to bed, was to get a lantern and examine the stile and its vicinity for
marks of blood. They found none, but captured a bulky bundle of--
"Of WHAT?"
If the words had been lightning they could not have leaped with a more
stunning suddenness from Huck's blanched lips. His eyes were staring
wide, now, and his breath suspended--waiting for the answer. The
Welshman started--stared in return--three seconds--five seconds--ten
--then replied:
"Of burglar's tools. Why, what's the MATTER with you?"
Huck sank back, panting gently, but deeply, unutterably grateful. The
Welshman eyed him gravely, curiously--and presently said:
"Yes, burglar's tools. That appears to relieve you a good deal. But
what did give you that turn? What were YOU expecting we'd found?"
Huck was in a close place--the inquiring eye was upon him--he would
have given anything for material for a plausible answer--nothing
suggested itself--the inquiring eye was boring deeper and deeper--a
senseless reply offered--there was no time to weigh it, so at a venture
he uttered it--feebly:
"Sunday-school books, maybe."
Poor Huck was too distressed to smile, but the old man laughed loud
and joyously, shook up the details of his anatomy from head to foot,
and ended by saying that such a laugh was money in a-man's pocket,
because it cut down the doctor's bill like everything. Then he added:
"Poor old chap, you're white and jaded--you ain't well a bit--no
wonder you're a little flighty and off your balance. But you'll come
out of it. Rest and sleep will fetch you out all right, I hope."
Huck was irritated to think he had been such a goose and betrayed such
a suspicious excitement, for he had dropped the idea that the parcel
brought from the tavern was the treasure, as soon as he had heard the
talk at the widow's stile. He had only thought it was not the treasure,
however--he had not known that it wasn't--and so the suggestion of a
captured bundle was too much for his self-possession. But on the whole
he felt glad the little episode had happened, for now he knew beyond
all question that that bundle was not THE bundle, and so his mind was
at rest and exceedingly comfortable. In fact, everything seemed to be
drifting just in the right direction, now; the treasure must be still
in No. 2, the men would be captured and jailed that day, and he and Tom
could seize the gold that night without any trouble or any fear of
interruption.
Just as breakfast was completed there was a knock at the door. Huck
jumped for a hiding-place, for he had no mind to be connected even
remotely with the late event. The Welshman admitted several ladies and
gentlemen, among them the Widow Douglas, and noticed that groups of
citizens were climbing up the hill--to stare at the stile. So the news
had spread. The Welshman had to tell the story of the night to the
visitors. The widow's gratitude for her preservation was outspoken.
"Don't say a word about it, madam. There's another that you're more
beholden to than you are to me and my boys, maybe, but he don't allow
me to tell his name. We wouldn't have been there but for him."
Of course this excited a curiosity so vast that it almost belittled
the main matter--but the Welshman allowed it to eat into the vitals of
his visitors, and through them be transmitted to the whole town, for he
refused to part with his secret. When all else had been learned, the
widow said:
"I went to sleep reading in bed and slept straight through all that
noise. Why didn't you come and wake me?"
"We judged it warn't worth while. Those fellows warn't likely to come
again--they hadn't any tools left to work with, and what was the use of
waking you up and scaring you to death? My three negro men stood guard
at your house all the rest of the night. They've just come back."
More visitors came, and the story had to be told and retold for a
couple of hours more.
There was no Sabbath-school during day-school vacation, but everybody
was early at church. The stirring event was well canvassed. News came
that not a sign of the two villains had been yet discovered. When the
sermon was finished, Judge Thatcher's wife dropped alongside of Mrs.
Harper as she moved down the aisle with the crowd and said:
"Is my Becky going to sleep all day? I just expected she would be
tired to death."
"Your Becky?"
"Yes," with a startled look--"didn't she stay with you last night?"
"Why, no."
Mrs. Thatcher turned pale, and sank into a pew, just as Aunt Polly,
talking briskly with a friend, passed by. Aunt Polly said:
"Good-morning, Mrs. Thatcher. Good-morning, Mrs. Harper. I've got a
boy that's turned up missing. I reckon my Tom stayed at your house last
night--one of you. And now he's afraid to come to church. I've got to
settle with him."
Mrs. Thatcher shook her head feebly and turned paler than ever.
"He didn't stay with us," said Mrs. Harper, beginning to look uneasy.
A marked anxiety came into Aunt Polly's face.
"Joe Harper, have you seen my Tom this morning?"
"No'm."
"When did you see him last?"
Joe tried to remember, but was not sure he could say. The people had
stopped moving out of church. Whispers passed along, and a boding
uneasiness took possession of every countenance. Children were
anxiously questioned, and young teachers. They all said they had not
noticed whether Tom and Becky were on board the ferryboat on the
homeward trip; it was dark; no one thought of inquiring if any one was
missing. One young man finally blurted out his fear that they were
still in the cave! Mrs. Thatcher swooned away. Aunt Polly fell to
crying and wringing her hands.
The alarm swept from lip to lip, from group to group, from street to
street, and within five minutes the bells were wildly clanging and the
whole town was up! The Cardiff Hill episode sank into instant
insignificance, the burglars were forgotten, horses were saddled,
skiffs were manned, the ferryboat ordered out, and before the horror
was half an hour old, two hundred men were pouring down highroad and
river toward the cave.
All the long afternoon the village seemed empty and dead. Many women
visited Aunt Polly and Mrs. Thatcher and tried to comfort them. They
cried with them, too, and that was still better than words. All the
tedious night the town waited for news; but when the morning dawned at
last, all the word that came was, "Send more candles--and send food."
Mrs. Thatcher was almost crazed; and Aunt Polly, also. Judge Thatcher
sent messages of hope and encouragement from the cave, but they
conveyed no real cheer.
The old Welshman came home toward daylight, spattered with
candle-grease, smeared with clay, and almost worn out. He found Huck
still in the bed that had been provided for him, and delirious with
fever. The physicians were all at the cave, so the Widow Douglas came
and took charge of the patient. She said she would do her best by him,
because, whether he was good, bad, or indifferent, he was the Lord's,
and nothing that was the Lord's was a thing to be neglected. The
Welshman said Huck had good spots in him, and the widow said:
"You can depend on it. That's the Lord's mark. He don't leave it off.
He never does. Puts it somewhere on every creature that comes from his
hands."
Early in the forenoon parties of jaded men began to straggle into the
village, but the strongest of the citizens continued searching. All the
news that could be gained was that remotenesses of the cavern were
being ransacked that had never been visited before; that every corner
and crevice was going to be thoroughly searched; that wherever one
wandered through the maze of passages, lights were to be seen flitting
hither and thither in the distance, and shoutings and pistol-shots sent
their hollow reverberations to the ear down the sombre aisles. In one
place, far from the section usually traversed by tourists, the names
"BECKY & TOM" had been found traced upon the rocky wall with
candle-smoke, and near at hand a grease-soiled bit of ribbon. Mrs.
Thatcher recognized the ribbon and cried over it. She said it was the
last relic she should ever have of her child; and that no other memorial
of her could ever be so precious, because this one parted latest from
the living body before the awful death came. Some said that now and
then, in the cave, a far-away speck of light would glimmer, and then a
glorious shout would burst forth and a score of men go trooping down the
echoing aisle--and then a sickening disappointment always followed; the
children were not there; it was only a searcher's light.
Three dreadful days and nights dragged their tedious hours along, and
the village sank into a hopeless stupor. No one had heart for anything.
The accidental discovery, just made, that the proprietor of the
Temperance Tavern kept liquor on his premises, scarcely fluttered the
public pulse, tremendous as the fact was. In a lucid interval, Huck
feebly led up to the subject of taverns, and finally asked--dimly
dreading the worst--if anything had been discovered at the Temperance
Tavern since he had been ill.
"Yes," said the widow.
Huck started up in bed, wild-eyed:
"What? What was it?"
"Liquor!--and the place has been shut up. Lie down, child--what a turn
you did give me!"
"Only tell me just one thing--only just one--please! Was it Tom Sawyer
that found it?"
The widow burst into tears. "Hush, hush, child, hush! I've told you
before, you must NOT talk. You are very, very sick!"
Then nothing but liquor had been found; there would have been a great
powwow if it had been the gold. So the treasure was gone forever--gone
forever! But what could she be crying about? Curious that she should
cry.
These thoughts worked their dim way through Huck's mind, and under the
weariness they gave him he fell asleep. The widow said to herself:
"There--he's asleep, poor wreck. Tom Sawyer find it! Pity but somebody
could find Tom Sawyer! Ah, there ain't many left, now, that's got hope
enough, or strength enough, either, to go on searching."
CHAPTER XXXI
NOW to return to Tom and Becky's share in the picnic. They tripped
along the murky aisles with the rest of the company, visiting the
familiar wonders of the cave--wonders dubbed with rather
over-descriptive names, such as "The Drawing-Room," "The Cathedral,"
"Aladdin's Palace," and so on. Presently the hide-and-seek frolicking
began, and Tom and Becky engaged in it with zeal until the exertion
began to grow a trifle wearisome; then they wandered down a sinuous
avenue holding their candles aloft and reading the tangled web-work of
names, dates, post-office addresses, and mottoes with which the rocky
walls had been frescoed (in candle-smoke). Still drifting along and
talking, they scarcely noticed that they were now in a part of the cave
whose walls were not frescoed. They smoked their own names under an
overhanging shelf and moved on. Presently they came to a place where a
little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying a limestone
sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and
ruffled Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone. Tom squeezed his
small body behind it in order to illuminate it for Becky's
gratification. He found that it curtained a sort of steep natural
stairway which was enclosed between narrow walls, and at once the
ambition to be a discoverer seized him. Becky responded to his call,
and they made a smoke-mark for future guidance, and started upon their
quest. They wound this way and that, far down into the secret depths of
the cave, made another mark, and branched off in search of novelties to
tell the upper world about. In one place they found a spacious cavern,
from whose ceiling depended a multitude of shining stalactites of the
length and circumference of a man's leg; they walked all about it,
wondering and admiring, and presently left it by one of the numerous
passages that opened into it. This shortly brought them to a bewitching
spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering
crystals; it was in the midst of a cavern whose walls were supported by
many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the joining of great
stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless
water-drip of centuries. Under the roof vast knots of bats had packed
themselves together, thousands in a bunch; the lights disturbed the
creatures and they came flocking down by hundreds, squeaking and
darting furiously at the candles. Tom knew their ways and the danger of
this sort of conduct. He seized Becky's hand and hurried her into the
first corridor that offered; and none too soon, for a bat struck
Becky's light out with its wing while she was passing out of the
cavern. The bats chased the children a good distance; but the fugitives
plunged into every new passage that offered, and at last got rid of the
perilous things. Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which
stretched its dim length away until its shape was lost in the shadows.
He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it would be best
to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the deep
stillness of the place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the
children. Becky said:
"Why, I didn't notice, but it seems ever so long since I heard any of
the others."
"Come to think, Becky, we are away down below them--and I don't know
how far away north, or south, or east, or whichever it is. We couldn't
hear them here."
Becky grew apprehensive.
"I wonder how long we've been down here, Tom? We better start back."
"Yes, I reckon we better. P'raps we better."
"Can you find the way, Tom? It's all a mixed-up crookedness to me."
"I reckon I could find it--but then the bats. If they put our candles
out it will be an awful fix. Let's try some other way, so as not to go
through there."
"Well. But I hope we won't get lost. It would be so awful!" and the
girl shuddered at the thought of the dreadful possibilities.
They started through a corridor, and traversed it in silence a long
way, glancing at each new opening, to see if there was anything
familiar about the look of it; but they were all strange. Every time
Tom made an examination, Becky would watch his face for an encouraging
sign, and he would say cheerily:
"Oh, it's all right. This ain't the one, but we'll come to it right
away!"
But he felt less and less hopeful with each failure, and presently
began to turn off into diverging avenues at sheer random, in desperate
hope of finding the one that was wanted. He still said it was "all
right," but there was such a leaden dread at his heart that the words
had lost their ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost!"
Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep
back the tears, but they would come. At last she said:
"Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time."
"Listen!" said he.
Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were
conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the
empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that
resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.
"Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Becky.
"It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know," and
he shouted again.
The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it
so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened;
but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and
hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain
indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky--he
could not find his way back!
"Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks!"
"Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want
to come back! No--I can't find the way. It's all mixed up."
"Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this awful
place! Oh, why DID we ever leave the others!"
She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom
was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He
sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his
bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing
regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom
begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell
to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable
situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope
again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he
would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than
she, she said.
So they moved on again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do
was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving--not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its
nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age
and familiarity with failure.
By-and-by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant
so much! Words were not needed. Becky understood, and her hope died
again. She knew that Tom had a whole candle and three or four pieces in
his pockets--yet he must economize.
By-and-by, fatigue began to assert its claims; the children tried to
pay attention, for it was dreadful to think of sitting down when time
was grown to be so precious, moving, in some direction, in any
direction, was at least progress and might bear fruit; but to sit down
was to invite death and shorten its pursuit.
At last Becky's frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat
down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends
there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried,
and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his
encouragements were grown threadbare with use, and sounded like
sarcasms. Fatigue bore so heavily upon Becky that she drowsed off to
sleep. Tom was grateful. He sat looking into her drawn face and saw it
grow smooth and natural under the influence of pleasant dreams; and
by-and-by a smile dawned and rested there. The peaceful face reflected
somewhat of peace and healing into his own spirit, and his thoughts
wandered away to bygone times and dreamy memories. While he was deep in
his musings, Becky woke up with a breezy little laugh--but it was
stricken dead upon her lips, and a groan followed it.
"Oh, how COULD I sleep! I wish I never, never had waked! No! No, I
don't, Tom! Don't look so! I won't say it again."
"I'm glad you've slept, Becky; you'll feel rested, now, and we'll find
the way out."
"We can try, Tom; but I've seen such a beautiful country in my dream.
I reckon we are going there."
"Maybe not, maybe not. Cheer up, Becky, and let's go on trying."
They rose up and wandered along, hand in hand and hopeless. They tried
to estimate how long they had been in the cave, but all they knew was
that it seemed days and weeks, and yet it was plain that this could not
be, for their candles were not gone yet. A long time after this--they
could not tell how long--Tom said they must go softly and listen for
dripping water--they must find a spring. They found one presently, and
Tom said it was time to rest again. Both were cruelly tired, yet Becky
said she thought she could go a little farther. She was surprised to
hear Tom dissent. She could not understand it. They sat down, and Tom
fastened his candle to the wall in front of them with some clay.
Thought was soon busy; nothing was said for some time. Then Becky broke
the silence:
"Tom, I am so hungry!"
Tom took something out of his pocket.
"Do you remember this?" said he.
Becky almost smiled.
"It's our wedding-cake, Tom."
"Yes--I wish it was as big as a barrel, for it's all we've got."
"I saved it from the picnic for us to dream on, Tom, the way grown-up
people do with wedding-cake--but it'll be our--"
She dropped the sentence where it was. Tom divided the cake and Becky
ate with good appetite, while Tom nibbled at his moiety. There was
abundance of cold water to finish the feast with. By-and-by Becky
suggested that they move on again. Tom was silent a moment. Then he
said:
"Becky, can you bear it if I tell you something?"
Becky's face paled, but she thought she could.
"Well, then, Becky, we must stay here, where there's water to drink.
That little piece is our last candle!"
Becky gave loose to tears and wailings. Tom did what he could to
comfort her, but with little effect. At length Becky said:
"Tom!"
"Well, Becky?"
"They'll miss us and hunt for us!"
"Yes, they will! Certainly they will!"
"Maybe they're hunting for us now, Tom."
"Why, I reckon maybe they are. I hope they are."
"When would they miss us, Tom?"
"When they get back to the boat, I reckon."
"Tom, it might be dark then--would they notice we hadn't come?"
"I don't know. But anyway, your mother would miss you as soon as they
got home."
A frightened look in Becky's face brought Tom to his senses and he saw
that he had made a blunder. Becky was not to have gone home that night!
The children became silent and thoughtful. In a moment a new burst of
grief from Becky showed Tom that the thing in his mind had struck hers
also--that the Sabbath morning might be half spent before Mrs. Thatcher
discovered that Becky was not at Mrs. Harper's.
The children fastened their eyes upon their bit of candle and watched
it melt slowly and pitilessly away; saw the half inch of wick stand
alone at last; saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin
column of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then--the horror of
utter darkness reigned!
How long afterward it was that Becky came to a slow consciousness that
she was crying in Tom's arms, neither could tell. All that they knew
was, that after what seemed a mighty stretch of time, both awoke out of
a dead stupor of sleep and resumed their miseries once more. Tom said
it might be Sunday, now--maybe Monday. He tried to get Becky to talk,
but her sorrows were too oppressive, all her hopes were gone. Tom said
that they must have been missed long ago, and no doubt the search was
going on. He would shout and maybe some one would come. He tried it;
but in the darkness the distant echoes sounded so hideously that he
tried it no more.
The hours wasted away, and hunger came to torment the captives again.
A portion of Tom's half of the cake was left; they divided and ate it.
But they seemed hungrier than before. The poor morsel of food only
whetted desire.
By-and-by Tom said:
"SH! Did you hear that?"
Both held their breath and listened. There was a sound like the
faintest, far-off shout. Instantly Tom answered it, and leading Becky
by the hand, started groping down the corridor in its direction.
Presently he listened again; again the sound was heard, and apparently
a little nearer.
"It's them!" said Tom; "they're coming! Come along, Becky--we're all
right now!"
The joy of the prisoners was almost overwhelming. Their speed was
slow, however, because pitfalls were somewhat common, and had to be
guarded against. They shortly came to one and had to stop. It might be
three feet deep, it might be a hundred--there was no passing it at any
rate. Tom got down on his breast and reached as far down as he could.
No bottom. They must stay there and wait until the searchers came. They
listened; evidently the distant shoutings were growing more distant! a
moment or two more and they had gone altogether. The heart-sinking
misery of it! Tom whooped until he was hoarse, but it was of no use. He
talked hopefully to Becky; but an age of anxious waiting passed and no
sounds came again.
The children groped their way back to the spring. The weary time
dragged on; they slept again, and awoke famished and woe-stricken. Tom
believed it must be Tuesday by this time.
Now an idea struck him. There were some side passages near at hand. It
would be better to explore some of these than bear the weight of the
heavy time in idleness. He took a kite-line from his pocket, tied it to
a projection, and he and Becky started, Tom in the lead, unwinding the
line as he groped along. At the end of twenty steps the corridor ended
in a "jumping-off place." Tom got down on his knees and felt below, and
then as far around the corner as he could reach with his hands
conveniently; he made an effort to stretch yet a little farther to the
right, and at that moment, not twenty yards away, a human hand, holding
a candle, appeared from behind a rock! Tom lifted up a glorious shout,
and instantly that hand was followed by the body it belonged to--Injun
Joe's! Tom was paralyzed; he could not move. He was vastly gratified
the next moment, to see the "Spaniard" take to his heels and get
himself out of sight. Tom wondered that Joe had not recognized his
voice and come over and killed him for testifying in court. But the
echoes must have disguised the voice. Without doubt, that was it, he
reasoned. Tom's fright weakened every muscle in his body. He said to
himself that if he had strength enough to get back to the spring he
would stay there, and nothing should tempt him to run the risk of
meeting Injun Joe again. He was careful to keep from Becky what it was
he had seen. He told her he had only shouted "for luck."
But hunger and wretchedness rise superior to fears in the long run.
Another tedious wait at the spring and another long sleep brought
changes. The children awoke tortured with a raging hunger. Tom believed
that it must be Wednesday or Thursday or even Friday or Saturday, now,
and that the search had been given over. He proposed to explore another
passage. He felt willing to risk Injun Joe and all other terrors. But
Becky was very weak. She had sunk into a dreary apathy and would not be
roused. She said she would wait, now, where she was, and die--it would
not be long. She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he
chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak
to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he
would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over.
Tom kissed her, with a choking sensation in his throat, and made a
show of being confident of finding the searchers or an escape from the
cave; then he took the kite-line in his hand and went groping down one
of the passages on his hands and knees, distressed with hunger and sick
with bodings of coming doom.
CHAPTER XXXII
TUESDAY afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The village of St.
Petersburg still mourned. The lost children had not been found. Public
prayers had been offered up for them, and many and many a private
prayer that had the petitioner's whole heart in it; but still no good
news came from the cave. The majority of the searchers had given up the
quest and gone back to their daily avocations, saying that it was plain
the children could never be found. Mrs. Thatcher was very ill, and a
great part of the time delirious. People said it was heartbreaking to
hear her call her child, and raise her head and listen a whole minute
at a time, then lay it wearily down again with a moan. Aunt Polly had
drooped into a settled melancholy, and her gray hair had grown almost
white. The village went to its rest on Tuesday night, sad and forlorn.
Away in the middle of the night a wild peal burst from the village
bells, and in a moment the streets were swarming with frantic half-clad
people, who shouted, "Turn out! turn out! they're found! they're
found!" Tin pans and horns were added to the din, the population massed
itself and moved toward the river, met the children coming in an open
carriage drawn by shouting citizens, thronged around it, joined its
homeward march, and swept magnificently up the main street roaring
huzzah after huzzah!
The village was illuminated; nobody went to bed again; it was the
greatest night the little town had ever seen. During the first half-hour
a procession of villagers filed through Judge Thatcher's house, seized
the saved ones and kissed them, squeezed Mrs. Thatcher's hand, tried to
speak but couldn't--and drifted out raining tears all over the place.
Aunt Polly's happiness was complete, and Mrs. Thatcher's nearly so. It
would be complete, however, as soon as the messenger dispatched with
the great news to the cave should get the word to her husband. Tom lay
upon a sofa with an eager auditory about him and told the history of
the wonderful adventure, putting in many striking additions to adorn it
withal; and closed with a description of how he left Becky and went on
an exploring expedition; how he followed two avenues as far as his
kite-line would reach; how he followed a third to the fullest stretch of
the kite-line, and was about to turn back when he glimpsed a far-off
speck that looked like daylight; dropped the line and groped toward it,
pushed his head and shoulders through a small hole, and saw the broad
Mississippi rolling by! And if it had only happened to be night he would
not have seen that speck of daylight and would not have explored that
passage any more! He told how he went back for Becky and broke the good
news and she told him not to fret her with such stuff, for she was
tired, and knew she was going to die, and wanted to. He described how he
labored with her and convinced her; and how she almost died for joy when
she had groped to where she actually saw the blue speck of daylight; how
he pushed his way out at the hole and then helped her out; how they sat
there and cried for gladness; how some men came along in a skiff and Tom
hailed them and told them their situation and their famished condition;
how the men didn't believe the wild tale at first, "because," said they,
"you are five miles down the river below the valley the cave is in"
--then took them aboard, rowed to a house, gave them supper, made them
rest till two or three hours after dark and then brought them home.
Before day-dawn, Judge Thatcher and the handful of searchers with him
were tracked out, in the cave, by the twine clews they had strung
behind them, and informed of the great news.
Three days and nights of toil and hunger in the cave were not to be
shaken off at once, as Tom and Becky soon discovered. They were
bedridden all of Wednesday and Thursday, and seemed to grow more and
more tired and worn, all the time. Tom got about, a little, on
Thursday, was down-town Friday, and nearly as whole as ever Saturday;
but Becky did not leave her room until Sunday, and then she looked as
if she had passed through a wasting illness.
Tom learned of Huck's sickness and went to see him on Friday, but
could not be admitted to the bedroom; neither could he on Saturday or
Sunday. He was admitted daily after that, but was warned to keep still
about his adventure and introduce no exciting topic. The Widow Douglas
stayed by to see that he obeyed. At home Tom learned of the Cardiff
Hill event; also that the "ragged man's" body had eventually been found
in the river near the ferry-landing; he had been drowned while trying
to escape, perhaps.
About a fortnight after Tom's rescue from the cave, he started off to
visit Huck, who had grown plenty strong enough, now, to hear exciting
talk, and Tom had some that would interest him, he thought. Judge
Thatcher's house was on Tom's way, and he stopped to see Becky. The
Judge and some friends set Tom to talking, and some one asked him
ironically if he wouldn't like to go to the cave again. Tom said he
thought he wouldn't mind it. The Judge said:
"Well, there are others just like you, Tom, I've not the least doubt.
But we have taken care of that. Nobody will get lost in that cave any
more."
"Why?"
"Because I had its big door sheathed with boiler iron two weeks ago,
and triple-locked--and I've got the keys."
Tom turned as white as a sheet.
"What's the matter, boy! Here, run, somebody! Fetch a glass of water!"
The water was brought and thrown into Tom's face.
"Ah, now you're all right. What was the matter with you, Tom?"
"Oh, Judge, Injun Joe's in the cave!"
CHAPTER XXXIII
WITHIN a few minutes the news had spread, and a dozen skiff-loads of
men were on their way to McDougal's cave, and the ferryboat, well
filled with passengers, soon followed. Tom Sawyer was in the skiff that
bore Judge Thatcher.
When the cave door was unlocked, a sorrowful sight presented itself in
the dim twilight of the place. Injun Joe lay stretched upon the ground,
dead, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing
eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer
of the free world outside. Tom was touched, for he knew by his own
experience how this wretch had suffered. His pity was moved, but
nevertheless he felt an abounding sense of relief and security, now,
which revealed to him in a degree which he had not fully appreciated
before how vast a weight of dread had been lying upon him since the day
he lifted his voice against this bloody-minded outcast.
Injun Joe's bowie-knife lay close by, its blade broken in two. The
great foundation-beam of the door had been chipped and hacked through,
with tedious labor; useless labor, too, it was, for the native rock
formed a sill outside it, and upon that stubborn material the knife had
wrought no effect; the only damage done was to the knife itself. But if
there had been no stony obstruction there the labor would have been
useless still, for if the beam had been wholly cut away Injun Joe could
not have squeezed his body under the door, and he knew it. So he had
only hacked that place in order to be doing something--in order to pass
the weary time--in order to employ his tortured faculties. Ordinarily
one could find half a dozen bits of candle stuck around in the crevices
of this vestibule, left there by tourists; but there were none now. The
prisoner had searched them out and eaten them. He had also contrived to
catch a few bats, and these, also, he had eaten, leaving only their
claws. The poor unfortunate had starved to death. In one place, near at
hand, a stalagmite had been slowly growing up from the ground for ages,
builded by the water-drip from a stalactite overhead. The captive had
broken off the stalagmite, and upon the stump had placed a stone,
wherein he had scooped a shallow hollow to catch the precious drop
that fell once in every three minutes with the dreary regularity of a
clock-tick--a dessertspoonful once in four and twenty hours. That drop
was falling when the Pyramids were new; when Troy fell; when the
foundations of Rome were laid when Christ was crucified; when the
Conqueror created the British empire; when Columbus sailed; when the
massacre at Lexington was "news." It is falling now; it will still be
falling when all these things shall have sunk down the afternoon of
history, and the twilight of tradition, and been swallowed up in the
thick night of oblivion. Has everything a purpose and a mission? Did
this drop fall patiently during five thousand years to be ready for
this flitting human insect's need? and has it another important object
to accomplish ten thousand years to come? No matter. It is many and
many a year since the hapless half-breed scooped out the stone to catch
the priceless drops, but to this day the tourist stares longest at that
pathetic stone and that slow-dropping water when he comes to see the
wonders of McDougal's cave. Injun Joe's cup stands first in the list of
the cavern's marvels; even "Aladdin's Palace" cannot rival it.
Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked
there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and
hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all
sorts of provisions, and confessed that they had had almost as
satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the
hanging.
This funeral stopped the further growth of one thing--the petition to
the governor for Injun Joe's pardon. The petition had been largely
signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a
committee of sappy women been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail
around the governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample
his duty under foot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five
citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself
there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names
to a pardon-petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently
impaired and leaky water-works.
The morning after the funeral Tom took Huck to a private place to have
an important talk. Huck had learned all about Tom's adventure from the
Welshman and the Widow Douglas, by this time, but Tom said he reckoned
there was one thing they had not told him; that thing was what he
wanted to talk about now. Huck's face saddened. He said:
"I know what it is. You got into No. 2 and never found anything but
whiskey. Nobody told me it was you; but I just knowed it must 'a' ben
you, soon as I heard 'bout that whiskey business; and I knowed you
hadn't got the money becuz you'd 'a' got at me some way or other and
told me even if you was mum to everybody else. Tom, something's always
told me we'd never get holt of that swag."
"Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. YOU know his tavern
was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you
was to watch there that night?"
"Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It was that very night that I
follered Injun Joe to the widder's."
"YOU followed him?"
"Yes--but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him,
and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it
hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right."
Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only
heard of the Welshman's part of it before.
"Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question,
"whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon
--anyways it's a goner for us, Tom."
"Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!"
"What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on
the track of that money again?"
"Huck, it's in the cave!"
Huck's eyes blazed.
"Say it again, Tom."
"The money's in the cave!"
"Tom--honest injun, now--is it fun, or earnest?"
"Earnest, Huck--just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go
in there with me and help get it out?"
"I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not
get lost."
"Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the
world."
"Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's--"
"Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll
agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I
will, by jings."
"All right--it's a whiz. When do you say?"
"Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?"
"Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days,
now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom--least I don't think I could."
"It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go,
Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me
know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the
skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You
needn't ever turn your hand over."
"Less start right off, Tom."
"All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little
bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these
new-fangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's
the time I wished I had some when I was in there before."
A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who
was absent, and got under way at once. When they were several miles
below "Cave Hollow," Tom said:
"Now you see this bluff here looks all alike all the way down from the
cave hollow--no houses, no wood-yards, bushes all alike. But do you see
that white place up yonder where there's been a landslide? Well, that's
one of my marks. We'll get ashore, now."
They landed.
"Now, Huck, where we're a-standing you could touch that hole I got out
of with a fishing-pole. See if you can find it."
Huck searched all the place about, and found nothing. Tom proudly
marched into a thick clump of sumach bushes and said:
"Here you are! Look at it, Huck; it's the snuggest hole in this
country. You just keep mum about it. All along I've been wanting to be
a robber, but I knew I'd got to have a thing like this, and where to
run across it was the bother. We've got it now, and we'll keep it
quiet, only we'll let Joe Harper and Ben Rogers in--because of course
there's got to be a Gang, or else there wouldn't be any style about it.
Tom Sawyer's Gang--it sounds splendid, don't it, Huck?"
"Well, it just does, Tom. And who'll we rob?"
"Oh, most anybody. Waylay people--that's mostly the way."
"And kill them?"
"No, not always. Hive them in the cave till they raise a ransom."
"What's a ransom?"
"Money. You make them raise all they can, off'n their friends; and
after you've kept them a year, if it ain't raised then you kill them.
That's the general way. Only you don't kill the women. You shut up the
women, but you don't kill them. They're always beautiful and rich, and
awfully scared. You take their watches and things, but you always take
your hat off and talk polite. They ain't anybody as polite as robbers
--you'll see that in any book. Well, the women get to loving you, and
after they've been in the cave a week or two weeks they stop crying and
after that you couldn't get them to leave. If you drove them out they'd
turn right around and come back. It's so in all the books."
"Why, it's real bully, Tom. I believe it's better'n to be a pirate."
"Yes, it's better in some ways, because it's close to home and
circuses and all that."
By this time everything was ready and the boys entered the hole, Tom
in the lead. They toiled their way to the farther end of the tunnel,
then made their spliced kite-strings fast and moved on. A few steps
brought them to the spring, and Tom felt a shudder quiver all through
him. He showed Huck the fragment of candle-wick perched on a lump of
clay against the wall, and described how he and Becky had watched the
flame struggle and expire.
The boys began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and
gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. They went on, and presently
entered and followed Tom's other corridor until they reached the
"jumping-off place." The candles revealed the fact that it was not
really a precipice, but only a steep clay hill twenty or thirty feet
high. Tom whispered:
"Now I'll show you something, Huck."
He held his candle aloft and said:
"Look as far around the corner as you can. Do you see that? There--on
the big rock over yonder--done with candle-smoke."
"Tom, it's a CROSS!"
"NOW where's your Number Two? 'UNDER THE CROSS,' hey? Right yonder's
where I saw Injun Joe poke up his candle, Huck!"
Huck stared at the mystic sign awhile, and then said with a shaky voice:
"Tom, less git out of here!"
"What! and leave the treasure?"
"Yes--leave it. Injun Joe's ghost is round about there, certain."
"No it ain't, Huck, no it ain't. It would ha'nt the place where he
died--away out at the mouth of the cave--five mile from here."
"No, Tom, it wouldn't. It would hang round the money. I know the ways
of ghosts, and so do you."
Tom began to fear that Huck was right. Misgivings gathered in his
mind. But presently an idea occurred to him--
"Lookyhere, Huck, what fools we're making of ourselves! Injun Joe's
ghost ain't a going to come around where there's a cross!"
The point was well taken. It had its effect.
"Tom, I didn't think of that. But that's so. It's luck for us, that
cross is. I reckon we'll climb down there and have a hunt for that box."
Tom went first, cutting rude steps in the clay hill as he descended.
Huck followed. Four avenues opened out of the small cavern which the
great rock stood in. The boys examined three of them with no result.
They found a small recess in the one nearest the base of the rock, with
a pallet of blankets spread down in it; also an old suspender, some
bacon rind, and the well-gnawed bones of two or three fowls. But there
was no money-box. The lads searched and researched this place, but in
vain. Tom said:
"He said UNDER the cross. Well, this comes nearest to being under the
cross. It can't be under the rock itself, because that sets solid on
the ground."
They searched everywhere once more, and then sat down discouraged.
Huck could suggest nothing. By-and-by Tom said:
"Lookyhere, Huck, there's footprints and some candle-grease on the
clay about one side of this rock, but not on the other sides. Now,
what's that for? I bet you the money IS under the rock. I'm going to
dig in the clay."
"That ain't no bad notion, Tom!" said Huck with animation.
Tom's "real Barlow" was out at once, and he had not dug four inches
before he struck wood.
"Hey, Huck!--you hear that?"
Huck began to dig and scratch now. Some boards were soon uncovered and
removed. They had concealed a natural chasm which led under the rock.
Tom got into this and held his candle as far under the rock as he
could, but said he could not see to the end of the rift. He proposed to
explore. He stooped and passed under; the narrow way descended
gradually. He followed its winding course, first to the right, then to
the left, Huck at his heels. Tom turned a short curve, by-and-by, and
exclaimed:
"My goodness, Huck, lookyhere!"
It was the treasure-box, sure enough, occupying a snug little cavern,
along with an empty powder-keg, a couple of guns in leather cases, two
or three pairs of old moccasins, a leather belt, and some other rubbish
well soaked with the water-drip.
"Got it at last!" said Huck, ploughing among the tarnished coins with
his hand. "My, but we're rich, Tom!"
"Huck, I always reckoned we'd get it. It's just too good to believe,
but we HAVE got it, sure! Say--let's not fool around here. Let's snake
it out. Lemme see if I can lift the box."
It weighed about fifty pounds. Tom could lift it, after an awkward
fashion, but could not carry it conveniently.
"I thought so," he said; "THEY carried it like it was heavy, that day
at the ha'nted house. I noticed that. I reckon I was right to think of
fetching the little bags along."
The money was soon in the bags and the boys took it up to the cross
rock.
"Now less fetch the guns and things," said Huck.
"No, Huck--leave them there. They're just the tricks to have when we
go to robbing. We'll keep them there all the time, and we'll hold our
orgies there, too. It's an awful snug place for orgies."
"What orgies?"
"I dono. But robbers always have orgies, and of course we've got to
have them, too. Come along, Huck, we've been in here a long time. It's
getting late, I reckon. I'm hungry, too. We'll eat and smoke when we
get to the skiff."
They presently emerged into the clump of sumach bushes, looked warily
out, found the coast clear, and were soon lunching and smoking in the
skiff. As the sun dipped toward the horizon they pushed out and got
under way. Tom skimmed up the shore through the long twilight, chatting
cheerily with Huck, and landed shortly after dark.
"Now, Huck," said Tom, "we'll hide the money in the loft of the
widow's woodshed, and I'll come up in the morning and we'll count it
and divide, and then we'll hunt up a place out in the woods for it
where it will be safe. Just you lay quiet here and watch the stuff till
I run and hook Benny Taylor's little wagon; I won't be gone a minute."
He disappeared, and presently returned with the wagon, put the two
small sacks into it, threw some old rags on top of them, and started
off, dragging his cargo behind him. When the boys reached the
Welshman's house, they stopped to rest. Just as they were about to move
on, the Welshman stepped out and said:
"Hallo, who's that?"
"Huck and Tom Sawyer."
"Good! Come along with me, boys, you are keeping everybody waiting.
Here--hurry up, trot ahead--I'll haul the wagon for you. Why, it's not
as light as it might be. Got bricks in it?--or old metal?"
"Old metal," said Tom.
"I judged so; the boys in this town will take more trouble and fool
away more time hunting up six bits' worth of old iron to sell to the
foundry than they would to make twice the money at regular work. But
that's human nature--hurry along, hurry along!"
The boys wanted to know what the hurry was about.
"Never mind; you'll see, when we get to the Widow Douglas'."
Huck said with some apprehension--for he was long used to being
falsely accused:
"Mr. Jones, we haven't been doing nothing."
The Welshman laughed.
"Well, I don't know, Huck, my boy. I don't know about that. Ain't you
and the widow good friends?"
"Yes. Well, she's ben good friends to me, anyway."
"All right, then. What do you want to be afraid for?"
This question was not entirely answered in Huck's slow mind before he
found himself pushed, along with Tom, into Mrs. Douglas' drawing-room.
Mr. Jones left the wagon near the door and followed.
The place was grandly lighted, and everybody that was of any
consequence in the village was there. The Thatchers were there, the
Harpers, the Rogerses, Aunt Polly, Sid, Mary, the minister, the editor,
and a great many more, and all dressed in their best. The widow
received the boys as heartily as any one could well receive two such
looking beings. They were covered with clay and candle-grease. Aunt
Polly blushed crimson with humiliation, and frowned and shook her head
at Tom. Nobody suffered half as much as the two boys did, however. Mr.
Jones said:
"Tom wasn't at home, yet, so I gave him up; but I stumbled on him and
Huck right at my door, and so I just brought them along in a hurry."
"And you did just right," said the widow. "Come with me, boys."
She took them to a bedchamber and said:
"Now wash and dress yourselves. Here are two new suits of clothes
--shirts, socks, everything complete. They're Huck's--no, no thanks,
Huck--Mr. Jones bought one and I the other. But they'll fit both of you.
Get into them. We'll wait--come down when you are slicked up enough."
Then she left.
CHAPTER XXXIV
HUCK said: "Tom, we can slope, if we can find a rope. The window ain't
high from the ground."
"Shucks! what do you want to slope for?"
"Well, I ain't used to that kind of a crowd. I can't stand it. I ain't
going down there, Tom."
"Oh, bother! It ain't anything. I don't mind it a bit. I'll take care
of you."
Sid appeared.
"Tom," said he, "auntie has been waiting for you all the afternoon.
Mary got your Sunday clothes ready, and everybody's been fretting about
you. Say--ain't this grease and clay, on your clothes?"
"Now, Mr. Siddy, you jist 'tend to your own business. What's all this
blow-out about, anyway?"
"It's one of the widow's parties that she's always having. This time
it's for the Welshman and his sons, on account of that scrape they
helped her out of the other night. And say--I can tell you something,
if you want to know."
"Well, what?"
"Why, old Mr. Jones is going to try to spring something on the people
here to-night, but I overheard him tell auntie to-day about it, as a
secret, but I reckon it's not much of a secret now. Everybody knows
--the widow, too, for all she tries to let on she don't. Mr. Jones was
bound Huck should be here--couldn't get along with his grand secret
without Huck, you know!"
"Secret about what, Sid?"
"About Huck tracking the robbers to the widow's. I reckon Mr. Jones
was going to make a grand time over his surprise, but I bet you it will
drop pretty flat."
Sid chuckled in a very contented and satisfied way.
"Sid, was it you that told?"
"Oh, never mind who it was. SOMEBODY told--that's enough."
"Sid, there's only one person in this town mean enough to do that, and
that's you. If you had been in Huck's place you'd 'a' sneaked down the
hill and never told anybody on the robbers. You can't do any but mean
things, and you can't bear to see anybody praised for doing good ones.
There--no thanks, as the widow says"--and Tom cuffed Sid's ears and
helped him to the door with several kicks. "Now go and tell auntie if
you dare--and to-morrow you'll catch it!"
Some minutes later the widow's guests were at the supper-table, and a
dozen children were propped up at little side-tables in the same room,
after the fashion of that country and that day. At the proper time Mr.
Jones made his little speech, in which he thanked the widow for the
honor she was doing himself and his sons, but said that there was
another person whose modesty--
And so forth and so on. He sprung his secret about Huck's share in the
adventure in the finest dramatic manner he was master of, but the
surprise it occasioned was largely counterfeit and not as clamorous and
effusive as it might have been under happier circumstances. However,
the widow made a pretty fair show of astonishment, and heaped so many
compliments and so much gratitude upon Huck that he almost forgot the
nearly intolerable discomfort of his new clothes in the entirely
intolerable discomfort of being set up as a target for everybody's gaze
and everybody's laudations.
The widow said she meant to give Huck a home under her roof and have
him educated; and that when she could spare the money she would start
him in business in a modest way. Tom's chance was come. He said:
"Huck don't need it. Huck's rich."
Nothing but a heavy strain upon the good manners of the company kept
back the due and proper complimentary laugh at this pleasant joke. But
the silence was a little awkward. Tom broke it:
"Huck's got money. Maybe you don't believe it, but he's got lots of
it. Oh, you needn't smile--I reckon I can show you. You just wait a
minute."
Tom ran out of doors. The company looked at each other with a
perplexed interest--and inquiringly at Huck, who was tongue-tied.
"Sid, what ails Tom?" said Aunt Polly. "He--well, there ain't ever any
making of that boy out. I never--"
Tom entered, struggling with the weight of his sacks, and Aunt Polly
did not finish her sentence. Tom poured the mass of yellow coin upon
the table and said:
"There--what did I tell you? Half of it's Huck's and half of it's mine!"
The spectacle took the general breath away. All gazed, nobody spoke
for a moment. Then there was a unanimous call for an explanation. Tom
said he could furnish it, and he did. The tale was long, but brimful of
interest. There was scarcely an interruption from any one to break the
charm of its flow. When he had finished, Mr. Jones said:
"I thought I had fixed up a little surprise for this occasion, but it
don't amount to anything now. This one makes it sing mighty small, I'm
willing to allow."
The money was counted. The sum amounted to a little over twelve
thousand dollars. It was more than any one present had ever seen at one
time before, though several persons were there who were worth
considerably more than that in property.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a
mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a
sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked
about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the
citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every
"haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was
dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for
hidden treasure--and not by boys, but men--pretty grave, unromantic
men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were
courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that
their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were
treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be
regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and
saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up
and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village
paper published biographical sketches of the boys.
The Widow Douglas put Huck's money out at six per cent., and Judge
Thatcher did the same with Tom's at Aunt Polly's request. Each lad had
an income, now, that was simply prodigious--a dollar for every week-day
in the year and half of the Sundays. It was just what the minister got
--no, it was what he was promised--he generally couldn't collect it. A
dollar and a quarter a week would board, lodge, and school a boy in
those old simple days--and clothe him and wash him, too, for that
matter.
Judge Thatcher had conceived a great opinion of Tom. He said that no
commonplace boy would ever have got his daughter out of the cave. When
Becky told her father, in strict confidence, how Tom had taken her
whipping at school, the Judge was visibly moved; and when she pleaded
grace for the mighty lie which Tom had told in order to shift that
whipping from her shoulders to his own, the Judge said with a fine
outburst that it was a noble, a generous, a magnanimous lie--a lie that
was worthy to hold up its head and march down through history breast to
breast with George Washington's lauded Truth about the hatchet! Becky
thought her father had never looked so tall and so superb as when he
walked the floor and stamped his foot and said that. She went straight
off and told Tom about it.
Judge Thatcher hoped to see Tom a great lawyer or a great soldier some
day. He said he meant to look to it that Tom should be admitted to the
National Military Academy and afterward trained in the best law school
in the country, in order that he might be ready for either career or
both.
Huck Finn's wealth and the fact that he was now under the Widow
Douglas' protection introduced him into society--no, dragged him into
it, hurled him into it--and his sufferings were almost more than he
could bear. The widow's servants kept him clean and neat, combed and
brushed, and they bedded him nightly in unsympathetic sheets that had
not one little spot or stain which he could press to his heart and know
for a friend. He had to eat with a knife and fork; he had to use
napkin, cup, and plate; he had to learn his book, he had to go to
church; he had to talk so properly that speech was become insipid in
his mouth; whithersoever he turned, the bars and shackles of
civilization shut him in and bound him hand and foot.
He bravely bore his miseries three weeks, and then one day turned up
missing. For forty-eight hours the widow hunted for him everywhere in
great distress. The public were profoundly concerned; they searched
high and low, they dragged the river for his body. Early the third
morning Tom Sawyer wisely went poking among some old empty hogsheads
down behind the abandoned slaughter-house, and in one of them he found
the refugee. Huck had slept there; he had just breakfasted upon some
stolen odds and ends of food, and was lying off, now, in comfort, with
his pipe. He was unkempt, uncombed, and clad in the same old ruin of
rags that had made him picturesque in the days when he was free and
happy. Tom routed him out, told him the trouble he had been causing,
and urged him to go home. Huck's face lost its tranquil content, and
took a melancholy cast. He said:
"Don't talk about it, Tom. I've tried it, and it don't work; it don't
work, Tom. It ain't for me; I ain't used to it. The widder's good to
me, and friendly; but I can't stand them ways. She makes me get up just
at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to
thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them
blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air
git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set
down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a
cellar-door for--well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and
sweat and sweat--I hate them ornery sermons! I can't ketch a fly in
there, I can't chaw. I got to wear shoes all Sunday. The widder eats by
a bell; she goes to bed by a bell; she gits up by a bell--everything's
so awful reg'lar a body can't stand it."
"Well, everybody does that way, Huck."
"Tom, it don't make no difference. I ain't everybody, and I can't
STAND it. It's awful to be tied up so. And grub comes too easy--I don't
take no interest in vittles, that way. I got to ask to go a-fishing; I
got to ask to go in a-swimming--dern'd if I hain't got to ask to do
everything. Well, I'd got to talk so nice it wasn't no comfort--I'd got
to go up in the attic and rip out awhile, every day, to git a taste in
my mouth, or I'd a died, Tom. The widder wouldn't let me smoke; she
wouldn't let me yell, she wouldn't let me gape, nor stretch, nor
scratch, before folks--" [Then with a spasm of special irritation and
injury]--"And dad fetch it, she prayed all the time! I never see such a
woman! I HAD to shove, Tom--I just had to. And besides, that school's
going to open, and I'd a had to go to it--well, I wouldn't stand THAT,
Tom. Looky here, Tom, being rich ain't what it's cracked up to be. It's
just worry and worry, and sweat and sweat, and a-wishing you was dead
all the time. Now these clothes suits me, and this bar'l suits me, and
I ain't ever going to shake 'em any more. Tom, I wouldn't ever got into
all this trouble if it hadn't 'a' ben for that money; now you just take
my sheer of it along with your'n, and gimme a ten-center sometimes--not
many times, becuz I don't give a dern for a thing 'thout it's tollable
hard to git--and you go and beg off for me with the widder."
"Oh, Huck, you know I can't do that. 'Tain't fair; and besides if
you'll try this thing just a while longer you'll come to like it."
"Like it! Yes--the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long
enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed
smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and
I'll stick to 'em, too. Blame it all! just as we'd got guns, and a
cave, and all just fixed to rob, here this dern foolishness has got to
come up and spile it all!"
Tom saw his opportunity--
"Lookyhere, Huck, being rich ain't going to keep me back from turning
robber."
"No! Oh, good-licks; are you in real dead-wood earnest, Tom?"
"Just as dead earnest as I'm sitting here. But Huck, we can't let you
into the gang if you ain't respectable, you know."
Huck's joy was quenched.
"Can't let me in, Tom? Didn't you let me go for a pirate?"
"Yes, but that's different. A robber is more high-toned than what a
pirate is--as a general thing. In most countries they're awful high up
in the nobility--dukes and such."
"Now, Tom, hain't you always ben friendly to me? You wouldn't shet me
out, would you, Tom? You wouldn't do that, now, WOULD you, Tom?"
"Huck, I wouldn't want to, and I DON'T want to--but what would people
say? Why, they'd say, 'Mph! Tom Sawyer's Gang! pretty low characters in
it!' They'd mean you, Huck. You wouldn't like that, and I wouldn't."
Huck was silent for some time, engaged in a mental struggle. Finally
he said:
"Well, I'll go back to the widder for a month and tackle it and see if
I can come to stand it, if you'll let me b'long to the gang, Tom."
"All right, Huck, it's a whiz! Come along, old chap, and I'll ask the
widow to let up on you a little, Huck."
"Will you, Tom--now will you? That's good. If she'll let up on some of
the roughest things, I'll smoke private and cuss private, and crowd
through or bust. When you going to start the gang and turn robbers?"
"Oh, right off. We'll get the boys together and have the initiation
to-night, maybe."
"Have the which?"
"Have the initiation."
"What's that?"
"It's to swear to stand by one another, and never tell the gang's
secrets, even if you're chopped all to flinders, and kill anybody and
all his family that hurts one of the gang."
"That's gay--that's mighty gay, Tom, I tell you."
"Well, I bet it is. And all that swearing's got to be done at
midnight, in the lonesomest, awfulest place you can find--a ha'nted
house is the best, but they're all ripped up now."
"Well, midnight's good, anyway, Tom."
"Yes, so it is. And you've got to swear on a coffin, and sign it with
blood."
"Now, that's something LIKE! Why, it's a million times bullier than
pirating. I'll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom; and if I git to be
a reg'lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking 'bout it, I reckon
she'll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet."
CONCLUSION
SO endeth this chronicle. It being strictly a history of a BOY, it
must stop here; the story could not go much further without becoming
the history of a MAN. When one writes a novel about grown people, he
knows exactly where to stop--that is, with a marriage; but when he
writes of juveniles, he must stop where he best can.
Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are
prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the
story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they
turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that
part of their lives at present.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
ALONZO FITZ AND OTHER STORIES
by Mark Twain
Contents:
The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton
On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying
About Magnanimous-Incident Literature
The Grateful Poodle
The Benevolent Author
The Grateful Husband
Punch, Brothers, Punch
The Great Revolution In Pitcairn
The Canvasser's Tale
An Encounter With An Interviewer
Paris Notes
Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany
Speech On The Babies
Speech On The Weather
Concerning The American Language
Rogers
THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON
It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of
Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was
newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One
could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white
emptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could
see the silence--no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely
long, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and there
you might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were
quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping
and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment
with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful
of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not
linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing
itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for
snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long.
Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in
fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and
straight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts,
great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a
moment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a
fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume
flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as
your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but each and
all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was
business.
Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor,
in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson
satin, elaborately quilted. The remains of his breakfast were before
him, and the dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious
charm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments of the
room. A cheery fire was blazing on the hearth.
A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snow washed
against them with a drenching sound, so to speak. The handsome young
bachelor murmured:
"That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do
for company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but
these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this,
one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of
captivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything.
One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just
the reverse."
He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock.
"That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is;
and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the same thing.
Alfred!"
There was no answer.
"Alfred! . . . Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock."
Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall. He waited a moment,
then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said:
"Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that I have started, I will
find out what time it is." He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall,
blew its whistle, and called, "Mother!" and repeated it twice.
"Well, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of order, too. Can't
raise anybody down-stairs--that is plain."
He sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of
it and spoke, as if to the floor: "Aunt Susan!"
A low, pleasant voice answered, "Is that you, Alonzo?'
"Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity,
and I can't seem to scare up any help."
"Dear me, what is the matter?"
"Matter enough, I can tell you!"
"Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?"
"I want to know what time it is."
"You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?"
"All--on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive my
blessing."
"Just five minutes after nine. No charge--keep your blessing."
"Thanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you
that you could live without other means."
He got up, murmuring, "Just five minutes after nine," and faced his
clock. "Ah," said he, "you are doing better than usual. You are only
thirty-four minutes wrong. Let me see . . . let me see. . . .
Thirty-three and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two
hundred and thirty-six. One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five.
That's right."
He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five
minutes to one, and said, "Now see if you can't keep right for a while
--else I'll raffle you!"
He sat down at the desk again, and said, "Aunt Susan!"
"Yes, dear."
"Had breakfast?"
"Yes, indeed, an hour ago."
"Busy?"
"No--except sewing. Why?"
"Got any company?"
"No, but I expect some at half past nine."
"I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to somebody."
"Very well, talk to me."
"But this is very private."
"Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me."
"I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--"
"But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo--you
know, you can."
"I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply--me,
and all the family---even the whole community."
"Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. What is it?"
"Aunt, if I might dare--"
"Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you. Tell me all.
Confide in me. What is it?"
"The weather!"
"Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart to
serve me so, Lon."
"There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor. I won't do it
again. Do you forgive me?"
"Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to.
You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time."
"No, I won't, honor bright. But such weather, oh, such weather! You've
got to keep your spirits up artificially. It is snowy, and blowy, and
gusty, and bitter cold! How is the weather with you?"
"Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go about the streets with
their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone. There's
an elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides of
the streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheerfulness, and
the windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless: nothing
comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking
odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in
their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their
gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and
ashes and his heart breaketh."
Alonzo opened his lips to say, "You ought to print that, and get it
framed," but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one
else. He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry
prospect. The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than
ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with
bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body
against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was
plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the
blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her
head. Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, "Better the slop, and the
sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!"
He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening
attitude. The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear. He
remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the
melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There was a
blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added
charm instead of a defect. This blemish consisted of a marked flatting
of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or
chorus of the piece. When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath,
and said, "Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung like that
before!"
He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded,
confidential voice, "Aunty, who is this divine singer?"
"She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me a month or two.
I will introduce you. Miss--"
"For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to think
what you are about!"
He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed
in his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly:
"Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue
dressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they get
a-going."
He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, "Now, Aunty, I am
ready," and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and
elegance that were in him.
"Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite
nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence. There! You are both good people, and
I like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a few
household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo. Good-by; I
sha'n't be gone long."
Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning imaginary
young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took a seat
himself, mentally saying, "Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blow now, and
the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!"
While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let us
take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two. She
sat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which
was manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady,
if signs and symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low,
comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a
fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and
other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and
hanging down in negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds of
Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool
or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs.
On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods
wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so
pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose
surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation
of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this work of art.
In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a
palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books everywhere:
Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His
Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books about all
kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano,
with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great
plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece, and
around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and
quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly
devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with
foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.
But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within
or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features,
of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is
receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the
garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an
expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of
a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and
rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with
native grace.
Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can
come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of
a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue
flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille;
overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins;
corn-colored polonaise, en zanier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons
and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings;
basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short
sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside
handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron
tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and
lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla.
This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely beautiful.
Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival or the ball?
All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of
our inspection. The minutes still sped, and still she talked. But by
and by she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent
its rich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed:
"There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!"
She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the young
man's answering good-by. She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and
gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock. Presently her pouting lips
parted, and she said:
"Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty
minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!"
At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presently
he said:
"Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe it
was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again?
Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?"
"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away."
"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?"
The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruel of
him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirably
counterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven."
"Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?"
"I'm sorry."
No reply.
"Miss Ethelton!"
"Well?"
"You you're there yet, ain't you?"
"Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?"
"Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's
asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by
and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?"
"I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try."
"Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton! . . . Ah, me, she's gone, and here are
the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again!
But she said good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by!
. . . The clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged
two hours it was!"
He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a
sigh and said:
"How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my
heart's in San Francisco!"
About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of her
bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas
that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he
is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic
talent of mimicry!"
II
Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay
luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with
some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular
actors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was
elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast
in his eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on
the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a nobby
lackey appeared, and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her
head understandingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley;
his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to
creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other.
The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the
mistress, to whom he said:
"There is no longer any question about it. She avoids me. She
continually excuses herself. If I could see her, if I could speak to her
only a moment, but this suspense--"
"Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley. Go to the
small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment. I will
despatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her
room. Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you."
Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but
as he was passing "Aunt Susan's" private parlor, the door of which stood
slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without
knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But before he could
make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and
chilled his young blood, he heard a voice say:
"Darling, it has come!"
Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say:
"So has yours, dearest!"
He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something--not merely
once, but again and again! His soul raged within him. The heartbreaking
conversation went on:
"Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is
blinding, this is intoxicating!"
"Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I know it is not true,
but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew you
must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar
the poor creation of my fancy."
Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again.
"Thank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must not
allow yourself to think of that. Sweetheart?"
"Yes, Alonzo."
"I am so happy, Rosannah."
"Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that
come after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous
cloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!"
"Oh, my Rosannah! for you are mine, are you not?"
"Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long,
and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet
burden is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state
of Maine!'"
"Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!" roared Burley, inwardly, and
rushed from the place.
Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of
astonishment. She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing
of herself was visible but her eyes and nose. She was a good allegory of
winter, for she was powdered all over with snow.
Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood "Aunt Susan," another picture of
astonishment. She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly
clad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan.
Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes.
"Soho!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, "this explains why nobody has been
able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!"
"So ho!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, "this explains why you have been a hermit
for the past six weeks, Rosannah!"
The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing
like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting judge Lynch's doom.
"Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness. Come to your mother's
arms, Alonzo!"
"Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!"
Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on
Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square.
Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was given
the order, "Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me a
roasting-hot lemonade."
Unto the other was given the order, "Put out this fire, and bring me two
palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water."
Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the
sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.
Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph
Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissed
through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in
melodrama, "Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature
shall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring,
she shall be mine!"
III
Two weeks later. Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very
prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had
visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave,
of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of
his health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably
have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was the
inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by
selling the privilege of using it. "At present," he continued, "a man
may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert
from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and
steal a hearing of that music as it passes along. My invention will stop
all that."
"Well," answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the music could not miss what
was stolen, why should he care?"
"He shouldn't care," said the Reverend.
"Well?" said Alonzo, inquiringly.
"Suppose," replied the Reverend, "suppose that, instead of music that was
passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving
endearments of the most private and sacred nature?"
Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. "Sir, it is a priceless invention,"
said he; "I must have it at any cost."
But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most
unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait. The thought of
Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was
galling to him. The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and
told of measures he had taken to hurry things up. This was some little
comfort to Alonzo.
One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo's
door. There was no response. He entered, glanced eagerly around,
closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft
and remote strains of the "Sweet By-and-by" came floating through the
instrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that
follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her
with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with
just the faintest flavor of impatience added:
"Sweetheart?"
"Yes, Alonzo?"
"Please don't sing that any more this week--try something modern."
The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and
the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy
folds of the velvet window-curtains. Alonzo entered and flew to the
telephone. Said he:
"Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?"
"Something modern?" asked she, with sarcastic bitterness.
"Yes, if you prefer."
"Sing it yourself, if you like!"
This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man. He said:
"Rosannah, that was not like you."
"I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you,
Mr. Fitz Clarence."
"Mister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my
speech."
"Oh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg
your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any more
to-day.'"
"Sing what any more to-day?"
"The song you mentioned, of course, How very obtuse we are, all of a
sudden!"
"I never mentioned any song."
"Oh, you didn't?"
"No, I didn't!"
"I am compelled to remark that you did."
"And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't."
"A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you.
All is over between us."
Then came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say:
"Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here,
some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I
never said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole
world . . . . Rosannah, dear speak to me, won't you?"
There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and
knew she had gone from the telephone. He rose with a heavy sigh, and
hastened from the room, saying to himself, "I will ransack the charity
missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother. She will persuade her
that I never meant to wound her."
A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat
that knoweth the ways of the prey. He had not very many minutes to wait.
A soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said:
"Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You could not have said so cruel a
thing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or
in jest."
The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones:
"You have said all was over between us. So let it be. I spurn your
proffered repentance, and despise it!"
Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with
his imaginary telephonic invention forever.
Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite
haunts of poverty and vice. They summoned the San Francisco household;
but there was no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon the
voiceless telephone.
At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a
half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of
"Rosannah!"
But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake. She said:
"I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her."
The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes. Then came
these fatal words, in a frightened tone:
"She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, she
told the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room.
Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you
will never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing
my poor "Sweet By-and-by," but never of the unkind words he said about
it.' That is her note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has
happened?"
But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw back the
velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the
sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his mother was
inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast
the curtains back. It read, "Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco."
"The miscreant!" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false
Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the
course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other all
about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at
their failings and foibles for lovers always do that. It has a
fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing.
IV
During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpired
that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her
grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a
duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph
Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had been
persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts
to find trace of her had failed.
Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, "She will sing
that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her." So he took his
carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native
city from his arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far
and wide and in many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded to
see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole
in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a
little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away. Sometimes
they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and
dangerous. Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person
grievously lacerated. But he bore it all patiently.
In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, "Ah, if I could
but hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!" But toward the end of it he used to
shed tears of anguish and say, "Ah, if I could but hear something else!"
Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people
seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York. He made
no moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all
hope. The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor
and bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion.
At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first
time. He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the
plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of
tramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening,
and New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and the
added cheer of a couple of student-lamps. So it was warm and snug
within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within,
though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit
with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries
had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to
pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very
ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear.
His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath.
The song flowed on--he waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously
from his recumbent position. At last he exclaimed:
"It is! it is she! Oh, the divine hated notes!"
He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded,
tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as
the last note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation:
"Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak tome, Rosannah, dearest! The
cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked
my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!"
There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound
came, framing itself into language:
"Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!"
"They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have
the proof, ample and abundant proof!"
"Oh; Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that
you are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy
hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!"
"We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour
chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the
years of our life."
"We will, we will, Alonzo!"
"Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth--"
"Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon shall--"
"Why; Rosannah, darling, where are you?"
"In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you? Stay by me; do not
leave me for a moment. I cannot bear it. Are you at home?"
"No, dear, I am in New York--a patient in the doctor's hands."
An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing
of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. Alonzo
hastened to say:
"Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I am getting well
under the sweet healing of your presence. Rosannah?"
"Yes, Alonzo? Oh, how you terrified me! Say on."
"Name the happy day, Rosannah!"
There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied,
"I blush--but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Would--would
you like to have it soon?"
"This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be
now!--this very night, this very moment!"
"Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle,
a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service--nobody but
him and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt
Susan--"
"Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah."
"Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan--I am content to word it so if it
pleases you; I would so like to have them present."
"So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. How long would it take
her to come?"
"The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow. The passage is
eight days. She would be here the 31st of March."
"Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear."
"Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!"
"So we be the happiest ones that that day's suit looks down upon in the
whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of
April, dear."
"Then the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!"
"Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah."
"I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do,
Alonzo?"
"The loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine."
There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if
wool-upped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah
said, "Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am
called to meet it."
The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which
looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could view the
charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers
and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in
the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied
precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over
to their destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no
doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the
glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one
could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of
dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay
the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.
Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and
heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie
and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced,
"'Frisco haole!"
"Show him in," said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a
meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to
heel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of
Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and
gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, "I am
here, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your
importune lies, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st of April
--eight in the morning. NOW GO!"
"Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--"
"Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you,
until that hour. No--no supplications; I will have it so."
When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of
troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said,
"What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier
--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to
imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous
monster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!"
Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be
told. On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained
this notice:
MARRIED.--In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning,--at eight
o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of
New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U. S., and
Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U. S. Mrs. Susan
Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she
being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the
bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also
present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage
service. Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated,
was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately
departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.
The New York papers of the same date contained this notice:
MARRIED.--In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in
the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays,
of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss
Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several
friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous
breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed
on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health
not admitting of a more extended journey.
Toward the close of that memorable day Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence
were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several
bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: "Oh, Lonny, I
forgot! I did what I said I would."
"Did you, dear?"
"Indeed, I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too!
Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black
dress-suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer,
waiting to be married. You should have seen the look he gave when I
whispered it in his ear. Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and
many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. So the vengeful
feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I
forgave him everything. But he wouldn't. He said he would live to be
avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us. But he can't, can
he, dear?"
"Never in this world, my Rosannah!"
Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their
Eastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so.
Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied her across our
continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting
between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until
that moment.
A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near
wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be
sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless
artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a
caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished.
ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING
ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL AND
ANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE.
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED.--[Did not take the prize]
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered
any decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is
eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need,
the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is
immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My
complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded
man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly
lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so
prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this scheme
with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters
to the mothers in Israel. It would not become me to criticize you,
gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in this thing
--and so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in
most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding;
indeed, if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the
attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development
which this Club has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lament
or shed a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a
spirit of just and appreciative recognition.
[It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and give
illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me
to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities.]
No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our
circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without
saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and
diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one
ought to be taught in the public schools--at the fireside--even in the
newspapers. What chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against the
educated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per-- against a lawyer?
Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even
better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An
awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.
Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb:
Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain
--adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says,
"The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In
another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is old that truth
should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick conscience
worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and
nuisances." It is strong language, but true. None of us could live with
an habitual truth-teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to. An
habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not
exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they
never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things
that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day; every
hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he
keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will
convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but that is a
platitude.
In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other;
and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice,
saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not
meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was
only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their
manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact.
Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two
whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form
of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth.
Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for
its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the
sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even
utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be
an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies
in that far country--but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of
lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, and were a credit to their
intelligence and at honor to their hearts. Let the particulars go.
The men in that far country were liars; every one. Their mere howdy-do
was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were
undertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you made
no conscientious diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, and
usually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and said
your health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost you
nothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interrupted
you, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you," and said
with your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it was
dinner-time." When he went, you said regretfully, "Must you go?" and
followed it with a "Call again"; but you did no harm, for you did not
deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made
you both unhappy.
I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and
should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a
beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and
gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do
what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an
injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an
injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should
reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The man
who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the
angels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his own
welfare into jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt this
magnanimous liar."
An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same
degree, is an injurious truth--a fact which is recognized by the law of
libel.
Among other common lies, we have the silent lie, the deception which one
conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate
truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak
no lie, they lie not at all. In that far country where I once lived,
there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and
pure, and whose character answered to them. One day I was there at
dinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars. She was
amazed, and said, "Not all!" It was before "Pinafore's" time so I did
not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but
frankly said, "Yes, all--we are all liars; there are no exceptions."
She looked almost offended, and said, "Why, do you include me?"
"Certainly," I said, "I think you even rank as an expert." She said,
"'Sh!--'sh! the children!"
So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, and
we went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young people
were out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said,
"I have made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I have never
departed from it in a single instance." I said, "I don't mean the least
harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since
I've been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain, because I
am not used to it." She required of me an instance--just a single
instance. So I said:
"Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland
hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she came
here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. This
blank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse:
'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give the
medicine?' and so forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful and
explicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires that
the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions.
You told me you were perfectly delighted with that nurse--that she had a
thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never could depend
on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly
chair for her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up the duplicate of
this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse.
How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any time guilty of a
negligence which was likely to result in the patient's taking cold?'
Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California: ten dollars to
ten cents you lied when you answered that question." She said, "I
didn't; I left it blank!" "Just so--you have told a silent lie; you have
left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that matter."
She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her one single
fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel." I said, "One ought
always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but,
your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice. Now
observe the result of this inexpert deflection of yours. You know Mr.
Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, your
recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him,
and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the
last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in those
fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a reputa--
However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will come around
to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of course, you'll
naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as personal a one,
in fact, as the undertaker."
But that was all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a
carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to save
what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse.
All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been lying
myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the hospital
which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the
squarest possible manner.
Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lying
injudiciously. She should have told the truth there, and made it up to
the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She
could have said, "In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection--when she
is on watch, she never snores." Almost any little pleasant lie would
have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of
the truth.
Lying is universal we all do it; we all must do it. Therefore, the wise
thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully,
judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for
others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably,
humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and
graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely,
with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as
being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and
pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we be great and good
and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign Nature
habitually lies, except when she promises execrable weather. Then--but
I am but a new and feeble student in this gracious art; I can not
instruct this Club.
Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what
sorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we must all
lie and do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid--and this is a
thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this
experienced Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, and
without undue flattery, Old Masters.
ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE
All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certain
set of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingenious
Fabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me.
They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly of
my kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; whenever I
felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, and they
told me what to do to win back my self-respect. Many times I wished that
the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had
continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors and
beneficiaries. This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at last
I determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotes
myself. So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious research
accomplished my task. I will lay the result before you, giving you each
anecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered it
through my investigations.
THE GRATEFUL POODLE
One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found a
stray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creature to
his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave the
little outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter.
But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, some
days later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and in
its company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, had
been broken. The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal,
nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God,
who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcast
poodle for the inculcating of, etc., etc., etc.
SEQUEL
The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming
with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two other
dogs-cripples. The cripples were speedily healed, and the four went
their way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by pious wonder
than ever. The day passed, the morning came. There at the door sat now
the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiring
reconstruction. This day also passed, and another morning came; and now
sixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, and
the people were going around. By noon the broken legs were all set, but
the pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to get
mixed with involuntary profanity. The sun rose once more, and exhibited
thirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying the sidewalk
and half of the street; the human spectators took up the rest of the
room. The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the
comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiring cheer, but
traffic was interrupted in that street. The good physician hired a
couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolent work before
dark, first taking the precaution to cancel his church-membership, so
that he might express himself with the latitude which the case required.
But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned,
and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reaching
multitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as well
acknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell the
pretty part of the story, and then stop. Fetch me the shotgun; this
thing has gone along far enough."
He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail of the
original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg. Now the great and good
work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in him such a
mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at last and
drive him mad. A month later, when the benevolent physician lay in the
death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends about him, and
said:
"Beware of the books. They tell but half of the story. Whenever a poor
wretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result may flow
from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and kill
the applicant."
And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost.
THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR
A poor and young literary beginner had tried in vain to get his
manuscripts accepted. At last, when the horrors of starvation were
staring him in the face, he laid his sad case before a celebrated author,
beseeching his counsel and assistance. This generous man immediately put
aside his own matters and proceeded to peruse one of the despised
manuscripts. Having completed his kindly task, he shook the poor young
man cordially by the hand, saying, "I perceive merit in this; come again
to me on Monday." At the time specified, the celebrated author, with a
sweet smile, but saying nothing, spread open a magazine which was damp
from the press. What was the poor young man's astonishment to discover
upon the printed page his own article. "How can I ever," said he,
falling upon his knees and bursting into tears, "testify my gratitude for
this noble conduct!"
The celebrated author was the renowned Snodgrass; the poor young beginner
thus rescued from obscurity and starvation was the afterward equally
renowned Snagsby. Let this pleasing incident admonish us to turn a
charitable ear to all beginners that need help.
SEQUEL
The next week Snagsby was back with five rejected manuscripts. The
celebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books the young
struggler had needed but one lift, apparently. However, he plowed
through these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up some
acres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of the
articles accepted.
A week or so drifted by, and the grateful Snagsby arrived with another
cargo. The celebrated author had felt a mighty glow of satisfaction
within himself the first time he had successfully befriended the poor
young struggler, and had compared himself with the generous people in the
books with high gratification; but he was beginning to suspect now that
he had struck upon something fresh in the noble-episode line. His
enthusiasm took a chill. Still, he could not bear to repulse this
struggling young author, who clung to him with such pretty simplicity and
trustfulness.
Well, the upshot of it all was that the celebrated author presently found
himself permanently freighted with the poor young beginner. All his mild
efforts to unload this cargo went for nothing. He had to give daily
counsel, daily encouragement; he had to keep on procuring magazine
acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make them presentable.
When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode into sudden fame by
describing the celebrated author's private life with such a caustic humor
and such minuteness of blistering detail that the book sold a prodigious
edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart with mortification.
With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceived me; they do not
tell the whole story. Beware of the struggling young author, my friends.
Whom God sees fit to starve, let not man presumptuously rescue to his own
undoing."
THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND
One day a lady was driving through the principal street of a great city
with her little boy, when the horses took fright and dashed madly away,
hurling the coachman from his box and leaving the occupants of the
carnage paralyzed with terror. But a brave youth who was driving a
grocery-wagon threw himself before the plunging animals, and succeeded in
arresting their flight at the peril of his own.--[This is probably a
misprint.--M. T.]--The grateful lady took his number, and upon arriving
at her home she related the heroic act to her husband (who had read the
books), who listened with streaming eyes to the moving recital, and who,
after returning thanks, in conjunction with his restored loved ones, to
Him who suffereth not even a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed,
sent for the brave young person, and, placing a check for five hundred
dollars in his hand, said, "Take this as a reward for your noble act,
William Ferguson, and if ever you shall need a friend, remember that
Thompson McSpadden has a grateful heart." Let us learn from this that
a good deed cannot fail to benefit the doer, however humble he may be.
SEQUEL
William Ferguson called the next week and asked Mr. McSpadden to use his
influence to get him a higher employment, he feeling capable of better
things than driving a grocer's wagon. Mr. McSpadden got him an
underclerkship at a good salary.
Presently William Ferguson's mother fell sick, and William--Well, to cut
the story short, Mr. McSpadden consented to take her into his house.
Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Mary
and Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother. Jimmy had
a pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it one day,
alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to an
indeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour.
A day or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeen
of his family's relatives came to the house to attend the funeral. This
made them acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, and
likewise kept the McSpaddens busy hunting-up situations of various sorts
for them, and hunting up more when they wore these out. The old woman
drank a good deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddens knew
it was their duty to reform her, considering what her son had done for
them, so they clave nobly to their generous task. William came often and
got decreasing sums of money, and asked for higher and more lucrative
employments--which the grateful McSpadden more or less promptly procured
for him. McSpadden consented also, after some demur, to fit William for
college; but when the first vacation came and the hero requested to be
sent to Europe for his health, the persecuted McSpadden rose against the
tyrant and revolted. He plainly and squarely refused. William
Ferguson's mother was so astounded that she let her gin-bottle drop, and
her profane lips refused to do their office. When she recovered she said
in a half-gasp, "Is this your gratitude? Where would your wife and boy
be now, but for my son?"
William said, "Is this your gratitude? Did I save your wife's life or
not? Tell me that!"
Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, "And this is
his gratitude!"
William's sisters stared, bewildered, and said, "And this is his grat--"
but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears and exclaimed,
"To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in the service
of such a reptile!"
Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, and
he replied with fervor, "Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribe of
you! I was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiled again
--once is sufficient for me." And turning to William he shouted, "Yes,
you did save my, wife's life, and the next man that does it shall die in
his tracks!"
Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon instead of
at the beginning. Here it is, from Mr. Noah Brooks's Recollections of
President Lincoln in Scribners Monthly:
J. H. Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr.
Lincoln great delight. With his usual desire to signify to others
his sense of obligation, Mr. Lincoln wrote a genial little note to
the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance.
Mr. Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one
of his own authorship. He also wrote several notes to the
President. One night, quite late, when the episode had passed out
of my mind, I went to the white House in answer to a message.
Passing into the President's office, I noticed, to my surprise,
Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience. The
President asked me if any one was outside. On being told, he said,
half sadly, "Oh, I can't see him, I can't see him; I was in hopes he
had gone away." Then he added, "Now this just illustrates the
difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this
place. You know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to
tell him so. He sent me that book, and there I thought the matter
would end. He is a master of his place in the profession, I
suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little
friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants
something. What do you suppose he wants?" I could not guess, and
Mr. Lincoln added, "well, he wants to be consul to London. Oh,
dear!"
I will observe, in conclusion, that the William Ferguson incident
occurred, and within my personal knowledge--though I have changed the
nature of the details, to keep William from recognizing himself in it.
All the readers of this article have in some sweet and gushing hour of
their lives played the role of Magnanimous-Incident hero. I wish I knew
how many there are among them who are willing to talk about that episode
and like to be reminded of the consequences that flowed from it.
PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH
Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see
if he can discover anything harmful in them?
Conductor, when you receive a fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare,
A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,
A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare,
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
CHORUS
Punch, brothers! punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!
I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ago,
and read them a couple of times. They took instant and entire possession
of me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; and
when, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I had
eaten anything or not. I had carefully laid out my day's work the day
before--thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing. I went to my
den to begin my deed of blood. I took up my pen, but all I could get it
to say was, "Punch in the presence of the passenjare." I fought hard for
an hour, but it was useless. My head kept humming, "A blue trip slip for
an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare," and so on and
so on, without peace or respite. The day's work was ruined--I could see
that plainly enough. I gave up and drifted down-town, and presently
discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle.
When I could stand it no longer I altered my step. But it did no good;
those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and went on
harassing me just as before. I returned home, and suffered all the
afternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner;
suffered, and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bed and
rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up at
midnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visible upon
the whirling page except "Punch! punch in the presence of the
passenjare." By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and
was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings--"Punch! oh, punch!
punch in the presence of the passenjare!"
Two days later, on Saturday morning, I arose, a tottering wreck, and went
forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. Mr.------,
to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant. He stared at me, but
asked no questions. We started. Mr.------ talked, talked, talked as is
his wont. I said nothing; I heard nothing. At the end of a mile,
Mr.------ said "Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man look so haggard
and worn and absent-minded. Say something, do!"
Drearily, without enthusiasm, I said: "Punch brothers, punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!"
My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, they said:
"I do not think I get your drift, Mark. Then does not seem to be any
relevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet--maybe it
was the way you said the words--I never heard anything that sounded so
pathetic. What is--"
But I heard no more. I was already far away with my pitiless,
heartbreaking "blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff trip slip for
a six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch in the
presence of the passenjare." I do not know what occurred during the
other nine miles. However, all of a sudden Mr.------ laid his hand on my
shoulder and shouted:
"Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don't sleep all day! Here we are at
the Tower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never
got a response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at
it! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen
boaster landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion.
What do you say to this?"
I sighed wearily; and murmured:
"A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent
fare, punch in the presence of the passenjare."
Rev. Mr. ------ stood there, very grave, full of concern, apparently, and
looked long at me; then he said:
"Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand. Those are
about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything
in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch in
the--how is it they go?"
I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines.
My friend's face lighted with interest. He said:
"Why, what a captivating jingle it is! It is almost music. It flows
along so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them over
just once more, and then I'll have them, sure."
I said them over. Then Mr. ------ said them. He made one little
mistake, which I corrected. The next time and the next he got them
right. Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That
torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest
and peace descended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I
did sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward.
Then my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of
many a weary hour began to gush and flow. It flowed on and on, joyously,
jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry. As I wrung my friend's
hand at parting, I said:
"Haven't we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven't said
a word for two hours. Come, come, out with something!"
The Rev. Mr.------ turned a lack-luster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh,
and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness:
"Punch, brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of the
passenjare!"
A pang shot through me as I said to myself, "Poor fellow, poor fellow!
he has got it, now."
I did not see Mr.------ for two or three days after that. Then, on
Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a
seat. He was pale, worn; he was a wreck. He lifted his faded eyes to my
face and said:
"Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless
rhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after
hour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the torments
of the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and
took the night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valued
old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon.
I took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse. But
I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and
the car-wheels began their 'clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack!
--clack-clack-clack!' and right away those odious rhymes fitted
themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and set a
syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the
car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been
chopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed
to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and
went to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth, and--well, you know
what the result was. The thing went right along, just the same.
'Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight
cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a
six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of
the passenjare!' Sleep? Not a single wink! I was almost a lunatic when
I got to Boston. Don't ask me about the funeral. I did the best I
could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and
woven in and out with 'Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the
presence of the passenjare.' And the most distressing thing was that my
delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and
I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of
it with their stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but
before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their
heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I had
finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy. Of
course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of
the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into
the church. She began to sob, and said:
"'Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn't see him before he died!'
"'Yes!' I said, 'he is gone, he is gone, he is gone--oh, will this
suffering never cease!'
"'You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!'
"'Loved him! Loved who?'
"'Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!'
"'Oh--him! Yes--oh, yes, yes. Certainly--certainly. Punch--punch--oh,
this misery will kill me!'
"'Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer in
this dear loss. Were you present during his last moments?'
"'Yes. I--whose last moments?'
"'His. The dear departed's.'
"'Yes! Oh, yes--yes--yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don't know! Oh,
certainly--I was there I was there!'
"'Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his last words
--oh, tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?'
"'He said--he said--oh, my head, my head, my head! He said--he said--he
never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the
passenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is generous,
leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair!--a buff trip slip for a
six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare--endu--rance can no
fur--ther go!--PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!"
My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he
said impressively:
"Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah
me, it is just as well--it is just as well. You could not do me any
good. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something
tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that
remorseless jingle. There--there it is coming on me again: a blue trip
slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a--"
Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance
and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite.
How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring
university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes
into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it with
them, now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article?
It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader,
if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoid
them as you would a pestilence.
THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN
Let me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly a hundred years ago
the crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his
officers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and
sailed southward. They procured wives for themselves among the natives
of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, called
Pitcairn's Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that
might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore.
Pitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was many
years before another vessel touched there. It had always been considered
an uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there,
in 1808, the captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled.
Although the mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killed
each other off until only two or three of the original stock remained,
these tragedies had not occurred before a number of children had been
born; so in 1808 the island had a population of twenty-seven persons.
John Adams, the chief mutineer, still survived, and was to live many
years yet, as governor and patriarch of the flock. From being mutineer
and homicide, he had turned Christian and teacher, and his nation of
twenty-seven persons was now the purest and devoutest in Christendom.
Adams had long ago hoisted the British flag and constituted his island an
appanage of the British crown.
To-day the population numbers ninety persons--sixteen men, nineteen
women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls--all descendants of the
mutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and all
speaking English, and English only. The island stands high up out of the
sea, and has precipitous walls. It is about three-quarters of a mile
long, and in places is as much as half a mile wide. Such arable land as
it affords is held by the several families, according to a division made
many years ago. There is some live stock--goats, pigs, chickens, and
cats; but no dogs, and no large animals. There is one church-building
used also as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library. The title
of the governor has been, for a generation or two, "Magistrate and Chief
Ruler, in subordination to her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain." It
was his province to make the laws, as well as execute them. His office
was elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote--no matter
about the sex.
The sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; their sole
recreation, religious services. There has never been a shop in the
island, nor any money. The habits and dress of the people have always
been primitive, and their laws simple to puerility. They have lived in a
deep Sabbath tranquillity, far from the world and its ambitions and
vexations, and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in the mighty
empires that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes. Once in three
or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged news of bloody
battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruined dynasties,
then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams and breadfruit, and
sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peaceful dreams and pious
dissipations once more.
On the 8th of last September, Admiral de Horsey, commander-in-chief of
the British fleet in the Pacific, visited Pitcairn's Island, and speaks
as follows in his official report to the admiralty:
They have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize;
pineapples, fig trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and
cocoanuts. Clothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter
for refreshments. There are no springs on the island, but as it
rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at
times in former years they have suffered from drought. No alcoholic
liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is
unknown....
The necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by
those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel,
serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap. They also stand
much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any
kind are most acceptable. I caused them to be supplied from the
public stores with a Union jack: for display on the arrival of
ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need. This, I
trust, will meet the approval of their lordships. If the munificent
people of England were only aware of the wants of this most
deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied....
Divine service is held every Sunday at 10.30 A.M. and at 3 P.M.,
in the house built and used by John Adams for that purpose until he
died in 1829. It is conducted strictly in accordance with the
liturgy of the Church of England, by Mr. Simon Young, their selected
pastor, who is much respected. A Bible class is held every
Wednesday, when all who conveniently can attend. There is also a
general meeting for prayer on the first Friday in every month.
Family prayers are said in every house the first thing in the
morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken
of without asking God's blessing before and afterward. Of these
islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep
respect. A people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to
commune in prayer with their God, and to join in hymns of praise,
and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from
vice than any other community, need no priest among them.
Now I come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he dropped
carelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a second
thought. He little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore!
This is the sentence:
One stranger, an American, has settled on the island--a doubtful
acquisition.
A doubtful acquisition, indeed! Captain Ormsby, in the American ship
Hornet, touched at Pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral's
visit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all about
that American. Let us put these facts together in historical form. The
American's name was Butterworth Stavely. As soon as he had become well
acquainted with all the people--and this took but a few days, of course
--he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts he could
command. He became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; for one
of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and
throw all his energies into religion. He was always reading his Bible,
or praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings. In prayer, no one had
such "liberty" as he, no one could pray so long or so well.
At last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly to sow
the seeds of discontent among the people. It was his deliberate purpose,
from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course he kept that
to himself for a time. He used different arts with different
individuals. He awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by calling
attention to the shortness of the Sunday services; he argued that there
should be three three-hour services on Sunday instead of only two. Many
had secretly held this opinion before; they now privately banded
themselves into a party to work for it. He showed certain of the women
that they were not allowed sufficient voice in the prayer-meetings; thus
another party was formed. No weapon was beneath his notice; he even
descended to the children, and awoke discontent in their breasts
because--as he discovered for them--they had not enough Sunday-school.
This created a third party.
Now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest power
in the community. So he proceeded to his next move--a no less important
one than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, James Russell Nickoy;
a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he being
the owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half of
yam-land, and the only boat in Pitcairn's, a whaleboat; and, most
unfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just the
right time.
One of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the law
against trespass. It was held in great reverence, and was regarded as
the palladium of the people's liberties. About thirty years ago an
important case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: a
chicken belonging to Elizabeth Young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight,
a daughter of John Mills, one of the mutineers of the Bounty) trespassed
upon the grounds of Thursday October Christian (aged twenty-nine, a
grandson of Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers). Christian killed
the chicken. According to the law, Christian could keep the chicken; or,
if he preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner and receive
damages in "produce" to an amount equivalent to the waste and injury
wrought by the trespasser. The court records set forth that "the said
Christian aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said Eliza
beth Young, and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of the
damage done." But Elizabeth Young considered the demand exorbitant; the
parties could not agree; therefore Christian brought suit in the courts.
He lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a
half-peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of
a defeat. He appealed. The case lingered several years in an ascending
grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original
verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it
stuck for twenty years. But last summer, even the supreme court managed
to arrive at a decision at last. Once more the original verdict was
sustained. Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely was
present, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mere
form," that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure that it
still existed. It seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. So the
demand was made. A messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; he
presently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from among
the state archives.
The court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been made
under a law which had no actual existence.
Great excitement ensued immediately. The news swept abroad over the
whole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost--maybe
treasonably destroyed. Within thirty minutes almost the entire nation
were in the court-room--that is to say, the church. The impeachment of
the chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely's motion. The accused met
his misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. He did
not plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had not
meddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives in the
same candle-box that had been used as their depository from the
beginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of the
lost document.
But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision of treason,
and degraded from his office, and all his property was confiscated.
The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggested by
his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it to
favor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely was
the only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. The
reader must remember that all these people are the descendants of half a
dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and bore
grandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried;
after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so that
to-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationships
are wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. A
stranger, for instance, says to an islander:
"You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you called her
your aunt."
"Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. And also my stepsister, my
niece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin,
my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law--and next week
she will be my wife."
So the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak. But no
matter; weak or strong, it suited Stavely. Stavely was immediately
elected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he
went vigorously to work. In no long time religious services raged
everywhere and unceasingly. By command, the second prayer of the Sunday
morning service, which had customarily endured some thirty-five or forty
minutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then by
national and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, and made
to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in the several
planets. Everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, "Now this is
something like." By command, the usual three-hour sermons were doubled
in length. The nation came in a body to testify their gratitude to the
new magistrate. The old law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath was
extended to the prohibition of eating, also. By command, Sunday-school
was privileged to spread over into the week. The joy of all classes was
complete. In one short month the new magistrate had become the people's
idol!
The time was ripe for this man's next move. He began, cautiously at
first, to poison the public mind against England. He took the chief
citizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic.
Presently he grew bolder, and spoke out. He said the nation owed it to
itself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might and
throw off "this galling English yoke."
But the simple islanders answered:
"We had not noticed that it galled. How does it gall? England sends a
ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, and things
which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she never troubles us;
she lets us go our own way."
"She lets you go your own way! So slaves have felt and spoken in all the
ages! This speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalized you
have become, under this grinding tyranny! What! has all manly pride
forsaken you? Is liberty nothing? Are you content to be a mere
appendage to a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up
and take your rightful place in the august family of nations, great,
free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but
the arbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing the
destinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?"
Speeches like this produced an effect by and by. Citizens began to feel
the English yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts they felt
it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it. They got to
grumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing for
relief and release. They presently fell to hating the English flag, that
sign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glance up
at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and grated their
teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud at the
foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand to it to
hoist it again. A certain thing which was sure to happen sooner or later
happened now. Some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate by
night, and said:
"We can endure this hated tyranny no longer. How can we cast it off?"
"By a coup d'etat."
"How?"
"A coup d'etat. It is like this: everything is got ready, and at the
appointed moment I, as the official head of the nation, publicly and
solemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance to any
and all other powers whatsoever."
"That sounds simple and easy. We can do that right away. Then what will
be the next thing to do?"
"Seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establish
martial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim the
empire!"
This fine program dazzled these innocents. They said:
"This is grand--this is splendid; but will not England resist?"
"Let her. This rock is a Gibraltar."
"True. But about the empire? Do we need an empire and an emperor?"
"What you need, my friends, is unification. Look at Germany; look at
Italy. They are unified. Unification is the thing. It makes living
dear. That constitutes progress. We must have a standing army and a
navy. Taxes follow, as a matter of course. All these things summed up
make grandeur. With unification and grandeur, what more can you want?
Very well--only the empire can confer these boons."
So on the 8th day of December Pitcairn's Island was proclaimed a free and
independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation of
Butterworth I, Emperor of Pitcairn's Island, took place, amid great
rejoicings and festivities. The entire nation, with the exception of
fourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne in
single file, with banners and music, the procession being upward of
ninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of a
minute passing a given point. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the
history of the island before. Public enthusiasm was measureless.
Now straightway imperial reforms began. Orders of nobility were
instituted. A minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat put
in commission. A minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed at
once with the formation of a standing army. A first lord of the treasury
was named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also open
negotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, with
foreign powers. Some generals and admirals were appointed; also some
chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of the
bedchamber.
At this point all the material was used up. The Grand Duke of Galilee,
minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empire
had been given great offices, and consequently would not consent to serve
in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a standstill. The
Marquis of Ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. He
said he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must have
somebody to man her.
The emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all the
boys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressed them
into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered
by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals. This pleased the
minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in the land;
for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves in the
fields of war, and he would be answerable for it. Some of the more
heartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly wait for the
emperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the body-guard.
On account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessary to
require the Duke of Bethany postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oar in the
navy and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree namely, Viscount
Canaan, lord justice of the common pleas. This turned the Duke of
Bethany into tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator--a thing
which the emperor foresaw, but could not help.
Things went from bad to worse. The emperor raised Nancy Peters to the
peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for
reasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry
Emmeline, eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Bethlehem. This caused
trouble in a powerful quarter--the church. The new empress secured the
support and friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women in the
nation by absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but this made
deadly enemies of the remaining twelve. The families of the maids of
honor soon began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keep
house. The twelve snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchen as
servants; so the empress had to require the Countess of Jericho and other
great court dames to fetch water, sweep the palace, and perform other
menial and equally distasteful services. This made bad blood in that
department.
Everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the support of
the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment were
intolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. The
emperor's reply--"Look--Look at Germany; look at Italy. Are you better
than they? and haven't you unification?"---did not satisfy them. They
said, "People can't eat unification, and we are starving. Agriculture
has ceased. Everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy,
everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, with
nothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields--"
"Look at Germany; look at Italy. It is the same there. Such is
unification, and there's no other way to get it--no other way to keep it
after you've got it," said the poor emperor always.
But the grumblers only replied, "We can't stand the taxes--we can't stand
them."
Now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amounting
to upward of forty-five dollars--half a dollar to every individual in the
nation. And they proposed to fund something. They had heard that this
was always done in such emergencies. They proposed duties on exports;
also on imports. And they wanted to issue bonds; also paper money,
redeemable in yams and cabbages in fifty years. They said the pay of the
army and of the navy and of the whole governmental machine was far in
arrears, and unless something was done, and done immediately, national
bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrection and revolution. The
emperor at once resolved upon a high-handed measure, and one of a nature
never before heard of in Pitcairn's Island. He went in state to the
church on Sunday morning, with the army at his back, and commanded the
minister of the treasury to take up a collection.
That was the feather that broke the camel's back. First one citizen, and
then another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage
--and each refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of the
malcontent's property. This vigor soon stopped the refusals, and the
collection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence. As the emperor
withdrew with the troops, he said, "I will teach you who is master here."
Several persons shouted, "Down with unification!" They were at once
arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by the soldiery.
But in the mean time, as any prophet might have foreseen, a Social
Democrat had been developed. As the emperor stepped into the gilded
imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at
him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a
peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage.
That very night the convulsion came. The nation rose as one man--though
forty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. The infantry
threw down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoanuts;
the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot in his
palace. He was very much depressed. He said:
"I freed you from a grinding tyranny; I lifted you up out of your
degradation, and made you a nation among nations; I gave you a strong,
compact, centralized government; and, more than all, I gave you the
blessing of blessings--unification. I have done all this, and my reward
is hatred, insult, and these bonds. Take me; do with me as you will.
I here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do I release
myself from their too heavy burden. For your sake I took them up; for
your sake I lay them down. The imperial jewel is no more; now bruise and
defile as ye will the useless setting."
By a unanimous voice the people condemned the ex-emperor and the social
democrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetual
labor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat--whichever they might prefer.
The next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the British flag,
reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition of
commoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attention to
the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and the
rehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing and
solacing pieties. The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, and
explained that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to further his
political projects. Therefore the nation gave the late chief magistrate
his office again, and also his alienated Property.
Upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetual
banishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor as
galley slaves "with perpetual religious services," as they phrased it;
wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles had
unseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them for the
present. Which they did.
Such is the history of Pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition."
THE CANVASSER'S TALE
Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired
look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard,
seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty
vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his
arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant
into the hands of another canvasser.
Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it
came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention
and sympathy. He told it something like this:
My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle
Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only
relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He
reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy.
In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my
servants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries.
During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens
of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one
whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with
confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you
too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I
reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the
heart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic
taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making
collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and
in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of
sympathy with this exquisite employment.
I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells;
another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and
refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's priceless
collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of
postage-stamps--and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit.
My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of. You
may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon
became a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his
great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant
leisure into a rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and
he spared it not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection which
filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of
cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one--an antique,
and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector. My
uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell.
Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches
no value to a collection that is not complete. His great heart breaks,
he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems
unoccupied.
Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and
intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his
great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired
brewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets and
other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the
factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as
himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--another
failure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed
at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec
inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all
former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble
gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the
inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of
such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather
part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his
darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned
white as snow in a single night.
Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill
him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other
man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered
the field-this time to make a collection of echoes.
"Of what?" said I.
Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated
four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a
thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his
next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak,
because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it
having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few
thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble
the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never
built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he
meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now it
was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of
cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states
and territories; he got them at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot.
Next he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a
fortune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the
scale of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact,
the same phraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten
dollars over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or
double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine
hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's
Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat
gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the
land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement.
Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted
suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was
beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss.
The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an
uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us
knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than
a small way, for esthetic amusement.
Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo,
since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of
Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You could
utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the
day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the
same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to
make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small
hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements
of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and
neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man;
a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill,
and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the
swale between was the dividing-line. So while my uncle was buying
Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand
dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three
million.
Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of
echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but
the one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content
with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There
were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other
collector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel toward a
man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!
You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that
nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be
nothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but
the man said, "I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you
must take care of your own end yourself."
Well, my uncle got an injunction put an him. The other man appealed and
fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme
Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of the
judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was
impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and
consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate,
because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable
from place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not
property at all.
It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were
property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the
two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at
full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but
must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which
might result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred
my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo,
without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part
of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of
course, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred
defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo,
without consent. You see the grand result! Neither man would give
consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from
its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up
and unsalable.
A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the
nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came
news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole
heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. The thought
surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the
earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read it; then
he sternly said, "Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtless you do in
your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection
of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far
and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir,
this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in
the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must
look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could
honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from
incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble,
painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a
maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a
beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden
echoes and quit my sight forever."
My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she
would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the
world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die
within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone,
praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together
again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the
weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these
maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less
money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle ten
dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I
will let you have for--
"Let me interrupt you," I said. "My friend, I have not had a moment's
respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I
did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details;
I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison
which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of
useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness.
I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me.
I would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to
sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on;
let us not have bloodshed."
But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams.
You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have
once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got
to suffer defeat.
I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I bought
two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another,
which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said,
"She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down."
AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER
The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and
said he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added:
"Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you."
"Come to what?"
"Interview you."
"Ah! I see. Yes--yes. Um! Yes--yes."
I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit
under a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been
looking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the young
man. I said:
"How do you spell it?"
"Spell what?"
"Interview."
"Oh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?"
"I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means."
"Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, if
you--if you--"
"Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too."
"In, in, ter, ter, inter--"
"Then you spell it with an h"
Why certainly!"
"Oh, that is what took me so long."
"Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?"
"Well, I--I--hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was ciphering
around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures.
But it's a very old edition."
"Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the latest
e--- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, but you
do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm
--I mean no harm at all."
"Oh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would
not flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite
remarkable in that way. Yes--yes; they always speak of it with rapture."
"I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the
custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious."
"Indeed, I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting.
What do you do it with?"
"Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening. It ought to be done with a
club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking
questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now.
Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the
salient points of your public and private history?"
"Oh, with pleasure--with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but I hope
you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregular memory
--singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it
will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great
grief to me."
"Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can."
"I will. I will put my whole mind on it."
"Thanks. Are you ready to begin?"
"Ready."
Q. How old are you?
A. Nineteen, in June.
Q. Indeed. I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were
you born?
A. In Missouri.
Q. When did you begin to write?
A. In 1836.
Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?
A. I don't know. It does seem curious, somehow.
Q. It does, indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you
ever met?
A. Aaron Burr.
Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen
years!
A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?
Q. Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more. How did you happen to
meet Burr?
A. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me to
make less noise, and--
Q. But, good heavens! if you were at his funeral, he must have been
dead, and if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise or
not?
A. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way.
Q. Still, I don't understand it at all, You say he spoke to you, and
that he was dead.
A. I didn't say he was dead.
Q. But wasn't he dead?
A. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't.
Q. What did you think?
A. Oh, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral.
Q. Did you--However, we can never get this matter straight. Let me ask
about something else. What was the date of your birth?
A. Monday, October 31, 1693.
Q. What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years
old. How do you account for that?
A. I don't account for it at all.
Q. But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make
yourself out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy.
A. Why, have you noticed that? (Shaking hands.) Many a time it has
seemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind.
How quick you notice a thing!
Q. Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have
you, any brothers or sisters?
A. Eh! I--I--I think so--yes--but I don't remember.
Q. Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard!
A. Why, what makes you think that?
Q. How could I think otherwise? Why, look here! Who is this a picture
of on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours?
A. Oh, yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it; that was a brother of
mine. That's William--Bill we called him. Poor old Bill!
Q. Why? Is he dead, then?
A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great
mystery about it.
Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then?
A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him.
Q. Buried him! Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not?
A. Oh, no! Not that. He was dead enough.
Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, and
you knew he was dead
A. No! no! We only thought he was.
Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again?
A. I bet he didn't.
Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody
was buried. Now, where was the mystery?
A. Ah! that's just it! That's it exactly. You see, we were twins
--defunct--and I--and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two
weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some
think it was Bill. Some think it was me.
Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think?
A. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn,
this awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell
you a secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before.
One of us had a peculiar mark--a large mole on the back of his left hand;
that was me. That child was the one that was drowned!
Q. Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it,
after all.
A. You don't? Well, I do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have
been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh!
--don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they
have heartbreaking troubles enough without adding this.
Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I am
very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good
deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind
telling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burr
was such a remarkable man?
A. Oh! it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed
it at all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to
start for the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he
said he wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and
rode with the driver.
Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company,
and I was sorry to see him go.
PARIS NOTES
--[Crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad" to make room for more vital
statistics.--M. T.]
The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, reads
no literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow and
pretty self-sufficient. However, let us not be too sweeping; there are
Frenchmen who know languages not their own: these are the waiters. Among
the rest, they know English; that is, they know it on the European plan
--which is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it. They
easily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to word
an English sentence in such away as to enable them to comprehend it.
They think they comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't.
Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote it
down at the time, in order to have it exactly correct.
I. These are fine oranges. Where are they grown?
He. More? Yes, I will bring them.
I. No, do not bring any more; I only want to know where they are from
where they are raised.
He. Yes? (with imperturbable mien and rising inflection.)
I. Yes. Can you tell me what country they are from?
He. Yes? (blandly, with rising inflection.)
I. (disheartened). They are very nice.
He. Good night. (Bows, and retires, quite satisfied with himself.)
That young man could have become a good English scholar by taking the
right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that. How
different is the case with our people; they utilize every means that
offers. There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and they
built a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead away
from the Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing,
preached in the correct way, there, in their precious French tongue, and
be happy. But their little game does not succeed. Our people are always
there ahead of them Sundays, and take up all the room. When the minister
gets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, each
ready and waiting, with his little book in his hand--a morocco-bound
Testament, apparently. But only apparently; it is Mr. Bellows's
admirable and exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in look
and binding and size is just like a Testament and those people are there
to study French. The building has been nicknamed "The Church of the
Gratis French Lesson."
These students probably acquire more language than general information,
for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it never
names a historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up in
dates, you get left. A French speech is something like this:
Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and
perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our
chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of
foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification
before heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the
seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice
of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting
the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of
France and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse
against the man of the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones,
the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th
March in history, no 12th October, no 19th January, no 22d April,
no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th February,
no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May--that but for him, France
the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant
almanac today!
I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquent
way:
My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th
January. The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have
been in just proportion to the magnitude of the set itself. But for
it there had been no 30 November--sorrowful spectacle! The grisly
deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man
of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the 3d September was
due, also the fatal 12th October. Shall we, then, be grateful for
the 13th January, with its freight of death for you and me and all
that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had
never come but for it, and it atone--the blessed 25th December.
It may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of my
readers this will hardly be necessary. The man of the 13th January is
Adam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowful
spectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; the grisly
deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3d September
was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12th day of
October, the last mountain-tops disappeared under the flood. When you go
to church in France, you want to take your almanac with you--annotated.
LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY
--[Left out of "A Tramp Abroad" because its authenticity seemed doubtful,
and could not at that time be proved.--M. T.]
More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom
--a little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one
might say. It was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoils
of that old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a
gentle and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft
Sabbath tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, there was
no ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no
unhappiness in the land.
In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to
the throne. The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good and so
pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almost a
worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the
stars and found something written in that shining book to this effect:
In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal
whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save
Hubert's life. So long as the king and the nation shall honor this
animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail
of an heir, nor the nation know war or pestilence or poverty. But
beware an erring choice!
All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of by the
soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the general
people. That one thing was this: How is the last sentence of the
prophecy to be understood? What goes before seems to mean that the
saving animal will choose itself at the proper time; but the closing
sentence seems to mean that the king must choose beforehand, and say what
singer among the animals pleases him best, and that if he choose wisely
the chosen animal will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that
if he should make "an erring choice"--beware!
By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matter as
there had been in the beginning; but a majority of the wise and the
simple were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king to
make choice beforehand, and the earlier the better. So an edict was sent
forth commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring them to
the great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of the new
year. This command was obeyed. When everything was in readiness for the
trial, the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of the
crown, all clothed in their robes of state. The king mounted his golden
throne and prepared to give judgment. But he presently said:
"These creatures all sing at once; the noise is unendurable; no one can
choose in such a turmoil. Take them all away, and bring back one at a
time."
This was done. One sweet warbler after another charmed the young king's
ear and was removed to make way for another candidate. The precious
minutes slipped by; among so many bewitching songsters he found it hard
to choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an error
was so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid to
trust his own ears. He grew nervous and his face showed distress. His
ministers saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment.
Now they began to say in their hearts:
"He has lost courage--the cool head is gone--he will err--he and his
dynasty and his people are doomed!"
At the end of an hour the king sat silent awhile, and then said:
"Bring back the linnet."
The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music. In the midst of it the king
was about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himself
and said:
"But let us be sure. Bring back the thrush; let them sing together."
The thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels of
song together. The king wavered, then his inclination began to settle
and strengthen--one could see it in his countenance. Hope budded in the
hearts of the old ministers, their pulses began to beat quicker, the
scepter began to rise slowly, when: There was a hideous interruption!
It was a sound like this--just at the door:
"Waw . . . he! waw . . . he! waw-he!-waw
he!-waw-he!"
Everybody was sorely startled--and enraged at himself for showing it.
The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant-maid of
nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childish
eagerness; but when she saw that august company and those angry faces she
stopped and hung her head and put her poor coarse apron to her eyes.
Nobody gave her welcome, none pitied her. Presently she looked up
timidly through her tears, and said:
"My lord the king, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong. I have no
father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in
all to me. My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good
donkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it. So when my
lord the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animals
should save the crown and nation, and moved me to bring him here--"
All the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying,
without trying to finish her speech. The chief minister gave a private
order that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precincts
of the palace and commanded to come within them no more.
Then the trial of the birds was resumed. The two birds sang their best,
but the scepter lay motionless in the king's hand. Hope died slowly out
in the breasts of all. An hour went by; two hours, still no decision.
The day waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside the palace
grew crazed with anxiety and apprehension. The twilight came on, the
shadows fell deeper and deeper. The king and his court could no longer
see each other's faces. No one spoke--none called for lights. The great
trial had been made; it had failed; each and all wished to hide their
faces from the light and cover up their deep trouble in their own hearts.
Finally-hark! A rich, full strain of the divinest melody streamed forth
from a remote part of the hall the nightingale's voice!
"Up!" shouted the king, "let all the bells make proclamation to the
people, for the choice is made and we have not erred. King, dynasty,
and nation are saved. From henceforth let the nightingale be honored
throughout the land forever. And publish it among all the people that
whosoever shall insult a nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death.
The king hath spoken."
All that little world was drunk with joy. The castle and the city blazed
with bonfires all night long, the people danced and drank and sang; and
the triumphant clamor of the bells never ceased.
From that day the nightingale was a sacred bird. Its song was heard in
every house; the poets wrote its praises; the painters painted it; its
sculptured image adorned every arch and turret and fountain and public
building. It was even taken into the king's councils; and no grave
matter of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thing
before the state nightingale and translated to the ministry what it was
that the bird had sung about it.
II
The young king was very fond of the chase. When the summer was come he
rode forth with hawk and hound, one day, in a brilliant company of his
nobles. He got separated from them by and by, in a great forest, and
took what he imagined a neat cut, to find them again; but it was a
mistake. He rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking courage
finally. Twilight came on, and still he was plunging through a lonely
and unknown land. Then came a catastrophe. In the dim light he forced
his horse through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rocky
declivity. When horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had a
broken neck and the latter a broken leg. The poor little king lay there
suffering agonies of pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him.
He kept his ear strained to hear any sound that might promise hope of
rescue; but he heard no voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound. So at
last he gave up all hope, and said, "Let death come, for come it must."
Just then the deep, sweet song of a nightingale swept across the still
wastes of the night.
"Saved!" the king said. "Saved! It is the sacred bird, and the prophecy
is come true. The gods themselves protected me from error in the
choice."
He could hardly contain his joy; he could not word his gratitude. Every
few moments, now he thought he caught the sound of approaching succor.
But each time it was a disappointment; no succor came. The dull hours
drifted on. Still no help came--but still the sacred bird sang on. He
began to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them. Toward
dawn the bird ceased. The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger;
but no succor. The day waxed and waned. At last the king cursed the
nightingale.
Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood. The king said
in his heart, "This was the true-bird--my choice was false--succor will
come now."
But it did not come. Then he lay many hours insensible. When he came to
himself, a linnet was singing. He listened with apathy. His faith was
gone. "These birds," he said, "can bring no help; I and my house and my
people are doomed." He turned him about to die; for he was grown very
feeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end was
near. In truth, he wanted to die, and be released from pain. For long
hours he lay without thought or feeling or motion. Then his senses
returned. The dawn of the third morning was breaking. Ah, the world
seemed very beautiful to those worn eyes. Suddenly a great longing to
live rose up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep and
fervent prayer that Heaven would have mercy upon him and let him see his
home and his friends once more. In that instant a soft, a faint, a
far-off sound, but oh, how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear, came
floating out of the distance:
"Waw . . . he! waw . . . he! waw-he!--waw-he!--waw-he!"
"That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voice
of the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, but
certainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved! The sacred singer has
chosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and my
life, my house, and my people are redeemed. The ass shall be sacred from
this day!"
The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger and stronger and ever
sweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear. Down the declivity
the docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing as he
went; and when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king, he
came and snuffed at them with simple and marveling curiosity. The king
petted him, and he knelt down as had been his wont when his little
mistress desired to mount. With great labor and pain the lad drew
himself upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of the
generous ears. The ass went singing forth from the place and carried the
king to the little peasant-maid's hut. She gave him her pallet for a
bed, refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the great news
to the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet.
The king got well. His first act was to proclaim the sacredness and
inviolability of the ass; his second was to add this particular ass to
his cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown; his third was to
have all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdom
destroyed, and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey;
and, his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid should
reach her fifteenth year he would make her his queen and he kept his
word.
Such is the legend. This explains why the moldering image of the ass
adorns all these old crumbling walls and arches; and it explains why,
during many centuries, an ass was always the chief minister in that royal
cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day; and it
also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all
great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities,
and all royal proclamations, always began with these stirring words:
"Waw . . . he! waw . . . he!--waw he! Waw-he!"
SPEECH ON THE BABIES
AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR
FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879
The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies--as they comfort us in
our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."
I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We
have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast
works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that
for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby,
as if he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute
--if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married
life and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he
amounted to a great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know
that when the little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to
hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his
lackey, his mere body servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was
not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or
anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or
not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics,
and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of
insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a
word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give
back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your
hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of
war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries,
and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his
war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the
chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw
out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer
and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his
pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to
work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as
to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was
right--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the
colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can taste
that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along!
Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying
that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are
whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on the
stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual
hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark,
with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much,
that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh!
you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down
the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified
baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!
--"Rock-a-by baby in the treetop," for instance. What a spectacle for an
Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too;
for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at
three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing
up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing
suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? ["Go on!"] You
simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby
doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front
yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and
your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising,
irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you
can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one
baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for
twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain't any real
difference between triplets and an insurrection.
Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of
the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty years
from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still
survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic
numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our
increase. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political
leviathan--a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be on
deck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract
on their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in
the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred
things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of them cradles the
unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething--think of
it!--and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but perfectly
justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the future renowned
astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a languid
interest--poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of that other
one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great historian is
lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is
ended. In another the future President is busying himself with no
profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair
so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some
60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to
grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still one
more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his
approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole
strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his
big toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the
illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some
fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there
are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.
SPEECH ON THE WEATHER
AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY
The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant--The Weather of New
England."
Who can lose it and forget it?
Who can have it and regret it?
Be interposes 'twixt us Twain.
Merchant of Venice.
To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:--
I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in
New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it
must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and
learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted
to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take
their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There is a sumptuous
variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's
admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing something there;
always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and
trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through
more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have
counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of
four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that
man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the
Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all
over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, "Don't you
do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him
what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he
came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he
confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never
heard of before. And as to quantity--well, after he had picked out and
discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather
enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to
deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor. The people of
New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some
things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets
for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual
visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and
cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the
first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has
permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for
accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the
paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's
weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States,
in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joy and pride of his
power till he gets to New England, and then see his tail drop. He
doesn't know what the weather is going to be in New England. Well, he
mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something about like this:
Probable northeast to southwest minds, varying to the southward and
westward and eastward, and points between, high and low barometer
swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail,
and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and
lightning. Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind, to
cover accidents: "But it is possible that the program may be wholly
changed in the mean time." Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New
England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one
thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to be plenty of
it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the
procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave
your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one you get drowned.
You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under,
and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you
know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments; but
they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so
convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that
thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something
valuable, and a Congressman had been there. And the thunder. When the
thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape and saw, and key up the
instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful thunder
you have here!" But when the baton is raised and the real concert
begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar with his head in the
ash-barrel. Now as to the size of the weather in New England lengthways,
I mean. It is utterly disproportioned to the size of that little
country. Half the time, when it is packed as full as it can stick, you
will see that New England weather sticking out beyond the edges and
projecting around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring
states. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks
all about where she has strained herself trying to do it. I could speak
volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I
will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof.
So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well,
sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every
time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merely to do honor to the
New England weather--no language could do it justice. But, after all,
there is at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you
please, effects produced, by it) which we residents would not like to
part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still
have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its
bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice
from the bottom to the top--ice that is as bright and clear as crystal;
when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and
the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia's diamond
plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns
all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and
flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again
with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and
green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of
dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest
possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable
magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.
CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE
--[Being part of a chapter which was crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad."--
M.T.]
There was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented me on
--on what? But you would never guess. He complimented me on my English.
He said Americans in general did not speak the English language as
correctly as I did. I said I was obliged to him for his compliment,
since I knew he meant it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled to
it, for I did not speak English at all--I only spoke American.
He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference. I said
no, the difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable.
We fell into a friendly dispute over the matter. I put my case as well
as I could, and said:
"The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changed
conditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far to the
west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and have introduced
new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones. English
people talk through their noses; we do not. We say know, English people
say nao; we say cow, the Briton says kaow; we--"
"Oh, come! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows that."
"Yes, it is pure Yankee; that is true. One cannot hear it in America
outside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land.
The English themselves planted it there, two hundred and fifty years ago,
and there it remains; it has never spread. But England talks through her
nose yet; the Londoner and the backwoods New-Englander pronounce 'know'
and 'cow' alike, and then the Briton unconsciously satirizes himself by
making fun of the Yankee's pronunciation."
We argued this point at some length; nobody won; but no matter, the fact
remains Englishmen say nao and kaow for "know" and "cow," and that is
what the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does.
"You conferred your 'a' upon New England, too, and there it remains; it
has not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little states in
all these two hundred and fifty years. All England uses it, New
England's small population--say four millions--use it, but we have
forty-five millions who do not use it. You say 'glahs of wawtah,' so
does New England; at least, New England says 'glahs.' America at large
flattens the 'a', and says 'glass of water.' These sounds are pleasanter
than yours; you may think they are not right--well, in English they are
not right, but 'American' they are. You say 'flahsk' and 'bahsket,' and
'jackahss'; we say 'flask,' 'basket,' 'jackass'--sounding the 'a' as it
is in 'tallow,' 'fallow,' and so on. Up to as late as 1847 Mr. Webster's
Dictionary had the impudence to still pronounce 'basket' bahsket, when he
knew that outside of his little New England all America shortened the 'a'
and paid no attention to his English broadening of it. However, it called
itself an English Dictionary, so it was proper enough that it should
stick to English forms, perhaps. It still calls itself an English
Dictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce 'basket' as if
it were spelt 'bahsket.' In the American language the 'h' is respected;
the 'h' is not dropped or added improperly."
"The same is the case in England--I mean among the educated classes, of
course."
"Yes, that is true; but a nation's language is a very large matter.
It is not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful;
the manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must be
considered also. Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not deny
that; our uneducated masses speak American it won't be fair for you to
deny that, for you can see, yourself, that when your stable-boy says,
'It isn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'orse, but the 'ammer, 'ammer,
'ammer on the 'ard 'ighway,' and our stable-boy makes the same remark
without suffocating a single h, these two people are manifestly talking
two different languages. But if the signs are to be trusted, even your
educated classes used to drop the 'h.' They say humble, now, and heroic,
and historic etc., but I judge that they used to drop those h's because
your writers still keep up the fashion of patting an before those words
instead of a. This is what Mr. Darwin might call a 'rudimentary' sign
that as an was justifiable once, and useful when your educated classes
used to say 'umble, and 'eroic, and 'istorical. Correct writers of the
American language do not put an before three words."
The English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, but never
mind what he said--I'm not arguing his case. I have him at a
disadvantage, now. I proceeded:
"In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, 'H'yaah! 'yaah!'
We pronounce it heer in some sections, 'h'yer' in others, and so on; but
our whites do not say 'h'yaah,' pronouncing the a's like the a in ah.
I have heard English ladies say 'don't you'--making two separate and
distinct words of it; your Mr. Burnand has satirized it. But we always
say 'dontchu.' This is much better. Your ladies say, 'Oh, it's oful
nice!' Ours say, 'Oh, it's awful nice!' We say, 'Four hundred,' you say
'For'--as in the word or. Your clergymen speak of 'the Lawd,' ours of
'the Lord'; yours speak of 'the gawds of the heathen,' ours of 'the gods
of the heathen.' When you are exhausted, you say you are 'knocked up.'
We don't. When you say you will do a thing 'directly,' you mean
'immediately'; in the American language--generally speaking--the word
signifies 'after a little.' When you say 'clever,' you mean 'capable';
with us the word used to mean 'accommodating,' but I don't know what it
means now. Your word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usually
means 'strong.' Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restricted
meaning; with us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, and
horse-thief. You say, 'I haven't got any stockings on,' 'I haven't got
any memory,' 'I haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'I
haven't any stockings on,' 'I haven't any memory!' 'I haven't any money
in my purse.' You say 'out of window'; we always put in a the. If one
asks 'How old is that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be about forty';
in the American language we should say, 'He is about forty.' However,
I won't tire you, sir; but if I wanted to, I could pile up differences
here until I not only convinced you that English and American are
separate languages, but that when I speak my native tongue in its utmost
purity an Englishman can't understand me at all."
"I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understand
you now."
That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantest terms
directly--I use the word in the English sense.
[Later--1882. Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teach
the pupils to broaden the 'a,' and to say "don't you," in the elegant
foreign way.]
ROGERS
This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town
of -----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile. His stepfather
had married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and so
he seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He came in
every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene human
curiosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to look
at my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he would
notice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respect me
accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion,
pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recently
arrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said he
would send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, "Pardon me," and
proceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched the
edges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to cover the
manufacturer's name. He said, "No one will know now where you got it.
I will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it over this
tissue circle." It was the calmest, coolest thing--I never admired a man
so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat sat offensively
near our noses, on the table--an ancient extinguisher of the "slouch"
pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored by vicissitudes of the
weather, and banded by an equator of bear's grease that had stewed
through.
Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor's
door was the legend, "By Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. the
Prince of Wales," etc. I did not know at the time that the most of the
tailor shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes nine
tailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make a
prince. He was full of compassion for my coat. Wrote down the address
of his tailor for me. Did not tell me to mention my nom de plume and the
tailor would put his best work on my garment, as complimentary people
sometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for an
unknown person (unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated in
England!--that was the cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention his
name, and it would be all right. Thinking to be facetious, I said:
"But he might sit up all night and injure his health."
"Well, let him," said Rogers; "I've done enough for him, for him to show
some appreciation of it."
I might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness.
Said Rogers: "I get all my coats there--they're the only coats fit to be
seen in."
I made one more attempt. I said, "I wish you had brought one with you
--I would like to look at it."
"Bless your heart, haven't I got one on?--this article is Morgan's make."
I examined it. The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham Street
Jew, without any question--about 1848. It probably cost four dollars
when it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless and
greasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It so
affected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemed
plunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, made
a feint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, and said
--with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion--"No matter; no matter;
don't mind me; do not bother about it. I can get another."
When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip and
command his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it--his servant must
have done it while dressing him that morning.
His servant! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this.
Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing.
One would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man who
always wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with the
Conquest.
It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make this
man admire something about me or something I did--you would have felt the
same way. I saw my opportunity: I was about to return to London, and had
"listed" my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposing
mountain in the corner of the room--fifty-four pieces. I hoped he would
fancy it was the accumulation of a single week. I took up the wash-list,
as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table, with
pretended forgetfulness. Sure enough, he took it up and ran his eye
along down to the grand total. Then he said, "You get off easy," and
laid it down again.
His gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get some
like them. His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking, but he
liked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them.
He wore a dim glass breastpin, which he called a "morphylitic diamond"
--whatever that may mean--and said only two of them had ever been found
--the Emperor of China had the other one.
Afterward, in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantastic
vagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand-ducal
way, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop--there was
nothing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me when
strangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me
"Sir Richard," or "General," or "Your Lordship"--and when people began to
stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casual way
why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and then remind
me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for the following day.
I think that for the time being these things were realities to him. He
once came and invited me to go with him and spend the evening with the
Earl of Warwick at his town house. I said I had received no formal
invitation. He said that that was of no consequence, the Earl had no
formalities for him or his friends. I asked if I could go just as I was.
He said no, that would hardly do; evening dress was requisite at night in
any gentleman's house. He said he would wait while I dressed, and then
we would go to his apartments and I could take a bottle of champagne and
a cigar while he dressed. I was very willing to see how this enterprise
would turn out, so I dressed, and we started to his lodgings. He said if
I didn't mind we would walk. So we tramped some four miles through the
mud and fog, and finally found his "apartments"; they consisted of a
single room over a barber's shop in a back street. Two chairs, a small
table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher (both on the floor
in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of a looking-glass, and a
flower-pot, with a perishing little rose geranium in it, which he called
a century plant, and said it had not bloomed now for upward of two
centuries--given to him by the late Lord Palmerston (been offered a
prodigious sum for it)--these were the contents of the room. Also a
brass candlestick and a part of a candle. Rogers lit the candle, and
told me to sit down and make myself at home. He said he hoped I was
thirsty, because he would surprise my palate with an article of champagne
that seldom got into a commoner's system; or would I prefer sherry, or
port? Said he had port in bottles that were swathed in stratified
cobwebs, every stratum representing a generation. And as for his
cigars--well, I should judge of them myself. Then he put his head out
at the door and called:
"Sackville!" No answer.
"Hi-Sackville!" No answer.
"Now what the devil can have become of that butler? I never allow a
servant to--Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get into
the other rooms without the keys."
(I was just wondering at his intrepidity in still keeping up the delusion
of the champagne, and trying to imagine how he was going to get out of
the difficulty.)
Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call "Anglesy." But
Anglesy didn't come. He said, "This is the second time that that equerry
has been absent without leave. To-morrow I'll discharge him." Now he
began to whoop for "Thomas," but Thomas didn't answer. Then for
"Theodore," but no Theodore replied.
"Well, I give it up," said Rogers. "The servants never expect me at this
hour, and so they're all off on a lark. Might get along without the
equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without the
butler, and can't dress without my valet."
I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it; and besides, he
said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practised hand.
However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends with the Earl
that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. So we took a
cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started. By and by we
stopped before a large house and got out. I never had seen this man with
a collar on. He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerable paper
collar out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and put them
on. He ascended the stoop, and entered. Presently he reappeared,
descended rapidly, and said:
"Come--quick!"
We hurried away, and turned the corner.
"Now we're safe," he said, and took off his collar and cravat and
returned them to his pocket.
"Made a mighty narrow escape," said he.
"How?" said I.
"B' George, the Countess was there!"
"Well, what of that?--don't she know you?"
"Know me? Absolutely worships me. I just did happen to catch a glimpse
of her before she saw me--and out I shot. Haven't seen her for two
months--to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal.
She could not have stood it. I didn't know she was in town--thought she
was at the castle. Let me lean on you--just a moment--there; now I am
better--thank you; thank you ever so much. Lord bless me, what an
escape!"
So I never got to call on the Earl, after all. But I marked the house
for future reference. It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, with
about a thousand plebeians roosting in it.
In most things Rogers was by no means a fool. In some things it was
plain enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it.
He was in the "deadest" earnest in these matters. He died at sea, last
summer, as the "Earl of Ramsgate."
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
SOME RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION
by Mark Twain
All the journeyings I had ever done had been purely in the way of
business. The pleasant May weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip
for pure recreation, the bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend
said he would go, too; a good man, one of the best of men, although a
clergyman. By eleven at night we were in New Haven and on board the New
York boat. We bought our tickets, and then went wandering around here
and there, in the solid comfort of being free and idle, and of putting
distance between ourselves and the mails and telegraphs.
After a while I went to my stateroom and undressed, but the night was too
enticing for bed. We were moving down the bay now, and it was pleasant
to stand at the window and take the cool night breeze and watch the
gliding lights on shore. Presently, two elderly men sat down under that
window and began a conversation. Their talk was properly no business of
mine, yet I was feeling friendly toward the world and willing to be
entertained. I soon gathered that they were brothers, that they were
from a small Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand concerned
the cemetery. Said one:
"Now, John, we talked it all over amongst ourselves, and this is what
we've done. You see, everybody was a-movin' from the old buryin'-ground,
and our folks was 'most about left to theirselves, as you may say. They
was crowded, too, as you know; lot wa'n't big enough in the first place;
and last year, when Seth's wife died, we couldn't hardly tuck her in.
She sort o' overlaid Deacon Shorb's lot, and he soured on her, so to
speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was for a
lay out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa'n't unwilling, if it
was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots was No. 8 and No. 9
--both of a size; nice comfortable room for twenty-six--twenty-six
full-growns, that is; but you reckon in children and other shorts, and
strike an everage, and I should say you might lay in thirty, or maybe
thirty-two or three, pretty genteel--no crowdin' to signify."
"That's a plenty, William. Which one did you buy?"
"Well, I'm a-comin' to that, John. You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars,
No. 9 fourteen--"
"I see. So's't you took No. 8."
"You wait. I took No. 9. And I'll tell you for why. In the first
place, Deacon Shorb wanted it. Well, after the way he'd gone on about
Seth's wife overlappin' his prem'ses, I'd 'a' beat him out of that No. 9
if I'd 'a' had to stand two dollars extra, let alone one. That's the way
I felt about it. Says I, what's a dollar, anyway? Life's on'y a
pilgrimage, says I; we ain't here for good, and we can't take it with us,
says I. So I just dumped it down, knowin' the Lord don't suffer a good
deed to go for nothin', and cal'latin' to take it out o' somebody in the
course o' trade. Then there was another reason, John. No. 9's a long
way the handiest lot in the simitery, and the likeliest for situation.
It lays right on top of a knoll in the dead center of the buryin' ground;
and you can see Millport from there, and Tracy's, and Hopper Mount, and a
raft o' farms, and so on. There ain't no better outlook from a
buryin'-plot in the state. Si Higgins says so, and I reckon he ought to
know. Well, and that ain't all. 'Course Shorb had to take No. 8; wa'n't
no help for 't. Now, No. 8 jines onto No. 9, but it's on the slope of
the hill, and every time it rains it 'll soak right down onto the Shorbs.
Si Higgins says 't when the deacon's time comes, he better take out fire
and marine insurance both on his remains."
Here there was the sound of a low, placid, duplicate chuckle of
appreciation and satisfaction.
"Now, John, here's a little rough draft of the ground that I've made on a
piece of paper. Up here in the left-hand corner we've bunched the
departed; took them from the old graveyard and stowed them one alongside
o' t'other, on a first-come-first-served plan, no partialities, with
Gran'ther Jones for a starter, on'y because it happened so, and windin'
up indiscriminate with Seth's twins. A little crowded towards the end of
the lay-out, maybe, but we reckoned 'twa'n't best to scatter the twins.
Well, next comes the livin'. Here, where it's marked A, we're goin' to
put Mariar and her family, when they're called; B, that's for Brother
Hosea and hisn; C, Calvin and tribe. What's left is these two lots
here--just the gem of the whole patch for general style and outlook;
they're for me and my folks, and you and yourn. Which of them would you
rather be buried in?"
"I swan, you've took me mighty unexpected, William! It sort of started
the shivers. Fact is, I was thinkin' so busy about makin' things
comfortable for the others, I hadn't thought about being buried myself."
"Life's on'y a fleetin' show, John, as the sayin' is. We've all got to
go, sooner or later. To go with a clean record's the main thing. Fact
is, it's the on'y thing worth strivin' for, John."
"Yes, that's so, William, that's so; there ain't no getting around it.
Which of these lots would you recommend?"
"Well, it depends, John. Are you particular about outlook?"
"I don't say I am, William, I don't say I ain't. Reely, I don't know.
But mainly, I reckon, I'd set store by a south exposure."
"That's easy fixed, John. They're both south exposure. They take the
sun, and the Shorbs get the shade."
"How about site, William?"
"D's a sandy sile, E's mostly loom."
"You may gimme E, then; William; a sandy sile caves in, more or less, and
costs for repairs."
"All right, set your name down here, John, under E. Now, if you don't
mind payin' me your share of the fourteen dollars, John, while we're on
the business, everything's fixed."
After some Niggling and sharp bargaining the money was paid, and John
bade his brother good night and took his leave. There was silence for
some moments; then a soft chuckle welled up from the lonely William, and
he muttered: "I declare for 't, if I haven't made a mistake! It's D
that's mostly loom, not E. And John's booked for a sandy site after
all."
There was another soft chuckle, and William departed to his rest also.
The next day, in New York, was a hot one. Still we managed to get more
or less entertainment out of it. Toward the middle of the afternoon we
arrived on board the stanch steamship Bermuda, with bag and baggage, and
hunted for a shady place. It was blazing summer weather, until we were
half-way down the harbor. Then I buttoned my coat closely; half an hour
later I put on a spring overcoat and buttoned that. As we passed the
light-ship I added an ulster and tied a handkerchief around the collar to
hold it snug to my neck. So rapidly had the summer gone and winter come
again?
By nightfall we were far out at sea, with no land in sight. No telegrams
could come here, no letters, no news. This was an uplifting thought. It
was still more uplifting to reflect that the millions of harassed people
on shore behind us were suffering just as usual.
The next day brought us into the midst of the Atlantic solitudes--out of
smoke-colored sounding into fathomless deep blue; no ships visible
anywhere over the wide ocean; no company but Mother Carey's chickens
wheeling, darting, skimming the waves in the sun. There were some
seafaring men among the passengers, and conversation drifted into matter
concerning ships and sailors. One said that "true as the needle to the
pole" was a bad figure, since the needle seldom pointed to the pole.
He said a ship's compass was not faithful to any particular point, but
was the most fickle and treacherous of the servants of man. It was
forever changing. It changed every day in the year; consequently the
amount of the daily variation had to be ciphered out and allowance made
for it, else the mariner would go utterly astray. Another said there was
a vast fortune waiting for the genius who should invent a compass that
would not be affected by the local influences of an iron ship. He said
there was only one creature more fickle than a wooden ship's compass,
and that was the compass of an iron ship. Then came reference to the
well known fact that an experienced mariner can look at the compass of a
new iron vessel, thousands of mile from her birthplace, and tell which
way her head was pointing when she was in process of building.
Now an ancient whale-ship master fell to talking about the sort of crews
they used to have in his early days. Said he:
"Sometimes we'd have a batch of college students Queer lot. Ignorant?
Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took
them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than
another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that
came aboard with gold spectacles on. And besides, he was rigged out from
main truck to keelson in the nobbiest clothes that ever saw a fo'castle.
He had a chestful, too: cloaks, and broadcloth coats, and velvet vests;
everything swell, you know; and didn't the saltwater fix them out for
him? I guess not! Well, going to sea, the mate told him to go aloft and
help shake out the foreto'gallants'l. Up he shins to the foretop, with
his spectacles on, and in a minute down he comes again, looking insulted.
Says the mate, 'What did you come down for?' Says the chap, 'P'r'aps you
didn't notice that there ain't any ladders above there.' You see we
hadn't any shrouds above the foretop. The men bursted out in a laugh
such as I guess you never heard the like of. Next night, which was dark
and rainy, the mate ordered this chap to go aloft about something, and
I'm dummed if he didn't start up with an umbrella and a lantern! But no
matter; he made a mighty good sailor before the voyage was done, and we
had to hunt up something else to laugh at. Years afterwards, when I had
forgot all about him, I comes into Boston, mate of a ship, and was
loafing around town with the second mate, and it so happened that we
stepped into the Revere House, thinking maybe we would chance the
salt-horse in that big diningroom for a flyer, as the boys say. Some
fellows were talking just at our elbow, and one says, 'Yonder's the new
governor of Massachusetts--at that table over there with the ladies.'
We took a good look my mate and I, for we hadn't either of us ever see a
governor before. I looked and looked at that face and then all of a
sudden it popped on me! But didn't give any sign. Says I, 'Mate, I've a
notion to go over and shake hands with him.' Says he 'I think I see you
doing it, Tom.' Says I, 'Mate I'm a-going to do it.' Says he, 'Oh, yes,
I guess so. Maybe you don't want to bet you will, Tom?' Say I, 'I don't
mind going a V on it, mate.' Says he 'Put it up.' 'Up she goes,' says
I, planking the cash. This surprised him. But he covered it, and say.
pretty sarcastic, 'Hadn't you better take your grub with the governor and
the ladies, Tom?' Says I 'Upon second thoughts, I will.' Says he, 'Well
Tom, you aye a dum fool.' Says I, 'Maybe I am maybe I ain't; but the
main question is, do you wan to risk two and a half that I won't do it?'
'Make it a V,' says he. 'Done,' says I. I started, him a giggling and
slapping his hand on his thigh, he felt so good. I went over there and
leaned my knuckle: on the table a minute and looked the governor in the
face, and says I, 'Mr. Gardner, don't you know me? He stared, and I
stared, and he stared. Then all of a sudden he sings out, 'Tom Bowling,
by the holy poker! Ladies, it's old Tom Bowling, that you've heard me
talk about--shipmate of mine in the Mary Ann.' He rose up and shook
hands with me ever so hearty--I sort of glanced around and took a
realizing sense of my mate's saucer eyes--and then says the governor,
'Plant yourself, Tom, plant yourself; you can't cat your anchor again
till you've had a feed with me and the ladies!' I planted myself
alongside the governor, and canted my eye around toward my mate. Well,
sir, his dead-lights were bugged out like tompions; and his mouth stood
that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it without him noticing
it."
There was great applause at the conclusion of the old captain's story;
then, after a moment's silence, a grave, pale young man said:
"Had you ever met the governor before?"
The old captain looked steadily at this inquirer awhile, and then got up
and walked aft without making any reply. One passenger after another
stole a furtive glance at the inquirer; but failed to make him out, and
so gave him up. It took some little work to get the talk-machinery to
running smoothly again after this derangement; but at length a
conversation sprang up about that important and jealously guarded
instrument, a ship's timekeeper, its exceeding delicate accuracy, and the
wreck and destruction that have sometimes resulted from its varying a few
seemingly trifling moments from the true time; then, in due course, my
comrade, the Reverend, got off on a yarn, with a fair wind and everything
drawing. It was a true story, too--about Captain Rounceville's shipwreck
--true in every detail. It was to this effect:
Captain Rounceville's vessel was lost in mid-Atlantic, and likewise his
wife and his two little children. Captain Rounceville and seven seamen
escaped with life, but with little else. A small, rudely constructed
raft was to be their home for eight days. They had neither provisions
nor water. They had scarcely any clothing; no one had a coat but the
captain. This coat was changing hands all the time, for the weather was
very cold. Whenever a man became exhausted with the cold, they put the
coat on him and laid him down between two shipmates until the garment and
their bodies had warmed life into him again. Among the sailors was a
Portuguese who knew no English. He seemed to have no thought of his own
calamity, but was concerned only about the captain's bitter loss of wife
and children. By day he would look his dumb compassion in the captain's
face; and by night, in the darkness and the driving spray and rain, he
would seek out the captain and try to comfort him with caressing pats on
the shoulder. One day, when hunger and thirst were making their sure
inroad; upon the men's strength and spirits, a floating barrel was seen
at a distance. It seemed a great find, for doubtless it contained food
of some sort. A brave fellow swam to it, and after long and exhausting
effort got it to the raft. It was eagerly opened. It was a barrel of
magnesia! On the fifth day an onion was spied. A sailor swam off and
got it. Although perishing with hunger, he brought it in its integrity
and put it into the captain's hand. The history of the sea teaches
that among starving, shipwrecked men selfishness is rare, and a
wonder-compelling magnanimity the rule. The onion was equally divided
into eight parts, and eaten with deep thanksgivings. On the eighth day a
distant ship was sighted. Attempts were made to hoist an oar, with
Captain Rounceville's coat on it for a signal. There were many failures,
for the men were but skeletons now, and strengthless. At last success
was achieved, but the signal brought no help. The ship faded out of
sight and left despair behind her. By and by another ship appeared, and
passed so near that the castaways, every eye eloquent with gratitude,
made ready to welcome the boat that would be sent to save them. But this
ship also drove on, and left these men staring their unutterable surprise
and dismay into each other's ashen faces. Late in the day, still another
ship came up out of the distance, but the men noted with a pang that her
course was one which would not bring her nearer. Their remnant of life
was nearly spent; their lips and tongues were swollen, parched, cracked
with eight days' thirst; their bodies starved; and here was their last
chance gliding relentlessly from them; they would not be alive when the
next sun rose. For a day or two past the men had lost their voices, but
now Captain Rounceville whispered, "Let us pray." The Portuguese patted
him on the shoulder in sign of deep approval. All knelt at the base of
the oar that was waving the signal-coat aloft, and bowed their heads. The
sea was tossing; the sun rested, a red, rayless disk, on the sea-line in
the west. When the men presently raised their heads they would have
roared a hallelujah if they had had a voice--the ship's sails lay
wrinkled and flapping against her masts--she was going about! Here was
rescue at last, and in the very last instant of time that was left for
it. No, not rescue yet--only the imminent prospect of it. The red disk
sank under the sea, and darkness blotted out the ship. By and by came a
pleasant sound-oars moving in a boat's rowlocks. Nearer it came, and
nearer-within thirty steps, but nothing visible. Then a deep voice:
"Hol-lo!" The castaways could not answer; their swollen tongues refused
voice. The boat skirted round and round the raft, started away--the
agony of it!--returned, rested the oars, close at hand, listening, no
doubt. The deep voice again: "Hol-lo! Where are ye, shipmates?" Captain
Rounceville whispered to his men, saying: "Whisper your best, boys! now
--all at once!" So they sent out an eightfold whisper in hoarse concert:
"Here!", There was life in it if it succeeded; death if it failed. After
that supreme moment Captain Rounceville was conscious of nothing until he
came to himself on board the saving ship. Said the Reverend, concluding:
"There was one little moment of time in which that raft could be visible
from that ship, and only one. If that one little fleeting moment had
passed unfruitful, those men's doom was sealed. As close as that does
God shave events foreordained from the beginning of the world. When the
sun reached the water's edge that day, the captain of that ship was
sitting on deck reading his prayer-book. The book fell; he stooped to
pick it up, and happened to glance at the sun. In that instant that
far-off raft appeared for a second against the red disk, its needlelike
oar and diminutive signal cut sharp and black against the bright surface,
and in the next instant was thrust away into the dusk again. But that
ship, that captain, and that pregnant instant had had their work
appointed for them in the dawn of time and could not fail of the
performance. The chronometer of God never errs!"
There was deep, thoughtful silence for some moments. Then the grave,
pale young man said:
"What is the chronometer of God?"
II
At dinner, six o'clock, the same people assembled whom we had talked with
on deck and seen at luncheon and breakfast this second day out, and at
dinner the evening before. That is to say, three journeying
ship-masters, a Boston merchant, and a returning Bermudian who had been
absent from his Bermuda thirteen years; these sat on the starboard side.
On the port side sat the Reverend in the seat of honor; the pale young
man next to him; I next; next to me an aged Bermudian, returning to his
sunny islands after an absence of twenty-seven years. Of course, our
captain was at the head of the table, the purser at the foot of it. A
small company, but small companies are pleasantest.
No racks upon the table; the sky cloudless, the sun brilliant, the blue
sea scarcely ruffled; then what had become of the four married couples,
the three bachelors, and the active and obliging doctor from the rural
districts of Pennsylvania?--for all these were on deck when we sailed
down New York harbor. This is the explanation. I quote from my
note-book:
Thursday, 3.30 P.M. Under way, passing the Battery. The large
party, of four married couples, three bachelors, and a cheery,
exhilarating doctor from the wilds of Pennsylvania, are evidently
traveling together. All but the doctor grouped in camp-chairs on
deck.
Passing principal fort. The doctor is one of those people who has
an infallible preventive of seasickness; is flitting from friend to
friend administering it and saying, "Don't you be afraid; I know
this medicine; absolutely infallible; prepared under my own
supervision." Takes a dose himself, intrepidly.
4.15 P.M. Two of those ladies have struck their colors,
notwithstanding the "infallible." They have gone below. The other
two begin to show distress.
5 P.M. Exit one husband and one bachelor. These still had their
infallible in cargo when they started, but arrived at the
companionway without it.
5.10. Lady No. 3, two bachelors, and one married man have gone
below with their own opinion of the infallible.
5.20. Passing Quarantine Hulk. The infallible has done the
business for all the party except the Scotchman's wife and the
author of that formidable remedy.
Nearing the Light-Ship. Exit the Scotchman's wife, head drooped on
stewardess's shoulder.
Entering the open sea. Exit doctor!
The rout seems permanent; hence the smallness of the company at table
since the voyage began. Our captain is a grave, handsome Hercules of
thirty-five, with a brown hand of such majestic size that one cannot eat
for admiring it and wondering if a single kid or calf could furnish
material for gloving it.
Conversation not general; drones along between couples. One catches a
sentence here and there. Like this, from Bermudian of thirteen years'
absence: "It is the nature of women to ask trivial, irrelevant, and
pursuing questions--questions that pursue you from a beginning in nothing
to a run-to-cover in nowhere." Reply of Bermudian of twenty-seven years'
absence: "Yes; and to think they have logical, analytical minds and
argumentative ability. You see 'em begin to whet up whenever they smell
argument in the air." Plainly these be philosophers.
Twice since we left port our engines have stopped for a couple of minutes
at a time. Now they stop again. Says the pale young man, meditatively,
"There!--that engineer is sitting down to rest again."
Grave stare from the captain, whose mighty jaws cease to work, and whose
harpooned potato stops in midair on its way to his open, paralyzed mouth.
Presently he says in measured tones, "Is it your idea that the engineer
of this ship propels her by a crank turned by his own hands?"
The pale young man studies over this a moment, then lifts up his
guileless eyes, and says, "Don't he?"
Thus gently falls the death-blow to further conversation, and the dinner
drags to its close in a reflective silence, disturbed by no sounds but
the murmurous wash of the sea and the subdued clash of teeth.
After a smoke and a promenade on deck, where is no motion to discompose
our steps, we think of a game of whist. We ask the brisk and capable
stewardess from Ireland if there are any cards in the ship.
"Bless your soul, dear, indeed there is. Not a whole pack, true for ye,
but not enough missing to signify."
However, I happened by accident to bethink me of a new pack in a morocco
case, in my trunk, which I had placed there by mistake, thinking it to be
a flask of something. So a party of us conquered the tedium of the
evening with a few games and were ready for bed at six bells, mariner's
time, the signal for putting out the lights.
There was much chat in the smoking-cabin on the upper deck after luncheon
to-day, mostly whaler yarns from those old sea-captains. Captain Tom
Bowling was garrulous. He had that garrulous attention to minor detail
which is born of secluded farm life or life at sea on long voyages, where
there is little to do and time no object. He would sail along till he
was right in the most exciting part of a yarn, and then say, "Well, as I
was saying, the rudder was fouled, ship driving before the gale, head-on,
straight for the iceberg, all hands holding their breath, turned to
stone, top-hamper giving 'way, sails blown to ribbons, first one stick
going, then another, boom! smash! crash! duck your head and stand from
under! when up comes Johnny Rogers, capstan-bar in hand, eyes a-blazing,
hair a-flying . . . no, 'twa'n't Johnny Rogers. . . lemme see . .
seems to me Johnny Rogers wa'n't along that voyage; he was along one
voyage, I know that mighty well, but somehow it seems to me that he
signed the articles for this voyage, but--but--whether he come along or
not, or got left, or something happened--"
And so on and so on till the excitement all cooled down and nobody cared
whether the ship struck the iceberg or not.
In the course of his talk he rambled into a criticism upon New England
degrees of merit in ship building. Said he, "You get a vessel built away
down Maine-way; Bath, for instance; what's the result? First thing you
do, you want to heave her down for repairs--that's the result! Well,
sir, she hain't been hove down a week till you can heave a dog through
her seams. You send that vessel to sea, and what's the result? She wets
her oakum the first trip! Leave it to any man if 'tain't so. Well, you
let our folks build you a vessel--down New Bedford-way. What's the
result? Well, sir, you might take that ship and heave her down, and keep
her hove down six months, and she'll never shed a tear!"
Everybody, landsmen and all, recognized the descriptive neatness of that
figure, and applauded, which greatly pleased the old man. A moment
later, the meek eyes of the pale young fellow heretofore mentioned came
up slowly, rested upon the old man's face a moment, and the meek mouth
began to open.
"Shet your head!" shouted the old mariner.
It was a rather startling surprise to everybody, but it was effective in
the matter of its purpose. So the conversation flowed on instead of
perishing.
There was some talk about the perils of the sea, and a landsman delivered
himself of the customary nonsense about the poor mariner wandering in far
oceans, tempest-tossed, pursued by dangers, every storm-blast and
thunderbolt in the home skies moving the friends by snug firesides to
compassion for that poor mariner, and prayers for his succor. Captain
Bowling put up with this for a while, and then burst out with a new view
of the matter.
"Come, belay there! I have read this kind of rot all my life in poetry
and tales and such-like rubbage. Pity for the poor mariner! sympathy for
the poor mariner! All right enough, but not in the way the poetry puts
it. Pity for the mariner's wife! all right again, but not in the way the
poetry puts it. Look-a here! whose life's the safest in the whole world
The poor mariner's. You look at the statistics, you'll see. So don't
you fool away any sympathy on the poor mariner's dangers and privations
and sufferings. Leave that to the poetry muffs. Now you look at the
other side a minute. Here is Captain Brace, forty years old, been at sea
thirty. On his way now to take command of his ship and sail south from
Bermuda. Next week he'll be under way; easy times; comfortable quarters;
passengers, sociable company; just enough to do to keep his mind healthy
and not tire him; king over his ship, boss of everything and everybody;
thirty years' safety to learn him that his profession ain't a dangerous
one. Now you look back at his home. His wife's a feeble woman; she's a
stranger in New York; shut up in blazing hot or freezing cold lodgings,
according to the season; don't know anybody hardly; no company but her
lonesomeness and her thoughts; husband gone six months at a time. She
has borne eight children; five of them she has buried without her husband
ever setting eyes on them. She watches them all the long nights till
they died--he comfortable on the sea; she followed them to the grave she
heard the clods fall that broke her heart he comfortable on the sea; she
mourned at home, weeks and weeks, missing them every day and every hour
--he cheerful at sea, knowing nothing about it. Now look at it a minute
--turn it over in your mind and size it: five children born, she among
strangers, and him not by to hearten her; buried, and him not by to
comfort her; think of that! Sympathy for the poor mariner's perils is
rot; give it to his wife's hard lines, where it belongs! Poetry makes
out that all the wife worries about is the dangers her husband's running.
She's got substantialer things to worry over, I tell you. Poetry's
always pitying the poor mariner on account of his perils at sea; better a
blamed sight pity him for the nights he can't sleep for thinking of how
he had to leave his wife in her very birth pains, lonesome and
friendless, in the thick of disease and trouble and death. If there's
one thing that can make me madder than another, it's this sappy, damned
maritime poetry!"
Captain Brace was a patient, gentle, seldom speaking man, with a pathetic
something in his bronzed face that had been a mystery up to this time,
but stood interpreted now since we had heard his story. He had voyaged
eighteen times to the Mediterranean, seven times to India, once to the
arctic pole in a discovery-ship, and "between times" had visited all the
remote seas and ocean corners of the globe. But he said that twelve
years ago, on account of his family, he "settled down," and ever
since then had ceased to roam. And what do you suppose was this
simple-hearted, lifelong wanderer's idea of settling down and ceasing to
roam? Why, the making of two five-month voyages a year between Surinam
and Boston for sugar and molasses!
Among other talk to-day, it came out that whale-ships carry no doctor.
The captain adds the doctorship to his own duties. He not only gives
medicines, but sets broken limbs after notions of his own, or saws them
off and sears the stump when amputation seems best. The captain is
provided with a medicine-chest, with the medicines numbered instead of
named. A book of directions goes with this. It describes diseases and
symptoms, and says, "Give a teaspoonful of No. 9 once an hour," or "Give
ten grains of No. 12 every half-hour," etc. One of our sea-captains came
across a skipper in the North Pacific who was in a state of great
surprise and perplexity. Said he:
"There's something rotten about this medicine-chest business. One of my
men was sick--nothing much the matter. I looked in the book: it said
give him a teaspoonful of No. 15. I went to the medicine-chest, and I
see I was out of No. 15. I judged I'd got to get up a combination
somehow that would fill the bill; so I hove into the fellow half a
teaspoonful of No. 8 and half a teaspoonful of No. 7, and I'll be hanged
if it didn't kill him in fifteen minutes! There's something about this
medicine-chest system that's too many for me!"
There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain "Hurricane"
Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us
present had known him; I particularly well, for I had made four
sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born in a
ship; he picked up what little education he had among his shipmates;
he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the
captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that
blurred and distorted by the unfocused lenses of an untrained mind. Such
a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane Jones
was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was in
repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he was
a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was
formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left
ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare
and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding
of India ink: "Virtue is its own R'd." (There was a lack of room.) He
was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fishwoman. He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it. He was a profound biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the "advanced" school of
thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles,
somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six
geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a
rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I
have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one
knows that without being told it.
One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a
clergyman, since the passenger-list did not betray the fact. He took a
great liking to this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great
deal; told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and
wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that
was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, "Peters, do you ever read the Bible?"
"Well--yes."
"I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in
dead earnest once, and you'll find it 'll pay. Don't you get
discouraged, but hang right on. First, you won't understand it; but by
and by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down
to eat."
"Yes, I have heard that said."
"And it's so, too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over
'm all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any
getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when
once you get on the inside everything's plain as day."
"The miracles, too, captain?"
"Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that
business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?"
"Well, I don't know but--"
"Own up now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't had any
experience in raveling such things out, and naturally it was too many for
you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you
how to get at the meat of these matters?"
"Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind."
Then the captain proceeded as follows: "I'll do it with pleasure. First,
you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to
understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then
after that it was all clear and easy. Now this was the way I put it up,
concerning Isaac--[This is the captain's own mistake]--and the prophets
of Baal. There was some mighty sharp men among the public characters of
that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings
--plenty of them, too; it ain't for me to apologize for Isaac; he played
it on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable,
considering the odds that was against him. No, all I say is, 'twa'n't
any miracle, and that I'll show you so's't you can see it yourself.
"Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is,
prophets of Isaac's denomination. There was four hundred and fifty
prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is,
if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say.
Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty
low-spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he
went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business,
but 'twa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to
anything. By and by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to
work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why, he begins to
throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other
--nothing very definite, maybe, but just kind of undermining their
reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to
the king. The king asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac,
'Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray-down fire from heaven on an
altar? It ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That's
the idea.' So the king was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the
prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar
ready, they were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too.
"So next morning all the children of Israel and their parents and the
other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great
crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking
up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was
called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other
team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four
hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopeful, and doing
their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so
on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of
course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they
might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he?
Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every
way he could think of. Says he, 'You don't speak up loud enough; your
god's asleep, like enough, or maybe he's taking a walk; you want to
holler, you know'--or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact
language. Mind, I don't apologize for Isaac; he had his faults.
"Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the
afternoon, and never raised, a spark. At last, about sundown, they were
all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.
"What does Isaac do now? He steps up and says to some friends of his
there, 'Pour four barrels of water on the altar!' Everybody was
astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got
whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, 'Heave on four more barrels.'
Then he says, 'Heave on four more.' Twelve barrels, you see, altogether.
The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a
trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads-'measures,' it
says; I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going
to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They
didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray; he strung along,
and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the
sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about
those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual program,
you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about
something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he
outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up
the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water?
Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!"
"Petroleum, captain?"
"Yes, sir, the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that.
You read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't
tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There
ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go
prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done."
At eight o'clock on the third morning out from New York, land was
sighted. Away across the sunny waves one saw a faint dark stripe
stretched along under the horizon-or pretended to see it, for the credit
of his eyesight. Even the Reverend said he saw it, a thing which was
manifestly not so. But I never have seen any one who was morally strong
enough to confess that he could not see land when others claimed that
they could.
By and by the Bermuda Islands were easily visible. The principal one lay
upon the water in the distance, a long, dull-colored body; scalloped with
slight hills and valleys. We could not go straight at it, but had to
travel all the way around it, sixteen miles from shore, because it is
fenced with an invisible coral reef. At last we sighted buoys, bobbing
here and there, and then we glided into a narrow channel among them,
"raised the reef," and came upon shoaling blue water that soon further
shoaled into pale green, with a surface scarcely rippled. Now came the
resurrection hour; the berths gave up their dead. Who are these pale
specters in plug-hats and silken flounces that file up the companionway
in melancholy procession and step upon the deck? These are they which
took the infallible preventive of seasickness in New York harbor and then
disappeared and were forgotten. Also there came two or three faces not
seen before until this moment. One's impulse is to ask, "Where did you
come aboard?"
We followed the narrow channel a long time, with land on both sides--low
hills that might have been green and grassy, but had a faded look
instead. However, the land-locked water was lovely, at any rate, with
its glittering belts of blue and green where moderate soundings were, and
its broad splotches of rich brown where the rocks lay near the surface.
Everybody was feeling so well that even the grave, pale young man (who,
by a sort of kindly common consent, had come latterly to be referred to
as "The Ass") received frequent and friendly notice--which was right
enough, for there was no harm in him.
At last we steamed between two island points whose rocky jaws allowed
only just enough room for the vessel's body, and now before us loomed
Hamilton on her clustered hillsides and summits, the whitest mass of
terraced architecture that exists in the world, perhaps.
It was Sunday afternoon, and on the pier were gathered one or two hundred
Bermudians, half of them black, half of them white, and all of them
nobbily dressed, as the poet says.
Several boats came off to the ship, bringing citizens. One of these
citizens was a faded, diminutive old gentleman, who approached our most
ancient passenger with a childlike joy in his twinkling eyes, halted
before him, folded his arms, and said, smiling with all his might and
with all the simple delight that was in him, "You don't know me, John!
Come, out with it now; you know you don't!"
The ancient passenger scanned him perplexedly, scanned the napless,
threadbare costume of venerable fashion that had done Sunday service no
man knows how many years, contemplated the marvelous stovepipe hat of
still more ancient and venerable pattern, with its poor, pathetic old
stiff brim canted up "gallusly" in the wrong places, and said, with a
hesitation that indicated strong internal effort to "place" the gentle
old apparition, "Why . . . let me see . . . plague on it . . .
there's something about you that . . . er . . . er . . . but
I've been gone from Bermuda for twenty-seven years, and . . . hum, hum
. . . I don't seem to get at it, somehow, but there's something about
you that is just as familiar to me as--"
"Likely it might be his hat," murmured the Ass, with innocent,
sympathetic interest.
So the Reverend and I had at last arrived at Hamilton, the principal town
in the Bermuda Islands. A wonderfully white town; white as snow itself.
White as marble; white as flour. Yet looking like none of these,
exactly. Never mind, we said; we shall hit upon a figure by and by that
will describe this peculiar white.
It was a town that was compacted together upon the sides and tops of a
cluster of small hills. Its outlying borders fringed off and thinned
away among the cedar forests, and there was no woody distance of curving
coast or leafy islet sleeping upon the dimpled, painted sea, but was
flecked with shining white points--half-concealed houses peeping out of
the foliage. The architecture of the town was mainly Spanish, inherited
from the colonists of two hundred and fifty years ago. Some
ragged-topped cocoa-palms, glimpsed here and there, gave the land
a tropical aspect.
There was an ample pier of heavy masonry; upon this, under shelter, were
some thousands of barrels containing that product which has carried the
fame of Bermuda to many lands, the potato. With here and there an onion.
That last sentence is facetious; for they grow at least two onions in
Bermuda to one potato. The onion is the pride and joy of Bermuda. It is
her jewel, her gem of gems. In her conversation, her pulpit, her
literature, it is her most frequent and eloquent figure. In Bermuda
metaphor it stands for perfection--perfection absolute.
The Bermudian weeping over the departed exhausts praise when he says, "He
was an onion!" The Bermudian extolling the living hero bankrupts
applause when he says, "He is an onion!" The Bermudian setting his son
upon the stage of life to dare and do for himself climaxes all counsel,
supplication, admonition, comprehends all ambition, when he says, "Be an
onion!"
When parallel with the pier, and ten or fifteen steps outside it, we
anchored. It was Sunday, bright and sunny. The groups upon the pier
--men, youths, and boys-were whites and blacks in about equal proportion.
All were well and neatly dressed; many of them nattily, a few of them
very stylishly. One would have to travel far before he would find
another town of twelve thousand inhabitants that could represent itself
so respectably, in the matter of clothes, on a freight-pier, without
premeditation or effort. The women and young girls, black and white, who
occasionally passed by, were nicely clad, and many were elegantly and
fashionably so. The men did not affect summer clothing much, but the
girls and women did, and their white garments were good to look at, after
so many months of familiarity with somber colors.
Around one isolated potato-barrel stood four young gentlemen, two black,
two white, becomingly dressed, each with the head of a slender cane
pressed against his teeth, and each with a foot propped up on the barrel.
Another young gentleman came up, looked longingly at the barrel, but saw
no rest for his foot there, and turned pensively away to seek another
barrel. He wandered here and there, but without result. Nobody sat upon
a barrel, as is the custom of the idle in other lands, yet all the
isolated barrels were humanly occupied. Whosoever had a foot to spare
put it on a barrel, if all the places on it were not already taken. The
habits of all peoples are determined by their circumstances. The
Bermudians lean upon barrels because of the scarcity of lamp-posts.
Many citizens came on board and spoke eagerly to the officers--inquiring
about the Turco-Russian war news, I supposed. However, by listening
judiciously I found that this was not so. They said, "What is the price
of onions?" or, "How's onions?" Naturally enough this was their first
interest; but they dropped into the war the moment it was satisfied.
We went ashore and found a novelty of a pleasant nature: there were no
hackmen, hacks, or omnibuses on the pier or about it anywhere, and nobody
offered his services to us, or molested us in any way. I said it was
like being in heaven. The Reverend rebukingly and rather pointedly
advised me to make the most of it, then. We knew of a boarding-house,
and what we needed now was somebody to pilot us to it. Presently a
little barefooted colored boy came along, whose raggedness was
conspicuously not Bermudian. His rear was so marvelously bepatched with
colored squares and triangles that one was half persuaded he had got it
out of an atlas. When the sun struck him right, he was as good to follow
as a lightning-bug. We hired him and dropped into his wake. He piloted
us through one picturesque street after another, and in due course
deposited us where we belonged. He charged nothing for his map, and but
a trifle for his services: so the Reverend doubled it. The little chap
received the money with a beaming applause in his eye which plainly said,
"This man's an onion!"
We had brought no letters of introduction; our names had been misspelled
in the passenger-list; nobody knew whether we were honest folk or
otherwise. So we were expecting to have a good private time in case
there was nothing in our general aspect to close boarding-house doors
against us. We had no trouble. Bermuda has had but little experience of
rascals, and is not suspicious. We got large, cool, well-lighted rooms
on a second floor, overlooking a bloomy display of flowers and flowering
shrubscalia and annunciation lilies, lantanas, heliotrope, jasmine,
roses, pinks, double geraniums, oleanders, pomegranates, blue
morning-glories of a great size, and many plants that were unknown to me.
We took a long afternoon walk, and soon found out that that exceedingly
white town was built of blocks of white coral. Bermuda is a coral
island, with a six-inch crust of soil on top of it, and every man has a
quarry on his own premises. Everywhere you go you see square recesses
cut into the hillsides, with perpendicular walls unmarred by crack or
crevice, and perhaps you fancy that a house grew out of the ground there,
and has been removed in a single piece from the mold. If you do, you
err. But the material for a house has been quarried there. They cut
right down through the coral, to any depth that is convenient--ten to
twenty feet--and take it out in great square blocks. This cutting is
done with a chisel that has a handle twelve or fifteen feet long, and is
used as one uses a crowbar when he is drilling a hole, or a dasher when
he is churning. Thus soft is this stone. Then with a common handsaw
they saw the great blocks into handsome, huge bricks that are two feet
long, a foot wide, and about six inches thick. These stand loosely piled
during a month to harden; then the work of building begins.
The house is built of these blocks; it is roofed with broad coral slabs
an inch thick, whose edges lap upon each other, so that the roof looks
like a succession of shallow steps or terraces; the chimneys are built of
the coral blocks, and sawed into graceful and picturesque patterns; the
ground-floor veranda is paved with coral blocks; also the walk to the
gate; the fence is built of coral blocks--built in massive panels, with
broad capstones and heavy gate-posts, and the whole trimmed into easy
lines and comely shape with the saw. Then they put a hard coat of
whitewash, as thick as your thumb-nail, on the fence and all over the
house, roof, chimneys, and all; the sun comes out and shines on this
spectacle, and it is time for you to shut your unaccustomed eyes, lest
they be put out. It is the whitest white you can conceive of, and the
blindingest. A Bermuda house does not look like marble; it is a much
intenser white than that; and, besides, there is a dainty, indefinable
something else about its look that is not marble-like. We put in a great
deal of solid talk and reflection over this matter of trying to find a
figure that would describe the unique white of a Bermuda house, and we
contrived to hit upon it at last. It is exactly the white of the icing
of a cake, and has the same unemphasized and scarcely perceptible polish.
The white of marble is modest and retiring compared with it.
After the house is cased in its hard scale of whitewash, not a crack, or
sign of a seam, or joining of the blocks is detectable, from base-stone
to chimney-top; the building looks as if it had been carved from a single
block of stone, and the doors and windows sawed out afterward. A white
marble house has a cold, tomb-like, unsociable look, and takes the
conversation out of a body and depresses him. Not so with a Bermuda
house. There is something exhilarating, even hilarious, about its vivid
whiteness when the sun plays upon it. If it be of picturesque shape and
graceful contour--and many of the Bermudian dwellings are--it will so
fascinate you that you will keep your eyes on it until they ache. One of
those clean-cut, fanciful chimneys--too pure and white for this world
--with one side glowing in the sun and the other touched with a soft
shadow, is an object that will charm one's gaze by the hour. I know of
no other country that has chimneys worthy to be gazed at and gloated
over. One of those snowy houses, half concealed and half glimpsed
through green foliage, is a pretty thing to see; and if it takes one by
surprise and suddenly, as he turns a sharp corner of a country road, it
will wring an exclamation from him, sure.
Wherever you go, in town or country, you find those snowy houses, and
always with masses of bright-colored flowers about them, but with no
vines climbing their walls; vines cannot take hold of the smooth, hard
whitewash. Wherever you go, in the town or along the country roads,
among little potato farms and patches or expensive country-seats, these
stainless white dwellings, gleaming out from flowers and foliage, meet
you at every turn. The least little bit of a cottage is as white and
blemishless as the stateliest mansion. Nowhere is there dirt or stench,
puddle or hog-wallow, neglect, disorder, or lack of trimness and
neatness. The roads, the streets, the dwellings, the people, the
clothes--this neatness extends to everything that falls under the eye.
It is the tidiest country in the world. And very much the tidiest, too.
Considering these things, the question came up, Where do the poor live?
No answer was arrived at. Therefore, we agreed to leave this conundrum
for future statesmen to wrangle over.
What a bright and startling spectacle one of those blazing white country
palaces, with its brown-tinted window-caps and ledges, and green
shutters, and its wealth of caressing flowers and foliage, would be in
black London! And what a gleaming surprise it would be in nearly any
American city one could mention, too!
Bermuda roads are made by cutting down a few inches into the solid white
coral--or a good many feet, where a hill intrudes itself--and smoothing
off the surface of the road-bed. It is a simple and easy process. The
grain of the coral is coarse and porous; the road-bed has the look of
being made of coarse white sugar. Its excessive cleanness and whiteness
are a trouble in one way: the sun is reflected into your eyes with such
energy as you walk along that you want to sneeze all the time. Old
Captain Tom Bowling found another difficulty. He joined us in our walk,
but kept wandering unrestfully to the roadside. Finally he explained.
Said he, "Well, I chew, you know, and the road's so plagued clean."
We walked several miles that afternoon in the bewildering glare of the
sun, the white roads, and the white buildings. Our eyes got to paining
us a good deal. By and by a soothing, blessed twilight spread its cool
balm around. We looked up in pleased surprise and saw that it proceeded
from an intensely black negro who was going by. We answered his military
salute in the grateful gloom of his near presence, and then passed on
into the pitiless white glare again.
The colored women whom we met usually bowed and spoke; so did the
children. The colored men commonly gave the military salute. They
borrow this fashion from the soldiers, no doubt; England has kept a
garrison here for generations. The younger men's custom of carrying
small canes is also borrowed from the soldiers, I suppose, who always
carry a cane, in Bermuda as everywhere else in Britain's broad dominions.
The country roads curve and wind hither and thither in the delightfulest
way, unfolding pretty surprises at every turn: billowy masses of oleander
that seem to float out from behind distant projections like the pink
cloud-banks of sunset; sudden plunges among cottages and gardens, life
and activity, followed by as sudden plunges into the somber twilight and
stillness of the woods; flitting visions of white fortresses and beacon
towers pictured against the sky on remote hilltops; glimpses of shining
green sea caught for a moment through opening headlands, then lost again;
more woods and solitude; and by and by another turn lays bare, without
warning, the full sweep of the inland ocean, enriched with its bars of
soft color and graced with its wandering sails.
Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you will not stay in it
half a mile. Your road is everything that a road ought to be: it is
bordered with trees, and with strange plants and flowers; it is shady and
pleasant, or sunny and still pleasant; it carries you by the prettiest
and peacefulest and most homelike of homes, and through stretches of
forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, and sometimes are alive with
the music of birds; it curves always, which is a continual promise,
whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance and kill interest.
Your road is all this, and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for
the reason that little seductive, mysterious roads are always branching
out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what
is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen
road and explore them. You are usually paid for your trouble;
consequently, your walk inland always turns out to be one of the most
crooked, involved, purposeless, and interesting experiences a body can
imagine. There is enough of variety. Sometimes you are in the level
open, with marshes thick grown with flag-lances that are ten feet high on
the one hand, and potato and onion orchards on the other; next, you are
on a hilltop, with the ocean and the islands spread around you; presently
the road winds through a deep cut, shut in by perpendicular walls thirty
or forty feet high, marked with the oddest and abruptest stratum lines,
suggestive of sudden and eccentric old upheavals, and garnished with here
and there a clinging adventurous flower, and here and there a dangling
vine; and by and by your way is along the sea edge, and you may look down
a fathom or two through the transparent water and watch the diamond-like
flash and play of the light upon the rocks and sands on the bottom until
you are tired of it--if you are so constituted as to be able to get tired
of it.
You may march the country roads in maiden meditation, fancy free, by
field and farm, for no dog will plunge out at you from unsuspected gate,
with breath-taking surprise of ferocious bark, notwithstanding it is a
Christian land and a civilized. We saw upward of a million cats in
Bermuda, but the people are very abstemious in the matter of dogs. Two
or three nights we prowled the country far and wide, and never once were
accosted by a dog. It is a great privilege to visit such a land. The
cats were no offense when properly distributed, but when piled they
obstructed travel.
As we entered the edge of the town that Sunday afternoon, we stopped at a
cottage to get a drink of water. The proprietor, a middle-aged man with
a good face, asked us to sit down and rest. His dame brought chairs, and
we grouped ourselves in the shade of the trees by the door. Mr. Smith
--that was not his name, but it will answer--questioned us about ourselves
and our country, and we answered him truthfully, as a general thing, and
questioned him in return. It was all very simple and pleasant and
sociable. Rural, too; for there was a pig and a small donkey and a hen
anchored out, close at hand, by cords to their legs, on a spot that
purported to be grassy. Presently, a woman passed along, and although
she coldly said nothing she changed the drift of our talk. Said Smith:
"She didn't look this way, you noticed? Well, she is our next neighbor
on one side, and there's another family that's our next neighbors on the
other side; but there's a general coolness all around now, and we don't
speak. Yet these three families, one generation and another, have lived
here side by side and been as friendly as weavers for a hundred and fifty
years, till about a year ago."
"Why, what calamity could have been powerful enough to break up so old a
friendship?"
"Well, it was too bad, but it couldn't be helped. It happened like this:
About a year or more ago, the rats got to pestering my place a good deal,
and I set up a steel trap in my back yard. Both of these neighbors run
considerable to cats, and so I warned them about the trap, because their
cats were pretty sociable around here nights, and they might get into
trouble without my intending it. Well, they shut up their cats for a
while, but you know how it is with people; they got careless, and sure
enough one night the trap took Mrs. Jones's principal tomcat into camp
and finished him up. In the morning Mrs. Jones comes here with the
corpse in her arms, and cries and takes on the same as if it was a child.
It was a cat by the name of Yelverton--Hector G. Yelverton--a troublesome
old rip, with no more principle than an Injun, though you couldn't make
her believe it. I said all a man could to comfort her, but no, nothing
would do but I must pay for him. Finally, I said I warn't investing in
cats now as much as I was, and with that she walked off in a huff,
carrying the remains with her. That closed our intercourse with the
Joneses. Mrs. Jones joined another church and took her tribe with her.
She said she would not hold fellowship with assassins. Well, by and by
comes Mrs. Brown's turn--she that went by here a minute ago. She had a
disgraceful old yellow cat that she thought as much of as if he was
twins, and one night he tried that trap on his neck, and it fitted him
so, and was so sort of satisfactory, that he laid down and curled up and
stayed with it. Such was the end of Sir John Baldwin."
"Was that the name of the cat?"
"The same. There's cats around here with names that would surprise you.
Maria" (to his wife), "what was that cat's name that eat a keg of
ratsbane by mistake over at Hooper's, and started home and got struck by
lightning and took the blind staggers and fell in the well and was 'most
drowned before they could fish him out?"
"That was that colored Deacon Jackson's cat. I only remember the last
end of its name, which was Hold-The-Fort-For-I-Am-Coming Jackson."
"Sho! that ain't the one. That's the one that eat up an entire box of
Seidlitz powders, and then hadn't any more judgment than to go and take a
drink. He was considered to be a great loss, but I never could see it.
Well, no matter about the names. Mrs. Brown wanted to be reasonable, but
Mrs. Jones wouldn't let her. She put her up to going to law for damages.
So to law she went, and had the face to claim seven shillings and
sixpence. It made a great stir. All the neighbors went to court.
Everybody took sides. It got hotter and hotter, and broke up all the
friendships for three hundred yards around friendships that had lasted
for generations and generations.
"Well, I proved by eleven witnesses that the cat was of a low character
and very ornery, and warn't worth a canceled postage-stamp, anyway,
taking the average of cats here; but I lost the case. What could I
expect? The system is all wrong here, and is bound to make revolution
and bloodshed some day. You see, they give the magistrate a poor little
starvation salary, and then turn him loose on the public to gouge for
fees and costs to live on. What is the natural result? Why, he never
looks into the justice of a case--never once. All he looks at is which
client has got the money. So this one piled the fees and costs and
everything on to me. I could pay specie, don't you see? and he knew
mighty well that if he put the verdict on to Mrs. Brown, where it
belonged, he'd have to take his swag in currency."
"Currency? Why, has Bermuda a currency?"
"Yes--onions. And they were forty per cent. discount, too, then, because
the season had been over as much as three months. So I lost my case.
I had to pay for that cat. But the general trouble the case made was the
worst thing about it. Broke up so much good feeling. The neighbors
don't speak to each other now. Mrs. Brown had named a child after me.
But she changed its name right away. She is a Baptist. Well, in the
course of baptizing it over again it got drowned. I was hoping we might
get to be friendly again some time or other, but of course this drowning
the child knocked that all out of the question. It would have saved a
world of heartbreak and ill blood if she had named it dry."
I knew by the sigh that this was honest. All this trouble and all this
destruction of confidence in the purity of the bench on account of a
seven-shilling lawsuit about a cat! Somehow, it seemed to "size" the
country.
At this point we observed that an English flag had just been placed at
half-mast on a building a hundred yards away. I and my friends were busy
in an instant trying to imagine whose death, among the island
dignitaries, could command such a mark of respect as this. Then a
shudder shook them and me at the same moment, and I knew that we had
jumped to one and the same conclusion: "The governor has gone to England;
it is for the British admiral!"
At this moment Mr. Smith noticed the flag. He said with emotion:
"That's on a boarding-house. I judge there's a boarder dead."
A dozen other flags within view went to half-mast.
"It's a boarder, sure," said Smith.
"But would they half-mast the flags here for a boarder, Mr. Smith?"
"Why, certainly they would, if he was dead."
That seemed to size the country again.
IV
The early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, Bermuda, is an
alluring time. There is just enough of whispering breeze, fragrance of
flowers, and sense of repose to raise one's thoughts heavenward; and just
enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of the other place.
There are many venerable pianos in Hamilton, and they all play at
twilight. Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical
instruments--notably those of the violin--but it seems to set a piano's
teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue there is the same that those
pianos prattled in their innocent infancy; and there is something very
pathetic about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic second
childhood, dropping a note here and there where a tooth is gone.
We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal church on the hill,
where five or six hundred people, half of them white and the other half
black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions; and all well
dressed--a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and to be confidently
expected. There was good music, which we heard, and doubtless--a good
sermon, but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so only the high
parts of the argument carried over it. As we came out, after service,
I overheard one young girl say to another:
"Why, you don't mean to say you pay duty on gloves and laces! I only pay
postage; have them done up and sent in the Boston Advertiser."
There are those that believe that the most difficult thing to create is
a woman who can comprehend that it is wrong to smuggle; and that an
impossible thing to create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or
no, when she gets a chance. But these may be errors.
We went wandering off toward the country, and were soon far down in the
lonely black depths of a road that was roofed over with the dense foliage
of a double rank of great cedars. There was no sound of any kind there;
it was perfectly still. And it was so dark that one could detect nothing
but somber outlines. We strode farther and farther down this tunnel,
cheering the way with chat.
Presently the chat took this shape: "How insensibly the character of the
people and of a government makes its impress upon a stranger, and gives
him a sense of security or of insecurity without his taking deliberate
thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question! We have been in
this land half a day; we have seen none but honest faces; we have noted
the British flag flying, which means efficient government and good order;
so without inquiry we plunge unarmed and with perfect confidence into
this dismal place, which in almost any other country would swarm with
thugs and garroters--"
'Sh! What was that? Stealthy footsteps! Low voices! We gasp, we close
up together, and wait. A vague shape glides out of the dusk and
confronts us. A voice speaks--demands money!
"A shilling, gentlemen, if you please, to help build the new Methodist
church."
Blessed sound! Holy sound! We contribute with thankful avidity to the
new Methodist church, and are happy to think how lucky it was that those
little colored Sunday-school scholars did not seize upon everything we
had with violence, before we recovered from our momentary helpless
condition. By the light of cigars we write down the names of weightier
philanthropists than ourselves on the contribution cards, and then pass
on into the farther darkness, saying, What sort of a government do they
call this, where they allow little black pious children, with
contribution cards, to plunge out upon peaceable strangers in the dark
and scare them to death?
We prowled on several hours, sometimes by the seaside, sometimes inland,
and finally managed to get lost, which is a feat that requires talent in
Bermuda. I had on new shoes. They were No. 7's when I started, but were
not more than 5's now, and still diminishing. I walked two hours in
those shoes after that, before we reached home. Doubtless I could have
the reader's sympathy for the asking. Many people have never had the
headache or the toothache, and I am one of those myself; but every body
has worn tight shoes for two or three hours, and known the luxury of
taking them off in a retired place and seeing his feet swell up and
obscure the firmament. Once when I was a callow, bashful cub, I took a
plain, unsentimental country girl to a comedy one night. I had known her
a day; she seemed divine; I wore my new boots. At the end of the first
half-hour she said, "Why do you fidget so with your feet?" I said, "Did
I?" Then I put my attention there and kept still. At the end of another
half-hour she said, "Why do you say, 'Yes, oh yes!' and 'Ha, ha, oh,
certainly! very true!' to everything I say, when half the time those are
entirely irrelevant answers?" I blushed, and explained that I had been a
little absent-minded. At the end of another half-hour she said, "Please,
why do you grin so steadfastly at vacancy, and yet look so sad?"
I explained that I always did that when I was reflecting. An hour
passed, and then she turned and contemplated me with her earnest eyes and
said, "Why do you cry all the time?" I explained that very funny
comedies always made me cry. At last human nature surrendered, and I
secretly slipped my boots off. This was a mistake. I was not able to
get them on any more. It was a rainy night; there were no omnibuses
going our way; and as I walked home, burning up with shame, with the girl
on one arm and my boots under the other, I was an object worthy of some
compassion--especially in those moments of martyrdom when I had to pass
through the glare that fell upon the pavement from street-lamps.
Finally, this child of the forest said, "Where are your boots?" and being
taken unprepared, I put a fitting finish to the follies of the evening
with the stupid remark, "The higher classes do not wear them to the
theater."
The Reverend had been an army chaplain during the war, and while we were
hunting for a road that would lead to Hamilton he told a story about two
dying soldiers which interested me in spite of my feet. He said that in
the Potomac hospitals rough pine coffins were furnished by government,
but that it was not always possible to keep up with the demand; so, when
a man died, if there was no coffin at hand he was buried without one.
One night, late, two soldiers lay dying in a ward. A man came in with a
coffin on his shoulder, and stood trying to make up his mind which of
these two poor fellows would be likely to need it first. Both of them
begged for it with their fading eyes--they were past talking. Then one
of them protruded a wasted hand from his blankets and made a feeble
beckoning sign with the fingers, to signify, "Be a good fellow; put it
under my bed, please." The man did it, and left. The lucky soldier
painfully turned himself in his bed until he faced the other warrior,
raised himself partly on his elbow, and began to work up a mysterious
expression of some kind in his face. Gradually, irksomely, but surely
and steadily, it developed, and at last it took definite form as a pretty
successful wink. The sufferer fell back exhausted with his labor, but
bathed in glory. Now entered a personal friend of No. 2, the despoiled
soldier. No. 2 pleaded with him with eloquent eyes, till presently he
understood, and removed the coffin from under No. 1's bed and put it
under No. 2's. No. 2 indicated his joy, and made some more signs; the
friend understood again, and put his arm under No. 2's shoulders and
lifted him partly up. Then the dying hero turned the dim exultation of
his eye upon No. 1, and began a slow and labored work with his hands;
gradually he lifted one hand up toward his face; it grew weak and dropped
back again; once more he made the effort, but failed again. He took a
rest; he gathered all the remnant of his strength, and this time he
slowly but surely carried his thumb to the side of his nose, spread the
gaunt fingers wide in triumph, and dropped back dead. That picture
sticks by me yet. The "situation" is unique.
The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour, the little white
table-waiter appeared suddenly in my room and shot a single word out of
himself "Breakfast!"
This was a remarkable boy in many ways. He was about eleven years old;
he had alert, intent black eyes; he was quick of movement; there was no
hesitation, no uncertainty about him anywhere; there was a military
decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that was an astonishing
thing to see in a little chap like him; he wasted no words; his answers
always came so quick and brief that they seemed to be part of the
question that had been asked instead of a reply to it. When he stood at
table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a cast-iron
gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawning want in somebody's
eye; then he pounced down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue again.
When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright till he
got to the door; he turned hand-springs the rest of the way.
"Breakfast!"
I thought I would make one more effort to get some conversation out of
this being.
"Have you called the Reverend, or are--"
"Yes s'r!"
"Is it early, or is--"
"Eight-five."
"Do you have to do all the 'chores,' or is there somebody to give
you a--"
"Colored girl."
"Is there only one parish in this island, or are there--"
"Eight!"
"Is the big church on the hill a parish church, or is it--"
"Chapel-of-ease!"
"Is taxation here classified into poll, parish, town, and--"
"Don't know!"
Before I could cudgel another question out of my head, he was below,
hand-springing across the back yard. He had slid down the balusters,
headfirst. I gave up trying to provoke a discussion with him. The
essential element of discussion had been left out of him; his answers
were so final and exact that they did not leave a doubt to hang
conversation on. I suspect that there is the making of a mighty man or a
mighty rascal in this boy--according to circumstances--but they are going
to apprentice him to a carpenter. It is the way the world uses its
opportunities.
During this day and the next we took carriage drives about the island and
over to the town of St. George's, fifteen or twenty miles away. Such
hard, excellent roads to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out of
Europe. An intelligent young colored man drove us, and acted as
guide-book. In the edge of the town we saw five or six mountain-cabbage
palms (atrocious name!) standing in a straight row, and equidistant from
each other. These were not the largest or the tallest trees I have ever
seen, but they were the stateliest, the most majestic. That row of them
must be the nearest that nature has ever come to counterfeiting a
colonnade. These trees are all the same height, say sixty feet; the
trunks as gray as granite, with a very gradual and perfect taper; without
sign of branch or knot or flaw; the surface not looking like bark, but
like granite that has been dressed and not polished. Thus all the way up
the diminishing shaft for fifty feet; then it begins to take the
appearance of being closely wrapped, spool-fashion, with gray cord, or of
having been turned in a lathe. Above this point there is an outward
swell, and thence upward for six feet or more the cylinder is a bright,
fresh green, and is formed of wrappings like those of an ear of green
Indian corn. Then comes the great, spraying palm plume, also green.
Other palm trees always lean out of the perpendicular, or have a curve in
them. But the plumb-line could not detect a deflection in any individual
of this stately row; they stand as straight as the colonnade of Baalbec;
they have its great height, they have its gracefulness, they have its
dignity; in moonlight or twilight, and shorn of their plumes, they would
duplicate it.
The birds we came across in the country were singularly tame; even that
wild creature, the quail, would pick around in the grass at ease while we
inspected it and talked about it at leisure. A small bird of the canary
species had to be stirred up with the butt-end of the whip before it
would move, and then it moved only a couple of feet. It is said that
even the suspicious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow
himself to be caught and caressed without misgivings. This should be
taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or less brag about it.
In San Francisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick a
child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to do that; as if
the knowledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice immigration. Such a
thing in nine cases out of ten would be almost sure to deter a thinking
man from coming.
We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying
in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night
after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying
something, and asked, "Is this your boot?" I said it was, and he said he
had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at
dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt,
but saw him and fled.
I inquired, "Did he get the shirt?"
"No."
"How did you know it was a shirt he was after?"
"I could see it in his eye."
We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian spider capable of
doing these things. Citizens said that their largest spiders could not
more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had
always been considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman against
the testimony of mere worldlings--interested ones, too. On the whole, I
judged it best to lock up my things.
Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime,
and fig trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the
date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems
as thick as a man's arm. Jungles of the mangrove tree stood up out of
swamps; propped on their interlacing roots as upon a tangle of stilts.
In drier places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of shade.
Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There was a
curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on it.
It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the fact
that it had a a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its
person. It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have
when glimpsed through smoked glass. It is possible that our
constellations have been so constructed as to be invisible through smoked
glass; if this is so it is a great mistake.
We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and unostentatiously
as a vine would do it. We saw an India-rubber tree, but out of season,
possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything that
a person would properly expect to find there. This gave it an
impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly one mahogany tree on the
island. I know this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he had
counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a
harelip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel.
Such men are all too few.
One's eye caught near and far the pink cloud of the oleander and the
red blaze of the pomegranate blossom. In one piece of wild wood the
morning-glory vines had wrapped the trees to their very tops, and
decorated them all over with couples and clusters of great bluebells--a
fine and striking spectacle, at a little distance. But the dull cedar is
everywhere, and is the prevailing foliage. One does not appreciate how
dull it is until the varnished, bright green attire of the infrequent
lemon tree pleasantly intrudes its contrast. In one thing Bermuda is
eminently tropical--was in May, at least--the unbrilliant, slightly
faded, unrejoicing look of the landscape. For forests arrayed in a
blemishless magnificence of glowing green foliage that seems to exult in
its own existence and can move the beholder to an enthusiasm that will
make him either shout or cry, one must go to countries that have
malignant winters.
We saw scores of colored farmers digging their crops of potatoes and
onions, their wives and children helping--entirely contented and
comfortable, if looks go for anything. We never met a man, or woman, or
child anywhere in this sunny island who seemed to be unprosperous, or
discontented, or sorry about anything. This sort of monotony became very
tiresome presently, and even something worse. The spectacle of an entire
nation groveling in contentment is an infuriating thing. We felt the
lack of something in this community--a vague, an indefinable, an elusive
something, and yet a lack. But after considerable thought we made out
what it was--tramps. Let them go there, right now, in a body. It is
utterly virgin soil. Passage is cheap. Every true patriot in America
will help buy tickets. Whole armies of these excellent beings can be
spared from our midst and our polls; they will find a delicious climate
and a green, kind-hearted people. There are potatoes and onions for all,
and a generous welcome for the first batch that arrives, and elegant
graves for the second.
It was the Early Rose potato the people were digging. Later in the year
they have another crop, which they call the Garnet. We buy their
potatoes (retail) at fifteen dollars a barrel; and those colored farmers
buy ours for a song, and live on them. Havana might exchange cigars with
Connecticut in the same advantageous way, if she thought of it.
We passed a roadside grocery with a sign up, "Potatoes Wanted." An
ignorant stranger, doubtless. He could not have gone thirty steps from
his place without finding plenty of them.
In several fields the arrowroot crop was already sprouting. Bermuda used
to make a vast annual profit out of this staple before firearms came into
such general use.
The island is not large. Somewhere in the interior a man ahead of us had
a very slow horse. I suggested that we had better go by him; but the
driver said the man had but a little way to go. I waited to see,
wondering how he could know. Presently the man did turn down another
road. I asked, "How did you know he would?"
"Because I knew the man, and where he lived."
I asked him, satirically, if he knew everybody in the island; he
answered, very simply, that he did. This gives a body's mind a good
substantial grip on the dimensions of the place.
At the principal hotel at St. George's, a young girl, with a sweet,
serious face, said we could not be furnished with dinner, because we had
not been expected, and no preparation had been made. Yet it was still an
hour before dinner-time. We argued, she yielded not; we supplicated, she
was serene. The hotel had not been expecting an inundation of two
people, and so it seemed that we should have to go home dinnerless.
I said we were not very hungry a fish would do. My little maid answered,
it was not the market-day for fish. Things began to look serious; but
presently the boarder who sustained the hotel came in, and when the case
was laid before him he was cheerfully willing to divide. So we had much
pleasant chat at table about St. George's chief industry, the repairing
of damaged ships; and in between we had a soup that had something in it
that seemed to taste like the hereafter, but it proved to be only pepper
of a particularly vivacious kind. And we had an iron-clad chicken that
was deliciously cooked, but not in the right way. Baking was not the
thing to convince this sort. He ought to have been put through a
quartz-mill until the "tuck" was taken out of him, and then boiled till
we came again. We got a good deal of sport out of him, but not enough
sustenance to leave the victory on our side. No matter; we had potatoes
and a pie and a sociable good time. Then a ramble through the town,
which is a quaint one, with interesting, crooked streets, and narrow,
crooked lanes, with here and there a grain of dust. Here, as in
Hamilton, the dwellings had Venetian blinds of a very sensible pattern.
They were not double shutters, hinged at the sides, but a single broad
shutter, hinged at the top; you push it outward, from the bottom, and
fasten it at any angle required by the sun or desired by yourself.
All about the island one sees great white scars on the hill-slopes.
These are dished spaces where the soil has been scraped off and the coral
exposed and glazed with hard whitewash. Some of these are a quarter-acre
in size. They catch and carry the rainfall to reservoirs; for the wells
are few and poor, and there are no natural springs and no brooks.
They say that the Bermuda climate is mild and equable, with never any
snow or ice, and that one may be very comfortable in spring clothing the
year round, there. We had delightful and decided summer weather in May,
with a flaming sun that permitted the thinnest of raiment, and yet there
was a constant breeze; consequently we were never discomforted by heat.
At four or five in the afternoon the mercury began to go down, and then
it became necessary to change to thick garments. I went to St. George's
in the morning clothed in the thinnest of linen, and reached home at five
in the afternoon with two overcoats on. The nights are said to be always
cool and bracing. We had mosquito-nets, and the Reverend said the
mosquitoes persecuted him a good deal. I often heard him slapping and
banging at these imaginary creatures with as much zeal as if they had
been real. There are no mosquitoes in the Bermudas in May.
The poet Thomas Moore spent several months in Bermuda more than seventy
years ago. He was sent out to be registrar of the admiralty. I am not
quite clear as to the function of a registrar of the admiralty of
Bermuda, but I think it is his duty to keep a record of all the admirals
born there. I will inquire into this. There was not much doing in
admirals, and Moore got tired and went away. A reverently preserved
souvenir of him is still one of the treasures of the islands: I gathered
the idea, vaguely, that it was a jug, but was persistently thwarted in
the twenty-two efforts I made to visit it. However, it was no matter,
for I found out afterward that it was only a chair.
There are several "sights" in the Bermudas, of course, but they are
easily avoided. This is a great advantage--one cannot have it in Europe.
Bermuda is the right country for a jaded man to "loaf" in. There are no
harassments; the deep peace and quiet of the country sink into one's body
and bones and give his conscience a rest, and chloroform the legion of
invisible small devils that are always trying to whitewash his hair.
A good many Americans go there about the first of March and remain until
the early spring weeks have finished their villainies at home.
The Bermudians are hoping soon to have telegraphic communication with the
world. But even after they shall have acquired this curse it will still
be a good country to go to for a vacation, for there are charming little
islets scattered about the inclosed sea where one could live secure from
interruption. The telegraph-boy would have to come in a boat, and one
could easily kill him while he was making his landing.
We had spent four days in Bermuda--three bright ones out of doors and one
rainy one in the house, we being disappointed about getting a yacht for a
sail; and now our furlough was ended, and we entered into the ship again
and sailed homeward.
We made the run home to New York quarantine in three days and five hours,
and could have gone right along up to the city if we had had a health
permit. But health permits are not granted after seven in the evening,
partly because a ship cannot be inspected and overhauled with exhaustive,
thoroughness except in daylight, and partly because health-officers are
liable to catch cold if they expose themselves to the night air. Still,
you can buy a permit after hours for five dollars extra, and the officer
will do the inspecting next week. Our ship and passengers lay under
expense and in humiliating captivity all night, under the very nose of
the little official reptile who is supposed to protect New York from
pestilence by his vigilant "inspections." This imposing rigor gave
everybody a solemn and awful idea of the beneficent watchfulness of our
government, and there were some who wondered if anything finer could be
found in other countries.
In the morning we were all a-tiptoe to witness the intricate ceremony
of inspecting the ship. But it was a disappointing thing. The
health-officer's tug ranged alongside for a moment, our purser handed the
lawful three-dollar permit fee to the health-officer's bootblack, who
passed us a folded paper in a forked stick, and away we went. The entire
"inspection" did not occupy thirteen seconds.
The health-officer's place is worth a hundred thousand dollars a year to
him. His system of inspection is perfect, and therefore cannot be
improved on; but it seems to me that his system of collecting his fees
might be amended. For a great ship to lie idle all night is a most
costly loss of time; for her passengers to have to do the same thing
works to them the same damage, with the addition of an amount of
exasperation and bitterness of soul that the spectacle of that
health-officer's ashes on a shovel could hardly sweeten. Now why would
it not be better and simpler to let the ships pass in unmolested, and the
fees and permits be exchanged once a year by post.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Rambling Notes of an Idle
Excursion, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT
by Mark Twain
[Left out of A Tramp Abroad, because it was feared that some of the
particulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true. Before
these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press.
--M. T.]
The following curious history was related to me by a chance railway
acquaintance. He was a gentleman more than seventy years of age, and his
thoroughly good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner imprinted
the unmistakable stamp of truth upon every statement which fell from his
lips. He said:
You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by
the people of that country. You know it is sacred to kings, only kings
may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to
kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship. Very well; five
years ago, when the troubles concerning the frontier line arose between
Great Britain and Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in
the wrong. Therefore every reparation was quickly made, and the British
representative stated that he was satisfied and the past should be
forgotten. This greatly relieved the King of Siam, and partly as a token
of gratitude, partly also, perhaps, to wipe out any little remaining
vestige of unpleasantness which England might feel toward him, he wished
to send the Queen a present--the sole sure way of propitiating an enemy,
according to Oriental ideas. This present ought not only to be a royal
one, but transcendently royal. Wherefore, what offering could be so meet
as that of a white elephant? My position in the Indian civil service was
such that I was deemed peculiarly worthy of the honor of conveying the
present to her Majesty. A ship was fitted out for me and my servants and
the officers and attendants of the elephant, and in due time I arrived in
New York harbor and placed my royal charge in admirable quarters in
Jersey City. It was necessary to remain awhile in order to recruit the
animal's health before resuming the voyage.
All went well during a fortnight--then my calamities began. The white
elephant was stolen! I was called up at dead of night and informed of
this fearful misfortune. For some moments I was beside myself with
terror and anxiety; I was helpless. Then I grew calmer and collected my
faculties. I soon saw my course--for, indeed, there was but the one
course for an intelligent man to pursue. Late as it was, I flew to New
York and got a policeman to conduct me to the headquarters of the
detective force. Fortunately I arrived in time, though the chief of the
force, the celebrated Inspector Blunt was just on the point of leaving
for his home. He was a man of middle size and compact frame, and when he
was thinking deeply he had a way of kniting his brows and tapping his
forehead reflectively with his finger, which impressed you at once with
the conviction that you stood in the presence of a person of no common
order. The very sight of him gave me confidence and made me hopeful.
I stated my errand. It did not flurry him in the least; it had no more
visible effect upon his iron self-possession than if I had told him
somebody had stolen my dog. He motioned me to a seat, and said, calmly:
"Allow me to think a moment, please."
So saying, he sat down at his office table and leaned his head upon his
hand. Several clerks were at work at the other end of the room; the
scratching of their pens was all the sound I heard during the next six or
seven minutes. Meantime the inspector sat there, buried in thought.
Finally he raised his head, and there was that in the firm lines of his
face which showed me that his brain had done its work and his plan was
made. Said he--and his voice was low and impressive:
"This is no ordinary case. Every step must be warily taken; each step
must be made sure before the next is ventured. And secrecy must be
observed--secrecy profound and absolute. Speak to no one about the
matter, not even the reporters. I will take care of them; I will see
that they get only what it may suit my ends to let them know." He
touched a bell; a youth appeared. "Alaric, tell the reporters to remain
for the present." The boy retired. "Now let us proceed to business--and
systematically. Nothing can be accomplished in this trade of mine
without strict and minute method."
He took a pen and some paper. "Now--name of the elephant?"
"Hassan Ben Ali Ben Selim Abdallah Mohammed Moist Alhammal
Jamsetjejeebhoy Dhuleep Sultan Ebu Bhudpoor."
"Very well. Given name?"
"Jumbo."
"Very well. Place of birth?"
"The capital city of Siam."
"Parents living?"
"No--dead."
"Had they any other issue besides this one?"
"None. He was an only child."
"Very well. These matters are sufficient under that head. Now please
describe the elephant, and leave out no particular, however
insignificant--that is, insignificant from your point of view. To me in
my profession there are no insignificant particulars; they do not exist."
I described he wrote. When I was done, he said:
"Now listen. If I have made any mistakes, correct me."
He read as follows:
"Height, 19 feet; length from apex of forehead insertion of tail, 26
feet; length of trunk, 16 feet; length of tail, 6 feet; total length,
including trunk, and tail, 48 feet; length of tusks, 9 feet; ears
keeping with these dimensions; footprint resembles the mark left when one
up-ends a barrel in the snow; the color of the elephant, a dull white;
has a hole the size of a plate in each ear for the insertion of jewelry
and possesses the habit in a remarkable degree of squirting water upon
spectators and of maltreating with his trunk not only such persons as he
is acquainted with, but even entire strangers; limps slightly with his
right hind leg, and has a small scar in his left armpit caused by a
former boil; had on, when stolen, a castle containing seats for fifteen
persons, and a gold-cloth saddle-blanket the size of an ordinary carpet."
There were no mistakes. The inspector touched the bell, handed the
description to Alaric, and said:
"Have fifty thousand copies of this printed at once and mailed to every
detective office and pawnbroker's shop on the continent." Alaric
retired. "There--so far, so good. Next, I must have a photograph of the
property."
I gave him one. He examined it critically, and said:
"It must do, since we can do no better; but he has his trunk curled up
and tucked into his mouth. That is unfortunate, and is calculated to
mislead, for of course he does not usually have it in that position."
He touched his bell.
"Alaric, have fifty thousand copies of this photograph made the first
thing in the morning, and mail them with the descriptive circulars."
Alaric retired to execute his orders. The inspector said:
"It will be necessary to offer a reward, of course. Now as to the
amount?"
"What sum would you suggest?"
"To begin with, I should say--well, twenty-five thousand dollars. It is
an intricate and difficult business; there are a thousand avenues of
escape and opportunities of concealment. These thieves have friends and
pals everywhere--"
"Bless me, do you know who they are?"
The wary face, practised in concealing the thoughts and feelings within,
gave me no token, nor yet the replying words, so quietly uttered:
"Never mind about that. I may, and I may not. We generally gather a
pretty shrewd inkling of who our man is by the manner of his work and the
size of the game he goes after. We are not dealing with a pickpocket or
a hall thief now, make up your mind to that. This property was not
'lifted' by a novice. But, as I was saying, considering the amount of
travel which will have to be done, and the diligence with which the
thieves will cover up their traces as they move along, twenty-five
thousand may be too small a sum to offer, yet I think it worth while to
start with that."
So we determined upon that figure as a beginning. Then this man, whom
nothing escaped which could by any possibility be made to serve as a
clue, said:
"There are cases in detective history to show that criminals have been
detected through peculiarities, in their appetites. Now, what does this
elephant eat, and how much?"
"Well, as to what he eats--he will eat anything. He will eat a man, he
will eat a Bible--he will eat anything between a man and a Bible."
"Good very good, indeed, but too general. Details are necessary--details
are the only valuable things in our trade. Very well--as to men. At one
meal--or, if you prefer, during one day--how man men will he eat, if
fresh?"
"He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he
would eat five ordinary men.
"Very good; five men; we will put that down. What nationalities would he
prefer?"
"He is indifferent about nationalities. He prefers acquaintances, but is
not prejudiced against strangers."
"Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles would he eat at a meal?"
"He would eat an entire edition."
"It is hardly succinct enough. Do you mean the ordinary octavo, or the
family illustrated?"
"I think he would be indifferent to illustrations that is, I think he
would not value illustrations above simple letterpress."
"No, you do not get my idea. I refer to bulk. The ordinary octavo Bible
weighs about two pound; and a half, while the great quarto with the
illustrations weighs ten or twelve. How many Dore Bibles would he eat at
a meal?"
"If you knew this elephant, you could not ask. He would take what they
had."
"Well, put it in dollars and cents, then. We must get at it somehow.
The Dore costs a hundred dollars a copy, Russia leather, beveled."
"He would require about fifty thousand dollars worth--say an edition of
five hundred copies."
"Now that is more exact. I will put that down. Very well; he likes men
and Bibles; so far, so good. What else will he eat? I want
particulars."
"He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave bricks to eat bottles,
he will leave bottles to eat clothing, he will leave clothing to eat
cats, he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to eat
ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie, he
will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes to eat bran; he
will leave bran to eat hay, he will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave
oats to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There is nothing
whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and he would eat that
if he could taste it."
"Very good. General quantity at a meal--say about--"
"Well, anywhere from a quarter to half a ton."
"And he drinks--"
"Everything that is fluid. Milk, water, whisky, molasses, castor oil,
camphene, carbolic acid--it is no use to go into particulars; whatever
fluid occurs to you set it down. He will drink anything that is fluid,
except European coffee."
"Very good. As to quantity?"
"Put it down five to fifteen barrels--his thirst varies; his other
appetites do not."
"These things are unusual. They ought to furnish quite good clues toward
tracing him."
He touched the bell.
"Alaric; summon Captain Burns."
Burns appeared. Inspector Blunt unfolded the whole matter to him, detail
by detail. Then he said in the clear, decisive tones of a man whose
plans are clearly defined in his head and who is accustomed to command:
"Captain Burns, detail Detectives Jones, Davis, Halsey, Bates, and
Hackett to shadow the elephant."
"Yes, sir."
"Detail Detectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers, Tupper, Higgins, and
Bartholomew to shadow the thieves."
"Yes, sir."
"Place a strong guard--A guard of thirty picked men, with a relief of
thirty--over the place from whence the elephant was stolen, to keep
strict watch there night and day, and allow none to approach--except
reporters--without written authority from me."
"Yes, sir."
"Place detectives in plain clothes in the railway; steamship, and ferry
depots, and upon all roadways leading out of Jersey City, with orders to
search all suspicious persons."
"Yes, sir."
"Furnish all these men with photograph and accompanying description of
the elephant, and instruct them to search all trains and outgoing
ferryboats and other vessels."
"Yes, sir."
"If the elephant should be found, let him be seized, and the information
forwarded to me by telegraph."
"Yes, sir."
"Let me be informed at once if any clues should be found footprints of
the animal, or anything of that kind."
"Yes, sir."
"Get an order commanding the harbor police to patrol the frontages
vigilantly."
"Yes, sir."
"Despatch detectives in plain clothes over all the railways, north as far
as Canada, west as far as Ohio, south as far as Washington."
"Yes, sir."
"Place experts in all the telegraph offices to listen in to all messages;
and let them require that all cipher despatches be interpreted to them."
"Yes, sir."
"Let all these things be done with the utmost's secrecy--mind, the most
impenetrable secrecy."
"Yes, sir."
"Report to me promptly at the usual hour."
"Yes, Sir."
"Go!"
"Yes, sir."
He was gone.
Inspector Blunt was silent and thoughtful a moment, while the fire in his
eye cooled down and faded out. Then he turned to me and said in a placid
voice:
"I am not given to boasting, it is not my habit; but--we shall find the
elephant."
I shook him warmly by the hand and thanked him; and I felt my thanks,
too. The more I had seen of the man the more I liked him and the more I
admired him and marveled over the mysterious wonders of his profession.
Then we parted for the night, and I went home with a far happier heart
than I had carried with me to his office.
II
Next morning it was all in the newspapers, in the minutest detail. It
even had additions--consisting of Detective This, Detective That, and
Detective The Other's "Theory" as to how the robbery was done, who the
robbers were, and whither they had flown with their booty. There were
eleven of these theories, and they covered all the possibilities; and
this single fact shows what independent thinkers detectives are. No two
theories were alike, or even much resembled each other, save in one
striking particular, and in that one all the other eleven theories were
absolutely agreed. That was, that although the rear of my building was
torn out and the only door remained locked, the elephant had not been
removed through the rent, but by some other (undiscovered) outlet.
All agreed that the robbers had made that rent only to mislead the
detectives. That never would have occurred to me or to any other layman,
perhaps, but it had not deceived the detectives for a moment. Thus, what
I had supposed was the only thing that had no mystery about it was in
fact the very thing I had gone furthest astray in. The eleven theories
all named the supposed robbers, but no two named the same robbers; the
total number of suspected persons was thirty-seven. The various
newspaper accounts all closed with the most important opinion of all
--that of Chief Inspector Blunt. A portion of this statement read as
follows:
The chief knows who the two principals are, namely, "Brick" Daffy
and "Red" McFadden. Ten days before the robbery was achieved he was
already aware that it was to be attempted, and had quietly proceeded
to shadow these two noted villains; but unfortunately on the night
in question their track was lost, and before it could be found again
the bird was flown--that is, the elephant.
Daffy and McFadden are the boldest scoundrels in the profession; the
chief has reasons for believing that they are the men who stole the
stove out of the detective headquarters on a bitter night last
winter--in consequence of which the chief and every detective
present were in the hands of the physicians before morning, some
with frozen feet, others with frozen fingers, ears, and other
members.
When I read the first half of that I was more astonished than ever at the
wonderful sagacity of this strange man. He not only saw everything in
the present with a clear eye, but even the future could not be hidden
from him. I was soon at his office, and said I could not help wishing he
had had those men arrested, and so prevented the trouble and loss; but
his reply was simple and unanswerable:
"It is not our province to prevent crime, but to punish it. We cannot
punish it until it is committed."
I remarked that the secrecy with which we had begun had been marred by
the newspapers; not only all our facts but all our plans and purposes had
been revealed; even all the suspected persons had been named; these would
doubtless disguise themselves now, or go into hiding.
"Let them. They will find that when I am ready for them my hand will
descend upon them, in their secret places, as unerringly as the hand of
fate. As to the newspapers, we must keep in with them. Fame,
reputation, constant public mention--these are the detective's bread and
butter. He must publish his facts, else he will be supposed to have
none; he must publish his theory, for nothing is so strange or striking
as a detective's theory, or brings him so much wonderful respect; we must
publish our plans, for these the journals insist upon having, and we
could not deny them without offending. We must constantly show the
public what we are doing, or they will believe we are doing nothing.
It is much pleasanter to have a newspaper say, 'Inspector Blunt's
ingenious and extraordinary theory is as follows,' than to have it say
some harsh thing, or, worse still, some sarcastic one."
"I see the force of what you say. But I noticed that in one part of your
remarks in the papers this morning you refused to reveal your opinion
upon a certain minor point."
"Yes, we always do that; it has a good effect. Besides, I had not formed
any opinion on that point, anyway."
I deposited a considerable sum of money with the inspector, to meet
current expenses, and sat down to wait for news. We were expecting the
telegrams to begin to arrive at any moment now. Meantime I reread the
newspapers and also our descriptive circular, and observed that our
twenty-five thousand dollars reward seemed to be offered only to
detectives. I said I thought it ought to be offered to anybody who would
catch the elephant. The inspector said:
"It is the detectives who will find the elephant; hence the reward will
go to the right place. If other people found the animal, it would only
be by watching the detectives and taking advantage of clues and
indications stolen from them, and that would entitle the detectives to
the reward, after all. The proper office of a reward is to stimulate the
men who deliver up their time and their trained sagacities to this sort
of work, and not to confer benefits upon chance citizens who stumble upon
a capture without having earned the benefits by their own merits and
labors."
This was reasonable enough, certainly. Now the telegraphic machine in
the corner began to click, and the following despatch was the result:
FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 7.30 A.M.
Have got a clue. Found a succession of deep tracks across a farm
near here. Followed them two miles east without result; think
elephant went west. Shall now shadow him in that direction.
DARLEY, Detective.
"Darley's one of the best men on the force," said the inspector. "We
shall hear from him again before long."
Telegram No. 2 came:
BARKER'S, N. J., 7.40 A.M.
Just arrived. Glass factory broken open here during night, and
eight hundred bottles taken. Only water in large quantity near here
is five miles distant. Shall strike for there. Elephant will be
thirsty. Bottles were empty.
DARLEY, Detective.
"That promises well, too," said the inspector.
"I told you the creature's appetites would not be bad clues."
Telegram No. 3:
TAYLORVILLE, L. I. 8.15 A.M.
A haystack near here disappeared during night. Probably eaten.
Have got a clue, and am off.
HUBBARD, Detective.
"How he does move around!" said the inspector "I knew we had a difficult
job on hand, but we shall catch him yet."
FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 9 A.M.
Shadowed the tracks three miles westward. Large, deep, and ragged.
Have just met a farmer who says they are not elephant-tracks. Says
they are holes where he dug up saplings for shade-trees when ground
was frozen last winter. Give me orders how to proceed.
DARLEY, Detective.
"Aha! a confederate of the thieves! The thing, grows warm," said the
inspector.
He dictated the following telegram to Darley:
Arrest the man and force him to name his pals. Continue to follow
the tracks to the Pacific, if necessary.
Chief BLUNT.
Next telegram:
CONEY POINT, PA., 8.45 A.M.
Gas office broken open here during night and three month; unpaid gas
bills taken. Have got a clue and am away.
MURPHY, Detective.
"Heavens!" said the inspector; "would he eat gas bills?"
"Through ignorance--yes; but they cannot support life. At least,
unassisted."
Now came this exciting telegram:
IRONVILLE, N. Y., 9.30 A.M.
Just arrived. This village in consternation. Elephant passed
through here at five this morning. Some say he went east some say
west, some north, some south--but all say they did not wait to
notice, particularly. He killed a horse; have secure a piece of it
for a clue. Killed it with his trunk; from style of blow, think he
struck it left-handed. From position in which horse lies, think
elephant traveled northward along line Berkley Railway. Has four
and a half hours' start, but I move on his track at once.
HAWES, Detective
I uttered exclamations of joy. The inspector was as self-contained as a
graven image. He calmly touched his bell.
"Alaric, send Captain Burns here."
Burns appeared.
"How many men are ready for instant orders?"
"Ninety-six, sir."
"Send them north at once. Let them concentrate along the line of the
Berkley road north of Ironville."
"Yes, sir."
"Let them conduct their movements with the utmost secrecy. As fast as
others are at liberty, hold them for orders."
"Yes, sir."
"Go!"
"Yes, sir."
Presently came another telegram:
SAGE CORNERS, N. Y., 10.30.
Just arrived. Elephant passed through here at 8.15. All escaped
from the town but a policeman. Apparently elephant did not strike
at policeman, but at the lamp-post. Got both. I have secured a
portion of the policeman as clue.
STUMM, Detective.
"So the elephant has turned westward," said the inspector. "However, he
will not escape, for my men are scattered all over that region."
The next telegram said:
GLOVER'S, 11.15
Just arrived. Village deserted, except sick and aged. Elephant passed
through three-quarters of an hour ago. The anti-temperance mass-meeting
was in session; he put his trunk in at a window and washed it out with
water from cistern. Some swallowed it--since dead; several drowned.
Detectives Cross and O'Shaughnessy were passing through town, but going
south--so missed elephant. Whole region for many miles around in terror
--people flying from their homes. Wherever they turn they meet elephant,
and many are killed.
BRANT, Detective.
I could have shed tears, this havoc so distressed me. But the inspector
only said:
"You see--we are closing in on him. He feels our presence; he has turned
eastward again."
Yet further troublous news was in store for us. The telegraph brought
this:
HOGANSPORT, 12.19.
Just arrived. Elephant passed through half an hour ago, creating
wildest fright and excitement. Elephant raged around streets; two
plumbers going by, killed one--other escaped. Regret general.
O'FLAHERTY, Detective.
"Now he is right in the midst of my men," said the inspector. "Nothing
can save him."
A succession of telegrams came from detectives who were scattered through
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and who were following clues consisting of
ravaged barns, factories, and Sunday-school libraries, with high
hopes-hopes amounting to certainties, indeed. The inspector said:
"I wish I could communicate with them and order them north, but that is
impossible. A detective only visits a telegraph office to send his
report; then he is off again, and you don't know where to put your hand
on him."
Now came this despatch:
BRIDGEPORT, CT., 12.15.
Barnum offers rate of $4,000 a year for exclusive privilege of using
elephant as traveling advertising medium from now till detectives
find him. Wants to paste circus-posters on him. Desires immediate
answer.
BOGGS, Detective.
"That is perfectly absurd!" I exclaimed.
"Of course it is," said the inspector. "Evidently Mr. Barnum, who thinks
he is so sharp, does not know me--but I know him."
Then he dictated this answer to the despatch:
Mr. Barnum's offer declined. Make it $7,000 or nothing.
Chief BLUNT.
"There. We shall not have to wait long for an answer. Mr. Barnum is
not at home; he is in the telegraph office--it is his way when he has
business on hand. Inside of three--"
Done.--P. T. BARNUM.
So interrupted the clicking telegraphic instrument. Before I could make
a comment upon this extraordinary episode, the following despatch carried
my thoughts into another and very distressing channel:
BOLIVIA, N. Y., 12.50.
Elephant arrived here from the south and passed through toward the
forest at 11.50, dispersing a funeral on the way, and diminishing
the mourners by two. Citizens fired some small cannon-balls into
him, and they fled. Detective Burke and I arrived ten minutes
later, from the north, but mistook some excavations for footprints,
and so lost a good deal of time; but at last we struck the right
trail and followed it to the woods. We then got down on our hands
and knees and continued to keep a sharp eye on the track, and so
shadowed it into the brush. Burke was in advance. Unfortunately
the animal had stopped to rest; therefore, Burke having his head
down, intent upon the track, butted up against the elephant's hind
legs before he was aware of his vicinity. Burke instantly arose to
his feet, seized the tail, and exclaimed joyfully, "I claim the
re--" but got no further, for a single blow of the huge trunk laid
the brave fellow's fragments low in death. I fled rearward, and the
elephant turned and shadowed me to the edge of the wood, making
tremendous speed, and I should inevitably have been lost, but that
the remains of the funeral providentially intervened again and
diverted his attention. I have just learned that nothing of that
funeral is now left; but this is no loss, for there is abundance of
material for another. Meantime, the elephant has disappeared again.
MULROONEY, Detective.
We heard no news except from the diligent and confident detectives
scattered about New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia--who
were all following fresh and encouraging clues--until shortly after
2 P.M., when this telegram came:
BAXTER CENTER, 2.15.
Elephant been here, plastered over with circus-bills, any broke up a
revival, striking down and damaging many who were on the point of
entering upon a better life. Citizens penned him up and established
a guard. When Detective Brown and I arrived, some time after, we
entered inclosure and proceeded to identify elephant by photograph
and description. All masks tallied exactly except one, which we
could not see--the boil-scar under armpit. To make sure, Brown
crept under to look, and was immediately brained--that is, head
crushed and destroyed, though nothing issued from debris. All fled
so did elephant, striking right and left with much effect. He
escaped, but left bold blood-track from cannon-wounds. Rediscovery
certain. He broke southward, through a dense forest.
BRENT, Detective.
That was the last telegram. At nightfall a fog shut down which was so
dense that objects but three feet away could not be discerned. This
lasted all night. The ferry-boats and even the omnibuses had to stop
running.
III
Next morning the papers were as full of detective theories as before;
they had all our tragic facts in detail also, and a great many more which
they had received from their telegraphic correspondents. Column after
column was occupied, a third of its way down, with glaring head-lines,
which it made my heart sick to read. Their general tone was like this:
THE WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE! HE MOVES UPON HIS FATAL MARCH WHOLE
VILLAGES DESERTED BY THEIR FRIGHT-STRICKEN OCCUPANTS! PALE TERROR
GOES BEFORE HIM, DEATH AND DEVASTATION FOLLOW AFTER! AFTER THESE,
THE DETECTIVES! BARNS DESTROYED, FACTORIES GUTTED, HARVESTS
DEVOURED, PUBLIC ASSEMBLAGES DISPERSED, ACCOMPANIED BY SCENES OF
CARNAGE IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE! THEORIES OF THIRTY-FOUR OF THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED DETECTIVES ON THE FORCES! THEORY OF CHIEF BLUNT!
"There!" said Inspector Blunt, almost betrayed into excitement, "this is
magnificent! This is the greatest windfall that any detective
organization ever had. The fame of it will travel to the ends of the
earth, and endure to the end of time, and my name with it."
But there was no joy for me. I felt as if I had committed all those red
crimes, and that the elephant was only my irresponsible agent. And how
the list had grown! In one place he had "interfered with an election and
killed five repeaters." He had followed this act with the destruction of
two pool fellows, named O'Donohue and McFlannigan, who had "found a
refuge in the home of the oppressed of all lands only the day before, and
were in the act of exercising for the first time the noble right of
American citizens at the polls, when stricken down by the relentless
hand of the Scourge of Siam." In another, he had "found a crazy
sensation-preacher preparing his next season's heroic attacks on the
dance, the theater, and other things which can't strike back, and had
stepped on him." And in still another place he had "killed a
lightning-rod agent." And so the list went on, growing redder and redder,
and more and more heartbreaking. Sixty persons had been killed, and two
hundred and forty wounded. All the accounts bore just testimony to the
activity and devotion of the detectives, and all closed with the remark
that "three hundred thousand citizen; and four detectives saw the dread
creature, and two of the latter he destroyed."
I dreaded to hear the telegraphic instrument begin to click again.
By and by the messages began to pour in, but I was happily disappointed
in they nature. It was soon apparent that all trace of the elephant was
lost. The fog had enabled him to search out a good hiding-place
unobserved. Telegrams from the most absurdly distant points reported
that a dim vast mass had been glimpsed there through the fog at such and
such an hour, and was "undoubtedly the elephant." This dim vast mass had
been glimpsed in New Haven, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in interior
New York, in Brooklyn, and even in the city of New York itself! But in
all cases the dim vast mass had vanished quickly and left no trace.
Every detective of the large force scattered over this huge extent of
country sent his hourly report, and each and every one of them had a
clue, and was shadowing something, and was hot upon the heels of it.
But the day passed without other result.
The next day the same.
The next just the same.
The newspaper reports began to grow monotonous with facts that amounted
to nothing, clues which led to nothing, and theories which had nearly
exhausted the elements which surprise and delight and dazzle.
By advice of the inspector I doubled the reward.
Four more dull days followed. Then came a bitter blow to the poor,
hard-working detectives--the journalists declined to print their
theories, and coldly said, "Give us a rest."
Two weeks after the elephant's disappearance I raised the reward to
seventy-five thousand dollars by the inspector's advice. It was a great
sum, but I felt that I would rather sacrifice my whole private fortune
than lose my credit with my government. Now that the detectives were in
adversity, the newspapers turned upon them, and began to fling the most
stinging sarcasms at them. This gave the minstrels an idea, and they
dressed themselves as detectives and hunted the elephant on the stage in
the most extravagant way. The caricaturists made pictures of detectives
scanning the country with spy-glasses, while the elephant, at their
backs, stole apples out of their pockets. And they made all sorts of
ridiculous pictures of the detective badge--you have seen that badge
printed in gold on the back of detective novels, no doubt it is a
wide-staring eye, with the legend, "WE NEVER SLEEP." When detectives
called for a drink, the would-be facetious barkeeper resurrected an
obsolete form of expression and said, "Will you have an eye-opener?"
All the air was thick with sarcasms.
But there was one man who moved calm, untouched, unaffected, through it
all. It was that heart of oak, the chief inspector. His brave eye never
drooped, his serene confidence never wavered. He always said:
"Let them rail on; he laughs best who laughs last."
My admiration for the man grew into a species of worship. I was at his
side always. His office had become an unpleasant place to me, and now
became daily more and more so. Yet if he could endure it I meant to do
so also--at least, as long as I could. So I came regularly, and stayed
--the only outsider who seemed to be capable of it. Everybody wondered
how I could; and often it seemed to me that I must desert, but at such
times I looked into that calm and apparently unconscious face, and held
my ground.
About three weeks after the elephant's disappearance I was about to say,
one morning, that I should have to strike my colors and retire, when the
great detective arrested the thought by proposing one more superb and
masterly move.
This was to compromise with the robbers. The fertility of this man's
invention exceeded anything I have ever seen, and I have had a wide
intercourse with the world's finest minds. He said he was confident he
could compromise for one hundred thousand dollars and recover the
elephant. I said I believed I could scrape the amount together, but what
would become of the poor detectives who had worked so faithfully? He
said:
"In compromises they always get half."
This removed my only objection. So the inspector wrote two notes, in
this form:
DEAR MADAM,--Your husband can make a large sum of money (and be
entirely protected from the law) by making an immediate, appointment
with me. Chief BLUNT.
He sent one of these by his confidential messenger to the "reputed wife"
of Brick Duffy, and the other to the reputed wife of Red McFadden.
Within the hour these offensive answers came:
YE OWLD FOOL: brick Duffys bin ded 2 yere.
BRIDGET MAHONEY.
CHIEF BAT,--Red McFadden is hung and in heving 18 month. Any Ass
but a detective know that.
MARY O'HOOLIGAN.
"I had long suspected these facts," said the inspector; "this testimony
proves the unerring accuracy of my instinct."
The moment one resource failed him he was ready with another. He
immediately wrote an advertisement for the morning papers, and I kept a
copy of it:
A.--xWhlv. 242 ht. Tjnd--fz328wmlg. Ozpo,--2 m! 2m!. M! ogw.
He said that if the thief was alive this would bring him to the usual
rendezvous. He further explained that the usual rendezvous was a glare
where all business affairs between detectives and criminals were
conducted. This meeting would take place at twelve the next night.
We could do nothing till then, and I lost no time in getting out of the
office, and was grateful indeed for the privilege.
At eleven the next night I brought one hundred thousand dollars in
bank-notes and put them into the chief's hands, and shortly afterward he
took his leave, with the brave old undimmed confidence in his eye.
An almost intolerable hour dragged to a close; then I heard his welcome
tread, and rose gasping and tottered to meet him. How his fine eyes
flamed with triumph! He said:
"We've compromised! The jokers will sing a different tune to-morrow!
Follow me!"
He took a lighted candle and strode down into the vast vaulted basement
where sixty detectives always slept, and where a score were now playing
cards to while the time. I followed close after him. He walked swiftly
down to the dim and remote end of the place, and just as I succumbed to
the pangs of suffocation and was swooning away he stumbled and fell over
the outlying members of a mighty object, and I heard him exclaim as he
went down:
"Our noble profession is vindicated. Here is your elephant!"
I was carried to the office above and restored with carbolic acid. The
whole detective force swarmed in, and such another season of triumphant
rejoicing ensued as I had never witnessed before. The reporters were
called, baskets of champagne were opened, toasts were drunk, the
handshakings and congratulations were continuous and enthusiastic.
Naturally the chief was the hero of the hour, and his happiness was so
complete and had been so patiently and worthily and bravely won that it
made me happy to see it, though I stood there a homeless beggar, my
priceless charge dead, and my position in my country's service lost to me
through what would always seem my fatally careless execution of a great
trust. Many an eloquent eye testified its deep admiration for the chief,
and many a detective's voice murmured, "Look at him--just the king of the
profession; only give him a clue, it's all he wants, and there ain't
anything hid that he can't find." The dividing of the fifty thousand
dollars made great pleasure; when it was finished the chief made a little
speech while he put his share in his pocket, in which he said, "Enjoy it,
boys, for you've earned it; and, more than that, you've earned for the
detective profession undying fame."
A telegram arrived, which read:
MONROE, MICH., 10 P.M.
First time I've struck a telegraph office in over three weeks. Have
followed those footprints, horseback, through the woods, a thousand miles
to here, and they get stronger and bigger and fresher every day. Don't
worry-inside of another week I'll have the elephant. This is dead sure.
DARLEY, Detective.
The chief ordered three cheers for "Darley, one of the finest minds on
the force," and then commanded that he be telegraphed to come home and
receive his share of the reward.
So ended that marvelous episode of the stolen elephant. The newspapers
were pleasant with praises once more, the next day, with one contemptible
exception. This sheet said, "Great is the detective! He may be a little
slow in finding a little thing like a mislaid elephant he may hunt him
all day and sleep with his rotting carcass all night for three weeks, but
he will find him at last if he can get the man who mislaid him to show
him the place!"
Poor Hassan was lost to me forever. The cannonshots had wounded him
fatally, he had crept to that unfriendly place in the fog, and there,
surrounded by his enemies and in constant danger of detection, he had
wasted away with hunger and suffering till death gave him peace.
The compromise cost me one hundred thousand dollars; my detective
expenses were forty-two thousand dollars more; I never applied for a
place again under my government; I am a ruined man and a wanderer on the
earth but my admiration for that man, whom I believe to be the greatest
detective the world has ever produced, remains undimmed to this day, and
will so remain unto the end.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stolen White Elephant
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
A TRAMP ABROAD
By Mark Twain
(Samuel L. Clemens)
First published in 1880
* * * * * *
CHAPTER I
[The Knighted Knave of Bergen]
One day it occurred to me that it had been many years
since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man
adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe
on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was
a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle.
So I determined to do it. This was in March, 1878.
I looked about me for the right sort of person to
accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally
hired a Mr. Harris for this service.
It was also my purpose to study art while in Europe.
Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much
of an enthusiast in art as I was, and not less anxious
to learn to paint. I desired to learn the German language;
so did Harris.
Toward the middle of April we sailed in the HOLSATIA,
Captain Brandt, and had a very peasant trip, indeed.
After a brief rest at Hamburg, we made preparations for
a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather,
but at the last moment we changed the program,
for private reasons, and took the express-train.
We made a short halt at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and found
it an interesting city. I would have liked to visit
the birthplace of Gutenburg, but it could not be done,
as no memorandum of the site of the house has been kept.
So we spent an hour in the Goethe mansion instead.
The city permits this house to belong to private parties,
instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor
of possessing and protecting it.
Frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have
the distinction of being the place where the following
incident occurred. Charlemagne, while chasing the Saxons
(as HE said), or being chased by them (as THEY said),
arrived at the bank of the river at dawn, in a fog.
The enemy were either before him or behind him;
but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly.
He would have given anything for a guide, but none was to
be had. Presently he saw a deer, followed by her young,
approach the water. He watched her, judging that she
would seek a ford, and he was right. She waded over,
and the army followed. So a great Frankish victory or
defeat was gained or avoided; and in order to commemorate
the episode, Charlemagne commanded a city to be built there,
which he named Frankfort--the ford of the Franks.
None of the other cities where this event happened were
named for it. This is good evidence that Frankfort was
the first place it occurred at.
Frankfort has another distinction--it is the birthplace
of the German alphabet; or at least of the German word
for alphabet --BUCHSTABEN. They say that the first movable
types were made on birch sticks--BUCHSTABE--hence the name.
I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfort.
I had brought from home a box containing a thousand
very cheap cigars. By way of experiment, I stepped
into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four
gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars,
and laid down a silver piece worth 48 cents. The man gave
me 43 cents change.
In Frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and I think we
noticed that this strange thing was the case in Hamburg, too,
and in the villages along the road. Even in the narrowest
and poorest and most ancient quarters of Frankfort neat
and clean clothes were the rule. The little children
of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into
a body's lap. And as for the uniforms of the soldiers,
they were newness and brightness carried to perfection.
One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust
upon them. The street-car conductors and drivers wore
pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox,
and their manners were as fine as their clothes.
In one of the shops I had the luck to stumble upon a book
which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled
THE LEGENDS OF THE RHINE FROM BASLE TO ROTTERDAM,
by F. J. Kiefer; translated by L. W. Garnham, B.A.
All tourists MENTION the Rhine legends--in that sort of way
which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar
with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly
be ignorant of them--but no tourist ever TELLS them.
So this little book fed me in a very hungry place; and I,
in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two
little lunches from the same larder. I shall not mar
Garnharn's translation by meddling with its English;
for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint
fashion of building English sentences on the German plan
--and punctuating them accordingly to no plan at all.
In the chapter devoted to "Legends of Frankfort,"
I find the following:
"THE KNAVE OF BERGEN"
"In Frankfort at the Romer was a great mask-ball, at
the coronation festival, and in the illuminated saloon,
the clanging music invited to dance, and splendidly
appeared the rich toilets and charms of the ladies,
and the festively costumed Princes and Knights.
All seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gaiety, only one of the
numerous guests had a gloomy exterior; but exactly the black
armor in which he walked about excited general attention,
and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of
his movements, attracted especially the regards of the ladies.
Who the Knight was? Nobody could guess, for his Vizier
was well closed, and nothing made him recognizable.
Proud and yet modest he advanced to the Empress; bowed on
one knee before her seat, and begged for the favor of a
waltz with the Queen of the festival. And she allowed
his request. With light and graceful steps he danced
through the long saloon, with the sovereign who thought
never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer.
But also by the grace of his manner, and fine conversation
he knew to win the Queen, and she graciously accorded him
a second dance for which he begged, a third, and a fourth,
as well as others were not refused him. How all regarded
the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favor;
how increased curiosity, who the masked knight could be.
"Also the Emperor became more and more excited with curiosity,
and with great suspense one awaited the hour, when according
to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known.
This moment came, but although all other unmasked;
the secret knight still refused to allow his features
to be seen, till at last the Queen driven by curiosity,
and vexed at the obstinate refusal; commanded him to open
his Vizier. He opened it, and none of the high ladies
and knights knew him. But from the crowded spectators,
2 officials advanced, who recognized the black dancer,
and horror and terror spread in the saloon, as they said who
the supposed knight was. It was the executioner of Bergen.
But glowing with rage, the King commanded to seize the
criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance,
with the queen; so disgraced the Empress, and insulted
the crown. The culpable threw himself at the Emperor,
and said--
"'Indeed I have heavily sinned against all noble guests
assembled here, but most heavily against you my sovereign
and my queen. The Queen is insulted by my haughtiness
equal to treason, but no punishment even blood, will not
be able to wash out the disgrace, which you have suffered
by me. Therefore oh King! allow me to propose a remedy,
to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done.
Draw your sword and knight me, then I will throw down
my gauntlet, to everyone who dares to speak disrespectfully
of my king.'
"The Emperor was surprised at this bold proposal,
however it appeared the wisest to him; 'You are a knave
he replied after a moment's consideration, however your
advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offense
shows adventurous courage. Well then, and gave him the
knight-stroke so I raise you to nobility, who begged for
grace for your offense now kneels before me, rise as knight;
knavish you have acted, and Knave of Bergen shall you
be called henceforth, and gladly the Black knight rose;
three cheers were given in honor of the Emperor,
and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with
which the Queen danced still once with the Knave of Bergen."
CHAPTER II
Heidelberg
[Landing a Monarch at Heidelberg]
We stopped at a hotel by the railway-station. Next morning,
as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up,
we got a good deal interested in something which was
going on over the way, in front of another hotel.
First, the personage who is called the PORTIER (who is
not the PORTER, but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel)
[1. See Appendix A] appeared at the door in a spick-and-span
new blue cloth uniform, decorated with shining brass buttons,
and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands;
and he wore white gloves, too. He shed an official glance
upon the situation, and then began to give orders.
Two women-servants came out with pails and brooms
and brushes, and gave the sidewalk a thorough scrubbing;
meanwhile two others scrubbed the four marble steps
which led up to the door; beyond these we could see some
men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase.
This carpet was carried away and the last grain of dust
beaten and banged and swept out of it; then brought back
and put down again. The brass stair-rods received an
exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places.
Now a troop of servants brought pots and tubs
of blooming plants and formed them into a beautiful
jungle about the door and the base of the staircase.
Other servants adorned all the balconies of the various
stories with flowers and banners; others ascended
to the roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there.
Now came some more chamber-maids and retouched the sidewalk,
and afterward wiped the marble steps with damp cloths
and finished by dusting them off with feather brushes.
Now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the
marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone.
The PORTIER cast his eye along it, and found it was not
absolutely straight; he commanded it to be straightened;
the servants made the effort--made several efforts,
in fact--but the PORTIER was not satisfied. He finally
had it taken up, and then he put it down himself and got
it right.
At this stage of the proceedings, a narrow bright
red carpet was unrolled and stretched from the top
of the marble steps to the curbstone, along the center
of the black carpet. This red path cost the PORTIER
more trouble than even the black one had done. But he
patiently fixed and refixed it until it was exactly right
and lay precisely in the middle of the black carpet.
In New York these performances would have gathered a mighty
crowd of curious and intensely interested spectators;
but here it only captured an audience of half a dozen
little boys who stood in a row across the pavement,
some with their school-knapsacks on their backs and their
hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles,
and all absorbed in the show. Occasionally one of them
skipped irreverently over the carpet and took up a position
on the other side. This always visibly annoyed the PORTIER.
Now came a waiting interval. The landlord, in plain clothes,
and bareheaded, placed himself on the bottom marble step,
abreast the PORTIER, who stood on the other end of the
same steps; six or eight waiters, gloved, bareheaded,
and wearing their whitest linen, their whitest cravats,
and their finest swallow-tails, grouped themselves
about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear.
Nobody moved or spoke any more but only waited.
In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard,
and immediately groups of people began to gather in the street.
Two or three open carriages arrived, and deposited some
maids of honor and some male officials at the hotel.
Presently another open carriage brought the Grand Duke
of Baden, a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsome
brass-mounted, steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head.
Last came the Empress of Germany and the Grand Duchess
of Baden in a closed carriage; these passed through the
low-bowing groups of servants and disappeared in the hotel,
exhibiting to us only the backs of their heads, and then
the show was over.
It appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it
is to launch a ship.
But as to Heidelberg. The weather was growing pretty warm,
--very warm, in fact. So we left the valley and took
quarters at the Schloss Hotel, on the hill, above the Castle.
Heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge--a gorge
the shape of a shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he
perceives that it is about straight, for a mile and a half,
then makes a sharp curve to the right and disappears.
This gorge--along whose bottom pours the swift Neckar
--is confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long,
steep ridges, a thousand feet high and densely wooded
clear to their summits, with the exception of one section
which has been shaved and put under cultivation.
These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge
and form two bold and conspicuous headlands, with Heidelberg
nestling between them; from their bases spreads away
the vast dim expanse of the Rhine valley, and into this
expanse the Neckar goes wandering in shining curves and is
presently lost to view.
Now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will
see the Schloss Hotel on the right perched on a precipice
overlooking the Neckar--a precipice which is so sumptuously
cushioned and draped with foliage that no glimpse of the
rock appears. The building seems very airily situated.
It has the appearance of being on a shelf half-way up
the wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated,
and very white, it makes a strong mark against the lofty
leafy rampart at its back.
This hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty,
and one which might be adopted with advantage by any house
which is perched in a commanding situation. This feature
may be described as a series of glass-enclosed parlors
CLINGING TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE, one against each
and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long,
narrow, high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building.
My room was a corner room, and had two of these things,
a north one and a west one.
From the north cage one looks up the Neckar gorge;
from the west one he looks down it. This last affords
the most extensive view, and it is one of the loveliest
that can be imagined, too. Out of a billowy upheaval of
vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge
ruin of Heidelberg Castle, [2. See Appendix B] with empty window
arches,
ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers--the Lear of
inanimate nature--deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms,
but royal still, and beautiful. It is a fine sight to see
the evening sunlight suddenly strike the leafy declivity
at the Castle's base and dash up it and drench it as with
a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in deep shadow.
Behind the Castle swells a great dome-shaped hill,
forest-clad, and beyond that a nobler and loftier one.
The Castle looks down upon the compact brown-roofed town;
and from the town two picturesque old bridges span
the river. Now the view broadens; through the gateway
of the sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide
Rhine plain, which stretches away, softly and richly tinted,
grows gradually and dreamily indistinct, and finally melts
imperceptibly into the remote horizon.
I have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene
and satisfying charm about it as this one gives.
The first night we were there, we went to bed and to
sleep early; but I awoke at the end of two or three hours,
and lay a comfortable while listening to the soothing
patter of the rain against the balcony windows.
I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the
murmur of the restless Neckar, tumbling over her dikes
and dams far below, in the gorge. I got up and went
into the west balcony and saw a wonderful sight.
Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle,
the town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate
cobweb of streets jeweled with twinkling lights;
there were rows of lights on the bridges; these flung
lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows
of the arches; and away at the extremity of all this
fairy spectacle blinked and glowed a massed multitude
of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of ground;
it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread
out there. I did not know before, that a half-mile
of sextuple railway-tracks could be made such an adornment.
One thinks Heidelberg by day--with its surroundings
--is the last possibility of the beautiful; but when he
sees Heidelberg by night, a fallen Milky Way, with that
glittering railway constellation pinned to the border,
he requires time to consider upon the verdict.
One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that
clothe all these lofty Neckar hills to their beguiling
and impressive charm in any country; but German legends
and fairy tales have given these an added charm.
They have peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs,
and all sorts of mysterious and uncanny creatures.
At the time I am writing of, I had been reading so much
of this literature that sometimes I was not sure but I
was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies
as realities.
One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from
the hotel, and presently fell into a train of dreamy thought
about animals which talk, and kobolds, and enchanted folk,
and the rest of the pleasant legendary stuff; and so,
by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I
glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the
columned aisles of the forest. It was a place which was
peculiarly meet for the occasion. It was a pine wood,
with so thick and soft a carpet of brown needles that one's
footfall made no more sound than if he were treading
on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight
and smooth as pillars, and stood close together;
they were bare of branches to a point about twenty-five
feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with
boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through.
The world was bright with sunshine outside, but a deep
and mellow twilight reigned in there, and also a deep
silence so profound that I seemed to hear my own breathings.
When I had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining,
and getting my spirit in tune with the place, and in the
right mood to enjoy the supernatural, a raven suddenly
uttered a horse croak over my head. It made me start;
and then I was angry because I started. I looked up,
and the creature was sitting on a limb right over me,
looking down at me. I felt something of the same sense
of humiliation and injury which one feels when he finds
that a human stranger has been clandestinely inspecting
him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him.
I eyed the raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said
during some seconds. Then the bird stepped a little way
along his limb to get a better point of observation,
lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his
shoulders toward me and croaked again--a croak with a
distinctly insulting expression about it. If he had
spoken in English he could not have said any more plainly
that he did say in raven, "Well, what do YOU want here?"
I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act
by a responsible being, and reproved for it. However, I
made no reply; I would not bandy words with a raven.
The adversary waited a while, with his shoulders still lifted,
his head thrust down between them, and his keen bright eye
fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more insults,
which I could not understand, further than that I
knew a portion of them consisted of language not used
in church.
I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head
and called. There was an answering croak from a little
distance in the wood--evidently a croak of inquiry.
The adversary explained with enthusiasm, and the other raven
dropped everything and came. The two sat side by side
on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively
as two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug.
The thing became more and more embarrassing. They called
in another friend. This was too much. I saw that they
had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get out
of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my
defeat as much as any low white people could have done.
They craned their necks and laughed at me (for a raven
CAN laugh, just like a man), they squalled insulting remarks
after me as long as they could see me. They were nothing
but ravens--I knew that--what they thought of me could
be a matter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven
shouts after you, "What a hat!" "Oh, pull down your vest!"
and that sort of thing, it hurts you and humiliates you,
and there is no getting around it with fine reasoning and
pretty arguments.
Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no
question about that; but I suppose there are very few
people who can understand them. I never knew but one man
who could. I knew he could, however, because he told
me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted
miner who had lived in a lonely corner of California,
among the woods and mountains, a good many years,
and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the beasts
and the birds, until he believed he could accurately
translate any remark which they made. This was Jim Baker.
According to Jim Baker, some animals have only a
limited education, and some use only simple words,
and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure;
whereas, certain other animals have a large vocabulary,
a fine command of language and a ready and fluent delivery;
consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it;
they are so conscious of their talent, and they enjoy
"showing off." Baker said, that after long and careful
observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays
were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said
he:
"There's more TO a bluejay than any other creature.
He has got more moods, and more different kinds
of feelings than other creatures; and, mind you,
whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language.
And no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling,
out-and-out book-talk--and bristling with metaphor,
too--just bristling! And as for command of language--why
YOU never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man
ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing:
I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow,
or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay.
You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat
does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat
get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights,
and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw.
Ignorant people think it's the NOISE which fighting
cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so;
it's the sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard
a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do,
they are as ashamed as a human; they shut right down
and leave.
"You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure
--but he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church,
perhaps; but otherwise he is just as much human as you be.
And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts, and instincts,
and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground.
A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.
A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive,
a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay
will go back on his solemnest promise. The sacredness
of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram
into no bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this,
there's another thing; a jay can out-swear any gentleman
in the mines. You think a cat can swear. Well, a cat can;
but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his
reserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don't talk to ME--I
know too much about this thing; in the one little particular
of scolding--just good, clean, out-and-out scolding
--a bluejay can lay over anything, human or divine.
Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry,
a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason
and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal,
a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is
an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. If a jay
ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all.
Now I'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about
some bluejays."
CHAPTER III
Baker's Bluejay Yarn
[What Stumped the Blue Jays]
"When I first begun to understand jay language correctly,
there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago,
the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands
his house--been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank
roof--just one big room, and no more; no ceiling--nothing
between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday
morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin,
with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills,
and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees,
and thinking of the home away yonder in the states,
that I hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay
lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says,
'Hello, I reckon I've struck something.' When he spoke,
the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof,
of course, but he didn't care; his mind was all on the
thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof.
He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the
other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug;
then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink
or two with his wings--which signifies gratification,
you understand--and says, 'It looks like a hole,
it's located like a hole--blamed if I don't believe it IS
a hole!'
"Then he cocked his head down and took another look;
he glances up perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings
and his tail both, and says, 'Oh, no, this ain't no fat thing,
I reckon! If I ain't in luck! --Why it's a perfectly
elegant hole!' So he flew down and got that acorn,
and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting
his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face,
when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening
attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his
countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the queerest
look of surprise took its place. Then he says, 'Why, I
didn't hear it fall!' He cocked his eye at the hole again,
and took a long look; raised up and shook his head;
stepped around to the other side of the hole and took
another look from that side; shook his head again.
He studied a while, then he just went into the Details
--walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every
point of the compass. No use. Now he took a thinking
attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back
of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says,
'Well, it's too many for ME, that's certain; must be
a mighty long hole; however, I ain't got no time to fool
around here, I got to "tend to business"; I reckon it's
all right--chance it, anyway.'
"So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped
it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick
enough to see what become of it, but he was too late.
He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised
up and sighed, and says, 'Confound it, I don't seem
to understand this thing, no way; however, I'll tackle
her again.' He fetched another acorn, and done his level
best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. He says,
'Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before;
I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.'
Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell,
walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking
his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got
the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose
and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird
take on so about a little thing. When he got through he
walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute;
then he says, 'Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole,
and a mighty singular hole altogether--but I've started
in to fill you, and I'm damned if I DON'T fill you, if it
takes a hundred years!'
"And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work
so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger,
and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about
two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and
astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped
to take a look anymore--he just hove 'em in and went
for more. Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings,
he was so tuckered out. He comes a-dropping down, once more,
sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his acorn in and says,
'NOW I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time!'
So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me,
when his head come up again he was just pale with rage.
He says, 'I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep
the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one
of 'em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full
of sawdust in two minutes!'
"He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the
comb and lean his back agin the chimbly, and then he
collected his impressions and begun to free his mind.
I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity
in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say.
"Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions,
and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him
the whole circumstance, and says, 'Now yonder's the hole,
and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.'
So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says,
'How many did you say you put in there?' 'Not any less
than two tons,' says the sufferer. The other jay went
and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he
raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all examined
the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again,
then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed
opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could
have done.
"They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty
soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it.
There must have been five thousand of them; and such
another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing,
you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his
eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed
opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there
before him. They examined the house all over, too.
The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay
happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course,
that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second.
There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor..
He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. 'Come here!'
he says, 'Come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't
been trying to fill up a house with acorns!' They all came
a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow
lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity
of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him
home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter,
and the next jay took his place and done the same.
"Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop
and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing
like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a bluejay
hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better.
And memory, too. They brought jays here from all over
the United States to look down that hole, every summer
for three years. Other birds, too. And they could all
see the point except an owl that come from Nova Scotia
to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on
his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny
in it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about
Yo Semite, too."
CHAPTER IV
Student Life
[The Laborious Beer King]
The summer semester was in full tide; consequently the
most frequent figure in and about Heidelberg was
the student. Most of the students were Germans,
of course, but the representatives of foreign lands
were very numerous. They hailed from every corner
of the globe--for instruction is cheap in Heidelberg,
and so is living, too. The Anglo-American Club,
composed of British and American students, had twenty-five
members, and there was still much material left to draw from.
Nine-tenths of the Heidelberg students wore no badge
or uniform; the other tenth wore caps of various colors,
and belonged to social organizations called "corps." There
were five corps, each with a color of its own; there were
white caps, blue caps, and red, yellow, and green ones.
The famous duel-fighting is confined to the "corps" boys.
The "KNEIP" seems to be a specialty of theirs, too.
Kneips are held, now and then, to celebrate great occasions,
like the election of a beer king, for instance.
The solemnity is simple; the five corps assemble at night,
and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer,
out of pint-mugs, as fast as possible, and each man keeps
his own count--usually by laying aside a lucifer match
for each mud he empties. The election is soon decided.
When the candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted
and the one who has drank the greatest number of pints is
proclaimed king. I was told that the last beer king elected
by the corps--or by his own capabilities--emptied his mug
seventy-five times. No stomach could hold all that quantity
at one time, of course--but there are ways of frequently
creating a vacuum, which those who have been much at sea
will understand.
One sees so many students abroad at all hours, that he
presently begins to wonder if they ever have any
working-hours. Some of them have, some of them haven't.
Each can choose for himself whether he will work or play;
for German university life is a very free life;
it seems to have no restraints. The student does not live
in the college buildings, but hires his own lodgings,
in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when
and where he pleases. He goes to bed when it suits him,
and does not get up at all unless he wants to.
He is not entered at the university for any particular
length of time; so he is likely to change about.
He passes no examinations upon entering college.
He merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars,
receives a card entitling him to the privileges of
the university, and that is the end of it. He is now ready
for business--or play, as he shall prefer. If he elects
to work, he finds a large list of lectures to choose from.
He selects the subjects which he will study, and enters
his name for these studies; but he can skip attendance.
The result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon
specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered
to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical
and every-day matters of education are delivered to very
large ones. I heard of one case where, day after day,
the lecturer's audience consisted of three students--and always
the same three. But one day two of them remained away.
The lecturer began as usual--
"Gentlemen," --then, without a smile, he corrected himself,
saying--
"Sir," --and went on with his discourse.
It is said that the vast majority of the Heidelberg students
are hard workers, and make the most of their opportunities;
that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation,
and no time to spare for frolicking. One lecture follows
right on the heels of another, with very little time
for the student to get out of one hall and into the next;
but the industrious ones manage it by going on a trot.
The professors assist them in the saving of their time
by being promptly in their little boxed-up pulpits when the
hours strike, and as promptly out again when the hour finishes.
I entered an empty lecture-room one day just before the
clock struck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks
and benches for about two hundred persons.
About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred
and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats,
immediately spread open their notebooks and dipped their
pens in ink. When the clock began to strike, a burly
professor entered, was received with a round of applause,
moved swiftly down the center aisle, said "Gentlemen,"
and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps; and by
the time he had arrived in his box and faced his audience,
his lecture was well under way and all the pens were going.
He had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and
energy for an hour--then the students began to remind
him in certain well-understood ways that his time was up;
he seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down
his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse
as he struck the floor; everybody rose respectfully,
and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared.
An instant rush for some other lecture-room followed,
and in a minute I was alone with the empty benches
once more.
Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule.
Out of eight hundred in the town, I knew the faces of only
about fifty; but these I saw everywhere, and daily.
They walked about the streets and the wooded hills,
they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped
beer and coffee, afternoons, in the Schloss gardens.
A good many of them wore colored caps of the corps.
They were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners
were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless,
comfortable life. If a dozen of them sat together and a lady
or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted,
they all rose to their feet and took off their caps.
The members of a corps always received a fellow-member
in this way, too; but they paid no attention to members
of other corps; they did not seem to see them. This was not
a discourtesy; it was only a part of the elaborate and rigid
corps etiquette.
There seems to be no chilly distance existing between the
German students and the professor; but, on the contrary,
a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness
and reserve. When the professor enters a beer-hall
in the evening where students are gathered together,
these rise up and take off their caps, and invite the old
gentleman to sit with them and partake. He accepts,
and the pleasant talk and the beer flow for an hour or two,
and by and by the professor, properly charged and comfortable,
gives a cordial good night, while the students stand
bowing and uncovered; and then he moves on his happy
way homeward with all his vast cargo of learning afloat
in his hold. Nobody finds fault or feels outraged;
no harm has been done.
It seemed to be a part of corps etiquette to keep a dog
or so, too. I mean a corps dog--the common property of
the organization, like the corps steward or head servant;
then there are other dogs, owned by individuals.
On a summer afternoon in the Castle gardens, I have
seen six students march solemnly into the grounds,
in single file, each carrying a bright Chinese parasol
and leading a prodigious dog by a string. It was a very
imposing spectacle. Sometimes there would be as many
dogs around the pavilion as students; and of all breeds
and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. These dogs
had a rather dry time of it; for they were tied to the
benches and had no amusement for an hour or two at a time
except what they could get out of pawing at the gnats,
or trying to sleep and not succeeding. However, they got
a lump of sugar occasionally--they were fond of that.
It seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs;
but everybody else had them, too--old men and young ones,
old women and nice young ladies. If there is one spectacle
that is unpleasanter than another, it is that of an
elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string.
It is said to be the sign and symbol of blighted love.
It seems to me that some other way of advertising it might
be devised, which would be just as conspicuous and yet
not so trying to the proprieties.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going
pleasure-seeking student carries an empty head.
Just the contrary. He has spent nine years in the gymnasium,
under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously
compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently, he has
left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive
and complete, that the most a university can do for it
is to perfect some of its profounder specialties.
It is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not
only has a comprehensive education, but he KNOWS what he
knows--it is not befogged with uncertainty, it is burnt
into him so that it will stay. For instance, he does not
merely read and write Greek, but speaks it; the same with
the Latin. Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium;
its rules are too severe. They go to the university
to put a mansard roof on their whole general education;
but the German student already has his mansard roof, so he
goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty,
such as a particular branch of law, or diseases of the eye,
or special study of the ancient Gothic tongues.
So this German attends only the lectures which belong
to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog
around and has a general good time the rest of the day.
He has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty
of the university life is just what he needs and likes
and thoroughly appreciates; and as it cannot last forever,
he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays
up a good rest against the day that must see him put on
the chains once more and enter the slavery of official
or professional life.
CHAPTER V
At the Students' Dueling-Ground
[Dueling by Wholesale]
One day in the interest of science my agent obtained
permission to bring me to the students' dueling-place. We
crossed the river and drove up the bank a few hundred yards,
then turned to the left, entered a narrow alley, followed it
a hundred yards and arrived at a two-story public house;
we were acquainted with its outside aspect, for it was
visible from the hotel. We went upstairs and passed into
a large whitewashed apartment which was perhaps fifty feet
long by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high.
It was a well-lighted place. There was no carpet.
Across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row
of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five
students [1. See Appendix C] were sitting.
Some of them were sipping wine, others were playing cards,
others chess, other groups were chatting together,
and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for
the coming duels. Nearly all of them wore colored caps;
there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps,
and bright-yellow ones; so, all the five corps were
present in strong force. In the windows at the vacant
end of the room stood six or eight, narrow-bladed swords
with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside
was a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone.
He understood his business; for when a sword left his hand
one could shave himself with it.
It was observable that the young gentlemen neither bowed
to nor spoke with students whose caps differed in color
from their own. This did not mean hostility, but only an
armed neutrality. It was considered that a person could
strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest interest,
if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with
his antagonist; therefore, comradeship between the corps
was not permitted. At intervals the presidents of the five
corps have a cold official intercourse with each other,
but nothing further. For example, when the regular
dueling-day of one of the corps approaches, its president
calls for volunteers from among the membership to
offer battle; three or more respond--but there must not
be less than three; the president lays their names before
the other presidents, with the request that they furnish
antagonists for these challengers from among their corps.
This is promptly done. It chanced that the present
occasion was the battle-day of the Red Cap Corps.
They were the challengers, and certain caps of other colors
had volunteered to meet them. The students fight duels
in the room which I have described, TWO DAYS IN EVERY WEEK
DURING SEVEN AND A HALF OR EIGHT MONTHS IN EVERY YEAR.
This custom had continued in Germany two hundred and fifty years.
To return to my narrative. A student in a white cap
met us and introduced us to six or eight friends of his
who also wore white caps, and while we stood conversing,
two strange-looking figures were led in from another room.
They were students panoplied for the duel. They were bareheaded;
their eyes were protected by iron goggles which projected
an inch or more, the leather straps of which bound
their ears flat against their heads were wound around
and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not
cut through; from chin to ankle they were padded thoroughly
against injury; their arms were bandaged and rebandaged,
layer upon layer, until they looked like solid black logs.
These weird apparitions had been handsome youths,
clad in fashionable attire, fifteen minutes before,
but now they did not resemble any beings one ever sees
unless in nightmares. They strode along, with their arms
projecting straight out from their bodies; they did
not hold them out themselves, but fellow-students walked
beside them and gave the needed support.
There was a rush for the vacant end of the room, now,
and we followed and got good places. The combatants were
placed face to face, each with several members of his own
corps about him to assist; two seconds, well padded,
and with swords in their hands, took their stations;
a student belonging to neither of the opposing corps
placed himself in a good position to umpire the combat;
another student stood by with a watch and a memorandum-book
to keep record of the time and the number and nature of
the wounds; a gray-haired surgeon was present with his lint,
his bandages, and his instruments. After a moment's pause
the duelists saluted the umpire respectfully, then one
after another the several officials stepped forward,
gracefully removed their caps and saluted him also,
and returned to their places. Everything was ready now;
students stood crowded together in the foreground,
and others stood behind them on chairs and tables.
Every face was turned toward the center of attraction.
The combatants were watching each other with alert eyes;
a perfect stillness, a breathless interest reigned.
I felt that I was going to see some wary work. But not so.
The instant the word was given, the two apparitions
sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each
other with such lightning rapidity that I could not quite
tell whether I saw the swords or only flashes they made
in the air; the rattling din of these blows as they struck
steel or paddings was something wonderfully stirring,
and they were struck with such terrific force that I could
not understand why the opposing sword was not beaten
down under the assault. Presently, in the midst of the
sword-flashes, I saw a handful of hair skip into the air
as if it had lain loose on the victim's head and a breath
of wind had puffed it suddenly away.
The seconds cried "Halt!" and knocked up the combatants'
swords with their own. The duelists sat down; a student
official stepped forward, examined the wounded head
and touched the place with a sponge once or twice;
the surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound
--and revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long,
and proceeded to bind an oval piece of leather and a bunch
of lint over it; the tally-keeper stepped up and tallied
one for the opposition in his book.
Then the duelists took position again; a small stream of
blood was flowing down the side of the injured man's head,
and over his shoulder and down his body to the floor,
but he did not seem to mind this. The word was given,
and they plunged at each other as fiercely as before;
once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed;
every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice
that a sword was bent--then they called "Halt!" struck up
the contending weapons, and an assisting student straightened
the bent one.
The wonderful turmoil went on--presently a bright spark
sprung from a blade, and that blade broken in several pieces,
sent one of its fragments flying to the ceiling.
A new sword was provided and the fight proceeded.
The exercise was tremendous, of course, and in time
the fighters began to show great fatigue. They were
allowed to rest a moment, every little while; they got
other rests by wounding each other, for then they could
sit down while the doctor applied the lint and bandages.
The laws is that the battle must continue fifteen minutes
if the men can hold out; and as the pauses do not count,
this duel was protracted to twenty or thirty minutes,
I judged. At last it was decided that the men were too much
wearied to do battle longer. They were led away drenched
with crimson from head to foot. That was a good fight,
but it could not count, partly because it did not last
the lawful fifteen minutes (of actual fighting), and
partly because neither man was disabled by his wound.
It was a drawn battle, and corps law requires that drawn
battles shall be refought as soon as the adversaries are
well of their hurts.
During the conflict, I had talked a little, now and then,
with a young gentleman of the White Cap Corps, and he
had mentioned that he was to fight next--and had also
pointed out his challenger, a young gentleman who was
leaning against the opposite wall smoking a cigarette
and restfully observing the duel then in progress.
My acquaintanceship with a party to the coming contest
had the effect of giving me a kind of personal interest
in it; I naturally wished he might win, and it was
the reverse of pleasant to learn that he probably
would not, because, although he was a notable swordsman,
the challenger was held to be his superior.
The duel presently began and in the same furious way
which had marked the previous one. I stood close by,
but could not tell which blows told and which did not,
they fell and vanished so like flashes of light. They all
seemed to tell; the swords always bent over the opponents'
heads, from the forehead back over the crown, and seemed
to touch, all the way; but it was not so--a protecting
blade, invisible to me, was always interposed between.
At the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve
or fifteen blows, and warded off twelve or fifteen,
and no harm done; then a sword became disabled, and a short
rest followed whilst a new one was brought. Early in the
next round the White Corps student got an ugly wound on
the side of his head and gave his opponent one like it.
In the third round the latter received another bad wound
in the head, and the former had his under-lip divided.
After that, the White Corps student gave many severe wounds,
but got none of the consequence in return. At the end
of five minutes from the beginning of the duel the surgeon
stopped it; the challenging party had suffered such
injuries that any addition to them might be dangerous.
These injuries were a fearful spectacle, but are better
left undescribed. So, against expectation, my acquaintance
was the victor.
CHAPTER VI
[A Sport that Sometimes Kills]
The third duel was brief and bloody. The surgeon stopped
it when he saw that one of the men had received such bad
wounds that he could not fight longer without endangering
his life.
The fourth duel was a tremendous encounter; but at the end
of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more:
another man so severely hurt as to render it unsafe to add
to his harms. I watched this engagement as I watched
the others--with rapt interest and strong excitement,
and with a shrink and a shudder for every blow that laid
open a cheek or a forehead; and a conscious paling of my
face when I occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking
nature inflicted. My eyes were upon the loser of this
duel when he got his last and vanquishing wound--it
was in his face and it carried away his--but no matter,
I must not enter into details. I had but a glance, and then
turned quickly, but I would not have been looking at all if I
had known what was coming. No, that is probably not true;
one thinks he would not look if he knew what was coming,
but the interest and the excitement are so powerful that
they would doubtless conquer all other feelings; and so,
under the fierce exhilaration of the clashing steel,
he would yield and look after all. Sometimes spectators
of these duels faint--and it does seem a very reasonable
thing to do, too.
Both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt so much
that the surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an
hour--a fact which is suggestive. But this waiting interval
was not wasted in idleness by the assembled students.
It was past noon, therefore they ordered their landlord,
downstairs, to send up hot beefsteaks, chickens, and such things,
and these they ate, sitting comfortable at the several tables,
whilst they chatted, disputed and laughed. The door to
the surgeon's room stood open, meantime, but the cutting,
sewing, splicing, and bandaging going on in there in
plain view did not seem to disturb anyone's appetite.
I went in and saw the surgeon labor awhile, but could
not enjoy; it was much less trying to see the wounds
given and received than to see them mended; the stir
and turmoil, and the music of the steel, were wanting
here--one's nerves were wrung by this grisly spectacle,
whilst the duel's compensating pleasurable thrill was lacking.
Finally the doctor finished, and the men who were to fight
the closing battle of the day came forth. A good many
dinners were not completed, yet, but no matter, they could
be eaten cold, after the battle; therefore everybody
crowded forth to see. This was not a love duel, but a
"satisfaction" affair. These two students had quarreled,
and were here to settle it. They did not belong to any of
the corps, but they were furnished with weapons and armor,
and permitted to fight here by the five corps as a courtesy.
Evidently these two young men were unfamiliar with the
dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar with
the sword. When they were placed in position they thought
it was time to begin--and then did begin, too, and with
a most impetuous energy, without waiting for anybody
to give the word. This vastly amused the spectators,
and even broke down their studied and courtly gravity
and surprised them into laughter. Of course the seconds
struck up the swords and started the duel over again.
At the word, the deluge of blows began, but before long
the surgeon once more interfered--for the only reason
which ever permits him to interfere--and the day's
war was over. It was now two in the afternoon, and I
had been present since half past nine in the morning.
The field of battle was indeed a red one by this time;
but some sawdust soon righted that. There had been one
duel before I arrived. In it one of the men received
many injuries, while the other one escaped without
a scratch.
I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed
in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet
had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected
any fleeting expression which confessed the sharp pain
the hurts were inflicting. This was good fortitude,
indeed. Such endurance is to be expected in savages
and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it;
but to find it in such perfection in these gently bred
and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise.
It was not merely under the excitement of the sword-play
that this fortitude was shown; it was shown in the surgeon's
room where an uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there
was no audience. The doctor's manipulations brought
out neither grimaces nor moans. And in the fights
it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed
with the same tremendous spirit, after they were covered
with streaming wounds, which they had shown in the beginning.
The world in general looks upon the college duels as very
farcical affairs: true, but considering that the college
duel is fought by boys; that the swords are real swords;
and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me
that it is a farce which had quite a grave side to it.
People laugh at it mainly because they think the student
is so covered up with armor that he cannot be hurt.
But it is not so; his eyes are ears are protected,
but the rest of his face and head are bare. He can not only
be badly wounded, but his life is in danger; and he would
sometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon.
It is not intended that his life shall be endangered.
Fatal accidents are possible, however. For instance,
the student's sword may break, and the end of it fly
up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which
could not be reached if the sword remained whole.
This has happened, sometimes, and death has resulted
on the spot. Formerly the student's armpits were not
protected--and at that time the swords were pointed,
whereas they are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit
was sometimes cut, and death followed. Then in the days
of sharp-pointed swords, a spectator was an occasional
victim--the end of a broken sword flew five or ten
feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart,
and death ensued instantly. The student duels in Germany
occasion two or three deaths every year, now, but this
arises only from the carelessness of the wounded men;
they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the
way of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such
a headway that it cannot be arrested. Indeed, there is
blood and pain and danger enough about the college duel
to entitle it to a considerable degree of respect.
All the customs, all the laws, all the details,
pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive.
The grave, precise, and courtly ceremony with which the
thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of antique charm.
This dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament,
not the prize-fight. The laws are as curious as they
are strict. For instance, the duelist may step forward
from the line he is placed upon, if he chooses, but never
back of it. If he steps back of it, or even leans back,
it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive
an advantage; so he is dismissed from his corps in disgrace.
It would seem natural to step from under a descending
sword unconsciously, and against one's will and intent--yet
this unconsciousness is not allowed. Again: if under the
sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a grimace,
he falls some degrees in the estimation of his fellows;
his corps are ashamed of him: they call him "hare foot,"
which is the German equivalent for chicken-hearted.
CHAPTER VII
[How Bismark Fought]
In addition to the corps laws, there are some corps
usages which have the force of laws.
Perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the
membership who is no longer an exempt--that is a freshman
--has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering
to fight; some day, the president, instead of calling
for volunteers, will APPOINT this sophomore to measure
swords with a student of another corps; he is free
to decline--everybody says so--there is no compulsion.
This is all true--but I have not heard of any student
who DID decline; to decline and still remain in the corps
would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so,
since he knew, when he joined, that his main business,
as a member, would be to fight. No, there is no law
against declining--except the law of custom, which is
confessedly stronger than written law, everywhere.
The ten men whose duels I had witnessed did not go away
when their hurts were dressed, as I had supposed they would,
but came back, one after another, as soon as they were free
of the surgeon, and mingled with the assemblage in the
dueling-room. The white-cap student who won the second
fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us
during the intermissions. He could not talk very well,
because his opponent's sword had cut his under-lip in two,
and then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it
with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could
he eat easily, still he contrived to accomplish a slow
and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing.
The man who was the worst hurt of all played chess
while waiting to see this engagement. A good part of
his face was covered with patches and bandages, and all
the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them.
It is said that the student likes to appear on the street
and in other public places in this kind of array,
and that this predilection often keeps him out when
exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him.
Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle
in the public gardens of Heidelberg. It is also said
that the student is glad to get wounds in the face,
because the scars they leave will show so well there;
and it is also said that these face wounds are so prized
that youths have even been known to pull them apart
from time to time and put red wine in them to make
them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible.
It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted
and maintained, nevertheless; I am sure of one thing--scars
are plenty enough in Germany, among the young men;
and very grim ones they are, too. They crisscross the face
in angry red welts, and are permanent and ineffaceable.
Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect;
and the effect is striking when several such accent
the milder ones, which form a city map on a man's face;
they suggest the "burned district" then. We had often
noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk
band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts.
It transpired that this signifies that the wearer has
fought three duels in which a decision was reached--duels
in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn
battles do not count. [1] After a student has received
his ribbon, he is "free"; he can cease from fighting,
without reproach--except some one insult him; his president
cannot appoint him to fight; he can volunteer if he
wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so.
Statistics show that he does NOT prefer to remain quiescent.
They show that the duel has a singular fascination about
it somewhere, for these free men, so far from resting upon
the privilege of the badge, are always volunteering.
A corps student told me it was of record that Prince
Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer
term when he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine
after his badge had given him the right to retire from
the field.
1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar,
in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed
portrait-groups of the Five Corps; some were recent,
but many antedated photography, and were pictured in
lithography--the dates ranged back to forty or fifty
years ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across
his breast. In one portrait-group representing (as each
of these pictures did) an entire Corps, I took pains
to count the ribbons: there were twenty-seven members,
and twenty-one of them wore that significant badge.
The statistics may be found to possess interest in
several particulars. Two days in every week are devoted
to dueling. The rule is rigid that there must be three
duels on each of these days; there are generally more,
but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day
I was present; sometimes there are seven or eight.
It is insisted that eight duels a week--four for each
of the two days--is too low an average to draw a
calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis,
preferring an understatement to an overstatement of the case.
This requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred
duelists a year--for in summer the college term is about
three and a half months, and in winter it is four months
and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty
students in the university at the time I am writing of,
only eighty belonged to the five corps, and it is only
these corps that do the dueling; occasionally other
students borrow the arms and battleground of the five corps
in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen
every dueling-day. [2] Consequently eighty youths furnish
the material for some two hundred and fifty duels a year.
This average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty.
This large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders
stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer.
2. They have to borrow the arms because they could not
get them elsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it,
the public authorities, all over Germany, allow the five
Corps to keep swords, but DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO USE THEM.
This is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that
is lax.
Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students
make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice
with the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the
Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to illustrate
some new sword trick which they have heard about;
and between the duels, on the day whose history I
have been writing, the swords were not always idle;
every now and then we heard a succession of the keen
hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being
put through its paces in the air, and this informed us
that a student was practicing. Necessarily, this unceasing
attention to the art develops an expert occasionally.
He becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads
to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen,
to fight with a Goettingen expert; if he is victorious,
he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will
send their experts to him. Americans and Englishmen often
join one or another of the five corps. A year or two ago,
the principal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian;
he was invited to the various universities and left
a wake of victory behind him all about Germany;
but at last a little student in Strasburg defeated him.
There was formerly a student in Heidelberg who had picked
up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up
under instead of cleaving down from above. While the trick
lasted he won in sixteen successive duels in his university;
but by that time observers had discovered what his charm was,
and how to break it, therefore his championship ceased.
A rule which forbids social intercourse between members
of different corps is strict. In the dueling-house, in
the parks, on the street, and anywhere and everywhere that
the students go, caps of a color group themselves together.
If all the tables in a public garden were crowded
but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it
and ten vacant places, the yellow-caps, the blue-caps,
the white caps, and the green caps, seeking seats,
would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor seem
to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds.
The student by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit
the dueling-place, wore the white cap--Prussian Corps.
He introduced us to many white caps, but to none of
another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us,
who were strangers, and required us to group with the white
corps only, and speak only with the white corps, while we
were their guests, and keep aloof from the caps of the
other colors. Once I wished to examine some of the swords,
but an American student said, "It would not be quite polite;
these now in the windows all have red hilts or blue;
they will bring in some with white hilts presently,
and those you can handle freely. "When a sword was broken
in the first duel, I wanted a piece of it; but its hilt
was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest
to await a properer season. It was brought to me after
the room was cleared, and I will now make a "life-size"
sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen,
to show the width of the weapon. [Figure 1] The length of
these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy.
One's disposition to cheer, during the course of the
duels or at their close, was naturally strong, but corps
etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort.
However brilliant a contest or a victory might be,
no sign or sound betrayed that any one was moved.
A dignified gravity and repression were maintained at
all times.
When the dueling was finished and we were ready to go,
the gentlemen of the Prussian Corps to whom we had been
introduced took off their caps in the courteous German way,
and also shook hands; their brethren of the same order
took off their caps and bowed, but without shaking hands;
the gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as
they would have treated white caps--they fell apart,
apparently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway,
but did not seem to see us or know we were there.
If we had gone thither the following week as guests of
another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense,
would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored
our presence.
[How strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life!
I had not been home a full half-hour, after witnessing
those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it
necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist
personally at a real one--a duel with no effeminate
limitation in the matter of results, but a battle
to the death. An account of it, in the next chapter,
will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun,
and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.]
CHAPTER VIII
The Great French Duel
[I Second Gambetta in a Terrific Duel]
Much as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain
smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous
institutions of our day. Since it is always fought in the
open air, the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold.
M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most inveterate of the French
duelists, had suffered so often in this way that he is at
last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in Paris
has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for
fifteen or twenty years more--unless he forms the habit
of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts
cannot intrude--he will eventually endanger his life.
This ought to moderate the talk of those people who are
so stubborn in maintaining that the French duel is the
most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air
exercise it affords. And it ought also to moderate that
foolish talk about French duelists and socialist-hated
monarchs being the only people who are immoral.
But it is time to get at my subject. As soon as I heard
of the late fiery outbreak between M. Gambetta and M. Fourtou
in the French Assembly, I knew that trouble must follow.
I knew it because a long personal friendship with
M. Gambetta revealed to me the desperate and implacable
nature of the man. Vast as are his physical proportions,
I knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate
to the remotest frontiers of his person.
I did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once
to him. As I had expected, I found the brave fellow
steeped in a profound French calm. I say French calm,
because French calmness and English calmness have points
of difference. He was moving swiftly back and forth
among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving
chance fragments of it across the room with his foot;
grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth;
and halting every little while to deposit another handful
of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on
the table.
He threw his arms around my neck, bent me over his stomach
to his breast, kissed me on both cheeks, hugged me four
or five times, and then placed me in his own arm-chair.
As soon as I had got well again, we began business at once.
I said I supposed he would wish me to act as his second,
and he said, "Of course." I said I must be allowed
to act under a French name, so that I might be shielded
from obloquy in my country, in case of fatal results.
He winced here, probably at the suggestion that dueling was
not regarded with respect in America. However, he agreed
to my requirement. This accounts for the fact that in all
the newspaper reports M. Gambetta's second was apparently
a Frenchman.
First, we drew up my principal's will. I insisted upon this,
and stuck to my point. I said I had never heard of a man
in his right mind going out to fight a duel without
first making his will. He said he had never heard
of a man in his right mind doing anything of the kind.
When he had finished the will, he wished to proceed
to a choice of his "last words." He wanted to know
how the following words, as a dying exclamation, struck me:
"I die for my God, for my country, for freedom of speech,
for progress, and the universal brotherhood of man!"
I objected that this would require too lingering a death;
it was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited
to the exigencies of the field of honor. We wrangled
over a good many ante-mortem outbursts, but I finally got
him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied
into his memorandum-book, purposing to get it by heart:
"I DIE THAT FRANCE MIGHT LIVE."
I said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy; but he
said relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last words,
what you wanted was thrill.
The next thing in order was the choice of weapons.
My principal said he was not feeling well, and would leave
that and the other details of the proposed meeting to me.
Therefore I wrote the following note and carried it to
M. Fourtou's friend:
Sir: M. Gambetta accepts M. Fourtou's challenge,
and authorizes me to propose Plessis-Piquet as the place
of meeting; tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time;
and axes as the weapons.
I am, sir, with great respect,
Mark Twain.
M. Fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered.
Then he turned to me, and said, with a suggestion of
severity in his tone:
"Have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable
result of such a meeting as this?"
"Well, for instance, what WOULD it be?"
"Bloodshed!"
"That's about the size of it," I said. "Now, if it is
a fair question, what was your side proposing to shed?"
I had him there. He saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened
to explain it away. He said he had spoken jestingly.
Then he added that he and his principal would enjoy axes,
and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred
by the French code, and so I must change my proposal.
I walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind,
and finally it occurred to me that Gatling-guns at fifteen
paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field
of honor. So I framed this idea into a proposition.
But it was not accepted. The code was in the way again.
I proposed rifles; then double-barreled shotguns;
then Colt's navy revolvers. These being all rejected,
I reflected awhile, and sarcastically suggested brickbats
at three-quarters of a mile. I always hate to fool away
a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humor;
and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly
away to submit the last proposition to his principal.
He came back presently and said his principal was charmed
with the idea of brickbats at three-quarters of a mile,
but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested
parties passing between them. Then I said:
"Well, I am at the end of my string, now. Perhaps YOU
would be good enough to suggest a weapon? Perhaps you
have even had one in your mind all the time?"
His countenance brightened, and he said with alacrity:
"Oh, without doubt, monsieur!"
So he fell to hunting in his pockets--pocket after pocket,
and he had plenty of them--muttering all the while,
"Now, what could I have done with them?"
At last he was successful. He fished out of his vest pocket
a couple of little things which I carried to the light
and ascertained to be pistols. They were single-barreled
and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty.
I was not able to speak for emotion. I silently hung
one of them on my watch-chain, and returned the other.
My companion in crime now unrolled a postage-stamp
containing several cartridges, and gave me one of them.
I asked if he meant to signify by this that our men were
to be allowed but one shot apiece. He replied that the
French code permitted no more. I then begged him to go
and suggest a distance, for my mind was growing weak
and confused under the strain which had been put upon it.
He named sixty-five yards. I nearly lost my patience.
I said:
"Sixty-five yards, with these instruments? Squirt-guns
would be deadlier at fifty. Consider, my friend,
you and I are banded together to destroy life, not make
it eternal."
But with all my persuasions, all my arguments, I was only
able to get him to reduce the distance to thirty-five yards;
and even this concession he made with reluctance,
and said with a sigh, "I wash my hands of this slaughter;
on your head be it."
There was nothing for me but to go home to my old
lion-heart and tell my humiliating story. When I entered,
M. Gambetta was laying his last lock of hair upon the altar.
He sprang toward me, exclaiming:
"You have made the fatal arrangements--I see it in your eye!"
"I have."
His face paled a trifle, and he leaned upon the table
for support. He breathed thick and heavily for a moment
or two, so tumultuous were his feelings; then he hoarsely
whispered:
"The weapon, the weapon! Quick! what is the weapon?"
"This!" and I displayed that silver-mounted thing.
He cast but one glance at it, then swooned ponderously
to the floor.
When he came to, he said mournfully:
"The unnatural calm to which I have subjected myself
has told upon my nerves. But away with weakness!
I will confront my fate like a man and a Frenchman."
He rose to his feet, and assumed an attitude which
for sublimity has never been approached by man,
and has seldom been surpassed by statues. Then he said,
in his deep bass tones:
"Behold, I am calm, I am ready; reveal to me the distance."
"Thirty-five yards." ...
I could not lift him up, of course; but I rolled him over,
and poured water down his back. He presently came to,
and said:
"Thirty-five yards--without a rest? But why ask? Since
murder was that man's intention, why should he palter
with small details? But mark you one thing: in my fall
the world shall see how the chivalry of France meets death."
After a long silence he asked:
"Was nothing said about that man's family standing
up with him, as an offset to my bulk? But no matter;
I would not stoop to make such a suggestion; if he is
not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is welcome
to this advantage, which no honorable man would take."
He now sank into a sort of stupor of reflection,
which lasted some minutes; after which he broke silence with:
"The hour--what is the hour fixed for the collision?"
"Dawn, tomorrow."
He seemed greatly surprised, and immediately said:
"Insanity! I never heard of such a thing. Nobody is
abroad at such an hour."
"That is the reason I named it. Do you mean to say you
want an audience?"
"It is no time to bandy words. I am astonished that M. Fourtou
should ever have agreed to so strange an innovation.
Go at once and require a later hour."
I ran downstairs, threw open the front door, and almost
plunged into the arms of M. Fourtou's second. He said:
"I have the honor to say that my principal strenuously
objects to the hour chosen, and begs you will consent
to change it to half past nine."
"Any courtesy, sir, which it is in our power to extend
is at the service of your excellent principal. We agree
to the proposed change of time."
"I beg you to accept the thanks of my client." Then he
turned to a person behind him, and said, "You hear, M. Noir,
the hour is altered to half past nine." Whereupon
M. Noir bowed, expressed his thanks, and went away.
My accomplice continued:
"If agreeable to you, your chief surgeons and ours shall
proceed to the field in the same carriage as is customary."
"It is entirely agreeable to me, and I am obliged
to you for mentioning the surgeons, for I am afraid
I should not have thought of them. How many shall
I want? I supposed two or three will be enough?"
"Two is the customary number for each party. I refer
to 'chief' surgeons; but considering the exalted positions
occupied by our clients, it will be well and decorous
that each of us appoint several consulting surgeons,
from among the highest in the profession. These will
come in their own private carriages. Have you engaged
a hearse?"
"Bless my stupidity, I never thought of it! I will attend
to it right away. I must seem very ignorant to you;
but you must try to overlook that, because I have never
had any experience of such a swell duel as this before.
I have had a good deal to do with duels on the Pacific coast,
but I see now that they were crude affairs. A hearse--sho!
we used to leave the elected lying around loose, and let
anybody cord them up and cart them off that wanted to.
Have you anything further to suggest?"
"Nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride together,
as is usual. The subordinates and mutes will go on foot,
as is also usual. I will see you at eight o'clock
in the morning, and we will then arrange the order
of the procession. I have the honor to bid you a good day."
I returned to my client, who said, "Very well;
at what hour is the engagement to begin?"
"Half past nine."
"Very good indeed.; Have you sent the fact to the newspapers?"
"SIR! If after our long and intimate friendship you can
for a moment deem me capable of so base a treachery--"
"Tut, tut! What words are these, my dear friend? Have I
wounded you? Ah, forgive me; I am overloading you with labor.
Therefore go on with the other details, and drop this
one from your list. The bloody-minded Fourtou will be
sure to attend to it. Or I myself--yes, to make certain,
I will drop a note to my journalistic friend, M. Noir--"
"Oh, come to think of it, you may save yourself the trouble;
that other second has informed M. Noir."
"H'm! I might have known it. It is just like that Fourtou,
who always wants to make a display."
At half past nine in the morning the procession approached
the field of Plessis-Piquet in the following order: first
came our carriage--nobody in it but M. Gambetta and myself;
then a carriage containing M. Fourtou and his second;
then a carriage containing two poet-orators who did
not believe in God, and these had MS. funeral orations
projecting from their breast pockets; then a carriage
containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments;
then eight private carriages containing consulting surgeons;
then a hack containing a coroner; then the two hearses;
then a carriage containing the head undertakers;
then a train of assistants and mutes on foot; and after
these came plodding through the fog a long procession
of camp followers, police, and citizens generally.
It was a noble turnout, and would have made a fine display
if we had had thinner weather.
There was no conversation. I spoke several times to
my principal, but I judge he was not aware of it, for he
always referred to his note-book and muttered absently,
"I die that France might live."
Arrived on the field, my fellow-second and I paced off
the thirty-five yards, and then drew lots for choice
of position. This latter was but an ornamental ceremony,
for all the choices were alike in such weather.
These preliminaries being ended, I went to my principal
and asked him if he was ready. He spread himself out
to his full width, and said in a stern voice, "Ready! Let
the batteries be charged."
The loading process was done in the presence of duly
constituted witnesses. We considered it best to perform
this delicate service with the assistance of a lantern,
on account of the state of the weather. We now placed
our men.
At this point the police noticed that the public had massed
themselves together on the right and left of the field;
they therefore begged a delay, while they should put
these poor people in a place of safety.
The request was granted.
The police having ordered the two multitudes to take
positions behind the duelists, we were once more ready.
The weather growing still more opaque, it was agreed between
myself and the other second that before giving the fatal
signal we should each deliver a loud whoop to enable
the combatants to ascertain each other's whereabouts.
I now returned to my principal, and was distressed
to observe that he had lost a good deal of his spirit.
I tried my best to hearten him. I said, "Indeed, sir,
things are not as bad as they seem. Considering the character
of the weapons, the limited number of shots allowed,
the generous distance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog,
and the added fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed
and the other cross-eyed and near-sighted, it seems to me
that this conflict need not necessarily be fatal. There are
chances that both of you may survive. Therefore, cheer up;
do not be downhearted."
This speech had so good an effect that my principal
immediately stretched forth his hand and said, "I am
myself again; give me the weapon."
I laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the center of the vast
solitude of his palm. He gazed at it and shuddered.
And still mournfully contemplating it, he murmured in a
broken voice:
"Alas, it is not death I dread, but mutilation."
I heartened him once more, and with such success that he
presently said, "Let the tragedy begin. Stand at my back;
do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend."
I gave him my promise. I now assisted him to point
his pistol toward the spot where I judged his adversary
to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and
further guide himself by my fellow-second's whoop.
Then I propped myself against M. Gambetta's back,
and raised a rousing "Whoop-ee!" This was answered from
out the far distances of the fog, and I immediately shouted:
"One--two--three--FIRE!"
Two little sounds like SPIT! SPIT! broke upon my ear,
and in the same instant I was crushed to the earth under
a mountain of flesh. Bruised as I was, I was still able
to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect:
"I die for... for ... perdition take it,
what IS it I die for? ... oh, yes--FRANCE! I die
that France may live!"
The surgeons swarmed around with their probes in
their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole
area of M. Gambetta's person, with the happy result of
finding nothing in the nature of a wound. Then a scene
ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting.
The two gladiators fell upon each other's neck, with floods
of proud and happy tears; that other second embraced me;
the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police,
everybody embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried,
and the whole atmosphere was filled with praise and with
joy unspeakable.
It seems to me then that I would rather be a hero
of a French duel than a crowned and sceptered monarch.
When the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body
of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal
of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there
was reason to believe that I would survive my injuries.
My internal hurts were deemed the most serious, since it
was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung,
and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far
to one side or the other of where they belonged, that it
was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their
functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities.
They then set my left arm in two places, pulled my right
hip into its socket again, and re-elevated my nose.
I was an object of great interest, and even admiration;
and many sincere and warm-hearted persons had themselves
introduced to me, and said they were proud to know
the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in
forty years.
I was placed in an ambulance at the very head of the procession;
and thus with gratifying 'ECLAT I was marched into Paris,
the most conspicuous figure in that great spectacle,
and deposited at the hospital.
The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred
upon me. However, few escape that distinction.
Such is the true version of the most memorable private
conflict of the age.
I have no complaints to make against any one. I acted
for myself, and I can stand the consequences.
Without boasting, I think I may say I am not afraid
to stand before a modern French duelist, but as long
as I keep in my right mind I will never consent to stand
behind one again.
CHAPTER IX
[What the Beautiful Maiden Said]
One day we took the train and went down to Mannheim
to see "King Lear" played in German. It was a mistake.
We sat in our seats three whole hours and never understood
anything but the thunder and lightning; and even that
was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came
first and the lightning followed after.
The behavior of the audience was perfect. There were
no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances;
each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding
was done after the curtain was down. The doors opened at
half past four, the play began promptly at half past five,
and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were
in their seats, and quiet reigned. A German gentleman
in the train had said that a Shakespearian play was an
appreciated treat in Germany and that we should find the
house filled. It was true; all the six tiers were filled,
and remained so to the end--which suggested that it is
not only balcony people who like Shakespeare in Germany,
but those of the pit and gallery, too.
Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree
--otherwise an opera--the one called "Lohengrin." The
banging and slamming and booming and crashing were
something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless
pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside
the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed.
There were circumstances which made it necessary for me
to stay through the hour hours to the end, and I stayed;
but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season
of suffering is indestructible. To have to endure it
in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder.
I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers,
of the two sexes, and this compelled repression;
yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I could hardly
keep the tears back. At those times, as the howlings
and wailings and shrieking of the singers, and the ragings
and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose
higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer
and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone.
Those strangers would not have been surprised to see
a man do such a thing who was being gradually skinned,
but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks
about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the
present case which was an advantage over being skinned.
There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act,
and I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I
should desert to stay out. There was another wait
of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone
through so much by that time that I had no spirit left,
and so had no desire but to be let alone.
I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there
were like me, for, indeed, they were not. Whether it
was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it
was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it,
I did not at the time know; but they did like--this was
plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked
as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs;
and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet,
in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick
with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause
swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me.
Of course, there were many people there who were not
under compulsion to stay; yet the tiers were as full at
the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed
that the people liked it.
It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner
of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough;
but there was not much action. That is to say,
there was not much really done, it was only talked about;
and always violently. It was what one might call a
narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and a grievance,
and none were reasonable about it, but all in an offensive
and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort
of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand
down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices,
and keep holding out their arms toward each other and drawing
them back and spreading both hands over first one breast
and then the other with a shake and a pressure--no,
it was every rioter for himself and no blending.
Each sang his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by
the whole orchestra of sixty instruments, and when this had
continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come
to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus
composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth,
and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived
over again all that I suffered the time the orphan asylum burned
down.
We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's
sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent
and acrimonious reproduction of the other place.
This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around
and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus.
To my untutored ear that was music--almost divine music.
While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm
of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could
almost resuffer the torments which had gone before,
in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep
ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so
largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously
augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is
prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose,
just as an honest man in politics shines more than he
would elsewhere.
I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans
like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild
and moderate way, but with their whole hearts.
This is a legitimate result of habit and education.
Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt.
One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes
it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of the other
forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the
rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it.
The latter usually hum the airs while they are being sung,
so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been
to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur
often enough.
A gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl
of seventeen sat right in front of us that night at the
Mannheim opera. These people talked, between the acts,
and I understood them, though I understood nothing
that was uttered on the distant stage. At first they
were guarded in their talk, but after they had heard
my agent and me conversing in English they dropped their
reserve and I picked up many of their little confidences;
no, I mean many of HER little confidences--meaning
the elder party--for the young girl only listened,
and gave assenting nods, but never said a word. How pretty
she was, and how sweet she was! I wished she would speak.
But evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts,
her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure
in silence. But she was not dreaming sleepy dreams--no,
she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still
a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was
of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round
young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled
over with the gracefulest little fringy films of lace;
she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes;
and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such
a dear little rosebud of a mouth; and she was so dovelike,
so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching.
For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak.
And at last she did; the red lips parted, and out leaps her
thought--and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm,
too: "Auntie, I just KNOW I've got five hundred fleas
on me!"
That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been
very much over the average. The average at that time
in the Grand Duchy of Baden was forty-five to a young
person (when alone), according to the official estimate
of the home secretary for that year; the average for older
people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a
wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders
she immediately lowered their average and raised her own.
She became a sort of contribution-box. This dear young
thing in the theater had been sitting there unconsciously
taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our
neighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming.
In that large audience, that night, there were eight very
conspicuous people. These were ladies who had their hats
or bonnets on. What a blessed thing it would be if a lady
could make herself conspicuous in our theaters by wearing
her hat. It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies
and gentlemen to take bonnets, hats, overcoats, canes,
or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in Mannheim this
rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely
made up of people from a distance, and among these were
always a few timid ladies who were afraid that if they had
to go into an anteroom to get their things when the play
was over, they would miss their train. But the great mass
of those who came from a distance always ran the risk
and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train
to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being
unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours.
CHAPTER X
[How Wagner Operas Bang Along]
Three or four hours. That is a long time to sit in one place,
whether one be conspicuous or not, yet some of Wagner's
operas bang along for six whole hours on a stretch!
But the people sit there and enjoy it all, and wish it
would last longer. A German lady in Munich told me
that a person could not like Wagner's music at first,
but must go through the deliberate process of learning
to like it--then he would have his sure reward;
for when he had learned to like it he would hunger
for it and never be able to get enough of it. She said
that six hours of Wagner was by no means too much.
She said that this composer had made a complete revolution
in music and was burying the old masters one by one.
And she said that Wagner's operas differed from all others
in one notable respect, and that was that they were not
merely spotted with music here and there, but were ALL music,
from the first strain to the last. This surprised me.
I said I had attended one of his insurrections, and found
hardly ANY music in it except the Wedding Chorus.
She said "Lohengrin" was noisier than Wagner's other operas,
but that if I would keep on going to see it I would find
by and by that it was all music, and therefore would
then enjoy it. I COULD have said, "But would you advise
a person to deliberately practice having a toothache
in the pit of his stomach for a couple of years in order
that he might then come to enjoy it?" But I reserved
that remark.
This lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor
who had performed in a Wagner opera the night before,
and went on to enlarge upon his old and prodigious fame,
and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the
princely houses of Germany. Here was another surprise.
I had attended that very opera, in the person of my agent,
and had made close and accurate observations. So I
said:
"Why, madam, MY experience warrants me in stating
that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all,
but only a shriek--the shriek of a hyena."
"That is very true," she said; "he cannot sing now;
it is already many years that he has lost his voice,
but in other times he sang, yes, divinely! So whenever
he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater
will not hold the people. JAWOHL BEI GOTT! his voice
is WUNDERSCHOEN in that past time."
I said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the
Germans which was worth emulating. I said that over
the water we were not quite so generous; that with us,
when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper had lost
his legs, these parties ceased to draw. I said I had been
to the opera in Hanover, once, and in Mannheim once,
and in Munich (through my authorized agent) once, and this
large experience had nearly persuaded me that the Germans
PREFERRED singers who couldn't sing. This was not such
a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly Mannheim
tenor's praises had been the talk of all Heidelberg for
a week before his performance took place--yet his voice
was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you
screech it across a window-pane. I said so to Heidelberg
friends the next day, and they said, in the calmest and
simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier
times his voice HAD been wonderfully fine. And the tenor
in Hanover was just another example of this sort.
The English-speaking German gentleman who went with me
to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that tenor.
He said:
"ACH GOTT! a great man! You shall see him. He is so celebrate
in all Germany--and he has a pension, yes, from the government.
He not obliged to sing now, only twice every year;
but if he not sing twice each year they take him his pension
away."
Very well, we went. When the renowned old tenor appeared,
I got a nudge and an excited whisper:
"Now you see him!"
But the "celebrate" was an astonishing disappointment to me.
If he had been behind a screen I should have supposed
they were performing a surgical operation on him.
I looked at my friend--to my great surprise he seemed
intoxicated with pleasure, his eyes were dancing
with eager delight. When the curtain at last fell,
he burst into the stormiest applause, and kept it up--as
did the whole house--until the afflictive tenor had
come three times before the curtain to make his bow.
While the glowing enthusiast was swabbing the perspiration
from his face, I said:
"I don't mean the least harm, but really, now, do you
think he can sing?"
"Him? NO! GOTT IM HIMMEL, ABER, how he has been able to
sing twenty-five years ago?" [Then pensively.] "ACH, no,
NOW he not sing any more, he only cry. When he think
he sing, now, he not sing at all, no, he only make
like a cat which is unwell."
Where and how did we get the idea that the Germans
are a stolid, phlegmatic race? In truth, they are
widely removed from that. They are warm-hearted,
emotional, impulsive, enthusiastic, their tears come
at the mildest touch, and it is not hard to move them
to laughter. They are the very children of impulse.
We are cold and self-contained, compared to the Germans.
They hug and kiss and cry and shout and dance and sing;
and where we use one loving, petting expressions they pour
out a score. Their language is full of endearing diminutives;
nothing that they love escapes the application of a petting
diminutive--neither the house, nor the dog, nor the horse,
nor the grandmother, nor any other creature, animate or
inanimate.
In the theaters at Hanover, Hamburg, and Mannheim,
they had a wise custom. The moment the curtain went up,
the light in the body of the house went down.
The audience sat in the cool gloom of a deep twilight,
which greatly enhanced the glowing splendors of the stage.
It saved gas, too, and people were not sweated to death.
When I saw "King Lear" played, nobody was allowed to see
a scene shifted; if there was nothing to be done but slide
a forest out of the way and expose a temple beyond, one did
not see that forest split itself in the middle and go
shrieking away, with the accompanying disenchanting spectacle
of the hands and heels of the impelling impulse--no,
the curtain was always dropped for an instant--one heard
not the least movement behind it--but when it went up,
the next instant, the forest was gone. Even when the
stage was being entirely reset, one heard no noise.
During the whole time that "King Lear" was playing
the curtain was never down two minutes at any one time.
The orchestra played until the curtain was ready to go up
for the first time, then they departed for the evening.
Where the stage waits never each two minutes there is no
occasion for music. I had never seen this two-minute
business between acts but once before, and that was when
the "Shaughraun" was played at Wallack's.
I was at a concert in Munich one night, the people
were streaming in, the clock-hand pointed to seven,
the music struck up, and instantly all movement in
the body of the house ceased--nobody was standing,
or walking up the aisles, or fumbling with a seat,
the stream of incomers had suddenly dried up at its source.
I listened undisturbed to a piece of music that was fifteen
minutes long--always expecting some tardy ticket-holders
to come crowding past my knees, and being continuously and
pleasantly disappointed--but when the last note was struck,
here came the stream again. You see, they had made
those late comers wait in the comfortable waiting-parlor
from the time the music had begin until it was ended.
It was the first time I had ever seen this sort of
criminals denied the privilege of destroying the comfort
of a house full of their betters. Some of these were
pretty fine birds, but no matter, they had to tarry
outside in the long parlor under the inspection of
a double rank of liveried footmen and waiting-maids
who supported the two walls with their backs and held
the wraps and traps of their masters and mistresses on their
arms.
We had no footmen to hold our things, and it was not
permissible to take them into the concert-room; but there
were some men and women to take charge of them for us.
They gave us checks for them and charged a fixed price,
payable in advance--five cents.
In Germany they always hear one thing at an opera
which has never yet been heard in America, perhaps--I
mean the closing strain of a fine solo or duet.
We always smash into it with an earthquake of applause.
The result is that we rob ourselves of the sweetest
part of the treat; we get the whiskey, but we don't get
the sugar in the bottom of the glass.
Our way of scattering applause along through an act seems
to me to be better than the Mannheim way of saving it
all up till the act is ended. I do not see how an actor
can forget himself and portray hot passion before a cold
still audience. I should think he would feel foolish.
It is a pain to me to this day, to remember how that old
German Lear raged and wept and howled around the stage,
with never a response from that hushed house, never a
single outburst till the act was ended. To me there was
something unspeakably uncomfortable in the solemn dead
silences that always followed this old person's tremendous
outpourings of his feelings. I could not help putting
myself in his place--I thought I knew how sick and flat
he felt during those silences, because I remembered a case
which came under my observation once, and which--but I
will tell the incident:
One evening on board a Mississippi steamboat, a boy of ten
years lay asleep in a berth--a long, slim-legged boy,
he was, encased in quite a short shirt; it was the first
time he had ever made a trip on a steamboat, and so he
was troubled, and scared, and had gone to bed with his
head filled with impending snaggings, and explosions,
and conflagrations, and sudden death. About ten o'clock
some twenty ladies were sitting around about the ladies'
saloon, quietly reading, sewing, embroidering, and so on,
and among them sat a sweet, benignant old dame with round
spectacles on her nose and her busy knitting-needles
in her hands. Now all of a sudden, into the midst of this
peaceful scene burst that slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt,
wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting, "Fire, fire!
JUMP AND RUN, THE BOAT'S AFIRE AND THERE AIN'T A MINUTE
TO LOSE!" All those ladies looked sweetly up and smiled,
nobody stirred, the old lady pulled her spectacles down,
looked over them, and said, gently:
"But you mustn't catch cold, child. Run and put on
your breastpin, and then come and tell us all about it."
It was a cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's
gushing vehemence. He was expecting to be a sort of
hero--the creator of a wild panic--and here everybody
sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made
fun of his bugbear. I turned and crept away--for I
was that boy--and never even cared to discover whether
I had dreamed the fire or actually seen it.
I am told that in a German concert or opera, they hardly
ever encore a song; that though they may be dying to hear
it again, their good breeding usually preserves them
against requiring the repetition.
Kings may encore; that is quite another matter;
it delights everybody to see that the King is pleased;
and as to the actor encored, his pride and gratification
are simply boundless. Still, there are circumstances
in which even a royal encore--
But it is better to illustrate. The King of Bavaria is
a poet, and has a poet's eccentricities--with the advantage
over all other poets of being able to gratify them,
no matter what form they may take. He is fond of opera,
but not fond of sitting in the presence of an audience;
therefore, it has sometimes occurred, in Munich,
that when an opera has been concluded and the players
were getting off their paint and finery, a command has
come to them to get their paint and finery on again.
Presently the King would arrive, solitary and alone,
and the players would begin at the beginning and do the
entire opera over again with only that one individual
in the vast solemn theater for audience. Once he took
an odd freak into his head. High up and out of sight,
over the prodigious stage of the court theater is a maze
of interlacing water-pipes, so pierced that in case
of fire, innumerable little thread-like streams of
water can be caused to descend; and in case of need,
this discharge can be augmented to a pouring flood.
American managers might want to make a note of that.
The King was sole audience. The opera proceeded,
it was a piece with a storm in it; the mimic thunder
began to mutter, the mimic wind began to wail and sough,
and the mimic rain to patter. The King's interest rose
higher and higher; it developed into enthusiasm. He cried
out:
"It is very, very good, indeed! But I will have real
rain! Turn on the water!"
The manager pleaded for a reversal of the command; said it
would ruin the costly scenery and the splendid costumes,
but the King cried:
"No matter, no matter, I will have real rain! Turn
on the water!"
So the real rain was turned on and began to descend in
gossamer lances to the mimic flower-beds and gravel walks
of the stage. The richly dressed actresses and actors
tripped about singing bravely and pretending not to mind it.
The King was delighted--his enthusiasm grew higher.
He cried out:
"Bravo, bravo! More thunder! more lightning! turn
on more rain!"
The thunder boomed, the lightning glared, the storm-winds raged,
the deluge poured down. The mimic royalty on the stage,
with their soaked satins clinging to their bodies,
slopped about ankle-deep in water, warbling their sweetest
and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the state sawed
away for dear life, with the cold overflow spouting down
the backs of their necks, and the dry and happy King sat
in his lofty box and wore his gloves to ribbons applauding.
"More yet!" cried the King; "more yet--let loose all
the thunder, turn on all the water! I will hang the man
that raises an umbrella!"
When this most tremendous and effective storm that had
ever been produced in any theater was at last over,
the King's approbation was measureless. He cried:
"Magnificent, magnificent! ENCORE! Do it again!"
But the manager succeeded in persuading him to recall
the encore, and said the company would feel sufficiently
rewarded and complimented in the mere fact that the
encore was desired by his Majesty, without fatiguing
him with a repetition to gratify their own vanity.
During the remainder of the act the lucky performers
were those whose parts required changes of dress;
the others were a soaked, bedraggled, and uncomfortable lot,
but in the last degree picturesque. The stage scenery
was ruined, trap-doors were so swollen that they wouldn't
work for a week afterward, the fine costumes were spoiled,
and no end of minor damages were done by that remarkable storm.
It was royal idea--that storm--and royally carried out.
But observe the moderation of the King; he did not
insist upon his encore. If he had been a gladsome,
unreflecting American opera-audience, he probably would
have had his storm repeated and repeated until he drowned
all those people.
CHAPTER XI
[I Paint a "Turner"]
The summer days passed pleasantly in Heidelberg.
We had a skilled trainer, and under his instructions we
were getting our legs in the right condition for the
contemplated pedestrian tours; we were well satisfied
with the progress which we had made in the German language,
[1. See Appendix D for information concerning this
fearful tongue.] and more than satisfied with what we had
accomplished in art. We had had the best instructors in
drawing and painting in Germany--Haemmerling, Vogel, Mueller,
Dietz, and Schumann. Haemmerling taught us landscape-painting.
Vogel taught us figure-drawing, Mueller taught us to do
still-life, and Dietz and Schumann gave us a finishing
course in two specialties--battle-pieces and shipwrecks.
Whatever I am in Art I owe to these men. I have something
of the manner of each and all of them; but they all said that I
had also a manner of my own, and that it was conspicuous.
They said there was a marked individuality about my
style--insomuch that if I ever painted the commonest
type of a dog, I should be sure to throw a something
into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from
being mistaken for the creation of any other artist.
Secretly I wanted to believe all these kind sayings,
but I could not; I was afraid that my masters'
partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment.
So I resolved to make a test. Privately, and unknown
to any one, I painted my great picture, "Heidelberg Castle
Illuminated"--my first really important work in oils--and
had it hung up in the midst of a wilderness of oil-pictures
in the Art Exhibition, with no name attached to it. To my
great gratification it was instantly recognized as mine.
All the town flocked to see it, and people even came from
neighboring localities to visit it. It made more stir than
any other work in the Exhibition. But the most gratifying
thing of all was, that chance strangers, passing through,
who had not heard of my picture, were not only drawn to it,
as by a lodestone, the moment they entered the gallery,
but always took it for a "Turner."
Apparently nobody had ever done that. There were ruined
castles on the overhanging cliffs and crags all the way;
these were said to have their legends, like those on the Rhine,
and what was better still, they had never been in print.
There was nothing in the books about that lovely region;
it had been neglected by the tourist, it was virgin soil for
the literary pioneer.
Meantime the knapsacks, the rough walking-suits and the stout
walking-shoes which we had ordered, were finished and brought
to us. A Mr. X and a young Mr. Z had agreed to go with us.
We went around one evening and bade good-by to our friends,
and afterward had a little farewell banquet at the hotel.
We got to bed early, for we wanted to make an early start,
so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning.
We were out of bed at break of day, feeling fresh
and vigorous, and took a hearty breakfast, then plunged
down through the leafy arcades of the Castle grounds,
toward the town. What a glorious summer morning it was,
and how the flowers did pour out their fragrance,
and how the birds did sing! It was just the time for a
tramp through the woods and mountains.
We were all dressed alike: broad slouch hats, to keep the
sun off; gray knapsacks; blue army shirts; blue overalls;
leathern gaiters buttoned tight from knee down to ankle;
high-quarter coarse shoes snugly laced. Each man had
an opera-glass, a canteen, and a guide-book case slung
over his shoulder, and carried an alpenstock in one hand
and a sun-umbrella in the other. Around our hats were
wound many folds of soft white muslin, with the ends
hanging and flapping down our backs--an idea brought
from the Orient and used by tourists all over Europe.
Harris carried the little watch-like machine called
a "pedometer," whose office is to keep count of a man's
steps and tell how far he has walked. Everybody stopped
to admire our costumes and give us a hearty "Pleasant march
to you!"
When we got downtown I found that we could go by rail to
within five miles of Heilbronn. The train was just starting,
so we jumped aboard and went tearing away in splendid spirits.
It was agreed all around that we had done wisely,
because it would be just as enjoyable to walk DOWN the Neckar
as up it, and it could not be needful to walk both ways.
There were some nice German people in our compartment.
I got to talking some pretty private matters presently,
and Harris became nervous; so he nudged me and said:
"Speak in German--these Germans may understand English."
I did so, it was well I did; for it turned out that there
was not a German in that party who did not understand
English perfectly. It is curious how widespread our language
is in Germany. After a while some of those folks got out
and a German gentleman and his two young daughters got in.
I spoke in German of one of the latter several times,
but without result. Finally she said:
"ICH VERSTEHE NUR DEUTCH UND ENGLISHE,"--or words to
that effect. That is, "I don't understand any language
but German and English."
And sure enough, not only she but her father and sister
spoke English. So after that we had all the talk we wanted;
and we wanted a good deal, for they were agreeable people.
They were greatly interested in our customs; especially
the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any before.
They said that the Neckar road was perfectly level, so we
must be going to Switzerland or some other rugged country;
and asked us if we did not find the walking pretty fatiguing
in such warm weather. But we said no.
We reached Wimpfen--I think it was Wimpfen--in about
three hours, and got out, not the least tired; found a
good hotel and ordered beer and dinner--then took
a stroll through the venerable old village. It was very
picturesque and tumble-down, and dirty and interesting.
It had queer houses five hundred years old in it,
and a military tower 115 feet high, which had stood there
more than ten centuries. I made a little sketch of it.
I kept a copy, but gave the original to the Burgomaster.
I think the original was better than the copy, because it
had more windows in it and the grass stood up better and had
a brisker look. There was none around the tower, though;
I composed the grass myself, from studies I made in a field
by Heidelberg in Haemmerling's time. The man on top,
looking at the view, is apparently too large, but I found
he could not be made smaller, conveniently. I wanted
him there, and I wanted him visible, so I thought out a
way to manage it; I composed the picture from two points
of view; the spectator is to observe the man from bout
where that flag is, and he must observe the tower itself
from the ground. This harmonizes the seeming discrepancy.
[Figure 2]
Near an old cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses
of stone--moldy and damaged things, bearing life-size
stone figures. The two thieves were dressed in the fanciful
court costumes of the middle of the sixteenth century,
while the Saviour was nude, with the exception of a cloth
around the loins.
We had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonging
to the hotel and overlooking the Neckar; then, after a smoke,
we went to bed. We had a refreshing nap, then got up
about three in the afternoon and put on our panoply.
As we tramped gaily out at the gate of the town,
we overtook a peasant's cart, partly laden with odds and
ends of cabbages and similar vegetable rubbish, and drawn
by a small cow and a smaller donkey yoked together.
It was a pretty slow concern, but it got us into Heilbronn
before dark--five miles, or possibly it was seven.
We stopped at the very same inn which the famous old
robber-knight and rough fighter Goetz von Berlichingen,
abode in after he got out of captivity in the Square Tower
of Heilbronn between three hundred and fifty and four hundred
years ago. Harris and I occupied the same room which he
had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off
the walls yet. The furniture was quaint old carved stuff,
full four hundred years old, and some of the smells
were over a thousand. There was a hook in the wall,
which the landlord said the terrific old Goetz used to
hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed.
This room was very large--it might be called immense
--and it was on the first floor; which means it was in
the second story, for in Europe the houses are so high
that they do not count the first story, else they
would get tired climbing before they got to the top.
The wallpaper was a fiery red, with huge gold figures in it,
well smirched by time, and it covered all the doors.
These doors fitted so snugly and continued the figures
of the paper so unbrokenly, that when they were closed
one had to go feeling and searching along the wall
to find them. There was a stove in the corner--one
of those tall, square, stately white porcelain things
that looks like a monument and keeps you thinking
of death when you ought to be enjoying your travels.
The windows looked out on a little alley, and over that
into a stable and some poultry and pig yards in the rear
of some tenement-houses. There were the customary two beds
in the room, one in one end, the other in the other,
about an old-fashioned brass-mounted, single-barreled
pistol-shot apart. They were fully as narrow as the usual
German bed, too, and had the German bed's ineradicable
habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every time
you forgot yourself and went to sleep.
A round table as large as King Arthur's stood in the
center of the room; while the waiters were getting
ready to serve our dinner on it we all went out to see
the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings.
CHAPTER XII
[What the Wives Saved]
The RATHHAUS, or municipal building, is of the quaintest
and most picturesque Middle-Age architecture. It has a
massive portico and steps, before it, heavily balustraded,
and adorned with life-sized rusty iron knights in
complete armor. The clock-face on the front of the building
is very large and of curious pattern. Ordinarily, a gilded
angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer;
as the striking ceases, a life-sized figure of Time raises
its hour-glass and turns it; two golden rams advance
and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings;
but the main features are two great angels, who stand
on each side of the dial with long horns at their lips;
it was said that they blew melodious blasts on these
horns every hour--but they did not do it for us.
We were told, later, than they blew only at night,
when the town was still.
Within the RATHHAUS were a number of huge wild boars'
heads, preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall;
they bore inscriptions telling who killed them and how many
hundred years ago it was done. One room in the building
was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives.
There they showed us no end of aged documents; some were
signed by Popes, some by Tilly and other great generals,
and one was a letter written and subscribed by Goetz von
Berlichingen in Heilbronn in 1519 just after his release
from the Square Tower.
This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely
religious man, hospitable, charitable to the poor,
fearless in fight, active, enterprising, and possessed
of a large and generous nature. He had in him a
quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries,
and being able to forgive and forget mortal ones as
soon as he had soundly trounced the authors of them.
He was prompt to take up any poor devil's quarrel and risk
his neck to right him. The common folk held him dear,
and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition.
He used to go on the highway and rob rich wayfarers;
and other times he would swoop down from his high castle
on the hills of the Neckar and capture passing cargoes
of merchandise. In his memoirs he piously thanks the
Giver of all Good for remembering him in his needs and
delivering sundry such cargoes into his hands at times
when only special providences could have relieved him.
He was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle.
In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria when he was
only twenty-three years old, his right hand was shot away,
but he was so interested in the fight that he did not
observe it for a while. He said that the iron hand
which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for
more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member
as the fleshy one had been. I was glad to get a facsimile
of the letter written by this fine old German Robin Hood,
though I was not able to read it. He was a better artist
with his sword than with his pen.
We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower.
It was a very venerable structure, very strong,
and very ornamental. There was no opening near the ground.
They had to use a ladder to get into it, no doubt.
We visited the principal church, also--a curious
old structure, with a towerlike spire adorned with all
sorts of grotesque images. The inner walls of the church
were placarded with large mural tablets of copper,
bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits
of old Heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago,
and also bearing rudely painted effigies of themselves
and their families tricked out in the queer costumes of
those days. The head of the family sat in the foreground,
and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing
row of sons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond
her extended a low row of diminishing daughters.
The family was usually large, but the perspective bad.
Then we hired the hack and the horse which Goetz von
Berlichingen used to use, and drove several miles into
the country to visit the place called WEIBERTREU--Wife's
Fidelity I suppose it means. It was a feudal castle
of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we
found it was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound,
or hill, round and tolerably steep, and about two hundred
feet high. Therefore, as the sun was blazing hot,
we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust,
and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up
against a fence and rested. The place has no interest
except that which is lent it by its legend, which is
a very pretty one--to this effect:
THE LEGEND
In the Middle Ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers,
took opposite sides in one of the wars, the one fighting
for the Emperor, the other against him. One of them
owned the castle and village on top of the mound which I
have been speaking of, and in his absence his brother
came with his knights and soldiers and began a siege.
It was a long and tedious business, for the people
made a stubborn and faithful defense. But at last
their supplies ran out and starvation began its work;
more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy.
They by and by surrendered, and begged for charitable terms.
But the beleaguering prince was so incensed against them
for their long resistance that he said he would spare none
but the women and children--all men should be put to the
sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed.
Then the women came and fell on their knees and begged for
the lives of their husbands.
"No," said the prince, "not a man of them shall escape alive;
you yourselves shall go with your children into houseless
and friendless banishment; but that you may not starve
I grant you this one grace, that each woman may bear
with her from this place as much of her most valuable
property as she is able to carry."
Very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed
those women carrying their HUSBANDS on their shoulders.
The besiegers, furious at the trick, rushed forward
to slaughter the men, but the Duke stepped between and
said:
"No, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable."
When we got back to the hotel, King Arthur's Round Table
was ready for us in its white drapery, and the head waiter
and his first assistant, in swallow-tails and white cravats,
brought in the soup and the hot plates at once.
Mr. X had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on,
he picked up a bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned
to the grave, the melancholy, the sepulchral head waiter
and said it was not the sort of wine he had asked for.
The head waiter picked up the bottle, cast his undertaker-eye
on it and said:
"It is true; I beg pardon." Then he turned on his
subordinate and calmly said, "Bring another label."
At the same time he slid the present label off with his hand
and laid it aside; it had been newly put on, its paste
was still wet. When the new label came, he put it on;
our French wine being now turned into German wine,
according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his
other duties, as if the working of this sort of miracle
was a common and easy thing to him.
Mr. X said he had not known, before, that there were
people honest enough to do this miracle in public,
but he was aware that thousands upon thousands of labels
were imported into America from Europe every year,
to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet
and inexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign
wines they might require.
We took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found
it fully as interesting in the moonlight as it had been
in the daytime. The streets were narrow and roughly paved,
and there was not a sidewalk or a street-lamp anywhere.
The dwellings were centuries old, and vast enough for hotels.
They widened all the way up; the stories projected
further and further forward and aside as they ascended,
and the long rows of lighted windows, filled with little bits
of panes, curtained with figured white muslin and adorned
outside with boxes of flowers, made a pretty effect.
The moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong;
and nothing could be more picturesque than those curving
streets, with their rows of huge high gables leaning
far over toward each other in a friendly gossiping way,
and the crowds below drifting through the alternating blots
of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. Nearly everybody
was abroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy
comfortable attitudes in the doorways.
In one place there was a public building which was
fenced about with a thick, rusty chain, which sagged
from post to post in a succession of low swings.
The pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone.
In the glare of the moon a party of barefooted children
were swinging on those chains and having a noisy good time.
They were not the first ones who have done that;
even their great-great-grandfathers had not been the first
to do it when they were children. The strokes of the bare
feet had worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags;
it had taken many generations of swinging children to
accomplish that. Everywhere in the town were the mold
and decay that go with antiquity, and evidence of it;
but I do not know that anything else gave us so vivid
a sense of the old age of Heilbronn as those footworn
grooves in the paving-stones.
CHAPTER XIII
[My Long Crawl in the Dark]
When we got back to the hotel I wound and set the
pedometer and put it in my pocket, for I was to carry
it next day and keep record of the miles we made.
The work which we had given the instrument to do during
the day which had just closed had not fatigued it perceptibly.
We were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on
our tramp homeward with the dawn. I hung fire, but Harris
went to sleep at once. I hate a man who goes to sleep
at once; there is a sort of indefinable something about it
which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an insolence;
and one which is hard to bear, too. I lay there fretting
over this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder
I tried, the wider awake I grew. I got to feeling very lonely
in the dark, with no company but an undigested dinner.
My mind got a start by and by, and began to consider the
beginning of every subject which has ever been thought of;
but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch
and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed.
At the end of an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and I
was dead tired, fagged out.
The fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some
head against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself
wide awake, I would really doze into momentary unconsciousness,
and come suddenly out of it with a physical jerk which nearly
wrenched my joints apart--the delusion of the instant
being that I was tumbling backward over a precipice.
After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus
found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight
or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other
half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses
began to extend their spell gradually over more of my
brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowse which
grew deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very
point of being a solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when--what was
that?
My dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life
and took a receptive attitude. Now out of an immense,
a limitless distance, came a something which grew and grew,
and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound
--it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. This sound
was a mile away, now--perhaps it was the murmur of a storm;
and now it was nearer--not a quarter of a mile away;
was it the muffled rasping and grinding of distant
machinery? No, it came still nearer; was it the measured
tramp of a marching troop? But it came nearer still,
and still nearer--and at last it was right in the room: it
was merely a mouse gnawing the woodwork. So I had held my
breath all that time for such a trifle.
Well, what was done could not be helped; I would go
to sleep at once and make up the lost time. That was
a thoughtless thought. Without intending it--hardly
knowing it--I fell to listening intently to that sound,
and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's
nutmeg-grater. Presently I was deriving exquisite suffering
from this employment, yet maybe I could have endured
it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work;
but he did not do that; he stopped every now and then,
and I suffered more while waiting and listening for
him to begin again than I did while he was gnawing.
Along at first I was mentally offering a reward
of five--six--seven--ten--dollars for that mouse;
but toward the last I was offering rewards which were
entirely beyond my means. I close-reefed my ears
--that is to say, I bent the flaps of them down and furled
them into five or six folds, and pressed them against
the hearing-orifice--but it did no good: the faculty
was so sharpened by nervous excitement that it was become
a microphone and could hear through the overlays without trouble.
My anger grew to a frenzy. I finally did what all persons
before me have done, clear back to Adam,--resolved to
throw something. I reached down and got my walking-shoes,
then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate
the noise. But I couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable
as a cricket's noise; and where one thinks that that is,
is always the very place where it isn't. So I presently
hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious vigor.
It struck the wall over Harris's head and fell down on him;
I had not imagined I could throw so far. It woke Harris,
and I was glad of it until I found he was not angry;
then I was sorry. He soon went to sleep again,
which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began again,
which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake
Harris a second time, but the gnawing continued until I
was compelled to throw the other shoe. This time I broke
a mirror--there were two in the room--I got the largest one,
of course. Harris woke again, but did not complain,
and I was sorrier than ever. I resolved that I would
suffer all possible torture before I would disturb him a
third time.
The mouse eventually retired, and by and by I was sinking
to sleep, when a clock began to strike; I counted till
it was done, and was about to drowse again when another
clock began; I counted; then the two great RATHHAUS clock
angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blasts
from their long trumpets. I had never heard anything
that was so lovely, or weird, or mysterious--but when they
got to blowing the quarter-hours, they seemed to me to be
overdoing the thing. Every time I dropped off for the moment,
a new noise woke me. Each time I woke I missed my coverlet,
and had to reach down to the floor and get it again.
At last all sleepiness forsook me. I recognized the fact
that I was hopelessly and permanently wide awake.
Wide awake, and feverish and thirsty. When I had lain
tossing there as long as I could endure it, it occurred
to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in
the great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain,
and smoke and reflect there until the remnant of the night
was gone.
I believed I could dress in the dark without waking Harris.
I had banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers
would do for a summer night. So I rose softly, and gradually
got on everything--down to one sock. I couldn't seem
to get on the track of that sock, any way I could fix it.
But I had to have it; so I went down on my hands and knees,
with one slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to
paw gently around and rake the floor, but with no success.
I enlarged my circle, and went on pawing and raking.
With every pressure of my knee, how the floor creaked!
and every time I chanced to rake against any article,
it seemed to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times
more noise than it would have done in the daytime.
In those cases I always stopped and held my breath till I
was sure Harris had not awakened--then I crept along again.
I moved on and on, but I could not find the sock;
I could not seem to find anything but furniture.
I could not remember that there was much furniture
in the room when I went to bed, but the place was alive
with it now --especially chairs--chairs everywhere
--had a couple of families moved in, in the mean time? And
I never could seem to GLANCE on one of those chairs,
but always struck it full and square with my head.
My temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as I
pawed on and on, I fell to making vicious comments under
my breath.
Finally, with a venomous access of irritation, I said I
would leave without the sock; so I rose up and made straight
for the door--as I supposed--and suddenly confronted my
dim spectral image in the unbroken mirror. It startled
the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showed me
that I was lost, and had no sort of idea where I was.
When I realized this, I was so angry that I had to sit
down on the floor and take hold of something to keep
from lifting the roof off with an explosion of opinion.
If there had been only one mirror, it might possibly have
helped to locate me; but there were two, and two were as
bad as a thousand; besides, these were on opposite sides
of the room. I could see the dim blur of the windows,
but in my turned-around condition they were exactly
where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me
instead of helping me.
I started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella;
it made a noise like a pistol-shot when it struck
that hard, slick, carpetless floor; I grated my teeth
and held my breath--Harris did not stir. I set the
umbrella slowly and carefully on end against the wall,
but as soon as I took my hand away, its heel slipped
from under it, and down it came again with another bang.
I shrunk together and listened a moment in silent fury
--no harm done, everything quiet. With the most painstaking
care and nicety, I stood the umbrella up once more,
took my hand away, and down it came again.
I have been strictly reared, but if it had not been
so dark and solemn and awful there in that lonely,
vast room, I do believe I should have said something
then which could not be put into a Sunday-school book
without injuring the sale of it. If my reasoning powers
had not been already sapped dry by my harassments,
I would have known better than to try to set an umbrella
on end on one of those glassy German floors in the dark;
it can't be done in the daytime without four failures
to one success. I had one comfort, though--Harris was
yet still and silent--he had not stirred.
The umbrella could not locate me--there were four
standing around the room, and all alike. I thought I
would feel along the wall and find the door in that way.
I rose up and began this operation, but raked down
a picture. It was not a large one, but it made noise
enough for a panorama. Harris gave out no sound, but I
felt that if I experimented any further with the pictures
I should be sure to wake him. Better give up trying to
get out. Yes, I would find King Arthur's Round Table once
more--I had already found it several times--and use it
for a base of departure on an exploring tour for my bed;
if I could find my bed I could then find my water pitcher;
I would quench my raging thirst and turn in. So I started
on my hands and knees, because I could go faster that way,
and with more confidence, too, and not knock down things.
By and by I found the table--with my head--rubbed the
bruise a little, then rose up and started, with hands
abroad and fingers spread, to balance myself. I found
a chair; then a wall; then another chair; then a sofa;
then an alpenstock, then another sofa; this confounded me,
for I had thought there was only one sofa. I hunted
up the table again and took a fresh start; found some
more chairs.
It occurred to me, now, as it ought to have done before,
that as the table was round, it was therefore of no
value as a base to aim from; so I moved off once more,
and at random among the wilderness of chairs and sofas
--wandering off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked
a candlestick and knocked off a lamp, grabbed at the lamp
and knocked off a water pitcher with a rattling crash,
and thought to myself, "I've found you at last--I
judged I was close upon you." Harris shouted "murder,"
and "thieves," and finished with "I'm absolutely drowned."
The crash had roused the house. Mr. X pranced in,
in his long night-garment, with a candle, young Z after him
with another candle; a procession swept in at another door,
with candles and lanterns--landlord and two German guests
in their nightgowns and a chambermaid in hers.
I looked around; I was at Harris's bed, a Sabbath-day's
journey from my own. There was only one sofa; it was against
the wall; there was only one chair where a body could get
at it--I had been revolving around it like a planet,
and colliding with it like a comet half the night.
I explained how I had been employing myself, and why.
Then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set
about our preparations for breakfast, for the dawn was
ready to break. I glanced furtively at my pedometer,
and found I had made 47 miles. But I did not care, for I
had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway.
CHAPTER XIV
[Rafting Down the Neckar]
When the landlord learned that I and my agents were artists,
our party rose perceptibly in his esteem; we rose still
higher when he learned that we were making a pedestrian
tour of Europe.
He told us all about the Heidelberg road, and which
were the best places to avoid and which the best ones
to tarry at; he charged me less than cost for the things
I broke in the night; he put up a fine luncheon for us
and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums,
the pleasantest fruit in Germany; he was so anxious to do us
honor that he would not allow us to walk out of Heilbronn,
but called up Goetz von Berlichingen's horse and cab
and made us ride.
I made a sketch of the turnout. It is not a Work, it is only
what artists call a "study"--a thing to make a finished
picture from. This sketch has several blemishes in it;
for instance, the wagon is not traveling as fast as the
horse is. This is wrong. Again, the person trying to get
out of the way is too small; he is out of perspective,
as we say. The two upper lines are not the horse's back,
they are the reigns; there seems to be a wheel missing
--this would be corrected in a finished Work, of course.
This thing flying out behind is not a flag, it is a curtain.
That other thing up there is the sun, but I didn't get
enough distance on it. I do not remember, now, what that
thing is that is in front of the man who is running,
but I think it is a haystack or a woman. This study
was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1879, but did not
take any medal; they do not give medals for studies.
[Figure 3]
We discharged the carriage at the bridge. The river was
full of logs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and we
leaned on the rails of the bridge, and watched the men put
them together into rafts. These rafts were of a shape
and construction to suit the crookedness and extreme
narrowness of the Neckar. They were from fifty to one
hundred yards long, and they gradually tapered from a
nine-log breadth at their sterns, to a three-log breadth
at their bow-ends. The main part of the steering is done
at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth there
furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs
are not larger around than an average young lady's waist.
The connections of the several sections of the raft are
slack and pliant, so that the raft may be readily bent
into any sort of curve required by the shape of the river.
The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person
can throw a dog across it, if he has one; when it is
also sharply curved in such places, the raftsman has
to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns.
The river is not always allowed to spread over its whole
bed--which is as much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards
wide--but is split into three equal bodies of water,
by stone dikes which throw the main volume, depth, and current
into the central one. In low water these neat narrow-edged
dikes project four or five inches above the surface,
like the comb of a submerged roof, but in high water
they are overflowed. A hatful of rain makes high water
in the Neckar, and a basketful produces an overflow.
There are dikes abreast the Schloss Hotel, and the current
is violently swift at that point. I used to sit for hours
in my glass cage, watching the long, narrow rafts slip
along through the central channel, grazing the right-bank
dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of the stone
bridge below; I watched them in this way, and lost all this
time hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck
itself sometime or other, but was always disappointed.
One was smashed there one morning, but I had just stepped
into my room a moment to light a pipe, so I lost it.
While I was looking down upon the rafts that morning
in Heilbronn, the daredevil spirit of adventure came
suddenly upon me, and I said to my comrades:
"_I_ am going to Heidelberg on a raft. Will you venture
with me?"
Their faces paled a little, but they assented with as
good a grace as they could. Harris wanted to cable his
mother--thought it his duty to do that, as he was all
she had in this world--so, while he attended to this,
I went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed
the captain with a hearty "Ahoy, shipmate!" which put us
upon pleasant terms at once, and we entered upon business.
I said we were on a pedestrian tour to Heidelberg,
and would like to take passage with him. I said this
partly through young Z, who spoke German very well,
and partly through Mr. X, who spoke it peculiarly. I can
UNDERSTAND German as well as the maniac that invented it,
but I TALK it best through an interpreter.
The captain hitched up his trousers, then shifted
his quid thoughtfully. Presently he said just what I
was expecting he would say--that he had no license
to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law
would be after him in case the matter got noised about
or any accident happened. So I CHARTERED the raft
and the crew and took all the responsibilities on myself.
With a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their
work and hove the cable short, then got the anchor home,
and our bark moved off with a stately stride, and soon
was bowling along at about two knots an hour.
Our party were grouped amidships. At first the talk was
a little gloomy, and ran mainly upon the shortness of life,
the uncertainty of it, the perils which beset it, and the
need and wisdom of being always prepared for the worst;
this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers
of the deep, and kindred matters; but as the gray east
began to redden and the mysterious solemnity and silence
of the dawn to give place to the joy-songs of the birds,
the talk took a cheerier tone, and our spirits began to
rise steadily.
Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful,
but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed
the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful
beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on a raft.
The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle,
and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; it calms down
all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous
hurry and impatience; under its restful influence all the
troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind
vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm,
a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it contrasts with hot
and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening
railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses
over blinding white roads!
We went slipping silently along, between the green and
fragrant banks, with a sense of pleasure and contentment
that grew, and grew, all the time. Sometimes the banks
were overhung with thick masses of willows that wholly
hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on
one hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops,
and on the other hand open levels blazing with poppies,
or clothed in the rich blue of the corn-flower;
sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and sometimes
along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass,
fresh and green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye.
And the birds!--they were everywhere; they swept back
and forth across the river constantly, and their jubilant
music was never stilled.
It was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun
create the new morning, and gradually, patiently,
lovingly, clothe it on with splendor after splendor,
and glory after glory, till the miracle was complete.
How different is this marvel observed from a raft,
from what it is when one observes it through the dingy
windows of a railway-station in some wretched village
while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the train.
CHAPTER XV
Down the River
[Charming Waterside Pictures]
Men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields
by this time. The people often stepped aboard the raft,
as we glided along the grassy shores, and gossiped with us
and with the crew for a hundred yards or so, then stepped
ashore again, refreshed by the ride.
Only the men did this; the women were too busy.
The women do all kinds of work on the continent. They dig,
they hoe, they reap, they sow, they bear monstrous burdens
on their backs, they shove similar ones long distances
on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog
or lean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist
the dog or cow. Age is no matter--the older the woman
the stronger she is, apparently. On the farm a woman's
duties are not defined--she does a little of everything;
but in the towns it is different, there she only does
certain things, the men do the rest. For instance,
a hotel chambermaid has nothing to do but make beds and
fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring towels and candles,
and fetch several tons of water up several flights of stairs,
a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers.
She does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours
a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub
the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and needs
a rest.
As the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took
off our outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge
of the raft and enjoyed the scenery, with our sun-umbrellas
over our heads and our legs dangling in the water.
Every now and then we plunged in and had a swim.
Every projecting grassy cape had its joyous group
of naked children, the boys to themselves and the girls
to themselves, the latter usually in care of some motherly
dame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting.
The little boys swam out to us, sometimes, but the little
maids stood knee-deep in the water and stopped their splashing
and frolicking to inspect the raft with their innocent
eyes as it drifted by. Once we turned a corner suddenly
and surprised a slender girl of twelve years or upward,
just stepping into the water. She had not time to run,
but she did what answered just as well; she promptly
drew a lithe young willow bough athwart her white body
with one hand, and then contemplated us with a simple and
untroubled interest. Thus she stood while we glided by.
She was a pretty creature, and she and her willow bough
made a very pretty picture, and one which could not
offend the modesty of the most fastidious spectator.
Her white skin had a low bank of fresh green willows for
background and effective contrast--for she stood against
them--and above and out of them projected the eager faces
and white shoulders of two smaller girls.
Toward noon we heard the inspiring cry:
"Sail ho!"
"Where away?" shouted the captain.
"Three points off the weather bow!"
We ran forward to see the vessel. It proved to be
a steamboat--for they had begun to run a steamer up
the Neckar, for the first time in May. She was a tug,
and one of a very peculiar build and aspect. I had
often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she
propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller
or paddles. She came churning along, now, making a deal
of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating it every
now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine
keel-boats hitched on behind and following after her
in a long, slender rank. We met her in a narrow place,
between dikes, and there was hardly room for us both in the
cramped passage. As she went grinding and groaning by,
we perceived the secret of her moving impulse. She did
not drive herself up the river with paddles or propeller,
she pulled herself by hauling on a great chain.
This chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only
fastened at the two ends. It is seventy miles long.
It comes in over the boat's bow, passes around a drum,
and is payed out astern. She pulls on that chain,
and so drags herself up the river or down it. She has
neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a
long-bladed rudder on each end and she never turns around.
She uses both rudders all the time, and they are powerful
enough to enable her to turn to the right or the left
and steer around curves, in spite of the strong resistance
of the chain. I would not have believed that that impossible
thing could be done; but I saw it done, and therefore I
know that there is one impossible thing which CAN be done.
What miracle will man attempt next?
We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails,
mule power, and profanity--a tedious and laborious business.
A wire rope led from the foretopmast to the file of mules
on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead, and by dint
of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment
of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles
an hour out of the mules against the stiff current.
The Neckar has always been used as a canal, and thus
has given employment to a great many men and animals;
but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew
and a bushel or so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther
up the river in one hour than thirty men and thirty mules
can do it in two, it is believed that the old-fashioned
towing industry is on its death-bed. A second steamboat
began work in the Neckar three months after the first one
was put in service. [Figure 4]
At noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer
and got some chickens cooked, while the raft waited;
then we immediately put to sea again, and had our
dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot.
There is no pleasanter place for such a meal than a raft
that is gliding down the winding Neckar past green meadows
and wooded hills, and slumbering villages, and craggy
heights graced with crumbling towers and battlements.
In one place we saw a nicely dressed German gentleman
without any spectacles. Before I could come to anchor
he had got underway. It was a great pity. I so wanted
to make a sketch of him. The captain comforted me
for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without
any doubt a fraud who had spectacles, but kept them
in his pocket in order to make himself conspicuous.
Below Hassmersheim we passed Hornberg, Goetz von Berlichingen's
old castle. It stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet
above the surface of the river; it has high vine-clad walls
enclosing trees, and a peaked tower about seventy-five
feet high. The steep hillside, from the castle clear
down to the water's edge, is terraced, and clothed thick
with grape vines. This is like farming a mansard roof.
All the steeps along that part of the river which furnish
the proper exposure, are given up to the grape. That region
is a great producer of Rhine wines. The Germans are
exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall,
slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage.
One tells them from vinegar by the label.
The Hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway
will pass under the castle.
THE CAVE OF THE SPECTER
Two miles below Hornberg castle is a cave in a low cliff,
which the captain of the raft said had once been occupied
by a beautiful heiress of Hornberg--the Lady Gertrude
--in the old times. It was seven hundred years ago.
She had a number of rich and noble lovers and one poor
and obscure one, Sir Wendel Lobenfeld. With the native
chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred
the poor and obscure lover. With the native sound judgment
of the father of a heroine of romance, the von Berlichingen
of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep,
or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place,
and resolved that she should stay there until she selected
a husband from among her rich and noble lovers. The latter
visited her and persecuted her with their supplications,
but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor
despised Crusader, who was fighting in the Holy Land.
Finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions
of the rich lovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped
and went down the river and hid herself in the cave on
the other side. Her father ransacked the country for her,
but found not a trace of her. As the days went by,
and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began
to torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made
that if she were yet living and would return, he would
oppose her no longer, she might marry whom she would.
The months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man,
he ceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures,
he devoted himself to pious works, and longed for the
deliverance of death.
Now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood
in the mouth of her cave, arrayed in white robes, and sang
a little love ballad which her Crusader had made for her.
She judged that if he came home alive the superstitious
peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in the cave,
and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know
that none but he and she knew that song, therefore he would
suspect that she was alive, and would come and find her.
As time went on, the people of the region became sorely
distressed about the Specter of the Haunted Cave.
It was said that ill luck of one kind or another always
overtook any one who had the misfortune to hear that song.
Eventually, every calamity that happened thereabouts was
laid at the door of that music. Consequently, no boatmen
would consent to pass the cave at night; the peasants
shunned the place, even in the daytime.
But the faithful girl sang on, night after night,
month after month, and patiently waited; her reward
must come at last. Five years dragged by, and still,
every night at midnight, the plaintive tones floated out
over the silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants
thrust their fingers into their ears and shuddered out a prayer.
And now came the Crusader home, bronzed and battle-scarred,
but bringing a great and splendid fame to lay at the feet
of his bride. The old lord of Hornberg received him as
his son, and wanted him to stay by him and be the comfort
and blessing of his age; but the tale of that young
girl's devotion to him and its pathetic consequences
made a changed man of the knight. He could not enjoy
his well-earned rest. He said his heart was broken,
he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds
in the cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death
and a blessed reunion with the brave true heart whose
love had more honored him than all his victories in war.
When the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told
him there was a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the
Haunted Cave, a dread creature which no knight had yet been
bold enough to face, and begged him to rid the land of its
desolating presence. He said he would do it. They told
him about the song, and when he asked what song it was,
they said the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been
hardy enough to listen to it for the past four years and more.
Toward midnight the Crusader came floating down the river
in a boat, with his trusty cross-bow in his hands.
He drifted silently through the dim reflections of the
crags and trees, with his intent eyes fixed upon the low
cliff which he was approaching. As he drew nearer,
he discerned the black mouth of the cave. Now--is that
a white figure? Yes. The plaintive song begins to well
forth and float away over meadow and river--the cross-bow
is slowly raised to position, a steady aim is taken,
the bolt flies straight to the mark--the figure sinks down,
still singing, the knight takes the wool out of his ears,
and recognizes the old ballad--too late! Ah, if he had
only not put the wool in his ears!
The Crusader went away to the wars again, and presently
fell in battle, fighting for the Cross. Tradition says
that during several centuries the spirit of the unfortunate
girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight, but the music
carried no curse with it; and although many listened
for the mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only
those could hear them who had never failed in a trust.
It is believed that the singing still continues, but it is
known that nobody has heard it during the present century.
CHAPTER XVI
An Ancient Legend of the Rhine
[The Lorelei]
The last legend reminds one of the "Lorelei"--a legend
of the Rhine. There is a song called "The Lorelei."
Germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of
several of them are peculiarly beautiful--but "The Lorelei"
is the people's favorite. I could not endure it at first,
but by and by it began to take hold of me, and now there
is no tune which I like so well.
It is not possible that it is much known in America, else I
should have heard it there. The fact that I never heard
it there, is evidence that there are others in my country
who have fared likewise; therefore, for the sake of these,
I mean to print the words and music in this chapter.
And I will refresh the reader's memory by printing the legend
of the Lorelei, too. I have it by me in the LEGENDS OF
THE RHINE, done into English by the wildly gifted Garnham,
Bachelor of Arts. I print the legend partly to refresh
my own memory, too, for I have never read it before.
THE LEGEND
Lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used to sit
on a high rock called the Ley or Lei (pronounced like our
word LIE) in the Rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction
in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot.
She so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her
wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze
up at her, and so they presently drifted among the broken
reefs and were lost.
In those old, old times, the Count Bruno lived in a great
castle near there with his son, the Count Hermann, a youth
of twenty. Hermann had heard a great deal about the
beautiful Lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love
with her without having seen her. So he used to wander
to the neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his Zither
and "Express his Longing in low Singing," as Garnham says.
On one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around
the top of the rock a brightness of unequaled clearness
and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened,
was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore.
"An unintentional cry of Joy escaped the Youth, he let
his Zither fall, and with extended arms he called out
the name of the enigmatical Being, who seemed to stoop
lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner;
indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his
name with unutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love.
Beside himself with delight the youth lost his Senses
and sank senseless to the earth."
After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming about,
thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else
in the world. "The old count saw with affliction this
changement in his son," whose cause he could not divine,
and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels,
but to no purpose. Then the old count used authority.
He commanded the youth to betake himself to the camp.
Obedience was promised. Garnham says:
"It was on the evening before his departure, as he
wished still once to visit the Lei and offer to the
Nymph of the Rhine his Sighs, the tones of his Zither,
and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this time accompanied
by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed
her silvery light over the whole country; the steep
bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes,
and the high oaks on either side bowed their Branches
on Hermann's passing. As soon as he approached the Lei,
and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized
with an inexpressible Anxiety and he begged permission
to land; but the Knight swept the strings of his Guitar
and sang:
"Once I saw thee in dark night, In supernatural Beauty bright;
Of Light-rays, was the Figure wove, To share its light,
locked-hair strove.
"Thy Garment color wave-dove By thy hand the sign of love,
Thy eyes sweet enchantment, Raying to me, oh! enchantment.
"O, wert thou but my sweetheart, How willingly thy love
to part! With delight I should be bound To thy rocky
house in deep ground."
That Hermann should have gone to that place at all,
was not wise; that he should have gone with such a song
as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. The Lorelei
did not "call his name in unutterable sweet Whispers"
this time. No, that song naturally worked an instant
and thorough "changement" in her; and not only that,
but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region
around about there--for--
"Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there
began tumult and sound, as if voices above and below
the water. On the Lei rose flames, the Fairy stood above,
at that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly
and urgently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff
in her left hand she called the waves to her service.
They began to mount heavenward; the boat was upset,
mocking every exertion; the waves rose to the gunwale,
and splitting on the hard stones, the Boat broke into Pieces.
The youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on
shore by a powerful wave."
The bitterest things have been said about the Lorelei
during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this
occasion entitles her to our respect. One feels drawn
tenderly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes
and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed
her career.
"The Fairy was never more seen; but her enchanting tones have
often been heard. In the beautiful, refreshing, still nights
of spring, when the moon pours her silver light over the Country,
the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves,
the echoing Clang of a wonderfully charming voice,
which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow
and fear he thinks on the young Count Hermann, seduced by the
Nymph."
Here is the music, and the German words by Heinrich Heine.
This song has been a favorite in Germany for forty years,
and will remain a favorite always, maybe. [Figure 5]
I have a prejudice against people who print things
in a foreign language and add no translation.
When I am the reader, and the author considers me
able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite
a nice compliment--but if he would do the translating
for me I would try to get along without the compliment.
If I were at home, no doubt I could get a translation of
this poem, but I am abroad and can't; therefore I will make
a translation myself. It may not be a good one, for poetry
is out of my line, but it will serve my purpose--which is,
to give the unGerman young girl a jingle of words to hang
the tune on until she can get hold of a good version,
made by some one who is a poet and knows how to convey
a poetical thought from one language to another.
THE LORELEI
I cannot divine what it meaneth,
This haunting nameless pain:
A tale of the bygone ages
Keeps brooding through my brain:
The faint air cools in the glooming,
And peaceful flows the Rhine,
The thirsty summits are drinking
The sunset's flooding wine;
The loveliest maiden is sitting
High-throned in yon blue air,
Her golden jewels are shining,
She combs her golden hair;
She combs with a comb that is golden,
And sings a weird refrain
That steeps in a deadly enchantment
The list'ner's ravished brain:
The doomed in his drifting shallop,
Is tranced with the sad sweet tone,
He sees not the yawning breakers,
He sees but the maid alone:
The pitiless billows engulf him!--
So perish sailor and bark;
And this, with her baleful singing,
Is the Lorelei's gruesome work.
I have a translation by Garnham, Bachelor of Arts,
in the LEGENDS OF THE RHINE, but it would not answer
the purpose I mentioned above, because the measure is too
nobly irregular; it don't fit the tune snugly enough;
in places it hangs over at the ends too far, and in other
places one runs out of words before he gets to the end
of a bar. Still, Garnham's translation has high merits,
and I am not dreaming of leaving it out of my book.
I believe this poet is wholly unknown in America and England;
I take peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward because I
consider that I discovered him:
THE LORELEI
Translated by L. W. Garnham, B.A.
I do not know what it signifies.
That I am so sorrowful?
A fable of old Times so terrifies,
Leaves my heart so thoughtful.
The air is cool and it darkens,
And calmly flows the Rhine;
The summit of the mountain hearkens
In evening sunshine line.
The most beautiful Maiden entrances
Above wonderfully there,
Her beautiful golden attire glances,
She combs her golden hair.
With golden comb so lustrous,
And thereby a song sings,
It has a tone so wondrous,
That powerful melody rings.
The shipper in the little ship
It effects with woe sad might;
He does not see the rocky slip,
He only regards dreaded height.
I believe the turbulent waves
Swallow the last shipper and boat;
She with her singing craves
All to visit her magic moat.
No translation could be closer. He has got in all
the facts; and in their regular order, too. There is not
a statistic wanting. It is as succinct as an invoice.
That is what a translation ought to be; it should exactly
reflect the thought of the original. You can't SING "Above
wonderfully there," because it simply won't go to the tune,
without damaging the singer; but it is a most clingingly exact
translation of DORT OBEN WUNDERBAR--fits it like a blister.
Mr. Garnham's reproduction has other merits--a hundred
of them--but it is not necessary to point them out.
They will be detected.
No one with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it.
Even Garnham has a rival. Mr. X had a small pamphlet
with him which he had bought while on a visit to Munich.
It was entitled A CATALOGUE OF PICTURES IN THE OLD PINACOTEK,
and was written in a peculiar kind of English. Here are
a few extracts:
"It is not permitted to make use of the work
in question to a publication of the same contents
as well as to the pirated edition of it."
"An evening landscape. In the foreground near a pond
and a group of white beeches is leading a footpath
animated by travelers."
"A learned man in a cynical and torn dress holding an open
book in his hand."
"St. Bartholomew and the Executioner with the knife
to fulfil the martyr."
"Portrait of a young man. A long while this picture
was thought to be Bindi Altoviti's portrait; now somebody
will again have it to be the self-portrait of Raphael."
"Susan bathing, surprised by the two old man.
In the background the lapidation of the condemned."
("Lapidation" is good; it is much more elegant than
"stoning.")
"St. Rochus sitting in a landscape with an angel who looks
at his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth
attents him."
"Spring. The Goddess Flora, sitting. Behind her a fertile
valley perfused by a river."
"A beautiful bouquet animated by May-bugs, etc."
"A warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans
against a table and blows the smoke far away of himself."
"A Dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses
it till to the background."
"Some peasants singing in a cottage. A woman lets drink
a child out of a cup."
"St. John's head as a boy--painted in fresco on a brick."
(Meaning a tile.)
"A young man of the Riccio family, his hair cut off
right at the end, dressed in black with the same cap.
Attributed to Raphael, but the signation is false."
"The Virgin holding the Infant. It is very painted
in the manner of Sassoferrato."
"A Larder with greens and dead game animated by a cook-maid
and two kitchen-boys."
However, the English of this catalogue is at least
as happy as that which distinguishes an inscription
upon a certain picture in Rome--to wit:
"Revelations-View. St. John in Patterson's Island."
But meanwhile the raft is moving on.
CHAPTER XVII
[Why Germans Wear Spectacles]
A mile or two above Eberbach we saw a peculiar ruin projecting
above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and
very steep hill. This ruin consisted of merely a couple
of crumbling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance
to human faces; they leaned forward and touched foreheads,
and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. This ruin
had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there
was no great deal of it, yet it was called the "Spectacular
Ruin."
LEGEND OF THE "SPECTACULAR RUIN"
The captain of the raft, who was as full of history as he
could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a most prodigious
fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region,
and made more trouble than a tax-collector. He was as long
as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable
green scales all over him. His breath bred pestilence
and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. He ate
men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular.
The German emperor of that day made the usual offer:
he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one
solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage
of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killers
to take a daughter for pay.
So the most renowned knights came from the four corners
of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after
the other. A panic arose and spread. Heroes grew cautious.
The procession ceased. The dragon became more destructive
than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fled
to the mountains for refuge.
At last Sir Wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight,
out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster.
A pitiable object he was, with his armor hanging in rags
about him, and his strange-shaped knapsack strapped
upon his back. Everybody turned up their noses at him,
and some openly jeered him. But he was calm. He simply
inquired if the emperor's offer was still in force.
The emperor said it was--but charitably advised him to go
and hunt hares and not endanger so precious a life as his
in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the
world's most illustrious heroes.
But this tramp only asked--"Were any of these heroes
men of science?" This raised a laugh, of course,
for science was despised in those days. But the tramp
was not in the least ruffled. He said he might be a
little in advance of his age, but no matter--science
would come to be honored, some time or other. He said
he would march against the dragon in the morning.
Out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him,
but he declined, and said, "spears were useless to men
of science." They allowed him to sup in the servants'
hall, and gave him a bed in the stables.
When he started forth in the morning, thousands were
gathered to see. The emperor said:
"Do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knapsack."
But the tramp said:
"It is not a knapsack," and moved straight on.
The dragon was waiting and ready. He was breathing forth
vast volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame.
The ragged knight stole warily to a good position,
then he unslung his cylindrical knapsack--which was simply
the common fire-extinguisher known to modern times
--and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot
the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth.
Out went the fires in an instant, and the dragon curled up
and died.
This man had brought brains to his aid. He had reared
dragons from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched
over them like a mother, and patiently studied them
and experimented upon them while they grew. Thus he had
found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon;
put out the dragon's fires and it could make steam
no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire
with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher.
The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck
and said:
"Deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning
out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters
to form and advance. But the tramp gave them no observance.
He simply said:
"My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly
of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in Germany."
The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed:
"This transcends all the impudence I ever heard! A
modest demand, by my halidome! Why didn't you ask
for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it?"
But the monarch had given his word, and he kept it.
To everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately
reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a
great and crushing burden was removed from the nation.
The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to
testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding
everybody to buy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them,
whether they needed them or not.
So originated the wide-spread custom of wearing
spectacles in Germany; and as a custom once established
in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains
universal in the empire to this day. Such is the legend
of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle,
now called the "Spectacular Ruin."
On the right bank, two or three miles below the Spectacular
Ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings
overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation.
A stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall
was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of
buildings within rose three picturesque old towers.
The place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a
family of princely rank. This castle had its legend,
too, but I should not feel justified in repeating
it because I doubted the truth of some of its minor details.
Along in this region a multitude of Italian laborers
were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make
room for the new railway. They were fifty or a hundred
feet above the river. As we turned a sharp corner they
began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look
out for the explosions. It was all very well to warn us,
but what could WE do? You can't back a raft upstream,
you can't hurry it downstream, you can't scatter out
to one side when you haven't any room to speak of,
you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other
shore when they appear to be blasting there, too.
Your resources are limited, you see. There is simply
nothing for it but to watch and pray.
For some hours we had been making three and a half or four
miles an hour and we were still making that. We had been
dancing right along until those men began to shout;
then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that I had
never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast went
off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result.
No harm done; none of the stones fell in the water.
Another blast followed, and another and another.
Some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern
of us.
We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it
was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable
weeks I ever spent, either aship or ashore. Of course
we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly
for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts
of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole
and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it.
It was very busy times along there for a while.
It appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was
not the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature
of the death--that was the sting--that and the bizarre
wording of the resulting obituary: "SHOT WITH A ROCK,
ON A RAFT." There would be no poetry written about it.
None COULD be written about it. Example:
NOT by war's shock, or war's shaft,--SHOT, with a rock,
on a raft.
No poet who valued his reputation would touch such a
theme as that. I should be distinguished as the only
"distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted,
in 1878.
But we escaped, and I have never regretted it.
The last blast was peculiarly strong one, and after
the small rubbish was done raining around us and we
were just going to shake hands over our deliverance,
a later and larger stone came down amongst our little
group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. It did
no other harm, but we took to the water just the same.
It seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the
new railway gradings is done mainly by Italians.
That was a revelation. We have the notion in our country
that Italians never do heavy work at all, but confine
themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding,
operatic singing, and assassination. We have blundered,
that is plain.
All along the river, near every village, we saw little
station-houses for the future railway. They were
finished and waiting for the rails and business.
They were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be.
They were always of brick or stone; they were of graceful
shape, they had vines and flowers about them already,
and around them the grass was bright and green,
and showed that it was carefully looked after. They were
a decoration to the beautiful landscape, not an offense.
Wherever one saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone,
it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave
or a stack of cannon-balls; nothing about those stations
or along the railroad or the wagon-road was allowed
to look shabby or be unornamental. The keeping a country
in such beautiful order as Germany exhibits, has a wise
practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people
in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous.
As the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up,
but I thought maybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on.
Presently the sky became overcast, and the captain came
aft looking uneasy. He cast his eye aloft, then shook
his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My party
wanted to land at once--therefore I wanted to go on.
The captain said we ought to shorten sail anyway,
out of common prudence. Consequently, the larboard watch
was ordered to lay in his pole. It grew quite dark,
now, and the wind began to rise. It wailed through
the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks
in fitful gusts. Things were taking on an ugly look.
The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward
log:
"How's she landing?"
The answer came faint and hoarse from far forward:
"Nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir."
"Let her go off a point!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"What water have you got?"
"Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard,
two and a half scant on the labboard!"
"Let her go off another point!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
"Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd
her round the weather corner!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"
Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting,
but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and
the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring
of the wind through the shingle-bundles. By this time
the sea was running inches high, and threatening every
moment to engulf the frail bark. Now came the mate,
hurrying aft, and said, close to the captain's ear,
in a low, agitated voice:
"Prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!"
"Heavens! where?"
"Right aft the second row of logs."
"Nothing but a miracle can save us! Don't let the men know,
or there will be a panic and mutiny! Lay her in shore
and stand by to jump with the stern-line the moment
she touches. Gentlemen, I must look to you to second
my endeavors in this hour of peril. You have hats--go
forward and bail for your lives!"
Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in
spray and thick darkness. At such a moment as this,
came from away forward that most appalling of all cries
that are ever heard at sea:
"MAN OVERBOARD!"
The captain shouted:
"Hard a-port! Never mind the man! Let him climb aboard
or wade ashore!"
Another cry came down the wind:
"Breakers ahead!"
"Where away?"
"Not a log's length off her port fore-foot!"
We had groped our slippery way forward, and were now
bailing with the frenzy of despair, when we heard
the mate's terrified cry, from far aft:
"Stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground!"
But this was immediately followed by the glad shout:
"Land aboard the starboard transom!"
"Saved!" cried the captain. "Jump ashore and take a turn
around a tree and pass the bight aboard!"
The next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing
for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents.
The captain said he had been a mariner for forty years
on the Neckar, and in that time had seen storms to make
a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never,
never seen a storm that even approached this one.
How familiar that sounded! For I have been at sea a good
deal and have heard that remark from captains with a
frequency accordingly.
We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks
and admiration and gratitude, and took the first
opportunity to vote it, and put it in writing and
present it to the captain, with the customary speech.
We tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer
rain full three miles, and reached "The Naturalist Tavern"
in the village of Hirschhorn just an hour before midnight,
almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue, and terror.
I can never forget that night.
The landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be
crusty and disobliging; he did not at all like being
turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us.
But no matter, his household got up and cooked a quick
supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves,
to keep off consumption. After supper and punch we
had an hour's soothing smoke while we fought the naval
battle over again and voted the resolutions; then we
retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs
that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom
pillowcases most elaborately and tastefully embroidered
by hand.
Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent
in German village inns as they are rare in ours.
Our villages are superior to German villages in
more merits, excellences, conveniences, and privileges
than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the list.
"The Naturalist Tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all
the halls and all the rooms were lined with large glass
cases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals,
glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and set up in the most natural
eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment we were abed,
the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off
to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl
which was looking intently down on me from a high perch
with the air of a person who thought he had met me before,
but could not make out for certain.
But young Z did not get off so easily. He said that as he was
sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows
and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed,
but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring,
and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him.
It made Z uncomfortable. He tried closing his own eyes,
but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept
making him open them again to see if the cat was still
getting ready to launch at him--which she always was.
He tried turning his back, but that was a failure;
he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at
last he had to get up, after an hour or two of worry
and experiment, and set the cat out in the hall. So he won,
that time.
CHAPTER XVIII
[The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]
In the morning we took breakfast in the garden,
under the trees, in the delightful German summer fashion.
The air was filled with the fragrance of flowers
and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie
of the "Naturalist Tavern" was all about us. There were
great cages populous with fluttering and chattering
foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens,
populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign.
There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable
ones they were. White rabbits went loping about the place,
and occasionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins;
a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and
examined us fearlessly; rare breeds of chickens and
doves begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven
hopped about with a humble, shamefaced mein which said,
"Please do not notice my exposure--think how you would
feel in my circumstances, and be charitable." If he
was observed too much, he would retire behind something
and stay there until he judged the party's interest had
found another object. I never have seen another dumb
creature that was so morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor,
who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals,
and understood their moral natures better than most men,
would have found some way to make this poor old chap forget
his troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art,
and so had to leave the raven to his griefs.
After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient
castle of Hirschhorn, and the ruined church near it.
There were some curious old bas-reliefs leaning against
the inner walls of the church--sculptured lords of
Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn
in the picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages.
These things are suffering damage and passing to decay,
for the last Hirschhorn has been dead two hundred years,
and there is nobody now who cares to preserve the family relics.
In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain
told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter
of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I
do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausible
about it except that the Hero wrenched this column into its
present screw-shape with his hands --just one single wrench.
All the rest of the legend was doubtful.
But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river.
Then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop,
and the old battlemented stone wall, stretching up and over
the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond,
make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy
the eye.
We descended from the church by steep stone stairways
which curved this way and that down narrow alleys
between the packed and dirty tenements of the village.
It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering,
unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps
and begged piteously. The people of the quarter were not
all idiots, of course, but all that begged seemed to be,
and were said to be.
I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town,
Necharsteinach; so I ran to the riverside in advance of
the party and asked a man there if he had a boat to hire.
I suppose I must have spoken High German--Court German--I
intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me.
I turned and twisted my question around and about,
trying to strike that man's average, but failed.
He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr. X arrived,
faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied
this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way:
"Can man boat get here?"
The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered.
I can comprehend why he was able to understand that
particular sentence, because by mere accident all the
words in it except "get" have the same sound and the same
meaning in German that they have in English; but how he
managed to understand Mr. X's next remark puzzled me.
I will insert it, presently. X turned away a moment,
and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board,
and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the
purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the
purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried
his best to understand me; he tried, and kept on trying,
harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use,
and said:
"There, don't strain yourself--it is of no consequence."
Then X turned to him and crisply said:
"MACHEN SIE a flat board."
I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man
did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow
a board as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling.
We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have
to go. I have given Mr. X's two remarks just as he made them.
Four of the five words in the first one were English,
and that they were also German was only accidental,
not intentional; three out of the five words in the second
remark were English, and English only, and the two German
ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection.
X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was
to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down,
according to German construction, and sprinkle in a German
word without any essential meaning to it, here and there,
by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood.
He could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand
him, sometimes, when even young Z had failed with them;
and young Z was a pretty good German scholar. For one thing,
X always spoke with such confidence--perhaps that helped.
And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called
PLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar
to their ears than another man's German. Quite indifferent
students of German can read Fritz Reuter's charming
platt-Deutch tales with some little facility because many
of the words are English. I suppose this is the tongue
which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them.
By and by I will inquire of some other philologist.
However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men
employed to calk the raft had found that the leak was not
a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs--a crack
that belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been
magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of
the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a good degree
of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident.
As we swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores,
we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs
in Germany and elsewhere.
As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us,
by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day
by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent
stock of misinformation. But this is not surprising;
it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country.
For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg,
to find out all about those five student-corps. I started
with the White Cap corps. I began to inquire of this
and that and the other citizen, and here is what I found
out:
1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none
but Prussians are admitted to it.
2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason.
It has simply pleased each corps to name itself after
some German state.
3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only
the White Cap Corps.
4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth.
5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth.
6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he
be a Frenchman.
7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he
was born.
8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood.
9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full
generations of noble descent.
10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification.
11. No moneyless student can belong to it.
12. Money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has
never been thought of.
I got some of this information from students themselves
--students who did not belong to the corps.
I finally went to headquarters--to the White Caps--where I
would have gone in the first place if I had been acquainted.
But even at headquarters I found difficulties; I perceived
that there were things about the White Cap Corps which
one member knew and another one didn't. It was natural;
for very few members of any organization know ALL that can
be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman
in Heidelberg who would not answer promptly and confidently
three out of every five questions about the White Cap Corps
which a stranger might ask; yet it is a very safe bet
that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time.
There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing
courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or
rising up from it. This bow startles a stranger out of his
self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely
to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment,
but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns to expect
this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it;
but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow
one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man.
One thinks, "If I rise to go, and tender my box,
and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads
to ignore the custom of their nation, and not return it,
how shall I feel, in case I survive to feel anything."
Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sits out the dinner,
and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bowing.
A table d'ho^te dinner is a tedious affair for a man
who seldom touches anything after the three first courses;
therefore I used to do some pretty dreary waiting
because of my fears. It took me months to assure myself
that those fears were groundless, but I did assure myself
at last by experimenting diligently through my agent.
I made Harris get up and bow and leave; invariably his bow
was returned, then I got up and bowed myself and retired.
Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me,
but not for Harris. Three courses of a table d'ho^te
dinner were enough for me, but Harris preferred thirteen.
Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed
the agent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties.
Once at Baden-Baden I nearly lost a train because I could
not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table
were Germans, since I had not heard them speak; they might
be American, they might be English, it was not safe to venture
a bow; but just as I had got that far with my thought,
one of them began a German remark, to my great relief
and gratitude; and before she got out her third word,
our bows had been delivered and graciously returned,
and we were off.
There is a friendly something about the German character
which is very winning. When Harris and I were making
a pedestrian tour through the Black Forest, we stopped at
a little country inn for dinner one day; two young ladies
and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us.
They were pedestrians, too. Our knapsacks were strapped
upon our backs, but they had a sturdy youth along to carry
theirs for them. All parties were hungry, so there was
no talking. By and by the usual bows were exchanged,
and we separated.
As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen,
next morning, these young people and took places
near us without observing us; but presently they saw
us and at once bowed and smiled; not ceremoniously,
but with the gratified look of people who have found
acquaintances where they were expecting strangers.
Then they spoke of the weather and the roads. We also
spoke of the weather and the roads. Next, they said they
had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding the weather.
We said that that had been our case, too. Then they said
they had walked thirty English miles the day before,
and asked how many we had walked. I could not lie, so I
told Harris to do it. Harris told them we had made thirty
English miles, too. That was true; we had "made" them,
though we had had a little assistance here and there.
After breakfast they found us trying to blast some
information out of the dumb hotel clerk about routes,
and observing that we were not succeeding pretty well,
they went and got their maps and things, and pointed
out and explained our course so clearly that even a New
York detective could have followed it. And when we
started they spoke out a hearty good-by and wished us
a pleasant journey. Perhaps they were more generous
with us than they might have been with native wayfarers
because we were a forlorn lot and in a strange land;
I don't know; I only know it was lovely to be treated so.
Very well, I took an American young lady to one of the fine
balls in Baden-Baden, one night, and at the entrance-door
upstairs we were halted by an official--something about Miss
Jones's dress was not according to rule; I don't remember
what it was, now; something was wanting--her back hair,
or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something.
The official was ever so polite, and every so sorry,
but the rule was strict, and he could not let us in.
It was very embarrassing, for many eyes were on us.
But now a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom,
inquired into the trouble, and said she could fix it in
a moment. She took Miss Jones to the robing-room, and soon
brought her back in regulation trim, and then we entered
the ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged.
Being safe, now, I began to puzzle through my sincere
but ungrammatical thanks, when there was a sudden mutual
recognition --the benefactress and I had met at Allerheiligen.
Two weeks had not altered her good face, and plainly
her heart was in the right place yet, but there was such
a difference between these clothes and the clothes I
had seen her in before, when she was walking thirty miles
a day in the Black Forest, that it was quite natural
that I had failed to recognize her sooner. I had on MY
other suit, too, but my German would betray me to a person
who had heard it once, anyway. She brought her brother
and sister, and they made our way smooth for that evening.
Well--months afterward, I was driving through the streets
of Munich in a cab with a German lady, one day, when she
said:
"There, that is Prince Ludwig and his wife, walking along there."
Everybody was bowing to them--cabmen, little children,
and everybody else--and they were returning all the bows
and overlooking nobody, when a young lady met them and made
a deep courtesy.
"That is probably one of the ladies of the court,"
said my German friend.
I said:
"She is an honor to it, then. I know her. I don't know
her name, but I know HER. I have known her at Allerheiligen
and Baden-Baden. She ought to be an Empress, but she
may be only a Duchess; it is the way things go in this way."
If one asks a German a civil question, he will be quite
sure to get a civil answer. If you stop a German in the
street and ask him to direct you to a certain place,
he shows no sign of feeling offended. If the place be
difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own
matters and go with you and show you.
In London, too, many a time, strangers have walked several
blocks with me to show me my way.
There is something very real about this sort of politeness.
Quite often, in Germany, shopkeepers who could not furnish
me the article I wanted have sent one of their employees
with me to show me a place where it could be had.
CHAPTER XIX
[The Deadly Jest of Dilsberg]
However, I wander from the raft. We made the port
of Necharsteinach in good season, and went to the hotel
and ordered a trout dinner, the same to be ready
against our return from a two-hour pedestrian excursion
to the village and castle of Dilsberg, a mile distant,
on the other side of the river. I do not mean that we
proposed to be two hours making two miles--no, we meant
to employ most of the time in inspecting Dilsberg.
For Dilsberg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly
and picturesquely situated, too. Imagine the beautiful
river before you; then a few rods of brilliant green sward
on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--no preparatory
gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill
--a hill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high,
as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an
inverted bowl has, and with about the same relation
of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good
honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with
green bushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly
out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains,
visible from a great distance down the bends of the river,
and with just exactly room on the top of its head
for its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap
of architecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted
within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall.
There is no house outside the wall on the whole hill,
or any vestige of a former house; all the houses are
inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one.
It is really a finished town, and has been finished
a very long time. There is no space between the wall
and the first circle of buildings; no, the village wall
is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings,
and the roofs jut a little over the wall and thus
furnish it with eaves. The general level of the massed
roofs is gracefully broken and relieved by the dominating
towers of the ruined castle and the tall spires of a
couple of churches; so, from a distance Dilsberg has
rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap.
That lofty green eminence and its quaint coronet form
quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush
of the evening sun.
We crossed over in a boat and began the ascent by a narrow,
steep path which plunged us at once into the leafy deeps
of the bushes. But they were not cool deeps by any means,
for the sun's rays were weltering hot and there was
little or no breeze to temper them. As we panted up
the sharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and barefooted
boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men;
they came upon us without warning, they gave us good day,
flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were gone as
suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. They were
bound for the other side of the river to work. This path
had been traveled by many generations of these people.
They have always gone down to the valley to earn their bread,
but they have always climbed their hill again to eat it,
and to sleep in their snug town.
It is said that the Dilsbergers do not emigrate much;
they find that living up there above the world, in their
peaceful nest, is pleasanter than living down in the
troublous world. The seven hundred inhabitants are all
blood-kin to each other, too; they have always been blood-kin
to each other for fifteen hundred years; they are simply
one large family, and they like the home folks better than
they like strangers, hence they persistently stay at home.
It has been said that for ages Dilsberg has been merely
a thriving and diligent idiot-factory. I saw no idiots there,
but the captain said, "Because of late years the government
has taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres;
and government wants to cripple the factory, too, and is
trying to get these Dilsbergers to marry out of the family,
but they don't like to."
The captain probably imagined all this, as modern science
denies that the intermarrying of relatives deteriorates
the stock.
Arrived within the wall, we found the usual village
sights and life. We moved along a narrow, crooked lane
which had been paved in the Middle Ages. A strapping,
ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little
bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail
with a will--if it was a flail; I was not farmer enough
to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was
herding half a dozen geese with a stick--driving them
along the lane and keeping them out of the dwellings;
a cooper was at work in a shop which I know he did not make
so large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room.
In the front rooms of dwellings girls and women were
cooking or spinning, and ducks and chickens were waddling
in and out, over the threshold, picking up chance crumbs
and holding pleasant converse; a very old and wrinkled man
sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast
and his extinguished pipe in his lap; soiled children
were playing in the dirt everywhere along the lane,
unmindful of the sun.
Except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work,
but the place was very still and peaceful, nevertheless;
so still that the distant cackle of the successful hen smote
upon the ear but little dulled by intervening sounds.
That commonest of village sights was lacking here--the
public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of
limpid water, and its group of gossiping pitcher-bearers;
for there is no well or fountain or spring on this tall hill;
cisterns of rain-water are used.
Our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention,
and as we moved through the village we gathered a considerable
procession of little boys and girls, and so went in some
state to the castle. It proved to be an extensive pile of
crumbling walls, arches, and towers, massive, properly grouped
for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory.
The children acted as guides; they walked us along the top
of the highest walls, then took us up into a high tower
and showed us a wide and beautiful landscape, made up
of wavy distances of woody hills, and a nearer prospect
of undulating expanses of green lowlands, on the one hand,
and castle-graced crags and ridges on the other,
with the shining curves of the Neckar flowing between.
But the principal show, the chief pride of the children,
was the ancient and empty well in the grass-grown court
of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three
or four feet above-ground, and is whole and uninjured.
The children said that in the Middle Ages this well was
four hundred feet deep, and furnished all the village
with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace.
They said that in the old day its bottom was below the level
of the Neckar, hence the water-supply was inexhaustible.
But there were some who believed it had never been a well
at all, and was never deeper than it is now--eighty feet;
that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it
and descended gradually to a remote place in the valley,
where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess,
and that the secret of this locality is now lost.
Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the
explanation that Dilsberg, besieged by Tilly and many
a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest
and closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to
perceive that the besieged were as fat and hearty as ever,
and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore
it must be that the Dilsbergers had been bringing these
things in through the subterranean passage all the time.
The children said that there was in truth a subterranean
outlet down there, and they would prove it. So they set
a great truss of straw on fire and threw it down the well,
while we leaned on the curb and watched the glowing
mass descend. It struck bottom and gradually burned out.
No smoke came up. The children clapped their hands and
said:
"You see! Nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now
where did the smoke go to, if there is no subterranean outlet?"
So it seemed quite evident that the subterranean outlet
indeed existed. But the finest thing within the ruin's
limits was a noble linden, which the children said was
four hundred years old, and no doubt it was. It had
a mighty trunk and a mighty spread of limb and foliage.
The limbs near the ground were nearly the thickness
of a barrel.
That tree had witnessed the assaults of men in mail
--how remote such a time seems, and how ungraspable is the
fact that real men ever did fight in real armor!--and it
had seen the time when these broken arches and crumbling
battlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress,
fluttering its gay banners in the sun, and peopled with vigorous
humanity--how impossibly long ago that seems!--and here
it stands yet, and possibly may still be standing here,
sunning itself and dreaming its historical dreams,
when today shall have been joined to the days called "ancient."
Well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the captain
delivered himself of his legend:
THE LEGEND OF DILSBERG CASTLE
It was to this effect. In the old times there was once
a great company assembled at the castle, and festivity
ran high. Of course there was a haunted chamber
in the castle, and one day the talk fell upon that.
It was said that whoever slept in it would not wake again
for fifty years. Now when a young knight named Conrad
von Geisberg heard this, he said that if the castle were
his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish
person might have the chance to bring so dreadful
a misfortune upon himself and afflict such as loved
him with the memory of it. Straightway, the company
privately laid their heads together to contrive some
way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber.
And they succeeded--in this way. They persuaded
his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature,
niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot.
She presently took him aside and had speech with him.
She used all her persuasions, but could not shake him;
he said his belief was firm, that if he should sleep
there he would wake no more for fifty years, and it made
him shudder to think of it. Catharina began to weep.
This was a better argument; Conrad could not out against it.
He yielded and said she should have her wish if she would only
smile and be happy again. She flung her arms about his neck,
and the kisses she gave him showed that her thankfulness
and her pleasure were very real. Then she flew to tell
the company her success, and the applause she received
made her glad and proud she had undertaken her mission,
since all alone she had accomplished what the multitude had
failed in.
At midnight, that night, after the usual feasting,
Conrad was taken to the haunted chamber and left there.
He fell asleep, by and by.
When he awoke again and looked about him, his heart
stood still with horror! The whole aspect of the chamber
was changed. The walls were moldy and hung with
ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings were rotten;
the furniture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces.
He sprang out of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under
him and he fell to the floor.
"This is the weakness of age," he said.
He rose and sought his clothing. It was clothing no longer.
The colors were gone, the garments gave way in many places
while he was putting them on. He fled, shuddering,
into the corridor, and along it to the great hall. Here he
was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kind countenance,
who stopped and gazed at him with surprise. Conrad said:
"Good sir, will you send hither the lord Ulrich?"
The stranger looked puzzled a moment, then said:
"The lord Ulrich?"
"Yes--if you will be so good."
The stranger called--"Wilhelm!" A young serving-man came,
and the stranger said to him:
"Is there a lord Ulrich among the guests?"
"I know none of the name, so please your honor."
Conrad said, hesitatingly:
"I did not mean a guest, but the lord of the castle, sir."
The stranger and the servant exchanged wondering glances.
Then the former said:
"I am the lord of the castle."
"Since when, sir?"
"Since the death of my father, the good lord Ulrich
more than forty years ago."
Conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his
hands while he rocked his body to and fro and moaned.
The stranger said in a low voice to the servant:
"I fear me this poor old creature is mad. Call some one."
In a moment several people came, and grouped themselves about,
talking in whispers. Conrad looked up and scanned
the faces about him wistfully.
Then he shook his head and said, in a grieved voice:
"No, there is none among ye that I know. I am old and alone
in the world. They are dead and gone these many years
that cared for me. But sure, some of these aged ones I see
about me can tell me some little word or two concerning them."
Several bent and tottering men and women came nearer
and answered his questions about each former friend
as he mentioned the names. This one they said had been
dead ten years, that one twenty, another thirty.
Each succeeding blow struck heavier and heavier.
At last the sufferer said:
"There is one more, but I have not the courage to--O
my lost Catharina!"
One of the old dames said:
"Ah, I knew her well, poor soul. A misfortune overtook
her lover, and she died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago.
She lieth under the linden tree without the court."
Conrad bowed his head and said:
"Ah, why did I ever wake! And so she died of grief for me,
poor child. So young, so sweet, so good! She never wittingly
did a hurtful thing in all the little summer of her life.
Her loving debt shall be repaid--for I will die of grief
for her."
His head drooped upon his breast. In the moment there
was a wild burst of joyous laughter, a pair of round
young arms were flung about Conrad's neck and a sweet
voice cried:
"There, Conrad mine, thy kind words kill me--the farce
shall go no further! Look up, and laugh with us--'twas
all a jest!"
And he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment
--for the disguises were stripped away, and the aged
men and women were bright and young and gay again.
Catharina's happy tongue ran on:
"'Twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out.
They gave you a heavy sleeping-draught before you went
to bed, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber
where all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags
of clothing by you. And when your sleep was spent and you
came forth, two strangers, well instructed in their parts,
were here to meet you; and all we, your friends,
in our disguises, were close at hand, to see and hear,
you may be sure. Ah, 'twas a gallant jest! Come, now,
and make thee ready for the pleasures of the day.
How real was thy misery for the moment, thou poor lad!
Look up and have thy laugh, now!"
He looked up, searched the merry faces about him
in a dreamy way, then sighed and said:
"I am aweary, good strangers, I pray you lead me to her grave."
All the smile vanished away, every cheek blanched,
Catharina sunk to the ground in a swoon.
All day the people went about the castle with troubled faces,
and communed together in undertones. A painful hush
pervaded the place which had lately been so full of
cheery life. Each in his turn tried to arouse Conrad
out of his hallucination and bring him to himself;
but all the answer any got was a meek, bewildered stare,
and then the words:
"Good stranger, I have no friends, all are at rest these
many years; ye speak me fair, ye mean me well, but I know
ye not; I am alone and forlorn in the world--prithee
lead me to her grave."
During two years Conrad spent his days, from the
early morning till the night, under the linden tree,
mourning over the imaginary grave of his Catharina.
Catharina was the only company of the harmless madman.
He was very friendly toward her because, as he said,
in some ways she reminded him of his Catharina whom he had
lost "fifty years ago." He often said:
"She was so gay, so happy-hearted--but you never smile;
and always when you think I am not looking, you cry."
When Conrad died, they buried him under the linden,
according to his directions, so that he might rest
"near his poor Catharina." Then Catharina sat under
the linden alone, every day and all day long, a great
many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling;
and at last her long repentance was rewarded with death,
and she was buried by Conrad's side.
Harris pleased the captain by saying it was good legend;
and pleased him further by adding:
"Now that I have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with
its four hundred years, I feel a desire to believe
the legend for ITS sake; so I will humor the desire,
and consider that the tree really watches over those poor
hearts and feels a sort of human tenderness for them."
We returned to Necharsteinach, plunged our hot heads
into the trough at the town pump, and then went to the
hotel and ate our trout dinner in leisurely comfort,
in the garden, with the beautiful Neckar flowing at our feet,
the quaint Dilsberg looming beyond, and the graceful
towers and battlements of a couple of medieval castles
(called the "Swallow's Nest" [1] and "The Brothers.")
assisting the rugged scenery of a bend of the river
down to our right. We got to sea in season to make the
eight-mile run to Heidelberg before the night shut down.
We sailed by the hotel in the mellow glow of sunset,
and came slashing down with the mad current into the narrow
passage between the dikes. I believed I could shoot the
bridge myself, and I went to the forward triplet of logs
and relieved the pilot of his pole and his responsibility.
1. The seeker after information is referred to Appendix
E for our captain's legend of the "Swallow's Nest"
and "The Brothers."
We went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and I
performed the delicate duties of my office very well indeed
for a first attempt; but perceiving, presently, that I
really was going to shoot the bridge itself instead
of the archway under it, I judiciously stepped ashore.
The next moment I had my long-coveted desire: I saw
a raft wrecked. It hit the pier in the center and went
all to smash and scatteration like a box of matches
struck by lightning.
I was the only one of our party who saw this grand sight;
the others were attitudinizing, for the benefit of the long
rank of young ladies who were promenading on the bank,
and so they lost it. But I helped to fish them out of
the river, down below the bridge, and then described it
to them as well as I could.
They were not interested, though. They said they were
wet and felt ridiculous and did not care anything for
descriptions of scenery. The young ladies, and other people,
crowded around and showed a great deal of sympathy,
but that did not help matters; for my friends said they
did not want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude.
CHAPTER XX
[My Precious, Priceless Tear-Jug]
Next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived
from Hamburg at last. Let this be a warning to the reader.
The Germans are very conscientious, and this trait makes
them very particular. Therefore if you tell a German you
want a thing done immediately, he takes you at your word;
he thinks you mean what you say; so he does that thing
immediately--according to his idea of immediately
--which is about a week; that is, it is a week if it refers
to the building of a garment, or it is an hour and a half
if it refers to the cooking of a trout. Very well; if you
tell a German to send your trunk to you by "slow freight,"
he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight,"
and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging
your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase
in the German tongue, before you get that trunk.
The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful,
when I got it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded
when it reached Heidelberg. However, it was still sound,
that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least;
the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful,
in Germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands.
There was nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we
set about our preparations.
Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection
of Ceramics. Of course I could not take it with me,
that would be inconvenient, and dangerous besides.
I took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers were divided
as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the
collection and warehouse it; others said try to get it
into the Grand Ducal Museum at Mannheim for safe keeping.
So I divided the collection, and followed the advice of
both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articles
which were the most frail and precious.
Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little
sketch of it here; [Figure 6] that thing creeping up
the side is not a bug, it is a hole. I bought this
tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred
and fifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the
Etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things,
and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now.
I also set aside my Henri II. plate. See sketch
from my pencil; [Figure 7] it is in the main correct,
though I think I have foreshortened one end of it a little
too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare; the shape
is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful
decorations on it, but I am not able to reproduce them.
It cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said
there was not another plate just like it in the world.
He said there was much false Henri II ware around,
but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable.
He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please;
it was a document which traced this plate's movements
all the way down from its birth--showed who bought it,
from whom, and what he paid for it--from the first buyer
down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up
from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said
that the whole Ceramic world would be informed that it
was now in my possession and would make a note of it,
with the price paid. [Figure 8]
There were Masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now.
Of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color;
it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating,
transboreal blue which is the despair of modern art.
The little sketch which I have made of this gem cannot
and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged
to leave out the color. But I've got the expression, though.
However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time
with these details. I did not intend to go into any
detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the
true ceramiker, or the true devotee in any department
of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his
pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop
until he drops from exhaustion. He has no more sense
of the flight of time than has any other lover when talking
of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on the bottom
of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into
a gibbering ecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning
relative to help dispute about whether the stopple
of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious.
Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting
is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes,
or decorating Japanese pots with decalcomanie butterflies
would be, and these people fling mud at the elegant Englishman,
Byng, who wrote a book called THE BRIC-A-BRAC HUNTER,
and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose
to call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over
these trifles; and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight"
in what they call his "tuppenny collection of beggarly
trivialities"; and for beginning his book with a picture
of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacent attitude,
in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junk
shop."
It is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us,
easy to despise us; therefore, let these people rail on;
they cannot feel as Byng and I feel--it is their loss,
not ours. For my part I am content to be a brick-a-bracker
and a ceramiker--more, I am proud to be so named.
I am proud to know that I lose my reason as immediately
in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark
on the bottom of it, as if I had just emptied that jug.
Very well; I packed and stored a part of my collection,
and the rest of it I placed in the care of the Grand Ducal
Museum in Mannheim, by permission. My Old Blue China
Cat remains there yet. I presented it to that excellent
institution.
I had but one misfortune with my things. An egg which I
had kept back from breakfast that morning, was broken
in packing. It was a great pity. I had shown it to the
best connoisseurs in Heidelberg, and they all said it
was an antique. We spent a day or two in farewell visits,
and then left for Baden-Baden. We had a pleasant
trip to it, for the Rhine valley is always lovely.
The only trouble was that the trip was too short.
If I remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours,
therefore I judge that the distance was very little,
if any, over fifty miles. We quitted the train at Oos,
and walked the entire remaining distance to Baden-Baden,
with the exception of a lift of less than an hour which we
got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm.
We came into town on foot.
One of the first persons we encountered, as we walked
up the street, was the Rev. Mr. ------, an old friend
from America--a lucky encounter, indeed, for his is
a most gentle, refined, and sensitive nature, and his
company and companionship are a genuine refreshment.
We knew he had been in Europe some time, but were not
at all expecting to run across him. Both parties burst
forth into loving enthusiasms, and Rev. Mr. ------said:
"I have got a brimful reservoir of talk to pour out
on you, and an empty one ready and thirsting to receive
what you have got; we will sit up till midnight
and have a good satisfying interchange, for I leave
here early in the morning." We agreed to that, of course.
I had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person
who was walking in the street abreast of us; I had glanced
furtively at him once or twice, and noticed that he
was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open,
independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale
and even almost imperceptible crop of early down,
and that he was clothed from head to heel in cool and
enviable snow-white linen. I thought I had also noticed
that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it.
Now about this time the Rev. Mr. ------said:
"The sidewalk is hardly wide enough for three, so I will
walk behind; but keep the talk going, keep the talk going,
there's no time to lose, and you may be sure I will do
my share." He ranged himself behind us, and straightway that
stately snow-white young fellow closed up to the sidewalk
alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder
with his broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness:
"AMERICANS for two-and-a-half and the money up! HEY?"
The Reverend winced, but said mildly:
"Yes--we are Americans."
"Lord love you, you can just bet that's what _I_ am,
every time! Put it there!"
He held out his Sahara of his palm, and the Reverend laid
his diminutive hand in it, and got so cordial a shake
that we heard his glove burst under it.
"Say, didn't I put you up right?"
"Oh, yes."
"Sho! I spotted you for MY kind the minute I heard
your clack. You been over here long?"
"About four months. Have you been over long?"
"LONG? Well, I should say so! Going on two YEARS,
by geeminy! Say, are you homesick?"
"No, I can't say that I am. Are you?"
"Oh, HELL, yes!" This with immense enthusiasm.
The Reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we
were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, that he
was throwing out signals of distress to us; but we did
not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy.
The young fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend's, now,
with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has
been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear,
and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the
mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles
of his mouth and turned himself loose--and with such a
relish! Some of his words were not Sunday-school words,
so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur.
"Yes indeedy! If _I_ ain't an American there AIN'T
any Americans, that's all. And when I heard you fellows
gassing away in the good old American language, I'm ------
if it wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging you! My
tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these
------forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here;
now I TELL you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian
word once more and kind of let the old taste soak it.
I'm from western New York. My name is Cholley Adams.
I'm a student, you know. Been here going on two years.
I'm learning to be a horse-doctor! I LIKE that part of it,
you know, but ------these people, they won't learn a fellow
in his own language, they make him learn in German; so before
I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this
miserable language.
"First off, I thought it would certainly give me
the botts, but I don't mind now. I've got it where the
hair's short, I think; and dontchuknow, they made me
learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't
give a ------for all the Latin that was ever jabbered;
and the first thing _I_ calculate to do when I get through,
is to just sit down and forget it. 'Twon't take me long,
and I don't mind the time, anyway. And I tell you what!
the difference between school-teaching over yonder and
school-teaching over here--sho! WE don't know anything
about it! Here you're got to peg and peg and peg and there
just ain't any let-up--and what you learn here, you've got
to KNOW, dontchuknow --or else you'll have one of these
------spavined, spectacles, ring-boned, knock-kneed old
professors in your hair. I've been here long ENOUGH,
and I'm getting blessed tired of it, mind I TELL you.
The old man wrote me that he was coming over in June,
and said he'd take me home in August, whether I was done
with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come;
never said why; just sent me a hamper of Sunday-school
books, and told me to be good, and hold on a while.
I don't take to Sunday-school books, dontchuknow--I
don't hanker after them when I can get pie--but I
READ them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells
me to do, that's the thing that I'm a-going to DO,
or tear something, you know. I buckled in and read
all those books, because he wanted me to; but that kind
of thing don't excite ME, I like something HEARTY.
But I'm awful homesick. I'm homesick from ear-socket
to crupper, and from crupper to hock-joint; but it ain't
any use, I've got to stay here, till the old man drops
the rag and give the word--yes, SIR, right here in this
------country I've got to linger till the old man says
COME!--and you bet your bottom dollar, Johnny, it AIN'T
just as easy as it is for a cat to have twins!"
At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he
fetched a prodigious "WHOOSH!" to relieve his lungs
and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway
dived into his narrative again for "Johnny's" benefit,
beginning, "Well, ------it ain't any use talking,
some of those old American words DO have a kind
of a bully swing to them; a man can EXPRESS himself
with 'em--a man can get at what he wants to SAY, dontchuknow."
When we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was
about to lose the Reverend, he showed so much sorrow,
and begged so hard and so earnestly that the Reverend's heart
was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings
--so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a
right Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings,
and sat in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity
till near midnight, and then left him--left him pretty
well talked out, but grateful "clear down to his frogs,"
as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpired
during the interview that "Cholley" Adams's father
was an extensive dealer in horses in western New York;
this accounted for Cholley's choice of a profession.
The Reverend brought away a pretty high opinion of
Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for
a useful citizen; he considered him rather a rough gem,
but a gem, nevertheless.
CHAPTER XXI
[Insolent Shopkeepers and Gabbling Americans]
Baden-Baden sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural
and artificial beauties of the surroundings are combined
effectively and charmingly. The level strip of ground
which stretches through and beyond the town is laid
out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees
and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling
fountain-jets. Thrice a day a fine band makes music
in the public promenade before the Conversation House,
and in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous
with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march
back and forth past the great music-stand and look very
much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise.
It seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence.
A good many of these people are there for a real
purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism,
and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths.
These invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on
their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over
all sorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany,
with her damp stone houses, is the home of rheumatism.
If that is so, Providence must have foreseen that it
would be so, and therefore filled the land with the
healing baths. Perhaps no other country is so generously
supplied with medicinal springs as Germany. Some of
these baths are good for one ailment, some for another;
and again, peculiar ailments are conquered by combining
the individual virtues of several different baths.
For instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks
the native hot water of Baden-Baden, with a spoonful
of salt from the Carlsbad springs dissolved in it.
That is not a dose to be forgotten right away.
They don't SELL this hot water; no, you go into the
great Trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot
and then on the other, while two or three young girls
sit pottering at some sort of ladylike sewing-work
in your neighborhood and can't seem to see you --polite
as three-dollar clerks in government offices.
By and by one of these rises painfully, and
"stretches"--stretches
fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from
the floor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn
of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears
behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is
constructed inside--then she slowly closes her cavern,
brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward,
contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water
and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. You
take it and say:
"How much?"--and she returns you, with elaborate indifference,
a beggar's answer:
"NACH BELIEBE" (what you please.)
This thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common
beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you
were expecting a simple straightforward commercial transaction,
adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation.
You ignore her reply, and ask again:
"How much?"
--and she calmly, indifferently, repeats:
"NACH BELIEBE."
You are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it;
you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes
her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner.
Therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools
stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind,
or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each
other's eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation:
"How much?"
"NACH BELIEBE."
"How much?"
"NACH BELIEBE."
"How much?"
"NACH BELIEBE."
"How much?"
"NACH BELIEBE."
"How much?"
"NACH BELIEBE."
"How much?"
"NACH BELIEBE."
I do not know what another person would have done,
but at this point I gave up; that cast-iron indifference,
that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and I struck
my colors. Now I knew she was used to receiving about a
penny from manly people who care nothing about the opinions
of scullery-maids, and about tuppence from moral cowards;
but I laid a silver twenty-five cent piece within her
reach and tried to shrivel her up with this sarcastic
speech:
"If it isn't enough, will you stoop sufficiently from
your official dignity to say so?"
She did not shrivel. Without deigning to look at me at all,
she languidly lifted the coin and bit it!--to see if it
was good. Then she turned her back and placidly waddled
to her former roost again, tossing the money into an open
till as she went along. She was victor to the last,
you see.
I have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they
are typical; her manners are the manners of a goodly
number of the Baden-Baden shopkeepers. The shopkeeper
there swindles you if he can, and insults you whether
he succeeds in swindling you or not. The keepers of
baths also take great and patient pains to insult you.
The frowsy woman who sat at the desk in the lobby
of the great Friederichsbad and sold bath tickets,
not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity
to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat
me out of a shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled
her to ten. Baden-Baden's splendid gamblers are gone,
only her microscopic knaves remain.
An English gentleman who had been living there
several years, said:
"If you could disguise your nationality, you would not
find any insolence here. These shopkeepers detest the
English and despise the Americans; they are rude to both,
more especially to ladies of your nationality and mine.
If these go shopping without a gentleman or a man-servant,
they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty insolences
--insolences of manner and tone, rather than word,
though words that are hard to bear are not always wanting.
I know of an instance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back
to an American lady with the remark, snappishly uttered,
'We don't take French money here.' And I know of a case
where an English lady said to one of these shopkeepers,
'Don't you think you ask too much for this article?'
and he replied with the question, 'Do you think you are
obliged to buy it?' However, these people are not impolite
to Russians or Germans. And as to rank, they worship that,
for they have long been used to generals and nobles.
If you wish to see what abysses servility can descend,
present yourself before a Baden-Baden shopkeeper in the
character of a Russian prince."
It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud,
and snobbery, but the baths are good. I spoke with
many people, and they were all agreed in that. I had
the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three years,
but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there,
and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my
rheumatism in Baden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it.
It was little, but it was all I had to give. I would
have preferred to leave something that was catching,
but it was not in my power.
There are several hot springs there, and during two
thousand years they have poured forth a never-diminishing
abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted
in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is reduced to
an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water.
The new Friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building,
and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever
been invented, and with all the additions of herbs and
drugs that his ailment may need or that the physician
of the establishment may consider a useful thing to put
into the water. You go there, enter the great door,
get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the
gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket and an insult from
the frowsy woman for a quarter; she strikes a bell and a
serving-man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you
into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror,
a bootjack, and a sofa in it, and there you undress
at your leisure.
The room is divided by a great curtain; you draw this
curtain aside, and find a large white marble bathtub,
with its rim sunk to the level of the floor,
and with three white marble steps leading down to it.
This tub is full of water which is as clear as crystal,
and is tempered to 28 degrees Re'aumur (about 95 degrees
Fahrenheit). Sunk into the floor, by the tub, is a covered
copper box which contains some warm towels and a sheet.
You look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched
out in that limpid bath. You remain in it ten minutes,
the first time, and afterward increase the duration from
day to day, till you reach twenty-five or thirty minutes.
There you stop. The appointments of the place are
so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate,
and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself
adoring the Friederichsbad and infesting it.
We had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel,
in Baden-Baden--the Ho^tel de France--and alongside my room
I had a giggling, cackling, chattering family who always
went to bed just two hours after me and always got up two
hours ahead of me. But this is common in German hotels;
the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get
up long before eight. The partitions convey sound
like a drum-head, and everybody knows it; but no matter,
a German family who are all kindness and consideration
in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate
their noises for your benefit at night. They will sing,
laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in a most
pitiless way. If you knock on your wall appealingly,
they will quiet down and discuss the matter softly among
themselves for a moment--then, like the mice, they fall
to persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before.
They keep cruelly late and early hours, for such noisy folk.
Of course, when one begins to find fault with foreign
people's ways, he is very likely to get a reminder to look
nearer home, before he gets far with it. I open my note-book
to see if I can find some more information of a valuable
nature about Baden-Baden, and the first thing I fall upon is
this:
"BADEN-BADEN (no date). Lot of vociferous Americans
at breakfast this morning. Talking AT everybody,
while pretending to talk among themselves. On their
first travels, manifestly. Showing off. The usual
signs--airy, easy-going references to grand distances
and foreign places. 'Well GOOD-by, old fellow
--if I don't run across you in Italy, you hunt me up in
London before you sail.'"
The next item which I find in my note-book is this one:
"The fact that a band of 6,000 Indians are now murdering
our frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we
are only able to send 1,200 soldiers against them,
is utilized here to discourage emigration to America.
The common people think the Indians are in New Jersey."
This is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our army
down to a ridiculous figure in the matter of numbers.
It is rather a striking one, too. I have not distorted
the truth in saying that the facts in the above item,
about the army and the Indians, are made use of to
discourage emigration to America. That the common
people should be rather foggy in their geography,
and foggy as to the location of the Indians, is a matter
for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise.
There is an interesting old cemetery in Baden-Baden, and
we spent several pleasant hours in wandering through it
and spelling out the inscriptions on the aged tombstones.
Apparently after a man has laid there a century or two,
and has had a good many people buried on top of him,
it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him
any longer. I judge so from the fact that hundreds
of old gravestones have been removed from the graves
and placed against the inner walls of the cemetery.
What artists they had in the old times! They chiseled angels
and cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones
in the most lavish and generous way--as to supply--but
curiously grotesque and outlandish as to form. It is not
always easy to tell which of the figures belong among
the blest and which of them among the opposite party.
But there was an inscription, in French, on one of those
old stones, which was quaint and pretty, and was plainly
not the work of any other than a poet. It was to this
effect:
Here Reposes in God, Caroline de Clery, a Religieuse
of St. Denis aged 83 years--and blind. The light
was restored to her in Baden the 5th of January, 1839
We made several excursions on foot to the neighboring villages,
over winding and beautiful roads and through enchanting
woodland scenery. The woods and roads were similar to those
at Heidelberg, but not so bewitching. I suppose that roads
and woods which are up to the Heidelberg mark are rare in the
world.
Once we wandered clear away to La Favorita Palace,
which is several miles from Baden-Baden. The grounds
about the palace were fine; the palace was a curiosity.
It was built by a Margravine in 1725, and remains as she
left it at her death. We wandered through a great many
of its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities
of decoration. For instance, the walls of one room were
pretty completely covered with small pictures of the
Margravine in all conceivable varieties of fanciful costumes,
some of them male.
The walls of another room were covered with grotesquely
and elaborately figured hand-wrought tapestry.
The musty ancient beds remained in the chambers,
and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated
with curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed
with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colors.
There was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building
to make a true brick-a-bracker green with envy.
A painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate
--but then the Margravine was herself a trifle indelicate.
It is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house,
and brimful of interest as a reflection of the character
and tastes of that rude bygone time.
In the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the
Margravine's chapel, just as she left it--a coarse
wooden structure, wholly barren of ornament. It is said
that the Margravine would give herself up to debauchery
and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time,
and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend
a few months in repenting and getting ready for another
good time. She was a devoted Catholic, and was perhaps
quite a model sort of a Christian as Christians went then,
in high life.
Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the
strange den I have been speaking of, after having indulged
herself in one final, triumphant, and satisfying spree.
She shut herself up there, without company, and without
even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the world.
In her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking;
she wore a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself
with whips--these aids to grace are exhibited there yet.
She prayed and told her beads, in another little room,
before a waxen Virgin niched in a little box against the wall;
she bedded herself like a slave.
In another small room is an unpainted wooden table,
and behind it sit half-life-size waxen figures of the
Holy Family, made by the very worst artist that ever
lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery.
[1] The margravine used to bring her meals to this table
and DINE WITH THE HOLY FAMILY. What an idea that was!
What a grisly spectacle it must have been! Imagine it:
Those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsy complexions
and fish glass eyes, occupying one side of the table
in the constrained attitudes and dead fixedness that
distinguish all men that are born of wax, and this wrinkled,
smoldering old fire-eater occupying the other side,
mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in the ghostly
stillness and shadowy indistinctness of a winter twilight.
It makes one feel crawly even to think of it.
1. The Savior was represented as a lad of about fifteen
years of age. This figure had lost one eye.
In this sordid place, and clothed, bedded, and fed like
a pauper, this strange princess lived and worshiped during
two years, and in it she died. Two or three hundred
years ago, this would have made the poor den holy ground;
and the church would have set up a miracle-factory there
and made plenty of money out of it. The den could be moved
into some portions of France and made a good property even now.
CHAPTER XXII
[The Black Forest and Its Treasures]
From Baden-Baden we made the customary trip into the
Black Forest. We were on foot most of the time. One cannot
describe those noble woods, nor the feeling with which they
inspire him. A feature of the feeling, however, is a deep
sense of contentment; another feature of it is a buoyant,
boyish gladness; and a third and very conspicuous feature
of it is one's sense of the remoteness of the work-day
world and his entire emancipation from it and its affairs.
Those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region;
and everywhere they are such dense woods, and so still,
and so piney and fragrant. The stems of the trees are trim
and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden
for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color,
with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not
a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness.
A rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles;
so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk
here and a bough yonder are strongly accented,
and when they strike the moss they fairly seem to burn.
But the weirdest effect, and the most enchanting is that
produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon sun;
no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the
diffused light takes color from moss and foliage,
and pervades the place like a faint, greet-tinted mist,
the theatrical fire of fairyland. The suggestion of mystery
and the supernatural which haunts the forest at all times
is intensified by this unearthly glow.
We found the Black Forest farmhouses and villages
all that the Black Forest stories have pictured them.
The first genuine specimen which we came upon was
the mansion of a rich farmer and member of the Common
Council of the parish or district. He was an important
personage in the land and so was his wife also,
of course. His daughter was the "catch" of the region,
and she may be already entering into immortality as the
heroine of one of Auerbach's novels, for all I know.
We shall see, for if he puts her in I shall recognize her
by her Black Forest clothes, and her burned complexion,
her plump figure, her fat hands, her dull expression,
her gentle spirit, her generous feet, her bonnetless head,
and the plaited tails of hemp-colored hair hanging down
her back.
The house was big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred
feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground
to eaves; but from the eaves to the comb of the mighty roof
was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof
was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick,
and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots,
with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation,
mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where
repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new
masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected far down,
like sheltering, hospitable wings. Across the gable that
fronted the road, and about ten feet above the ground,
ran a narrow porch, with a wooden railing; a row of
small windows filled with very small panes looked upon
the porch. Above were two or three other little windows,
one clear up under the sharp apex of the roof.
Before the ground-floor door was a huge pile of manure.
The door of the second-story room on the side of the house
was open, and occupied by the rear elevation of a cow.
Was this probably the drawing-room? All of the front
half of the house from the ground up seemed to be
occupied by the people, the cows, and the chickens,
and all the rear half by draught-animals and hay.
But the chief feature, all around this house, was the big
heaps of manure.
We became very familiar with the fertilizer in the Forest.
We fell unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's
station in life by this outward and eloquent sign.
Sometimes we said, "Here is a poor devil, this is manifest."
When we saw a stately accumulation, we said, "Here is
a banker." When we encountered a country-seat surrounded
by an Alpine pomp of manure, we said, "Doubtless a duke
lives here."
The importance of this feature has not been properly
magnified in the Black Forest stories. Manure is evidently
the Black-Forester's main treasure--his coin, his jewel,
his pride, his Old Master, his ceramics, his bric-a-brac,
his darling, his title to public consideration,
envy, veneration, and his first solicitude when he gets
ready to make his will. The true Black Forest novel,
if it is ever written, will be skeletoned somewhat in this way:
SKELETON FOR A BLACK FOREST NOVEL
Rich old farmer, named Huss. Has inherited great wealth
of manure, and by diligence has added to it. It is
double-starred in Baedeker. [1] The Black forest artist
paints it--his masterpiece. The king comes to see it.
Gretchen Huss, daughter and heiress. Paul Hoch,
young neighbor, suitor for Gretchen's hand--ostensibly;
he really wants the manure. Hoch has a good many cart-loads
of the Black Forest currency himself, and therefore is a
good catch; but he is sordid, mean, and without sentiment,
whereas Gretchen is all sentiment and poetry.
Hans Schmidt, young neighbor, full of sentiment,
full of poetry, loves Gretchen, Gretchen loves him.
But he has no manure. Old Huss forbids him in the house.
His heart breaks, he goes away to die in the woods,
far from the cruel world--for he says, bitterly, "What is man,
without manure?"
1. When Baedeker's guide-books mention a thing and put
two stars (**) after it, it means well worth visiting.
M.T.
[Interval of six months.]
Paul Hoch comes to old Huss and says, "I am at last
as rich as you required--come and view the pile."
Old Huss views it and says, "It is sufficient--take
her and be happy,"--meaning Gretchen.
[Interval of two weeks.]
Wedding party assembled in old Huss's drawing-room. Hoch
placid and content, Gretchen weeping over her hard fate.
Enter old Huss's head bookkeeper. Huss says fiercely,
"I gave you three weeks to find out why your books
don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter;
the time is up--find me the missing property or you go
to prison as a thief." Bookkeeper: "I have found it."
"Where?" Bookkeeper (sternly--tragically): "In the bridegroom's
pile!--behold the thief--see him blench and tremble!"
[Sensation.] Paul Hoch: Lost, lost!"--falls over the cow
in a swoon and is handcuffed. Gretchen: "Saved!" Falls
over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms
of Hans Schmidt, who springs in at that moment. Old Huss:
"What, you here, varlet? Unhand the maid and quit the place."
Hans (still supporting the insensible girl): "Never! Cruel
old man, know that I come with claims which even you
cannot despise."
Huss: "What, YOU? name them."
Hans: "Listen then. The world has forsaken me, I forsook
the world, I wandered in the solitude of the forest,
longing for death but finding none. I fed upon roots,
and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest,
loathing the sweeter kind. Digging, three days agone,
I struck a manure mine!--a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza,
of solid manure! I can buy you ALL, and have mountain
ranges of manure left! Ha-ha, NOW thou smilest a smile!"
[Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine.
Old Huss (enthusiastically): "Wake her up, shake her up,
noble young man, she is yours!" Wedding takes place on
the spot; bookkeeper restored to his office and emoluments;
Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king of the Black
Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his
wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter
envy of everybody around.
We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn,
in a very pretty village (Ottenhoefen), and then went into
the public room to rest and smoke. There we found nine
or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table.
They were the Common Council of the parish. They had
gathered there at eight o'clock that morning to elect
a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four
hours at the new member's expense. They were men of fifty
or sixty years of age, with grave good-natured faces,
and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us
by the Black Forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt
hats with the brims curled up all round; long red waistcoats
with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the
waists up between the shoulders. There were no speeches,
there was but little talk, there were no frivolities;
the Council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely,
with beer, and conducted themselves with sedate decorum,
as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure.
We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy
bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses,
water-mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints
and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc., are set up in
memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost
as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands.
We followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck;
we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade
leave the shady places before we could get to them.
In all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike
a piece of road at its time for being shady. We had a
particularly hot time of it on that particular afternoon,
and with no comfort but what we could get out of the fact
that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountainsides
above our heads were even worse off than we were.
By and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable
glare and heat any longer; so we struck across the ravine
and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt
for what the guide-book called the "old road."
We found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the
right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction
that it was the wrong one. If it was the wrong one there
could be no use in hurrying; therefore we did not hurry,
but sat down frequently on the soft moss and enjoyed
the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes.
There had been distractions in the carriage-road
--school-children, peasants, wagons, troops of
pedestrianizing students from all over Germany
--but we had the old road to ourselves.
Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious
ant at his work. I found nothing new in him--certainly
nothing to change my opinion of him. It seems to me that
in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely
overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him,
when I ought to have been in better business, and I have
not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any
more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant,
of course; I have had no experience of those wonderful
Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies,
hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular
ants may be all that the naturalist paints them,
but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham.
I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest-working
creature in the world--when anybody is looking--but his
leather-headedness is the point I make against him.
He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what
does he do? Go home? No--he goes anywhere but home.
He doesn't know where home is. His home may be only
three feet away--no matter, he can't find it. He makes
his capture, as I have said; it is generally something
which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else;
it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be;
he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it;
he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts;
not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly
and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful
of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead
of going around it, he climbs over it backward dragging
his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side,
jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes,
moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it
this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment,
turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder
and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes
tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed;
it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it;
and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property
to the top--which is as bright a thing to do as it would
be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelberg to Paris
by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he
finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance
at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down,
and starts off once more--as usual, in a new direction.
At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches
of the place he started from and lays his burden down;
meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards around,
and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across.
Now he wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs,
and then marches aimlessly off, in as violently a hurry
as ever. He does not remember to have ever seen it before;
he looks around to see which is not the way home, grabs his
bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures he
had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along.
Evidently the friend remarks that a last year's grasshopper
leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he
got it. Evidently the proprietor does not remember
exactly where he did get it, but thinks he got it "around
here somewhere." Evidently the friend contracts to help
him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly
antic (pun not intended), then take hold of opposite ends
of that grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their
might in opposite directions. Presently they take a rest
and confer together. They decide that something is wrong,
they can't make out what. Then they go at it again,
just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow.
Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist.
They lock themselves together and chew each other's jaws
for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till
one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs.
They make up and go to work again in the same old insane way,
but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may,
the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it.
Instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins
bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way.
By and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged
all over the same old ground once more, it is finally
dumped at about the spot where it originally lay,
the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide
that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property
after all, and then each starts off in a different
direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something
else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at
the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it.
There in the Black Forest, on the mountainside,
I saw an ant go through with such a performance as this
with a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight.
The spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist.
He had a round body the size of a pea. The little ant
--observing that I was noticing--turned him on his back,
sunk his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and
started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles,
stepping on the spider's legs and tripping himself up,
dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him
up stones six inches high instead of going around them,
climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping
from their summits--and finally leaving him in the middle
of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an
ant that wanted him. I measured the ground which this
ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he
had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute
some such job as this--relatively speaking--for a man;
to wit: to strap two eight-hundred-pound horses together,
carry them eighteen hundred feet, mainly over (not around)
boulders averaging six feet high, and in the course
of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one
precipice like Niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred
and twenty feet high; and then put the horses down,
in an exposed place, without anybody to watch them,
and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for
vanity's sake.
Science has recently discovered that the ant does not
lay up anything for winter use. This will knock him
out of literature, to some extent. He does not work,
except when people are looking, and only then when the
observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be
taking notes. This amounts to deception, and will injure
him for the Sunday-schools. He has not judgment enough
to know what is good to eat from what isn't. This amounts
to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for him.
He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again.
This amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact
is established, thoughtful people will cease to look
up to him, the sentimental will cease to fondle him.
His vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect,
since he never gets home with anything he starts with.
This disposes of the last remnant of his reputation
and wholly destroys his main usefulness as a moral agent,
since it will make the sluggard hesitate to go to him
any more. It is strange, beyond comprehension, that so
manifest a humbug as the ant has been able to fool so
many nations and keep it up so many ages without being
found out.
The ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing,
where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular
power before. A toadstool--that vegetable which springs
to full growth in a single night--had torn loose and
lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice
its own bulk into the air, and supported it there,
like a column supporting a shed. Ten thousand toadstools,
with the right purchase, could lift a man, I suppose.
But what good would it do?
All our afternoon's progress had been uphill. About five
or half past we reached the summit, and all of a sudden
the dense curtain of the forest parted and we looked
down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a
wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits
shining in the sun and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed
with purple shade. The gorge under our feet--called
Allerheiligen--afforded room in the grassy level at its
head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away
from the world and its botherations, and consequently
the monks of the old times had not failed to spy it out;
and here were the brown and comely ruins of their church
and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct
seven hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest
nooks and corners in a land as priests have today.
A big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives
a brisk trade with summer tourists. We descended
into the gorge and had a supper which would have been
very satisfactory if the trout had not been boiled.
The Germans are pretty sure to boil a trout or anything
else if left to their own devices. This is an argument
of some value in support of the theory that they were
the original colonists of the wild islands of the coast
of Scotland. A schooner laden with oranges was wrecked
upon one of those islands a few years ago, and the gentle
savages rendered the captain such willing assistance
that he gave them as many oranges as they wanted.
Next day he asked them how they liked them. They shook
their heads and said:
"Baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn't
things for a hungry man to hanker after."
We went down the glen after supper. It is beautiful--a
mixture of sylvan loveliness and craggy wildness.
A limpid torrent goes whistling down the glen, and toward
the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between lofty
precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls.
After one passes the last of these he has a backward
glimpse at the falls which is very pleasing--they rise
in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and glittering cascades,
and make a picture which is as charming as it is unusual.
CHAPTER XXIII
[Nicodemus Dodge and the Skeleton]
We were satisfied that we could walk to Oppenau in
one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out
the next morning after breakfast determined to do it.
It was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest
summer weather for it. So we set the pedometer and then
stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through
the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath
of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, and wishing
we might never have anything to do forever but walk
to Oppenau and keep on doing it and then doing it over again.
Now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie
in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking.
The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by,
and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active;
the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon
a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace
to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes
from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom
or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment
lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping
of the sympathetic ear.
And what motley variety of subjects a couple of people will
casually rake over in the course of a day's tramp! There
being no constraint, a change of subject is always in order,
and so a body is not likely to keep pegging at a single
topic until it grows tiresome. We discussed everything
we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes,
that morning, and then branched out into the glad, free,
boundless realm of the things we were not certain about.
Harris said that if the best writer in the world once got
the slovenly habit of doubling up his "haves" he could
never get rid of it while he lived. That is to say,
if a man gets the habit of saying "I should have liked
to have known more about it" instead of saying simply
and sensibly, "I should have liked to know more about it,"
that man's disease is incurable. Harris said that his sort
of lapse is to be found in every copy of every newspaper
that has ever been printed in English, and in almost all
of our books. He said he had observed it in Kirkham's
grammar and in Macaulay. Harris believed that milk-teeth
are commoner in men's mouths than those "doubled-up haves." [1]
1. I do not know that there have not been moments in the
course of the present session when I should have been
very glad to have accepted the proposal of my noble friend,
and to have exchanged parts in some of our evenings
of work.--[From a Speech of the English Chancellor
of the Exchequer, August, 1879.]
That changed the subject to dentistry. I said I believed
the average man dreaded tooth-pulling more than amputation,
and that he would yell quicker under the former operation
than he would under the latter. The philosopher Harris
said that the average man would not yell in either case
if he had an audience. Then he continued:
"When our brigade first went into camp on the Potomac,
we used to be brought up standing, occasionally, by an
ear-splitting howl of anguish. That meant that a soldier
was getting a tooth pulled in a tent. But the surgeons
soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry.
There never was a howl afterward--that is, from the man
who was having the tooth pulled. At the daily dental
hour there would always be about five hundred soldiers
gathered together in the neighborhood of that dental chair
waiting to see the performance--and help; and the moment
the surgeon took a grip on the candidate's tooth and began
to lift, every one of those five hundred rascals would
clap his hand to his jaw and begin to hop around on one
leg and howl with all the lungs he had! It was enough
to raise your hair to hear that variegated and enormous
unanimous caterwaul burst out! With so big and so derisive
an audience as that, a suffer wouldn't emit a sound though
you pulled his head off. The surgeons said that pretty
often a patient was compelled to laugh, in the midst
of his pangs, but that had never caught one crying out,
after the open-air exhibition was instituted."
Dental surgeons suggested doctors, doctors suggested death,
death suggested skeletons--and so, by a logical process
the conversation melted out of one of these subjects
and into the next, until the topic of skeletons raised up
Nicodemus Dodge out of the deep grave in my memory where he
had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years.
When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri,
a loose-jointed, long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad
countrified cub of about sixteen lounged in one day,
and without removing his hands from the depths
of his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin
of a slouch hat, whose broken rim hung limp and ragged
about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten cabbage leaf,
stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip
against the editor's table, crossed his mighty brogans,
aimed at a distant fly from a crevice in his upper teeth,
laid him low, and said with composure:
"Whar's the boss?"
"I am the boss," said the editor, following this curious
bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face
with his eye.
"Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?"
"Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?"
"Pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so I want to git
a show somers if I kin, 'taint no diffunce what--I'm strong
and hearty, and I don't turn my back on no kind of work,
hard nur soft."
"Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?"
"Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I DO learn,
so's I git a chance fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon
learn print'n's anything."
"Can you read?"
"Yes--middlin'."
"Write?"
"Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar."
"Cipher?"
"Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon,
but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch.
'Tother side of that is what gits me."
"Where is your home?"
"I'm f'm old Shelby."
"What's your father's religious denomination?"
"Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith."
"No, no--I don't mean his trade. What's his RELIGIOUS
DENOMINATION?"
"OH--I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason."
"No, no, you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is,
does he belong to any CHURCH?"
"NOW you're talkin'! Couldn't make out what you was a-tryin'
to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a CHURCH! Why,
boss, he's ben the pizenest kind of Free-will Babtis'
for forty year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n what HE is.
Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If they
said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar _I_ wuz
--not MUCH they wouldn't."
"What is your own religion?"
"Well, boss, you've kind o' got me, there--and yit
you hain't got me so mighty much, nuther. I think 't
if a feller he'ps another feller when he's in trouble,
and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur noth'n'
he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the Saviour's
name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's
about as saift as he b'longed to a church."
"But suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?"
"Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't
stand no chance--he OUGHTN'T to have no chance, anyway,
I'm most rotten certain 'bout that."
"What is your name?"
"Nicodemus Dodge."
"I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you
a trial, anyway."
"All right."
"When would you like to begin?"
"Now."
So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this
nondescript he was one of us, and with his coat off
and hard at it.
Beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest
from the street, was a deserted garden, pathless,
and thickly grown with the bloomy and villainous "jimpson"
weed and its common friend the stately sunflower.
In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged
little "frame" house with but one room, one window, and no
ceiling--it had been a smoke-house a generation before.
Nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den as a bedchamber.
The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus,
right away--a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see
that he was inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones
had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him;
he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and winked
to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept
away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes.
He simply said:
"I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome,"--and
seemed to suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus
waylaid George and poured a bucket of ice-water over him.
One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy
"tied" his clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's
by way of retaliation.
A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later--he
walked up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night,
with a staring handbill pinned between his shoulders.
The joker spent the remainder of the night, after church,
in the cellar of a deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on
the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make sure
that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made,
some rough treatment would be the consequence. The cellar
had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed
with six inches of soft mud.
But I wander from the point. It was the subject of
skeletons that brought this boy back to my recollection.
Before a very long time had elapsed, the village smarties
began to feel an uncomfortable consciousness of not having
made a very shining success out of their attempts on the
simpleton from "old Shelby." Experimenters grew scarce
and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue.
There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare
Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it.
He had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of the late
and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village
drunkard--a grisly piece of property which he had bought
of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars,
under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in
the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. The fifty
dollars had gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably
hurried up the change of ownership in the skeleton.
The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in Nicodemus's
bed!
This was done--about half past ten in the evening.
About Nicodemus's usual bedtime--midnight--the village
jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson
weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den.
They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the
long-legged pauper, on his bed, in a very short shirt,
and nothing more; he was dangling his legs contentedly
back and forth, and wheezing the music of "Camptown Races"
out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing
against his mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top,
and solid india-rubber ball, a handful of painted marbles,
five pounds of "store" candy, and a well-gnawed slab of
gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet-music.
He had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three
dollars and was enjoying the result!
Just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were
drifting into the subject of fossils, Harris and I heard
a shout, and glanced up the steep hillside. We saw men
and women standing away up there looking frightened,
and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering
down the steep slope toward us. We got out of the way,
and when the object landed in the road it proved to be a boy.
He had tripped and fallen, and there was nothing for him
to do but trust to luck and take what might come.
When one starts to roll down a place like that, there is
no stopping till the bottom is reached. Think of people
FARMING on a slant which is so steep that the best you can
say of it--if you want to be fastidiously accurate--is,
that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite
so steep as a mansard roof. But that is what they do.
Some of the little farms on the hillside opposite Heidelberg
were stood up "edgeways." The boy was wonderfully jolted up,
and his head was bleeding, from cuts which it had got from
small stones on the way.
Harris and I gathered him up and set him on a stone,
and by that time the men and women had scampered down
and brought his cap.
Men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring
cottages and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted,
and stared at, and commiserated, and water was
brought for him to drink and bathe his bruises in.
And such another clatter of tongues! All who had seen
the catastrophe were describing it at once, and each
trying to talk louder than his neighbor; and one youth
of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill,
called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us,
and thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done.
Harris and I were included in all the descriptions;
how we were coming along; how Hans Gross shouted;
how we looked up startled; how we saw Peter coming like
a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way,
and let him come; and with what presence of mind we
picked him up and brushed him off and set him on a rock
when the performance was over. We were as much heroes
as anybody else, except Peter, and were so recognized;
we were taken with Peter and the populace to Peter's
mother's cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese,
and drank milk and beer with everybody, and had a most
sociable good time; and when we left we had a handshake
all around, and were receiving and shouting back LEB'
WOHL's until a turn in the road separated us from our
cordial and kindly new friends forever.
We accomplished our undertaking. At half past eight
in the evening we stepped into Oppenau, just eleven
hours and a half out of Allerheiligen--one hundred
and forty-six miles. This is the distance by pedometer;
the guide-book and the Imperial Ordinance maps make
it only ten and a quarter--a surprising blunder,
for these two authorities are usually singularly accurate
in the matter of distances.
CHAPTER XXIV
[I Protect the Empress of Germany]
That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only
one we were ever to have which was all the way downhill.
We took the train next morning and returned to Baden-Baden
through fearful fogs of dust. Every seat was crowded, too;
for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was taking
a "pleasure" excursion. Hot! the sky was an oven--and
a sound one, too, with no cracks in it to let in any air.
An odd time for a pleasure excursion, certainly!
Sunday is the great day on the continent--the free day,
the happy day. One can break the Sabbath in a hundred
ways without committing any sin.
We do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it;
the Germans do not work on Sunday, because the commandment
forbids it. We rest on Sunday, because the commandment
requires it; the Germans rest on Sunday because the
commandment requires it. But in the definition
of the word "rest" lies all the difference. With us,
its Sunday meaning is, stay in the house and keep still;
with the Germans its Sunday and week-day meanings seem
to be the same--rest the TIRED PART, and never mind the
other parts of the frame; rest the tired part, and use
the means best calculated to rest that particular part.
Thus: If one's duties have kept him in the house all the week,
it will rest him to be out on Sunday; if his duties
have required him to read weighty and serious matter all
the week, it will rest him to read light matter on Sunday;
if his occupation has busied him with death and funerals
all the week, it will rest him to go to the theater Sunday
night and put in two or three hours laughing at a comedy;
if he is tired with digging ditches or felling trees
all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in the house
on Sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue,
or any other member, is fatigued with inanition,
it is not to be rested by added a day's inanition;
but if a member is fatigued with exertion, inanition is
the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans
seem to define the word "rest"; that is to say, they rest
a member by recreating, recuperating, restore its forces.
But our definition is less broad. We all rest alike
on Sunday--by secluding ourselves and keeping still,
whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us
or not. The Germans make the actors, the preachers,
etc., work on Sunday. We encourage the preachers,
the editors, the printers, etc., to work on Sunday,
and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us;
but I do not know how we are going to get around the fact
that if it is wrong for the printer to work at his trade
on Sunday it must be equally wrong for the preacher to
work at his, since the commandment has made no exception
in his favor. We buy Monday morning's paper and read it,
and thus encourage Sunday printing. But I shall never do
it again.
The Germans remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,
by abstaining from work, as commanded; we keep it
holy by abstaining from work, as commanded, and by
also abstaining from play, which is not commanded.
Perhaps we constructively BREAK the command to rest,
because the resting we do is in most cases only a name,
and not a fact.
These reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend
the rent in my conscience which I made by traveling to
Baden-Baden that Sunday. We arrived in time to furbish
up and get to the English church before services began.
We arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlord
had ordered the first carriage that could be found,
since there was no time to lose, and our coachman was
so splendidly liveried that we were probably mistaken
for a brace of stray dukes; why else were we honored
with a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect
at the left of the chancel? That was my first thought.
In the pew directly in front of us sat an elderly lady,
plainly and cheaply dressed; at her side sat a young
lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite
simply dressed; but around us and about us were clothes
and jewels which it would do anybody's heart good to
worship in.
I thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady
was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous
place arrayed in such cheap apparel; I began to feel sorry
for her and troubled about her. She tried to seem very busy
with her prayer-book and her responses, and unconscious
that she was out of place, but I said to myself, "She is
not succeeding--there is a distressed tremulousness
in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment."
Presently the Savior's name was mentioned, and in her flurry
she lost her head completely, and rose and courtesied,
instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did.
The sympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave
those fine birds what I intended to be a beseeching look,
but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into
a look which said, "If any of you pets of fortune laugh
at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for it."
Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself
mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection.
My mind was wholly upon her. I forgot all about the sermon.
Her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her;
she got to snapping the lid of her smelling-bottle--it
made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped
and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing.
The last extremity was reached when the collection-plate
began its rounds; the moderate people threw in pennies,
the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid
a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest before her
with a sounding slap! I said to myself, "She has parted
with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these
unpitying people--it is a sorrowful spectacle." I did not
venture to look around this time; but as the service closed,
I said to myself, "Let them laugh, it is their opportunity;
but at the door of this church they shall see her step
into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman
shall drive her home."
Then she rose--and all the congregation stood while she
walked down the aisle. She was the Empress of Germany!
No--she had not been so much embarrassed as I had supposed.
My imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that
is always hopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight
on misinterpreting everything, clear through to the end.
The young lady with her imperial Majesty was a maid of
honor--and I had been taking her for one of her boarders,
all the time.
This is the only time I have ever had an Empress under
my personal protection; and considering my inexperience,
I wonder I got through with it so well. I should have
been a little embarrassed myself if I had known earlier
what sort of a contract I had on my hands.
We found that the Empress had been in Baden-Baden
several days. It is said that she never attends
any but the English form of church service.
I lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues
the remainder of that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent
me at the afternoon service, for I never allow anything
to interfere with my habit of attending church twice every
Sunday.
There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night
to hear the band play the "Fremersberg." This piece tells
one of the old legends of the region; how a great noble
of the Middle Ages got lost in the mountains, and wandered
about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last
the faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks
to a midnight service, caught his ear, and he followed
the direction the sounds came from and was saved.
A beautiful air ran through the music, without ceasing,
sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it
could hardly be distinguished--but it was always there;
it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling
of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of the rain,
and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft
and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones,
such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious
winding of the hunter's horn, the distressed bayings
of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks;
it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself
with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled
in the convent hall to cheer up the rescued huntsman
while he ate his supper. The instruments imitated all
these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one
man started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst
forth and the sheets of mimic rain came driving by;
it was hardly possible to keep from putting your hand
to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek;
and it was NOT possible to refrain from starting when
those sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were
let loose.
I suppose the "Fremersberg" is a very low-grade music;
I know, indeed, that it MUST be low-grade music, because it
delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me,
enraptured me, that I was full of cry all the time,
and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such a
scouring out since I was born. The solemn and majestic
chanting of the monks was not done by instruments,
but by men's voices; and it rose and fell, and rose again
in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and pulsing bells,
and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting air,
and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest
of low-grade music COULD be so divinely beautiful.
The great crowd which the "Fremersberg" had called out was
another evidence that it was low-grade music; for only
the few are educated up to a point where high-grade music
gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music
to be able to enjoy it. I dislike the opera because I want
to love it and can't.
I suppose there are two kinds of music--one kind which
one feels, just as an oyster might, and another sort
which requires a higher faculty, a faculty which must
be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if base music
gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other?
But we do. We want it because the higher and better
like it. We want it without giving it the necessary
time and trouble; so we climb into that upper tier,
that dress-circle, by a lie; we PRETEND we like it.
I know several of that sort of people--and I propose
to be one of them myself when I get home with my fine
European education.
And then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull,
Turner's "Slave Ship" was to me, before I studied art.
Mr. Ruskin is educated in art up to a point where that
picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of pleasure
as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year,
when I was ignorant. His cultivation enables him--and me,
now--to see water in that glaring yellow mud, and natural
effects in those lurid explosions of mixed smoke and flame,
and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles him--and me,
now--to the floating of iron cable-chains and other
unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming
around on top of the mud--I mean the water. The most of
the picture is a manifest impossibility--that is to say,
a lie; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find
truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it,
and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it.
A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave
Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagration of reds
and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell
cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. In my then
uneducated state, that went home to my non-cultivation,
and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye.
Mr. Ruskin would have said: This person is an ass.
That is what I would say, now. [1]
1. Months after this was written, I happened into the National
Gallery in London, and soon became so fascinated with the
Turner pictures that I could hardly get away from the place.
I went there often, afterward, meaning to see the rest
of the gallery, but the Turner spell was too strong;
it could not be shaken off. However, the Turners
which attracted me most did not remind me of the Slave Ship.
However, our business in Baden-Baden this time,
was to join our courier. I had thought it best
to hire one, as we should be in Italy, by and by,
and we did not know the language. Neither did he.
We found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us.
I asked him if he was "all fixed." He said he was.
That was very true. He had a trunk, two small satchels,
and an umbrella. I was to pay him fifty-five dollars
a month and railway fares. On the continent the railway
fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man.
Couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging.
This seems a great saving to the tourist--at first.
It does not occur to the tourist that SOMEBODY pays that
man's board and lodging. It occurs to him by and by,
however, in one of his lucid moments.
CHAPTER XXV
[Hunted by the Little Chamois]
Next morning we left in the train for Switzerland,
and reached Lucerne about ten o'clock at night.
The first discovery I made was that the beauty of the lake
had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made
another discovery. This was, that the lauded chamois
is not a wild goat; that it is not a horned animal;
that it is not shy; that it does not avoid human society;
and that there is no peril in hunting it. The chamois is
a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed;
you do not have to go after it, it comes after you;
it arrives in vast herds and skips and scampers all over
your body, inside your clothes; thus it is not shy,
but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on the
contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous,
but neither is it pleasant; its activity has not been
overstated --if you try to put your finger on it,
it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump,
and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights.
A great deal of romantic nonsense has been written
about the Swiss chamois and the perils of hunting it,
whereas the truth is that even women and children
hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it;
the hunting is going on all the time, day and night,
in bed and out of it. It is poetic foolishness to hunt
it with a gun; very few people do that; there is not
one man in a million who can hit it with a gun.
It is much easier to catch it than it is to shoot it,
and only the experienced chamois-hunter can do either.
Another common piece of exaggeration is that about the
"scarcity" of the chamois. It is the reverse of scarce.
Droves of one hundred million chamois are not unusual
in the Swiss hotels. Indeed, they are so numerous
as to be a great pest. The romancers always dress up
the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume,
whereas the best way to hunt this game is to do it without
any costume at all. The article of commerce called
chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody could skin a chamois,
it is too small. The creature is a humbug in every way,
and everything which has been written about it is
sentimental exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find
the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions;
all my life it had been my dream to see him in his native
wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous sport
of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure
to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight
in him and respect for him, but still it must be done,
for when an honest writer discovers an imposition it
is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down
from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it;
any other course would render him unworthy of the public
confidence.
Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water's edge,
with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads
itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded,
disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye
a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables,
dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there
a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over
the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square
tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there a town
clock with only one hand--a hand which stretches across
the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out
the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it.
Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad
avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees.
The lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier,
and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard.
All day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses,
children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees,
or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes
darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake
at the stately border of snow-hooded mountains peaks.
Little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming
and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young
girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats,
or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind.
The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies,
where one may take his private luncheon in calm,
cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty
scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work
connected with it.
Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking
costume, and carry alpenstocks. Evidently, it is not
considered safe to go about in Switzerland, even in town,
without an alpenstock. If the tourist forgets and
comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes
back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner.
When his touring in Switzerland is finished, he does not
throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him,
to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him
more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could.
You see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name
is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill,
or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it,
he has the names of those places burned upon it, too.
Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears
the record of his achievements. It is worth three francs
when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it
after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it.
There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is
to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist.
And observe, a man is respected in Switzerland according
to his alpenstock. I found I could get no attention there,
while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is
not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect
upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked.
I felt repaid for my trouble.
Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of
English people; the other half is made up of many nationalities,
the Germans leading and the Americans coming next.
The Americans were not as numerous as I had expected
they would be.
The seven-thirty table d'ho^te at the great Schweitzerhof
furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities,
but it offered a better opportunity to observe costumes
than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables,
and therefore the faces were mainly seen in perspective;
but the breakfasts were served at small round tables,
and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the
midst of the assemblage he could have as many faces
to study as he could desire. We used to try to guess out
the nationalities, and generally succeeded tolerably well.
Sometimes we tried to guess people's names; but that was
a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good
deal of practice. We presently dropped it and gave our
efforts to less difficult particulars. One morning I
said:
"There is an American party."
Harris said:
"Yes--but name the state."
I named one state, Harris named another. We agreed upon
one thing, however--that the young girl with the party
was very beautiful, and very tastefully dressed.
But we disagreed as to her age. I said she was eighteen,
Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us
waxed warm, and I finally said, with a pretense of being
in earnest:
"Well, there is one way to settle the matter--I will go
and ask her."
Harris said, sarcastically, "Certainly, that is the thing
to do. All you need to do is to use the common formula
over here: go and say, 'I'm an American!' Of course she
will be glad to see you."
Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger
of my venturing to speak to her.
I said, "I was only talking--I didn't intend to approach her,
but I see that you do not know what an intrepid person
I am. I am not afraid of any woman that walks.
I will go and speak to this young girl."
The thing I had in my mind was not difficult.
I meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask
her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former
acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when she should
reply that the name I mentioned was not the name she bore,
I meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire.
There would be no harm done. I walked to her table,
bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her and was about
to begin my little speech when she exclaimed:
"I KNEW I wasn't mistaken--I told John it was you!
John said it probably wasn't, but I knew I was right.
I said you would recognize me presently and come over;
and I'm glad you did, for I shouldn't have felt much flattered
if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me.
Sit down, sit down--how odd it is--you are the last person I
was ever expecting to see again."
This was a stupefying surprise. It took my wits
clear away, for an instant. However, we shook hands
cordially all around, and I sat down. But truly this
was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely
remember the girl's face, now, but I had no idea where I
had seen it before, or what named belonged with it.
I immediately tried to get up a diversion about Swiss scenery,
to keep her from launching into topics that might
betray that I did not know her, but it was of no use,
she went right along upon matters which interested her more:
"Oh dear, what a night that was, when the sea washed
the forward boats away--do you remember it?"
"Oh, DON'T I!" said I--but I didn't. I wished the sea
had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain
away--then I could have located this questioner.
"And don't you remember how frightened poor Mary was,
and how she cried?"
"Indeed I do!" said I. "Dear me, how it all comes back!"
I fervently wished it WOULD come back--but my memory was
a blank. The wise way would have been to frankly own up;
but I could not bring myself to do that, after the young
girl had praised me so for recognizing her; so I went on,
deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue
but never getting one. The Unrecognizable continued,
with vivacity:
"Do you know, George married Mary, after all?"
"Why, no! Did he?"
"Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half
as much to blame as her father was, and I thought he
was right. Didn't you?"
"Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case.
I always said so."
"Why, no you didn't!--at least that summer."
"Oh, no, not that summer. No, you are perfectly right
about that. It was the following winter that I said it."
"Well, as it turned out, Mary was not in the least
to blame --it was all her father's fault--at least
his and old Darley's."
It was necessary to say something--so I said:
"I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing."
"So he was, but then they always had a great affection
for him, although he had so many eccentricities.
You remember that when the weather was the least cold,
he would try to come into the house."
I was rather afraid to proceed. Evidently Darley was not
a man--he must be some other kind of animal--possibly
a dog, maybe an elephant. However, tails are common
to all animals, so I ventured to say:
"And what a tail he had!"
"ONE! He had a thousand!"
This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say,
so I only said:
"Yes, he WAS rather well fixed in the matter of tails."
"For a negro, and a crazy one at that, I should say he was,"
said she.
It was getting pretty sultry for me. I said to myself,
"Is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for
me to speak? If she does, the conversation is blocked.
A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person
cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more
or less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a
vast subject--"
But here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts
by saying:
"Yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was
simply no end to them if anybody would listen. His own
quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather
was cold, the family were sure to have his company--nothing
could keep him out of the house. But they always bore it
kindly because he had saved Tom's life, years before.
You remember Tom?
"Oh, perfectly. Fine fellow he was, too."
"Yes he was. And what a pretty little thing his child was!"
"You may well say that. I never saw a prettier child."
"I used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play
with it."
"So did I."
"You named it. What WAS that name? I can't call it
to mind."
It appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty
thin, here. I would have given something to know
what the child's was. However, I had the good luck
to think of a name that would fit either sex--so I brought it
out:
"I named it Frances."
"From a relative, I suppose? But you named the one that died,
too--one that I never saw. What did you call that one?"
I was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead
and she had never seen it, I thought I might risk a name
for it and trust to luck. Therefore I said:
"I called that one Thomas Henry."
She said, musingly:
"That is very singular ... very singular."
I sat still and let the cold sweat run down. I was
in a good deal of trouble, but I believed I could worry
through if she wouldn't ask me to name any more children.
I wondered where the lightning was going to strike next.
She was still ruminating over that last child's title,
but presently she said:
"I have always been sorry you were away at the time--I
would have had you name my child."
"YOUR child! Are you married?"
"I have been married thirteen years."
"Christened, you mean."
`"No, married. The youth by your side is my son."
"It seems incredible--even impossible. I do not mean
any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you
are any over eighteen?--that is to say, will you tell
me how old you are?"
"I was just nineteen the day of the storm we were
talking about. That was my birthday."
That did not help matters, much, as I did not know
the date of the storm. I tried to think of some
non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk,
and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences
as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be
about out of non-committal things. I was about to say,
"You haven't changed a bit since then"--but that was risky.
I thought of saying, "You have improved ever so much
since then"--but that wouldn't answer, of course.
I was about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change,
when the girl slipped in ahead of me and said:
"How I have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times
--haven't you?"
"I never have spent such a half-hour in all my life before!"
said I, with emotion; and I could have added, with a
near approach to truth, "and I would rather be scalped
than spend another one like it." I was holily grateful
to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make
my good-bys and get out, when the girl said:
"But there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me."
"Why, what is that?"
"That dead child's name. What did you say it was?"
Here was another balmy place to be in: I had forgotten the
child's name; I hadn't imagined it would be needed again.
However, I had to pretend to know, anyway, so I said:
"Joseph William."
The youth at my side corrected me, and said:
"No, Thomas Henry."
I thanked him--in words--and said, with trepidation:
"O yes--I was thinking of another child that I named--I
have named a great many, and I get them confused--this
one was named Henry Thompson--"
"Thomas Henry," calmly interposed the boy.
I thanked him again--strictly in words--and stammered
out:
"Thomas Henry--yes, Thomas Henry was the poor child's name.
I named him for Thomas--er--Thomas Carlyle, the great author,
you know--and Henry--er--er--Henry the Eight. The parents
were very grateful to have a child named Thomas Henry."
"That makes it more singular than ever," murmured my
beautiful friend.
"Does it? Why?"
"Because when the parents speak of that child now,
they always call it Susan Amelia."
That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely
out of verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie,
and that I would not do; so I simply sat still and suffered
--sat mutely and resignedly there, and sizzled--for I
was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes.
Presently the enemy laughed a happy laugh and said:
"I HAVE enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not.
I saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me,
and so as I had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning,
I made up my mind to punish you. And I have succeeded
pretty well. I was glad to see that you knew George and Tom
and Darley, for I had never heard of them before and therefore
could not be sure that you had; and I was glad to learn
the names of those imaginary children, too. One can get
quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at
it cleverly. Mary and the storm, and the sweeping away
of the forward boats, were facts--all the rest was fiction.
Mary was my sister; her full name was Mary ------. NOW
do you remember me?"
"Yes," I said, "I do remember you now; and you are as
hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship,
else you wouldn't have punished me so. You haven't
change your nature nor your person, in any way at all;
you look as young as you did then, you are just as beautiful
as you were then, and you have transmitted a deal
of your comeliness to this fine boy. There--if that
speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce,
with the understanding that I am conquered and confess it."
All of which was agreed to and accomplished, on the spot.
When I went back to Harris, I said:
"Now you see what a person with talent and address can do."
"Excuse me, I see what a person of colossal ignorance and
simplicity can do. The idea of your going and intruding
on a party of strangers, that way, and talking for half
an hour; why I never heard of a man in his right mind
doing such a thing before. What did you say to them?"
I never said any harm. I merely asked the girl what her
name was."
"I don't doubt it. Upon my word I don't. I think you
were capable of it. It was stupid in me to let you go
over there and make such an exhibition of yourself.
But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such
an inexcusable thing. What will those people think
of us? But how did you say it?--I mean the manner of it.
I hope you were not abrupt."
"No, I was careful about that. I said, 'My friend and I
would like to know what your name is, if you don't mind.'"
"No, that was not abrupt. There is a polish about it that
does you infinite credit. And I am glad you put me in;
that was a delicate attention which I appreciate at its
full value. What did she do?"
"She didn't do anything in particular. She told me
her name."
"Simply told you her name. Do you mean to say she did
not show any surprise?"
"Well, now I come to think, she did show something;
maybe it was surprise; I hadn't thought of that--I took
it for gratification."
"Oh, undoubtedly you were right; it must have been gratification;
it could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted
by a stranger with such a question as that. Then what did you
do?"
"I offered my hand and the party gave me a shake."
"I saw it! I did not believe my own eyes, at the time.
Did the gentleman say anything about cutting your throat?"
"No, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as I could judge."
"And do you know, I believe they were. I think they said
to themselves, 'Doubtless this curiosity has got away from
his keeper--let us amuse ourselves with him.' There is
no other way of accounting for their facile docility.
You sat down. Did they ASK you to sit down?"
"No, they did not ask me, but I suppose they did not think
of it."
"You have an unerring instinct. What else did you do?
What did you talk about?"
"Well, I asked the girl how old she was."
"UNdoubtedly. Your delicacy is beyond praise. Go on,
go on--don't mind my apparent misery--I always look
so when I am steeped in a profound and reverent joy.
Go on--she told you her age?"
"Yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother,
and her grandmother, and her other relations, and all
about herself."
"Did she volunteer these statistics?"
"No, not exactly that. I asked the questions and she
answered them."
"This is divine. Go on--it is not possible that you
forgot to inquire into her politics?"
"No, I thought of that. She is a democrat, her husband
is a republican, and both of them are Baptists."
"Her husband? Is that child married?"
"She is not a child. She is married, and that is her
husband who is there with her."
"Has she any children."
"Yes--seven and a half."
"That is impossible."
"No, she has them. She told me herself."
"Well, but seven and a HALF? How do you make out the half?
Where does the half come in?"
"There is a child which she had by another husband
--not this one but another one--so it is a stepchild,
and they do not count in full measure."
"Another husband? Has she another husband?"
"Yes, four. This one is number four."
"I don't believe a word of it. It is impossible,
upon its face. Is that boy there her brother?"
"No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not
as old as he looked; he is only eleven and a half."
"These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a
wretched business. It is a plain case: they simply took
your measure, and concluded to fill you up. They seem
to have succeeded. I am glad I am not in the mess;
they may at least be charitable enough to think there
ain't a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long?"
"No, they leave before noon."
"There is one man who is deeply grateful for that.
How did you find out? You asked, I suppose?"
"No, along at first I inquired into their plans, in a
general way, and they said they were going to be here
a week, and make trips round about; but toward the end
of the interview, when I said you and I would tour around
with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over
and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked
if you were from the same establishment that I was.
I said you were, and then they said they had changed
their mind and considered it necessary to start at once
and visit a sick relative in Siberia."
"Ah, me, you struck the summit! You struck the loftiest
altitude of stupidity that human effort has ever reached.
You shall have a monument of jackasses' skulls as high
as the Strasburg spire if you die before I do.
They wanted to know I was from the same 'establishment'
that you hailed from, did they? What did they mean by
'establishment'?"
"I don't know; it never occurred to me to ask."
"Well _I_ know-- they meant an asylum-- an IDIOT asylum,
do you understand? So they DO think there's a pair of us,
after all. Now what do you think of yourself?"
"Well, I don't know. I didn't know I was doing any harm;
I didn't MEAN to do any harm. They were very nice people,
and they seemed to like me."
Harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom
--to break some furniture, he said. He was a singularly
irascible man; any little thing would disturb his temper.
I had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter,
I took it out on Harris. One should always "get even"
in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting.
CHAPTER XXVI
[The Nest of the Cuckoo-clock]
The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts.
All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six
o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen
to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of it, but get up
and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late
comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way.
This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time,
and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door,
and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd.
Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and
thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is
the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight
little box of a church is the most favorable place
to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true,
there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally,
but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get
fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away
the organist would let go another avalanche.
The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the
souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals,
photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings.
I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the
Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them.
But they are libels upon him, every one of them.
There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos
of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun
fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give
you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right,
the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that
indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne
the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world,
is wanting.
The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low
cliff--for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff.
His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head
is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder,
his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France.
Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear
stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base,
and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored,
among the water-lilies.
Around about are green trees and grass. The place is
a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise
and stir and confusion--and all this is fitting, for lions
do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals
in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings.
The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere,
but nowhere so impressive as where he is.
Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people.
Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is
very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings,
and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually
considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings.
She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest
spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head.
None of these qualities are kingly but the last.
Taken together they make a character which would have fared
harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill
luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do
the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one.
Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him.
He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must
not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he
ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink
the man and be the king--but it was a failure, he only
succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant
in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded
to do a thing while it could do any good--he was iron,
he was adamant in his stubbornness then--but as soon as
the thing had reached a point where it would be positively
harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could
stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful,
but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve
by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier.
His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand.
If a national toe required amputating, he could not see
that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others
saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first
perceived that the toe needed cutting off--so he cut it off;
and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the
disease had reached the thigh. He was good, and honest,
and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases,
but he never could overtake one. As a private man,
he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was
strictly contemptible.
His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable
spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his
Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he
allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause,
and forbade them to shed the "sacred French blood"
purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped
mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace.
He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint
once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this
occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him.
It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon
the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day,
instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on,
there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would
be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would
answer just as well to remember the 10th of August by.
Martyrdom made a saint of Mary Queen of Scots three
hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her
saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint of the trivial
and foolish Marie Antoinette, and her biographers still
keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day,
while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write
that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked,
she supplied--the instinct to root out and get rid of
an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him.
The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have
been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness,
or even might not have happened at all, if Marie
Antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born.
The world owes a great deal to the French Revolution,
and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the
Poor in Spirit and his queen.
We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory
or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones,
or even any photographic slanders of him. The truth is,
these copies were so common, so universal, in the shops
and everywhere, that they presently became as intolerable
to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually
becomes to the harassed ear. In Lucerne, too, the wood
carvings of other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look
upon when one saw them occasionally at home, soon began
to fatigue us. We grew very tired of seeing wooden quails
and chickens picking and strutting around clock-faces,
and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged
chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them
in family groups, or peering alertly up from behind them.
The first day, I would have bought a hundred and fifty
of these clocks if I had the money--and I did buy three
--but on the third day the disease had run its course,
I had convalesced, and was in the market once more--trying
to sell. However, I had no luck; which was just as well,
for the things will be pretty enough, no doubt, when I get
them home.
For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock;
now here I was, at last, right in the creature's home;
so wherever I went that distressing "HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo!
HOO'hoo!" was always in my ears. For a nervous man,
this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler
than others, but no sound is quite so inane, and silly,
and aggravating as the "HOO'hoo" of a cuckoo clock, I think.
I bought one, and am carrying it home to a certain person;
for I have always said that if the opportunity ever happened,
I would do that man an ill turn. What I meant, was, that I
would break one of his legs, or something of that sort;
but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind.
That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way.
So I bought the cuckoo clock; and if I ever get home
with it, he is "my meat," as they say in the mines.
I thought of another candidate--a book-reviewer whom
I could name if I wanted to--but after thinking
it over, I didn't buy him a clock. I couldn't injure
his mind.
We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span
the green and brilliant Reuss just below where it goes
plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. These rambling,
sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their
alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water.
They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures,
by old Swiss masters--old boss sign-painters, who flourished
before the decadence of art.
The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye,
for the water is very clear. The parapets in front of the
hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages.
One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught.
The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly,
a circumstance which I had not thought of before for
twelve years. This one:
THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY'S
When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents
in Washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down
Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving
storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man
who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction.
"This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain't you?"
Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate
person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man
over from head to foot, and finally said:
"I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?"
"That's just what I was doing," said the man, joyously,
"and it's the biggest luck in the world that I've found you.
My name is Lykins. I'm one of the teachers of the high
school--San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco
postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it--and here
I am."
"Yes," said Riley, slowly, "as you have remarked ...
Mr. Lykins ... here you are. And have you got it?"
"Well, not exactly GOT it, but the next thing to it.
I've brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent
of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more
than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you'll
be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation,
for I want to rush this thing through and get along home."
"If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we
visit the delegation tonight," said Riley, in a voice
which had nothing mocking in it--to an unaccustomed ear.
"Oh, tonight, by all means! I haven't got any time to
fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed
--I ain't the talking kind, I'm the DOING kind!"
"Yes ... you've come to the right place for that.
When did you arrive?"
"Just an hour ago."
"When are you intending to leave?"
"For New York tomorrow evening--for San Francisco
next morning."
"Just so.... What are you going to do tomorrow?"
"DO! Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition
and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?"
"Yes ... very true ... that is correct. And then what?"
"Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.--got to get
the appointment confirmed--I reckon you'll grant that?"
"Yes ... yes," said Riley, meditatively, "you are
right again. Then you take the train for New York in
the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?"
"That's it--that's the way I map it out!"
Riley considered a while, and then said:
"You couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two
days longer?"
"Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man
to go fooling around--I'm a man that DOES things,
I tell you."
The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts.
Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie,
during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:
"Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's,
once? ... But I see you haven't."
He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him,
fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner,
and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly
and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably
in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted
by a wintry midnight tempest:
"I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time.
Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man
arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning,
with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and
an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond of and proud of;
he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord
and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said,
'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman
to wait--said he hadn't time to take anything to eat,
he only had a little claim against the government to collect,
would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch
the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee,
for he was in considerable of a hurry.
"Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back
and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses
up--said he would collect the claim in the morning.
This was in January, you understand--January, 1834
--the 3d of January--Wednesday.
"Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage,
and bought a cheap second-hand one--said it would answer
just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care
for style.
"On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses
--said he'd often thought a pair was better than four,
to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body
had to be careful about his driving--and there wasn't
so much of his claim but he could lug the money home
with a pair easy enough.
"On the 13th of December he sold another horse--said
two warn't necessary to drag that old light vehicle
with--in fact, one could snatch it along faster than
was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid
winter weather and the roads in splendid condition.
"On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage
and bought a cheap second-hand buggy--said a buggy
was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early
spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try
a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway.
"On the 1st August he sold the buggy and bought the
remains of an old sulky--said he just wanted to see
those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw
him come a-ripping along in a sulky--didn't believe
they'd ever heard of a sulky in their lives.
"Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored
coachman--said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky
--wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway--and,
besides, it wasn't every day that Providence sent a man
a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for
such a third-rate negro as that--been wanting to get
rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to THROW him away.
"Eighteen months later--that is to say, on the 15th
of February, 1837--he sold the sulky and bought
a saddle--said horseback-riding was what the doctor
had always recommended HIM to take, and dog'd if he
wanted to risk HIS neck going over those mountain roads
on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself.
"On the 9th of April he sold the saddle--said he wasn't
going to risk HIS life with any perishable saddle-girth
that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road,
while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was
safe--always HAD despised to ride on a saddle, anyway.
"On the 24th of April he sold his horse--said 'I'm just
fifty-seven today, hale and hearty--it would be a PRETTY
howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such
weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything
in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through
the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains,
to a man that IS a man--and I can make my dog carry my
claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it's collected.
So tomorrow I'll be up bright and early, make my little
old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own
hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby's.'
"On the 22d of June he sold his dog--said 'Dern a dog,
anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully
pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills--perfect
nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks at everything,
goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords
--man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature
--and I'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself,
it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty uncertain
in a financial way--always noticed it--well, GOOD-by,
boys--last call--I'm off for Tennessee with a good
leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.'"
There was a pause and a silence--except the noise
of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said,
impatiently:
"Well?"
Riley said:
"Well,--that was thirty years ago."
"Very well, very well--what of it?"
"I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes
every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago
--he's off for Tennessee early tomorrow morning--as usual;
said he calculated to get his claim through and be off
before night-owls like me have turned out of bed.
The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going
to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more."
Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:
"Is that all?"
"That is all."
"Well, for the TIME of night, and the KIND of night,
it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what's
it all FOR?"
"Oh, nothing in particular."
"Well, where's the point of it?"
"Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only, if you
are not in TOO much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco
with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I'd advise
you to 'PUT UP AT GADSBY'S' for a spell, and take it easy.
Good-by. GOD bless you!"
So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left
the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing
and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow
of the street-lamp.
He never got that post-office.
To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded,
after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes
to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed
and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up
at Gadsby's" and take it easy. It is likely that a fish
has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years;
but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there
all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it.
One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented
and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris,
but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there
in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all--the
recent dog and the translated cat.
CHAPTER XXVII
[I Spare an Awful Bore]
Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the
"Glacier Garden"--and it is the only one in the world.
It is on high ground. Four or five years ago,
some workmen who were digging foundations for a house
came upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age.
Scientific men perceived in it a confirmation of their
theories concerning the glacial period; so through
their persuasions the little tract of ground was bought
and permanently protected against being built upon.
The soil was removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered
track which the ancient glacier had made as it moved
along upon its slow and tedious journey. This track
was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock,
formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders
by the turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers.
These huge round boulders still remain in the holes;
they and the walls of the holes are worn smooth by
the long-continued chafing which they gave each other
in those old days. It took a mighty force to churn
these big lumps of stone around in that vigorous way.
The neighboring country had a very different shape,
at that time--the valleys have risen up and become hills,
since, and the hills have become valleys. The boulders
discovered in the pots had traveled a great distance,
for there is no rock like them nearer than the distant
Rhone Glacier.
For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue
lake Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains
that border it all around--an enticing spectacle,
this last, for there is a strange and fascinating beauty
and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun blazing
upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally
we concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on
a steamboat, and a dash on foot at the Rigi. Very well,
we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on a breezy, sunny day.
Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under an awning;
everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonder scenery;
in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection
of pleasuring. The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel.
Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake,
and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer
with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way.
Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high
enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their
foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive,
but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.
And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes,
that one could not imagine a man being able to keep
his footing upon such a surface, yet there are paths,
and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.
Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight
inclination of the huge ship-houses in dockyards
--then high aloft, toward the sky, it took a little
stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof--and
perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little
things like martin boxes, and presently perceived that
these were the dwellings of peasants--an airy place
for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should walk
in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front
yard?--the friends would have a tedious long journey down
out of those cloud-heights before they found the remains.
And yet those far-away homes looked ever so seductive,
they were so remote from the troubled world, they dozed
in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams--surely no one
who has learned to live up there would ever want
to live on a meaner level.
We swept through the prettiest little curving arms
of the lake, among these colossal green walls,
enjoying new delights, always, as the stately panorama
unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself
behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise
of bursting suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the
distant and dominating Jungfrau, or some kindred giant,
looming head and shoulders above a tumbled waste of lesser Alps.
Once, while I was hungrily taking in one of these surprises,
and doing my best to get all I possibly could of it while it
should last, I was interrupted by a young and care-free voice:
"You're an American, I think--so'm I."
He was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen; slender and
of medium height; open, frank, happy face; a restless
but independent eye; a snub nose, which had the air
of drawing back with a decent reserve from the silky
new-born mustache below it until it should be introduced;
a loosely hung jaw, calculated to work easily in the sockets.
He wore a low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat,
with a broad blue ribbon around it which had a white
anchor embroidered on it in front; nobby short-tailed
coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat and up with
the fashion; red-striped stockings, very low-quarter
patent-leather shoes, tied with black ribbon; blue ribbon
around his neck, wide-open collar; tiny diamond studs;
wrinkleless kids; projecting cuffs, fastened with large
oxidized silver sleeve-buttons, bearing the device
of a dog's face--English pug. He carries a slim cane,
surmounted with an English pug's head with red glass eyes.
Under his arm he carried a German grammar--Otto's. His hair
was short, straight, and smooth, and presently when he turned
his head a moment, I saw that it was nicely parted behind.
He took a cigarette out of a dainty box, stuck it into
a meerschaum holder which he carried in a morocco case,
and reached for my cigar. While he was lighting, I said:
"Yes--I am an American."
"I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you
come over in?"
"HOLSATIA."
"We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard, you know. What kind
of passage did you have?"
"Tolerably rough."
"So did we. Captain said he'd hardly ever seen it rougher.
Where are you from?"
"New England."
"So'm I. I'm from New Bloomfield. Anybody with you?"
"Yes--a friend."
"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around
alone--don't you think so?"
"Rather slow."
"Ever been over here before?"
"Yes."
"I haven't. My first trip. But we've been all around--Paris
and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year.
Studying German all the time, now. Can't enter till I
know German. I know considerable French--I get along
pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French.
What hotel are you stopping at?"
"Schweitzerhof."
"No! is that so? I never see you in the reception-room.
I go to the reception-room a good deal of the time,
because there's so many Americans there. I make lots
of acquaintances. I know an American as soon as I see
him--and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance.
I like to be always making acquaintances--don't you?"
"Lord, yes!"
"You see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate.
I never got bored on a trip like this, if I can
make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to.
But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore,
if a body couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with
and talk to on a trip like this. I'm fond of talking,
ain't you?
"Passionately."
"Have you felt bored, on this trip?"
"Not all the time, part of it."
"That's it!--you see you ought to go around and get acquainted,
and talk. That's my way. That's the way I always do--I
just go 'round, 'round, 'round and talk, talk, talk--I
never get bored. You been up the Rigi yet?"
"No."
"Going?"
"I think so."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"I don't know. Is there more than one?"
"Three. You stop at the Schreiber--you'll find it full
of Americans. What ship did you say you came over in?"
"CITY OF ANTWERP."
"German, I guess. You going to Geneva?"
"Yes."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"Hotel de l''Ecu de G'en`eve."
"Don't you do it! No Americans there! You stop at one
of those big hotels over the bridge--they're packed
full of Americans."
"But I want to practice my Arabic."
"Good gracious, do you speak Arabic?"
"Yes--well enough to get along."
"Why, hang it, you won't get along in Geneva--THEY don't
speak Arabic, they speak French. What hotel are you
stopping at here?"
"Hotel Pension-Beaurivage."
"Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof. Didn't you
know the Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland?
--look at your Baedeker."
"Yes, I know--but I had an idea there warn't any
Americans there."
"No Americans! Why, bless your soul, it's just alive with
them! I'm in the great reception-room most all the time.
I make lots of acquaintances there. Not as many as I did
at first, because now only the new ones stop in there
--the others go right along through. Where are you from?"
"Arkansaw."
"Is that so? I'm from New England--New Bloomfield's my town
when I'm at home. I'm having a mighty good time today,
ain't you?"
"Divine."
"That's what I call it. I like this knocking around,
loose and easy, and making acquaintances and talking.
I know an American, soon as I see him; so I go and speak
to him and make his acquaintance. I ain't ever bored,
on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk.
I'm awful fond of talking when I can get hold of the right
kind of a person, ain't you?"
"I prefer it to any other dissipation."
"That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take
a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon
around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things,
but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like it, let 'em do it,
I don't object; but as for me, talking's what _I_ like.
You been up the Rigi?"
"Yes."
"What hotel did you stop at?"
"Schreiber."
"That's the place!--I stopped there too. FULL of Americans,
WASN'T it? It always is--always is. That's what they say.
Everybody says that. What ship did you come over in?"
"VILLE DE PARIS."
"French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ... excuse me
a minute, there's some Americans I haven't seen before."
And away he went. He went uninjured, too--I had the murderous
impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock,
but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me;
I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such
a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.
Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting,
with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were
skimming by--a monolith not shaped by man, but by Nature's
free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high,
devised by Nature ten million years ago against the day
when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument.
The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer
bears Schiller's name in huge letters upon its face.
Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled
in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let
himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys,
and painted all over it, in blue letters bigger than those in
Schiller's name, these words:
"Try Sozodont;" "Buy Sun Stove Polish;" "Helmbold's Buchu;"
"Try Benzaline for the Blood."
He was captured and it turned out that he was an American.
Upon his trial the judge said to him:
"You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is
privileged to profane and insult Nature, and, through her,
Nature's God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny
in his pocket. But here the case is different. Because you
are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sentence light;
if you were a native I would deal strenuously with you.
Hear and obey: --You will immediately remove every trace
of your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay
a fine of ten thousand francs; you will suffer two years'
imprisonment at hard labor; you will then be horsewhipped,
tarred and feathered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a
rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever.
The severest penalties are omitted in your case--not as
a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the
misfortune to give you birth."
The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across
the deck. My back hair was mingling innocently with
the back hair of a couple of ladies. Presently they
were addressed by some one and I overheard this conversation:
"You are Americans, I think? So'm I."
"Yes--we are Americans."
"I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you
come over in?"
"CITY OF CHESTER."
"Oh, yes--Inman line. We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard
you know. What kind of a passage did you have?"
"Pretty fair."
"That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said
he'd hardly seen it rougher. Where are you from?"
"New Jersey."
"So'm I. No--I didn't mean that; I'm from New England.
New Bloomfield's my place. These your children?--belong
to both of you?"
"Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married."
"Single, I reckon? So'm I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?"
"No--my husband is with us."
"Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around
alone--don't you think so?"
"I suppose it must be."
"Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again.
Named after Pontius Pilate, you know, that shot the apple
off of William Tell's head. Guide-book tells all about it,
they say. I didn't read it--an American told me. I don't
read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good time.
Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used
to preach?"
"I did not know he ever preached there."
"Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don't
ever shut up his guide-book. He knows more about this lake
than the fishes in it. Besides, they CALL it 'Tell's
Chapel'--you know that yourself. You ever been over here
before?"
"Yes."
"I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around
--Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year.
Studying German all the time now. Can't enter till I
know German. This book's Otto's grammar. It's a mighty
good book to get the ICH HABE GEHABT HABEN's out of.
But I don't really study when I'm knocking around this way.
If the notion takes me, I just run over my little
old ICH HABE GEHABT, DU HAST GEHABT, ER HAT GEHABT,
WIR HABEN GEHABT, IHR HABEN GEHABT, SIE HABEN GEHABT
--kind of 'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know,
and after that, maybe I don't buckle to it for three days.
It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is;
you want to take it in small doses, or first you know
your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing
around in your head same as so much drawn butter.
But French is different; FRENCH ain't anything. I ain't
any more afraid of French than a tramp's afraid of pie; I can
rattle off my little J'AI, TU AS, IL A, and the rest of it,
just as easy as a-b-c. I get along pretty well in Paris,
or anywhere where they speak French. What hotel are you
stopping at?"
"The Schweitzerhof."
"No! is that so? I never see you in the big reception-room.
I go in there a good deal of the time, because there's
so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances.
You been up the Rigi yet?"
"No."
"Going?"
"We think of it."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"I don't know."
"Well, then you stop at the Schreiber--it's full of Americans.
What ship did you come over in?"
"CITY OF CHESTER."
"Oh, yes, I remember I asked you that before. But I
always ask everybody what ship they came over in, and so
sometimes I forget and ask again. You going to Geneva?"
"Yes."
"What hotel you going to stop at?"
"We expect to stop in a pension."
"I don't hardly believe you'll like that; there's very few
Americans in the pensions. What hotel are you stopping
at here?"
"The Schweitzerhof."
"Oh, yes. I asked you that before, too. But I always
ask everybody what hotel they're stopping at, and so I've
got my head all mixed up with hotels. But it makes talk,
and I love to talk. It refreshes me up so--don't it
you--on a trip like this?"
"Yes--sometimes."
"Well, it does me, too. As long as I'm talking I never
feel bored--ain't that the way with you?"
"Yes--generally. But there are exception to the rule."
"Oh, of course. _I_ don't care to talk to everybody, MYSELF.
If a person starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery,
and history, and pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things,
I get the fan-tods mighty soon. I say 'Well, I must be going
now--hope I'll see you again'--and then I take a walk. Where you
from?"
"New Jersey."
"Why, bother it all, I asked you THAT before, too.
Have you seen the Lion of Lucerne?"
"Not yet."
"Nor I, either. But the man who told me about
Mount Pilatus says it's one of the things to see.
It's twenty-eight feet long. It don't seem reasonable,
but he said so, anyway. He saw it yesterday; said it
was dying, then, so I reckon it's dead by this time.
But that ain't any matter, of course they'll stuff it.
Did you say the children are yours--or HERS?"
"Mine."
"Oh, so you did. Are you going up the ... no, I asked
you that. What ship ... no, I asked you that, too.
What hotel are you ... no, you told me that.
Let me see ... um .... Oh, what kind of voy ... no,
we've been over that ground, too. Um ... um ... well,
I believe that is all. BONJOUR--I am very glad to have
made your acquaintance, ladies. GUTEN TAG."
CHAPTER XXVIII
[The Jodel and Its Native Wilds]
The Rigi-Kulm is an imposing Alpine mass, six thousand
feet high, which stands by itself, and commands a mighty
prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains
--a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles
in circumference. The ascent is made by rail, or horseback,
or on foot, as one may prefer. I and my agent panoplied
ourselves in walking-costume, one bright morning,
and started down the lake on the steamboat; we got ashore
at the village of Waeggis; three-quarters of an hour distant
from Lucerne. This village is at the foot of the mountain.
We were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path,
and then the talk began to flow, as usual. It was
twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy, cloudless day;
the ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under
the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sailboats,
and beetling cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland.
All the circumstances were perfect--and the anticipations,
too, for we should soon be enjoying, for the first time,
that wonderful spectacle, an Alpine sunrise--the object
of our journey. There was (apparently) no real need
for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking-distance
from Waeggis to the summit only three hours and a quarter.
I say "apparently," because the guide-book had already
fooled us once--about the distance from Allerheiligen
to Oppenau--and for aught I knew it might be getting ready
to fool us again. We were only certain as to the altitudes
--we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours
it is from the bottom to the top. The summit is six
thousand feet above the sea, but only forty-five hundred
feet above the lake. When we had walked half an hour,
we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking,
so we cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom
we met to carry our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats
and things for us; that left us free for business.
I suppose we must have stopped oftener to stretch out
on the grass in the shade and take a bit of a smoke
than this boy was used to, for presently he asked if it
had been our idea to hire him by the job, or by the year?
We told him he could move along if he was in a hurry.
He said he wasn't in such a very particular hurry,
but he wanted to get to the top while he was young.
We told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at
the uppermost hotel and say we should be along presently.
He said he would secure us a hotel if he could, but if they
were all full he would ask them to build another one
and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against
we arrived. Still gently chaffing us, he pushed ahead,
up the trail, and soon disappeared. By six o'clock we
were pretty high up in the air, and the view of lake
and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and interest.
We halted awhile at a little public house, where we
had bread and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk,
out on the porch, with the big panorama all before us--and
then moved on again.
Ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging
down the mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his
alpenstock ahead of him, and taking a grip on the ground
with its iron point to support these big strides.
He stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the
perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief,
panted a moment or two, and asked how far to Waeggis.
I said three hours. He looked surprised, and said:
"Why, it seems as if I could toss a biscuit into the lake
from here, it's so close by. Is that an inn, there?"
I said it was.
"Well," said he, "I can't stand another three hours,
I've had enough today; I'll take a bed there."
I asked:
"Are we nearly to the top?"
"Nearly to the TOP? Why, bless your soul, you haven't
really started, yet."
I said we would put up at the inn, too. So we turned
back and ordered a hot supper, and had quite a jolly
evening of it with this Englishman.
The German landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds,
and when I and my agent turned in, it was with the resolution
to be up early and make the utmost of our first Alpine sunrise.
But of course we were dead tired, and slept like policemen;
so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the window it
was already too late, because it was half past eleven.
It was a sharp disappointment. However, we ordered
breakfast and told the landlady to call the Englishman,
but she said he was already up and off at daybreak--and
swearing like mad about something or other. We could not
find out what the matter was. He had asked the landlady
the altitude of her place above the level of the lake,
and she told him fourteen hundred and ninety-five feet.
That was all that was said; then he lost his temper.
He said that between ------fools and guide-books, a man
could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a
country like this to last him a year. Harris believed
our boy had been loading him up with misinformation;
and this was probably the case, for his epithet described
that boy to a dot.
We got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out
for the summit again, with a fresh and vigorous step.
When we had gone about two hundred yards, and stopped
to rest, I glanced to the left while I was lighting my pipe,
and in the distance detected a long worm of black smoke
crawling lazily up the steep mountain. Of course that was
the locomotive. We propped ourselves on our elbows at once,
to gaze, for we had never seen a mountain railway yet.
Presently we could make out the train. It seemed incredible
that that thing should creep straight up a sharp slant
like the roof of a house--but there it was, and it was doing
that very miracle.
In the course of a couple hours we reached a fine breezy
altitude where the little shepherd huts had big stones
all over their roofs to hold them down to the earth when
the great storms rage. The country was wild and rocky
about here, but there were plenty of trees, plenty of moss,
and grass.
Away off on the opposite shore of the lake we could
see some villages, and now for the first time we could
observe the real difference between their proportions
and those of the giant mountains at whose feet they slept.
When one is in one of those villages it seems spacious,
and its houses seem high and not out of proportion to the
mountain that overhands them--but from our altitude,
what a change! The mountains were bigger and grander
than ever, as they stood there thinking their solemn
thoughts with their heads in the drifting clouds,
but the villages at their feet--when the painstaking
eye could trace them up and find them--were so reduced,
almost invisible, and lay so flat against the ground,
that the exactest simile I can devise is to compare
them to ant-deposits of granulated dirt overshadowed
by the huge bulk of a cathedral. The steamboats skimming
along under the stupendous precipices were diminished
by distance to the daintiest little toys, the sailboats
and rowboats to shallops proper for fairies that keep
house in the cups of lilies and ride to court on the backs
of bumblebees.
Presently we came upon half a dozen sheep nibbling grass
in the spray of a stream of clear water that sprang
from a rock wall a hundred feet high, and all at once
our ears were startled with a melodious "Lul ...
l ... l l l llul-lul-LAhee-o-o-o!" pealing joyously
from a near but invisible source, and recognized that we
were hearing for the first time the famous Alpine JODEL
in its own native wilds. And we recognized, also,
that it was that sort of quaint commingling of baritone
and falsetto which at home we call "Tyrolese warbling."
The jodeling (pronounced yOdling--emphasis on the O)
continued, and was very pleasant and inspiriting to hear.
Now the jodeler appeared--a shepherd boy of sixteen
--and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him a franc
to jodel some more. So he jodeled and we listened.
We moved on, presently, and he generously jodeled us
out of sight. After about fifteen minutes we came across
another shepherd boy who was jodeling, and gave him half
a franc to keep it up. He also jodeled us out of sight.
After that, we found a jodeler every ten minutes;
we gave the first one eight cents, the second one
six cents, the third one four, the fourth one a penny,
contributed nothing to Nos. 5, 6, and 7, and during
the remainder of the day hired the rest of the jodelers,
at a franc apiece, not to jodel any more. There is somewhat
too much of the jodeling in the Alps.
About the middle of the afternoon we passed through
a prodigious natural gateway called the Felsenthor,
formed by two enormous upright rocks, with a third lying
across the top. There was a very attractive little
hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet,
so we went on.
Three hours afterward we came to the railway-track. It
was planted straight up the mountain with the slant
of a ladder that leans against a house, and it seemed
to us that man would need good nerves who proposed
to travel up it or down it either.
During the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our
roasting interiors with ice-cold water from clear streams,
the only really satisfying water we had tasted since we
left home, for at the hotels on the continent they
merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in,
and that only modifies its hotness, doesn't make it cold.
Water can only be made cold enough for summer comfort by
being prepared in a refrigerator or a closed ice-pitcher.
Europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. How do they
know?--they never drink any.
At ten minutes past six we reached the Kaltbad station,
where there is a spacious hotel with great verandas which
command a majestic expanse of lake and mountain scenery.
We were pretty well fagged out, now, but as we did
not wish to miss the Alpine sunrise, we got through our
dinner as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed.
It was unspeakably comfortable to stretch our weary limbs
between the cool, damp sheets. And how we did sleep!--for
there is no opiate like Alpine pedestrianism.
In the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the
same instant and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains;
but we suffered a bitter disappointment again: it
was already half past three in the afternoon.
We dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing
the other of oversleeping. Harris said if we had brought
the courier along, as we ought to have done, we should
not have missed these sunrises. I said he knew very well
that one of us would have to sit up and wake the courier;
and I added that we were having trouble enough to take
care of ourselves, on this climb, without having to take
care of a courier besides.
During breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we
found by this guide-book that in the hotels on the summit
the tourist is not left to trust to luck for his sunrise,
but is roused betimes by a man who goes through the halls
with a great Alpine horn, blowing blasts that would
raise the dead. And there was another consoling thing:
the guide-book said that up there on the summit the guests
did not wait to dress much, but seized a red bed blanket
and sailed out arrayed like an Indian. This was good;
this would be romantic; two hundred and fifty people
grouped on the windy summit, with their hair flying and
their red blankets flapping, in the solemn presence of the
coming sun, would be a striking and memorable spectacle.
So it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had missed
those other sunrises.
We were informed by the guide-book that we were now
3,228 feet above the level of the lake--therefore
full two-thirds of our journey had been accomplished.
We got away at a quarter past four, P.M.; a hundred yards
above the hotel the railway divided; one track went
straight up the steep hill, the other one turned square
off to the right, with a very slight grade. We took
the latter, and followed it more than a mile, turned a
rocky corner, and came in sight of a handsome new hotel.
If we had gone on, we should have arrived at the summit,
but Harris preferred to ask a lot of questions--as usual,
of a man who didn't know anything--and he told us to go
back and follow the other route. We did so. We could ill
afford this loss of time.
We climbed and climbed; and we kept on climbing; we reached about
forty summits, but there was always another one just ahead.
It came on to rain, and it rained in dead earnest.
We were soaked through and it was bitter cold. Next a
smoky fog of clouds covered the whole region densely,
and we took to the railway-ties to keep from getting lost.
Sometimes we slopped along in a narrow path on the left-hand
side of the track, but by and by when the fog blew as aside
a little and we saw that we were treading the rampart
of a precipice and that our left elbows were projecting
over a perfectly boundless and bottomless vacancy,
we gasped, and jumped for the ties again.
The night shut down, dark and drizzly and cold.
About eight in the evening the fog lifted and showed us
a well-worn path which led up a very steep rise to the left.
We took it, and as soon as we had got far enough from the
railway to render the finding it again an impossibility,
the fog shut down on us once more.
We were in a bleak, unsheltered place, now, and had
to trudge right along, in order to keep warm, though we
rather expected to go over a precipice, sooner or later.
About nine o'clock we made an important discovery
--that we were not in any path. We groped around a while
on our hands and knees, but we could not find it;
so we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait.
We were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted
with a vast body which showed itself vaguely for an instant
and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again.
It was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified
by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice,
and decided not to try to claw up it.
We sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies,
and quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most
of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity
of deserting the railway-track. We sat with our backs
to the precipice, because what little wind there was
came from that quarter. At some time or other the fog
thinned a little; we did not know when, for we were facing
the empty universe and the thinness could not show;
but at last Harris happened to look around, and there stood
a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been.
One could faintly discern the windows and chimneys,
and a dull blur of lights. Our first emotion was deep,
unutterable gratitude, our next was a foolish rage,
born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been
visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there
in those cold puddles quarreling.
Yes, it was the Rigi-Kulm hotel--the one that occupies
the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle
of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among
the stars from our balcony away down yonder in Lucerne.
The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the surly
reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times,
but by mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness
and servility we finally got them to show us to the room
which our boy had engaged for us.
We got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was
preparing we loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast
cavernous drawing-rooms, one of which had a stove in it.
This stove was in a corner, and densely walled around
with people. We could not get near the fire, so we moved
at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people
who sat silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering--thinking
what fools they were to come, perhaps. There were some
Americans and some Germans, but one could see that the
great majority were English.
We lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd,
to see what was going on. It was a memento-magazine.
The tourists were eagerly buying all sorts and styles of
paper-cutters, marked "Souvenir of the Rigi," with handles
made of the little curved horn of the ostensible chamois;
there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things,
similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I
believed I could remember the cold comfort of the Rigi-Kulm
without it, so I smothered the impulse.
Supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed--but first,
as Mr. Baedeker requests all tourists to call his attention
to any errors which they may find in his guide-books, I
dropped him a line to inform him he missed it by just
about three days. I had previously informed him of his
mistake about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau,
and had also informed the Ordnance Depart of the German
government of the same error in the imperial maps.
I will add, here, that I never got any answer to those letters,
or any thanks from either of those sources; and, what is still
more discourteous, these corrections have not been made,
either in the maps or the guide-books. But I will write
again when I get time, for my letters may have miscarried.
We curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without
rocking.
We were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor
turned over till the blooming blasts of the Alpine horn
aroused us. It may well be imagined that we did not lose
any time. We snatched on a few odds and ends of clothing,
cocooned ourselves in the proper red blankets, and plunged
along the halls and out into the whistling wind bareheaded.
We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak
of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it.
We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding,
and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair
flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the fierce
breeze.
"Fifteen minutes too late, at last!" said Harris,
in a vexed voice. "The sun is clear above the horizon."
"No matter," I said, "it is a most magnificent spectacle,
and we will see it do the rest of its rising anyway."
In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us,
and dead to everything else. The great cloud-barred disk
of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing
white-caps--so to speak--a billowy chaos of massy mountain
domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded
with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors,
while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun,
radiating lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith.
The cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted
mist which veiled the ruggedness of their crags and ribs
and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region
into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise.
We could not speak. We could hardly breathe.
We could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink in it.
Presently Harris exclaimed:
"Why--nation, it's going DOWN!"
Perfectly true. We had missed the MORNING hornblow,
and slept all day. This was stupefying.
Harris said:
"Look here, the sun isn't the spectacle--it's US--stacked
up here on top of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets,
and two hundred and fifty well-dressed men and women down
here gawking up at us and not caring a straw whether the sun
rises or sets, as long as they've got such a ridiculous
spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books.
They seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's
one girl there at appears to be going all to pieces.
I never saw such a man as you before. I think you are
the very last possibility in the way of an ass."
"What have _I_ done?" I answered, with heat.
"What have you done? You've got up at half past seven
o'clock in the evening to see the sun rise, that's what
you've done."
"And have you done any better, I'd like to know? I've
always used to get up with the lark, till I came under
the petrifying influence of your turgid intellect."
"YOU used to get up with the lark--Oh, no doubt
--you'll get up with the hangman one of these days.
But you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this,
in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top
of the Alps. And no end of people down here to boot;
this isn't any place for an exhibition of temper."
And so the customary quarrel went on. When the sun
was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel in the
charitable gloaming, and went to bed again. We had
encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried
to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset,
which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had
totally missed; but we said no, we only took our solar
rations on the "European plan"--pay for what you get.
He promised to make us hear his horn in the morning,
if we were alive.
CHAPTER XXIX
[Looking West for Sunrise]
He kept his word. We heard his horn and instantly got up.
It was dark and cold and wretched. As I fumbled around
for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands,
I wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day,
when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one
wasn't sleepy. We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a
couple sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything,
our hands shook so. I thought of how many happy people
there were in Europe, Asia, and America, and everywhere,
who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not
have to get up and see the Rigi sunrise--people who did
not appreciate their advantage, as like as not, but would
get up in the morning wanting more boons of Providence.
While thinking these thoughts I yawned, in a rather ample way,
and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door,
and while I was mounting a chair to free myself, Harris drew
the window-curtain, and said:
"Oh, this is luck! We shan't have to go out at all
--yonder are the mountains, in full view."
That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away.
One could see the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined
against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars
blinking through rifts in the night. Fully clothed,
and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up,
by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat,
while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an Alpine
sunrise was going to look by candlelight. By and by
a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself
by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of
the snowy wastes--but there the effort seemed to stop.
I said, presently:
"There is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere.
It doesn't seem to go. What do you reckon is the matter
with it?"
"I don't know. It appears to hang fire somewhere.
I never saw a sunrise act like that before. Can it be
that the hotel is playing anything on us?"
"Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest
in the sun, it has nothing to do with the management of it.
It is a precarious kind of property, too; a succession
of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern.
Now what can be the matter with this sunrise?"
Harris jumped up and said:
"I've got it! I know what's the matter with it! We've
been looking at the place where the sun SET last night!"
"It is perfectly true! Why couldn't you have thought of
that sooner? Now we've lost another one! And all through
your blundering. It was exactly like you to light a pipe
and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west."
"It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too.
You never would have found it out. I find out all the mistakes."
"You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty
would be wasted on you. But don't stop to quarrel,
now--maybe we are not too late yet."
But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the
exhibition-ground.
On our way up we met the crowd returning--men and women
dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting
all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gaits
and countenances. A dozen still remained on the ground
when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold
with their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red
guide-books open at the diagram of the view, and were
painfully picking out the several mountains and trying
to impress their names and positions on their memories.
It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw.
Two sides of this place were guarded by railings,
to keep people from being blown over the precipices.
The view, looking sheer down into the broad valley,
eastward, from this great elevation--almost a perpendicular
mile--was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns,
hilly ribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow,
great forest tracts, winding streams, a dozen blue lakes,
a block of busy steamboats--we saw all this little
world in unique circumstantiality of detail--saw it
just as the birds see it--and all reduced to the smallest
of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as a
steel engraving. The numerous toy villages, with tiny
spires projecting out of them, were just as the children
might have left them when done with play the day before;
the forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss;
one or two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller
ones to puddles--though they did not look like puddles,
but like blue teardrops which had fallen and lodged
in slight depressions, conformable to their shapes,
among the moss-beds and the smooth levels of dainty
green farm-land; the microscopic steamboats glided along,
as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover
the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart;
and the isthmus which separated two lakes looked as if
one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows
in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling
across it and finding the distance a tedious one.
This beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance
of those "relief maps" which reproduce nature precisely,
with the heights and depressions and other details graduated
to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes,
etc., colored after nature.
I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau
in a day, but I knew we could go down by rail in about
an hour, so I chose the latter method. I wanted to see
what it was like, anyway. The train came along about
the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was.
The locomotive-boiler stood on end, and it and the whole
locomotive were tilted sharply backward. There were
two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all around.
These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were;
this enables the passenger to sit level while going down a
steep incline.
There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged;
the "lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along
these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its
motion on the down trip. About the same speed--three miles
an hour--is maintained both ways. Whether going up or down,
the locomotive is always at the lower end of the train.
It pushes in the one case, braces back in the other.
The passenger rides backward going up, and faces forward
going down.
We got front seats, and while the train moved along
about fifty yards on level ground, I was not the
least frightened; but now it started abruptly downstairs,
and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors,
unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight
to the rear, but, of course, that did no particular good.
I had slidden down the balusters when I was a boy,
and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters
in a railway-train is a thing to make one's flesh creep.
Sometimes we had as much as ten yards of almost level
ground, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfort;
but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long steep
line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort
was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause,
or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously,
but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and went
it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow,
and went gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by
the circumstances.
It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of
the precipices, after this grisly fashion, and look straight
down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago.
There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station;
the railbed was as steep as a roof; I was curious
to see how the stop was going to be managed.
But it was very simple; the train came sliding down,
and when it reached the right spot it just stopped--that
was all there was "to it"--stopped on the steep incline,
and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had
been made, it moved off and went sliding down again.
The train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice.
There was one curious effect, which I need not take the
trouble to describe--because I can scissor a description
of it out of the railway company's advertising pamphlet,
and save my ink:
"On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo
an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible.
All the shrubs, fir trees, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent
in a slanting direction, as by an immense pressure of air.
They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets
and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down.
It is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line.
Those who are seated in the carriage do not observe that they
are doing down a declivity of twenty to twenty-five degrees
(their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding
and being bent down at their backs). They mistake their
carriage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure
of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside
which really are in a horizontal position must show a
disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity,
in regard to the mountain."
By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence
in the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the
locomotive by holding back. Thenceforth he smokes his
pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon the magnificent
picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment.
There is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze;
it is like inspecting the world on the wing. However--to be
exact--there is one place where the serenity lapses for a while;
this is while one is crossing the Schnurrtobel Bridge,
a frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down
through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant
spider-strand.
One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while
the train is creeping down this bridge; and he repents
of them, too; though he sees, when he gets to Vitznau,
that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe.
So ends the eventual trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm
to see an Alpine sunrise.
CHAPTER XXX
[Harris Climbs Mountains for Me]
An hour's sail brought us to Lucerne again. I judged
it best to go to bed and rest several days, for I knew
that the man who undertakes to make the tour of Europe
on foot must take care of himself.
Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I perceived that
they did not take in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier,
the Finsteraarhorn, the Wetterhorn, etc. I immediately
examined the guide-book to see if these were important,
and found they were; in fact, a pedestrian tour of Europe
could not be complete without them. Of course that decided
me at once to see them, for I never allow myself to do
things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way.
I called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay
and make a careful examination of these noted places,
on foot, and bring me back a written report of the result,
for insertion in my book. I instructed him to go to Hospenthal
as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there;
to extend his foot expedition as far as the Giesbach fall,
and return to me from thence by diligence or mule.
I told him to take the courier with him.
He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason,
since he was about to venture upon new and untried ground;
but I thought he might as well learn how to take care of
the courier now as later, therefore I enforced my point.
I said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience
of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep
respect which a courier's presence commands, and I must
insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys
as possible.
So the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes
and departed. A week later they returned, pretty well
used up, and my agent handed me the following
Official Report
OF A VISIT TO THE FURKA REGION. BY H. HARRIS, AGENT
About seven o'clock in the morning, with perfectly
fine weather, we started from Hospenthal, and arrived at
the MAISON on the Furka in a little under QUATRE hours.
The want of variety in the scenery from Hospenthal made
the KAHKAHPONEEKA wearisome; but let none be discouraged;
no one can fail to be completely R'ECOMPENS'EE for
his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch
of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment
before all was dullness, but a PAS further has placed us
on the summit of the Furka; and exactly in front of us,
at a HOPOW of only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain
lifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky.
The inferior mountains on each side of the pass form
a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord,
and close in the view so completely that no other prominent
feature in the Oberland is visible from this BONG-A-BONG;
nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary grandeur
of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form
the abutments of the central peak.
With the addition of some others, who were also bound
for the Grimsel, we formed a large XHVLOJ as we descended
the STEG which winds round the shoulder of a mountain
toward the Rhone Glacier. We soon left the path and took
to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices UN PEU,
to admire the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear
the rushing of waters through their subglacial channels,
we struck out a course toward L'AUTRE CO^T'E and crossed
the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from
which the infant Rhone takes its first bound from under
the grand precipice of ice. Half a mile below this
we began to climb the flowery side of the Meienwand.
One of our party started before the rest, but the HITZE
was so great, that we found IHM quite exhausted,
and lying at full length in the shade of a large GESTEIN.
We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat
exceedingly in the climb up this very steep BOLWOGGOLY,
and then we set out again together, and arrived at last
near the Dead Man's Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn.
This lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-place,
after a sanguinary BATTUE between the French and Austrians,
is the perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight
to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten
whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass
in the OWDAWAKK of winter. Near this point the footpath joins
the wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the head
of the Rhone SCHNAWP; this has been carefully constructed,
and leads with a tortuous course among and over LES PIERRES,
down to the bank of the gloomy little SWOSH-SWOSH, which
almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel Hospice.
We arrived a little before four o'clock at the end
of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step,
taking by most of the PARTIE, of plunging into the crystal
water of the snow-fed lake.
The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier,
with the intention of, at all events, getting as far
as the HUETTE which is used as a sleeping-place by most
of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to Grindelwald.
We got over the tedious collection of stones and DE'BRIS
which covers the PIED of the GLETCHER, and had walked
nearly three hours from the Grimsel, when, just as
we were thinking of crossing over to the right,
to climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds,
which had for some time assumed a threatening appearance,
suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of them, driving toward
us from the Finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge of
HABOOLONG and hail. Fortunately, we were not far from
a very large glacier-table; it was a huge rock balanced
on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit of our all
creeping under it for GOWKARAK. A stream of PUCKITTYPUKK
had furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base,
and we were obliged to stand with one FUSS on each side
of this, and endeavor to keep ourselves CHAUD by cutting
steps in the steep bank of the pedestal, so as to get
a higher place for standing on, as the WASSER rose rapidly
in its trench. A very cold BZZZZZZZZEEE accompanied
the storm, and made our position far from pleasant;
and presently came a flash of BLITZEN, apparently in the
middle of our little party, with an instantaneous clap
of YOKKY, sounding like a large gun fired close to our ears;
the effect was startling; but in a few seconds our attention
was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against
the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us.
This was followed by many more bursts, none of WELCHE,
however, was so dangerously near; and after waiting a long
DEMI-hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to talk through
a HABOOLONG which, though not so heavy as before, was quite
enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the
Hospice.
The Grimsel is CERTAINEMENT a wonderful place; situated at
the bottom of a sort of huge crater, the sides of which
are utterly savage GEBIRGE, composed of barren rocks
which cannot even support a single pine ARBRE, and afford
only scanty food for a herd of GMWKWLLOLP, it looks as
if it must be completely BEGRABEN in the winter snows.
Enormous avalanches fall against it every spring,
sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty
or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick,
and furnished with outside shutters, the two men who stay here
when the VOYAGEURS are snugly quartered in their distant homes
can tell you that the snow sometimes shakes the house to its
foundations.
Next morning the HOGGLEBUMGULLUP still continued bad,
but we made up our minds to go on, and make the best of it.
Half an hour after we started, the REGEN thickened unpleasantly,
and we attempted to get shelter under a projecting rock,
but being far to NASS already to make standing at all
AGRE'ABLE, we pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves
with the reflection that from the furious rushing
of the river Aar at our side, we should at all events
see the celebrated WASSERFALL in GRANDE PERFECTION.
Nor were we NAPPERSOCKET in our expectation; the water
was roaring down its leap of two hundred and fifty feet
in a most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling
to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence of the
hurricane which it brought down with it; even the stream,
which falls into the main cascade at right angles,
and TOUTEFOIS forms a beautiful feature in the scene,
was now swollen into a raging torrent; and the violence
of this "meeting of the waters," about fifty feet below
the frail bridge where we stood, was fearfully grand.
While we were looking at it, GLUECKLICHEWEISE a gleam
of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow
was formed by the spray, and hung in mid-air suspended over
the awful gorge.
On going into the CHALET above the fall, we were
informed that a BRUECKE had broken down near Guttanen,
and that it would be impossible to proceed for some time;
accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for
EIN STUNDE, when some VOYAGEURS arrived from Meiringen,
and told us that there had been a trifling accident,
ABER that we could now cross. On arriving at the spot,
I was much inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse
to make us SLOWWK and drink the more at the Handeck Inn,
for only a few planks had been carried away, and though
there might perhaps have been some difficulty with mules,
the gap was certainly not larger than a MMBGLX might cross
with a very slight leap. Near Guttanen the HABOOLONG
happily ceased, and we had time to walk ourselves tolerably
dry before arriving at Reichenback, WO we enjoyed a good DINE'
at the Hotel des Alps.
Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the BEAU ID'EAL
of Swiss scenery, where we spent the middle of the day
in an excursion to the glacier. This was more beautiful
than words can describe, for in the constant progress
of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity
and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above,
and rippled like a frozen ocean. A few steps cut
in the WHOOPJAMBOREEHOO enabled us to walk completely
under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest
objects in creation. The glacier was all around divided
by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color,
and the finest wood-ERDBEEREN were growing in abundance
but a few yards from the ice. The inn stands in a CHARMANT
spot close to the C^OTE DE LA RIVIE`RE, which, lower down,
forms the Reichenbach fall, and embosomed in the richest
of pine woods, while the fine form of the Wellhorn
looking down upon it completes the enchanting BOPPLE.
In the afternoon we walked over the Great Scheideck
to Grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the Upper
glacier by the way; but we were again overtaken by bad
HOGGLEBUMGULLUP and arrived at the hotel in a SOLCHE
a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in great request.
The clouds by this time seemed to have done their worst,
for a lovely day succeeded, which we determined to devote
to an ascent of the Faulhorn. We left Grindelwald just as
a thunder-storm was dying away, and we hoped to find GUTEN
WETTER up above; but the rain, which had nearly ceased,
began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing
FROID as we ascended. Two-thirds of the way up were
completed when the rain was exchanged for GNILLIC,
with which the BODEN was thickly covered, and before we
arrived at the top the GNILLIC and mist became so thick
that we could not see one another at more than twenty
POOPOO distance, and it became difficult to pick our way over
the rough and thickly covered ground. Shivering with cold,
we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes,
and slept comfortably while the wind howled AUTOUR DE
LA MAISON; when I awoke, the wall and the window looked
equally dark, but in another hour I found I could just
see the form of the latter; so I jumped out of bed,
and forced it open, though with great difficulty from
the frost and the quantities of GNILLIC heaped up against it.
A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge of the roof,
and anything more wintry than the whole ANBLICK could
not well be imagined; but the sudden appearance of the
great mountains in front was so startling that I felt no
inclination to move toward bed again. The snow which had
collected upon LA FENE^TRE had increased the FINSTERNISS
ODER DER DUNKELHEIT, so that when I looked out I was
surprised to find that the daylight was considerable,
and that the BALRAGOOMAH would evidently rise before long.
Only the brightest of LES E'TOILES were still shining;
the sky was cloudless overhead, though small curling
mists lay thousands of feet below us in the valleys,
wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding
to the splendor of their lofty summits. We were soon
dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual approach
of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view
of the Oberland giants, which broke upon us unexpectedly
after the intense obscurity of the evening before.
"KABAUGWAKKO SONGWASHEE KUM WETTERHORN SNAWPO!" cried some one,
as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn;
and in a few moments the double crest of the Schreckhorn
followed its example; peak after peak seemed warmed
with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully
than her neighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the
east to the Wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires
glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods.
The WLGW was very severe; our sleeping-place could
hardly be DISTINGUEE' from the snow around it, which had
fallen to a depth of a FLIRK during the past evening,
and we heartily enjoyed a rough scramble EN BAS to the
Giesbach falls, where we soon found a warm climate.
At noon the day before Grindelwald the thermometer could
not have stood at less than 100 degrees Fahr. in the sun;
and in the evening, judging from the icicles formed,
and the state of the windows, there must have been at least
twelve DINGBLATTER of frost, thus giving a change of 80
degrees during a few hours.
I said:
"You have done well, Harris; this report is concise,
compact, well expressed; the language is crisp,
the descriptions are vivid and not needlessly elaborated;
your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly
to business, and doesn't fool around. It is in many
ways an excellent document. But it has a fault--it
is too learned, it is much too learned. What is 'DINGBLATTER'?
"'DINGBLATTER' is a Fiji word meaning 'degrees.'"
"You knew the English of it, then?"
"Oh, yes."
"What is 'GNILLIC'?
"That is the Eskimo term for 'snow.'"
"So you knew the English for that, too?"
"Why, certainly."
"What does 'MMBGLX' stand for?"
"That is Zulu for 'pedestrian.'"
"'While the form of the Wellhorn looking down upon it
completes the enchanting BOPPLE.' What is 'BOPPLE'?"
"'Picture.' It's Choctaw."
"What is 'SCHNAWP'?"
"'Valley.' That is Choctaw, also."
"What is 'BOLWOGGOLY'?"
"That is Chinese for 'hill.'"
"'KAHKAHPONEEKA'?"
"'Ascent.' Choctaw."
"'But we were again overtaken by bad HOGGLEBUMGULLUP.'
What does 'HOGGLEBUMGULLUP' mean?"
"That is Chinese for 'weather.'"
"Is 'HOGGLEBUMGULLUP' better than the English word? Is
it any more descriptive?"
"No, it means just the same."
"And 'DINGBLATTER' and 'GNILLIC,' and 'BOPPLE,'
and 'SCHNAWP'--are they better than the English words?"
"No, they mean just what the English ones do."
"Then why do you use them? Why have you used all this
Chinese and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish?"
"Because I didn't know any French but two or three words,
and I didn't know any Latin or Greek at all."
"That is nothing. Why should you want to use foreign words,
anyhow?"
"They adorn my page. They all do it."
"Who is 'all'?"
"Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly. Anybody has
a right to that wants to."
"I think you are mistaken." I then proceeded in the following
scathing manner. "When really learned men write books
for other learned men to read, they are justified in using
as many learned words as they please--their audience
will understand them; but a man who writes a book for the
general public to read is not justified in disfiguring
his pages with untranslated foreign expressions.
It is an insolence toward the majority of the purchasers,
for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying,
'Get the translations made yourself if you want them,
this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' There are
men who know a foreign language so well and have used it
so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole
volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously,
and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time.
That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the
man's readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer
would say he only uses the foreign language where the
delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.
Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man,
and he ought to warn the nine other not to buy his book.
However, the excuse he offers is at least an excuse;
but there is another set of men who are like YOU;
they know a WORD here and there, of a foreign language,
or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, filched from
the back of the Dictionary, and these are continually
peppering into their literature, with a pretense of
knowing that language--what excuse can they offer? The
foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact
equivalents in a nobler language--English; yet they think
they 'adorn their page' when they say STRASSE for street,
and BAHNHOF for railway-station, and so on--flaunting
these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader's face
and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the
sign of untold riches held in reserve. I will let your
'learning' remain in your report; you have as much right,
I suppose, to 'adorn your page' with Zulu and Chinese
and Choctaw rubbish as others of your sort have to adorn
theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half
a dozen learned tongues whose A-B ABS they don't even know."
When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel,
he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up.
Similar was the effect of these blistering words upon the
tranquil and unsuspecting Agent. I can be dreadfully rough
on a person when the mood takes me.
CHAPTER XXXI
[Alp-scaling by Carriage]
We now prepared for a considerable walk--from Lucerne
to Interlaken, over the Bruenig Pass. But at the last moment
the weather was so good that I changed my mind and hired
a four-horse carriage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy
in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable.
We got away pretty early in the morning, after a hot breakfast,
and went bowling over a hard, smooth road, through the summer
loveliness of Switzerland, with near and distant lakes
and mountains before and about us for the entertainment
of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm
the ear. Sometimes there was only the width of the road
between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear
cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable
fish skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow;
and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land
stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant,
and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalets,
the peculiarly captivating cottage of Switzerland.
The ordinary chalet turns a broad, honest gable end
to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home
in a protecting, caressing way, projecting its sheltering
eaves far outward. The quaint windows are filled with
little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains,
and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers.
Across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves
and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch,
are elaborate carvings--wreaths, fruits, arabesques,
verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building
is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very
pleasing color. It generally has vines climbing over it.
Set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside,
and it looks ever so cozy and inviting and picturesque,
and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape.
One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken
upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house
--a house which is aping the town fashions of Germany
and France, a prim, hideous, straight-up-and-down thing,
plastered all over on the outside to look like stone,
and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly, and forbidding,
and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf
and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings,
that it suggests an undertaker at a picnic, a corpse at
a wedding, a puritan in Paradise.
In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius
Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake.
The legend goes that after the Crucifixion his conscience
troubled him, and he fled from Jerusalem and wandered
about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of
the mind. Eventually, he hid himself away, on the heights
of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and
crags for years; but rest and peace were still denied him,
so he finally put an end to his misery by drowning himself.
Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor
was born. This was the children's friend, Santa Claus,
or St. Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations
in the world. This saint's is an instance. He has
ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children,
yet it appears he was not much of a friend to his own.
He had ten of them, and when fifty years old he left them,
and sought out as dismal a refuge from the world as possible,
and became a hermit in order that he might reflect upon
pious themes without being disturbed by the joyous and other
noises from the nursery, doubtless.
Judging by Pilate and St. Nicholas, there exists no rule
for the construction of hermits; they seem made out of all
kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of
expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas St. Nicholas
will probably have to go on climbing down sooty chimneys,
Christmas eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other
people's children, to make up for deserting his own.
His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sachseln)
which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence.
His portrait is common in the farmhouses of the region,
but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness.
During his hermit life, according to legend, he partook
of the bread and wine of the communion once a month,
but all the rest of the month he fasted.
A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases
of the steep mountains on this journey, was, not that
avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all
the time. One does not understand why rocks and landslides
do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslip
occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route
from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing.
A mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad,
and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three
thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below,
burying four villages and five hundred people, as in a grave.
We had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures
of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys,
and majestic mountains, and milky cataracts dancing
down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that we could
not help feeling sweet toward all the world; so we tried
to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots
and berries, and buy all the bouquets of wild flowers
which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale;
but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy.
At short distances--and they were entirely too short--all
along the road, were groups of neat and comely children,
with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth
in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we
approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their
baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage,
barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy.
They seldom desisted early, but continued to run and
insist--beside the wagon while they could, and behind
it until they lost breath. Then they turned and chased
a returning carriage back to their trading-post again.
After several hours of this, without any intermission,
it becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we
should have done without the returning carriages to draw
off the pursuit. However, there were plenty of these,
loaded with dusty tourists and piled high with luggage.
Indeed, from Lucerne to Interlaken we had the spectacle,
among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of
fruit-peddlers and tourists carriages.
Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see
on the down-grade of the Bruenig, by and by, after we
should pass the summit. All our friends in Lucerne had
said that to look down upon Meiringen, and the rushing
blue-gray river Aar, and the broad level green valley;
and across at the mighty Alpine precipices that rise
straight up to the clouds out of that valley; and up
at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves
of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully
through the drifting veil of vapor; and still up and up,
at the superb Oltschiback and the other beautiful cascades
that leap from those rugged heights, robed in powdery spray,
ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows--to look upon
these things, they say, was to look upon the last possibility
of the sublime and the enchanting. Therefore, as I say,
we talked mainly of these coming wonders; if we were conscious
of any impatience, it was to get there in favorable season;
if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might
remain perfect, and enable us to see those marvels at their best.
As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave way.
We were in distress for a moment, but only a moment.
It was the fore-and-aft gear that was broken--the thing
that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is
made fast to the thing that pulls the wagon. In America
this would have been a heavy leathern strap; but, all over
the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size
of your little finger--clothes-line is what it is.
Cabs use it, private carriages, freight-carts and wagons,
all sorts of vehicles have it. In Munich I afterward saw
it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half-barrels
of beer; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelberg
used it--not new rope, but rope that had been in use
since Abraham's time --and I had felt nervous, sometimes,
behind it when the cab was tearing down a hill. But I
had long been accustomed to it now, and had even become
afraid of the leather strap which belonged in its place.
Our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out of his
locker and repaired the break in two minutes.
So much for one European fashion. Every country has its
own ways. It may interest the reader to know how they "put
horses to" on the continent. The man stands up the horses
on each side of the thing that projects from the front end
of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear
forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the
other thing through the other ring and hauls it aft on the
other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one,
after crossing them and bringing the loose end back,
and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse,
and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spoke
of before, and puts another thing over each horse's head,
with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes,
and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his
teeth on, uphill, and brings the ends of these things aft
over his back, after buckling another one around under
his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing
on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head
up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack
of the thing which I mentioned a while ago, and fetches it
aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon,
and hands the other things up to the driver to steer with.
I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think
we do it that way.
We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud
of his turnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot,
on the highway, but when he entered a village he did it on
a furious run, and accompanied it with a frenzy of ceaseless
whip-crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry.
He tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp
curves like a moving earthquake, showering his volleys
as he went, and before him swept a continuous tidal wave
of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping
babies which they had snatched out of the way of the
coming destruction; and as this living wave washed aside,
along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fears
and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant driver
till he thundered around the next curve and was lost to sight.
He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy
clothes and his terrific ways. Whenever he stopped
to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread,
the villagers stood around admiring him while he
swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with
humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs
of beer and conversed proudly with him while he drank.
Then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive whip,
and away he went again, like a storm. I had not seen
anything like this before since I was a boy, and the
stage used to flourish the village with the dust flying
and the horn tooting.
When we reached the base of the Kaiserstuhl, we took
two more horses; we had to toil along with difficulty
for an hour and a half or two hours, for the ascent
was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone
and approached the station, the driver surpassed all
his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter.
He could not have six horses all the time, so he made
the most of his chance while he had it.
Up to this point we had been in the heart of the William
Tell region. The hero is not forgotten, by any means,
or held in doubtful veneration. His wooden image,
with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a
frequent feature of the scenery.
About noon we arrived at the foot of the Bruenig Pass,
and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of
those clean, pretty, and thoroughly well-kept inns which are
such an astonishment to people who are accustomed to hotels
of a dismally different pattern in remote country-towns.
There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains,
the green slopes that rose toward the lower crags
were graced with scattered Swiss cottages nestling
among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy
ambuscade in the upper heights tumbled a brawling cataract.
Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks,
arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon populous.
We were early at the table d'ho^te and saw the people
all come in. There were twenty-five, perhaps. They were
of various nationalities, but we were the only Americans.
Next to me sat an English bride, and next to her sat her
new husband, whom she called "Neddy," though he was big
enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his full name.
They had a pretty little lovers' quarrel over what wine
they should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book
and taking the wine of the country; but the bride said:
"What, that nahsty stuff!"
"It isn't nahsty, pet, it's quite good."
"It IS nahsty."
"No, it ISN'T nahsty."
"It's Oful nahsty, Neddy, and I shahn't drink it."
Then the question was, what she must have. She said he
knew very well that she never drank anything but champagne.
She added:
"You know very well papa always has champagne on his table,
and I've always been used to it."
Neddy made a playful pretense of being distressed about
the expense, and this amused her so much that she nearly
exhausted herself with laughter--and this pleased HIM
so much that he repeated his jest a couple of times,
and added new and killing varieties to it. When the bride
finally recovered, she gave Neddy a love-box on the arm
with her fan, and said with arch severity:
"Well, you would HAVE me--nothing else would do
--so you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain.
DO order the champagne, I'm Oful dry."
So with a mock groan which made her laugh again,
Neddy ordered the champagne.
The fact that this young woman had never moistened
the selvedge edge of her soul with a less plebeian
tipple than champagne, had a marked and subduing effect
on Harris. He believed she belonged to the royal family.
But I had my doubts.
We heard two or three different languages spoken by
people at the table and guessed out the nationalities
of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we
failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a
young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentleman
of about thirty-five who sat three seats beyond Harris.
We did not hear any of these speak. But finally the
last-named gentleman left while we were not noticing,
but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table.
He stopped there a moment, and made his toilet with a
pocket comb. So he was a German; or else he had lived
in German hotels long enough to catch the fashion.
When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave,
they bowed respectfully to us. So they were Germans, too.
This national custom is worth six of the other one,
for export.
After dinner we talked with several Englishmen, and they
inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than ever,
to see the sights of Meiringen from the heights of
the Bruenig Pass. They said the view was marvelous,
and that one who had seen it once could never forget it.
They also spoke of the romantic nature of the road over
the pass, and how in one place it had been cut through
a flank of the solid rock, in such a way that the mountain
overhung the tourist as he passed by; and they furthermore
said that the sharp turns in the road and the abruptness
of the descent would afford us a thrilling experience,
for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be
spinning around the rings of a whirlwind, like a drop
of whiskey descending the spirals of a corkscrew.
I got all the information out of these gentlemen that we
could need; and then, to make everything complete, I asked
them if a body could get hold of a little fruit and milk
here and there, in case of necessity. They threw up their
hands in speechless intimation that the road was simply paved
with refreshment-peddlers. We were impatient to get away,
now, and the rest of our two-hour stop rather dragged.
But finally the set time arrived and we began the ascent.
Indeed it was a wonderful road. It was smooth, and compact,
and clean, and the side next the precipices was guarded
all along by dressed stone posts about three feet high,
placed at short distances apart. The road could not have
been better built if Napoleon the First had built it.
He seems to have been the introducer of the sort of roads
which Europe now uses. All literature which describes
life as it existed in England, France, and Germany up
to the close of the last century, is filled with pictures
of coaches and carriages wallowing through these three
countries in mud and slush half-wheel deep; but after
Napoleon had floundered through a conquered kingdom he
generally arranged things so that the rest of the world
could follow dry-shod.
We went on climbing, higher and higher, and curving hither
and thither, in the shade of noble woods, and with a rich
variety and profusion of wild flowers all about us;
and glimpses of rounded grassy backbones below us occupied
by trim chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses
of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the
chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether;
and every now and then some ermined monarch of the Alps
swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted
past an intervening spur and disappeared again.
It was an intoxicating trip altogether; the exceeding
sense of satisfaction that follows a good dinner added
largely to the enjoyment; the having something especial
to look forward to and muse about, like the approaching
grandeurs of Meiringen, sharpened the zest. Smoking was
never so good before, solid comfort was never solider;
we lay back against the thick cushions silent, meditative,
steeped in felicity.
I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and started. I had been
dreaming I was at sea, and it was a thrilling surprise to wake
up and find land all around me. It took me a couple seconds
to "come to," as you may say; then I took in the situation.
The horses were drinking at a trough in the edge of a town,
the driver was taking beer, Harris was snoring at my side,
the courier, with folded arms and bowed head, was sleeping
on the box, two dozen barefooted and bareheaded children
were gathered about the carriage, with their hands
crossed behind, gazing up with serious and innocent
admiration at the dozing tourists baking there in the sun.
Several small girls held night-capped babies nearly
as big as themselves in their arms, and even these fat
babies seemed to take a sort of sluggish interest in us.
We had slept an hour and a half and missed all the scenery!
I did not need anybody to tell me that. If I had been
a girl, I could have cursed for vexation. As it was,
I woke up the agent and gave him a piece of my mind.
Instead of being humiliated, he only upbraided me for being
so wanting in vigilance. He said he had expected to improve
his mind by coming to Europe, but a man might travel to the
ends of the earth with me and never see anything, for I
was manifestly endowed with the very genius of ill luck.
He even tried to get up some emotion about that poor courier,
who never got a chance to see anything, on account of
my heedlessness. But when I thought I had borne about
enough of this kind of talk, I threatened to make Harris
tramp back to the summit and make a report on that scenery,
and this suggestion spiked his battery.
We drove sullenly through Brienz, dead to the seductions
of its bewildering array of Swiss carvings and the
clamorous HOO-hooing of its cuckoo clocks, and had not
entirely recovered our spirits when we rattled across
a bridge over the rushing blue river and entered the
pretty town of Interlaken. It was just about sunset,
and we had made the trip from Lucerne in ten hours.
CHAPTER XXXII
[The Jungfrau, the Bride, and the Piano]
We located ourselves at the Jungfrau Hotel, one of those
huge establishments which the needs of modern travel
have created in every attractive spot on the continent.
There was a great gathering at dinner, and, as usual,
one heard all sorts of languages.
The table d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed
in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peasants.
This consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes
of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris,
cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise
and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched
to the mise en sce`ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives
to the wearer a singularly piquant and alluring aspect.
One of these waitresses, a woman of forty,
had side-whiskers reaching half-way down her jaws.
They were two fingers broad, dark in color, pretty thick,
and the hairs were an inch long. One sees many women on
the continent with quite conspicuous mustaches, but this
was the only woman I saw who had reached the dignity of whiskers.
After dinner the guests of both sexes distributed themselves
about the front porches and the ornamental grounds belonging
to the hotel, to enjoy the cool air; but, as the twilight
deepened toward darkness, they gathered themselves together
in that saddest and solemnest and most constrained of
all places, the great blank drawing-room which is the chief
feature of all continental summer hotels. There they
grouped themselves about, in couples and threes, and mumbled
in bated voices, and looked timid and homeless and forlorn.
There was a small piano in this room, a clattery, wheezy,
asthmatic thing, certainly the very worst miscarriage
in the way of a piano that the world has seen. In turn,
five or six dejected and homesick ladies approached
it doubtingly, gave it a single inquiring thump, and retired
with the lockjaw. But the boss of that instrument was
to come, nevertheless; and from my own country--from Arkansaw.
She was a brand-new bride, innocent, girlish, happy in herself
and her grave and worshiping stripling of a husband; she was
about eighteen, just out of school, free from affections,
unconscious of that passionless multitude around her;
and the very first time she smote that old wreck one
recognized that it had met its destiny. Her stripling
brought an armful of aged sheet-music from their room
--for this bride went "heeled," as you might say--and bent
himself lovingly over and got ready to turn the pages.
The bride fetched a swoop with her fingers from one end
of the keyboard to the other, just to get her bearings,
as it were, and you could see the congregation set their teeth
with the agony of it. Then, without any more preliminaries,
she turned on all the horrors of the "Battle of Prague,"
that venerable shivaree, and waded chin-deep in the blood
of the slain. She made a fair and honorable average
of two false notes in every five, but her soul was in arms
and she never stopped to correct. The audience stood it
with pretty fair grit for a while, but when the cannonade
waxed hotter and fiercer, and the discord average
rose to four in five, the procession began to move.
A few stragglers held their ground ten minutes longer,
but when the girl began to wring the true inwardness out
of the "cries of the wounded," they struck their colors
and retired in a kind of panic.
There never was a completer victory; I was the only
non-combatant left on the field. I would not have
deserted my countrywoman anyhow, but indeed I had no
desires in that direction. None of us like mediocrity,
but we all reverence perfection. This girl's music
was perfection in its way; it was the worst music that
had ever been achieved on our planet by a mere human being.
I moved up close, and never lost a strain. When she
got through, I asked her to play it again. She did it
with a pleased alacrity and a heightened enthusiasm.
She made it ALL discords, this time. She got an amount
of anguish into the cries of the wounded that shed a new
light on human suffering. She was on the war-path all
the evening. All the time, crowds of people gathered on
the porches and pressed their noses against the windows
to look and marvel, but the bravest never ventured in.
The bride went off satisfied and happy with her young fellow,
when her appetite was finally gorged, and the tourists
swarmed in again.
What a change has come over Switzerland, and in fact
all Europe, during this century! Seventy or eighty years
ago Napoleon was the only man in Europe who could really
be called a traveler; he was the only man who had devoted
his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it;
he was the only man who had traveled extensively;
but now everybody goes everywhere; and Switzerland,
and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown
remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days
a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer.
But I digress.
In the morning, when we looked out of our windows,
we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley,
and apparently quite neighborly and close at hand,
the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into
the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands.
It reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossal billows
which swells suddenly up beside one's ship, at sea,
sometimes, with its crest and shoulders snowy white, and the
rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam.
I took out my sketch-book and made a little picture
of the Jungfrau, merely to get the shape. [Figure 9]
I do not regard this as one of my finished works, in fact I
do not rank it among my Works at all; it is only a study;
it is hardly more than what one might call a sketch.
Other artists have done me the grace to admire it; but I
am severe in my judgments of my own pictures, and this
one does not move me.
It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded rampart on
the left which so overtops the Jungfrau was not actually
the higher of the two, but it was not, of course.
It is only two or three thousand feet high, and of course
has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the Jungfrau is not
much shorter of fourteen thousand feet high and therefore
that lowest verge of snow on her side, which seems nearly
down to the valley level, is really about seven thousand feet
higher up in the air than the summit of that wooded rampart.
It is the distance that makes the deception. The wooded
height is but four or five miles removed from us,
but the Jungfrau is four or five times that distance away.
Walking down the street of shops, in the fore-noon, I
was attracted by a large picture, carved, frame and all,
from a single block of chocolate-colored wood.
There are people who know everything. Some of these had
told us that continental shopkeepers always raise their
prices on English and Americans. Many people had told
us it was expensive to buy things through a courier,
whereas I had supposed it was just the reverse.
When I saw this picture, I conjectured that it was worth
more than the friend I proposed to buy it for would
like to pay, but still it was worth while to inquire;
so I told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if he
wanted it for himself; I told him not to speak in English,
and above all not to reveal the fact that he was a courier.
Then I moved on a few yards, and waited.
The courier came presently and reported the price.
I said to myself, "It is a hundred francs too much,"
and so dismissed the matter from my mind. But in
the afternoon I was passing that place with Harris,
and the picture attracted me again. We stepped in,
to see how much higher broken German would raise the price.
The shopwoman named a figure just a hundred francs lower
than the courier had named. This was a pleasant surprise.
I said I would take it. After I had given directions as to
where it was to be shipped, the shopwoman said, appealingly:
"If you please, do not let your courier know you bought it."
This was an unexpected remark. I said:
"What makes you think I have a courier?"
"Ah, that is very simple; he told me himself."
"He was very thoughtful. But tell me--why did you charge
him more than you are charging me?"
"That is very simple, also: I do not have to pay you
a percentage."
"Oh, I begin to see. You would have had to pay the courier
a percentage."
"Undoubtedly. The courier always has his percentage.
In this case it would have been a hundred francs."
"Then the tradesman does not pay a part of it
--the purchaser pays all of it?"
"There are occasions when the tradesman and the courier
agree upon a price which is twice or thrice the value of
the article, then the two divide, and both get a percentage."
"I see. But it seems to me that the purchaser does
all the paying, even then."
"Oh, to be sure! It goes without saying."
"But I have bought this picture myself; therefore why
shouldn't the courier know it?"
The woman exclaimed, in distress:
"Ah, indeed it would take all my little profit! He would
come and demand his hundred francs, and I should have
to pay."
"He has not done the buying. You could refuse."
"I could not dare to refuse. He would never bring
travelers here again. More than that, he would denounce me
to the other couriers, they would divert custom from me,
and my business would be injured."
I went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. I began to see why
a courier could afford to work for fifty-five dollars a month
and his fares. A month or two later I was able to understand
why a courier did not have to pay any board and lodging,
and why my hotel bills were always larger when I had him
with me than when I left him behind, somewhere, for a few days.
Another thing was also explained, now, apparently.
In one town I had taken the courier to the bank to do
the translating when I drew some money. I had sat
in the reading-room till the transaction was finished.
Then a clerk had brought the money to me in person,
and had been exceedingly polite, even going so far as to
precede me to the door and holding it open for me and bow
me out as if I had been a distinguished personage.
It was a new experience. Exchange had been in my favor
ever since I had been in Europe, but just that one time.
I got simply the face of my draft, and no extra francs,
whereas I had expected to get quite a number of them.
This was the first time I had ever used the courier at
the bank. I had suspected something then, and as long
as he remained with me afterward I managed bank matters
by myself.
Still, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would
never travel without a courier, for a good courier is
a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars
and cents. Without him, travel is a bitter harassment,
a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless
and pitiless punishment--I mean to an irascible man
who has no business capacity and is confused by details.
Without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure
in it, anywhere; but with him it is a continuous and
unruffled delight. He is always at hand, never has to be
sent for; if your bell is not answered promptly--and it
seldom is--you have only to open the door and speak,
the courier will hear, and he will have the order attended
to or raise an insurrection. You tell him what day
you will start, and whither you are going--leave all
the rest to him. You need not inquire about trains,
or fares, or car changes, or hotels, or anything else.
At the proper time he will put you in a cab or an omnibus,
and drive you to the train or the boat; he has packed your
luggage and transferred it, he has paid all the bills.
Other people have preceded you half an hour to scramble
for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you can
take your time; the courier has secured your seats for you,
and you can occupy them at your leisure.
At the station, the crowd mash one another to pulp in the
effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks;
they dispute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool
and indifferent; they get their baggage billets, at last,
and then have another squeeze and another rage over the
disheartening business of trying to get them recorded and
paid for, and still another over the equally disheartening
business of trying to get near enough to the ticket
office to buy a ticket; and now, with their tempers gone
to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together,
laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the
weary wife and babies, in the waiting-room, till the doors
are thrown open--and then all hands make a grand final
rush to the train, find it full, and have to stand on
the platform and fret until some more cars are put on.
They are in a condition to kill somebody by this time.
Meantime, you have been sitting in your car, smoking,
and observing all this misery in the extremest comfort.
On the journey the guard is polite and watchful--won't
allow anybody to get into your compartment--tells them
you are just recovering from the small-pox and do not
like to be disturbed. For the courier has made everything
right with the guard. At way-stations the courier comes
to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water,
or a newspaper, or anything; at eating-stations he sends
luncheon out to you, while the other people scramble
and worry in the dining-rooms. If anything breaks about
the car you are in, and a station-master proposes to pack
you and your agent into a compartment with strangers,
the courier reveals to him confidentially that you are
a French duke born deaf and dumb, and the official comes
and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car
to be added to the train for you.
At custom-houses the multitude file tediously through,
hot and irritated, and look on while the officers
burrow into the trunks and make a mess of everything;
but you hand your keys to the courier and sit still.
Perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rain-storm
at ten at night--you generally do. The multitude
spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting
it transferred to the omnibuses; but the courier puts
you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time,
and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been
secured two or three days in advance, everything is ready,
you can go at once to bed. Some of those other people will
have to drift around to two or three hotels, in the rain,
before they find accommodations.
I have not set down half of the virtues that are
vested in a good courier, but I think I have set down
a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man
who can afford one and does not employ him is not a
wise economist. My courier was the worst one in Europe,
yet he was a good deal better than none at all.
It could not pay him to be a better one than he was,
because I could not afford to buy things through him.
He was a good enough courier for the small amount he
got out of his service. Yes, to travel with a courier
is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse.
I have had dealings with some very bad couriers; but I have also
had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection.
He was a young Polander, named Joseph N. Verey. He spoke
eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all
of them; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual;
he was fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in
the matter of overcoming difficulties; he not only knew
how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways
and the quickest; he was handy with children and invalids;
all his employer needed to do was to take life easy
and leave everything to the courier. His address is,
care of Messrs. Gay & Son, Strand, London; he was formerly
a conductor of Gay's tourist parties. Excellent couriers
are somewhat rare; if the reader is about to travel,
he will find it to his advantage to make a note of this one.
CHAPTER XXXIII
[We Climb Far--by Buggy]
The beautiful Giesbach Fall is near Interlaken, on the
other side of the lake of Brienz, and is illuminated
every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose
name I cannot call just at this moment. This was said
to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means
to miss. I was strongly tempted, but I could not go
there with propriety, because one goes in a boat.
The task which I had set myself was to walk over Europe
on foot, not skim over it in a boat. I had made a tacit
contract with myself; it was my duty to abide by it.
I was willing to make boat trips for pleasure, but I could
not conscientiously make them in the way of business.
It cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight,
but I lived down the desire, and gained in my self-respect
through the triumph. I had a finer and a grander sight,
however, where I was. This was the mighty dome of the Jungfrau
softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by
the starlight. There was something subduing in the influence
of that silent and solemn and awful presence; one seemed
to meet the immutable, the indestructible, the eternal,
face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature
of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast.
One had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation
of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice--a spirit
which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages,
upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them;
and would judge a million more--and still be there,
watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life
should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation.
While I was feeling these things, I was groping,
without knowing it, toward an understanding of what the
spell is which people find in the Alps, and in no other
mountains--that strange, deep, nameless influence, which,
once felt, cannot be forgotten--once felt, leaves always
behind it a restless longing to feel it again--a longing
which is like homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning
which will plead, implore, and persecute till it has its will.
I met dozens of people, imaginative and unimaginative,
cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far countries
and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after year--they
could not explain why. They had come first, they said,
out of idle curiosity, because everybody talked about it;
they had come since because they could not help it, and they
should keep on coming, while they lived, for the same reason;
they had tried to break their chains and stay away,
but it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them.
Others came nearer formulating what they felt; they said they
could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they
were troubled: all frets and worries and chafings sank to
sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps;
the Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace
upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them;
they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid
things here, before the visible throne of God.
Down the road a piece was a Kursaal--whatever that may be
--and we joined the human tide to see what sort of enjoyment
it might afford. It was the usual open-air concert,
in an ornamental garden, with wines, beer, milk, whey,
grapes, etc.--the whey and the grapes being necessaries
of life to certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair,
and who only continue to exist by the grace of whey
or grapes. One of these departed spirits told me,
in a sad and lifeless way, that there is no way for him
to live but by whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey,
he didn't know whey he did, but he did. After making
this pun he died--that is the whey it served him.
Some other remains, preserved from decomposition
by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of
a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature,
and that they were counted out and administered by the
grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills.
The new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape
before breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple
between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon,
seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape
just before going to bed, by way of a general regulator.
The quantity was gradually and regularly increased,
according to the needs and capacities of the patient,
until by and by you would find him disposing of his one
grape per second all the day long, and his regular barrel
per day.
He said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard
the grape system, never afterward got over the habit
of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis,
because they always made a pause between each two words
while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape.
He said these were tedious people to talk with.
He said that men who had been cured by the other process
were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind
because they always tilted their heads back, between every
two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey.
He said it was an impressive thing to observe two men,
who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in
conversation--said their pauses and accompanying movements
were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think
himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines.
One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling,
if he stumbles upon the right person.
I did not remain long at the Kursaal; the music was
good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone
of that Arkansaw expert. Besides, my adventurous spirit
had conceived a formidable enterprise--nothing less
than a trip from Interlaken, by the Gemmi and Visp,
clear to Zermatt, on foot! So it was necessary to plan
the details, and get ready for an early start. The courier
(this was not the one I have just been speaking of)
thought that the portier of the hotel would be able
to tell us how to find our way. And so it turned out.
He showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could
see our route, with all its elevations and depressions,
its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing
over it in a balloon. A relief-map is a great thing.
The portier also wrote down each day's journey and the
nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and made our course
so plain that we should never be able to get lost without
high-priced outside help.
I put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was
going to Lausanne, and then we went to bed, after laying
out the walking-costumes and putting them into condition
for instant occupation in the morning.
However, when we came down to breakfast at 8 A.M., it
looked so much like rain that I hired a two-horse top-buggy
for the first third of the journey. For two or three hours
we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful
lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery
expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us,
veiled in a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour
set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects.
We kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away
from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy;
but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather
in and seemed to like it. We had the road to ourselves,
and I never had a pleasanter excursion.
The weather began to clear while we were driving up
a valley called the Kienthal, and presently a vast black
cloud-bank in front of us dissolved away and uncurtained
the grand proportions and the soaring loftiness of the
Blumis Alp. It was a sort of breath-taking surprise;
for we had not supposed there was anything behind
that low-hung blanket of sable cloud but level valley.
What we had been mistaking for fleeting glimpses of sky
away aloft there, were really patches of the Blumis's
snowy crest caught through shredded rents in the drifting
pall of vapor.
We dined in the inn at Frutigen, and our driver ought
to have dined there, too, but he would not have had
time to dine and get drunk both, so he gave his mind
to making a masterpiece of the latter, and succeeded.
A German gentleman and his two young-lady daughters had
been taking their nooning at the inn, and when they left,
just ahead of us, it was plain that their driver was
as drunk as ours, and as happy and good-natured, too,
which was saying a good deal. These rascals overflowed
with attentions and information for their guests, and with
brotherly love for each other. They tied their reins,
and took off their coats and hats, so that they might
be able to give unencumbered attention to conversation
and to the gestures necessary for its illustration.
The road was smooth; it led up and over and down a continual
succession of hills; but it was narrow, the horses were
used to it, and could not well get out of it anyhow;
so why shouldn't the drivers entertain themselves and us?
The noses of our horses projected sociably into the rear
of the forward carriage, and as we toiled up the long
hills our driver stood up and talked to his friend,
and his friend stood up and talked back to him, with his
rear to the scenery. When the top was reached and we
went flying down the other side, there was no change in
the program. I carry in my memory yet the picture of that
forward driver, on his knees on his high seat, resting his
elbows on its back, and beaming down on his passengers,
with happy eye, and flying hair, and jolly red face,
and offering his card to the old German gentleman while he
praised his hack and horses, and both teams were whizzing
down a long hill with nobody in a position to tell whether
we were bound to destruction or an undeserved safety.
Toward sunset we entered a beautiful green valley dotted
with chalets, a cozy little domain hidden away from the busy
world in a cloistered nook among giant precipices topped
with snowy peaks that seemed to float like islands above
the curling surf of the sea of vapor that severed them from
the lower world. Down from vague and vaporous heights,
little ruffled zigzag milky currents came crawling,
and found their way to the verge of one of those tremendous
overhanging walls, whence they plunged, a shaft of silver,
shivered to atoms in mid-descent and turned to an air puff
of luminous dust. Here and there, in grooved depressions
among the snowy desolations of the upper altitudes,
one glimpsed the extremity of a glacier, with its sea-green
and honeycombed battlements of ice.
Up the valley, under a dizzy precipice, nestled the
village of Kandersteg, our halting-place for the night.
We were soon there, and housed in the hotel. But the waning
day had such an inviting influence that we did not remain
housed many moments, but struck out and followed a roaring
torrent of ice-water up to its far source in a sort of
little grass-carpeted parlor, walled in all around by vast
precipices and overlooked by clustering summits of ice.
This was the snuggest little croquet-ground imaginable;
it was perfectly level, and not more than a mile long
by half a mile wide. The walls around it were so gigantic,
and everything about it was on so mighty a scale that it
was belittled, by contrast, to what I have likened it
to--a cozy and carpeted parlor. It was so high above
the Kandersteg valley that there was nothing between it
and the snowy-peaks. I had never been in such intimate
relations with the high altitudes before; the snow-peaks
had always been remote and unapproachable grandeurs,
hitherto, but now we were hob-a-nob--if one may use
such a seemingly irreverent expression about creations
so august as these.
We could see the streams which fed the torrent we
had followed issuing from under the greenish ramparts
of glaciers; but two or three of these, instead of flowing
over the precipices, sank down into the rock and sprang
in big jets out of holes in the mid-face of the walls.
The green nook which I have been describing is called
the Gasternthal. The glacier streams gather and flow through
it in a broad and rushing brook to a narrow cleft between
lofty precipices; here the rushing brook becomes a mad torrent
and goes booming and thundering down toward Kandersteg,
lashing and thrashing its way over and among monster boulders,
and hurling chance roots and logs about like straws.
There was no lack of cascades along this route.
The path by the side of the torrent was so narrow
that one had to look sharp, when he heard a cow-bell,
and hunt for a place that was wide enough to accommodate
a cow and a Christian side by side, and such places were
not always to be had at an instant's notice. The cows
wear church-bells, and that is a good idea in the cows,
for where that torrent is, you couldn't hear an ordinary
cow-bell any further than you could hear the ticking of a watch.
I needed exercise, so I employed my agent in setting
stranded logs and dead trees adrift, and I sat on a
boulder and watched them go whirling and leaping head
over heels down the boiling torrent. It was a wonderfully
exhilarating spectacle. When I had had enough exercise,
I made the agent take some, by running a race with one
of those logs. I made a trifle by betting on the log.
After dinner we had a walk up and down the Kandersteg valley,
in the soft gloaming, with the spectacle of the dying lights
of day playing about the crests and pinnacles of the still
and solemn upper realm for contrast, and text for talk.
There were no sounds but the dulled complaining of the
torrent and the occasional tinkling of a distant bell.
The spirit of the place was a sense of deep, pervading peace;
one might dream his life tranquilly away there, and not miss
it or mind it when it was gone.
The summer departed with the sun, and winter came with
the stars. It grew to be a bitter night in that little hotel,
backed up against a precipice that had no visible top to it,
but we kept warm, and woke in time in the morning to find
that everybody else had left for Gemmi three hours before
--so our little plan of helping that German family (principally
the old man) over the pass, was a blocked generosity.
CHAPTER XXXIV
[The World's Highest Pig Farm]
We hired the only guide left, to lead us on our way.
He was over seventy, but he could have given me nine-tenths
of his strength and still had all his age entitled him to.
He shouldered our satchels, overcoats, and alpenstocks,
and we set out up the steep path. It was hot work.
The old man soon begged us to hand over our coats
and waistcoats to him to carry, too, and we did it;
one could not refuse so little a thing to a poor old man
like that; he should have had them if he had been a hundred
and fifty.
When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic
chalet perched away up against heaven on what seemed
to be the highest mountain near us. It was on our right,
across the narrow head of the valley. But when we got
up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering
high above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude
was just about that of the little Gasternthal which we had
visited the evening before. Still it seemed a long way up
in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of rocks.
It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed
about as big as a billiard-table, and this grass-plot
slanted so sharply downward, and was so brief, and ended
so exceedingly soon at the verge of the absolute precipice,
that it was a shuddery thing to think of a person's venturing
to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all.
Suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard;
there would be nothing for him to seize; nothing could
keep him from rolling; five revolutions would bring him
to the edge, and over he would go. What a frightful distance
he would fall!--for there are very few birds that fly
as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce,
two or three times, on his way down, but this would be
no advantage to him. I would as soon taking an airing
on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front yard.
I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about
the same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce.
I could not see how the peasants got up to that chalet
--the region seemed too steep for anything but a balloon.
As we strolled on, climbing up higher and higher, we were
continually bringing neighboring peaks into view and lofty
prominence which had been hidden behind lower peaks before;
so by and by, while standing before a group of these giants,
we looked around for the chalet again; there it was,
away down below us, apparently on an inconspicuous ridge
in the valley! It was as far below us, now, as it had been
above us when we were beginning the ascent.
After a while the path led us along a railed precipice,
and we looked over--far beneath us was the snug parlor again,
the little Gasternthal, with its water jets spouting
from the face of its rock walls. We could have dropped
a stone into it. We had been finding the top of the world
all along--and always finding a still higher top stealing
into view in a disappointing way just ahead; when we looked
down into the Gasternthal we felt pretty sure that we
had reached the genuine top at last, but it was not so;
there were much higher altitudes to be scaled yet.
We were still in the pleasant shade of forest trees,
we were still in a region which was cushioned with beautiful
mosses and aglow with the many-tinted luster of innumerable
wild flowers.
We found, indeed, more interest in the wild flowers
than in anything else. We gathered a specimen or two
of every kind which we were unacquainted with; so we
had sumptuous bouquets. But one of the chief interests
lay in chasing the seasons of the year up the mountain,
and determining them by the presence of flowers and
berries which we were acquainted with. For instance,
it was the end of August at the level of the sea;
in the Kandersteg valley at the base of the pass,
we found flowers which would not be due at the sea-level
for two or three weeks; higher up, we entered October,
and gathered fringed gentians. I made no notes, and have
forgotten the details, but the construction of the floral
calendar was very entertaining while it lasted.
In the high regions we found rich store of the splendid
red flower called the Alpine rose, but we did not find
any examples of the ugly Swiss favorite called Edelweiss.
Its name seems to indicate that it is a noble flower
and that it is white. It may be noble enough,
but it is not attractive, and it is not white.
The fuzzy blossom is the color of bad cigar ashes,
and appears to be made of a cheap quality of gray plush.
It has a noble and distant way of confining itself to the
high altitudes, but that is probably on account of its looks;
it apparently has no monopoly of those upper altitudes,
however, for they are sometimes intruded upon by some
of the loveliest of the valley families of wild flowers.
Everybody in the Alps wears a sprig of Edelweiss in his hat.
It is the native's pet, and also the tourist's.
All the morning, as we loafed along, having a good time,
other pedestrians went staving by us with vigorous strides,
and with the intent and determined look of men who were
walking for a wager. These wore loose knee-breeches, long
yarn stockings, and hobnailed high-laced walking-shoes.
They were gentlemen who would go home to England or Germany
and tell how many miles they had beaten the guide-book
every day. But I doubted if they ever had much real fun,
outside of the mere magnificent exhilaration of the
tramp through the green valleys and the breezy heights;
for they were almost always alone, and even the finest
scenery loses incalculably when there is no one to enjoy
it with.
All the morning an endless double procession of mule-mounted
tourists filed past us along the narrow path--the one
procession going, the other coming. We had taken
a good deal of trouble to teach ourselves the kindly
German custom of saluting all strangers with doffed hat,
and we resolutely clung to it, that morning, although it
kept us bareheaded most of the time and was not always
responded to. Still we found an interest in the thing,
because we naturally liked to know who were English
and Americans among the passers-by. All continental
natives responded of course; so did some of the English
and Americans, but, as a general thing, these two races
gave no sign. Whenever a man or a woman showed us
cold neglect, we spoke up confidently in our own tongue
and asked for such information as we happened to need,
and we always got a reply in the same language.
The English and American folk are not less kindly than
other races, they are only more reserved, and that comes
of habit and education. In one dreary, rocky waste,
away above the line of vegetation, we met a procession
of twenty-five mounted young men, all from America.
We got answering bows enough from these, of course,
for they were of an age to learn to do in Rome as Rome does,
without much effort.
At one extremity of this patch of desolation, overhung by bare
and forbidding crags which husbanded drifts of everlasting
snow in their shaded cavities, was a small stretch
of thin and discouraged grass, and a man and a family
of pigs were actually living here in some shanties.
Consequently this place could be really reckoned as
"property"; it had a money value, and was doubtless taxed.
I think it must have marked the limit of real estate
in this world. It would be hard to set a money value
upon any piece of earth that lies between that spot
and the empty realm of space. That man may claim the
distinction of owning the end of the world, for if there
is any definite end to the world he has certainly found it.
From here forward we moved through a storm-swept
and smileless desolation. All about us rose gigantic
masses, crags, and ramparts of bare and dreary rock,
with not a vestige or semblance of plant or tree or
flower anywhere, or glimpse of any creature that had life.
The frost and the tempests of unnumbered ages had battered
and hacked at these cliffs, with a deathless energy,
destroying them piecemeal; so all the region about
their bases was a tumbled chaos of great fragments
which had been split off and hurled to the ground.
Soiled and aged banks of snow lay close about our path.
The ghastly desolation of the place was as tremendously
complete as if Dor'e had furnished the working-plans
for it. But every now and then, through the stern
gateways around us we caught a view of some neighboring
majestic dome, sheathed with glittering ice, and displaying
its white purity at an elevation compared to which
ours was groveling and plebeian, and this spectacle
always chained one's interest and admiration at once,
and made him forget there was anything ugly in the world.
I have just said that there was nothing but death
and desolation in these hideous places, but I forgot.
In the most forlorn and arid and dismal one of all,
where the racked and splintered debris was thickest,
where the ancient patches of snow lay against the very path,
where the winds blew bitterest and the general aspect was
mournfulest and dreariest, and furthest from any suggestion
of cheer or hope, I found a solitary wee forget-me-not
flourishing away, not a droop about it anywhere,
but holding its bright blue star up with the prettiest
and gallantest air in the world, the only happy spirit,
the only smiling thing, in all that grisly desert.
She seemed to say, "Cheer up!--as long as we are here,
let us make the best of it." I judged she had earned
a right to a more hospitable place; so I plucked her up
and sent her to America to a friend who would respect
her for the fight she had made, all by her small self,
to make a whole vast despondent Alpine desolation stop
breaking its heart over the unalterable, and hold up its
head and look at the bright side of things for once.
We stopped for a nooning at a strongly built little inn
called the Schwarenbach. It sits in a lonely spot among
the peaks, where it is swept by the trailing fringes
of the cloud-rack, and is rained on, and snowed on,
and pelted and persecuted by the storms, nearly every day
of its life. It was the only habitation in the whole
Gemmi Pass.
Close at hand, now, was a chance for a blood-curdling
Alpine adventure. Close at hand was the snowy mass
of the Great Altels cooling its topknot in the sky
and daring us to an ascent. I was fired with the idea,
and immediately made up my mind to procure the necessary
guides, ropes, etc., and undertake it. I instructed
Harris to go to the landlord of the inn and set him
about our preparations. Meantime, I went diligently
to work to read up and find out what this much-talked-of
mountain-climbing was like, and how one should go about
it--for in these matters I was ignorant. I opened
Mr. Hinchliff's SUMMER MONTHS AMONG THE ALPS (published
1857), and selected his account of his ascent of Monte Rosa.
It began:
"It is very difficult to free the mind from excitement
on the evening before a grand expedition--"
I saw that I was too calm; so I walked the room a while
and worked myself into a high excitement; but the book's
next remark --that the adventurer must get up at two
in the morning--came as near as anything to flatting it
all out again. However, I reinforced it, and read on,
about how Mr. Hinchliff dressed by candle-light and was "soon
down among the guides, who were bustling about in the passage,
packing provisions, and making every preparation for the start";
and how he glanced out into the cold clear night and saw that--
"The whole sky was blazing with stars, larger and brighter
than they appear through the dense atmosphere breathed
by inhabitants of the lower parts of the earth.
They seemed actually suspended from the dark vault
of heaven, and their gentle light shed a fairylike gleam
over the snow-fields around the foot of the Matterhorn,
which raised its stupendous pinnacle on high, penetrating to
the heart of the Great Bear, and crowning itself with a
diadem of his magnificent stars. Not a sound disturbed
the deep tranquillity of the night, except the distant
roar of streams which rush from the high plateau of the
St. Theodule glacier, and fall headlong over precipitous
rocks till they lose themselves in the mazes of
the Gorner glacier."
He took his hot toast and coffee, and then about
half past three his caravan of ten men filed away
from the Riffel Hotel, and began the steep climb.
At half past five he happened to turn around, and "beheld
the glorious spectacle of the Matterhorn, just touched
by the rosy-fingered morning, and looking like a huge
pyramid of fire rising out of the barren ocean of ice
and rock around it." Then the Breithorn and the Dent
Blanche caught the radiant glow; but "the intervening
mass of Monte Rosa made it necessary for us to climb many
long hours before we could hope to see the sun himself,
yet the whole air soon grew warmer after the splendid
birth of the day."
He gazed at the lofty crown of Monte Rosa and the wastes
of snow that guarded its steep approaches, and the chief
guide delivered the opinion that no man could conquer
their awful heights and put his foot upon that summit.
But the adventurers moved steadily on, nevertheless.
They toiled up, and up, and still up; they passed
the Grand Plateau; then toiled up a steep shoulder
of the mountain, clinging like flies to its rugged face;
and now they were confronted by a tremendous wall from
which great blocks of ice and snow were evidently in the
habit of falling. They turned aside to skirt this wall,
and gradually ascended until their way was barred by a "maze
of gigantic snow crevices,"--so they turned aside again,
and "began a long climb of sufficient steepness to make
a zigzag course necessary."
Fatigue compelled them to halt frequently, for a moment
or two. At one of these halts somebody called out,
"Look at Mont Blanc!" and "we were at once made aware
of the very great height we had attained by actually seeing
the monarch of the Alps and his attendant satellites
right over the top of the Breithorn, itself at least
14,000 feet high!"
These people moved in single file, and were all tied
to a strong rope, at regular distances apart, so that if
one of them slipped on those giddy heights, the others
could brace themselves on their alpenstocks and save him
from darting into the valley, thousands of feet below.
By and by they came to an ice-coated ridge which was tilted
up at a sharp angle, and had a precipice on one side of it.
They had to climb this, so the guide in the lead cut
steps in the ice with his hatchet, and as fast as he
took his toes out of one of these slight holes, the toes
of the man behind him occupied it.
"Slowly and steadily we kept on our way over this dangerous
part of the ascent, and I dare say it was fortunate for
some of us that attention was distracted from the head
by the paramount necessity of looking after the feet;
FOR, WHILE ON THE LEFT THE INCLINE OF ICE WAS SO STEEP
THAT IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY MAN TO SAVE HIMSELF
IN CASE OF A SLIP, UNLESS THE OTHERS COULD HOLD HIM UP,
ON THE RIGHT WE MIGHT DROP A PEBBLE FROM THE HAND OVER
PRECIPICES OF UNKNOWN EXTENT DOWN UPON THE TREMENDOUS
GLACIER BELOW.
"Great caution, therefore, was absolutely necessary,
and in this exposed situation we were attacked by all
the fury of that grand enemy of aspirants to Monte
Rosa--a severe and bitterly cold wind from the north.
The fine powdery snow was driven past us in the clouds,
penetrating the interstices of our clothes, and the pieces
of ice which flew from the blows of Peter's ax were
whisked into the air, and then dashed over the precipice.
We had quite enough to do to prevent ourselves from being
served in the same ruthless fashion, and now and then,
in the more violent gusts of wind, were glad to stick our
alpenstocks into the ice and hold on hard."
Having surmounted this perilous steep, they sat down and
took a brief rest with their backs against a sheltering
rock and their heels dangling over a bottomless abyss;
then they climbed to the base of another ridge--a more
difficult and dangerous one still:
"The whole of the ridge was exceedingly narrow, and the
fall on each side desperately steep, but the ice in some
of these intervals between the masses of rock assumed
the form of a mere sharp edge, almost like a knife;
these places, though not more than three or four short
paces in length, looked uncommonly awkward; but, like the
sword leading true believers to the gates of Paradise,
they must needs be passed before we could attain to
the summit of our ambition. These were in one or two
places so narrow, that in stepping over them with toes
well turned out for greater security, ONE END OF THE
FOOT PROJECTED OVER THE AWFUL PRECIPICE ON THE RIGHT,
WHILE THE OTHER WAS ON THE BEGINNING OF THE ICE SLOPE ON
THE LEFT, WHICH WAS SCARCELY LESS STEEP THAN THE ROCKS.
On these occasions Peter would take my hand, and each
of us stretching as far as we could, he was thus enabled
to get a firm footing two paces or rather more from me,
whence a spring would probably bring him to the rock
on the other side; then, turning around, he called
to me to come, and, taking a couple of steps carefully,
I was met at the third by his outstretched hand ready
to clasp mine, and in a moment stood by his side.
The others followed in much the same fashion. Once my
right foot slipped on the side toward the precipice,
but I threw out my left arm in a moment so that it caught
the icy edge under my armpit as I fell, and supported
me considerably; at the same instant I cast my eyes
down the side on which I had slipped, and contrived
to plant my right foot on a piece of rock as large as a
cricket-ball, which chanced to protrude through the ice,
on the very edge of the precipice. Being thus anchored
fore and aft, as it were, I believe I could easily have
recovered myself, even if I had been alone, though it must
be confessed the situation would have been an awful one;
as it was, however, a jerk from Peter settled the matter
very soon, and I was on my legs all right in an instant.
The rope is an immense help in places of this kind."
Now they arrived at the base of a great knob or dome
veneered with ice and powdered with snow--the utmost,
summit, the last bit of solidity between them and the hollow
vault of heaven. They set to work with their hatchets,
and were soon creeping, insectlike, up its surface, with their
heels projecting over the thinnest kind of nothingness,
thickened up a little with a few wandering shreds and
films of cloud moving in a lazy procession far below.
Presently, one man's toe-hold broke and he fell! There he
dangled in mid-air at the end of the rope, like a spider,
till his friends above hauled him into place again.
A little bit later, the party stood upon the wee pedestal
of the very summit, in a driving wind, and looked out
upon the vast green expanses of Italy and a shoreless
ocean of billowy Alps.
When I had read thus far, Harris broke into the room
in a noble excitement and said the ropes and the guides
were secured, and asked if I was ready. I said I
believed I wouldn't ascend the Altels this time.
I said Alp-climbing was a different thing from what I had
supposed it was, and so I judged we had better study its
points a little more before we went definitely into it.
But I told him to retain the guides and order them to
follow us to Zermatt, because I meant to use them there.
I said I could feel the spirit of adventure beginning
to stir in me, and was sure that the fell fascination
of Alp-climbing would soon be upon me. I said he could
make up his mind to it that we would do a deed before we
were a week older which would make the hair of the timid
curl with fright.
This made Harris happy, and filled him with ambitious
anticipations. He went at once to tell the guides to
follow us to Zermatt and bring all their paraphernalia
with them.
CHAPTER XXXV
[Swindling the Coroner]
A great and priceless thing is a new interest! How
it takes possession of a man! how it clings to him,
how it rides him! I strode onward from the Schwarenbach
hostelry a changed man, a reorganized personality.
I walked into a new world, I saw with new eyes.
I had been looking aloft at the giant show-peaks only as
things to be worshiped for their grandeur and magnitude,
and their unspeakable grace of form; I looked up at
them now, as also things to be conquered and climbed.
My sense of their grandeur and their noble beauty
was neither lost nor impaired; I had gained a new
interest in the mountains without losing the old ones.
I followed the steep lines up, inch by inch, with my eye,
and noted the possibility or impossibility of following
them with my feet. When I saw a shining helmet of ice
projecting above the clouds, I tried to imagine I saw
files of black specks toiling up it roped together with a
gossamer thread.
We skirted the lonely little lake called the Daubensee,
and presently passed close by a glacier on the right
--a thing like a great river frozen solid in its flow
and broken square off like a wall at its mouth.
I had never been so near a glacier before.
Here we came upon a new board shanty, and found some men
engaged in building a stone house; so the Schwarenbach was
soon to have a rival. We bought a bottle or so of beer here;
at any rate they called it beer, but I knew by the price
that it was dissolved jewelry, and I perceived by the
taste that dissolved jewelry is not good stuff to drink.
We were surrounded by a hideous desolation. We stepped
forward to a sort of jumping-off place, and were confronted
by a startling contrast: we seemed to look down into fairyland.
Two or three thousand feet below us was a bright green level,
with a pretty town in its midst, and a silvery stream
winding among the meadows; the charming spot was walled
in on all sides by gigantic precipices clothed with pines;
and over the pines, out of the softened distances,
rose the snowy domes and peaks of the Monte Rosa region.
How exquisitely green and beautiful that little valley
down there was! The distance was not great enough to
obliterate details, it only made them little, and mellow,
and dainty, like landscapes and towns seen through the
wrong end of a spy-glass.
Right under us a narrow ledge rose up out of the valley,
with a green, slanting, bench-shaped top, and grouped
about upon this green-baize bench were a lot of black
and white sheep which looked merely like oversized worms.
The bench seemed lifted well up into our neighborhood,
but that was a deception--it was a long way down to it.
We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I
have ever seen. It wound its corkscrew curves down the face
of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always
the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular
nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing
up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room
to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule.
I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the
mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall.
I preferred the inside, of course, but I should have had
to take it anyhow, because the mule prefers the outside.
A mule's preference--on a precipice--is a thing to
be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside.
His life is mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers
and packages which rest against his body--therefore he
is habituated to taking the outside edge of mountain paths,
to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or banks
on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he
absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his
passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower
world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands,
so to speak. More than once I saw a mule's hind foot
cave over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into
the bottom abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions
the rider, whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell.
There was one place where an eighteen-inch breadth of
light masonry had been added to the verge of the path,
and as there was a very sharp turn here, a panel of fencing
had been set up there at some time, as a protection.
This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light
masonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young
American girl came along on a mule, and in making the turn
the mule's hind foot caved all the loose masonry and one
of the fence-posts overboard; the mule gave a violent lurch
inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort,
but that girl turned as white as the snows of Mont Blanc
for a moment.
The path was simply a groove cut into the face of
the precipice; there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock
under the traveler, and four-foot breadth of solid rock
just above his head, like the roof of a narrow porch;
he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer
summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him,
across a gorge or crack a biscuit's toss in width
--but he could not see the bottom of his own precipice
unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge.
I did not do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes.
Every few hundred yards, at particularly bad places,
one came across a panel or so of plank fencing; but they
were always old and weak, and they generally leaned
out over the chasm and did not make any rash promises
to hold up people who might need support. There was one
of these panels which had only its upper board left;
a pedestrianizing English youth came tearing down the path,
was seized with an impulse to look over the precipice,
and without an instant's thought he threw his weight
upon that crazy board. It bent outward a foot! I never
made a gasp before that came so near suffocating me.
The English youth's face simply showed a lively surprise,
but nothing more. He went swinging along valleyward again,
as if he did not know he had just swindled a coroner by the
closest kind of a shave.
The Alpine litter is sometimes like a cushioned box
made fast between the middles of two long poles,
and sometimes it is a chair with a back to it and a support
for the feet. It is carried by relays of strong porters.
The motion is easier than that of any other conveyance.
We met a few men and a great many ladies in litters;
it seemed to me that most of the ladies looked pale
and nauseated; their general aspect gave me the idea
that they were patiently enduring a horrible suffering.
As a rule, they looked at their laps, and left the scenery
to take care of itself.
But the most frightened creature I saw, was a led horse
that overtook us. Poor fellow, he had been born and reared
in the grassy levels of the Kandersteg valley and had
never seen anything like this hideous place before.
Every few steps he would stop short, glance wildly out from
the dizzy height, and then spread his red nostrils wide
and pant as violently as if he had been running a race;
and all the while he quaked from head to heel as with
a palsy. He was a handsome fellow, and he made a fine
statuesque picture of terror, but it was pitiful to see
him suffer so.
This dreadful path has had its tragedy. Baedeker, with his
customary over-terseness, begins and ends the tale thus:
"The descent on horseback should be avoided.
In 1861 a Comtesse d'Herlincourt fell from her saddle
over the precipice and was killed on the spot."
We looked over the precipice there, and saw the monument
which commemorates the event. It stands in the bottom
of the gorge, in a place which has been hollowed out of
the rock to protect it from the torrent and the storms.
Our old guide never spoke but when spoken to, and then
limited himself to a syllable or two, but when we asked
him about this tragedy he showed a strong interest
in the matter. He said the Countess was very pretty,
and very young--hardly out of her girlhood, in fact.
She was newly married, and was on her bridal tour.
The young husband was riding a little in advance; one guide
was leading the husband's horse, another was leading the
bride's.
The old man continued:
"The guide that was leading the husband's horse happened
to glance back, and there was that poor young thing sitting
up staring out over the precipice; and her face began
to bend downward a little, and she put up her two hands
slowly and met it--so,--and put them flat against her
eyes--so--and then she sank out of the saddle, with a
sharp shriek, and one caught only the flash of a dress,
and it was all over."
Then after a pause:
"Ah, yes, that guide saw these things--yes, he saw them all.
He saw them all, just as I have told you."
After another pause:
"Ah, yes, he saw them all. My God, that was ME.
I was that guide!"
This had been the one event of the old man's life; so one
may be sure he had forgotten no detail connected with it.
We listened to all he had to say about what was done and what
happened and what was said after the sorrowful occurrence,
and a painful story it was.
When we had wound down toward the valley until we were about
on the last spiral of the corkscrew, Harris's hat blew
over the last remaining bit of precipice--a small cliff
a hundred or hundred and fifty feet high--and sailed down
toward a steep slant composed of rough chips and fragments
which the weather had flaked away from the precipices.
We went leisurely down there, expecting to find it without
any trouble, but we had made a mistake, as to that.
We hunted during a couple of hours--not because the old
straw hat was valuable, but out of curiosity to find out
how such a thing could manage to conceal itself in open
ground where there was nothing left for it to hide behind.
When one is reading in bed, and lays his paper-knife down,
he cannot find it again if it is smaller than a saber;
that hat was as stubborn as any paper-knife could have been,
and we finally had to give it up; but we found a fragment
that had once belonged to an opera-glass, and by digging
around and turning over the rocks we gradually collected
all the lenses and the cylinders and the various odds
and ends that go to making up a complete opera-glass.
We afterward had the thing reconstructed, and the owner
can have his adventurous lost-property by submitting
proofs and paying costs of rehabilitation. We had hopes
of finding the owner there, distributed around amongst
the rocks, for it would have made an elegant paragraph;
but we were disappointed. Still, we were far from
being disheartened, for there was a considerable area
which we had not thoroughly searched; we were satisfied he
was there, somewhere, so we resolved to wait over a day at
Leuk and come back and get him.
Then we sat down to polish off the perspiration and
arrange about what we would do with him when we got him.
Harris was for contributing him to the British Museum;
but I was for mailing him to his widow. That is the difference
between Harris and me: Harris is all for display, I am
all for the simple right, even though I lose money by it.
Harris argued in favor of his proposition against mine,
I argued in favor of mine and against his. The discussion
warmed into a dispute; the dispute warmed into a quarrel.
I finally said, very decidedly:
"My mind is made up. He goes to the widow."
Harris answered sharply:
"And MY mind is made up. He goes to the Museum."
I said, calmly:
"The museum may whistle when it gets him."
Harris retorted:
"The widow may save herself the trouble of whistling,
for I will see that she never gets him."
After some angry bandying of epithets, I said:
"It seems to me that you are taking on a good many airs
about these remains. I don't quite see what YOU'VE got
to say about them?"
"I? I've got ALL to say about them. They'd never have
been thought of if I hadn't found their opera-glass. The
corpse belongs to me, and I'll do as I please with him."
I was leader of the Expedition, and all discoveries
achieved by it naturally belonged to me. I was entitled
to these remains, and could have enforced my right;
but rather than have bad blood about the matter,
I said we would toss up for them. I threw heads and won,
but it was a barren victory, for although we spent all
the next day searching, we never found a bone. I cannot
imagine what could ever have become of that fellow.
The town in the valley is called Leuk or Leukerbad.
We pointed our course toward it, down a verdant slope
which was adorned with fringed gentians and other flowers,
and presently entered the narrow alleys of the outskirts
and waded toward the middle of the town through liquid
"fertilizer." They ought to either pave that village or
organize a ferry.
Harris's body was simply a chamois-pasture; his person
was populous with the little hungry pests; his skin,
when he stripped, was splotched like a scarlet-fever patient's;
so, when we were about to enter one of the Leukerbad inns,
and he noticed its sign, "Chamois Hotel," he refused
to stop there. He said the chamois was plentiful enough,
without hunting up hotels where they made a specialty of it.
I was indifferent, for the chamois is a creature that will
neither bite me nor abide with me; but to calm Harris,
we went to the Ho^tel des Alpes.
At the table d'ho^te, we had this, for an incident.
A very grave man--in fact his gravity amounted to solemnity,
and almost to austerity--sat opposite us and he was
"tight," but doing his best to appear sober. He took up
a CORKED bottle of wine, tilted it over his glass awhile,
then set it out of the way, with a contented look, and went
on with his dinner.
Presently he put his glass to his mouth, and of course
found it empty. He looked puzzled, and glanced furtively
and suspiciously out of the corner of his eye at a
benignant and unconscious old lady who sat at his right.
Shook his head, as much as to say, "No, she couldn't have
done it." He tilted the corked bottle over his glass again,
meantime searching around with his watery eye to see
if anybody was watching him. He ate a few mouthfuls,
raised his glass to his lips, and of course it was
still empty. He bent an injured and accusing side-glance
upon that unconscious old lady, which was a study to see.
She went on eating and gave no sign. He took up his glass
and his bottle, with a wise private nod of his head,
and set them gravely on the left-hand side of his plate
--poured himself another imaginary drink--went to work
with his knife and fork once more--presently lifted
his glass with good confidence, and found it empty,
as usual.
This was almost a petrifying surprise. He straightened
himself up in his chair and deliberately and sorrowfully
inspected the busy old ladies at his elbows, first one and
then the other. At last he softly pushed his plate away,
set his glass directly in front of him, held on to it
with his left hand, and proceeded to pour with his right.
This time he observed that nothing came. He turned the
bottle clear upside down; still nothing issued from it;
a plaintive look came into his face, and he said, as if
to himself,
"'IC! THEY'VE GOT IT ALL!" Then he set the bottle down,
resignedly, and took the rest of his dinner dry.
It was at that table d'ho^te, too, that I had under inspection
the largest lady I have ever seen in private life.
She was over seven feet high, and magnificently proportioned.
What had first called my attention to her, was my stepping
on an outlying flange of her foot, and hearing, from up
toward the ceiling, a deep "Pardon, m'sieu, but you encroach!"
That was when we were coming through the hall, and the place
was dim, and I could see her only vaguely. The thing
which called my attention to her the second time was,
that at a table beyond ours were two very pretty girls,
and this great lady came in and sat down between them
and me and blotted out my view. She had a handsome face,
and she was very finely formed--perfected formed,
I should say. But she made everybody around her look trivial
and commonplace. Ladies near her looked like children,
and the men about her looked mean. They looked like failures;
and they looked as if they felt so, too. She sat with
her back to us. I never saw such a back in my life.
I would have so liked to see the moon rise over it.
The whole congregation waited, under one pretext or another,
till she finished her dinner and went out; they wanted to see
her at full altitude, and they found it worth tarrying for.
She filled one's idea of what an empress ought to be,
when she rose up in her unapproachable grandeur and moved
superbly out of that place.
We were not at Leuk in time to see her at her heaviest weight.
She had suffered from corpulence and had come there to get
rid of her extra flesh in the baths. Five weeks of soaking
--five uninterrupted hours of it every day--had accomplished
her purpose and reduced her to the right proportions.
Those baths remove fat, and also skin-diseases. The
patients remain in the great tanks for hours at a time.
A dozen gentlemen and ladies occupy a tank together,
and amuse themselves with rompings and various games.
They have floating desks and tables, and they read or lunch
or play chess in water that is breast-deep. The tourist
can step in and view this novel spectacle if he chooses.
There's a poor-box, and he will have to contribute.
There are several of these big bathing-houses, and you can
always tell when you are near one of them by the romping
noises and shouts of laughter that proceed from it.
The water is running water, and changes all the time,
else a patient with a ringworm might take the bath with only
a partial success, since, while he was ridding himself of
the ringworm, he might catch the itch.
The next morning we wandered back up the green valley,
leisurely, with the curving walls of those bare and
stupendous precipices rising into the clouds before us.
I had never seen a clean, bare precipice stretching up
five thousand feet above me before, and I never shall
expect to see another one. They exist, perhaps, but not
in places where one can easily get close to them.
This pile of stone is peculiar. From its base to the
soaring tops of its mighty towers, all its lines and
all its details vaguely suggest human architecture.
There are rudimentary bow-windows, cornices, chimneys,
demarcations of stories, etc. One could sit and stare up
there and study the features and exquisite graces of this
grand structure, bit by bit, and day after day, and never
weary his interest. The termination, toward the town,
observed in profile, is the perfection of shape.
It comes down out of the clouds in a succession of rounded,
colossal, terracelike projections--a stairway for the gods;
at its head spring several lofty storm-scarred towers,
one after another, with faint films of vapor curling
always about them like spectral banners. If there were
a king whose realms included the whole world, here would
be the place meet and proper for such a monarch. He would
only need to hollow it out and put in the electric light.
He could give audience to a nation at a time under its roof.
Our search for those remains having failed, we inspected with
a glass the dim and distant track of an old-time avalanche
that once swept down from some pine-grown summits behind
the town and swept away the houses and buried the people;
then we struck down the road that leads toward the Rhone,
to see the famous Ladders. These perilous things are
built against the perpendicular face of a cliff two or
three hundred feet high. The peasants, of both sexes,
were climbing up and down them, with heavy loads on
their backs. I ordered Harris to make the ascent, so I
could put the thrill and horror of it in my book, and he
accomplished the feat successfully, though a subagent,
for three francs, which I paid. It makes me shudder yet
when I think of what I felt when I was clinging there
between heaven and earth in the person of that proxy.
At times the world swam around me, and I could hardly keep
from letting go, so dizzying was the appalling danger.
Many a person would have given up and descended, but I stuck
to my task, and would not yield until I had accomplished it.
I felt a just pride in my exploit, but I would not
have repeated it for the wealth of the world. I shall
break my neck yet with some such foolhardy performance,
for warnings never seem to have any lasting effect on me.
When the people of the hotel found that I had been
climbing those crazy Ladders, it made me an object of
considerable attention.
Next morning, early, we drove to the Rhone valley and took
the train for Visp. There we shouldered our knapsacks
and things, and set out on foot, in a tremendous rain,
up the winding gorge, toward Zermatt. Hour after hour we
slopped along, by the roaring torrent, and under noble
Lesser Alps which were clothed in rich velvety green
all the way up and had little atomy Swiss homes perched
upon grassy benches along their mist-dimmed heights.
The rain continued to pour and the torrent to boom, and we
continued to enjoy both. At the one spot where this torrent
tossed its white mane highest, and thundered loudest,
and lashed the big boulders fiercest, the canton had done
itself the honor to build the flimsiest wooden bridge
that exists in the world. While we were walking over it,
along with a party of horsemen, I noticed that even
the larger raindrops made it shake. I called Harris's
attention to it, and he noticed it, too. It seemed
to me that if I owned an elephant that was a keepsake,
and I thought a good deal of him, I would think twice
before I would ride him over that bridge.
We climbed up to the village of St. Nicholas, about half
past four in the afternoon, waded ankle-deep through
the fertilizer-juice, and stopped at a new and nice hotel
close by the little church. We stripped and went to bed,
and sent our clothes down to be baked. And the horde
of soaked tourists did the same. That chaos of clothing
got mixed in the kitchen, and there were consequences.
I did not get back the same drawers I sent down, when our
things came up at six-fifteen; I got a pair on a new plan.
They were merely a pair of white ruffle-cuffed absurdities,
hitched together at the top with a narrow band, and they did
not come quite down to my knees. They were pretty enough,
but they made me feel like two people, and disconnected
at that. The man must have been an idiot that got himself
up like that, to rough it in the Swiss mountains.
The shirt they brought me was shorter than the drawers,
and hadn't any sleeves to it--at least it hadn't anything
more than what Mr. Darwin would call "rudimentary" sleeves;
these had "edging" around them, but the bosom was
ridiculously plain. The knit silk undershirt they brought
me was on a new plan, and was really a sensible thing;
it opened behind, and had pockets in it to put your
shoulder-blades in; but they did not seem to fit mine,
and so I found it a sort of uncomfortable garment.
They gave my bobtail coat to somebody else, and sent me
an ulster suitable for a giraffe. I had to tie my collar on,
because there was no button behind on that foolish little shirt
which I described a while ago.
When I was dressed for dinner at six-thirty, I was too loose
in some places and too tight in others, and altogether I
felt slovenly and ill-conditioned. However, the people
at the table d'ho^te were no better off than I was;
they had everybody's clothes but their own on. A long
stranger recognized his ulster as soon as he saw the tail
of it following me in, but nobody claimed my shirt or
my drawers, though I described them as well as I was able.
I gave them to the chambermaid that night when I went
to bed, and she probably found the owner, for my own
things were on a chair outside my door in the morning.
There was a lovable English clergyman who did
not get to the table d'ho^te at all. His breeches
had turned up missing, and without any equivalent.
He said he was not more particular than other people,
but he had noticed that a clergyman at dinner without
any breeches was almost sure to excite remark.
CHAPTER XXXVI
[The Fiendish Fun of Alp-climbing]
We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell
began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from
the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it
takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation
through his head. Most church-bells in the world
are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping
sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin,
but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one
that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening
in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its
excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every
citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be
any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no
family in America without a clock, and consequently there
is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful
sounds that issues from our steeples. There is much more
profanity in America on Sunday than is all in the other six
days of the week put together, and it is of a more bitter
and malignant character than the week-day profanity, too.
It is produced by the cracked-pot clangor of the cheap
church-bells.
We build our churches almost without regard to cost;
we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we
gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything
we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by
putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it,
giving some the headache, others St. Vitus's dance,
and the rest the blind staggers.
An American village at ten o'clock on a summer Sunday is
the quietest and peacefulest and holiest thing in nature;
but it is a pretty different thing half an hour later.
Mr. Poe's poem of the "Bells" stands incomplete to this day;
but it is well enough that it is so, for the public reciter
or "reader" who goes around trying to imitate the sounds
of the various sorts of bells with his voice would find
himself "up a stump" when he got to the church-bell
--as Joseph Addison would say. The church is always trying
to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea
to reform itself a little, by way of example. It is still
clinging to one or two things which were useful once,
but which are not useful now, neither are they ornamental.
One is the bell-ringing to remind a clock-caked town
that it is church-time, and another is the reading from
the pulpit of a tedious list of "notices" which everybody
who is interested has already read in the newspaper.
The clergyman even reads the hymn through--a relic
of an ancient time when hymn-books are scarce and costly;
but everybody has a hymn-book, now, and so the public reading
is no longer necessary. It is not merely unnecessary,
it is generally painful; for the average clergyman could
not fire into his congregation with a shotgun and hit a worse
reader than himself, unless the weapon scattered shamefully.
I am not meaning to be flippant and irreverent, I am only
meaning to be truthful. The average clergyman, in all
countries and of all denominations, is a very bad reader.
One would think he would at least learn how to read
the Lord's Prayer, by and by, but it is not so. He races
through it as if he thought the quicker he got it in,
the sooner it would be answered. A person who does not
appreciate the exceeding value of pauses, and does not know
how to measure their duration judiciously, cannot render
the grand simplicity and dignity of a composition like
that effectively.
We took a tolerably early breakfast, and tramped off
toward Zermatt through the reeking lanes of the village,
glad to get away from that bell. By and by we had a fine
spectacle on our right. It was the wall-like butt end of a
huge glacier, which looked down on us from an Alpine height
which was well up in the blue sky. It was an astonishing
amount of ice to be compacted together in one mass.
We ciphered upon it and decided that it was not less than
several hundred feet from the base of the wall of solid
ice to the top of it--Harris believed it was really
twice that. We judged that if St. Paul's, St. Peter's,
the Great Pyramid, the Strasburg Cathedral and the Capitol
in Washington were clustered against that wall, a man
sitting on its upper edge could not hang his hat on the top
of any one of them without reaching down three or four
hundred feet--a thing which, of course, no man could do.
To me, that mighty glacier was very beautiful. I did
not imagine that anybody could find fault with it; but I
was mistaken. Harris had been snarling for several days.
He was a rabid Protestant, and he was always saying:
"In the Protestant cantons you never see such poverty
and dirt and squalor as you do in this Catholic one;
you never see the lanes and alleys flowing with foulness;
you never see such wretched little sties of houses;
you never see an inverted tin turnip on top of a church
for a dome; and as for a church-bell, why, you never hear
a church-bell at all."
All this morning he had been finding fault, straight along.
First it was with the mud. He said, "It ain't muddy in a
Protestant canton when it rains." Then it was with the dogs:
"They don't have those lop-eared dogs in a Protestant canton."
Then it was with the roads: "They don't leave the roads
to make themselves in a Protestant canton, the people make
them--and they make a road that IS a road, too." Next it
was the goats: "You never see a goat shedding tears
in a Protestant canton--a goat, there, is one of the
cheerfulest objects in nature." Next it was the chamois:
"You never see a Protestant chamois act like one of these
--they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp
with you and stay." Then it was the guide-boards: "In
a Protestant canton you couldn't get lost if you wanted to,
but you never see a guide-board in a Catholic canton."
Next, "You never see any flower-boxes in the windows,
here--never anything but now and then a cat--a torpid one;
but you take a Protestant canton: windows perfectly lovely
with flowers--and as for cats, there's just acres of them.
These folks in this canton leave a road to make itself,
and then fine you three francs if you 'trot' over it
--as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road."
Next about the goiter: "THEY talk about goiter!--I haven't
seen a goiter in this whole canton that I couldn't put
in a hat."
He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle
him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier.
I intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly
discontent: "You ought to see them in the Protestant cantons."
This irritated me. But I concealed the feeling, and asked:
"What is the matter with this one?"
"Matter? Why, it ain't in any kind of condition.
They never take any care of a glacier here. The moraine
has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty."
"Why, man, THEY can't help that."
"THEY? You're right. That is, they WON'T. They could
if they wanted to. You never see a speck of dirt
on a Protestant glacier. Look at the Rhone glacier.
It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think.
If this was a Protestant glacier you wouldn't see it looking
like this, I can tell you."
"That is nonsense. What would they do with it?"
"They would whitewash it. They always do."
I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have
trouble I let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue
with a bigot. I even doubted if the Rhone glacier WAS
in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I could
not make anything by contradicting a man who would
probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence.
About nine miles from St. Nicholas we crossed a bridge
over the raging torrent of the Visp, and came to a log
strip of flimsy fencing which was pretending to secure
people from tumbling over a perpendicular wall forty feet
high and into the river. Three children were approaching;
one of them, a little girl, about eight years old,
was running; when pretty close to us she stumbled and fell,
and her feet shot under the rail of the fence and for a
moment projected over the stream. It gave us a sharp shock,
for we thought she was gone, sure, for the ground slanted
steeply, and to save herself seemed a sheer impossibility;
but she managed to scramble up, and ran by us laughing.
We went forward and examined the place and saw the long
tracks which her feet had made in the dirt when they
darted over the verge. If she had finished her trip she
would have struck some big rocks in the edge of the water,
and then the torrent would have snatched her downstream
among the half-covered boulders and she would have been
pounded to pulp in two minutes. We had come exceedingly
near witnessing her death.
And now Harris's contrary nature and inborn selfishness
were striking manifested. He has no spirit of self-denial.
He began straight off, and continued for an hour,
to express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed.
I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was;
just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about
anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over and
over again. Often, of course, it was mere heedlessness,
mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have been
the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard
to bar on that account--and after all, its bottom,
its groundwork, was selfishness. There is no avoiding
that conclusion. In the instance under consideration,
I did think the indecency of running on in that way might
occur to him; but no, the child was saved and he was glad,
that was sufficient--he cared not a straw for MY feelings,
or my loss of such a literary plum, snatched from my
very mouth at the instant it was ready to drop into it.
His selfishness was sufficient to place his own gratification
in being spared suffering clear before all concern for me,
his friend. Apparently, he did not once reflect upon the
valuable details which would have fallen like a windfall
to me: fishing the child out--witnessing the surprise of
the family and the stir the thing would have made among the
peasants--then a Swiss funeral--then the roadside monument,
to be paid for by us and have our names mentioned in it.
And we should have gone into Baedeker and been immortal.
I was silent. I was too much hurt to complain. If he could
act so, and be so heedless and so frivolous at such a time,
and actually seem to glory in it, after all I had done for him,
I would have cut my hand off before I would let him see
that I was wounded.
We were approaching Zermatt; consequently, we were
approaching the renowned Matterhorn. A month before,
this mountain had been only a name to us, but latterly
we had been moving through a steadily thickening double
row of pictures of it, done in oil, water, chromo, wood,
steel, copper, crayon, and photography, and so it had at
length become a shape to us--and a very distinct, decided,
and familiar one, too. We were expecting to recognize
that mountain whenever or wherever we should run across it.
We were not deceived. The monarch was far away when we
first saw him, but there was no such thing as mistaking him.
He has the rare peculiarity of standing by himself;
he is peculiarly steep, too, and is also most oddly shaped.
He towers into the sky like a colossal wedge, with the
upper third of its blade bent a little to the left.
The broad base of this monster wedge is planted upon
a grand glacier-paved Alpine platform whose elevation
is ten thousand feet above sea-level; as the wedge itself
is some five thousand feet high, it follows that its
apex is about fifteen thousand feet above sea-level.
So the whole bulk of this stately piece of rock, this
sky-cleaving monolith, is above the line of eternal snow.
Yet while all its giant neighbors have the look of being
built of solid snow, from their waists up, the Matterhorn
stands black and naked and forbidding, the year round,
or merely powdered or streaked with white in places,
for its sides are so steep that the snow cannot stay there.
Its strange form, its august isolation, and its majestic
unkinship with its own kind, make it--so to speak--the Napoleon
of the mountain world. "Grand, gloomy, and peculiar,"
is a phrase which fits it as aptly as it fitted the great
captain.
Think of a monument a mile high, standing on a pedestal
two miles high! This is what the Matterhorn is--a monument.
Its office, henceforth, for all time, will be to keep
watch and ward over the secret resting-place of the young
Lord Douglas, who, in 1865, was precipitated from the
summit over a precipice four thousand feet high, and never
seen again. No man ever had such a monument as this before;
the most imposing of the world's other monuments are
but atoms compared to it; and they will perish, and their
places will pass from memory, but this will remain. [1]
1. The accident which cost Lord Douglas his life (see
Chapter xii) also cost the lives of three other men.
These three fell four-fifths of a mile, and their bodies
were afterward found, lying side by side, upon a glacier,
whence they were borne to Zermatt and buried in the
churchyard.
The remains of Lord Douglas have never been found.
The secret of his sepulture, like that of Moses, must remain
a mystery always.
A walk from St. Nicholas to Zermatt is a wonderful experience.
Nature is built on a stupendous plan in that region.
One marches continually between walls that are piled
into the skies, with their upper heights broken into
a confusion of sublime shapes that gleam white and cold
against the background of blue; and here and there one
sees a big glacier displaying its grandeurs on the top
of a precipice, or a graceful cascade leaping and flashing
down the green declivities. There is nothing tame,
or cheap, or trivial--it is all magnificent. That short
valley is a picture-gallery of a notable kind, for it
contains no mediocrities; from end to end the Creator
has hung it with His masterpieces.
We made Zermatt at three in the afternoon, nine hours out
from St. Nicholas. Distance, by guide-book, twelve miles;
by pedometer seventy-two. We were in the heart and home
of the mountain-climbers, now, as all visible things
testified. The snow-peaks did not hold themselves aloof,
in aristocratic reserve; they nestled close around,
in a friendly, sociable way; guides, with the ropes and
axes and other implements of their fearful calling slung
about their persons, roosted in a long line upon a stone
wall in front of the hotel, and waited for customers;
sun-burnt climbers, in mountaineering costume, and followed
by their guides and porters, arrived from time to time,
from breakneck expeditions among the peaks and glaciers
of the High Alps; male and female tourists, on mules,
filed by, in a continuous procession, hotelward-bound from
wild adventures which would grow in grandeur very time
they were described at the English or American fireside,
and at last outgrow the possible itself.
We were not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home
of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations;
no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous
Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine
summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining
a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him,
while looking straight at him at short range. I would rather
face whole Hyde Parks of artillery than the ghastly forms
of death which he has faced among the peaks and precipices
of the mountains. There is probably no pleasure equal
to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is
a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can
find pleasure in it. I have not jumped to this conclusion;
I have traveled to it per gravel-train, so to speak.
I have thought the thing all out, and am quite sure I
am right. A born climber's appetite for climbing is hard
to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a starving
man with a feast before him; he may have other business
on hand, but it must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had had
his usual summer holiday in the Alps, and had spent it
in his usual way, hunting for unique chances to break
his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed
for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon
him to climb the tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he
had heard of a new and utterly impossible route up it.
His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and a friend,
laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens
of milk, were just setting out. They would spend
the night high up among the snows, somewhere, and get
up at two in the morning and finish the enterprise.
I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down
--a feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude,
could not do.
Even ladies catch the climbing mania, and are unable to
throw it off. A famous climber, of that sex, had attempted
the Weisshorn a few days before our arrival, and she
and her guides had lost their way in a snow-storm high up
among the peaks and glaciers and been forced to wander
around a good while before they could find a way down.
When this lady reached the bottom, she had been on her
feet twenty-three hours!
Our guides, hired on the Gemmi, were already at Zermatt
when we reached there. So there was nothing to interfere
with our getting up an adventure whenever we should
choose the time and the object. I resolved to devote
my first evening in Zermatt to studying up the subject
of Alpine climbing, by way of preparation.
I read several books, and here are some of the things
I found out. One's shoes must be strong and heavy,
and have pointed hobnails in them. The alpenstock
must be of the best wood, for if it should break,
loss of life might be the result. One should carry an ax,
to cut steps in the ice with, on the great heights.
There must be a ladder, for there are steep bits of rock
which can be surmounted with this instrument--or this
utensil--but could not be surmounted without it;
such an obstruction has compelled the tourist to waste
hours hunting another route, when a ladder would have
saved him all trouble. One must have from one hundred
and fifty to five hundred feet of strong rope, to be used
in lowering the party down steep declivities which are
too steep and smooth to be traversed in any other way.
One must have a steel hook, on another rope--a very
useful thing; for when one is ascending and comes to a low
bluff which is yet too high for the ladder, he swings
this rope aloft like a lasso, the hook catches at the top
of the bluff, and then the tourist climbs the rope,
hand over hand--being always particular to try and forget
that if the hook gives way he will never stop falling
till he arrives in some part of Switzerland where they
are not expecting him. Another important thing--there
must be a rope to tie the whole party together with,
so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless
chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope
and save him. One must have a silk veil, to protect
his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored
goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy,
snow-blindness. Finally, there must be some porters,
to carry provisions, wine and scientific instruments,
and also blanket bags for the party to sleep in.
I closed my readings with a fearful adventure which
Mr. Whymper once had on the Matterhorn when he was prowling
around alone, five thousand feet above the town of Breil.
He was edging his way gingerly around the corner of a
precipice where the upper edge of a sharp declivity
of ice-glazed snow joined it. This declivity swept
down a couple of hundred feet, into a gully which curved
around and ended at a precipice eight hundred feet high,
overlooking a glacier. His foot slipped, and he fell.
He says:
"My knapsack brought my head down first, and I pitched into
some rocks about a dozen feet below; they caught something,
and tumbled me off the edge, head over heels, into the gully;
the baton was dashed from my hands, and I whirled downward
in a series of bounds, each longer than the last; now over ice,
now into rocks, striking my head four or five times,
each time with increased force. The last bound sent me
spinning through the air in a leap of fifty or sixty feet,
from one side of the gully to the other, and I struck
the rocks, luckily, with the whole of my left side.
They caught my clothes for a moment, and I fell back on
to the snow with motion arrested. My head fortunately
came the right side up, and a few frantic catches brought
me to a halt, in the neck of the gully and on the verge
of the precipice. Baton, hat, and veil skimmed by
and disappeared, and the crash of the rocks--which I had
started--as they fell on to the glacier, told how narrow
had been the escape from utter destruction. As it was,
I fell nearly two hundred feet in seven or eight bounds.
Ten feet more would have taken me in one gigantic leaps
of eight hundred feet on to the glacier below.
"The situation was sufficiently serious. The rocks could
not be let go for a moment, and the blood was spurting
out of more than twenty cuts. The most serious ones were
in the head, and I vainly tried to close them with one hand,
while holding on with the other. It was useless;
the blood gushed out in blinding jets at each pulsation.
At last, in a moment of inspiration, I kicked out a big
lump of snow and struck it as plaster on my head.
The idea was a happy one, and the flow of blood diminished.
Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a
place of safety, and fainted away. The sun was setting
when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before
the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination
of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred
feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without a slip,
or once missing the way."
His wounds kept him abed some days. Then he got up
and climbed that mountain again. That is the way with
a true Alp-climber; the more fun he has, the more he wants.
CHAPTER XXXVII
[Our Imposing Column Starts Upward]
After I had finished my readings, I was no longer myself;
I was tranced, uplifted, intoxicated, by the almost
incredible perils and adventures I had been following
my authors through, and the triumphs I had been sharing
with them. I sat silent some time, then turned to Harris
and said:
"My mind is made up."
Something in my tone struck him: and when he glanced
at my eye and read what was written there, his face
paled perceptibly. He hesitated a moment, then said:
"Speak."
I answered, with perfect calmness:
"I will ascend the Riffelberg."
If I had shot my poor friend he could not have fallen from
his chair more suddenly. If I had been his father he could
not have pleaded harder to get me to give up my purpose.
But I turned a deaf ear to all he said. When he perceived
at last that nothing could alter my determination,
he ceased to urge, and for a while the deep silence was
broken only by his sobs. I sat in marble resolution,
with my eyes fixed upon vacancy, for in spirit I was already
wrestling with the perils of the mountains, and my friend
sat gazing at me in adoring admiration through his tears.
At last he threw himself upon me in a loving embrace and
exclaimed in broken tones:
"Your Harris will never desert you. We will die together."
I cheered the noble fellow with praises, and soon his
fears were forgotten and he was eager for the adventure.
He wanted to summon the guides at once and leave at
two in the morning, as he supposed the custom was;
but I explained that nobody was looking at that hour;
and that the start in the dark was not usually made from
the village but from the first night's resting-place
on the mountain side. I said we would leave the village
at 3 or 4 P.M. on the morrow; meantime he could notify
the guides, and also let the public know of the attempt
which we proposed to make.
I went to bed, but not to sleep. No man can sleep when he
is about to undertake one of these Alpine exploits.
I tossed feverishly all night long, and was glad enough
when I heard the clock strike half past eleven and knew it
was time to get up for dinner. I rose, jaded and rusty,
and went to the noon meal, where I found myself the center
of interest and curiosity; for the news was already abroad.
It is not easy to eat calmly when you are a lion; but it is
very pleasant, nevertheless.
As usual, at Zermatt, when a great ascent is about to
be undertaken, everybody, native and foreign, laid aside
his own projects and took up a good position to observe
the start. The expedition consisted of 198 persons,
including the mules; or 205, including the cows.
As follows:
CHIEFS OF SERVICE SUBORDINATES
Myself 1 Veterinary Surgeon Mr. Harris 1 Butler 17
Guides 12 Waiters 4 Surgeons 1 Footman 1 Geologist 1
Barber 1 Botanist 1 Head Cook 3 Chaplains 9 Assistants
15 Barkeepers 1 Confectionery Artist 1 Latinist
TRANSPORTATION, ETC.
27 Porters 3 Coarse Washers and Ironers 44 Mules 1 Fine
ditto 44 Muleteers 7 Cows 2 Milkers
Total, 154 men, 51 animals. Grand Total, 205.
RATIONS, ETC. APPARATUS
16 Cases Hams 25 Spring Mattresses 2 Barrels Flour 2
Hair ditto 22 Barrels Whiskey Bedding for same 1 Barrel
Sugar 2 Mosquito-nets 1 Keg Lemons 29 Tents 2,000 Cigars
Scientific Instruments 1 Barrel Pies 97 Ice-axes 1 Ton
of Pemmican 5 Cases Dynamite 143 Pair Crutches 7 Cans
Nitroglycerin 2 Barrels Arnica 22 40-foot Ladders 1 Bale
of Lint 2 Miles of Rope 27 Kegs Paregoric 154 Umbrellas
It was full four o'clock in the afternoon before my cavalcade
was entirely ready. At that hour it began to move.
In point of numbers and spectacular effect, it was the most
imposing expedition that had ever marched from Zermatt.
I commanded the chief guide to arrange the men and animals
in single file, twelve feet apart, and lash them all
together on a strong rope. He objected that the first
two miles was a dead level, with plenty of room, and that
the rope was never used except in very dangerous places.
But I would not listen to that. My reading had taught
me that many serious accidents had happened in the Alps
simply from not having the people tied up soon enough;
I was not going to add one to the list. The guide then
obeyed my order.
When the procession stood at ease, roped together,
and ready to move, I never saw a finer sight. It was 3,122
feet long--over half a mile; every man and me was on foot,
and had on his green veil and his blue goggles, and his
white rag around his hat, and his coil of rope over one
shoulder and under the other, and his ice-ax in his belt,
and carried his alpenstock in his left hand, his umbrella
(closed) in his right, and his crutches slung at his back.
The burdens of the pack-mules and the horns of the cows
were decked with the Edelweiss and the Alpine rose.
I and my agent were the only persons mounted. We were
in the post of danger in the extreme rear, and tied
securely to five guides apiece. Our armor-bearers carried
our ice-axes, alpenstocks, and other implements for us.
We were mounted upon very small donkeys, as a measure
of safety; in time of peril we could straighten our legs
and stand up, and let the donkey walk from under.
Still, I cannot recommend this sort of animal--at least
for excursions of mere pleasure--because his ears interrupt
the view. I and my agent possessed the regulation
mountaineering costumes, but concluded to leave them behind.
Out of respect for the great numbers of tourists of both
sexes who would be assembled in front of the hotels
to see us pass, and also out of respect for the many
tourists whom we expected to encounter on our expedition,
we decided to make the ascent in evening dress.
We watered the caravan at the cold stream which rushes
down a trough near the end of the village, and soon
afterward left the haunts of civilization behind us.
About half past five o'clock we arrived at a bridge which
spans the Visp, and after throwing over a detachment to see
if it was safe, the caravan crossed without accident.
The way now led, by a gentle ascent, carpeted with
fresh green grass, to the church at Winkelmatten.
Without stopping to examine this edifice, I executed
a flank movement to the right and crossed the bridge
over the Findelenbach, after first testing its strength.
Here I deployed to the right again, and presently entered
an inviting stretch of meadowland which was unoccupied save
by a couple of deserted huts toward the furthest extremity.
These meadows offered an excellent camping-place. We
pitched our tents, supped, established a proper grade,
recorded the events of the day, and then went to bed.
We rose at two in the morning and dressed by candle-light. It
was a dismal and chilly business. A few stars were shining,
but the general heavens were overcast, and the great shaft
of the Matterhorn was draped in a cable pall of clouds.
The chief guide advised a delay; he said he feared it
was going to rain. We waited until nine o'clock, and then
got away in tolerably clear weather.
Our course led up some terrific steeps, densely wooded with
larches and cedars, and traversed by paths which the rains
had guttered and which were obstructed by loose stones.
To add to the danger and inconvenience, we were constantly
meeting returning tourists on foot and horseback,
and as constantly being crowded and battered by ascending
tourists who were in a hurry and wanted to get by.
Our troubles thickened. About the middle of the afternoon
the seventeen guides called a halt and held a consultation.
After consulting an hour they said their first suspicion
remained intact--that is to say, they believed they
were lost. I asked if they did not KNOW it? No, they said,
they COULDN'T absolutely know whether they were lost or not,
because none of them had ever been in that part of the
country before. They had a strong instinct that they
were lost, but they had no proofs--except that they
did not know where they were. They had met no tourists
for some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign.
Plainly we were in an ugly fix. The guides were naturally
unwilling to go alone and seek a way out of the difficulty;
so we all went together. For better security we moved
slow and cautiously, for the forest was very dense.
We did not move up the mountain, but around it, hoping to
strike across the old trail. Toward nightfall, when we
were about tired out, we came up against a rock as big
as a cottage. This barrier took all the remaining spirit
out of the men, and a panic of fear and despair ensued.
They moaned and wept, and said they should never see
their homes and their dear ones again. Then they began
to upbraid me for bringing them upon this fatal expedition.
Some even muttered threats against me.
Clearly it was no time to show weakness. So I made
a speech in which I said that other Alp-climbers had been
in as perilous a position as this, and yet by courage
and perseverance had escaped. I promised to stand by them,
I promised to rescue them. I closed by saying we had plenty
of provisions to maintain us for quite a siege--and did they
suppose Zermatt would allow half a mile of men and mules
to mysteriously disappear during any considerable time,
right above their noses, and make no inquiries? No,
Zermatt would send out searching-expeditions and we should be
saved.
This speech had a great effect. The men pitched the tents
with some little show of cheerfulness, and we were snugly
under cover when the night shut down. I now reaped
the reward of my wisdom in providing one article which is
not mentioned in any book of Alpine adventure but this.
I refer to the paregoric. But for that beneficent drug,
would have not one of those men slept a moment during that
fearful night. But for that gentle persuader they must
have tossed, unsoothed, the night through; for the whiskey
was for me. Yes, they would have risen in the morning
unfitted for their heavy task. As it was, everybody slept
but my agent and me--only we and the barkeepers.
I would not permit myself to sleep at such a time.
I considered myself responsible for all those lives.
I meant to be on hand and ready, in case of avalanches
up there, but I did not know it then.
We watched the weather all through that awful night,
and kept an eye on the barometer, to be prepared for
the least change. There was not the slightest change
recorded by the instrument, during the whole time.
Words cannot describe the comfort that that friendly,
hopeful, steadfast thing was to me in that season
of trouble. It was a defective barometer, and had no hand
but the stationary brass pointer, but I did not know that
until afterward. If I should be in such a situation again,
I should not wish for any barometer but that one.
All hands rose at two in the morning and took breakfast,
and as soon as it was light we roped ourselves together
and went at that rock. For some time we tried the hook-rope
and other means of scaling it, but without success--that is,
without perfect success. The hook caught once, and Harris
started up it hand over hand, but the hold broke and if
there had not happened to be a chaplain sitting underneath
at the time, Harris would certainly have been crippled.
As it was, it was the chaplain. He took to his crutches,
and I ordered the hook-rope to be laid aside.
It was too dangerous an implement where so many people
are standing around.
We were puzzled for a while; then somebody thought of
the ladders. One of these was leaned against the rock,
and the men went up it tied together in couples.
Another ladder was sent up for use in descending.
At the end of half an hour everybody was over, and that rock
was conquered. We gave our first grand shout of triumph.
But the joy was short-lived, for somebody asked how we were
going to get the animals over.
This was a serious difficulty; in fact, it was an impossibility.
The courage of the men began to waver immediately; once more
we were threatened with a panic. But when the danger
was most imminent, we were saved in a mysterious way.
A mule which had attracted attention from the beginning
by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a five-pound
can of nitroglycerin. This happened right alongside
the rock. The explosion threw us all to the ground,
and covered us with dirt and debris; it frightened
us extremely, too, for the crash it made was deafening,
and the violence of the shock made the ground tremble.
However, we were grateful, for the rock was gone.
Its place was occupied by a new cellar, about thirty
feet across, by fifteen feet deep. The explosion was
heard as far as Zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward,
many citizens of that town were knocked down and quite
seriously injured by descending portions of mule meat,
frozen solid. This shows, better than any estimate
in figures, how high the experimenter went.
We had nothing to do, now, but bridge the cellar and proceed
on our way. With a cheer the men went at their work.
I attended to the engineering, myself. I appointed a strong
detail to cut down trees with ice-axes and trim them for
piers to support the bridge. This was a slow business,
for ice-axes are not good to cut wood with. I caused
my piers to be firmly set up in ranks in the cellar,
and upon them I laid six of my forty-foot ladders,
side by side, and laid six more on top of them.
Upon this bridge I caused a bed of boughs to be spread,
and on top of the boughs a bed of earth six inches deep.
I stretched ropes upon either side to serve as railings,
and then my bridge was complete. A train of elephants
could have crossed it in safety and comfort. By nightfall
the caravan was on the other side and the ladders were
taken up.
Next morning we went on in good spirits for a while,
though our way was slow and difficult, by reason of the
steep and rocky nature of the ground and the thickness
of the forest; but at last a dull despondency crept into
the men's faces and it was apparent that not only they,
but even the guides, were now convinced that we were lost.
The fact that we still met no tourists was a circumstance
that was but too significant. Another thing seemed to
suggest that we were not only lost, but very badly lost;
for there must surely be searching-parties on the road
before this time, yet we had seen no sign of them.
Demoralization was spreading; something must be done,
and done quickly, too. Fortunately, I am not unfertile
in expedients. I contrived one now which commended itself
to all, for it promised well. I took three-quarters
of a mile of rope and fastened one end of it around
the waist of a guide, and told him to go find the road,
while the caravan waited. I instructed him to guide himself
back by the rope, in case of failure; in case of success,
he was to give the rope a series of violent jerks,
whereupon the Expedition would go to him at once.
He departed, and in two minutes had disappeared among
the trees. I payed out the rope myself, while everybody
watched the crawling thing with eager eyes. The rope
crept away quite slowly, at times, at other times with
some briskness. Twice or thrice we seemed to get the signal,
and a shout was just ready to break from the men's lips
when they perceived it was a false alarm. But at last,
when over half a mile of rope had slidden away, it stopped
gliding and stood absolutely still--one minute--two
minutes--three--while we held our breath and watched.
Was the guide resting? Was he scanning the country from
some high point? Was he inquiring of a chance mountaineer?
Stop,--had he fainted from excess of fatigue and anxiety?
This thought gave us a shock. I was in the very first act
of detailing an Expedition to succor him, when the cord
was assailed with a series of such frantic jerks that I
could hardly keep hold of it. The huzza that went up,
then, was good to hear. "Saved! saved!" was the word
that rang out, all down the long rank of the caravan.
We rose up and started at once. We found the route to be
good enough for a while, but it began to grow difficult,
by and by, and this feature steadily increased. When we
judged we had gone half a mile, we momently expected
to see the guide; but no, he was not visible anywhere;
neither was he waiting, for the rope was still moving,
consequently he was doing the same. This argued that he
had not found the road, yet, but was marching to it
with some peasant. There was nothing for us to do but
plod along--and this we did. At the end of three hours
we were still plodding. This was not only mysterious,
but exasperating. And very fatiguing, too; for we had
tried hard, along at first, to catch up with the guide,
but had only fagged ourselves, in vain; for although he
was traveling slowly he was yet able to go faster than the
hampered caravan over such ground.
At three in the afternoon we were nearly dead with
exhaustion--and still the rope was slowly gliding out.
The murmurs against the guide had been growing steadily,
and at last they were become loud and savage.
A mutiny ensued. The men refused to proceed. They declared
that we had been traveling over and over the same ground
all day, in a kind of circle. They demanded that our
end of the rope be made fast to a tree, so as to halt
the guide until we could overtake him and kill him.
This was not an unreasonable requirement, so I gave the order.
As soon as the rope was tied, the Expedition moved
forward with that alacrity which the thirst for
vengeance usually inspires. But after a tiresome march
of almost half a mile, we came to a hill covered thick
with a crumbly rubbish of stones, and so steep that no
man of us all was now in a condition to climb it.
Every attempt failed, and ended in crippling somebody.
Within twenty minutes I had five men on crutches.
Whenever a climber tried to assist himself by the rope,
it yielded and let him tumble backward. The frequency
of this result suggested an idea to me. I ordered
the caravan to 'bout face and form in marching order;
I then made the tow-rope fast to the rear mule, and gave
the command:
"Mark time--by the right flank--forward--march!"
The procession began to move, to the impressive strains
of a battle-chant, and I said to myself, "Now, if the rope
don't break I judge THIS will fetch that guide into the camp."
I watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently
when I was all fixed for triumph I was confronted
by a bitter disappointment; there was no guide tied
to the rope, it was only a very indignant old black ram.
The fury of the baffled Expedition exceeded all bounds.
They even wanted to wreak their unreasoning vengeance on this
innocent dumb brute. But I stood between them and their prey,
menaced by a bristling wall of ice-axes and alpenstocks,
and proclaimed that there was but one road to this murder,
and it was directly over my corpse. Even as I spoke I
saw that my doom was sealed, except a miracle supervened
to divert these madmen from their fell purpose. I see
the sickening wall of weapons now; I see that advancing
host as I saw it then, I see the hate in those cruel eyes;
I remember how I drooped my head upon my breast,
I feel again the sudden earthquake shock in my rear,
administered by the very ram I was sacrificing myself to save;
I hear once more the typhoon of laughter that burst from
the assaulting column as I clove it from van to rear
like a Sepoy shot from a Rodman gun.
I was saved. Yes, I was saved, and by the merciful instinct
of ingratitude which nature had planted in the breast
of that treacherous beast. The grace which eloquence
had failed to work in those men's hearts, had been wrought
by a laugh. The ram was set free and my life was spared.
We lived to find out that that guide had deserted us as soon
as he had placed a half-mile between himself and us.
To avert suspicion, he had judged it best that the line
should continue to move; so he caught that ram, and at
the time that he was sitting on it making the rope fast
to it, we were imagining that he was lying in a swoon,
overcome by fatigue and distress. When he allowed the ram
to get up it fell to plunging around, trying to rid itself
of the rope, and this was the signal which we had risen
up with glad shouts to obey. We had followed this ram
round and round in a circle all day--a thing which was
proven by the discovery that we had watered the Expedition
seven times at one and same spring in seven hours.
As expert a woodman as I am, I had somehow failed to notice
this until my attention was called to it by a hog.
This hog was always wallowing there, and as he was the
only hog we saw, his frequent repetition, together with
his unvarying similarity to himself, finally caused me
to reflect that he must be the same hog, and this led
me to the deduction that this must be the same spring,
also--which indeed it was.
I made a note of this curious thing, as showing
in a striking manner the relative difference between
glacial action and the action of the hog. It is now
a well-established fact that glaciers move; I consider
that my observations go to show, with equal conclusiveness,
that a hog in a spring does not move. I shall be glad
to receive the opinions of other observers upon this point.
To return, for an explanatory moment, to that guide,
and then I shall be done with him. After leaving the ram
tied to the rope, he had wandered at large a while,
and then happened to run across a cow. Judging that
a cow would naturally know more than a guide, he took
her by the tail, and the result justified his judgment.
She nibbled her leisurely way downhill till it was near
milking-time, then she struck for home and towed him
into Zermatt.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
[I Conquer the Gorner Grat]
We went into camp on that wild spot to which that ram
had brought us. The men were greatly fatigued.
Their conviction that we were lost was forgotten in the cheer
of a good supper, and before the reaction had a chance
to set in, I loaded them up with paregoric and put them to bed.
Next morning I was considering in my mind our desperate
situation and trying to think of a remedy, when Harris
came to me with a Baedeker map which showed conclusively
that the mountain we were on was still in Switzerland--yes,
every part of it was in Switzerland. So we were not lost,
after all. This was an immense relief; it lifted the weight
of two such mountains from my breast. I immediately
had the news disseminated and the map was exhibited.
The effect was wonderful. As soon as the men saw with
their own eyes that they knew where they were, and that it
was only the summit that was lost and not themselves,
they cheered up instantly and said with one accord,
let the summit take care of itself.
Our distresses being at an end, I now determined to rest
the men in camp and give the scientific department of the
Expedition a chance. First, I made a barometric observation,
to get our altitude, but I could not perceive that there
was any result. I knew, by my scientific reading,
that either thermometers or barometers ought to be boiled,
to make them accurate; I did not know which it was,
so I boiled them both. There was still no result;
so I examined these instruments and discovered that they
possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand
but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was
stuffed with tin-foil. I might have boiled those things
to rags, and never found out anything.
I hunted up another barometer; it was new and perfect.
I boiled it half an hour in a pot of bean soup which
the cooks were making. The result was unexpected: the
instrument was not affecting at all, but there was such
a strong barometer taste to the soup that the head cook,
who was a most conscientious person, changed its name
in the bill of fare. The dish was so greatly liked by all,
that I ordered the cook to have barometer soup every day.
It was believed that the barometer might eventually
be injured, but I did not care for that. I had demonstrated
to my satisfaction that it could not tell how high
a mountain was, therefore I had no real use for it.
Changes in the weather I could take care of without it;
I did not wish to know when the weather was going to be good,
what I wanted to know was when it was going to be bad,
and this I could find out from Harris's corns. Harris had
had his corns tested and regulated at the government
observatory in Heidelberg, and one could depend upon them
with confidence. So I transferred the new barometer to
the cooking department, to be used for the official mess.
It was found that even a pretty fair article of soup could
be made from the defective barometer; so I allowed that one
to be transferred to the subordinate mess.
I next boiled the thermometer, and got a most excellent result;
the mercury went up to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
In the opinion of the other scientists of the Expedition,
this seemed to indicate that we had attained the extraordinary
altitude of two hundred thousand feet above sea-level.
Science places the line of eternal snow at about ten thousand
feet above sea-level. There was no snow where we were,
consequently it was proven that the eternal snow-line
ceases somewhere above the ten-thousand-foot level and
does not begin any more. This was an interesting fact,
and one which had not been observed by any observer before.
It was as valuable as interesting, too, since it would open
up the deserted summits of the highest Alps to population
and agriculture. It was a proud thing to be where we were,
yet it caused us a pang to reflect that but for that ram we
might just as well been two hundred thousand feet higher.
The success of my last experiment induced me to try an
experiment with my photographic apparatus. I got it out,
and boiled one of my cameras, but the thing was a failure;
it made the wood swell up and burst, and I could not see
that the lenses were any better than they were before.
I now concluded to boil a guide. It might improve him,
it could not impair his usefulness. But I was not
allowed to proceed. Guides have no feeling for science,
and this one would not consent to be made uncomfortable
in its interest.
In the midst of my scientific work, one of those
needless accidents happened which are always occurring
among the ignorant and thoughtless. A porter shot
at a chamois and missed it and crippled the Latinist.
This was not a serious matter to me, for a Latinist's
duties are as well performed on crutches as otherwise
--but the fact remained that if the Latinist had not
happened to be in the way a mule would have got
that load. That would have been quite another matter,
for when it comes down to a question of value there is
a palpable difference between a Latinist and a mule.
I could not depend on having a Latinist in the right
place every time; so, to make things safe, I ordered
that in the future the chamois must not be hunted within
limits of the camp with any other weapon than the forefinger.
My nerves had hardly grown quiet after this affair when
they got another shake-up--one which utterly unmanned
me for a moment: a rumor swept suddenly through the camp
that one of the barkeepers had fallen over a precipice!
However, it turned out that it was only a chaplain.
I had laid in an extra force of chaplains, purposely to
be prepared for emergencies like this, but by some
unaccountable oversight had come away rather short-handed
in the matter of barkeepers.
On the following morning we moved on, well refreshed and in
good spirits. I remember this day with peculiar pleasure,
because it saw our road restored to us. Yes, we found
our road again, and in quite an extraordinary way.
We had plodded along some two hours and a half, when we came
up against a solid mass of rock about twenty feet high.
I did not need to be instructed by a mule this time.
I was already beginning to know more than any mule in
the Expedition. I at once put in a blast of dynamite,
and lifted that rock out of the way. But to my surprise
and mortification, I found that there had been a chalet
on top of it.
I picked up such members of the family as fell in my vicinity,
and subordinates of my corps collected the rest.
None of these poor people were injured, happily, but they
were much annoyed. I explained to the head chaleteer
just how the thing happened, and that I was only searching
for the road, and would certainly have given him timely
notice if I had known he was up there. I said I had
meant no harm, and hoped I had not lowered myself in
his estimation by raising him a few rods in the air.
I said many other judicious things, and finally when I
offered to rebuild his chalet, and pay for the breakages,
and throw in the cellar, he was mollified and satisfied.
He hadn't any cellar at all, before; he would not have
as good a view, now, as formerly, but what he had lost
in view he had gained in cellar, by exact measurement.
He said there wasn't another hole like that in the mountains
--and he would have been right if the late mule had not tried
to eat up the nitroglycerin.
I put a hundred and sixteen men at work, and they rebuilt
the chalet from its own debris in fifteen minutes.
It was a good deal more picturesque than it was before,
too. The man said we were now on the Feil-Stutz, above
the Schwegmatt--information which I was glad to get,
since it gave us our position to a degree of particularity
which we had not been accustomed to for a day or so.
We also learned that we were standing at the foot
of the Riffelberg proper, and that the initial chapter
of our work was completed.
We had a fine view, from here, of the energetic Visp,
as it makes its first plunge into the world from under a huge
arch of solid ice, worn through the foot-wall of the great
Gorner Glacier; and we could also see the Furggenbach,
which is the outlet of the Furggen Glacier.
The mule-road to the summit of the Riffelberg passed right
in front of the chalet, a circumstance which we almost
immediately noticed, because a procession of tourists was
filing along it pretty much all the time. [1] The chaleteer's
business consisted in furnishing refreshments to tourists.
My blast had interrupted this trade for a few minutes,
by breaking all the bottles on the place; but I gave
the man a lot of whiskey to sell for Alpine champagne,
and a lot of vinegar which would answer for Rhine wine,
consequently trade was soon as brisk as ever.
1. "Pretty much" may not be elegant English, but it is
high time it was. There is no elegant word or phrase
which means just what it means.--M.T.
Leaving the Expedition outside to rest, I quartered myself
in the chalet, with Harris, proposing to correct my journals
and scientific observations before continuing the ascent.
I had hardly begun my work when a tall, slender, vigorous
American youth of about twenty-three, who was on his
way down the mountain, entered and came toward me with
that breeze self-complacency which is the adolescent's
idea of the well-bred ease of the man of the world.
His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle,
and he had all the look of an American person who would
be likely to begin his signature with an initial,
and spell his middle name out. He introduced himself,
smiling a smirky smile borrowed from the courtiers
of the stage, extended a fair-skinned talon, and while
he gripped my hand in it he bent his body forward
three times at the hips, as the stage courtier does,
and said in the airiest and most condescending
and patronizing way--I quite remember his exact language:
"Very glad to make your acquaintance, 'm sure; very glad indeed,
assure you. I've read all your little efforts and greatly
admired them, and when I heard you were here, I ..."
I indicated a chair, and he sat down. This grandee was
the grandson of an American of considerable note in his day,
and not wholly forgotten yet--a man who came so near
being a great man that he was quite generally accounted
one while he lived.
I slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems,
and heard this conversation:
GRANDSON. First visit to Europe?
HARRIS. Mine? Yes.
G.S. (With a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone
joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.)
Ah, I know what it is to you. A first visit!--ah,
the romance of it! I wish I could feel it again.
H. Yes, I find it exceeds all my dreams. It is enchantment.
I go...
G.S. (With a dainty gesture of the hand signifying "Spare
me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.") Yes, _I_ know,
I know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag
through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you
stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground,
and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with
your first crude conceptions of Art, and are proud
and happy. Ah, yes, proud and happy--that expresses it.
Yes-yes, enjoy it--it is right--it is an innocent revel.
H. And you? Don't you do these things now?
G.S. I! Oh, that is VERY good! My dear sir, when you
are as old a traveler as I am, you will not ask such
a question as that. _I_ visit the regulation gallery,
moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round
of the regulation sights, YET?--Excuse me!
H. Well, what DO you do, then?
G.S. Do? I flit--and flit--for I am ever on the wing--but I
avoid the herd. Today I am in Paris, tomorrow in Berlin,
anon in Rome; but you would look for me in vain in the
galleries of the Louvre or the common resorts of the
gazers in those other capitals. If you would find me,
you must look in the unvisited nooks and corners where
others never think of going. One day you will find me
making myself at home in some obscure peasant's cabin,
another day you will find me in some forgotten castle
worshiping some little gem or art which the careless eye
has overlooked and which the unexperienced would despise;
again you will find me as guest in the inner sanctuaries
of palaces while the herd is content to get a hurried
glimpse of the unused chambers by feeing a servant.
H. You are a GUEST in such places?
G.S. And a welcoming one.
H. It is surprising. How does it come?
G.S. My grandfather's name is a passport to all the courts
in Europe. I have only to utter that name and every
door is open to me. I flit from court to court at my
own free will and pleasure, and am always welcome.
I am as much at home in the palaces of Europe as you are
among your relatives. I know every titled person in Europe,
I think. I have my pockets full of invitations all the time.
I am under promise to go to Italy, where I am to be the
guest of a succession of the noblest houses in the land.
In Berlin my life is a continued round of gaiety in the
imperial palace. It is the same, wherever I go.
H. It must be very pleasant. But it must make Boston
seem a little slow when you are at home.
G.S. Yes, of course it does. But I don't go home much.
There's no life there--little to feed a man's higher nature.
Boston's very narrow, you know. She doesn't know it, and you
couldn't convince her of it--so I say nothing when I'm
there: where's the use? Yes, Boston is very narrow, but she
has such a good opinion of herself that she can't see it.
A man who has traveled as much as I have, and seen as much
of the world, sees it plain enough, but he can't cure it,
you know, so the best is to leave it and seek a sphere
which is more in harmony with his tastes and culture.
I run across there, one a year, perhaps, when I have
nothing important on hand, but I'm very soon back again.
I spend my time in Europe.
H. I see. You map out your plans and ...
G.S. No, excuse me. I don't map out any plans. I simply
follow the inclination of the day. I am limited by no ties,
no requirements, I am not bound in any way. I am too old
a traveler to hamper myself with deliberate purposes.
I am simply a traveler--an inveterate traveler--a man of
the world, in a word--I can call myself by no other name.
I do not say, "I am going here, or I am going there"--I
say nothing at all, I only act. For instance, next week
you may find me the guest of a grandee of Spain, or you
may find me off for Venice, or flitting toward Dresden.
I shall probably go to Egypt presently; friends will say
to friends, "He is at the Nile cataracts"--and at that
very moment they will be surprised to learn that I'm away
off yonder in India somewhere. I am a constant surprise
to people. They are always saying, "Yes, he was in Jerusalem
when we heard of him last, but goodness knows where he
is now."
Presently the Grandson rose to leave--discovered he
had an appointment with some Emperor, perhaps. He did
his graces over again: gripped me with one talon,
at arm's-length, pressed his hat against his stomach
with the other, bent his body in the middle three times,
murmuring:
"Pleasure, 'm sure; great pleasure, 'm sure. Wish you
much success."
Then he removed his gracious presence. It is a great
and solemn thing to have a grandfather.
I have not purposed to misrepresent this boy in any way,
for what little indignation he excited in me soon
passed and left nothing behind it but compassion.
One cannot keep up a grudge against a vacuum.
I have tried to repeat this lad's very words;
if I have failed anywhere I have at least not failed
to reproduce the marrow and meaning of what he said.
He and the innocent chatterbox whom I met on the Swiss
lake are the most unique and interesting specimens of
Young America I came across during my foreign tramping.
I have made honest portraits of them, not caricatures.
The Grandson of twenty-three referred to himself five
or six times as an "old traveler," and as many as three
times (with a serene complacency which was maddening)
as a "man of the world." There was something very delicious
about his leaving Boston to her "narrowness," unreproved
and uninstructed.
I formed the caravan in marching order, presently,
and after riding down the line to see that it was
properly roped together, gave the command to proceed.
In a little while the road carried us to open, grassy land.
We were above the troublesome forest, now, and had an
uninterrupted view, straight before us, of our summit
--the summit of the Riffelberg.
We followed the mule-road, a zigzag course, now to the right,
now to the left, but always up, and always crowded and
incommoded by going and coming files of reckless tourists
who were never, in a single instance, tied together.
I was obliged to exert the utmost care and caution,
for in many places the road was not two yards wide,
and often the lower side of it sloped away in slanting
precipices eight and even nine feet deep. I had to
encourage the men constantly, to keep them from giving
way to their unmanly fears.
We might have made the summit before night, but for a
delay caused by the loss of an umbrella. I was allowing
the umbrella to remain lost, but the men murmured,
and with reason, for in this exposed region we stood
in peculiar need of protection against avalanches;
so I went into camp and detached a strong party to go
after the missing article.
The difficulties of the next morning were severe,
but our courage was high, for our goal was near.
At noon we conquered the last impediment--we stood
at last upon the summit, and without the loss of a
single man except the mule that ate the glycerin.
Our great achievement was achieved--the possibility of
the impossible was demonstrated, and Harris and I walked
proudly into the great dining-room of the Riffelberg
Hotel and stood our alpenstocks up in the corner.
Yes, I had made the grand ascent; but it was a mistake
to do it in evening dress. The plug hats were battered,
the swallow-tails were fluttering rags, mud added no grace,
the general effect was unpleasant and even disreputable.
There were about seventy-five tourists at the hotel
--mainly ladies and little children--and they gave us
an admiring welcome which paid us for all our privations
and sufferings. The ascent had been made, and the names
and dates now stand recorded on a stone monument there
to prove it to all future tourists.
I boiled a thermometer and took an altitude, with a most
curious result: THE SUMMIT WAS NOT AS HIGH AS THE POINT ON
THE MOUNTAINSIDE WHERE I HAD TAKEN THE FIRST ALTITUDE.
Suspecting that I had made an important discovery,
I prepared to verify it. There happened to be a still
higher summit (called the Gorner Grat), above the hotel,
and notwithstanding the fact that it overlooks a glacier
from a dizzy height, and that the ascent is difficult
and dangerous, I resolved to venture up there and boil
a thermometer. So I sent a strong party, with some
borrowed hoes, in charge of two chiefs of service, to dig
a stairway in the soil all the way up, and this I ascended,
roped to the guides. This breezy height was the summit
proper--so I accomplished even more than I had originally
purposed to do. This foolhardy exploit is recorded on
another stone monument.
I boiled my thermometer, and sure enough, this spot,
which purported to be two thousand feet higher than the
locality of the hotel, turned out to be nine thousand
feet LOWER. Thus the fact was clearly demonstrated that,
ABOVE A CERTAIN POINT, THE HIGHER A POINT SEEMS TO BE,
THE LOWER IT ACTUALLY IS. Our ascent itself was a
great achievement, but this contribution to science was
an inconceivably greater matter.
Cavilers object that water boils at a lower and lower
temperature the higher and higher you go, and hence the
apparent anomaly. I answer that I do not base my theory
upon what the boiling water does, but upon what a boiled
thermometer says. You can't go behind the thermometer.
I had a magnificent view of Monte Rosa, and apparently
all the rest of the Alpine world, from that high place.
All the circling horizon was piled high with a mighty
tumult of snowy crests. One might have imagined he
saw before him the tented camps of a beleaguering host
of Brobdingnagians.
But lonely, conspicuous, and superb, rose that wonderful
upright wedge, the Matterhorn. Its precipitous sides were
powdered over with snow, and the upper half hidden in thick
clouds which now and then dissolved to cobweb films and gave
brief glimpses of the imposing tower as through a veil.
[2] A little later the Matterhorn took to himself the
semblance of a volcano; he was stripped naked to his apex
--around this circled vast wreaths of white cloud which strung
slowly out and streamed away slantwise toward the sun,
a twenty-mile stretch of rolling and tumbling vapor,
and looking just as if it were pouring out of a crater.
Later again, one of the mountain's sides was clean and clear,
and another side densely clothed from base to summit in
thick smokelike cloud which feathered off and flew around
the shaft's sharp edge like the smoke around the corners of
a burning building. The Matterhorn is always experimenting,
and always gets up fine effects, too. In the sunset,
when all the lower world is palled in gloom, it points
toward heaven out of the pervading blackness like a finger
of fire. In the sunrise--well, they say it is very fine
in the sunrise.
2. NOTE.--I had the very unusual luck to catch one little
momentary glimpse of the Matterhorn wholly unencumbered
by clouds. I leveled my photographic apparatus at it
without the loss of an instant, and should have got
an elegant picture if my donkey had not interfered.
It was my purpose to draw this photograph all by myself
for my book, but was obliged to put the mountain part
of it into the hands of the professional artist because
I found I could not do landscape well.
Authorities agree that there is no such tremendous "layout"
of snowy Alpine magnitude, grandeur, and sublimity to be
seen from any other accessible point as the tourist may see
from the summit of the Riffelberg. Therefore, let the
tourist rope himself up and go there; for I have shown
that with nerve, caution, and judgment, the thing can be done.
I wish to add one remark, here--in parentheses, so to speak
--suggested by the word "snowy," which I have just used.
We have all seen hills and mountains and levels with snow
on them, and so we think we know all the aspects and
effects produced by snow. But indeed we do not until
we have seen the Alps. Possibly mass and distance add
something--at any rate, something IS added. Among other
noticeable things, there is a dazzling, intense whiteness
about the distant Alpine snow, when the sun is on it,
which one recognizes as peculiar, and not familiar to
the eye. The snow which one is accustomed to has a tint
to it--painters usually give it a bluish cast--but there
is no perceptible tint to the distant Alpine snow when it
is trying to look its whitest. As to the unimaginable
splendor of it when the sun is blazing down on it--well,
it simply IS unimaginable.
CHAPTER XXXIX
[We Travel by Glacier]
A guide-book is a queer thing. The reader has just seen
what a man who undertakes the great ascent from Zermatt
to the Riffelberg Hotel must experience. Yet Baedeker
makes these strange statements concerning this matter:
1. Distance--3 hours.
2. The road cannot be mistaken.
3. Guide unnecessary.
4. Distance from Riffelberg Hotel to the Gorner Grat,
one hour and a half.
5. Ascent simple and easy. Guide unnecessary.
6. Elevation of Zermatt above sea-level, 5,315 feet.
7. Elevation of Riffelberg Hotel above sea-level,
8,429 feet.
8. Elevation of the Gorner Grat above sea-level, 10,289 feet.
I have pretty effectually throttled these errors by sending
him the following demonstrated facts:
1. Distance from Zermatt to Riffelberg Hotel, 7 days.
2. The road CAN be mistaken. If I am the first that did it,
I want the credit of it, too.
3. Guides ARE necessary, for none but a native can read
those finger-boards.
4. The estimate of the elevation of the several localities
above sea-level is pretty correct--for Baedeker.
He only misses it about a hundred and eighty or ninety
thousand feet.
I found my arnica invaluable. My men were suffering
excruciatingly, from the friction of sitting down so much.
During two or three days, not one of them was able to do
more than lie down or walk about; yet so effective was
the arnica, that on the fourth all were able to sit up.
I consider that, more than to anything else, I owe the
success of our great undertaking to arnica and paregoric.
My men are being restored to health and strength,
my main perplexity, now, was how to get them down
the mountain again. I was not willing to expose the
brave fellows to the perils, fatigues, and hardships
of that fearful route again if it could be helped.
First I thought of balloons; but, of course, I had to
give that idea up, for balloons were not procurable.
I thought of several other expedients, but upon
consideration discarded them, for cause. But at last
I hit it. I was aware that the movement of glaciers
is an established fact, for I had read it in Baedeker;
so I resolved to take passage for Zermatt on the great
Gorner Glacier.
Very good. The next thing was, how to get down the
glacier comfortably--for the mule-road to it was long,
and winding, and wearisome. I set my mind at work,
and soon thought out a plan. One looks straight down
upon the vast frozen river called the Gorner Glacier,
from the Gorner Grat, a sheer precipice twelve hundred
feet high. We had one hundred and fifty-four umbrellas
--and what is an umbrella but a parachute?
I mentioned this noble idea to Harris, with enthusiasm,
and was about to order the Expedition to form on the
Gorner Grat, with their umbrellas, and prepare for
flight by platoons, each platoon in command of a guide,
when Harris stopped me and urged me not to be too hasty.
He asked me if this method of descending the Alps had
ever been tried before. I said no, I had not heard
of an instance. Then, in his opinion, it was a matter
of considerable gravity; in his opinion it would not be
well to send the whole command over the cliff at once;
a better way would be to send down a single individual,
first, and see how he fared.
I saw the wisdom in this idea instantly. I said as much,
and thanked my agent cordially, and told him to take
his umbrella and try the thing right away, and wave
his hat when he got down, if he struck in a soft place,
and then I would ship the rest right along.
Harris was greatly touched with this mark of confidence,
and said so, in a voice that had a perceptible tremble in it;
but at the same time he said he did not feel himself worthy
of so conspicuous a favor; that it might cause jealousy
in the command, for there were plenty who would not hesitate
to say he had used underhanded means to get the appointment,
whereas his conscience would bear him witness that he
had not sought it at all, nor even, in his secret heart,
desired it.
I said these words did him extreme credit, but that he must not
throw away the imperishable distinction of being the first man
to descend an Alp per parachute, simply to save the feelings
of some envious underlings. No, I said, he MUST accept
the appointment--it was no longer an invitation, it was a
command.
He thanked me with effusion, and said that putting
the thing in this form removed every objection.
He retired, and soon returned with his umbrella, his eye
flaming with gratitude and his cheeks pallid with joy.
Just then the head guide passed along. Harris's expression
changed to one of infinite tenderness, and he said:
"That man did me a cruel injury four days ago, and I
said in my heart he should live to perceive and confess
that the only noble revenge a man can take upon his enemy
is to return good for evil. I resign in his favor.
Appoint him."
I threw my arms around the generous fellow and said:
"Harris, you are the noblest soul that lives. You shall
not regret this sublime act, neither shall the world
fail to know of it. You shall have opportunity far
transcending this one, too, if I live--remember that."
I called the head guide to me and appointed him on
the spot. But the thing aroused no enthusiasm in him.
He did not take to the idea at all.
He said:
"Tie myself to an umbrella and jump over the Gorner
Grat! Excuse me, there are a great many pleasanter roads
to the devil than that."
Upon a discussion of the subject with him, it appeared that he
considered the project distinctly and decidedly dangerous.
I was not convinced, yet I was not willing to try the
experiment in any risky way--that is, in a way that might
cripple the strength and efficiency of the Expedition.
I was about at my wits' end when it occurred to me to try
it on the Latinist.
He was called in. But he declined, on the plea
of inexperience, diffidence in public, lack of curiosity,
and I didn't know what all. Another man declined
on account of a cold in the head; thought he ought
to avoid exposure. Another could not jump well--never
COULD jump well--did not believe he could jump so far
without long and patient practice. Another was afraid it
was going to rain, and his umbrella had a hole in it.
Everybody had an excuse. The result was what the reader
has by this time guessed: the most magnificent idea
that was ever conceived had to be abandoned, from sheer
lack of a person with enterprise enough to carry it out.
Yes, I actually had to give that thing up--while doubtless
I should live to see somebody use it and take all the credit from
me.
Well, I had to go overland--there was no other way.
I marched the Expedition down the steep and tedious mule-path
and took up as good a position as I could upon the middle
of the glacier--because Baedeker said the middle part
travels the fastest. As a measure of economy, however,
I put some of the heavier baggage on the shoreward parts,
to go as slow freight.
I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move.
Night was coming on, the darkness began to gather--still we
did not budge. It occurred to me then, that there might
be a time-table in Baedeker; it would be well to find out
the hours of starting. I called for the book--it could not
be found. Bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table;
but no Bradshaw could be found.
Very well, I must make the best of the situation. So I
pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows,
had supper, paregoricked the men, established the watch,
and went to bed--with orders to call me as soon as we came
in sight of Zermatt.
I awoke about half past ten next morning, and looked around.
We hadn't budged a peg! At first I could not understand it;
then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground.
So I cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard
and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of
three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use.
She was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long,
and there was no telling just whereabouts she WAS aground.
The men began to show uneasiness, too, and presently they
came flying to me with ashy faces, saying she had sprung
a leak.
Nothing but my cool behavior at this critical time saved us
from another panic. I order them to show me the place.
They led me to a spot where a huge boulder lay in a deep
pool of clear and brilliant water. It did look like
a pretty bad leak, but I kept that to myself. I made
a pump and set the men to work to pump out the glacier.
We made a success of it. I perceived, then, that it was not
a leak at all. This boulder had descended from a precipice
and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier,
and the sun had warmed it up, every day, and consequently
it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice,
until at last it reposed, as we had found it, in a deep
pool of the clearest and coldest water.
Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly
for the time-table. There was none. The book simply said
the glacier was moving all the time. This was satisfactory,
so I shut up the book and chose a good position to view
the scenery as we passed along. I stood there some time
enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did
not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself,
"This confounded old thing's aground again, sure,"--and
opened Baedeker to see if I could run across any remedy
for these annoying interruptions. I soon found a sentence
which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. It said,
"The Gorner Glacier travels at an average rate of a little
less than an inch a day." I have seldom felt so outraged.
I have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed.
I made a small calculation: One inch a day, say thirty
feet a year; estimated distance to Zermatt, three and
one-eighteenth miles. Time required to go by glacier,
A LITTLE OVER FIVE HUNDRED YEARS! I said to myself, "I can
WALK it quicker--and before I will patronize such a fraud
as this, I will do it."
When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part
of this glacier--the central part--the lightning-express part,
so to speak--was not due in Zermatt till the summer
of 2378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge,
would not arrive until some generations later, he burst
out with:
"That is European management, all over! An inch a day--think
of that! Five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles!
But I am not a bit surprised. It's a Catholic glacier.
You can tell by the look of it. And the management."
I said, no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it
was in a Catholic canton.
"Well, then, it's a government glacier," said Harris.
"It's all the same. Over here the government runs
everything--so everything's slow; slow, and ill-managed. But
with us, everything's done by private enterprise--and then
there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it.
I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old
slab once--you'd see it take a different gait from this."
I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there
was trade enough to justify it.
"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris. "That's the difference
between governments and individuals. Governments don't care,
individuals do. Tom Scott would take all the trade;
in two years Gorner stock would go to two hundred,
and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers
under the hammer for taxes." After a reflective pause,
Harris added, "A little less than an inch a day; a little
less than an INCH, mind you. Well, I'm losing my reverence
for glaciers."
I was feeling much the same way myself. I have traveled
by canal-boat, ox-wagon, raft, and by the Ephesus and
Smyrna railway; but when it comes down to good solid
honest slow motion, I bet my money on the glacier.
As a means of passenger transportation, I consider
the glacier a failure; but as a vehicle of slow freight,
I think she fills the bill. In the matter of putting
the fine shades on that line of business, I judge she
could teach the Germans something.
I ordered the men to break camp and prepare for the land
journey to Zermatt. At this moment a most interesting
find was made; a dark object, bedded in the glacial ice,
was cut out with the ice-axes, and it proved to be a piece
of the undressed skin of some animal--a hair trunk, perhaps;
but a close inspection disabled the hair-trunk theory,
and further discussion and examination exploded it
entirely--that is, in the opinion of all the scientists
except the one who had advanced it. This one clung
to his theory with affectionate fidelity characteristic
of originators of scientific theories, and afterward won
many of the first scientists of the age to his view,
by a very able pamphlet which he wrote, entitled, "Evidences
going to show that the hair trunk, in a wild state,
belonged to the early glacial period, and roamed the wastes
of chaos in the company with the cave-bear, primeval man,
and the other Ooelitics of the Old Silurian family."
Each of our scientists had a theory of his own, and put
forward an animal of his own as a candidate for the skin.
I sided with the geologist of the Expedition in the
belief that this patch of skin had once helped to cover
a Siberian elephant, in some old forgotten age--but we
divided there, the geologist believing that this discovery
proved that Siberia had formerly been located where
Switzerland is now, whereas I held the opinion that it
merely proved that the primeval Swiss was not the dull
savage he is represented to have been, but was a being
of high intellectual development, who liked to go to the
menagerie.
We arrived that evening, after many hardships and adventures,
in some fields close to the great ice-arch where the mad
Visp boils and surges out from under the foot of the
great Gorner Glacier, and here we camped, our perils over
and our magnificent undertaking successfully completed.
We marched into Zermatt the next day, and were received
with the most lavish honors and applause. A document,
signed and sealed by the authorities, was given to me
which established and endorsed the fact that I had made
the ascent of the Riffelberg. This I wear around my neck,
and it will be buried with me when I am no more.
CHAPTER XL
[Piteous Relics at Chamonix]
I am not so ignorant about glacial movement, now, as I
was when I took passage on the Gorner Glacier.
I have "read up" since. I am aware that these vast
bodies of ice do not travel at the same rate of speed;
while the Gorner Glacier makes less than an inch a day,
the Unter-Aar Glacier makes as much as eight; and still
other glaciers are said to go twelve, sixteen, and even
twenty inches a day. One writer says that the slowest
glacier travels twenty-give feet a year, and the fastest
four hundred.
What is a glacier? It is easy to say it looks like a
frozen river which occupies the bed of a winding gorge
or gully between mountains. But that gives no notion
of its vastness. For it is sometimes six hundred
feet thick, and we are not accustomed to rivers six hundred
feet deep; no, our rivers are six feet, twenty feet,
and sometimes fifty feet deep; we are not quite able
to grasp so large a fact as an ice-river six hundred feet deep.
The glacier's surface is not smooth and level, but has
deep swales and swelling elevations, and sometimes has
the look of a tossing sea whose turbulent billows were
frozen hard in the instant of their most violent motion;
the glacier's surface is not a flawless mass, but is a river
with cracks or crevices, some narrow, some gaping wide.
Many a man, the victim of a slip or a misstep, has plunged
down on of these and met his death. Men have been
fished out of them alive; but it was when they did not
go to a great depth; the cold of the great depths would
quickly stupefy a man, whether he was hurt or unhurt.
These cracks do not go straight down; one can seldom see
more than twenty to forty feet down them; consequently men
who have disappeared in them have been sought for,
in the hope that they had stopped within helping distance,
whereas their case, in most instances, had really been
hopeless from the beginning.
In 1864 a party of tourists was descending Mont Blanc,
and while picking their way over one of the mighty glaciers
of that lofty region, roped together, as was proper,
a young porter disengaged himself from the line and
started across an ice-bridge which spanned a crevice.
It broke under him with a crash, and he disappeared.
The others could not see how deep he had gone, so it might
be worthwhile to try and rescue him. A brave young guide
named Michel Payot volunteered.
Two ropes were made fast to his leather belt and he bore
the end of a third one in his hand to tie to the victim
in case he found him. He was lowered into the crevice,
he descended deeper and deeper between the clear blue
walls of solid ice, he approached a bend in the crack
and disappeared under it. Down, and still down, he went,
into this profound grave; when he had reached a depth
of eighty feet he passed under another bend in the crack,
and thence descended eighty feet lower, as between
perpendicular precipices. Arrived at this stage of one
hundred and sixty feet below the surface of the glacier,
he peered through the twilight dimness and perceived
that the chasm took another turn and stretched away at
a steep slant to unknown deeps, for its course was lost
in darkness. What a place that was to be in--especially
if that leather belt should break! The compression
of the belt threatened to suffocate the intrepid fellow;
he called to his friends to draw him up, but could not make
them hear. They still lowered him, deeper and deeper.
Then he jerked his third cord as vigorously as he could;
his friends understood, and dragged him out of those icy jaws
of death.
Then they attached a bottle to a cord and sent it down
two hundred feet, but it found no bottom. It came up
covered with congelations--evidence enough that even if
the poor porter reached the bottom with unbroken bones,
a swift death from cold was sure, anyway.
A glacier is a stupendous, ever-progressing, resistless plow.
It pushes ahead of its masses of boulders which are
packed together, and they stretch across the gorge,
right in front of it, like a long grave or a long,
sharp roof. This is called a moraine. It also shoves
out a moraine along each side of its course.
Imposing as the modern glaciers are, they are not so
huge as were some that once existed. For instance,
Mr. Whymper says:
"At some very remote period the Valley of Aosta was occupied
by a vast glacier, which flowed down its entire length from
Mont Blanc to the plain of Piedmont, remained stationary,
or nearly so, at its mouth for many centuries, and deposited
there enormous masses of debris. The length of this
glacier exceeded EIGHTY MILES, and it drained a basin
twenty-five to thirty-five miles across, bounded by the
highest mountains in the Alps. The great peaks rose
several thousand feet above the glaciers, and then, as now,
shattered by sun and frost, poured down their showers of
rocks and stones, in witness of which there are the immense
piles of angular fragments that constitute the moraines of Ivrea.
"The moraines around Ivrea are of extraordinary dimensions.
That which was on the left bank of the glacier is
about THIRTEEN MILES long, and in some places rises
to a height of TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FEET
above the floor of the valley! The terminal moraines
(those which are pushed in front of the glaciers)
cover something like twenty square miles of country.
At the mouth of the Valley of Aosta, the thickness of
the glacier must have been at least TWO THOUSAND feet,
and its width, at that part, FIVE MILES AND A QUARTER."
It is not easy to get at a comprehension of a mass of ice
like that. If one could cleave off the butt end of such
a glacier--an oblong block two or three miles wide
by five and a quarter long and two thousand feet thick
--he could completely hide the city of New York under it,
and Trinity steeple would only stick up into it relatively
as far as a shingle-nail would stick up into the bottom
of a Saratoga trunk.
"The boulders from Mont Blanc, upon the plain below Ivrea,
assure us that the glacier which transported them existed
for a prodigious length of time. Their present distance from
the cliffs from which they were derived is about 420,000 feet,
and if we assume that they traveled at the rate of 400 feet
per annum, their journey must have occupied them no less
than 1,055 years! In all probability they did not travel so
fast."
Glaciers are sometimes hurried out of their characteristic
snail-pace. A marvelous spectacle is presented then.
Mr. Whymper refers to a case which occurred in Iceland
in 1721:
"It seems that in the neighborhood of the mountain Kotlugja,
large bodies of water formed underneath, or within
the glaciers (either on account of the interior heat of
the earth, or from other causes), and at length acquired
irresistible power, tore the glaciers from their mooring on
the land, and swept them over every obstacle into the sea.
Prodigious masses of ice were thus borne for a distance
of about ten miles over land in the space of a few hours;
and their bulk was so enormous that they covered the sea
for seven miles from the shore, and remained aground
in six hundred feet of water! The denudation of the land
was upon a grand scale. All superficial accumulations were
swept away, and the bedrock was exposed. It was described,
in graphic language, how all irregularities and depressions
were obliterated, and a smooth surface of several miles'
area laid bare, and that this area had the appearance
of having been PLANED BY A PLANE."
The account translated from the Icelandic says that the
mountainlike ruins of this majestic glacier so covered
the sea that as far as the eye could reach no open water
was discoverable, even from the highest peaks. A monster
wall or barrier of ice was built across a considerable
stretch of land, too, by this strange irruption:
"One can form some idea of the altitude of this barrier
of ice when it is mentioned that from Hofdabrekka farm,
which lies high up on a fjeld, one could not see
Hjorleifshofdi opposite, which is a fell six hundred and
forty feet in height; but in order to do so had to clamber
up a mountain slope east of Hofdabrekka twelve hundred feet
high."
These things will help the reader to understand why it is
that a man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel
tolerably insignificant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers
together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man
and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only
remain within the influence of their sublime presence long
enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
The Alpine glaciers move--that is granted, now, by everybody.
But there was a time when people scoffed at the idea;
they said you might as well expect leagues of solid rock
to crawl along the ground as expect leagues of ice to do it.
But proof after proof as furnished, and the finally the
world had to believe.
The wise men not only said the glacier moved, but they
timed its movement. They ciphered out a glacier's gait,
and then said confidently that it would travel just
so far in so many years. There is record of a striking
and curious example of the accuracy which may be attained
in these reckonings.
In 1820 the ascent of Mont Blanc was attempted by a Russian
and two Englishmen, with seven guides. They had reached
a prodigious altitude, and were approaching the summit,
when an avalanche swept several of the party down a
sharp slope of two hundred feet and hurled five of them
(all guides) into one of the crevices of a glacier.
The life of one of the five was saved by a long barometer
which was strapped to his back--it bridged the crevice
and suspended him until help came. The alpenstock
or baton of another saved its owner in a similar way.
Three men were lost--Pierre Balmat, Pierre Carrier,
and Auguste Tairraz. They had been hurled down into the
fathomless great deeps of the crevice.
Dr. Forbes, the English geologist, had made frequent visits
to the Mont Blanc region, and had given much attention
to the disputed question of the movement of glaciers.
During one of these visits he completed his estimates
of the rate of movement of the glacier which had swallowed
up the three guides, and uttered the prediction that the
glacier would deliver up its dead at the foot of the
mountain thirty-five years from the time of the accident,
or possibly forty.
A dull, slow journey--a movement imperceptible to any eye
--but it was proceeding, nevertheless, and without cessation.
It was a journey which a rolling stone would make in a
few seconds--the lofty point of departure was visible
from the village below in the valley.
The prediction cut curiously close to the truth;
forty-one years after the catastrophe, the remains
were cast forth at the foot of the glacier.
I find an interesting account of the matter in the
HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC, by Stephen d'Arve. I will
condense this account, as follows:
On the 12th of August, 1861, at the hour of the close of mass,
a guide arrived out of breath at the mairie of Chamonix,
and bearing on his shoulders a very lugubrious burden.
It was a sack filled with human remains which he had gathered
from the orifice of a crevice in the Glacier des Bossons.
He conjectured that these were remains of the victims
of the catastrophe of 1820, and a minute inquest,
immediately instituted by the local authorities,
soon demonstrated the correctness of his supposition.
The contents of the sack were spread upon a long table,
and officially inventoried, as follows:
Portions of three human skulls. Several tufts of black and
blonde hair. A human jaw, furnished with fine white teeth.
A forearm and hand, all the fingers of the latter intact.
The flesh was white and fresh, and both the arm and hand
preserved a degree of flexibility in the articulations.
The ring-finger had suffered a slight abrasion, and the
stain of the blood was still visible and unchanged after
forty-one years. A left foot, the flesh white and fresh.
Along with these fragments were portions of waistcoats, hats,
hobnailed shoes, and other clothing; a wing of a pigeon,
with black feathers; a fragment of an alpenstock;
a tin lantern; and lastly, a boiled leg of mutton,
the only flesh among all the remains that exhaled an
unpleasant odor. The guide said that the mutton had no
odor when he took it from the glacier; an hour's exposure
to the sun had already begun the work of decomposition upon it.
Persons were called for, to identify these poor pathetic relics,
and a touching scene ensured. Two men were still living
who had witnessed the grim catastrophe of nearly half
a century before--Marie Couttet (saved by his baton)
and Julien Davouassoux (saved by the barometer). These aged
men entered and approached the table. Davouassoux, more than
eighty years old, contemplated the mournful remains mutely
and with a vacant eye, for his intelligence and his memory
were torpid with age; but Couttet's faculties were still
perfect at seventy-two, and he exhibited strong emotion. He
said:
"Pierre Balmat was fair; he wore a straw hat. This bit of skull,
with the tuft of blond hair, was his; this is his hat.
Pierre Carrier was very dark; this skull was his, and this
felt hat. This is Balmat's hand, I remember it so well!"
and the old man bent down and kissed it reverently,
then closed his fingers upon it in an affectionate grasp,
crying out, "I could never have dared to believe that
before quitting this world it would be granted me to
press once more the hand of one of those brave comrades,
the hand of my good friend Balmat."
There is something weirdly pathetic about the picture
of that white-haired veteran greeting with his loving
handshake this friend who had been dead forty years.
When these hands had met last, they were alike in the
softness and freshness of youth; now, one was brown and
wrinkled and horny with age, while the other was still
as young and fair and blemishless as if those forty years
had come and gone in a single moment, leaving no mark
of their passage. Time had gone on, in the one case;
it had stood still in the other. A man who has not seen
a friend for a generation, keeps him in mind always as he
saw him last, and is somehow surprised, and is also shocked,
to see the aging change the years have wrought when he
sees him again. Marie Couttet's experience, in finding
his friend's hand unaltered from the image of it which he
had carried in his memory for forty years, is an experience
which stands alone in the history of man, perhaps.
Couttet identified other relics:
"This hat belonged to Auguste Tairraz. He carried
the cage of pigeons which we proposed to set free upon
the summit. Here is the wing of one of those pigeons.
And here is the fragment of my broken baton; it was by
grace of that baton that my life was saved. Who could
have told me that I should one day have the satisfaction
to look again upon this bit of wood that supported me above
the grave that swallowed up my unfortunate companions!"
No portions of the body of Tairraz, other than a piece
of the skull, had been found. A diligent search was made,
but without result. However, another search was
instituted a year later, and this had better success.
Many fragments of clothing which had belonged to the lost
guides were discovered; also, part of a lantern, and a
green veil with blood-stains on it. But the interesting
feature was this:
One of the searchers came suddenly upon a sleeved arm
projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand
outstretched as if offering greeting! "The nails of this white
hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers
seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of
day."
The hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk.
After being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly
faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster
hue of death. This was the third RIGHT hand found;
therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for,
beyond cavil or question.
Dr. Hamel was the Russian gentleman of the party which
made the ascent at the time of the famous disaster.
He left Chamonix as soon as he conveniently could after
the descent; and as he had shown a chilly indifference
about the calamity, and offered neither sympathy nor
assistance to the widows and orphans, he carried with
him the cordial execrations of the whole community.
Four months before the first remains were found,
a Chamonix guide named Balmat--a relative of one of
the lost men--was in London, and one day encountered
a hale old gentleman in the British Museum, who said:
"I overheard your name. Are you from Chamonix,
Monsieur Balmat?"
"Yes, sir."
"Haven't they found the bodies of my three guides,
yet? I am Dr. Hamel."
"Alas, no, monsieur."
"Well, you'll find them, sooner or later."
"Yes, it is the opinion of Dr. Forbes and Mr. Tyndall,
that the glacier will sooner or later restore to us the
remains of the unfortunate victims."
"Without a doubt, without a doubt. And it will be a great
thing for Chamonix, in the matter of attracting tourists.
You can get up a museum with those remains that will draw!"
This savage idea has not improved the odor of Dr. Hamel's
name in Chamonix by any means. But after all, the man
was sound on human nature. His idea was conveyed
to the public officials of Chamonix, and they gravely
discussed it around the official council-table. They
were only prevented from carrying it into execution by
the determined opposition of the friends and descendants
of the lost guides, who insisted on giving the remains
Christian burial, and succeeded in their purpose.
A close watch had to be kept upon all the poor remnants
and fragments, to prevent embezzlement. A few accessory
odds and ends were sold. Rags and scraps of the coarse
clothing were parted with at the rate equal to about
twenty dollars a yard; a piece of a lantern and one or
two other trifles brought nearly their weight in gold;
and an Englishman offered a pound sterling for a single
breeches-button.
CHAPTER XLI
[The Fearful Disaster of 1865]
One of the most memorable of all the Alpine catastrophes
was that of July, 1865, on the Matterhorn--already
sighted referred to, a few pages back. The details
of it are scarcely known in America. To the vast
majority of readers they are not known at all.
Mr. Whymper's account is the only authentic one.
I will import the chief portion of it into this book,
partly because of its intrinsic interest, and partly
because it gives such a vivid idea of what the perilous
pastime of Alp-climbing is. This was Mr. Whymper's
NINTH attempt during a series of years, to vanquish
that steep and stubborn pillar or rock; it succeeded,
the other eight were failures. No man had ever accomplished
the ascent before, though the attempts had been numerous.
MR. WHYMPER'S NARRATIVE
We started from Zermatt on the 13th of July, at half
past five, on a brilliant and perfectly cloudless morning.
We were eight in number--Croz (guide), old Peter
Taugwalder (guide) and his two sons; Lord F. Douglas,
Mr. Hadow, Rev. Mr. Hudson, and I. To insure steady
motion, one tourist and one native walked together.
The youngest Taugwalder fell to my share. The wine-bags
also fell to my lot to carry, and throughout the day,
after each drink, I replenished them secretly with water,
so that at the next halt they were found fuller than
before! This was considered a good omen, and little short
of miraculous.
On the first day we did not intend to ascend to any
great height, and we mounted, accordingly, very leisurely.
Before twelve o'clock we had found a good position
for the tent, at a height of eleven thousand feet.
We passed the remaining hours of daylight--some basking
in the sunshine, some sketching, some collecting;
Hudson made tea, I coffee, and at length we retired,
each one to his blanket bag.
We assembled together before dawn on the 14th
and started directly it was light enough to move.
One of the young Taugwalders returned to Zermatt.
In a few minutes we turned the rib which had intercepted
the view of the eastern face from our tent platform.
The whole of this great slope was now revealed, rising for
three thousand feet like a huge natural staircase.
Some parts were more, and others were less easy, but we
were not once brought to a halt by any serious impediment,
for when an obstruction was met in front it could always
be turned to the right or to the left. For the greater part
of the way there was no occasion, indeed, for the rope,
and sometimes Hudson led, sometimes myself. At six-twenty we
had attained a height of twelve thousand eight hundred feet,
and halted for half an hour; we then continued the ascent
without a break until nine-fifty-five, when we stopped
for fifty minutes, at a height of fourteen thousand feet.
We had now arrived at the foot of that part which, seen from
the Riffelberg, seems perpendicular or overhanging.
We could no longer continue on the eastern side. For a little
distance we ascended by snow upon the ARE^TE--that is,
the ridge--then turned over to the right, or northern side.
The work became difficult, and required caution. In some places
there was little to hold; the general slope of the mountain
was LESS than forty degrees, and snow had accumulated in,
and had filled up, the interstices of the rock-face, leaving
only occasional fragments projecting here and there.
These were at times covered with a thin film of ice.
It was a place which any fair mountaineer might pass
in safety. We bore away nearly horizontally for about four
hundred feet, then ascended directly toward the summit
for about sixty feet, then doubled back to the ridge
which descends toward Zermatt. A long stride round
a rather awkward corner brought us to snow once more.
That last doubt vanished! The Matterhorn was ours! Nothing
but two hundred feet of easy snow remained to be surmounted.
The higher we rose, the more intense became the excitement.
The slope eased off, at length we could be detached,
and Croz and I, dashed away, ran a neck-and-neck race,
which ended in a dead heat. At 1:40 P.M., the world was at
our feet, and the Matterhorn was conquered!
The others arrived. Croz now took the tent-pole, and
planted it in the highest snow. "Yes," we said, "there is
the flag-staff, but where is the flag?" "Here it is,"
he answered, pulling off his blouse and fixing it to the stick.
It made a poor flag, and there was no wind to float it out,
yet it was seen all around. They saw it at Zermatt--at
the Riffel--in the Val Tournanche... .
We remained on the summit for one hour--
One crowded hour of glorious life.
It passed away too quickly, and we began to prepare
for the descent.
Hudson and I consulted as to the best and safest arrangement
of the party. We agreed that it was best for Croz
to go first, and Hadow second; Hudson, who was almost
equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third;
Lord Douglas was placed next, and old Peter, the strongest
of the remainder, after him. I suggested to Hudson
that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival
at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended,
as an additional protection. He approved the idea,
but it was not definitely decided that it should be done.
The party was being arranged in the above order while I
was sketching the summit, and they had finished,
and were waiting for me to be tied in line, when some one
remembered that our names had not been left in a bottle.
They requested me to write them down, and moved off
while it was being done.
A few minutes afterward I tied myself to young Peter,
ran down after the others, and caught them just as they
were commencing the descent of the difficult part.
Great care was being taken. Only one man was moving at a time;
when he was firmly planted the next advanced, and so on.
They had not, however, attached the additional rope
to rocks, and nothing was said about it. The suggestion
was not made for my own sake, and I am not sure that it
ever occurred to me again. For some little distance we
two followed the others, detached from them, and should
have continued so had not Lord Douglas asked me, about 3
P.M., to tie on to old Peter, as he feared, he said,
that Taugwalder would not be able to hold his ground if a
slip occurred.
A few minutes later, a sharp-eyed lad ran into the Monte
Rosa Hotel, at Zermatt, saying that he had seen an avalanche
fall from the summit of the Matterhorn onto the Matterhorn
glacier. The boy was reproved for telling idle stories;
he was right, nevertheless, and this was what he saw.
Michel Croz had laid aside his ax, and in order to give
Mr. Hadow greater security, was absolutely taking
hold of his legs, and putting his feet, one by one,
into their proper positions. As far as I know, no one
was actually descending. I cannot speak with certainty,
because the two leading men were partially hidden
from my sight by an intervening mass of rock, but it
is my belief, from the movements of their shoulders,
that Croz, having done as I said, was in the act
of turning round to go down a step or two himself;
at this moment Mr. Hadow slipped, fell against him,
and knocked him over. I heard one startled exclamation
from Croz, then saw him and Mr. Hadow flying downward;
in another moment Hudson was dragged from his steps,
and Lord Douglas immediately after him. All this was the
work of a moment. Immediately we heard Croz's exclamation,
old Peter and I planted ourselves as firmly as the rocks
would permit; the rope was taut between us, and the jerk
came on us both as on one man. We held; but the rope
broke midway between Taugwalder and Lord Francis Douglas.
For a few seconds we saw our unfortunate companions sliding
downward on their backs, and spreading out their hands,
endeavoring to save themselves. They passed from our
sight uninjured, disappeared one by one, and fell from the
precipice to precipice onto the Matterhorn glacier below,
a distance of nearly four thousand feet in height.
From the moment the rope broke it was impossible to help them.
So perished our comrades!
For more than two hours afterward I thought almost every
moment that the next would be my last; for the Taugwalders,
utterly unnerved, were not only incapable of giving assistance,
but were in such a state that a slip might have been
expected from them at any moment. After a time we were able
to do that which should have been done at first, and fixed
rope to firm rocks, in addition to being tied together.
These ropes were cut from time to time, and were left behind.
Even with their assurance the men were afraid to proceed,
and several times old Peter turned, with ashy face
and faltering limbs, and said, with terrible emphasis,
"I CANNOT!"
About 6 P.M., we arrived at the snow upon the ridge
descending toward Zermatt, and all peril was over.
We frequently looked, but in vain, for traces of our
unfortunate companions; we bent over the ridge and cried
to them, but no sound returned. Convinced at last that
they were neither within sight nor hearing, we ceased
from our useless efforts; and, too cast down for speech,
silently gathered up our things, and the little effects
of those who were lost, and then completed the descent.
----------
Such is Mr. Whymper's graphic and thrilling narrative.
Zermatt gossip darkly hints that the elder Taugwalder
cut the rope, when the accident occurred, in order
to preserve himself from being dragged into the abyss;
but Mr. Whymper says that the ends of the rope showed
no evidence of cutting, but only of breaking. He adds
that if Taugwalder had had the disposition to cut the rope,
he would not have had time to do it, the accident was so
sudden and unexpected.
Lord Douglas' body has never been found. It probably
lodged upon some inaccessible shelf in the face of the
mighty precipice. Lord Douglas was a youth of nineteen.
The three other victims fell nearly four thousand feet,
and their bodies lay together upon the glacier when found
by Mr. Whymper and the other searchers the next morning.
Their graves are beside the little church in Zermatt.
CHAPTER XLII
[Chillon has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon]
Switzerland is simply a large, humpy, solid rock,
with a thin skin of grass stretched over it. Consequently,
they do not dig graves, they blast them out with power
and fuse. They cannot afford to have large graveyards,
the grass skin is too circumscribed and too valuable.
It is all required for the support of the living.
The graveyard in Zermatt occupies only about one-eighth
of an acre. The graves are sunk in the living rock, and are
very permanent; but occupation of them is only temporary;
the occupant can only stay till his grave is needed
by a later subject, he is removed, then, for they do not
bury one body on top of another. As I understand it,
a family owns a grave, just as it owns a house. A man dies
and leaves his house to his son--and at the same time,
this dead father succeeds to his own father's grave.
He moves out of the house and into the grave, and his
predecessor moves out of the grave and into the cellar
of the chapel. I saw a black box lying in the churchyard,
with skull and cross-bones painted on it, and was told that
this was used in transferring remains to the cellar.
In that cellar the bones and skulls of several hundred of
former citizens were compactly corded up. They made a pile
eighteen feet long, seven feet high, and eight feet wide.
I was told that in some of the receptacles of this kind
in the Swiss villages, the skulls were all marked,
and if a man wished to find the skulls of his ancestors
for several generations back, he could do it by these marks,
preserved in the family records.
An English gentleman who had lived some years in this region,
said it was the cradle of compulsory education.
But he said that the English idea that compulsory
education would reduce bastardy and intemperance was an
error--it has not that effect. He said there was more
seduction in the Protestant than in the Catholic cantons,
because the confessional protected the girls. I wonder
why it doesn't protect married women in France and Spain?
This gentleman said that among the poorer peasants in the Valais,
it was common for the brothers in a family to cast lots
to determine which of them should have the coveted privilege
of marrying, and his brethren--doomed bachelors--heroically
banded themselves together to help support the new family.
We left Zermatt in a wagon--and in a rain-storm, too
--for St. Nicholas about ten o'clock one morning.
Again we passed between those grass-clad prodigious cliffs,
specked with wee dwellings peeping over at us from
velvety green walls ten and twelve hundred feet high.
It did not seem possible that the imaginary chamois
even could climb those precipices. Lovers on opposite
cliffs probably kiss through a spy-glass, and correspond
with a rifle.
In Switzerland the farmer's plow is a wide shovel,
which scrapes up and turns over the thin earthy skin of his
native rock--and there the man of the plow is a hero.
Now here, by our St. Nicholas road, was a grave, and it
had a tragic story. A plowman was skinning his farm
one morning--not the steepest part of it, but still
a steep part--that is, he was not skinning the front
of his farm, but the roof of it, near the eaves--when he
absent-mindedly let go of the plow-handles to moisten
his hands, in the usual way; he lost his balance and fell
out of his farm backward; poor fellow, he never touched
anything till he struck bottom, fifteen hundred feet below.
[1] We throw a halo of heroism around the life of the
soldier and the sailor, because of the deadly dangers they
are facing all the time. But we are not used to looking
upon farming as a heroic occupation. This is because we
have not lived in Switzerland.
1. This was on a Sunday.--M.T.
From St. Nicholas we struck out for Visp--or Vispach--on foot.
The rain-storms had been at work during several days,
and had done a deal of damage in Switzerland and Savoy.
We came to one place where a stream had changed its
course and plunged down a mountain in a new place,
sweeping everything before it. Two poor but precious farms
by the roadside were ruined. One was washed clear away,
and the bed-rock exposed; the other was buried out of sight
under a tumbled chaos of rocks, gravel, mud, and rubbish.
The resistless might of water was well exemplified.
Some saplings which had stood in the way were bent to the ground,
stripped clean of their bark, and buried under rocky debris.
The road had been swept away, too.
In another place, where the road was high up on the mountain's
face, and its outside edge protected by flimsy masonry,
we frequently came across spots where this masonry had
carved off and left dangerous gaps for mules to get over;
and with still more frequency we found the masonry
slightly crumbled, and marked by mule-hoofs, thus showing
that there had been danger of an accident to somebody.
When at last we came to a badly ruptured bit of masonry,
with hoof-prints evidencing a desperate struggle
to regain the lost foothold, I looked quite hopefully
over the dizzy precipice. But there was nobody down there.
They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland
and other portions of Europe. They wall up both banks
with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end
to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves
at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River.
It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow
of the majestic Alps, that we came across some little
children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first,
a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it was in
simply a natural and characteristic way. They were roped
together with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and
ice-axes, and were climbing a meek and lowly manure-pile
with a most blood-curdling amount of care and caution.
The "guide" at the head of the line cut imaginary steps,
in a laborious and painstaking way, and not a monkey
budged till the step above was vacated. If we had waited
we should have witnessed an imaginary accident, no doubt;
and we should have heard the intrepid band hurrah when they
made the summit and looked around upon the "magnificent view,"
and seen them throw themselves down in exhausted attitudes
for a rest in that commanding situation.
In Nevada I used to see the children play at silver-mining.
Of course, the great thing was an accident in a mine,
and there were two "star" parts; that of the man
who fell down the mimic shaft, and that of the daring
hero who was lowered into the depths to bring him up.
I knew one small chap who always insisted on playing
BOTH of these parts--and he carried his point.
He would tumble into the shaft and die, and then come
to the surface and go back after his own remains.
It is the smartest boy that gets the hero part everywhere;
he is head guide in Switzerland, head miner in Nevada,
head bull-fighter in Spain, etc.; but I knew a preacher's son,
seven years old, who once selected a part for himself compared
to which those just mentioned are tame and unimpressive.
Jimmy's father stopped him from driving imaginary
horse-cars one Sunday--stopped him from playing captain
of an imaginary steamboat next Sunday--stopped him
from leading an imaginary army to battle the following
Sunday--and so on. Finally the little fellow said:
"I've tried everything, and they won't any of them do.
What CAN I play?"
"I hardly know, Jimmy; but you MUST play only things
that are suitable to the Sabbath-day."
Next Sunday the preacher stepped softly to a back-room
door to see if the children were rightly employed.
He peeped in. A chair occupied the middle of the room,
and on the back of it hung Jimmy's cap; one of his little
sisters took the cap down, nibbled at it, then passed it
to another small sister and said, "Eat of this fruit,
for it is good." The Reverend took in the situation--alas,
they were playing the Expulsion from Eden! Yet he found
one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself, "For once
Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him,
I did not believe there was so much modesty in him;
I should have expected him to be either Adam or Eve."
This crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while;
he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an
imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown
on his face. What that meant was very plain--HE WAS
IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of the guileless sublimity of
that idea.
We reached Vispach at 8 P.M., only about seven hours
out from St. Nicholas. So we must have made fully
a mile and a half an hour, and it was all downhill,
too, and very muddy at that. We stayed all night at
the Ho^tel de Soleil; I remember it because the landlady,
the portier, the waitress, and the chambermaid were not
separate persons, but were all contained in one neat and
chipper suit of spotless muslin, and she was the prettiest
young creature I saw in all that region. She was the
landlord's daughter. And I remember that the only native
match to her I saw in all Europe was the young daughter
of the landlord of a village inn in the Black Forest.
Why don't more people in Europe marry and keep hotel?
Next morning we left with a family of English friends
and went by train to Brevet, and thence by boat across
the lake to Ouchy (Lausanne).
Ouchy is memorable to me, not on account of its beautiful
situation and lovely surroundings--although these would
make it stick long in one's memory--but as the place
where _I_ caught the London TIMES dropping into humor.
It was NOT aware of it, though. It did not do it on purpose.
An English friend called my attention to this lapse,
and cut out the reprehensible paragraph for me. Think of
encountering a grin like this on the face of that grim
journal:
ERRATUM.--We are requested by Reuter's Telegram Company
to correct an erroneous announcement made in their Brisbane
telegram of the 2d inst., published in our impression of the 5th
inst., stating that "Lady Kennedy had given birth to twins,
the eldest being a son." The Company explain that the message
they received contained the words "Governor of Queensland,
TWINS FIRST SON." Being, however, subsequently informed
that Sir Arthur Kennedy was unmarried and that there
must be some mistake, a telegraphic repetition was at
once demanded. It has been received today (11th inst.)
and shows that the words really telegraphed by Reuter's
agent were "Governor Queensland TURNS FIRST SOD,"
alluding to the Maryborough-Gympic Railway in course
of construction. The words in italics were mutilated by
the telegraph in transmission from Australia, and reaching
the company in the form mentioned above gave rise to the mistake.
I had always had a deep and reverent compassion
for the sufferings of the "prisoner of Chillon,"
whose story Byron had told in such moving verse; so I took
the steamer and made pilgrimage to the dungeons of the
Castle of Chillon, to see the place where poor Bonnivard
endured his dreary captivity three hundred years ago.
I am glad I did that, for it took away some of the pain
I was feeling on the prisoner's account. His dungeon
was a nice, cool, roomy place, and I cannot see why he
should have been dissatisfied with it. If he had been
imprisoned in a St. Nicholas private dwelling, where the
fertilizer prevails, and the goat sleeps with the guest,
and the chickens roost on him and the cow comes in and
bothers him when he wants to muse, it would have been
another matter altogether; but he surely could not have
had a very cheerless time of it in that pretty dungeon.
It has romantic window-slits that let in generous bars
of light, and it has tall, noble columns, carved apparently
from the living rock; and what is more, they are written
all over with thousands of names; some of them--like
Byron's and Victor Hugo's--of the first celebrity.
Why didn't he amuse himself reading these names? Then
there are the couriers and tourists--swarms of them every
day--what was to hinder him from having a good time
with them? I think Bonnivard's sufferings have been overrated.
Next, we took the train and went to Martigny, on the way
to Mont Blanc. Next morning we started, about eight
o'clock, on foot. We had plenty of company, in the way
of wagon-loads and mule-loads of tourists--and dust.
This scattering procession of travelers was perhaps a
mile long. The road was uphill--interminable uphill--and
tolerably steep. The weather was blisteringly hot,
and the man or woman who had to sit on a creeping mule,
or in a crawling wagon, and broil in the beating sun,
was an object to be pitied. We could dodge among the bushes,
and have the relief of shade, but those people could not.
They paid for a conveyance, and to get their money's worth
they rode.
We went by the way of the Te^te Noir, and after we
reached high ground there was no lack of fine scenery.
In one place the road was tunneled through a shoulder
of the mountain; from there one looked down into a gorge
with a rushing torrent in it, and on every hand was a
charming view of rocky buttresses and wooded heights.
There was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too,
on the Te^te Noir route.
About half an hour before we reached the village of
Argentie`re a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it
drifted into view and framed itself in a strong V-shaped
gateway of the mountains, and we recognized Mont Blanc,
the "monarch of the Alps." With every step, after that,
this stately dome rose higher and higher into the blue sky,
and at last seemed to occupy the zenith.
Some of Mont Blanc's neighbors--bare, light-brown, steeplelike
rocks--were very peculiarly shaped. Some were whittled
to a sharp point, and slightly bent at the upper end,
like a lady's finger; one monster sugar-loaf resembled
a bishop's hat; it was too steep to hold snow on its sides,
but had some in the division.
While we were still on very high ground, and before
the descent toward Argentie`re began, we looked up
toward a neighboring mountain-top, and saw exquisite
prismatic colors playing about some white clouds which
were so delicate as to almost resemble gossamer webs.
The faint pinks and greens were peculiarly beautiful;
none of the colors were deep, they were the lightest shades.
They were bewitching commingled. We sat down to study and
enjoy this singular spectacle. The tints remained during
several minutes--fitting, changing, melting into each other;
paling almost away for a moment, then reflushing--a shifting,
restless, unstable succession of soft opaline gleams,
shimmering over that air film of white cloud, and turning
it into a fabric dainty enough to clothe an angel with.
By and by we perceived what those super-delicate colors,
and their continuous play and movement, reminded us of;
it is what one sees in a soap-bubble that is drifting along,
catching changes of tint from the objects it passes.
A soap-bubble is the most beautiful thing, and the
most exquisite, in nature; that lovely phantom fabric
in the sky was suggestive of a soap-bubble split open,
and spread out in the sun. I wonder how much it would take
to buy a soap-bubble, if there was only one in the world?
One could buy a hatful of Koh-i-Noors with the same money,
no doubt.
We made the tramp from Martigny to Argentie`re in eight hours.
We beat all the mules and wagons; we didn't usually do that.
We hired a sort of open baggage-wagon for the trip down
the valley to Chamonix, and then devoted an hour to dining.
This gave the driver time to get drunk. He had a friend
with him, and this friend also had had time to get drunk.
When we drove off, the driver said all the tourists had
arrived and gone by while we were at dinner; "but," said he,
impressively, "be not disturbed by that--remain tranquil--give
yourselves no uneasiness--their dust rises far before us
--rest you tranquil, leave all to me--I am the king of drivers.
Behold!"
Down came his whip, and away we clattered. I never had such
a shaking up in my life. The recent flooding rains had
washed the road clear away in places, but we never stopped,
we never slowed down for anything. We tore right along,
over rocks, rubbish, gullies, open fields--sometimes with
one or two wheels on the ground, but generally with none.
Every now and then that calm, good-natured madman would
bend a majestic look over his shoulder at us and say,
"Ah, you perceive? It is as I have said --I am the
king of drivers." Every time we just missed going
to destruction, he would say, with tranquil happiness,
"Enjoy it, gentlemen, it is very rare, it is very unusual
--it is given to few to ride with the king of drivers
--and observe, it is as I have said, _I_ am he."
He spoke in French, and punctuated with hiccoughs.
His friend was French, too, but spoke in German--using
the same system of punctuation, however. The friend
called himself the "Captain of Mont Blanc," and wanted us
to make the ascent with him. He said he had made more
ascents than any other man--forty seven--and his brother
had made thirty-seven. His brother was the best guide
in the world, except himself--but he, yes, observe him
well--he was the "Captain of Mont Blanc"--that title
belonged to none other.
The "king" was as good as his word--he overtook that long
procession of tourists and went by it like a hurricane.
The result was that we got choicer rooms at the hotel
in Chamonix than we should have done if his majesty
had been a slower artist--or rather, if he hadn't most
providentially got drunk before he left Argentie`re.
CHAPTER XLIII
[My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed]
Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the
principal street of the village--not on the sidewalks,
but all over the street; everybody was lounging, loafing,
chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--for it
was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time
--the half-dozen big diligences would soon be arriving
from Geneva, and the village was interested, in many ways,
in knowing how many people were coming and what sort of
folk they might be. It was altogether the livest-looking
street we had seen in any village on the continent.
The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music
was loud and strong; we could not see this torrent, for it
was dark, now, but one could locate it without a light.
There was a large enclosed yard in front of the hotel,
and this was filled with groups of villagers waiting to see
the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists
for the morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its
huge barrel canted up toward the lustrous evening star.
The long porch of the hotel was populous with tourists,
who sat in shawls and wraps under the vast overshadowing
bulk of Mont Blanc, and gossiped or meditated.
Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed
at one's very elbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty
cluster of slender minarets that were its neighbors,
seemed to be almost over one's head. It was night
in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere;
the broad bases and shoulders of the mountains were in
a deep gloom, but their summits swam in a strange rich
glow which was really daylight, and yet had a mellow
something about it which was very different from the hard
white glare of the kind of daylight I was used to.
Its radiance was strong and clear, but at the same time
it was singularly soft, and spiritual, and benignant.
No, it was not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight;
it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or to heaven.
I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I
had not seen daylight and black night elbow to elbow before.
At least I had not seen the daylight resting upon an object
sufficiently close at hand, before, to make the contrast
startling and at war with nature.
The daylight passed away. Presently the moon rose up
behind some of those sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles
of bare rock of which I have spoken--they were a little
to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc, and right over
our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high
enough toward heaven to get entirely above them.
She would show the glittering arch of her upper third,
occasionally, and scrape it along behind the comblike row;
sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuette
of ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed
to glide out of it by its own volition and power,
and become a dim specter, while the next pinnacle glided
into its place and blotted the spotless disk with the black
exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacle
took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head,
in the inkiest silhouette, while it rested against the moon.
The unillumined peaks and minarets, hovering vague and
phantom-like above us while the others were painfully
white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiar effect.
But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles,
was hidden behind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc,
the masterpiece of the evening was flung on the canvas.
A rich greenish radiance sprang into the sky from behind
the mountain, and in this same airy shreds and ribbons of vapor
floated about, and being flushed with that strange tint,
went waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a while,
radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up
and stretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain.
It was a spectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it,
and the sublimity.
Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow
streaming up from behind that dark and prodigious form
and occupying the half of the dull and opaque heavens,
was the most imposing and impressive marvel I had ever
looked upon. There is no simile for it, for nothing
is like it. If a child had asked me what it was,
I should have said, "Humble yourself, in this presence,
it is the glory flowing from the hidden head of the Creator."
One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes,
in trying to explain mysteries to the little people.
I could have found out the cause of this awe-compelling
miracle by inquiring, for it is not infrequent at Mont
Blanc,--but I did not wish to know. We have not the
reverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has,
because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we
gained by prying into the matter.
We took a walk down street, a block or two, and a
place where four streets met and the principal shops
were clustered, found the groups of men in the roadway
thicker than ever--for this was the Exchange of Chamonix.
These men were in the costumes of guides and porters,
and were there to be hired.
The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-Chief
of the Chamonix Guild of Guides, was near by. This guild
is a close corporation, and is governed by strict laws.
There are many excursion routes, some dangerous and
some not, some that can be made safely without a guide,
and some that cannot. The bureau determines these things.
Where it decides that a guide is necessary, you are
forbidden to go without one. Neither are you allowed to be
a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay.
The guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man
who is to take your life into his hands, you must take
the worst in the lot, if it is his turn. A guide's fee
ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (for some trifling
excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according to
the distance traversed and the nature of the ground.
A guide's fee for taking a person to the summit of Mont
Blanc and back, is twenty dollars--and he earns it.
The time employed is usually three days, and there is
enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy
and wealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be.
The porter's fee for the same trip is ten dollars.
Several fools--no, I mean several tourists--usually go together,
and divide up the expense, and thus make it light;
for if only one f--tourist, I mean--went, he would have
to have several guides and porters, and that would make the
matter costly.
We went into the Chief's office. There were maps
of mountains on the walls; also one or two lithographs
of celebrated guides, and a portrait of the scientist
De Saussure.
In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots
and batons, and other suggestive relics and remembrances
of casualties on Mount Blanc. In a book was a record of all
the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with Nos.
1 and 2--being those of Jacques Balmat and De Saussure,
in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet.
In fact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting
to receive the precious official diploma which should prove
to his German household and to his descendants that he had once
been indiscreet enough to climb to the top of Mont Blanc.
He looked very happy when he got his document; in fact,
he spoke up and said he WAS happy.
I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home
who had never traveled, and whose desire all his life has
been to ascend Mont Blanc, but the Guide-in-Chief rather
insolently refused to sell me one. I was very much offended.
I said I did not propose to be discriminated against on
the account of my nationality; that he had just sold
a diploma to this German gentleman, and my money was
a good as his; I would see to it that he couldn't keep
his shop for Germans and deny his produce to Americans;
I would have his license taken away from him at the dropping
of a handkerchief; if France refused to break him, I would
make an international matter of it and bring on a war;
the soil should be drenched with blood; and not only that,
but I would set up an opposition show and sell diplomas
at half price.
For two cents I would have done these things, too;
but nobody offered me two cents. I tried to move that
German's feelings, but it could not be done; he would
not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me.
I TOLD him my friend was sick and could not come himself,
but he said he did not care a VERDAMMTES PFENNIG,
he wanted his diploma for himself--did I suppose he was
going to risk his neck for that thing and then give it
to a sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't.
I resolved, then, that I would do all I could to injure
Mont Blanc.
In the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents
which happened on the mountain. It began with the one
in 1820 when the Russian Dr. Hamel's three guides were
lost in a crevice of the glacier, and it recorded the
delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-moving
glacier forty-one years later. The latest catastrophe
bore the date 1877.
We stepped out and roved about the village awhile.
In front of the little church was a monument to the memory
of the bold guide Jacques Balmat, the first man who ever
stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. He made that wild
trip solitary and alone. He accomplished the ascent
a number of times afterward. A stretch of nearly half
a century lay between his first ascent and his last one.
At the ripe old age of seventy-two he was climbing
around a corner of a lofty precipice of the Pic du
Midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell.
So he died in the harness.
He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go
off stealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible
gold among those perilous peaks and precipices.
He was on a quest of that kind when he lost his life.
There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure,
in the hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door
of a room upstairs bore an inscription to the effect
that that room had been occupied by Albert Smith.
Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc--so to
speak--but it was Smith who made it a paying property.
His articles in BLACKWOOD and his lectures on Mont Blanc
in London advertised it and made people as anxious to see it
as if it owed them money.
As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red
signal-light glowing in the darkness of the mountainside.
It seemed but a trifling way up--perhaps a hundred yards,
a climb of ten minutes. It was a lucky piece of sagacity
in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met and get
a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb
to that lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose.
The man said that that lantern was on the Grands Mulets,
some sixty-five hundred feet above the valley! I know
by our Riffelberg experience, that it would have taken us
a good part of a week to go up there. I would sooner not
smoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light.
Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this
mountain's close proximity creates curious deceptions.
For instance, one sees with the naked eye a cabin up
there beside the glacier, and a little above and beyond
he sees the spot where that red light was located;
he thinks he could throw a stone from the one place to
the other. But he couldn't, for the difference between
the two altitudes is more than three thousand feet.
It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true,
but it is true, nevertheless.
While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all
the time, and we still kept an eye on her after we got back
to the hotel portico. I had a theory that the gravitation
of refraction, being subsidiary to atmospheric compensation,
the refrangibility of the earth's surface would emphasize
this effect in regions where great mountain ranges occur,
and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic
forces together, the one upon the other, as to prevent
the moon from rising higher than 12,200 feet above
sea-level. This daring theory had been received with frantic
scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and with an eager
silence by others. Among the former I may mention
Prof. H----y; and among the latter Prof. T----l. Such
is professional jealousy; a scientist will never show
any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.
There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people.
Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother.
To show how far their ungenerosity can carry them, I will
state that I offered to let Prof. H----y publish my great
theory as his own discovery; I even begged him to do it;
I even proposed to print it myself as his theory.
Instead of thanking me, he said that if I tried to
fasten that theory on him he would sue me for slander.
I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whom I understood
to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to me
that perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did
not concern heraldry.
But I am glad now, that I was forced to father my intrepid
theory myself, for, on the night of which I am writing,
it was triumphantly justified and established. Mont Blanc
is nearly sixteen thousand feet high; he hid the moon utterly;
near him is a peak which is 12,216 feet high; the moon slid
along behind the pinnacles, and when she approached that
one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation
as a scientist must stand or fall by its decision.
I cannot describe the emotions which surged like tidal
waves through my breast when I saw the moon glide behind
that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing more
than two feet four inches of her upper rim above it;
I was secure, then. I knew she could rise no higher,
and I was right. She sailed behind all the peaks and
never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one
of them.
While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers,
its shadow was flung athwart the vacant heavens
--a long, slanting, clean-cut, dark ray--with a streaming
and energetic suggestion of FORCE about it, such as the
ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords.
It was curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly
object cast upon so intangible a field as the atmosphere.
We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I
woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples,
and a head which was physically sore, outside and in.
I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed.
I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent.
In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads,
one has always the roar of the torrent in his ears.
He imagines it is music, and he thinks poetic things
about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and is lulled
to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to notice
that his head is very sore--he cannot account for it;
in solitudes where the profoundest silence reigns,
he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears,
which is like what he would experience if he had sea-shells
pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is
drowsy and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind,
he cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out;
if he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty,
no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do,
and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed,
listening painfully to the muffled roar of a distant train
in his ears; in his soundest sleep the strain continues,
he goes on listening, always listening intently, anxiously,
and wakes at last, harassed, irritable, unrefreshed.
He cannot manage to account for these things.
Day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights
in a sleeping-car. It actually takes him weeks to find
out that it is those persecuting torrents that have been
making all the mischief. It is time for him to get out
of Switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered
the cause, the misery is magnified several fold. The roar
of the torrent is maddening, then, for his imagination
is assisting; the physical pain it inflicts is exquisite.
When he finds he is approaching one of those streams,
his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track
and avoid the implacable foe.
Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents
had departed from me, the roar and thunder of the
streets of Paris brought it all back again. I moved
to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace.
About midnight the noises dulled away, and I was
sinking to sleep, when I heard a new and curious sound;
I listened: evidently some joyous lunatic was softly
dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head.
I had to wait for him to get through, of course. Five long,
long minutes he smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed,
then something fell with a thump on the floor.
I said to myself "There--he is pulling off his boots
--thank heavens he is done." Another slight pause--he went
to shuffling again! I said to myself, "Is he trying to see
what he can do with only one boot on?" Presently came
another pause and another thump on the floor. I said
"Good, he has pulled off his other boot--NOW he is done."
But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again.
I said, "Confound him, he is at it in his slippers!"
After a little came that same old pause, and right after
it that thump on the floor once more. I said, "Hang him,
he had on TWO pair of boots!" For an hour that magician
went on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed
as many as twenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge
of lunacy. I got my gun and stole up there. The fellow
was in the midst of an acre of sprawling boots, and he had
a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I mean POLISHING it.
The mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing.
He was the "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending
to business.
CHAPTER XLIV
[I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope]
After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went
out in the yard and watched the gangs of excursioning
tourists arriving and departing with their mules and guides
and porters; then we took a look through the telescope
at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant
with sunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly
five hundred yards away. With the naked eye we could
dimly make out the house at the Pierre Pointue, which is
located by the side of the great glacier, and is more
than three thousand feet above the level of the valley;
but with the telescope we could see all its details.
While I looked, a woman rode by the house on a mule, and I
saw her with sharp distinctness; I could have described
her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house,
and rein up her mule, and put her hand up to shield
her eyes from the sun. I was not used to telescopes;
in fact, I had never looked through a good one before;
it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be
so far away. I was satisfied that I could see all
these details with my naked eye; but when I tried it,
that mule and those vivid people had wholly vanished,
and the house itself was become small and vague. I tried
the telescope again, and again everything was vivid.
The strong black shadows of the mule and the woman were
flung against the side of the house, and I saw the mule's
silhouette wave its ears.
The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know
which is right--said a party were making a grand ascent,
and would come in sight on the remote upper heights,
presently; so we waited to observe this performance.
Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with
a party on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able
to say I had done it, and I believed the telescope
could set me within seven feet of the uppermost man.
The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked
him how much I owed him for as far as I had got? He said,
one franc. I asked him how much it would cost to make
the entire ascent? Three francs. I at once determined
to make the entire ascent. But first I inquired
if there was any danger? He said no--not by telescope;
said he had taken a great many parties to the summit,
and never lost a man. I asked what he would charge to let
my agent go with me, together with such guides and porters
as might be necessary. He said he would let Harris go
for two francs; and that unless we were unusually timid,
he should consider guides and porters unnecessary;
it was not customary to take them, when going by telescope,
for they were rather an encumbrance than a help.
He said that the party now on the mountain were approaching
the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should
overtake them within ten minutes, and could then join them
and have the benefit of their guides and porters without
their knowledge, and without expense to us.
I then said we would start immediately. I believe I
said it calmly, though I was conscious of a shudder
and of a paling cheek, in view of the nature of the
exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in. But the old
daredevil spirit was upon me, and I said that as I
had committed myself I would not back down; I would
ascend Mont Blanc if it cost me my life. I told the man
to slant his machine in the proper direction and let us be off.
Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened
him up and said I would hold his hand all the way; so he
gave his consent, though he trembled a little at first.
I took a last pathetic look upon the pleasant summer scene
about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass and prepared
to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows.
We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great
Glacier des Bossons, over yawning and terrific crevices
and among imposing crags and buttresses of ice which were
fringed with icicles of gigantic proportions. The desert
of ice that stretched far and wide about us was wild and
desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us
were so great that at times I was minded to turn back.
But I pulled my pluck together and pushed on.
We passed the glacier safely and began to mount
the steeps beyond, with great alacrity. When we
were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we
reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect;
an apparently limitless continent of gleaming snow was
tilted heavenward before our faces. As my eye followed
that awful acclivity far away up into the remote skies,
it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before of sublimity
and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this.
We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed.
Within three minutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us,
and stopped to observe them. They were toiling up a long,
slanting ridge of snow--twelve persons, roped together some
fifteen feet apart, marching in single file, and strongly
marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman.
We could see them lift their feet and put them down;
we saw them swing their alpenstocks forward in unison,
like so many pendulums, and then bear their weight
upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief.
They dragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way,
for they had been climbing steadily from the Grand Mulets,
on the Glacier des Dossons, since three in the morning,
and it was eleven, now. We saw them sink down in the
snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle.
After a while they moved on, and as they approached the final
short dash of the home-stretch we closed up on them and
joined them.
Presently we all stood together on the summit! What a view
was spread out below! Away off under the northwestern horizon
rolled the silent billows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy
crests glinting softly in the subdued lights of distance;
in the north rose the giant form of the Wobblehorn,
draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds;
beyond him, to the right, stretched the grand processional
summits of the Cisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a
sensuous haze; to the east loomed the colossal masses
of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn,
their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun;
beyond them shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts
of Jubbelpore and the Aigulles des Alleghenies; in the
south towered the smoking peak of Popocatapetl and the
unapproachable altitudes of the peerless Scrabblehorn;
in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas
lay dreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around
the curving horizon the eye roved over a troubled sea
of sun-kissed Alps, and noted, here and there, the noble
proportions and the soaring domes of the Bottlehorn,
and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn,
all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly
gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds.
Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant,
tremendous shout, in unison. A startled man at my elbow
said:
"Confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here
in the street?"
That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt.
I gave that man some spiritual advice and disposed of him,
and then paid the telescope man his full fee, and said
that we were charmed with the trip and would remain down,
and not reascend and require him to fetch us down by telescope.
This pleased him very much, for of course we could have
stepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble
of bringing us home if we wanted to.
I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we
went after them, but the Chief Guide put us off,
with one pretext or another, during all the time we stayed
in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all.
So much for his prejudice against people's nationality.
However, we worried him enough to make him remember
us and our ascent for some time. He even said, once,
that he wished there was a lunatic asylum in Chamonix.
This shows that he really had fears that we were going
to drive him mad. It was what we intended to do,
but lack of time defeated it.
I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other,
as to ascending Mont Blanc. I say only this: if he is at
all timid, the enjoyments of the trip will hardly make up
for the hardships and sufferings he will have to endure.
But, if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold,
firm will, and could leave his family comfortably provided
for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent
a wonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision
to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exultation
all the days of his life.
While I do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent,
I do not advise him against it. But if he elects to attempt it,
let him be warily careful of two things: chose a calm,
clear day; and do not pay the telescope man in advance.
There are dark stories of his getting advance payers on
the summit and then leaving them there to rot.
A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the
Chamonix telescopes. Think of questions and answers
like these, on an inquest:
CORONER. You saw deceased lose his life?
WITNESS. I did.
C. Where was he, at the time?
W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc.
C. Where were you?
W. In the main street of Chamonix.
C. What was the distance between you?
W. A LITTLE OVER FIVE MILES, as the bird flies.
This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the
disaster on the Matterhorn. Three adventurous English gentlemen,
[1] of great experience in mountain-climbing, made up their
minds to ascend Mont Blanc without guides or porters.
All endeavors to dissuade them from their project failed.
Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix. These huge
brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointed
skyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the
formidable look of artillery, and give the town the general
aspect of getting ready to repel a charge of angels.
The reader may easily believe that the telescopes
had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866,
for everybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was
on foot, and all had fears that misfortune would result.
All the morning the tubes remained directed toward the
mountain heights, each with its anxious group around it;
but the white deserts were vacant.
1. Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert.
At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were
looking through the telescopes cried out "There they
are!"--and sure enough, far up, on the loftiest terraces
of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared,
climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. They disappeared
in the "Corridor," and were lost to sight during an hour.
Then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together
upon the extreme summit of Mont Blanc. So, all was well.
They remained a few minutes on that highest point of land
in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, and were then
seen to begin descent. Suddenly all three vanished.
An instant after, they appeared again, TWO THOUSAND FEET
BELOW!
Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost
perpendicular slope of ice to a point where it joined
the border of the upper glacier. Naturally, the distant
witness supposed they were now looking upon three corpses;
so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently saw
two of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third.
During two hours and a half they watched the two busying
themselves over the extended form of their brother,
who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix's affairs stood still;
everybody was in the street, all interest was centered
upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stage
five miles away. Finally the two--one of them walking
with great difficulty--were seen to begin descent,
abandoning the third, who was no doubt lifeless.
Their movements were followed, step by step, until they
reached the "Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge.
Before they had had time to traverse the "Corridor"
and reappear, twilight was come, and the power of the
telescope was at an end.
The survivors had a most perilous journey before
them in the gathering darkness, for they must get
down to the Grands Mulets before they would find
a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent,
and perilous enough even in good daylight. The oldest
guides expressed the opinion that they could not succeed;
that all the chances were that they would lose their lives.
Yet those brave men did succeed. They reached the Grands
Mulets in safety. Even the fearful shock which their nerves
had sustained was not sufficient to overcome their coolness
and courage. It would appear from the official account
that they were threading their way down through those
dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock
in the morning, or later, because the rescuing party from
Chamonix reached the Grand Mulets about three in the morning
and moved thence toward the scene of the disaster under
the leadership of Sir George Young, "who had only just arrived."
After having been on his feet twenty-four hours,
in the exhausting work of mountain-climbing, Sir George
began the reascent at the head of the relief party
of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother.
This was considered a new imprudence, as the number
was too few for the service required. Another relief
party presently arrived at the cabin on the Grands
Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events.
Ten hours after Sir George's departure toward the summit,
this new relief were still scanning the snowy altitudes
above them from their own high perch among the ice
deserts ten thousand feet above the level of the sea,
but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any
living thing appearing up there.
This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number set out,
then early in the afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George
and his guides. The persons remaining at the cabin saw
these disappear, and then ensued another distressing wait.
Four hours passed, without tidings. Then at five
o'clock another relief, consisting of three guides,
set forward from the cabin. They carried food and
cordials for the refreshment of their predecessors;
they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on,
and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun
to fall.
At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent,
the official Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region
undertook the dangerous descent to Chamonix, all alone,
to get reinforcements. However, a couple of hours later,
at 7 P.M., the anxious solicitude came to an end,
and happily. A bugle note was heard, and a cluster
of black specks was distinguishable against the snows
of the upper heights. The watchers counted these specks
eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. An hour and a half
later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin.
They had brought the corpse with them. Sir George Young
tarried there but a few minutes, and then began the long
and troublesome descent from the cabin to Chamonix.
He probably reached there about two or three o'clock
in the morning, after having been afoot among the rocks
and glaciers during two days and two nights. His endurance
was equal to his daring.
The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and
the relief parties among the heights where the disaster
had happened was a thick fog--or, partly that and partly
the slow and difficult work of conveying the dead body
down the perilous steeps.
The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed
no bruises, and it was some time before the surgeons
discovered that the neck was broken. One of the surviving
brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries,
but the other had suffered no hurt at all. How these men
could fall two thousand feet, almost perpendicularly,
and live afterward, is a most strange and unaccountable thing.
A great many women have made the ascent of Mont Blanc.
An English girl, Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea,
two or three years ago, of attempting the ascent in the
middle of winter. She tried it--and she succeeded.
Moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up,
she fell in love with her guide on the summit,
and she married him when she got to the bottom again.
There is nothing in romance, in the way of a striking
"situation," which can beat this love scene in midheaven
on an isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero
and an Artic gale blowing.
The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a girl aged
twenty-two--Mlle. Maria Paradis--1809. Nobody was
with her but her sweetheart, and he was not a guide.
The sex then took a rest for about thirty years,
when a Mlle. d'Angeville made the ascent --1838. In
Chamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day
which pictured her "in the act."
However, I value it less as a work of art than as a
fashion-plate. Miss d'Angeville put on a pair of men's
pantaloons to climb it, which was wise; but she cramped
their utility by adding her petticoat, which was idiotic.
One of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition
to climb dangerous mountains has resulted in,
happened on Mont Blanc in September 1870. M. D'Arve
tells the story briefly in his HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC.
In the next chapter I will copy its chief features.
CHAPTER XLV
A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives
[Perished at the Verge of Safety]
On the 5th of September, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons
departed from Chamonix to make the ascent of Mont Blanc.
Three of the party were tourists; Messrs. Randall and Bean,
Americans, and Mr. George Corkindale, a Scotch gentleman;
there were three guides and five porters. The cabin
on the Grands Mulets was reached that day; the ascent
was resumed early the next morning, September 6th.
The day was fine and clear, and the movements of the party
were observed through the telescopes of Chamonix; at two
o'clock in the afternoon they were seen to reach the summit.
A few minutes later they were seen making the first steps
of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid
them from view.
Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came,
no one had returned to the Grands Mulets. Sylvain Couttet,
keeper of the cabin there, suspected a misfortune,
and sent down to the valley for help. A detachment of
guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedious
trip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in.
They had to wait; nothing could be attempted in such
a tempest.
The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing;
but on the 17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the
cabin and succeeded in making the ascent. In the snowy
wastes near the summit they came upon five bodies,
lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude which
suggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there,
while exhausted with fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold,
and never knew when death stole upon them. Couttet moved
a few steps further and discovered five more bodies.
The eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found,
although diligent search was made for it.
In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found
a note-book in which had been penciled some sentences
which admit us, in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the
presence of these men during their last hours of life,
and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked
upon and their failing consciousness took cognizance of:
TUESDAY, SEPT. 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc,
with ten persons--eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale
and Mr. Randall. We reached the summit at half past 2.
Immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds
of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed
in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I
was ill all night.
SEPT. 7--MORNING. The cold is excessive. The snow falls
heavily and without interruption. The guides take no rest.
EVENING. My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on
Mont Blanc, in the midst of a terrible hurricane of snow,
we have lost our way, and are in a hole scooped in the snow,
at an altitude of 15,000 feet. I have no longer any hope
of descending.
They had wandered around, and around, in the blinding
snow-storm, hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred
yards square; and when cold and fatigue vanquished them
at last, they scooped their cave and lay down there
to die by inches, UNAWARE THAT FIVE STEPS MORE WOULD HAVE
BROUGHT THEM INTO THE TRUTH PATH. They were so near
to life and safety as that, and did not suspect it.
The thought of this gives the sharpest pang that the tragic
story conveys.
The author of the HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC introduced
the closing sentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus:
"Here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand
which traces them is become chilled and torpid;
but the spirit survives, and the faith and resignation
of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity."
Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you.
We have nothing to eat, my feet are already frozen,
and I am exhausted; I have strength to write only a few
words more. I have left means for C's education; I know
you will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God,
and with loving thoughts of you. Farewell to all.
We shall meet again, in Heaven. ... I think of
you always.
It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims
with a merciful swiftness, but here the rule failed.
These men suffered the bitterest death that has been
recorded in the history of those mountains, freighted as
that history is with grisly tragedies.
CHAPTER XLVI
[Meeting a Hog on a Precipice]
Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters and ascended
to the Ho^tel des Pyramides, which is perched on the
high moraine which borders the Glacier des Bossons.
The road led sharply uphill, all the way, through grass
and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk,
barring the fatigue of the climb.
From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very
close range. After a rest we followed down a path
which had been made in the steep inner frontage
of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself.
One of the shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern,
which had been hewn in the glacier. The proprietor
of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it.
It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high.
Its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich
blue light that produced a lovely effect, and suggested
enchanted caves, and that sort of thing. When we had
proceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we turned
about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods
and heights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen
through the tender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere.
The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we
reached its inner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch
tunnel with his candles and left us buried in the bowels
of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness. We judged his
purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matches
and prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible
by setting the glacier on fire if the worst came to the
worst--but we soon perceived that this man had changed
his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious voice,
and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. By and by he
came back and pretended that that was what he had gone
behind there for. We believed as much of that as we wanted to.
Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril,
but by the exercise of the swift sagacity and cool courage
which had saved us so often, we had added another escape
to the long list. The tourist should visit that ice-cavern,
by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but I would
advise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force.
I do not consider artillery necessary, yet it would not be
unadvisable to take it along, if convenient. The journey,
going and coming, is about three miles and a half, three of
which are on level ground. We made it in less than a day,
but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressed
for time--to allow themselves two. Nothing is gained
in the Alps by over-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding
two days' work into one for the poor sake of being able
to boast of the exploit afterward. It will be found
much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days,
and then subtract one of them from the narrative.
This saves fatigue, and does not injure the narrative.
All the more thoughtful among the Alpine tourists
do this.
We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron
of guides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert.
This idiot glared at us, and said:
"You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert."
"What do we need, then?"
"Such as YOU?--an ambulance!"
I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took
my custom elsewhere.
Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five
thousand feet above the level of the sea. Here we camped
and breakfasted. There was a cabin there--the spot is
called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-cold water.
On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effect
that "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes."
We did not invest; what we wanted was to see a dead one.
A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the
new hotel on the Montanvert, and had a view of six miles,
right up the great glacier, the famous Mer de Glace.
At this point it is like a sea whose deep swales and long,
rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement and
frozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly
tossing billows of ice.
We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine,
and invaded the glacier. There were tourists of both
sexes scattered far and wide over it, everywhere, and it
had the festive look of a skating-rink.
The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She ascended
the Montanvert in 1810--but not alone; a small army
of men preceded her to clear the path--and carpet it,
perhaps--and she followed, under the protection
of SIXTY-EIGHT guides.
Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style.
It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire,
and poor Marie Louise, ex-Empress was a fugitive.
She came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants,
and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled,
soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown still
girdling her brow," and implored admittance--and was
refused! A few days before, the adulations and applauses
of a nation were sounding in her ears, and now she was come to
this!
We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we had misgivings.
The crevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious,
and it made one nervous to traverse them. The huge
round waves of ice were slippery and difficult to climb,
and the chances of tripping and sliding down them and
darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable.
In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest
of the ice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended
to be cutting steps to insure the safety of tourists.
He was "soldiering" when we came upon him, but he hopped
up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough
for a cat, and charged us a franc or two for it.
Then he sat down again, to doze till the next party
should come along. He had collected blackmail from two
or three hundred people already, that day, but had not
chipped out ice enough to impair the glacier perceptibly.
I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seems
to me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest
one I have encountered yet.
That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent
and persecuting thirst with it. What an unspeakable luxury
it was to slake that thirst with the pure and limpid
ice-water of the glacier! Down the sides of every great rib
of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved by their
own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain,
there was now a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides
and bottom of ice, and this bowl was brimming with water
of such absolute clearness that the careless observer would
not see it at all, but would think the bowl was empty.
These fountains had such an alluring look that I often
stretched myself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my
face in and drank till my teeth ached. Everywhere among
the Swiss mountains we had at hand the blessing--not
to be found in Europe EXCEPT in the mountains--of water
capable of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss
highlands brilliant little rills of exquisitely cold water
went dancing along by the roadsides, and my comrade and I
were always drinking and always delivering our deep gratitude.
But in Europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water
is flat and insipid beyond the power of words to describe.
It is served lukewarm; but no matter, ice could not help it;
it is incurably flat, incurably insipid. It is only good
to wash with; I wonder it doesn't occur to the average
inhabitant to try it for that. In Europe the people
say contemptuously, "Nobody drinks water here." Indeed,
they have a sound and sufficient reason. In many places
they even have what may be called prohibitory reasons.
In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, "Don't drink
the water, it is simply poison."
Either America is healthier than Europe, notwithstanding her
"deadly" indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep
the run of her death-rate as sharply as Europe does.
I think we do keep up the death statistics accurately;
and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities
of Europe. Every month the German government tabulates
the death-rate of the world and publishes it. I scrap-booked
these reports during several months, and it was curious
to see how regular and persistently each city repeated
its same death-rate month after month. The tables might
as well have been stereotyped, they varied so little.
These tables were based upon weekly reports showing the
average of deaths in each 1,000 population for a year.
Munich was always present with her 33 deaths in each
1,000 of her population (yearly average), Chicago was
as constant with her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48--and
so on.
Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they
are scattered so widely over the country that they furnish
a good general average of CITY health in the United States;
and I think it will be granted that our towns and villages
are healthier than our cities.
Here is the average of the only American cities reported
in the German tables:
Chicago, deaths in 1,000 population annually,
16; Philadelphia, 18; St. Louis, 18; San Francisco,
19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23.
See how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives
at the transatlantic list:
Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna, 28;
Augsburg, 28; Braunschweig, 28; K"onigsberg, 29;
Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg, 29; Berlin, 30;
Bombay, 30; Warsaw, 31; Breslau, 31; Odessa, 32;
Munich, 33; Strasburg, 33, Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35;
Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36; Prague, 37; Madras, 37;
Bucharest, 39; St. Petersburg, 40; Trieste, 40;
Alexandria (Egypt), 43; Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55.
Edinburgh is as healthy as New York--23; but there
is no CITY in the entire list which is healthier,
except Frankfort-on-the-Main--20. But Frankfort is not
as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, or Philadelphia.
Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact
that where one in 1,000 of America's population dies,
two in 1,000 of the other populations of the earth succumb.
I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think
the above statistics darkly suggest that these people
over here drink this detestable water "on the sly."
We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier,
and then crept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so,
in pretty constant danger of a tumble to the glacier below.
The fall would have been only one hundred feet, but it
would have closed me out as effectually as one thousand,
therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and was
glad when the trip was done. A moraine is an ugly thing
to assault head-first. At a distance it looks like an endless
grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed;
but close by, it is found to be made mainly of rough
boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head to that of
a cottage.
By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas, or the Villainous Road,
to translate it feelingly. It was a breakneck path
around the face of a precipice forty or fifty feet high,
and nothing to hang on to but some iron railings.
I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally
reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little,
but they were quickly blighted; for there I met a hog--a
long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout
and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly. A hog on
a pleasure excursion in Switzerland--think of it! It is
striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it.
He could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it.
It would have been foolish to stand upon our dignity
in a place where there was hardly room to stand upon
our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. There were
twenty or thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all
turned about and went back, and the hog followed behind.
The creature did not seem set up by what he had done;
he had probably done it before.
We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau
at four in the afternoon. It was a memento-factory, and
the stock was large, cheap, and varied. I bought the usual
paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had Mont Blanc,
the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region branded on
my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked
home without being tied together. This was not dangerous,
for the valley was five miles wide, and quite level.
We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next
morning we left for Geneva on top of the diligence,
under shelter of a gay awning. If I remember rightly,
there were more than twenty people up there.
It was so high that the ascent was made by ladder.
The huge vehicle was full everywhere, inside and out.
Five other diligences left at the same time, all full.
We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure,
and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the
rest of the company were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker,
and waited; consequently some of them got their seats
for one or two dollars. Baedeker knows all about hotels,
railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mind freely.
He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler.
We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many
miles away; then he lifted his majestic proportions
high into the heavens, all white and cold and solemn,
and made the rest of the world seem little and plebeian,
and cheap and trivial.
As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman
settled himself in his seat and said:
"Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features
of Swiss scenery--Mont Blanc and the goiter--now for home!"
CHAPTER XLVII
[Queer European Manners]
We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva,
that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made
for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks
never give the correct time of day by any accident.
Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are
filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one
enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon,
and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that,
and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get
out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment.
The shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in Geneva,
are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen
of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins du
Louvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering,
pursuing, and insistence have been reduced to a science.
In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic
--that is another bad feature. I was looking in at a window
at a very pretty string of beads, suitable for a child.
I was only admiring them; I had no use for them; I hardly
ever wear beads. The shopwoman came out and offered
them to me for thirty-five francs. I said it was cheap,
but I did not need them.
"Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!"
I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one
of my age and simplicity of character. She darted in and
brought them out and tried to force them into my hands,
saying:
"Ah, but only see how lovely they are! Surely monsieur will
take them; monsieur shall have them for thirty francs.
There, I have said it--it is a loss, but one must live."
I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect
my unprotected situation. But no, she dangled the beads
in the sun before my face, exclaiming, "Ah, monsieur
CANNOT resist them!" She hung them on my coat button,
folded her hand resignedly, and said: "Gone,--and for
thirty francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but
the good God will sanctify the sacrifice to me."
I removed them gently, returned them, and walked away,
shaking my head and smiling a smile of silly embarrassment
while the passers-by halted to observe. The woman leaned
out of her door, shook the beads, and screamed after me:
"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!"
I shook my head.
"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin
--but take them, only take them."
I still retreated, still wagging my head.
"MON DIEU, they shall even go for twenty-six! There,
I have said it. Come!"
I wagged another negative. A nurse and a little English girl
had been near me, and were following me, now. The shopwoman
ran to the nurse, thrust the beads into her hands, and said:
"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! Take them
to the hotel--he shall send me the money tomorrow
--next day--when he likes." Then to the child: "When thy
father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel,
and thou shall have something oh so pretty!"
I was thus providentially saved. The nurse refused
the beads squarely and firmly, and that ended the matter.
The "sights" of Geneva are not numerous. I made one
attempt to hunt up the houses once inhabited by those
two disagreeable people, Rousseau and Calvin, but I had
no success. Then I concluded to go home. I found it was
easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town
is a bewildering place. I got lost in a tangle of narrow
and crooked streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two.
Finally I found a street which looked somewhat familiar,
and said to myself, "Now I am at home, I judge." But I
was wrong; this was "HELL street." Presently I found
another place which had a familiar look, and said to myself,
"Now I am at home, sure." It was another error. This was
"PURGATORY street." After a little I said, "NOW I've got the
right place, anyway ... no, this is 'PARADISE street';
I'm further from home than I was in the beginning."
Those were queer names--Calvin was the author of them,
likely. "Hell" and "Purgatory" fitted those two streets
like a glove, but the "Paradise" appeared to be sarcastic.
I came out on the lake-front, at last, and then I knew
where I was. I was walking along before the glittering
jewelry shops when I saw a curious performance.
A lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged across the walk
in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring
himself exactly in front of her when she got to him;
he made no offer to step out of the way; he did not apologize;
he did not even notice her. She had to stop still and let
him lounge by. I wondered if he had done that piece
of brutality purposely. He strolled to a chair and seated
himself at a small table; two or three other males were
sitting at similar tables sipping sweetened water.
I waited; presently a youth came by, and this fellow got
up and served him the same trick. Still, it did not seem
possible that any one could do such a thing deliberately.
To satisfy my curiosity I went around the block, and,
sure enough, as I approached, at a good round speed, he got
up and lounged lazily across my path, fouling my course
exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight.
This proved that his previous performances had not
been accidental, but intentional.
I saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in Paris,
but not for amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed,
but simply from a selfish indifference to other people's
comfort and rights. One does not see it as frequently
in Paris as he might expect to, for there the law says,
in effect, "It is the business of the weak to get out of
the way of the strong." We fine a cabman if he runs over
a citizen; Paris fines the citizen for being run over.
At least so everybody says--but I saw something which
caused me to doubt; I saw a horseman run over an old woman
one day--the police arrested him and took him away.
That looked as if they meant to punish him.
It will not do for me to find merit in American manners
--for are they not the standing butt for the jests
of critical and polished Europe? Still, I must venture
to claim one little matter of superiority in our manners;
a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming
as she chooses, and she will never be molested by any man;
but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets
of London, even at noonday, she will be pretty likely
to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunken sailors,
but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen.
It is maintained that these people are not gentlemen,
but are a lower sort, disguised as gentlemen. The case
of Colonel Valentine Baker obstructs that argument,
for a man cannot become an officer in the British army
except he hold the rank of gentleman. This person,
finding himself alone in a railway compartment with
an unprotected girl--but it is an atrocious story,
and doubtless the reader remembers it well enough.
London must have been more or less accustomed to Bakers,
and the ways of Bakers, else London would have been
offended and excited. Baker was "imprisoned"--in a parlor;
and he could not have been more visited, or more overwhelmed
with attentions, if he had committed six murders and then
--while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after
the manner of the holy Charles Peace, of saintly memory.
Arkansaw--it seems a little indelicate to be trumpeting forth
our own superiorities, and comparisons are always odious,
but still--Arkansaw would certainly have hanged Baker.
I do not say she would have tried him first, but she would have
hanged him, anyway.
Even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested,
her sex and her weakness being her sufficient protection.
She will encounter less polish than she would in the
old world, but she will run across enough humanity to make
up for it.
The music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning,
and we rose up and made ready for a pretty formidable
walk--to Italy; but the road was so level that we took
the train.. We lost a good deal of time by this, but it
was no matter, we were not in a hurry. We were four
hours going to Chamb`ery. The Swiss trains go upward
of three miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe.
That aged French town of Chamb`ery was as quaint and crooked
as Heilbronn. A drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back
streets which made strolling through them very pleasant,
barring the almost unbearable heat of the sun.
In one of these streets, which was eight feet wide,
gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses,
I saw three fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep)
taking care of them. From queer old-fashioned windows
along the curve projected boxes of bright flowers, and over
the edge of one of these boxes hung the head and shoulders
of a cat--asleep. The five sleeping creatures were the
only living things visible in that street. There was not
a sound; absolute stillness prevailed. It was Sunday;
one is not used to such dreamy Sundays on the continent.
In our part of the town it was different that night.
A regiment of brown and battered soldiers had arrived home
from Algiers, and I judged they got thirsty on the way.
They sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air.
We left for Turin at ten the next morning by a railway which
was profusely decorated with tunnels. We forgot to take
a lantern along, consequently we missed all the scenery.
Our compartment was full. A ponderous tow-headed Swiss woman,
who put on many fine-lady airs, but was evidently more
used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in a corner
seat and put her legs across into the opposite one,
propping them intermediately with her up-ended valise.
In the seat thus pirated, sat two Americans, greatly incommoded
by that woman's majestic coffin-clad feet. One of them
begged, politely, to remove them. She opened her wide eyes
and gave him a stare, but answered nothing. By and by he
proferred his request again, with great respectfulness.
She said, in good English, and in a deeply offended tone,
that she had paid her passage and was not going to be
bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners,
even if she was alone and unprotected.
"But I have rights, also, madam. My ticket entitles me
to a seat, but you are occupying half of it."
"I will not talk with you, sir. What right have you
to speak to me? I do not know you. One would know
you came from a land where there are no gentlemen.
No GENTLEMAN would treat a lady as you have treated me."
"I come from a region where a lady would hardly give me
the same provocation."
"You have insulted me, sir! You have intimated that I am
not a lady--and I hope I am NOT one, after the pattern
of your country."
"I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head,
madam; but at the same time I must insist--always
respectfully--that you let me have my seat."
Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs.
"I never was so insulted before! Never, never! It
is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse
an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs
and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!"
"Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! I
offer a thousand pardons. And I offer them most sincerely.
I did not know--I COULD not know--anything was the matter.
You are most welcome to the seat, and would have been
from the first if I had only known. I am truly sorry it
all happened, I do assure you."
But he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her.
She simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly
unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding
the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture
and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and
humble little efforts to do something for her comfort.
Then the train halted at the Italian line and she hopped
up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any
washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see
how she had fooled me.
Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess
it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before,
I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one
is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking,
and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it.
The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares
are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome,
and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as
straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalks
are about as wide as ordinary European STREETS, and are
covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone
piers or columns. One walks from one end to the other
of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time,
and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops
and the most inviting dining-houses.
There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the
most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass,
high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles
laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place
is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering
and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers,
it is a spectacle worth seeing.
Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings,
for instance--and they are architecturally imposing,
too, as well as large. The big squares have big bronze
monuments in them. At the hotel they gave us rooms
that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match.
It was well the weather required no fire in the parlor,
for I think one might as well have tried to warm a park.
The place would have a warm look, though, in any weather,
for the window-curtains were of red silk damask,
and the walls were covered with the same fire-hued
goods--so, also, were the four sofas and the brigade
of chairs. The furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers,
the carpets, were all new and bright and costly.
We did not need a parlor at all, but they said it belonged
to the two bedrooms and we might use it if we chose.
Since it was to cost nothing, we were not averse to using it,
of course.
Turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more
book-stores to the square rod than any other town I
know of. And it has its own share of military folk.
The Italian officers' uniforms are very much the most
beautiful I have ever seen; and, as a general thing,
the men in them were as handsome as the clothes. They were
not large men, but they had fine forms, fine features,
rich olive complexions, and lustrous black eyes.
For several weeks I had been culling all the information
I could about Italy, from tourists. The tourists were
all agreed upon one thing--one must expect to be cheated
at every turn by the Italians. I took an evening walk
in Turin, and presently came across a little Punch and Judy
show in one of the great squares. Twelve or fifteen
people constituted the audience. This miniature theater
was not much bigger than a man's coffin stood on end;
the upper part was open and displayed a tinseled
parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered
for a drop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple
of candle-ends an inch long; various manikins the size
of dolls appeared on the stage and made long speeches at
each other, gesticulating a good deal, and they generally
had a fight before they got through. They were worked
by strings from above, and the illusion was not perfect,
for one saw not only the strings but the brawny hand
that manipulated them--and the actors and actresses all
talked in the same voice, too. The audience stood in front
of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performance heartily.
When the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started
around with a small copper saucer to make a collection.
I did not know how much to put in, but thought I would
be guided by my predecessors. Unluckily, I only had two
of these, and they did not help me much because they
did not put in anything. I had no Italian money,
so I put in a small Swiss coin worth about ten cents.
The youth finished his collection trip and emptied
the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk
with the concealed manager, then he came working his
way through the little crowd--seeking me, I thought.
I had a mind to slip away, but concluded I wouldn't;
I would stand my ground, and confront the villainy,
whatever it was. The youth stood before me and held
up that Swiss coin, sure enough, and said something.
I did not understand him, but I judged he was requiring
Italian money of me. The crowd gathered close,
to listen. I was irritated, and said--in English,
of course:
"I know it's Swiss, but you'll take that or none.
I haven't any other."
He tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again.
I drew my hand away, and said:
"NO, sir. I know all about you people. You can't play
any of your fraudful tricks on me. If there is a discount
on that coin, I am sorry, but I am not going to make
it good. I noticed that some of the audience didn't pay
you anything at all. You let them go, without a word,
but you come after me because you think I'm a stranger
and will put up with an extortion rather than have a scene.
But you are mistaken this time--you'll take that Swiss
money or none."
The youth stood there with the coin in his fingers,
nonplused and bewildered; of course he had not understood
a word. An English-speaking Italian spoke up, now, and said:
"You are misunderstanding the boy. He does not mean any harm.
He did not suppose you gave him so much money purposely,
so he hurried back to return you the coin lest you
might get away before you discovered your mistake.
Take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything
smooth again."
I probably blushed, then, for there was occasion.
Through the interpreter I begged the boy's pardon,
but I nobly refused to take back the ten cents. I said
I was accustomed to squandering large sums in that way
--it was the kind of person I was. Then I retired to make
a note to the effect that in Italy persons connected
with the drama do not cheat.
The episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter
in my history. I once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman
of four dollars--in a church. It happened this way.
When I was out with the Innocents Abroad, the ship
stopped in the Russian port of Odessa and I went ashore,
with others, to view the town. I got separated from the rest,
and wandered about alone, until late in the afternoon,
when I entered a Greek church to see what it was like.
When I was ready to leave, I observed two wrinkled old
women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall,
near the door, with their brown palms open to receive alms.
I contributed to the nearer one, and passed out.
I had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when it occurred to me
that I must remain ashore all night, as I had heard
that the ship's business would carry her away at four
o'clock and keep her away until morning. It was a little
after four now. I had come ashore with only two pieces
of money, both about the same size, but differing largely
in value--one was a French gold piece worth four dollars,
the other a Turkish coin worth two cents and a half.
With a sudden and horrified misgiving, I put my hand in
my pocket, now, and sure enough, I fetched out that Turkish
penny!
Here was a situation. A hotel would require pay in
advance --I must walk the street all night, and perhaps
be arrested as a suspicious character. There was but one
way out of the difficulty--I flew back to the church,
and softly entered. There stood the old woman yet,
and in the palm of the nearest one still lay my gold piece.
I was grateful. I crept close, feeling unspeakably mean;
I got my Turkish penny ready, and was extending a trembling
hand to make the nefarious exchange, when I heard a cough
behind me. I jumped back as if I had been accused,
and stood quaking while a worshiper entered and passed up
the aisle.
I was there a year trying to steal that money; that is,
it seemed a year, though, of course, it must have been
much less. The worshipers went and came; there were hardly
ever three in the church at once, but there was always one
or more. Every time I tried to commit my crime somebody
came in or somebody started out, and I was prevented;
but at last my opportunity came; for one moment there
was nobody in the church but the two beggar-women and me.
I whipped the gold piece out of the poor old pauper's palm
and dropped my Turkish penny in its place. Poor old thing,
she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart.
Then I sped away in a guilty hurry, and even when I was a mile
from the church I was still glancing back, every moment,
to see if I was being pursued.
That experience has been of priceless value and benefit
to me; for I resolved then, that as long as I lived I
would never again rob a blind beggar-woman in a church;
and I have always kept my word. The most permanent lessons
in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching,
but of experience.
CHAPTER XLVIII
[Beauty of Women--and of Old Masters]
In Milan we spent most of our time in the vast and
beautiful Arcade or Gallery, or whatever it is called.
Blocks of tall new buildings of the most sumptuous sort,
rich with decoration and graced with statues, the streets
between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height,
the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble,
arranged in tasteful patterns--little tables all over these
marble streets, people sitting at them, eating, drinking,
or smoking--crowds of other people strolling by--such
is the Arcade. I should like to live in it all the time.
The windows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open,
and one breakfasts there and enjoys the passing show.
We wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going
on in the streets. We took one omnibus ride, and as I
did not speak Italian and could not ask the price, I held
out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two.
Then he went and got his tariff card and showed me that he
had taken only the right sum. So I made a note--Italian
omnibus conductors do not cheat.
Near the Cathedral I saw another instance of probity.
An old man was peddling dolls and toy fans. Two small
American children and one gave the old man a franc
and three copper coins, and both started away; but they
were called back, and the franc and one of the coppers
were restored to them. Hence it is plain that in Italy,
parties connected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy
interests do not cheat.
The stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally.
In the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store,
we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together,
clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price.
One suit was marked forty-five francs--nine dollars.
Harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that.
Nothing easier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy,
brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped
the clothes to the hotel. He said he did not keep two
suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second
when it was needed to reclothe the dummy.
In another quarter we found six Italians engaged
in a violent quarrel. They danced fiercely about,
gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs,
their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally
with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists
in each other's very faces. We lost half an hour there,
waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced
each other affectionately, and the trouble was over.
The episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded
all the time to it if we had known nothing was going
to come of it but a reconciliation. Note made--in Italy,
people who quarrel cheat the spectator.
We had another disappointment afterward. We approached
a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it
found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating
over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece
of old blanket. Every little while he would bend down
and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme
tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no
deception--chattering away all the while--but always,
just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain,
he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further.
However, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon
with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around,
for people to see that it was all right and he was taking
no advantage--his chatter became more excited than ever.
I supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and
swallow it, so I was greatly wrought up and interested.
I got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other,
intending to give him the former if he survived and the
latter if he killed himself--for his loss would be my gain
in a literary way, and I was willing to pay a fair price
for the item --but this impostor ended his intensely
moving performance by simply adding some powder to the
liquid and polishing the spoon! Then he held it aloft,
and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he
had achieved an immortal miracle. The crowd applauded
in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history
speaks the truth when it says these children of the south
are easily entertained.
We spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long
shafts of tinted light were cleaving through the solemn
dimness from the lofty windows and falling on a pillar here,
a picture there, and a kneeling worshiper yonder.
The organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were
glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were
filing silently past them; the scene was one to sweep all
frivolous thoughts away and steep the soul in a holy calm.
A trim young American lady paused a yard or two from me,
fixed her eyes on the mellow sparks flecking the far-off altar,
bent her head reverently a moment, then straightened up,
kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught it
deftly in her hand, and marched briskly out.
We visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation
"sights"
of Milan--not because I wanted to write about them again,
but to see if I had learned anything in twelve years.
I afterward visited the great galleries of Rome and
Florence for the same purpose. I found I had learned
one thing. When I wrote about the Old Masters before,
I said the copies were better than the originals.
That was a mistake of large dimensions. The Old Masters
were still unpleasing to me, but they were truly divine
contrasted with the copies. The copy is to the original
as the pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to
the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men
and women whom it professes to duplicate. There is a
mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures,
which is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound
is to the ear. That is the merit which is most loudly
praised in the old picture, and is the one which the copy
most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must
not hope to compass. It was generally conceded by the
artists with whom I talked, that that subdued splendor,
that mellow richness, is imparted to the picture by AGE.
Then why should we worship the Old Master for it,
who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping Old Time,
who did? Perhaps the picture was a clanging bell,
until Time muffled it and sweetened it.
In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked: "What
is it that people see in the Old Masters? I have been in the
Doge's palace and I saw several acres of very bad drawing,
very bad perspective, and very incorrect proportions.
Paul Veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; all the horses
look like bladders on legs; one man had a RIGHT leg on
the left side of his body; in the large picture where
the Emperor (Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope,
there are three men in the foreground who are over
thirty feet high, if one may judge by the size of a
kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground;
and according to the same scale, the Pope is seven feet
high and the Doge is a shriveled dwarf of four feet."
The artist said:
"Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not
care much for truth and exactness in minor details;
but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective,
bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no longer
appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred
years ago, there is a SOMETHING about their pictures
which is divine--a something which is above and beyond
the art of any epoch since--a something which would be
the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect
to attain it, and therefore do not worry about it."
That is what he said--and he said what he believed;
and not only believed, but felt.
Reasoning--especially reasoning, without technical
knowledge--must be put aside, in cases of this kind.
It cannot assist the inquirer. It will lead him,
in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes
of artists, would be a most illogical conclusion.
Thus: bad drawing, bad proportion, bad perspective,
indifference to truthful detail, color which gets its
merit from time, and not from the artist--these things
constitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master
was a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old Master
at all, but an Old Apprentice. Your friend the artist
will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion;
he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable
list of confessed defects, there is still a something
that is divine and unapproachable about the Old Master,
and that there is no arguing the fact away by any system of
reasoning whatsoever.
I can believe that. There are women who have an
indefinable charm in their faces which makes them
beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger
who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty
would fail. He would say to one of these women: This
chin is too short, this nose is too long, this forehead
is too high, this hair is too red, this complexion is
too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition
is incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful.
But her nearest friend might say, and say truly,
"Your premises are right, your logic is faultless,
but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an Old
Master--she is beautiful, but only to such as know her;
it is a beauty which cannot be formulated, but it is there, just
the same."
I found more pleasure in contemplating the Old Masters
this time than I did when I was in Europe in former years,
but still it was a calm pleasure; there was nothing
overheated about it. When I was in Venice before,
I think I found no picture which stirred me much,
but this time there were two which enticed me to the Doge's
palace day after day, and kept me there hours at a time.
One of these was Tintoretto's three-acre picture in the
Great Council Chamber. When I saw it twelve years ago I
was not strongly attracted to it--the guide told me it
was an insurrection in heaven--but this was an error.
The movement of this great work is very fine. There are
ten thousand figures, and they are all doing something.
There is a wonderful "go" to the whole composition.
Some of the figures are driving headlong downward,
with clasped hands, others are swimming through the
cloud-shoals--some on their faces, some on their backs--great
processions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftly
centerward from various outlying directions--everywhere
is enthusiastic joy, there is rushing movement everywhere.
There are fifteen or twenty figures scattered here and there,
with books, but they cannot keep their attention on
their reading--they offer the books to others, but no
one wishes to read, now. The Lion of St. Mark is there
with his book; St. Mark is there with his pen uplifted;
he and the Lion are looking each other earnestly in the face,
disputing about the way to spell a word--the Lion
looks up in rapt admiration while St. Mark spells.
This is wonderfully interpreted by the artist.
It is the master-stroke of this imcomparable painting.
[Figure 10]
I visited the place daily, and never grew tired of
looking at that grand picture. As I have intimated,
the movement is almost unimaginable vigorous; the figures
are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowing trumpets.
So vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who become
absorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting
comments in each other's ears, making ear-trumpets of their
curved hands, fearing they may not otherwise be heard.
One often sees a tourist, with the eloquent tears pouring
down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife's ear,
and hears him roar through them, "OH, TO BE THERE AND
AT REST!"
None but the supremely great in art can produce effects
like these with the silent brush.
Twelve years ago I could not have appreciated this picture.
One year ago I could not have appreciated it. My study
of Art in Heidelberg has been a noble education to me.
All that I am today in Art, I owe to that.
The other great work which fascinated me was Bassano's
immortal Hair Trunk. This is in the Chamber of the Council
of Ten. It is in one of the three forty-foot pictures
which decorate the walls of the room. The composition
of this picture is beyond praise. The Hair Trunk is not
hurled at the stranger's head--so to speak--as the chief
feature of an immortal work so often is; no, it is
carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated,
it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverly held
in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to,
by the master, and consequently when the spectator reaches
it at last, he is taken unawares, he is unprepared,
and it bursts upon him with a stupefying surprise.
One is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which
this elaborate planning must have cost. A general glance
at the picture could never suggest that there was a hair
trunk in it; the Hair Trunk is not mentioned in the title
even--which is, "Pope Alexander III. and the Doge Ziani,
the Conqueror of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa";
you see, the title is actually utilized to help
divert attention from the Trunk; thus, as I say,
nothing suggests the presence of the Trunk, by any hint,
yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step.
Let us examine into this, and observe the exquisitely
artful artlessness of the plan.
At the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women,
one of them with a child looking over her shoulder at
a wounded man sitting with bandaged head on the ground.
These people seem needless, but no, they are there
for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeing
the gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers,
and banner-bearers which is passing along behind them;
one cannot see the procession without feeling the curiosity
to follow it and learn whither it is going; it leads him
to the Pope, in the center of the picture, who is talking
with the bonnetless Doge--talking tranquilly, too,
although within twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum,
and not far from the drummer two persons are blowing horns,
and many horsemen are plunging and rioting about--indeed,
twenty-two feet of this great work is all a deep and
happy holiday serenity and Sunday-school procession,
and then we come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet
of turmoil and racket and insubordination. This latter
state of things is not an accident, it has its purpose.
But for it, one would linger upon the Pope and the Doge,
thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of
the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously,
to see what the trouble is about. Now at the very END
of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture,
and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it,
the Hair Trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness
upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection,
and the great master's triumph is sweeping and complete.
From that moment no other thing in those forty feet of canvas
has any charm; one sees the Hair Trunk, and the Hair Trunk
only--and to see it is to worship it. Bassano even placed
objects in the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Feature
whose pretended purpose was to divert attention from it yet
a little longer and thus delay and augment the surprise;
for instance, to the right of it he has placed a stooping
man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eye
for a moment--to the left of it, some six feet away,
he has placed a red-coated man on an inflated horse,
and that coat plucks your eye to that locality the next
moment--then, between the Trunk and the red horseman he
has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carrying
a fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead
of on his shoulder--this admirable feat interests you,
of course--keeps you at bay a little longer, like a sock
or a jacket thrown to the pursuing wolf--but at last,
in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eye
of even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure
to fall upon the World's Masterpiece, and in that
moment he totters to his chair or leans upon his guide
for support.
Descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily
be imperfect, yet they are of value. The top of the Trunk
is arched; the arch is a perfect half-circle, in the Roman
style of architecture, for in the then rapid decadence
of Greek art, the rising influence of Rome was already
beginning to be felt in the art of the Republic.
The Trunk is bound or bordered with leather all around
where the lid joins the main body. Many critics consider
this leather too cold in tone; but I consider this
its highest merit, since it was evidently made so to
emphasize by contrast the impassioned fervor of the hasp.
The highlights in this part of the work are cleverly managed,
the MOTIF is admirably subordinated to the ground tints,
and the technique is very fine. The brass nail-heads
are in the purest style of the early Renaissance.
The strokes, here, are very firm and bold--every nail-head
is a portrait. The handle on the end of the Trunk has
evidently been retouched--I think, with a piece of chalk
--but one can still see the inspiration of the Old Master
in the tranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it. The hair
of this Trunk is REAL hair--so to speak--white in patched,
brown in patches. The details are finely worked out;
the repose proper to hair in a recumbent and inactive
attitude is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling
about this part of the work which lifts it to the highest
altitudes of art; the sense of sordid realism vanishes
away--one recognizes that there is SOUL here.
View this Trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel,
it is a miracle. Some of the effects are very daring,
approaching even to the boldest flights of the rococo,
the sirocco, and the Byzantine schools--yet the master's hand
never falters--it moves on, calm, majestic, confident--and,
with that art which conceals art, it finally casts over
the TOUT ENSEMBLE, by mysterious methods of its own,
a subtle something which refines, subdues, etherealizes the
arid components and endures them with the deep charm
and gracious witchery of poesy.
Among the art-treasures of Europe there are pictures
which approach the Hair Trunk--there are two which may
be said to equal it, possibly--but there is none that
surpasses it. So perfect is the Hair Trunk that it moves
even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art.
When an Erie baggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could
hardly keep from checking it; and once when a customs
inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon
it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly
and unconsciously placed one hand behind him with the
palm uppermost, and got out his chalk with the other.
These facts speak for themselves.
CHAPTER XLIX
[Hanged with a Golden Rope]
One lingers about the Cathedral a good deal, in Venice.
There is a strong fascination about it--partly because
it is so old, and partly because it is so ugly.
Too many of the world's famous buildings fail of one
chief virtue--harmony; they are made up of a methodless
mixture of the ugly and the beautiful; this is bad;
it is confusing, it is unrestful. One has a sense
of uneasiness, of distress, without knowing why. But one
is calm before St. Mark's, one is calm in the cellar;
for its details are masterfully ugly, no misplaced
and impertinent beauties are intruded anywhere; and the
consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, of soothing,
entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness.
One's admiration of a perfect thing always grows,
never declines; and this is the surest evidence to him
that it IS perfect. St. Mark's is perfect. To me it
soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was
difficult to stay away from it, even for a little while.
Every time its squat domes disappeared from my view,
I had a despondent feeling; whenever they reappeared,
I felt an honest rapture--I have not known any happier hours
than those I daily spent in front of Florian's, looking
across the Great Square at it. Propped on its long row
of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes,
it seemed like a vast warty bug taking a meditative walk.
St. Mark's is not the oldest building in the world, of course,
but it seems the oldest, and looks the oldest--especially inside.
When the ancient mosaics in its walls become damaged,
they are repaired but not altered; the grotesque old
pattern is preserved. Antiquity has a charm of its own,
and to smarten it up would only damage it. One day I
was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking
up at an ancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic,
illustrative of the command to "multiply and replenish
the earth." The Cathedral itself had seemed very old;
but this picture was illustrating a period in history
which made the building seem young by comparison.
But I presently found an antique which was older than either
the battered Cathedral or the date assigned to the piece
of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as large as
the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench,
and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth.
Contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this
modest fossil, those other things were flippantly
modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday.
The sense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away
under the influence of this truly venerable presence.
St. Mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer
of the profound and simply piety of the Middle Ages.
Whoever could ravish a column from a pagan temple,
did it and contributed his swag to this Christian one.
So this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitions
procured in that peculiar way. In our day it would be
immoral to go on the highway to get bricks for a church,
but it was no sin in the old times. St. Mark's was itself
the victim of a curious robbery once. The thing is set
down in the history of Venice, but it might be smuggled
into the Arabian Nights and not seem out of place
there:
Nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a Candian
named Stammato, in the suite of a prince of the house
of Este, was allowed to view the riches of St. Mark's.
His sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himself behind
an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priest
discovered him and turned him out. Afterward he got
in again--by false keys, this time. He went there,
night after night, and worked hard and patiently, all alone,
overcoming difficulty after difficulty with his toil,
and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marble
paneling which walled the lower part of the treasury;
this block he fixed so that he could take it out and put
it in at will. After that, for weeks, he spent all
his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it
in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure,
and always slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn,
with a duke's ransom under his cloak. He did not need
to grab, haphazard, and run--there was no hurry.
He could make deliberate and well-considered selections;
he could consult his esthetic tastes. One comprehends
how undisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger
of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off
a unicorn's horn--a mere curiosity--which would not pass
through the egress entire, but had to be sawn in two
--a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor.
He continued to store up his treasures at home until his
occupation lost the charm of novelty and became monotonous;
then he ceased from it, contented. Well he might be;
for his collection, raised to modern values, represented nearly
fifty million dollars!
He could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country,
and it might have been years before the plunder was missed;
but he was human--he could not enjoy his delight alone,
he must have somebody to talk about it with. So he
exacted a solemn oath from a Candian noble named Crioni,
then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breath
away with a sight of his glittering hoard. He detected
a look in his friend's face which excited his suspicion,
and was about to slip a stiletto into him when Crioni
saved himself by explaining that that look was only
an expression of supreme and happy astonishment.
Stammato made Crioni a present of one of the state's
principal jewels--a huge carbuncle, which afterward
figured in the Ducal cap of state--and the pair parted.
Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal,
and handed over the carbuncle as evidence.
Stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the
old-time Venetian promptness. He was hanged between
the two great columns in the Piazza--with a gilded rope,
out of compliment to his love of gold, perhaps. He got
no good of his booty at all--it was ALL recovered.
In Venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot
on the continent--a home dinner with a private family.
If one could always stop with private families,
when traveling, Europe would have a charm which it
now lacks. As it is, one must live in the hotels,
of course, and that is a sorrowful business.
A man accustomed to American food and American domestic
cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe;
but I think he would gradually waste away, and eventually die.
He would have to do without his accustomed morning meal.
That is too formidable a change altogether; he would
necessarily suffer from it. He could get the shadow,
the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; but it would
do him no good, and money could not buy the reality.
To particularize: the average American's simplest and
commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak;
well, in Europe, coffee is an unknown beverage. You can
get what the European hotel-keeper thinks is coffee, but it
resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resembles holiness.
It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff,
and almost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an
American hotel. The milk used for it is what the French
call "Christian" milk--milk which has been baptized.
After a few months' acquaintance with European "coffee,"
one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins
to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted
layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream,
after all, and a thing which never existed.
Next comes the European bread--fair enough, good enough,
after a fashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic;
and never any change, never any variety--always the same
tiresome thing.
Next, the butter--the sham and tasteless butter; no salt
in it, and made of goodness knows what.
Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in Europe, but they
don't know how to cook it. Neither will they cut it right.
It comes on the table in a small, round pewter platter.
It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering
bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape,
and thickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers
cut off. It is a little overdone, is rather dry,
it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses no enthusiasm.
Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing;
and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better
land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an
inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle;
dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little
melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness
and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling
out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms;
a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing
an outlying district of this ample county of beefsteak;
the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the
tenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel
also adds a great cup of American home-made coffee,
with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and
yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate
of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could
words describe the gratitude of this exile?
The European dinner is better than the European breakfast,
but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy.
He comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his
soup--there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere;
thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants
--eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps
the one that will hit the hungry place--tries it,
and is conscious that there was a something wanting
about it, also. And thus he goes on, from dish to dish,
like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting
caught every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught
after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared
about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied,
the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest,
and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly.
There is here and there an American who will say he can remember
rising from a European table d'ho^te perfectly satisfied;
but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here
and there an American who will lie.
The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such
a monotonous variety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane
dead-level of "fair-to-middling." There is nothing to
ACCENT it. Perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef--a big,
generous one--were brought on the table and carved in full
view of the client, that might give the right sense of
earnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that,
they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and so you
are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least.
Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back,
with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing
from his fat sides ... but I may as well stop there,
for they would not know how to cook him. They can't
even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it,
they do that with a hatchet.
This is about the customary table d'ho^te bill in summer:
Soup (characterless).
Fish--sole, salmon, or whiting--usually tolerably good.
Roast--mutton or beef--tasteless--and some last year's potatoes.
A pa^te, or some other made dish--usually good--"considering."
One vegetable--brought on in state, and all alone--usually
insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus.
Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper.
Lettuce-salad--tolerably good.
Decayed strawberries or cherries.
Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is
no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway.
The grapes are generally good, and sometimes there
is a tolerably good peach, by mistake.
The variations of the above bill are trifling. After a
fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent,
not real; in the third week you get what you had the first,
and in the fourth the week you get what you had the second.
Three or four months of this weary sameness will kill
the robustest appetite.
It has now been many months, at the present writing,
since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon
have one--a modest, private affair, all to myself.
I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill
of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me,
and be hot when I arrive--as follows:
Radishes. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
American coffee, with real cream.
American butter.
Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.
Broiled chicken, American style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast. Clear maple syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cherry-stone clams.
San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Oyster soup. Clam Soup.
Philadelphia Terapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style.
Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.
Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mississippi.
American roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.
Cranberry sauce. Celery.
Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore.
Prairie liens, from Illinois.
Missouri partridges, broiled.
'Possum. Coon.
Boston bacon and beans.
Bacon and greens, Southern style.
Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus.
Butter beans. Sweet potatoes.
Lettuce. Succotash. String beans.
Mashed potatoes. Catsup.
Boiled potatoes, in their skins.
New potatoes, minus the skins.
Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot.
Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes.
Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper.
Green corn, on the ear.
Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style.
Hot hoe-cake, Southern style.
Hot egg-bread, Southern style.
Hot light-bread, Southern style.
Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk.
Apple dumplings, with real cream.
Apple pie. Apple fritters.
Apple puffs, Southern style.
Peach cobbler, Southern style
Peach pie. American mince pie.
Pumpkin pie. Squash pie.
All sorts of American pastry.
Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which
are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more
liberal way. Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet,
but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.
Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels
will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. They will
find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with,
in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d'ho^te.
Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we
can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made,
not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired;
but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say,
"Where's your haggis?" and the Fijian would sigh and say,
"Where's your missionary?"
I have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment.
This has met with professional recognition. I have often
furnished recipes for cook-books. Here are some designs
for pies and things, which I recently prepared for a
friend's projected cook-book, but as I forgot to furnish
diagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out,
of course.
RECIPE FOR AN ASH-CAKE
Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse
Indian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt.
Mix well together, knead into the form of a "pone," and let
the pone stand awhile--not on its edge, but the other way.
Rake away a place among the embers, lay it there,
and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes. When it
is done, remove it; blow off all the ashes but one layer;
butter that one and eat.
N.B.--No household should ever be without this talisman.
It has been noticed that tramps never return for another
ash-cake.
----------
RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE
To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as
follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency
of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough.
Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned
up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry
in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature.
Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and
of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples;
aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron;
add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder
on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies.
Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.
----------
RECIPE FOR GERMAN COFFEE
Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory
berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former
into the water. Continue the boiling and evaporation
until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee
and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree;
then set aside to cool. Now unharness the remains of a
once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press,
and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that
pale-blue juice which a German superstition regards
as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket
of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. Mix the
beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep
a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement.
----------
TO CARVE FOWLS IN THE GERMAN FASHION
Use a club, and avoid the joints.
CHAPTER L
[Titian Bad and Titian Good]
I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is allowed
as much indecent license today as in earlier times
--but the privileges of Literature in this respect have been
sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years.
Fielding and Smollett could portray the beastliness
of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty
of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are
not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice
and guarded forms of speech. But not so with Art.
The brush may still deal freely with any subject,
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze
sarcasm at every pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see
what this last generation has been doing with the statues.
These works, which had stood in innocent nakedness for ages,
are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can
help noticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous.
But the comical thing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf
is confined to cold and pallid marble, which would be still
cold and unsuggestive without this sham and ostentatious
symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.
At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is confronted
by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with
accumulated grime--they hardly suggest human beings
--yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and
conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation.
You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little
gallery that exists in the world--the Tribune--and there,
against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf,
you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest,
the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian's Venus.
It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no,
it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I
ventured to describe that attitude, there would be a fine
howl--but there the Venus lies, for anybody to gloat
over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges.
I saw young girls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw
young men gaze long and absorbedly at her; I saw aged,
infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
How I should like to describe her--just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear
the unreflecting average man deliver himself about my
grossness and coarseness, and all that. The world says
that no worded description of a moving spectacle is
a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacle seen
with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its
son and its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast,
but won't stand a description of it in words.
Which shows that the world is not as consistent as it
might be.
There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure
thought--I am well aware of that. I am not railing
at such. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that
Titian's Venus is very far from being one of that sort.
Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it
was probably refused because it was a trifle too strong.
In truth, it is too strong for any place but a public
Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses in the Tribune;
persons who have seen them will easily remember which one I am
referring to.
In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures
of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures
portraying intolerable suffering--pictures alive
with every conceivable horror, wrought out in dreadful
detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas
every day and publicly exhibited--without a growl from
anybody--for they are innocent, they are inoffensive,
being works of art. But suppose a literary artist ventured
to go into a painstaking and elaborate description
of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin
him alive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped;
Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers.
Somebody else may cipher out the whys and the wherefores
and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time.
Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune, there is
no softening that fact, but his "Moses" glorifies it.
The simple truthfulness of its noble work wins the heart
and the applause of every visitor, be he learned or ignorant.
After wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy,
sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases
of the Old Masters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand
before this peerless child and feel that thrill which tells
you you are at last in the presence of the real thing.
This is a human child, this is genuine. You have seen him
a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here
--and you confess, without reserve, that Titian WAS a Master.
The doll-faces of other painted babes may mean one thing,
they may mean another, but with the "Moses" the case
is different. The most famous of all the art-critics
has said, "There is no room for doubt, here--plainly this
child is in trouble."
I consider that the "Moses" has no equal among the works
of the Old Masters, except it be the divine Hair Trunk
of Bassano. I feel sure that if all the other Old Masters
were lost and only these two preserved, the world would
be the gainer by it.
My sole purpose in going to Florence was to see this
immortal "Moses," and by good fortune I was just in time,
for they were already preparing to remove it to a more
private and better-protected place because a fashion
of robbing the great galleries was prevailing in Europe
at the time.
I got a capable artist to copy the picture; Pannemaker,
the engraver of Dor'e's books, engraved it for me,
and I have the pleasure of laying it before the reader
in this volume.
We took a turn to Rome and some other Italian cities
--then to Munich, and thence to Paris--partly for exercise,
but mainly because these things were in our projected program,
and it was only right that we should be faithful to it.
From Paris I branched out and walked through Holland and Belgium,
procuring an occasional lift by rail or canal when tired,
and I had a tolerably good time of it "by and large."
I worked Spain and other regions through agents to save
time and shoe-leather.
We crossed to England, and then made the homeward
passage in the Cunarder GALLIA, a very fine ship.
I was glad to get home--immeasurably glad; so glad,
in fact, that it did not seem possible that anything
could ever get me out of the country again. I had not
enjoyed a pleasure abroad which seemed to me to compare
with the pleasure I felt in seeing New York harbor again.
Europe has many advantages which we have not, but they
do not compensate for a good many still more valuable
ones which exist nowhere but in our own country.
Then we are such a homeless lot when we are over
there! So are Europeans themselves, for the matter.
They live in dark and chilly vast tombs--costly enough,
maybe, but without conveniences. To be condemned to live
as the average European family lives would make life
a pretty heavy burden to the average American family.
On the whole, I think that short visits to Europe are
better for us than long ones. The former preserve us from
becoming Europeanized; they keep our pride of country intact,
and at the same time they intensify our affection for our
country and our people; whereas long visits have the effect
of dulling those feelings--at least in the majority
of cases. I think that one who mixes much with Americans
long resident abroad must arrive at this conclusion.
APPENDIX ----------
Nothing gives such weight and dignity to a book
as an Appendix. HERODOTUS
APPENDIX A
The Portier
Omar Khay'am, the poet-prophet of Persia, writing more
than eight hundred years ago, has said:
"In the four parts of the earth are many that are able
to write learned books, many that are able to lead armies,
and many also that are able to govern kingdoms and empires;
but few there be that can keep a hotel."
A word about the European hotel PORTIER. He is a most
admirable invention, a most valuable convenience.
He always wears a conspicuous uniform; he can always
be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closely to
his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke;
he speaks from four to ten languages; he is your surest
help and refuge in time of trouble or perplexity.
He is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; he ranks above
the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen.
Instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home,
you go to the portier. It is the pride of our average
hotel clerk to know nothing whatever; it is the pride
of the portier to know everything. You ask the portier
at what hours the trains leave--he tells you instantly;
or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what
is the hack tariff; or how many children the mayor has;
or what days the galleries are open, and whether a permit
is required, and where you are to get it, and what you
must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close,
what the plays are to be, and the price of seats;
or what is the newest thing in hats; or how the bills
of mortality average; or "who struck Billy Patterson."
It does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases
out of ten he knows, and in the tenth case he will find
out for you before you can turn around three times.
There is nothing he will not put his hand to. Suppose you
tell him you wish to go from Hamburg to Peking by the way
of Jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices
--the next morning he will hand you a piece of paper with
the whole thing worked out on it to the last detail.
Before you have been long on European soil, you find
yourself still SAYING you are relying on Providence,
but when you come to look closer you will see that in reality
you are relying on the portier. He discovers what is
puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is,
before you can get the half of it out, and he promptly says,
"Leave that to me." Consequently, you easily drift into
the habit of leaving everything to him. There is a certain
embarrassment about applying to the average American
hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity
against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment in your
intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions
with an enthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their
accomplishment with an alacrity which almost inebriates.
The more requirements you can pile upon him, the better he
likes it. Of course the result is that you cease from doing
anything for yourself. He calls a hack when you want one;
puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you;
receives you like a long-lost child when you return;
sends you about your business, does all the quarreling
with the hackman himself, and pays him his money out
of his own pocket. He sends for your theater tickets,
and pays for them; he sends for any possible article
you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a
postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you will
find a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will
put you in your railway compartment, buy your tickets,
have your baggage weighed, bring you the printed tags,
and tell you everything is in your bill and paid for.
At home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing
service as this only in the best hotels of our large cities;
but in Europe you get it in the mere back country-towns just
as well.
What is the secret of the portier's devotion? It is
very simple: he gets FEES, AND NO SALARY. His fee
is pretty closely regulated, too. If you stay a week,
you give him five marks--a dollar and a quarter, or about
eighteen cents a day. If you stay a month, you reduce
this average somewhat. If you stay two or three months
or longer, you cut it down half, or even more than half.
If you stay only one day, you give the portier a mark.
The head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's;
the Boots, who not only blacks your boots and brushes
your clothes, but is usually the porter and handles your
baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than the head waiter;
the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the Boots.
You fee only these four, and no one else. A German
gentleman told me that when he remained a week in a hotel,
he gave the portier five marks, the head waiter four,
the Boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if he
stayed three months he divided ninety marks among them,
in about the above proportions. Ninety marks make
$22.50.
None of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel,
though it be a year--except one of these four servants
should go away in the mean time; in that case he will
be sure to come and bid you good-by and give you the
opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him.
It is considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you
are still to remain longer in the hotel, because if you
gave him too little he might neglect you afterward,
and if you gave him too much he might neglect somebody
else to attend to you. It is considered best to keep his
expectations "on a string" until your stay is concluded.
I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any
wages or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there
the feeing system in vogue is a heavy burden. The waiter
expects a quarter at breakfast--and gets it. You have
a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets a quarter.
Your waiter at dinner is another stranger--consequently
he gets a quarter. The boy who carries your satchel
to your room and lights your gas fumbles around and hangs
around significantly, and you fee him to get rid of him.
Now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes later
for a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar;
and by and by for a newspaper--and what is the result? Why,
a new boy has appeared every time and fooled and fumbled
around until you have paid him something. Suppose you
boldly put your foot down, and say it is the hotel's
business to pay its servants? You will have to ring your
bell ten or fifteen times before you get a servant there;
and when he goes off to fill your order you will grow old
and infirm before you see him again. You may struggle nobly
for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you are an adamantine
sort of person, but in the mean time you will have been
so wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will
haul down your colors, and go to impoverishing yourself
with fees.
It seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import
the European feeing system into America. I believe it
would result in getting even the bells of the Philadelphia
hotels answered, and cheerful service rendered.
The greatest American hotels keep a number of clerks
and a cashier, and pay them salaries which mount up
to a considerable total in the course of a year.
The great continental hotels keep a cashier on a trifling
salary, and a portier WHO PAYS THE HOTEL A SALARY.
By the latter system both the hotel and the public
save money and are better served than by our system.
One of our consuls told me that a portier of a great Berlin
hotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position,
and yet cleared six thousand dollars for himself.
The position of portier in the chief hotels of Saratoga,
Long Branch, New York, and similar centers of resort,
would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more
than five thousand dollars for, perhaps.
When we borrowed the feeing fashion from Europe a dozen
years ago, the salary system ought to have been discontinued,
of course. We might make this correction now, I should think.
And we might add the portier, too. Since I first began
to study the portier, I have had opportunities to observe
him in the chief cities of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy;
and the more I have seen of him the more I have wished
that he might be adopted in America, and become there,
as he is in Europe, the stranger's guardian angel.
Yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just
as true today: "Few there be that can keep a hotel."
Perhaps it is because the landlords and their subordinates
have in too many cases taken up their trade without first
learning it. In Europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught.
The apprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder
and masters the several grades one after the other.
Just as in our country printing-offices the apprentice
first learns how to sweep out and bring water;
then learns to "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type;
and finally rounds and completes his education with
job-work and press-work; so the landlord-apprentice serves
as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then as a parlor waiter;
then as head waiter, in which position he often has
to make out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier;
then as portier. His trade is learned now, and by and
by he will assume the style and dignity of landlord,
and be found conducting a hotel of his own.
Now in Europe, the same as in America, when a man has
kept a hotel so thoroughly well during a number of years
as to give it a great reputation, he has his reward.
He can live prosperously on that reputation. He can let
his hotel run down to the last degree of shabbiness and
yet have it full of people all the time. For instance,
there is the Ho^tel de Ville, in Milan. It swarms with mice
and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed
it could furnish dirt enough to start another one with.
The food would create an insurrection in a poorhouse;
and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel
makes up its loss by overcharging you on all sorts
of trifles--and without making any denials or excuses
about it, either. But the Ho^tel de Ville's old excellent
reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded with travelers
who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend
to warn them.
APPENDIX B
Heidelberg Castle
Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful before
the French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred
years ago. The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint,
and does not seem to stain easily. The dainty and elaborate
ornamentation upon its two chief fronts is as delicately
carved as if it had been intended for the interior of a
drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house.
Many fruit and flower clusters, human heads and grim
projecting lions' heads are still as perfect in every detail
as if they were new. But the statues which are ranked
between the windows have suffered. These are life-size
statues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar
grandees, clad in mail and bearing ponderous swords.
Some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow
is chopped off at the middle. There is a saying that if
a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across
the court to the castle front without saying anything,
he can made a wish and it will be fulfilled. But they
say that the truth of this thing has never had a chance
to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can
walk from the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty
of the palace front will extort an exclamation of delight from
him.
A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective.
This one could not have been better placed. It stands
upon a commanding elevation, it is buried in green words,
there is no level ground about it, but, on the contrary,
there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks
down through shining leaves into profound chasms and
abysses where twilight reigns and the sun cannot intrude.
Nature knows how to garnish a ruin to get the best effect.
One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one
half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as to
establish itself in a picturesque attitude. Then all it
lacked was a fitting drapery, and Nature has furnished that;
she has robed the rugged mass in flowers and verdure,
and made it a charm to the eye. The standing half
exposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open,
toothless mouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have
done their work of grace. The rear portion of the tower
has not been neglected, either, but is clothed with a
clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the wounds
and stains of time. Even the top is not left bare, but is
crowned with a flourishing group of trees and shrubs.
Misfortune has done for this old tower what it has done
for the human character sometimes--improved it.
A gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been
fine to live in the castle in the day of its prime,
but that we had one advantage which its vanished
inhabitants lacked--the advantage of having a charming
ruin to visit and muse over. But that was a hasty idea.
Those people had the advantage of US. They had the fine
castle to live in, and they could cross the Rhine valley
and muse over the stately ruin of Trifels besides.
The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago,
could go and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished,
now, to the last stone. There have always been ruins,
no doubt; and there have always been pensive people to sigh
over them, and asses to scratch upon them their names
and the important date of their visit. Within a hundred
years after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave
the usual general flourish with his hand and said: "Place
where the animals were named, ladies and gentlemen;
place where the tree of the forbidden fruit stood;
exact spot where Adam and Eve first met; and here,
ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names
and addresses of three generations of tourists, we have
the crumbling remains of Cain's altar--fine old ruin!"
Then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel apiece and let
them go.
An illumination of Heidelberg Castle is one of the
sights of Europe. The Castle's picturesque shape;
its commanding situation, midway up the steep and
wooded mountainside; its vast size--these features combine
to make an illumination a most effective spectacle.
It is necessarily an expensive show, and consequently
rather infrequent. Therefore whenever one of these exhibitions
is to take place, the news goes about in the papers and
Heidelberg is sure to be full of people on that night.
I and my agent had one of these opportunities, and improved it.
About half past seven on the appointed evening we
crossed the lower bridge, with some American students,
in a pouring rain, and started up the road which borders
the Neunheim side of the river. This roadway was densely
packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former
of all ages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes.
This black and solid mass was struggling painfully onward,
through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge.
We waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finally
took up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly
opposite the Castle. We could not SEE the Castle--or
anything else, for that matter--but we could dimly
discern the outlines of the mountain over the way,
through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts
the Castle was located. We stood on one of the hundred
benches in the garden, under our umbrellas; the other
ninety-nine were occupied by standing men and women,
and they also had umbrellas. All the region round about,
and up and down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of
humanity hidden under an unbroken pavement of carriage tops
and umbrellas. Thus we stood during two drenching hours.
No rain fell on my head, but the converging whalebone
points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little
cooling steams of water down my neck, and sometimes into
my ears, and thus kept me from getting hot and impatient.
I had the rheumatism, too, and had heard that this was
good for it. Afterward, however, I was led to believe
that the water treatment is NOT good for rheumatism.
There were even little girls in that dreadful place.
A men held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much
as an hour, with umbrella-drippings soaking into her clothing
all the time.
In the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us
to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come,
we felt repaid. It came unexpectedly, of course--things
always do, that have been long looked and longed for.
With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mast
sheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out
of the black throats of the Castle towers, accompanied by
a thundering crash of sound, and instantly every detail of
the prodigious ruin stood revealed against the mountainside
and glowing with an almost intolerable splendor of fire
and color. For some little time the whole building was
a blinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout
thick columns of rockets aloft, and overhead the sky
was radiant with arrowy bolts which clove their way to
the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, then burst
into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks.
The red fires died slowly down, within the Castle,
and presently the shell grew nearly black outside;
the angry glare that shone out through the broken arches
and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the
aspect which the Castle must have borne in the old time
when the French spoilers saw the monster bonfire which
they had made there fading and spoiling toward extinction.
While we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly
enveloped in rolling and rumbling volumes of vaporous
green fire; then in dazzling purple ones; then a mixture
of many colors followed, then drowned the great fabric
in its blended splendors. Meantime the nearest bridge
had been illuminated, and from several rafts anchored
in the river, meteor showers of rockets, Roman candles,
bombs, serpents, and Catharine wheels were being discharged
in wasteful profusion into the sky--a marvelous sight indeed
to a person as little used to such spectacles as I was.
For a while the whole region about us seemed as bright as day,
and yet the rain was falling in torrents all the time.
The evening's entertainment presently closed, and we
joined the innumerable caravan of half-drowned strangers,
and waded home again.
The Castle grounds are very ample and very beautiful;
and as they joined the Hotel grounds, with no fences
to climb, but only some nobly shaded stone stairways
to descend, we spent a part of nearly every day in
idling through their smooth walks and leafy groves.
There was an attractive spot among the trees where were
a great many wooden tables and benches; and there one could
sit in the shade and pretend to sip at his foamy beaker
of beer while he inspected the crowd. I say pretend,
because I only pretended to sip, without really sipping.
That is the polite way; but when you are ready to go,
you empty the beaker at a draught. There was a brass band,
and it furnished excellent music every afternoon.
Sometimes so many people came that every seat was occupied,
every table filled. And never a rough in the assemblage--all
nicely dressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen
and ladies and children; and plenty of university
students and glittering officers; with here and there
a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting;
and always a sprinkling of gawky foreigners.
Everybody had his glass of beer before him, or his cup
of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or his hot cutlet
and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves,
or wrought at their crocheting or embroidering;
the students fed sugar to their dogs, or discussed duels,
or illustrated new fencing tricks with their little canes;
and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and everywhere
peace and good-will to men. The trees were jubilant
with birds, and the paths with rollicking children.
One could have a seat in that place and plenty of music,
any afternoon, for about eight cents, or a family ticket
for the season for two dollars.
For a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll
to the Castle, and burrow among its dungeons, or climb
about its ruined towers, or visit its interior shows--the
great Heidelberg Tun, for instance. Everybody has heard
of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it,
no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some
traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other
traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels.
I think it likely that one of these statements is
a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere
matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence,
since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty,
history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could
excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom
in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in,
when you can get a better quality, outside, any day,
free of expense. What could this cask have been
built for? The more one studies over that, the more
uncertain and unhappy he becomes. Some historians say
that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples,
can dance on the head of this cask at the same time.
Even this does not seem to me to account for the building
of it. It does not even throw light on it. A profound
and scholarly Englishman--a specialist--who had made
the great Heidelberg Tun his sole study for fifteen years,
told me he had at last satisfied himself that the ancients
built it to make German cream in. He said that the average
German cow yielded from one to two and half teaspoons of milk,
when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagon
more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. This milk
was very sweet and good, and a beautiful transparent
bluish tint; but in order to get cream from it in the
most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary.
Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect
several milkings in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun,
fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from
time to time as the needs of the German Empire demanded.
This began to look reasonable. It certainly began
to account for the German cream which I had encountered
and marveled over in so many hotels and restaurants.
But a thought struck me--
"Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup
of milk and his own cask of water, and mix them,
without making a government matter of it?'
"Where could he get a cask large enough to contain
the right proportion of water?"
Very true. It was plain that the Englishman had studied
the matter from all sides. Still I thought I might catch
him on one point; so I asked him why the modern empire
did not make the nation's cream in the Heidelberg Tun,
instead of leaving it to rot away unused. But he answered
as one prepared--
"A patient and diligent examination of the modern German cream
had satisfied me that they do not use the Great Tun now,
because they have got a BIGGER one hid away somewhere.
Either that is the case or they empty the spring milkings
into the mountain torrents and then skim the Rhine
all summer."
There is a museum of antiquities in the Castle, and among
its most treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected
with German history. There are hundreds of these,
and their dates stretch back through many centuries.
One of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand
of a successor of Charlemagne, in the year 896.
A signature made by a hand which vanished out of this life
near a thousand years ago, is a more impressive thing than
even a ruined castle. Luther's wedding-ring was shown me;
also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era,
and an early bootjack. And there was a plaster cast
of the head of a man who was assassinated about sixty
years ago. The stab-wounds in the face were duplicated
with unpleasant fidelity. One or two real hairs
still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast.
That trifle seemed to almost change the counterfeit into
a corpse.
There are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless;
some of great interest, some of none at all. I bought a
couple--one a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other
a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe. I bought
them to start a portrait-gallery of my ancestors with.
I paid a dollar and a half for the duke and a half
for the princess. One can lay in ancestors at even
cheaper rates than these, in Europe, if he will mouse
among old picture shops and look out for chances.
APPENDIX C
The College Prison
It seems that the student may break a good many of the public
laws without having to answer to the public authorities.
His case must come before the University for trial
and punishment. If a policeman catches him in an unlawful
act and proceeds to arrest him, the offender proclaims that
he is a student, and perhaps shows his matriculation card,
whereupon the officer asks for his address, then goes
his way, and reports the matter at headquarters. If the
offense is one over which the city has no jurisdiction,
the authorities report the case officially to the University,
and give themselves no further concern about it.
The University court send for the student, listen to
the evidence, and pronounce judgment. The punishment
usually inflicted is imprisonment in the University prison.
As I understand it, a student's case is often tried
without his being present at all. Then something
like this happens: A constable in the service of the
University visits the lodgings of the said student,
knocks, is invited to come in, does so, and says politely--
"If you please, I am here to conduct you to prison."
"Ah," says the student, "I was not expecting it.
What have I been doing?"
"Two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be
disturbed by you."
"It is true; I had forgotten it. Very well: I have been
complained of, tried, and found guilty--is that it?"
"Exactly. You are sentenced to two days' solitary confinement
in the College prison, and I am sent to fetch you."
STUDENT. "O, I can't go today."
OFFICER. "If you please--why?"
STUDENT. "Because I've got an engagement."
OFFICER. "Tomorrow, then, perhaps?"
STUDENT. "No, I am going to the opera, tomorrow."
OFFICER. "Could you come Friday?"
STUDENT. (Reflectively.) "Let me see--Friday--Friday.
I don't seem to have anything on hand Friday."
OFFICER. "Then, if you please, I will expect you on Friday."
STUDENT. "All right, I'll come around Friday."
OFFICER. "Thank you. Good day, sir."
STUDENT. "Good day."
So on Friday the student goes to the prison of his
own accord, and is admitted.
It is questionable if the world's criminal history can
show a custom more odd than this. Nobody knows, now,
how it originated. There have always been many noblemen
among the students, and it is presumed that all students
are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to mar
the convenience of such folk as little as possible;
perhaps this indulgent custom owes its origin to this.
One day I was listening to some conversation upon this
subject when an American student said that for some time he
had been under sentence for a slight breach of the peace
and had promised the constable that he would presently
find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison.
I asked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go
to jail as soon as he conveniently could, so that I might
try to get in there and visit him, and see what college
captivity was like. He said he would appoint the very
first day he could spare.
His confinement was to endure twenty-four hours. He shortly
chose his day, and sent me word. I started immediately.
When I reached the University Place, I saw two gentlemen
talking together, and, as they had portfolios under
their arms, I judged they were tutors or elderly students;
so I asked them in English to show me the college jail.
I had learned to take it for granted that anybody in Germany
who knows anything, knows English, so I had stopped
afflicting people with my German. These gentlemen seemed
a trifle amused--and a trifle confused, too--but one
of them said he would walk around the corner with me
and show me the place. He asked me why I wanted to get
in there, and I said to see a friend--and for curiosity.
He doubted if I would be admitted, but volunteered to put
in a word or two for me with the custodian.
He rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved
way and then up into a small living-room, where we were
received by a hearty and good-natured German woman of fifty.
She threw up her hands with a surprised "ACH GOTT,
HERR PROFESSOR!" and exhibited a mighty deference for my
new acquaintance. By the sparkle in her eye I judged
she was a good deal amused, too. The "Herr Professor"
talked to her in German, and I understood enough of it
to know that he was bringing very plausible reasons to bear
for admitting me. They were successful. So the Herr
Professor received my earnest thanks and departed.
The old dame got her keys, took me up two or three flights
of stairs, unlocked a door, and we stood in the presence
of the criminal. Then she went into a jolly and eager
description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what
the Herr Professor had said, and so forth and so on.
Plainly, she regarded it as quite a superior joke that I had
waylaid a Professor and employed him in so odd a service.
But I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was a Professor;
therefore my conscience was not disturbed.
Now the dame left us to ourselves. The cell was not a roomy one;
still it was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell.
It had a window of good size, iron-grated; a small stove;
two wooden chairs; two oaken tables, very old and
most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces,
armorial bearings, etc.--the work of several generations
of imprisoned students; and a narrow wooden bedstead
with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows,
blankets, or coverlets--for these the student must furnish
at his own cost if he wants them. There was no carpet, of
course.
The ceiling was completely covered with names, dates,
and monograms, done with candle-smoke. The walls were
thickly covered with pictures and portraits (in profile),
some done with ink, some with soot, some with a pencil,
and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever
an inch or two of space had remained between the pictures,
the captives had written plaintive verses, or names
and dates. I do not think I was ever in a more elaborately
frescoed apartment.
Against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws.
I made a note of one or two of these. For instance:
The prisoner must pay, for the "privilege" of entering,
a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our money; for the privilege
of leaving, when his term had expired, 20 cents; for every
day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light,
12 cents a day. The jailer furnishes coffee, mornings,
for a small sum; dinners and suppers may be ordered
from outside if the prisoner chooses--and he is allowed
to pay for them, too.
Here and there, on the walls, appeared the names
of American students, and in one place the American
arms and motto were displayed in colored chalks.
With the help of my friend I translated many of the inscriptions.
Some of them were cheerful, others the reverse.
I will give the reader a few specimens:
"In my tenth semester (my best one), I am cast here
through the complaints of others. Let those who follow
me take warning."
"III TAGE OHNE GRUND ANGEBLICH AUS NEUGIERDE." Which is to say,
he had a curiosity to know what prison life was like;
so he made a breach in some law and got three days for it.
It is more than likely that he never had the same
curiosity again.
(TRANSLATION.) "E. Glinicke, four days for being too eager
a spectator of a row."
"F. Graf Bismarck--27-29, II, '74." Which means that
Count Bismarck, son of the great statesman, was a prisoner
two days in 1874.
(TRANSLATION.) "R. Diergandt--for Love--4 days."
Many people in this world have caught it heavier than
for the same indiscretion.
This one is terse. I translate:
"Four weeks for MISINTERPRETED GALLANTRY." I wish
the sufferer had explained a little more fully.
A four-week term is a rather serious matter.
There were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls,
to a certain unpopular dignitary. One sufferer had got
three days for not saluting him. Another had "here two days
slept and three nights lain awake," on account of this
same "Dr. K." In one place was a picture of Dr. K. hanging
on a gallows.
Here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time
by altering the records left by predecessors. Leaving the
name standing, and the date and length of the captivity,
they had erased the description of the misdemeanor,
and written in its place, in staring capitals, "FOR THEFT!"
or "FOR MURDER!" or some other gaudy crime. In one place,
all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word:
"Rache!" [1]
1. "Revenge!"
There was no name signed, and no date. It was an
inscription well calculated to pique curiosity.
One would greatly like to know the nature of the wrong
that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted,
and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not.
But there was no way of finding out these things.
Occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark,
"II days, for disturbing the peace," and without comment
upon the justice or injustice of the sentence.
In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the
green cap corps with a bottle of champagne in each hand;
and below was the legend: "These make an evil fate endurable."
There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on
walls or ceiling for another name or portrait or picture.
The inside surfaces of the two doors were completely
covered with CARTES DE VISITE of former prisoners,
ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt
and injury by glass.
I very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which
the prisoners had spent so many years in ornamenting
with their pocket-knives, but red tape was in the way.
The custodian could not sell one without an order from
a superior; and that superior would have to get it from
HIS superior; and this one would have to get it from
a higher one--and so on up and up until the faculty
should sit on the matter and deliver final judgment.
The system was right, and nobody could find fault with it;
but it did not seem justifiable to bother so many people,
so I proceeded no further. It might have cost me more than
I could afford, anyway; for one of those prison tables,
which was at the time in a private museum in Heidelberg,
was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fifty dollars.
It was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar
and half, before the captive students began their work
on it. Persons who saw it at the auction said it was
so curiously and wonderfully carved that it was worth
the money that was paid for it.
Among them many who have tasted the college prison's
dreary hospitality was a lively young fellow from one
of the Southern states of America, whose first year's
experience of German university life was rather peculiar.
The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name
on the college books, and was so elated with the fact
that his dearest hope had found fruition and he was
actually a student of the old and renowned university,
that he set to work that very night to celebrate the event
by a grand lark in company with some other students.
In the course of his lark he managed to make a wide
breach in one of the university's most stringent laws.
Sequel: before noon, next day, he was in the college
prison--booked for three months. The twelve long weeks
dragged slowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last.
A great crowd of sympathizing fellow-students received
him with a rousing demonstration as he came forth,
and of course there was another grand lark--in the course
of which he managed to make a wide breach of the CITY'S
most stringent laws. Sequel: before noon, next day,
he was safe in the city lockup--booked for three months.
This second tedious captivity drew to an end in the course
of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizing fellow
students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth;
but his delight in his freedom was so boundless that he
could not proceed soberly and calmly, but must go hopping
and skipping and jumping down the sleety street from sheer
excess of joy. Sequel: he slipped and broke his leg,
and actually lay in the hospital during the next three
months!
When he at last became a free man again, he said he believed
he would hunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg
lectures might be good, but the opportunities of attending
them were too rare, the educational process too slow;
he said he had come to Europe with the idea that the
acquirement of an education was only a matter of time,
but if he had averaged the Heidelberg system correctly,
it was rather a matter of eternity.
APPENDIX D
The Awful German Language
A little learning makes the whole world kin.
--Proverbs xxxii, 7.
I went often to look at the collection of curiosities
in Heidelberg Castle, and one day I surprised the keeper
of it with my German. I spoke entirely in that language.
He was greatly interested; and after I had talked a while
he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique";
and wanted to add it to his museum.
If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art,
he would also have known that it would break any
collector to buy it. Harris and I had been hard at
work on our German during several weeks at that time,
and although we had made good progress, it had been
accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance,
for three of our teachers had died in the mean time.
A person who has not studied German can form no idea
of what a perplexing language it is.
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod
and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp.
One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most
helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured
a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid
the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech,
he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make
careful note of the following EXCEPTIONS." He runs his
eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the
rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again,
to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand.
Such has been, and continues to be, my experience.
Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing
"cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant
preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with
an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground
from under me. For instance, my book inquires after
a certain bird--(it is always inquiring after things
which are of no sort of no consequence to anybody): "Where
is the bird?" Now the answer to this question--according
to the book--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith
shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would
do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well,
I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin
at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea.
I say to myself, "REGEN (rain) is masculine--or maybe it
is feminine--or possibly neuter--it is too much trouble
to look now. Therefore, it is either DER (the) Regen,
or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which
gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest
of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it
is masculine. Very well--then THE rain is DER Regen,
if it is simply in the quiescent state of being MENTIONED,
without enlargement or discussion--Nominative case;
but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general
way on the ground, it is then definitely located,
it is DOING SOMETHING--that is, RESTING (which is one
of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and
this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it
DEM Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is
doing something ACTIVELY,--it is falling--to interfere
with the bird, likely--and this indicates MOVEMENT,
which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case
and changing DEM Regen into DEN Regen." Having completed
the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up
confidently and state in German that the bird is staying
in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen."
Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark
that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence,
it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case,
regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in
the blacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens."
N.B.--I was informed, later, by a higher authority,
that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen
DEN Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances,
but that this exception is not extended to anything
BUT rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome.
An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime
and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column;
it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order,
but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed
by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any
dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one,
without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens;
it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects,
each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and
there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally,
all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together
between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed
in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other
in the middle of the last line of it--AFTER WHICH COMES
THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man
has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way
of ornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels
in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN,"
or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.
I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the
flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty.
German books are easy enough to read when you hold them
before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as
to reverse the construction--but I think that to learn
to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing
which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks
of the Parenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild
as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at
last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your
mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what
has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular
and excellent German novel--which a slight parenthesis
in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation,
and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens
for the assistance of the reader--though in the original
there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader
is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he
can:
"But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-
now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)
government counselor's wife MET," etc., etc. [1]
1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide
gehuellten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode
gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet.
That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt.
And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved
German model. You observe how far that verb is from
the reader's base of operations; well, in a German
newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page;
and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the
exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two,
they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting
to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left
in a very exhausted and ignorant state.
We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one
may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers:
but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed
writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans
it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen
and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual
fog which stands for clearness among these people.
For surely it is NOT clearness--it necessarily can't
be clearness. Even a jury would have penetration enough
to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a good
deal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence,
when he starts out to say that a man met a counselor's
wife in the street, and then right in the midst of this
so simple undertaking halts these approaching people
and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory
of the woman's dress. That is manifestly absurd.
It reminds a person of those dentists who secure your instant
and breathless interest in a tooth by taking a grip on it
with the forceps, and then stand there and drawl through
a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk.
Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste.
The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they
make by splitting a verb in two and putting half of it
at the beginning of an exciting chapter and the OTHER
HALF at the end of it. Can any one conceive of anything
more confusing than that? These things are called
"separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered
all over with separable verbs; and the wider the two
portions of one of them are spread apart, the better
the author of the crime is pleased with his performance.
A favorite one is REISTE AB--which means departed.
Here is an example which I culled from a novel and reduced
to English:
"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his
mother and sisters, and once more pressing to his bosom
his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin,
with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich
brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, still pale
from the terror and excitement of the past evening,
but longing to lay her poor aching head yet once again
upon the breast of him whom she loved more dearly than
life itself, PARTED."
However, it is not well to dwell too much on the
separable verbs. One is sure to lose his temper early;
and if he sticks to the subject, and will not be warned,
it will at last either soften his brain or petrify it.
Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance
in this language, and should have been left out.
For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE,
and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY,
and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a
language which has to make one word do the work of six--and
a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that.
But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing
which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey.
This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me,
I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.
Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity
would have been an advantage; therefore, for no other reason,
the inventor of this language complicated it all he could.
When we wish to speak of our "good friend or friends,"
in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one form and have
no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the German
tongue it is different. When a German gets his hands
on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining
it until the common sense is all declined out of it.
It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance:
SINGULAR
Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend.
Genitives--MeinES GutEN FreundES, of my good friend.
Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my good friend.
Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend.
PLURAL
N.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends. G.--MeinER gutEN
FreundE, of my good friends. D.--MeinEN gutEN FreundEN,
to my good friends. A.--MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends.
Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize
those variations, and see how soon he will be elected.
One might better go without friends in Germany than take
all this trouble about them. I have shown what a bother
it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is
only a third of the work, for there is a variety of new
distortions of the adjective to be learned when the object
is feminine, and still another when the object is neuter.
Now there are more adjectives in this language than there
are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be as
elaborately declined as the examples above suggested.
Difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it.
I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of
his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks
than one German adjective.
The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure
in complicating it in every way he could think of.
For instance, if one is casually referring to a house,
HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND, he spells these
words as I have indicated; but if he is referring to them
in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary
E and spells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE. So, as an added
E often signifies the plural, as the S does with us,
the new student is likely to go on for a month making
twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake;
and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill
afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only
got one of them, because he ignorantly bought that dog
in the Dative singular when he really supposed he was
talking plural--which left the law on the seller's side,
of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore
a suit for recovery could not lie.
In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter.
Now that is a good idea; and a good idea, in this language,
is necessarily conspicuous from its lonesomeness. I consider
this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason
of it you are almost always able to tell a noun the minute
you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you
mistake the name of a person for the name of a thing,
and waste a good deal of time trying to dig a meaning
out of it. German names almost always do mean something,
and this helps to deceive the student. I translated
a passage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress
broke loose and utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest"
(Tannenwald). When I was girding up my loins to doubt this,
I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a
man's name.
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system
in the distribution; so the gender of each must be
learned separately and by heart. There is no other way.
To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book.
In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip,
and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it
looks in print--I translate this from a conversation
in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English
maiden?
"Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds
are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless,
dogs are male, cats are female--tomcats included, of course;
a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet,
and body are of the male sex, and his head is male
or neuter according to the word selected to signify it,
and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears
it--for in Germany all the women either male heads or
sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast,
hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair,
ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience
haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language
probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in
Germany a man may THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look
into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts;
he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture;
and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the
thought that he can at least depend on a third of this
mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second
thought will quickly remind him that in this respect
he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.
In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor
of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib)
is not--which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex;
she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish
is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither.
To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description;
that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse.
A German speaks of an Englishman as the ENGLAENDER; to change
the sex, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman
--ENGLAENDERINN. That seems descriptive enough, but still
it is not exact enough for a German; so he precedes the
word with that article which indicates that the creature
to follow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die
Englaenderinn,"--which means "the she-Englishwoman."
I consider that that person is over-described.
Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great
number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he
finds it impossible to persuade his tongue to refer
to things as "he" and "she," and "him" and "her," which
it has been always accustomed to refer to it as "it."
When he even frames a German sentence in his mind,
with the hims and hers in the right places, and then works
up his courage to the utterance-point, it is no use
--the moment he begins to speak his tongue files the track
and all those labored males and females come out as "its."
And even when he is reading German to himself, he always
calls those things "it," where as he ought to read in this way:
TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]
2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and
ancient English) fashion.
It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail,
how he rattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along,
and of the Mud, how deep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife,
it is stuck fast in the Mire; it has dropped its Basket
of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scales
as it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale
has even got into its Eye. and it cannot get her out.
It opens its Mouth to cry for Help; but if any Sound comes
out of him, alas he is drowned by the raging of the Storm.
And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and she
will surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin,
she holds her in her Mouth--will she swallow her? No,
the Fishwife's brave Mother-dog deserts his Puppies and
rescues the Fin--which he eats, himself, as his Reward.
O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket;
he sets him on Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the
doomed Utensil with her red and angry Tongue; now she
attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot--she burns him up,
all but the big Toe, and even SHE is partly consumed;
and still she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues;
she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys IT; she attacks
its Hand and destroys HER also; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg
and destroys HER also; she attacks its Body and consumes HIM;
she wreathes herself about its Heart and IT is consumed;
next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder;
now she reaches its Neck--He goes; now its Chin
--IT goes; now its Nose--SHE goes. In another Moment,
except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more.
Time presses--is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy,
joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas,
the generous she-Female is too late: where now is
the fated Fishwife? It has ceased from its Sufferings,
it has gone to a better Land; all that is left of it
for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering
Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him
up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear
him to his long Rest, with the Prayer that when he rises
again it will be a Realm where he will have one good square
responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of
having a mangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him
in Spots.
----------
There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun
business is a very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue.
I suppose that in all languages the similarities of look
and sound between words which have no similarity in meaning
are a fruitful source of perplexity to the foreigner.
It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in
the German. Now there is that troublesome word VERMAEHLT:
to me it has so close a resemblance--either real or
fancied--to three or four other words, that I never know
whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married;
until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means
the latter. There are lots of such words and they are
a great torment. To increase the difficulty there are
words which SEEM to resemble each other, and yet do not;
but they make just as much trouble as if they did.
For instance, there is the word VERMIETHEN (to let,
to lease, to hire); and the word VERHEIRATHEN (another way
of saying to marry). I heard of an Englishman who knocked
at a man's door in Heidelberg and proposed, in the best
German he could command, to "verheirathen" that house.
Then there are some words which mean one thing when you
emphasize the first syllable, but mean something very
different if you throw the emphasis on the last syllable.
For instance, there is a word which means a runaway,
or the act of glancing through a book, according to the
placing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies
to ASSOCIATE with a man, or to AVOID him, according to
where you put the emphasis--and you can generally depend
on putting it in the wrong place and getting into trouble.
There are some exceedingly useful words in this language.
SCHLAG, for example; and ZUG. There are three-quarters
of a column of SCHLAGS in the dictionary, and a column
and a half of ZUGS. The word SCHLAG means Blow, Stroke,
Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar, Coin, Stamp, Kind,
Sort, Manner, Way, Apoplexy, Wood-cutting, Enclosure,
Field, Forest-clearing. This is its simple and EXACT
meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning;
but there are ways by which you can set it free,
so that it can soar away, as on the wings of the morning,
and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please
to its tail, and make it mean anything you want to.
You can begin with SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery,
and you can hang on the whole dictionary, word by word,
clear through the alphabet to SCHLAG-WASSER, which means
bilge-water--and including SCHLAG-MUTTER, which means
mother-in-law.
Just the same with ZUG. Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull,
Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction,
Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line,
Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move,
Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation,
Disposition: but that thing which it does NOT mean--when
all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not been
discovered yet.
One cannot overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG.
Armed just with these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot
the foreigner on German soil accomplish? The German word
ALSO is the equivalent of the English phrase "You know,"
and does not mean anything at all--in TALK, though it
sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his
mouth an ALSO falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites
one in two that was trying to GET out.
Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words,
is master of the situation. Let him talk right along,
fearlessly; let him pour his indifferent German forth,
and when he lacks for a word, let him heave a SCHLAG into
the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like a plug,
but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a ZUG after it;
the two together can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if,
by a miracle, they SHOULD fail, let him simply say ALSO!
and this will give him a moment's chance to think of the
needful word. In Germany, when you load your conversational
gun it is always best to throw in a SCHLAG or two and a ZUG
or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much
the rest of the charge may scatter, you are bound to bag
something with THEM. Then you blandly say ALSO, and load
up again. Nothing gives such an air of grace and elegance
and unconstraint to a German or an English conversation
as to scatter it full of "Also's" or "You knows."
In my note-book I find this entry:
July 1.--In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen
syllables was successfully removed from a patient--a
North German from near Hamburg; but as most unfortunately
the surgeons had opened him in the wrong place, under the
impression that he contained a panorama, he died.
The sad event has cast a gloom over the whole community.
That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about
one of the most curious and notable features of my
subject--the length of German words. Some German words
are so long that they have a perspective. Observe these
examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions.
And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper
at any time and see them marching majestically across
the page--and if he has any imagination he can see
the banners and hear the music, too. They impart
a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a
great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come
across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum.
In this way I have made quite a valuable collection.
When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors,
and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here rare
some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale
of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes
stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles
that literary landscape--but at the same time it is a great
distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way;
he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel
through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help,
but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw
the line somewhere--so it leaves this sort of words out.
And it is right, because these long things are hardly
legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words,
and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.
They are compound words with the hyphens left out.
The various words used in building them are in the dictionary,
but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt
the materials out, one by one, and get at the meaning
at last, but it is a tedious and harassing business.
I have tried this process upon some of the above examples.
"Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendship demonstrations,"
which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying "demonstrations
of friendship." "Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen" seems
to be "Independencedeclarations," which is no improvement
upon "Declarations of Independence," so far as I can see.
"Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be
"General-statesrepresentativesmeetings," as nearly as I
can get at it--a mere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for
"meetings of the legislature," I judge. We used to have
a good deal of this sort of crime in our literature,
but it has gone out now. We used to speak of a things as a
"never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping
it into the simple and sufficient word "memorable" and then
going calmly about our business as if nothing had happened.
In those days we were not content to embalm the thing
and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monument over it.
But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers
a little to the present day, but with the hyphens left out,
in the German fashion. This is the shape it takes:
instead of saying "Mr. Simmons, clerk of the county and
district courts, was in town yesterday," the new form put
it thus: "Clerk of the County and District Courts Simmons
was in town yesterday." This saves neither time nor ink,
and has an awkward sound besides. One often sees a remark
like this in our papers: "MRS. Assistant District Attorney
Johnson returned to her city residence yesterday for the season."
That is a case of really unjustifiable compounding;
because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confers
a title on Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to.
But these little instances are trifles indeed, contrasted
with the ponderous and dismal German system of piling
jumbled compounds together. I wish to submit the following
local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration:
"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock Night,
the inthistownstandingtavern called 'The Wagoner' was downburnt.
When the fire to the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork's
Nest reached, flew the parent Storks away. But when
the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest ITSELF caught Fire,
straightway plunged the quickreturning Mother-Stork into
the Flames and died, her Wings over her young ones outspread."
Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to
take the pathos out of that picture--indeed, it somehow
seems to strengthen it. This item is dated away back
yonder months ago. I could have used it sooner, but I
was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. I am still waiting.
"ALSO!" If I had not shown that the German is a
difficult language, I have at least intended to do so.
I have heard of an American student who was asked how he
was getting along with his German, and who answered
promptly: "I am not getting along at all. I have worked
at it hard for three level months, and all I have got
to show for it is one solitary German phrase--'ZWEI GLAS'"
(two glasses of beer). He paused for a moment, reflectively;
then added with feeling: "But I've got that SOLID!"
And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing
and infuriating study, my execution has been at fault,
and not my intent. I heard lately of a worn and sorely
tried American student who used to fly to a certain German
word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations
no longer--the only word whose sound was sweet and
precious to his ear and healing to his lacerated spirit.
This was the word DAMIT. It was only the SOUND that
helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when he
learned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable,
his only stay and support was gone, and he faded away
and died.
3. It merely means, in its general sense, "herewith."
I think that a description of any loud, stirring,
tumultuous episode must be tamer in German than in English.
Our descriptive words of this character have such
a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their German
equivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless.
Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder,
explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell.
These are magnificent words; the have a force and magnitude
of sound befitting the things which they describe.
But their German equivalents would be ever so nice to sing
the children to sleep with, or else my awe-inspiring ears
were made for display and not for superior usefulness
in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in a
battle which was called by so tame a term as a SCHLACHT?
Or would not a consumptive feel too much bundled up,
who was about to go out, in a shirt-collar and a seal-ring,
into a storm which the bird-song word GEWITTER was employed
to describe? And observe the strongest of the several
German equivalents for explosion--AUSBRUCH. Our word
Toothbrush is more powerful than that. It seems to me
that the Germans could do worse than import it into their
language to describe particularly tremendous explosions with.
The German word for hell--Hoelle--sounds more like HELLY
than anything else; therefore, how necessary chipper,
frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told
in German to go there, could he really rise to thee
dignity of feeling insulted?
Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of
this language, I now come to the brief and pleasant task
of pointing out its virtues. The capitalizing of the nouns
I have already mentioned. But far before this virtue stands
another--that of spelling a word according to the sound of it.
After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell
how any German word is pronounced without having to ask;
whereas in our language if a student should inquire of us,
"What does B, O, W, spell?" we should be obliged to reply,
"Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if off by itself;
you can only tell by referring to the context and finding
out what it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot
arrows with, or a nod of one's head, or the forward end of a
boat."
There are some German words which are singularly
and powerfully effective. For instance, those which
describe lowly, peaceful, and affectionate home life;
those which deal with love, in any and all forms,
from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward
the passing stranger, clear up to courtship; those which
deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest
aspects--with meadows and forests, and birds and flowers,
the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and the moonlight
of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal with
any and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also
which deal with the creatures and marvels of fairyland;
and lastly and chiefly, in those words which express pathos,
is the language surpassingly rich and affective. There are
German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.
That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct--it
interprets the meanings with truth and with exactness;
and so the ear is informed, and through the ear, the heart.
The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word
when it is the right one. They repeat it several times,
if they choose. That is wise. But in English, when we
have used a word a couple of times in a paragraph,
we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weak
enough to exchange it for some other word which only
approximates exactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy
is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely
inexactness is worse.
-----------
There are people in the world who will take a great
deal of trouble to point out the faults in a religion
or a language, and then go blandly about their business
without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kind
of person. I have shown that the German language
needs reforming. Very well, I am ready to reform it.
At least I am ready to make the proper suggestions.
Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but I
have devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last,
to a careful and critical study of this tongue, and thus
have acquired a confidence in my ability to reform it
which no mere superficial culture could have conferred
upon me.
In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case.
It confuses the plurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows
when he is in the Dative case, except he discover it
by accident--and then he does not know when or where it
was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it,
or how he is going to get out of it again. The Dative case
is but an ornamental folly--it is better to discard it.
In the next place, I would move the Verb further up
to the front. You may load up with ever so good a Verb,
but I notice that you never really bring down a subject
with it at the present German range--you only cripple it.
So I insist that this important part of speech should be
brought forward to a position where it may be easily seen
with the naked eye.
Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English
tongue--to swear with, and also to use in describing
all sorts of vigorous things in a vigorous ways. [4]
4. "Verdammt," and its variations and enlargements,
are words which have plenty of meaning, but the SOUNDS
are so mild and ineffectual that German ladies can use
them without sin. German ladies who could not be induced
to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly rip
out one of these harmless little words when they tear their
dresses or don't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked
as our "My gracious." German ladies are constantly saying,
"Ach! Gott!" "Mein Gott!" "Gott in Himmel!" "Herr Gott"
"Der Herr Jesus!" etc. They think our ladies have the
same custom, perhaps; for I once heard a gentle and lovely
old German lady say to a sweet young American girl:
"The two languages are so alike--how pleasant that is;
we say 'Ach! Gott!' you say 'Goddamn.'"
Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute
them accordingly to the will of the creator. This as
a tribute of respect, if nothing else.
Fifthly, I would do away with those great long
compounded words; or require the speaker to deliver
them in sections, with intermissions for refreshments.
To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas are
more easily received and digested when they come one at
a time than when they come in bulk. Intellectual food
is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial
to take it with a spoon than with a shovel.
Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done,
and not hang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen
gehabt haben geworden seins" to the end of his oration.
This sort of gewgaws undignify a speech, instead of adding
a grace. They are, therefore, an offense, and should
be discarded.
Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis,
the re-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses,
and likewise the final wide-reaching all-enclosing
king-parenthesis. I would require every individual,
be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforward tale,
or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace.
Infractions of this law should be punishable with death.
And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG,
with their pendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary.
This would simplify the language.
I have now named what I regard as the most necessary
and important changes. These are perhaps all I could
be expected to name for nothing; but there are other
suggestions which I can and will make in case my proposed
application shall result in my being formally employed
by the government in the work of reforming the language.
My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person
ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing)
in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German
in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the
latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired.
If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently
and reverently set aside among the dead languages,
for only the dead have time to learn it.
A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION IN THE GERMAN TONGUE, DELIVERED AT
A BANQUET OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN CLUB OF STUDENTS BY THE
AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK
Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this
old wonderland, this vast garden of Germany, my English
tongue has so often proved a useless piece of baggage
to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a country
where they haven't the checking system for luggage, that I
finally set to work, and learned the German language.
Also! Es freut mich dass dies so ist, denn es muss,
in ein hauptsaechlich degree, hoeflich sein, dass man
auf ein occasion like this, sein Rede in die Sprache des
Landes worin he boards, aussprechen soll. Dafuer habe ich,
aus reinische Verlegenheit--no, Vergangenheit--no, I
mean Hoflichkeit--aus reinishe Hoflichkeit habe ich
resolved to tackle this business in the German language,
um Gottes willen! Also! Sie muessen so freundlich sein,
und verzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei
Englischer Worte, hie und da, denn ich finde dass die
deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when
you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw
on a language that can stand the strain.
Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde
ich ihm spaeter dasselbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst
verlangen wollen haben werden sollen sein haette. (I don't
know what wollen haben werden sollen sein haette means,
but I notice they always put it at the end of a German
sentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness,
I suppose.)
This is a great and justly honored day--a day which is
worthy of the veneration in which it is held by the true
patriots of all climes and nationalities--a day which
offers a fruitful theme for thought and speech; und meinem
Freunde--no, meinEN FreundEN--meinES FreundES--well,
take your choice, they're all the same price; I don't
know which one is right--also! ich habe gehabt haben
worden gewesen sein, as Goethe says in his Paradise
Lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us change cars.
Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischer
hier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar
a welcome and inspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you
to it? Can the terse German tongue rise to the expression of
this impulse? Is it Freundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordneten-
versammlungenfamilieneigenthuemlichkeiten? Nein,
o nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails
to pierce the marrow of the impulse which has gathered
this friendly meeting and produced diese Anblick--eine
Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fuer die Augen
in a foreign land and a far country--eine Anblick solche
als in die gewoehnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein
"schoenes Aussicht!" Ja, freilich natuerlich wahrscheinlich
ebensowohl! Also! Die Aussicht auf dem Koenigsstuhl
mehr groesser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nicht so
schoen, lob' Gott! Because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen,
in Bruderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu feirn,
whose high benefits were not for one land and one locality,
but have conferred a measure of good upon all lands
that know liberty today, and love it. Hundert Jahre
vorueber, waren die Englaender und die Amerikaner Feinde;
aber heut sind sie herzlichen Freunde, Gott sei Dank!
May this good-fellowship endure; may these banners here
blended in amity so remain; may they never any more wave
over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which
was kindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred,
until a line drawn upon a map shall be able to say:
"THIS bars the ancestral blood from flowing in the veins
of the descendant!"
APPENDIX E
Legend of the Castles
Called the "Swallow's Nest" and "The Brothers,"
as Condensed from the Captain's Tale
In the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the Swallow's
Nest and the larger castle between it and Neckarsteinach
were owned and occupied by two old knights who were
twin brothers, and bachelors. They had no relatives.
They were very rich. They had fought through the wars
and retired to private life--covered with honorable scars.
They were honest, honorable men in their dealings,
but the people had given them a couple of nicknames which
were very suggestive--Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless.
The old knights were so proud of these names that if
a burgher called them by their right ones they would
correct them.
The most renowned scholar in Europe, at the time, was the
Herr Doctor Franz Reikmann, who lived in Heidelberg.
All Germany was proud of the venerable scholar, who lived
in the simplest way, for great scholars are always poor.
He was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet
young daughter Hildegarde and his library. He had been
all his life collecting his library, book and book,
and he lived it as a miser loves his hoarded gold.
He said the two strings of his heart were rooted,
the one in his daughter, the other in his books; and that
if either were severed he must die. Now in an evil hour,
hoping to win a marriage portion for his child, this simple
old man had entrusted his small savings to a sharper to be
ventured in a glittering speculation. But that was not
the worst of it: he signed a paper--without reading it.
That is the way with poets and scholars; they always sign
without reading. This cunning paper made him responsible
for heaps of things. The rest was that one night he
found himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand
pieces of gold!--an amount so prodigious that it simply
stupefied him to think of it. It was a night of woe in
that house.
"I must part with my library--I have nothing else.
So perishes one heartstring," said the old man.
"What will it bring, father?" asked the girl.
"Nothing! It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold;
but by auction it will go for little or nothing."
"Then you will have parted with the half of your heart
and the joy of your life to no purpose, since so mighty
of burden of debt will remain behind."
"There is no help for it, my child. Our darlings must
pass under the hammer. We must pay what we can."
"My father, I have a feeling that the dear Virgin will
come to our help. Let us not lose heart."
"She cannot devise a miracle that will turn NOTHING into
eight thousand gold pieces, and lesser help will bring
us little peace."
"She can do even greater things, my father. She will
save us, I know she will."
Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep
in his chair where he had been sitting before his books
as one who watches by his beloved dead and prints the
features on his memory for a solace in the aftertime
of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room
and gently woke him, saying--
"My presentiment was true! She will save us.
Three times has she appeared to me in my dreams, and said,
'Go to the Herr Givenaught, go to the Herr Heartless,
ask them to come and bid.' There, did I not tell you she
would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!"
Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh.
"Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their
castles stand upon as to the harder ones that lie
in those men's breasts, my child. THEY bid on books
writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own."
But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken.
Bright and early she was on her way up the Neckar road,
as joyous as a bird.
Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having
an early breakfast in the former's castle--the Sparrow's
Nest--and flavoring it with a quarrel; for although
these twins bore a love for each other which almost
amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which they
could not touch without calling each other hard names
--and yet it was the subject which they oftenest touched upon.
"I tell you," said Givenaught, "you will beggar yourself
yet with your insane squanderings of money upon
what you choose to consider poor and worthy objects.
All these years I have implored you to stop this foolish
custom and husband your means, but all in vain.
You are always lying to me about these secret benevolences,
but you never have managed to deceive me yet. Every time
a poor devil has been set upon his feet I have detected
your hand in it--incorrigible ass!"
"Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself,
you mean. Where I give one unfortunate a little private lift,
you do the same for a dozen. The idea of YOUR swelling
around the country and petting yourself with the nickname
of Givenaught--intolerable humbug! Before I would be
such a fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off.
Your life is a continual lie. But go on, I have tried MY
best to save you from beggaring yourself by your riotous
charities--now for the thousandth time I wash my hands
of the consequences. A maundering old fool! that's
what you are."
"And you a blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught,
springing up.
"I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more
delicacy than to call me such names. Mannerless swine!"
So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion.
But some lucky accident intervened, as usual, to change
the subject, and the daily quarrel ended in the customary
daily living reconciliation. The gray-headed old
eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to his
own castle.
Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence
of Herr Givenaught. He heard her story, and said--
"I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor,
I care nothing for bookish rubbish, I shall not be there."
He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor
Hildegarde's heart, nevertheless. When she was gone
the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands--
"It was a good stroke. I have saved my brother's pocket
this time, in spite of him. Nothing else would have
prevented his rushing off to rescue the old scholar,
the pride of Germany, from his trouble. The poor child
won't venture near HIM after the rebuff she has received
from his brother the Givenaught."
But he was mistaken. The Virgin had commanded,
and Hildegarde would obey. She went to Herr Heartless
and told her story. But he said coldly--
"I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me.
I wish you well, but I shall not come."
When Hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said--
"How my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would
rage if he knew how cunningly I have saved his pocket.
How he would have flown to the old man's rescue! But the
girl won't venture near him now."
When Hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she
had prospered. She said--
"The Virgin has promised, and she will keep her word;
but not in the way I thought. She knows her own ways,
and they are best."
The old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting
smile, but he honored her for her brave faith, nevertheless.
II
Next day the people assembled in the great hall
of the Ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for
the proprietor had said the treasure of Germany's most
honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place.
Hildegarde and her father sat close to the books,
silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands.
There was a great crowd of people present. The bidding began--
"How much for this precious library, just as it stands,
all complete?" called the auctioneer.
"Fifty pieces of gold!"
"A hundred!"
"Two hundred."
"Three!"
"Four!"
"Five hundred!"
"Five twenty-five."
A brief pause.
"Five forty!"
A longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions.
"Five-forty-five!"
A heavy drag--the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded,
implored--it was useless, everybody remained silent--
"Well, then--going, going--one--two--"
"Five hundred and fifty!"
This in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung
with rags, and with a green patch over his left eye.
Everybody in his vicinity turned and gazed at him.
It was Givenaught in disguise. He was using a disguised
voice, too.
"Good!" cried the auctioneer. "Going, going--one--two--"
"Five hundred and sixty!"
This, in a deep, harsh voice, from the midst of the
crowd at the other end of the room. The people near
by turned, and saw an old man, in a strange costume,
supporting himself on crutches. He wore a long white beard,
and blue spectacles. It was Herr Heartless, in disguise,
and using a disguised voice.
"Good again! Going, going--one--"
"Six hundred!"
Sensation. The crowd raised a cheer, and some one
cried out, "Go it, Green-patch!" This tickled the audience
and a score of voices shouted, "Go it, Green-patch!"
"Going--going--going--third and last call--one--two--"
"Seven hundred!"
"Huzzah!--well done, Crutches!" cried a voice. The crowd
took it up, and shouted altogether, "Well done, Crutches!"
"Splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently.
Going, going--"
"A thousand!"
"Three cheers for Green-patch! Up and at him, Crutches!"
"Going--going--"
"Two thousand!"
And while the people cheered and shouted, "Crutches" muttered,
"Who can this devil be that is fighting so to get these
useless books?--But no matter, he sha'n't have them.
The pride of Germany shall have his books if it beggars
me to buy them for him."
"Going, going, going--"
"Three thousand!"
"Come, everybody--give a rouser for Green-patch!"
And while they did it, "Green-patch" muttered, "This cripple
is plainly a lunatic; but the old scholar shall have
his books, nevertheless, though my pocket sweat for it."
"Going--going--"
"Four thousand!"
"Huzza!"
"Five thousand!"
"Huzza!"
"Six thousand!"
"Huzza!"
"Seven thousand!"
"Huzza!"
"EIGHT thousand!"
"We are saved, father! I told you the Holy Virgin
would keep her word!" "Blessed be her sacred name!"
said the old scholar, with emotion. The crowd roared,
"Huzza, huzza, huzza--at him again, Green-patch!"
"Going--going--"
"TEN thousand!" As Givenaught shouted this, his excitement
was so great that he forgot himself and used his
natural voice. He brother recognized it, and muttered,
under cover of the storm of cheers--
"Aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? Take
the books, I know what you'll do with them!"
So saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was
at an end. Givenaught shouldered his way to Hildegarde,
whispered a word in her ear, and then he also vanished.
The old scholar and his daughter embraced, and the former said,
"Truly the Holy Mother has done more than she promised,
child, for she has give you a splendid marriage portion
--think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!"
"And more still," cried Hildegarde, "for she has give
you back your books; the stranger whispered me that he
would none of them--'the honored son of Germany must
keep them,' so he said. I would I might have asked
his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing;
but he was Our Lady's angel, and it is not meet that we
of earth should venture speech with them that dwell above."
APPENDIX F
German Journals
The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, Munich,
and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan.
I speak of these because I am more familiar with them
than with any other German papers. They contain no
"editorials" whatever; no "personals"--and this is rather
a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column;
no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings
of higher courts; no information about prize-fights
or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines,
yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sporting
matters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches;
no department of curious odds and ends of floating fact
and gossip; no "rumors" about anything or anybody;
no prognostications or prophecies about anything or anybody;
no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference
to such things; no abuse of public officials, big or little,
or complaints against them, or praises of them; no religious
columns Saturdays, no rehash of cold sermons Mondays;
no "weather indications"; no "local item" unveiling of
what is happening in town--nothing of a local nature,
indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince,
or the proposed meeting of some deliberative body.
After so formidable a list of what one can't find
in a German daily, the question may well be asked,
What CAN be found in it? It is easily answered: A child's
handful of telegrams, mainly about European national and
international political movements; letter-correspondence about
the same things; market reports. There you have it.
That is what a German daily is made of. A German
daily is the slowest and saddest and dreariest of the
inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate the reader,
pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him.
Once a week the German daily of the highest class lightens
up its heavy columns--that is, it thinks it lightens
them up--with a profound, an abysmal, book criticism;
a criticism which carries you down, down, down into
the scientific bowels of the subject--for the German
critic is nothing if not scientific--and when you come
up at last and scent the fresh air and see the bonny
daylight once more, you resolve without a dissenting voice
that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten up
a German daily. Sometimes, in place of the criticism,
the first-class daily gives you what it thinks is a gay
and chipper essay--about ancient Grecian funeral customs,
or the ancient Egyptian method of tarring a mummy,
or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples
who existed before the flood did not approve of cats.
These are not unpleasant subjects; they are not
uninteresting subjects; they are even exciting subjects
--until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them.
He soon convinces you that even these matters can
be handled in such a way as to make a person low-spirited.
As I have said, the average German daily is made up
solely of correspondences--a trifle of it by telegraph,
the rest of it by mail. Every paragraph has the side-head,
"London," "Vienna," or some other town, and a date.
And always, before the name of the town, is placed a letter
or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that
the authorities can find him when they want to hang him.
Stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns
--such are some of the signs used by correspondents.
Some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly.
For instance, my Heidelberg daily was always twenty-four
hours old when it arrived at the hotel; but one of my
Munich evening papers used to come a full twenty-four hours
before it was due.
Some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoonful
of a continued story every day; it is strung across
the bottom of the page, in the French fashion.
By subscribing for the paper for five years I judge that
a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story.
If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich
daily journal, he will always tell you that there is
only one good Munich daily, and that it is published
in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. It is like saying
that the best daily paper in New York is published out
in New Jersey somewhere. Yes, the Augsburg ALLGEMEINE
ZEITUNG is "the best Munich paper," and it is the one I
had in my mind when I was describing a "first-class
German daily" above. The entire paper, opened out, is not
quite as large as a single page of the New York HERALD.
It is printed on both sides, of course; but in such large
type that its entire contents could be put, in HERALD type,
upon a single page of the HERALD--and there would still
be room enough on the page for the ZEITUNG's "supplement"
and some portion of the ZEITUNG's next day's contents.
Such is the first-class daily. The dailies actually printed
in Munich are all called second-class by the public.
If you ask which is the best of these second-class
papers they say there is no difference; one is as good
as another. I have preserved a copy of one of them;
it is called the MUENCHENER TAGES-ANZEIGER, and bears
date January 25, 1879. Comparisons are odious,
but they need not be malicious; and without any malice
I wish to compare this journals of other countries.
I know of no other way to enable the reader to "size"
the thing.
A column of an average daily paper in America contains
from 1,800 to 2,500 words; the reading-matter in a
single issue consists of from 25,000 to 50,000 words.
The reading-matter in my copy of the Munich journal
consists of a total of 1,654 words --for I counted them.
That would be nearly a column of one of our dailies.
A single issue of the bulkiest daily newspaper in the
world--the London TIMES--often contains 100,000 words
of reading-matter. Considering that the DAILY ANZEIGER
issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading
matter in a single number of the London TIMES would keep it
in "copy" two months and a half.
The ANZEIGER is an eight-page paper; its page is one
inch wider and one inch longer than a foolscap page;
that is to say, the dimensions of its page are somewhere
between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's
pocket handkerchief. One-fourth of the first page is
taken up with the heading of the journal; this gives it
a rather top-heavy appearance; the rest of the first page
is reading-matter; all of the second page is reading-matter;
the other six pages are devoted to advertisements.
The reading-matter is compressed into two hundred
and five small-pica lines, and is lighted up with eight
pica headlines. The bill of fare is as follows: First,
under a pica headline, to enforce attention and respect,
is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that,
although they are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs
of heaven; and that "When they depart from earth they soar
to heaven." Perhaps a four-line sermon in a Saturday paper
is the sufficient German equivalent of the eight or ten
columns of sermons which the New-Yorkers get in their
Monday morning papers. The latest news (two days old)
follows the four-line sermon, under the pica headline
"Telegrams"--these are "telegraphed" with a pair of
scissors out of the AUGSBURGER ZEITUNG of the day before.
These telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds lines
from Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and two and five-eights
lines from Calcutta. Thirty-three small-pica lines news
in a daily journal in a King's Capital of one hundred and
seventy thousand inhabitants is surely not an overdose.
Next we have the pica heading, "News of the Day,"
under which the following facts are set forth: Prince
Leopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines;
Prince Arnulph is coming back from Russia, two lines;
the Landtag will meet at ten o'clock in the morning and
consider an election law, three lines and one word over;
a city government item, five and one-half lines;
prices of tickets to the proposed grand Charity Ball,
twenty-three lines--for this one item occupies almost
one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to be
a wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the-Main,
with an orchestra of one hundred and eight instruments,
seven and one-half lines. That concludes the first page.
Eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page,
including three headlines. About fifty of those lines,
as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters
are not overworked.
Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with
an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them
being headlines), and "Death Notices," ten lines.
The other half of the second page is made up of two
paragraphs under the head of "Miscellaneous News."
One of these paragraphs tells about a quarrel between the Czar
of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one and a half lines;
and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of a
peasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth
of the total of the reading-matter contained in the paper.
Consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an American
daily paper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy
thousand inhabitants amounts to! Think what a mass it is.
Would any one suppose I could so snugly tuck away such a
mass in a chapter of this book that it would be difficult
to find it again in the reader lost his place? Surely not.
I will translate that child-murder word for word,
to give the reader a realizing sense of what a fifth
part of the reading-matter of a Munich daily actually
is when it comes under measurement of the eye:
"From Oberkreuzberg, January 21st, the DONAU ZEITUNG
receives a long account of a crime, which we shortened
as follows: In Rametuach, a village near Eppenschlag,
lived a young married couple with two children, one of which,
a boy aged five, was born three years before the marriage.
For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach
had bequeathed M400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless
father considered him in the way; so the unnatural
parents determined to sacrifice him in the cruelest
possible manner. They proceeded to starve him slowly
to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the
village people now make known, when it is too late.
The boy was shut in a hole, and when people passed
by he cried, and implored them to give him bread.
His long-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed
him at last, on the third of January. The sudden (sic)
death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the
body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier.
Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held
on the 6th. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then!
The body was a complete skeleton. The stomach and intestines
were utterly empty; they contained nothing whatsoever.
The flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the back of
a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood.
There was not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar
on the whole body; wounds, scars, bruises, discolored
extravasated blood, everywhere--even on the soles of
the feet there were wounds. The cruel parents asserted
that the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged
to use severe punishments, and that he finally fell over
a bench and broke his neck. However, they were arrested
two weeks after the inquest and put in the prison at Deggendorf."
Yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest."
What a home sound that has. That kind of police briskness
rather more reminds me of my native land than German
journalism does.
I think a German daily journal doesn't do any good to
speak of, but at the same time it doesn't do any harm.
That is a very large merit, and should not be lightly
weighted nor lightly thought of.
The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon
fine paper, and the illustrations are finely drawn,
finely engraved, and are not vapidly funny, but deliciously so.
So also, generally speaking, are the two or three terse
sentences which accompany the pictures. I remember one
of these pictures: A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully
contemplating some coins which lie in his open palm.
He says: "Well, begging is getting played out. Only about
five marks ($1.25) for the whole day; many an official
makes more!" And I call to mind a picture of a commercial
traveler who is about to unroll his samples:
MERCHANT (pettishly).--NO, don't. I don't want to buy anything!
DRUMMER.--If you please, I was only going to show you--
MERCHANT.--But I don't wish to see them!
DRUMMER (after a pause, pleadingly).--But do you you mind
letting ME look at them! I haven't seen them for three weeks!
End of Project Gutenberg's A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER
by Mark Twain
Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, to Lord Cromwell, on the birth of the
Prince of Wales (afterward Edward VI.).
From the National Manuscripts preserved by the British Government.
Ryght honorable, Salutem in Christo Jesu, and Syr here ys no lesse joynge
and rejossynge in thes partees for the byrth of our prynce, hoom we
hungurde for so longe, then ther was (I trow), inter vicinos att the
byrth of S. J. Baptyste, as thys berer, Master Erance, can telle you.
Gode gyffe us alle grace, to yelde dew thankes to our Lorde Gode, Gode of
Inglonde, for verely He hathe shoyd Hym selff Gode of Inglonde, or rather
an Inglyssh Gode, yf we consydyr and pondyr welle alle Hys procedynges
with us from tyme to tyme. He hath over cumme alle our yllnesse with Hys
excedynge goodnesse, so that we are now moor then compellyd to serve Hym,
seke Hys glory, promott Hys wurde, yf the Devylle of alle Devylles be
natt in us. We have now the stooppe of vayne trustes ande the stey of
vayne expectations; lett us alle pray for hys preservatione. Ande I for
my partt wylle wyssh that hys Grace allways have, and evyn now from the
begynynge, Governares, Instructores and offyceres of ryght jugmente, ne
optimum ingenium non optima educatione deprevetur.
Butt whatt a grett fowlle am I! So, whatt devotione shoyth many tymys
butt lytelle dyscretione! Ande thus the Gode of Inglonde be ever with
you in alle your procedynges.
The 19 of October.
Youres, H. L. B. of Wurcestere, now att Hartlebury.
Yf you wolde excytt thys berere to be moore hartye ayen the abuse of
ymagry or mor forwarde to promotte the veryte, ytt myght doo goode. Natt
that ytt came of me, butt of your selffe, etc.
(Addressed) To the Ryght Honorable Loorde P. Sealle hys synguler gode
Lorde.
To those good-mannered and agreeable children Susie and Clara Clemens
this book is affectionately inscribed by their father.
I will set down a tale as it was told to me by one who had it of his
father, which latter had it of HIS father, this last having in like
manner had it of HIS father--and so on, back and still back, three
hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so
preserving it. It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition.
It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it COULD have
happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old
days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it and
credited it.
Contents.
I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper.
II. Tom's early life.
III. Tom's meeting with the Prince.
IV. The Prince's troubles begin.
V. Tom as a patrician.
VI. Tom receives instructions.
VII. Tom's first royal dinner.
VIII. The question of the Seal.
IX. The river pageant.
X. The Prince in the toils.
XI. At Guildhall.
XII. The Prince and his deliverer.
XIII. The disappearance of the Prince.
XIV. 'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.'
XV. Tom as King.
XVI. The state dinner.
XVII. Foo-foo the First.
XVIII. The Prince with the tramps.
XIX. The Prince with the peasants.
XX. The Prince and the hermit.
XXI. Hendon to the rescue.
XXII. A victim of treachery.
XXIII. The Prince a prisoner.
XXIV. The escape.
XXV. Hendon Hall.
XXVI. Disowned.
XXVII. In prison.
XXVIII. The sacrifice.
XXIX. To London.
XXX. Tom's progress.
XXXI. The Recognition procession.
XXXII. Coronation Day.
XXXIII. Edward as King.
Conclusion. Justice and Retribution.
Notes.
'The quality of mercy . . . is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The thron-ed monarch better than his crown'.
Merchant of Venice.
Chapter I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper.
In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second
quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the
name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English
child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.
All England wanted him too. England had so longed for him, and hoped for
him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the
people went nearly mad for joy. Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed
each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich
and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept
this up for days and nights together. By day, London was a sight to see,
with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and splendid
pageants marching along. By night, it was again a sight to see, with its
great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revellers making merry
around them. There was no talk in all England but of the new baby,
Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins,
unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies
were tending him and watching over him--and not caring, either. But
there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor
rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble
with his presence.
Chapter II. Tom's early life.
Let us skip a number of years.
London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town--for that day.
It had a hundred thousand inhabitants--some think double as many. The
streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part
where Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge. The houses
were of wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the
third sticking its elbows out beyond the second. The higher the houses
grew, the broader they grew. They were skeletons of strong criss-cross
beams, with solid material between, coated with plaster. The beams were
painted red or blue or black, according to the owner's taste, and this
gave the houses a very picturesque look. The windows were small, glazed
with little diamond-shaped panes, and they opened outward, on hinges,
like doors.
The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called
Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety,
but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty's tribe
occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and father had a sort of
bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters,
Bet and Nan, were not restricted--they had all the floor to themselves,
and might sleep where they chose. There were the remains of a blanket or
two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not
rightly be called beds, for they were not organised; they were kicked
into a general pile, mornings, and selections made from the mass at
night, for service.
Bet and Nan were fifteen years old--twins. They were good-hearted girls,
unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant. Their mother was like
them. But the father and the grandmother were a couple of fiends. They
got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody
else who came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober;
John Canty was a thief, and his mother a beggar. They made beggars of
the children, but failed to make thieves of them. Among, but not of, the
dreadful rabble that inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the
King had turned out of house and home with a pension of a few farthings,
and he used to get the children aside and teach them right ways secretly.
Father Andrew also taught Tom a little Latin, and how to read and write;
and would have done the same with the girls, but they were afraid of the
jeers of their friends, who could not have endured such a queer
accomplishment in them.
All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty's house. Drunkenness,
riot and brawling were the order, there, every night and nearly all night
long. Broken heads were as common as hunger in that place. Yet little
Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it, but did not know it. It
was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he
supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing. When he came home
empty-handed at night, he knew his father would curse him and thrash him
first, and that when he was done the awful grandmother would do it all
over again and improve on it; and that away in the night his starving
mother would slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap or crust she
had been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding
she was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it by
her husband.
No, Tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer. He only
begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were
stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time
listening to good Father Andrew's charming old tales and legends about
giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous
kings and princes. His head grew to be full of these wonderful things,
and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw,
tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his
imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious picturings
to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace. One
desire came in time to haunt him day and night: it was to see a real
prince, with his own eyes. He spoke of it once to some of his Offal
Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that
he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.
He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge
upon them. His dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him,
by-and-by. His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby
clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad. He went
on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but, instead
of splashing around in the Thames solely for the fun of it, he began to
find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it
afforded.
Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in Cheapside,
and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London had a chance
to see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried
prisoner to the Tower, by land or boat. One summer's day he saw poor Anne
Askew and three men burned at the stake in Smithfield, and heard an
ex-Bishop preach a sermon to them which did not interest him. Yes, Tom's
life was varied and pleasant enough, on the whole.
By-and-by Tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a
strong effect upon him that he began to ACT the prince, unconsciously.
His speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the
vast admiration and amusement of his intimates. But Tom's influence
among these young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he
came to be looked up to, by them, with a sort of wondering awe, as a
superior being. He seemed to know so much! and he could do and say such
marvellous things! and withal, he was so deep and wise! Tom's remarks,
and Tom's performances, were reported by the boys to their elders; and
these, also, presently began to discuss Tom Canty, and to regard him as a
most gifted and extraordinary creature. Full-grown people brought their
perplexities to Tom for solution, and were often astonished at the wit
and wisdom of his decisions. In fact he was become a hero to all who
knew him except his own family--these, only, saw nothing in him.
Privately, after a while, Tom organised a royal court! He was the
prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords
and ladies in waiting, and the royal family. Daily the mock prince was
received with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic
readings; daily the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in
the royal council, and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his
imaginary armies, navies, and viceroyalties.
After which, he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat
his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch
himself upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in
his dreams.
And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh,
grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed
all other desires, and became the one passion of his life.
One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up
and down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour
after hour, bare-footed and cold, looking in at cook-shop windows and
longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed
there--for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is,
judging by the smell, they were--for it had never been his good luck to
own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was
murky; it was a melancholy day. At night Tom reached home so wet and
tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother
to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved--after their fashion;
wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed. For
a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on
in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to
far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled and
gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming
before them or flying to execute their orders. And then, as usual, he
dreamed that HE was a princeling himself.
All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved
among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes,
drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the
glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile,
and there a nod of his princely head.
And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about
him, his dream had had its usual effect--it had intensified the
sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. Then came bitterness, and
heart-break, and tears.
Chapter III. Tom's meeting with the Prince.
Tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy
with the shadowy splendours of his night's dreams. He wandered here and
there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was
happening around him. People jostled him, and some gave him rough
speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy. By-and-by he found
himself at Temple Bar, the farthest from home he had ever travelled in
that direction. He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his
imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London. The Strand
had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street,
but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact
row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered great
buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample
and beautiful grounds stretching to the river--grounds that are now
closely packed with grim acres of brick and stone.
Tom discovered Charing Village presently, and rested himself at the
beautiful cross built there by a bereaved king of earlier days; then
idled down a quiet, lovely road, past the great cardinal's stately
palace, toward a far more mighty and majestic palace beyond--Westminster.
Tom stared in glad wonder at the vast pile of masonry, the wide-spreading
wings, the frowning bastions and turrets, the huge stone gateway, with
its gilded bars and its magnificent array of colossal granite lions, and
other the signs and symbols of English royalty. Was the desire of his
soul to be satisfied at last? Here, indeed, was a king's palace. Might
he not hope to see a prince now--a prince of flesh and blood, if Heaven
were willing?
At each side of the gilded gate stood a living statue--that is to say, an
erect and stately and motionless man-at-arms, clad from head to heel in
shining steel armour. At a respectful distance were many country folk,
and people from the city, waiting for any chance glimpse of royalty that
might offer. Splendid carriages, with splendid people in them and
splendid servants outside, were arriving and departing by several other
noble gateways that pierced the royal enclosure.
Poor little Tom, in his rags, approached, and was moving slowly and
timidly past the sentinels, with a beating heart and a rising hope, when
all at once he caught sight through the golden bars of a spectacle that
almost made him shout for joy. Within was a comely boy, tanned and brown
with sturdy outdoor sports and exercises, whose clothing was all of
lovely silks and satins, shining with jewels; at his hip a little
jewelled sword and dagger; dainty buskins on his feet, with red heels;
and on his head a jaunty crimson cap, with drooping plumes fastened with
a great sparkling gem. Several gorgeous gentlemen stood near--his
servants, without a doubt. Oh! he was a prince--a prince, a living
prince, a real prince--without the shadow of a question; and the prayer
of the pauper-boy's heart was answered at last.
Tom's breath came quick and short with excitement, and his eyes grew big
with wonder and delight. Everything gave way in his mind instantly to
one desire: that was to get close to the prince, and have a good,
devouring look at him. Before he knew what he was about, he had his face
against the gate-bars. The next instant one of the soldiers snatched him
rudely away, and sent him spinning among the gaping crowd of country
gawks and London idlers. The soldier said,--
"Mind thy manners, thou young beggar!"
The crowd jeered and laughed; but the young prince sprang to the gate
with his face flushed, and his eyes flashing with indignation, and cried
out,--
"How dar'st thou use a poor lad like that? How dar'st thou use the King
my father's meanest subject so? Open the gates, and let him in!"
You should have seen that fickle crowd snatch off their hats then. You
should have heard them cheer, and shout, "Long live the Prince of Wales!"
The soldiers presented arms with their halberds, opened the gates, and
presented again as the little Prince of Poverty passed in, in his
fluttering rags, to join hands with the Prince of Limitless Plenty.
Edward Tudor said--
"Thou lookest tired and hungry: thou'st been treated ill. Come with
me."
Half a dozen attendants sprang forward to--I don't know what; interfere,
no doubt. But they were waved aside with a right royal gesture, and they
stopped stock still where they were, like so many statues. Edward took
Tom to a rich apartment in the palace, which he called his cabinet. By
his command a repast was brought such as Tom had never encountered before
except in books. The prince, with princely delicacy and breeding, sent
away the servants, so that his humble guest might not be embarrassed by
their critical presence; then he sat near by, and asked questions while
Tom ate.
"What is thy name, lad?"
"Tom Canty, an' it please thee, sir."
"'Tis an odd one. Where dost live?"
"In the city, please thee, sir. Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane."
"Offal Court! Truly 'tis another odd one. Hast parents?"
"Parents have I, sir, and a grand-dam likewise that is but indifferently
precious to me, God forgive me if it be offence to say it--also twin
sisters, Nan and Bet."
"Then is thy grand-dam not over kind to thee, I take it?"
"Neither to any other is she, so please your worship. She hath a wicked
heart, and worketh evil all her days."
"Doth she mistreat thee?"
"There be times that she stayeth her hand, being asleep or overcome with
drink; but when she hath her judgment clear again, she maketh it up to me
with goodly beatings."
A fierce look came into the little prince's eyes, and he cried out--
"What! Beatings?"
"Oh, indeed, yes, please you, sir."
"BEATINGS!--and thou so frail and little. Hark ye: before the night
come, she shall hie her to the Tower. The King my father"--
"In sooth, you forget, sir, her low degree. The Tower is for the great
alone."
"True, indeed. I had not thought of that. I will consider of her
punishment. Is thy father kind to thee?"
"Not more than Gammer Canty, sir."
"Fathers be alike, mayhap. Mine hath not a doll's temper. He smiteth
with a heavy hand, yet spareth me: he spareth me not always with his
tongue, though, sooth to say. How doth thy mother use thee?"
"She is good, sir, and giveth me neither sorrow nor pain of any sort.
And Nan and Bet are like to her in this."
"How old be these?"
"Fifteen, an' it please you, sir."
"The Lady Elizabeth, my sister, is fourteen, and the Lady Jane Grey, my
cousin, is of mine own age, and comely and gracious withal; but my sister
the Lady Mary, with her gloomy mien and--Look you: do thy sisters forbid
their servants to smile, lest the sin destroy their souls?"
"They? Oh, dost think, sir, that THEY have servants?"
The little prince contemplated the little pauper gravely a moment, then
said--
"And prithee, why not? Who helpeth them undress at night? Who attireth
them when they rise?"
"None, sir. Would'st have them take off their garment, and sleep
without--like the beasts?"
"Their garment! Have they but one?"
"Ah, good your worship, what would they do with more? Truly they have
not two bodies each."
"It is a quaint and marvellous thought! Thy pardon, I had not meant to
laugh. But thy good Nan and thy Bet shall have raiment and lackeys enow,
and that soon, too: my cofferer shall look to it. No, thank me not;
'tis nothing. Thou speakest well; thou hast an easy grace in it. Art
learned?"
"I know not if I am or not, sir. The good priest that is called Father
Andrew taught me, of his kindness, from his books."
"Know'st thou the Latin?"
"But scantly, sir, I doubt."
"Learn it, lad: 'tis hard only at first. The Greek is harder; but
neither these nor any tongues else, I think, are hard to the Lady
Elizabeth and my cousin. Thou should'st hear those damsels at it! But
tell me of thy Offal Court. Hast thou a pleasant life there?"
"In truth, yes, so please you, sir, save when one is hungry. There be
Punch-and-Judy shows, and monkeys--oh such antic creatures! and so
bravely dressed!--and there be plays wherein they that play do shout and
fight till all are slain, and 'tis so fine to see, and costeth but a
farthing--albeit 'tis main hard to get the farthing, please your
worship."
"Tell me more."
"We lads of Offal Court do strive against each other with the cudgel,
like to the fashion of the 'prentices, sometimes."
The prince's eyes flashed. Said he--
"Marry, that would not I mislike. Tell me more."
"We strive in races, sir, to see who of us shall be fleetest."
"That would I like also. Speak on."
"In summer, sir, we wade and swim in the canals and in the river, and
each doth duck his neighbour, and splatter him with water, and dive and
shout and tumble and--"
"'Twould be worth my father's kingdom but to enjoy it once! Prithee go
on."
"We dance and sing about the Maypole in Cheapside; we play in the sand,
each covering his neighbour up; and times we make mud pastry--oh the
lovely mud, it hath not its like for delightfulness in all the world!--we
do fairly wallow in the mud, sir, saving your worship's presence."
"Oh, prithee, say no more, 'tis glorious! If that I could but clothe me
in raiment like to thine, and strip my feet, and revel in the mud once,
just once, with none to rebuke me or forbid, meseemeth I could forego the
crown!"
"And if that I could clothe me once, sweet sir, as thou art clad--just
once--"
"Oho, would'st like it? Then so shall it be. Doff thy rags, and don
these splendours, lad! It is a brief happiness, but will be not less
keen for that. We will have it while we may, and change again before any
come to molest."
A few minutes later the little Prince of Wales was garlanded with Tom's
fluttering odds and ends, and the little Prince of Pauperdom was tricked
out in the gaudy plumage of royalty. The two went and stood side by side
before a great mirror, and lo, a miracle: there did not seem to have been
any change made! They stared at each other, then at the glass, then at
each other again. At last the puzzled princeling said--
"What dost thou make of this?"
"Ah, good your worship, require me not to answer. It is not meet that
one of my degree should utter the thing."
"Then will _I_ utter it. Thou hast the same hair, the same eyes, the
same voice and manner, the same form and stature, the same face and
countenance that I bear. Fared we forth naked, there is none could say
which was you, and which the Prince of Wales. And, now that I am clothed
as thou wert clothed, it seemeth I should be able the more nearly to feel
as thou didst when the brute soldier--Hark ye, is not this a bruise upon
your hand?"
"Yes; but it is a slight thing, and your worship knoweth that the poor
man-at-arms--"
"Peace! It was a shameful thing and a cruel!" cried the little prince,
stamping his bare foot. "If the King--Stir not a step till I come again!
It is a command!"
In a moment he had snatched up and put away an article of national
importance that lay upon a table, and was out at the door and flying
through the palace grounds in his bannered rags, with a hot face and
glowing eyes. As soon as he reached the great gate, he seized the bars,
and tried to shake them, shouting--
"Open! Unbar the gates!"
The soldier that had maltreated Tom obeyed promptly; and as the prince
burst through the portal, half-smothered with royal wrath, the soldier
fetched him a sounding box on the ear that sent him whirling to the
roadway, and said--
"Take that, thou beggar's spawn, for what thou got'st me from his
Highness!"
The crowd roared with laughter. The prince picked himself out of the
mud, and made fiercely at the sentry, shouting--
"I am the Prince of Wales, my person is sacred; and thou shalt hang for
laying thy hand upon me!"
The soldier brought his halberd to a present-arms and said mockingly--
"I salute your gracious Highness." Then angrily--"Be off, thou crazy
rubbish!"
Here the jeering crowd closed round the poor little prince, and hustled
him far down the road, hooting him, and shouting--
"Way for his Royal Highness! Way for the Prince of Wales!"
Chapter IV. The Prince's troubles begin.
After hours of persistent pursuit and persecution, the little prince was
at last deserted by the rabble and left to himself. As long as he had
been able to rage against the mob, and threaten it royally, and royally
utter commands that were good stuff to laugh at, he was very
entertaining; but when weariness finally forced him to be silent, he was
no longer of use to his tormentors, and they sought amusement elsewhere.
He looked about him, now, but could not recognise the locality. He was
within the city of London--that was all he knew. He moved on, aimlessly,
and in a little while the houses thinned, and the passers-by were
infrequent. He bathed his bleeding feet in the brook which flowed then
where Farringdon Street now is; rested a few moments, then passed on, and
presently came upon a great space with only a few scattered houses in it,
and a prodigious church. He recognised this church. Scaffoldings were
about, everywhere, and swarms of workmen; for it was undergoing elaborate
repairs. The prince took heart at once--he felt that his troubles were
at an end, now. He said to himself, "It is the ancient Grey Friars'
Church, which the king my father hath taken from the monks and given for
a home for ever for poor and forsaken children, and new-named it Christ's
Church. Right gladly will they serve the son of him who hath done so
generously by them--and the more that that son is himself as poor and as
forlorn as any that be sheltered here this day, or ever shall be."
He was soon in the midst of a crowd of boys who were running, jumping,
playing at ball and leap-frog, and otherwise disporting themselves, and
right noisily, too. They were all dressed alike, and in the fashion
which in that day prevailed among serving-men and 'prentices{1}--that is
to say, each had on the crown of his head a flat black cap about the size
of a saucer, which was not useful as a covering, it being of such scanty
dimensions, neither was it ornamental; from beneath it the hair fell,
unparted, to the middle of the forehead, and was cropped straight around;
a clerical band at the neck; a blue gown that fitted closely and hung as
low as the knees or lower; full sleeves; a broad red belt; bright yellow
stockings, gartered above the knees; low shoes with large metal buckles.
It was a sufficiently ugly costume.
The boys stopped their play and flocked about the prince, who said with
native dignity--
"Good lads, say to your master that Edward Prince of Wales desireth
speech with him."
A great shout went up at this, and one rude fellow said--
"Marry, art thou his grace's messenger, beggar?"
The prince's face flushed with anger, and his ready hand flew to his hip,
but there was nothing there. There was a storm of laughter, and one boy
said--
"Didst mark that? He fancied he had a sword--belike he is the prince
himself."
This sally brought more laughter. Poor Edward drew himself up proudly
and said--
"I am the prince; and it ill beseemeth you that feed upon the king my
father's bounty to use me so."
This was vastly enjoyed, as the laughter testified. The youth who had
first spoken, shouted to his comrades--
"Ho, swine, slaves, pensioners of his grace's princely father, where be
your manners? Down on your marrow bones, all of ye, and do reverence to
his kingly port and royal rags!"
With boisterous mirth they dropped upon their knees in a body and did
mock homage to their prey. The prince spurned the nearest boy with his
foot, and said fiercely--
"Take thou that, till the morrow come and I build thee a gibbet!"
Ah, but this was not a joke--this was going beyond fun. The laughter
ceased on the instant, and fury took its place. A dozen shouted--
"Hale him forth! To the horse-pond, to the horse-pond! Where be the
dogs? Ho, there, Lion! ho, Fangs!"
Then followed such a thing as England had never seen before--the sacred
person of the heir to the throne rudely buffeted by plebeian hands, and
set upon and torn by dogs.
As night drew to a close that day, the prince found himself far down in
the close-built portion of the city. His body was bruised, his hands
were bleeding, and his rags were all besmirched with mud. He wandered on
and on, and grew more and more bewildered, and so tired and faint he
could hardly drag one foot after the other. He had ceased to ask
questions of anyone, since they brought him only insult instead of
information. He kept muttering to himself, "Offal Court--that is the
name; if I can but find it before my strength is wholly spent and I drop,
then am I saved--for his people will take me to the palace and prove that
I am none of theirs, but the true prince, and I shall have mine own
again." And now and then his mind reverted to his treatment by those
rude Christ's Hospital boys, and he said, "When I am king, they shall not
have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books; for a full
belly is little worth where the mind is starved, and the heart. I will
keep this diligently in my remembrance, that this day's lesson be not
lost upon me, and my people suffer thereby; for learning softeneth the
heart and breedeth gentleness and charity." {1}
The lights began to twinkle, it came on to rain, the wind rose, and a raw
and gusty night set in. The houseless prince, the homeless heir to the
throne of England, still moved on, drifting deeper into the maze of
squalid alleys where the swarming hives of poverty and misery were massed
together.
Suddenly a great drunken ruffian collared him and said--
"Out to this time of night again, and hast not brought a farthing home, I
warrant me! If it be so, an' I do not break all the bones in thy lean
body, then am I not John Canty, but some other."
The prince twisted himself loose, unconsciously brushed his profaned
shoulder, and eagerly said--
"Oh, art HIS father, truly? Sweet heaven grant it be so--then wilt thou
fetch him away and restore me!"
"HIS father? I know not what thou mean'st; I but know I am THY father,
as thou shalt soon have cause to--"
"Oh, jest not, palter not, delay not!--I am worn, I am wounded, I can
bear no more. Take me to the king my father, and he will make thee rich
beyond thy wildest dreams. Believe me, man, believe me!--I speak no lie,
but only the truth!--put forth thy hand and save me! I am indeed the
Prince of Wales!"
The man stared down, stupefied, upon the lad, then shook his head and
muttered--
"Gone stark mad as any Tom o' Bedlam!"--then collared him once more, and
said with a coarse laugh and an oath, "But mad or no mad, I and thy
Gammer Canty will soon find where the soft places in thy bones lie, or
I'm no true man!"
With this he dragged the frantic and struggling prince away, and
disappeared up a front court followed by a delighted and noisy swarm of
human vermin.
Chapter V. Tom as a patrician.
Tom Canty, left alone in the prince's cabinet, made good use of his
opportunity. He turned himself this way and that before the great
mirror, admiring his finery; then walked away, imitating the prince's
high-bred carriage, and still observing results in the glass. Next he
drew the beautiful sword, and bowed, kissing the blade, and laying it
across his breast, as he had seen a noble knight do, by way of salute to
the lieutenant of the Tower, five or six weeks before, when delivering
the great lords of Norfolk and Surrey into his hands for captivity. Tom
played with the jewelled dagger that hung upon his thigh; he examined the
costly and exquisite ornaments of the room; he tried each of the
sumptuous chairs, and thought how proud he would be if the Offal Court
herd could only peep in and see him in his grandeur. He wondered if they
would believe the marvellous tale he should tell when he got home, or if
they would shake their heads, and say his overtaxed imagination had at
last upset his reason.
At the end of half an hour it suddenly occurred to him that the prince
was gone a long time; then right away he began to feel lonely; very soon
he fell to listening and longing, and ceased to toy with the pretty
things about him; he grew uneasy, then restless, then distressed.
Suppose some one should come, and catch him in the prince's clothes, and
the prince not there to explain. Might they not hang him at once, and
inquire into his case afterward? He had heard that the great were prompt
about small matters. His fear rose higher and higher; and trembling he
softly opened the door to the antechamber, resolved to fly and seek the
prince, and, through him, protection and release. Six gorgeous
gentlemen-servants and two young pages of high degree, clothed like
butterflies, sprang to their feet and bowed low before him. He stepped
quickly back and shut the door. He said--
"Oh, they mock at me! They will go and tell. Oh! why came I here to
cast away my life?"
He walked up and down the floor, filled with nameless fears, listening,
starting at every trifling sound. Presently the door swung open, and a
silken page said--
"The Lady Jane Grey."
The door closed and a sweet young girl, richly clad, bounded toward him.
But she stopped suddenly, and said in a distressed voice--
"Oh, what aileth thee, my lord?"
Tom's breath was nearly failing him; but he made shift to stammer out--
"Ah, be merciful, thou! In sooth I am no lord, but only poor Tom Canty
of Offal Court in the city. Prithee let me see the prince, and he will
of his grace restore to me my rags, and let me hence unhurt. Oh, be thou
merciful, and save me!"
By this time the boy was on his knees, and supplicating with his eyes and
uplifted hands as well as with his tongue. The young girl seemed
horror-stricken. She cried out--
"O my lord, on thy knees?--and to ME!"
Then she fled away in fright; and Tom, smitten with despair, sank down,
murmuring--
"There is no help, there is no hope. Now will they come and take me."
Whilst he lay there benumbed with terror, dreadful tidings were speeding
through the palace. The whisper--for it was whispered always--flew from
menial to menial, from lord to lady, down all the long corridors, from
story to story, from saloon to saloon, "The prince hath gone mad, the
prince hath gone mad!" Soon every saloon, every marble hall, had its
groups of glittering lords and ladies, and other groups of dazzling
lesser folk, talking earnestly together in whispers, and every face had
in it dismay. Presently a splendid official came marching by these
groups, making solemn proclamation--
"IN THE NAME OF THE KING!
Let none list to this false and foolish matter, upon pain of death, nor
discuss the same, nor carry it abroad. In the name of the King!"
The whisperings ceased as suddenly as if the whisperers had been stricken
dumb.
Soon there was a general buzz along the corridors, of "The prince! See,
the prince comes!"
Poor Tom came slowly walking past the low-bowing groups, trying to bow in
return, and meekly gazing upon his strange surroundings with bewildered
and pathetic eyes. Great nobles walked upon each side of him, making him
lean upon them, and so steady his steps. Behind him followed the
court-physicians and some servants.
Presently Tom found himself in a noble apartment of the palace and heard
the door close behind him. Around him stood those who had come with him.
Before him, at a little distance, reclined a very large and very fat man,
with a wide, pulpy face, and a stern expression. His large head was very
grey; and his whiskers, which he wore only around his face, like a frame,
were grey also. His clothing was of rich stuff, but old, and slightly
frayed in places. One of his swollen legs had a pillow under it, and was
wrapped in bandages. There was silence now; and there was no head there
but was bent in reverence, except this man's. This stern-countenanced
invalid was the dread Henry VIII. He said--and his face grew gentle as
he began to speak--
"How now, my lord Edward, my prince? Hast been minded to cozen me, the
good King thy father, who loveth thee, and kindly useth thee, with a
sorry jest?"
Poor Tom was listening, as well as his dazed faculties would let him, to
the beginning of this speech; but when the words 'me, the good King' fell
upon his ear, his face blanched, and he dropped as instantly upon his
knees as if a shot had brought him there. Lifting up his hands, he
exclaimed--
"Thou the KING? Then am I undone indeed!"
This speech seemed to stun the King. His eyes wandered from face to face
aimlessly, then rested, bewildered, upon the boy before him. Then he
said in a tone of deep disappointment--
"Alack, I had believed the rumour disproportioned to the truth; but I
fear me 'tis not so." He breathed a heavy sigh, and said in a gentle
voice, "Come to thy father, child: thou art not well."
Tom was assisted to his feet, and approached the Majesty of England,
humble and trembling. The King took the frightened face between his
hands, and gazed earnestly and lovingly into it awhile, as if seeking
some grateful sign of returning reason there, then pressed the curly head
against his breast, and patted it tenderly. Presently he said--
"Dost not know thy father, child? Break not mine old heart; say thou
know'st me. Thou DOST know me, dost thou not?"
"Yea: thou art my dread lord the King, whom God preserve!"
"True, true--that is well--be comforted, tremble not so; there is none
here would hurt thee; there is none here but loves thee. Thou art better
now; thy ill dream passeth--is't not so? Thou wilt not miscall thyself
again, as they say thou didst a little while agone?"
"I pray thee of thy grace believe me, I did but speak the truth, most
dread lord; for I am the meanest among thy subjects, being a pauper born,
and 'tis by a sore mischance and accident I am here, albeit I was therein
nothing blameful. I am but young to die, and thou canst save me with one
little word. Oh speak it, sir!"
"Die? Talk not so, sweet prince--peace, peace, to thy troubled heart
--thou shalt not die!"
Tom dropped upon his knees with a glad cry--
"God requite thy mercy, O my King, and save thee long to bless thy land!"
Then springing up, he turned a joyful face toward the two lords in
waiting, and exclaimed, "Thou heard'st it! I am not to die: the King
hath said it!" There was no movement, save that all bowed with grave
respect; but no one spoke. He hesitated, a little confused, then turned
timidly toward the King, saying, "I may go now?"
"Go? Surely, if thou desirest. But why not tarry yet a little? Whither
would'st go?"
Tom dropped his eyes, and answered humbly--
"Peradventure I mistook; but I did think me free, and so was I moved to
seek again the kennel where I was born and bred to misery, yet which
harboureth my mother and my sisters, and so is home to me; whereas these
pomps and splendours whereunto I am not used--oh, please you, sir, to let
me go!"
The King was silent and thoughtful a while, and his face betrayed a
growing distress and uneasiness. Presently he said, with something of
hope in his voice--
"Perchance he is but mad upon this one strain, and hath his wits unmarred
as toucheth other matter. God send it may be so! We will make trial."
Then he asked Tom a question in Latin, and Tom answered him lamely in the
same tongue. The lords and doctors manifested their gratification also.
The King said--
"'Twas not according to his schooling and ability, but showeth that his
mind is but diseased, not stricken fatally. How say you, sir?"
The physician addressed bowed low, and replied--
"It jumpeth with my own conviction, sire, that thou hast divined aright."
The King looked pleased with this encouragement, coming as it did from so
excellent authority, and continued with good heart--
"Now mark ye all: we will try him further."
He put a question to Tom in French. Tom stood silent a moment,
embarrassed by having so many eyes centred upon him, then said
diffidently--
"I have no knowledge of this tongue, so please your majesty."
The King fell back upon his couch. The attendants flew to his
assistance; but he put them aside, and said--
"Trouble me not--it is nothing but a scurvy faintness. Raise me! There,
'tis sufficient. Come hither, child; there, rest thy poor troubled head
upon thy father's heart, and be at peace. Thou'lt soon be well: 'tis
but a passing fantasy. Fear thou not; thou'lt soon be well." Then he
turned toward the company: his gentle manner changed, and baleful
lightnings began to play from his eyes. He said--
"List ye all! This my son is mad; but it is not permanent. Over-study
hath done this, and somewhat too much of confinement. Away with his
books and teachers! see ye to it. Pleasure him with sports, beguile him
in wholesome ways, so that his health come again." He raised himself
higher still, and went on with energy, "He is mad; but he is my son, and
England's heir; and, mad or sane, still shall he reign! And hear ye
further, and proclaim it: whoso speaketh of this his distemper worketh
against the peace and order of these realms, and shall to the gallows!
. . . Give me to drink--I burn: this sorrow sappeth my strength. . . .
There, take away the cup. . . . Support me. There, that is well. Mad,
is he? Were he a thousand times mad, yet is he Prince of Wales, and I the
King will confirm it. This very morrow shall he be installed in his
princely dignity in due and ancient form. Take instant order for it, my
lord Hertford."
One of the nobles knelt at the royal couch, and said--
"The King's majesty knoweth that the Hereditary Great Marshal of England
lieth attainted in the Tower. It were not meet that one attainted--"
"Peace! Insult not mine ears with his hated name. Is this man to live
for ever? Am I to be baulked of my will? Is the prince to tarry
uninstalled, because, forsooth, the realm lacketh an Earl Marshal free of
treasonable taint to invest him with his honours? No, by the splendour of
God! Warn my Parliament to bring me Norfolk's doom before the sun rise
again, else shall they answer for it grievously!" {1}
Lord Hertford said--
"The King's will is law;" and, rising, returned to his former place.
Gradually the wrath faded out of the old King's face, and he said--
"Kiss me, my prince. There . . . what fearest thou? Am I not thy loving
father?"
"Thou art good to me that am unworthy, O mighty and gracious lord: that
in truth I know. But--but--it grieveth me to think of him that is to
die, and--"
"Ah, 'tis like thee, 'tis like thee! I know thy heart is still the same,
even though thy mind hath suffered hurt, for thou wert ever of a gentle
spirit. But this duke standeth between thee and thine honours: I will
have another in his stead that shall bring no taint to his great office.
Comfort thee, my prince: trouble not thy poor head with this matter."
"But is it not I that speed him hence, my liege? How long might he not
live, but for me?"
"Take no thought of him, my prince: he is not worthy. Kiss me once
again, and go to thy trifles and amusements; for my malady distresseth
me. I am aweary, and would rest. Go with thine uncle Hertford and thy
people, and come again when my body is refreshed."
Tom, heavy-hearted, was conducted from the presence, for this last
sentence was a death-blow to the hope he had cherished that now he would
be set free. Once more he heard the buzz of low voices exclaiming, "The
prince, the prince comes!"
His spirits sank lower and lower as he moved between the glittering files
of bowing courtiers; for he recognised that he was indeed a captive now,
and might remain for ever shut up in this gilded cage, a forlorn and
friendless prince, except God in his mercy take pity on him and set him
free.
And, turn where he would, he seemed to see floating in the air the
severed head and the remembered face of the great Duke of Norfolk, the
eyes fixed on him reproachfully.
His old dreams had been so pleasant; but this reality was so dreary!
Chapter VI. Tom receives instructions.
Tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made
to sit down--a thing which he was loth to do, since there were elderly
men and men of high degree about him. He begged them to be seated also,
but they only bowed their thanks or murmured them, and remained standing.
He would have insisted, but his 'uncle' the Earl of Hertford whispered in
his ear--
"Prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy
presence."
The Lord St. John was announced, and after making obeisance to Tom, he
said--
"I come upon the King's errand, concerning a matter which requireth
privacy. Will it please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend
you here, save my lord the Earl of Hertford?"
Observing that Tom did not seem to know how to proceed, Hertford
whispered him to make a sign with his hand, and not trouble himself to
speak unless he chose. When the waiting gentlemen had retired, Lord St.
John said--
"His majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the
prince's grace shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his
power, till it be passed and he be as he was before. To wit, that he
shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to England's
greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive,
without word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which unto
it do appertain of right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to speak
to any of that lowly birth and life his malady hath conjured out of the
unwholesome imaginings of o'er-wrought fancy; that he shall strive with
diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which he was wont to
know--and where he faileth he shall hold his peace, neither betraying by
semblance of surprise or other sign that he hath forgot; that upon
occasions of state, whensoever any matter shall perplex him as to the
thing he should do or the utterance he should make, he shall show nought
of unrest to the curious that look on, but take advice in that matter of
the Lord Hertford, or my humble self, which are commanded of the King to
be upon this service and close at call, till this commandment be
dissolved. Thus saith the King's majesty, who sendeth greeting to your
royal highness, and prayeth that God will of His mercy quickly heal you
and have you now and ever in His holy keeping."
The Lord St. John made reverence and stood aside. Tom replied
resignedly--
"The King hath said it. None may palter with the King's command, or fit
it to his ease, where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. The King shall
be obeyed."
Lord Hertford said--
"Touching the King's majesty's ordainment concerning books and such like
serious matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your
time with lightsome entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet and
suffer harm thereby."
Tom's face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw
Lord St. John's eyes bent sorrowfully upon him. His lordship said--
"Thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprise--but suffer
it not to trouble thee, for 'tis a matter that will not bide, but depart
with thy mending malady. My Lord of Hertford speaketh of the city's
banquet which the King's majesty did promise, some two months flown, your
highness should attend. Thou recallest it now?"
"It grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me," said Tom, in a
hesitating voice; and blushed again.
At this moment the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Jane Grey were announced.
The two lords exchanged significant glances, and Hertford stepped quickly
toward the door. As the young girls passed him, he said in a low voice--
"I pray ye, ladies, seem not to observe his humours, nor show surprise
when his memory doth lapse--it will grieve you to note how it doth stick
at every trifle."
Meantime Lord St. John was saying in Tom's ear--
"Please you, sir, keep diligently in mind his majesty's desire. Remember
all thou canst--SEEM to remember all else. Let them not perceive that
thou art much changed from thy wont, for thou knowest how tenderly thy
old play-fellows bear thee in their hearts and how 'twould grieve them.
Art willing, sir, that I remain?--and thine uncle?"
Tom signified assent with a gesture and a murmured word, for he was
already learning, and in his simple heart was resolved to acquit himself
as best he might, according to the King's command.
In spite of every precaution, the conversation among the young people
became a little embarrassing at times. More than once, in truth, Tom was
near to breaking down and confessing himself unequal to his tremendous
part; but the tact of the Princess Elizabeth saved him, or a word from
one or the other of the vigilant lords, thrown in apparently by chance,
had the same happy effect. Once the little Lady Jane turned to Tom and
dismayed him with this question,--
"Hast paid thy duty to the Queen's majesty to-day, my lord?"
Tom hesitated, looked distressed, and was about to stammer out something
at hazard, when Lord St. John took the word and answered for him with the
easy grace of a courtier accustomed to encounter delicate difficulties
and to be ready for them--
"He hath indeed, madam, and she did greatly hearten him, as touching his
majesty's condition; is it not so, your highness?"
Tom mumbled something that stood for assent, but felt that he was getting
upon dangerous ground. Somewhat later it was mentioned that Tom was to
study no more at present, whereupon her little ladyship exclaimed--
"'Tis a pity, 'tis a pity! Thou wert proceeding bravely. But bide thy
time in patience: it will not be for long. Thou'lt yet be graced with
learning like thy father, and make thy tongue master of as many languages
as his, good my prince."
"My father!" cried Tom, off his guard for the moment. "I trow he cannot
speak his own so that any but the swine that kennel in the styes may tell
his meaning; and as for learning of any sort soever--"
He looked up and encountered a solemn warning in my Lord St. John's eyes.
He stopped, blushed, then continued low and sadly: "Ah, my malady
persecuteth me again, and my mind wandereth. I meant the King's grace no
irreverence."
"We know it, sir," said the Princess Elizabeth, taking her 'brother's'
hand between her two palms, respectfully but caressingly; "trouble not
thyself as to that. The fault is none of thine, but thy distemper's."
"Thou'rt a gentle comforter, sweet lady," said Tom, gratefully, "and my
heart moveth me to thank thee for't, an' I may be so bold."
Once the giddy little Lady Jane fired a simple Greek phrase at Tom. The
Princess Elizabeth's quick eye saw by the serene blankness of the
target's front that the shaft was overshot; so she tranquilly delivered a
return volley of sounding Greek on Tom's behalf, and then straightway
changed the talk to other matters.
Time wore on pleasantly, and likewise smoothly, on the whole. Snags and
sandbars grew less and less frequent, and Tom grew more and more at his
ease, seeing that all were so lovingly bent upon helping him and
overlooking his mistakes. When it came out that the little ladies were
to accompany him to the Lord Mayor's banquet in the evening, his heart
gave a bound of relief and delight, for he felt that he should not be
friendless, now, among that multitude of strangers; whereas, an hour
earlier, the idea of their going with him would have been an
insupportable terror to him.
Tom's guardian angels, the two lords, had had less comfort in the
interview than the other parties to it. They felt much as if they were
piloting a great ship through a dangerous channel; they were on the alert
constantly, and found their office no child's play. Wherefore, at last,
when the ladies' visit was drawing to a close and the Lord Guilford
Dudley was announced, they not only felt that their charge had been
sufficiently taxed for the present, but also that they themselves were
not in the best condition to take their ship back and make their anxious
voyage all over again. So they respectfully advised Tom to excuse
himself, which he was very glad to do, although a slight shade of
disappointment might have been observed upon my Lady Jane's face when she
heard the splendid stripling denied admittance.
There was a pause now, a sort of waiting silence which Tom could not
understand. He glanced at Lord Hertford, who gave him a sign--but he
failed to understand that also. The ready Elizabeth came to the rescue
with her usual easy grace. She made reverence and said--
"Have we leave of the prince's grace my brother to go?"
Tom said--
"Indeed your ladyships can have whatsoever of me they will, for the
asking; yet would I rather give them any other thing that in my poor
power lieth, than leave to take the light and blessing of their presence
hence. Give ye good den, and God be with ye!" Then he smiled inwardly at
the thought, "'Tis not for nought I have dwelt but among princes in my
reading, and taught my tongue some slight trick of their broidered and
gracious speech withal!"
When the illustrious maidens were gone, Tom turned wearily to his keepers
and said--
"May it please your lordships to grant me leave to go into some corner
and rest me?"
Lord Hertford said--
"So please your highness, it is for you to command, it is for us to obey.
That thou should'st rest is indeed a needful thing, since thou must
journey to the city presently."
He touched a bell, and a page appeared, who was ordered to desire the
presence of Sir William Herbert. This gentleman came straightway, and
conducted Tom to an inner apartment. Tom's first movement there was to
reach for a cup of water; but a silk-and-velvet servitor seized it,
dropped upon one knee, and offered it to him on a golden salver.
Next the tired captive sat down and was going to take off his buskins,
timidly asking leave with his eye, but another silk-and-velvet
discomforter went down upon his knees and took the office from him. He
made two or three further efforts to help himself, but being promptly
forestalled each time, he finally gave up, with a sigh of resignation and
a murmured "Beshrew me, but I marvel they do not require to breathe for
me also!" Slippered, and wrapped in a sumptuous robe, he laid himself
down at last to rest, but not to sleep, for his head was too full of
thoughts and the room too full of people. He could not dismiss the
former, so they stayed; he did not know enough to dismiss the latter, so
they stayed also, to his vast regret--and theirs.
Tom's departure had left his two noble guardians alone. They mused a
while, with much head-shaking and walking the floor, then Lord St. John
said--
"Plainly, what dost thou think?"
"Plainly, then, this. The King is near his end; my nephew is mad--mad
will mount the throne, and mad remain. God protect England, since she
will need it!"
"Verily it promiseth so, indeed. But . . . have you no misgivings as to
. . . as to . . ."
The speaker hesitated, and finally stopped. He evidently felt that he
was upon delicate ground. Lord Hertford stopped before him, looked into
his face with a clear, frank eye, and said--
"Speak on--there is none to hear but me. Misgivings as to what?"
"I am full loth to word the thing that is in my mind, and thou so near to
him in blood, my lord. But craving pardon if I do offend, seemeth it not
strange that madness could so change his port and manner?--not but that
his port and speech are princely still, but that they DIFFER, in one
unweighty trifle or another, from what his custom was aforetime. Seemeth
it not strange that madness should filch from his memory his father's
very lineaments; the customs and observances that are his due from such
as be about him; and, leaving him his Latin, strip him of his Greek and
French? My lord, be not offended, but ease my mind of its disquiet and
receive my grateful thanks. It haunteth me, his saying he was not the
prince, and so--"
"Peace, my lord, thou utterest treason! Hast forgot the King's command?
Remember I am party to thy crime if I but listen."
St. John paled, and hastened to say--
"I was in fault, I do confess it. Betray me not, grant me this grace out
of thy courtesy, and I will neither think nor speak of this thing more.
Deal not hardly with me, sir, else am I ruined."
"I am content, my lord. So thou offend not again, here or in the ears of
others, it shall be as though thou hadst not spoken. But thou need'st
not have misgivings. He is my sister's son; are not his voice, his face,
his form, familiar to me from his cradle? Madness can do all the odd
conflicting things thou seest in him, and more. Dost not recall how that
the old Baron Marley, being mad, forgot the favour of his own countenance
that he had known for sixty years, and held it was another's; nay, even
claimed he was the son of Mary Magdalene, and that his head was made of
Spanish glass; and, sooth to say, he suffered none to touch it, lest by
mischance some heedless hand might shiver it? Give thy misgivings
easement, good my lord. This is the very prince--I know him well--and
soon will be thy king; it may advantage thee to bear this in mind, and
more dwell upon it than the other."
After some further talk, in which the Lord St. John covered up his
mistake as well as he could by repeated protests that his faith was
thoroughly grounded now, and could not be assailed by doubts again, the
Lord Hertford relieved his fellow-keeper, and sat down to keep watch and
ward alone. He was soon deep in meditation, and evidently the longer he
thought, the more he was bothered. By-and-by he began to pace the floor
and mutter.
"Tush, he MUST be the prince! Will any he in all the land maintain there
can be two, not of one blood and birth, so marvellously twinned? And
even were it so, 'twere yet a stranger miracle that chance should cast
the one into the other's place. Nay, 'tis folly, folly, folly!"
Presently he said--
"Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you THAT would be
natural; that would be reasonable. But lived ever an impostor yet, who,
being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all,
DENIED his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? NO! By the soul
of St. Swithin, no! This is the true prince, gone mad!"
Chapter VII. Tom's first royal dinner.
Somewhat after one in the afternoon, Tom resignedly underwent the ordeal
of being dressed for dinner. He found himself as finely clothed as
before, but everything different, everything changed, from his ruff to
his stockings. He was presently conducted with much state to a spacious
and ornate apartment, where a table was already set for one. Its
furniture was all of massy gold, and beautified with designs which
well-nigh made it priceless, since they were the work of Benvenuto. The
room was half-filled with noble servitors. A chaplain said grace, and
Tom was about to fall to, for hunger had long been constitutional with
him, but was interrupted by my lord the Earl of Berkeley, who fastened a
napkin about his neck; for the great post of Diaperers to the Prince of
Wales was hereditary in this nobleman's family. Tom's cupbearer was
present, and forestalled all his attempts to help himself to wine. The
Taster to his highness the Prince of Wales was there also, prepared to
taste any suspicious dish upon requirement, and run the risk of being
poisoned. He was only an ornamental appendage at this time, and was
seldom called upon to exercise his function; but there had been times,
not many generations past, when the office of taster had its perils, and
was not a grandeur to be desired. Why they did not use a dog or a
plumber seems strange; but all the ways of royalty are strange. My Lord
d'Arcy, First Groom of the Chamber, was there, to do goodness knows what;
but there he was--let that suffice. The Lord Chief Butler was there, and
stood behind Tom's chair, overseeing the solemnities, under command of
the Lord Great Steward and the Lord Head Cook, who stood near. Tom had
three hundred and eighty-four servants beside these; but they were not
all in that room, of course, nor the quarter of them; neither was Tom
aware yet that they existed.
All those that were present had been well drilled within the hour to
remember that the prince was temporarily out of his head, and to be
careful to show no surprise at his vagaries. These 'vagaries' were soon
on exhibition before them; but they only moved their compassion and their
sorrow, not their mirth. It was a heavy affliction to them to see the
beloved prince so stricken.
Poor Tom ate with his fingers mainly; but no one smiled at it, or even
seemed to observe it. He inspected his napkin curiously, and with deep
interest, for it was of a very dainty and beautiful fabric, then said
with simplicity--
"Prithee, take it away, lest in mine unheedfulness it be soiled."
The Hereditary Diaperer took it away with reverent manner, and without
word or protest of any sort.
Tom examined the turnips and the lettuce with interest, and asked what
they were, and if they were to be eaten; for it was only recently that
men had begun to raise these things in England in place of importing them
as luxuries from Holland. {1} His question was answered with grave
respect, and no surprise manifested. When he had finished his dessert,
he filled his pockets with nuts; but nobody appeared to be aware of it,
or disturbed by it. But the next moment he was himself disturbed by it,
and showed discomposure; for this was the only service he had been
permitted to do with his own hands during the meal, and he did not doubt
that he had done a most improper and unprincely thing. At that moment
the muscles of his nose began to twitch, and the end of that organ to
lift and wrinkle. This continued, and Tom began to evince a growing
distress. He looked appealingly, first at one and then another of the
lords about him, and tears came into his eyes. They sprang forward with
dismay in their faces, and begged to know his trouble. Tom said with
genuine anguish--
"I crave your indulgence: my nose itcheth cruelly. What is the custom
and usage in this emergence? Prithee, speed, for 'tis but a little time
that I can bear it."
None smiled; but all were sore perplexed, and looked one to the other in
deep tribulation for counsel. But behold, here was a dead wall, and
nothing in English history to tell how to get over it. The Master of
Ceremonies was not present: there was no one who felt safe to venture
upon this uncharted sea, or risk the attempt to solve this solemn
problem. Alas! there was no Hereditary Scratcher. Meantime the tears
had overflowed their banks, and begun to trickle down Tom's cheeks. His
twitching nose was pleading more urgently than ever for relief. At last
nature broke down the barriers of etiquette: Tom lifted up an inward
prayer for pardon if he was doing wrong, and brought relief to the
burdened hearts of his court by scratching his nose himself.
His meal being ended, a lord came and held before him a broad, shallow,
golden dish with fragrant rosewater in it, to cleanse his mouth and
fingers with; and my lord the Hereditary Diaperer stood by with a napkin
for his use. Tom gazed at the dish a puzzled moment or two, then raised
it to his lips, and gravely took a draught. Then he returned it to the
waiting lord, and said--
"Nay, it likes me not, my lord: it hath a pretty flavour, but it wanteth
strength."
This new eccentricity of the prince's ruined mind made all the hearts
about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment.
Tom's next unconscious blunder was to get up and leave the table just
when the chaplain had taken his stand behind his chair, and with uplifted
hands, and closed, uplifted eyes, was in the act of beginning the
blessing. Still nobody seemed to perceive that the prince had done a
thing unusual.
By his own request our small friend was now conducted to his private
cabinet, and left there alone to his own devices. Hanging upon hooks in
the oaken wainscoting were the several pieces of a suit of shining steel
armour, covered all over with beautiful designs exquisitely inlaid in
gold. This martial panoply belonged to the true prince--a recent present
from Madam Parr the Queen. Tom put on the greaves, the gauntlets, the
plumed helmet, and such other pieces as he could don without assistance,
and for a while was minded to call for help and complete the matter, but
bethought him of the nuts he had brought away from dinner, and the joy it
would be to eat them with no crowd to eye him, and no Grand Hereditaries
to pester him with undesired services; so he restored the pretty things
to their several places, and soon was cracking nuts, and feeling almost
naturally happy for the first time since God for his sins had made him a
prince. When the nuts were all gone, he stumbled upon some inviting
books in a closet, among them one about the etiquette of the English
court. This was a prize. He lay down upon a sumptuous divan, and
proceeded to instruct himself with honest zeal. Let us leave him there
for the present.
Chapter VIII. The question of the Seal.
About five o'clock Henry VIII. awoke out of an unrefreshing nap, and
muttered to himself, "Troublous dreams, troublous dreams! Mine end is now
at hand: so say these warnings, and my failing pulses do confirm it."
Presently a wicked light flamed up in his eye, and he muttered, "Yet will
not I die till HE go before."
His attendants perceiving that he was awake, one of them asked his
pleasure concerning the Lord Chancellor, who was waiting without.
"Admit him, admit him!" exclaimed the King eagerly.
The Lord Chancellor entered, and knelt by the King's couch, saying--
"I have given order, and, according to the King's command, the peers of
the realm, in their robes, do now stand at the bar of the House, where,
having confirmed the Duke of Norfolk's doom, they humbly wait his
majesty's further pleasure in the matter."
The King's face lit up with a fierce joy. Said he--
"Lift me up! In mine own person will I go before my Parliament, and with
mine own hand will I seal the warrant that rids me of--"
His voice failed; an ashen pallor swept the flush from his cheeks; and
the attendants eased him back upon his pillows, and hurriedly assisted
him with restoratives. Presently he said sorrowfully--
"Alack, how have I longed for this sweet hour! and lo, too late it
cometh, and I am robbed of this so coveted chance. But speed ye, speed
ye! let others do this happy office sith 'tis denied to me. I put my
Great Seal in commission: choose thou the lords that shall compose it,
and get ye to your work. Speed ye, man! Before the sun shall rise and
set again, bring me his head that I may see it."
"According to the King's command, so shall it be. Will't please your
majesty to order that the Seal be now restored to me, so that I may forth
upon the business?"
"The Seal? Who keepeth the Seal but thou?"
"Please your majesty, you did take it from me two days since, saying it
should no more do its office till your own royal hand should use it upon
the Duke of Norfolk's warrant."
"Why, so in sooth I did: I do remember . . . What did I with it?. . . I
am very feeble . . . So oft these days doth my memory play the traitor
with me . . . 'Tis strange, strange--"
The King dropped into inarticulate mumblings, shaking his grey head
weakly from time to time, and gropingly trying to recollect what he had
done with the Seal. At last my Lord Hertford ventured to kneel and offer
information--
"Sire, if that I may be so bold, here be several that do remember with me
how that you gave the Great Seal into the hands of his highness the
Prince of Wales to keep against the day that--"
"True, most true!" interrupted the King. "Fetch it! Go: time flieth!"
Lord Hertford flew to Tom, but returned to the King before very long,
troubled and empty-handed. He delivered himself to this effect--
"It grieveth me, my lord the King, to bear so heavy and unwelcome
tidings; but it is the will of God that the prince's affliction abideth
still, and he cannot recall to mind that he received the Seal. So came I
quickly to report, thinking it were waste of precious time, and little
worth withal, that any should attempt to search the long array of
chambers and saloons that belong unto his royal high--"
A groan from the King interrupted the lord at this point. After a little
while his majesty said, with a deep sadness in his tone--
"Trouble him no more, poor child. The hand of God lieth heavy upon him,
and my heart goeth out in loving compassion for him, and sorrow that I
may not bear his burden on mine old trouble-weighted shoulders, and so
bring him peace."
He closed his eyes, fell to mumbling, and presently was silent. After a
time he opened his eyes again, and gazed vacantly around until his glance
rested upon the kneeling Lord Chancellor. Instantly his face flushed with
wrath--
"What, thou here yet! By the glory of God, an' thou gettest not about
that traitor's business, thy mitre shall have holiday the morrow for lack
of a head to grace withal!"
The trembling Chancellor answered--
"Good your Majesty, I cry you mercy! I but waited for the Seal."
"Man, hast lost thy wits? The small Seal which aforetime I was wont to
take with me abroad lieth in my treasury. And, since the Great Seal hath
flown away, shall not it suffice? Hast lost thy wits? Begone! And hark
ye--come no more till thou do bring his head."
The poor Chancellor was not long in removing himself from this dangerous
vicinity; nor did the commission waste time in giving the royal assent to
the work of the slavish Parliament, and appointing the morrow for the
beheading of the premier peer of England, the luckless Duke of Norfolk.
{1}
Chapter IX. The river pageant.
At nine in the evening the whole vast river-front of the palace was
blazing with light. The river itself, as far as the eye could reach
citywards, was so thickly covered with watermen's boats and with
pleasure-barges, all fringed with coloured lanterns, and gently agitated
by the waves, that it resembled a glowing and limitless garden of flowers
stirred to soft motion by summer winds. The grand terrace of stone steps
leading down to the water, spacious enough to mass the army of a German
principality upon, was a picture to see, with its ranks of royal
halberdiers in polished armour, and its troops of brilliantly costumed
servitors flitting up and down, and to and fro, in the hurry of
preparation.
Presently a command was given, and immediately all living creatures
vanished from the steps. Now the air was heavy with the hush of suspense
and expectancy. As far as one's vision could carry, he might see the
myriads of people in the boats rise up, and shade their eyes from the
glare of lanterns and torches, and gaze toward the palace.
A file of forty or fifty state barges drew up to the steps. They were
richly gilt, and their lofty prows and sterns were elaborately carved.
Some of them were decorated with banners and streamers; some with
cloth-of-gold and arras embroidered with coats-of-arms; others with
silken flags that had numberless little silver bells fastened to them,
which shook out tiny showers of joyous music whenever the breezes
fluttered them; others of yet higher pretensions, since they belonged to
nobles in the prince's immediate service, had their sides picturesquely
fenced with shields gorgeously emblazoned with armorial bearings. Each
state barge was towed by a tender. Besides the rowers, these tenders
carried each a number of men-at-arms in glossy helmet and breastplate,
and a company of musicians.
The advance-guard of the expected procession now appeared in the great
gateway, a troop of halberdiers. 'They were dressed in striped hose of
black and tawny, velvet caps graced at the sides with silver roses, and
doublets of murrey and blue cloth, embroidered on the front and back with
the three feathers, the prince's blazon, woven in gold. Their halberd
staves were covered with crimson velvet, fastened with gilt nails, and
ornamented with gold tassels. Filing off on the right and left, they
formed two long lines, extending from the gateway of the palace to the
water's edge. A thick rayed cloth or carpet was then unfolded, and laid
down between them by attendants in the gold-and-crimson liveries of the
prince. This done, a flourish of trumpets resounded from within. A
lively prelude arose from the musicians on the water; and two ushers with
white wands marched with a slow and stately pace from the portal. They
were followed by an officer bearing the civic mace, after whom came
another carrying the city's sword; then several sergeants of the city
guard, in their full accoutrements, and with badges on their sleeves;
then the Garter King-at-arms, in his tabard; then several Knights of the
Bath, each with a white lace on his sleeve; then their esquires; then the
judges, in their robes of scarlet and coifs; then the Lord High
Chancellor of England, in a robe of scarlet, open before, and purfled
with minever; then a deputation of aldermen, in their scarlet cloaks; and
then the heads of the different civic companies, in their robes of state.
Now came twelve French gentlemen, in splendid habiliments, consisting
of pourpoints of white damask barred with gold, short mantles of
crimson velvet lined with violet taffeta, and carnation coloured
hauts-de-chausses, and took their way down the steps. They were of the
suite of the French ambassador, and were followed by twelve cavaliers of
the suite of the Spanish ambassador, clothed in black velvet, unrelieved
by any ornament. Following these came several great English nobles with
their attendants.'
There was a flourish of trumpets within; and the Prince's uncle, the
future great Duke of Somerset, emerged from the gateway, arrayed in a
'doublet of black cloth-of-gold, and a cloak of crimson satin flowered
with gold, and ribanded with nets of silver.' He turned, doffed his
plumed cap, bent his body in a low reverence, and began to step backward,
bowing at each step. A prolonged trumpet-blast followed, and a
proclamation, "Way for the high and mighty the Lord Edward, Prince of
Wales!" High aloft on the palace walls a long line of red tongues of
flame leapt forth with a thunder-crash; the massed world on the river
burst into a mighty roar of welcome; and Tom Canty, the cause and hero of
it all, stepped into view and slightly bowed his princely head.
He was 'magnificently habited in a doublet of white satin, with a
front-piece of purple cloth-of-tissue, powdered with diamonds, and edged
with ermine. Over this he wore a mantle of white cloth-of-gold, pounced
with the triple-feathered crest, lined with blue satin, set with pearls
and precious stones, and fastened with a clasp of brilliants. About his
neck hung the order of the Garter, and several princely foreign orders;'
and wherever light fell upon him jewels responded with a blinding flash.
O Tom Canty, born in a hovel, bred in the gutters of London, familiar
with rags and dirt and misery, what a spectacle is this!
Chapter X. The Prince in the toils.
We left John Canty dragging the rightful prince into Offal Court, with a
noisy and delighted mob at his heels. There was but one person in it who
offered a pleading word for the captive, and he was not heeded; he was
hardly even heard, so great was the turmoil. The Prince continued to
struggle for freedom, and to rage against the treatment he was suffering,
until John Canty lost what little patience was left in him, and raised
his oaken cudgel in a sudden fury over the Prince's head. The single
pleader for the lad sprang to stop the man's arm, and the blow descended
upon his own wrist. Canty roared out--
"Thou'lt meddle, wilt thou? Then have thy reward."
His cudgel crashed down upon the meddler's head: there was a groan, a
dim form sank to the ground among the feet of the crowd, and the next
moment it lay there in the dark alone. The mob pressed on, their
enjoyment nothing disturbed by this episode.
Presently the Prince found himself in John Canty's abode, with the door
closed against the outsiders. By the vague light of a tallow candle
which was thrust into a bottle, he made out the main features of the
loathsome den, and also the occupants of it. Two frowsy girls and a
middle-aged woman cowered against the wall in one corner, with the aspect
of animals habituated to harsh usage, and expecting and dreading it now.
From another corner stole a withered hag with streaming grey hair and
malignant eyes. John Canty said to this one--
"Tarry! There's fine mummeries here. Mar them not till thou'st enjoyed
them: then let thy hand be heavy as thou wilt. Stand forth, lad. Now
say thy foolery again, an thou'st not forgot it. Name thy name. Who art
thou?"
The insulted blood mounted to the little prince's cheek once more, and he
lifted a steady and indignant gaze to the man's face and said--
"'Tis but ill-breeding in such as thou to command me to speak. I tell
thee now, as I told thee before, I am Edward, Prince of Wales, and none
other."
The stunning surprise of this reply nailed the hag's feet to the floor
where she stood, and almost took her breath. She stared at the Prince in
stupid amazement, which so amused her ruffianly son, that he burst into a
roar of laughter. But the effect upon Tom Canty's mother and sisters was
different. Their dread of bodily injury gave way at once to distress of
a different sort. They ran forward with woe and dismay in their faces,
exclaiming--
"Oh, poor Tom, poor lad!"
The mother fell on her knees before the Prince, put her hands upon his
shoulders, and gazed yearningly into his face through her rising tears.
Then she said--
"Oh, my poor boy! Thy foolish reading hath wrought its woeful work at
last, and ta'en thy wit away. Ah! why did'st thou cleave to it when I so
warned thee 'gainst it? Thou'st broke thy mother's heart."
The Prince looked into her face, and said gently--
"Thy son is well, and hath not lost his wits, good dame. Comfort thee:
let me to the palace where he is, and straightway will the King my father
restore him to thee."
"The King thy father! Oh, my child! unsay these words that be freighted
with death for thee, and ruin for all that be near to thee. Shake of
this gruesome dream. Call back thy poor wandering memory. Look upon me.
Am not I thy mother that bore thee, and loveth thee?"
The Prince shook his head and reluctantly said--
"God knoweth I am loth to grieve thy heart; but truly have I never looked
upon thy face before."
The woman sank back to a sitting posture on the floor, and, covering her
eyes with her hands, gave way to heart-broken sobs and wailings.
"Let the show go on!" shouted Canty. "What, Nan!--what, Bet! mannerless
wenches! will ye stand in the Prince's presence? Upon your knees, ye
pauper scum, and do him reverence!"
He followed this with another horse-laugh. The girls began to plead
timidly for their brother; and Nan said--
"An thou wilt but let him to bed, father, rest and sleep will heal his
madness: prithee, do."
"Do, father," said Bet; "he is more worn than is his wont. To-morrow
will he be himself again, and will beg with diligence, and come not empty
home again."
This remark sobered the father's joviality, and brought his mind to
business. He turned angrily upon the Prince, and said--
"The morrow must we pay two pennies to him that owns this hole; two
pennies, mark ye--all this money for a half-year's rent, else out of this
we go. Show what thou'st gathered with thy lazy begging."
The Prince said--
"Offend me not with thy sordid matters. I tell thee again I am the
King's son."
A sounding blow upon the Prince's shoulder from Canty's broad palm sent
him staggering into goodwife Canty's arms, who clasped him to her breast,
and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing
her own person. The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the
grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son. The Prince sprang
away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming--
"Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam. Let these swine do their will upon
me alone."
This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about
their work without waste of time. Between them they belaboured the boy
right soundly, and then gave the girls and their mother a beating for
showing sympathy for the victim.
"Now," said Canty, "to bed, all of ye. The entertainment has tired me."
The light was put out, and the family retired. As soon as the snorings
of the head of the house and his mother showed that they were asleep, the
young girls crept to where the Prince lay, and covered him tenderly from
the cold with straw and rags; and their mother crept to him also, and
stroked his hair, and cried over him, whispering broken words of comfort
and compassion in his ear the while. She had saved a morsel for him to
eat, also; but the boy's pains had swept away all appetite--at least for
black and tasteless crusts. He was touched by her brave and costly
defence of him, and by her commiseration; and he thanked her in very
noble and princely words, and begged her to go to her sleep and try to
forget her sorrows. And he added that the King his father would not let
her loyal kindness and devotion go unrewarded. This return to his
'madness' broke her heart anew, and she strained him to her breast again
and again, and then went back, drowned in tears, to her bed.
As she lay thinking and mourning, the suggestion began to creep into her
mind that there was an undefinable something about this boy that was
lacking in Tom Canty, mad or sane. She could not describe it, she could
not tell just what it was, and yet her sharp mother-instinct seemed to
detect it and perceive it. What if the boy were really not her son,
after all? Oh, absurd! She almost smiled at the idea, spite of her
griefs and troubles. No matter, she found that it was an idea that would
not 'down,' but persisted in haunting her. It pursued her, it harassed
her, it clung to her, and refused to be put away or ignored. At last she
perceived that there was not going to be any peace for her until she
should devise a test that should prove, clearly and without question,
whether this lad was her son or not, and so banish these wearing and
worrying doubts. Ah, yes, this was plainly the right way out of the
difficulty; therefore she set her wits to work at once to contrive that
test. But it was an easier thing to propose than to accomplish. She
turned over in her mind one promising test after another, but was obliged
to relinquish them all--none of them were absolutely sure, absolutely
perfect; and an imperfect one could not satisfy her. Evidently she was
racking her head in vain--it seemed manifest that she must give the
matter up. While this depressing thought was passing through her mind,
her ear caught the regular breathing of the boy, and she knew he had
fallen asleep. And while she listened, the measured breathing was broken
by a soft, startled cry, such as one utters in a troubled dream. This
chance occurrence furnished her instantly with a plan worth all her
laboured tests combined. She at once set herself feverishly, but
noiselessly, to work to relight her candle, muttering to herself, "Had I
but seen him THEN, I should have known! Since that day, when he was
little, that the powder burst in his face, he hath never been startled of
a sudden out of his dreams or out of his thinkings, but he hath cast his
hand before his eyes, even as he did that day; and not as others would do
it, with the palm inward, but always with the palm turned outward--I have
seen it a hundred times, and it hath never varied nor ever failed. Yes,
I shall soon know, now!"
By this time she had crept to the slumbering boy's side, with the candle,
shaded, in her hand. She bent heedfully and warily over him, scarcely
breathing in her suppressed excitement, and suddenly flashed the light in
his face and struck the floor by his ear with her knuckles. The
sleeper's eyes sprang wide open, and he cast a startled stare about him
--but he made no special movement with his hands.
The poor woman was smitten almost helpless with surprise and grief; but
she contrived to hide her emotions, and to soothe the boy to sleep again;
then she crept apart and communed miserably with herself upon the
disastrous result of her experiment. She tried to believe that her Tom's
madness had banished this habitual gesture of his; but she could not do
it. "No," she said, "his HANDS are not mad; they could not unlearn so
old a habit in so brief a time. Oh, this is a heavy day for me!"
Still, hope was as stubborn now as doubt had been before; she could not
bring herself to accept the verdict of the test; she must try the thing
again--the failure must have been only an accident; so she startled the
boy out of his sleep a second and a third time, at intervals--with the
same result which had marked the first test; then she dragged herself to
bed, and fell sorrowfully asleep, saying, "But I cannot give him up--oh
no, I cannot, I cannot--he MUST be my boy!"
The poor mother's interruptions having ceased, and the Prince's pains
having gradually lost their power to disturb him, utter weariness at last
sealed his eyes in a profound and restful sleep. Hour after hour slipped
away, and still he slept like the dead. Thus four or five hours passed.
Then his stupor began to lighten. Presently, while half asleep and half
awake, he murmured--
"Sir William!"
After a moment--
"Ho, Sir William Herbert! Hie thee hither, and list to the strangest
dream that ever . . . Sir William! dost hear? Man, I did think me
changed to a pauper, and . . . Ho there! Guards! Sir William! What! is
there no groom of the chamber in waiting? Alack! it shall go hard with--"
"What aileth thee?" asked a whisper near him. "Who art thou calling?"
"Sir William Herbert. Who art thou?"
"I? Who should I be, but thy sister Nan? Oh, Tom, I had forgot! Thou'rt
mad yet--poor lad, thou'rt mad yet: would I had never woke to know it
again! But prithee master thy tongue, lest we be all beaten till we
die!"
The startled Prince sprang partly up, but a sharp reminder from his
stiffened bruises brought him to himself, and he sank back among his foul
straw with a moan and the ejaculation--
"Alas! it was no dream, then!"
In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were
upon him again, and he realised that he was no longer a petted prince in
a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an
outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and
consorting with beggars and thieves.
In the midst of his grief he began to be conscious of hilarious noises
and shoutings, apparently but a block or two away. The next moment there
were several sharp raps at the door; John Canty ceased from snoring and
said--
"Who knocketh? What wilt thou?"
A voice answered--
"Know'st thou who it was thou laid thy cudgel on?"
"No. Neither know I, nor care."
"Belike thou'lt change thy note eftsoons. An thou would save thy neck,
nothing but flight may stead thee. The man is this moment delivering up
the ghost. 'Tis the priest, Father Andrew!"
"God-a-mercy!" exclaimed Canty. He roused his family, and hoarsely
commanded, "Up with ye all and fly--or bide where ye are and perish!"
Scarcely five minutes later the Canty household were in the street and
flying for their lives. John Canty held the Prince by the wrist, and
hurried him along the dark way, giving him this caution in a low voice--
"Mind thy tongue, thou mad fool, and speak not our name. I will choose
me a new name, speedily, to throw the law's dogs off the scent. Mind thy
tongue, I tell thee!"
He growled these words to the rest of the family--
"If it so chance that we be separated, let each make for London Bridge;
whoso findeth himself as far as the last linen-draper's shop on the
bridge, let him tarry there till the others be come, then will we flee
into Southwark together."
At this moment the party burst suddenly out of darkness into light; and
not only into light, but into the midst of a multitude of singing,
dancing, and shouting people, massed together on the river frontage.
There was a line of bonfires stretching as far as one could see, up and
down the Thames; London Bridge was illuminated; Southwark Bridge
likewise; the entire river was aglow with the flash and sheen of coloured
lights; and constant explosions of fireworks filled the skies with an
intricate commingling of shooting splendours and a thick rain of dazzling
sparks that almost turned night into day; everywhere were crowds of
revellers; all London seemed to be at large.
John Canty delivered himself of a furious curse and commanded a retreat;
but it was too late. He and his tribe were swallowed up in that swarming
hive of humanity, and hopelessly separated from each other in an instant.
We are not considering that the Prince was one of his tribe; Canty still
kept his grip upon him. The Prince's heart was beating high with hopes
of escape, now. A burly waterman, considerably exalted with liquor,
found himself rudely shoved by Canty in his efforts to plough through the
crowd; he laid his great hand on Canty's shoulder and said--
"Nay, whither so fast, friend? Dost canker thy soul with sordid business
when all that be leal men and true make holiday?"
"Mine affairs are mine own, they concern thee not," answered Canty,
roughly; "take away thy hand and let me pass."
"Sith that is thy humour, thou'lt NOT pass, till thou'st drunk to the
Prince of Wales, I tell thee that," said the waterman, barring the way
resolutely.
"Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!"
Other revellers were interested by this time. They cried out--
"The loving-cup, the loving-cup! make the sour knave drink the
loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes."
So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman, grasping it by one of its
handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary
napkin, presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp
the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the
other, according to ancient custom. {1} This left the Prince hand-free
for a second, of course. He wasted no time, but dived among the forest
of legs about him and disappeared. In another moment he could not have
been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had
been the Atlantic's and he a lost sixpence.
He very soon realised this fact, and straightway busied himself about his
own affairs without further thought of John Canty. He quickly realised
another thing, too. To wit, that a spurious Prince of Wales was being
feasted by the city in his stead. He easily concluded that the pauper
lad, Tom Canty, had deliberately taken advantage of his stupendous
opportunity and become a usurper.
Therefore there was but one course to pursue--find his way to the
Guildhall, make himself known, and denounce the impostor. He also made
up his mind that Tom should be allowed a reasonable time for spiritual
preparation, and then be hanged, drawn and quartered, according to the
law and usage of the day in cases of high treason.
Chapter XI. At Guildhall.
The royal barge, attended by its gorgeous fleet, took its stately way
down the Thames through the wilderness of illuminated boats. The air was
laden with music; the river banks were beruffled with joy-flames; the
distant city lay in a soft luminous glow from its countless invisible
bonfires; above it rose many a slender spire into the sky, incrusted with
sparkling lights, wherefore in their remoteness they seemed like jewelled
lances thrust aloft; as the fleet swept along, it was greeted from the
banks with a continuous hoarse roar of cheers and the ceaseless flash and
boom of artillery.
To Tom Canty, half buried in his silken cushions, these sounds and this
spectacle were a wonder unspeakably sublime and astonishing. To his
little friends at his side, the Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Jane
Grey, they were nothing.
Arrived at the Dowgate, the fleet was towed up the limpid Walbrook (whose
channel has now been for two centuries buried out of sight under acres of
buildings) to Bucklersbury, past houses and under bridges populous with
merry-makers and brilliantly lighted, and at last came to a halt in a
basin where now is Barge Yard, in the centre of the ancient city of
London. Tom disembarked, and he and his gallant procession crossed
Cheapside and made a short march through the Old Jewry and Basinghall
Street to the Guildhall.
Tom and his little ladies were received with due ceremony by the Lord
Mayor and the Fathers of the City, in their gold chains and scarlet robes
of state, and conducted to a rich canopy of state at the head of the
great hall, preceded by heralds making proclamation, and by the Mace and
the City Sword. The lords and ladies who were to attend upon Tom and his
two small friends took their places behind their chairs.
At a lower table the Court grandees and other guests of noble degree were
seated, with the magnates of the city; the commoners took places at a
multitude of tables on the main floor of the hall. From their lofty
vantage-ground the giants Gog and Magog, the ancient guardians of the
city, contemplated the spectacle below them with eyes grown familiar to
it in forgotten generations. There was a bugle-blast and a proclamation,
and a fat butler appeared in a high perch in the leftward wall, followed
by his servitors bearing with impressive solemnity a royal baron of beef,
smoking hot and ready for the knife.
After grace, Tom (being instructed) rose--and the whole house with him
--and drank from a portly golden loving-cup with the Princess Elizabeth;
from her it passed to the Lady Jane, and then traversed the general
assemblage. So the banquet began.
By midnight the revelry was at its height. Now came one of those
picturesque spectacles so admired in that old day. A description of it
is still extant in the quaint wording of a chronicler who witnessed it:
'Space being made, presently entered a baron and an earl appareled after
the Turkish fashion in long robes of bawdkin powdered with gold; hats on
their heads of crimson velvet, with great rolls of gold, girded with two
swords, called scimitars, hanging by great bawdricks of gold. Next came
yet another baron and another earl, in two long gowns of yellow satin,
traversed with white satin, and in every bend of white was a bend of
crimson satin, after the fashion of Russia, with furred hats of gray on
their heads; either of them having an hatchet in their hands, and boots
with pykes' (points a foot long), 'turned up. And after them came a
knight, then the Lord High Admiral, and with him five nobles, in doublets
of crimson velvet, voyded low on the back and before to the cannell-bone,
laced on the breasts with chains of silver; and over that, short cloaks
of crimson satin, and on their heads hats after the dancers' fashion,
with pheasants' feathers in them. These were appareled after the fashion
of Prussia. The torchbearers, which were about an hundred, were
appareled in crimson satin and green, like Moors, their faces black.
Next came in a mommarye. Then the minstrels, which were disguised,
danced; and the lords and ladies did wildly dance also, that it was a
pleasure to behold.'
And while Tom, in his high seat, was gazing upon this 'wild' dancing,
lost in admiration of the dazzling commingling of kaleidoscopic colours
which the whirling turmoil of gaudy figures below him presented, the
ragged but real little Prince of Wales was proclaiming his rights and his
wrongs, denouncing the impostor, and clamouring for admission at the
gates of Guildhall! The crowd enjoyed this episode prodigiously, and
pressed forward and craned their necks to see the small rioter.
Presently they began to taunt him and mock at him, purposely to goad him
into a higher and still more entertaining fury. Tears of mortification
sprang to his eyes, but he stood his ground and defied the mob right
royally. Other taunts followed, added mockings stung him, and he
exclaimed--
"I tell ye again, you pack of unmannerly curs, I am the Prince of Wales!
And all forlorn and friendless as I be, with none to give me word of
grace or help me in my need, yet will not I be driven from my ground, but
will maintain it!"
"Though thou be prince or no prince, 'tis all one, thou be'st a gallant
lad, and not friendless neither! Here stand I by thy side to prove it;
and mind I tell thee thou might'st have a worser friend than Miles Hendon
and yet not tire thy legs with seeking. Rest thy small jaw, my child; I
talk the language of these base kennel-rats like to a very native."
The speaker was a sort of Don Caesar de Bazan in dress, aspect, and
bearing. He was tall, trim-built, muscular. His doublet and trunks were
of rich material, but faded and threadbare, and their gold-lace
adornments were sadly tarnished; his ruff was rumpled and damaged; the
plume in his slouched hat was broken and had a bedraggled and
disreputable look; at his side he wore a long rapier in a rusty iron
sheath; his swaggering carriage marked him at once as a ruffler of the
camp. The speech of this fantastic figure was received with an explosion
of jeers and laughter. Some cried, "'Tis another prince in disguise!"
"'Ware thy tongue, friend: belike he is dangerous!" "Marry, he looketh
it--mark his eye!" "Pluck the lad from him--to the horse-pond wi' the
cub!"
Instantly a hand was laid upon the Prince, under the impulse of this
happy thought; as instantly the stranger's long sword was out and the
meddler went to the earth under a sounding thump with the flat of it.
The next moment a score of voices shouted, "Kill the dog! Kill him!
Kill him!" and the mob closed in on the warrior, who backed himself
against a wall and began to lay about him with his long weapon like a
madman. His victims sprawled this way and that, but the mob-tide poured
over their prostrate forms and dashed itself against the champion with
undiminished fury. His moments seemed numbered, his destruction certain,
when suddenly a trumpet-blast sounded, a voice shouted, "Way for the
King's messenger!" and a troop of horsemen came charging down upon the
mob, who fled out of harm's reach as fast as their legs could carry them.
The bold stranger caught up the Prince in his arms, and was soon far away
from danger and the multitude.
Return we within the Guildhall. Suddenly, high above the jubilant roar
and thunder of the revel, broke the clear peal of a bugle-note. There
was instant silence--a deep hush; then a single voice rose--that of the
messenger from the palace--and began to pipe forth a proclamation, the
whole multitude standing listening.
The closing words, solemnly pronounced, were--
"The King is dead!"
The great assemblage bent their heads upon their breasts with one accord;
remained so, in profound silence, a few moments; then all sank upon their
knees in a body, stretched out their hands toward Tom, and a mighty shout
burst forth that seemed to shake the building--
"Long live the King!"
Poor Tom's dazed eyes wandered abroad over this stupefying spectacle, and
finally rested dreamily upon the kneeling princesses beside him, a
moment, then upon the Earl of Hertford. A sudden purpose dawned in his
face. He said, in a low tone, at Lord Hertford's ear--
"Answer me truly, on thy faith and honour! Uttered I here a command, the
which none but a king might hold privilege and prerogative to utter,
would such commandment be obeyed, and none rise up to say me nay?"
"None, my liege, in all these realms. In thy person bides the majesty of
England. Thou art the king--thy word is law."
Tom responded, in a strong, earnest voice, and with great animation--
"Then shall the king's law be law of mercy, from this day, and never more
be law of blood! Up from thy knees and away! To the Tower, and say the
King decrees the Duke of Norfolk shall not die!" {1}
The words were caught up and carried eagerly from lip to lip far and wide
over the hall, and as Hertford hurried from the presence, another
prodigious shout burst forth--
"The reign of blood is ended! Long live Edward, King of England!"
Chapter XII. The Prince and his deliverer.
As soon as Miles Hendon and the little prince were clear of the mob, they
struck down through back lanes and alleys toward the river. Their way
was unobstructed until they approached London Bridge; then they ploughed
into the multitude again, Hendon keeping a fast grip upon the Prince's
--no, the King's--wrist. The tremendous news was already abroad, and the
boy learned it from a thousand voices at once--"The King is dead!" The
tidings struck a chill to the heart of the poor little waif, and sent a
shudder through his frame. He realised the greatness of his loss, and
was filled with a bitter grief; for the grim tyrant who had been such a
terror to others had always been gentle with him. The tears sprang to
his eyes and blurred all objects. For an instant he felt himself the
most forlorn, outcast, and forsaken of God's creatures--then another cry
shook the night with its far-reaching thunders: "Long live King Edward
the Sixth!" and this made his eyes kindle, and thrilled him with pride to
his fingers' ends. "Ah," he thought, "how grand and strange it seems--I
AM KING!"
Our friends threaded their way slowly through the throngs upon the
bridge. This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had
been a noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious
affair, for a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family
quarters overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the
river to the other. The Bridge was a sort of town to itself; it had its
inn, its beer-houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets,
its manufacturing industries, and even its church. It looked upon the
two neighbours which it linked together--London and Southwark--as being
well enough as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important. It was
a close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single
street a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village
population and everybody in it knew all his fellow-townsmen intimately,
and had known their fathers and mothers before them--and all their little
family affairs into the bargain. It had its aristocracy, of course--its
fine old families of butchers, and bakers, and what-not, who had occupied
the same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great
history of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange legends;
and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts, and lied
in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way. It was just the sort
of population to be narrow and ignorant and self-conceited. Children were
born on the Bridge, were reared there, grew to old age, and finally died
without ever having set a foot upon any part of the world but London
Bridge alone. Such people would naturally imagine that the mighty and
interminable procession which moved through its street night and day,
with its confused roar of shouts and cries, its neighings and bellowing
and bleatings and its muffled thunder-tramp, was the one great thing in
this world, and themselves somehow the proprietors of it. And so they
were, in effect--at least they could exhibit it from their windows, and
did--for a consideration--whenever a returning king or hero gave it a
fleeting splendour, for there was no place like it for affording a long,
straight, uninterrupted view of marching columns.
Men born and reared upon the Bridge found life unendurably dull and inane
elsewhere. History tells of one of these who left the Bridge at the age
of seventy-one and retired to the country. But he could only fret and
toss in his bed; he could not go to sleep, the deep stillness was so
painful, so awful, so oppressive. When he was worn out with it, at last,
he fled back to his old home, a lean and haggard spectre, and fell
peacefully to rest and pleasant dreams under the lulling music of the
lashing waters and the boom and crash and thunder of London Bridge.
In the times of which we are writing, the Bridge furnished 'object
lessons' in English history for its children--namely, the livid and
decaying heads of renowned men impaled upon iron spikes atop of its
gateways. But we digress.
Hendon's lodgings were in the little inn on the Bridge. As he neared the
door with his small friend, a rough voice said--
"So, thou'rt come at last! Thou'lt not escape again, I warrant thee; and
if pounding thy bones to a pudding can teach thee somewhat, thou'lt not
keep us waiting another time, mayhap"--and John Canty put out his hand to
seize the boy.
Miles Hendon stepped in the way and said--
"Not too fast, friend. Thou art needlessly rough, methinks. What is the
lad to thee?"
"If it be any business of thine to make and meddle in others' affairs, he
is my son."
"'Tis a lie!" cried the little King, hotly.
"Boldly said, and I believe thee, whether thy small headpiece be sound or
cracked, my boy. But whether this scurvy ruffian be thy father or no,
'tis all one, he shall not have thee to beat thee and abuse, according to
his threat, so thou prefer to bide with me."
"I do, I do--I know him not, I loathe him, and will die before I will go
with him."
"Then 'tis settled, and there is nought more to say."
"We will see, as to that!" exclaimed John Canty, striding past Hendon to
get at the boy; "by force shall he--"
"If thou do but touch him, thou animated offal, I will spit thee like a
goose!" said Hendon, barring the way and laying his hand upon his sword
hilt. Canty drew back. "Now mark ye," continued Hendon, "I took this
lad under my protection when a mob of such as thou would have mishandled
him, mayhap killed him; dost imagine I will desert him now to a worser
fate?--for whether thou art his father or no--and sooth to say, I think
it is a lie--a decent swift death were better for such a lad than life in
such brute hands as thine. So go thy ways, and set quick about it, for I
like not much bandying of words, being not over-patient in my nature."
John Canty moved off, muttering threats and curses, and was swallowed
from sight in the crowd. Hendon ascended three flights of stairs to his
room, with his charge, after ordering a meal to be sent thither. It was
a poor apartment, with a shabby bed and some odds and ends of old
furniture in it, and was vaguely lighted by a couple of sickly candles.
The little King dragged himself to the bed and lay down upon it, almost
exhausted with hunger and fatigue. He had been on his feet a good part
of a day and a night (for it was now two or three o'clock in the
morning), and had eaten nothing meantime. He murmured drowsily--
"Prithee call me when the table is spread," and sank into a deep sleep
immediately.
A smile twinkled in Hendon's eye, and he said to himself--
"By the mass, the little beggar takes to one's quarters and usurps one's
bed with as natural and easy a grace as if he owned them--with never a
by-your-leave or so-please-it-you, or anything of the sort. In his
diseased ravings he called himself the Prince of Wales, and bravely doth
he keep up the character. Poor little friendless rat, doubtless his mind
has been disordered with ill-usage. Well, I will be his friend; I have
saved him, and it draweth me strongly to him; already I love the
bold-tongued little rascal. How soldier-like he faced the smutty rabble
and flung back his high defiance! And what a comely, sweet and gentle
face he hath, now that sleep hath conjured away its troubles and its
griefs. I will teach him; I will cure his malady; yea, I will be his
elder brother, and care for him and watch over him; and whoso would shame
him or do him hurt may order his shroud, for though I be burnt for it he
shall need it!"
He bent over the boy and contemplated him with kind and pitying interest,
tapping the young cheek tenderly and smoothing back the tangled curls
with his great brown hand. A slight shiver passed over the boy's form.
Hendon muttered--
"See, now, how like a man it was to let him lie here uncovered and fill
his body with deadly rheums. Now what shall I do? 'twill wake him to
take him up and put him within the bed, and he sorely needeth sleep."
He looked about for extra covering, but finding none, doffed his doublet
and wrapped the lad in it, saying, "I am used to nipping air and scant
apparel, 'tis little I shall mind the cold!"--then walked up and down the
room, to keep his blood in motion, soliloquising as before.
"His injured mind persuades him he is Prince of Wales; 'twill be odd to
have a Prince of Wales still with us, now that he that WAS the prince is
prince no more, but king--for this poor mind is set upon the one fantasy,
and will not reason out that now it should cast by the prince and call
itself the king. . . If my father liveth still, after these seven years
that I have heard nought from home in my foreign dungeon, he will welcome
the poor lad and give him generous shelter for my sake; so will my good
elder brother, Arthur; my other brother, Hugh--but I will crack his crown
an HE interfere, the fox-hearted, ill-conditioned animal! Yes, thither
will we fare--and straightway, too."
A servant entered with a smoking meal, disposed it upon a small deal
table, placed the chairs, and took his departure, leaving such cheap
lodgers as these to wait upon themselves. The door slammed after him,
and the noise woke the boy, who sprang to a sitting posture, and shot a
glad glance about him; then a grieved look came into his face and he
murmured to himself, with a deep sigh, "Alack, it was but a dream, woe is
me!" Next he noticed Miles Hendon's doublet--glanced from that to
Hendon, comprehended the sacrifice that had been made for him, and said,
gently--
"Thou art good to me, yes, thou art very good to me. Take it and put it
on--I shall not need it more."
Then he got up and walked to the washstand in the corner and stood there,
waiting. Hendon said in a cheery voice--
"We'll have a right hearty sup and bite, now, for everything is savoury
and smoking hot, and that and thy nap together will make thee a little
man again, never fear!"
The boy made no answer, but bent a steady look, that was filled with
grave surprise, and also somewhat touched with impatience, upon the tall
knight of the sword. Hendon was puzzled, and said--
"What's amiss?"
"Good sir, I would wash me."
"Oh, is that all? Ask no permission of Miles Hendon for aught thou
cravest. Make thyself perfectly free here, and welcome, with all that
are his belongings."
Still the boy stood, and moved not; more, he tapped the floor once or
twice with his small impatient foot. Hendon was wholly perplexed. Said
he--
"Bless us, what is it?"
"Prithee pour the water, and make not so many words!"
Hendon, suppressing a horse-laugh, and saying to himself, "By all the
saints, but this is admirable!" stepped briskly forward and did the small
insolent's bidding; then stood by, in a sort of stupefaction, until the
command, "Come--the towel!" woke him sharply up. He took up a towel,
from under the boy's nose, and handed it to him without comment. He now
proceeded to comfort his own face with a wash, and while he was at it his
adopted child seated himself at the table and prepared to fall to.
Hendon despatched his ablutions with alacrity, then drew back the other
chair and was about to place himself at table, when the boy said,
indignantly--
"Forbear! Wouldst sit in the presence of the King?"
This blow staggered Hendon to his foundations. He muttered to himself,
"Lo, the poor thing's madness is up with the time! It hath changed with
the great change that is come to the realm, and now in fancy is he KING!
Good lack, I must humour the conceit, too--there is no other way--faith,
he would order me to the Tower, else!"
And pleased with this jest, he removed the chair from the table, took his
stand behind the King, and proceeded to wait upon him in the courtliest
way he was capable of.
While the King ate, the rigour of his royal dignity relaxed a little, and
with his growing contentment came a desire to talk. He said--"I think
thou callest thyself Miles Hendon, if I heard thee aright?"
"Yes, Sire," Miles replied; then observed to himself, "If I MUST humour
the poor lad's madness, I must 'Sire' him, I must 'Majesty' him, I must
not go by halves, I must stick at nothing that belongeth to the part I
play, else shall I play it ill and work evil to this charitable and
kindly cause."
The King warmed his heart with a second glass of wine, and said--"I would
know thee--tell me thy story. Thou hast a gallant way with thee, and a
noble--art nobly born?"
"We are of the tail of the nobility, good your Majesty. My father is a
baronet--one of the smaller lords by knight service {2}--Sir Richard
Hendon of Hendon Hall, by Monk's Holm in Kent."
"The name has escaped my memory. Go on--tell me thy story."
"'Tis not much, your Majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short
half-hour for want of a better. My father, Sir Richard, is very rich,
and of a most generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a boy. I
have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's;
and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious,
underhanded--a reptile. Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten
years past, when I last saw him--a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being
twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is none other of us but the
Lady Edith, my cousin--she was sixteen then--beautiful, gentle, good, the
daughter of an earl, the last of her race, heiress of a great fortune and
a lapsed title. My father was her guardian. I loved her and she loved
me; but she was betrothed to Arthur from the cradle, and Sir Richard
would not suffer the contract to be broken. Arthur loved another maid,
and bade us be of good cheer and hold fast to the hope that delay and
luck together would some day give success to our several causes. Hugh
loved the Lady Edith's fortune, though in truth he said it was herself he
loved--but then 'twas his way, alway, to say the one thing and mean the
other. But he lost his arts upon the girl; he could deceive my father,
but none else. My father loved him best of us all, and trusted and
believed him; for he was the youngest child, and others hated him--these
qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent's dearest love;
and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of lying
--and these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind affection to
cozen itself. I was wild--in troth I might go yet farther and say VERY
wild, though 'twas a wildness of an innocent sort, since it hurt none but
me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in it any taint of crime or
baseness, or what might not beseem mine honourable degree.
"Yet did my brother Hugh turn these faults to good account--he seeing
that our brother Arthur's health was but indifferent, and hoping the
worst might work him profit were I swept out of the path--so--but 'twere
a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the telling. Briefly, then,
this brother did deftly magnify my faults and make them crimes; ending
his base work with finding a silken ladder in mine apartments--conveyed
thither by his own means--and did convince my father by this, and
suborned evidence of servants and other lying knaves, that I was minded
to carry off my Edith and marry with her in rank defiance of his will.
"Three years of banishment from home and England might make a soldier and
a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of wisdom. I
fought out my long probation in the continental wars, tasting sumptuously
of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in my last battle I was
taken captive, and during the seven years that have waxed and waned since
then, a foreign dungeon hath harboured me. Through wit and courage I won
to the free air at last, and fled hither straight; and am but just
arrived, right poor in purse and raiment, and poorer still in knowledge
of what these dull seven years have wrought at Hendon Hall, its people
and belongings. So please you, sir, my meagre tale is told."
"Thou hast been shamefully abused!" said the little King, with a flashing
eye. "But I will right thee--by the cross will I! The King hath said
it."
Then, fired by the story of Miles's wrongs, he loosed his tongue and
poured the history of his own recent misfortunes into the ears of his
astonished listener. When he had finished, Miles said to himself--
"Lo, what an imagination he hath! Verily, this is no common mind; else,
crazed or sane, it could not weave so straight and gaudy a tale as this
out of the airy nothings wherewith it hath wrought this curious romaunt.
Poor ruined little head, it shall not lack friend or shelter whilst I
bide with the living. He shall never leave my side; he shall be my pet,
my little comrade. And he shall be cured!--ay, made whole and sound
--then will he make himself a name--and proud shall I be to say, 'Yes, he
is mine--I took him, a homeless little ragamuffin, but I saw what was in
him, and I said his name would be heard some day--behold him, observe
him--was I right?'"
The King spoke--in a thoughtful, measured voice--
"Thou didst save me injury and shame, perchance my life, and so my crown.
Such service demandeth rich reward. Name thy desire, and so it be within
the compass of my royal power, it is thine."
This fantastic suggestion startled Hendon out of his reverie. He was
about to thank the King and put the matter aside with saying he had only
done his duty and desired no reward, but a wiser thought came into his
head, and he asked leave to be silent a few moments and consider the
gracious offer--an idea which the King gravely approved, remarking that
it was best to be not too hasty with a thing of such great import.
Miles reflected during some moments, then said to himself, "Yes, that is
the thing to do--by any other means it were impossible to get at it--and
certes, this hour's experience has taught me 'twould be most wearing and
inconvenient to continue it as it is. Yes, I will propose it; 'twas a
happy accident that I did not throw the chance away." Then he dropped
upon one knee and said--
"My poor service went not beyond the limit of a subject's simple duty,
and therefore hath no merit; but since your Majesty is pleased to hold it
worthy some reward, I take heart of grace to make petition to this
effect. Near four hundred years ago, as your grace knoweth, there being
ill blood betwixt John, King of England, and the King of France, it was
decreed that two champions should fight together in the lists, and so
settle the dispute by what is called the arbitrament of God. These two
kings, and the Spanish king, being assembled to witness and judge the
conflict, the French champion appeared; but so redoubtable was he, that
our English knights refused to measure weapons with him. So the matter,
which was a weighty one, was like to go against the English monarch by
default. Now in the Tower lay the Lord de Courcy, the mightiest arm in
England, stripped of his honours and possessions, and wasting with long
captivity. Appeal was made to him; he gave assent, and came forth
arrayed for battle; but no sooner did the Frenchman glimpse his huge
frame and hear his famous name but he fled away, and the French king's
cause was lost. King John restored De Courcy's titles and possessions,
and said, 'Name thy wish and thou shalt have it, though it cost me half
my kingdom;' whereat De Courcy, kneeling, as I do now, made answer,
'This, then, I ask, my liege; that I and my successors may have and hold
the privilege of remaining covered in the presence of the kings of
England, henceforth while the throne shall last.' The boon was granted,
as your Majesty knoweth; and there hath been no time, these four hundred
years, that that line has failed of an heir; and so, even unto this day,
the head of that ancient house still weareth his hat or helm before the
King's Majesty, without let or hindrance, and this none other may do. {3}
Invoking this precedent in aid of my prayer, I beseech the King to grant
to me but this one grace and privilege--to my more than sufficient
reward--and none other, to wit: that I and my heirs, for ever, may SIT
in the presence of the Majesty of England!"
"Rise, Sir Miles Hendon, Knight," said the King, gravely--giving the
accolade with Hendon's sword--"rise, and seat thyself. Thy petition is
granted. Whilst England remains, and the crown continues, the privilege
shall not lapse."
His Majesty walked apart, musing, and Hendon dropped into a chair at
table, observing to himself, "'Twas a brave thought, and hath wrought me
a mighty deliverance; my legs are grievously wearied. An I had not
thought of that, I must have had to stand for weeks, till my poor lad's
wits are cured." After a little, he went on, "And so I am become a
knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows! A most odd and strange
position, truly, for one so matter-of-fact as I. I will not laugh--no,
God forbid, for this thing which is so substanceless to me is REAL to
him. And to me, also, in one way, it is not a falsity, for it reflects
with truth the sweet and generous spirit that is in him." After a pause:
"Ah, what if he should call me by my fine title before folk!--there'd be
a merry contrast betwixt my glory and my raiment! But no matter, let him
call me what he will, so it please him; I shall be content."
Chapter XIII. The disappearance of the Prince.
A heavy drowsiness presently fell upon the two comrades. The King said--
"Remove these rags"--meaning his clothing.
Hendon disapparelled the boy without dissent or remark, tucked him up in
bed, then glanced about the room, saying to himself, ruefully, "He hath
taken my bed again, as before--marry, what shall _I_ do?" The little
King observed his perplexity, and dissipated it with a word. He said,
sleepily--
"Thou wilt sleep athwart the door, and guard it." In a moment more he
was out of his troubles, in a deep slumber.
"Dear heart, he should have been born a king!" muttered Hendon,
admiringly; "he playeth the part to a marvel."
Then he stretched himself across the door, on the floor, saying
contentedly--
"I have lodged worse for seven years; 'twould be but ill gratitude to Him
above to find fault with this."
He dropped asleep as the dawn appeared. Toward noon he rose, uncovered
his unconscious ward--a section at a time--and took his measure with a
string. The King awoke, just as he had completed his work, complained of
the cold, and asked what he was doing.
"'Tis done, now, my liege," said Hendon; "I have a bit of business
outside, but will presently return; sleep thou again--thou needest it.
There--let me cover thy head also--thou'lt be warm the sooner."
The King was back in dreamland before this speech was ended. Miles
slipped softly out, and slipped as softly in again, in the course of
thirty or forty minutes, with a complete second-hand suit of boy's
clothing, of cheap material, and showing signs of wear; but tidy, and
suited to the season of the year. He seated himself, and began to
overhaul his purchase, mumbling to himself--
"A longer purse would have got a better sort, but when one has not the
long purse one must be content with what a short one may do--
"'There was a woman in our town, In our town did dwell--'
"He stirred, methinks--I must sing in a less thunderous key; 'tis not
good to mar his sleep, with this journey before him, and he so wearied
out, poor chap . . . This garment--'tis well enough--a stitch here and
another one there will set it aright. This other is better, albeit a
stitch or two will not come amiss in it, likewise . . . THESE be very
good and sound, and will keep his small feet warm and dry--an odd new
thing to him, belike, since he has doubtless been used to foot it bare,
winters and summers the same . . . Would thread were bread, seeing one
getteth a year's sufficiency for a farthing, and such a brave big needle
without cost, for mere love. Now shall I have the demon's own time to
thread it!"
And so he had. He did as men have always done, and probably always will
do, to the end of time--held the needle still, and tried to thrust the
thread through the eye, which is the opposite of a woman's way. Time and
time again the thread missed the mark, going sometimes on one side of the
needle, sometimes on the other, sometimes doubling up against the shaft;
but he was patient, having been through these experiences before, when he
was soldiering. He succeeded at last, and took up the garment that had
lain waiting, meantime, across his lap, and began his work.
"The inn is paid--the breakfast that is to come, included--and there is
wherewithal left to buy a couple of donkeys and meet our little costs for
the two or three days betwixt this and the plenty that awaits us at
Hendon Hall--
"'She loved her hus--'
"Body o' me! I have driven the needle under my nail! . . . It matters
little--'tis not a novelty--yet 'tis not a convenience, neither . . .We
shall be merry there, little one, never doubt it! Thy troubles will
vanish there, and likewise thy sad distemper--
"'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man--'
"These be noble large stitches!"--holding the garment up and viewing it
admiringly--"they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause these small
stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mightily paltry and plebeian--
"'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man he loved she,--'
"Marry, 'tis done--a goodly piece of work, too, and wrought with
expedition. Now will I wake him, apparel him, pour for him, feed him,
and then will we hie us to the mart by the Tabard Inn in Southwark and
--be pleased to rise, my liege!--he answereth not--what ho, my liege!--of a
truth must I profane his sacred person with a touch, sith his slumber is
deaf to speech. What!"
He threw back the covers--the boy was gone!
He stared about him in speechless astonishment for a moment; noticed for
the first time that his ward's ragged raiment was also missing; then he
began to rage and storm and shout for the innkeeper. At that moment a
servant entered with the breakfast.
"Explain, thou limb of Satan, or thy time is come!" roared the man of
war, and made so savage a spring toward the waiter that this latter could
not find his tongue, for the instant, for fright and surprise. "Where is
the boy?"
In disjointed and trembling syllables the man gave the information
desired.
"You were hardly gone from the place, your worship, when a youth came
running and said it was your worship's will that the boy come to you
straight, at the bridge-end on the Southwark side. I brought him hither;
and when he woke the lad and gave his message, the lad did grumble some
little for being disturbed 'so early,' as he called it, but straightway
trussed on his rags and went with the youth, only saying it had been
better manners that your worship came yourself, not sent a stranger--and
so--"
"And so thou'rt a fool!--a fool and easily cozened--hang all thy breed!
Yet mayhap no hurt is done. Possibly no harm is meant the boy. I will
go fetch him. Make the table ready. Stay! the coverings of the bed were
disposed as if one lay beneath them--happened that by accident?"
"I know not, good your worship. I saw the youth meddle with them--he
that came for the boy."
"Thousand deaths! 'Twas done to deceive me--'tis plain 'twas done to
gain time. Hark ye! Was that youth alone?"
"All alone, your worship."
"Art sure?"
"Sure, your worship."
"Collect thy scattered wits--bethink thee--take time, man."
After a moment's thought, the servant said--
"When he came, none came with him; but now I remember me that as the two
stepped into the throng of the Bridge, a ruffian-looking man plunged out
from some near place; and just as he was joining them--"
"What THEN?--out with it!" thundered the impatient Hendon, interrupting.
"Just then the crowd lapped them up and closed them in, and I saw no
more, being called by my master, who was in a rage because a joint that
the scrivener had ordered was forgot, though I take all the saints to
witness that to blame ME for that miscarriage were like holding the
unborn babe to judgment for sins com--"
"Out of my sight, idiot! Thy prating drives me mad! Hold! Whither art
flying? Canst not bide still an instant? Went they toward Southwark?"
"Even so, your worship--for, as I said before, as to that detestable
joint, the babe unborn is no whit more blameless than--"
"Art here YET! And prating still! Vanish, lest I throttle thee!" The
servitor vanished. Hendon followed after him, passed him, and plunged
down the stairs two steps at a stride, muttering, "'Tis that scurvy
villain that claimed he was his son. I have lost thee, my poor little
mad master--it is a bitter thought--and I had come to love thee so! No!
by book and bell, NOT lost! Not lost, for I will ransack the land till I
find thee again. Poor child, yonder is his breakfast--and mine, but I
have no hunger now; so, let the rats have it--speed, speed! that is the
word!" As he wormed his swift way through the noisy multitudes upon the
Bridge he several times said to himself--clinging to the thought as if it
were a particularly pleasing one--"He grumbled, but he WENT--he went,
yes, because he thought Miles Hendon asked it, sweet lad--he would ne'er
have done it for another, I know it well."
Chapter XIV. 'Le Roi est mort--vive le Roi.'
Toward daylight of the same morning, Tom Canty stirred out of a heavy
sleep and opened his eyes in the dark. He lay silent a few moments,
trying to analyse his confused thoughts and impressions, and get some
sort of meaning out of them; then suddenly he burst out in a rapturous
but guarded voice--
"I see it all, I see it all! Now God be thanked, I am indeed awake at
last! Come, joy! vanish, sorrow! Ho, Nan! Bet! kick off your straw and
hie ye hither to my side, till I do pour into your unbelieving ears the
wildest madcap dream that ever the spirits of night did conjure up to
astonish the soul of man withal! . . . Ho, Nan, I say! Bet!"
A dim form appeared at his side, and a voice said--
"Wilt deign to deliver thy commands?"
"Commands? . . . O, woe is me, I know thy voice! Speak thou--who am I?"
"Thou? In sooth, yesternight wert thou the Prince of Wales; to-day art
thou my most gracious liege, Edward, King of England."
Tom buried his head among his pillows, murmuring plaintively--
"Alack, it was no dream! Go to thy rest, sweet sir--leave me to my
sorrows."
Tom slept again, and after a time he had this pleasant dream. He thought
it was summer, and he was playing, all alone, in the fair meadow called
Goodman's Fields, when a dwarf only a foot high, with long red whiskers
and a humped back, appeared to him suddenly and said, "Dig by that
stump." He did so, and found twelve bright new pennies--wonderful
riches! Yet this was not the best of it; for the dwarf said--
"I know thee. Thou art a good lad, and a deserving; thy distresses shall
end, for the day of thy reward is come. Dig here every seventh day, and
thou shalt find always the same treasure, twelve bright new pennies.
Tell none--keep the secret."
Then the dwarf vanished, and Tom flew to Offal Court with his prize,
saying to himself, "Every night will I give my father a penny; he will
think I begged it, it will glad his heart, and I shall no more be beaten.
One penny every week the good priest that teacheth me shall have; mother,
Nan, and Bet the other four. We be done with hunger and rags, now, done
with fears and frets and savage usage."
In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes
dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his
mother's lap and cried out--
"They are for thee!--all of them, every one!--for thee and Nan and Bet
--and honestly come by, not begged nor stolen!"
The happy and astonished mother strained him to her breast and exclaimed--
"It waxeth late--may it please your Majesty to rise?"
Ah! that was not the answer he was expecting. The dream had snapped
asunder--he was awake.
He opened his eyes--the richly clad First Lord of the Bedchamber was
kneeling by his couch. The gladness of the lying dream faded away--the
poor boy recognised that he was still a captive and a king. The room was
filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantles--the mourning colour--and
with noble servants of the monarch. Tom sat up in bed and gazed out from
the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company.
The weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another
knelt and paid his court and offered to the little King his condolences
upon his heavy loss, whilst the dressing proceeded. In the beginning, a
shirt was taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who passed it to the
First Lord of the Buckhounds, who passed it to the Second Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest, who
passed it to the Third Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the
Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who passed it to the Master
of the Wardrobe, who passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed it to
the Constable of the Tower, who passed it to the Chief Steward of the
Household, who passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who passed it
to the Lord High Admiral of England, who passed it to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who passed it to the First Lord of the Bedchamber, who took
what was left of it and put it on Tom. Poor little wondering chap, it
reminded him of passing buckets at a fire.
Each garment in its turn had to go through this slow and solemn process;
consequently Tom grew very weary of the ceremony; so weary that he felt
an almost gushing gratefulness when he at last saw his long silken hose
begin the journey down the line and knew that the end of the matter was
drawing near. But he exulted too soon. The First Lord of the Bedchamber
received the hose and was about to encase Tom's legs in them, when a
sudden flush invaded his face and he hurriedly hustled the things back
into the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury with an astounded look and
a whispered, "See, my lord!" pointing to a something connected with the
hose. The Archbishop paled, then flushed, and passed the hose to the
Lord High Admiral, whispering, "See, my lord!" The Admiral passed the
hose to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, and had hardly breath enough in
his body to ejaculate, "See, my lord!" The hose drifted backward along
the line, to the Chief Steward of the Household, the Constable of the
Tower, Norroy King-at-Arms, the Master of the Wardrobe, the Chancellor
Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Third Groom of the Stole, the Head
Ranger of Windsor Forest, the Second Gentleman of the Bedchamber, the
First Lord of the Buckhounds,--accompanied always with that amazed and
frightened "See! see!"--till they finally reached the hands of the Chief
Equerry in Waiting, who gazed a moment, with a pallid face, upon what had
caused all this dismay, then hoarsely whispered, "Body of my life, a tag
gone from a truss-point!--to the Tower with the Head Keeper of the King's
Hose!"--after which he leaned upon the shoulder of the First Lord of the
Buckhounds to regather his vanished strength whilst fresh hose, without
any damaged strings to them, were brought.
But all things must have an end, and so in time Tom Canty was in a
condition to get out of bed. The proper official poured water, the
proper official engineered the washing, the proper official stood by with
a towel, and by-and-by Tom got safely through the purifying stage and was
ready for the services of the Hairdresser-royal. When he at length
emerged from this master's hands, he was a gracious figure and as pretty
as a girl, in his mantle and trunks of purple satin, and purple-plumed
cap. He now moved in state toward his breakfast-room, through the midst
of the courtly assemblage; and as he passed, these fell back, leaving his
way free, and dropped upon their knees.
After breakfast he was conducted, with regal ceremony, attended by his
great officers and his guard of fifty Gentlemen Pensioners bearing gilt
battle-axes, to the throne-room, where he proceeded to transact business
of state. His 'uncle,' Lord Hertford, took his stand by the throne, to
assist the royal mind with wise counsel.
The body of illustrious men named by the late King as his executors
appeared, to ask Tom's approval of certain acts of theirs--rather a form,
and yet not wholly a form, since there was no Protector as yet. The
Archbishop of Canterbury made report of the decree of the Council of
Executors concerning the obsequies of his late most illustrious Majesty,
and finished by reading the signatures of the Executors, to wit: the
Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lord Chancellor of England; William Lord
St. John; John Lord Russell; Edward Earl of Hertford; John Viscount
Lisle; Cuthbert Bishop of Durham--
Tom was not listening--an earlier clause of the document was puzzling
him. At this point he turned and whispered to Lord Hertford--
"What day did he say the burial hath been appointed for?"
"The sixteenth of the coming month, my liege."
"'Tis a strange folly. Will he keep?"
Poor chap, he was still new to the customs of royalty; he was used to
seeing the forlorn dead of Offal Court hustled out of the way with a very
different sort of expedition. However, the Lord Hertford set his mind at
rest with a word or two.
A secretary of state presented an order of the Council appointing the
morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and
desired the King's assent.
Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford, who whispered--
"Your Majesty will signify consent. They come to testify their royal
masters' sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your Grace and
the realm of England."
Tom did as he was bidden. Another secretary began to read a preamble
concerning the expenses of the late King's household, which had amounted
to 28,000 pounds during the preceding six months--a sum so vast that it
made Tom Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that 20,000
pounds of this money was still owing and unpaid; {4} and once more when
it appeared that the King's coffers were about empty, and his twelve
hundred servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them. Tom
spoke out, with lively apprehension--
"We be going to the dogs, 'tis plain. 'Tis meet and necessary that we
take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no
value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the
spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath nor
brains nor hands to help itself withal. I remember me of a small house
that standeth over against the fish-market, by Billingsgate--"
A sharp pressure upon Tom's arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a
blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this
strange speech had been remarked or given concern.
A secretary made report that forasmuch as the late King had provided in
his will for conferring the ducal degree upon the Earl of Hertford and
raising his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, to the peerage, and likewise
Hertford's son to an earldom, together with similar aggrandisements to
other great servants of the Crown, the Council had resolved to hold a
sitting on the 16th of February for the delivering and confirming of
these honours, and that meantime, the late King not having granted, in
writing, estates suitable to the support of these dignities, the Council,
knowing his private wishes in that regard, had thought proper to grant to
Seymour '500 pound lands,' and to Hertford's son '800 pound lands, and
300 pound of the next bishop's lands which should fall vacant,'--his
present Majesty being willing. {5}
Tom was about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the
late King's debts first, before squandering all this money, but a timely
touch upon his arm, from the thoughtful Hertford, saved him this
indiscretion; wherefore he gave the royal assent, without spoken comment,
but with much inward discomfort. While he sat reflecting a moment over
the ease with which he was doing strange and glittering miracles, a happy
thought shot into his mind: why not make his mother Duchess of Offal
Court, and give her an estate? But a sorrowful thought swept it
instantly away: he was only a king in name, these grave veterans and
great nobles were his masters; to them his mother was only the creature
of a diseased mind; they would simply listen to his project with
unbelieving ears, then send for the doctor.
The dull work went tediously on. Petitions were read, and proclamations,
patents, and all manner of wordy, repetitious, and wearisome papers
relating to the public business; and at last Tom sighed pathetically and
murmured to himself, "In what have I offended, that the good God should
take me away from the fields and the free air and the sunshine, to shut
me up here and make me a king and afflict me so?" Then his poor muddled
head nodded a while and presently drooped to his shoulder; and the
business of the empire came to a standstill for want of that august
factor, the ratifying power. Silence ensued around the slumbering child,
and the sages of the realm ceased from their deliberations.
During the forenoon, Tom had an enjoyable hour, by permission of his
keepers, Hertford and St. John, with the Lady Elizabeth and the little
Lady Jane Grey; though the spirits of the princesses were rather subdued
by the mighty stroke that had fallen upon the royal house; and at the end
of the visit his 'elder sister'--afterwards the 'Bloody Mary' of history
--chilled him with a solemn interview which had but one merit in his eyes,
its brevity. He had a few moments to himself, and then a slim lad of
about twelve years of age was admitted to his presence, whose clothing,
except his snowy ruff and the laces about his wrists, was of black,
--doublet, hose, and all. He bore no badge of mourning but a knot of
purple ribbon on his shoulder. He advanced hesitatingly, with head bowed
and bare, and dropped upon one knee in front of Tom. Tom sat still and
contemplated him soberly a moment. Then he said--
"Rise, lad. Who art thou. What wouldst have?"
The boy rose, and stood at graceful ease, but with an aspect of concern
in his face. He said--
"Of a surety thou must remember me, my lord. I am thy whipping-boy."
"My WHIPPING-boy?"
"The same, your Grace. I am Humphrey--Humphrey Marlow."
Tom perceived that here was someone whom his keepers ought to have posted
him about. The situation was delicate. What should he do?--pretend he
knew this lad, and then betray by his every utterance that he had never
heard of him before? No, that would not do. An idea came to his relief:
accidents like this might be likely to happen with some frequency, now
that business urgencies would often call Hertford and St. John from his
side, they being members of the Council of Executors; therefore perhaps
it would be well to strike out a plan himself to meet the requirements of
such emergencies. Yes, that would be a wise course--he would practise on
this boy, and see what sort of success he might achieve. So he stroked
his brow perplexedly a moment or two, and presently said--
"Now I seem to remember thee somewhat--but my wit is clogged and dim with
suffering--"
"Alack, my poor master!" ejaculated the whipping-boy, with feeling;
adding, to himself, "In truth 'tis as they said--his mind is gone--alas,
poor soul! But misfortune catch me, how am I forgetting! They said one
must not seem to observe that aught is wrong with him."
"'Tis strange how my memory doth wanton with me these days," said Tom.
"But mind it not--I mend apace--a little clue doth often serve to bring
me back again the things and names which had escaped me. (And not they,
only, forsooth, but e'en such as I ne'er heard before--as this lad shall
see.) Give thy business speech."
"'Tis matter of small weight, my liege, yet will I touch upon it, an' it
please your Grace. Two days gone by, when your Majesty faulted thrice in
your Greek--in the morning lessons,--dost remember it?"
"Y-e-s--methinks I do. (It is not much of a lie--an' I had meddled with
the Greek at all, I had not faulted simply thrice, but forty times.)
Yes, I do recall it, now--go on."
"The master, being wroth with what he termed such slovenly and doltish
work, did promise that he would soundly whip me for it--and--"
"Whip THEE!" said Tom, astonished out of his presence of mind. "Why
should he whip THEE for faults of mine?"
"Ah, your Grace forgetteth again. He always scourgeth me when thou dost
fail in thy lessons."
"True, true--I had forgot. Thou teachest me in private--then if I fail,
he argueth that thy office was lamely done, and--"
"Oh, my liege, what words are these? I, the humblest of thy servants,
presume to teach THEE?"
"Then where is thy blame? What riddle is this? Am I in truth gone mad,
or is it thou? Explain--speak out."
"But, good your Majesty, there's nought that needeth simplifying.--None
may visit the sacred person of the Prince of Wales with blows; wherefore,
when he faulteth, 'tis I that take them; and meet it is and right, for
that it is mine office and my livelihood." {1}
Tom stared at the tranquil boy, observing to himself, "Lo, it is a
wonderful thing,--a most strange and curious trade; I marvel they have
not hired a boy to take my combings and my dressings for me--would heaven
they would!--an' they will do this thing, I will take my lashings in mine
own person, giving God thanks for the change." Then he said aloud--
"And hast thou been beaten, poor friend, according to the promise?"
"No, good your Majesty, my punishment was appointed for this day, and
peradventure it may be annulled, as unbefitting the season of mourning
that is come upon us; I know not, and so have made bold to come hither
and remind your Grace about your gracious promise to intercede in my
behalf--"
"With the master? To save thee thy whipping?"
"Ah, thou dost remember!"
"My memory mendeth, thou seest. Set thy mind at ease--thy back shall go
unscathed--I will see to it."
"Oh, thanks, my good lord!" cried the boy, dropping upon his knee again.
"Mayhap I have ventured far enow; and yet--"
Seeing Master Humphrey hesitate, Tom encouraged him to go on, saying he
was "in the granting mood."
"Then will I speak it out, for it lieth near my heart. Sith thou art no
more Prince of Wales but King, thou canst order matters as thou wilt,
with none to say thee nay; wherefore it is not in reason that thou wilt
longer vex thyself with dreary studies, but wilt burn thy books and turn
thy mind to things less irksome. Then am I ruined, and mine orphan
sisters with me!"
"Ruined? Prithee how?"
"My back is my bread, O my gracious liege! if it go idle, I starve. An'
thou cease from study mine office is gone thou'lt need no whipping-boy.
Do not turn me away!"
Tom was touched with this pathetic distress. He said, with a right royal
burst of generosity--
"Discomfort thyself no further, lad. Thine office shall be permanent in
thee and thy line for ever." Then he struck the boy a light blow on the
shoulder with the flat of his sword, exclaiming, "Rise, Humphrey Marlow,
Hereditary Grand Whipping-Boy to the Royal House of England! Banish
sorrow--I will betake me to my books again, and study so ill that they
must in justice treble thy wage, so mightily shall the business of thine
office be augmented."
The grateful Humphrey responded fervidly--
"Thanks, O most noble master, this princely lavishness doth far surpass
my most distempered dreams of fortune. Now shall I be happy all my days,
and all the house of Marlow after me."
Tom had wit enough to perceive that here was a lad who could be useful to
him. He encouraged Humphrey to talk, and he was nothing loath. He was
delighted to believe that he was helping in Tom's 'cure'; for always, as
soon as he had finished calling back to Tom's diseased mind the various
particulars of his experiences and adventures in the royal school-room
and elsewhere about the palace, he noticed that Tom was then able to
'recall' the circumstances quite clearly. At the end of an hour Tom
found himself well freighted with very valuable information concerning
personages and matters pertaining to the Court; so he resolved to draw
instruction from this source daily; and to this end he would give order
to admit Humphrey to the royal closet whenever he might come, provided
the Majesty of England was not engaged with other people. Humphrey had
hardly been dismissed when my Lord Hertford arrived with more trouble for
Tom.
He said that the Lords of the Council, fearing that some overwrought
report of the King's damaged health might have leaked out and got abroad,
they deemed it wise and best that his Majesty should begin to dine in
public after a day or two--his wholesome complexion and vigorous step,
assisted by a carefully guarded repose of manner and ease and grace of
demeanour, would more surely quiet the general pulse--in case any evil
rumours HAD gone about--than any other scheme that could be devised.
Then the Earl proceeded, very delicately, to instruct Tom as to the
observances proper to the stately occasion, under the rather thin
disguise of 'reminding' him concerning things already known to him; but
to his vast gratification it turned out that Tom needed very little help
in this line--he had been making use of Humphrey in that direction, for
Humphrey had mentioned that within a few days he was to begin to dine in
public; having gathered it from the swift-winged gossip of the Court.
Tom kept these facts to himself, however.
Seeing the royal memory so improved, the Earl ventured to apply a few
tests to it, in an apparently casual way, to find out how far its
amendment had progressed. The results were happy, here and there, in
spots--spots where Humphrey's tracks remained--and on the whole my lord
was greatly pleased and encouraged. So encouraged was he, indeed, that
he spoke up and said in a quite hopeful voice--
"Now am I persuaded that if your Majesty will but tax your memory yet a
little further, it will resolve the puzzle of the Great Seal--a loss
which was of moment yesterday, although of none to-day, since its term of
service ended with our late lord's life. May it please your Grace to make
the trial?"
Tom was at sea--a Great Seal was something which he was totally
unacquainted with. After a moment's hesitation he looked up innocently
and asked--
"What was it like, my lord?"
The Earl started, almost imperceptibly, muttering to himself, "Alack, his
wits are flown again!--it was ill wisdom to lead him on to strain them"
--then he deftly turned the talk to other matters, with the purpose of
sweeping the unlucky seal out of Tom's thoughts--a purpose which easily
succeeded.
Chapter XV. Tom as King.
The next day the foreign ambassadors came, with their gorgeous trains;
and Tom, throned in awful state, received them. The splendours of the
scene delighted his eye and fired his imagination at first, but the
audience was long and dreary, and so were most of the addresses
--wherefore, what began as a pleasure grew into weariness and home-sickness
by-and-by. Tom said the words which Hertford put into his mouth from
time to time, and tried hard to acquit himself satisfactorily, but he was
too new to such things, and too ill at ease to accomplish more than a
tolerable success. He looked sufficiently like a king, but he was ill
able to feel like one. He was cordially glad when the ceremony was
ended.
The larger part of his day was 'wasted'--as he termed it, in his own
mind--in labours pertaining to his royal office. Even the two hours
devoted to certain princely pastimes and recreations were rather a burden
to him than otherwise, they were so fettered by restrictions and
ceremonious observances. However, he had a private hour with his
whipping-boy which he counted clear gain, since he got both entertainment
and needful information out of it.
The third day of Tom Canty's kingship came and went much as the others
had done, but there was a lifting of his cloud in one way--he felt less
uncomfortable than at first; he was getting a little used to his
circumstances and surroundings; his chains still galled, but not all the
time; he found that the presence and homage of the great afflicted and
embarrassed him less and less sharply with every hour that drifted over
his head.
But for one single dread, he could have seen the fourth day approach
without serious distress--the dining in public; it was to begin that day.
There were greater matters in the programme--for on that day he would
have to preside at a council which would take his views and commands
concerning the policy to be pursued toward various foreign nations
scattered far and near over the great globe; on that day, too, Hertford
would be formally chosen to the grand office of Lord Protector; other
things of note were appointed for that fourth day, also; but to Tom they
were all insignificant compared with the ordeal of dining all by himself
with a multitude of curious eyes fastened upon him and a multitude of
mouths whispering comments upon his performance,--and upon his mistakes,
if he should be so unlucky as to make any.
Still, nothing could stop that fourth day, and so it came. It found poor
Tom low-spirited and absent-minded, and this mood continued; he could not
shake it off. The ordinary duties of the morning dragged upon his hands,
and wearied him. Once more he felt the sense of captivity heavy upon
him.
Late in the forenoon he was in a large audience-chamber, conversing with
the Earl of Hertford and dully awaiting the striking of the hour
appointed for a visit of ceremony from a considerable number of great
officials and courtiers.
After a little while, Tom, who had wandered to a window and become
interested in the life and movement of the great highway beyond the
palace gates--and not idly interested, but longing with all his heart to
take part in person in its stir and freedom--saw the van of a hooting and
shouting mob of disorderly men, women, and children of the lowest and
poorest degree approaching from up the road.
"I would I knew what 'tis about!" he exclaimed, with all a boy's
curiosity in such happenings.
"Thou art the King!" solemnly responded the Earl, with a reverence.
"Have I your Grace's leave to act?"
"O blithely, yes! O gladly, yes!" exclaimed Tom excitedly, adding to
himself with a lively sense of satisfaction, "In truth, being a king is
not all dreariness--it hath its compensations and conveniences."
The Earl called a page, and sent him to the captain of the guard with the
order--
"Let the mob be halted, and inquiry made concerning the occasion of its
movement. By the King's command!"
A few seconds later a long rank of the royal guards, cased in flashing
steel, filed out at the gates and formed across the highway in front of
the multitude. A messenger returned, to report that the crowd were
following a man, a woman, and a young girl to execution for crimes
committed against the peace and dignity of the realm.
Death--and a violent death--for these poor unfortunates! The thought
wrung Tom's heart-strings. The spirit of compassion took control of him,
to the exclusion of all other considerations; he never thought of the
offended laws, or of the grief or loss which these three criminals had
inflicted upon their victims; he could think of nothing but the scaffold
and the grisly fate hanging over the heads of the condemned. His concern
made him even forget, for the moment, that he was but the false shadow of
a king, not the substance; and before he knew it he had blurted out the
command--
"Bring them here!"
Then he blushed scarlet, and a sort of apology sprung to his lips; but
observing that his order had wrought no sort of surprise in the Earl or
the waiting page, he suppressed the words he was about to utter. The
page, in the most matter-of-course way, made a profound obeisance and
retired backwards out of the room to deliver the command. Tom
experienced a glow of pride and a renewed sense of the compensating
advantages of the kingly office. He said to himself, "Truly it is like
what I was used to feel when I read the old priest's tales, and did
imagine mine own self a prince, giving law and command to all, saying 'Do
this, do that,' whilst none durst offer let or hindrance to my will."
Now the doors swung open; one high-sounding title after another was
announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was quickly
half-filled with noble folk and finery. But Tom was hardly conscious of
the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and so intensely
absorbed in that other and more interesting matter. He seated himself
absently in his chair of state, and turned his eyes upon the door with
manifestations of impatient expectancy; seeing which, the company forbore
to trouble him, and fell to chatting a mixture of public business and
court gossip one with another.
In a little while the measured tread of military men was heard
approaching, and the culprits entered the presence in charge of an
under-sheriff and escorted by a detail of the king's guard. The civil
officer knelt before Tom, then stood aside; the three doomed persons
knelt, also, and remained so; the guard took position behind Tom's chair.
Tom scanned the prisoners curiously. Something about the dress or
appearance of the man had stirred a vague memory in him. "Methinks I
have seen this man ere now . . . but the when or the where fail me"--such
was Tom's thought. Just then the man glanced quickly up and quickly
dropped his face again, not being able to endure the awful port of
sovereignty; but the one full glimpse of the face which Tom got was
sufficient. He said to himself: "Now is the matter clear; this is the
stranger that plucked Giles Witt out of the Thames, and saved his life,
that windy, bitter, first day of the New Year--a brave good deed--pity he
hath been doing baser ones and got himself in this sad case . . . I have
not forgot the day, neither the hour; by reason that an hour after, upon
the stroke of eleven, I did get a hiding by the hand of Gammer Canty
which was of so goodly and admired severity that all that went before or
followed after it were but fondlings and caresses by comparison."
Tom now ordered that the woman and the girl be removed from the presence
for a little time; then addressed himself to the under-sheriff, saying--
"Good sir, what is this man's offence?"
The officer knelt, and answered--
"So please your Majesty, he hath taken the life of a subject by poison."
Tom's compassion for the prisoner, and admiration of him as the daring
rescuer of a drowning boy, experienced a most damaging shock.
"The thing was proven upon him?" he asked.
"Most clearly, sire."
Tom sighed, and said--
"Take him away--he hath earned his death. 'Tis a pity, for he was a
brave heart--na--na, I mean he hath the LOOK of it!"
The prisoner clasped his hands together with sudden energy, and wrung
them despairingly, at the same time appealing imploringly to the 'King'
in broken and terrified phrases--
"O my lord the King, an' thou canst pity the lost, have pity upon me! I
am innocent--neither hath that wherewith I am charged been more than but
lamely proved--yet I speak not of that; the judgment is gone forth
against me and may not suffer alteration; yet in mine extremity I beg a
boon, for my doom is more than I can bear. A grace, a grace, my lord the
King! in thy royal compassion grant my prayer--give commandment that I be
hanged!"
Tom was amazed. This was not the outcome he had looked for.
"Odds my life, a strange BOON! Was it not the fate intended thee?"
"O good my liege, not so! It is ordered that I be BOILED ALIVE!"
The hideous surprise of these words almost made Tom spring from his
chair. As soon as he could recover his wits he cried out--
"Have thy wish, poor soul! an' thou had poisoned a hundred men thou
shouldst not suffer so miserable a death."
The prisoner bowed his face to the ground and burst into passionate
expressions of gratitude--ending with--
"If ever thou shouldst know misfortune--which God forefend!--may thy
goodness to me this day be remembered and requited!"
Tom turned to the Earl of Hertford, and said--
"My lord, is it believable that there was warrant for this man's
ferocious doom?"
"It is the law, your Grace--for poisoners. In Germany coiners be boiled
to death in OIL--not cast in of a sudden, but by a rope let down into the
oil by degrees, and slowly; first the feet, then the legs, then--"
"O prithee no more, my lord, I cannot bear it!" cried Tom, covering his
eyes with his hands to shut out the picture. "I beseech your good
lordship that order be taken to change this law--oh, let no more poor
creatures be visited with its tortures."
The Earl's face showed profound gratification, for he was a man of
merciful and generous impulses--a thing not very common with his class in
that fierce age. He said--
"These your Grace's noble words have sealed its doom. History will
remember it to the honour of your royal house."
The under-sheriff was about to remove his prisoner; Tom gave him a sign
to wait; then he said--
"Good sir, I would look into this matter further. The man has said his
deed was but lamely proved. Tell me what thou knowest."
"If the King's grace please, it did appear upon the trial that this man
entered into a house in the hamlet of Islington where one lay sick--three
witnesses say it was at ten of the clock in the morning, and two say it
was some minutes later--the sick man being alone at the time, and
sleeping--and presently the man came forth again and went his way. The
sick man died within the hour, being torn with spasms and retchings."
"Did any see the poison given? Was poison found?"
"Marry, no, my liege."
"Then how doth one know there was poison given at all?"
"Please your Majesty, the doctors testified that none die with such
symptoms but by poison."
Weighty evidence, this, in that simple age. Tom recognised its
formidable nature, and said--
"The doctor knoweth his trade--belike they were right. The matter hath
an ill-look for this poor man."
"Yet was not this all, your Majesty; there is more and worse. Many
testified that a witch, since gone from the village, none know whither,
did foretell, and speak it privately in their ears, that the sick man
WOULD DIE BY POISON--and more, that a stranger would give it--a stranger
with brown hair and clothed in a worn and common garb; and surely this
prisoner doth answer woundily to the bill. Please your Majesty to give
the circumstance that solemn weight which is its due, seeing it was
FORETOLD."
This was an argument of tremendous force in that superstitious day. Tom
felt that the thing was settled; if evidence was worth anything, this
poor fellow's guilt was proved. Still he offered the prisoner a chance,
saying--
"If thou canst say aught in thy behalf, speak."
"Nought that will avail, my King. I am innocent, yet cannot I make it
appear. I have no friends, else might I show that I was not in Islington
that day; so also might I show that at that hour they name I was above a
league away, seeing I was at Wapping Old Stairs; yea more, my King, for I
could show, that whilst they say I was TAKING life, I was SAVING it. A
drowning boy--"
"Peace! Sheriff, name the day the deed was done!"
"At ten in the morning, or some minutes later, the first day of the New
Year, most illustrious--"
"Let the prisoner go free--it is the King's will!"
Another blush followed this unregal outburst, and he covered his
indecorum as well as he could by adding--
"It enrageth me that a man should be hanged upon such idle, hare-brained
evidence!"
A low buzz of admiration swept through the assemblage. It was not
admiration of the decree that had been delivered by Tom, for the
propriety or expediency of pardoning a convicted poisoner was a thing
which few there would have felt justified in either admitting or
admiring--no, the admiration was for the intelligence and spirit which
Tom had displayed. Some of the low-voiced remarks were to this effect--
"This is no mad king--he hath his wits sound."
"How sanely he put his questions--how like his former natural self was
this abrupt imperious disposal of the matter!"
"God be thanked, his infirmity is spent! This is no weakling, but a
king. He hath borne himself like to his own father."
The air being filled with applause, Tom's ear necessarily caught a little
of it. The effect which this had upon him was to put him greatly at his
ease, and also to charge his system with very gratifying sensations.
However, his juvenile curiosity soon rose superior to these pleasant
thoughts and feelings; he was eager to know what sort of deadly mischief
the woman and the little girl could have been about; so, by his command,
the two terrified and sobbing creatures were brought before him.
"What is it that these have done?" he inquired of the sheriff.
"Please your Majesty, a black crime is charged upon them, and clearly
proven; wherefore the judges have decreed, according to the law, that
they be hanged. They sold themselves to the devil--such is their crime."
Tom shuddered. He had been taught to abhor people who did this wicked
thing. Still, he was not going to deny himself the pleasure of feeding
his curiosity for all that; so he asked--
"Where was this done?--and when?"
"On a midnight in December, in a ruined church, your Majesty."
Tom shuddered again.
"Who was there present?"
"Only these two, your grace--and THAT OTHER."
"Have these confessed?"
"Nay, not so, sire--they do deny it."
"Then prithee, how was it known?"
"Certain witness did see them wending thither, good your Majesty; this
bred the suspicion, and dire effects have since confirmed and justified
it. In particular, it is in evidence that through the wicked power so
obtained, they did invoke and bring about a storm that wasted all the
region round about. Above forty witnesses have proved the storm; and
sooth one might have had a thousand, for all had reason to remember it,
sith all had suffered by it."
"Certes this is a serious matter." Tom turned this dark piece of
scoundrelism over in his mind a while, then asked--
"Suffered the woman also by the storm?"
Several old heads among the assemblage nodded their recognition of the
wisdom of this question. The sheriff, however, saw nothing consequential
in the inquiry; he answered, with simple directness--
"Indeed did she, your Majesty, and most righteously, as all aver. Her
habitation was swept away, and herself and child left shelterless."
"Methinks the power to do herself so ill a turn was dearly bought. She
had been cheated, had she paid but a farthing for it; that she paid her
soul, and her child's, argueth that she is mad; if she is mad she knoweth
not what she doth, therefore sinneth not."
The elderly heads nodded recognition of Tom's wisdom once more, and one
individual murmured, "An' the King be mad himself, according to report,
then is it a madness of a sort that would improve the sanity of some I
wot of, if by the gentle providence of God they could but catch it."
"What age hath the child?" asked Tom.
"Nine years, please your Majesty."
"By the law of England may a child enter into covenant and sell itself,
my lord?" asked Tom, turning to a learned judge.
"The law doth not permit a child to make or meddle in any weighty matter,
good my liege, holding that its callow wit unfitteth it to cope with the
riper wit and evil schemings of them that are its elders. The DEVIL may
buy a child, if he so choose, and the child agree thereto, but not an
Englishman--in this latter case the contract would be null and void."
"It seemeth a rude unchristian thing, and ill contrived, that English law
denieth privileges to Englishmen to waste them on the devil!" cried Tom,
with honest heat.
This novel view of the matter excited many smiles, and was stored away in
many heads to be repeated about the Court as evidence of Tom's
originality as well as progress toward mental health.
The elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon Tom's
words with an excited interest and a growing hope. Tom noticed this, and
it strongly inclined his sympathies toward her in her perilous and
unfriended situation. Presently he asked--
"How wrought they to bring the storm?"
"BY PULLING OFF THEIR STOCKINGS, sire."
This astonished Tom, and also fired his curiosity to fever heat. He said,
eagerly--
"It is wonderful! Hath it always this dread effect?"
"Always, my liege--at least if the woman desire it, and utter the needful
words, either in her mind or with her tongue."
Tom turned to the woman, and said with impetuous zeal--
"Exert thy power--I would see a storm!"
There was a sudden paling of cheeks in the superstitious assemblage, and
a general, though unexpressed, desire to get out of the place--all of
which was lost upon Tom, who was dead to everything but the proposed
cataclysm. Seeing a puzzled and astonished look in the woman's face, he
added, excitedly--
"Never fear--thou shalt be blameless. More--thou shalt go free--none
shall touch thee. Exert thy power."
"Oh, my lord the King, I have it not--I have been falsely accused."
"Thy fears stay thee. Be of good heart, thou shalt suffer no harm. Make
a storm--it mattereth not how small a one--I require nought great or
harmful, but indeed prefer the opposite--do this and thy life is spared
--thou shalt go out free, with thy child, bearing the King's pardon, and
safe from hurt or malice from any in the realm."
The woman prostrated herself, and protested, with tears, that she had no
power to do the miracle, else she would gladly win her child's life
alone, and be content to lose her own, if by obedience to the King's
command so precious a grace might be acquired.
Tom urged--the woman still adhered to her declarations. Finally he said--
"I think the woman hath said true. An' MY mother were in her place and
gifted with the devil's functions, she had not stayed a moment to call
her storms and lay the whole land in ruins, if the saving of my forfeit
life were the price she got! It is argument that other mothers are made
in like mould. Thou art free, goodwife--thou and thy child--for I do
think thee innocent. NOW thou'st nought to fear, being pardoned--pull
off thy stockings!--an' thou canst make me a storm, thou shalt be rich!"
The redeemed creature was loud in her gratitude, and proceeded to obey,
whilst Tom looked on with eager expectancy, a little marred by
apprehension; the courtiers at the same time manifesting decided
discomfort and uneasiness. The woman stripped her own feet and her
little girl's also, and plainly did her best to reward the King's
generosity with an earthquake, but it was all a failure and a
disappointment. Tom sighed, and said--
"There, good soul, trouble thyself no further, thy power is departed out
of thee. Go thy way in peace; and if it return to thee at any time,
forget me not, but fetch me a storm." {13}
Chapter XVI. The State Dinner.
The dinner hour drew near--yet strangely enough, the thought brought but
slight discomfort to Tom, and hardly any terror. The morning's
experiences had wonderfully built up his confidence; the poor little
ash-cat was already more wonted to his strange garret, after four days'
habit, than a mature person could have become in a full month. A child's
facility in accommodating itself to circumstances was never more
strikingly illustrated.
Let us privileged ones hurry to the great banqueting-room and have a
glance at matters there whilst Tom is being made ready for the imposing
occasion. It is a spacious apartment, with gilded pillars and pilasters,
and pictured walls and ceilings. At the door stand tall guards, as rigid
as statues, dressed in rich and picturesque costumes, and bearing
halberds. In a high gallery which runs all around the place is a band of
musicians and a packed company of citizens of both sexes, in brilliant
attire. In the centre of the room, upon a raised platform, is Tom's
table. Now let the ancient chronicler speak:
"A gentleman enters the room bearing a rod, and along with him another
bearing a tablecloth, which, after they have both kneeled three times
with the utmost veneration, he spreads upon the table, and after kneeling
again they both retire; then come two others, one with the rod again, the
other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they have kneeled as
the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too
retire with the same ceremonies performed by the first; at last come two
nobles, richly clothed, one bearing a tasting-knife, who, after
prostrating themselves three times in the most graceful manner, approach
and rub the table with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the King
had been present." {6}
So end the solemn preliminaries. Now, far down the echoing corridors we
hear a bugle-blast, and the indistinct cry, "Place for the King! Way for
the King's most excellent majesty!" These sounds are momently repeated
--they grow nearer and nearer--and presently, almost in our faces, the
martial note peals and the cry rings out, "Way for the King!" At this
instant the shining pageant appears, and files in at the door, with a
measured march. Let the chronicler speak again:--
"First come Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly
dressed and bareheaded; next comes the Chancellor, between two, one of
which carries the royal sceptre, the other the Sword of State in a red
scabbard, studded with golden fleurs-de-lis, the point upwards; next
comes the King himself--whom, upon his appearing, twelve trumpets and
many drums salute with a great burst of welcome, whilst all in the
galleries rise in their places, crying 'God save the King!' After him
come nobles attached to his person, and on his right and left march his
guard of honour, his fifty Gentlemen Pensioners, with gilt battle-axes."
This was all fine and pleasant. Tom's pulse beat high, and a glad light
was in his eye. He bore himself right gracefully, and all the more so
because he was not thinking of how he was doing it, his mind being
charmed and occupied with the blithe sights and sounds about him--and
besides, nobody can be very ungraceful in nicely-fitting beautiful
clothes after he has grown a little used to them--especially if he is for
the moment unconscious of them. Tom remembered his instructions, and
acknowledged his greeting with a slight inclination of his plumed head,
and a courteous "I thank ye, my good people."
He seated himself at table, without removing his cap; and did it without
the least embarrassment; for to eat with one's cap on was the one
solitary royal custom upon which the kings and the Cantys met upon common
ground, neither party having any advantage over the other in the matter
of old familiarity with it. The pageant broke up and grouped itself
picturesquely, and remained bareheaded.
Now to the sound of gay music the Yeomen of the Guard entered,--"the
tallest and mightiest men in England, they being carefully selected in
this regard"--but we will let the chronicler tell about it:--
"The Yeomen of the Guard entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with
golden roses upon their backs; and these went and came, bringing in each
turn a course of dishes, served in plate. These dishes were received by
a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the
table, while the taster gave to each guard a mouthful to eat of the
particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison."
Tom made a good dinner, notwithstanding he was conscious that hundreds of
eyes followed each morsel to his mouth and watched him eat it with an
interest which could not have been more intense if it had been a deadly
explosive and was expected to blow him up and scatter him all about the
place. He was careful not to hurry, and equally careful not to do
anything whatever for himself, but wait till the proper official knelt
down and did it for him. He got through without a mistake--flawless and
precious triumph.
When the meal was over at last and he marched away in the midst of his
bright pageant, with the happy noises in his ears of blaring bugles,
rolling drums, and thundering acclamations, he felt that if he had seen
the worst of dining in public it was an ordeal which he would be glad to
endure several times a day if by that means he could but buy himself free
from some of the more formidable requirements of his royal office.
Chapter XVII. Foo-foo the First.
Miles Hendon hurried along toward the Southwark end of the bridge,
keeping a sharp look-out for the persons he sought, and hoping and
expecting to overtake them presently. He was disappointed in this,
however. By asking questions, he was enabled to track them part of the
way through Southwark; then all traces ceased, and he was perplexed as to
how to proceed. Still, he continued his efforts as best he could during
the rest of the day. Nightfall found him leg-weary, half-famished, and
his desire as far from accomplishment as ever; so he supped at the Tabard
Inn and went to bed, resolved to make an early start in the morning, and
give the town an exhaustive search. As he lay thinking and planning, he
presently began to reason thus: The boy would escape from the ruffian,
his reputed father, if possible; would he go back to London and seek his
former haunts? No, he would not do that, he would avoid recapture.
What, then, would he do? Never having had a friend in the world, or a
protector, until he met Miles Hendon, he would naturally try to find that
friend again, provided the effort did not require him to go toward London
and danger. He would strike for Hendon Hall, that is what he would do,
for he knew Hendon was homeward bound and there he might expect to find
him. Yes, the case was plain to Hendon--he must lose no more time in
Southwark, but move at once through Kent, toward Monk's Holm, searching
the wood and inquiring as he went. Let us return to the vanished little
King now.
The ruffian whom the waiter at the inn on the bridge saw 'about to join'
the youth and the King did not exactly join them, but fell in close
behind them and followed their steps. He said nothing. His left arm was
in a sling, and he wore a large green patch over his left eye; he limped
slightly, and used an oaken staff as a support. The youth led the King a
crooked course through Southwark, and by-and-by struck into the high road
beyond. The King was irritated, now, and said he would stop here--it was
Hendon's place to come to him, not his to go to Hendon. He would not
endure such insolence; he would stop where he was. The youth said--
"Thou'lt tarry here, and thy friend lying wounded in the wood yonder? So
be it, then."
The King's manner changed at once. He cried out--
"Wounded? And who hath dared to do it? But that is apart; lead on, lead
on! Faster, sirrah! Art shod with lead? Wounded, is he? Now though
the doer of it be a duke's son he shall rue it!"
It was some distance to the wood, but the space was speedily traversed.
The youth looked about him, discovered a bough sticking in the ground,
with a small bit of rag tied to it, then led the way into the forest,
watching for similar boughs and finding them at intervals; they were
evidently guides to the point he was aiming at. By-and-by an open place
was reached, where were the charred remains of a farm-house, and near
them a barn which was falling to ruin and decay. There was no sign of
life anywhere, and utter silence prevailed. The youth entered the barn,
the King following eagerly upon his heels. No one there! The King shot a
surprised and suspicious glance at the youth, and asked--
"Where is he?"
A mocking laugh was his answer. The King was in a rage in a moment; he
seized a billet of wood and was in the act of charging upon the youth
when another mocking laugh fell upon his ear. It was from the lame
ruffian who had been following at a distance. The King turned and said
angrily--
"Who art thou? What is thy business here?"
"Leave thy foolery," said the man, "and quiet thyself. My disguise is
none so good that thou canst pretend thou knowest not thy father through
it."
"Thou art not my father. I know thee not. I am the King. If thou hast
hid my servant, find him for me, or thou shalt sup sorrow for what thou
hast done."
John Canty replied, in a stern and measured voice--
"It is plain thou art mad, and I am loath to punish thee; but if thou
provoke me, I must. Thy prating doth no harm here, where there are no
ears that need to mind thy follies; yet it is well to practise thy tongue
to wary speech, that it may do no hurt when our quarters change. I have
done a murder, and may not tarry at home--neither shalt thou, seeing I
need thy service. My name is changed, for wise reasons; it is Hobbs
--John Hobbs; thine is Jack--charge thy memory accordingly. Now, then,
speak. Where is thy mother? Where are thy sisters? They came not to
the place appointed--knowest thou whither they went?"
The King answered sullenly--
"Trouble me not with these riddles. My mother is dead; my sisters are in
the palace."
The youth near by burst into a derisive laugh, and the King would have
assaulted him, but Canty--or Hobbs, as he now called himself--prevented
him, and said--
"Peace, Hugo, vex him not; his mind is astray, and thy ways fret him.
Sit thee down, Jack, and quiet thyself; thou shalt have a morsel to eat,
anon."
Hobbs and Hugo fell to talking together, in low voices, and the King
removed himself as far as he could from their disagreeable company. He
withdrew into the twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found
the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw. He lay down here, drew
straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in
thinking. He had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into
forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father. To the rest of
the world the name of Henry VIII. brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre
whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and
death; but to this boy the name brought only sensations of pleasure; the
figure it invoked wore a countenance that was all gentleness and
affection. He called to mind a long succession of loving passages
between his father and himself, and dwelt fondly upon them, his unstinted
tears attesting how deep and real was the grief that possessed his heart.
As the afternoon wasted away, the lad, wearied with his troubles, sank
gradually into a tranquil and healing slumber.
After a considerable time--he could not tell how long--his senses
struggled to a half-consciousness, and as he lay with closed eyes vaguely
wondering where he was and what had been happening, he noted a murmurous
sound, the sullen beating of rain upon the roof. A snug sense of comfort
stole over him, which was rudely broken, the next moment, by a chorus of
piping cackles and coarse laughter. It startled him disagreeably, and he
unmuffled his head to see whence this interruption proceeded. A grim and
unsightly picture met his eye. A bright fire was burning in the middle
of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and around it, and lit
weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the motliest company of
tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or
dreamed of. There were huge stalwart men, brown with exposure,
long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized
youths, of truculent countenance, and similarly clad; there were blind
mendicants, with patched or bandaged eyes; crippled ones, with wooden
legs and crutches; diseased ones, with running sores peeping from
ineffectual wrappings; there was a villain-looking pedlar with his pack;
a knife-grinder, a tinker, and a barber-surgeon, with the implements of
their trades; some of the females were hardly-grown girls, some were at
prime, some were old and wrinkled hags, and all were loud, brazen,
foul-mouthed; and all soiled and slatternly; there were three sore-faced
babies; there were a couple of starveling curs, with strings about their
necks, whose office was to lead the blind.
The night was come, the gang had just finished feasting, an orgy was
beginning; the can of liquor was passing from mouth to mouth. A general
cry broke forth--
"A song! a song from the Bat and Dick and Dot-and-go-One!"
One of the blind men got up, and made ready by casting aside the patches
that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited
the cause of his calamity. Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself of his
timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his
fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were
reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing
chorus. By the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken
enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang
it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous
sound that made the rafters quake. These were the inspiring words:--
'Bien Darkman's then, Bouse Mort and Ken, The bien Coves bings awast, On
Chates to trine by Rome Coves dine For his long lib at last. Bing'd out
bien Morts and toure, and toure, Bing out of the Rome vile bine, And
toure the Cove that cloy'd your duds, Upon the Chates to trine.' (From
'The English Rogue.' London, 1665.)
Conversation followed; not in the thieves' dialect of the song, for that
was only used in talk when unfriendly ears might be listening. In the
course of it, it appeared that 'John Hobbs' was not altogether a new
recruit, but had trained in the gang at some former time. His later
history was called for, and when he said he had 'accidentally' killed a
man, considerable satisfaction was expressed; when he added that the man
was a priest, he was roundly applauded, and had to take a drink with
everybody. Old acquaintances welcomed him joyously, and new ones were
proud to shake him by the hand. He was asked why he had 'tarried away so
many months.' He answered--
"London is better than the country, and safer, these late years, the laws
be so bitter and so diligently enforced. An' I had not had that
accident, I had stayed there. I had resolved to stay, and never more
venture country-wards--but the accident has ended that."
He inquired how many persons the gang numbered now. The 'ruffler,' or
chief, answered--
"Five and twenty sturdy budges, bulks, files, clapperdogeons and
maunders, counting the dells and doxies and other morts. {7} Most are
here, the rest are wandering eastward, along the winter lay. We follow at
dawn."
"I do not see the Wen among the honest folk about me. Where may he be?"
"Poor lad, his diet is brimstone, now, and over hot for a delicate taste.
He was killed in a brawl, somewhere about midsummer."
"I sorrow to hear that; the Wen was a capable man, and brave."
"That was he, truly. Black Bess, his dell, is of us yet, but absent on
the eastward tramp; a fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none
ever seeing her drunk above four days in the seven."
"She was ever strict--I remember it well--a goodly wench and worthy all
commendation. Her mother was more free and less particular; a
troublesome and ugly-tempered beldame, but furnished with a wit above the
common."
"We lost her through it. Her gift of palmistry and other sorts of
fortune-telling begot for her at last a witch's name and fame. The law
roasted her to death at a slow fire. It did touch me to a sort of
tenderness to see the gallant way she met her lot--cursing and reviling
all the crowd that gaped and gazed around her, whilst the flames licked
upward toward her face and catched her thin locks and crackled about her
old gray head--cursing them! why an' thou should'st live a thousand years
thoud'st never hear so masterful a cursing. Alack, her art died with
her. There be base and weakling imitations left, but no true blasphemy."
The Ruffler sighed; the listeners sighed in sympathy; a general
depression fell upon the company for a moment, for even hardened outcasts
like these are not wholly dead to sentiment, but are able to feel a
fleeting sense of loss and affliction at wide intervals and under
peculiarly favouring circumstances--as in cases like to this, for
instance, when genius and culture depart and leave no heir. However, a
deep drink all round soon restored the spirits of the mourners.
"Have any others of our friends fared hardly?" asked Hobbs.
"Some--yes. Particularly new comers--such as small husbandmen turned
shiftless and hungry upon the world because their farms were taken from
them to be changed to sheep ranges. They begged, and were whipped at the
cart's tail, naked from the girdle up, till the blood ran; then set in
the stocks to be pelted; they begged again, were whipped again, and
deprived of an ear; they begged a third time--poor devils, what else
could they do?--and were branded on the cheek with a red-hot iron, then
sold for slaves; they ran away, were hunted down, and hanged. 'Tis a
brief tale, and quickly told. Others of us have fared less hardly. Stand
forth, Yokel, Burns, and Hodge--show your adornments!"
These stood up and stripped away some of their rags, exposing their
backs, criss-crossed with ropy old welts left by the lash; one turned up
his hair and showed the place where a left ear had once been; another
showed a brand upon his shoulder--the letter V--and a mutilated ear; the
third said--
"I am Yokel, once a farmer and prosperous, with loving wife and kids--now
am I somewhat different in estate and calling; and the wife and kids are
gone; mayhap they are in heaven, mayhap in--in the other place--but the
kindly God be thanked, they bide no more in ENGLAND! My good old
blameless mother strove to earn bread by nursing the sick; one of these
died, the doctors knew not how, so my mother was burnt for a witch,
whilst my babes looked on and wailed. English law!--up, all, with your
cups!--now all together and with a cheer!--drink to the merciful English
law that delivered HER from the English hell! Thank you, mates, one and
all. I begged, from house to house--I and the wife--bearing with us the
hungry kids--but it was crime to be hungry in England--so they stripped
us and lashed us through three towns. Drink ye all again to the merciful
English law!--for its lash drank deep of my Mary's blood and its blessed
deliverance came quick. She lies there, in the potter's field, safe from
all harms. And the kids--well, whilst the law lashed me from town to
town, they starved. Drink, lads--only a drop--a drop to the poor kids,
that never did any creature harm. I begged again--begged, for a crust,
and got the stocks and lost an ear--see, here bides the stump; I begged
again, and here is the stump of the other to keep me minded of it. And
still I begged again, and was sold for a slave--here on my cheek under
this stain, if I washed it off, ye might see the red S the branding-iron
left there! A SLAVE! Do you understand that word? An English SLAVE!
--that is he that stands before ye. I have run from my master, and when I
am found--the heavy curse of heaven fall on the law of the land that hath
commanded it!--I shall hang!" {1}
A ringing voice came through the murky air--
"Thou shalt NOT!--and this day the end of that law is come!"
All turned, and saw the fantastic figure of the little King approaching
hurriedly; as it emerged into the light and was clearly revealed, a
general explosion of inquiries broke out--
"Who is it? WHAT is it? Who art thou, manikin?"
The boy stood unconfused in the midst of all those surprised and
questioning eyes, and answered with princely dignity--
"I am Edward, King of England."
A wild burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of
delight in the excellence of the joke. The King was stung. He said
sharply--
"Ye mannerless vagrants, is this your recognition of the royal boon I
have promised?"
He said more, with angry voice and excited gesture, but it was lost in a
whirlwind of laughter and mocking exclamations. 'John Hobbs' made
several attempts to make himself heard above the din, and at last
succeeded--saying--
"Mates, he is my son, a dreamer, a fool, and stark mad--mind him not--he
thinketh he IS the King."
"I AM the King," said Edward, turning toward him, "as thou shalt know to
thy cost, in good time. Thou hast confessed a murder--thou shalt swing
for it."
"THOU'LT betray me?--THOU? An' I get my hands upon thee--"
"Tut-tut!" said the burley Ruffler, interposing in time to save the King,
and emphasising this service by knocking Hobbs down with his fist, "hast
respect for neither Kings NOR Rufflers? An' thou insult my presence so
again, I'll hang thee up myself." Then he said to his Majesty, "Thou
must make no threats against thy mates, lad; and thou must guard thy
tongue from saying evil of them elsewhere. BE King, if it please thy mad
humour, but be not harmful in it. Sink the title thou hast uttered--'tis
treason; we be bad men in some few trifling ways, but none among us is so
base as to be traitor to his King; we be loving and loyal hearts, in that
regard. Note if I speak truth. Now--all together: 'Long live Edward,
King of England!'"
"LONG LIVE EDWARD, KING OF ENGLAND!"
The response came with such a thundergust from the motley crew that the
crazy building vibrated to the sound. The little King's face lighted
with pleasure for an instant, and he slightly inclined his head, and said
with grave simplicity--
"I thank you, my good people."
This unexpected result threw the company into convulsions of merriment.
When something like quiet was presently come again, the Ruffler said,
firmly, but with an accent of good nature--
"Drop it, boy, 'tis not wise, nor well. Humour thy fancy, if thou must,
but choose some other title."
A tinker shrieked out a suggestion--
"Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!"
The title 'took,' at once, every throat responded, and a roaring shout
went up, of--
"Long live Foo-foo the First, King of the Mooncalves!" followed by
hootings, cat-calls, and peals of laughter.
"Hale him forth, and crown him!"
"Robe him!"
"Sceptre him!"
"Throne him!"
These and twenty other cries broke out at once! and almost before the
poor little victim could draw a breath he was crowned with a tin basin,
robed in a tattered blanket, throned upon a barrel, and sceptred with the
tinker's soldering-iron. Then all flung themselves upon their knees
about him and sent up a chorus of ironical wailings, and mocking
supplications, whilst they swabbed their eyes with their soiled and
ragged sleeves and aprons--
"Be gracious to us, O sweet King!"
"Trample not upon thy beseeching worms, O noble Majesty!"
"Pity thy slaves, and comfort them with a royal kick!"
"Cheer us and warm us with thy gracious rays, O flaming sun of
sovereignty!"
"Sanctify the ground with the touch of thy foot, that we may eat the dirt
and be ennobled!"
"Deign to spit upon us, O Sire, that our children's children may tell of
thy princely condescension, and be proud and happy for ever!"
But the humorous tinker made the 'hit' of the evening and carried off the
honours. Kneeling, he pretended to kiss the King's foot, and was
indignantly spurned; whereupon he went about begging for a rag to paste
over the place upon his face which had been touched by the foot, saying
it must be preserved from contact with the vulgar air, and that he should
make his fortune by going on the highway and exposing it to view at the
rate of a hundred shillings a sight. He made himself so killingly funny
that he was the envy and admiration of the whole mangy rabble.
Tears of shame and indignation stood in the little monarch's eyes; and
the thought in his heart was, "Had I offered them a deep wrong they could
not be more cruel--yet have I proffered nought but to do them a kindness
--and it is thus they use me for it!"
Chapter XVIII. The Prince with the tramps.
The troop of vagabonds turned out at early dawn, and set forward on their
march. There was a lowering sky overhead, sloppy ground under foot, and
a winter chill in the air. All gaiety was gone from the company; some
were sullen and silent, some were irritable and petulant, none were
gentle-humoured, all were thirsty.
The Ruffler put 'Jack' in Hugo's charge, with some brief instructions,
and commanded John Canty to keep away from him and let him alone; he also
warned Hugo not to be too rough with the lad.
After a while the weather grew milder, and the clouds lifted somewhat.
The troop ceased to shiver, and their spirits began to improve. They
grew more and more cheerful, and finally began to chaff each other and
insult passengers along the highway. This showed that they were awaking
to an appreciation of life and its joys once more. The dread in which
their sort was held was apparent in the fact that everybody gave them the
road, and took their ribald insolences meekly, without venturing to talk
back. They snatched linen from the hedges, occasionally in full view of
the owners, who made no protest, but only seemed grateful that they did
not take the hedges, too.
By-and-by they invaded a small farmhouse and made themselves at home
while the trembling farmer and his people swept the larder clean to
furnish a breakfast for them. They chucked the housewife and her
daughters under the chin whilst receiving the food from their hands, and
made coarse jests about them, accompanied with insulting epithets and
bursts of horse-laughter. They threw bones and vegetables at the farmer
and his sons, kept them dodging all the time, and applauded uproariously
when a good hit was made. They ended by buttering the head of one of the
daughters who resented some of their familiarities. When they took their
leave they threatened to come back and burn the house over the heads of
the family if any report of their doings got to the ears of the
authorities.
About noon, after a long and weary tramp, the gang came to a halt behind
a hedge on the outskirts of a considerable village. An hour was allowed
for rest, then the crew scattered themselves abroad to enter the village
at different points to ply their various trades--'Jack' was sent with
Hugo. They wandered hither and thither for some time, Hugo watching for
opportunities to do a stroke of business, but finding none--so he finally
said--
"I see nought to steal; it is a paltry place. Wherefore we will beg."
"WE, forsooth! Follow thy trade--it befits thee. But _I_ will not beg."
"Thou'lt not beg!" exclaimed Hugo, eyeing the King with surprise.
"Prithee, since when hast thou reformed?"
"What dost thou mean?"
"Mean? Hast thou not begged the streets of London all thy life?"
"I? Thou idiot!"
"Spare thy compliments--thy stock will last the longer. Thy father says
thou hast begged all thy days. Mayhap he lied. Peradventure you will
even make so bold as to SAY he lied," scoffed Hugo.
"Him YOU call my father? Yes, he lied."
"Come, play not thy merry game of madman so far, mate; use it for thy
amusement, not thy hurt. An' I tell him this, he will scorch thee finely
for it."
"Save thyself the trouble. I will tell him."
"I like thy spirit, I do in truth; but I do not admire thy judgment.
Bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going out
of one's way to invite them. But a truce to these matters; _I_ believe
your father. I doubt not he can lie; I doubt not he DOTH lie, upon
occasion, for the best of us do that; but there is no occasion here. A
wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for nought. But
come; sith it is thy humour to give over begging, wherewithal shall we
busy ourselves? With robbing kitchens?"
The King said, impatiently--
"Have done with this folly--you weary me!"
Hugo replied, with temper--
"Now harkee, mate; you will not beg, you will not rob; so be it. But I
will tell you what you WILL do. You will play decoy whilst _I_ beg.
Refuse, an' you think you may venture!"
The King was about to reply contemptuously, when Hugo said, interrupting--
"Peace! Here comes one with a kindly face. Now will I fall down in a
fit. When the stranger runs to me, set you up a wail, and fall upon your
knees, seeming to weep; then cry out as all the devils of misery were in
your belly, and say, 'Oh, sir, it is my poor afflicted brother, and we be
friendless; o' God's name cast through your merciful eyes one pitiful
look upon a sick, forsaken, and most miserable wretch; bestow one little
penny out of thy riches upon one smitten of God and ready to perish!'
--and mind you, keep you ON wailing, and abate not till we bilk him of his
penny, else shall you rue it."
Then immediately Hugo began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and
reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he
sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the
dirt, in seeming agony.
"O, dear, O dear!" cried the benevolent stranger, "O poor soul, poor
soul, how he doth suffer! There--let me help thee up."
"O noble sir, forbear, and God love you for a princely gentleman--but it
giveth me cruel pain to touch me when I am taken so. My brother there
will tell your worship how I am racked with anguish when these fits be
upon me. A penny, dear sir, a penny, to buy a little food; then leave me
to my sorrows."
"A penny! thou shalt have three, thou hapless creature"--and he fumbled
in his pocket with nervous haste and got them out. "There, poor lad, take
them and most welcome. Now come hither, my boy, and help me carry thy
stricken brother to yon house, where--"
"I am not his brother," said the King, interrupting.
"What! not his brother?"
"Oh, hear him!" groaned Hugo, then privately ground his teeth. "He denies
his own brother--and he with one foot in the grave!"
"Boy, thou art indeed hard of heart, if this is thy brother. For shame!
--and he scarce able to move hand or foot. If he is not thy brother, who
is he, then?"
"A beggar and a thief! He has got your money and has picked your pocket
likewise. An' thou would'st do a healing miracle, lay thy staff over his
shoulders and trust Providence for the rest."
But Hugo did not tarry for the miracle. In a moment he was up and off
like the wind, the gentleman following after and raising the hue and cry
lustily as he went. The King, breathing deep gratitude to Heaven for his
own release, fled in the opposite direction, and did not slacken his pace
until he was out of harm's reach. He took the first road that offered,
and soon put the village behind him. He hurried along, as briskly as he
could, during several hours, keeping a nervous watch over his shoulder
for pursuit; but his fears left him at last, and a grateful sense of
security took their place. He recognised, now, that he was hungry, and
also very tired. So he halted at a farmhouse; but when he was about to
speak, he was cut short and driven rudely away. His clothes were against
him.
He wandered on, wounded and indignant, and was resolved to put himself in
the way of like treatment no more. But hunger is pride's master; so, as
the evening drew near, he made an attempt at another farmhouse; but here
he fared worse than before; for he was called hard names and was promised
arrest as a vagrant except he moved on promptly.
The night came on, chilly and overcast; and still the footsore monarch
laboured slowly on. He was obliged to keep moving, for every time he sat
down to rest he was soon penetrated to the bone with the cold. All his
sensations and experiences, as he moved through the solemn gloom and the
empty vastness of the night, were new and strange to him. At intervals
he heard voices approach, pass by, and fade into silence; and as he saw
nothing more of the bodies they belonged to than a sort of formless
drifting blur, there was something spectral and uncanny about it all that
made him shudder. Occasionally he caught the twinkle of a light--always
far away, apparently--almost in another world; if he heard the tinkle of
a sheep's bell, it was vague, distant, indistinct; the muffled lowing of
the herds floated to him on the night wind in vanishing cadences, a
mournful sound; now and then came the complaining howl of a dog over
viewless expanses of field and forest; all sounds were remote; they made
the little King feel that all life and activity were far removed from
him, and that he stood solitary, companionless, in the centre of a
measureless solitude.
He stumbled along, through the gruesome fascinations of this new
experience, startled occasionally by the soft rustling of the dry leaves
overhead, so like human whispers they seemed to sound; and by-and-by he
came suddenly upon the freckled light of a tin lantern near at hand. He
stepped back into the shadows and waited. The lantern stood by the open
door of a barn. The King waited some time--there was no sound, and
nobody stirring. He got so cold, standing still, and the hospitable barn
looked so enticing, that at last he resolved to risk everything and
enter. He started swiftly and stealthily, and just as he was crossing the
threshold he heard voices behind him. He darted behind a cask, within
the barn, and stooped down. Two farm-labourers came in, bringing the
lantern with them, and fell to work, talking meanwhile. Whilst they
moved about with the light, the King made good use of his eyes and took
the bearings of what seemed to be a good-sized stall at the further end
of the place, purposing to grope his way to it when he should be left to
himself. He also noted the position of a pile of horse blankets, midway
of the route, with the intent to levy upon them for the service of the
crown of England for one night.
By-and-by the men finished and went away, fastening the door behind them
and taking the lantern with them. The shivering King made for the
blankets, with as good speed as the darkness would allow; gathered them
up, and then groped his way safely to the stall. Of two of the blankets
he made a bed, then covered himself with the remaining two. He was a
glad monarch, now, though the blankets were old and thin, and not quite
warm enough; and besides gave out a pungent horsey odour that was almost
suffocatingly powerful.
Although the King was hungry and chilly, he was also so tired and
so drowsy that these latter influences soon began to get the
advantage of the former, and he presently dozed off into a state of
semi-consciousness. Then, just as he was on the point of losing himself
wholly, he distinctly felt something touch him! He was broad awake in a
moment, and gasping for breath. The cold horror of that mysterious touch
in the dark almost made his heart stand still. He lay motionless, and
listened, scarcely breathing. But nothing stirred, and there was no
sound. He continued to listen, and wait, during what seemed a long time,
but still nothing stirred, and there was no sound. So he began to drop
into a drowse once more, at last; and all at once he felt that mysterious
touch again! It was a grisly thing, this light touch from this noiseless
and invisible presence; it made the boy sick with ghostly fears. What
should he do? That was the question; but he did not know how to answer
it. Should he leave these reasonably comfortable quarters and fly from
this inscrutable horror? But fly whither? He could not get out of the
barn; and the idea of scurrying blindly hither and thither in the dark,
within the captivity of the four walls, with this phantom gliding after
him, and visiting him with that soft hideous touch upon cheek or shoulder
at every turn, was intolerable. But to stay where he was, and endure
this living death all night--was that better? No. What, then, was there
left to do? Ah, there was but one course; he knew it well--he must put
out his hand and find that thing!
It was easy to think this; but it was hard to brace himself up to try it.
Three times he stretched his hand a little way out into the dark,
gingerly; and snatched it suddenly back, with a gasp--not because it had
encountered anything, but because he had felt so sure it was just GOING
to. But the fourth time, he groped a little further, and his hand
lightly swept against something soft and warm. This petrified him,
nearly, with fright; his mind was in such a state that he could imagine
the thing to be nothing else than a corpse, newly dead and still warm.
He thought he would rather die than touch it again. But he thought this
false thought because he did not know the immortal strength of human
curiosity. In no long time his hand was tremblingly groping again
--against his judgment, and without his consent--but groping persistently
on, just the same. It encountered a bunch of long hair; he shuddered,
but followed up the hair and found what seemed to be a warm rope;
followed up the rope and found an innocent calf!--for the rope was not a
rope at all, but the calf's tail.
The King was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that
fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he
need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened
him, but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and
any other boy, in those old superstitious times, would have acted and
suffered just as he had done.
The King was not only delighted to find that the creature was only a
calf, but delighted to have the calf's company; for he had been feeling
so lonesome and friendless that the company and comradeship of even this
humble animal were welcome. And he had been so buffeted, so rudely
entreated by his own kind, that it was a real comfort to him to feel that
he was at last in the society of a fellow-creature that had at least a
soft heart and a gentle spirit, whatever loftier attributes might be
lacking. So he resolved to waive rank and make friends with the calf.
While stroking its sleek warm back--for it lay near him and within easy
reach--it occurred to him that this calf might be utilised in more ways
than one. Whereupon he re-arranged his bed, spreading it down close to
the calf; then he cuddled himself up to the calf's back, drew the covers
up over himself and his friend, and in a minute or two was as warm and
comfortable as he had ever been in the downy couches of the regal palace
of Westminster.
Pleasant thoughts came at once; life took on a cheerfuller seeming. He
was free of the bonds of servitude and crime, free of the companionship
of base and brutal outlaws; he was warm; he was sheltered; in a word, he
was happy. The night wind was rising; it swept by in fitful gusts that
made the old barn quake and rattle, then its forces died down at
intervals, and went moaning and wailing around corners and projections
--but it was all music to the King, now that he was snug and comfortable:
let it blow and rage, let it batter and bang, let it moan and wail, he
minded it not, he only enjoyed it. He merely snuggled the closer to his
friend, in a luxury of warm contentment, and drifted blissfully out of
consciousness into a deep and dreamless sleep that was full of serenity
and peace. The distant dogs howled, the melancholy kine complained, and
the winds went on raging, whilst furious sheets of rain drove along the
roof; but the Majesty of England slept on, undisturbed, and the calf did
the same, it being a simple creature, and not easily troubled by storms
or embarrassed by sleeping with a king.
Chapter XIX. The Prince with the peasants.
When the King awoke in the early morning, he found that a wet but
thoughtful rat had crept into the place during the night and made a cosy
bed for itself in his bosom. Being disturbed now, it scampered away.
The boy smiled, and said, "Poor fool, why so fearful? I am as forlorn as
thou. 'Twould be a sham in me to hurt the helpless, who am myself so
helpless. Moreover, I owe you thanks for a good omen; for when a king
has fallen so low that the very rats do make a bed of him, it surely
meaneth that his fortunes be upon the turn, since it is plain he can no
lower go."
He got up and stepped out of the stall, and just then he heard the sound
of children's voices. The barn door opened and a couple of little girls
came in. As soon as they saw him their talking and laughing ceased, and
they stopped and stood still, gazing at him with strong curiosity; they
presently began to whisper together, then they approached nearer, and
stopped again to gaze and whisper. By-and-by they gathered courage and
began to discuss him aloud. One said--
"He hath a comely face."
The other added--
"And pretty hair."
"But is ill clothed enow."
"And how starved he looketh."
They came still nearer, sidling shyly around and about him, examining him
minutely from all points, as if he were some strange new kind of animal,
but warily and watchfully the while, as if they half feared he might be a
sort of animal that would bite, upon occasion. Finally they halted
before him, holding each other's hands for protection, and took a good
satisfying stare with their innocent eyes; then one of them plucked up
all her courage and inquired with honest directness--
"Who art thou, boy?"
"I am the King," was the grave answer.
The children gave a little start, and their eyes spread themselves wide
open and remained so during a speechless half minute. Then curiosity
broke the silence--
"The KING? What King?"
"The King of England."
The children looked at each other--then at him--then at each other again
--wonderingly, perplexedly; then one said--
"Didst hear him, Margery?--he said he is the King. Can that be true?"
"How can it be else but true, Prissy? Would he say a lie? For look you,
Prissy, an' it were not true, it WOULD be a lie. It surely would be.
Now think on't. For all things that be not true, be lies--thou canst
make nought else out of it."
It was a good tight argument, without a leak in it anywhere; and it left
Prissy's half-doubts not a leg to stand on. She considered a moment,
then put the King upon his honour with the simple remark--
"If thou art truly the King, then I believe thee."
"I am truly the King."
This settled the matter. His Majesty's royalty was accepted without
further question or discussion, and the two little girls began at once to
inquire into how he came to be where he was, and how he came to be so
unroyally clad, and whither he was bound, and all about his affairs. It
was a mighty relief to him to pour out his troubles where they would not
be scoffed at or doubted; so he told his tale with feeling, forgetting
even his hunger for the time; and it was received with the deepest and
tenderest sympathy by the gentle little maids. But when he got down to
his latest experiences and they learned how long he had been without
food, they cut him short and hurried him away to the farmhouse to find a
breakfast for him.
The King was cheerful and happy now, and said to himself, "When I am come
to mine own again, I will always honour little children, remembering how
that these trusted me and believed in me in my time of trouble; whilst
they that were older, and thought themselves wiser, mocked at me and held
me for a liar."
The children's mother received the King kindly, and was full of pity; for
his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her womanly
heart. She was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had seen
trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate. She imagined
that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or keepers; so
she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that she might take
measures to return him; but all her references to neighbouring towns and
villages, and all her inquiries in the same line went for nothing--the
boy's face, and his answers, too, showed that the things she was talking
of were not familiar to him. He spoke earnestly and simply about court
matters, and broke down, more than once, when speaking of the late King
'his father'; but whenever the conversation changed to baser topics, he
lost interest and became silent.
The woman was mightily puzzled; but she did not give up. As she
proceeded with her cooking, she set herself to contriving devices to
surprise the boy into betraying his real secret. She talked about
cattle--he showed no concern; then about sheep--the same result: so her
guess that he had been a shepherd boy was an error; she talked about
mills; and about weavers, tinkers, smiths, trades and tradesmen of all
sorts; and about Bedlam, and jails, and charitable retreats: but no
matter, she was baffled at all points. Not altogether, either; for she
argued that she had narrowed the thing down to domestic service. Yes,
she was sure she was on the right track, now; he must have been a house
servant. So she led up to that. But the result was discouraging. The
subject of sweeping appeared to weary him; fire-building failed to stir
him; scrubbing and scouring awoke no enthusiasm. The goodwife touched,
with a perishing hope, and rather as a matter of form, upon the subject
of cooking. To her surprise, and her vast delight, the King's face
lighted at once! Ah, she had hunted him down at last, she thought; and
she was right proud, too, of the devious shrewdness and tact which had
accomplished it.
Her tired tongue got a chance to rest, now; for the King's, inspired by
gnawing hunger and the fragrant smells that came from the sputtering pots
and pans, turned itself loose and delivered itself up to such an eloquent
dissertation upon certain toothsome dishes, that within three minutes the
woman said to herself, "Of a truth I was right--he hath holpen in a
kitchen!" Then he broadened his bill of fare, and discussed it with such
appreciation and animation, that the goodwife said to herself, "Good
lack! how can he know so many dishes, and so fine ones withal? For these
belong only upon the tables of the rich and great. Ah, now I see! ragged
outcast as he is, he must have served in the palace before his reason
went astray; yes, he must have helped in the very kitchen of the King
himself! I will test him."
Full of eagerness to prove her sagacity, she told the King to mind the
cooking a moment--hinting that he might manufacture and add a dish or
two, if he chose; then she went out of the room and gave her children a
sign to follow after. The King muttered--
"Another English king had a commission like to this, in a bygone time--it
is nothing against my dignity to undertake an office which the great
Alfred stooped to assume. But I will try to better serve my trust than
he; for he let the cakes burn."
The intent was good, but the performance was not answerable to it, for
this King, like the other one, soon fell into deep thinkings concerning
his vast affairs, and the same calamity resulted--the cookery got burned.
The woman returned in time to save the breakfast from entire destruction;
and she promptly brought the King out of his dreams with a brisk and
cordial tongue-lashing. Then, seeing how troubled he was over his
violated trust, she softened at once, and was all goodness and gentleness
toward him.
The boy made a hearty and satisfying meal, and was greatly refreshed and
gladdened by it. It was a meal which was distinguished by this curious
feature, that rank was waived on both sides; yet neither recipient of the
favour was aware that it had been extended. The goodwife had intended to
feed this young tramp with broken victuals in a corner, like any other
tramp or like a dog; but she was so remorseful for the scolding she had
given him, that she did what she could to atone for it by allowing him to
sit at the family table and eat with his betters, on ostensible terms of
equality with them; and the King, on his side, was so remorseful for
having broken his trust, after the family had been so kind to him, that
he forced himself to atone for it by humbling himself to the family
level, instead of requiring the woman and her children to stand and wait
upon him, while he occupied their table in the solitary state due to his
birth and dignity. It does us all good to unbend sometimes. This good
woman was made happy all the day long by the applauses which she got out
of herself for her magnanimous condescension to a tramp; and the King was
just as self-complacent over his gracious humility toward a humble
peasant woman.
When breakfast was over, the housewife told the King to wash up the
dishes. This command was a staggerer, for a moment, and the King came
near rebelling; but then he said to himself, "Alfred the Great watched
the cakes; doubtless he would have washed the dishes too--therefore will
I essay it."
He made a sufficiently poor job of it; and to his surprise too, for the
cleaning of wooden spoons and trenchers had seemed an easy thing to do.
It was a tedious and troublesome piece of work, but he finished it at
last. He was becoming impatient to get away on his journey now; however,
he was not to lose this thrifty dame's society so easily. She furnished
him some little odds and ends of employment, which he got through with
after a fair fashion and with some credit. Then she set him and the
little girls to paring some winter apples; but he was so awkward at this
service that she retired him from it and gave him a butcher knife to
grind. Afterwards she kept him carding wool until he began to think he
had laid the good King Alfred about far enough in the shade for the
present in the matter of showy menial heroisms that would read
picturesquely in story-books and histories, and so he was half-minded to
resign. And when, just after the noonday dinner, the goodwife gave him a
basket of kittens to drown, he did resign. At least he was just going to
resign--for he felt that he must draw the line somewhere, and it seemed
to him that to draw it at kitten-drowning was about the right thing--when
there was an interruption. The interruption was John Canty--with a
peddler's pack on his back--and Hugo.
The King discovered these rascals approaching the front gate before they
had had a chance to see him; so he said nothing about drawing the line,
but took up his basket of kittens and stepped quietly out the back way,
without a word. He left the creatures in an out-house, and hurried on,
into a narrow lane at the rear.
Chapter XX. The Prince and the hermit.
The high hedge hid him from the house, now; and so, under the impulse of
a deadly fright, he let out all his forces and sped toward a wood in the
distance. He never looked back until he had almost gained the shelter of
the forest; then he turned and descried two figures in the distance.
That was sufficient; he did not wait to scan them critically, but hurried
on, and never abated his pace till he was far within the twilight depths
of the wood. Then he stopped; being persuaded that he was now tolerably
safe. He listened intently, but the stillness was profound and solemn
--awful, even, and depressing to the spirits. At wide intervals his
straining ear did detect sounds, but they were so remote, and hollow, and
mysterious, that they seemed not to be real sounds, but only the moaning
and complaining ghosts of departed ones. So the sounds were yet more
dreary than the silence which they interrupted.
It was his purpose, in the beginning, to stay where he was the rest of
the day; but a chill soon invaded his perspiring body, and he was at last
obliged to resume movement in order to get warm. He struck straight
through the forest, hoping to pierce to a road presently, but he was
disappointed in this. He travelled on and on; but the farther he went,
the denser the wood became, apparently. The gloom began to thicken,
by-and-by, and the King realised that the night was coming on. It made
him shudder to think of spending it in such an uncanny place; so he tried
to hurry faster, but he only made the less speed, for he could not now
see well enough to choose his steps judiciously; consequently he kept
tripping over roots and tangling himself in vines and briers.
And how glad he was when at last he caught the glimmer of a light! He
approached it warily, stopping often to look about him and listen. It
came from an unglazed window-opening in a shabby little hut. He heard a
voice, now, and felt a disposition to run and hide; but he changed his
mind at once, for this voice was praying, evidently. He glided to the
one window of the hut, raised himself on tiptoe, and stole a glance
within. The room was small; its floor was the natural earth, beaten hard
by use; in a corner was a bed of rushes and a ragged blanket or two; near
it was a pail, a cup, a basin, and two or three pots and pans; there was
a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the remains of a
faggot fire were smouldering; before a shrine, which was lighted by a
single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box at his side
lay an open book and a human skull. The man was of large, bony frame;
his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he was clothed in a
robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to his heels.
"A holy hermit!" said the King to himself; "now am I indeed fortunate."
The hermit rose from his knees; the King knocked. A deep voice
responded--
"Enter!--but leave sin behind, for the ground whereon thou shalt stand is
holy!"
The King entered, and paused. The hermit turned a pair of gleaming,
unrestful eyes upon him, and said--
"Who art thou?"
"I am the King," came the answer, with placid simplicity.
"Welcome, King!" cried the hermit, with enthusiasm. Then, bustling about
with feverish activity, and constantly saying, "Welcome, welcome," he
arranged his bench, seated the King on it, by the hearth, threw some
faggots on the fire, and finally fell to pacing the floor with a nervous
stride.
"Welcome! Many have sought sanctuary here, but they were not worthy, and
were turned away. But a King who casts his crown away, and despises the
vain splendours of his office, and clothes his body in rags, to devote
his life to holiness and the mortification of the flesh--he is worthy, he
is welcome!--here shall he abide all his days till death come." The King
hastened to interrupt and explain, but the hermit paid no attention to
him--did not even hear him, apparently, but went right on with his talk,
with a raised voice and a growing energy. "And thou shalt be at peace
here. None shall find out thy refuge to disquiet thee with supplications
to return to that empty and foolish life which God hath moved thee to
abandon. Thou shalt pray here; thou shalt study the Book; thou shalt
meditate upon the follies and delusions of this world, and upon the
sublimities of the world to come; thou shalt feed upon crusts and herbs,
and scourge thy body with whips, daily, to the purifying of thy soul.
Thou shalt wear a hair shirt next thy skin; thou shalt drink water only;
and thou shalt be at peace; yes, wholly at peace; for whoso comes to seek
thee shall go his way again, baffled; he shall not find thee, he shall
not molest thee."
The old man, still pacing back and forth, ceased to speak aloud, and
began to mutter. The King seized this opportunity to state his case; and
he did it with an eloquence inspired by uneasiness and apprehension. But
the hermit went on muttering, and gave no heed. And still muttering, he
approached the King and said impressively--
"'Sh! I will tell you a secret!" He bent down to impart it, but checked
himself, and assumed a listening attitude. After a moment or two he went
on tiptoe to the window-opening, put his head out, and peered around in
the gloaming, then came tiptoeing back again, put his face close down to
the King's, and whispered--
"I am an archangel!"
The King started violently, and said to himself, "Would God I were with
the outlaws again; for lo, now am I the prisoner of a madman!" His
apprehensions were heightened, and they showed plainly in his face. In a
low excited voice the hermit continued--
"I see you feel my atmosphere! There's awe in your face! None may be in
this atmosphere and not be thus affected; for it is the very atmosphere
of heaven. I go thither and return, in the twinkling of an eye. I was
made an archangel on this very spot, it is five years ago, by angels sent
from heaven to confer that awful dignity. Their presence filled this
place with an intolerable brightness. And they knelt to me, King! yes,
they knelt to me! for I was greater than they. I have walked in the
courts of heaven, and held speech with the patriarchs. Touch my hand--be
not afraid--touch it. There--now thou hast touched a hand which has been
clasped by Abraham and Isaac and Jacob! For I have walked in the golden
courts; I have seen the Deity face to face!" He paused, to give this
speech effect; then his face suddenly changed, and he started to his feet
again saying, with angry energy, "Yes, I am an archangel; A MERE
ARCHANGEL!--I that might have been pope! It is verily true. I was told
it from heaven in a dream, twenty years ago; ah, yes, I was to be pope!
--and I SHOULD have been pope, for Heaven had said it--but the King
dissolved my religious house, and I, poor obscure unfriended monk, was
cast homeless upon the world, robbed of my mighty destiny!" Here he began
to mumble again, and beat his forehead in futile rage, with his fist; now
and then articulating a venomous curse, and now and then a pathetic
"Wherefore I am nought but an archangel--I that should have been pope!"
So he went on, for an hour, whilst the poor little King sat and suffered.
Then all at once the old man's frenzy departed, and he became all
gentleness. His voice softened, he came down out of his clouds, and fell
to prattling along so simply and so humanly, that he soon won the King's
heart completely. The old devotee moved the boy nearer to the fire and
made him comfortable; doctored his small bruises and abrasions with a
deft and tender hand; and then set about preparing and cooking a supper
--chatting pleasantly all the time, and occasionally stroking the lad's
cheek or patting his head, in such a gently caressing way that in a
little while all the fear and repulsion inspired by the archangel were
changed to reverence and affection for the man.
This happy state of things continued while the two ate the supper; then,
after a prayer before the shrine, the hermit put the boy to bed, in a
small adjoining room, tucking him in as snugly and lovingly as a mother
might; and so, with a parting caress, left him and sat down by the fire,
and began to poke the brands about in an absent and aimless way.
Presently he paused; then tapped his forehead several times with his
fingers, as if trying to recall some thought which had escaped from his
mind. Apparently he was unsuccessful. Now he started quickly up, and
entered his guest's room, and said--
"Thou art King?"
"Yes," was the response, drowsily uttered.
"What King?"
"Of England."
"Of England? Then Henry is gone!"
"Alack, it is so. I am his son."
A black frown settled down upon the hermit's face, and he clenched his
bony hands with a vindictive energy. He stood a few moments, breathing
fast and swallowing repeatedly, then said in a husky voice--
"Dost know it was he that turned us out into the world houseless and
homeless?"
There was no response. The old man bent down and scanned the boy's
reposeful face and listened to his placid breathing. "He sleeps--sleeps
soundly;" and the frown vanished away and gave place to an expression of
evil satisfaction. A smile flitted across the dreaming boy's features.
The hermit muttered, "So--his heart is happy;" and he turned away. He
went stealthily about the place, seeking here and there for something;
now and then halting to listen, now and then jerking his head around and
casting a quick glance toward the bed; and always muttering, always
mumbling to himself. At last he found what he seemed to want--a rusty
old butcher knife and a whetstone. Then he crept to his place by the
fire, sat himself down, and began to whet the knife softly on the stone,
still muttering, mumbling, ejaculating. The winds sighed around the
lonely place, the mysterious voices of the night floated by out of the
distances. The shining eyes of venturesome mice and rats peered out at
the old man from cracks and coverts, but he went on with his work, rapt,
absorbed, and noted none of these things.
At long intervals he drew his thumb along the edge of his knife, and
nodded his head with satisfaction. "It grows sharper," he said; "yes, it
grows sharper."
He took no note of the flight of time, but worked tranquilly on,
entertaining himself with his thoughts, which broke out occasionally in
articulate speech--
"His father wrought us evil, he destroyed us--and is gone down into the
eternal fires! Yes, down into the eternal fires! He escaped us--but it
was God's will, yes it was God's will, we must not repine. But he hath
not escaped the fires! No, he hath not escaped the fires, the consuming,
unpitying, remorseless fires--and THEY are everlasting!"
And so he wrought, and still wrought--mumbling, chuckling a low rasping
chuckle at times--and at times breaking again into words--
"It was his father that did it all. I am but an archangel; but for him I
should be pope!"
The King stirred. The hermit sprang noiselessly to the bedside, and went
down upon his knees, bending over the prostrate form with his knife
uplifted. The boy stirred again; his eyes came open for an instant, but
there was no speculation in them, they saw nothing; the next moment his
tranquil breathing showed that his sleep was sound once more.
The hermit watched and listened, for a time, keeping his position and
scarcely breathing; then he slowly lowered his arms, and presently crept
away, saying,--
"It is long past midnight; it is not best that he should cry out, lest by
accident someone be passing."
He glided about his hovel, gathering a rag here, a thong there, and
another one yonder; then he returned, and by careful and gentle handling
he managed to tie the King's ankles together without waking him. Next he
essayed to tie the wrists; he made several attempts to cross them, but
the boy always drew one hand or the other away, just as the cord was
ready to be applied; but at last, when the archangel was almost ready to
despair, the boy crossed his hands himself, and the next moment they were
bound. Now a bandage was passed under the sleeper's chin and brought up
over his head and tied fast--and so softly, so gradually, and so deftly
were the knots drawn together and compacted, that the boy slept
peacefully through it all without stirring.
Chapter XXI. Hendon to the rescue.
The old man glided away, stooping, stealthy, cat-like, and brought the
low bench. He seated himself upon it, half his body in the dim and
flickering light, and the other half in shadow; and so, with his craving
eyes bent upon the slumbering boy, he kept his patient vigil there,
heedless of the drift of time, and softly whetted his knife, and mumbled
and chuckled; and in aspect and attitude he resembled nothing so much as
a grizzly, monstrous spider, gloating over some hapless insect that lay
bound and helpless in his web.
After a long while, the old man, who was still gazing,--yet not seeing,
his mind having settled into a dreamy abstraction,--observed, on a
sudden, that the boy's eyes were open! wide open and staring!--staring up
in frozen horror at the knife. The smile of a gratified devil crept over
the old man's face, and he said, without changing his attitude or his
occupation--
"Son of Henry the Eighth, hast thou prayed?"
The boy struggled helplessly in his bonds, and at the same time forced a
smothered sound through his closed jaws, which the hermit chose to
interpret as an affirmative answer to his question.
"Then pray again. Pray the prayer for the dying!"
A shudder shook the boy's frame, and his face blenched. Then he
struggled again to free himself--turning and twisting himself this way
and that; tugging frantically, fiercely, desperately--but uselessly--to
burst his fetters; and all the while the old ogre smiled down upon him,
and nodded his head, and placidly whetted his knife; mumbling, from time
to time, "The moments are precious, they are few and precious--pray the
prayer for the dying!"
The boy uttered a despairing groan, and ceased from his struggles,
panting. The tears came, then, and trickled, one after the other, down
his face; but this piteous sight wrought no softening effect upon the
savage old man.
The dawn was coming now; the hermit observed it, and spoke up sharply,
with a touch of nervous apprehension in his voice--
"I may not indulge this ecstasy longer! The night is already gone. It
seems but a moment--only a moment; would it had endured a year! Seed of
the Church's spoiler, close thy perishing eyes, an' thou fearest to look
upon--"
The rest was lost in inarticulate mutterings. The old man sank upon his
knees, his knife in his hand, and bent himself over the moaning boy.
Hark! There was a sound of voices near the cabin--the knife dropped from
the hermit's hand; he cast a sheepskin over the boy and started up,
trembling. The sounds increased, and presently the voices became rough
and angry; then came blows, and cries for help; then a clatter of swift
footsteps, retreating. Immediately came a succession of thundering
knocks upon the cabin door, followed by--
"Hullo-o-o! Open! And despatch, in the name of all the devils!"
Oh, this was the blessedest sound that had ever made music in the King's
ears; for it was Miles Hendon's voice!
The hermit, grinding his teeth in impotent rage, moved swiftly out of the
bedchamber, closing the door behind him; and straightway the King heard a
talk, to this effect, proceeding from the 'chapel':--
"Homage and greeting, reverend sir! Where is the boy--MY boy?"
"What boy, friend?"
"What boy! Lie me no lies, sir priest, play me no deceptions!--I am not
in the humour for it. Near to this place I caught the scoundrels who I
judged did steal him from me, and I made them confess; they said he was
at large again, and they had tracked him to your door. They showed me
his very footprints. Now palter no more; for look you, holy sir, an'
thou produce him not--Where is the boy?"
"O good sir, peradventure you mean the ragged regal vagrant that tarried
here the night. If such as you take an interest in such as he, know,
then, that I have sent him of an errand. He will be back anon."
"How soon? How soon? Come, waste not the time--cannot I overtake him?
How soon will he be back?"
"Thou need'st not stir; he will return quickly."
"So be it, then. I will try to wait. But stop!--YOU sent him of an
errand?--you! Verily this is a lie--he would not go. He would pull thy
old beard, an' thou didst offer him such an insolence. Thou hast lied,
friend; thou hast surely lied! He would not go for thee, nor for any
man."
"For any MAN--no; haply not. But I am not a man."
"WHAT! Now o' God's name what art thou, then?"
"It is a secret--mark thou reveal it not. I am an archangel!"
There was a tremendous ejaculation from Miles Hendon--not altogether
unprofane--followed by--
"This doth well and truly account for his complaisance! Right well I
knew he would budge nor hand nor foot in the menial service of any
mortal; but, lord, even a king must obey when an archangel gives the word
o' command! Let me--'sh! What noise was that?"
All this while the little King had been yonder, alternately quaking with
terror and trembling with hope; and all the while, too, he had thrown all
the strength he could into his anguished moanings, constantly expecting
them to reach Hendon's ear, but always realising, with bitterness, that
they failed, or at least made no impression. So this last remark of his
servant came as comes a reviving breath from fresh fields to the dying;
and he exerted himself once more, and with all his energy, just as the
hermit was saying--
"Noise? I heard only the wind."
"Mayhap it was. Yes, doubtless that was it. I have been hearing it
faintly all the--there it is again! It is not the wind! What an odd
sound! Come, we will hunt it out!"
Now the King's joy was nearly insupportable. His tired lungs did their
utmost--and hopefully, too--but the sealed jaws and the muffling
sheepskin sadly crippled the effort. Then the poor fellow's heart sank,
to hear the hermit say--
"Ah, it came from without--I think from the copse yonder. Come, I will
lead the way."
The King heard the two pass out, talking; heard their footsteps die
quickly away--then he was alone with a boding, brooding, awful silence.
It seemed an age till he heard the steps and voices approaching again
--and this time he heard an added sound,--the trampling of hoofs,
apparently. Then he heard Hendon say--
"I will not wait longer. I CANNOT wait longer. He has lost his way in
this thick wood. Which direction took he? Quick--point it out to me."
"He--but wait; I will go with thee."
"Good--good! Why, truly thou art better than thy looks. Marry I do not
think there's not another archangel with so right a heart as thine. Wilt
ride? Wilt take the wee donkey that's for my boy, or wilt thou fork thy
holy legs over this ill-conditioned slave of a mule that I have provided
for myself?--and had been cheated in too, had he cost but the indifferent
sum of a month's usury on a brass farthing let to a tinker out of work."
"No--ride thy mule, and lead thine ass; I am surer on mine own feet, and
will walk."
"Then prithee mind the little beast for me while I take my life in my
hands and make what success I may toward mounting the big one."
Then followed a confusion of kicks, cuffs, tramplings and plungings,
accompanied by a thunderous intermingling of volleyed curses, and finally
a bitter apostrophe to the mule, which must have broken its spirit, for
hostilities seemed to cease from that moment.
With unutterable misery the fettered little King heard the voices and
footsteps fade away and die out. All hope forsook him, now, for the
moment, and a dull despair settled down upon his heart. "My only friend
is deceived and got rid of," he said; "the hermit will return and--" He
finished with a gasp; and at once fell to struggling so frantically with
his bonds again, that he shook off the smothering sheepskin.
And now he heard the door open! The sound chilled him to the marrow
--already he seemed to feel the knife at his throat. Horror made him close
his eyes; horror made him open them again--and before him stood John
Canty and Hugo!
He would have said "Thank God!" if his jaws had been free.
A moment or two later his limbs were at liberty, and his captors, each
gripping him by an arm, were hurrying him with all speed through the
forest.
Chapter XXII. A victim of treachery.
Once more 'King Foo-foo the First' was roving with the tramps and
outlaws, a butt for their coarse jests and dull-witted railleries, and
sometimes the victim of small spitefulness at the hands of Canty and Hugo
when the Ruffler's back was turned. None but Canty and Hugo really
disliked him. Some of the others liked him, and all admired his pluck
and spirit. During two or three days, Hugo, in whose ward and charge the
King was, did what he covertly could to make the boy uncomfortable; and
at night, during the customary orgies, he amused the company by putting
small indignities upon him--always as if by accident. Twice he stepped
upon the King's toes--accidentally--and the King, as became his royalty,
was contemptuously unconscious of it and indifferent to it; but the third
time Hugo entertained himself in that way, the King felled him to the
ground with a cudgel, to the prodigious delight of the tribe. Hugo,
consumed with anger and shame, sprang up, seized a cudgel, and came at
his small adversary in a fury. Instantly a ring was formed around the
gladiators, and the betting and cheering began. But poor Hugo stood no
chance whatever. His frantic and lubberly 'prentice-work found but a
poor market for itself when pitted against an arm which had been trained
by the first masters of Europe in single-stick, quarter-staff, and every
art and trick of swordsmanship. The little King stood, alert but at
graceful ease, and caught and turned aside the thick rain of blows with a
facility and precision which set the motley on-lookers wild with
admiration; and every now and then, when his practised eye detected an
opening, and a lightning-swift rap upon Hugo's head followed as a result,
the storm of cheers and laughter that swept the place was something
wonderful to hear. At the end of fifteen minutes, Hugo, all battered,
bruised, and the target for a pitiless bombardment of ridicule, slunk
from the field; and the unscathed hero of the fight was seized and borne
aloft upon the shoulders of the joyous rabble to the place of honour
beside the Ruffler, where with vast ceremony he was crowned King of the
Game-Cocks; his meaner title being at the same time solemnly cancelled
and annulled, and a decree of banishment from the gang pronounced against
any who should thenceforth utter it.
All attempts to make the King serviceable to the troop had failed. He had
stubbornly refused to act; moreover, he was always trying to escape. He
had been thrust into an unwatched kitchen, the first day of his return;
he not only came forth empty-handed, but tried to rouse the housemates.
He was sent out with a tinker to help him at his work; he would not work;
moreover, he threatened the tinker with his own soldering-iron; and
finally both Hugo and the tinker found their hands full with the mere
matter of keeping his from getting away. He delivered the thunders of
his royalty upon the heads of all who hampered his liberties or tried to
force him to service. He was sent out, in Hugo's charge, in company with
a slatternly woman and a diseased baby, to beg; but the result was not
encouraging--he declined to plead for the mendicants, or be a party to
their cause in any way.
Thus several days went by; and the miseries of this tramping life, and
the weariness and sordidness and meanness and vulgarity of it, became
gradually and steadily so intolerable to the captive that he began at
last to feel that his release from the hermit's knife must prove only a
temporary respite from death, at best.
But at night, in his dreams, these things were forgotten, and he was on
his throne, and master again. This, of course, intensified the
sufferings of the awakening--so the mortifications of each succeeding
morning of the few that passed between his return to bondage and the
combat with Hugo, grew bitterer and bitterer, and harder and harder to
bear.
The morning after that combat, Hugo got up with a heart filled with
vengeful purposes against the King. He had two plans, in particular.
One was to inflict upon the lad what would be, to his proud spirit and
'imagined' royalty, a peculiar humiliation; and if he failed to
accomplish this, his other plan was to put a crime of some kind upon the
King, and then betray him into the implacable clutches of the law.
In pursuance of the first plan, he purposed to put a 'clime' upon the
King's leg; rightly judging that that would mortify him to the last and
perfect degree; and as soon as the clime should operate, he meant to get
Canty's help, and FORCE the King to expose his leg in the highway and beg
for alms. 'Clime' was the cant term for a sore, artificially created.
To make a clime, the operator made a paste or poultice of unslaked lime,
soap, and the rust of old iron, and spread it upon a piece of leather,
which was then bound tightly upon the leg. This would presently fret off
the skin, and make the flesh raw and angry-looking; blood was then rubbed
upon the limb, which, being fully dried, took on a dark and repulsive
colour. Then a bandage of soiled rags was put on in a cleverly careless
way which would allow the hideous ulcer to be seen, and move the
compassion of the passer-by. {8}
Hugo got the help of the tinker whom the King had cowed with the
soldering-iron; they took the boy out on a tinkering tramp, and as soon
as they were out of sight of the camp they threw him down and the tinker
held him while Hugo bound the poultice tight and fast upon his leg.
The King raged and stormed, and promised to hang the two the moment the
sceptre was in his hand again; but they kept a firm grip upon him and
enjoyed his impotent struggling and jeered at his threats. This
continued until the poultice began to bite; and in no long time its work
would have been perfected, if there had been no interruption. But there
was; for about this time the 'slave' who had made the speech denouncing
England's laws, appeared on the scene, and put an end to the enterprise,
and stripped off the poultice and bandage.
The King wanted to borrow his deliverer's cudgel and warm the jackets of
the two rascals on the spot; but the man said no, it would bring trouble
--leave the matter till night; the whole tribe being together, then, the
outside world would not venture to interfere or interrupt. He marched
the party back to camp and reported the affair to the Ruffler, who
listened, pondered, and then decided that the King should not be again
detailed to beg, since it was plain he was worthy of something higher and
better--wherefore, on the spot he promoted him from the mendicant rank
and appointed him to steal!
Hugo was overjoyed. He had already tried to make the King steal, and
failed; but there would be no more trouble of that sort, now, for of
course the King would not dream of defying a distinct command delivered
directly from head-quarters. So he planned a raid for that very
afternoon, purposing to get the King in the law's grip in the course of
it; and to do it, too, with such ingenious strategy, that it should seem
to be accidental and unintentional; for the King of the Game-Cocks was
popular now, and the gang might not deal over-gently with an unpopular
member who played so serious a treachery upon him as the delivering him
over to the common enemy, the law.
Very well. All in good time Hugo strolled off to a neighbouring village
with his prey; and the two drifted slowly up and down one street after
another, the one watching sharply for a sure chance to achieve his evil
purpose, and the other watching as sharply for a chance to dart away and
get free of his infamous captivity for ever.
Both threw away some tolerably fair-looking opportunities; for both, in
their secret hearts, were resolved to make absolutely sure work this
time, and neither meant to allow his fevered desires to seduce him into
any venture that had much uncertainty about it.
Hugo's chance came first. For at last a woman approached who carried a
fat package of some sort in a basket. Hugo's eyes sparkled with sinful
pleasure as he said to himself, "Breath o' my life, an' I can but put
THAT upon him, 'tis good-den and God keep thee, King of the Game-Cocks!"
He waited and watched--outwardly patient, but inwardly consuming with
excitement--till the woman had passed by, and the time was ripe; then
said, in a low voice--
"Tarry here till I come again," and darted stealthily after the prey.
The King's heart was filled with joy--he could make his escape, now, if
Hugo's quest only carried him far enough away.
But he was to have no such luck. Hugo crept behind the woman, snatched
the package, and came running back, wrapping it in an old piece of
blanket which he carried on his arm. The hue and cry was raised in a
moment, by the woman, who knew her loss by the lightening of her burden,
although she had not seen the pilfering done. Hugo thrust the bundle
into the King's hands without halting, saying--
"Now speed ye after me with the rest, and cry 'Stop thief!' but mind ye
lead them astray!"
The next moment Hugo turned a corner and darted down a crooked alley--and
in another moment or two he lounged into view again, looking innocent and
indifferent, and took up a position behind a post to watch results.
The insulted King threw the bundle on the ground; and the blanket fell
away from it just as the woman arrived, with an augmenting crowd at her
heels; she seized the King's wrist with one hand, snatched up her bundle
with the other, and began to pour out a tirade of abuse upon the boy
while he struggled, without success, to free himself from her grip.
Hugo had seen enough--his enemy was captured and the law would get him,
now--so he slipped away, jubilant and chuckling, and wended campwards,
framing a judicious version of the matter to give to the Ruffler's crew
as he strode along.
The King continued to struggle in the woman's strong grasp, and now and
then cried out in vexation--
"Unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not I that bereaved thee of thy
paltry goods."
The crowd closed around, threatening the King and calling him names; a
brawny blacksmith in leather apron, and sleeves rolled to his elbows,
made a reach for him, saying he would trounce him well, for a lesson; but
just then a long sword flashed in the air and fell with convincing force
upon the man's arm, flat side down, the fantastic owner of it remarking
pleasantly, at the same time--
"Marry, good souls, let us proceed gently, not with ill blood and
uncharitable words. This is matter for the law's consideration, not
private and unofficial handling. Loose thy hold from the boy, goodwife."
The blacksmith averaged the stalwart soldier with a glance, then went
muttering away, rubbing his arm; the woman released the boy's wrist
reluctantly; the crowd eyed the stranger unlovingly, but prudently closed
their mouths. The King sprang to his deliverer's side, with flushed
cheeks and sparkling eyes, exclaiming--
"Thou hast lagged sorely, but thou comest in good season, now, Sir Miles;
carve me this rabble to rags!"
Chapter XXIII. The Prince a prisoner.
Hendon forced back a smile, and bent down and whispered in the King's
ear--
"Softly, softly, my prince, wag thy tongue warily--nay, suffer it not to
wag at all. Trust in me--all shall go well in the end." Then he added to
himself: "SIR Miles! Bless me, I had totally forgot I was a knight!
Lord, how marvellous a thing it is, the grip his memory doth take upon
his quaint and crazy fancies! . . . An empty and foolish title is mine,
and yet it is something to have deserved it; for I think it is more
honour to be held worthy to be a spectre-knight in his Kingdom of Dreams
and Shadows, than to be held base enough to be an earl in some of the
REAL kingdoms of this world."
The crowd fell apart to admit a constable, who approached and was about
to lay his hand upon the King's shoulder, when Hendon said--
"Gently, good friend, withhold your hand--he shall go peaceably; I am
responsible for that. Lead on, we will follow."
The officer led, with the woman and her bundle; Miles and the King
followed after, with the crowd at their heels. The King was inclined to
rebel; but Hendon said to him in a low voice--
"Reflect, Sire--your laws are the wholesome breath of your own royalty;
shall their source resist them, yet require the branches to respect them?
Apparently one of these laws has been broken; when the King is on his
throne again, can it ever grieve him to remember that when he was
seemingly a private person he loyally sank the king in the citizen and
submitted to its authority?"
"Thou art right; say no more; thou shalt see that whatsoever the King of
England requires a subject to suffer, under the law, he will himself
suffer while he holdeth the station of a subject."
When the woman was called upon to testify before the justice of the
peace, she swore that the small prisoner at the bar was the person who
had committed the theft; there was none able to show the contrary, so the
King stood convicted. The bundle was now unrolled, and when the contents
proved to be a plump little dressed pig, the judge looked troubled,
whilst Hendon turned pale, and his body was thrilled with an electric
shiver of dismay; but the King remained unmoved, protected by his
ignorance. The judge meditated, during an ominous pause, then turned to
the woman, with the question--
"What dost thou hold this property to be worth?"
The woman courtesied and replied--
"Three shillings and eightpence, your worship--I could not abate a penny
and set forth the value honestly."
The justice glanced around uncomfortably upon the crowd, then nodded to
the constable, and said--
"Clear the court and close the doors."
It was done. None remained but the two officials, the accused, the
accuser, and Miles Hendon. This latter was rigid and colourless, and on
his forehead big drops of cold sweat gathered, broke and blended
together, and trickled down his face. The judge turned to the woman
again, and said, in a compassionate voice--
"'Tis a poor ignorant lad, and mayhap was driven hard by hunger, for
these be grievous times for the unfortunate; mark you, he hath not an
evil face--but when hunger driveth--Good woman! dost know that when one
steals a thing above the value of thirteenpence ha'penny the law saith he
shall HANG for it?"
The little King started, wide-eyed with consternation, but controlled
himself and held his peace; but not so the woman. She sprang to her
feet, shaking with fright, and cried out--
"Oh, good lack, what have I done! God-a-mercy, I would not hang the poor
thing for the whole world! Ah, save me from this, your worship--what
shall I do, what CAN I do?"
The justice maintained his judicial composure, and simply said--
"Doubtless it is allowable to revise the value, since it is not yet writ
upon the record."
"Then in God's name call the pig eightpence, and heaven bless the day
that freed my conscience of this awesome thing!"
Miles Hendon forgot all decorum in his delight; and surprised the King
and wounded his dignity, by throwing his arms around him and hugging him.
The woman made her grateful adieux and started away with her pig; and
when the constable opened the door for her, he followed her out into the
narrow hall. The justice proceeded to write in his record book. Hendon,
always alert, thought he would like to know why the officer followed the
woman out; so he slipped softly into the dusky hall and listened. He
heard a conversation to this effect--
"It is a fat pig, and promises good eating; I will buy it of thee; here
is the eightpence."
"Eightpence, indeed! Thou'lt do no such thing. It cost me three
shillings and eightpence, good honest coin of the last reign, that old
Harry that's just dead ne'er touched or tampered with. A fig for thy
eightpence!"
"Stands the wind in that quarter? Thou wast under oath, and so swore
falsely when thou saidst the value was but eightpence. Come straightway
back with me before his worship, and answer for the crime!--and then the
lad will hang."
"There, there, dear heart, say no more, I am content. Give me the
eightpence, and hold thy peace about the matter."
The woman went off crying: Hendon slipped back into the court room, and
the constable presently followed, after hiding his prize in some
convenient place. The justice wrote a while longer, then read the King a
wise and kindly lecture, and sentenced him to a short imprisonment in the
common jail, to be followed by a public flogging. The astounded King
opened his mouth, and was probably going to order the good judge to be
beheaded on the spot; but he caught a warning sign from Hendon, and
succeeded in closing his mouth again before he lost anything out of it.
Hendon took him by the hand, now, made reverence to the justice, and the
two departed in the wake of the constable toward the jail. The moment
the street was reached, the inflamed monarch halted, snatched away his
hand, and exclaimed--
"Idiot, dost imagine I will enter a common jail ALIVE?"
Hendon bent down and said, somewhat sharply--
"WILL you trust in me? Peace! and forbear to worsen our chances with
dangerous speech. What God wills, will happen; thou canst not hurry it,
thou canst not alter it; therefore wait, and be patient--'twill be time
enow to rail or rejoice when what is to happen has happened." {1}
Chapter XXIV. The escape.
The short winter day was nearly ended. The streets were deserted, save
for a few random stragglers, and these hurried straight along, with the
intent look of people who were only anxious to accomplish their errands
as quickly as possible, and then snugly house themselves from the rising
wind and the gathering twilight. They looked neither to the right nor to
the left; they paid no attention to our party, they did not even seem to
see them. Edward the Sixth wondered if the spectacle of a king on his way
to jail had ever encountered such marvellous indifference before.
By-and-by the constable arrived at a deserted market-square, and
proceeded to cross it. When he had reached the middle of it, Hendon
laid his hand upon his arm, and said in a low voice--
"Bide a moment, good sir, there is none in hearing, and I would say a
word to thee."
"My duty forbids it, sir; prithee hinder me not, the night comes on."
"Stay, nevertheless, for the matter concerns thee nearly. Turn thy back
a moment and seem not to see: LET THIS POOR LAD ESCAPE."
"This to me, sir! I arrest thee in--"
"Nay, be not too hasty. See thou be careful and commit no foolish
error"--then he shut his voice down to a whisper, and said in the man's
ear--"the pig thou hast purchased for eightpence may cost thee thy neck,
man!"
The poor constable, taken by surprise, was speechless, at first, then
found his tongue and fell to blustering and threatening; but Hendon was
tranquil, and waited with patience till his breath was spent; then said--
"I have a liking to thee, friend, and would not willingly see thee come
to harm. Observe, I heard it all--every word. I will prove it to thee."
Then he repeated the conversation which the officer and the woman had had
together in the hall, word for word, and ended with--
"There--have I set it forth correctly? Should not I be able to set it
forth correctly before the judge, if occasion required?"
The man was dumb with fear and distress, for a moment; then he rallied,
and said with forced lightness--
"'Tis making a mighty matter, indeed, out of a jest; I but plagued the
woman for mine amusement."
"Kept you the woman's pig for amusement?"
The man answered sharply--
"Nought else, good sir--I tell thee 'twas but a jest."
"I do begin to believe thee," said Hendon, with a perplexing mixture of
mockery and half-conviction in his tone; "but tarry thou here a moment
whilst I run and ask his worship--for nathless, he being a man
experienced in law, in jests, in--"
He was moving away, still talking; the constable hesitated, fidgeted,
spat out an oath or two, then cried out--
"Hold, hold, good sir--prithee wait a little--the judge! Why, man, he
hath no more sympathy with a jest than hath a dead corpse!--come, and we
will speak further. Ods body! I seem to be in evil case--and all for an
innocent and thoughtless pleasantry. I am a man of family; and my wife
and little ones--List to reason, good your worship: what wouldst thou
of me?"
"Only that thou be blind and dumb and paralytic whilst one may count a
hundred thousand--counting slowly," said Hendon, with the expression of a
man who asks but a reasonable favour, and that a very little one.
"It is my destruction!" said the constable despairingly. "Ah, be
reasonable, good sir; only look at this matter, on all its sides, and see
how mere a jest it is--how manifestly and how plainly it is so. And even
if one granted it were not a jest, it is a fault so small that e'en the
grimmest penalty it could call forth would be but a rebuke and warning
from the judge's lips."
Hendon replied with a solemnity which chilled the air about him--
"This jest of thine hath a name, in law,--wot you what it is?"
"I knew it not! Peradventure I have been unwise. I never dreamed it had
a name--ah, sweet heaven, I thought it was original."
"Yes, it hath a name. In the law this crime is called Non compos mentis
lex talionis sic transit gloria mundi."
"Ah, my God!"
"And the penalty is death!"
"God be merciful to me a sinner!"
"By advantage taken of one in fault, in dire peril, and at thy mercy,
thou hast seized goods worth above thirteenpence ha'penny, paying but a
trifle for the same; and this, in the eye of the law, is constructive
barratry, misprision of treason, malfeasance in office, ad hominem
expurgatis in statu quo--and the penalty is death by the halter, without
ransom, commutation, or benefit of clergy."
"Bear me up, bear me up, sweet sir, my legs do fail me! Be thou
merciful--spare me this doom, and I will turn my back and see nought that
shall happen."
"Good! now thou'rt wise and reasonable. And thou'lt restore the pig?"
"I will, I will indeed--nor ever touch another, though heaven send it and
an archangel fetch it. Go--I am blind for thy sake--I see nothing. I
will say thou didst break in and wrest the prisoner from my hands by
force. It is but a crazy, ancient door--I will batter it down myself
betwixt midnight and the morning."
"Do it, good soul, no harm will come of it; the judge hath a loving
charity for this poor lad, and will shed no tears and break no jailer's
bones for his escape."
Chapter XXV. Hendon Hall.
As soon as Hendon and the King were out of sight of the constable, his
Majesty was instructed to hurry to a certain place outside the town, and
wait there, whilst Hendon should go to the inn and settle his account.
Half an hour later the two friends were blithely jogging eastward on
Hendon's sorry steeds. The King was warm and comfortable, now, for he
had cast his rags and clothed himself in the second-hand suit which
Hendon had bought on London Bridge.
Hendon wished to guard against over-fatiguing the boy; he judged that
hard journeys, irregular meals, and illiberal measures of sleep would be
bad for his crazed mind; whilst rest, regularity, and moderate exercise
would be pretty sure to hasten its cure; he longed to see the stricken
intellect made well again and its diseased visions driven out of the
tormented little head; therefore he resolved to move by easy stages
toward the home whence he had so long been banished, instead of obeying
the impulse of his impatience and hurrying along night and day.
When he and the King had journeyed about ten miles, they reached a
considerable village, and halted there for the night, at a good inn.
The former relations were resumed; Hendon stood behind the King's chair,
while he dined, and waited upon him; undressed him when he was ready for
bed; then took the floor for his own quarters, and slept athwart the
door, rolled up in a blanket.
The next day, and the day after, they jogged lazily along talking over
the adventures they had met since their separation, and mightily enjoying
each other's narratives. Hendon detailed all his wide wanderings in
search of the King, and described how the archangel had led him a fool's
journey all over the forest, and taken him back to the hut, finally, when
he found he could not get rid of him. Then--he said--the old man went
into the bedchamber and came staggering back looking broken-hearted, and
saying he had expected to find that the boy had returned and laid down in
there to rest, but it was not so. Hendon had waited at the hut all day;
hope of the King's return died out, then, and he departed upon the quest
again.
"And old Sanctum Sanctorum WAS truly sorry your highness came not back,"
said Hendon; "I saw it in his face."
"Marry I will never doubt THAT!" said the King--and then told his own
story; after which, Hendon was sorry he had not destroyed the archangel.
During the last day of the trip, Hendon's spirits were soaring. His
tongue ran constantly. He talked about his old father, and his brother
Arthur, and told of many things which illustrated their high and generous
characters; he went into loving frenzies over his Edith, and was so
glad-hearted that he was even able to say some gentle and brotherly
things about Hugh. He dwelt a deal on the coming meeting at Hendon Hall;
what a surprise it would be to everybody, and what an outburst of
thanksgiving and delight there would be.
It was a fair region, dotted with cottages and orchards, and the road led
through broad pasture lands whose receding expanses, marked with gentle
elevations and depressions, suggested the swelling and subsiding
undulations of the sea. In the afternoon the returning prodigal made
constant deflections from his course to see if by ascending some hillock
he might not pierce the distance and catch a glimpse of his home. At
last he was successful, and cried out excitedly--
"There is the village, my Prince, and there is the Hall close by! You may
see the towers from here; and that wood there--that is my father's park.
Ah, NOW thou'lt know what state and grandeur be! A house with seventy
rooms--think of that!--and seven and twenty servants! A brave lodging
for such as we, is it not so? Come, let us speed--my impatience will not
brook further delay."
All possible hurry was made; still, it was after three o'clock before the
village was reached. The travellers scampered through it, Hendon's
tongue going all the time. "Here is the church--covered with the same
ivy--none gone, none added." "Yonder is the inn, the old Red Lion,--and
yonder is the market-place." "Here is the Maypole, and here the pump
--nothing is altered; nothing but the people, at any rate; ten years make a
change in people; some of these I seem to know, but none know me." So
his chat ran on. The end of the village was soon reached; then the
travellers struck into a crooked, narrow road, walled in with tall
hedges, and hurried briskly along it for half a mile, then passed into a
vast flower garden through an imposing gateway, whose huge stone pillars
bore sculptured armorial devices. A noble mansion was before them.
"Welcome to Hendon Hall, my King!" exclaimed Miles. "Ah, 'tis a great
day! My father and my brother, and the Lady Edith will be so mad with
joy that they will have eyes and tongue for none but me in the first
transports of the meeting, and so thou'lt seem but coldly welcomed--but
mind it not; 'twill soon seem otherwise; for when I say thou art my ward,
and tell them how costly is my love for thee, thou'lt see them take thee
to their breasts for Miles Hendon's sake, and make their house and hearts
thy home for ever after!"
The next moment Hendon sprang to the ground before the great door, helped
the King down, then took him by the hand and rushed within. A few steps
brought him to a spacious apartment; he entered, seated the King with
more hurry than ceremony, then ran toward a young man who sat at a
writing-table in front of a generous fire of logs.
"Embrace me, Hugh," he cried, "and say thou'rt glad I am come again! and
call our father, for home is not home till I shall touch his hand, and
see his face, and hear his voice once more!"
But Hugh only drew back, after betraying a momentary surprise, and bent a
grave stare upon the intruder--a stare which indicated somewhat of
offended dignity, at first, then changed, in response to some inward
thought or purpose, to an expression of marvelling curiosity, mixed with
a real or assumed compassion. Presently he said, in a mild voice--
"Thy wits seem touched, poor stranger; doubtless thou hast suffered
privations and rude buffetings at the world's hands; thy looks and dress
betoken it. Whom dost thou take me to be?"
"Take thee? Prithee for whom else than whom thou art? I take thee to be
Hugh Hendon," said Miles, sharply.
The other continued, in the same soft tone--
"And whom dost thou imagine thyself to be?"
"Imagination hath nought to do with it! Dost thou pretend thou knowest
me not for thy brother Miles Hendon?"
An expression of pleased surprise flitted across Hugh's face, and he
exclaimed--
"What! thou art not jesting? can the dead come to life? God be praised
if it be so! Our poor lost boy restored to our arms after all these
cruel years! Ah, it seems too good to be true, it IS too good to be
true--I charge thee, have pity, do not trifle with me! Quick--come to
the light--let me scan thee well!"
He seized Miles by the arm, dragged him to the window, and began to
devour him from head to foot with his eyes, turning him this way and
that, and stepping briskly around him and about him to prove him from all
points of view; whilst the returned prodigal, all aglow with gladness,
smiled, laughed, and kept nodding his head and saying--
"Go on, brother, go on, and fear not; thou'lt find nor limb nor feature
that cannot bide the test. Scour and scan me to thy content, my good old
Hugh--I am indeed thy old Miles, thy same old Miles, thy lost brother,
is't not so? Ah, 'tis a great day--I SAID 'twas a great day! Give me
thy hand, give me thy cheek--lord, I am like to die of very joy!"
He was about to throw himself upon his brother; but Hugh put up his hand
in dissent, then dropped his chin mournfully upon his breast, saying with
emotion--
"Ah, God of his mercy give me strength to bear this grievous
disappointment!"
Miles, amazed, could not speak for a moment; then he found his tongue,
and cried out--
"WHAT disappointment? Am I not thy brother?"
Hugh shook his head sadly, and said--
"I pray heaven it may prove so, and that other eyes may find the
resemblances that are hid from mine. Alack, I fear me the letter spoke
but too truly."
"What letter?"
"One that came from over sea, some six or seven years ago. It said my
brother died in battle."
"It was a lie! Call thy father--he will know me."
"One may not call the dead."
"Dead?" Miles's voice was subdued, and his lips trembled. "My father
dead!--oh, this is heavy news. Half my new joy is withered now. Prithee
let me see my brother Arthur--he will know me; he will know me and
console me."
"He, also, is dead."
"God be merciful to me, a stricken man! Gone,--both gone--the worthy
taken and the worthless spared, in me! Ah! I crave your mercy!--do not
say the Lady Edith--"
"Is dead? No, she lives."
"Then, God be praised, my joy is whole again! Speed thee, brother--let
her come to me! An' SHE say I am not myself--but she will not; no, no,
SHE will know me, I were a fool to doubt it. Bring her--bring the old
servants; they, too, will know me."
"All are gone but five--Peter, Halsey, David, Bernard, and Margaret."
So saying, Hugh left the room. Miles stood musing a while, then began to
walk the floor, muttering--
"The five arch-villains have survived the two-and-twenty leal and honest
--'tis an odd thing."
He continued walking back and forth, muttering to himself; he had
forgotten the King entirely. By-and-by his Majesty said gravely, and
with a touch of genuine compassion, though the words themselves were
capable of being interpreted ironically--
"Mind not thy mischance, good man; there be others in the world whose
identity is denied, and whose claims are derided. Thou hast company."
"Ah, my King," cried Hendon, colouring slightly, "do not thou condemn me
--wait, and thou shalt see. I am no impostor--she will say it; you shall
hear it from the sweetest lips in England. I an impostor? Why, I know
this old hall, these pictures of my ancestors, and all these things that
are about us, as a child knoweth its own nursery. Here was I born and
bred, my lord; I speak the truth; I would not deceive thee; and should
none else believe, I pray thee do not THOU doubt me--I could not bear
it."
"I do not doubt thee," said the King, with a childlike simplicity and
faith.
"I thank thee out of my heart!" exclaimed Hendon with a fervency which
showed that he was touched. The King added, with the same gentle
simplicity--
"Dost thou doubt ME?"
A guilty confusion seized upon Hendon, and he was grateful that the door
opened to admit Hugh, at that moment, and saved him the necessity of
replying.
A beautiful lady, richly clothed, followed Hugh, and after her came
several liveried servants. The lady walked slowly, with her head bowed
and her eyes fixed upon the floor. The face was unspeakably sad. Miles
Hendon sprang forward, crying out--
"Oh, my Edith, my darling--"
But Hugh waved him back, gravely, and said to the lady--
"Look upon him. Do you know him?"
At the sound of Miles's voice the woman had started slightly, and her
cheeks had flushed; she was trembling now. She stood still, during an
impressive pause of several moments; then slowly lifted up her head and
looked into Hendon's eyes with a stony and frightened gaze; the blood
sank out of her face, drop by drop, till nothing remained but the grey
pallor of death; then she said, in a voice as dead as the face, "I know
him not!" and turned, with a moan and a stifled sob, and tottered out of
the room.
Miles Hendon sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
After a pause, his brother said to the servants--
"You have observed him. Do you know him?"
They shook their heads; then the master said--
"The servants know you not, sir. I fear there is some mistake. You have
seen that my wife knew you not."
"Thy WIFE!" In an instant Hugh was pinned to the wall, with an iron grip
about his throat. "Oh, thou fox-hearted slave, I see it all! Thou'st
writ the lying letter thyself, and my stolen bride and goods are its
fruit. There--now get thee gone, lest I shame mine honourable
soldiership with the slaying of so pitiful a mannikin!"
Hugh, red-faced, and almost suffocated, reeled to the nearest chair, and
commanded the servants to seize and bind the murderous stranger. They
hesitated, and one of them said--
"He is armed, Sir Hugh, and we are weaponless."
"Armed! What of it, and ye so many? Upon him, I say!"
But Miles warned them to be careful what they did, and added--
"Ye know me of old--I have not changed; come on, an' it like you."
This reminder did not hearten the servants much; they still held back.
"Then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors,
whilst I send one to fetch the watch!" said Hugh. He turned at the
threshold, and said to Miles, "You'll find it to your advantage to offend
not with useless endeavours at escape."
"Escape? Spare thyself discomfort, an' that is all that troubles thee.
For Miles Hendon is master of Hendon Hall and all its belongings. He
will remain--doubt it not."
Chapter XXVI. Disowned.
The King sat musing a few moments, then looked up and said--
"'Tis strange--most strange. I cannot account for it."
"No, it is not strange, my liege. I know him, and this conduct is but
natural. He was a rascal from his birth."
"Oh, I spake not of HIM, Sir Miles."
"Not of him? Then of what? What is it that is strange?"
"That the King is not missed."
"How? Which? I doubt I do not understand."
"Indeed? Doth it not strike you as being passing strange that the land
is not filled with couriers and proclamations describing my person and
making search for me? Is it no matter for commotion and distress that
the Head of the State is gone; that I am vanished away and lost?"
"Most true, my King, I had forgot." Then Hendon sighed, and muttered to
himself, "Poor ruined mind--still busy with its pathetic dream."
"But I have a plan that shall right us both--I will write a paper, in
three tongues--Latin, Greek and English--and thou shalt haste away with
it to London in the morning. Give it to none but my uncle, the Lord
Hertford; when he shall see it, he will know and say I wrote it. Then he
will send for me."
"Might it not be best, my Prince, that we wait here until I prove myself
and make my rights secure to my domains? I should be so much the better
able then to--"
The King interrupted him imperiously--
"Peace! What are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted
with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a
throne?" Then, he added, in a gentle voice, as if he were sorry for his
severity, "Obey, and have no fear; I will right thee, I will make thee
whole--yes, more than whole. I shall remember, and requite."
So saying, he took the pen, and set himself to work. Hendon contemplated
him lovingly a while, then said to himself--
"An' it were dark, I should think it WAS a king that spoke; there's no
denying it, when the humour's upon on him he doth thunder and lighten
like your true King; now where got he that trick? See him scribble and
scratch away contentedly at his meaningless pot-hooks, fancying them to
be Latin and Greek--and except my wit shall serve me with a lucky device
for diverting him from his purpose, I shall be forced to pretend to post
away to-morrow on this wild errand he hath invented for me."
The next moment Sir Miles's thoughts had gone back to the recent episode.
So absorbed was he in his musings, that when the King presently handed
him the paper which he had been writing, he received it and pocketed it
without being conscious of the act. "How marvellous strange she acted,"
he muttered. "I think she knew me--and I think she did NOT know me.
These opinions do conflict, I perceive it plainly; I cannot reconcile
them, neither can I, by argument, dismiss either of the two, or even
persuade one to outweigh the other. The matter standeth simply thus:
she MUST have known my face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be
otherwise? Yet she SAID she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for
she cannot lie. But stop--I think I begin to see. Peradventure he hath
influenced her, commanded her, compelled her to lie. That is the
solution. The riddle is unriddled. She seemed dead with fear--yes, she
was under his compulsion. I will seek her; I will find her; now that he
is away, she will speak her true mind. She will remember the old times
when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart,
and she will no more betray me, but will confess me. There is no
treacherous blood in her--no, she was always honest and true. She has
loved me, in those old days--this is my security; for whom one has loved,
one cannot betray."
He stepped eagerly toward the door; at that moment it opened, and the
Lady Edith entered. She was very pale, but she walked with a firm step,
and her carriage was full of grace and gentle dignity. Her face was as
sad as before.
Miles sprang forward, with a happy confidence, to meet her, but she
checked him with a hardly perceptible gesture, and he stopped where he
was. She seated herself, and asked him to do likewise. Thus simply did
she take the sense of old comradeship out of him, and transform him into
a stranger and a guest. The surprise of it, the bewildering
unexpectedness of it, made him begin to question, for a moment, if he WAS
the person he was pretending to be, after all. The Lady Edith said--
"Sir, I have come to warn you. The mad cannot be persuaded out of their
delusions, perchance; but doubtless they may be persuaded to avoid
perils. I think this dream of yours hath the seeming of honest truth to
you, and therefore is not criminal--but do not tarry here with it; for
here it is dangerous." She looked steadily into Miles's face a moment,
then added, impressively, "It is the more dangerous for that you ARE much
like what our lost lad must have grown to be if he had lived."
"Heavens, madam, but I AM he!"
"I truly think you think it, sir. I question not your honesty in that; I
but warn you, that is all. My husband is master in this region; his
power hath hardly any limit; the people prosper or starve, as he wills.
If you resembled not the man whom you profess to be, my husband might bid
you pleasure yourself with your dream in peace; but trust me, I know him
well; I know what he will do; he will say to all that you are but a mad
impostor, and straightway all will echo him." She bent upon Miles that
same steady look once more, and added: "If you WERE Miles Hendon, and he
knew it and all the region knew it--consider what I am saying, weigh it
well--you would stand in the same peril, your punishment would be no less
sure; he would deny you and denounce you, and none would be bold enough
to give you countenance."
"Most truly I believe it," said Miles, bitterly. "The power that can
command one life-long friend to betray and disown another, and be obeyed,
may well look to be obeyed in quarters where bread and life are on the
stake and no cobweb ties of loyalty and honour are concerned."
A faint tinge appeared for a moment in the lady's cheek, and she dropped
her eyes to the floor; but her voice betrayed no emotion when she
proceeded--
"I have warned you--I must still warn you--to go hence. This man will
destroy you, else. He is a tyrant who knows no pity. I, who am his
fettered slave, know this. Poor Miles, and Arthur, and my dear guardian,
Sir Richard, are free of him, and at rest: better that you were with
them than that you bide here in the clutches of this miscreant. Your
pretensions are a menace to his title and possessions; you have assaulted
him in his own house: you are ruined if you stay. Go--do not hesitate.
If you lack money, take this purse, I beg of you, and bribe the servants
to let you pass. Oh, be warned, poor soul, and escape while you may."
Miles declined the purse with a gesture, and rose up and stood before
her.
"Grant me one thing," he said. "Let your eyes rest upon mine, so that I
may see if they be steady. There--now answer me. Am I Miles Hendon?"
"No. I know you not."
"Swear it!"
The answer was low, but distinct--
"I swear."
"Oh, this passes belief!"
"Fly! Why will you waste the precious time? Fly, and save yourself."
At that moment the officers burst into the room, and a violent struggle
began; but Hendon was soon overpowered and dragged away. The King was
taken also, and both were bound and led to prison.
Chapter XXVII. In prison.
The cells were all crowded; so the two friends were chained in a large
room where persons charged with trifling offences were commonly kept.
They had company, for there were some twenty manacled and fettered
prisoners here, of both sexes and of varying ages,--an obscene and noisy
gang. The King chafed bitterly over the stupendous indignity thus put
upon his royalty, but Hendon was moody and taciturn. He was pretty
thoroughly bewildered; he had come home, a jubilant prodigal, expecting
to find everybody wild with joy over his return; and instead had got the
cold shoulder and a jail. The promise and the fulfilment differed so
widely that the effect was stunning; he could not decide whether it was
most tragic or most grotesque. He felt much as a man might who had
danced blithely out to enjoy a rainbow, and got struck by lightning.
But gradually his confused and tormenting thoughts settled down into some
sort of order, and then his mind centred itself upon Edith. He turned
her conduct over, and examined it in all lights, but he could not make
anything satisfactory out of it. Did she know him--or didn't she know
him? It was a perplexing puzzle, and occupied him a long time; but he
ended, finally, with the conviction that she did know him, and had
repudiated him for interested reasons. He wanted to load her name with
curses now; but this name had so long been sacred to him that he found he
could not bring his tongue to profane it.
Wrapped in prison blankets of a soiled and tattered condition, Hendon and
the King passed a troubled night. For a bribe the jailer had furnished
liquor to some of the prisoners; singing of ribald songs, fighting,
shouting, and carousing was the natural consequence. At last, a while
after midnight, a man attacked a woman and nearly killed her by beating
her over the head with his manacles before the jailer could come to the
rescue. The jailer restored peace by giving the man a sound clubbing
about the head and shoulders--then the carousing ceased; and after that,
all had an opportunity to sleep who did not mind the annoyance of the
moanings and groanings of the two wounded people.
During the ensuing week, the days and nights were of a monotonous
sameness as to events; men whose faces Hendon remembered more or less
distinctly, came, by day, to gaze at the 'impostor' and repudiate and
insult him; and by night the carousing and brawling went on with
symmetrical regularity. However, there was a change of incident at last.
The jailer brought in an old man, and said to him--
"The villain is in this room--cast thy old eyes about and see if thou
canst say which is he."
Hendon glanced up, and experienced a pleasant sensation for the first
time since he had been in the jail. He said to himself, "This is Blake
Andrews, a servant all his life in my father's family--a good honest
soul, with a right heart in his breast. That is, formerly. But none are
true now; all are liars. This man will know me--and will deny me, too,
like the rest."
The old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and
finally said--
"I see none here but paltry knaves, scum o' the streets. Which is he?"
The jailer laughed.
"Here," he said; "scan this big animal, and grant me an opinion."
The old man approached, and looked Hendon over, long and earnestly, then
shook his head and said--
"Marry, THIS is no Hendon--nor ever was!"
"Right! Thy old eyes are sound yet. An' I were Sir Hugh, I would take
the shabby carle and--"
The jailer finished by lifting himself a-tip-toe with an imaginary
halter, at the same time making a gurgling noise in his throat suggestive
of suffocation. The old man said, vindictively--
"Let him bless God an' he fare no worse. An' _I_ had the handling o' the
villain he should roast, or I am no true man!"
The jailer laughed a pleasant hyena laugh, and said--
"Give him a piece of thy mind, old man--they all do it. Thou'lt find it
good diversion."
Then he sauntered toward his ante-room and disappeared. The old man
dropped upon his knees and whispered--
"God be thanked, thou'rt come again, my master! I believed thou wert
dead these seven years, and lo, here thou art alive! I knew thee the
moment I saw thee; and main hard work it was to keep a stony countenance
and seem to see none here but tuppenny knaves and rubbish o' the streets.
I am old and poor, Sir Miles; but say the word and I will go forth and
proclaim the truth though I be strangled for it."
"No," said Hendon; "thou shalt not. It would ruin thee, and yet help but
little in my cause. But I thank thee, for thou hast given me back
somewhat of my lost faith in my kind."
The old servant became very valuable to Hendon and the King; for he
dropped in several times a day to 'abuse' the former, and always smuggled
in a few delicacies to help out the prison bill of fare; he also
furnished the current news. Hendon reserved the dainties for the King;
without them his Majesty might not have survived, for he was not able to
eat the coarse and wretched food provided by the jailer. Andrews was
obliged to confine himself to brief visits, in order to avoid suspicion;
but he managed to impart a fair degree of information each time
--information delivered in a low voice, for Hendon's benefit, and
interlarded with insulting epithets delivered in a louder voice for the
benefit of other hearers.
So, little by little, the story of the family came out. Arthur had been
dead six years. This loss, with the absence of news from Hendon,
impaired the father's health; he believed he was going to die, and he
wished to see Hugh and Edith settled in life before he passed away; but
Edith begged hard for delay, hoping for Miles's return; then the letter
came which brought the news of Miles's death; the shock prostrated Sir
Richard; he believed his end was very near, and he and Hugh insisted upon
the marriage; Edith begged for and obtained a month's respite, then
another, and finally a third; the marriage then took place by the
death-bed of Sir Richard. It had not proved a happy one. It was
whispered about the country that shortly after the nuptials the bride
found among her husband's papers several rough and incomplete drafts of
the fatal letter, and had accused him of precipitating the marriage--and
Sir Richard's death, too--by a wicked forgery. Tales of cruelty to the
Lady Edith and the servants were to be heard on all hands; and since the
father's death Sir Hugh had thrown off all soft disguises and become a
pitiless master toward all who in any way depended upon him and his
domains for bread.
There was a bit of Andrew's gossip which the King listened to with a
lively interest--
"There is rumour that the King is mad. But in charity forbear to say _I_
mentioned it, for 'tis death to speak of it, they say."
His Majesty glared at the old man and said--
"The King is NOT mad, good man--and thou'lt find it to thy advantage to
busy thyself with matters that nearer concern thee than this seditious
prattle."
"What doth the lad mean?" said Andrews, surprised at this brisk assault
from such an unexpected quarter. Hendon gave him a sign, and he did not
pursue his question, but went on with his budget--
"The late King is to be buried at Windsor in a day or two--the 16th of
the month--and the new King will be crowned at Westminster the 20th."
"Methinks they must needs find him first," muttered his Majesty; then
added, confidently, "but they will look to that--and so also shall I."
"In the name of--"
But the old man got no further--a warning sign from Hendon checked his
remark. He resumed the thread of his gossip--
"Sir Hugh goeth to the coronation--and with grand hopes. He confidently
looketh to come back a peer, for he is high in favour with the Lord
Protector."
"What Lord Protector?" asked his Majesty.
"His Grace the Duke of Somerset."
"What Duke of Somerset?"
"Marry, there is but one--Seymour, Earl of Hertford."
The King asked sharply--
"Since when is HE a duke, and Lord Protector?"
"Since the last day of January."
"And prithee who made him so?"
"Himself and the Great Council--with help of the King."
His Majesty started violently. "The KING!" he cried. "WHAT king, good
sir?"
"What king, indeed! (God-a-mercy, what aileth the boy?) Sith we have but
one, 'tis not difficult to answer--his most sacred Majesty King Edward
the Sixth--whom God preserve! Yea, and a dear and gracious little urchin
is he, too; and whether he be mad or no--and they say he mendeth daily
--his praises are on all men's lips; and all bless him, likewise, and offer
prayers that he may be spared to reign long in England; for he began
humanely with saving the old Duke of Norfolk's life, and now is he bent
on destroying the cruellest of the laws that harry and oppress the
people."
This news struck his Majesty dumb with amazement, and plunged him into so
deep and dismal a reverie that he heard no more of the old man's gossip.
He wondered if the 'little urchin' was the beggar-boy whom he left
dressed in his own garments in the palace. It did not seem possible that
this could be, for surely his manners and speech would betray him if he
pretended to be the Prince of Wales--then he would be driven out, and
search made for the true prince. Could it be that the Court had set up
some sprig of the nobility in his place? No, for his uncle would not
allow that--he was all-powerful and could and would crush such a
movement, of course. The boy's musings profited him nothing; the more he
tried to unriddle the mystery the more perplexed he became, the more his
head ached, and the worse he slept. His impatience to get to London grew
hourly, and his captivity became almost unendurable.
Hendon's arts all failed with the King--he could not be comforted; but a
couple of women who were chained near him succeeded better. Under their
gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of patience. He
was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to delight in the
sweet and soothing influence of their presence. He asked them why they
were in prison, and when they said they were Baptists, he smiled, and
inquired--
"Is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison? Now I grieve, for I
shall lose ye--they will not keep ye long for such a little thing."
They did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. He
said, eagerly--
"You do not speak; be good to me, and tell me--there will be no other
punishment? Prithee tell me there is no fear of that."
They tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he
pursued it--
"Will they scourge thee? No, no, they would not be so cruel! Say they
would not. Come, they WILL not, will they?"
The women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an
answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion--
"Oh, thou'lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit!--God will help us to
bear our--"
"It is a confession!" the King broke in. "Then they WILL scourge thee,
the stony-hearted wretches! But oh, thou must not weep, I cannot bear
it. Keep up thy courage--I shall come to my own in time to save thee
from this bitter thing, and I will do it!"
When the King awoke in the morning, the women were gone.
"They are saved!" he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, "but woe
is me!--for they were my comforters."
Each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token
of remembrance. He said he would keep these things always; and that soon
he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them under his
protection.
Just then the jailer came in with some subordinates, and commanded that
the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard. The King was overjoyed--it
would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air
once more. He fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but
his turn came at last, and he was released from his staple and ordered to
follow the other prisoners with Hendon.
The court or quadrangle was stone-paved, and open to the sky. The
prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were
placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. A rope was
stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their officers.
It was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which had fallen
during the night whitened the great empty space and added to the general
dismalness of its aspect. Now and then a wintry wind shivered through the
place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither.
In the centre of the court stood two women, chained to posts. A glance
showed the King that these were his good friends. He shuddered, and said
to himself, "Alack, they are not gone free, as I had thought. To think
that such as these should know the lash!--in England! Ay, there's the
shame of it--not in Heathennesse, Christian England! They will be
scourged; and I, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must look
on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange, that I, the
very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect them.
But let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a day
coming when I will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work. For
every blow they strike now, they shall feel a hundred then."
A great gate swung open, and a crowd of citizens poured in. They flocked
around the two women, and hid them from the King's view. A clergyman
entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden. The King
now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being asked and
answered, but he could not make out what was said. Next there was a deal
of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of officials
through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side of the
women; and whilst this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon the
people.
Now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the King saw a
spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones. Faggots had been piled
about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them!
The women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands;
the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling
faggots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the
clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayer--just then two young girls
came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw
themselves upon the women at the stake. Instantly they were torn away by
the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other
broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could
be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother's neck again. She was
torn away once more, and with her gown on fire. Two or three men held
her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown
flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying
she would be alone in the world, now; and begging to be allowed to die
with her mother. Both the girls screamed continually, and fought for
freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of
heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony--the King glanced from the frantic
girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face against
the wall, and looked no more. He said, "That which I have seen, in that
one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will abide
there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the nights,
till I die. Would God I had been blind!"
Hendon was watching the King. He said to himself, with satisfaction,
"His disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler. If he had
followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he
was King, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed. Soon
his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be
whole again. God speed the day!"
That same day several prisoners were brought in to remain over night, who
were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom, to
undergo punishment for crimes committed. The King conversed with these
--he had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself for the
kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity offered
--and the tale of their woes wrung his heart. One of them was a poor
half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a weaver
--she was to be hanged for it. Another was a man who had been accused of
stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had imagined that
he was safe from the halter; but no--he was hardly free before he was
arraigned for killing a deer in the King's park; this was proved against
him, and now he was on his way to the gallows. There was a tradesman's
apprentice whose case particularly distressed the King; this youth said
he found a hawk, one evening, that had escaped from its owner, and he
took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it; but the court
convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death.
The King was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted Hendon to break
jail and fly with him to Westminster, so that he could mount his throne
and hold out his sceptre in mercy over these unfortunate people and save
their lives. "Poor child," sighed Hendon, "these woeful tales have
brought his malady upon him again; alack, but for this evil hap, he would
have been well in a little time."
Among these prisoners was an old lawyer--a man with a strong face and a
dauntless mien. Three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the
Lord Chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for it
by the loss of his ears in the pillory, and degradation from the bar, and
in addition had been fined 3,000 pounds and sentenced to imprisonment for
life. Lately he had repeated his offence; and in consequence was now
under sentence to lose WHAT REMAINED OF HIS EARS, pay a fine of 5,000
pounds, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison for life.
"These be honourable scars," he said, and turned back his grey hair and
showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears.
The King's eye burned with passion. He said--
"None believe in me--neither wilt thou. But no matter--within the
compass of a month thou shalt be free; and more, the laws that have
dishonoured thee, and shamed the English name, shall be swept from the
statute books. The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to
their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy." {1}
Chapter XXVIII. The sacrifice.
Meantime Miles was growing sufficiently tired of confinement and
inaction. But now his trial came on, to his great gratification, and he
thought he could welcome any sentence provided a further imprisonment
should not be a part of it. But he was mistaken about that. He was in a
fine fury when he found himself described as a 'sturdy vagabond' and
sentenced to sit two hours in the stocks for bearing that character and
for assaulting the master of Hendon Hall. His pretensions as to
brothership with his prosecutor, and rightful heirship to the Hendon
honours and estates, were left contemptuously unnoticed, as being not
even worth examination.
He raged and threatened on his way to punishment, but it did no good; he
was snatched roughly along by the officers, and got an occasional cuff,
besides, for his irreverent conduct.
The King could not pierce through the rabble that swarmed behind; so he
was obliged to follow in the rear, remote from his good friend and
servant. The King had been nearly condemned to the stocks himself for
being in such bad company, but had been let off with a lecture and a
warning, in consideration of his youth. When the crowd at last halted,
he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting a
place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and delay,
succeeded. There sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks, the
sport and butt of a dirty mob--he, the body servant of the King of
England! Edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not
realised the half that it meant. His anger began to rise as the sense of
this new indignity which had been put upon him sank home; it jumped to
summer heat, the next moment, when he saw an egg sail through the air and
crush itself against Hendon's cheek, and heard the crowd roar its
enjoyment of the episode. He sprang across the open circle and
confronted the officer in charge, crying--
"For shame! This is my servant--set him free! I am the--"
"Oh, peace!" exclaimed Hendon, in a panic, "thou'lt destroy thyself.
Mind him not, officer, he is mad."
"Give thyself no trouble as to the matter of minding him, good man, I
have small mind to mind him; but as to teaching him somewhat, to that I
am well inclined." He turned to a subordinate and said, "Give the little
fool a taste or two of the lash, to mend his manners."
"Half a dozen will better serve his turn," suggested Sir Hugh, who had
ridden up, a moment before, to take a passing glance at the proceedings.
The King was seized. He did not even struggle, so paralysed was he with
the mere thought of the monstrous outrage that was proposed to be
inflicted upon his sacred person. History was already defiled with the
record of the scourging of an English king with whips--it was an
intolerable reflection that he must furnish a duplicate of that shameful
page. He was in the toils, there was no help for him; he must either
take this punishment or beg for its remission. Hard conditions; he would
take the stripes--a king might do that, but a king could not beg.
But meantime, Miles Hendon was resolving the difficulty. "Let the child
go," said he; "ye heartless dogs, do ye not see how young and frail he
is? Let him go--I will take his lashes."
"Marry, a good thought--and thanks for it," said Sir Hugh, his face
lighting with a sardonic satisfaction. "Let the little beggar go, and
give this fellow a dozen in his place--an honest dozen, well laid on."
The King was in the act of entering a fierce protest, but Sir Hugh
silenced him with the potent remark, "Yes, speak up, do, and free thy
mind--only, mark ye, that for each word you utter he shall get six
strokes the more."
Hendon was removed from the stocks, and his back laid bare; and whilst
the lash was applied the poor little King turned away his face and
allowed unroyal tears to channel his cheeks unchecked. "Ah, brave good
heart," he said to himself, "this loyal deed shall never perish out of my
memory. I will not forget it--and neither shall THEY!" he added, with
passion. Whilst he mused, his appreciation of Hendon's magnanimous
conduct grew to greater and still greater dimensions in his mind, and so
also did his gratefulness for it. Presently he said to himself, "Who
saves his prince from wounds and possible death--and this he did for me
--performs high service; but it is little--it is nothing--oh, less than
nothing!--when 'tis weighed against the act of him who saves his prince
from SHAME!"
Hendon made no outcry under the scourge, but bore the heavy blows with
soldierly fortitude. This, together with his redeeming the boy by taking
his stripes for him, compelled the respect of even that forlorn and
degraded mob that was gathered there; and its gibes and hootings died
away, and no sound remained but the sound of the falling blows. The
stillness that pervaded the place, when Hendon found himself once more in
the stocks, was in strong contrast with the insulting clamour which had
prevailed there so little a while before. The King came softly to
Hendon's side, and whispered in his ear--
"Kings cannot ennoble thee, thou good, great soul, for One who is higher
than kings hath done that for thee; but a king can confirm thy nobility
to men." He picked up the scourge from the ground, touched Hendon's
bleeding shoulders lightly with it, and whispered, "Edward of England
dubs thee Earl!"
Hendon was touched. The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time
the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his
gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth
from showing outside. To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the
common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of an Earldom, seemed
to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque. He said to
himself, "Now am I finely tinselled, indeed! The spectre-knight of the
Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows is become a spectre-earl--a dizzy flight
for a callow wing! An' this go on, I shall presently be hung like a very
maypole with fantastic gauds and make-believe honours. But I shall value
them, all valueless as they are, for the love that doth bestow them.
Better these poor mock dignities of mine, that come unasked, from a clean
hand and a right spirit, than real ones bought by servility from grudging
and interested power."
The dreaded Sir Hugh wheeled his horse about, and as he spurred away, the
living wall divided silently to let him pass, and as silently closed
together again. And so remained; nobody went so far as to venture a
remark in favour of the prisoner, or in compliment to him; but no matter
--the absence of abuse was a sufficient homage in itself. A late comer
who was not posted as to the present circumstances, and who delivered a
sneer at the 'impostor,' and was in the act of following it with a dead
cat, was promptly knocked down and kicked out, without any words, and
then the deep quiet resumed sway once more.
Chapter XXIX. To London.
When Hendon's term of service in the stocks was finished, he was released
and ordered to quit the region and come back no more. His sword was
restored to him, and also his mule and his donkey. He mounted and rode
off, followed by the King, the crowd opening with quiet respectfulness to
let them pass, and then dispersing when they were gone.
Hendon was soon absorbed in thought. There were questions of high import
to be answered. What should he do? Whither should he go? Powerful help
must be found somewhere, or he must relinquish his inheritance and remain
under the imputation of being an impostor besides. Where could he hope
to find this powerful help? Where, indeed! It was a knotty question.
By-and-by a thought occurred to him which pointed to a possibility--the
slenderest of slender possibilities, certainly, but still worth
considering, for lack of any other that promised anything at all. He
remembered what old Andrews had said about the young King's goodness and
his generous championship of the wronged and unfortunate. Why not go and
try to get speech of him and beg for justice? Ah, yes, but could so
fantastic a pauper get admission to the august presence of a monarch?
Never mind--let that matter take care of itself; it was a bridge that
would not need to be crossed till he should come to it. He was an old
campaigner, and used to inventing shifts and expedients: no doubt he
would be able to find a way. Yes, he would strike for the capital.
Maybe his father's old friend Sir Humphrey Marlow would help him--'good
old Sir Humphrey, Head Lieutenant of the late King's kitchen, or stables,
or something'--Miles could not remember just what or which. Now that he
had something to turn his energies to, a distinctly defined object to
accomplish, the fog of humiliation and depression which had settled down
upon his spirits lifted and blew away, and he raised his head and looked
about him. He was surprised to see how far he had come; the village was
away behind him. The King was jogging along in his wake, with his head
bowed; for he, too, was deep in plans and thinkings. A sorrowful
misgiving clouded Hendon's new-born cheerfulness: would the boy be
willing to go again to a city where, during all his brief life, he had
never known anything but ill-usage and pinching want? But the question
must be asked; it could not be avoided; so Hendon reined up, and called
out--
"I had forgotten to inquire whither we are bound. Thy commands, my
liege!"
"To London!"
Hendon moved on again, mightily contented with the answer--but astounded
at it too.
The whole journey was made without an adventure of importance. But it
ended with one. About ten o'clock on the night of the 19th of February
they stepped upon London Bridge, in the midst of a writhing, struggling
jam of howling and hurrahing people, whose beer-jolly faces stood out
strongly in the glare from manifold torches--and at that instant the
decaying head of some former duke or other grandee tumbled down between
them, striking Hendon on the elbow and then bounding off among the
hurrying confusion of feet. So evanescent and unstable are men's works in
this world!--the late good King is but three weeks dead and three days in
his grave, and already the adornments which he took such pains to select
from prominent people for his noble bridge are falling. A citizen
stumbled over that head, and drove his own head into the back of somebody
in front of him, who turned and knocked down the first person that came
handy, and was promptly laid out himself by that person's friend. It was
the right ripe time for a free fight, for the festivities of the morrow
--Coronation Day--were already beginning; everybody was full of strong
drink and patriotism; within five minutes the free fight was occupying a
good deal of ground; within ten or twelve it covered an acre of so, and
was become a riot. By this time Hendon and the King were hopelessly
separated from each other and lost in the rush and turmoil of the roaring
masses of humanity. And so we leave them.
Chapter XXX. Tom's progress.
Whilst the true King wandered about the land poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and
murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all
impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed quite a different
experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day:
in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his presence when
he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with them,
with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It no
longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of
officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, "Way for the King!"
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and seeming
to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece. He liked to
receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen to the
affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who called
him brother. O happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his four
hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled them. The
adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music to his ears. He
remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and determined champion of all
that were oppressed, and he made tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon
occasion, being offended, he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and
give him a look that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal
'sister,' the grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him
against the wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would
otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that their
august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high as sixty
thousand convicts at one time, and that during his admirable reign he had
delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers over to death by the
executioner, {9} the boy was filled with generous indignation, and
commanded her to go to her closet, and beseech God to take away the stone
that was in her breast, and give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful prince
who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot zeal to avenge
him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate? Yes; his first royal
days and nights were pretty well sprinkled with painful thoughts about
the lost prince, and with sincere longings for his return, and happy
restoration to his native rights and splendours. But as time wore on,
and the prince did not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied
with his new and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the
vanished monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he
did intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome spectre,
for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom's poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his mind.
At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to see them, but
later, the thought of their coming some day in their rags and dirt, and
betraying him with their kisses, and pulling him down from his lofty
place, and dragging him back to penury and degradation and the slums,
made him shudder. At last they ceased to trouble his thoughts almost
wholly. And he was content, even glad: for, whenever their mournful and
accusing faces did rise before him now, they made him feel more
despicable than the worms that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to sleep in
his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals, and surrounded
by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow was the day appointed
for his solemn crowning as King of England. At that same hour, Edward,
the true king, hungry and thirsty, soiled and draggled, worn with travel,
and clothed in rags and shreds--his share of the results of the riot--was
wedged in among a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest
certain hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation for the royal
coronation.
Chapter XXXI. The Recognition procession.
When Tom Canty awoke the next morning, the air was heavy with a
thunderous murmur: all the distances were charged with it. It was music
to him; for it meant that the English world was out in its strength to
give loyal welcome to the great day.
Presently Tom found himself once more the chief figure in a wonderful
floating pageant on the Thames; for by ancient custom the 'recognition
procession' through London must start from the Tower, and he was bound
thither.
When he arrived there, the sides of the venerable fortress seemed
suddenly rent in a thousand places, and from every rent leaped a red
tongue of flame and a white gush of smoke; a deafening explosion
followed, which drowned the shoutings of the multitude, and made the
ground tremble; the flame-jets, the smoke, and the explosions, were
repeated over and over again with marvellous celerity, so that in a few
moments the old Tower disappeared in the vast fog of its own smoke, all
but the very top of the tall pile called the White Tower; this, with its
banners, stood out above the dense bank of vapour as a mountain-peak
projects above a cloud-rack.
Tom Canty, splendidly arrayed, mounted a prancing war-steed, whose rich
trappings almost reached to the ground; his 'uncle,' the Lord Protector
Somerset, similarly mounted, took place in his rear; the King's Guard
formed in single ranks on either side, clad in burnished armour; after
the Protector followed a seemingly interminable procession of resplendent
nobles attended by their vassals; after these came the lord mayor and the
aldermanic body, in crimson velvet robes, and with their gold chains
across their breasts; and after these the officers and members of all the
guilds of London, in rich raiment, and bearing the showy banners of the
several corporations. Also in the procession, as a special guard of
honour through the city, was the Ancient and Honourable Artillery
Company--an organisation already three hundred years old at that time,
and the only military body in England possessing the privilege (which it
still possesses in our day) of holding itself independent of the commands
of Parliament. It was a brilliant spectacle, and was hailed with
acclamations all along the line, as it took its stately way through the
packed multitudes of citizens. The chronicler says, 'The King, as he
entered the city, was received by the people with prayers, welcomings,
cries, and tender words, and all signs which argue an earnest love of
subjects toward their sovereign; and the King, by holding up his glad
countenance to such as stood afar off, and most tender language to those
that stood nigh his Grace, showed himself no less thankful to receive the
people's goodwill than they to offer it. To all that wished him well, he
gave thanks. To such as bade "God save his Grace," he said in return,
"God save you all!" and added that "he thanked them with all his heart."
Wonderfully transported were the people with the loving answers and
gestures of their King.'
In Fenchurch Street a 'fair child, in costly apparel,' stood on a stage
to welcome his Majesty to the city. The last verse of his greeting was
in these words--
'Welcome, O King! as much as hearts can think; Welcome, again, as much as
tongue can tell,--Welcome to joyous tongues, and hearts that will not
shrink: God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well.'
The people burst forth in a glad shout, repeating with one voice what the
child had said. Tom Canty gazed abroad over the surging sea of eager
faces, and his heart swelled with exultation; and he felt that the one
thing worth living for in this world was to be a king, and a nation's
idol. Presently he caught sight, at a distance, of a couple of his
ragged Offal Court comrades--one of them the lord high admiral in his
late mimic court, the other the first lord of the bedchamber in the same
pretentious fiction; and his pride swelled higher than ever. Oh, if they
could only recognise him now! What unspeakable glory it would be, if
they could recognise him, and realise that the derided mock king of the
slums and back alleys was become a real King, with illustrious dukes and
princes for his humble menials, and the English world at his feet! But
he had to deny himself, and choke down his desire, for such a recognition
might cost more than it would come to: so he turned away his head, and
left the two soiled lads to go on with their shoutings and glad
adulations, unsuspicious of whom it was they were lavishing them upon.
Every now and then rose the cry, "A largess! a largess!" and Tom
responded by scattering a handful of bright new coins abroad for the
multitude to scramble for.
The chronicler says, 'At the upper end of Gracechurch Street, before the
sign of the Eagle, the city had erected a gorgeous arch, beneath which
was a stage, which stretched from one side of the street to the other.
This was an historical pageant, representing the King's immediate
progenitors. There sat Elizabeth of York in the midst of an immense
white rose, whose petals formed elaborate furbelows around her; by her
side was Henry VII., issuing out of a vast red rose, disposed in the same
manner: the hands of the royal pair were locked together, and the
wedding-ring ostentatiously displayed. From the red and white roses
proceeded a stem, which reached up to a second stage, occupied by Henry
VIII., issuing from a red and white rose, with the effigy of the new
King's mother, Jane Seymour, represented by his side. One branch sprang
from this pair, which mounted to a third stage, where sat the effigy of
Edward VI. himself, enthroned in royal majesty; and the whole pageant was
framed with wreaths of roses, red and white.'
This quaint and gaudy spectacle so wrought upon the rejoicing people,
that their acclamations utterly smothered the small voice of the child
whose business it was to explain the thing in eulogistic rhymes. But Tom
Canty was not sorry; for this loyal uproar was sweeter music to him than
any poetry, no matter what its quality might be. Whithersoever Tom
turned his happy young face, the people recognised the exactness of his
effigy's likeness to himself, the flesh and blood counterpart; and new
whirlwinds of applause burst forth.
The great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after
another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical
tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or
merit, of the little King's. 'Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from
every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest
carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets--specimens of
the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendour of this
thoroughfare was equalled in the other streets, and in some even
surpassed.'
"And all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome me--me!" murmured
Tom Canty.
The mock King's cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were
flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. At this point, just
as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught sight
of a pale, astounded face, which was strained forward out of the second
rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him. A sickening
consternation struck through him; he recognised his mother! and up flew
his hand, palm outward, before his eyes--that old involuntary gesture,
born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. In an instant
more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was
at his side. She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she
cried, "O my child, my darling!" lifting toward him a face that was
transfigured with joy and love. The same instant an officer of the
King's Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back
whence she came with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. The words
"I do not know you, woman!" were falling from Tom Canty's lips when this
piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated
so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was
swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted,
that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and
withered his stolen royalty. His grandeurs were stricken valueless:
they seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags.
The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting splendours
and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they were as if
they had not been. He neither saw nor heard. Royalty had lost its grace
and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. Remorse was eating his
heart out. He said, "Would God I were free of my captivity!"
He had unconsciously dropped back into the phraseology of the first days
of his compulsory greatness.
The shining pageant still went winding like a radiant and interminable
serpent down the crooked lanes of the quaint old city, and through the
huzzaing hosts; but still the King rode with bowed head and vacant eyes,
seeing only his mother's face and that wounded look in it.
"Largess, largess!" The cry fell upon an unheeding ear.
"Long live Edward of England!" It seemed as if the earth shook with the
explosion; but there was no response from the King. He heard it only as
one hears the thunder of the surf when it is blown to the ear out of a
great distance, for it was smothered under another sound which was still
nearer, in his own breast, in his accusing conscience--a voice which kept
repeating those shameful words, "I do not know you, woman!"
The words smote upon the King's soul as the strokes of a funeral bell
smite upon the soul of a surviving friend when they remind him of secret
treacheries suffered at his hands by him that is gone.
New glories were unfolded at every turning; new wonders, new marvels,
sprang into view; the pent clamours of waiting batteries were released;
new raptures poured from the throats of the waiting multitudes: but the
King gave no sign, and the accusing voice that went moaning through his
comfortless breast was all the sound he heard.
By-and-by the gladness in the faces of the populace changed a little, and
became touched with a something like solicitude or anxiety: an abatement
in the volume of the applause was observable too. The Lord Protector was
quick to notice these things: he was as quick to detect the cause. He
spurred to the King's side, bent low in his saddle, uncovered, and said--
"My liege, it is an ill time for dreaming. The people observe thy
downcast head, thy clouded mien, and they take it for an omen. Be
advised: unveil the sun of royalty, and let it shine upon these boding
vapours, and disperse them. Lift up thy face, and smile upon the
people."
So saying, the Duke scattered a handful of coins to right and left, then
retired to his place. The mock King did mechanically as he had been
bidden. His smile had no heart in it, but few eyes were near enough or
sharp enough to detect that. The noddings of his plumed head as he
saluted his subjects were full of grace and graciousness; the largess
which he delivered from his hand was royally liberal: so the people's
anxiety vanished, and the acclamations burst forth again in as mighty a
volume as before.
Still once more, a little before the progress was ended, the Duke was
obliged to ride forward, and make remonstrance. He whispered--
"O dread sovereign! shake off these fatal humours; the eyes of the world
are upon thee." Then he added with sharp annoyance, "Perdition catch
that crazy pauper! 'twas she that hath disturbed your Highness."
The gorgeous figure turned a lustreless eye upon the Duke, and said in a
dead voice--
"She was my mother!"
"My God!" groaned the Protector as he reined his horse backward to his
post, "the omen was pregnant with prophecy. He is gone mad again!"
Chapter XXXII. Coronation Day.
Let us go backward a few hours, and place ourselves in Westminster Abbey,
at four o'clock in the morning of this memorable Coronation Day. We are
not without company; for although it is still night, we find the
torch-lighted galleries already filling up with people who are well
content to sit still and wait seven or eight hours till the time shall
come for them to see what they may not hope to see twice in their lives
--the coronation of a King. Yes, London and Westminster have been astir
ever since the warning guns boomed at three o'clock, and already crowds
of untitled rich folk who have bought the privilege of trying to find
sitting-room in the galleries are flocking in at the entrances reserved
for their sort.
The hours drag along tediously enough. All stir has ceased for some
time, for every gallery has long ago been packed. We may sit, now, and
look and think at our leisure. We have glimpses, here and there and
yonder, through the dim cathedral twilight, of portions of many galleries
and balconies, wedged full with other people, the other portions of these
galleries and balconies being cut off from sight by intervening pillars
and architectural projections. We have in view the whole of the great
north transept--empty, and waiting for England's privileged ones. We see
also the ample area or platform, carpeted with rich stuffs, whereon the
throne stands. The throne occupies the centre of the platform, and is
raised above it upon an elevation of four steps. Within the seat of the
throne is enclosed a rough flat rock--the stone of Scone--which many
generations of Scottish kings sat on to be crowned, and so it in time
became holy enough to answer a like purpose for English monarchs. Both
the throne and its footstool are covered with cloth of gold.
Stillness reigns, the torches blink dully, the time drags heavily. But at
last the lagging daylight asserts itself, the torches are extinguished,
and a mellow radiance suffuses the great spaces. All features of the
noble building are distinct now, but soft and dreamy, for the sun is
lightly veiled with clouds.
At seven o'clock the first break in the drowsy monotony occurs; for on
the stroke of this hour the first peeress enters the transept, clothed
like Solomon for splendour, and is conducted to her appointed place by an
official clad in satins and velvets, whilst a duplicate of him gathers up
the lady's long train, follows after, and, when the lady is seated,
arranges the train across her lap for her. He then places her footstool
according to her desire, after which he puts her coronet where it will be
convenient to her hand when the time for the simultaneous coroneting of
the nobles shall arrive.
By this time the peeresses are flowing in in a glittering stream, and the
satin-clad officials are flitting and glinting everywhere, seating them
and making them comfortable. The scene is animated enough now. There is
stir and life, and shifting colour everywhere. After a time, quiet
reigns again; for the peeresses are all come and are all in their places,
a solid acre or such a matter, of human flowers, resplendent in
variegated colours, and frosted like a Milky Way with diamonds. There
are all ages here: brown, wrinkled, white-haired dowagers who are able to
go back, and still back, down the stream of time, and recall the crowning
of Richard III. and the troublous days of that old forgotten age; and
there are handsome middle-aged dames; and lovely and gracious young
matrons; and gentle and beautiful young girls, with beaming eyes and
fresh complexions, who may possibly put on their jewelled coronets
awkwardly when the great time comes; for the matter will be new to them,
and their excitement will be a sore hindrance. Still, this may not
happen, for the hair of all these ladies has been arranged with a special
view to the swift and successful lodging of the crown in its place when
the signal comes.
We have seen that this massed array of peeresses is sown thick with
diamonds, and we also see that it is a marvellous spectacle--but now we
are about to be astonished in earnest. About nine, the clouds suddenly
break away and a shaft of sunshine cleaves the mellow atmosphere, and
drifts slowly along the ranks of ladies; and every rank it touches flames
into a dazzling splendour of many-coloured fires, and we tingle to our
finger-tips with the electric thrill that is shot through us by the
surprise and the beauty of the spectacle! Presently a special envoy from
some distant corner of the Orient, marching with the general body of
foreign ambassadors, crosses this bar of sunshine, and we catch our
breath, the glory that streams and flashes and palpitates about him is so
overpowering; for he is crusted from head to heel with gems, and his
slightest movement showers a dancing radiance all around him.
Let us change the tense for convenience. The time drifted along--one
hour--two hours--two hours and a half; then the deep booming of artillery
told that the King and his grand procession had arrived at last; so the
waiting multitude rejoiced. All knew that a further delay must follow,
for the King must be prepared and robed for the solemn ceremony; but this
delay would be pleasantly occupied by the assembling of the peers of the
realm in their stately robes. These were conducted ceremoniously to
their seats, and their coronets placed conveniently at hand; and
meanwhile the multitude in the galleries were alive with interest, for
most of them were beholding for the first time, dukes, earls, and barons,
whose names had been historical for five hundred years. When all were
finally seated, the spectacle from the galleries and all coigns of
vantage was complete; a gorgeous one to look upon and to remember.
Now the robed and mitred great heads of the church, and their attendants,
filed in upon the platform and took their appointed places; these were
followed by the Lord Protector and other great officials, and these again
by a steel-clad detachment of the Guard.
There was a waiting pause; then, at a signal, a triumphant peal of music
burst forth, and Tom Canty, clothed in a long robe of cloth of gold,
appeared at a door, and stepped upon the platform. The entire multitude
rose, and the ceremony of the Recognition ensued.
Then a noble anthem swept the Abbey with its rich waves of sound; and
thus heralded and welcomed, Tom Canty was conducted to the throne. The
ancient ceremonies went on, with impressive solemnity, whilst the
audience gazed; and as they drew nearer and nearer to completion, Tom
Canty grew pale, and still paler, and a deep and steadily deepening woe
and despondency settled down upon his spirits and upon his remorseful
heart.
At last the final act was at hand. The Archbishop of Canterbury lifted
up the crown of England from its cushion and held it out over the
trembling mock-King's head. In the same instant a rainbow-radiance
flashed along the spacious transept; for with one impulse every
individual in the great concourse of nobles lifted a coronet and poised
it over his or her head--and paused in that attitude.
A deep hush pervaded the Abbey. At this impressive moment, a startling
apparition intruded upon the scene--an apparition observed by none in the
absorbed multitude, until it suddenly appeared, moving up the great
central aisle. It was a boy, bareheaded, ill shod, and clothed in coarse
plebeian garments that were falling to rags. He raised his hand with a
solemnity which ill comported with his soiled and sorry aspect, and
delivered this note of warning--
"I forbid you to set the crown of England upon that forfeited head. I am
the King!"
In an instant several indignant hands were laid upon the boy; but in the
same instant Tom Canty, in his regal vestments, made a swift step
forward, and cried out in a ringing voice--
"Loose him and forbear! He IS the King!"
A sort of panic of astonishment swept the assemblage, and they partly
rose in their places and stared in a bewildered way at one another and at
the chief figures in this scene, like persons who wondered whether they
were awake and in their senses, or asleep and dreaming. The Lord
Protector was as amazed as the rest, but quickly recovered himself, and
exclaimed in a voice of authority--
"Mind not his Majesty, his malady is upon him again--seize the vagabond!"
He would have been obeyed, but the mock-King stamped his foot and cried
out--
"On your peril! Touch him not, he is the King!"
The hands were withheld; a paralysis fell upon the house; no one moved,
no one spoke; indeed, no one knew how to act or what to say, in so
strange and surprising an emergency. While all minds were struggling to
right themselves, the boy still moved steadily forward, with high port
and confident mien; he had never halted from the beginning; and while the
tangled minds still floundered helplessly, he stepped upon the platform,
and the mock-King ran with a glad face to meet him; and fell on his knees
before him and said--
"Oh, my lord the King, let poor Tom Canty be first to swear fealty to
thee, and say, 'Put on thy crown and enter into thine own again!'"
The Lord Protector's eye fell sternly upon the new-comer's face; but
straightway the sternness vanished away, and gave place to an expression
of wondering surprise. This thing happened also to the other great
officers. They glanced at each other, and retreated a step by a common
and unconscious impulse. The thought in each mind was the same: "What a
strange resemblance!"
The Lord Protector reflected a moment or two in perplexity, then he said,
with grave respectfulness--
"By your favour, sir, I desire to ask certain questions which--"
"I will answer them, my lord."
The Duke asked him many questions about the Court, the late King, the
prince, the princesses--the boy answered them correctly and without
hesitating. He described the rooms of state in the palace, the late
King's apartments, and those of the Prince of Wales.
It was strange; it was wonderful; yes, it was unaccountable--so all said
that heard it. The tide was beginning to turn, and Tom Canty's hopes to
run high, when the Lord Protector shook his head and said--
"It is true it is most wonderful--but it is no more than our lord the
King likewise can do." This remark, and this reference to himself as
still the King, saddened Tom Canty, and he felt his hopes crumbling from
under him. "These are not PROOFS," added the Protector.
The tide was turning very fast now, very fast indeed--but in the wrong
direction; it was leaving poor Tom Canty stranded on the throne, and
sweeping the other out to sea. The Lord Protector communed with himself
--shook his head--the thought forced itself upon him, "It is perilous to
the State and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as this; it
could divide the nation and undermine the throne." He turned and said--
"Sir Thomas, arrest this--No, hold!" His face lighted, and he confronted
the ragged candidate with this question--
"Where lieth the Great Seal? Answer me this truly, and the riddle is
unriddled; for only he that was Prince of Wales CAN so answer! On so
trivial a thing hang a throne and a dynasty!"
It was a lucky thought, a happy thought. That it was so considered by
the great officials was manifested by the silent applause that shot from
eye to eye around their circle in the form of bright approving glances.
Yes, none but the true prince could dissolve the stubborn mystery of the
vanished Great Seal--this forlorn little impostor had been taught his
lesson well, but here his teachings must fail, for his teacher himself
could not answer THAT question--ah, very good, very good indeed; now we
shall be rid of this troublesome and perilous business in short order!
And so they nodded invisibly and smiled inwardly with satisfaction, and
looked to see this foolish lad stricken with a palsy of guilty confusion.
How surprised they were, then, to see nothing of the sort happen--how
they marvelled to hear him answer up promptly, in a confident and
untroubled voice, and say--
"There is nought in this riddle that is difficult." Then, without so
much as a by-your-leave to anybody, he turned and gave this command, with
the easy manner of one accustomed to doing such things: "My Lord St.
John, go you to my private cabinet in the palace--for none knoweth the
place better than you--and, close down to the floor, in the left corner
remotest from the door that opens from the ante-chamber, you shall find
in the wall a brazen nail-head; press upon it and a little jewel-closet
will fly open which not even you do know of--no, nor any soul else in
all the world but me and the trusty artisan that did contrive it for me.
The first thing that falleth under your eye will be the Great Seal--fetch
it hither."
All the company wondered at this speech, and wondered still more to see
the little mendicant pick out this peer without hesitancy or apparent
fear of mistake, and call him by name with such a placidly convincing air
of having known him all his life. The peer was almost surprised into
obeying. He even made a movement as if to go, but quickly recovered his
tranquil attitude and confessed his blunder with a blush. Tom Canty
turned upon him and said, sharply--
"Why dost thou hesitate? Hast not heard the King's command? Go!"
The Lord St. John made a deep obeisance--and it was observed that it was
a significantly cautious and non-committal one, it not being delivered at
either of the kings, but at the neutral ground about half-way between the
two--and took his leave.
Now began a movement of the gorgeous particles of that official group
which was slow, scarcely perceptible, and yet steady and persistent--a
movement such as is observed in a kaleidoscope that is turned slowly,
whereby the components of one splendid cluster fall away and join
themselves to another--a movement which, little by little, in the present
case, dissolved the glittering crowd that stood about Tom Canty and
clustered it together again in the neighbourhood of the new-comer. Tom
Canty stood almost alone. Now ensued a brief season of deep suspense and
waiting--during which even the few faint hearts still remaining near Tom
Canty gradually scraped together courage enough to glide, one by one,
over to the majority. So at last Tom Canty, in his royal robes and
jewels, stood wholly alone and isolated from the world, a conspicuous
figure, occupying an eloquent vacancy.
Now the Lord St. John was seen returning. As he advanced up the
mid-aisle the interest was so intense that the low murmur of conversation
in the great assemblage died out and was succeeded by a profound hush, a
breathless stillness, through which his footfalls pulsed with a dull and
distant sound. Every eye was fastened upon him as he moved along. He
reached the platform, paused a moment, then moved toward Tom Canty with a
deep obeisance, and said--
"Sire, the Seal is not there!"
A mob does not melt away from the presence of a plague-patient with more
haste than the band of pallid and terrified courtiers melted away from
the presence of the shabby little claimant of the Crown. In a moment he
stood all alone, without friend or supporter, a target upon which was
concentrated a bitter fire of scornful and angry looks. The Lord
Protector called out fiercely--
"Cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the town--the
paltry knave is worth no more consideration!"
Officers of the guard sprang forward to obey, but Tom Canty waved them
off and said--
"Back! Whoso touches him perils his life!"
The Lord Protector was perplexed in the last degree. He said to the Lord
St. John--
"Searched you well?--but it boots not to ask that. It doth seem passing
strange. Little things, trifles, slip out of one's ken, and one does not
think it matter for surprise; but how so bulky a thing as the Seal of
England can vanish away and no man be able to get track of it again--a
massy golden disk--"
Tom Canty, with beaming eyes, sprang forward and shouted--
"Hold, that is enough! Was it round?--and thick?--and had it letters and
devices graved upon it?--yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is
that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to
me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it
lies; but it was not I that put it there--first."
"Who, then, my liege?" asked the Lord Protector.
"He that stands there--the rightful King of England. And he shall tell
you himself where it lies--then you will believe he knew it of his own
knowledge. Bethink thee, my King--spur thy memory--it was the last, the
very LAST thing thou didst that day before thou didst rush forth from the
palace, clothed in my rags, to punish the soldier that insulted me."
A silence ensued, undisturbed by a movement or a whisper, and all eyes
were fixed upon the new-comer, who stood, with bent head and corrugated
brow, groping in his memory among a thronging multitude of valueless
recollections for one single little elusive fact, which, found, would
seat him upon a throne--unfound, would leave him as he was, for good and
all--a pauper and an outcast. Moment after moment passed--the moments
built themselves into minutes--still the boy struggled silently on, and
gave no sign. But at last he heaved a sigh, shook his head slowly, and
said, with a trembling lip and in a despondent voice--
"I call the scene back--all of it--but the Seal hath no place in it." He
paused, then looked up, and said with gentle dignity, "My lords and
gentlemen, if ye will rob your rightful sovereign of his own for lack of
this evidence which he is not able to furnish, I may not stay ye, being
powerless. But--"
"Oh, folly, oh, madness, my King!" cried Tom Canty, in a panic, "wait!
--think! Do not give up!--the cause is not lost! Nor SHALL be, neither!
List to what I say--follow every word--I am going to bring that morning
back again, every hap just as it happened. We talked--I told you of my
sisters, Nan and Bet--ah, yes, you remember that; and about mine old
grandam--and the rough games of the lads of Offal Court--yes, you
remember these things also; very well, follow me still, you shall recall
everything. You gave me food and drink, and did with princely courtesy
send away the servants, so that my low breeding might not shame me before
them--ah, yes, this also you remember."
As Tom checked off his details, and the other boy nodded his head in
recognition of them, the great audience and the officials stared in
puzzled wonderment; the tale sounded like true history, yet how could
this impossible conjunction between a prince and a beggar-boy have come
about? Never was a company of people so perplexed, so interested, and so
stupefied, before.
"For a jest, my prince, we did exchange garments. Then we stood before a
mirror; and so alike were we that both said it seemed as if there had
been no change made--yes, you remember that. Then you noticed that the
soldier had hurt my hand--look! here it is, I cannot yet even write with
it, the fingers are so stiff. At this your Highness sprang up, vowing
vengeance upon that soldier, and ran towards the door--you passed a
table--that thing you call the Seal lay on that table--you snatched it up
and looked eagerly about, as if for a place to hide it--your eye caught
sight of--"
"There, 'tis sufficient!--and the good God be thanked!" exclaimed the
ragged claimant, in a mighty excitement. "Go, my good St. John--in an
arm-piece of the Milanese armour that hangs on the wall, thou'lt find the
Seal!"
"Right, my King! right!" cried Tom Canty; "NOW the sceptre of England is
thine own; and it were better for him that would dispute it that he had
been born dumb! Go, my Lord St. John, give thy feet wings!"
The whole assemblage was on its feet now, and well-nigh out of its mind
with uneasiness, apprehension, and consuming excitement. On the floor
and on the platform a deafening buzz of frantic conversation burst forth,
and for some time nobody knew anything or heard anything or was
interested in anything but what his neighbour was shouting into his ear,
or he was shouting into his neighbour's ear. Time--nobody knew how much
of it--swept by unheeded and unnoted. At last a sudden hush fell upon
the house, and in the same moment St. John appeared upon the platform,
and held the Great Seal aloft in his hand. Then such a shout went up--
"Long live the true King!"
For five minutes the air quaked with shouts and the crash of musical
instruments, and was white with a storm of waving handkerchiefs; and
through it all a ragged lad, the most conspicuous figure in England,
stood, flushed and happy and proud, in the centre of the spacious
platform, with the great vassals of the kingdom kneeling around him.
Then all rose, and Tom Canty cried out--
"Now, O my King, take these regal garments back, and give poor Tom, thy
servant, his shreds and remnants again."
The Lord Protector spoke up--
"Let the small varlet be stripped and flung into the Tower."
But the new King, the true King, said--
"I will not have it so. But for him I had not got my crown again--none
shall lay a hand upon him to harm him. And as for thee, my good uncle,
my Lord Protector, this conduct of thine is not grateful toward this poor
lad, for I hear he hath made thee a duke"--the Protector blushed--"yet he
was not a king; wherefore what is thy fine title worth now? To-morrow
you shall sue to me, THROUGH HIM, for its confirmation, else no duke, but
a simple earl, shalt thou remain."
Under this rebuke, his Grace the Duke of Somerset retired a little from
the front for the moment. The King turned to Tom, and said kindly--"My
poor boy, how was it that you could remember where I hid the Seal when I
could not remember it myself?"
"Ah, my King, that was easy, since I used it divers days."
"Used it--yet could not explain where it was?"
"I did not know it was THAT they wanted. They did not describe it, your
Majesty."
"Then how used you it?"
The red blood began to steal up into Tom's cheeks, and he dropped his
eyes and was silent.
"Speak up, good lad, and fear nothing," said the King. "How used you the
Great Seal of England?"
Tom stammered a moment, in a pathetic confusion, then got it out--
"To crack nuts with!"
Poor child, the avalanche of laughter that greeted this nearly swept him
off his feet. But if a doubt remained in any mind that Tom Canty was not
the King of England and familiar with the august appurtenances of
royalty, this reply disposed of it utterly.
Meantime the sumptuous robe of state had been removed from Tom's
shoulders to the King's, whose rags were effectually hidden from sight
under it. Then the coronation ceremonies were resumed; the true King was
anointed and the crown set upon his head, whilst cannon thundered the
news to the city, and all London seemed to rock with applause.
Chapter XXXIII. Edward as King.
Miles Hendon was picturesque enough before he got into the riot on London
Bridge--he was more so when he got out of it. He had but little money
when he got in, none at all when he got out. The pickpockets had
stripped him of his last farthing.
But no matter, so he found his boy. Being a soldier, he did not go at
his task in a random way, but set to work, first of all, to arrange his
campaign.
What would the boy naturally do? Where would he naturally go? Well
--argued Miles--he would naturally go to his former haunts, for that is the
instinct of unsound minds, when homeless and forsaken, as well as of
sound ones. Whereabouts were his former haunts? His rags, taken
together with the low villain who seemed to know him and who even claimed
to be his father, indicated that his home was in one or another of the
poorest and meanest districts of London. Would the search for him be
difficult, or long? No, it was likely to be easy and brief. He would
not hunt for the boy, he would hunt for a crowd; in the centre of a big
crowd or a little one, sooner or later, he should find his poor little
friend, sure; and the mangy mob would be entertaining itself with
pestering and aggravating the boy, who would be proclaiming himself King,
as usual. Then Miles Hendon would cripple some of those people, and
carry off his little ward, and comfort and cheer him with loving words,
and the two would never be separated any more.
So Miles started on his quest. Hour after hour he tramped through back
alleys and squalid streets, seeking groups and crowds, and finding no end
of them, but never any sign of the boy. This greatly surprised him, but
did not discourage him. To his notion, there was nothing the matter with
his plan of campaign; the only miscalculation about it was that the
campaign was becoming a lengthy one, whereas he had expected it to be
short.
When daylight arrived, at last, he had made many a mile, and canvassed
many a crowd, but the only result was that he was tolerably tired, rather
hungry and very sleepy. He wanted some breakfast, but there was no way
to get it. To beg for it did not occur to him; as to pawning his sword,
he would as soon have thought of parting with his honour; he could spare
some of his clothes--yes, but one could as easily find a customer for a
disease as for such clothes.
At noon he was still tramping--among the rabble which followed after the
royal procession, now; for he argued that this regal display would
attract his little lunatic powerfully. He followed the pageant through
all its devious windings about London, and all the way to Westminster and
the Abbey. He drifted here and there amongst the multitudes that were
massed in the vicinity for a weary long time, baffled and perplexed, and
finally wandered off, thinking, and trying to contrive some way to better
his plan of campaign. By-and-by, when he came to himself out of his
musings, he discovered that the town was far behind him and that the day
was growing old. He was near the river, and in the country; it was a
region of fine rural seats--not the sort of district to welcome clothes
like his.
It was not at all cold; so he stretched himself on the ground in the lee
of a hedge to rest and think. Drowsiness presently began to settle upon
his senses; the faint and far-off boom of cannon was wafted to his ear,
and he said to himself, "The new King is crowned," and straightway fell
asleep. He had not slept or rested, before, for more than thirty hours.
He did not wake again until near the middle of the next morning.
He got up, lame, stiff, and half famished, washed himself in the river,
stayed his stomach with a pint or two of water, and trudged off toward
Westminster, grumbling at himself for having wasted so much time. Hunger
helped him to a new plan, now; he would try to get speech with old Sir
Humphrey Marlow and borrow a few marks, and--but that was enough of a
plan for the present; it would be time enough to enlarge it when this
first stage should be accomplished.
Toward eleven o'clock he approached the palace; and although a host of
showy people were about him, moving in the same direction, he was not
inconspicuous--his costume took care of that. He watched these people's
faces narrowly, hoping to find a charitable one whose possessor might be
willing to carry his name to the old lieutenant--as to trying to get into
the palace himself, that was simply out of the question.
Presently our whipping-boy passed him, then wheeled about and scanned his
figure well, saying to himself, "An' that is not the very vagabond his
Majesty is in such a worry about, then am I an ass--though belike I was
that before. He answereth the description to a rag--that God should make
two such would be to cheapen miracles by wasteful repetition. I would I
could contrive an excuse to speak with him."
Miles Hendon saved him the trouble; for he turned about, then, as a man
generally will when somebody mesmerises him by gazing hard at him from
behind; and observing a strong interest in the boy's eyes, he stepped
toward him and said--
"You have just come out from the palace; do you belong there?"
"Yes, your worship."
"Know you Sir Humphrey Marlow?"
The boy started, and said to himself, "Lord! mine old departed father!"
Then he answered aloud, "Right well, your worship."
"Good--is he within?"
"Yes," said the boy; and added, to himself, "within his grave."
"Might I crave your favour to carry my name to him, and say I beg to say
a word in his ear?"
"I will despatch the business right willingly, fair sir."
"Then say Miles Hendon, son of Sir Richard, is here without--I shall be
greatly bounden to you, my good lad."
The boy looked disappointed. "The King did not name him so," he said to
himself; "but it mattereth not, this is his twin brother, and can give
his Majesty news of t'other Sir-Odds-and-Ends, I warrant." So he said to
Miles, "Step in there a moment, good sir, and wait till I bring you
word."
Hendon retired to the place indicated--it was a recess sunk in the palace
wall, with a stone bench in it--a shelter for sentinels in bad weather.
He had hardly seated himself when some halberdiers, in charge of an
officer, passed by. The officer saw him, halted his men, and commanded
Hendon to come forth. He obeyed, and was promptly arrested as a
suspicious character prowling within the precincts of the palace. Things
began to look ugly. Poor Miles was going to explain, but the officer
roughly silenced him, and ordered his men to disarm him and search him.
"God of his mercy grant that they find somewhat," said poor Miles; "I
have searched enow, and failed, yet is my need greater than theirs."
Nothing was found but a document. The officer tore it open, and Hendon
smiled when he recognised the 'pot-hooks' made by his lost little friend
that black day at Hendon Hall. The officer's face grew dark as he read
the English paragraph, and Miles blenched to the opposite colour as he
listened.
"Another new claimant of the Crown!" cried the officer. "Verily they
breed like rabbits, to-day. Seize the rascal, men, and see ye keep him
fast whilst I convey this precious paper within and send it to the King."
He hurried away, leaving the prisoner in the grip of the halberdiers.
"Now is my evil luck ended at last," muttered Hendon, "for I shall dangle
at a rope's end for a certainty, by reason of that bit of writing. And
what will become of my poor lad!--ah, only the good God knoweth."
By-and-by he saw the officer coming again, in a great hurry; so he
plucked his courage together, purposing to meet his trouble as became a
man. The officer ordered the men to loose the prisoner and return his
sword to him; then bowed respectfully, and said--
"Please you, sir, to follow me."
Hendon followed, saying to himself, "An' I were not travelling to death
and judgment, and so must needs economise in sin, I would throttle this
knave for his mock courtesy."
The two traversed a populous court, and arrived at the grand entrance of
the palace, where the officer, with another bow, delivered Hendon into
the hands of a gorgeous official, who received him with profound respect
and led him forward through a great hall, lined on both sides with rows
of splendid flunkeys (who made reverential obeisance as the two passed
along, but fell into death-throes of silent laughter at our stately
scarecrow the moment his back was turned), and up a broad staircase,
among flocks of fine folk, and finally conducted him into a vast room,
clove a passage for him through the assembled nobility of England, then
made a bow, reminded him to take his hat off, and left him standing in
the middle of the room, a mark for all eyes, for plenty of indignant
frowns, and for a sufficiency of amused and derisive smiles.
Miles Hendon was entirely bewildered. There sat the young King, under a
canopy of state, five steps away, with his head bent down and aside,
speaking with a sort of human bird of paradise--a duke, maybe. Hendon
observed to himself that it was hard enough to be sentenced to death in
the full vigour of life, without having this peculiarly public
humiliation added. He wished the King would hurry about it--some of the
gaudy people near by were becoming pretty offensive. At this moment the
King raised his head slightly, and Hendon caught a good view of his face.
The sight nearly took his breath away!--He stood gazing at the fair young
face like one transfixed; then presently ejaculated--
"Lo, the Lord of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows on his throne!"
He muttered some broken sentences, still gazing and marvelling; then
turned his eyes around and about, scanning the gorgeous throng and the
splendid saloon, murmuring, "But these are REAL--verily these are REAL
--surely it is not a dream."
He stared at the King again--and thought, "IS it a dream . . . or IS he
the veritable Sovereign of England, and not the friendless poor Tom o'
Bedlam I took him for--who shall solve me this riddle?"
A sudden idea flashed in his eye, and he strode to the wall, gathered up
a chair, brought it back, planted it on the floor, and sat down in it!
A buzz of indignation broke out, a rough hand was laid upon him and a
voice exclaimed--
"Up, thou mannerless clown! would'st sit in the presence of the King?"
The disturbance attracted his Majesty's attention, who stretched forth
his hand and cried out--
"Touch him not, it is his right!"
The throng fell back, stupefied. The King went on--
"Learn ye all, ladies, lords, and gentlemen, that this is my trusty and
well-beloved servant, Miles Hendon, who interposed his good sword and
saved his prince from bodily harm and possible death--and for this he is
a knight, by the King's voice. Also learn, that for a higher service, in
that he saved his sovereign stripes and shame, taking these upon himself,
he is a peer of England, Earl of Kent, and shall have gold and lands meet
for the dignity. More--the privilege which he hath just exercised is his
by royal grant; for we have ordained that the chiefs of his line shall
have and hold the right to sit in the presence of the Majesty of England
henceforth, age after age, so long as the crown shall endure. Molest him
not."
Two persons, who, through delay, had only arrived from the country during
this morning, and had now been in this room only five minutes, stood
listening to these words and looking at the King, then at the scarecrow,
then at the King again, in a sort of torpid bewilderment. These were Sir
Hugh and the Lady Edith. But the new Earl did not see them. He was
still staring at the monarch, in a dazed way, and muttering--
"Oh, body o' me! THIS my pauper! This my lunatic! This is he whom _I_
would show what grandeur was, in my house of seventy rooms and
seven-and-twenty servants! This is he who had never known aught but rags
for raiment, kicks for comfort, and offal for diet! This is he whom _I_
adopted and would make respectable! Would God I had a bag to hide my head
in!"
Then his manners suddenly came back to him, and he dropped upon his
knees, with his hands between the King's, and swore allegiance and did
homage for his lands and titles. Then he rose and stood respectfully
aside, a mark still for all eyes--and much envy, too.
Now the King discovered Sir Hugh, and spoke out with wrathful voice and
kindling eye--
"Strip this robber of his false show and stolen estates, and put him
under lock and key till I have need of him."
The late Sir Hugh was led away.
There was a stir at the other end of the room, now; the assemblage fell
apart, and Tom Canty, quaintly but richly clothed, marched down, between
these living walls, preceded by an usher. He knelt before the King, who
said--
"I have learned the story of these past few weeks, and am well pleased
with thee. Thou hast governed the realm with right royal gentleness and
mercy. Thou hast found thy mother and thy sisters again? Good; they
shall be cared for--and thy father shall hang, if thou desire it and the
law consent. Know, all ye that hear my voice, that from this day, they
that abide in the shelter of Christ's Hospital and share the King's
bounty shall have their minds and hearts fed, as well as their baser
parts; and this boy shall dwell there, and hold the chief place in its
honourable body of governors, during life. And for that he hath been a
king, it is meet that other than common observance shall be his due;
wherefore note this his dress of state, for by it he shall be known, and
none shall copy it; and wheresoever he shall come, it shall remind the
people that he hath been royal, in his time, and none shall deny him his
due of reverence or fail to give him salutation. He hath the throne's
protection, he hath the crown's support, he shall be known and called by
the honourable title of the King's Ward."
The proud and happy Tom Canty rose and kissed the King's hand, and was
conducted from the presence. He did not waste any time, but flew to his
mother, to tell her and Nan and Bet all about it and get them to help him
enjoy the great news. {1}
Conclusion. Justice and retribution.
When the mysteries were all cleared up, it came out, by confession of
Hugh Hendon, that his wife had repudiated Miles by his command, that day
at Hendon Hall--a command assisted and supported by the perfectly
trustworthy promise that if she did not deny that he was Miles Hendon,
and stand firmly to it, he would have her life; whereupon she said, "Take
it!"--she did not value it--and she would not repudiate Miles; then the
husband said he would spare her life but have Miles assassinated! This
was a different matter; so she gave her word and kept it.
Hugh was not prosecuted for his threats or for stealing his brother's
estates and title, because the wife and brother would not testify against
him--and the former would not have been allowed to do it, even if she had
wanted to. Hugh deserted his wife and went over to the continent, where
he presently died; and by-and-by the Earl of Kent married his relict.
There were grand times and rejoicings at Hendon village when the couple
paid their first visit to the Hall.
Tom Canty's father was never heard of again.
The King sought out the farmer who had been branded and sold as a slave,
and reclaimed him from his evil life with the Ruffler's gang, and put him
in the way of a comfortable livelihood.
He also took that old lawyer out of prison and remitted his fine. He
provided good homes for the daughters of the two Baptist women whom he
saw burned at the stake, and roundly punished the official who laid the
undeserved stripes upon Miles Hendon's back.
He saved from the gallows the boy who had captured the stray falcon, and
also the woman who had stolen a remnant of cloth from a weaver; but he
was too late to save the man who had been convicted of killing a deer in
the royal forest.
He showed favour to the justice who had pitied him when he was supposed
to have stolen a pig, and he had the gratification of seeing him grow in
the public esteem and become a great and honoured man.
As long as the King lived he was fond of telling the story of his
adventures, all through, from the hour that the sentinel cuffed him away
from the palace gate till the final midnight when he deftly mixed himself
into a gang of hurrying workmen and so slipped into the Abbey and climbed
up and hid himself in the Confessor's tomb, and then slept so long, next
day, that he came within one of missing the Coronation altogether. He
said that the frequent rehearsing of the precious lesson kept him strong
in his purpose to make its teachings yield benefits to his people; and
so, whilst his life was spared he should continue to tell the story, and
thus keep its sorrowful spectacles fresh in his memory and the springs of
pity replenished in his heart.
Miles Hendon and Tom Canty were favourites of the King, all through his
brief reign, and his sincere mourners when he died. The good Earl of Kent
had too much sense to abuse his peculiar privilege; but he exercised it
twice after the instance we have seen of it before he was called from
this world--once at the accession of Queen Mary, and once at the
accession of Queen Elizabeth. A descendant of his exercised it at the
accession of James I. Before this one's son chose to use the privilege,
near a quarter of a century had elapsed, and the 'privilege of the Kents'
had faded out of most people's memories; so, when the Kent of that day
appeared before Charles I. and his court and sat down in the sovereign's
presence to assert and perpetuate the right of his house, there was a
fine stir indeed! But the matter was soon explained, and the right
confirmed. The last Earl of the line fell in the wars of the
Commonwealth fighting for the King, and the odd privilege ended with him.
Tom Canty lived to be a very old man, a handsome, white-haired old
fellow, of grave and benignant aspect. As long as he lasted he was
honoured; and he was also reverenced, for his striking and peculiar
costume kept the people reminded that 'in his time he had been royal;'
so, wherever he appeared the crowd fell apart, making way for him, and
whispering, one to another, "Doff thy hat, it is the King's Ward!"--and
so they saluted, and got his kindly smile in return--and they valued it,
too, for his was an honourable history.
Yes, King Edward VI. lived only a few years, poor boy, but he lived them
worthily. More than once, when some great dignitary, some gilded vassal
of the crown, made argument against his leniency, and urged that some law
which he was bent upon amending was gentle enough for its purpose, and
wrought no suffering or oppression which any one need mightily mind, the
young King turned the mournful eloquence of his great compassionate eyes
upon him and answered--
"What dost THOU know of suffering and oppression? I and my people know,
but not thou."
The reign of Edward VI. was a singularly merciful one for those harsh
times. Now that we are taking leave of him, let us try to keep this in
our minds, to his credit.
FOOTNOTES AND TWAIN'S NOTES
{1} For Mark Twain's note see below under the relevant chapter heading.
{2} He refers to the order of baronets, or baronettes; the barones
minores, as distinct from the parliamentary barons--not, it need hardly
be said, to the baronets of later creation.
{3} The lords of Kingsale, descendants of De Courcy, still enjoy this
curious privilege.
{4} Hume.
{5} Ib.
{6} Leigh Hunt's 'The Town,' p.408, quotation from an early tourist.
{7} Canting terms for various kinds of thieves, beggars and vagabonds,
and their female companions.
{8} From 'The English Rogue.' London, 1665.
{9} Hume's England.
{10} See Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p. 11.
NOTE 1, Chapter IV. Christ's Hospital Costume.
It is most reasonable to regard the dress as copied from the costume of
the citizens of London of that period, when long blue coats were the
common habit of apprentices and serving-men, and yellow stockings were
generally worn; the coat fits closely to the body, but has loose sleeves,
and beneath is worn a sleeveless yellow under-coat; around the waist is a
red leathern girdle; a clerical band around the neck, and a small flat
black cap, about the size of a saucer, completes the costume.--Timbs'
Curiosities of London.
NOTE 2, Chapter IV.
It appears that Christ's Hospital was not originally founded as a SCHOOL;
its object was to rescue children from the streets, to shelter, feed,
clothe them.--Timbs' Curiosities of London.
NOTE 3, Chapter V. The Duke of Norfolk's Condemnation commanded.
The King was now approaching fast towards his end; and fearing lest
Norfolk should escape him, he sent a message to the Commons, by which he
desired them to hasten the Bill, on pretence that Norfolk enjoyed the
dignity of Earl Marshal, and it was necessary to appoint another, who
might officiate at the ensuing ceremony of installing his son Prince of
Wales.--Hume's History of England, vol. iii. p. 307.
NOTE 4, Chapter VII.
It was not till the end of this reign (Henry VIII.) that any salads,
carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were produced in England. The
little of these vegetables that was used was formerly imported from
Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine, when she wanted a salad, was
obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.--Hume's History of
England, vol. iii. p. 314.
NOTE 5, Chapter VIII. Attainder of Norfolk.
The House of Peers, without examining the prisoner, without trial or
evidence, passed a Bill of Attainder against him and sent it down to the
Commons . . . The obsequious Commons obeyed his (the King's) directions;
and the King, having affixed the Royal assent to the Bill by
commissioners, issued orders for the execution of Norfolk on the morning
of January 29 (the next day).--Hume's History of England, vol iii. p 306.
NOTE 6, Chapter X. The Loving-cup.
The loving-cup, and the peculiar ceremonies observed in drinking from it,
are older than English history. It is thought that both are Danish
importations. As far back as knowledge goes, the loving-cup has always
been drunk at English banquets. Tradition explains the ceremonies in
this way. In the rude ancient times it was deemed a wise precaution to
have both hands of both drinkers employed, lest while the pledger pledged
his love and fidelity to the pledgee, the pledgee take that opportunity
to slip a dirk into him!
NOTE 7, Chapter XI. The Duke of Norfolk's narrow Escape.
Had Henry VIII. survived a few hours longer, his order for the duke's
execution would have been carried into effect. 'But news being carried to
the Tower that the King himself had expired that night, the lieutenant
deferred obeying the warrant; and it was not thought advisable by the
Council to begin a new reign by the death of the greatest nobleman in the
kingdom, who had been condemned by a sentence so unjust and tyrannical.'
--Hume's History of England, vol. iii, p. 307.
NOTE 8, Chapter XIV. The Whipping-boy.
James I. and Charles II. had whipping-boys, when they were little
fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their
lessons; so I have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my
own purposes.
NOTES to Chapter XV.
Character of Hertford.
The young King discovered an extreme attachment to his uncle, who was, in
the main, a man of moderation and probity.--Hume's History of England,
vol. iii, p324.
But if he (the Protector) gave offence by assuming too much state, he
deserves great praise on account of the laws passed this session, by
which the rigour of former statutes was much mitigated, and some security
given to the freedom of the constitution. All laws were repealed which
extended the crime of treason beyond the statute of the twenty-fifth of
Edward III.; all laws enacted during the late reign extending the crime
of felony; all the former laws against Lollardy or heresy, together with
the statute of the Six Articles. None were to be accused for words, but
within a month after they were spoken. By these repeals several of the
most rigorous laws that ever had passed in England were annulled; and
some dawn, both of civil and religious liberty, began to appear to the
people. A repeal also passed of that law, the destruction of all laws,
by which the King's proclamation was made of equal force with a statute.
--Ibid. vol. iii. p. 339.
Boiling to Death.
In the reign of Henry VIII. poisoners were, by Act of Parliament,
condemned to be BOILED TO DEATH. This Act was repealed in the following
reign.
In Germany, even in the seventeenth century, this horrible punishment was
inflicted on coiners and counterfeiters. Taylor, the Water Poet,
describes an execution he witnessed in Hamburg in 1616. The judgment
pronounced against a coiner of false money was that he should 'BE BOILED
TO DEATH IN OIL; not thrown into the vessel at once, but with a pulley or
rope to be hanged under the armpits, and then let down into the oil BY
DEGREES; first the feet, and next the legs, and so to boil his flesh from
his bones alive.'--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False,
p. 13.
The Famous Stocking Case.
A woman and her daughter, NINE YEARS OLD, were hanged in Huntingdon for
selling their souls to the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off
their stockings!--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and False, p.
20.
NOTE 10, Chapter XVII. Enslaving.
So young a King and so ignorant a peasant were likely to make mistakes;
and this is an instance in point. This peasant was suffering from this
law BY ANTICIPATION; the King was venting his indignation against a law
which was not yet in existence; for this hideous statute was to have
birth in this little King's OWN REIGN. However, we know, from the
humanity of his character, that it could never have been suggested by
him.
NOTES to Chapter XXIII. Death for Trifling Larcenies.
When Connecticut and New Haven were framing their first codes, larceny
above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in England--as it had
been since the time of Henry I.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws,
True and False, p. 17.
The curious old book called The English Rogue makes the limit thirteen
pence ha'penny: death being the portion of any who steal a thing 'above
the value of thirteen pence ha'penny.'
NOTES to Chapter XXVII.
From many descriptions of larceny the law expressly took away the benefit
of clergy: to steal a horse, or a HAWK, or woollen cloth from the
weaver, was a hanging matter. So it was to kill a deer from the King's
forest, or to export sheep from the kingdom.--Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's
Blue Laws, True and False, p.13.
William Prynne, a learned barrister, was sentenced (long after Edward
VI.'s time) to lose both his ears in the pillory, to degradation from the
bar, a fine of 3,000 pounds, and imprisonment for life. Three years
afterwards he gave new offence to Laud by publishing a pamphlet against
the hierarchy. He was again prosecuted, and was sentenced to lose WHAT
REMAINED OF HIS EARS, to pay a fine of 5,000 pounds, to be BRANDED ON
BOTH HIS CHEEKS with the letters S. L. (for Seditious Libeller), and to
remain in prison for life. The severity of this sentence was equalled by
the savage rigour of its execution.--Ibid. p. 12.
NOTES to Chapter XXXIII.
Christ's Hospital, or Bluecoat School, 'the noblest institution in the
world.'
The ground on which the Priory of the Grey Friars stood was conferred by
Henry VIII. on the Corporation of London (who caused the institution
there of a home for poor boys and girls). Subsequently, Edward VI. caused
the old Priory to be properly repaired, and founded within it that noble
establishment called the Bluecoat School, or Christ's Hospital, for the
EDUCATION and maintenance of orphans and the children of indigent persons
. . . Edward would not let him (Bishop Ridley) depart till the letter was
written (to the Lord Mayor), and then charged him to deliver it himself,
and signify his special request and commandment that no time might be
lost in proposing what was convenient, and apprising him of the
proceedings. The work was zealously undertaken, Ridley himself engaging
in it; and the result was the founding of Christ's Hospital for the
education of poor children. (The King endowed several other charities at
the same time.) "Lord God," said he, "I yield Thee most hearty thanks
that Thou hast given me life thus long to finish this work to the glory
of Thy name!" That innocent and most exemplary life was drawing rapidly
to its close, and in a few days he rendered up his spirit to his Creator,
praying God to defend the realm from Papistry.--J. Heneage Jesse's
London: its Celebrated Characters and Places.
In the Great Hall hangs a large picture of King Edward VI. seated on his
throne, in a scarlet and ermined robe, holding the sceptre in his left
hand, and presenting with the other the Charter to the kneeling Lord
Mayor. By his side stands the Chancellor, holding the seals, and next to
him are other officers of state. Bishop Ridley kneels before him with
uplifted hands, as if supplicating a blessing on the event; whilst the
Aldermen, etc., with the Lord Mayor, kneel on both sides, occupying the
middle ground of the picture; and lastly, in front, are a double row of
boys on one side and girls on the other, from the master and matron down
to the boy and girl who have stepped forward from their respective rows,
and kneel with raised hands before the King.--Timbs' Curiosities of
London, p. 98.
Christ's Hospital, by ancient custom, possesses the privilege of
addressing the Sovereign on the occasion of his or her coming into the
City to partake of the hospitality of the Corporation of London.--Ibid.
The Dining Hall, with its lobby and organ-gallery, occupies the entire
storey, which is 187 feet long, 51 feet wide, and 47 feet high; it is lit
by nine large windows, filled with stained glass on the south side; and
is, next to Westminster Hall, the noblest room in the metropolis. Here
the boys, now about 800 in number, dine; and here are held the 'Suppings
in Public,' to which visitors are admitted by tickets issued by the
Treasurer and by the Governors of Christ's Hospital. The tables are laid
with cheese in wooden bowls, beer in wooden piggins, poured from leathern
jacks, and bread brought in large baskets. The official company enter;
the Lord Mayor, or President, takes his seat in a state chair made of oak
from St. Catherine's Church, by the Tower; a hymn is sung, accompanied by
the organ; a 'Grecian,' or head boy, reads the prayers from the pulpit,
silence being enforced by three drops of a wooden hammer. After prayer
the supper commences, and the visitors walk between the tables. At its
close the 'trade-boys' take up the baskets, bowls, jacks, piggins, and
candlesticks, and pass in procession, the bowing to the Governors being
curiously formal. This spectacle was witnessed by Queen Victoria and
Prince Albert in 1845.
Among the more eminent Bluecoat boys are Joshua Barnes, editor of
Anacreon and Euripides; Jeremiah Markland, the eminent critic,
particularly in Greek Literature; Camden, the antiquary; Bishop
Stillingfleet; Samuel Richardson, the novelist; Thomas Mitchell, the
translator of Aristophanes; Thomas Barnes, many years editor of the
London Times; Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt.
No boy is admitted before he is seven years old, or after he is nine; and
no boy can remain in the school after he is fifteen, King's boys and
'Grecians' alone excepted. There are about 500 Governors, at the head of
whom are the Sovereign and the Prince of Wales. The qualification for a
Governor is payment of 500 pounds.--Ibid.
GENERAL NOTE.
One hears much about the 'hideous Blue Laws of Connecticut,' and is
accustomed to shudder piously when they are mentioned. There are people
in America--and even in England!--who imagine that they were a very
monument of malignity, pitilessness, and inhumanity; whereas in reality
they were about the first SWEEPING DEPARTURE FROM JUDICIAL ATROCITY which
the 'civilised' world had seen. This humane and kindly Blue Law Code, of
two hundred and forty years ago, stands all by itself, with ages of
bloody law on the further side of it, and a century and three-quarters of
bloody English law on THIS side of it.
There has never been a time--under the Blue Laws or any other--when above
FOURTEEN crimes were punishable by death in Connecticut. But in England,
within the memory of men who are still hale in body and mind, TWO HUNDRED
AND TWENTY-THREE crimes were punishable by death! {10} These facts are
worth knowing--and worth thinking about, too.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prince and The Pauper, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
BY MARK TWAIN
THE 'BODY OF THE NATION'
BUT the basin of the Mississippi is the BODY OF THE NATION. All the
other parts are but members, important in themselves, yet more important
in their relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake basin and of 300,000
square miles in Texas and New Mexico, which in many aspects form a part
of it, this basin contains about 1,250,000 square miles. In extent it
is the second great valley of the world, being exceeded only by that of
the Amazon. The valley of the frozen Obi approaches it in extent; that
of La Plata comes next in space, and probably in habitable capacity,
having about eight-ninths of its area; then comes that of the Yenisei,
with about seven-ninths; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho, Yang-tse-kiang, and
Nile, five-ninths; the Ganges, less than one-half; the Indus, less than
one-third; the Euphrates, one-fifth; the Rhine, one-fifteenth. It
exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, exclusive of Russia, Norway, and
Sweden. IT WOULD CONTAIN AUSTRIA FOUR TIMES, GERMANY OR SPAIN FIVE
TIMES, FRANCE SIX TIMES, THE BRITISH ISLANDS OR ITALY TEN TIMES.
Conceptions formed from the river-basins of Western Europe are rudely
shocked when we consider the extent of the valley of the Mississippi;
nor are those formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers of
Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the mighty sweep of the
swampy Amazon more adequate. Latitude, elevation, and rainfall all
combine to render every part of the Mississippi Valley capable of
supporting a dense population. AS A DWELLING-PLACE FOR CIVILIZED MAN IT
IS BY FAR THE FIRST UPON OUR GLOBE.
EDITOR'S TABLE, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 1863
Chapter 1 The River and Its History
THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a commonplace
river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the
Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in the world--four
thousand three hundred miles. It seems safe to say that it is also the
crookedest river in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses
up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the same ground that the
crow would fly over in six hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three
times as much water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as
the Rhine, and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the
Thames. No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water
supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware, on the
Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho on
the Pacific slope--a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude. The
Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from fifty-four
subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats, and from some
hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels. The area of its
drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas of England, Wales,
Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and
Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile; the Mississippi
valley, proper, is exceptionally so.
It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of widening toward its
mouth, it grows narrower; grows narrower and deeper. From the junction
of the Ohio to a point half way down to the sea, the width averages a
mile in high water: thence to the sea the width steadily diminishes,
until, at the 'Passes,' above the mouth, it is but little over half a
mile. At the junction of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth is eighty-
seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching one hundred and
twenty-nine just above the mouth.
The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable--not in the upper,
but in the lower river. The rise is tolerably uniform down to Natchez
(three hundred and sixty miles above the mouth)--about fifty feet. But
at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty-four feet; at New
Orleans only fifteen, and just above the mouth only two and one half.
An article in the New Orleans 'Times-Democrat,' based upon reports of
able engineers, states that the river annually empties four hundred and
six million tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico--which brings to mind
Captain Marryat's rude name for the Mississippi--'the Great Sewer.' This
mud, solidified, would make a mass a mile square and two hundred and
forty-one feet high.
The mud deposit gradually extends the land--but only gradually; it has
extended it not quite a third of a mile in the two hundred years which
have elapsed since the river took its place in history. The belief of
the scientific people is, that the mouth used to be at Baton Rouge,
where the hills cease, and that the two hundred miles of land between
there and the Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the age of that
piece of country, without any trouble at all--one hundred and twenty
thousand years. Yet it is much the youthfullest batch of country that
lies around there anywhere.
The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way--its disposition to
make prodigious jumps by cutting through narrow necks of land, and thus
straightening and shortening itself. More than once it has shortened
itself thirty miles at a single jump! These cut-offs have had curious
effects: they have thrown several river towns out into the rural
districts, and built up sand bars and forests in front of them. The town
of Delta used to be three miles below Vicksburg: a recent cutoff has
radically changed the position, and Delta is now TWO MILES ABOVE
Vicksburg.
Both of these river towns have been retired to the country by that cut-
off. A cut-off plays havoc with boundary lines and jurisdictions: for
instance, a man is living in the State of Mississippi to-day, a cut-off
occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds himself and his land over
on the other side of the river, within the boundaries and subject to the
laws of the State of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the upper
river in the old times, could have transferred a slave from Missouri to
Illinois and made a free man of him.
The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut-offs alone: it is
always changing its habitat BODILY--is always moving bodily SIDEWISE. At
Hard Times, La., the river is two miles west of the region it used to
occupy. As a result, the original SITE of that settlement is not now in
Louisiana at all, but on the other side of the river, in the State of
Mississippi. NEARLY THE WHOLE OF THAT ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED MILES
OF OLD MISSISSIPPI RIVER WHICH LA SALLE FLOATED DOWN IN HIS CANOES, TWO
HUNDRED YEARS AGO, IS GOOD SOLID DRY GROUND NOW. The river lies to the
right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other places.
Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but slowly, down at the
mouth, where the Gulfs billows interfere with its work, it builds fast
enough in better protected regions higher up: for instance, Prophet's
Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of land thirty years
ago; since then the river has added seven hundred acres to it.
But enough of these examples of the mighty stream's eccentricities for
the present--I will give a few more of them further along in the book.
Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and say a word about its
historical history--so to speak. We can glance briefly at its slumbrous
first epoch in a couple of short chapters; at its second and wider-awake
epoch in a couple more; at its flushest and widest-awake epoch in a good
many succeeding chapters; and then talk about its comparatively tranquil
present epoch in what shall be left of the book.
The world and the books are so accustomed to use, and over-use, the word
'new' in connection with our country, that we early get and permanently
retain the impression that there is nothing old about it. We do of
course know that there are several comparatively old dates in American
history, but the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, no
distinct realization, of the stretch of time which they represent. To
say that De Soto, the first white man who ever saw the Mississippi
River, saw it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without
interpreting it: it is something like giving the dimensions of a sunset
by astronomical measurements, and cataloguing the colors by their
scientific names;--as a result, you get the bald fact of the sunset, but
you don't see the sunset. It would have been better to paint a picture
of it.
The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or nothing to us; but
when one groups a few neighboring historical dates and facts around it,
he adds perspective and color, and then realizes that this is one of the
American dates which is quite respectable for age.
For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by a white man, less
than a quarter of a century had elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at
Pavia; the death of Raphael; the death of Bayard, SANS PEUR ET SANS
REPROCHE; the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers from Rhodes by the
Turks; and the placarding of the Ninety-Five Propositions,--the act
which began the Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the
river, Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the order of the Jesuits was
not yet a year old; Michael Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the Last
Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots was not yet born,
but would be before the year closed. Catherine de Medici was a child;
Elizabeth of England was not yet in her teens; Calvin, Benvenuto
Cellini, and the Emperor Charles V. were at the top of their fame, and
each was manufacturing history after his own peculiar fashion; Margaret
of Navarre was writing the 'Heptameron' and some religious books,--the
first survives, the others are forgotten, wit and indelicacy being
sometimes better literature preservers than holiness; lax court morals
and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather, and the joust and
the tournament were the frequent pastime of titled fine gentlemen who
could fight better than they could spell, while religion was the passion
of their ladies, and classifying their offspring into children of full
rank and children by brevet their pastime. In fact, all around, religion
was in a peculiarly blooming condition: the Council of Trent was being
called; the Spanish Inquisition was roasting, and racking, and burning,
with a free hand; elsewhere on the continent the nations were being
persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire; in England, Henry VIII.
had suppressed the monasteries, burnt Fisher and another bishop or two,
and was getting his English reformation and his harem effectively
started. When De Soto stood on the banks of the Mississippi, it was
still two years before Luther's death; eleven years before the burning
of Servetus; thirty years before the St. Bartholomew slaughter; Rabelais
was not yet published; 'Don Quixote' was not yet written; Shakespeare
was not yet born; a hundred long years must still elapse before
Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver Cromwell.
Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is a datable fact which
considerably mellows and modifies the shiny newness of our country, and
gives her a most respectable outside-aspect of rustiness and antiquity.
De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and was buried in it by his
priests and soldiers. One would expect the priests and the soldiers to
multiply the river's dimensions by ten--the Spanish custom of the day--
and thus move other adventurers to go at once and explore it. On the
contrary, their narratives when they reached home, did not excite that
amount of curiosity. The Mississippi was left unvisited by whites during
a term of years which seems incredible in our energetic days. One may
'sense' the interval to his mind, after a fashion, by dividing it up in
this way: After De Soto glimpsed the river, a fraction short of a
quarter of a century elapsed, and then Shakespeare was born; lived a
trifle more than half a century, then died; and when he had been in his
grave considerably more than half a century, the SECOND white man saw
the Mississippi. In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to
elapse between glimpses of a marvel. If somebody should discover a
creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in, Europe
and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither: one to
explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for each other.
For more than a hundred and fifty years there had been white settlements
on our Atlantic coasts. These people were in intimate communication
with the Indians: in the south the Spaniards were robbing,
slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up, the English were
trading beads and blankets to them for a consideration, and throwing in
civilization and whiskey, 'for lagniappe;' and in Canada the French were
schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and
drawing whole populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to
Montreal, to buy furs of them. Necessarily, then, these various
clusters of whites must have heard of the great river of the far west;
and indeed, they did hear of it vaguely,--so vaguely and indefinitely,
that its course, proportions, and locality were hardly even guessable.
The mere mysteriousness of the matter ought to have fired curiosity and
compelled exploration; but this did not occur. Apparently nobody
happened to want such a river, nobody needed it, nobody was curious
about it; so, for a century and a half the Mississippi remained out of
the market and undisturbed. When De Soto found it, he was not hunting
for a river, and had no present occasion for one; consequently he did
not value it or even take any particular notice of it.
But at last La Salle the Frenchman conceived the idea of seeking out
that river and exploring it. It always happens that when a man seizes
upon a neglected and important idea, people inflamed with the same
notion crop up all around. It happened so in this instance.
Naturally the question suggests itself, Why did these people want the
river now when nobody had wanted it in the five preceding generations?
Apparently it was because at this late day they thought they had
discovered a way to make it useful; for it had come to be believed that
the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California, and therefore
afforded a short cut from Canada to China. Previously the supposition
had been that it emptied into the Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia.
Chapter 2 The River and Its Explorers
LA SALLE himself sued for certain high privileges, and they were
graciously accorded him by Louis XIV of inflated memory. Chief among
them was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and build forts, and
stake out continents, and hand the same over to the king, and pay the
expenses himself; receiving, in return, some little advantages of one
sort or another; among them the monopoly of buffalo hides. He spent
several years and about all of his money, in making perilous and painful
trips between Montreal and a fort which he had built on the Illinois,
before he at last succeeded in getting his expedition in such a shape
that he could strike for the Mississippi.
And meantime other parties had had better fortune. In 1673 Joliet the
merchant, and Marquette the priest, crossed the country and reached the
banks of the Mississippi. They went by way of the Great Lakes; and from
Green Bay, in canoes, by way of Fox River and the Wisconsin. Marquette
had solemnly contracted, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, that
if the Virgin would permit him to discover the great river, he would
name it Conception, in her honor. He kept his word. In that day, all
explorers traveled with an outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four
with him. La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were often out of
meat, and scant of clothes, but they always had the furniture and other
requisites for the mass; they were always prepared, as one of the quaint
chroniclers of the time phrased it, to 'explain hell to the savages.'
On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and Marquette and their
five subordinates reached the junction of the Wisconsin with the
Mississippi. Mr. Parkman says: 'Before them a wide and rapid current
coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights wrapped thick in
forests.' He continues: 'Turning southward, they paddled down the
stream, through a solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man.'
A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and startled him; and
reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians that he was on
a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river contained a
demon 'whose roar could be heard at a great distance, and who would
engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt.' I have seen a Mississippi cat-
fish that was more than six feet long, and weighed two hundred and fifty
pounds; and if Marquette's fish was the fellow to that one, he had a
fair right to think the river's roaring demon was come.
'At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the great
prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette describes the
fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared at the intruders
through the tangled mane which nearly blinded them.'
The voyagers moved cautiously: 'Landed at night and made a fire to cook
their evening meal; then extinguished it, embarked again, paddled some
way farther, and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on the watch till
morning.'
They did this day after day and night after night; and at the end of two
weeks they had not seen a human being. The river was an awful solitude,
then. And it is now, over most of its stretch.
But at the close of the fortnight they one day came upon the footprints
of men in the mud of the western bank--a Robinson Crusoe experience
which carries an electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in
print. They had been warned that the river Indians were as ferocious
and pitiless as the river demon, and destroyed all comers without
waiting for provocation; but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into
the country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. They found them,
by and by, and were hospitably received and well treated--if to be
received by an Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order to
appear at his level best is to be received hospitably; and if to be
treated abundantly to fish, porridge, and other game, including dog, and
have these things forked into one's mouth by the ungloved fingers of
Indians is to be well treated. In the morning the chief and six hundred
of his tribesmen escorted the Frenchmen to the river and bade them a
friendly farewell.
On the rocks above the present city of Alton they found some rude and
fantastic Indian paintings, which they describe. A short distance below
'a torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm blue current
of the Mississippi, boiling and surging and sweeping in its course logs,
branches, and uprooted trees.' This was the mouth of the Missouri, 'that
savage river,' which 'descending from its mad career through a vast
unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its
gentle sister.'
By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed cane-brakes;
they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day after day, through the
deep silence and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant shade of
makeshift awnings, and broiling with the heat; they encountered and
exchanged civilities with another party of Indians; and at last they
reached the mouth of the Arkansas (about a month out from their
starting-point), where a tribe of war-whooping savages swarmed out to
meet and murder them; but they appealed to the Virgin for help; so in
place of a fight there was a feast, and plenty of pleasant palaver and
fol-de-rol.
They had proved to their satisfaction, that the Mississippi did not
empty into the Gulf of California, or into the Atlantic. They believed
it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned back, now, and carried
their great news to Canada.
But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La Salle to furnish the
proof. He was provokingly delayed, by one misfortune after another, but
at last got his expedition under way at the end of the year 1681. In
the dead of winter he and Henri de Tonty, son of Lorenzo Tonty, who
invented the tontine, his lieutenant, started down the Illinois, with a
following of eighteen Indians brought from New England, and twenty-three
Frenchmen. They moved in procession down the surface of the frozen
river, on foot, and dragging their canoes after them on sledges.
At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and paddled thence to the
Mississippi and turned their prows southward. They plowed through the
fields of floating ice, past the mouth of the Missouri; past the mouth
of the Ohio, by-and-by; 'and, gliding by the wastes of bordering swamp,
landed on the 24th of February near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs,' where
they halted and built Fort Prudhomme.
'Again,' says Mr. Parkman, 'they embarked; and with every stage of their
adventurous progress, the mystery of this vast new world was more and
more unveiled. More and more they entered the realms of spring. The
hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy air, the tender foliage, the opening
flowers, betokened the reviving life of nature.'
Day by day they floated down the great bends, in the shadow of the dense
forests, and in time arrived at the mouth of the Arkansas. First, they
were greeted by the natives of this locality as Marquette had before
been greeted by them--with the booming of the war drum and the flourish
of arms. The Virgin composed the difficulty in Marquette's case; the
pipe of peace did the same office for La Salle. The white man and the
red man struck hands and entertained each other during three days.
Then, to the admiration of the savages, La Salle set up a cross with the
arms of France on it, and took possession of the whole country for the
king--the cool fashion of the time--while the priest piously consecrated
the robbery with a hymn. The priest explained the mysteries of the faith
'by signs,' for the saving of the savages; thus compensating them with
possible possessions in Heaven for the certain ones on earth which they
had just been robbed of. And also, by signs, La Salle drew from these
simple children of the forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the
Putrid, over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal ironies.
These performances took place on the site of the future town of
Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised on
the banks of the great river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of
discovery ended at the same spot--the site of the future town of
Napoleon. When De Soto took his fleeting glimpse of the river, away back
in the dim early days, he took it from that same spot--the site of the
future town of Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, three out of the four
memorable events connected with the discovery and exploration of the
mighty river, occurred, by accident, in one and the same place. It is a
most curious distinction, when one comes to look at it and think about
it. France stole that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon;
and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the country back again!--make
restitution, not to the owners, but to their white American heirs.
The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and there; 'passed the sites,
since become historic, of Vicksburg and Grand Gulf,' and visited an
imposing Indian monarch in the Teche country, whose capital city was a
substantial one of sun-baked bricks mixed with straw--better houses than
many that exist there now. The chiefs house contained an audience room
forty feet square; and there he received Tonty in State, surrounded by
sixty old men clothed in white cloaks. There was a temple in the town,
with a mud wall about it ornamented with skulls of enemies sacrificed to
the sun.
The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the site of the present
city of that name, where they found a 'religious and political
despotism, a privileged class descended from the sun, a temple and a
sacred fire.' It must have been like getting home again; it was home
with an advantage, in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV.
A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle stood in the shadow of
his confiscating cross, at the meeting of the waters from Delaware, and
from Itaska, and from the mountain ranges close upon the Pacific, with
the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his task finished, his prodigy
achieved. Mr. Parkman, in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums
up:
'On that day, the realm of France received on parchment a stupendous
accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast basin of the
Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the sultry borders of
the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Alleghanies to the bare peaks of
the Rocky Mountains--a region of savannas and forests, sun-cracked
deserts and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a
thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of
Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half
a mile.'
Chapter 3 Frescoes from the Past
APPARENTLY the river was ready for business, now. But no, the
distribution of a population along its banks was as calm and deliberate
and time-devouring a process as the discovery and exploration had been.
Seventy years elapsed, after the exploration, before the river's borders
had a white population worth considering; and nearly fifty more before
the river had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the river and
the time when it may be said to have become the vehicle of anything like
a regular and active commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne
of England, America had become an independent nation, Louis XIV. and
Louis XV. had rotted and died, the French monarchy had gone down in the
red tempest of the revolution, and Napoleon was a name that was
beginning to be talked about. Truly, there were snails in those days.
The river's earliest commerce was in great barges--keelboats,
broadhorns. They floated and sailed from the upper rivers to New
Orleans, changed cargoes there, and were tediously warped and poled back
by hand. A voyage down and back sometimes occupied nine months. In time
this commerce increased until it gave employment to hordes of rough and
hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, suffering terrific hardships with
sailor-like stoicism; heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties
like the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy fighters, reckless
fellows, every one, elephantinely jolly, foul-witted, profane; prodigal
of their money, bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of barbaric
finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main, honest, trustworthy,
faithful to promises and duty, and often picturesquely magnanimous.
By and by the steamboat intruded. Then for fifteen or twenty years,
these men continued to run their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers
did all of the upstream business, the keelboatmen selling their boats in
New Orleans, and returning home as deck passengers in the steamers.
But after a while the steamboats so increased in number and in speed
that they were able to absorb the entire commerce; and then keelboating
died a permanent death. The keelboatman became a deck hand, or a mate,
or a pilot on the steamer; and when steamer-berths were not open to him,
he took a berth on a Pittsburgh coal-flat, or on a pine-raft constructed
in the forests up toward the sources of the Mississippi.
In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the river from end to end
was flaked with coal-fleets and timber rafts, all managed by hand, and
employing hosts of the rough characters whom I have been trying to
describe. I remember the annual processions of mighty rafts that used
to glide by Hannibal when I was a boy,--an acre or so of white, sweet-
smelling boards in each raft, a crew of two dozen men or more, three or
four wigwams scattered about the raft's vast level space for storm-
quarters,--and I remember the rude ways and the tremendous talk of their
big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their admiringly patterning
successors; for we used to swim out a quarter or third of a mile and get
on these rafts and have a ride.
By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, and that now-departed
and hardly-remembered raft-life, I will throw in, in this place, a
chapter from a book which I have been working at, by fits and starts,
during the past five or six years, and may possibly finish in the course
of five or six more. The book is a story which details some passages in
the life of an ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town drunkard
of my time out west, there. He has run away from his persecuting
father, and from a persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice,
truth-telling, respectable boy of him; and with him a slave of the
widow's has also escaped. They have found a fragment of a lumber raft
(it is high water and dead summer time), and are floating down the river
by night, and hiding in the willows by day,--bound for Cairo,--whence
the negro will seek freedom in the heart of the free States. But in a
fog, they pass Cairo without knowing it. By and by they begin to suspect
the truth, and Huck Finn is persuaded to end the dismal suspense by
swimming down to a huge raft which they have seen in the distance ahead
of them, creeping aboard under cover of the darkness, and gathering the
needed information by eavesdropping:--
But you know a young person can't wait very well when he is impatient to
find a thing out. We talked it over, and by and by Jim said it was such
a black night, now, that it wouldn't be no risk to swim down to the big
raft and crawl aboard and listen--they would talk about Cairo, because
they would be calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe, or
anyway they would send boats ashore to buy whiskey or fresh meat or
something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he could most
always start a good plan when you wanted one.
I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, and struck
out for the raft's light. By and by, when I got down nearly to her, I
eased up and went slow and cautious. But everything was all right--
nobody at the sweeps. So I swum down along the raft till I was most
abreast the camp fire in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched
along and got in amongst some bundles of shingles on the weather side of
the fire. There was thirteen men there--they was the watch on deck of
course. And a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They had a jug, and tin
cups, and they kept the jug moving. One man was singing--roaring, you
may say; and it wasn't a nice song--for a parlor anyway. He roared
through his nose, and strung out the last word of every line very long.
When he was done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then
another was sung. It begun:--
'There was a woman in our towdn, In our towdn did dwed'l (dwell,) She
loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l.
Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo, Ri-too, riloo, rilay - - - e, She
loved her husband dear-i-lee, But another man twyste as wed'l.
And so on--fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when he was going
to start on the next verse one of them said it was the tune the old cow
died on; and another one said, 'Oh, give us a rest.' And another one
told him to take a walk. They made fun of him till he got mad and
jumped up and begun to cuss the crowd, and said he could lame any thief
in the lot.
They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest man there
jumped up and says--
'Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my meat.'
Then he jumped up in the air three times and cracked his heels together
every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that was all hung with
fringes, and says, 'You lay thar tell the chawin-up's done;' and flung
his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says, 'You lay thar tell
his sufferin's is over.'
Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together again and
shouted out--
'Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-
bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me! I'm the
man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane,
dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to
the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen
alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust
health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I
split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder
when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my
strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music
to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!--and lay low and hold your
breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!'
All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head and
looking fierce, and kind of swelling around in a little circle, tucking
up his wrist-bands, and now and then straightening up and beating his
breast with his fist, saying, 'Look at me, gentlemen!' When he got
through, he jumped up and cracked his heels together three times, and
let off a roaring 'Whoo-oop! I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that
lives!'
Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch hat down
over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with his back sagged
and his south end sticking out far, and his fists a-shoving out and
drawing in in front of him, and so went around in a little circle about
three times, swelling himself up and breathing hard. Then he
straightened, and jumped up and cracked his heels together three times,
before he lit again (that made them cheer), and he begun to shout like
this--
'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's a-
coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! whoo-
oop! I'm a child of sin, don't let me get a start! Smoked glass, here,
for all! Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen!
When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of
latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch
my head with the lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder!
When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when I'm hot I
fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm thirsty I reach up and
suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I range the earth hungry, famine
follows in my tracks! Whoo-oop! Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand
on the sun's face and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of
the moon and hurry the seasons; I shake myself and crumble the
mountains! Contemplate me through leather--don't use the naked eye! I'm
the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! The massacre of
isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction
of nationalities the serious business of my life! The boundless vastness
of the great American desert is my enclosed property, and I bury my dead
on my own premises!' He jumped up and cracked his heels together three
times before he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come down he
shouted out: 'Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the pet child of
calamity's a-coming! '
Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing again--the first
one--the one they called Bob; next, the Child of Calamity chipped in
again, bigger than ever; then they both got at it at the same time,
swelling round and round each other and punching their fists most into
each other's faces, and whooping and jawing like Injuns; then Bob called
the Child names, and the Child called him names back again: next, Bob
called him a heap rougher names and the Child come back at him with the
very worst kind of language; next, Bob knocked the Child's hat off, and
the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony hat about six foot; Bob
went and got it and said never mind, this warn't going to be the last of
this thing, because he was a man that never forgot and never forgive,
and so the Child better look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as
sure as he was a living man, that he would have to answer to him with
the best blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than he
was for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, now,
never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till he had waded
in his blood, for such was his nature, though he was sparing him now on
account of his family, if he had one.
Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling and
shaking their heads and going on about what they was going to do; but a
little black-whiskered chap skipped up and says--
'Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and I'll thrash
the two of ye!'
And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and
that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling faster than they
could get up. Why, it warn't two minutes till they begged like dogs--
and how the other lot did yell and laugh and clap their hands all the
way through, and shout 'Sail in, Corpse-Maker!' 'Hi! at him again, Child
of Calamity!' 'Bully for you, little Davy!' Well, it was a perfect pow-
wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and black eyes when
they got through. Little Davy made them own up that they were sneaks and
cowards and not fit to eat with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob
and the Child shook hands with each other, very solemn, and said they
had always respected each other and was willing to let bygones be
bygones. So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then
there was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them went
forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to handle the
after-sweeps.
I laid still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke out of a
pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing was finished, and
they stumped back and had a drink around and went to talking and singing
again. Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played and another
patted juba, and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-
fashioned keel-boat break-down. They couldn't keep that up very long
without getting winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again.
They sung 'jolly, jolly raftman's the life for me,' with a musing
chorus, and then they got to talking about differences betwixt hogs, and
their different kind of habits; and next about women and their different
ways: and next about the best ways to put out houses that was afire;
and next about what ought to be done with the Injuns; and next about
what a king had to do, and how much he got; and next about how to make
cats fight; and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next
about differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. The
man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was wholesomer to
drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you let a pint of
this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a half to
three-quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the stage
of the river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water--what you
wanted to do was to keep it stirred up--and when the river was low, keep
mud on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.
The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness
in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in
his stomach if he wanted to. He says--
'You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow
worth chucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard
they grow upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the
water the people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't
richen a soil any.'
And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Mississippi
water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is
low, you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east
side of the Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you
get out a quarter of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all
thick and yaller the rest of the way across. Then they talked about how
to keep tobacco from getting moldy, and from that they went into ghosts
and told about a lot that other folks had seen; but Ed says--
'Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves? Now let me
have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as this, and right
along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and I was on watch and boss
of the stabboard oar forrard, and one of my pards was a man named Dick
Allbright, and he come along to where I was sitting, forrard--gaping and
stretching, he was--and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed
his face in the river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe,
and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says--
'"Why looky-here," he says, "ain't that Buck Miller's place, over yander
in the bend."
'"Yes," says I, "it is--why." He laid his pipe down and leant his head
on his hand, and says--
'"I thought we'd be furder down." I says--
'"I thought it too, when I went off watch"--we was standing six hours on
and six off--"but the boys told me," I says, "that the raft didn't seem
to hardly move, for the last hour," says I, "though she's a slipping
along all right, now," says I. He give a kind of a groan, and says--
'"I've seed a raft act so before, along here," he says, "'pears to me
the current has most quit above the head of this bend durin' the last
two years," he says.
'Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off and around
on the water. That started me at it, too. A body is always doing what
he sees somebody else doing, though there mayn't be no sense in it.
Pretty soon I see a black something floating on the water away off to
stabboard and quartering behind us. I see he was looking at it, too. I
says--
'"What's that?" He says, sort of pettish,--
'"Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l."
'"An empty bar'l!" says I, "why," says I, "a spy-glass is a fool to your
eyes. How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?" He says--
'"I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought it might be,"
says he.
'"Yes," I says, "so it might be, and it might be anything else, too; a
body can't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that," I says.
'We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By and by I
says--
'"Why looky-here, Dick Allbright, that thing's a-gaining on us, I
believe."
'He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and I judged it
must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we swung down into the
crossing, and the thing floated across the bright streak of the
moonshine, and, by George, it was bar'l. Says I--
'"Dick Allbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l, when it
was a half a mile off," says I. Says he--
'"I don't know." Says I--
'"You tell me, Dick Allbright." He says--
'"Well, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has seen it;
they says it's a haunted bar'l."
'I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood there, and I
told them what Dick said. It floated right along abreast, now, and
didn't gain any more. It was about twenty foot off. Some was for having
it aboard, but the rest didn't want to. Dick Allbright said rafts that
had fooled with it had got bad luck by it. The captain of the watch
said he didn't believe in it. He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us
because it was in a little better current than what we was. He said it
would leave by and by.
'So then we went to talking about other things, and we had a song, and
then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the watch called for
another song; but it was clouding up, now, and the bar'l stuck right
thar in the same place, and the song didn't seem to have much warm-up to
it, somehow, and so they didn't finish it, and there warn't any cheers,
but it sort of dropped flat, and nobody said anything for a minute. Then
everybody tried to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it
warn't no use, they didn't laugh, and even the chap that made the joke
didn't laugh at it, which ain't usual. We all just settled down glum,
and watched the bar'l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable. Well, sir, it
shut down black and still, and then the wind begin to moan around, and
next the lightning begin to play and the thunder to grumble. And pretty
soon there was a regular storm, and in the middle of it a man that was
running aft stumbled and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to
lay up. This made the boys shake their heads. And every time the
lightning come, there was that bar'l with the blue lights winking around
it. We was always on the look-out for it. But by and by, towards dawn,
she was gone. When the day come we couldn't see her anywhere, and we
warn't sorry, neither.
'But next night about half-past nine, when there was songs and high
jinks going on, here she comes again, and took her old roost on the
stabboard side. There warn't no more high jinks. Everybody got solemn;
nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody to do anything but set around
moody and look at the bar'l. It begun to cloud up again. When the watch
changed, the off watch stayed up, 'stead of turning in. The storm ripped
and roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man tripped
and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The bar'l left towards
day, and nobody see it go.
'Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I don't mean the
kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone--not that. They was
quiet, but they all drunk more than usual--not together--but each man
sidled off and took it private, by himself.
'After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung, nobody talked;
the boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sort of huddled together,
forrard; and for two hours they set there, perfectly still, looking
steady in the one direction, and heaving a sigh once in a while. And
then, here comes the bar'l again. She took up her old place. She staid
there all night; nobody turned in. The storm come on again, after
midnight. It got awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the
thunder boomed and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and
the lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and showed
the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up white as milk as
far as you could see for miles, and there was that bar'l jiggering
along, same as ever. The captain ordered the watch to man the after
sweeps for a crossing, and nobody would go--no more sprained ankles for
them, they said. They wouldn't even walk aft. Well then, just then the
sky split wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of
the after watch, and crippled two more. Crippled them how, says you?
Why, sprained their ankles!
'The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, towards dawn. Well, not
a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After that the men loafed
around, in twos and threes, and talked low together. But none of them
herded with Dick Allbright. They all give him the cold shake. If he
come around where any of the men was, they split up and sidled away.
They wouldn't man the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs
hauled up on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the
dead men be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believe a man that got
ashore would come back; and he was right.
'After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was going to be
trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a muttering going on. A
good many wanted to kill Dick Allbright, because he'd seen the bar'l on
other trips, and that had an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore.
Some said, let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.
'This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being bunched
together forrard watching for the bar'l, when, lo and behold you, here
she comes again. Down she comes, slow and steady, and settles into her
old tracks. You could a heard a pin drop. Then up comes the captain,
and says:--
'"Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want this bar'l
to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and YOU don't; well, then,
how's the best way to stop it? Burn it up,--that's the way. I'm going
to fetch it aboard," he says. And before anybody could say a word, in he
went.
'He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to
one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and
there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked baby. It was Dick
Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so.
'"Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my own lamented darling,
my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased," says he,--for he could
curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a
mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres.
Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night
he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,--which
was prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l,
before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail
and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l had
chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till
four men was killed, and then the bar'l didn't come any more after that.
He said if the men would stand it one more night,--and was a-going on
like that,--but the men had got enough. They started to get out a boat
to take him ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of
a sudden and jumped overboard with it hugged up to his breast and
shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor old
suffering soul, nor Charles William neither.'
'WHO was shedding tears?' says Bob; 'was it Allbright or the baby?'
'Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was dead. Been
dead three years--how could it cry?'
'Well, never mind how it could cry--how could it KEEP all that time?'
says Davy. 'You answer me that.'
'I don't know how it done it,' says Ed. 'It done it though--that's all
I know about it.'
'Say--what did they do with the bar'l?' says the Child of Calamity.
'Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of lead.'
'Edward, did the child look like it was choked?' says one.
'Did it have its hair parted?' says another.
'What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?' says a fellow they called
Bill.
'Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?' says Jimmy.
'Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the lightning.'
says Davy.
'Him? O, no, he was both of 'em,' says Bob. Then they all haw-hawed.
'Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill? You look bad--
don't you feel pale?' says the Child of Calamity.
'O, come, now, Eddy,' says Jimmy, 'show up; you must a kept part of that
bar'l to prove the thing by. Show us the bunghole--do--and we'll all
believe you.'
'Say, boys,' says Bill, 'less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of us. I
can swaller a thirteenth of the yarn, if you can worry down the rest.'
Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which he ripped
out pretty savage, and then walked off aft cussing to himself, and they
yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and laughing so you could hear
them a mile.
'Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that,' says the Child of Calamity;
and he come rummaging around in the dark amongst the shingle bundles
where I was, and put his hand on me. I was warm and soft and naked; so
he says 'Ouch!' and jumped back.
'Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys--there's a snake here as
big as a cow!'
So they run there with a lantern and crowded up and looked in on me.
'Come out of that, you beggar!' says one.
'Who are you?' says another.
'What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard you go.
'Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels.'
I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembling. They looked me
over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says--
'A cussed thief! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard!'
'No,' says Big Bob, 'less get out the paint-pot and paint him a sky blue
all over from head to heel, and then heave him over!'
'Good, that 's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy.'
When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just going to begin,
the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I begun to cry, and that
sort of worked on Davy, and he says--
''Vast there! He 's nothing but a cub. 'I'll paint the man that
tetches him!'
So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and growled, and
Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't take it up.
'Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here,' says Davy.
'Now set down there and give an account of yourself. How long have you
been aboard here?'
'Not over a quarter of a minute, sir,' says I.
'How did you get dry so quick?'
'I don't know, sir. I'm always that way, mostly.'
'Oh, you are, are you. What's your name?'
I warn't going to tell my name. I didn't know what to say, so I just
says--
'Charles William Allbright, sir.'
Then they roared--the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad I said that,
because maybe laughing would get them in a better humor.
When they got done laughing, Davy says--
'It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have growed this
much in five year, and you was a baby when you come out of the bar'l,
you know, and dead at that. Come, now, tell a straight story, and
nobody'll hurt you, if you ain't up to anything wrong. What IS your
name?'
'Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins.'
'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?'
'From a trading scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was born on her.
Pap has traded up and down here all his life; and he told me to swim off
here, because when you went by he said he would like to get some of you
to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, in Cairo, and tell him--'
'Oh, come!'
'Yes, sir; it's as true as the world; Pap he says--'
'Oh, your grandmother!'
They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in on me and
stopped me.
'Now, looky-here,' says Davy; 'you're scared, and so you talk wild.
Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?'
'Yes, sir, in a trading scow. She lays up at the head of the bend. But
I warn't born in her. It's our first trip.'
'Now you're talking! What did you come aboard here, for? To steal?'
'No, sir, I didn't.--It was only to get a ride on the raft. All boys
does that.'
'Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?'
'Sometimes they drive the boys off.'
'So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you off this
time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes hereafter?'
''Deed I will, boss. You try me.'
'All right, then. You ain't but little ways from shore. Overboard with
you, and don't you make a fool of yourself another time this way.--Blast
it, boy, some raftsmen would rawhide you till you were black and blue!'
I didn't wait to kiss good-bye, but went overboard and broke for shore.
When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was away out of sight around
the point. I swum out and got aboard, and was mighty glad to see home
again.
The boy did not get the information he was after, but his adventure has
furnished the glimpse of the departed raftsman and keelboatman which I
desire to offer in this place.
I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life of the flush times
of steamboating, which seems to me to warrant full examination--the
marvelous science of piloting, as displayed there. I believe there has
been nothing like it elsewhere in the world.
Chapter 4 The Boys' Ambition
WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades
in our village{footnote [1. Hannibal, Missouri]} on the west bank of the
Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus
came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro
minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that
kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good,
God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in
its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and
another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious
with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not
only the boys, but the whole village, felt this. After all these years I
can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white
town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty,
or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water
Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the
wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with
shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a
litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in
watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles
scattered about the 'levee;' a pile of 'skids' on the slope of the
stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow
of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to
listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its
mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the
other side; the 'point' above the town, and the 'point' below, bounding
the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very
still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke
appears above one of those remote 'points;' instantly a negro drayman,
famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, 'S-t-e-
a-m-boat a-comin'!' and the scene changes! The town drunkard stirs, the
clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every house and
store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead
town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go hurrying from
many quarters to a common center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people
fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a wonder they are seeing
for the first time. And the boat IS rather a handsome sight, too. She
is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped
chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a
fanciful pilot-house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the
'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture
or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the
hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean
white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff;
the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper
decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell,
calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are
rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded grandeur created
with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are
grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port
bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a
coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge-
cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then
they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.
Then such a scramble as there is to get aboard, and to get ashore, and
to take in freight and to discharge freight, all at one and the same
time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates facilitate it all
with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under way again, with no flag on
the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. After ten
more minutes the town is dead again, and the town drunkard asleep by the
skids once more.
My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the
power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that
offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing;
but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I
first wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white
apron on and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades
could see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood
on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because
he was particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams,--they
were too heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by
one of our boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time. At last
he turned up as apprentice engineer or 'striker' on a steamboat. This
thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy
had been notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted
to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. There was nothing
generous about this fellow in his greatness. He would always manage to
have a rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town, and he
would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, where we could all see him
and envy him and loathe him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would
come home and swell around the town in his blackest and greasiest
clothes, so that nobody could help remembering that he was a
steamboatman; and he used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his
talk, as if he were so used to them that he forgot common people could
not understand them. He would speak of the 'labboard' side of a horse in
an easy, natural way that would make one wish he was dead. And he was
always talking about 'St. Looy' like an old citizen; he would refer
casually to occasions when he 'was coming down Fourth Street,' or when
he was 'passing by the Planter's House,' or when there was a fire and he
took a turn on the brakes of 'the old Big Missouri;' and then he would
go on and lie about how many towns the size of ours were burned down
there that day. Two or three of the boys had long been persons of
consideration among us because they had been to St. Louis once and had a
vague general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of their glory was
over now. They lapsed into a humble silence, and learned to disappear
when the ruthless 'cub'-engineer approached. This fellow had money,
too, and hair oil. Also an ignorant silver watch and a showy brass watch
chain. He wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. If ever a youth
was cordially admired and hated by his comrades, this one was. No girl
could withstand his charms. He 'cut out' every boy in the village. When
his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil contentment among us
such as we had not known for months. But when he came home the next
week, alive, renowned, and appeared in church all battered up and
bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and wondered over by everybody, it
seemed to us that the partiality of Providence for an undeserving
reptile had reached a point where it was open to criticism.
This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily
followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son
became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud
clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat;
four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge,
became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even
in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary--from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.
Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now
some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river--at
least our parents would not let us.
So by and by I ran away. I said I never would come home again till I
was a pilot and could come in glory. But somehow I could not manage it.
I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like
sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the
pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and
clerks. I had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the time
being, but I had comforting daydreams of a future when I should be a
great and honored pilot, with plenty of money, and could kill some of
these mates and clerks and pay for them.
Chapter 5 I Want to be a Cub-pilot
MONTHS afterward the hope within me struggled to a reluctant death, and
I found myself without an ambition. But I was ashamed to go home. I was
in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map out a new career. I had been
reading about the recent exploration of the river Amazon by an
expedition sent out by our government. It was said that the expedition,
owing to difficulties, had not thoroughly explored a part of the country
lying about the head-waters, some four thousand miles from the mouth of
the river. It was only about fifteen hundred miles from Cincinnati to
New Orleans, where I could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty dollars
left; I would go and complete the exploration of the Amazon. This was
all the thought I gave to the subject. I never was great in matters of
detail. I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient tub called
the 'Paul Jones,' for New Orleans. For the sum of sixteen dollars I had
the scarred and tarnished splendors of 'her' main saloon principally to
myself, for she was not a creature to attract the eye of wiser
travelers.
When we presently got under way and went poking down the broad Ohio, I
became a new being, and the subject of my own admiration. I was a
traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an
exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes
which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a
glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I
was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had
hardly a trace of contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages and
wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly upon the railings of the
boiler deck to enjoy the envy of the country boys on the bank. If they
did not seem to discover me, I presently sneezed to attract their
attention, or moved to a position where they could not help seeing me.
And as soon as I knew they saw me I gaped and stretched, and gave other
signs of being mightily bored with traveling.
I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the wind and the sun
could strike me, because I wanted to get the bronzed and weather-beaten
look of an old traveler. Before the second day was half gone I
experienced a joy which filled me with the purest gratitude; for I saw
that the skin had begun to blister and peel off my face and neck. I
wished that the boys and girls at home could see me now.
We reached Louisville in time--at least the neighborhood of it. We stuck
hard and fast on the rocks in the middle of the river, and lay there
four days. I was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being a part
of the boat's family, a sort of infant son to the captain and younger
brother to the officers. There is no estimating the pride I took in this
grandeur, or the affection that began to swell and grow in me for those
people. I could not know how the lordly steamboatman scorns that sort
of presumption in a mere landsman. I particularly longed to acquire the
least trifle of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the alert
for an opportunity to do him a service to that end. It came at last.
The riotous powwow of setting a spar was going on down on the
forecastle, and I went down there and stood around in the way--or mostly
skipping out of it--till the mate suddenly roared a general order for
somebody to bring him a capstan bar. I sprang to his side and said:
'Tell me where it is--I'll fetch it!'
If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic service for the Emperor
of Russia, the monarch could not have been more astounded than the mate
was. He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared down at me. It took
him ten seconds to scrape his disjointed remains together again. Then he
said impressively: 'Well, if this don't beat hell!' and turned to his
work with the air of a man who had been confronted with a problem too
abstruse for solution.
I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of the day. I did not go
to dinner; I stayed away from supper until everybody else had finished.
I did not feel so much like a member of the boat's family now as before.
However, my spirits returned, in installments, as we pursued our way
down the river. I was sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in
(young) human nature not to admire him. He was huge and muscular, his
face was bearded and whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a blue
woman tattooed on his right arm,--one on each side of a blue anchor with
a red rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. When
he was getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see
and hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the
world feel it, too. When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged
it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of
profanity thundering after it. I could not help contrasting the way in
which the average landsman would give an order, with the mate's way of
doing it. If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot
farther forward, he would probably say: 'James, or William, one of you
push that plank forward, please;' but put the mate in his place and he
would roar out: 'Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now!
WHAT're you about! Snatch it! SNATCH it! There! there! Aft again! aft
again! don't you hear me. Dash it to dash! are you going to SLEEP over
it! 'VAST heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear
astern? WHERE're you going with that barrel! FOR'ARD with it 'fore I
make you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-DASHED split between a tired
mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!'
I wished I could talk like that.
When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat worn off, I
began timidly to make up to the humblest official connected with the
boat--the night watchman. He snubbed my advances at first, but I
presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe; and that softened him.
So he allowed me to sit with him by the big bell on the hurricane deck,
and in time he melted into conversation. He could not well have helped
it, I hung with such homage on his words and so plainly showed that I
felt honored by his notice. He told me the names of dim capes and
shadowy islands as we glided by them in the solemnity of the night,
under the winking stars, and by and by got to talking about himself. He
seemed over-sentimental for a man whose salary was six dollars a week--
or rather he might have seemed so to an older person than I. But I drank
in his words hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved mountains
if it had been applied judiciously. What was it to me that he was soiled
and seedy and fragrant with gin? What was it to me that his grammar was
bad, his construction worse, and his profanity so void of art that it
was an element of weakness rather than strength in his conversation? He
was a wronged man, a man who had seen trouble, and that was enough for
me. As he mellowed into his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the
lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy. He said he was the
son of an English nobleman--either an earl or an alderman, he could not
remember which, but believed was both; his father, the nobleman, loved
him, but his mother hated him from the cradle; and so while he was still
a little boy he was sent to 'one of them old, ancient colleges'--he
couldn't remember which; and by and by his father died and his mother
seized the property and 'shook' him as he phrased it. After his mother
shook him, members of the nobility with whom he was acquainted used
their influence to get him the position of 'loblolly-boy in a ship;' and
from that point my watchman threw off all trammels of date and locality
and branched out into a narrative that bristled all along with
incredible adventures; a narrative that was so reeking with bloodshed
and so crammed with hair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and
unconscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless, enjoying,
shuddering, wondering, worshipping.
It was a sore blight to find out afterwards that he was a low, vulgar,
ignorant, sentimental, half-witted humbug, an untraveled native of the
wilds of Illinois, who had absorbed wildcat literature and appropriated
its marvels, until in time he had woven odds and ends of the mess into
this yarn, and then gone on telling it to fledglings like me, until he
had come to believe it himself.
Chapter 6 A Cub-pilot's Experience
WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at Louisville, and some other
delays, the poor old 'Paul Jones' fooled away about two weeks in making
the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This gave me a chance to get
acquainted with one of the pilots, and he taught me how to steer the
boat, and thus made the fascination of river life more potent than ever
for me.
It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a youth who had taken
deck passage--more's the pity; for he easily borrowed six dollars of me
on a promise to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day after
we should arrive. But he probably died or forgot, for he never came. It
was doubtless the former, since he had said his parents were wealthy,
and he only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.{footnote [1.
'Deck' Passage, i.e. steerage passage.]}
I soon discovered two things. One was that a vessel would not be likely
to sail for the mouth of the Amazon under ten or twelve years; and the
other was that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket would not
suffice for so imposing an exploration as I had planned, even if I could
afford to wait for a ship. Therefore it followed that I must contrive a
new career. The 'Paul Jones' was now bound for St. Louis. I planned a
siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he
surrendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first
wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the small
enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I had
really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I should not
have had the courage to begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to do
was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that that
could be much of a trick, since it was so wide.
The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and it
was 'our watch' until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief, 'straightened her
up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at the
Levee, and then said, 'Here, take her; shave those steamships as close
as you'd peel an apple.' I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered
up into the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape
the side off every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath
and began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own
opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into such
peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I had a wide
margin of safety intervening between the 'Paul Jones' and the ships; and
within ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was
going into danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.
I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which
my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current
outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the
benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage
of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and
leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he,
'This is Six-Mile Point.' I assented. It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, 'This
is Nine-Mile Point.' Later he said, 'This is Twelve-Mile Point.' They
were all about level with the water's edge; they all looked about alike
to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would
change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging
the shore with affection, and then say: 'The slack water ends here,
abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.' So he crossed
over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either
came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too
far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.
The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At
midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman
said--
'Come! turn out!'
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure;
so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon
the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed.
I said:--
'What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the
night for. Now as like as not I'll not get to sleep again to-night.'
The watchman said--
'Well, if this an't good, I'm blest.'
The 'off-watch' was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter
from them, and such remarks as 'Hello, watchman! an't the new cub turned
out yet? He's delicate, likely. Give him some sugar in a rag and send
for the chambermaid to sing rock-a-by-baby to him.'
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute
later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on
and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here
was something fresh--this thing of getting up in the middle of the night
to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me
at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never
happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had
imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this
new phase of it.
It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.
The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star
and was holding her straight up the middle of the river. The shores on
either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed
wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate said:--
'We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir.'
The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, I wish you joy of
your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a good time finding Mr. Jones's
plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never WILL find it as
long as you live.
Mr. Bixby said to the mate:--
'Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?'
'Upper.'
'I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water at this stage: It's
no great distance to the lower, and you'll have to get along with that.'
'All right, sir. If Jones don't like it he'll have to lump it, I
reckon.'
And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonder to
come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation
on such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I
dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many
short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I
desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass
enough to really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night
when all plantations were exactly alike and all the same color. But I
held in. I used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.
Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as
if it had been daylight. And not only that, but singing--
'Father in heaven, the day is declining,' etc.
It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly
reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:--
'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
'Don't KNOW?'
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I
had to say just what I had said before.
'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the name of the
NEXT point?'
Once more I didn't know.
'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or place I
told you.'
I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.
'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?'
'I--I--don't know.'
'You--you--don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What DO
you know?'
'I--I--nothing, for certain.'
'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
you being a pilot--you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down
a lane.'
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from
one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would
boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?'
I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation
provoked me to say:--
'Well--to--to--be entertaining, I thought.'
This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was
crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as
Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who
would TALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such
an irruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and
farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted
his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the
window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and
not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said
to me in the gentlest way--
'My boy, you must get a little memorandum book, and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one way to be a
pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know
it just like A B C.'
That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged
long. I judged that it was best to make some allowances, for doubtless
Mr. Bixby was 'stretching.' Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few
strokes on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was
as black as ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was
not entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the
invisible watchman called up from the hurricane deck--
'What's this, sir?'
'Jones's plantation.'
I said to myself, I wish I might venture to offer a small bet that it
isn't. But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the
engine bells, and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a torch
glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darky's voice on the
bank said, 'Gimme de k'yarpet-bag, Mars' Jones,' and the next moment we
were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected deeply
awhile, and then said--but not aloud--'Well, the finding of that
plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn't
happen again in a hundred years.' And I fully believed it was an
accident, too.
By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the river, I had
learned to be a tolerably plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight, and
before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress in night-
work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book that fairly bristled with the
names of towns, 'points,' bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc.; but the
information was to be found only in the notebook--none of it was in my
head. It made my heart ache to think I had only got half of the river
set down; for as our watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and
night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for every time I had
slept since the voyage began.
My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat, and I
packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand affair. When I
stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water that I seemed
perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far away, fore and
aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have considered the
little 'Paul Jones' a large craft. There were other differences, too.
The 'Paul Jones's' pilot-house was a cheap, dingy, battered rattle-trap,
cramped for room: but here was a sumptuous glass temple; room enough to
have a dance in; showy red and gold window-curtains; an imposing sofa;
leather cushions and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots sit,
to spin yarns and 'look at the river;' bright, fanciful 'cuspadores'
instead of a broad wooden box filled with sawdust; nice new oil-cloth on
the floor; a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my
head, costly with inlaid work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs
for the bells; and a tidy, white-aproned, black 'texas-tender,' to bring
up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this
was 'something like,' and so I began to take heart once more to believe
that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we
were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself
with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I
looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a
splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on
every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed
chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and
the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost. The
boiler deck (i.e. the second story of the boat, so to speak) was as
spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there
was no pitiful handful of deckhands, firemen, and roustabouts down
there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were fiercely glaring
from a long row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge boilers! This
was unutterable pomp. The mighty engines--but enough of this. I had
never felt so fine before. And when I found that the regiment of natty
servants respectfully 'sir'd' me, my satisfaction was complete.
Chapter 7 A Daring Deed
WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Louis was gone and I was lost.
Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book, but I could
make neither head nor tail of it: you understand, it was turned around.
I had seen it when coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to see
how it looked when it was behind me. My heart broke again, for it was
plain that I had got to learn this troublesome river BOTH WAYS.
The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.'
What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St.
Louis and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi
changes its channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find it
necessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats
were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.
A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who
seldom had a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their
being always freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoes
of some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot's
sudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many of them
constantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they ever
really hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat)
it was cheaper to 'look at the river' than stay ashore and pay board. In
time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested boats
that had an established reputation for setting good tables. All visiting
pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing, winter or
summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the channel or
assist the boat's pilots in any way they could. They were likewise
welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together,
and as they talk only about the river they are always understood and are
always interesting. Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on
earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride
of kings.
We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip. There
were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in our great
pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborate
shirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots.
They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity
proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots. The
others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tall
felt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.
I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say
torpid. I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel
when it was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest
that stood nearest did that when occasion required--and this was pretty
much all the time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the
scant water. I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the
hope all out of me. One visitor said to another--
'Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?'
'It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boys on the
"Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards above the wood pile on
the false point, and held on the cabin under Plum Point till I raised
the reef--quarter less twain--then straightened up for the middle bar
till I got well abreast the old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then
got my stern on the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the
point, and came through a-booming--nine and a half.'
'Pretty square crossing, an't it?'
'Yes, but the upper bar 's working down fast.'
Another pilot spoke up and said--
'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down; started out from
the false point--mark twain--raised the second reef abreast the big snag
in the bend, and had quarter less twain.'
One of the gorgeous ones remarked--
'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good deal
of water for Plum Point, it seems to me.'
There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped on the
boaster and 'settled' him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking.
Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my ears
hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and
islands and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm
personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood
and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve
hundred miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these
things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes that
can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the piloting
business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it.'
At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signal to land),
and the captain emerged from his drawing-room in the forward end of the
texas, and looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby said--
'We will lay up here all night, captain.'
'Very well, sir.'
That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night. It
seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased, without
asking so grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and went
immediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and
experiences. My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of
meaningless names. It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had
looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped for respite in sleep; but no,
it reveled all through my head till sunrise again, a frantic and
tireless nightmare.
Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming
along, taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of
the river' (as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should
overtake us. But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently
grounded the boat, and we lost so much time in getting her off that it
was plain that darkness would overtake us a good long way above the
mouth. This was a great misfortune, especially to certain of our
visiting pilots, whose boats would have to wait for their return, no
matter how long that might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good
deal. Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low water or any kind of
darkness; nothing stopped them but fog. But down-stream work was
different; a boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current pushing
behind her; so it was not customary to run down-stream at night in low
water.
There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get through the
intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we could
venture the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water.
But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night. So there was a
deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day, and a constant
ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Island was the eternal
subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimes we were delayed in a bad
crossing, and down it went again. For hours all hands lay under the
burden of this suppressed excitement; it was even communicated to me,
and I got to feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such an
awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I might have five
minutes on shore to draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over
again. We were standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ran such
portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream, because of
his greater familiarity with it; but both remained in the pilot house
constantly.
An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped
aside. For the next thirty minutes every man held his watch in his hand
and was restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, with a
doomful sigh--
'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.' All the watches
closed with a snap, everybody sighed and muttered something about its
being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour
sooner!' and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment.
Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The
sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. Inquiring looks passed
from one guest to another; and one who had his hand on the door-knob and
had turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and let the
knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend. More looks were
exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words. Insensibly
the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as the sky darkened and one or
two dim stars came out. The dead silence and sense of waiting became
oppressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notes from
the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause, and one more note
was struck. The watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane deck--
'Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!'
The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance, and were
gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck.
'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Half
twain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less--'
Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faint jinglings far
below in the engine room, and our speed slackened. The steam began to
whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen went on--and
it is a weird sound, always, in the night. Every pilot in the lot was
watching now, with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. Nobody was
calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would put his wheel down and stand on a
spoke, and as the steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible
marks--for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he
would meet and fasten her there. Out of the murmur of half-audible talk,
one caught a coherent sentence now and then--such as--
'There; she's over the first reef all right!'
After a pause, another subdued voice--
'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!'
'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!'
Somebody else muttered--
'Oh, it was done beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!'
Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we drifted with the
current. Not that I could see the boat drift, for I could not, the
stars being all gone by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work;
it held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than
that which surrounded us. It was the head of the island. We were
closing right down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and so
imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to suffocate; and I had the
strongest impulse to do SOMETHING, anything, to save the vessel. But
still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, and all the
pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back.
'She'll not make it!' somebody whispered.
The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries, till it was
down to--
'Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... Seven-
and--'
Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer--
'Stand by, now!'
'Aye-aye, sir!'
'Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and--'
We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,
shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you've
got!' then to his partner, 'Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch her!'
The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apex
of disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went! And
such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof of a
pilot-house before!
There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero that night;
and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talked
about by river men.
Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in laying the great
steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one should know that
not only must she pick her intricate way through snags and blind reefs,
and then shave the head of the island so closely as to brush the
overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she must pass
almost within arm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would
snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should strike it, and
destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-boat and cargo in
five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the
bargain.
The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby,
uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests. He said--
'By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!'
Chapter 8 Perplexing Lessons
At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my head
full of islands, towns, bars, 'points,' and bends; and a curiously
inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as I could shut
my eyes and reel off a good long string of these names without leaving
out more than ten miles of river in every fifty, I began to feel that I
could take a boat down to New Orleans if I could make her skip those
little gaps. But of course my complacency could hardly get start enough
to lift my nose a trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think of
something to fetch it down again. One day he turned on me suddenly with
this settler--
'What is the shape of Walnut Bend?'
He might as well have asked me my grandmother's opinion of protoplasm. I
reflected respectfully, and then said I didn't know it had any
particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,
and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.
I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds of
ammunition, and was sure to subside into a very placable and even
remorseful old smooth-bore as soon as they were all gone. That word
'old' is merely affectionate; he was not more than thirty-four. I
waited. By and by he said--
'My boy, you've got to know the SHAPE of the river perfectly. It is all
there is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is
blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the
night that it has in the day-time.'
'How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?'
'How do you follow a hall at home in the dark. Because you know the
shape of it. You can't see it.'
'Do you mean to say that I've got to know all the million trifling
variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I
know the shape of the front hall at home?'
'On my honor, you've got to know them BETTER than any man ever did know
the shapes of the halls in his own house.'
'I wish I was dead!'
'Now I don't want to discourage you, but--'
'Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.'
'You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't any getting around it.
A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that if you didn't
know the shape of a shore perfectly you would claw away from every bunch
of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a solid
cape; and you see you would be getting scared to death every fifteen
minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time
when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in
one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of
the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's your pitch-
dark night; the river is a very different shape on a pitch-dark night
from what it is on a starlight night. All shores seem to be straight
lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; and you'd RUN them for straight
lines only you know better. You boldly drive your boat right into what
seems to be a solid, straight wall (you knowing very well that in
reality there is a curve there), and that wall falls back and makes way
for you. Then there's your gray mist. You take a night when there's one
of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there isn't any
particular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle the head of the
oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds of MOONLIGHT
change the shape of the river in different ways. You see--'
'Oh, don't say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape of the
river according to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I
tried to carry all that cargo in my head it would make me stoop-
shouldered.'
'NO! you only learn THE shape of the river, and you learn it with such
absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that's IN YOUR
HEAD, and never mind the one that's before your eyes.'
'Very well, I'll try it; but after I have learned it can I depend on it.
Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?'
Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W---- came in to take the watch, and
he said--
'Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's Island and all that
country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are
caving and the shape of the shores changing like everything. Why, you
wouldn't know the point above 40. You can go up inside the old sycamore-
snag, now.{footnote [1. It may not be necessary, but still it can do no
harm to explain that 'inside' means between the snag and the shore.--
M.T.]}
So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing
shape. My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty
apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man had got to
learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other
was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every
twenty-four hours.
That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an ancient river
custom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed. While
the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar, his partner,
the retiring pilot, would say something like this--
'I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale's Point; had
quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain {footnote [Two fathoms.
'Quarter twain' is two-and-a-quarter fathoms, thirteen-and-a-half feet.
'Mark three' is three fathoms.]} with the other.'
'Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip. Meet any boats?'
'Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar,
and I couldn't make her out entirely. I took her for the "Sunny South"-
-hadn't any skylights forward of the chimneys.'
And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel his
partner{footnote ['Partner' is a technical term for 'the other pilot'.]}
would mention that we were in such-and-such a bend, and say we were
abreast of such-and-such a man's wood-yard or plantation. This was
courtesy; I supposed it was necessity. But Mr. W---- came on watch full
twelve minutes late on this particular night,--a tremendous breach of
etiquette; in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots. So Mr.
Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but simply surrendered the wheel
and marched out of the pilot-house without a word. I was appalled; it
was a villainous night for blackness, we were in a particularly wide and
blind part of the river, where there was no shape or substance to
anything, and it seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that
poor fellow to kill the boat trying to find out where he was. But I
resolved that I would stand by him any way. He should find that he was
not wholly friendless. So I stood around, and waited to be asked where
we were. But Mr. W---- plunged on serenely through the solid firmament
of black cats that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his mouth.
Here is a proud devil, thought I; here is a limb of Satan that would
rather send us all to destruction than put himself under obligations to
me, because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth and privileged to
snub captains and lord it over everything dead and alive in a steamboat.
I presently climbed up on the bench; I did not think it was safe to go
to sleep while this lunatic was on watch.
However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time, because the
next thing I was aware of was the fact that day was breaking, Mr. W----
gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four o'clock and all
well--but me; I felt like a skinful of dry bones and all of them trying
to ache at once.
Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessed that it
was to do Mr. W---- a benevolence,--tell him where he was. It took five
minutes for the entire preposterousness of the thing to filter into Mr.
Bixby's system, and then I judge it filled him nearly up to the chin;
because he paid me a compliment--and not much of a one either. He said,
'Well, taking you by-and-large, you do seem to be more different kinds
of an ass than any creature I ever saw before. What did you suppose he
wanted to know for?'
I said I thought it might be a convenience to him.
'Convenience D-nation! Didn't I tell you that a man's got to know the
river in the night the same as he'd know his own front hall?'
'Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I know it IS the front
hall; but suppose you set me down in the middle of it in the dark and
not tell me which hall it is; how am I to know?'
'Well you've GOT to, on the river!'
'All right. Then I'm glad I never said anything to Mr. W---- '
'I should say so. Why, he'd have slammed you through the window and
utterly ruined a hundred dollars' worth of window-sash and stuff.'
I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would have made me
unpopular with the owners. They always hated anybody who had the name
of being careless, and injuring things.
I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the
eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands
on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded
point that projected far into the river some miles ahead of me, and go
to laboriously photographing its shape upon my brain; and just as I was
beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and
the exasperating thing would begin to melt away and fold back into the
bank! If there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing upon the very
point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into
the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I
got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to its shape long
enough for me to make up my mind what its form really was, but it was as
dissolving and changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter in the
hottest corner of the tropics. Nothing ever had the same shape when I
was coming downstream that it had borne when I went up. I mentioned
these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He said--
'That's the very main virtue of the thing. If the shapes didn't change
every three seconds they wouldn't be of any use. Take this place where
we are now, for instance. As long as that hill over yonder is only one
hill, I can boom right along the way I'm going; but the moment it splits
at the top and forms a V, I know I've got to scratch to starboard in a
hurry, or I'll bang this boat's brains out against a rock; and then the
moment one of the prongs of the V swings behind the other, I've got to
waltz to larboard again, or I'll have a misunderstanding with a snag
that would snatch the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it
were a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn't change its shape on bad
nights there would be an awful steamboat grave-yard around here inside
of a year.'
It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the river in all the
different ways that could be thought of,--upside down, wrong end first,
inside out, fore-and-aft, and 'thortships,'--and then know what to do on
gray nights when it hadn't any shape at all. So I set about it. In the
course of time I began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my
self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed,
and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened on me after this
fashion--
'How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall,
trip before last?'
I considered this an outrage. I said--
'Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through that tangled
place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I
can remember such a mess as that?'
'My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got to remember the exact
spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water,
in everyone of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New
Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip
mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for
they're not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.'
When I came to myself again, I said--
'When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to raise the dead, and
then I won't have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to
retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I'm only
fit for a roustabout. I haven't got brains enough to be a pilot; and if
I had I wouldn't have strength enough to carry them around, unless I
went on crutches.'
'Now drop that! When I say I'll learn {footnote ['Teach' is not in the
river vocabulary.]} a man the river, I mean it. And you can depend on
it, I'll learn him or kill him.'
Chapter 9 Continued Perplexities
THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this. I promptly put
such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal water and the
countless crossing-marks began to stay with me. But the result was just
the same. I never could more than get one knotty thing learned before
another presented itself. Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the
water and pretending to read it as if it were a book; but it was a book
that told me nothing. A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby
seemed to think me far enough advanced to bear a lesson on water-
reading. So he began--
'Do you see that long slanting line on the face of the water? Now,
that's a reef. Moreover, it's a bluff reef. There is a solid sand-bar
under it that is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a house.
There is plenty of water close up to it, but mighty little on top of it.
If you were to hit it you would knock the boat's brains out. Do you see
where the line fringes out at the upper end and begins to fade away?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, that is a low place; that is the head of the reef. You can climb
over there, and not hurt anything. Cross over, now, and follow along
close under the reef--easy water there--not much current.'
I followed the reef along till I approached the fringed end. Then Mr.
Bixby said--
'Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She won't want to mount the
reef; a boat hates shoal water. Stand by--wait--WAIT--keep her well in
hand. NOW cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch her!'
He seized the other side of the wheel and helped to spin it around until
it was hard down, and then we held it so. The boat resisted, and refused
to answer for a while, and next she came surging to starboard, mounted
the reef, and sent a long, angry ridge of water foaming away from her
bows.
'Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll get away from you. When
she fights strong and the tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort
of way, let up on her a trifle; it is the way she tells you at night
that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, little by little,
toward the point. You are well up on the bar, now; there is a bar under
every point, because the water that comes down around it forms an eddy
and allows the sediment to sink. Do you see those fine lines on the
face of the water that branch out like the ribs of a fan. Well, those
are little reefs; you want to just miss the ends of them, but run them
pretty close. Now look out--look out! Don't you crowd that slick,
greasy-looking place; there ain't nine feet there; she won't stand it.
She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you! Oh blazes, there you
go! Stop the starboard wheel! Quick! Ship up to back! Set her back!
The engine bells jingled and the engines answered promptly, shooting
white columns of steam far aloft out of the 'scape pipes, but it was too
late. The boat had 'smelt' the bar in good earnest; the foamy ridges
that radiated from her bows suddenly disappeared, a great dead swell
came rolling forward and swept ahead of her, she careened far over to
larboard, and went tearing away toward the other shore as if she were
about scared to death. We were a good mile from where we ought to have
been, when we finally got the upper hand of her again.
During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. Bixby asked me if I knew
how to run the next few miles. I said--
'Go inside the first snag above the point, outside the next one, start
out from the lower end of Higgins's wood-yard, make a square crossing
and--'
'That's all right. I'll be back before you close up on the next point.'
But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded it and entered upon a
piece of river which I had some misgivings about. I did not know that
he was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would perform. I went gaily
along, getting prouder and prouder, for he had never left the boat in my
sole charge such a length of time before. I even got to 'setting' her
and letting the wheel go, entirely, while I vaingloriously turned my
back and inspected the stem marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy
indifference which I had prodigiously admired in Bixby and other great
pilots. Once I inspected rather long, and when I faced to the front
again my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if I hadn't clapped
my teeth together I should have lost it. One of those frightful bluff
reefs was stretching its deadly length right across our bows! My head
was gone in a moment; I did not know which end I stood on; I gasped and
could not get my breath; I spun the wheel down with such rapidity that
it wove itself together like a spider's web; the boat answered and
turned square away from the reef, but the reef followed her! I fled, and
still it followed, still it kept--right across my bows! I never looked
to see where I was going, I only fled. The awful crash was imminent--why
didn't that villain come! If I committed the crime of ringing a bell, I
might get thrown overboard. But better that than kill the boat. So in
blind desperation I started such a rattling 'shivaree' down below as
never had astounded an engineer in this world before, I fancy. Amidst
the frenzy of the bells the engines began to back and fill in a furious
way, and my reason forsook its throne--we were about to crash into the
woods on the other side of the river. Just then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly
into view on the hurricane deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude.
My distress vanished; I would have felt safe on the brink of Niagara,
with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane deck. He blandly and sweetly took his
tooth-pick out of his mouth between his fingers, as if it were a cigar--
we were just in the act of climbing an overhanging big tree, and the
passengers were scudding astern like rats--and lifted up these commands
to me ever so gently--
'Stop the starboard. Stop the larboard. Set her back on both.'
The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among the boughs a critical
instant, then reluctantly began to back away.
'Stop the larboard. Come ahead on it. Stop the starboard. Come ahead
on it. Point her for the bar.'
I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning Mr. Bixby came in and
said, with mock simplicity--
'When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to tap the big bell three times
before you land, so that the engineers can get ready.'
I blushed under the sarcasm, and said I hadn't had any hail.
'Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The officer of the watch will
tell you when he wants to wood up.'
I went on consuming and said I wasn't after wood.
'Indeed? Why, what could you want over here in the bend, then? Did you
ever know of a boat following a bend up-stream at this stage of the
river?'
'No sir,--and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was getting away from a
bluff reef.'
'No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within three miles of where
you were.'
'But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder.'
'Just about. Run over it!'
'Do you give it as an order?'
'Yes. Run over it.'
'If I don't, I wish I may die.'
'All right; I am taking the responsibility.' I was just as anxious to
kill the boat, now, as I had been to save her before. I impressed my
orders upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and made a straight
break for the reef. As it disappeared under our bows I held my breath;
but we slid over it like oil.
'Now don't you see the difference? It wasn't anything but a WIND reef.
The wind does that.'
'So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. How am I ever going to
tell them apart?'
'I can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by you will just
naturally KNOW one from the other, but you never will be able to explain
why or how you know them apart'
It turned out to be true. The face of the water, in time, became a
wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated
passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its
most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice.
And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new
story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there
was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could
leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip,
thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There
never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest
was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every
reperusal. The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar
sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did
not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED
passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest
capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it;
for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the
life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest
and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a
pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw
nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and
shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures
at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know
every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I
knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But
I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be
restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had
gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain
wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A
broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance
the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came
floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay
sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling,
tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy
flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful
circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our
left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this
forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like
silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a
single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor
that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected
images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and
near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every
passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The
world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home.
But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the
glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight
wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether
to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should
have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it,
inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have
wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small
thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef
which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it
keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a
dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in
the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is
shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest
is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very
best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead
tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then
how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night
without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the
value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it
could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since
those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely
flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples
above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick
with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he
ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her
professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to
himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or
lost most by learning his trade?
Chapter 10 Completing My Education
WHOSOEVER has done me the courtesy to read my chapters which have
preceded this may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with piloting
as a science. It was the prime purpose of those chapters; and I am not
quite done yet. I wish to show, in the most patient and painstaking way,
what a wonderful science it is. Ship channels are buoyed and lighted,
and therefore it is a comparatively easy undertaking to learn to run
them; clear-water rivers, with gravel bottoms, change their channels
very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn them but once; but
piloting becomes another matter when you apply it to vast streams like
the Mississippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave and change
constantly, whose snags are always hunting up new quarters, whose
sandbars are never at rest, whose channels are for ever dodging and
shirking, and whose obstructions must be confronted in all nights and
all weathers without the aid of a single light-house or a single buoy;
for there is neither light nor buoy to be found anywhere in all this
three or four thousand miles of villainous river.{footnote [True at the
time referred to; not true now (1882).]} I feel justified in enlarging
upon this great science for the reason that I feel sure no one has ever
yet written a paragraph about it who had piloted a steamboat himself,
and so had a practical knowledge of the subject. If the theme were
hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently with the reader; but since
it is wholly new, I have felt at liberty to take up a considerable
degree of room with it.
When I had learned the name and position of every visible feature of the
river; when I had so mastered its shape that I could shut my eyes and
trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans; when I had learned to read the
face of the water as one would cull the news from the morning paper; and
finally, when I had trained my dull memory to treasure up an endless
array of soundings and crossing-marks, and keep fast hold of them, I
judged that my education was complete: so I got to tilting my cap to
the side of my head, and wearing a tooth-pick in my mouth at the wheel.
Mr. Bixby had his eye on these airs. One day he said--
'What is the height of that bank yonder, at Burgess's?'
'How can I tell, sir. It is three-quarters of a mile away.'
'Very poor eye--very poor. Take the glass.'
I took the glass, and presently said--'I can't tell. I suppose that that
bank is about a foot and a half high.'
'Foot and a half! That's a six-foot bank. How high was the bank along
here last trip?'
'I don't know; I never noticed.'
'You didn't? Well, you must always do it hereafter.'
'Why?'
'Because you'll have to know a good many things that it tells you. For
one thing, it tells you the stage of the river--tells you whether
there's more water or less in the river along here than there was last
trip.'
'The leads tell me that.' I rather thought I had the advantage of him
there.
'Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would tell you so, and then
you'd stir those leadsmen up a bit. There was a ten-foot bank here last
trip, and there is only a six-foot bank now. What does that signify?'
'That the river is four feet higher than it was last trip.'
'Very good. Is the river rising or falling?'
'Rising.'
'No it ain't.'
'I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift-wood floating down the
stream.'
'A rise starts the drift-wood, but then it keeps on floating a while
after the river is done rising. Now the bank will tell you about this.
Wait till you come to a place where it shelves a little. Now here; do
you see this narrow belt of fine sediment That was deposited while the
water was higher. You see the driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank
helps in other ways. Do you see that stump on the false point?'
'Ay, ay, sir.'
'Well, the water is just up to the roots of it. You must make a note of
that.'
'Why?'
'Because that means that there's seven feet in the chute of 103.'
'But 103 is a long way up the river yet.'
'That's where the benefit of the bank comes in. There is water enough
in 103 NOW, yet there may not be by the time we get there; but the bank
will keep us posted all along. You don't run close chutes on a falling
river, up-stream, and there are precious few of them that you are
allowed to run at all down-stream. There's a law of the United States
against it. The river may be rising by the time we get to 103, and in
that case we'll run it. We are drawing--how much?'
'Six feet aft,--six and a half forward.'
'Well, you do seem to know something.'
'But what I particularly want to know is, if I have got to keep up an
everlasting measuring of the banks of this river, twelve hundred miles,
month in and month out?'
'Of course!'
My emotions were too deep for words for a while. Presently I said--'
And how about these chutes. Are there many of them?'
'I should say so. I fancy we shan't run any of the river this trip as
you've ever seen it run before--so to speak. If the river begins to
rise again, we'll go up behind bars that you've always seen standing out
of the river, high and dry like the roof of a house; we'll cut across
low places that you've never noticed at all, right through the middle of
bars that cover three hundred acres of river; we'll creep through cracks
where you've always thought was solid land; we'll dart through the woods
and leave twenty-five miles of river off to one side; we'll see the
hind-side of every island between New Orleans and Cairo.'
'Then I've got to go to work and learn just as much more river as I
already know.'
'Just about twice as much more, as near as you can come at it.'
'Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool when I went into
this business.'
'Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you'll not be when you've
learned it.'
'Ah, I never can learn it.'
'I will see that you DO.'
By and by I ventured again--
'Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know the rest of the
river--shapes and all--and so I can run it at night?'
'Yes. And you've got to have good fair marks from one end of the river
to the other, that will help the bank tell you when there is water
enough in each of these countless places--like that stump, you know.
When the river first begins to rise, you can run half a dozen of the
deepest of them; when it rises a foot more you can run another dozen;
the next foot will add a couple of dozen, and so on: so you see you have
to know your banks and marks to a dead moral certainty, and never get
them mixed; for when you start through one of those cracks, there's no
backing out again, as there is in the big river; you've got to go
through, or stay there six months if you get caught on a falling river.
There are about fifty of these cracks which you can't run at all except
when the river is brim full and over the banks.'
'This new lesson is a cheerful prospect.'
'Cheerful enough. And mind what I've just told you; when you start into
one of those places you've got to go through. They are too narrow to
turn around in, too crooked to back out of, and the shoal water is
always up at the head; never elsewhere. And the head of them is always
likely to be filling up, little by little, so that the marks you reckon
their depth by, this season, may not answer for next.'
'Learn a new set, then, every year?'
'Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are you standing up through
the middle of the river for?'
The next few months showed me strange things. On the same day that we
held the conversation above narrated, we met a great rise coming down
the river. The whole vast face of the stream was black with drifting
dead logs, broken boughs, and great trees that had caved in and been
washed away. It required the nicest steering to pick one's way through
this rushing raft, even in the day-time, when crossing from point to
point; and at night the difficulty was mightily increased; every now and
then a huge log, lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear right
under our bows, coming head-on; no use to try to avoid it then; we could
only stop the engines, and one wheel would walk over that log from one
end to the other, keeping up a thundering racket and careening the boat
in a way that was very uncomfortable to passengers. Now and then we
would hit one of these sunken logs a rattling bang, dead in the center,
with a full head of steam, and it would stun the boat as if she had hit
a continent. Sometimes this log would lodge, and stay right across our
nose, and back the Mississippi up before it; we would have to do a
little craw-fishing, then, to get away from the obstruction. We often
hit WHITE logs, in the dark, for we could not see them till we were
right on them; but a black log is a pretty distinct object at night. A
white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight is gone.
Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigious timber-
rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi, coal barges from
Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere, and broad-horns from
'Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with 'fruit and furniture'--the usual
term for describing it, though in plain English the freight thus
aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred to
these craft; and it was returned with usury. The law required all such
helpless traders to keep a light burning, but it was a law that was
often broken. All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up,
right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice, with the backwoods
'whang' to it, would wail out--
'Whar'n the ---- you goin' to! Cain't you see nothin', you dash-dashed
aig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!'
Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our furnaces
would reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating orator as if
under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen and deck-hands
would send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity, one of our
wheels would walk off with the crashing fragments of a steering-oar, and
down the dead blackness would shut again. And that flatboatman would be
sure to go into New Orleans and sue our boat, swearing stoutly that he
had a light burning all the time, when in truth his gang had the lantern
down below to sing and lie and drink and gamble by, and no watch on
deck. Once, at night, in one of those forest-bordered crevices (behind
an island) which steamboatmen intensely describe with the phrase 'as
dark as the inside of a cow,' we should have eaten up a Posey County
family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they happened to be fiddling
down below, and we just caught the sound of the music in time to sheer
off, doing no serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it that
we had good hopes for a moment. These people brought up their lantern,
then, of course; and as we backed and filled to get away, the precious
family stood in the light of it--both sexes and various ages--and cursed
us till everything turned blue. Once a coalboatman sent a bullet through
our pilot-house, when we borrowed a steering oar of him in a very narrow
place.
Chapter 11 The River Rises
DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were an intolerable nuisance.
We were running chute after chute,--a new world to me,--and if there was
a particularly cramped place in a chute, we would be pretty sure to meet
a broad-horn there; and if he failed to be there, we would find him in a
still worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the shoal water.
And then there would be no end of profane cordialities exchanged.
Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be feeling our way cautiously
along through a fog, the deep hush would suddenly be broken by yells and
a clamor of tin pans, and all in instant a log raft would appear vaguely
through the webby veil, close upon us; and then we did not wait to swap
knives, but snatched our engine bells out by the roots and piled on all
the steam we had, to scramble out of the way! One doesn't hit a rock or
a solid log craft with a steamboat when he can get excused.
You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat clerks always carried a
large assortment of religious tracts with them in those old departed
steamboating days. Indeed they did. Twenty times a day we would be
cramping up around a bar, while a string of these small-fry rascals were
drifting down into the head of the bend away above and beyond us a
couple of miles. Now a skiff would dart away from one of them, and come
fighting its laborious way across the desert of water. It would 'ease
all,' in the shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oarsmen would
shout, 'Gimme a pa-a-per!' as the skiff drifted swiftly astern. The
clerk would throw over a file of New Orleans journals. If these were
picked up without comment, you might notice that now a dozen other
skiffs had been drifting down upon us without saying anything. You
understand, they had been waiting to see how No. 1 was going to fare.
No. 1 making no comment, all the rest would bend to their oars and come
on, now; and as fast as they came the clerk would heave over neat
bundles of religious tracts, tied to shingles. The amount of hard
swearing which twelve packages of religious literature will command when
impartially divided up among twelve raftsmen's crews, who have pulled a
heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them, is simply incredible.
As I have said, the big rise brought a new world under my vision. By the
time the river was over its banks we had forsaken our old paths and were
hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet out of water before;
we were shaving stumpy shores, like that at the foot of Madrid Bend,
which I had always seen avoided before; we were clattering through
chutes like that of 82, where the opening at the foot was an unbroken
wall of timber till our nose was almost at the very spot. Some of these
chutes were utter solitudes. The dense, untouched forest overhung both
banks of the crooked little crack, and one could believe that human
creatures had never intruded there before. The swinging grape-vines, the
grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by, the flowering creepers
waving their red blossoms from the tops of dead trunks, and all the
spendthrift richness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown away
there. The chutes were lovely places to steer in; they were deep,
except at the head; the current was gentle; under the 'points' the water
was absolutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that where the
tender willow thickets projected you could bury your boat's broadside in
them as you tore along, and then you seemed fairly to fly.
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretcheder
little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two
above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced
male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbows on knees, jaws in
hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the result at floating chips
through crevices left by lost teeth; while the rest of the family and
the few farm-animals were huddled together in an empty wood-flat riding
at her moorings close at hand. In this flat-boat the family would have
to cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number of days (or
possibly weeks), until the river should fall two or three feet and let
them get back to their log-cabin and their chills again--chills being a
merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to enable them to take
exercise without exertion. And this sort of watery camping out was a
thing which these people were rather liable to be treated to a couple of
times a year: by the December rise out of the Ohio, and the June rise
out of the Mississippi. And yet these were kindly dispensations, for
they at least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead now and
then, and look upon life when a steamboat went by. They appreciated the
blessing, too, for they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and made
the most of these occasions. Now what COULD these banished creatures
find to do to keep from dying of the blues during the low-water season!
Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we found our course
completely bridged by a great fallen tree. This will serve to show how
narrow some of the chutes were. The passengers had an hour's recreation
in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands chopped the bridge away;
for there was no such thing as turning back, you comprehend.
From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is over its banks, you have no
particular trouble in the night, for the thousand-mile wall of dense
forest that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped with a farm
or wood-yard opening at intervals, and so you can't 'get out of the
river' much easier than you could get out of a fenced lane; but from
Baton Rouge to New Orleans it is a different matter. The river is more
than a mile wide, and very deep--as much as two hundred feet, in places.
Both banks, for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of their
timber and bordered by continuous sugar plantations, with only here and
there a scattering sapling or row of ornamental China-trees. The timber
is shorn off clear to the rear of the plantations, from two to four
miles. When the first frost threatens to come, the planters snatch off
their crops in a hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane, they
form the refuse of the stalks (which they call BAGASSE) into great piles
and set fire to them, though in other sugar countries the bagasse is
used for fuel in the furnaces of the sugar mills. Now the piles of damp
bagasse burn slowly, and smoke like Satan's own kitchen.
An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards both banks of the
Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river, and this
embankment is set back from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a
hundred feet, according to circumstances; say thirty or forty feet, as a
general thing. Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of
smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is
over the banks, and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and
see how she will feel. And see how you will feel, too! You find
yourself away out in the midst of a vague dim sea that is shoreless,
that fades out and loses itself in the murky distances; for you cannot
discern the thin rib of embankment, and you are always imagining you see
a straggling tree when you don't. The plantations themselves are
transformed by the smoke, and look like a part of the sea. All through
your watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery of uncertainty.
You hope you are keeping in the river, but you do not know. All that you
are sure about is that you are likely to be within six feet of the bank
and destruction, when you think you are a good half-mile from shore. And
you are sure, also, that if you chance suddenly to fetch up against the
embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, you will have the small
comfort of knowing that it is about what you were expecting to do. One
of the great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar plantation one
night, at such a time, and had to stay there a week. But there was no
novelty about it; it had often been done before.
I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish to add a curious
thing, while it is in my mind. It is only relevant in that it is
connected with piloting. There used to be an excellent pilot on the
river, a Mr. X., who was a somnambulist. It was said that if his mind
was troubled about a bad piece of river, he was pretty sure to get up
and walk in his sleep and do strange things. He was once fellow-pilot
for a trip or two with George Ealer, on a great New Orleans passenger
packet. During a considerable part of the first trip George was uneasy,
but got over it by and by, as X. seemed content to stay in his bed when
asleep. Late one night the boat was approaching Helena, Arkansas; the
water was low, and the crossing above the town in a very blind and
tangled condition. X. had seen the crossing since Ealer had, and as the
night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark, Ealer was considering
whether he had not better have X. called to assist in running the place,
when the door opened and X. walked in. Now on very dark nights, light is
a deadly enemy to piloting; you are aware that if you stand in a lighted
room, on such a night, you cannot see things in the street to any
purpose; but if you put out the lights and stand in the gloom you can
make out objects in the street pretty well. So, on very dark nights,
pilots do not smoke; they allow no fire in the pilot-house stove if
there is a crack which can allow the least ray to escape; they order the
furnaces to be curtained with huge tarpaulins and the sky-lights to be
closely blinded. Then no light whatever issues from the boat. The
undefinable shape that now entered the pilot-house had Mr. X.'s voice.
This said--
'Let me take her, George; I've seen this place since you have, and it is
so crooked that I reckon I can run it myself easier than I could tell
you how to do it.'
'It is kind of you, and I swear _I_ am willing. I haven't got another
drop of perspiration left in me. I have been spinning around and around
the wheel like a squirrel. It is so dark I can't tell which way she is
swinging till she is coming around like a whirligig.'
So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and breathless. The black
phantom assumed the wheel without saying anything, steadied the waltzing
steamer with a turn or two, and then stood at ease, coaxing her a little
to this side and then to that, as gently and as sweetly as if the time
had been noonday. When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, he wished
he had not confessed! He stared, and wondered, and finally said--
'Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steamboat, but that was another
mistake of mine.'
X. said nothing, but went serenely on with his work. He rang for the
leads; he rang to slow down the steam; he worked the boat carefully and
neatly into invisible marks, then stood at the center of the wheel and
peered blandly out into the blackness, fore and aft, to verify his
position; as the leads shoaled more and more, he stopped the engines
entirely, and the dead silence and suspense of 'drifting' followed when
the shoalest water was struck, he cracked on the steam, carried her
handsomely over, and then began to work her warily into the next system
of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines
followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and entered
upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she
moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted
tediously till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a
tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef and away into deep
water and safety!
Ealer let his long-pent breath pour out in a great, relieving sigh, and
said--
'That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was ever done on the
Mississippi River! I wouldn't believed it could be done, if I hadn't
seen it.'
There was no reply, and he added--
'Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and let me run down and get
a cup of coffee.'
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the 'texas,' and
comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchman happened
in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer and
exclaimed--
'Who is at the wheel, sir?'
'X.'
'Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!'
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way,
three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer was whistling
down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! The watchman shot
out of the place again; Ealer seized the wheel, set an engine back with
power, and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung away from a
'towhead' which she was about to knock into the middle of the Gulf of
Mexico!
By and by the watchman came back and said--
'Didn't that lunatic tell you he was asleep, when he first came up
here?'
'NO.'
'Well, he was. I found him walking along on top of the railings just as
unconcerned as another man would walk a pavement; and I put him to bed;
now just this minute there he was again, away astern, going through that
sort of tight-rope deviltry the same as before.'
'Well, I think I'll stay by, next time he has one of those fits. But I
hope he'll have them often. You just ought to have seen him take this
boat through Helena crossing. I never saw anything so gaudy before. And
if he can do such gold-leaf, kid-glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when
he is sound asleep, what COULDN'T he do if he was dead!'
Chapter 12 Sounding
WHEN the river is very low, and one's steamboat is 'drawing all the
water' there is in the channel,--or a few inches more, as was often the
case in the old times,--one must be painfully circumspect in his
piloting. We used to have to 'sound' a number of particularly bad places
almost every trip when the river was at a very low stage.
Sounding is done in this way. The boat ties up at the shore, just above
the shoal crossing; the pilot not on watch takes his 'cub' or steersman
and a picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and goes out in
the yawl--provided the boat has not that rare and sumptuous luxury, a
regularly-devised 'sounding-boat'--and proceeds to hunt for the best
water, the pilot on duty watching his movements through a spy-glass,
meantime, and in some instances assisting by signals of the boat's
whistle, signifying 'try higher up' or 'try lower down;' for the surface
of the water, like an oil-painting, is more expressive and intelligible
when inspected from a little distance than very close at hand. The
whistle signals are seldom necessary, however; never, perhaps, except
when the wind confuses the significant ripples upon the water's surface.
When the yawl has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, the
pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole ten or twelve feet long, and
the steersman at the tiller obeys the order to 'hold her up to
starboard;' or, 'let her fall off to larboard;'{footnote [The term
'larboard' is never used at sea now, to signify the left hand; but was
always used on the river in my time]} or 'steady--steady as you go.'
When the measurements indicate that the yawl is approaching the shoalest
part of the reef, the command is given to 'ease all!' Then the men stop
rowing and the yawl drifts with the current. The next order is, 'Stand
by with the buoy!' The moment the shallowest point is reached, the
pilot delivers the order, 'Let go the buoy!' and over she goes. If the
pilot is not satisfied, he sounds the place again; if he finds better
water higher up or lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. Being
finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all the men stand their oars
straight up in the air, in line; a blast from the boat's whistle
indicates that the signal has been seen; then the men 'give way' on
their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy; the steamer comes
creeping carefully down, is pointed straight at the buoy, husbands her
power for the coming struggle, and presently, at the critical moment,
turns on all her steam and goes grinding and wallowing over the buoy and
the sand, and gains the deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn't; maybe
she 'strikes and swings.' Then she has to while away several hours (or
days) sparring herself off.
Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl goes ahead, hunting
the best water, and the steamer follows along in its wake. Often there
is a deal of fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it is a
glorious summer day, or a blustering night. But in winter the cold and
the peril take most of the fun out of it.
A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet long, with one end
turned up; it is a reversed school-house bench, with one of the supports
left and the other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part of the
reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast to the end of it. But for
the resistance of the turned-up end of the reversed bench, the current
would pull the buoy under water. At night, a paper lantern with a
candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy, and this can be seen a mile
or more, a little glimmering spark in the waste of blackness.
Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity to go out sounding.
There is such an air of adventure about it; often there is danger; it is
so gaudy and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stern-sheets and steer a
swift yawl; there is something fine about the exultant spring of the
boat when an experienced old sailor crew throw their souls into the
oars; it is lovely to see the white foam stream away from the bows;
there is music in the rush of the water; it is deliciously exhilarating,
in summer, to go speeding over the breezy expanses of the river when the
world of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grandeur, too, to
the cub, to get a chance to give an order; for often the pilot will
simply say, 'Let her go about!' and leave the rest to the cub, who
instantly cries, in his sternest tone of command, 'Ease starboard!
Strong on the larboard! Starboard give way! With a will, men!' The cub
enjoys sounding for the further reason that the eyes of the passengers
are watching all the yawl's movements with absorbing interest if the
time be daylight; and if it be night he knows that those same wondering
eyes are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out into the
gloom and dims away in the remote distance.
One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in our pilot-house with
her uncle and aunt, every day and all day long. I fell in love with
her. So did Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G----. Tom and I had been bosom
friends until this time; but now a coolness began to arise. I told the
girl a good many of my river adventures, and made myself out a good deal
of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be a hero, too, and
succeeded to some extent, but then he always had a way of embroidering.
However, virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible trifle
ahead in the contest. About this time something happened which promised
handsomely for me: the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head
of 21. This would occur about nine or ten o'clock at night, when the
passengers would be still up; it would be Mr. Thornburg's watch,
therefore my chief would have to do the sounding. We had a perfect love
of a sounding-boat--long, trim, graceful, and as fleet as a greyhound;
her thwarts were cushioned; she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates
was always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, for ours was a
steamer where no end of 'style' was put on.
We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. It was a foul night,
and the river was so wide, there, that a landsman's uneducated eyes
could discern no opposite shore through such a gloom. The passengers
were alert and interested; everything was satisfactory. As I hurried
through the engine-room, picturesquely gotten up in storm toggery, I met
Tom, and could not forbear delivering myself of a mean speech--
'Ain't you glad YOU don't have to go out sounding?'
Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and said--
'Now just for that, you can go and get the sounding-pole yourself. I was
going after it, but I'd see you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it.'
'Who wants you to get it? I don't. It's in the sounding-boat.'
'It ain't, either. It's been new-painted; and it's been up on the
ladies' cabin guards two days, drying.'
I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd of watching and
wondering ladies just in time to hear the command:
'Give way, men!'
I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding-boat booming away, the
unprincipled Tom presiding at the tiller, and my chief sitting by him
with the sounding-pole which I had been sent on a fool's errand to
fetch. Then that young girl said to me--
'Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little boat on such a night! Do
you think there is any danger?'
I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, full of venom, to help in
the pilot-house. By and by the boat's lantern disappeared, and after an
interval a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water a mile away.
Mr. Thornburg blew the whistle, in acknowledgment, backed the steamer
out, and made for it. We flew along for a while, then slackened steam
and went cautiously gliding toward the spark. Presently Mr. Thornburg
exclaimed--
'Hello, the buoy-lantern's out!'
He stopped the engines. A moment or two later he said--
'Why, there it is again!'
So he came ahead on the engines once more, and rang for the leads.
Gradually the water shoaled up, and then began to deepen again! Mr.
Thornburg muttered--
'Well, I don't understand this. I believe that buoy has drifted off the
reef. Seems to be a little too far to the left. No matter, it is safest
to run over it anyhow.'
So, in that solid world of darkness we went creeping down on the light.
Just as our bows were in the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thornburg
seized the bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed--
'My soul, it's the sounding-boat!'
A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far below--a pause--and then
the sound of grinding and crashing followed. Mr. Thornburg exclaimed--
'There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sounding-boat to lucifer
matches! Run! See who is killed!'
I was on the main deck in the twinkling of an eye. My chief and the
third mate and nearly all the men were safe. They had discovered their
danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; then, when the great
guards overshadowed them a moment later, they were prepared and knew
what to do; at my chiefs order they sprang at the right instant, seized
the guard, and were hauled aboard. The next moment the sounding-yawl
swept aft to the wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two of
the men and the cub Tom, were missing--a fact which spread like wildfire
over the boat. The passengers came flocking to the forward gangway,
ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked in awed voices of
the dreadful thing. And often and again I heard them say, 'Poor fellows!
poor boy, poor boy!'
By this time the boat's yawl was manned and away, to search for the
missing. Now a faint call was heard, off to the left. The yawl had
disappeared in the other direction. Half the people rushed to one side
to encourage the swimmer with their shouts; the other half rushed the
other way to shriek to the yawl to turn about. By the callings, the
swimmer was approaching, but some said the sound showed failing
strength. The crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck railings,
leaning over and staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry
wrung from them such words as, 'Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there
no way to save him?'
But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently the voice
said pluckily--
'I can make it! Stand by with a rope!'
What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief mate took his stand in
the glare of a torch-basket, a coil of rope in his hand, and his men
grouped about him. The next moment the swimmer's face appeared in the
circle of light, and in another one the owner of it was hauled aboard,
limp and drenched, while cheer on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom.
The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no sign of the two men.
They probably failed to catch the guard, tumbled back, and were struck
by the wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for the guard at all, but
had plunged head-first into the river and dived under the wheel. It was
nothing; I could have done it easy enough, and I said so; but everybody
went on just the same, making a wonderful to do over that ass, as if he
had done something great. That girl couldn't seem to have enough of
that pitiful 'hero' the rest of the trip; but little I cared; I loathed
her, any way.
The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's lantern for the buoy-
light was this. My chief said that after laying the buoy he fell away
and watched it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a position a
hundred yards below it and a little to one side of the steamer's course,
headed the sounding-boat up-stream, and waited. Having to wait some
time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up when he judged
that the steamer was about on the reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but
supposed that the steamer had already run over it; he went on with his
talk; he noticed that the steamer was getting very close on him, but
that was the correct thing; it was her business to shave him closely,
for convenience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her to sheer off,
until the last moment; then it flashed upon him that she was trying to
run him down, mistaking his lantern for the buoy-light; so he sang out,
'Stand by to spring for the guard, men!' and the next instant the jump
was made.
Chapter 13 A Pilot's Needs
BUT I am wandering from what I was intending to do, that is, make
plainer than perhaps appears in the previous chapters, some of the
peculiar requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, there is
one faculty which a pilot must incessantly cultivate until he has
brought it to absolute perfection. Nothing short of perfection will do.
That faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely thinking a thing is
so and so; he must know it; for this is eminently one of the 'exact'
sciences. With what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, if
he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 'I think,' instead of the
vigorous one 'I know!' One cannot easily realize what a tremendous
thing it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred miles of
river and know it with absolute exactness. If you will take the longest
street in New York, and travel up and down it, conning its features
patiently until you know every house and window and door and lamp-post
and big and little sign by heart, and know them so accurately that you
can instantly name the one you are abreast of when you are set down at
random in that street in the middle of an inky black night, you will
then have a tolerable notion of the amount and the exactness of a
pilot's knowledge who carries the Mississippi River in his head. And
then if you will go on until you know every street crossing, the
character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, and the varying
depth of mud in each of those numberless places, you will have some idea
of what the pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi steamer out
of trouble. Next, if you will take half of the signs in that long
street, and CHANGE THEIR PLACES once a month, and still manage to know
their new positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up with these
repeated changes without making any mistakes, you will understand what
is required of a pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi.
I think a pilot's memory is about the most wonderful thing in the world.
To know the Old and New Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them
glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random anywhere in the book and
recite both ways and never trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant
mass of knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to a pilot's
massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his marvelous facility in the
handling of it. I make this comparison deliberately, and believe I am
not expanding the truth when I do it. Many will think my figure too
strong, but pilots will not.
And how easily and comfortably the pilot's memory does its work; how
placidly effortless is its way; how UNCONSCIOUSLY it lays up its vast
stores, hour by hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single
valuable package of them all! Take an instance. Let a leadsman cry,
'Half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain! half twain!' until it
become as monotonous as the ticking of a clock; let conversation be
going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his share of the talking,
and no longer consciously listening to the leadsman; and in the midst of
this endless string of half twains let a single 'quarter twain!' be
interjected, without emphasis, and then the half twain cry go on again,
just as before: two or three weeks later that pilot can describe with
precision the boat's position in the river when that quarter twain was
uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, stern-marks, and side-
marks to guide you, that you ought to be able to take the boat there and
put her in that same spot again yourself! The cry of 'quarter twain' did
not really take his mind from his talk, but his trained faculties
instantly photographed the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid
up the important details for future reference without requiring any
assistance from him in the matter. If you were walking and talking with
a friend, and another friend at your side kept up a monotonous
repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of blocks, and then in the
midst interjected an R, thus, A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave
the R no emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or three weeks
afterward, that the R had been put in, nor be able to tell what objects
you were passing at the moment it was done. But you could if your
memory had been patiently and laboriously trained to do that sort of
thing mechanically.
Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, and piloting will
develop it into a very colossus of capability. But ONLY IN THE MATTERS
IT IS DAILY DRILLED IN. A time would come when the man's faculties could
not help noticing landmarks and soundings, and his memory could not help
holding on to them with the grip of a vise; but if you asked that same
man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would be ten chances to
one that he could not tell you. Astonishing things can be done with the
human memory if you will devote it faithfully to one particular line of
business.
At the time that wages soared so high on the Missouri River, my chief,
Mr. Bixby, went up there and learned more than a thousand miles of that
stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonishing. When he had seen
each division once in the daytime and once at night, his education was
so nearly complete that he took out a 'daylight' license; a few trips
later he took out a full license, and went to piloting day and night--
and he ranked A 1, too.
Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while under a pilot whose feats
of memory were a constant marvel to me. However, his memory was born in
him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody would mention a name.
Instantly Mr. Brown would break in--
'Oh, I knew HIM. Sallow-faced, red-headed fellow, with a little scar on
the side of his throat, like a splinter under the flesh. He was only in
the Southern trade six months. That was thirteen years ago. I made a
trip with him. There was five feet in the upper river then; the "Henry
Blake" grounded at the foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the
"George Elliott" unshipped her rudder on the wreck of the "Sunflower"--'
'Why, the "Sunflower" didn't sink until--'
'I know when she sunk; it was three years before that, on the 2nd of
December; Asa Hardy was captain of her, and his brother John was first
clerk; and it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me these
things a week afterward in New Orleans; he was first mate of the
"Sunflower." Captain Hardy stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of
the next year, and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His brother died
two years after 3rd of March,--erysipelas. I never saw either of the
Hardys,--they were Alleghany River men,--but people who knew them told
me all these things. And they said Captain Hardy wore yarn socks winter
and summer just the same, and his first wife's name was Jane Shook--she
was from New England--and his second one died in a lunatic asylum. It
was in the blood. She was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name was Horton
before she was married.'
And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would go. He could NOT forget
any thing. It was simply impossible. The most trivial details remained
as distinct and luminous in his head, after they had lain there for
years, as the most memorable events. His was not simply a pilot's
memory; its grasp was universal. If he were talking about a trifling
letter he had received seven years before, he was pretty sure to deliver
you the entire screed from memory. And then without observing that he
was departing from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely to
hurl in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that
letter; and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's
relatives, one by one, and give you their biographies, too.
Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences are
of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting
circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to
clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself an
insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject. He picks
up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led
aside. Mr. Brown would start out with the honest intention of telling
you a vastly funny anecdote about a dog. He would be 'so full of laugh'
that he could hardly begin; then his memory would start with the dog's
breed and personal appearance; drift into a history of his owner; of his
owner's family, with descriptions of weddings and burials that had
occurred in it, together with recitals of congratulatory verses and
obituary poetry provoked by the same: then this memory would recollect
that one of these events occurred during the celebrated 'hard winter' of
such and such a year, and a minute description of that winter would
follow, along with the names of people who were frozen to death, and
statistics showing the high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork
and hay would suggest corn and fodder; corn and fodder would suggest
cows and horses; cows and horses would suggest the circus and certain
celebrated bare-back riders; the transition from the circus to the
menagerie was easy and natural; from the elephant to equatorial Africa
was but a step; then of course the heathen savages would suggest
religion; and at the end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, the watch
would change, and Brown would go out of the pilot-house muttering
extracts from sermons he had heard years before about the efficacy of
prayer as a means of grace. And the original first mention would be all
you had learned about that dog, after all this waiting and hungering.
A pilot must have a memory; but there are two higher qualities which he
must also have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and
a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give a man the merest
trifle of pluck to start with, and by the time he has become a pilot he
cannot be unmanned by any danger a steamboat can get into; but one
cannot quite say the same for judgment. Judgment is a matter of brains,
and a man must START with a good stock of that article or he will never
succeed as a pilot.
The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it
does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until some time after
the young pilot has been 'standing his own watch,' alone and under the
staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the
position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted
with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his
steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is
HIS courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out
and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man's.
He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment; he
is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his
knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a
sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely train these
cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon
the candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I used
to blush even in my sleep when I thought of it. I had become a good
steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch,
night and day; Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did
was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad
crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of
leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any
crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I
should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any
crossing in the lot, in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for
contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the
bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as
high as a giraffe's, when Mr. Bixby said--
'I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?'
This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest
crossing in the whole river. One couldn't come to any harm, whether he
ran it right or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom
there. I knew all this, perfectly well.
'Know how to RUN it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.'
'How much water is there in it?'
'Well, that is an odd question. I couldn't get bottom there with a
church steeple.'
'You think so, do you?'
The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was what Mr.
Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying anything more. I began to
imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent
somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the
leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers, and
then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could
observe results. Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane
deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a
straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head of the
island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my
nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across, the
captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasiness in his
voice--
'Where is Mr. Bixby?'
'Gone below, sir.'
But that did the business for me. My imagination began to construct
dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the
run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave
of coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every
joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the
bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more;
clutched it tremblingly one again, and pulled it so feebly that I could
hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and
both together--
'Starboard lead there! and quick about it!'
This was another shock. I began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but
I would hardly get the boat started to port before I would see new
dangers on that side, and away I would spin to the other; only to find
perils accumulating to starboard, and be crazy to get to port again.
Then came the leadsman's sepulchral cry--
'D-e-e-p four!'
Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath
away.
'M-a-r-k three!... M-a-r-k three... Quarter less three!... Half twain!'
This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and stopped the engines.
'Quarter twain! Quarter twain! MARK twain!'
I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking
from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck
out so far.
'Quarter LESS twain! Nine and a HALF!'
We were DRAWING nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could not
ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and
shouted to the engineer--
'Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal
SOUL out of her!'
I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stood Mr.
Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the hurricane
deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all, now,
and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history. I laid in the
lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said--
'It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, WASN'T it? I suppose I'll
never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the
head of 66.'
'Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you won't; for I want you
to learn something by that experience. Didn't you KNOW there was no
bottom in that crossing?'
'Yes, sir, I did.'
'Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed me or anybody else to
shake your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that. And
another thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't turn coward.
That isn't going to help matters any.'
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the
hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase
which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, 'Oh, Ben, if
you love me, back her!'
Chapter 14 Rank and Dignity of Piloting
IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going into the minutiae of the
science of piloting, to carry the reader step by step to a comprehension
of what the science consists of; and at the same time I have tried to
show him that it is a very curious and wonderful science, too, and very
worthy of his attention. If I have seemed to love my subject, it is no
surprising thing, for I loved the profession far better than any I have
followed since, and I took a measureless pride in it. The reason is
plain: a pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely
independent human being that lived in the earth. Kings are but the
hampered servants of parliament and people; parliaments sit in chains
forged by their constituency; the editor of a newspaper cannot be
independent, but must work with one hand tied behind him by party and
patrons, and be content to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind; no
clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole truth, regardless of his
parish's opinions; writers of all kinds are manacled servants of the
public. We write frankly and fearlessly, but then we 'modify' before we
print. In truth, every man and woman and child has a master, and
worries and frets in servitude; but in the day I write of, the
Mississippi pilot had none. The captain could stand upon the hurricane
deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, and give him five or six
orders while the vessel backed into the stream, and then that skipper's
reign was over. The moment that the boat was under way in the river,
she was under the sole and unquestioned control of the pilot. He could
do with her exactly as he pleased, run her when and whither he chose,
and tie her up to the bank whenever his judgment said that that course
was best. His movements were entirely free; he consulted no one, he
received commands from nobody, he promptly resented even the merest
suggestions. Indeed, the law of the United States forbade him to listen
to commands or suggestions, rightly considering that the pilot
necessarily knew better how to handle the boat than anybody could tell
him. So here was the novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute
monarch who was absolute in sober truth and not by a fiction of words. I
have seen a boy of eighteen taking a great steamer serenely into what
seemed almost certain destruction, and the aged captain standing mutely
by, filled with apprehension but powerless to interfere. His
interference, in that particular instance, might have been an excellent
thing, but to permit it would have been to establish a most pernicious
precedent. It will easily be guessed, considering the pilot's boundless
authority, that he was a great personage in the old steamboating days.
He was treated with marked courtesy by the captain and with marked
deference by all the officers and servants; and this deferential spirit
was quickly communicated to the passengers, too. I think pilots were
about the only people I ever knew who failed to show, in some degree,
embarrassment in the presence of traveling foreign princes. But then,
people in one's own grade of life are not usually embarrassing objects.
By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes in the form of
commands. It 'gravels' me, to this day, to put my will in the weak shape
of a request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order.
In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to New
Orleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days,
on an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the
wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard
at work, except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up
town, and receive the same wages for it as if they had been on duty. The
moment the boat touched the wharf at either city, they were ashore; and
they were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was ringing and
everything in readiness for another voyage.
When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly high reputation, he
took pains to keep him. When wages were four hundred dollars a month on
the Upper Mississippi, I have known a captain to keep such a pilot in
idleness, under full pay, three months at a time, while the river was
frozen up. And one must remember that in those cheap times four hundred
dollars was a salary of almost inconceivable splendor. Few men on shore
got such pay as that, and when they did they were mightily looked up to.
When pilots from either end of the river wandered into our small
Missouri village, they were sought by the best and the fairest, and
treated with exalted respect. Lying in port under wages was a thing
which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated; especially if they
belonged in the Missouri River in the heyday of that trade (Kansas
times), and got nine hundred dollars a trip, which was equivalent to
about eighteen hundred dollars a month. Here is a conversation of that
day. A chap out of the Illinois River, with a little stern-wheel tub,
accosts a couple of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots--
'Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the upcountry, and shall
want you about a month. How much will it be?'
'Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.'
'Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me have your wages, and I'll
divide!'
I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steamboatmen were important
in landsmen's eyes (and in their own, too, in a degree) according to the
dignity of the boat they were on. For instance, it was a proud thing to
be of the crew of such stately craft as the 'Aleck Scott' or the 'Grand
Turk.' Negro firemen, deck hands, and barbers belonging to those boats
were distinguished personages in their grade of life, and they were well
aware of that fact too. A stalwart darkey once gave offense at a negro
ball in New Orleans by putting on a good many airs. Finally one of the
managers bustled up to him and said--
'Who IS you, any way? Who is you? dat's what I wants to know!'
The offender was not disconcerted in the least, but swelled himself up
and threw that into his voice which showed that he knew he was not
putting on all those airs on a stinted capital.
'Who IS I? Who IS I? I let you know mighty quick who I is! I want you
niggers to understan' dat I fires de middle do'{footnote [Door]} on de
"Aleck Scott!"'
That was sufficient.
The barber of the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro, who aired his
importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly courted by the circle
in which he moved. The young colored population of New Orleans were much
given to flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets.
Somebody saw and heard something like the following, one evening, in one
of those localities. A middle-aged negro woman projected her head
through a broken pane and shouted (very willing that the neighbors
should hear and envy), 'You Mary Ann, come in de house dis minute!
Stannin' out dah foolin' 'long wid dat low trash, an' heah's de barber
offn de "Gran' Turk" wants to conwerse wid you!'
My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a pilot's peculiar official
position placed him out of the reach of criticism or command, brings
Stephen W---- naturally to my mind. He was a gifted pilot, a good
fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor in him. He had a
most irreverent independence, too, and was deliciously easy-going and
comfortable in the presence of age, official dignity, and even the most
august wealth. He always had work, he never saved a penny, he was a
most persuasive borrower, he was in debt to every pilot on the river,
and to the majority of the captains. He could throw a sort of splendor
around a bit of harum-scarum, devil-may-care piloting, that made it
almost fascinating--but not to everybody. He made a trip with good old
Captain Y----once, and was 'relieved' from duty when the boat got to New
Orleans. Somebody expressed surprise at the discharge. Captain Y----
shuddered at the mere mention of Stephen. Then his poor, thin old voice
piped out something like this:--
'Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild creature on my boat for the
world--not for the whole world! He swears, he sings, he whistles, he
yells--I never saw such an Injun to yell. All times of the night--it
never made any difference to him. He would just yell that way, not for
anything in particular, but merely on account of a kind of devilish
comfort he got out of it. I never could get into a sound sleep but he
would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of those
dreadful war-whoops. A queer being--very queer being; no respect for
anything or anybody. Sometimes he called me "Johnny." And he kept a
fiddle, and a cat. He played execrably. This seemed to distress the
cat, and so the cat would howl. Nobody could sleep where that man--and
his family--was. And reckless. There never was anything like it. Now
you may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting here, he brought
my boat a-tilting down through those awful snags at Chicot under a
rattling head of steam, and the wind a-blowing like the very nation, at
that! My officers will tell you so. They saw it. And, sir, while he
was a-tearing right down through those snags, and I a-shaking in my
shoes and praying, I wish I may never speak again if he didn't pucker up
his mouth and go to WHISTLING! Yes, sir; whistling "Buffalo gals, can't
you come out tonight, can't you come out to-night, can't you come out
to-night;" and doing it as calmly as if we were attending a funeral and
weren't related to the corpse. And when I remonstrated with him about
it, he smiled down on me as if I was his child, and told me to run in
the house and try to be good, and not be meddling with my superiors!'
Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in New Orleans out of work and
as usual out of money. He laid steady siege to Stephen, who was in a
very 'close place,' and finally persuaded him to hire with him at one
hundred and twenty-five dollars per month, just half wages, the captain
agreeing not to divulge the secret and so bring down the contempt of all
the guild upon the poor fellow. But the boat was not more than a day
out of New Orleans before Stephen discovered that the captain was
boasting of his exploit, and that all the officers had been told.
Stephen winced, but said nothing. About the middle of the afternoon the
captain stepped out on the hurricane deck, cast his eye around, and
looked a good deal surprised. He glanced inquiringly aloft at Stephen,
but Stephen was whistling placidly, and attending to business. The
captain stood around a while in evident discomfort, and once or twice
seemed about to make a suggestion; but the etiquette of the river taught
him to avoid that sort of rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace.
He chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then retired to his
apartments. But soon he was out again, and apparently more perplexed
than ever. Presently he ventured to remark, with deference--
'Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir?'
'Well, I should say so! Bank-full IS a pretty liberal stage.'
'Seems to be a good deal of current here.'
'Good deal don't describe it! It's worse than a mill-race.'
'Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here in the middle?'
'Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too careful with a steamboat.
It's pretty safe out here; can't strike any bottom here, you can depend
on that.'
The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At this rate, he would
probably die of old age before his boat got to St. Louis. Next day he
appeared on deck and again found Stephen faithfully standing up the
middle of the river, fighting the whole vast force of the Mississippi,
and whistling the same placid tune. This thing was becoming serious. In
by the shore was a slower boat clipping along in the easy water and
gaining steadily; she began to make for an island chute; Stephen stuck
to the middle of the river. Speech was WRUNG from the captain.
He said--
'Mr. W----, don't that chute cut off a good deal of distance?'
'I think it does, but I don't know.'
'Don't know! Well, isn't there water enough in it now to go through?'
'I expect there is, but I am not certain.'
'Upon my word this is odd! Why, those pilots on that boat yonder are
going to try it. Do you mean to say that you don't know as much as they
do?'
'THEY! Why, THEY are two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pilots! But don't you
be uneasy; I know as much as any man can afford to know for a hundred
and twenty-five!'
The captain surrendered.
Five minutes later Stephen was bowling through the chute and showing the
rival boat a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar pair of heels.
Chapter 15 The Pilots' Monopoly
ONE day, on board the 'Aleck Scott,' my chief, Mr. Bixby, was crawling
carefully through a close place at Cat Island, both leads going, and
everybody holding his breath. The captain, a nervous, apprehensive man,
kept still as long as he could, but finally broke down and shouted from
the hurricane deck--
'For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! give her steam! She'll
never raise the reef on this headway!'
For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. Bixby, one would have
supposed that no remark had been made. But five minutes later, when the
danger was past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into a
consuming fury, and gave the captain the most admirable cursing I ever
listened to. No bloodshed ensued; but that was because the captain's
cause was weak; for ordinarily he was not a man to take correction
quietly.
Having now set forth in detail the nature of the science of piloting,
and likewise described the rank which the pilot held among the
fraternity of steamboatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few
words about an organization which the pilots once formed for the
protection of their guild. It was curious and noteworthy in this, that
it was perhaps the compactest, the completest, and the strongest
commercial organization ever formed among men.
For a long time wages had been two hundred and fifty dollars a month;
but curiously enough, as steamboats multiplied and business increased,
the wages began to fall little by little. It was easy to discover the
reason of this. Too many pilots were being 'made.' It was nice to have
a 'cub,' a steersman, to do all the hard work for a couple of years,
gratis, while his master sat on a high bench and smoked; all pilots and
captains had sons or nephews who wanted to be pilots. By and by it came
to pass that nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman. When a
steersman had made an amount of progress that was satisfactory to any
two pilots in the trade, they could get a pilot's license for him by
signing an application directed to the United States Inspector. Nothing
further was needed; usually no questions were asked, no proofs of
capacity required.
Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots presently began to undermine
the wages, in order to get berths. Too late--apparently--the knights of
the tiller perceived their mistake. Plainly, something had to be done,
and quickly; but what was to be the needful thing. A close
organization. Nothing else would answer. To compass this seemed an
impossibility; so it was talked, and talked, and then dropped. It was
too likely to ruin whoever ventured to move in the matter. But at last
about a dozen of the boldest--and some of them the best--pilots on the
river launched themselves into the enterprise and took all the chances.
They got a special charter from the legislature, with large powers,
under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Association; elected their
officers, completed their organization, contributed capital, put
'association' wages up to two hundred and fifty dollars at once--and
then retired to their homes, for they were promptly discharged from
employment. But there were two or three unnoticed trifles in their by-
laws which had the seeds of propagation in them. For instance, all idle
members of the association, in good standing, were entitled to a pension
of twenty-five dollars per month. This began to bring in one straggler
after another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots, in the dull
(summer) season. Better have twenty-five dollars than starve; the
initiation fee was only twelve dollars, and no dues required from the
unemployed.
Also, the widows of deceased members in good standing could draw twenty-
five dollars per month, and a certain sum for each of their children.
Also, the said deceased would be buried at the association's expense.
These things resurrected all the superannuated and forgotten pilots in
the Mississippi Valley. They came from farms, they came from interior
villages, they came from everywhere. They came on crutches, on drays,
in ambulances,--any way, so they got there. They paid in their twelve
dollars, and straightway began to draw out twenty-five dollars a month,
and calculate their burial bills.
By and by, all the useless, helpless pilots, and a dozen first-class
ones, were in the association, and nine-tenths of the best pilots out of
it and laughing at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river.
Everybody joked about the by-law requiring members to pay ten per cent.
of their wages, every month, into the treasury for the support of the
association, whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed, and no
one would employ them. Everybody was derisively grateful to the
association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the way and
leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving; and
everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for a result
which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wages as the
busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figure of one
hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and in some
cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the
fact that this charming thing had been accomplished by a body of men not
one of whom received a particle of benefit from it. Some of the jokers
used to call at the association rooms and have a good time chaffing the
members and offering them the charity of taking them as steersmen for a
trip, so that they could see what the forgotten river looked like.
However, the association was content; or at least it gave no sign to the
contrary. Now and then it captured a pilot who was 'out of luck,' and
added him to its list; and these later additions were very valuable, for
they were good pilots; the incompetent ones had all been absorbed
before. As business freshened, wages climbed gradually up to two
hundred and fifty dollars--the association figure--and became firmly
fixed there; and still without benefiting a member of that body, for no
member was hired. The hilarity at the association's expense burst all
bounds, now. There was no end to the fun which that poor martyr had to
put up with.
However, it is a long lane that has no turning. Winter approached,
business doubled and trebled, and an avalanche of Missouri, Illinois and
Upper Mississippi River boats came pouring down to take a chance in the
New Orleans trade. All of a sudden pilots were in great demand, and
were correspondingly scarce. The time for revenge was come. It was a
bitter pill to have to accept association pilots at last, yet captains
and owners agreed that there was no other way. But none of these
outcasts offered! So there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed:
they must be sought out and asked for their services. Captain ---- was
the first man who found it necessary to take the dose, and he had been
the loudest derider of the organization. He hunted up one of the best of
the association pilots and said--
'Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for a little while, so
I'll give in with as good a grace as I can. I've come to hire you; get
your trunk aboard right away. I want to leave at twelve o'clock.'
'I don't know about that. Who is your other pilot?'
'I've got I. S----. Why?'
'I can't go with him. He don't belong to the association.'
'What!'
'It's so.'
'Do you mean to tell me that you won't turn a wheel with one of the very
best and oldest pilots on the river because he don't belong to your
association?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Well, if this isn't putting on airs! I supposed I was doing you a
benevolence; but I begin to think that I am the party that wants a favor
done. Are you acting under a law of the concern?'
'Yes.'
'Show it to me.'
So they stepped into the association rooms, and the secretary soon
satisfied the captain, who said--
'Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S---- for the entire season.'
'I will provide for you,' said the secretary. 'I will detail a pilot to
go with you, and he shall be on board at twelve o'clock.'
'But if I discharge S----, he will come on me for the whole season's
wages.'
'Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. S----, captain. We
cannot meddle in your private affairs.'
The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the end he had to discharge
S----, pay him about a thousand dollars, and take an association pilot
in his place. The laugh was beginning to turn the other way now. Every
day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every day some outraged captain
discharged a non-association pet, with tears and profanity, and
installed a hated association man in his berth. In a very little while,
idle non-associationists began to be pretty plenty, brisk as business
was, and much as their services were desired. The laugh was shifting to
the other side of their mouths most palpably. These victims, together
with the captains and owners, presently ceased to laugh altogether, and
began to rage about the revenge they would take when the passing
business 'spurt' was over.
Soon all the laughers that were left were the owners and crews of boats
that had two non-association pilots. But their triumph was not very
long-lived. For this reason: It was a rigid rule of the association that
its members should never, under any circumstances whatever, give
information about the channel to any 'outsider.' By this time about
half the boats had none but association pilots, and the other half had
none but outsiders. At the first glance one would suppose that when it
came to forbidding information about the river these two parties could
play equally at that game; but this was not so. At every good-sized town
from one end of the river to the other, there was a 'wharf-boat' to land
at, instead of a wharf or a pier. Freight was stored in it for
transportation; waiting passengers slept in its cabins. Upon each of
these wharf-boats the association's officers placed a strong box
fastened with a peculiar lock which was used in no other service but
one--the United States mail service. It was the letter-bag lock, a
sacred governmental thing. By dint of much beseeching the government had
been persuaded to allow the association to use this lock. Every
association man carried a key which would open these boxes. That key, or
rather a peculiar way of holding it in the hand when its owner was asked
for river information by a stranger--for the success of the St. Louis
and New Orleans association had now bred tolerably thriving branches in
a dozen neighboring steamboat trades--was the association man's sign and
diploma of membership; and if the stranger did not respond by producing
a similar key and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed, his
question was politely ignored. From the association's secretary each
member received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks, printed like
a billhead, on handsome paper, properly ruled in columns; a bill-head
worded something like this--
STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC.
JOHN SMITH MASTER
PILOTS, JOHN JONES AND THOMAS BROWN.
+ ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- +
| CROSSINGS. | SOUNDINGS. | MARKS. | REMARKS. |
+ ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- +
These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the voyage progressed, and
deposited in the several wharf-boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the
first crossing, out from St. Louis, was completed, the items would be
entered upon the blank, under the appropriate headings, thus--
'St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stern on court-house, head on dead
cottonwood above wood-yard, until you raise the first reef, then pull up
square.' Then under head of Remarks: 'Go just outside the wrecks; this
is important. New snag just where you straighten down; go above it.'
The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo box (after adding to it
the details of every crossing all the way down from St. Louis) took out
and read half a dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound steamers)
concerning the river between Cairo and Memphis, posted himself
thoroughly, returned them to the box, and went back aboard his boat
again so armed against accident that he could not possibly get his boat
into trouble without bringing the most ingenious carelessness to his
aid.
Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in a piece of river twelve
or thirteen hundred miles long, whose channel was shifting every day!
The pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with seeing a shoal
place once or possibly twice a month, had a hundred sharp eyes to watch
it for him, now, and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to
run it. His information about it was seldom twenty-four hours old. If
the reports in the last box chanced to leave any misgivings on his mind
concerning a treacherous crossing, he had his remedy; he blew his steam-
whistle in a peculiar way as soon as he saw a boat approaching; the
signal was answered in a peculiar way if that boat's pilots were
association men; and then the two steamers ranged alongside and all
uncertainties were swept away by fresh information furnished to the
inquirer by word of mouth and in minute detail.
The first thing a pilot did when he reached New Orleans or St. Louis was
to take his final and elaborate report to the association parlors and
hang it up there,--after which he was free to visit his family. In these
parlors a crowd was always gathered together, discussing changes in the
channel, and the moment there was a fresh arrival, everybody stopped
talking till this witness had told the newest news and settled the
latest uncertainty. Other craftsmen can 'sink the shop,' sometimes, and
interest themselves in other matters. Not so with a pilot; he must
devote himself wholly to his profession and talk of nothing else; for it
would be small gain to be perfect one day and imperfect the next. He has
no time or words to waste if he would keep 'posted.'
But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No particular place to meet
and exchange information, no wharf-boat reports, none but chance and
unsatisfactory ways of getting news. The consequence was that a man
sometimes had to run five hundred miles of river on information that was
a week or ten days old. At a fair stage of the river that might have
answered; but when the dead low water came it was destructive.
Now came another perfectly logical result. The outsiders began to
ground steamboats, sink them, and get into all sorts of trouble, whereas
accidents seemed to keep entirely away from the association men.
Wherefore even the owners and captains of boats furnished exclusively
with outsiders, and previously considered to be wholly independent of
the association and free to comfort themselves with brag and laughter,
began to feel pretty uncomfortable. Still, they made a show of keeping
up the brag, until one black day when every captain of the lot was
formally ordered to immediately discharge his outsiders and take
association pilots in their stead. And who was it that had the dashing
presumption to do that? Alas, it came from a power behind the throne
that was greater than the throne itself. It was the underwriters!
It was no time to 'swap knives.' Every outsider had to take his trunk
ashore at once. Of course it was supposed that there was collusion
between the association and the underwriters, but this was not so. The
latter had come to comprehend the excellence of the 'report' system of
the association and the safety it secured, and so they had made their
decision among themselves and upon plain business principles.
There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in the camp of the
outsiders now. But no matter, there was but one course for them to
pursue, and they pursued it. They came forward in couples and groups,
and proffered their twelve dollars and asked for membership. They were
surprised to learn that several new by-laws had been long ago added. For
instance, the initiation fee had been raised to fifty dollars; that sum
must be tendered, and also ten per cent. of the wages which the
applicant had received each and every month since the founding of the
association. In many cases this amounted to three or four hundred
dollars. Still, the association would not entertain the application
until the money was present. Even then a single adverse vote killed the
application. Every member had to vote 'Yes' or 'No' in person and before
witnesses; so it took weeks to decide a candidacy, because many pilots
were so long absent on voyages. However, the repentant sinners scraped
their savings together, and one by one, by our tedious voting process,
they were added to the fold. A time came, at last, when only about ten
remained outside. They said they would starve before they would apply.
They remained idle a long while, because of course nobody could venture
to employ them.
By and by the association published the fact that upon a certain date
the wages would be raised to five hundred dollars per month. All the
branch associations had grown strong, now, and the Red River one had
advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a month. Reluctantly the ten
outsiders yielded, in view of these things, and made application. There
was another new by-law, by this time, which required them to pay dues
not only on all the wages they had received since the association was
born, but also on what they would have received if they had continued at
work up to the time of their application, instead of going off to pout
in idleness. It turned out to be a difficult matter to elect them, but
it was accomplished at last. The most virulent sinner of this batch had
stayed out and allowed 'dues' to accumulate against him so long that he
had to send in six hundred and twenty-five dollars with his application.
The association had a good bank account now, and was very strong. There
was no longer an outsider. A by-law was added forbidding the reception
of any more cubs or apprentices for five years; after which time a
limited number would be taken, not by individuals, but by the
association, upon these terms: the applicant must not be less than
eighteen years old, and of respectable family and good character; he
must pass an examination as to education, pay a thousand dollars in
advance for the privilege of becoming an apprentice, and must remain
under the commands of the association until a great part of the
membership (more than half, I think) should be willing to sign his
application for a pilot's license.
All previously-articled apprentices were now taken away from their
masters and adopted by the association. The president and secretary
detailed them for service on one boat or another, as they chose, and
changed them from boat to boat according to certain rules. If a pilot
could show that he was in infirm health and needed assistance, one of
the cubs would be ordered to go with him.
The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the association's financial
resources. The association attended its own funerals in state, and paid
for them. When occasion demanded, it sent members down the river upon
searches for the bodies of brethren lost by steamboat accidents; a
search of this kind sometimes cost a thousand dollars.
The association procured a charter and went into the insurance business,
also. It not only insured the lives of its members, but took risks on
steamboats.
The organization seemed indestructible. It was the tightest monopoly in
the world. By the United States law, no man could become a pilot unless
two duly licensed pilots signed his application; and now there was
nobody outside of the association competent to sign. Consequently the
making of pilots was at an end. Every year some would die and others
become incapacitated by age and infirmity; there would be no new ones to
take their places. In time, the association could put wages up to any
figure it chose; and as long as it should be wise enough not to carry
the thing too far and provoke the national government into amending the
licensing system, steamboat owners would have to submit, since there
would be no help for it.
The owners and captains were the only obstruction that lay between the
association and absolute power; and at last this one was removed.
Incredible as it may seem, the owners and captains deliberately did it
themselves. When the pilots' association announced, months beforehand,
that on the first day of September, 1861, wages would be advanced to
five hundred dollars per month, the owners and captains instantly put
freights up a few cents, and explained to the farmers along the river
the necessity of it, by calling their attention to the burdensome rate
of wages about to be established. It was a rather slender argument, but
the farmers did not seem to detect it. It looked reasonable to them that
to add five cents freight on a bushel of corn was justifiable under the
circumstances, overlooking the fact that this advance on a cargo of
forty thousand sacks was a good deal more than necessary to cover the
new wages.
So, straightway the captains and owners got up an association of their
own, and proposed to put captains' wages up to five hundred dollars,
too, and move for another advance in freights. It was a novel idea, but
of course an effect which had been produced once could be produced
again. The new association decreed (for this was before all the
outsiders had been taken into the pilots' association) that if any
captain employed a non-association pilot, he should be forced to
discharge him, and also pay a fine of five hundred dollars. Several of
these heavy fines were paid before the captains' organization grew
strong enough to exercise full authority over its membership; but that
all ceased, presently. The captains tried to get the pilots to decree
that no member of their corporation should serve under a non-association
captain; but this proposition was declined. The pilots saw that they
would be backed up by the captains and the underwriters anyhow, and so
they wisely refrained from entering into entangling alliances.
As I have remarked, the pilots' association was now the compactest
monopoly in the world, perhaps, and seemed simply indestructible. And
yet the days of its glory were numbered. First, the new railroad
stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, to Northern
railway centers, began to divert the passenger travel from the steamers;
next the war came and almost entirely annihilated the steamboating
industry during several years, leaving most of the pilots idle, and the
cost of living advancing all the time; then the treasurer of the St.
Louis association put his hand into the till and walked off with every
dollar of the ample fund; and finally, the railroads intruding
everywhere, there was little for steamers to do, when the war was over,
but carry freights; so straightway some genius from the Atlantic coast
introduced the plan of towing a dozen steamer cargoes down to New
Orleans at the tail of a vulgar little tug-boat; and behold, in the
twinkling of an eye, as it were, the association and the noble science
of piloting were things of the dead and pathetic past!
Chapter 16 Racing Days
IT was always the custom for the boats to leave New Orleans between four
and five o'clock in the afternoon. From three o'clock onward they would
be burning rosin and pitch pine (the sign of preparation), and so one
had the picturesque spectacle of a rank, some two or three miles long,
of tall, ascending columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which
supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended together and spreading
abroad over the city. Every outward-bound boat had its flag flying at
the jack-staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge staff astern. Two
or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than
usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrels and boxes were
spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks, belated
passengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping
to reach the forecastle companion way alive, but having their doubts
about it; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with
husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies, and making a
failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general
distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither
in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together,
and then during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity,
except vaguely and dimly; every windlass connected with every forehatch,
from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping
up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the
half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring
such songs as 'De Las' Sack! De Las' Sack!'--inspired to unimaginable
exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket that was driving everybody
else mad. By this time the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamers
would be packed and black with passengers. The 'last bells' would begin
to clang, all down the line, and then the powwow seemed to double; in a
moment or two the final warning came,--a simultaneous din of Chinese
gongs, with the cry, 'All dat ain't goin', please to git asho'!'--and
behold, the powwow quadrupled! People came swarming ashore, overturning
excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One more moment
later a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its
customary latest passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails,
and everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a
wild spring shoreward over his head.
Now a number of the boats slide backward into the stream, leaving wide
gaps in the serried rank of steamers. Citizens crowd the decks of boats
that are not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer after steamer
straightens herself up, gathers all her strength, and presently comes
swinging by, under a tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black
smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and deck-hands (usually
swarthy negroes) massed together on the forecastle, the best 'voice' in
the lot towering from the midst (being mounted on the capstan), waving
his hat or a flag, and all roaring a mighty chorus, while the parting
cannons boom and the multitudinous spectators swing their hats and
huzza! Steamer after steamer falls into line, and the stately procession
goes winging its flight up the river.
In the old times, whenever two fast boats started out on a race, with a
big crowd of people looking on, it was inspiring to hear the crews sing,
especially if the time were night-fall, and the forecastle lit up with
the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was royal fun. The public
always had an idea that racing was dangerous; whereas the opposite was
the case--that is, after the laws were passed which restricted each boat
to just so many pounds of steam to the square inch. No engineer was ever
sleepy or careless when his heart was in a race. He was constantly on
the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching things. The dangerous place
was on slow, plodding boats, where the engineers drowsed around and
allowed chips to get into the 'doctor' and shut off the water supply
from the boilers.
In the 'flush times' of steamboating, a race between two notoriously
fleet steamers was an event of vast importance. The date was set for it
several weeks in advance, and from that time forward, the whole
Mississippi Valley was in a state of consuming excitement. Politics and
the weather were dropped, and people talked only of the coming race. As
the time approached, the two steamers 'stripped' and got ready. Every
encumbrance that added weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind or
water, was removed, if the boat could possibly do without it. The
'spars,' and sometimes even their supporting derricks, were sent ashore,
and no means left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground. When
the 'Eclipse' and the 'A. L. Shotwell' ran their great race many years
ago, it was said that pains were taken to scrape the gilding off the
fanciful device which hung between the 'Eclipse's' chimneys, and that
for that one trip the captain left off his kid gloves and had his head
shaved. But I always doubted these things.
If the boat was known to make her best speed when drawing five and a
half feet forward and five feet aft, she was carefully loaded to that
exact figure--she wouldn't enter a dose of homoeopathic pills on her
manifest after that. Hardly any passengers were taken, because they not
only add weight but they never will 'trim boat.' They always run to the
side when there is anything to see, whereas a conscientious and
experienced steamboatman would stick to the center of the boat and part
his hair in the middle with a spirit level.
No way-freights and no way-passengers were allowed, for the racers would
stop only at the largest towns, and then it would be only 'touch and
go.' Coal flats and wood flats were contracted for beforehand, and these
were kept ready to hitch on to the flying steamers at a moment's
warning. Double crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly
done.
The chosen date being come, and all things in readiness, the two great
steamers back into the stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, and
apparently watching each other's slightest movement, like sentient
creatures; flags drooping, the pent steam shrieking through safety-
valves, the black smoke rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and
darkening all the air. People, people everywhere; the shores, the house-
tops, the steamboats, the ships, are packed with them, and you know that
the borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be fringed with
humanity thence northward twelve hundred miles, to welcome these racers.
Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 'scape-pipes of both
steamers, two guns boom a good-bye, two red-shirted heroes mounted on
capstans wave their small flags above the massed crews on the
forecastles, two plaintive solos linger on the air a few waiting
seconds, two mighty choruses burst forth--and here they come! Brass
bands bray Hail Columbia, huzza after huzza thunders from the shores,
and the stately creatures go whistling by like the wind.
Those boats will never halt a moment between New Orleans and St. Louis,
except for a second or two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood-
boats alongside. You should be on board when they take a couple of
those wood-boats in tow and turn a swarm of men into each; by the time
you have wiped your glasses and put them on, you will be wondering what
has become of that wood.
Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of each other day after
day. They might even stay side by side, but for the fact that pilots are
not all alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race. If one of the
boats has a 'lightning' pilot, whose 'partner' is a trifle his inferior,
you can tell which one is on watch by noting whether that boat has
gained ground or lost some during each four-hour stretch. The shrewdest
pilot can delay a boat if he has not a fine genius for steering.
Steering is a very high art. One must not keep a rudder dragging across
a boat's stem if he wants to get up the river fast.
There is a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was
on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left
port in. But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferryboats used to
lose valuable trips because their passengers grew old and died, waiting
for us to get by. This was at still rarer intervals. I had the
documents for these occurrences, but through carelessness they have been
mislaid. This boat, the 'John J. Roe,' was so slow that when she finally
sunk in Madrid Bend, it was five years before the owners heard of it.
That was always a confusing fact to me, but it is according to the
record, any way. She was dismally slow; still, we often had pretty
exciting times racing with islands, and rafts, and such things. One
trip, however, we did rather well. We went to St. Louis in sixteen
days. But even at this rattling gait I think we changed watches three
times in Fort Adams reach, which is five miles long. A 'reach' is a
piece of straight river, and of course the current drives through such a
place in a pretty lively way.
That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New Orleans, in four days (three
hundred and forty miles); the 'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' did it in one.
We were nine days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hundred miles); the
'Eclipse' and 'Shotwell' went there in two days. Something over a
generation ago, a boat called the 'J. M. White' went from New Orleans to
Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four minutes. In 1853 the
'Eclipse' made the same trip in three days, three hours, and twenty
minutes.{footnote [Time disputed. Some authorities add 1 hour and 16
minutes to this.]} In 1870 the 'R. E. Lee' did it in three days and ONE
hour. This last is called the fastest trip on record. I will try to show
that it was not. For this reason: the distance between New Orleans and
Cairo, when the 'J. M. White' ran it, was about eleven hundred and six
miles; consequently her average speed was a trifle over fourteen miles
per hour. In the 'Eclipse's' day the distance between the two ports had
become reduced to one thousand and eighty miles; consequently her
average speed was a shade under fourteen and three-eighths miles per
hour. In the 'R. E. Lee's' time the distance had diminished to about one
thousand and thirty miles; consequently her average was about fourteen
and one-eighth miles per hour. Therefore the 'Eclipse's' was
conspicuously the fastest time that has ever been made.
THE RECORD OF SOME FAMOUS
TRIPS
(From Commodore Rollingpin's Almanack.)
FAST TIME ON THE WESTERN WATERS
FROM NEW ORLEANS TO NATCHEZ--268 MILES
D. H. M.
1814 Orleans made the run in 6 6 40
1814 Comet " " 5 10
1815 Enterprise " " 4 11 20
1817 Washington " " 4
1817 Shelby " " 3 20
1818 Paragon " " 3 8
1828 Tecumseh " " 3 1 20
1834 Tuscarora " " 1 21
1838 Natchez " " 1 17
1840 Ed. Shippen " " 1 8
1842 Belle of the West " 1 18
1844 Sultana " " 19 45
1851 Magnolia " " 19 50
1853 A. L. Shotwell " " 19 49
1853 Southern Belle " " 20 3
1853 Princess (No. 4) " 20 26
1853 Eclipse " " 19 47
1855 Princess (New) " " 18 53
1855 Natchez (New) " " 17 30
1856 Princess (New) " " 17 30
1870 Natchez " " 17 17
1870 R. E. Lee " " 17 11
FROM NEW ORLEANS TO CAIRO--1,024 MILES
D. H. M.
1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 6 44
1852 Reindeer " " 3 12 45
1853 Eclipse " " 3 4 4
1853 A. L. Shotwell " " 3 3 40
1869 Dexter " " 3 6 20
1870 Natchez " " 3 4 34
1870 R. E. Lee " " 3 1
FROM NEW ORLEANS TO LOUISVILLE--1,440 MILES
D. H. M.
1815 Enterprise made the run in 25 2 40
1817 Washington " " 25
1817. Shelby " " 20 4 20
1818 Paragon " " 18 10
1828 Tecumseh " " 8 4
1834 Tuscarora " " 7 16
1837 Gen. Brown " " 6 22
1837 Randolph " " 6 22
1837 Empress " " 6 17
1837 Sultana " " 6 15
1840 Ed. Shippen " " 5 14
1842 Belle of the West " 6 14
1843 Duke of Orleans" " 5 23
1844 Sultana " " 5 12
1849 Bostona " " 5 8
1851 Belle Key " " 3 4 23
1852 Reindeer " " 4 20 45
1852 Eclipse " " 4 19
1853 A. L. Shotwell " " 4 10 20
1853 Eclipse " " 4 9 30
FROM NEW ORLEANS TO DONALDSONVILLE--78 MILES
H. M.
1852 A. L. Shotwell made the run in 5 42
1852 Eclipse " " 5 42
1854 Sultana " " 4 51
1860 Atlantic " " 5 11
1860 Gen. Quitman " " 5 6
1865 Ruth " " 4 43
1870 R. E. Lee " " 4 59
FROM NEW ORLEANS TO ST. LOUIS--1,218 MILES
D. H. M.
1844 J. M. White made the run in 3 23 9
1849 Missouri " " 4 19
1869 Dexter " " 4 9
1870 Natchez " " 3 21 58
1870 R. E. Lee " " 3 18 14
FROM LOUISVILLE TO CINCINNATI--141 MILES
D. H. M.
1819 Gen. Pike made the run in 1 16
1819 Paragon " " 1 14 20
1822 Wheeling Packet " " 1 10
1837 Moselle " " 12
1843 Duke of Orleans " " 12
1843 Congress " " 12 20
1846 Ben Franklin (No. 6) " 11 45
1852 Alleghaney " " 10 38
1852 Pittsburgh " " 10 23
1853 Telegraph No. 3 " " 9 52
FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS--750 MILES
D. H. M.
1843 Congress made the run in 2 1
1854 Pike " " 1 23
1854 Northerner " " 1 22 30
1855 Southemer " " 1 19
FROM CINCINNATI TO PITTSBURGH--490 MILES
D. H.
1850 Telegraph No. 2 made the run in 1 17
1851 Buckeye State " " 1 16
1852 Pittsburgh " " 1 15
FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON--30 MILES
D. M.
1853 Altona made the run in 1 35
1876 Golden Eagle " " 1 37
1876 War Eagle " " 1 37
MISCELLANEOUS RUNS
In June, 1859, the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet, City of Louisiana,
made the run from St. Louis to Keokuk (214 miles) in 16 hours
and 20 minutes, the best time on record.
In 1868 the steamer Hawkeye State, of the Northern Packet Company,
made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800 miles) in 2 days and 20 hours.
Never was beaten.
In 1853 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St. Louis to St. Joseph,
on the Missouri River, in 64 hours. In July, 1856, the steamer Jas.
H. Lucas, Andy Wineland, Master, made the same run in 60 hours
and 57 minutes. The distance between the ports is 600 miles,
and when the difficulties of navigating the turbulent Missouri
are taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucas
deserves especial mention.
THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEE
The time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St. Louis
in 1870, in her famous race with the Natchez, is the best
on record, and, inasmuch as the race created a national interest,
we give below her time table from port to port.
Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30th, 1870, at 4 o'clock
and 55 minutes, p.m.; reached
D. H. M.
Carrollton 27{half}
Harry Hills 1 00{half}
Red Church 1 39
Bonnet Carre 2 38
College Point 3 50{half}
Donaldsonville 4 59
Plaquemine 7 05{half}
Baton Rouge 8 25
Bayou Sara 10 26
Red River 12 56
Stamps 13 56
Bryaro 15 51{half}
Hinderson's 16 29
Natchez 17 11
Cole's Creek 19 21
Waterproof 18 53
Rodney 20 45
St. Joseph 21 02
Grand Gulf 22 06
Hard Times 22 18
Half Mile below Warrenton 1
Vicksburg 1 38
Milliken's Bend 1 2 37
Bailey's 1 3 48
Lake Providence 1 5 47
Greenville 1 10 55
Napoleon 1 16 22
White River 1 16 56
Australia 1 19
Helena 1 23 25
Half Mile Below St. Francis 2
Memphis 2 6 9
Foot of Island 37 2 9
Foot of Island 26 2 13 30
Tow-head, Island 14 2 17 23
New Madrid 2 19 50
Dry Bar No. 10 2 20 37
Foot of Island 8 2 21 25
Upper Tow-head--Lucas Bend 3
Cairo 3 1
St. Louis 3 18 14
The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 A.M., on July 4th, 1870--6 hours
and 36 minutes ahead of the Natchez. The officers of the Natchez claimed
7 hours and 1 minute stoppage on account of fog and repairing machinery.
The R. E. Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the Natchez
was in charge of that veteran Southern boatman, Captain Thomas P.
Leathers.
Chapter 17 Cut-offs and Stephen
THESE dry details are of importance in one particular. They give me an
opportunity of introducing one of the Mississippi's oddest
peculiarities,--that of shortening its length from time to time. If you
will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder, it will
pretty fairly shape itself into an average section of the Mississippi
River; that is, the nine or ten hundred miles stretching from Cairo,
Illinois, southward to New Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked,
with a brief straight bit here and there at wide intervals. The two
hundred-mile stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so
crooked, that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the 'lower' river into deep
horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to
get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck,
half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple
of hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed
of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again. When the river is rising
fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back in the country, and
therefore of inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little
gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the
water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened:
to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch,
and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling its
value), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation finds itself
away out yonder on a big island; the old watercourse around it will soon
shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten miles of it, and down goes
its value to a fourth of its former worth. Watches are kept on those
narrow necks, at needful times, and if a man happens to be caught
cutting a ditch across them, the chances are all against his ever having
another opportunity to cut a ditch.
Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business. Once there
was a neck opposite Port Hudson, Louisiana, which was only half a mile
across, in its narrowest place. You could walk across there in fifteen
minutes; but if you made the journey around the cape on a raft, you
traveled thirty-five miles to accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the
river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed, and thus shortened
itself thirty-five miles. In the same way it shortened itself twenty-
five miles at Black Hawk Point in 1699. Below Red River Landing,
Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fifty years ago, I think). This
shortened the river twenty-eight miles. In our day, if you travel by
river from the southernmost of these three cut-offs to the northernmost,
you go only seventy miles. To do the same thing a hundred and seventy-
six years ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-eight miles!--
shortening of eighty-eight miles in that trifling distance. At some
forgotten time in the past, cut-offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana;
at island 92; at island 84; and at Hale's Point. These shortened the
river, in the aggregate, seventy-seven miles.
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at
Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend;
and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,
sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,
which shortened the river ten miles or more.
Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve
hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. It
was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was one
thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-
seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred and
seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and
'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had
occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the
far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is
here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue
from! Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great
things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi
has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average
of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm
person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic
Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower
Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand
miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-
two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-
quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets
together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a
mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.
When the water begins to flow through one of those ditches I have been
speaking of, it is time for the people thereabouts to move. The water
cleaves the banks away like a knife. By the time the ditch has become
twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity is as good as accomplished,
for no power on earth can stop it now. When the width has reached a
hundred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices half an acre wide.
The current flowing around the bend traveled formerly only five miles an
hour; now it is tremendously increased by the shortening of the
distance. I was on board the first boat that tried to go through the
cut-off at American Bend, but we did not get through. It was toward
midnight, and a wild night it was--thunder, lightning, and torrents of
rain. It was estimated that the current in the cut-off was making about
fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twelve or thirteen was the best our
boat could do, even in tolerably slack water, therefore perhaps we were
foolish to try the cut-off. However, Mr. Brown was ambitious, and he
kept on trying. The eddy running up the bank, under the 'point,' was
about as swift as the current out in the middle; so we would go flying
up the shore like a lightning express train, get on a big head of steam,
and 'stand by for a surge' when we struck the current that was whirling
by the point. But all our preparations were useless. The instant the
current hit us it spun us around like a top, the water deluged the
forecastle, and the boat careened so far over that one could hardly keep
his feet. The next instant we were away down the river, clawing with
might and main to keep out of the woods. We tried the experiment four
times. I stood on the forecastle companion way to see. It was
astonishing to observe how suddenly the boat would spin around and turn
tail the moment she emerged from the eddy and the current struck her
nose. The sounding concussion and the quivering would have been about
the same if she had come full speed against a sand-bank. Under the
lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins and the goodly
acres tumble into the river; and the crash they made was not a bad
effort at thunder. Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house
about twenty feet, that had a light burning in the window; and in the
same instant that house went overboard. Nobody could stay on our
forecastle; the water swept across it in a torrent every time we plunged
athwart the current. At the end of our fourth effort we brought up in
the woods two miles below the cut-off; all the country there was
overflowed, of course. A day or two later the cut-off was three-quarters
of a mile wide, and boats passed up through it without much difficulty,
and so saved ten miles.
The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's length twenty-eight miles.
There used to be a tradition connected with it. It was said that a boat
came along there in the night and went around the enormous elbow the
usual way, the pilots not knowing that the cut-off had been made. It was
a grisly, hideous night, and all shapes were vague and distorted. The
old bend had already begun to fill up, and the boat got to running away
from mysterious reefs, and occasionally hitting one. The perplexed
pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely unnecessary
wish that they might never get out of that place. As always happens in
such cases, that particular prayer was answered, and the others
neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is still butting around
in that deserted river, trying to find her way out. More than one grave
watchman has sworn to me that on drizzly, dismal nights, he has glanced
fearfully down that forgotten river as he passed the head of the island,
and seen the faint glow of the specter steamer's lights drifting through
the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her 'scape-pipes and
the plaintive cry of her leadsmen.
In the absence of further statistics, I beg to close this chapter with
one more reminiscence of 'Stephen.'
Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note for borrowed sums,
ranging from two hundred and fifty dollars upward. Stephen never paid
one of these notes, but he was very prompt and very zealous about
renewing them every twelve months.
Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen could no longer
borrow of his ancient creditors; so he was obliged to lie in wait for
new men who did not know him. Such a victim was good-hearted, simple
natured young Yates (I use a fictitious name, but the real name began,
as this one does, with a Y). Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a
berth, and when the month was ended and he stepped up to the clerk's
office and received his two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp new
bills, Stephen was there! His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very
little while Yates's two hundred and fifty dollars had changed hands.
The fact was soon known at pilot headquarters, and the amusement and
satisfaction of the old creditors were large and generous. But innocent
Yates never suspected that Stephen's promise to pay promptly at the end
of the week was a worthless one. Yates called for his money at the
stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up and put him off a week. He
called then, according to agreement, and came away sugar-coated again,
but suffering under another postponement. So the thing went on. Yates
haunted Stephen week after week, to no purpose, and at last gave it up.
And then straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates! Wherever Yates
appeared, there was the inevitable Stephen. And not only there, but
beaming with affection and gushing with apologies for not being able to
pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw him coming, he would turn and
fly, and drag his company with him, if he had company; but it was of no
use; his debtor would run him down and corner him. Panting and red-
faced, Stephen would come, with outstretched hands and eager eyes,
invade the conversation, shake both of Yates's arms loose in their
sockets, and begin--
'My, what a race I've had! I saw you didn't see me, and so I clapped on
all steam for fear I'd miss you entirely. And here you are! there, just
stand so, and let me look at you! just the same old noble countenance.'
[To Yates's friend:] 'Just look at him! LOOK at him! Ain't it just GOOD
to look at him! AIN'T it now? Ain't he just a picture! SOME call him
a picture; I call him a panorama! That's what he is--an entire panorama.
And now I'm reminded! How I do wish I could have seen you an hour
earlier! For twenty-four hours I've been saving up that two hundred and
fifty dollars for you; been looking for you everywhere. I waited at the
Planter's from six yesterday evening till two o'clock this morning,
without rest or food; my wife says, "Where have you been all night?" I
said, "This debt lies heavy on my mind." She says, "In all my days I
never saw a man take a debt to heart the way you do." I said, "It's my
nature; how can I change it?" She says, "Well, do go to bed and get some
rest." I said, "Not till that poor, noble young man has got his money."
So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, and the first man I
struck told me you had shipped on the "Grand Turk" and gone to New
Orleans. Well, sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. So
help me goodness, I couldn't help it. The man that owned the place come
out cleaning up with a rag, and said he didn't like to have people cry
against his building, and then it seemed to me that the whole world had
turned against me, and it wasn't any use to live any more; and coming
along an hour ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim Wilson
and paid him the two hundred and fifty dollars on account; and to think
that here you are, now, and I haven't got a cent! But as sure as I am
standing here on this ground on this particular brick,--there, I've
scratched a mark on the brick to remember it by,--I'll borrow that money
and pay it over to you at twelve o'clock sharp, tomorrow! Now, stand
so; let me look at you just once more.'
And so on. Yates's life became a burden to him. He could not escape
his debtor and his debtor's awful sufferings on account of not being
able to pay. He dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should
find Stephen lying in wait for him at the corner.
Bogart's billiard saloon was a great resort for pilots in those days.
They met there about as much to exchange river news as to play. One
morning Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept out of sight.
But by and by, when about all the pilots had arrived who were in town,
Stephen suddenly appeared in the midst, and rushed for Yates as for a
long-lost brother.
'OH, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the sight of you is such a
comfort to my eyes! Gentlemen, I owe all of you money; among you I owe
probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it; I intend to pay it
every last cent of it. You all know, without my telling you, what
sorrow it has cost me to remain so long under such deep obligations to
such patient and generous friends; but the sharpest pang I suffer--by
far the sharpest--is from the debt I owe to this noble young man here;
and I have come to this place this morning especially to make the
announcement that I have at last found a method whereby I can pay off
all my debts! And most especially I wanted HIM to be here when I
announced it. Yes, my faithful friend,--my benefactor, I've found the
method! I've found the method to pay off all my debts, and you'll get
your money!' Hope dawned in Yates's eye; then Stephen, beaming
benignantly, and placing his hand upon Yates's head, added, 'I am going
to pay them off in alphabetical order!'
Then he turned and disappeared. The full significance of Stephen's
'method' did not dawn upon the perplexed and musing crowd for some two
minutes; and then Yates murmured with a sigh--
'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't get any further than the
C's in THIS world, and I reckon that after a good deal of eternity has
wasted away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there as "that
poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. Louis in the early days!"
Chapter 18 I Take a Few Extra Lessons
DURING the two or two and a half years of my apprenticeship, I served
under many pilots, and had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and
many varieties of steamboats; for it was not always convenient for Mr.
Bixby to have me with him, and in such cases he sent me with somebody
else. I am to this day profiting somewhat by that experience; for in
that brief, sharp schooling, I got personally and familiarly acquainted
with about all the different types of human nature that are to be found
in fiction, biography, or history. The fact is daily borne in upon me,
that the average shore-employment requires as much as forty years to
equip a man with this sort of an education. When I say I am still
profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it has constituted me a
judge of men--no, it has not done that; for judges of men are born, not
made. My profit is various in kind and degree; but the feature of it
which I value most is the zest which that early experience has given to
my later reading. When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or
biography, I generally take a warm personal interest in him, for the
reason that I have known him before--met him on the river.
The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of the shadows of that
vanished time, is that of Brown, of the steamer 'Pennsylvania'--the man
referred to in a former chapter, whose memory was so good and tiresome.
He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, smooth-shaven, horse-faced,
ignorant, stingy, malicious, snarling, fault hunting, mote-magnifying
tyrant. I early got the habit of coming on watch with dread at my heart.
No matter how good a time I might have been having with the off-watch
below, and no matter how high my spirits might be when I started aloft,
my soul became lead in my body the moment I approached the pilot-house.
I still remember the first time I ever entered the presence of that man.
The boat had backed out from St. Louis and was 'straightening down;' I
ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very proud to be semi-
officially a member of the executive family of so fast and famous a
boat. Brown was at the wheel. I paused in the middle of the room, all
fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look around. I thought he took a
furtive glance at me out of the corner of his eye, but as not even this
notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken. By this time he was
picking his way among some dangerous 'breaks' abreast the woodyards;
therefore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I stepped softly
to the high bench and took a seat.
There was silence for ten minutes; then my new boss turned and inspected
me deliberately and painstakingly from head to heel for about--as it
seemed to me--a quarter of an hour. After which he removed his
countenance and I saw it no more for some seconds; then it came around
once more, and this question greeted me--
'Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?'
'Yes, sir.'
After this there was a pause and another inspection. Then--
'What's your name?'
I told him. He repeated it after me. It was probably the only thing he
ever forgot; for although I was with him many months he never addressed
himself to me in any other way than 'Here!' and then his command
followed.
'Where was you born?'
'In Florida, Missouri.'
A pause. Then--
'Dern sight better staid there!'
By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct questions, he pumped my
family history out of me.
The leads were going now, in the first crossing. This interrupted the
inquest. When the leads had been laid in, he resumed--
'How long you been on the river?'
I told him. After a pause--
'Where'd you get them shoes?'
I gave him the information.
'Hold up your foot!'
I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe minutely and
contemptuously, scratching his head thoughtfully, tilting his high
sugar-loaf hat well forward to facilitate the operation, then
ejaculated, 'Well, I'll be dod derned!' and returned to his wheel.
What occasion there was to be dod derned about it is a thing which is
still as much of a mystery to me now as it was then. It must have been
all of fifteen minutes--fifteen minutes of dull, homesick silence--
before that long horse-face swung round upon me again--and then, what a
change! It was as red as fire, and every muscle in it was working. Now
came this shriek--
'Here!--You going to set there all day?'
I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the electric suddenness
of the surprise. As soon as I could get my voice I said,
apologetically:--'I have had no orders, sir.'
'You've had no ORDERS! My, what a fine bird we are! We must have
ORDERS! Our father was a GENTLEMAN--owned slaves--and we've been to
SCHOOL. Yes, WE are a gentleman, TOO, and got to have ORDERS! ORDERS,
is it? ORDERS is what you want! Dod dern my skin, I'LL learn you to
swell yourself up and blow around here about your dod-derned ORDERS!
G'way from the wheel!' (I had approached it without knowing it.)
I moved back a step or two, and stood as in a dream, all my senses
stupefied by this frantic assault.
'What you standing there for? Take that ice-pitcher down to the texas-
tender-come, move along, and don't you be all day about it!'
The moment I got back to the pilot-house, Brown said--
'Here! What was you doing down there all this time?'
'I couldn't find the texas-tender; I had to go all the way to the
pantry.'
'Derned likely story! Fill up the stove.'
I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. Presently he shouted--
'Put down that shovel! Deadest numskull I ever saw--ain't even got
sense enough to load up a stove.'
All through the watch this sort of thing went on. Yes, and the
subsequent watches were much like it, during a stretch of months. As I
have said, I soon got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The moment
I was in the presence, even in the darkest night, I could feel those
yellow eyes upon me, and knew their owner was watching for a pretext to
spit out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say--
'Here! Take the wheel.'
Two minutes later--
'WHERE in the nation you going to? Pull her down! pull her down!'
After another moment--
'Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her go--meet her! meet her!'
Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the wheel from me, and meet
her himself, pouring out wrath upon me all the time.
George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was having good times now;
for his boss, George Ealer, was as kindhearted as Brown wasn't. Ritchie
had steeled for Brown the season before; consequently he knew exactly
how to entertain himself and plague me, all by the one operation.
Whenever I took the wheel for a moment on Ealer's watch, Ritchie would
sit back on the bench and play Brown, with continual ejaculations of
'Snatch her! snatch her! Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!' 'Here! Where
you going NOW? Going to run over that snag?' 'Pull her DOWN! Don't you
hear me? Pull her DOWN!' 'There she goes! JUST as I expected! I TOLD
you not to cramp that reef. G'way from the wheel!'
So I always had a rough time of it, no matter whose watch it was; and
sometimes it seemed to me that Ritchie's good-natured badgering was
pretty nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest nagging.
I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not answer. A cub had to
take everything his boss gave, in the way of vigorous comment and
criticism; and we all believed that there was a United States law making
it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten a pilot who was on duty.
However, I could IMAGINE myself killing Brown; there was no law against
that; and that was the thing I used always to do the moment I was abed.
Instead of going over my river in my mind as was my duty, I threw
business aside for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every
night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace ways, but in new and
picturesque ones;--ways that were sometimes surprising for freshness of
design and ghastliness of situation and environment.
Brown was ALWAYS watching for a pretext to find fault; and if he could
find no plausible pretext, he would invent one. He would scold you for
shaving a shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar, and for not
hugging it; for 'pulling down' when not invited, and for not pulling
down when not invited; for firing up without orders, and for waiting FOR
orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to find fault with
EVERYTHING you did; and another invariable rule of his was to throw all
his remarks (to you) into the form of an insult.
One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound down and heavily laden.
Brown was at one side of the wheel, steering; I was at the other,
standing by to 'pull down' or 'shove up.' He cast a furtive glance at
me every now and then. I had long ago learned what that meant; viz., he
was trying to invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was going
to take. By and by he stepped back from the wheel and said in his usual
snarly way--
'Here!--See if you've got gumption enough to round her to.'
This was simply BOUND to be a success; nothing could prevent it; for he
had never allowed me to round the boat to before; consequently, no
matter how I might do the thing, he could find free fault with it. He
stood back there with his greedy eye on me, and the result was what
might have been foreseen: I lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and
didn't know what I was about; I started too early to bring the boat
around, but detected a green gleam of joy in Brown's eye, and corrected
my mistake; I started around once more while too high up, but corrected
myself again in time; I made other false moves, and still managed to
save myself; but at last I grew so confused and anxious that I tumbled
into the very worst blunder of all--I got too far down before beginning
to fetch the boat around. Brown's chance was come.
His face turned red with passion; he made one bound, hurled me across
the house with a sweep of his arm, spun the wheel down, and began to
pour out a stream of vituperation upon me which lasted till he was out
of breath. In the course of this speech he called me all the different
kinds of hard names he could think of, and once or twice I thought he
was even going to swear--but he didn't this time. 'Dod dern' was the
nearest he ventured to the luxury of swearing, for he had been brought
up with a wholesome respect for future fire and brimstone.
That was an uncomfortable hour; for there was a big audience on the
hurricane deck. When I went to bed that night, I killed Brown in
seventeen different ways--all of them new.
Chapter 19 Brown and I Exchange Compliments
Two trips later, I got into serious trouble. Brown was steering; I was
'pulling down.' My younger brother appeared on the hurricane deck, and
shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other a mile or so below.
Brown gave no intimation that he had heard anything. But that was his
way: he never condescended to take notice of an under clerk. The wind
was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he always pretended he wasn't),
and I very much doubted if he had heard the order. If I had two heads, I
would have spoken; but as I had only one, it seemed judicious to take
care of it; so I kept still.
Presently, sure enough, we went sailing by that plantation. Captain
Klinefelter appeared on the deck, and said--
'Let her come around, sir, let her come around. Didn't Henry tell you to
land here?'
'NO, sir!'
'I sent him up to do, it.'
'He did come up; and that's all the good it done, the dod-derned fool.
He never said anything.'
'Didn't YOU hear him?' asked the captain of me.
Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this business, but there was
no way to avoid it; so I said--
'Yes, sir.'
I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before he uttered it; it was--
'Shut your mouth! you never heard anything of the kind.'
I closed my mouth according to instructions. An hour later, Henry
entered the pilot-house, unaware of what had been going on. He was a
thoroughly inoffensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I knew
Brown would have no pity on him. Brown began, straightway--
'Here! why didn't you tell me we'd got to land at that plantation?'
'I did tell you, Mr. Brown.'
'It's a lie!'
I said--
'You lie, yourself. He did tell you.'
Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and for as much as a moment
he was entirely speechless; then he shouted to me--
'I'll attend to your case in half a minute!' then to Henry, 'And you
leave the pilot-house; out with you!'
It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy started out, and even had
his foot on the upper step outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden
access of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and sprang after him;
but I was between, with a heavy stool, and I hit Brown a good honest
blow which stretched-him out.
I had committed the crime of crimes--I had lifted my hand against a
pilot on duty! I supposed I was booked for the penitentiary sure, and
couldn't be booked any surer if I went on and squared my long account
with this person while I had the chance; consequently I stuck to him and
pounded him with my fists a considerable time--I do not know how long,
the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer than it really was;--but
in the end he struggled free and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a
very natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this steamboat
tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen miles an hour and nobody
at the helm! However, Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full
stage, and correspondingly long and deep; and the boat was steering
herself straight down the middle and taking no chances. Still, that was
only luck--a body MIGHT have found her charging into the woods.
Perceiving, at a glance, that the 'Pennsylvania' was in no danger, Brown
gathered up the big spy-glass, war-club fashion, and ordered me out of
the pilot-house with more than Comanche bluster. But I was not afraid of
him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criticized his grammar; I
reformed his ferocious speeches for him, and put them into good English,
calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard
dialect of the Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted. He
could have done his part to admiration in a cross-fire of mere
vituperation, of course; but he was not equipped for this species of
controversy; so he presently laid aside his glass and took the wheel,
muttering and shaking his head; and I retired to the bench. The racket
had brought everybody to the hurricane deck, and I trembled when I saw
the old captain looking up from the midst of the crowd. I said to
myself, 'Now I AM done for!'--For although, as a rule, he was so
fatherly and indulgent toward the boat's family, and so patient of minor
shortcomings, he could be stern enough when the fault was worth it.
I tried to imagine what he WOULD do to a cub pilot who had been guilty
of such a crime as mine, committed on a boat guard-deep with costly
freight and alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. I
thought I would go and hide somewhere till I got a chance to slide
ashore. So I slipped out of the pilot-house, and down the steps, and
around to the texas door--and was in the act of gliding within, when the
captain confronted me! I dropped my head, and he stood over me in
silence a moment or two, then said impressively--
'Follow me.'
I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his parlor in the forward end
of the texas. We were alone, now. He closed the after door; then moved
slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat down; I stood before
him. He looked at me some little time, then said--
'So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?'
I answered meekly--
'Yes, sir.'
'Do you know that that is a very serious matter?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Are you aware that this boat was plowing down the river fully five
minutes with no one at the wheel?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did you strike him first?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What with?'
'A stool, sir.'
'Hard?'
'Middling, sir.'
'Did it knock him down?'
'He--he fell, sir.'
'Did you follow it up? Did you do anything further?'
'Yes, sir.'
'What did you do?'
'Pounded him, sir.'
'Pounded him?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did you pound him much?--that is, severely?'
'One might call it that, sir, maybe.'
'I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention that I said that. You
have been guilty of a great crime; and don't you ever be guilty of it
again, on this boat. BUT--lay for him ashore! Give him a good sound
thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the expenses. Now go--and mind you,
not a word of this to anybody. Clear out with you!--you've been guilty
of a great crime, you whelp!'
I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and a mighty
deliverance; and I heard him laughing to himself and slapping his fat
thighs after I had closed his door.
When Brown came off watch he went straight to the captain, who was
talking with some passengers on the boiler deck, and demanded that I be
put ashore in New Orleans--and added--
'I'll never turn a wheel on this boat again while that cub stays.'
The captain said--
'But he needn't come round when you are on watch, Mr. Brown.
'I won't even stay on the same boat with him. One of us has got to go
ashore.'
'Very well,' said the captain, 'let it be yourself;' and resumed his
talk with the passengers.
During the brief remainder of the trip, I knew how an emancipated slave
feels; for I was an emancipated slave myself. While we lay at landings,
I listened to George Ealer's flute; or to his readings from his two
bibles, that is to say, Goldsmith and Shakespeare; or I played chess
with him--and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back
his last move and ran the game out differently.
Chapter 20 A Catastrophe
WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the captain did not succeed in
finding another pilot; so he proposed that I should stand a daylight
watch, and leave the night watches to George Ealer. But I was afraid; I
had never stood a watch of any sort by myself, and I believed I should
be sure to get into trouble in the head of some chute, or ground the
boat in a near cut through some bar or other. Brown remained in his
place; but he would not travel with me. So the captain gave me an order
on the captain of the 'A. T. Lacey,' for a passage to St. Louis, and
said he would find a new pilot there and my steersman's berth could then
be resumed. The 'Lacey' was to leave a couple of days after the
'Pennsylvania.'
The night before the 'Pennsylvania' left, Henry and I sat chatting on a
freight pile on the levee till midnight. The subject of the chat,
mainly, was one which I think we had not exploited before--steamboat
disasters. One was then on its way to us, little as we suspected it;
the water which was to make the steam which should cause it, was washing
past some point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we talked;--but
it would arrive at the right time and the right place. We doubted if
persons not clothed with authority were of much use in cases of disaster
and attendant panic; still, they might be of SOME use; so we decided
that if a disaster ever fell within our experience we would at least
stick to the boat, and give such minor service as chance might throw in
the way. Henry remembered this, afterward, when the disaster came, and
acted accordingly.
The 'Lacey' started up the river two days behind the 'Pennsylvania.' We
touched at Greenville, Mississippi, a couple of days out, and somebody
shouted--
'The "Pennsylvania" is blown up at Ship Island, and a hundred and fifty
lives lost!'
At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got an extra, issued by a
Memphis paper, which gave some particulars. It mentioned my brother, and
said he was not hurt.
Further up the river we got a later extra. My brother was again
mentioned; but this time as being hurt beyond help. We did not get full
details of the catastrophe until we reached Memphis. This is the
sorrowful story--
It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The 'Pennsylvania' was
creeping along, north of Ship Island, about sixty miles below Memphis on
a half-head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fast being emptied.
George Ealer was in the pilot-house-alone, I think; the second engineer
and a striker had the watch in the engine room; the second mate had the
watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood, and my brother, clerks, were
asleep, as were also Brown and the head engineer, the carpenter, the
chief mate, and one striker; Captain Klinefelter was in the barber's
chair, and the barber was preparing to shave him. There were a good
many cabin passengers aboard, and three or four hundred deck passengers
--so it was said at the time--and not very many of them were astir. The
wood being nearly all out of the flat now, Ealer rang to 'come ahead'
full steam, and the next moment four of the eight boilers exploded with
a thunderous crash, and the whole forward third of the boat was hoisted
toward the sky! The main part of the mass, with the chimneys, dropped
upon the boat again, a mountain of riddled and chaotic rubbish--and
then, after a little, fire broke out.
Many people were flung to considerable distances, and fell in the river;
among these were Mr. Wood and my brother, and the carpenter. The
carpenter was still stretched upon his mattress when he struck the water
seventy-five feet from the boat. Brown, the pilot, and George Black,
chief clerk, were never seen or heard of after the explosion. The
barber's chair, with Captain Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left with
its back overhanging vacancy--everything forward of it, floor and all,
had disappeared; and the stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood
with one toe projecting over space, still stirring his lather
unconsciously, and saying, not a word.
When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging aloft in front of him, he
knew what the matter was; so he muffled his face in the lapels of his
coat, and pressed both hands there tightly to keep this protection in
its place so that no steam could get to his nose or mouth. He had ample
time to attend to these details while he was going up and returning. He
presently landed on top of the unexploded boilers, forty feet below the
former pilot-house, accompanied by his wheel and a rain of other stuff,
and enveloped in a cloud of scalding steam. All of the many who breathed
that steam, died; none escaped. But Ealer breathed none of it. He made
his way to the free air as quickly as he could; and when the steam
cleared away he returned and climbed up on the boilers again, and
patiently hunted out each and every one of his chessmen and the several
joints of his flute.
By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. Shrieks and groans
filled the air. A great many persons had been scalded, a great many
crippled; the explosion had driven an iron crowbar through one man's
body--I think they said he was a priest. He did not die at once, and his
sufferings were very dreadful. A young French naval cadet, of fifteen,
son of a French admiral, was fearfully scalded, but bore his tortures
manfully. Both mates were badly scalded, but they stood to their posts,
nevertheless. They drew the wood-boat aft, and they and the captain
fought back the frantic herd of frightened immigrants till the wounded
could be brought there and placed in safety first.
When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water, they struck out for shore,
which was only a few hundred yards away; but Henry presently said he
believed he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error!), and therefore
would swim back to the boat and help save the wounded. So they parted,
and Henry returned.
By this time the fire was making fierce headway, and several persons who
were imprisoned under the ruins were begging piteously for help. All
efforts to conquer the fire proved fruitless; so the buckets were
presently thrown aside and the officers fell-to with axes and tried to
cut the prisoners out. A striker was one of the captives; he said he was
not injured, but could not free himself; and when he saw that the fire
was likely to drive away the workers, he begged that some one would
shoot him, and thus save him from the more dreadful death. The fire did
drive the axmen away, and they had to listen, helpless, to this poor
fellow's supplications till the flames ended his miseries.
The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be accommodated there;
it was cut adrift, then, and it and the burning steamer floated down the
river toward Ship Island. They moored the flat at the head of the
island, and there, unsheltered from the blazing sun, the half-naked
occupants had to remain, without food or stimulants, or help for their
hurts, during the rest of the day. A steamer came along, finally, and
carried the unfortunates to Memphis, and there the most lavish
assistance was at once forthcoming. By this time Henry was insensible.
The physicians examined his injuries and saw that they were fatal, and
naturally turned their main attention to patients who could be saved.
Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets on the floor of a great
public hall, and among these was Henry. There the ladies of Memphis
came every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and delicacies of all
kinds, and there they remained and nursed the wounded. All the
physicians stood watches there, and all the medical students; and the
rest of the town furnished money, or whatever else was wanted. And
Memphis knew how to do all these things well; for many a disaster like
the 'Pennsylvania's' had happened near her doors, and she was
experienced, above all other cities on the river, in the gracious office
of the Good Samaritan'
The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was new and strange to
me. Two long rows of prostrate forms--more than forty, in all--and every
face and head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a gruesome
spectacle. I watched there six days and nights, and a very melancholy
experience it was. There was one daily incident which was peculiarly
depressing: this was the removal of the doomed to a chamber apart. It
was done in order that the MORALE of the other patients might not be
injuriously affected by seeing one of their number in the death-agony.
The fated one was always carried out with as little stir as possible,
and the stretcher was always hidden from sight by a wall of assistants;
but no matter: everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms, with its
muffled step and its slow movement meant; and all eyes watched it
wistfully, and a shudder went abreast of it like a wave.
I saw many poor fellows removed to the 'death-room,' and saw them no
more afterward. But I saw our chief mate carried thither more than
once. His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He was clothed
in linseed oil and raw cotton to his waist, and resembled nothing human.
He was often out of his mind; and then his pains would make him rave and
shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after a period of dumb exhaustion,
his disordered imagination would suddenly transform the great apartment
into a forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses into the crew; and
he would come to a sitting posture and shout, 'Hump yourselves, HUMP
yourselves, you petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers! going to be
all DAY getting that hatful of freight out?' and supplement this
explosion with a firmament-obliterating irruption or profanity which
nothing could stay or stop till his crater was empty. And now and then
while these frenzies possessed him, he would tear off handfuls of the
cotton and expose his cooked flesh to view. It was horrible. It was bad
for the others, of course--this noise and these exhibitions; so the
doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him. But, in his mind or
out of it, he would not take it. He said his wife had been killed by
that treacherous drug, and he would die before he would take it. He
suspected that the doctors were concealing it in his ordinary medicines
and in his water--so he ceased from putting either to his lips. Once,
when he had been without water during two sweltering days, he took the
dipper in his hand, and the sight of the limpid fluid, and the misery of
his thirst, tempted him almost beyond his strength; but he mastered
himself and threw it away, and after that he allowed no more to be
brought near him. Three times I saw him carried to the death-room,
insensible and supposed to be dying; but each time he revived, cursed
his attendants, and demanded to be taken back. He lived to be mate of a
steamboat again.
But he was the only one who went to the death-room and returned alive.
Dr. Peyton, a principal physician, and rich in all the attributes that
go to constitute high and flawless character, did all that educated
judgment and trained skill could do for Henry; but, as the newspapers
had said in the beginning, his hurts were past help. On the evening of
the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself with matters far away,
and his nerveless fingers 'picked at his coverlet.' His hour had struck;
we bore him to the death-room, poor boy.
Chapter 21 A Section in My Biography
IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged. I
dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes resulting, intermittent
work gave place to steady and protracted engagements. Time drifted
smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed--and hoped--that I was
going to follow the river the rest of my days, and die at the wheel when
my mission was ended. But by and by the war came, commerce was
suspended, my occupation was gone.
I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver miner in Nevada;
next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner, in California; next, a
reporter in San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the Sandwich
Islands; next, a roving correspondent in Europe and the East; next, an
instructional torch-bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I
became a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among the other
rocks of New England.
In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-drifting years
that have come and gone since I last looked from the windows of a pilot-
house.
Let us resume, now.
Chapter 22 I Return to My Muttons
AFTER twenty-one years' absence, I felt a very strong desire to see the
river again, and the steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left;
so I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a poet for company, and a
stenographer to 'take him down,' and started westward about the middle
of April.
As I proposed to make notes, with a view to printing, I took some
thought as to methods of procedure. I reflected that if I were
recognized, on the river, I should not be as free to go and come, talk,
inquire, and spy around, as I should be if unknown; I remembered that it
was the custom of steamboatmen in the old times to load up the confiding
stranger with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and put the
sophisticated friend off with dull and ineffectual facts: so I
concluded, that, from a business point of view, it would be an advantage
to disguise our party with fictitious names. The idea was certainly
good, but it bred infinite bother; for although Smith, Jones, and
Johnson are easy names to remember when there is no occasion to remember
them, it is next to impossible to recollect them when they are wanted.
How do criminals manage to keep a brand-new ALIAS in mind? This is a
great mystery. I was innocent; and yet was seldom able to lay my hand
on my new name when it was needed; and it seemed to me that if I had had
a crime on my conscience to further confuse me, I could never have kept
the name by me at all.
We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 A.M. April 18.
'EVENING. Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness drop gradually
out of it as one travels away from New York.'
I find that among my notes. It makes no difference which direction you
take, the fact remains the same. Whether you move north, south, east, or
west, no matter: you can get up in the morning and guess how far you
have come, by noting what degree of grace and picturesqueness is by that
time lacking in the costumes of the new passengers,--I do not mean of
the women alone, but of both sexes. It may be that CARRIAGE is at the
bottom of this thing; and I think it is; for there are plenty of ladies
and gentlemen in the provincial cities whose garments are all made by
the best tailors and dressmakers of New York; yet this has no
perceptible effect upon the grand fact: the educated eye never mistakes
those people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a godless grace, and snap,
and style about a born and bred New-Yorker which mere clothing cannot
effect.
'APRIL 19. This morning, struck into the region of full goatees--
sometimes accompanied by a mustache, but only occasionally.'
It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an obsolete and uncomely
fashion; it was like running suddenly across a forgotten acquaintance
whom you had supposed dead for a generation. The goatee extends over a
wide extent of country; and is accompanied by an iron-clad belief in
Adam and the biblical history of creation, which has not suffered from
the assaults of the scientists.
'AFTERNOON. At the railway stations the loafers carry BOTH hands in
their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore, that one hand was
sometimes out of doors,--here, never. This is an important fact in
geography.'
If the loafers determined the character of a country, it would be still
more important, of course.
'Heretofore, all along, the station-loafer has been often observed to
scratch one shin with the other foot; here, these remains of activity
are wanting. This has an ominous look.'
By and by, we entered the tobacco-chewing region. Fifty years ago, the
tobacco-chewing region covered the Union. It is greatly restricted now.
Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, however. Later--away
down the Mississippi--they became the rule. They disappeared from other
sections of the Union with the mud; no doubt they will disappear from
the river villages, also, when proper pavements come in.
We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At the counter of the
hotel I tendered a hurriedly-invented fictitious name, with a miserable
attempt at careless ease. The clerk paused, and inspected me in the
compassionate way in which one inspects a respectable person who is
found in doubtful circumstances; then he said--
'It's all right; I know what sort of a room you want. Used to clerk at
the St. James, in New York.'
An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career. We started to the
supper room, and met two other men whom I had known elsewhere. How odd
and unfair it is: wicked impostors go around lecturing under my NOM DE
GUERRE and nobody suspects them; but when an honest man attempts an
imposture, he is exposed at once.
One thing seemed plain: we must start down the river the next day, if
people who could not be deceived were going to crop up at this rate: an
unpalatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have a week in St.
Louis. The Southern was a good hotel, and we could have had a
comfortable time there. It is large, and well conducted, and its
decorations do not make one cry, as do those of the vast Palmer House,
in Chicago. True, the billiard-tables were of the Old Silurian Period,
and the cues and balls of the Post-Pliocene; but there was refreshment
in this, not discomfort; for there is rest and healing in the
contemplation of antiquities.
The most notable absence observable in the billiard-room, was the
absence of the river man. If he was there he had taken in his sign, he
was in disguise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, and
ostentatious displays of money, and pompous squanderings of it, which
used to distinguish the steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowd in the
bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. Louis. In those
times, the principal saloons were always populous with river men; given
fifty players present, thirty or thirty-five were likely to be from the
river. But I suspected that the ranks were thin now, and the
steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy. Why, in my time they used to
call the 'barkeep' Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him on the shoulder; I
watched for that. But none of these people did it. Manifestly a glory
that once was had dissolved and vanished away in these twenty-one years.
When I went up to my room, I found there the young man called Rogers,
crying. Rogers was not his name; neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter,
Ferguson, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered to either of these that
a body found handy in an emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he
perceived that you meant him. He said--
'What is a person to do here when he wants a drink of water?--drink this
slush?'
'Can't you drink it?'
'I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'
Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not
affected this water's mulatto complexion in the least; a score of
centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the
turbulent, bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly
an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the
diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate
the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them
both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is
very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases
hunger; the other, thirst. But the natives do not take them separately,
but together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in the
bottom of a glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as they
would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter,
but once used to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the
case. It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is
worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing.
Next morning, we drove around town in the rain. The city seemed but
little changed. It WAS greatly changed, but it did not seem so; because
in St. Louis, as in London and Pittsburgh, you can't persuade a new
thing to look new; the coal smoke turns it into an antiquity the moment
you take your hand off it. The place had just about doubled its size,
since I was a resident of it, and was now become a city of 400,000
inhabitants; still, in the solid business parts, it looked about as it
had looked formerly. Yet I am sure there is not as much smoke in St.
Louis now as there used to be. The smoke used to bank itself in a dense
billowy black canopy over the town, and hide the sky from view. This
shelter is very much thinner now; still, there is a sufficiency of smoke
there, I think. I heard no complaint.
However, on the outskirts changes were apparent enough; notably in
dwelling-house architecture. The fine new homes are noble and beautiful
and modern. They stand by themselves, too, with green lawns around
them; whereas the dwellings of a former day are packed together in
blocks, and are all of one pattern, with windows all alike, set in an
arched frame-work of twisted stone; a sort of house which was handsome
enough when it was rarer.
There was another change--the Forest Park. This was new to me. It is
beautiful and very extensive, and has the excellent merit of having been
made mainly by nature. There are other parks, and fine ones, notably
Tower Grove and the Botanical Gardens; for St. Louis interested herself
in such improvements at an earlier day than did the most of our cities.
The first time I ever saw St. Louis, I could have bought it for six
million dollars, and it was the mistake of my life that I did not do it.
It was bitter now to look abroad over this domed and steepled
metropolis, this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching away on
every hand into dim, measure-defying distances, and remember that I had
allowed that opportunity to go by. Why I should have allowed it to go
by seems, of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, at a first glance;
yet there were reasons at the time to justify this course.
A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, writing some forty-five or
fifty years ago, said--'The streets are narrow, ill paved and ill
lighted.' Those streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are
ill paved yet; but the reproach of ill lighting cannot be repeated, now.
The 'Catholic New Church' was the only notable building then, and Mr.
Murray was confidently called upon to admire it, with its 'species of
Grecian portico, surmounted by a kind of steeple, much too diminutive in
its proportions, and surmounted by sundry ornaments' which the
unimaginative Scotchman found himself 'quite unable to describe;' and
therefore was grateful when a German tourist helped him out with the
exclamation--'By ---, they look exactly like bed-posts!' St. Louis is
well equipped with stately and noble public buildings now, and the
little church, which the people used to be so proud of, lost its
importance a long time ago. Still, this would not surprise Mr. Murray,
if he could come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness of St.
Louis with strong confidence.
The further we drove in our inspection-tour, the more sensibly I
realized how the city had grown since I had seen it last; changes in
detail became steadily more apparent and frequent than at first, too:
changes uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.
But the change of changes was on the 'levee.' This time, a departure
from the rule. Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see
a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was melancholy, this was woeful.
The absence of the pervading and jocund steamboatman from the billiard-
saloon was explained. He was absent because he is no more. His
occupation is gone, his power has passed away, he is absorbed into the
common herd, he grinds at the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous.
Half a dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves, a negro
fatigued with whiskey stretched asleep, in a wide and soundless vacancy,
where the serried hosts of commerce used to contend!{footnote [Capt.
Marryat, writing forty-five years ago says: 'St. Louis has 20,000
inhabitants. THE RIVER ABREAST OF THE TOWN IS CROWDED WITH STEAMBOATS,
LYING IN TWO OR THREE TIERS.']} Here was desolation, indeed.
'The old, old sea, as one in tears, Comes murmuring, with foamy lips,
And knocking at the vacant piers, Calls for his long-lost multitude of
ships.'
The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done it well and
completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along over our heads, had
done its share in the slaughter and spoliation. Remains of former
steamboatmen told me, with wan satisfaction, that the bridge doesn't
pay. Still, it can be no sufficient compensation to a corpse, to know
that the dynamite that laid him out was not of as good quality as it had
been supposed to be.
The pavements along the river front were bad: the sidewalks were rather
out of repair; there was a rich abundance of mud. All this was familiar
and satisfying; but the ancient armies of drays, and struggling throngs
of men, and mountains of freight, were gone; and Sabbath reigned in
their stead. The immemorial mile of cheap foul doggeries remained, but
business was dull with them; the multitudes of poison-swilling Irishmen
had departed, and in their places were a few scattering handfuls of
ragged negroes, some drinking, some drunk, some nodding, others asleep.
St. Louis is a great and prosperous and advancing city; but the river-
edge of it seems dead past resurrection.
Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty
years, it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than thirty more,
it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of
course it is not absolutely dead, neither is a crippled octogenarian who
could once jump twenty-two feet on level ground; but as contrasted with
what it was in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be called
dead.
It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reducing the freight-trip
to New Orleans to less than a week. The railroads have killed the
steamboat passenger traffic by doing in two or three days what the
steamboats consumed a week in doing; and the towing-fleets have killed
the through-freight traffic by dragging six or seven steamer-loads of
stuff down the river at a time, at an expense so trivial that steamboat
competition was out of the question.
Freight and passenger way-traffic remains to the steamers. This is in
the hands--along the two thousand miles of river between St. Paul and
New Orleans---of two or three close corporations well fortified with
capital; and by able and thoroughly business-like management and system,
these make a sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once
prodigious steamboating industry. I suppose that St. Louis and New
Orleans have not suffered materially by the change, but alas for the
wood-yard man!
He used to fringe the river all the way; his close-ranked merchandise
stretched from the one city to the other, along the banks, and he sold
uncountable cords of it every year for cash on the nail; but all the
scattering boats that are left burn coal now, and the seldomest
spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a wood-pile. Where now is the
once wood-yard man?
Chapter 23 Traveling Incognito
MY idea was, to tarry a while in every town between St. Louis and New
Orleans. To do this, it would be necessary to go from place to place by
the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to make, and would have
been an easy one to follow, twenty years ago--but not now. There are
wide intervals between boats, these days.
I wanted to begin with the interesting old French settlements of St.
Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty miles below St. Louis. There was only one
boat advertised for that section--a Grand Tower packet. Still, one boat
was enough; so we went down to look at her. She was a venerable rack-
heap, and a fraud to boot; for she was playing herself for personal
property, whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly caked all over her
that she was righteously taxable as real estate. There are places in New
England where her hurricane deck would be worth a hundred and fifty
dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle was quite good--the new crop
of wheat was already springing from the cracks in protected places. The
companionway was of a dry sandy character, and would have been well
suited for grapes, with a southern exposure and a little subsoiling.
The soil of the boiler deck was thin and rocky, but good enough for
grazing purposes. A colored boy was on watch here--nobody else visible.
We gathered from him that this calm craft would go, as advertised, 'if
she got her trip;' if she didn't get it, she would wait for it.
'Has she got any of her trip?'
'Bless you, no, boss. She ain't unloadened, yit. She only come in dis
mawnin'.'
He was uncertain as to when she might get her trip, but thought it might
be to-morrow or maybe next day. This would not answer at all; so we had
to give up the novelty of sailing down the river on a farm. We had one
more arrow in our quiver: a Vicksburg packet, the 'Gold Dust,' was to
leave at 5 P.M. We took passage in her for Memphis, and gave up the idea
of stopping off here and there, as being impracticable. She was neat,
clean, and comfortable. We camped on the boiler deck, and bought some
cheap literature to kill time with. The vender was a venerable Irishman
with a benevolent face and a tongue that worked easily in the socket,
and from him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty-four years
and had never been across the river during that period. Then he wandered
into a very flowing lecture, filled with classic names and allusions,
which was quite wonderful for fluency until the fact became rather
apparent that this was not the first time, nor perhaps the fiftieth,
that the speech had been delivered. He was a good deal of a character,
and much better company than the sappy literature he was selling. A
random remark, connecting Irishmen and beer, brought this nugget of
information out of him--
They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, sir. Give an Irishman
lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with
copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is
the saving of him, sir.'
At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and crossed the river. As we
crept toward the shore, in the thick darkness, a blinding glory of white
electric light burst suddenly from our forecastle, and lit up the water
and the warehouses as with a noon-day glare. Another big change, this--
no more flickering, smoky, pitch-dripping, ineffectual torch-baskets,
now: their day is past. Next, instead of calling out a score of hands
to man the stage, a couple of men and a hatful of steam lowered it from
the derrick where it was suspended, launched it, deposited it in just
the right spot, and the whole thing was over and done with before a mate
in the olden time could have got his profanity-mill adjusted to begin
the preparatory services. Why this new and simple method of handling the
stages was not thought of when the first steamboat was built, is a
mystery which helps one to realize what a dull-witted slug the average
human being is.
We finally got away at two in the morning, and when I turned out at six,
we were rounding to at a rocky point where there was an old stone
warehouse--at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayed dwelling-
houses were near by, in the shelter of the leafy hills; but there were
no evidences of human or other animal life to be seen. I wondered if I
had forgotten the river; for I had no recollection whatever of this
place; the shape of the river, too, was unfamiliar; there was nothing in
sight, anywhere, that I could remember ever having seen before. I was
surprised, disappointed, and annoyed.
We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, and two well-dressed,
lady-like young girls, together with sundry Russia-leather bags. A
strange place for such folk! No carriage was waiting. The party moved
off as if they had not expected any, and struck down a winding country
road afoot.
But the mystery was explained when we got under way again; for these
people were evidently bound for a large town which lay shut in behind a
tow-head (i.e., new island) a couple of miles below this landing. I
couldn't remember that town; I couldn't place it, couldn't call its
name. So I lost part of my temper. I suspected that it might be St.
Genevieve--and so it proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river
had been about: it had built up this huge useless tow-head directly in
front of this town, cut off its river communications, fenced it away
completely, and made a 'country' town of it. It is a fine old place,
too, and deserved a better fate. It was settled by the French, and is a
relic of a time when one could travel from the mouths of the Mississippi
to Quebec and be on French territory and under French rule all the way.
Presently I ascended to the hurricane deck and cast a longing glance
toward the pilot-house.
Chapter 24 My Incognito is Exploded
AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on watch, I was satisfied
that I had never seen him before; so I went up there. The pilot
inspected me; I re-inspected the pilot. These customary preliminaries
over, I sat down on the high bench, and he faced about and went on with
his work. Every detail of the pilot-house was familiar to me, with one
exception,--a large-mouthed tube under the breast-board. I puzzled over
that thing a considerable time; then gave up and asked what it was for.
'To hear the engine-bells through.'
It was another good contrivance which ought to have been invented half a
century sooner. So I was thinking, when the pilot asked--
'Do you know what this rope is for?'
I managed to get around this question, without committing myself.
'Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot-house?'
I crept under that one.
'Where are you from?'
'New England.'
'First time you have ever been West?'
I climbed over this one.
'If you take an interest in such things, I can tell you what all these
things are for.'
I said I should like it.
'This,' putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 'is to sound the fire-
alarm; this,' putting his hand on a go-ahead bell, 'is to call the
texas-tender; this one,' indicating the whistle-lever, 'is to call the
captain'--and so he went on, touching one object after another, and
reeling off his tranquil spool of lies.
I had never felt so like a passenger before. I thanked him, with
emotion, for each new fact, and wrote it down in my note-book. The pilot
warmed to his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in the good old-
fashioned way. At times I was afraid he was going to rupture his
invention; but it always stood the strain, and he pulled through all
right. He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the river's
marvelous eccentricities of one sort and another, and backed them up
with some pretty gigantic illustrations. For instance--
'Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the water yonder? well,
when I first came on the river, that was a solid ridge of rock, over
sixty feet high and two miles long. All washed away but that.' [This
with a sigh.]
I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it seemed to me that killing,
in any ordinary way, would be too good for him.
Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal-scuttle slanting aloft
on the end of a beam, was steaming by in the distance, he indifferently
drew attention to it, as one might to an object grown wearisome through
familiarity, and observed that it was an 'alligator boat.'
'An alligator boat? What's it for?'
'To dredge out alligators with.'
'Are they so thick as to be troublesome?'
'Well, not now, because the Government keeps them down. But they used to
be. Not everywhere; but in favorite places, here and there, where the
river is wide and shoal-like Plum Point, and Stack Island, and so on--
places they call alligator beds.'
'Did they actually impede navigation?'
'Years ago, yes, in very low water; there was hardly a trip, then, that
we didn't get aground on alligators.'
It seemed to me that I should certainly have to get out my tomahawk.
However, I restrained myself and said--
'It must have been dreadful.'
'Yes, it was one of the main difficulties about piloting. It was so hard
to tell anything about the water; the damned things shift around so--
never lie still five minutes at a time. You can tell a wind-reef,
straight off, by the look of it; you can tell a break; you can tell a
sand-reef--that's all easy; but an alligator reef doesn't show up, worth
anything. Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is; and when
you do see where it is, like as not it ain't there when YOU get there,
the devils have swapped around so, meantime. Of course there were some
few pilots that could judge of alligator water nearly as well as they
could of any other kind, but they had to have natural talent for it; it
wasn't a thing a body could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me
see: there was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and Squire Bell, and
Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon,
and Jim Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood--all A 1 alligator
pilots. THEY could tell alligator water as far as another Christian
could tell whiskey. Read it?--Ah, COULDN'T they, though! I only wish I
had as many dollars as they could read alligator water a mile and a half
off. Yes, and it paid them to do it, too. A good alligator pilot could
always get fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other people had to
lay up for alligators, but those fellows never laid up for alligators;
they never laid up for anything but fog. They could SMELL the best
alligator water it was said; I don't know whether it was so or not, and
I think a body's got his hands full enough if he sticks to just what he
knows himself, without going around backing up other people's say-so's,
though there's a plenty that ain't backward about doing it, as long as
they can roust out something wonderful to tell. Which is not the style
of Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom--maybe quarter-LESS.'
[My! Was this Rob Styles?--This mustached and stately figure?-A slim
enough cub, in my time. How he has improved in comeliness in five-and-
twenty year and in the noble art of inflating his facts.] After these
musings, I said aloud--
'I should think that dredging out the alligators wouldn't have done much
good, because they could come back again right away.'
'If you had had as much experience of alligators as I have, you wouldn't
talk like that. You dredge an alligator once and he's CONVINCED. It's
the last you hear of HIM. He wouldn't come back for pie. If there's one
thing that an alligator is more down on than another, it's being
dredged. Besides, they were not simply shoved out of the way; the most
of the scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them into the hold;
and when they had got a trip, they took them to Orleans to the
Government works.'
'What for?'
'Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. All the Government shoes
are made of alligator hide. It makes the best shoes in the world. They
last five years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator fishery is
a Government monopoly. All the alligators are Government property--just
like the live-oaks. You cut down a live-oak, and Government fines you
fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up you go for misprision of
treason--lucky duck if they don't hang you, too. And they will, if
you're a Democrat. The buzzard is the sacred bird of the South, and you
can't touch him; the alligator is the sacred bird of the Government, and
you've got to let him alone.'
'Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?'
'Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years.'
'Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator boats in service?'
'Just for police duty--nothing more. They merely go up and down now and
then. The present generation of alligators know them as easy as a
burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one coming, they break camp and
go for the woods.'
After rounding-out and finishing-up and polishing-off the alligator
business, he dropped easily and comfortably into the historical vein,
and told of some tremendous feats of half-a-dozen old-time steamboats of
his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a certain
extraordinary performance of his chief favorite among this distinguished
fleet--and then adding--
'That boat was the "Cyclone,"--last trip she ever made--she sunk, that
very trip--captain was Tom Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I
struck. He couldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind of
weather. Why, he would make you fairly shudder. He WAS the most
scandalous liar! I left him, finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb
says, "like master, like man;" and if you stay with that kind of a man,
you'll come under suspicion by and by, just as sure as you live. He
paid first-class wages; but said I, What's wages when your reputation's
in danger? So I let the wages go, and froze to my reputation. And I've
never regretted it. Reputation's worth everything, ain't it? That's the
way I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any seven men in the
world--all packed in the stern-sheets of his skull, of course, where
they belonged. They weighed down the back of his head so that it made
his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it was vanity, but it
wasn't, it was malice. If you only saw his foot, you'd take him to be
nineteen feet high, but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of
drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, no doubt, if his foot
was made first, but he didn't get there; he was only five feet ten.
That's what he was, and that's what he is. You take the lies out of
him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out
of him, and he'll disappear. That "Cyclone" was a rattler to go, and
the sweetest thing to steer that ever walked the waters. Set her
amidships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all you had to
do. She would hold herself on a star all night, if you let her alone.
You couldn't ever feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer
her than it is to count the Republican vote in a South Carolina
election. One morning, just at daybreak, the last trip she ever made,
they took her rudder aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it;
I backed her out from the wood-yard and went a-weaving down the river
all serene. When I had gone about twenty-three miles, and made four
horribly crooked crossings--'
'Without any rudder?'
'Yes--old Capt. Tom appeared on the roof and began to find fault with me
for running such a dark night--'
'Such a DARK NIGHT ?--Why, you said--'
'Never mind what I said,--'twas as dark as Egypt now, though pretty soon
the moon began to rise, and--'
'You mean the SUN--because you started out just at break of--look here!
Was this BEFORE you quitted the captain on account of his lying, or--'
'It was before--oh, a long time before. And as I was saying, he--'
'But was this the trip she sunk, or was--'
'Oh, no!--months afterward. And so the old man, he--'
'Then she made TWO last trips, because you said--'
He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away his perspiration, and
said--
'Here!' (calling me by name), 'YOU take her and lie a while--you're
handier at it than I am. Trying to play yourself for a stranger and an
innocent!--why, I knew you before you had spoken seven words; and I made
up my mind to find out what was your little game. It was to DRAW ME OUT.
Well, I let you, didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish the watch; and
next time play fair, and you won't have to work your passage.'
Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not six hours out from St.
Louis! but I had gained a privilege, any way, for I had been itching to
get my hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed to have
forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgotten how to steer a steamboat,
nor how to enjoy it, either.
Chapter 25 From Cairo to Hickman
THE scenery, from St. Louis to Cairo--two hundred miles--is varied and
beautiful. The hills were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now,
and were a gracious and worthy setting for the broad river flowing
between. Our trip began auspiciously, with a perfect day, as to breeze
and sunshine, and our boat threw the miles out behind her with
satisfactory despatch.
We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois; Chester has also a
penitentiary now, and is otherwise marching on. At Grand Tower, too,
there was a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The former town gets
its name from a huge, squat pillar of rock, which stands up out of the
water on the Missouri side of the river--a piece of nature's fanciful
handiwork--and is one of the most picturesque features of the scenery of
that region. For nearer or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the Devil's
Bake Oven--so called, perhaps, because it does not powerfully resemble
anybody else's bake oven; and the Devil's Tea Table--this latter a great
smooth-surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass stem, perched
some fifty or sixty feet above the river, beside a beflowered and
garlanded precipice, and sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for
anybody, Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have the Devil's
Elbow and the Devil's Race-course, and lots of other property of his
which I cannot now call to mind.
The Town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier place than it had been in
old times, but it seemed to need some repairs here and there, and a new
coat of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me to see the old
coat once more. 'Uncle' Mumford, our second officer, said the place had
been suffering from high water, and consequently was not looking its
best now. But he said it was not strange that it didn't waste white-
wash on itself, for more lime was made there, and of a better quality,
than anywhere in the West; and added--'On a dairy farm you never can get
any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar for it on a sugar plantation;
and it is against sense to go to a lime town to hunt for white-wash.' In
my own experience I knew the first two items to be true; and also that
people who sell candy don't care for candy; therefore there was
plausibility in Uncle Mumford's final observation that 'people who make
lime run more to religion than whitewash.' Uncle Mumford said, further,
that Grand Tower was a great coaling center and a prospering place.
Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes a handsome
appearance. There is a great Jesuit school for boys at the foot of the
town by the river. Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for
thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri! There was another
college higher up on an airy summit--a bright new edifice, picturesquely
and peculiarly towered and pinnacled--a sort of gigantic casters, with
the cruets all complete. Uncle Mumford said that Cape Girardeau was the
Athens of Missouri, and contained several colleges besides those already
mentioned; and all of them on a religious basis of one kind or another.
He directed my attention to what he called the 'strong and pervasive
religious look of the town,' but I could not see that it looked more
religious than the other hill towns with the same slope and built of the
same kind of bricks. Partialities often make people see more than really
exists.
Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on the river. He is a man of
practical sense and a level head; has observed; has had much experience
of one sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a perceptible
dash of poetry in his composition, an easy gift of speech, a thick growl
in his voice, and an oath or two where he can get at them when the
exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift. He is a mate of the
blessed old-time kind; and goes gravely damning around, when there is
work to the fore, in a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman's heart with
sweet soft longings for the vanished days that shall come no more. 'GIT
up there you! Going to be all day? Why d'n't you SAY you was petrified
in your hind legs, before you shipped!'
He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, but firm; so they like
him, and stay with him. He is still in the slouchy garb of the old
generation of mates; but next trip the Anchor Line will have him in
uniform--a natty blue naval uniform, with brass buttons, along with all
the officers of the line--and then he will be a totally different style
of scenery from what he is now.
Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the other changes put
together, for surprise. Still, there is another surprise--that it was
not made fifty years ago. It is so manifestly sensible, that it might
have been thought of earlier, one would suppose. During fifty years, out
there, the innocent passenger in need of help and information, has been
mistaking the mate for the cook, and the captain for the barber--and
being roughly entertained for it, too. But his troubles are ended now.
And the greatly improved aspect of the boat's staff is another advantage
achieved by the dress-reform period.
Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. They used to call it
'Steersman's Bend;' plain sailing and plenty of water in it, always;
about the only place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed to
take a boat through, in low water.
Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and Commerce at the foot of it,
were towns easily rememberable, as they had not undergone conspicuous
alteration. Nor the Chain, either--in the nature of things; for it is a
chain of sunken rocks admirably arranged to capture and kill steamboats
on bad nights. A good many steamboat corpses lie buried there, out of
sight; among the rest my first friend the 'Paul Jones;' she knocked her
bottom out, and went down like a pot, so the historian told me--Uncle
Mumford. He said she had a gray mare aboard, and a preacher. To me,
this sufficiently accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to
Mumford, who added--
'But there are many ignorant people who would scoff at such a matter,
and call it superstition. But you will always notice that they are
people who have never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I went
down the river once in such company. We grounded at Bloody Island; we
grounded at Hanging Dog; we grounded just below this same Commerce; we
jolted Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks in the
'Graveyard' behind Goose Island; we had a roustabout killed in a fight;
we burnt a boiler; broke a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo
with nine feet of water in the hold--may have been more, may have been
less. I remember it as if it were yesterday. The men lost their heads
with terror. They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and threw
the preacher overboard, or we should not have arrived at all. The
preacher was fished out and saved. He acknowledged, himself, that he had
been to blame. I remember it all, as if it were yesterday.'
That this combination--of preacher and gray mare--should breed calamity,
seems strange, and at first glance unbelievable; but the fact is
fortified by so much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor
reason. I myself remember a case where a captain was warned by numerous
friends against taking a gray mare and a preacher with him, but
persisted in his purpose in spite of all that could be said; and the
same day--it may have been the next, and some say it was, though I think
it was the same day--he got drunk and fell down the hatchway, and was
borne to his home a corpse. This is literally true.
No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred of it is washed away.
I do not even remember what part of the river it used to be in, except
that it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It was a bad region--
all around and about Hat Island, in early days. A farmer who lived on
the Illinois shore there, said that twenty-nine steamboats had left
their bones strung along within sight from his house. Between St. Louis
and Cairo the steamboat wrecks average one to the mile;--two hundred
wrecks, altogether.
I could recognize big changes from Commerce down. Beaver Dam Rock was
out in the middle of the river now, and throwing a prodigious 'break;'
it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down outside of it. A
big island that used to be away out in mid-river, has retired to the
Missouri shore, and boats do not go near it any more. The island called
Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge now, and is booked for early
destruction. Goose Island is all gone but a little dab the size of a
steamboat. The perilous 'Graveyard,' among whose numberless wrecks we
used to pick our way so slowly and gingerly, is far away from the
channel now, and a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly called
the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, which used to lie close to
the Illinois shore, is now on the Missouri side, a mile away; it is
joined solidly to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to see where the
seam is--but it is Illinois ground yet, and the people who live on it
have to ferry themselves over and work the Illinois roads and pay
Illinois taxes: singular state of things!
Near the mouth of the river several islands were missing--washed away.
Cairo was still there--easily visible across the long, flat point upon
whose further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long way around to
get to it. Night fell as we were going out of the 'Upper River' and
meeting the floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxiety; for
the hidden rock which used to lie right in the way has moved up stream a
long distance out of the channel; or rather, about one county has gone
into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo point has 'made
down' and added to its long tongue of territory correspondingly. The
Mississippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles one man's
farm overboard without building a new farm just like it for that man's
neighbor. This keeps down hard feelings.
Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steamboat which paid no
attention to our whistle and then tried to cross our bows. By doing some
strong backing, we saved him; which was a great loss, for he would have
made good literature.
Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially built, and has a city
look about it which is in noticeable contrast to its former estate, as
per Mr. Dickens's portrait of it. However, it was already building with
bricks when I had seen it last--which was when Colonel (now General)
Grant was drilling his first command there. Uncle Mumford says the
libraries and Sunday-schools have done a good work in Cairo, as well as
the brick masons. Cairo has a heavy railroad and river trade, and her
situation at the junction of the two great rivers is so advantageous
that she cannot well help prospering.
When I turned out, in the morning, we had passed Columbus, Kentucky, and
were approaching Hickman, a pretty town, perched on a handsome hill.
Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly enjoyed a great and
lucrative trade in that staple, collecting it there in her warehouses
from a large area of country and shipping it by boat; but Uncle Mumford
says she built a railway to facilitate this commerce a little more, and
he thinks it facilitated it the wrong way--took the bulk of the trade
out of her hands by 'collaring it along the line without gathering it at
her doors.'
Chapter 26 Under Fire
TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down into the
upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was just
behind us, so there was a good deal said about the famous battle of
Belmont. Several of the boat's officers had seen active service in the
Mississippi war-fleet. I gathered that they found themselves sadly out
of their element in that kind of business at first, but afterward got
accustomed to it, reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it. One
of our pilots had his first war experience in the Belmont fight, as a
pilot on a boat in the Confederate service. I had often had a curiosity
to know how a green hand might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all
solitary and alone on high in a pilot house, a target for Tom, Dick and
Harry, and nobody at his elbow to shame him from showing the white
feather when matters grew hot and perilous around him; so, to me his
story was valuable--it filled a gap for me which all histories had left
till that time empty.
THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLE
He said--
It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the morning. I
was on the 'R. H. W. Hill.' Took over a load of troops from Columbus.
Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner said he was
going to see the fight; wanted me to go along. I said, no, I wasn't
anxious, I would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I was a
coward, and left.
That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men strip
their coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow me to
hell or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house; and then
he galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General Pillow, with his
white hair, mounted on a white horse, sailed in, too, leading his troops
as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and
here they came! tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil take the
hindmost! and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter. I
was sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window. All at
once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear. Judged it was a bullet.
I didn't stop to think about anything, I just tilted over backwards and
landed on the floor, and staid there. The balls came booming around.
Three cannon-balls went through the chimney; one ball took off the
corner of the pilot-house; shells were screaming and bursting all
around. Mighty warm times--I wished I hadn't come. I lay there on the
pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster and faster. I crept in
behind the big stove, in the middle of the pilot-house. Presently a
minie-ball came through the stove, and just grazed my head, and cut my
hat. I judged it was time to go away from there. The captain was on
the roof with a red-headed major from Memphis--a fine-looking man. I
heard him say he wanted to leave here, but 'that pilot is killed.' I
crept over to the starboard side to pull the bell to set her back;
raised up and took a look, and I saw about fifteen shot holes through
the window panes; had come so lively I hadn't noticed them. I glanced
out on the water, and the spattering shot were like a hailstorm. I
thought best to get out of that place. I went down the pilot-house guy,
head first--not feet first but head first--slid down--before I struck
the deck, the captain said we must leave there. So I climbed up the guy
and got on the floor again. About that time, they collared my partner
and were bringing him up to the pilot-house between two soldiers.
Somebody had said I was killed. He put his head in and saw me on the
floor reaching for the backing bells. He said, 'Oh, hell, he ain't
shot,' and jerked away from the men who had him by the collar, and ran
below. We were there until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then got
away all right.
The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out, be honest, and
tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to see that battle?'
He says, 'I went down in the hold.'
All through that fight I was scared nearly to death. I hardly knew
anything, I was so frightened; but you see, nobody knew that but me.
Next day General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my bravery and
gallant conduct. I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged
it wasn't so, but it was not for me to contradict a general officer.
Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to go off to the
Hot Springs. When there, I got a good many letters from commanders
saying they wanted me to come back. I declined, because I wasn't well
enough or strong enough; but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had
made.
A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told me that that
pilot had 'gilded that scare of his, in spots;' that his subsequent
career in the war was proof of it.
We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went below and
fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy
carriage and an intelligent face. We were approaching Island No. 10, a
place so celebrated during the war. This gentleman's home was on the
main shore in its neighborhood. I had some talk with him about the war
times; but presently the discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of
the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer
between warring families, than in this particular region. This gentleman
said--
'There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but I reckon
the worst one was between the Darnells and the Watsons. Nobody don't
know now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago; the
Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living,
which I don't think there is. Some says it was about a horse or a cow--
anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of no
consequence--none in the world--both families was rich. The thing could
have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words
had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that.
That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and
crippling! Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other;
and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud
and kept it a-going. And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each
other, year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you see
--till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever a
Darnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was
going to get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on the
other. They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the
family. They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet,
they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men. A
man shot a boy twelve years old--happened on him in the woods, and
didn't give him no chance. If he HAD 'a' given him a chance, the boy'd
'a' shot him. Both families belonged to the same church (everybody
around here is religious); through all this fifty or sixty years' fuss,
both tribes was there every Sunday, to worship. They lived each side of
the line, and the church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the
church and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee.
Sundays you'd see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes,
men, women, and children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and
orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on
the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against
the wall, handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and
praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel down, along
with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard. I don't know; never
was at that church in my life; but I remember that that's what used to
be said.
'Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud families caught a
young man of nineteen out and killed him. Don't remember whether it was
the Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other feuds; but anyway, this
young man rode up--steamboat laying there at the time--and the first
thing he saw was a whole gang of the enemy. He jumped down behind a
wood-pile, but they rode around and begun on him, he firing back, and
they galloping and cavorting and yelling and banging away with all their
might. Think he wounded a couple of them; but they closed in on him and
chased him into the river; and as he swum along down stream, they
followed along the bank and kept on shooting at him; and when he struck
shore he was dead. Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it. He was
captain of the boat.
'Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old man and his two
sons concluded they'd leave the country. They started to take steamboat
just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it; and they arrived just
as the two young Darnells was walking up the companion-way with their
wives on their arms. The fight begun then, and they never got no
further--both of them killed. After that, old Darnell got into trouble
with the man that run the ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst of it--
and died. But his friends shot old Darnell through and through--filled
him full of bullets, and ended him.'
The country gentleman who told me these things had been reared in ease
and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college bred. His loose
grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance. This habit among
educated men in the West is not universal, but it is prevalent--
prevalent in the towns, certainly, if not in the cities; and to a degree
which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at. I heard a Westerner
who would be accounted a highly educated man in any country, say 'never
mind, it DON'T MAKE NO DIFFERENCE, anyway.' A life-long resident who was
present heard it, but it made no impression upon her. She was able to
recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it; but she confessed that
the words had not grated upon her ear at the time--a confession which
suggests that if educated people can hear such blasphemous grammar, from
such a source, and be unconscious of the deed, the crime must be
tolerably common--so common that the general ear has become dulled by
familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longer sensitive to such
affronts.
No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has ever written
it--NO one, either in the world or out of it (taking the Scriptures for
evidence on the latter point); therefore it would not be fair to exact
grammatical perfection from the peoples of the Valley; but they and all
other peoples may justly be required to refrain from KNOWINGLY and
PURPOSELY debauching their grammar.
I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10. The island which I
remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide,
heavily timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore--within two hundred
yards of it, I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it with a
spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and
this was no longer near the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against
the opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island had been an
important place, for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily
fortified, there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and
lower divisions of the Union forces, and kept them separate, until a
junction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land; but the
island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide river is without
obstruction.
In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee, back into
Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again. So a
mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.
The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell; but otherwise unchanged
from its former condition and aspect. Its blocks of frame-houses were
still grouped in the same old flat plain, and environed by the same old
forests. It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither
grown nor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high water
had invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news; for in
low water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), and in my day
an overflow had always been considered an impossibility. This present
flood of 1882 Will doubtless be celebrated in the river's history for
several generations before a deluge of like magnitude shall be seen. It
put all the unprotected low lands under water, from Cairo to the mouth;
it broke down the levees in a great many places, on both sides of the
river; and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest, the
Mississippi was SEVENTY MILES wide! a number of lives were lost, and the
destruction of property was fearful. The crops were destroyed, houses
washed away, and shelterless men and cattle forced to take refuge on
scattering elevations here and there in field and forest, and wait in
peril and suffering until the boats put in commission by the national
and local governments and by newspaper enterprise could come and rescue
them. The properties of multitudes of people were under water for
months, and the poorer ones must have starved by the hundred if succor
had not been promptly afforded.{footnote [For a detailed and interesting
description of the great flood, written on board of the New Orleans
TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S relief-boat, see Appendix A]} The water had been
falling during a considerable time now, yet as a rule we found the banks
still under water.
Chapter 27 Some Imported Articles
WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two steamboats in sight at once!
an infrequent spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi. The loneliness
of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive--and depressing. League
after league, and still league after league, it pours its chocolate tide
along, between its solid forest walls, its almost untenanted shores,
with seldom a sail or a moving object of any kind to disturb the surface
and break the monotony of the blank, watery solitude; and so the day
goes, the night comes, and again the day--and still the same, night
after night and day after day--majestic, unchanging sameness of
serenity, repose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy--symbol of eternity,
realization of the heaven pictured by priest and prophet, and longed for
by the good and thoughtless!
Immediately after the war of 1812, tourists began to come to America,
from England; scattering ones at first, then a sort of procession of
them--a procession which kept up its plodding, patient march through the
land during many, many years. Each tourist took notes, and went home and
published a book--a book which was usually calm, truthful, reasonable,
kind; but which seemed just the reverse to our tender-footed
progenitors. A glance at these tourist-books shows us that in certain of
its aspects the Mississippi has undergone no change since those
strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it was then. The
emotions produced in those foreign breasts by these aspects were not all
formed on one pattern, of course; they HAD to be various, along at
first, because the earlier tourists were obliged to originate their
emotions, whereas in older countries one can always borrow emotions from
one's predecessors. And, mind you, emotions are among the toughest
things in the world to manufacture out of whole cloth; it is easier to
manufacture seven facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall. R.N.,
writing fifty-five years ago, says--
'Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long wished to
behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment for all the trouble
I had experienced in coming so far; and stood looking at the river
flowing past till it was too dark to distinguish anything. But it was
not till I had visited the same spot a dozen times, that I came to a
right comprehension of the grandeur of the scene.'
Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is writing a few months
later in the same year, 1827, and is coming in at the mouth of the
Mississippi--
'The first indication of our approach to land was the appearance of this
mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters, and mingling with
the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never beheld a scene so utterly
desolate as this entrance of the Mississippi. Had Dante seen it, he
might have drawn images of another Borgia from its horrors. One only
object rears itself above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a
vessel long since wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still
stands, a dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding
prophet of that which is to come.'
Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near St. Louis), seven years
later--
'It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or a hundred
miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of nature, that
you begin to understand all his might and majesty. You see him
fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his course the trophies
of his thousand victories over the shattered forest--here carrying away
large masses of soil with all their growth, and there forming islands,
destined at some future period to be the residence of man; and while
indulging in this prospect, it is then time for reflection to suggest
that the current before you has flowed through two or three thousand
miles, and has yet to travel one thousand three hundred more before
reaching its ocean destination.'
Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, R.N. author of the sea
tales, writing in 1837, three years after Mr. Murray--
'Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an instance of a
century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as is to be collected
from the history of the turbulent and blood-stained Mississippi. The
stream itself appears as if appropriate for the deeds which have been
committed. It is not like most rivers, beautiful to the sight,
bestowing fertility in its course; not one that the eye loves to dwell
upon as it sweeps along, nor can you wander upon its banks, or trust
yourself without danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid,
desolating torrent, loaded with alluvial soil; and few of those who are
received into its waters ever rise again, {footnote [There was a foolish
superstition of some little prevalence in that day, that the Mississippi
would neither buoy up a swimmer, nor permit a drowned person's body to
rise to the surface.]} or can support themselves long upon its surface
without assistance from some friendly log. It contains the coarsest and
most uneatable of fish, such as the cat-fish and such genus, and as you
descend, its banks are occupied with the fetid alligator, while the
panther basks at its edge in the cane-brakes, almost impervious to man.
Pouring its impetuous waters through wild tracks covered with trees of
little value except for firewood, it sweeps down whole forests in its
course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion, whirled away by the
stream now loaded with the masses of soil which nourished their roots,
often blocking up and changing for a time the channel of the river,
which, as if in anger at its being opposed, inundates and devastates the
whole country round; and as soon as it forces its way through its former
channel, plants in every direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest
(upon whose branches the bird will never again perch, or the raccoon,
the opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurous
navigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down upon these concealed
dangers which pierce through the planks, very often have not time to
steer for and gain the shore before they sink to the bottom. There are
no pleasing associations connected with the great common sewer of the
Western America, which pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf,
polluting the clear blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a
river of desolation; and instead of reminding you, like other beautiful
rivers, of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man, you
imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome by the
wonderful power of steam.'
It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed to handling a pen;
still, as a panorama of the emotions sent weltering through this noted
visitor's breast by the aspect and traditions of the 'great common
sewer,' it has a value. A value, though marred in the matter of
statistics by inaccuracies; for the catfish is a plenty good enough fish
for anybody, and there are no panthers that are 'impervious to man.'
Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle Temple, Barrister at
Law, with a better digestion, and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as
follows--
'The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I first felt
myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my schoolboy dreams, and in
my waking visions afterwards, had my imagination pictured to itself the
lordly stream, rolling with tumultuous current through the boundless
region to which it has given its name, and gathering into itself, in its
course to the ocean, the tributary waters of almost every latitude in
the temperate zone! Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length,
steaming against its tide. I looked upon it with that reverence with
which everyone must regard a great feature of external nature.'
So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and all, remark upon the
deep, brooding loneliness and desolation of the vast river. Captain
Basil Hall, who saw it at flood-stage, says--
'Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty miles without
seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search of hints for a
painting of the deluge, would here have found them in abundance.'
The first shall be last, etc. just two hundred years ago, the old
original first and gallantest of all the foreign tourists, pioneer, head
of the procession, ended his weary and tedious discovery-voyage down the
solemn stretches of the great river--La Salle, whose name will last as
long as the river itself shall last. We quote from Mr. Parkman--
'And now they neared their journey's end. On the sixth of April, the
river divided itself into three broad channels. La Salle followed that
of the west, and D'Autray that of the east; while Tonty took the middle
passage. As he drifted down the turbid current, between the low and
marshy shores, the brackish water changed to brine, and the breeze grew
fresh with the salt breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of the great
Gulf opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows, limitless,
voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign
of life.'
Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared a column 'bearing the
arms of France; the Frenchmen were mustered under arms; and while the
New England Indians and their squaws looked on in wondering silence,
they chanted the TE DEUM, THE EXAUDIAT, and the DOMINE SALVUM FAC
REGEM.'
Then, whilst the musketry volleyed and rejoicing shouts burst forth, the
victorious discoverer planted the column, and made proclamation in a
loud voice, taking formal possession of the river and the vast countries
watered by it, in the name of the King. The column bore this
inscription--
LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL,
1682.
New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this present year, the
bicentennial anniversary of this illustrious event; but when the time
came, all her energies and surplus money were required in other
directions, for the flood was upon the land then, making havoc and
devastation everywhere.
Chapter 28 Uncle Mumford Unloads
ALL day we swung along down the river, and had the stream almost wholly
to ourselves. Formerly, at such a stage of the water, we should have
passed acres of lumber rafts, and dozens of big coal barges; also
occasional little trading-scows, peddling along from farm to farm, with
the peddler's family on board; possibly, a random scow, bearing a humble
Hamlet and Co. on an itinerant dramatic trip. But these were all
absent. Far along in the day, we saw one steamboat; just one, and no
more. She was lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth of the
Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact that she was named for me
--or HE was named for me, whichever you prefer. As this was the first
time I had ever encountered this species of honor, it seems excusable to
mention it, and at the same time call the attention of the authorities
to the tardiness of my recognition of it.
Noted a big change in the river, at Island 21. It was a very large
island, and used to be out toward mid-stream; but it is joined fast to
the main shore now, and has retired from business as an island.
As we approached famous and formidable Plum Point, darkness fell, but
that was nothing to shudder about--in these modern times. For now the
national government has turned the Mississippi into a sort of two-
thousand-mile torchlight procession. In the head of every crossing, and
in the foot of every crossing, the government has set up a clear-burning
lamp. You are never entirely in the dark, now; there is always a beacon
in sight, either before you, or behind you, or abreast. One might almost
say that lamps have been squandered there. Dozens of crossings are
lighted which were not shoal when they were created, and have never been
shoal since; crossings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a
steamboat can take herself through them without any help, after she has
been through once. Lamps in such places are of course not wasted; it is
much more convenient and comfortable for a pilot to hold on them than on
a spread of formless blackness that won't stay still; and money is saved
to the boat, at the same time, for she can of course make more miles
with her rudder amidships than she can with it squared across her stern
and holding her back.
But this thing has knocked the romance out of piloting, to a large
extent. It, and some other things together, have knocked all the romance
out of it. For instance, the peril from snags is not now what it once
was. The government's snag-boats go patrolling up and down, in these
matter-of-fact days, pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted out all
the old clusters which made many localities so formidable; and they
allow no new ones to collect. Formerly, if your boat got away from you,
on a black night, and broke for the woods, it was an anxious time with
you; so was it also, when you were groping your way through solidified
darkness in a narrow chute; but all that is changed now--you flash out
your electric light, transform night into day in the twinkling of an
eye, and your perils and anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby and
George Ritchie have charted the crossings and laid out the courses by
compass; they have invented a lamp to go with the chart, and have
patented the whole. With these helps, one may run in the fog now, with
considerable security, and with a confidence unknown in the old days.
With these abundant beacons, the banishment of snags, plenty of daylight
in a box and ready to be turned on whenever needed, and a chart and
compass to fight the fog with, piloting, at a good stage of water, is
now nearly as safe and simple as driving stage, and is hardly more than
three times as romantic.
And now in these new days, these days of infinite change, the Anchor
Line have raised the captain above the pilot by giving him the bigger
wages of the two. This was going far, but they have not stopped there.
They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his post, and stand his
watch clear through, whether the boat be under way or tied up to the
shore. We, that were once the aristocrats of the river, can't go to bed
now, as we used to do, and sleep while a hundred tons of freight are
lugged aboard; no, we must sit in the pilot-house; and keep awake, too.
Verily we are being treated like a parcel of mates and engineers. The
Government has taken away the romance of our calling; the Company has
taken away its state and dignity.
Plum Point looked as it had always looked by night, with the exception
that now there were beacons to mark the crossings, and also a lot of
other lights on the Point and along its shore; these latter glinting
from the fleet of the United States River Commission, and from a village
which the officials have built on the land for offices and for the
employees of the service. The military engineers of the Commission have
taken upon their shoulders the job of making the Mississippi over again
--a job transcended in size by only the original job of creating it. They
are building wing-dams here and there, to deflect the current; and dikes
to confine it in narrower bounds; and other dikes to make it stay there;
and for unnumbered miles along the Mississippi, they are felling the
timber-front for fifty yards back, with the purpose of shaving the bank
down to low-water mark with the slant of a house roof, and ballasting it
with stones; and in many places they have protected the wasting shores
with rows of piles. One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver--
not aloud, but to himself--that ten thousand River Commissions, with the
mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream,
cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, Go here, or Go there,
and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar
its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over,
and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken
words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere;
they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since
they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him,
it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and
wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work
at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we
do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like
impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission
might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make
them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable
conduct.
I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and cognate matters; and I
give here the result, stenographically reported, and therefore to be
relied on as being full and correct; except that I have here and there
left out remarks which were addressed to the men, such as 'where in
blazes are you going with that barrel now?' and which seemed to me to
break the flow of the written statement, without compensating by adding
to its information or its clearness. Not that I have ventured to strike
out all such interjections; I have removed only those which were
obviously irrelevant; wherever one occurred which I felt any question
about, I have judged it safest to let it remain.
UNCLE MUMFORD'S IMPRESSIONS
Uncle Mumford said--
'As long as I have been mate of a steamboat--thirty years--I have
watched this river and studied it. Maybe I could have learnt more about
it at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may be WHAT ARE YOU
SUCKING YOUR FINGERS THERE FOR ?--COLLAR THAT KAG OF NAILS! Four years
at West Point, and plenty of books and schooling, will learn a man a
good deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him the river. You turn one of
those little European rivers over to this Commission, with its hard
bottom and clear water, and it would just be a holiday job for them to
wall it, and pile it, and dike it, and tame it down, and boss it around,
and make it go wherever they wanted it to, and stay where they put it,
and do just as they said, every time. But this ain't that kind of a
river. They have started in here with big confidence, and the best
intentions in the world; but they are going to get left. What does
Ecclesiastes vii. 13 say? Says enough to knock THEIR little game
galley-west, don't it? Now you look at their methods once. There at
Devil's Island, in the Upper River, they wanted the water to go one way,
the water wanted to go another. So they put up a stone wall. But what
does the river care for a stone wall? When it got ready, it just bulged
through it. Maybe they can build another that will stay; that is, up
there--but not down here they can't. Down here in the Lower River, they
drive some pegs to turn the water away from the shore and stop it from
slicing off the bank; very well, don't it go straight over and cut
somebody else's bank? Certainly. Are they going to peg all the banks?
Why, they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi cheaper. They are
pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. It won't do any good. If the river has
got a mortgage on that island, it will foreclose, sure, pegs or no pegs.
Away down yonder, they have driven two rows of piles straight through
the middle of a dry bar half a mile long, which is forty foot out of the
water when the river is low. What do you reckon that is for? If I know,
I wish I may land in-HUMP YOURSELF, YOU SON OF AN UNDERTAKER!--OUT WITH
THAT COAL-OIL, NOW, LIVELY, LIVELY! And just look at what they are
trying to do down there at Milliken's Bend. There's been a cut-off in
that section, and Vicksburg is left out in the cold. It's a country
town now. The river strikes in below it; and a boat can't go up to the
town except in high water. Well, they are going to build wing-dams in
the bend opposite the foot of 103, and throw the water over and cut off
the foot of the island and plow down into an old ditch where the river
used to be in ancient times; and they think they can persuade the water
around that way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg, as it used to
do, and fetch the town back into the world again. That is, they are
going to take this whole Mississippi, and twist it around and make it
run several miles UP STREAM. Well you've got to admire men that deal in
ideas of that size and can tote them around without crutches; but you
haven't got to believe they can DO such miracles, have you! And yet you
ain't absolutely obliged to believe they can't. I reckon the safe way,
where a man can afford it, is to copper the operation, and at the same
time buy enough property in Vicksburg to square you up in case they win.
Government is doing a deal for the Mississippi, now--spending loads of
money on her. When there used to be four thousand steamboats and ten
thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts and trading scows, there wasn't
a lantern from St. Paul to New Orleans, and the snags were thicker than
bristles on a hog's back; and now when there's three dozen steamboats
and nary barge or raft, Government has snatched out all the snags, and
lit up the shores like Broadway, and a boat's as safe on the river as
she'd be in heaven. And I reckon that by the time there ain't any boats
left at all, the Commission will have the old thing all reorganized, and
dredged out, and fenced in, and tidied up, to a degree that will make
navigation just simply perfect, and absolutely safe and profitable; and
all the days will be Sundays, and all the mates will be Sunday-school
su-WHAT-IN-THE-NATION-YOU-FOOLING-AROUND-THERE-FOR, YOU SONS OF
UNRIGHTEOUSNESS, HEIRS OF PERDITION! GOING TO BE A YEAR GETTING THAT
HOGSHEAD ASHORE?'
During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had many conversations with
river men, planters, journalists, and officers of the River Commission--
with conflicting and confusing results. To wit:--
1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to arbitrarily and
permanently confine (and thus deepen) the channel, preserve threatened
shores, etc.
2. Some believed that the Commission's money ought to be spent only on
building and repairing the great system of levees.
3. Some believed that the higher you build your levee, the higher the
river's bottom will rise; and that consequently the levee system is a
mistake.
4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the river, in flood-time, by
turning its surplus waters off into Lake Borgne, etc.
5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake-reservoirs to replenish
the Mississippi in low-water seasons.
Wherever you find a man down there who believes in one of these theories
you may turn to the next man and frame your talk upon the hypothesis
that he does not believe in that theory; and after you have had
experience, you do not take this course doubtfully, or hesitatingly, but
with the confidence of a dying murderer--converted one, I mean. For you
will have come to know, with a deep and restful certainty, that you are
not going to meet two people sick of the same theory, one right after
the other. No, there will always be one or two with the other diseases
along between. And as you proceed, you will find out one or two other
things. You will find out that there is no distemper of the lot but is
contagious; and you cannot go where it is without catching it. You may
vaccinate yourself with deterrent facts as much as you please--it will
do no good; it will seem to 'take,' but it doesn't; the moment you rub
against any one of those theorists, make up your mind that it is time to
hang out your yellow flag.
Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not all to your hurt--
only part of it; for he is like your family physician, who comes and
cures the mumps, and leaves the scarlet-fever behind. If your man is a
Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance, he will exhale a cloud of
deadly facts and statistics which will lay you out with that disease,
sure; but at the same time he will cure you of any other of the five
theories that may have previously got into your system.
I have had all the five; and had them 'bad;' but ask me not, in mournful
numbers, which one racked me hardest, or which one numbered the biggest
sick list, for I do not know. In truth, no one can answer the latter
question. Mississippi Improvement is a mighty topic, down yonder. Every
man on the river banks, south of Cairo, talks about it every day, during
such moments as he is able to spare from talking about the war; and each
of the several chief theories has its host of zealous partisans; but, as
I have said, it is not possible to determine which cause numbers the
most recruits.
All were agreed upon one point, however: if Congress would make a
sufficient appropriation, a colossal benefit would result. Very well;
since then the appropriation has been made--possibly a sufficient one,
certainly not too large a one. Let us hope that the prophecy will be
amply fulfilled.
One thing will be easily granted by the reader; that an opinion from Mr.
Edward Atkinson, upon any vast national commercial matter, comes as near
ranking as authority, as can the opinion of any individual in the Union.
What he has to say about Mississippi River Improvement will be found in
the Appendix.{footnote [See Appendix B.]}
Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lightning-flash,
the importance of a subject which ten thousand labored words, with the
same purpose in view, had left at last but dim and uncertain. Here is a
case of the sort--paragraph from the 'Cincinnati Commercial'--
'The towboat "Jos. B. Williams" is on her way to New Orleans with a tow
of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels (seventy-
six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the
largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world.
Her freight bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take
eighteen hundred cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the
car, to transport this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car,
which would be a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight bill
would amount to $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than by river. The
tow will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen
days. It would take one hundred trains of eighteen cars to the train to
transport this one tow of six hundred thousand bushels of coal, and even
if it made the usual speed of fast freight lines, it would take one
whole summer to put it through by rail.'
When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000 and a
whole summer's time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to
keep the river in good condition is made plain to even the uncommercial
mind.
Chapter 29 A Few Specimen Bricks
WE passed through the Plum Point region, turned Craighead's Point, and
glided unchallenged by what was once the formidable Fort Pillow,
memorable because of the massacre perpetrated there during the war.
Massacres are sprinkled with some frequency through the histories of
several Christian nations, but this is almost the only one that can be
found in American history; perhaps it is the only one which rises to a
size correspondent to that huge and somber title. We have the 'Boston
Massacre,' where two or three people were killed; but we must bunch
Anglo-Saxon history together to find the fellow to the Fort Pillow
tragedy; and doubtless even then we must travel back to the days and the
performances of Coeur de Lion, that fine 'hero,' before we accomplish
it.
More of the river's freaks. In times past, the channel used to strike
above Island 37, by Brandywine Bar, and down towards Island 39.
Afterward, changed its course and went from Brandywine down through
Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow, to Island 39--part of this course
reversing the old order; the river running UP four or five miles,
instead of down, and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen miles of
distance. This in 1876. All that region is now called Centennial
Island.
There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the principal abiding
places of the once celebrated 'Murel's Gang.' This was a colossal
combination of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and
counterfeiters, engaged in business along the river some fifty or sixty
years ago. While our journey across the country towards St. Louis was in
progress we had had no end of Jesse James and his stirring history; for
he had just been assassinated by an agent of the Governor of Missouri,
and was in consequence occupying a good deal of space in the newspapers.
Cheap histories of him were for sale by train boys. According to these,
he was the most marvelous creature of his kind that had ever existed. It
was a mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness; in pluck; in rapacity;
in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treachery, and in general and
comprehensive vileness and shamelessness; and very much his superior in
some larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Murel, wholesale.
James's modest genius dreamed of no loftier flight than the planning of
raids upon cars, coaches, and country banks; Murel projected negro
insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and furthermore, on
occasion, this Murel could go into a pulpit and edify the congregation.
What are James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared with this
stately old-time criminal, with his sermons, his meditated insurrections
and city-captures, and his majestic following of ten hundred men, sworn
to do his evil will!
Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big operator, from a now
forgotten book which was published half a century ago--
He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consummate villain.
When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of an itinerant preacher;
and it is said that his discourses were very 'soul-moving'--interesting
the hearers so much that they forgot to look after their horses, which
were carried away by his confederates while he was preaching. But the
stealing of horses in one State, and selling them in another, was but a
small portion of their business; the most lucrative was the enticing
slaves to run away from their masters, that they might sell them in
another quarter. This was arranged as follows; they would tell a negro
that if he would run away from his master, and allow them to sell him,
he should receive a portion of the money paid for him, and that upon his
return to them a second time they would send him to a free State, where
he would be safe. The poor wretches complied with this request, hoping
to obtain money and freedom; they would be sold to another master, and
run away again, to their employers; sometimes they would be sold in this
manner three or four times, until they had realized three or four
thousand dollars by them; but as, after this, there was fear of
detection, the usual custom was to get rid of the only witness that
could be produced against them, which was the negro himself, by
murdering him, and throwing his body into the Mississippi. Even if it
was established that they had stolen a negro, before he was murdered,
they were always prepared to evade punishment; for they concealed the
negro who had run away, until he was advertised, and a reward offered to
any man who would catch him. An advertisement of this kind warrants the
person to take the property, if found. And then the negro becomes a
property in trust, when, therefore, they sold the negro, it only became
a breach of trust, not stealing; and for a breach of trust, the owner of
the property can only have redress by a civil action, which was useless,
as the damages were never paid. It may be inquired, how it was that
Murel escaped Lynch law under such circumstances This will be easily
understood when it is stated that he had MORE THAN A THOUSAND SWORN
CONFEDERATES, all ready at a moment's notice to support any of the gang
who might be in trouble. The names of all the principal confederates of
Murel were obtained from himself, in a manner which I shall presently
explain. The gang was composed of two classes: the Heads or Council, as
they were called, who planned and concerted, but seldom acted; they
amounted to about four hundred. The other class were the active agents,
and were termed strikers, and amounted to about six hundred and fifty.
These were the tools in the hands of the others; they ran all the risk,
and received but a small portion of the money; they were in the power of
the leaders of the gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by handing
them over to justice, or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi. The
general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansas side
of the river, where they concealed their negroes in the morasses and
cane-brakes.
The depredations of this extensive combination were severely felt; but
so well were their plans arranged, that although Murel, who was always
active, was everywhere suspected, there was no proof to be obtained. It
so happened, however, that a young man of the name of Stewart, who was
looking after two slaves which Murel had decoyed away, fell in with him
and obtained his confidence, took the oath, and was admitted into the
gang as one of the General Council. By this means all was discovered;
for Stewart turned traitor, although he had taken the oath, and having
obtained every information, exposed the whole concern, the names of all
the parties, and finally succeeded in bringing home sufficient evidence
against Murel, to procure his conviction and sentence to the
Penitentiary (Murel was sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment); so
many people who were supposed to be honest, and bore a respectable name
in the different States, were found to be among the list of the Grand
Council as published by Stewart, that every attempt was made to throw
discredit upon his assertions--his character was vilified, and more than
one attempt was made to assassinate him. He was obliged to quit the
Southern States in consequence. It is, however, now well ascertained to
have been all true; and although some blame Mr. Stewart for having
violated his oath, they no longer attempt to deny that his revelations
were correct. I will quote one or two portions of Murel's confessions to
Mr. Stewart, made to him when they were journeying together. I ought to
have observed, that the ultimate intentions of Murel and his associates
were, by his own account, on a very extended scale; having no less an
object in view than RAISING THE BLACKS AGAINST THE WHITES, TAKING
POSSESSION OF, AND PLUNDERING NEW ORLEANS, AND MAKING THEMSELVES
POSSESSORS OF THE TERRITORY. The following are a few extracts:--
'I collected all my friends about New Orleans at one of our friends'
houses in that place, and we sat in council three days before we got all
our plans to our notion; we then determined to undertake the rebellion
at every hazard, and make as many friends as we could for that purpose.
Every man's business being assigned him, I started to Natchez on foot,
having sold my horse in New Orleans,--with the intention of stealing
another after I started. I walked four days, and no opportunity offered
for me to get a horse. The fifth day, about twelve, I had become tired,
and stopped at a creek to get some water and rest a little. While I was
sitting on a log, looking down the road the way that I had come, a man
came in sight riding on a good-looking horse. The very moment I saw
him, I was determined to have his horse, if he was in the garb of a
traveler. He rode up, and I saw from his equipage that he was a
traveler. I arose and drew an elegant rifle pistol on him and ordered
him to dismount. He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle and
pointed down the creek, and ordered him to walk before me. He went a
few hundred yards and stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made him
undress himself, all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered him to turn
his back to me. He said, 'If you are determined to kill me, let me have
time to pray before I die,' I told him I had no time to hear him pray.
He turned around and dropped on his knees, and I shot him through the
back of the head. I ripped open his belly and took out his entrails, and
sunk him in the creek. I then searched his pockets, and found four
hundred dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a number of papers that I
did not take time to examine. I sunk the pocket-book and papers and his
hat, in the creek. His boots were brand-new, and fitted me genteelly;
and I put them on and sunk my old shoes in the creek, to atone for them.
I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they were
brand-new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as ever
I straddled, and directed my course for Natchez in much better style
than I had been for the last five days.
'Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four good horses
and started for Georgia. We got in company with a young South
Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland Mountain, and Crenshaw soon
knew all about his business. He had been to Tennessee to buy a drove of
hogs, but when he got there pork was dearer than he calculated, and he
declined purchasing. We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at
me; I understood his idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I
never had; we had traveled several miles on the mountain, when he passed
near a great precipice; just before we passed it Crenshaw asked me for
my whip, which had a pound of lead in the butt; I handed it to him, and
he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian, and gave him a blow on
the side of the head and tumbled him from his horse; we lit from our
horses and fingered his pockets; we got twelve hundred and sixty-two
dollars. Crenshaw said he knew a place to hide him, and he gathered him
under his arms, and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in
the brow of the precipice, and tumbled him into it, and he went out of
sight; we then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which
was worth two hundred dollars.
'We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend went to a
little village in the neighborhood and saw the negro advertised (a negro
in our possession), and a description of the two men of whom he had been
purchased, and giving his suspicions of the men. It was rather squally
times, but any port in a storm: we took the negro that night on the bank
of a creek which runs by the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him
through the head. We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek.
'He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansaw River for
upwards of five hundred dollars; and then stole him and delivered him
into the hand of his friend, who conducted him to a swamp, and veiled
the tragic scene, and got the last gleanings and sacred pledge of
secrecy; as a game of that kind will not do unless it ends in a mystery
to all but the fraternity. He sold the negro, first and last, for nearly
two thousand dollars, and then put him for ever out of the reach of all
pursuers; and they can never graze him unless they can find the negro;
and that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and
catfish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a long day
to the silent repose of his skeleton.'
We were approaching Memphis, in front of which city, and witnessed by
its people, was fought the most famous of the river battles of the Civil
War. Two men whom I had served under, in my river days, took part in
that fight: Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the Union fleet, and Montgomery,
Commodore of the Confederate fleet. Both saw a great deal of active
service during the war, and achieved high reputations for pluck and
capacity.
As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about for an excuse to stay with
the 'Gold Dust' to the end of her course--Vicksburg. We were so
pleasantly situated, that we did not wish to make a change. I had an
errand of considerable importance to do at Napoleon, Arkansas, but
perhaps I could manage it without quitting the 'Gold Dust.' I said as
much; so we decided to stick to present quarters.
The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the next morning. It is a
beautiful city, nobly situated on a commanding bluff overlooking the
river. The streets are straight and spacious, though not paved in a way
to incite distempered admiration. No, the admiration must be reserved
for the town's sewerage system, which is called perfect; a recent
reform, however, for it was just the other way, up to a few years ago--a
reform resulting from the lesson taught by a desolating visitation of
the yellow-fever. In those awful days the people were swept off by
hundreds, by thousands; and so great was the reduction caused by flight
and by death together, that the population was diminished three-fourths,
and so remained for a time. Business stood nearly still, and the streets
bore an empty Sunday aspect.
Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous time, drawn by a German
tourist who seems to have been an eye-witness of the scenes which he
describes. It is from Chapter VII, of his book, just published, in
Leipzig, 'Mississippi-Fahrten, von Ernst von Hesse-Wartegg.'--
'In August the yellow-fever had reached its extremest height. Daily,
hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic. The city was become
a mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the population had deserted the place,
and only the poor, the aged and the sick, remained behind, a sure prey
for the insidious enemy. The houses were closed: little lamps burned in
front of many--a sign that here death had entered. Often, several lay
dead in a single house; from the windows hung black crape. The stores
were shut up, for their owners were gone away or dead.
'Fearful evil! In the briefest space it struck down and swept away even
the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, then an hour of
fever, then the hideous delirium, then--the Yellow Death! On the street
corners, and in the squares, lay sick men, suddenly overtaken by the
disease; and even corpses, distorted and rigid. Food failed. Meat
spoiled in a few hours in the fetid and pestiferous air, and turned
black.
'Fearful clamors issue from many houses; then after a season they cease,
and all is still: noble, self-sacrificing men come with the coffin,
nail it up, and carry it away, to the graveyard. In the night stillness
reigns. Only the physicians and the hearses hurry through the streets;
and out of the distance, at intervals, comes the muffled thunder of the
railway train, which with the speed of the wind, and as if hunted by
furies, flies by the pest-ridden city without halting.'
But there is life enough there now. The population exceeds forty
thousand and is augmenting, and trade is in a flourishing condition. We
drove about the city; visited the park and the sociable horde of
squirrels there; saw the fine residences, rose-clad and in other ways
enticing to the eye; and got a good breakfast at the hotel.
A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the Mississippi: has a
great wholesale jobbing trade; foundries, machine shops; and
manufactories of wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil; and is shortly
to have cotton mills and elevators.
Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand bales last year--an
increase of sixty thousand over the year before. Out from her healthy
commercial heart issue five trunk lines of railway; and a sixth is being
added.
This is a very different Memphis from the one which the vanished and
unremembered procession of foreign tourists used to put into their books
long time ago. In the days of the now forgotten but once renowned and
vigorously hated Mrs. Trollope, Memphis seems to have consisted mainly
of one long street of log-houses, with some outlying cabins sprinkled
around rearward toward the woods; and now and then a pig, and no end of
mud. That was fifty-five years ago. She stopped at the hotel. Plainly
it was not the one which gave us our breakfast. She says--
'The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full. They ate in
perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity that their dinner
was over literally before ours was begun; the only sounds heard were
those produced by the knives and forks, with the unceasing chorus of
coughing, ETC.'
'Coughing, etc.' The 'etc.' stands for an unpleasant word there, a
word which she does not always charitably cover up, but sometimes
prints. You will find it in the following description of a steamboat
dinner which she ate in company with a lot of aristocratic planters;
wealthy, well-born, ignorant swells they were, tinselled with the usual
harmless military and judicial titles of that old day of cheap shams and
windy pretense--
'The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table; the voracious
rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured; the strange
uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the
contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our
dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the
whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth; and the still more frightful
manner of cleaning the teeth afterward with a pocket knife, soon forced
us to feel that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and
majors of the old world; and that the dinner hour was to be anything
rather than an hour of enjoyment.'
Chapter 30 Sketches by the Way
IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere, and
very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over the land,
flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior; and in
places, to a depth of fifteen feet; signs, all about, of men's hard work
gone to ruin, and all to be done over again, with straitened means and a
weakened courage. A melancholy picture, and a continuous one;--hundreds
of miles of it. Sometimes the beacon lights stood in water three feet
deep, in the edge of dense forests which extended for miles without
farm, wood-yard, clearing, or break of any kind; which meant that the
keeper of the light must come in a skiff a great distance to discharge
his trust,--and often in desperate weather. Yet I was told that the work
is faithfully performed, in all weathers; and not always by men,
sometimes by women, if the man is sick or absent. The Government
furnishes oil, and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for the lighting
and tending. A Government boat distributes oil and pays wages once a
month.
The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenantless as ever. The island
has ceased to be an island; has joined itself compactly to the main
shore, and wagons travel, now, where the steamboats used to navigate.
No signs left of the wreck of the 'Pennsylvania.' Some farmer will turn
up her bones with his plow one day, no doubt, and be surprised.
We were getting down now into the migrating negro region. These poor
people could never travel when they were slaves; so they make up for the
privation now. They stay on a plantation till the desire to travel
seizes them; then they pack up, hail a steamboat, and clear out. Not
for any particular place; no, nearly any place will answer; they only
want to be moving. The amount of money on hand will answer the rest of
the conundrum for them. If it will take them fifty miles, very well; let
it be fifty. If not, a shorter flight will do.
During a couple of days, we frequently answered these hails. Sometimes
there was a group of high-water-stained, tumble-down cabins, populous
with colored folk, and no whites visible; with grassless patches of dry
ground here and there; a few felled trees, with skeleton cattle, mules,
and horses, eating the leaves and gnawing the bark--no other food for
them in the flood-wasted land. Sometimes there was a single lonely
landing-cabin; near it the colored family that had hailed us; little and
big, old and young, roosting on the scant pile of household goods; these
consisting of a rusty gun, some bed-ticks, chests, tinware, stools, a
crippled looking-glass, a venerable arm-chair, and six or eight base-
born and spiritless yellow curs, attached to the family by strings. They
must have their dogs; can't go without their dogs. Yet the dogs are
never willing; they always object; so, one after another, in ridiculous
procession, they are dragged aboard; all four feet braced and sliding
along the stage, head likely to be pulled off; but the tugger marching
determinedly forward, bending to his work, with the rope over his
shoulder for better purchase. Sometimes a child is forgotten and left on
the bank; but never a dog.
The usual river-gossip going on in the pilot-house. Island No. 63--an
island with a lovely 'chute,' or passage, behind it in the former times.
They said Jesse Jamieson, in the 'Skylark,' had a visiting pilot with
him one trip--a poor old broken-down, superannuated fellow--left him at
the wheel, at the foot of 63, to run off the watch. The ancient mariner
went up through the chute, and down the river outside; and up the chute
and down the river again; and yet again and again; and handed the boat
over to the relieving pilot, at the end of three hours of honest
endeavor, at the same old foot of the island where he had originally
taken the wheel! A darkey on shore who had observed the boat go by,
about thirteen times, said, 'clar to gracious, I wouldn't be s'prised if
dey's a whole line o' dem Sk'ylarks!'
Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in the changing of
opinion. The 'Eclipse' was renowned for her swiftness. One day she
passed along; an old darkey on shore, absorbed in his own matters, did
not notice what steamer it was. Presently someone asked--
'Any boat gone up?'
'Yes, sah.'
'Was she going fast?'
'Oh, so-so--loafin' along.'
'Now, do you know what boat that was?'
'No, sah.'
'Why, uncle, that was the "Eclipse."'
'No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was--cause she jes' went by here a-
SPARKLIN'!'
Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of some of the people
down along here, During the early weeks of high water, A's fence rails
washed down on B's ground, and B's rails washed up in the eddy and
landed on A's ground. A said, 'Let the thing remain so; I will use your
rails, and you use mine.' But B objected--wouldn't have it so. One
day, A came down on B's ground to get his rails. B said, 'I'll kill
you!' and proceeded for him with his revolver. A said, 'I'm not armed.'
So B, who wished to do only what was right, threw down his revolver;
then pulled a knife, and cut A's throat all around, but gave his
principal attention to the front, and so failed to sever the jugular.
Struggling around, A managed to get his hands on the discarded revolver,
and shot B dead with it--and recovered from his own injuries.
Further gossip;--after which, everybody went below to get afternoon
coffee, and left me at the wheel, alone, Something presently reminded me
of our last hour in St. Louis, part of which I spent on this boat's
hurricane deck, aft. I was joined there by a stranger, who dropped into
conversation with me--a brisk young fellow, who said he was born in a
town in the interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a steamboat until
a week before. Also said that on the way down from La Crosse he had
inspected and examined his boat so diligently and with such passionate
interest that he had mastered the whole thing from stem to rudder-blade.
Asked me where I was from. I answered, New England. 'Oh, a Yank!' said
he; and went chatting straight along, without waiting for assent or
denial. He immediately proposed to take me all over the boat and tell me
the names of her different parts, and teach me their uses. Before I
could enter protest or excuse, he was already rattling glibly away at
his benevolent work; and when I perceived that he was misnaming the
things, and inhospitably amusing himself at the expense of an innocent
stranger from a far country, I held my peace, and let him have his way.
He gave me a world of misinformation; and the further he went, the wider
his imagination expanded, and the more he enjoyed his cruel work of
deceit. Sometimes, after palming off a particularly fantastic and
outrageous lie upon me, he was so 'full of laugh' that he had to step
aside for a minute, upon one pretext or another, to keep me from
suspecting. I staid faithfully by him until his comedy was finished.
Then he remarked that he had undertaken to 'learn' me all about a
steamboat, and had done it; but that if he had overlooked anything, just
ask him and he would supply the lack. 'Anything about this boat that you
don't know the name of or the purpose of, you come to me and I'll tell
you.' I said I would, and took my departure; disappeared, and approached
him from another quarter, whence he could not see me. There he sat, all
alone, doubling himself up and writhing this way and that, in the throes
of unappeasable laughter. He must have made himself sick; for he was not
publicly visible afterward for several days. Meantime, the episode
dropped out of my mind.
The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was alone at the wheel, was
the spectacle of this young fellow standing in the pilot-house door,
with the knob in his hand, silently and severely inspecting me. I don't
know when I have seen anybody look so injured as he did. He did not say
anything--simply stood there and looked; reproachfully looked and
pondered. Finally he shut the door, and started away; halted on the
texas a minute; came slowly back and stood in the door again, with that
grieved look in his face; gazed upon me awhile in meek rebuke, then
said--
'You let me learn you all about a steamboat, didn't you?'
'Yes,' I confessed.
'Yes, you did--DIDN'T you?'
'Yes.'
'You are the feller that--that--'
Language failed. Pause--impotent struggle for further words--then he
gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good.
Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was
cold--would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweat
to play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning, I would
have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction, and saved him
from committing that wanton and silly impoliteness.
I had myself called with the four o'clock watch, mornings, for one
cannot see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi. They are
enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush
broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness,
isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world. The dawn
creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften to gray,
and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water
is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there
is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquillity
is profound and infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up, another
follows, and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music.
You see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of song
which seems to sing itself. When the light has become a little
stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable.
You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage near by;
you see it paling shade by shade in front of you; upon the next
projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint has lightened to the
tender young green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost lost
color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon
the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it
and about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have
the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the
receding capes pictured in it. Well, that is all beautiful; soft and
rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a
pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it
will yield the best effect, you grant that you have seen something that
is worth remembering.
We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early morning--scene of a
strange and tragic accident in the old times, Captain Poe had a small
stern-wheel boat, for years the home of himself and his wife. One night
the boat struck a snag in the head of Kentucky Bend, and sank with
astonishing suddenness; water already well above the cabin floor when
the captain got aft. So he cut into his wife's state-room from above
with an ax; she was asleep in the upper berth, the roof a flimsier one
than was supposed; the first blow crashed down through the rotten boards
and clove her skull.
This bend is all filled up now--result of a cut-off; and the same agent
has taken the great and once much-frequented Walnut Bend, and set it
away back in a solitude far from the accustomed track of passing
steamers.
Helena we visited, and also a town I had not heard of before, it being
of recent birth--Arkansas City. It was born of a railway; the Little
Rock, Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the river there. We
asked a passenger who belonged there what sort of a place it was.
'Well,' said he, after considering, and with the air of one who wishes
to take time and be accurate, 'It's a hell of a place.' A description
which was photographic for exactness. There were several rows and
clusters of shabby frame-houses, and a supply of mud sufficient to
insure the town against a famine in that article for a hundred years;
for the overflow had but lately subsided. There were stagnant ponds in
the streets, here and there, and a dozen rude scows were scattered
about, lying aground wherever they happened to have been when the waters
drained off and people could do their visiting and shopping on foot once
more. Still, it is a thriving place, with a rich country behind it, an
elevator in front of it, and also a fine big mill for the manufacture of
cotton-seed oil. I had never seen this kind of a mill before.
Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my time; but it is worth $12
or $13 a ton now, and none of it is thrown away. The oil made from it is
colorless, tasteless, and almost if not entirely odorless. It is
claimed that it can, by proper manipulation, be made to resemble and
perform the office of any and all oils, and be produced at a cheaper
rate than the cheapest of the originals. Sagacious people shipped it to
Italy, doctored it, labeled it, and brought it back as olive oil. This
trade grew to be so formidable that Italy was obliged to put a
prohibitory impost upon it to keep it from working serious injury to her
oil industry.
Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on the Mississippi. Her
perch is the last, the southernmost group of hills which one sees on
that side of the river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town;
but the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately been ravaging it;
whole streets of houses had been invaded by the muddy water, and the
outsides of the buildings were still belted with a broad stain extending
upwards from the foundations. Stranded and discarded scows lay all
about; plank sidewalks on stilts four feet high were still standing; the
board sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous,--a couple of
men trotting along them could make a blind man think a cavalry charge
was coming; everywhere the mud was black and deep, and in many places
malarious pools of stagnant water were standing. A Mississippi
inundation is the next most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire.
We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sunday: two full hours'
liberty ashore while the boat discharged freight. In the back streets
but few white people were visible, but there were plenty of colored
folk--mainly women and girls; and almost without exception upholstered
in bright new clothes of swell and elaborate style and cut--a glaring
and hilarious contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles.
Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point of population--which is
placed at five thousand. The country about it is exceptionally
productive. Helena has a good cotton trade; handles from forty to sixty
thousand bales annually; she has a large lumber and grain commerce; has
a foundry, oil mills, machine shops and wagon factories--in brief has
$1,000,000 invested in manufacturing industries. She has two railways,
and is the commercial center of a broad and prosperous region. Her gross
receipts of money, annually, from all sources, are placed by the New
Orleans 'Times-Democrat' at $4,000,000.
Chapter 31 A Thumb-print and What Came of It
WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So I began to think about my
errand there. Time, noonday; and bright and sunny. This was bad--not
best, anyway; for mine was not (preferably) a noonday kind of errand.
The more I thought, the more that fact pushed itself upon me--now in one
form, now in another. Finally, it took the form of a distinct question:
is it good common sense to do the errand in daytime, when, by a little
sacrifice of comfort and inclination, you can have night for it, and no
inquisitive eyes around. This settled it. Plain question and plain
answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.
I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I was sorry to create
annoyance and disappointment, but that upon reflection it really seemed
best that we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon. Their
disapproval was prompt and loud; their language mutinous. Their main
argument was one which has always been the first to come to the surface,
in such cases, since the beginning of time: 'But you decided and AGREED
to stick to this boat, etc.; as if, having determined to do an unwise
thing, one is thereby bound to go ahead and make TWO unwise things of
it, by carrying out that determination.
I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, with reasonably good
success: under which encouragement, I increased my efforts; and, to show
them that I had not created this annoying errand, and was in no way to
blame for it, I presently drifted into its history--substantially as
follows:
Toward the end of last year, I spent a few months in Munich, Bavaria. In
November I was living in Fraulein Dahlweiner's PENSION, 1a, Karlstrasse;
but my working quarters were a mile from there, in the house of a widow
who supported herself by taking lodgers. She and her two young children
used to drop in every morning and talk German to me--by request. One
day, during a ramble about the city, I visited one of the two
establishments where the Government keeps and watches corpses until the
doctors decide that they are permanently dead, and not in a trance
state. It was a grisly place, that spacious room. There were thirty-six
corpses of adults in sight, stretched on their backs on slightly slanted
boards, in three long rows--all of them with wax-white, rigid faces, and
all of them wrapped in white shrouds. Along the sides of the room were
deep alcoves, like bay windows; and in each of these lay several marble-
visaged babes, utterly hidden and buried under banks of fresh flowers,
all but their faces and crossed hands. Around a finger of each of these
fifty still forms, both great and small, was a ring; and from the ring a
wire led to the ceiling, and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder,
where, day and night, a watchman sits always alert and ready to spring
to the aid of any of that pallid company who, waking out of death, shall
make a movement--for any, even the slightest, movement will twitch the
wire and ring that fearful bell. I imagined myself a death-sentinel
drowsing there alone, far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty
night, and having in a twinkling all my body stricken to quivering jelly
by the sudden clamor of that awful summons! So I inquired about this
thing; asked what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and the
restored corpse came and did what it could to make his last moments
easy. But I was rebuked for trying to feed an idle and frivolous
curiosity in so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my way with a
humbled crest.
Next morning I was telling the widow my adventure, when she exclaimed--
'Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell you all you want to know.
He has been a night-watchman there.'
He was a living man, but he did not look it. He was abed, and had his
head propped high on pillows; his face was wasted and colorless, his
deep-sunken eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast, was talon-
like, it was so bony and long-fingered. The widow began her introduction
of me. The man's eyes opened slowly, and glittered wickedly out from
the twilight of their caverns; he frowned a black frown; he lifted his
lean hand and waved us peremptorily away. But the widow kept straight
on, till she had got out the fact that I was a stranger and an American.
The man's face changed at once; brightened, became even eager--and the
next moment he and I were alone together.
I opened up in cast-iron German; he responded in quite flexible English;
thereafter we gave the German language a permanent rest.
This consumptive and I became good friends. I visited him every day,
and we talked about everything. At least, about everything but wives
and children. Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be mentioned, and
three things always followed: the most gracious and loving and tender
light glimmered in the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, and
in its place came that deadly look which had flamed there the first time
I ever saw his lids unclose; thirdly, he ceased from speech, there and
then for that day; lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed; apparently
heard nothing that I said; took no notice of my good-byes, and plainly
did not know, by either sight or hearing, when I left the room.
When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and sole intimate during two
months, he one day said, abruptly--
'I will tell you my story.'
A DYING MAN S CONFESSION
Then he went on as follows:--
I have never given up, until now. But now I have given up. I am going
to die. I made up my mind last night that it must be, and very soon,
too. You say you are going to revisit your river, by-and-bye, when you
find opportunity. Very well; that, together with a certain strange
experience which fell to my lot last night, determines me to tell you my
history--for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas; and for my sake you will
stop there, and do a certain thing for me--a thing which you will
willingly undertake after you shall have heard my narrative.
Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for it will need it, being
long. You already know how I came to go to America, and how I came to
settle in that lonely region in the South. But you do not know that I
had a wife. My wife was young, beautiful, loving, and oh, so divinely
good and blameless and gentle! And our little girl was her mother in
miniature. It was the happiest of happy households.
One night--it was toward the close of the war--I woke up out of a sodden
lethargy, and found myself bound and gagged, and the air tainted with
chloroform! I saw two men in the room, and one was saying to the other,
in a hoarse whisper, 'I told her I would, if she made a noise, and as
for the child--'
The other man interrupted in a low, half-crying voice--
'You said we'd only gag them and rob them, not hurt them; or I wouldn't
have come.'
'Shut up your whining; had to change the plan when they waked up; you
done all you could to protect them, now let that satisfy you; come, help
rummage.'
Both men were masked, and wore coarse, ragged 'nigger' clothes; they had
a bull's-eye lantern, and by its light I noticed that the gentler robber
had no thumb on his right hand. They rummaged around my poor cabin for a
moment; the head bandit then said, in his stage whisper--
'It's a waste of time--he shall tell where it's hid. Undo his gag, and
revive him up.'
The other said--
'All right--provided no clubbing.'
'No clubbing it is, then--provided he keeps still.'
They approached me; just then there was a sound outside; a sound of
voices and trampling hoofs; the robbers held their breath and listened;
the sounds came slowly nearer and nearer; then came a shout--
'HELLO, the house! Show a light, we want water.'
'The captain's voice, by G--!' said the stage-whispering ruffian, and
both robbers fled by the way of the back door, shutting off their
bull's-eye as they ran.
The strangers shouted several times more, then rode by--there seemed to
be a dozen of the horses--and I heard nothing more.
I struggled, but could not free myself from my bonds. I tried to speak,
but the gag was effective; I could not make a sound. I listened for my
wife's voice and my child's--listened long and intently, but no sound
came from the other end of the room where their bed was. This silence
became more and more awful, more and more ominous, every moment. Could
you have endured an hour of it, do you think? Pity me, then, who had to
endure three. Three hours--? it was three ages! Whenever the clock
struck, it seemed as if years had gone by since I had heard it last.
All this time I was struggling in my bonds; and at last, about dawn, I
got myself free, and rose up and stretched my stiff limbs. I was able
to distinguish details pretty well. The floor was littered with things
thrown there by the robbers during their search for my savings. The
first object that caught my particular attention was a document of mine
which I had seen the rougher of the two ruffians glance at and then cast
away. It had blood on it! I staggered to the other end of the room. Oh,
poor unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay, their troubles ended,
mine begun!
Did I appeal to the law--I? Does it quench the pauper's thirst if the
King drink for him? Oh, no, no, no--I wanted no impertinent
interference of the law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt
that was owing to me! Let the laws leave the matter in my hands, and
have no fears: I would find the debtor and collect the debt. How
accomplish this, do you say? How accomplish it, and feel so sure about
it, when I had neither seen the robbers' faces, nor heard their natural
voices, nor had any idea who they might be? Nevertheless, I WAS sure--
quite sure, quite confident. I had a clue--a clue which you would not
have valued--a clue which would not have greatly helped even a
detective, since he would lack the secret of how to apply it. I shall
come to that, presently--you shall see. Let us go on, now, taking things
in their due order. There was one circumstance which gave me a slant in
a definite direction to begin with: Those two robbers were manifestly
soldiers in tramp disguise; and not new to military service, but old in
it--regulars, perhaps; they did not acquire their soldierly attitude,
gestures, carriage, in a day, nor a month, nor yet in a year. So I
thought, but said nothing. And one of them had said, 'the captain's
voice, by G--!'--the one whose life I would have. Two miles away,
several regiments were in camp, and two companies of U.S. cavalry. When
I learned that Captain Blakely, of Company C had passed our way, that
night, with an escort, I said nothing, but in that company I resolved to
seek my man. In conversation I studiously and persistently described
the robbers as tramps, camp followers; and among this class the people
made useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me.
Working patiently, by night, in my desolated home, I made a disguise for
myself out of various odds and ends of clothing; in the nearest village
I bought a pair of blue goggles. By-and-bye, when the military camp
broke up, and Company C was ordered a hundred miles north, to Napoleon,
I secreted my small hoard of money in my belt, and took my departure in
the night. When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there. Yes,
I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial, I
made friends and told fortunes among all the companies garrisoned there;
but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself
limitlessly obliging to these particular men; they could ask me no
favor, put upon me no risk, which I would decline. I became the willing
butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity; I became a favorite.
I early found a private who lacked a thumb--what joy it was to me! And
when I found that he alone, of all the company, had lost a thumb, my
last misgiving vanished; I was SURE I was on the right track. This
man's name was Kruger, a German. There were nine Germans in the company.
I watched, to see who might be his intimates; but he seemed to have no
especial intimates. But I was his intimate; and I took care to make the
intimacy grow. Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that I could
hardly restrain myself from going on my knees and begging him to point
out the man who had murdered my wife and child; but I managed to bridle
my tongue. I bided my time, and went on telling fortunes, as
opportunity offered.
My apparatus was simple: a little red paint and a bit of white paper. I
painted the ball of the client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper,
studied it that night, and revealed his fortune to him next day. What
was my idea in this nonsense? It was this: When I was a youth, I knew
an old Frenchman who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, and he
told me that there was one thing about a person which never changed,
from the cradle to the grave--the lines in the ball of the thumb; and he
said that these lines were never exactly alike in the thumbs of any two
human beings. In these days, we photograph the new criminal, and hang
his picture in the Rogues' Gallery for future reference; but that
Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of the ball of a new
prisoner's thumb and put that away for future reference. He always said
that pictures were no good--future disguises could make them useless;
'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he; 'you can't disguise that.'
And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances;
it always succeeded.
I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all alone,
and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass. Imagine the
devouring eagerness with which I pored over those mazy red spirals, with
that document by my side which bore the right-hand thumb-and-finger-
marks of that unknown murderer, printed with the dearest blood--to me--
that was ever shed on this earth! And many and many a time I had to
repeat the same old disappointed remark, 'will they NEVER correspond!'
But my reward came at last. It was the print of the thumb of the forty-
third man of Company C whom I had experimented on--Private Franz Adler.
An hour before, I did not know the murderer's name, or voice, or figure,
or face, or nationality; but now I knew all these things! I believed I
might feel sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations being so good a
warranty. Still, there was a way to MAKE sure. I had an impression of
Kruger's left thumb. In the morning I took him aside when he was off
duty; and when we were out of sight and hearing of witnesses, I said,
impressively--
'A part of your fortune is so grave, that I thought it would be better
for you if I did not tell it in public. You and another man, whose
fortune I was studying last night,--Private Adler,--have been murdering
a woman and a child! You are being dogged: within five days both of you
will be assassinated.'
He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his wits; and for five
minutes he kept pouring out the same set of words, like a demented
person, and in the same half-crying way which was one of my memories of
that murderous night in my cabin--
'I didn't do it; upon my soul I didn't do it; and I tried to keep HIM
from doing it; I did, as God is my witness. He did it alone.'
This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid of the fool; but no, he
clung to me, imploring me to save him from the assassin. He said--
'I have money--ten thousand dollars--hid away, the fruit of loot and
thievery; save me--tell me what to do, and you shall have it, every
penny. Two-thirds of it is my cousin Adler's; but you can take it all.
We hid it when we first came here. But I hid it in a new place
yesterday, and have not told him--shall not tell him. I was going to
desert, and get away with it all. It is gold, and too heavy to carry
when one is running and dodging; but a woman who has been gone over the
river two days to prepare my way for me is going to follow me with it;
and if I got no chance to describe the hiding-place to her I was going
to slip my silver watch into her hand, or send it to her, and she would
understand. There's a piece of paper in the back of the case, which
tells it all. Here, take the watch--tell me what to do!'
He was trying to press his watch upon me, and was exposing the paper and
explaining it to me, when Adler appeared on the scene, about a dozen
yards away. I said to poor Kruger--
'Put up your watch, I don't want it. You shan't come to any harm. Go,
now; I must tell Adler his fortune. Presently I will tell you how to
escape the assassin; meantime I shall have to examine your thumbmark
again. Say nothing to Adler about this thing--say nothing to anybody.'
He went away filled with fright and gratitude, poor devil. I told Adler
a long fortune--purposely so long that I could not finish it; promised
to come to him on guard, that night, and tell him the really important
part of it--the tragical part of it, I said--so must be out of reach of
eavesdroppers. They always kept a picket-watch outside the town--mere
discipline and ceremony--no occasion for it, no enemy around.
Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the countersign, and picked my
way toward the lonely region where Adler was to keep his watch. It was
so dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost before I could get
out a protecting word. The sentinel hailed and I answered, both at the
same moment. I added, 'It's only me--the fortune-teller.' Then I slipped
to the poor devil's side, and without a word I drove my dirk into his
heart! YA WOHL, laughed I, it WAS the tragedy part of his fortune,
indeed! As he fell from his horse, he clutched at me, and my blue
goggles remained in his hand; and away plunged the beast dragging him,
with his foot in the stirrup.
I fled through the woods, and made good my escape, leaving the accusing
goggles behind me in that dead man's hand.
This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then I have wandered
aimlessly about the earth, sometimes at work, sometimes idle; sometimes
with money, sometimes with none; but always tired of life, and wishing
it was done, for my mission here was finished, with the act of that
night; and the only pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had, in all those
tedious years, was in the daily reflection, 'I have killed him!'
Four years ago, my health began to fail. I had wandered into Munich, in
my purposeless way. Being out of money, I sought work, and got it; did
my duty faithfully about a year, and was then given the berth of night
watchman yonder in that dead-house which you visited lately. The place
suited my mood. I liked it. I liked being with the dead--liked being
alone with them. I used to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer
into their austere faces, by the hour. The later the time, the more
impressive it was; I preferred the late time. Sometimes I turned the
lights low: this gave perspective, you see; and the imagination could
play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird
and fascinating fancies. Two years ago--I had been there a year then--I
was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night,
chilled, numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into unconsciousness; the
sobbing of the wind and the slamming of distant shutters falling fainter
and fainter upon my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and suddenly
that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling alarum over my head! The shock
of it nearly paralyzed me; for it was the first time I had ever heard
it.
I gathered myself together and flew to the corpse-room. About midway
down the outside rank, a shrouded figure was sitting upright, wagging
its head slowly from one side to the other--a grisly spectacle! Its side
was toward me. I hurried to it and peered into its face. Heavens, it
was Adler!
Can you divine what my first thought was? Put into words, it was this:
'It seems, then, you escaped me once: there will be a different result
this time!'
Evidently this creature was suffering unimaginable terrors. Think what
it must have been to wake up in the midst of that voiceless hush, and,
look out over that grim congregation of the dead! What gratitude shone
in his skinny white face when he saw a living form before him! And how
the fervency of this mute gratitude was augmented when his eyes fell
upon the life-giving cordials which I carried in my hands! Then imagine
the horror which came into this pinched face when I put the cordials
behind me, and said mockingly--
'Speak up, Franz Adler--call upon these dead. Doubtless they will
listen and have pity; but here there is none else that will.'
He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud which bound his jaws,
held firm and would not let him. He tried to lift imploring hands, but
they were crossed upon his breast and tied. I said--
'Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the distant streets hear you
and bring help. Shout--and lose no time, for there is little to lose.
What, you cannot? That is a pity; but it is no matter--it does not
always bring help. When you and your cousin murdered a helpless woman
and child in a cabin in Arkansas--my wife, it was, and my child!--they
shrieked for help, you remember; but it did no good; you remember that
it did no good, is it not so? Your teeth chatter--then why cannot you
shout? Loosen the bandages with your hands--then you can. Ah, I see--
your hands are tied, they cannot aid you. How strangely things repeat
themselves, after long years; for MY hands were tied, that night, you
remember? Yes, tied much as yours are now--how odd that is. I could
not pull free. It did not occur to you to untie me; it does not occur to
me to untie you. Sh--! there's a late footstep. It is coming this way.
Hark, how near it is! One can count the footfalls--one--two--three.
There--it is just outside. Now is the time! Shout, man, shout!--it is
the one sole chance between you and eternity! Ah, you see you have
delayed too long--it is gone by. There--it is dying out. It is gone!
Think of it--reflect upon it--you have heard a human footstep for the
last time. How curious it must be, to listen to so common a sound as
that, and know that one will never hear the fellow to it again.'
Oh, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face was ecstasy to see! I
thought of a new torture, and applied it--assisting myself with a trifle
of lying invention--
'That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and child, and I did him a
grateful good turn for it when the time came. I persuaded him to rob
you; and I and a woman helped him to desert, and got him away in
safety.' A look as of surprise and triumph shone out dimly through the
anguish in my victim's face. I was disturbed, disquieted. I said--
'What, then--didn't he escape?'
A negative shake of the head.
'No? What happened, then?'
The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still plainer. The man tried
to mumble out some words--could not succeed; tried to express something
with his obstructed hands--failed; paused a moment, then feebly tilted
his head, in a meaning way, toward the corpse that lay nearest him.
'Dead?' I asked. 'Failed to escape?--caught in the act and shot?'
Negative shake of the head.
'How, then?'
Again the man tried to do something with his hands. I watched closely,
but could not guess the intent. I bent over and watched still more
intently. He had twisted a thumb around and was weakly punching at his
breast with it. 'Ah--stabbed, do you mean?'
Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile of such peculiar
devilishness, that it struck an awakening light through my dull brain,
and I cried--
'Did I stab him, mistaking him for you?--for that stroke was meant for
none but you.'
The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was as joyous as his failing
strength was able to put into its expression.
'O, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the pitying soul that, stood a
friend to my darlings when they were helpless, and would have saved them
if he could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!'
I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a, mocking laugh. I took my face
out of my hands, and saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined board.
He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had a wonderful vitality, an
astonishing constitution. Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it. I got
a chair and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read. Occasionally I
took a sip of brandy. This was necessary, on account of the cold. But
I did it partly because I saw, that along at first, whenever I reached
for the bottle, he thought I was going to give him some. I read aloud:
mainly imaginary accounts of people snatched from the grave's threshold
and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonsful of liquor and a warm
bath. Yes, he had a long, hard death of it--three hours and six
minutes, from the time he rang his bell.
It is believed that in all these eighteen years that have elapsed since
the institution of the corpse-watch, no shrouded occupant of the
Bavarian dead-houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless
belief. Let it stand at that.
The chill of that death-room had penetrated my bones. It revived and
fastened upon me the disease which had been afflicting me, but which, up
to that night, had been steadily disappearing. That man murdered my
wife and my child; and in three days hence he will have added me to his
list. No matter--God! how delicious the memory of it!--I caught him
escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it.
After that night, I was confined to my bed for a week; but as soon as I
could get about, I went to the dead-house books and got the number of
the house which Adler had died in. A wretched lodging-house, it was. It
was my idea that he would naturally have gotten hold of Kruger's
effects, being his cousin; and I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I
could. But while I was sick, Adler's things had been sold and
scattered, all except a few old letters, and some odds and ends of no
value. However, through those letters, I traced out a son of Kruger's,
the only relative left. He is a man of thirty now, a shoemaker by trade,
and living at No. 14 Konigstrasse, Mannheim--widower, with several small
children. Without explaining to him why, I have furnished two-thirds of
his support, ever since.
Now, as to that watch--see how strangely things happen! I traced it
around and about Germany for more than a year, at considerable cost in
money and vexation; and at last I got it. Got it, and was unspeakably
glad; opened it, and found nothing in it! Why, I might have known that
that bit of paper was not going to stay there all this time. Of course
I gave up that ten thousand dollars then; gave it up, and dropped it out
of my mind: and most sorrowfully, for I had wanted it for Kruger's son.
Last night, when I consented at last that I must die, I began to make
ready. I proceeded to burn all useless papers; and sure enough, from a
batch of Adler's, not previously examined with thoroughness, out dropped
that long-desired scrap! I recognized it in a moment. Here it is--I
will translate it:
'Brick livery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, corner of
Orleans and Market. Corner toward Court-house. Third stone, fourth row.
Stick notice there, saying how many are to come.'
There--take it, and preserve it. Kruger explained that that stone was
removable; and that it was in the north wall of the foundation, fourth
row from the top, and third stone from the west. The money is secreted
behind it. He said the closing sentence was a blind, to mislead in case
the paper should fall into wrong hands. It probably performed that
office for Adler.
Now I want to beg that when you make your intended journey down the
river, you will hunt out that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger,
care of the Mannheim address which I have mentioned. It will make a
rich man of him, and I shall sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing
that I have done what I could for the son of the man who tried to save
my wife and child--albeit my hand ignorantly struck him down, whereas
the impulse of my heart would have been to shield and serve him.
Chapter 32 The Disposal of a Bonanza
'SUCH was Ritter's narrative,' said I to my two friends. There was a
profound and impressive silence, which lasted a considerable time; then
both men broke into a fusillade of exciting and admiring ejaculations
over the strange incidents of the tale; and this, along with a rattling
fire of questions, was kept up until all hands were about out of breath.
Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off, under shelter of
occasional volleys, into silence and abysmal reverie. For ten minutes
now, there was stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily--
'Ten thousand dollars.'
Adding, after a considerable pause--
'Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.'
Presently the poet inquired--
'Are you going to send it to him right away?'
'Yes,' I said. 'It is a queer question.'
No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly:
'ALL of it?--That is--I mean--'
'Certainly, all of it.'
I was going to say more, but stopped--was stopped by a train of thought
which started up in me. Thompson spoke, but my mind was absent, and I
did not catch what he said. But I heard Rogers answer--
'Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient; for I don't
see that he has done anything.'
Presently the poet said--
'When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at
it--five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime! And
it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him--you want to look at that. In
a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe
take to drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other
evil courses, go steadily from bad to worse--'
'Yes, that's it,' interrupted Rogers, fervently, 'I've seen it a hundred
times--yes, more than a hundred. You put money into the hands of a man
like that, if you want to destroy him, that's all; just put money into
his hands, it's all you've got to do; and if it don't pull him down, and
take all the usefulness out of him, and all the self-respect and
everything, then I don't know human nature--ain't that so, Thompson?
And even if we were to give him a THIRD of it; why, in less than six
months--'
'Less than six WEEKS, you'd better say!' said I, warming up and breaking
in. 'Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he
couldn't touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than--'
'Of COURSE he wouldn't,' said Thompson; 'I've edited books for that kind
of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty--maybe
it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand--'
'What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars, I should
like to know?' broke in Rogers, earnestly. 'A man perhaps perfectly
contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eating
his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone can give,
enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart; and BLEST!--
yes, I say blest! blest above all the myriads that go in silk attire and
walk the empty artificial round of social folly--but just you put that
temptation before him once! just you lay fifteen hundred dollars before
a man like that, and say--'
'Fifteen hundred devils!' cried I, 'FIVE hundred would rot his
principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to
the gutter, thence to the almshouse, thence to ----'
'WHY put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?' interrupted the poet
earnestly and appealingly. 'He is happy where he is, and AS he is.
Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment of
high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave
him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship. We
could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that would
be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.'
After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his
heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was
manifest that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker
SOMETHING. There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and
we finally decided to send him a chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily to
everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired that these
two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me. That was
not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them they might
consider themselves lucky. Rogers said--
'Who would have had ANY if it hadn't been for me? I flung out the first
hint--but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.'
Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very
moment that Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough,
and without anybody's help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was
sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each man
got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up after
a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor. I
found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would
permit--
'I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at
Napoleon.'
'Go ashore where?'
'Napoleon.'
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood, stopped
that and said--
'But are you serious?'
'Serious? I certainly am.'
The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said--
'He wants to get off at Napoleon!'
'Napoleon ?'
'That's what he says.'
'Great Caesar's ghost!'
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said--
'Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!'
'Well, by ---?'
I said--
'Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go ashore at Napoleon if he
wants to?'
'Why, hang it, don't you know? There ISN'T any Napoleon any more.
Hasn't been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it,
tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!'
'Carried the WHOLE town away?-banks, churches, jails, newspaper-offices,
court-house, theater, fire department, livery stable EVERYTHING ?'
'Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.' or such a matter. Didn't
leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the fag-end of a
shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right now,
where the dead-center of that town used to be; yonder is the brick
chimney-all that's left of Napoleon. These dense woods on the right used
to be a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you--up-stream--now
you begin to recognize this country, don't you?'
'Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever
heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful--and unexpected.'
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and
umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain's news. Thompson put
a half-dollar in my hand and said softly--
'For my share of the chromo.'
Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between
unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good
big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county-seat of
a great and important county; town with a big United States marine
hospital; town of innumerable fights--an inquest every day; town where I
had used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the
whole Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed
news of the 'Pennsylvania's' mournful disaster a quarter of a century
ago; a town no more--swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes;
nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!
Chapter 33 Refreshments and Ethics
IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far from the former
Napoleon, a freak of the river here has sorely perplexed the laws of men
and made them a vanity and a jest. When the State of Arkansas was
chartered, she controlled 'to the center of the river'--a most unstable
line. The State of Mississippi claimed 'to the channel'--another shifty
and unstable line. No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. By and by a cut-off
threw this big island out of Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi.
'Middle of the river' on one side of it, 'channel' on the other. That
is as I understand the problem. Whether I have got the details right or
wrong, this FACT remains: that here is this big and exceedingly valuable
island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the cold, and belonging to
neither the one State nor the other; paying taxes to neither, owing
allegiance to neither. One man owns the whole island, and of right is
'the man without a country.'
Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved it over and joined it to
Mississippi. A chap established a whiskey shop there, without a
Mississippi license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi custom under
Arkansas protection (where no license was in those days required).
We glided steadily down the river in the usual privacy--steamboat or
other moving thing seldom seen. Scenery as always: stretch upon stretch
of almost unbroken forest, on both sides of the river; soundless
solitude. Here and there a cabin or two, standing in small openings on
the gray and grassless banks--cabins which had formerly stood a quarter
or half-mile farther to the front, and gradually been pulled farther and
farther back as the shores caved in. As at Pilcher's Point, for
instance, where the cabins had been moved back three hundred yards in
three months, so we were told; but the caving banks had already caught
up with them, and they were being conveyed rearward once more.
Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mississippi, in the old
times; but behold, Napoleon is gone to the cat-fishes, and here is
Greenville full of life and activity, and making a considerable flourish
in the Valley; having three thousand inhabitants, it is said, and doing
a gross trade of $2,500,000 annually. A growing town.
There was much talk on the boat about the Calhoun Land Company, an
enterprise which is expected to work wholesome results. Colonel Calhoun,
a grandson of the statesman, went to Boston and formed a syndicate which
purchased a large tract of land on the river, in Chicot County,
Arkansas--some ten thousand acres--for cotton-growing. The purpose is to
work on a cash basis: buy at first hands, and handle their own product;
supply their negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a
trifling profit, say 8 or 10 per cent.; furnish them comfortable
quarters, etc., and encourage them to save money and remain on the
place. If this proves a financial success, as seems quite certain, they
propose to establish a banking-house in Greenville, and lend money at an
unburdensome rate of interest--6 per cent. is spoken of.
The trouble heretofore has been--I am quoting remarks of planters and
steamboatmen--that the planters, although owning the land, were without
cash capital; had to hypothecate both land and crop to carry on the
business. Consequently, the commission dealer who furnishes the money
takes some risk and demands big interest--usually 10 per cent., and
2{half} per cent. for negotiating the loan. The planter has also to buy
his supplies through the same dealer, paying commissions and profits.
Then when he ships his crop, the dealer adds his commissions, insurance,
etc. So, taking it by and large, and first and last, the dealer's share
of that crop is about 25 per cent.'{footnote ['But what can the State do
where the people are under subjection to rates of interest ranging from
18 to 30 per cent., and are also under the necessity of purchasing their
crops in advance even of planting, at these rates, for the privilege of
purchasing all their supplies at 100 per cent. profit?'--EDWARD
ATKINSON.]}
A cotton-planter's estimate of the average margin of profit on planting,
in his section: One man and mule will raise ten acres of cotton, giving
ten bales cotton, worth, say, $500; cost of producing, say $350; net
profit, $150, or $15 per acre. There is also a profit now from the
cotton-seed, which formerly had little value--none where much
transportation was necessary. In sixteen hundred pounds crude cotton
four hundred are lint, worth, say, ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred
pounds of seed, worth $12 or $13 per ton. Maybe in future even the
stems will not be thrown away. Mr. Edward Atkinson says that for each
bale of cotton there are fifteen hundred pounds of stems, and that these
are very rich in phosphate of lime and potash; that when ground and
mixed with ensilage or cotton-seed meal (which is too rich for use as
fodder in large quantities), the stem mixture makes a superior food,
rich in all the elements needed for the production of milk, meat, and
bone. Heretofore the stems have been considered a nuisance.
Complaint is made that the planter remains grouty toward the former
slave, since the war; will have nothing but a chill business relation
with him, no sentiment permitted to intrude, will not keep a 'store'
himself, and supply the negro's wants and thus protect the negro's
pocket and make him able and willing to stay on the place and an
advantage to him to do it, but lets that privilege to some thrifty
Israelite, who encourages the thoughtless negro and wife to buy all
sorts of things which they could do without--buy on credit, at big
prices, month after month, credit based on the negro's share of the
growing crop; and at the end of the season, the negro's share belongs to
the Israelite,' the negro is in debt besides, is discouraged,
dissatisfied, restless, and both he and the planter are injured; for he
will take steamboat and migrate, and the planter must get a stranger in
his place who does not know him, does not care for him, will fatten the
Israelite a season, and follow his predecessor per steamboat.
It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, by its humane and
protective treatment of its laborers, that its method is the most
profitable for both planter and negro; and it is believed that a general
adoption of that method will then follow.
And where so many are saying their say, shall not the barkeeper testify?
He is thoughtful, observant, never drinks; endeavors to earn his salary,
and WOULD earn it if there were custom enough. He says the people along
here in Mississippi and Louisiana will send up the river to buy
vegetables rather than raise them, and they will come aboard at the
landings and buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they 'don't know
anything but cotton;' believes they don't know how to raise vegetables
and fruit--'at least the most of them.' Says 'a nigger will go to H for
a watermelon' ('H' is all I find in the stenographer's report--means
Halifax probably, though that seems a good way to go for a watermelon).
Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the river, brings them down
and sells them for fifty. 'Why does he mix such elaborate and
picturesque drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?' Because they
won't have any other. 'They want a big drink; don't make any difference
what you make it of, they want the worth of their money. You give a
nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five cents--will he
touch it? No. Ain't size enough to it. But you put up a pint of all
kinds of worthless rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it
beautiful--red's the main thing--and he wouldn't put down that glass to
go to a circus.' All the bars on this Anchor Line are rented and owned
by one firm. They furnish the liquors from their own establishment, and
hire the barkeepers 'on salary.' Good liquors? Yes, on some of the
boats, where there are the kind of passengers that want it and can pay
for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but the deck hands and firemen
to drink it. 'Brandy? Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you
don't want any of it unless you've made your will.' It isn't as it used
to be in the old times. Then everybody traveled by steamboat, everybody
drank, and everybody treated everybody else. 'Now most everybody goes by
railroad, and the rest don't drink.' In the old times the barkeeper
owned the bar himself, 'and was gay and smarty and talky and all jeweled
up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the boat; used to make $2,000 on a
trip. A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him a fortune. Now
he leaves him board and lodging; yes, and washing, if a shirt a trip
will do. Yes, indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, on the
principal line of boats on the Upper Mississippi, they don't have any
bar at all! Sounds like poetry, but it's the petrified truth.'
Chapter 34 Tough Yarns
STACK ISLAND. I remembered Stack Island; also Lake Providence,
Louisiana--which is the first distinctly Southern-looking town you come
to, downward-bound; lies level and low, shade-trees hung with venerable
gray beards of Spanish moss; 'restful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the
place,' comments Uncle Mumford, with feeling--also with truth.
A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact concerning this region
which I would have hesitated to believe if I had not known him to be a
steamboat mate. He was a passenger of ours, a resident of Arkansas
City, and bound to Vicksburg to join his boat, a little Sunflower
packet. He was an austere man, and had the reputation of being
singularly unworldly, for a river man. Among other things, he said that
Arkansas had been injured and kept back by generations of exaggerations
concerning the mosquitoes here. One may smile, said he, and turn the
matter off as being a small thing; but when you come to look at the
effects produced, in the way of discouragement of immigration, and
diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a small
thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered at. These
mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and
lawless; whereas 'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant in size,
diffident to a fault, sensitive'--and so on, and so on; you would have
supposed he was talking about his family. But if he was soft on the
Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the mosquitoes of Lake
Providence to make up for it--'those Lake Providence colossi,' as he
finely called them. He said that two of them could whip a dog, and that
four of them could hold a man down; and except help come, they would
kill him--'butcher him,' as he expressed it. Referred in a sort of
casual way--and yet significant way--to 'the fact that the life policy
in its simplest form is unknown in Lake Providence--they take out a
mosquito policy besides.' He told many remarkable things about those
lawless insects. Among others, said he had seen them try to vote.
Noticing that this statement seemed to be a good deal of a strain on us,
he modified it a little: said he might have been mistaken, as to that
particular, but knew he had seen them around the polls 'canvassing.'
There was another passenger--friend of H.'s--who backed up the harsh
evidence against those mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventures
which he had had with them. The stories were pretty sizable, merely
pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. was continually interrupting with a cold,
inexorable 'Wait--knock off twenty-five per cent. of that; now go on;'
or, 'Wait--you are getting that too strong; cut it down, cut it down--
you get a leetle too much costumery on to your statements: always dress
a fact in tights, never in an ulster;' or, 'Pardon, once more: if you
are going to load anything more on to that statement, you want to get a
couple of lighters and tow the rest, because it's drawing all the water
there is in the river already; stick to facts--just stick to the cold
facts; what these gentlemen want for a book is the frozen truth--ain't
that so, gentlemen?' He explained privately that it was necessary to
watch this man all the time, and keep him within bounds; it would not do
to neglect this precaution, as he, Mr. H., 'knew to his sorrow.' Said
he, 'I will not deceive you; he told me such a monstrous lie once, that
it swelled my left ear up, and spread it so that I was actually not able
to see out around it; it remained so for months, and people came miles
to see me fan myself with it.'
Chapter 35 Vicksburg During the Trouble
WE used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicksburg, down-stream; but we
cannot do that now. A cut-off has made a country town of it, like
Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several others. There is currentless water
--also a big island--in front of Vicksburg now. You come down the river
the other side of the island, then turn and come up to the town; that
is, in high water: in low water you can't come up, but must land some
distance below it.
Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicksburg's tremendous war
experiences; earthworks, trees crippled by the cannon balls, cave-
refuges in the clay precipices, etc. The caves did good service during
the six weeks' bombardment of the city--May 8 to July 4, 1863. They
were used by the non-combatants--mainly by the women and children; not
to live in constantly, but to fly to for safety on occasion. They were
mere holes, tunnels, driven into the perpendicular clay bank, then
branched Y shape, within the hill. Life in Vicksburg, during the six
weeks was perhaps--but wait; here are some materials out of which to
reproduce it:--
Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and three thousand non-
combatants; the city utterly cut off from the world--walled solidly in,
the frontage by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; hence, no
buying and selling with the outside; no passing to and fro; no God-
speeding a parting guest, no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of
world-wide news to be read at breakfast, mornings--a tedious dull
absence of such matter, instead; hence, also, no running to see
steamboats smoking into view in the distance up or down, and plowing
toward the town--for none came, the river lay vacant and undisturbed; no
rush and turmoil around the railway station, no struggling over
bewildered swarms of passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen--all quiet
there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar thirty, corn ten
dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars a pound, rum a hundred dollars a
gallon; other things in proportion: consequently, no roar and racket of
drays and carriages tearing along the streets; nothing for them to do,
among that handful of non-combatants of exhausted means; at three
o'clock in the morning, silence; silence so dead that the measured tramp
of a sentinel can be heard a seemingly impossible distance; out of
hearing of this lonely sound, perhaps the stillness is absolute: all in
a moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of artillery, the sky is
cobwebbed with the crisscrossing red lines streaming from soaring bomb-
shells, and a rain of iron fragments descends upon the city; descends
upon the empty streets: streets which are not empty a moment later, but
mottled with dim figures of frantic women and children scurrying from
home and bed toward the cave dungeons--encouraged by the humorous grim
soldiery, who shout 'Rats, to your holes!' and laugh.
The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and crash overhead, the iron
rain pours down, one hour, two hours, three, possibly six, then stops;
silence follows, but the streets are still empty; the silence continues;
by-and-bye a head projects from a cave here and there and yonder, and
reconnoitres, cautiously; the silence still continuing, bodies follow
heads, and jaded, half smothered creatures group themselves about,
stretch their cramped limbs, draw in deep draughts of the grateful fresh
air, gossip with the neighbors from the next cave; maybe straggle off
home presently, or take a lounge through the town, if the stillness
continues; and will scurry to the holes again, by-and-bye, when the war-
tempest breaks forth once more.
There being but three thousand of these cave-dwellers--merely the
population of a village--would they not come to know each other, after a
week or two, and familiarly; insomuch that the fortunate or unfortunate
experiences of one would be of interest to all?
Those are the materials furnished by history. From them might not
almost anybody reproduce for himself the life of that time in Vicksburg?
Could you, who did not experience it, come nearer to reproducing it to
the imagination of another non-participant than could a Vicksburger who
did experience it? It seems impossible; and yet there are reasons why
it might not really be. When one makes his first voyage in a ship, it
is an experience which multitudinously bristles with striking novelties;
novelties which are in such sharp contrast with all this person's former
experiences that they take a seemingly deathless grip upon his
imagination and memory. By tongue or pen he can make a landsman live
that strange and stirring voyage over with him; make him see it all and
feel it all. But if he wait? If he make ten voyages in succession--what
then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; and has become
commonplace. The man would have nothing to tell that would quicken a
landsman's pulse.
Years ago, I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg non-combatants--a man
and his wife. Left to tell their story in their own way, those people
told it without fire, almost without interest.
A week of their wonderful life there would have made their tongues
eloquent for ever perhaps; but they had six weeks of it, and that wore
the novelty all out; they got used to being bomb-shelled out of home and
into the ground; the matter became commonplace. After that, the
possibility of their ever being startlingly interesting in their talks
about it was gone. What the man said was to this effect:--
'It got to be Sunday all the time. Seven Sundays in the week--to us,
anyway. We hadn't anything to do, and time hung heavy. Seven Sundays,
and all of them broken up at one time or another, in the day or in the
night, by a few hours of the awful storm of fire and thunder and iron.
At first we used to shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did
afterwards. The first time, I forgot the children, and Maria fetched
them both along. When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or
three weeks afterwards, when she was running for the holes, one morning,
through a shell-shower, a big shell burst near her, and covered her all
over with dirt, and a piece of the iron carried away her game-bag of
false hair from the back of her head. Well, she stopped to get that
game-bag before she shoved along again! Was getting used to things
already, you see. We all got so that we could tell a good deal about
shells; and after that we didn't always go under shelter if it was a
light shower. Us men would loaf around and talk; and a man would say,
'There she goes!' and name the kind of shell it was from the sound of
it, and go on talking--if there wasn't any danger from it. If a shell
was bursting close over us, we stopped talking and stood still;--
uncomfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to move. When it let go, we went
on talking again, if nobody hurt--maybe saying, 'That was a ripper!' or
some such commonplace comment before we resumed; or, maybe, we would see
a shell poising itself away high in the air overhead. In that case,
every fellow just whipped out a sudden, 'See you again, gents!' and
shoved. Often and often I saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets,
looking as cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching
the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain about
what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; and after that
they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, according to the
verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of pieces of paper, and
odds and ends of one sort or another lying around. Ours hadn't; they
had IRON litter. Sometimes a man would gather up all the iron fragments
and unbursted shells in his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of
monument in his front yard--a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left;
glass couldn't stand such a bombardment; it was all shivered out.
Windows of the houses vacant--looked like eye-holes in a skull. WHOLE
panes were as scarce as news.
'We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; but by-and-bye
pretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a minute, and everybody
sit quiet--no voice heard, pretty funeral-like then--and all the more so
on account of the awful boom and crash going on outside and overhead;
and pretty soon, when a body could be heard, service would go on again.
Organs and church-music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful queer
combination--along at first. Coming out of church, one morning, we had
an accident--the only one that happened around me on a Sunday. I was
just having a hearty handshake with a friend I hadn't seen for a while,
and saying, 'Drop into our cave to-night, after bombardment; we've got
hold of a pint of prime wh--.' Whiskey, I was going to say, you know,
but a shell interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man's arm off, and left
it dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that is going to
stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything else, little and
big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then? It was 'the whiskey IS
SAVED.' And yet, don't you know, it was kind of excusable; because it
was as scarce as diamonds, and we had only just that little; never had
another taste during the siege.
'Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded, and always hot and close.
Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five people packed into it; no
turning-room for anybody; air so foul, sometimes, you couldn't have made
a candle burn in it. A child was born in one of those caves one night,
Think of that; why, it was like having it born in a trunk.
'Twice we had sixteen people in our cave; and a number of times we had a
dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always had eight; eight
belonged there. Hunger and misery and sickness and fright and sorrow,
and I don't know what all, got so loaded into them that none of them
were ever rightly their old selves after the siege. They all died but
three of us within a couple of years. One night a shell burst in front
of the hole and caved it in and stopped it up. It was lively times, for
a while, digging out. Some of us came near smothering. After that we
made two openings--ought to have thought of it at first.
'Mule meat. No, we only got down to that the last day or two. Of course
it was good; anything is good when you are starving.
This man had kept a diary during--six weeks? No, only the first six
days. The first day, eight close pages; the second, five; the third,
one--loosely written; the fourth, three or four lines; a line or two the
fifth and sixth days; seventh day, diary abandoned; life in terrific
Vicksburg having now become commonplace and matter of course.
The war history of Vicksburg has more about it to interest the general
reader than that of any other of the river-towns. It is full of variety,
full of incident, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out longer
than any other important river-town, and saw warfare in all its phases,
both land and water--the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the
bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine.
The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries is here. Over the
great gateway is this inscription:--
"HERE REST IN PEACE 16,600 WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY IN THE YEARS 1861
TO 1865"
The grounds are nobly situated; being very high and commanding a wide
prospect of land and river. They are tastefully laid out in broad
terraces, with winding roads and paths; and there is profuse adornment
in the way of semi-tropical shrubs and flowers,' and in one part is a
piece of native wild-wood, left just as it grew, and, therefore, perfect
in its charm. Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand of the
national Government. The Government's work is always conspicuous for
excellence, solidity, thoroughness, neatness. The Government does its
work well in the first place, and then takes care of it.
By winding-roads--which were often cut to so great a depth between
perpendicular walls that they were mere roofless tunnels--we drove out a
mile or two and visited the monument which stands upon the scene of the
surrender of Vicksburg to General Grant by General Pemberton. Its metal
will preserve it from the hackings and chippings which so defaced its
predecessor, which was of marble; but the brick foundations are
crumbling, and it will tumble down by-and-bye. It overlooks a
picturesque region of wooded hills and ravines; and is not unpicturesque
itself, being well smothered in flowering weeds. The battered remnant of
the marble monument has been removed to the National Cemetery.
On the road, a quarter of a mile townward, an aged colored man showed
us, with pride, an unexploded bomb-shell which has lain in his yard
since the day it fell there during the siege.
'I was a-stannin' heah, an' de dog was a-stannin' heah; de dog he went
for de shell, gwine to pick a fuss wid it; but I didn't; I says, "Jes'
make you'seff at home heah; lay still whah you is, or bust up de place,
jes' as you's a mind to, but I's got business out in de woods, I has!"'
Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets and pleasant
residences; it commands the commerce of the Yazoo and Sunflower Rivers;
is pushing railways in several directions, through rich agricultural
regions, and has a promising future of prosperity and importance.
Apparently, nearly all the river towns, big and little, have made up
their minds that they must look mainly to railroads for wealth and
upbuilding, henceforth. They are acting upon this idea. The signs are,
that the next twenty years will bring about some noteworthy changes in
the Valley, in the direction of increased population and wealth, and in
the intellectual advancement and the liberalizing of opinion which go
naturally with these. And yet, if one may judge by the past, the river
towns will manage to find and use a chance, here and there, to cripple
and retard their progress. They kept themselves back in the days of
steamboating supremacy, by a system of wharfage-dues so stupidly graded
as to prohibit what may be called small RETAIL traffic in freights and
passengers. Boats were charged such heavy wharfage that they could not
afford to land for one or two passengers or a light lot of freight.
Instead of encouraging the bringing of trade to their doors, the towns
diligently and effectively discouraged it. They could have had many
boats and low rates; but their policy rendered few boats and high rates
compulsory. It was a policy which extended--and extends--from New
Orleans to St. Paul.
We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower--an
interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this
time, because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in
force--but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New
Orleans boat on our return; so we were obliged to give up the project.
Here is a story which I picked up on board the boat that night. I insert
it in this place merely because it is a good story, not because it
belongs here--for it doesn't. It was told by a passenger--a college
professor--and was called to the surface in the course of a general
conversation which began with talk about horses, drifted into talk about
astronomy, then into talk about the lynching of the gamblers in
Vicksburg half a century ago, then into talk about dreams and
superstitions; and ended, after midnight, in a dispute over free trade
and protection.
Chapter 36 The Professor's Yarn
IT was in the early days. I was not a college professor then. I was a
humble-minded young land-surveyor, with the world before me--to survey,
in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract to survey a route for
a great mining-ditch in California, and I was on my way thither, by sea
--a three or four weeks' voyage. There were a good many passengers, but
I had very little to say to them; reading and dreaming were my passions,
and I avoided conversation in order to indulge these appetites. There
were three professional gamblers on board--rough, repulsive fellows. I
never had any talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them with some
frequency, for they gambled in an upper-deck stateroom every day and
night, and in my promenades I often had glimpses of them through their
door, which stood a little ajar to let out the surplus tobacco smoke and
profanity. They were an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up
with it, of course,
There was one other passenger who fell under my eye a good deal, for he
seemed determined to be friendly with me, and I could not have gotten
rid of him without running some chance of hurting his feelings, and I
was far from wishing to do that. Besides, there was something engaging
in his countrified simplicity and his beaming good-nature. The first
time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, from his clothes and his
looks, that he was a grazier or farmer from the backwoods of some
western State--doubtless Ohio--and afterward when he dropped into his
personal history and I discovered that he WAS a cattle-raiser from
interior Ohio, I was so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed
toward him for verifying my instinct.
He got to dropping alongside me every day, after breakfast, to help me
make my promenade; and so, in the course of time, his easy-working jaw
had told me everything about his business, his prospects, his family,
his relatives, his politics--in fact everything that concerned a Backus,
living or dead. And meantime I think he had managed to get out of me
everything I knew about my trade, my tribe, my purposes, my prospects,
and myself. He was a gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing
showed it; for I was not given to talking about my matters. I said
something about triangulation, once; the stately word pleased his ear;
he inquired what it meant; I explained; after that he quietly and
inoffensively ignored my name, and always called me Triangle.
What an enthusiast he was in cattle! At the bare name of a bull or a
cow, his eye would light and his eloquent tongue would turn itself
loose. As long as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; he
knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he caressed them all with his
affectionate tongue. I tramped along in voiceless misery whilst the
cattle question was up; when I could endure it no longer, I used to
deftly insert a scientific topic into the conversation; then my eye
fired and his faded; my tongue fluttered, his stopped; life was a joy to
me, and a sadness to him.
One day he said, a little hesitatingly, and with somewhat of diffidence--
'Triangle, would you mind coming down to my stateroom a minute, and have
a little talk on a certain matter?'
I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put his head out, glanced up
and down the saloon warily, then closed the door and locked it. He sat
down on the sofa, and he said--
'I'm a-going to make a little proposition to you, and if it strikes you
favorable, it'll be a middling good thing for both of us. You ain't
a-going out to Californy for fun, nuther am I--it's business, ain't that
so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so can I you, if we see fit.
I've raked and scraped and saved, a considerable many years, and I've
got it all here.' He unlocked an old hair trunk, tumbled a chaos of
shabby clothes aside, and drew a short stout bag into view for a moment,
then buried it again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice to a
cautious low tone, he continued, 'She's all there--a round ten thousand
dollars in yellow-boys; now this is my little idea: What I don't know
about raising cattle, ain't worth knowing. There's mints of money in it,
in Californy. Well, I know, and you know, that all along a line that 's
being surveyed, there 's little dabs of land that they call "gores,"
that fall to the surveyor free gratis for nothing. All you've got to
do, on your side, is to survey in such a way that the "gores" will fall
on good fat land, then you turn 'em over to me, I stock 'em with cattle,
in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of the dollars regular, right
along, and--'
I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, but it could not be
helped. I interrupted, and said severely--
'I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change the subject, Mr.
Backus.'
It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his awkward and shamefaced
apologies. I was as much distressed as he was--especially as he seemed
so far from having suspected that there was anything improper in his
proposition. So I hastened to console him and lead him on to forget his
mishap in a conversational orgy about cattle and butchery. We were lying
at Acapulco; and, as we went on deck, it happened luckily that the crew
were just beginning to hoist some beeves aboard in slings. Backus's
melancholy vanished instantly, and with it the memory of his late
mistake.
'Now only look at that!' cried he; 'My goodness, Triangle, what WOULD
they say to it in OHIO. Wouldn't their eyes bug out, to see 'em handled
like that?--wouldn't they, though?'
All the passengers were on deck to look--even the gamblers--and Backus
knew them all, and had afflicted them all with his pet topic. As I moved
away, I saw one of the gamblers approach and accost him; then another of
them; then the third. I halted; waited; watched; the conversation
continued between the four men; it grew earnest; Backus drew gradually
away; the gamblers followed, and kept at his elbow. I was uncomfortable.
However, as they passed me presently, I heard Backus say, with a tone of
persecuted annoyance--
'But it ain't any use, gentlemen; I tell you again, as I've told you a
half a dozen times before, I warn't raised to it, and I ain't a-going to
resk it.'
I felt relieved. 'His level head will be his sufficient protection,' I
said to myself.
During the fortnight's run from Acapulco to San Francisco I several
times saw the gamblers talking earnestly with Backus, and once I threw
out a gentle warning to him. He chuckled comfortably and said--
'Oh, yes! they tag around after me considerable--want me to play a
little, just for amusement, they say--but laws-a-me, if my folks have
told me once to look out for that sort of live-stock, they've told me a
thousand times, I reckon.'
By-and-bye, in due course, we were approaching San Francisco. It was an
ugly black night, with a strong wind blowing, but there was not much
sea. I was on deck, alone. Toward ten I started below. A figure issued
from the gamblers' den, and disappeared in the darkness. I experienced a
shock, for I was sure it was Backus. I flew down the companion-way,
looked about for him, could not find him, then returned to the deck just
in time to catch a glimpse of him as he re-entered that confounded nest
of rascality. Had he yielded at last? I feared it. What had he gone
below for?--His bag of coin? Possibly. I drew near the door, full of
bodings. It was a-crack, and I glanced in and saw a sight that made me
bitterly wish I had given my attention to saving my poor cattle-friend,
instead of reading and dreaming my foolish time away. He was gambling.
Worse still, he was being plied with champagne, and was already showing
some effect from it. He praised the 'cider,' as he called it, and said
now that he had got a taste of it he almost believed he would drink it
if it was spirits, it was so good and so ahead of anything he had ever
run across before. Surreptitious smiles, at this, passed from one rascal
to another, and they filled all the glasses, and whilst Backus honestly
drained his to the bottom they pretended to do the same, but threw the
wine over their shoulders.
I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward and tried to interest
myself in the sea and the voices of the wind. But no, my uneasy spirit
kept dragging me back at quarter-hour intervals; and always I saw Backus
drinking his wine--fairly and squarely, and the others throwing theirs
away. It was the painfullest night I ever spent.
The only hope I had was that we might reach our anchorage with speed--
that would break up the game. I helped the ship along all I could with
my prayers. At last we went booming through the Golden Gate, and my
pulses leaped for joy. I hurried back to that door and glanced in.
Alas, there was small room for hope--Backus's eyes were heavy and
bloodshot, his sweaty face was crimson, his speech maudlin and thick,
his body sawed drunkenly about with the weaving motion of the ship. He
drained another glass to the dregs, whilst the cards were being dealt.
He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes lit up for a moment.
The gamblers observed it, and showed their gratification by hardly
perceptible signs.
'How many cards?'
'None!' said Backus.
One villain--named Hank Wiley--discarded one card, the others three
each. The betting began. Heretofore the bets had been trifling--a
dollar or two; but Backus started off with an eagle now, Wiley hesitated
a moment, then 'saw it' and 'went ten dollars better.' The other two
threw up their hands.
Backus went twenty better. Wiley said--
'I see that, and go you a hundred better!' then smiled and reached for
the money.
'Let it alone,' said Backus, with drunken gravity.
'What! you mean to say you're going to cover it?'
'Cover it? Well, I reckon I am--and lay another hundred on top of it,
too.'
He reached down inside his overcoat and produced the required sum.
'Oh, that's your little game, is it? I see your raise, and raise it
five hundred!' said Wiley.
'Five hundred better.' said the foolish bull-driver, and pulled out the
amount and showered it on the pile. The three conspirators hardly tried
to conceal their exultation.
All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, and the sharp exclamations
came thick and fast, and the yellow pyramid grew higher and higher. At
last ten thousand dollars lay in view. Wiley cast a bag of coin on the
table, and said with mocking gentleness--
'Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the rural districts--what
do you say NOW?'
'I CALL you!' said Backus, heaving his golden shot-bag on the pile.
'What have you got?'
'Four kings, you d--d fool!' and Wiley threw down his cards and
surrounded the stakes with his arms.
'Four ACES, you ass!' thundered Backus, covering his man with a cocked
revolver. 'I'M A PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER MYSELF, AND I'VE BEEN LAYING FOR
YOU DUFFERS ALL THIS VOYAGE!'
Down went the anchor, rumbledy-dum-dum! and the long trip was ended.
Well--well, it is a sad world. One of the three gamblers was Backus's
'pal.' It was he that dealt the fateful hands. According to an
understanding with the two victims, he was to have given Backus four
queens, but alas, he didn't.
A week later, I stumbled upon Backus--arrayed in the height of fashion--
in Montgomery Street. He said, cheerily, as we were parting--
'Ah, by-the-way, you needn't mind about those gores. I don't really
know anything about cattle, except what I was able to pick up in a
week's apprenticeship over in Jersey just before we sailed. My cattle-
culture and cattle-enthusiasm have served their turn--I shan't need them
any more.'
Next day we reluctantly parted from the 'Gold Dust' and her officers,
hoping to see that boat and all those officers again, some day. A thing
which the fates were to render tragically impossible!
Chapter 37 The End of the 'Gold Dust'
FOR, three months later, August 8, while I was writing one of these
foregoing chapters, the New York papers brought this telegram--
A TERRIBLE DISASTER.
SEVENTEEN PERSONS KILLED BY AN EXPLOSION ON THE STEAMER 'GOLD DUST.'
'NASHVILLE, Aug. 7.--A despatch from Hickman, Ky., says--
'The steamer "Gold Dust" exploded her boilers at three o'clock to-day,
just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were scalded and
seventeen are missing. The boat was landed in the eddy just above the
town, and through the exertions of the citizens the cabin passengers,
officers, and part of the crew and deck passengers were taken ashore and
removed to the hotels and residences. Twenty-four of the injured were
lying in Holcomb's dry-goods store at one time, where they received
every attention before being removed to more comfortable places.'
A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared that of the seventeen
dead, one was the barkeeper; and among the forty-seven wounded, were the
captain, chief mate, second mate, and second and third clerks; also Mr.
Lem S. Gray, pilot, and several members of the crew.
In answer to a private telegram, we learned that none of these was
severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. Letters received afterward confirmed
this news, and said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get well.
Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case; and finally came one
announcing his death. A good man, a most companionable and manly man,
and worthy of a kindlier fate.
Chapter 38 The House Beautiful
WE took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New Orleans; or on a Cincinnati
boat--either is correct; the former is the eastern form of putting it,
the latter the western.
Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Mississippi steamboats were
'magnificent,' or that they were 'floating palaces,'--terms which had
always been applied to them; terms which did not over-express the
admiration with which the people viewed them.
Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; the people's position
was certainly unassailable. If Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats
with the crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matterhorn; or with
some other priceless or wonderful thing which he had seen, they were not
magnificent--he was right. The people compared them with what they had
seen; and, thus measured, thus judged, the boats were magnificent--the
term was the correct one, it was not at all too strong. The people were
as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were finer than anything on
shore. Compared with superior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels in
the Valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they were 'palaces.' To a
few people living in New Orleans and St. Louis, they were not
magnificent, perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majority of those
populations, and to the entire populations spread over both banks
between Baton Rouge and St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with
the citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and satisfied it.
Every town and village along that vast stretch of double river-frontage
had a best dwelling, finest dwelling, mansion,--the home of its
wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it:
large grassy yard, with paling fence painted white--in fair repair;
brick walk from gate to door; big, square, two-story 'frame' house,
painted white and porticoed like a Grecian temple--with this difference,
that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic
sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door
knob--discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of
planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen--in
some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center-
table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade--standing on a gridiron, so to
speak, made of high-colored yarns, by the young ladies of the house, and
called a lamp-mat; several books, piled and disposed, with cast-iron
exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them,
Tupper, much penciled; also, 'Friendship's Offering,' and 'Affection's
Wreath,' with their sappy inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints;
also, Ossian; 'Alonzo and Melissa:' maybe 'Ivanhoe:' also 'Album,' full
of original 'poetry' of the Thou-hast-wounded-the-spirit-that-loved-thee
breed; two or three goody-goody works--'Shepherd of Salisbury Plain,'
etc.; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's 'Lady's Book,'
with painted fashion-plate of wax-figure women with mouths all alike--
lips and eyelids the same size--each five-foot woman with a two-inch
wedge sticking from under her dress and letting-on to be half of her
foot. Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe
passing through a board which closes up the discarded good old
fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, over the fireplace, a
large basket of peaches and other fruits, natural size, all done in
plaster, rudely, or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals--which
they don't. Over middle of mantel, engraving--Washington Crossing the
Delaware; on the wall by the door, copy of it done in thunder-and-
lightning crewels by one of the young ladies--work of art which would
have made Washington hesitate about crossing, if he could have foreseen
what advantage was going to be taken of it. Piano--kettle in disguise--
with music, bound and unbound, piled on it, and on a stand near by:
Battle of Prague; Bird Waltz; Arkansas Traveler; Rosin the Bow;
Marseilles Hymn; On a Lone Barren Isle (St. Helena); The Last Link is
Broken; She wore a Wreath of Roses the Night when last we met; Go,
forget me, Why should Sorrow o'er that Brow a Shadow fling; Hours there
were to Memory Dearer; Long, Long Ago; Days of Absence; A Life on the
Ocean Wave, a Home on the Rolling Deep; Bird at Sea; and spread open on
the rack, where the plaintive singer has left it, RO-holl on, silver
MOO-hoon, guide the TRAV-el-lerr his WAY, etc. Tilted pensively against
the piano, a guitar--guitar capable of playing the Spanish Fandango by
itself, if you give it a start. Frantic work of art on the wall--pious
motto, done on the premises, sometimes in colored yarns, sometimes in
faded grasses: progenitor of the 'God Bless Our Home' of modern
commerce. Framed in black moldings on the wall, other works of arts,
conceived and committed on the premises, by the young ladies; being grim
black-and-white crayons; landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sail-boat,
petrified clouds, pre-geological trees on shore, anthracite precipice;
name of criminal conspicuous in the corner. Lithograph, Napoleon
Crossing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates,
Trumbull's Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar. Copper-
plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of the Prodigal Son. In big
gilt frame, slander of the family in oil: papa holding a book
('Constitution of the United States'); guitar leaning against mamma,
blue ribbons fluttering from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in
slippers and scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other
beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, who
simpers back. These persons all fresh, raw, and red--apparently skinned.
Opposite, in gilt frame, grandpa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two,
stiff, old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring pallidly out
from a background of solid Egyptian night. Under a glass French clock
dome, large bouquet of stiff flowers done in corpsy-white wax.
Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occupied chiefly with
bric-a-brac of the period, disposed with an eye to best effect: shell,
with the Lord's Prayer carved on it; another shell--of the long-oval
sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, running from end to
end--portrait of Washington carved on it; not well done; the shell had
Washington's mouth, originally--artist should have built to that. These
two are memorials of the long-ago bridal trip to New Orleans and the
French Market. Other bric-a-brac: Californian 'specimens'--quartz, with
gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with circlet of ancestral
hair in it; Indian arrow-heads, of flint; pair of bead moccasins, from
uncle who crossed the Plains; three 'alum' baskets of various colors--
being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed-on with cubes of crystallized alum
in the rock-candy style--works of art which were achieved by the young
ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found upon all what-nots in
the land; convention of desiccated bugs and butterflies pinned to a
card; painted toy-dog, seated upon bellows-attachment--drops its under
jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar-candy rabbit--limbs and
features merged together, not strongly defined; pewter presidential-
campaign medal; miniature card-board wood-sawyer, to be attached to the
stove-pipe and operated by the heat; small Napoleon, done in wax;
spread-open daguerreotypes of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and
friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no templed portico at
back, and manufactured landscape stretching away in the distance--that
came in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures lavishly
chained and ringed--metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes
and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much
fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of
a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in
fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together--husband sitting,
wife standing, with hand on his shoulder--and both preserving, all these
fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk 'Now
smile, if you please!' Bracketed over what-not--place of special
sacredness--an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came
on a visit long ago, and died. Pity, too; for she might have repented of
this in time. Horse-hair chairs, horse-hair sofa which keeps sliding
from under you. Window shades, of oil stuff, with milk-maids and ruined
castles stenciled on them in fierce colors. Lambrequins dependent from
gaudy boxings of beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets;
bedsteads of the 'corded' sort, with a sag in the middle, the cords
needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed--not aired often enough; cane-
seat chairs, splint-bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate
size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl and pitcher, possibly
--but not certainly; brass candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing
else in the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no visitor likely to
come along who has ever seen one.
That was the residence of the principal citizen, all the way from the
suburbs of New Orleans to the edge of St. Louis. When he stepped aboard
a big fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous world: chimney-tops
cut to counterfeit a spraying crown of plumes--and maybe painted red;
pilot-house, hurricane deck, boiler-deck guards, all garnished with
white wooden filigree work of fanciful patterns; gilt acorns topping the
derricks; gilt deer-horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on
the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler-deck, painted blue, and
furnished with Windsor armchairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white
'cabin;' porcelain knob and oil-picture on every stateroom door; curving
patterns of filigree-work touched up with gilding, stretching overhead
all down the converging vista; big chandeliers every little way, each an
April shower of glittering glass-drops; lovely rainbow-light falling
everywhere from the colored glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-
drawn, resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying spectacle!
In the ladies' cabin a pink and white Wilton carpet, as soft as mush,
and glorified with a ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the
Bridal Chamber--the animal that invented that idea was still alive and
unhanged, at that day--Bridal Chamber whose pretentious flummery was
necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect of that hosannahing
citizen. Every state-room had its couple of cozy clean bunks, and
perhaps a looking-glass and a snug closet; and sometimes there was even
a washbowl and pitcher, and part of a towel which could be told from
mosquito netting by an expert--though generally these things were
absent, and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed themselves at a long
row of stationary bowls in the barber shop, where were also public
towels, public combs, and public soap.
Take the steamboat which I have just described, and you have her in her
highest and finest, and most pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory
estate. Now cake her over with a layer of ancient and obdurate dirt,
and you have the Cincinnati steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all
over--only inside; for she was ably officered in all departments except
the steward's.
But wash that boat and repaint her, and she would be about the
counterpart of the most complimented boat of the old flush times: for
the steamboat architecture of the West has undergone no change; neither
has steamboat furniture and ornamentation undergone any.
Chapter 39 Manufactures and Miscreants
WHERE the river, in the Vicksburg region, used to be corkscrewed, it is
now comparatively straight--made so by cut-off; a former distance of
seventy miles is reduced to thirty-five. It is a change which threw
Vicksburg's neighbor, Delta, Louisiana, out into the country and ended
its career as a river town. Its whole river-frontage is now occupied by
a vast sand-bar, thickly covered with young trees--a growth which will
magnify itself into a dense forest by-and-bye, and completely hide the
exiled town.
In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, of war fame, and reached
Natchez, the last of the beautiful hill-cities--for Baton Rouge, yet to
come, is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous Natchez-under-
the-hill has not changed notably in twenty years; in outward aspect--
judging by the descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign
tourists--it has not changed in sixty; for it is still small,
straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate reputation, morally, in the
old keel-boating and early steamboating times--plenty of drinking,
carousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the riff-raff of the
river, in those days. But Natchez-on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has
always been attractive. Even Mrs. Trollope (1827) had to confess its
charms:
'At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by bluffs, as
they call the short intervals of high ground. The town of Natchez is
beautifully situated on one of those high spots. The contrast that its
bright green hill forms with the dismal line of black forest that
stretches on every side, the abundant growth of the pawpaw, palmetto and
orange, the copious variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish
there, all make it appear like an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the
furthest point to the north at which oranges ripen in the open air, or
endure the winter without shelter. With the exception of this sweet
spot, I thought all the little towns and villages we passed wretched-
looking in the extreme.'
Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, has railways now, and is
adding to them--pushing them hither and thither into all rich outlying
regions that are naturally tributary to her. And like Vicksburg and New
Orleans, she has her ice-factory: she makes thirty tons of ice a day.
In Vicksburg and Natchez, in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the rich
could wear it. But anybody and everybody can have it now. I visited one
of the ice-factories in New Orleans, to see what the polar regions might
look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics. But there was
nothing striking in the aspect of the place. It was merely a spacious
house, with some innocent steam machinery in one end of it and some big
porcelain pipes running here and there. No, not porcelain--they merely
seemed to be; they were iron, but the ammonia which was being breathed
through them had coated them to the thickness of your hand with solid
milk-white ice. It ought to have melted; for one did not require winter
clothing in that atmosphere: but it did not melt; the inside of the
pipe was too cold.
Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a foot square and two
feet long, and open at the top end. These were full of clear water; and
around each box, salt and other proper stuff was packed; also, the
ammonia gases were applied to the water in some way which will always
remain a secret to me, because I was not able to understand the process.
While the water in the boxes gradually froze, men gave it a stir or two
with a stick occasionally--to liberate the air-bubbles, I think. Other
men were continually lifting out boxes whose contents had become hard
frozen. They gave the box a single dip into a vat of boiling water, to
melt the block of ice free from its tin coffin, then they shot the block
out upon a platform car, and it was ready for market. These big blocks
were hard, solid, and crystal-clear. In certain of them, big bouquets of
fresh and brilliant tropical flowers had been frozen-in; in others,
beautiful silken-clad French dolls, and other pretty objects. These
blocks were to be set on end in a platter, in the center of dinner-
tables, to cool the tropical air; and also to be ornamental, for the
flowers and things imprisoned in them could be seen as through plate
glass. I was told that this factory could retail its ice, by wagon,
throughout New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house quantities, at
six or seven dollars a ton, and make a sufficient profit. This being the
case, there is business for ice-factories in the North; for we get ice
on no such terms there, if one take less than three hundred and fifty
pounds at a delivery.
The Rosalie Yarn Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity of 6,000 spindles and
160 looms, and employs 100 hands. The Natchez Cotton Mills Company
began operations four years ago in a two-story building of 50 x 190
feet, with 4,000 spindles and 128 looms; capital $105,000, all
subscribed in the town. Two years later, the same stockholders increased
their capital to $225,000; added a third story to the mill, increased
its length to 317 feet; added machinery to increase the capacity to
10,300 spindles and 304 looms. The company now employ 250 operatives,
many of whom are citizens of Natchez. 'The mill works 5,000 bales of
cotton annually and manufactures the best standard quality of brown
shirtings and sheetings and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards of these
goods per year.'{footnote [New Orleans Times-Democrat, 26 Aug, 1882.]} A
close corporation--stock held at $5,000 per share, but none in the
market.
The changes in the Mississippi River are great and strange, yet were to
be expected; but I was not expecting to live to see Natchez and these
other river towns become manufacturing strongholds and railway centers.
Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic which I
heard--which I overheard--on board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a
fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I listened--
two men were talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I
looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late
breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed
up the inundation with a few words--having used it, evidently, as a mere
ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into
business. It soon transpired that they were drummers--one belonging in
Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement
and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion.
'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible
butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from
our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it. Put any test on it you
want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now--
what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight--it's
oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is--oleomargarine. You can't
tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house.
We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of
butter on one of them. We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along
is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel
trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't
find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the
Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are
turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell
it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it--can't get
around it you see. Butter don't stand any show--there ain't any chance
for competition. Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to
the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can't
imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati
to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.'
And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid
strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said--
Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the
only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out
of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.'
'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business
for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and
Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it for
genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke
up the game--of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling
impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had to hang
up and quit.'
'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.'
Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes
out the corks--says:
'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the
labels. One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this
country. One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed
olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that
want to, can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to
Europe and back--it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth
six of that. We turn out the whole thing--clean from the word go--in our
factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no,
not labels: been buying them abroad--get them dirt-cheap there. You
see, there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a
gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor, or
something--get that out, and you're all right--perfectly easy then to
turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybody
that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that
one little particle out--and we're the only firm that does. And we turn
out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect--undetectable! We are doing
a ripping trade, too--as I could easily show you by my order-book for
this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll
cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that's a
dead-certain thing.'
Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two scoundrels
exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left the table, Cincinnati
said--
'But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you? How do you manage
that?'
I did not catch the answer.
We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the most terrific episodes of the
war--the night-battle there between Farragut's fleet and the Confederate
land batteries, April 14th, 1863; and the memorable land battle, two
months later, which lasted eight hours--eight hours of exceptionally
fierce and stubborn fighting--and ended, finally, in the repulse of the
Union forces with great slaughter.
Chapter 40 Castles and Culture
BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a bride--no, much more so; like
a greenhouse. For we were in the absolute South now--no modifications,
no compromises, no half-way measures. The magnolia-trees in the Capitol
grounds were lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and huge
snow-ball blossoms. The scent of the flower is very sweet, but you want
distance on it, because it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom
blossoms--they might suffocate one in his sleep. We were certainly in
the South at last; for here the sugar region begins, and the
plantations--vast green levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters
clustered together in the middle distance--were in view. And there was
a tropical sun overhead and a tropical swelter in the air.
And at this point, also, begins the pilot's paradise: a wide river hence
to New Orleans, abundance of water from shore to shore, and no bars,
snags, sawyers, or wrecks in his road.
Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the Capitol building; for
it is not conceivable that this little sham castle would ever have been
built if he had not run the people mad, a couple of generations ago,
with his medieval romances. The South has not yet recovered from the
debilitating influence of his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes
and their grotesque 'chivalry' doings and romantic juvenilities still
survives here, in an atmosphere in which is already perceptible the
wholesome and practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton-factories and
locomotives; and traces of its inflated language and other windy
humbuggeries survive along with it. It is pathetic enough, that a
whitewashed castle, with turrets and things--materials all ungenuine
within and without, pretending to be what they are not--should ever have
been built in this otherwise honorable place; but it is much more
pathetic to see this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration and
perpetuation in our day, when it would have been so easy to let dynamite
finish what a charitable fire began, and then devote this restoration-
money to the building of something genuine.
Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, however, and no monopoly
of them. Here is a picture from the advertisement of the 'Female
Institute' of Columbia; Tennessee. The following remark is from the
same advertisement--
'The Institute building has long been famed as a model of striking and
beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with its resemblance to
the old castles of song and story, with its towers, turreted walls, and
ivy-mantled porches.'
Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as romantic as keeping
hotel in a castle.
By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harmless, and well enough;
but as a symbol and breeder and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age
romanticism here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and
infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries the world has
seen, it is necessarily a hurtful thing and a mistake.
Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Kentucky 'Female College.'
Female college sounds well enough; but since the phrasing it in that
unjustifiable way was done purely in the interest of brevity, it seems
to me that she-college would have been still better--because shorter,
and means the same thing: that is, if either phrase means anything at
all--
'The president is southern by birth, by rearing, by education, and by
sentiment; the teachers are all southern in sentiment, and with the
exception of those born in Europe were born and raised in the south.
Believing the southern to be the highest type of civilization this
continent has seen, the young ladies are trained according to the
southern ideas of delicacy, refinement, womanhood, religion, and
propriety; hence we offer a first-class female college for the south and
solicit southern patronage.'
{footnote (long one) [Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the
advertiser:
KNOXVILLE, Tenn., October 19.--This morning a few minutes after ten
o'clock, General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O'Connor, and Joseph A. Mabry,
Jr., were killed in a shooting affray. The difficulty began yesterday
afternoon by General Mabry attacking Major O'Connor and threatening to
kill him. This was at the fair grounds, and O'Connor told Mabry that it
was not the place to settle their difficulties. Mabry then told O'Connor
he should not live. It seems that Mabry was armed and O'Connor was not.
The cause of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some
property from Mabry to O'Connor. Later in the afternoon Mabry sent word
to O'Connor that he would kill him on sight. This morning Major O'Connor
was standing in the door of the Mechanics' National Bank, of which he
was president. General Mabry and another gentleman walked down Gay
Street on the opposite side from the bank. O'Connor stepped into the
bank, got a shot gun, took deliberate aim at General Mabry and fired.
Mabry fell dead, being shot in the left side. As he fell O'Connor fired
again, the shot taking effect in Mabry's thigh. O'Connor then reached
into the bank and got another shot gun. About this time Joseph A. Mabry,
Jr., son of General Mabry, came rushing down the street, unseen by
O'Connor until within forty feet, when the young man fired a pistol, the
shot taking effect in O'Connor's right breast, passing through the body
near the heart. The instant Mabry shot, O'Connor turned and fired, the
load taking effect in young Mabry's right breast and side. Mabry fell
pierced with twenty buckshot, and almost instantly O'Connor fell dead
without a struggle. Mabry tried to rise, but fell back dead. The whole
tragedy occurred within two minutes, and neither of the three spoke
after he was shot. General Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body.
A bystander was painfully wounded in the thigh with a buckshot, and
another was wounded in the arm. Four other men had their clothing
pierced by buckshot. The affair caused great excitement, and Gay Street
was thronged with thousands of people. General Mabry and his son Joe
were acquitted only a few days ago of the murder of Moses Lusby and Don
Lusby, father and son, whom they killed a few weeks ago. Will Mabry was
killed by Don Lusby last Christmas. Major Thomas O'Connor was President
of the Mechanics' National Bank here, and was the wealthiest man in the
State.--ASSOCIATED PRESS TELEGRAM.
One day last month, Professor Sharpe, of the Somerville, Tenn., Female
College, 'a quiet and gentlemanly man,' was told that his brother-in-
law, a Captain Burton, had threatened to kill him. Burton, t seems, had
already killed one man and driven his knife into another. The Professor
armed himself with a double-barreled shot gun, started out in search of
his brother-in-law, found him playing billiards in a saloon, and blew
his brains out. The 'Memphis Avalanche' reports that the Professor's
course met with pretty general approval in the community; knowing that
the law was powerless, in the actual condition of public sentiment, to
protect him, he protected himself.
About the same time, two young men in North Carolina quarreled about a
girl, and 'hostile messages' were exchanged. Friends tried to reconcile
them, but had their labor for their pains. On the 24th the young men met
in the public highway. One of them had a heavy club in his hand, the
other an ax. The man with the club fought desperately for his life, but
it was a hopeless fight from the first. A well-directed blow sent his
club whirling out of his grasp, and the next moment he was a dead man.
About the same time, two 'highly connected' young Virginians, clerks in
a hardware store at Charlottesville, while 'skylarking,' came to blows.
Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles Roads's eyes; Roads demanded an
apology; Dick refused to give it, and it was agreed that a duel was
inevitable, but a difficulty arose; the parties had no pistols, and it
was too late at night to procure them. One of them suggested that
butcher-knives would answer the purpose, and the other accepted the
suggestion; the result was that Roads fell to the floor with a gash in
his abdomen that may or may not prove fatal. If Dick has been arrested,
the news has not reached us. He 'expressed deep regret,' and we are told
by a Staunton correspondent of the PHILADELPHIA PRESS that 'every effort
has been made to hush the matter up.'--EXTRACTS FROM THE PUBLIC
JOURNALS.]}
What, warder, ho! the man that can blow so complacent a blast as that,
probably blows it from a castle.
From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great sugar plantations border both
sides of the river all the way, and stretch their league-wide levels
back to the dim forest-walls of bearded cypress in the rear. Shores
lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings all the way, on both banks--
standing so close together, for long distances, that the broad river
lying between the two rows, becomes a sort of spacious street. A most
home-like and happy-looking region. And now and then you see a pillared
and porticoed great manor-house, embowered in trees. Here is testimony
of one or two of the procession of foreign tourists that filed along
here half a century ago. Mrs. Trollope says--
'The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi continued
unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the graceful and
luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the bright orange, were
everywhere to be seen, and it was many days before we were weary of
looking at them.'
Captain Basil Hall--
'The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi, in the
lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thickly peopled by sugar
planters, whose showy houses, gay piazzas, trig gardens, and numerous
slave-villages, all clean and neat, gave an exceedingly thriving air to
the river scenery.
All the procession paint the attractive picture in the same way. The
descriptions of fifty years ago do not need to have a word changed in
order to exactly describe the same region as it appears to-day--except
as to the 'trigness' of the houses. The whitewash is gone from the negro
cabins now; and many, possibly most, of the big mansions, once so
shining white, have worn out their paint and have a decayed, neglected
look. It is the blight of the war. Twenty-one years ago everything was
trim and trig and bright along the 'coast,' just as it had been in 1827,
as described by those tourists.
Unfortunate tourists! People humbugged them with stupid and silly lies,
and then laughed at them for believing and printing the same. They told
Mrs. Trollope that the alligators--or crocodiles, as she calls them--
were terrible creatures; and backed up the statement with a blood-
curdling account of how one of these slandered reptiles crept into a
squatter cabin one night, and ate up a woman and five children. The
woman, by herself, would have satisfied any ordinarily-impossible
alligator; but no, these liars must make him gorge the five children
besides. One would not imagine that jokers of this robust breed would be
sensitive--but they were. It is difficult, at this day, to understand,
and impossible to justify, the reception which the book of the grave,
honest, intelligent, gentle, manly, charitable, well-meaning Capt. Basil
Hall got.
Chapter 41 The Metropolis of the South
THE approaches to New Orleans were familiar; general aspects were
unchanged. When one goes flying through London along a railway propped
in the air on tall arches, he may inspect miles of upper bedrooms
through the open windows, but the lower half of the houses is under his
level and out of sight. Similarly, in high-river stage, in the New
Orleans region, the water is up to the top of the enclosing levee-rim,
the flat country behind it lies low--representing the bottom of a dish--
and as the boat swims along, high on the flood, one looks down upon the
houses and into the upper windows. There is nothing but that frail
breastwork of earth between the people and destruction.
The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the upper end of the city
looked as they had always looked; warehouses which had had a kind of
Aladdin's lamp experience, however, since I had seen them; for when the
war broke out the proprietor went to bed one night leaving them packed
with thousands of sacks of vulgar salt, worth a couple of dollars a
sack, and got up in the morning and found his mountain of salt turned
into a mountain of gold, so to speak, so suddenly and to so dizzy a
height had the war news sent up the price of the article.
The vast reach of plank wharves remained unchanged, and there were as
many ships as ever: but the long array of steamboats had vanished; not
altogether, of course, but not much of it was left.
The city itself had not changed--to the eye. It had greatly increased
in spread and population, but the look of the town was not altered. The
dust, waste-paper-littered, was still deep in the streets; the deep,
trough-like gutters alongside the curbstones were still half full of
reposeful water with a dusty surface; the sidewalks were still--in the
sugar and bacon region--encumbered by casks and barrels and hogsheads;
the great blocks of austerely plain commercial houses were as dusty-
looking as ever.
Canal Street was finer, and more attractive and stirring than formerly,
with its drifting crowds of people, its several processions of hurrying
street-cars, and--toward evening--its broad second-story verandas
crowded with gentlemen and ladies clothed according to the latest mode.
Not that there is any 'architecture' in Canal Street: to speak in
broad, general terms, there is no architecture in New Orleans, except in
the cemeteries. It seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy, far-
seeing, and energetic city of a quarter of a million inhabitants, but it
is true. There is a huge granite U.S. Custom-house--costly enough,
genuine enough, but as a decoration it is inferior to a gasometer. It
looks like a state prison. But it was built before the war.
Architecture in America may be said to have been born since the war. New
Orleans, I believe, has had the good luck--and in a sense the bad luck--
to have had no great fire in late years. It must be so. If the
opposite had been the case, I think one would be able to tell the 'burnt
district' by the radical improvement in its architecture over the old
forms. One can do this in Boston and Chicago. The 'burnt district' of
Boston was commonplace before the fire; but now there is no commercial
district in any city in the world that can surpass it--or perhaps even
rival it--in beauty, elegance, and tastefulness.
However, New Orleans has begun--just this moment, as one may say. When
completed, the new Cotton Exchange will be a stately and beautiful
building; massive, substantial, full of architectural graces; no shams
or false pretenses or uglinesses about it anywhere. To the city, it will
be worth many times its cost, for it will breed its species. What has
been lacking hitherto, was a model to build toward; something to educate
eye and taste; a SUGGESTER, so to speak.
The city is well outfitted with progressive men--thinking, sagacious,
long-headed men. The contrast between the spirit of the city and the
city's architecture is like the contrast between waking and sleep.
Apparently there is a 'boom' in everything but that one dead feature.
The water in the gutters used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent
disease-breeder; but the gutters are flushed now, two or three times a
day, by powerful machinery; in many of the gutters the water never
stands still, but has a steady current. Other sanitary improvements
have been made; and with such effect that New Orleans claims to be
(during the long intervals between the occasional yellow-fever assaults)
one of the healthiest cities in the Union. There's plenty of ice now
for everybody, manufactured in the town. It is a driving place
commercially, and has a great river, ocean, and railway business. At
the date of our visit, it was the best lighted city in the Union,
electrically speaking. The New Orleans electric lights were more
numerous than those of New York, and very much better. One had this
modified noonday not only in Canal and some neighboring chief streets,
but all along a stretch of five miles of river frontage. There are good
clubs in the city now--several of them but recently organized--and
inviting modern-style pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish Fort.
The telephone is everywhere. One of the most notable advances is in
journalism. The newspapers, as I remember them, were not a striking
feature. Now they are. Money is spent upon them with a free hand. They
get the news, let it cost what it may. The editorial work is not hack-
grinding, but literature. As an example of New Orleans journalistic
achievement, it may be mentioned that the 'Times-Democrat' of August 26,
1882, contained a report of the year's business of the towns of the
Mississippi Valley, from New Orleans all the way to St. Paul--two
thousand miles. That issue of the paper consisted of forty pages; seven
columns to the page; two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen
hundred words to the column; an aggregate of four hundred and twenty
thousand words. That is to say, not much short of three times as many
words as there are in this book. One may with sorrow contrast this with
the architecture of New Orleans.
I have been speaking of public architecture only. The domestic article
in New Orleans is reproachless, notwithstanding it remains as it always
was. All the dwellings are of wood--in the American part of the town, I
mean--and all have a comfortable look. Those in the wealthy quarter are
spacious; painted snow-white usually, and generally have wide verandas,
or double-verandas, supported by ornamental columns. These mansions
stand in the center of large grounds, and rise, garlanded with roses,
out of the midst of swelling masses of shining green foliage and many-
colored blossoms. No houses could well be in better harmony with their
surroundings, or more pleasing to the eye, or more home-like and
comfortable-looking.
One even becomes reconciled to the cistern presently; this is a mighty
cask, painted green, and sometimes a couple of stories high, which is
propped against the house-corner on stilts. There is a mansion-and-
brewery suggestion about the combination which seems very incongruous at
first. But the people cannot have wells, and so they take rain-water.
Neither can they conveniently have cellars, or graves,{footnote [The
Israelites are buried in graves--by permission, I take it, not
requirement; but none else, except the destitute, who are buried at
public expense. The graves are but three or four feet deep.]} the town
being built upon 'made' ground; so they do without both, and few of the
living complain, and none of the others.
Chapter 42 Hygiene and Sentiment
THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the ground. These vaults have a
resemblance to houses--sometimes to temples; are built of marble,
generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks
and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a
thousand or so of them and sees their white roofs and gables stretching
into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all
at once a meaning to him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are
kept in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business
streets near it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those
people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do
after they are dead, they would find many advantages in it; and besides,
their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world.
Fresh flowers, in vases of water, are to be seen at the portals of many
of the vaults: placed there by the pious hands of bereaved parents and
children, husbands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form of
sorrow finds its inexpensive and lasting remembrancer in the coarse and
ugly but indestructible 'immortelle'--which is a wreath or cross or some
such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with sometimes a yellow
rosette at the conjunction of the cross's bars--kind of sorrowful
breast-pin, so to say. The immortelle requires no attention: you just
hang it up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will take care of
your grief for you, and keep it in mind better than you can; stands
weather first-rate, and lasts like boiler-iron.
On sunny days, pretty little chameleons--gracefullest of legged
reptiles--creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and catch flies.
Their changes of color--as to variety--are not up to the creature's
reputation. They change color when a person comes along and hangs up an
immortelle; but that is nothing: any right-feeling reptile would do
that.
I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. I have been trying
all I could to get down to the sentimental part of it, but I cannot
accomplish it. I think there is no genuinely sentimental part to it.
It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible. Graveyards may have been
justifiable in the bygone ages, when nobody knew that for every dead
body put into the ground, to glut the earth and the plant-roots, and the
air with disease-germs, five or fifty, or maybe a hundred persons must
die before their proper time; but they are hardly justifiable now, when
even the children know that a dead saint enters upon a century-long
career of assassination the moment the earth closes over his corpse. It
is a grim sort of a thought. The relics of St. Anne, up in Canada, have
now, after nineteen hundred years, gone to curing the sick by the dozen.
But it is merest matter-of-course that these same relics, within a
generation after St. Anne's death and burial, MADE several thousand
people sick. Therefore these miracle-performances are simply
compensation, nothing more. St. Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint,
it is true; but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years, and
outlawed by the statute of limitations, than not paid at all; and most
of the knights of the halo do not pay at all. Where you find one that
pays--like St. Anne--you find a hundred and fifty that take the benefit
of the statute. And none of them pay any more than the principal of what
they owe--they pay none of the interest either simple or compound. A
Saint can never QUITE return the principal, however; for his dead body
KILLS people, whereas his relics HEAL only--they never restore the dead
to life. That part of the account is always left unsettled.
'Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical practice, wrote:
"The inhumation of human bodies, dead from infectious diseases, results
in constantly loading the atmosphere, and polluting the waters, with not
only the germs that rise from simply putrefaction, but also with the
SPECIFIC germs of the diseases from which death resulted."
'The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surface through eight
or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do, and there is
practically no limit to their power of escape.
'During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Barton reported
that in the Fourth District the mortality was four hundred and fifty-two
per thousand--more than double that of any other. In this district were
three large cemeteries, in which during the previous year more than
three thousand bodies had been buried. In other districts the proximity
of cemeteries seemed to aggravate the disease.
'In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful reappearance of
the plague at Modena was caused by excavations in ground where, THREE
HUNDRED YEARS PREVIOUSLY, the victims of the pestilence had been buried.
Mr. Cooper, in explaining the causes of some epidemics, remarks that the
opening of the plague burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate
outbreak of disease.'--NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, NO. 3, VOL. 135.
In an address before the Chicago Medical Society, in advocacy of
cremation, Dr. Charles W. Purdy made some striking comparisons to show
what a burden is laid upon society by the burial of the dead:--
'One and one-fourth times more money is expended annually in funerals in
the United States than the Government expends for public-school
purposes. Funerals cost this country in 1880 enough money to pay the
liabilities of all the commercial failures in the United States during
the same year, and give each bankrupt a capital of $8,630 with which to
resume business. Funerals cost annually more money than the value of the
combined gold and silver yield of the United States in the year 1880!
These figures do not include the sums invested in burial-grounds and
expended in tombs and monuments, nor the loss from depreciation of
property in the vicinity of cemeteries.'
For the rich, cremation would answer as well as burial; for the
ceremonies connected with it could be made as costly and ostentatious as
a Hindu suttee; while for the poor, cremation would be better than
burial, because so cheap {footnote [Four or five dollars is the minimum
cost.]}--so cheap until the poor got to imitating the rich, which they
would do by-and-bye. The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a
muck of threadbare burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand, it would
resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation-jokes that have had a rest for
two thousand years.
I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living by odd jobs and heavy
manual labor. He never earns above four hundred dollars in a year, and
as he has a wife and several young children, the closest scrimping is
necessary to get him through to the end of the twelve months debtless.
To such a man a funeral is a colossal financial disaster. While I was
writing one of the preceding chapters, this man lost a little child. He
walked the town over with a friend, trying to find a coffin that was
within his means. He bought the very cheapest one he could find, plain
wood, stained. It cost him twenty-six dollars. It would have cost less
than four, probably, if it had been built to put something useful into.
He and his family will feel that outlay a good many months.
Chapter 43 The Art of Inhumation
ABOUT the same time, I encountered a man in the street, whom I had not
seen for six or seven years; and something like this talk followed. I
said--
'But you used to look sad and oldish; you don't now. Where did you get
all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness? Give me the address.'
He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, pointed to a notched
pink circlet of paper pasted into its crown, with something lettered on
it, and went on chuckling while I read, 'J. B----, UNDERTAKER.' Then he
clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent tilt to leeward, and cried
out--
'That's what's the matter! It used to be rough times with me when you
knew me--insurance-agency business, you know; mighty irregular. Big
fire, all right--brisk trade for ten days while people scared; after
that, dull policy-business till next fire. Town like this don't have
fires often enough--a fellow strikes so many dull weeks in a row that he
gets discouraged. But you bet you, this is the business! People don't
wait for examples to die. No, sir, they drop off right along--there
ain't any dull spots in the undertaker line. I just started in with two
or three little old coffins and a hired hearse, and now look at the
thing! I've worked up a business here that would satisfy any man, don't
care who he is. Five years ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell
house now, with a mansard roof, and all the modern inconveniences.'
'Does a coffin pay so well. Is there much profit on a coffin?'
'Go-way! How you talk!' Then, with a confidential wink, a dropping of
the voice, and an impressive laying of his hand on my arm; 'Look here;
there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap. That's a coffin.
There's one thing in this world which a person don't ever try to jew you
down on. That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world which a
person don't say--"I'll look around a little, and if I find I can't do
better I'll come back and take it." That's a coffin. There's one thing
in this world which a person won't take in pine if he can go walnut; and
won't take in walnut if he can go mahogany; and won't take in mahogany
if he can go an iron casket with silver door-plate and bronze handles.
That's a coffin. And there's one thing in this world which you don't
have to worry around after a person to get him to pay for. And that's a
coffin. Undertaking?--why it's the dead-surest business in Christendom,
and the nobbiest.
'Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have anything but your very
best; and you can just pile it on, too--pile it on and sock it to him--
he won't ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if you work him
right he'll bust himself on a single lay-out. Or especially a woman.
F'r instance: Mrs. O'Flaherty comes in--widow--wiping her eyes and kind
of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it around tearfully over the
stock; says--
'"And fhat might ye ask for that wan?"
'"Thirty-nine dollars, madam," says I.
'"It 's a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be buried like a
gintleman, as he was, if I have to work me fingers off for it. I'll have
that wan, sor."
'"Yes, madam," says I, "and it is a very good one, too; not costly, to
be sure, but in this life we must cut our garment to our clothes, as the
saying is." And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually, "This
one with the white satin lining is a beauty, but I am afraid--well,
sixty-five dollars is a rather--rather--but no matter, I felt obliged to
say to Mrs. O'Shaughnessy--"
'"D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O'Shaughnessy bought the mate to that
joo-ul box to ship that dhrunken divil to Purgatory in?"
'"Yes, madam."
'"Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, if it takes the last
rap the O'Flaherties can raise; and moind you, stick on some extras,
too, and I'll give ye another dollar."
'And as I lay-in with the livery stables, of course I don't forget to
mention that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy hired fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks
and flung as much style into Dennis's funeral as if he had been a duke
or an assassin. And of course she sails in and goes the O'Shaughnessy
about four hacks and an omnibus better. That used to be, but that's all
played now; that is, in this particular town. The Irish got to piling
up hacks so, on their funerals, that a funeral left them ragged and
hungry for two years afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it
all up. He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes
only one.'
'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary
times, what must you be in an epidemic?'
He shook his head.
'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic. An epidemic
don't pay. Well, of course I don't mean that, exactly; but it don't pay
in proportion to the regular thing. Don't it occur to you, why?'
No.
'Think.'
'I can't imagine. What is it?'
'It's just two things.'
'Well, what are they?'
'One's Embamming.'
'And what's the other?'
'Ice.'
'How is that?'
'Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay him up in ice; one
day two days, maybe three, to wait for friends to come. Takes a lot of
it--melts fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice, and war-prices
for attendance. Well, don't you know, when there's an epidemic, they
rush 'em to the cemetery the minute the breath's out. No market for ice
in an epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a family that's able to
embam, and you've got a soft thing. You can mention sixteen different
ways to do it--though there AIN'T only one or two ways, when you come
down to the bottom facts of it--and they'll take the highest-priced way,
every time. It's human nature--human nature in grief. It don't reason,
you see. Time being, it don't care a dam. All it wants is physical
immortality for deceased, and they're willing to pay for it. All you've
got to do is to just be ca'm and stack it up--they'll stand the racket.
Why, man, you can take a defunct that you couldn't GIVE away; and get
your embamming traps around you and go to work; and in a couple of hours
he is worth a cool six hundred--that's what HE'S worth. There ain't
anything equal to it but trading rats for di'monds in time of famine.
Well, don't you see, when there's an epidemic, people don't wait to
embam. No, indeed they don't; and it hurts the business like hell-th, as
we say--hurts it like hell-th, HEALTH, see?--Our little joke in the
trade. Well, I must be going. Give me a call whenever you need any--I
mean, when you're going by, sometime.'
In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating himself, if any has
been done. I have not enlarged on him.
With the above brief references to inhumation, let us leave the subject.
As for me, I hope to be cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once,
who said, with what he seemed to think was an impressive manner--
'I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your chances.' Much he knew about
it--the family all so opposed to it.
Chapter 44 City Sights
THE old French part of New Orleans--anciently the Spanish part--bears no
resemblance to the American end of the city: the American end which lies
beyond the intervening brick business-center. The houses are massed in
blocks; are austerely plain and dignified; uniform of pattern, with here
and there a departure from it with pleasant effect; all are plastered on
the outside, and nearly all have long, iron-railed verandas running
along the several stories. Their chief beauty is the deep, warm,
varicolored stain with which time and the weather have enriched the
plaster. It harmonizes with all the surroundings, and has as natural a
look of belonging there as has the flush upon sunset clouds. This
charming decoration cannot be successfully imitated; neither is it to be
found elsewhere in America.
The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pattern is often
exceedingly light and dainty, and airy and graceful--with a large cipher
or monogram in the center, a delicate cobweb of baffling, intricate
forms, wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand-made, and are
now comparatively rare and proportionately valuable. They are become
BRIC-A-BRAC.
The party had the privilege of idling through this ancient quarter of
New Orleans with the South's finest literary genius, the author of 'the
Grandissimes.' In him the South has found a masterly delineator of its
interior life and its history. In truth, I find by experience, that the
untrained eye and vacant mind can inspect it, and learn of it, and judge
of it, more clearly and profitably in his books than by personal contact
with it.
With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe and explain and
illuminate, a jog through that old quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you
have a vivid sense as of unseen or dimly seen things--vivid, and yet
fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient features, but lose the fine
shades or catch them imperfectly through the vision of the imagination:
a case, as it were, of ignorant near-sighted stranger traversing the rim
of wide vague horizons of Alps with an inspired and enlightened long-
sighted native.
We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied by municipal offices.
There is nothing strikingly remarkable about it; but one can say of it
as of the Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or a shovel has
ever been used in it there is no circumstantial evidence to back up the
fact. It is curious that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in the
Academy of Music; but no doubt it is on account of the interruption of
the light by the benches, and the impossibility of hoeing the crop
except in the aisles. The fact that the ushers grow their buttonhole-
bouquets on the premises shows what might be done if they had the right
kind of an agricultural head to the establishment.
We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the pretty square in front
of it; the one dim with religious light, the other brilliant with the
worldly sort, and lovely with orange-trees and blossomy shrubs; then we
drove in the hot sun through the wilderness of houses and out on to the
wide dead level beyond, where the villas are, and the water wheels to
drain the town, and the commons populous with cows and children; passing
by an old cemetery where we were told lie the ashes of an early pirate;
but we took him on trust, and did not visit him. He was a pirate with a
tremendous and sanguinary history; and as long as he preserved
unspotted, in retirement, the dignity of his name and the grandeur of
his ancient calling, homage and reverence were his from high and low;
but when at last he descended into politics and became a paltry
alderman, the public 'shook' him, and turned aside and wept. When he
died, they set up a monument over him; and little by little he has come
into respect again; but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman.
To-day the loyal and generous remember only what he was, and charitably
forget what he became.
Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, along a raised shell road,
with a canal on one hand and a dense wood on the other; and here and
there, in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and moss-bearded
cypress, top standing out, clear cut against the sky, and as quaint of
form as the apple-trees in Japanese pictures--such was our course and
the surroundings of it. There was an occasional alligator swimming
comfortably along in the canal, and an occasional picturesque colored
person on the bank, flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still
water and watching for a bite.
And by-and-bye we reached the West End, a collection of hotels of the
usual light summer-resort pattern, with broad verandas all around, and
the waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lapping the
thresholds. We had dinner on a ground-veranda over the water--the chief
dish the renowned fish called the pompano, delicious as the less
criminal forms of sin.
Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to West End and to Spanish
Fort every evening, and dine, listen to the bands, take strolls in the
open air under the electric lights, go sailing on the lake, and
entertain themselves in various and sundry other ways.
We had opportunities on other days and in other places to test the
pompano. Notably, at an editorial dinner at one of the clubs in the
city. He was in his last possible perfection there, and justified his
fame. In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet cray-fish--large ones;
as large as one's thumb--delicate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled
whitebait; also shrimps of choice quality; and a platter of small soft-
shell crabs of a most superior breed. The other dishes were what one
might get at Delmonico's, or Buckingham Palace; those I have spoken of
can be had in similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose.
In the West and South they have a new institution--the Broom Brigade. It
is composed of young ladies who dress in a uniform costume, and go
through the infantry drill, with broom in place of musket. It is a very
pretty sight, on private view. When they perform on the stage of a
theater, in the blaze of colored fires, it must be a fine and
fascinating spectacle. I saw them go through their complex manual with
grace, spirit, and admirable precision. I saw them do everything which a
human being can possibly do with a broom, except sweep. I did not see
them sweep. But I know they could learn. What they have already learned
proves that. And if they ever should learn, and should go on the war-
path down Tchoupitoulas or some of those other streets around there,
those thoroughfares would bear a greatly improved aspect in a very few
minutes. But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would be really
gained, after all.
The drill was in the Washington Artillery building. In this building we
saw many interesting relics of the war. Also a fine oil-painting
representing Stonewall Jackson's last interview with General Lee. Both
men are on horseback. Jackson has just ridden up, and is accosting Lee.
The picture is very valuable, on account of the portraits, which are
authentic. But, like many another historical picture, it means nothing
without its label. And one label will fit it as well as another--
First Interview between Lee and Jackson.
Last Interview between Lee and Jackson.
Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee.
Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner.
Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner--with Thanks.
Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat.
Jackson Reporting a Great Victory.
Jackson Asking Lee for a Match.
It tells ONE story, and a sufficient one; for it says quite plainly and
satisfactorily, 'Here are Lee and Jackson together.' The artist would
have made it tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if he
could have done it. But he couldn't, for there wasn't any way to do it.
A good legible label is usually worth, for information, a ton of
significant attitude and expression in a historical picture. In Rome,
people with fine sympathetic natures stand up and weep in front of the
celebrated 'Beatrice Cenci the Day before her Execution.' It shows what
a label can do. If they did not know the picture, they would inspect it
unmoved, and say, 'Young girl with hay fever; young girl with her head
in a bag.'
I found the half-forgotten Southern intonations and elisions as pleasing
to my ear as they had formerly been. A Southerner talks music. At least
it is music to me, but then I was born in the South. The educated
Southerner has no use for an r, except at the beginning of a word. He
says 'honah,' and 'dinnah,' and 'Gove'nuh,' and 'befo' the waw,' and so
on. The words may lack charm to the eye, in print, but they have it to
the ear. When did the r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it
come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was not borrowed from the
North, nor inherited from England. Many Southerners--most Southerners--
put a y into occasional words that begin with the k sound. For instance,
they say Mr. K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding
in the k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom--long ago fallen into
decay in the North--of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.'
Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, Suh', 'No,
Suh.'
But there are some infelicities. Such as 'like' for 'as,' and the
addition of an 'at' where it isn't needed. I heard an educated gentleman
say, 'Like the flag-officer did.' His cook or his butler would have
said, 'Like the flag-officer done.' You hear gentlemen say, 'Where have
you been at?' And here is the aggravated form--heard a ragged street
Arab say it to a comrade: 'I was a-ask'n' Tom whah you was a-sett'n'
at.' The very elect carelessly say 'will' when they mean 'shall'; and
many of them say, 'I didn't go to do it,' meaning 'I didn't mean to do
it.' The Northern word 'guess'--imported from England, where it used to
be common, and now regarded by satirical Englishmen as a Yankee
original--is but little used among Southerners. They say 'reckon.' They
haven't any 'doesn't' in their language; they say 'don't' instead. The
unpolished often use 'went' for 'gone.' It is nearly as bad as the
Northern 'hadn't ought.' This reminds me that a remark of a very
peculiar nature was made here in my neighborhood (in the North) a few
days ago: 'He hadn't ought to have went.' How is that? Isn't that a
good deal of a triumph? One knows the orders combined in this half-
breed's architecture without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other
Southern. To-day I heard a schoolmistress ask, 'Where is John gone?'
This form is so common--so nearly universal, in fact--that if she had
used 'whither' instead of 'where,' I think it would have sounded like an
affectation.
We picked up one excellent word--a word worth traveling to New Orleans
to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word--'lagniappe.' They
pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish--so they said. We discovered it at
the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day;
heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third;
adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a
restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when
they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a 'baker's
dozen.' It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure. The custom
originated in the Spanish quarter of the city. When a child or a servant
buys something in a shop--or even the mayor or the governor, for aught I
know--he finishes the operation by saying--
'Give me something for lagniappe.'
The shopman always responds; gives the child a bit of licorice-root,
gives the servant a cheap cigar or a spool of thread, gives the
governor--I don't know what he gives the governor; support, likely.
When you are invited to drink, and this does occur now and then in New
Orleans--and you say, 'What, again?--no, I've had enough;' the other
party says, 'But just this one time more--this is for lagniappe.' When
the beau perceives that he is stacking his compliments a trifle too
high, and sees by the young lady's countenance that the edifice would
have been better with the top compliment left off, he puts his 'I beg
pardon--no harm intended,' into the briefer form of 'Oh, that's for
lagniappe.' If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills a gill
of coffee down the back of your neck, he says 'For lagniappe, sah,' and
gets you another cup without extra charge.
Chapter 45 Southern Sports
IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social conversation, once a
month; sometimes as often as once a week; but as a distinct subject for
talk, it has long ago been relieved of duty. There are sufficient
reasons for this. Given a dinner company of six gentlemen to-day, it
can easily happen that four of them--and possibly five--were not in the
field at all. So the chances are four to two, or five to one, that the
war will at no time during the evening become the topic of conversation;
and the chances are still greater that if it become the topic it will
remain so but a little while. If you add six ladies to the company, you
have added six people who saw so little of the dread realities of the
war that they ran out of talk concerning them years ago, and now would
soon weary of the war topic if you brought it up.
The case is very different in the South. There, every man you meet was
in the war; and every lady you meet saw the war. The war is the great
chief topic of conversation. The interest in it is vivid and constant;
the interest in other topics is fleeting. Mention of the war will wake
up a dull company and set their tongues going, when nearly any other
topic would fail. In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they
date from it. All day long you hear things 'placed' as having happened
since the waw; or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or right aftah the
waw; or 'bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the waw or
aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual was visited, in
his own person, by that tremendous episode. It gives the inexperienced
stranger a better idea of what a vast and comprehensive calamity
invasion is than he can ever get by reading books at the fireside.
At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said, in an aside--
'You notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war.
It isn't because we haven't anything else to talk about, but because
nothing else has so strong an interest for us. And there is another
reason: In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampled
all the different varieties of human experience; as a consequence, you
can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainly remind
some listener of something that happened during the war--and out he
comes with it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war. You may
try all you want to, to keep other subjects before the house, and we may
all join in and help, but there can be but one result: the most random
topic would load every man up with war reminiscences, and shut him up,
too; and talk would be likely to stop presently, because you can't talk
pale inconsequentialities when you've got a crimson fact or fancy in
your head that you are burning to fetch out.'
The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presently he began
to speak--about the moon.
The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an 'aside:' 'There,
the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but you will see that it
will suggest something to somebody about the war; in ten minutes from
now the moon, as a topic, will be shelved.'
The poet was saying he had noticed something which was a surprise to
him; had had the impression that down here, toward the equator, the
moonlight was much stronger and brighter than up North; had had the
impression that when he visited New Orleans, many years ago, the moon--
Interruption from the other end of the room--
'Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anecdote. Everything is changed
since the war, for better or for worse; but you'll find people down here
born grumblers, who see no change except the change for the worse.
There was an old negro woman of this sort. A young New-Yorker said in
her presence, "What a wonderful moon you have down here!" She sighed
and said, "Ah, bless yo' heart, honey, you ought to seen dat moon befo'
de waw!"'
The new topic was dead already. But the poet resurrected it, and gave
it a new start.
A brief dispute followed, as to whether the difference between Northern
and Southern moonlight really existed or was only imagined. Moonlight
talk drifted easily into talk about artificial methods of dispelling
darkness. Then somebody remembered that when Farragut advanced upon
Port Hudson on a dark night--and did not wish to assist the aim of the
Confederate gunners--he carried no battle-lanterns, but painted the
decks of his ships white, and thus created a dim but valuable light,
which enabled his own men to grope their way around with considerable
facility. At this point the war got the floor again--the ten minutes not
quite up yet.
I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always
interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is
likely to be dull.
We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Saturday afternoon. I had never
seen a cock-fight before. There were men and boys there of all ages and
all colors, and of many languages and nationalities. But I noticed one
quite conspicuous and surprising absence: the traditional brutal faces.
There were no brutal faces. With no cock-fighting going on, you could
have played the gathering on a stranger for a prayer-meeting; and after
it began, for a revival--provided you blindfolded your stranger--for the
shouting was something prodigious.
A negro and a white man were in the ring; everybody else outside. The
cocks were brought in in sacks; and when time was called, they were
taken out by the two bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, poked toward
each other, and finally liberated. The big black cock plunged instantly
at the little gray one and struck him on the head with his spur. The
gray responded with spirit. Then the Babel of many-tongued shoutings
broke out, and ceased not thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting
some little time, I was expecting them momently to drop dead, for both
were blind, red with blood, and so exhausted that they frequently fell
down. Yet they would not give up, neither would they die. The negro and
the white man would pick them up every few seconds, wipe them off, blow
cold water on them in a fine spray, and take their heads in their mouths
and hold them there a moment--to warm back the perishing life perhaps; I
do not know. Then, being set down again, the dying creatures would
totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, find each other, strike a
guesswork blow or two, and fall exhausted once more.
I did not see the end of the battle. I forced myself to endure it as
long as I could, but it was too pitiful a sight; so I made frank
confession to that effect, and we retired. We heard afterward that the
black cock died in the ring, and fighting to the last.
Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 'sport' for such as
have had a degree of familiarity with it. I never saw people enjoy
anything more than this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was the
same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. They lost themselves in
frenzies of delight. The 'cocking-main' is an inhuman sort of
entertainment, there is no question about that; still, it seems a much
more respectable and far less cruel sport than fox-hunting--for the
cocks like it; they experience, as well as confer enjoyment; which is
not the fox's case.
We assisted--in the French sense--at a mule race, one day. I believe I
enjoyed this contest more than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more
than I remember having enjoyed any other animal race I ever saw. The
grand-stand was well filled with the beauty and the chivalry of New
Orleans. That phrase is not original with me. It is the Southern
reporter's. He has used it for two generations. He uses it twenty times
a day, or twenty thousand times a day; or a million times a day--
according to the exigencies. He is obliged to use it a million times a
day, if he have occasion to speak of respectable men and women that
often; for he has no other phrase for such service except that single
one. He never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him. There is a
kind of swell medieval bulliness and tinsel about it that pleases his
gaudy barbaric soul. If he had been in Palestine in the early times, we
should have had no references to 'much people' out of him. No, he would
have said 'the beauty and the chivalry of Galilee' assembled to hear the
Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that the men and women of the South
are sick enough of that phrase by this time, and would like a change,
but there is no immediate prospect of their getting it.
The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, direct, unflowery style;
wastes no words, and does not gush. Not so with his average
correspondent. In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned by a
trained hand; but the average correspondent hurls a style which differs
from that. For instance--
The 'Times-Democrat' sent a relief-steamer up one of the bayous, last
April. This steamer landed at a village, up there somewhere, and the
Captain invited some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip
with him. They accepted and came aboard, and the steamboat shoved out up
the creek. That was all there was 'to it.' And that is all that the
editor of the 'Times-Democrat' would have got out of it. There was
nothing in the thing but statistics, and he would have got nothing else
out of it. He would probably have even tabulated them, partly to secure
perfect clearness of statement, and partly to save space. But his
special correspondent knows other methods of handling statistics. He
just throws off all restraint and wallows in them--
'On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place graced our
cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little boat glided up
the bayou.'
Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard and the boat shoved out
up the creek, is a clean waste of ten good words, and is also
destructive of compactness of statement.
The trouble with the Southern reporter is--Women. They unsettle him;
they throw him off his balance. He is plain, and sensible, and
satisfactory, until a woman heaves in sight. Then he goes all to
pieces; his mind totters, he becomes flowery and idiotic. From reading
the above extract, you would imagine that this student of Sir Walter
Scott is an apprentice, and knows next to nothing about handling a pen.
On the contrary, he furnishes plenty of proofs, in his long letter, that
he knows well enough how to handle it when the women are not around to
give him the artificial-flower complaint. For instance--
'At 4 o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south-east, and
presently from the Gulf there came a blow which increased in severity
every moment. It was not safe to leave the landing then, and there was a
delay. The oaks shook off long tresses of their mossy beards to the
tugging of the wind, and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature
waves in mocking of much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a
start, and homewards we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind
blowing. As darkness crept on, there were few on board who did not wish
themselves nearer home.'
There is nothing the matter with that. It is good description,
compactly put. Yet there was great temptation, there, to drop into
lurid writing.
But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, I have rummaged around
and found a full report of the race. In it I find confirmation of the
theory which I broached just now--namely, that the trouble with the
Southern reporter is Women: Women, supplemented by Walter Scott and his
knights and beauty and chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent report,
as long as the women stay out of it. But when they intrude, we have this
frantic result--
'It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents such
a sea of foam-like loveliness as it did yesterday. The New Orleans
women are always charming, but never so much so as at this time of the
year, when in their dainty spring costumes they bring with them a
breath of balmy freshness and an odor of sanctity unspeakable. The stand
was so crowded with them that, walking at their feet and seeing no
possibility of approach, many a man appreciated as he never did before
the Peri's feeling at the Gates of Paradise, and wondered what was the
priceless boon that would admit him to their sacred presence. Sparkling
on their white-robed breasts or shoulders were the colors of their
favorite knights, and were it not for the fact that the doughty heroes
appeared on unromantic mules, it would have been easy to imagine one of
King Arthur's gala-days.'
There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all sorts of mules, they
were; all sorts of complexions, gaits, dispositions, aspects. Some were
handsome creatures, some were not; some were sleek, some hadn't had
their fur brushed lately; some were innocently gay and frisky; some were
full of malice and all unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of
them thought the matter on hand was war, some thought it was a lark, the
rest took it for a religious occasion. And each mule acted according to
his convictions. The result was an absence of harmony well compensated
by a conspicuous presence of variety--variety of a picturesque and
entertaining sort.
All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable society. If the
reader has been wondering why it is that the ladies of New Orleans
attend so humble an orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now. It
is a fashion-freak; all connected with it are people of fashion.
It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule-race is one of the
marked occasions of the year. It has brought some pretty fast mules to
the front. One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so fast that
he turned the thing into a one-mule contest, and robbed it of one of its
best features--variety. But every now and then somebody disguises him
with a new name and a new complexion, and rings him in again.
The riders dress in full jockey costumes of bright-colored silks,
satins, and velvets.
The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a couple of false starts,
and scampered off with prodigious spirit. As each mule and each rider
had a distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought to be run,
and which side of the track was best in certain circumstances, and how
often the track ought to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be
accomplished, and when it ought to be avoided, these twenty-six
conflicting opinions created a most fantastic and picturesque confusion,
and the resulting spectacle was killingly comical.
Mile heat; time 2:22. Eight of the thirteen mules distanced. I had a bet
on a mule which would have won if the procession had been reversed. The
second heat was good fun; and so was the 'consolation race for beaten
mules,' which followed later; but the first heat was the best in that
respect.
I think that much the most enjoyable of all races is a steamboat race;
but, next to that, I prefer the gay and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot
steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve--that is
to say, every rivet in the boilers--quaking and shaking and groaning
from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black
smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into
long breaks of hissing foam--this is sport that makes a body's very
liver curl with enjoyment. A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in
comparison. Still, a horse-race might be well enough, in its way,
perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome false starts. But then, nobody
is ever killed. At least, nobody was ever killed when I was at a horse-
race. They have been crippled, it is true; but this is little to the
purpose.
Chapter 46 Enchantments and Enchanters
THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a something which we arrived
too late to sample--the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of
the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years ago--with knights and
nobles and so on, clothed in silken and golden Paris-made
gorgeousnesses, planned and bought for that single night's use; and in
their train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and other
diverting grotesquerie--a startling and wonderful sort of show, as it
filed solemnly and silently down the street in the light of its smoking
and flickering torches; but it is said that in these latter days the
spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, splendor, and variety.
There is a chief personage--'Rex;' and if I remember rightly, neither
this king nor any of his great following of subordinates is known to any
outsider. All these people are gentlemen of position and consequence;
and it is a proud thing to belong to the organization; so the mystery in
which they hide their personality is merely for romance's sake, and not
on account of the police.
Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and Spanish occupation;
but I judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out
of it now. Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl
and rosary, and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by
the monsters and the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-
land, is finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and
performances of the reveling rabble of the priest's day, and serves
quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the day and admonish men that the
grace-line between the worldly season and the holy one is reached.
This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of New Orleans
until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis and St. Louis and
Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit. It is a thing which could
hardly exist in the practical North; would certainly last but a very
brief time; as brief a time as it would last in London. For the soul of
it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. Take away the
romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and
Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South. The very feature that
keeps it alive in the South--girly-girly romance--would kill it in the
North or in London. Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall
upon it and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be
also its last.
Against the crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set
two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke the chains of the
ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a
nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above
birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that
whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men,
since, and can never be gods again, but only figureheads, and answerable
for their acts like common clay. Such benefactions as these compensate
the temporary harm which Bonaparte and the Revolution did, and leave the
world in debt to them for these great and permanent services to liberty,
humanity, and progress.
Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single
might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the
world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms
of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the
sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham
chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did
measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other
individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good
part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South
they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a
generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and
wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused
and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and
so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive
works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune
romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to
be buried. But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the
Southerner--or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of
phrasing it--would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval
mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than
it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major
or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he,
also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it
was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for
rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on
slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of
Sir Walter.
Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it
existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the
war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never
should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a
plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild
proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so
did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter
as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be
traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's influence than to that of any
other thing or person.
One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply that influence
penetrated, and how strongly it holds. If one take up a Northern or
Southern literary periodical of forty or fifty years ago, he will find
it filled with wordy, windy, flowery 'eloquence,' romanticism,
sentimentality--all imitated from Sir Walter, and sufficiently badly
done, too--innocent travesties of his style and methods, in fact. This
sort of literature being the fashion in both sections of the country,
there was opportunity for the fairest competition; and as a consequence,
the South was able to show as many well-known literary names,
proportioned to population, as the North could.
But a change has come, and there is no opportunity now for a fair
competition between North and South. For the North has thrown out that
old inflated style, whereas the Southern writer still clings to it--
clings to it and has a restricted market for his wares, as a
consequence. There is as much literary talent in the South, now, as ever
there was, of course; but its work can gain but slight currency under
present conditions; the authors write for the past, not the present;
they use obsolete forms, and a dead language. But when a Southerner of
genius writes modern English, his book goes upon crutches no longer, but
upon wings; and they carry it swiftly all about America and England, and
through the great English reprint publishing houses of Germany--as
witness the experience of Mr. Cable and Uncle Remus, two of the very few
Southern authors who do not write in the Southern style. Instead of
three or four widely-known literary names, the South ought to have a
dozen or two--and will have them when Sir Walter's time is out.
A curious exemplification of the power of a single book for good or harm
is shown in the effects wrought by 'Don Quixote' and those wrought by
'Ivanhoe.' The first swept the world's admiration for the medieval
chivalry-silliness out of existence; and the other restored it. As far
as our South is concerned, the good work done by Cervantes is pretty
nearly a dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious work
undermined it.
Chapter 47 Uncle Remus and Mr. Cable
MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS ('Uncle Remus') was to arrive from Atlanta at
seven o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received him. We were
able to detect him among the crowd of arrivals at the hotel-counter by
his correspondence with a description of him which had been furnished us
from a trustworthy source. He was said to be undersized, red-haired, and
somewhat freckled. He was the only man in the party whose outside
tallied with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very shy. He
is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. It may not show on the
surface, but the shyness is there. After days of intimacy one wonders
to see that it is still in about as strong force as ever. There is a
fine and beautiful nature hidden behind it, as all know who have read
the Uncle Remus book; and a fine genius, too, as all know by the same
sign. I seem to be talking quite freely about this neighbor; but in
talking to the public I am but talking to his personal friends, and
these things are permissible among friends.
He deeply disappointed a number of children who had flocked eagerly to
Mr. Cable's house to get a glimpse of the illustrious sage and oracle of
the nation's nurseries. They said--
'Why, he 's white!'
They were grieved about it. So, to console them, the book was brought,
that they might hear Uncle Remus's Tar-Baby story from the lips of Uncle
Remus himself--or what, in their outraged eyes, was left of him. But it
turned out that he had never read aloud to people, and was too shy to
venture the attempt now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of ours, to
show him what an easy trick it was; but his immortal shyness was proof
against even this sagacious strategy, so we had to read about Brer
Rabbit ourselves.
Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro dialect better than
anybody else, for in the matter of writing it he is the only master the
country has produced. Mr. Cable is the only master in the writing of
French dialects that the country has produced; and he reads them in
perfection. It was a great treat to hear him read about Jean-ah
Poquelin, and about Innerarity and his famous 'pigshoo' representing
'Louisihanna RIF-fusing to Hanter the Union,' along with passages of
nicely-shaded German dialect from a novel which was still in manuscript.
It came out in conversation, that in two different instances Mr. Cable
got into grotesque trouble by using, in his books, next-to-impossible
French names which nevertheless happened to be borne by living and
sensitive citizens of New Orleans. His names were either inventions or
were borrowed from the ancient and obsolete past, I do not now remember
which; but at any rate living bearers of them turned up, and were a good
deal hurt at having attention directed to themselves and their affairs
in so excessively public a manner.
Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same sort when we wrote the
book called 'The Gilded Age.' There is a character in it called
'Sellers.' I do not remember what his first name was, in the beginning;
but anyway, Mr. Warner did not like it, and wanted it improved. He asked
me if I was able to imagine a person named 'Eschol Sellers.' Of course I
said I could not, without stimulants. He said that away out West, once,
he had met, and contemplated, and actually shaken hands with a man
bearing that impossible name--'Eschol Sellers.' He added--
'It was twenty years ago; his name has probably carried him off before
this; and if it hasn't, he will never see the book anyhow. We will
confiscate his name. The name you are using is common, and therefore
dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sellerses bearing it, and the
whole horde will come after us; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name--it is
a rock.'
So we borrowed that name; and when the book had been out about a week,
one of the stateliest and handsomest and most aristocratic looking white
men that ever lived, called around, with the most formidable libel suit
in his pocket that ever--well, in brief, we got his permission to
suppress an edition of ten million {footnote [Figures taken from memory,
and probably incorrect. Think it was more.]} copies of the book and
change that name to 'Mulberry Sellers' in future editions.
Chapter 48 Sugar and Postage
ONE day, on the street, I encountered the man whom, of all men, I most
wished to see--Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me--or rather, over
me--now captain of the great steamer 'City of Baton Rouge,' the latest
and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the
same tight curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the same
decision of eye and answering decision of hand, the same erect military
bearing; not an inch gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or
lost in weight, not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, to leave a man
thirty-five years old, and come back at the end of twenty-one years and
find him still only thirty-five. I have not had an experience of this
kind before, I believe. There were some crow's-feet, but they counted
for next to nothing, since they were inconspicuous.
His boat was just in. I had been waiting several days for her,
purposing to return to St. Louis in her. The captain and I joined a
party of ladies and gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down the
river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex-Governor Warmouth's sugar
plantation. Strung along below the city, were a number of decayed, ram-
shackly, superannuated old steamboats, not one of which had I ever seen
before. They had all been built, and worn out, and thrown aside, since I
was here last. This gives one a realizing sense of the frailness of a
Mississippi boat and the briefness of its life.
Six miles below town a fat and battered brick chimney, sticking above
the magnolias and live-oaks, was pointed out as the monument erected by
an appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New Orleans--Jackson's
victory over the British, January 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two
nations were at peace, but the news had not yet reached New Orleans. If
we had had the cable telegraph in those days, this blood would not have
been spilt, those lives would not have been wasted; and better still,
Jackson would probably never have been president. We have gotten over
the harms done us by the war of 1812, but not over some of those done us
by Jackson's presidency.
The Warmouth plantation covers a vast deal of ground, and the
hospitality of the Warmouth mansion is graduated to the same large
scale. We saw steam-plows at work, here, for the first time. The
traction engine travels about on its own wheels, till it reaches the
required spot; then it stands still and by means of a wire rope pulls
the huge plow toward itself two or three hundred yards across the field,
between the rows of cane. The thing cuts down into the black mold a foot
and a half deep. The plow looks like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson
river steamer, inverted. When the negro steersman sits on one end of it,
that end tilts down near the ground, while the other sticks up high in
air. This great see-saw goes rolling and pitching like a ship at sea,
and it is not every circus rider that could stay on it.
The plantation contains two thousand six hundred acres; six hundred and
fifty are in cane; and there is a fruitful orange grove of five thousand
trees. The cane is cultivated after a modern and intricate scientific
fashion, too elaborate and complex for me to attempt to describe; but it
lost $40,000 last year. I forget the other details. However, this
year's crop will reach ten or twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently
last year's loss will not matter. These troublesome and expensive
scientific methods achieve a yield of a ton and a half and from that to
two tons, to the acre; which is three or four times what the yield of an
acre was in my time.
The drainage-ditches were everywhere alive with little crabs--
'fiddlers.' One saw them scampering sidewise in every direction
whenever they heard a disturbing noise. Expensive pests, these crabs;
for they bore into the levees, and ruin them.
The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs and tanks and vats and
filters, pumps, pipes, and machinery. The process of making sugar is
exceedingly interesting. First, you heave your cane into the
centrifugals and grind out the juice; then run it through the
evaporating pan to extract the fiber; then through the bone-filter to
remove the alcohol; then through the clarifying tanks to discharge the
molasses; then through the granulating pipe to condense it; then through
the vacuum pan to extract the vacuum. It is now ready for market. I
have jotted these particulars down from memory. The thing looks simple
and easy. Do not deceive yourself. To make sugar is really one of the
most difficult things in the world. And to make it right, is next to
impossible. If you will examine your own supply every now and then for a
term of years, and tabulate the result, you will find that not two men
in twenty can make sugar without getting sand into it.
We could have gone down to the mouth of the river and visited Captain
Eads' great work, the 'jetties,' where the river has been compressed
between walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; but it was voted
useless to go, since at this stage of the water everything would be
covered up and invisible.
We could have visited that ancient and singular burg, 'Pilot-town,'
which stands on stilts in the water--so they say; where nearly all
communication is by skiff and canoe, even to the attending of weddings
and funerals; and where the littlest boys and girls are as handy with
the oar as unamphibious children are with the velocipede.
We could have done a number of other things; but on account of limited
time, we went back home. The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was
a charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and
romantic but for the interruptions of the tug's pet parrot, whose
tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were always this-
worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundance of the
discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed--a
machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it.
He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song.
He cackled it out with hideous energy after 'Home again, home again from
a foreign shore,' and said he 'wouldn't give a damn for a tug-load of
such rot.' Romance and sentiment cannot long survive this sort of
discouragement; so the singing and talking presently ceased; which so
delighted the parrot that he cursed himself hoarse for joy.
Then the male members of the party moved to the forecastle, to smoke and
gossip. There were several old steamboatmen along, and I learned from
them a great deal of what had been happening to my former river friends
during my long absence. I learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for
is become a spiritualist, and for more than fifteen years has been
receiving a letter every week from a deceased relative, through a New
York spiritualist medium named Manchester--postage graduated by
distance: from the local post-office in Paradise to New York, five
dollars; from New York to St. Louis, three cents. I remember Mr.
Manchester very well. I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple
of friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a deceased uncle. This
uncle had lost his life in a peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a
dozen years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles and knocked a
tree down with him which was four feet through at the butt and sixty-
five feet high. He did not survive this triumph. At the seance just
referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle, through Mr.
Manchester, and the late uncle wrote down his replies, using Mr.
Manchester's hand and pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair
example of the questions asked, and also of the sloppy twaddle in the
way of answers, furnished by Manchester under the pretense that it came
from the specter. If this man is not the paltriest fraud that lives, I
owe him an apology--
QUESTION. Where are you?
ANSWER. In the spirit world.
Q. Are you happy?
A. Very happy. Perfectly happy.
Q. How do you amuse yourself?
A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits.
Q. What else?
A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary.
Q. What do you talk about?
A. About how happy we are; and about friends left behind in the earth,
and how to influence them for their good.
Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the spirit land, what shall
you have to talk about then?--nothing but about how happy you all are?
No reply. It is explained that spirits will not answer frivolous
questions.
Q. How is it that spirits that are content to spend an eternity in
frivolous employments, and accept it as happiness, are so fastidious
about frivolous questions upon the subject?
No reply.
Q. Would you like to come back?
A. No.
Q. Would you say that under oath?
A. Yes.
Q. What do you eat there?
A. We do not eat.
Q. What do you drink?
A. We do not drink.
Q. What do you smoke?
A. We do not smoke.
Q. What do you read?
A. We do not read.
Q. Do all the good people go to your place?
A. Yes.
Q. You know my present way of life. Can you suggest any additions to
it, in the way of crime, that will reasonably insure my going to some
other place.
A. No reply.
Q. When did you die?
A. I did not die, I passed away.
Q. Very well, then, when did you pass away? How long have you been in
the spirit land?
A. We have no measurements of time here.
Q. Though you may be indifferent and uncertain as to dates and times in
your present condition and environment, this has nothing to do with your
former condition. You had dates then. One of these is what I ask for.
You departed on a certain day in a certain year. Is not this true?
A. Yes.
Q. Then name the day of the month.
(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the medium, accompanied by
violent spasmodic jerkings of his head and body, for some little time.
Finally, explanation to the effect that spirits often forget dates, such
things being without importance to them.)
Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date of its translation to
the spirit land?
This was granted to be the case.
Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year was it?
(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the part of the medium.
Finally, explanation to the effect that the spirit has forgotten the
year.)
Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one more question, one last
question, to you, before we part to meet no more;--for even if I fail to
avoid your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as a meeting,
since by that time you will easily have forgotten me and my name: did
you die a natural death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe?
A. (After long hesitation and many throes and spasms.) NATURAL DEATH.
This ended the interview. My friend told the medium that when his
relative was in this poor world, he was endowed with an extraordinary
intellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and it seemed a great
pity that he had not been allowed to keep some shred of these for his
amusement in the realms of everlasting contentment, and for the
amazement and admiration of the rest of the population there.
This man had plenty of clients--has plenty yet. He receives letters
from spirits located in every part of the spirit world, and delivers
them all over this country through the United States mail. These letters
are filled with advice--advice from 'spirits' who don't know as much as
a tadpole--and this advice is religiously followed by the receivers.
One of these clients was a man whom the spirits (if one may thus
plurally describe the ingenious Manchester) were teaching how to
contrive an improved railway car-wheel. It is coarse employment for a
spirit, but it is higher and wholesomer activity than talking for ever
about 'how happy we are.'
Chapter 49 Episodes in Pilot Life
IN the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that out of every five
of my former friends who had quitted the river, four had chosen farming
as an occupation. Of course this was not because they were peculiarly
gifted, agriculturally, and thus more likely to succeed as farmers than
in other industries: the reason for their choice must be traced to some
other source. Doubtless they chose farming because that life is private
and secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers--like the pilot-
house hermitage. And doubtless they also chose it because on a thousand
nights of black storm and danger they had noted the twinkling lights of
solitary farm-houses, as the boat swung by, and pictured to themselves
the serenity and security and coziness of such refuges at such times,
and so had by-and-bye come to dream of that retired and peaceful life as
the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, and at last
enjoy.
But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished
anybody with their successes. Their farms do not support them: they
support their farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river
annually, about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next
frost. Then he appears again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out
of his hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter. In this way
he pays the debts which his farming has achieved during the agricultural
season. So his river bondage is but half broken; he is still the
river's slave the hardest half of the year.
One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it. He knew a
trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperize his farm by
applying his personal ignorance to working it. No, he put the farm into
the hands of an agricultural expert to be worked on shares--out of every
three loads of corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third. But
at the end of the season the pilot received no corn. The expert
explained that his share was not reached. The farm produced only two
loads.
Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures--the outcome
fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases. Captain Montgomery, whom I
had steered for when he was a pilot, commanded the Confederate fleet in
the great battle before Memphis; when his vessel went down, he swam
ashore, fought his way through a squad of soldiers, and made a gallant
and narrow escape. He was always a cool man; nothing could disturb his
serenity. Once when he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was
bringing the boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting
orders from the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stopped the
wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased. It was
evening--dim twilight--the captain's hat was perched upon the big bell,
and I supposed the intellectual end of the captain was in it, but such
was not the case. The captain was very strict; therefore I knew better
than to touch a bell without orders. My duty was to hold the boat
steadily on her calamitous course, and leave the consequences to take
care of themselves--which I did. So we went plowing past the sterns of
steamboats and getting closer and closer--the crash was bound to come
very soon--and still that hat never budged; for alas, the captain was
napping in the texas.... Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and
uncomfortable. It seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear
in time to see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walking
into the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said, with
heavenly serenity, 'Set her back on both'--which I did; but a trifle
late, however, for the next moment we went smashing through that other
boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket. The captain
never said a word to me about the matter afterwards, except to remark
that I had done right, and that he hoped I would not hesitate to act in
the same way again in like circumstances.
One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the river had died a
very honorable death. His boat caught fire, and he remained at the
wheel until he got her safe to land. Then he went out over the breast-
board with his clothing in flames, and was the last person to get
ashore. He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours,
and his was the only life lost.
The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of
this sort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a
like fate which came within a second or two of being fatally too late;
BUT THERE IS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE
WHILE BY REMAINING AND SACRIFICING IT HE MIGHT SECURE OTHER LIVES FROM
DESTRUCTION. It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and
well worth while to put it in italics, too.
The 'cub' pilot is early admonished to despise all perils connected with
a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sort of death to the deep dishonor
of deserting his post while there is any possibility of his being useful
in it. And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated, that even
young and but half-tried pilots can be depended upon to stick to the
wheel, and die there when occasion requires. In a Memphis graveyard is
buried a young fellow who perished at the wheel a great many years ago,
in White River, to save the lives of other men. He said to the captain
that if the fire would give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance
away, all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bank of the
river would be to insure the loss of many lives. He reached the bar and
grounded the boat in shallow water; but by that time the flames had
closed around him, and in escaping through them he was fatally burned.
He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as became a pilot to
reply--
'I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay, no one will
be lost but me. I will stay.'
There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the
pilot's. There used to be a monument to this young fellow, in that
Memphis graveyard. While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I
started out to look for it, but our time was so brief that I was obliged
to turn back before my object was accomplished.
The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead--blown up,
near Memphis, and killed; that several others whom I had known had
fallen in the war--one or two of them shot down at the wheel; that
another and very particular friend, whom I had steered many trips for,
had stepped out of his house in New Orleans, one night years ago, to
collect some money in a remote part of the city, and had never been seen
again--was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that Ben
Thornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I used to quarrel
with, all through every daylight watch. A heedless, reckless creature
he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief. An Arkansas
passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day, and chained him to a
life-boat on the hurricane deck. Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till
he had gone there and unchained the bear, to 'see what he would do.' He
was promptly gratified. The bear chased him around and around the deck,
for miles and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning through the
railings for audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tail and
went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turned out with alacrity,
and left the bear in sole possession. He presently grew lonesome, and
started out for recreation. He ranged the whole boat--visited every part
of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a
voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last,
those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in
hiding, and the boat was a solitude.
I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel, from
heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time. He saw
the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; ran up, and
found the pilot lying dead on the floor.
Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured, but the
other pilot was lost.
George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown into the river from
the wheel, and disabled. The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton
bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he
was rescued by some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck. They
tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed the life
back into him, and got him safe to Memphis. He is one of Bixby's pilots
on the 'Baton Rouge' now.
Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bit of
romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless. When I
knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, goodhearted,
full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuously promising to
fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing. In a Western
city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; and in their
family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant. The
young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was not George
Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposes of this
narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned; and the
old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed, they
lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.
Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed
them. After that, they were able to continue their sin without
concealment. By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he
followed after her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among
the mourners sat the two young sinners. The will was opened and
solemnly read. It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth
to MRS. GEORGE JOHNSON!
And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then, and
did a very foolish thing: married themselves before an obscure Justice
of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing. That did no sort of
good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposed the fraudful date
with extreme suddenness and surprising ease, and carried off the
fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and
irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage, but with not so much
as a penny to bless themselves withal. Such are the actual facts; and
not all novels have for a base so telling a situation.
Chapter 50 The 'Original Jacobs'
WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead. He
was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and
on the river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his
old age--as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and
his eye and hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as
firm and clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of
pilots. He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot
before the day of steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other
steamboat pilot, still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned
a wheel. Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which
illustrious survivors of a bygone age are always held by their
associates. He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added
some trifle of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been
sufficiently stiff in its original state.
He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date back to his
first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the year the first
steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi. At the time of his
death a correspondent of the 'St. Louis Republican' culled the following
items from the diary--
'In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler," at
Florence, Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and
back--this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It
was during his stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap
of the bell as a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was
the custom for the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were
wanted. The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt,
rendered this an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of
the present day.
'In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of two hundred and
eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithland and New Orleans.
Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828, and on this boat he did his
first piloting in the St. Louis trade; his first watch extending from
Herculaneum to St. Genevieve. On May 26, 1836, he completed and left
Pittsburgh in charge of the steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred
tons, and the first steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St.
Louis. In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which
has, with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day; in
fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.
'As general items of river history, we quote the following marginal
notes from his general log--
'In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louis on the
low-pressure steamer "Natchez."
'In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharf to
celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson's visit to that city.
'In 1830 the "North American" made the run from New Orleans to Memphis
in six days--best time on record to that date. It has since been made in
two days and ten hours.
'In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.
'In 1832 steamer "Hudson" made the run from White River to Helena, a
distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This was the source of
much talk and speculation among parties directly interested.
'In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed.
'Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascertain, by
reference to the diary, he has made four hundred and sixty round trips
to New Orleans, which gives a distance of one million one hundred and
four thousand miles, or an average of eighty-six miles a day.'
Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of gossiping pilots, a chill
fell there, and talking ceased. For this reason: whenever six pilots
were gathered together, there would always be one or two newly fledged
ones in the lot, and the elder ones would be always 'showing off' before
these poor fellows; making them sorrowfully feel how callow they were,
how recent their nobility, and how humble their degree, by talking
largely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the river; always
making it a point to date everything back as far as they could, so as to
make the new men feel their newness to the sharpest degree possible, and
envy the old stagers in the like degree. And how these complacent
baldheads WOULD swell, and brag, and lie, and date back--ten, fifteen,
twenty years,--and how they did enjoy the effect produced upon the
marveling and envying youngsters!
And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings, the stately
figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and only genuine Son of
Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst. Imagine the size of the
silence that would result on the instant. And imagine the feelings of
those bald-heads, and the exultation of their recent audience when the
ancient captain would begin to drop casual and indifferent remarks of a
reminiscent nature--about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that
had been made, a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company
had ever set his foot in a pilot-house!
Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scene in the
above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation around him. If one
might believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back to the misty
dawn of river history; and he never used the same island twice; and
never did he employ an island that still existed, or give one a name
which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before. If you
might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiously particular about
little details; never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,' for instance
--no, he would say, 'When the State of Mississippi was where Arkansas now
is,' and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouri in a general way,
and leave an incorrect impression on your mind--no, he would say, 'When
Louisiana was up the river farther,' or 'When Missouri was on the
Illinois side.'
The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to
jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the
river, and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,' and give them to the 'New Orleans
Picayune.' They related to the stage and condition of the river, and
were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. But
in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point, the
captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about this being the
first time he had seen the water so high or so low at that particular
point for forty-nine years; and now and then he would mention Island So-
and-so, and follow it, in parentheses, with some such observation as
'disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.' In these antique
interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other old pilots, and
they used to chaff the 'Mark Twain' paragraphs with unsparing mockery.
It so chanced that one of these paragraphs--{footnote [The original MS.
of it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent to me from New Orleans.
It reads as follows--
VICKSBURG May 4, 1859.
'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The water is
higher this far up than it has been since 8. My opinion is that the
water will be feet deep in Canal street before the first of next June.
Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black Island is all under
water, and it has not been since 1815.
'I. Sellers.']}
became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesqued it
broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent of
eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time. I showed
my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in
the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it did nobody
any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.
There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It
laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.
I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering
comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the
first time pilloried in print.
Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day
forth. When I say he did me the honor, I am not using empty words. It
was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man as Captain
Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate it and be proud of it. It
was distinction to be loved by such a man; but it was a much greater
distinction to be hated by him, because he loved scores of people; but
he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me.
He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never again
signed 'Mark Twain' to anything. At the time that the telegraph brought
the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new
journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient
mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it
was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found
in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I
have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.
The captain had an honorable pride in his profession and an abiding love
for it. He ordered his monument before he died, and kept it near him
until he did die. It stands over his grave now, in Bellefontaine
cemetery, St. Louis. It is his image, in marble, standing on duty at the
pilot wheel; and worthy to stand and confront criticism, for it
represents a man who in life would have stayed there till he burned to a
cinder, if duty required it.
The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw as we
approached New Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the curving frontage
of the crescent city lit up with the white glare of five miles of
electric lights. It was a wonderful sight, and very beautiful.
Chapter 51 Reminiscences
WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfully
hot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished.
I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen, but got so
pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that I got nothing
more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the craft.
I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and
'straightened up' for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,' in
the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneys
equally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum, and
presently were fairly under way and booming along. It was all as natural
and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no
break in my river life. There was a 'cub,' and I judged that he would
take the wheel now; and he did. Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-
house. Presently the cub closed up on the rank of steamships. He made
me nervous, for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and
the ships. I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could
date back in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on,
during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself, and crowded
the boat in, till she went scraping along within a hand-breadth of the
ships. It was exactly the favor which he had done me, about a quarter
of a century before, in that same spot, the first time I ever steamed
out of the port of New Orleans. It was a very great and sincere pleasure
to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim.
We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half--
much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water.
The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and saw Ritchie
successfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using for his guidance
the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself. This
sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.
By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the
reflection of a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six
hundred yards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree
itself. The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding
fog, were very pretty things to see.
We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg, and still
another about fifty miles below Memphis. They had an old-fashioned
energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This third storm was
accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bank when we saw the
tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me. The wind bent
the young trees down, exposing the pale underside of the leaves; and
gust after gust followed, in quick succession, thrashing the branches
violently up and down, and to this side and that, and creating swift
waves of alternating green and white according to the side of the leaf
that was exposed, and these waves raced after each other as do their
kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. No color that was visible
anywhere was quite natural--all tints were charged with a leaden tinge
from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden; all distances
the same; and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were
dully shaded by the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming
legions marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening;
explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between,
and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying
to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and produced
effects which enchanted the eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed
delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve in the body in
unintermittent procession. The rain poured down in amazing volume; the
ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind increased
in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them
sailing away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and
straining and cracking and surging, and I went down in the hold to see
what time it was.
People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms; but the storms
which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were not the equals of some
which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley. I may not have seen the
Alps do their best, of course, and if they can beat the Mississippi, I
don't wish to.
On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half a mile long,
which had been formed during the past nineteen years. Since there was so
much time to spare that nineteen years of it could be devoted to the
construction of a mere towhead, where was the use, originally, in
rushing this whole globe through in six days? It is likely that if more
time had been taken, in the first place, the world would have been made
right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary
now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find
out by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or
some other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be
supplied, no matter how much expense and vexation it may cost.
We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was
observable that whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees
with the intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious
effect was always produced: hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from
the masses of shining green foliage, and went careering hither and
thither through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned up and fell
to singing. We judged that they mistook this superb artificial day for
the genuine article. We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-
ordered steamer, and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By
means of diligence and activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the
old friends. One was missing, however; he went to his reward, whatever
it was, two years ago. But I found out all about him. His case helped
me to realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling
occurrence. When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a
schoolboy, a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a
while; and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did
the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in
the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and
the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering,
ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He
disappeared, and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him
there, by and by. He was standing musing on a street corner, with his
left hand on his hip, the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face
bowed and frowning, slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining
himself to be Othello or some such character, and imagining that the
passing crowd marked his tragic bearing and were awestruck.
I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds, but did not
succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently, that he was a
member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with
indifference, but the indifference was thin, and a mighty exultation
showed through it. He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar, for
that night, and if I should come I would see him. IF I should come! I
said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.
I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself, 'How
strange it is! WE always thought this fellow a fool; yet the moment he
comes to a great city, where intelligence and appreciation abound, the
talent concealed in this shabby napkin is at once discovered, and
promptly welcomed and honored.'
But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended;
for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills.
I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he
asked--
'Did you see me?'
'No, you weren't there.'
He looked surprised and disappointed. He said--
'Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.'
'Which one?'
'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank,
and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?'
'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustabouts in
nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched around treading
on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-legged consumptive dressed
like themselves?'
'That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers. I was the next
to the last one. A half a year ago I used to always be the last one;
but I've been promoted.'
Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the
last--a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a
'speaking part,' but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go
and say, 'My lord, the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a
sentence or two to this, his memory felt the strain and he was likely to
miss fire. Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently studying the part of
Hamlet for more than thirty years, and he lived and died in the belief
that some day he would be invited to play it!
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young Englishmen
to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble horseshoes this man
might have made, but for those Englishmen; and what an inadequate Roman
soldier he DID make!
A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along Fourth
Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me,
then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow,
and finally said with deep asperity--
'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET?'
A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him. I
made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me, and answered
as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how--
'Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the place
where they keep it. Come in and help.'
He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was
agreeable. He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all
his affairs aside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make
me answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of
his late asperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise.
This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of about thirty
years ago. I spent a week there, at that time, in a boarding-house, and
had this young fellow for a neighbor across the hall. We saw some of
the fightings and killings; and by and by we went one night to an armory
where two hundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and go forth
against the rioters, under command of a military man. We drilled till
about ten o'clock at night; then news came that the mob were in great
force in the lower end of the town, and were sweeping everything before
them. Our column moved at once. It was a very hot night, and my musket
was very heavy. We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the
seat of war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behind my
friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while I dropped out
and got a drink. Then I branched off and went home. I was not feeling
any solicitude about him of course, because I knew he was so well armed,
now, that he could take care of himself without any trouble. If I had
had any doubts about that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.
I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if this grizzled man
had not happened to encounter my name in the papers the other day in St.
Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I should have carried to my grave
a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether he ever got out of the riots
all right or not. I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know
that. And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in the
circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigations than
I was.
One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis, the 'Globe-
Democrat' came out with a couple of pages of Sunday statistics, whereby
it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis people attended the morning and
evening church services the day before, and 23,102 children attended
Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons, out of the city's total of 400,000
population, respected the day religious-wise. I found these statistics,
in a condensed form, in a telegram of the Associated Press, and
preserved them. They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher
state of grace than she could have claimed to be in my time. But now
that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspect that the telegraph
mutilated them. It cannot be that there are more than 150,000 Catholics
in the town; the other 250,000 must be classified as Protestants. Out
of these 250,000, according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362
attended church and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics,
116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.
Chapter 52 A Burning Brand
ALL at once the thought came into my mind, 'I have not sought out Mr.
Brown.'
Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my subject,
and make a little excursion. I wish to reveal a secret which I have
carried with me nine years, and which has become burdensome.
Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with strong
feeling, 'If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the
great grain merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the
hand.'
The occasion and the circumstances were as follows. A friend of mine, a
clergyman, came one evening and said--
'I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want to read to you,
if I can do it without breaking down. I must preface it with some
explanations, however. The letter is written by an ex-thief and
ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, a man all stained with
crime and steeped in ignorance; but, thank God, with a mine of pure gold
hidden away in him, as you shall see. His letter is written to a burglar
named Williams, who is serving a nine-year term in a certain State
prison, for burglary. Williams was a particularly daring burglar, and
plied that trade during a number of years; but he was caught at last and
jailed, to await trial in a town where he had broken into a house at
night, pistol in hand, and forced the owner to hand over to him $8,000
in government bonds. Williams was not a common sort of person, by any
means; he was a graduate of Harvard College, and came of good New
England stock. His father was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his
health began to fail, and he was threatened with consumption. This fact,
together with the opportunity for reflection afforded by solitary
confinement, had its effect--its natural effect. He fell into serious
thought; his early training asserted itself with power, and wrought with
strong influence upon his mind and heart. He put his old life behind
him, and became an earnest Christian. Some ladies in the town heard of
this, visited him, and by their encouraging words supported him in his
good resolutions and strengthened him to continue in his new life. The
trial ended in his conviction and sentence to the State prison for the
term of nine years, as I have before said. In the prison he became
acquainted with the poor wretch referred to in the beginning of my talk,
Jack Hunt, the writer of the letter which I am going to read. You will
see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt. When Hunt's time was
out, he wandered to St. Louis; and from that place he wrote his letter
to Williams. The letter got no further than the office of the prison
warden, of course; prisoners are not often allowed to receive letters
from outside. The prison authorities read this letter, but did not
destroy it. They had not the heart to do it. They read it to several
persons, and eventually it fell into the hands of those ladies of whom I
spoke a while ago. The other day I came across an old friend of mine--a
clergyman--who had seen this letter, and was full of it. The mere
remembrance of it so moved him that he could not talk of it without his
voice breaking. He promised to get a copy of it for me; and here it is
--an exact copy, with all the imperfections of the original preserved. It
has many slang expressions in it--thieves' argot--but their meaning has
been interlined, in parentheses, by the prison authorities'--
St. Louis, June 9th 1872.
Mr. W---- friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are surprised
to get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at my writing to
you. i want to tell you my thanks for the way you talked to me when i
was in prison--it has led me to try and be a better man; i guess you
thought i did not cair for what you said, & at the first go off I
didn't, but i noed you was a man who had don big work with good men &
want no sucker, nor want gasing & all the boys knod it.
I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off swearing
months before my time was up, for i saw it want no good, nohow--the day
my time was up you told me if i would shake the cross (QUIT STEALING) &
live on the square for months, it would be the best job i ever done in
my life. The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i
thought more of what you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When
we got to Chicago on the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old
woman's leather; (ROBBED HER OF HER POCKETBOOK) i hadn't no more than
got it off when i wished i hadn't done it, for awhile before that i made
up my mind to be a square bloke, for months on your word, but forgot it
when i saw the leather was a grip (EASY TO GET)--but i kept clos to her
& when she got out of the cars at a way place i said, marm have you lost
anything. & she tumbled (DISCOVERED) her leather was off (GONE)--is this
it says i, giving it to her--well if you aint honest, says she, but i
hadn't got cheak enough to stand that sort of talk, so i left her in a
hurry. When i got here i had $1 and 25 cents left & i didn't get no work
for 3 days as i aint strong enough for roust about on a steam bote (FOR
A DECK HAND)--The afternoon of the 3rd day I spent my last 10 cts for
moons (LARGE, ROUND SEA-BISCUIT) & cheese & i felt pretty rough & was
thinking i would have to go on the dipe (PICKING POCKETS) again, when i
thought of what you once said about a fellows calling on the Lord when
he was in hard luck, & i thought i would try it once anyhow, but when i
tryed it i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off wos, Lord give
a poor fellow a chance to square it for 3 months for Christ's sake,
amen; & i kept a thinking, of it over and over as i went along--about an
hour after that i was in 4th St. & this is what happened & is the cause
of my being where i am now & about which i will tell you before i get
done writing. As i was walking along herd a big noise & saw a horse
running away with a carriage with 2 children in it, & I grabed up a
peace of box cover from the side walk & run in the middle of the street,
& when the horse came up i smashed him over the head as hard as i could
drive--the bord split to peces & the horse checked up a little & I
grabbed the reigns & pulled his head down until he stopped--the
gentleman what owned him came running up & soon as he saw the children
were all rite, he shook hands with me and gave me a $50 green back, & my
asking the Lord to help me come into my head, & i was so thunderstruck i
couldn't drop the reigns nor say nothing--he saw something was up, &
coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt? & the thought come into my
head just then to ask him for work; & i asked him to take back the bill
and give me a job--says he, jump in here & lets talk about it, but keep
the money--he asked me if i could take care of horses & i said yes, for
i used to hang round livery stables & often would help clean & drive
horses, he told me he wanted a man for that work, & would give me $16 a
month & bord me. You bet i took that chance at once. that nite in my
little room over the stable i sat a long time thinking over my past life
& of what had just happened & i just got down on my nees & thanked the
Lord for the job & to help me to square it, & to bless you for putting
me up to it, & the next morning i done it again & got me some new togs
(CLOTHES) & a bible for i made up my mind after what the Lord had done
for me i would read the bible every nite and morning, & ask him to keep
an eye on me. When I had been there about a week Mr. Brown (that's his
name) came in my room one nite and saw me reading the bible--he asked me
if i was a Christian & i told him no--he asked me how it was i read the
bible instead of papers & books--Well Charlie i thought i had better
give him a square deal in the start, so i told him all about my being in
prison & about you, & how i had almost done give up looking for work &
how the Lord got me the job when I asked him; & the only way i had to
pay him back was to read the bible & square it, & i asked him to give me
a chance for 3 months--he talked to me like a father for a long time, &
told me i could stay & then i felt better than ever i had done in my
life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me & now i didn't fear
no one giving me a back cap (EXPOSING HIS PAST LIFE) & running me off
the job--the next morning he called me into the library & gave me
another square talk, & advised me to study some every day, & he would
help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic, a spelling
book, a Geography & a writing book, & he hers me every nite--he lets me
come into the house to prayers every morning, & got me put in a bible
class in the Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps me to
understand my bible better.
Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago, & as you
said, it is the best job i ever did in my life, & i commenced another of
the same sort right away, only it is to God helping me to last a
lifetime Charlie--i wrote this letter to tell you I do think God has
forgiven my sins & herd your prayers, for you told me you should pray
for me--i no i love to read his word & tell him all my troubles & he
helps me i know for i have plenty of chances to steal but i don't feel
to as i once did & now i take more pleasure in going to church than to
the theater & that wasnt so once--our minister and others often talk
with me & a month ago they wanted me to join the church, but I said no,
not now, i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will wait awhile, but now i
feel that God has called me & on the first Sunday in July i will join
the church--dear friend i wish i could write to you as i feel, but i
cant do it yet--you no i learned to read and write while prisons & i
aint got well enough along to write as i would talk; i no i aint spelled
all the words rite in this & lots of other mistakes but you will excuse
it i no, for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run away, &
that i never new who my father and mother was & i dont no my right name,
& i hope you wont be mad at me, but i have as much rite to one name as
another & i have taken your name, for you wont use it when you get out i
no, & you are the man i think most of in the world; so i hope you wont
be mad--I am doing well, i put $10 a month in bank with $25 of the $50--
if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is yours. i wish you
would let me send you some now. I send you with this a receipt for a
year of Littles Living Age, i didn't know what you would like & i told
Mr. Brown & he said he thought you would like it--i wish i was nere you
so i could send you chuck (REFRESHMENTS) on holidays; it would spoil
this weather from here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any
way--next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as lite porter & will
advance me as soon as i know a little more--he keeps a big granary
store, wholesale--i forgot to tell you of my mission school, sunday
school class--the school is in the sunday afternoon, i went out two
sunday afternoons, and picked up seven kids (LITTLE BOYS) & got them to
come in. two of them new as much as i did & i had them put in a class
where they could learn something. i dont no much myself, but as these
kids cant read i get on nicely with them. i make sure of them by going
after them every Sunday hour before school time, I also got 4 girls to
come. tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come out here when
their time is up i will get them jobs at once. i hope you will excuse
this long letter & all mistakes, i wish i could see you for i cant write
as i would talk--i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--i was
afraid when you was bleeding you would die--give my respects to all the
boys and tell them how i am doing--i am doing well and every one here
treats me as kind as they can--Mr. Brown is going to write to you
sometime--i hope some day you will write to me, this letter is from your
very true friend
C---- W----
who you know as Jack Hunt.
I send you Mr. Brown's card. Send my letter to him.
Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence; and without a single
grace or ornament to help it out. I have seldom been so deeply stirred
by any piece of writing. The reader of it halted, all the way through,
on a lame and broken voice; yet he had tried to fortify his feelings by
several private readings of the letter before venturing into company
with it. He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of his
being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting with anything like
a decent command over his feelings. The result was not promising.
However, he determined to risk it; and did. He got through tolerably
well; but his audience broke down early, and stayed in that condition to
the end.
The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brother minister came
and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily into a sermon, preached the
sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday morning, and the letter
drowned them in their own tears. Then my friend put it into a sermon and
went before his Sunday morning congregation with it. It scored another
triumph. The house wept as one individual.
My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regions of our
northern British neighbors, and carried this sermon with him, since he
might possibly chance to need a sermon. He was asked to preach, one day.
The little church was full. Among the people present were the late Dr.
J. G. Holland, the late Mr. Seymour of the 'New York Times,' Mr. Page,
the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I think, Senator Frye,
of Maine. The marvelous letter did its wonted work; all the people were
moved, all the people wept; the tears flowed in a steady stream down Dr.
Holland's cheeks, and nearly the same can be said with regard to all who
were there. Mr. Page was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he
said he would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison, and had
speech with the man who had been able to inspire a fellow-unfortunate to
write so priceless a tract.
Ah, that unlucky Page!--and another man. If they had only been in
Jericho, that letter would have rung through the world and stirred all
the hearts of all the nations for a thousand years to come, and nobody
might ever have found out that it was the confoundedest, brazenest,
ingeniousest piece of fraud and humbuggery that was ever concocted to
fool poor confiding mortals with!
The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth. And take it by and
large, it was without a compeer among swindles. It was perfect, it was
rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal!
The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't learn it till some
miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair. My friend came back
from the woods, and he and other clergymen and lay missionaries began
once more to inundate audiences with their tears and the tears of said
audiences; I begged hard for permission to print the letter in a
magazine and tell the watery story of its triumphs; numbers of people
got copies of the letter, with permission to circulate them in writing,
but not in print; copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far
regions.
Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn letter was
read and wept over. At the church door, afterward, he dropped a
peculiarly cold iceberg down the clergyman's back with the question--
'Do you know that letter to be genuine?'
It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced; but it had that
sickening effect which first-uttered suspicions against one's idol
always have. Some talk followed--
'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?'
'Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and compact, and
fluent, and nicely put together for an ignorant person, an unpractised
hand. I think it was done by an educated man.'
The literary artist had detected the literary machinery. If you will
look at the letter now, you will detect it yourself--it is observable in
every line.
Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed of suspicion
sprouting in him, and wrote to a minister residing in that town where
Williams had been jailed and converted; asked for light; and also asked
if a person in the literary line (meaning me) might be allowed to print
the letter and tell its history. He presently received this answer--
Rev. ---- ----
MY DEAR FRIEND,--In regard to that 'convict's letter' there can be no
doubt as to its genuineness. 'Williams,' to whom it was written, lay in
our jail and professed to have been converted, and Rev. Mr. ----, the
chaplain, had great faith in the genuineness of the change--as much as
one can have in any such case.
The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday-school
teacher,--sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain of the
State's prison, probably. She has been greatly annoyed in having so
much publicity, lest it might seem a breach of confidence, or be an
injury to Williams. In regard to its publication, I can give no
permission; though if the names and places were omitted, and especially
if sent out of the country, I think you might take the responsibility
and do it.
It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much less one
unsanctified, could ever have written. As showing the work of grace in
a human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one, it proves its own
origin and reproves our weak faith in its power to cope with any form of
wickedness.
'Mr. Brown' of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man. Do all whom
you send from Hartford serve their Master as well?
P.S.--Williams is still in the State's prison, serving out a long
sentence--of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatened with
consumption, but I have not inquired after him lately. This lady that I
speak of corresponds with him, I presume, and will be quite sure to look
after him.
This letter arrived a few days after it was written--and up went Mr.
Williams's stock again. Mr. Warner's low-down suspicion was laid in the
cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged. It was a suspicion based
upon mere internal evidence, anyway; and when you come to internal
evidence, it's a big field and a game that two can play at: as witness
this other internal evidence, discovered by the writer of the note above
quoted, that 'it is a wonderful letter--which no Christian genius, much
less one unsanctified, could ever have written.'
I had permission now to print--provided I suppressed names and places
and sent my narrative out of the country. So I chose an Australian
magazine for vehicle, as being far enough out of the country, and set
myself to work on my article. And the ministers set the pumps going
again, with the letter to work the handles.
But meantime Brother Page had been agitating. He had not visited the
penitentiary, but he had sent a copy of the illustrious letter to the
chaplain of that institution, and accompanied it with--apparently
inquiries. He got an answer, dated four days later than that other
Brother's reassuring epistle; and before my article was complete, it
wandered into my hands. The original is before me, now, and I here
append it. It is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the most
solid description--
STATE'S PRISON, CHAPLAIN'S OFFICE, July 11, 1873.
DEAR BRO. PAGE,--Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me. I am
afraid its genuineness cannot be established. It purports to be
addressed to some prisoner here. No such letter ever came to a prisoner
here. All letters received are carefully read by officers of the prison
before they go into the hands of the convicts, and any such letter could
not be forgotten. Again, Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a
dissolute, cunning prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel.
His name is an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance. I
am preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars, and should
like to deliver the same in your vicinity.
And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the fire; for
whereas the materials for it were now more abundant and infinitely
richer than they had previously been, there were parties all around me,
who, although longing for the publication before, were a unit for
suppression at this stage and complexion of the game. They said: 'Wait
--the wound is too fresh, yet.' All the copies of the famous letter
except mine disappeared suddenly; and from that time onward, the
aforetime same old drought set in in the churches. As a rule, the town
was on a spacious grin for a while, but there were places in it where
the grin did not appear, and where it was dangerous to refer to the
ex-convict's letter.
A word of explanation. 'Jack Hunt,' the professed writer of the letter,
was an imaginary person. The burglar Williams--Harvard graduate, son of
a minister--wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it smuggled out
of the prison; got it conveyed to persons who had supported and
encouraged him in his conversion--where he knew two things would happen:
the genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into; and
the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable effect--the
effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardoned out
of prison.
That 'nub' is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and immediately
left there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferent
reader would never suspect that it was the heart and core of the
epistle, if he even took note of it at all, This is the 'nub'--
'i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--I WAS AFRAID WHEN YOU
WAS BLEEDING YOU WOULD DIE--give my respects,' etc.
That is all there is of it--simply touch and go--no dwelling upon it.
Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be swift to see it;
and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of
a poor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip of
consumption.
When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years ago, I felt
that it was the most remarkable one I had ever encountered. And it so
warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if ever I
visited that city again, I would seek out that excellent man and kiss
the hem of his garment if it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis,
but I did not hunt for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigations of long
ago had proved that the benevolent Brown, like 'Jack Hunt,' was not a
real person, but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal, Williams--
burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman.
Chapter 53 My Boyhood's Home
WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. Paul
Packet Company, and started up the river.
When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was
twenty-two or twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the
estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down
eight miles since then; and the pilots say that within five years the
river will cut through and move the mouth down five miles more, which
will bring it within ten miles of St. Louis.
About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing town of Alton,
Illinois; and before daylight next morning the town of Louisiana,
Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a brisk railway center now;
however, all the towns out there are railway centers now. I could not
clearly recognize the place. This seemed odd to me, for when I retired
from the rebel army in '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at
least in good enough order for a person who had not yet learned how to
retreat according to the rules of war, and had to trust to native
genius. It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it was not
badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaign that was at
all equal to it.
There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkled with
glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.
At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhood
was spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another
glimpse six years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly
counted. The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the
memory of it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years
ago. That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a
photograph. I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of
a dead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of what the
Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come out and look
upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiously the familiar
and the strange were mixed together before them. I saw the new houses--
saw them plainly enough--but they did not affect the older picture in my
mind, for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the vanished
houses, which had formerly stood there, with perfect distinctness.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passed through
the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was, and not as it is,
and recognizing and metaphorically shaking hands with a hundred familiar
objects which no longer exist; and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get
a comprehensive view. The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I
could mark and fix every locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a
good deal moved. I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this
tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in
the other place.' The things about me and before me made me feel like a
boy again--convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply
been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all
that; for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty old houses down yonder,
into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a woman who
was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grandmother
who was a plump young bride at that time.'
From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river, and
wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful--one of the
most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which is a hazardous remark
to make, for the eight hundred miles of river between St. Louis and St.
Paul afford an unbroken succession of lovely pictures. It may be that
my affection for the one in question biases my judgment in its favor; I
cannot say as to that. No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me,
and it had this advantage over all the other friends whom I was about to
greet again: it had suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and
comely and gracious as ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the
others would be old, and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked
with their griefs and defeats, and would give me no upliftings of
spirit.
An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along, and we
discussed the weather, and then drifted into other matters. I could not
remember his face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight years.
So he had come after my time, and I had never seen him before. I asked
him various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday school--what
became of him?
'He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off into the
world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of knowledge and
memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.'
'He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.'
'Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it all.'
I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our village
school when I was a boy.
'He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern college; but life
whipped him in every battle, straight along, and he died in one of the
Territories, years ago, a defeated man.'
I asked after another of the bright boys.
'He is a success, always has been, always will be, I think.'
I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to study for one of
the professions when I was a boy.
'He went at something else before he got through--went from medicine to
law, or from law to medicine--then to some other new thing; went away
for a year, came back with a young wife; fell to drinking, then to
gambling behind the door; finally took his wife and two young children
to her father's, and went off to Mexico; went from bad to worse, and
finally died there, without a cent to buy a shroud, and without a friend
to attend the funeral.'
'Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and hopeful young
fellow that ever was.'
I named another boy.
'Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and children, and is
prospering.'
Same verdict concerning other boys.
I named three school-girls.
'The first two live here, are married and have children; the other is
long ago dead--never married.'
I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.
'She is all right. Been married three times; buried two husbands,
divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting ready to marry an old
fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She's got children scattered around
here and there, most everywheres.'
The answer to several other inquiries was brief and simple--
'Killed in the war.'
I named another boy.
'Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn't a human being in this
town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead; perfect dummy;
just a stupid ass, as you may say. Everybody knew it, and everybody said
it. Well, if that very boy isn't the first lawyer in the State of
Missouri to-day, I'm a Democrat!'
'Is that so?'
'It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth.'
'How do you account for it?'
'Account for it? There ain't any accounting for it, except that if you
send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned
fool they'll never find it out. There's one thing sure--if I had a
damned fool I should know what to do with him: ship him to St. Louis--
it's the noblest market in the world for that kind of property. Well,
when you come to look at it all around, and chew at it and think it
over, don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?'
'Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think maybe it was the
Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy, and not the St. Louis
people'
'Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very cradle--
they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis idiots could
have known him. No, if you have got any damned fools that you want to
realize on, take my advice--send them to St. Louis.'
I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known. Some
were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered, some had come to
naught; but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot, the answer was
comforting:
'Prosperous--live here yet--town littered with their children.'
I asked about Miss ----.
Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago--never was out of it
from the time she went in; and was always suffering, too; never got a
shred of her mind back.'
If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed. Thirty-six
years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fun! I was a
small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies come
tiptoeing into the room where Miss ---- sat reading at midnight by a
lamp. The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface,
she crept behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and she looked
up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions. She did not recover
from the fright, but went mad. In these days it seems incredible that
people believed in ghosts so short a time ago. But they did.
After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind, I finally
inquired about MYSELF:
'Oh, he succeeded well enough--another case of damned fool. If they'd
sent him to St. Louis, he'd have succeeded sooner.'
It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having
told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name was Smith.
Chapter 54 Past and Present
Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in the
distant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy
past. Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem
Hackett (fictitious name). It carried me back more than a generation in
a moment, and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of
life were not the natural and logical results of great general laws, but
of special orders, and were freighted with very precise and distinct
purposes--partly punitive in intent, partly admonitory; and usually
local in application.
When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday. He fell
out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing. Being loaded with sin,
he went to the bottom like an anvil. He was the only boy in the village
who slept that night. We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not
needed the information, delivered from the pulpit that evening, that
Lem's was a case of special judgment--we knew that, already. There was
a ferocious thunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until
near dawn. The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the
roof in pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky
blackness of the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out
white and blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shut
down again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemed to
rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters. I sat up in
bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destruction of the world,
and expecting it. To me there was nothing strange or incongruous in
heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett. Apparently it was the
right and proper thing to do. Not a doubt entered my mind that all the
angels were grouped together, discussing this boy's case and observing
the awful bombardment of our beggarly little village with satisfaction
and approval. There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious
way; that was the thought that this centering of the celestial interest
on our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observers
to people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years. I
felt that I was not only one of those people, but the very one most
likely to be discovered. That discovery could have but one result: I
should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the river had been
fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would be only just and fair.
I was increasing the chances against myself all the time, by feeling a
secret bitterness against Lem for having attracted this fatal attention
to me, but I could not help it--this sinful thought persisted in
infesting my breast in spite of me. Every time the lightning glared I
caught my breath, and judged I was gone. In my terror and misery, I
meanly began to suggest other boys, and mention acts of theirs which
were wickeder than mine, and peculiarly needed punishment--and I tried
to pretend to myself that I was simply doing this in a casual way, and
without intent to divert the heavenly attention to them for the purpose
of getting rid of it myself. With deep sagacity I put these mentions
into the form of sorrowing recollections and left-handed sham-
supplications that the sins of those boys might be allowed to pass
unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.' 'It is true that Jim Smith broke
a window and lied about it--but maybe he did not mean any harm. And
although Tom Holmes says more bad words than any other boy in the
village, he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he
would. And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a little on
Sunday, once, he didn't really catch anything but only just one small
useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't have been so awful if he had
thrown it back--as he says he did, but he didn't. Pity but they would
repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they will yet.'
But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps
--who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same
moment, though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my
candle burning. It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions.
There was no occasion to add anything to the facilities for attracting
notice to me--so I put the light out.
It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever
spent. I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had
committed, and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure
that they had been set down against me in a book by an angel who was
wiser than I and did not trust such important matters to memory. It
struck me, by and by, that I had been making a most foolish and
calamitous mistake, in one respect: doubtless I had not only made my own
destruction sure by directing attention to those other boys, but had
already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless the lightning had stretched them
all dead in their beds by this time! The anguish and the fright which
this thought gave me made my previous sufferings seem trifling by
comparison.
Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn over a new leaf
instantly; I also resolved to connect myself with the church the next
day, if I survived to see its sun appear. I resolved to cease from sin
in all its forms, and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after.
I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry
baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfil the regulation
conditions, although I knew we had none among us so poor but they would
smash the basket over my head for my pains); I would instruct other boys
in right ways, and take the resulting trouncings meekly; I would subsist
entirely on tracts; I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard--
and finally, if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to
live, I would go for a missionary.
The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to sleep with
a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to eternal suffering in
that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster--my
own loss.
But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those other boys
were still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the whole thing was a
false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been on Lem's account and
nobody's else. The world looked so bright and safe that there did not
seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf. I was a little
subdued, during that day, and perhaps the next; after that, my purpose
of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind, and I had a peaceful,
comfortable time again, until the next storm.
That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the most
unaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced; for on the
afternoon of that day, 'Dutchy' was drowned. Dutchy belonged to our
Sunday-school. He was a German lad who did not know enough to come in
out of the rain; but he was exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious
memory. One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the youth and the
talk of all the admiring village, by reciting three thousand verses of
Scripture without missing a word; then he went off the very next day and
got drowned.
Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness. We were all
bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep hole in it, and in this hole
the coopers had sunk a pile of green hickory hoop poles to soak, some
twelve feet under water. We were diving and 'seeing who could stay under
longest.' We managed to remain down by holding on to the hoop poles.
Dutchy made such a poor success of it that he was hailed with laughter
and derision every time his head appeared above water. At last he seemed
hurt with the taunts, and begged us to stand still on the bank and be
fair with him and give him an honest count--'be friendly and kind just
this once, and not miscount for the sake of having the fun of laughing
at him.' Treacherous winks were exchanged, and all said 'All right,
Dutchy--go ahead, we'll play fair.'
Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of beginning to count, followed
the lead of one of their number and scampered to a range of blackberry
bushes close by and hid behind it. They imagined Dutchy's humiliation,
when he should rise after a superhuman effort and find the place silent
and vacant, nobody there to applaud. They were 'so full of laugh' with
the idea, that they were continually exploding into muffled cackles.
Time swept on, and presently one who was peeping through the briers,
said, with surprise--
'Why, he hasn't come up, yet!'
The laughing stopped.
'Boys, it 's a splendid dive,' said one.
'Never mind that,' said another, 'the joke on him is all the better for
it.'
There was a remark or two more, and then a pause. Talking ceased, and
all began to peer through the vines. Before long, the boys' faces began
to look uneasy, then anxious, then terrified. Still there was no
movement of the placid water. Hearts began to beat fast, and faces to
turn pale. We all glided out, silently, and stood on the bank, our
horrified eyes wandering back and forth from each other's countenances
to the water.
'Somebody must go down and see!'
Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that grisly task.
'Draw straws!'
So we did--with hands which shook so, that we hardly knew what we were
about. The lot fell to me, and I went down. The water was so muddy I
could not see anything, but I felt around among the hoop poles, and
presently grasped a limp wrist which gave me no response--and if it had
I should not have known it, I let it go with such a frightened
suddenness.
The boy had been caught among the hoop poles and entangled there,
helplessly. I fled to the surface and told the awful news. Some of us
knew that if the boy were dragged out at once he might possibly be
resuscitated, but we never thought of that. We did not think of
anything; we did not know what to do, so we did nothing--except that the
smaller lads cried, piteously, and we all struggled frantically into our
clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy, and getting them wrong-
side-out and upside-down, as a rule. Then we scurried away and gave the
alarm, but none of us went back to see the end of the tragedy. We had a
more important thing to attend to: we all flew home, and lost not a
moment in getting ready to lead a better life.
The night presently closed down. Then came on that tremendous and
utterly unaccountable storm. I was perfectly dazed; I could not
understand it. It seemed to me that there must be some mistake. The
elements were turned loose, and they rattled and banged and blazed away
in the most blind and frantic manner. All heart and hope went out of
me, and the dismal thought kept floating through my brain, 'If a boy who
knows three thousand verses by heart is not satisfactory, what chance is
there for anybody else?'
Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm was on Dutchy's
account, or that he or any other inconsequential animal was worthy of
such a majestic demonstration from on high; the lesson of it was the
only thing that troubled me; for it convinced me that if Dutchy, with
all his perfections, was not a delight, it would be vain for me to turn
over a new leaf, for I must infallibly fall hopelessly short of that
boy, no matter how hard I might try. Nevertheless I did turn it over--a
highly educated fear compelled me to do that--but succeeding days of
cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around, and within a month I
had so drifted backward that again I was as lost and comfortable as
ever.
Breakfast time approached while I mused these musings and called these
ancient happenings back to mind; so I got me back into the present and
went down the hill.
On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house which was my home
when I was a boy. At present rates, the people who now occupy it are of
no more value than I am; but in my time they would have been worth not
less than five hundred dollars apiece. They are colored folk.
After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up some of
the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils might compare
with their progenitors who had sat with me in those places and had
probably taken me as a model--though I do not remember as to that now.
By the public square there had been in my day a shabby little brick
church called the 'Old Ship of Zion,' which I had attended as a Sunday-
school scholar; and I found the locality easily enough, but not the old
church; it was gone, and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in
its place. The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were
those of my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors;
and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces. Still,
I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness, and
if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring,
and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls some of whom
I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of
whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other, so many years gone
by--and, Lord, where be they now!
I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be allowed to
remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendent
who had been a tow-headed Sunday-school mate of mine on that spot in the
early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wild nonsense to
those children to hide the thoughts which were in me, and which could
not have been spoken without a betrayal of feeling that would have been
recognized as out of character with me.
Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine; and I was
resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but in the next and larger
Sunday-school I found myself in the rear of the assemblage; so I was
very willing to go on the platform a moment for the sake of getting a
good look at the scholars. On the spur of the moment I could not recall
any of the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me with when
I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for this, since it would have given
me time and excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look
at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh young comeliness
not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size. As I talked
merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strung out the random
rubbish solely to prolong the inspection, I judged it but decent to
confess these low motives, and I did so.
If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see
him. The Model Boy of my time--we never had but the one--was perfect:
perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in
filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a
prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed
place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse
off for it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness was a standing
reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the
mothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what became
of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into
details. He succeeded in life.
Chapter 55 A Vendetta and Other Things
DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morning with the
impression that I was a boy--for in my dreams the faces were all young
again, and looked as they had looked in the old times--but I went to bed
a hundred years old, every night--for meantime I had been seeing those
faces as they are now.
Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I had become
adjusted to the changed state of things. I met young ladies who did not
seem to have changed at all; but they turned out to be the daughters of
the young ladies I had in mind--sometimes their grand-daughters. When
you are told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is nothing
surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she is a person whom you
knew as a little girl, it seems impossible. You say to yourself, 'How
can a little girl be a grandmother.' It takes some little time to accept
and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends
have not been standing still, in that matter.
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women, not
the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but
their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to
be good.
There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gone. Dead, these
many years, they said. Once or twice a day, the saddler used to go
tearing down the street, putting on his coat as he went; and then
everybody knew a steamboat was coming. Everybody knew, also, that John
Stavely was not expecting anybody by the boat--or any freight, either;
and Stavely must have known that everybody knew this, still it made no
difference to him; he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred
thousand tons of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life,
enjoying being faithfully on hand to receive and receipt for those
saddles, in case by any miracle they should come. A malicious Quincy
paper used always to refer to this town, in derision as 'Stavely's
Landing.' Stavely was one of my earliest admirations; I envied him his
rush of imaginary business, and the display he was able to make of it,
before strangers, as he went flying down the street struggling with his
fluttering coat.
But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty
liar, but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a
romantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me
with awe. I vividly remember the first time he took me into his
confidence. He was planing a board, and every now and then he would
pause and heave a deep sigh; and occasionally mutter broken sentences--
confused and not intelligible--but out of their midst an ejaculation
sometimes escaped which made me shiver and did me good: one was, 'O
God, it is his blood!' I sat on the tool-chest and humbly and
shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime. At last he
said in a low voice--
'My little friend, can you keep a secret?'
I eagerly said I could.
'A dark and dreadful one?'
I satisfied him on that point.
'Then I will tell you some passages in my history; for oh, I MUST
relieve my burdened soul, or I shall die!'
He cautioned me once more to be 'as silent as the grave;' then he told
me he was a 'red-handed murderer.' He put down his plane, held his hands
out before him, contemplated them sadly, and said--
'Look--with these hands I have taken the lives of thirty human beings!'
The effect which this had upon me was an inspiration to him, and he
turned himself loose upon his subject with interest and energy. He left
generalizing, and went into details,--began with his first murder;
described it, told what measures he had taken to avert suspicion; then
passed to his second homicide, his third, his fourth, and so on. He had
always done his murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all my hairs
rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it to me.
At the end of this first seance I went home with six of his fearful
secrets among my freightage, and found them a great help to my dreams,
which had been sluggish for a while back. I sought him again and again,
on my Saturday holidays; in fact I spent the summer with him--all of it
which was valuable to me. His fascinations never diminished, for he
threw something fresh and stirring, in the way of horror, into each
successive murder. He always gave names, dates, places--everything.
This by and by enabled me to note two things: that he had killed his
victims in every quarter of the globe, and that these victims were
always named Lynch. The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on,
Saturday after Saturday, until the original thirty had multiplied to
sixty--and more to be heard from yet; then my curiosity got the better
of my timidity, and I asked how it happened that these justly punished
persons all bore the same name.
My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to any living being;
but felt that he could trust me, and therefore he would lay bare before
me the story of his sad and blighted life. He had loved one 'too fair
for earth,' and she had reciprocated 'with all the sweet affection of
her pure and noble nature.' But he had a rival, a 'base hireling' named
Archibald Lynch, who said the girl should be his, or he would 'dye his
hands in her heart's best blood.' The carpenter, 'innocent and happy in
love's young dream,' gave no weight to the threat, but led his 'golden-
haired darling to the altar,' and there, the two were made one; there
also, just as the minister's hands were stretched in blessing over their
heads, the fell deed was done--with a knife--and the bride fell a corpse
at her husband's feet. And what did the husband do? He plucked forth
that knife, and kneeling by the body of his lost one, swore to
'consecrate his life to the extermination of all the human scum that
bear the hated name of Lynch.'
That was it. He had been hunting down the Lynches and slaughtering
them, from that day to this--twenty years. He had always used that same
consecrated knife; with it he had murdered his long array of Lynches,
and with it he had left upon the forehead of each victim a peculiar
mark--a cross, deeply incised. Said he--
'The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in Europe, in America, in
China, in Siam, in the Tropics, in the Polar Seas, in the deserts of
Asia, in all the earth. Wherever in the uttermost parts of the globe, a
Lynch has penetrated, there has the Mysterious Cross been seen, and
those who have seen it have shuddered and said, "It is his mark, he has
been here." You have heard of the Mysterious Avenger--look upon him, for
before you stands no less a person! But beware--breathe not a word to
any soul. Be silent, and wait. Some morning this town will flock aghast
to view a gory corpse; on its brow will be seen the awful sign, and men
will tremble and whisper, "He has been here--it is the Mysterious
Avenger's mark!" You will come here, but I shall have vanished; you will
see me no more.'
This ass had been reading the 'Jibbenainosay,' no doubt, and had had his
poor romantic head turned by it; but as I had not yet seen the book
then, I took his inventions for truth, and did not suspect that he was a
plagiarist.
However, we had a Lynch living in the town; and the more I reflected
upon his impending doom, the more I could not sleep. It seemed my plain
duty to save him, and a still plainer and more important duty to get
some sleep for myself, so at last I ventured to go to Mr. Lynch and tell
him what was about to happen to him--under strict secrecy. I advised him
to 'fly,' and certainly expected him to do it. But he laughed at me; and
he did not stop there; he led me down to the carpenter's shop, gave the
carpenter a jeering and scornful lecture upon his silly pretensions,
slapped his face, made him get down on his knees and beg--then went off
and left me to contemplate the cheap and pitiful ruin of what, in my
eyes, had so lately been a majestic and incomparable hero. The carpenter
blustered, flourished his knife, and doomed this Lynch in his usual
volcanic style, the size of his fateful words undiminished; but it was
all wasted upon me; he was a hero to me no longer, but only a poor,
foolish, exposed humbug. I was ashamed of him, and ashamed of myself; I
took no further interest in him, and never went to his shop any more.
He was a heavy loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I had ever
known. The fellow must have had some talent; for some of his imaginary
murders were so vividly and dramatically described that I remember all
their details yet.
The people of Hannibal are not more changed than is the town. It is no
longer a village; it is a city, with a mayor, and a council, and water-
works, and probably a debt. It has fifteen thousand people, is a
thriving and energetic place, and is paved like the rest of the west and
south--where a well-paved street and a good sidewalk are things so
seldom seen, that one doubts them when he does see them. The customary
half-dozen railways center in Hannibal now, and there is a new depot
which cost a hundred thousand dollars. In my time the town had no
specialty, and no commercial grandeur; the daily packet usually landed a
passenger and bought a catfish, and took away another passenger and a
hatful of freight; but now a huge commerce in lumber has grown up and a
large miscellaneous commerce is one of the results. A deal of money
changes hands there now.
Bear Creek--so called, perhaps, because it was always so particularly
bare of bears--is hidden out of sight now, under islands and continents
of piled lumber, and nobody but an expert can find it. I used to get
drowned in it every summer regularly, and be drained out, and inflated
and set going again by some chance enemy; but not enough of it is
unoccupied now to drown a person in. It was a famous breeder of chills
and fever in its day. I remember one summer when everybody in town had
this disease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, and all the
houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt. The chasm or
gorge between Lover's Leap and the hill west of it is supposed by
scientists to have been caused by glacial action. This is a mistake.
There is an interesting cave a mile or two below Hannibal, among the
bluffs. I would have liked to revisit it, but had not time. In my time
the person who then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his
daughter, aged fourteen. The body of this poor child was put into a
copper cylinder filled with alcohol, and this was suspended in one of
the dismal avenues of the cave. The top of the cylinder was removable;
and it was said to be a common thing for the baser order of tourists to
drag the dead face into view and examine it and comment upon it.
Chapter 56 A Question of Law
THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so is the
small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood. A
citizen asked, 'Do you remember when Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard, was
burned to death in the calaboose?'
Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through lapse of time and the
help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the
calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of
delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I
mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn to die. The calaboose victim
was not a citizen; he was a poor stranger, a harmless whiskey-sodden
tramp. I know more about his case than anybody else; I knew too much of
it, in that bygone day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was
wandering about the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his
mouth, and begging for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy; on
the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed him around and amused
themselves with nagging and annoying him. I assisted; but at last, some
appeal which the wayfarer made for forbearance, accompanying it with a
pathetic reference to his forlorn and friendless condition, touched such
sense of shame and remnant of right feeling as were left in me, and I
went away and got him some matches, and then hied me home and to bed,
heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit. An hour or
two afterward, the man was arrested and locked up in the calaboose by
the marshal--large name for a constable, but that was his title. At two
in the morning, the church bells rang for fire, and everybody turned
out, of course--I with the rest. The tramp had used his matches
disastrously: he had set his straw bed on fire, and the oaken sheathing
of the room had caught. When I reached the ground, two hundred men,
women, and children stood massed together, transfixed with horror, and
staring at the grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars, and
tugging frantically at them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp; he
seemed like a black object set against a sun, so white and intense was
the light at his back. That marshal could not be found, and he had the
only key. A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of its
blows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that the spectators broke
into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle won. But it was not
so. The timbers were too strong; they did not yield. It was said that
the man's death-grip still held fast to the bars after he was dead; and
that in this position the fires wrapped him about and consumed him. As
to this, I do not know. What was seen after I recognized the face that
was pleading through the bars was seen by others, not by me.
I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time afterward; and
I believed myself as guilty of the man's death as if I had given him the
matches purposely that he might burn himself up with them. I had not a
doubt that I should be hanged if my connection with this tragedy were
found out. The happenings and the impressions of that time are burnt
into my memory, and the study of them entertains me as much now as they
themselves distressed me then. If anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I
was all ears in a moment, and alert to hear what might be said, for I
was always dreading and expecting to find out that I was suspected; and
so fine and so delicate was the perception of my guilty conscience, that
it often detected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks, and in
looks, gestures, glances of the eye which had no significance, but which
sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, just the same. And how sick
it made me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren of
intent, the remark that 'murder will out!' For a boy of ten years, I was
carrying a pretty weighty cargo.
All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing--the fact that I was
an inveterate talker in my sleep. But one night I awoke and found my
bed-mate--my younger brother--sitting up in bed and contemplating me by
the light of the moon. I said--
'What is the matter?'
'You talk so much I can't sleep.'
I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in my throat
and my hair on end.
'What did I say. Quick--out with it--what did I say?'
'Nothing much.'
'It's a lie--you know everything.'
'Everything about what?'
'You know well enough. About THAT.'
'About WHAT?--I don't know what you are talking about. I think you are
sick or crazy or something. But anyway, you're awake, and I'll get to
sleep while I've got a chance.'
He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning this new terror
over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind. The burden of my
thought was, How much did I divulge? How much does he know?--what a
distress is this uncertainty! But by and by I evolved an idea--I would
wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook him
up, and said--
'Suppose a man should come to you drunk--'
'This is foolish--I never get drunk.'
'I don't mean you, idiot--I mean the man. Suppose a MAN should come to
you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you
forgot to tell him it was loaded, and--'
'How could you load a tomahawk?'
'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said the
pistol. Now don't you keep breaking in that way, because this is
serious. There's been a man killed.'
'What! in this town?'
'Yes, in this town.'
'Well, go on--I won't say a single word.'
'Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with it,
because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with that
pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident,
being drunk. Well, would it be murder?'
'No--suicide.'
'No, no. I don't mean HIS act, I mean yours: would you be a murderer
for letting him have that pistol?'
After deep thought came this answer--
'Well, I should think I was guilty of something--maybe murder--yes,
probably murder, but I don't quite know.'
This made me very uncomfortable. However, it was not a decisive
verdict. I should have to set out the real case--there seemed to be no
other way. But I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out for
suspicious effects. I said--
'I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the real one now. Do you
know how the man came to be burned up in the calaboose?'
'No.'
'Haven't you the least idea?'
'Not the least.'
'Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?'
'Yes, wish I may die in my tracks.'
'Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted some matches to light his
pipe. A boy got him some. The man set fire to the calaboose with those
very matches, and burnt himself up.'
'Is that so?'
'Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you think?'
'Let me see. The man was drunk?'
'Yes, he was drunk.'
'Very drunk?'
'Yes.'
'And the boy knew it?'
'Yes, he knew it.'
There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict--
'If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the boy murdered that man.
This is certain.'
Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers of my body, and I
seemed to know how a person feels who hears his death sentence
pronounced from the bench. I waited to hear what my brother would say
next. I believed I knew what it would be, and I was right. He said--
'I know the boy.'
I had nothing to say; so I said nothing. I simply shuddered. Then he
added--
'Yes, before you got half through telling about the thing, I knew
perfectly well who the boy was; it was Ben Coontz!'
I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the dead. I said, with
admiration--
'Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?'
'You told it in your sleep.'
I said to myself, 'How splendid that is! This is a habit which must be
cultivated.'
My brother rattled innocently on--
'When you were talking in your sleep, you kept mumbling something about
"matches," which I couldn't make anything out of; but just now, when you
began to tell me about the man and the calaboose and the matches, I
remembered that in your sleep you mentioned Ben Coontz two or three
times; so I put this and that together, you see, and right away I knew
it was Ben that burnt that man up.'
I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked--
'Are you going to give him up to the law?'
'No,' I said; 'I believe that this will be a lesson to him. I shall keep
an eye on him, of course, for that is but right; but if he stops where
he is and reforms, it shall never be said that I betrayed him.'
'How good you are!'
'Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a world like this.'
And now, my burden being shifted to other shoulders, my terrors soon
faded away.
The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing fell under my notice--
the surprising spread which longitudinal time undergoes there. I learned
it from one of the most unostentatious of men--the colored coachman of a
friend of mine, who lives three miles from town. He was to call for me
at the Park Hotel at 7.30 P.M., and drive me out. But he missed it
considerably--did not arrive till ten. He excused himself by saying--
'De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de country en what it is in
de town; you'll be in plenty time, boss. Sometimes we shoves out early
for church, Sunday, en fetches up dah right plum in de middle er de
sermon. Diffunce in de time. A body can't make no calculations 'bout
it.'
I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a fact worth four.
Chapter 57 An Archangel
FROM St. Louis northward there are all the enlivening signs of the
presence of active, energetic, intelligent, prosperous, practical
nineteenth-century populations. The people don't dream, they work. The
happy result is manifest all around in the substantial outside aspect of
things, and the suggestions of wholesome life and comfort that
everywhere appear.
Quincy is a notable example--a brisk, handsome, well-ordered city; and
now, as formerly, interested in art, letters, and other high things.
But Marion City is an exception. Marion City has gone backwards in a
most unaccountable way. This metropolis promised so well that the
projectors tacked 'city' to its name in the very beginning, with full
confidence; but it was bad prophecy. When I first saw Marion City,
thirty-five years ago, it contained one street, and nearly or quite six
houses. It contains but one house now, and this one, in a state of ruin,
is getting ready to follow the former five into the river. Doubtless
Marion City was too near to Quincy. It had another disadvantage: it
was situated in a flat mud bottom, below high-water mark, whereas Quincy
stands high up on the slope of a hill.
In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways of a model New England
town: and these she has yet: broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellings
and lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial buildings. And
there are ample fair-grounds, a well kept park, and many attractive
drives; library, reading-rooms, a couple of colleges, some handsome and
costly churches, and a grand court-house, with grounds which occupy a
square. The population of the city is thirty thousand. There are some
large factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts, is done on a
great scale.
La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I missed Alexandria; was
told it was under water, but would come up to blow in the summer.
Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 1857--an extraordinary
year there in real-estate matters. The 'boom' was something wonderful.
Everybody bought, everybody sold--except widows and preachers; they
always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, they get left. Anything in the
semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated, was salable, and at a
figure which would still have been high if the ground had been sodded
with greenbacks.
The town has a population of fifteen thousand now, and is progressing
with a healthy growth. It was night, and we could not see details, for
which we were sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of being a beautiful
city. It was a pleasant one to live in long ago, and doubtless has
advanced, not retrograded, in that respect.
A mighty work which was in progress there in my day is finished now.
This is the canal over the Rapids. It is eight miles long, three
hundred feet wide, and is in no place less than six feet deep. Its
masonry is of the majestic kind which the War Department usually deals
in, and will endure like a Roman aqueduct. The work cost four or five
millions.
After an hour or two spent with former friends, we started up the river
again. Keokuk, a long time ago, was an occasional loafing-place of that
erratic genius, Henry Clay Dean. I believe I never saw him but once; but
he was much talked of when I lived there. This is what was said of him--
He began life poor and without education. But he educated himself--on
the curbstones of Keokuk. He would sit down on a curbstone with his
book, careless or unconscious of the clatter of commerce and the tramp
of the passing crowds, and bury himself in his studies by the hour,
never changing his position except to draw in his knees now and then to
let a dray pass unobstructed; and when his book was finished, its
contents, however abstruse, had been burnt into his memory, and were his
permanent possession. In this way he acquired a vast hoard of all sorts
of learning, and had it pigeon-holed in his head where he could put his
intellectual hand on it whenever it was wanted.
His clothes differed in no respect from a 'wharf-rat's,' except that
they were raggeder, more ill-assorted and inharmonious (and therefore
more extravagantly picturesque), and several layers dirtier. Nobody
could infer the master-mind in the top of that edifice from the edifice
itself.
He was an orator--by nature in the first place, and later by the
training of experience and practice. When he was out on a canvass, his
name was a lodestone which drew the farmers to his stump from fifty
miles around. His theme was always politics. He used no notes, for a
volcano does not need notes. In 1862, a son of Keokuk's late
distinguished citizen, Mr. Claggett, gave me this incident concerning
Dean--
The war feeling was running high in Keokuk (in '61), and a great mass
meeting was to be held on a certain day in the new Athenaeum. A
distinguished stranger was to address the house. After the building had
been packed to its utmost capacity with sweltering folk of both sexes,
the stage still remained vacant--the distinguished stranger had failed
to connect. The crowd grew impatient, and by and by indignant and
rebellious. About this time a distressed manager discovered Dean on a
curb-stone, explained the dilemma to him, took his book away from him,
rushed him into the building the back way, and told him to make for the
stage and save his country.
Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling audience, and
everybody's eyes sought a single point--the wide, empty, carpetless
stage. A figure appeared there whose aspect was familiar to hardly a
dozen persons present. It was the scarecrow Dean--in foxy shoes, down at
the heels; socks of odd colors, also 'down;' damaged trousers, relics of
antiquity, and a world too short, exposing some inches of naked ankle;
an unbuttoned vest, also too short, and exposing a zone of soiled and
wrinkled linen between it and the waistband; shirt bosom open; long
black handkerchief, wound round and round the neck like a bandage; bob-
tailed blue coat, reaching down to the small of the back, with sleeves
which left four inches of forearm unprotected; small, stiff-brimmed
soldier-cap hung on a corner of the bump of--whichever bump it was.
This figure moved gravely out upon the stage and, with sedate and
measured step, down to the front, where it paused, and dreamily
inspected the house, saying no word. The silence of surprise held its
own for a moment, then was broken by a just audible ripple of merriment
which swept the sea of faces like the wash of a wave. The figure
remained as before, thoughtfully inspecting. Another wave started--
laughter, this time. It was followed by another, then a third--this
last one boisterous.
And now the stranger stepped back one pace, took off his soldier-cap,
tossed it into the wing, and began to speak, with deliberation, nobody
listening, everybody laughing and whispering. The speaker talked on
unembarrassed, and presently delivered a shot which went home, and
silence and attention resulted. He followed it quick and fast, with
other telling things; warmed to his work and began to pour his words
out, instead of dripping them; grew hotter and hotter, and fell to
discharging lightnings and thunder--and now the house began to break
into applause, to which the speaker gave no heed, but went hammering
straight on; unwound his black bandage and cast it away, still
thundering; presently discarded the bob tailed coat and flung it aside,
firing up higher and higher all the time; finally flung the vest after
the coat; and then for an untimed period stood there, like another
Vesuvius, spouting smoke and flame, lava and ashes, raining pumice-stone
and cinders, shaking the moral earth with intellectual crash upon crash,
explosion upon explosion, while the mad multitude stood upon their feet
in a solid body, answering back with a ceaseless hurricane of cheers,
through a thrashing snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs.
'When Dean came,' said Claggett, 'the people thought he was an escaped
lunatic; but when he went, they thought he was an escaped archangel.'
Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is another hill city; and
also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; a fine and flourishing city,
with a population of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy
factories of nearly every imaginable description. It was a very sober
city, too--for the moment--for a most sobering bill was pending; a bill
to forbid the manufacture, exportation, importation, purchase, sale,
borrowing, lending, stealing, drinking, smelling, or possession, by
conquest, inheritance, intent, accident, or otherwise, in the State of
Iowa, of each and every deleterious beverage known to the human race,
except water. This measure was approved by all the rational people in
the State; but not by the bench of Judges.
Burlington has the progressive modern city's full equipment of devices
for right and intelligent government; including a paid fire department,
a thing which the great city of New Orleans is without, but still
employs that relic of antiquity, the independent system.
In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns, one breathes a
go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in the nostrils. An opera-house has
lately been built there which is in strong contrast with the shabby dens
which usually do duty as theaters in cities of Burlington's size.
We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but had a daylight view of it
from the boat. I lived there awhile, many years ago, but the place,
now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so I suppose it has clear outgrown
the town which I used to know. In fact, I know it has; for I remember it
as a small place--which it isn't now. But I remember it best for a
lunatic who caught me out in the fields, one Sunday, and extracted a
butcher-knife from his boot and proposed to carve me up with it, unless
I acknowledged him to be the only son of the Devil. I tried to
compromise on an acknowledgment that he was the only member of the
family I had met; but that did not satisfy him; he wouldn't have any
half-measures; I must say he was the sole and only son of the Devil--he
whetted his knife on his boot. It did not seem worth while to make
trouble about a little thing like that; so I swung round to his view of
the matter and saved my skin whole. Shortly afterward, he went to visit
his father; and as he has not turned up since, I trust he is there yet.
And I remember Muscatine--still more pleasantly--for its summer sunsets.
I have never seen any, on either side of the ocean, that equaled them.
They used the broad smooth river as a canvas, and painted on it every
imaginable dream of color, from the mottled daintinesses and delicacies
of the opal, all the way up, through cumulative intensities, to blinding
purple and crimson conflagrations which were enchanting to the eye, but
sharply tried it at the same time. All the Upper Mississippi region has
these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle. It is the true
Sunset Land: I am sure no other country can show so good a right to the
name. The sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine. I do not know.
Chapter 58 On the Upper River
THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and between stretch
processions of thrifty farms, not desolate solitude. Hour by hour, the
boat plows deeper and deeper into the great and populous North-west; and
with each successive section of it which is revealed, one's surprise and
respect gather emphasis and increase. Such a people, and such
achievements as theirs, compel homage. This is an independent race who
think for themselves, and who are competent to do it, because they are
educated and enlightened; they read, they keep abreast of the best and
newest thought, they fortify every weak place in their land with a
school, a college, a library, and a newspaper; and they live under law.
Solicitude for the future of a race like this is not in order.
This region is new; so new that it may be said to be still in its
babyhood. By what it has accomplished while still teething, one may
forecast what marvels it will do in the strength of its maturity. It is
so new that the foreign tourist has not heard of it yet; and has not
visited it. For sixty years, the foreign tourist has steamed up and down
the river between St. Louis and New Orleans, and then gone home and
written his book, believing he had seen all of the river that was worth
seeing or that had anything to see. In not six of all these books is
there mention of these Upper River towns--for the reason that the five
or six tourists who penetrated this region did it before these towns
were projected. The latest tourist of them all (1878) made the same old
regulation trip--he had not heard that there was anything north of St.
Louis.
Yet there was. There was this amazing region, bristling with great
towns, projected day before yesterday, so to speak, and built next
morning. A score of them number from fifteen hundred to five thousand
people. Then we have Muscatine, ten thousand; Winona, ten thousand;
Moline, ten thousand; Rock Island, twelve thousand; La Crosse, twelve
thousand; Burlington, twenty-five thousand; Dubuque, twenty-five
thousand; Davenport, thirty thousand; St. Paul, fifty-eight thousand,
Minneapolis, sixty thousand and upward.
The foreign tourist has never heard of these; there is no note of them
in his books. They have sprung up in the night, while he slept. So new
is this region, that I, who am comparatively young, am yet older than it
is. When I was born, St. Paul had a population of three persons,
Minneapolis had just a third as many. The then population of Minneapolis
died two years ago; and when he died he had seen himself undergo an
increase, in forty years, of fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and
ninety-nine persons. He had a frog's fertility.
I must explain that the figures set down above, as the population of St.
Paul and Minneapolis, are several months old. These towns are far
larger now. In fact, I have just seen a newspaper estimate which gives
the former seventy-one thousand, and the latter seventy-eight thousand.
This book will not reach the public for six or seven months yet; none of
the figures will be worth much then.
We had a glimpse of Davenport, which is another beautiful city, crowning
a hill--a phrase which applies to all these towns; for they are all
comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye, and
cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated upon hills. Therefore
we will give that phrase a rest. The Indians have a tradition that
Marquette and Joliet camped where Davenport now stands, in 1673. The
next white man who camped there, did it about a hundred and seventy
years later--in 1834. Davenport has gathered its thirty thousand people
within the past thirty years. She sends more children to her schools
now, than her whole population numbered twenty-three years ago. She has
the usual Upper River quota of factories, newspapers, and institutions
of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs, an electric alarm,
and an admirable paid fire department, consisting of six hook and ladder
companies, four steam fire engines, and thirty churches. Davenport is
the official residence of two bishops--Episcopal and Catholic.
Opposite Davenport is the flourishing town of Rock Island, which lies at
the foot of the Upper Rapids. A great railroad bridge connects the two
towns--one of the thirteen which fret the Mississippi and the pilots,
between St. Louis and St. Paul.
The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and half a mile
wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government has turned it
into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by art, and
threading its fine forests with many miles of drives. Near the center of
the island one catches glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone
four-story buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground. These are
the Government workshops; for the Rock Island establishment is a
national armory and arsenal.
We move up the river--always through enchanting scenery, there being no
other kind on the Upper Mississippi--and pass Moline, a center of vast
manufacturing industries; and Clinton and Lyons, great lumber centers;
and presently reach Dubuque, which is situated in a rich mineral region.
The lead mines are very productive, and of wide extent. Dubuque has a
great number of manufacturing establishments; among them a plow factory
which has for customers all Christendom in general. At least so I was
told by an agent of the concern who was on the boat. He said--
'You show me any country under the sun where they really know how to
plow, and if I don't show you our mark on the plow they use, I'll eat
that plow; and I won't ask for any Woostershyre sauce to flavor it up
with, either.'
All this part of the river is rich in Indian history and traditions.
Black Hawk's was once a puissant name hereabouts; as was Keokuk's,
further down. A few miles below Dubuque is the Tete de Mort--Death's-
head rock, or bluff--to the top of which the French drove a band of
Indians, in early times, and cooped them up there, with death for a
certainty, and only the manner of it matter of choice--to starve, or
jump off and kill themselves. Black Hawk adopted the ways of the white
people, toward the end of his life; and when he died he was buried, near
Des Moines, in Christian fashion, modified by Indian custom; that is to
say, clothed in a Christian military uniform, and with a Christian cane
in his hand, but deposited in the grave in a sitting posture. Formerly,
a horse had always been buried with a chief. The substitution of the
cane shows that Black Hawk's haughty nature was really humbled, and he
expected to walk when he got over.
We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the Mississippi was olive-
green--rich and beautiful and semi-transparent, with the sun on it. Of
course the water was nowhere as clear or of as fine a complexion as it
is in some other seasons of the year; for now it was at flood stage, and
therefore dimmed and blurred by the mud manufactured from caving banks.
The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along through this region,
charm one with the grace and variety of their forms, and the soft beauty
of their adornment. The steep verdant slope, whose base is at the
water's edge is topped by a lofty rampart of broken, turreted rocks,
which are exquisitely rich and mellow in color--mainly dark browns and
dull greens, but splashed with other tints. And then you have the
shining river, winding here and there and yonder, its sweep interrupted
at intervals by clusters of wooded islands threaded by silver channels;
and you have glimpses of distant villages, asleep upon capes; and of
stealthy rafts slipping along in the shade of the forest walls; and of
white steamers vanishing around remote points. And it is all as tranquil
and reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly about it--
nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.
Until the unholy train comes tearing along--which it presently does,
ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatters with its devil's
warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushing wheels--and straightway
you are back in this world, and with one of its frets ready to hand for
your entertainment: for you remember that this is the very road whose
stock always goes down after you buy it, and always goes up again as
soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder to this day, to remember that
I once came near not getting rid of my stock at all. It must be an awful
thing to have a railroad left on your hands.
The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the steamboat almost the
whole way from St. Louis to St. Paul--eight hundred miles. These
railroads have made havoc with the steamboat commerce. The clerk of our
boat was a steamboat clerk before these roads were built. In that day
the influx of population was so great, and the freight business so
heavy, that the boats were not able to keep up with the demands made
upon their carrying capacity; consequently the captains were very
independent and airy--pretty 'biggity,' as Uncle Remus would say. The
clerk nut-shelled the contrast between the former time and the present,
thus--
'Boat used to land--captain on hurricane roof--mighty stiff and
straight--iron ramrod for a spine--kid gloves, plug tile, hair parted
behind--man on shore takes off hat and says--
'"Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap'n--be great favor if you can take
them."
'Captain says--
'"'ll take two of them"--and don't even condescend to look at him.
'But nowadays the captain takes off his old slouch, and smiles all the
way around to the back of his ears, and gets off a bow which he hasn't
got any ramrod to interfere with, and says--
'"Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you--you're looking well--haven't
seen you looking so well for years--what you got for us?"
'"Nuth'n", says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and just turns his back and
goes to talking with somebody else.
'Oh, yes, eight years ago, the captain was on top; but it's Smith's turn
now. Eight years ago a boat used to go up the river with every stateroom
full, and people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor; and a solid
deck-load of immigrants and harvesters down below, into the bargain. To
get a first-class stateroom, you'd got to prove sixteen quarterings of
nobility and four hundred years of descent, or be personally acquainted
with the nigger that blacked the captain's boots. But it's all changed
now; plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below--there's a patent
self-binder now, and they don't have harvesters any more; they've gone
where the woodbine twineth--and they didn't go by steamboat, either;
went by the train.'
Up in this region we met massed acres of lumber rafts coming down--but
not floating leisurely along, in the old-fashioned way, manned with
joyous and reckless crews of fiddling, song-singing, whiskey-drinking,
breakdown-dancing rapscallions; no, the whole thing was shoved swiftly
along by a powerful stern-wheeler, modern fashion, and the small crews
were quiet, orderly men, of a sedate business aspect, with not a
suggestion of romance about them anywhere.
Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran some exceedingly narrow
and intricate island-chutes by aid of the electric light. Behind was
solid blackness--a crackless bank of it; ahead, a narrow elbow of water,
curving between dense walls of foliage that almost touched our bows on
both sides; and here every individual leaf, and every individual ripple
stood out in its natural color, and flooded with a glare as of noonday
intensified. The effect was strange, and fine, and very striking.
We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father Marquette's camping-
places; and after some hours of progress through varied and beautiful
scenery, reached La Crosse. Here is a town of twelve or thirteen
thousand population, with electric lighted streets, and with blocks of
buildings which are stately enough, and also architecturally fine
enough, to command respect in any city. It is a choice town, and we made
satisfactory use of the hour allowed us, in roaming it over, though the
weather was rainier than necessary.
Chapter 59 Legends and Scenery
WE added several passengers to our list, at La Crosse; among others an
old gentleman who had come to this north-western region with the early
settlers, and was familiar with every part of it. Pardonably proud of
it, too. He said--
'You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul that can give the Hudson
points. You'll have the Queen's Bluff--seven hundred feet high, and
just as imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres; and Trempeleau
Island, which isn't like any other island in America, I believe, for it
is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian
traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes; if you catch the sun
just right there, you will have a picture that will stay with you. And
above Winona you'll have lovely prairies; and then come the Thousand
Islands, too beautiful for anything; green? why you never saw foliage so
green, nor packed so thick; it's like a thousand plush cushions afloat
on a looking-glass--when the water 's still; and then the monstrous
bluffs on both sides of the river--ragged, rugged, dark-complected--just
the frame that's wanted; you always want a strong frame, you know, to
throw up the nice points of a delicate picture and make them stand out.'
The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian legend or two--but not
very powerful ones.
After this excursion into history, he came back to the scenery, and
described it, detail by detail, from the Thousand Islands to St. Paul;
naming its names with such facility, tripping along his theme with such
nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-ton word, here and there,
with such a complacent air of 't isn't-anything,-I-can-do-it-any-time-I-
want-to, and letting off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at such
judicious intervals, that I presently began to suspect--
But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him--
'Ten miles above Winona we come to Fountain City, nestling sweetly at
the feet of cliffs that lift their awful fronts, Jovelike, toward the
blue depths of heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that have
known no other contact save that of angels' wings.
'And next we glide through silver waters, amid lovely and stupendous
aspects of nature that attune our hearts to adoring admiration, about
twelve miles, and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high, with
romantic ruins of a once first-class hotel perched far among the cloud
shadows that mottle its dizzy heights--sole remnant of once-flourishing
Mount Vernon, town of early days, now desolate and utterly deserted.
'And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we fly--noble shaft of six
hundred feet; then just before landing at Minnieska our attention is
attracted by a most striking promontory rising over five hundred feet--
the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape--thickly-wooded surface
girding its sides, and its apex like that of a cone, cause the spectator
to wonder at nature's workings. From its dizzy heights superb views of
the forests, streams, bluffs, hills and dales below and beyond for miles
are brought within its focus. What grander river scenery can be
conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape, from the uppermost
point of these bluffs upon the valleys below? The primeval wildness and
awful loneliness of these sublime creations of nature and nature's God,
excite feelings of unbounded admiration, and the recollection of which
can never be effaced from the memory, as we view them in any direction.
'Next we have the Lion's Head and the Lioness's Head, carved by nature's
hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteous stream; and then anon the
river widens, and a most charming and magnificent view of the valley
before us suddenly bursts upon our vision; rugged hills, clad with
verdant forests from summit to base, level prairie lands, holding in
their lap the beautiful Wabasha, City of the Healing Waters, puissant
foe of Bright's disease, and that grandest conception of nature's works,
incomparable Lake Pepin--these constitute a picture whereon the
tourist's eye may gaze uncounted hours, with rapture unappeased and
unappeasable.
'And so we glide along; in due time encountering those majestic domes,
the mighty Sugar Loaf, and the sublime Maiden's Rock--which latter,
romantic superstition has invested with a voice; and oft-times as the
birch canoe glides near, at twilight, the dusky paddler fancies he hears
the soft sweet music of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian song
and story.
'Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delightful resort of jaded summer
tourists; then progressive Red Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive and
preponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and the St. Croix; and
anon we see bursting upon us the domes and steeples of St. Paul, giant
young chief of the North, marching with seven-league stride in the van
of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and newest civilization,
carving his beneficent way with the tomahawk of commercial enterprise,
sounding the warwhoop of Christian culture, tearing off the reeking
scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there the steam-plow and the
school-house--ever in his front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance,
crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, and the
pulpit; and ever--'
'Have you ever traveled with a panorama?'
'I have formerly served in that capacity.'
My suspicion was confirmed.
'Do you still travel with it?'
'No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I am helping now to
work up the materials for a Tourist's Guide which the St. Louis and St.
Paul Packet Company are going to issue this summer for the benefit of
travelers who go by that line.'
'When you were talking of Maiden's Rock, you spoke of the long-departed
Winona, darling of Indian song and story. Is she the maiden of the
rock?--and are the two connected by legend?'
'Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps the most celebrated,
as well as the most pathetic, of all the legends of the Mississippi.'
We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his conversational vein and
back into his lecture-gait without an effort, and rolled on as follows--
'A little distance above Lake City is a famous point known as Maiden's
Rock, which is not only a picturesque spot, but is full of romantic
interest from the event which gave it its name, Not many years ago this
locality was a favorite resort for the Sioux Indians on account of the
fine fishing and hunting to be had there, and large numbers of them were
always to be found in this locality. Among the families which used to
resort here, was one belonging to the tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na
(first-born) was the name of a maiden who had plighted her troth to a
lover belonging to the same band. But her stern parents had promised
her hand to another, a famous warrior, and insisted on her wedding him.
The day was fixed by her parents, to her great grief. She appeared to
accede to the proposal and accompany them to the rock, for the purpose
of gathering flowers for the feast. On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran
to its summit and standing on its edge upbraided her parents who were
below, for their cruelty, and then singing a death-dirge, threw herself
from the precipice and dashed them in pieces on the rock below.'
'Dashed who in pieces--her parents?'
'Yes.'
'Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you say. And moreover,
there is a startling kind of dramatic surprise about it which I was not
looking for. It is a distinct improvement upon the threadbare form of
Indian legend. There are fifty Lover's Leaps along the Mississippi from
whose summit disappointed Indian girls have jumped, but this is the only
jump in the lot hat turned out in the right and satisfactory way. What
became of Winona?'
'She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but she got herself together
and disappeared before the coroner reached the fatal spot; and 'tis said
she sought and married her true love, and wandered with him to some
distant clime, where she lived happy ever after, her gentle spirit
mellowed and chastened by the romantic incident which had so early
deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother's love and a father's
protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended, upon the cold charity of
a censorious world.'
I was glad to hear the lecturer's description of the scenery, for it
assisted my appreciation of what I saw of it, and enabled me to imagine
such of it as we lost by the intrusion of night.
As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is blanketed with Indian
tales and traditions. But I reminded him that people usually merely
mention this fact--doing it in a way to make a body's mouth water--and
judiciously stopped there. Why? Because the impression left, was that
these tales were full of incident and imagination--a pleasant impression
which would be promptly dissipated if the tales were told. I showed him
a lot of this sort of literature which I had been collecting, and he
confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rubbish; and I
ventured to add that the legends which he had himself told us were of
this character, with the single exception of the admirable story of
Winona. He granted these facts, but said that if I would hunt up Mr.
Schoolcraft's book, published near fifty years ago, and now doubtless
out of print, I would find some Indian inventions in it that were very
far from being barren of incident and imagination; that the tales in
Hiawatha were of this sort, and they came from Schoolcraft's book; and
that there were others in the same book which Mr. Longfellow could have
turned into verse with good effect. For instance, there was the legend
of 'The Undying Head.' He could not tell it, for many of the details had
grown dim in his memory; but he would recommend me to find it and
enlarge my respect for the Indian imagination. He said that this tale,
and most of the others in the book, were current among the Indians along
this part of the Mississippi when he first came here; and that the
contributors to Schoolcraft's book had got them directly from Indian
lips, and had written them down with strict exactness, and without
embellishments of their own.
I have found the book. The lecturer was right. There are several
legends in it which confirm what he said. I will offer two of them--
'The Undying Head,' and 'Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of the
Seasons.' The latter is used in Hiawatha; but it is worth reading in the
original form, if only that one may see how effective a genuine poem can
be without the helps and graces of poetic measure and rhythm--
PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN.
An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the side of a frozen
stream. It was the close of winter, and his fire was almost out, He
appeared very old and very desolate. His locks were white with age, and
he trembled in every joint. Day after day passed in solitude, and he
heard nothing but the sound of the tempest, sweeping before it the new-
fallen snow.
One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man approached and
entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with the blood of youth, his
eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile played upon his lips. He
walked with a light and quick step. His forehead was bound with a
wreath of sweet grass, in place of a warrior's frontlet, and he carried
a bunch of flowers in his hand.
'Ah, my son,' said the old man, 'I am happy to see you. Come in. Come
and tell me of your adventures, and what strange lands you have been to
see. Let us pass the night together. I will tell you of my prowess and
exploits, and what I can perform. You shall do the same, and we will
amuse ourselves.'
He then drew from his sack a curiously wrought antique pipe, and having
filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixture of certain leaves,
handed it to his guest. When this ceremony was concluded they began to
speak.
'I blow my breath,' said the old man, 'and the stream stands still. The
water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.'
'I breathe,' said the young man, 'and flowers spring up over the plain.'
'I shake my locks,' retorted the old man, 'and snow covers the land. The
leaves fall from the trees at my command, and my breath blows them away.
The birds get up from the water, and fly to a distant land. The animals
hide themselves from my breath, and the very ground becomes as hard as
flint.'
'I shake my ringlets,' rejoined the young man, 'and warm showers of soft
rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their heads out of the
earth, like the eyes of children glistening with delight. My voice
recalls the birds. The warmth of my breath unlocks the streams. Music
fills the groves wherever I walk, and all nature rejoices.'
At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth came over the place.
The tongue of the old man became silent. The robin and bluebird began to
sing on the top of the lodge. The stream began to murmur by the door,
and the fragrance of growing herbs and flowers came softly on the vernal
breeze.
Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of his
entertainer. When he looked upon him, he had the icy visage of
Peboan.{footnote [Winter.]} Streams began to flow from his eyes. As the
sun increased, he grew less and less in stature, and anon had melted
completely away. Nothing remained on the place of his lodge-fire but the
miskodeed,{footnote [The trailing arbutus.]} a small white flower, with
a pink border, which is one of the earliest species of northern plants.
'The Undying Head' is a rather long tale, but it makes up in weird
conceits, fairy-tale prodigies, variety of incident, and energy of
movement, for what it lacks in brevity.{footnote [See appendix D.]}
Chapter 60 Speculations and Conclusions
WE reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation of the Mississippi, and
there our voyage of two thousand miles from New Orleans ended. It is
about a ten-day trip by steamer. It can probably be done quicker by
rail. I judge so because I know that one may go by rail from St. Louis
to Hannibal--a distance of at least a hundred and twenty miles--in seven
hours. This is better than walking; unless one is in a hurry.
The season being far advanced when we were in New Orleans, the roses and
magnolia blossoms were falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow, In
New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering breath from over a
crater, apparently; here in St. Paul we caught a frequent benumbing one
from over a glacier, apparently.
But I wander from my theme. St. Paul is a wonderful town. It is put
together in solid blocks of honest brick and stone, and has the air of
intending to stay. Its post-office was established thirty-six years
ago; and by and by, when the postmaster received a letter, he carried it
to Washington, horseback, to inquire what was to be done with it. Such
is the legend. Two frame houses were built that year, and several
persons were added to the population. A recent number of the leading St.
Paul paper, the 'Pioneer Press,' gives some statistics which furnish a
vivid contrast to that old state of things, to wit: Population, autumn
of the present year (1882), 71,000; number of letters handled, first
half of the year, 1,209,387; number of houses built during three-
quarters of the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000. The increase of
letters over the corresponding six months of last year was fifty per
cent. Last year the new buildings added to the city cost above
$4,500,000. St. Paul's strength lies in her commerce--I mean his
commerce. He is a manufacturing city, of course--all the cities of that
region are--but he is peculiarly strong in the matter of commerce. Last
year his jobbing trade amounted to upwards of $52,000,000.
He has a custom-house, and is building a costly capitol to replace the
one recently burned--for he is the capital of the State. He has churches
without end; and not the cheap poor kind, but the kind that the rich
Protestant puts up, the kind that the poor Irish 'hired-girl' delights
to erect. What a passion for building majestic churches the Irish
hired-girl has. It is a fine thing for our architecture but too often we
enjoy her stately fanes without giving her a grateful thought. In fact,
instead of reflecting that 'every brick and every stone in this
beautiful edifice represents an ache or a pain, and a handful of sweat,
and hours of heavy fatigue, contributed by the back and forehead and
bones of poverty,' it is our habit to forget these things entirely, and
merely glorify the mighty temple itself, without vouchsafing one
praiseful thought to its humble builder, whose rich heart and withered
purse it symbolizes.
This is a land of libraries and schools. St. Paul has three public
libraries, and they contain, in the aggregate, some forty thousand
books. He has one hundred and sixteen school-houses, and pays out more
than seventy thousand dollars a year in teachers' salaries.
There is an unusually fine railway station; so large is it, in fact,
that it seemed somewhat overdone, in the matter of size, at first; but
at the end of a few months it was perceived that the mistake was
distinctly the other way. The error is to be corrected.
The town stands on high ground; it is about seven hundred feet above the
sea level. It is so high that a wide view of river and lowland is
offered from its streets.
It is a very wonderful town indeed, and is not finished yet. All the
streets are obstructed with building material, and this is being
compacted into houses as fast as possible, to make room for more--for
other people are anxious to build, as soon as they can get the use of
the streets to pile up their bricks and stuff in.
How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of
civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat,
never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never
the missionary--but always whiskey! Such is the case. Look history
over; you will see. The missionary comes after the whiskey--I mean he
arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comes the poor immigrant,
with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next, the miscellaneous
rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their
kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap who has bought up
an old grant that covers all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the
vigilance committee brings the undertaker. All these interests bring the
newspaper; the newspaper starts up politics and a railroad; all hands
turn to and build a church and a jail--and behold, civilization is
established for ever in the land. But whiskey, you see, was the van-
leader in this beneficent work. It always is. It was like a foreigner--
and excusable in a foreigner--to be ignorant of this great truth, and
wander off into astronomy to borrow a symbol. But if he had been
conversant with the facts, he would have said--
Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way.
This great van-leader arrived upon the ground which St. Paul now
occupies, in June 1837. Yes, at that date, Pierre Parrant, a Canadian,
built the first cabin, uncorked his jug, and began to sell whiskey to
the Indians. The result is before us.
All that I have said of the newness, briskness, swift progress, wealth,
intelligence, fine and substantial architecture, and general slash and
go, and energy of St. Paul, will apply to his near neighbor,
Minneapolis--with the addition that the latter is the bigger of the two
cities.
These extraordinary towns were ten miles apart, a few months ago, but
were growing so fast that they may possibly be joined now, and getting
along under a single mayor. At any rate, within five years from now
there will be at least such a substantial ligament of buildings
stretching between them and uniting them that a stranger will not be
able to tell where the one Siamese twin leaves off and the other begins.
Combined, they will then number a population of two hundred and fifty
thousand, if they continue to grow as they are now growing. Thus, this
center of population at the head of Mississippi navigation, will then
begin a rivalry as to numbers, with that center of population at the
foot of it--New Orleans.
Minneapolis is situated at the falls of St. Anthony, which stretch
across the river, fifteen hundred feet, and have a fall of eighty-two
feet--a waterpower which, by art, has been made of inestimable value,
business-wise, though somewhat to the damage of the Falls as a
spectacle, or as a background against which to get your photograph
taken.
Thirty flouring-mills turn out two million barrels of the very choicest
of flour every year; twenty sawmills produce two hundred million feet of
lumber annually; then there are woolen mills, cotton mills, paper and
oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture, barrel, and other factories,
without number, so to speak. The great flouring-mills here and at St.
Paul use the 'new process' and mash the wheat by rolling, instead of
grinding it.
Sixteen railroads meet in Minneapolis, and sixty-five passenger trains
arrive and depart daily. In this place, as in St. Paul, journalism
thrives. Here there are three great dailies, ten weeklies, and three
monthlies.
There is a university, with four hundred students--and, better still,
its good efforts are not confined to enlightening the one sex. There are
sixteen public schools, with buildings which cost $500,000; there are
six thousand pupils and one hundred and twenty-eight teachers. There are
also seventy churches existing, and a lot more projected. The banks
aggregate a capital of $3,000,000, and the wholesale jobbing trade of
the town amounts to $50,000,000 a year.
Near St. Paul and Minneapolis are several points of interest--Fort
Snelling, a fortress occupying a river-bluff a hundred feet high; the
falls of Minnehaha, White-bear Lake, and so forth. The beautiful falls
of Minnehaha are sufficiently celebrated--they do not need a lift from
me, in that direction. The White-bear Lake is less known. It is a
lovely sheet of water, and is being utilized as a summer resort by the
wealth and fashion of the State. It has its club-house, and its hotel,
with the modern improvements and conveniences; its fine summer
residences; and plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives. There
are a dozen minor summer resorts around about St. Paul and Minneapolis,
but the White-bear Lake is the resort. Connected with White-bear Lake is
a most idiotic Indian legend. I would resist the temptation to print it
here, if I could, but the task is beyond my strength. The guide-book
names the preserver of the legend, and compliments his 'facile pen.'
Without further comment or delay then, let us turn the said facile pen
loose upon the reader--
A LEGEND OF WHITE-BEAR LAKE.
Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has been a
nation of red men, an island in the middle of White-bear Lake has been
visited by a band of Indians for the purpose of making maple sugar.
Tradition says that many springs ago, while upon this island, a young
warrior loved and wooed the daughter of his chief, and it is said, also,
the maiden loved the warrior. He had again and again been refused her
hand by her parents, the old chief alleging that he was no brave, and
his old consort called him a woman!
The sun had again set upon the 'sugar-bush,' and the bright moon rose
high in the bright blue heavens, when the young warrior took down his
flute and went out alone, once more to sing the story of his love, the
mild breeze gently moved the two gay feathers in his head-dress, and as
he mounted on the trunk of a leaning tree, the damp snow fell from his
feet heavily. As he raised his flute to his lips, his blanket slipped
from his well-formed shoulders, and lay partly on the snow beneath. He
began his weird, wild love-song, but soon felt that he was cold, and as
he reached back for his blanket, some unseen hand laid it gently on his
shoulders; it was the hand of his love, his guardian angel. She took her
place beside him, and for the present they were happy; for the Indian
has a heart to love, and in this pride he is as noble as in his own
freedom, which makes him the child of the forest. As the legend runs, a
large white-bear, thinking, perhaps, that polar snows and dismal winter
weather extended everywhere, took up his journey southward. He at length
approached the northern shore of the lake which now bears his name,
walked down the bank and made his way noiselessly through the deep heavy
snow toward the island. It was the same spring ensuing that the lovers
met. They had left their first retreat, and were now seated among the
branches of a large elm which hung far over the lake. (The same tree is
still standing, and excites universal curiosity and interest.) For fear
of being detected, they talked almost in a whisper, and now, that they
might get back to camp in good time and thereby avoid suspicion, they
were just rising to return, when the maiden uttered a shriek which was
heard at the camp, and bounding toward the young brave, she caught his
blanket, but missed the direction of her foot and fell, bearing the
blanket with her into the great arms of the ferocious monster. Instantly
every man, woman, and child of the band were upon the bank, but all
unarmed. Cries and wailings went up from every mouth. What was to be
done'? In the meantime this white and savage beast held the breathless
maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled with his precious prey as if he
were used to scenes like this. One deafening yell from the lover
warrior is heard above the cries of hundreds of his tribe, and dashing
away to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife, returns almost at a
single bound to the scene of fear and fright, rushes out along the
leaning tree to the spot where his treasure fell, and springing with the
fury of a mad panther, pounced upon his prey. The animal turned, and
with one stroke of his huge paw brought the lovers heart to heart, but
the next moment the warrior, with one plunge of the blade of his knife,
opened the crimson sluices of death, and the dying bear relaxed his
hold.
That night there was no more sleep for the band or the lovers, and as
the young and the old danced about the carcass of the dead monster, the
gallant warrior was presented with another plume, and ere another moon
had set he had a living treasure added to his heart. Their children for
many years played upon the skin of the white-bear--from which the lake
derives its name--and the maiden and the brave remembered long the
fearful scene and rescue that made them one, for Kis-se-me-pa and Ka-go-
ka could never forget their fearful encounter with the huge monster that
came so near sending them to the happy hunting-ground.
It is a perplexing business. First, she fell down out of the tree--she
and the blanket; and the bear caught her and fondled her--her and the
blanket; then she fell up into the tree again--leaving the blanket;
meantime the lover goes war-whooping home and comes back 'heeled,'
climbs the tree, jumps down on the bear, the girl jumps down after him--
apparently, for she was up the tree--resumes her place in the bear's
arms along with the blanket, the lover rams his knife into the bear, and
saves--whom, the blanket? No--nothing of the sort. You get yourself all
worked up and excited about that blanket, and then all of a sudden, just
when a happy climax seems imminent you are let down flat--nothing saved
but the girl. Whereas, one is not interested in the girl; she is not the
prominent feature of the legend. Nevertheless, there you are left, and
there you must remain; for if you live a thousand years you will never
know who got the blanket. A dead man could get up a better legend than
this one. I don't mean a fresh dead man either; I mean a man that's been
dead weeks and weeks.
We struck the home-trail now, and in a few hours were in that
astonishing Chicago--a city where they are always rubbing the lamp, and
fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities.
It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with
Chicago--she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She
is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you
passed through the last time. The Pennsylvania road rushed us to New
York without missing schedule time ten minutes anywhere on the route;
and there ended one of the most enjoyable five-thousand-mile journeys I
have ever had the good fortune to make.
APPENDIX A
(FROM THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES DEMOCRAT OF MARCH 29, 1882.)
VOYAGE OF THE TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S RELIEF BOAT THROUGH THE INUNDATED REGIONS
IT was nine o'clock Thursday morning when the 'Susie' left the
Mississippi and entered Old River, or what is now called the mouth of
the Red. Ascending on the left, a flood was pouring in through and over
the levees on the Chandler plantation, the most northern point in Pointe
Coupee parish. The water completely covered the place, although the
levees had given way but a short time before. The stock had been
gathered in a large flat-boat, where, without food, as we passed, the
animals were huddled together, waiting for a boat to tow them off. On
the right-hand side of the river is Turnbull's Island, and on it is a
large plantation which formerly was pronounced one of the most fertile
in the State. The water has hitherto allowed it to go scot-free in usual
floods, but now broad sheets of water told only where fields were. The
top of the protecting levee could be seen here and there, but nearly all
of it was submerged.
The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has poured in,
and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant aspect to the eye
is neutralized by the interminable waste of water. We pass mile after
mile, and it is nothing but trees standing up to their branches in
water. A water-turkey now and again rises and flies ahead into the long
avenue of silence. A pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and
crosses the Red River on its way out to the Mississippi, but the sad-
faced paddlers never turn their heads to look at our boat. The puffing
of the boat is music in this gloom, which affects one most curiously. It
is not the gloom of deep forests or dark caverns, but a peculiar kind of
solemn silence and impressive awe that holds one perforce to its
recognition. We passed two negro families on a raft tied up in the
willows this morning. They were evidently of the well-to-do class, as
they had a supply of meal and three or four hogs with them. Their rafts
were about twenty feet square, and in front of an improvised shelter
earth had been placed, on which they built their fire.
The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift, the Mississippi
showing a predilection in that direction, which needs only to be seen to
enforce the opinion of that river's desperate endeavors to find a short
way to the Gulf. Small boats, skiffs, pirogues, etc., are in great
demand, and many have been stolen by piratical negroes, who take them
where they will bring the greatest price. From what was told me by Mr.
C. P. Ferguson, a planter near Red River Landing, whose place has just
gone under, there is much suffering in the rear of that place. The
negroes had given up all thoughts of a crevasse there, as the upper
levee had stood so long, and when it did come they were at its mercy.
On Thursday a number were taken out of trees and off of cabin roofs and
brought in, many yet remaining.
One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has traveled through
a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for it, but here, with
fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles, house-tops barely visible, it
is expected. In fact a grave-yard, if the mounds were above water,
would be appreciated. The river here is known only because there is an
opening in the trees, and that is all. It is in width, from Fort Adams
on the left bank of the Mississippi to the bank of Rapides Parish, a
distance of about sixty miles. A large portion of this was under
cultivation, particularly along the Mississippi and back of the Red.
When Red River proper was entered, a strong current was running directly
across it, pursuing the same direction as that of the Mississippi.
After a run of some hours, Black River was reached. Hardly was it
entered before signs of suffering became visible. All the willows along
the banks were stripped of their leaves. One man, whom your
correspondent spoke to, said that he had had one hundred and fifty head
of cattle and one hundred head of hogs. At the first appearance of water
he had started to drive them to the high lands of Avoyelles, thirty-five
miles off, but he lost fifty head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs.
Black River is quite picturesque, even if its shores are under water. A
dense growth of ash, oak, gum, and hickory make the shores almost
impenetrable, and where one can get a view down some avenue in the
trees, only the dim outlines of distant trunks can be barely
distinguished in the gloom.
A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the banks was fully
eight feet, and on all sides could be seen, still holding against the
strong current, the tops of cabins. Here and there one overturned was
surrounded by drift-wood, forming the nucleus of possibly some future
island.
In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel at any
point to be touched during the expedition, a look-out was kept for a
wood-pile. On rounding a point a pirogue, skilfully paddled by a youth,
shot out, and in its bow was a girl of fifteen, of fair face, beautiful
black eyes, and demure manners. The boy asked for a paper, which was
thrown to him, and the couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell
of the boat.
Presently a little girl, not certainly over twelve years, paddled out in
the smallest little canoe and handled it with all the deftness of an old
voyageur. The little one looked more like an Indian than a white child,
and laughed when asked if she were afraid. She had been raised in a
pirogue and could go anywhere. She was bound out to pick willow leaves
for the stock, and she pointed to a house near by with water three
inches deep on the floors. At its back door was moored a raft about
thirty feet square, with a sort of fence built upon it, and inside of
this some sixteen cows and twenty hogs were standing. The family did
not complain, except on account of losing their stock, and promptly
brought a supply of wood in a flat.
From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there is not a
spot of earth above water, and to the westward for thirty-five miles
there is nothing but the river's flood. Black River had risen during
Thursday, the 23rd, 1{three-quarters} inches, and was going up at night
still. As we progress up the river habitations become more frequent, but
are yet still miles apart. Nearly all of them are deserted, and the
out-houses floated off. To add to the gloom, almost every living thing
seems to have departed, and not a whistle of a bird nor the bark of the
squirrel can be heard in this solitude. Sometimes a morose gar will
throw his tail aloft and disappear in the river, but beyond this
everything is quiet--the quiet of dissolution. Down the river floats now
a neatly whitewashed hen-house, then a cluster of neatly split fence-
rails, or a door and a bloated carcass, solemnly guarded by a pair of
buzzards, the only bird to be seen, which feast on the carcass as it
bears them along. A picture-frame in which there was a cheap lithograph
of a soldier on horseback, as it floated on told of some hearth invaded
by the water and despoiled of this ornament.
At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the woods was
hunted and to a tall gum-tree the boat was made fast for the night.
A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over forest and
river, making a picture that would be a delightful piece of landscape
study, could an artist only hold it down to his canvas. The motion of
the engines had ceased, the puffing of the escaping steam was stilled,
and the enveloping silence closed upon us, and such silence it was!
Usually in a forest at night one can hear the piping of frogs, the hum
of insects, or the dropping of limbs; but here nature was dumb. The dark
recesses, those aisles into this cathedral, gave forth no sound, and
even the ripplings of the current die away.
At daylight Friday morning all hands were up, and up the Black we
started. The morning was a beautiful one, and the river, which is
remarkably straight, put on its loveliest garb. The blossoms of the haw
perfumed the air deliciously, and a few birds whistled blithely along
the banks. The trees were larger, and the forest seemed of older growth
than below. More fields were passed than nearer the mouth, but the same
scene presented itself--smoke-houses drifting out in the pastures, negro
quarters anchored in confusion against some oak, and the modest
residence just showing its eaves above water. The sun came up in a
glory of carmine, and the trees were brilliant in their varied shades of
green. Not a foot of soil is to be seen anywhere, and the water is
apparently growing deeper and deeper, for it reaches up to the branches
of the largest trees. All along, the bordering willows have been denuded
of leaves, showing how long the people have been at work gathering this
fodder for their animals. An old man in a pirogue was asked how the
willow leaves agreed with his cattle. He stopped in his work, and with
an ominous shake of his head replied: 'Well, sir, it 's enough to keep
warmth in their bodies and that's all we expect, but it's hard on the
hogs, particularly the small ones. They is dropping off powerful fast.
But what can you do? It 's all we've got.'
At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the water extends from
Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pine hills of Louisiana, a
distance of seventy-three miles, and there is hardly a spot that is not
ten feet under it. The tendency of the current up the Black is toward
the west. In fact, so much is this the case, the waters of Red River
have been driven down from toward the Calcasieu country, and the waters
of the Black enter the Red some fifteen miles above the mouth of the
former, a thing never before seen by even the oldest steamboatmen. The
water now in sight of us is entirely from the Mississippi.
Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a short distance below, the
people have nearly all moved out, those remaining having enough for
their present personal needs. Their cattle, though, are suffering and
dying off quite fast, as the confinement on rafts and the food they get
breeds disease.
After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section where there
were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered about. Here were seen
more pictures of distress. On the inside of the houses the inmates had
built on boxes a scaffold on which they placed the furniture. The bed-
posts were sawed off on top, as the ceiling was not more than four feet
from the improvised floor. The buildings looked very insecure, and
threatened every moment to float off. Near the houses were cattle
standing breast high in the water, perfectly impassive. They did not
move in their places, but stood patiently waiting for help to come. The
sight was a distressing one, and the poor creatures will be sure to die
unless speedily rescued. Cattle differ from horses in this peculiar
quality. A horse, after finding no relief comes, will swim off in
search of food, whereas a beef will stand in its tracks until with
exhaustion it drops in the water and drowns.
At half-past twelve o'clock a hail was given from a flat-boat inside the
line of the bank. Rounding to we ran alongside, and General York
stepped aboard. He was just then engaged in getting off stock, and
welcomed the 'Times-Democrat' boat heartily, as he said there was much
need for her. He said that the distress was not exaggerated in the
least. People were in a condition it was difficult even for one to
imagine. The water was so high there was great danger of their houses
being swept away. It had already risen so high that it was approaching
the eaves, and when it reaches this point there is always imminent risk
of their being swept away. If this occurs, there will be great loss of
life. The General spoke of the gallant work of many of the people in
their attempts to save their stock, but thought that fully twenty-five
per cent. had perished. Already twenty-five hundred people had received
rations from Troy, on Black River, and he had towed out a great many
cattle, but a very great quantity remained and were in dire need. The
water was now eighteen inches higher than in 1874, and there was no land
between Vidalia and the hills of Catahoula.
At two o'clock the 'Susie' reached Troy, sixty-five miles above the
mouth of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little River; just
beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the Tensas. These three
rivers form the Black River. Troy, or a portion of it, is situated on
and around three large Indian mounds, circular in shape, which rise
above the present water about twelve feet. They are about one hundred
and fifty feet in diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart. The
houses are all built between these mounds, and hence are all flooded to
a depth of eighteen inches on their floors.
These elevations, built by the aborigines, hundreds of years ago, are
the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived we found them
crowded with stock, all of which was thin and hardly able to stand up.
They were mixed together, sheep, hogs, horses, mules, and cattle. One of
these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard, and to-day
we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones, chewing
their cud in contentment, after a meal of corn furnished by General
York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the women and girls in
the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed. Children were
paddling about in these most ticklish crafts with all the nonchalance of
adepts.
General York has put into operation a perfect system in regard to
furnishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of the place where it
is asked, sees what is necessary to be done, and then, having two boats
chartered, with flats, sends them promptly to the place, when the cattle
are loaded and towed to the pine hills and uplands of Catahoula. He has
made Troy his headquarters, and to this point boats come for their
supply of feed for cattle. On the opposite side of Little River, which
branches to the left out of Black, and between it and the Ouachita, is
situated the town of Trinity, which is hourly threatened with
destruction. It is much lower than Troy, and the water is eight and nine
feet deep in the houses. A strong current sweeps through it, and it is
remarkable that all of its houses have not gone before. The residents of
both Troy and Trinity have been cared for, yet some of their stock have
to be furnished with food.
As soon as the 'Susie' reached Troy, she was turned over to General
York, and placed at his disposition to carry out the work of relief more
rapidly. Nearly all her supplies were landed on one of the mounds to
lighten her, and she was headed down stream to relieve those below. At
Tom Hooper's place, a few miles from Troy, a large flat, with about
fifty head of stock on board, was taken in tow. The animals were fed,
and soon regained some strength. To-day we go on Little River, where the
suffering is greatest.
DOWN BLACK RIVER
Saturday Evening, March 25.
We started down Black River quite early, under the direction of General
York, to bring out what stock could be reached. Going down river a flat
in tow was left in a central locality, and from there men poled her back
in the rear of plantations, picking up the animals wherever found. In
the loft of a gin-house there were seventeen head found, and after a
gangway was built they were led down into the flat without difficulty.
Taking a skiff with the General, your reporter was pulled up to a little
house of two rooms, in which the water was standing two feet on the
floors. In one of the large rooms were huddled the horses and cows of
the place, while in the other the Widow Taylor and her son were seated
on a scaffold raised on the floor. One or two dug-outs were drifting
about in the roam ready to be put in service at any time. When the flat
was brought up, the side of the house was cut away as the only means of
getting the animals out, and the cattle were driven on board the boat.
General York, in this as in every case, inquired if the family desired
to leave, informing them that Major Burke, of 'The Times-Democrat,' has
sent the 'Susie' up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor said she thanked
Major Burke, but she would try and hold out. The remarkable tenacity of
the people here to their homes is beyond all comprehension. Just below,
at a point sixteen miles from Troy, information was received that the
house of Mr. Tom Ellis was in danger, and his family were all in it. We
steamed there immediately, and a sad picture was presented. Looking out
of the half of the window left above water, was Mrs. Ellis, who is in
feeble health, whilst at the door were her seven children, the oldest
not fourteen years. One side of the house was given up to the work
animals, some twelve head, besides hogs. In the next room the family
lived, the water coming within two inches of the bed-rail. The stove was
below water, and the cooking was done on a fire on top of it. The house
threatened to give way at any moment: one end of it was sinking, and, in
fact, the building looked a mere shell. As the boat rounded to, Mr.
Ellis came out in a dug-out, and General York told him that he had come
to his relief; that 'The Times-Democrat' boat was at his service, and
would remove his family at once to the hills, and on Monday a flat would
take out his stock, as, until that time, they would be busy.
Notwithstanding the deplorable situation himself and family were in, Mr.
Ellis did not want to leave. He said he thought he would wait until
Monday, and take the risk of his house falling. The children around the
door looked perfectly contented, seeming to care little for the danger
they were in. These are but two instances of the many. After weeks of
privation and suffering, people still cling to their houses and leave
only when there is not room between the water and the ceiling to build a
scaffold on which to stand. It seemed to be incomprehensible, yet the
love for the old place was stronger than that for safety.
After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched at was the Oswald
place. Here the flat was towed alongside the gin-house where there were
fifteen head standing in water; and yet, as they stood on scaffolds,
their heads were above the top of the entrance. It was found impossible
to get them out without cutting away a portion of the front; and so axes
were brought into requisition and a gap made. After much labor the
horses and mules were securely placed on the flat.
At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more dug-outs
arriving, bringing information of stock in other places in need.
Notwithstanding the fact that a great many had driven a part of their
stock to the hills some time ago, there yet remains a large quantity,
which General York, who is working with indomitable energy, will get
landed in the pine hills by Tuesday.
All along Black River the 'Susie' has been visited by scores of
planters, whose tales are the repetition of those already heard of
suffering and loss. An old planter, who has lived on the river since
1844, said there never was such a rise, and he was satisfied more than
one quarter of the stock has been lost. Luckily the people cared first
for their work stock, and when they could find it horses and mules were
housed in a place of safety. The rise which still continues, and was two
inches last night, compels them to get them out to the hills; hence it
is that the work of General York is of such a great value. From daylight
to late at night he is going this way and that, cheering by his kindly
words and directing with calm judgment what is to be done. One
unpleasant story, of a certain merchant in New Orleans, is told all
along the river. It appears for some years past the planters have been
dealing with this individual, and many of them had balances in his
hands. When the overflow came they wrote for coffee, for meal, and, in
fact, for such little necessities as were required. No response to these
letters came, and others were written, and yet these old customers, with
plantations under water, were refused even what was necessary to sustain
life. It is needless to say he is not popular now on Back River.
The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and stock on
Black River are in Catahoula parish, twenty-four miles from Black River.
After filling the flat with cattle we took on board the family of T. S.
Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remain in their dwelling,
and we are now taking them up Little River to the hills.
THE FLOOD STILL RISING
Troy: March 27, 1882, noon.
The flood here is rising about three and a half inches every twenty-four
hours, and rains have set in which will increase this. General York
feels now that our efforts ought to be directed towards saving life, as
the increase of the water has jeopardized many houses. We intend to go
up the Tensas in a few minutes, and then we will return and go down
Black River to take off families. There is a lack of steam
transportation here to meet the emergency. The General has three boats
chartered, with flats in tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock
is greater than they can meet with promptness. All are working night
and day, and the 'Susie' hardly stops for more than an hour anywhere.
The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous plight, and momentarily it is
expected that some of the houses will float off. Troy is a little
higher, yet all are in the water. Reports have come in that a woman and
child have been washed away below here, and two cabins floated off.
Their occupants are the same who refused to come off day before
yesterday. One would not believe the utter passiveness of the people.
As yet no news has been received of the steamer 'Delia,' which is
supposed to be the one sunk in yesterday's storm on Lake Catahoula. She
is due here now, but has not arrived. Even the mail here is most
uncertain, and this I send by skiff to Natchez to get it to you. It is
impossible to get accurate data as to past crops, etc., as those who
know much about the matter have gone, and those who remain are not well
versed in the production of this section.
General York desires me to say that the amount of rations formerly sent
should be duplicated and sent at once. It is impossible to make any
estimate, for the people are fleeing to the hills, so rapid is the rise.
The residents here are in a state of commotion that can only be
appreciated when seen, and complete demoralization has set in,
If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts, they would
not be certain to be distributed, so everything should be sent to Troy
as a center, and the General will have it properly disposed of. He has
sent for one hundred tents, and, if all go to the hills who are in
motion now, two hundred will be required.
APPENDIX B
THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER COMMISSION
THE condition of this rich valley of the Lower Mississippi, immediately
after and since the war, constituted one of the disastrous effects of
war most to be deplored. Fictitious property in slaves was not only
righteously destroyed, but very much of the work which had depended upon
the slave labor was also destroyed or greatly impaired, especially the
levee system.
It might have been expected by those who have not investigated the
subject, that such important improvements as the construction and
maintenance of the levees would have been assumed at once by the several
States. But what can the State do where the people are under subjection
to rates of interest ranging from 18 to 30 per cent., and are also under
the necessity of pledging their crops in advance even of planting, at
these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all of their supplies at
100 per cent. profit?
It has needed but little attention to make it perfectly obvious that the
control of the Mississippi River, if undertaken at all, must be
undertaken by the national government, and cannot be compassed by
States. The river must be treated as a unit; its control cannot be
compassed under a divided or separate system of administration.
Neither are the States especially interested competent to combine among
themselves for the necessary operations. The work must begin far up the
river; at least as far as Cairo, if not beyond; and must be conducted
upon a consistent general plan throughout the course of the river.
It does not need technical or scientific knowledge to comprehend the
elements of the case if one will give a little time and attention to the
subject, and when a Mississippi River commission has been constituted,
as the existing commission is, of thoroughly able men of different walks
in life, may it not be suggested that their verdict in the case should
be accepted as conclusive, so far as any a priori theory of construction
or control can be considered conclusive?
It should be remembered that upon this board are General Gilmore,
General Comstock, and General Suter, of the United States Engineers;
Professor Henry Mitchell (the most competent authority on the question
of hydrography), of the United States Coast Survey; B. B. Harrod, the
State Engineer of Louisiana; Jas. B. Eads, whose success with the
jetties at New Orleans is a warrant of his competency, and Judge Taylor,
of Indiana.
It would be presumption on the part of any single man, however skilled,
to contest the judgment of such a board as this.
The method of improvement proposed by the commission is at once in
accord with the results of engineering experience and with observations
of nature where meeting our wants. As in nature the growth of trees and
their proneness where undermined to fall across the slope and support
the bank secures at some points a fair depth of channel and some degree
of permanence, so in the project of the engineer the use of timber and
brush and the encouragement of forest growth are the main features. It
is proposed to reduce the width where excessive by brushwood dykes, at
first low, but raised higher and higher as the mud of the river settles
under their shelter, and finally slope them back at the angle upon which
willows will grow freely. In this work there are many details connected
with the forms of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to
present a series of settling basins, etc., a description of which would
only complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the river
works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all the banks on
the concave side of the beds must be held against the wear of the
stream, and much of the opposite banks defended at critical points. The
works having in view this conservative object may be generally
designated works of revetment; and these also will be largely of
brushwood, woven in continuous carpets, or twined into wire-netting.
This veneering process has been successfully employed on the Missouri
River; and in some cases they have so covered themselves with sediments,
and have become so overgrown with willows, that they may be regarded as
permanent. In securing these mats rubble-stone is to be used in small
quantities, and in some instances the dressed slope between high and low
river will have to be more or less paved with stone.
Any one who has been on the Rhine will have observed operations not
unlike those to which we have just referred; and, indeed, most of the
rivers of Europe flowing among their own alluvia have required similar
treatment in the interest of navigation and agriculture.
The levee is the crowning work of bank revetment, although not
necessarily in immediate connection. It may be set back a short
distance from the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the requisite
parapet. The flood river and the low river cannot be brought into
register, and compelled to unite in the excavation of a single permanent
channel, without a complete control of all the stages; and even the
abnormal rise must be provided against, because this would endanger the
levee, and once in force behind the works of revetment would tear them
also away.
Under the general principle that the local slope of a river is the
result and measure of the resistance of its bed, it is evident that a
narrow and deep stream should have less slope, because it has less
frictional surface in proportion to capacity; i.e., less perimeter in
proportion to area of cross section. The ultimate effect of levees and
revetments confining the floods and bringing all the stages of the river
into register is to deepen the channel and let down the slope. The first
effect of the levees is to raise the surface; but this, by inducing
greater velocity of flow, inevitably causes an enlargement of section,
and if this enlargement is prevented from being made at the expense of
the banks, the bottom must give way and the form of the waterway be so
improved as to admit this flow with less rise. The actual experience
with levees upon the Mississippi River, with no attempt to hold the
banks, has been favorable, and no one can doubt, upon the evidence
furnished in the reports of the commission, that if the earliest levees
had been accompanied by revetment of banks, and made complete, we should
have to-day a river navigable at low water, and an adjacent country safe
from inundation.
Of course it would be illogical to conclude that the constrained river
can ever lower its flood slope so as to make levees unnecessary, but it
is believed that, by this lateral constraint, the river as a conduit may
be so improved in form that even those rare floods which result from the
coincident rising of many tributaries will find vent without destroying
levees of ordinary height. That the actual capacity of a channel through
alluvium depends upon its service during floods has been often shown,
but this capacity does not include anomalous, but recurrent, floods.
It is hardly worth while to consider the projects for relieving the
Mississippi River floods by creating new outlets, since these
sensational propositions have commended themselves only to unthinking
minds, and have no support among engineers. Were the river bed cast-
iron, a resort to openings for surplus waters might be a necessity; but
as the bottom is yielding, and the best form of outlet is a single deep
channel, as realizing the least ratio of perimeter to area of cross
section, there could not well be a more unphilosophical method of
treatment than the multiplication of avenues of escape.
In the foregoing statement the attempt has been made to condense in as
limited a space as the importance of the subject would permit, the
general elements of the problem, and the general features of the
proposed method of improvement which has been adopted by the Mississippi
River Commission.
The writer cannot help feeling that it is somewhat presumptuous on his
part to attempt to present the facts relating to an enterprise which
calls for the highest scientific skill; but it is a matter which
interests every citizen of the United States, and is one of the methods
of reconstruction which ought to be approved. It is a war claim which
implies no private gain, and no compensation except for one of the cases
of destruction incident to war, which may well be repaired by the people
of the whole country.
EDWARD ATKINSON.
Boston: April 14, 1882.
APPENDIX C
RECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S BOOK IN THE UNITED STATES
HAVING now arrived nearly at the end of our travels, I am induced, ere I
conclude, again to mention what I consider as one of the most remarkable
traits in the national character of the Americans; namely, their
exquisite sensitiveness and soreness respecting everything said or
written concerning them. Of this, perhaps, the most remarkable example I
can give is the effect produced on nearly every class of readers by the
appearance of Captain Basil Hall's 'Travels in North America.' In fact,
it was a sort of moral earthquake, and the vibration it occasioned
through the nerves of the republic, from one corner of the Union to the
other, was by no means over when I left the country in July 1831, a
couple of years after the shock.
I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but it was not till
July 1830, that I procured a copy of them. One bookseller to whom I
applied told me that he had had a few copies before he understood the
nature of the work, but that, after becoming acquainted with it, nothing
should induce him to sell another. Other persons of his profession
must, however, have been less scrupulous; for the book was read in city,
town, village, and hamlet, steamboat, and stage-coach, and a sort of
war-whoop was sent forth perfectly unprecedented in my recollection upon
any occasion whatever.
An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness under
censure, have always, I believe, been considered as amiable traits of
character; but the condition into which the appearance of Captain Hall's
work threw the republic shows plainly that these feelings, if carried to
excess, produce a weakness which amounts to imbecility.
It was perfectly astonishing to hear men who, on other subjects, were of
some judgment, utter their opinions upon this. I never heard of any
instance in which the commonsense generally found in national criticism
was so overthrown by passion. I do not speak of the want of justice, and
of fair and liberal interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be
expected. Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens
of the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a breeze
blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. It was not,
therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcible observations of a
traveler they knew would be listened to should be received testily. The
extraordinary features of the business were, first, the excess of the
rage into which they lashed themselves; and, secondly, the puerility of
the inventions by which they attempted to account for the severity with
which they fancied they had been treated.
Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no word of truth,
from beginning to end (which is an assertion I heard made very nearly as
often as they were mentioned), the whole country set to work to discover
the causes why Captain Hall had visited the United States, and why he
had published his book.
I have heard it said with as much precision and gravity as if the
statement had been conveyed by an official report, that Captain Hall had
been sent out by the British Government expressly for the purpose of
checking the growing admiration of England for the Government of the
United States,--that it was by a commission from the treasury he had
come, and that it was only in obedience to orders that he had found
anything to object to.
I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded that it is
the belief of a very considerable portion of the country. So deep is the
conviction of this singular people that they cannot be seen without
being admired, that they will not admit the possibility that any one
should honestly and sincerely find aught to disapprove in them or their
country.
The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well known in
England; I need not, therefore, quote them here, but I sometimes
wondered that they, none of them, ever thought of translating Obadiah's
curse into classic American; if they had done so, on placing (he, Basil
Hall) between brackets, instead of (he, Obadiah) it would have saved
them a world of trouble.
I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down at length to
peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I do justice to my
surprise at their contents. To say that I found not one exaggerated
statement throughout the work is by no means saying enough. It is
impossible for any one who knows the country not to see that Captain
Hall earnestly sought out things to admire and commend. When he praises,
it is with evident pleasure; and when he finds fault, it is with evident
reluctance and restraint, excepting where motives purely patriotic urge
him to state roundly what it is for the benefit of his country should be
known.
In fact, Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible
advantage. Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to the
most distinguished individuals, and with the still more influential
recommendation of his own reputation, he was received in full drawing-
room style and state from one end of the Union to the other. He saw the
country in full dress, and had little or no opportunity of judging of it
unhouselled, unanointed, unannealed, with all its imperfections on its
head, as I and my family too often had.
Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of making himself
acquainted with the form of the government and the laws; and of
receiving, moreover, the best oral commentary upon them, in conversation
with the most distinguished citizens. Of these opportunities he made
excellent use; nothing important met his eye which did not receive that
sort of analytical attention which an experienced and philosophical
traveler alone can give. This has made his volumes highly interesting
and valuable; but I am deeply persuaded, that were a man of equal
penetration to visit the United States with no other means of becoming
acquainted with the national character than the ordinary working-day
intercourse of life, he would conceive an infinitely lower idea of the
moral atmosphere of the country than Captain Hall appears to have done;
and the internal conviction on my mind is strong, that if Captain Hall
had not placed a firm restraint on himself, he must have given
expression to far deeper indignation than any he has uttered against
many points in the American character, with which he shows from other
circumstances that he was well acquainted. His rule appears to have been
to state just so much of the truth as would leave on the mind of his
readers a correct impression, at the least cost of pain to the sensitive
folks he was writing about. He states his own opinions and feelings, and
leaves it to be inferred that he has good grounds for adopting them; but
he spares the Americans the bitterness which a detail of the
circumstances would have produced.
If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelve millions
of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I must bear it; and were the
question one of mere idle speculation, I certainly would not court the
abuse I must meet for stating it. But it is not so.
. . . . . . .
The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they mistake for
irony, or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give pain to persons
from whom he has received kindness, they scornfully reject as
affectation, and although they must know right well, in their own secret
hearts, how infinitely more they lay at his mercy than he has chosen to
betray; they pretend, even to themselves, that he has exaggerated the
bad points of their character and institutions; whereas, the truth is,
that he has let them off with a degree of tenderness which may be quite
suitable for him to exercise, however little merited; while, at the same
time, he has most industriously magnified their merits, whenever he
could possibly find anything favorable.
APPENDIX D
THE UNDYING HEAD
IN a remote part of the North lived a man and his sister, who had never
seen a human being. Seldom, if ever, had the man any cause to go from
home; for, as his wants demanded food, he had only to go a little
distance from the lodge, and there, in some particular spot, place his
arrows, with their barbs in the ground. Telling his sister where they
had been placed, every morning she would go in search, and never fail of
finding each stuck through the heart of a deer. She had then only to
drag them into the lodge and prepare their food. Thus she lived till she
attained womanhood, when one day her brother, whose name was Iamo, said
to her: 'Sister, the time is at hand when you will be ill. Listen to
my advice. If you do not, it will probably be the cause of my death.
Take the implements with which we kindle our fires. Go some distance
from our lodge and build a separate fire. When you are in want of food,
I will tell you where to find it. You must cook for yourself, and I will
for myself. When you are ill, do not attempt to come near the lodge, or
bring any of the utensils you use. Be sure always to fasten to your
belt the implements you need, for you do not know when the time will
come. As for myself, I must do the best I can.' His sister promised to
obey him in all he had said.
Shortly after, her brother had cause to go from home. She was alone in
her lodge, combing her hair. She had just untied the belt to which the
implements were fastened, when suddenly the event, to which her brother
had alluded, occurred. She ran out of the lodge, but in her haste forgot
the belt. Afraid to return, she stood for some time thinking. Finally,
she decided to enter the lodge and get it. For, thought she, my brother
is not at home, and I will stay but a moment to catch hold of it. She
went back. Running in suddenly, she caught hold of it, and was coming
out when her brother came in sight. He knew what was the matter. 'Oh,'
he said, 'did I not tell you to take care. But now you have killed me.'
She was going on her way, but her brother said to her, 'What can you do
there now. The accident has happened. Go in, and stay where you have
always stayed. And what will become of you? You have killed me.'
He then laid aside his hunting-dress and accoutrements, and soon after
both his feet began to turn black, so that he could not move. Still he
directed his sister where to place the arrows, that she might always
have food. The inflammation continued to increase, and had now reached
his first rib; and he said: 'Sister, my end is near. You must do as I
tell you. You see my medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It
contains all my medicines, and my war-plumes, and my paints of all
colors. As soon as the inflammation reaches my breast, you will take my
war-club. It has a sharp point, and you will cut off my head. When it is
free from my body, take it, place its neck in the sack, which you must
open at one end. Then hang it up in its former place. Do not forget my
bow and arrows. One of the last you will take to procure food. The
remainder, tie in my sack, and then hang it up, so that I can look
towards the door. Now and then I will speak to you, but not often.' His
sister again promised to obey.
In a little time his breast was affected. 'Now,' said he, 'take the
club and strike off my head.' She was afraid, but he told her to muster
courage. 'Strike,' said he, and a smile was on his face. Mustering all
her courage, she gave the blow and cut off the head. 'Now,' said the
head, 'place me where I told you.' And fearfully she obeyed it in all
its commands. Retaining its animation, it looked around the lodge as
usual, and it would command its sister to go in such places as it
thought would procure for her the flesh of different animals she needed.
One day the head said: 'The time is not distant when I shall be freed
from this situation, and I shall have to undergo many sore evils. So the
superior manito decrees, and I must bear all patiently.' In this
situation we must leave the head.
In a certain part of the country was a village inhabited by a numerous
and warlike band of Indians. In this village was a family of ten young
men--brothers. It was in the spring of the year that the youngest of
these blackened his face and fasted. His dreams were propitious. Having
ended his fast, he went secretly for his brothers at night, so that none
in the village could overhear or find out the direction they intended to
go. Though their drum was heard, yet that was a common occurrence.
Having ended the usual formalities, he told how favorable his dreams
were, and that he had called them together to know if they would
accompany him in a war excursion. They all answered they would. The
third brother from the eldest, noted for his oddities, coming up with
his war-club when his brother had ceased speaking, jumped up. 'Yes,'
said he, 'I will go, and this will be the way I will treat those I am
going to fight;' and he struck the post in the center of the lodge, and
gave a yell. The others spoke to him, saying: 'Slow, slow, Mudjikewis,
when you are in other people's lodges.' So he sat down. Then, in turn,
they took the drum, and sang their songs, and closed with a feast. The
youngest told them not to whisper their intention to their wives, but
secretly to prepare for their journey. They all promised obedience, and
Mudjikewis was the first to say so.
The time for their departure drew near. Word was given to assemble on a
certain night, when they would depart immediately. Mudjikewis was loud
in his demands for his moccasins. Several times his wife asked him the
reason. 'Besides,' said she, 'you have a good pair on.' 'Quick,
quick,' said he, 'since you must know, we are going on a war excursion;
so be quick.' He thus revealed the secret. That night they met and
started. The snow was on the ground, and they traveled all night, lest
others should follow them. When it was daylight, the leader took snow
and made a ball of it, then tossing it into the air, he said: 'It was in
this way I saw snow fall in a dream, so that I could not be tracked.'
And he told them to keep close to each other for fear of losing
themselves, as the snow began to fall in very large flakes. Near as they
walked, it was with difficulty they could see each other. The snow
continued falling all that day and the following night, so it was
impossible to track them.
They had now walked for several days, and Mudjikewis was always in the
rear. One day, running suddenly forward, he gave the SAW-SAW-
QUAN,{footnote [War-whoop.]} and struck a tree with his war-club, and it
broke into pieces as if struck with lightning. 'Brothers,' said he,
'this will be the way I will serve those we are going to fight.' The
leader answered, 'Slow, slow, Mudjikewis, the one I lead you to is not
to be thought of so lightly.' Again he fell back and thought to
himself: 'What! what! who can this be he is leading us to?' He felt
fearful and was silent. Day after day they traveled on, till they came
to an extensive plain, on the borders of which human bones were
bleaching in the sun. The leader spoke: 'They are the bones of those
who have gone before us. None has ever yet returned to tell the sad tale
of their fate.' Again Mudjikewis became restless, and, running forward,
gave the accustomed yell. Advancing to a large rock which stood above
the ground, he struck it, and it fell to pieces. 'See, brothers,' said
he, 'thus will I treat those whom we are going to fight.' 'Still,
still,' once more said the leader; 'he to whom I am leading you is not
to be compared to the rock.'
Mudjikewis fell back thoughtful, saying to himself: 'I wonder who this
can be that he is going to attack;' and he was afraid. Still they
continued to see the remains of former warriors, who had been to the
place where they were now going, some of whom had retreated as far back
as the place where they first saw the bones, beyond which no one had
ever escaped. At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which
they plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth
bear.
The distance between them was very great, but the size of the animal
caused him to be plainly seen. 'There,' said the leader, 'it is he to
whom I am leading you; here our troubles will commence, for he is a
mishemokwa and a manito. It is he who has that we prize so dearly (i.e.
wampum), to obtain which, the warriors whose bones we saw, sacrificed
their lives. You must not be fearful: be manly. We shall find him
asleep.' Then the leader went forward and touched the belt around the
animal's neck. 'This,' said he, 'is what we must get. It contains the
wampum.' Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over
the bear's head, who appeared to be fast asleep, as he was not in the
least disturbed by the attempt to obtain the belt. All their efforts
were in vain, till it came to the one next the youngest. He tried, and
the belt moved nearly over the monster's head, but he could get it no
farther. Then the youngest one, and the leader, made his attempt, and
succeeded. Placing it on the back of the oldest, he said, 'Now we must
run,' and off they started. When one became fatigued with its weight,
another would relieve him. Thus they ran till they had passed the bones
of all former warriors, and were some distance beyond, when looking
back, they saw the monster slowly rising. He stood some time before he
missed his wampum. Soon they heard his tremendous howl, like distant
thunder, slowly filling all the sky; and then they heard him speak and
say, 'Who can it be that has dared to steal my wampum? earth is not so
large but that I can find them;' and he descended from the hill in
pursuit. As if convulsed, the earth shook with every jump he made. Very
soon he approached the party. They, however, kept the belt, exchanging
it from one to another, and encouraging each other; but he gained on
them fast. 'Brothers,' said the leader, 'has never any one of you, when
fasting, dreamed of some friendly spirit who would aid you as a
guardian?' A dead silence followed. 'Well,' said he, 'fasting, I
dreamed of being in danger of instant death, when I saw a small lodge,
with smoke curling from its top. An old man lived in it, and I dreamed
he helped me; and may it be verified soon,' he said, running forward and
giving the peculiar yell, and a howl as if the sounds came from the
depths of his stomach, and what is called CHECAUDUM. Getting upon a
piece of rising ground, behold! a lodge, with smoke curling from its
top, appeared. This gave them all new strength, and they ran forward
and entered it. The leader spoke to the old man who sat in the lodge,
saying, 'Nemesho, help us; we claim your protection, for the great bear
will kill us.' 'Sit down and eat, my grandchildren,' said the old man.
'Who is a great manito?' said he. 'There is none but me; but let me
look,' and he opened the door of the lodge, when, lo! at a little
distance he saw the enraged animal coming on, with slow but powerful
leaps. He closed the door. 'Yes,' said he, 'he is indeed a great
manito: my grandchildren, you will be the cause of my losing my life;
you asked my protection, and I granted it; so now, come what may, I will
protect you. When the bear arrives at the door, you must run out of the
other door of the lodge.' Then putting his hand to the side of the
lodge where he sat, he brought out a bag which he opened. Taking out two
small black dogs, he placed them before him. 'These are the ones I use
when I fight,' said he; and he commenced patting with both hands the
sides of one of them, and he began to swell out, so that he soon filled
the lodge by his bulk; and he had great strong teeth. When he attained
his full size he growled, and from that moment, as from instinct, he
jumped out at the door and met the bear, who in another leap would have
reached the lodge. A terrible combat ensued. The skies rang with the
howls of the fierce monsters. The remaining dog soon took the field.
The brothers, at the onset, took the advice of the old man, and escaped
through the opposite side of the lodge. They had not proceeded far
before they heard the dying cry of one of the dogs, and soon after of
the other. 'Well,' said the leader, 'the old man will share their fate:
so run; he will soon be after us.' They started with fresh vigor, for
they had received food from the old man: but very soon the bear came in
sight, and again was fast gaining upon them. Again the leader asked the
brothers if they could do nothing for their safety. All were silent.
The leader, running forward, did as before. 'I dreamed,' he cried,
'that, being in great trouble, an old man helped me who was a manito; we
shall soon see his lodge.' Taking courage, they still went on. After
going a short distance they saw the lodge of the old manito. They
entered immediately and claimed his protection, telling him a manito was
after them. The old man, setting meat before them, said: 'Eat! who is a
manito? there is no manito but me; there is none whom I fear;' and the
earth trembled as the monster advanced. The old man opened the door and
saw him coming. He shut it slowly, and said: 'Yes, my grandchildren,
you have brought trouble upon me.' Procuring his medicine-sack, he took
out his small war-clubs of black stone, and told the young men to run
through the other side of the lodge. As he handled the clubs, they
became very large, and the old man stepped out just as the bear reached
the door. Then striking him with one of the clubs, it broke in pieces;
the bear stumbled. Renewing the attempt with the other war-club, that
also was broken, but the bear fell senseless. Each blow the old man gave
him sounded like a clap of thunder, and the howls of the bear ran along
till they filled the heavens.
The young men had now run some distance, when they looked back. They
could see that the bear was recovering from the blows. First he moved
his paws, and soon they saw him rise on his feet. The old man shared
the fate of the first, for they now heard his cries as he was torn in
pieces. Again the monster was in pursuit, and fast overtaking them. Not
yet discouraged, the young men kept on their way; but the bear was now
so close, that the leader once more applied to his brothers, but they
could do nothing. 'Well,' said he, 'my dreams will soon be exhausted;
after this I have but one more.' He advanced, invoking his guardian
spirit to aid him. 'Once,' said he, 'I dreamed that, being sorely
pressed, I came to a large lake, on the shore of which was a canoe,
partly out of water, having ten paddles all in readiness. Do not fear,'
he cried, 'we shall soon get it.' And so it was, even as he had said.
Coming to the lake, they saw the canoe with ten paddles, and immediately
they embarked. Scarcely had they reached the center of the lake, when
they saw the bear arrive at its borders. Lifting himself on his hind
legs, he looked all around. Then he waded into the water; then losing
his footing he turned back, and commenced making the circuit of the
lake. Meantime the party remained stationary in the center to watch his
movements. He traveled all around, till at last he came to the place
from whence he started. Then he commenced drinking up the water, and
they saw the current fast setting in towards his open mouth. The leader
encouraged them to paddle hard for the opposite shore. When only a short
distance from land, the current had increased so much, that they were
drawn back by it, and all their efforts to reach it were in vain.
Then the leader again spoke, telling them to meet their fates manfully.
'Now is the time, Mudjikewis,' said he, 'to show your prowess. Take
courage and sit at the bow of the canoe; and when it approaches his
mouth, try what effect your club will have on his head.' He obeyed, and
stood ready to give the blow; while the leader, who steered, directed
the canoe for the open mouth of the monster.
Rapidly advancing, they were just about to enter his mouth, when
Mudjikewis struck him a tremendous blow on the head, and gave the SAW-
SAW-QUAN. The bear's limbs doubled under him, and he fell, stunned by
the blow. But before Mudjikewis could renew it, the monster disgorged
all the water he had drank, with a force which sent the canoe with great
velocity to the opposite shore. Instantly leaving the canoe, again they
fled, and on they went till they were completely exhausted. The earth
again shook, and soon they saw the monster hard after them. Their
spirits drooped, and they felt discouraged. The leader exerted himself,
by actions and words, to cheer them up; and once more he asked them if
they thought of nothing, or could do nothing for their rescue; and, as
before, all were silent. 'Then,' he said, 'this is the last time I can
apply to my guardian spirit. Now, if we do not succeed, our fates are
decided.' He ran forward, invoking his spirit with great earnestness,
and gave the yell. 'We shall soon arrive,' said he to his brothers, 'at
the place where my last guardian spirit dwells. In him I place great
confidence. Do not, do not be afraid, or your limbs will be fear-bound.
We shall soon reach his lodge. Run, run,' he cried.
Returning now to Iamo, he had passed all the time in the same condition
we had left him, the head directing his sister, in order to procure
food, where to place the magic arrows, and speaking at long intervals.
One day the sister saw the eyes of the head brighten, as if with
pleasure. At last it spoke. 'Oh, sister,' it said, 'in what a pitiful
situation you have been the cause of placing me! Soon, very soon, a
party of young men will arrive and apply to me for aid; but alas! How
can I give what I would have done with so much pleasure? Nevertheless,
take two arrows, and place them where you have been in the habit of
placing the others, and have meat prepared and cooked before they
arrive. When you hear them coming and calling on my name, go out and
say, "Alas! it is long ago that an accident befell him. I was the cause
of it." If they still come near, ask them in, and set meat before them.
And now you must follow my directions strictly. When the bear is near,
go out and meet him. You will take my medicine-sack, bows and arrows,
and my head. You must then untie the sack, and spread out before you my
paints of all colors, my war-eagle feathers, my tufts of dried hair, and
whatever else it contains. As the bear approaches, you will take all
these articles, one by one, and say to him, "This is my deceased
brother's paint," and so on with all the other articles, throwing each
of them as far as you can. The virtues contained in them will cause him
to totter; and, to complete his destruction, you will take my head, and
that too you will cast as far off as you can, crying aloud, "See, this
is my deceased brother's head." He will then fall senseless. By this
time the young men will have eaten, and you will call them to your
assistance. You must then cut the carcass into pieces, yes, into small
pieces, and scatter them to the four winds; for, unless you do this, he
will again revive.' She promised that all should be done as he said.
She had only time to prepare the meat, when the voice of the leader was
heard calling upon Iamo for aid. The woman went out and said as her
brother had directed. But the war party being closely pursued, came up
to the lodge. She invited them in, and placed the meat before them.
While they were eating, they heard the bear approaching. Untying the
medicine-sack and taking the head, she had all in readiness for his
approach. When he came up she did as she had been told; and, before she
had expended the paints and feathers, the bear began to totter, but,
still advancing, came close to the woman. Saying as she was commanded,
she then took the head, and cast it as far from her as she could. As it
rolled along the ground, the blood, excited by the feelings of the head
in this terrible scene, gushed from the nose and mouth. The bear,
tottering, soon fell with a tremendous noise. Then she cried for help,
and the young men came rushing out, having partially regained their
strength and spirits.
Mudjikewis, stepping up, gave a yell and struck him a blow upon the
head. This he repeated, till it seemed like a mass of brains, while the
others, as quick as possible, cut him into very small pieces, which they
then scattered in every direction. While thus employed, happening to
look around where they had thrown the meat, wonderful to behold, they
saw starting up and turning off in every direction small black bears,
such as are seen at the present day. The country was soon overspread
with these black animals. And it was from this monster that the present
race of bears derived their origin.
Having thus overcome their pursuer, they returned to the lodge. In the
meantime, the woman, gathering the implements she had used, and the
head, placed them again in the sack. But the head did not speak again,
probably from its great exertion to overcome the monster.
Having spent so much time and traversed so vast a country in their
flight, the young men gave up the idea of ever returning to their own
country, and game being plenty, they determined to remain where they now
were. One day they moved off some distance from the lodge for the
purpose of hunting, having left the wampum with the woman. They were
very successful, and amused themselves, as all young men do when alone,
by talking and jesting with each other. One of them spoke and said, 'We
have all this sport to ourselves; let us go and ask our sister if she
will not let us bring the head to this place, as it is still alive. It
may be pleased to hear us talk, and be in our company. In the meantime
take food to our sister.' They went and requested the head. She told
them to take it, and they took it to their hunting-grounds, and tried to
amuse it, but only at times did they see its eyes beam with pleasure.
One day, while busy in their encampment, they were unexpectedly attacked
by unknown Indians. The skirmish was long contested and bloody; many of
their foes were slain, but still they were thirty to one. The young men
fought desperately till they were all killed. The attacking party then
retreated to a height of ground, to muster their men, and to count the
number of missing and slain. One of their young men had stayed away,
and, in endeavoring to overtake them, came to the place where the head
was hung up. Seeing that alone retain animation, he eyed it for some
time with fear and surprise. However, he took it down and opened the
sack, and was much pleased to see the beautiful feathers, one of which
he placed on his head.
Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his party,
when he threw down the head and sack, and told them how he had found it,
and that the sack was full of paints and feathers. They all looked at
the head and made sport of it. Numbers of the young men took the paint
and painted themselves, and one of the party took the head by the hair
and said--
'Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of warriors.'
But the feathers were so beautiful, that numbers of them also placed
them on their heads. Then again they used all kinds of indignity to the
head, for which they were in turn repaid by the death of those who had
used the feathers. Then the chief commanded them to throw away all
except the head. 'We will see,' said he, 'when we get home, what we can
do with it. We will try to make it shut its eyes.'
When they reached their homes they took it to the council-lodge, and
hung it up before the fire, fastening it with raw hide soaked, which
would shrink and become tightened by the action of the fire. 'We will
then see,' they said, 'if we cannot make it shut its eyes.'
Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for the young
men to bring back the head; till, at last, getting impatient, she went
in search of it. The young men she found lying within short distances
of each other, dead, and covered with wounds. Various other bodies lay
scattered in different directions around them. She searched for the head
and sack, but they were nowhere to be found. She raised her voice and
wept, and blackened her face. Then she walked in different directions,
till she came to the place from whence the head had been taken. Then
she found the magic bow and arrows, where the young men, ignorant of
their qualities, had left them. She thought to herself that she would
find her brother's head, and came to a piece of rising ground, and there
saw some of his paints and feathers. These she carefully put up, and
hung upon the branch of a tree till her return.
At dusk she arrived at the first lodge of a very extensive village. Here
she used a charm, common among Indians when they wish to meet with a
kind reception. On applying to the old man and woman of the lodge, she
was kindly received. She made known her errand. The old man promised to
aid her, and told her the head was hung up before the council-fire, and
that the chiefs of the village, with their young men, kept watch over it
continually. The former are considered as manitoes. She said she only
wished to see it, and would be satisfied if she could only get to the
door of the lodge. She knew she had not sufficient power to take it by
force. 'Come with me,' said the Indian, 'I will take you there.' They
went, and they took their seats near the door. The council-lodge was
filled with warriors, amusing themselves with games, and constantly
keeping up a fire to smoke the head, as they said, to make dry meat.
They saw the head move, and not knowing what to make of it, one spoke
and said: 'Ha! ha! It is beginning to feel the effects of the smoke.'
The sister looked up from the door, and her eyes met those of her
brother, and tears rolled down the cheeks of the head. 'Well,' said the
chief, 'I thought we would make you do something at last. Look! look at
it--shedding tears,' said he to those around him; and they all laughed
and passed their jokes upon it. The chief, looking around, and
observing the woman, after some time said to the man who came with her:
'Who have you got there? I have never seen that woman before in our
village.' 'Yes,' replied the man, 'you have seen her; she is a relation
of mine, and seldom goes out. She stays at my lodge, and asked me to
allow her to come with me to this place.' In the center of the lodge sat
one of those young men who are always forward, and fond of boasting and
displaying themselves before others. 'Why,' said he, 'I have seen her
often, and it is to this lodge I go almost every night to court her.'
All the others laughed and continued their games. The young man did not
know he was telling a lie to the woman's advantage, who by that means
escaped.
She returned to the man's lodge, and immediately set out for her own
country. Coming to the spot where the bodies of her adopted brothers
lay, she placed them together, their feet toward the east. Then taking
an ax which she had, she cast it up into the air, crying out, 'Brothers,
get up from under it, or it will fall on you.' This she repeated three
times, and the third time the brothers all arose and stood on their
feet.
Mudjikewis commenced rubbing his eyes and stretching himself. 'Why,'
said he, 'I have overslept myself.' 'No, indeed,' said one of the
others, 'do you not know we were all killed, and that it is our sister
who has brought us to life?' The young men took the bodies of their
enemies and burned them. Soon after, the woman went to procure wives for
them, in a distant country, they knew not where; but she returned with
ten young women, which she gave to the ten young men, beginning with the
eldest. Mudjikewis stepped to and fro, uneasy lest he should not get
the one he liked. But he was not disappointed, for she fell to his lot.
And they were well matched, for she was a female magician. They then all
moved into a very large lodge, and their sister told them that the women
must now take turns in going to her brother's head every night, trying
to untie it. They all said they would do so with pleasure. The eldest
made the first attempt, and with a rushing noise she fled through the
air.
Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, as she
succeeded in untying only one of the knots. All took their turns
regularly, and each one succeeded in untying only one knot each time.
But when the youngest went, she commenced the work as soon as she
reached the lodge; although it had always been occupied, still the
Indians never could see any one. For ten nights now, the smoke had not
ascended, but filled the lodge and drove them out. This last night they
were all driven out, and the young woman carried off the head.
The young people and the sister heard the young woman coming high
through the air, and they heard her saying: 'Prepare the body of our
brother.' And as soon as they heard it, they went to a small lodge
where the black body of Iamo lay. His sister commenced cutting the neck
part, from which the neck had been severed. She cut so deep as to cause
it to bleed; and the others who were present, by rubbing the body and
applying medicines, expelled the blackness. In the meantime, the one
who brought it, by cutting the neck of the head, caused that also to
bleed.
As soon as she arrived, they placed that close to the body, and, by aid
of medicines and various other means, succeeded in restoring Iamo to all
his former beauty and manliness. All rejoiced in the happy termination
of their troubles, and they had spent some time joyfully together, when
Iamo said: 'Now I will divide the wampum,' and getting the belt which
contained it, he commenced with the eldest, giving it in equal portions.
But the youngest got the most splendid and beautiful, as the bottom of
the belt held the richest and rarest.
They were told that, since they had all once died, and were restored to
life, they were no longer mortal, but spirits, and they were assigned
different stations in the invisible world. Only Mudjikewis's place was,
however, named. He was to direct the west wind, hence generally called
Kebeyun, there to remain for ever. They were commanded, as they had it
in their power, to do good to the inhabitants of the earth, and,
forgetting their sufferings in procuring the wampum, to give all things
with a liberal hand. And they were also commanded that it should also be
held by them sacred; those grains or shells of the pale hue to be
emblematic of peace, while those of the darker hue would lead to evil
and war.
The spirits then, amid songs and shouts, took their flight to their
respective abodes on high; while Iamo, with his sister Iamoqua,
descended into the depths below.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Life On The Mississippi, Complete
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
By Mark Twain
NOTICE
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons
attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR, Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
EXPLANATORY
IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro
dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the
ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last.
The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork;
but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of
personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would
suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not
succeeding.
THE AUTHOR.
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
Scene: The Mississippi Valley Time: Forty to fifty years ago
CHAPTER I.
YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made
by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which
he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never
seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or
the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and
Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is
mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money
that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six
thousand dollars apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when
it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at
interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round
--more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took
me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough
living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and
decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no
longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again,
and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he
was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back
to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she
called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it.
She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat
and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced
again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time.
When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to
wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the
victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that
is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds
and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of
swaps around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the
Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by
she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then
I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead
people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she
wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must
try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They
get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was
a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody,
being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a
thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that
was all right, because she done it herself.
Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on,
had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a
spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then
the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for
an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say,
"Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like
that, Huckleberry--set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say,
"Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry--why don't you try to
behave?" Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I
was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was
to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She
said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the
whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well,
I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my
mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only
make trouble, and wouldn't do no good.
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good
place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all
day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much
of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would
go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about
that, because I wanted him and me to be together.
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By
and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody
was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it
on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to
think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I
most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled
in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing
about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about
somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper
something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the
cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of
a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's
on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in
its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so
down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a
spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in
the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't
need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch
me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me.
I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast
every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to
keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've
lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the
door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad
luck when you'd killed a spider.
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke;
for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't
know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go
boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever.
Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees
--something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could
just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. That was good! Says I,
"me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and
scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the
ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom
Sawyer waiting for me.
CHAPTER II.
WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of
the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our
heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a
noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger,
named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty
clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his
neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says:
"Who dah?"
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right
between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes
and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close
together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I
dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right
between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well,
I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality,
or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you
are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all
over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says:
"Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n.
Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen
tell I hears it agin."
So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up
against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched
one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into
my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside.
Next I got to itching underneath. I didn't know how I was going to set
still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it
seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different
places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I
set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe
heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon comfortable
again.
Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we
went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom
whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said
no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I
warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip
in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim
might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there
and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay.
Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do
Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play
something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was
so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence,
and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of
the house. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on
a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake.
Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance,
and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again,
and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told
it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time
he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode
him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all
over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he
wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to
hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in
that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and
look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking
about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was
talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in
and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked
up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece
round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to
him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and
fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but
he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all
around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that
five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had
his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck
up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down
into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where
there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so
fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and
awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben
Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we
unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the
big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.
We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the
secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest
part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands
and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up.
Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall
where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a
narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold,
and there we stopped. Tom says:
"Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang.
Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name
in blood."
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote
the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and
never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in
the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family
must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed
them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band.
And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he
did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if
anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his
throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered
all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never
mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot
forever.
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it
out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of
pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.
Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES of boys that told the
secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it
in. Then Ben Rogers says:
"Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout
him?"
"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.
"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He
used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen
in these parts for a year or more."
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said
every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be
fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to
do--everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but
all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson--they
could kill her. Everybody said:
"Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and
I made my mark on the paper.
"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?"
"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.
"But who are we going to rob?--houses, or cattle, or--"
"Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary,"
says Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We
are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on,
and kill the people and take their watches and money."
"Must we always kill the people?"
"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly
it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave
here, and keep them till they're ransomed."
"Ransomed? What's that?"
"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so
of course that's what we've got to do."
"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"
"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the
books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books,
and get things all muddled up?"
"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are
these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them?
--that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?"
"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed,
it means that we keep them till they're dead."
"Now, that's something LIKE. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that
before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome
lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get
loose."
"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard
over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"
"A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody's got to set up all night and
never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's
foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they
get here?"
"Because it ain't in the books so--that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you
want to do things regular, or don't you?--that's the idea. Don't you
reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing
to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal.
No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."
"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we
kill the women, too?"
"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill
the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You
fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and
by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any
more."
"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it.
Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows
waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers.
But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."
Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was
scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't
want to be a robber any more.
So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him
mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom
give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet
next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.
Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted
to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it
on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and
fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first
captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.
I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was
breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was
dog-tired.
CHAPTER III.
WELL, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on
account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned
off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would
behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and
prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and
whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it.
Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without
hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't
make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but
she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out
no way.
I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I
says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't
Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get
back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up?
No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the
widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it
was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told me what
she meant--I must help other people, and do everything I could for other
people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself.
This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods
and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no
advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I
wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the
widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a
body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and
knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two
Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the
widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for
him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the
widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to
be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant,
and so kind of low-down and ornery.
Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable
for me; I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me
when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to
the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he
was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people
said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just
his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like
pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been
in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. They said he was
floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the
bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of
something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his
back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a
woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I
judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he
wouldn't.
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All
the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but
only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging
down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but
we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he
called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and
powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and
marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to
run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was
the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got
secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish
merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two
hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter"
mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard
of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called
it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our
swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a
turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it,
though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them
till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than
what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of
Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I
was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the
word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no
Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It
warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at
that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we
never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a
rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher
charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no
di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them
there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and
things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so
ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without
asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was
hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we
had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole
thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all
right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom
Sawyer said I was a numskull.
"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would
hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as
tall as a tree and as big around as a church."
"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US--can't we lick the
other crowd then?"
"How you going to get them?"
"I don't know. How do THEY get them?"
"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come
tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke
a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They
don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting
a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man."
"Who makes them tear around so?"
"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the
lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells
them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full
of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter
from China for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've got to do
it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to waltz that
palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand."
"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping
the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's
more--if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would
drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp."
"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he rubbed it,
whether you wanted to or not."
"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then;
I WOULD come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there
was in the country."
"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to
know anything, somehow--perfect saphead."
I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I
would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron
ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like
an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no
use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was
only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs
and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks
of a Sunday-school.
CHAPTER IV.
WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter
now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and
write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six
times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any
further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in
mathematics, anyway.
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it.
Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next
day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the
easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways,
too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a
bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used
to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to
me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new
ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure,
and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I
reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder
and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and
crossed me off. She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess
you are always making!" The widow put in a good word for me, but that
warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough. I
started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering
where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There is
ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them
kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited
and on the watch-out.
I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go
through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the
ground, and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry
and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden
fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. I
couldn't make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to
follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't
notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left
boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.
I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my
shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge
Thatcher's as quick as I could get there. He said:
"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your
interest?"
"No, sir," I says; "is there some for me?"
"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty
dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along
with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it."
"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all
--nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it
to you--the six thousand and all."
He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says:
"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"
I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it
--won't you?"
He says:
"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?"
"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have to
tell no lies."
He studied a while, and then he says:
"Oho-o! I think I see. You want to SELL all your property to me--not
give it. That's the correct idea."
Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:
"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.' That means I have bought
it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign
it."
So I signed it, and left.
Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had
been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic
with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed
everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again,
for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he
was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and
said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the
floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried
it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got
down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it
warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't
talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter
that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little,
and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was
so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (I
reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge.) I
said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it,
because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it
and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it
was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the
quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you
couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so
anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well,
I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it.
Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again.
This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my
whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked
to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says:
"Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he
spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to
res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin'
roun' 'bout him. One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black.
De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail
in en bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him
at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble
in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en
sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well
agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light
en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to
marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way
fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in
de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung."
When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap--his
own self!
CHAPTER V.
I HAD shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was. I used
to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was
scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is, after the
first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so
unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth
bothring about.
He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he
was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up
whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it
was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick,
a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly
white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was all. He had one ankle
resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his
toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying
on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.
I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair
tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was
up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By
and by he says:
"Starchy clothes--very. You think you're a good deal of a big-bug, DON'T
you?"
"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.
"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on
considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say--can read and
write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he
can't? I'LL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such
hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?"
"The widow. She told me."
"The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?"
"Nobody never told her."
"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here--you drop that
school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs
over his own father and let on to be better'n what HE is. You lemme
catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother
couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of
the family couldn't before THEY died. I can't; and here you're
a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it--you hear?
Say, lemme hear you read."
I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the
wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack
with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says:
"It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky
here; you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for
you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good.
First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son."
He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and
says:
"What's this?"
"It's something they give me for learning my lessons good."
He tore it up, and says:
"I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide."
He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says:
"AIN'T you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a
look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father
got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I
bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you.
Why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich. Hey?--how's
that?"
"They lie--that's how."
"Looky here--mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can
stand now--so don't gimme no sass. I've been in town two days, and I
hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. I heard about it away
down the river, too. That's why I come. You git me that money
to-morrow--I want it."
"I hain't got no money."
"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I want it."
"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell
you the same."
"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know
the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it."
"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--"
"It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it
out."
He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was
going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day.
When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me
for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I
reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me
to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me
if I didn't drop that.
Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged
him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then
he swore he'd make the law force him.
The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from
him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had
just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't
interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther
not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow
had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me
till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I
borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got
drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying
on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight;
then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed
him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied; said he was boss of
his son, and he'd make it warm for HIM.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him.
So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and
had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just
old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about
temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a
fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new
leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge
would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him
for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd
been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said
he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down
was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And
when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says:
"Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it.
There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's
the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before
he'll go back. You mark them words--don't forget I said them. It's a
clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard."
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The
judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge--made
his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something
like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was
the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and
clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his
new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old
time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and
rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most
froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come
to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could
navigate it.
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform
the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.
CHAPTER VI.
WELL, pretty soon the old man was up and around again, and then he went
for Judge Thatcher in the courts to make him give up that money, and he
went for me, too, for not stopping school. He catched me a couple of
times and thrashed me, but I went to school just the same, and dodged him
or outrun him most of the time. I didn't want to go to school much
before, but I reckoned I'd go now to spite pap. That law trial was a
slow business--appeared like they warn't ever going to get started on
it; so every now and then I'd borrow two or three dollars off of the
judge for him, to keep from getting a cowhiding. Every time he got money
he got drunk; and every time he got drunk he raised Cain around town; and
every time he raised Cain he got jailed. He was just suited--this kind
of thing was right in his line.
He got to hanging around the widow's too much and so she told him at last
that if he didn't quit using around there she would make trouble for him.
Well, WASN'T he mad? He said he would show who was Huck Finn's boss. So
he watched out for me one day in the spring, and catched me, and took me
up the river about three mile in a skiff, and crossed over to the
Illinois shore where it was woody and there warn't no houses but an old
log hut in a place where the timber was so thick you couldn't find it if
you didn't know where it was.
He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off.
We lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key
under his head nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we
fished and hunted, and that was what we lived on. Every little while he
locked me in and went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and
traded fish and game for whisky, and fetched it home and got drunk and
had a good time, and licked me. The widow she found out where I was by
and by, and she sent a man over to try to get hold of me; but pap drove
him off with the gun, and it warn't long after that till I was used to
being where I was, and liked it--all but the cowhide part.
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking
and fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and
my clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got
to like it so well at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a
plate, and comb up, and go to bed and get up regular, and be forever
bothering over a book, and have old Miss Watson pecking at you all the
time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had stopped cussing, because
the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again because pap hadn't
no objections. It was pretty good times up in the woods there, take it
all around.
But by and by pap got too handy with his hick'ry, and I couldn't stand
it. I was all over welts. He got to going away so much, too, and locking
me in. Once he locked me in and was gone three days. It was dreadful
lonesome. I judged he had got drowned, and I wasn't ever going to get
out any more. I was scared. I made up my mind I would fix up some way
to leave there. I had tried to get out of that cabin many a time, but I
couldn't find no way. There warn't a window to it big enough for a dog
to get through. I couldn't get up the chimbly; it was too narrow. The
door was thick, solid oak slabs. Pap was pretty careful not to leave a
knife or anything in the cabin when he was away; I reckon I had hunted
the place over as much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time
at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this
time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any
handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof.
I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed
against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep
the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out. I
got under the table and raised the blanket, and went to work to saw a
section of the big bottom log out--big enough to let me through. Well,
it was a good long job, but I was getting towards the end of it when I
heard pap's gun in the woods. I got rid of the signs of my work, and
dropped the blanket and hid my saw, and pretty soon pap come in.
Pap warn't in a good humor--so he was his natural self. He said he was
down town, and everything was going wrong. His lawyer said he reckoned
he would win his lawsuit and get the money if they ever got started on
the trial; but then there was ways to put it off a long time, and Judge
Thatcher knowed how to do it. And he said people allowed there'd be
another trial to get me away from him and give me to the widow for my
guardian, and they guessed it would win this time. This shook me up
considerable, because I didn't want to go back to the widow's any more
and be so cramped up and sivilized, as they called it. Then the old man
got to cussing, and cussed everything and everybody he could think of,
and then cussed them all over again to make sure he hadn't skipped any,
and after that he polished off with a kind of a general cuss all round,
including a considerable parcel of people which he didn't know the names
of, and so called them what's-his-name when he got to them, and went
right along with his cussing.
He said he would like to see the widow get me. He said he would watch
out, and if they tried to come any such game on him he knowed of a place
six or seven mile off to stow me in, where they might hunt till they
dropped and they couldn't find me. That made me pretty uneasy again, but
only for a minute; I reckoned I wouldn't stay on hand till he got that
chance.
The old man made me go to the skiff and fetch the things he had got.
There was a fifty-pound sack of corn meal, and a side of bacon,
ammunition, and a four-gallon jug of whisky, and an old book and two
newspapers for wadding, besides some tow. I toted up a load, and went
back and set down on the bow of the skiff to rest. I thought it all
over, and I reckoned I would walk off with the gun and some lines, and
take to the woods when I run away. I guessed I wouldn't stay in one
place, but just tramp right across the country, mostly night times, and
hunt and fish to keep alive, and so get so far away that the old man nor
the widow couldn't ever find me any more. I judged I would saw out and
leave that night if pap got drunk enough, and I reckoned he would. I got
so full of it I didn't notice how long I was staying till the old man
hollered and asked me whether I was asleep or drownded.
I got the things all up to the cabin, and then it was about dark. While
I was cooking supper the old man took a swig or two and got sort of
warmed up, and went to ripping again. He had been drunk over in town,
and laid in the gutter all night, and he was a sight to look at. A body
would a thought he was Adam--he was just all mud. Whenever his liquor
begun to work he most always went for the govment, this time he says:
"Call this a govment! why, just look at it and see what it's like.
Here's the law a-standing ready to take a man's son away from him--a
man's own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and
all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son
raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin' for HIM
and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call THAT
govment! That ain't all, nuther. The law backs that old Judge Thatcher
up and helps him to keep me out o' my property. Here's what the law
does: The law takes a man worth six thousand dollars and up'ards, and
jams him into an old trap of a cabin like this, and lets him go round in
clothes that ain't fitten for a hog. They call that govment! A man can't
get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I've a mighty notion to
just leave the country for good and all. Yes, and I TOLD 'em so; I told
old Thatcher so to his face. Lots of 'em heard me, and can tell what I
said. Says I, for two cents I'd leave the blamed country and never come
a-near it agin. Them's the very words. I says look at my hat--if you
call it a hat--but the lid raises up and the rest of it goes down till
it's below my chin, and then it ain't rightly a hat at all, but more like
my head was shoved up through a jint o' stove-pipe. Look at it, says I
--such a hat for me to wear--one of the wealthiest men in this town if I
could git my rights.
"Oh, yes, this is a wonderful govment, wonderful. Why, looky here.
There was a free nigger there from Ohio--a mulatter, most as white as a
white man. He had the whitest shirt on you ever see, too, and the
shiniest hat; and there ain't a man in that town that's got as fine
clothes as what he had; and he had a gold watch and chain, and a
silver-headed cane--the awfulest old gray-headed nabob in the State. And
what do you think? They said he was a p'fessor in a college, and could
talk all kinds of languages, and knowed everything. And that ain't the
wust. They said he could VOTE when he was at home. Well, that let me
out. Thinks I, what is the country a-coming to? It was 'lection day, and
I was just about to go and vote myself if I warn't too drunk to get
there; but when they told me there was a State in this country where
they'd let that nigger vote, I drawed out. I says I'll never vote agin.
Them's the very words I said; they all heard me; and the country may rot
for all me --I'll never vote agin as long as I live. And to see the cool
way of that nigger--why, he wouldn't a give me the road if I hadn't
shoved him out o' the way. I says to the people, why ain't this nigger
put up at auction and sold?--that's what I want to know. And what do you
reckon they said? Why, they said he couldn't be sold till he'd been in
the State six months, and he hadn't been there that long yet. There,
now--that's a specimen. They call that a govment that can't sell a free
nigger till he's been in the State six months. Here's a govment that
calls itself a govment, and lets on to be a govment, and thinks it is a
govment, and yet's got to set stock-still for six whole months before it
can take a hold of a prowling, thieving, infernal, white-shirted free
nigger, and--"
Pap was agoing on so he never noticed where his old limber legs was
taking him to, so he went head over heels over the tub of salt pork and
barked both shins, and the rest of his speech was all the hottest kind of
language--mostly hove at the nigger and the govment, though he give the
tub some, too, all along, here and there. He hopped around the cabin
considerable, first on one leg and then on the other, holding first one
shin and then the other one, and at last he let out with his left foot
all of a sudden and fetched the tub a rattling kick. But it warn't good
judgment, because that was the boot that had a couple of his toes leaking
out of the front end of it; so now he raised a howl that fairly made a
body's hair raise, and down he went in the dirt, and rolled there, and
held his toes; and the cussing he done then laid over anything he had
ever done previous. He said so his own self afterwards. He had heard
old Sowberry Hagan in his best days, and he said it laid over him, too;
but I reckon that was sort of piling it on, maybe.
After supper pap took the jug, and said he had enough whisky there for
two drunks and one delirium tremens. That was always his word. I judged
he would be blind drunk in about an hour, and then I would steal the key,
or saw myself out, one or t'other. He drank and drank, and tumbled down
on his blankets by and by; but luck didn't run my way. He didn't go
sound asleep, but was uneasy. He groaned and moaned and thrashed around
this way and that for a long time. At last I got so sleepy I couldn't
keep my eyes open all I could do, and so before I knowed what I was about
I was sound asleep, and the candle burning.
I don't know how long I was asleep, but all of a sudden there was an
awful scream and I was up. There was pap looking wild, and skipping
around every which way and yelling about snakes. He said they was
crawling up his legs; and then he would give a jump and scream, and say
one had bit him on the cheek--but I couldn't see no snakes. He started
and run round and round the cabin, hollering "Take him off! take him off!
he's biting me on the neck!" I never see a man look so wild in the eyes.
Pretty soon he was all fagged out, and fell down panting; then he rolled
over and over wonderful fast, kicking things every which way, and
striking and grabbing at the air with his hands, and screaming and saying
there was devils a-hold of him. He wore out by and by, and laid still a
while, moaning. Then he laid stiller, and didn't make a sound. I could
hear the owls and the wolves away off in the woods, and it seemed
terrible still. He was laying over by the corner. By and by he raised up
part way and listened, with his head to one side. He says, very low:
"Tramp--tramp--tramp; that's the dead; tramp--tramp--tramp; they're
coming after me; but I won't go. Oh, they're here! don't touch me
--don't! hands off--they're cold; let go. Oh, let a poor devil alone!"
Then he went down on all fours and crawled off, begging them to let him
alone, and he rolled himself up in his blanket and wallowed in under the
old pine table, still a-begging; and then he went to crying. I could
hear him through the blanket.
By and by he rolled out and jumped up on his feet looking wild, and he
see me and went for me. He chased me round and round the place with a
clasp-knife, calling me the Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me,
and then I couldn't come for him no more. I begged, and told him I was
only Huck; but he laughed SUCH a screechy laugh, and roared and cussed,
and kept on chasing me up. Once when I turned short and dodged under his
arm he made a grab and got me by the jacket between my shoulders, and I
thought I was gone; but I slid out of the jacket quick as lightning, and
saved myself. Pretty soon he was all tired out, and dropped down with his
back against the door, and said he would rest a minute and then kill me.
He put his knife under him, and said he would sleep and get strong, and
then he would see who was who.
So he dozed off pretty soon. By and by I got the old split-bottom chair
and clumb up as easy as I could, not to make any noise, and got down the
gun. I slipped the ramrod down it to make sure it was loaded, then I
laid it across the turnip barrel, pointing towards pap, and set down
behind it to wait for him to stir. And how slow and still the time did
drag along.
CHAPTER VII.
"GIT up! What you 'bout?"
I opened my eyes and looked around, trying to make out where I was. It
was after sun-up, and I had been sound asleep. Pap was standing over me
looking sour and sick, too. He says:
"What you doin' with this gun?"
I judged he didn't know nothing about what he had been doing, so I says:
"Somebody tried to get in, so I was laying for him."
"Why didn't you roust me out?"
"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; I couldn't budge you."
"Well, all right. Don't stand there palavering all day, but out with you
and see if there's a fish on the lines for breakfast. I'll be along in a
minute."
He unlocked the door, and I cleared out up the river-bank. I noticed
some pieces of limbs and such things floating down, and a sprinkling of
bark; so I knowed the river had begun to rise. I reckoned I would have
great times now if I was over at the town. The June rise used to be
always luck for me; because as soon as that rise begins here comes
cordwood floating down, and pieces of log rafts--sometimes a dozen logs
together; so all you have to do is to catch them and sell them to the
wood-yards and the sawmill.
I went along up the bank with one eye out for pap and t'other one out for
what the rise might fetch along. Well, all at once here comes a canoe;
just a beauty, too, about thirteen or fourteen foot long, riding high
like a duck. I shot head-first off of the bank like a frog, clothes and
all on, and struck out for the canoe. I just expected there'd be
somebody laying down in it, because people often done that to fool folks,
and when a chap had pulled a skiff out most to it they'd raise up and
laugh at him. But it warn't so this time. It was a drift-canoe sure
enough, and I clumb in and paddled her ashore. Thinks I, the old man
will be glad when he sees this--she's worth ten dollars. But when I
got to shore pap wasn't in sight yet, and as I was running her into a
little creek like a gully, all hung over with vines and willows, I struck
another idea: I judged I'd hide her good, and then, 'stead of taking to
the woods when I run off, I'd go down the river about fifty mile and camp
in one place for good, and not have such a rough time tramping on foot.
It was pretty close to the shanty, and I thought I heard the old man
coming all the time; but I got her hid; and then I out and looked around
a bunch of willows, and there was the old man down the path a piece just
drawing a bead on a bird with his gun. So he hadn't seen anything.
When he got along I was hard at it taking up a "trot" line. He abused me
a little for being so slow; but I told him I fell in the river, and that
was what made me so long. I knowed he would see I was wet, and then he
would be asking questions. We got five catfish off the lines and went
home.
While we laid off after breakfast to sleep up, both of us being about
wore out, I got to thinking that if I could fix up some way to keep pap
and the widow from trying to follow me, it would be a certainer thing
than trusting to luck to get far enough off before they missed me; you
see, all kinds of things might happen. Well, I didn't see no way for a
while, but by and by pap raised up a minute to drink another barrel of
water, and he says:
"Another time a man comes a-prowling round here you roust me out, you
hear? That man warn't here for no good. I'd a shot him. Next time you
roust me out, you hear?"
Then he dropped down and went to sleep again; but what he had been saying
give me the very idea I wanted. I says to myself, I can fix it now so
nobody won't think of following me.
About twelve o'clock we turned out and went along up the bank. The river
was coming up pretty fast, and lots of driftwood going by on the rise.
By and by along comes part of a log raft--nine logs fast together. We
went out with the skiff and towed it ashore. Then we had dinner.
Anybody but pap would a waited and seen the day through, so as to catch
more stuff; but that warn't pap's style. Nine logs was enough for one
time; he must shove right over to town and sell. So he locked me in and
took the skiff, and started off towing the raft about half-past three. I
judged he wouldn't come back that night. I waited till I reckoned he had
got a good start; then I out with my saw, and went to work on that log
again. Before he was t'other side of the river I was out of the hole;
him and his raft was just a speck on the water away off yonder.
I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was hid, and
shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I done the same
with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took all the coffee and
sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took the wadding; I took the
bucket and gourd; I took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two
blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot. I took fish-lines and
matches and other things--everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned
out the place. I wanted an axe, but there wasn't any, only the one out
at the woodpile, and I knowed why I was going to leave that. I fetched
out the gun, and now I was done.
I had wore the ground a good deal crawling out of the hole and dragging
out so many things. So I fixed that as good as I could from the outside
by scattering dust on the place, which covered up the smoothness and the
sawdust. Then I fixed the piece of log back into its place, and put two
rocks under it and one against it to hold it there, for it was bent up at
that place and didn't quite touch ground. If you stood four or five foot
away and didn't know it was sawed, you wouldn't never notice it; and
besides, this was the back of the cabin, and it warn't likely anybody
would go fooling around there.
It was all grass clear to the canoe, so I hadn't left a track. I
followed around to see. I stood on the bank and looked out over the
river. All safe. So I took the gun and went up a piece into the woods,
and was hunting around for some birds when I see a wild pig; hogs soon
went wild in them bottoms after they had got away from the prairie farms.
I shot this fellow and took him into camp.
I took the axe and smashed in the door. I beat it and hacked it
considerable a-doing it. I fetched the pig in, and took him back nearly
to the table and hacked into his throat with the axe, and laid him down
on the ground to bleed; I say ground because it was ground--hard packed,
and no boards. Well, next I took an old sack and put a lot of big rocks
in it--all I could drag--and I started it from the pig, and dragged it
to the door and through the woods down to the river and dumped it in, and
down it sunk, out of sight. You could easy see that something had been
dragged over the ground. I did wish Tom Sawyer was there; I knowed he
would take an interest in this kind of business, and throw in the fancy
touches. Nobody could spread himself like Tom Sawyer in such a thing as
that.
Well, last I pulled out some of my hair, and blooded the axe good, and
stuck it on the back side, and slung the axe in the corner. Then I took
up the pig and held him to my breast with my jacket (so he couldn't drip)
till I got a good piece below the house and then dumped him into the
river. Now I thought of something else. So I went and got the bag of
meal and my old saw out of the canoe, and fetched them to the house. I
took the bag to where it used to stand, and ripped a hole in the bottom
of it with the saw, for there warn't no knives and forks on the place
--pap done everything with his clasp-knife about the cooking. Then I
carried the sack about a hundred yards across the grass and through the
willows east of the house, to a shallow lake that was five mile wide and
full of rushes--and ducks too, you might say, in the season. There was a
slough or a creek leading out of it on the other side that went miles
away, I don't know where, but it didn't go to the river. The meal sifted
out and made a little track all the way to the lake. I dropped pap's
whetstone there too, so as to look like it had been done by accident.
Then I tied up the rip in the meal sack with a string, so it wouldn't
leak no more, and took it and my saw to the canoe again.
It was about dark now; so I dropped the canoe down the river under some
willows that hung over the bank, and waited for the moon to rise. I made
fast to a willow; then I took a bite to eat, and by and by laid down in
the canoe to smoke a pipe and lay out a plan. I says to myself, they'll
follow the track of that sackful of rocks to the shore and then drag the
river for me. And they'll follow that meal track to the lake and go
browsing down the creek that leads out of it to find the robbers that
killed me and took the things. They won't ever hunt the river for
anything but my dead carcass. They'll soon get tired of that, and won't
bother no more about me. All right; I can stop anywhere I want to.
Jackson's Island is good enough for me; I know that island pretty well,
and nobody ever comes there. And then I can paddle over to town nights,
and slink around and pick up things I want. Jackson's Island's the place.
I was pretty tired, and the first thing I knowed I was asleep. When I
woke up I didn't know where I was for a minute. I set up and looked
around, a little scared. Then I remembered. The river looked miles and
miles across. The moon was so bright I could a counted the drift logs
that went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from
shore. Everything was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late.
You know what I mean--I don't know the words to put it in.
I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start
when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I
made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from
oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out through
the willow branches, and there it was--a skiff, away across the water. I
couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it was
abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it. Think's I, maybe
it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with the
current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and
he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well,
it WAS pap, sure enough--and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars.
I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a-spinning down stream soft
but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then
struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river,
because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people
might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid
down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had
a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a
cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back
in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear
on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry landing.
I heard what they said, too--every word of it. One man said it was
getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one said
THIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned--and then they laughed,
and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up
another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped
out something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he
'lowed to tell it to his old woman--she would think it was pretty good;
but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time.
I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight
wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got
further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; but
I could hear the mumble, and now and then a laugh, too, but it seemed a
long ways off.
I was away below the ferry now. I rose up, and there was Jackson's
Island, about two mile and a half down stream, heavy timbered and
standing up out of the middle of the river, big and dark and solid, like
a steamboat without any lights. There warn't any signs of the bar at the
head--it was all under water now.
It didn't take me long to get there. I shot past the head at a ripping
rate, the current was so swift, and then I got into the dead water and
landed on the side towards the Illinois shore. I run the canoe into a
deep dent in the bank that I knowed about; I had to part the willow
branches to get in; and when I made fast nobody could a seen the canoe
from the outside.
I went up and set down on a log at the head of the island, and looked out
on the big river and the black driftwood and away over to the town, three
mile away, where there was three or four lights twinkling. A monstrous
big lumber-raft was about a mile up stream, coming along down, with a
lantern in the middle of it. I watched it come creeping down, and when
it was most abreast of where I stood I heard a man say, "Stern oars,
there! heave her head to stabboard!" I heard that just as plain as if
the man was by my side.
There was a little gray in the sky now; so I stepped into the woods, and
laid down for a nap before breakfast.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight
o'clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about
things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could
see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all
about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on
the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the
freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze
up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very
friendly.
I was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook
breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep
sound of "boom!" away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow
and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and
looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on
the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry. And there was the
ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the
matter now. "Boom!" I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's
side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my
carcass come to the top.
I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire,
because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the
cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there,
and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so I was having a good
enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to
eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in
loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the
drownded carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a lookout, and if
any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show. I changed
to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I
warn't disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it
with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of
course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore--I knowed
enough for that. But by and by along comes another one, and this time I
won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver,
and set my teeth in. It was "baker's bread"--what the quality eat; none
of your low-down corn-pone.
I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching
the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. And then
something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or
somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and
done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing
--that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson
prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just
the right kind.
I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. The
ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I'd have a chance
to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in
close, where the bread did. When she'd got pretty well along down
towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread,
and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. Where the
log forked I could peep through.
By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could a
run out a plank and walked ashore. Most everybody was on the boat. Pap,
and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Jo Harper, and Tom Sawyer,
and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more. Everybody was
talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says:
"Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's
washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I
hope so, anyway."
"I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly
in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. I could see
them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out:
"Stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it
made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and I
judged I was gone. If they'd a had some bullets in, I reckon they'd a
got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt, thanks to
goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder
of the island. I could hear the booming now and then, further and
further off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn't hear it no more. The
island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was
giving it up. But they didn't yet a while. They turned around the foot
of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side, under
steam, and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that
side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they
quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the
town.
I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me.
I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick
woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under
so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him
open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp fire and had
supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast.
When it was dark I set by my camp fire smoking, and feeling pretty well
satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set
on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the
stars and drift logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed;
there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't
stay so, you soon get over it.
And so for three days and nights. No difference--just the same thing.
But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was
boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all
about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty
strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green
razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They
would all come handy by and by, I judged.
Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far
from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot
nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home.
About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went
sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get
a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to
the ashes of a camp fire that was still smoking.
My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further,
but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever
I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves
and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I
slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so
on. If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and
broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two
and I only got half, and the short half, too.
When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in
my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got
all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I
put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last
year's camp, and then clumb a tree.
I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing, I
didn't hear nothing--I only THOUGHT I heard and seen as much as a
thousand things. Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I
got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time.
All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast.
By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and
dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the
Illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and
cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all
night when I hear a PLUNKETY-PLUNK, PLUNKETY-PLUNK, and says to myself,
horses coming; and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into
the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods
to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I hear a man say:
"We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about
beat out. Let's look around."
I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the
old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe.
I didn't sleep much. I couldn't, somehow, for thinking. And every time
I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn't do
me no good. By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way; I'm
a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; I'll
find it out or bust. Well, I felt better right off.
So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then
let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shining,
and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. I poked
along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep.
Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little
ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the
night was about done. I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her
nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the
woods. I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. I
see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river.
But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed
the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had
run across that camp fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. But I
hadn't no luck somehow; I couldn't seem to find the place. But by and
by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I
went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a
look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods.
He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. I
set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my
eyes on him steady. It was getting gray daylight now. Pretty soon he
gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was Miss
Watson's Jim! I bet I was glad to see him. I says:
"Hello, Jim!" and skipped out.
He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees,
and puts his hands together and says:
"Doan' hurt me--don't! I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I alwuz
liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em. You go en git in de
river agin, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz awluz
yo' fren'."
Well, I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead. I was ever so
glad to see Jim. I warn't lonesome now. I told him I warn't afraid of
HIM telling the people where I was. I talked along, but he only set
there and looked at me; never said nothing. Then I says:
"It's good daylight. Le's get breakfast. Make up your camp fire good."
"What's de use er makin' up de camp fire to cook strawbries en sich
truck? But you got a gun, hain't you? Den we kin git sumfn better den
strawbries."
"Strawberries and such truck," I says. "Is that what you live on?"
"I couldn' git nuffn else," he says.
"Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?"
"I come heah de night arter you's killed."
"What, all that time?"
"Yes--indeedy."
"And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?"
"No, sah--nuffn else."
"Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?"
"I reck'n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de
islan'?"
"Since the night I got killed."
"No! W'y, what has you lived on? But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a
gun. Dat's good. Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire."
So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a
grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee,
and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was
set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with
witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with
his knife, and fried him.
When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot.
Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. Then
when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by
Jim says:
"But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it
warn't you?"
Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom
Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had. Then I says:
"How do you come to be here, Jim, and how'd you get here?"
He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. Then he
says:
"Maybe I better not tell."
"Why, Jim?"
"Well, dey's reasons. But you wouldn' tell on me ef I uz to tell you,
would you, Huck?"
"Blamed if I would, Jim."
"Well, I b'lieve you, Huck. I--I RUN OFF."
"Jim!"
"But mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell,
Huck."
"Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest INJUN, I
will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for
keeping mum--but that don't make no difference. I ain't a-going to tell,
and I ain't a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le's know all about
it."
"Well, you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missus--dat's Miss Watson--she pecks
on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she
wouldn' sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader
roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one
night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I
hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but
she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it
'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'. De widder she try to
git her to say she wouldn' do it, but I never waited to hear de res'. I
lit out mighty quick, I tell you.
"I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de sho'
som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid in de
ole tumble-down cooper-shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way.
Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'Long
'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine
every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de
town en say you's killed. Dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen
a-goin' over for to see de place. Sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en
take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to know all
'bout de killin'. I 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but I ain't
no mo' now.
"I laid dah under de shavin's all day. I 'uz hungry, but I warn't
afeard; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de
camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows I
goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me
roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'.
De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday
soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way.
"Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two
mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. I'd made up my mine 'bout
what I's agwyne to do. You see, ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot,
de dogs 'ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat
skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side, en
whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff is what I's arter; it doan'
MAKE no track.
"I see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so I wade' in en shove' a
log ahead o' me en swum more'n half way acrost de river, en got in
'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de
current tell de raff come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck
a-holt. It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. So I clumb
up en laid down on de planks. De men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle,
whah de lantern wuz. De river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current;
so I reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be twenty-five mile down de
river, en den I'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to
de woods on de Illinois side.
"But I didn' have no luck. When we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan'
a man begin to come aft wid de lantern, I see it warn't no use fer to
wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'. Well, I had a
notion I could lan' mos' anywhers, but I couldn't--bank too bluff. I 'uz
mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I found' a good place. I went into de
woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de
lantern roun' so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg, en some matches in
my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right."
"And so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? Why didn't
you get mud-turkles?"
"How you gwyne to git 'm? You can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a
body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? En
I warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime."
"Well, that's so. You've had to keep in the woods all the time, of
course. Did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?"
"Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah--watched um
thoo de bushes."
Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting.
Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when
young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when
young birds done it. I was going to catch some of them, but Jim wouldn't
let me. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once,
and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would
die, and he did.
And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for
dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the
table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that
man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or
else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees
wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried
them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me.
I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. Jim
knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. I said it
looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if
there warn't any good-luck signs. He says:
"Mighty few--an' DEY ain't no use to a body. What you want to know when
good luck's a-comin' for? Want to keep it off?" And he said: "Ef you's
got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's agwyne to be
rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead.
You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git
discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to
be rich bymeby."
"Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?"
"What's de use to ax dat question? Don't you see I has?"
"Well, are you rich?"
"No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich agin. Wunst I had foteen
dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out."
"What did you speculate in, Jim?"
"Well, fust I tackled stock."
"What kind of stock?"
"Why, live stock--cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I
ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. De cow up 'n' died on my
han's."
"So you lost the ten dollars."
"No, I didn't lose it all. I on'y los' 'bout nine of it. I sole de hide
en taller for a dollar en ten cents."
"You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate any more?"
"Yes. You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish?
Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo'
dollars mo' at de en' er de year. Well, all de niggers went in, but dey
didn't have much. I wuz de on'y one dat had much. So I stuck out for
mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd start a bank mysef.
Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he
says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say I could put in
my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year.
"So I done it. Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right
off en keep things a-movin'. Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had ketched
a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en I bought it off'n him en
told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but
somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex day de one-laigged nigger
say de bank's busted. So dey didn' none uv us git no money."
"What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?"
"Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to
give it to a nigger name' Balum--Balum's Ass dey call him for short; he's
one er dem chuckleheads, you know. But he's lucky, dey say, en I see I
warn't lucky. De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a
raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he
hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de Lord, en boun'
to git his money back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten
cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it."
"Well, what did come of it, Jim?"
"Nuffn never come of it. I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en
Balum he couldn'. I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de
security. Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says!
Ef I could git de ten CENTS back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de
chanst."
"Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again
some time or other."
"Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth
eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'."
CHAPTER IX.
I WANTED to go and look at a place right about the middle of the island
that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it,
because the island was only three miles long and a quarter of a mile
wide.
This place was a tolerable long, steep hill or ridge about forty foot
high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides was so steep and
the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and
by found a good big cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side
towards Illinois. The cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched
together, and Jim could stand up straight in it. It was cool in there.
Jim was for putting our traps in there right away, but I said we didn't
want to be climbing up and down there all the time.
Jim said if we had the canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps
in the cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the island,
and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them
little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to
get wet?
So we went back and got the canoe, and paddled up abreast the cavern, and
lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to
hide the canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of
the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.
The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one
side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a
good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there.
We put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon
it darkened up, and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right
about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too,
and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer
storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and
lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a
little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of
wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the
leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set
the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next,
when it was just about the bluest and blackest--FST! it was as bright as
glory, and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about away
off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see
before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let
go with an awful crash, and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling, down
the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels
down stairs--where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you
know.
"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but
here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben
down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat
you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de
birds, chile."
The river went on raising and raising for ten or twelve days, till at
last it was over the banks. The water was three or four foot deep on the
island in the low places and on the Illinois bottom. On that side it was
a good many miles wide, but on the Missouri side it was the same old
distance across--a half a mile--because the Missouri shore was just a
wall of high bluffs.
Daytimes we paddled all over the island in the canoe, It was mighty cool
and shady in the deep woods, even if the sun was blazing outside. We
went winding in and out amongst the trees, and sometimes the vines hung
so thick we had to back away and go some other way. Well, on every old
broken-down tree you could see rabbits and snakes and such things; and
when the island had been overflowed a day or two they got so tame, on
account of being hungry, that you could paddle right up and put your hand
on them if you wanted to; but not the snakes and turtles--they would
slide off in the water. The ridge our cavern was in was full of them.
We could a had pets enough if we'd wanted them.
One night we catched a little section of a lumber raft--nice pine planks.
It was twelve foot wide and about fifteen or sixteen foot long, and the
top stood above water six or seven inches--a solid, level floor. We
could see saw-logs go by in the daylight sometimes, but we let them go;
we didn't show ourselves in daylight.
Another night when we was up at the head of the island, just before
daylight, here comes a frame-house down, on the west side. She was a
two-story, and tilted over considerable. We paddled out and got aboard
--clumb in at an upstairs window. But it was too dark to see yet, so we
made the canoe fast and set in her to wait for daylight.
The light begun to come before we got to the foot of the island. Then we
looked in at the window. We could make out a bed, and a table, and two
old chairs, and lots of things around about on the floor, and there was
clothes hanging against the wall. There was something laying on the
floor in the far corner that looked like a man. So Jim says:
"Hello, you!"
But it didn't budge. So I hollered again, and then Jim says:
"De man ain't asleep--he's dead. You hold still--I'll go en see."
He went, and bent down and looked, and says:
"It's a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He's ben shot in de back.
I reck'n he's ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan' look
at his face--it's too gashly."
I didn't look at him at all. Jim throwed some old rags over him, but he
needn't done it; I didn't want to see him. There was heaps of old greasy
cards scattered around over the floor, and old whisky bottles, and a
couple of masks made out of black cloth; and all over the walls was the
ignorantest kind of words and pictures made with charcoal. There was two
old dirty calico dresses, and a sun-bonnet, and some women's underclothes
hanging against the wall, and some men's clothing, too. We put the lot
into the canoe--it might come good. There was a boy's old speckled straw
hat on the floor; I took that, too. And there was a bottle that had had
milk in it, and it had a rag stopper for a baby to suck. We would a took
the bottle, but it was broke. There was a seedy old chest, and an old
hair trunk with the hinges broke. They stood open, but there warn't
nothing left in them that was any account. The way things was scattered
about we reckoned the people left in a hurry, and warn't fixed so as to
carry off most of their stuff.
We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a
bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and a lot of tallow
candles, and a tin candlestick, and a gourd, and a tin cup, and a ratty
old bedquilt off the bed, and a reticule with needles and pins and
beeswax and buttons and thread and all such truck in it, and a hatchet
and some nails, and a fishline as thick as my little finger with some
monstrous hooks on it, and a roll of buckskin, and a leather dog-collar,
and a horseshoe, and some vials of medicine that didn't have no label on
them; and just as we was leaving I found a tolerable good curry-comb, and
Jim he found a ratty old fiddle-bow, and a wooden leg. The straps was
broke off of it, but, barring that, it was a good enough leg, though it
was too long for me and not long enough for Jim, and we couldn't find the
other one, though we hunted all around.
And so, take it all around, we made a good haul. When we was ready to
shove off we was a quarter of a mile below the island, and it was pretty
broad day; so I made Jim lay down in the canoe and cover up with the
quilt, because if he set up people could tell he was a nigger a good ways
off. I paddled over to the Illinois shore, and drifted down most a half
a mile doing it. I crept up the dead water under the bank, and hadn't no
accidents and didn't see nobody. We got home all safe.
CHAPTER X.
AFTER breakfast I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess out how he
come to be killed, but Jim didn't want to. He said it would fetch bad
luck; and besides, he said, he might come and ha'nt us; he said a man
that warn't buried was more likely to go a-ha'nting around than one that
was planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn't
say no more; but I couldn't keep from studying over it and wishing I
knowed who shot the man, and what they done it for.
We rummaged the clothes we'd got, and found eight dollars in silver sewed
up in the lining of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said he reckoned the
people in that house stole the coat, because if they'd a knowed the money
was there they wouldn't a left it. I said I reckoned they killed him,
too; but Jim didn't want to talk about that. I says:
"Now you think it's bad luck; but what did you say when I fetched in the
snake-skin that I found on the top of the ridge day before yesterday?
You said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snake-skin
with my hands. Well, here's your bad luck! We've raked in all this
truck and eight dollars besides. I wish we could have some bad luck like
this every day, Jim."
"Never you mind, honey, never you mind. Don't you git too peart. It's
a-comin'. Mind I tell you, it's a-comin'."
It did come, too. It was a Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after
dinner Friday we was laying around in the grass at the upper end of the
ridge, and got out of tobacco. I went to the cavern to get some, and
found a rattlesnake in there. I killed him, and curled him up on the
foot of Jim's blanket, ever so natural, thinking there'd be some fun when
Jim found him there. Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and
when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light the
snake's mate was there, and bit him.
He jumped up yelling, and the first thing the light showed was the
varmint curled up and ready for another spring. I laid him out in a
second with a stick, and Jim grabbed pap's whisky-jug and begun to pour
it down.
He was barefooted, and the snake bit him right on the heel. That all
comes of my being such a fool as to not remember that wherever you leave
a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. Jim told
me to chop off the snake's head and throw it away, and then skin the body
and roast a piece of it. I done it, and he eat it and said it would help
cure him. He made me take off the rattles and tie them around his wrist,
too. He said that that would help. Then I slid out quiet and throwed
the snakes clear away amongst the bushes; for I warn't going to let Jim
find out it was all my fault, not if I could help it.
Jim sucked and sucked at the jug, and now and then he got out of his head
and pitched around and yelled; but every time he come to himself he went
to sucking at the jug again. His foot swelled up pretty big, and so did
his leg; but by and by the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was
all right; but I'd druther been bit with a snake than pap's whisky.
Jim was laid up for four days and nights. Then the swelling was all gone
and he was around again. I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt
of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it.
Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time. And he said that
handling a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to
the end of it yet. He said he druther see the new moon over his left
shoulder as much as a thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his
hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I've always
reckoned that looking at the new moon over your left shoulder is one of
the carelessest and foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker
done it once, and bragged about it; and in less than two years he got
drunk and fell off of the shot-tower, and spread himself out so that he
was just a kind of a layer, as you may say; and they slid him edgeways
between two barn doors for a coffin, and buried him so, so they say, but
I didn't see it. Pap told me. But anyway it all come of looking at the
moon that way, like a fool.
Well, the days went along, and the river went down between its banks
again; and about the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks
with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a catfish that was as big as a
man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds.
We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois. We
just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drownded. We
found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, and lots of
rubbage. We split the ball open with the hatchet, and there was a spool
in it. Jim said he'd had it there a long time, to coat it over so and
make a ball of it. It was as big a fish as was ever catched in the
Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he hadn't ever seen a bigger one. He
would a been worth a good deal over at the village. They peddle out such
a fish as that by the pound in the market-house there; everybody buys
some of him; his meat's as white as snow and makes a good fry.
Next morning I said it was getting slow and dull, and I wanted to get a
stirring up some way. I said I reckoned I would slip over the river and
find out what was going on. Jim liked that notion; but he said I must go
in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and said, couldn't I
put on some of them old things and dress up like a girl? That was a good
notion, too. So we shortened up one of the calico gowns, and I turned up
my trouser-legs to my knees and got into it. Jim hitched it behind with
the hooks, and it was a fair fit. I put on the sun-bonnet and tied it
under my chin, and then for a body to look in and see my face was like
looking down a joint of stove-pipe. Jim said nobody would know me, even
in the daytime, hardly. I practiced around all day to get the hang of
the things, and by and by I could do pretty well in them, only Jim said I
didn't walk like a girl; and he said I must quit pulling up my gown to
get at my britches-pocket. I took notice, and done better.
I started up the Illinois shore in the canoe just after dark.
I started across to the town from a little below the ferry-landing, and
the drift of the current fetched me in at the bottom of the town. I tied
up and started along the bank. There was a light burning in a little
shanty that hadn't been lived in for a long time, and I wondered who had
took up quarters there. I slipped up and peeped in at the window. There
was a woman about forty year old in there knitting by a candle that was
on a pine table. I didn't know her face; she was a stranger, for you
couldn't start a face in that town that I didn't know. Now this was
lucky, because I was weakening; I was getting afraid I had come; people
might know my voice and find me out. But if this woman had been in such
a little town two days she could tell me all I wanted to know; so I
knocked at the door, and made up my mind I wouldn't forget I was a girl.
CHAPTER XI.
"COME in," says the woman, and I did. She says: "Take a cheer."
I done it. She looked me all over with her little shiny eyes, and says:
"What might your name be?"
"Sarah Williams."
"Where 'bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?'
"No'm. In Hookerville, seven mile below. I've walked all the way and
I'm all tired out."
"Hungry, too, I reckon. I'll find you something."
"No'm, I ain't hungry. I was so hungry I had to stop two miles below
here at a farm; so I ain't hungry no more. It's what makes me so late.
My mother's down sick, and out of money and everything, and I come to
tell my uncle Abner Moore. He lives at the upper end of the town, she
says. I hain't ever been here before. Do you know him?"
"No; but I don't know everybody yet. I haven't lived here quite two
weeks. It's a considerable ways to the upper end of the town. You better
stay here all night. Take off your bonnet."
"No," I says; "I'll rest a while, I reckon, and go on. I ain't afeared
of the dark."
She said she wouldn't let me go by myself, but her husband would be in by
and by, maybe in a hour and a half, and she'd send him along with me.
Then she got to talking about her husband, and about her relations up the
river, and her relations down the river, and about how much better off
they used to was, and how they didn't know but they'd made a mistake
coming to our town, instead of letting well alone--and so on and so on,
till I was afeard I had made a mistake coming to her to find out what was
going on in the town; but by and by she dropped on to pap and the murder,
and then I was pretty willing to let her clatter right along. She told
about me and Tom Sawyer finding the six thousand dollars (only she got it
ten) and all about pap and what a hard lot he was, and what a hard lot I
was, and at last she got down to where I was murdered. I says:
"Who done it? We've heard considerable about these goings on down in
Hookerville, but we don't know who 'twas that killed Huck Finn."
"Well, I reckon there's a right smart chance of people HERE that'd like
to know who killed him. Some think old Finn done it himself."
"No--is that so?"
"Most everybody thought it at first. He'll never know how nigh he come
to getting lynched. But before night they changed around and judged it
was done by a runaway nigger named Jim."
"Why HE--"
I stopped. I reckoned I better keep still. She run on, and never
noticed I had put in at all:
"The nigger run off the very night Huck Finn was killed. So there's a
reward out for him--three hundred dollars. And there's a reward out for
old Finn, too--two hundred dollars. You see, he come to town the morning
after the murder, and told about it, and was out with 'em on the
ferryboat hunt, and right away after he up and left. Before night they
wanted to lynch him, but he was gone, you see. Well, next day they found
out the nigger was gone; they found out he hadn't ben seen sence ten
o'clock the night the murder was done. So then they put it on him, you
see; and while they was full of it, next day, back comes old Finn, and
went boo-hooing to Judge Thatcher to get money to hunt for the nigger all
over Illinois with. The judge gave him some, and that evening he got
drunk, and was around till after midnight with a couple of mighty
hard-looking strangers, and then went off with them. Well, he hain't
come back sence, and they ain't looking for him back till this thing
blows over a little, for people thinks now that he killed his boy and
fixed things so folks would think robbers done it, and then he'd get
Huck's money without having to bother a long time with a lawsuit. People
do say he warn't any too good to do it. Oh, he's sly, I reckon. If he
don't come back for a year he'll be all right. You can't prove anything
on him, you know; everything will be quieted down then, and he'll walk in
Huck's money as easy as nothing."
"Yes, I reckon so, 'm. I don't see nothing in the way of it. Has
everybody quit thinking the nigger done it?"
"Oh, no, not everybody. A good many thinks he done it. But they'll get
the nigger pretty soon now, and maybe they can scare it out of him."
"Why, are they after him yet?"
"Well, you're innocent, ain't you! Does three hundred dollars lay around
every day for people to pick up? Some folks think the nigger ain't far
from here. I'm one of them--but I hain't talked it around. A few days
ago I was talking with an old couple that lives next door in the log
shanty, and they happened to say hardly anybody ever goes to that island
over yonder that they call Jackson's Island. Don't anybody live there?
says I. No, nobody, says they. I didn't say any more, but I done some
thinking. I was pretty near certain I'd seen smoke over there, about the
head of the island, a day or two before that, so I says to myself, like
as not that nigger's hiding over there; anyway, says I, it's worth the
trouble to give the place a hunt. I hain't seen any smoke sence, so I
reckon maybe he's gone, if it was him; but husband's going over to see
--him and another man. He was gone up the river; but he got back to-day,
and I told him as soon as he got here two hours ago."
I had got so uneasy I couldn't set still. I had to do something with my
hands; so I took up a needle off of the table and went to threading it.
My hands shook, and I was making a bad job of it. When the woman stopped
talking I looked up, and she was looking at me pretty curious and smiling
a little. I put down the needle and thread, and let on to be interested
--and I was, too--and says:
"Three hundred dollars is a power of money. I wish my mother could get
it. Is your husband going over there to-night?"
"Oh, yes. He went up-town with the man I was telling you of, to get a
boat and see if they could borrow another gun. They'll go over after
midnight."
"Couldn't they see better if they was to wait till daytime?"
"Yes. And couldn't the nigger see better, too? After midnight he'll
likely be asleep, and they can slip around through the woods and hunt up
his camp fire all the better for the dark, if he's got one."
"I didn't think of that."
The woman kept looking at me pretty curious, and I didn't feel a bit
comfortable. Pretty soon she says"
"What did you say your name was, honey?"
"M--Mary Williams."
Somehow it didn't seem to me that I said it was Mary before, so I didn't
look up--seemed to me I said it was Sarah; so I felt sort of cornered,
and was afeared maybe I was looking it, too. I wished the woman would
say something more; the longer she set still the uneasier I was. But now
she says:
"Honey, I thought you said it was Sarah when you first come in?"
"Oh, yes'm, I did. Sarah Mary Williams. Sarah's my first name. Some
calls me Sarah, some calls me Mary."
"Oh, that's the way of it?"
"Yes'm."
I was feeling better then, but I wished I was out of there, anyway. I
couldn't look up yet.
Well, the woman fell to talking about how hard times was, and how poor
they had to live, and how the rats was as free as if they owned the
place, and so forth and so on, and then I got easy again. She was right
about the rats. You'd see one stick his nose out of a hole in the corner
every little while. She said she had to have things handy to throw at
them when she was alone, or they wouldn't give her no peace. She showed
me a bar of lead twisted up into a knot, and said she was a good shot
with it generly, but she'd wrenched her arm a day or two ago, and didn't
know whether she could throw true now. But she watched for a chance, and
directly banged away at a rat; but she missed him wide, and said "Ouch!"
it hurt her arm so. Then she told me to try for the next one. I wanted
to be getting away before the old man got back, but of course I didn't
let on. I got the thing, and the first rat that showed his nose I let
drive, and if he'd a stayed where he was he'd a been a tolerable sick
rat. She said that was first-rate, and she reckoned I would hive the
next one. She went and got the lump of lead and fetched it back, and
brought along a hank of yarn which she wanted me to help her with. I
held up my two hands and she put the hank over them, and went on talking
about her and her husband's matters. But she broke off to say:
"Keep your eye on the rats. You better have the lead in your lap,
handy."
So she dropped the lump into my lap just at that moment, and I clapped my
legs together on it and she went on talking. But only about a minute.
Then she took off the hank and looked me straight in the face, and very
pleasant, and says:
"Come, now, what's your real name?"
"Wh--what, mum?"
"What's your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?--or what is it?"
I reckon I shook like a leaf, and I didn't know hardly what to do. But I
says:
"Please to don't poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I'm in the way
here, I'll--"
"No, you won't. Set down and stay where you are. I ain't going to hurt
you, and I ain't going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your
secret, and trust me. I'll keep it; and, what's more, I'll help you.
So'll my old man if you want him to. You see, you're a runaway
'prentice, that's all. It ain't anything. There ain't no harm in it.
You've been treated bad, and you made up your mind to cut. Bless you,
child, I wouldn't tell on you. Tell me all about it now, that's a good
boy."
So I said it wouldn't be no use to try to play it any longer, and I would
just make a clean breast and tell her everything, but she musn't go back
on her promise. Then I told her my father and mother was dead, and the
law had bound me out to a mean old farmer in the country thirty mile back
from the river, and he treated me so bad I couldn't stand it no longer;
he went away to be gone a couple of days, and so I took my chance and
stole some of his daughter's old clothes and cleared out, and I had been
three nights coming the thirty miles. I traveled nights, and hid
daytimes and slept, and the bag of bread and meat I carried from home
lasted me all the way, and I had a-plenty. I said I believed my uncle
Abner Moore would take care of me, and so that was why I struck out for
this town of Goshen.
"Goshen, child? This ain't Goshen. This is St. Petersburg. Goshen's
ten mile further up the river. Who told you this was Goshen?"
"Why, a man I met at daybreak this morning, just as I was going to turn
into the woods for my regular sleep. He told me when the roads forked I
must take the right hand, and five mile would fetch me to Goshen."
"He was drunk, I reckon. He told you just exactly wrong."
"Well, he did act like he was drunk, but it ain't no matter now. I got
to be moving along. I'll fetch Goshen before daylight."
"Hold on a minute. I'll put you up a snack to eat. You might want it."
So she put me up a snack, and says:
"Say, when a cow's laying down, which end of her gets up first? Answer
up prompt now--don't stop to study over it. Which end gets up first?"
"The hind end, mum."
"Well, then, a horse?"
"The for'rard end, mum."
"Which side of a tree does the moss grow on?"
"North side."
"If fifteen cows is browsing on a hillside, how many of them eats with
their heads pointed the same direction?"
"The whole fifteen, mum."
"Well, I reckon you HAVE lived in the country. I thought maybe you was
trying to hocus me again. What's your real name, now?"
"George Peters, mum."
"Well, try to remember it, George. Don't forget and tell me it's
Elexander before you go, and then get out by saying it's George Elexander
when I catch you. And don't go about women in that old calico. You do a
girl tolerable poor, but you might fool men, maybe. Bless you, child,
when you set out to thread a needle don't hold the thread still and fetch
the needle up to it; hold the needle still and poke the thread at it;
that's the way a woman most always does, but a man always does t'other
way. And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe
and fetch your hand up over your head as awkward as you can, and miss
your rat about six or seven foot. Throw stiff-armed from the shoulder,
like there was a pivot there for it to turn on, like a girl; not from the
wrist and elbow, with your arm out to one side, like a boy. And, mind
you, when a girl tries to catch anything in her lap she throws her knees
apart; she don't clap them together, the way you did when you catched the
lump of lead. Why, I spotted you for a boy when you was threading the
needle; and I contrived the other things just to make certain. Now trot
along to your uncle, Sarah Mary Williams George Elexander Peters, and if
you get into trouble you send word to Mrs. Judith Loftus, which is me,
and I'll do what I can to get you out of it. Keep the river road all the
way, and next time you tramp take shoes and socks with you. The river
road's a rocky one, and your feet'll be in a condition when you get to
Goshen, I reckon."
I went up the bank about fifty yards, and then I doubled on my tracks and
slipped back to where my canoe was, a good piece below the house. I
jumped in, and was off in a hurry. I went up-stream far enough to make
the head of the island, and then started across. I took off the
sun-bonnet, for I didn't want no blinders on then. When I was about the
middle I heard the clock begin to strike, so I stops and listens; the
sound come faint over the water but clear--eleven. When I struck the
head of the island I never waited to blow, though I was most winded, but
I shoved right into the timber where my old camp used to be, and started
a good fire there on a high and dry spot.
Then I jumped in the canoe and dug out for our place, a mile and a half
below, as hard as I could go. I landed, and slopped through the timber
and up the ridge and into the cavern. There Jim laid, sound asleep on
the ground. I roused him out and says:
"Git up and hump yourself, Jim! There ain't a minute to lose. They're
after us!"
Jim never asked no questions, he never said a word; but the way he worked
for the next half an hour showed about how he was scared. By that time
everything we had in the world was on our raft, and she was ready to be
shoved out from the willow cove where she was hid. We put out the camp
fire at the cavern the first thing, and didn't show a candle outside
after that.
I took the canoe out from the shore a little piece, and took a look; but
if there was a boat around I couldn't see it, for stars and shadows ain't
good to see by. Then we got out the raft and slipped along down in the
shade, past the foot of the island dead still--never saying a word.
CHAPTER XII.
IT must a been close on to one o'clock when we got below the island at
last, and the raft did seem to go mighty slow. If a boat was to come
along we was going to take to the canoe and break for the Illinois shore;
and it was well a boat didn't come, for we hadn't ever thought to put the
gun in the canoe, or a fishing-line, or anything to eat. We was in
ruther too much of a sweat to think of so many things. It warn't good
judgment to put EVERYTHING on the raft.
If the men went to the island I just expect they found the camp fire I
built, and watched it all night for Jim to come. Anyways, they stayed
away from us, and if my building the fire never fooled them it warn't no
fault of mine. I played it as low down on them as I could.
When the first streak of day began to show we tied up to a towhead in a
big bend on the Illinois side, and hacked off cottonwood branches with
the hatchet, and covered up the raft with them so she looked like there
had been a cave-in in the bank there. A tow-head is a sandbar that has
cottonwoods on it as thick as harrow-teeth.
We had mountains on the Missouri shore and heavy timber on the Illinois
side, and the channel was down the Missouri shore at that place, so we
warn't afraid of anybody running across us. We laid there all day, and
watched the rafts and steamboats spin down the Missouri shore, and
up-bound steamboats fight the big river in the middle. I told Jim all
about the time I had jabbering with that woman; and Jim said she was a
smart one, and if she was to start after us herself she wouldn't set down
and watch a camp fire--no, sir, she'd fetch a dog. Well, then, I said,
why couldn't she tell her husband to fetch a dog? Jim said he bet she
did think of it by the time the men was ready to start, and he believed
they must a gone up-town to get a dog and so they lost all that time, or
else we wouldn't be here on a towhead sixteen or seventeen mile below the
village--no, indeedy, we would be in that same old town again. So I said
I didn't care what was the reason they didn't get us as long as they
didn't.
When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the
cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight;
so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug wigwam
to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things dry.
Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above the
level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps was out of reach
of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a layer of
dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for to hold it
to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather or chilly;
the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra steering-oar,
too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag or something.
We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern on, because we
must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat coming
down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn't have to light
it for up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they call a
"crossing"; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks being still
a little under water; so up-bound boats didn't always run the channel,
but hunted easy water.
This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current
that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and
we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of
solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking
up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't
often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had
mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us
at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next.
Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides,
nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The
fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up.
In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand
people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful
spread of lights at two o'clock that still night. There warn't a sound
there; everybody was asleep.
Every night now I used to slip ashore towards ten o'clock at some little
village, and buy ten or fifteen cents' worth of meal or bacon or other
stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting
comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when
you get a chance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy
find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see
pap when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to
say, anyway.
Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a
watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of
that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was
meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything
but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it. Jim said
he reckoned the widow was partly right and pap was partly right; so the
best way would be for us to pick out two or three things from the list
and say we wouldn't borrow them any more--then he reckoned it wouldn't be
no harm to borrow the others. So we talked it over all one night,
drifting along down the river, trying to make up our minds whether to
drop the watermelons, or the cantelopes, or the mushmelons, or what. But
towards daylight we got it all settled satisfactory, and concluded to
drop crabapples and p'simmons. We warn't feeling just right before that,
but it was all comfortable now. I was glad the way it come out, too,
because crabapples ain't ever good, and the p'simmons wouldn't be ripe
for two or three months yet.
We shot a water-fowl now and then that got up too early in the morning or
didn't go to bed early enough in the evening. Take it all round, we
lived pretty high.
The fifth night below St. Louis we had a big storm after midnight, with a
power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid
sheet. We stayed in the wigwam and let the raft take care of itself.
When the lightning glared out we could see a big straight river ahead,
and high, rocky bluffs on both sides. By and by says I, "Hel-LO, Jim,
looky yonder!" It was a steamboat that had killed herself on a rock. We
was drifting straight down for her. The lightning showed her very
distinct. She was leaning over, with part of her upper deck above water,
and you could see every little chimbly-guy clean and clear, and a chair
by the big bell, with an old slouch hat hanging on the back of it, when
the flashes come.
Well, it being away in the night and stormy, and all so mysterious-like,
I felt just the way any other boy would a felt when I see that wreck
laying there so mournful and lonesome in the middle of the river. I
wanted to get aboard of her and slink around a little, and see what there
was there. So I says:
"Le's land on her, Jim."
But Jim was dead against it at first. He says:
"I doan' want to go fool'n 'long er no wrack. We's doin' blame' well, en
we better let blame' well alone, as de good book says. Like as not dey's
a watchman on dat wrack."
"Watchman your grandmother," I says; "there ain't nothing to watch but
the texas and the pilot-house; and do you reckon anybody's going to resk
his life for a texas and a pilot-house such a night as this, when it's
likely to break up and wash off down the river any minute?" Jim couldn't
say nothing to that, so he didn't try. "And besides," I says, "we might
borrow something worth having out of the captain's stateroom. Seegars, I
bet you--and cost five cents apiece, solid cash. Steamboat captains is
always rich, and get sixty dollars a month, and THEY don't care a cent
what a thing costs, you know, long as they want it. Stick a candle in
your pocket; I can't rest, Jim, till we give her a rummaging. Do you
reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn't.
He'd call it an adventure--that's what he'd call it; and he'd land on
that wreck if it was his last act. And wouldn't he throw style into it?
--wouldn't he spread himself, nor nothing? Why, you'd think it was
Christopher C'lumbus discovering Kingdom-Come. I wish Tom Sawyer WAS
here."
Jim he grumbled a little, but give in. He said we mustn't talk any more
than we could help, and then talk mighty low. The lightning showed us
the wreck again just in time, and we fetched the stabboard derrick, and
made fast there.
The deck was high out here. We went sneaking down the slope of it to
labboard, in the dark, towards the texas, feeling our way slow with our
feet, and spreading our hands out to fend off the guys, for it was so
dark we couldn't see no sign of them. Pretty soon we struck the forward
end of the skylight, and clumb on to it; and the next step fetched us in
front of the captain's door, which was open, and by Jimminy, away down
through the texas-hall we see a light! and all in the same second we seem
to hear low voices in yonder!
Jim whispered and said he was feeling powerful sick, and told me to come
along. I says, all right, and was going to start for the raft; but just
then I heard a voice wail out and say:
"Oh, please don't, boys; I swear I won't ever tell!"
Another voice said, pretty loud:
"It's a lie, Jim Turner. You've acted this way before. You always want
more'n your share of the truck, and you've always got it, too, because
you've swore 't if you didn't you'd tell. But this time you've said it
jest one time too many. You're the meanest, treacherousest hound in this
country."
By this time Jim was gone for the raft. I was just a-biling with
curiosity; and I says to myself, Tom Sawyer wouldn't back out now, and so
I won't either; I'm a-going to see what's going on here. So I dropped on
my hands and knees in the little passage, and crept aft in the dark till
there warn't but one stateroom betwixt me and the cross-hall of the
texas. Then in there I see a man stretched on the floor and tied hand
and foot, and two men standing over him, and one of them had a dim
lantern in his hand, and the other one had a pistol. This one kept
pointing the pistol at the man's head on the floor, and saying:
"I'd LIKE to! And I orter, too--a mean skunk!"
The man on the floor would shrivel up and say, "Oh, please don't, Bill; I
hain't ever goin' to tell."
And every time he said that the man with the lantern would laugh and say:
"'Deed you AIN'T! You never said no truer thing 'n that, you bet you."
And once he said: "Hear him beg! and yit if we hadn't got the best of
him and tied him he'd a killed us both. And what FOR? Jist for noth'n.
Jist because we stood on our RIGHTS--that's what for. But I lay you
ain't a-goin' to threaten nobody any more, Jim Turner. Put UP that
pistol, Bill."
Bill says:
"I don't want to, Jake Packard. I'm for killin' him--and didn't he kill
old Hatfield jist the same way--and don't he deserve it?"
"But I don't WANT him killed, and I've got my reasons for it."
"Bless yo' heart for them words, Jake Packard! I'll never forgit you
long's I live!" says the man on the floor, sort of blubbering.
Packard didn't take no notice of that, but hung up his lantern on a nail
and started towards where I was there in the dark, and motioned Bill to
come. I crawfished as fast as I could about two yards, but the boat
slanted so that I couldn't make very good time; so to keep from getting
run over and catched I crawled into a stateroom on the upper side. The
man came a-pawing along in the dark, and when Packard got to my
stateroom, he says:
"Here--come in here."
And in he come, and Bill after him. But before they got in I was up in
the upper berth, cornered, and sorry I come. Then they stood there, with
their hands on the ledge of the berth, and talked. I couldn't see them,
but I could tell where they was by the whisky they'd been having. I was
glad I didn't drink whisky; but it wouldn't made much difference anyway,
because most of the time they couldn't a treed me because I didn't
breathe. I was too scared. And, besides, a body COULDN'T breathe and
hear such talk. They talked low and earnest. Bill wanted to kill
Turner. He says:
"He's said he'll tell, and he will. If we was to give both our shares to
him NOW it wouldn't make no difference after the row and the way we've
served him. Shore's you're born, he'll turn State's evidence; now you
hear ME. I'm for putting him out of his troubles."
"So'm I," says Packard, very quiet.
"Blame it, I'd sorter begun to think you wasn't. Well, then, that's all
right. Le's go and do it."
"Hold on a minute; I hain't had my say yit. You listen to me.
Shooting's good, but there's quieter ways if the thing's GOT to be done.
But what I say is this: it ain't good sense to go court'n around after a
halter if you can git at what you're up to in some way that's jist as
good and at the same time don't bring you into no resks. Ain't that so?"
"You bet it is. But how you goin' to manage it this time?"
"Well, my idea is this: we'll rustle around and gather up whatever
pickins we've overlooked in the staterooms, and shove for shore and hide
the truck. Then we'll wait. Now I say it ain't a-goin' to be more'n two
hours befo' this wrack breaks up and washes off down the river. See?
He'll be drownded, and won't have nobody to blame for it but his own
self. I reckon that's a considerble sight better 'n killin' of him. I'm
unfavorable to killin' a man as long as you can git aroun' it; it ain't
good sense, it ain't good morals. Ain't I right?"
"Yes, I reck'n you are. But s'pose she DON'T break up and wash off?"
"Well, we can wait the two hours anyway and see, can't we?"
"All right, then; come along."
So they started, and I lit out, all in a cold sweat, and scrambled
forward. It was dark as pitch there; but I said, in a kind of a coarse
whisper, "Jim !" and he answered up, right at my elbow, with a sort of a
moan, and I says:
"Quick, Jim, it ain't no time for fooling around and moaning; there's a
gang of murderers in yonder, and if we don't hunt up their boat and set
her drifting down the river so these fellows can't get away from the
wreck there's one of 'em going to be in a bad fix. But if we find their
boat we can put ALL of 'em in a bad fix--for the sheriff 'll get 'em.
Quick--hurry! I'll hunt the labboard side, you hunt the stabboard.
You start at the raft, and--"
"Oh, my lordy, lordy! RAF'? Dey ain' no raf' no mo'; she done broke
loose en gone I--en here we is!"
CHAPTER XIII.
WELL, I catched my breath and most fainted. Shut up on a wreck with such
a gang as that! But it warn't no time to be sentimentering. We'd GOT to
find that boat now--had to have it for ourselves. So we went a-quaking
and shaking down the stabboard side, and slow work it was, too--seemed a
week before we got to the stern. No sign of a boat. Jim said he didn't
believe he could go any further--so scared he hadn't hardly any strength
left, he said. But I said, come on, if we get left on this wreck we are
in a fix, sure. So on we prowled again. We struck for the stern of the
texas, and found it, and then scrabbled along forwards on the skylight,
hanging on from shutter to shutter, for the edge of the skylight was in
the water. When we got pretty close to the cross-hall door there was the
skiff, sure enough! I could just barely see her. I felt ever so
thankful. In another second I would a been aboard of her, but just then
the door opened. One of the men stuck his head out only about a couple
of foot from me, and I thought I was gone; but he jerked it in again, and
says:
"Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!"
He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and
set down. It was Packard. Then Bill HE come out and got in. Packard
says, in a low voice:
"All ready--shove off!"
I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says:
"Hold on--'d you go through him?"
"No. Didn't you?"
"No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet."
"Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money."
"Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?"
"Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come along."
So they got out and went in.
The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half
second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my
knife and cut the rope, and away we went!
We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even
breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the
paddle-box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a
hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last
sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it.
When we was three or four hundred yards down-stream we see the lantern
show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by
that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to
understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was.
Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the
first time that I begun to worry about the men--I reckon I hadn't had
time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for
murderers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no telling
but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like
it? So says I to Jim:
"The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it,
in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then
I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that
gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their
time comes."
But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and
this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light
showed; everybody in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river,
watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the
rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering,
and by and by a flash showed us a black thing ahead, floating, and we
made for it.
It was the raft, and mighty glad was we to get aboard of it again. We
seen a light now away down to the right, on shore. So I said I would go
for it. The skiff was half full of plunder which that gang had stole
there on the wreck. We hustled it on to the raft in a pile, and I told
Jim to float along down, and show a light when he judged he had gone
about two mile, and keep it burning till I come; then I manned my oars
and shoved for the light. As I got down towards it three or four more
showed--up on a hillside. It was a village. I closed in above the shore
light, and laid on my oars and floated. As I went by I see it was a
lantern hanging on the jackstaff of a double-hull ferryboat. I skimmed
around for the watchman, a-wondering whereabouts he slept; and by and by
I found him roosting on the bitts forward, with his head down between his
knees. I gave his shoulder two or three little shoves, and begun to cry.
He stirred up in a kind of a startlish way; but when he see it was only
me he took a good gap and stretch, and then he says:
"Hello, what's up? Don't cry, bub. What's the trouble?"
I says:
"Pap, and mam, and sis, and--"
Then I broke down. He says:
"Oh, dang it now, DON'T take on so; we all has to have our troubles, and
this 'n 'll come out all right. What's the matter with 'em?"
"They're--they're--are you the watchman of the boat?"
"Yes," he says, kind of pretty-well-satisfied like. "I'm the captain and
the owner and the mate and the pilot and watchman and head deck-hand; and
sometimes I'm the freight and passengers. I ain't as rich as old Jim
Hornback, and I can't be so blame' generous and good to Tom, Dick, and
Harry as what he is, and slam around money the way he does; but I've told
him a many a time 't I wouldn't trade places with him; for, says I, a
sailor's life's the life for me, and I'm derned if I'D live two mile out
o' town, where there ain't nothing ever goin' on, not for all his
spondulicks and as much more on top of it. Says I--"
I broke in and says:
"They're in an awful peck of trouble, and--"
"WHO is?"
"Why, pap and mam and sis and Miss Hooker; and if you'd take your
ferryboat and go up there--"
"Up where? Where are they?"
"On the wreck."
"What wreck?"
"Why, there ain't but one."
"What, you don't mean the Walter Scott?"
"Yes."
"Good land! what are they doin' THERE, for gracious sakes?"
"Well, they didn't go there a-purpose."
"I bet they didn't! Why, great goodness, there ain't no chance for 'em
if they don't git off mighty quick! Why, how in the nation did they ever
git into such a scrape?"
"Easy enough. Miss Hooker was a-visiting up there to the town--"
"Yes, Booth's Landing--go on."
"She was a-visiting there at Booth's Landing, and just in the edge of the
evening she started over with her nigger woman in the horse-ferry to stay
all night at her friend's house, Miss What-you-may-call-her I disremember
her name--and they lost their steering-oar, and swung around and went
a-floating down, stern first, about two mile, and saddle-baggsed on the
wreck, and the ferryman and the nigger woman and the horses was all lost,
but Miss Hooker she made a grab and got aboard the wreck. Well, about an
hour after dark we come along down in our trading-scow, and it was so
dark we didn't notice the wreck till we was right on it; and so WE
saddle-baggsed; but all of us was saved but Bill Whipple--and oh, he WAS
the best cretur !--I most wish 't it had been me, I do."
"My George! It's the beatenest thing I ever struck. And THEN what did
you all do?"
"Well, we hollered and took on, but it's so wide there we couldn't make
nobody hear. So pap said somebody got to get ashore and get help
somehow. I was the only one that could swim, so I made a dash for it, and
Miss Hooker she said if I didn't strike help sooner, come here and hunt
up her uncle, and he'd fix the thing. I made the land about a mile
below, and been fooling along ever since, trying to get people to do
something, but they said, 'What, in such a night and such a current?
There ain't no sense in it; go for the steam ferry.' Now if you'll go
and--"
"By Jackson, I'd LIKE to, and, blame it, I don't know but I will; but who
in the dingnation's a-going' to PAY for it? Do you reckon your pap--"
"Why THAT'S all right. Miss Hooker she tole me, PARTICULAR, that her
uncle Hornback--"
"Great guns! is HE her uncle? Looky here, you break for that light over
yonder-way, and turn out west when you git there, and about a quarter of
a mile out you'll come to the tavern; tell 'em to dart you out to Jim
Hornback's, and he'll foot the bill. And don't you fool around any,
because he'll want to know the news. Tell him I'll have his niece all
safe before he can get to town. Hump yourself, now; I'm a-going up
around the corner here to roust out my engineer."
I struck for the light, but as soon as he turned the corner I went back
and got into my skiff and bailed her out, and then pulled up shore in the
easy water about six hundred yards, and tucked myself in among some
woodboats; for I couldn't rest easy till I could see the ferryboat start.
But take it all around, I was feeling ruther comfortable on accounts of
taking all this trouble for that gang, for not many would a done it. I
wished the widow knowed about it. I judged she would be proud of me for
helping these rapscallions, because rapscallions and dead beats is the
kind the widow and good people takes the most interest in.
Well, before long here comes the wreck, dim and dusky, sliding along
down! A kind of cold shiver went through me, and then I struck out for
her. She was very deep, and I see in a minute there warn't much chance
for anybody being alive in her. I pulled all around her and hollered a
little, but there wasn't any answer; all dead still. I felt a little bit
heavy-hearted about the gang, but not much, for I reckoned if they could
stand it I could.
Then here comes the ferryboat; so I shoved for the middle of the river on
a long down-stream slant; and when I judged I was out of eye-reach I laid
on my oars, and looked back and see her go and smell around the wreck for
Miss Hooker's remainders, because the captain would know her uncle
Hornback would want them; and then pretty soon the ferryboat give it up
and went for the shore, and I laid into my work and went a-booming down
the river.
It did seem a powerful long time before Jim's light showed up; and when
it did show it looked like it was a thousand mile off. By the time I got
there the sky was beginning to get a little gray in the east; so we
struck for an island, and hid the raft, and sunk the skiff, and turned in
and slept like dead people.
CHAPTER XIV.
BY and by, when we got up, we turned over the truck the gang had stole
off of the wreck, and found boots, and blankets, and clothes, and all
sorts of other things, and a lot of books, and a spyglass, and three
boxes of seegars. We hadn't ever been this rich before in neither of our
lives. The seegars was prime. We laid off all the afternoon in the
woods talking, and me reading the books, and having a general good time.
I told Jim all about what happened inside the wreck and at the ferryboat,
and I said these kinds of things was adventures; but he said he didn't
want no more adventures. He said that when I went in the texas and he
crawled back to get on the raft and found her gone he nearly died,
because he judged it was all up with HIM anyway it could be fixed; for if
he didn't get saved he would get drownded; and if he did get saved,
whoever saved him would send him back home so as to get the reward, and
then Miss Watson would sell him South, sure. Well, he was right; he was
most always right; he had an uncommon level head for a nigger.
I read considerable to Jim about kings and dukes and earls and such, and
how gaudy they dressed, and how much style they put on, and called each
other your majesty, and your grace, and your lordship, and so on, 'stead
of mister; and Jim's eyes bugged out, and he was interested. He says:
"I didn' know dey was so many un um. I hain't hearn 'bout none un um,
skasely, but ole King Sollermun, onless you counts dem kings dat's in a
pack er k'yards. How much do a king git?"
"Get?" I says; "why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want
it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them."
"AIN' dat gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?"
"THEY don't do nothing! Why, how you talk! They just set around."
"No; is dat so?"
"Of course it is. They just set around--except, maybe, when there's a
war; then they go to the war. But other times they just lazy around; or
go hawking--just hawking and sp--Sh!--d' you hear a noise?"
We skipped out and looked; but it warn't nothing but the flutter of a
steamboat's wheel away down, coming around the point; so we come back.
"Yes," says I, "and other times, when things is dull, they fuss with the
parlyment; and if everybody don't go just so he whacks their heads off.
But mostly they hang round the harem."
"Roun' de which?"
"Harem."
"What's de harem?"
"The place where he keeps his wives. Don't you know about the harem?
Solomon had one; he had about a million wives."
"Why, yes, dat's so; I--I'd done forgot it. A harem's a bo'd'n-house, I
reck'n. Mos' likely dey has rackety times in de nussery. En I reck'n de
wives quarrels considable; en dat 'crease de racket. Yit dey say
Sollermun de wises' man dat ever live'. I doan' take no stock in dat.
Bekase why: would a wise man want to live in de mids' er sich a
blim-blammin' all de time? No--'deed he wouldn't. A wise man 'ud take
en buil' a biler-factry; en den he could shet DOWN de biler-factry when
he want to res'."
"Well, but he WAS the wisest man, anyway; because the widow she told me
so, her own self."
"I doan k'yer what de widder say, he WARN'T no wise man nuther. He had
some er de dad-fetchedes' ways I ever see. Does you know 'bout dat chile
dat he 'uz gwyne to chop in two?"
"Yes, the widow told me all about it."
"WELL, den! Warn' dat de beatenes' notion in de worl'? You jes' take en
look at it a minute. Dah's de stump, dah--dat's one er de women; heah's
you--dat's de yuther one; I's Sollermun; en dish yer dollar bill's de
chile. Bofe un you claims it. What does I do? Does I shin aroun'
mongs' de neighbors en fine out which un you de bill DO b'long to, en
han' it over to de right one, all safe en soun', de way dat anybody dat
had any gumption would? No; I take en whack de bill in TWO, en give half
un it to you, en de yuther half to de yuther woman. Dat's de way
Sollermun was gwyne to do wid de chile. Now I want to ast you: what's
de use er dat half a bill?--can't buy noth'n wid it. En what use is a
half a chile? I wouldn' give a dern for a million un um."
"But hang it, Jim, you've clean missed the point--blame it, you've missed
it a thousand mile."
"Who? Me? Go 'long. Doan' talk to me 'bout yo' pints. I reck'n I
knows sense when I sees it; en dey ain' no sense in sich doin's as dat.
De 'spute warn't 'bout a half a chile, de 'spute was 'bout a whole chile;
en de man dat think he kin settle a 'spute 'bout a whole chile wid a half
a chile doan' know enough to come in out'n de rain. Doan' talk to me
'bout Sollermun, Huck, I knows him by de back."
"But I tell you you don't get the point."
"Blame de point! I reck'n I knows what I knows. En mine you, de REAL
pint is down furder--it's down deeper. It lays in de way Sollermun was
raised. You take a man dat's got on'y one or two chillen; is dat man
gwyne to be waseful o' chillen? No, he ain't; he can't 'ford it. HE
know how to value 'em. But you take a man dat's got 'bout five million
chillen runnin' roun' de house, en it's diffunt. HE as soon chop a chile
in two as a cat. Dey's plenty mo'. A chile er two, mo' er less, warn't
no consekens to Sollermun, dad fatch him!"
I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there
warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any
nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let
Solomon slide. I told about Louis Sixteenth that got his head cut off in
France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would a
been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died
there.
"Po' little chap."
"But some says he got out and got away, and come to America."
"Dat's good! But he'll be pooty lonesome--dey ain' no kings here, is
dey, Huck?"
"No."
"Den he cain't git no situation. What he gwyne to do?"
"Well, I don't know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them
learns people how to talk French."
"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?"
"NO, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said--not a single word."
"Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?"
"I don't know; but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book.
S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy--what would you
think?"
"I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head--dat is, if he
warn't white. I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat."
"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know
how to talk French?"
"Well, den, why couldn't he SAY it?"
"Why, he IS a-saying it. That's a Frenchman's WAY of saying it."
"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout
it. Dey ain' no sense in it."
"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?"
"No, a cat don't."
"Well, does a cow?"
"No, a cow don't, nuther."
"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?"
"No, dey don't."
"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't
it?"
"Course."
"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different
from US?"
"Why, mos' sholy it is."
"Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a FRENCHMAN to talk
different from us? You answer me that."
"Is a cat a man, Huck?"
"No."
"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a
man?--er is a cow a cat?"
"No, she ain't either of them."
"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the
yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?"
"Yes."
"WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he TALK like a man? You answer me
DAT!"
I see it warn't no use wasting words--you can't learn a nigger to argue.
So I quit.
CHAPTER XV.
WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom
of Illinois, where the Ohio River comes in, and that was what we was
after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the
Ohio amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble.
Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead
to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try to run in a fog; but when I paddled
ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but
little saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on
the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current, and the raft
come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she
went. I see the fog closing down, and it made me so sick and scared I
couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me--and then there
warn't no raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into
the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle and set her
back a stroke. But she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't
untied her. I got up and tried to untie her, but I was so excited my
hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them.
As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right
down the towhead. That was all right as far as it went, but the towhead
warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot
out into the solid white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was
going than a dead man.
Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank or a
towhead or something; I got to set still and float, and yet it's mighty
fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I
whooped and listened. Away down there somewheres I hears a small whoop,
and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp to
hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't heading for it, but
heading away to the right of it. And the next time I was heading away to
the left of it--and not gaining on it much either, for I was flying
around, this way and that and t'other, but it was going straight ahead
all the time.
I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the
time, but he never did, and it was the still places between the whoops
that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I
hears the whoop BEHIND me. I was tangled good now. That was somebody
else's whoop, or else I was turned around.
I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me
yet, but in a different place; it kept coming, and kept changing its
place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again,
and I knowed the current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and I
was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman hollering. I
couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look
natural nor sound natural in a fog.
The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a
cut bank with smoky ghosts of big trees on it, and the current throwed me
off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared,
the currrent was tearing by them so swift.
In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set
perfectly still then, listening to my heart thump, and I reckon I didn't
draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.
I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was an
island, and Jim had gone down t'other side of it. It warn't no towhead
that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a
regular island; it might be five or six miles long and more than half a
mile wide.
I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I
was floating along, of course, four or five miles an hour; but you don't
ever think of that. No, you FEEL like you are laying dead still on the
water; and if a little glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to
yourself how fast YOU'RE going, but you catch your breath and think, my!
how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome
out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once--you'll
see.
Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears
the answer a long ways off, and tries to follow it, but I couldn't do it,
and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had little
dim glimpses of them on both sides of me--sometimes just a narrow channel
between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there because I'd hear
the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung
over the banks. Well, I warn't long loosing the whoops down amongst the
towheads; and I only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because
it was worse than chasing a Jack-o'-lantern. You never knowed a sound
dodge around so, and swap places so quick and so much.
I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to
keep from knocking the islands out of the river; and so I judged the raft
must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get
further ahead and clear out of hearing--it was floating a little faster
than what I was.
Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't
hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned Jim had fetched up on a
snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I laid
down in the canoe and said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to
go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it; so I
thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.
But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars
was shining bright, the fog was all gone, and I was spinning down a big
bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was
dreaming; and when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up
dim out of last week.
It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind
of timber on both banks; just a solid wall, as well as I could see by the
stars. I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the water.
I took after it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of
sawlogs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and chased that;
then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft.
When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his
knees, asleep, with his right arm hanging over the steering-oar. The
other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and
branches and dirt. So she'd had a rough time.
I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to gap,
and stretch my fists out against Jim, and says:
"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up?"
"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' dead--you ain'
drownded--you's back agin? It's too good for true, honey, it's too
good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you ain'
dead! you's back agin, 'live en soun', jis de same ole Huck--de same ole
Huck, thanks to goodness!"
"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking?"
"Drinkin'? Has I ben a-drinkin'? Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin'?"
"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?"
"How does I talk wild?"
"HOW? Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that
stuff, as if I'd been gone away?"
"Huck--Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. HAIN'T you
ben gone away?"
"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain't been gone
anywheres. Where would I go to?"
"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. Is I ME, or who IS
I? Is I heah, or whah IS I? Now dat's what I wants to know."
"Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a
tangle-headed old fool, Jim."
"I is, is I? Well, you answer me dis: Didn't you tote out de line in de
canoe fer to make fas' to de tow-head?"
"No, I didn't. What tow-head? I hain't see no tow-head."
"You hain't seen no towhead? Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en de
raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en leave you en de canoe behine in de
fog?"
"What fog?"
"Why, de fog!--de fog dat's been aroun' all night. En didn't you whoop,
en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up in de islands en one un us got
los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he
wuz? En didn't I bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible
time en mos' git drownded? Now ain' dat so, boss--ain't it so? You
answer me dat."
"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no
islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been setting here talking with
you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon
I done the same. You couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course
you've been dreaming."
"Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?"
"Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it
happen."
"But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as--"
"It don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it.
I know, because I've been here all the time."
Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying
over it. Then he says:
"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de
powerfullest dream I ever see. En I hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's
tired me like dis one."
"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like
everything sometimes. But this one was a staving dream; tell me all
about it, Jim."
So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it
happened, only he painted it up considerable. Then he said he must start
in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the
first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the
current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was
warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try
hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck,
'stead of keeping us out of it. The lot of towheads was troubles we was
going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks,
but if we minded our business and didn't talk back and aggravate them, we
would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river,
which was the free States, and wouldn't have no more trouble.
It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was
clearing up again now.
"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim," I
says; "but what does THESE things stand for?"
It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could
see them first-rate now.
Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash
again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn't
seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right
away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me
steady without ever smiling, and says:
"What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out
wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos'
broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en
de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de
tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so
thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv
ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is
dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed."
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without
saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean
I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back.
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble
myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it
afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't
done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.
CHAPTER XVI.
WE slept most all day, and started out at night, a little ways behind a
monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession. She had
four long sweeps at each end, so we judged she carried as many as thirty
men, likely. She had five big wigwams aboard, wide apart, and an open
camp fire in the middle, and a tall flag-pole at each end. There was a
power of style about her. It AMOUNTED to something being a raftsman on
such a craft as that.
We went drifting down into a big bend, and the night clouded up and got
hot. The river was very wide, and was walled with solid timber on both
sides; you couldn't see a break in it hardly ever, or a light. We talked
about Cairo, and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I
said likely we wouldn't, because I had heard say there warn't but about a
dozen houses there, and if they didn't happen to have them lit up, how
was we going to know we was passing a town? Jim said if the two big
rivers joined together there, that would show. But I said maybe we might
think we was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old
river again. That disturbed Jim--and me too. So the question was, what
to do? I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed, and tell
them pap was behind, coming along with a trading-scow, and was a green
hand at the business, and wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim
thought it was a good idea, so we took a smoke on it and waited.
There warn't nothing to do now but to look out sharp for the town, and
not pass it without seeing it. He said he'd be mighty sure to see it,
because he'd be a free man the minute he seen it, but if he missed it
he'd be in a slave country again and no more show for freedom. Every
little while he jumps up and says:
"Dah she is?"
But it warn't. It was Jack-o'-lanterns, or lightning bugs; so he set
down again, and went to watching, same as before. Jim said it made him
all over trembly and feverish to be so close to freedom. Well, I can
tell you it made me all over trembly and feverish, too, to hear him,
because I begun to get it through my head that he WAS most free--and who
was to blame for it? Why, ME. I couldn't get that out of my conscience,
no how nor no way. It got to troubling me so I couldn't rest; I couldn't
stay still in one place. It hadn't ever come home to me before, what
this thing was that I was doing. But now it did; and it stayed with me,
and scorched me more and more. I tried to make out to myself that I
warn't to blame, because I didn't run Jim off from his rightful owner;
but it warn't no use, conscience up and says, every time, "But you knowed
he was running for his freedom, and you could a paddled ashore and told
somebody." That was so--I couldn't get around that noway. That was
where it pinched. Conscience says to me, "What had poor Miss Watson done
to you that you could see her nigger go off right under your eyes and
never say one single word? What did that poor old woman do to you that
you could treat her so mean? Why, she tried to learn you your book, she
tried to learn you your manners, she tried to be good to you every way
she knowed how. THAT'S what she done."
I got to feeling so mean and so miserable I most wished I was dead. I
fidgeted up and down the raft, abusing myself to myself, and Jim was
fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still. Every
time he danced around and says, "Dah's Cairo!" it went through me like a
shot, and I thought if it WAS Cairo I reckoned I would die of
miserableness.
Jim talked out loud all the time while I was talking to myself. He was
saying how the first thing he would do when he got to a free State he
would go to saving up money and never spend a single cent, and when he
got enough he would buy his wife, which was owned on a farm close to
where Miss Watson lived; and then they would both work to buy the two
children, and if their master wouldn't sell them, they'd get an
Ab'litionist to go and steal them.
It most froze me to hear such talk. He wouldn't ever dared to talk such
talk in his life before. Just see what a difference it made in him the
minute he judged he was about free. It was according to the old saying,
"Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Thinks I, this is what
comes of my not thinking. Here was this nigger, which I had as good as
helped to run away, coming right out flat-footed and saying he would
steal his children--children that belonged to a man I didn't even know; a
man that hadn't ever done me no harm.
I was sorry to hear Jim say that, it was such a lowering of him. My
conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says
to it, "Let up on me--it ain't too late yet--I'll paddle ashore at the
first light and tell." I felt easy and happy and light as a feather
right off. All my troubles was gone. I went to looking out sharp for a
light, and sort of singing to myself. By and by one showed. Jim sings
out:
"We's safe, Huck, we's safe! Jump up and crack yo' heels! Dat's de good
ole Cairo at las', I jis knows it!"
I says:
"I'll take the canoe and go and see, Jim. It mightn't be, you know."
He jumped and got the canoe ready, and put his old coat in the bottom for
me to set on, and give me the paddle; and as I shoved off, he says:
"Pooty soon I'll be a-shout'n' for joy, en I'll say, it's all on accounts
o' Huck; I's a free man, en I couldn't ever ben free ef it hadn' ben for
Huck; Huck done it. Jim won't ever forgit you, Huck; you's de bes' fren'
Jim's ever had; en you's de ONLY fren' ole Jim's got now."
I was paddling off, all in a sweat to tell on him; but when he says this,
it seemed to kind of take the tuck all out of me. I went along slow
then, and I warn't right down certain whether I was glad I started or
whether I warn't. When I was fifty yards off, Jim says:
"Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his
promise to ole Jim."
Well, I just felt sick. But I says, I GOT to do it--I can't get OUT of
it. Right then along comes a skiff with two men in it with guns, and
they stopped and I stopped. One of them says:
"What's that yonder?"
"A piece of a raft," I says.
"Do you belong on it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Any men on it?"
"Only one, sir."
"Well, there's five niggers run off to-night up yonder, above the head of
the bend. Is your man white or black?"
I didn't answer up prompt. I tried to, but the words wouldn't come. I
tried for a second or two to brace up and out with it, but I warn't man
enough--hadn't the spunk of a rabbit. I see I was weakening; so I just
give up trying, and up and says:
"He's white."
"I reckon we'll go and see for ourselves."
"I wish you would," says I, "because it's pap that's there, and maybe
you'd help me tow the raft ashore where the light is. He's sick--and so
is mam and Mary Ann."
"Oh, the devil! we're in a hurry, boy. But I s'pose we've got to. Come,
buckle to your paddle, and let's get along."
I buckled to my paddle and they laid to their oars. When we had made a
stroke or two, I says:
"Pap'll be mighty much obleeged to you, I can tell you. Everybody goes
away when I want them to help me tow the raft ashore, and I can't do it
by myself."
"Well, that's infernal mean. Odd, too. Say, boy, what's the matter with
your father?"
"It's the--a--the--well, it ain't anything much."
They stopped pulling. It warn't but a mighty little ways to the raft
now. One says:
"Boy, that's a lie. What IS the matter with your pap? Answer up square
now, and it'll be the better for you."
"I will, sir, I will, honest--but don't leave us, please. It's the--the
--Gentlemen, if you'll only pull ahead, and let me heave you the
headline, you won't have to come a-near the raft--please do."
"Set her back, John, set her back!" says one. They backed water. "Keep
away, boy--keep to looard. Confound it, I just expect the wind has
blowed it to us. Your pap's got the small-pox, and you know it precious
well. Why didn't you come out and say so? Do you want to spread it all
over?"
"Well," says I, a-blubbering, "I've told everybody before, and they just
went away and left us."
"Poor devil, there's something in that. We are right down sorry for you,
but we--well, hang it, we don't want the small-pox, you see. Look here,
I'll tell you what to do. Don't you try to land by yourself, or you'll
smash everything to pieces. You float along down about twenty miles, and
you'll come to a town on the left-hand side of the river. It will be
long after sun-up then, and when you ask for help you tell them your
folks are all down with chills and fever. Don't be a fool again, and let
people guess what is the matter. Now we're trying to do you a kindness;
so you just put twenty miles between us, that's a good boy. It wouldn't
do any good to land yonder where the light is--it's only a wood-yard.
Say, I reckon your father's poor, and I'm bound to say he's in pretty
hard luck. Here, I'll put a twenty-dollar gold piece on this board, and
you get it when it floats by. I feel mighty mean to leave you; but my
kingdom! it won't do to fool with small-pox, don't you see?"
"Hold on, Parker," says the other man, "here's a twenty to put on the
board for me. Good-bye, boy; you do as Mr. Parker told you, and you'll
be all right."
"That's so, my boy--good-bye, good-bye. If you see any runaway niggers
you get help and nab them, and you can make some money by it."
"Good-bye, sir," says I; "I won't let no runaway niggers get by me if I
can help it."
They went off and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I
knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to
try to learn to do right; a body that don't get STARTED right when he's
little ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to
back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I
thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on; s'pose you'd a done right
and give Jim up, would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I,
I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I,
what's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right
and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same? I was
stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't bother no more
about it, but after this always do whichever come handiest at the time.
I went into the wigwam; Jim warn't there. I looked all around; he warn't
anywhere. I says:
"Jim!"
"Here I is, Huck. Is dey out o' sight yit? Don't talk loud."
He was in the river under the stern oar, with just his nose out. I told
him they were out of sight, so he come aboard. He says:
"I was a-listenin' to all de talk, en I slips into de river en was gwyne
to shove for sho' if dey come aboard. Den I was gwyne to swim to de raf'
agin when dey was gone. But lawsy, how you did fool 'em, Huck! Dat WUZ
de smartes' dodge! I tell you, chile, I'spec it save' ole Jim--ole Jim
ain't going to forgit you for dat, honey."
Then we talked about the money. It was a pretty good raise--twenty
dollars apiece. Jim said we could take deck passage on a steamboat now,
and the money would last us as far as we wanted to go in the free States.
He said twenty mile more warn't far for the raft to go, but he wished we
was already there.
Towards daybreak we tied up, and Jim was mighty particular about hiding
the raft good. Then he worked all day fixing things in bundles, and
getting all ready to quit rafting.
That night about ten we hove in sight of the lights of a town away down
in a left-hand bend.
I went off in the canoe to ask about it. Pretty soon I found a man out
in the river with a skiff, setting a trot-line. I ranged up and says:
"Mister, is that town Cairo?"
"Cairo? no. You must be a blame' fool."
"What town is it, mister?"
"If you want to know, go and find out. If you stay here botherin' around
me for about a half a minute longer you'll get something you won't want."
I paddled to the raft. Jim was awful disappointed, but I said never
mind, Cairo would be the next place, I reckoned.
We passed another town before daylight, and I was going out again; but it
was high ground, so I didn't go. No high ground about Cairo, Jim said.
I had forgot it. We laid up for the day on a towhead tolerable close to
the left-hand bank. I begun to suspicion something. So did Jim. I
says:
"Maybe we went by Cairo in the fog that night."
He says:
"Doan' le's talk about it, Huck. Po' niggers can't have no luck. I
awluz 'spected dat rattlesnake-skin warn't done wid its work."
"I wish I'd never seen that snake-skin, Jim--I do wish I'd never laid
eyes on it."
"It ain't yo' fault, Huck; you didn' know. Don't you blame yo'self 'bout
it."
When it was daylight, here was the clear Ohio water inshore, sure enough,
and outside was the old regular Muddy! So it was all up with Cairo.
We talked it all over. It wouldn't do to take to the shore; we couldn't
take the raft up the stream, of course. There warn't no way but to wait
for dark, and start back in the canoe and take the chances. So we slept
all day amongst the cottonwood thicket, so as to be fresh for the work,
and when we went back to the raft about dark the canoe was gone!
We didn't say a word for a good while. There warn't anything to say. We
both knowed well enough it was some more work of the rattlesnake-skin; so
what was the use to talk about it? It would only look like we was
finding fault, and that would be bound to fetch more bad luck--and keep
on fetching it, too, till we knowed enough to keep still.
By and by we talked about what we better do, and found there warn't no
way but just to go along down with the raft till we got a chance to buy a
canoe to go back in. We warn't going to borrow it when there warn't
anybody around, the way pap would do, for that might set people after us.
So we shoved out after dark on the raft.
Anybody that don't believe yet that it's foolishness to handle a
snake-skin, after all that that snake-skin done for us, will believe
it now if they read on and see what more it done for us.
The place to buy canoes is off of rafts laying up at shore. But we
didn't see no rafts laying up; so we went along during three hours and
more. Well, the night got gray and ruther thick, which is the next
meanest thing to fog. You can't tell the shape of the river, and you
can't see no distance. It got to be very late and still, and then along
comes a steamboat up the river. We lit the lantern, and judged she would
see it. Up-stream boats didn't generly come close to us; they go out and
follow the bars and hunt for easy water under the reefs; but nights like
this they bull right up the channel against the whole river.
We could hear her pounding along, but we didn't see her good till she was
close. She aimed right for us. Often they do that and try to see how
close they can come without touching; sometimes the wheel bites off a
sweep, and then the pilot sticks his head out and laughs, and thinks he's
mighty smart. Well, here she comes, and we said she was going to try and
shave us; but she didn't seem to be sheering off a bit. She was a big
one, and she was coming in a hurry, too, looking like a black cloud with
rows of glow-worms around it; but all of a sudden she bulged out, big and
scary, with a long row of wide-open furnace doors shining like red-hot
teeth, and her monstrous bows and guards hanging right over us. There
was a yell at us, and a jingling of bells to stop the engines, a powwow
of cussing, and whistling of steam--and as Jim went overboard on one side
and I on the other, she come smashing straight through the raft.
I dived--and I aimed to find the bottom, too, for a thirty-foot wheel had
got to go over me, and I wanted it to have plenty of room. I could
always stay under water a minute; this time I reckon I stayed under a
minute and a half. Then I bounced for the top in a hurry, for I was
nearly busting. I popped out to my armpits and blowed the water out of
my nose, and puffed a bit. Of course there was a booming current; and of
course that boat started her engines again ten seconds after she stopped
them, for they never cared much for raftsmen; so now she was churning
along up the river, out of sight in the thick weather, though I could
hear her.
I sung out for Jim about a dozen times, but I didn't get any answer; so I
grabbed a plank that touched me while I was "treading water," and struck
out for shore, shoving it ahead of me. But I made out to see that the
drift of the current was towards the left-hand shore, which meant that I
was in a crossing; so I changed off and went that way.
It was one of these long, slanting, two-mile crossings; so I was a good
long time in getting over. I made a safe landing, and clumb up the bank.
I couldn't see but a little ways, but I went poking along over rough
ground for a quarter of a mile or more, and then I run across a big
old-fashioned double log-house before I noticed it. I was going to rush
by and get away, but a lot of dogs jumped out and went to howling and
barking at me, and I knowed better than to move another peg.
CHAPTER XVII.
IN about a minute somebody spoke out of a window without putting his head
out, and says:
"Be done, boys! Who's there?"
I says:
"It's me."
"Who's me?"
"George Jackson, sir."
"What do you want?"
"I don't want nothing, sir. I only want to go along by, but the dogs
won't let me."
"What are you prowling around here this time of night for--hey?"
"I warn't prowling around, sir, I fell overboard off of the steamboat."
"Oh, you did, did you? Strike a light there, somebody. What did you say
your name was?"
"George Jackson, sir. I'm only a boy."
"Look here, if you're telling the truth you needn't be afraid--nobody'll
hurt you. But don't try to budge; stand right where you are. Rouse out
Bob and Tom, some of you, and fetch the guns. George Jackson, is there
anybody with you?"
"No, sir, nobody."
I heard the people stirring around in the house now, and see a light.
The man sung out:
"Snatch that light away, Betsy, you old fool--ain't you got any sense?
Put it on the floor behind the front door. Bob, if you and Tom are
ready, take your places."
"All ready."
"Now, George Jackson, do you know the Shepherdsons?"
"No, sir; I never heard of them."
"Well, that may be so, and it mayn't. Now, all ready. Step forward,
George Jackson. And mind, don't you hurry--come mighty slow. If there's
anybody with you, let him keep back--if he shows himself he'll be shot.
Come along now. Come slow; push the door open yourself--just enough to
squeeze in, d' you hear?"
I didn't hurry; I couldn't if I'd a wanted to. I took one slow step at a
time and there warn't a sound, only I thought I could hear my heart. The
dogs were as still as the humans, but they followed a little behind me.
When I got to the three log doorsteps I heard them unlocking and
unbarring and unbolting. I put my hand on the door and pushed it a
little and a little more till somebody said, "There, that's enough--put
your head in." I done it, but I judged they would take it off.
The candle was on the floor, and there they all was, looking at me, and
me at them, for about a quarter of a minute: Three big men with guns
pointed at me, which made me wince, I tell you; the oldest, gray and
about sixty, the other two thirty or more--all of them fine and handsome
--and the sweetest old gray-headed lady, and back of her two young women
which I couldn't see right well. The old gentleman says:
"There; I reckon it's all right. Come in."
As soon as I was in the old gentleman he locked the door and barred it
and bolted it, and told the young men to come in with their guns, and
they all went in a big parlor that had a new rag carpet on the floor, and
got together in a corner that was out of the range of the front windows
--there warn't none on the side. They held the candle, and took a good
look at me, and all said, "Why, HE ain't a Shepherdson--no, there ain't
any Shepherdson about him." Then the old man said he hoped I wouldn't
mind being searched for arms, because he didn't mean no harm by it--it
was only to make sure. So he didn't pry into my pockets, but only felt
outside with his hands, and said it was all right. He told me to make
myself easy and at home, and tell all about myself; but the old lady
says:
"Why, bless you, Saul, the poor thing's as wet as he can be; and don't
you reckon it may be he's hungry?"
"True for you, Rachel--I forgot."
So the old lady says:
"Betsy" (this was a nigger woman), "you fly around and get him something
to eat as quick as you can, poor thing; and one of you girls go and wake
up Buck and tell him--oh, here he is himself. Buck, take this little
stranger and get the wet clothes off from him and dress him up in some of
yours that's dry."
Buck looked about as old as me--thirteen or fourteen or along there,
though he was a little bigger than me. He hadn't on anything but a
shirt, and he was very frowzy-headed. He came in gaping and digging one
fist into his eyes, and he was dragging a gun along with the other one.
He says:
"Ain't they no Shepherdsons around?"
They said, no, 'twas a false alarm.
"Well," he says, "if they'd a ben some, I reckon I'd a got one."
They all laughed, and Bob says:
"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in
coming."
"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right I'm always kept down; I
don't get no show."
"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show enough,
all in good time, don't you fret about that. Go 'long with you now, and
do as your mother told you."
When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a
roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he
asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to tell
me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods day
before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle went
out. I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no way.
"Well, guess," he says.
"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it before?"
"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy."
"WHICH candle?" I says.
"Why, any candle," he says.
"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"
"Why, he was in the DARK! That's where he was!"
"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?"
"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you
going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming
times--they don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a
dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in. Do
you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? You bet I
don't, but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches! I reckon I'd
better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm. Are you all ready?
All right. Come along, old hoss."
Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what they
had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever I've come
across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob pipes, except the
nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young women. They all smoked
and talked, and I eat and talked. The young women had quilts around
them, and their hair down their backs. They all asked me questions, and
I told them how pap and me and all the family was living on a little farm
down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and my sister Mary Ann run off and got
married and never was heard of no more, and Bill went to hunt them and he
warn't heard of no more, and Tom and Mort died, and then there warn't
nobody but just me and pap left, and he was just trimmed down to nothing,
on account of his troubles; so when he died I took what there was left,
because the farm didn't belong to us, and started up the river, deck
passage, and fell overboard; and that was how I come to be here. So they
said I could have a home there as long as I wanted it. Then it was most
daylight and everybody went to bed, and I went to bed with Buck, and when
I waked up in the morning, drat it all, I had forgot what my name was.
So I laid there about an hour trying to think, and when Buck waked up I
says:
"Can you spell, Buck?"
"Yes," he says.
"I bet you can't spell my name," says I.
"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.
"All right," says I, "go ahead."
"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n--there now," he says.
"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn't think you could. It ain't no
slouch of a name to spell--right off without studying."
I set it down, private, because somebody might want ME to spell it next,
and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to
it.
It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn't seen
no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much
style. It didn't have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one
with a buckskin string, but a brass knob to turn, the same as houses in
town. There warn't no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps
of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was
bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring
water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash
them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they
do in town. They had big brass dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log.
There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a
town painted on the bottom half of the glass front, and a round place in
the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging
behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when
one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in
good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she
got tuckered out. They wouldn't took any money for her.
Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made
out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots
was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you
pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn't open their mouths nor look
different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a
couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. On
the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery
basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it,
which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but
they warn't real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off
and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath.
This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and
blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It
come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books,
too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a
big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim's Progress, about a
man that left his family, it didn't say why. I read considerable in it
now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was
Friendship's Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn't
read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay's Speeches, and another was Dr.
Gunn's Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was
sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And
there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too--not bagged
down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.
They had pictures hung on the walls--mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes,
and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the
Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the
daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen
years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before
--blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress,
belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle
of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil,
and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black
slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on
her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down
her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the
picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas." Another one was a
young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head,
and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was
crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her
other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall
Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas." There was one where a young
lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her
cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax
showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to
it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou
Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but
I didn't somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a
little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died,
because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body
could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that
with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She
was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took
sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to
live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a
picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a
bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and
looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had
two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front,
and two more reaching up towards the moon--and the idea was to see which
pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I
was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept
this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her
birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a
little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice
sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery,
seemed to me.
This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste
obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the
Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.
It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name
of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:
ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D
And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad
hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry?
No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad
hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots.
No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not
these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots.
Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach
troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots.
O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul
did from this cold world fly By falling down a well.
They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was
gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great.
If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was
fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck
said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to
stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't
find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down
another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about
anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful.
Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on
hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes.
The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the
undertaker--the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and
then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was
Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but
she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time
I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out
her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been
aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that
family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between
us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was
alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some
about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two
myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's
room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked
to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old
lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers,
and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly.
Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on
the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines
all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little
old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever
so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken" and
play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was
plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was
whitewashed on the outside.
It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and
floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day,
and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn't be better. And
warn't the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!
CHAPTER XVIII.
COL. GRANGERFORD was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over;
and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that's
worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said,
and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town;
and pap he always said it, too, though he warn't no more quality than a
mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a
darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean
shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind
of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy
eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they
seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His
forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his
shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put
on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so
white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue
tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a
silver head to it. There warn't no frivolishness about him, not a bit,
and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could be--you could feel
that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it
was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole,
and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you
wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was
afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners
--everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have
him around, too; he was sunshine most always--I mean he made it seem
like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for
half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again
for a week.
When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up
out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn't set down again
till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the
decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and he
held it in his hand and waited till Tom's and Bob's was mixed, and then
they bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and THEY bowed
the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all
three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the
mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give
it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.
Bob was the oldest and Tom next--tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.
Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn't stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like
her father. She was beautiful.
So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.
Each person had their own nigger to wait on them--Buck too. My nigger
had a monstrous easy time, because I warn't used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck's was on the jump most of the time.
This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more
--three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.
The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings
round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods
daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.
There was another clan of aristocracy around there--five or six families
--mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and well
born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons
and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two
mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our
folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their fine horses.
One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse
coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:
"Quick! Jump for the woods!"
We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty
soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse
easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I
had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's
gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his head. He
grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we
didn't wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn't
thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen
Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come--to
get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn't see. We never stopped running till
we got home. The old gentleman's eyes blazed a minute--'twas pleasure,
mainly, I judged--then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says,
kind of gentle:
"I don't like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn't you step into
the road, my boy?"
"The Shepherdsons don't, father. They always take advantage."
Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling
his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young
men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale,
but the color come back when she found the man warn't hurt.
Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by
ourselves, I says:
"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"
"Well, I bet I did."
"What did he do to you?"
"Him? He never done nothing to me."
"Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?"
"Why, nothing--only it's on account of the feud."
"What's a feud?"
"Why, where was you raised? Don't you know what a feud is?"
"Never heard of it before--tell me about it."
"Well," says Buck, "a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another
man, and kills him; then that other man's brother kills HIM; then the
other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the COUSINS
chip in--and by and by everybody's killed off, and there ain't no more
feud. But it's kind of slow, and takes a long time."
"Has this one been going on long, Buck?"
"Well, I should RECKON! It started thirty year ago, or som'ers along
there. There was trouble 'bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle
it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man
that won the suit--which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody
would."
"What was the trouble about, Buck?--land?"
"I reckon maybe--I don't know."
"Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?"
"Laws, how do I know? It was so long ago."
"Don't anybody know?"
"Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they
don't know now what the row was about in the first place."
"Has there been many killed, Buck?"
"Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don't always kill. Pa's
got a few buckshot in him; but he don't mind it 'cuz he don't weigh much,
anyway. Bob's been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom's been hurt once
or twice."
"Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?"
"Yes; we got one and they got one. 'Bout three months ago my cousin Bud,
fourteen year old, was riding through the woods on t'other side of the
river, and didn't have no weapon with him, which was blame' foolishness,
and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees
old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin' after him with his gun in his hand and
his white hair a-flying in the wind; and 'stead of jumping off and taking
to the brush, Bud 'lowed he could out-run him; so they had it, nip and
tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so at
last Bud seen it warn't any use, so he stopped and faced around so as to
have the bullet holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up and
shot him down. But he didn't git much chance to enjoy his luck, for
inside of a week our folks laid HIM out."
"I reckon that old man was a coward, Buck."
"I reckon he WARN'T a coward. Not by a blame' sight. There ain't a
coward amongst them Shepherdsons--not a one. And there ain't no cowards
amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kep' up his end in a
fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come out
winner. They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind
a little woodpile, and kep' his horse before him to stop the bullets; but
the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old man,
and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his
horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had
to be FETCHED home--and one of 'em was dead, and another died the next
day. No, sir; if a body's out hunting for cowards he don't want to fool
away any time amongst them Shepherdsons, becuz they don't breed any of
that KIND."
Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody
a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them
between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The
Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching--all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a
good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a
powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me
to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.
About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their
chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a
dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went up to
our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss
Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in
her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I
said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and not tell
anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she'd forgot her Testament,
and left it in the seat at church between two other books, and would I
slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say nothing to
nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the road, and
there warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there
warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in
summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go
to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.
Says I to myself, something's up; it ain't natural for a girl to be in
such a sweat about a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out drops a
little piece of paper with "HALF-PAST TWO" wrote on it with a pencil. I
ransacked it, but couldn't find anything else. I couldn't make anything
out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I got home
and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me. She
pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament till she
found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad; and before a
body could think she grabbed me and give me a squeeze, and said I was the
best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. She was mighty red in
the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it made her powerful
pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got my breath I asked
her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I had read it, and I
said no, and she asked me if I could read writing, and I told her "no,
only coarse-hand," and then she said the paper warn't anything but a
book-mark to keep her place, and I might go and play now.
I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon I
noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of
sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes
a-running, and says:
"Mars Jawge, if you'll come down into de swamp I'll show you a whole
stack o' water-moccasins."
Thinks I, that's mighty curious; he said that yesterday. He oughter know
a body don't love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for them.
What is he up to, anyway? So I says:
"All right; trot ahead."
I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded
ankle deep as much as another half-mile. We come to a little flat piece
of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines, and
he says:
"You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; dah's whah dey is.
I's seed 'm befo'; I don't k'yer to see 'em no mo'."
Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid
him. I poked into the place a-ways and come to a little open patch as
big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man laying there
asleep--and, by jings, it was my old Jim!
I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to him
to see me again, but it warn't. He nearly cried he was so glad, but he
warn't surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard me
yell every time, but dasn't answer, because he didn't want nobody to pick
HIM up and take him into slavery again. Says he:
"I got hurt a little, en couldn't swim fas', so I wuz a considable ways
behine you towards de las'; when you landed I reck'ned I could ketch up
wid you on de lan' 'dout havin' to shout at you, but when I see dat house
I begin to go slow. I 'uz off too fur to hear what dey say to you--I wuz
'fraid o' de dogs; but when it 'uz all quiet agin I knowed you's in de
house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early in de mawnin'
some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey tuk me en
showed me dis place, whah de dogs can't track me on accounts o' de water,
en dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how you's a-gitt'n
along."
"Why didn't you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?"
"Well, 'twarn't no use to 'sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn--but
we's all right now. I ben a-buyin' pots en pans en vittles, as I got a
chanst, en a-patchin' up de raf' nights when--"
"WHAT raft, Jim?"
"Our ole raf'."
"You mean to say our old raft warn't smashed all to flinders?"
"No, she warn't. She was tore up a good deal--one en' of her was; but
dey warn't no great harm done, on'y our traps was mos' all los'. Ef we
hadn' dive' so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn' ben so
dark, en we warn't so sk'yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin' is,
we'd a seed de raf'. But it's jis' as well we didn't, 'kase now she's
all fixed up agin mos' as good as new, en we's got a new lot o' stuff, in
de place o' what 'uz los'."
"Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim--did you catch her?"
"How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods? No; some er de niggers
foun' her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben', en dey hid her in a
crick 'mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin' 'bout which un 'um
she b'long to de mos' dat I come to heah 'bout it pooty soon, so I ups en
settles de trouble by tellin' 'um she don't b'long to none uv um, but to
you en me; en I ast 'm if dey gwyne to grab a young white genlman's
propaty, en git a hid'n for it? Den I gin 'm ten cents apiece, en dey
'uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo' raf's 'ud come along en make
'm rich agin. Dey's mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en whatever I
wants 'm to do fur me I doan' have to ast 'm twice, honey. Dat Jack's a
good nigger, en pooty smart."
"Yes, he is. He ain't ever told me you was here; told me to come, and
he'd show me a lot of water-moccasins. If anything happens HE ain't
mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it 'll be the
truth."
I don't want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I'll cut it
pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go
to sleep again when I noticed how still it was--didn't seem to be anybody
stirring. That warn't usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone.
Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down stairs--nobody around;
everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what
does it mean? Down by the wood-pile I comes across my Jack, and says:
"What's it all about?"
Says he:
"Don't you know, Mars Jawge?"
"No," says I, "I don't."
"Well, den, Miss Sophia's run off! 'deed she has. She run off in de
night some time--nobody don't know jis' when; run off to get married to
dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know--leastways, so dey 'spec. De
fambly foun' it out 'bout half an hour ago--maybe a little mo'--en' I
TELL you dey warn't no time los'. Sich another hurryin' up guns en
hosses YOU never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de
relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river
road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him 'fo' he kin git acrost
de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck'n dey's gwyne to be mighty rough
times."
"Buck went off 'thout waking me up."
"Well, I reck'n he DID! Dey warn't gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars Buck
he loaded up his gun en 'lowed he's gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson or
bust. Well, dey'll be plenty un 'm dah, I reck'n, en you bet you he'll
fetch one ef he gits a chanst."
I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to
hear guns a good ways off. When I came in sight of the log store and the
woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees and
brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks of a
cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a wood-rank
four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I was going
to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn't.
There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open
place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a
couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the
steamboat landing; but they couldn't come it. Every time one of them
showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. The two
boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch both
ways.
By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started
riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady
bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All
the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started
to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the
run. They got half way to the tree I was in before the men noticed.
Then the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after
them. They gained on the boys, but it didn't do no good, the boys had
too good a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree,
and slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again.
One of the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about
nineteen years old.
The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was
out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn't know what to
make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful
surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men
come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or other
--wouldn't be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I dasn't
come down. Buck begun to cry and rip, and 'lowed that him and his cousin
Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day yet. He
said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or three of the
enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. Buck said his
father and brothers ought to waited for their relations--the Shepherdsons
was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of young Harney and
Miss Sophia. He said they'd got across the river and was safe. I was
glad of that; but the way Buck did take on because he didn't manage to
kill Harney that day he shot at him--I hain't ever heard anything like
it.
All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns--the men had
slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their
horses! The boys jumped for the river--both of them hurt--and as they
swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and
singing out, "Kill them, kill them!" It made me so sick I most fell out
of the tree. I ain't a-going to tell ALL that happened--it would make me
sick again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn't ever come ashore that
night to see such things. I ain't ever going to get shut of them--lots
of times I dream about them.
I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down.
Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the
trouble was still a-going on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my
mind I wouldn't ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was
to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss
Sophia was to meet Harney somewheres at half-past two and run off; and I
judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way
she acted, and then maybe he would a locked her up, and this awful mess
wouldn't ever happened.
When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a
piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and
tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces, and
got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering up
Buck's face, for he was mighty good to me.
It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through
the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn't on his island, so I tramped
off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot to
jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone! My
souls, but I was scared! I couldn't get my breath for most a minute.
Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot from me says:
"Good lan'! is dat you, honey? Doan' make no noise."
It was Jim's voice--nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the
bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was
so glad to see me. He says:
"Laws bless you, chile, I 'uz right down sho' you's dead agin. Jack's
been heah; he say he reck'n you's ben shot, kase you didn' come home no
mo'; so I's jes' dis minute a startin' de raf' down towards de mouf er de
crick, so's to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack comes
agin en tells me for certain you IS dead. Lawsy, I's mighty glad to git
you back again, honey."
I says:
"All right--that's mighty good; they won't find me, and they'll think
I've been killed, and floated down the river--there's something up there
that 'll help them think so--so don't you lose no time, Jim, but just
shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can."
I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the
middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and
judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn't had a bite to eat
since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and
pork and cabbage and greens--there ain't nothing in the world so good
when it's cooked right--and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a
good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was
Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn't no home like a
raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a
raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
CHAPTER XIX.
TWO or three days and nights went by; I reckon I might say they swum by,
they slid along so quiet and smooth and lovely. Here is the way we put
in the time. It was a monstrous big river down there--sometimes a mile
and a half wide; we run nights, and laid up and hid daytimes; soon as
night was most gone we stopped navigating and tied up--nearly always in
the dead water under a towhead; and then cut young cottonwoods and
willows, and hid the raft with them. Then we set out the lines. Next we
slid into the river and had a swim, so as to freshen up and cool off;
then we set down on the sandy bottom where the water was about knee deep,
and watched the daylight come. Not a sound anywheres--perfectly still
--just like the whole world was asleep, only sometimes the bullfrogs
a-cluttering, maybe. The first thing to see, looking away over the water,
was a kind of dull line--that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't
make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness
spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black
any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever
so far away--trading scows, and such things; and long black streaks
--rafts; sometimes you could hear a sweep screaking; or jumbled up voices,
it was so still, and sounds come so far; and by and by you could see a
streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's
a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak
look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the
east reddens up, and the river, and you make out a log-cabin in the edge
of the woods, away on the bank on t'other side of the river, being a
woodyard, likely, and piled by them cheats so you can throw a dog through
it anywheres; then the nice breeze springs up, and comes fanning you from
over there, so cool and fresh and sweet to smell on account of the woods
and the flowers; but sometimes not that way, because they've left dead
fish laying around, gars and such, and they do get pretty rank; and next
you've got the full day, and everything smiling in the sun, and the
song-birds just going it!
A little smoke couldn't be noticed now, so we would take some fish off of
the lines and cook up a hot breakfast. And afterwards we would watch the
lonesomeness of the river, and kind of lazy along, and by and by lazy off
to sleep. Wake up by and by, and look to see what done it, and maybe see
a steamboat coughing along up-stream, so far off towards the other side
you couldn't tell nothing about her only whether she was a stern-wheel or
side-wheel; then for about an hour there wouldn't be nothing to hear nor
nothing to see--just solid lonesomeness. Next you'd see a raft sliding
by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping, because they're
most always doing it on a raft; you'd see the axe flash and come down
--you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time
it's above the man's head then you hear the K'CHUNK!--it had took all
that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying
around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the
rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats
wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear
them talking and cussing and laughing--heard them plain; but we couldn't
see no sign of them; it made you feel crawly; it was like spirits
carrying on that way in the air. Jim said he believed it was spirits;
but I says:
"No; spirits wouldn't say, 'Dern the dern fog.'"
Soon as it was night out we shoved; when we got her out to about the
middle we let her alone, and let her float wherever the current wanted
her to; then we lit the pipes, and dangled our legs in the water, and
talked about all kinds of things--we was always naked, day and night,
whenever the mosquitoes would let us--the new clothes Buck's folks made
for me was too good to be comfortable, and besides I didn't go much on
clothes, nohow.
Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest
time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a
spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water
you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe
you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts.
It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled
with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and
discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he
allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would
have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could a LAID them;
well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it,
because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done.
We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim
allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.
Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the
dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of
her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful
pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and
her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her
waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the
raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't
tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.
After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or three
hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows. These
sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant morning was
coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away.
One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to
the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a mile
up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get some
berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed
the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as
they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was
after anybody I judged it was ME--or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out
from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out
and begged me to save their lives--said they hadn't been doing nothing,
and was being chased for it--said there was men and dogs a-coming. They
wanted to jump right in, but I says:
"Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got time
to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you
take to the water and wade down to me and get in--that'll throw the dogs
off the scent."
They done it, and soon as they was aboard I lit out for our towhead, and
in about five or ten minutes we heard the dogs and the men away off,
shouting. We heard them come along towards the crick, but couldn't see
them; they seemed to stop and fool around a while; then, as we got
further and further away all the time, we couldn't hardly hear them at
all; by the time we had left a mile of woods behind us and struck the
river, everything was quiet, and we paddled over to the towhead and hid
in the cottonwoods and was safe.
One of these fellows was about seventy or upwards, and had a bald head
and very gray whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a
greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed
into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses--no, he only had one. He had
an old long-tailed blue jeans coat with slick brass buttons flung over
his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.
The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After
breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out
was that these chaps didn't know one another.
"What got you into trouble?" says the baldhead to t'other chap.
"Well, I'd been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth--and
it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it--but I
stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of
sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you
told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I
told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out WITH you.
That's the whole yarn--what's yourn?
"Well, I'd ben a-running' a little temperance revival thar 'bout a week,
and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin' it
mighty warm for the rummies, I TELL you, and takin' as much as five or
six dollars a night--ten cents a head, children and niggers free--and
business a-growin' all the time, when somehow or another a little report
got around last night that I had a way of puttin' in my time with a
private jug on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin', and told
me the people was getherin' on the quiet with their dogs and horses, and
they'd be along pretty soon and give me 'bout half an hour's start, and
then run me down if they could; and if they got me they'd tar and feather
me and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn't wait for no breakfast--I warn't
hungry."
"Old man," said the young one, "I reckon we might double-team it
together; what do you think?"
"I ain't undisposed. What's your line--mainly?"
"Jour printer by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theater-actor
--tragedy, you know; take a turn to mesmerism and phrenology when there's a
chance; teach singing-geography school for a change; sling a lecture
sometimes--oh, I do lots of things--most anything that comes handy, so it
ain't work. What's your lay?"
"I've done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin' on o'
hands is my best holt--for cancer and paralysis, and sich things; and I
k'n tell a fortune pretty good when I've got somebody along to find out
the facts for me. Preachin's my line, too, and workin' camp-meetin's,
and missionaryin' around."
Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh
and says:
"Alas!"
"What 're you alassin' about?" says the bald-head.
"To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded
down into such company." And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with
a rag.
"Dern your skin, ain't the company good enough for you?" says the
baldhead, pretty pert and uppish.
"Yes, it IS good enough for me; it's as good as I deserve; for who
fetched me so low when I was so high? I did myself. I don't blame YOU,
gentlemen--far from it; I don't blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let
the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a grave somewhere
for me. The world may go on just as it's always done, and take everything
from me--loved ones, property, everything; but it can't take that.
Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart
will be at rest." He went on a-wiping.
"Drot your pore broken heart," says the baldhead; "what are you heaving
your pore broken heart at US f'r? WE hain't done nothing."
"No, I know you haven't. I ain't blaming you, gentlemen. I brought
myself down--yes, I did it myself. It's right I should suffer--perfectly
right--I don't make any moan."
"Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?"
"Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes--let it pass
--'tis no matter. The secret of my birth--"
"The secret of your birth! Do you mean to say--"
"Gentlemen," says the young man, very solemn, "I will reveal it to you,
for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!"
Jim's eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too.
Then the baldhead says: "No! you can't mean it?"
"Yes. My great-grandfather, eldest son of the Duke of Bridgewater, fled
to this country about the end of the last century, to breathe the pure
air of freedom; married here, and died, leaving a son, his own father
dying about the same time. The second son of the late duke seized the
titles and estates--the infant real duke was ignored. I am the lineal
descendant of that infant--I am the rightful Duke of Bridgewater; and
here am I, forlorn, torn from my high estate, hunted of men, despised by
the cold world, ragged, worn, heart-broken, and degraded to the
companionship of felons on a raft!"
Jim pitied him ever so much, and so did I. We tried to comfort him, but
he said it warn't much use, he couldn't be much comforted; said if we was
a mind to acknowledge him, that would do him more good than most anything
else; so we said we would, if he would tell us how. He said we ought to
bow when we spoke to him, and say "Your Grace," or "My Lord," or "Your
Lordship"--and he wouldn't mind it if we called him plain
"Bridgewater," which, he said, was a title anyway, and not a name; and
one of us ought to wait on him at dinner, and do any little thing for him
he wanted done.
Well, that was all easy, so we done it. All through dinner Jim stood
around and waited on him, and says, "Will yo' Grace have some o' dis or
some o' dat?" and so on, and a body could see it was mighty pleasing to
him.
But the old man got pretty silent by and by--didn't have much to say, and
didn't look pretty comfortable over all that petting that was going on
around that duke. He seemed to have something on his mind. So, along in
the afternoon, he says:
"Looky here, Bilgewater," he says, "I'm nation sorry for you, but you
ain't the only person that's had troubles like that."
"No?"
"No you ain't. You ain't the only person that's ben snaked down
wrongfully out'n a high place."
"Alas!"
"No, you ain't the only person that's had a secret of his birth." And,
by jings, HE begins to cry.
"Hold! What do you mean?"
"Bilgewater, kin I trust you?" says the old man, still sort of sobbing.
"To the bitter death!" He took the old man by the hand and squeezed it,
and says, "That secret of your being: speak!"
"Bilgewater, I am the late Dauphin!"
You bet you, Jim and me stared this time. Then the duke says:
"You are what?"
"Yes, my friend, it is too true--your eyes is lookin' at this very moment
on the pore disappeared Dauphin, Looy the Seventeen, son of Looy the
Sixteen and Marry Antonette."
"You! At your age! No! You mean you're the late Charlemagne; you must
be six or seven hundred years old, at the very least."
"Trouble has done it, Bilgewater, trouble has done it; trouble has brung
these gray hairs and this premature balditude. Yes, gentlemen, you see
before you, in blue jeans and misery, the wanderin', exiled, trampled-on,
and sufferin' rightful King of France."
Well, he cried and took on so that me and Jim didn't know hardly what to
do, we was so sorry--and so glad and proud we'd got him with us, too. So
we set in, like we done before with the duke, and tried to comfort HIM.
But he said it warn't no use, nothing but to be dead and done with it all
could do him any good; though he said it often made him feel easier and
better for a while if people treated him according to his rights, and got
down on one knee to speak to him, and always called him "Your Majesty,"
and waited on him first at meals, and didn't set down in his presence
till he asked them. So Jim and me set to majestying him, and doing this
and that and t'other for him, and standing up till he told us we might
set down. This done him heaps of good, and so he got cheerful and
comfortable. But the duke kind of soured on him, and didn't look a bit
satisfied with the way things was going; still, the king acted real
friendly towards him, and said the duke's great-grandfather and all the
other Dukes of Bilgewater was a good deal thought of by HIS father, and
was allowed to come to the palace considerable; but the duke stayed huffy
a good while, till by and by the king says:
"Like as not we got to be together a blamed long time on this h-yer raft,
Bilgewater, and so what's the use o' your bein' sour? It 'll only make
things oncomfortable. It ain't my fault I warn't born a duke, it ain't
your fault you warn't born a king--so what's the use to worry? Make the
best o' things the way you find 'em, says I--that's my motto. This ain't
no bad thing that we've struck here--plenty grub and an easy life--come,
give us your hand, duke, and le's all be friends."
The duke done it, and Jim and me was pretty glad to see it. It took away
all the uncomfortableness and we felt mighty good over it, because it
would a been a miserable business to have any unfriendliness on the raft;
for what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be
satisfied, and feel right and kind towards the others.
It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no
kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds. But I
never said nothing, never let on; kept it to myself; it's the best way;
then you don't have no quarrels, and don't get into no trouble. If they
wanted us to call them kings and dukes, I hadn't no objections, 'long as
it would keep peace in the family; and it warn't no use to tell Jim, so I
didn't tell him. If I never learnt nothing else out of pap, I learnt
that the best way to get along with his kind of people is to let them
have their own way.
CHAPTER XX.
THEY asked us considerable many questions; wanted to know what we covered
up the raft that way for, and laid by in the daytime instead of running
--was Jim a runaway nigger? Says I:
"Goodness sakes! would a runaway nigger run SOUTH?"
No, they allowed he wouldn't. I had to account for things some way, so I
says:
"My folks was living in Pike County, in Missouri, where I was born, and
they all died off but me and pa and my brother Ike. Pa, he 'lowed he'd
break up and go down and live with Uncle Ben, who's got a little
one-horse place on the river, forty-four mile below Orleans. Pa was
pretty poor, and had some debts; so when he'd squared up there warn't
nothing left but sixteen dollars and our nigger, Jim. That warn't enough
to take us fourteen hundred mile, deck passage nor no other way. Well,
when the river rose pa had a streak of luck one day; he ketched this
piece of a raft; so we reckoned we'd go down to Orleans on it. Pa's luck
didn't hold out; a steamboat run over the forrard corner of the raft one
night, and we all went overboard and dove under the wheel; Jim and me
come up all right, but pa was drunk, and Ike was only four years old, so
they never come up no more. Well, for the next day or two we had
considerable trouble, because people was always coming out in skiffs and
trying to take Jim away from me, saying they believed he was a runaway
nigger. We don't run daytimes no more now; nights they don't bother us."
The duke says:
"Leave me alone to cipher out a way so we can run in the daytime if we
want to. I'll think the thing over--I'll invent a plan that'll fix it.
We'll let it alone for to-day, because of course we don't want to go by
that town yonder in daylight--it mightn't be healthy."
Towards night it begun to darken up and look like rain; the heat
lightning was squirting around low down in the sky, and the leaves was
beginning to shiver--it was going to be pretty ugly, it was easy to see
that. So the duke and the king went to overhauling our wigwam, to see
what the beds was like. My bed was a straw tick better than Jim's, which
was a corn-shuck tick; there's always cobs around about in a shuck tick,
and they poke into you and hurt; and when you roll over the dry shucks
sound like you was rolling over in a pile of dead leaves; it makes such a
rustling that you wake up. Well, the duke allowed he would take my bed;
but the king allowed he wouldn't. He says:
"I should a reckoned the difference in rank would a sejested to you that
a corn-shuck bed warn't just fitten for me to sleep on. Your Grace 'll
take the shuck bed yourself."
Jim and me was in a sweat again for a minute, being afraid there was
going to be some more trouble amongst them; so we was pretty glad when
the duke says:
"'Tis my fate to be always ground into the mire under the iron heel of
oppression. Misfortune has broken my once haughty spirit; I yield, I
submit; 'tis my fate. I am alone in the world--let me suffer; can bear
it."
We got away as soon as it was good and dark. The king told us to stand
well out towards the middle of the river, and not show a light till we
got a long ways below the town. We come in sight of the little bunch of
lights by and by--that was the town, you know--and slid by, about a half
a mile out, all right. When we was three-quarters of a mile below we
hoisted up our signal lantern; and about ten o'clock it come on to rain
and blow and thunder and lighten like everything; so the king told us to
both stay on watch till the weather got better; then him and the duke
crawled into the wigwam and turned in for the night. It was my watch
below till twelve, but I wouldn't a turned in anyway if I'd had a bed,
because a body don't see such a storm as that every day in the week, not
by a long sight. My souls, how the wind did scream along! And every
second or two there'd come a glare that lit up the white-caps for a half
a mile around, and you'd see the islands looking dusty through the rain,
and the trees thrashing around in the wind; then comes a H-WHACK!--bum!
bum! bumble-umble-um-bum-bum-bum-bum--and the thunder would go rumbling
and grumbling away, and quit--and then RIP comes another flash and
another sockdolager. The waves most washed me off the raft sometimes,
but I hadn't any clothes on, and didn't mind. We didn't have no trouble
about snags; the lightning was glaring and flittering around so constant
that we could see them plenty soon enough to throw her head this way or
that and miss them.
I had the middle watch, you know, but I was pretty sleepy by that time,
so Jim he said he would stand the first half of it for me; he was always
mighty good that way, Jim was. I crawled into the wigwam, but the king
and the duke had their legs sprawled around so there warn't no show for
me; so I laid outside--I didn't mind the rain, because it was warm, and
the waves warn't running so high now. About two they come up again,
though, and Jim was going to call me; but he changed his mind, because he
reckoned they warn't high enough yet to do any harm; but he was mistaken
about that, for pretty soon all of a sudden along comes a regular ripper
and washed me overboard. It most killed Jim a-laughing. He was the
easiest nigger to laugh that ever was, anyway.
I took the watch, and Jim he laid down and snored away; and by and by the
storm let up for good and all; and the first cabin-light that showed I
rousted him out, and we slid the raft into hiding quarters for the day.
The king got out an old ratty deck of cards after breakfast, and him and
the duke played seven-up a while, five cents a game. Then they got tired
of it, and allowed they would "lay out a campaign," as they called it.
The duke went down into his carpet-bag, and fetched up a lot of little
printed bills and read them out loud. One bill said, "The celebrated Dr.
Armand de Montalban, of Paris," would "lecture on the Science of
Phrenology" at such and such a place, on the blank day of blank, at ten
cents admission, and "furnish charts of character at twenty-five cents
apiece." The duke said that was HIM. In another bill he was the
"world-renowned Shakespearian tragedian, Garrick the Younger, of Drury
Lane, London." In other bills he had a lot of other names and done other
wonderful things, like finding water and gold with a "divining-rod,"
"dissipating witch spells," and so on. By and by he says:
"But the histrionic muse is the darling. Have you ever trod the boards,
Royalty?"
"No," says the king.
"You shall, then, before you're three days older, Fallen Grandeur," says
the duke. "The first good town we come to we'll hire a hall and do the
sword fight in Richard III. and the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet.
How does that strike you?"
"I'm in, up to the hub, for anything that will pay, Bilgewater; but, you
see, I don't know nothing about play-actin', and hain't ever seen much of
it. I was too small when pap used to have 'em at the palace. Do you
reckon you can learn me?"
"Easy!"
"All right. I'm jist a-freezn' for something fresh, anyway. Le's
commence right away."
So the duke he told him all about who Romeo was and who Juliet was, and
said he was used to being Romeo, so the king could be Juliet.
"But if Juliet's such a young gal, duke, my peeled head and my white
whiskers is goin' to look oncommon odd on her, maybe."
"No, don't you worry; these country jakes won't ever think of that.
Besides, you know, you'll be in costume, and that makes all the
difference in the world; Juliet's in a balcony, enjoying the moonlight
before she goes to bed, and she's got on her night-gown and her ruffled
nightcap. Here are the costumes for the parts."
He got out two or three curtain-calico suits, which he said was meedyevil
armor for Richard III. and t'other chap, and a long white cotton
nightshirt and a ruffled nightcap to match. The king was satisfied; so
the duke got out his book and read the parts over in the most splendid
spread-eagle way, prancing around and acting at the same time, to show
how it had got to be done; then he give the book to the king and told him
to get his part by heart.
There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and
after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run
in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would
go down to the town and fix that thing. The king allowed he would go,
too, and see if he couldn't strike something. We was out of coffee, so
Jim said I better go along with them in the canoe and get some.
When we got there there warn't nobody stirring; streets empty, and
perfectly dead and still, like Sunday. We found a sick nigger sunning
himself in a back yard, and he said everybody that warn't too young or
too sick or too old was gone to camp-meeting, about two mile back in the
woods. The king got the directions, and allowed he'd go and work that
camp-meeting for all it was worth, and I might go, too.
The duke said what he was after was a printing-office. We found it; a
little bit of a concern, up over a carpenter shop--carpenters and
printers all gone to the meeting, and no doors locked. It was a dirty,
littered-up place, and had ink marks, and handbills with pictures of
horses and runaway niggers on them, all over the walls. The duke shed
his coat and said he was all right now. So me and the king lit out for
the camp-meeting.
We got there in about a half an hour fairly dripping, for it was a most
awful hot day. There was as much as a thousand people there from twenty
mile around. The woods was full of teams and wagons, hitched
everywheres, feeding out of the wagon-troughs and stomping to keep off
the flies. There was sheds made out of poles and roofed over with
branches, where they had lemonade and gingerbread to sell, and piles of
watermelons and green corn and such-like truck.
The preaching was going on under the same kinds of sheds, only they was
bigger and held crowds of people. The benches was made out of outside
slabs of logs, with holes bored in the round side to drive sticks into
for legs. They didn't have no backs. The preachers had high platforms to
stand on at one end of the sheds. The women had on sun-bonnets; and some
had linsey-woolsey frocks, some gingham ones, and a few of the young ones
had on calico. Some of the young men was barefooted, and some of the
children didn't have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt. Some of
the old women was knitting, and some of the young folks was courting on
the sly.
The first shed we come to the preacher was lining out a hymn. He lined
out two lines, everybody sung it, and it was kind of grand to hear it,
there was so many of them and they done it in such a rousing way; then he
lined out two more for them to sing--and so on. The people woke up more
and more, and sung louder and louder; and towards the end some begun to
groan, and some begun to shout. Then the preacher begun to preach, and
begun in earnest, too; and went weaving first to one side of the platform
and then the other, and then a-leaning down over the front of it, with
his arms and his body going all the time, and shouting his words out with
all his might; and every now and then he would hold up his Bible and
spread it open, and kind of pass it around this way and that, shouting,
"It's the brazen serpent in the wilderness! Look upon it and live!" And
people would shout out, "Glory!--A-a-MEN!" And so he went on, and the
people groaning and crying and saying amen:
"Oh, come to the mourners' bench! come, black with sin! (AMEN!) come,
sick and sore! (AMEN!) come, lame and halt and blind! (AMEN!) come, pore
and needy, sunk in shame! (A-A-MEN!) come, all that's worn and soiled and
suffering!--come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart! come
in your rags and sin and dirt! the waters that cleanse is free, the door
of heaven stands open--oh, enter in and be at rest!" (A-A-MEN! GLORY,
GLORY HALLELUJAH!)
And so on. You couldn't make out what the preacher said any more, on
account of the shouting and crying. Folks got up everywheres in the
crowd, and worked their way just by main strength to the mourners' bench,
with the tears running down their faces; and when all the mourners had
got up there to the front benches in a crowd, they sung and shouted and
flung themselves down on the straw, just crazy and wild.
Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him
over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and
the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He
told them he was a pirate--been a pirate for thirty years out in the
Indian Ocean--and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in
a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to
goodness he'd been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat
without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that
ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the
first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right
off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his
life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it
better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that
ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without
money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he
would say to him, "Don't you thank me, don't you give me no credit; it
all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting, natural
brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the
truest friend a pirate ever had!"
And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings
out, "Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!" Well, a half
a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, "Let HIM pass the
hat around!" Then everybody said it, the preacher too.
So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes,
and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so
good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the
prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would
up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he
always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or
six times--and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to
live in their houses, and said they'd think it was an honor; but he said
as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn't do no good, and
besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to
work on the pirates.
When we got back to the raft and he come to count up he found he had
collected eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents. And then he had
fetched away a three-gallon jug of whisky, too, that he found under a
wagon when he was starting home through the woods. The king said, take
it all around, it laid over any day he'd ever put in in the missionarying
line. He said it warn't no use talking, heathens don't amount to shucks
alongside of pirates to work a camp-meeting with.
The duke was thinking HE'D been doing pretty well till the king come to
show up, but after that he didn't think so so much. He had set up and
printed off two little jobs for farmers in that printing-office--horse
bills--and took the money, four dollars. And he had got in ten
dollars' worth of advertisements for the paper, which he said he would
put in for four dollars if they would pay in advance--so they done it.
The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three
subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on condition of them paying him in
advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he
said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as
he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash. He set up a little
piece of poetry, which he made, himself, out of his own head--three
verses--kind of sweet and saddish--the name of it was, "Yes, crush, cold
world, this breaking heart"--and he left that all set up and ready to
print in the paper, and didn't charge nothing for it. Well, he took in
nine dollars and a half, and said he'd done a pretty square day's work
for it.
Then he showed us another little job he'd printed and hadn't charged for,
because it was for us. It had a picture of a runaway nigger with a
bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and "$200 reward" under it. The
reading was all about Jim, and just described him to a dot. It said he
run away from St. Jacques' plantation, forty mile below New Orleans, last
winter, and likely went north, and whoever would catch him and send him
back he could have the reward and expenses.
"Now," says the duke, "after to-night we can run in the daytime if we
want to. Whenever we see anybody coming we can tie Jim hand and foot
with a rope, and lay him in the wigwam and show this handbill and say we
captured him up the river, and were too poor to travel on a steamboat, so
we got this little raft on credit from our friends and are going down to
get the reward. Handcuffs and chains would look still better on Jim, but
it wouldn't go well with the story of us being so poor. Too much like
jewelry. Ropes are the correct thing--we must preserve the unities, as
we say on the boards."
We all said the duke was pretty smart, and there couldn't be no trouble
about running daytimes. We judged we could make miles enough that night
to get out of the reach of the powwow we reckoned the duke's work in the
printing office was going to make in that little town; then we could boom
right along if we wanted to.
We laid low and kept still, and never shoved out till nearly ten o'clock;
then we slid by, pretty wide away from the town, and didn't hoist our
lantern till we was clear out of sight of it.
When Jim called me to take the watch at four in the morning, he says:
"Huck, does you reck'n we gwyne to run acrost any mo' kings on dis trip?"
"No," I says, "I reckon not."
"Well," says he, "dat's all right, den. I doan' mine one er two kings,
but dat's enough. Dis one's powerful drunk, en de duke ain' much
better."
I found Jim had been trying to get him to talk French, so he could hear
what it was like; but he said he had been in this country so long, and
had so much trouble, he'd forgot it.
CHAPTER XXI.
IT was after sun-up now, but we went right on and didn't tie up. The
king and the duke turned out by and by looking pretty rusty; but after
they'd jumped overboard and took a swim it chippered them up a good deal.
After breakfast the king he took a seat on the corner of the raft, and
pulled off his boots and rolled up his britches, and let his legs dangle
in the water, so as to be comfortable, and lit his pipe, and went to
getting his Romeo and Juliet by heart. When he had got it pretty good
him and the duke begun to practice it together. The duke had to learn
him over and over again how to say every speech; and he made him sigh,
and put his hand on his heart, and after a while he said he done it
pretty well; "only," he says, "you mustn't bellow out ROMEO! that way,
like a bull--you must say it soft and sick and languishy, so--R-o-o-meo!
that is the idea; for Juliet's a dear sweet mere child of a girl, you
know, and she doesn't bray like a jackass."
Well, next they got out a couple of long swords that the duke made out of
oak laths, and begun to practice the sword fight--the duke called himself
Richard III.; and the way they laid on and pranced around the raft was
grand to see. But by and by the king tripped and fell overboard, and
after that they took a rest, and had a talk about all kinds of adventures
they'd had in other times along the river.
After dinner the duke says:
"Well, Capet, we'll want to make this a first-class show, you know, so I
guess we'll add a little more to it. We want a little something to
answer encores with, anyway."
"What's onkores, Bilgewater?"
The duke told him, and then says:
"I'll answer by doing the Highland fling or the sailor's hornpipe; and
you--well, let me see--oh, I've got it--you can do Hamlet's soliloquy."
"Hamlet's which?"
"Hamlet's soliloquy, you know; the most celebrated thing in Shakespeare.
Ah, it's sublime, sublime! Always fetches the house. I haven't got it
in the book--I've only got one volume--but I reckon I can piece it out
from memory. I'll just walk up and down a minute, and see if I can call
it back from recollection's vaults."
So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and frowning horrible every
now and then; then he would hoist up his eyebrows; next he would squeeze
his hand on his forehead and stagger back and kind of moan; next he would
sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a tear. It was beautiful to see him.
By and by he got it. He told us to give attention. Then he strikes a
most noble attitude, with one leg shoved forwards, and his arms stretched
away up, and his head tilted back, looking up at the sky; and then he
begins to rip and rave and grit his teeth; and after that, all through
his speech, he howled, and spread around, and swelled up his chest, and
just knocked the spots out of any acting ever I see before. This is the
speech--I learned it, easy enough, while he was learning it to the king:
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so
long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to
Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the
innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling
the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I
would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The
oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The law's delay, and the
quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the
night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that
the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes
forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like
the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care, And all the clouds
that lowered o'er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn
awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be
wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble
jaws, But get thee to a nunnery--go!
Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so he
could do it first-rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and when
he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the way he
would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it off.
The first chance we got the duke he had some showbills printed; and after
that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a most
uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but sword fighting and
rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the time. One morning,
when we was pretty well down the State of Arkansaw, we come in sight of a
little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied up about three-quarters
of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick which was shut in like a
tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us but Jim took the canoe and
went down there to see if there was any chance in that place for our
show.
We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that
afternoon, and the country people was already beginning to come in, in
all kinds of old shackly wagons, and on horses. The circus would leave
before night, so our show would have a pretty good chance. The duke he
hired the courthouse, and we went around and stuck up our bills. They
read like this:
Shaksperean Revival ! ! !
Wonderful Attraction!
For One Night Only!
The world renowned tragedians, David Garrick the Younger, of Drury Lane
Theatre London, and Edmund Kean the elder, of the Royal Haymarket
Theatre, Whitechapel, Pudding Lane, Piccadilly, London, and the Royal
Continental Theatres, in their sublime Shaksperean Spectacle entitled
TheBalcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet ! ! !
Romeo...................Mr. Garrick
Juliet..................Mr. Kean
Assisted by the whole strength of the company!
New costumes, new scenes, new appointments!
Also: The thrilling, masterly, and blood-curdling
Broad-sword conflict In Richard III. ! ! !
Richard III.............Mr. Garrick
Richmond................Mr. Kean
Also: (by special request) Hamlet's Immortal Soliloquy ! !
By The Illustrious Kean! Done by him 300 consecutive nights in Paris!
For One Night Only, On account of imperative European engagements!
Admission 25 cents; children and servants, 10 cents.
Then we went loafing around town. The stores and houses was most all
old, shackly, dried up frame concerns that hadn't ever been painted; they
was set up three or four foot above ground on stilts, so as to be out of
reach of the water when the river was over-flowed. The houses had little
gardens around them, but they didn't seem to raise hardly anything in
them but jimpson-weeds, and sunflowers, and ash piles, and old curled-up
boots and shoes, and pieces of bottles, and rags, and played-out tinware.
The fences was made of different kinds of boards, nailed on at different
times; and they leaned every which way, and had gates that didn't generly
have but one hinge--a leather one. Some of the fences had been
white-washed some time or another, but the duke said it was in Clumbus'
time, like enough. There was generly hogs in the garden, and people
driving them out.
All the stores was along one street. They had white domestic awnings in
front, and the country people hitched their horses to the awning-posts.
There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on
them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing
tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching--a mighty ornery lot.
They generly had on yellow straw hats most as wide as an umbrella, but
didn't wear no coats nor waistcoats, they called one another Bill, and
Buck, and Hank, and Joe, and Andy, and talked lazy and drawly, and used
considerable many cuss words. There was as many as one loafer leaning up
against every awning-post, and he most always had his hands in his
britches-pockets, except when he fetched them out to lend a chaw of
tobacco or scratch. What a body was hearing amongst them all the time
was:
"Gimme a chaw 'v tobacker, Hank."
"Cain't; I hain't got but one chaw left. Ask Bill."
Maybe Bill he gives him a chaw; maybe he lies and says he ain't got none.
Some of them kinds of loafers never has a cent in the world, nor a chaw
of tobacco of their own. They get all their chawing by borrowing; they
say to a fellow, "I wisht you'd len' me a chaw, Jack, I jist this minute
give Ben Thompson the last chaw I had"--which is a lie pretty much
everytime; it don't fool nobody but a stranger; but Jack ain't no
stranger, so he says:
"YOU give him a chaw, did you? So did your sister's cat's grandmother.
You pay me back the chaws you've awready borry'd off'n me, Lafe Buckner,
then I'll loan you one or two ton of it, and won't charge you no back
intrust, nuther."
"Well, I DID pay you back some of it wunst."
"Yes, you did--'bout six chaws. You borry'd store tobacker and paid back
nigger-head."
Store tobacco is flat black plug, but these fellows mostly chaws the
natural leaf twisted. When they borrow a chaw they don't generly cut it
off with a knife, but set the plug in between their teeth, and gnaw with
their teeth and tug at the plug with their hands till they get it in two;
then sometimes the one that owns the tobacco looks mournful at it when
it's handed back, and says, sarcastic:
"Here, gimme the CHAW, and you take the PLUG."
All the streets and lanes was just mud; they warn't nothing else BUT mud
--mud as black as tar and nigh about a foot deep in some places, and two
or three inches deep in ALL the places. The hogs loafed and grunted
around everywheres. You'd see a muddy sow and a litter of pigs come
lazying along the street and whollop herself right down in the way, where
folks had to walk around her, and she'd stretch out and shut her eyes and
wave her ears whilst the pigs was milking her, and look as happy as if
she was on salary. And pretty soon you'd hear a loafer sing out, "Hi! SO
boy! sick him, Tige!" and away the sow would go, squealing most horrible,
with a dog or two swinging to each ear, and three or four dozen more
a-coming; and then you would see all the loafers get up and watch the thing
out of sight, and laugh at the fun and look grateful for the noise. Then
they'd settle back again till there was a dog fight. There couldn't
anything wake them up all over, and make them happy all over, like a dog
fight--unless it might be putting turpentine on a stray dog and setting
fire to him, or tying a tin pan to his tail and see him run himself to
death.
On the river front some of the houses was sticking out over the bank, and
they was bowed and bent, and about ready to tumble in, The people had
moved out of them. The bank was caved away under one corner of some
others, and that corner was hanging over. People lived in them yet, but
it was dangersome, because sometimes a strip of land as wide as a house
caves in at a time. Sometimes a belt of land a quarter of a mile deep
will start in and cave along and cave along till it all caves into the
river in one summer. Such a town as that has to be always moving back,
and back, and back, because the river's always gnawing at it.
The nearer it got to noon that day the thicker and thicker was the wagons
and horses in the streets, and more coming all the time. Families
fetched their dinners with them from the country, and eat them in the
wagons. There was considerable whisky drinking going on, and I seen
three fights. By and by somebody sings out:
"Here comes old Boggs!--in from the country for his little old monthly
drunk; here he comes, boys!"
All the loafers looked glad; I reckoned they was used to having fun out
of Boggs. One of them says:
"Wonder who he's a-gwyne to chaw up this time. If he'd a-chawed up all
the men he's ben a-gwyne to chaw up in the last twenty year he'd have
considerable ruputation now."
Another one says, "I wisht old Boggs 'd threaten me, 'cuz then I'd know I
warn't gwyne to die for a thousan' year."
Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an
Injun, and singing out:
"Cler the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is
a-gwyne to raise."
He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year
old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him
and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay
them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd
come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat
first, and spoon vittles to top off on."
He see me, and rode up and says:
"Whar'd you come f'm, boy? You prepared to die?"
Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says:
"He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's
drunk. He's the best naturedest old fool in Arkansaw--never hurt nobody,
drunk nor sober."
Boggs rode up before the biggest store in town, and bent his head down so
he could see under the curtain of the awning and yells:
"Come out here, Sherburn! Come out and meet the man you've swindled.
You're the houn' I'm after, and I'm a-gwyne to have you, too!"
And so he went on, calling Sherburn everything he could lay his tongue
to, and the whole street packed with people listening and laughing and
going on. By and by a proud-looking man about fifty-five--and he was a
heap the best dressed man in that town, too--steps out of the store, and
the crowd drops back on each side to let him come. He says to Boggs,
mighty ca'm and slow--he says:
"I'm tired of this, but I'll endure it till one o'clock. Till one
o'clock, mind--no longer. If you open your mouth against me only once
after that time you can't travel so far but I will find you."
Then he turns and goes in. The crowd looked mighty sober; nobody
stirred, and there warn't no more laughing. Boggs rode off blackguarding
Sherburn as loud as he could yell, all down the street; and pretty soon
back he comes and stops before the store, still keeping it up. Some men
crowded around him and tried to get him to shut up, but he wouldn't; they
told him it would be one o'clock in about fifteen minutes, and so he MUST
go home--he must go right away. But it didn't do no good. He cussed
away with all his might, and throwed his hat down in the mud and rode
over it, and pretty soon away he went a-raging down the street again,
with his gray hair a-flying. Everybody that could get a chance at him
tried their best to coax him off of his horse so they could lock him up
and get him sober; but it warn't no use--up the street he would tear
again, and give Sherburn another cussing. By and by somebody says:
"Go for his daughter!--quick, go for his daughter; sometimes he'll listen
to her. If anybody can persuade him, she can."
So somebody started on a run. I walked down street a ways and stopped.
In about five or ten minutes here comes Boggs again, but not on his
horse. He was a-reeling across the street towards me, bare-headed, with
a friend on both sides of him a-holt of his arms and hurrying him along.
He was quiet, and looked uneasy; and he warn't hanging back any, but was
doing some of the hurrying himself. Somebody sings out:
"Boggs!"
I looked over there to see who said it, and it was that Colonel Sherburn.
He was standing perfectly still in the street, and had a pistol raised in
his right hand--not aiming it, but holding it out with the barrel tilted
up towards the sky. The same second I see a young girl coming on the
run, and two men with her. Boggs and the men turned round to see who
called him, and when they see the pistol the men jumped to one side, and
the pistol-barrel come down slow and steady to a level--both barrels
cocked. Boggs throws up both of his hands and says, "O Lord, don't
shoot!" Bang! goes the first shot, and he staggers back, clawing at the
air--bang! goes the second one, and he tumbles backwards on to the
ground, heavy and solid, with his arms spread out. That young girl
screamed out and comes rushing, and down she throws herself on her
father, crying, and saying, "Oh, he's killed him, he's killed him!" The
crowd closed up around them, and shouldered and jammed one another, with
their necks stretched, trying to see, and people on the inside trying to
shove them back and shouting, "Back, back! give him air, give him air!"
Colonel Sherburn he tossed his pistol on to the ground, and turned around
on his heels and walked off.
They took Boggs to a little drug store, the crowd pressing around just
the same, and the whole town following, and I rushed and got a good place
at the window, where I was close to him and could see in. They laid him
on the floor and put one large Bible under his head, and opened another
one and spread it on his breast; but they tore open his shirt first, and
I seen where one of the bullets went in. He made about a dozen long
gasps, his breast lifting the Bible up when he drawed in his breath, and
letting it down again when he breathed it out--and after that he laid
still; he was dead. Then they pulled his daughter away from him,
screaming and crying, and took her off. She was about sixteen, and very
sweet and gentle looking, but awful pale and scared.
Well, pretty soon the whole town was there, squirming and scrouging and
pushing and shoving to get at the window and have a look, but people that
had the places wouldn't give them up, and folks behind them was saying
all the time, "Say, now, you've looked enough, you fellows; 'tain't right
and 'tain't fair for you to stay thar all the time, and never give nobody
a chance; other folks has their rights as well as you."
There was considerable jawing back, so I slid out, thinking maybe there
was going to be trouble. The streets was full, and everybody was
excited. Everybody that seen the shooting was telling how it happened,
and there was a big crowd packed around each one of these fellows,
stretching their necks and listening. One long, lanky man, with long
hair and a big white fur stovepipe hat on the back of his head, and a
crooked-handled cane, marked out the places on the ground where Boggs
stood and where Sherburn stood, and the people following him around from
one place to t'other and watching everything he done, and bobbing their
heads to show they understood, and stooping a little and resting their
hands on their thighs to watch him mark the places on the ground with his
cane; and then he stood up straight and stiff where Sherburn had stood,
frowning and having his hat-brim down over his eyes, and sung out,
"Boggs!" and then fetched his cane down slow to a level, and says "Bang!"
staggered backwards, says "Bang!" again, and fell down flat on his back.
The people that had seen the thing said he done it perfect; said it was
just exactly the way it all happened. Then as much as a dozen people got
out their bottles and treated him.
Well, by and by somebody said Sherburn ought to be lynched. In about a
minute everybody was saying it; so away they went, mad and yelling, and
snatching down every clothes-line they come to to do the hanging with.
CHAPTER XXII.
THEY swarmed up towards Sherburn's house, a-whooping and raging like
Injuns, and everything had to clear the way or get run over and tromped
to mush, and it was awful to see. Children was heeling it ahead of the
mob, screaming and trying to get out of the way; and every window along
the road was full of women's heads, and there was nigger boys in every
tree, and bucks and wenches looking over every fence; and as soon as the
mob would get nearly to them they would break and skaddle back out of
reach. Lots of the women and girls was crying and taking on, scared most
to death.
They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam
together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise. It was a
little twenty-foot yard. Some sung out "Tear down the fence! tear down
the fence!" Then there was a racket of ripping and tearing and smashing,
and down she goes, and the front wall of the crowd begins to roll in like
a wave.
Just then Sherburn steps out on to the roof of his little front porch,
with a double-barrel gun in his hand, and takes his stand, perfectly ca'm
and deliberate, not saying a word. The racket stopped, and the wave
sucked back.
Sherburn never said a word--just stood there, looking down. The
stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow
along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to
out-gaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky.
Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the
kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand
in it.
Then he says, slow and scornful:
"The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you
thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN! Because you're brave
enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along
here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a
MAN? Why, a MAN'S safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind--as
long as it's daytime and you're not behind him.
"Do I know you? I know you clear through was born and raised in the
South, and I've lived in the North; so I know the average all around.
The average man's a coward. In the North he lets anybody walk over him
that wants to, and goes home and prays for a humble spirit to bear it.
In the South one man all by himself, has stopped a stage full of men in
the daytime, and robbed the lot. Your newspapers call you a brave people
so much that you think you are braver than any other people--whereas
you're just AS brave, and no braver. Why don't your juries hang
murderers? Because they're afraid the man's friends will shoot them in
the back, in the dark--and it's just what they WOULD do.
"So they always acquit; and then a MAN goes in the night, with a hundred
masked cowards at his back and lynches the rascal. Your mistake is, that
you didn't bring a man with you; that's one mistake, and the other is
that you didn't come in the dark and fetch your masks. You brought PART
of a man--Buck Harkness, there--and if you hadn't had him to start you,
you'd a taken it out in blowing.
"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger.
YOU don't like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a man--like Buck
Harkness, there--shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back
down--afraid you'll be found out to be what you are--COWARDS--and so
you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail,
and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do.
The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is--a mob; they
don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's
borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any
MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to
do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real
lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern
fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN
along. Now LEAVE--and take your half-a-man with you"--tossing his gun up
across his left arm and cocking it when he says this.
The crowd washed back sudden, and then broke all apart, and went tearing
off every which way, and Buck Harkness he heeled it after them, looking
tolerable cheap. I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.
I went to the circus and loafed around the back side till the watchman
went by, and then dived in under the tent. I had my twenty-dollar gold
piece and some other money, but I reckoned I better save it, because
there ain't no telling how soon you are going to need it, away from home
and amongst strangers that way. You can't be too careful. I ain't
opposed to spending money on circuses when there ain't no other way, but
there ain't no use in WASTING it on them.
It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was
when they all come riding in, two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by
side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts, and no shoes nor
stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs easy and comfortable
--there must a been twenty of them--and every lady with a lovely
complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real
sure-enough queens, and dressed in clothes that cost millions of dollars,
and just littered with diamonds. It was a powerful fine sight; I never
see anything so lovely. And then one by one they got up and stood, and
went a-weaving around the ring so gentle and wavy and graceful, the men
looking ever so tall and airy and straight, with their heads bobbing and
skimming along, away up there under the tent-roof, and every lady's
rose-leafy dress flapping soft and silky around her hips, and she looking
like the most loveliest parasol.
And then faster and faster they went, all of them dancing, first one foot
out in the air and then the other, the horses leaning more and more, and
the ringmaster going round and round the center-pole, cracking his whip
and shouting "Hi!--hi!" and the clown cracking jokes behind him; and by
and by all hands dropped the reins, and every lady put her knuckles on
her hips and every gentleman folded his arms, and then how the horses did
lean over and hump themselves! And so one after the other they all
skipped off into the ring, and made the sweetest bow I ever see, and then
scampered out, and everybody clapped their hands and went just about
wild.
Well, all through the circus they done the most astonishing things; and
all the time that clown carried on so it most killed the people. The
ringmaster couldn't ever say a word to him but he was back at him quick
as a wink with the funniest things a body ever said; and how he ever
COULD think of so many of them, and so sudden and so pat, was what I
couldn't noway understand. Why, I couldn't a thought of them in a year.
And by and by a drunk man tried to get into the ring--said he wanted to
ride; said he could ride as well as anybody that ever was. They argued
and tried to keep him out, but he wouldn't listen, and the whole show
come to a standstill. Then the people begun to holler at him and make
fun of him, and that made him mad, and he begun to rip and tear; so that
stirred up the people, and a lot of men begun to pile down off of the
benches and swarm towards the ring, saying, "Knock him down! throw him
out!" and one or two women begun to scream. So, then, the ringmaster he
made a little speech, and said he hoped there wouldn't be no disturbance,
and if the man would promise he wouldn't make no more trouble he would
let him ride if he thought he could stay on the horse. So everybody
laughed and said all right, and the man got on. The minute he was on, the
horse begun to rip and tear and jump and cavort around, with two circus
men hanging on to his bridle trying to hold him, and the drunk man
hanging on to his neck, and his heels flying in the air every jump, and
the whole crowd of people standing up shouting and laughing till tears
rolled down. And at last, sure enough, all the circus men could do, the
horse broke loose, and away he went like the very nation, round and round
the ring, with that sot laying down on him and hanging to his neck, with
first one leg hanging most to the ground on one side, and then t'other
one on t'other side, and the people just crazy. It warn't funny to me,
though; I was all of a tremble to see his danger. But pretty soon he
struggled up astraddle and grabbed the bridle, a-reeling this way and
that; and the next minute he sprung up and dropped the bridle and stood!
and the horse a-going like a house afire too. He just stood up there,
a-sailing around as easy and comfortable as if he warn't ever drunk in his
life--and then he begun to pull off his clothes and sling them. He shed
them so thick they kind of clogged up the air, and altogether he shed
seventeen suits. And, then, there he was, slim and handsome, and dressed
the gaudiest and prettiest you ever saw, and he lit into that horse with
his whip and made him fairly hum--and finally skipped off, and made his
bow and danced off to the dressing-room, and everybody just a-howling
with pleasure and astonishment.
Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he WAS the sickest
ringmaster you ever see, I reckon. Why, it was one of his own men! He
had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody.
Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn't a been in
that ringmaster's place, not for a thousand dollars. I don't know; there
may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them
yet. Anyways, it was plenty good enough for ME; and wherever I run across
it, it can have all of MY custom every time.
Well, that night we had OUR show; but there warn't only about twelve
people there--just enough to pay expenses. And they laughed all the
time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the
show was over, but one boy which was asleep. So the duke said these
Arkansaw lunkheads couldn't come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was
low comedy--and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he
reckoned. He said he could size their style. So next morning he got
some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off
some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village. The bills said:
AT THE COURT HOUSE! FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The World-Renowned Tragedians
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER!
AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER!
Of the London and
Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
THE KING'S CAMELEOPARD,
OR THE ROYAL NONESUCH ! ! !
Admission 50 cents.
Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said:
LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.
"There," says he, "if that line don't fetch them, I don't know Arkansaw!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
WELL, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a
curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was
jam full of men in no time. When the place couldn't hold no more, the
duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the
stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and
praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that
ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about
Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it;
and at last when he'd got everybody's expectations up high enough, he
rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out
on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-
striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow. And--but never
mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny.
The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done
capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and
stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after
that they made him do it another time. Well, it would make a cow laugh to
see the shines that old idiot cut.
Then the duke he lets the curtain down, and bows to the people, and says
the great tragedy will be performed only two nights more, on accounts of
pressing London engagements, where the seats is all sold already for it
in Drury Lane; and then he makes them another bow, and says if he has
succeeded in pleasing them and instructing them, he will be deeply
obleeged if they will mention it to their friends and get them to come
and see it.
Twenty people sings out:
"What, is it over? Is that ALL?"
The duke says yes. Then there was a fine time. Everybody sings out,
"Sold!" and rose up mad, and was a-going for that stage and them
tragedians. But a big, fine looking man jumps up on a bench and shouts:
"Hold on! Just a word, gentlemen." They stopped to listen. "We are
sold--mighty badly sold. But we don't want to be the laughing stock of
this whole town, I reckon, and never hear the last of this thing as long
as we live. NO. What we want is to go out of here quiet, and talk this
show up, and sell the REST of the town! Then we'll all be in the same
boat. Ain't that sensible?" ("You bet it is!--the jedge is right!"
everybody sings out.) "All right, then--not a word about any sell. Go
along home, and advise everybody to come and see the tragedy."
Next day you couldn't hear nothing around that town but how splendid that
show was. House was jammed again that night, and we sold this crowd the
same way. When me and the king and the duke got home to the raft we all
had a supper; and by and by, about midnight, they made Jim and me back
her out and float her down the middle of the river, and fetch her in and
hide her about two mile below town.
The third night the house was crammed again--and they warn't new-comers
this time, but people that was at the show the other two nights. I stood
by the duke at the door, and I see that every man that went in had his
pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and I see it
warn't no perfumery, neither, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs
by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the
signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four of
them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for
me; I couldn't stand it. Well, when the place couldn't hold no more
people the duke he give a fellow a quarter and told him to tend door for
him a minute, and then he started around for the stage door, I after him;
but the minute we turned the corner and was in the dark he says:
"Walk fast now till you get away from the houses, and then shin for the
raft like the dickens was after you!"
I done it, and he done the same. We struck the raft at the same time,
and in less than two seconds we was gliding down stream, all dark and
still, and edging towards the middle of the river, nobody saying a word.
I reckoned the poor king was in for a gaudy time of it with the audience,
but nothing of the sort; pretty soon he crawls out from under the wigwam,
and says:
"Well, how'd the old thing pan out this time, duke?" He hadn't been
up-town at all.
We never showed a light till we was about ten mile below the village.
Then we lit up and had a supper, and the king and the duke fairly laughed
their bones loose over the way they'd served them people. The duke says:
"Greenhorns, flatheads! I knew the first house would keep mum and let
the rest of the town get roped in; and I knew they'd lay for us the third
night, and consider it was THEIR turn now. Well, it IS their turn, and
I'd give something to know how much they'd take for it. I WOULD just
like to know how they're putting in their opportunity. They can turn it
into a picnic if they want to--they brought plenty provisions."
Them rapscallions took in four hundred and sixty-five dollars in that
three nights. I never see money hauled in by the wagon-load like that
before. By and by, when they was asleep and snoring, Jim says:
"Don't it s'prise you de way dem kings carries on, Huck?"
"No," I says, "it don't."
"Why don't it, Huck?"
"Well, it don't, because it's in the breed. I reckon they're all alike,"
"But, Huck, dese kings o' ourn is reglar rapscallions; dat's jist what
dey is; dey's reglar rapscallions."
"Well, that's what I'm a-saying; all kings is mostly rapscallions, as fur
as I can make out."
"Is dat so?"
"You read about them once--you'll see. Look at Henry the Eight; this 'n
's a Sunday-school Superintendent to HIM. And look at Charles Second,
and Louis Fourteen, and Louis Fifteen, and James Second, and Edward
Second, and Richard Third, and forty more; besides all them Saxon
heptarchies that used to rip around so in old times and raise Cain. My,
you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He WAS a
blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head
next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was
ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up.
Next morning, 'Chop off her head!' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane
Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her head'--and
they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the
bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' And he made every one of them
tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a
thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and
called it Domesday Book--which was a good name and stated the case. You
don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one
of the cleanest I've struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he
wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it
--give notice?--give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves
all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of
independence, and dares them to come on. That was HIS style--he never
give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of
Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No--drownded
him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S'pose people left money laying
around where he was--what did he do? He collared it. S'pose he
contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and
see that he done it--what did he do? He always done the other thing.
S'pose he opened his mouth--what then? If he didn't shut it up powerful
quick he'd lose a lie every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was;
and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled that town a
heap worse than ourn done. I don't say that ourn is lambs, because they
ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing
to THAT old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to
make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot.
It's the way they're raised."
"But dis one do SMELL so like de nation, Huck."
"Well, they all do, Jim. We can't help the way a king smells; history
don't tell no way."
"Now de duke, he's a tolerble likely man in some ways."
"Yes, a duke's different. But not very different. This one's a middling
hard lot for a duke. When he's drunk there ain't no near-sighted man
could tell him from a king."
"Well, anyways, I doan' hanker for no mo' un um, Huck. Dese is all I kin
stan'."
"It's the way I feel, too, Jim. But we've got them on our hands, and we
got to remember what they are, and make allowances. Sometimes I wish we
could hear of a country that's out of kings."
What was the use to tell Jim these warn't real kings and dukes? It
wouldn't a done no good; and, besides, it was just as I said: you
couldn't tell them from the real kind.
I went to sleep, and Jim didn't call me when it was my turn. He often
done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with
his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I
didn't take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was
thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low
and homesick; because he hadn't ever been away from home before in his
life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white
folks does for their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so. He
was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was
asleep, and saying, "Po' little 'Lizabeth! po' little Johnny! it's mighty
hard; I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo'!" He was a
mighty good nigger, Jim was.
But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young
ones; and by and by he says:
"What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder
on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I
treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery. She warn't on'y 'bout fo' year ole,
en she tuck de sk'yarlet fever, en had a powful rough spell; but she got
well, en one day she was a-stannin' aroun', en I says to her, I says:
"'Shet de do'.'
"She never done it; jis' stood dah, kiner smilin' up at me. It make me
mad; en I says agin, mighty loud, I says:
"'Doan' you hear me? Shet de do'!'
"She jis stood de same way, kiner smilin' up. I was a-bilin'! I says:
"'I lay I MAKE you mine!'
"En wid dat I fetch' her a slap side de head dat sont her a-sprawlin'.
Den I went into de yuther room, en 'uz gone 'bout ten minutes; en when I
come back dah was dat do' a-stannin' open YIT, en dat chile stannin' mos'
right in it, a-lookin' down and mournin', en de tears runnin' down. My,
but I WUZ mad! I was a-gwyne for de chile, but jis' den--it was a do'
dat open innerds--jis' den, 'long come de wind en slam it to, behine de
chile, ker-BLAM!--en my lan', de chile never move'! My breff mos' hop
outer me; en I feel so--so--I doan' know HOW I feel. I crope out, all
a-tremblin', en crope aroun' en open de do' easy en slow, en poke my head
in behine de chile, sof' en still, en all uv a sudden I says POW! jis' as
loud as I could yell. SHE NEVER BUDGE! Oh, Huck, I bust out a-cryin' en
grab her up in my arms, en say, 'Oh, de po' little thing! De Lord God
Amighty fogive po' ole Jim, kaze he never gwyne to fogive hisself as
long's he live!' Oh, she was plumb deef en dumb, Huck, plumb deef en
dumb--en I'd ben a-treat'n her so!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
NEXT day, towards night, we laid up under a little willow towhead out in
the middle, where there was a village on each side of the river, and the
duke and the king begun to lay out a plan for working them towns. Jim he
spoke to the duke, and said he hoped it wouldn't take but a few hours,
because it got mighty heavy and tiresome to him when he had to lay all
day in the wigwam tied with the rope. You see, when we left him all
alone we had to tie him, because if anybody happened on to him all by
himself and not tied it wouldn't look much like he was a runaway nigger,
you know. So the duke said it WAS kind of hard to have to lay roped all
day, and he'd cipher out some way to get around it.
He was uncommon bright, the duke was, and he soon struck it. He dressed
Jim up in King Lear's outfit--it was a long curtain-calico gown, and a
white horse-hair wig and whiskers; and then he took his theater paint and
painted Jim's face and hands and ears and neck all over a dead, dull,
solid blue, like a man that's been drownded nine days. Blamed if he
warn't the horriblest looking outrage I ever see. Then the duke took and
wrote out a sign on a shingle so:
Sick Arab--but harmless when not out of his head.
And he nailed that shingle to a lath, and stood the lath up four or five
foot in front of the wigwam. Jim was satisfied. He said it was a sight
better than lying tied a couple of years every day, and trembling all
over every time there was a sound. The duke told him to make himself
free and easy, and if anybody ever come meddling around, he must hop out
of the wigwam, and carry on a little, and fetch a howl or two like a wild
beast, and he reckoned they would light out and leave him alone. Which
was sound enough judgment; but you take the average man, and he wouldn't
wait for him to howl. Why, he didn't only look like he was dead, he
looked considerable more than that.
These rapscallions wanted to try the Nonesuch again, because there was so
much money in it, but they judged it wouldn't be safe, because maybe the
news might a worked along down by this time. They couldn't hit no
project that suited exactly; so at last the duke said he reckoned he'd
lay off and work his brains an hour or two and see if he couldn't put up
something on the Arkansaw village; and the king he allowed he would drop
over to t'other village without any plan, but just trust in Providence to
lead him the profitable way--meaning the devil, I reckon. We had all
bought store clothes where we stopped last; and now the king put his'n
on, and he told me to put mine on. I done it, of course. The king's
duds was all black, and he did look real swell and starchy. I never
knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked
like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his
new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and
good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and
maybe was old Leviticus himself. Jim cleaned up the canoe, and I got my
paddle ready. There was a big steamboat laying at the shore away up
under the point, about three mile above the town--been there a couple
of hours, taking on freight. Says the king:
"Seein' how I'm dressed, I reckon maybe I better arrive down from St.
Louis or Cincinnati, or some other big place. Go for the steamboat,
Huckleberry; we'll come down to the village on her."
I didn't have to be ordered twice to go and take a steamboat ride. I
fetched the shore a half a mile above the village, and then went scooting
along the bluff bank in the easy water. Pretty soon we come to a nice
innocent-looking young country jake setting on a log swabbing the sweat
off of his face, for it was powerful warm weather; and he had a couple of
big carpet-bags by him.
"Run her nose in shore," says the king. I done it. "Wher' you bound
for, young man?"
"For the steamboat; going to Orleans."
"Git aboard," says the king. "Hold on a minute, my servant 'll he'p you
with them bags. Jump out and he'p the gentleman, Adolphus"--meaning me,
I see.
I done so, and then we all three started on again. The young chap was
mighty thankful; said it was tough work toting his baggage such weather.
He asked the king where he was going, and the king told him he'd come
down the river and landed at the other village this morning, and now he
was going up a few mile to see an old friend on a farm up there. The
young fellow says:
"When I first see you I says to myself, 'It's Mr. Wilks, sure, and he
come mighty near getting here in time.' But then I says again, 'No, I
reckon it ain't him, or else he wouldn't be paddling up the river.' You
AIN'T him, are you?"
"No, my name's Blodgett--Elexander Blodgett--REVEREND Elexander Blodgett,
I s'pose I must say, as I'm one o' the Lord's poor servants. But still
I'm jist as able to be sorry for Mr. Wilks for not arriving in time, all
the same, if he's missed anything by it--which I hope he hasn't."
"Well, he don't miss any property by it, because he'll get that all
right; but he's missed seeing his brother Peter die--which he mayn't
mind, nobody can tell as to that--but his brother would a give anything
in this world to see HIM before he died; never talked about nothing else
all these three weeks; hadn't seen him since they was boys together--and
hadn't ever seen his brother William at all--that's the deef and dumb
one--William ain't more than thirty or thirty-five. Peter and George
were the only ones that come out here; George was the married brother;
him and his wife both died last year. Harvey and William's the only ones
that's left now; and, as I was saying, they haven't got here in time."
"Did anybody send 'em word?"
"Oh, yes; a month or two ago, when Peter was first took; because Peter
said then that he sorter felt like he warn't going to get well this time.
You see, he was pretty old, and George's g'yirls was too young to be much
company for him, except Mary Jane, the red-headed one; and so he was
kinder lonesome after George and his wife died, and didn't seem to care
much to live. He most desperately wanted to see Harvey--and William,
too, for that matter--because he was one of them kind that can't bear to
make a will. He left a letter behind for Harvey, and said he'd told in
it where his money was hid, and how he wanted the rest of the property
divided up so George's g'yirls would be all right--for George didn't
leave nothing. And that letter was all they could get him to put a pen
to."
"Why do you reckon Harvey don't come? Wher' does he live?"
"Oh, he lives in England--Sheffield--preaches there--hasn't ever been in
this country. He hasn't had any too much time--and besides he mightn't a
got the letter at all, you know."
"Too bad, too bad he couldn't a lived to see his brothers, poor soul.
You going to Orleans, you say?"
"Yes, but that ain't only a part of it. I'm going in a ship, next
Wednesday, for Ryo Janeero, where my uncle lives."
"It's a pretty long journey. But it'll be lovely; wisht I was a-going.
Is Mary Jane the oldest? How old is the others?"
"Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about fourteen
--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip."
"Poor things! to be left alone in the cold world so."
"Well, they could be worse off. Old Peter had friends, and they ain't
going to let them come to no harm. There's Hobson, the Babtis' preacher;
and Deacon Lot Hovey, and Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi
Bell, the lawyer; and Dr. Robinson, and their wives, and the widow
Bartley, and--well, there's a lot of them; but these are the ones that
Peter was thickest with, and used to write about sometimes, when he wrote
home; so Harvey 'll know where to look for friends when he gets here."
Well, the old man went on asking questions till he just fairly emptied
that young fellow. Blamed if he didn't inquire about everybody and
everything in that blessed town, and all about the Wilkses; and about
Peter's business--which was a tanner; and about George's--which was a
carpenter; and about Harvey's--which was a dissentering minister; and so
on, and so on. Then he says:
"What did you want to walk all the way up to the steamboat for?"
"Because she's a big Orleans boat, and I was afeard she mightn't stop
there. When they're deep they won't stop for a hail. A Cincinnati boat
will, but this is a St. Louis one."
"Was Peter Wilks well off?"
"Oh, yes, pretty well off. He had houses and land, and it's reckoned he
left three or four thousand in cash hid up som'ers."
"When did you say he died?"
"I didn't say, but it was last night."
"Funeral to-morrow, likely?"
"Yes, 'bout the middle of the day."
"Well, it's all terrible sad; but we've all got to go, one time or
another. So what we want to do is to be prepared; then we're all right."
"Yes, sir, it's the best way. Ma used to always say that."
When we struck the boat she was about done loading, and pretty soon she
got off. The king never said nothing about going aboard, so I lost my
ride, after all. When the boat was gone the king made me paddle up
another mile to a lonesome place, and then he got ashore and says:
"Now hustle back, right off, and fetch the duke up here, and the new
carpet-bags. And if he's gone over to t'other side, go over there and
git him. And tell him to git himself up regardless. Shove along, now."
I see what HE was up to; but I never said nothing, of course. When I got
back with the duke we hid the canoe, and then they set down on a log, and
the king told him everything, just like the young fellow had said it
--every last word of it. And all the time he was a-doing it he tried to
talk like an Englishman; and he done it pretty well, too, for a slouch.
I can't imitate him, and so I ain't a-going to try to; but he really done
it pretty good. Then he says:
"How are you on the deef and dumb, Bilgewater?"
The duke said, leave him alone for that; said he had played a deef and
dumb person on the histronic boards. So then they waited for a
steamboat.
About the middle of the afternoon a couple of little boats come along,
but they didn't come from high enough up the river; but at last there was
a big one, and they hailed her. She sent out her yawl, and we went
aboard, and she was from Cincinnati; and when they found we only wanted
to go four or five mile they was booming mad, and gave us a cussing, and
said they wouldn't land us. But the king was ca'm. He says:
"If gentlemen kin afford to pay a dollar a mile apiece to be took on and
put off in a yawl, a steamboat kin afford to carry 'em, can't it?"
So they softened down and said it was all right; and when we got to the
village they yawled us ashore. About two dozen men flocked down when
they see the yawl a-coming, and when the king says:
"Kin any of you gentlemen tell me wher' Mr. Peter Wilks lives?" they give
a glance at one another, and nodded their heads, as much as to say, "What
d' I tell you?" Then one of them says, kind of soft and gentle:
"I'm sorry sir, but the best we can do is to tell you where he DID live
yesterday evening."
Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up
against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his
back, and says:
"Alas, alas, our poor brother--gone, and we never got to see him; oh,
it's too, too hard!"
Then he turns around, blubbering, and makes a lot of idiotic signs to the
duke on his hands, and blamed if he didn't drop a carpet-bag and bust out
a-crying. If they warn't the beatenest lot, them two frauds, that ever I
struck.
Well, the men gathered around and sympathized with them, and said all
sorts of kind things to them, and carried their carpet-bags up the hill
for them, and let them lean on them and cry, and told the king all about
his brother's last moments, and the king he told it all over again on his
hands to the duke, and both of them took on about that dead tanner like
they'd lost the twelve disciples. Well, if ever I struck anything like
it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE news was all over town in two minutes, and you could see the people
tearing down on the run from every which way, some of them putting on
their coats as they come. Pretty soon we was in the middle of a crowd,
and the noise of the tramping was like a soldier march. The windows and
dooryards was full; and every minute somebody would say, over a fence:
"Is it THEM?"
And somebody trotting along with the gang would answer back and say:
"You bet it is."
When we got to the house the street in front of it was packed, and the
three girls was standing in the door. Mary Jane WAS red-headed, but that
don't make no difference, she was most awful beautiful, and her face and
her eyes was all lit up like glory, she was so glad her uncles was come.
The king he spread his arms, and Mary Jane she jumped for them, and the
hare-lip jumped for the duke, and there they HAD it! Everybody most,
leastways women, cried for joy to see them meet again at last and have
such good times.
Then the king he hunched the duke private--I see him do it--and then he
looked around and see the coffin, over in the corner on two chairs; so
then him and the duke, with a hand across each other's shoulder, and
t'other hand to their eyes, walked slow and solemn over there, everybody
dropping back to give them room, and all the talk and noise stopping,
people saying "Sh!" and all the men taking their hats off and drooping
their heads, so you could a heard a pin fall. And when they got there
they bent over and looked in the coffin, and took one sight, and then
they bust out a-crying so you could a heard them to Orleans, most; and
then they put their arms around each other's necks, and hung their chins
over each other's shoulders; and then for three minutes, or maybe four, I
never see two men leak the way they done. And, mind you, everybody was
doing the same; and the place was that damp I never see anything like it.
Then one of them got on one side of the coffin, and t'other on t'other
side, and they kneeled down and rested their foreheads on the coffin, and
let on to pray all to themselves. Well, when it come to that it worked
the crowd like you never see anything like it, and everybody broke down
and went to sobbing right out loud--the poor girls, too; and every woman,
nearly, went up to the girls, without saying a word, and kissed them,
solemn, on the forehead, and then put their hand on their head, and
looked up towards the sky, with the tears running down, and then busted
out and went off sobbing and swabbing, and give the next woman a show. I
never see anything so disgusting.
Well, by and by the king he gets up and comes forward a little, and works
himself up and slobbers out a speech, all full of tears and flapdoodle
about its being a sore trial for him and his poor brother to lose the
diseased, and to miss seeing diseased alive after the long journey of
four thousand mile, but it's a trial that's sweetened and sanctified to
us by this dear sympathy and these holy tears, and so he thanks them out
of his heart and out of his brother's heart, because out of their mouths
they can't, words being too weak and cold, and all that kind of rot and
slush, till it was just sickening; and then he blubbers out a pious
goody-goody Amen, and turns himself loose and goes to crying fit to bust.
And the minute the words were out of his mouth somebody over in the crowd
struck up the doxolojer, and everybody joined in with all their might,
and it just warmed you up and made you feel as good as church letting
out. Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash I
never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully.
Then the king begins to work his jaw again, and says how him and his
nieces would be glad if a few of the main principal friends of the family
would take supper here with them this evening, and help set up with the
ashes of the diseased; and says if his poor brother laying yonder could
speak he knows who he would name, for they was names that was very dear
to him, and mentioned often in his letters; and so he will name the same,
to wit, as follows, vizz.:--Rev. Mr. Hobson, and Deacon Lot Hovey, and
Mr. Ben Rucker, and Abner Shackleford, and Levi Bell, and Dr. Robinson,
and their wives, and the widow Bartley.
Rev. Hobson and Dr. Robinson was down to the end of the town a-hunting
together--that is, I mean the doctor was shipping a sick man to t'other
world, and the preacher was pinting him right. Lawyer Bell was away up
to Louisville on business. But the rest was on hand, and so they all
come and shook hands with the king and thanked him and talked to him; and
then they shook hands with the duke and didn't say nothing, but just kept
a-smiling and bobbing their heads like a passel of sapheads whilst he
made all sorts of signs with his hands and said "Goo-goo--goo-goo-goo"
all the time, like a baby that can't talk.
So the king he blattered along, and managed to inquire about pretty much
everybody and dog in town, by his name, and mentioned all sorts of little
things that happened one time or another in the town, or to George's
family, or to Peter. And he always let on that Peter wrote him the
things; but that was a lie: he got every blessed one of them out of that
young flathead that we canoed up to the steamboat.
Then Mary Jane she fetched the letter her father left behind, and the
king he read it out loud and cried over it. It give the dwelling-house
and three thousand dollars, gold, to the girls; and it give the tanyard
(which was doing a good business), along with some other houses and land
(worth about seven thousand), and three thousand dollars in gold to
Harvey and William, and told where the six thousand cash was hid down
cellar. So these two frauds said they'd go and fetch it up, and have
everything square and above-board; and told me to come with a candle. We
shut the cellar door behind us, and when they found the bag they spilt it
out on the floor, and it was a lovely sight, all them yaller-boys. My,
the way the king's eyes did shine! He slaps the duke on the shoulder and
says:
"Oh, THIS ain't bully nor noth'n! Oh, no, I reckon not! Why, Billy, it
beats the Nonesuch, DON'T it?"
The duke allowed it did. They pawed the yaller-boys, and sifted them
through their fingers and let them jingle down on the floor; and the king
says:
"It ain't no use talkin'; bein' brothers to a rich dead man and
representatives of furrin heirs that's got left is the line for you and
me, Bilge. Thish yer comes of trust'n to Providence. It's the best way,
in the long run. I've tried 'em all, and ther' ain't no better way."
Most everybody would a been satisfied with the pile, and took it on
trust; but no, they must count it. So they counts it, and it comes out
four hundred and fifteen dollars short. Says the king:
"Dern him, I wonder what he done with that four hundred and fifteen
dollars?"
They worried over that awhile, and ransacked all around for it. Then the
duke says:
"Well, he was a pretty sick man, and likely he made a mistake--I reckon
that's the way of it. The best way's to let it go, and keep still about
it. We can spare it."
"Oh, shucks, yes, we can SPARE it. I don't k'yer noth'n 'bout that--it's
the COUNT I'm thinkin' about. We want to be awful square and open and
above-board here, you know. We want to lug this h-yer money up stairs
and count it before everybody--then ther' ain't noth'n suspicious. But
when the dead man says ther's six thous'n dollars, you know, we don't
want to--"
"Hold on," says the duke. "Le's make up the deffisit," and he begun to
haul out yaller-boys out of his pocket.
"It's a most amaz'n' good idea, duke--you HAVE got a rattlin' clever head
on you," says the king. "Blest if the old Nonesuch ain't a heppin' us
out agin," and HE begun to haul out yaller-jackets and stack them up.
It most busted them, but they made up the six thousand clean and clear.
"Say," says the duke, "I got another idea. Le's go up stairs and count
this money, and then take and GIVE IT TO THE GIRLS."
"Good land, duke, lemme hug you! It's the most dazzling idea 'at ever a
man struck. You have cert'nly got the most astonishin' head I ever see.
Oh, this is the boss dodge, ther' ain't no mistake 'bout it. Let 'em
fetch along their suspicions now if they want to--this 'll lay 'em out."
When we got up-stairs everybody gethered around the table, and the king
he counted it and stacked it up, three hundred dollars in a pile--twenty
elegant little piles. Everybody looked hungry at it, and licked their
chops. Then they raked it into the bag again, and I see the king begin
to swell himself up for another speech. He says:
"Friends all, my poor brother that lays yonder has done generous by them
that's left behind in the vale of sorrers. He has done generous by these
yer poor little lambs that he loved and sheltered, and that's left
fatherless and motherless. Yes, and we that knowed him knows that he
would a done MORE generous by 'em if he hadn't ben afeard o' woundin' his
dear William and me. Now, WOULDN'T he? Ther' ain't no question 'bout it
in MY mind. Well, then, what kind o' brothers would it be that 'd stand
in his way at sech a time? And what kind o' uncles would it be that 'd
rob--yes, ROB--sech poor sweet lambs as these 'at he loved so at sech a
time? If I know William--and I THINK I do--he--well, I'll jest ask him."
He turns around and begins to make a lot of signs to the duke with his
hands, and the duke he looks at him stupid and leather-headed a while;
then all of a sudden he seems to catch his meaning, and jumps for the
king, goo-gooing with all his might for joy, and hugs him about fifteen
times before he lets up. Then the king says, "I knowed it; I reckon THAT
'll convince anybody the way HE feels about it. Here, Mary Jane, Susan,
Joanner, take the money--take it ALL. It's the gift of him that lays
yonder, cold but joyful."
Mary Jane she went for him, Susan and the hare-lip went for the duke, and
then such another hugging and kissing I never see yet. And everybody
crowded up with the tears in their eyes, and most shook the hands off of
them frauds, saying all the time:
"You DEAR good souls!--how LOVELY!--how COULD you!"
Well, then, pretty soon all hands got to talking about the diseased
again, and how good he was, and what a loss he was, and all that; and
before long a big iron-jawed man worked himself in there from outside,
and stood a-listening and looking, and not saying anything; and nobody
saying anything to him either, because the king was talking and they was
all busy listening. The king was saying--in the middle of something he'd
started in on--
"--they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. That's why they're
invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want ALL to come--everybody;
for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that
his funeral orgies sh'd be public."
And so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and
every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke
he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper,
"OBSEQUIES, you old fool," and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and
reaching it over people's heads to him. The king he reads it and puts it
in his pocket, and says:
"Poor William, afflicted as he is, his HEART'S aluz right. Asks me to
invite everybody to come to the funeral--wants me to make 'em all
welcome. But he needn't a worried--it was jest what I was at."
Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his
funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. And
when he done it the third time he says:
"I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't
--obsequies bein' the common term--but because orgies is the right term.
Obsequies ain't used in England no more now--it's gone out. We say
orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing
you're after more exact. It's a word that's made up out'n the Greek
ORGO, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew JEESUM, to plant, cover up;
hence inTER. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral."
He was the WORST I ever struck. Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed
right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody says, "Why,
DOCTOR!" and Abner Shackleford says:
"Why, Robinson, hain't you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks."
The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says:
"Is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? I--"
"Keep your hands off of me!" says the doctor. "YOU talk like an
Englishman, DON'T you? It's the worst imitation I ever heard. YOU Peter
Wilks's brother! You're a fraud, that's what you are!"
Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor and tried to
quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey 'd
showed in forty ways that he WAS Harvey, and knowed everybody by name,
and the names of the very dogs, and begged and BEGGED him not to hurt
Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings, and all that. But it
warn't no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to
be an Englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he
did was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls was hanging to the king and
crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on THEM. He says:
"I was your father's friend, and I'm your friend; and I warn you as a
friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of
harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing
to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as
he calls it. He is the thinnest kind of an impostor--has come here with
a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you
take them for PROOFS, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish
friends here, who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for
your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. Now listen to me; turn
this pitiful rascal out--I BEG you to do it. Will you?"
Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She
says:
"HERE is my answer." She hove up the bag of money and put it in the
king's hands, and says, "Take this six thousand dollars, and invest for
me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for
it."
Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the
hare-lip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and
stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his
head and smiled proud. The doctor says:
"All right; I wash MY hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a
time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this
day." And away he went.
"All right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him; "we'll try and
get 'em to send for you;" which made them all laugh, and they said it was
a prime good hit.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off
for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for
Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a
little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and
sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it.
The king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning me.
So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain
but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took
out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they
warn't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a
curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old
hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of
little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room
with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for
these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty
small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.
That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there,
and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and
the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the
table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was,
and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried
chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to
force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop,
and said so--said "How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "Where,
for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind
of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you
know.
And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen
off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up
the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest
if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says:
"Did you ever see the king?"
"Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have--he goes to our church." I
knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes
to our church, she says:
"What--regular?"
"Yes--regular. His pew's right over opposite ourn--on t'other side the
pulpit."
"I thought he lived in London?"
"Well, he does. Where WOULD he live?"
"But I thought YOU lived in Sheffield?"
I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken
bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says:
"I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's
only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths."
"Why, how you talk--Sheffield ain't on the sea."
"Well, who said it was?"
"Why, you did."
"I DIDN'T nuther."
"You did!"
"I didn't."
"You did."
"I never said nothing of the kind."
"Well, what DID you say, then?"
"Said he come to take the sea BATHS--that's what I said."
"Well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the
sea?"
"Looky here," I says; "did you ever see any Congress-water?"
"Yes."
"Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?"
"Why, no."
"Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea
bath."
"How does he get it, then?"
"Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water--in barrels. There
in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water
hot. They can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea.
They haven't got no conveniences for it."
"Oh, I see, now. You might a said that in the first place and saved
time."
When she said that I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was
comfortable and glad. Next, she says:
"Do you go to church, too?"
"Yes--regular."
"Where do you set?"
"Why, in our pew."
"WHOSE pew?"
"Why, OURN--your Uncle Harvey's."
"His'n? What does HE want with a pew?"
"Wants it to set in. What did you RECKON he wanted with it?"
"Why, I thought he'd be in the pulpit."
Rot him, I forgot he was a preacher. I see I was up a stump again, so I
played another chicken bone and got another think. Then I says:
"Blame it, do you suppose there ain't but one preacher to a church?"
"Why, what do they want with more?"
"What!--to preach before a king? I never did see such a girl as you.
They don't have no less than seventeen."
"Seventeen! My land! Why, I wouldn't set out such a string as that, not
if I NEVER got to glory. It must take 'em a week."
"Shucks, they don't ALL of 'em preach the same day--only ONE of 'em."
"Well, then, what does the rest of 'em do?"
"Oh, nothing much. Loll around, pass the plate--and one thing or
another. But mainly they don't do nothing."
"Well, then, what are they FOR?"
"Why, they're for STYLE. Don't you know nothing?"
"Well, I don't WANT to know no such foolishness as that. How is servants
treated in England? Do they treat 'em better 'n we treat our niggers?"
"NO! A servant ain't nobody there. They treat them worse than dogs."
"Don't they give 'em holidays, the way we do, Christmas and New Year's
week, and Fourth of July?"
"Oh, just listen! A body could tell YOU hain't ever been to England by
that. Why, Hare-l--why, Joanna, they never see a holiday from year's end
to year's end; never go to the circus, nor theater, nor nigger shows, nor
nowheres."
"Nor church?"
"Nor church."
"But YOU always went to church."
Well, I was gone up again. I forgot I was the old man's servant. But
next minute I whirled in on a kind of an explanation how a valley was
different from a common servant and HAD to go to church whether he wanted
to or not, and set with the family, on account of its being the law. But
I didn't do it pretty good, and when I got done I see she warn't
satisfied. She says:
"Honest injun, now, hain't you been telling me a lot of lies?"
"Honest injun," says I.
"None of it at all?"
"None of it at all. Not a lie in it," says I.
"Lay your hand on this book and say it."
I see it warn't nothing but a dictionary, so I laid my hand on it and
said it. So then she looked a little better satisfied, and says:
"Well, then, I'll believe some of it; but I hope to gracious if I'll
believe the rest."
"What is it you won't believe, Joe?" says Mary Jane, stepping in with
Susan behind her. "It ain't right nor kind for you to talk so to him,
and him a stranger and so far from his people. How would you like to be
treated so?"
"That's always your way, Maim--always sailing in to help somebody before
they're hurt. I hain't done nothing to him. He's told some stretchers,
I reckon, and I said I wouldn't swallow it all; and that's every bit and
grain I DID say. I reckon he can stand a little thing like that, can't
he?"
"I don't care whether 'twas little or whether 'twas big; he's here in our
house and a stranger, and it wasn't good of you to say it. If you was in
his place it would make you feel ashamed; and so you oughtn't to say a
thing to another person that will make THEM feel ashamed."
"Why, Maim, he said--"
"It don't make no difference what he SAID--that ain't the thing. The
thing is for you to treat him KIND, and not be saying things to make him
remember he ain't in his own country and amongst his own folks."
I says to myself, THIS is a girl that I'm letting that old reptle rob her
of her money!
Then Susan SHE waltzed in; and if you'll believe me, she did give
Hare-lip hark from the tomb!
Says I to myself, and this is ANOTHER one that I'm letting him rob her of
her money!
Then Mary Jane she took another inning, and went in sweet and lovely
again--which was her way; but when she got done there warn't hardly
anything left o' poor Hare-lip. So she hollered.
"All right, then," says the other girls; "you just ask his pardon."
She done it, too; and she done it beautiful. She done it so beautiful it
was good to hear; and I wished I could tell her a thousand lies, so she
could do it again.
I says to myself, this is ANOTHER one that I'm letting him rob her of her
money. And when she got through they all jest laid theirselves out to
make me feel at home and know I was amongst friends. I felt so ornery
and low down and mean that I says to myself, my mind's made up; I'll hive
that money for them or bust.
So then I lit out--for bed, I said, meaning some time or another. When I
got by myself I went to thinking the thing over. I says to myself, shall
I go to that doctor, private, and blow on these frauds? No--that won't
do. He might tell who told him; then the king and the duke would make it
warm for me. Shall I go, private, and tell Mary Jane? No--I dasn't do
it. Her face would give them a hint, sure; they've got the money, and
they'd slide right out and get away with it. If she was to fetch in help
I'd get mixed up in the business before it was done with, I judge. No;
there ain't no good way but one. I got to steal that money, somehow; and
I got to steal it some way that they won't suspicion that I done it.
They've got a good thing here, and they ain't a-going to leave till
they've played this family and this town for all they're worth, so I'll
find a chance time enough. I'll steal it and hide it; and by and by, when
I'm away down the river, I'll write a letter and tell Mary Jane where
it's hid. But I better hive it tonight if I can, because the doctor
maybe hasn't let up as much as he lets on he has; he might scare them out
of here yet.
So, thinks I, I'll go and search them rooms. Upstairs the hall was dark,
but I found the duke's room, and started to paw around it with my hands;
but I recollected it wouldn't be much like the king to let anybody else
take care of that money but his own self; so then I went to his room and
begun to paw around there. But I see I couldn't do nothing without a
candle, and I dasn't light one, of course. So I judged I'd got to do the
other thing--lay for them and eavesdrop. About that time I hears their
footsteps coming, and was going to skip under the bed; I reached for it,
but it wasn't where I thought it would be; but I touched the curtain that
hid Mary Jane's frocks, so I jumped in behind that and snuggled in
amongst the gowns, and stood there perfectly still.
They come in and shut the door; and the first thing the duke done was to
get down and look under the bed. Then I was glad I hadn't found the bed
when I wanted it. And yet, you know, it's kind of natural to hide under
the bed when you are up to anything private. They sets down then, and
the king says:
"Well, what is it? And cut it middlin' short, because it's better for us
to be down there a-whoopin' up the mournin' than up here givin' 'em a
chance to talk us over."
"Well, this is it, Capet. I ain't easy; I ain't comfortable. That
doctor lays on my mind. I wanted to know your plans. I've got a notion,
and I think it's a sound one."
"What is it, duke?"
"That we better glide out of this before three in the morning, and clip
it down the river with what we've got. Specially, seeing we got it so
easy--GIVEN back to us, flung at our heads, as you may say, when of
course we allowed to have to steal it back. I'm for knocking off and
lighting out."
That made me feel pretty bad. About an hour or two ago it would a been a
little different, but now it made me feel bad and disappointed, The king
rips out and says:
"What! And not sell out the rest o' the property? March off like a
passel of fools and leave eight or nine thous'n' dollars' worth o'
property layin' around jest sufferin' to be scooped in?--and all good,
salable stuff, too."
The duke he grumbled; said the bag of gold was enough, and he didn't want
to go no deeper--didn't want to rob a lot of orphans of EVERYTHING they
had.
"Why, how you talk!" says the king. "We sha'n't rob 'em of nothing at
all but jest this money. The people that BUYS the property is the
suff'rers; because as soon 's it's found out 'at we didn't own it--which
won't be long after we've slid--the sale won't be valid, and it 'll all
go back to the estate. These yer orphans 'll git their house back agin,
and that's enough for THEM; they're young and spry, and k'n easy earn a
livin'. THEY ain't a-goin to suffer. Why, jest think--there's thous'n's
and thous'n's that ain't nigh so well off. Bless you, THEY ain't got
noth'n' to complain of."
Well, the king he talked him blind; so at last he give in, and said all
right, but said he believed it was blamed foolishness to stay, and that
doctor hanging over them. But the king says:
"Cuss the doctor! What do we k'yer for HIM? Hain't we got all the fools
in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"
So they got ready to go down stairs again. The duke says:
"I don't think we put that money in a good place."
That cheered me up. I'd begun to think I warn't going to get a hint of
no kind to help me. The king says:
"Why?"
"Because Mary Jane 'll be in mourning from this out; and first you know
the nigger that does up the rooms will get an order to box these duds up
and put 'em away; and do you reckon a nigger can run across money and not
borrow some of it?"
"Your head's level agin, duke," says the king; and he comes a-fumbling
under the curtain two or three foot from where I was. I stuck tight to
the wall and kept mighty still, though quivery; and I wondered what them
fellows would say to me if they catched me; and I tried to think what I'd
better do if they did catch me. But the king he got the bag before I
could think more than about a half a thought, and he never suspicioned I
was around. They took and shoved the bag through a rip in the straw tick
that was under the feather-bed, and crammed it in a foot or two amongst
the straw and said it was all right now, because a nigger only makes up
the feather-bed, and don't turn over the straw tick only about twice a
year, and so it warn't in no danger of getting stole now.
But I knowed better. I had it out of there before they was half-way down
stairs. I groped along up to my cubby, and hid it there till I could get
a chance to do better. I judged I better hide it outside of the house
somewheres, because if they missed it they would give the house a good
ransacking: I knowed that very well. Then I turned in, with my clothes
all on; but I couldn't a gone to sleep if I'd a wanted to, I was in such
a sweat to get through with the business. By and by I heard the king and
the duke come up; so I rolled off my pallet and laid with my chin at the
top of my ladder, and waited to see if anything was going to happen. But
nothing did.
So I held on till all the late sounds had quit and the early ones hadn't
begun yet; and then I slipped down the ladder.
CHAPTER XXVII.
I CREPT to their doors and listened; they was snoring. So I tiptoed
along, and got down stairs all right. There warn't a sound anywheres. I
peeped through a crack of the dining-room door, and see the men that was
watching the corpse all sound asleep on their chairs. The door was open
into the parlor, where the corpse was laying, and there was a candle in
both rooms. I passed along, and the parlor door was open; but I see there
warn't nobody in there but the remainders of Peter; so I shoved on by;
but the front door was locked, and the key wasn't there. Just then I
heard somebody coming down the stairs, back behind me. I run in the
parlor and took a swift look around, and the only place I see to hide the
bag was in the coffin. The lid was shoved along about a foot, showing
the dead man's face down in there, with a wet cloth over it, and his
shroud on. I tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just down beyond
where his hands was crossed, which made me creep, they was so cold, and
then I run back across the room and in behind the door.
The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, very soft, and
kneeled down and looked in; then she put up her handkerchief, and I see
she begun to cry, though I couldn't hear her, and her back was to me. I
slid out, and as I passed the dining-room I thought I'd make sure them
watchers hadn't seen me; so I looked through the crack, and everything
was all right. They hadn't stirred.
I slipped up to bed, feeling ruther blue, on accounts of the thing
playing out that way after I had took so much trouble and run so much
resk about it. Says I, if it could stay where it is, all right; because
when we get down the river a hundred mile or two I could write back to
Mary Jane, and she could dig him up again and get it; but that ain't the
thing that's going to happen; the thing that's going to happen is, the
money 'll be found when they come to screw on the lid. Then the king 'll
get it again, and it 'll be a long day before he gives anybody another
chance to smouch it from him. Of course I WANTED to slide down and get it
out of there, but I dasn't try it. Every minute it was getting earlier
now, and pretty soon some of them watchers would begin to stir, and I
might get catched--catched with six thousand dollars in my hands that
nobody hadn't hired me to take care of. I don't wish to be mixed up in
no such business as that, I says to myself.
When I got down stairs in the morning the parlor was shut up, and the
watchers was gone. There warn't nobody around but the family and the
widow Bartley and our tribe. I watched their faces to see if anything
had been happening, but I couldn't tell.
Towards the middle of the day the undertaker come with his man, and they
set the coffin in the middle of the room on a couple of chairs, and then
set all our chairs in rows, and borrowed more from the neighbors till the
hall and the parlor and the dining-room was full. I see the coffin lid
was the way it was before, but I dasn't go to look in under it, with
folks around.
Then the people begun to flock in, and the beats and the girls took seats
in the front row at the head of the coffin, and for a half an hour the
people filed around slow, in single rank, and looked down at the dead
man's face a minute, and some dropped in a tear, and it was all very
still and solemn, only the girls and the beats holding handkerchiefs to
their eyes and keeping their heads bent, and sobbing a little. There
warn't no other sound but the scraping of the feet on the floor and
blowing noses--because people always blows them more at a funeral than
they do at other places except church.
When the place was packed full the undertaker he slid around in his black
gloves with his softy soothering ways, putting on the last touches, and
getting people and things all ship-shape and comfortable, and making no
more sound than a cat. He never spoke; he moved people around, he
squeezed in late ones, he opened up passageways, and done it with nods,
and signs with his hands. Then he took his place over against the wall.
He was the softest, glidingest, stealthiest man I ever see; and there
warn't no more smile to him than there is to a ham.
They had borrowed a melodeum--a sick one; and when everything was ready a
young woman set down and worked it, and it was pretty skreeky and
colicky, and everybody joined in and sung, and Peter was the only one
that had a good thing, according to my notion. Then the Reverend Hobson
opened up, slow and solemn, and begun to talk; and straight off the most
outrageous row busted out in the cellar a body ever heard; it was only
one dog, but he made a most powerful racket, and he kept it up right
along; the parson he had to stand there, over the coffin, and wait--you
couldn't hear yourself think. It was right down awkward, and nobody
didn't seem to know what to do. But pretty soon they see that
long-legged undertaker make a sign to the preacher as much as to say,
"Don't you worry--just depend on me." Then he stooped down and begun to
glide along the wall, just his shoulders showing over the people's heads.
So he glided along, and the powwow and racket getting more and more
outrageous all the time; and at last, when he had gone around two sides
of the room, he disappears down cellar. Then in about two seconds we
heard a whack, and the dog he finished up with a most amazing howl or
two, and then everything was dead still, and the parson begun his solemn
talk where he left off. In a minute or two here comes this undertaker's
back and shoulders gliding along the wall again; and so he glided and
glided around three sides of the room, and then rose up, and shaded his
mouth with his hands, and stretched his neck out towards the preacher,
over the people's heads, and says, in a kind of a coarse whisper, "HE HAD
A RAT!" Then he drooped down and glided along the wall again to his
place. You could see it was a great satisfaction to the people, because
naturally they wanted to know. A little thing like that don't cost
nothing, and it's just the little things that makes a man to be looked up
to and liked. There warn't no more popular man in town than what that
undertaker was.
Well, the funeral sermon was very good, but pison long and tiresome; and
then the king he shoved in and got off some of his usual rubbage, and at
last the job was through, and the undertaker begun to sneak up on the
coffin with his screw-driver. I was in a sweat then, and watched him
pretty keen. But he never meddled at all; just slid the lid along as soft
as mush, and screwed it down tight and fast. So there I was! I didn't
know whether the money was in there or not. So, says I, s'pose somebody
has hogged that bag on the sly?--now how do I know whether to write to
Mary Jane or not? S'pose she dug him up and didn't find nothing, what
would she think of me? Blame it, I says, I might get hunted up and
jailed; I'd better lay low and keep dark, and not write at all; the
thing's awful mixed now; trying to better it, I've worsened it a hundred
times, and I wish to goodness I'd just let it alone, dad fetch the whole
business!
They buried him, and we come back home, and I went to watching faces
again--I couldn't help it, and I couldn't rest easy. But nothing come
of it; the faces didn't tell me nothing.
The king he visited around in the evening, and sweetened everybody up,
and made himself ever so friendly; and he give out the idea that his
congregation over in England would be in a sweat about him, so he must
hurry and settle up the estate right away and leave for home. He was
very sorry he was so pushed, and so was everybody; they wished he could
stay longer, but they said they could see it couldn't be done. And he
said of course him and William would take the girls home with them; and
that pleased everybody too, because then the girls would be well fixed
and amongst their own relations; and it pleased the girls, too--tickled
them so they clean forgot they ever had a trouble in the world; and told
him to sell out as quick as he wanted to, they would be ready. Them poor
things was that glad and happy it made my heart ache to see them getting
fooled and lied to so, but I didn't see no safe way for me to chip in and
change the general tune.
Well, blamed if the king didn't bill the house and the niggers and all
the property for auction straight off--sale two days after the funeral;
but anybody could buy private beforehand if they wanted to.
So the next day after the funeral, along about noon-time, the girls' joy
got the first jolt. A couple of nigger traders come along, and the king
sold them the niggers reasonable, for three-day drafts as they called it,
and away they went, the two sons up the river to Memphis, and their
mother down the river to Orleans. I thought them poor girls and them
niggers would break their hearts for grief; they cried around each other,
and took on so it most made me down sick to see it. The girls said they
hadn't ever dreamed of seeing the family separated or sold away from the
town. I can't ever get it out of my memory, the sight of them poor
miserable girls and niggers hanging around each other's necks and crying;
and I reckon I couldn't a stood it all, but would a had to bust out and
tell on our gang if I hadn't knowed the sale warn't no account and the
niggers would be back home in a week or two.
The thing made a big stir in the town, too, and a good many come out
flatfooted and said it was scandalous to separate the mother and the
children that way. It injured the frauds some; but the old fool he
bulled right along, spite of all the duke could say or do, and I tell you
the duke was powerful uneasy.
Next day was auction day. About broad day in the morning the king and
the duke come up in the garret and woke me up, and I see by their look
that there was trouble. The king says:
"Was you in my room night before last?"
"No, your majesty"--which was the way I always called him when nobody but
our gang warn't around.
"Was you in there yisterday er last night?"
"No, your majesty."
"Honor bright, now--no lies."
"Honor bright, your majesty, I'm telling you the truth. I hain't been
a-near your room since Miss Mary Jane took you and the duke and showed it
to you."
The duke says:
"Have you seen anybody else go in there?"
"No, your grace, not as I remember, I believe."
"Stop and think."
I studied awhile and see my chance; then I says:
"Well, I see the niggers go in there several times."
Both of them gave a little jump, and looked like they hadn't ever
expected it, and then like they HAD. Then the duke says:
"What, all of them?"
"No--leastways, not all at once--that is, I don't think I ever see them
all come OUT at once but just one time."
"Hello! When was that?"
"It was the day we had the funeral. In the morning. It warn't early,
because I overslept. I was just starting down the ladder, and I see
them."
"Well, go on, GO on! What did they do? How'd they act?"
"They didn't do nothing. And they didn't act anyway much, as fur as I
see. They tiptoed away; so I seen, easy enough, that they'd shoved in
there to do up your majesty's room, or something, s'posing you was up;
and found you WARN'T up, and so they was hoping to slide out of the way
of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up."
"Great guns, THIS is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty
sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching
their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy
chuckle, and says:
"It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to
be SORRY they was going out of this region! And I believed they WAS
sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don't ever tell ME any more
that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played
that thing it would fool ANYBODY. In my opinion, there's a fortune in
'em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a better lay-out
than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. Yes, and ain't
privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where IS that song--that draft?"
"In the bank for to be collected. Where WOULD it be?"
"Well, THAT'S all right then, thank goodness."
Says I, kind of timid-like:
"Is something gone wrong?"
The king whirls on me and rips out:
"None o' your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own
affairs--if you got any. Long as you're in this town don't you forgit
THAT--you hear?" Then he says to the duke, "We got to jest swaller it
and say noth'n': mum's the word for US."
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and
says:
"Quick sales AND small profits! It's a good business--yes."
The king snarls around on him and says:
"I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. If the
profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry,
is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?"
"Well, THEY'D be in this house yet and we WOULDN'T if I could a got my
advice listened to."
The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around
and lit into ME again. He give me down the banks for not coming and
TELLING him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way--said
any fool would a KNOWED something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed
HIMSELF awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking
his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it
again. So they went off a-jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it
all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
BY and by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started
for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls' room the door was open, and
I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she'd
been packing things in it--getting ready to go to England. But she had
stopped now with a folded gown in her lap, and had her face in her hands,
crying. I felt awful bad to see it; of course anybody would. I went in
there and says:
"Miss Mary Jane, you can't a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can't
--most always. Tell me about it."
So she done it. And it was the niggers--I just expected it. She said
the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn't
know HOW she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the
children warn't ever going to see each other no more--and then busted out
bitterer than ever, and flung up her hands, and says:
"Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain't EVER going to see each other any
more!"
"But they WILL--and inside of two weeks--and I KNOW it!" says I.
Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she
throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it AGAIN, say it AGAIN,
say it AGAIN!
I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place.
I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient
and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a
person that's had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I
says to myself, I reckon a body that ups and tells the truth when he is
in a tight place is taking considerable many resks, though I ain't had no
experience, and can't say for certain; but it looks so to me, anyway; and
yet here's a case where I'm blest if it don't look to me like the truth
is better and actuly SAFER than a lie. I must lay it by in my mind, and
think it over some time or other, it's so kind of strange and unregular.
I never see nothing like it. Well, I says to myself at last, I'm a-going
to chance it; I'll up and tell the truth this time, though it does seem
most like setting down on a kag of powder and touching it off just to see
where you'll go to. Then I says:
"Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you
could go and stay three or four days?"
"Yes; Mr. Lothrop's. Why?"
"Never mind why yet. If I'll tell you how I know the niggers will see
each other again inside of two weeks--here in this house--and PROVE how I
know it--will you go to Mr. Lothrop's and stay four days?"
"Four days!" she says; "I'll stay a year!"
"All right," I says, "I don't want nothing more out of YOU than just your
word--I druther have it than another man's kiss-the-Bible." She smiled
and reddened up very sweet, and I says, "If you don't mind it, I'll shut
the door--and bolt it."
Then I come back and set down again, and says:
"Don't you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to tell
the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it's a bad kind,
and going to be hard to take, but there ain't no help for it. These
uncles of yourn ain't no uncles at all; they're a couple of frauds
--regular dead-beats. There, now we're over the worst of it, you can stand
the rest middling easy."
It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal
water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher
all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck
that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she
flung herself on to the king's breast at the front door and he kissed her
sixteen or seventeen times--and then up she jumps, with her face afire
like sunset, and says:
"The brute! Come, don't waste a minute--not a SECOND--we'll have them
tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!"
Says I:
"Cert'nly. But do you mean BEFORE you go to Mr. Lothrop's, or--"
"Oh," she says, "what am I THINKING about!" she says, and set right down
again. "Don't mind what I said--please don't--you WON'T, now, WILL you?"
Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would
die first. "I never thought, I was so stirred up," she says; "now go on,
and I won't do so any more. You tell me what to do, and whatever you say
I'll do it."
"Well," I says, "it's a rough gang, them two frauds, and I'm fixed so I
got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not--I
druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would
get me out of their claws, and I'd be all right; but there'd be another
person that you don't know about who'd be in big trouble. Well, we got
to save HIM, hain't we? Of course. Well, then, we won't blow on them."
Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could
get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave.
But I didn't want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard
to answer questions but me; so I didn't want the plan to begin working
till pretty late to-night. I says:
"Miss Mary Jane, I'll tell you what we'll do, and you won't have to stay
at Mr. Lothrop's so long, nuther. How fur is it?"
"A little short of four miles--right out in the country, back here."
"Well, that 'll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till
nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again
--tell them you've thought of something. If you get here before eleven put
a candle in this window, and if I don't turn up wait TILL eleven, and
THEN if I don't turn up it means I'm gone, and out of the way, and safe.
Then you come out and spread the news around, and get these beats
jailed."
"Good," she says, "I'll do it."
"And if it just happens so that I don't get away, but get took up along
with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and
you must stand by me all you can."
"Stand by you! indeed I will. They sha'n't touch a hair of your head!"
she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said
it, too.
"If I get away I sha'n't be here," I says, "to prove these rapscallions
ain't your uncles, and I couldn't do it if I WAS here. I could swear
they was beats and bummers, that's all, though that's worth something.
Well, there's others can do that better than what I can, and they're
people that ain't going to be doubted as quick as I'd be. I'll tell you
how to find them. Gimme a pencil and a piece of paper. There--'Royal
Nonesuch, Bricksville.' Put it away, and don't lose it. When the court
wants to find out something about these two, let them send up to
Bricksville and say they've got the men that played the Royal Nonesuch,
and ask for some witnesses--why, you'll have that entire town down here
before you can hardly wink, Miss Mary. And they'll come a-biling, too."
I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says:
"Just let the auction go right along, and don't worry. Nobody don't have
to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on
accounts of the short notice, and they ain't going out of this till they
get that money; and the way we've fixed it the sale ain't going to count,
and they ain't going to get no money. It's just like the way it was with
the niggers--it warn't no sale, and the niggers will be back before
long. Why, they can't collect the money for the NIGGERS yet--they're in
the worst kind of a fix, Miss Mary."
"Well," she says, "I'll run down to breakfast now, and then I'll start
straight for Mr. Lothrop's."
"'Deed, THAT ain't the ticket, Miss Mary Jane," I says, "by no manner of
means; go BEFORE breakfast."
"Why?"
"What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?"
"Well, I never thought--and come to think, I don't know. What was it?"
"Why, it's because you ain't one of these leather-face people. I don't
want no better book than what your face is. A body can set down and read
it off like coarse print. Do you reckon you can go and face your uncles
when they come to kiss you good-morning, and never--"
"There, there, don't! Yes, I'll go before breakfast--I'll be glad to.
And leave my sisters with them?"
"Yes; never mind about them. They've got to stand it yet a while. They
might suspicion something if all of you was to go. I don't want you to
see them, nor your sisters, nor nobody in this town; if a neighbor was to
ask how is your uncles this morning your face would tell something. No,
you go right along, Miss Mary Jane, and I'll fix it with all of them.
I'll tell Miss Susan to give your love to your uncles and say you've went
away for a few hours for to get a little rest and change, or to see a
friend, and you'll be back to-night or early in the morning."
"Gone to see a friend is all right, but I won't have my love given to
them."
"Well, then, it sha'n't be." It was well enough to tell HER so--no harm
in it. It was only a little thing to do, and no trouble; and it's the
little things that smooths people's roads the most, down here below; it
would make Mary Jane comfortable, and it wouldn't cost nothing. Then I
says: "There's one more thing--that bag of money."
"Well, they've got that; and it makes me feel pretty silly to think HOW
they got it."
"No, you're out, there. They hain't got it."
"Why, who's got it?"
"I wish I knowed, but I don't. I HAD it, because I stole it from them;
and I stole it to give to you; and I know where I hid it, but I'm afraid
it ain't there no more. I'm awful sorry, Miss Mary Jane, I'm just as
sorry as I can be; but I done the best I could; I did honest. I come
nigh getting caught, and I had to shove it into the first place I come
to, and run--and it warn't a good place."
"Oh, stop blaming yourself--it's too bad to do it, and I won't allow it
--you couldn't help it; it wasn't your fault. Where did you hide it?"
I didn't want to set her to thinking about her troubles again; and I
couldn't seem to get my mouth to tell her what would make her see that
corpse laying in the coffin with that bag of money on his stomach. So
for a minute I didn't say nothing; then I says:
"I'd ruther not TELL you where I put it, Miss Mary Jane, if you don't
mind letting me off; but I'll write it for you on a piece of paper, and
you can read it along the road to Mr. Lothrop's, if you want to. Do you
reckon that 'll do?"
"Oh, yes."
So I wrote: "I put it in the coffin. It was in there when you was
crying there, away in the night. I was behind the door, and I was mighty
sorry for you, Miss Mary Jane."
It made my eyes water a little to remember her crying there all by
herself in the night, and them devils laying there right under her own
roof, shaming her and robbing her; and when I folded it up and give it to
her I see the water come into her eyes, too; and she shook me by the
hand, hard, and says:
"GOOD-bye. I'm going to do everything just as you've told me; and if I
don't ever see you again, I sha'n't ever forget you and I'll think of
you a many and a many a time, and I'll PRAY for you, too!"--and she was
gone.
Pray for me! I reckoned if she knowed me she'd take a job that was more
nearer her size. But I bet she done it, just the same--she was just that
kind. She had the grit to pray for Judus if she took the notion--there
warn't no back-down to her, I judge. You may say what you want to, but
in my opinion she had more sand in her than any girl I ever see; in my
opinion she was just full of sand. It sounds like flattery, but it ain't
no flattery. And when it comes to beauty--and goodness, too--she lays
over them all. I hain't ever seen her since that time that I see her go
out of that door; no, I hain't ever seen her since, but I reckon I've
thought of her a many and a many a million times, and of her saying she
would pray for me; and if ever I'd a thought it would do any good for me
to pray for HER, blamed if I wouldn't a done it or bust.
Well, Mary Jane she lit out the back way, I reckon; because nobody see
her go. When I struck Susan and the hare-lip, I says:
"What's the name of them people over on t'other side of the river that
you all goes to see sometimes?"
They says:
"There's several; but it's the Proctors, mainly."
"That's the name," I says; "I most forgot it. Well, Miss Mary Jane she
told me to tell you she's gone over there in a dreadful hurry--one of
them's sick."
"Which one?"
"I don't know; leastways, I kinder forget; but I thinks it's--"
"Sakes alive, I hope it ain't HANNER?"
"I'm sorry to say it," I says, "but Hanner's the very one."
"My goodness, and she so well only last week! Is she took bad?"
"It ain't no name for it. They set up with her all night, Miss Mary Jane
said, and they don't think she'll last many hours."
"Only think of that, now! What's the matter with her?"
I couldn't think of anything reasonable, right off that way, so I says:
"Mumps."
"Mumps your granny! They don't set up with people that's got the mumps."
"They don't, don't they? You better bet they do with THESE mumps. These
mumps is different. It's a new kind, Miss Mary Jane said."
"How's it a new kind?"
"Because it's mixed up with other things."
"What other things?"
"Well, measles, and whooping-cough, and erysiplas, and consumption, and
yaller janders, and brain-fever, and I don't know what all."
"My land! And they call it the MUMPS?"
"That's what Miss Mary Jane said."
"Well, what in the nation do they call it the MUMPS for?"
"Why, because it IS the mumps. That's what it starts with."
"Well, ther' ain't no sense in it. A body might stump his toe, and take
pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains
out, and somebody come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull
up and say, 'Why, he stumped his TOE.' Would ther' be any sense in that?
NO. And ther' ain't no sense in THIS, nuther. Is it ketching?"
"Is it KETCHING? Why, how you talk. Is a HARROW catching--in the dark?
If you don't hitch on to one tooth, you're bound to on another, ain't
you? And you can't get away with that tooth without fetching the whole
harrow along, can you? Well, these kind of mumps is a kind of a harrow,
as you may say--and it ain't no slouch of a harrow, nuther, you come to
get it hitched on good."
"Well, it's awful, I think," says the hare-lip. "I'll go to Uncle Harvey
and--"
"Oh, yes," I says, "I WOULD. Of COURSE I would. I wouldn't lose no
time."
"Well, why wouldn't you?"
"Just look at it a minute, and maybe you can see. Hain't your uncles
obleegd to get along home to England as fast as they can? And do you
reckon they'd be mean enough to go off and leave you to go all that
journey by yourselves? YOU know they'll wait for you. So fur, so good.
Your uncle Harvey's a preacher, ain't he? Very well, then; is a PREACHER
going to deceive a steamboat clerk? is he going to deceive a SHIP CLERK?
--so as to get them to let Miss Mary Jane go aboard? Now YOU know he
ain't. What WILL he do, then? Why, he'll say, 'It's a great pity, but
my church matters has got to get along the best way they can; for my
niece has been exposed to the dreadful pluribus-unum mumps, and so it's
my bounden duty to set down here and wait the three months it takes to
show on her if she's got it.' But never mind, if you think it's best to
tell your uncle Harvey--"
"Shucks, and stay fooling around here when we could all be having good
times in England whilst we was waiting to find out whether Mary Jane's
got it or not? Why, you talk like a muggins."
"Well, anyway, maybe you'd better tell some of the neighbors."
"Listen at that, now. You do beat all for natural stupidness. Can't you
SEE that THEY'D go and tell? Ther' ain't no way but just to not tell
anybody at ALL."
"Well, maybe you're right--yes, I judge you ARE right."
"But I reckon we ought to tell Uncle Harvey she's gone out a while,
anyway, so he won't be uneasy about her?"
"Yes, Miss Mary Jane she wanted you to do that. She says, 'Tell them to
give Uncle Harvey and William my love and a kiss, and say I've run over
the river to see Mr.'--Mr.--what IS the name of that rich family your
uncle Peter used to think so much of?--I mean the one that--"
"Why, you must mean the Apthorps, ain't it?"
"Of course; bother them kind of names, a body can't ever seem to remember
them, half the time, somehow. Yes, she said, say she has run over for to
ask the Apthorps to be sure and come to the auction and buy this house,
because she allowed her uncle Peter would ruther they had it than anybody
else; and she's going to stick to them till they say they'll come, and
then, if she ain't too tired, she's coming home; and if she is, she'll be
home in the morning anyway. She said, don't say nothing about the
Proctors, but only about the Apthorps--which 'll be perfectly true,
because she is going there to speak about their buying the house; I know
it, because she told me so herself."
"All right," they said, and cleared out to lay for their uncles, and give
them the love and the kisses, and tell them the message.
Everything was all right now. The girls wouldn't say nothing because
they wanted to go to England; and the king and the duke would ruther Mary
Jane was off working for the auction than around in reach of Doctor
Robinson. I felt very good; I judged I had done it pretty neat--I
reckoned Tom Sawyer couldn't a done it no neater himself. Of course he
would a throwed more style into it, but I can't do that very handy, not
being brung up to it.
Well, they held the auction in the public square, along towards the end
of the afternoon, and it strung along, and strung along, and the old man
he was on hand and looking his level pisonest, up there longside of the
auctioneer, and chipping in a little Scripture now and then, or a little
goody-goody saying of some kind, and the duke he was around goo-gooing
for sympathy all he knowed how, and just spreading himself generly.
But by and by the thing dragged through, and everything was sold
--everything but a little old trifling lot in the graveyard. So they'd got
to work that off--I never see such a girafft as the king was for wanting
to swallow EVERYTHING. Well, whilst they was at it a steamboat landed,
and in about two minutes up comes a crowd a-whooping and yelling and
laughing and carrying on, and singing out:
"HERE'S your opposition line! here's your two sets o' heirs to old Peter
Wilks--and you pays your money and you takes your choice!"
CHAPTER XXIX.
THEY was fetching a very nice-looking old gentleman along, and a
nice-looking younger one, with his right arm in a sling. And, my souls,
how the people yelled and laughed, and kept it up. But I didn't see no
joke about it, and I judged it would strain the duke and the king some to
see any. I reckoned they'd turn pale. But no, nary a pale did THEY
turn. The duke he never let on he suspicioned what was up, but just went
a goo-gooing around, happy and satisfied, like a jug that's googling out
buttermilk; and as for the king, he just gazed and gazed down sorrowful
on them new-comers like it give him the stomach-ache in his very heart to
think there could be such frauds and rascals in the world. Oh, he done
it admirable. Lots of the principal people gethered around the king, to
let him see they was on his side. That old gentleman that had just come
looked all puzzled to death. Pretty soon he begun to speak, and I see
straight off he pronounced LIKE an Englishman--not the king's way, though
the king's WAS pretty good for an imitation. I can't give the old gent's
words, nor I can't imitate him; but he turned around to the crowd, and
says, about like this:
"This is a surprise to me which I wasn't looking for; and I'll
acknowledge, candid and frank, I ain't very well fixed to meet it and
answer it; for my brother and me has had misfortunes; he's broke his arm,
and our baggage got put off at a town above here last night in the night
by a mistake. I am Peter Wilks' brother Harvey, and this is his brother
William, which can't hear nor speak--and can't even make signs to amount
to much, now't he's only got one hand to work them with. We are who we
say we are; and in a day or two, when I get the baggage, I can prove it.
But up till then I won't say nothing more, but go to the hotel and wait."
So him and the new dummy started off; and the king he laughs, and
blethers out:
"Broke his arm--VERY likely, AIN'T it?--and very convenient, too, for a
fraud that's got to make signs, and ain't learnt how. Lost their
baggage! That's MIGHTY good!--and mighty ingenious--under the
CIRCUMSTANCES!"
So he laughed again; and so did everybody else, except three or four, or
maybe half a dozen. One of these was that doctor; another one was a
sharp-looking gentleman, with a carpet-bag of the old-fashioned kind made
out of carpet-stuff, that had just come off of the steamboat and was
talking to him in a low voice, and glancing towards the king now and then
and nodding their heads--it was Levi Bell, the lawyer that was gone up to
Louisville; and another one was a big rough husky that come along and
listened to all the old gentleman said, and was listening to the king
now. And when the king got done this husky up and says:
"Say, looky here; if you are Harvey Wilks, when'd you come to this town?"
"The day before the funeral, friend," says the king.
"But what time o' day?"
"In the evenin'--'bout an hour er two before sundown."
"HOW'D you come?"
"I come down on the Susan Powell from Cincinnati."
"Well, then, how'd you come to be up at the Pint in the MORNIN'--in a
canoe?"
"I warn't up at the Pint in the mornin'."
"It's a lie."
Several of them jumped for him and begged him not to talk that way to an
old man and a preacher.
"Preacher be hanged, he's a fraud and a liar. He was up at the Pint that
mornin'. I live up there, don't I? Well, I was up there, and he was up
there. I see him there. He come in a canoe, along with Tim Collins and
a boy."
The doctor he up and says:
"Would you know the boy again if you was to see him, Hines?"
"I reckon I would, but I don't know. Why, yonder he is, now. I know him
perfectly easy."
It was me he pointed at. The doctor says:
"Neighbors, I don't know whether the new couple is frauds or not; but if
THESE two ain't frauds, I am an idiot, that's all. I think it's our duty
to see that they don't get away from here till we've looked into this
thing. Come along, Hines; come along, the rest of you. We'll take these
fellows to the tavern and affront them with t'other couple, and I reckon
we'll find out SOMETHING before we get through."
It was nuts for the crowd, though maybe not for the king's friends; so we
all started. It was about sundown. The doctor he led me along by the
hand, and was plenty kind enough, but he never let go my hand.
We all got in a big room in the hotel, and lit up some candles, and
fetched in the new couple. First, the doctor says:
"I don't wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're
frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If
they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks
left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object
to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove they're
all right--ain't that so?"
Everybody agreed to that. So I judged they had our gang in a pretty
tight place right at the outstart. But the king he only looked
sorrowful, and says:
"Gentlemen, I wish the money was there, for I ain't got no disposition to
throw anything in the way of a fair, open, out-and-out investigation o'
this misable business; but, alas, the money ain't there; you k'n send and
see, if you want to."
"Where is it, then?"
"Well, when my niece give it to me to keep for her I took and hid it
inside o' the straw tick o' my bed, not wishin' to bank it for the few
days we'd be here, and considerin' the bed a safe place, we not bein'
used to niggers, and suppos'n' 'em honest, like servants in England. The
niggers stole it the very next mornin' after I had went down stairs; and
when I sold 'em I hadn't missed the money yit, so they got clean away
with it. My servant here k'n tell you 'bout it, gentlemen."
The doctor and several said "Shucks!" and I see nobody didn't altogether
believe him. One man asked me if I see the niggers steal it. I said no,
but I see them sneaking out of the room and hustling away, and I never
thought nothing, only I reckoned they was afraid they had waked up my
master and was trying to get away before he made trouble with them. That
was all they asked me. Then the doctor whirls on me and says:
"Are YOU English, too?"
I says yes; and him and some others laughed, and said, "Stuff!"
Well, then they sailed in on the general investigation, and there we had
it, up and down, hour in, hour out, and nobody never said a word about
supper, nor ever seemed to think about it--and so they kept it up, and
kept it up; and it WAS the worst mixed-up thing you ever see. They made
the king tell his yarn, and they made the old gentleman tell his'n; and
anybody but a lot of prejudiced chuckleheads would a SEEN that the old
gentleman was spinning truth and t'other one lies. And by and by they
had me up to tell what I knowed. The king he give me a left-handed look
out of the corner of his eye, and so I knowed enough to talk on the right
side. I begun to tell about Sheffield, and how we lived there, and all
about the English Wilkses, and so on; but I didn't get pretty fur till
the doctor begun to laugh; and Levi Bell, the lawyer, says:
"Set down, my boy; I wouldn't strain myself if I was you. I reckon you
ain't used to lying, it don't seem to come handy; what you want is
practice. You do it pretty awkward."
I didn't care nothing for the compliment, but I was glad to be let off,
anyway.
The doctor he started to say something, and turns and says:
"If you'd been in town at first, Levi Bell--" The king broke in and
reached out his hand, and says:
"Why, is this my poor dead brother's old friend that he's wrote so often
about?"
The lawyer and him shook hands, and the lawyer smiled and looked pleased,
and they talked right along awhile, and then got to one side and talked
low; and at last the lawyer speaks up and says:
"That 'll fix it. I'll take the order and send it, along with your
brother's, and then they'll know it's all right."
So they got some paper and a pen, and the king he set down and twisted
his head to one side, and chawed his tongue, and scrawled off something;
and then they give the pen to the duke--and then for the first time the
duke looked sick. But he took the pen and wrote. So then the lawyer
turns to the new old gentleman and says:
"You and your brother please write a line or two and sign your names."
The old gentleman wrote, but nobody couldn't read it. The lawyer looked
powerful astonished, and says:
"Well, it beats ME"--and snaked a lot of old letters out of his pocket,
and examined them, and then examined the old man's writing, and then THEM
again; and then says: "These old letters is from Harvey Wilks; and
here's THESE two handwritings, and anybody can see they didn't write
them" (the king and the duke looked sold and foolish, I tell you, to see
how the lawyer had took them in), "and here's THIS old gentleman's hand
writing, and anybody can tell, easy enough, HE didn't write them--fact
is, the scratches he makes ain't properly WRITING at all. Now, here's
some letters from--"
The new old gentleman says:
"If you please, let me explain. Nobody can read my hand but my brother
there--so he copies for me. It's HIS hand you've got there, not mine."
"WELL!" says the lawyer, "this IS a state of things. I've got some of
William's letters, too; so if you'll get him to write a line or so we can
com--"
"He CAN'T write with his left hand," says the old gentleman. "If he
could use his right hand, you would see that he wrote his own letters and
mine too. Look at both, please--they're by the same hand."
The lawyer done it, and says:
"I believe it's so--and if it ain't so, there's a heap stronger
resemblance than I'd noticed before, anyway. Well, well, well! I
thought we was right on the track of a solution, but it's gone to grass,
partly. But anyway, one thing is proved--THESE two ain't either of 'em
Wilkses"--and he wagged his head towards the king and the duke.
Well, what do you think? That muleheaded old fool wouldn't give in THEN!
Indeed he wouldn't. Said it warn't no fair test. Said his brother
William was the cussedest joker in the world, and hadn't tried to write
--HE see William was going to play one of his jokes the minute he put the
pen to paper. And so he warmed up and went warbling right along till he
was actuly beginning to believe what he was saying HIMSELF; but pretty
soon the new gentleman broke in, and says:
"I've thought of something. Is there anybody here that helped to lay out
my br--helped to lay out the late Peter Wilks for burying?"
"Yes," says somebody, "me and Ab Turner done it. We're both here."
Then the old man turns towards the king, and says:
"Perhaps this gentleman can tell me what was tattooed on his breast?"
Blamed if the king didn't have to brace up mighty quick, or he'd a
squshed down like a bluff bank that the river has cut under, it took him
so sudden; and, mind you, it was a thing that was calculated to make most
ANYBODY sqush to get fetched such a solid one as that without any notice,
because how was HE going to know what was tattooed on the man? He
whitened a little; he couldn't help it; and it was mighty still in there,
and everybody bending a little forwards and gazing at him. Says I to
myself, NOW he'll throw up the sponge--there ain't no more use. Well,
did he? A body can't hardly believe it, but he didn't. I reckon he
thought he'd keep the thing up till he tired them people out, so they'd
thin out, and him and the duke could break loose and get away. Anyway,
he set there, and pretty soon he begun to smile, and says:
"Mf! It's a VERY tough question, AIN'T it! YES, sir, I k'n tell you
what's tattooed on his breast. It's jest a small, thin, blue arrow
--that's what it is; and if you don't look clost, you can't see it. NOW
what do you say--hey?"
Well, I never see anything like that old blister for clean out-and-out
cheek.
The new old gentleman turns brisk towards Ab Turner and his pard, and his
eye lights up like he judged he'd got the king THIS time, and says:
"There--you've heard what he said! Was there any such mark on Peter
Wilks' breast?"
Both of them spoke up and says:
"We didn't see no such mark."
"Good!" says the old gentleman. "Now, what you DID see on his breast was
a small dim P, and a B (which is an initial he dropped when he was
young), and a W, with dashes between them, so: P--B--W"--and he marked
them that way on a piece of paper. "Come, ain't that what you saw?"
Both of them spoke up again, and says:
"No, we DIDN'T. We never seen any marks at all."
Well, everybody WAS in a state of mind now, and they sings out:
"The whole BILIN' of 'm 's frauds! Le's duck 'em! le's drown 'em! le's
ride 'em on a rail!" and everybody was whooping at once, and there was a
rattling powwow. But the lawyer he jumps on the table and yells, and
says:
"Gentlemen--gentleMEN! Hear me just a word--just a SINGLE word--if you
PLEASE! There's one way yet--let's go and dig up the corpse and look."
That took them.
"Hooray!" they all shouted, and was starting right off; but the lawyer
and the doctor sung out:
"Hold on, hold on! Collar all these four men and the boy, and fetch THEM
along, too!"
"We'll do it!" they all shouted; "and if we don't find them marks we'll
lynch the whole gang!"
I WAS scared, now, I tell you. But there warn't no getting away, you
know. They gripped us all, and marched us right along, straight for the
graveyard, which was a mile and a half down the river, and the whole town
at our heels, for we made noise enough, and it was only nine in the
evening.
As we went by our house I wished I hadn't sent Mary Jane out of town;
because now if I could tip her the wink she'd light out and save me, and
blow on our dead-beats.
Well, we swarmed along down the river road, just carrying on like
wildcats; and to make it more scary the sky was darking up, and the
lightning beginning to wink and flitter, and the wind to shiver amongst
the leaves. This was the most awful trouble and most dangersome I ever
was in; and I was kinder stunned; everything was going so different from
what I had allowed for; stead of being fixed so I could take my own time
if I wanted to, and see all the fun, and have Mary Jane at my back to
save me and set me free when the close-fit come, here was nothing in the
world betwixt me and sudden death but just them tattoo-marks. If they
didn't find them--
I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think
about nothing else. It got darker and darker, and it was a beautiful
time to give the crowd the slip; but that big husky had me by the wrist
--Hines--and a body might as well try to give Goliar the slip. He dragged
me right along, he was so excited, and I had to run to keep up.
When they got there they swarmed into the graveyard and washed over it
like an overflow. And when they got to the grave they found they had
about a hundred times as many shovels as they wanted, but nobody hadn't
thought to fetch a lantern. But they sailed into digging anyway by the
flicker of the lightning, and sent a man to the nearest house, a half a
mile off, to borrow one.
So they dug and dug like everything; and it got awful dark, and the rain
started, and the wind swished and swushed along, and the lightning come
brisker and brisker, and the thunder boomed; but them people never took
no notice of it, they was so full of this business; and one minute you
could see everything and every face in that big crowd, and the shovelfuls
of dirt sailing up out of the grave, and the next second the dark wiped
it all out, and you couldn't see nothing at all.
At last they got out the coffin and begun to unscrew the lid, and then
such another crowding and shouldering and shoving as there was, to
scrouge in and get a sight, you never see; and in the dark, that way, it
was awful. Hines he hurt my wrist dreadful pulling and tugging so, and I
reckon he clean forgot I was in the world, he was so excited and panting.
All of a sudden the lightning let go a perfect sluice of white glare, and
somebody sings out:
"By the living jingo, here's the bag of gold on his breast!"
Hines let out a whoop, like everybody else, and dropped my wrist and give
a big surge to bust his way in and get a look, and the way I lit out and
shinned for the road in the dark there ain't nobody can tell.
I had the road all to myself, and I fairly flew--leastways, I had it all
to myself except the solid dark, and the now-and-then glares, and the
buzzing of the rain, and the thrashing of the wind, and the splitting of
the thunder; and sure as you are born I did clip it along!
When I struck the town I see there warn't nobody out in the storm, so I
never hunted for no back streets, but humped it straight through the main
one; and when I begun to get towards our house I aimed my eye and set it.
No light there; the house all dark--which made me feel sorry and
disappointed, I didn't know why. But at last, just as I was sailing by,
FLASH comes the light in Mary Jane's window! and my heart swelled up
sudden, like to bust; and the same second the house and all was behind me
in the dark, and wasn't ever going to be before me no more in this world.
She WAS the best girl I ever see, and had the most sand.
The minute I was far enough above the town to see I could make the
towhead, I begun to look sharp for a boat to borrow, and the first time
the lightning showed me one that wasn't chained I snatched it and shoved.
It was a canoe, and warn't fastened with nothing but a rope. The towhead
was a rattling big distance off, away out there in the middle of the
river, but I didn't lose no time; and when I struck the raft at last I
was so fagged I would a just laid down to blow and gasp if I could
afforded it. But I didn't. As I sprung aboard I sung out:
"Out with you, Jim, and set her loose! Glory be to goodness, we're shut
of them!"
Jim lit out, and was a-coming for me with both arms spread, he was so
full of joy; but when I glimpsed him in the lightning my heart shot up in
my mouth and I went overboard backwards; for I forgot he was old King
Lear and a drownded A-rab all in one, and it most scared the livers and
lights out of me. But Jim fished me out, and was going to hug me and
bless me, and so on, he was so glad I was back and we was shut of the
king and the duke, but I says:
"Not now; have it for breakfast, have it for breakfast! Cut loose and
let her slide!"
So in two seconds away we went a-sliding down the river, and it DID seem
so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river, and
nobody to bother us. I had to skip around a bit, and jump up and crack
my heels a few times--I couldn't help it; but about the third crack I
noticed a sound that I knowed mighty well, and held my breath and
listened and waited; and sure enough, when the next flash busted out over
the water, here they come!--and just a-laying to their oars and making
their skiff hum! It was the king and the duke.
So I wilted right down on to the planks then, and give up; and it was all
I could do to keep from crying.
CHAPTER XXX.
WHEN they got aboard the king went for me, and shook me by the collar,
and says:
"Tryin' to give us the slip, was ye, you pup! Tired of our company,
hey?"
I says:
"No, your majesty, we warn't--PLEASE don't, your majesty!"
"Quick, then, and tell us what WAS your idea, or I'll shake the insides
out o' you!"
"Honest, I'll tell you everything just as it happened, your majesty. The
man that had a-holt of me was very good to me, and kept saying he had a
boy about as big as me that died last year, and he was sorry to see a boy
in such a dangerous fix; and when they was all took by surprise by
finding the gold, and made a rush for the coffin, he lets go of me and
whispers, 'Heel it now, or they'll hang ye, sure!' and I lit out. It
didn't seem no good for ME to stay--I couldn't do nothing, and I didn't
want to be hung if I could get away. So I never stopped running till I
found the canoe; and when I got here I told Jim to hurry, or they'd catch
me and hang me yet, and said I was afeard you and the duke wasn't alive
now, and I was awful sorry, and so was Jim, and was awful glad when we
see you coming; you may ask Jim if I didn't."
Jim said it was so; and the king told him to shut up, and said, "Oh, yes,
it's MIGHTY likely!" and shook me up again, and said he reckoned he'd
drownd me. But the duke says:
"Leggo the boy, you old idiot! Would YOU a done any different? Did you
inquire around for HIM when you got loose? I don't remember it."
So the king let go of me, and begun to cuss that town and everybody in
it. But the duke says:
"You better a blame' sight give YOURSELF a good cussing, for you're the
one that's entitled to it most. You hain't done a thing from the start
that had any sense in it, except coming out so cool and cheeky with that
imaginary blue-arrow mark. That WAS bright--it was right down bully; and
it was the thing that saved us. For if it hadn't been for that they'd a
jailed us till them Englishmen's baggage come--and then--the
penitentiary, you bet! But that trick took 'em to the graveyard, and the
gold done us a still bigger kindness; for if the excited fools hadn't let
go all holts and made that rush to get a look we'd a slept in our cravats
to-night--cravats warranted to WEAR, too--longer than WE'D need 'em."
They was still a minute--thinking; then the king says, kind of
absent-minded like:
"Mf! And we reckoned the NIGGERS stole it!"
That made me squirm!
"Yes," says the duke, kinder slow and deliberate and sarcastic, "WE did."
After about a half a minute the king drawls out:
"Leastways, I did."
The duke says, the same way:
"On the contrary, I did."
The king kind of ruffles up, and says:
"Looky here, Bilgewater, what'r you referrin' to?"
The duke says, pretty brisk:
"When it comes to that, maybe you'll let me ask, what was YOU referring
to?"
"Shucks!" says the king, very sarcastic; "but I don't know--maybe you was
asleep, and didn't know what you was about."
The duke bristles up now, and says:
"Oh, let UP on this cussed nonsense; do you take me for a blame' fool?
Don't you reckon I know who hid that money in that coffin?"
"YES, sir! I know you DO know, because you done it yourself!"
"It's a lie!"--and the duke went for him. The king sings out:
"Take y'r hands off!--leggo my throat!--I take it all back!"
The duke says:
"Well, you just own up, first, that you DID hide that money there,
intending to give me the slip one of these days, and come back and dig it
up, and have it all to yourself."
"Wait jest a minute, duke--answer me this one question, honest and fair;
if you didn't put the money there, say it, and I'll b'lieve you, and take
back everything I said."
"You old scoundrel, I didn't, and you know I didn't. There, now!"
"Well, then, I b'lieve you. But answer me only jest this one more--now
DON'T git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide
it?"
The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:
"Well, I don't care if I DID, I didn't DO it, anyway. But you not only
had it in mind to do it, but you DONE it."
"I wisht I never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say
I warn't goin' to do it, because I WAS; but you--I mean somebody--got in
ahead o' me."
"It's a lie! You done it, and you got to SAY you done it, or--"
The king began to gurgle, and then he gasps out:
"'Nough!--I OWN UP!"
I was very glad to hear him say that; it made me feel much more easier
than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off and says:
"If you ever deny it again I'll drown you. It's WELL for you to set
there and blubber like a baby--it's fitten for you, after the way you've
acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything
--and I a-trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought
to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled on to a lot
of poor niggers, and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel
ridiculous to think I was soft enough to BELIEVE that rubbage. Cuss you,
I can see now why you was so anxious to make up the deffisit--you wanted
to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another,
and scoop it ALL!"
The king says, timid, and still a-snuffling:
"Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffisit; it warn't me."
"Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "And
NOW you see what you GOT by it. They've got all their own money back,
and all of OURN but a shekel or two BESIDES. G'long to bed, and don't
you deffersit ME no more deffersits, long 's YOU live!"
So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort,
and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle; and so in about a half an
hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the
lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms. They
both got powerful mellow, but I noticed the king didn't get mellow enough
to forget to remember to not deny about hiding the money-bag again. That
made me feel easy and satisfied. Of course when they got to snoring we
had a long gabble, and I told Jim everything.
CHAPTER XXXI.
WE dasn't stop again at any town for days and days; kept right along down
the river. We was down south in the warm weather now, and a mighty long
ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them,
hanging down from the limbs like long, gray beards. It was the first I
ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal. So
now the frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work
the villages again.
First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough for
them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started a
dancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroo
does; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in and
pranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution;
but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them a
solid good cussing, and made them skip out. They tackled missionarying,
and mesmerizing, and doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of
everything; but they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got
just about dead broke, and laid around the raft as she floated along,
thinking and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a
time, and dreadful blue and desperate.
And at last they took a change and begun to lay their heads together in
the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three hours at a time.
Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of it. We judged they
was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than ever. We turned it over
and over, and at last we made up our minds they was going to break into
somebody's house or store, or was going into the counterfeit-money
business, or something. So then we was pretty scared, and made up an
agreement that we wouldn't have nothing in the world to do with such
actions, and if we ever got the least show we would give them the cold
shake and clear out and leave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid
the raft in a good, safe place about two mile below a little bit of a
shabby village named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore and told us
all to stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if
anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to rob,
you MEAN," says I to myself; "and when you get through robbing it you'll
come back here and wonder what has become of me and Jim and the raft--and
you'll have to take it out in wondering.") And he said if he warn't back
by midday the duke and me would know it was all right, and we was to come
along.
So we stayed where we was. The duke he fretted and sweated around, and
was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything, and we couldn't
seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every little thing.
Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad when midday come and
no king; we could have a change, anyway--and maybe a chance for THE
chance on top of it. So me and the duke went up to the village, and
hunted around there for the king, and by and by we found him in the back
room of a little low doggery, very tight, and a lot of loafers
bullyragging him for sport, and he a-cussing and a-threatening with all
his might, and so tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to
them. The duke he begun to abuse him for an old fool, and the king begun
to sass back, and the minute they was fairly at it I lit out and shook
the reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a deer,
for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that it would be a long day
before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all out of
breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out:
"Set her loose, Jim! we're all right now!"
But there warn't no answer, and nobody come out of the wigwam. Jim was
gone! I set up a shout--and then another--and then another one; and run
this way and that in the woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no
use--old Jim was gone. Then I set down and cried; I couldn't help it.
But I couldn't set still long. Pretty soon I went out on the road,
trying to think what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and
asked him if he'd seen a strange nigger dressed so and so, and he says:
"Yes."
"Whereabouts?" says I.
"Down to Silas Phelps' place, two mile below here. He's a runaway
nigger, and they've got him. Was you looking for him?"
"You bet I ain't! I run across him in the woods about an hour or two
ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out--and told me to lay
down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever since; afeard
to come out."
"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've got him.
He run off f'm down South, som'ers."
"It's a good job they got him."
"Well, I RECKON! There's two hunderd dollars reward on him. It's like
picking up money out'n the road."
"Yes, it is--and I could a had it if I'd been big enough; I see him
FIRST. Who nailed him?"
"It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in him for
forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't wait. Think
o' that, now! You bet I'D wait, if it was seven year."
"That's me, every time," says I. "But maybe his chance ain't worth no
more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's something ain't
straight about it."
"But it IS, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill myself. It
tells all about him, to a dot--paints him like a picture, and tells the
plantation he's frum, below NewrLEANS. No-sirree-BOB, they ain't no
trouble 'bout THAT speculation, you bet you. Say, gimme a chaw tobacker,
won't ye?"
I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the
wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore
my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all
this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it
was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because
they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him
a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty
dollars.
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a
slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd GOT to be a slave,
and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss
Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things:
she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for
leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if
she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd
make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced.
And then think of ME! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a
nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that
town again I'd be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's
just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to
take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide, it ain't no
disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the
more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down
and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden
that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and
letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up
there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's nigger that
hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there's One that's
always on the lookout, and ain't a-going to allow no such miserable
doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks
I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up
somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn't so
much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, "There was the
Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you'd a done it they'd a
learnt you there that people that acts as I'd been acting about that
nigger goes to everlasting fire."
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I
couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I
kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't they? It
warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from ME, neither. I
knowed very well why they wouldn't come. It was because my heart warn't
right; it was because I warn't square; it was because I was playing
double. I was letting ON to give up sin, but away inside of me I was
holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth SAY
I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that
nigger's owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was
a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie--I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know what to do.
At last I had an idea; and I says, I'll go and write the letter--and then
see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a
feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece
of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below
Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the
reward if you send.
HUCK FINN.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever
felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it
straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking
how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost
and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our
trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day
and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we
a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I
couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the
other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of
calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I
come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up
there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me
honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how
good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling
the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was
the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got
now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was
a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and
I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then
says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said. And I let them
stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole
thing out of my head, and said I would take up wickedness again, which
was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a
starter I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I
could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I
was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.
Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over some
considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that
suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was down
the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept out with my
raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned in. I slept the
night through, and got up before it was light, and had my breakfast, and
put on my store clothes, and tied up some others and one thing or another
in a bundle, and took the canoe and cleared for shore. I landed below
where I judged was Phelps's place, and hid my bundle in the woods, and
then filled up the canoe with water, and loaded rocks into her and sunk
her where I could find her again when I wanted her, about a quarter of a
mile below a little steam sawmill that was on the bank.
Then I struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a sign on it,
"Phelps's Sawmill," and when I come to the farm-houses, two or three
hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but didn't see nobody
around, though it was good daylight now. But I didn't mind, because I
didn't want to see nobody just yet--I only wanted to get the lay of the
land. According to my plan, I was going to turn up there from the
village, not from below. So I just took a look, and shoved along,
straight for town. Well, the very first man I see when I got there was
the duke. He was sticking up a bill for the Royal Nonesuch--three-night
performance--like that other time. They had the cheek, them frauds! I
was right on him before I could shirk. He looked astonished, and says:
"Hel-LO! Where'd YOU come from?" Then he says, kind of glad and eager,
"Where's the raft?--got her in a good place?"
I says:
"Why, that's just what I was going to ask your grace."
Then he didn't look so joyful, and says:
"What was your idea for asking ME?" he says.
"Well," I says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday I says to
myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer; so I went
a-loafing around town to put in the time and wait. A man up and offered
me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river and back to fetch a
sheep, and so I went along; but when we was dragging him to the boat, and
the man left me a-holt of the rope and went behind him to shove him
along, he was too strong for me and jerked loose and run, and we after
him. We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the
country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark; then we
fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there and
see it was gone, I says to myself, 'They've got into trouble and had to
leave; and they've took my nigger, which is the only nigger I've got in
the world, and now I'm in a strange country, and ain't got no property no
more, nor nothing, and no way to make my living;' so I set down and
cried. I slept in the woods all night. But what DID become of the raft,
then?--and Jim--poor Jim!"
"Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft. That old fool had
made a trade and got forty dollars, and when we found him in the doggery
the loafers had matched half-dollars with him and got every cent but what
he'd spent for whisky; and when I got him home late last night and found
the raft gone, we said, 'That little rascal has stole our raft and shook
us, and run off down the river.'"
"I wouldn't shake my NIGGER, would I?--the only nigger I had in the
world, and the only property."
"We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to consider him
OUR nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows we had trouble
enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone and we flat broke,
there warn't anything for it but to try the Royal Nonesuch another shake.
And I've pegged along ever since, dry as a powder-horn. Where's that ten
cents? Give it here."
I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him to
spend it for something to eat, and give me some, because it was all the
money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since yesterday. He never
said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me and says:
"Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he done
that!"
"How can he blow? Hain't he run off?"
"No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the money's
gone."
"SOLD him?" I says, and begun to cry; "why, he was MY nigger, and that
was my money. Where is he?--I want my nigger."
"Well, you can't GET your nigger, that's all--so dry up your blubbering.
Looky here--do you think YOU'D venture to blow on us? Blamed if I think
I'd trust you. Why, if you WAS to blow on us--"
He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes before.
I went on a-whimpering, and says:
"I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow, nohow.
I got to turn out and find my nigger."
He looked kinder bothered, and stood there with his bills fluttering on
his arm, thinking, and wrinkling up his forehead. At last he says:
"I'll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you'll
promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you
where to find him."
So I promised, and he says:
"A farmer by the name of Silas Ph--" and then he stopped. You see, he
started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped that way, and begun to
study and think again, I reckoned he was changing his mind. And so he
was. He wouldn't trust me; he wanted to make sure of having me out of the
way the whole three days. So pretty soon he says:
"The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G. Foster--and he
lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road to Lafayette."
"All right," I says, "I can walk it in three days. And I'll start this
very afternoon."
"No you wont, you'll start NOW; and don't you lose any time about it,
neither, nor do any gabbling by the way. Just keep a tight tongue in
your head and move right along, and then you won't get into trouble with
US, d'ye hear?"
That was the order I wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted
to be left free to work my plans.
"So clear out," he says; "and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you want
to. Maybe you can get him to believe that Jim IS your nigger--some idiots
don't require documents--leastways I've heard there's such down South
here. And when you tell him the handbill and the reward's bogus, maybe
he'll believe you when you explain to him what the idea was for getting
'em out. Go 'long now, and tell him anything you want to; but mind you
don't work your jaw any BETWEEN here and there."
So I left, and struck for the back country. I didn't look around, but I
kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire him out
at that. I went straight out in the country as much as a mile before I
stopped; then I doubled back through the woods towards Phelps'. I
reckoned I better start in on my plan straight off without fooling
around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth till these fellows could get
away. I didn't want no trouble with their kind. I'd seen all I wanted
to of them, and wanted to get entirely shut of them.
CHAPTER XXXII.
WHEN I got there it was all still and Sunday-like, and hot and sunshiny;
the hands was gone to the fields; and there was them kind of faint
dronings of bugs and flies in the air that makes it seem so lonesome and
like everybody's dead and gone; and if a breeze fans along and quivers
the leaves it makes you feel mournful, because you feel like it's spirits
whispering--spirits that's been dead ever so many years--and you always
think they're talking about YOU. As a general thing it makes a body wish
HE was dead, too, and done with it all.
Phelps' was one of these little one-horse cotton plantations, and they
all look alike. A rail fence round a two-acre yard; a stile made out of
logs sawed off and up-ended in steps, like barrels of a different length,
to climb over the fence with, and for the women to stand on when they are
going to jump on to a horse; some sickly grass-patches in the big yard,
but mostly it was bare and smooth, like an old hat with the nap rubbed
off; big double log-house for the white folks--hewed logs, with the
chinks stopped up with mud or mortar, and these mud-stripes been
whitewashed some time or another; round-log kitchen, with a big broad,
open but roofed passage joining it to the house; log smoke-house back of
the kitchen; three little log nigger-cabins in a row t'other side the
smoke-house; one little hut all by itself away down against the back
fence, and some outbuildings down a piece the other side; ash-hopper and
big kettle to bile soap in by the little hut; bench by the kitchen door,
with bucket of water and a gourd; hound asleep there in the sun; more
hounds asleep round about; about three shade trees away off in a corner;
some currant bushes and gooseberry bushes in one place by the fence;
outside of the fence a garden and a watermelon patch; then the cotton
fields begins, and after the fields the woods.
I went around and clumb over the back stile by the ash-hopper, and
started for the kitchen. When I got a little ways I heard the dim hum of
a spinning-wheel wailing along up and sinking along down again; and then
I knowed for certain I wished I was dead--for that IS the lonesomest
sound in the whole world.
I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting
to Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come; for
I'd noticed that Providence always did put the right words in my mouth if
I left it alone.
When I got half-way, first one hound and then another got up and went for
me, and of course I stopped and faced them, and kept still. And such
another powwow as they made! In a quarter of a minute I was a kind of a
hub of a wheel, as you may say--spokes made out of dogs--circle of
fifteen of them packed together around me, with their necks and noses
stretched up towards me, a-barking and howling; and more a-coming; you
could see them sailing over fences and around corners from everywheres.
A nigger woman come tearing out of the kitchen with a rolling-pin in her
hand, singing out, "Begone YOU Tige! you Spot! begone sah!" and she
fetched first one and then another of them a clip and sent them howling,
and then the rest followed; and the next second half of them come back,
wagging their tails around me, and making friends with me. There ain't
no harm in a hound, nohow.
And behind the woman comes a little nigger girl and two little nigger
boys without anything on but tow-linen shirts, and they hung on to their
mother's gown, and peeped out from behind her at me, bashful, the way
they always do. And here comes the white woman running from the house,
about forty-five or fifty year old, bareheaded, and her spinning-stick in
her hand; and behind her comes her little white children, acting the same
way the little niggers was going. She was smiling all over so she could
hardly stand--and says:
"It's YOU, at last!--AIN'T it?"
I out with a "Yes'm" before I thought.
She grabbed me and hugged me tight; and then gripped me by both hands and
shook and shook; and the tears come in her eyes, and run down over; and
she couldn't seem to hug and shake enough, and kept saying, "You don't
look as much like your mother as I reckoned you would; but law sakes, I
don't care for that, I'm so glad to see you! Dear, dear, it does seem
like I could eat you up! Children, it's your cousin Tom!--tell him
howdy."
But they ducked their heads, and put their fingers in their mouths, and
hid behind her. So she run on:
"Lize, hurry up and get him a hot breakfast right away--or did you get
your breakfast on the boat?"
I said I had got it on the boat. So then she started for the house,
leading me by the hand, and the children tagging after. When we got
there she set me down in a split-bottomed chair, and set herself down on
a little low stool in front of me, holding both of my hands, and says:
"Now I can have a GOOD look at you; and, laws-a-me, I've been hungry for
it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it's come at last!
We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep' you?--boat
get aground?"
"Yes'm--she--"
"Don't say yes'm--say Aunt Sally. Where'd she get aground?"
I didn't rightly know what to say, because I didn't know whether the boat
would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct;
and my instinct said she would be coming up--from down towards Orleans.
That didn't help me much, though; for I didn't know the names of bars
down that way. I see I'd got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the
one we got aground on--or--Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
"It warn't the grounding--that didn't keep us back but a little. We
blowed out a cylinder-head."
"Good gracious! anybody hurt?"
"No'm. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I
think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a
family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember
now, he DID die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him.
But it didn't save him. Yes, it was mortification--that was it. He
turned blue all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection.
They say he was a sight to look at. Your uncle's been up to the town
every day to fetch you. And he's gone again, not more'n an hour ago;
he'll be back any minute now. You must a met him on the road, didn't
you?--oldish man, with a--"
"No, I didn't see nobody, Aunt Sally. The boat landed just at daylight,
and I left my baggage on the wharf-boat and went looking around the town
and out a piece in the country, to put in the time and not get here too
soon; and so I come down the back way."
"Who'd you give the baggage to?"
"Nobody."
"Why, child, it 'll be stole!"
"Not where I hid it I reckon it won't," I says.
"How'd you get your breakfast so early on the boat?"
It was kinder thin ice, but I says:
"The captain see me standing around, and told me I better have something
to eat before I went ashore; so he took me in the texas to the officers'
lunch, and give me all I wanted."
I was getting so uneasy I couldn't listen good. I had my mind on the
children all the time; I wanted to get them out to one side and pump them
a little, and find out who I was. But I couldn't get no show, Mrs.
Phelps kept it up and run on so. Pretty soon she made the cold chills
streak all down my back, because she says:
"But here we're a-running on this way, and you hain't told me a word
about Sis, nor any of them. Now I'll rest my works a little, and you
start up yourn; just tell me EVERYTHING--tell me all about 'm all every
one of 'm; and how they are, and what they're doing, and what they told
you to tell me; and every last thing you can think of."
Well, I see I was up a stump--and up it good. Providence had stood by me
this fur all right, but I was hard and tight aground now. I see it
warn't a bit of use to try to go ahead--I'd got to throw up my hand. So
I says to myself, here's another place where I got to resk the truth. I
opened my mouth to begin; but she grabbed me and hustled me in behind the
bed, and says:
"Here he comes! Stick your head down lower--there, that'll do; you can't
be seen now. Don't you let on you're here. I'll play a joke on him.
Children, don't you say a word."
I see I was in a fix now. But it warn't no use to worry; there warn't
nothing to do but just hold still, and try and be ready to stand from
under when the lightning struck.
I had just one little glimpse of the old gentleman when he come in; then
the bed hid him. Mrs. Phelps she jumps for him, and says:
"Has he come?"
"No," says her husband.
"Good-NESS gracious!" she says, "what in the warld can have become of
him?"
"I can't imagine," says the old gentleman; "and I must say it makes me
dreadful uneasy."
"Uneasy!" she says; "I'm ready to go distracted! He MUST a come; and
you've missed him along the road. I KNOW it's so--something tells me
so."
"Why, Sally, I COULDN'T miss him along the road--YOU know that."
"But oh, dear, dear, what WILL Sis say! He must a come! You must a
missed him. He--"
"Oh, don't distress me any more'n I'm already distressed. I don't know
what in the world to make of it. I'm at my wit's end, and I don't mind
acknowledging 't I'm right down scared. But there's no hope that he's
come; for he COULDN'T come and me miss him. Sally, it's terrible--just
terrible--something's happened to the boat, sure!"
"Why, Silas! Look yonder!--up the road!--ain't that somebody coming?"
He sprung to the window at the head of the bed, and that give Mrs. Phelps
the chance she wanted. She stooped down quick at the foot of the bed and
give me a pull, and out I come; and when he turned back from the window
there she stood, a-beaming and a-smiling like a house afire, and I
standing pretty meek and sweaty alongside. The old gentleman stared, and
says:
"Why, who's that?"
"Who do you reckon 't is?"
"I hain't no idea. Who IS it?"
"It's TOM SAWYER!"
By jings, I most slumped through the floor! But there warn't no time to
swap knives; the old man grabbed me by the hand and shook, and kept on
shaking; and all the time how the woman did dance around and laugh and
cry; and then how they both did fire off questions about Sid, and Mary,
and the rest of the tribe.
But if they was joyful, it warn't nothing to what I was; for it was like
being born again, I was so glad to find out who I was. Well, they froze
to me for two hours; and at last, when my chin was so tired it couldn't
hardly go any more, I had told them more about my family--I mean the
Sawyer family--than ever happened to any six Sawyer families. And I
explained all about how we blowed out a cylinder-head at the mouth of
White River, and it took us three days to fix it. Which was all right,
and worked first-rate; because THEY didn't know but what it would take
three days to fix it. If I'd a called it a bolthead it would a done just
as well.
Now I was feeling pretty comfortable all down one side, and pretty
uncomfortable all up the other. Being Tom Sawyer was easy and
comfortable, and it stayed easy and comfortable till by and by I hear a
steamboat coughing along down the river. Then I says to myself, s'pose
Tom Sawyer comes down on that boat? And s'pose he steps in here any
minute, and sings out my name before I can throw him a wink to keep
quiet?
Well, I couldn't HAVE it that way; it wouldn't do at all. I must go up
the road and waylay him. So I told the folks I reckoned I would go up to
the town and fetch down my baggage. The old gentleman was for going
along with me, but I said no, I could drive the horse myself, and I
druther he wouldn't take no trouble about me.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
SO I started for town in the wagon, and when I was half-way I see a wagon
coming, and sure enough it was Tom Sawyer, and I stopped and waited till
he come along. I says "Hold on!" and it stopped alongside, and his mouth
opened up like a trunk, and stayed so; and he swallowed two or three
times like a person that's got a dry throat, and then says:
"I hain't ever done you no harm. You know that. So, then, what you want
to come back and ha'nt ME for?"
I says:
"I hain't come back--I hain't been GONE."
When he heard my voice it righted him up some, but he warn't quite
satisfied yet. He says:
"Don't you play nothing on me, because I wouldn't on you. Honest injun,
you ain't a ghost?"
"Honest injun, I ain't," I says.
"Well--I--I--well, that ought to settle it, of course; but I can't
somehow seem to understand it no way. Looky here, warn't you ever
murdered AT ALL?"
"No. I warn't ever murdered at all--I played it on them. You come in
here and feel of me if you don't believe me."
So he done it; and it satisfied him; and he was that glad to see me again
he didn't know what to do. And he wanted to know all about it right off,
because it was a grand adventure, and mysterious, and so it hit him where
he lived. But I said, leave it alone till by and by; and told his driver
to wait, and we drove off a little piece, and I told him the kind of a
fix I was in, and what did he reckon we better do? He said, let him
alone a minute, and don't disturb him. So he thought and thought, and
pretty soon he says:
"It's all right; I've got it. Take my trunk in your wagon, and let on
it's your'n; and you turn back and fool along slow, so as to get to the
house about the time you ought to; and I'll go towards town a piece, and
take a fresh start, and get there a quarter or a half an hour after you;
and you needn't let on to know me at first."
I says:
"All right; but wait a minute. There's one more thing--a thing that
NOBODY don't know but me. And that is, there's a nigger here that I'm
a-trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is JIM--old Miss Watson's
Jim."
He says:
"What! Why, Jim is--"
He stopped and went to studying. I says:
"I know what you'll say. You'll say it's dirty, low-down business; but
what if it is? I'm low down; and I'm a-going to steal him, and I want
you keep mum and not let on. Will you?"
His eye lit up, and he says:
"I'll HELP you steal him!"
Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most
astonishing speech I ever heard--and I'm bound to say Tom Sawyer fell
considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn't believe it. Tom Sawyer a
NIGGER-STEALER!
"Oh, shucks!" I says; "you're joking."
"I ain't joking, either."
"Well, then," I says, "joking or no joking, if you hear anything said
about a runaway nigger, don't forget to remember that YOU don't know
nothing about him, and I don't know nothing about him."
Then we took the trunk and put it in my wagon, and he drove off his way
and I drove mine. But of course I forgot all about driving slow on
accounts of being glad and full of thinking; so I got home a heap too
quick for that length of a trip. The old gentleman was at the door, and
he says:
"Why, this is wonderful! Whoever would a thought it was in that mare to
do it? I wish we'd a timed her. And she hain't sweated a hair--not a
hair. It's wonderful. Why, I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that
horse now--I wouldn't, honest; and yet I'd a sold her for fifteen
before, and thought 'twas all she was worth."
That's all he said. He was the innocentest, best old soul I ever see.
But it warn't surprising; because he warn't only just a farmer, he was a
preacher, too, and had a little one-horse log church down back of the
plantation, which he built it himself at his own expense, for a church
and schoolhouse, and never charged nothing for his preaching, and it was
worth it, too. There was plenty other farmer-preachers like that, and
done the same way, down South.
In about half an hour Tom's wagon drove up to the front stile, and Aunt
Sally she see it through the window, because it was only about fifty
yards, and says:
"Why, there's somebody come! I wonder who 'tis? Why, I do believe it's
a stranger. Jimmy" (that's one of the children) "run and tell Lize to
put on another plate for dinner."
Everybody made a rush for the front door, because, of course, a stranger
don't come EVERY year, and so he lays over the yaller-fever, for
interest, when he does come. Tom was over the stile and starting for the
house; the wagon was spinning up the road for the village, and we was all
bunched in the front door. Tom had his store clothes on, and an
audience--and that was always nuts for Tom Sawyer. In them circumstances
it warn't no trouble to him to throw in an amount of style that was
suitable. He warn't a boy to meeky along up that yard like a sheep; no,
he come ca'm and important, like the ram. When he got a-front of us he
lifts his hat ever so gracious and dainty, like it was the lid of a box
that had butterflies asleep in it and he didn't want to disturb them, and
says:
"Mr. Archibald Nichols, I presume?"
"No, my boy," says the old gentleman, "I'm sorry to say 't your driver
has deceived you; Nichols's place is down a matter of three mile more.
Come in, come in."
Tom he took a look back over his shoulder, and says, "Too late--he's out
of sight."
"Yes, he's gone, my son, and you must come in and eat your dinner with
us; and then we'll hitch up and take you down to Nichols's."
"Oh, I CAN'T make you so much trouble; I couldn't think of it. I'll walk
--I don't mind the distance."
"But we won't LET you walk--it wouldn't be Southern hospitality to do it.
Come right in."
"Oh, DO," says Aunt Sally; "it ain't a bit of trouble to us, not a bit in
the world. You must stay. It's a long, dusty three mile, and we can't
let you walk. And, besides, I've already told 'em to put on another
plate when I see you coming; so you mustn't disappoint us. Come right in
and make yourself at home."
So Tom he thanked them very hearty and handsome, and let himself be
persuaded, and come in; and when he was in he said he was a stranger from
Hicksville, Ohio, and his name was William Thompson--and he made another
bow.
Well, he run on, and on, and on, making up stuff about Hicksville and
everybody in it he could invent, and I getting a little nervious, and
wondering how this was going to help me out of my scrape; and at last,
still talking along, he reached over and kissed Aunt Sally right on the
mouth, and then settled back again in his chair comfortable, and was
going on talking; but she jumped up and wiped it off with the back of her
hand, and says:
"You owdacious puppy!"
He looked kind of hurt, and says:
"I'm surprised at you, m'am."
"You're s'rp--Why, what do you reckon I am? I've a good notion to take
and--Say, what do you mean by kissing me?"
He looked kind of humble, and says:
"I didn't mean nothing, m'am. I didn't mean no harm. I--I--thought
you'd like it."
"Why, you born fool!" She took up the spinning stick, and it looked like
it was all she could do to keep from giving him a crack with it. "What
made you think I'd like it?"
"Well, I don't know. Only, they--they--told me you would."
"THEY told you I would. Whoever told you's ANOTHER lunatic. I never
heard the beat of it. Who's THEY?"
"Why, everybody. They all said so, m'am."
It was all she could do to hold in; and her eyes snapped, and her fingers
worked like she wanted to scratch him; and she says:
"Who's 'everybody'? Out with their names, or ther'll be an idiot short."
He got up and looked distressed, and fumbled his hat, and says:
"I'm sorry, and I warn't expecting it. They told me to. They all told
me to. They all said, kiss her; and said she'd like it. They all said
it--every one of them. But I'm sorry, m'am, and I won't do it no more
--I won't, honest."
"You won't, won't you? Well, I sh'd RECKON you won't!"
"No'm, I'm honest about it; I won't ever do it again--till you ask me."
"Till I ASK you! Well, I never see the beat of it in my born days! I
lay you'll be the Methusalem-numskull of creation before ever I ask you
--or the likes of you."
"Well," he says, "it does surprise me so. I can't make it out, somehow.
They said you would, and I thought you would. But--" He stopped and
looked around slow, like he wished he could run across a friendly eye
somewheres, and fetched up on the old gentleman's, and says, "Didn't YOU
think she'd like me to kiss her, sir?"
"Why, no; I--I--well, no, I b'lieve I didn't."
Then he looks on around the same way to me, and says:
"Tom, didn't YOU think Aunt Sally 'd open out her arms and say, 'Sid
Sawyer--'"
"My land!" she says, breaking in and jumping for him, "you impudent young
rascal, to fool a body so--" and was going to hug him, but he fended her
off, and says:
"No, not till you've asked me first."
So she didn't lose no time, but asked him; and hugged him and kissed him
over and over again, and then turned him over to the old man, and he took
what was left. And after they got a little quiet again she says:
"Why, dear me, I never see such a surprise. We warn't looking for YOU at
all, but only Tom. Sis never wrote to me about anybody coming but him."
"It's because it warn't INTENDED for any of us to come but Tom," he says;
"but I begged and begged, and at the last minute she let me come, too;
so, coming down the river, me and Tom thought it would be a first-rate
surprise for him to come here to the house first, and for me to by and by
tag along and drop in, and let on to be a stranger. But it was a
mistake, Aunt Sally. This ain't no healthy place for a stranger to
come."
"No--not impudent whelps, Sid. You ought to had your jaws boxed; I
hain't been so put out since I don't know when. But I don't care, I
don't mind the terms--I'd be willing to stand a thousand such jokes to
have you here. Well, to think of that performance! I don't deny it, I
was most putrified with astonishment when you give me that smack."
We had dinner out in that broad open passage betwixt the house and the
kitchen; and there was things enough on that table for seven families
--and all hot, too; none of your flabby, tough meat that's laid in a
cupboard in a damp cellar all night and tastes like a hunk of old cold
cannibal in the morning. Uncle Silas he asked a pretty long blessing
over it, but it was worth it; and it didn't cool it a bit, neither, the
way I've seen them kind of interruptions do lots of times. There was a
considerable good deal of talk all the afternoon, and me and Tom was on
the lookout all the time; but it warn't no use, they didn't happen to say
nothing about any runaway nigger, and we was afraid to try to work up to
it. But at supper, at night, one of the little boys says:
"Pa, mayn't Tom and Sid and me go to the show?"
"No," says the old man, "I reckon there ain't going to be any; and you
couldn't go if there was; because the runaway nigger told Burton and me
all about that scandalous show, and Burton said he would tell the people;
so I reckon they've drove the owdacious loafers out of town before this
time."
So there it was!--but I couldn't help it. Tom and me was to sleep in the
same room and bed; so, being tired, we bid good-night and went up to bed
right after supper, and clumb out of the window and down the
lightning-rod, and shoved for the town; for I didn't believe anybody was
going to give the king and the duke a hint, and so if I didn't hurry up
and give them one they'd get into trouble sure.
On the road Tom he told me all about how it was reckoned I was murdered,
and how pap disappeared pretty soon, and didn't come back no more, and
what a stir there was when Jim run away; and I told Tom all about our
Royal Nonesuch rapscallions, and as much of the raft voyage as I had time
to; and as we struck into the town and up through the--here comes a
raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling,
and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let
them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke
astraddle of a rail--that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke,
though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing
in the world that was human--just looked like a couple of monstrous big
soldier-plumes. Well, it made me sick to see it; and I was sorry for
them poor pitiful rascals, it seemed like I couldn't ever feel any
hardness against them any more in the world. It was a dreadful thing to
see. Human beings CAN be awful cruel to one another.
We see we was too late--couldn't do no good. We asked some stragglers
about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent;
and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of
his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house
rose up and went for them.
So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was
before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow--though I
hadn't done nothing. But that's always the way; it don't make no
difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got
no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that
didn't know no more than a person's conscience does I would pison him.
It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet
ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
WE stopped talking, and got to thinking. By and by Tom says:
"Looky here, Huck, what fools we are to not think of it before! I bet I
know where Jim is."
"No! Where?"
"In that hut down by the ash-hopper. Why, looky here. When we was at
dinner, didn't you see a nigger man go in there with some vittles?"
"Yes."
"What did you think the vittles was for?"
"For a dog."
"So 'd I. Well, it wasn't for a dog."
"Why?"
"Because part of it was watermelon."
"So it was--I noticed it. Well, it does beat all that I never thought
about a dog not eating watermelon. It shows how a body can see and don't
see at the same time."
"Well, the nigger unlocked the padlock when he went in, and he locked it
again when he came out. He fetched uncle a key about the time we got up
from table--same key, I bet. Watermelon shows man, lock shows prisoner;
and it ain't likely there's two prisoners on such a little plantation,
and where the people's all so kind and good. Jim's the prisoner. All
right--I'm glad we found it out detective fashion; I wouldn't give
shucks for any other way. Now you work your mind, and study out a plan
to steal Jim, and I will study out one, too; and we'll take the one we
like the best."
What a head for just a boy to have! If I had Tom Sawyer's head I
wouldn't trade it off to be a duke, nor mate of a steamboat, nor clown in
a circus, nor nothing I can think of. I went to thinking out a plan, but
only just to be doing something; I knowed very well where the right plan
was going to come from. Pretty soon Tom says:
"Ready?"
"Yes," I says.
"All right--bring it out."
"My plan is this," I says. "We can easy find out if it's Jim in there.
Then get up my canoe to-morrow night, and fetch my raft over from the
island. Then the first dark night that comes steal the key out of the
old man's britches after he goes to bed, and shove off down the river on
the raft with Jim, hiding daytimes and running nights, the way me and Jim
used to do before. Wouldn't that plan work?"
"WORK? Why, cert'nly it would work, like rats a-fighting. But it's too
blame' simple; there ain't nothing TO it. What's the good of a plan that
ain't no more trouble than that? It's as mild as goose-milk. Why, Huck,
it wouldn't make no more talk than breaking into a soap factory."
I never said nothing, because I warn't expecting nothing different; but I
knowed mighty well that whenever he got HIS plan ready it wouldn't have
none of them objections to it.
And it didn't. He told me what it was, and I see in a minute it was
worth fifteen of mine for style, and would make Jim just as free a man as
mine would, and maybe get us all killed besides. So I was satisfied, and
said we would waltz in on it. I needn't tell what it was here, because I
knowed it wouldn't stay the way, it was. I knowed he would be changing
it around every which way as we went along, and heaving in new
bullinesses wherever he got a chance. And that is what he done.
Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in
earnest, and was actuly going to help steal that nigger out of slavery.
That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was
respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose; and folks at
home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and
knowing and not ignorant; and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was,
without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this
business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before
everybody. I COULDN'T understand it no way at all. It was outrageous,
and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true
friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself.
And I DID start to tell him; but he shut me up, and says:
"Don't you reckon I know what I'm about? Don't I generly know what I'm
about?"
"Yes."
"Didn't I SAY I was going to help steal the nigger?"
"Yes."
"WELL, then."
That's all he said, and that's all I said. It warn't no use to say any
more; because when he said he'd do a thing, he always done it. But I
couldn't make out how he was willing to go into this thing; so I just let
it go, and never bothered no more about it. If he was bound to have it
so, I couldn't help it.
When we got home the house was all dark and still; so we went on down to
the hut by the ash-hopper for to examine it. We went through the yard so
as to see what the hounds would do. They knowed us, and didn't make no
more noise than country dogs is always doing when anything comes by in
the night. When we got to the cabin we took a look at the front and the
two sides; and on the side I warn't acquainted with--which was the north
side--we found a square window-hole, up tolerable high, with just one
stout board nailed across it. I says:
"Here's the ticket. This hole's big enough for Jim to get through if we
wrench off the board."
Tom says:
"It's as simple as tit-tat-toe, three-in-a-row, and as easy as playing
hooky. I should HOPE we can find a way that's a little more complicated
than THAT, Huck Finn."
"Well, then," I says, "how 'll it do to saw him out, the way I done
before I was murdered that time?"
"That's more LIKE," he says. "It's real mysterious, and troublesome, and
good," he says; "but I bet we can find a way that's twice as long. There
ain't no hurry; le's keep on looking around."
Betwixt the hut and the fence, on the back side, was a lean-to that
joined the hut at the eaves, and was made out of plank. It was as long
as the hut, but narrow--only about six foot wide. The door to it was at
the south end, and was padlocked. Tom he went to the soap-kettle and
searched around, and fetched back the iron thing they lift the lid with;
so he took it and prized out one of the staples. The chain fell down,
and we opened the door and went in, and shut it, and struck a match, and
see the shed was only built against a cabin and hadn't no connection with
it; and there warn't no floor to the shed, nor nothing in it but some old
rusty played-out hoes and spades and picks and a crippled plow. The
match went out, and so did we, and shoved in the staple again, and the
door was locked as good as ever. Tom was joyful. He says;
"Now we're all right. We'll DIG him out. It 'll take about a week!"
Then we started for the house, and I went in the back door--you only have
to pull a buckskin latch-string, they don't fasten the doors--but that
warn't romantical enough for Tom Sawyer; no way would do him but he must
climb up the lightning-rod. But after he got up half way about three
times, and missed fire and fell every time, and the last time most busted
his brains out, he thought he'd got to give it up; but after he was
rested he allowed he would give her one more turn for luck, and this time
he made the trip.
In the morning we was up at break of day, and down to the nigger cabins
to pet the dogs and make friends with the nigger that fed Jim--if it WAS
Jim that was being fed. The niggers was just getting through breakfast
and starting for the fields; and Jim's nigger was piling up a tin pan
with bread and meat and things; and whilst the others was leaving, the
key come from the house.
This nigger had a good-natured, chuckle-headed face, and his wool was all
tied up in little bunches with thread. That was to keep witches off. He
said the witches was pestering him awful these nights, and making him see
all kinds of strange things, and hear all kinds of strange words and
noises, and he didn't believe he was ever witched so long before in his
life. He got so worked up, and got to running on so about his troubles,
he forgot all about what he'd been a-going to do. So Tom says:
"What's the vittles for? Going to feed the dogs?"
The nigger kind of smiled around gradually over his face, like when you
heave a brickbat in a mud-puddle, and he says:
"Yes, Mars Sid, A dog. Cur'us dog, too. Does you want to go en look at
'im?"
"Yes."
I hunched Tom, and whispers:
"You going, right here in the daybreak? THAT warn't the plan."
"No, it warn't; but it's the plan NOW."
So, drat him, we went along, but I didn't like it much. When we got in
we couldn't hardly see anything, it was so dark; but Jim was there, sure
enough, and could see us; and he sings out:
"Why, HUCK! En good LAN'! ain' dat Misto Tom?"
I just knowed how it would be; I just expected it. I didn't know nothing
to do; and if I had I couldn't a done it, because that nigger busted in
and says:
"Why, de gracious sakes! do he know you genlmen?"
We could see pretty well now. Tom he looked at the nigger, steady and
kind of wondering, and says:
"Does WHO know us?"
"Why, dis-yer runaway nigger."
"I don't reckon he does; but what put that into your head?"
"What PUT it dar? Didn' he jis' dis minute sing out like he knowed you?"
Tom says, in a puzzled-up kind of way:
"Well, that's mighty curious. WHO sung out? WHEN did he sing out? WHAT
did he sing out?" And turns to me, perfectly ca'm, and says, "Did YOU
hear anybody sing out?"
Of course there warn't nothing to be said but the one thing; so I says:
"No; I ain't heard nobody say nothing."
Then he turns to Jim, and looks him over like he never see him before,
and says:
"Did you sing out?"
"No, sah," says Jim; "I hain't said nothing, sah."
"Not a word?"
"No, sah, I hain't said a word."
"Did you ever see us before?"
"No, sah; not as I knows on."
So Tom turns to the nigger, which was looking wild and distressed, and
says, kind of severe:
"What do you reckon's the matter with you, anyway? What made you think
somebody sung out?"
"Oh, it's de dad-blame' witches, sah, en I wisht I was dead, I do. Dey's
awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos' kill me, dey sk'yers me so. Please to
don't tell nobody 'bout it sah, er ole Mars Silas he'll scole me; 'kase
he say dey AIN'T no witches. I jis' wish to goodness he was heah now
--DEN what would he say! I jis' bet he couldn' fine no way to git aroun'
it DIS time. But it's awluz jis' so; people dat's SOT, stays sot; dey
won't look into noth'n'en fine it out f'r deyselves, en when YOU fine it
out en tell um 'bout it, dey doan' b'lieve you."
Tom give him a dime, and said we wouldn't tell nobody; and told him to
buy some more thread to tie up his wool with; and then looks at Jim, and
says:
"I wonder if Uncle Silas is going to hang this nigger. If I was to catch
a nigger that was ungrateful enough to run away, I wouldn't give him up,
I'd hang him." And whilst the nigger stepped to the door to look at the
dime and bite it to see if it was good, he whispers to Jim and says:
"Don't ever let on to know us. And if you hear any digging going on
nights, it's us; we're going to set you free."
Jim only had time to grab us by the hand and squeeze it; then the nigger
come back, and we said we'd come again some time if the nigger wanted us
to; and he said he would, more particular if it was dark, because the
witches went for him mostly in the dark, and it was good to have folks
around then.
CHAPTER XXXV.
IT would be most an hour yet till breakfast, so we left and struck down
into the woods; because Tom said we got to have SOME light to see how to
dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what
we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire, and
just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place. We
fetched an armful and hid it in the weeds, and set down to rest, and Tom
says, kind of dissatisfied:
"Blame it, this whole thing is just as easy and awkward as it can be.
And so it makes it so rotten difficult to get up a difficult plan. There
ain't no watchman to be drugged--now there OUGHT to be a watchman. There
ain't even a dog to give a sleeping-mixture to. And there's Jim chained
by one leg, with a ten-foot chain, to the leg of his bed: why, all you
got to do is to lift up the bedstead and slip off the chain. And Uncle
Silas he trusts everybody; sends the key to the punkin-headed nigger, and
don't send nobody to watch the nigger. Jim could a got out of that
window-hole before this, only there wouldn't be no use trying to travel
with a ten-foot chain on his leg. Why, drat it, Huck, it's the stupidest
arrangement I ever see. You got to invent ALL the difficulties. Well, we
can't help it; we got to do the best we can with the materials we've got.
Anyhow, there's one thing--there's more honor in getting him out
through a lot of difficulties and dangers, where there warn't one of them
furnished to you by the people who it was their duty to furnish them, and
you had to contrive them all out of your own head. Now look at just that
one thing of the lantern. When you come down to the cold facts, we
simply got to LET ON that a lantern's resky. Why, we could work with a
torchlight procession if we wanted to, I believe. Now, whilst I think of
it, we got to hunt up something to make a saw out of the first chance we
get."
"What do we want of a saw?"
"What do we WANT of a saw? Hain't we got to saw the leg of Jim's bed
off, so as to get the chain loose?"
"Why, you just said a body could lift up the bedstead and slip the chain
off."
"Well, if that ain't just like you, Huck Finn. You CAN get up the
infant-schooliest ways of going at a thing. Why, hain't you ever read
any books at all?--Baron Trenck, nor Casanova, nor Benvenuto Chelleeny,
nor Henri IV., nor none of them heroes? Who ever heard of getting a
prisoner loose in such an old-maidy way as that? No; the way all the
best authorities does is to saw the bed-leg in two, and leave it just so,
and swallow the sawdust, so it can't be found, and put some dirt and
grease around the sawed place so the very keenest seneskal can't see no
sign of it's being sawed, and thinks the bed-leg is perfectly sound.
Then, the night you're ready, fetch the leg a kick, down she goes; slip
off your chain, and there you are. Nothing to do but hitch your rope
ladder to the battlements, shin down it, break your leg in the moat
--because a rope ladder is nineteen foot too short, you know--and there's
your horses and your trusty vassles, and they scoop you up and fling you
across a saddle, and away you go to your native Langudoc, or Navarre, or
wherever it is. It's gaudy, Huck. I wish there was a moat to this cabin.
If we get time, the night of the escape, we'll dig one."
I says:
"What do we want of a moat when we're going to snake him out from under
the cabin?"
But he never heard me. He had forgot me and everything else. He had his
chin in his hand, thinking. Pretty soon he sighs and shakes his head;
then sighs again, and says:
"No, it wouldn't do--there ain't necessity enough for it."
"For what?" I says.
"Why, to saw Jim's leg off," he says.
"Good land!" I says; "why, there ain't NO necessity for it. And what
would you want to saw his leg off for, anyway?"
"Well, some of the best authorities has done it. They couldn't get the
chain off, so they just cut their hand off and shoved. And a leg would
be better still. But we got to let that go. There ain't necessity
enough in this case; and, besides, Jim's a nigger, and wouldn't
understand the reasons for it, and how it's the custom in Europe; so
we'll let it go. But there's one thing--he can have a rope ladder; we
can tear up our sheets and make him a rope ladder easy enough. And we
can send it to him in a pie; it's mostly done that way. And I've et
worse pies."
"Why, Tom Sawyer, how you talk," I says; "Jim ain't got no use for a rope
ladder."
"He HAS got use for it. How YOU talk, you better say; you don't know
nothing about it. He's GOT to have a rope ladder; they all do."
"What in the nation can he DO with it?"
"DO with it? He can hide it in his bed, can't he?" That's what they all
do; and HE'S got to, too. Huck, you don't ever seem to want to do
anything that's regular; you want to be starting something fresh all the
time. S'pose he DON'T do nothing with it? ain't it there in his bed, for
a clew, after he's gone? and don't you reckon they'll want clews? Of
course they will. And you wouldn't leave them any? That would be a
PRETTY howdy-do, WOULDN'T it! I never heard of such a thing."
"Well," I says, "if it's in the regulations, and he's got to have it, all
right, let him have it; because I don't wish to go back on no
regulations; but there's one thing, Tom Sawyer--if we go to tearing up
our sheets to make Jim a rope ladder, we're going to get into trouble
with Aunt Sally, just as sure as you're born. Now, the way I look at it,
a hickry-bark ladder don't cost nothing, and don't waste nothing, and is
just as good to load up a pie with, and hide in a straw tick, as any rag
ladder you can start; and as for Jim, he ain't had no experience, and so
he don't care what kind of a--"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, if I was as ignorant as you I'd keep still
--that's what I'D do. Who ever heard of a state prisoner escaping by a
hickry-bark ladder? Why, it's perfectly ridiculous."
"Well, all right, Tom, fix it your own way; but if you'll take my advice,
you'll let me borrow a sheet off of the clothesline."
He said that would do. And that gave him another idea, and he says:
"Borrow a shirt, too."
"What do we want of a shirt, Tom?"
"Want it for Jim to keep a journal on."
"Journal your granny--JIM can't write."
"S'pose he CAN'T write--he can make marks on the shirt, can't he, if we
make him a pen out of an old pewter spoon or a piece of an old iron
barrel-hoop?"
"Why, Tom, we can pull a feather out of a goose and make him a better
one; and quicker, too."
"PRISONERS don't have geese running around the donjon-keep to pull pens
out of, you muggins. They ALWAYS make their pens out of the hardest,
toughest, troublesomest piece of old brass candlestick or something like
that they can get their hands on; and it takes them weeks and weeks and
months and months to file it out, too, because they've got to do it by
rubbing it on the wall. THEY wouldn't use a goose-quill if they had it.
It ain't regular."
"Well, then, what'll we make him the ink out of?"
"Many makes it out of iron-rust and tears; but that's the common sort and
women; the best authorities uses their own blood. Jim can do that; and
when he wants to send any little common ordinary mysterious message to
let the world know where he's captivated, he can write it on the bottom
of a tin plate with a fork and throw it out of the window. The Iron Mask
always done that, and it's a blame' good way, too."
"Jim ain't got no tin plates. They feed him in a pan."
"That ain't nothing; we can get him some."
"Can't nobody READ his plates."
"That ain't got anything to DO with it, Huck Finn. All HE'S got to do is
to write on the plate and throw it out. You don't HAVE to be able to
read it. Why, half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes on
a tin plate, or anywhere else."
"Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?"
"Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates."
"But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?"
"Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care whose--"
He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-horn blowing. So we
cleared out for the house.
Along during the morning I borrowed a sheet and a white shirt off of the
clothes-line; and I found an old sack and put them in it, and we went
down and got the fox-fire, and put that in too. I called it borrowing,
because that was what pap always called it; but Tom said it warn't
borrowing, it was stealing. He said we was representing prisoners; and
prisoners don't care how they get a thing so they get it, and nobody
don't blame them for it, either. It ain't no crime in a prisoner to
steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it's his right; and
so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to
steal anything on this place we had the least use for to get ourselves
out of prison with. He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very
different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he
warn't a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was
that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that,
when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger-patch and eat it; and he made
me go and give the niggers a dime without telling them what it was for.
Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we NEEDED. Well,
I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn't need it to get out
of prison with; there's where the difference was. He said if I'd a
wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal
with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I
couldn't see no advantage in my representing a prisoner if I got to set
down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that every time I
see a chance to hog a watermelon.
Well, as I was saying, we waited that morning till everybody was settled
down to business, and nobody in sight around the yard; then Tom he
carried the sack into the lean-to whilst I stood off a piece to keep
watch. By and by he come out, and we went and set down on the woodpile
to talk. He says:
"Everything's all right now except tools; and that's easy fixed."
"Tools?" I says.
"Yes."
"Tools for what?"
"Why, to dig with. We ain't a-going to GNAW him out, are we?"
"Ain't them old crippled picks and things in there good enough to dig a
nigger out with?" I says.
He turns on me, looking pitying enough to make a body cry, and says:
"Huck Finn, did you EVER hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and
all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now
I want to ask you--if you got any reasonableness in you at all--what kind
of a show would THAT give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend
him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels--why, they wouldn't
furnish 'em to a king."
"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we
want?"
"A couple of case-knives."
"To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?"
"Yes."
"Confound it, it's foolish, Tom."
"It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the RIGHT way--and
it's the regular way. And there ain't no OTHER way, that ever I heard
of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these
things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind
you; generly it's through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks
and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in
the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that
dug himself out that way; how long was HE at it, you reckon?"
"I don't know."
"Well, guess."
"I don't know. A month and a half."
"THIRTY-SEVEN YEAR--and he come out in China. THAT'S the kind. I wish
the bottom of THIS fortress was solid rock."
"JIM don't know nobody in China."
"What's THAT got to do with it? Neither did that other fellow. But
you're always a-wandering off on a side issue. Why can't you stick to
the main point?"
"All right--I don't care where he comes out, so he COMES out; and Jim
don't, either, I reckon. But there's one thing, anyway--Jim's too old to
be dug out with a case-knife. He won't last."
"Yes he will LAST, too. You don't reckon it's going to take thirty-seven
years to dig out through a DIRT foundation, do you?"
"How long will it take, Tom?"
"Well, we can't resk being as long as we ought to, because it mayn't take
very long for Uncle Silas to hear from down there by New Orleans. He'll
hear Jim ain't from there. Then his next move will be to advertise Jim,
or something like that. So we can't resk being as long digging him out
as we ought to. By rights I reckon we ought to be a couple of years; but
we can't. Things being so uncertain, what I recommend is this: that we
really dig right in, as quick as we can; and after that, we can LET ON,
to ourselves, that we was at it thirty-seven years. Then we can snatch
him out and rush him away the first time there's an alarm. Yes, I reckon
that 'll be the best way."
"Now, there's SENSE in that," I says. "Letting on don't cost nothing;
letting on ain't no trouble; and if it's any object, I don't mind letting
on we was at it a hundred and fifty year. It wouldn't strain me none,
after I got my hand in. So I'll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of
case-knives."
"Smouch three," he says; "we want one to make a saw out of."
"Tom, if it ain't unregular and irreligious to sejest it," I says,
"there's an old rusty saw-blade around yonder sticking under the
weather-boarding behind the smoke-house."
He looked kind of weary and discouraged-like, and says:
"It ain't no use to try to learn you nothing, Huck. Run along and smouch
the knives--three of them." So I done it.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
AS soon as we reckoned everybody was asleep that night we went down the
lightning-rod, and shut ourselves up in the lean-to, and got out our pile
of fox-fire, and went to work. We cleared everything out of the way,
about four or five foot along the middle of the bottom log. Tom said we
was right behind Jim's bed now, and we'd dig in under it, and when we got
through there couldn't nobody in the cabin ever know there was any hole
there, because Jim's counter-pin hung down most to the ground, and you'd
have to raise it up and look under to see the hole. So we dug and dug
with the case-knives till most midnight; and then we was dog-tired, and
our hands was blistered, and yet you couldn't see we'd done anything
hardly. At last I says:
"This ain't no thirty-seven year job; this is a thirty-eight year job,
Tom Sawyer."
He never said nothing. But he sighed, and pretty soon he stopped
digging, and then for a good little while I knowed that he was thinking.
Then he says:
"It ain't no use, Huck, it ain't a-going to work. If we was prisoners it
would, because then we'd have as many years as we wanted, and no hurry;
and we wouldn't get but a few minutes to dig, every day, while they was
changing watches, and so our hands wouldn't get blistered, and we could
keep it up right along, year in and year out, and do it right, and the
way it ought to be done. But WE can't fool along; we got to rush; we
ain't got no time to spare. If we was to put in another night this way
we'd have to knock off for a week to let our hands get well--couldn't
touch a case-knife with them sooner."
"Well, then, what we going to do, Tom?"
"I'll tell you. It ain't right, and it ain't moral, and I wouldn't like
it to get out; but there ain't only just the one way: we got to dig him
out with the picks, and LET ON it's case-knives."
"NOW you're TALKING!" I says; "your head gets leveler and leveler all
the time, Tom Sawyer," I says. "Picks is the thing, moral or no moral;
and as for me, I don't care shucks for the morality of it, nohow. When I
start in to steal a nigger, or a watermelon, or a Sunday-school book, I
ain't no ways particular how it's done so it's done. What I want is my
nigger; or what I want is my watermelon; or what I want is my
Sunday-school book; and if a pick's the handiest thing, that's the thing
I'm a-going to dig that nigger or that watermelon or that Sunday-school
book out with; and I don't give a dead rat what the authorities thinks
about it nuther."
"Well," he says, "there's excuse for picks and letting-on in a case like
this; if it warn't so, I wouldn't approve of it, nor I wouldn't stand by
and see the rules broke--because right is right, and wrong is wrong, and
a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows
better. It might answer for YOU to dig Jim out with a pick, WITHOUT any
letting on, because you don't know no better; but it wouldn't for me,
because I do know better. Gimme a case-knife."
He had his own by him, but I handed him mine. He flung it down, and
says:
"Gimme a CASE-KNIFE."
I didn't know just what to do--but then I thought. I scratched around
amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took
it and went to work, and never said a word.
He was always just that particular. Full of principle.
So then I got a shovel, and then we picked and shoveled, turn about, and
made the fur fly. We stuck to it about a half an hour, which was as long
as we could stand up; but we had a good deal of a hole to show for it.
When I got up stairs I looked out at the window and see Tom doing his
level best with the lightning-rod, but he couldn't come it, his hands was
so sore. At last he says:
"It ain't no use, it can't be done. What you reckon I better do? Can't
you think of no way?"
"Yes," I says, "but I reckon it ain't regular. Come up the stairs, and
let on it's a lightning-rod."
So he done it.
Next day Tom stole a pewter spoon and a brass candlestick in the house,
for to make some pens for Jim out of, and six tallow candles; and I hung
around the nigger cabins and laid for a chance, and stole three tin
plates. Tom says it wasn't enough; but I said nobody wouldn't ever see
the plates that Jim throwed out, because they'd fall in the dog-fennel
and jimpson weeds under the window-hole--then we could tote them back and
he could use them over again. So Tom was satisfied. Then he says:
"Now, the thing to study out is, how to get the things to Jim."
"Take them in through the hole," I says, "when we get it done."
He only just looked scornful, and said something about nobody ever heard
of such an idiotic idea, and then he went to studying. By and by he said
he had ciphered out two or three ways, but there warn't no need to decide
on any of them yet. Said we'd got to post Jim first.
That night we went down the lightning-rod a little after ten, and took
one of the candles along, and listened under the window-hole, and heard
Jim snoring; so we pitched it in, and it didn't wake him. Then we
whirled in with the pick and shovel, and in about two hours and a half
the job was done. We crept in under Jim's bed and into the cabin, and
pawed around and found the candle and lit it, and stood over Jim awhile,
and found him looking hearty and healthy, and then we woke him up gentle
and gradual. He was so glad to see us he most cried; and called us
honey, and all the pet names he could think of; and was for having us
hunt up a cold-chisel to cut the chain off of his leg with right away,
and clearing out without losing any time. But Tom he showed him how
unregular it would be, and set down and told him all about our plans, and
how we could alter them in a minute any time there was an alarm; and not
to be the least afraid, because we would see he got away, SURE. So Jim
he said it was all right, and we set there and talked over old times
awhile, and then Tom asked a lot of questions, and when Jim told him
Uncle Silas come in every day or two to pray with him, and Aunt Sally
come in to see if he was comfortable and had plenty to eat, and both of
them was kind as they could be, Tom says:
"NOW I know how to fix it. We'll send you some things by them."
I said, "Don't do nothing of the kind; it's one of the most jackass ideas
I ever struck;" but he never paid no attention to me; went right on. It
was his way when he'd got his plans set.
So he told Jim how we'd have to smuggle in the rope-ladder pie and other
large things by Nat, the nigger that fed him, and he must be on the
lookout, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we
would put small things in uncle's coat-pockets and he must steal them
out; and we would tie things to aunt's apron-strings or put them in her
apron-pocket, if we got a chance; and told him what they would be and
what they was for. And told him how to keep a journal on the shirt with
his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn't see no
sense in the most of it, but he allowed we was white folks and knowed
better than him; so he was satisfied, and said he would do it all just as
Tom said.
Jim had plenty corn-cob pipes and tobacco; so we had a right down good
sociable time; then we crawled out through the hole, and so home to bed,
with hands that looked like they'd been chawed. Tom was in high spirits.
He said it was the best fun he ever had in his life, and the most
intellectural; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep
it up all the rest of our lives and leave Jim to our children to get out;
for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he
got used to it. He said that in that way it could be strung out to as
much as eighty year, and would be the best time on record. And he said
it would make us all celebrated that had a hand in it.
In the morning we went out to the woodpile and chopped up the brass
candlestick into handy sizes, and Tom put them and the pewter spoon in
his pocket. Then we went to the nigger cabins, and while I got Nat's
notice off, Tom shoved a piece of candlestick into the middle of a
corn-pone that was in Jim's pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it
would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most mashed
all his teeth out; and there warn't ever anything could a worked better.
Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a
piece of rock or something like that that's always getting into bread,
you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his
fork into it in three or four places first.
And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a
couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jim's bed; and they kept on
piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warn't hardly room in
there to get your breath. By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to
door! The nigger Nat he only just hollered "Witches" once, and keeled
over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was
dying. Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jim's meat, and
the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back
again and shut the door, and I knowed he'd fixed the other door too.
Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and
asking him if he'd been imagining he saw something again. He raised up,
and blinked his eyes around, and says:
"Mars Sid, you'll say I's a fool, but if I didn't b'lieve I see most a
million dogs, er devils, er some'n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese
tracks. I did, mos' sholy. Mars Sid, I FELT um--I FELT um, sah; dey was
all over me. Dad fetch it, I jis' wisht I could git my han's on one er
dem witches jis' wunst--on'y jis' wunst--it's all I'd ast. But mos'ly I
wisht dey'd lemme 'lone, I does."
Tom says:
"Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this
runaway nigger's breakfast-time? It's because they're hungry; that's the
reason. You make them a witch pie; that's the thing for YOU to do."
"But my lan', Mars Sid, how's I gwyne to make 'm a witch pie? I doan'
know how to make it. I hain't ever hearn er sich a thing b'fo'."
"Well, then, I'll have to make it myself."
"Will you do it, honey?--will you? I'll wusshup de groun' und' yo' foot,
I will!"
"All right, I'll do it, seeing it's you, and you've been good to us and
showed us the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty careful. When we
come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we've put in the pan,
don't you let on you see it at all. And don't you look when Jim unloads
the pan--something might happen, I don't know what. And above all, don't
you HANDLE the witch-things."
"HANNEL 'm, Mars Sid? What IS you a-talkin' 'bout? I wouldn' lay de
weight er my finger on um, not f'r ten hund'd thous'n billion dollars, I
wouldn't."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THAT was all fixed. So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in
the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of
bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched
around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as
we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full
of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails
that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and
sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt
Sally's apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and t'other we stuck
in the band of Uncle Silas's hat, which was on the bureau, because we
heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger's
house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the
pewter spoon in Uncle Silas's coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn't come
yet, so we had to wait a little while.
And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldn't hardly wait
for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand
and cracking the handiest child's head with her thimble with the other,
and says:
"I've hunted high and I've hunted low, and it does beat all what HAS
become of your other shirt."
My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard
piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the
road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the
children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry
out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around
the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for
about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out
for half price if there was a bidder. But after that we was all right
again--it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold.
Uncle Silas he says:
"It's most uncommon curious, I can't understand it. I know perfectly
well I took it OFF, because--"
"Because you hain't got but one ON. Just LISTEN at the man! I know you
took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory,
too, because it was on the clo's-line yesterday--I see it there myself.
But it's gone, that's the long and the short of it, and you'll just have
to change to a red flann'l one till I can get time to make a new one.
And it 'll be the third I've made in two years. It just keeps a body on
the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to DO with 'm
all is more'n I can make out. A body 'd think you WOULD learn to take
some sort of care of 'em at your time of life."
"I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But it oughtn't to be
altogether my fault, because, you know, I don't see them nor have nothing
to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've ever
lost one of them OFF of me."
"Well, it ain't YOUR fault if you haven't, Silas; you'd a done it if you
could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a
spoon gone; and THAT ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine.
The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon,
THAT'S certain."
"Why, what else is gone, Sally?"
"Ther's six CANDLES gone--that's what. The rats could a got the candles,
and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place,
the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if
they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas--YOU'D never find it
out; but you can't lay the SPOON on the rats, and that I know."
"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but I
won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes."
"Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta
PHELPS!"
Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the
sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then the nigger woman steps
on to the passage, and says:
"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."
"A SHEET gone! Well, for the land's sake!"
"I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.
"Oh, DO shet up!--s'pose the rats took the SHEET? WHERE'S it gone,
Lize?"
"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally. She wuz on de
clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah no mo' now."
"I reckon the world IS coming to an end. I NEVER see the beat of it in
all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--"
"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n."
"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!"
Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I
would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She
kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and
everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking
kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped,
with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in
Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:
"It's JUST as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and
like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get there?"
"I reely don't know, Sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you know I
would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before
breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put
my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ain't in; but
I'll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I
didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and
took up the spoon, and--"
"Oh, for the land's sake! Give a body a rest! Go 'long now, the whole
kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got back my
peace of mind."
I'd a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out;
and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead. As we was passing
through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the
shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and
laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out. Tom
see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:
"Well, it ain't no use to send things by HIM no more, he ain't reliable."
Then he says: "But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway,
without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without HIM knowing
it--stop up his rat-holes."
There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole
hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard
steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the
old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in t'other,
looking as absent-minded as year before last. He went a mooning around,
first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to them all. Then
he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and
thinking. Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying:
"Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it. I could show
her now that I warn't to blame on account of the rats. But never mind
--let it go. I reckon it wouldn't do no good."
And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left. He was a
mighty nice old man. And always is.
Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said
we'd got to have it; so he took a think. When he had ciphered it out he
told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket
till we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons
and laying them out to one side, and I slid one of them up my sleeve, and
Tom says:
"Why, Aunt Sally, there ain't but nine spoons YET."
She says:
"Go 'long to your play, and don't bother me. I know better, I counted 'm
myself."
"Well, I've counted them twice, Aunty, and I can't make but nine."
She looked out of all patience, but of course she come to count--anybody
would.
"I declare to gracious ther' AIN'T but nine!" she says. "Why, what in
the world--plague TAKE the things, I'll count 'm again."
So I slipped back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she
says:
"Hang the troublesome rubbage, ther's TEN now!" and she looked huffy and
bothered both. But Tom says:
"Why, Aunty, I don't think there's ten."
"You numskull, didn't you see me COUNT 'm?"
"I know, but--"
"Well, I'll count 'm AGAIN."
So I smouched one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well,
she WAS in a tearing way--just a-trembling all over, she was so mad. But
she counted and counted till she got that addled she'd start to count in
the basket for a spoon sometimes; and so, three times they come out
right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she grabbed up the
basket and slammed it across the house and knocked the cat galley-west;
and she said cle'r out and let her have some peace, and if we come
bothering around her again betwixt that and dinner she'd skin us. So we
had the odd spoon, and dropped it in her apron-pocket whilst she was
a-giving us our sailing orders, and Jim got it all right, along with her
shingle nail, before noon. We was very well satisfied with this
business, and Tom allowed it was worth twice the trouble it took, because
he said NOW she couldn't ever count them spoons twice alike again to save
her life; and wouldn't believe she'd counted them right if she DID; and
said that after she'd about counted her head off for the next three days
he judged she'd give it up and offer to kill anybody that wanted her to
ever count them any more.
So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and stole one out of her
closet; and kept on putting it back and stealing it again for a couple of
days till she didn't know how many sheets she had any more, and she
didn't CARE, and warn't a-going to bullyrag the rest of her soul out
about it, and wouldn't count them again not to save her life; she druther
die first.
So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and
the candles, by the help of the calf and the rats and the mixed-up
counting; and as to the candlestick, it warn't no consequence, it would
blow over by and by.
But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with that pie. We fixed
it up away down in the woods, and cooked it there; and we got it done at
last, and very satisfactory, too; but not all in one day; and we had to
use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got
burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke;
because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't
prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought
of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too, in the
pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet
all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight
we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with. We let on it
took nine months to make it.
And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into
the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough
for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or
sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.
But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie,
and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in the
wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble
brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged
to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from
England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early
ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things
that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they
warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her
out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies,
because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We
took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her
up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put
hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool
and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a
satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a
couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't
cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about,
and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too.
Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan; and we put the
three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim
got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into
the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of his straw tick, and scratched
some marks on a tin plate and throwed it out of the window-hole.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MAKING them pens was a distressid tough job, and so was the saw; and Jim
allowed the inscription was going to be the toughest of all. That's the
one which the prisoner has to scrabble on the wall. But he had to have
it; Tom said he'd GOT to; there warn't no case of a state prisoner not
scrabbling his inscription to leave behind, and his coat of arms.
"Look at Lady Jane Grey," he says; "look at Gilford Dudley; look at old
Northumberland! Why, Huck, s'pose it IS considerble trouble?--what you
going to do?--how you going to get around it? Jim's GOT to do his
inscription and coat of arms. They all do."
Jim says:
"Why, Mars Tom, I hain't got no coat o' arm; I hain't got nuffn but dish
yer ole shirt, en you knows I got to keep de journal on dat."
"Oh, you don't understand, Jim; a coat of arms is very different."
"Well," I says, "Jim's right, anyway, when he says he ain't got no coat
of arms, because he hain't."
"I reckon I knowed that," Tom says, "but you bet he'll have one before he
goes out of this--because he's going out RIGHT, and there ain't going to
be no flaws in his record."
So whilst me and Jim filed away at the pens on a brickbat apiece, Jim
a-making his'n out of the brass and I making mine out of the spoon, Tom
set to work to think out the coat of arms. By and by he said he'd struck
so many good ones he didn't hardly know which to take, but there was one
which he reckoned he'd decide on. He says:
"On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire
MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under
his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief
engrailed, and three invected lines on a field AZURE, with the nombril
points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE,
with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of
gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE
OTTO. Got it out of a book--means the more haste the less speed."
"Geewhillikins," I says, "but what does the rest of it mean?"
"We ain't got no time to bother over that," he says; "we got to dig in
like all git-out."
"Well, anyway," I says, "what's SOME of it? What's a fess?"
"A fess--a fess is--YOU don't need to know what a fess is. I'll show him
how to make it when he gets to it."
"Shucks, Tom," I says, "I think you might tell a person. What's a bar
sinister?"
"Oh, I don't know. But he's got to have it. All the nobility does."
That was just his way. If it didn't suit him to explain a thing to you,
he wouldn't do it. You might pump at him a week, it wouldn't make no
difference.
He'd got all that coat of arms business fixed, so now he started in to
finish up the rest of that part of the work, which was to plan out a
mournful inscription--said Jim got to have one, like they all done. He
made up a lot, and wrote them out on a paper, and read them off, so:
1. Here a captive heart busted. 2. Here a poor prisoner, forsook by the
world and friends, fretted his sorrowful life. 3. Here a lonely heart
broke, and a worn spirit went to its rest, after thirty-seven years of
solitary captivity. 4. Here, homeless and friendless, after thirty-seven
years of bitter captivity, perished a noble stranger, natural son of
Louis XIV.
Tom's voice trembled whilst he was reading them, and he most broke down.
When he got done he couldn't no way make up his mind which one for Jim to
scrabble on to the wall, they was all so good; but at last he allowed he
would let him scrabble them all on. Jim said it would take him a year to
scrabble such a lot of truck on to the logs with a nail, and he didn't
know how to make letters, besides; but Tom said he would block them out
for him, and then he wouldn't have nothing to do but just follow the
lines. Then pretty soon he says:
"Come to think, the logs ain't a-going to do; they don't have log walls
in a dungeon: we got to dig the inscriptions into a rock. We'll fetch a
rock."
Jim said the rock was worse than the logs; he said it would take him such
a pison long time to dig them into a rock he wouldn't ever get out. But
Tom said he would let me help him do it. Then he took a look to see how
me and Jim was getting along with the pens. It was most pesky tedious
hard work and slow, and didn't give my hands no show to get well of the
sores, and we didn't seem to make no headway, hardly; so Tom says:
"I know how to fix it. We got to have a rock for the coat of arms and
mournful inscriptions, and we can kill two birds with that same rock.
There's a gaudy big grindstone down at the mill, and we'll smouch it, and
carve the things on it, and file out the pens and the saw on it, too."
It warn't no slouch of an idea; and it warn't no slouch of a grindstone
nuther; but we allowed we'd tackle it. It warn't quite midnight yet, so
we cleared out for the mill, leaving Jim at work. We smouched the
grindstone, and set out to roll her home, but it was a most nation tough
job. Sometimes, do what we could, we couldn't keep her from falling over,
and she come mighty near mashing us every time. Tom said she was going
to get one of us, sure, before we got through. We got her half way; and
then we was plumb played out, and most drownded with sweat. We see it
warn't no use; we got to go and fetch Jim So he raised up his bed and
slid the chain off of the bed-leg, and wrapt it round and round his neck,
and we crawled out through our hole and down there, and Jim and me laid
into that grindstone and walked her along like nothing; and Tom
superintended. He could out-superintend any boy I ever see. He knowed
how to do everything.
Our hole was pretty big, but it warn't big enough to get the grindstone
through; but Jim he took the pick and soon made it big enough. Then Tom
marked out them things on it with the nail, and set Jim to work on them,
with the nail for a chisel and an iron bolt from the rubbage in the
lean-to for a hammer, and told him to work till the rest of his candle
quit on him, and then he could go to bed, and hide the grindstone under
his straw tick and sleep on it. Then we helped him fix his chain back on
the bed-leg, and was ready for bed ourselves. But Tom thought of
something, and says:
"You got any spiders in here, Jim?"
"No, sah, thanks to goodness I hain't, Mars Tom."
"All right, we'll get you some."
"But bless you, honey, I doan' WANT none. I's afeard un um. I jis' 's
soon have rattlesnakes aroun'."
Tom thought a minute or two, and says:
"It's a good idea. And I reckon it's been done. It MUST a been done; it
stands to reason. Yes, it's a prime good idea. Where could you keep
it?"
"Keep what, Mars Tom?"
"Why, a rattlesnake."
"De goodness gracious alive, Mars Tom! Why, if dey was a rattlesnake to
come in heah I'd take en bust right out thoo dat log wall, I would, wid
my head."
Why, Jim, you wouldn't be afraid of it after a little. You could tame
it."
"TAME it!"
"Yes--easy enough. Every animal is grateful for kindness and petting,
and they wouldn't THINK of hurting a person that pets them. Any book
will tell you that. You try--that's all I ask; just try for two or three
days. Why, you can get him so in a little while that he'll love you; and
sleep with you; and won't stay away from you a minute; and will let you
wrap him round your neck and put his head in your mouth."
"PLEASE, Mars Tom--DOAN' talk so! I can't STAN' it! He'd LET me shove
his head in my mouf--fer a favor, hain't it? I lay he'd wait a pow'ful
long time 'fo' I AST him. En mo' en dat, I doan' WANT him to sleep wid
me."
"Jim, don't act so foolish. A prisoner's GOT to have some kind of a dumb
pet, and if a rattlesnake hain't ever been tried, why, there's more glory
to be gained in your being the first to ever try it than any other way
you could ever think of to save your life."
"Why, Mars Tom, I doan' WANT no sich glory. Snake take 'n bite Jim's
chin off, den WHAH is de glory? No, sah, I doan' want no sich doin's."
"Blame it, can't you TRY? I only WANT you to try--you needn't keep it up
if it don't work."
"But de trouble all DONE ef de snake bite me while I's a tryin' him.
Mars Tom, I's willin' to tackle mos' anything 'at ain't onreasonable, but
ef you en Huck fetches a rattlesnake in heah for me to tame, I's gwyne to
LEAVE, dat's SHORE."
"Well, then, let it go, let it go, if you're so bull-headed about it. We
can get you some garter-snakes, and you can tie some buttons on their
tails, and let on they're rattlesnakes, and I reckon that 'll have to
do."
"I k'n stan' DEM, Mars Tom, but blame' 'f I couldn' get along widout um,
I tell you dat. I never knowed b'fo' 't was so much bother and trouble
to be a prisoner."
"Well, it ALWAYS is when it's done right. You got any rats around here?"
"No, sah, I hain't seed none."
"Well, we'll get you some rats."
"Why, Mars Tom, I doan' WANT no rats. Dey's de dadblamedest creturs to
'sturb a body, en rustle roun' over 'im, en bite his feet, when he's
tryin' to sleep, I ever see. No, sah, gimme g'yarter-snakes, 'f I's got
to have 'm, but doan' gimme no rats; I hain' got no use f'r um, skasely."
"But, Jim, you GOT to have 'em--they all do. So don't make no more fuss
about it. Prisoners ain't ever without rats. There ain't no instance of
it. And they train them, and pet them, and learn them tricks, and they
get to be as sociable as flies. But you got to play music to them. You
got anything to play music on?"
"I ain' got nuffn but a coase comb en a piece o' paper, en a juice-harp;
but I reck'n dey wouldn' take no stock in a juice-harp."
"Yes they would. THEY don't care what kind of music 'tis. A jews-harp's
plenty good enough for a rat. All animals like music--in a prison they
dote on it. Specially, painful music; and you can't get no other kind
out of a jews-harp. It always interests them; they come out to see
what's the matter with you. Yes, you're all right; you're fixed very
well. You want to set on your bed nights before you go to sleep, and
early in the mornings, and play your jews-harp; play 'The Last Link is
Broken'--that's the thing that 'll scoop a rat quicker 'n anything else;
and when you've played about two minutes you'll see all the rats, and the
snakes, and spiders, and things begin to feel worried about you, and
come. And they'll just fairly swarm over you, and have a noble good
time."
"Yes, DEY will, I reck'n, Mars Tom, but what kine er time is JIM havin'?
Blest if I kin see de pint. But I'll do it ef I got to. I reck'n I
better keep de animals satisfied, en not have no trouble in de house."
Tom waited to think it over, and see if there wasn't nothing else; and
pretty soon he says:
"Oh, there's one thing I forgot. Could you raise a flower here, do you
reckon?"
"I doan know but maybe I could, Mars Tom; but it's tolable dark in heah,
en I ain' got no use f'r no flower, nohow, en she'd be a pow'ful sight o'
trouble."
"Well, you try it, anyway. Some other prisoners has done it."
"One er dem big cat-tail-lookin' mullen-stalks would grow in heah, Mars
Tom, I reck'n, but she wouldn't be wuth half de trouble she'd coss."
"Don't you believe it. We'll fetch you a little one and you plant it in
the corner over there, and raise it. And don't call it mullen, call it
Pitchiola--that's its right name when it's in a prison. And you want to
water it with your tears."
"Why, I got plenty spring water, Mars Tom."
"You don't WANT spring water; you want to water it with your tears. It's
the way they always do."
"Why, Mars Tom, I lay I kin raise one er dem mullen-stalks twyste wid
spring water whiles another man's a START'N one wid tears."
"That ain't the idea. You GOT to do it with tears."
"She'll die on my han's, Mars Tom, she sholy will; kase I doan' skasely
ever cry."
So Tom was stumped. But he studied it over, and then said Jim would have
to worry along the best he could with an onion. He promised he would go
to the nigger cabins and drop one, private, in Jim's coffee-pot, in the
morning. Jim said he would "jis' 's soon have tobacker in his coffee;"
and found so much fault with it, and with the work and bother of raising
the mullen, and jews-harping the rats, and petting and flattering up the
snakes and spiders and things, on top of all the other work he had to do
on pens, and inscriptions, and journals, and things, which made it more
trouble and worry and responsibility to be a prisoner than anything he
ever undertook, that Tom most lost all patience with him; and said he was
just loadened down with more gaudier chances than a prisoner ever had in
the world to make a name for himself, and yet he didn't know enough to
appreciate them, and they was just about wasted on him. So Jim he was
sorry, and said he wouldn't behave so no more, and then me and Tom shoved
for bed.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and
fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we
had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it
in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for
spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found
it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out,
and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was
a-standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what
they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us
both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another
fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the
likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock.
I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was.
We got a splendid stock of sorted spiders, and bugs, and frogs, and
caterpillars, and one thing or another; and we like to got a hornet's
nest, but we didn't. The family was at home. We didn't give it right
up, but stayed with them as long as we could; because we allowed we'd
tire them out or they'd got to tire us out, and they done it. Then we
got allycumpain and rubbed on the places, and was pretty near all right
again, but couldn't set down convenient. And so we went for the snakes,
and grabbed a couple of dozen garters and house-snakes, and put them in a
bag, and put it in our room, and by that time it was supper-time, and a
rattling good honest day's work: and hungry?--oh, no, I reckon not! And
there warn't a blessed snake up there when we went back--we didn't half
tie the sack, and they worked out somehow, and left. But it didn't
matter much, because they was still on the premises somewheres. So we
judged we could get some of them again. No, there warn't no real
scarcity of snakes about the house for a considerable spell. You'd see
them dripping from the rafters and places every now and then; and they
generly landed in your plate, or down the back of your neck, and most of
the time where you didn't want them. Well, they was handsome and
striped, and there warn't no harm in a million of them; but that never
made no difference to Aunt Sally; she despised snakes, be the breed what
they might, and she couldn't stand them no way you could fix it; and
every time one of them flopped down on her, it didn't make no difference
what she was doing, she would just lay that work down and light out. I
never see such a woman. And you could hear her whoop to Jericho. You
couldn't get her to take a-holt of one of them with the tongs. And if
she turned over and found one in bed she would scramble out and lift a
howl that you would think the house was afire. She disturbed the old man
so that he said he could most wish there hadn't ever been no snakes
created. Why, after every last snake had been gone clear out of the
house for as much as a week Aunt Sally warn't over it yet; she warn't
near over it; when she was setting thinking about something you could
touch her on the back of her neck with a feather and she would jump right
out of her stockings. It was very curious. But Tom said all women was
just so. He said they was made that way for some reason or other.
We got a licking every time one of our snakes come in her way, and she
allowed these lickings warn't nothing to what she would do if we ever
loaded up the place again with them. I didn't mind the lickings, because
they didn't amount to nothing; but I minded the trouble we had to lay in
another lot. But we got them laid in, and all the other things; and you
never see a cabin as blithesome as Jim's was when they'd all swarm out
for music and go for him. Jim didn't like the spiders, and the spiders
didn't like Jim; and so they'd lay for him, and make it mighty warm for
him. And he said that between the rats and the snakes and the grindstone
there warn't no room in bed for him, skasely; and when there was, a body
couldn't sleep, it was so lively, and it was always lively, he said,
because THEY never all slept at one time, but took turn about, so when
the snakes was asleep the rats was on deck, and when the rats turned in
the snakes come on watch, so he always had one gang under him, in his
way, and t'other gang having a circus over him, and if he got up to hunt
a new place the spiders would take a chance at him as he crossed over.
He said if he ever got out this time he wouldn't ever be a prisoner
again, not for a salary.
Well, by the end of three weeks everything was in pretty good shape. The
shirt was sent in early, in a pie, and every time a rat bit Jim he would
get up and write a little in his journal whilst the ink was fresh; the
pens was made, the inscriptions and so on was all carved on the
grindstone; the bed-leg was sawed in two, and we had et up the sawdust,
and it give us a most amazing stomach-ache. We reckoned we was all going
to die, but didn't. It was the most undigestible sawdust I ever see; and
Tom said the same. But as I was saying, we'd got all the work done now,
at last; and we was all pretty much fagged out, too, but mainly Jim. The
old man had wrote a couple of times to the plantation below Orleans to
come and get their runaway nigger, but hadn't got no answer, because
there warn't no such plantation; so he allowed he would advertise Jim in
the St. Louis and New Orleans papers; and when he mentioned the St. Louis
ones it give me the cold shivers, and I see we hadn't no time to lose.
So Tom said, now for the nonnamous letters.
"What's them?" I says.
"Warnings to the people that something is up. Sometimes it's done one
way, sometimes another. But there's always somebody spying around that
gives notice to the governor of the castle. When Louis XVI. was going to
light out of the Tooleries a servant-girl done it. It's a very good way,
and so is the nonnamous letters. We'll use them both. And it's usual
for the prisoner's mother to change clothes with him, and she stays in,
and he slides out in her clothes. We'll do that, too."
"But looky here, Tom, what do we want to WARN anybody for that
something's up? Let them find it out for themselves--it's their
lookout."
"Yes, I know; but you can't depend on them. It's the way they've acted
from the very start--left us to do EVERYTHING. They're so confiding and
mullet-headed they don't take notice of nothing at all. So if we don't
GIVE them notice there won't be nobody nor nothing to interfere with us,
and so after all our hard work and trouble this escape 'll go off
perfectly flat; won't amount to nothing--won't be nothing TO it."
"Well, as for me, Tom, that's the way I'd like."
"Shucks!" he says, and looked disgusted. So I says:
"But I ain't going to make no complaint. Any way that suits you suits
me. What you going to do about the servant-girl?"
"You'll be her. You slide in, in the middle of the night, and hook that
yaller girl's frock."
"Why, Tom, that 'll make trouble next morning; because, of course, she
prob'bly hain't got any but that one."
"I know; but you don't want it but fifteen minutes, to carry the
nonnamous letter and shove it under the front door."
"All right, then, I'll do it; but I could carry it just as handy in my
own togs."
"You wouldn't look like a servant-girl THEN, would you?"
"No, but there won't be nobody to see what I look like, ANYWAY."
"That ain't got nothing to do with it. The thing for us to do is just to
do our DUTY, and not worry about whether anybody SEES us do it or not.
Hain't you got no principle at all?"
"All right, I ain't saying nothing; I'm the servant-girl. Who's Jim's
mother?"
"I'm his mother. I'll hook a gown from Aunt Sally."
"Well, then, you'll have to stay in the cabin when me and Jim leaves."
"Not much. I'll stuff Jim's clothes full of straw and lay it on his bed
to represent his mother in disguise, and Jim 'll take the nigger woman's
gown off of me and wear it, and we'll all evade together. When a
prisoner of style escapes it's called an evasion. It's always called so
when a king escapes, f'rinstance. And the same with a king's son; it
don't make no difference whether he's a natural one or an unnatural one."
So Tom he wrote the nonnamous letter, and I smouched the yaller wench's
frock that night, and put it on, and shoved it under the front door, the
way Tom told me to. It said:
Beware. Trouble is brewing. Keep a sharp lookout. UNKNOWN FRIEND.
Next night we stuck a picture, which Tom drawed in blood, of a skull and
crossbones on the front door; and next night another one of a coffin on
the back door. I never see a family in such a sweat. They couldn't a
been worse scared if the place had a been full of ghosts laying for them
behind everything and under the beds and shivering through the air. If a
door banged, Aunt Sally she jumped and said "ouch!" if anything fell, she
jumped and said "ouch!" if you happened to touch her, when she warn't
noticing, she done the same; she couldn't face noway and be satisfied,
because she allowed there was something behind her every time--so she was
always a-whirling around sudden, and saying "ouch," and before she'd got
two-thirds around she'd whirl back again, and say it again; and she was
afraid to go to bed, but she dasn't set up. So the thing was working
very well, Tom said; he said he never see a thing work more satisfactory.
He said it showed it was done right.
So he said, now for the grand bulge! So the very next morning at the
streak of dawn we got another letter ready, and was wondering what we
better do with it, because we heard them say at supper they was going to
have a nigger on watch at both doors all night. Tom he went down the
lightning-rod to spy around; and the nigger at the back door was asleep,
and he stuck it in the back of his neck and come back. This letter said:
Don't betray me, I wish to be your friend. There is a desprate gang of
cut-throats from over in the Indian Territory going to steal your runaway
nigger to-night, and they have been trying to scare you so as you will
stay in the house and not bother them. I am one of the gang, but have
got religgion and wish to quit it and lead an honest life again, and will
betray the helish design. They will sneak down from northards, along the
fence, at midnight exact, with a false key, and go in the nigger's cabin
to get him. I am to be off a piece and blow a tin horn if I see any
danger; but stead of that I will BA like a sheep soon as they get in and
not blow at all; then whilst they are getting his chains loose, you slip
there and lock them in, and can kill them at your leasure. Don't do
anything but just the way I am telling you; if you do they will suspicion
something and raise whoop-jamboreehoo. I do not wish any reward but to
know I have done the right thing. UNKNOWN FRIEND.
CHAPTER XL.
WE was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went
over the river a-fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time, and took a
look at the raft and found her all right, and got home late to supper,
and found them in such a sweat and worry they didn't know which end they
was standing on, and made us go right off to bed the minute we was done
supper, and wouldn't tell us what the trouble was, and never let on a
word about the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much
about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her
back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good
lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about
half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole and
was going to start with the lunch, but says:
"Where's the butter?"
"I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of a corn-pone."
"Well, you LEFT it laid out, then--it ain't here."
"We can get along without it," I says.
"We can get along WITH it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and
fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along.
I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in
disguise, and be ready to BA like a sheep and shove soon as you get
there."
So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a
person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of
corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs very
stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt
Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my
hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says:
"You been down cellar?"
"Yes'm."
"What you been doing down there?"
"Noth'n."
"NOTH'N!"
"No'm."
"Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?"
"I don't know 'm."
"You don't KNOW? Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you
been DOING down there."
"I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I
have."
I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I
s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat
about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says,
very decided:
"You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You
been up to something you no business to, and I lay I'll find out what it
is before I'M done with you."
So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room.
My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them
had a gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair and set down.
They was setting around, some of them talking a little, in a low voice,
and all of them fidgety and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't;
but I knowed they was, because they was always taking off their hats, and
putting them on, and scratching their heads, and changing their seats,
and fumbling with their buttons. I warn't easy myself, but I didn't take
my hat off, all the same.
I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done with me, and lick me, if
she wanted to, and let me get away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this
thing, and what a thundering hornet's-nest we'd got ourselves into, so we
could stop fooling around straight off, and clear out with Jim before
these rips got out of patience and come for us.
At last she come and begun to ask me questions, but I COULDN'T answer
them straight, I didn't know which end of me was up; because these men
was in such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right NOW and lay
for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't but a few minutes to midnight;
and others was trying to get them to hold on and wait for the
sheep-signal; and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions, and me
a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in my tracks I was that scared;
and the place getting hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt
and run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty soon, when one of
them says, "I'M for going and getting in the cabin FIRST and right NOW,
and catching them when they come," I most dropped; and a streak of butter
come a-trickling down my forehead, and Aunt Sally she see it, and turns
white as a sheet, and says:
"For the land's sake, what IS the matter with the child? He's got the
brain-fever as shore as you're born, and they're oozing out!"
And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my hat, and out comes the
bread and what was left of the butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me,
and says:
"Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad and grateful I am it ain't
no worse; for luck's against us, and it never rains but it pours, and
when I see that truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by the color
and all it was just like your brains would be if--Dear, dear, whyd'nt you
TELL me that was what you'd been down there for, I wouldn't a cared. Now
cler out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till morning!"
I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-rod in another one,
and shinning through the dark for the lean-to. I couldn't hardly get my
words out, I was so anxious; but I told Tom as quick as I could we must
jump for it now, and not a minute to lose--the house full of men, yonder,
with guns!
His eyes just blazed; and he says:
"No!--is that so? AIN'T it bully! Why, Huck, if it was to do over
again, I bet I could fetch two hundred! If we could put it off till--"
"Hurry! HURRY!" I says. "Where's Jim?"
"Right at your elbow; if you reach out your arm you can touch him. He's
dressed, and everything's ready. Now we'll slide out and give the
sheep-signal."
But then we heard the tramp of men coming to the door, and heard them
begin to fumble with the pad-lock, and heard a man say:
"I TOLD you we'd be too soon; they haven't come--the door is locked.
Here, I'll lock some of you into the cabin, and you lay for 'em in the
dark and kill 'em when they come; and the rest scatter around a piece,
and listen if you can hear 'em coming."
So in they come, but couldn't see us in the dark, and most trod on us
whilst we was hustling to get under the bed. But we got under all right,
and out through the hole, swift but soft--Jim first, me next, and Tom
last, which was according to Tom's orders. Now we was in the lean-to,
and heard trampings close by outside. So we crept to the door, and Tom
stopped us there and put his eye to the crack, but couldn't make out
nothing, it was so dark; and whispered and said he would listen for the
steps to get further, and when he nudged us Jim must glide out first, and
him last. So he set his ear to the crack and listened, and listened, and
listened, and the steps a-scraping around out there all the time; and at
last he nudged us, and we slid out, and stooped down, not breathing, and
not making the least noise, and slipped stealthy towards the fence in
Injun file, and got to it all right, and me and Jim over it; but Tom's
britches catched fast on a splinter on the top rail, and then he hear the
steps coming, so he had to pull loose, which snapped the splinter and
made a noise; and as he dropped in our tracks and started somebody sings
out:
"Who's that? Answer, or I'll shoot!"
But we didn't answer; we just unfurled our heels and shoved. Then there
was a rush, and a BANG, BANG, BANG! and the bullets fairly whizzed around
us! We heard them sing out:
"Here they are! They've broke for the river! After 'em, boys, and turn
loose the dogs!"
So here they come, full tilt. We could hear them because they wore boots
and yelled, but we didn't wear no boots and didn't yell. We was in the
path to the mill; and when they got pretty close on to us we dodged into
the bush and let them go by, and then dropped in behind them. They'd had
all the dogs shut up, so they wouldn't scare off the robbers; but by this
time somebody had let them loose, and here they come, making powwow
enough for a million; but they was our dogs; so we stopped in our tracks
till they catched up; and when they see it warn't nobody but us, and no
excitement to offer them, they only just said howdy, and tore right ahead
towards the shouting and clattering; and then we up-steam again, and
whizzed along after them till we was nearly to the mill, and then struck
up through the bush to where my canoe was tied, and hopped in and pulled
for dear life towards the middle of the river, but didn't make no more
noise than we was obleeged to. Then we struck out, easy and comfortable,
for the island where my raft was; and we could hear them yelling and
barking at each other all up and down the bank, till we was so far away
the sounds got dim and died out. And when we stepped on to the raft I
says:
"NOW, old Jim, you're a free man again, and I bet you won't ever be a
slave no more."
"En a mighty good job it wuz, too, Huck. It 'uz planned beautiful, en it
'uz done beautiful; en dey ain't NOBODY kin git up a plan dat's mo'
mixed-up en splendid den what dat one wuz."
We was all glad as we could be, but Tom was the gladdest of all because
he had a bullet in the calf of his leg.
When me and Jim heard that we didn't feel so brash as what we did before.
It was hurting him considerable, and bleeding; so we laid him in the
wigwam and tore up one of the duke's shirts for to bandage him, but he
says:
"Gimme the rags; I can do it myself. Don't stop now; don't fool around
here, and the evasion booming along so handsome; man the sweeps, and set
her loose! Boys, we done it elegant!--'deed we did. I wish WE'D a had
the handling of Louis XVI., there wouldn't a been no 'Son of Saint Louis,
ascend to heaven!' wrote down in HIS biography; no, sir, we'd a whooped
him over the BORDER--that's what we'd a done with HIM--and done it just
as slick as nothing at all, too. Man the sweeps--man the sweeps!"
But me and Jim was consulting--and thinking. And after we'd thought a
minute, I says:
"Say it, Jim."
So he says:
"Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat 'uz
bein' sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, 'Go on
en save me, nemmine 'bout a doctor f'r to save dis one?' Is dat like
Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn't! WELL, den, is
JIM gywne to say it? No, sah--I doan' budge a step out'n dis place 'dout
a DOCTOR, not if it's forty year!"
I knowed he was white inside, and I reckoned he'd say what he did say--so
it was all right now, and I told Tom I was a-going for a doctor. He
raised considerable row about it, but me and Jim stuck to it and wouldn't
budge; so he was for crawling out and setting the raft loose himself; but
we wouldn't let him. Then he give us a piece of his mind, but it didn't
do no good.
So when he sees me getting the canoe ready, he says:
"Well, then, if you re bound to go, I'll tell you the way to do when you
get to the village. Shut the door and blindfold the doctor tight and
fast, and make him swear to be silent as the grave, and put a purse full
of gold in his hand, and then take and lead him all around the back
alleys and everywheres in the dark, and then fetch him here in the canoe,
in a roundabout way amongst the islands, and search him and take his
chalk away from him, and don't give it back to him till you get him back
to the village, or else he will chalk this raft so he can find it again.
It's the way they all do."
So I said I would, and left, and Jim was to hide in the woods when he see
the doctor coming till he was gone again.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE doctor was an old man; a very nice, kind-looking old man when I got
him up. I told him me and my brother was over on Spanish Island hunting
yesterday afternoon, and camped on a piece of a raft we found, and about
midnight he must a kicked his gun in his dreams, for it went off and shot
him in the leg, and we wanted him to go over there and fix it and not say
nothing about it, nor let anybody know, because we wanted to come home
this evening and surprise the folks.
"Who is your folks?" he says.
"The Phelpses, down yonder."
"Oh," he says. And after a minute, he says:
"How'd you say he got shot?"
"He had a dream," I says, "and it shot him."
"Singular dream," he says.
So he lit up his lantern, and got his saddle-bags, and we started. But
when he sees the canoe he didn't like the look of her--said she was big
enough for one, but didn't look pretty safe for two. I says:
"Oh, you needn't be afeard, sir, she carried the three of us easy
enough."
"What three?"
"Why, me and Sid, and--and--and THE GUNS; that's what I mean."
"Oh," he says.
But he put his foot on the gunnel and rocked her, and shook his head, and
said he reckoned he'd look around for a bigger one. But they was all
locked and chained; so he took my canoe, and said for me to wait till he
come back, or I could hunt around further, or maybe I better go down home
and get them ready for the surprise if I wanted to. But I said I didn't;
so I told him just how to find the raft, and then he started.
I struck an idea pretty soon. I says to myself, spos'n he can't fix that
leg just in three shakes of a sheep's tail, as the saying is? spos'n it
takes him three or four days? What are we going to do?--lay around there
till he lets the cat out of the bag? No, sir; I know what I'LL do. I'll
wait, and when he comes back if he says he's got to go any more I'll get
down there, too, if I swim; and we'll take and tie him, and keep him, and
shove out down the river; and when Tom's done with him we'll give him
what it's worth, or all we got, and then let him get ashore.
So then I crept into a lumber-pile to get some sleep; and next time I
waked up the sun was away up over my head! I shot out and went for the
doctor's house, but they told me he'd gone away in the night some time or
other, and warn't back yet. Well, thinks I, that looks powerful bad for
Tom, and I'll dig out for the island right off. So away I shoved, and
turned the corner, and nearly rammed my head into Uncle Silas's stomach!
He says:
"Why, TOM! Where you been all this time, you rascal?"
"I hain't been nowheres," I says, "only just hunting for the runaway
nigger--me and Sid."
"Why, where ever did you go?" he says. "Your aunt's been mighty uneasy."
"She needn't," I says, "because we was all right. We followed the men
and the dogs, but they outrun us, and we lost them; but we thought we
heard them on the water, so we got a canoe and took out after them and
crossed over, but couldn't find nothing of them; so we cruised along
up-shore till we got kind of tired and beat out; and tied up the canoe
and went to sleep, and never waked up till about an hour ago; then we
paddled over here to hear the news, and Sid's at the post-office to see
what he can hear, and I'm a-branching out to get something to eat for us,
and then we're going home."
So then we went to the post-office to get "Sid"; but just as I
suspicioned, he warn't there; so the old man he got a letter out of the
office, and we waited awhile longer, but Sid didn't come; so the old man
said, come along, let Sid foot it home, or canoe it, when he got done
fooling around--but we would ride. I couldn't get him to let me stay and
wait for Sid; and he said there warn't no use in it, and I must come
along, and let Aunt Sally see we was all right.
When we got home Aunt Sally was that glad to see me she laughed and cried
both, and hugged me, and give me one of them lickings of hern that don't
amount to shucks, and said she'd serve Sid the same when he come.
And the place was plum full of farmers and farmers' wives, to dinner; and
such another clack a body never heard. Old Mrs. Hotchkiss was the worst;
her tongue was a-going all the time. She says:
"Well, Sister Phelps, I've ransacked that-air cabin over, an' I b'lieve
the nigger was crazy. I says to Sister Damrell--didn't I, Sister
Damrell?--s'I, he's crazy, s'I--them's the very words I said. You all
hearn me: he's crazy, s'I; everything shows it, s'I. Look at that-air
grindstone, s'I; want to tell ME't any cretur 't's in his right mind 's a
goin' to scrabble all them crazy things onto a grindstone, s'I? Here
sich 'n' sich a person busted his heart; 'n' here so 'n' so pegged along
for thirty-seven year, 'n' all that--natcherl son o' Louis somebody, 'n'
sich everlast'n rubbage. He's plumb crazy, s'I; it's what I says in the
fust place, it's what I says in the middle, 'n' it's what I says last 'n'
all the time--the nigger's crazy--crazy 's Nebokoodneezer, s'I."
"An' look at that-air ladder made out'n rags, Sister Hotchkiss," says old
Mrs. Damrell; "what in the name o' goodness COULD he ever want of--"
"The very words I was a-sayin' no longer ago th'n this minute to Sister
Utterback, 'n' she'll tell you so herself. Sh-she, look at that-air rag
ladder, sh-she; 'n' s'I, yes, LOOK at it, s'I--what COULD he a-wanted of
it, s'I. Sh-she, Sister Hotchkiss, sh-she--"
"But how in the nation'd they ever GIT that grindstone IN there, ANYWAY?
'n' who dug that-air HOLE? 'n' who--"
"My very WORDS, Brer Penrod! I was a-sayin'--pass that-air sasser o'
m'lasses, won't ye?--I was a-sayin' to Sister Dunlap, jist this minute,
how DID they git that grindstone in there, s'I. Without HELP, mind you
--'thout HELP! THAT'S wher 'tis. Don't tell ME, s'I; there WUZ help,
s'I; 'n' ther' wuz a PLENTY help, too, s'I; ther's ben a DOZEN a-helpin'
that nigger, 'n' I lay I'd skin every last nigger on this place but I'D
find out who done it, s'I; 'n' moreover, s'I--"
"A DOZEN says you!--FORTY couldn't a done every thing that's been done.
Look at them case-knife saws and things, how tedious they've been made;
look at that bed-leg sawed off with 'm, a week's work for six men; look
at that nigger made out'n straw on the bed; and look at--"
"You may WELL say it, Brer Hightower! It's jist as I was a-sayin' to
Brer Phelps, his own self. S'e, what do YOU think of it, Sister
Hotchkiss, s'e? Think o' what, Brer Phelps, s'I? Think o' that bed-leg
sawed off that a way, s'e? THINK of it, s'I? I lay it never sawed
ITSELF off, s'I--somebody SAWED it, s'I; that's my opinion, take it or
leave it, it mayn't be no 'count, s'I, but sich as 't is, it's my
opinion, s'I, 'n' if any body k'n start a better one, s'I, let him DO it,
s'I, that's all. I says to Sister Dunlap, s'I--"
"Why, dog my cats, they must a ben a house-full o' niggers in there every
night for four weeks to a done all that work, Sister Phelps. Look at
that shirt--every last inch of it kivered over with secret African writ'n
done with blood! Must a ben a raft uv 'm at it right along, all the
time, amost. Why, I'd give two dollars to have it read to me; 'n' as for
the niggers that wrote it, I 'low I'd take 'n' lash 'm t'll--"
"People to HELP him, Brother Marples! Well, I reckon you'd THINK so if
you'd a been in this house for a while back. Why, they've stole
everything they could lay their hands on--and we a-watching all the time,
mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that
sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many
times they DIDN'T steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks,
and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that I
disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and Silas and my Sid and
Tom on the constant watch day AND night, as I was a-telling you, and not
a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and
here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under
our noses and fools us, and not only fools US but the Injun Territory
robbers too, and actuly gets AWAY with that nigger safe and sound, and
that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right on their very heels at
that very time! I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever HEARD of.
Why, SPERITS couldn't a done better and been no smarter. And I reckon
they must a BEEN sperits--because, YOU know our dogs, and ther' ain't no
better; well, them dogs never even got on the TRACK of 'm once! You
explain THAT to me if you can!--ANY of you!"
"Well, it does beat--"
"Laws alive, I never--"
"So help me, I wouldn't a be--"
"HOUSE-thieves as well as--"
"Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--"
"'Fraid to LIVE!--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed, or
get up, or lay down, or SET down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd steal the
very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was
in by the time midnight come last night. I hope to gracious if I warn't
afraid they'd steal some o' the family! I was just to that pass I didn't
have no reasoning faculties no more. It looks foolish enough NOW, in the
daytime; but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up
stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy
't I crep' up there and locked 'em in! I DID. And anybody would.
Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on,
and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling,
and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to
yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't
locked, and you--" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she
turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--I got up and
took a walk.
Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room
this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I
done it. But I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. And when it was
late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and told her the
noise and shooting waked up me and "Sid," and the door was locked, and we
wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us
got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try THAT no more. And
then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before; and then
she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and
about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty
harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm
hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful
we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what
was past and done. So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and
dropped into a kind of a brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:
"Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet! What HAS become
of that boy?"
I see my chance; so I skips up and says:
"I'll run right up to town and get him," I says.
"No you won't," she says. "You'll stay right wher' you are; ONE'S enough
to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, your uncle 'll go."
Well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went.
He come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across Tom's
track. Aunt Sally was a good DEAL uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said there
warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll see this
one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to be
satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him a while anyway, and keep a
light burning so he could see it.
And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her
candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and like I
couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and talked
with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and didn't
seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me every now
and then if I reckoned he could a got lost, or hurt, or maybe drownded,
and might be laying at this minute somewheres suffering or dead, and she
not by him to help him, and so the tears would drip down silent, and I
would tell her that Sid was all right, and would be home in the morning,
sure; and she would squeeze my hand, or maybe kiss me, and tell me to say
it again, and keep on saying it, because it done her good, and she was in
so much trouble. And when she was going away she looked down in my eyes
so steady and gentle, and says:
"The door ain't going to be locked, Tom, and there's the window and the
rod; but you'll be good, WON'T you? And you won't go? For MY sake."
Laws knows I WANTED to go bad enough to see about Tom, and was all
intending to go; but after that I wouldn't a went, not for kingdoms.
But she was on my mind and Tom was on my mind, so I slept very restless.
And twice I went down the rod away in the night, and slipped around
front, and see her setting there by her candle in the window with her
eyes towards the road and the tears in them; and I wished I could do
something for her, but I couldn't, only to swear that I wouldn't never do
nothing to grieve her any more. And the third time I waked up at dawn,
and slid down, and she was there yet, and her candle was most out, and
her old gray head was resting on her hand, and she was asleep.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE old man was uptown again before breakfast, but couldn't get no track
of Tom; and both of them set at the table thinking, and not saying
nothing, and looking mournful, and their coffee getting cold, and not
eating anything. And by and by the old man says:
"Did I give you the letter?"
"What letter?"
"The one I got yesterday out of the post-office."
"No, you didn't give me no letter."
"Well, I must a forgot it."
So he rummaged his pockets, and then went off somewheres where he had
laid it down, and fetched it, and give it to her. She says:
"Why, it's from St. Petersburg--it's from Sis."
I allowed another walk would do me good; but I couldn't stir. But before
she could break it open she dropped it and run--for she see something.
And so did I. It was Tom Sawyer on a mattress; and that old doctor; and
Jim, in HER calico dress, with his hands tied behind him; and a lot of
people. I hid the letter behind the first thing that come handy, and
rushed. She flung herself at Tom, crying, and says:
"Oh, he's dead, he's dead, I know he's dead!"
And Tom he turned his head a little, and muttered something or other,
which showed he warn't in his right mind; then she flung up her hands,
and says:
"He's alive, thank God! And that's enough!" and she snatched a kiss of
him, and flew for the house to get the bed ready, and scattering orders
right and left at the niggers and everybody else, as fast as her tongue
could go, every jump of the way.
I followed the men to see what they was going to do with Jim; and the old
doctor and Uncle Silas followed after Tom into the house. The men was
very huffy, and some of them wanted to hang Jim for an example to all the
other niggers around there, so they wouldn't be trying to run away like
Jim done, and making such a raft of trouble, and keeping a whole family
scared most to death for days and nights. But the others said, don't do
it, it wouldn't answer at all; he ain't our nigger, and his owner would
turn up and make us pay for him, sure. So that cooled them down a
little, because the people that's always the most anxious for to hang a
nigger that hain't done just right is always the very ones that ain't the
most anxious to pay for him when they've got their satisfaction out of
him.
They cussed Jim considerble, though, and give him a cuff or two side the
head once in a while, but Jim never said nothing, and he never let on to
know me, and they took him to the same cabin, and put his own clothes on
him, and chained him again, and not to no bed-leg this time, but to a big
staple drove into the bottom log, and chained his hands, too, and both
legs, and said he warn't to have nothing but bread and water to eat after
this till his owner come, or he was sold at auction because he didn't
come in a certain length of time, and filled up our hole, and said a
couple of farmers with guns must stand watch around about the cabin every
night, and a bulldog tied to the door in the daytime; and about this time
they was through with the job and was tapering off with a kind of generl
good-bye cussing, and then the old doctor comes and takes a look, and
says:
"Don't be no rougher on him than you're obleeged to, because he ain't a
bad nigger. When I got to where I found the boy I see I couldn't cut the
bullet out without some help, and he warn't in no condition for me to
leave to go and get help; and he got a little worse and a little worse,
and after a long time he went out of his head, and wouldn't let me come
a-nigh him any more, and said if I chalked his raft he'd kill me, and no
end of wild foolishness like that, and I see I couldn't do anything at
all with him; so I says, I got to have HELP somehow; and the minute I
says it out crawls this nigger from somewheres and says he'll help, and
he done it, too, and done it very well. Of course I judged he must be a
runaway nigger, and there I WAS! and there I had to stick right straight
along all the rest of the day and all night. It was a fix, I tell you!
I had a couple of patients with the chills, and of course I'd of liked to
run up to town and see them, but I dasn't, because the nigger might get
away, and then I'd be to blame; and yet never a skiff come close enough
for me to hail. So there I had to stick plumb until daylight this
morning; and I never see a nigger that was a better nuss or faithfuller,
and yet he was risking his freedom to do it, and was all tired out, too,
and I see plain enough he'd been worked main hard lately. I liked the
nigger for that; I tell you, gentlemen, a nigger like that is worth a
thousand dollars--and kind treatment, too. I had everything I needed,
and the boy was doing as well there as he would a done at home--better,
maybe, because it was so quiet; but there I WAS, with both of 'm on my
hands, and there I had to stick till about dawn this morning; then some
men in a skiff come by, and as good luck would have it the nigger was
setting by the pallet with his head propped on his knees sound asleep; so
I motioned them in quiet, and they slipped up on him and grabbed him and
tied him before he knowed what he was about, and we never had no trouble.
And the boy being in a kind of a flighty sleep, too, we muffled the oars
and hitched the raft on, and towed her over very nice and quiet, and the
nigger never made the least row nor said a word from the start. He ain't
no bad nigger, gentlemen; that's what I think about him."
Somebody says:
"Well, it sounds very good, doctor, I'm obleeged to say."
Then the others softened up a little, too, and I was mighty thankful to
that old doctor for doing Jim that good turn; and I was glad it was
according to my judgment of him, too; because I thought he had a good
heart in him and was a good man the first time I see him. Then they all
agreed that Jim had acted very well, and was deserving to have some
notice took of it, and reward. So every one of them promised, right out
and hearty, that they wouldn't cuss him no more.
Then they come out and locked him up. I hoped they was going to say he
could have one or two of the chains took off, because they was rotten
heavy, or could have meat and greens with his bread and water; but they
didn't think of it, and I reckoned it warn't best for me to mix in, but I
judged I'd get the doctor's yarn to Aunt Sally somehow or other as soon
as I'd got through the breakers that was laying just ahead of me
--explanations, I mean, of how I forgot to mention about Sid being shot
when I was telling how him and me put in that dratted night paddling
around hunting the runaway nigger.
But I had plenty time. Aunt Sally she stuck to the sick-room all day and
all night, and every time I see Uncle Silas mooning around I dodged him.
Next morning I heard Tom was a good deal better, and they said Aunt Sally
was gone to get a nap. So I slips to the sick-room, and if I found him
awake I reckoned we could put up a yarn for the family that would wash.
But he was sleeping, and sleeping very peaceful, too; and pale, not
fire-faced the way he was when he come. So I set down and laid for him
to wake. In about half an hour Aunt Sally comes gliding in, and there I
was, up a stump again! She motioned me to be still, and set down by me,
and begun to whisper, and said we could all be joyful now, because all
the symptoms was first-rate, and he'd been sleeping like that for ever so
long, and looking better and peacefuller all the time, and ten to one
he'd wake up in his right mind.
So we set there watching, and by and by he stirs a bit, and opened his
eyes very natural, and takes a look, and says:
"Hello!--why, I'm at HOME! How's that? Where's the raft?"
"It's all right," I says.
"And JIM?"
"The same," I says, but couldn't say it pretty brash. But he never
noticed, but says:
"Good! Splendid! NOW we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?"
I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says: "About what, Sid?"
"Why, about the way the whole thing was done."
"What whole thing?"
"Why, THE whole thing. There ain't but one; how we set the runaway
nigger free--me and Tom."
"Good land! Set the run--What IS the child talking about! Dear, dear,
out of his head again!"
"NO, I ain't out of my HEAD; I know all what I'm talking about. We DID
set him free--me and Tom. We laid out to do it, and we DONE it. And we
done it elegant, too." He'd got a start, and she never checked him up,
just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it
warn't no use for ME to put in. "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work
--weeks of it--hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep.
And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your
dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan,
and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't
think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and
one thing or another, and you can't think HALF the fun it was. And we
had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters
from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole
into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a
pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket--"
"Mercy sakes!"
"--and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for
Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that
you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we
was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive
at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go
by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the
most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all
safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and WASN'T
it bully, Aunty!"
"Well, I never heard the likes of it in all my born days! So it was YOU,
you little rapscallions, that's been making all this trouble, and turned
everybody's wits clean inside out and scared us all most to death. I've
as good a notion as ever I had in my life to take it out o' you this very
minute. To think, here I've been, night after night, a--YOU just get
well once, you young scamp, and I lay I'll tan the Old Harry out o' both
o' ye!"
But Tom, he WAS so proud and joyful, he just COULDN'T hold in, and his
tongue just WENT it--she a-chipping in, and spitting fire all along, and
both of them going it at once, like a cat convention; and she says:
"WELL, you get all the enjoyment you can out of it NOW, for mind I tell
you if I catch you meddling with him again--"
"Meddling with WHO?" Tom says, dropping his smile and looking surprised.
"With WHO? Why, the runaway nigger, of course. Who'd you reckon?"
Tom looks at me very grave, and says:
"Tom, didn't you just tell me he was all right? Hasn't he got away?"
"HIM?" says Aunt Sally; "the runaway nigger? 'Deed he hasn't. They've
got him back, safe and sound, and he's in that cabin again, on bread and
water, and loaded down with chains, till he's claimed or sold!"
Tom rose square up in bed, with his eye hot, and his nostrils opening and
shutting like gills, and sings out to me:
"They hain't no RIGHT to shut him up! SHOVE!--and don't you lose a
minute. Turn him loose! he ain't no slave; he's as free as any cretur
that walks this earth!"
"What DOES the child mean?"
"I mean every word I SAY, Aunt Sally, and if somebody don't go, I'LL go.
I've knowed him all his life, and so has Tom, there. Old Miss Watson
died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him
down the river, and SAID so; and she set him free in her will."
"Then what on earth did YOU want to set him free for, seeing he was
already free?"
"Well, that IS a question, I must say; and just like women! Why, I
wanted the ADVENTURE of it; and I'd a waded neck-deep in blood to
--goodness alive, AUNT POLLY!"
If she warn't standing right there, just inside the door, looking as
sweet and contented as an angel half full of pie, I wish I may never!
Aunt Sally jumped for her, and most hugged the head off of her, and cried
over her, and I found a good enough place for me under the bed, for it
was getting pretty sultry for us, seemed to me. And I peeped out, and in
a little while Tom's Aunt Polly shook herself loose and stood there
looking across at Tom over her spectacles--kind of grinding him into the
earth, you know. And then she says:
"Yes, you BETTER turn y'r head away--I would if I was you, Tom."
"Oh, deary me!" says Aunt Sally; "IS he changed so? Why, that ain't TOM,
it's Sid; Tom's--Tom's--why, where is Tom? He was here a minute ago."
"You mean where's Huck FINN--that's what you mean! I reckon I hain't
raised such a scamp as my Tom all these years not to know him when I SEE
him. That WOULD be a pretty howdy-do. Come out from under that bed,
Huck Finn."
So I done it. But not feeling brash.
Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest-looking persons I ever see
--except one, and that was Uncle Silas, when he come in and they told it
all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn't
know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer-meeting
sermon that night that gave him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest
man in the world couldn't a understood it. So Tom's Aunt Polly, she told
all about who I was, and what; and I had to up and tell how I was in such
a tight place that when Mrs. Phelps took me for Tom Sawyer--she chipped
in and says, "Oh, go on and call me Aunt Sally, I'm used to it now, and
'tain't no need to change"--that when Aunt Sally took me for Tom Sawyer I
had to stand it--there warn't no other way, and I knowed he wouldn't
mind, because it would be nuts for him, being a mystery, and he'd make an
adventure out of it, and be perfectly satisfied. And so it turned out,
and he let on to be Sid, and made things as soft as he could for me.
And his Aunt Polly she said Tom was right about old Miss Watson setting
Jim free in her will; and so, sure enough, Tom Sawyer had gone and took
all that trouble and bother to set a free nigger free! and I couldn't
ever understand before, until that minute and that talk, how he COULD
help a body set a nigger free with his bringing-up.
Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and
SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself:
"Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go off that
way without anybody to watch him. So now I got to go and trapse all the
way down the river, eleven hundred mile, and find out what that creetur's
up to THIS time, as long as I couldn't seem to get any answer out of you
about it."
"Why, I never heard nothing from you," says Aunt Sally.
"Well, I wonder! Why, I wrote you twice to ask you what you could mean
by Sid being here."
"Well, I never got 'em, Sis."
Aunt Polly she turns around slow and severe, and says:
"You, Tom!"
"Well--WHAT?" he says, kind of pettish.
"Don t you what ME, you impudent thing--hand out them letters."
"What letters?"
"THEM letters. I be bound, if I have to take a-holt of you I'll--"
"They're in the trunk. There, now. And they're just the same as they
was when I got them out of the office. I hain't looked into them, I
hain't touched them. But I knowed they'd make trouble, and I thought if
you warn't in no hurry, I'd--"
"Well, you DO need skinning, there ain't no mistake about it. And I
wrote another one to tell you I was coming; and I s'pose he--"
"No, it come yesterday; I hain't read it yet, but IT'S all right, I've
got that one."
I wanted to offer to bet two dollars she hadn't, but I reckoned maybe it
was just as safe to not to. So I never said nothing.
CHAPTER THE LAST
THE first time I catched Tom private I asked him what was his idea, time
of the evasion?--what it was he'd planned to do if the evasion worked all
right and he managed to set a nigger free that was already free before?
And he said, what he had planned in his head from the start, if we got
Jim out all safe, was for us to run him down the river on the raft, and
have adventures plumb to the mouth of the river, and then tell him about
his being free, and take him back up home on a steamboat, in style, and
pay him for his lost time, and write word ahead and get out all the
niggers around, and have them waltz him into town with a torchlight
procession and a brass-band, and then he would be a hero, and so would
we. But I reckoned it was about as well the way it was.
We had Jim out of the chains in no time, and when Aunt Polly and Uncle
Silas and Aunt Sally found out how good he helped the doctor nurse Tom,
they made a heap of fuss over him, and fixed him up prime, and give him
all he wanted to eat, and a good time, and nothing to do. And we had him
up to the sick-room, and had a high talk; and Tom give Jim forty dollars
for being prisoner for us so patient, and doing it up so good, and Jim
was pleased most to death, and busted out, and says:
"DAH, now, Huck, what I tell you?--what I tell you up dah on Jackson
islan'? I TOLE you I got a hairy breas', en what's de sign un it; en I
TOLE you I ben rich wunst, en gwineter to be rich AGIN; en it's come
true; en heah she is! DAH, now! doan' talk to ME--signs is SIGNS, mine I
tell you; en I knowed jis' 's well 'at I 'uz gwineter be rich agin as I's
a-stannin' heah dis minute!"
And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three
slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for
howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a
couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me, but I ain't
got no money for to buy the outfit, and I reckon I couldn't get none from
home, because it's likely pap's been back before now, and got it all away
from Judge Thatcher and drunk it up.
"No, he hain't," Tom says; "it's all there yet--six thousand dollars and
more; and your pap hain't ever been back since. Hadn't when I come away,
anyhow."
Jim says, kind of solemn:
"He ain't a-comin' back no mo', Huck."
I says:
"Why, Jim?"
"Nemmine why, Huck--but he ain't comin' back no mo."
But I kept at him; so at last he says:
"Doan' you 'member de house dat was float'n down de river, en dey wuz a
man in dah, kivered up, en I went in en unkivered him and didn' let you
come in? Well, den, you kin git yo' money when you wants it, kase dat
wuz him."
Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard
for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't
nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a
knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and
ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the
Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me
and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Complete, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
by
MARK TWAIN
(Samuel L. Clemens)
PREFACE
The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are
historical, and the episodes which are used to illustrate them
are also historical. It is not pretended that these laws and
customs existed in England in the sixth century; no, it is only
pretended that inasmuch as they existed in the English and other
civilizations of far later times, it is safe to consider that it is
no libel upon the sixth century to suppose them to have been in
practice in that day also. One is quite justified in inferring
that whatever one of these laws or customs was lacking in that
remote time, its place was competently filled by a worse one.
The question as to whether there is such a thing as divine right
of kings is not settled in this book. It was found too difficult.
That the executive head of a nation should be a person of lofty
character and extraordinary ability, was manifest and indisputable;
that none but the Deity could select that head unerringly, was
also manifest and indisputable; that the Deity ought to make that
selection, then, was likewise manifest and indisputable; consequently,
that He does make it, as claimed, was an unavoidable deduction.
I mean, until the author of this book encountered the Pompadour,
and Lady Castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind;
these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it
was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which
must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle
the question in another book. It is, of course, a thing which
ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular
to do next winter anyway.
MARK TWAIN
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT
A WORD OF EXPLANATION
It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger
whom I am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things:
his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor,
and the restfulness of his company--for he did all the talking.
We fell together, as modest people will, in the tail of the herd
that was being shown through, and he at once began to say things
which interested me. As he talked along, softly, pleasantly,
flowingly, he seemed to drift away imperceptibly out of this world
and time, and into some remote era and old forgotten country;
and so he gradually wove such a spell about me that I seemed
to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold of a gray
antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! Exactly as I would
speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most familiar
neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir Launcelot
of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of the
Table Round--and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry
and musty and ancient he came to look as he went on! Presently
he turned to me and said, just as one might speak of the weather,
or any other common matter--
"You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about
transposition of epochs--and bodies?"
I said I had not heard of it. He was so little interested--just
as when people speak of the weather--that he did not notice
whether I made him any answer or not. There was half a moment
of silence, immediately interrupted by the droning voice of the
salaried cicerone:
"Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthur
and the Round Table; said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor
le Desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail in
the left breast; can't be accounted for; supposed to have been
done with a bullet since invention of firearms--perhaps maliciously
by Cromwell's soldiers."
My acquaintance smiled--not a modern smile, but one that must
have gone out of general use many, many centuries ago--and muttered
apparently to himself:
"Wit ye well, _I saw it done_." Then, after a pause, added:
"I did it myself."
By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise of this
remark, he was gone.
All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped
in a dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows,
and the wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to
time I dipped into old Sir Thomas Malory's enchanting book, and
fed at its rich feast of prodigies and adventures, breathed in
the fragrance of its obsolete names, and dreamed again. Midnight
being come at length, I read another tale, for a nightcap--this
which here follows, to wit:
HOW SIR LAUNCELOT SLEW TWO GIANTS, AND MADE A CASTLE FREE
Anon withal came there upon him two great giants,
well armed, all save the heads, with two horrible
clubs in their hands. Sir Launcelot put his shield
afore him, and put the stroke away of the one
giant, and with his sword he clave his head asunder.
When his fellow saw that, he ran away as he were
wood [*demented], for fear of the horrible strokes,
and Sir Launcelot after him with all his might,
and smote him on the shoulder, and clave him to
the middle. Then Sir Launcelot went into the hall,
and there came afore him three score ladies and
damsels, and all kneeled unto him, and thanked
God and him of their deliverance. For, sir, said
they, the most part of us have been here this
seven year their prisoners, and we have worked all
manner of silk works for our meat, and we are all
great gentle-women born, and blessed be the time,
knight, that ever thou wert born; for thou hast
done the most worship that ever did knight in the
world, that will we bear record, and we all pray
you to tell us your name, that we may tell our
friends who delivered us out of prison. Fair
damsels, he said, my name is Sir Launcelot du
Lake. And so he departed from them and betaught
them unto God. And then he mounted upon his
horse, and rode into many strange and wild
countries, and through many waters and valleys,
and evil was he lodged. And at the last by
fortune him happened against a night to come to
a fair courtilage, and therein he found an old
gentle-woman that lodged him with a good-will,
and there he had good cheer for him and his horse.
And when time was, his host brought him into a
fair garret over the gate to his bed. There
Sir Launcelot unarmed him, and set his harness
by him, and went to bed, and anon he fell on
sleep. So, soon after there came one on
horseback, and knocked at the gate in great
haste. And when Sir Launcelot heard this he rose
up, and looked out at the window, and saw by the
moonlight three knights come riding after that
one man, and all three lashed on him at once
with swords, and that one knight turned on them
knightly again and defended him. Truly, said
Sir Launcelot, yonder one knight shall I help,
for it were shame for me to see three knights
on one, and if he be slain I am partner of his
death. And therewith he took his harness and
went out at a window by a sheet down to the four
knights, and then Sir Launcelot said on high,
Turn you knights unto me, and leave your
fighting with that knight. And then they all
three left Sir Kay, and turned unto Sir Launcelot,
and there began great battle, for they alight
all three, and strake many strokes at Sir
Launcelot, and assailed him on every side. Then
Sir Kay dressed him for to have holpen Sir
Launcelot. Nay, sir, said he, I will none of
your help, therefore as ye will have my help
let me alone with them. Sir Kay for the pleasure
of the knight suffered him for to do his will,
and so stood aside. And then anon within six
strokes Sir Launcelot had stricken them to the earth.
And then they all three cried, Sir Knight, we
yield us unto you as man of might matchless. As
to that, said Sir Launcelot, I will not take
your yielding unto me, but so that ye yield
you unto Sir Kay the seneschal, on that covenant
I will save your lives and else not. Fair knight,
said they, that were we loath to do; for as for
Sir Kay we chased him hither, and had overcome
him had ye not been; therefore, to yield us unto
him it were no reason. Well, as to that, said
Sir Launcelot, advise you well, for ye may
choose whether ye will die or live, for an ye be
yielden, it shall be unto Sir Kay. Fair knight,
then they said, in saving our lives we will do
as thou commandest us. Then shall ye, said Sir
Launcelot, on Whitsunday next coming go unto the
court of King Arthur, and there shall ye yield
you unto Queen Guenever, and put you all three
in her grace and mercy, and say that Sir Kay
sent you thither to be her prisoners. On the morn
Sir Launcelot arose early, and left Sir Kay
sleeping; and Sir Launcelot took Sir Kay's armor
and his shield and armed him, and so he went to
the stable and took his horse, and took his leave
of his host, and so he departed. Then soon after
arose Sir Kay and missed Sir Launcelot; and
then he espied that he had his armor and his
horse. Now by my faith I know well that he will
grieve some of the court of King Arthur; for on
him knights will be bold, and deem that it is I,
and that will beguile them; and because of his
armor and shield I am sure I shall ride in peace.
And then soon after departed Sir Kay, and
thanked his host.
As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my
stranger came in. I gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him
welcome. I also comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him
another one; then still another--hoping always for his story.
After a fourth persuader, he drifted into it himself, in a quite
simple and natural way:
THE STRANGER'S HISTORY
I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State
of Connecticut--anyway, just over the river, in the country. So
I am a Yankee of the Yankees--and practical; yes, and nearly
barren of sentiment, I suppose--or poetry, in other words. My
father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was
both, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factory
and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned
to make everything: guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all
sorts of labor-saving machinery. Why, I could make anything
a body wanted--anything in the world, it didn't make any difference
what; and if there wasn't any quick new-fangled way to make a thing,
I could invent one--and do it as easy as rolling off a log. I became
head superintendent; had a couple of thousand men under me.
Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight--that goes
without saying. With a couple of thousand rough men under one,
one has plenty of that sort of amusement. I had, anyway. At last
I met my match, and I got my dose. It was during a misunderstanding
conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules.
He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything
crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it
overlap its neighbor. Then the world went out in darkness, and
I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all
--at least for a while.
When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the
grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all
to myself--nearly. Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse,
looking down at me--a fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was
in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his
head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield,
and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on,
too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous
red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like
a bedquilt, nearly to the ground.
"Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow.
"Will I which?"
"Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for--"
"What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along back to your circus,
or I'll report you."
Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards
and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his
nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear
pointed straight ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up
the tree when he arrived.
He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear.
There was argument on his side--and the bulk of the advantage
--so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an agreement
whereby I was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. I came
down, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse.
We marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which
I could not remember to have seen before--which puzzled me and
made me wonder--and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of
a circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was
from an asylum. But we never came to an asylum--so I was up
a stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford.
He said he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a lie,
but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw a
far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond
it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets,
the first I had ever seen out of a picture.
"Bridgeport?" said I, pointing.
"Camelot," said he.
My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caught
himself nodding, now, and smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete
smiles of his, and said:
"I find I can't go on; but come with me, I've got it all written
out, and you can read it if you like."
In his chamber, he said: "First, I kept a journal; then by and by,
after years, I took the journal and turned it into a book. How
long ago that was!"
He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place where
I should begin:
"Begin here--I've already told you what goes before." He was
steeped in drowsiness by this time. As I went out at his door
I heard him murmur sleepily: "Give you good den, fair sir."
I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first part
of it--the great bulk of it--was parchment, and yellow with age.
I scanned a leaf particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest.
Under the old dim writing of the Yankee historian appeared traces
of a penmanship which was older and dimmer still--Latin words
and sentences: fragments from old monkish legends, evidently.
I turned to the place indicated by my stranger and began to read
--as follows:
THE TALE OF THE LOST LAND
CHAPTER I
CAMELOT
"Camelot--Camelot," said I to myself. "I don't seem to remember
hearing of it before. Name of the asylum, likely."
It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream,
and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full of the smell of
flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds,
and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life,
nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints
in it, and now and then a faint trace of wheels on either side in
the grass--wheels that apparently had a tire as broad as one's hand.
Presently a fair slip of a girl, about ten years old, with a cataract
of golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, came along.
Around her head she wore a hoop of flame-red poppies. It was as
sweet an outfit as ever I saw, what there was of it. She walked
indolently along, with a mind at rest, its peace reflected in her
innocent face. The circus man paid no attention to her; didn't
even seem to see her. And she--she was no more startled at his
fantastic make-up than if she was used to his like every day of
her life. She was going by as indifferently as she might have gone
by a couple of cows; but when she happened to notice me, _then_
there was a change! Up went her hands, and she was turned to stone;
her mouth dropped open, her eyes stared wide and timorously, she
was the picture of astonished curiosity touched with fear. And
there she stood gazing, in a sort of stupefied fascination, till
we turned a corner of the wood and were lost to her view. That
she should be startled at me instead of at the other man, was too
many for me; I couldn't make head or tail of it. And that she
should seem to consider me a spectacle, and totally overlook her
own merits in that respect, was another puzzling thing, and a
display of magnanimity, too, that was surprising in one so young.
There was food for thought here. I moved along as one in a dream.
As we approached the town, signs of life began to appear. At
intervals we passed a wretched cabin, with a thatched roof, and
about it small fields and garden patches in an indifferent state of
cultivation. There were people, too; brawny men, with long, coarse,
uncombed hair that hung down over their faces and made them look
like animals. They and the women, as a rule, wore a coarse
tow-linen robe that came well below the knee, and a rude sort of
sandal, and many wore an iron collar. The small boys and girls
were always naked; but nobody seemed to know it. All of these
people stared at me, talked about me, ran into the huts and fetched
out their families to gape at me; but nobody ever noticed that
other fellow, except to make him humble salutation and get no
response for their pains.
In the town were some substantial windowless houses of stone
scattered among a wilderness of thatched cabins; the streets were
mere crooked alleys, and unpaved; troops of dogs and nude children
played in the sun and made life and noise; hogs roamed and rooted
contentedly about, and one of them lay in a reeking wallow in
the middle of the main thoroughfare and suckled her family.
Presently there was a distant blare of military music; it came
nearer, still nearer, and soon a noble cavalcade wound into view,
glorious with plumed helmets and flashing mail and flaunting banners
and rich doublets and horse-cloths and gilded spearheads; and
through the muck and swine, and naked brats, and joyous dogs, and
shabby huts, it took its gallant way, and in its wake we followed.
Followed through one winding alley and then another,--and climbing,
always climbing--till at last we gained the breezy height where
the huge castle stood. There was an exchange of bugle blasts;
then a parley from the walls, where men-at-arms, in hauberk and
morion, marched back and forth with halberd at shoulder under
flapping banners with the rude figure of a dragon displayed upon
them; and then the great gates were flung open, the drawbridge
was lowered, and the head of the cavalcade swept forward under
the frowning arches; and we, following, soon found ourselves in
a great paved court, with towers and turrets stretching up into
the blue air on all the four sides; and all about us the dismount
was going on, and much greeting and ceremony, and running to and
fro, and a gay display of moving and intermingling colors, and
an altogether pleasant stir and noise and confusion.
CHAPTER II
KING ARTHUR'S COURT
The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched
an ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an
insinuating, confidential way:
"Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the asylum, or are
you just on a visit or something like that?"
He looked me over stupidly, and said:
"Marry, fair sir, me seemeth--"
"That will do," I said; "I reckon you are a patient."
I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye
out for any chance passenger in his right mind that might come
along and give me some light. I judged I had found one, presently;
so I drew him aside and said in his ear:
"If I could see the head keeper a minute--only just a minute--"
"Prithee do not let me."
"Let you _what_?"
"_Hinder_ me, then, if the word please thee better. Then he went
on to say he was an under-cook and could not stop to gossip,
though he would like it another time; for it would comfort his
very liver to know where I got my clothes. As he started away he
pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose,
and was seeking me besides, no doubt. This was an airy slim boy
in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot,
the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles;
and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap
tilted complacently over his ear. By his look, he was good-natured;
by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough
to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent
curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.
"Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a paragraph."
It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However, it never phazed
him; he didn't appear to know he was hurt. He began to talk and
laugh, in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along,
and made himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts
of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waited
for an answer--always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn't
know he had asked a question and wasn't expecting any reply, until
at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning
of the year 513.
It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped and said,
a little faintly:
"Maybe I didn't hear you just right. Say it again--and say it
slow. What year was it?"
"513."
"513! You don't look it! Come, my boy, I am a stranger and
friendless; be honest and honorable with me. Are you in your
right mind?"
He said he was.
"Are these other people in their right minds?"
He said they were.
"And this isn't an asylum? I mean, it isn't a place where they
cure crazy people?"
He said it wasn't.
"Well, then," I said, "either I am a lunatic, or something just
as awful has happened. Now tell me, honest and true, where am I?"
"IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT."
I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home,
and then said:
"And according to your notions, what year is it now?"
"528--nineteenth of June."
I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: "I shall
never see my friends again--never, never again. They will not
be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet."
I seemed to believe the boy, I didn't know why. _Something_ in me
seemed to believe him--my consciousness, as you may say; but my
reason didn't. My reason straightway began to clamor; that was
natural. I didn't know how to go about satisfying it, because
I knew that the testimony of men wouldn't serve--my reason would
say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. But all
of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew
that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the
sixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A.D. 528, O.S., and
began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also knew that no total eclipse
of the sun was due in what to _me_ was the present year--i.e., 1879.
So, if I could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart
out of me for forty-eight hours, I should then find out for certain
whether this boy was telling me the truth or not.
Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now shoved this
whole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour
should come, in order that I might turn all my attention to the
circumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready to
make the most out of them that could be made. One thing at a time,
is my motto--and just play that thing for all it is worth, even
if it's only two pair and a jack. I made up my mind to two things:
if it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunatics
and couldn't get away, I would presently boss that asylum or know
the reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth
century, all right, I didn't want any softer thing: I would boss
the whole country inside of three months; for I judged I would
have the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter
of thirteen hundred years and upward. I'm not a man to waste
time after my mind's made up and there's work on hand; so I said
to the page:
"Now, Clarence, my boy--if that might happen to be your name
--I'll get you to post me up a little if you don't mind. What is
the name of that apparition that brought me here?"
"My master and thine? That is the good knight and great lord
Sir Kay the Seneschal, foster brother to our liege the king."
"Very good; go on, tell me everything."
He made a long story of it; but the part that had immediate interest
for me was this: He said I was Sir Kay's prisoner, and that
in the due course of custom I would be flung into a dungeon and
left there on scant commons until my friends ransomed me--unless
I chanced to rot, first. I saw that the last chance had the best
show, but I didn't waste any bother about that; time was too
precious. The page said, further, that dinner was about ended
in the great hall by this time, and that as soon as the sociability
and the heavy drinking should begin, Sir Kay would have me in and
exhibit me before King Arthur and his illustrious knights seated at
the Table Round, and would brag about his exploit in capturing
me, and would probably exaggerate the facts a little, but it
wouldn't be good form for me to correct him, and not over safe,
either; and when I was done being exhibited, then ho for the
dungeon; but he, Clarence, would find a way to come and see me every
now and then, and cheer me up, and help me get word to my friends.
Get word to my friends! I thanked him; I couldn't do less; and
about this time a lackey came to say I was wanted; so Clarence
led me in and took me off to one side and sat down by me.
Well, it was a curious kind of spectacle, and interesting. It was
an immense place, and rather naked--yes, and full of loud contrasts.
It was very, very lofty; so lofty that the banners depending from
the arched beams and girders away up there floated in a sort of
twilight; there was a stone-railed gallery at each end, high up,
with musicians in the one, and women, clothed in stunning colors,
in the other. The floor was of big stone flags laid in black and
white squares, rather battered by age and use, and needing repair.
As to ornament, there wasn't any, strictly speaking; though on
the walls hung some huge tapestries which were probably taxed
as works of art; battle-pieces, they were, with horses shaped like
those which children cut out of paper or create in gingerbread;
with men on them in scale armor whose scales are represented by
round holes--so that the man's coat looks as if it had been done
with a biscuit-punch. There was a fireplace big enough to camp in;
and its projecting sides and hood, of carved and pillared stonework,
had the look of a cathedral door. Along the walls stood men-at-arms,
in breastplate and morion, with halberds for their only weapon
--rigid as statues; and that is what they looked like.
In the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken
table which they called the Table Round. It was as large as
a circus ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressed
in such various and splendid colors that it hurt one's eyes to look
at them. They wore their plumed hats, right along, except that
whenever one addressed himself directly to the king, he lifted
his hat a trifle just as he was beginning his remark.
Mainly they were drinking--from entire ox horns; but a few were
still munching bread or gnawing beef bones. There was about
an average of two dogs to one man; and these sat in expectant
attitudes till a spent bone was flung to them, and then they went
for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued
a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of
plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of
howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that
was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest
anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet
on it, and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out
over their balusters with the same object; and all broke into
delighted ejaculations from time to time. In the end, the winning
dog stretched himself out comfortably with his bone between his
paws, and proceeded to growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease
the floor with it, just as fifty others were already doing; and the
rest of the court resumed their previous industries and entertainments.
As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious
and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners
when anybody was telling anything--I mean in a dog-fightless
interval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot;
telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and
winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else's
lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them with
anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood
and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget
to shudder.
I was not the only prisoner present. There were twenty or more.
Poor devils, many of them were maimed, hacked, carved, in a frightful
way; and their hair, their faces, their clothing, were caked with
black and stiffened drenchings of blood. They were suffering
sharp physical pain, of course; and weariness, and hunger and
thirst, no doubt; and at least none had given them the comfort
of a wash, or even the poor charity of a lotion for their wounds;
yet you never heard them utter a moan or a groan, or saw them show
any sign of restlessness, or any disposition to complain. The
thought was forced upon me: "The rascals--_they_ have served other
people so in their day; it being their own turn, now, they were
not expecting any better treatment than this; so their philosophical
bearing is not an outcome of mental training, intellectual fortitude,
reasoning; it is mere animal training; they are white Indians."
CHAPTER III
KNIGHTS OF THE TABLE ROUND
Mainly the Round Table talk was monologues--narrative accounts
of the adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their
friends and backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor.
As a general thing--as far as I could make out--these murderous
adventures were not forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to
settle old disputes or sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they were
simply duels between strangers--duels between people who had never
even been introduced to each other, and between whom existed no
cause of offense whatever. Many a time I had seen a couple of boys,
strangers, meet by chance, and say simultaneously, "I can lick you,"
and go at it on the spot; but I had always imagined until now that
that sort of thing belonged to children only, and was a sign and
mark of childhood; but here were these big boobies sticking to it
and taking pride in it clear up into full age and beyond. Yet there
was something very engaging about these great simple-hearted
creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did not seem
to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait
a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little,
because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society
like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled
its symmetry--perhaps rendered its existence impossible.
There was a fine manliness observable in almost every face; and
in some a certain loftiness and sweetness that rebuked your
belittling criticisms and stilled them. A most noble benignity
and purity reposed in the countenance of him they called Sir Galahad,
and likewise in the king's also; and there was majesty and greatness
in the giant frame and high bearing of Sir Launcelot of the Lake.
There was presently an incident which centered the general interest
upon this Sir Launcelot. At a sign from a sort of master of
ceremonies, six or eight of the prisoners rose and came forward
in a body and knelt on the floor and lifted up their hands toward
the ladies' gallery and begged the grace of a word with the queen.
The most conspicuously situated lady in that massed flower-bed
of feminine show and finery inclined her head by way of assent,
and then the spokesman of the prisoners delivered himself and his
fellows into her hands for free pardon, ransom, captivity, or death,
as she in her good pleasure might elect; and this, as he said, he
was doing by command of Sir Kay the Seneschal, whose prisoners
they were, he having vanquished them by his single might and
prowess in sturdy conflict in the field.
Surprise and astonishment flashed from face to face all over
the house; the queen's gratified smile faded out at the name of
Sir Kay, and she looked disappointed; and the page whispered in
my ear with an accent and manner expressive of extravagant derision--
"Sir _Kay_, forsooth! Oh, call me pet names, dearest, call me
a marine! In twice a thousand years shall the unholy invention
of man labor at odds to beget the fellow to this majestic lie!"
Every eye was fastened with severe inquiry upon Sir Kay. But he
was equal to the occasion. He got up and played his hand like
a major--and took every trick. He said he would state the case
exactly according to the facts; he would tell the simple
straightforward tale, without comment of his own; "and then,"
said he, "if ye find glory and honor due, ye will give it unto him
who is the mightiest man of his hands that ever bare shield or
strake with sword in the ranks of Christian battle--even him that
sitteth there!" and he pointed to Sir Launcelot. Ah, he fetched
them; it was a rattling good stroke. Then he went on and told
how Sir Launcelot, seeking adventures, some brief time gone by,
killed seven giants at one sweep of his sword, and set a hundred
and forty-two captive maidens free; and then went further, still
seeking adventures, and found him (Sir Kay) fighting a desperate
fight against nine foreign knights, and straightway took the battle
solely into his own hands, and conquered the nine; and that night
Sir Launcelot rose quietly, and dressed him in Sir Kay's armor and
took Sir Kay's horse and gat him away into distant lands, and
vanquished sixteen knights in one pitched battle and thirty-four
in another; and all these and the former nine he made to swear
that about Whitsuntide they would ride to Arthur's court and yield
them to Queen Guenever's hands as captives of Sir Kay the Seneschal,
spoil of his knightly prowess; and now here were these half dozen,
and the rest would be along as soon as they might be healed of
their desperate wounds.
Well, it was touching to see the queen blush and smile, and look
embarrassed and happy, and fling furtive glances at Sir Launcelot
that would have got him shot in Arkansas, to a dead certainty.
Everybody praised the valor and magnanimity of Sir Launcelot; and
as for me, I was perfectly amazed, that one man, all by himself,
should have been able to beat down and capture such battalions
of practiced fighters. I said as much to Clarence; but this mocking
featherhead only said:
"An Sir Kay had had time to get another skin of sour wine into him,
ye had seen the accompt doubled."
I looked at the boy in sorrow; and as I looked I saw the cloud of
a deep despondency settle upon his countenance. I followed the
direction of his eye, and saw that a very old and white-bearded
man, clothed in a flowing black gown, had risen and was standing
at the table upon unsteady legs, and feebly swaying his ancient
head and surveying the company with his watery and wandering eye.
The same suffering look that was in the page's face was observable
in all the faces around--the look of dumb creatures who know that
they must endure and make no moan.
"Marry, we shall have it again," sighed the boy; "that same old
weary tale that he hath told a thousand times in the same words,
and that he _will_ tell till he dieth, every time he hath gotten his
barrel full and feeleth his exaggeration-mill a-working. Would
God I had died or I saw this day!"
"Who is it?"
"Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for
the weariness he worketh with his one tale! But that men fear
him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the
devils that be in hell at his beck and call, they would have dug
his entrails out these many years ago to get at that tale and
squelch it. He telleth it always in the third person, making
believe he is too modest to glorify himself--maledictions light
upon him, misfortune be his dole! Good friend, prithee call me
for evensong."
The boy nestled himself upon my shoulder and pretended to go
to sleep. The old man began his tale; and presently the lad was
asleep in reality; so also were the dogs, and the court, the lackeys,
and the files of men-at-arms. The droning voice droned on; a soft
snoring arose on all sides and supported it like a deep and subdued
accompaniment of wind instruments. Some heads were bowed upon
folded arms, some lay back with open mouths that issued unconscious
music; the flies buzzed and bit, unmolested, the rats swarmed
softly out from a hundred holes, and pattered about, and made
themselves at home everywhere; and one of them sat up like a
squirrel on the king's head and held a bit of cheese in its hands
and nibbled it, and dribbled the crumbs in the king's face with
naive and impudent irreverence. It was a tranquil scene, and
restful to the weary eye and the jaded spirit.
This was the old man's tale. He said:
"Right so the king and Merlin departed, and went until an hermit
that was a good man and a great leech. So the hermit searched
all his wounds and gave him good salves; so the king was there
three days, and then were his wounds well amended that he might
ride and go, and so departed. And as they rode, Arthur said,
I have no sword. No force* [*Footnote from M.T.: No matter.],
said Merlin, hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may.
So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water
and broad, and in the midst of the lake Arthur was ware of an arm
clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in that hand.
Lo, said Merlin, yonder is that sword that I spake of. With that
they saw a damsel going upon the lake. What damsel is that?
said Arthur. That is the Lady of the lake, said Merlin; and within
that lake is a rock, and therein is as fair a place as any on earth,
and richly beseen, and this damsel will come to you anon, and then
speak ye fair to her that she will give you that sword. Anon
withal came the damsel unto Arthur and saluted him, and he her
again. Damsel, said Arthur, what sword is that, that yonder
the arm holdeth above the water? I would it were mine, for I have
no sword. Sir Arthur King, said the damsel, that sword is mine,
and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it.
By my faith, said Arthur, I will give you what gift ye will ask.
Well, said the damsel, go ye into yonder barge and row yourself
to the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you, and I will ask
my gift when I see my time. So Sir Arthur and Merlin alight, and
tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the ship,
and when they came to the sword that the hand held, Sir Arthur
took it up by the handles, and took it with him. And the arm
and the hand went under the water; and so they came unto the land
and rode forth. And then Sir Arthur saw a rich pavilion. What
signifieth yonder pavilion? It is the knight's pavilion, said
Merlin, that ye fought with last, Sir Pellinore, but he is out,
he is not there; he hath ado with a knight of yours, that hight
Egglame, and they have fought together, but at the last Egglame
fled, and else he had been dead, and he hath chased him even
to Carlion, and we shall meet with him anon in the highway. That
is well said, said Arthur, now have I a sword, now will I wage
battle with him, and be avenged on him. Sir, ye shall not so,
said Merlin, for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing, so
that ye shall have no worship to have ado with him; also, he will
not lightly be matched of one knight living; and therefore it is my
counsel, let him pass, for he shall do you good service in short
time, and his sons, after his days. Also ye shall see that day
in short space ye shall be right glad to give him your sister
to wed. When I see him, I will do as ye advise me, said Arthur.
Then Sir Arthur looked on the sword, and liked it passing well.
Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard?
Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise,
said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while
ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye
never so sore wounded; therefore, keep well the scabbard always
with you. So they rode into Carlion, and by the way they met with
Sir Pellinore; but Merlin had done such a craft that Pellinore saw
not Arthur, and he passed by without any words. I marvel, said
Arthur, that the knight would not speak. Sir, said Merlin, he saw
you not; for and he had seen you ye had not lightly departed. So
they came unto Carlion, whereof his knights were passing glad.
And when they heard of his adventures they marveled that he would
jeopard his person so alone. But all men of worship said it was
merry to be under such a chieftain that would put his person in
adventure as other poor knights did."
CHAPTER IV
SIR DINADAN THE HUMORIST
It seemed to me that this quaint lie was most simply and beautifully
told; but then I had heard it only once, and that makes a difference;
it was pleasant to the others when it was fresh, no doubt.
Sir Dinadan the Humorist was the first to awake, and he soon roused
the rest with a practical joke of a sufficiently poor quality.
He tied some metal mugs to a dog's tail and turned him loose,
and he tore around and around the place in a frenzy of fright,
with all the other dogs bellowing after him and battering and
crashing against everything that came in their way and making
altogether a chaos of confusion and a most deafening din and
turmoil; at which every man and woman of the multitude laughed
till the tears flowed, and some fell out of their chairs and
wallowed on the floor in ecstasy. It was just like so many children.
Sir Dinadan was so proud of his exploit that he could not keep
from telling over and over again, to weariness, how the immortal
idea happened to occur to him; and as is the way with humorists
of his breed, he was still laughing at it after everybody else had
got through. He was so set up that he concluded to make a speech
--of course a humorous speech. I think I never heard so many old
played-out jokes strung together in my life. He was worse than
the minstrels, worse than the clown in the circus. It seemed
peculiarly sad to sit here, thirteen hundred years before I was
born, and listen again to poor, flat, worm-eaten jokes that had
given me the dry gripes when I was a boy thirteen hundred years
afterwards. It about convinced me that there isn't any such thing
as a new joke possible. Everybody laughed at these antiquities
--but then they always do; I had noticed that, centuries later.
However, of course the scoffer didn't laugh--I mean the boy. No,
he scoffed; there wasn't anything he wouldn't scoff at. He said
the most of Sir Dinadan's jokes were rotten and the rest were
petrified. I said "petrified" was good; as I believed, myself,
that the only right way to classify the majestic ages of some of
those jokes was by geologic periods. But that neat idea hit
the boy in a blank place, for geology hadn't been invented yet.
However, I made a note of the remark, and calculated to educate
the commonwealth up to it if I pulled through. It is no use
to throw a good thing away merely because the market isn't ripe yet.
Now Sir Kay arose and began to fire up on his history-mill with me
for fuel. It was time for me to feel serious, and I did. Sir Kay
told how he had encountered me in a far land of barbarians, who
all wore the same ridiculous garb that I did--a garb that was a work
of enchantment, and intended to make the wearer secure from hurt
by human hands. However he had nullified the force of the
enchantment by prayer, and had killed my thirteen knights in
a three hours' battle, and taken me prisoner, sparing my life
in order that so strange a curiosity as I was might be exhibited
to the wonder and admiration of the king and the court. He spoke
of me all the time, in the blandest way, as "this prodigious giant,"
and "this horrible sky-towering monster," and "this tusked and
taloned man-devouring ogre", and everybody took in all this bosh
in the naivest way, and never smiled or seemed to notice that
there was any discrepancy between these watered statistics and me.
He said that in trying to escape from him I sprang into the top of
a tree two hundred cubits high at a single bound, but he dislodged
me with a stone the size of a cow, which "all-to brast" the most
of my bones, and then swore me to appear at Arthur's court for
sentence. He ended by condemning me to die at noon on the 21st;
and was so little concerned about it that he stopped to yawn before
he named the date.
I was in a dismal state by this time; indeed, I was hardly enough
in my right mind to keep the run of a dispute that sprung up as
to how I had better be killed, the possibility of the killing being
doubted by some, because of the enchantment in my clothes. And yet
it was nothing but an ordinary suit of fifteen-dollar slop-shops.
Still, I was sane enough to notice this detail, to wit: many of
the terms used in the most matter-of-fact way by this great
assemblage of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land would
have made a Comanche blush. Indelicacy is too mild a term to convey
the idea. However, I had read "Tom Jones," and "Roderick Random,"
and other books of that kind, and knew that the highest and first
ladies and gentlemen in England had remained little or no cleaner
in their talk, and in the morals and conduct which such talk
implies, clear up to a hundred years ago; in fact clear into our
own nineteenth century--in which century, broadly speaking,
the earliest samples of the real lady and real gentleman discoverable
in English history--or in European history, for that matter--may be
said to have made their appearance. Suppose Sir Walter, instead
of putting the conversations into the mouths of his characters,
had allowed the characters to speak for themselves? We should
have had talk from Rebecca and Ivanhoe and the soft lady Rowena
which would embarrass a tramp in our day. However, to the
unconsciously indelicate all things are delicate. King Arthur's
people were not aware that they were indecent and I had presence
of mind enough not to mention it.
They were so troubled about my enchanted clothes that they were
mightily relieved, at last, when old Merlin swept the difficulty
away for them with a common-sense hint. He asked them why they
were so dull--why didn't it occur to them to strip me. In half a
minute I was as naked as a pair of tongs! And dear, dear, to think
of it: I was the only embarrassed person there. Everybody discussed
me; and did it as unconcernedly as if I had been a cabbage.
Queen Guenever was as naively interested as the rest, and said
she had never seen anybody with legs just like mine before. It was
the only compliment I got--if it was a compliment.
Finally I was carried off in one direction, and my perilous clothes
in another. I was shoved into a dark and narrow cell in a dungeon,
with some scant remnants for dinner, some moldy straw for a bed,
and no end of rats for company.
CHAPTER V
AN INSPIRATION
I was so tired that even my fears were not able to keep me awake long.
When I next came to myself, I seemed to have been asleep a very
long time. My first thought was, "Well, what an astonishing dream
I've had! I reckon I've waked only just in time to keep from
being hanged or drowned or burned or something.... I'll nap again
till the whistle blows, and then I'll go down to the arms factory
and have it out with Hercules."
But just then I heard the harsh music of rusty chains and bolts,
a light flashed in my eyes, and that butterfly, Clarence, stood
before me! I gasped with surprise; my breath almost got away from me.
"What!" I said, "you here yet? Go along with the rest of
the dream! scatter!"
But he only laughed, in his light-hearted way, and fell to making
fun of my sorry plight.
"All right," I said resignedly, "let the dream go on; I'm in no hurry."
"Prithee what dream?"
"What dream? Why, the dream that I am in Arthur's court--a person
who never existed; and that I am talking to you, who are nothing
but a work of the imagination."
"Oh, la, indeed! and is it a dream that you're to be burned
to-morrow? Ho-ho--answer me that!"
The shock that went through me was distressing. I now began
to reason that my situation was in the last degree serious, dream
or no dream; for I knew by past experience of the lifelike intensity
of dreams, that to be burned to death, even in a dream, would be
very far from being a jest, and was a thing to be avoided, by any
means, fair or foul, that I could contrive. So I said beseechingly:
"Ah, Clarence, good boy, only friend I've got,--for you _are_ my
friend, aren't you?--don't fail me; help me to devise some way
of escaping from this place!"
"Now do but hear thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors are
in guard and keep of men-at-arms."
"No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence? Not many, I hope?"
"Full a score. One may not hope to escape." After a pause
--hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons--and weightier."
"Other ones? What are they?"
"Well, they say--oh, but I daren't, indeed daren't!"
"Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench? Why do
you tremble so?"
"Oh, in sooth, there is need! I do want to tell you, but--"
"Come, come, be brave, be a man--speak out, there's a good lad!"
He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear;
then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finally
crept close to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his
fearful news in a whisper, and with all the cowering apprehension
of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things
whose very mention might be freighted with death.
"Merlin, in his malice, has woven a spell about this dungeon, and
there bides not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate
enough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me,
I have told it! Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who
means thee well; for an thou betray me I am lost!"
I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had for some time;
and shouted:
"Merlin has wrought a spell! _Merlin_, forsooth! That cheap old
humbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh
in the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish,
idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev
--oh, damn Merlin!"
But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half finished,
and he was like to go out of his mind with fright.
"Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any moment these walls
may crumble upon us if you say such things. Oh call them back
before it is too late!"
Now this strange exhibition gave me a good idea and set me to
thinking. If everybody about here was so honestly and sincerely
afraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainly
a superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive
some way to take advantage of such a state of things. I went
on thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said:
"Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the eye. Do you
know why I laughed?"
"No--but for our blessed Lady's sake, do it no more."
"Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a magician myself."
"Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, for
the thing hit him rather sudden; but the aspect which he took
on was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that; it
indicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in this
asylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that.
I resumed.
"I've know Merlin seven hundred years, and he--"
"Seven hun--"
"Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteen
times, and traveled under a new name every time: Smith, Jones,
Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin--a new alias every
time he turns up. I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago;
I knew him in India five hundred years ago--he is always blethering
around in my way, everywhere I go; he makes me tired. He don't
amount to shucks, as a magician; knows some of the old common
tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments, and never will.
He is well enough for the provinces--one-night stands and that
sort of thing, you know--but dear me, _he_ oughtn't to set up for
an expert--anyway not where there's a real artist. Now look here,
Clarence, I am going to stand your friend, right along, and in
return you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I want
you to get word to the king that I am a magician myself--and the
Supreme Grand High-yu-Muck-amuck and head of the tribe, at that;
and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietly
arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these
realms if Sir Kay's project is carried out and any harm comes
to me. Will you get that to the king for me?"
The poor boy was in such a state that he could hardly answer me.
It was pitiful to see a creature so terrified, so unnerved, so
demoralized. But he promised everything; and on my side he made
me promise over and over again that I would remain his friend, and
never turn against him or cast any enchantments upon him. Then
he worked his way out, staying himself with his hand along the
wall, like a sick person.
Presently this thought occurred to me: how heedless I have been!
When the boy gets calm, he will wonder why a great magician like me
should have begged a boy like him to help me get out of this place;
he will put this and that together, and will see that I am a humbug.
I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour, and called myself
a great many hard names, meantime. But finally it occurred to me
all of a sudden that these animals didn't reason; that _they_ never
put this and that together; that all their talk showed that they
didn't know a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest, then.
But as soon as one is at rest, in this world, off he goes on
something else to worry about. It occurred to me that I had made
another blunder: I had sent the boy off to alarm his betters with
a threat--I intending to invent a calamity at my leisure; now
the people who are the readiest and eagerest and willingest to
swallow miracles are the very ones who are hungriest to see you
perform them; suppose I should be called on for a sample? Suppose
I should be asked to name my calamity? Yes, I had made a blunder;
I ought to have invented my calamity first. "What shall I do?
what can I say, to gain a little time?" I was in trouble again;
in the deepest kind of trouble...
"There's a footstep!--they're coming. If I had only just a moment
to think.... Good, I've got it. I'm all right."
You see, it was the eclipse. It came into my mind in the nick
of time, how Columbus, or Cortez, or one of those people, played
an eclipse as a saving trump once, on some savages, and I saw my
chance. I could play it myself, now, and it wouldn't be any
plagiarism, either, because I should get it in nearly a thousand
years ahead of those parties.
Clarence came in, subdued, distressed, and said:
"I hasted the message to our liege the king, and straightway he
had me to his presence. He was frighted even to the marrow,
and was minded to give order for your instant enlargement, and
that you be clothed in fine raiment and lodged as befitted one so
great; but then came Merlin and spoiled all; for he persuaded
the king that you are mad, and know not whereof you speak; and
said your threat is but foolishness and idle vaporing. They
disputed long, but in the end, Merlin, scoffing, said, 'Wherefore
hath he not _named_ his brave calamity? Verily it is because he
cannot.' This thrust did in a most sudden sort close the king's
mouth, and he could offer naught to turn the argument; and so,
reluctant, and full loth to do you the discourtesy, he yet prayeth
you to consider his perplexed case, as noting how the matter stands,
and name the calamity--if so be you have determined the nature
of it and the time of its coming. Oh, prithee delay not; to delay
at such a time were to double and treble the perils that already
compass thee about. Oh, be thou wise--name the calamity!"
I allowed silence to accumulate while I got my impressiveness
together, and then said:
"How long have I been shut up in this hole?"
"Ye were shut up when yesterday was well spent. It is 9 of
the morning now."
"No! Then I have slept well, sure enough. Nine in the morning
now! And yet it is the very complexion of midnight, to a shade.
This is the 20th, then?"
"The 20th--yes."
"And I am to be burned alive to-morrow." The boy shuddered.
"At what hour?"
"At high noon."
"Now then, I will tell you what to say." I paused, and stood over
that cowering lad a whole minute in awful silence; then, in a voice
deep, measured, charged with doom, I began, and rose by dramatically
graded stages to my colossal climax, which I delivered in as sublime
and noble a way as ever I did such a thing in my life: "Go back
and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world
in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he
shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack
of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish
and die, to the last man!"
I had to carry the boy out myself, he sunk into such a collapse.
I handed him over to the soldiers, and went back.
CHAPTER VI
THE ECLIPSE
In the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to
supplement knowledge. The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but
when you come to _realize_ your fact, it takes on color. It is
all the difference between hearing of a man being stabbed to
the heart, and seeing it done. In the stillness and the darkness,
the knowledge that I was in deadly danger took to itself deeper
and deeper meaning all the time; a something which was realization
crept inch by inch through my veins and turned me cold.
But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these,
as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there
comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness
along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for
himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with
a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me,
and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightway
my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudes
all vanished. I was as happy a man as there was in the world.
I was even impatient for to-morrow to come, I so wanted to gather
in that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder
and reverence. Besides, in a business way it would be the making
of me; I knew that.
Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background
of my mind. That was the half-conviction that when the nature
of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious
people, it would have such an effect that they would want to
compromise. So, by and by when I heard footsteps coming, that
thought was recalled to me, and I said to myself, "As sure as
anything, it's the compromise. Well, if it is good, all right,
I will accept; but if it isn't, I mean to stand my ground and play
my hand for all it is worth."
The door opened, and some men-at-arms appeared. The leader said:
"The stake is ready. Come!"
The stake! The strength went out of me, and I almost fell down.
It is hard to get one's breath at such a time, such lumps come into
one's throat, and such gaspings; but as soon as I could speak, I said:
"But this is a mistake--the execution is to-morrow."
"Order changed; been set forward a day. Haste thee!"
I was lost. There was no help for me. I was dazed, stupefied;
I had no command over myself, I only wandered purposely about,
like one out of his mind; so the soldiers took hold of me, and
pulled me along with them, out of the cell and along the maze of
underground corridors, and finally into the fierce glare of daylight
and the upper world. As we stepped into the vast enclosed court
of the castle I got a shock; for the first thing I saw was the stake,
standing in the center, and near it the piled fagots and a monk.
On all four sides of the court the seated multitudes rose rank
above rank, forming sloping terraces that were rich with color.
The king and the queen sat in their thrones, the most conspicuous
figures there, of course.
To note all this, occupied but a second. The next second Clarence
had slipped from some place of concealment and was pouring news
into my ear, his eyes beaming with triumph and gladness. He said:
"Tis through _me_ the change was wrought! And main hard have I worked
to do it, too. But when I revealed to them the calamity in store,
and saw how mighty was the terror it did engender, then saw I also
that this was the time to strike! Wherefore I diligently pretended,
unto this and that and the other one, that your power against the sun
could not reach its full until the morrow; and so if any would save
the sun and the world, you must be slain to-day, while your
enchantments are but in the weaving and lack potency. Odsbodikins,
it was but a dull lie, a most indifferent invention, but you should
have seen them seize it and swallow it, in the frenzy of their
fright, as it were salvation sent from heaven; and all the while
was I laughing in my sleeve the one moment, to see them so cheaply
deceived, and glorifying God the next, that He was content to let
the meanest of His creatures be His instrument to the saving of
thy life. Ah how happy has the matter sped! You will not need
to do the sun a _real_ hurt--ah, forget not that, on your soul forget
it not! Only make a little darkness--only the littlest little
darkness, mind, and cease with that. It will be sufficient. They
will see that I spoke falsely,--being ignorant, as they will fancy
--and with the falling of the first shadow of that darkness you
shall see them go mad with fear; and they will set you free and
make you great! Go to thy triumph, now! But remember--ah, good
friend, I implore thee remember my supplication, and do the blessed
sun no hurt. For _my_ sake, thy true friend."
I choked out some words through my grief and misery; as much as
to say I would spare the sun; for which the lad's eyes paid me back
with such deep and loving gratitude that I had not the heart
to tell him his good-hearted foolishness had ruined me and sent me
to my death.
As the soldiers assisted me across the court the stillness was
so profound that if I had been blindfold I should have supposed
I was in a solitude instead of walled in by four thousand people.
There was not a movement perceptible in those masses of humanity;
they were as rigid as stone images, and as pale; and dread sat
upon every countenance. This hush continued while I was being
chained to the stake; it still continued while the fagots were
carefully and tediously piled about my ankles, my knees, my thighs,
my body. Then there was a pause, and a deeper hush, if possible,
and a man knelt down at my feet with a blazing torch; the multitude
strained forward, gazing, and parting slightly from their seats
without knowing it; the monk raised his hands above my head, and
his eyes toward the blue sky, and began some words in Latin; in
this attitude he droned on and on, a little while, and then stopped.
I waited two or three moments; then looked up; he was standing
there petrified. With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly
up and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns,
there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling through
my veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly into
the sun's disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the
assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew
that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was
ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck,
with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble
effect. You could _see_ the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.
Two shouts rang out, one close upon the heels of the other:
"Apply the torch!"
"I forbid it!"
The one was from Merlin, the other from the king. Merlin started
from his place--to apply the torch himself, I judged. I said:
"Stay where you are. If any man moves--even the king--before
I give him leave, I will blast him with thunder, I will consume
him with lightnings!"
The multitude sank meekly into their seats, and I was just expecting
they would. Merlin hesitated a moment or two, and I was on pins
and needles during that little while. Then he sat down, and I took
a good breath; for I knew I was master of the situation now.
The king said:
"Be merciful, fair sir, and essay no further in this perilous matter,
lest disaster follow. It was reported to us that your powers could
not attain unto their full strength until the morrow; but--"
"Your Majesty thinks the report may have been a lie? It _was_ a lie."
That made an immense effect; up went appealing hands everywhere,
and the king was assailed with a storm of supplications that
I might be bought off at any price, and the calamity stayed.
The king was eager to comply. He said:
"Name any terms, reverend sir, even to the halving of my kingdom;
but banish this calamity, spare the sun!"
My fortune was made. I would have taken him up in a minute, but
I couldn't stop an eclipse; the thing was out of the question. So
I asked time to consider. The king said:
"How long--ah, how long, good sir? Be merciful; look, it groweth
darker, moment by moment. Prithee how long?"
"Not long. Half an hour--maybe an hour."
There were a thousand pathetic protests, but I couldn't shorten up
any, for I couldn't remember how long a total eclipse lasts. I was
in a puzzled condition, anyway, and wanted to think. Something
was wrong about that eclipse, and the fact was very unsettling.
If this wasn't the one I was after, how was I to tell whether this
was the sixth century, or nothing but a dream? Dear me, if I could
only prove it was the latter! Here was a glad new hope. If the boy
was right about the date, and this was surely the 20th, it _wasn't_
the sixth century. I reached for the monk's sleeve, in considerable
excitement, and asked him what day of the month it was.
Hang him, he said it was the _twenty-first_! It made me turn cold
to hear him. I begged him not to make any mistake about it; but
he was sure; he knew it was the 21st. So, that feather-headed
boy had botched things again! The time of the day was right
for the eclipse; I had seen that for myself, in the beginning,
by the dial that was near by. Yes, I was in King Arthur's court,
and I might as well make the most out of it I could.
The darkness was steadily growing, the people becoming more and
more distressed. I now said:
"I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will let this darkness
proceed, and spread night in the world; but whether I blot out
the sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. These are
the terms, to wit: You shall remain king over all your dominions,
and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship;
but you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive,
and give me for my services one per cent of such actual increase
of revenue over and above its present amount as I may succeed
in creating for the state. If I can't live on that, I sha'n't ask
anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?"
There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midst
of it the king's voice rose, saying:
"Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, high
and low, rich and poor, for he is become the king's right hand,
is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest
step of the throne! Now sweep away this creeping night, and bring
the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee."
But I said:
"That a common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing;
but it were dishonor to the _king_ if any that saw his minister naked
should not also see him delivered from his shame. If I might ask
that my clothes be brought again--"
"They are not meet," the king broke in. "Fetch raiment of another
sort; clothe him like a prince!"
My idea worked. I wanted to keep things as they were till the
eclipse was total, otherwise they would be trying again to get
me to dismiss the darkness, and of course I couldn't do it. Sending
for the clothes gained some delay, but not enough. So I had to make
another excuse. I said it would be but natural if the king should
change his mind and repent to some extent of what he had done
under excitement; therefore I would let the darkness grow a while,
and if at the end of a reasonable time the king had kept his mind
the same, the darkness should be dismissed. Neither the king nor
anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but I had
to stick to my point.
It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggled
with those awkward sixth-century clothes. It got to be pitch dark,
at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold
uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars
come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total,
and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which
was quite natural. I said:
"The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms." Then
I lifted up my hands--stood just so a moment--then I said, with
the most awful solemnity: "Let the enchantment dissolve and
pass harmless away!"
There was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness and
that graveyard hush. But when the silver rim of the sun pushed
itself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with
a vast shout and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me
with blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the last of
the wash, to be sure.
CHAPTER VII
MERLIN'S TOWER
Inasmuch as I was now the second personage in the Kingdom, as far
as political power and authority were concerned, much was made
of me. My raiment was of silks and velvets and cloth of gold,
and by consequence was very showy, also uncomfortable. But habit
would soon reconcile me to my clothes; I was aware of that. I was
given the choicest suite of apartments in the castle, after
the king's. They were aglow with loud-colored silken hangings,
but the stone floors had nothing but rushes on them for a carpet,
and they were misfit rushes at that, being not all of one breed.
As for conveniences, properly speaking, there weren't any. I mean
_little_ conveniences; it is the little conveniences that make
the real comfort of life. The big oaken chairs, graced with rude
carvings, were well enough, but that was the stopping place.
There was no soap, no matches, no looking-glass--except a metal
one, about as powerful as a pail of water. And not a chromo.
I had been used to chromos for years, and I saw now that without
my suspecting it a passion for art had got worked into the fabric
of my being, and was become a part of me. It made me homesick
to look around over this proud and gaudy but heartless barrenness
and remember that in our house in East Hartford, all unpretending
as it was, you couldn't go into a room but you would find an
insurance-chromo, or at least a three-color God-Bless-Our-Home
over the door; and in the parlor we had nine. But here, even in
my grand room of state, there wasn't anything in the nature of
a picture except a thing the size of a bedquilt, which was either
woven or knitted (it had darned places in it), and nothing in it
was the right color or the right shape; and as for proportions,
even Raphael himself couldn't have botched them more formidably,
after all his practice on those nightmares they call his "celebrated
Hampton Court cartoons." Raphael was a bird. We had several
of his chromos; one was his "Miraculous Draught of Fishes," where
he puts in a miracle of his own--puts three men into a canoe which
wouldn't have held a dog without upsetting. I always admired
to study R.'s art, it was so fresh and unconventional.
There wasn't even a bell or a speaking-tube in the castle. I had
a great many servants, and those that were on duty lolled in the
anteroom; and when I wanted one of them I had to go and call for him.
There was no gas, there were no candles; a bronze dish half full
of boarding-house butter with a blazing rag floating in it was
the thing that produced what was regarded as light. A lot of
these hung along the walls and modified the dark, just toned it
down enough to make it dismal. If you went out at night, your
servants carried torches. There were no books, pens, paper or
ink, and no glass in the openings they believed to be windows.
It is a little thing--glass is--until it is absent, then it becomes
a big thing. But perhaps the worst of all was, that there wasn't
any sugar, coffee, tea, or tobacco. I saw that I was just another
Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society
but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life
bearable I must do as he did--invent, contrive, create, reorganize
things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well,
that was in my line.
One thing troubled me along at first--the immense interest which
people took in me. Apparently the whole nation wanted a look
at me. It soon transpired that the eclipse had scared the British
world almost to death; that while it lasted the whole country,
from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and
the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with praying
and weeping poor creatures who thought the end of the world was
come. Then had followed the news that the producer of this awful
event was a stranger, a mighty magician at Arthur's court; that he
could have blown out the sun like a candle, and was just going
to do it when his mercy was purchased, and he then dissolved
his enchantments, and was now recognized and honored as the man
who had by his unaided might saved the globe from destruction and
its peoples from extinction. Now if you consider that everybody
believed that, and not only believed it, but never even dreamed
of doubting it, you will easily understand that there was not
a person in all Britain that would not have walked fifty miles
to get a sight of me. Of course I was all the talk--all other
subjects were dropped; even the king became suddenly a person of
minor interest and notoriety. Within twenty-four hours the
delegations began to arrive, and from that time onward for a fortnight
they kept coming. The village was crowded, and all the countryside.
I had to go out a dozen times a day and show myself to these
reverent and awe-stricken multitudes. It came to be a great burden,
as to time and trouble, but of course it was at the same time
compensatingly agreeable to be so celebrated and such a center
of homage. It turned Brer Merlin green with envy and spite, which
was a great satisfaction to me. But there was one thing I couldn't
understand--nobody had asked for an autograph. I spoke to Clarence
about it. By George! I had to explain to him what it was. Then
he said nobody in the country could read or write but a few dozen
priests. Land! think of that.
There was another thing that troubled me a little. Those multitudes
presently began to agitate for another miracle. That was natural.
To be able to carry back to their far homes the boast that they
had seen the man who could command the sun, riding in the heavens,
and be obeyed, would make them great in the eyes of their neighbors,
and envied by them all; but to be able to also say they had seen
him work a miracle themselves--why, people would come a distance
to see _them_. The pressure got to be pretty strong. There was
going to be an eclipse of the moon, and I knew the date and hour,
but it was too far away. Two years. I would have given a good
deal for license to hurry it up and use it now when there was
a big market for it. It seemed a great pity to have it wasted so,
and come lagging along at a time when a body wouldn't have any
use for it, as like as not. If it had been booked for only a month
away, I could have sold it short; but, as matters stood, I couldn't
seem to cipher out any way to make it do me any good, so I gave up
trying. Next, Clarence found that old Merlin was making himself
busy on the sly among those people. He was spreading a report that
I was a humbug, and that the reason I didn't accommodate the people
with a miracle was because I couldn't. I saw that I must do
something. I presently thought out a plan.
By my authority as executive I threw Merlin into prison--the same
cell I had occupied myself. Then I gave public notice by herald
and trumpet that I should be busy with affairs of state for
a fortnight, but about the end of that time I would take a moment's
leisure and blow up Merlin's stone tower by fires from heaven;
in the meantime, whoso listened to evil reports about me, let him
beware. Furthermore, I would perform but this one miracle at
this time, and no more; if it failed to satisfy and any murmured,
I would turn the murmurers into horses, and make them useful.
Quiet ensued.
I took Clarence into my confidence, to a certain degree, and we
went to work privately. I told him that this was a sort of miracle
that required a trifle of preparation, and that it would be sudden
death to ever talk about these preparations to anybody. That made
his mouth safe enough. Clandestinely we made a few bushels of
first-rate blasting powder, and I superintended my armorers while
they constructed a lightning-rod and some wires. This old stone
tower was very massive--and rather ruinous, too, for it was Roman,
and four hundred years old. Yes, and handsome, after a rude
fashion, and clothed with ivy from base to summit, as with a shirt
of scale mail. It stood on a lonely eminence, in good view from
the castle, and about half a mile away.
Working by night, we stowed the powder in the tower--dug stones
out, on the inside, and buried the powder in the walls themselves,
which were fifteen feet thick at the base. We put in a peck
at a time, in a dozen places. We could have blown up the Tower
of London with these charges. When the thirteenth night was come
we put up our lightning-rod, bedded it in one of the batches of
powder, and ran wires from it to the other batches. Everybody
had shunned that locality from the day of my proclamation, but
on the morning of the fourteenth I thought best to warn the people,
through the heralds, to keep clear away--a quarter of a mile away.
Then added, by command, that at some time during the twenty-four
hours I would consummate the miracle, but would first give a brief
notice; by flags on the castle towers if in the daytime, by
torch-baskets in the same places if at night.
Thunder-showers had been tolerably frequent of late, and I was
not much afraid of a failure; still, I shouldn't have cared for
a delay of a day or two; I should have explained that I was busy
with affairs of state yet, and the people must wait.
Of course, we had a blazing sunny day--almost the first one without
a cloud for three weeks; things always happen so. I kept secluded,
and watched the weather. Clarence dropped in from time to time
and said the public excitement was growing and growing all the
time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far
as one could see from the battlements. At last the wind sprang up
and a cloud appeared--in the right quarter, too, and just at
nightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread
and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered
the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me.
A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found
the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness
toward Merlin's Tower. Already the darkness was so heavy that
one could not see far; these people and the old turrets, being
partly in deep shadow and partly in the red glow from the great
torch-baskets overhead, made a good deal of a picture.
Merlin arrived in a gloomy mood. I said:
"You wanted to burn me alive when I had not done you any harm,
and latterly you have been trying to injure my professional
reputation. Therefore I am going to call down fire and blow up
your tower, but it is only fair to give you a chance; now if you
think you can break my enchantments and ward off the fires, step
to the bat, it's your innings."
"I can, fair sir, and I will. Doubt it not."
He drew an imaginary circle on the stones of the roof, and burnt
a pinch of powder in it, which sent up a small cloud of aromatic
smoke, whereat everybody fell back and began to cross themselves
and get uncomfortable. Then he began to mutter and make passes
in the air with his hands. He worked himself up slowly and
gradually into a sort of frenzy, and got to thrashing around with
his arms like the sails of a windmill. By this time the storm had
about reached us; the gusts of wind were flaring the torches and
making the shadows swash about, the first heavy drops of rain
were falling, the world abroad was black as pitch, the lightning
began to wink fitfully. Of course, my rod would be loading itself
now. In fact, things were imminent. So I said:
"You have had time enough. I have given you every advantage,
and not interfered. It is plain your magic is weak. It is only
fair that I begin now."
I made about three passes in the air, and then there was an awful
crash and that old tower leaped into the sky in chunks, along
with a vast volcanic fountain of fire that turned night to noonday,
and showed a thousand acres of human beings groveling on the ground
in a general collapse of consternation. Well, it rained mortar and
masonry the rest of the week. This was the report; but probably
the facts would have modified it.
It was an effective miracle. The great bothersome temporary
population vanished. There were a good many thousand tracks
in the mud the next morning, but they were all outward bound.
If I had advertised another miracle I couldn't have raised an
audience with a sheriff.
Merlin's stock was flat. The king wanted to stop his wages; he
even wanted to banish him, but I interfered. I said he would be
useful to work the weather, and attend to small matters like that,
and I would give him a lift now and then when his poor little
parlor-magic soured on him. There wasn't a rag of his tower left,
but I had the government rebuild it for him, and advised him
to take boarders; but he was too high-toned for that. And as for
being grateful, he never even said thank you. He was a rather
hard lot, take him how you might; but then you couldn't fairly
expect a man to be sweet that had been set back so.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BOSS
To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have
the on-looking world consent to it is a finer. The tower episode
solidified my power, and made it impregnable. If any were perchance
disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced
a change of heart, now. There was not any one in the kingdom
who would have considered it good judgment to meddle with my matters.
I was fast getting adjusted to my situation and circumstances.
For a time, I used to wake up, mornings, and smile at my "dream,"
and listen for the Colt's factory whistle; but that sort of thing
played itself out, gradually, and at last I was fully able to realize
that I was actually living in the sixth century, and in Arthur's
court, not a lunatic asylum. After that, I was just as much
at home in that century as I could have been in any other; and
as for preference, I wouldn't have traded it for the twentieth.
Look at the opportunities here for a man of knowledge, brains,
pluck, and enterprise to sail in and grow up with the country.
The grandest field that ever was; and all my own; not a competitor;
not a man who wasn't a baby to me in acquirements and capacities;
whereas, what would I amount to in the twentieth century? I should
be foreman of a factory, that is about all; and could drag a seine
down street any day and catch a hundred better men than myself.
What a jump I had made! I couldn't keep from thinking about it,
and contemplating it, just as one does who has struck oil. There
was nothing back of me that could approach it, unless it might be
Joseph's case; and Joseph's only approached it, it didn't equal
it, quite. For it stands to reason that as Joseph's splendid
financial ingenuities advantaged nobody but the king, the general
public must have regarded him with a good deal of disfavor, whereas
I had done my entire public a kindness in sparing the sun, and was
popular by reason of it.
I was no shadow of a king; I was the substance; the king himself
was the shadow. My power was colossal; and it was not a mere
name, as such things have generally been, it was the genuine
article. I stood here, at the very spring and source of the second
great period of the world's history; and could see the trickling
stream of that history gather and deepen and broaden, and roll
its mighty tides down the far centuries; and I could note the
upspringing of adventurers like myself in the shelter of its long
array of thrones: De Montforts, Gavestons, Mortimers, Villierses;
the war-making, campaign-directing wantons of France, and Charles
the Second's scepter-wielding drabs; but nowhere in the procession
was my full-sized fellow visible. I was a Unique; and glad to know
that that fact could not be dislodged or challenged for thirteen
centuries and a half, for sure. Yes, in power I was equal to
the king. At the same time there was another power that was
a trifle stronger than both of us put together. That was the Church.
I do not wish to disguise that fact. I couldn't, if I wanted to.
But never mind about that, now; it will show up, in its proper
place, later on. It didn't cause me any trouble in the beginning
--at least any of consequence.
Well, it was a curious country, and full of interest. And the
people! They were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race;
why, they were nothing but rabbits. It was pitiful for a person
born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble
and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church
and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor
king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor
the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him!
Why, dear me, _any_ kind of royalty, howsoever modified, _any_ kind
of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you
are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably
never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody
else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race
to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones
without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people
that have always figured as its aristocracies--a company of monarchs
and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and
obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions.
The most of King Arthur's British nation were slaves, pure and
simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on their
necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name;
they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves
so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one
object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble;
to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might
be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that
they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and
jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them,
be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures
of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves
the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were
cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took
even this sort of attention as an honor.
Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe
and examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs.
In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit,
and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reason
and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. For
instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without
title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts
and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration
than so many animals, bugs, insects; whereas I had inherited the idea
that human daws who can consent to masquerade in the peacock-shams
of inherited dignities and unearned titles, are of no good but
to be laughed at. The way I was looked upon was odd, but it was
natural. You know how the keeper and the public regard the elephant
in the menagerie: well, that is the idea. They are full of
admiration of his vast bulk and his prodigious strength; they
speak with pride of the fact that he can do a hundred marvels
which are far and away beyond their own powers; and they speak
with the same pride of the fact that in his wrath he is able
to drive a thousand men before him. But does that make him one
of _them_? No; the raggedest tramp in the pit would smile at
the idea. He couldn't comprehend it; couldn't take it in; couldn't
in any remote way conceive of it. Well, to the king, the nobles,
and all the nation, down to the very slaves and tramps, I was
just that kind of an elephant, and nothing more. I was admired,
also feared; but it was as an animal is admired and feared.
The animal is not reverenced, neither was I; I was not even
respected. I had no pedigree, no inherited title; so in the king's
and nobles' eyes I was mere dirt; the people regarded me with
wonder and awe, but there was no reverence mixed with it; through
the force of inherited ideas they were not able to conceive of
anything being entitled to that except pedigree and lordship.
There you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman Catholic
Church. In two or three little centuries it had converted a nation
of men to a nation of worms. Before the day of the Church's
supremacy in the world, men were men, and held their heads up,
and had a man's pride and spirit and independence; and what
of greatness and position a person got, he got mainly by achievement,
not by birth. But then the Church came to the front, with an axe
to grind; and she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way
to skin a cat--or a nation; she invented "divine right of kings,"
and propped it all around, brick by brick, with the Beatitudes
--wrenching them from their good purpose to make them fortify
an evil one; she preached (to the commoner) humility, obedience
to superiors, the beauty of self-sacrifice; she preached (to the
commoner) meekness under insult; preached (still to the commoner,
always to the commoner) patience, meanness of spirit, non-resistance
under oppression; and she introduced heritable ranks and
aristocracies, and taught all the Christian populations of the earth
to bow down to them and worship them. Even down to my birth-century
that poison was still in the blood of Christendom, and the best
of English commoners was still content to see his inferiors
impudently continuing to hold a number of positions, such as
lordships and the throne, to which the grotesque laws of his country
did not allow him to aspire; in fact, he was not merely contented
with this strange condition of things, he was even able to persuade
himself that he was proud of it. It seems to show that there isn't
anything you can't stand, if you are only born and bred to it.
Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been
in our American blood, too--I know that; but when I left America
it had disappeared--at least to all intents and purposes. The
remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. When
a disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly
be said to be out of the system.
But to return to my anomalous position in King Arthur's kingdom.
Here I was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master
intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement
the one and only actually great man in that whole British world;
and yet there and then, just as in the remote England of my
birth-time, the sheep-witted earl who could claim long descent
from a king's leman, acquired at second-hand from the slums of
London, was a better man than I was. Such a personage was fawned
upon in Arthur's realm and reverently looked up to by everybody,
even though his dispositions were as mean as his intelligence,
and his morals as base as his lineage. There were times when
_he_ could sit down in the king's presence, but I couldn't. I could
have got a title easily enough, and that would have raised me
a large step in everybody's eyes; even in the king's, the giver
of it. But I didn't ask for it; and I declined it when it was
offered. I couldn't have enjoyed such a thing with my notions;
and it wouldn't have been fair, anyway, because as far back as
I could go, our tribe had always been short of the bar sinister.
I couldn't have felt really and satisfactorily fine and proud
and set-up over any title except one that should come from the nation
itself, the only legitimate source; and such an one I hoped to win;
and in the course of years of honest and honorable endeavor, I did
win it and did wear it with a high and clean pride. This title
fell casually from the lips of a blacksmith, one day, in a village,
was caught up as a happy thought and tossed from mouth to mouth
with a laugh and an affirmative vote; in ten days it had swept
the kingdom, and was become as familiar as the king's name. I was
never known by any other designation afterward, whether in the
nation's talk or in grave debate upon matters of state at the
council-board of the sovereign. This title, translated into modern
speech, would be THE BOSS. Elected by the nation. That suited me.
And it was a pretty high title. There were very few THE'S, and
I was one of them. If you spoke of the duke, or the earl, or
the bishop, how could anybody tell which one you meant? But if
you spoke of The King or The Queen or The Boss, it was different.
Well, I liked the king, and as king I respected him--respected
the office; at least respected it as much as I was capable of
respecting any unearned supremacy; but as MEN I looked down upon
him and his nobles--privately. And he and they liked me, and
respected my office; but as an animal, without birth or sham title,
they looked down upon me--and were not particularly private about it,
either. I didn't charge for my opinion about them, and they didn't
charge for their opinion about me: the account was square, the
books balanced, everybody was satisfied.
CHAPTER IX
THE TOURNAMENT
They were always having grand tournaments there at Camelot; and
very stirring and picturesque and ridiculous human bull-fights
they were, too, but just a little wearisome to the practical mind.
However, I was generally on hand--for two reasons: a man must
not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his
community have at heart if he would be liked--especially as
a statesman; and both as business man and statesman I wanted
to study the tournament and see if I couldn't invent an improvement
on it. That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first
official thing I did, in my administration--and it was on the very
first day of it, too--was to start a patent office; for I knew
that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was
just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways.
Things ran along, a tournament nearly every week; and now and then
the boys used to want me to take a hand--I mean Sir Launcelot and
the rest--but I said I would by and by; no hurry yet, and too much
government machinery to oil up and set to rights and start a-going.
We had one tournament which was continued from day to day during
more than a week, and as many as five hundred knights took part
in it, from first to last. They were weeks gathering. They came
on horseback from everywhere; from the very ends of the country,
and even from beyond the sea; and many brought ladies, and all
brought squires and troops of servants. It was a most gaudy and
gorgeous crowd, as to costumery, and very characteristic of the
country and the time, in the way of high animal spirits, innocent
indecencies of language, and happy-hearted indifference to morals.
It was fight or look on, all day and every day; and sing, gamble,
dance, carouse half the night every night. They had a most noble
good time. You never saw such people. Those banks of beautiful
ladies, shining in their barbaric splendors, would see a knight
sprawl from his horse in the lists with a lanceshaft the thickness
of your ankle clean through him and the blood spouting, and instead
of fainting they would clap their hands and crowd each other for a
better view; only sometimes one would dive into her handkerchief,
and look ostentatiously broken-hearted, and then you could lay
two to one that there was a scandal there somewhere and she was
afraid the public hadn't found it out.
The noise at night would have been annoying to me ordinarily, but
I didn't mind it in the present circumstances, because it kept me
from hearing the quacks detaching legs and arms from the day's
cripples. They ruined an uncommon good old cross-cut saw for me,
and broke the saw-buck, too, but I let it pass. And as for my
axe--well, I made up my mind that the next time I lent an axe
to a surgeon I would pick my century.
I not only watched this tournament from day to day, but detailed
an intelligent priest from my Department of Public Morals and
Agriculture, and ordered him to report it; for it was my purpose
by and by, when I should have gotten the people along far enough,
to start a newspaper. The first thing you want in a new country,
is a patent office; then work up your school system; and after that,
out with your paper. A newspaper has its faults, and plenty of them,
but no matter, it's hark from the tomb for a dead nation, and don't
you forget it. You can't resurrect a dead nation without it; there
isn't any way. So I wanted to sample things, and be finding out
what sort of reporter-material I might be able to rake together out
of the sixth century when I should come to need it.
Well, the priest did very well, considering. He got in all
the details, and that is a good thing in a local item: you see,
he had kept books for the undertaker-department of his church
when he was younger, and there, you know, the money's in the details;
the more details, the more swag: bearers, mutes, candles, prayers
--everything counts; and if the bereaved don't buy prayers enough
you mark up your candles with a forked pencil, and your bill
shows up all right. And he had a good knack at getting in the
complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely
to advertise--no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also
had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door
for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and worked miracles.
Of course this novice's report lacked whoop and crash and lurid
description, and therefore wanted the true ring; but its antique
wording was quaint and sweet and simple, and full of the fragrances
and flavors of the time, and these little merits made up in a measure
for its more important lacks. Here is an extract from it:
Then Sir Brian de les Isles and Grummore Grummorsum,
knights of the castle, encountered with Sir Aglovale and
Sir Tor, and Sir Tor smote down Sir Grummore Grummorsum
to the earth. Then came Sir Carados of the dolorous
tower, and Sir Turquine, knights of the castle, and
there encountered with them Sir Percivale de Galis
and Sir Lamorak de Galis, that were two brethren, and
there encountered Sir Percivale with Sir Carados, and
either brake their spears unto their hands, and then
Sir Turquine with Sir Lamorak, and either of them smote
down other, horse and all, to the earth, and either
parties rescued other and horsed them again. And Sir
Arnold, and Sir Gauter, knights of the castle,
encountered with Sir Brandiles and Sir Kay, and these
four knights encountered mightily, and brake their
spears to their hands. Then came Sir Pertolope from
the castle, and there encountered with him Sir Lionel,
and there Sir Pertolope the green knight smote down Sir
Lionel, brother to Sir Launcelot. All this was marked
by noble heralds, who bare him best, and their names.
Then Sir Bleobaris brake his spear upon Sir Gareth,
but of that stroke Sir Bleobaris fell to the earth.
When Sir Galihodin saw that, he bad Sir Gareth keep him,
and Sir Gareth smote him to the earth. Then Sir Galihud
gat a spear to avenge his brother, and in the same wise
Sir Gareth served him, and Sir Dinadan and his brother
La Cote Male Taile, and Sir Sagramore le Disirous, and
Sir Dodinas le Savage; all these he bare down with one
spear. When King Aswisance of Ireland saw Sir Gareth
fare so he marvelled what he might be, that one time
seemed green, and another time, at his again coming,
he seemed blue. And thus at every course that he rode
to and fro he changed his color, so that there might
neither king nor knight have ready cognizance of him.
Then Sir Agwisance the King of Ireland encountered
with Sir Gareth, and there Sir Gareth smote him from
his horse, saddle and all. And then came King Carados
of Scotland, and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and
man. And in the same wise he served King Uriens of the
land of Gore. And then there came in Six Bagdemagus,
and Sir Gareth smote him down horse and man to the
earth. And Bagdemagus's son Meliganus brake a spear
upon Sir Gareth mightily and knightly. And then Sir
Galahault the noble prince cried on high, Knight with
the many colors, well hast thou justed; now make thee
ready that I may just with thee. Sir Gareth heard him,
and he gat a great spear, and so they encountered
together, and there the prince brake his spear; but Sir
Gareth smote him upon the left side of the helm, that
he reeled here and there, and he had fallen down had not
his men recovered him. Truly, said King Arthur, that
knight with the many colors is a good knight. Wherefore
the king called unto him Sir Launcelot, and prayed him
to encounter with that knight. Sir, said Launcelot, I
may as well find in my heart for to forbear him at
this time, for he hath had travail enough this day, and
when a good knight doth so well upon some day, it is
no good knight's part to let him of his worship, and,
namely, when he seeth a knight hath done so great
labour; for peradventure, said Sir Launcelot, his
quarrel is here this day, and peradventure he is best
beloved with this lady of all that be here, for I see
well he paineth himself and enforceth him to do great
deeds, and therefore, said Sir Launcelot, as for me,
this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my
power to put him from it, I would not.
There was an unpleasant little episode that day, which for reasons
of state I struck out of my priest's report. You will have noticed
that Garry was doing some great fighting in the engagement. When
I say Garry I mean Sir Gareth. Garry was my private pet name
for him; it suggests that I had a deep affection for him, and that
was the case. But it was a private pet name only, and never spoken
aloud to any one, much less to him; being a noble, he would not
have endured a familiarity like that from me. Well, to proceed:
I sat in the private box set apart for me as the king's minister.
While Sir Dinadan was waiting for his turn to enter the lists,
he came in there and sat down and began to talk; for he was always
making up to me, because I was a stranger and he liked to have
a fresh market for his jokes, the most of them having reached that
stage of wear where the teller has to do the laughing himself while
the other person looks sick. I had always responded to his efforts
as well as I could, and felt a very deep and real kindness for him,
too, for the reason that if by malice of fate he knew the one
particular anecdote which I had heard oftenest and had most hated
and most loathed all my life, he had at least spared it me. It was
one which I had heard attributed to every humorous person who
had ever stood on American soil, from Columbus down to Artemus Ward.
It was about a humorous lecturer who flooded an ignorant audience
with the killingest jokes for an hour and never got a laugh; and
then when he was leaving, some gray simpletons wrung him gratefully
by the hand and said it had been the funniest thing they had ever
heard, and "it was all they could do to keep from laughin' right
out in meetin'." That anecdote never saw the day that it was
worth the telling; and yet I had sat under the telling of it
hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of times, and
cried and cursed all the way through. Then who can hope to know
what my feelings were, to hear this armor-plated ass start in on
it again, in the murky twilight of tradition, before the dawn of
history, while even Lactantius might be referred to as "the late
Lactantius," and the Crusades wouldn't be born for five hundred
years yet? Just as he finished, the call-boy came; so, haw-hawing
like a demon, he went rattling and clanking out like a crate of
loose castings, and I knew nothing more. It was some minutes
before I came to, and then I opened my eyes just in time to see
Sir Gareth fetch him an awful welt, and I unconsciously out with
the prayer, "I hope to gracious he's killed!" But by ill-luck,
before I had got half through with the words, Sir Gareth crashed
into Sir Sagramor le Desirous and sent him thundering over his
horse's crupper, and Sir Sagramor caught my remark and thought
I meant it for _him_.
Well, whenever one of those people got a thing into his head,
there was no getting it out again. I knew that, so I saved my
breath, and offered no explanations. As soon as Sir Sagramor
got well, he notified me that there was a little account to settle
between us, and he named a day three or four years in the future;
place of settlement, the lists where the offense had been given.
I said I would be ready when he got back. You see, he was going
for the Holy Grail. The boys all took a flier at the Holy Grail
now and then. It was a several years' cruise. They always put in
the long absence snooping around, in the most conscientious way,
though none of them had any idea where the Holy Grail really was,
and I don't think any of them actually expected to find it, or
would have known what to do with it if he _had_ run across it.
You see, it was just the Northwest Passage of that day, as you may
say; that was all. Every year expeditions went out holy grailing,
and next year relief expeditions went out to hunt for _them_. There
was worlds of reputation in it, but no money. Why, they actually
wanted _me_ to put in! Well, I should smile.
CHAPTER X
BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION
The Round Table soon heard of the challenge, and of course it was
a good deal discussed, for such things interested the boys.
The king thought I ought now to set forth in quest of adventures,
so that I might gain renown and be the more worthy to meet
Sir Sagramor when the several years should have rolled away.
I excused myself for the present; I said it would take me three
or four years yet to get things well fixed up and going smoothly;
then I should be ready; all the chances were that at the end of
that time Sir Sagramor would still be out grailing, so no valuable
time would be lost by the postponement; I should then have been
in office six or seven years, and I believed my system and machinery
would be so well developed that I could take a holiday without
its working any harm.
I was pretty well satisfied with what I had already accomplished.
In various quiet nooks and corners I had the beginnings of all
sorts of industries under way--nuclei of future vast factories,
the iron and steel missionaries of my future civilization. In these
were gathered together the brightest young minds I could find,
and I kept agents out raking the country for more, all the time.
I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts--experts
in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling. These nurseries
of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their
obscure country retreats, for nobody was allowed to come into their
precincts without a special permit--for I was afraid of the Church.
I had started a teacher-factory and a lot of Sunday-schools the
first thing; as a result, I now had an admirable system of graded
schools in full blast in those places, and also a complete variety
of Protestant congregations all in a prosperous and growing
condition. Everybody could be any kind of a Christian he wanted
to; there was perfect freedom in that matter. But I confined public
religious teaching to the churches and the Sunday-schools, permitting
nothing of it in my other educational buildings. I could have
given my own sect the preference and made everybody a Presbyterian
without any trouble, but that would have been to affront a law
of human nature: spiritual wants and instincts are as various in
the human family as are physical appetites, complexions, and
features, and a man is only at his best, morally, when he is
equipped with the religious garment whose color and shape and
size most nicely accommodate themselves to the spiritual complexion,
angularities, and stature of the individual who wears it; and,
besides, I was afraid of a united Church; it makes a mighty power,
the mightiest conceivable, and then when it by and by gets into
selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to
human liberty and paralysis to human thought.
All mines were royal property, and there were a good many of them.
They had formerly been worked as savages always work mines--holes
grubbed in the earth and the mineral brought up in sacks of hide by
hand, at the rate of a ton a day; but I had begun to put the mining
on a scientific basis as early as I could.
Yes, I had made pretty handsome progress when Sir Sagramor's
challenge struck me.
Four years rolled by--and then! Well, you would never imagine
it in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in
safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect
government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect
earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the
despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease
of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and
leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an
earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is
the worst form that is possible.
My works showed what a despot could do with the resources of
a kingdom at his command. Unsuspected by this dark land, I had
the civilization of the nineteenth century booming under its very
nose! It was fenced away from the public view, but there it was,
a gigantic and unassailable fact--and to be heard from, yet, if
I lived and had luck. There it was, as sure a fact and as substantial
a fact as any serene volcano, standing innocent with its smokeless
summit in the blue sky and giving no sign of the rising hell in its
bowels. My schools and churches were children four years before;
they were grown-up now; my shops of that day were vast factories
now; where I had a dozen trained men then, I had a thousand now;
where I had one brilliant expert then, I had fifty now. I stood
with my hand on the cock, so to speak, ready to turn it on and
flood the midnight world with light at any moment. But I was not
going to do the thing in that sudden way. It was not my policy.
The people could not have stood it; and, moreover, I should have
had the Established Roman Catholic Church on my back in a minute.
No, I had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidential
agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was
to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw
a little at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare
the way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning on
my light one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue to do so.
I had scattered some branch schools secretly about the kingdom,
and they were doing very well. I meant to work this racket more
and more, as time wore on, if nothing occurred to frighten me.
One of my deepest secrets was my West Point--my military academy.
I kept that most jealously out of sight; and I did the same with my
naval academy which I had established at a remote seaport. Both
were prospering to my satisfaction.
Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right
hand. He was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn't
anything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training
him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start
in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for
experimental circulation in my civilization-nurseries. He took
to it like a duck; there was an editor concealed in him, sure.
Already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth century
and wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing,
steadily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark,
and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region
either by matter or flavor.
We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraph
and a telephone; our first venture in this line. These wires were
for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until
a riper day should come. We had a gang of men on the road, working
mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires; we were afraid
to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground
wires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires were
protected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect.
My men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and
establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights
betrayed their presence, and leaving experts in charge. Nobody
could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobody
ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by
accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without
thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and another
we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the
kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble.
So we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor
wisdom to antagonize the Church.
As for the general condition of the country, it was as it had been
when I arrived in it, to all intents and purposes. I had made
changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not
noticeable. Thus far, I had not even meddled with taxation,
outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had
systematized those, and put the service on an effective and
righteous basis. As a result, these revenues were already quadrupled,
and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed than
before, that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises
of my administration were hearty and general.
Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did not mind it,
it could not have happened at a better time. Earlier it could
have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming
right along. The king had reminded me several times, of late, that
the postponement I had asked for, four years before, had about
run out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seek
adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy
of the honor of breaking a lance with Sir Sagramor, who was still
out grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions,
and might be found any year, now. So you see I was expecting
this interruption; it did not take me by surprise.
CHAPTER XI
THE YANKEE IN SEARCH OF ADVENTURES
There never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were
of both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps
arriving; and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or
other wanting help to get her out of some far-away castle where
she was held in captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant.
Now you would think that the first thing the king would do after
listening to such a novelette from an entire stranger, would be
to ask for credentials--yes, and a pointer or two as to locality
of castle, best route to it, and so on. But nobody ever thought
of so simple and common-sense a thing at that. No, everybody
swallowed these people's lies whole, and never asked a question
of any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was not
around, one of these people came along--it was a she one, this
time--and told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was
a captive in a vast and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other
young and beautiful girls, pretty much all of them princesses;
they had been languishing in that cruel captivity for twenty-six
years; the masters of the castle were three stupendous brothers,
each with four arms and one eye--the eye in the center of the
forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of fruit not mentioned;
their usual slovenliness in statistics.
Would you believe it? The king and the whole Round Table were
in raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure.
Every knight of the Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it;
but to their vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me,
who had not asked for it at all.
By an effort, I contained my joy when Clarence brought me the news.
But he--he could not contain his. His mouth gushed delight and
gratitude in a steady discharge--delight in my good fortune,
gratitude to the king for this splendid mark of his favor for me.
He could keep neither his legs nor his body still, but pirouetted
about the place in an airy ecstasy of happiness.
On my side, I could have cursed the kindness that conferred upon
me this benefaction, but I kept my vexation under the surface
for policy's sake, and did what I could to let on to be glad.
Indeed, I _said_ I was glad. And in a way it was true; I was as
glad as a person is when he is scalped.
Well, one must make the best of things, and not waste time with
useless fretting, but get down to business and see what can be
done. In all lies there is wheat among the chaff; I must get at
the wheat in this case: so I sent for the girl and she came. She
was a comely enough creature, and soft and modest, but, if signs
went for anything, she didn't know as much as a lady's watch. I said:
"My dear, have you been questioned as to particulars?"
She said she hadn't.
"Well, I didn't expect you had, but I thought I would ask, to make
sure; it's the way I've been raised. Now you mustn't take it
unkindly if I remind you that as we don't know you, we must go
a little slow. You may be all right, of course, and we'll hope
that you are; but to take it for granted isn't business. _You_
understand that. I'm obliged to ask you a few questions; just
answer up fair and square, and don't be afraid. Where do you
live, when you are at home?"
"In the land of Moder, fair sir."
"Land of Moder. I don't remember hearing of it before.
Parents living?"
"As to that, I know not if they be yet on live, sith it is many
years that I have lain shut up in the castle."
"Your name, please?"
"I hight the Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, an it please you."
"Do you know anybody here who can identify you?"
"That were not likely, fair lord, I being come hither now for
the first time."
"Have you brought any letters--any documents--any proofs that
you are trustworthy and truthful?"
"Of a surety, no; and wherefore should I? Have I not a tongue,
and cannot I say all that myself?"
"But _your_ saying it, you know, and somebody else's saying it,
is different."
"Different? How might that be? I fear me I do not understand."
"Don't _understand_? Land of--why, you see--you see--why, great Scott,
can't you understand a little thing like that? Can't you understand
the difference between your--_why_ do you look so innocent and idiotic!"
"I? In truth I know not, but an it were the will of God."
"Yes, yes, I reckon that's about the size of it. Don't mind my
seeming excited; I'm not. Let us change the subject. Now as
to this castle, with forty-five princesses in it, and three ogres
at the head of it, tell me--where is this harem?"
"Harem?"
"The _castle_, you understand; where is the castle?"
"Oh, as to that, it is great, and strong, and well beseen, and
lieth in a far country. Yes, it is many leagues."
"_How_ many?"
"Ah, fair sir, it were woundily hard to tell, they are so many,
and do so lap the one upon the other, and being made all in the
same image and tincted with the same color, one may not know
the one league from its fellow, nor how to count them except
they be taken apart, and ye wit well it were God's work to do
that, being not within man's capacity; for ye will note--"
"Hold on, hold on, never mind about the distance; _whereabouts_
does the castle lie? What's the direction from here?"
"Ah, please you sir, it hath no direction from here; by reason
that the road lieth not straight, but turneth evermore; wherefore
the direction of its place abideth not, but is some time under
the one sky and anon under another, whereso if ye be minded that
it is in the east, and wend thitherward, ye shall observe that
the way of the road doth yet again turn upon itself by the space
of half a circle, and this marvel happing again and yet again and
still again, it will grieve you that you had thought by vanities
of the mind to thwart and bring to naught the will of Him that
giveth not a castle a direction from a place except it pleaseth
Him, and if it please Him not, will the rather that even all castles
and all directions thereunto vanish out of the earth, leaving the
places wherein they tarried desolate and vacant, so warning His
creatures that where He will He will, and where He will not He--"
"Oh, that's all right, that's all right, give us a rest; never mind
about the direction, _hang_ the direction--I beg pardon, I beg
a thousand pardons, I am not well to-day; pay no attention when
I soliloquize, it is an old habit, an old, bad habit, and hard
to get rid of when one's digestion is all disordered with eating
food that was raised forever and ever before he was born; good
land! a man can't keep his functions regular on spring chickens
thirteen hundred years old. But come--never mind about that;
let's--have you got such a thing as a map of that region about
you? Now a good map--"
"Is it peradventure that manner of thing which of late the unbelievers
have brought from over the great seas, which, being boiled in oil,
and an onion and salt added thereto, doth--"
"What, a map? What are you talking about? Don't you know what
a map is? There, there, never mind, don't explain, I hate
explanations; they fog a thing up so that you can't tell anything
about it. Run along, dear; good-day; show her the way, Clarence."
Oh, well, it was reasonably plain, now, why these donkeys didn't
prospect these liars for details. It may be that this girl had
a fact in her somewhere, but I don't believe you could have sluiced
it out with a hydraulic; nor got it with the earlier forms of
blasting, even; it was a case for dynamite. Why, she was a perfect
ass; and yet the king and his knights had listened to her as if
she had been a leaf out of the gospel. It kind of sizes up the
whole party. And think of the simple ways of this court: this
wandering wench hadn't any more trouble to get access to the king
in his palace than she would have had to get into the poorhouse
in my day and country. In fact, he was glad to see her, glad
to hear her tale; with that adventure of hers to offer, she was
as welcome as a corpse is to a coroner.
Just as I was ending-up these reflections, Clarence came back.
I remarked upon the barren result of my efforts with the girl;
hadn't got hold of a single point that could help me to find
the castle. The youth looked a little surprised, or puzzled,
or something, and intimated that he had been wondering to himself
what I had wanted to ask the girl all those questions for.
"Why, great guns," I said, "don't I want to find the castle? And
how else would I go about it?"
"La, sweet your worship, one may lightly answer that, I ween.
She will go with thee. They always do. She will ride with thee."
"Ride with me? Nonsense!"
"But of a truth she will. She will ride with thee. Thou shalt see."
"What? She browse around the hills and scour the woods with me
--alone--and I as good as engaged to be married? Why, it's scandalous.
Think how it would look."
My, the dear face that rose before me! The boy was eager to know
all about this tender matter. I swore him to secrecy and then
whispered her name--"Puss Flanagan." He looked disappointed,
and said he didn't remember the countess. How natural it was for
the little courtier to give her a rank. He asked me where she lived.
"In East Har--" I came to myself and stopped, a little confused;
then I said, "Never mind, now; I'll tell you some time."
And might he see her? Would I let him see her some day?
It was but a little thing to promise--thirteen hundred years
or so--and he so eager; so I said Yes. But I sighed; I couldn't
help it. And yet there was no sense in sighing, for she wasn't
born yet. But that is the way we are made: we don't reason,
where we feel; we just feel.
My expedition was all the talk that day and that night, and the
boys were very good to me, and made much of me, and seemed to have
forgotten their vexation and disappointment, and come to be as
anxious for me to hive those ogres and set those ripe old virgins
loose as if it were themselves that had the contract. Well, they
_were_ good children--but just children, that is all. And they
gave me no end of points about how to scout for giants, and how
to scoop them in; and they told me all sorts of charms against
enchantments, and gave me salves and other rubbish to put on my
wounds. But it never occurred to one of them to reflect that if
I was such a wonderful necromancer as I was pretending to be,
I ought not to need salves or instructions, or charms against
enchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any
kind--even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils hot from
perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after,
these commonplace ogres of the back settlements.
I was to have an early breakfast, and start at dawn, for that was
the usual way; but I had the demon's own time with my armor,
and this delayed me a little. It is troublesome to get into, and
there is so much detail. First you wrap a layer or two of blanket
around your body, for a sort of cushion and to keep off the cold
iron; then you put on your sleeves and shirt of chain mail--these
are made of small steel links woven together, and they form a fabric
so flexible that if you toss your shirt onto the floor, it slumps
into a pile like a peck of wet fish-net; it is very heavy and
is nearly the uncomfortablest material in the world for a night
shirt, yet plenty used it for that--tax collectors, and reformers,
and one-horse kings with a defective title, and those sorts of
people; then you put on your shoes--flat-boats roofed over with
interleaving bands of steel--and screw your clumsy spurs into
the heels. Next you buckle your greaves on your legs, and your
cuisses on your thighs; then come your backplate and your breastplate,
and you begin to feel crowded; then you hitch onto the breastplate
the half-petticoat of broad overlapping bands of steel which hangs
down in front but is scolloped out behind so you can sit down,
and isn't any real improvement on an inverted coal scuttle, either
for looks or for wear, or to wipe your hands on; next you belt
on your sword; then you put your stove-pipe joints onto your arms,
your iron gauntlets onto your hands, your iron rat-trap onto your
head, with a rag of steel web hitched onto it to hang over the back
of your neck--and there you are, snug as a candle in a candle-mould.
This is no time to dance. Well, a man that is packed away like
that is a nut that isn't worth the cracking, there is so little of
the meat, when you get down to it, by comparison with the shell.
The boys helped me, or I never could have got in. Just as we
finished, Sir Bedivere happened in, and I saw that as like as not
I hadn't chosen the most convenient outfit for a long trip. How
stately he looked; and tall and broad and grand. He had on his
head a conical steel casque that only came down to his ears, and
for visor had only a narrow steel bar that extended down to his
upper lip and protected his nose; and all the rest of him, from
neck to heel, was flexible chain mail, trousers and all. But
pretty much all of him was hidden under his outside garment, which
of course was of chain mail, as I said, and hung straight from his
shoulders to his ankles; and from his middle to the bottom, both
before and behind, was divided, so that he could ride and let the
skirts hang down on each side. He was going grailing, and it was
just the outfit for it, too. I would have given a good deal for
that ulster, but it was too late now to be fooling around. The sun
was just up, the king and the court were all on hand to see me off
and wish me luck; so it wouldn't be etiquette for me to tarry.
You don't get on your horse yourself; no, if you tried it you
would get disappointed. They carry you out, just as they carry
a sun-struck man to the drug store, and put you on, and help get
you to rights, and fix your feet in the stirrups; and all the while
you do feel so strange and stuffy and like somebody else--like
somebody that has been married on a sudden, or struck by lightning,
or something like that, and hasn't quite fetched around yet, and
is sort of numb, and can't just get his bearings. Then they
stood up the mast they called a spear, in its socket by my left
foot, and I gripped it with my hand; lastly they hung my shield
around my neck, and I was all complete and ready to up anchor
and get to sea. Everybody was as good to me as they could be,
and a maid of honor gave me the stirrup-cup her own self. There was
nothing more to do now, but for that damsel to get up behind me on
a pillion, which she did, and put an arm or so around me to hold on.
And so we started, and everybody gave us a goodbye and waved their
handkerchiefs or helmets. And everybody we met, going down the hill
and through the village was respectful to us, except some shabby
little boys on the outskirts. They said:
"Oh, what a guy!" And hove clods at us.
In my experience boys are the same in all ages. They don't respect
anything, they don't care for anything or anybody. They say
"Go up, baldhead" to the prophet going his unoffending way in
the gray of antiquity; they sass me in the holy gloom of the
Middle Ages; and I had seen them act the same way in Buchanan's
administration; I remember, because I was there and helped. The
prophet had his bears and settled with his boys; and I wanted
to get down and settle with mine, but it wouldn't answer, because
I couldn't have got up again. I hate a country without a derrick.
CHAPTER XII
SLOW TORTURE
Straight off, we were in the country. It was most lovely and
pleasant in those sylvan solitudes in the early cool morning
in the first freshness of autumn. From hilltops we saw fair
green valleys lying spread out below, with streams winding through
them, and island groves of trees here and there, and huge lonely
oaks scattered about and casting black blots of shade; and beyond
the valleys we saw the ranges of hills, blue with haze, stretching
away in billowy perspective to the horizon, with at wide intervals
a dim fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we knew was
a castle. We crossed broad natural lawns sparkling with dew,
and we moved like spirits, the cushioned turf giving out no sound
of footfall; we dreamed along through glades in a mist of green
light that got its tint from the sun-drenched roof of leaves
overhead, and by our feet the clearest and coldest of runlets
went frisking and gossiping over its reefs and making a sort of
whispering music, comfortable to hear; and at times we left the
world behind and entered into the solemn great deeps and rich
gloom of the forest, where furtive wild things whisked and scurried
by and were gone before you could even get your eye on the place
where the noise was; and where only the earliest birds were turning
out and getting to business with a song here and a quarrel yonder
and a mysterious far-off hammering and drumming for worms on
a tree trunk away somewhere in the impenetrable remotenesses of
the woods. And by and by out we would swing again into the glare.
About the third or fourth or fifth time that we swung out into
the glare--it was along there somewhere, a couple of hours or so
after sun-up--it wasn't as pleasant as it had been. It was
beginning to get hot. This was quite noticeable. We had a very
long pull, after that, without any shade. Now it is curious how
progressively little frets grow and multiply after they once get
a start. Things which I didn't mind at all, at first, I began
to mind now--and more and more, too, all the time. The first
ten or fifteen times I wanted my handkerchief I didn't seem to care;
I got along, and said never mind, it isn't any matter, and dropped
it out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it all
the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn't
get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and said
hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets
in it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other
things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can't take off
by yourself. That hadn't occurred to me when I put it there;
and in fact I didn't know it. I supposed it would be particularly
convenient there. And so now, the thought of its being there,
so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all the
worse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can't get
is the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that.
Well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off,
and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed,
imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it
was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling
down into my eyes, and I couldn't get at it. It seems like a little
thing, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it was
the most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so.
I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time,
let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of course
these iron dudes of the Round Table would think it was scandalous,
and maybe raise Sheol about it, but as for me, give me comfort
first, and style afterwards. So we jogged along, and now and then
we struck a stretch of dust, and it would tumble up in clouds and
get into my nose and make me sneeze and cry; and of course I said
things I oughtn't to have said, I don't deny that. I am not
better than others.
We couldn't seem to meet anybody in this lonesome Britain, not
even an ogre; and, in the mood I was in then, it was well for
the ogre; that is, an ogre with a handkerchief. Most knights
would have thought of nothing but getting his armor; but so I got
his bandanna, he could keep his hardware, for all of me.
Meantime, it was getting hotter and hotter in there. You see,
the sun was beating down and warming up the iron more and more
all the time. Well, when you are hot, that way, every little thing
irritates you. When I trotted, I rattled like a crate of dishes,
and that annoyed me; and moreover I couldn't seem to stand that
shield slatting and banging, now about my breast, now around my
back; and if I dropped into a walk my joints creaked and screeched
in that wearisome way that a wheelbarrow does, and as we didn't
create any breeze at that gait, I was like to get fried in that
stove; and besides, the quieter you went the heavier the iron
settled down on you and the more and more tons you seemed to weigh
every minute. And you had to be always changing hands, and passing
your spear over to the other foot, it got so irksome for one hand
to hold it long at a time.
Well, you know, when you perspire that way, in rivers, there comes
a time when you--when you--well, when you itch. You are inside,
your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between.
It is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. First it is one
place; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading and
spreading, and at last the territory is all occupied, and nobody
can imagine what you feel like, nor how unpleasant it is. And
when it had got to the worst, and it seemed to me that I could
not stand anything more, a fly got in through the bars and settled
on my nose, and the bars were stuck and wouldn't work, and I
couldn't get the visor up; and I could only shake my head, which
was baking hot by this time, and the fly--well, you know how a fly
acts when he has got a certainty--he only minded the shaking enough
to change from nose to lip, and lip to ear, and buzz and buzz
all around in there, and keep on lighting and biting, in a way
that a person, already so distressed as I was, simply could not
stand. So I gave in, and got Alisande to unship the helmet and
relieve me of it. Then she emptied the conveniences out of it
and fetched it full of water, and I drank and then stood up, and
she poured the rest down inside the armor. One cannot think how
refreshing it was. She continued to fetch and pour until I was
well soaked and thoroughly comfortable.
It was good to have a rest--and peace. But nothing is quite
perfect in this life, at any time. I had made a pipe a while back,
and also some pretty fair tobacco; not the real thing, but what
some of the Indians use: the inside bark of the willow, dried.
These comforts had been in the helmet, and now I had them again,
but no matches.
Gradually, as the time wore along, one annoying fact was borne in
upon my understanding--that we were weather-bound. An armed novice
cannot mount his horse without help and plenty of it. Sandy was
not enough; not enough for me, anyway. We had to wait until
somebody should come along. Waiting, in silence, would have been
agreeable enough, for I was full of matter for reflection, and
wanted to give it a chance to work. I wanted to try and think out
how it was that rational or even half-rational men could ever
have learned to wear armor, considering its inconveniences; and
how they had managed to keep up such a fashion for generations
when it was plain that what I had suffered to-day they had had
to suffer all the days of their lives. I wanted to think that out;
and moreover I wanted to think out some way to reform this evil
and persuade the people to let the foolish fashion die out; but
thinking was out of the question in the circumstances. You couldn't
think, where Sandy was.
She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had
a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head
sore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a cork
she would have been a comfort. But you can't cork that kind;
they would die. Her clack was going all day, and you would think
something would surely happen to her works, by and by; but no,
they never got out of order; and she never had to slack up for
words. She could grind, and pump, and churn, and buzz by the week,
and never stop to oil up or blow out. And yet the result was just
nothing but wind. She never had any ideas, any more than a fog
has. She was a perfect blatherskite; I mean for jaw, jaw, jaw,
talk, talk, talk, jabber, jabber, jabber; but just as good as she
could be. I hadn't minded her mill that morning, on account of
having that hornets' nest of other troubles; but more than once
in the afternoon I had to say:
"Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air,
the kingdom will have to go to importing it by to-morrow, and it's
a low enough treasury without that."
CHAPTER XIII
FREEMEN
Yes, it is strange how little a while at a time a person can be
contented. Only a little while back, when I was riding and
suffering, what a heaven this peace, this rest, this sweet serenity
in this secluded shady nook by this purling stream would have
seemed, where I could keep perfectly comfortable all the time
by pouring a dipper of water into my armor now and then; yet
already I was getting dissatisfied; partly because I could not
light my pipe--for, although I had long ago started a match factory,
I had forgotten to bring matches with me--and partly because we
had nothing to eat. Here was another illustration of the childlike
improvidence of this age and people. A man in armor always trusted
to chance for his food on a journey, and would have been scandalized
at the idea of hanging a basket of sandwiches on his spear. There
was probably not a knight of all the Round Table combination who
would not rather have died than been caught carrying such a thing
as that on his flagstaff. And yet there could not be anything more
sensible. It had been my intention to smuggle a couple of sandwiches
into my helmet, but I was interrupted in the act, and had to make
an excuse and lay them aside, and a dog got them.
Night approached, and with it a storm. The darkness came on fast.
We must camp, of course. I found a good shelter for the demoiselle
under a rock, and went off and found another for myself. But
I was obliged to remain in my armor, because I could not get it off
by myself and yet could not allow Alisande to help, because it
would have seemed so like undressing before folk. It would not
have amounted to that in reality, because I had clothes on
underneath; but the prejudices of one's breeding are not gotten
rid of just at a jump, and I knew that when it came to stripping
off that bob-tailed iron petticoat I should be embarrassed.
With the storm came a change of weather; and the stronger the wind
blew, and the wilder the rain lashed around, the colder and colder
it got. Pretty soon, various kinds of bugs and ants and worms
and things began to flock in out of the wet and crawl down inside
my armor to get warm; and while some of them behaved well enough,
and snuggled up amongst my clothes and got quiet, the majority
were of a restless, uncomfortable sort, and never stayed still,
but went on prowling and hunting for they did not know what;
especially the ants, which went tickling along in wearisome
procession from one end of me to the other by the hour, and are
a kind of creatures which I never wish to sleep with again.
It would be my advice to persons situated in this way, to not roll
or thrash around, because this excites the interest of all the
different sorts of animals and makes every last one of them want
to turn out and see what is going on, and this makes things worse
than they were before, and of course makes you objurgate harder,
too, if you can. Still, if one did not roll and thrash around
he would die; so perhaps it is as well to do one way as the other;
there is no real choice. Even after I was frozen solid I could
still distinguish that tickling, just as a corpse does when he is
taking electric treatment. I said I would never wear armor
after this trip.
All those trying hours whilst I was frozen and yet was in a living
fire, as you may say, on account of that swarm of crawlers, that
same unanswerable question kept circling and circling through my
tired head: How do people stand this miserable armor? How have
they managed to stand it all these generations? How can they sleep
at night for dreading the tortures of next day?
When the morning came at last, I was in a bad enough plight: seedy,
drowsy, fagged, from want of sleep; weary from thrashing around,
famished from long fasting; pining for a bath, and to get rid of
the animals; and crippled with rheumatism. And how had it fared
with the nobly born, the titled aristocrat, the Demoiselle Alisande
la Carteloise? Why, she was as fresh as a squirrel; she had slept
like the dead; and as for a bath, probably neither she nor any
other noble in the land had ever had one, and so she was not
missing it. Measured by modern standards, they were merely modified
savages, those people. This noble lady showed no impatience to get
to breakfast--and that smacks of the savage, too. On their journeys
those Britons were used to long fasts, and knew how to bear them;
and also how to freight up against probable fasts before starting,
after the style of the Indian and the anaconda. As like as not,
Sandy was loaded for a three-day stretch.
We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along
behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor
creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded
as a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when I
proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so
overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that
at first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest.
My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said
in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the
other cattle--a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely
because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended
them, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels.
By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths
of the free population of the country were of just their class and
degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is
to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about
all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy,
and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and
leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king,
nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with
the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value
in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious
contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail
of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and
banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be
the Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long
that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only
that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests
had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state
of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how
unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially
such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter
there and become respectfully quiet.
The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in
a formerly American ear. They were freemen, but they could not
leave the estates of their lord or their bishop without his
permission; they could not prepare their own bread, but must have
their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his bakery,
and pay roundly for the same; they could not sell a piece of their
own property without paying him a handsome percentage of the
proceeds, nor buy a piece of somebody else's without remembering
him in cash for the privilege; they had to harvest his grain for him
gratis, and be ready to come at a moment's notice, leaving their
own crop to destruction by the threatened storm; they had to let
him plant fruit trees in their fields, and then keep their indignation
to themselves when his heedless fruit-gatherers trampled the grain
around the trees; they had to smother their anger when his hunting
parties galloped through their fields laying waste the result of
their patient toil; they were not allowed to keep doves themselves,
and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops
they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would
the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came
the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first
the Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner
took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad
upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty
to bestow the remnant in his barn, in case it was worth the trouble;
there were taxes, and taxes, and taxes, and more taxes, and taxes
again, and yet other taxes--upon this free and independent pauper,
but none upon his lord the baron or the bishop, none upon the
wasteful nobility or the all-devouring Church; if the baron would
sleep unvexed, the freeman must sit up all night after his day's
work and whip the ponds to keep the frogs quiet; if the freeman's
daughter--but no, that last infamy of monarchical government is
unprintable; and finally, if the freeman, grown desperate with his
tortures, found his life unendurable under such conditions, and
sacrificed it and fled to death for mercy and refuge, the gentle
Church condemned him to eternal fire, the gentle law buried him
at midnight at the cross-roads with a stake through his back,
and his master the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property
and turned his widow and his orphans out of doors.
And here were these freemen assembled in the early morning to work
on their lord the bishop's road three days each--gratis; every
head of a family, and every son of a family, three days each,
gratis, and a day or so added for their servants. Why, it was
like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable
and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such
villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood--one: a settlement
of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for
each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of
that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and
shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell.
There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it
and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other
in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had
lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand
persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are
all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror,
so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe,
compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty,
and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with
death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the
coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so
diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could
hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror
--that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has
been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
These poor ostensible freemen who were sharing their breakfast
and their talk with me, were as full of humble reverence for their
king and Church and nobility as their worst enemy could desire.
There was something pitifully ludicrous about it. I asked them
if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free
vote in every man's hand, would elect that a single family and its
descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies,
to the exclusion of all other families--including the voter's; and
would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised
to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible
glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation's
families--_including his own_.
They all looked unhit, and said they didn't know; that they had
never thought about it before, and it hadn't ever occurred to them
that a nation could be so situated that every man _could_ have
a say in the government. I said I had seen one--and that it would
last until it had an Established Church. Again they were all
unhit--at first. But presently one man looked up and asked me
to state that proposition again; and state it slowly, so it could
soak into his understanding. I did it; and after a little he had
the idea, and he brought his fist down and said _he_ didn't believe
a nation where every man had a vote would voluntarily get down
in the mud and dirt in any such way; and that to steal from a nation
its will and preference must be a crime and the first of all crimes.
I said to myself:
"This one's a man. If I were backed by enough of his sort, I would
make a strike for the welfare of this country, and try to prove
myself its loyalest citizen by making a wholesome change in its
system of government."
You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to
its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real
thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing
to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are
extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out,
become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body
from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout
for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--that is a loyalty
of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented
by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose
Constitution declares "that all political power is inherent in
the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority
and instituted for their benefit; and that they have _at all times_
an undeniable and indefeasible right to _alter their form of
government_ in such a manner as they may think expedient."
Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the
commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his
peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is
a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this
decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and
it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see
the matter as he does.
And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the
country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each
thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four
to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose
to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man,
it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black
treason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporation
where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all
the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves
a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed
to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was
a new deal. The thing that would have best suited the circus side
of my nature would have been to resign the Boss-ship and get up
an insurrection and turn it into a revolution; but I knew that the
Jack Cade or the Wat Tyler who tries such a thing without first
educating his materials up to revolution grade is almost absolutely
certain to get left. I had never been accustomed to getting left,
even if I do say it myself. Wherefore, the "deal" which had been
for some time working into shape in my mind was of a quite different
pattern from the Cade-Tyler sort.
So I did not talk blood and insurrection to that man there who sat
munching black bread with that abused and mistaught herd of human
sheep, but took him aside and talked matter of another sort to him.
After I had finished, I got him to lend me a little ink from his
veins; and with this and a sliver I wrote on a piece of bark--
Put him in the Man-factory--
and gave it to him, and said:
"Take it to the palace at Camelot and give it into the hands of
Amyas le Poulet, whom I call Clarence, and he will understand."
"He is a priest, then," said the man, and some of the enthusiasm
went out of his face.
"How--a priest? Didn't I tell you that no chattel of the Church,
no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn't
I tell you that _you_ couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever
it might be, was your own free property?"
"Marry, it is so, and for that I was glad; wherefore it liked me not,
and bred in me a cold doubt, to hear of this priest being there."
"But he isn't a priest, I tell you."
The man looked far from satisfied. He said:
"He is not a priest, and yet can read?"
"He is not a priest and yet can read--yes, and write, too, for that
matter. I taught him myself." The man's face cleared. "And it is
the first thing that you yourself will be taught in that Factory--"
"I? I would give blood out of my heart to know that art. Why,
I will be your slave, your--"
"No you won't, you won't be anybody's slave. Take your family
and go along. Your lord the bishop will confiscate your small
property, but no matter. Clarence will fix you all right."
CHAPTER XIV
"DEFEND THEE, LORD"
I paid three pennies for my breakfast, and a most extravagant
price it was, too, seeing that one could have breakfasted a dozen
persons for that money; but I was feeling good by this time, and
I had always been a kind of spendthrift anyway; and then these
people had wanted to give me the food for nothing, scant as
their provision was, and so it was a grateful pleasure to emphasize
my appreciation and sincere thankfulness with a good big financial
lift where the money would do so much more good than it would
in my helmet, where, these pennies being made of iron and not
stinted in weight, my half-dollar's worth was a good deal of a
burden to me. I spent money rather too freely in those days,
it is true; but one reason for it was that I hadn't got the
proportions of things entirely adjusted, even yet, after so long
a sojourn in Britain--hadn't got along to where I was able to
absolutely realize that a penny in Arthur's land and a couple of
dollars in Connecticut were about one and the same thing: just
twins, as you may say, in purchasing power. If my start from
Camelot could have been delayed a very few days I could have paid
these people in beautiful new coins from our own mint, and that
would have pleased me; and them, too, not less. I had adopted
the American values exclusively. In a week or two now, cents,
nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars, and also a trifle of
gold, would be trickling in thin but steady streams all through
the commercial veins of the kingdom, and I looked to see this
new blood freshen up its life.
The farmers were bound to throw in something, to sort of offset
my liberality, whether I would or no; so I let them give me a flint
and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy
and me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke
shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke
for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground
with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching
dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other
professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people
to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that
this was only a bit of enchantment which would work harm to none
but my enemies. And I promised, with my hand on my heart, that
if all who felt no enmity toward me would come forward and pass
before me they should see that only those who remained behind would
be struck dead. The procession moved with a good deal of promptness.
There were no casualties to report, for nobody had curiosity enough
to remain behind to see what would happen.
I lost some time, now, for these big children, their fears gone,
became so ravished with wonder over my awe-compelling fireworks
that I had to stay there and smoke a couple of pipes out before
they would let me go. Still the delay was not wholly unproductive,
for it took all that time to get Sandy thoroughly wonted to the new
thing, she being so close to it, you know. It plugged up her
conversation mill, too, for a considerable while, and that was
a gain. But above all other benefits accruing, I had learned
something. I was ready for any giant or any ogre that might come
along, now.
We tarried with a holy hermit, that night, and my opportunity
came about the middle of the next afternoon. We were crossing
a vast meadow by way of short-cut, and I was musing absently,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, when Sandy suddenly interrupted
a remark which she had begun that morning, with the cry:
"Defend thee, lord!--peril of life is toward!"
And she slipped down from the horse and ran a little way and stood.
I looked up and saw, far off in the shade of a tree, half a dozen
armed knights and their squires; and straightway there was bustle
among them and tightening of saddle-girths for the mount. My pipe
was ready and would have been lit, if I had not been lost in
thinking about how to banish oppression from this land and restore
to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging
anybody. I lit up at once, and by the time I had got a good head
of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none of
those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about
--one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair
play. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush,
they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down,
plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was
a handsome sight, a beautiful sight--for a man up a tree. I laid
my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron
wave was just ready to break over me, then spouted a column of
white smoke through the bars of my helmet. You should have seen
the wave go to pieces and scatter! This was a finer sight than
the other one.
But these people stopped, two or three hundred yards away, and
this troubled me. My satisfaction collapsed, and fear came;
I judged I was a lost man. But Sandy was radiant; and was going
to be eloquent--but I stopped her, and told her my magic had
miscarried, somehow or other, and she must mount, with all despatch,
and we must ride for life. No, she wouldn't. She said that my
enchantment had disabled those knights; they were not riding on,
because they couldn't; wait, they would drop out of their saddles
presently, and we would get their horses and harness. I could not
deceive such trusting simplicity, so I said it was a mistake; that
when my fireworks killed at all, they killed instantly; no, the men
would not die, there was something wrong about my apparatus,
I couldn't tell what; but we must hurry and get away, for those
people would attack us again, in a minute. Sandy laughed, and said:
"Lack-a-day, sir, they be not of that breed! Sir Launcelot will
give battle to dragons, and will abide by them, and will assail
them again, and yet again, and still again, until he do conquer
and destroy them; and so likewise will Sir Pellinore and Sir Aglovale
and Sir Carados, and mayhap others, but there be none else that
will venture it, let the idle say what the idle will. And, la,
as to yonder base rufflers, think ye they have not their fill,
but yet desire more?"
"Well, then, what are they waiting for? Why don't they leave?
Nobody's hindering. Good land, I'm willing to let bygones be
bygones, I'm sure."
"Leave, is it? Oh, give thyself easement as to that. They dream
not of it, no, not they. They wait to yield them."
"Come--really, is that 'sooth'--as you people say? If they want to,
why don't they?"
"It would like them much; but an ye wot how dragons are esteemed,
ye would not hold them blamable. They fear to come."
"Well, then, suppose I go to them instead, and--"
"Ah, wit ye well they would not abide your coming. I will go."
And she did. She was a handy person to have along on a raid.
I would have considered this a doubtful errand, myself. I presently
saw the knights riding away, and Sandy coming back. That was
a relief. I judged she had somehow failed to get the first innings
--I mean in the conversation; otherwise the interview wouldn't have
been so short. But it turned out that she had managed the business
well; in fact, admirably. She said that when she told those people
I was The Boss, it hit them where they lived: "smote them sore
with fear and dread" was her word; and then they were ready to
put up with anything she might require. So she swore them to appear
at Arthur's court within two days and yield them, with horse and
harness, and be my knights henceforth, and subject to my command.
How much better she managed that thing than I should have done
it myself! She was a daisy.
CHAPTER XV
SANDY'S TALE
"And so I'm proprietor of some knights," said I, as we rode off.
"Who would ever have supposed that I should live to list up assets
of that sort. I shan't know what to do with them; unless I raffle
them off. How many of them are there, Sandy?"
"Seven, please you, sir, and their squires."
"It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out?"
"Where do they hang out?"
"Yes, where do they live?"
"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons." Then she
said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her
tongue: "Hang they out--hang they out--where hang--where do they
hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth the
phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded
withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby
I may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so!
already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as--"
"Don't forget the cowboys, Sandy."
"Cowboys?"
"Yes; the knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them.
A while back, you remember. Figuratively speaking, game's called."
"Game--"
"Yes, yes, yes! Go to the bat. I mean, get to work on your
statistics, and don't burn so much kindling getting your fire
started. Tell me about the knights."
"I will well, and lightly will begin. So they two departed and
rode into a great forest. And--"
"Great Scott!"
You see, I recognized my mistake at once. I had set her works
a-going; it was my own fault; she would be thirty days getting down
to those facts. And she generally began without a preface and
finished without a result. If you interrupted her she would either
go right along without noticing, or answer with a couple of words,
and go back and say the sentence over again. So, interruptions
only did harm; and yet I had to interrupt, and interrupt pretty
frequently, too, in order to save my life; a person would die if
he let her monotony drip on him right along all day.
"Great Scott!" I said in my distress. She went right back and
began over again:
"So they two departed and rode into a great forest. And--"
"_Which_ two?"
"Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine. And so they came to an abbey of monks,
and there were well lodged. So on the morn they heard their masses
in the abbey, and so they rode forth till they came to a great
forest; then was Sir Gawaine ware in a valley by a turret, of
twelve fair damsels, and two knights armed on great horses, and
the damsels went to and fro by a tree. And then was Sir Gawaine
ware how there hung a white shield on that tree, and ever as the
damsels came by it they spit upon it, and some threw mire upon
the shield--"
"Now, if I hadn't seen the like myself in this country, Sandy,
I wouldn't believe it. But I've seen it, and I can just see those
creatures now, parading before that shield and acting like that.
The women here do certainly act like all possessed. Yes, and
I mean your best, too, society's very choicest brands. The humblest
hello-girl along ten thousand miles of wire could teach gentleness,
patience, modesty, manners, to the highest duchess in Arthur's land."
"Hello-girl?"
"Yes, but don't you ask me to explain; it's a new kind of a girl;
they don't have them here; one often speaks sharply to them when
they are not the least in fault, and he can't get over feeling
sorry for it and ashamed of himself in thirteen hundred years,
it's such shabby mean conduct and so unprovoked; the fact is,
no gentleman ever does it--though I--well, I myself, if I've got
to confess--"
"Peradventure she--"
"Never mind her; never mind her; I tell you I couldn't ever explain
her so you would understand."
"Even so be it, sith ye are so minded. Then Sir Gawaine and
Sir Uwaine went and saluted them, and asked them why they did that
despite to the shield. Sirs, said the damsels, we shall tell you.
There is a knight in this country that owneth this white shield,
and he is a passing good man of his hands, but he hateth all
ladies and gentlewomen, and therefore we do all this despite to
the shield. I will say you, said Sir Gawaine, it beseemeth evil
a good knight to despise all ladies and gentlewomen, and peradventure
though he hate you he hath some cause, and peradventure he loveth
in some other places ladies and gentlewomen, and to be loved again,
and he such a man of prowess as ye speak of--"
"Man of prowess--yes, that is the man to please them, Sandy.
Man of brains--that is a thing they never think of. Tom Sayers
--John Heenan--John L. Sullivan--pity but you could be here. You
would have your legs under the Round Table and a 'Sir' in front
of your names within the twenty-four hours; and you could bring
about a new distribution of the married princesses and duchesses
of the Court in another twenty-four. The fact is, it is just
a sort of polished-up court of Comanches, and there isn't a squaw
in it who doesn't stand ready at the dropping of a hat to desert
to the buck with the biggest string of scalps at his belt."
"--and he be such a man of prowess as ye speak of, said Sir Gawaine.
Now, what is his name? Sir, said they, his name is Marhaus the
king's son of Ireland."
"Son of the king of Ireland, you mean; the other form doesn't mean
anything. And look out and hold on tight, now, we must jump
this gully.... There, we are all right now. This horse belongs in
the circus; he is born before his time."
"I know him well, said Sir Uwaine, he is a passing good knight as
any is on live."
"_On live_. If you've got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that
you are a shade too archaic. But it isn't any matter."
"--for I saw him once proved at a justs where many knights were
gathered, and that time there might no man withstand him. Ah, said
Sir Gawaine, damsels, methinketh ye are to blame, for it is to
suppose he that hung that shield there will not be long therefrom,
and then may those knights match him on horseback, and that is
more your worship than thus; for I will abide no longer to see
a knight's shield dishonored. And therewith Sir Uwaine and
Sir Gawaine departed a little from them, and then were they ware
where Sir Marhaus came riding on a great horse straight toward
them. And when the twelve damsels saw Sir Marhaus they fled into
the turret as they were wild, so that some of them fell by the way.
Then the one of the knights of the tower dressed his shield, and
said on high, Sir Marhaus defend thee. And so they ran together
that the knight brake his spear on Marhaus, and Sir Marhaus smote
him so hard that he brake his neck and the horse's back--"
"Well, that is just the trouble about this state of things,
it ruins so many horses."
"That saw the other knight of the turret, and dressed him toward
Marhaus, and they went so eagerly together, that the knight of
the turret was soon smitten down, horse and man, stark dead--"
"_Another_ horse gone; I tell you it is a custom that ought to be
broken up. I don't see how people with any feeling can applaud
and support it."
. . . .
"So these two knights came together with great random--"
I saw that I had been asleep and missed a chapter, but I didn't
say anything. I judged that the Irish knight was in trouble with
the visitors by this time, and this turned out to be the case.
"--that Sir Uwaine smote Sir Marhaus that his spear brast in pieces
on the shield, and Sir Marhaus smote him so sore that horse and
man he bare to the earth, and hurt Sir Uwaine on the left side--"
"The truth is, Alisande, these archaics are a little _too_ simple;
the vocabulary is too limited, and so, by consequence, descriptions
suffer in the matter of variety; they run too much to level Saharas
of fact, and not enough to picturesque detail; this throws about
them a certain air of the monotonous; in fact the fights are all
alike: a couple of people come together with great random
--random is a good word, and so is exegesis, for that matter, and
so is holocaust, and defalcation, and usufruct and a hundred others,
but land! a body ought to discriminate--they come together with
great random, and a spear is brast, and one party brake his shield
and the other one goes down, horse and man, over his horse-tail
and brake his neck, and then the next candidate comes randoming in,
and brast _his_ spear, and the other man brast his shield, and down
_he_ goes, horse and man, over his horse-tail, and brake _his_ neck,
and then there's another elected, and another and another and still
another, till the material is all used up; and when you come to
figure up results, you can't tell one fight from another, nor who
whipped; and as a _picture_, of living, raging, roaring battle,
sho! why, it's pale and noiseless--just ghosts scuffling in a fog.
Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest
spectacle?--the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance?
Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy
brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, _that_ ain't a picture!"
It was a good deal of a lecture, I thought, but it didn't disturb
Sandy, didn't turn a feather; her steam soared steadily up again,
the minute I took off the lid:
"Then Sir Marhaus turned his horse and rode toward Gawaine with
his spear. And when Sir Gawaine saw that, he dressed his shield,
and they aventred their spears, and they came together with all
the might of their horses, that either knight smote other so hard
in the midst of their shields, but Sir Gawaine's spear brake--"
"I knew it would."
--"but Sir Marhaus's spear held; and therewith Sir Gawaine and
his horse rushed down to the earth--"
"Just so--and brake his back."
--"and lightly Sir Gawaine rose upon his feet and pulled out
his sword, and dressed him toward Sir Marhaus on foot, and therewith
either came unto other eagerly, and smote together with their
swords, that their shields flew in cantels, and they bruised their
helms and their hauberks, and wounded either other. But Sir Gawaine,
fro it passed nine of the clock, waxed by the space of three hours
ever stronger and stronger and thrice his might was increased.
All this espied Sir Marhaus, and had great wonder how his might
increased, and so they wounded other passing sore; and then when
it was come noon--"
The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and
sounds of my boyhood days:
"N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductr'll strike
the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers for
the Shore line please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar
don't go no furder--_ahh_-pls, _aw_-rnjz, b'_nan_ners,
_s-a-n-d-'ches, p--_op_-corn!"
--"and waxed past noon and drew toward evensong. Sir Gawaine's
strength feebled and waxed passing faint, that unnethes he might
dure any longer, and Sir Marhaus was then bigger and bigger--"
"Which strained his armor, of course; and yet little would one
of these people mind a small thing like that."
--"and so, Sir Knight, said Sir Marhaus, I have well felt that
ye are a passing good knight, and a marvelous man of might as ever
I felt any, while it lasteth, and our quarrels are not great, and
therefore it were a pity to do you hurt, for I feel you are passing
feeble. Ah, said Sir Gawaine, gentle knight, ye say the word
that I should say. And therewith they took off their helms and
either kissed other, and there they swore together either to love
other as brethren--"
But I lost the thread there, and dozed off to slumber, thinking
about what a pity it was that men with such superb strength
--strength enabling them to stand up cased in cruelly burdensome
iron and drenched with perspiration, and hack and batter and bang
each other for six hours on a stretch--should not have been born
at a time when they could put it to some useful purpose. Take
a jackass, for instance: a jackass has that kind of strength, and
puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to this world because
he is a jackass; but a nobleman is not valuable because he is
a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should
never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you
start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is
going to come of it.
When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that
I had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a long
way off with her people.
"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones,
and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was
the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting
thereby. In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knight
since it was christened, but he found strange adventures--"
"This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son of
Ireland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue,
or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one would
recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named.
It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should
make him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight since
it was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.'
You see how much better that sounds."
--"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers.
Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hard
to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed
with usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted
other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and
she was threescore winter of age or more--"
"The _damsel_ was?"
"Even so, dear lord--and her hair was white under the garland--"
"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fit
kind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and
fall out when you laugh."
"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of
gold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--"
Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded
out of my hearing!
Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her age
who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom
I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back
over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many,
many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer
mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!"
just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a
"Hello, Hank!" that was music of the spheres to my enchanted ear.
She got three dollars a week, but she was worth it.
I could not follow Alisande's further explanation of who our
captured knights were, now--I mean in case she should ever get
to explaining who they were. My interest was gone, my thoughts
were far away, and sad. By fitful glimpses of the drifting tale,
caught here and there and now and then, I merely noted in a vague
way that each of these three knights took one of these three damsels
up behind him on his horse, and one rode north, another east,
the other south, to seek adventures, and meet again and lie, after
year and day. Year and day--and without baggage. It was of
a piece with the general simplicity of the country.
The sun was now setting. It was about three in the afternoon when
Alisande had begun to tell me who the cowboys were; so she had made
pretty good progress with it--for her. She would arrive some time
or other, no doubt, but she was not a person who could be hurried.
We were approaching a castle which stood on high ground; a huge,
strong, venerable structure, whose gray towers and battlements were
charmingly draped with ivy, and whose whole majestic mass was
drenched with splendors flung from the sinking sun. It was the
largest castle we had seen, and so I thought it might be the one
we were after, but Sandy said no. She did not know who owned it;
she said she had passed it without calling, when she went down
to Camelot.
CHAPTER XVI
MORGAN LE FAY
If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable
places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant
were _not_ persons to be believed--that is, measured by modern
standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own
time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very
simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the rest
was fact. Now after making this allowance, the truth remained
that if I could find out something about a castle before ringing
the door-bell--I mean hailing the warders--it was the sensible
thing to do. So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman
making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from this castle.
As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet,
and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious
addition also--a stiff square garment like a herald's tabard.
However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer
and read this sign on his tabard:
"Persimmon's Soap -- All the Prime-Donna Use It."
That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes
in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the
first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense
of knight errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had
started a number of these people out--the bravest knights I could
get--each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device
or another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerous
enough they would begin to look ridiculous; and then, even the
steel-clad ass that _hadn't_ any board would himself begin to look
ridiculous because he was out of the fashion.
Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating
suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness
among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people,
if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church.
I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education--next, freedom
--and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that
any Established Church is an established crime, an established
slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in
any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. Why, in my
own former day--in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb
of time--there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been
born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act
and the Test still in force in it--timbers propped against men's
liberties and dishonored consciences to shore up an Established
Anachronism with.
My missionaries were taught to spell out the gilt signs on their
tabards--the showy gilding was a neat idea, I could have got the
king to wear a bulletin-board for the sake of that barbaric
splendor--they were to spell out these signs and then explain to
the lords and ladies what soap was; and if the lords and ladies
were afraid of it, get them to try it on a dog. The missionary's
next move was to get the family together and try it on himself;
he was to stop at no experiment, however desperate, that could
convince the nobility that soap was harmless; if any final doubt
remained, he must catch a hermit--the woods were full of them;
saints they called themselves, and saints they were believed to be.
They were unspeakably holy, and worked miracles, and everybody
stood in awe of them. If a hermit could survive a wash, and that
failed to convince a duke, give him up, let him alone.
Whenever my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road
they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and
get a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest
of his days. As a consequence the workers in the field were
increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading.
My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only two
hands; but before I had left home I was already employing fifteen,
and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was getting
so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping
around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer,
and Sir Launcelot got so that he did hardly anything but walk up
and down the roof and swear, although I told him it was worse up
there than anywhere else, but he said he wanted plenty of air; and
he was always complaining that a palace was no place for a soap
factory anyway, and said if a man was to start one in his house
he would be damned if he wouldn't strangle him. There were ladies
present, too, but much these people ever cared for that; they would
swear before children, if the wind was their way when the factory
was going.
This missionary knight's name was La Cote Male Taile, and he said
that this castle was the abode of Morgan le Fay, sister of
King Arthur, and wife of King Uriens, monarch of a realm about
as big as the District of Columbia--you could stand in the middle
of it and throw bricks into the next kingdom. "Kings" and "Kingdoms"
were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in
Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up
because they couldn't stretch out without a passport.
La Cote was much depressed, for he had scored here the worst
failure of his campaign. He had not worked off a cake; yet he had
tried all the tricks of the trade, even to the washing of a hermit;
but the hermit died. This was, indeed, a bad failure, for this
animal would now be dubbed a martyr, and would take his place
among the saints of the Roman calendar. Thus made he his moan,
this poor Sir La Cote Male Taile, and sorrowed passing sore. And
so my heart bled for him, and I was moved to comfort and stay him.
Wherefore I said:
"Forbear to grieve, fair knight, for this is not a defeat. We have
brains, you and I; and for such as have brains there are no defeats,
but only victories. Observe how we will turn this seeming disaster
into an advertisement; an advertisement for our soap; and the
biggest one, to draw, that was ever thought of; an advertisement
that will transform that Mount Washington defeat into a Matterhorn
victory. We will put on your bulletin-board, '_Patronized by the
elect_.' How does that strike you?"
"Verily, it is wonderly bethought!"
"Well, a body is bound to admit that for just a modest little
one-line ad, it's a corker."
So the poor colporteur's griefs vanished away. He was a brave
fellow, and had done mighty feats of arms in his time. His chief
celebrity rested upon the events of an excursion like this one
of mine, which he had once made with a damsel named Maledisant,
who was as handy with her tongue as was Sandy, though in a different
way, for her tongue churned forth only railings and insult, whereas
Sandy's music was of a kindlier sort. I knew his story well, and so
I knew how to interpret the compassion that was in his face when he
bade me farewell. He supposed I was having a bitter hard time of it.
Sandy and I discussed his story, as we rode along, and she said
that La Cote's bad luck had begun with the very beginning of that
trip; for the king's fool had overthrown him on the first day,
and in such cases it was customary for the girl to desert to the
conqueror, but Maledisant didn't do it; and also persisted afterward
in sticking to him, after all his defeats. But, said I, suppose
the victor should decline to accept his spoil? She said that that
wouldn't answer--he must. He couldn't decline; it wouldn't be
regular. I made a note of that. If Sandy's music got to be too
burdensome, some time, I would let a knight defeat me, on the chance
that she would desert to him.
In due time we were challenged by the warders, from the castle
walls, and after a parley admitted. I have nothing pleasant to
tell about that visit. But it was not a disappointment, for I knew
Mrs. le Fay by reputation, and was not expecting anything pleasant.
She was held in awe by the whole realm, for she had made everybody
believe she was a great sorceress. All her ways were wicked, all
her instincts devilish. She was loaded to the eyelids with cold
malice. All her history was black with crime; and among her crimes
murder was common. I was most curious to see her; as curious as
I could have been to see Satan. To my surprise she was beautiful;
black thoughts had failed to make her expression repulsive, age
had failed to wrinkle her satin skin or mar its bloomy freshness.
She could have passed for old Uriens' granddaughter, she could
have been mistaken for sister to her own son.
As soon as we were fairly within the castle gates we were ordered
into her presence. King Uriens was there, a kind-faced old man
with a subdued look; and also the son, Sir Uwaine le Blanchemains,
in whom I was, of course, interested on account of the tradition
that he had once done battle with thirty knights, and also on
account of his trip with Sir Gawaine and Sir Marhaus, which Sandy
had been aging me with. But Morgan was the main attraction, the
conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household,
that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began,
with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me
questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something,
talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been
misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along,
and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and
as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something
on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid
his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her
knee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as
another person would have harpooned a rat!
Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in
one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the
old king was wrung an involuntary "O-h!" of compassion. The look
he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens
in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom
and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly
along with her talk.
I saw that she was a good housekeeper, for while she talked she
kept a corner of her eye on the servants to see that they made
no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came
with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and
when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated
a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had
overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed
to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer
than any tongue, does dumb circumstantial evidence speak.
Morgan le Fay rippled along as musically as ever. Marvelous woman.
And what a glance she had: when it fell in reproof upon those
servants, they shrunk and quailed as timid people do when the
lightning flashes out of a cloud. I could have got the habit
myself. It was the same with that poor old Brer Uriens; he was
always on the ragged edge of apprehension; she could not even turn
toward him but he winced.
In the midst of the talk I let drop a complimentary word about
King Arthur, forgetting for the moment how this woman hated her
brother. That one little compliment was enough. She clouded up
like storm; she called for her guards, and said:
"Hale me these varlets to the dungeons."
That struck cold on my ears, for her dungeons had a reputation.
Nothing occurred to me to say--or do. But not so with Sandy.
As the guard laid a hand upon me, she piped up with the tranquilest
confidence, and said:
"God's wounds, dost thou covet destruction, thou maniac? It is
The Boss!"
Now what a happy idea that was!--and so simple; yet it would never
have occurred to me. I was born modest; not all over, but in spots;
and this was one of the spots.
The effect upon madame was electrical. It cleared her countenance
and brought back her smiles and all her persuasive graces and
blandishments; but nevertheless she was not able to entirely cover up
with them the fact that she was in a ghastly fright. She said:
"La, but do list to thine handmaid! as if one gifted with powers
like to mine might say the thing which I have said unto one who
has vanquished Merlin, and not be jesting. By mine enchantments
I foresaw your coming, and by them I knew you when you entered
here. I did but play this little jest with hope to surprise you
into some display of your art, as not doubting you would blast
the guards with occult fires, consuming them to ashes on the spot,
a marvel much beyond mine own ability, yet one which I have long
been childishly curious to see."
The guards were less curious, and got out as soon as they got permission.
CHAPTER XVII
A ROYAL BANQUET
Madame, seeing me pacific and unresentful, no doubt judged that
I was deceived by her excuse; for her fright dissolved away, and
she was soon so importunate to have me give an exhibition and kill
somebody, that the thing grew to be embarrassing. However, to my
relief she was presently interrupted by the call to prayers. I will
say this much for the nobility: that, tyrannical, murderous,
rapacious, and morally rotten as they were, they were deeply and
enthusiastically religious. Nothing could divert them from the
regular and faithful performance of the pieties enjoined by the
Church. More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his
enemy at a disadvantage, stop to pray before cutting his throat;
more than once I had seen a noble, after ambushing and despatching
his enemy, retire to the nearest wayside shrine and humbly give
thanks, without even waiting to rob the body. There was to be
nothing finer or sweeter in the life of even Benvenuto Cellini,
that rough-hewn saint, ten centuries later. All the nobles of
Britain, with their families, attended divine service morning and
night daily, in their private chapels, and even the worst of them
had family worship five or six times a day besides. The credit
of this belonged entirely to the Church. Although I was no friend
to that Catholic Church, I was obliged to admit this. And often,
in spite of me, I found myself saying, "What would this country
be without the Church?"
After prayers we had dinner in a great banqueting hall which was
lighted by hundreds of grease-jets, and everything was as fine and
lavish and rudely splendid as might become the royal degree of the
hosts. At the head of the hall, on a dais, was the table of the
king, queen, and their son, Prince Uwaine. Stretching down the hall
from this, was the general table, on the floor. At this, above
the salt, sat the visiting nobles and the grown members of their
families, of both sexes,--the resident Court, in effect--sixty-one
persons; below the salt sat minor officers of the household, with
their principal subordinates: altogether a hundred and eighteen
persons sitting, and about as many liveried servants standing
behind their chairs, or serving in one capacity or another. It was
a very fine show. In a gallery a band with cymbals, horns, harps,
and other horrors, opened the proceedings with what seemed to be
the crude first-draft or original agony of the wail known to later
centuries as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." It was new, and ought
to have been rehearsed a little more. For some reason or other
the queen had the composer hanged, after dinner.
After this music, the priest who stood behind the royal table said
a noble long grace in ostensible Latin. Then the battalion of
waiters broke away from their posts, and darted, rushed, flew,
fetched and carried, and the mighty feeding began; no words
anywhere, but absorbing attention to business. The rows of chops
opened and shut in vast unison, and the sound of it was like to
the muffled burr of subterranean machinery.
The havoc continued an hour and a half, and unimaginable was the
destruction of substantials. Of the chief feature of the feast
--the huge wild boar that lay stretched out so portly and imposing
at the start--nothing was left but the semblance of a hoop-skirt;
and he was but the type and symbol of what had happened to all
the other dishes.
With the pastries and so on, the heavy drinking began--and the talk.
Gallon after gallon of wine and mead disappeared, and everybody
got comfortable, then happy, then sparklingly joyous--both sexes,
--and by and by pretty noisy. Men told anecdotes that were terrific
to hear, but nobody blushed; and when the nub was sprung, the
assemblage let go with a horse-laugh that shook the fortress.
Ladies answered back with historiettes that would almost have made
Queen Margaret of Navarre or even the great Elizabeth of England
hide behind a handkerchief, but nobody hid here, but only laughed
--howled, you may say. In pretty much all of these dreadful stories,
ecclesiastics were the hardy heroes, but that didn't worry the
chaplain any, he had his laugh with the rest; more than that, upon
invitation he roared out a song which was of as daring a sort as
any that was sung that night.
By midnight everybody was fagged out, and sore with laughing; and,
as a rule, drunk: some weepingly, some affectionately, some
hilariously, some quarrelsomely, some dead and under the table.
Of the ladies, the worst spectacle was a lovely young duchess, whose
wedding-eve this was; and indeed she was a spectacle, sure enough.
Just as she was she could have sat in advance for the portrait of the
young daughter of the Regent d'Orleans, at the famous dinner whence
she was carried, foul-mouthed, intoxicated, and helpless, to her bed,
in the lost and lamented days of the Ancient Regime.
Suddenly, even while the priest was lifting his hands, and all
conscious heads were bowed in reverent expectation of the coming
blessing, there appeared under the arch of the far-off door at
the bottom of the hall an old and bent and white-haired lady,
leaning upon a crutch-stick; and she lifted the stick and pointed it
toward the queen and cried out:
"The wrath and curse of God fall upon you, woman without pity,
who have slain mine innocent grandchild and made desolate this
old heart that had nor chick, nor friend nor stay nor comfort in
all this world but him!"
Everybody crossed himself in a grisly fright, for a curse was an
awful thing to those people; but the queen rose up majestic, with
the death-light in her eye, and flung back this ruthless command:
"Lay hands on her! To the stake with her!"
The guards left their posts to obey. It was a shame; it was a
cruel thing to see. What could be done? Sandy gave me a look;
I knew she had another inspiration. I said:
"Do what you choose."
She was up and facing toward the queen in a moment. She indicated
me, and said:
"Madame, _he_ saith this may not be. Recall the commandment, or he
will dissolve the castle and it shall vanish away like the instable
fabric of a dream!"
Confound it, what a crazy contract to pledge a person to! What if
the queen--
But my consternation subsided there, and my panic passed off;
for the queen, all in a collapse, made no show of resistance but
gave a countermanding sign and sunk into her seat. When she reached
it she was sober. So were many of the others. The assemblage rose,
whiffed ceremony to the winds, and rushed for the door like a mob;
overturning chairs, smashing crockery, tugging, struggling,
shouldering, crowding--anything to get out before I should change
my mind and puff the castle into the measureless dim vacancies of
space. Well, well, well, they _were_ a superstitious lot. It is
all a body can do to conceive of it.
The poor queen was so scared and humbled that she was even afraid
to hang the composer without first consulting me. I was very sorry
for her--indeed, any one would have been, for she was really
suffering; so I was willing to do anything that was reasonable, and
had no desire to carry things to wanton extremities. I therefore
considered the matter thoughtfully, and ended by having the
musicians ordered into our presence to play that Sweet Bye and
Bye again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, and
gave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxation
of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A statesman gains
little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon all
occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his
subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little
concession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is the wiser policy.
Now that the queen was at ease in her mind once more, and measurably
happy, her wine naturally began to assert itself again, and it got
a little the start of her. I mean it set her music going--her silver
bell of a tongue. Dear me, she was a master talker. It would not
become me to suggest that it was pretty late and that I was a tired
man and very sleepy. I wished I had gone off to bed when I had
the chance. Now I must stick it out; there was no other way. So
she tinkled along and along, in the otherwise profound and ghostly
hush of the sleeping castle, until by and by there came, as if
from deep down under us, a far-away sound, as of a muffled shriek
--with an expression of agony about it that made my flesh crawl.
The queen stopped, and her eyes lighted with pleasure; she tilted
her graceful head as a bird does when it listens. The sound bored
its way up through the stillness again.
"What is it?" I said.
"It is truly a stubborn soul, and endureth long. It is many hours now."
"Endureth what?"
"The rack. Come--ye shall see a blithe sight. An he yield not
his secret now, ye shall see him torn asunder."
What a silky smooth hellion she was; and so composed and serene,
when the cords all down my legs were hurting in sympathy with that
man's pain. Conducted by mailed guards bearing flaring torches,
we tramped along echoing corridors, and down stone stairways dank
and dripping, and smelling of mould and ages of imprisoned night
--a chill, uncanny journey and a long one, and not made the shorter
or the cheerier by the sorceress's talk, which was about this
sufferer and his crime. He had been accused by an anonymous
informer, of having killed a stag in the royal preserves. I said:
"Anonymous testimony isn't just the right thing, your Highness.
It were fairer to confront the accused with the accuser."
"I had not thought of that, it being but of small consequence.
But an I would, I could not, for that the accuser came masked by
night, and told the forester, and straightway got him hence again,
and so the forester knoweth him not."
"Then is this Unknown the only person who saw the stag killed?"
"Marry, _no_ man _saw_ the killing, but this Unknown saw this hardy
wretch near to the spot where the stag lay, and came with right
loyal zeal and betrayed him to the forester."
"So the Unknown was near the dead stag, too? Isn't it just possible
that he did the killing himself? His loyal zeal--in a mask--looks
just a shade suspicious. But what is your highness's idea for
racking the prisoner? Where is the profit?"
"He will not confess, else; and then were his soul lost. For his
crime his life is forfeited by the law--and of a surety will I see
that he payeth it!--but it were peril to my own soul to let him
die unconfessed and unabsolved. Nay, I were a fool to fling me
into hell for _his_ accommodation."
"But, your Highness, suppose he has nothing to confess?"
"As to that, we shall see, anon. An I rack him to death and he
confess not, it will peradventure show that he had indeed naught
to confess--ye will grant that that is sooth? Then shall I not be
damned for an unconfessed man that had naught to confess
--wherefore, I shall be safe."
It was the stubborn unreasoning of the time. It was useless to
argue with her. Arguments have no chance against petrified
training; they wear it as little as the waves wear a cliff. And
her training was everybody's. The brightest intellect in the land
would not have been able to see that her position was defective.
As we entered the rack-cell I caught a picture that will not go
from me; I wish it would. A native young giant of thirty or
thereabouts lay stretched upon the frame on his back, with his
wrists and ankles tied to ropes which led over windlasses at either
end. There was no color in him; his features were contorted and
set, and sweat-drops stood upon his forehead. A priest bent over
him on each side; the executioner stood by; guards were on duty;
smoking torches stood in sockets along the walls; in a corner
crouched a poor young creature, her face drawn with anguish,
a half-wild and hunted look in her eyes, and in her lap lay a little
child asleep. Just as we stepped across the threshold the
executioner gave his machine a slight turn, which wrung a cry
from both the prisoner and the woman; but I shouted, and the
executioner released the strain without waiting to see who spoke.
I could not let this horror go on; it would have killed me to
see it. I asked the queen to let me clear the place and speak
to the prisoner privately; and when she was going to object I spoke
in a low voice and said I did not want to make a scene before
her servants, but I must have my way; for I was King Arthur's
representative, and was speaking in his name. She saw she had
to yield. I asked her to indorse me to these people, and then
leave me. It was not pleasant for her, but she took the pill;
and even went further than I was meaning to require. I only wanted
the backing of her own authority; but she said:
"Ye will do in all things as this lord shall command. It is The Boss."
It was certainly a good word to conjure with: you could see it
by the squirming of these rats. The queen's guards fell into line,
and she and they marched away, with their torch-bearers, and woke
the echoes of the cavernous tunnels with the measured beat of their
retreating footfalls. I had the prisoner taken from the rack and
placed upon his bed, and medicaments applied to his hurts, and
wine given him to drink. The woman crept near and looked on,
eagerly, lovingly, but timorously,--like one who fears a repulse;
indeed, she tried furtively to touch the man's forehead, and jumped
back, the picture of fright, when I turned unconsciously toward
her. It was pitiful to see.
"Lord," I said, "stroke him, lass, if you want to. Do anything
you're a mind to; don't mind me."
Why, her eyes were as grateful as an animal's, when you do it
a kindness that it understands. The baby was out of her way and
she had her cheek against the man's in a minute and her hands
fondling his hair, and her happy tears running down. The man
revived and caressed his wife with his eyes, which was all he
could do. I judged I might clear the den, now, and I did; cleared
it of all but the family and myself. Then I said:
"Now, my friend, tell me your side of this matter; I know
the other side."
The man moved his head in sign of refusal. But the woman looked
pleased--as it seemed to me--pleased with my suggestion. I went on--
"You know of me?"
"Yes. All do, in Arthur's realms."
"If my reputation has come to you right and straight, you should
not be afraid to speak."
The woman broke in, eagerly:
"Ah, fair my lord, do thou persuade him! Thou canst an thou wilt.
Ah, he suffereth so; and it is for me--for _me_! And how can I bear it?
I would I might see him die--a sweet, swift death; oh, my Hugo,
I cannot bear this one!"
And she fell to sobbing and grovelling about my feet, and still
imploring. Imploring what? The man's death? I could not quite
get the bearings of the thing. But Hugo interrupted her and said:
"Peace! Ye wit not what ye ask. Shall I starve whom I love,
to win a gentle death? I wend thou knewest me better."
"Well," I said, "I can't quite make this out. It is a puzzle. Now--"
"Ah, dear my lord, an ye will but persuade him! Consider how
these his tortures wound me! Oh, and he will not speak!--whereas,
the healing, the solace that lie in a blessed swift death--"
"What _are_ you maundering about? He's going out from here a free
man and whole--he's not going to die."
The man's white face lit up, and the woman flung herself at me
in a most surprising explosion of joy, and cried out:
"He is saved!--for it is the king's word by the mouth of the king's
servant--Arthur, the king whose word is gold!"
"Well, then you do believe I can be trusted, after all. Why
didn't you before?"
"Who doubted? Not I, indeed; and not she."
"Well, why wouldn't you tell me your story, then?"
"Ye had made no promise; else had it been otherwise."
"I see, I see.... And yet I believe I don't quite see, after all.
You stood the torture and refused to confess; which shows plain
enough to even the dullest understanding that you had nothing
to confess--"
"I, my lord? How so? It was I that killed the deer!"
"You _did_? Oh, dear, this is the most mixed-up business that ever--"
"Dear lord, I begged him on my knees to confess, but--"
"You _did_! It gets thicker and thicker. What did you want him
to do that for?"
"Sith it would bring him a quick death and save him all this
cruel pain."
"Well--yes, there is reason in that. But _he_ didn't want the
quick death."
"He? Why, of a surety he _did_."
"Well, then, why in the world _didn't_ he confess?"
"Ah, sweet sir, and leave my wife and chick without bread and shelter?"
"Oh, heart of gold, now I see it! The bitter law takes the convicted
man's estate and beggars his widow and his orphans. They could
torture you to death, but without conviction or confession they
could not rob your wife and baby. You stood by them like a man;
and _you_--true wife and the woman that you are--you would have
bought him release from torture at cost to yourself of slow
starvation and death--well, it humbles a body to think what your
sex can do when it comes to self-sacrifice. I'll book you both
for my colony; you'll like it there; it's a Factory where I'm going
to turn groping and grubbing automata into _men_."
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE QUEEN'S DUNGEONS
Well, I arranged all that; and I had the man sent to his home.
I had a great desire to rack the executioner; not because he was
a good, painstaking and paingiving official,--for surely it was
not to his discredit that he performed his functions well--but to
pay him back for wantonly cuffing and otherwise distressing that
young woman. The priests told me about this, and were generously
hot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sort
was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed
that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many,
even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground
among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and
devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings.
Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted
about it, and never many minutes at a time; it has never been my
way to bother much about things which you can't cure. But I did
not like it, for it was just the sort of thing to keep people
reconciled to an Established Church. We _must_ have a religion
--it goes without saying--but my idea is, to have it cut up into
forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been
the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power
in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is
only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed,
cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and
does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered
condition. That wasn't law; it wasn't gospel: it was only
an opinion--my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn't
worth any more than the pope's--or any less, for that matter.
Well, I couldn't rack the executioner, neither would I overlook
the just complaint of the priests. The man must be punished
somehow or other, so I degraded him from his office and made him
leader of the band--the new one that was to be started. He begged
hard, and said he couldn't play--a plausible excuse, but too thin;
there wasn't a musician in the country that could.
The queen was a good deal outraged, next morning when she found
she was going to have neither Hugo's life nor his property. But
I told her she must bear this cross; that while by law and custom
she certainly was entitled to both the man's life and his property,
there were extenuating circumstances, and so in Arthur the king's
name I had pardoned him. The deer was ravaging the man's fields,
and he had killed it in sudden passion, and not for gain; and he
had carried it into the royal forest in the hope that that might make
detection of the misdoer impossible. Confound her, I couldn't
make her see that sudden passion is an extenuating circumstance
in the killing of venison--or of a person--so I gave it up and let
her sulk it out. I _did_ think I was going to make her see it by
remarking that her own sudden passion in the case of the page
modified that crime.
"Crime!" she exclaimed. "How thou talkest! Crime, forsooth!
Man, I am going to _pay_ for him!"
Oh, it was no use to waste sense on her. Training--training is
everything; training is all there is _to_ a person. We speak of
nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we
call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.
We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are
transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us,
and therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be
covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the
rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession
of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam
or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously
and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me,
all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this
pathetic drift between the eternities, is to look out and humbly
live a pure and high and blameless life, and save that one
microscopic atom in me that is truly _me_: the rest may land in
Sheol and welcome for all I care.
No, confound her, her intellect was good, she had brains enough,
but her training made her an ass--that is, from a many-centuries-later
point of view. To kill the page was no crime--it was her right;
and upon her right she stood, serenely and unconscious of offense.
She was a result of generations of training in the unexamined and
unassailed belief that the law which permitted her to kill a subject
when she chose was a perfectly right and righteous one.
Well, we must give even Satan his due. She deserved a compliment
for one thing; and I tried to pay it, but the words stuck in my
throat. She had a right to kill the boy, but she was in no wise
obliged to pay for him. That was law for some other people, but
not for her. She knew quite well that she was doing a large and
generous thing to pay for that lad, and that I ought in common
fairness to come out with something handsome about it, but I
couldn't--my mouth refused. I couldn't help seeing, in my fancy,
that poor old grandma with the broken heart, and that fair young
creature lying butchered, his little silken pomps and vanities
laced with his golden blood. How could she _pay_ for him! _Whom_
could she pay? And so, well knowing that this woman, trained
as she had been, deserved praise, even adulation, I was yet not
able to utter it, trained as I had been. The best I could do was
to fish up a compliment from outside, so to speak--and the pity
of it was, that it was true:
"Madame, your people will adore you for this."
Quite true, but I meant to hang her for it some day if I lived.
Some of those laws were too bad, altogether too bad. A master
might kill his slave for nothing--for mere spite, malice, or
to pass the time--just as we have seen that the crowned head could
do it with _his_ slave, that is to say, anybody. A gentleman could
kill a free commoner, and pay for him--cash or garden-truck.
A noble could kill a noble without expense, as far as the law was
concerned, but reprisals in kind were to be expected. _Any_body
could kill _some_body, except the commoner and the slave; these had
no privileges. If they killed, it was murder, and the law wouldn't
stand murder. It made short work of the experimenter--and of
his family, too, if he murdered somebody who belonged up among
the ornamental ranks. If a commoner gave a noble even so much
as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens'
dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters
with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack
jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the
best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable,
as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his
chapter about the dismemberment of Louis XV's poor awkward enemy.
I had had enough of this grisly place by this time, and wanted
to leave, but I couldn't, because I had something on my mind that
my conscience kept prodding me about, and wouldn't let me forget.
If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn't have any conscience.
It is one of the most disagreeable things connected with a person;
and although it certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot
be said to pay, in the long run; it would be much better to have
less good and more comfort. Still, this is only my opinion, and
I am only one man; others, with less experience, may think
differently. They have a right to their view. I only stand
to this: I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I know
it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I started
with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it, because we
prize anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so.
If we look at it in another way, we see how absurd it is: if I had
an anvil in me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet when you
come to think, there is no real difference between a conscience
and an anvil--I mean for comfort. I have noticed it a thousand
times. And you could dissolve an anvil with acids, when you
couldn't stand it any longer; but there isn't any way that you can
work off a conscience--at least so it will stay worked off; not
that I know of, anyway.
There was something I wanted to do before leaving, but it was
a disagreeable matter, and I hated to go at it. Well, it bothered
me all the morning. I could have mentioned it to the old king,
but what would be the use?--he was but an extinct volcano; he had
been active in his time, but his fire was out, this good while,
he was only a stately ash-pile now; gentle enough, and kindly
enough for my purpose, without doubt, but not usable. He was
nothing, this so-called king: the queen was the only power there.
And she was a Vesuvius. As a favor, she might consent to warm
a flock of sparrows for you, but then she might take that very
opportunity to turn herself loose and bury a city. However,
I reflected that as often as any other way, when you are expecting
the worst, you get something that is not so bad, after all.
So I braced up and placed my matter before her royal Highness.
I said I had been having a general jail-delivery at Camelot and
among neighboring castles, and with her permission I would like
to examine her collection, her bric-a-brac--that is to say, her
prisoners. She resisted; but I was expecting that. But she finally
consented. I was expecting that, too, but not so soon. That about
ended my discomfort. She called her guards and torches, and
we went down into the dungeons. These were down under the castle's
foundations, and mainly were small cells hollowed out of the living
rock. Some of these cells had no light at all. In one of them was
a woman, in foul rags, who sat on the ground, and would not answer
a question or speak a word, but only looked up at us once or twice,
through a cobweb of tangled hair, as if to see what casual thing
it might be that was disturbing with sound and light the meaningless
dull dream that was become her life; after that, she sat bowed,
with her dirt-caked fingers idly interlocked in her lap, and gave
no further sign. This poor rack of bones was a woman of middle
age, apparently; but only apparently; she had been there nine
years, and was eighteen when she entered. She was a commoner,
and had been sent here on her bridal night by Sir Breuse Sance Pite,
a neighboring lord whose vassal her father was, and to which said
lord she had refused what has since been called le droit du
seigneur, and, moreover, had opposed violence to violence and spilt
half a gill of his almost sacred blood. The young husband had
interfered at that point, believing the bride's life in danger,
and had flung the noble out into the midst of the humble and
trembling wedding guests, in the parlor, and left him there
astonished at this strange treatment, and implacably embittered
against both bride and groom. The said lord being cramped for
dungeon-room had asked the queen to accommodate his two criminals,
and here in her bastile they had been ever since; hither, indeed,
they had come before their crime was an hour old, and had never
seen each other since. Here they were, kenneled like toads in the
same rock; they had passed nine pitch dark years within fifty feet
of each other, yet neither knew whether the other was alive or not.
All the first years, their only question had been--asked with
beseechings and tears that might have moved stones, in time,
perhaps, but hearts are not stones: "Is he alive?" "Is she alive?"
But they had never got an answer; and at last that question was
not asked any more--or any other.
I wanted to see the man, after hearing all this. He was thirty-four
years old, and looked sixty. He sat upon a squared block of
stone, with his head bent down, his forearms resting on his knees,
his long hair hanging like a fringe before his face, and he was
muttering to himself. He raised his chin and looked us slowly
over, in a listless dull way, blinking with the distress of the
torchlight, then dropped his head and fell to muttering again
and took no further notice of us. There were some pathetically
suggestive dumb witnesses present. On his wrists and ankles were
cicatrices, old smooth scars, and fastened to the stone on which
he sat was a chain with manacles and fetters attached; but this
apparatus lay idle on the ground, and was thick with rust. Chains
cease to be needed after the spirit has gone out of a prisoner.
I could not rouse the man; so I said we would take him to her,
and see--to the bride who was the fairest thing in the earth to him,
once--roses, pearls, and dew made flesh, for him; a wonder-work,
the master-work of nature: with eyes like no other eyes, and voice
like no other voice, and a freshness, and lithe young grace, and
beauty, that belonged properly to the creatures of dreams--as he
thought--and to no other. The sight of her would set his stagnant
blood leaping; the sight of her--
But it was a disappointment. They sat together on the ground and
looked dimly wondering into each other's faces a while, with a
sort of weak animal curiosity; then forgot each other's presence,
and dropped their eyes, and you saw that they were away again and
wandering in some far land of dreams and shadows that we know
nothing about.
I had them taken out and sent to their friends. The queen did not
like it much. Not that she felt any personal interest in the matter,
but she thought it disrespectful to Sir Breuse Sance Pite. However,
I assured her that if he found he couldn't stand it I would fix him
so that he could.
I set forty-seven prisoners loose out of those awful rat-holes,
and left only one in captivity. He was a lord, and had killed
another lord, a sort of kinsman of the queen. That other lord
had ambushed him to assassinate him, but this fellow had got the
best of him and cut his throat. However, it was not for that that
I left him jailed, but for maliciously destroying the only public
well in one of his wretched villages. The queen was bound to hang
him for killing her kinsman, but I would not allow it: it was no
crime to kill an assassin. But I said I was willing to let her
hang him for destroying the well; so she concluded to put up with
that, as it was better than nothing.
Dear me, for what trifling offenses the most of those forty-seven
men and women were shut up there! Indeed, some were there for
no distinct offense at all, but only to gratify somebody's spite;
and not always the queen's by any means, but a friend's. The newest
prisoner's crime was a mere remark which he had made. He said
he believed that men were about all alike, and one man as good
as another, barring clothes. He said he believed that if you were
to strip the nation naked and send a stranger through the crowd, he
couldn't tell the king from a quack doctor, nor a duke from a hotel
clerk. Apparently here was a man whose brains had not been reduced
to an ineffectual mush by idiotic training. I set him loose and
sent him to the Factory.
Some of the cells carved in the living rock were just behind the
face of the precipice, and in each of these an arrow-slit had been
pierced outward to the daylight, and so the captive had a thin
ray from the blessed sun for his comfort. The case of one of
these poor fellows was particularly hard. From his dusky swallow's
hole high up in that vast wall of native rock he could peer out
through the arrow-slit and see his own home off yonder in the
valley; and for twenty-two years he had watched it, with heartache
and longing, through that crack. He could see the lights shine
there at night, and in the daytime he could see figures go in and
come out--his wife and children, some of them, no doubt, though
he could not make out at that distance. In the course of years
he noted festivities there, and tried to rejoice, and wondered
if they were weddings or what they might be. And he noted funerals;
and they wrung his heart. He could make out the coffin, but he
could not determine its size, and so could not tell whether it was
wife or child. He could see the procession form, with priests
and mourners, and move solemnly away, bearing the secret with
them. He had left behind him five children and a wife; and in
nineteen years he had seen five funerals issue, and none of them
humble enough in pomp to denote a servant. So he had lost five
of his treasures; there must still be one remaining--one now
infinitely, unspeakably precious,--but _which_ one? wife, or child?
That was the question that tortured him, by night and by day,
asleep and awake. Well, to have an interest, of some sort, and
half a ray of light, when you are in a dungeon, is a great support
to the body and preserver of the intellect. This man was in pretty
good condition yet. By the time he had finished telling me his
distressful tale, I was in the same state of mind that you would
have been in yourself, if you have got average human curiosity;
that is to say, I was as burning up as he was to find out which
member of the family it was that was left. So I took him over
home myself; and an amazing kind of a surprise party it was, too
--typhoons and cyclones of frantic joy, and whole Niagaras of happy
tears; and by George! we found the aforetime young matron graying
toward the imminent verge of her half century, and the babies all
men and women, and some of them married and experimenting familywise
themselves--for not a soul of the tribe was dead! Conceive of the
ingenious devilishness of that queen: she had a special hatred for
this prisoner, and she had _invented_ all those funerals herself,
to scorch his heart with; and the sublimest stroke of genius of
the whole thing was leaving the family-invoice a funeral _short_,
so as to let him wear his poor old soul out guessing.
But for me, he never would have got out. Morgan le Fay hated him
with her whole heart, and she never would have softened toward him.
And yet his crime was committed more in thoughtlessness than
deliberate depravity. He had said she had red hair. Well, she
had; but that was no way to speak of it. When red-headed people
are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.
Consider it: among these forty-seven captives there were five
whose names, offenses, and dates of incarceration were no longer
known! One woman and four men--all bent, and wrinkled, and
mind-extinguished patriarchs. They themselves had long ago forgotten
these details; at any rate they had mere vague theories about them,
nothing definite and nothing that they repeated twice in the same
way. The succession of priests whose office it had been to pray
daily with the captives and remind them that God had put them
there, for some wise purpose or other, and teach them that patience,
humbleness, and submission to oppression was what He loved to see
in parties of a subordinate rank, had traditions about these poor
old human ruins, but nothing more. These traditions went but
little way, for they concerned the length of the incarceration only,
and not the names of the offenses. And even by the help of
tradition the only thing that could be proven was that none of
the five had seen daylight for thirty-five years: how much longer
this privation has lasted was not guessable. The king and the queen
knew nothing about these poor creatures, except that they were
heirlooms, assets inherited, along with the throne, from the former
firm. Nothing of their history had been transmitted with their
persons, and so the inheriting owners had considered them of no
value, and had felt no interest in them. I said to the queen:
"Then why in the world didn't you set them free?"
The question was a puzzler. She didn't know _why_ she hadn't, the
thing had never come up in her mind. So here she was, forecasting
the veritable history of future prisoners of the Castle d'If,
without knowing it. It seemed plain to me now, that with her
training, those inherited prisoners were merely property--nothing
more, nothing less. Well, when we inherit property, it does not
occur to us to throw it away, even when we do not value it.
When I brought my procession of human bats up into the open world
and the glare of the afternoon sun--previously blindfolding them,
in charity for eyes so long untortured by light--they were a
spectacle to look at. Skeletons, scarecrows, goblins, pathetic
frights, every one; legitimatest possible children of Monarchy
by the Grace of God and the Established Church. I muttered absently:
"I _wish_ I could photograph them!"
You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they
don't know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they
are, the more pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't
shot over their heads. The queen was just one of that sort, and
was always making the stupidest blunders by reason of it. She
hesitated a moment; then her face brightened up with sudden
comprehension, and she said she would do it for me.
I thought to myself: She? why what can she know about photography?
But it was a poor time to be thinking. When I looked around, she
was moving on the procession with an axe!
Well, she certainly was a curious one, was Morgan le Fay. I have
seen a good many kinds of women in my time, but she laid over them
all for variety. And how sharply characteristic of her this episode
was. She had no more idea than a horse of how to photograph
a procession; but being in doubt, it was just like her to try
to do it with an axe.
CHAPTER XIX
KNIGHT-ERRANTRY AS A TRADE
Sandy and I were on the road again, next morning, bright and early.
It was so good to open up one's lungs and take in whole luscious
barrels-ful of the blessed God's untainted, dew-fashioned,
woodland-scented air once more, after suffocating body and mind for two
days and nights in the moral and physical stenches of that intolerable
old buzzard-roost! I mean, for me: of course the place was all
right and agreeable enough for Sandy, for she had been used to
high life all her days.
Poor girl, her jaws had had a wearisome rest now for a while,
and I was expecting to get the consequences. I was right; but she
had stood by me most helpfully in the castle, and had mightily
supported and reinforced me with gigantic foolishnesses which were
worth more for the occasion than wisdoms double their size; so
I thought she had earned a right to work her mill for a while,
if she wanted to, and I felt not a pang when she started it up:
"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty
winter of age southward--"
"Are you going to see if you can work up another half-stretch on
the trail of the cowboys, Sandy?"
"Even so, fair my lord."
"Go ahead, then. I won't interrupt this time, if I can help it.
Begin over again; start fair, and shake out all your reefs, and
I will load my pipe and give good attention."
"Now turn we unto Sir Marhaus that rode with the damsel of thirty
winter of age southward. And so they came into a deep forest,
and by fortune they were nighted, and rode along in a deep way,
and at the last they came into a courtelage where abode the duke
of South Marches, and there they asked harbour. And on the morn
the duke sent unto Sir Marhaus, and bad him make him ready. And
so Sir Marhaus arose and armed him, and there was a mass sung
afore him, and he brake his fast, and so mounted on horseback in
the court of the castle, there they should do the battle. So there
was the duke already on horseback, clean armed, and his six sons
by him, and every each had a spear in his hand, and so they
encountered, whereas the duke and his two sons brake their spears
upon him, but Sir Marhaus held up his spear and touched none of
them. Then came the four sons by couples, and two of them brake
their spears, and so did the other two. And all this while
Sir Marhaus touched them not. Then Sir Marhaus ran to the duke,
and smote him with his spear that horse and man fell to the earth.
And so he served his sons. And then Sir Marhaus alight down, and
bad the duke yield him or else he would slay him. And then some
of his sons recovered, and would have set upon Sir Marhaus. Then
Sir Marhaus said to the duke, Cease thy sons, or else I will do
the uttermost to you all. When the duke saw he might not escape
the death, he cried to his sons, and charged them to yield them
to Sir Marhaus. And they kneeled all down and put the pommels
of their swords to the knight, and so he received them. And then
they holp up their father, and so by their common assent promised
unto Sir Marhaus never to be foes unto King Arthur, and thereupon
at Whitsuntide after, to come he and his sons, and put them in
the king's grace.*
[*Footnote: The story is borrowed, language and all, from the
Morte d'Arthur.--M.T.]
"Even so standeth the history, fair Sir Boss. Now ye shall wit
that that very duke and his six sons are they whom but few days
past you also did overcome and send to Arthur's court!"
"Why, Sandy, you can't mean it!"
"An I speak not sooth, let it be the worse for me."
"Well, well, well,--now who would ever have thought it? One
whole duke and six dukelets; why, Sandy, it was an elegant haul.
Knight-errantry is a most chuckle-headed trade, and it is tedious
hard work, too, but I begin to see that there _is_ money in it,
after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it
as a business, for I wouldn't. No sound and legitimate business
can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl
in the knight-errantry line--now what is it when you blow away
the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It's just a corner
in pork, that's all, and you can't make anything else out of it.
You're rich--yes,--suddenly rich--for about a day, maybe a week;
then somebody corners the market on _you_, and down goes your
bucket-shop; ain't that so, Sandy?"
"Whethersoever it be that my mind miscarrieth, bewraying simple
language in such sort that the words do seem to come endlong
and overthwart--"
"There's no use in beating about the bush and trying to get around
it that way, Sandy, it's _so_, just as I say. I _know_ it's so. And,
moreover, when you come right down to the bedrock, knight-errantry
is _worse_ than pork; for whatever happens, the pork's left, and
so somebody's benefited anyway; but when the market breaks, in a
knight-errantry whirl, and every knight in the pool passes in his
checks, what have you got for assets? Just a rubbish-pile of
battered corpses and a barrel or two of busted hardware. Can you
call _those_ assets? Give me pork, every time. Am I right?"
"Ah, peradventure my head being distraught by the manifold matters
whereunto the confusions of these but late adventured haps and
fortunings whereby not I alone nor you alone, but every each of us,
meseemeth--"
"No, it's not your head, Sandy. Your head's all right, as far as
it goes, but you don't know business; that's where the trouble
is. It unfits you to argue about business, and you're wrong
to be always trying. However, that aside, it was a good haul,
anyway, and will breed a handsome crop of reputation in Arthur's
court. And speaking of the cowboys, what a curious country this
is for women and men that never get old. Now there's Morgan le Fay,
as fresh and young as a Vassar pullet, to all appearances, and
here is this old duke of the South Marches still slashing away with
sword and lance at his time of life, after raising such a family
as he has raised. As I understand it, Sir Gawaine killed seven
of his sons, and still he had six left for Sir Marhaus and me to
take into camp. And then there was that damsel of sixty winter
of age still excursioning around in her frosty bloom--How old
are you, Sandy?"
It was the first time I ever struck a still place in her. The mill
had shut down for repairs, or something.
CHAPTER XX
THE OGRE'S CASTLE
Between six and nine we made ten miles, which was plenty for a
horse carrying triple--man, woman, and armor; then we stopped
for a long nooning under some trees by a limpid brook.
Right so came by and by a knight riding; and as he drew near he
made dolorous moan, and by the words of it I perceived that he
was cursing and swearing; yet nevertheless was I glad of his
coming, for that I saw he bore a bulletin-board whereon in letters
all of shining gold was writ:
"USE PETERSON'S PROPHYLACTIC TOOTH-BRUSH--ALL THE GO."
I was glad of his coming, for even by this token I knew him for
knight of mine. It was Sir Madok de la Montaine, a burly great
fellow whose chief distinction was that he had come within an ace
of sending Sir Launcelot down over his horse-tail once. He was
never long in a stranger's presence without finding some pretext
or other to let out that great fact. But there was another fact
of nearly the same size, which he never pushed upon anybody unasked,
and yet never withheld when asked: that was, that the reason he
didn't quite succeed was, that he was interrupted and sent down
over horse-tail himself. This innocent vast lubber did not see
any particular difference between the two facts. I liked him,
for he was earnest in his work, and very valuable. And he was so
fine to look at, with his broad mailed shoulders, and the grand
leonine set of his plumed head, and his big shield with its quaint
device of a gauntleted hand clutching a prophylactic tooth-brush,
with motto: "Try Noyoudont." This was a tooth-wash that I was
introducing.
He was aweary, he said, and indeed he looked it; but he would not
alight. He said he was after the stove-polish man; and with this
he broke out cursing and swearing anew. The bulletin-boarder
referred to was Sir Ossaise of Surluse, a brave knight, and of
considerable celebrity on account of his having tried conclusions
in a tournament once, with no less a Mogul than Sir Gaheris
himself--although not successfully. He was of a light and laughing
disposition, and to him nothing in this world was serious. It was
for this reason that I had chosen him to work up a stove-polish
sentiment. There were no stoves yet, and so there could be nothing
serious about stove-polish. All that the agent needed to do was
to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change,
and have them established in predilections toward neatness against
the time when the stove should appear upon the stage.
Sir Madok was very bitter, and brake out anew with cursings. He
said he had cursed his soul to rags; and yet he would not get down
from his horse, neither would he take any rest, or listen to any
comfort, until he should have found Sir Ossaise and settled this
account. It appeared, by what I could piece together of the
unprofane fragments of his statement, that he had chanced upon
Sir Ossaise at dawn of the morning, and been told that if he would
make a short cut across the fields and swamps and broken hills and
glades, he could head off a company of travelers who would be rare
customers for prophylactics and tooth-wash. With characteristic
zeal Sir Madok had plunged away at once upon this quest, and after
three hours of awful crosslot riding had overhauled his game. And
behold, it was the five patriarchs that had been released from the
dungeons the evening before! Poor old creatures, it was all of
twenty years since any one of them had known what it was to be
equipped with any remaining snag or remnant of a tooth.
"Blank-blank-blank him," said Sir Madok, "an I do not stove-polish
him an I may find him, leave it to me; for never no knight that
hight Ossaise or aught else may do me this disservice and bide
on live, an I may find him, the which I have thereunto sworn a
great oath this day."
And with these words and others, he lightly took his spear and
gat him thence. In the middle of the afternoon we came upon one
of those very patriarchs ourselves, in the edge of a poor village.
He was basking in the love of relatives and friends whom he had not
seen for fifty years; and about him and caressing him were also
descendants of his own body whom he had never seen at all till now;
but to him these were all strangers, his memory was gone, his mind
was stagnant. It seemed incredible that a man could outlast half
a century shut up in a dark hole like a rat, but here were his old
wife and some old comrades to testify to it. They could remember
him as he was in the freshness and strength of his young manhood,
when he kissed his child and delivered it to its mother's hands
and went away into that long oblivion. The people at the castle
could not tell within half a generation the length of time the man
had been shut up there for his unrecorded and forgotten offense;
but this old wife knew; and so did her old child, who stood there
among her married sons and daughters trying to realize a father
who had been to her a name, a thought, a formless image, a tradition,
all her life, and now was suddenly concreted into actual flesh
and blood and set before her face.
It was a curious situation; yet it is not on that account that
I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which
seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter
brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against
these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty
and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but
a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the
depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire
being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation,
dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in
this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say
that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower
deep for him.
I rather wished I had gone some other road. This was not the sort
of experience for a statesman to encounter who was planning out
a peaceful revolution in his mind. For it could not help bringing
up the unget-aroundable fact that, all gentle cant and philosophizing
to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in the world ever did
achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion:
it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed must
_begin_ in blood, whatever may answer afterward. If history teaches
anything, it teaches that. What this folk needed, then, was a
Reign of Terror and a guillotine, and I was the wrong man for them.
Two days later, toward noon, Sandy began to show signs of excitement
and feverish expectancy. She said we were approaching the ogre's
castle. I was surprised into an uncomfortable shock. The object
of our quest had gradually dropped out of my mind; this sudden
resurrection of it made it seem quite a real and startling thing
for a moment, and roused up in me a smart interest. Sandy's
excitement increased every moment; and so did mine, for that sort
of thing is catching. My heart got to thumping. You can't reason
with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which
the intellect scorns. Presently, when Sandy slid from the horse,
motioned me to stop, and went creeping stealthily, with her head
bent nearly to her knees, toward a row of bushes that bordered
a declivity, the thumpings grew stronger and quicker. And they
kept it up while she was gaining her ambush and getting her glimpse
over the declivity; and also while I was creeping to her side on
my knees. Her eyes were burning now, as she pointed with her
finger, and said in a panting whisper:
"The castle! The castle! Lo, where it looms!"
What a welcome disappointment I experienced! I said:
"Castle? It is nothing but a pigsty; a pigsty with a wattled
fence around it."
She looked surprised and distressed. The animation faded out of
her face; and during many moments she was lost in thought and
silent. Then:
"It was not enchanted aforetime," she said in a musing fashion,
as if to herself. "And how strange is this marvel, and how awful
--that to the one perception it is enchanted and dight in a base
and shameful aspect; yet to the perception of the other it is not
enchanted, hath suffered no change, but stands firm and stately
still, girt with its moat and waving its banners in the blue air
from its towers. And God shield us, how it pricks the heart to
see again these gracious captives, and the sorrow deepened in their
sweet faces! We have tarried along, and are to blame."
I saw my cue. The castle was enchanted to _me_, not to her. It would
be wasted time to try to argue her out of her delusion, it couldn't
be done; I must just humor it. So I said:
"This is a common case--the enchanting of a thing to one eye and
leaving it in its proper form to another. You have heard of it
before, Sandy, though you haven't happened to experience it.
But no harm is done. In fact, it is lucky the way it is. If these
ladies were hogs to everybody and to themselves, it would be
necessary to break the enchantment, and that might be impossible
if one failed to find out the particular process of the enchantment.
And hazardous, too; for in attempting a disenchantment without the
true key, you are liable to err, and turn your hogs into dogs,
and the dogs into cats, the cats into rats, and so on, and end by
reducing your materials to nothing finally, or to an odorless gas
which you can't follow--which, of course, amounts to the same
thing. But here, by good luck, no one's eyes but mine are under
the enchantment, and so it is of no consequence to dissolve it.
These ladies remain ladies to you, and to themselves, and to
everybody else; and at the same time they will suffer in no way
from my delusion, for when I know that an ostensible hog is a
lady, that is enough for me, I know how to treat her."
"Thanks, oh, sweet my lord, thou talkest like an angel. And I know
that thou wilt deliver them, for that thou art minded to great
deeds and art as strong a knight of your hands and as brave to will
and to do, as any that is on live."
"I will not leave a princess in the sty, Sandy. Are those three
yonder that to my disordered eyes are starveling swine-herds--"
"The ogres, Are _they_ changed also? It is most wonderful. Now
am I fearful; for how canst thou strike with sure aim when five of
their nine cubits of stature are to thee invisible? Ah, go warily,
fair sir; this is a mightier emprise than I wend."
"You be easy, Sandy. All I need to know is, how _much_ of an ogre
is invisible; then I know how to locate his vitals. Don't you be
afraid, I will make short work of these bunco-steerers. Stay
where you are."
I left Sandy kneeling there, corpse-faced but plucky and hopeful,
and rode down to the pigsty, and struck up a trade with the
swine-herds. I won their gratitude by buying out all the hogs
at the lump sum of sixteen pennies, which was rather above latest
quotations. I was just in time; for the Church, the lord of the
manor, and the rest of the tax-gatherers would have been along
next day and swept off pretty much all the stock, leaving the
swine-herds very short of hogs and Sandy out of princesses. But
now the tax people could be paid in cash, and there would be
a stake left besides. One of the men had ten children; and he
said that last year when a priest came and of his ten pigs took
the fattest one for tithes, the wife burst out upon him, and offered
him a child and said:
"Thou beast without bowels of mercy, why leave me my child, yet
rob me of the wherewithal to feed it?"
How curious. The same thing had happened in the Wales of my day,
under this same old Established Church, which was supposed by many
to have changed its nature when it changed its disguise.
I sent the three men away, and then opened the sty gate and beckoned
Sandy to come--which she did; and not leisurely, but with the rush
of a prairie fire. And when I saw her fling herself upon those
hogs, with tears of joy running down her cheeks, and strain them
to her heart, and kiss them, and caress them, and call them
reverently by grand princely names, I was ashamed of her, ashamed
of the human race.
We had to drive those hogs home--ten miles; and no ladies were
ever more fickle-minded or contrary. They would stay in no road,
no path; they broke out through the brush on all sides, and flowed
away in all directions, over rocks, and hills, and the roughest
places they could find. And they must not be struck, or roughly
accosted; Sandy could not bear to see them treated in ways unbecoming
their rank. The troublesomest old sow of the lot had to be called
my Lady, and your Highness, like the rest. It is annoying and
difficult to scour around after hogs, in armor. There was one
small countess, with an iron ring in her snout and hardly any hair
on her back, that was the devil for perversity. She gave me a race
of an hour, over all sorts of country, and then we were right where
we had started from, having made not a rod of real progress.
I seized her at last by the tail, and brought her along squealing.
When I overtook Sandy she was horrified, and said it was in the
last degree indelicate to drag a countess by her train.
We got the hogs home just at dark--most of them. The princess
Nerovens de Morganore was missing, and two of her ladies in waiting:
namely, Miss Angela Bohun, and the Demoiselle Elaine Courtemains,
the former of these two being a young black sow with a white star
in her forehead, and the latter a brown one with thin legs and a
slight limp in the forward shank on the starboard side--a couple
of the tryingest blisters to drive that I ever saw. Also among
the missing were several mere baronesses--and I wanted them to
stay missing; but no, all that sausage-meat had to be found; so
servants were sent out with torches to scour the woods and hills
to that end.
Of course, the whole drove was housed in the house, and, great
guns!--well, I never saw anything like it. Nor ever heard anything
like it. And never smelt anything like it. It was like an
insurrection in a gasometer.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PILGRIMS
When I did get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching
out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious,
how delicious! but that was as far as I could get--sleep was out of
the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing
of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium
come again, and kept me broad awake. Being awake, my thoughts
were busy, of course; and mainly they busied themselves with Sandy's
curious delusion. Here she was, as sane a person as the kingdom
could produce; and yet, from my point of view she was acting like
a crazy woman. My land, the power of training! of influence!
of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything. I had
to put myself in Sandy's place to realize that she was not a
lunatic. Yes, and put her in mine, to demonstrate how easy it is
to seem a lunatic to a person who has not been taught as you have
been taught. If I had told Sandy I had seen a wagon, uninfluenced
by enchantment, spin along fifty miles an hour; had seen a man,
unequipped with magic powers, get into a basket and soar out of
sight among the clouds; and had listened, without any necromancer's
help, to the conversation of a person who was several hundred miles
away, Sandy would not merely have supposed me to be crazy, she
would have thought she knew it. Everybody around her believed in
enchantments; nobody had any doubts; to doubt that a castle could
be turned into a sty, and its occupants into hogs, would have been
the same as my doubting among Connecticut people the actuality
of the telephone and its wonders,--and in both cases would be
absolute proof of a diseased mind, an unsettled reason. Yes, Sandy
was sane; that must be admitted. If I also would be sane--to Sandy
--I must keep my superstitions about unenchanted and unmiraculous
locomotives, balloons, and telephones, to myself. Also, I believed
that the world was not flat, and hadn't pillars under it to support
it, nor a canopy over it to turn off a universe of water that
occupied all space above; but as I was the only person in the kingdom
afflicted with such impious and criminal opinions, I recognized
that it would be good wisdom to keep quiet about this matter, too,
if I did not wish to be suddenly shunned and forsaken by everybody
as a madman.
The next morning Sandy assembled the swine in the dining-room and
gave them their breakfast, waiting upon them personally and
manifesting in every way the deep reverence which the natives of
her island, ancient and modern, have always felt for rank, let its
outward casket and the mental and moral contents be what they may.
I could have eaten with the hogs if I had had birth approaching my
lofty official rank; but I hadn't, and so accepted the unavoidable
slight and made no complaint. Sandy and I had our breakfast at
the second table. The family were not at home. I said:
"How many are in the family, Sandy, and where do they keep themselves?"
"Family?"
"Yes."
"Which family, good my lord?"
"Why, this family; your own family."
"Sooth to say, I understand you not. I have no family."
"No family? Why, Sandy, isn't this your home?"
"Now how indeed might that be? I have no home."
"Well, then, whose house is this?"
"Ah, wit you well I would tell you an I knew myself."
"Come--you don't even know these people? Then who invited us here?"
"None invited us. We but came; that is all."
"Why, woman, this is a most extraordinary performance. The
effrontery of it is beyond admiration. We blandly march into
a man's house, and cram it full of the only really valuable nobility
the sun has yet discovered in the earth, and then it turns out
that we don't even know the man's name. How did you ever venture
to take this extravagant liberty? I supposed, of course, it was
your home. What will the man say?"
"What will he say? Forsooth what can he say but give thanks?"
"Thanks for what?"
Her face was filled with a puzzled surprise:
"Verily, thou troublest mine understanding with strange words.
Do ye dream that one of his estate is like to have the honor twice
in his life to entertain company such as we have brought to grace
his house withal?"
"Well, no--when you come to that. No, it's an even bet that this
is the first time he has had a treat like this."
"Then let him be thankful, and manifest the same by grateful speech
and due humility; he were a dog, else, and the heir and ancestor
of dogs."
To my mind, the situation was uncomfortable. It might become more so.
It might be a good idea to muster the hogs and move on. So I said:
"The day is wasting, Sandy. It is time to get the nobility together
and be moving."
"Wherefore, fair sir and Boss?"
"We want to take them to their home, don't we?"
"La, but list to him! They be of all the regions of the earth!
Each must hie to her own home; wend you we might do all these
journeys in one so brief life as He hath appointed that created
life, and thereto death likewise with help of Adam, who by sin
done through persuasion of his helpmeet, she being wrought upon
and bewrayed by the beguilements of the great enemy of man, that
serpent hight Satan, aforetime consecrated and set apart unto that
evil work by overmastering spite and envy begotten in his heart
through fell ambitions that did blight and mildew a nature erst
so white and pure whenso it hove with the shining multitudes
its brethren-born in glade and shade of that fair heaven wherein
all such as native be to that rich estate and--"
"Great Scott!"
"My lord?"
"Well, you know we haven't got time for this sort of thing. Don't
you see, we could distribute these people around the earth in less
time than it is going to take you to explain that we can't. We
mustn't talk now, we must act. You want to be careful; you mustn't
let your mill get the start of you that way, at a time like this.
To business now--and sharp's the word. Who is to take the
aristocracy home?"
"Even their friends. These will come for them from the far parts
of the earth."
This was lightning from a clear sky, for unexpectedness; and the
relief of it was like pardon to a prisoner. She would remain to
deliver the goods, of course.
"Well, then, Sandy, as our enterprise is handsomely and successfully
ended, I will go home and report; and if ever another one--"
"I also am ready; I will go with thee."
This was recalling the pardon.
"How? You will go with me? Why should you?"
"Will I be traitor to my knight, dost think? That were dishonor.
I may not part from thee until in knightly encounter in the field
some overmatching champion shall fairly win and fairly wear me.
I were to blame an I thought that that might ever hap."
"Elected for the long term," I sighed to myself. "I may as well
make the best of it." So then I spoke up and said:
"All right; let us make a start."
While she was gone to cry her farewells over the pork, I gave that
whole peerage away to the servants. And I asked them to take
a duster and dust around a little where the nobilities had mainly
lodged and promenaded; but they considered that that would be
hardly worth while, and would moreover be a rather grave departure
from custom, and therefore likely to make talk. A departure from
custom--that settled it; it was a nation capable of committing any
crime but that. The servants said they would follow the fashion,
a fashion grown sacred through immemorial observance; they would
scatter fresh rushes in all the rooms and halls, and then the
evidence of the aristocratic visitation would be no longer visible.
It was a kind of satire on Nature: it was the scientific method,
the geologic method; it deposited the history of the family in
a stratified record; and the antiquary could dig through it and
tell by the remains of each period what changes of diet the family
had introduced successively for a hundred years.
The first thing we struck that day was a procession of pilgrims.
It was not going our way, but we joined it, nevertheless; for it
was hourly being borne in upon me now, that if I would govern
this country wisely, I must be posted in the details of its life,
and not at second hand, but by personal observation and scrutiny.
This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it
had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions
the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume.
There were young men and old men, young women and old women,
lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, and
there was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty was
to remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet.
It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and
full of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. What
they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused
no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best English
society twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of the
English wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century
were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled
the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was
made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward
the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling
spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along;
and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake.
Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted
me. She said:
"They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of the
godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansed
from sin."
"Where is this watering place?"
"It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land that
hight the Cuckoo Kingdom."
"Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place?"
"Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time there
lived there an abbot and his monks. Belike were none in the world
more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious
books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and
ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed
much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it
fell from their bodies through age and decay. Right so came they
to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities,
and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced."
"Proceed."
"But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time,
the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clear
water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were the
fickle monks tempted of the Fiend, and they wrought with their
abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would construct
a bath; and when he was become aweary and might not resist more,
he said have ye your will, then, and granted that they asked.
Now mark thou what 'tis to forsake the ways of purity the which
He loveth, and wanton with such as be worldly and an offense.
These monks did enter into the bath and come thence washed as
white as snow; and lo, in that moment His sign appeared, in
miraculous rebuke! for His insulted waters ceased to flow, and
utterly vanished away."
"They fared mildly, Sandy, considering how that kind of crime
is regarded in this country."
"Belike; but it was their first sin; and they had been of perfect
life for long, and differing in naught from the angels. Prayers,
tears, torturings of the flesh, all was vain to beguile that water
to flow again. Even processions; even burnt-offerings; even votive
candles to the Virgin, did fail every each of them; and all in
the land did marvel."
"How odd to find that even this industry has its financial panics,
and at times sees its assignats and greenbacks languish to zero,
and everything come to a standstill. Go on, Sandy."
"And so upon a time, after year and day, the good abbot made humble
surrender and destroyed the bath. And behold, His anger was in that
moment appeased, and the waters gushed richly forth again, and even
unto this day they have not ceased to flow in that generous measure."
"Then I take it nobody has washed since."
"He that would essay it could have his halter free; yes, and
swiftly would he need it, too."
"The community has prospered since?"
"Even from that very day. The fame of the miracle went abroad
into all lands. From every land came monks to join; they came
even as the fishes come, in shoals; and the monastery added building
to building, and yet others to these, and so spread wide its arms
and took them in. And nuns came, also; and more again, and yet
more; and built over against the monastery on the yon side of the
vale, and added building to building, until mighty was that nunnery.
And these were friendly unto those, and they joined their loving
labors together, and together they built a fair great foundling
asylum midway of the valley between."
"You spoke of some hermits, Sandy."
"These have gathered there from the ends of the earth. A hermit
thriveth best where there be multitudes of pilgrims. Ye shall not
find no hermit of no sort wanting. If any shall mention a hermit
of a kind he thinketh new and not to be found but in some far
strange land, let him but scratch among the holes and caves and
swamps that line that Valley of Holiness, and whatsoever be his
breed, it skills not, he shall find a sample of it there."
I closed up alongside of a burly fellow with a fat good-humored
face, purposing to make myself agreeable and pick up some further
crumbs of fact; but I had hardly more than scraped acquaintance
with him when he began eagerly and awkwardly to lead up, in the
immemorial way, to that same old anecdote--the one Sir Dinadan
told me, what time I got into trouble with Sir Sagramor and was
challenged of him on account of it. I excused myself and dropped
to the rear of the procession, sad at heart, willing to go hence
from this troubled life, this vale of tears, this brief day of
broken rest, of cloud and storm, of weary struggle and monotonous
defeat; and yet shrinking from the change, as remembering how long
eternity is, and how many have wended thither who know that anecdote.
Early in the afternoon we overtook another procession of pilgrims;
but in this one was no merriment, no jokes, no laughter, no playful
ways, nor any happy giddiness, whether of youth or age. Yet both
were here, both age and youth; gray old men and women, strong men
and women of middle age, young husbands, young wives, little boys
and girls, and three babies at the breast. Even the children were
smileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundred
people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness
which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with
despair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feet
and their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists;
and all except the children were also linked together in a file
six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collar
all down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped three
hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and ends
of food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in these
chains every night, bundled together like swine. They had upon
their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be
clothed. Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and
made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet were
torn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been a
hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold on
the trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried
a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into
several knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut the
shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and
straightened them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed his
desire without that. None of these poor creatures looked up as
we rode along by; they showed no consciousness of our presence.
And they made no sound but one; that was the dull and awful clank
of their chains from end to end of the long file, as forty-three
burdened feet rose and fell in unison. The file moved in a cloud
of its own making.
All these faces were gray with a coating of dust. One has seen
the like of this coating upon furniture in unoccupied houses, and
has written his idle thought in it with his finger. I was reminded
of this when I noticed the faces of some of those women, young
mothers carrying babes that were near to death and freedom, how
a something in their hearts was written in the dust upon their
faces, plain to see, and lord, how plain to read! for it was the
track of tears. One of these young mothers was but a girl, and
it hurt me to the heart to read that writing, and reflect that it
was come up out of the breast of such a child, a breast that ought
not to know trouble yet, but only the gladness of the morning of
life; and no doubt--
She reeled just then, giddy with fatigue, and down came the lash
and flicked a flake of skin from her naked shoulder. It stung me
as if I had been hit instead. The master halted the file and
jumped from his horse. He stormed and swore at this girl, and
said she had made annoyance enough with her laziness, and as this
was the last chance he should have, he would settle the account now.
She dropped on her knees and put up her hands and began to beg,
and cry, and implore, in a passion of terror, but the master gave
no attention. He snatched the child from her, and then made the
men-slaves who were chained before and behind her throw her on
the ground and hold her there and expose her body; and then he
laid on with his lash like a madman till her back was flayed, she
shrieking and struggling the while piteously. One of the men who
was holding her turned away his face, and for this humanity he was
reviled and flogged.
All our pilgrims looked on and commented--on the expert way in
which the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by lifelong
everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything
else in the exhibition that invited comment. This was what slavery
could do, in the way of ossifying what one may call the superior
lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kind-hearted people,
and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.
I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves free, but that
would not do. I must not interfere too much and get myself a name
for riding over the country's laws and the citizen's rights
roughshod. If I lived and prospered I would be the death of
slavery, that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so
that when I became its executioner it should be by command of
the nation.
Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now arrived a landed
proprietor who had bought this girl a few miles back, deliverable
here where her irons could be taken off. They were removed; then
there was a squabble between the gentleman and the dealer as to
which should pay the blacksmith. The moment the girl was delivered
from her irons, she flung herself, all tears and frantic sobbings,
into the arms of the slave who had turned away his face when she
was whipped. He strained her to his breast, and smothered her
face and the child's with kisses, and washed them with the rain
of his tears. I suspected. I inquired. Yes, I was right; it was
husband and wife. They had to be torn apart by force; the girl
had to be dragged away, and she struggled and fought and shrieked
like one gone mad till a turn of the road hid her from sight; and
even after that, we could still make out the fading plaint of those
receding shrieks. And the husband and father, with his wife and
child gone, never to be seen by him again in life?--well, the look
of him one might not bear at all, and so I turned away; but I knew
I should never get his picture out of my mind again, and there
it is to this day, to wring my heartstrings whenever I think of it.
We put up at the inn in a village just at nightfall, and when
I rose next morning and looked abroad, I was ware where a knight
came riding in the golden glory of the new day, and recognized him
for knight of mine--Sir Ozana le Cure Hardy. He was in the
gentlemen's furnishing line, and his missionarying specialty was
plug hats. He was clothed all in steel, in the beautifulest armor
of the time--up to where his helmet ought to have been; but he
hadn't any helmet, he wore a shiny stove-pipe hat, and was ridiculous
a spectacle as one might want to see. It was another of my
surreptitious schemes for extinguishing knighthood by making it
grotesque and absurd. Sir Ozana's saddle was hung about with
leather hat boxes, and every time he overcame a wandering knight
he swore him into my service and fitted him with a plug and made
him wear it. I dressed and ran down to welcome Sir Ozana and
get his news.
"How is trade?" I asked.
"Ye will note that I have but these four left; yet were they sixteen
whenas I got me from Camelot."
"Why, you have certainly done nobly, Sir Ozana. Where have you
been foraging of late?"
"I am but now come from the Valley of Holiness, please you sir."
"I am pointed for that place myself. Is there anything stirring
in the monkery, more than common?"
"By the mass ye may not question it!.... Give him good feed,
boy, and stint it not, an thou valuest thy crown; so get ye lightly
to the stable and do even as I bid.... Sir, it is parlous news
I bring, and--be these pilgrims? Then ye may not do better, good
folk, than gather and hear the tale I have to tell, sith it
concerneth you, forasmuch as ye go to find that ye will not find,
and seek that ye will seek in vain, my life being hostage for my
word, and my word and message being these, namely: That a hap
has happened whereof the like has not been seen no more but once
this two hundred years, which was the first and last time that
that said misfortune strake the holy valley in that form by
commandment of the Most High whereto by reasons just and causes
thereunto contributing, wherein the matter--"
"The miraculous fount hath ceased to flow!" This shout burst from
twenty pilgrim mouths at once.
"Ye say well, good people. I was verging to it, even when ye spake."
"Has somebody been washing again?"
"Nay, it is suspected, but none believe it. It is thought to be
some other sin, but none wit what."
"How are they feeling about the calamity?"
"None may describe it in words. The fount is these nine days dry.
The prayers that did begin then, and the lamentations in sackcloth
and ashes, and the holy processions, none of these have ceased
nor night nor day; and so the monks and the nuns and the foundlings
be all exhausted, and do hang up prayers writ upon parchment,
sith that no strength is left in man to lift up voice. And at last
they sent for thee, Sir Boss, to try magic and enchantment; and
if you could not come, then was the messenger to fetch Merlin,
and he is there these three days now, and saith he will fetch that
water though he burst the globe and wreck its kingdoms to accomplish
it; and right bravely doth he work his magic and call upon his
hellions to hie them hither and help, but not a whiff of moisture
hath he started yet, even so much as might qualify as mist upon
a copper mirror an ye count not the barrel of sweat he sweateth
betwixt sun and sun over the dire labors of his task; and if ye--"
Breakfast was ready. As soon as it was over I showed to Sir Ozana
these words which I had written on the inside of his hat: "Chemical
Department, Laboratory extension, Section G. Pxxp. Send two of
first size, two of No. 3, and six of No. 4, together with the proper
complementary details--and two of my trained assistants." And I said:
"Now get you to Camelot as fast as you can fly, brave knight, and
show the writing to Clarence, and tell him to have these required
matters in the Valley of Holiness with all possible dispatch."
"I will well, Sir Boss," and he was off.
CHAPTER XXII
THE HOLY FOUNTAIN
The pilgrims were human beings. Otherwise they would have acted
differently. They had come a long and difficult journey, and now
when the journey was nearly finished, and they learned that the main
thing they had come for had ceased to exist, they didn't do as
horses or cats or angle-worms would probably have done--turn back
and get at something profitable--no, anxious as they had before
been to see the miraculous fountain, they were as much as forty
times as anxious now to see the place where it had used to be.
There is no accounting for human beings.
We made good time; and a couple of hours before sunset we stood
upon the high confines of the Valley of Holiness, and our eyes
swept it from end to end and noted its features. That is, its
large features. These were the three masses of buildings. They
were distant and isolated temporalities shrunken to toy constructions
in the lonely waste of what seemed a desert--and was. Such a scene
is always mournful, it is so impressively still, and looks so
steeped in death. But there was a sound here which interrupted
the stillness only to add to its mournfulness; this was the faint
far sound of tolling bells which floated fitfully to us on the
passing breeze, and so faintly, so softly, that we hardly knew
whether we heard it with our ears or with our spirits.
We reached the monastery before dark, and there the males were
given lodging, but the women were sent over to the nunnery. The
bells were close at hand now, and their solemn booming smote
upon the ear like a message of doom. A superstitious despair
possessed the heart of every monk and published itself in his
ghastly face. Everywhere, these black-robed, soft-sandaled,
tallow-visaged specters appeared, flitted about and disappeared,
noiseless as the creatures of a troubled dream, and as uncanny.
The old abbot's joy to see me was pathetic. Even to tears; but
he did the shedding himself. He said:
"Delay not, son, but get to thy saving work. An we bring not
the water back again, and soon, we are ruined, and the good work
of two hundred years must end. And see thou do it with enchantments
that be holy, for the Church will not endure that work in her cause
be done by devil's magic."
"When I work, Father, be sure there will be no devil's work
connected with it. I shall use no arts that come of the devil,
and no elements not created by the hand of God. But is Merlin
working strictly on pious lines?"
"Ah, he said he would, my son, he said he would, and took oath
to make his promise good."
"Well, in that case, let him proceed."
"But surely you will not sit idle by, but help?"
"It will not answer to mix methods, Father; neither would it be
professional courtesy. Two of a trade must not underbid each
other. We might as well cut rates and be done with it; it would
arrive at that in the end. Merlin has the contract; no other
magician can touch it till he throws it up."
"But I will take it from him; it is a terrible emergency and the
act is thereby justified. And if it were not so, who will give
law to the Church? The Church giveth law to all; and what she
wills to do, that she may do, hurt whom it may. I will take it
from him; you shall begin upon the moment."
"It may not be, Father. No doubt, as you say, where power is
supreme, one can do as one likes and suffer no injury; but we poor
magicians are not so situated. Merlin is a very good magician
in a small way, and has quite a neat provincial reputation. He
is struggling along, doing the best he can, and it would not be
etiquette for me to take his job until he himself abandons it."
The abbot's face lighted.
"Ah, that is simple. There are ways to persuade him to abandon it."
"No-no, Father, it skills not, as these people say. If he were
persuaded against his will, he would load that well with a malicious
enchantment which would balk me until I found out its secret.
It might take a month. I could set up a little enchantment of
mine which I call the telephone, and he could not find out its
secret in a hundred years. Yes, you perceive, he might block me
for a month. Would you like to risk a month in a dry time like this?"
"A month! The mere thought of it maketh me to shudder. Have it
thy way, my son. But my heart is heavy with this disappointment.
Leave me, and let me wear my spirit with weariness and waiting,
even as I have done these ten long days, counterfeiting thus
the thing that is called rest, the prone body making outward sign
of repose where inwardly is none."
Of course, it would have been best, all round, for Merlin to waive
etiquette and quit and call it half a day, since he would never be
able to start that water, for he was a true magician of the time;
which is to say, the big miracles, the ones that gave him his
reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but
Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd
around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in
that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was
sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial
moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire
from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively
myself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot,
and that would take two or three days.
My presence gave the monks hope, and cheered them up a good deal;
insomuch that they ate a square meal that night for the first time
in ten days. As soon as their stomachs had been properly reinforced
with food, their spirits began to rise fast; when the mead began to
go round they rose faster. By the time everybody was half-seas over,
the holy community was in good shape to make a night of it; so we
stayed by the board and put it through on that line. Matters got
to be very jolly. Good old questionable stories were told that made
the tears run down and cavernous mouths stand wide and the round
bellies shake with laughter; and questionable songs were bellowed out
in a mighty chorus that drowned the boom of the tolling bells.
At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the success of it.
Not right off, of course, for the native of those islands does
not, as a rule, dissolve upon the early applications of a humorous
thing; but the fifth time I told it, they began to crack in places;
the eight time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth
repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth they
disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them up. This language
is figurative. Those islanders--well, they are slow pay at first,
in the matter of return for your investment of effort, but in the end
they make the pay of all other nations poor and small by contrast.
I was at the well next day betimes. Merlin was there, enchanting
away like a beaver, but not raising the moisture. He was not in
a pleasant humor; and every time I hinted that perhaps this contract
was a shade too hefty for a novice he unlimbered his tongue and
cursed like a bishop--French bishop of the Regency days, I mean.
Matters were about as I expected to find them. The "fountain" was
an ordinary well, it had been dug in the ordinary way, and stoned up
in the ordinary way. There was no miracle about it. Even the lie
that had created its reputation was not miraculous; I could have
told it myself, with one hand tied behind me. The well was in a
dark chamber which stood in the center of a cut-stone chapel, whose
walls were hung with pious pictures of a workmanship that would
have made a chromo feel good; pictures historically commemorative
of curative miracles which had been achieved by the waters when
nobody was looking. That is, nobody but angels; they are always
on deck when there is a miracle to the fore--so as to get put in
the picture, perhaps. Angels are as fond of that as a fire company;
look at the old masters.
The well-chamber was dimly lighted by lamps; the water was drawn
with a windlass and chain by monks, and poured into troughs which
delivered it into stone reservoirs outside in the chapel--when
there was water to draw, I mean--and none but monks could enter
the well-chamber. I entered it, for I had temporary authority
to do so, by courtesy of my professional brother and subordinate.
But he hadn't entered it himself. He did everything by incantations;
he never worked his intellect. If he had stepped in there and used
his eyes, instead of his disordered mind, he could have cured
the well by natural means, and then turned it into a miracle in
the customary way; but no, he was an old numskull, a magician who
believed in his own magic; and no magician can thrive who is
handicapped with a superstition like that.
I had an idea that the well had sprung a leak; that some of the
wall stones near the bottom had fallen and exposed fissures that
allowed the water to escape. I measured the chain--98 feet. Then
I called in a couple of monks, locked the door, took a candle, and
made them lower me in the bucket. When the chain was all paid out,
the candle confirmed my suspicion; a considerable section of the
wall was gone, exposing a good big fissure.
I almost regretted that my theory about the well's trouble was
correct, because I had another one that had a showy point or two
about it for a miracle. I remembered that in America, many
centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to
blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well
dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people most
nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite
bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was
plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot have
everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to
be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his
mind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no
hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too.
When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down
a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there
was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:
"How deep is the well?"
"That, sir, I wit not, having never been told."
"How does the water usually stand in it?"
"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth,
brought down to us through our predecessors."
It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witness
to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty
feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn
and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other
time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and
mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had
discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed
the well would flow again. The leak had befallen again now, and
these children would have prayed, and processioned, and tolled
their bells for heavenly succor till they all dried up and blew
away, and no innocent of them all would ever have thought to drop
a fish-line into the well or go down in it and find out what was
really the matter. Old habit of mind is one of the toughest things
to get away from in the world. It transmits itself like physical
form and feature; and for a man, in those days, to have had an idea
that his ancestors hadn't had, would have brought him under suspicion
of being illegitimate. I said to the monk:
"It is a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we
will try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a very
passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may
not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that should
be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do _this_ kind of
miracle knows enough to keep hotel."
"Hotel? I mind not to have heard--"
"Of hotel? It's what you call hostel. The man that can do this
miracle can keep hostel. I can do this miracle; I shall do this
miracle; yet I do not try to conceal from you that it is a miracle
to tax the occult powers to the last strain."
"None knoweth that truth better than the brotherhood, indeed; for
it is of record that aforetime it was parlous difficult and took
a year. Natheless, God send you good success, and to that end
will we pray."
As a matter of business it was a good idea to get the notion around
that the thing was difficult. Many a small thing has been made
large by the right kind of advertising. That monk was filled up
with the difficulty of this enterprise; he would fill up the others.
In two days the solicitude would be booming.
On my way home at noon, I met Sandy. She had been sampling the
hermits. I said:
"I would like to do that myself. This is Wednesday. Is there
a matinee?"
"A which, please you, sir?"
"Matinee. Do they keep open afternoons?"
"Who?"
"The hermits, of course."
"Keep open?"
"Yes, keep open. Isn't that plain enough? Do they knock off at noon?"
"Knock off?"
"Knock off?--yes, knock off. What is the matter with knock off?
I never saw such a dunderhead; can't you understand anything at all?
In plain terms, do they shut up shop, draw the game, bank the fires--"
"Shut up shop, draw--"
"There, never mind, let it go; you make me tired. You can't seem
to understand the simplest thing."
"I would I might please thee, sir, and it is to me dole and sorrow
that I fail, albeit sith I am but a simple damsel and taught of
none, being from the cradle unbaptized in those deep waters of
learning that do anoint with a sovereignty him that partaketh of
that most noble sacrament, investing him with reverend state to
the mental eye of the humble mortal who, by bar and lack of that
great consecration seeth in his own unlearned estate but a symbol
of that other sort of lack and loss which men do publish to the
pitying eye with sackcloth trappings whereon the ashes of grief
do lie bepowdered and bestrewn, and so, when such shall in the
darkness of his mind encounter these golden phrases of high mystery,
these shut-up-shops, and draw-the-game, and bank-the-fires, it is
but by the grace of God that he burst not for envy of the mind that
can beget, and tongue that can deliver so great and mellow-sounding
miracles of speech, and if there do ensue confusion in that humbler
mind, and failure to divine the meanings of these wonders, then
if so be this miscomprehension is not vain but sooth and true,
wit ye well it is the very substance of worshipful dear homage and
may not lightly be misprized, nor had been, an ye had noted this
complexion of mood and mind and understood that that I would
I could not, and that I could not I might not, nor yet nor might
_nor_ could, nor might-not nor could-not, might be by advantage
turned to the desired _would_, and so I pray you mercy of my fault,
and that ye will of your kindness and your charity forgive it, good
my master and most dear lord."
I couldn't make it all out--that is, the details--but I got the
general idea; and enough of it, too, to be ashamed. It was not
fair to spring those nineteenth century technicalities upon the
untutored infant of the sixth and then rail at her because she
couldn't get their drift; and when she was making the honest best
drive at it she could, too, and no fault of hers that she couldn't
fetch the home plate; and so I apologized. Then we meandered
pleasantly away toward the hermit holes in sociable converse
together, and better friends than ever.
I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence
for this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station
and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless
transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that
I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German
Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she
began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took
the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words
had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the
German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a
mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war,
she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary
German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see
of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his
verb in his mouth.
We drifted from hermit to hermit all the afternoon. It was a most
strange menagerie. The chief emulation among them seemed to be,
to see which could manage to be the uncleanest and most prosperous
with vermin. Their manner and attitudes were the last expression
of complacent self-righteousness. It was one anchorite's pride
to lie naked in the mud and let the insects bite him and blister
him unmolested; it was another's to lean against a rock, all day
long, conspicuous to the admiration of the throng of pilgrims
and pray; it was another's to go naked and crawl around on all fours;
it was another's to drag about with him, year in and year out,
eighty pounds of iron; it was another's to never lie down when
he slept, but to stand among the thorn-bushes and snore when there
were pilgrims around to look; a woman, who had the white hair of
age, and no other apparel, was black from crown to heel with
forty-seven years of holy abstinence from water. Groups of gazing
pilgrims stood around all and every of these strange objects, lost
in reverent wonder, and envious of the fleckless sanctity which
these pious austerities had won for them from an exacting heaven.
By and by we went to see one of the supremely great ones. He was
a mighty celebrity; his fame had penetrated all Christendom; the
noble and the renowned journeyed from the remotest lands on the globe
to pay him reverence. His stand was in the center of the widest part
of the valley; and it took all that space to hold his crowds.
His stand was a pillar sixty feet high, with a broad platform on
the top of it. He was now doing what he had been doing every day
for twenty years up there--bowing his body ceaselessly and rapidly
almost to his feet. It was his way of praying. I timed him with a
stop watch, and he made 1,244 revolutions in 24 minutes and
46 seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste.
It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal
movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some
day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing
machine with it. I afterward carried out that scheme, and got
five years' good service out of him; in which time he turned out
upward of eighteen thousand first-rate tow-linen shirts, which
was ten a day. I worked him Sundays and all; he was going, Sundays,
the same as week days, and it was no use to waste the power.
These shirts cost me nothing but just the mere trifle for the
materials--I furnished those myself, it would not have been right
to make him do that--and they sold like smoke to pilgrims at a
dollar and a half apiece, which was the price of fifty cows or
a blooded race horse in Arthurdom. They were regarded as a perfect
protection against sin, and advertised as such by my knights
everywhere, with the paint-pot and stencil-plate; insomuch that
there was not a cliff or a bowlder or a dead wall in England but
you could read on it at a mile distance:
"Buy the only genuine St. Stylite; patronized by the Nobility.
Patent applied for."
There was more money in the business than one knew what to do with.
As it extended, I brought out a line of goods suitable for kings,
and a nobby thing for duchesses and that sort, with ruffles down
the forehatch and the running-gear clewed up with a featherstitch
to leeward and then hauled aft with a back-stay and triced up with
a half-turn in the standing rigging forward of the weather-gaskets.
Yes, it was a daisy.
But about that time I noticed that the motive power had taken to
standing on one leg, and I found that there was something the matter
with the other one; so I stocked the business and unloaded, taking
Sir Bors de Ganis into camp financially along with certain of his
friends; for the works stopped within a year, and the good saint
got him to his rest. But he had earned it. I can say that for him.
When I saw him that first time--however, his personal condition
will not quite bear description here. You can read it in the
Lives of the Saints.*
[*All the details concerning the hermits, in this chapter, are from
Lecky--but greatly modified. This book not being a history but
only a tale, the majority of the historian's frank details were too
strong for reproduction in it.--_Editor_]
CHAPTER XXIII
RESTORATION OF THE FOUNTAIN
Saturday noon I went to the well and looked on a while. Merlin
was still burning smoke-powders, and pawing the air, and muttering
gibberish as hard as ever, but looking pretty down-hearted, for
of course he had not started even a perspiration in that well yet.
Finally I said:
"How does the thing promise by this time, partner?"
"Behold, I am even now busied with trial of the powerfulest
enchantment known to the princes of the occult arts in the lands
of the East; an it fail me, naught can avail. Peace, until I finish."
He raised a smoke this time that darkened all the region, and must
have made matters uncomfortable for the hermits, for the wind
was their way, and it rolled down over their dens in a dense and
billowy fog. He poured out volumes of speech to match, and contorted
his body and sawed the air with his hands in a most extraordinary
way. At the end of twenty minutes he dropped down panting, and
about exhausted. Now arrived the abbot and several hundred monks
and nuns, and behind them a multitude of pilgrims and a couple of
acres of foundlings, all drawn by the prodigious smoke, and all
in a grand state of excitement. The abbot inquired anxiously for
results. Merlin said:
"If any labor of mortal might break the spell that binds these
waters, this which I have but just essayed had done it. It has
failed; whereby I do now know that that which I had feared is
a truth established; the sign of this failure is, that the most
potent spirit known to the magicians of the East, and whose name
none may utter and live, has laid his spell upon this well. The
mortal does not breathe, nor ever will, who can penetrate the secret
of that spell, and without that secret none can break it. The
water will flow no more forever, good Father. I have done what
man could. Suffer me to go."
Of course this threw the abbot into a good deal of a consternation.
He turned to me with the signs of it in his face, and said:
"Ye have heard him. Is it true?"
"Part of it is."
"Not all, then, not all! What part is true?"
"That that spirit with the Russian name has put his spell
upon the well."
"God's wounds, then are we ruined!"
"Possibly."
"But not certainly? Ye mean, not certainly?"
"That is it."
"Wherefore, ye also mean that when he saith none can break the spell--"
"Yes, when he says that, he says what isn't necessarily true.
There are conditions under which an effort to break it may have
some chance--that is, some small, some trifling chance--of success."
"The conditions--"
"Oh, they are nothing difficult. Only these: I want the well
and the surroundings for the space of half a mile, entirely to
myself from sunset to-day until I remove the ban--and nobody
allowed to cross the ground but by my authority."
"Are these all?"
"Yes."
"And you have no fear to try?"
"Oh, none. One may fail, of course; and one may also succeed.
One can try, and I am ready to chance it. I have my conditions?"
"These and all others ye may name. I will issue commandment
to that effect."
"Wait," said Merlin, with an evil smile. "Ye wit that he that
would break this spell must know that spirit's name?"
"Yes, I know his name."
"And wit you also that to know it skills not of itself, but ye
must likewise pronounce it? Ha-ha! Knew ye that?"
"Yes, I knew that, too."
"You had that knowledge! Art a fool? Are ye minded to utter
that name and die?"
"Utter it? Why certainly. I would utter it if it was Welsh."
"Ye are even a dead man, then; and I go to tell Arthur."
"That's all right. Take your gripsack and get along. The thing
for _you_ to do is to go home and work the weather, John W. Merlin."
It was a home shot, and it made him wince; for he was the worst
weather-failure in the kingdom. Whenever he ordered up the
danger-signals along the coast there was a week's dead calm, sure,
and every time he prophesied fair weather it rained brickbats.
But I kept him in the weather bureau right along, to undermine
his reputation. However, that shot raised his bile, and instead
of starting home to report my death, he said he would remain
and enjoy it.
My two experts arrived in the evening, and pretty well fagged,
for they had traveled double tides. They had pack-mules along,
and had brought everything I needed--tools, pump, lead pipe,
Greek fire, sheaves of big rockets, roman candles, colored fire
sprays, electric apparatus, and a lot of sundries--everything
necessary for the stateliest kind of a miracle. They got their
supper and a nap, and about midnight we sallied out through a
solitude so wholly vacant and complete that it quite overpassed
the required conditions. We took possession of the well and its
surroundings. My boys were experts in all sorts of things, from
the stoning up of a well to the constructing of a mathematical
instrument. An hour before sunrise we had that leak mended in
ship-shape fashion, and the water began to rise. Then we stowed our
fireworks in the chapel, locked up the place, and went home to bed.
Before the noon mass was over, we were at the well again; for there
was a deal to do yet, and I was determined to spring the miracle
before midnight, for business reasons: for whereas a miracle
worked for the Church on a week-day is worth a good deal, it is
worth six times as much if you get it in on a Sunday. In nine hours
the water had risen to its customary level--that is to say, it was
within twenty-three feet of the top. We put in a little iron pump,
one of the first turned out by my works near the capital; we bored
into a stone reservoir which stood against the outer wall of the
well-chamber and inserted a section of lead pipe that was long
enough to reach to the door of the chapel and project beyond
the threshold, where the gushing water would be visible to the
two hundred and fifty acres of people I was intending should be
present on the flat plain in front of this little holy hillock at
the proper time.
We knocked the head out of an empty hogshead and hoisted this
hogshead to the flat roof of the chapel, where we clamped it down
fast, poured in gunpowder till it lay loosely an inch deep on the
bottom, then we stood up rockets in the hogshead as thick as they
could loosely stand, all the different breeds of rockets there are;
and they made a portly and imposing sheaf, I can tell you. We
grounded the wire of a pocket electrical battery in that powder,
we placed a whole magazine of Greek fire on each corner of the
roof--blue on one corner, green on another, red on another, and
purple on the last--and grounded a wire in each.
About two hundred yards off, in the flat, we built a pen of
scantlings, about four feet high, and laid planks on it, and so
made a platform. We covered it with swell tapestries borrowed
for the occasion, and topped it off with the abbot's own throne.
When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want
to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the
properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters
comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose
and play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of
these things, for I know human nature. You can't throw too much
style into a miracle. It costs trouble, and work, and sometimes
money; but it pays in the end. Well, we brought the wires to
the ground at the chapel, and then brought them under the ground
to the platform, and hid the batteries there. We put a rope fence
a hundred feet square around the platform to keep off the common
multitude, and that finished the work. My idea was, doors open
at 10:30, performance to begin at 11:25 sharp. I wished I could
charge admission, but of course that wouldn't answer. I instructed
my boys to be in the chapel as early as 10, before anybody was
around, and be ready to man the pumps at the proper time, and
make the fur fly. Then we went home to supper.
The news of the disaster to the well had traveled far by this time;
and now for two or three days a steady avalanche of people had
been pouring into the valley. The lower end of the valley was
become one huge camp; we should have a good house, no question
about that. Criers went the rounds early in the evening and
announced the coming attempt, which put every pulse up to fever
heat. They gave notice that the abbot and his official suite would
move in state and occupy the platform at 10:30, up to which time
all the region which was under my ban must be clear; the bells
would then cease from tolling, and this sign should be permission
to the multitudes to close in and take their places.
I was at the platform and all ready to do the honors when the
abbot's solemn procession hove in sight--which it did not do till
it was nearly to the rope fence, because it was a starless black
night and no torches permitted. With it came Merlin, and took
a front seat on the platform; he was as good as his word for once.
One could not see the multitudes banked together beyond the ban,
but they were there, just the same. The moment the bells stopped,
those banked masses broke and poured over the line like a vast
black wave, and for as much as a half hour it continued to flow,
and then it solidified itself, and you could have walked upon
a pavement of human heads to--well, miles.
We had a solemn stage-wait, now, for about twenty minutes--a thing
I had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience
have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the
silence a noble Latin chant--men's voices--broke and swelled up
and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had
put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented.
When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my
hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted--that always
produces a dead hush--and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word
with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and
many women to faint:
"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmachersgesellschafft!"
Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched
off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of
people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense
--that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit
in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot
and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered
with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished
clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin
with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted
my hands and groaned out this word--as it were in agony:
"Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchenssprengungsattentaetsversuchungen!"
--and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic
of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue!
After sixty seconds I shouted:
"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthiertreibertrauungsthraenen-
tragoedie!"
--and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds this
time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating
syllables of this word of words:
"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmuttermarmormonumentenmacher!"
--and whirled on the purple glare! There they were, all going
at once, red, blue, green, purple!--four furious volcanoes pouring
vast clouds of radiant smoke aloft, and spreading a blinding
rainbowed noonday to the furthest confines of that valley. In
the distance one could see that fellow on the pillar standing rigid
against the background of sky, his seesaw stopped for the first
time in twenty years. I knew the boys were at the pump now and
ready. So I said to the abbot:
"The time is come, Father. I am about to pronounce the dread name
and command the spell to dissolve. You want to brace up, and take
hold of something." Then I shouted to the people: "Behold, in
another minute the spell will be broken, or no mortal can break it.
If it break, all will know it, for you will see the sacred water
gush from the chapel door!"
I stood a few moments, to let the hearers have a chance to spread
my announcement to those who couldn't hear, and so convey it
to the furthest ranks, then I made a grand exhibition of extra
posturing and gesturing, and shouted:
"Lo, I command the fell spirit that possesses the holy fountain
to now disgorge into the skies all the infernal fires that still
remain in him, and straightway dissolve his spell and flee hence
to the pit, there to lie bound a thousand years. By his own dread
name I command it--BGWJJILLIGKKK!"
Then I touched off the hogshead of rockets, and a vast fountain of
dazzling lances of fire vomited itself toward the zenith with a
hissing rush, and burst in mid-sky into a storm of flashing jewels!
One mighty groan of terror started up from the massed people
--then suddenly broke into a wild hosannah of joy--for there, fair
and plain in the uncanny glare, they saw the freed water leaping
forth! The old abbot could not speak a word, for tears and the
chokings in his throat; without utterance of any sort, he folded me
in his arms and mashed me. It was more eloquent than speech.
And harder to get over, too, in a country where there were really
no doctors that were worth a damaged nickel.
You should have seen those acres of people throw themselves down
in that water and kiss it; kiss it, and pet it, and fondle it, and
talk to it as if it were alive, and welcome it back with the dear
names they gave their darlings, just as if it had been a friend who
was long gone away and lost, and was come home again. Yes, it was
pretty to see, and made me think more of them than I had done before.
I sent Merlin home on a shutter. He had caved in and gone down
like a landslide when I pronounced that fearful name, and had
never come to since. He never had heard that name before,--neither
had I--but to him it was the right one. Any jumble would have
been the right one. He admitted, afterward, that that spirit's own
mother could not have pronounced that name better than I did.
He never could understand how I survived it, and I didn't tell
him. It is only young magicians that give away a secret like that.
Merlin spent three months working enchantments to try to find out
the deep trick of how to pronounce that name and outlive it.
But he didn't arrive.
When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back
reverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind
of a superior being--and I was. I was aware of that. I took along
a night shift of monks, and taught them the mystery of the pump,
and set them to work, for it was plain that a good part of the
people out there were going to sit up with the water all night,
consequently it was but right that they should have all they wanted
of it. To those monks that pump was a good deal of a miracle
itself, and they were full of wonder over it; and of admiration,
too, of the exceeding effectiveness of its performance.
It was a great night, an immense night. There was reputation in it.
I could hardly get to sleep for glorying over it.
CHAPTER XXIV
A RIVAL MAGICIAN
My influence in the Valley of Holiness was something prodigious
now. It seemed worth while to try to turn it to some valuable
account. The thought came to me the next morning, and was suggested
by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come
riding in. According to history, the monks of this place two
centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash.
It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still
remaining. So I sounded a Brother:
"Wouldn't you like a bath?"
He shuddered at the thought--the thought of the peril of it to
the well--but he said with feeling:
"One needs not to ask that of a poor body who has not known that
blessed refreshment sith that he was a boy. Would God I might
wash me! but it may not be, fair sir, tempt me not; it is forbidden."
And then he sighed in such a sorrowful way that I was resolved
he should have at least one layer of his real estate removed,
if it sized up my whole influence and bankrupted the pile. So I
went to the abbot and asked for a permit for this Brother. He
blenched at the idea--I don't mean that you could see him blench,
for of course you couldn't see it without you scraped him, and
I didn't care enough about it to scrape him, but I knew the blench
was there, just the same, and within a book-cover's thickness of
the surface, too--blenched, and trembled. He said:
"Ah, son, ask aught else thou wilt, and it is thine, and freely
granted out of a grateful heart--but this, oh, this! Would you
drive away the blessed water again?"
"No, Father, I will not drive it away. I have mysterious knowledge
which teaches me that there was an error that other time when
it was thought the institution of the bath banished the fountain."
A large interest began to show up in the old man's face. "My
knowledge informs me that the bath was innocent of that misfortune,
which was caused by quite another sort of sin."
"These are brave words--but--but right welcome, if they be true."
"They are true, indeed. Let me build the bath again, Father.
Let me build it again, and the fountain shall flow forever."
"You promise this?--you promise it? Say the word--say you promise it!"
"I do promise it."
"Then will I have the first bath myself! Go--get ye to your work.
Tarry not, tarry not, but go."
I and my boys were at work, straight off. The ruins of the old
bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone
missing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and
avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. In two days we
had it all done and the water in--a spacious pool of clear pure
water that a body could swim in. It was running water, too.
It came in, and went out, through the ancient pipes. The old abbot
kept his word, and was the first to try it. He went down black
and shaky, leaving the whole black community above troubled and
worried and full of bodings; but he came back white and joyful,
and the game was made! another triumph scored.
It was a good campaign that we made in that Valley of Holiness,
and I was very well satisfied, and ready to move on now, but
I struck a disappointment. I caught a heavy cold, and it started
up an old lurking rheumatism of mine. Of course the rheumatism
hunted up my weakest place and located itself there. This was
the place where the abbot put his arms about me and mashed me, what
time he was moved to testify his gratitude to me with an embrace.
When at last I got out, I was a shadow. But everybody was full
of attentions and kindnesses, and these brought cheer back into
my life, and were the right medicine to help a convalescent swiftly
up toward health and strength again; so I gained fast.
Sandy was worn out with nursing; so I made up my mind to turn out
and go a cruise alone, leaving her at the nunnery to rest up.
My idea was to disguise myself as a freeman of peasant degree
and wander through the country a week or two on foot. This would
give me a chance to eat and lodge with the lowliest and poorest
class of free citizens on equal terms. There was no other way
to inform myself perfectly of their everyday life and the operation
of the laws upon it. If I went among them as a gentleman, there
would be restraints and conventionalities which would shut me out
from their private joys and troubles, and I should get no further
than the outside shell.
One morning I was out on a long walk to get up muscle for my trip,
and had climbed the ridge which bordered the northern extremity
of the valley, when I came upon an artificial opening in the face
of a low precipice, and recognized it by its location as a hermitage
which had often been pointed out to me from a distance as the den
of a hermit of high renown for dirt and austerity. I knew he had
lately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lions
and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and
difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought
I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed
with its reputation.
My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured.
Then there was another surprise. Back in the gloom of the cavern
I heard the clink of a little bell, and then this exclamation:
"Hello Central! Is this you, Camelot?--Behold, thou mayst glad
thy heart an thou hast faith to believe the wonderful when that
it cometh in unexpected guise and maketh itself manifest in
impossible places--here standeth in the flesh his mightiness
The Boss, and with thine own ears shall ye hear him speak!"
Now what a radical reversal of things this was; what a jumbling
together of extravagant incongruities; what a fantastic conjunction
of opposites and irreconcilables--the home of the bogus miracle
become the home of a real one, the den of a mediaeval hermit turned
into a telephone office!
The telephone clerk stepped into the light, and I recognized one
of my young fellows. I said:
"How long has this office been established here, Ulfius?"
"But since midnight, fair Sir Boss, an it please you. We saw many
lights in the valley, and so judged it well to make a station,
for that where so many lights be needs must they indicate a town
of goodly size."
"Quite right. It isn't a town in the customary sense, but it's
a good stand, anyway. Do you know where you are?"
"Of that I have had no time to make inquiry; for whenas my
comradeship moved hence upon their labors, leaving me in charge,
I got me to needed rest, purposing to inquire when I waked, and
report the place's name to Camelot for record."
"Well, this is the Valley of Holiness."
It didn't take; I mean, he didn't start at the name, as I had
supposed he would. He merely said:
"I will so report it."
"Why, the surrounding regions are filled with the noise of late
wonders that have happened here! You didn't hear of them?"
"Ah, ye will remember we move by night, and avoid speech with all.
We learn naught but that we get by the telephone from Camelot."
"Why _they_ know all about this thing. Haven't they told you anything
about the great miracle of the restoration of a holy fountain?"
"Oh, _that_? Indeed yes. But the name of _this_ valley doth woundily
differ from the name of _that_ one; indeed to differ wider were not pos--"
"What was that name, then?"
"The Valley of Hellishness."
"_That_ explains it. Confound a telephone, anyway. It is the very
demon for conveying similarities of sound that are miracles of
divergence from similarity of sense. But no matter, you know
the name of the place now. Call up Camelot."
He did it, and had Clarence sent for. It was good to hear my boy's
voice again. It was like being home. After some affectionate
interchanges, and some account of my late illness, I said:
"What is new?"
"The king and queen and many of the court do start even in this
hour, to go to your valley to pay pious homage to the waters ye
have restored, and cleanse themselves of sin, and see the place
where the infernal spirit spouted true hell-flames to the clouds
--an ye listen sharply ye may hear me wink and hear me likewise
smile a smile, sith 'twas I that made selection of those flames
from out our stock and sent them by your order."
"Does the king know the way to this place?"
"The king?--no, nor to any other in his realms, mayhap; but the lads
that holp you with your miracle will be his guide and lead the way,
and appoint the places for rests at noons and sleeps at night."
"This will bring them here--when?"
"Mid-afternoon, or later, the third day."
"Anything else in the way of news?"
"The king hath begun the raising of the standing army ye suggested
to him; one regiment is complete and officered."
"The mischief! I wanted a main hand in that myself. There is
only one body of men in the kingdom that are fitted to officer
a regular army."
"Yes--and now ye will marvel to know there's not so much as one
West Pointer in that regiment."
"What are you talking about? Are you in earnest?"
"It is truly as I have said."
"Why, this makes me uneasy. Who were chosen, and what was the
method? Competitive examination?"
"Indeed, I know naught of the method. I but know this--these
officers be all of noble family, and are born--what is it you
call it?--chuckleheads."
"There's something wrong, Clarence."
"Comfort yourself, then; for two candidates for a lieutenancy do
travel hence with the king--young nobles both--and if you but wait
where you are you will hear them questioned."
"That is news to the purpose. I will get one West Pointer in,
anyway. Mount a man and send him to that school with a message;
let him kill horses, if necessary, but he must be there before
sunset to-night and say--"
"There is no need. I have laid a ground wire to the school.
Prithee let me connect you with it."
It sounded good! In this atmosphere of telephones and lightning
communication with distant regions, I was breathing the breath
of life again after long suffocation. I realized, then, what a
creepy, dull, inanimate horror this land had been to me all these
years, and how I had been in such a stifled condition of mind as
to have grown used to it almost beyond the power to notice it.
I gave my order to the superintendent of the Academy personally.
I also asked him to bring me some paper and a fountain pen and
a box or so of safety matches. I was getting tired of doing
without these conveniences. I could have them now, as I wasn't
going to wear armor any more at present, and therefore could get
at my pockets.
When I got back to the monastery, I found a thing of interest
going on. The abbot and his monks were assembled in the great
hall, observing with childish wonder and faith the performances
of a new magician, a fresh arrival. His dress was the extreme of
the fantastic; as showy and foolish as the sort of thing an Indian
medicine-man wears. He was mowing, and mumbling, and gesticulating,
and drawing mystical figures in the air and on the floor,--the
regular thing, you know. He was a celebrity from Asia--so he
said, and that was enough. That sort of evidence was as good
as gold, and passed current everywhere.
How easy and cheap it was to be a great magician on this fellow's
terms. His specialty was to tell you what any individual on the
face of the globe was doing at the moment; and what he had done
at any time in the past, and what he would do at any time in the
future. He asked if any would like to know what the Emperor of
the East was doing now? The sparkling eyes and the delighted rubbing
of hands made eloquent answer--this reverend crowd _would_ like to
know what that monarch was at, just as this moment. The fraud
went through some more mummery, and then made grave announcement:
"The high and mighty Emperor of the East doth at this moment put
money in the palm of a holy begging friar--one, two, three pieces,
and they be all of silver."
A buzz of admiring exclamations broke out, all around:
"It is marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "What study, what labor, to have
acquired a so amazing power as this!"
Would they like to know what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing?
Yes. He told them what the Supreme Lord of Inde was doing. Then
he told them what the Sultan of Egypt was at; also what the King
of the Remote Seas was about. And so on and so on; and with each
new marvel the astonishment at his accuracy rose higher and higher.
They thought he must surely strike an uncertain place some time;
but no, he never had to hesitate, he always knew, and always with
unerring precision. I saw that if this thing went on I should lose
my supremacy, this fellow would capture my following, I should
be left out in the cold. I must put a cog in his wheel, and do it
right away, too. I said:
"If I might ask, I should very greatly like to know what a certain
person is doing."
"Speak, and freely. I will tell you."
"It will be difficult--perhaps impossible."
"My art knoweth not that word. The more difficult it is, the more
certainly will I reveal it to you."
You see, I was working up the interest. It was getting pretty
high, too; you could see that by the craning necks all around,
and the half-suspended breathing. So now I climaxed it:
"If you make no mistake--if you tell me truly what I want to
know--I will give you two hundred silver pennies."
"The fortune is mine! I will tell you what you would know."
"Then tell me what I am doing with my right hand."
"Ah-h!" There was a general gasp of surprise. It had not occurred
to anybody in the crowd--that simple trick of inquiring about
somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away. The magician was
hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his
experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet
it. He looked stunned, confused; he couldn't say a word. "Come,"
I said, "what are you waiting for? Is it possible you can answer up,
right off, and tell what anybody on the other side of the earth is
doing, and yet can't tell what a person is doing who isn't three
yards from you? Persons behind me know what I am doing with my
right hand--they will indorse you if you tell correctly." He was
still dumb. "Very well, I'll tell you why you don't speak up and
tell; it is because you don't know. _You_ a magician! Good friends,
this tramp is a mere fraud and liar."
This distressed the monks and terrified them. They were not used
to hearing these awful beings called names, and they did not know
what might be the consequence. There was a dead silence now;
superstitious bodings were in every mind. The magician began to
pull his wits together, and when he presently smiled an easy,
nonchalant smile, it spread a mighty relief around; for it indicated
that his mood was not destructive. He said:
"It hath struck me speechless, the frivolity of this person's
speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not,
that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with
the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born
in the purple and them only. Had ye asked me what Arthur the great
king is doing, it were another matter, and I had told ye; but the
doings of a subject interest me not."
"Oh, I misunderstood you. I thought you said 'anybody,' and so
I supposed 'anybody' included--well, anybody; that is, everybody."
"It doth--anybody that is of lofty birth; and the better if
he be royal."
"That, it meseemeth, might well be," said the abbot, who saw his
opportunity to smooth things and avert disaster, "for it were not
likely that so wonderful a gift as this would be conferred for
the revelation of the concerns of lesser beings than such as be
born near to the summits of greatness. Our Arthur the king--"
"Would you know of him?" broke in the enchanter.
"Most gladly, yea, and gratefully."
Everybody was full of awe and interest again right away, the
incorrigible idiots. They watched the incantations absorbingly,
and looked at me with a "There, now, what can you say to that?"
air, when the announcement came:
"The king is weary with the chase, and lieth in his palace these
two hours sleeping a dreamless sleep."
"God's benison upon him!" said the abbot, and crossed himself;
"may that sleep be to the refreshment of his body and his soul."
"And so it might be, if he were sleeping," I said, "but the king
is not sleeping, the king rides."
Here was trouble again--a conflict of authority. Nobody knew which
of us to believe; I still had some reputation left. The magician's
scorn was stirred, and he said:
"Lo, I have seen many wonderful soothsayers and prophets and
magicians in my life days, but none before that could sit idle and
see to the heart of things with never an incantation to help."
"You have lived in the woods, and lost much by it. I use incantations
myself, as this good brotherhood are aware--but only on occasions
of moment."
When it comes to sarcasming, I reckon I know how to keep my end up.
That jab made this fellow squirm. The abbot inquired after the
queen and the court, and got this information:
"They be all on sleep, being overcome by fatigue, like as to the king."
I said:
"That is merely another lie. Half of them are about their amusements,
the queen and the other half are not sleeping, they ride. Now
perhaps you can spread yourself a little, and tell us where the king
and queen and all that are this moment riding with them are going?"
"They sleep now, as I said; but on the morrow they will ride,
for they go a journey toward the sea."
"And where will they be the day after to-morrow at vespers?"
"Far to the north of Camelot, and half their journey will be done."
"That is another lie, by the space of a hundred and fifty miles.
Their journey will not be merely half done, it will be all done,
and they will be _here_, in this valley."
_That_ was a noble shot! It set the abbot and the monks in a whirl
of excitement, and it rocked the enchanter to his base. I followed
the thing right up:
"If the king does not arrive, I will have myself ridden on a rail:
if he does I will ride you on a rail instead."
Next day I went up to the telephone office and found that the king
had passed through two towns that were on the line. I spotted
his progress on the succeeding day in the same way. I kept these
matters to myself. The third day's reports showed that if he
kept up his gait he would arrive by four in the afternoon. There
was still no sign anywhere of interest in his coming; there seemed
to be no preparations making to receive him in state; a strange
thing, truly. Only one thing could explain this: that other
magician had been cutting under me, sure. This was true. I asked
a friend of mine, a monk, about it, and he said, yes, the magician
had tried some further enchantments and found out that the court
had concluded to make no journey at all, but stay at home. Think
of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country.
These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in
history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive
value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer
who could offer no evidence of his powers but his mere unproven word.
However, it was not good politics to let the king come without
any fuss and feathers at all, so I went down and drummed up a
procession of pilgrims and smoked out a batch of hermits and
started them out at two o'clock to meet him. And that was the
sort of state he arrived in. The abbot was helpless with rage
and humiliation when I brought him out on a balcony and showed
him the head of the state marching in and never a monk on hand to
offer him welcome, and no stir of life or clang of joy-bell to glad
his spirit. He took one look and then flew to rouse out his forces.
The next minute the bells were dinning furiously, and the various
buildings were vomiting monks and nuns, who went swarming in a
rush toward the coming procession; and with them went that magician
--and he was on a rail, too, by the abbot's order; and his reputation
was in the mud, and mine was in the sky again. Yes, a man can
keep his trademark current in such a country, but he can't sit
around and do it; he has got to be on deck and attending to business
right along.
CHAPTER XXV
A COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION
When the king traveled for change of air, or made a progress, or
visited a distant noble whom he wished to bankrupt with the cost
of his keep, part of the administration moved with him. It was
a fashion of the time. The Commission charged with the examination
of candidates for posts in the army came with the king to the
Valley, whereas they could have transacted their business just
as well at home. And although this expedition was strictly a
holiday excursion for the king, he kept some of his business
functions going just the same. He touched for the evil, as usual;
he held court in the gate at sunrise and tried cases, for he was
himself Chief Justice of the King's Bench.
He shone very well in this latter office. He was a wise and humane
judge, and he clearly did his honest best and fairest,--according
to his lights. That is a large reservation. His lights--I mean
his rearing--often colored his decisions. Whenever there was a
dispute between a noble or gentleman and a person of lower degree,
the king's leanings and sympathies were for the former class always,
whether he suspected it or not. It was impossible that this should
be otherwise. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's
moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a
privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders
under another name. This has a harsh sound, and yet should not
be offensive to any--even to the noble himself--unless the fact
itself be an offense: for the statement simply formulates a fact.
The repulsive feature of slavery is the _thing_, not its name. One
needs but to hear an aristocrat speak of the classes that are below
him to recognize--and in but indifferently modified measure
--the very air and tone of the actual slaveholder; and behind these
are the slaveholder's spirit, the slaveholder's blunted feeling.
They are the result of the same cause in both cases: the possessor's
old and inbred custom of regarding himself as a superior being.
The king's judgments wrought frequent injustices, but it was merely
the fault of his training, his natural and unalterable sympathies.
He was as unfitted for a judgeship as would be the average mother
for the position of milk-distributor to starving children in
famine-time; her own children would fare a shade better than the rest.
One very curious case came before the king. A young girl, an
orphan, who had a considerable estate, married a fine young fellow
who had nothing. The girl's property was within a seigniory held
by the Church. The bishop of the diocese, an arrogant scion of
the great nobility, claimed the girl's estate on the ground that
she had married privately, and thus had cheated the Church out
of one of its rights as lord of the seigniory--the one heretofore
referred to as le droit du seigneur. The penalty of refusal or
avoidance was confiscation. The girl's defense was, that the
lordship of the seigniory was vested in the bishop, and the
particular right here involved was not transferable, but must be
exercised by the lord himself or stand vacated; and that an older
law, of the Church itself, strictly barred the bishop from exercising
it. It was a very odd case, indeed.
It reminded me of something I had read in my youth about the
ingenious way in which the aldermen of London raised the money
that built the Mansion House. A person who had not taken the
Sacrament according to the Anglican rite could not stand as a
candidate for sheriff of London. Thus Dissenters were ineligible;
they could not run if asked, they could not serve if elected.
The aldermen, who without any question were Yankees in disguise,
hit upon this neat device: they passed a by-law imposing a fine
of L400 upon any one who should refuse to be a candidate for
sheriff, and a fine of L600 upon any person who, after being
elected sheriff, refused to serve. Then they went to work and
elected a lot of Dissenters, one after another, and kept it up
until they had collected L15,000 in fines; and there stands the
stately Mansion House to this day, to keep the blushing citizen
in mind of a long past and lamented day when a band of Yankees
slipped into London and played games of the sort that has given
their race a unique and shady reputation among all truly good
and holy peoples that be in the earth.
The girl's case seemed strong to me; the bishop's case was just
as strong. I did not see how the king was going to get out of
this hole. But he got out. I append his decision:
"Truly I find small difficulty here, the matter being even a
child's affair for simpleness. An the young bride had conveyed
notice, as in duty bound, to her feudal lord and proper master
and protector the bishop, she had suffered no loss, for the said
bishop could have got a dispensation making him, for temporary
conveniency, eligible to the exercise of his said right, and thus
would she have kept all she had. Whereas, failing in her first
duty, she hath by that failure failed in all; for whoso, clinging
to a rope, severeth it above his hands, must fall; it being no
defense to claim that the rest of the rope is sound, neither any
deliverance from his peril, as he shall find. Pardy, the woman's
case is rotten at the source. It is the decree of the court that
she forfeit to the said lord bishop all her goods, even to the
last farthing that she doth possess, and be thereto mulcted in
the costs. Next!"
Here was a tragic end to a beautiful honeymoon not yet three months
old. Poor young creatures! They had lived these three months
lapped to the lips in worldly comforts. These clothes and trinkets
they were wearing were as fine and dainty as the shrewdest stretch
of the sumptuary laws allowed to people of their degree; and in
these pretty clothes, she crying on his shoulder, and he trying
to comfort her with hopeful words set to the music of despair,
they went from the judgment seat out into the world homeless,
bedless, breadless; why, the very beggars by the roadsides were
not so poor as they.
Well, the king was out of the hole; and on terms satisfactory to
the Church and the rest of the aristocracy, no doubt. Men write
many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but
the fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutal
laws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor material
for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy;
and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short
work of that law which the king had just been administering if it
had been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrase
which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come
to seem to have sense and meaning--the sense and meaning implied
when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or
the other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government";
and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation
somewhere, some time or other which _wasn't_ capable of it--wasn't as
able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or
would be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in all
ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation,
and from the mass of the nation only--not from its privileged
classes; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade
was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long
ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day
that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself.
Which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best
governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still
behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the
same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way
down to the lowest.
King Arthur had hurried up the army business altogether beyond
my calculations. I had not supposed he would move in the matter
while I was away; and so I had not mapped out a scheme for determining
the merits of officers; I had only remarked that it would be wise
to submit every candidate to a sharp and searching examination;
and privately I meant to put together a list of military qualifications
that nobody could answer to but my West Pointers. That ought
to have been attended to before I left; for the king was so taken
with the idea of a standing army that he couldn't wait but must
get about it at once, and get up as good a scheme of examination
as he could invent out of his own head.
I was impatient to see what this was; and to show, too, how much
more admirable was the one which I should display to the Examining
Board. I intimated this, gently, to the king, and it fired his
curiosity. When the Board was assembled, I followed him in; and
behind us came the candidates. One of these candidates was a bright
young West Pointer of mine, and with him were a couple of my
West Point professors.
When I saw the Board, I did not know whether to cry or to laugh.
The head of it was the officer known to later centuries as Norroy
King-at-Arms! The two other members were chiefs of bureaus in
his department; and all three were priests, of course; all officials
who had to know how to read and write were priests.
My candidate was called first, out of courtesy to me, and the head
of the Board opened on him with official solemnity:
"Name?"
"Mal-ease."
"Son of?"
"Webster."
"Webster--Webster. H'm--I--my memory faileth to recall the
name. Condition?"
"Weaver."
"Weaver!--God keep us!"
The king was staggered, from his summit to his foundations; one
clerk fainted, and the others came near it. The chairman pulled
himself together, and said indignantly:
"It is sufficient. Get you hence."
But I appealed to the king. I begged that my candidate might be
examined. The king was willing, but the Board, who were all
well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of
examining the weaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough to
examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs and the king
turned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboard
prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began. It was
beautiful to hear the lad lay out the science of war, and wallow
in details of battle and siege, of supply, transportation, mining
and countermining, grand tactics, big strategy and little strategy,
signal service, infantry, cavalry, artillery, and all about siege
guns, field guns, gatling guns, rifled guns, smooth bores, musket
practice, revolver practice--and not a solitary word of it all
could these catfish make head or tail of, you understand--and it
was handsome to see him chalk off mathematical nightmares on the
blackboard that would stump the angels themselves, and do it like
nothing, too--all about eclipses, and comets, and solstices, and
constellations, and mean time, and sidereal time, and dinner time,
and bedtime, and every other imaginable thing above the clouds or
under them that you could harry or bullyrag an enemy with and make
him wish he hadn't come--and when the boy made his military salute
and stood aside at last, I was proud enough to hug him, and all
those other people were so dazed they looked partly petrified,
partly drunk, and wholly caught out and snowed under. I judged
that the cake was ours, and by a large majority.
Education is a great thing. This was the same youth who had come
to West Point so ignorant that when I asked him, "If a general
officer should have a horse shot under him on the field of battle,
what ought he to do?" answered up naively and said:
"Get up and brush himself."
One of the young nobles was called up now. I thought I would
question him a little myself. I said:
"Can your lordship read?"
His face flushed indignantly, and he fired this at me:
"Takest me for a clerk? I trow I am not of a blood that--"
"Answer the question!"
He crowded his wrath down and made out to answer "No."
"Can you write?"
He wanted to resent this, too, but I said:
"You will confine yourself to the questions, and make no comments.
You are not here to air your blood or your graces, and nothing
of the sort will be permitted. Can you write?"
"No."
"Do you know the multiplication table?"
"I wit not what ye refer to."
"How much is 9 times 6?"
"It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency
requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred,
and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren
of the knowledge."
"If A trade a barrel of onions to B, worth 2 pence the bushel,
in exchange for a sheep worth 4 pence and a dog worth a penny,
and C kill the dog before delivery, because bitten by the same,
who mistook him for D, what sum is still due to A from B, and
which party pays for the dog, C or D, and who gets the money?
If A, is the penny sufficient, or may he claim consequential damages
in the form of additional money to represent the possible profit
which might have inured from the dog, and classifiable as earned
increment, that is to say, usufruct?"
"Verily, in the all-wise and unknowable providence of God, who
moveth in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, have I never
heard the fellow to this question for confusion of the mind and
congestion of the ducts of thought. Wherefore I beseech you let
the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless
names work out their several salvations from their piteous and
wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their
trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should
but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself
to see the desolation wrought."
"What do you know of the laws of attraction and gravitation?"
"If there be such, mayhap his grace the king did promulgate them
whilst that I lay sick about the beginning of the year and thereby
failed to hear his proclamation."
"What do you know of the science of optics?"
"I know of governors of places, and seneschals of castles, and
sheriffs of counties, and many like small offices and titles of
honor, but him you call the Science of Optics I have not heard
of before; peradventure it is a new dignity."
"Yes, in this country."
Try to conceive of this mollusk gravely applying for an official
position, of any kind under the sun! Why, he had all the earmarks
of a typewriter copyist, if you leave out the disposition to
contribute uninvited emendations of your grammar and punctuation.
It was unaccountable that he didn't attempt a little help of that
sort out of his majestic supply of incapacity for the job. But that
didn't prove that he hadn't material in him for the disposition,
it only proved that he wasn't a typewriter copyist yet. After
nagging him a little more, I let the professors loose on him and
they turned him inside out, on the line of scientific war, and
found him empty, of course. He knew somewhat about the warfare
of the time--bushwhacking around for ogres, and bull-fights in
the tournament ring, and such things--but otherwise he was empty
and useless. Then we took the other young noble in hand, and he
was the first one's twin, for ignorance and incapacity. I delivered
them into the hands of the chairman of the Board with the comfortable
consciousness that their cake was dough. They were examined in
the previous order of precedence.
"Name, so please you?"
"Pertipole, son of Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash."
"Grandfather?"
"Also Sir Pertipole, Baron of Barley Mash."
"Great-grandfather?"
"The same name and title."
"Great-great-grandfather?"
"We had none, worshipful sir, the line failing before it had
reached so far back."
"It mattereth not. It is a good four generations, and fulfilleth
the requirements of the rule."
"Fulfills what rule?" I asked.
"The rule requiring four generations of nobility or else the
candidate is not eligible."
"A man not eligible for a lieutenancy in the army unless he can
prove four generations of noble descent?"
"Even so; neither lieutenant nor any other officer may be commissioned
without that qualification."
"Oh, come, this is an astonishing thing. What good is such a
qualification as that?"
"What good? It is a hardy question, fair sir and Boss, since it doth
go far to impugn the wisdom of even our holy Mother Church herself."
"As how?"
"For that she hath established the self-same rule regarding
saints. By her law none may be canonized until he hath lain dead
four generations."
"I see, I see--it is the same thing. It is wonderful. In the one
case a man lies dead-alive four generations--mummified in ignorance
and sloth--and that qualifies him to command live people, and take
their weal and woe into his impotent hands; and in the other case,
a man lies bedded with death and worms four generations, and that
qualifies him for office in the celestial camp. Does the king's
grace approve of this strange law?"
The king said:
"Why, truly I see naught about it that is strange. All places of
honor and of profit do belong, by natural right, to them that be
of noble blood, and so these dignities in the army are their
property and would be so without this or any rule. The rule is
but to mark a limit. Its purpose is to keep out too recent blood,
which would bring into contempt these offices, and men of lofty
lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I were
to blame an I permitted this calamity. _You_ can permit it an you
are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but
that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not
comprehensible to any."
"I yield. Proceed, sir Chief of the Herald's College."
The chairman resumed as follows:
"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and
State did the founder of your great line lift himself to the
sacred dignity of the British nobility?"
"He built a brewery."
"Sire, the Board finds this candidate perfect in all the requirements
and qualifications for military command, and doth hold his case
open for decision after due examination of his competitor."
The competitor came forward and proved exactly four generations
of nobility himself. So there was a tie in military qualifications
that far.
He stood aside a moment, and Sir Pertipole was questioned further:
"Of what condition was the wife of the founder of your line?"
"She came of the highest landed gentry, yet she was not noble;
she was gracious and pure and charitable, of a blameless life and
character, insomuch that in these regards was she peer of the
best lady in the land."
"That will do. Stand down." He called up the competing lordling
again, and asked: "What was the rank and condition of the
great-grandmother who conferred British nobility upon your
great house?"
"She was a king's leman and did climb to that splendid eminence
by her own unholpen merit from the sewer where she was born."
"Ah, this, indeed, is true nobility, this is the right and perfect
intermixture. The lieutenancy is yours, fair lord. Hold it not in
contempt; it is the humble step which will lead to grandeurs more
worthy of the splendor of an origin like to thine."
I was down in the bottomless pit of humiliation. I had promised
myself an easy and zenith-scouring triumph, and this was the outcome!
I was almost ashamed to look my poor disappointed cadet in the
face. I told him to go home and be patient, this wasn't the end.
I had a private audience with the king, and made a proposition.
I said it was quite right to officer that regiment with nobilities,
and he couldn't have done a wiser thing. It would also be a good
idea to add five hundred officers to it; in fact, add as many
officers as there were nobles and relatives of nobles in the
country, even if there should finally be five times as many officers
as privates in it; and thus make it the crack regiment, the envied
regiment, the King's Own regiment, and entitled to fight on its
own hook and in its own way, and go whither it would and come
when it pleased, in time of war, and be utterly swell and independent.
This would make that regiment the heart's desire of all the
nobility, and they would all be satisfied and happy. Then we
would make up the rest of the standing army out of commonplace
materials, and officer it with nobodies, as was proper--nobodies
selected on a basis of mere efficiency--and we would make this
regiment toe the line, allow it no aristocratic freedom from
restraint, and force it to do all the work and persistent hammering,
to the end that whenever the King's Own was tired and wanted to go
off for a change and rummage around amongst ogres and have a good
time, it could go without uneasiness, knowing that matters were in
safe hands behind it, and business going to be continued at the
old stand, same as usual. The king was charmed with the idea.
When I noticed that, it gave me a valuable notion. I thought
I saw my way out of an old and stubborn difficulty at last. You
see, the royalties of the Pendragon stock were a long-lived race
and very fruitful. Whenever a child was born to any of these
--and it was pretty often--there was wild joy in the nation's mouth,
and piteous sorrow in the nation's heart. The joy was questionable,
but the grief was honest. Because the event meant another call
for a Royal Grant. Long was the list of these royalties, and
they were a heavy and steadily increasing burden upon the treasury
and a menace to the crown. Yet Arthur could not believe this
latter fact, and he would not listen to any of my various projects
for substituting something in the place of the royal grants. If I
could have persuaded him to now and then provide a support for
one of these outlying scions from his own pocket, I could have
made a grand to-do over it, and it would have had a good effect
with the nation; but no, he wouldn't hear of such a thing. He had
something like a religious passion for royal grant; he seemed to
look upon it as a sort of sacred swag, and one could not irritate
him in any way so quickly and so surely as by an attack upon that
venerable institution. If I ventured to cautiously hint that there
was not another respectable family in England that would humble
itself to hold out the hat--however, that is as far as I ever got;
he always cut me short there, and peremptorily, too.
But I believed I saw my chance at last. I would form this crack
regiment out of officers alone--not a single private. Half of it
should consist of nobles, who should fill all the places up to
Major-General, and serve gratis and pay their own expenses; and
they would be glad to do this when they should learn that the rest
of the regiment would consist exclusively of princes of the blood.
These princes of the blood should range in rank from Lieutenant-General
up to Field Marshal, and be gorgeously salaried and equipped and
fed by the state. Moreover--and this was the master stroke
--it should be decreed that these princely grandees should be always
addressed by a stunningly gaudy and awe-compelling title (which
I would presently invent), and they and they only in all England
should be so addressed. Finally, all princes of the blood should
have free choice; join that regiment, get that great title, and
renounce the royal grant, or stay out and receive a grant. Neatest
touch of all: unborn but imminent princes of the blood could be
_born_ into the regiment, and start fair, with good wages and a
permanent situation, upon due notice from the parents.
All the boys would join, I was sure of that; so, all existing
grants would be relinquished; that the newly born would always
join was equally certain. Within sixty days that quaint and
bizarre anomaly, the Royal Grant, would cease to be a living fact,
and take its place among the curiosities of the past.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE FIRST NEWSPAPER
When I told the king I was going out disguised as a petty freeman
to scour the country and familiarize myself with the humbler life
of the people, he was all afire with the novelty of the thing
in a minute, and was bound to take a chance in the adventure
himself--nothing should stop him--he would drop everything and
go along--it was the prettiest idea he had run across for many
a day. He wanted to glide out the back way and start at once;
but I showed him that that wouldn't answer. You see, he was billed
for the king's-evil--to touch for it, I mean--and it wouldn't be
right to disappoint the house and it wouldn't make a delay worth
considering, anyway, it was only a one-night stand. And I thought
he ought to tell the queen he was going away. He clouded up at
that and looked sad. I was sorry I had spoken, especially when
he said mournfully:
"Thou forgettest that Launcelot is here; and where Launcelot is,
she noteth not the going forth of the king, nor what day he returneth."
Of course, I changed the Subject. Yes, Guenever was beautiful,
it is true, but take her all around she was pretty slack. I never
meddled in these matters, they weren't my affair, but I did hate
to see the way things were going on, and I don't mind saying that
much. Many's the time she had asked me, "Sir Boss, hast seen
Sir Launcelot about?" but if ever she went fretting around for
the king I didn't happen to be around at the time.
There was a very good lay-out for the king's-evil business--very
tidy and creditable. The king sat under a canopy of state; about
him were clustered a large body of the clergy in full canonicals.
Conspicuous, both for location and personal outfit, stood Marinel,
a hermit of the quack-doctor species, to introduce the sick. All
abroad over the spacious floor, and clear down to the doors,
in a thick jumble, lay or sat the scrofulous, under a strong light.
It was as good as a tableau; in fact, it had all the look of being
gotten up for that, though it wasn't. There were eight hundred
sick people present. The work was slow; it lacked the interest
of novelty for me, because I had seen the ceremonies before;
the thing soon became tedious, but the proprieties required me
to stick it out. The doctor was there for the reason that in all
such crowds there were many people who only imagined something
was the matter with them, and many who were consciously sound
but wanted the immortal honor of fleshly contact with a king, and
yet others who pretended to illness in order to get the piece of
coin that went with the touch. Up to this time this coin had been
a wee little gold piece worth about a third of a dollar. When you
consider how much that amount of money would buy, in that age
and country, and how usual it was to be scrofulous, when not dead,
you would understand that the annual king's-evil appropriation was
just the River and Harbor bill of that government for the grip it
took on the treasury and the chance it afforded for skinning the
surplus. So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself
for the king's-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation
into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my
adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into
five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk
of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each
gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. It might strain the
nickel some, but I judged it could stand it. As a rule, I do not
approve of watering stock, but I considered it square enough
in this case, for it was just a gift, anyway. Of course, you can
water a gift as much as you want to; and I generally do. The old
gold and silver coins of the country were of ancient and unknown
origin, as a rule, but some of them were Roman; they were ill-shapen,
and seldom rounder than a moon that is a week past the full; they
were hammered, not minted, and they were so worn with use that
the devices upon them were as illegible as blisters, and looked
like them. I judged that a sharp, bright new nickel, with a
first-rate likeness of the king on one side of it and Guenever
on the other, and a blooming pious motto, would take the tuck out
of scrofula as handy as a nobler coin and please the scrofulous
fancy more; and I was right. This batch was the first it was
tried on, and it worked to a charm. The saving in expense was
a notable economy. You will see that by these figures: We touched
a trifle over 700 of the 800 patients; at former rates, this would
have cost the government about $240; at the new rate we pulled
through for about $35, thus saving upward of $200 at one swoop.
To appreciate the full magnitude of this stroke, consider these
other figures: the annual expenses of a national government amount
to the equivalent of a contribution of three days' average wages of
every individual of the population, counting every individual as
if he were a man. If you take a nation of 60,000,000, where average
wages are $2 per day, three days' wages taken from each individual
will provide $360,000,000 and pay the government's expenses. In my
day, in my own country, this money was collected from imposts,
and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it
made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid
by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed
among them that the annual cost to the 100-millionaire and the
annual cost to the sucking child of the day-laborer was precisely
the same--each paid $6. Nothing could be equaler than that,
I reckon. Well, Scotland and Ireland were tributary to Arthur,
and the united populations of the British Islands amounted to
something less than 1,000,000. A mechanic's average wage was
3 cents a day, when he paid his own keep. By this rule the national
government's expenses were $90,000 a year, or about $250 a day.
Thus, by the substitution of nickels for gold on a king's-evil
day, I not only injured no one, dissatisfied no one, but pleased
all concerned and saved four-fifths of that day's national expense
into the bargain--a saving which would have been the equivalent
of $800,000 in my day in America. In making this substitution
I had drawn upon the wisdom of a very remote source--the wisdom
of my boyhood--for the true statesman does not despise any wisdom,
howsoever lowly may be its origin: in my boyhood I had always
saved my pennies and contributed buttons to the foreign missionary
cause. The buttons would answer the ignorant savage as well as
the coin, the coin would answer me better than the buttons; all
hands were happy and nobody hurt.
Marinel took the patients as they came. He examined the candidate;
if he couldn't qualify he was warned off; if he could he was passed
along to the king. A priest pronounced the words, "They shall
lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Then the king
stroked the ulcers, while the reading continued; finally, the
patient graduated and got his nickel--the king hanging it around
his neck himself--and was dismissed. Would you think that that
would cure? It certainly did. Any mummery will cure if the
patient's faith is strong in it. Up by Astolat there was a chapel
where the Virgin had once appeared to a girl who used to herd
geese around there--the girl said so herself--and they built the
chapel upon that spot and hung a picture in it representing the
occurrence--a picture which you would think it dangerous for a sick
person to approach; whereas, on the contrary, thousands of the lame
and the sick came and prayed before it every year and went away
whole and sound; and even the well could look upon it and live.
Of course, when I was told these things I did not believe them;
but when I went there and saw them I had to succumb. I saw the
cures effected myself; and they were real cures and not questionable.
I saw cripples whom I had seen around Camelot for years on crutches,
arrive and pray before that picture, and put down their crutches
and walk off without a limp. There were piles of crutches there
which had been left by such people as a testimony.
In other places people operated on a patient's mind, without saying
a word to him, and cured him. In others, experts assembled patients
in a room and prayed over them, and appealed to their faith, and
those patients went away cured. Wherever you find a king who can't
cure the king's-evil you can be sure that the most valuable
superstition that supports his throne--the subject's belief in
the divine appointment of his sovereign--has passed away. In my
youth the monarchs of England had ceased to touch for the evil,
but there was no occasion for this diffidence: they could have
cured it forty-nine times in fifty.
Well, when the priest had been droning for three hours, and the
good king polishing the evidences, and the sick were still pressing
forward as plenty as ever, I got to feeling intolerably bored.
I was sitting by an open window not far from the canopy of state.
For the five hundredth time a patient stood forward to have his
repulsivenesses stroked; again those words were being droned out:
"they shall lay their hands on the sick"--when outside there rang
clear as a clarion a note that enchanted my soul and tumbled
thirteen worthless centuries about my ears: "Camelot _Weekly
Hosannah and Literary Volcano!_--latest irruption--only two cents
--all about the big miracle in the Valley of Holiness!" One greater
than kings had arrived--the newsboy. But I was the only person
in all that throng who knew the meaning of this mighty birth, and
what this imperial magician was come into the world to do.
I dropped a nickel out of the window and got my paper; the
Adam-newsboy of the world went around the corner to get my change;
is around the corner yet. It was delicious to see a newspaper
again, yet I was conscious of a secret shock when my eye fell upon
the first batch of display head-lines. I had lived in a clammy
atmosphere of reverence, respect, deference, so long that they
sent a quivery little cold wave through me:
HIGH TIMES IN THE VALLEY
OF HOLINESS!
----
THE WATER-WORKS CORKED!
----
BRER MERLIN WORKS HIS ARTS, BUT GETS
LEFT?
----
But the Boss scores on his first Innings!
----
The Miraculous Well Uncorked amid
awful outbursts of
INFERNAL FIRE AND SMOKE
ATHUNDER!
----
THE BUZZARD-ROOST ASTONISHED!
----
UNPARALLELED REJOIBINGS!
--and so on, and so on. Yes, it was too loud. Once I could have
enjoyed it and seen nothing out of the way about it, but now its
note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this
was not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated
to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising.
Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through
the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change
without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by
pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and
airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my life. There was an
abundance of the following breed of items, and they discomforted me:
LOCAL SMOKE AND CINDERS.
Sir Launcelot met up with old King
Agrivance of Ireland unexpectedly last
weok over on the moor south of Sir
Balmoral le Merveilleuse's hog dasture.
The widow has been notified.
Expedition No. 3 will start adout the
first of mext month on a search f8r Sir
Sagramour le Desirous. It is in com-
and of the renowned Knight of the Red
Lawns, assissted by Sir Persant of Inde,
who is compete9t. intelligent, courte-
ous, and in every way a brick, and fur-
tHer assisted by Sir Palamides the Sara-
cen, who is no huckleberry hinself.
This is no pic-nic, these boys mean
busine&s.
The readers of the Hosannah will re-
gret to learn that the hadndsome and
popular Sir Charolais of Gaul, who dur-
ing his four weeks' stay at the Bull and
Halibut, this city, has won every heart
by his polished manners and elegant
cPnversation, will pUll out to-day for
home. Give us another call, Charley!
The bdsiness end of the funeral of
the late Sir Dalliance the duke's son of
Cornwall, killed in an encounter with
the Giant of the Knotted Bludgeon last
Tuesday on the borders of the Plain of
Enchantment was in the hands of the
ever affable and efficient Mumble,
prince of un3ertakers, then whom there
exists none by whom it were a more
satisfying pleasure to have the last sad
offices performed. Give him a trial.
The cordial thanks of the Hosannah
office are due, from editor down to
devil, to the ever courteous and thought-
ful Lord High Stew d of the Palace's
Third Assistant V t for several sau-
ceTs of ice crEam a quality calculated
to make the ey of the recipients hu-
mid with grt ude; and it done it.
When this administration wants to
chalk up a desirable name for early
promotion, the Hosannah would like a
chance to sudgest.
The Demoiselle Irene Dewlap, of
South Astolat, is visiting her uncle, the
popular host of the Cattlemen's Board-
ing Ho&se, Liver Lane, this city.
Young Barker the bellows-mender is
hoMe again, and looks much improved
by his vacation round-up among the out-
lying smithies. See his ad.
Of course it was good enough journalism for a beginning; I knew
that quite well, and yet it was somehow disappointing. The
"Court Circular" pleased me better; indeed, its simple and dignified
respectfulness was a distinct refreshment to me after all those
disgraceful familiarities. But even it could have been improved.
Do what one may, there is no getting an air of variety into a court
circular, I acknowledge that. There is a profound monotonousness
about its facts that baffles and defeats one's sincerest efforts
to make them sparkle and enthuse. The best way to manage--in fact,
the only sensible way--is to disguise repetitiousness of fact under
variety of form: skin your fact each time and lay on a new cuticle
of words. It deceives the eye; you think it is a new fact; it
gives you the idea that the court is carrying on like everything;
this excites you, and you drain the whole column, with a good
appetite, and perhaps never notice that it's a barrel of soup made
out of a single bean. Clarence's way was good, it was simple,
it was dignified, it was direct and business-like; all I say is,
it was not the best way:
COURT CIRCULAR.
On Monday, the king rode in the park.
" Tuesday, " " "
" Wendesday " " "
" Thursday " " "
" Friday, " " "
" Saturday " " "
" Sunday, " " "
However, take the paper by and large, I was vastly pleased with it.
Little crudities of a mechanical sort were observable here and
there, but there were not enough of them to amount to anything,
and it was good enough Arkansas proof-reading, anyhow, and better
than was needed in Arthur's day and realm. As a rule, the grammar
was leaky and the construction more or less lame; but I did not
much mind these things. They are common defects of my own, and
one mustn't criticise other people on grounds where he can't stand
perpendicular himself.
I was hungry enough for literature to want to take down the whole
paper at this one meal, but I got only a few bites, and then had
to postpone, because the monks around me besieged me so with eager
questions: What is this curious thing? What is it for? Is it a
handkerchief?--saddle blanket?--part of a shirt? What is it made of?
How thin it is, and how dainty and frail; and how it rattles.
Will it wear, do you think, and won't the rain injure it? Is it
writing that appears on it, or is it only ornamentation? They
suspected it was writing, because those among them who knew how
to read Latin and had a smattering of Greek, recognized some of
the letters, but they could make nothing out of the result as a
whole. I put my information in the simplest form I could:
"It is a public journal; I will explain what that is, another time.
It is not cloth, it is made of paper; some time I will explain
what paper is. The lines on it are reading matter; and not written
by hand, but printed; by and by I will explain what printing is.
A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this,
in every minute detail--they can't be told apart." Then they all
broke out with exclamations of surprise and admiration:
"A thousand! Verily a mighty work--a year's work for many men."
"No--merely a day's work for a man and a boy."
They crossed themselves, and whiffed out a protective prayer or two.
"Ah-h--a miracle, a wonder! Dark work of enchantment."
I let it go at that. Then I read in a low voice, to as many as
could crowd their shaven heads within hearing distance, part of
the account of the miracle of the restoration of the well, and
was accompanied by astonished and reverent ejaculations all through:
"Ah-h-h!" "How true!" "Amazing, amazing!" "These be the very
haps as they happened, in marvelous exactness!" And might they
take this strange thing in their hands, and feel of it and examine
it?--they would be very careful. Yes. So they took it, handling
it as cautiously and devoutly as if it had been some holy thing
come from some supernatural region; and gently felt of its texture,
caressed its pleasant smooth surface with lingering touch, and
scanned the mysterious characters with fascinated eyes. These
grouped bent heads, these charmed faces, these speaking eyes
--how beautiful to me! For was not this my darling, and was not
all this mute wonder and interest and homage a most eloquent
tribute and unforced compliment to it? I knew, then, how a mother
feels when women, whether strangers or friends, take her new baby,
and close themselves about it with one eager impulse, and bend
their heads over it in a tranced adoration that makes all the rest
of the universe vanish out of their consciousness and be as if it
were not, for that time. I knew how she feels, and that there is
no other satisfied ambition, whether of king, conqueror, or poet,
that ever reaches half-way to that serene far summit or yields half
so divine a contentment.
During all the rest of the seance my paper traveled from group to
group all up and down and about that huge hall, and my happy eye
was upon it always, and I sat motionless, steeped in satisfaction,
drunk with enjoyment. Yes, this was heaven; I was tasting it once,
if I might never taste it more.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE YANKEE AND THE KING TRAVEL INCOGNITO
About bedtime I took the king to my private quarters to cut his
hair and help him get the hang of the lowly raiment he was to wear.
The high classes wore their hair banged across the forehead but
hanging to the shoulders the rest of the way around, whereas the
lowest ranks of commoners were banged fore and aft both; the slaves
were bangless, and allowed their hair free growth. So I inverted
a bowl over his head and cut away all the locks that hung below it.
I also trimmed his whiskers and mustache until they were only
about a half-inch long; and tried to do it inartistically, and
succeeded. It was a villainous disfigurement. When he got his
lubberly sandals on, and his long robe of coarse brown linen cloth,
which hung straight from his neck to his ankle-bones, he was no
longer the comeliest man in his kingdom, but one of the unhandsomest
and most commonplace and unattractive. We were dressed and barbered
alike, and could pass for small farmers, or farm bailiffs, or
shepherds, or carters; yes, or for village artisans, if we chose,
our costume being in effect universal among the poor, because of
its strength and cheapness. I don't mean that it was really cheap
to a very poor person, but I do mean that it was the cheapest
material there was for male attire--manufactured material, you
understand.
We slipped away an hour before dawn, and by broad sun-up had made
eight or ten miles, and were in the midst of a sparsely settled
country. I had a pretty heavy knapsack; it was laden with
provisions--provisions for the king to taper down on, till he
could take to the coarse fare of the country without damage.
I found a comfortable seat for the king by the roadside, and then
gave him a morsel or two to stay his stomach with. Then I said
I would find some water for him, and strolled away. Part of my
project was to get out of sight and sit down and rest a little
myself. It had always been my custom to stand when in his presence;
even at the council board, except upon those rare occasions when
the sitting was a very long one, extending over hours; then I had
a trifling little backless thing which was like a reversed culvert
and was as comfortable as the toothache. I didn't want to break
him in suddenly, but do it by degrees. We should have to sit
together now when in company, or people would notice; but it would
not be good politics for me to be playing equality with him when
there was no necessity for it.
I found the water some three hundred yards away, and had been
resting about twenty minutes, when I heard voices. That is all
right, I thought--peasants going to work; nobody else likely to be
stirring this early. But the next moment these comers jingled into
sight around a turn of the road--smartly clad people of quality,
with luggage-mules and servants in their train! I was off like
a shot, through the bushes, by the shortest cut. For a while it
did seem that these people would pass the king before I could
get to him; but desperation gives you wings, you know, and I canted
my body forward, inflated my breast, and held my breath and flew.
I arrived. And in plenty good enough time, too.
"Pardon, my king, but it's no time for ceremony--jump! Jump to
your feet--some quality are coming!"
"Is that a marvel? Let them come."
"But my liege! You must not be seen sitting. Rise!--and stand in
humble posture while they pass. You are a peasant, you know."
"True--I had forgot it, so lost was I in planning of a huge war
with Gaul"--he was up by this time, but a farm could have got up
quicker, if there was any kind of a boom in real estate--"and
right-so a thought came randoming overthwart this majestic dream
the which--"
"A humbler attitude, my lord the king--and quick! Duck your head!
--more!--still more!--droop it!"
He did his honest best, but lord, it was no great things. He looked
as humble as the leaning tower at Pisa. It is the most you could
say of it. Indeed, it was such a thundering poor success that
it raised wondering scowls all along the line, and a gorgeous
flunkey at the tail end of it raised his whip; but I jumped in
time and was under it when it fell; and under cover of the volley
of coarse laughter which followed, I spoke up sharply and warned
the king to take no notice. He mastered himself for the moment,
but it was a sore tax; he wanted to eat up the procession. I said:
"It would end our adventures at the very start; and we, being
without weapons, could do nothing with that armed gang. If we
are going to succeed in our emprise, we must not only look the
peasant but act the peasant."
"It is wisdom; none can gainsay it. Let us go on, Sir Boss.
I will take note and learn, and do the best I may."
He kept his word. He did the best he could, but I've seen better.
If you have ever seen an active, heedless, enterprising child
going diligently out of one mischief and into another all day
long, and an anxious mother at its heels all the while, and just
saving it by a hair from drowning itself or breaking its neck with
each new experiment, you've seen the king and me.
If I could have foreseen what the thing was going to be like,
I should have said, No, if anybody wants to make his living
exhibiting a king as a peasant, let him take the layout; I can
do better with a menagerie, and last longer. And yet, during
the first three days I never allowed him to enter a hut or other
dwelling. If he could pass muster anywhere during his early
novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these
places we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he
could, but what of that? He didn't improve a bit that I could see.
He was always frightening me, always breaking out with fresh
astonishers, in new and unexpected places. Toward evening on
the second day, what does he do but blandly fetch out a dirk
from inside his robe!
"Great guns, my liege, where did you get that?"
"From a smuggler at the inn, yester eve."
"What in the world possessed you to buy it?"
"We have escaped divers dangers by wit--thy wit--but I have
bethought me that it were but prudence if I bore a weapon, too.
Thine might fail thee in some pinch."
"But people of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What
would a lord say--yes, or any other person of whatever condition
--if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?"
It was a lucky thing for us that nobody came along just then.
I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as
persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing
itself. We walked along, silent and thinking. Finally the king said:
"When ye know that I meditate a thing inconvenient, or that hath
a peril in it, why do you not warn me to cease from that project?"
It was a startling question, and a puzzler. I didn't quite know
how to take hold of it, or what to say, and so, of course, I ended
by saying the natural thing:
"But, sire, how can I know what your thoughts are?"
The king stopped dead in his tracks, and stared at me.
"I believed thou wert greater than Merlin; and truly in magic
thou art. But prophecy is greater than magic. Merlin is a prophet."
I saw I had made a blunder. I must get back my lost ground.
After a deep reflection and careful planning, I said:
"Sire, I have been misunderstood. I will explain. There are two
kinds of prophecy. One is the gift to foretell things that are but
a little way off, the other is the gift to foretell things that
are whole ages and centuries away. Which is the mightier gift,
do you think?"
"Oh, the last, most surely!"
"True. Does Merlin possess it?"
"Partly, yes. He foretold mysteries about my birth and future
kingship that were twenty years away."
"Has he ever gone beyond that?"
"He would not claim more, I think."
"It is probably his limit. All prophets have their limit. The limit
of some of the great prophets has been a hundred years."
"These are few, I ween."
"There have been two still greater ones, whose limit was four
hundred and six hundred years, and one whose limit compassed
even seven hundred and twenty."
"Gramercy, it is marvelous!"
"But what are these in comparison with me? They are nothing."
"What? Canst thou truly look beyond even so vast a stretch
of time as--"
"Seven hundred years? My liege, as clear as the vision of an eagle
does my prophetic eye penetrate and lay bare the future of this
world for nearly thirteen centuries and a half!"
My land, you should have seen the king's eyes spread slowly open,
and lift the earth's entire atmosphere as much as an inch! That
settled Brer Merlin. One never had any occasion to prove his
facts, with these people; all he had to do was to state them. It
never occurred to anybody to doubt the statement.
"Now, then," I continued, "I _could_ work both kinds of prophecy
--the long and the short--if I chose to take the trouble to keep
in practice; but I seldom exercise any but the long kind, because
the other is beneath my dignity. It is properer to Merlin's sort
--stump-tail prophets, as we call them in the profession. Of course,
I whet up now and then and flirt out a minor prophecy, but not
often--hardly ever, in fact. You will remember that there was
great talk, when you reached the Valley of Holiness, about my
having prophesied your coming and the very hour of your arrival,
two or three days beforehand."
"Indeed, yes, I mind it now."
"Well, I could have done it as much as forty times easier, and
piled on a thousand times more detail into the bargain, if it had
been five hundred years away instead of two or three days."
"How amazing that it should be so!"
"Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five
hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five
hundred seconds off."
"And yet in reason it should clearly be the other way; it should
be five hundred times as easy to foretell the last as the first,
for, indeed, it is so close by that one uninspired might almost
see it. In truth, the law of prophecy doth contradict the likelihoods,
most strangely making the difficult easy, and the easy difficult."
It was a wise head. A peasant's cap was no safe disguise for it;
you could know it for a king's under a diving-bell, if you could
hear it work its intellect.
I had a new trade now, and plenty of business in it. The king
was as hungry to find out everything that was going to happen
during the next thirteen centuries as if he were expecting to live
in them. From that time out, I prophesied myself bald-headed
trying to supply the demand. I have done some indiscreet things in
my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the
worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't have
to have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for the
ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional
work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit of
prophecy comes upon you, you merely cake your intellect and lay it
off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it
alone; it will work itself: the result is prophecy.
Every day a knight-errant or so came along, and the sight of them
fired the king's martial spirit every time. He would have forgotten
himself, sure, and said something to them in a style a suspicious
shade or so above his ostensible degree, and so I always got him
well out of the road in time. Then he would stand and look with
all his eyes; and a proud light would flash from them, and his
nostrils would inflate like a war-horse's, and I knew he was
longing for a brush with them. But about noon of the third day
I had stopped in the road to take a precaution which had been
suggested by the whip-stroke that had fallen to my share two days
before; a precaution which I had afterward decided to leave untaken,
I was so loath to institute it; but now I had just had a fresh
reminder: while striding heedlessly along, with jaw spread and
intellect at rest, for I was prophesying, I stubbed my toe and
fell sprawling. I was so pale I couldn't think for a moment;
then I got softly and carefully up and unstrapped my knapsack.
I had that dynamite bomb in it, done up in wool in a box. It was
a good thing to have along; the time would come when I could do
a valuable miracle with it, maybe, but it was a nervous thing
to have about me, and I didn't like to ask the king to carry it.
Yet I must either throw it away or think up some safe way to get
along with its society. I got it out and slipped it into my scrip,
and just then here came a couple of knights. The king stood,
stately as a statue, gazing toward them--had forgotten himself again,
of course--and before I could get a word of warning out, it was
time for him to skip, and well that he did it, too. He supposed
they would turn aside. Turn aside to avoid trampling peasant dirt
under foot? When had he ever turned aside himself--or ever had
the chance to do it, if a peasant saw him or any other noble knight
in time to judiciously save him the trouble? The knights paid
no attention to the king at all; it was his place to look out
himself, and if he hadn't skipped he would have been placidly
ridden down, and laughed at besides.
The king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge
and epithets with a most royal vigor. The knights were some little
distance by now. They halted, greatly surprised, and turned in
their saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worth
while to bother with such scum as we. Then they wheeled and
started for us. Not a moment must be lost. I started for _them_.
I passed them at a rattling gait, and as I went by I flung out a
hair-lifting soul-scorching thirteen-jointed insult which made
the king's effort poor and cheap by comparison. I got it out of
the nineteenth century where they know how. They had such headway
that they were nearly to the king before they could check up;
then, frantic with rage, they stood up their horses on their hind
hoofs and whirled them around, and the next moment here they came,
breast to breast. I was seventy yards off, then, and scrambling up
a great bowlder at the roadside. When they were within thirty
yards of me they let their long lances droop to a level, depressed
their mailed heads, and so, with their horse-hair plumes streaming
straight out behind, most gallant to see, this lightning express
came tearing for me! When they were within fifteen yards, I sent
that bomb with a sure aim, and it struck the ground just under
the horses' noses.
Yes, it was a neat thing, very neat and pretty to see. It resembled
a steamboat explosion on the Mississippi; and during the next
fifteen minutes we stood under a steady drizzle of microscopic
fragments of knights and hardware and horse-flesh. I say we,
for the king joined the audience, of course, as soon as he had got
his breath again. There was a hole there which would afford steady
work for all the people in that region for some years to come
--in trying to explain it, I mean; as for filling it up, that service
would be comparatively prompt, and would fall to the lot of a
select few--peasants of that seignory; and they wouldn't get
anything for it, either.
But I explained it to the king myself. I said it was done with a
dynamite bomb. This information did him no damage, because it
left him as intelligent as he was before. However, it was a noble
miracle, in his eyes, and was another settler for Merlin. I thought
it well enough to explain that this was a miracle of so rare a sort
that it couldn't be done except when the atmospheric conditions
were just right. Otherwise he would be encoring it every time we
had a good subject, and that would be inconvenient, because I
hadn't any more bombs along.
CHAPTER XXVIII
DRILLING THE KING
On the morning of the fourth day, when it was just sunrise, and we
had been tramping an hour in the chill dawn, I came to a resolution:
the king _must_ be drilled; things could not go on so, he must be
taken in hand and deliberately and conscientiously drilled, or we
couldn't ever venture to enter a dwelling; the very cats would know
this masquerader for a humbug and no peasant. So I called a halt
and said:
"Sire, as between clothes and countenance, you are all right, there
is no discrepancy; but as between your clothes and your bearing,
you are all wrong, there is a most noticeable discrepancy. Your
soldierly stride, your lordly port--these will not do. You stand
too straight, your looks are too high, too confident. The cares
of a kingdom do not stoop the shoulders, they do not droop the chin,
they do not depress the high level of the eye-glance, they do not
put doubt and fear in the heart and hang out the signs of them
in slouching body and unsure step. It is the sordid cares of
the lowly born that do these things. You must learn the trick;
you must imitate the trademarks of poverty, misery, oppression,
insult, and the other several and common inhumanities that sap
the manliness out of a man and make him a loyal and proper and
approved subject and a satisfaction to his masters, or the very
infants will know you for better than your disguise, and we shall go
to pieces at the first hut we stop at. Pray try to walk like this."
The king took careful note, and then tried an imitation.
"Pretty fair--pretty fair. Chin a little lower, please--there, very
good. Eyes too high; pray don't look at the horizon, look at the
ground, ten steps in front of you. Ah--that is better, that is
very good. Wait, please; you betray too much vigor, too much
decision; you want more of a shamble. Look at me, please--this is
what I mean.... Now you are getting it; that is the idea--at least,
it sort of approaches it.... Yes, that is pretty fair. _But!_
There is a great big something wanting, I don't quite know what
it is. Please walk thirty yards, so that I can get a perspective
on the thing.... Now, then--your head's right, speed's right,
shoulders right, eyes right, chin right, gait, carriage, general
style right--everything's right! And yet the fact remains, the
aggregate's wrong. The account don't balance. Do it again,
please.... _Now_ I think I begin to see what it is. Yes, I've
struck it. You see, the genuine spiritlessness is wanting; that's
what's the trouble. It's all _amateur_--mechanical details all
right, almost to a hair; everything about the delusion perfect,
except that it don't delude."
"What, then, must one do, to prevail?"
"Let me think... I can't seem to quite get at it. In fact, there
isn't anything that can right the matter but practice. This is
a good place for it: roots and stony ground to break up your
stately gait, a region not liable to interruption, only one field
and one hut in sight, and they so far away that nobody could
see us from there. It will be well to move a little off the road
and put in the whole day drilling you, sire."
After the drill had gone on a little while, I said:
"Now, sire, imagine that we are at the door of the hut yonder,
and the family are before us. Proceed, please--accost the head
of the house."
The king unconsciously straightened up like a monument, and said,
with frozen austerity:
"Varlet, bring a seat; and serve to me what cheer ye have."
"Ah, your grace, that is not well done."
"In what lacketh it?"
"These people do not call _each other_ varlets."
"Nay, is that true?"
"Yes; only those above them call them so."
"Then must I try again. I will call him villein."
"No-no; for he may be a freeman."
"Ah--so. Then peradventure I should call him goodman."
"That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if
you said friend, or brother."
"Brother!--to dirt like that?"
"Ah, but _we_ are pretending to be dirt like that, too."
"It is even true. I will say it. Brother, bring a seat, and
thereto what cheer ye have, withal. Now 'tis right."
"Not quite, not wholly right. You have asked for one, not _us_
--for one, not both; food for one, a seat for one."
The king looked puzzled--he wasn't a very heavy weight, intellectually.
His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do
it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.
"Would _you_ have a seat also--and sit?"
"If I did not sit, the man would perceive that we were only pretending
to be equals--and playing the deception pretty poorly, too."
"It is well and truly said! How wonderful is truth, come it in
whatsoever unexpected form it may! Yes, he must bring out seats
and food for both, and in serving us present not ewer and napkin
with more show of respect to the one than to the other."
"And there is even yet a detail that needs correcting. He must
bring nothing outside; we will go in--in among the dirt, and
possibly other repulsive things,--and take the food with the
household, and after the fashion of the house, and all on equal
terms, except the man be of the serf class; and finally, there
will be no ewer and no napkin, whether he be serf or free. Please
walk again, my liege. There--it is better--it is the best yet;
but not perfect. The shoulders have known no ignobler burden
than iron mail, and they will not stoop."
"Give me, then, the bag. I will learn the spirit that goeth
with burdens that have not honor. It is the spirit that stoopeth
the shoulders, I ween, and not the weight; for armor is heavy,
yet it is a proud burden, and a man standeth straight in it....
Nay, but me no buts, offer me no objections. I will have the thing.
Strap it upon my back."
He was complete now with that knapsack on, and looked as little
like a king as any man I had ever seen. But it was an obstinate
pair of shoulders; they could not seem to learn the trick of
stooping with any sort of deceptive naturalness. The drill went on,
I prompting and correcting:
"Now, make believe you are in debt, and eaten up by relentless
creditors; you are out of work--which is horse-shoeing, let us
say--and can get none; and your wife is sick, your children are
crying because they are hungry--"
And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn all
sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and
misfortunes. But lord, it was only just words, words--they meant
nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled.
Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have
suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to
describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and
complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves
that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than
a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much
bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they
know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know
all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money
enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days,
but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as
near nothing as you can cipher it down--and I will be satisfied, too.
Intellectual "work" is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation,
and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect,
engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate,
legislator, actor, preacher, singer is constructively in heaven
when he is at work; and as for the musician with the fiddle-bow
in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the
ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him--why,
certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord,
it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly
unfair--but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher
the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall
be his pay in cash, also. And it's also the very law of those
transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE SMALLPOX HUT
When we arrived at that hut at mid-afternoon, we saw no signs
of life about it. The field near by had been denuded of its crop
some time before, and had a skinned look, so exhaustively had
it been harvested and gleaned. Fences, sheds, everything had a
ruined look, and were eloquent of poverty. No animal was around
anywhere, no living thing in sight. The stillness was awful, it
was like the stillness of death. The cabin was a one-story one,
whose thatch was black with age, and ragged from lack of repair.
The door stood a trifle ajar. We approached it stealthily--on tiptoe
and at half-breath--for that is the way one's feeling makes him do,
at such a time. The king knocked. We waited. No answer. Knocked
again. No answer. I pushed the door softly open and looked in.
I made out some dim forms, and a woman started up from the ground
and stared at me, as one does who is wakened from sleep. Presently
she found her voice:
"Have mercy!" she pleaded. "All is taken, nothing is left."
"I have not come to take anything, poor woman."
"You are not a priest?"
"No."
"Nor come not from the lord of the manor?"
"No, I am a stranger."
"Oh, then, for the fear of God, who visits with misery and death
such as be harmless, tarry not here, but fly! This place is under
his curse--and his Church's."
"Let me come in and help you--you are sick and in trouble."
I was better used to the dim light now. I could see her hollow
eyes fixed upon me. I could see how emaciated she was.
"I tell you the place is under the Church's ban. Save yourself
--and go, before some straggler see thee here, and report it."
"Give yourself no trouble about me; I don't care anything for the
Church's curse. Let me help you."
"Now all good spirits--if there be any such--bless thee for that
word. Would God I had a sup of water!--but hold, hold, forget
I said it, and fly; for there is that here that even he that
feareth not the Church must fear: this disease whereof we die.
Leave us, thou brave, good stranger, and take with thee such
whole and sincere blessing as them that be accursed can give."
But before this I had picked up a wooden bowl and was rushing
past the king on my way to the brook. It was ten yards away.
When I got back and entered, the king was within, and was opening
the shutter that closed the window-hole, to let in air and light.
The place was full of a foul stench. I put the bowl to the woman's
lips, and as she gripped it with her eager talons the shutter came
open and a strong light flooded her face. Smallpox!
I sprang to the king, and said in his ear:
"Out of the door on the instant, sire! the woman is dying of that
disease that wasted the skirts of Camelot two years ago."
He did not budge.
"Of a truth I shall remain--and likewise help."
I whispered again:
"King, it must not be. You must go."
"Ye mean well, and ye speak not unwisely. But it were shame that
a king should know fear, and shame that belted knight should
withhold his hand where be such as need succor. Peace, I will
not go. It is you who must go. The Church's ban is not upon me,
but it forbiddeth you to be here, and she will deal with you with
a heavy hand an word come to her of your trespass."
It was a desperate place for him to be in, and might cost him his
life, but it was no use to argue with him. If he considered his
knightly honor at stake here, that was the end of argument; he
would stay, and nothing could prevent it; I was aware of that.
And so I dropped the subject. The woman spoke:
"Fair sir, of your kindness will ye climb the ladder there,
and bring me news of what ye find? Be not afraid to report,
for times can come when even a mother's heart is past breaking
--being already broke."
"Abide," said the king, "and give the woman to eat. I will go."
And he put down the knapsack.
I turned to start, but the king had already started. He halted,
and looked down upon a man who lay in a dim light, and had not
noticed us thus far, or spoken.
"Is it your husband?" the king asked.
"Yes."
"Is he asleep?"
"God be thanked for that one charity, yes--these three hours.
Where shall I pay to the full, my gratitude! for my heart is
bursting with it for that sleep he sleepeth now."
I said:
"We will be careful. We will not wake him."
"Ah, no, that ye will not, for he is dead."
"Dead?"
"Yes, what triumph it is to know it! None can harm him, none
insult him more. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there,
he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find
neither abbot nor yet bishop. We were boy and girl together; we
were man and wife these five and twenty years, and never separated
till this day. Think how long that is to love and suffer together.
This morning was he out of his mind, and in his fancy we were
boy and girl again and wandering in the happy fields; and so in
that innocent glad converse wandered he far and farther, still
lightly gossiping, and entered into those other fields we know
not of, and was shut away from mortal sight. And so there was
no parting, for in his fancy I went with him; he knew not but
I went with him, my hand in his--my young soft hand, not this
withered claw. Ah, yes, to go, and know it not; to separate and
know it not; how could one go peace--fuller than that? It was
his reward for a cruel life patiently borne."
There was a slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where
the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he
was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the
other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a
slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying
of smallpox. Here was heroism at its last and loftiest possibility,
its utmost summit; this was challenging death in the open field
unarmed, with all the odds against the challenger, no reward set
upon the contest, and no admiring world in silks and cloth of gold
to gaze and applaud; and yet the king's bearing was as serenely
brave as it had always been in those cheaper contests where knight
meets knight in equal fight and clothed in protecting steel. He
was great now; sublimely great. The rude statues of his ancestors
in his palace should have an addition--I would see to that; and it
would not be a mailed king killing a giant or a dragon, like the
rest, it would be a king in commoner's garb bearing death in his
arms that a peasant mother might look her last upon her child and
be comforted.
He laid the girl down by her mother, who poured out endearments
and caresses from an overflowing heart, and one could detect a
flickering faint light of response in the child's eyes, but that
was all. The mother hung over her, kissing her, petting her, and
imploring her to speak, but the lips only moved and no sound came.
I snatched my liquor flask from my knapsack, but the woman forbade
me, and said:
"No--she does not suffer; it is better so. It might bring her back
to life. None that be so good and kind as ye are would do her
that cruel hurt. For look you--what is left to live for? Her
brothers are gone, her father is gone, her mother goeth, the
Church's curse is upon her, and none may shelter or befriend her
even though she lay perishing in the road. She is desolate. I have
not asked you, good heart, if her sister be still on live, here
overhead; I had no need; ye had gone back, else, and not left
the poor thing forsaken--"
"She lieth at peace," interrupted the king, in a subdued voice.
"I would not change it. How rich is this day in happiness! Ah,
my Annis, thou shalt join thy sister soon--thou'rt on thy way,
and these be merciful friends that will not hinder."
And so she fell to murmuring and cooing over the girl again, and
softly stroking her face and hair, and kissing her and calling her
by endearing names; but there was scarcely sign of response now
in the glazing eyes. I saw tears well from the king's eyes, and
trickle down his face. The woman noticed them, too, and said:
"Ah, I know that sign: thou'st a wife at home, poor soul, and
you and she have gone hungry to bed, many's the time, that the
little ones might have your crust; you know what poverty is, and
the daily insults of your betters, and the heavy hand of the Church
and the king."
The king winced under this accidental home-shot, but kept still;
he was learning his part; and he was playing it well, too, for
a pretty dull beginner. I struck up a diversion. I offered the
woman food and liquor, but she refused both. She would allow
nothing to come between her and the release of death. Then I slipped
away and brought the dead child from aloft, and laid it by her.
This broke her down again, and there was another scene that was
full of heartbreak. By and by I made another diversion, and beguiled
her to sketch her story.
"Ye know it well yourselves, having suffered it--for truly none
of our condition in Britain escape it. It is the old, weary tale.
We fought and struggled and succeeded; meaning by success, that
we lived and did not die; more than that is not to be claimed. No
troubles came that we could not outlive, till this year brought
them; then came they all at once, as one might say, and overwhelmed
us. Years ago the lord of the manor planted certain fruit trees on
our farm; in the best part of it, too--a grievous wrong and shame--"
"But it was his right," interrupted the king.
"None denieth that, indeed; an the law mean anything, what is
the lord's is his, and what is mine is his also. Our farm was
ours by lease, therefore 'twas likewise his, to do with it as he
would. Some little time ago, three of those trees were found hewn
down. Our three grown sons ran frightened to report the crime.
Well, in his lordship's dungeon there they lie, who saith there
shall they lie and rot till they confess. They have naught to
confess, being innocent, wherefore there will they remain until
they die. Ye know that right well, I ween. Think how this left us;
a man, a woman and two children, to gather a crop that was planted
by so much greater force, yes, and protect it night and day from
pigeons and prowling animals that be sacred and must not be hurt
by any of our sort. When my lord's crop was nearly ready for
the harvest, so also was ours; when his bell rang to call us to
his fields to harvest his crop for nothing, he would not allow that
I and my two girls should count for our three captive sons, but
for only two of them; so, for the lacking one were we daily fined.
All this time our own crop was perishing through neglect; and so
both the priest and his lordship fined us because their shares
of it were suffering through damage. In the end the fines ate up
our crop--and they took it all; they took it all and made us harvest
it for them, without pay or food, and we starving. Then the worst
came when I, being out of my mind with hunger and loss of my boys,
and grief to see my husband and my little maids in rags and misery
and despair, uttered a deep blasphemy--oh! a thousand of them!
--against the Church and the Church's ways. It was ten days ago.
I had fallen sick with this disease, and it was to the priest
I said the words, for he was come to chide me for lack of due
humility under the chastening hand of God. He carried my trespass
to his betters; I was stubborn; wherefore, presently upon my head
and upon all heads that were dear to me, fell the curse of Rome.
"Since that day we are avoided, shunned with horror. None has
come near this hut to know whether we live or not. The rest of us
were taken down. Then I roused me and got up, as wife and mother
will. It was little they could have eaten in any case; it was
less than little they had to eat. But there was water, and I gave
them that. How they craved it! and how they blessed it! But the
end came yesterday; my strength broke down. Yesterday was the
last time I ever saw my husband and this youngest child alive.
I have lain here all these hours--these ages, ye may say--listening,
listening for any sound up there that--"
She gave a sharp quick glance at her eldest daughter, then cried
out, "Oh, my darling!" and feebly gathered the stiffening form
to her sheltering arms. She had recognized the death-rattle.
CHAPTER XXX
THE TRAGEDY OF THE MANOR-HOUSE
At midnight all was over, and we sat in the presence of four
corpses. We covered them with such rags as we could find, and
started away, fastening the door behind us. Their home must be
these people's grave, for they could not have Christian burial,
or be admitted to consecrated ground. They were as dogs, wild
beasts, lepers, and no soul that valued its hope of eternal life
would throw it away by meddling in any sort with these rebuked and
smitten outcasts.
We had not moved four steps when I caught a sound as of footsteps
upon gravel. My heart flew to my throat. We must not be seen
coming from that house. I plucked at the king's robe and we drew
back and took shelter behind the corner of the cabin.
"Now we are safe," I said, "but it was a close call--so to speak.
If the night had been lighter he might have seen us, no doubt,
he seemed to be so near."
"Mayhap it is but a beast and not a man at all."
"True. But man or beast, it will be wise to stay here a minute
and let it get by and out of the way."
"Hark! It cometh hither."
True again. The step was coming toward us--straight toward the hut.
It must be a beast, then, and we might as well have saved our
trepidation. I was going to step out, but the king laid his hand
upon my arm. There was a moment of silence, then we heard a soft
knock on the cabin door. It made me shiver. Presently the knock
was repeated, and then we heard these words in a guarded voice:
"Mother! Father! Open--we have got free, and we bring news to
pale your cheeks but glad your hearts; and we may not tarry, but
must fly! And--but they answer not. Mother! father!--"
I drew the king toward the other end of the hut and whispered:
"Come--now we can get to the road."
The king hesitated, was going to demur; but just then we heard
the door give way, and knew that those desolate men were in the
presence of their dead.
"Come, my liege! in a moment they will strike a light, and then
will follow that which it would break your heart to hear."
He did not hesitate this time. The moment we were in the road
I ran; and after a moment he threw dignity aside and followed.
I did not want to think of what was happening in the hut--I couldn't
bear it; I wanted to drive it out of my mind; so I struck into the
first subject that lay under that one in my mind:
"I have had the disease those people died of, and so have nothing
to fear; but if you have not had it also--"
He broke in upon me to say he was in trouble, and it was his
conscience that was troubling him:
"These young men have got free, they say--but _how_? It is not
likely that their lord hath set them free."
"Oh, no, I make no doubt they escaped."
"That is my trouble; I have a fear that this is so, and your
suspicion doth confirm it, you having the same fear."
"I should not call it by that name though. I do suspect that they
escaped, but if they did, I am not sorry, certainly."
"I am not sorry, I _think_--but--"
"What is it? What is there for one to be troubled about?"
"_If_ they did escape, then are we bound in duty to lay hands upon
them and deliver them again to their lord; for it is not seemly
that one of his quality should suffer a so insolent and high-handed
outrage from persons of their base degree."
There it was again. He could see only one side of it. He was
born so, educated so, his veins were full of ancestral blood that
was rotten with this sort of unconscious brutality, brought down
by inheritance from a long procession of hearts that had each done
its share toward poisoning the stream. To imprison these men
without proof, and starve their kindred, was no harm, for they were
merely peasants and subject to the will and pleasure of their lord,
no matter what fearful form it might take; but for these men to
break out of unjust captivity was insult and outrage, and a thing
not to be countenanced by any conscientious person who knew his
duty to his sacred caste.
I worked more than half an hour before I got him to change the
subject--and even then an outside matter did it for me. This was
a something which caught our eyes as we struck the summit of a
small hill--a red glow, a good way off.
"That's a fire," said I.
Fires interested me considerably, because I was getting a good
deal of an insurance business started, and was also training some
horses and building some steam fire-engines, with an eye to a paid
fire department by and by. The priests opposed both my fire and
life insurance, on the ground that it was an insolent attempt to
hinder the decrees of God; and if you pointed out that they did not
hinder the decrees in the least, but only modified the hard
consequences of them if you took out policies and had luck, they
retorted that that was gambling against the decrees of God, and was
just as bad. So they managed to damage those industries more
or less, but I got even on my Accident business. As a rule, a knight
is a lummox, and some times even a labrick, and hence open to pretty
poor arguments when they come glibly from a superstition-monger,
but even _he_ could see the practical side of a thing once in a while;
and so of late you couldn't clean up a tournament and pile the
result without finding one of my accident-tickets in every helmet.
We stood there awhile, in the thick darkness and stillness, looking
toward the red blur in the distance, and trying to make out the
meaning of a far-away murmur that rose and fell fitfully on the
night. Sometimes it swelled up and for a moment seemed less
remote; but when we were hopefully expecting it to betray its cause
and nature, it dulled and sank again, carrying its mystery with it.
We started down the hill in its direction, and the winding road
plunged us at once into almost solid darkness--darkness that was
packed and crammed in between two tall forest walls. We groped
along down for half a mile, perhaps, that murmur growing more and
more distinct all the time. The coming storm threatening more and
more, with now and then a little shiver of wind, a faint show of
lightning, and dull grumblings of distant thunder. I was in the
lead. I ran against something--a soft heavy something which gave,
slightly, to the impulse of my weight; at the same moment the
lightning glared out, and within a foot of my face was the writhing
face of a man who was hanging from the limb of a tree! That is,
it seemed to be writhing, but it was not. It was a grewsome sight.
Straightway there was an ear-splitting explosion of thunder, and
the bottom of heaven fell out; the rain poured down in a deluge.
No matter, we must try to cut this man down, on the chance that
there might be life in him yet, mustn't we? The lightning came
quick and sharp now, and the place was alternately noonday and
midnight. One moment the man would be hanging before me in an
intense light, and the next he was blotted out again in the darkness.
I told the king we must cut him down. The king at once objected.
"If he hanged himself, he was willing to lose him property to
his lord; so let him be. If others hanged him, belike they had
the right--let him hang."
"But--"
"But me no buts, but even leave him as he is. And for yet another
reason. When the lightning cometh again--there, look abroad."
Two others hanging, within fifty yards of us!
"It is not weather meet for doing useless courtesies unto dead folk.
They are past thanking you. Come--it is unprofitable to tarry here."
There was reason in what he said, so we moved on. Within the next
mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the lightning,
and altogether it was a grisly excursion. That murmur was a murmur
no longer, it was a roar; a roar of men's voices. A man came flying
by now, dimly through the darkness, and other men chasing him.
They disappeared. Presently another case of the kind occurred,
and then another and another. Then a sudden turn of the road
brought us in sight of that fire--it was a large manor-house, and
little or nothing was left of it--and everywhere men were flying
and other men raging after them in pursuit.
I warned the king that this was not a safe place for strangers.
We would better get away from the light, until matters should
improve. We stepped back a little, and hid in the edge of the
wood. From this hiding-place we saw both men and women hunted
by the mob. The fearful work went on until nearly dawn. Then,
the fire being out and the storm spent, the voices and flying
footsteps presently ceased, and darkness and stillness reigned again.
We ventured out, and hurried cautiously away; and although we were
worn out and sleepy, we kept on until we had put this place some
miles behind us. Then we asked hospitality at the hut of a charcoal
burner, and got what was to be had. A woman was up and about, but
the man was still asleep, on a straw shake-down, on the clay floor.
The woman seemed uneasy until I explained that we were travelers
and had lost our way and been wandering in the woods all night.
She became talkative, then, and asked if we had heard of the
terrible goings-on at the manor-house of Abblasoure. Yes, we had
heard of them, but what we wanted now was rest and sleep. The
king broke in:
"Sell us the house and take yourselves away, for we be perilous
company, being late come from people that died of the Spotted Death."
It was good of him, but unnecessary. One of the commonest decorations
of the nation was the waffle-iron face. I had early noticed that
the woman and her husband were both so decorated. She made us
entirely welcome, and had no fears; and plainly she was immensely
impressed by the king's proposition; for, of course, it was a good
deal of an event in her life to run across a person of the king's
humble appearance who was ready to buy a man's house for the sake
of a night's lodging. It gave her a large respect for us, and she
strained the lean possibilities of her hovel to the utmost to make
us comfortable.
We slept till far into the afternoon, and then got up hungry enough to
make cotter fare quite palatable to the king, the more particularly
as it was scant in quantity. And also in variety; it consisted
solely of onions, salt, and the national black bread made out of
horse-feed. The woman told us about the affair of the evening
before. At ten or eleven at night, when everybody was in bed,
the manor-house burst into flames. The country-side swarmed to
the rescue, and the family were saved, with one exception, the
master. He did not appear. Everybody was frantic over this loss,
and two brave yeomen sacrificed their lives in ransacking the
burning house seeking that valuable personage. But after a while
he was found--what was left of him--which was his corpse. It was
in a copse three hundred yards away, bound, gagged, stabbed in a
dozen places.
Who had done this? Suspicion fell upon a humble family in the
neighborhood who had been lately treated with peculiar harshness
by the baron; and from these people the suspicion easily extended
itself to their relatives and familiars. A suspicion was enough;
my lord's liveried retainers proclaimed an instant crusade against
these people, and were promptly joined by the community in general.
The woman's husband had been active with the mob, and had not
returned home until nearly dawn. He was gone now to find out
what the general result had been. While we were still talking he
came back from his quest. His report was revolting enough. Eighteen
persons hanged or butchered, and two yeomen and thirteen prisoners
lost in the fire.
"And how many prisoners were there altogether in the vaults?"
"Thirteen."
"Then every one of them was lost?"
"Yes, all."
"But the people arrived in time to save the family; how is it they
could save none of the prisoners?"
The man looked puzzled, and said:
"Would one unlock the vaults at such a time? Marry, some would
have escaped."
"Then you mean that nobody _did_ unlock them?"
"None went near them, either to lock or unlock. It standeth to
reason that the bolts were fast; wherefore it was only needful
to establish a watch, so that if any broke the bonds he might not
escape, but be taken. None were taken."
"Natheless, three did escape," said the king, "and ye will do well
to publish it and set justice upon their track, for these murthered
the baron and fired the house."
I was just expecting he would come out with that. For a moment
the man and his wife showed an eager interest in this news and
an impatience to go out and spread it; then a sudden something
else betrayed itself in their faces, and they began to ask questions.
I answered the questions myself, and narrowly watched the effects
produced. I was soon satisfied that the knowledge of who these
three prisoners were had somehow changed the atmosphere; that
our hosts' continued eagerness to go and spread the news was now
only pretended and not real. The king did not notice the change,
and I was glad of that. I worked the conversation around toward
other details of the night's proceedings, and noted that these
people were relieved to have it take that direction.
The painful thing observable about all this business was the
alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their
cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common
oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel
between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural
and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil's whole caste
to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever
stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This
man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his
work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against
them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable
as evidence, still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything
horrible about it.
This was depressing--to a man with the dream of a republic in his
head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when
the "poor whites" of our South who were always despised and
frequently insulted by the slave-lords around them, and who owed
their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their
midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave-lords
in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of
slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out
their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very
institution which degraded them. And there was only one redeeming
feature connected with that pitiful piece of history; and that was,
that secretly the "poor white" did detest the slave-lord, and did
feel his own shame. That feeling was not brought to the surface,
but the fact that it was there and could have been brought out,
under favoring circumstances, was something--in fact, it was enough;
for it showed that a man is at bottom a man, after all, even if it
doesn't show on the outside.
Well, as it turned out, this charcoal burner was just the twin of
the Southern "poor white" of the far future. The king presently
showed impatience, and said:
"An ye prattle here all the day, justice will miscarry. Think ye
the criminals will abide in their father's house? They are fleeing,
they are not waiting. You should look to it that a party of horse
be set upon their track."
The woman paled slightly, but quite perceptibly, and the man looked
flustered and irresolute. I said:
"Come, friend, I will walk a little way with you, and explain which
direction I think they would try to take. If they were merely
resisters of the gabelle or some kindred absurdity I would try
to protect them from capture; but when men murder a person of
high degree and likewise burn his house, that is another matter."
The last remark was for the king--to quiet him. On the road
the man pulled his resolution together, and began the march with
a steady gait, but there was no eagerness in it. By and by I said:
"What relation were these men to you--cousins?"
He turned as white as his layer of charcoal would let him, and
stopped, trembling.
"Ah, my God, how know ye that?"
"I didn't know it; it was a chance guess."
"Poor lads, they are lost. And good lads they were, too."
"Were you actually going yonder to tell on them?"
He didn't quite know how to take that; but he said, hesitatingly:
"Ye-s."
"Then I think you are a damned scoundrel!"
It made him as glad as if I had called him an angel.
"Say the good words again, brother! for surely ye mean that ye
would not betray me an I failed of my duty."
"Duty? There is no duty in the matter, except the duty to keep
still and let those men get away. They've done a righteous deed."
He looked pleased; pleased, and touched with apprehension at the
same time. He looked up and down the road to see that no one
was coming, and then said in a cautious voice:
"From what land come you, brother, that you speak such perilous
words, and seem not to be afraid?"
"They are not perilous words when spoken to one of my own caste,
I take it. You would not tell anybody I said them?"
"I? I would be drawn asunder by wild horses first."
"Well, then, let me say my say. I have no fears of your repeating
it. I think devil's work has been done last night upon those
innocent poor people. That old baron got only what he deserved.
If I had my way, all his kind should have the same luck."
Fear and depression vanished from the man's manner, and gratefulness
and a brave animation took their place:
"Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing,
yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others
like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one
good feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now,
and ye may report it if ye be so minded. I helped to hang my
neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of
zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason.
All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly
sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies
safety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the only
ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of
that taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the
scaffold, for I am ready."
There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages
of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him.
Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is
plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded
people that ever existed--even the Russians; plenty of manhood
in them--even in the Germans--if one could but force it out of
its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the
mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever
supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and
believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done,
then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every
member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage
instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the
men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no
occasion to give up my dream yet a while.
CHAPTER XXXI
MARCO
We strolled along in a sufficiently indolent fashion now, and
talked. We must dispose of about the amount of time it ought
to take to go to the little hamlet of Abblasoure and put justice
on the track of those murderers and get back home again. And
meantime I had an auxiliary interest which had never paled yet,
never lost its novelty for me since I had been in Arthur's kingdom:
the behavior--born of nice and exact subdivisions of caste--of chance
passers-by toward each other. Toward the shaven monk who trudged
along with his cowl tilted back and the sweat washing down his
fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply reverent; to the gentleman
he was abject; with the small farmer and the free mechanic he was
cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by with a countenance
respectfully lowered, this chap's nose was in the air--he couldn't
even see him. Well, there are times when one would like to hang
the whole human race and finish the farce.
Presently we struck an incident. A small mob of half-naked boys
and girls came tearing out of the woods, scared and shrieking.
The eldest among them were not more than twelve or fourteen years
old. They implored help, but they were so beside themselves that
we couldn't make out what the matter was. However, we plunged
into the wood, they skurrying in the lead, and the trouble was
quickly revealed: they had hanged a little fellow with a bark rope,
and he was kicking and struggling, in the process of choking to
death. We rescued him, and fetched him around. It was some more
human nature; the admiring little folk imitating their elders;
they were playing mob, and had achieved a success which promised
to be a good deal more serious than they had bargained for.
It was not a dull excursion for me. I managed to put in the time
very well. I made various acquaintanceships, and in my quality
of stranger was able to ask as many questions as I wanted to.
A thing which naturally interested me, as a statesman, was the
matter of wages. I picked up what I could under that head during
the afternoon. A man who hasn't had much experience, and doesn't
think, is apt to measure a nation's prosperity or lack of prosperity
by the mere size of the prevailing wages; if the wages be high, the
nation is prosperous; if low, it isn't. Which is an error. It
isn't what sum you get, it's how much you can buy with it, that's
the important thing; and it's that that tells whether your wages
are high in fact or only high in name. I could remember how it
was in the time of our great civil war in the nineteenth century.
In the North a carpenter got three dollars a day, gold valuation;
in the South he got fifty--payable in Confederate shinplasters
worth a dollar a bushel. In the North a suit of overalls cost
three dollars--a day's wages; in the South it cost seventy-five
--which was two days' wages. Other things were in proportion.
Consequently, wages were twice as high in the North as they were
in the South, because the one wage had that much more purchasing
power than the other had.
Yes, I made various acquaintances in the hamlet and a thing that
gratified me a good deal was to find our new coins in circulation
--lots of milrays, lots of mills, lots of cents, a good many nickels,
and some silver; all this among the artisans and commonalty
generally; yes, and even some gold--but that was at the bank,
that is to say, the goldsmith's. I dropped in there while Marco,
the son of Marco, was haggling with a shopkeeper over a quarter
of a pound of salt, and asked for change for a twenty-dollar gold
piece. They furnished it--that is, after they had chewed the piece,
and rung it on the counter, and tried acid on it, and asked me
where I got it, and who I was, and where I was from, and where
I was going to, and when I expected to get there, and perhaps
a couple of hundred more questions; and when they got aground,
I went right on and furnished them a lot of information voluntarily;
told them I owned a dog, and his name was Watch, and my first wife
was a Free Will Baptist, and her grandfather was a Prohibitionist,
and I used to know a man who had two thumbs on each hand and a wart
on the inside of his upper lip, and died in the hope of a glorious
resurrection, and so on, and so on, and so on, till even that
hungry village questioner began to look satisfied, and also a shade
put out; but he had to respect a man of my financial strength,
and so he didn't give me any lip, but I noticed he took it out of
his underlings, which was a perfectly natural thing to do. Yes,
they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little,
which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking
into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring
the boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all
of a sudden. He could do it, maybe; but at the same time he
would wonder how a small farmer happened to be carrying so much
money around in his pocket; which was probably this goldsmith's
thought, too; for he followed me to the door and stood there gazing
after me with reverent admiration.
Our new money was not only handsomely circulating, but its language
was already glibly in use; that is to say, people had dropped
the names of the former moneys, and spoke of things as being worth
so many dollars or cents or mills or milrays now. It was very
gratifying. We were progressing, that was sure.
I got to know several master mechanics, but about the most interesting
fellow among them was the blacksmith, Dowley. He was a live man
and a brisk talker, and had two journeymen and three apprentices,
and was doing a raging business. In fact, he was getting rich,
hand over fist, and was vastly respected. Marco was very proud of
having such a man for a friend. He had taken me there ostensibly
to let me see the big establishment which bought so much of his
charcoal, but really to let me see what easy and almost familiar
terms he was on with this great man. Dowley and I fraternized
at once; I had had just such picked men, splendid fellows, under
me in the Colt Arms Factory. I was bound to see more of him, so
I invited him to come out to Marco's Sunday, and dine with us.
Marco was appalled, and held his breath; and when the grandee
accepted, he was so grateful that he almost forgot to be astonished
at the condescension.
Marco's joy was exuberant--but only for a moment; then he grew
thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell Dowley I should
have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out
there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost
his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it was the
expense. He saw ruin before him; he judged that his financial
days were numbered. However, on our way to invite the others,
I said:
"You must allow me to have these friends come; and you must also
allow me to pay the costs."
His face cleared, and he said with spirit:
"But not all of it, not all of it. Ye cannot well bear a burden
like to this alone."
I stopped him, and said:
"Now let's understand each other on the spot, old friend. I am
only a farm bailiff, it is true; but I am not poor, nevertheless.
I have been very fortunate this year--you would be astonished
to know how I have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I say
I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never
care _that_ for the expense!" and I snapped my fingers. I could
see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's estimation, and when
I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for style
and altitude. "So you see, you must let me have my way. You
can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's _settled_."
"It's grand and good of you--"
"No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones and me in the
most generous way; Jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before
you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likely
to say such a thing to you--because Jones isn't a talker, and is
diffident in society--he has a good heart and a grateful, and
knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and
your wife have been very hospitable toward us--"
"Ah, brother, 'tis nothing--_such_ hospitality!"
"But it _is_ something; the best a man has, freely given, is always
something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right
along beside it--for even a prince can but do his best. And so
we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry
about the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever
was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend
--but never mind about that--you'd never believe it anyway."
And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing
things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now
and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of
shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes
had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged.
The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and
linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being
made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township
by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a
hand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present.
Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of
that swell company, and I didn't know just how to get at it
--with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I had already
been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would
be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial
sort; so I said:
"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit--out of
kindness for Jones--because you wouldn't want to offend him.
He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but
he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged
me to buy some little things and give them to you and Dame Phyllis
and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from
him--you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing
--and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his idea
was, a new outfit of clothes for you both--"
"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be.
Consider the vastness of the sum--"
"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment,
and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways,
you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good
form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it.
Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff--and don't
forget to remember to not let on to Jones that you know he had
anything to do with it. You can't think how curiously sensitive
and proud he is. He's a farmer--pretty fairly well-to-do farmer
--an I'm his bailiff; _but_--the imagination of that man! Why,
sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd
think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen
to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer--especially if
he talked agriculture. He _thinks_ he's a Sheol of a farmer; thinks
he's old Grayback from Wayback; but between you and me privately
he don't know as much about farming as he does about running
a kingdom--still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your
underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such
incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you
might die before you got enough of it. That will please Jones."
It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character;
but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when
you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and
can't remember it more than about half the time, you can't take
too many precautions.
This was the best store we had come across yet; it had everything
in it, in small quantities, from anvils and drygoods all the way
down to fish and pinchbeck jewelry. I concluded I would bunch
my whole invoice right here, and not go pricing around any more.
So I got rid of Marco, by sending him off to invite the mason and
the wheelwright, which left the field free to me. For I never care
to do a thing in a quiet way; it's got to be theatrical or I don't
take any interest in it. I showed up money enough, in a careless
way, to corral the shopkeeper's respect, and then I wrote down
a list of the things I wanted, and handed it to him to see if he
could read it. He could, and was proud to show that he could.
He said he had been educated by a priest, and could both read
and write. He ran it through, and remarked with satisfaction that
it was a pretty heavy bill. Well, and so it was, for a little
concern like that. I was not only providing a swell dinner, but
some odds and ends of extras. I ordered that the things be carted
out and delivered at the dwelling of Marco, the son of Marco,
by Saturday evening, and send me the bill at dinner-time Sunday.
He said I could depend upon his promptness and exactitude, it was
the rule of the house. He also observed that he would throw in
a couple of miller-guns for the Marcos gratis--that everybody
was using them now. He had a mighty opinion of that clever
device. I said:
"And please fill them up to the middle mark, too; and add that
to the bill."
He would, with pleasure. He filled them, and I took them with
me. I couldn't venture to tell him that the miller-gun was a
little invention of my own, and that I had officially ordered that
every shopkeeper in the kingdom keep them on hand and sell them
at government price--which was the merest trifle, and the shopkeeper
got that, not the government. We furnished them for nothing.
The king had hardly missed us when we got back at nightfall. He
had early dropped again into his dream of a grand invasion of Gaul
with the whole strength of his kingdom at his back, and the afternoon
had slipped away without his ever coming to himself again.
CHAPTER XXXII
DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION
Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon,
I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting. They were
sure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselves
as accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in addition to the
dinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum,
I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family:
for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tables
of their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeable
deal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which was
another piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery,
stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructed
the Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to give
me a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerning
the new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were up
and down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so that
they could put them on, and they were into them at last as much
as an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure--not to say
delirium--was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of it
paid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered.
The king had slept just as usual--like the dead. The Marcos could
not thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but they
tried every way they could think of to make him see how grateful
they were. Which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any change.
It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which is
just a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to be
out of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembled
under a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances.
Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some little
trouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along at
first. I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer;
but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thing
stand at that, and not elaborate it any. Because he was just the
kind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing like
that if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and his
spirit so willing, and his information so uncertain.
Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then
adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and
himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him
hum. Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They do
deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true;
and they are among the very first to find it out, too. He told how
he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends
able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest
master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours
long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a
half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted
the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him
dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally
unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years
and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade--or "mystery"
as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first
gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speak
of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a
gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human
being. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on
his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens
and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine.
"I remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, with
enthusiasm.
"And I likewise!" cried the mason. "I would not believe they
were thine own; in faith I could not."
"Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. "I was like
to lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap been
stealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not
days like that."
Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always
had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white
bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak.
And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter.
"And now consider what is come to pass," said he, impressively.
"Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table."
He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added
--"and eight times salt meat."
"It is even true," said the wheelwright, with bated breath.
"I know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same
reverent fashion.
"On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year,"
added the master smith, with solemnity. "I leave it to your own
consciences, friends, if this is not also true?"
"By my head, yes," cried the mason.
"I can testify it--and I do," said the wheelwright.
"And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment
is." He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and
unhampered freedom of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved;
speak as ye would speak; an I were not here."
"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit
your family is but three," said the wheelwright, with deep respect.
"And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter
to eat and drink from withal," said the mason, impressively. "And
I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway,
but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body,
be they false or be they sooth."
"Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones," said the
smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless ye
would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and
but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be
assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well
ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is
willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth
a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest.
And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth
we are equals--equals"--and he smiled around on the company with
the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious
thing and is quite well aware of it.
The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and
let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which
had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural
to one who was being called upon by greatness.
The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree.
It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a
sumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher still
when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore,
but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity,
slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it.
That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs,
and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise;
you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine new
stools--whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of
every guest. Then she brought two more--as calmly as she could.
Sensation again--with awed murmurs. Again she brought two
--walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, and
the mason muttered:
"There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence."
As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax
while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a
languid composure but was a poor imitation of it:
"These suffice; leave the rest."
So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't have
played the hand better myself.
From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that
fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the
shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to
gasped "Oh's" and "Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes.
She fetched crockery--new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets
and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs,
roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth
of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread
laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had
seen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied with
wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and
the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come
to collect.
"That's all right," I said, indifferently. "What is the amount?
give us the items."
Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened,
and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate
waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's:
2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800
3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700
2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000
2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800
1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600
8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000
1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred.
Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.
"Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.
"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are
placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like
you, I will sepa--"
"It is of no consequence," I said, accompanying the words with
a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand
total, please."
The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:
"Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!"
The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table
to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of:
"God be with us in the day of disaster!"
The clerk hastened to say:
"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you
to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you--"
I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an
air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money
and tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seen
them stare!
The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain
one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and
--I interrupted:
"What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole.
Keep the change."
There was an amazed murmur to this effect:
"Verily this being is _made_ of money! He throweth it away even
as if it were dirt."
The blacksmith was a crushed man.
The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said
to Marco and his wife:
"Good folk, here is a little trifle for you"--handing the miller-guns
as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them
contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures
went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the
others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:
"Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to."
Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don't know that
I ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectacular
effects out of the materials available. The blacksmith--well, he
was simply mashed. Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man was
feeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing and
bragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his fresh
meat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his white
bread every Sunday the year round--all for a family of three; the
entire cost for the year not above 69.2.6 (sixty-nine cents, two
mills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a man
who slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and not
only that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such small
sums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up and
collapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's been
stepped on by a cow.
CHAPTER XXXIII
SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY
However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first third
of the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easy
to do--in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a country
where they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he is
only part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You prove
your superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, and
that's the end of it--he knuckles down. You can't insult him
after that. No, I don't mean quite that; of course you _can_ insult
him, I only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lot
of useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. I had the
smith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperous
and rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some little
gimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner's
in the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages,
in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three.
This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in the
earth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look into
the future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakable
Georges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonored
the creators of this world--after God--Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright,
Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell.
The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning upon
battle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsiness
and went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placed
the beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavings
in humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into matters
near and dear to the hearts of our sort--business and wages,
of course. At a first glance, things appeared to be exceeding
prosperous in this little tributary kingdom--whose lord was
King Bagdemagus--as compared with the state of things in my own
region. They had the "protection" system in full force here,
whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easy
stages, and were now about half way. Before long, Dowley and I
were doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowley
warmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and began
to put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me,
and they did have something of that look:
"In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff,
master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?"
"Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent."
The smith's face beamed with joy. He said:
"With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanic
get--carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright,
and the like?"
"On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day."
"Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any good
mechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, but
not the others--they are all allowed a cent a day, and in driving
times they get more--yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteen
milrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, within
the week. 'Rah for protection--to Sheol with free-trade!"
And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn't
scare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myself
fifteen minutes to drive him into the earth--drive him _all_ in
--drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should show
above ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked:
"What do you pay a pound for salt?"
"A hundred milrays."
"We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton--when you
buy it?" That was a neat hit; it made the color come.
"It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milrays
the pound."
"_We_ pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs?"
"Fifty milrays the dozen."
"We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer?"
"It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint."
"We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent.
What do you pay for wheat?"
"At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel."
"We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?"
"Thirteen cents."
"We pay six. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of the
laborer or the mechanic?"
"We pay eight cents, four mills."
"Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills,
we pay only four cents." I prepared now to sock it to him. I said:
"Look here, dear friend, _what's become of your high wages you
were bragging so about a few minutes ago?_"--and I looked around
on the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped up
on him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without his
ever noticing that he was being tied at all. "What's become of
those noble high wages of yours?--I seem to have knocked the
stuffing all out of them, it appears to me."
But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, that
is all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he had
walked into a trap, didn't discover that he was _in_ a trap. I could
have shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a struggling
intellect he fetched this out:
"Marry, I seem not to understand. It is _proved_ that our wages
be double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefrom
the stuffing?--an miscall not the wonderly word, this being the
first time under grace and providence of God it hath been granted
me to hear it."
Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity on
his part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided with
him and were of his mind--if you might call it mind. My position
was simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplified
more? However, I must try:
"Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages are
merely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_."
"Hear him! They are the _double_--ye have confessed it yourself."
"Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to do
with it; the _amount_ of the wages in mere coins, with meaningless
names attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to do
with it. The thing is, how much can you _buy_ with your wages?
--that's the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanic
is allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us only
about a dollar and seventy-five--"
"There--ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!"
"Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say is
this. With us _half_ a dollar buys more than a _dollar_ buys
with you--and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonest
kind of common-sense, that our wages are _higher_ than yours."
He looked dazed, and said, despairingly:
"Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are the
higher, and with the same breath ye take it back."
"Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thing
through your head? Now look here--let me illustrate. We pay
four cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8.4.0, which is
four mills more than _double_. What do you allow a laboring
woman who works on a farm?"
"Two mills a day."
"Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenth
of a cent a day; and--"
"Again ye're conf--"
"Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'll
understand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earn
her gown, at 2 mills a day--7 weeks' work; but ours earns hers
in forty days--two days _short_ of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown,
and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, and
two days' wages left, to buy something else with. There--_now_
you understand it!"
He looked--well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say;
so did the others. I waited--to let the thing work. Dowley spoke
at last--and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten away
from his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, with
a trifle of hesitancy:
"But--but--ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is better
than one."
Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chanced
another flyer:
"Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes out
and buys the following articles:
"1 pound of salt;
1 dozen eggs;
1 dozen pints of beer;
1 bushel of wheat;
1 tow-linen suit;
5 pounds of beef;
5 pounds of mutton.
"The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working days
to earn the money--5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us and
work 32 days at _half_ the wages; he can buy all those things for
a shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29
days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. Carry
it through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages every
two months, _your_ man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wages
in a year, your man not a cent. _Now_ I reckon you understand that
'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anything
in the world until you find out which of them will _buy_ the most!"
It was a crusher.
But, alas! it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What those
people valued was _high wages_; it didn't seem to be a matter of
any consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anything
or not. They stood for "protection," and swore by it, which was
reasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them into
the notion that it was protection which had created their high
wages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wages
had advanced but 30 per cent., while the cost of living had gone
up 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced
40 per cent. while the cost of living had gone steadily down. But
it didn't do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs.
Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat,
but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to think
of the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablest
man, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiest
uncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any political
firmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated in
argument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see that
those others were sorry for me--which made me blush till I could
smell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as mean
as I did, as ashamed as I felt--wouldn't _you_ have struck below the
belt to get even? Yes, you would; it is simply human nature.
Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it; I'm only
saying that I was mad, and _anybody_ would have done it.
Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan out
a love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit him
at all, I'm going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at him
all of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way business
of it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on him
gradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit him
at all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, and
he can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. That is
the way I went for brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy and
comfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and the
oldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of my
starting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up:
"Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom,
and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it;
yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement,
too. There are written laws--they perish; but there are also
unwritten laws--_they_ are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages:
it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight through
the centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages are
now, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that's
the wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred years
ago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far back
as we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress,
the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, without
a document to help us, we can come pretty close to determining
what the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago.
Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward;
we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I can
tell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in the
future you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years."
"What, goodman, what!"
"Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six times
what they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will be
allowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6."
"I would't I might die now and live then!" interrupted Smug, the
wheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye.
"And that isn't all; they'll get their board besides--such as it is:
it won't bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later--pay attention
now--a mechanic's wages will be--mind you, this is law, not
guesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be _twenty_ cents a day!"
There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the mason
murmured, with raised eyes and hands:
"More than three weeks' pay for one day's work!"
"Riches!--of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered Marco, his breath
coming quick and short, with excitement.
"Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little,
as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred and
forty years more there'll be at least _one_ country where the
mechanic's average wage will be _two hundred_ cents a day!"
It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could get
his breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burner
said prayerfully:
"Might I but live to see it!"
"It is the income of an earl!" said Smug.
"An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more than that and
speak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hath
an income like to that. Income of an earl--mf! it's the income
of an angel!"
"Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages.
In that remote day, that man will earn, with _one_ week's work,
that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of _fifty_ weeks to
earn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen,
too. Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring,
what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, and
servant shall be for that year?"
"Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all,
the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistrate
that fixes the wages."
"Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to _help_ him fix their wages
for them, does he?"
"Hm! That _were_ an idea! The master that's to pay him the money
is the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice."
"Yes--but I thought the other man might have some little trifle
at stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures.
The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally.
These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shall
have who _do_ work. You see? They're a 'combine'--a trade union,
to coin a new phrase--who band themselves together to force their
lowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundred
years hence--so says the unwritten law--the 'combine' will be the
other way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fume
and fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of trade
unions! Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange the
wages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; and
then all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a couple
of thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing;
and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself.
Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliation
to settle."
"Do ye believe--"
"That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed.
And he will be strong and able, then."
"Brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous smith.
"Oh,--and there's another detail. In that day, a master may hire
a man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time,
if he wants to."
"What?"
"It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a man
to work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the man
wants to or not."
"Will there be _no_ law or sense in that day?"
"Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property,
not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave town
whenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him!--and they can't
put him in the pillory for it."
"Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley, in strong indignation.
"An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors and
respect for authority! The pillory--"
"Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. I think
the pillory ought to be abolished."
"A most strange idea. Why?"
"Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory for
a capital crime?"
"No."
"Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a small
offense and then kill him?"
There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the first
time, the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it.
Good effect.
"You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillory
a while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't going
to use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. What
usually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for some
little offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? The
mob try to have some fun with him, don't they?"
"Yes."
"They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to pieces
to see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?"
"Yes."
"Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that mob
and here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge against
him--and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community,
for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another--stones
and bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?"
"There is no doubt of it."
"As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he?--jaws broken, teeth
smashed out?--or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off?
--or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?"
"It is true, God knoweth it."
"And if he is unpopular he can depend on _dying_, right there in
the stocks, can't he?"
"He surely can! One may not deny it."
"I take it none of _you_ are unpopular--by reason of pride or
insolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things that
excite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? _You_
wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?"
Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betray
it by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly,
and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of the
stocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they would
never consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quick
death by hanging.
"Well, to change the subject--for I think I've established my
point that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of our
laws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which ought
to deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keep
still and don't report me, _you_ will get the stocks if anybody
informs on you."
"Ah, but that would serve you but right," said Dowley, "for you
_must_ inform. So saith the law."
The others coincided.
"Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there's
one thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes a
mechanic's wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says that
if any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business,
to pay anything _over_ that cent a day, even for a single day, he
shall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he did
it and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Now
it seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us,
that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that within
a week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil--"
Oh, I tell _you_ it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them to
go to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poor
smiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, that
he never suspected anything was going to happen till the blow
came crashing down and knocked him all to rags.
A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with so
little time to work it up in.
But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little.
I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scare
them to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see they
had been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; and
to have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of them
distinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go and
report--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recover
from the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together.
Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better than
so many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thought
they would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands,
and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end.
But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressed
and suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantage
taken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kind
treatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates.
Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course,
they wanted to, but they couldn't dare.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES
Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I must
get up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think,
and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to life
again. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to get
the hang of his miller-gun--turned to stone, just in the attitude
he was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in his
unconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explain
its mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet it
was mysterious enough, for that race and that age.
I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, they
were totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreled
tube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a spring
to it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shot
wouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In the
gun were two sizes--wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort that
were several times larger. They were money. The mustard-seed
shot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun was
a purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the dark
with it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; or
in your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes
--one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar.
Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metal
cost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I was
the only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower.
"Paying the shot" soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knew
it would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenth
century, yet none would suspect how and when it originated.
The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap,
and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now, I was so
uneasy--for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me to
detect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed to
indicate that he had been loading himself up for a performance
of some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choose
such a time as this?
I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocently
artful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to the
subject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me.
I wanted to whisper in his ear, "Man, we are in awful danger!
every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men's
confidence; _don't_ waste any of this golden time." But of course
I couldn't do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we were
conspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant while
the king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his
damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts,
summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue from
every quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion
and fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but
presently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallize
and fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order and
quiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as if
out of remote distance:
"--were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be denied
that authorities differ as concerning this point, some contending
that the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken early
from the tree--"
The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyes
in a surprised and troubled way.
"--whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, that
this is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and other
like cereals do be always dug in the unripe state--"
The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear.
"--yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when one
doth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of the
tranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage--"
The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, and
one of them muttered, "These be errors, every one--God hath surely
smitten the mind of this farmer." I was in miserable apprehension;
I sat upon thorns.
"--and further instancing the known truth that in the case of
animals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of the
creature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe,
his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect,
taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsome
appetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious quality
of morals--"
They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, "The one would
betray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill them!" they flung
themselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! He
might be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just in
his line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight.
He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clear
off his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "St. George for
Britain!" and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, but
I laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up and
came again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeating
this, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly,
reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell us
from each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away with
what might was left in them. Hammering each other--for we stepped
aside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged,
and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention to
business of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension,
for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us,
and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safe
from intrusion.
Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurred
to me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around; he
was nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled the
king's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marco
there, no Phyllis there! They had gone to the road for help, sure.
I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later.
We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted into
the shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excited
peasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head.
They were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody;
the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depths
we would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then came
another sound--dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. It
magnified our contract--we must find running water.
We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behind
and modified to a murmur. We struck a stream and darted into it.
We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as much
as three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a great
bough sticking out over the water. We climbed up on this bough,
and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; now
we began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struck
our trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. And
then for another while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had found
the place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzing
up and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again.
When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage,
the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we could
crawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged it
worth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, though
the king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect.
We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment among
the foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt.
Presently we heard it coming--and coming on the jump, too; yes,
and down both sides of the stream. Louder--louder--next minute
it swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings,
and swept by like a cyclone.
"I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest something
to them," said I, "but I don't mind the disappointment. Come,
my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We've
flanked them. Dark is coming on, presently. If we can cross the
stream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses from
somebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough."
We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemed
to hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen.
"Yes," said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're on
their way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and let
them go by."
So we climbed back. The king listened a moment and said:
"They still search--I wit the sign. We did best to abide."
He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noise
approached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said:
"They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them,
and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we took
the water."
"Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hoping
better things."
The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was drifting
under us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt from
the other bank, and said:
"An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branch
that overhangs, and yet not touch ground. Ye will do well to send
a man up it."
"Marry, that we will do!"
I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thing
and swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there are
some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness
and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need
to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person
for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never
had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought
to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing
he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends
him on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make any
valuable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headed
clown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the right
one? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, which
was, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started.
Matters were serious now. We remained still, and awaited developments.
The peasant toiled his difficult way up. The king raised himself
up and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's head
arrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the man
floundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of anger
below, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we were
treed, and prisoners. Another man started up; the bridging bough
was detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnished
the bridge. The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep the
bridge. For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter,
the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodged
him as soon as he came in reach. The king's spirits rose, his joy
was limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospect
we should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics we
could hold the tree against the whole country-side.
However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; wherefore
they called off the assault and began to debate other plans.
They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stones
might answer. We had no objections. A stone might possibly
penetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we were
well protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible from
any good aiming point. If they would but waste half an hour in
stone-throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feeling
very well satisfied. We could smile; almost laugh.
But we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have been
interrupted. Before the stones had been raging through the leaves
and bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to notice
a smell. A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation
--it was smoke! Our game was up at last. We recognized that. When
smoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile of
dry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they saw
the thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they broke
out in a storm of joy-clamors. I got enough breath to say:
"Proceed, my liege; after you is manners."
The king gasped:
"Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of the
trunk, and leave me the other. Then will we fight. Let each pile
his dead according to his own fashion and taste."
Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struck
the ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places,
and began to give and take with all our might. The powwow and
racket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion and
thick-falling blows. Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midst
of the crowd, and a voice shouted:
"Hold--or ye are dead men!"
How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks of
a gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command,
a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation.
The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentleman
inspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants:
"What are ye doing to these people?"
"They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we know
not whence, and--"
"Ye know not whence? Do ye pretend ye know them not?"
"Most honored sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangers
and unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violent
and bloodthirsty madmen that ever--"
"Peace! Ye know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye?
And whence are ye? Explain."
"We are but peaceful strangers, sir," I said, "and traveling upon
our own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquainted
here. We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your brave
interference and protection these people would have killed us.
As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violent
or bloodthirsty."
The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "Lash me
these animals to their kennels!"
The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen,
laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down such
as were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to the
bush. The shrieks and supplications presently died away in the
distance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. Meantime
the gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dug
no particulars out of us. We were lavish of recognition of the
service he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that we
were friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort were
all returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants:
"Bring the led-horses and mount these people."
"Yes, my lord."
We were placed toward the rear, among the servants. We traveled
pretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at a
roadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of our
troubles. My lord went immediately to his room, after ordering
his supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morning
we breakfasted and made ready to start.
My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment with
indolent grace, and said:
"Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is our
direction likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath given
commandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certain
of us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet,
whenso ye shall be out of peril."
We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept the
offer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate and
comfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Grip
was a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day's
journey beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it was
near the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market square
of the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more for
my lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center of
the square, to see what might be the object of interest. It was the
remnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! So they had
been dragging their chains about, all this weary time. That poor
husband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchases
had been added to the gang. The king was not interested, and
wanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity. I could
not take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity.
There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining,
with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. And by hideous contrast, a
redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty
steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"
I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was remembering
I was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and--
Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions,
those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on. The
king burst out in a fury, and said:
"What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?"
My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly:
"Put up the slaves and sell them!"
_Slaves!_ The word had a new sound--and how unspeakably awful! The
king lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force;
but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen of
the rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we were
helpless, with our hands bound behind us. We so loudly and so
earnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interested
attention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd,
and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude.
The orator said:
"If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear--the God-given
liberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter!
(Applause.) Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs."
"What proofs?"
"Proof that ye are freemen."
Ah--I remembered! I came to myself; I said nothing. But the
king stormed out:
"Thou'rt insane, man. It were better, and more in reason, that
this thief and scoundrel here prove that we are _not_ freemen."
You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often know
the laws; by words, not by effects. They take a _meaning_, and get
to be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself.
All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turned
away, no longer interested. The orator said--and this time in the
tones of business, not of sentiment:
"An ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learned
them. Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. Ye may be
freemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. The law
is clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves,
it requireth you to prove ye are not."
I said:
"Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us only
time to send to the Valley of Holiness--"
"Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you may
not hope to have them granted. It would cost much time, and would
unwarrantably inconvenience your master--"
"_Master_, idiot!" stormed the king. "I have no master, I myself
am the m--"
"Silence, for God's sake!"
I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in trouble
enough already; it could not help us any to give these people
the notion that we were lunatics.
There is no use in stringing out the details. The earl put us up
and sold us at auction. This same infernal law had existed in
our own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred years
later, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove that
they were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery without
the circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but the
minute law and the auction block came into my personal experience,
a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenly
hellish. Well, that's the way we are made.
Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. In a big town and an
active market we should have brought a good price; but this place
was utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes me
ashamed, every time I think of it. The King of England brought
seven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king was
easily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. But
that is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dull
market, I don't care what the property is, you are going to make
a poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. If
the earl had had wit enough to--
However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies up
on his account. Let him go, for the present; I took his number,
so to speak.
The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that long
chain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. We
took up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon;
and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the King
of England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fettered
and yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle men
and women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely,
and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark.
Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a king
than there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap and
hollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But reveal
his quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to look
at him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt.
CHAPTER XXXV
A PITIFUL INCIDENT
It's a world of surprises. The king brooded; this was natural.
What would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigious
nature of his fall, of course--from the loftiest place in the world
to the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world to
the obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest.
No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to start
with, was not this, but the price he had fetched! He couldn't
seem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, when
I first found it out, that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seem
natural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a right
focus on it, I saw I was mistaken; it _was_ natural. For this
reason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings,
like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities;
but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, are
real, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued below
his own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn't
anything more than an average man, if he was up that high.
Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anything
like a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars,
sure--a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldest
conceit; I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground for
me to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and do
the diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside, and
brazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars;
whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world had
never seen a king that was worth half the money, and during the
next thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourth
of it. Yes, he tired me. If he began to talk about the crops;
or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics;
or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology--no matter what
--I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was going to get out of it
a palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. Wherever we
halted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look which
said plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, with
this kind of folk, you would see a different result." Well, when
he was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for seven
dollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worrying
I wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chance
to die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchasers
looked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment on
the king was something like this:
"Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style.
Pity but style was marketable."
At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our owner
was a practical person and he perceived that this defect must be
mended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he went
to work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could have
given the man some valuable advice, but I didn't; you mustn't
volunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damage
the cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficiently
difficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style,
even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertake
to reduce the king's style to a slave's style--and by force--go to!
it was a stately contract. Never mind the details--it will save me
trouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that at the
end of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and club
and fist had done their work well; the king's body was a sight
to see--and to weep over; but his spirit?--why, it wasn't even
phased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to see
that there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a man
till he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood you
can't. This man found that from his first effort down to his
latest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but the
king was ready to plunge for him, and did it. So he gave up
at last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired.
The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was
a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him.
We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth,
and suffering. And what Englishman was the most interested in
the slavery question by that time? His grace the king! Yes; from
being the most indifferent, he was become the most interested.
He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had ever
heard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question which
I had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer that
I had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further.
Would he abolish slavery?
His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time;
I shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanity
was not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-word
almost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, it
ought to have been.
I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn't wanted to get
free any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to,
but I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and had
always dissuaded the king from them. But now--ah, it was a new
atmosphere! Liberty would be worth any cost that might be put
upon it now. I set about a plan, and was straightway charmed
with it. It would require time, yes, and patience, too, a great
deal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully as sure
ones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none that
could be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give this
one up. It might delay us months, but no matter, I would carry
it out or break something.
Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken
by a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making
for. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving
snow was so thick. You couldn't see a thing, and we were soon
lost. The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin
before him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for they
drove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor.
So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where we
were. The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased.
By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were
dead, and others past moving and threatened with death. Our
master was nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living, and
made us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation,
and he helped as well as he could with his whip.
Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a
woman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung
herself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of people
came tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was a
witch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease,
and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a black
cat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly looked
human, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her.
Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed
around this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. He
said, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imagine
that! They were willing. They fastened her to a post; they
brought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch while
she shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughters
to her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business,
lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into life
and commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocent
life of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort of master we
had. I took _his_ number. That snow-storm cost him nine of his
flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for
many days together, he was so enraged over his loss.
We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession.
And such a procession! All the riffraff of the kingdom seemed
to be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. In the van was
a cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely young
girl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to her
breast in a passion of love every little while, and every little
while wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained down
upon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her,
happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand,
which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart.
Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or after
the cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singing
snatches of foul song, skipping, dancing--a very holiday of
hellions, a sickening sight. We had struck a suburb of London,
outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of London
society. Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows.
A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, and
said comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff provide
a stool for her. Then he stood there by her on the gallows, and
for a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at his
feet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched away
on every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then began
to tell the story of the case. And there was pity in his voice
--how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land!
I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he said
it in; and so I change it into my own words:
"Law is intended to mete out justice. Sometimes it fails. This
cannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be resigned, and pray
for the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, and
that his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thing
to death--and it is right. But another law had placed her where
she must commit her crime or starve with her child--and before God
that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death!
"A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years,
was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lips
were blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad and
innocent hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she; for he was
doing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft,
his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering,
he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he was
adding his mite to the wealth of the nation. By consent of a
treacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home and
swept it away! That young husband was waylaid and impressed,
and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought him
everywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplications
of her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks dragged
by, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreck
under the burden of her misery. Little by little all her small
possessions went for food. When she could no longer pay her rent,
they turned her out of doors. She begged, while she had strength;
when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole a
piece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent,
thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was seen by the
owner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to trial.
The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her, and her
sorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, by
permission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mind
was so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overborne
with hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless through
her brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was so
hungry! For a moment all were touched, and there was disposition
to deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young and
friendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed her
of her support to blame as being the first and only cause of her
transgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereas
these things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still there
was much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here would
be a danger to property--oh, my God, is there no property in ruined
homes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British law
holds precious!--and so he must require sentence.
"When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolen
linen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray as
ashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'Oh, poor
child, poor child, I did not know it was death!' and fell as a
tree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone; before
the sun was set, he had taken his own life. A kindly man; a man
whose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this that
is to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong
--to the rulers and the bitter laws of Britain. The time is come, my
child; let me pray over thee--not _for_ thee, dear abused poor heart
and innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death,
who need it more."
After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck,
and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear,
because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it,
and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching it
with tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and the
baby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight over
what it took for romp and play. Even the hangman couldn't stand it,
but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled and
tugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and stepped
quickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made a
wild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope--and the
under-sheriff--held her short. Then she went on her knees and
stretched out her hands and cried:
"One more kiss--oh, my God, one more, one more,--it is the dying
that begs it!"
She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when they
got it away again, she cried out:
"Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it has
no father, no friend, no mother--"
"It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these will I be
to it till I die."
You should have seen her face then! Gratitude? Lord, what do
you want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire;
a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away
to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.
CHAPTER XXXVI
AN ENCOUNTER IN THE DARK
London--to a slave--was a sufficiently interesting place. It was
merely a great big village; and mainly mud and thatch. The streets
were muddy, crooked, unpaved. The populace was an ever flocking
and drifting swarm of rags, and splendors, of nodding plumes and
shining armor. The king had a palace there; he saw the outside
of it. It made him sigh; yes, and swear a little, in a poor
juvenile sixth century way. We saw knights and grandees whom
we knew, but they didn't know us in our rags and dirt and raw
welts and bruises, and wouldn't have recognized us if we had hailed
them, nor stopped to answer, either, it being unlawful to speak
with slaves on a chain. Sandy passed within ten yards of me on
a mule--hunting for me, I imagined. But the thing which clean
broke my heart was something which happened in front of our old
barrack in a square, while we were enduring the spectacle of a man
being boiled to death in oil for counterfeiting pennies. It was
the sight of a newsboy--and I couldn't get at him! Still, I had
one comfort--here was proof that Clarence was still alive and
banging away. I meant to be with him before long; the thought was
full of cheer.
I had one little glimpse of another thing, one day, which gave me
a great uplift. It was a wire stretching from housetop to housetop.
Telegraph or telephone, sure. I did very much wish I had a little
piece of it. It was just what I needed, in order to carry out my
project of escape. My idea was to get loose some night, along with
the king, then gag and bind our master, change clothes with him,
batter him into the aspect of a stranger, hitch him to the slave-chain,
assume possession of the property, march to Camelot, and--
But you get my idea; you see what a stunning dramatic surprise
I would wind up with at the palace. It was all feasible, if
I could only get hold of a slender piece of iron which I could
shape into a lock-pick. I could then undo the lumbering padlocks
with which our chains were fastened, whenever I might choose.
But I never had any luck; no such thing ever happened to fall
in my way. However, my chance came at last. A gentleman who
had come twice before to dicker for me, without result, or indeed
any approach to a result, came again. I was far from expecting
ever to belong to him, for the price asked for me from the time
I was first enslaved was exorbitant, and always provoked either
anger or derision, yet my master stuck stubbornly to it--twenty-two
dollars. He wouldn't bate a cent. The king was greatly admired,
because of his grand physique, but his kingly style was against
him, and he wasn't salable; nobody wanted that kind of a slave.
I considered myself safe from parting from him because of my
extravagant price. No, I was not expecting to ever belong to
this gentleman whom I have spoken of, but he had something which
I expected would belong to me eventually, if he would but visit
us often enough. It was a steel thing with a long pin to it, with
which his long cloth outside garment was fastened together in
front. There were three of them. He had disappointed me twice,
because he did not come quite close enough to me to make my project
entirely safe; but this time I succeeded; I captured the lower
clasp of the three, and when he missed it he thought he had lost
it on the way.
I had a chance to be glad about a minute, then straightway a chance
to be sad again. For when the purchase was about to fail, as usual,
the master suddenly spoke up and said what would be worded thus
--in modern English:
"I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm tired supporting these two for
no good. Give me twenty-two dollars for this one, and I'll throw
the other one in."
The king couldn't get his breath, he was in such a fury. He began
to choke and gag, and meantime the master and the gentleman moved
away discussing.
"An ye will keep the offer open--"
"'Tis open till the morrow at this hour."
"Then I will answer you at that time," said the gentleman, and
disappeared, the master following him.
I had a time of it to cool the king down, but I managed it.
I whispered in his ear, to this effect:
"Your grace _will_ go for nothing, but after another fashion. And
so shall I. To-night we shall both be free."
"Ah! How is that?"
"With this thing which I have stolen, I will unlock these locks
and cast off these chains to-night. When he comes about nine-thirty
to inspect us for the night, we will seize him, gag him, batter
him, and early in the morning we will march out of this town,
proprietors of this caravan of slaves."
That was as far as I went, but the king was charmed and satisfied.
That evening we waited patiently for our fellow-slaves to get
to sleep and signify it by the usual sign, for you must not take
many chances on those poor fellows if you can avoid it. It is
best to keep your own secrets. No doubt they fidgeted only about
as usual, but it didn't seem so to me. It seemed to me that they
were going to be forever getting down to their regular snoring.
As the time dragged on I got nervously afraid we shouldn't have
enough of it left for our needs; so I made several premature
attempts, and merely delayed things by it; for I couldn't seem
to touch a padlock, there in the dark, without starting a rattle
out of it which interrupted somebody's sleep and made him turn
over and wake some more of the gang.
But finally I did get my last iron off, and was a free man once
more. I took a good breath of relief, and reached for the king's
irons. Too late! in comes the master, with a light in one hand
and his heavy walking-staff in the other. I snuggled close among
the wallow of snorers, to conceal as nearly as possible that I was
naked of irons; and I kept a sharp lookout and prepared to spring
for my man the moment he should bend over me.
But he didn't approach. He stopped, gazed absently toward our
dusky mass a minute, evidently thinking about something else;
then set down his light, moved musingly toward the door, and before
a body could imagine what he was going to do, he was out of the
door and had closed it behind him.
"Quick!" said the king. "Fetch him back!"
Of course, it was the thing to do, and I was up and out in a
moment. But, dear me, there were no lamps in those days, and
it was a dark night. But I glimpsed a dim figure a few steps
away. I darted for it, threw myself upon it, and then there was
a state of things and lively! We fought and scuffled and struggled,
and drew a crowd in no time. They took an immense interest in
the fight and encouraged us all they could, and, in fact, couldn't
have been pleasanter or more cordial if it had been their own
fight. Then a tremendous row broke out behind us, and as much
as half of our audience left us, with a rush, to invest some
sympathy in that. Lanterns began to swing in all directions;
it was the watch gathering from far and near. Presently a halberd
fell across my back, as a reminder, and I knew what it meant.
I was in custody. So was my adversary. We were marched off toward
prison, one on each side of the watchman. Here was disaster,
here was a fine scheme gone to sudden destruction! I tried to
imagine what would happen when the master should discover that
it was I who had been fighting him; and what would happen if they
jailed us together in the general apartment for brawlers and petty
law-breakers, as was the custom; and what might--
Just then my antagonist turned his face around in my direction,
the freckled light from the watchman's tin lantern fell on it,
and, by George, he was the wrong man!
CHAPTER XXXVII
AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT
Sleep? It was impossible. It would naturally have been impossible
in that noisome cavern of a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken,
quarrelsome, and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that
made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of, was my
racking impatience to get out of this place and find out the whole
size of what might have happened yonder in the slave-quarters
in consequence of that intolerable miscarriage of mine.
It was a long night, but the morning got around at last. I made
a full and frank explanation to the court. I said I was a slave,
the property of the great Earl Grip, who had arrived just after
dark at the Tabard inn in the village on the other side of the
water, and had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being
taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder. I had been
ordered to cross to the city in all haste and bring the best
physician; I was doing my best; naturally I was running with all
my might; the night was dark, I ran against this common person
here, who seized me by the throat and began to pummel me, although
I told him my errand, and implored him, for the sake of the great
earl my master's mortal peril--
The common person interrupted and said it was a lie; and was going
to explain how I rushed upon him and attacked him without a word--
"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him hence and give him
a few stripes whereby to teach him how to treat the servant of
a nobleman after a different fashion another time. Go!"
Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I would not fail
to tell his lordship it was in no wise the court's fault that this
high-handed thing had happened. I said I would make it all right,
and so took my leave. Took it just in time, too; he was starting
to ask me why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was
arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it--which was true
--but that I was so battered by that man that all my wit was knocked
out of me--and so forth and so on, and got myself away, still
mumbling. I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under my
feet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty--everybody gone!
That is, everybody except one body--the slave-master's. It lay
there all battered to pulp; and all about were the evidences of
a terrific fight. There was a rude board coffin on a cart at
the door, and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a
road through the gaping crowd in order that they might bring it in.
I picked out a man humble enough in life to condescend to talk
with one so shabby as I, and got his account of the matter.
"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against their master
in the night, and thou seest how it ended."
"Yes. How did it begin?"
"There was no witness but the slaves. They said the slave that
was most valuable got free of his bonds and escaped in some strange
way--by magic arts 'twas thought, by reason that he had no key,
and the locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured. When
the master discovered his loss, he was mad with despair, and threw
himself upon his people with his heavy stick, who resisted and
brake his back and in other and divers ways did give him hurts
that brought him swiftly to his end."
"This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves, no doubt,
upon the trial."
"Marry, the trial is over."
"Over!"
"Would they be a week, think you--and the matter so simple? They
were not the half of a quarter of an hour at it."
"Why, I don't see how they could determine which were the guilty
ones in so short a time."
"_Which_ ones? Indeed, they considered not particulars like to that.
They condemned them in a body. Wit ye not the law?--which men
say the Romans left behind them here when they went--that if one
slave killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it."
"True. I had forgotten. And when will these die?"
"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some say they will
wait a pair of days more, if peradventure they may find the missing
one meantime."
The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable.
"Is it likely they will find him?"
"Before the day is spent--yes. They seek him everywhere. They
stand at the gates of the town, with certain of the slaves who
will discover him to them if he cometh, and none can pass out
but he will be first examined."
"Might one see the place where the rest are confined?"
"The outside of it--yes. The inside of it--but ye will not want
to see that."
I took the address of that prison for future reference and then
sauntered off. At the first second-hand clothing shop I came to,
up a back street, I got a rough rig suitable for a common seaman
who might be going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with
a liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This concealed my
worst bruises. It was a transformation. I no longer resembled my
former self. Then I struck out for that wire, found it and
followed it to its den. It was a little room over a butcher's
shop--which meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic
line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his table. I locked
the door and put the vast key in my bosom. This alarmed the young
fellow, and he was going to make a noise; but I said:
"Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are dead, sure. Tackle
your instrument. Lively, now! Call Camelot."
"This doth amaze me! How should such as you know aught of such
matters as--"
"Call Camelot! I am a desperate man. Call Camelot, or get away
from the instrument and I will do it myself."
"What--you?"
"Yes--certainly. Stop gabbling. Call the palace."
He made the call.
"Now, then, call Clarence."
"Clarence _who_?"
"Never mind Clarence who. Say you want Clarence; you'll get
an answer."
He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes--ten minutes
--how long it did seem!--and then came a click that was as familiar
to me as a human voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil.
"Now, my lad, vacate! They would have known _my_ touch, maybe,
and so your call was surest; but I'm all right now."
He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen--but it didn't
win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste any time in sociabilities
with Clarence, but squared away for business, straight-off--thus:
"The king is here and in danger. We were captured and brought
here as slaves. We should not be able to prove our identity
--and the fact is, I am not in a position to try. Send a telegram
for the palace here which will carry conviction with it."
His answer came straight back:
"They don't know anything about the telegraph; they haven't had
any experience yet, the line to London is so new. Better not
venture that. They might hang you. Think up something else."
Might hang us! Little he knew how closely he was crowding the
facts. I couldn't think up anything for the moment. Then an idea
struck me, and I started it along:
"Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot in the lead; and
send them on the jump. Let them enter by the southwest gate, and
look out for the man with a white cloth around his right arm."
The answer was prompt:
"They shall start in half an hour."
"All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I'm a friend
of yours and a dead-head; and that he must be discreet and say
nothing about this visit of mine."
The instrument began to talk to the youth and I hurried away.
I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it would be nine o'clock.
Knights and horses in heavy armor couldn't travel very fast.
These would make the best time they could, and now that the ground
was in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would probably
make a seven-mile gait; they would have to change horses a couple
of times; they would arrive about six, or a little after; it would
still be plenty light enough; they would see the white cloth which
I should tie around my right arm, and I would take command. We
would surround that prison and have the king out in no time.
It would be showy and picturesque enough, all things considered,
though I would have preferred noonday, on account of the more
theatrical aspect the thing would have.
Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my bow, I thought
I would look up some of those people whom I had formerly recognized,
and make myself known. That would help us out of our scrape,
without the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it was
a risky business. I must get into sumptuous raiment, and it
wouldn't do to run and jump into it. No, I must work up to it
by degrees, buying suit after suit of clothes, in shops wide apart,
and getting a little finer article with each change, until I should
finally reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project. So
I started.
But the scheme fell through like scat! The first corner I turned,
I came plump upon one of our slaves, snooping around with a watchman.
I coughed at the moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right
into my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard that cough before.
I turned immediately into a shop and worked along down the counter,
pricing things and watching out of the corner of my eye. Those
people had stopped, and were talking together and looking in at
the door. I made up my mind to get out the back way, if there
was a back way, and I asked the shopwoman if I could step out
there and look for the escaped slave, who was believed to be in
hiding back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in disguise,
and my pard was yonder at the door with one of the murderers in
charge, and would she be good enough to step there and tell him
he needn't wait, but had better go at once to the further end of
the back alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out.
She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those already celebrated
murderers, and she started on the errand at once. I slipped out
the back way, locked the door behind me, put the key in my pocket
and started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable.
Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake.
A double one, in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid of
that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must
pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character.
And then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the officer, being
human, would _naturally_ do; whereas when you are least expecting it,
a man will now and then go and do the very thing which it's _not_
natural for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do,
in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he would find
a stout oaken door, securely locked, between him and me; before
he could break it down, I should be far away and engaged in slipping
into a succession of baffling disguises which would soon get me
into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection from meddling
law-dogs in Britain than any amount of mere innocence and purity
of character. But instead of doing the natural thing, the officer
took me at my word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I
came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction with my
own cleverness, he turned the corner and I walked right into his
handcuffs. If I had known it was a cul de sac--however, there
isn't any excusing a blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up
to profit and loss.
Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just come ashore from
a long voyage, and all that sort of thing--just to see, you know,
if it would deceive that slave. But it didn't. He knew me. Then
I reproached him for betraying me. He was more surprised than
hurt. He stretched his eyes wide, and said:
"What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape and not hang
with us, when thou'rt the very _cause_ of our hanging? Go to!"
"Go to" was their way of saying "I should smile!" or "I like that!"
Queer talkers, those people.
Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case,
and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by
argument, what is the use to argue? It isn't my way. So I only said:
"You're not going to be hanged. None of us are."
Both men laughed, and the slave said:
"Ye have not ranked as a fool--before. You might better keep
your reputation, seeing the strain would not be for long."
"It will stand it, I reckon. Before to-morrow we shall be out
of prison, and free to go where we will, besides."
The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made
a rasping noise in his throat, and said:
"Out of prison--yes--ye say true. And free likewise to go where
ye will, so ye wander not out of his grace the Devil's sultry realm."
I kept my temper, and said, indifferently:
"Now I suppose you really think we are going to hang within
a day or two."
"I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the thing was decided
and proclaimed."
"Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?"
"Even that. I only _thought_, then; I _know_, now."
I felt sarcastical, so I said:
"Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell us, then,
what you _know_."
"That ye will all be hanged _to-day_, at mid-afternoon! Oho! that
shot hit home! Lean upon me."
The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My knights couldn't
arrive in time. They would be as much as three hours too late.
Nothing in the world could save the King of England; nor me, which
was more important. More important, not merely to me, but to
the nation--the only nation on earth standing ready to blossom
into civilization. I was sick. I said no more, there wasn't
anything to say. I knew what the man meant; that if the missing
slave was found, the postponement would be revoked, the execution
take place to-day. Well, the missing slave was found.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
SIR LAUNCELOT AND KNIGHTS TO THE RESCUE
Nearing four in the afternoon. The scene was just outside the
walls of London. A cool, comfortable, superb day, with a brilliant
sun; the kind of day to make one want to live, not die. The
multitude was prodigious and far-reaching; and yet we fifteen
poor devils hadn't a friend in it. There was something painful
in that thought, look at it how you might. There we sat, on our
tall scaffold, the butt of the hate and mockery of all those
enemies. We were being made a holiday spectacle. They had built
a sort of grand stand for the nobility and gentry, and these were
there in full force, with their ladies. We recognized a good
many of them.
The crowd got a brief and unexpected dash of diversion out of
the king. The moment we were freed of our bonds he sprang up,
in his fantastic rags, with face bruised out of all recognition, and
proclaimed himself Arthur, King of Britain, and denounced the
awful penalties of treason upon every soul there present if hair
of his sacred head were touched. It startled and surprised him
to hear them break into a vast roar of laughter. It wounded his
dignity, and he locked himself up in silence. Then, although
the crowd begged him to go on, and tried to provoke him to it
by catcalls, jeers, and shouts of:
"Let him speak! The king! The king! his humble subjects hunger
and thirst for words of wisdom out of the mouth of their master
his Serene and Sacred Raggedness!"
But it went for nothing. He put on all his majesty and sat under
this rain of contempt and insult unmoved. He certainly was great
in his way. Absently, I had taken off my white bandage and wound
it about my right arm. When the crowd noticed this, they began
upon me. They said:
"Doubtless this sailor-man is his minister--observe his costly
badge of office!"
I let them go on until they got tired, and then I said:
"Yes, I am his minister, The Boss; and to-morrow you will hear
that from Camelot which--"
I got no further. They drowned me out with joyous derision. But
presently there was silence; for the sheriffs of London, in their
official robes, with their subordinates, began to make a stir which
indicated that business was about to begin. In the hush which
followed, our crime was recited, the death warrant read, then
everybody uncovered while a priest uttered a prayer.
Then a slave was blindfolded; the hangman unslung his rope. There
lay the smooth road below us, we upon one side of it, the banked
multitude wailing its other side--a good clear road, and kept free
by the police--how good it would be to see my five hundred horsemen
come tearing down it! But no, it was out of the possibilities.
I followed its receding thread out into the distance--not a horseman
on it, or sign of one.
There was a jerk, and the slave hung dangling; dangling and hideously
squirming, for his limbs were not tied.
A second rope was unslung, in a moment another slave was dangling.
In a minute a third slave was struggling in the air. It was
dreadful. I turned away my head a moment, and when I turned back
I missed the king! They were blindfolding him! I was paralyzed;
I couldn't move, I was choking, my tongue was petrified. They
finished blindfolding him, they led him under the rope. I couldn't
shake off that clinging impotence. But when I saw them put the
noose around his neck, then everything let go in me and I made
a spring to the rescue--and as I made it I shot one more glance
abroad--by George! here they came, a-tilting!--five hundred mailed
and belted knights on bicycles!
The grandest sight that ever was seen. Lord, how the plumes
streamed, how the sun flamed and flashed from the endless procession
of webby wheels!
I waved my right arm as Launcelot swept in--he recognized my rag
--I tore away noose and bandage, and shouted:
"On your knees, every rascal of you, and salute the king! Who
fails shall sup in hell to-night!"
I always use that high style when I'm climaxing an effect. Well,
it was noble to see Launcelot and the boys swarm up onto that
scaffold and heave sheriffs and such overboard. And it was fine
to see that astonished multitude go down on their knees and beg
their lives of the king they had just been deriding and insulting.
And as he stood apart there, receiving this homage in rags,
I thought to myself, well, really there is something peculiarly
grand about the gait and bearing of a king, after all.
I was immensely satisfied. Take the whole situation all around,
it was one of the gaudiest effects I ever instigated.
And presently up comes Clarence, his own self! and winks, and
says, very modernly:
"Good deal of a surprise, wasn't it? I knew you'd like it. I've
had the boys practicing this long time, privately; and just hungry
for a chance to show off."
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE YANKEE'S FIGHT WITH THE KNIGHTS
Home again, at Camelot. A morning or two later I found the paper,
damp from the press, by my plate at the breakfast table. I turned
to the advertising columns, knowing I should find something of
personal interest to me there. It was this:
DE PAR LE ROI.
Know that the great lord and illus-
trious Kni8ht, SIR SAGRAMOR LE
DESIROUS naving condescended to
meet the King's Minister, Hank Mor-
gan, the which is surnamed The Boss,
for satisfgction of offence anciently given,
these wilL engage in the lists by
Camelot about the fourth hour of the
morning of the sixteenth day of this
next succeeding month. The battle
will be a l outrance, sith the said offence
was of a deadly sort, admitting of no
comPosition.
DE PAR LE ROI
Clarence's editorial reference to this affair was to this effect:
It will be observed, by a gl7nce at our
advertising columns, that the commu-
nity is to be favored with a treat of un-
usual interest in the tournament line.
The n ames of the artists are warrant of
good enterTemment. The box-office
will be open at noon of the 13th; ad-
mission 3 cents, reserved seatsh 5; pro-
ceeds to go to the hospital fund The
royal pair and all the Court will be pres-
ent. With these exceptions, and the
press and the clergy, the free list is strict-
ly susPended. Parties are hereby warn-
ed against buying tickets of speculators;
they will not be good at the door.
Everybody knows and likes The Boss,
everybody knows and likes Sir Sag.;
come, let us give the lads a good send-
off. ReMember, the proceeds go to a
great and free charity, and one whose
broad begevolence stretches out its help-
ing hand, warm with the blood of a lov-
ing heart, to all that suffer, regardless of
race, creed, condition or color--the
only charity yet established in the earth
which has no politico-religious stop-
cock on its compassion, but says Here
flows the stream, let ALL come and
drink! Turn out, all hands! fetch along
your dou3hnuts and your gum-drops
and have a good time. Pie for sale on
the grounds, and rocks to crack it with;
and ciRcus-lemonade--three drops of
lime juice to a barrel of water.
N.B. This is the first tournament
under the new law, whidh allow each
combatant to use any weapon he may pre-
fer. You may want to make a note of that.
Up to the day set, there was no talk in all Britain of anything
but this combat. All other topics sank into insignificance and
passed out of men's thoughts and interest. It was not because
a tournament was a great matter, it was not because Sir Sagramor
had found the Holy Grail, for he had not, but had failed; it was
not because the second (official) personage in the kingdom was
one of the duellists; no, all these features were commonplace.
Yet there was abundant reason for the extraordinary interest which
this coming fight was creating. It was born of the fact that all
the nation knew that this was not to be a duel between mere men,
so to speak, but a duel between two mighty magicians; a duel not
of muscle but of mind, not of human skill but of superhuman art
and craft; a final struggle for supremacy between the two master
enchanters of the age. It was realized that the most prodigious
achievements of the most renowned knights could not be worthy
of comparison with a spectacle like this; they could be but child's
play, contrasted with this mysterious and awful battle of the gods.
Yes, all the world knew it was going to be in reality a duel
between Merlin and me, a measuring of his magic powers against
mine. It was known that Merlin had been busy whole days and nights
together, imbuing Sir Sagramor's arms and armor with supernal
powers of offense and defense, and that he had procured for him
from the spirits of the air a fleecy veil which would render the
wearer invisible to his antagonist while still visible to other
men. Against Sir Sagramor, so weaponed and protected, a thousand
knights could accomplish nothing; against him no known enchantments
could prevail. These facts were sure; regarding them there was
no doubt, no reason for doubt. There was but one question: might
there be still other enchantments, _unknown_ to Merlin, which could
render Sir Sagramor's veil transparent to me, and make his enchanted
mail vulnerable to my weapons? This was the one thing to be
decided in the lists. Until then the world must remain in suspense.
So the world thought there was a vast matter at stake here, and
the world was right, but it was not the one they had in their
minds. No, a far vaster one was upon the cast of this die:
_the life of knight-errantry_. I was a champion, it was true, but
not the champion of the frivolous black arts, I was the champion
of hard unsentimental common-sense and reason. I was entering
the lists to either destroy knight-errantry or be its victim.
Vast as the show-grounds were, there were no vacant spaces in them
outside of the lists, at ten o'clock on the morning of the 16th.
The mammoth grand-stand was clothed in flags, streamers, and rich
tapestries, and packed with several acres of small-fry tributary
kings, their suites, and the British aristocracy; with our own
royal gang in the chief place, and each and every individual
a flashing prism of gaudy silks and velvets--well, I never saw
anything to begin with it but a fight between an Upper Mississippi
sunset and the aurora borealis. The huge camp of beflagged and
gay-colored tents at one end of the lists, with a stiff-standing
sentinel at every door and a shining shield hanging by him for
challenge, was another fine sight. You see, every knight was
there who had any ambition or any caste feeling; for my feeling
toward their order was not much of a secret, and so here was their
chance. If I won my fight with Sir Sagramor, others would have
the right to call me out as long as I might be willing to respond.
Down at our end there were but two tents; one for me, and another
for my servants. At the appointed hour the king made a sign, and
the heralds, in their tabards, appeared and made proclamation,
naming the combatants and stating the cause of quarrel. There
was a pause, then a ringing bugle-blast, which was the signal for
us to come forth. All the multitude caught their breath, and
an eager curiosity flashed into every face.
Out from his tent rode great Sir Sagramor, an imposing tower
of iron, stately and rigid, his huge spear standing upright in its
socket and grasped in his strong hand, his grand horse's face and
breast cased in steel, his body clothed in rich trappings that
almost dragged the ground--oh, a most noble picture. A great
shout went up, of welcome and admiration.
And then out I came. But I didn't get any shout. There was
a wondering and eloquent silence for a moment, then a great wave
of laughter began to sweep along that human sea, but a warning
bugle-blast cut its career short. I was in the simplest and
comfortablest of gymnast costumes--flesh-colored tights from neck
to heel, with blue silk puffings about my loins, and bareheaded.
My horse was not above medium size, but he was alert, slender-limbed,
muscled with watchsprings, and just a greyhound to go. He was
a beauty, glossy as silk, and naked as he was when he was born,
except for bridle and ranger-saddle.
The iron tower and the gorgeous bedquilt came cumbrously but
gracefully pirouetting down the lists, and we tripped lightly up
to meet them. We halted; the tower saluted, I responded; then
we wheeled and rode side by side to the grand-stand and faced
our king and queen, to whom we made obeisance. The queen exclaimed:
"Alack, Sir Boss, wilt fight naked, and without lance or sword or--"
But the king checked her and made her understand, with a polite
phrase or two, that this was none of her business. The bugles
rang again; and we separated and rode to the ends of the lists,
and took position. Now old Merlin stepped into view and cast
a dainty web of gossamer threads over Sir Sagramor which turned
him into Hamlet's ghost; the king made a sign, the bugles blew,
Sir Sagramor laid his great lance in rest, and the next moment here
he came thundering down the course with his veil flying out behind,
and I went whistling through the air like an arrow to meet him
--cocking my ear the while, as if noting the invisible knight's
position and progress by hearing, not sight. A chorus of encouraging
shouts burst out for him, and one brave voice flung out a heartening
word for me--said:
"Go it, slim Jim!"
It was an even bet that Clarence had procured that favor for me
--and furnished the language, too. When that formidable lance-point
was within a yard and a half of my breast I twitched my horse aside
without an effort, and the big knight swept by, scoring a blank.
I got plenty of applause that time. We turned, braced up, and
down we came again. Another blank for the knight, a roar of
applause for me. This same thing was repeated once more; and
it fetched such a whirlwind of applause that Sir Sagramor lost his
temper, and at once changed his tactics and set himself the task
of chasing me down. Why, he hadn't any show in the world at that;
it was a game of tag, with all the advantage on my side; I whirled
out of his path with ease whenever I chose, and once I slapped him
on the back as I went to the rear. Finally I took the chase into
my own hands; and after that, turn, or twist, or do what he would,
he was never able to get behind me again; he found himself always
in front at the end of his maneuver. So he gave up that business
and retired to his end of the lists. His temper was clear gone now,
and he forgot himself and flung an insult at me which disposed
of mine. I slipped my lasso from the horn of my saddle, and
grasped the coil in my right hand. This time you should have seen
him come!--it was a business trip, sure; by his gait there was
blood in his eye. I was sitting my horse at ease, and swinging
the great loop of my lasso in wide circles about my head; the
moment he was under way, I started for him; when the space between
us had narrowed to forty feet, I sent the snaky spirals of the rope
a-cleaving through the air, then darted aside and faced about and
brought my trained animal to a halt with all his feet braced under
him for a surge. The next moment the rope sprang taut and yanked
Sir Sagramor out of the saddle! Great Scott, but there was
a sensation!
Unquestionably, the popular thing in this world is novelty. These
people had never seen anything of that cowboy business before,
and it carried them clear off their feet with delight. From all
around and everywhere, the shout went up:
"Encore! encore!"
I wondered where they got the word, but there was no time to cipher
on philological matters, because the whole knight-errantry hive
was just humming now, and my prospect for trade couldn't have
been better. The moment my lasso was released and Sir Sagramor
had been assisted to his tent, I hauled in the slack, took my
station and began to swing my loop around my head again. I was
sure to have use for it as soon as they could elect a successor
for Sir Sagramor, and that couldn't take long where there were
so many hungry candidates. Indeed, they elected one straight off
--Sir Hervis de Revel.
_Bzz_! Here he came, like a house afire; I dodged: he passed like
a flash, with my horse-hair coils settling around his neck;
a second or so later, _fst_! his saddle was empty.
I got another encore; and another, and another, and still another.
When I had snaked five men out, things began to look serious to
the ironclads, and they stopped and consulted together. As a
result, they decided that it was time to waive etiquette and send
their greatest and best against me. To the astonishment of that
little world, I lassoed Sir Lamorak de Galis, and after him
Sir Galahad. So you see there was simply nothing to be done now,
but play their right bower--bring out the superbest of the superb,
the mightiest of the mighty, the great Sir Launcelot himself!
A proud moment for me? I should think so. Yonder was Arthur,
King of Britain; yonder was Guenever; yes, and whole tribes of
little provincial kings and kinglets; and in the tented camp yonder,
renowned knights from many lands; and likewise the selectest body
known to chivalry, the Knights of the Table Round, the most
illustrious in Christendom; and biggest fact of all, the very sun
of their shining system was yonder couching his lance, the focal
point of forty thousand adoring eyes; and all by myself, here was
I laying for him. Across my mind flitted the dear image of a
certain hello-girl of West Hartford, and I wished she could see
me now. In that moment, down came the Invincible, with the rush
of a whirlwind--the courtly world rose to its feet and bent forward
--the fateful coils went circling through the air, and before you
could wink I was towing Sir Launcelot across the field on his
back, and kissing my hand to the storm of waving kerchiefs and
the thunder-crash of applause that greeted me!
Said I to myself, as I coiled my lariat and hung it on my saddle-horn,
and sat there drunk with glory, "The victory is perfect--no other
will venture against me--knight-errantry is dead." Now imagine my
astonishment--and everybody else's, too--to hear the peculiar
bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to
enter the lists! There was a mystery here; I couldn't account for
this thing. Next, I noticed Merlin gliding away from me; and then
I noticed that my lasso was gone! The old sleight-of-hand expert
had stolen it, sure, and slipped it under his robe.
The bugle blew again. I looked, and down came Sagramor riding
again, with his dust brushed off and his veil nicely re-arranged.
I trotted up to meet him, and pretended to find him by the sound
of his horse's hoofs. He said:
"Thou'rt quick of ear, but it will not save thee from this!" and
he touched the hilt of his great sword. "An ye are not able to see
it, because of the influence of the veil, know that it is no cumbrous
lance, but a sword--and I ween ye will not be able to avoid it."
His visor was up; there was death in his smile. I should never
be able to dodge his sword, that was plain. Somebody was going
to die this time. If he got the drop on me, I could name the
corpse. We rode forward together, and saluted the royalties.
This time the king was disturbed. He said:
"Where is thy strange weapon?"
"It is stolen, sire."
"Hast another at hand?"
"No, sire, I brought only the one."
Then Merlin mixed in:
"He brought but the one because there was but the one to bring.
There exists none other but that one. It belongeth to the king
of the Demons of the Sea. This man is a pretender, and ignorant,
else he had known that that weapon can be used in but eight bouts
only, and then it vanisheth away to its home under the sea."
"Then is he weaponless," said the king. "Sir Sagramore, ye will
grant him leave to borrow."
"And I will lend!" said Sir Launcelot, limping up. "He is as
brave a knight of his hands as any that be on live, and he shall
have mine."
He put his hand on his sword to draw it, but Sir Sagramor said:
"Stay, it may not be. He shall fight with his own weapons; it
was his privilege to choose them and bring them. If he has erred,
on his head be it."
"Knight!" said the king. "Thou'rt overwrought with passion; it
disorders thy mind. Wouldst kill a naked man?"
"An he do it, he shall answer it to me," said Sir Launcelot.
"I will answer it to any he that desireth!" retorted Sir Sagramor hotly.
Merlin broke in, rubbing his hands and smiling his lowdownest
smile of malicious gratification:
"'Tis well said, right well said! And 'tis enough of parleying,
let my lord the king deliver the battle signal."
The king had to yield. The bugle made proclamation, and we turned
apart and rode to our stations. There we stood, a hundred yards
apart, facing each other, rigid and motionless, like horsed statues.
And so we remained, in a soundless hush, as much as a full minute,
everybody gazing, nobody stirring. It seemed as if the king could
not take heart to give the signal. But at last he lifted his hand,
the clear note of the bugle followed, Sir Sagramor's long blade
described a flashing curve in the air, and it was superb to see him
come. I sat still. On he came. I did not move. People got so
excited that they shouted to me:
"Fly, fly! Save thyself! This is murther!"
I never budged so much as an inch till that thundering apparition
had got within fifteen paces of me; then I snatched a dragoon
revolver out of my holster, there was a flash and a roar, and
the revolver was back in the holster before anybody could tell
what had happened.
Here was a riderless horse plunging by, and yonder lay Sir Sagramor,
stone dead.
The people that ran to him were stricken dumb to find that the life
was actually gone out of the man and no reason for it visible,
no hurt upon his body, nothing like a wound. There was a hole
through the breast of his chain-mail, but they attached no importance
to a little thing like that; and as a bullet wound there produces
but little blood, none came in sight because of the clothing and
swaddlings under the armor. The body was dragged over to let
the king and the swells look down upon it. They were stupefied
with astonishment naturally. I was requested to come and explain
the miracle. But I remained in my tracks, like a statue, and said:
"If it is a command, I will come, but my lord the king knows that
I am where the laws of combat require me to remain while any desire
to come against me."
I waited. Nobody challenged. Then I said:
"If there are any who doubt that this field is well and fairly won,
I do not wait for them to challenge me, I challenge them."
"It is a gallant offer," said the king, "and well beseems you.
Whom will you name first?"
"I name none, I challenge all! Here I stand, and dare the chivalry
of England to come against me--not by individuals, but in mass!"
"What!" shouted a score of knights.
"You have heard the challenge. Take it, or I proclaim you recreant
knights and vanquished, every one!"
It was a "bluff" you know. At such a time it is sound judgment
to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what
it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to "call,"
and you rake in the chips. But just this once--well, things looked
squally! In just no time, five hundred knights were scrambling
into their saddles, and before you could wink a widely scattering
drove were under way and clattering down upon me. I snatched
both revolvers from the holsters and began to measure distances
and calculate chances.
Bang! One saddle empty. Bang! another one. Bang--bang, and
I bagged two. Well, it was nip and tuck with us, and I knew it.
If I spent the eleventh shot without convincing these people,
the twelfth man would kill me, sure. And so I never did feel
so happy as I did when my ninth downed its man and I detected
the wavering in the crowd which is premonitory of panic. An instant
lost now could knock out my last chance. But I didn't lose it.
I raised both revolvers and pointed them--the halted host stood
their ground just about one good square moment, then broke and fled.
The day was mine. Knight-errantry was a doomed institution. The
march of civilization was begun. How did I feel? Ah, you never
could imagine it.
And Brer Merlin? His stock was flat again. Somehow, every time
the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science,
the magic of fol-de-rol got left.
CHAPTER XL
THREE YEARS LATER
When I broke the back of knight-errantry that time, I no longer
felt obliged to work in secret. So, the very next day I exposed
my hidden schools, my mines, and my vast system of clandestine
factories and workshops to an astonished world. That is to say,
I exposed the nineteenth century to the inspection of the sixth.
Well, it is always a good plan to follow up an advantage promptly.
The knights were temporarily down, but if I would keep them so
I must just simply paralyze them--nothing short of that would
answer. You see, I was "bluffing" that last time in the field;
it would be natural for them to work around to that conclusion,
if I gave them a chance. So I must not give them time; and I didn't.
I renewed my challenge, engraved it on brass, posted it up where
any priest could read it to them, and also kept it standing in
the advertising columns of the paper.
I not only renewed it, but added to its proportions. I said,
name the day, and I would take fifty assistants and stand up
_against the massed chivalry of the whole earth and destroy it_.
I was not bluffing this time. I meant what I said; I could do
what I promised. There wasn't any way to misunderstand the language
of that challenge. Even the dullest of the chivalry perceived
that this was a plain case of "put up, or shut up." They were
wise and did the latter. In all the next three years they gave
me no trouble worth mentioning.
Consider the three years sped. Now look around on England. A happy
and prosperous country, and strangely altered. Schools everywhere,
and several colleges; a number of pretty good newspapers. Even
authorship was taking a start; Sir Dinadan the Humorist was first
in the field, with a volume of gray-headed jokes which I had been
familiar with during thirteen centuries. If he had left out that
old rancid one about the lecturer I wouldn't have said anything;
but I couldn't stand that one. I suppressed the book and hanged
the author.
Slavery was dead and gone; all men were equal before the law;
taxation had been equalized. The telegraph, the telephone, the
phonograph, the typewriter, the sewing-machine, and all the thousand
willing and handy servants of steam and electricity were working
their way into favor. We had a steamboat or two on the Thames,
we had steam warships, and the beginnings of a steam commercial
marine; I was getting ready to send out an expedition to discover
America.
We were building several lines of railway, and our line from
Camelot to London was already finished and in operation. I was
shrewd enough to make all offices connected with the passenger
service places of high and distinguished honor. My idea was
to attract the chivalry and nobility, and make them useful and keep
them out of mischief. The plan worked very well, the competition
for the places was hot. The conductor of the 4.33 express was
a duke; there wasn't a passenger conductor on the line below
the degree of earl. They were good men, every one, but they had
two defects which I couldn't cure, and so had to wink at: they
wouldn't lay aside their armor, and they would "knock down" fare
--I mean rob the company.
There was hardly a knight in all the land who wasn't in some useful
employment. They were going from end to end of the country in all
manner of useful missionary capacities; their penchant for wandering,
and their experience in it, made them altogether the most effective
spreaders of civilization we had. They went clothed in steel and
equipped with sword and lance and battle-axe, and if they couldn't
persuade a person to try a sewing-machine on the installment plan,
or a melodeon, or a barbed-wire fence, or a prohibition journal,
or any of the other thousand and one things they canvassed for,
they removed him and passed on.
I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly
longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which
were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the
Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins
--not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and
the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding
that upon Arthur's death unlimited suffrage should be introduced,
and given to men and women alike--at any rate to all men, wise
or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found
to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one. Arthur was
good for thirty years yet, he being about my own age--that is
to say, forty--and I believed that in that time I could easily
have the active part of the population of that day ready and eager
for an event which should be the first of its kind in the history
of the world--a rounded and complete governmental revolution
without bloodshed. The result to be a republic. Well, I may
as well confess, though I do feel ashamed when I think of it:
I was beginning to have a base hankering to be its first president
myself. Yes, there was more or less human nature in me; I found
that out.
Clarence was with me as concerned the revolution, but in a modified
way. His idea was a republic, without privileged orders, but with
a hereditary royal family at the head of it instead of an elective
chief magistrate. He believed that no nation that had ever known
the joy of worshiping a royal family could ever be robbed of it
and not fade away and die of melancholy. I urged that kings were
dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal
family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful
as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would
have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition
to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably
vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive;
finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other
royal house, and "Tom VII, or Tom XI, or Tom XIV by the grace
of God King," would sound as well as it would when applied to
the ordinary royal tomcat with tights on. "And as a rule," said
he, in his neat modern English, "the character of these cats would
be considerably above the character of the average king, and this
would be an immense moral advantage to the nation, for the reason
that a nation always models its morals after its monarch's. The
worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and
harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties,
and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that
they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted
no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of
a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and
would certainly get it. The eyes of the whole harried world would
soon be fixed upon this humane and gentle system, and royal butchers
would presently begin to disappear; their subjects would fill
the vacancies with catlings from our own royal house; we should
become a factory; we should supply the thrones of the world; within
forty years all Europe would be governed by cats, and we should
furnish the cats. The reign of universal peace would begin then,
to end no more forever.... Me-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow--fzt!--wow!"
Hang him, I supposed he was in earnest, and was beginning to be
persuaded by him, until he exploded that cat-howl and startled me
almost out of my clothes. But he never could be in earnest. He
didn't know what it was. He had pictured a distinct and perfectly
rational and feasible improvement upon constitutional monarchy,
but he was too feather-headed to know it, or care anything about
it, either. I was going to give him a scolding, but Sandy came
flying in at that moment, wild with terror, and so choked with sobs
that for a minute she could not get her voice. I ran and took her
in my arms, and lavished caresses upon her and said, beseechingly:
"Speak, darling, speak! What is it?"
Her head fell limp upon my bosom, and she gasped, almost inaudibly:
"HELLO-CENTRAL!"
"Quick!" I shouted to Clarence; "telephone the king's homeopath
to come!"
In two minutes I was kneeling by the child's crib, and Sandy was
dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the
palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance--membranous
croup! I bent down and whispered:
"Wake up, sweetheart! Hello-Central."
She opened her soft eyes languidly, and made out to say:
"Papa."
That was a comfort. She was far from dead yet. I sent for
preparations of sulphur, I rousted out the croup-kettle myself;
for I don't sit down and wait for doctors when Sandy or the child
is sick. I knew how to nurse both of them, and had had experience.
This little chap had lived in my arms a good part of its small life,
and often I could soothe away its troubles and get it to laugh
through the tear-dews on its eye-lashes when even its mother couldn't.
Sir Launcelot, in his richest armor, came striding along the great
hall now on his way to the stock-board; he was president of the
stock-board, and occupied the Siege Perilous, which he had bought
of Sir Galahad; for the stock-board consisted of the Knights of
the Round Table, and they used the Round Table for business purposes
now. Seats at it were worth--well, you would never believe the
figure, so it is no use to state it. Sir Launcelot was a bear, and
he had put up a corner in one of the new lines, and was just getting
ready to squeeze the shorts to-day; but what of that? He was
the same old Launcelot, and when he glanced in as he was passing
the door and found out that his pet was sick, that was enough
for him; bulls and bears might fight it out their own way for all
him, he would come right in here and stand by little Hello-Central
for all he was worth. And that was what he did. He shied his
helmet into the corner, and in half a minute he had a new wick
in the alcohol lamp and was firing up on the croup-kettle. By this
time Sandy had built a blanket canopy over the crib, and everything
was ready.
Sir Launcelot got up steam, he and I loaded up the kettle with
unslaked lime and carbolic acid, with a touch of lactic acid added
thereto, then filled the thing up with water and inserted the
steam-spout under the canopy. Everything was ship-shape now,
and we sat down on either side of the crib to stand our watch.
Sandy was so grateful and so comforted that she charged a couple
of church-wardens with willow-bark and sumach-tobacco for us,
and told us to smoke as much as we pleased, it couldn't get under
the canopy, and she was used to smoke, being the first lady in the
land who had ever seen a cloud blown. Well, there couldn't be
a more contented or comfortable sight than Sir Launcelot in his
noble armor sitting in gracious serenity at the end of a yard
of snowy church-warden. He was a beautiful man, a lovely man,
and was just intended to make a wife and children happy. But, of
course Guenever--however, it's no use to cry over what's done and
can't be helped.
Well, he stood watch-and-watch with me, right straight through,
for three days and nights, till the child was out of danger; then
he took her up in his great arms and kissed her, with his plumes
falling about her golden head, then laid her softly in Sandy's
lap again and took his stately way down the vast hall, between
the ranks of admiring men-at-arms and menials, and so disappeared.
And no instinct warned me that I should never look upon him again
in this world! Lord, what a world of heart-break it is.
The doctors said we must take the child away, if we would coax
her back to health and strength again. And she must have sea-air.
So we took a man-of-war, and a suite of two hundred and sixty
persons, and went cruising about, and after a fortnight of this we
stepped ashore on the French coast, and the doctors thought it
would be a good idea to make something of a stay there. The little
king of that region offered us his hospitalities, and we were glad
to accept. If he had had as many conveniences as he lacked, we
should have been plenty comfortable enough; even as it was, we
made out very well, in his queer old castle, by the help of comforts
and luxuries from the ship.
At the end of a month I sent the vessel home for fresh supplies,
and for news. We expected her back in three or four days. She
would bring me, along with other news, the result of a certain
experiment which I had been starting. It was a project of mine
to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an
escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks
entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve
the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation.
I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time,
and the date was now arriving for their first public effort.
This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue
from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose
my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either
team who wasn't a sceptered sovereign. As for material of this
sort, there was a glut of it always around Arthur. You couldn't
throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king. Of course,
I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't
do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the
armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that
was the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mail
ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemer
steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I
ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way,
but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat
and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards
sometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on his
stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into
port. At first I appointed men of no rank to act as umpires, but
I had to discontinue that. These people were no easier to please
than other nines. The umpire's first decision was usually his
last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted him
home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived
a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint
somebody whose rank and lofty position under the government would
protect him.
Here are the names of the nines:
BESSEMERS ULSTERS
KING ARTHUR. EMPEROR LUCIUS.
KING LOT OF LOTHIAN. KING LOGRIS.
KING OF NORTHGALIS. KING MARHALT OF IRELAND.
KING MARSIL. KING MORGANORE.
KING OF LITTLE BRITAIN. KING MARK OF CORNWALL.
KING LABOR. KING NENTRES OF GARLOT.
KING PELLAM OF LISTENGESE. KING MELIODAS OF LIONES.
KING BAGDEMAGUS. KING OF THE LAKE.
KING TOLLEME LA FEINTES. THE SOWDAN OF SYRIA.
Umpire--CLARENCE.
The first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people;
and for solid fun would be worth going around the world to see.
Everything would be favorable; it was balmy and beautiful spring
weather now, and Nature was all tailored out in her new clothes.
CHAPTER XLI
THE INTERDICT
However, my attention was suddenly snatched from such matters;
our child began to lose ground again, and we had to go to sitting
up with her, her case became so serious. We couldn't bear to allow
anybody to help in this service, so we two stood watch-and-watch,
day in and day out. Ah, Sandy, what a right heart she had, how
simple, and genuine, and good she was! She was a flawless wife
and mother; and yet I had married her for no other particular
reasons, except that by the customs of chivalry she was my property
until some knight should win her from me in the field. She had
hunted Britain over for me; had found me at the hanging-bout
outside of London, and had straightway resumed her old place at
my side in the placidest way and as of right. I was a New Englander,
and in my opinion this sort of partnership would compromise her,
sooner or later. She couldn't see how, but I cut argument short
and we had a wedding.
Now I didn't know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did
draw. Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ours
was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. People
talk about beautiful friendships between two persons of the same
sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship
of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of
both are the same? There is no place for comparison between
the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.
In my dreams, along at first, I still wandered thirteen centuries
away, and my unsatisfied spirit went calling and harking all up
and down the unreplying vacancies of a vanished world. Many a
time Sandy heard that imploring cry come from my lips in my sleep.
With a grand magnanimity she saddled that cry of mine upon our
child, conceiving it to be the name of some lost darling of mine.
It touched me to tears, and it also nearly knocked me off my feet,
too, when she smiled up in my face for an earned reward, and played
her quaint and pretty surprise upon me:
"The name of one who was dear to thee is here preserved, here made
holy, and the music of it will abide alway in our ears. Now
thou'lt kiss me, as knowing the name I have given the child."
But I didn't know it, all the same. I hadn't an idea in the
world; but it would have been cruel to confess it and spoil her
pretty game; so I never let on, but said:
"Yes, I know, sweetheart--how dear and good it is of you, too!
But I want to hear these lips of yours, which are also mine, utter
it first--then its music will be perfect."
Pleased to the marrow, she murmured:
"HELLO-CENTRAL!"
I didn't laugh--I am always thankful for that--but the strain
ruptured every cartilage in me, and for weeks afterward I could
hear my bones clack when I walked. She never found out her mistake.
The first time she heard that form of salute used at the telephone
she was surprised, and not pleased; but I told her I had given
order for it: that henceforth and forever the telephone must
always be invoked with that reverent formality, in perpetual honor
and remembrance of my lost friend and her small namesake. This
was not true. But it answered.
Well, during two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in
our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of
that sick-room. Then our reward came: the center of the universe
turned the corner and began to mend. Grateful? It isn't the term.
There _isn't_ any term for it. You know that yourself, if you've
watched your child through the Valley of the Shadow and seen it
come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one
all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand.
Why, we were back in this world in one instant! Then we looked
the same startled thought into each other's eyes at the same
moment; more than two weeks gone, and that ship not back yet!
In another minute I appeared in the presence of my train. They
had been steeped in troubled bodings all this time--their faces
showed it. I called an escort and we galloped five miles to a
hilltop overlooking the sea. Where was my great commerce that
so lately had made these glistening expanses populous and beautiful
with its white-winged flocks? Vanished, every one! Not a sail,
from verge to verge, not a smoke-bank--just a dead and empty
solitude, in place of all that brisk and breezy life.
I went swiftly back, saying not a word to anybody. I told Sandy
this ghastly news. We could imagine no explanation that would
begin to explain. Had there been an invasion? an earthquake?
a pestilence? Had the nation been swept out of existence? But
guessing was profitless. I must go--at once. I borrowed the king's
navy--a "ship" no bigger than a steam launch--and was soon ready.
The parting--ah, yes, that was hard. As I was devouring the child
with last kisses, it brisked up and jabbered out its vocabulary!
--the first time in more than two weeks, and it made fools of us
for joy. The darling mispronunciations of childhood!--dear me,
there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it
wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never
visit his bereaved ear again. Well, how good it was to be able
to carry that gracious memory away with me!
I approached England the next morning, with the wide highway of
salt water all to myself. There were ships in the harbor, at
Dover, but they were naked as to sails, and there was no sign
of life about them. It was Sunday; yet at Canterbury the streets
were empty; strangest of all, there was not even a priest in sight,
and no stroke of a bell fell upon my ear. The mournfulness of
death was everywhere. I couldn't understand it. At last, in
the further edge of that town I saw a small funeral procession
--just a family and a few friends following a coffin--no priest;
a funeral without bell, book, or candle; there was a church there
close at hand, but they passed it by weeping, and did not enter it;
I glanced up at the belfry, and there hung the bell, shrouded in
black, and its tongue tied back. Now I knew! Now I understood
the stupendous calamity that had overtaken England. Invasion?
Invasion is a triviality to it. It was the INTERDICT!
I asked no questions; I didn't need to ask any. The Church had
struck; the thing for me to do was to get into a disguise, and
go warily. One of my servants gave me a suit of clothes, and
when we were safe beyond the town I put them on, and from that time
I traveled alone; I could not risk the embarrassment of company.
A miserable journey. A desolate silence everywhere. Even in
London itself. Traffic had ceased; men did not talk or laugh, or
go in groups, or even in couples; they moved aimlessly about, each
man by himself, with his head down, and woe and terror at his heart.
The Tower showed recent war-scars. Verily, much had been happening.
Of course, I meant to take the train for Camelot. Train! Why,
the station was as vacant as a cavern. I moved on. The journey
to Camelot was a repetition of what I had already seen. The Monday
and the Tuesday differed in no way from the Sunday. I arrived
far in the night. From being the best electric-lighted town in
the kingdom and the most like a recumbent sun of anything you ever
saw, it was become simply a blot--a blot upon darkness--that is
to say, it was darker and solider than the rest of the darkness,
and so you could see it a little better; it made me feel as if
maybe it was symbolical--a sort of sign that the Church was going to
_keep_ the upper hand now, and snuff out all my beautiful civilization
just like that. I found no life stirring in the somber streets.
I groped my way with a heavy heart. The vast castle loomed black
upon the hilltop, not a spark visible about it. The drawbridge
was down, the great gate stood wide, I entered without challenge,
my own heels making the only sound I heard--and it was sepulchral
enough, in those huge vacant courts.
CHAPTER XLII
WAR!
I found Clarence alone in his quarters, drowned in melancholy;
and in place of the electric light, he had reinstituted the ancient
rag-lamp, and sat there in a grisly twilight with all curtains
drawn tight. He sprang up and rushed for me eagerly, saying:
"Oh, it's worth a billion milrays to look upon a live person again!"
He knew me as easily as if I hadn't been disguised at all. Which
frightened me; one may easily believe that.
"Quick, now, tell me the meaning of this fearful disaster," I said.
"How did it come about?"
"Well, if there hadn't been any Queen Guenever, it wouldn't have
come so early; but it would have come, anyway. It would have
come on your own account by and by; by luck, it happened to come
on the queen's."
"_And_ Sir Launcelot's?"
"Just so."
"Give me the details."
"I reckon you will grant that during some years there has been
only one pair of eyes in these kingdoms that has not been looking
steadily askance at the queen and Sir Launcelot--"
"Yes, King Arthur's."
"--and only one heart that was without suspicion--"
"Yes--the king's; a heart that isn't capable of thinking evil
of a friend."
"Well, the king might have gone on, still happy and unsuspecting,
to the end of his days, but for one of your modern improvements
--the stock-board. When you left, three miles of the London,
Canterbury and Dover were ready for the rails, and also ready and
ripe for manipulation in the stock-market. It was wildcat, and
everybody knew it. The stock was for sale at a give-away. What
does Sir Launcelot do, but--"
"Yes, I know; he quietly picked up nearly all of it for a song;
then he bought about twice as much more, deliverable upon call;
and he was about to call when I left."
"Very well, he did call. The boys couldn't deliver. Oh, he had
them--and he just settled his grip and squeezed them. They were
laughing in their sleeves over their smartness in selling stock
to him at 15 and 16 and along there that wasn't worth 10. Well,
when they had laughed long enough on that side of their mouths,
they rested-up that side by shifting the laugh to the other side.
That was when they compromised with the Invincible at 283!"
"Good land!"
"He skinned them alive, and they deserved it--anyway, the whole
kingdom rejoiced. Well, among the flayed were Sir Agravaine and
Sir Mordred, nephews to the king. End of the first act. Act
second, scene first, an apartment in Carlisle castle, where the
court had gone for a few days' hunting. Persons present, the
whole tribe of the king's nephews. Mordred and Agravaine propose
to call the guileless Arthur's attention to Guenever and Sir
Launcelot. Sir Gawaine, Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris will have
nothing to do with it. A dispute ensues, with loud talk; in the
midst of it enter the king. Mordred and Agravaine spring their
devastating tale upon him. _Tableau_. A trap is laid for Launcelot,
by the king's command, and Sir Launcelot walks into it. He made
it sufficiently uncomfortable for the ambushed witnesses--to wit,
Mordred, Agravaine, and twelve knights of lesser rank, for he
killed every one of them but Mordred; but of course that couldn't
straighten matters between Launcelot and the king, and didn't."
"Oh, dear, only one thing could result--I see that. War, and
the knights of the realm divided into a king's party and a
Sir Launcelot's party."
"Yes--that was the way of it. The king sent the queen to the
stake, proposing to purify her with fire. Launcelot and his
knights rescued her, and in doing it slew certain good old friends
of yours and mine--in fact, some of the best we ever had; to wit,
Sir Belias le Orgulous, Sir Segwarides, Sir Griflet le Fils de Dieu,
Sir Brandiles, Sir Aglovale--"
"Oh, you tear out my heartstrings."
"--wait, I'm not done yet--Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer--"
"The very best man in my subordinate nine. What a handy right-fielder
he was!"
"--Sir Reynold's three brothers, Sir Damus, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay
the Stranger--"
"My peerless short-stop! I've seen him catch a daisy-cutter in
his teeth. Come, I can't stand this!"
"--Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir Pertilope,
Sir Perimones, and--whom do you think?"
"Rush! Go on."
"Sir Gaheris, and Sir Gareth--both!"
"Oh, incredible! Their love for Launcelot was indestructible."
"Well, it was an accident. They were simply onlookers; they were
unarmed, and were merely there to witness the queen's punishment.
Sir Launcelot smote down whoever came in the way of his blind fury,
and he killed these without noticing who they were. Here is an
instantaneous photograph one of our boys got of the battle; it's
for sale on every news-stand. There--the figures nearest the queen
are Sir Launcelot with his sword up, and Sir Gareth gasping his
latest breath. You can catch the agony in the queen's face through
the curling smoke. It's a rattling battle-picture."
"Indeed, it is. We must take good care of it; its historical value
is incalculable. Go on."
"Well, the rest of the tale is just war, pure and simple. Launcelot
retreated to his town and castle of Joyous Gard, and gathered
there a great following of knights. The king, with a great host,
went there, and there was desperate fighting during several days,
and, as a result, all the plain around was paved with corpses
and cast-iron. Then the Church patched up a peace between Arthur
and Launcelot and the queen and everybody--everybody but Sir Gawaine.
He was bitter about the slaying of his brothers, Gareth and Gaheris,
and would not be appeased. He notified Launcelot to get him
thence, and make swift preparation, and look to be soon attacked.
So Launcelot sailed to his Duchy of Guienne with his following, and
Gawaine soon followed with an army, and he beguiled Arthur to go
with him. Arthur left the kingdom in Sir Mordred's hands until
you should return--"
"Ah--a king's customary wisdom!"
"Yes. Sir Mordred set himself at once to work to make his kingship
permanent. He was going to marry Guenever, as a first move; but
she fled and shut herself up in the Tower of London. Mordred
attacked; the Bishop of Canterbury dropped down on him with the
Interdict. The king returned; Mordred fought him at Dover, at
Canterbury, and again at Barham Down. Then there was talk of peace
and a composition. Terms, Mordred to have Cornwall and Kent during
Arthur's life, and the whole kingdom afterward."
"Well, upon my word! My dream of a republic to _be_ a dream, and
so remain."
"Yes. The two armies lay near Salisbury. Gawaine--Gawaine's head
is at Dover Castle, he fell in the fight there--Gawaine appeared to
Arthur in a dream, at least his ghost did, and warned him to
refrain from conflict for a month, let the delay cost what it might.
But battle was precipitated by an accident. Arthur had given
order that if a sword was raised during the consultation over
the proposed treaty with Mordred, sound the trumpet and fall on!
for he had no confidence in Mordred. Mordred had given a similar
order to _his_ people. Well, by and by an adder bit a knight's heel;
the knight forgot all about the order, and made a slash at the
adder with his sword. Inside of half a minute those two prodigious
hosts came together with a crash! They butchered away all day.
Then the king--however, we have started something fresh since
you left--our paper has."
"No? What is that?"
"War correspondence!"
"Why, that's good."
"Yes, the paper was booming right along, for the Interdict made
no impression, got no grip, while the war lasted. I had war
correspondents with both armies. I will finish that battle by
reading you what one of the boys says:
'Then the king looked about him, and then was he
ware of all his host and of all his good knights
were left no more on live but two knights, that
was Sir Lucan de Butlere, and his brother Sir
Bedivere: and they were full sore wounded. Jesu
mercy, said the king, where are all my noble
knights becomen? Alas that ever I should see this
doleful day. For now, said Arthur, I am come to
mine end. But would to God that I wist where were
that traitor Sir Mordred, that hath caused all
this mischief. Then was King Arthur ware where Sir
Mordred leaned upon his sword among a great heap
of dead men. Now give me my spear, said Arthur
unto Sir Lucan, for yonder I have espied the
traitor that all this woe hath wrought. Sir, let
him be, said Sir Lucan, for he is unhappy; and if
ye pass this unhappy day, ye shall be right well
revenged upon him. Good lord, remember ye of your
night's dream, and what the spirit of Sir Gawaine
told you this night, yet God of his great goodness
hath preserved you hitherto. Therefore, for God's
sake, my lord, leave off by this. For blessed be
God ye have won the field: for here we be three
on live, and with Sir Mordred is none on live.
And if ye leave off now, this wicked day of
destiny is past. Tide me death, betide me life,
saith the king, now I see him yonder alone, he
shall never escape mine hands, for at a better
avail shall I never have him. God speed you well,
said Sir Bedivere. Then the king gat his spear
in both his hands, and ran toward Sir Mordred
crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come. And
when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until
him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then
King Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield,
with a foin of his spear throughout the body more
than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he
had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with
the might that he had, up to the butt of King
Arthur's spear. And right so he smote his father
Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands,
on the side of the head, that the sword pierced
the helmet and the brain-pan, and therewithal
Sir Mordred fell stark dead to the earth. And
the noble Arthur fell in a swoon to the earth,
and there he swooned oft-times--'"
"That is a good piece of war correspondence, Clarence; you are
a first-rate newspaper man. Well--is the king all right? Did
he get well?"
"Poor soul, no. He is dead."
I was utterly stunned; it had not seemed to me that any wound
could be mortal to him.
"And the queen, Clarence?"
"She is a nun, in Almesbury."
"What changes! and in such a short while. It is inconceivable.
What next, I wonder?"
"I can tell you what next."
"Well?"
"Stake our lives and stand by them!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"The Church is master now. The Interdict included you with Mordred;
it is not to be removed while you remain alive. The clans are
gathering. The Church has gathered all the knights that are left
alive, and as soon as you are discovered we shall have business
on our hands."
"Stuff! With our deadly scientific war-material; with our hosts
of trained--"
"Save your breath--we haven't sixty faithful left!"
"What are you saying? Our schools, our colleges, our vast
workshops, our--"
"When those knights come, those establishments will empty themselves
and go over to the enemy. Did you think you had educated the
superstition out of those people?"
"I certainly did think it."
"Well, then, you may unthink it. They stood every strain easily
--until the Interdict. Since then, they merely put on a bold
outside--at heart they are quaking. Make up your mind to it
--when the armies come, the mask will fall."
"It's hard news. We are lost. They will turn our own science
against us."
"No they won't."
"Why?"
"Because I and a handful of the faithful have blocked that game.
I'll tell you what I've done, and what moved me to it. Smart as
you are, the Church was smarter. It was the Church that sent
you cruising--through her servants, the doctors."
"Clarence!"
"It is the truth. I know it. Every officer of your ship was
the Church's picked servant, and so was every man of the crew."
"Oh, come!"
"It is just as I tell you. I did not find out these things at once,
but I found them out finally. Did you send me verbal information,
by the commander of the ship, to the effect that upon his return
to you, with supplies, you were going to leave Cadiz--"
"Cadiz! I haven't been at Cadiz at all!"
"--going to leave Cadiz and cruise in distant seas indefinitely,
for the health of your family? Did you send me that word?"
"Of course not. I would have written, wouldn't I?"
"Naturally. I was troubled and suspicious. When the commander
sailed again I managed to ship a spy with him. I have never
heard of vessel or spy since. I gave myself two weeks to hear
from you in. Then I resolved to send a ship to Cadiz. There was
a reason why I didn't."
"What was that?"
"Our navy had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared! Also, as
suddenly and as mysteriously, the railway and telegraph and
telephone service ceased, the men all deserted, poles were cut
down, the Church laid a ban upon the electric light! I had to be
up and doing--and straight off. Your life was safe--nobody in
these kingdoms but Merlin would venture to touch such a magician
as you without ten thousand men at his back--I had nothing to
think of but how to put preparations in the best trim against your
coming. I felt safe myself--nobody would be anxious to touch
a pet of yours. So this is what I did. From our various works
I selected all the men--boys I mean--whose faithfulness under
whatsoever pressure I could swear to, and I called them together
secretly and gave them their instructions. There are fifty-two of
them; none younger than fourteen, and none above seventeen years old."
"Why did you select boys?"
"Because all the others were born in an atmosphere of superstition
and reared in it. It is in their blood and bones. We imagined
we had educated it out of them; they thought so, too; the Interdict
woke them up like a thunderclap! It revealed them to themselves,
and it revealed them to me, too. With boys it was different. Such
as have been under our training from seven to ten years have had
no acquaintance with the Church's terrors, and it was among these
that I found my fifty-two. As a next move, I paid a private visit
to that old cave of Merlin's--not the small one--the big one--"
"Yes, the one where we secretly established our first great electric
plant when I was projecting a miracle."
"Just so. And as that miracle hadn't become necessary then,
I thought it might be a good idea to utilize the plant now. I've
provisioned the cave for a siege--"
"A good idea, a first-rate idea."
"I think so. I placed four of my boys there as a guard--inside,
and out of sight. Nobody was to be hurt--while outside; but any
attempt to enter--well, we said just let anybody try it! Then
I went out into the hills and uncovered and cut the secret wires
which connected your bedroom with the wires that go to the dynamite
deposits under all our vast factories, mills, workshops, magazines,
etc., and about midnight I and my boys turned out and connected
that wire with the cave, and nobody but you and I suspects where
the other end of it goes to. We laid it under ground, of course, and
it was all finished in a couple of hours or so. We sha'n't have
to leave our fortress now when we want to blow up our civilization."
"It was the right move--and the natural one; military necessity,
in the changed condition of things. Well, what changes _have_ come!
We expected to be besieged in the palace some time or other, but
--however, go on."
"Next, we built a wire fence."
"Wire fence?"
"Yes. You dropped the hint of it yourself, two or three years ago."
"Oh, I remember--the time the Church tried her strength against
us the first time, and presently thought it wise to wait for a
hopefuler season. Well, how have you arranged the fence?"
"I start twelve immensely strong wires--naked, not insulated
--from a big dynamo in the cave--dynamo with no brushes except
a positive and a negative one--"
"Yes, that's right."
"The wires go out from the cave and fence in a circle of level
ground a hundred yards in diameter; they make twelve independent
fences, ten feet apart--that is to say, twelve circles within
circles--and their ends come into the cave again."
"Right; go on."
"The fences are fastened to heavy oaken posts only three feet apart,
and these posts are sunk five feet in the ground."
"That is good and strong."
"Yes. The wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave.
They go out from the positive brush of the dynamo; there is a
ground-connection through the negative brush; the other ends of
the wire return to the cave, and each is grounded independently."
"No, no, that won't do!"
"Why?"
"It's too expensive--uses up force for nothing. You don't want
any ground-connection except the one through the negative brush.
The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave
and fastened independently, and _without_ any ground-connection.
Now, then, observe the economy of it. A cavalry charge hurls
itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending
no money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horses
come against the wire; the moment they touch it they form a
connection with the negative brush _through the ground_, and drop
dead. Don't you see?--you are using no energy until it is needed;
your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; but
it isn't costing you a cent till you touch it off. Oh, yes, the
single ground-connection--"
"Of course! I don't know how I overlooked that. It's not only
cheaper, but it's more effectual than the other way, for if wires
break or get tangled, no harm is done."
"No, especially if we have a tell-tale in the cave and disconnect
the broken wire. Well, go on. The gatlings?"
"Yes--that's arranged. In the center of the inner circle, on a
spacious platform six feet high, I've grouped a battery of thirteen
gatling guns, and provided plenty of ammunition."
"That's it. They command every approach, and when the Church's
knights arrive, there's going to be music. The brow of the
precipice over the cave--"
"I've got a wire fence there, and a gatling. They won't drop any
rocks down on us."
"Well, and the glass-cylinder dynamite torpedoes?"
"That's attended to. It's the prettiest garden that was ever
planted. It's a belt forty feet wide, and goes around the outer
fence--distance between it and the fence one hundred yards--kind of
neutral ground that space is. There isn't a single square yard
of that whole belt but is equipped with a torpedo. We laid them
on the surface of the ground, and sprinkled a layer of sand over
them. It's an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start
in to hoe it once, and you'll see."
"You tested the torpedoes?"
"Well, I was going to, but--"
"But what? Why, it's an immense oversight not to apply a--"
"Test? Yes, I know; but they're all right; I laid a few in the
public road beyond our lines and they've been tested."
"Oh, that alters the case. Who did it?"
"A Church committee."
"How kind!"
"Yes. They came to command us to make submission. You see they
didn't really come to test the torpedoes; that was merely an incident."
"Did the committee make a report?"
"Yes, they made one. You could have heard it a mile."
"Unanimous?"
"That was the nature of it. After that I put up some signs, for the
protection of future committees, and we have had no intruders since."
"Clarence, you've done a world of work, and done it perfectly."
"We had plenty of time for it; there wasn't any occasion for hurry."
We sat silent awhile, thinking. Then my mind was made up, and
I said:
"Yes, everything is ready; everything is shipshape, no detail is
wanting. I know what to do now."
"So do I; sit down and wait."
"No, _sir_! rise up and _strike_!"
"Do you mean it?"
"Yes, indeed! The _de_fensive isn't in my line, and the _of_fensive
is. That is, when I hold a fair hand--two-thirds as good a hand
as the enemy. Oh, yes, we'll rise up and strike; that's our game."
"A hundred to one you are right. When does the performance begin?"
"_Now!_ We'll proclaim the Republic."
"Well, that _will_ precipitate things, sure enough!"
"It will make them buzz, I tell you! England will be a hornets'
nest before noon to-morrow, if the Church's hand hasn't lost its
cunning--and we know it hasn't. Now you write and I'll dictate thus:
"PROCLAMATION
---
"BE IT KNOWN UNTO ALL. Whereas the king having died
and left no heir, it becomes my duty to continue the
executive authority vested in me, until a government
shall have been created and set in motion. The
monarchy has lapsed, it no longer exists. By
consequence, all political power has reverted to its
original source, the people of the nation. With the
monarchy, its several adjuncts died also; wherefore
there is no longer a nobility, no longer a privileged
class, no longer an Established Church; all men are
become exactly equal; they are upon one common
level, and religion is free. _A Republic is hereby
proclaimed_, as being the natural estate of a nation
when other authority has ceased. It is the duty of
the British people to meet together immediately,
and by their votes elect representatives and deliver
into their hands the government."
I signed it "The Boss," and dated it from Merlin's Cave.
Clarence said--
"Why, that tells where we are, and invites them to call right away."
"That is the idea. We _strike_--by the Proclamation--then it's
their innings. Now have the thing set up and printed and posted,
right off; that is, give the order; then, if you've got a couple
of bicycles handy at the foot of the hill, ho for Merlin's Cave!"
"I shall be ready in ten minutes. What a cyclone there is going
to be to-morrow when this piece of paper gets to work!... It's a
pleasant old palace, this is; I wonder if we shall ever again
--but never mind about that."
CHAPTER XLIII
THE BATTLE OF THE SAND BELT
In Merlin's Cave-- Clarence and I and fifty-two fresh, bright,
well-educated, clean-minded young British boys. At dawn I sent
an order to the factories and to all our great works to stop
operations and remove all life to a safe distance, as everything
was going to be blown up by secret mines, "_and no telling at what
moment--therefore, vacate at once_." These people knew me, and
had confidence in my word. They would clear out without waiting
to part their hair, and I could take my own time about dating the
explosion. You couldn't hire one of them to go back during the
century, if the explosion was still impending.
We had a week of waiting. It was not dull for me, because I was
writing all the time. During the first three days, I finished
turning my old diary into this narrative form; it only required
a chapter or so to bring it down to date. The rest of the week
I took up in writing letters to my wife. It was always my habit
to write to Sandy every day, whenever we were separate, and now
I kept up the habit for love of it, and of her, though I couldn't
do anything with the letters, of course, after I had written them.
But it put in the time, you see, and was almost like talking;
it was almost as if I was saying, "Sandy, if you and Hello-Central
were here in the cave, instead of only your photographs, what
good times we could have!" And then, you know, I could imagine
the baby goo-gooing something out in reply, with its fists in its
mouth and itself stretched across its mother's lap on its back,
and she a-laughing and admiring and worshipping, and now and then
tickling under the baby's chin to set it cackling, and then maybe
throwing in a word of answer to me herself--and so on and so on
--well, don't you know, I could sit there in the cave with my pen,
and keep it up, that way, by the hour with them. Why, it was
almost like having us all together again.
I had spies out every night, of course, to get news. Every report
made things look more and more impressive. The hosts were gathering,
gathering; down all the roads and paths of England the knights were
riding, and priests rode with them, to hearten these original
Crusaders, this being the Church's war. All the nobilities, big
and little, were on their way, and all the gentry. This was all
as was expected. We should thin out this sort of folk to such
a degree that the people would have nothing to do but just step
to the front with their republic and--
Ah, what a donkey I was! Toward the end of the week I began to get
this large and disenchanting fact through my head: that the mass
of the nation had swung their caps and shouted for the republic for
about one day, and there an end! The Church, the nobles, and
the gentry then turned one grand, all-disapproving frown upon them
and shriveled them into sheep! From that moment the sheep had
begun to gather to the fold--that is to say, the camps--and offer
their valueless lives and their valuable wool to the "righteous
cause." Why, even the very men who had lately been slaves were
in the "righteous cause," and glorifying it, praying for it,
sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners.
Imagine such human muck as this; conceive of this folly!
Yes, it was now "Death to the Republic!" everywhere--not a dissenting
voice. All England was marching against us! Truly, this was more
than I had bargained for.
I watched my fifty-two boys narrowly; watched their faces, their
walk, their unconscious attitudes: for all these are a language
--a language given us purposely that it may betray us in times of
emergency, when we have secrets which we want to keep. I knew
that that thought would keep saying itself over and over again
in their minds and hearts, _All England is marching against us!_
and ever more strenuously imploring attention with each repetition,
ever more sharply realizing itself to their imaginations, until
even in their sleep they would find no rest from it, but hear
the vague and flitting creatures of the dreams say, _All England_
--ALL ENGLAND!--_is marching against you_! I knew all this would
happen; I knew that ultimately the pressure would become so great
that it would compel utterance; therefore, I must be ready with an
answer at that time--an answer well chosen and tranquilizing.
I was right. The time came. They HAD to speak. Poor lads, it
was pitiful to see, they were so pale, so worn, so troubled. At
first their spokesman could hardly find voice or words; but he
presently got both. This is what he said--and he put it in the
neat modern English taught him in my schools:
"We have tried to forget what we are--English boys! We have tried
to put reason before sentiment, duty before love; our minds
approve, but our hearts reproach us. While apparently it was
only the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirty
thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one
mind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every one
of these fifty-two lads who stand here before you, said, 'They
have chosen--it is their affair.' But think!--the matter is
altered--_All England is marching against us_! Oh, sir, consider!
--reflect!--these people are our people, they are bone of our bone,
flesh of our flesh, we love them--do not ask us to destroy our nation!"
Well, it shows the value of looking ahead, and being ready for
a thing when it happens. If I hadn't foreseen this thing and been
fixed, that boy would have had me!--I couldn't have said a word.
But I was fixed. I said:
"My boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought the
worthy thought, you have done the worthy thing. You are English
boys, you will remain English boys, and you will keep that name
unsmirched. Give yourselves no further concern, let your minds be
at peace. Consider this: while all England is marching against
us, who is in the van? Who, by the commonest rules of war, will
march in the front? Answer me."
"The mounted host of mailed knights."
"True. They are thirty thousand strong. Acres deep they will march.
Now, observe: none but _they_ will ever strike the sand-belt! Then
there will be an episode! Immediately after, the civilian multitude
in the rear will retire, to meet business engagements elsewhere.
None but nobles and gentry are knights, and _none but these_ will
remain to dance to our music after that episode. It is absolutely
true that we shall have to fight nobody but these thirty thousand
knights. Now speak, and it shall be as you decide. Shall we
avoid the battle, retire from the field?"
"NO!!!"
The shout was unanimous and hearty.
"Are you--are you--well, afraid of these thirty thousand knights?"
That joke brought out a good laugh, the boys' troubles vanished
away, and they went gaily to their posts. Ah, they were a darling
fifty-two! As pretty as girls, too.
I was ready for the enemy now. Let the approaching big day come
along--it would find us on deck.
The big day arrived on time. At dawn the sentry on watch in the
corral came into the cave and reported a moving black mass under
the horizon, and a faint sound which he thought to be military
music. Breakfast was just ready; we sat down and ate it.
This over, I made the boys a little speech, and then sent out
a detail to man the battery, with Clarence in command of it.
The sun rose presently and sent its unobstructed splendors over
the land, and we saw a prodigious host moving slowly toward us,
with the steady drift and aligned front of a wave of the sea.
Nearer and nearer it came, and more and more sublimely imposing
became its aspect; yes, all England was there, apparently. Soon
we could see the innumerable banners fluttering, and then the sun
struck the sea of armor and set it all aflash. Yes, it was a fine
sight; I hadn't ever seen anything to beat it.
At last we could make out details. All the front ranks, no telling
how many acres deep, were horsemen--plumed knights in armor.
Suddenly we heard the blare of trumpets; the slow walk burst into
a gallop, and then--well, it was wonderful to see! Down swept
that vast horse-shoe wave--it approached the sand-belt--my breath
stood still; nearer, nearer--the strip of green turf beyond the
yellow belt grew narrow--narrower still--became a mere ribbon in
front of the horses--then disappeared under their hoofs. Great
Scott! Why, the whole front of that host shot into the sky with
a thunder-crash, and became a whirling tempest of rags and fragments;
and along the ground lay a thick wall of smoke that hid what was
left of the multitude from our sight.
Time for the second step in the plan of campaign! I touched
a button, and shook the bones of England loose from her spine!
In that explosion all our noble civilization-factories went up in
the air and disappeared from the earth. It was a pity, but it
was necessary. We could not afford to let the enemy turn our own
weapons against us.
Now ensued one of the dullest quarter-hours I had ever endured.
We waited in a silent solitude enclosed by our circles of wire,
and by a circle of heavy smoke outside of these. We couldn't
see over the wall of smoke, and we couldn't see through it. But
at last it began to shred away lazily, and by the end of another
quarter-hour the land was clear and our curiosity was enabled
to satisfy itself. No living creature was in sight! We now
perceived that additions had been made to our defenses. The
dynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide, all around
us, and cast up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on both
borders of it. As to destruction of life, it was amazing. Moreover,
it was beyond estimate. Of course, we could not _count_ the dead,
because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneous
protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons.
No life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some
wounded in the rear ranks, who were carried off the field under
cover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among the
others--there always is, after an episode like that. But there
would be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalry
of England; it was all that was left of the order, after the recent
annihilating wars. So I felt quite safe in believing that the
utmost force that could for the future be brought against us
would be but small; that is, of knights. I therefore issued a
congratulatory proclamation to my army in these words:
SOLDIERS, CHAMPIONS OF HUMAN LIBERTY AND EQUALITY:
Your General congratulates you! In the pride of his
strength and the vanity of his renown, an arrogant
enemy came against you. You were ready. The conflict
was brief; on your side, glorious. This mighty
victory, having been achieved utterly without loss,
stands without example in history. So long as the
planets shall continue to move in their orbits, the
BATTLE OF THE SAND-BELT will not perish out of the
memories of men.
THE BOSS.
I read it well, and the applause I got was very gratifying to me.
I then wound up with these remarks:
"The war with the English nation, as a nation, is at an end.
The nation has retired from the field and the war. Before it can
be persuaded to return, war will have ceased. This campaign is
the only one that is going to be fought. It will be brief
--the briefest in history. Also the most destructive to life,
considered from the standpoint of proportion of casualties to
numbers engaged. We are done with the nation; henceforth we deal
only with the knights. English knights can be killed, but they
cannot be conquered. We know what is before us. While one of
these men remains alive, our task is not finished, the war is not
ended. We will kill them all." [Loud and long continued applause.]
I picketed the great embankments thrown up around our lines by
the dynamite explosion--merely a lookout of a couple of boys
to announce the enemy when he should appear again.
Next, I sent an engineer and forty men to a point just beyond
our lines on the south, to turn a mountain brook that was there,
and bring it within our lines and under our command, arranging
it in such a way that I could make instant use of it in an emergency.
The forty men were divided into two shifts of twenty each, and
were to relieve each other every two hours. In ten hours the
work was accomplished.
It was nightfall now, and I withdrew my pickets. The one who
had had the northern outlook reported a camp in sight, but visible
with the glass only. He also reported that a few knights had been
feeling their way toward us, and had driven some cattle across our
lines, but that the knights themselves had not come very near.
That was what I had been expecting. They were feeling us, you
see; they wanted to know if we were going to play that red terror
on them again. They would grow bolder in the night, perhaps.
I believed I knew what project they would attempt, because it was
plainly the thing I would attempt myself if I were in their places
and as ignorant as they were. I mentioned it to Clarence.
"I think you are right," said he; "it is the obvious thing for
them to try."
"Well, then," I said, "if they do it they are doomed."
"Certainly."
"They won't have the slightest show in the world."
"Of course they won't."
"It's dreadful, Clarence. It seems an awful pity."
The thing disturbed me so that I couldn't get any peace of mind
for thinking of it and worrying over it. So, at last, to quiet
my conscience, I framed this message to the knights:
TO THE HONORABLE THE COMMANDER OF THE INSURGENT
CHIVALRY OF ENGLAND: YOU fight in vain. We know
your strength--if one may call it by that name.
We know that at the utmost you cannot bring
against us above five and twenty thousand knights.
Therefore, you have no chance--none whatever.
Reflect: we are well equipped, well fortified, we
number 54. Fifty-four what? Men? No, MINDS--the
capablest in the world; a force against which
mere animal might may no more hope to prevail than
may the idle waves of the sea hope to prevail
against the granite barriers of England. Be advised.
We offer you your lives; for the sake of your
families, do not reject the gift. We offer you
this chance, and it is the last: throw down your
arms; surrender unconditionally to the Republic,
and all will be forgiven.
(Signed) THE BOSS.
I read it to Clarence, and said I proposed to send it by a flag
of truce. He laughed the sarcastic laugh he was born with, and said:
"Somehow it seems impossible for you to ever fully realize what
these nobilities are. Now let us save a little time and trouble.
Consider me the commander of the knights yonder. Now, then,
you are the flag of truce; approach and deliver me your message,
and I will give you your answer."
I humored the idea. I came forward under an imaginary guard of
the enemy's soldiers, produced my paper, and read it through.
For answer, Clarence struck the paper out of my hand, pursed up
a scornful lip and said with lofty disdain:
"Dismember me this animal, and return him in a basket to the
base-born knave who sent him; other answer have I none!"
How empty is theory in presence of fact! And this was just fact,
and nothing else. It was the thing that would have happened,
there was no getting around that. I tore up the paper and granted
my mistimed sentimentalities a permanent rest.
Then, to business. I tested the electric signals from the gatling
platform to the cave, and made sure that they were all right;
I tested and retested those which commanded the fences--these
were signals whereby I could break and renew the electric current
in each fence independently of the others at will. I placed the
brook-connection under the guard and authority of three of my
best boys, who would alternate in two-hour watches all night and
promptly obey my signal, if I should have occasion to give it
--three revolver-shots in quick succession. Sentry-duty was discarded
for the night, and the corral left empty of life; I ordered that
quiet be maintained in the cave, and the electric lights turned
down to a glimmer.
As soon as it was good and dark, I shut off the current from all
the fences, and then groped my way out to the embankment bordering
our side of the great dynamite ditch. I crept to the top of it
and lay there on the slant of the muck to watch. But it was
too dark to see anything. As for sounds, there were none. The
stillness was deathlike. True, there were the usual night-sounds
of the country--the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects,
the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine
--but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified
it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.
I presently gave up looking, the night shut down so black, but
I kept my ears strained to catch the least suspicious sound, for
I judged I had only to wait, and I shouldn't be disappointed.
However, I had to wait a long time. At last I caught what you
may call in distinct glimpses of sound dulled metallic sound.
I pricked up my ears, then, and held my breath, for this was the
sort of thing I had been waiting for. This sound thickened, and
approached--from toward the north. Presently, I heard it at my
own level--the ridge-top of the opposite embankment, a hundred
feet or more away. Then I seemed to see a row of black dots appear
along that ridge--human heads? I couldn't tell; it mightn't be
anything at all; you can't depend on your eyes when your imagination
is out of focus. However, the question was soon settled. I heard
that metallic noise descending into the great ditch. It augmented
fast, it spread all along, and it unmistakably furnished me this
fact: an armed host was taking up its quarters in the ditch. Yes,
these people were arranging a little surprise party for us. We
could expect entertainment about dawn, possibly earlier.
I groped my way back to the corral now; I had seen enough. I went
to the platform and signaled to turn the current on to the two
inner fences. Then I went into the cave, and found everything
satisfactory there--nobody awake but the working-watch. I woke
Clarence and told him the great ditch was filling up with men,
and that I believed all the knights were coming for us in a body.
It was my notion that as soon as dawn approached we could expect
the ditch's ambuscaded thousands to swarm up over the embankment
and make an assault, and be followed immediately by the rest
of their army.
Clarence said:
"They will be wanting to send a scout or two in the dark to make
preliminary observations. Why not take the lightning off the
outer fences, and give them a chance?"
"I've already done it, Clarence. Did you ever know me to be
inhospitable?"
"No, you are a good heart. I want to go and--"
"Be a reception committee? I will go, too."
We crossed the corral and lay down together between the two inside
fences. Even the dim light of the cave had disordered our eyesight
somewhat, but the focus straightway began to regulate itself and
soon it was adjusted for present circumstances. We had had to feel
our way before, but we could make out to see the fence posts now.
We started a whispered conversation, but suddenly Clarence broke
off and said:
"What is that?"
"What is what?"
"That thing yonder."
"What thing--where?"
"There beyond you a little piece--dark something--a dull shape
of some kind--against the second fence."
I gazed and he gazed. I said:
"Could it be a man, Clarence?"
"No, I think not. If you notice, it looks a lit--why, it _is_
a man!--leaning on the fence."
"I certainly believe it is; let us go and see."
We crept along on our hands and knees until we were pretty close,
and then looked up. Yes, it was a man--a dim great figure in armor,
standing erect, with both hands on the upper wire--and, of course,
there was a smell of burning flesh. Poor fellow, dead as a
door-nail, and never knew what hurt him. He stood there like a
statue--no motion about him, except that his plumes swished about
a little in the night wind. We rose up and looked in through
the bars of his visor, but couldn't make out whether we knew him
or not--features too dim and shadowed.
We heard muffled sounds approaching, and we sank down to the ground
where we were. We made out another knight vaguely; he was coming
very stealthily, and feeling his way. He was near enough now for
us to see him put out a hand, find an upper wire, then bend and
step under it and over the lower one. Now he arrived at the
first knight--and started slightly when he discovered him. He
stood a moment--no doubt wondering why the other one didn't move
on; then he said, in a low voice, "Why dreamest thou here, good
Sir Mar--" then he laid his hand on the corpse's shoulder--and just
uttered a little soft moan and sunk down dead. Killed by a dead
man, you see--killed by a dead friend, in fact. There was something
awful about it.
These early birds came scattering along after each other, about
one every five minutes in our vicinity, during half an hour.
They brought no armor of offense but their swords; as a rule,
they carried the sword ready in the hand, and put it forward and
found the wires with it. We would now and then see a blue spark
when the knight that caused it was so far away as to be invisible
to us; but we knew what had happened, all the same; poor fellow,
he had touched a charged wire with his sword and been elected.
We had brief intervals of grim stillness, interrupted with piteous
regularity by the clash made by the falling of an iron-clad; and
this sort of thing was going on, right along, and was very creepy
there in the dark and lonesomeness.
We concluded to make a tour between the inner fences. We elected
to walk upright, for convenience's sake; we argued that if discerned,
we should be taken for friends rather than enemies, and in any case
we should be out of reach of swords, and these gentry did not seem
to have any spears along. Well, it was a curious trip. Everywhere
dead men were lying outside the second fence--not plainly visible,
but still visible; and we counted fifteen of those pathetic
statues--dead knights standing with their hands on the upper wire.
One thing seemed to be sufficiently demonstrated: our current
was so tremendous that it killed before the victim could cry out.
Pretty soon we detected a muffled and heavy sound, and next moment
we guessed what it was. It was a surprise in force coming! whispered
Clarence to go and wake the army, and notify it to wait in silence
in the cave for further orders. He was soon back, and we stood
by the inner fence and watched the silent lightning do its awful
work upon that swarming host. One could make out but little of
detail; but he could note that a black mass was piling itself up
beyond the second fence. That swelling bulk was dead men! Our
camp was enclosed with a solid wall of the dead--a bulwark,
a breastwork, of corpses, you may say. One terrible thing about
this thing was the absence of human voices; there were no cheers,
no war cries; being intent upon a surprise, these men moved as
noiselessly as they could; and always when the front rank was near
enough to their goal to make it proper for them to begin to get
a shout ready, of course they struck the fatal line and went down
without testifying.
I sent a current through the third fence now; and almost immediately
through the fourth and fifth, so quickly were the gaps filled up.
I believed the time was come now for my climax; I believed that
that whole army was in our trap. Anyway, it was high time to find
out. So I touched a button and set fifty electric suns aflame
on the top of our precipice.
Land, what a sight! We were enclosed in three walls of dead men!
All the other fences were pretty nearly filled with the living,
who were stealthily working their way forward through the wires.
The sudden glare paralyzed this host, petrified them, you may say,
with astonishment; there was just one instant for me to utilize
their immobility in, and I didn't lose the chance. You see, in
another instant they would have recovered their faculties, then
they'd have burst into a cheer and made a rush, and my wires
would have gone down before it; but that lost instant lost them
their opportunity forever; while even that slight fragment of time
was still unspent, I shot the current through all the fences and
struck the whole host dead in their tracks! _There_ was a groan
you could _hear_! It voiced the death-pang of eleven thousand men.
It swelled out on the night with awful pathos.
A glance showed that the rest of the enemy--perhaps ten thousand
strong--were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing
forward to the assault. Consequently we had them _all!_ and had
them past help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I fired
the three appointed revolver shots--which meant:
"Turn on the water!"
There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain
brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a
hundred feet wide and twenty-five deep.
"Stand to your guns, men! Open fire!"
The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten
thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against
that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and
swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth
part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment;
the three-fourths reached it and plunged over--to death by drowning.
Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance
was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were
masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us.
But how treacherous is fortune! In a little while--say an hour
--happened a thing, by my own fault, which--but I have no heart
to write that. Let the record end here.
CHAPTER XLIV
A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE
I, Clarence, must write it for him. He proposed that we two
go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I was
strenuous against the project. I said that if there were many,
we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to
trust ourselves among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turned
from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current
from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing
ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The first
wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back
against a dead comrade. When The Boss bent over him and spoke
to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That knight was
Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet. He
will not ask for help any more.
We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was
not very serious, the best care we could. In this service we had
the help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised
as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife.
In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he
had appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook
for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps
which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. The Boss
had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with
finishing up his record.
We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We
were in a trap, you see--a trap of our own making. If we stayed
where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our
defenses, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered;
in turn we were conquered. The Boss recognized this; we all
recognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps and
patch up some kind of terms with the enemy--yes, but The Boss
could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that
were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands.
Others were taken down, and still others. To-morrow--
_To-morrow._ It is here. And with it the end. About midnight
I awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about
The Boss's head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybody
but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound.
The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing
toward the door. I called out:
"Stop! What have you been doing?"
She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction:
"Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! These others are perishing
--you also. Ye shall all die in this place--every one--except _him_.
He sleepeth now--and shall sleep thirteen centuries. I am Merlin!"
Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled
about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one
of our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still
laughing. I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until
the corpse turns to dust.
The Boss has never stirred--sleeps like a stone. If he does not
wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and
his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses
of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for
the rest of us--well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever
escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and
loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief,
whose property it is, be he alive or dead.
THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT
FINAL P.S. BY M.T.
The dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside. The rain
had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm
was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger's
room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. I could
hear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I still
heard the voice. I peeped in. The man lay on his back in bed,
talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms,
which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium.
I slipped in softly and bent over him. His mutterings and
ejaculations went on. I spoke--merely a word, to call his attention.
His glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with
pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome:
"Oh, Sandy, you are come at last--how I have longed for you! Sit
by me--do not leave me--never leave me again, Sandy, never again.
Where is your hand?--give it me, dear, let me hold it--there
--now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again--_we_ are happy
again, isn't it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague, you are but
a mist, a cloud, but you are _here_, and that is blessedness sufficient;
and I have your hand; don't take it away--it is for only a little
while, I shall not require it long.... Was that the child?...
Hello-Central!... she doesn't answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring her
when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair,
and tell her good-bye.... Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lost
myself a moment, and I thought you were gone.... Have I been
sick long? It must be so; it seems months to me. And such dreams!
such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams that were as real
as reality--delirium, of course, but _so_ real! Why, I thought
the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn't get
home, I thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy
of these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a handful of
my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England!
But even that was not the strangest. I seemed to be a creature
out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even _that_ was
as real as the rest! Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that
age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set
down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an
abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between
me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear
to me, all that could make life worth the living! It was awful
--awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy
--stay by me every moment--_don't_ let me go out of my mind again;
death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with
the torture of those hideous dreams--I cannot endure _that_ again....
Sandy?..."
He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he
lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. Presently
his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign
I knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the
death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed
to listen: then he said:
"A bugle?... It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the
battlements!--turn out the--"
He was getting up his last "effect"; but he never finished it.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court, Complete, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
by Mark Twain
1892
EXPLANATORY
The Colonel Mulberry Sellers here re-introduced to the public is the same
person who appeared as Eschol Sellers in the first edition of the tale
entitled "The Gilded Age," years ago, and as Beriah Sellers in the
subsequent editions of the same book, and finally as Mulberry Sellers in
the drama played afterward by John T. Raymond.
The name was changed from Eschol to Beriah to accommodate an Eschol
Sellers who rose up out of the vasty deeps of uncharted space and
preferred his request--backed by threat of a libel suit--then went his
way appeased, and came no more. In the play Beriah had to be dropped to
satisfy another member of the race, and Mulberry was substituted in the
hope that the objectors would be tired by that time and let it pass
unchallenged. So far it has occupied the field in peace; therefore we
chance it again, feeling reasonably safe, this time, under shelter of the
statute of limitations.
MARK TWAIN.
Hartford, 1891.
THE WEATHER IN THIS BOOK.
No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book
through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in
fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the
while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the
mood.
Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it
because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an
author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the
weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad
for both reader and author.
Of course weather is necessary to a narrative of human experience.
That is conceded. But it ought to be put where it will not be in the
way; where it will not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And it ought
to be the ablest weather that can be had, not ignorant, poor-quality,
amateur weather. Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand
can turn out a good article of it. The present author can do only a few
trifling ordinary kinds of weather, and he cannot do those very good.
So it has seemed wisest to borrow such weather as is necessary for the
book from qualified and recognized experts--giving credit, of course.
This weather will be found over in the back part of the book, out of the
way. See Appendix. The reader is requested to turn over and help
himself from time to time as he goes along.
CHAPTER I.
It is a matchless morning in rural England. On a fair hill we see a
majestic pile, the ivied walls and towers of Cholmondeley Castle, huge
relic and witness of the baronial grandeurs of the Middle Ages. This is
one of the seats of the Earl of Rossmore, K. G. G. C. B. K. C. M. G.,
etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., who possesses twenty-two thousand acres of
English land, owns a parish in London with two thousand houses on its
lease-roll, and struggles comfortably along on an income of two hundred
thousand pounds a year. The father and founder of this proud old line
was William the Conqueror his very self; the mother of it was not
inventoried in history by name, she being merely a random episode and
inconsequential, like the tanner's daughter of Falaise.
In a breakfast room of the castle on this breezy fine morning there are
two persons and the cooling remains of a deserted meal. One of these
persons is the old lord, tall, erect, square-shouldered, white-haired,
stern-browed, a man who shows character in every feature, attitude, and
movement, and carries his seventy years as easily as most men carry
fifty. The other person is his only son and heir, a dreamy-eyed young
fellow, who looks about twenty-six but is nearer thirty. Candor,
kindliness, honesty, sincerity, simplicity, modesty--it is easy to see
that these are cardinal traits of his character; and so when you have
clothed him in the formidable components of his name, you somehow seem
to be contemplating a lamb in armor: his name and style being the
Honourable Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjorihanks Sellers Viscount-Berkeley,
of Cholmondeley Castle, Warwickshire. (Pronounced K'koobry Thlanover
Marshbanks Sellers Vycount Barkly, of Chumly Castle, Warrikshr.) He is
standing by a great window, in an attitude suggestive of respectful
attention to what his father is saying and equally respectful dissent
from the positions and arguments offered. The father walks the floor as
he talks, and his talk shows that his temper is away up toward summer
heat.
"Soft-spirited as you are, Berkeley, I am quite aware that when you have
once made up your mind to do a thing which your ideas of honor and
justice require you to do, argument and reason are (for the time being,)
wasted upon you--yes, and ridicule; persuasion, supplication, and command
as well. To my mind--"
"Father, if you will look at it without prejudice, without passion, you
must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless, wilful
thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it. I did not
create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not hunt
for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice.
He found himself, he injected himself into our lives--"
"And has made mine a purgatory for ten years with his tiresome letters,
his wordy reasonings, his acres of tedious evidence,--"
"Which you would never read, would never consent to read. Yet in common
fairness he was entitled to a hearing. That hearing would either prove
he was the rightful earl--in which case our course would be plain--or it
would prove that he wasn't--in which case our course would be equally
plain. I have read his evidences, my lord. I have conned them well,
studied them patiently and thoroughly. The chain seems to be complete,
no important link wanting. I believe he is the rightful earl."
"And I a usurper--a--nameless pauper, a tramp! Consider what you are
saying, sir."
"Father, if he is the rightful earl, would you, could you--that fact
being established--consent to keep his titles and his properties from him
a day, an hour, a minute?"
"You are talking nonsense--nonsense--lurid idiotcy! Now, listen to me.
I will make a confession--if you wish to call it by that name. I did not
read those evidences because I had no occasion to--I was made familiar
with them in the time of this claimant's father and of my own father
forty years ago. This fellow's predecessors have kept mine more or less
familiar with them for close upon a hundred and fifty years. The truth
is, the rightful heir did go to America, with the Fairfax heir or about
the same time--but disappeared--somewhere in the wilds of Virginia, got
married, end began to breed savages for the Claimant market; wrote no
letters home; was supposed to be dead; his younger brother softly took
possession; presently the American did die, and straightway his eldest
product put in his claim--by letter--letter still in existence--and died
before the uncle in-possession found time--or maybe inclination--to
--answer. The infant son of that eldest product grew up--long interval,
you see--and he took to writing letters and furnishing evidences. Well,
successor after successor has done the same, down to the present idiot.
It was a succession of paupers; not one of them was ever able to pay his
passage to England or institute suit. The Fairfaxes kept their lordship
alive, and so they have never lost it to this day, although they live in
Maryland; their friend lost his by his own neglect. You perceive now,
that the facts in this case bring us to precisely this result: morally
the American tramp is rightful earl of Rossmore; legally he has no more
right than his dog. There now--are you satisfied?"
There was a pause, then the son glanced at the crest carved in the great
oaken mantel and said, with a regretful note in his voice:
"Since the introduction of heraldic symbols,--the motto of this house has
been 'Suum cuique'--to every man his own. By your own intrepidly frank
confession, my lord, it is become a sarcasm: If Simon Lathers--"
Keep that exasperating name to yourself! For ten years it has pestered
my eye--and tortured my ear; till at last my very footfalls time
themselves to the brain-racking rhythm of Simon Lathers!--Simon Lathers!
--Simon Lathers! And now, to make its presence in my soul eternal,
immortal, imperishable, you have resolved to--to--what is it you have
resolved to do?"
"To go to Simon Lathers, in America, and change places with him."
"What? Deliver the reversion of the earldom into his hands?"
"That is my purpose."
"Make this tremendous surrender without even trying the fantastic case in
the Lords?"
"Ye--s--" with hesitation and some embarrassment.
"By all that is amazing, I believe you are insane, my son. See here
--have you been training with that ass again--that radical, if you prefer
the term, though the words are synonymous--Lord Tanzy, of Tollmache?"
The son did not reply, and the old lord continued:
"Yes, you confess. That puppy, that shame to his birth and caste, who
holds all hereditary lordships and privilege to be usurpation, all
nobility a tinsel sham, all aristocratic institutions a fraud, all
inequalities in rank a legalized crime and an infamy, and no bread honest
bread that a man doesn't earn by his own work--work, pah!"--and the old
patrician brushed imaginary labor-dirt from his white hands. "You have
come to hold just those opinions yourself, suppose,"--he added with a
sneer.
A faint flush in the younger man's cheek told that the shot had hit and
hurt; but he answered with dignity:
"I have. I say it without shame--I feel none. And now my reason for
resolving to renounce my heirship without resistance is explained.
I wish to retire from what to me is a false existence, a false position,
and begin my life over again--begin it right--begin it on the level of
mere manhood, unassisted by factitious aids, and succeed or fail by pure
merit or the want of it. I will go to America, where all men are equal
and all have an equal chance; I will live or die, sink or swim, win or
lose as just a man--that alone, and not a single helping gaud or fiction
back of it."
"Hear, hear!" The two men looked each other steadily in the eye a moment
or two, then the elder one added, musingly, "Ab-so-lutely
cra-zy-ab-solutely!" After another silence, he said, as one who, long
troubled by clouds, detects a ray of sunshine, "Well, there will be one
satisfaction--Simon Lathets will come here to enter into his own, and I
will drown him in the horsepond. That poor devil--always so humble in
his letters, so pitiful, so deferential; so steeped in reverence for our
great line and lofty-station; so anxious to placate us, so prayerful for
recognition as a relative, a bearer in his veins of our sacred blood
--and withal so poor, so needy, so threadbare and pauper-shod as to
raiment, so despised, so laughed at for his silly claimantship by the
lewd American scum around him--ah, the vulgar, crawling, insufferable
tramp! To read one of his cringing, nauseating letters--well?"
This to a splendid flunkey, all in inflamed plush and buttons and
knee-breeches as to his trunk, and a glinting white frost-work of
ground-glass paste as to his head, who stood with his heels together and
the upper half of him bent forward, a salver in his hands:
"The letters, my lord."
My lord took them, and the servant disappeared.
"Among the rest, an American letter. From the tramp, of course. Jove,
but here's a change! No brown paper envelope this time, filched from a
shop, and carrying the shop's advertisement in the corner. Oh, no, a
proper enough envelope--with a most ostentatiously broad mourning
border--for his cat, perhaps, since he was a bachelor--and fastened with
red wax--a batch of it as big as a half-crown--and--and--our crest for a
seal!--motto and all. And the ignorant, sprawling hand is gone; he
sports a secretary, evidently--a secretary with a most confident swing
and flourish to his pen. Oh indeed, our fortunes are improving over
there--our meek tramp has undergone a metamorphosis."
"Read it, my lord, please."
"Yes, this time I will. For the sake of the cat:
14,042 SIXTEENTH. STREET,
WASHINGTON, May 2.
It is my painful duty to announce to you that the head of our illustrious
house is no more--The Right Honourable, The Most Noble, The Most Puissant
Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore having departed this life ("Gone at last
--this is unspeakably precious news, my son,") at his seat in the environs
of the hamlet of Duffy's Corners in the grand old State of Arkansas,
--and his twin brother with him, both being crushed by a log at a
smoke-house-raising, owing to carelessness on the part of all present,
referable to over-confidence and gaiety induced by overplus of
sour-mash--("Extolled be sour-mash, whatever that may be, eh Berkeley?")
five days ago, with no scion of our ancient race present to close his
eyes and inter him with the honors due his historic name and lofty
rank--in fact, he is on the ice yet, him and his brother--friends took a
collection for it. But I shall take immediate occasion to have their
noble remains shipped to you ("Great heavens!") for interment, with due
ceremonies and solemnities, in the family vault or mausoleum of our
house. Meantime I shall put up a pair of hatchments on my house-front,
and you will of course do the same at your several seats.
I have also to remind you that by this sad disaster I as sole heir,
inherit and become seized of all the titles, honors, lands, and goods of
our lamented relative, and must of necessity, painful as the duty is,
shortly require at the bar of the Lords restitution of these dignities
and properties, now illegally enjoyed by your titular lordship.
With assurance of my distinguished consideration and warm cousinly
regard, I remain
Your titular lordship's
Most obedient servant,
Mulberry Sellers Earl Rossmore.
"Im-mense! Come, this one's interesting. Why, Berkeley, his breezy
impudence is--is--why, it's colossal, it's sublime."
"No, this one doesn't seem to cringe much."
"Cringe--why, he doesn't know the meaning of the word. Hatchments! To
commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate. And he is
going to send me the remains. The late Claimant was a fool, but plainly
this new one's a maniac. What a name! Mulberry Sellers--there's music
for you, Simon Lathers--Mulberry Sellers--Mulberry Sellers--Simon
Lathers. Sounds like machinery working and churning. Simon Lathers,
Mulberry Sel--Are you going?"
"If I have your leave, father."
The old gentleman stood musing some time, after his son was gone. This
was his thought:
"He is a good boy, and lovable. Let him take his own course--as it would
profit nothing to oppose him--make things worse, in fact. My arguments
and his aunt's persuasions have failed; let us see what America can do
for us. Let us see what equality and hard-times can effect for the
mental health of a brain-sick young British lord. Going to renounce his
lordship and be a man! Yas!"
CHAPTER II.
COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS--this was some days before he wrote his letter
to Lord Rossmore--was seated in his "library," which was also his
"drawing-room" and was also his "picture gallery" and likewise his
"work-shop." Sometimes he called it by one of these names, sometimes by
another, according to occasion and circumstance. He was constructing
what seemed to be some kind of a frail mechanical toy; and was apparently
very much interested in his work. He was a white-headed man, now, but
otherwise he was as young, alert, buoyant, visionary and enterprising as
ever. His loving old wife sat near by, contentedly knitting and
thinking, with a cat asleep in her lap. The room was large, light, and
had a comfortable look, in fact a home-like look, though the furniture
was of a humble sort and not over abundant, and the knickknacks and
things that go to adorn a living-room not plenty and not costly. But
there were natural flowers, and there was an abstract and unclassifiable
something about the place which betrayed the presence in the house of
somebody with a happy taste and an effective touch.
Even the deadly chromos on the walls were somehow without offence;
in fact they seemed to belong there and to add an attraction to the room
--a fascination, anyway; for whoever got his eye on one of them was like
to gaze and suffer till he died--you have seen that kind of pictures.
Some of these terrors were landscapes, some libeled the sea, some were
ostensible portraits, all were crimes. All the portraits were
recognizable as dead Americans of distinction, and yet, through labeling
added, by a daring hand, they were all doing duty here as "Earls of
Rossmore." The newest one had left the works as Andrew Jackson, but was
doing its best now, as "Simon Lathers Lord Rossmore, Present Earl."
On one wall was a cheap old railroad map of Warwickshire. This had been
newly labeled "The Rossmore Estates." On the opposite wall was another
map, and this was the most imposing decoration of the establishment and
the first to catch a stranger's attention, because of its great size.
It had once borne simply the title SIBERIA; but now the word "FUTURE" had
been written in front of that word. There were other additions, in red
ink--many cities, with great populations set down, scattered over the
vast-country at points where neither cities nor populations exist to-day.
One of these cities, with population placed at 1,500,000, bore the name
"Libertyorloffskoizalinski," and there was a still more populous one,
centrally located and marked "Capital," which bore the name
"Freedomolovnaivanovich."
The "mansion"--the Colonel's usual name for the house--was a rickety old
two-story frame of considerable size, which had been painted, some time
or other, but had nearly forgotten it. It was away out in the ragged
edge of Washington and had once been somebody's country place. It had a
neglected yard around it, with a paling fence that needed straightening
up, in places, and a gate that would stay shut. By the door-post were
several modest tin signs. "Col. Mulberry Sellers, Attorney at Law and
Claim Agent," was the principal one. One learned from the others that
the Colonel was a Materializer, a Hypnotizer, a Mind-Cure dabbler; and so
on. For he was a man who could always find things to do.
A white-headed negro man, with spectacles and damaged white cotton gloves
appeared in the presence, made a stately obeisance and announced:
"Marse Washington Hawkins, suh."
"Great Scott! Show him in, Dan'l, show him in."
The Colonel and his wife were on their feet in a moment, and
the next moment were joyfully wringing the hands of a stoutish,
discouraged-looking man whose general aspect suggested that he was
fifty years old, but whose hair swore to a hundred.
"Well, well, well, Washington, my boy, it is good to look at you again.
Sit down, sit down, and make yourself at home. There, now--why, you look
perfectly natural; aging a little, just a little, but you'd have known
him anywhere, wouldn't you, Polly?"
"Oh, yes, Berry, he's just like his pa would have looked if he'd lived.
Dear, dear, where have you dropped from? Let me see, how long is it
since--"
I should say it's all of fifteen` years, Mrs. Sellers."
"Well, well, how time does get away with us. Yes, and oh, the changes
that--"
There was a sudden catch of her voice and a trembling of the lip, the men
waiting reverently for her to get command of herself and go on; but
after a little struggle she turned away, with her apron to her eyes, and
softly disappeared.
"Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing--dear, dear,
they're all dead but the youngest.
"But banish care, it's no time for it now--on with the dance, let joy be
unconfined is my motto, whether there's any dance to dance; or any joy to
unconfine--you'll be the healthier for it every time,--every time,
Washington--it's my experience, and I've seen a good deal of this world.
Come--where have you disappeared to all these years, and are you from
there, now, or where are you from?"
"I don't quite think you would ever guess, Colonel. Cherokee Strip."
"My land!"
"Sure as you live."
"You can't mean it. Actually living out there?"
"Well, yes, if a body may call it that; though it's a pretty strong term
for 'dobies and jackass rabbits, boiled beans and slap-jacks, depression,
withered hopes, poverty in all its varieties--"
"Louise out there?"
"Yes, and the children."
"Out there now?"
"Yes, I couldn't afford to bring them with me."
"Oh, I see,--you had to come--claim against the government. Make
yourself perfectly easy--I'll take care of that."
"But it isn't a claim against the government."
"No? Want to be postmaster? That's all right. Leave it to me. I'll
fix it."
"But it isn't postmaster--you're all astray yet."
"Well, good gracious, Washington, why don't you come out and tell me what
it is? What, do you want to be so reserved and distrustful with an old
friend like me, for? Don't you reckon I can keep a se--"
"There's no secret about it--you merely don't give me a chance to--"
"Now look here, old friend, I know the human race; and I know that when a
man comes to Washington, I don't care if it's from heaven, let alone
Cherokee-Strip, it's because he wants something. And I know that as a
rule he's not going to get it; that he'll stay and try--for another thing
and won't get that; the same luck with the next and the next and the
next; and keeps on till he strikes bottom, and is too poor and ashamed to
go back, even to Cherokee Strip; and at last his heart breaks--and they
take up a collection and bury him. There--don't interrupt me, I know
what I'm talking about. Happy and prosperous in the Far West wasn't I?
You know that. Principal citizen of Hawkeye, looked up to by everybody,
kind of an autocrat, actually a kind of an autocrat, Washington. Well,
nothing would do but I must go Minister to St. James, the Governor and
everybody insisting, you know, and so at last I consented--no getting out
of it, had to do it, so here I came. A day too late, Washington. Think
of that--what little things change the world's history--yes, sir, the
place had been filled. Well, there I was, you see. I offered to
compromise and go to Paris. The President was very sorry and all that,
but that place, you see, didn't belong to the West, so there I was again.
There was no help for it, so I had to stoop a little--we all reach the
day some time or other when we've got to do that, Washington, and it's
not a bad thing for us, either, take it by and large and all around
--I had to stoop a little and offer to take Constantinople. Washington,
consider this--for it's perfectly true--within a month I asked for China;
within another month I begged for Japan; one year later I was away down,
down, down, supplicating with tears and anguish for the bottom office in
the gift of the government of the United States--Flint-Picker in the
cellars of the War Department. And by George I didn't get it."
"Flint-Picker?"
"Yes. Office established in the time of the Revolution, last century.
The musket-flints for the military posts were supplied from the capitol.
They do it yet; for although the flint-arm has gone out and the forts
have tumbled down, the decree hasn't been repealed--been overlooked and
forgotten, you see--and so the vacancies where old Ticonderoga and others
used to stand, still get their six quarts of gun-flints a year just the
same."
Washington said musingly after a pause:
"How strange it seems--to start for Minister to England at twenty
thousand a year and fail for flintpicker at--"
"Three dollars a week. It's human life, Washington--just an epitome of
human ambition, and struggle, and the outcome: you aim for the palace and
get drowned in the sewer."
There was another meditative silence. Then Washington said, with earnest
compassion in his voice--
"And so, after coming here, against your inclination, to satisfy your
sense of patriotic duty and appease a selfish public clamor, you get
absolutely nothing for it."
"Nothing?" The Colonel had to get up and stand, to get room for his
amazement to expand. "Nothing, Washington? I ask you this: to be a
perpetual Member and the only Perpetual Member of a Diplomatic Body
accredited to the greatest country on earth do you call that nothing?"
It was Washington's turn to be amazed. He was stricken dumb; but the
wide-eyed wonder, the reverent admiration expressed in his face were more
eloquent than any words could have been. The Colonel's wounded spirit
was healed and he resumed his seat pleased and content. He leaned
forward and said impressively:
"What was due to a man who had become forever conspicuous by an
experience without precedent in the history of the world?--a man made
permanently and diplomatically sacred, so to speak, by having been
connected, temporarily, through solicitation, with every single
diplomatic post in the roster of this government, from Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James all
the way down to Consul to a guano rock in the Straits of Sunda--salary
payable in guano--which disappeared by volcanic convulsion the day before
they got down to my name in the list of applicants. Certainly something
august enough to be answerable to the size of this unique and memorable
experience was my due, and I got it. By the common voice of this
community, by acclamation of the people, that mighty utterance which
brushes aside laws and legislation, and from whose decrees there is no
appeal, I was named Perpetual Member of the Diplomatic Body representing
the multifarious sovereignties and civilizations of the globe near the
republican court of the United States of America. And they brought me
home with a torchlight procession."
"It is wonderful, Colonel, simply wonderful."
"It's the loftiest official position in the whole earth."
"I should think so--and the most commanding."
"You have named the word. Think of it. I frown, and there is war; I
smile, and contending nations lay down their arms."
"It is awful. The responsibility, I mean."
"It is nothing. Responsibility is no burden to me; I am used to it; have
always been used to it."
"And the work--the work! Do you have to attend all the sittings?"
"Who, I? Does the Emperor of Russia attend the conclaves of the
governors of the provinces? He sits at home, and indicates his
pleasure."
Washington was silent a moment, then a deep sigh escaped him.
"How proud I was an hour ago; how paltry seems my little promotion now!
Colonel, the reason I came to Washington is,--I am Congressional Delegate
from Cherokee Strip!"
The Colonel sprang to his feet and broke out with prodigious enthusiasm:
"Give me your hand, my boy--this is immense news! I congratulate you
with all my heart. My prophecies stand confirmed. I always said it was
in you. I always said you were born for high distinction and would
achieve it. You ask Polly if I didn't."
Washington was dazed by this most unexpected demonstration.
"Why, Colonel, there's nothing to it. That little narrow, desolate,
unpeopled, oblong streak of grass and gravel, lost in the remote wastes
of the vast continent--why, it's like representing a billiard table--a
discarded one."
"Tut-tut, it's a great, it's a staving preferment, and just opulent with
influence here."
"Shucks, Colonel, I haven't even a vote."
"That's nothing; you can make speeches."
"No, I can't. The population's only two hundred--"
"That's all right, that's all right--"
"And they hadn't any right to elect me; we're not even a territory,
there's no Organic Act, the government hasn't any official knowledge of
us whatever."
"Never mind about that; I'll fix that. I'll rush the thing through, I'll
get you organized in no time."
"Will you, Colonel?--it's too good of you; but it's just your old
sterling self, the same old ever-faithful friend," and the grateful tears
welled up in Washington's eyes.
"It's just as good as done, my boy, just as good as done. Shake hands.
We'll hitch teams together, you and I, and we'll make things hum!"
CHAPTER III.
Mrs. Sellers returned, now, with her composure restored, and began to ask
after Hawkins's wife, and about his children, and the number of them, and
so on, and her examination of the witness resulted in a circumstantial
history of the family's ups and downs and driftings to and fro in the far
West during the previous fifteen years. There was a message, now, from
out back, and Colonel Sellers went out there in answer to it. Hawkins
took this opportunity to ask how the world had been using the Colonel
during the past half-generation.
"Oh, it's been using him just the same; it couldn't change its way of
using him if it wanted to, for he wouldn't let it."
"I can easily believe that, Mrs. Sellers."
"Yes, you see, he doesn't change, himself--not the least little bit in
the world--he's always Mulberry Sellers."
"I can see that plain enough."
"Just the same old scheming, generous, good-hearted, moonshiny, hopeful,
no-account failure he always was, and still everybody likes him just as
well as if he was the shiningest success."
"They always did: and it was natural, because he was so obliging and
accommodating, and had something about him that made it kind of easy to
ask help of him, or favors--you didn't feel shy, you know, or have that
wish--you--didn't--have--to--try feeling that you have with other
people."
"It's just so, yet; and a body wonders at it, too, because he's been
shamefully treated, many times, by people that had used him for a ladder
to climb up by, and then kicked him down when they didn't need him any
more. For a time you can see he's hurt, his pride's wounded, because he
shrinks away from that thing and don't want to talk about it--and so I
used to think now he's learned something and he'll be more careful
hereafter--but laws! in a couple of weeks he's forgotten all about it,
and any selfish tramp out of nobody knows where can come and put up a
poor mouth and walk right into his heart with his boots on."
"It must try your patience pretty sharply sometimes."
"Oh, no, I'm used to it; and I'd rather have him so than the other way.
When I call him a failure, I mean to the world he's a failure; he isn't
to me. I don't know as I want him different much different, anyway.
I have to scold him some, snarl at him, you might even call it, but I
reckon I'd do that just the same, if he was different--it's my make.
But I'm a good deal less snarly and more contented when he's a failure
than I am when he isn't."
"Then he isn't always a failure," said Hawking, brightening.
"Him? Oh, bless you, no. He makes a strike, as he calls it, from time
to time. Then's my time to fret and fuss. For the money just flies
--first come first served. Straight off, he loads up the house with
cripples and idiots and stray cats and all the different kinds of poor
wrecks that other people don't want and he does, and then when the
poverty comes again I've got to clear the most of them out or we'd
starve; and that distresses him, and me the same, of course.
"Here's old Dan'l and old Jinny, that the sheriff sold south one of the
times that we got bankrupted before the war--they came wandering back
after the peace, worn out and used up on the cotton plantations,
helpless, and not another lick of work left in their old hides for the
rest of this earthly pilgrimage--and we so pinched, oh so pinched for the
very crumbs to keep life in us, and he just flung the door wide, and the
way he received them you'd have thought they had come straight down from
heaven in answer to prayer. I took him one side and said, 'Mulberry we
can't have them--we've nothing for ourselves--we can't feed them.'
He looked at me kind of hurt, and said, 'Turn them out?--and they've come
to me just as confident and trusting as--as--why Polly, I must have
bought that confidence sometime or other a long time ago, and given my
note, so to speak--you don't get such things as a gift--and how am I
going to go back on a debt like that? And you see, they're so poor,
and old, and friendless, and--' But I was ashamed by that time, and shut
him off, and somehow felt a new courage in me, and so I said, softly,
'We'll keep them--the Lord will provide.' He was glad, and started to
blurt out one of those over-confident speeches of his, but checked
himself in time, and said humbly, 'I will, anyway.' It was years and
years and years ago. Well, you see those old wrecks are here yet."
"But don't they do your housework?"
"Laws! The idea. They would if they could, poor old things, and perhaps
they think they do do some of it. But it's a superstition. Dan'l waits
on the front door, and sometimes goes on an errand; and sometimes you'll
see one or both of them letting on to dust around in here--but that's
because there's something they want to hear about and mix their gabble
into. And they're always around at meals, for the same reason. But the
fact is, we have to keep a young negro girl just to take care of them,
and a negro woman to do the housework and help take care of them."
"Well, they ought to be tolerably happy, I should think."
"It's no name for it. They quarrel together pretty much all the time
--most always about religion, because Dan'l's a Dunker Baptist and Jinny's
a shouting Methodist, and Jinny believes in special Providences and Dan'l
don't, because he thinks he's a kind of a free-thinker--and they play and
sing plantation hymns together, and talk and chatter just eternally and
forever, and are sincerely fond of each other and think the world of
Mulberry, and he puts up patiently with all their spoiled ways and
foolishness, and so--ah, well, they're happy enough if it comes to that.
And I don't mind--I've got used to it. I can get used to anything, with
Mulberry to help; and the fact is, I don't much care what happens, so
long as he's spared to me."
"Well, here's to him, and hoping he'll make another strike soon."
"And rake in the lame, the halt and the blind, and turn the house into a
hospital again? It's what he would do. I've seen aplenty of that and
more. No, Washington, I want his strikes to be mighty moderate ones the
rest of the way down the vale."
"Well, then, big strike or little strike, or no strike at all, here's
hoping he'll never lack for friends--and I don't reckon he ever will
while there's people around who know enough to--"
"Him lack for friends!" and she tilted her head up with a frank pride--
"why, Washington, you can't name a man that's anybody that isn't fond of
him. I'll tell you privately, that I've had Satan's own time to keep
them from appointing him to some office or other. They knew he'd no
business with an office, just as well as I did, but he's the hardest man
to refuse anything to, a body ever saw. Mulberry Sellers with an office!
laws goodness, you know what that would be like. Why, they'd come from
the ends of the earth to see a circus like that. I'd just as lieves be
married to Niagara Falls, and done with it." After a reflective pause
she added--having wandered back, in the interval, to the remark that had
been her text: "Friends?--oh, indeed, no man ever had more; and such
friends: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Johnston, Longstreet, Lee--many's the
time they've sat in that chair you're sitting in--" Hawkins was out of it
instantly, and contemplating it with a reverential surprise, and with the
awed sense of having trodden shod upon holy ground--
"They!" he said.
"Oh, indeed, yes, a many and a many a time."
He continued to gaze at the chair fascinated, magnetized; and for once in
his life that continental stretch of dry prairie which stood for his
imagination was afire, and across it was marching a slanting flamefront
that joined its wide horizons together and smothered the skies with
smoke. He was experiencing what one or another drowsing, geographically
ignorant alien experiences every day in the year when he turns a dull and
indifferent eye out of the car window and it falls upon a certain
station-sign which reads "Stratford-on-Avon!" Mrs. Sellers went
gossiping comfortably along:
"Oh, they like to hear him talk, especially if their load is getting
rather heavy on one shoulder and they want to shift it. He's all air,
you know,--breeze, you may say--and he freshens them up; it's a trip to
the country, they say. Many a time he's made General Grant laugh--and
that's a tidy job, I can tell you, and as for Sheridan, his eye lights up
and he listens to Mulberry Sellers the same as if he was artillery.
You see, the charm about Mulberry is, he is so catholic and unprejudiced
that he fits in anywhere and everywhere. It makes him powerful good
company, and as popular as scandal. You go to the White House when the
President's holding a general reception--sometime when Mulberry's there.
Why, dear me, you can't tell which of them it is that's holding that
reception."
"Well, he certainly is a remarkable man--and he always was. Is he
religious?"
"Clear to his marrow--does more thinking and reading on that subject than
any other except Russia and Siberia: thrashes around over the whole
field, too; nothing bigoted about him."
"What is his religion?"
"He--" She stopped, and was lost for a moment or two in thinking, then
she said, with simplicity, "I think he was a Mohammedan or something last
week."
Washington started down town, now, to bring his trunk, for the hospitable
Sellerses would listen to no excuses; their house must be his home during
the session. The Colonel returned presently and resumed work upon his
plaything. It was finished when Washington got back.
"There it is," said the Colonel, "all finished."
"What is it for, Colonel?"
"Oh, it's just a trifle. Toy to amuse the children."
Washington examined it.
"It seems to be a puzzle."
"Yes, that's what it is. I call it Pigs in the Clover. Put them in--see
if you can put them in the pen."
After many failures Washington succeeded, and was as pleased as a child.
"It's wonderfully ingenious, Colonel, it's ever so clever and
interesting--why, I could play with it all day. What are you going to do
with it?"
"Oh, nothing. Patent it and throw it aside."
"Don't you do anything of the kind. There's money in that thing."
A compassionate look traveled over the Colonel's countenance, and he
said:
"Money--yes; pin money: a couple of hundred thousand, perhaps. Not
more."
Washington's eyes blazed.
"A couple of hundred thousand dollars! do you call that pin money?"
The colonel rose and tip-toed his way across the room, closed a door that
was slightly ajar, tip-toed his way to his seat again, and said, under
his breath:
"You can keep a secret?"
Washington nodded his affirmative, he was too awed to speak.
"You have heard of materialization--materialization of departed spirits?"
Washington had heard of it.
"And probably didn't believe in it; and quite right, too. The thing as
practised by ignorant charlatans is unworthy of attention or respect--
where there's a dim light and a dark cabinet, and a parcel of sentimental
gulls gathered together, with their faith and their shudders and their
tears all ready, and one and the same fatty degeneration of protoplasm
and humbug comes out and materializes himself into anybody you want,
grandmother, grandchild, brother-in-law, Witch of Endor, John Milton,
Siamese twins, Peter the Great, and all such frantic nonsense--no, that
is all foolish and pitiful. But when a man that is competent brings the
vast powers of science to bear, it's a different matter, a totally
different matter, you see. The spectre that answers that call has come
to stay. Do you note the commercial value of that detail?"
"Well, I--the--the truth is, that I don't quite know that I do. Do you
mean that such, being permanent, not transitory, would give more general
satisfaction, and so enhance the price--of tickets to the show--"
"Show? Folly--listen to me; and get a good grip on your breath, for you
are going to need it. Within three days I shall have completed my
method, and then--let the world stand aghast, for it shall see marvels.
Washington, within three days--ten at the outside--you shall see me call
the dead of any century, and they will arise and walk. Walk?--they shall
walk forever, and never die again. Walk with all the muscle and spring
of their pristine vigor."
"Colonel! Indeed it does take one's breath away."
"Now do you see the money that's in it?"
"I'm--well, I'm--not really sure that I do."
Great Scott, look here. I shall have a monopoly; they'll all belong to
me, won't they? Two thousand policemen in the city of New York. Wages,
four dollars a day. I'll replace them with dead ones at half the money.
"Oh, prodigious! I never thought of that. F-o-u-r thousand dollars a
day. Now I do begin to see! But will dead policemen answer?"
"Haven't they--up to this time?"
"Well, if you put it that way--"
"Put it any way you want to. Modify it to suit yourself, and my lads
shall still be superior. They won't eat, they won't drink--don't need
those things; they won't wink for cash at gambling dens and unlicensed
rum-holes, they won't spark the scullery maids; and moreover the bands of
toughs that ambuscade them on lonely beats, and cowardly shoot and knife
them will only damage the uniforms and not live long enough to get more
than a momentary satisfaction out of that."
"Why, Colonel, if you can furnish policemen, then of course--"
"Certainly--I can furnish any line of goods that's wanted. Take the
army, for instance--now twenty-five thousand men; expense, twenty-two
millions a year. I will dig up the Romans, I will resurrect the Greeks,
I will furnish the government, for ten millions a year, ten thousand
veterans drawn from the victorious legions of all the ages--soldiers that
will chase Indians year in and year out on materialized horses, and cost
never a cent for rations or repairs. The armies of Europe cost two
billions a year now--I will replace them all for a billion. I will dig
up the trained statesmen of all ages and all climes, and furnish this
country with a Congress that knows enough to come in out of the rain--
a thing that's never happened yet, since the Declaration of Independence,
and never will happen till these practically dead people are replaced
with the genuine article. I will restock the thrones of Europe with the
best brains and the best morals that all the royal sepulchres of all the
centuries can furnish--which isn't promising very much--and I'll divide
the wages and the civil list, fair and square, merely taking my half
and--"
"Colonel, if the half of this is true, there's millions in it--millions."
"Billions in it--billions; that's what you mean. Why, look here; the
thing is so close at hand, so imminent, so absolutely immediate, that if
a man were to come to me now and say, Colonel, I am a little short, and
if you could lend me a couple of billion dollars for--come in!"
This in answer to a knock. An energetic looking man bustled in with a
big pocket-book in his hand, took a paper from it and presented it, with
the curt remark:
"Seventeenth and last call--you want to out with that three dollars and
forty cents this time without fail, Colonel Mulberry Sellers."
The Colonel began to slap this pocket and that one, and feel here and
there and everywhere, muttering:
"What have I done with that wallet?--let me see--um--not here, not there
--Oh, I must have left it in the kitchen; I'll just run and--"
"No you won't--you'll stay right where you are. And you're going to
disgorge, too--this time."
Washington innocently offered to go and look. When he was gone the
Colonel said:
"The fact is, I've got to throw myself on your indulgence just this once
more, Suggs; you see the remittances I was expecting--"
"Hang the remittances--it's too stale--it won't answer. Come!"
The Colonel glanced about him in despair. Then his face lighted; he ran
to the wall and began to dust off a peculiarly atrocious chromo with his
handkerchief. Then he brought it reverently, offered it to the
collector, averted his face and said:
"Take it, but don't let me see it go. It's the sole remaining Rembrandt
that--"
"Rembrandt be damned, it's a chromo."
"Oh, don't speak of it so, I beg you. It's the only really great
original, the only supreme example of that mighty school of art which--"
"Art! It's the sickest looking thing I--"
The colonel was already bringing another horror and tenderly dusting it.
"Take this one too--the gem of my collection--the only genuine Fra
Angelico that--"
"Illuminated liver-pad, that's what it is. Give it here--good day--
people will think I've robbed a' nigger barber-shop."
As he slammed the door behind him the Colonel shouted with an anguished
accent--
"Do please cover them up--don't let the damp get at them. The delicate
tints in the Angelico--"
But the man was gone.
Washington re-appeared and said he had looked everywhere, and so had Mrs.
Sellers and the servants, but in vain; and went on to say he wished he
could get his eye on a certain man about this time--no need to hunt up
that pocket-book then. The Colonel's interest was awake at once.
"What man?"
"One-armed Pete they call him out there--out in the Cherokee country I
mean. Robbed the bank in Tahlequah."
"Do they have banks in Tahlequah?"
"Yes--a bank, anyway. He was suspected of robbing it. Whoever did it
got away with more than twenty thousand dollars. They offered a reward
of five thousand. I believe I saw that very man, on my way east."
"No--is that so?
"I certainly saw a man on the train, the first day I struck the railroad,
that answered the description pretty exactly--at least as to clothes and
a lacking arm."
"Why don't you get him arrested and claim the reward?"
"I couldn't. I had to get a requisition, of course. But I meant to stay
by him till I got my chance."
"Well?"
"Well, he left the train during the night some time."
"Oh, hang it, that's too bad."
"Not so very bad, either."
"Why?"
"Because he came down to Baltimore in the very train I was in, though I
didn't know it in time. As we moved out of the station I saw him going
toward the iron gate with a satchel in his hand."
"Good; we'll catch him. Let's lay a plan."
"Send description to the Baltimore police?"
"Why, what are you talking about? No. Do you want them to get the
reward?"
"What shall we do, then?"
The Colonel reflected.
"I'll tell you. Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun. Word it like this:
"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE."
"Hold on. Which arm has he lost?"
"The right."
"Good. Now then--
"A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left hand.
Address X. Y. Z., General Postoffice, Washington. From YOU KNOW WHO."
"There--that'll fetch him."
"But he won't know who--will he?"
"No, but he'll want to know, won't he?"
"Why, certainly--I didn't think of that. What made you think of it?"
"Knowledge of human curiosity. Strong trait, very strong trait."
"Now I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tell
them to print it to the worth of that."
CHAPTER IV.
The day wore itself out. After dinner the two friends put in a long and
harassing evening trying to decide what to do with the five thousand
dollars reward which they were going to get when they should find One-
Armed Pete, and catch him, and prove him to be the right person, and
extradite him, and ship him to Tahlequah in the Indian Territory. But
there were so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found it
impossible to make up their minds and keep them made up. Finally, Mrs.
Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said:
"What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?"
Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed.
Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawings and
specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toy puzzle,
and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see what chance there
might be to do something with it commercially. He did not have to go
far. In a small old wooden shanty which had once been occupied as a
dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyed Yankee engaged
in repairing cheap chairs and other second-hand furniture. This man
examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do the puzzle; found it not
so easy as he had expected; grew more interested, and finally
emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked:
"Is it patented?"
"Patent applied for."
"That will answer. What do you want for it?"
"What will it retail for?"
"Well, twenty-five cents, I should think."
"What will you give for the exclusive right?"
"I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'll tell
you what I'll do. I'll make it and market it, and pay you five cents
royalty on each one."
Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing.
So he said:
"All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper." He went his way with the
paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room
for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his
half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both
beneficiaries could not be hit upon.
He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief
and booming with glad excitement--working both these emotions
successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell on
Hawkins's neck sobbing, and said:
"Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has
smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore--congratulate me!"
He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his
arms about her and said--"You will bear up, for my sake, my lady--it had
to happen, it was decreed."
She bore up very well, and said:
"It's no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thing
and no account, and his brother never was worth shucks."
The rightful earl continued:
"I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to be able
to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friend here to
break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen and instruct her
to--"
"What Lady Gwendolen?"
"Our poor daughter, who, alas!--"
"Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?"
"There--please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember your own
dignity, be considerate also of mine. It were best to cease from using
my family name, now, Lady Rossmore."
"Goodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?"
"In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible,
to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyship
will speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, or
the Earl, or his Lordship, and--"
"Oh, scat! I can't ever do it, Berry."
"But indeed you must, my love--we must live up to our altered position
and submit with what grace we may to its requirements."
"Well, all right, have it your own way; I've never set my wishes against
your commands yet, Mul--my lord, and it's late to begin now, though to my
mind it's the rottenest foolishness that ever was."
"Spoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again."
"But--Gwendolen! I don't know how I am ever going to stand that name.
Why, a body wouldn't know Sally Sellers in it. It's too large for her;
kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it's a most outlandish sort of a
name, anyway, to my mind."
"You'll not hear her find fault with it, my lady."
"That's a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she
was born to it. She never got it from me, that's sure. And sending her
to that silly college hasn't helped the matter any--just the other way."
"Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most
aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under no
circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and
fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American
nobility. Castellated college-buildings--towers and turrets and an
imitation moat--and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter
Scott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the
richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses,
with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots,
and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind
them--"
"And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single
blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. But
send for the Lady Gwendolen--do; for I reckon the peerage regulations
require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn
for those Arkansas blatherskites she's lost."
"My darling! Blatherskites? Remember--noblesse oblige."
"There, there--talk to me in your own tongue, Ross--you don't know any
other, and you only botch it when you try. Oh, don't stare--it was a
slip, and no crime; customs of a life-time can't be dropped in a second.
Rossmore--there, now, be appeased, and go along with you and attend to
Gwendolen. Are you going to write, Washington?--or telegraph?"
"He will telegraph, dear."
"I thought as much," my lady muttered, as she left the room. "Wants it
so the address will have to appear on the envelop. It will just make a
fool of that child. She'll get it, of course, for if there are any other
Sellerses there they'll not be able to claim it. And just leave her
alone to show it around and make the most of it. Well, maybe she's
forgivable for that. She's so poor and they're so rich, of course she's
had her share of snubs from the livery-flunkey sort, and I reckon it's
only human to want to get even."
Uncle Dan'l was sent with the telegram; for although a conspicuous object
in a corner of the drawing-room was a telephone hanging on a transmitter,
Washington found all attempts to raise the central office vain. The
Colonel grumbled something about its being "always out of order when
you've got particular and especial use for it," but he didn't explain
that one of the reasons for this was that the thing was only a dummy and
hadn't any wire attached to it. And yet the Colonel often used it--when
visitors were present--and seemed to get messages through it. Mourning
paper and a seal were ordered, then the friends took a rest.
Next afternoon, while Hawkins, by request, draped Andrew Jackson's
portrait with crape, the rightful earl, wrote off the family bereavement
to the usurper in England--a letter which we have already read. He also,
by letter to the village authorities at Duffy's Corners, Arkansas, gave
order that the remains of the late twins be embalmed by some St. Louis
expert and shipped at once to the usurper--with bill. Then he drafted
out the Rossmore arms and motto on a great sheet of brown paper, and he
and Hawkins took it to Hawkins's Yankee furniture-mender and at the end
of an hour came back with a couple of stunning hatchments, which they
nailed up on the front of the house--attractions calculated to draw, and
they did; for it was mainly an idle and shiftless negro neighborhood,
with plenty of ragged children and indolent dogs to spare for a point of
interest like that, and keep on sparing them for it, days and days
together.
The new earl found--without surprise--this society item in the evening
paper, and cut it out and scrapbooked it:
By a recent bereavement our esteemed fellow citizen, Colonel
Mulberry Sellers, Perpetual Member-at-large of the Diplomatic Body,
succeeds, as rightful lord, to the great earldom of Rossmore, third
by order of precedence in the earldoms of Great Britain, and will
take early measures, by suit in the House of Lords, to wrest the
title and estates from the present usurping holder of them. Until
the season of mourning is past, the usual Thursday evening
receptions at Rossmore Towers will be discontinued.
Lady Rossmore's comment-to herself:
"Receptions! People who don't rightly know him may think he is
commonplace, but to my mind he is one of the most unusual men I ever saw.
As for suddenness and capacity in imagining things, his beat don't exist,
I reckon. As like as not it wouldn't have occurred to anybody else to
name this poor old rat-trap Rossmore Towers, but it just comes natural to
him. Well, no doubt it's a blessed thing to have an imagination that can
always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed. Uncle Dave
Hopkins used to always say, 'Turn me into John Calvin, and I want to know
which place I'm going to; turn me into Mulberry Sellers and I don't
care.'"
The rightful earl's comment-to himself:
"It's a beautiful name, beautiful. Pity I didn't think of it before I
wrote the usurper. But I'll be ready for him when he answers."
CHAPTER V.
No answer to that telegram; no arriving daughter. Yet nobody showed any
uneasiness or seemed surprised; that is, nobody but Washington. After
three days of waiting, he asked Lady Rossmore what she supposed the
trouble was. She answered, tranquilly:
"Oh, it's some notion of hers, you never can tell. She's a Sellers, all
through--at least in some of her ways; and a Sellers can't tell you
beforehand what he's going to do, because he don't know himself till he's
done it. She's all right; no occasion to worry about her. When she's
ready she'll come or she'll write, and you can't tell which, till it's
happened."
It turned out to be a letter. It was handed in at that moment, and was
received by the mother without trembling hands or feverish eagerness,
or any other of the manifestations common in the case of long delayed
answers to imperative telegrams. She polished her glasses with
tranquility and thoroughness, pleasantly gossiping along, the while,
then opened the letter and began to read aloud:
KENILWORTH KEEP, REDGAUNTLET HALL,
ROWENA-IVANHOE COLLEGE, THURSDAY.
DEAR PRECIOUS MAMMA ROSSMORE:
Oh, the joy of it!--you can't think. They had always turned up
their noses at our pretentions, you know; and I had fought back as
well as I could by turning up mine at theirs. They always said it
might be something great and fine to be rightful Shadow of an
earldom, but to merely be shadow of a shadow, and two or three times
removed at that--pooh-pooh! And I always retorted that not to be
able to show four generations of American-Colonial-Dutch Peddler-
and-Salt-Cod-McAllister-Nobility might be endurable, but to have to
confess such an origin--pfew-few! Well, the telegram, it was just a
cyclone! The messenger came right into the great Rob Roy Hall of
Audience, as excited as he could be, singing out, "Dispatch for Lady
Gwendolen Sellers!" and you ought to have seen that simpering
chattering assemblage of pinchbeck aristocrats, turn to stone!
I was off in the corner, of course, by myself--it's where Cinderella
belongs. I took the telegram and read it, and tried to faint--and I
could have done it if I had had any preparation, but it was all so
sudden, you know--but no matter, I did the next best thing: I put my
handkerchief to my eyes and fled sobbing to my room, dropping the
telegram as I started. I released one corner of my eye a moment--
just enough to see the herd swarm for the telegram--and then
continued my broken-hearted flight just as happy as a bird.
Then the visits of condolence began, and I had to accept the loan of
Miss Augusta-Templeton-Ashmore Hamilton's quarters because the press
was so great and there isn't room for three and a cat in mine. And
I've been holding a Lodge of Sorrow ever since and defending myself
against people's attempts to claim kin. And do you know, the very
first girl to fetch her tears and sympathy to my market was that
foolish Skimperton girl who has always snubbed me so shamefully and
claimed lordship and precedence of the whole college because some
ancestor of hers, some time or other, was a McAllister. Why it was
like the bottom bird in the menagerie putting on airs because its
head ancestor was a pterodactyl.
But the ger-reatest triumph of all was--guess. But you'll never.
This is it. That little fool and two others have always been
fussing and fretting over which was entitled to precedence--by rank,
you know. They've nearly starved themselves at it; for each claimed
the right to take precedence of all the college in leaving the
table, and so neither of them ever finished her dinner, but broke
off in the middle and tried to get out ahead of the others. Well,
after my first day's grief and seclusion--I was fixing up a mourning
dress you see--I appeared at the public table again, and then--what
do you think? Those three fluffy goslings sat there contentedly,
and squared up the long famine--lapped and lapped, munched and
munched, ate and ate, till the gravy appeared in their eyes--humbly
waiting for the Lady Gwendolen to take precedence and move out
first, you see!
Oh, yes, I've been having a darling good time. And do you know, not
one of these collegians has had the cruelty to ask me how I came by
my new name. With some, this is due to charity, but with the others
it isn't. They refrain, not from native kindness but from educated
discretion. I educated them.
Well, as soon as I shall have settled up what's left of the old
scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating
clouds of incense, I shall pack and depart homeward. Tell papa I
am as fond of him as I am of my new name. I couldn't put it
stronger than that. What an inspiration it was! But inspirations
come easy to him.
These, from your loving daughter,
GWENDOLEN.
Hawkins reached for the letter and glanced over it.
"Good hand," he said, "and full of confidence and animation, and goes
racing right along. She's bright--that's plain."
"Oh, they're all bright--the Sellerses. Anyway, they would be, if there
were any. Even those poor Latherses would have been bright if they had
been Sellerses; I mean full blood. Of course they had a Sellers strain
in them--a big strain of it, too--but being a Bland dollar don't make it
a dollar just the same."
The seventh day after the date of the telegram Washington came dreaming
down to breakfast and was set wide awake by an electrical spasm of
pleasure.
Here was the most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life.
It was Sally Sellers Lady Gwendolen; she had come in the night. And it
seemed to him that her clothes were the prettiest and the daintiest he
had ever looked upon, and the most exquisitely contrived and fashioned
and combined, as to decorative trimmings, and fixings, and melting
harmonies of color. It was only a morning dress, and inexpensive, but he
confessed to himself, in the English common to Cherokee Strip, that it
was a "corker." And now, as he perceived, the reason why the Sellers
household poverties and sterilities had been made to blossom like the
rose, and charm the eye and satisfy the spirit, stood explained; here was
the magician; here in the midst of her works, and furnishing in her own
person the proper accent and climaxing finish of the whole.
"My daughter, Major Hawkins--come home to mourn; flown home at the call
of affliction to help the authors of her being bear the burden of
bereavement. She was very fond of the late earl--idolized him, sir,
idolized him--"
"Why, father, I've never seen him."
"True--she's right, I was thinking of another--er--of her mother--"
"I idolized that smoked haddock?--that sentimental, spiritless--"
"I was thinking of myself! Poor noble fellow, we were inseparable com--"
"Hear the man! Mulberry Sel--Mul--Rossmore--hang the troublesome name I
can never--if I've heard you say once, I've heard you say a thousand
times that if that poor sheep--"
"I was thinking of--of--I don't know who I was thinking of, and it
doesn't make any difference anyway; somebody idolized him, I recollect it
as if it were yesterday; and--"
"Father, I am going to shake hands with Major Hawkins, and let the
introduction work along and catch up at its leisure. I remember you very
well in deed, Major Hawkins, although I was a little child when I saw you
last; and I am very, very glad indeed to see you again and have you in
our house as one of us;" and beaming in his face she finished her cordial
shake with the hope that he had not forgotten her.
He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to
repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but
better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not
quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a tangled sentence which
answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and
unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied
him that he hadn't got back to his bearings, yet, and therefore couldn't
be certain as to whether he remembered her at all or not. The speech
made him her friend; it couldn't well help it.
In truth the beauty of this fair creature was of a rare type, and may
well excuse a moment of our time spent in its consideration. It did not
consist in the fact that she had eyes, nose, mouth, chin, hair, ears, it
consisted in their arrangement. In true beauty, more depends upon right
location and judicious distribution of feature than upon multiplicity of
them. So also as regards color. The very combination of colors which in
a volcanic irruption would add beauty to a landscape might detach it from
a girl. Such was Gwendolen Sellers.
The family circle being completed by Gwendolen's arrival, it was decreed
that the official mourning should now begin; that it should begin at six
o'clock every evening, (the dinner hour,) and end with the dinner.
"It's a grand old line, major, a sublime old line, and deserves to be
mourned for, almost royally; almost imperially, I may say. Er--Lady
Gwendolen--but she's gone; never mind; I wanted my Peerage; I'll fetch it
myself, presently, and show you a thing or two that will give you a
realizing idea of what our house is. I've been glancing through Burke,
and I find that of William the Conqueror's sixty-four natural ah--
my dear, would you mind getting me that book? It's on the escritoire in
our boudoir. Yes, as I was saying, there's only St. Albans, Buccleugh
and Grafton ahead of us on the list--all the rest of the British nobility
are in procession behind us. Ah, thanks, my lady. Now then, we turn to
William, and we find--letter for XYZ? Oh, splendid--when'd you get it?"
"Last night; but I was asleep before you came, you were out so late; and
when I came to breakfast Miss Gwendolen--well, she knocked everything out
of me, you know--"
"Wonderful girl, wonderful; her great origin is detectable in her step,
her carriage, her features--but what does he say? Come, this is
exciting."
"I haven't read it--er--Rossm--Mr. Rossm--er--"
"M'lord! Just cut it short like that. It's the English way. I'll open
it. Ah, now let's see."
A. TO YOU KNOW WHO. Think I know you. Wait ten days. Coming to
Washington.
The excitement died out of both men's faces. There was a brooding
silence for a while, then the younger one said with a sigh:
"Why, we can't wait ten days for the money."
"No--the man's unreasonable; we are down to the bed rock, financially
speaking."
"If we could explain to him in some way, that we are so situated that
time is of the utmost importance to us--"
"Yes--yes, that's it--and so if it would be as convenient for him to come
at once it would be a great accommodation to us, and one which we--which
we--which we--wh--well, which we should sincerely appreciate--"
"That's it--and most gladly reciprocate--"
"Certainly--that'll fetch him. Worded right, if he's a man--got any of
the feelings of a man, sympathies and all that, he'll be here inside of
twenty-four hours. Pen and paper--come, we'll get right at it."
Between them they framed twenty-two different advertisements, but none
was satisfactory. A main fault in all of them was urgency. That feature
was very troublesome: if made prominent, it was calculated to excite
Pete's suspicion; if modified below the suspicion-point it was flat and
meaningless. Finally the Colonel resigned, and said:
"I have noticed, in such literary experiences as I have had, that one of
the most taking things to do is to conceal your meaning when you are
trying to conceal it. Whereas, if you go at literature with a free
conscience and nothing to conceal, you can turn out a book, every time,
that the very elect can't understand. They all do."
Then Hawkins resigned also, and the two agreed that they must manage to
wait the ten days some how or other. Next, they caught a ray of cheer:
since they had something definite to go upon, now, they could probably
borrow money on the reward--enough, at any rate, to tide them over till
they got it; and meantime the materializing recipe would be perfected,
and then good bye to trouble for good and all.
The next day, May the tenth, a couple of things happened--among others.
The remains of the noble Arkansas twins left our shores for England,
consigned to Lord Rossmore, and Lord Rossmore's son, Kirkcudbright
Llanover Marjoribanks Sellers Viscount Berkeley, sailed from Liverpool
for America to place the reversion of the earldom in the hands of the
rightful peer, Mulberry Sellers, of Rossmore Towers in the District of
Columbia, U. S. A.
These two impressive shipments would meet and part in mid-Atlantic, five
days later, and give no sign.
CHAPTER VI.
In the course of time the twins arrived and were delivered to their great
kinsman. To try to describe the rage of that old man would profit
nothing, the attempt would fall so far short of the purpose. However
when he had worn himself out and got quiet again, he looked the matter
over and decided that the twins had some moral rights, although they had
no legal ones; they were of his blood, and it could not be decorous to
treat them as common clay. So he laid them with their majestic kin in
the Cholmondeley church, with imposing state and ceremony, and added the
supreme touch by officiating as chief mourner himself. But he drew the
line at hatchments.
Our friends in Washington watched the weary days go by, while they waited
for Pete and covered his name with reproaches because of his calamitous
procrastinations. Meantime, Sally Sellers, who was as practical and
democratic as the Lady Gwendolen Sellers was romantic and aristocratic,
was leading a life of intense interest and activity and getting the most
she could out of her double personality. All day long in the privacy of
her work-room, Sally Sellers earned bread for the Sellers family; and all
the evening Lady Gwendolen Sellers supported the Rossmore dignity. All
day she was American, practically, and proud of the work of her head and
hands and its commercial result; all the evening she took holiday and
dwelt in a rich shadow-land peopled with titled and coroneted fictions.
By day, to her, the place was a plain, unaffected, ramshackle old trap
just that, and nothing more; by night it was Rossmore Towers. At college
she had learned a trade without knowing it. The girls had found out that
she was the designer of her own gowns. She had no idle moments after
that, and wanted none; for the exercise of an extraordinary gift is the
supremest pleasure in life, and it was manifest that Sally Sellers
possessed a gift of that sort in the matter of costume-designing. Within
three days after reaching home she had hunted up some work; before Pete
was yet due in Washington, and before the twins were fairly asleep in
English soil, she was already nearly swamped with work, and the
sacrificing of the family chromos for debt had got an effective check.
"She's a brick," said Rossmore to the Major; "just her father all over:
prompt to labor with head or hands, and not ashamed of it; capable,
always capable, let the enterprise be what it may; successful by nature--
don't know what defeat is; thus, intensely and practically American by
inhaled nationalism, and at the same time intensely and aristocratically
European by inherited nobility of blood. Just me, exactly: Mulberry
Sellers in matter of finance and invention; after office hours, what do
you find? The same clothes, yes, but what's in them? Rossmore of the
peerage."
The two friends had haunted the general post-office daily. At last they
had their reward. Toward evening the 20th of May, they got a letter for
XYZ. It bore the Washington postmark; the note itself was not dated. It
said:
"Ash barrel back of lamp post Black horse Alley. If you are playing
square go and set on it to-morrow morning 21st 10.22 not sooner not
later wait till I come."
The friends cogitated over the note profoundly. Presently the earl said:
"Don't you reckon he's afraid we are a sheriff with a requisition?"
"Why, m'lord?"
"Because that's no place for a seance. Nothing friendly, nothing
sociable about it. And at the same time, a body that wanted to know who
was roosting on that ash-barrel without exposing himself by going near
it, or seeming to be interested in it, could just stand on the street
corner and take a glance down the alley and satisfy himself, don't you
see?"
"Yes, his idea is plain, now. He seems to be a man that can't be candid
and straightforward. He acts as if he thought we--shucks, I wish he had
come out like a man and told us what hotel he--"
"Now you've struck it! you've struck it sure, Washington; he has told
us."
"Has he?"
"Yes, he has; but he didn't mean to. That alley is a lonesome little
pocket that runs along one side of the New Gadsby. That's his hotel."
"What makes' you think that?"
"Why, I just know it. He's got a room that's just across from that lamp
post. He's going to sit there perfectly comfortable behind his shutters
at 10.22 to-morrow, and when he sees us sitting on the ash-barrel, he'll
say to himself, 'I saw one of those fellows on the train'--and then he'll
pack his satchel in half a minute and ship for the ends of the earth."
Hawkins turned sick with disappointment:
"Oh, dear, it's all up, Colonel--it's exactly what he'll do."
"Indeed he won't!"
"Won't he? Why?"
"Because you won't be holding the ash barrel down, it'll be me. You'll
be coming in with an officer and a requisition in plain clothes--the
officer, I mean--the minute you see him arrive and open up a talk with
me."
"Well, what a head you have got, Colonel Sellers! I never should have
thought of that in the world."
"Neither would any earl of Rossmore, betwixt William's contribution and
Mulberry--as earl; but it's office hours, now, you see, and the earl in
me sleeps. Come--I'll show you his very room."
They reached the neighborhood of the New Gadsby about nine in the
evening, and passed down the alley to the lamp post.
"There you are," said the colonel, triumphantly, with a wave of his hand
which took in the whole side of the hotel. "There it is--what did I tell
you?"
"Well, but--why, Colonel, it's six stories high. I don't quite make out
which window you--"
"All the windows, all of them. Let him have his choice--I'm indifferent,
now that I have located him. You go and stand on the corner and wait;
I'll prospect the hotel."
The earl drifted here and there through the swarming lobby, and finally
took a waiting position in the neighborhood of the elevator. During an
hour crowds went up and crowds came down; and all complete as to limbs;
but at last the watcher got a glimpse of a figure that was satisfactory--
got a glimpse of the back of it, though he had missed his chance at the
face through waning alertness. The glimpse revealed a cowboy hat, and
below it a plaided sack of rather loud pattern, and an empty sleeve
pinned up to the shoulder. Then the elevator snatched the vision aloft
and the watcher fled away in joyful excitement, and rejoined the
fellow-conspirator.
"We've got him, Major--got him sure! I've seen him--seen him good; and I
don't care where or when that man approaches me backwards, I'll recognize
him every time. We're all right. Now for the requisition."
They got it, after the delays usual in such cases. By half past eleven
they were at home and happy, and went to bed full of dreams of the
morrow's great promise.
Among the elevator load which had the suspect for fellow-passenger was a
young kinsman of Mulberry Sellers, but Mulberry was not aware of it and
didn't see him. It was Viscount Berkeley.
CHAPTER VII.
Arrived in his room Lord Berkeley made preparations for that first and
last and all-the-time duty of the visiting Englishman--the jotting down
in his diary of his "impressions" to date. His preparations consisted in
ransacking his "box" for a pen. There was a plenty of steel pens on his
table with the ink bottle, but he was English. The English people
manufacture steel pens for nineteen-twentieths of the globe, but they
never use any themselves. They use exclusively the pre-historic quill.
My lord not only found a quill pen, but the best one he had seen in
several years--and after writing diligently for some time, closed with
the following entry:
BUT IN ONE THING I HAVE MADE AN IMMENSE MISTAKE, I OUGHT TO
HAVE SHUCKED MY TITLE AND CHANGED MY NAME BEFORE I STARTED.
He sat admiring that pen a while, and then went on:
"All attempts to mingle with the common people and became permanently one
of them are going to fail, unless I can get rid of it, disappear from it,
and re-appear with the solid protection of a new name. I am astonished
and pained to see how eager the most of these Americans are to get
acquainted with a lord, and how diligent they are in pushing attentions
upon him. They lack English servility, it is true--but they could
acquire it, with practice. My quality travels ahead of me in the most
mysterious way. I write my family name without additions, on the
register of this hotel, and imagine that I am going to pass for an
obscure and unknown wanderer, but the clerk promptly calls out, 'Front!
show his lordship to four-eighty-two!' and before I can get to the lift
there is a reporter trying to interview me as they call it. This sort of
thing shall cease at once. I will hunt up the American Claimant the
first thing in the morning, accomplish my mission, then change my lodging
and vanish from scrutiny under a fictitious name."
He left his diary on the table, where it would be handy in case any new
"impressions" should wake him up in the night, then he went to bed and
presently fell asleep. An hour or two passed, and then he came slowly to
consciousness with a confusion of mysterious and augmenting sounds
hammering at the gates of his brain for admission; the next moment he was
sharply awake, and those sounds burst with the rush and roar and boom of
an undammed freshet into his ears. Banging and slamming of shutters;
smashing of windows and the ringing clash of falling glass; clatter of
flying feet along the halls; shrieks, supplications, dumb moanings of
despair, within, hoarse shouts of command outside; cracklings and
mappings, and the windy roar of victorious flames!
Bang, bang, bang! on the door, and a cry:
"Turn out--the house is on fire!"
The cry passed on, and the banging. Lord Berkeley sprang out of bed and
moved with all possible speed toward the clothes-press in the darkness
and the gathering smoke, but fell over a chair and lost his bearings.
He groped desperately about on his hands, and presently struck his head
against the table and was deeply grateful, for it gave him his bearings
again, since it stood close by the door. He seized his most precious
possession; his journaled Impressions of America, and darted from the
room.
He ran down the deserted hall toward the red lamp which he knew indicated
the place of a fire-escape. The door of the room beside it was open.
In the room the gas was burning full head; on a chair was a pile of
clothing. He ran to the window, could not get it up, but smashed it with
a chair, and stepped out on the landing of the fire-escape; below him was
a crowd of men, with a sprinkling of women and youth, massed in a ruddy
light. Must he go down in his spectral night dress? No--this side of
the house was not yet on fire except at the further end; he would snatch
on those clothes. Which he did. They fitted well enough, though a
trifle loosely, and they were just a shade loud as to pattern. Also as
to hat--which was of a new breed to him, Buffalo Bill not having been to
England yet. One side of the coat went on, but the other side refused;
one of its sleeves was turned up and stitched to the shoulder. He
started down without waiting to get it loose, made the trip successfully,
and was promptly hustled outside the limit-rope by the police.
The cowboy hat and the coat but half on made him too much of a centre of
attraction for comfort, although nothing could be more profoundly
respectful, not to say deferential, than was the manner of the crowd
toward him. In his mind he framed a discouraged remark for early entry
in his diary: "It is of no use; they know a lord through any disguise,
and show awe of him--even something very like fear, indeed."
Presently one of the gaping and adoring half-circle of boys ventured a
timid question. My lord answered it. The boys glanced wonderingly at
each other and from somewhere fell the comment:
"English cowboy! Well, if that ain't curious."
Another mental note to be preserved for the diary: "Cowboy. Now what
might a cowboy be? Perhaps--" But the viscount perceived that some more
questions were about to be asked; so he worked his way out of the crowd,
released the sleeve, put on the coat and wandered away to seek a humble
and obscure lodging. He found it and went to bed and was soon asleep.
In the morning, he examined his clothes. They were rather assertive, it
seemed to him, but they were new and clean, at any rate. There was
considerable property in the pockets. Item, five one-hundred dollar
bills. Item, near fifty dollars in small bills and silver. Plug of
tobacco. Hymn-book, which refuses to open; found to contain whiskey.
Memorandum book bearing no name. Scattering entries in it, recording in
a sprawling, ignorant hand, appointments, bets, horse-trades, and so on,
with people of strange, hyphenated name--Six-Fingered Jake, Young-Man-
afraid-of his-Shadow, and the like. No letters, no documents.
The young man muses--maps out his course. His letter of credit is burned;
he will borrow the small bills and the silver in these pockets, apply
part of it to advertising for the owner, and use the rest for sustenance
while he seeks work. He sends out for the morning paper, next, and
proceeds to read about the fire. The biggest line in the display-head
announces his own death! The body of the account furnishes all the
particulars; and tells how, with the inherited heroism of his caste, he
went on saving women and children until escape for himself was
impossible; then with the eyes of weeping multitudes upon him, he stood
with folded arms and sternly awaited the approach of the devouring fiend;
"and so standing, amid a tossing sea of flame and on-rushing billows of
smoke, the noble young heir of the great house of Rossmore was caught up
in a whirlwind of fiery glory, and disappeared forever from the vision of
men."
The thing was so fine and generous and knightly that it brought the
moisture to his eyes. Presently he said to himself: "What to do is as
plain as day, now. My Lord Berkeley is dead--let him stay so. Died
creditably, too; that will make the calamity the easier for my father.
And I don't have to report to the American Claimant, now. Yes, nothing
could be better than the way matters have turned out. I have only to
furnish myself with a new name, and take my new start in life totally
untrammeled. Now I breathe my first breath of real freedom; and how
fresh and breezy and inspiring it is! At last I am a man! a man on equal
terms with my neighbor; and by my manhood; and by it alone, I shall rise
and be seen of the world, or I shall sink from sight and deserve it.
This is the gladdest day, and the proudest, that ever poured it's sun
upon my head!"
CHAPTER VIII.
"GOD bless my soul, Hawkins!"
The morning paper dropped from the Colonel's nerveless-grasp.
"What is it?"
"He's gone!--the bright, the young, the gifted, the noblest of his
illustrious race--gone! gone up in flames and unimaginable glory!"
"Who?"
"My precious, precious young kinsman--Kirkcudbright Llanover Marjoribanks
Sellers Viscount Berkeley, son and heir of usurping Rossmore."
"No!"
"It's true--too true."
"When?"
"Last night."
"Where?"
"Right here in Washington; where he arrived from England last night, the
papers say."
"You don't say!"
"Hotel burned down."
"What hotel?"
"The New Gadsby!"
"Oh, my goodness! And have we lost both of them?"
"Both who?"
"One-Arm Pete."
"Oh, great guns, I forgot all about him. Oh, I hope not."
"Hope! Well, I should say! Oh, we can't spare him! We can better
afford to lose a million viscounts than our only support and stay."
They searched the paper diligently, and were appalled to find that a
one-armed man had been seen flying along one of the halls of the hotel
in his underclothing and apparently out of his head with fright, and as
he would listen to no one and persisted in making for a stairway which
would carry him to certain death, his case was given over as a hopeless
one.
"Poor fellow," sighed Hawkins; "and he had friends so near. I wish we
hadn't come away from there--maybe we could have saved him."
The earl looked up and said calmly:
"His being dead doesn't matter. He was uncertain before. We've got him
sure, this time."
"Got him? How?"
"I will materialize him."
"Rossmore, don't--don't trifle with me. Do you mean that? Can you do
it?"
"I can do it, just as sure as you are sitting there. And I will."
"Give me your hand, and let me have the comfort of shaking it. I was
perishing, and you have put new life into me. Get at it, oh, get at it
right away."
"It will take a little time, Hawkins, but there's no hurry, none in the
world--in the circumstances. And of course certain duties have devolved
upon me now, which necessarily claim my first attention. This poor young
nobleman--"
"Why, yes, I am sorry for my heartlessness, and you smitten with this new
family affliction. Of course you must materialize him first--I quite
understand that."
"I--I--well, I wasn't meaning just that, but,--why, what am I thinking
of! Of course I must materialize him. Oh, Hawkins, selfishness is the
bottom trait in human nature; I was only thinking that now, with the
usurper's heir out of the way. But you'll forgive that momentary weakness,
and forget it. Don't ever remember it against me that Mulberry Sellers
was once mean enough to think the thought that I was thinking. I'll
materialise him--I will, on my honor--and I'd do it were he a thousand
heirs jammed into one and stretching in a solid rank from here to the
stolen estates of Rossmore, and barring the road forever to the rightful
earl!
"There spoke the real Sellers--the other had a false ring, old friend."
"Hawkins, my boy, it just occurs to me--a thing I keep forgetting to
mention--a matter that we've got to be mighty careful about."
"What is that?"
"We must keep absolutely still about these materializations. Mind, not a
hint of them must escape--not a hint. To say nothing of how my wife and
daughter--high-strung, sensitive organizations--might feel about them,
the negroes wouldn't stay on the place a minute."
"That's true, they wouldn't. It's well you spoke, for I'm not naturally
discreet with my tongue when I'm not warned."
Sellers reached out and touched a bell-button in the wall; set his eye
upon the rear door and waited; touched it again and waited; and just as
Hawkins was remarking admiringly that the Colonel was the most
progressive and most alert man he had ever seen, in the matter of
impressing into his service every modern convenience the moment it was
invented, and always keeping breast to breast with the drum major in the
great work of material civilization, he forsook the button (which hadn't
any wire attached to it,) rang a vast dinner bell which stood on the
table, and remarked that he had tried that new-fangled dry battery, now,
to his entire satisfaction, and had got enough of it; and added:
"Nothing would do Graham Bell but I must try it; said the mere fact of my
trying it would secure public confidence, and get it a chance to show
what it could do. I told him that in theory a dry battery was just a
curled darling and no mistake, but when it come to practice, sho!--and
here's the result. Was I right? What should you say, Washington
Hawkins? You've seen me try that button twice. Was I right?--that's the
idea. Did I know what I was talking about, or didn't I?"
"Well, you know how I feel about you, Colonel Sellers, and always have
felt. It seems to me that you always know everything about everything.
If that man had known you as I know you he would have taken your judgment
at the start, and dropped his dry battery where it was."
"Did you ring, Marse Sellers?"
"No, Marse Sellers didn't."
"Den it was you, Marse Washington. I's heah, suh."
"No, it wasn't Marse Washington, either."
"De good lan'! who did ring her, den?"
"Lord Rossmore rang it!"
The old negro flung up his hands and exclaimed:
"Blame my skin if I hain't gone en forgit dat name agin! Come heah,
Jinny--run heah, honey."
Jinny arrived.
"You take dish-yer order de lord gwine to give you I's gwine down suller
and study dat name tell I git it."
"I take de order! Who's yo' nigger las' year? De bell rung for you."
"Dat don't make no diffunce. When a bell ring for anybody, en old
marster tell me to--"
"Clear out, and settle it in the kitchen!"
The noise of the quarreling presently sank to a murmur in the distance,
and the earl added: "That's a trouble with old house servants that were
your slaves once and have been your personal friends always."
"Yes, and members of the family."
"Members of the family is just what they become--THE members of the
family, in fact. And sometimes master and mistress of the household.
These two are mighty good and loving and faithful and honest, but hang
it, they do just about as they please, they chip into a conversation
whenever they want to, and the plain fact is, they ought to be killed."
It was a random remark, but it gave him an idea--however, nothing could
happen without that result.
"What I wanted, Hawkins, was to send for the family and break the news to
them."
"O, never mind bothering with the servants, then. I will go and bring
them down."
While he was gone, the earl worked his idea.
"Yes," he said to himself, "when I've got the materializing down to a
certainty, I will get Hawkins to kill them, and after that they will be
under better control. Without doubt a materialized negro could easily be
hypnotized into a state resembling silence. And this could be made
permanent--yes, and also modifiable, at will--sometimes very silent,
sometimes turn on more talk, more action, more emotion, according to what
you want. It's a prime good idea. Make it adjustable--with a screw or
something."
The two ladies entered, now, with Hawkins, and the two negroes followed,
uninvited, and fell to brushing and dusting around, for they perceived
that there was matter of interest to the fore, and were willing to find
out what it was.
Sellers broke the news with stateliness and ceremony, first warning the
ladies, with gentle art, that a pang of peculiar sharpness was about to
be inflicted upon their hearts--hearts still sore from a like hurt, still
lamenting a like loss--then he took the paper, and with trembling lips
and with tears in his voice he gave them that heroic death-picture.
The result was a very genuine outbreak of sorrow and sympathy from all
the hearers. The elder lady cried, thinking how proud that great-hearted
young hero's mother would be, if she were living, and how unappeasable
her grief; and the two old servants cried with her, and spoke out their
applauses and their pitying lamentations with the eloquent sincerity and
simplicity native to their race. Gwendolen was touched, and the romantic
side of her nature was strongly wrought upon. She said that such a
nature as that young man's was rarely and truly noble, and nearly
perfect; and that with nobility of birth added it was entirely perfect.
For such a man she could endure all things, suffer all things, even to
the sacrificing of her life. She wished she could have seen him; the
slightest, the most momentary, contact with such a spirit would have
ennobled her own character and made ignoble thoughts and ignoble acts
thereafter impossible to her forever.
"Have they found the body, Rossmore?" asked the wife.
"Yes, that is, they've found several. It must be one of them, but none
of them are recognizable."
"What are you going to do?"
"I am going down there and identify one of them and send it home to the
stricken father."
"But papa, did you ever see the young man?"
"No, Gwendolen-why?"
"How will you identify it?"
"I--well, you know it says none of them are recognizable. I'll send his
father one of them--there's probably no choice."
Gwendolen knew it was not worth while to argue the matter further, since
her father's mind was made up and there was a chance for him to appear
upon that sad scene down yonder in an authentic and official way. So she
said no more--till he asked for a basket.
"A basket, papa? What for?"
"It might be ashes."
CHAPTER IX.
The earl and Washington started on the sorrowful errand, talking as they
walked.
"And as usual!"
"What, Colonel?"
"Seven of them in that hotel. Actresses. And all burnt out, of
course."
"Any of them burnt up?"
"Oh, no they escaped; they always do; but there's never a one of them
that knows enough to fetch out her jewelry with her."
"That's strange."
"Strange--it's the most unaccountable thing in the world. Experience
teaches them nothing; they can't seem to learn anything except out of a
book. In some uses there's manifestly a fatality about it. For
instance, take What's-her-name, that plays those sensational thunder and
lightning parts. She's got a perfectly immense reputation--draws like a
dog-fight--and it all came from getting burnt out in hotels."
"Why, how could that give her a reputation as an actress?"
"It didn't--it only made her name familiar. People want to see her play
because her name is familiar, but they don't know what made it familiar,
because they don't remember. First, she was at the bottom of the
ladder, and absolutely obscure wages thirteen dollars a week and find her
own pads."
"Pads?"
"Yes--things to fat up her spindles with so as to be plump and attractive.
Well, she got burnt out in a hotel and lost $30,000 worth of diamonds."
"She? Where'd she get them?"
"Goodness knows--given to her, no doubt, by spoony young flats and sappy
old bald-heads in the front row. All the papers were full of it. She
struck for higher pay and got it. Well, she got burnt out again and lost
all her diamonds, and it gave her such a lift that she went starring."
"Well, if hotel fires are all she's got to depend on to keep up her name,
it's a pretty precarious kind of a reputation I should think."
"Not with her. No, anything but that. Because she's so lucky; born
lucky, I reckon. Every time there's a hotel fire she's in it. She's
always there--and if she can't be there herself, her diamonds are. Now
you can't make anything out of that but just sheer luck."
"I never heard of such a thing. She must have lost quarts of diamonds."
"Quarts, she's lost bushels of them. It's got so that the hotels are
superstitious about her. They won't let her in. They think there will
be a fire; and besides, if she's there it cancels the insurance. She's
been waning a little lately, but this fire will set her up. She lost
$60,000 worth last night."
"I think she's a fool. If I had $60,000 worth of diamonds I wouldn't
trust them in a hotel."
"I wouldn't either; but you can't teach an actress that. This one's been
burnt out thirty-five times. And yet if there's a hotel fire in San
Francisco to-night she's got to bleed again, you mark my words. Perfect
ass; they say she's got diamonds in every hotel in the country."
When they arrived at the scene of the fire the poor old earl took one
glimpse at the melancholy morgue and turned away his face overcome by the
spectacle. He said:
"It is too true, Hawkins--recognition is impossible, not one of the five
could be identified by its nearest friend. You make the selection, I
can't bear it."
"Which one had I better--"
"Oh, take any of them. Pick out the best one."
However, the officers assured the earl--for they knew him, everybody in
Washington knew him--that the position in which these bodies were found
made it impossible that any one of them could be that of his noble young
kinsman. They pointed out the spot where, if the newspaper account was
correct, he must have sunk down to destruction; and at a wide distance
from this spot they showed him where the young man must have gone down in
case he was suffocated in his room; and they showed him still a third
place, quite remote, where he might possibly have found his death if
perchance he tried to escape by the side exit toward the rear. The old
Colonel brushed away a tear and said to Hawkins:
"As it turns out there was something prophetic in my fears. Yes, it's a
matter of ashes. Will you kindly step to a grocery and fetch a couple
more baskets?"
Reverently they got a basket of ashes from each of those now hallowed
spots, and carried them home to consult as to the best manner of
forwarding them to England, and also to give them an opportunity to "lie
in state,"--a mark of respect which the colonel deemed obligatory,
considering the high rank of the deceased.
They set the baskets on the table in what was formerly the library,
drawing-room and workshop--now the Hall of Audience--and went up stairs
to the lumber room to see if they could find a British flag to use as a
part of the outfit proper to the lying in state. A moment later, Lady
Rossmore came in from the street and caught sight of the baskets just as
old Jinny crossed her field of vision. She quite lost her patience and
said:
"Well, what will you do next? What in the world possessed you to clutter
up the parlor table with these baskets of ashes?"
"Ashes?" And she came to look. She put up her hands in pathetic
astonishment. "Well, I never see de like!"
"Didn't you do it?"
"Who, me? Clah to goodness it's de fust time I've sot eyes on 'em, Miss
Polly. Dat's Dan'l. Dat ole moke is losin' his mine."
But it wasn't Dan'l, for he was called, and denied it.
"Dey ain't no way to 'splain dat. Wen hit's one er dese-yer common
'currences, a body kin reckon maybe de cat--"
"Oh!" and a shudder shook Lady Rossmore to her foundations. "I see it
all. Keep away from them--they're his."
"His, m' lady?"
"Yes--your young Marse Sellers from England that's burnt up."
She was alone with the ashes--alone before she could take half a breath.
Then she went after Mulberry Sellers, purposing to make short work with
his program, whatever it might be; "for," said she, "when his
sentimentals are up, he's a numskull, and there's no knowing what
extravagance he'll contrive, if you let him alone." She found him.
He had found the flag and was bringing it. When she heard that his idea
was to have the remains "lie in state, and invite the government and the
public," she broke it up. She said:
"Your intentions are all right--they always are--you want to do honour to
the remains, and surely nobody can find any fault with that, for he was
your kin; but you are going the wrong way about it, and you will see it
yourself if you stop and think. You can't file around a basket of ashes
trying to look sorry for it and make a sight that is really solemn,
because the solemner it is, the more it isn't--anybody can see that. It
would be so with one basket; it would be three times so with three.
Well, it stands to reason that if it wouldn't be solemn with one mourner,
it wouldn't be with a procession--and there would be five thousand people
here. I don't know but it would be pretty near ridiculous; I think it
would. No, Mulberry, they can't lie in state--it would be a mistake.
Give that up and think of something else."
So he gave it up; and not reluctantly, when he had thought it over and
realized how right her instinct was. He concluded to merely sit up with
the remains just himself and Hawkins. Even this seemed a doubtful
attention, to his wife, but she offered no objection, for it was plain
that he had a quite honest and simple-hearted desire to do the friendly
and honourable thing by these forlorn poor relics which could command no
hospitality in this far off land of strangers but his. He draped the
flag about the baskets, put some crape on the door-knob, and said with
satisfaction:
"There--he is as comfortable, now, as we can make him in the
circumstances. Except--yes, we must strain a point there--one must do as
one would wish to be done by--he must have it."
"Have what, dear?"
"Hatchment."
The wife felt that the house-front was standing about all it could well
stand, in that way; the prospect of another stunning decoration of that
nature distressed her, and she wished the thing had not occurred to him.
She said, hesitatingly:
"But I thought such an honour as that wasn't allowed to any but very very
near relations, who--"
"Right, you are quite right, my lady, perfectly right; but there aren't
any nearer relatives than relatives by usurpation. We cannot avoid it;
we are slaves of aristocratic custom and must submit."
The hatchments were unnecessarily generous, each being as large as a
blanket, and they were unnecessarily volcanic, too, as to variety and
violence of color, but they pleased the earl's barbaric eye, and they
satisfied his taste for symmetry and completeness, too, for they left no
waste room to speak of on the house-front.
Lady Rossmore and her daughter assisted at the sitting-up till near
midnight, and helped the gentlemen to consider what ought to be done next
with the remains. Rossmore thought they ought to be sent home with a
committee and resolutions,--at once. But the wife was doubtful. She
said:
"Would you send all of the baskets?"
"Oh, yes, all."
"All at once?"
"To his father? Oh, no--by no means. Think of the shock. No--one at a
time; break it to him by degrees."
"Would that have that effect, father?"
"Yes, my daughter. Remember, you are young and elastic, but he is old.
To send him the whole at once might well be more than he could bear.
But mitigated--one basket at a time, with restful intervals between,
he would be used to it by the time he got all of him. And sending him
in three ships is safer anyway. On account of wrecks and storms."
"I don't like the idea, father. If I were his father it would be
dreadful to have him coming in that--in that--"
"On the installment plan," suggested Hawkins, gravely, and proud of being
able to help.
"Yes--dreadful to have him coming in that incoherent way. There would be
the strain of suspense upon me all the time. To have so depressing a
thing as a funeral impending, delayed, waiting, unaccomplished--"
"Oh, no, my child," said the earl reassuringly, "there would be nothing
of that kind; so old a gentleman could not endure a long-drawn suspense
like that. There will be three funerals."
Lady Rossmore looked up surprised, and said:
"How is that going to make it easier for him? It's a total mistake, to
my mind. He ought to be buried all at once; I'm sure of it."
"I should think so, too," said Hawkins.
"And certainly I should," said the daughter.
"You are all wrong," said the earl. "You will see it yourselves, if you
think. Only one of these baskets has got him in it."
"Very well, then," said Lady Rossmore, "the thing is perfectly simple--
bury that one."
"Certainly," said Lady Gwendolen.
"But it is not simple," said the earl, "because we do not know which
basket he is in. We know he is in one of them, but that is all we do
know. You see now, I reckon, that I was right; it takes three funerals,
there is no other way."
"And three graves and three monuments and three inscriptions?" asked the
daughter.
"Well--yes--to do it right. That is what I should do."
"It could not be done so, father. Each of the inscriptions would give
the same name and the same facts and say he was under each and all of
these monuments, and that would not answer at all."
The earl nestled uncomfortably in his chair.
"No," he said, "that is an objection. That is a serious objection. I
see no way out."
There was a general silence for a while. Then Hawkins said:
"It seems to me that if we mixed the three ramifications together--"
The earl grasped him by the hand and shook it gratefully.
"It solves the whole problem," he said. "One ship, one funeral, one
grave, one monument--it is admirably conceived. It does you honor, Major
Hawkins, it has relieved me of a most painful embarrassment and distress,
and it will save that poor stricken old father much suffering. Yes, he
shall go over in one basket."
"When?" asked the wife.
"To-morrow-immediately, of course."
"I would wait, Mulberry."
"Wait? Why?"
"You don't want to break that childless old man's heart."
"God knows I don't!"
"Then wait till he sends for his son's remains. If you do that, you will
never have to give him the last and sharpest pain a parent can know--
I mean, the certainty that his son is dead. For he will never send."
"Why won't he?"
"Because to send--and find out the truth--would rob him of the one
precious thing left him, the uncertainty, the dim hope that maybe, after
all, his boy escaped, and he will see him again some day."
"Why Polly, he'll know by the papers that he was burnt up."
"He won't let himself believe the papers; he'll argue against anything
and everything that proves his son is dead; and he will keep that up and
live on it, and on nothing else till he dies. But if the remains should
actually come, and be put before that poor old dim-hoping soul--"
"Oh, my God, they never shall! Polly, you've saved me from a crime, and
I'll bless you for it always. Now we know what to do. We'll place them
reverently away, and he shall never know."
CHAPTER X.
The young Lord Berkeley, with the fresh air of freedom in his nostrils,
was feeling invincibly strong for his new career; and yet--and yet--if
the fight should prove a very hard one at first, very discouraging, very
taxing on untoughened moral sinews, he might in some weak moment want to
retreat. Not likely, of course, but possibly that might happen. And so
on the whole it might be pardonable caution to burn his bridges behind
him. Oh, without doubt. He must not stop with advertising for the owner
of that money, but must put it where he could not borrow from it himself,
meantime, under stress of circumstances. So he went down town, and put
in his advertisement, then went to a bank and handed in the $500 for
deposit.
"What name?"
He hesitated and colored a little; he had forgotten to make a selection.
He now brought out the first one that suggested itself:
"Howard Tracy."
When he was gone the clerks, marveling, said:
"The cowboy blushed."
The first step was accomplished. The money was still under his command
and at his disposal, but the next step would dispose of that difficulty.
He went to another bank and drew upon the first bank for the 500 by
check. The money was collected and deposited a second time to the credit
of Howard Tracy. He was asked to leave a few samples of his signature,
which he did. Then he went away, once more proud and of perfect courage,
saying:
"No help for me now, for henceforth I couldn't draw that money without
identification, and that is become legally impossible. No resources to
fall back on. It is work or starve from now to the end. I am ready--and
not afraid!"
Then he sent this cablegram to his father:
"Escaped unhurt from burning hotel. Have taken fictitious name.
Goodbye."
During the, evening while he was wandering about in one of the outlying
districts of the city, he came across a small brick church, with a bill
posted there with these words printed on it: "MECHANICS' CLUB DEBATE.
ALL INVITED." He saw people, apparently mainly of the working class,
entering the place, and he followed and took his seat. It was a humble
little church, quite bare as to ornamentation. It had painted pews
without cushions, and no pulpit, properly speaking, but it had a
platform. On the platform sat the chairman, and by his side sat a man
who held a manuscript in his hand and had the waiting look of one who is
going to perform the principal part. The church was soon filled with a
quiet and orderly congregation of decently dressed and modest people.
This is what the chairman said:
"The essayist for this evening is an old member of our club whom you all
know, Mr. Parker, assistant editor of the Daily Democrat. The subject
of his essay is the American Press, and he will use as his text a couple
of paragraphs taken from Mr. Matthew Arnold's new book. He asks me to
read these texts for him. The first is as follows:
"'Goethe says somewhere that "the thrill of awe," that is to say,
REVERENCE, is the best thing humanity has."
"Mr. Arnold's other paragraph is as follows:
"'I should say that if one were searching for the best means to efface
and kill in a whole nation the discipline of respect, one could not do
better than take the American newspapers."
Mr. Parker rose and bowed, and was received with warm applause. He then
began to read in a good round resonant voice, with clear enunciation and
careful attention to his pauses and emphases. His points were received
with approval as he went on.
The essayist took the position that the most important function of a
public journal in any country was the propagating of national feeling and
pride in the national name--the keeping the people "in love with their
country and its institutions, and shielded from the allurements of alien
and inimical systems." He sketched the manner in which the reverent
Turkish or Russian journalist fulfilled this function--the one assisted
by the prevalent "discipline of respect" for the bastinado, the other for
Siberia. Continuing, he said:
The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals
the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain
things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others. For
instance, it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon the glories
of England, a processional splendor stretching its receding line down the
hazy vistas of time, with the mellowed lights of a thousand years
glinting from its banners; and it must keep it diligently diverted from
the fact that all these glories were for the enrichment and
aggrandizement of the petted and privileged few, at cost of the blood and
sweat and poverty of the unconsidered masses who achieved them but might
not enter in and partake of them. It must keep the public eye fixed in
loving and awful reverence upon the throne as a sacred thing, and
diligently divert it from the fact that no throne was ever set up by the
unhampered vote of a majority of any nation; and that hence no throne
exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any
flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and
crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only
business-wise--merely as retail differs from wholesale. It must keep the
citizen's eye fixed in reverent docility upon that curious invention of
machine politics, an Established Church, and upon that bald contradiction
of common justice, a hereditary nobility; and diligently divert it from
the fact that the one damns him if he doesn't wear its collar, and robs
him under the gentle name of taxation whether he wears it or not, and the
other gets all the honors while he does all the work.
The essayist thought that Mr. Arnold, with his trained eye and
intelligent observation, ought to have perceived that the very quality
which he so regretfully missed from our press--respectfulness, reverence
--was exactly the thing which would make our press useless to us if it
had it--rob it of the very thing which differentiates it from all other
journalism in the world and makes it distinctively and preciously
American, its frank and cheerful irreverence being by all odds the most
valuable of all its qualities. "For its mission--overlooked by Mr.
Arnold--is to stand guard over a nation's liberties, not its humbugs and
shams." He thought that if during fifty years the institutions of the
old world could be exposed to the fire of a flouting and scoffing press
like ours, "monarchy and its attendant crimes would disappear from
Christendom." Monarchists might doubt this; then "why not persuade the
Czar to give it a trial in Russia?" Concluding, he said:
Well, the charge is, that our press has but little of that old world
quality, reverence. Let us be candidly grateful that it is so. With its
limited reverence it at least reveres the things which this nation
reveres, as a rule, and that is sufficient: what other people revere is
fairly and properly matter of light importance to us. Our press does not
reverence kings, it does not reverence so called nobilities, it does not
reverence established ecclesiastical slaveries, it does not reverence
laws which rob a younger son to fatten an elder one, it does not
reverence any fraud or sham or infamy, howsoever old or rotten or holy,
which sets one citizen above his neighbor by accident of birth: it does
not reverence any law or custom, howsoever old or decayed or sacred,
which shuts against the best man in the land the best place in the land
and the divine right to prove property and go up and occupy it. In the
sense of the poet Goethe--that meek idolater of provincial three carat
royalty and nobility--our press is certainly bankrupt in the "thrill of
awe"--otherwise reverence; reverence for nickel plate and brummagem.
Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever: for to
my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of
human liberty--even as the other thing is the creator, nurse, and
steadfast protector of all forms of human slavery, bodily and mental.
Tracy said to himself, almost shouted to himself, "I'm glad I came to
this country. I was right. I was right to seek out a land where such
healthy principles and theories are in men's hearty and minds. Think of
the innumerable slaveries imposed by misplaced reverence! How well he
brought that out, and how true it is. There's manifestly prodigious
force in reverence. If you can get a man to reverence your ideals, he's
your slave. Oh, yes, in all the ages the peoples of Europe have been
diligently taught to avoid reasoning about the shams of monarchy and
nobility, been taught to avoid examining them, been taught to reverence
them; and now, as a natural result, to reverence them is second nature.
In order to shock them it is sufficient to inject a thought of the
opposite kind into their dull minds. For ages, any expression of
so-called irreverence from their lips has been sin and crime. The sham
and swindle of all this is apparent the moment one reflects that he is
himself the only legitimately qualified judge of what is entitled to
reverence and what is not. Come, I hadn't thought of that before, but
it is true, absolutely true. What right has Goethe, what right has
Arnold, what right has any dictionary, to define the word Irreverence
for me? What their ideals are is nothing to me. So long as I reverence
my own ideals my whole duty is done, and I commit no profanation if I
laugh at theirs. I may scoff at other people's ideals as much as I want
to. It is my right and my privilege. No man has any right to deny it."
Tracy was expecting to hear the essay debated, but this did not happen.
The chairman said, by way of explanation:
"I would say, for the information of the strangers present here, that in
accordance with our custom the subject of this meeting will be debated at
the next meeting of the club. This is in order to enable our members to
prepare what they may wish to say upon the subject with pen and paper,
for we are mainly mechanics and unaccustomed to speaking. We are obliged
to write down what we desire to say."
Many brief papers were now read, and several offhand speeches made in
discussion of the essay read at the last meeting of the club, which had
been a laudation, by some visiting professor, of college culture, and the
grand results flowing from it to the nation. One of the papers was read
by a man approaching middle age, who said he hadn't had a college
education, that he had got his education in a printing office, and had
graduated from there into the patent office, where he had been a clerk
now for a great many years. Then he continued to this effect:
The essayist contrasted the America of to-day with the America of bygone
times, and certainly the result is the exhibition of a mighty progress.
But I think he a little overrated the college-culture share in the
production of that result. It can no doubt be easily shown that the
colleges have contributed the intellectual part of this progress,
and that that part is vast; but that the material progress has been
immeasurably vaster, I think you will concede. Now I have been looking
over a list of inventors--the creators of this amazing material
development--and I find that they were not college-bred men. Of course
there are exceptions--like Professor Henry of Princeton, the inventor of
Mr. Morse's system of telegraphy--but these exceptions are few. It is
not overstatement to say that the imagination-stunning material
development of this century, the only century worth living in since time
itself was invented, is the creation of men not college-bred. We think
we see what these inventors have done: no, we see only the visible vast
frontage of their work; behind it is their far vaster work, and it is
invisible to the careless glance. They have reconstructed this nation--
made it over, that is--and metaphorically speaking, have multiplied its
numbers almost beyond the power of figures to express. I will explain
what I mean. What constitutes the population of a land? Merely the
numberable packages of meat and bones in it called by courtesy men and
women? Shall a million ounces of brass and a million ounces of gold be
held to be of the same value? Take a truer standard: the measure of a
man's contributing capacity to his time and his people--the work he can
do--and then number the population of this country to-day, as multiplied
by what a man can now do, more than his grandfather could do. By this
standard of measurement, this nation, two or three generations ago,
consisted of mere cripples, paralytics, dead men, as compared with the
men of to-day. In 1840 our population was 17,000,000. By way of rude
but striking illustration, let us consider, for argument's sake, that
four of these millions consisted of aged people, little children, and
other incapables, and that the remaining 13,000,000 were divided and
employed as follows:
2,000,000 as ginners of cotton.
6,000,000 (women) as stocking-knitters.
2,000,000 (women) as thread-spinners.
500,000 as screw makers.
400,000 as reapers, binders, etc.
1,000,000 as corn shellers.
40,000 as weavers.
1,000 as stitchers of shoe soles.
Now the deductions which I am going to append to these figures may sound
extravagant, but they are not. I take them from Miscellaneous Documents
No. 50, second session 45th Congress, and they are official and
trustworthy. To-day, the work of those 2,000,000 cotton-ginners is done
by 2,000 men; that of the 6,000,000 stocking-knitters is done by 3,000
boys; that of the 2,000,000 thread-spinners is done by 1,000 girls; that
of the 500,000 screw makers is done by 500 girls; that of the 400,000
reapers, binders, etc., is done by 4,000 boys; that of the 1,000,000 corn
shelters is done by 7,500 men; that of the 40,000 weavers is done by
1,200 men; and that of the 1,000 stitchers of shoe soles is done by
6 men. To bunch the figures, 17,900 persons to-day do the above-work,
whereas fifty years ago it would have taken thirteen millions of persons
to do it. Now then, how many of that ignorant race--our fathers and
grandfathers--with their ignorant methods, would it take to do our work
to-day? It would take forty thousand millions--a hundred times the
swarming population of China--twenty times the present population of the
globe. You look around you and you see a nation of sixty millions--
apparently; but secreted in their hands and brains, and invisible to your
eyes, is the true population of this Republic, and it numbers forty
billions! It is the stupendous creation of those humble unlettered,
un-college-bred inventors--all honor to their name.
"How grand that is!" said Tracy, as he wended homeward. "What a
civilization it is, and what prodigious results these are! and brought
about almost wholly by common men; not by Oxford-trained aristocrats,
but men who stand shoulder to shoulder in the humble ranks of life and
earn the bread that they eat. Again, I'm glad I came. I have found a
country at last where one may start fair, and breast to breast with his
fellow man, rise by his own efforts, and be something in the world and be
proud of that something; not be something created by an ancestor three
hundred years ago."
CHAPTER XI.
During the first few days he kept the fact diligently before his mind
that he was in a land where there was "work and bread for all." In fact,
for convenience' sake he fitted it to a little tune and hummed it to
himself; but as time wore on the fact itself began to take on a doubtful
look, and next the tune got fatigued and presently ran down and stopped.
His first effort was to get an upper clerkship in one of the departments,
where his Oxford education could come into play and do him service.
But he stood no chance whatever. There, competency was no
recommendation; political backing, without competency, was worth six of
it. He was glaringly English, and that was necessarily against him in
the political centre of a nation where both parties prayed for the Irish
cause on the house-top and blasphemed it in the cellar. By his dress he
was a cowboy; that won him respect--when his back was not turned--but it
couldn't get a clerkship for him. But he had said, in a rash moment,
that he would wear those clothes till the owner or the owner's friends
caught sight of them and asked for that money, and his conscience would
not let him retire from that engagement now.
At the end of a week things were beginning to wear rather a startling
look. He had hunted everywhere for work, descending gradually the scale
of quality, until apparently he had sued for all the various kinds of
work a man without a special calling might hope to be able to do, except
ditching and the other coarse manual sorts--and had got neither work nor
the promise of it.
He was mechanically turning over the leaves of his diary, meanwhile, and
now his eye fell upon the first record made after he was burnt out:
"I myself did not doubt my stamina before, nobody could doubt it now, if
they could see how I am housed, and realise that I feel absolutely no
disgust with these quarters, but am as serenely content with them as any
dog would be in a similar kennel. Terms, twenty-five dollars a week.
I said I would start at the bottom. I have kept my word."
A shudder went quaking through him, and he exclaimed:
"What have I been thinking of! This the bottom! Mooning along a whole
week, and these terrific expenses climbing and climbing all the time!
I must end this folly straightway."
He settled up at once and went forth to find less sumptuous lodgings. He
had to wander far and seek with diligence, but he succeeded. They made
him pay in advance--four dollars and a half; this secured both bed and
food for a week. The good-natured, hardworked landlady took him up three
flights of narrow, uncarpeted stairs and delivered him into his room.
There were two double-bedsteads in it, and one single one. He would be
allowed to sleep alone in one of the double beds until some new boarder
should come, but he wouldn't be charged extra.
So he would presently be required to sleep with some stranger!
The thought of it made him sick. Mrs. Marsh, the landlady, was very
friendly and hoped he would like her house--they all liked it, she said.
"And they're a very nice set of boys. They carry on a good deal, but
that's their fun. You see, this room opens right into this back one,
and sometimes they're all in one and sometimes in the other; and hot
nights they all sleep on the roof when it don't rain. They get out there
the minute it's hot enough. The season's so early that they've already
had a night or two up there. If you'd like to go up and pick out a
place, you can. You'll find chalk in the side of the chimney where
there's a brick wanting. You just take the chalk and--but of course
you've done it before."
"Oh, no, I haven't."
"Why, of course you haven't--what am I thinking of? Plenty of room on the
Plains without chalking, I'll be bound. Well, you just chalk out a place
the size of a blanket anywhere on the tin that ain't already marked off,
you know, and that's your property. You and your bed-mate take turnabout
carrying up the blanket and pillows and fetching them down again;
or one carries them up and the other fetches them down, you fix it the
way you like, you know. You'll like the boys, they're everlasting
sociable--except the printer. He's the one that sleeps in that single
bed--the strangest creature; why, I don't believe you could get that man
to sleep with another man, not if the house was afire. Mind you, I'm not
just talking, I know. The boys tried him, to see. They took his bed out
one night, and so when he got home about three in the morning--he was on
a morning paper then, but he's on an evening one now--there wasn't any
place for him but with the iron-moulder; and if you'll believe me, he
just set up the rest of the night--he did, honest. They say he's
cracked, but it ain't so, he's English--they're awful particular.
You won't mind my saying that. You--you're English?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. I could tell it by the way you mispronounce the words
that's got a's in them, you know; such as saying loff when you mean laff
--but you'll get over that. He's a right down good fellow, and a little
sociable with the photographer's boy and the caulker and the blacksmith
that work in the navy yard, but not so much with the others. The fact
is, though it's private, and the others don't know it, he's a kind of an
aristocrat, his father being a doctor, and you know what style that is--
in England, I mean, because in this country a doctor ain't so very much,
even if he's that. But over there of course it's different. So this
chap had a falling out with his father, and was pretty high strung, and
just cut for this country, and the first he knew he had to get to work or
starve. Well, he'd been to college, you see, and so he judged he was all
right--did you say anything?"
"No--I only sighed."
"And there's where he was mistaken. Why, he mighty near starved. And I
reckon he would have starved sure enough, if some jour' printer or other
hadn't took pity on him and got him a place as apprentice. So he learnt
the trade, and then he was all right--but it was a close call. Once he
thought he had got to haul in his pride and holler for his father and--
why, you're sighing again. Is anything the matter with you?--does my
clatter--"
"Oh, dear--no. Pray go on--I like it."
"Yes, you see, he's been over here ten years; he's twenty-eight, now,
and he ain't pretty well satisfied in his mind, because he can't get
reconciled to being a mechanic and associating with mechanics, he being,
as he says to me, a gentleman, which is a pretty plain letting-on that
the boys ain't, but of course I know enough not to let that cat out of
the bag."
"Why--would there be any harm in it?"
"Harm in it? They'd lick him, wouldn't they? Wouldn't you? Of course
you would. Don't you ever let a man say you ain't a gentleman in this
country. But laws, what am I thinking about? I reckon a body would
think twice before he said a cowboy wasn't a gentleman."
A trim, active, slender and very pretty girl of about eighteen walked
into the room now, in the most satisfied and unembarrassed way. She was
cheaply but smartly and gracefully dressed, and the mother's quick glance
at the stranger's face as he rose, was of the kind which inquires what
effect has been produced, and expects to find indications of surprise and
admiration.
"This is my daughter Hattie--we call her Puss. It's the new boarder,
Puss." This without rising.
The young Englishman made the awkward bow common to his nationality and
time of life in circumstances of delicacy and difficulty, and these were
of that sort; for, being taken by surprise, his natural, lifelong self
sprang to the front, and that self of course would not know just how to
act when introduced to a chambermaid, or to the heiress of a mechanics'
boarding house. His other self--the self which recognized the equality
of all men--would have managed the thing better, if it hadn't been caught
off guard and robbed of its chance. The young girl paid no attention to
the bow, but put out her hand frankly and gave the stranger a friendly
shake and said:
"How do you do?"
Then she marched to the one washstand in the room, tilted her head this
way and that before the wreck of a cheap mirror that hung above it,
dampened her fingers with her tongue, perfected the circle of a little
lock of hair that was pasted against her forehead, then began to busy
herself with the slops.
"Well, I must be going--it's getting towards supper time. Make yourself
at home, Mr. Tracy, you'll hear the bell when it's ready."
The landlady took her tranquil departure, without commanding either of
the young people to vacate the room. The young man wondered a little
that a mother who seemed so honest and respectable should be so
thoughtless, and was reaching for his hat, intending to disembarrass the
girl of his presence; but she said:
"Where are you going?"
"Well--nowhere in particular, but as I am only in the way here--"
"Why, who said you were in the way? Sit down--I'll move you when you are
in the way."
She was making the beds, now. He sat down and watched her deft and
diligent performance.
"What gave you that notion? Do you reckon I need a whole room just to
make up a bed or two in?"
"Well no, it wasn't that, exactly. We are away up here in an empty
house, and your mother being gone--"
The girl interrupted him with an amused laugh, and said:
"Nobody to protect me? Bless you, I don't need it. I'm not afraid.
I might be if I was alone, because I do hate ghosts, and I don't deny it.
Not that I believe in them, for I don't. I'm only just afraid of them."
"How can you be afraid of them if you don't believe in them?"
"Oh, I don't know the how of it--that's too many for me; I only know it's
so. It's the same with Maggie Lee."
"Who is that?"
"One of the boarders; young lady that works in the factry."
"She works in a factory?"
"Yes. Shoe factory."
"In a shoe factory; and you call her a young lady?"
"Why, she's only twenty-two; what should you call her?"
"I wasn't thinking of her age, I was thinking of the title. The fact is,
I came away from England to get away from artificial forms--for
artificial forms suit artificial people only--and here you've got them
too. I'm sorry. I hoped you had only men and women; everybody equal;
no differences in rank."
The girl stopped with a pillow in her teeth and the case spread open
below it, contemplating him from under her brows with a slightly puzzled
expression. She released the pillow and said:
"Why, they are all equal. Where's any difference in rank?"
"If you call a factory girl a young lady, what do you call the
President's wife?"
"Call her an old one."
"Oh, you make age the only distinction?"
"There ain't any other to make as far as I can see."
"Then all women are ladies?"
"Certainly they are. All the respectable ones."
"Well, that puts a better face on it. Certainly there is no harm in a
title when it is given to everybody. It is only an offense and a wrong
when it is restricted to a favored few. But Miss--er--"
"Hattie."
"Miss Hattie, be frank; confess that that title isn't accorded by
everybody to everybody. The rich American doesn't call her cook a lady--
isn't that so?"
"Yes, it's so. What of it?"
He was surprised and a little disappointed, to see that his admirable
shot had produced no perceptible effect.
"What of it?" he said. "Why this: equality is not conceded here, after
all, and the Americans are no better off than the English. In fact
there's no difference."
"Now what an idea. There's nothing in a title except what is put into
it--you've said that yourself. Suppose the title is 'clean,' instead of
'lady.' You get that?"
"I believe so. Instead of speaking of a woman as a lady, you substitute
clean and say she's a clean person."
"That's it. In England the swell folks don't speak of the working people
as gentlemen and ladies?"
"Oh, no."
"And the working people don't call themselves gentlemen and ladies?"
"Certainly not."
"So if you used the other word there wouldn't be any change. The swell
people wouldn't call anybody but themselves 'clean,' and those others
would drop sort of meekly into their way of talking and they wouldn't
call themselves clean. We don't do that way here. Everybody calls
himself a lady or gentleman, and thinks he is, and don't care what
anybody else thinks him, so long as he don't say it out loud. You think
there's no difference. You knuckle down and we don't. Ain't that a
difference?"
"It is a difference I hadn't thought of; I admit that. Still--calling
one's self a lady doesn't--er--"
"I wouldn't go on if I were you."
Howard Tracy turned his head to see who it might be that had introduced
this remark. It was a short man about forty years old, with sandy hair,
no beard, and a pleasant face badly freckled but alive and intelligent,
and he wore slop-shop clothing which was neat but showed wear. He had
come from the front room beyond the hall, where he had left his hat, and
he had a chipped and cracked white wash-bowl in his hand. The girl came
and took the bowl.
"I'll get it for you. You go right ahead and give it to him, Mr.
Barrow. He's the new boarder--Mr. Tracy--and I'd just got to where it
was getting too deep for me."
"Much obliged if you will, Hattie. I was coming to borrow of the boys."
He sat down at his ease on an old trunk, and said, "I've been listening
and got interested; and as I was saying, I wouldn't go on, if I were you.
You see where you are coming to, don't you? Calling yourself a lady
doesn't elect you; that is what you were going to say; and you saw that
if you said it you were going to run right up against another difference
that you hadn't thought of: to-wit, Whose right is it to do the electing?
Over there, twenty thousand people in a million elect themselves
gentlemen and ladies, and the nine hundred and eighty thousand accept
that decree and swallow the affront which it puts upon them. Why, if
they didn't accept it, it wouldn't be an election, it would be a dead
letter and have no force at all. Over here the twenty thousand would-be
exclusives come up to the polls and vote themselves to be ladies and
gentlemen. But the thing doesn't stop there. The nine hundred and
eighty thousand come and vote themselves to be ladies and gentlemen too,
and that elects the whole nation. Since the whole million vote
themselves ladies and gentlemen, there is no question about that
election. It does make absolute equality, and there is no fiction about
it; while over yonder the inequality, (by decree of the infinitely
feeble, and consent of the infinitely strong,) is also absolute--as real
and absolute as our equality."
Tracy had shrunk promptly into his English shell when this speech began,
notwithstanding he had now been in severe training several weeks for
contact and intercourse with the common herd on the common herd's terms;
but he lost no time in pulling himself out again, and so by the time the
speech was finished his valves were open once more, and he was forcing
himself to accept without resentment the common herd's frank fashion of
dropping sociably into other people's conversations unembarrassed and
uninvited. The process was not very difficult this time, for the man's
smile and voice and manner were persuasive and winning. Tracy would even
have liked him on the spot, but for the fact--fact which he was not
really aware of--that the equality of men was not yet a reality to him,
it was only a theory; the mind perceived, but the man failed to feel it.
It was Hattie's ghost over again, merely turned around. Theoretically
Barrow was his equal, but it was distinctly distasteful to see him
exhibit it. He presently said:
"I hope in all sincerity that what you have said is true, as regards the
Americans, for doubts have crept into my mind several times. It seemed
that the equality must be ungenuine where the sign-names of castes were
still in vogue; but those sign-names have certainly lost their offence
and are wholly neutralized, nullified and harmless if they are the
undisputed property of every individual in the nation. I think I realize
that caste does not exist and cannot exist except by common consent of
the masses outside of its limits. I thought caste created itself and
perpetuated itself; but it seems quite true that it only creates itself,
and is perpetuated by the people whom it despises, and who can dissolve
it at any time by assuming its mere sign-names themselves."
"It's what I think. There isn't any power on earth that can prevent
England's thirty millions from electing themselves dukes and duchesses
to-morrow and calling themselves so. And within six months all the
former dukes and duchesses would have retired from the business.
I wish they'd try that. Royalty itself couldn't survive such a process.
A handful of frowners against thirty million laughers in a state of
irruption. Why, it's Herculaneum against Vesuvius; it would take another
eighteen centuries to find that Herculaneum after the cataclysm. What's
a Colonel in our South? He's a nobody; because they're all colonels down
there. No, Tracy" (shudder from Tracy) "nobody in England would call you
a gentleman and you wouldn't call yourself one; and I tell you it's a
state of things that makes a man put himself into most unbecoming
attitudes sometimes--the broad and general recognition and acceptance of
caste as caste does, I mean. Makes him do it unconsciously--being bred
in him, you see, and never thought over and reasoned out. You couldn't
conceive of the Matterhorn being flattered by the notice of one of your
comely little English hills, could you?"
"Why, no."
"Well, then, let a man in his right mind try to conceive of Darwin
feeling flattered by the notice of a princess. It's so grotesque that
it--well, it paralyzes the imagination. Yet that Memnon was flattered by
the notice of that statuette; he says so--says so himself. The system
that can make a god disown his godship and profane it--oh, well, it's all
wrong, it's all wrong and ought to be abolished, I should say."
The mention of Darwin brought on a literary discussion, and this topic
roused such enthusiasm in Barrow that he took off his coat and made
himself the more free and comfortable for it, and detained him so long
that he was still at it when the noisy proprietors of the room came
shouting and skylarking in and began to romp, scuffle, wash, and
otherwise entertain themselves. He lingered yet a little longer to offer
the hospitalities of his room and his book shelf to Tracy and ask him a
personal question or two:
"What is your trade?"
"They--well, they call me a cowboy, but that is a fancy. I'm not that.
I haven't any trade."
"What do you work at for your living?"
Oh, anything--I mean I would work at, anything I could get to do, but
thus far I haven't been able to find an occupation."
"Maybe I can help you; I'd like to try."
"I shall be very glad. I've tried, myself, to weariness."
"Well, of course where a man hasn't a regular trade he's pretty bad off
in this world. What you needed, I reckon, was less book learning and
more bread-and-butter learning. I don't know what your father could have
been thinking of. You ought to have had a trade, you ought to have had a
trade, by all means. But never mind about that; we'll stir up something
to do, I guess. And don't you get homesick; that's a bad business.
We'll talk the thing over and look around a little. You'll come out all
right. Wait for me--I'll go down to supper with you."
By this time Tracy had achieved a very friendly feeling for Barrow and
would have called him a friend, maybe, if not taken too suddenly on a
straight-out requirement to realize on his theories. He was glad of his
society, anyway, and was feeling lighter hearted than before. Also he
was pretty curious to know what vocation it might be which had furnished
Barrow such a large acquaintanceship with books and allowed him so much
time to read.
CHAPTER XII.
Presently the supper bell began to ring in the depths of the house, and
the sound proceeded steadily upward, growing in intensity all the way up
towards the upper floors. The higher it came the more maddening was the
noise, until at last what it lacked of being absolutely deafening, was
made up of the sudden crash and clatter of an avalanche of boarders down
the uncarpeted stairway. The peerage did not go to meals in this
fashion; Tracy's training had not fitted him to enjoy this hilarious
zoological clamor and enthusiasm. He had to confess that there was
something about this extraordinary outpouring of animal spirits which he
would have to get inured to before he could accept it. No doubt in time
he would prefer it; but he wished the process might be modified and made
just a little more gradual, and not quite so pronounced and violent.
Barrow and Tracy followed the avalanche down through an ever increasing
and ever more and more aggressive stench of bygone cabbage and kindred
smells; smells which are to be found nowhere but in a cheap private
boarding house; smells which once encountered can never be forgotten;
smells which encountered generations later are instantly recognizable,
but never recognizable with pleasure. To Tracy these odors were
suffocating, horrible, almost unendurable; but he held his peace and said
nothing. Arrived in the basement, they entered a large dining-room where
thirty-five or forty people sat at a long table. They took their places.
The feast had already begun and the conversation was going on in the
liveliest way from one end of the table to the other. The table cloth
was of very coarse material and was liberally spotted with coffee stains
and grease. The knives and forks were iron, with bone handles, the
spoons appeared to be iron or sheet iron or something of the sort.
The tea and coffee cups were of the commonest and heaviest and most
durable stone ware. All the furniture of the table was of the commonest
and cheapest sort. There was a single large thick slice of bread by each
boarder's plate, and it was observable that he economized it as if he
were not expecting it to be duplicated. Dishes of butter were
distributed along the table within reach of people's arms, if they had
long ones, but there were no private butter plates. The butter was
perhaps good enough, and was quiet and well behaved; but it had more
bouquet than was necessary, though nobody commented upon that fact or
seemed in any way disturbed by it. The main feature of the feast was a
piping hot Irish stew made of the potatoes and meat left over from a
procession of previous meals. Everybody was liberally supplied with this
dish. On the table were a couple of great dishes of sliced ham, and
there were some other eatables of minor importance--preserves and New
Orleans molasses and such things. There was also plenty of tea and
coffee of an infernal sort, with brown sugar and condensed milk, but the
milk and sugar supply was not left at the discretion of the boarders, but
was rationed out at headquarters--one spoonful of sugar and one of
condensed milk to each cup and no more. The table was waited upon by two
stalwart negro women who raced back and forth from the bases of supplies
with splendid dash and clatter and energy. Their labors were
supplemented after a fashion by the young girl Puss. She carried coffee
and tea back and forth among the boarders, but she made pleasure
excursions rather than business ones in this way, to speak strictly.
She made jokes with various people. She chaffed the young men pleasantly
and wittily, as she supposed, and as the rest also supposed, apparently,
judging by the applause and laughter which she got by her efforts.
Manifestly she was a favorite with most of the young fellows and
sweetheart of the rest of them. Where she conferred notice she conferred
happiness, as was seen by the face of the recipient; and; at the same
time she conferred unhappiness--one could see it fall and dim the faces
of the other young fellows like a shadow. She never "Mistered" these
friends of hers, but called them "Billy," "Tom," "John," and they called
her "Puss" or "Hattie."
Mr. Marsh sat at the head of the table, his wife sat at the foot. Marsh
was a man of sixty, and was an American; but if he had been born a month
earlier he would have been a Spaniard. He was plenty good enough
Spaniard as it was; his face was very dark, his hair very black, and his
eyes were not only exceedingly black but were very intense, and there was
something about them that indicated that they could burn with passion
upon occasion. He was stoop-shouldered and lean-faced, and the general
aspect of him was disagreeable; he was evidently not a very companionable
person. If looks went for anything, he was the very opposite of his
wife, who was all motherliness and charity, good will and good nature.
All the young men and the women called her Aunt Rachael, which was
another sign. Tracy's wandering and interested eye presently fell upon
one boarder who had been overlooked in the distribution of the stew.
He was very pale and looked as if he had but lately come out of a sick
bed, and also as if he ought to get back into it again as soon as
possible. His face was very melancholy. The waves of laughter and
conversation broke upon it without affecting it any more than if it had
been a rock in the sea and the words and the laughter veritable waters.
He held his head down and looked ashamed. Some of the women cast glances
of pity toward him from time to time in a furtive and half afraid way,
and some of the youngest of the men plainly had compassion on the young
fellow--a compassion exhibited in their faces but not in any more active
or compromising way. But the great majority of the people present showed
entire indifference to the youth and his sorrows. Marsh sat with his
head down, but one could catch the malicious gleam of his eyes through
his shaggy brows. He was watching that young fellow with evident relish.
He had not neglected him through carelessness, and apparently the table
understood that fact. The spectacle was making Mrs. Marsh very
uncomfortable. She had the look of one who hopes against hope that the
impossible may happen. But as the impossible did not happen, she finally
ventured to speak up and remind her husband that Nat Brady hadn't been
helped to the Irish stew.
Marsh lifted his head and gasped out with mock courtliness, "Oh, he
hasn't, hasn't he? What a pity that is. I don't know how I came to
overlook him. Ah, he must pardon me. You must indeed Mr--er--Baxter--
Barker, you must pardon me. I--er--my attention was directed to some
other matter, I don't know what. The thing that grieves me mainly is,
that it happens every meal now. But you must try to overlook these
little things, Mr. Bunker, these little neglects on my part. They're
always likely to happen with me in any case, and they are especially
likely to happen where a person has--er--well, where a person is, say,
about three weeks in arrears for his board. You get my meaning?--you get
my idea? Here is your Irish stew, and--er--it gives me the greatest
pleasure to send it to you, and I hope that you will enjoy the charity as
much as I enjoy conferring it."
A blush rose in Brady's white cheeks and flowed slowly backward to his
ears and upward toward his forehead, but he said nothing and began to eat
his food under the embarrassment of a general silence and the sense that
all eyes were fastened upon him. Barrow whispered to Tracy:
"The old man's been waiting for that. He wouldn't have missed that
chance for anything."
"It's a brutal business," said Tracy. Then he said to himself, purposing
to set the thought down in his diary later:
"Well, here in this very house is a republic where all are free and
equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have
arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on
the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt. Yet here on the
threshold I find an inequality. There are people at this table who are
looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a
boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by
humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common one of being
poor. Equality ought to make men noble-minded. In fact I had supposed
it did do that."
After supper, Barrow proposed a walk, and they started. Barrow had a
purpose. He wanted Tracy to get rid of that cowboy hat. He didn't see
his way to finding mechanical or manual employment for a person rigged in
that fashion. Barrow presently said:
"As I understand it, you're not a cowboy."
"No, I'm not."
"Well, now if you will not think me too curious, how did you come to
mount that hat? Where'd you get it?"
Tracy didn't know quite how to reply to this, but presently said,
"Well, without going into particulars; I exchanged clothes with a
stranger under stress of weather, and I would like to find him and
re-exchange."
"Well, why don't you find him? Where is he?"
"I don't know. I supposed the best way to find him would be to continue
to wear his clothes, which are conspicuous enough to attract his
attention if I should meet him on the street."
"Oh, very well," said Barrow, "the rest of the outfit, is well enough,
and while it's not too conspicuous, it isn't quite like the clothes that
anybody else wears. Suppress the hat. When you meet your man he'll
recognize the rest of his suit. That's a mighty embarrassing hat, you
know, in a centre of civilization like this. I don't believe an angel
could get employment in Washington in a halo like that."
Tracy agreed to replace the hat with something of a modester form, and
they stepped aboard a crowded car and stood with others on the rear
platform. Presently, as the car moved swiftly along the rails, two men
crossing the street caught sight of the backs of Barrow and Tracy, and
both exclaimed at once, "There he is!" It was Sellers and Hawkins.
Both were so paralyzed with joy that before they could pull themselves
together and make an effort to stop the car, it was gone too far,
and they decided to wait for the next one. They waited a while; then
it occurred to Washington that there could be no use in chasing one
horse-car with another, and he wanted to hunt up a hack. But the
Colonel said:
"When you come to think of it, there's no occasion for that at all.
Now that I've got him materialized, I can command his motions. I'll have
him at the house by the time we get there."
Then they hurried off home in a state of great and joyful excitement.
The hat exchange accomplished, the two new friends started to walk back
leisurely to the boarding house. Barrow's mind was full of curiosity
about this young fellow. He said,
"You've never been to the Rocky Mountains?"
"No."
"You've never been out on the plains?"
"No."
"How long have you been in this country?"
"Only a few days."
"You've never been in America before?"
Then Barrow communed with himself. "Now what odd shapes the notions of
romantic people take. Here's a young, fellow who's read in England about
cowboys and adventures on the plains. He comes here and buys a cowboy's
suit. Thinks he can play himself on folks for a cowboy,
all inexperienced as he is. Now the minute he's caught in this poor
little game, he's ashamed of it and ready to retire from it. It is that
exchange that he has put up as an explanation. It's rather thin,
too thin altogether. Well, he's young, never been anywhere, knows
nothing about the world, sentimental, no doubt. Perhaps it was the
natural thing for him to do, but it was a most singular choice, curious
freak, altogether."
Both men were busy with their thoughts for a time, then Tracy heaved a
sigh and said,
"Mr. Barrow, the case of that young fellow troubles me."
"You mean Nat Brady?"
"Yes, Brady, or Baxter, or whatever it was. The old landlord called him
by several different names."
"Oh, yes, he has been very liberal with names for Brady, since Brady fell
into arrears for his board. Well, that's one of his sarcasms--the old
man thinks he's great on sarcasm."
"Well, what is Brady's difficulty? What is Brady--who is he?"
"Brady is a tinner. He's a young journeyman tinner who was getting along
all right till he fell sick and lost his job. He was very popular before
he lost his job; everybody in the house liked Brady. The old man was
rather especially fond of him, but you know that when a man loses his job
and loses his ability to support himself and to pay his way as he goes,
it makes a great difference in the way people look at him and feel about
him."
"Is that so! Is it so?"
Barrow looked at Tracy in a puzzled way. "Why of course it's so.
Wouldn't you know that, naturally. Don't you know that the wounded deer
is always attacked and killed by its companions and friends?"
Tracy said to himself, while a chilly and boding discomfort spread itself
through his system, "In a republic of deer and men where all are free and
equal, misfortune is a crime, and the prosperous gore the unfortunate to
death." Then he said aloud, "Here in the boarding house, if one would
have friends and be popular instead of having the cold shoulder turned
upon him, he must be prosperous."
"Yes," Barrow said, "that is so. It's their human nature. They do turn
against Brady, now that he's unfortunate, and they don't like him as well
as they did before; but it isn't because of any lack in Brady--he's just
as he was before, has the same nature and the same impulses, but they--
well, Brady is a thorn in their consciences, you see. They know they
ought to help him and they're too stingy to do it, and they're ashamed of
themselves for that, and they ought also to hate themselves on that
account, but instead of that they hate Brady because he makes them
ashamed of themselves. I say that's human nature; that occurs
everywhere; this boarding house is merely the world in little, it's the
case all over--they're all alike. In prosperity we are popular;
popularity comes easy in that case, but when the other thing comes our
friends are pretty likely to turn against us."
Tracy's noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty
damp and clammy. He wondered if by any possibility he had made a mistake
in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the cross
of other people's unprosperity. But he wouldn't listen to that sort of
thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead resolutely
along the course he had mapped out for himself.
Extracts from his diary:
Have now spent several days in this singular hive. I don't know quite
what to make out of these people. They have merits and virtues, but they
have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get along with.
I can't enjoy them. The moment I appeared in a hat of the period,
I noticed a change. The respect which had been paid me before, passed
suddenly away, and the people became friendly--more than that--they
became familiar, and I'm not used to familiarity, and can't take to it
right off; I find that out. These people's familiarity amounts to
impudence, sometimes. I suppose it's all right; no doubt I can get used
to it, but it's not a satisfactory process at all. I have accomplished
my dearest wish, I am a man among men, on an equal footing with Tom, Dick
and Harry, and yet it isn't just exactly what I thought it was going to
be. I--I miss home. Am obliged to say I am homesick. Another thing--
and this is a confession--a reluctant one, but I will make it: The thing
I miss most and most severely, is the respect, the deference, with which
I was treated all my life in England, and which seems to be somehow
necessary to me. I get along very well without the luxury and the wealth
and the sort of society I've been accustomed to, but I do miss the
respect and can't seem to get reconciled to the absence of it. There is
respect, there is deference here, but it doesn't fall to my share. It is
lavished on two men. One of them is a portly man of middle age who is a
retired plumber. Everybody is pleased to have that man's notice.
He's full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar,
and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any
dog in the kennel barks. The other person is a policeman at the
capitol-building. He represents the government. The deference paid to
these two men is not so very far short of that which is paid to an earl
in England, though the method of it differs. Not so much courtliness,
but the deference is all there.
Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too.
It does rather look as if in a republic where all are free and equal,
prosperity and position constitute rank.
CHAPTER XIII.
The days drifted by, and they grew ever more dreary. For Barrow's
efforts to find work for Tracy were unavailing. Always the first
question asked was, "What Union do you belong to?"
Tracy was obliged to reply that he didn't belong to any trade-union.
"Very well, then, it's impossible to employ you. My men wouldn't stay
with me if I should employ a 'scab,' or 'rat,'" or whatever the phrase
was.
Finally, Tracy had a happy thought. He said, "Why the thing for me to
do, of course, is to join a trade-union."
"Yes," Barrow said, "that is the thing for you to do--if you can."
"If I can? Is it difficult?"
"Well, Yes," Barrow said, "it's sometimes difficult--in fact, very
difficult. But you can try, and of course it will be best to try."
Therefore Tracy tried; but he did not succeed. He was refused admission
with a good deal of promptness, and was advised to go back home, where he
belonged, not come here taking honest men's bread out of their mouths.
Tracy began to realize that the situation was desperate, and the thought
made him cold to the marrow. He said to himself, "So there is an
aristocracy of position here, and an aristocracy of prosperity, and
apparently there is also an aristocracy of the ins as opposed to the
outs, and I am with the outs. So the ranks grow daily, here. Plainly
there are all kinds of castes here and only one that I belong to, the
outcasts." But he couldn't even smile at his small joke, although he was
obliged to confess that he had a rather good opinion of it. He was
feeling so defeated and miserable by this time that he could no longer
look with philosophical complacency on the horseplay of the young fellows
in the upper rooms at night. At first it had been pleasant to see them
unbend and have a good time after having so well earned it by the labors
of the day, but now it all rasped upon his feelings and his dignity.
He lost patience with the spectacle. When they were feeling good, they
shouted, they scuffled, they sang songs, they romped about the place like
cattle, and they generally wound up with a pillow fight, in which they
banged each other over the head, and threw the pillows in all directions,
and every now and then he got a buffet himself; and they were always
inviting him to join in. They called him "Johnny Bull," and invited him
with excessive familiarity to take a hand. At first he had endured all
this with good nature, but latterly he had shown by his manner that it
was distinctly distasteful to him, and very soon he saw a change in the
manner of these young people toward him. They were souring on him as
they would have expressed it in their language. He had never been what
might be called popular. That was hardly the phrase for it; he had
merely been liked, but now dislike for him was growing. His case was not
helped by the fact that he was out of luck, couldn't get work, didn't
belong to a union, and couldn't gain admission to one. He got a good many
slights of that small ill-defined sort that you can't quite put your
finger on, and it was manifest that there was only one thing which
protected him from open insult, and that was his muscle. These young
people had seen him exercising, mornings, after his cold sponge bath,
and they had perceived by his performance and the build of his body,
that he was athletic, and also versed in boxing. He felt pretty naked
now, recognizing that he was shorn of all respect except respect for his
fists. One night when he entered his room he found about a dozen of the
young fellows there carrying on a very lively conversation punctuated
with horse-laughter. The talking ceased instantly, and the frank affront
of a dead silence followed. He said,
"Good evening gentlemen," and sat down.
There was no response. He flushed to the temples but forced himself to
maintain silence. He sat there in this uncomfortable stillness some
time, then got up and went out.
The moment he had disappeared he heard a prodigious shout of laughter
break forth. He saw that their plain purpose had been to insult him.
He ascended to the flat roof, hoping to be able to cool down his spirit
there and get back his tranquility. He found the young tinner up there,
alone and brooding, and entered into conversation with him. They were
pretty fairly matched, now, in unpopularity and general ill-luck and
misery, and they had no trouble in meeting upon this common ground with
advantage and something of comfort to both. But Tracy's movements had
been watched, and in a few minutes the tormentors came straggling one
after another to the roof, where they began to stroll up and down in an
apparently purposeless way. But presently they fell to dropping remarks
that were evidently aimed at Tracy, and some of them at the tinner.
The ringleader of this little mob was a short-haired bully and amateur
prize-fighter named Allen, who was accustomed to lording it over the
upper floor, and had more than once shown a disposition to make trouble
with Tracy. Now there was an occasional cat-call, and hootings, and
whistlings, and finally the diversion of an exchange of connected remarks
was introduced:
"How many does it take to make a pair?"
"Well, two generally makes a pair, but sometimes there ain't stuff enough
in them to make a whole pair." General laugh.
"What were you saying about the English a while ago?"
"Oh, nothing, the English are all right, only--I--"
"What was it you said about them?"
"Oh, I only said they swallow well."
"Swallow better than other people?"
"Oh, yes, the English swallow a good deal better than other people."
"What is it they swallow best?"
"Oh, insults." Another general laugh.
"Pretty hard to make 'em fight, ain't it?"
"No, taint hard to make 'em fight."
"Ain't it, really?"
"No, taint hard. It's impossible." Another laugh.
"This one's kind of spiritless, that's certain."
"Couldn't be the other way--in his case."
"Why?"
"Don't you know the secret of his birth?"
"No! has he got a secret of his birth?"
"You bet he has."
"What is it?"
"His father was a wax-figger."
Allen came strolling by where the pair were sitting; stopped, and said to
the tinner;
"How are you off for friends, these days?"
"Well enough off."
"Got a good many?"
"Well, as many as I need."
"A friend is valuable, sometimes--as a protector, you know. What do you
reckon would happen if I was to snatch your cap off and slap you in the
face with it?"
"Please don't trouble me, Mr. Allen, I ain't doing anything to you."
You answer me! What do you reckon would happen?"
"Well, I don't know."
Tracy spoke up with a good deal of deliberation and said:
"Don't trouble the young fellow, I can tell you what would happen."
"Oh, you can, can you? Boys, Johnny Bull can tell us what would happen
if I was to snatch this chump's cap off and slap him in the face with it.
Now you'll see."
He snatched the cap and struck the youth in the face, and before he could
inquire what was going to happen, it had already happened, and he was
warming the tin with the broad of his back. Instantly there was a rush,
and shouts of:
"A ring, a ring, make a ring! Fair play all round! Johnny's grit; give
him a chance."
The ring was quickly chalked on the tin, and Tracy found himself as eager
to begin as he could have been if his antagonist had been a prince
instead of a mechanic. At bottom he was a little surprised at this,
because although his theories had been all in that direction for some
time, he was not prepared to find himself actually eager to measure
strength with quite so common a man as this ruffian. In a moment all the
windows in the neighborhood were filled with people, and the roofs also.
The men squared off, and the fight began. But Allen stood no chance
whatever, against the young Englishman. Neither in muscle nor in science
was he his equal. He measured his length on the tin time and again;
in fact, as fast as he could get up he went down again, and the applause
was kept up in liberal fashion from all the neighborhood around.
Finally, Allen had to be helped up. Then Tracy declined to punish him
further and the fight was at an end. Allen was carried off by some of
his friends in a very much humbled condition, his face black and blue and
bleeding, and Tracy was at once surrounded by the young fellows, who
congratulated him, and told him that he had done the whole house a
service, and that from this out Mr. Allen would be a little more
particular about how he handled slights and insults and maltreatment
around amongst the boarders.
Tracy was a hero now, and exceedingly popular. Perhaps nobody had ever
been quite so popular on that upper floor before. But if being
discountenanced by these young fellows had been hard to bear, their
lavish commendations and approval and hero-worship was harder still to
endure. He felt degraded, but he did not allow himself to analyze the
reasons why, too closely. He was content to satisfy himself with the
suggestion that he looked upon himself as degraded by the public
spectacle which he had made of himself, fighting on a tin roof, for the
delectation of everybody a block or two around. But he wasn't entirely
satisfied with that explanation of it. Once he went a little too far and
wrote in his diary that his case was worse than that of the prodigal son.
He said the prodigal son merely fed swine, he didn't have to chum with
them. But he struck that out, and said "All men are equal. I will not
disown my principles. These men are as good as I am."
Tracy was become popular on the lower floors also. Everybody was
grateful for Allen's reduction to the ranks, and for his transformation
from a doer of outrages to a mere threatener of them. The young girls,
of whom there were half a dozen, showed many attentions to Tracy,
particularly that boarding house pet Hattie, the landlady's daughter.
She said to him, very sweetly,
"I think you're ever so nice."
And when he said, "I'm glad you think so, Miss Hattie," she said, still
more sweetly,
"Don't call me Miss Hattie--call me Puss."
Ah, here was promotion! He had struck the summit. There were no higher
heights to climb in that boarding house. His popularity was complete.
In the presence of people, Tracy showed a tranquil outside, but his heart
was being eaten out of him by distress and despair.
In a little while he should be out of money, and then what should he do?
He wished, now, that he had borrowed a little more liberally from that
stranger's store. He found it impossible to sleep. A single torturing,
terrifying thought went racking round and round in his head, wearing a
groove in his brain: What should he do--What was to become of him? And
along with it began to intrude a something presently which was very like
a wish that he had not joined the great and noble ranks of martyrdom, but
had stayed at home and been content to be merely an earl and nothing
better, with nothing more to do in this world of a useful sort than an
earl finds to do. But he smothered that part of his thought as well as
he could; he made every effort to drive it away, and with fair keep it
from intruding a little success, but he couldn't now and then, and when
it intruded it came suddenly and nipped him like a bite, a sting, a burn.
He recognized that thought by the peculiar sharpness of its pang. The
others were painful enough, but that one cut to the quick when it calm.
Night after night he lay tossing to the music of the hideous snoring of
the honest bread-winners until two and three o'clock in the morning,
then got up and took refuge on the roof, where he sometimes got a nap and
sometimes failed entirely. His appetite was leaving him and the zest of
life was going along with it. Finally, owe day, being near the imminent
verge of total discouragement, he said to himself--and took occasion to
blush privately when he said it, "If my father knew what my American name
is,--he--well, my duty to my father rather requires that I furnish him my
name. I have no right to make his days and nights unhappy, I can do
enough unhappiness for the family all by myself. Really he ought to know
what my American name is." He thought over it a while and framed a
cablegram in his mind to this effect:
"My American name is Howard Tracy."
That wouldn't be suggesting anything. His father could understand that
as he chose, and doubtless he would understand it as it was meant, as a
dutiful and affectionate desire on the part of a son to make his old
father happy for a moment. Continuing his train of thought, Tracy said
to himself, "Ah, but if he should cable me to come home! I--I--couldn't
do that--I mustn't do that. I've started out on a mission, and I mustn't
turn my back on it in cowardice. No, no, I couldn't go home, at--at--
least I shouldn't want to go home." After a reflective pause: "Well,
maybe--perhaps--it would be my duty to go in the circumstances; he's very
old and he does need me by him to stay his footsteps down the long hill
that inclines westward toward the sunset of his life. Well, I'll think
about that. Yes, of course it wouldn't be right to stay here. If I--
well, perhaps I could just drop him a line and put it off a little while
and satisfy him in that way. It would be--well, it would mar everything
to have him require me to come instantly." Another reflective pause--
then: "And yet if he should do that I don't know but--oh, dear me--home!
how good it sounds! and a body is excusable for wanting to see his home
again, now and then, anyway."
He went to one of the telegraph offices in the avenue and got the first
end of what Barrow called the "usual Washington courtesy," where "they
treat you as a tramp until they find out you're a congressman, and then
they slobber all over you." There was a boy of seventeen on duty there,
tying his shoe. He had his foot on a chair and his back turned towards
the wicket. He glanced over his shoulder, took Tracy's measure, turned
back, and went on tying his shoe. Tracy finished writing his telegram
and waited, still waited, and still waited, for that performance to
finish, but there didn't seem to be any finish to it; so finally Tracy
said:
"Can't you take my telegram?"
The youth looked over his shoulder and said, by his manner, not his
words:
"Don't you think you could wait a minute, if you tried?"
However, he got the shoe tied at last, and came and took the telegram,
glanced over it, then looked up surprised, at Tracy. There was something
in his look that bordered upon respect, almost reverence, it seemed to
Tracy, although he had been so long without anything of this kind he was
not sure that he knew the signs of it.
The boy read the address aloud, with pleased expression in face and
voice.
"The Earl of Rossmore! Cracky! Do you know him?"
"Yes."
"Is that so! Does he know you?"
"Well--yes."
"Well, I swear! Will he answer you?"
"I think he will."
"Will he though? Where'll you have it sent?"
"Oh, nowhere. I'll call here and get it. When shall I call?"
"Oh, I don't know--I'll send it to you. Where shall I send it? Give me
your address; I'll send it to you soon's it comes."
But Tracy didn't propose to do this. He had acquired the boy's
admiration and deferential respect, and he wasn't willing to throw these
precious things away, a result sure to follow if he should give the
address of that boarding house. So he said again that he would call and
get the telegram, and went his way.
He idled along, reflecting. He said to himself, "There is something
pleasant about being respected. I have acquired the respect of Mr.
Allen and some of those others, and almost the deference of some of them
on pure merit, for having thrashed Allen. While their respect and their
deference--if it is deference--is pleasant, a deference based upon a
sham, a shadow, does really seem pleasanter still. It's no real merit to
be in correspondence with an earl, and yet after all, that boy makes me
feel as if there was."
The cablegram was actually gone home! the thought of it gave him an
immense uplift. He walked with a lighter tread. His heart was full of
happiness. He threw aside all hesitances and confessed to himself that
he was glad through and through that he was going to give up this
experiment and go back to his home again. His eagerness to get his
father's answer began to grow, now, and it grew with marvelous celerity,
after it began. He waited an hour, walking about, putting in his time as
well as he could, but interested in nothing that came under his eye, and
at last he presented himself at the office again and asked if any answer
had come yet. The boy said,
"No, no answer yet," then glanced at the clock and added, "I don't think
it's likely you'll get one to-day."
"Why not?"
"Well, you see it's getting pretty late. You can't always tell where
'bouts a man is when he's on the other side, and you can't always find
him just the minute you want him, and you see it's getting about six
o'clock now, and over there it's pretty late at night."
"Why yes," said Tracy, "I hadn't thought of that."
"Yes, pretty late, now, half past ten or eleven. Oh yes, you probably
won't get any answer to-night."
CHAPTER XIV.
So Tracy went home to supper. The odors in that supper room seemed more
strenuous and more horrible than ever before, and he was happy in the
thought that he was so soon to be free from them again. When the supper
was over he hardly knew whether he had eaten any of it or not, and he
certainly hadn't heard any of the conversation. His heart had been
dancing all the time, his thoughts had been faraway from these things,
and in the visions of his mind the sumptuous appointments of his father's
castle had risen before him without rebuke. Even the plushed flunkey,
that walking symbol of a sham inequality, had not been unpleasant to his
dreaming view. After the meal Barrow said,
"Come with me. I'll give you a jolly evening."
"Very good. Where are you going?"
"To my club."
"What club is that?"
"Mechanics' Debating Club."
Tracy shuddered, slightly. He didn't say anything about having visited
that place himself. Somehow he didn't quite relish the memory of that
time. The sentiments which had made his former visit there so enjoyable,
and filled him with such enthusiasm, had undergone a gradual change, and
they had rotted away to such a degree that he couldn't contemplate
another visit there with anything strongly resembling delight. In fact
he was a little ashamed to go; he didn't want to go there and find out by
the rude impact of the thought of those people upon his reorganized
condition of mind, how sharp the change had been. He would have
preferred to stay away. He expected that now he should hear nothing
except sentiments which would be a reproach to him in his changed mental
attitude, and he rather wished he might be excused. And yet he didn't
quite want to say that, he didn't want to show how he did feel, or show
any disinclination to go, and so he forced himself to go along with
Barrow, privately purposing to take an early opportunity to get away.
After the essayist of the evening had read his paper, the chairman
announced that the debate would now be upon the subject of the previous
meeting, "The American Press." It saddened the backsliding disciple to
hear this announcement. It brought up too many reminiscences. He wished
he had happened upon some other subject. But the debate began, and he
sat still and listened.
In the course of the discussion one of the speakers--a blacksmith named
Tompkins--arraigned all monarchs and all lords in the earth for their
cold selfishness in retaining their unearned dignities. He said that no
monarch and no son of a monarch, no lord and no son of a lord ought to be
able to look his fellow man in the face without shame. Shame for
consenting to keep his unearned titles, property, and privileges--at the
expense of other people; shame for consenting to remain, on any terms, in
dishonourable possession of these things, which represented bygone
robberies and wrongs inflicted upon the general people of the nation.
He said, "if there were a laid or the son of a lord here, I would like to
reason with him, and try to show him how unfair and how selfish his
position is. I would try to persuade him to relinquish it, take his
place among men on equal terms, earn the bread he eats, and hold of
slight value all deference paid him because of artificial position, all
reverence not the just due of his own personal merits."
Tracy seemed to be listening to utterances of his own made in talks with
his radical friends in England. It was as if some eavesdropping
phonograph had treasured up his words and brought them across the
Atlantic to accuse him with them in the hour of his defection and
retreat. Every word spoken by this stranger seemed to leave a blister on
Tracy's conscience, and by the time the speech was finished he felt that
he was all conscience and one blister. This man's deep compassion for
the enslaved and oppressed millions in Europe who had to bear with the
contempt of that small class above them, throned upon shining heights
whose paths were shut against them, was the very thing he had often
uttered himself. The pity in this man's voice and words was the very
twin of the pity that used to reside in his own heart and come from his
own lips when he thought of these oppressed peoples.
The homeward tramp was accomplished in brooding silence. It was a
silence most grateful to Tracy's feelings. He wouldn't have broken it
for anything; for he was ashamed of himself all the way through to his
spine. He kept saying to himself:
"How unanswerable it all is--how absolutely unanswerable! It is basely,
degradingly selfish to keep those unearned honors, and--and--oh, hang
it, nobody but a cur--"
"What an idiotic damned speech that Tompkins made!"
This outburst was from Barrow. It flooded Tracy's demoralized soul with
waters of refreshment. These were the darlingest words the poor
vacillating young apostate had ever heard--for they whitewashed his shame
for him, and that is a good service to have when you can't get the best
of all verdicts, self-acquittal.
"Come up to my room and smoke a pipe, Tracy."
Tracy had been expecting this invitation, and had had his declination all
ready: but he was glad enough to accept, now. Was it possible that a
reasonable argument could be made against that man's desolating speech?
He was burning to hear Barrow try it. He knew how to start him, and keep
him going: it was to seem to combat his positions--a process effective
with most people.
"What is it you object to in Tompkins's speech, Barrow?"
"Oh, the leaving out of the factor of human nature; requiring another man
to do what you wouldn't do yourself."
"Do you mean--"
"Why here's what I mean; it's very simple. Tompkins is a blacksmith; has
a family; works for wages; and hard, too--fooling around won't furnish
the bread. Suppose it should turn out that by the death of somebody in
England he is suddenly an earl--income, half a million dollars a year.
What would he do?"
"Well, I--I suppose he would have to decline to--"
"Man, he would grab it in a second!"
"Do you really think he would?"
"Think?--I don't think anything about it, I know it."
"Why?"
"Because he's not a fool."
"So you think that if he were a fool, he--"
"No, I don't. Fool or no fool, he would grab it. Anybody would.
Anybody that's alive. And I've seen dead people that would get up and go
for it. I would myself."
"This was balm, this was healing, this was rest and peace and comfort."
"But I thought you were opposed to nobilities."
"Transmissible ones, yes. But that's nothing. I'm opposed to
millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
"You'd take it?"
"I would leave the funeral of my dearest enemy to go and assume its
burdens and responsibilities."
Tracy thought a while, then said:
"I don't know that I quite get the bearings of your position. You say
you are opposed to hereditary nobilities, and yet if you had the chance
you would--"
"Take one? In a minute I would. And there isn't a mechanic in that
entire club that wouldn't. There isn't a lawyer, doctor, editor, author,
tinker, loafer, railroad president, saint-land, there isn't a human being
in the United States that wouldn't jump at the chance!"
"Except me," said Tracy softly.
"Except you!" Barrow could hardly get the words out, his scorn so
choked him. And he couldn't get any further than that form of words;
it seemed to dam his flow, utterly. He got up and came and glared upon
Tracy in a kind of outraged and unappeasable way, and said again, "Except
you!" He walked around him--inspecting him from one point of view and
then another, and relieving his soul now and then by exploding that
formula at him; "Except you!" Finally he slumped down into his chair
with the air of one who gives it up, and said:
"He's straining his viscera and he's breaking his heart trying to get
some low-down job that a good dog wouldn't have, and yet wants to let on
that if he had a chance to scoop an earldom he wouldn't do it. Tracy,
don't put this kind of a strain on me. Lately I'm not as strong as I
was."
"Well, I wasn't meaning to put--a strain on you, Barrow, I was only
meaning to intimate that if an earldom ever does fall in my way--"
"There--I wouldn't give myself any worry about that, if I was you. And
besides, I can settle what you would do. Are you any different from me?"
"Well--no."
"Are you any better than me?"
"O,--er--why, certainly not."
"Are you as good? Come!"
"Indeed, I--the fact is you take me so suddenly--"
"Suddenly? What is there sudden about it? It isn't a difficult question
is it? Or doubtful? Just measure us on the only fair lines--the lines
of merit--and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that
earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture
of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success,
and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a
young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's
valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had
any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the
artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate
--come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you
to do it!"
Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for
that last remark. Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up
briskly and said:
"But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions--your,
principles, if they are principles. You are inconsistent. You are
opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could. Am I
to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an
earl?"
"I certainly don't."
"And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for
accepting an earldom if it was offered?"
"Indeed I wouldn't."
"Well, then, who would you blame?"
"The whole nation--any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any
country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a
hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter--and on absolutely free and
equal terms."
"Come, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not
differences?"
"Indeed I am not. I am entirely clear-headed about this thing. If I
could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I
should be a rascal to accept them. And if enough of the mass would join
me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do
otherwise than help in the attempt."
"I believe I understand--yes, I think I get the idea. You have no blame
for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they
were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the
nation for allowing the nest to exist."
"That's it, that's it! You can get a simple thing through your head if
you work at it long enough."
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. And I'll give you some sound advice: when you go
back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront,
lend a hand; but if that isn't the state of things and you get a chance
at an earldom, don't you be a fool--you take it."
Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm:
"As I live, I'll do it!"
Barrow laughed.
"I never saw such a fellow. I begin to think you've got a good deal of
imagination. With you, the idlest-fancy freezes into a reality at a
breath. Why, you looked, then, as if it wouldn't astonish you if you did
tumble into an earldom."
Tracy blushed. Barrow added: "Earldom! Oh, yes, take it, if it offers;
but meantime we'll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get
a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week,
you just trade off the earldom for a last year's almanac and stick to the
sausage-stuffing,"
CHAPTER XV.
Tracy went to bed happy once more, at rest in his mind once more. He had
started out on a high emprise--that was to his credit, he argued; he had
fought the best fight he could, considering the odds against him--that
was to his credit; he had been defeated--certainly there was nothing
discreditable in that. Being defeated, he had a right to retire with the
honors of war and go back without prejudice to the position in the
world's society to which he had been born. Why not? even the rabid
republican chair-maker would do that. Yes, his conscience was
comfortable once more.
He woke refreshed, happy, and eager for his cablegram. He had been born
an aristocrat, he had been a democrat for a time, he was now an
aristocrat again. He marveled to find that this final change was not
merely intellectual, it had invaded his feeling; and he also marveled to
note that this feeling seemed a good deal less artificial than any he had
entertained in his system for a long time. He could also have noted,
if he had thought of it, that his bearing had stiffened, over night,
and that his chin had lifted itself a shade. Arrived in the basement,
he was about to enter the breakfast room when he saw old Marsh in the dim
light of a corner of the hall, beckoning him with his finger to approach.
The blood welled slowly up in Tracy's cheek, and he said with a grade of
injured dignity almost ducal:
"Is that for me?"
"Yes."
"What is the purpose of it?"
"I want to speak to you--in private."
"This spot is private enough for me."
Marsh was surprised; and not particularly pleased. He approached and
said:
"Oh, in public, then, if you prefer. Though it hasn't been my way."
The boarders gathered to the spot, interested.
"Speak out," said Tracy. "What is it you want?"
"Well, haven't you--er--forgot something?"
"I? I'm not aware of it."
"Oh, you're not? Now you stop and think, a minute."
"I refuse to stop and think. It doesn't interest me. If it interests
you, speak out."
"Well, then," said Marsh, raising his voice to a slightly angry pitch,
"You forgot to pay your board yesterday--if you're bound to have it
public."
Oh, yes, this heir to an annual million or so had been dreaming and
soaring, and had forgotten that pitiful three or four dollars. For
penalty he must have it coarsely flung in his face in the presence of
these people--people in whose countenances was already beginning to dawn
an uncharitable enjoyment of the situation.
"Is that all! Take your money and give your terrors a rest."
Tracy's hand went down into his pocket with angry decision. But--it
didn't come out. The color began to ebb out of his face. The
countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a
heightened satisfaction. There was an uncomfortable pause--then he
forced out, with difficulty, the words:
"I've--been robbed!"
Old Marsh's eyes flamed up with Spanish fire, and he exclaimed:
"Robbed, is it? That's your tune? It's too old--been played in this
house too often; everybody plays it that can't get work when he wants it,
and won't work when he can get it. Trot out Mr. Allen, somebody, and let
him take a toot at it. It's his turn next, he forgot, too, last night.
I'm laying for him."
One of the negro women came scrambling down stairs as pale as a sorrel
horse with consternation and excitement:
"Misto Marsh, Misto Allen's skipped out!"
"What!"
"Yes-sah, and cleaned out his room clean; tuck bofe towels en de soap!"
"You lie, you hussy!"
"It's jes' so, jes' as I tells you--en Misto Summer's socks is gone, en
Misto Naylor's yuther shirt."
Mr. Marsh was at boiling point by this time. He turned upon Tracy:
"Answer up now--when are you going to settle?"
"To-day--since you seem to be in a hurry."
"To-day is it? Sunday--and you out of work? I like that. Come--where
are you going to get the money?"
Tracy's spirit was rising again. He proposed to impress these people:
"I am expecting a cablegram from home."
Old Marsh was caught out, with the surprise of it. The idea was so
immense, so extravagant, that he couldn't get his breath at first. When
he did get it, it came rancid with sarcasm.
"A cablegram--think of it, ladies and gents, he's expecting a cablegram!
He's expecting a cablegram--this duffer, this scrub, this bilk! From his
father--eh? Yes--without a doubt. A dollar or two a word--oh, that's
nothing--they don't mind a little thing like that--this kind's fathers
don't. Now his father is--er--well, I reckon his father--"
"My father is an English earl!"
The crowd fell back aghast-aghast at the sublimity of the young loafer's
"cheek." Then they burst into a laugh that made the windows rattle.
Tracy was too angry to realize that he had done a foolish thing. He
said:
"Stand aside, please. I--"
"Wait a minute, your lordship," said Marsh, bowing low, "where is your
lordship going?"
"For the cablegram. Let me pass."
"Excuse me, your lordship, you'll stay right where you are."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that I didn't begin to keep boarding-house yesterday. It means
that I am not the kind that can be taken in by every hack-driver's son
that comes loafing over here because he can't bum a living at home. It
means that you can't skip out on any such--"
Tracy made a step toward the old man, but Mrs. Marsh sprang between, and
said:
"Don't, Mr. Tracy, please." She turned to her husband and said, "Do
bridle your tongue. What has he done to be treated so? Can't you see he
has lost his mind, with trouble and distress? He's not responsible."
"Thank your kind heart, madam, but I've not lost my mind; and if I can
have the mere privilege of stepping to the telegraph office--"
"Well, you can't," cried Marsh.
"--or sending--"
"Sending! That beats everything. If there's anybody that's fool enough
to go on such a chuckle-headed errand--"
"Here comes Mr. Barrow--he will go for me. Barrow--"
A brisk fire of exclamations broke out--
"Say, Barrow, he's expecting a cablegram!"
"Cablegram from his father, you know!"
"Yes--cablegram from the wax-figger!"
"And say, Barrow, this fellow's an earl--take off your hat, pull down
your vest!"
"Yes, he's come off and forgot his crown, that he wears Sundays. He's
cabled over to his pappy to send it."
"You step out and get that cablegram, Barrow; his majesty's a little lame
to-day."
"Oh stop," cried Barrow; "give the man a chance." He turned, and said
with some severity, "Tracy, what's the matter with you? What kind of
foolishness is this you've been talking. You ought to have more sense."
"I've not been talking foolishness; and if you'll go to the telegraph
office--"
"Oh; don't talk so. I'm your friend in trouble and out of it, before
your face and behind your back, for anything in reason; but you've lost
your head, you see, and this moonshine about a cablegram--"
"I'll go there and ask for it!"
"Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Brady. Here, I'll give you a
Written order for it. Fly, now, and fetch it. We'll soon see!"
Brady flew. Immediately the sort of quiet began to steal over the crowd
which means dawning doubt, misgiving; and might be translated into the
words, "Maybe he is expecting a cablegram--maybe he has got a father
somewhere--maybe we've been just a little too fresh, just a shade too
'previous'!"
Loud talk ceased; then the mutterings and low murmurings and whisperings
died out. The crowd began to crumble apart. By ones and twos the
fragments drifted to the breakfast table. Barrow tried to bring Tracy
in; but he said:
"Not yet, Barrow--presently."
Mrs. Marsh and Hattie tried, offering gentle and kindly persuasions; but
he said;
"I would rather wait--till he comes."
Even old Marsh began to have suspicions that maybe he had been a trifle
too "brash," as he called it in the privacy of his soul, and he pulled
himself together and started toward Tracy with invitation in his eyes;
but Tracy warned him off with a gesture which was quite positive and
eloquent. Then followed the stillest quarter of an hour which had ever
been known in that house at that time of day. It was so still, and so
solemn withal, that when somebody's cup slipped from his fingers and
landed in his plate the shock made people start, and the sharp sound
seemed as indecorous there and as out of place as if a coffin and
mourners were imminent and being waited for. And at last when Brady's
feet came clattering down the stairs the sacrilege seemed unbearable.
Everybody rose softly and turned toward the door, where stood Tracy;
then with a common impulse, moved a step or two in that direction, and
stopped. While they gazed, young Brady arrived, panting, and put into
Tracy's hand,--sure enough--an envelope. Tracy fastened a bland
victorious eye upon the gazers, and kept it there till one by one they
dropped their eyes, vanquished and embarrassed. Then he tore open the
telegram and glanced at its message. The yellow paper fell from his
fingers and fluttered to the floor, and his face turned white. There was
nothing there but one word--
"Thanks."
The humorist of the house, the tall, raw-boned Billy Nash, caulker from
the navy yard, was standing in the rear of the crowd. In the midst of
the pathetic silence that was now brooding over the place and moving some
few hearts there toward compassion, he began to whimper, then he put his
handkerchief to his eyes and buried his face in the neck of the
bashfulest young fellow in the company, a navy-yard blacksmith, shrieked
"Oh, pappy, how could you!" and began to bawl like a teething baby, if
one may imagine a baby with the energy and the devastating voice of a
jackass.
So perfect was that imitation of a child's cry, and so vast the scale of
it and so ridiculous the aspect of the performer, that all gravity was
swept from the place as if by a hurricane, and almost everybody there
joined in the crash of laughter provoked by the exhibition. Then the
small mob began to take its revenge--revenge for the discomfort and
apprehension it had brought upon itself by its own too rash freshness of
a little while before. It guyed its poor victim, baited him, worried
him, as dogs do with a cornered cat. The victim answered back with
defiances and challenges which included everybody, and which only gave
the sport new spirit and variety; but when he changed his tactics and
began to single out individuals and invite them by name, the fun lost its
funniness and the interest of the show died out, along with the noise.
Finally Marsh was about to take an innings, but Barrow said:
"Never mind, now--leave him alone. You've no account with him but a
money account. I'll take care of that myself."
The distressed and worried landlady gave Barrow a fervently grateful look
for his championship of the abused stranger; and the pet of the house, a
very prism in her cheap but ravishing Sunday rig, blew him a kiss from
the tips of her fingers and said, with the darlingest smile and a sweet
little toss of her head:
"You're the only man here, and I'm going to set my cap for you, you dear
old thing!"
"For shame, Puss! How you talk! I never saw such a child!"
It took a good deal of argument and persuasion--that is to say, petting,
under these disguises--to get Tracy to entertain the idea of breakfast.
He at first said he would never eat again in that house; and added that
he had enough firmness of character, he trusted, to enable him to starve
like a man when the alternative was to eat insult with his bread.
When he had finished his breakfast, Barrow took him to his room,
furnished him a pipe, and said cheerily:
"Now, old fellow, take in your battle-flag out of the wet, you're not in
the hostile camp any more. You're a little upset by your troubles,
and that's natural enough, but don't let your mind run on them anymore
than you can help; drag your thoughts away from your troubles by the
ears, by the heels, or any other way, so you manage it; it's the
healthiest thing a body can do; dwelling on troubles is deadly, just
deadly--and that's the softest name there is for it. You must keep your
mind amused--you must, indeed."
"Oh, miserable me!"
"Don't! There's just pure heart-break in that tone. It's just as I say;
you've got to get right down to it and amuse your mind, as if it was
salvation."
"They're easy words to say, Barrow, but how am I going to amuse,
entertain, divert a mind that finds itself suddenly assaulted and
overwhelmed by disasters of a sort not dreamed of and not provided for?
No--no, the bare idea of amusement is repulsive to my feelings: Let us
talk of death and funerals."
"No--not yet. That would be giving up the ship. We'll not give up the
ship yet. I'm going to amuse you; I sent Brady out for the wherewithal
before you finished breakfast."
"You did? What is it?"
"Come, this is a good sign--curiosity. Oh, there's hope for you yet."
CHAPTER XVI.
Brady arrived with a box, and departed, after saying, "They're finishing
one up, but they'll be along as soon as it's done."
Barrow took a frameless oil portrait a foot square from the box, set it
up in a good light, without comment, and reached for another, taking a
furtive glance at Tracy, meantime. The stony solemnity in Tracy's face
remained as it was, and gave out no sign of interest. Barrow placed the
second portrait beside the first, and stole another glance while reaching
for a third. The stone image softened, a shade. No. 3 forced the ghost
of a smile, No. 4 swept indifference wholly away, and No. 5 started a
laugh which was still in good and hearty condition when No. 14 took its
place in the row.
"Oh, you're all right, yet," said Barrow. "You see you're not past
amusement."
The pictures were fearful, as to color, and atrocious as to drawing and
expression; but the feature which squelched animosity and made them funny
was a feature which could not achieve its full force in a single picture,
but required the wonder-working assistance of repetition. One loudly
dressed mechanic in stately attitude, with his hand on a cannon, ashore,
and a ship riding at anchor in the offing,--this is merely odd; but when
one sees the same cannon and the same ship in fourteen pictures in a row,
and a different mechanic standing watch in each, the thing gets to be
funny.
"Explain--explain these aberrations," said Tracy.
"Well, they are not the achievement of a single intellect, a single
talent--it takes two to do these miracles. They are collaborations;
the one artist does the figure, the other the accessories. The
figure-artist is a German shoemaker with an untaught passion for art,
the other is a simple hearted old Yankee sailor-man whose possibilities
are strictly limited to his ship, his cannon and his patch of petrified
sea. They work these things up from twenty-five-cent tintypes; they get
six dollars apiece for them, and they can grind out a couple a day when
they strike what they call a boost--that is, an inspiration."
"People actually pay money for these calumnies?"
"They actually do--and quite willingly, too. And these abortionists
could double their trade and work the women in, if Capt. Saltmarsh could
whirl a horse in, or a piano, or a guitar, in place of his cannon. The
fact is, he fatigues the market with that cannon. Even the male market,
I mean. These fourteen in the procession are not all satisfied. One is
an old "independent" fireman, and he wants an engine in place of the
cannon; another is a mate of a tug, and wants a tug in place of the ship
--and so on, and so on. But the captain can't make a tug that is
deceptive, and a fire engine is many flights beyond his power."
"This is a most extraordinary form of robbery, I never have heard of
anything like it. It's interesting."
"Yes, and so are the artists. They are perfectly honest men, and
sincere. And the old sailor-man is full of sound religion, and is as
devoted a student of the Bible and misquoter of it as you can find
anywhere. I don't know a better man or kinder hearted old soul than
Saltmarsh, although he does swear a little, sometimes."
"He seems to be perfect. I want to know him, Barrow."
"You'll have the chance. I guess I hear them coming, now. We'll draw
them out on their art, if you like."
The artists arrived and shook hands with great heartiness. The German
was forty and a little fleshy, with a shiny bald head and a kindly face
and deferential manner. Capt. Saltmarsh was sixty, tall, erect,
powerfully built, with coal-black hair and whiskers, and he had a well
tanned complexion, and a gait and countenance that were full of command,
confidence and decision. His horny hands and wrists were covered with
tattoo-marks, and when his lips parted, his teeth showed up white and
blemishless. His voice was the effortless deep bass of a church organ,
and would disturb the tranquility of a gas flame fifty yards away.
"They're wonderful pictures," said Barrow. "We've been examining them."
"It is very bleasant dot you like dem," said Handel, the German, greatly
pleased. "Und you, Herr Tracy, you haf peen bleased mit dem too,
alretty?"
"I can honestly say I have never seen anything just like them before."
"Schon!" cried the German, delighted. "You hear, Gaptain? Here is a
chentleman, yes, vot abbreviate unser aart."
The captain was charmed, and said:
"Well, sir, we're thankful for a compliment yet, though they're not as
scarce now as they used to be before we made a reputation."
"Getting the reputation is the up-hill time in most things, captain."
"It's so. It ain't enough to know how to reef a gasket, you got to make
the mate know you know it. That's reputation. The good word, said at
the right time, that's the word that makes us; and evil be to him that
evil thinks, as Isaiah says."
"It's very relevant, and hits the point exactly," said Tracy.
"Where did you study art, Captain?"
"I haven't studied; it's a natural gift."
"He is born mit dose cannon in him. He tondt haf to do noding, his
chenius do all de vork. Of he is asleep, and take a pencil in his hand,
out come a cannon. Py crashus, of he could do a clavier, of he could do
a guitar, of he could do a vashtub, it is a fortune, heiliger Yohanniss
it is yoost a fortune!"
"Well, it is an immense pity that the business is hindered and limited in
this unfortunate way."
The captain grew a trifle excited, himself, now:
"You've said it, Mr. Tracy!--Hindered? well, I should say so. Why, look
here. This fellow here, No. 11, he's a hackman,--a flourishing hackman,
I may say. He wants his hack in this picture. Wants it where the cannon
is. I got around that difficulty, by telling him the cannon's our
trademark, so to speak--proves that the picture's our work, and I was
afraid if we left it out people wouldn't know for certain if it was a
Saltmarsh--Handel--now you wouldn't yourself--"
"What, Captain? You wrong yourself, indeed you do. Anyone who has once
seen a genuine Saltmarsh-Handel is safe from imposture forever. Strip
it, flay it, skin it out of every detail but the bare color and
expression, and that man will still recognize it--still stop to
worship--"
"Oh, how it makes me feel to hear dose oxpressions!--"
--"still say to himself again as he had, said a hundred times before, the
art of the Saltmarsh-Handel is an art apart, there is nothing in the
heavens above or in the earth beneath that resembles it,--"
"Py chiminy, nur horen Sie einmal! In my life day haf I never heard so
brecious worts."
"So I talked him out of the hack, Mr. Tracy, and he let up on that, and
said put in a hearse, then--because he's chief mate of a hearse but don't
own it--stands a watch for wages, you know. But I can't do a hearse any
more than I can a hack; so here we are--becalmed, you see. And it's the
same with women and such. They come and they want a little johnry
picture--"
"It's the accessories that make it a 'genre?'"
"Yes--cannon, or cat, or any little thing like that, that you heave into
whoop up the effect. We could do a prodigious trade with the women if we
could foreground the things they like, but they don't give a damn for
artillery. Mine's the lack," continued the captain with a sigh, "Andy's
end of the business is all right I tell you he's an artist from way
back!"
"Yoost hear dot old man! He always talk 'poud me like dot," purred the
pleased German.
"Look at his work yourself! Fourteen portraits in a row. And no two of
them alike."
"Now that you speak of it, it is true; I hadn't noticed it before. It is
very remarkable. Unique, I suppose."
"I should say so. That's the very thing about Andy--he discriminates.
Discrimination's the thief of time--forty-ninth Psalm; but that ain't any
matter, it's the honest thing, and it pays in the end."
"Yes, he certainly is great in that feature, one is obliged to admit it;
but--now mind, I'm not really criticising--don't you think he is just a
trifle overstrong in technique?"
The captain's face was knocked expressionless by this remark. It
remained quite vacant while he muttered to himself-- "Technique--
technique--polytechnique--pyro-technique; that's it, likely--fireworks too
much color." Then he spoke up with serenity and confidence, and said:
"Well, yes, he does pile it on pretty loud; but they all like it, you
know--fact is, it's the life of the business. Take that No. 9, there,
Evans the butcher. He drops into the stoodio as sober-colored as
anything you ever see: now look at him. You can't tell him from scarlet
fever. Well, it pleases that butcher to death. I'm making a study of a
sausage-wreath to hang on the cannon, and I don't really reckon I can do
it right, but if I can, we can break the butcher."
"Unquestionably your confederate--I mean your--your fellow-craftsman--
is a great colorist--"
"Oh, danke schon!--"
--"in fact a quite extraordinary colorist; a colorist, I make bold to
say, without imitator here or abroad--and with a most bold and effective
touch, a touch like a battering ram; and a manner so peculiar and
romantic, and extraneous, and ad libitum, and heart-searching, that--
that--he--he is an impressionist, I presume?"
"No," said the captain simply, "he is a Presbyterian."
"It accounts for it all--all--there's something divine about his art,--
soulful, unsatisfactory, yearning, dim hearkening on the void horizon,
vague--murmuring to the spirit out of ultra-marine distances and
far-sounding cataclysms of uncreated space--oh, if he--if, he--has he
ever tried distemper?"
The captain answered up with energy:
"Not if he knows himself! But his dog has, and--"
"Oh, no, it vas not my dog."
"Why, you said it was your dog."
"Oh, no, gaptain, I--"
"It was a white dog, wasn't it, with his tail docked, and one ear gone,
and--"
"Dot's him, dot's him!--der fery dog. Wy, py Chorge, dot dog he would
eat baint yoost de same like--"
"Well, never mind that, now--'vast heaving--I never saw such a man. You
start him on that dog and he'll dispute a year. Blamed if I haven't seen
him keep it up a level two hours and a half."
"Why captain!" said Barrow. "I guess that must be hearsay."
"No, sir, no hearsay about it--he disputed with me."
"I don't see how you stood it."
"Oh, you've got to--if you run with Andy. But it's the only fault he's
got."
"Ain't you afraid of acquiring it?"
"Oh, no," said the captain, tranquilly, "no danger of that, I reckon."
The artists presently took their leave. Then Barrow put his hands on
Tracy's shoulders and said:
"Look me in the eye, my boy. Steady, steady. There--it's just as I
thought--hoped, anyway; you're all right, thank goodness. Nothing the
matter with your mind. But don't do that again--even for fun. It isn't
wise. They wouldn't have believed you if you'd been an earl's son.
Why, they couldn't--don't you know that? What ever possessed you to take
such a freak? But never mind about that; let's not talk of it. It was a
mistake; you see that yourself."
"Yes--it was a mistake."
"Well, just drop it out of your, mind; it's no harm; we all make them.
Pull your courage together, and don't brood, and don't give up. I'm at
your back, and we'll pull through, don't you be afraid."
When he was gone, Barrow walked the floor a good while, uneasy in his
mind. He said to himself, "I'm troubled about him. He never would have
made a break like that if he hadn't been a little off his balance.
But I know what being out of work and no prospect ahead can do for a man.
First it knocks the pluck out of him and drags his pride in the dirt;
worry does the rest, and his mind gets shaky. I must talk to these
people. No--if there's any humanity in them--and there is, at bottom--
they'll be easier on him if they think his troubles have disturbed his
reason. But I've got to find him some work; work's the only medicine for
his disease. Poor devil! away off here, and not a friend."
CHAPTER XVII
The moment Tracy was alone his spirits vanished away, and all the misery
of his situation was manifest to him. To be moneyless and an object of
the chairmaker's charity--this was bad enough, but his folly in
proclaiming himself an earl's son to that scoffing and unbelieving crew,
and, on top of that, the humiliating result--the recollection of these
things was a sharper torture still. He made up his mind that he would
never play earl's son again before a doubtful audience.
His father's answer was a blow he could not understand. At times he
thought his father imagined he could get work to do in America without
any trouble, and was minded to let him try it and cure himself of his
radicalism by hard, cold, disenchanting experience. That seemed the most
plausible theory, yet he could not content himself with it. A theory
that pleased him better was, that this cablegram would be followed by
another, of a gentler sort, requiring him to come home. Should he write
and strike his flag, and ask for a ticket home? Oh, no, that he couldn't
ever do. At least, not yet. That cablegram would come, it certainly
would. So he went from one telegraph office to another every day for
nearly a week, and asked if there was a cablegram for Howard Tracy.
No, there wasn't any. So they answered him at first. Later, they said
it before he had a chance to ask. Later still they merely shook their
heads impatiently as soon as he came in sight. After that he was ashamed
to go any more.
He was down in the lowest depths of despair, now; for the harder Barrow
tried to find work for him the more hopeless the possibilities seemed to
grow. At last he said to Barrow:
"Look here. I want to make a confession. I have got down, now, to where
I am not only willing to acknowledge to myself that I am a shabby
creature and full of false pride, but am willing to acknowledge it to
you. Well, I've been allowing you to wear yourself out hunting for work
for me when there's been a chance open to me all the time. Forgive my
pride--what was left of it. It is all gone, now, and I've come to
confess that if those ghastly artists want another confederate, I'm their
man--for at last I am dead to shame."
"No? Really, can you paint?"
"Not as badly as they. No, I don't claim that, for I am not a genius;
in fact, I am a very indifferent amateur, a slouchy dabster, a mere
artistic sarcasm; but drunk or asleep I can beat those buccaneers."
"Shake! I want to shout! Oh, I tell you, I am immensely delighted and
relieved. Oh, just to work--that is life! No matter what the work is--
that's of no consequence. Just work itself is bliss when a man's been
starving for it. I've been there! Come right along; we'll hunt the old
boys up. Don't you feel good? I tell you I do."
The freebooters were not at home. But their "works" were, displayed in
profusion all about the little ratty studio. Cannon to the right of
them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front--it was Balaclava come
again.
"Here's the uncontented hackman, Tracy. Buckle to--deepen the sea-green
to turf, turn the ship into a hearse. Let the boys have a taste of your
quality."
The artists arrived just as the last touch was put on. They stood
transfixed with admiration.
"My souls but she's a stunner, that hearse! The hackman will just go all
to pieces when he sees that won't he Andy?"
"Oh, it is sphlennid, sphlennid! Herr Tracy, why haf you not said you
vas a so sublime aartist? Lob' Gott, of you had lif'd in Paris you would
be a Pree de Rome, dot's votes de matter!"
The arrangements were soon made. Tracy was taken into full and equal
partnership, and he went straight to work, with dash and energy, to
reconstructing gems of art whose accessories had failed to satisfy.
Under his hand, on that and succeeding days, artillery disappeared and
the emblems of peace and commerce took its place--cats, hacks, sausages,
tugs, fire engines, pianos, guitars, rocks, gardens, flower-pots,
landscapes--whatever was wanted, he flung it in; and the more out of
place and absurd the required object was, the more joy he got out of
fabricating it. The pirates were delighted, the customers applauded, the
sex began to flock in, great was the prosperity of the firm. Tracy was
obliged to confess to himself that there was something about work,--even
such grotesque and humble work as this--which most pleasantly satisfied a
something in his nature which had never been satisfied before, and also
gave him a strange new dignity in his own private view of himself.
.......................
The Unqualified Member from Cherokee Strip was in a state of deep
dejection. For a good while, now, he had been leading a sort of life
which was calculated to kill; for it had consisted in regularly
alternating days of brilliant hope and black disappointment. The
brilliant hopes were created by the magician Sellers, and they always
promised that now he had got the trick, sure, and would effectively
influence that materialized cowboy to call at the Towers before night.
The black disappointments consisted in the persistent and monotonous
failure of these prophecies.
At the date which this history has now reached, Sellers was appalled to
find that the usual remedy was inoperative, and that Hawkins's low
spirits refused absolutely to lift. Something must be done, he
reflected; it was heart-breaking, this woe, this smileless misery,
this dull despair that looked out from his poor friend's face. Yes, he
must be cheered up. He mused a while, then he saw his way. He said in
his most conspicuously casual vein:
"Er--uh--by the way, Hawkins, we are feeling disappointed about this
thing--the way the materializee is acting, I mean--we are disappointed;
you concede that?"
"Concede it? Why, yes, if you like the term."
"Very well; so far, so good. Now for the basis of the feeling. It is
not that your heart, your affections are concerned; that is to say, it is
not that you want the materializee Itself. You concede that?"
"Yes, I concede that, too--cordially."
"Very well, again; we are making progress. To sum up: The feeling, it is
conceded, is not engendered by the mere conduct of the materializee; it
is conceded that it does not arise from any pang which the personality of
the materializee could assuage. Now then," said the earl, with the light
of triumph in his eye, "the inexorable logic of the situation narrows us
down to this: our feeling has its source in the money-loss involved.
Come--isn't that so?"
"Goodness knows I concede that, with all my heart."
"Very well. When you've found out the source of a disease, you've also
found out what remedy is required--just as in this case. In this case
money is required. And only money."
The old, old seduction was in that airy, confident tone and those
significant words--usually called pregnant words in books. The old
answering signs of faith and hope showed up in Hawkins's countenance,
and he said:
"Only money? Do you mean that you know a way to--"
"Washington, have you the impression that I have no resources but those
I allow the public and my intimate friends to know about?"
"Well, I--er--"
"Is it likely, do you think, that a man moved by nature and taught by
experience to keep his affairs to himself and a cautious and reluctant
tongue in his head, wouldn't be thoughtful enough to keep a few resources
in reserve for a rainy day, when he's got as many as I have to select
from?"
"Oh, you make me feel so much better already, Colonel!"
"Have you ever been in my laboratory?"
"Why, no."
"That's it. You see you didn't even know that I had one. Come along.
I've got a little trick there that I want to show you. I've kept it
perfectly quiet, not fifty people know anything about it. But that's my
way, always been my way. Wait till you're ready, that's the idea; and
when you're ready, zzip!--let her go!"
"Well, Colonel, I've never seen a man that I've had such unbounded
confidence in as you. When you say a thing right out, I always feel as
if that ends it; as if that is evidence, and proof, and everything else."
The old earl was profoundly pleased and touched.
"I'm glad you believe in me, Washington; not everybody is so just."
"I always have believed in you; and I always shall as long as I live."
"Thank you, my boy. You shan't repent it. And you can't." Arrived in
the "laboratory," the earl continued, "Now, cast your eye around this
room--what do you see? Apparently a junk-shop; apparently a hospital
connected with a patent office--in reality, the mines of Golconda in
disguise! Look at that thing there. Now what would you take that thing
to be?"
"I don't believe I could ever imagine."
"Of course you couldn't. It's my grand adaptation of the phonograph to
the marine service. You store up profanity in it for use at sea.
You know that sailors don't fly around worth a cent unless you swear
at them--so the mate that can do the best job of swearing is the most
valuable man. In great emergencies his talent saves the ship. But a
ship is a large thing, and he can't be everywhere at once; so there have
been times when one mate has lost a ship which could have been saved if
they had had a hundred. Prodigious storms, you know. Well, a ship can't
afford a hundred mates; but she can afford a hundred Cursing Phonographs,
and distribute them all over the vessel--and there, you see, she's armed
at every point. Imagine a big storm, and a hundred of my machines all
cursing away at once--splendid spectacle, splendid!--you couldn't hear
yourself think. Ship goes through that storm perfectly serene--she's
just as safe as she'd be on shore."
"It's a wonderful idea. How do you prepare the thing?"
"Load it--simply load it."
"How?"
"Why you just stand over it and swear into it."
"That loads it, does it?"
"Yes--because every word it collars, it keeps--keeps it forever. Never
wears out. Any time you turn the crank, out it'll come. In times of
great peril, you can reverse it, and it'll swear backwards. That makes a
sailor hump himself!"
"O, I see. Who loads them?--the mate?"
"Yes, if he chooses. Or I'll furnish them already loaded. I can hire an
expert for $75 a month who will load a hundred and fifty phonographs in
150 hours, and do it easy. And an expert can furnish a stronger article,
of course, than the mere average uncultivated mate could. Then you see,
all the ships of the world will buy them ready loaded--for I shall have
them loaded in any language a customer wants. Hawkins, it will work the
grandest moral reform of the 19th century. Five years from now, all the
swearing will be done by machinery--you won't ever hear a profane word
come from human lips on a ship. Millions of dollars have been spent by
the churches, in the effort to abolish profanity in the commercial
marine. Think of it--my name will live forever in the affections of good
men as the man, who, solitary and alone, accomplished this noble and
elevating reform."
"O, it is grand and beneficent and beautiful. How did you ever come to
think of it? You have a wonderful mind. How did you say you loaded the
machine?"
"O, it's no trouble--perfectly simple. If you want to load it up loud and
strong, you stand right over it and shout. But if you leave it open and
all set, it'll eavesdrop, so to speak--that is to say, it will load
itself up with any sounds that are made within six feet of it. Now I'll
show you how it works. I had an expert come and load this one up
yesterday. Hello, it's been left open--it's too bad--still I reckon it
hasn't had much chance to collect irrelevant stuff. All you do is to
press this button in the floor--so."
The phonograph began to sing in a plaintive voice:
There is a boarding-house, far far away,
Where they have ham and eggs, 3 times a day.
"Hang it, that ain't it. Somebody's been singing around here."
The plaintive song began again, mingled with a low, gradually rising wail
of cats slowly warming up toward a fight;
O, how the boarders yell,
When they hear that dinner bell
They give that landlord--
(momentary outburst of terrific catfight which drowns out one word.)
Three times a day.
(Renewal of furious catfight for a moment. The plaintive voice on a high
fierce key, "Scat, you devils"--and a racket as of flying missiles.)
"Well, never mind--let it go. I've got some sailor-profanity down in
there somewhere, if I could get to it. But it isn't any matter; you see
how the machine works."
Hawkins responded with enthusiasm:
"O, it works admirably! I know there's a hundred fortunes in it."
"And mind, the Hawkins family get their share, Washington."
"O, thanks, thanks; you are just as generous as ever. Ah, it's the
grandest invention of the age!"
"Ah, well; we live in wonderful times. The elements are crowded full of
beneficent forces--always have been--and ours is the first generation to
turn them to account and make them work for us. Why Hawkins, everything
is useful--nothing ought ever to be wasted. Now look at sewer gas, for
instance. Sewer gas has always been wasted, heretofore; nobody tried to
save up sewer-gas--you can't name me a man. Ain't that so? you know
perfectly well it's so."
"Yes it is so--but I never--er--I don't quite see why a body--"
"Should want to save it up? Well, I'll tell you. Do you see this little
invention here?--it's a decomposer--I call it a decomposer. I give you
my word of honor that if you show me a house that produces a given
quantity of sewer-gas in a day, I'll engage to set up my decomposer there
and make that house produce a hundred times that quantity of sewer-gas in
less than half an hour."
"Dear me, but why should you want to?"
"Want to? Listen, and you'll see. My boy, for illuminating purposes
and economy combined, there's nothing in the world that begins with
sewer-gas. And really, it don't cost a cent. You put in a good inferior
article of plumbing,--such as you find everywhere--and add my decomposer,
and there you are. Just use the ordinary gas pipes--and there your
expense ends. Think of it. Why, Major, in five years from now you won't
see a house lighted with anything but sewer-gas. Every physician I talk
to, recommends it; and every plumber."
"But isn't it dangerous?"
"O, yes, more or less, but everything is--coal gas, candles, electricity
--there isn't anything that ain't."
"It lights up well, does it?"
"O, magnificently."
"Have you given it a good trial?"
"Well, no, not a first rate one. Polly's prejudiced, and she won't let
me put it in here; but I'm playing my cards to get it adopted in the
President's house, and then it'll go--don't you doubt it. I shall not
need this one for the present, Washington; you may take it down to some
boarding-house and give it a trial if you like."
CHAPTER XVIII.
Washington shuddered slightly at the suggestion, then his face took on a
dreamy look and he dropped into a trance of thought. After a little,
Sellers asked him what he was grinding in his mental mill.
"Well, this. Have you got some secret project in your head which
requires a Bank of England back of it to make it succeed?"
The Colonel showed lively astonishment, and said:
"Why, Hawkins, are you a mind-reader?"
"I? I never thought of such a thing."
"Well, then how did you happen to drop onto that idea in this curious
fashion? It's just mind-reading, that's what it is, though you may not
know it. Because I have got a private project that requires a Bank of
England at its back. How could you divine that? What was the process?
This is interesting."
"There wasn't any process. A thought like this happened to slip through
my head by accident: How much would make you or me comfortable?
A hundred thousand. Yet you are expecting two or three of--these
inventions of yours to turn out some billions of money--and you are
wanting them to do that. If you wanted ten millions, I could understand
that--it's inside the human limits. But billions! That's clear outside
the limits. There must be a definite project back of that somewhere."
The earl's interest and surprise augmented with every word, and when
Hawkins finished, he said with strong admiration:
"It's wonderfully reasoned out, Washington, it certainly is. It shows
what I think is quite extraordinary penetration. For you've hit it;
you've driven the centre, you've plugged the bulls-eye of my dream. Now
I'll tell you the whole thing, and you'll understand it. I don't need to
ask you to keep it to yourself, because you'll see that the project will
prosper all the better for being kept in the background till the right
time. Have you noticed how many pamphlets and books I've got lying
around relating to Russia?"
"Yes, I think most anybody would notice that--anybody who wasn't dead."
"Well, I've been posting myself a good while. That's a great and,
splendid nation, and deserves to be set free." He paused, then added in
a quite matter-of-fact way, "When I get this money I'm going to set it
free."
"Great guns!"
"Why, what makes you jump like that?"
"Dear me, when you are going to drop a remark under a man's chair that is
likely to blow him out through the roof, why don't you put some
expression, some force, some noise unto it that will prepare him? You
shouldn't flip out such a gigantic thing as this in that colorless kind
of a way. You do jolt a person up, so. Go on, now, I'm all right again.
Tell me all about it. I'm all interest--yes, and sympathy, too."
"Well, I've looked the ground over, and concluded that the methods of the
Russian patriots, while good enough considering the way the boys are
hampered, are not the best; at least not the quickest. They are trying
to revolutionize Russia from within; that's pretty slow, you know, and
liable to interruption all the time, and is full of perils for the
workers. Do you know how Peter the Great started his army? He didn't
start it on the family premises under the noses of the Strelitzes; no, he
started it away off yonder, privately,--only just one regiment, you know,
and he built to that. The first thing the Strelitzes knew, the regiment
was an army, their position was turned, and they had to take a walk.
Just that little idea made the biggest and worst of all the despotisms
the world has seen. The same idea can unmake it. I'm going to prove it.
I'm going to get out to one side and work my scheme the way Peter did."
"This is mighty interesting, Rossmore. What is it you are, going to do?"
"I am going to buy Siberia and start a republic."
"There,--bang you go again, without giving any notice! Going to buy it?"
"Yes, as soon as I get the money. I don't care what the price is, I
shall take it. I can afford it, and I will. Now then, consider this--
and you've never thought of it, I'll warrant. Where is the place where
there is twenty-five times more manhood, pluck, true heroism,
unselfishness, devotion to high and noble ideals, adoration of liberty,
wide education, and brains, per thousand of population, than any other
domain in the whole world can show?"
"Siberia!"
"Right."
"It is true; it certainly is true, but I never thought of it before."
"Nobody ever thinks of it. But it's so, just the same. In those mines
and prisons are gathered together the very finest and noblest and
capablest multitude of human beings that God is able to create. Now if
you had that kind of a population to sell, would you offer it to a
despotism? No, the despotism has no use for it; you would lose money.
A despotism has no use for anything but human cattle. But suppose you
want to start a republic?"
"Yes, I see. It's just the material for it."
"Well, I should say so! There's Siberia with just the very finest and
choicest material on the globe for a republic, and more coming--more
coming all the time, don't you see! It is being daily, weekly, monthly
recruited by the most perfectly devised system that has ever been
invented, perhaps. By this system the whole of the hundred millions of
Russia are being constantly and patiently sifted, sifted, sifted, by
myriads of trained experts, spies appointed by the Emperor personally;
and whenever they catch a man, woman or child that has got any brains or
education or character, they ship that person straight to Siberia. It is
admirable, it is wonderful. It is so searching and so effective that it
keeps the general level of Russian intellect and education down to that
of the Czar."
"Come, that sounds like exaggeration."
"Well, it's what they say anyway. But I think, myself, it's a lie. And
it doesn't seem right to slander a whole nation that way, anyhow. Now,
then, you see what the material is, there in Siberia, for a republic."
He paused, and his breast began to heave and his eye to burn, under the
impulse of strong emotion. Then his words began to stream forth, with
constantly increasing energy and fire, and he rose to his feet as if to
give himself larger freedom. "The minute I organize that republic, the
light of liberty, intelligence, justice, humanity, bursting from it,
flooding from it, flaming from it, will concentrate the gaze of the whole
astonished world as upon the miracle of a new sun; Russia's countless
multitudes of slaves will rise up and march, march!--eastward, with that
great light transfiguring their faces as they come, and far back of them
you will see-what will you see?--a vacant throne in an empty land! It
can be done, and by God I will do it!"
He stood a moment bereft of earthy consciousness by his exaltation; then
consciousness returned, bringing him a slight shock, and he said with
grave earnestness:
"I must ask you to pardon me, Major Hawkins. I have never used that
expression before, and I beg you will forgive it this time."
Hawkins was quite willing.
"You see, Washington, it is an error which I am by nature not liable to.
Only excitable people, impulsive people, are exposed to it. But the
circumstances of the present case--I being a democrat by birth and
preference, and an aristocrat by inheritance and relish--"
The earl stopped suddenly, his frame stiffened, and he began to stare
speechless through the curtainless window. Then he pointed, and gasped
out a single rapturous word:
"Look!"
"What is it, Colonel?"
"IT!"
"No!"
"Sure as you're born. Keep perfectly still. I'll apply the influence--
I'll turn on all my force. I've brought It thus far--I'll fetch It right
into the house. You'll see."
He was making all sorts of passes in the air with his hands.
"There! Look at that. I've made It smile! See?"
Quite true. Tracy, out for an afternoon stroll, had come unexpectantly
upon his family arms displayed upon this shabby house-front. The
hatchments made him smile; which was nothing, they had made the
neighborhood cats do that.
"Look, Hawkins, look! I'm drawing It over!"
"You're drawing it sure, Rossmore. If I ever had any doubts about
materialization, they're gone, now, and gone for good. Oh, this is a
joyful day!"
Tracy was sauntering over to read the door-plate. Before he was half way
over he was saying to himself, "Why, manifestly these are the American
Claimant's quarters."
"It's coming--coming right along. I'll slide, down and pull It in. You
follow after me."
Sellers, pale and a good deal agitated, opened the door and confronted
Tracy. The old man could not at once get his voice: then he pumped out a
scattering and hardly coherent salutation, and followed it with--
"Walk in, walk right in, Mr.--er--"
"Tracy--Howard Tracy."
"Tracy--thanks--walk right in, you're expected."
Tracy entered, considerably puzzled, and said:
"Expected? I think there must be some mistake."
"Oh, I judge not," said Sellers, who--noticing that Hawkins had arrived,
gave him a sidewise glance intended to call his close attention to a
dramatic effect which he was proposing to produce by his next remark.
Then he said, slowly and impressively--"I am--YOU KNOW WHO."
To the astonishment of both conspirators the remark produced no dramatic
effect at all; for the new-comer responded with a quite innocent and
unembarrassed air--
"No, pardon me. I don't know who you are. I only suppose--but no doubt
correctly--that you are the gentleman whose title is on the doorplate."
"Right, quite right--sit down, pray sit down." The earl was rattled,
thrown off his bearings, his head was in a whirl. Then he noticed
Hawkins standing apart and staring idiotically at what to him was the
apparition of a defunct man, and a new idea was born to him. He said to
Tracy briskly:
"But a thousand pardons, dear sir, I am forgetting courtesies due to a
guest and stranger. Let me introduce my friend General Hawkins--General
Hawkins, our new Senator--Senator from the latest and grandest addition to
the radiant galaxy of sovereign States, Cherokee Strip"--(to himself,
"that name will shrivel him up!"--but it didn't, in the least, and the
Colonel resumed the introduction piteously disheartened and amazed),--
"Senator Hawkins, Mr. Howard Tracy, of--er--"
"England."
"England!--Why that's im--"
"England, yes, native of England."
"Recently from there?"
"Yes, quite recently."
Said the Colonel to himself, "This phantom lies like an expert.
Purifying this kind by fire don't work. I'll sound him a little further,
give him another chance or two to work his gift." Then aloud--with deep
irony--
"Visiting our great country for recreation and amusement, no doubt.
I suppose you find that traveling in the majestic expanses of our Far
West is--"
"I haven't been West, and haven't been devoting myself to amusement with
any sort of exclusiveness, I assure you. In fact, to merely live, an
artist has got to work, not play."
"Artist!" said Hawkins to himself, thinking of the rifled bank; "that is
a name for it!"
"Are you an artist?" asked the colonel; and added to himself, "now I'm
going to catch him."
"In a humble way, yes."
"What line?" pursued the sly veteran.
"Oils."
"I've got him!" said Sellers to himself. Then aloud, "This is fortunate.
Could I engage you to restore some of my paintings that need that
attention?"
"I shall be very glad. Pray let me see them."
No shuffling, no evasion, no embarrassment, even under this crucial test.
The Colonel was nonplussed. He led Tracy to a chromo which had suffered
damage in a former owner's hands through being used as a lamp mat, and
said, with a flourish of his hand toward the picture--
"This del Sarto--"
"Is that a del Sarto?"
The colonel bent a look of reproach upon Tracy, allowed it to sink home,
then resumed as if there had been no interruption--
"This del Sarto is perhaps the only original of that sublime master in
our country. You see, yourself, that the work is of such exceeding
delicacy that the risk--could--er--would you mind giving me a little
example of what you can do before we--"
"Cheerfully, cheerfully. I will copy one of these marvels."
Water-color materials--relics of Miss Sally's college life--were brought.
Tracy said he was better in oils, but would take a chance with these.
So he was left alone. He began his work, but the attractions of the
place were too strong for him, and he got up and went drifting about,
fascinated; also amazed.
CHAPTER XIX.
Meantime the earl and Hawkins were holding a troubled and anxious private
consultation. The earl said:
"The mystery that bothers me, is, where did It get its other arm?"
"Yes--it worries me, too. And another thing troubles me--the apparition
is English. How do you account for that, Colonel?"
"Honestly, I don't know, Hawkins, I don't really know. It is very
confusing and awful."
"Don't you think maybe we've waked up the wrong one?"
"The wrong one? How do you account for the clothes?"
"The clothes are right, there's no getting around it. What are we going
to do? We can't collect, as I see. The reward is for a one-armed
American. This is a two-armed Englishman."
"Well, it may be that that is not objectionable. You see it isn't less
than is called for, it is more, and so,--"
But he saw that this argument was weak, and dropped it. The friends sat
brooding over their perplexities some time in silence. Finally the
earl's face began to glow with an inspiration, and he said, impressively:
"Hawkins, this materialization is a grander and nobler science than we
have dreamed of. We have little imagined what a solemn and stupendous
thing we have done. The whole secret is perfectly clear to me, now,
clear as day. Every man is made up of heredities, long-descended atoms
and particles of his ancestors. This present materialization is
incomplete. We have only brought it down to perhaps the beginning of
this century."
"What do you mean, Colonel!" cried Hawkins, filled with vague alarms by
the old man's awe-compelling words and manner.
"This. We've materialized this burglar's ancestor!"
"Oh, don't--don't say that. It's hideous."
"But it's true, Hawkins, I know it. Look at the facts. This apparition
is distinctly English--note that. It uses good grammar--note that. It is
an Artist--note that. It has the manners and carriage of a gentleman--
note that. Where's your cow-boy? Answer me that."
"Rossmore, this is dreadful--it's too dreadful to think of!"
"Never resurrected a rag of that burglar but the clothes, not a solitary
rag of him but the clothes."
"Colonel, do you really mean--"
The Colonel brought his fist down with emphasis and said:
"I mean exactly this. The materialization was immature, the burglar has
evaded us, this is nothing but a damned ancestor!"
He rose and walked the floor in great excitement.
Hawkins said plaintively:
"It's a bitter disappointment--bitter."
"I know it. I know it, Senator; I feel it as deeply as anybody could.
But we've got to submit--on moral grounds. I need money, but God knows
I am not poor enough or shabby enough to be an accessory to the punishing
of a man's ancestor for crimes committed by that ancestor's posterity."
"But Colonel!" implored Hawkins; "stop and think; don't be rash; you know
it's the only chance we've got to get the money; and besides, the Bible
itself says posterity to the fourth generation shall be punished for the
sins and crimes committed by ancestors four generations back that hadn't
anything to do with them; and so it's only fair to turn the rule around
and make it work both ways."
The Colonel was struck with the strong logic of this position. He strode
up and down, and thought it painfully over. Finally he said:
"There's reason in it; yes, there's reason in it. And so, although it
seems a piteous thing to sweat this poor ancient devil for a burglary he
hadn't the least hand in, still if duty commands I suppose we must give
him up to the authorities."
"I would," said Hawkins, cheered and relieved, "I'd give him up if he was
a thousand ancestors compacted into one."
"Lord bless me, that's just what he is," said Sellers, with something
like a groan, "it's exactly what he is; there's a contribution in him
from every ancestor he ever had. In him there's atoms of priests,
soldiers, crusaders, poets, and sweet and gracious women--all kinds and
conditions of folk who trod this earth in old, old centuries, and
vanished out of it ages ago, and now by act of ours they are summoned
from their holy peace to answer for gutting a one-horse bank away out on
the borders of Cherokee Strip, and it's just a howling outrage!"
"Oh, don't talk like that, Colonel; it takes the heart all out of me, and
makes me ashamed of the part I am proposing to--"
"Wait--I've got it!"
"A saving hope? Shout it out, I am perishing."
"It's perfectly simple; a child would have thought of it. He is all
right, not a flaw in him, as far as I have carried the work. If I've
been able to bring him as far as the beginning of this century, what's to
stop me now? I'll go on and materialize him down to date."
"Land, I never thought of that!" said Hawkins all ablaze with joy again.
"It's the very thing. What a brain you have got! And will he shed the
superfluous arm?"
"He will."
"And lose his English accent?"
"It will wholly disappear. He will speak Cherokee Strip--and other forms
of profanity."
"Colonel, maybe he'll confess!"
"Confess? Merely that bank robbery?"
"Merely? Yes, but why 'merely'?"
The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: "Hawkins, he will be
wholly under my command. I will make him confess every crime he ever
committed. There must be a thousand. Do you get the idea?"
"Well--not quite."
"The rewards will come to us."
"Prodigious conception! I never saw such ahead for seeing with a
lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a
central idea."
"It is nothing; it comes natural to me. When his time is out in one jail
he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but
collect the rewards as he goes along. It is a perfectly steady income as
long as we live, Hawkins. And much better than other kinds of
investments, because he is indestructible."
"It looks--it really does look the way you say; it does indeed."
"Look?--why it is. It will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide
and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that
I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever
controlled."
"Do you really think so?"
"I do, indeed."
"O, Colonel, the wasting grind and grief of poverty! If we could realize
immediately. I don't mean sell it all, but sell part--enough, you know,
to--"
"See how you tremble with excitement. That comes of lack of experience.
My boy, when you have been familiar with vast operations as long as I
have, you'll be different. Look at me; is my eye dilated? do you notice
a quiver anywhere? Feel my pulse: plunk-plunk-plunk--same as if I were
asleep. And yet, what is passing through my calm cold mind? A
procession of figures which would make a financial novice drunk just the
sight of them. Now it is by keeping cool, and looking at a thing all
around, that a man sees what's really in it, and saves himself from the
novice's unfailing mistake--the one you've just suggested--eagerness to
realize. Listen to me. Your idea is to sell a part of him for ready
cash. Now mine is--guess."
"I haven't an idea. What is it?"
"Stock him--of course."
"Well, I should never have thought of that."
"Because you are not a financier. Say he has committed a thousand
crimes. Certainly that's a low estimate. By the look of him, even in
his unfinished condition, he has committed all of a million. But call it
only a thousand to be perfectly safe; five thousand reward, multiplied by
a thousand, gives us a dead sure cash basis of--what? Five million
dollars!"
"Wait--let me get my breath."
"And the property indestructible. Perpetually fruitful--perpetually; for
a property with his disposition will go on committing crimes and winning
rewards."
"You daze me, you make my head whirl!"
"Let it whirl, it won't do it any harm. Now that matter is all fixed--
leave it alone. I'll get up the company and issue the stock, all in good
time. Just leave it in my hands. I judge you don't doubt my ability to
work it up for all it is worth."
"Indeed I don't. I can say that with truth."
"All right, then. That's disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old
operators, go by order and system--no helter-skelter business with us.
What's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the
materialization--the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at
once. I think--
"Look here, Rossmore. You didn't lock It in. A hundred to one it has
escaped!"
"Calm yourself, as to that; don't give yourself any uneasiness."
"But why shouldn't it escape?"
"Let it, if it wants to? What of it?"
"Well, I should consider it a pretty serious calamity."
"Why, my dear boy, once in my power, always in my power. It may go and
come freely. I can produce it here whenever I want it, just by the
exercise of my will."
"Well, I am truly glad to hear that, I do assure you."
"Yes, I shall give it all the painting it wants to do, and we and the
family will make it as comfortable and contented as we can. No occasion
to restrain its movements. I hope to persuade it to remain pretty quiet,
though, because a materialization which is in a state of arrested
development must of necessity be pretty soft and flabby and
substanceless, and--er--by the way, I wonder where It comes from?"
"How? What do you mean?"
The earl pointed significantly--and interrogatively toward the sky.
Hawkins started; then settled into deep reflection; finally shook his
head sorrowfully and pointed downwards.
"What makes you think so, Washington?"
"Well, I hardly know, but really you can see, yourself, that he doesn't
seem to be pining for his last place."
"It's well thought! Soundly deduced. We've done that Thing a favor.
But I believe I will pump it a little, in a quiet way, and find out if we
are right."
"How long is it going to take to finish him off and fetch him down to
date, Colonel?"
"I wish I knew, but I don't. I am clear knocked out by this new detail--
this unforeseen necessity of working a subject down gradually from his
condition of ancestor to his ultimate result as posterity. But I'll make
him hump himself, anyway."
"Rossmore!"
"Yes, dear. We're in the laboratory. Come--Hawkins is here. Mind, now
Hawkins--he's a sound, living, human being to all the family--don't
forget that. Here she comes."
"Keep your seats, I'm not coming in. I just wanted to ask, who is it
that's painting down there?"
"That? Oh, that's a young artist; young Englishman, named Tracy; very
promising--favorite pupil of Hans Christian Andersen or one of the other
old masters--Andersen I'm pretty sure it is; he's going to half-sole some
of our old Italian masterpieces. Been talking to him?"
"Well, only a word. I stumbled right in on him without expecting anybody
was there. I tried to be polite to him; offered him a snack"--(Sellers
delivered a large wink to Hawkins from behind his hand), "but he
declined, and said he wasn't hungry" (another sarcastic wink); "so I
brought some apples" (doublewink), "and he ate a couple of--"
"What!" and the colonel sprang some yards toward the ceiling and came
down quaking with astonishment.
Lady Rossmore was smitten dumb with amazement. She gazed at the sheepish
relic of Cherokee Strip, then at her husband, and then at the guest
again. Finally she said:
"What is the matter with you, Mulberry?"
He did not answer immediately. His back was turned; he was bending over
his chair, feeling the seat of it. But he answered next moment, and
said:
"Ah, there it is; it was a tack."
The lady contemplated him doubtfully a moment, then said, pretty
snappishly:
"All that for a tack! Praise goodness it wasn't a shingle nail, it would
have landed you in the Milky Way. I do hate to have my nerves shook up
so." And she turned on her heel and went her way.
As soon as she was safely out, the Colonel said, in a suppressed voice:
"Come--we must see for ourselves. It must be a mistake."
They hurried softly down and peeped in. Sellers whispered, in a sort of
despair--
It is eating! What a grisly spectacle! Hawkins it's horrible! Take me
away--I can't stand--
They tottered back to the laboratory.
CHAPTER XX.
Tracy made slow progress with his work, for his mind wandered a good
deal. Many things were puzzling him. Finally a light burst upon him all
of a sudden--seemed to, at any rate--and he said to himself, "I've got
the clew at last--this man's mind is off its balance; I don't know how
much, but it's off a point or two, sure; off enough to explain this mess
of perplexities, anyway. These dreadful chromos which he takes for old
masters; these villainous portraits--which to his frantic mind represent
Rossmores; the hatchments; the pompous name of this ramshackle old crib--
Rossmore Towers; and that odd assertion of his, that I was expected. How
could I be expected? that is, Lord Berkeley. He knows by the papers that
that person was burned up in the New Gadsby. Why, hang it, he really
doesn't know who he was expecting; for his talk showed that he was not
expecting an Englishman, or yet an artist, yet I answer his requirements
notwithstanding. He seems sufficiently satisfied with me. Yes, he is a
little off; in fact I am afraid he is a good deal off, poor old
gentleman. But he's interesting--all people in about his condition are,
I suppose. I hope he'll like my work; I would like to come every day and
study him. And when I write my father--ah, that hurts! I mustn't get on
that subject; it isn't good for my spirits. Somebody coming--I must get
to work. It's the old gentleman again. He looks bothered. Maybe my
clothes are suspicious; and they are--for an artist. If my conscience
would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question.
I wonder what he's making those passes in the air for, with his hands.
I seem to be the object of them. Can he be trying to mesmerize me?
I don't quite like it. There's something uncanny about it."
The colonel muttered to himself, "It has an effect on him, I can see it
myself. That's enough for one time, I reckon. He's not very solid, yet,
I suppose, and I might disintegrate him. I'll just put a sly question or
two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and
where he's from."
He approached and said affably:
"Don't let me disturb you, Mr. Tracy; I only want to take a little
glimpse of your work. Ah, that's fine--that's very fine indeed. You are
doing it elegantly. My daughter will be charmed with this. May I sit
down by you?"
"Oh, do; I shall be glad."
"It won't disturb you? I mean, won't dissipate your inspirations?"
Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily
discommoded.
The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions--
questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy--but the answers
conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to
himself, with mixed pride and gratification:
"It's a good job as far as I've got, with it. He's solid. Solid and
going to last, solid as the real thing."
"It's wonderful--wonderful. I believe I could--petrify him." After a
little he asked, warily "Do you prefer being here, or--or there?"
"There? Where?"
"Why--er--where you've been?"
Tracy's thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision.
"Oh, here, much!"
The colonel was startled, and said to himself, "There's no uncertain ring
about that. It indicates where he's been to, poor fellow. Well, I am
satisfied, now. I'm glad I got him out."
He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go. At length he
said to himself, "Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of
my endeavors in poor Berkeley's case. He went in the other direction.
Well, it's all right. He's better off."
Sally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the
artist was introduced to her. It was a violent case of mutual love at
first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact,
perhaps. The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, "Perhaps
he is not insane, after all." Sally sat down, and showed an interest in
Tracy's work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of
it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould.
Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his
leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse"
thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his
affairs. The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric,
perhaps, but that is all." He reproached himself for having injuriously
judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really
was.
Of course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along
comfortably. The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities
of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is
nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities,
consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is
acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows
how it came about. This new acquaintanceship--friendship, indeed--
progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness
of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact--
that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious
of Tracy's clothes. Later this consciousness was re-awakened; it was
then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it
was apparent to Tracy that he wasn't. The re-awakening was brought about
by Gwendolen's inviting the artist to stay to dinner. He had to decline,
because he wanted to live, now--that is, now that there was something to
live for--and he could not survive in those clothes at a gentleman's
table. He thought he knew that. But he went away happy, for he saw that
Gwendolen was disappointed.
And whither did he go? He went straight to a slopshop and bought as neat
and reasonably well-fitting a suit of clothes as an Englishman could be
persuaded to wear. He said--to himself, but at his conscience--"I know
it's wrong; but it would be wrong not to do it; and two wrongs do not
make a right."
This satisfied him, and made his heart light. Perhaps it will also
satisfy the reader--if he can make out what it means.
The old people were troubled about Gwendolen at dinner, because she was
so distraught and silent. If they had noticed, they would have found
that she was sufficiently alert and interested whenever the talk stumbled
upon the artist and his work; but they didn't notice, and so the chat
would swap around to some other subject, and then somebody would
presently be privately worrying about Gwendolen again, and wondering if
she were not well, or if something had gone wrong in the millinery line.
Her mother offered her various reputable patent medicines, and tonics
with iron and other hardware in them, and her father even proposed to
send out for wine, relentless prohibitionist and head of the order in the
District of Columbia as he was, but these kindnesses were all declined--
thankfully, but with decision. At bedtime, when the family were breaking
up for the night, she privately looted one of the brushes, saying to
herself, "It's the one he has used, the most."
The next morning Tracy went forth wearing his new suit, and equipped with
a pink in his button-hole--a daily attention from Puss. His whole soul
was full of Gwendolen Sellers, and this condition was an inspiration,
art-wise. All the morning his brush pawed nimbly away at the canvases,
almost without his awarity--awarity, in this sense being the sense of
being aware, though disputed by some authorities--turning out marvel upon
marvel, in the way of decorative accessories to the portraits, with a
felicity and celerity which amazed the veterans of the firm and fetched
out of them continuous explosions of applause.
Meantime Gwendolen was losing her morning, and many dollars. She
supposed Tracy was coming in the forenoon--a conclusion which she had
jumped to without outside help. So she tripped down stairs every little
while from her work-parlor to arrange the brushes and things over again,
and see if he had arrived. And when she was in her work-parlor it was
not profitable, but just the other way--as she found out to her sorrow.
She had put in her idle moments during the last little while back, in
designing a particularly rare and capable gown for herself, and this
morning she set about making it up; but she was absent minded, and made
an irremediable botch of it. When she saw what she had done, she knew
the reason of it and the meaning of it; and she put her work away from
her and said she would accept the sign. And from that time forth she
came no more away from the Audience Chamber, but remained there and
waited. After luncheon she waited again. A whole hour. Then a great
joy welled up in her heart, for she saw him coming. So she flew back up
stairs thankful, and could hardly wait for him to miss the principal
brush, which she had mislaid down there, but knew where she had mislaid
it. However, all in good time the others were called in and couldn't
find the brush, and then she was sent for, and she couldn't find it
herself for some little time; but then she found it when the others had
gone away to hunt in the kitchen and down cellar and in the woodshed,
and all those other places where people look for things whose ways they
are not familiar with. So she gave him the brush, and remarked that she
ought to have seen that everything was ready for him, but it hadn't
seemed necessary, because it was so early that she wasn't expecting--but
she stopped there, surprised at herself for what she was saying; and he
felt caught and ashamed, and said to himself, "I knew my impatience would
drag me here before I was expected, and betray me, and that is just what
it has done; she sees straight through me--and is laughing at me, inside,
of course."
Gwendolen was very much pleased, on one account, and a little the other
way in another; pleased with the new clothes and the improvement which
they had achieved; less pleased by the pink in the buttonhole.
Yesterday's pink had hardly interested her; this one was just like it,
but somehow it had got her immediate attention, and kept it. She wished
she could think of some way of getting at its history in a properly
colorless and indifferent way. Presently she made a venture. She said:
"Whatever a man's age may be, he can reduce it several years by putting a
bright-colored flower in his button-hole. I have often noticed that.
Is that your sex's reason for wearing a boutonniere?"
"I fancy not, but certainly that reason would be a sufficient one. I've
never heard of the idea before."
"You seem to prefer pinks. Is it on account of the color, or the form?"
"Oh no," he said, simply, "they are given to me. I don't think I have
any preference."
"They are given to him," she said to herself, and she felt a coldness
toward that pink. "I wonder who it is, and what she is like." The
flower began to take up a good deal of room; it obtruded itself
everywhere, it intercepted all views, and marred them; it was becoming
exceedingly annoying and conspicuous for a little thing. "I wonder if he
cares for her." That thought gave her a quite definite pain.
CHAPTER XXI.
She had made everything comfortable for the artist; there was no further
pretext for staying. So she said she would go, now, and asked him to
summon the servants in case he should need anything. She went away
unhappy; and she left unhappiness behind her; for she carried away all
the sunshine. The time dragged heavily for both, now. He couldn't paint
for thinking of her; she couldn't design or millinerize with any heart,
for thinking of him. Never before had painting seemed so empty to him,
never before had millinerizing seemed so void of interest to her. She
had gone without repeating that dinner-invitation--an almost unendurable
disappointment to him. On her part-well, she was suffering, too; for she
had found she couldn't invite him. It was not hard yesterday, but it was
impossible to-day. A thousand innocent privileges seemed to have been
filched from her unawares in the past twenty-four hours. To-day she felt
strangely hampered, restrained of her liberty. To-day she couldn't
propose to herself to do anything or say anything concerning this young
man without being instantly paralyzed into non-action by the fear that he
might "suspect." Invite him to dinner to-day? It made her shiver to
think of it.
And so her afternoon was one long fret. Broken at intervals. Three
times she had to go down stairs on errands--that is, she thought she had
to go down stairs on errands. Thus, going and coming, she had six
glimpses of him, in the aggregate, without seeming to look in his
direction; and she tried to endure these electric ecstasies without
showing any sign, but they fluttered her up a good deal, and she felt
that the naturalness she was putting on was overdone and quite too
frantically sober and hysterically calm to deceive.
The painter had his share of the rapture; he had his six glimpses, and
they smote him with waves of pleasure that assaulted him, beat upon him,
washed over him deliciously, and drowned out all consciousness of what he
was doing with his brush. So there were six places in his canvas which
had to be done over again.
At last Gwendolen got some peace of mind by sending word to the
Thompsons, in the neighborhood, that she was coming there to dinner.
She wouldn't be reminded, at that table, that there was an absentee who
ought to be a presentee--a word which she meant to look out in the
dictionary at a calmer time.
About this time the old earl dropped in for a chat with the artist, and
invited him to stay to dinner. Tracy cramped down his joy and gratitude
by a sudden and powerful exercise of all his forces; and he felt that now
that he was going to be close to Gwendolen, and hear her voice and watch
her face during several precious hours, earth had nothing valuable to add
to his life for the present.
The earl said to himself, "This spectre can eat apples, apparently.
We shall find out, now, if that is a specialty. I think, myself, it's a
specialty. Apples, without doubt, constitute the spectral limit. It was
the case with our first parents. No, I am wrong--at least only partly
right. The line was drawn at apples, just as in the present case, but it
was from the other direction." The new clothes gave him a thrill of
pleasure and pride. He said to himself, "I've got part of him down to
date, anyway."
Sellers said he was pleased with Tracy's work; and he went on and engaged
him to restore his old masters, and said he should also want him to paint
his portrait and his wife's and possibly his daughter's. The tide of the
artist's happiness was at flood, now. The chat flowed pleasantly along
while Tracy painted and Sellers carefully unpacked a picture which he had
brought with him. It was a chromo; a new one, just out. It was the
smirking, self-satisfied portrait of a man who was inundating the Union
with advertisements inviting everybody to buy his specialty, which was a
three-dollar shoe or a dress-suit or something of that kind. The old
gentleman rested the chromo flat upon his lap and gazed down tenderly
upon it, and became silent and meditative. Presently Tracy noticed that
he was dripping tears on it. This touched the young fellow's sympathetic
nature, and at the same time gave him the painful sense of being an
intruder upon a sacred privacy, an observer of emotions which a stranger
ought not to witness. But his pity rose superior to other
considerations, and compelled him to try to comfort the old mourner with
kindly words and a show of friendly interest. He said:
"I am very sorry--is it a friend whom--"
"Ah, more than that, far more than that--a relative, the dearest I had on
earth, although I was never permitted to see him. Yes, it is young Lord
Berkeley, who perished so heroically in the awful conflagration, what is
the matter?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing."
"It was a little startling to be so suddenly brought face to face, so to
speak, with a person one has heard so much talk about. Is it a good
likeness?"
"Without doubt, yes. I never saw him, but you can easily see the
resemblance to his father," said Sellers, holding up the chromo and
glancing from it to the chromo misrepresenting the Usurping Earl and back
again with an approving eye.
"Well, no--I am not sure that I make out the likeness. It is plain that
the Usurping Earl there has a great deal of character and a long face
like a horse's, whereas his heir here is smirky, moon-faced and
characterless."
"We are all that way in the beginning--all the line," said Sellers,
undisturbed. "We all start as moonfaced fools, then later we tadpole
along into horse-faced marvels of intellect and character. It is by that
sign and by that fact that I detect the resemblance here and know this
portrait to be genuine and perfect. Yes, all our family are fools at
first."
"This young man seems to meet the hereditary requirement, certainly."
"Yes, yes, he was a fool, without any doubt. Examine the face, the shape
of the head, the expression. It's all fool, fool, fool, straight
through."
"Thanks,--" said Tracy, involuntarily.
"Thanks?"
"I mean for explaining it to me. Go on, please."
"As I was saying, fool is printed all over the face."
"A body can even read the details."
"What do they say?"
"Well, added up, he is a wobbler."
"A which?"
"Wobbler. A person that's always taking a firm stand about something or
other--kind of a Gibraltar stand, he thinks, for unshakable fidelity and
everlastingness--and then, inside of a little while, he begins to wobble;
no more Gibraltar there; no, sir, a mighty ordinary commonplace weakling
wobbling--around on stilts. That's Lord Berkeley to a dot, you can see
it look at that sheep! But,--why are you blushing like sunset! Dear
sir, have I unwittingly offended in some way?"
"Oh, no indeed, no indeed. Far from it. But it always makes me blush to
hear a man revile his own blood." He said to himself, "How strangely his
vagrant and unguided fancies have hit upon the truth. By accident, he
has described me. I am that contemptible thing. When I left England I
thought I knew myself; I thought I was a very Frederick the Great for
resolution and staying capacity; whereas in truth I am just a Wobbler,
simply a Wobbler. Well--after all, it is at least creditable to have
high ideals and give birth to lofty resolutions; I will allow myself that
comfort." Then he said, aloud, "Could this sheep, as you call him, breed
a great and self-sacrificing idea in his head, do you think? Could he
meditate such a thing, for instance, as the renunciation of the earldom
and its wealth and its glories, and voluntary retirement to the ranks of
the commonalty, there to rise by his own merit or remain forever poor and
obscure?"
"Could he? Why, look at him--look at this simpering self-righteous mug!
There is your answer. It's the very thing he would think of. And he
would start in to do it, too."
"And then?"
"He'd wobble."
"And back down?"
"Every time."
"Is that to happen with all my--I mean would that happen to all his high
resolutions?"
"Oh certainly--certainly. It's the Rossmore of it."
"Then this creature was fortunate to die! Suppose, for argument's sake,
that I was a Rossmore, and--"
"It can't be done."
"Why?"
"Because it's not a supposable case. To be a Rossmore at your age, you'd
have to be a fool, and you're not a fool. And you'd have to be a
Wobbler, whereas anybody that is an expert in reading character can see
at a glance that when you set your foot down once, it's there to stay;
and earthquake can't wobble it." He added to himself, "That's enough to
say to him, but it isn't half strong enough for the facts. The more
I observe him, now, the more remarkable I find him. It is the strongest
face I have ever examined. There is almost superhuman firmness here,
immovable purpose, iron steadfastness of will. A most extraordinary
young man."
He presently said, aloud:
"Some time I want to ask your advice about a little matter, Mr. Tracy.
You see, I've got that young lord's remaims--my goodness, how you jump!"
"Oh, it's nothing, pray go on. You've got his remains?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure they are his, and not somebody else's?"
"Oh, perfectly sure. Samples, I mean. Not all of him."
"Samples?"
"Yes--in baskets. Some time you will be going home; and if you wouldn't
mind taking them along--"
"Who? I?"
"Yes--certainly. I don't mean now; but after a while; after--but look
here, would you like to see them?"
"No! Most certainly not. I don't want to see them."
"O, very well. I only thought--hey, where are you going, dear?"
"Out to dinner, papa."
Tracy was aghast. The colonel said, in a disappointed voice:
"Well, I'm sorry. Sho, I didn't know she was going out, Mr. Tracy."
Gwendolen's face began to take on a sort of apprehensive 'What-have-I-
done expression.'
"Three old people to one young one--well, it isn't a good team, that's a
fact."
Gwendolen's face betrayed a dawning hopefulness and she said--with a tone
of reluctance which hadn't the hall-mark on it:
"If you prefer, I will send word to the Thompsons that I--"
"Oh, is it the Thompsons? That simplifies it--sets everything right.
We can fix it without spoiling your arrangements, my child. You've got
your heart set on--"
"But papa, I'd just as soon go there some other--"
"No--I won't have it. You are a good hard-working darling child, and
your father is not the man to disappoint you when you--"
"But papa, I--"
"Go along, I won't hear a word. We'll get along, dear."
Gwendolen was ready to cry with venation. But there was nothing to do
but start; which she was about to do when her father hit upon an idea
which filled him with delight because it so deftly covered all the
difficulties of the situation and made things smooth and satisfactory:
"I've got it, my love, so that you won't be robbed of your holiday and at
the same time we'll be pretty satisfactorily fixed for a good time here.
You send Belle Thompson here--perfectly beautiful creature, Tracy,
perfectly beautiful; I want you to see that girl; why, you'll just go
mad; you'll go mad inside of a minute; yes, you send her right along,
Gwendolen, and tell her--why, she's gone!" He turned--she was already
passing out at the gate. He muttered, "I wonder what's the matter; I
don't know what her mouth's doing, but I think her shoulders are
swearing. Well," said Sellers blithely to Tracy, "I shall miss her--
parents always miss the children as soon as they're out of sight, it's
only a natural and wisely ordained partiality--but you'll be all right,
because Miss Belle will supply the youthful element for you and to your
entire content; and we old people will do our best, too. We shall have a
good enough time. And you'll have a chance to get better acquainted with
Admiral Hawkins. That's a rare character, Mr. Tracy--one of the rarest
and most engaging characters the world has produced. You'll find him
worth studying. I've studied him ever since he was a child and have
always found him developing. I really consider that one of the main
things that has enabled me to master the difficult science of
character-reading was the livid interest I always felt in that boy
and the baffling inscrutabilities of his ways and inspirations."
Tracy was not hearing a word. His spirits were gone, he was desolate.
"Yes, a most wonderful character. Concealment--that's the basis of it.
Always the first thing you want to do is to find the keystone a man's
character is built on--then you've got it. No misleading and apparently
inconsistent peculiarities can fool you then. What do you read on the
Senator's surface? Simplicity; a kind of rank and protuberant
simplicity; whereas, in fact, that's one of the deepest minds in the
world. A perfectly honest man--an absolutely honest and honorable man--
and yet without doubt the profoundest master of dissimulation the world
has ever seen."
"O, it's devilish!" This was wrung from the unlistening Tracy by the
anguished thought of what might have been if only the dinner arrangements
hadn't got mixed.
"No, I shouldn't call it that," said Sellers, who was now placidly
walking up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails and
listening to himself talk. "One could quite properly call it devilish
in another man, but not in the Senator. Your term is right--perfectly
right--I grant that--but the application is wrong. It makes a great
difference. Yes, he is a marvelous character. I do not suppose that any
other statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined with
the ability to totally conceal it. I may except George Washington and
Cromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there. A person
not an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and never
find out he had any more sense of humor than a cemetery."
A deep-drawn yard-long sigh from the distraught and dreaming artist,
followed by a murmured, "Miserable, oh, miserable!"
"Well, no, I shouldn't say that about it, quite. On the contrary, I
admire his ability to conceal his humor even more if possible than I
admire the gift itself, stupendous as it is. Another thing--General
Hawkins is a thinker; a keen, logical, exhaustive, analytical thinker--
perhaps the ablest of modern times. That is, of course, upon themes
suited to his size, like the glacial period, and the correlation of
forces, and the evolution of the Christian from the caterpillar--any of
those things; give him a subject according to his size, and just stand
back and watch him think! Why you can see the place rock! Ah, yes, you
must know him; you must get on the inside of him. Perhaps the most
extraordinary mind since Aristotle."
Dinner was kept waiting for a while for Miss Thompson, but as Gwendolen
had not delivered the invitation to her the waiting did no good, and the
household presently went to the meal without her. Poor old Sellers tried
everything his hospitable soul could devise to make the occasion an
enjoyable one for the guest, and the guest tried his honest best to be
cheery and chatty and happy for the old gentleman's sake; in fact all
hands worked hard in the interest of a mutual good time, but the thing
was a failure from the start; Tracy's heart was lead in his bosom, there
seemed to be only one prominent feature in the landscape and that was a
vacant chair, he couldn't drag his mind away from Gwendolen and his hard
luck; consequently his distractions allowed deadly pauses to slip in
every now and then when it was his turn to say something, and of course
this disease spread to the rest of the conversation--wherefore, instead
of having a breezy sail in sunny waters, as anticipated, everybody was
bailing out and praying for land. What could the matter be? Tracy alone
could have told, the others couldn't even invent a theory.
Meanwhile they were having a similarly dismal time at the Thompson house;
in fact a twin experience. Gwendolen was ashamed of herself for allowing
her disappointment to so depress her spirits and make her so strangely
and profoundly miserable; but feeling ashamed of herself didn't improve
the matter any; it only seemed to aggravate the suffering. She explained
that she was not feeling very well, and everybody could see that this was
true; so she got sincere sympathy and commiseration; but that didn't help
the case. Nothing helps that kind of a case. It is best to just stand
off and let it fester. The moment the dinner was over the girl excused
herself, and she hurried home feeling unspeakably grateful to get away
from that house and that intolerable captivity and suffering.
Will he be gone? The thought arose in her brain, but took effect in her
heels. She slipped into the house, threw off her things and made
straight for the dining room. She stopped and listened. Her father's
voice--with no life in it; presently her mother's--no life in that;
a considerable vacancy, then a sterile remark from Washington Hawkins.
Another silence; then, not Tracy's but her father's voice again.
"He's gone," she said to herself despairingly, and listlessly opened the
door and stepped within.
"Why, my child," cried the mother, "how white you are! Are you--has
anything--"
"White?" exclaimed Sellers. "It's gone like a flash; 'twasn't serious.
Already she's as red as the soul of a watermelon! Sit down, dear, sit
down--goodness knows you're welcome. Did you have a good time? We've
had great times here--immense. Why didn't Miss Belle come? Mr. Tracy is
not feeling well, and she'd have made him forget it."
She was content now; and out from her happy eyes there went a light that
told a secret to another pair of eyes there and got a secret in return.
In just that infinitely small fraction of a second those two great
confessions were made, received, and perfectly understood. All anxiety,
apprehension, uncertainty, vanished out of these young people's hearts
and left them filled with a great peace.
Sellers had had the most confident faith that with the new reinforcement
victory would be at this last moment snatched from the jaws of defeat,
but it was an error. The talk was as stubbornly disjointed as ever.
He was proud of Gwendolen, and liked to show her off, even against Miss
Belle Thompson, and here had been a great opportunity, and what had she
made of it? He felt a good deal put out. It vexed him to think that
this Englishman, with the traveling Briton's everlasting disposition to
generalize whole mountain ranges from single sample-grains of sand, would
jump to the conclusion that American girls were as dumb as himself--
generalizing the whole tribe from this single sample and she at her
poorest, there being nothing at that table to inspire her, give her a
start, keep her from going to sleep. He made up his mind that for the
honor of the country he would bring these two together again over the
social board before long. There would be a different result another
time, he judged. He said to himself, with a deep sense of injury,
"He'll put in his diary--they all keep diaries--he'll put in his diary
that she was miraculously uninteresting--dear, dear, but wasn't she!
I never saw the like--and yet looking as beautiful as Satan, too--and
couldn't seem to do anything but paw bread crumbs, and pick flowers to
pieces, and look fidgety. And it isn't any better here in the Hall of
Audience. I've had enough; I'll haul down my flag--the others may fight
it out if they want to."
He shook hands all around and went off to do some work which he said was
pressing. The idolaters were the width of the room apart; and apparently
unconscious of each other's presence. The distance got shortened a
little, now. Very soon the mother withdrew. The distance narrowed
again. Tracy stood before a chromo of some Ohio politician which had
been retouched and chain-mailed for a crusading Rossmore, and Gwendolen
was sitting on the sofa not far from his elbow artificially absorbed in
examining a photograph album that hadn't any photographs in it.
The "Senator" still lingered. He was sorry for the young people; it had
been a dull evening for them. In the goodness of his heart he tried to
make it pleasant for them now; tried to remove the ill impression
necessarily left by the general defeat; tried to be chatty, even tried to
be gay. But the responses were sickly, there was no starting any
enthusiasm; he would give it up and quit--it was a day specially picked
out and consecrated to failures.
But when Gwendolen rose up promptly and smiled a glad smile and said with
thankfulness and blessing, "Must you go?" it seemed cruel to desert, and
he sat down again.
He was about to begin a remark when--when he didn't. We have all been
there. He didn't know how he knew his concluding to stay longer had been
a mistake, he merely knew it; and knew it for dead certain, too. And so
he bade goodnight, and went mooning out, wondering what he could have
done that changed the atmosphere that way. As the door closed behind him
those two were standing side by side, looking at that door--looking at it
in a waiting, second-counting, but deeply grateful kind of way. And the
instant it closed they flung their arms about each other's necks, and
there, heart to heart and lip to lip--
"Oh, my God, she's kissing it!"
Nobody heard this remark, because Hawkins, who bred it, only thought it,
he didn't utter it. He had turned, the moment he had closed the door,
and had pushed it open a little, intending to re-enter and ask what
ill-advised thing he had done or said, and apologize for it. But he
didn't re-enter; he staggered off stunned, terrified, distressed.
CHAPTER XXII.
Five minutes later he was sitting in his room, with his head bowed within
the circle of his arms, on the table--final attitude of grief and despair.
His tears were flowing fast, and now and then a sob broke upon the
stillness. Presently he said:
"I knew her when she was a little child and used to climb about my knees;
I love her as I love my own, and now--oh, poor thing, poor thing, I
cannot bear it!--she's gone and lost her heart to this mangy
materializee! Why didn't we see that that might happen? But how could
we? Nobody could; nobody could ever have dreamed of such a thing. You
couldn't expect a person would fall in love with a wax-work. And this
one doesn't even amount to that."
He went on grieving to himself, and now and then giving voice to his
lamentations.
"It's done, oh, it's done, and there's no help for it, no undoing the
miserable business. If I had the nerve, I would kill it. But that
wouldn't do any good. She loves it; she thinks it's genuine and
authentic. If she lost it she would grieve for it just as she would for
a real person. And who's to break it to the family! Not I--I'll die
first. Sellers is the best human being I ever knew and I wouldn't any
more think of--oh, dear, why it'll break his heart when he finds it out.
And Polly's too. This comes of meddling with such infernal matters!
But for this, the creature would still be roasting in Sheol where it
belongs. How is it that these people don't smell the brimstone?
Sometimes I can't come into the same room with him without nearly
suffocating."
After a while he broke out again:
"Well, there's one thing, sure. The materializing has got to stop right
where it is. If she's got to marry a spectre, let her marry a decent one
out of the Middle Ages, like this one--not a cowboy and a thief such as
this protoplasmic tadpole's going to turn into if Sellers keeps on
fussing at it. It costs five thousand dollars cash and shuts down on the
incorporated company to stop the works at this point, but Sally Sellers's
happiness is worth more than that."
He heard Sellers coming, and got himself to rights. Sellers took a seat,
and said:
"Well, I've got to confess I'm a good deal puzzled. It did certainly
eat, there's no getting around it. Not eat, exactly, either, but it
nibbled; nibbled in an appetiteless way, but still it nibbled; and that's
just a marvel. Now the question is, what does it do with those
nibblings? That's it--what does it do with them? My idea is that we
don't begin to know all there is to this stupendous discovery yet.
But time will show--time and science--give us a chance, and don't get
impatient."
But he couldn't get Hawkins interested; couldn't make him talk to amount
to anything; couldn't drag him out of his depression. But at last he
took a turn that arrested Hawkins's attention.
"I'm coming to like him, Hawkins. He is a person of stupendous
character--absolutely gigantic. Under that placid exterior is concealed
the most dare-devil spirit that was ever put into a man--he's just a
Clive over again. Yes, I'm all admiration for him, on account of his
character, and liking naturally follows admiration, you know. I'm coming
to like him immensely. Do you know, I haven't the heart to degrade such
a character as that down to the burglar estate for money or for anything
else; and I've come to ask if you are willing to let the reward go, and
leave this poor fellow--"
"Where he is?"
"Yes--not bring him down to date."
"Oh, there's my hand; and my heart's in it, too!"
"I'll never forget you for this, Hawkins," said the old gentleman in a
voice which he found it hard to control. "You are making a great
sacrifice for me, and one which you can ill afford, but I'll never forget
your generosity, and if I live you shall not suffer for it, be sure of
that."
Sally Sellers immediately and vividly realized that she was become a new
being; a being of a far higher and worthier sort than she had been such a
little while before; an earnest being, in place of a dreamer; and
supplied with a reason for her presence in the world, where merely a
wistful and troubled curiosity about it had existed before. So great and
so comprehensive was the change which had been wrought, that she seemed
to herself to be a real person who had lately been a shadow; a something
which had lately been a nothing; a purpose, which had lately been a
fancy; a finished temple, with the altar-fires lit and the voice of
worship ascending, where before had been but an architect's confusion of
arid working plans, unintelligible to the passing eye and prophesying
nothing.
"Lady" Gwendolen! The pleasantness of that sound was all gone; it was an
offense to her ear now. She said:
"There--that sham belongs to the past; I will not be called by it any
more."
"I may call you simply Gwendolen? You will allow me to drop the
formalities straightway and name you by your dear first name without
additions?"
She was dethroning the pink and replacing it with a rosebud.
"There--that is better. I hate pinks--some pinks. Indeed yes, you are to
call me by my first name without additions--that is,--well, I don't mean
without additions entirely, but--"
It was as far as she could get. There was a pause; his intellect was
struggling to comprehend; presently it did manage to catch the idea in
time to save embarrassment all around, and he said gratefully--
"Dear Gwendolen! I may say that?"
"Yes--part of it. But--don't kiss me when I am talking, it makes me
forget what I was going to say. You can call me by part of that form,
but not the last part. Gwendolen is not my name."
"Not your name?" This in a tone of wonder and surprise.
The girl's soul was suddenly invaded by a creepy apprehension, a quite
definite sense of suspicion and alarm. She put his arms away from her,
looked him searchingly in the eye, and said:
"Answer me truly, on your honor. You are not seeking to marry me on
account of my rank?"
The shot almost knocked him through the wall, he was so little prepared
for it. There was something so finely grotesque about the question and
its parent suspicion, that he stopped to wonder and admire, and thus was
he saved from laughing. Then, without wasting precious time, he set
about the task of convincing her that he had been lured by herself alone,
and had fallen in love with her only, not her title and position; that he
loved her with all his heart, and could not love her more if she were a
duchess, or less if she were without home, name or family. She watched
his face wistfully, eagerly, hopefully, translating his words by its
expression; and when he had finished there was gladness in her heart--
a tumultuous gladness, indeed, though outwardly she was calm, tranquil,
even judicially austere. She prepared a surprise for him, now,
calculated to put a heavy strain upon those disinterested protestations
of his; and thus she delivered it, burning it away word by word as the
fuse burns down to a bombshell, and watching to see how far the explosion
would lift him:
"Listen--and do not doubt me, for I shall speak the exact truth. Howard
Tracy, I am no more an earl's child than you are!"
To her joy--and secret surprise, also--it never phased him. He was
ready, this time, and saw his chance. He cried out with enthusiasm,
"Thank heaven for that!" and gathered her to his arms.
To express her happiness was almost beyond her gift of speech.
"You make me the proudest girl in all the earth," she said, with her head
pillowed on his shoulder. "I thought it only natural that you should be
dazzled by the title--maybe even unconsciously, you being English--and
that you might be deceiving yourself in thinking you loved only me, and
find you didn't love me when the deception was swept away; so it makes me
proud that the revelation stands for nothing and that you do love just
me, only me--oh, prouder than any words can tell!"
"It is only you, sweetheart, I never gave one envying glance toward your
father's earldom. That is utterly true, dear Gwendolen."
"There--you mustn't call me that. I hate that false name. I told you it
wasn't mine. My name is Sally Sellers--or Sarah, if you like. From this
time I banish dreams, visions, imaginings, and will no more of them.
I am going to be myself--my genuine self, my honest self, my natural
self, clear and clean of sham and folly and fraud, and worthy of you.
There is no grain of social inequality between us; I, like you, am poor;
I, like you, am without position or distinction; you are a struggling
artist, I am that, too, in my humbler way. Our bread is honest bread,
we work for our living. Hand in hand we will walk hence to the grave,
helping each other in all ways, living for each other, being and
remaining one in heart and purpose, one in hope and aspiration,
inseparable to the end. And though our place is low, judged by the
world's eye, we will make it as high as the highest in the great
essentials of honest work for what we eat and wear, and conduct above
reproach. We live in a land, let us be thankful, where this is
all-sufficient, and no man is better than his neighbor by the grace
of God, but only by his own merit."
Tracy tried to break in, but she stopped him and kept the floor herself.
"I am not through yet. I am going to purge myself of the last vestiges
of artificiality and pretence, and then start fair on your own honest
level and be worthy mate to you thenceforth. My father honestly thinks
he is an earl. Well, leave him his dream, it pleases him and does no one
any harm: It was the dream of his ancestors before him. It has made
fools of the house of Sellers for generations, and it made something of a
fool of me, but took no deep root. I am done with it now, and for good.
Forty-eight hours ago I was privately proud of being the daughter of a
pinchbeck earl, and thought the proper mate for me must be a man of like
degree; but to-day--oh, how grateful I am for your love which has healed
my sick brain and restored my sanity!--I could make oath that no earl's
son in all the world--"
"Oh,--well, but--but--"
"Why, you look like a person in a panic. What is it? What is the
matter?"
"Matter? Oh, nothing--nothing. I was only going to say"--but in his
flurry nothing occurred to him to say, for a moment; then by a lucky
inspiration he thought of something entirely sufficient for the occasion,
and brought it out with eloquent force: "Oh, how beautiful you are! You
take my breath away when you look like that."
It was well conceived, well timed, and cordially delivered--and it got
its reward.
"Let me see. Where was I? Yes, my father's earldom is pure moonshine.
Look at those dreadful things on the wall. You have of course supposed
them to be portraits of his ancestors, earls of Rossmore. Well, they are
not. They are chromos of distinguished Americans--all moderns; but he
has carried them back a thousand years by re-labeling them. Andrew
Jackson there, is doing what he can to be the late American earl; and the
newest treasure in the collection is supposed to be the young English
heir--I mean the idiot with the crape; but in truth it's a shoemaker, and
not Lord Berkeley at all."
"Are you sure?"
"Why of course I am. He wouldn't look like that."
"Why?"
"Because his conduct in his last moments, when the fire was sweeping
around him shows that he was a man. It shows that he was a fine,
high-souled young creature."
Tracy was strongly moved by these compliments, and it seemed to him that
the girl's lovely lips took on anew loveliness when they were delivering
them. He said, softly:
"It is a pity he could not know what a gracious impression his behavior
was going to leave with the dearest and sweetest stranger in the
land of--"
"Oh, I almost loved him! Why, I think of him every day. He is always
floating about in my mind."
Tracy felt that this was a little more than was necessary. He was
conscious of the sting of jealousy. He said:
"It is quite right to think of him--at least now and then--that is, at
intervals--in perhaps an admiring way--but it seems to me that--"
"Howard Tracy, are you jealous of that dead man?"
He was ashamed--and at the same time not ashamed. He was jealous--and at
the same time he was not jealous. In a sense the dead man was himself;
in that case compliments and affection lavished upon that corpse went
into his own till and were clear profit. But in another sense the dead
man was not himself; and in that case all compliments and affection
lavished there were wasted, and a sufficient basis for jealousy. A tiff
was the result of the dispute between the two. Then they made it up, and
were more loving than ever. As an affectionate clincher of the
reconciliation, Sally declared that she had now banished Lord Berkeley
from her mind; and added, "And in order to make sure that he shall never
make trouble between us again, I will teach myself to detest that name
and all that have ever borne it or ever shall bear it."
This inflicted another pang, and Tracy was minded to ask her to modify
that a little just on general principles, and as practice in not
overdoing a good thing--perhaps he might better leave things as they were
and not risk bringing on another tiff. He got away from that particular,
and sought less tender ground for conversation.
"I suppose you disapprove wholly of aristocracies and nobilities, now
that you have renounced your title and your father's earldom."
"Real ones? Oh, dear no--but I've thrown aside our sham one for good."
This answer fell just at the right time and just in the right place, to
save the poor unstable young man from changing his political complexion
once more. He had been on the point of beginning to totter again, but
this prop shored him up and kept him from floundering back into democracy
and re-renouncing aristocracy. So he went home glad that he had asked
the fortunate question. The girl would accept a little thing like a
genuine earldom, she was merely prejudiced against the brummagem article.
Yes, he could have his girl and have his earldom, too: that question was
a fortunate stroke.
Sally went to bed happy, too; and remained happy, deliriously happy, for
nearly two hours; but at last, just as she was sinking into a contented
and luxurious unconsciousness, the shady devil who lives and lurks and
hides and watches inside of human beings and is always waiting for a
chance to do the proprietor a malicious damage, whispered to her soul and
said, "That question had a harmless look, but what was back of it?--what
was the secret motive of it?--what suggested it?"
The shady devil had knifed her, and could retire, now, and take a rest;
the wound would attend to business for him. And it did.
Why should Howard Tracy ask that question? If he was not trying to marry
her for the sake of her rank, what should suggest that question to him?
Didn't he plainly look gratified when she said her objections to
aristocracy had their limitations? Ah, he is after that earldom, that
gilded sham--it isn't poor me he wants.
So she argued, in anguish and tears. Then she argued the opposite
theory, but made a weak, poor business of it, and lost the case. She
kept the arguing up, one side and then the other, the rest of the night,
and at last fell asleep at dawn; fell in the fire at dawn, one may say;
for that kind of sleep resembles fire, and one comes out of it with his
brain baked and his physical forces fried out of him.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Tracy wrote his father before he sought his bed. He wrote a letter which
he believed would get better treatment than his cablegram received, for
it contained what ought to be welcome news; namely, that he had tried
equality and working for a living; had made a fight which he could find
no reason to be ashamed of, and in the matter of earning a living had
proved that he was able to do it; but that on the whole he had arrived at
the conclusion that he could not reform the world single-handed, and was
willing to retire from the conflict with the fair degree of honor which
he had gained, and was also willing to return home and resume his
position and be content with it and thankful for it for the future,
leaving further experiment of a missionary sort to other young people
needing the chastening and quelling persuasions of experience, the only
logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged
health. Then he approached the subject of marriage with the daughter of
the American Claimant with a good deal of caution and much painstaking
art. He said praiseful and appreciative things about the girl, but
didn't dwell upon that detail or make it prominent. The thing which he
made prominent was the opportunity now so happily afforded, to reconcile
York and Lancaster, graft the warring roses upon one stem, and end
forever a crying injustice which had already lasted far too long. One
could infer that he had thought this thing all out and chosen this way of
making all things fair and right because it was sufficiently fair and
considerably wiser than the renunciation-scheme which he had brought with
him from England. One could infer that, but he didn't say it. In fact
the more he read his letter over, the more he got to inferring it
himself.
When the old earl received that letter, the first part of it filled him
with a grim and snarly satisfaction; but the rest of it brought a snort
or two out of him that could be translated differently. He wasted no ink
in this emergency, either in cablegrams or letters; he promptly took ship
for America to look into the matter himself. He had staunchly held his
grip all this long time, and given no sign of the hunger at his heart to
see his son; hoping for the cure of his insane dream, and resolute that
the process should go through all the necessary stages without assuaging
telegrams or other nonsense from home, and here was victory at last.
Victory, but stupidly marred by this idiotic marriage project. Yes, he
would step over and take a hand in this matter himself.
During the first ten days following the mailing of the letter Tracy's
spirits had no idle time; they were always climbing up into the clouds or
sliding down into the earth as deep as the law of gravitation reached.
He was intensely happy or intensely miserable by turns, according to Miss
Sally's moods. He never could tell when the mood was going to change,
and when it changed he couldn't tell what it was that had changed it.
Sometimes she was so in love with him that her love was tropical, torrid,
and she could find no language fervent enough for its expression; then
suddenly, and without warning or any apparent reason, the weather would
change, and the victim would find himself adrift among the icebergs and
feeling as lonesome and friendless as the north pole. It sometimes
seemed to him that a man might better be dead than exposed to these
devastating varieties of climate.
The case was simple. Sally wanted to believe that Tracy's preference was
disinterested; so she was always applying little tests of one sort or
another, hoping and expecting that they would bring out evidence which
would confirm or fortify her belief. Poor Tracy did not know that these
experiments were being made upon him, consequently he walked promptly
into all the traps the girl set for him. These traps consisted in
apparently casual references to social distinction, aristocratic title
and privilege, and such things. Often Tracy responded to these
references heedlessly and not much caring what he said provided it kept
the talk going and prolonged the seance. He didn't suspect that the girl
was watching his face and listening for his words as one who watches the
judge's face and listens for the words which will restore him to home and
friends and freedom or shut him away from the sun and human companionship
forever. He didn't suspect that his careless words were being weighed,
and so he often delivered sentence of death when it would have been just
as handy and all the same to him to pronounce acquittal. Daily he broke
the girl's heart, nightly he sent her to the rack for sleep. He couldn't
understand it.
Some people would have put this and that together and perceived that the
weather never changed until one particular subject was introduced,
and that then it always changed. And they would have looked further,
and perceived that that subject was always introduced by the one party,
never the other. They would have argued, then, that this was done for a
purpose. If they could not find out what that purpose was in any simpler
or easier way, they would ask.
But Tracy was not deep enough or suspicious enough to think of these
things. He noticed only one particular; that the weather was always
sunny when a visit began. No matter how much it might cloud up later,
it always began with a clear sky. He couldn't explain this curious fact
to himself, he merely knew it to be a fact. The truth of the matter was,
that by the time Tracy had been out of Sally's sight six hours she was so
famishing for a sight of him that her doubts and suspicions were all
consumed away in the fire of that longing, and so always she came into
his presence as surprisingly radiant and joyous as she wasn't when she
went out of it.
In circumstances like these a growing portrait runs a good many risks.
The portrait of Sellers, by Tracy, was fighting along, day by day,
through this mixed weather, and daily adding to itself ineradicable signs
of the checkered life it was leading. It was the happiest portrait, in
spots, that was ever seen; but in other spots a damned soul looked out
from it; a soul that was suffering all the different kinds of distress
there are, from stomach ache to rabies. But Sellers liked it. He said it
was just himself all over--a portrait that sweated moods from every pore,
and no two moods alike. He said he had as many different kinds of
emotions in him as a jug.
It was a kind of a deadly work of art, maybe, but it was a starchy
picture for show; for it was life size, full length, and represented the
American earl in a peer's scarlet robe, with the three ermine bars
indicative of an earl's rank, and on the gray head an earl's coronet,
tilted just a wee bit to one side in a most gallus and winsome way. When
Sally's weather was sunny the portrait made Tracy chuckle, but when her
weather was overcast it disordered his mind and stopped the circulation
of his blood.
Late one night when the sweethearts had been having a flawless visit
together, Sally's interior devil began to work his specialty, and soon
the conversation was drifting toward the customary rock. Presently, in
the midst of Tracy's serene flow of talk, he felt a shudder which he knew
was not his shudder, but exterior to his breast although immediately
against it. After the shudder came sobs; Sally was crying.
"Oh, my darling, what have I done--what have I said? It has happened
again! What have I done to wound you?"
She disengaged herself from his arms and gave him a look of deep
reproach.
"What have you done? I will tell you what you have done. You have
unwittingly revealed--oh, for the twentieth time, though I could not
believe it, would not believe it!--that it is not me you love, but that
foolish sham my father's imitation earldom; and you have broken my
heart!"
"Oh, my child, what are you saying! I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Oh, Howard, Howard, the things you have uttered when you were forgetting
to guard your tongue, have betrayed you."
"Things I have uttered when I was forgetting to guard my tongue? These
are hard words. When have I remembered to guard it? Never in one
instance. It has no office but to speak the truth. It needs no guarding
for that."
"Howard, I have noted your words and weighed them, when you were not
thinking of their significance--and they have told me more than you meant
they should."
"Do you mean to say you have answered the trust I had in you by using it
as an ambuscade from which you could set snares for my unsuspecting
tongue and be safe from detection while you did it? You have not done
this--surely you have not done this thing. Oh, one's enemy could not do
it."
This was an aspect of the girl's conduct which she had not clearly
perceived before. Was it treachery? Had she abused a trust? The
thought crimsoned her cheeks with shame and remorse.
"Oh, forgive me," she said, "I did not know what I was doing. I have
been so tortured--you will forgive me, you must; I have suffered so much,
and I am so sorry and so humble; you do forgive me, don't you?--don't
turn away, don't refuse me; it is only my love that is at fault, and you
know I love you, love you with all my heart; I couldn't bear to--oh,
dear, dear, I am so miserable, and I sever meant any harm, and I didn't
see where this insanity was carrying me, and how it was wronging and
abusing the dearest heart in all the world to me--and--and--oh, take me
in your arms again, I have no other refuge, no other home and hope!"
There was reconciliation again--immediate, perfect, all-embracing--and
with it utter happiness. This would have been a good time to adjourn.
But no, now that the cloud-breeder was revealed at last; now that it was
manifest that all the sour weather had come from this girl's dread that
Tracy was lured by her rank and not herself, he resolved to lay that
ghost immediately and permanently by furnishing the best possible proof
that he couldn't have had back of him at any time the suspected motive.
So he said:
"Let me whisper a little secret in your ear--a secret which I have kept
shut up in my breast all this time. Your rank couldn't ever have been an
enticement. I am son and heir to an English earl!"
The girl stared at him--one, two, three moments, maybe a dozen--then her
lips parted:
"You?" she said, and moved away from him, still gazing at him in a kind
of blank amazement.
"Why--why, certainly I am. Why do you act like this? What have I done
now?"
"What have you done? You have certainly made a most strange statement.
You must see that yourself."
"Well," with a timid little laugh, "it may be a strange enough statement;
but of what consequence is that, if it is true?"
"If it is true. You are already retiring from it."
"Oh, not for a moment! You should not say that. I have not deserved it.
I have spoken the truth; why do you doubt it?"
Her reply was prompt.
"Simply because you didn't speak it earlier!"
"Oh!" It wasn't a groan, exactly, but it was an intelligible enough
expression of the fact that he saw the point and recognized that there
was reason in it.
"You have seemed to conceal nothing from me that I ought to know
concerning yourself, and you were not privileged to keep back such a
thing as this from me a moment after--after--well, after you had
determined to pay your court to me."
"Its true, it's true, I know it! But there were circumstances--in--
in the way--circumstances which--"
She waved the circumstances aside.
"Well, you see," he said, pleadingly, "you seemed so bent on our
traveling the proud path of honest labor and honorable poverty, that I
was terrified--that is, I was afraid--of--of--well, you know how you
talked."
"Yes, I know how I talked. And I also know that before the talk was
finished you inquired how I stood as regards aristocracies, and my answer
was calculated to relieve your fears."
He was silent a while. Then he said, in a discouraged way:
"I don't see any way out of it. It was a mistake. That is in truth all
it was, just a mistake. No harm was meant, no harm in the world.
I didn't see how it might some time look. It is my way. I don't seem to
see far."
The girl was almost disarmed, for a moment. Then she flared up again.
"An Earl's son! Do earls' sons go about working in lowly callings for
their bread and butter?"
"God knows they don't! I have wished they did."
"Do earls' sons sink their degree in a country like this, and come sober
and decent to sue for the hand of a born child of poverty when they can
go drunk, profane, and steeped in dishonorable debt and buy the pick and
choice of the millionaires' daughters of America? You an earl's son!
Show me the signs."
"I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs. But yet I am an
earl's son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me,
but you will not. I know no way to persuade you."
She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her
foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out:
"Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that
you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are?
You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there.
You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without
credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don't you see that,
yourself?"
He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated
a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence:
"I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you--
to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth. I had an ideal--call it
a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges
and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation
by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against
right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on
equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my
own merit if I rose at all."
The young girl scanned his face narrowly while he spoke; and there was
something about his simplicity of manner and statement which touched her
--touched her almost to the danger point; but she set her grip on the
yielding spirit and choked it to quiescence; it could not be wise to
surrender to compassion or any kind of sentiment, yet; she must ask one
or two more questions. Tracy was reading her face; and what he read
there lifted his drooping hopes a little.
"An earl's son to do that! Why, he were a man! A man to love!--oh,
more, a man to worship!"
"Why?"
"But he never lived! He is not born, he will not be born. The
self-abnegation that could do that--even in utter folly, and hopeless of
conveying benefit to any, beyond the mere example--could be mistaken for
greatness; why, it would be greatness in this cold age of sordid ideals!
A moment--wait--let me finish; I have one question more. Your father is
earl of what?"
"Rossmore--and I am Viscount Berkeley!"
The fat was in the fire again. The girl felt so outraged that it was
difficult for her to speak.
"How can you venture such a brazen thing! You know that he is dead,
and you know that I know it. Oh, to rob the living of name and honors
for a selfish and temporary advantage is crime enough, but to rob the
defenceless dead--why it is more than crime, it degrades crime!"
"Oh, listen to me--just a word--don't turn away like that. Don't go--
don't leave me, so--stay one moment. On my honor--"
"Oh, on your honor!"
"On my honor I am what I say! And I will prove it, and you will believe,
I know you will. I will bring you a message--a cablegram--"
"When?"
"To-morrow--next day--"
"Signed 'Rossmore'?"
"Yes--signed Rossmore."
"What will that prove?"
"What will it prove? What should it prove?"
"If you force me to say it--possibly the presence of a confederate
somewhere."
This was a hard blow, and staggered him. He said, dejectedly:
"It is true. I did not think of it. Oh, my God, I do not know any way
to do; I do everything wrong. You are going?--and you won't say even
good-night--or good-bye? Ah, we have not parted like this before."
"Oh, I want to run and--no, go, now." A pause--then she said, "You may
bring the message when it comes."
"Oh, may I? God bless you."
He was gone; and none too soon; her lips were already quivering, and now
she broke down. Through her sobbings her words broke from time to time.
"Oh, he is gone. I have lost him, I shall never see him any more. And
he didn't kiss me good-bye; never even offered to force a kiss from me,
and he knowing it was the very, very last, and I expecting he would, and
never dreaming he would treat me so after all we have been to each other.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, what shall I do, what shall I do! He is a dear, poor,
miserable, good-hearted, transparent liar and humbug, but oh, I do love
him so--!" After a little she broke into speech again. "How dear he is!
and I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so! Why won't he ever think to
forge a message and fetch it?--but no, he never will, he never thinks of
anything; he's so honest and simple it wouldn't ever occur to him.
Oh, what did possess him to think he could succeed as a fraud--and he
hasn't the first requisite except duplicity that I can see. Oh, dear,
I'll go to bed and give it all up. Oh, I wish I had told him to come and
tell me whenever he didn't get any telegram--and now it's all my own
fault if I never see him again. How my eyes must look!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
Next day, sure enough, the cablegram didn't come. This was an immense
disaster; for Tracy couldn't go into the presence without that ticket,
although it wasn't going to possess any value as evidence. But if the
failure of the cablegram on that first day may be called an immense
disaster, where is the dictionary that can turn out a phrase sizeable
enough to describe the tenth day's failure? Of course every day that the
cablegram didn't come made Tracy all of twenty-four hours' more ashamed
of himself than he was the day before, and made Sally fully twenty-four
hours more certain than ever that he not only hadn't any father anywhere,
but hadn't even a confederate--and so it followed that he was a
double-dyed humbug and couldn't be otherwise.
These were hard days for Barrow and the art firm. All these had their
hands full, trying to comfort Tracy. Barrow's task was particularly
hard, because he was made a confidant in full, and therefore had to humor
Tracy's delusion that he had a father, and that the father was an earl,
and that he was going to send a cablegram. Barrow early gave up the idea
of trying to convince Tracy that he hadn't any father, because this had
such a bad effect on the patient, and worked up his temper to such an
alarming degree. He had tried, as an experiment, letting Tracy think he
had a father; the result was so good that he went further, with proper
caution, and tried letting him think his father was an earl; this wrought
so well, that he grew bold, and tried letting him think he had two
fathers, if he wanted to, but he didn't want to, so Barrow withdrew one
of them and substituted letting him think he was going to get a
cablegram--which Barrow judged he wouldn't, and was right; but Barrow
worked the cablegram daily for all it was worth, and it was the one thing
that kept Tracy alive; that was Barrow's opinion.
And these were bitter hard days for poor Sally, and mainly delivered up
to private crying. She kept her furniture pretty damp, and so caught
cold, and the dampness and the cold and the sorrow together undermined
her appetite, and she was a pitiful enough object, poor thing. Her state
was bad enough, as per statement of it above quoted; but all the forces
of nature and circumstance seemed conspiring to make it worse--and
succeeding. For instance, the morning after her dismissal of Tracy,
Hawkins and Sellers read in the associated press dispatches that a toy
puzzle called Pigs in the Clover, had come into sudden favor within the
past few weeks, and that from the Atlantic to the Pacific all the
populations of all the States had knocked off work to play with it,
and that the business of the country had now come to a standstill by
consequence; that judges, lawyers, burglars, parsons, thieves, merchants,
mechanics, murderers, women, children, babies--everybody, indeed, could
be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and
purpose, and only one--to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle
successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the
nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every
countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the
signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of
mental decay and incipient madness; that factories were at work night and
day in eight cities, and yet to supply the demand for the puzzle was thus
far impossible. Hawkins was wild with joy, but Sellers was calm. Small
matters could not disturb his serenity. He said--
"That's just the way things go. A man invents a thing which could
revolutionize the arts, produce mountains of money, and bless the earth,
and who will bother with it or show any interest in it?--and so you are
just as poor as you were before. But you invent some worthless thing to
amuse yourself with, and would throw it away if let alone, and all of a
sudden the whole world makes a snatch for it and out crops a fortune.
Hunt up that Yankee and collect, Hawkins--half is yours, you know.
Leave me to potter at my lecture."
This was a temperance lecture. Sellers was head chief in the Temperance
camp, and had lectured, now and then in that interest, but had been
dissatisfied with his efforts; wherefore he was now about to try a new
plan. After much thought he had concluded that a main reason why his
lectures lacked fire or something, was, that they were too transparently
amateurish; that is to say, it was probably too plainly perceptible that
the lecturer was trying to tell people about the horrid effects of liquor
when he didn't really know anything about those effects except from
hearsay, since he had hardly ever tasted an intoxicant in his life.
His scheme, now, was to prepare himself to speak from bitter experience.
Hawkins was to stand by with the bottle, calculate the doses, watch the
effects, make notes of results, and otherwise assist in the preparation.
Time was short, for the ladies would be along about noon--that is to say,
the temperance organization called the Daughters of Siloam--and Sellers
must be ready to head the procession.
The time kept slipping along--Hawkins did not return--Sellers could not
venture to wait longer; so he attacked the bottle himself, and proceeded
to note the effects. Hawkins got back at last; took one comprehensive
glance at the lecturer, and went down and headed off the procession.
The ladies were grieved to hear that the champion had been taken suddenly
ill and violently so, but glad to hear that it was hoped he would be out
again in a few days.
As it turned out, the old gentleman didn't turn over or show any signs of
life worth speaking of for twenty-four hours. Then he asked after the
procession, and learned what had happened about it. He was sorry; said
he had been "fixed" for it. He remained abed several days, and his wife
and daughter took turns in sitting with him and ministering to his wants.
Often he patted Sally's head and tried to comfort her.
"Don't cry, my child, don't cry so; you know your old father did it by
mistake and didn't mean a bit of harm; you know he wouldn't intentionally
do anything to make you ashamed for the world; you know he was trying to
do good and only made the mistake through ignorance, not knowing the
right doses and Washington not there to help. Don't cry so, dear, it
breaks my old heart to see you, and think I've brought this humiliation
on you and you so dear to me and so good. I won't ever do it again,
indeed I won't; now be comforted, honey, that's a good child."
But when she wasn't on duty at the bedside the crying went on just the
same; then the mother would try to comfort her, and say:
"Don't cry, dear, he never meant any harm; it was all one of those
happens that you can't guard against when you are trying experiments,
that way. You see I don't cry. It's because I know him so well.
I could never look anybody in the face again if he had got into such an
amazing condition as that a-purpose; but bless you his intention was
pure and high, and that makes the act pure, though it was higher than was
necessary. We're not humiliated, dear, he did it under a noble impulse
and we don't need to be ashamed. There, don't cry any more, honey."
Thus, the old gentleman was useful to Sally, during several days, as an
explanation of her tearfulness. She felt thankful to him for the shelter
he was affording her, but often said to herself, "It's a shame to let him
see in my cryings a reproach--as if he could ever do anything that could
make me reproach him! But I can't confess; I've got to go on using him
for a pretext, he's the only one I've got in the world, and I do need one
so much."
As soon as Sellers was out again, and found that stacks of money had been
placed in bank for him and Hawkins by the Yankee, he said, "Now we'll
soon see who's the Claimant and who's the Authentic. I'll just go over
there and warm up that House of Lords." During the next few days he and
his wife were so busy with preparations for the voyage that Sally had all
the privacy she needed, and all the chance to cry that was good for her.
Then the old pair left for New York--and England.
Sally had also had a chance to do another thing. That was, to make up
her mind that life was not worth living upon the present terms. If she
must give up her impostor and die; doubtless she must submit; but might
she not lay her whole case before some disinterested person, first, and
see if there wasn't perhaps some saving way out of the matter? She
turned this idea over in her mind a good deal. In her first visit with
Hawkins after her parents were gone, the talk fell upon Tracy, and she
was impelled to set her case before the statesman and take his counsel.
So she poured out her heart, and he listened with painful solicitude.
She concluded, pleadingly, with--
"Don't tell me he is an impostor. I suppose he is, but doesn't it look
to you as if he isn't? You are cool, you know, and outside; and so,
maybe it can look to you as if he isn't one, when it can't to me.
Doesn't it look to you as if he isn't? Couldn't you--can't it look to
you that way--for--for my sake?"
The poor man was troubled, but he felt obliged to keep in the
neighborhood of the truth. He fought around the present detail a little
while, then gave it up and said he couldn't really see his way to
clearing Tracy.
"No," he said, "the truth is, he's an impostor."
"That is, you--you feel a little certain, but not entirely--oh, not
entirely, Mr. Hawkins!"
"It's a pity to have to say it--I do hate to say it, but I don't think
anything about it, I know he's an impostor."
"Oh, now, Mr. Hawkins, you can't go that far. A body can't really know
it, you know. It isn't proved that he's not what he says he is."
Should he come out and make a clean breast of the whole wretched
business? Yes--at least the most of it--it ought to be done. So he set
his teeth and went at the matter with determination, but purposing to
spare the girl one pain--that of knowing that Tracy was a criminal.
"Now I am going to tell you a plain tale; one not pleasant for me to tell
or for you to hear, but we've got to stand it. I know all about that
fellow; and I know he is no earl's son."
The girl's eyes flashed, and she said:
"I don't care a snap for that--go on!"
This was so wholly unexpected that it at once obstructed the narrative;
Hawkins was not even sure that he had heard aright. He said:
"I don't know that I quite understand. Do you mean to say that if he was
all right and proper otherwise you'd be indifferent about the earl part
of the business?"
"Absolutely."
"You'd be entirely satisfied with him and wouldn't care for his not being
an earl's son,--that being an earl's son wouldn't add any value to him?"
"Not the least value that I would care for. Why, Mr. Hawkins, I've
gotten over all that day-dreaming about earldoms and aristocracies and
all such nonsense and am become just a plain ordinary nobody and content
with it; and it is to him I owe my cure. And as to anything being able
to add a value to him, nothing can do that. He is the whole world to me,
just as he is; he comprehends all the values there are--then how can you
add one?"
"She's pretty far gone." He said that to himself. He continued, still
to himself, "I must change my plan again; I can't seem to strike one that
will stand the requirements of this most variegated emergency five
minutes on a stretch. Without making this fellow a criminal, I believe
I will invent a name and a character for him calculated to disenchant
her. If it fails to do it, then I'll know that the next rightest thing
to do will be to help her to her fate, poor thing, not hinder her."
Then he said aloud:
"Well, Gwendolen--"
"I want to be called Sally."
"I'm glad of it; I like it better, myself. Well, then, I'll tell you
about this man Snodgrass."
"Snodgrass! Is that his name?"
"Yes--Snodgrass. The other's his nom de plume."
"It's hideous!"
"I know it is, but we can't help our names."
"And that is truly his real name--and not Howard Tracy?"
Hawkins answered, regretfully:
"Yes, it seems a pity."
The girl sampled the name musingly, once or twice--
"Snodgrass. Snodgrass. No, I could not endure that. I could not get
used to it. No, I should call him by his first name. What is his first
name?"
"His--er--his initials are S. M."
"His initials? I don't care anything about his initials. I can't call
him by his initials. What do they stand for?"
"Well, you see, his father was a physician, and he--he--well he was an
idolater of his profession, and he--well, he was a very eccentric man,
and--"
"What do they stand for! What are you shuffling about?"
"They--well they stand for Spinal Meningitis. His father being a phy--"
"I never heard such an infamous name! Nobody can ever call a person
that--a person they love. I wouldn't call an enemy by such a name.
It sounds like an epithet." After a moment, she added with a kind of
consternation, "Why, it would be my name! Letters would come with it
on."
"Yes--Mrs. Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass."
"Don't repeat it--don't; I can't bear it. Was the father a lunatic?"
"No, that is not charged."
"I am glad of that, because that is transmissible. What do you think was
the matter with him, then?"
"Well, I don't really know. The family used to run a good deal to
idiots, and so, maybe--"
"Oh, there isn't any maybe about it. This one was an idiot."
"Well, yes--he could have been. He was suspected."
"Suspected!" said Sally, with irritation. "Would one suspect there was
going to be a dark time if he saw the constellations fall out of the sky?
But that is enough about the idiot, I don't take any interest in idiots;
tell me about the son."
Very well, then, this one was the eldest, but not the favorite. His
brother, Zylobalsamum--"
"Wait--give me a chance to realize that. It is perfectly stupefying.
Zylo--what did you call it?"
"Zylobalsamum."
"I never heard such a name: It sounds like a disease. Is it a disease?"
"No, I don't think it's a disease. It's either Scriptural or--"
"Well, it's not Scriptural."
"Then it's anatomical. I knew it was one or the other. Yes, I remember,
now, it is anatomical. It's a ganglion--a nerve centre--it is what is
called the zylobalsamum process."
"Well, go on; and if you come to any more of them, omit the names; they
make one feel so uncomfortable."
"Very well, then. As I said, this one was not a favorite in the family,
and so he was neglected in every way, never sent to school, always
allowed to associate with the worst and coarsest characters, and so of
course he has grown up a rude, vulgar, ignorant, dissipated ruffian,
and--"
"He? It's no such thing! You ought to be more generous than to make
such a statement as that about a poor young stranger who--who--why, he is
the very opposite of that! He is considerate, courteous, obliging,
modest, gentle, refined, cultivated-oh, for shame! how can you say such
things about him?"
"I don't blame you, Sally--indeed I haven't a word of blame for you for
being blinded by--your affection--blinded to these minor defects which
are so manifest to others who--"
"Minor defects? Do you call these minor defects? What are murder and
arson, pray?"
"It is a difficult question to answer straight off--and of course
estimates of such things vary with environment. With us, out our way,
they would not necessarily attract as much attention as with you, yet
they are often regarded with disapproval--"
"Murder and arson are regarded with disapproval?"
"Oh, frequently."
"With disapproval. Who are those Puritans you are talking about?
But wait--how did you come to know so much about this family? Where did
you get all this hearsay evidence?"
"Sally, it isn't hearsay evidence. That is the serious part of it.
I knew that family--personally."
This was a surprise.
"You? You actually knew them?"
"Knew Zylo, as we used to call him, and knew his father, Dr. Snodgrass.
I didn't know your own Snodgrass, but have had glimpses of him from time
to time, and I heard about him all the time. He was the common talk, you
see, on account of his--"
"On account of his not being a house-burner or an assassin, I suppose.
That would have made him commonplace. Where did you know these people?"
"In Cherokee Strip."
"Oh, how preposterous! There are not enough people in Cherokee Strip to
give anybody a reputation, good or bad. There isn't a quorum. Why the
whole population consists of a couple of wagon loads of horse thieves."
Hawkins answered placidly--
"Our friend was one of those wagon loads."
Sally's eyes burned and her breath came quick and fast, but she kept a
fairly good grip on her anger and did not let it get the advantage of her
tongue. The statesman sat still and waited for developments. He was
content with his work. It was as handsome a piece of diplomatic art as
he had ever turned out, he thought; and now, let the girl make her own
choice. He judged she would let her spectre go; he hadn't a doubt of it
in fact; but anyway, let the choice be made, and he was ready to ratify
it and offer no further hindrance.
Meantime Sally had thought her case out and made up her mind. To the
major's disappointment the verdict was against him. Sally said:
"He has no friend but me, and I will not desert him now. I will not
marry him if his moral character is bad; but if he can prove that it
isn't, I will--and he shall have the chance. To me he seems utterly good
and dear; I've never seen anything about him that looked otherwise--
except, of course, his calling himself an earl's son. Maybe that is only
vanity, and no real harm, when you get to the bottom of it. I do not
believe he is any such person as you have painted him. I want to see
him. I want you to find him and send him to me. I will implore him to
be honest with me, and tell me the whole truth, and not be afraid."
"Very well; if that is your decision I will do it. But Sally, you know,
he's poor, and--"
"Oh, I don't care anything about that. That's neither here nor there.
Will you bring him to me?"
"I'll do it. When?--"
"Oh, dear, it's getting toward dark, now, and so you'll have to put it
off till morning. But you will find him in the morning, won't you?
Promise."
"I'll have him here by daylight."
"Oh, now you're your own old self again--and lovelier than ever!"
"I couldn't ask fairer than that. Good-bye, dear."
Sally mused a moment alone, then said earnestly, "I love him in spite of
his name!" and went about her affairs with a light heart.
CHAPTER XXV.
Hawkins went straight to the telegraph office and disburdened his
conscience. He said to himself, "She's not going to give this galvanized
cadaver up, that's plain. Wild horses can't pull her away from him.
I've done my share; it's for Sellers to take an innings, now." So he
sent this message to New York:
"Come back. Hire special train. She's going to marry the materializee."
Meantime a note came to Rossmore Towers to say that the Earl of Rossmore
had just arrived from England, and would do himself the pleasure of
calling in the evening. Sally said to herself, "It is a pity he didn't
stop in New York; but it's no matter; he can go up to-morrow and see my
father. He has come over here to tomahawk papa, very likely--or buy out
his claim. This thing would have excited me, a while back; but it has
only one interest for me now, and only one value. I can say to--to--
Spine, Spiny, Spinal--I don't like any form of that name!--I can say to
him to-morrow, 'Don't try to keep it up any more, or I shall have to tell
you whom I have been talking with last night, and then you will be
embarrassed.'"
Tracy couldn't know he was to be invited for the morrow, or he might have
waited. As it was, he was too miserable to wait any longer; for his last
hope--a letter--had failed him. It was fully due to-day; it had not
come. Had his father really flung him away? It looked so. It was not
like his father, but it surely looked so. His father was a rather tough
nut, in truth, but had never been so with his son--still, this implacable
silence had a calamitous look. Anyway, Tracy would go to the Towers and
--then what? He didn't know; his head was tired out with thinking--
he wouldn't think about what he must do or say--let it all take care of
itself. So that he saw Sally once more, he would be satisfied, happen
what might; he wouldn't care.
He hardly knew how he got to the Towers, or when. He knew and cared for
only one thing--he was alone with Sally. She was kind, she was gentle,
there was moisture in her eyes, and a yearning something in her face and
manner which she could not wholly hide--but she kept her distance. They
talked. Bye and bye she said--watching his downcast countenance out of
the corner of her eye--
"It's so lonesome--with papa and mamma gone. I try to read, but I can't
seem to get interested in any book. I try the newspapers, but they do
put such rubbish in them. You take up a paper and start to read
something you thinks interesting, and it goes on and on and on about how
somebody--well, Dr. Snodgrass, for instance--"
Not a movement from Tracy, not the quiver of a muscle. Sally was amazed
--what command of himself he must have! Being disconcerted, she paused
so long that Tracy presently looked up wearily and said:
"Well?"
"Oh, I thought you were not listening. Yes, it goes on and on about this
Doctor Snodgrass, till you are so tired, and then about his younger son--
the favorite son--Zylobalsamum Snodgrass--"
Not a sign from Tracy, whose head was drooping again. What supernatural
self-possession! Sally fixed her eye on him and began again, resolved to
blast him out of his serenity this time if she knew how to apply the
dynamite that is concealed in certain forms of words when those words are
properly loaded with unexpected meanings.
"And next it goes on and on and on about the eldest son--not the
favorite, this one--and how he is neglected in his poor barren boyhood,
and allowed to grow up unschooled, ignorant, coarse, vulgar, the comrade
of the community's scum, and become in his completed manhood a rude,
profane, dissipated ruffian--"
That head still drooped! Sally rose, moved softly and solemnly a step or
two, and stood before Tracy--his head came slowly up, his meek eyes met
her intense ones--then she finished with deep impressiveness--
"--named Spinal Meningitis Snodgrass!"
Tracy merely exhibited signs of increased fatigue. The girl was outraged
by this iron indifference and callousness, and cried out--
"What are you made of?"
"I? Why?"
"Haven't you any sensitiveness? Don't these things touch any poor
remnant of delicate feeling in you?"
"N--no," he said wonderingly, "they don't seem to. Why should they?"
"O, dear me, how can you look so innocent, and foolish, and good, and
empty, and gentle, and all that, right in the hearing of such things as
those! Look me in the eye--straight in the eye. There, now then, answer
me without a flinch. Isn't Doctor Snodgrass your father, and isn't
Zylobalsamum your brother," [here Hawkins was about to enter the room,
but changed his mind upon hearing these words, and elected for a walk
down town, and so glided swiftly away], "and isn't your name Spinal
Meningitis, and isn't your father a doctor and an idiot, like all the
family for generations, and doesn't he name all his children after
poisons and pestilences and abnormal anatomical eccentricities of the
human body? Answer me, some way or somehow--and quick. Why do you sit
there looking like an envelope without any address on it and see me going
mad before your face with suspense!"
"Oh, I wish I could do--do--I wish I could do something, anything that
would give you peace again and make you happy; but I know of nothing--
I know of no way. I have never heard of these awful people before."
"What? Say it again!"
"I have never--never in my life till now."
"Oh, you do look so honest when you say that! It must be true--surely
you couldn't look that way, you wouldn't look that way if it were not
true--would you?"
"I couldn't and wouldn't. It is true. Oh, let us end this suffering--
take me back into your heart and confidence--"
"Wait--one more thing. Tell me you told that falsehood out of mere
vanity and are sorry for it; that you're not expecting to ever wear the
coronet of an earl--"
"Truly I am cured--cured this very day--I am not expecting it!"
"O, now you are mine! I've got you back in the beauty and glory of your
unsmirched poverty and your honorable obscurity, and nobody shall ever
take you from me again but the grave! And if--"
"De earl of Rossmore, fum Englan'!"
"My father!" The young man released the girl and hung his head.
The old gentleman stood surveying the couple--the one with a strongly
complimentary right eye, the other with a mixed expression done with the
left. This is difficult, and not often resorted to. Presently his face
relaxed into a kind of constructive gentleness, and he said to his son:
"Don't you think you could embrace me, too?"
The young man did it with alacrity. "Then you are the son of an earl,
after all," said Sally, reproachfully.
"Yes, I--"
"Then I won't have you!"
"O, but you know--"
"No, I will not. You've told me another fib."
"She's right. Go away and leave us. I want to talk with her."
Berkeley was obliged to go. But he did not go far. He remained on the
premises. At midnight the conference between the old gentleman and the
young girl was still going blithely on, but it presently drew to a close,
and the former said:
"I came all the way over here to inspect you, my dear, with the general
idea of breaking off this match if there were two fools of you, but as
there's only one, you can have him if you'll take him."
"Indeed I will, then! May I kiss you?"
"You may. Thank you. Now you shall have that privilege whenever you are
good."
Meantime Hawkins had long ago returned and slipped up into the
laboratory. He was rather disconcerted to find his late invention,
Snodgrass, there. The news was told him that the English Rossmore was
come,
--"and I'm his son, Viscount Berkeley, not Howard Tracy any more."
Hawkins was aghast. He said:
"Good gracious, then you're dead!"
"Dead?"
"Yes you are--we've got your ashes."
"Hang those ashes, I'm tired of them; I'll give them to my father."
Slowly and painfully the statesman worked the truth into his head that
this was really a flesh and blood young man, and not the insubstantial
resurrection he and Sellers had so long supposed him to be. Then he said
with feeling--
"I'm so glad; so glad on Sally's account, poor thing. We took you for a
departed materialized bank thief from Tahlequah. This will be a heavy
blow to Sellers." Then he explained the whole matter to Berkeley, who
said:
"Well, the Claimant must manage to stand the blow, severe as it is.
But he'll get over the disappointment."
"Who--the colonel? He'll get over it the minute he invents a new miracle
to take its place. And he's already at it by this time. But look here--
what do you suppose became of the man you've been representing all this
time?"
"I don't know. I saved his clothes--it was all I could do. I am afraid
he lost his life."
"Well, you must have found twenty or thirty thousand dollars in those
clothes, in money or certificates of deposit."
"No, I found only five hundred and a trifle. I borrowed the trifle and
banked the five hundred."
"What'll we do about it?"
"Return it to the owner."
"It's easy said, but not easy to manage. Let's leave it alone till we
get Sellers's advice. And that reminds me. I've got to run and meet
Sellers and explain who you are not and who you are, or he'll come
thundering in here to stop his daughter from marrying a phantom. But--
suppose your father came over here to break off the match?"
"Well, isn't he down stairs getting acquainted with Sally? That's all
safe."
So Hawkins departed to meet and prepare the Sellerses.
Rossmore Towers saw great times and late hours during the succeeding
week. The two earls were such opposites in nature that they fraternized
at once. Sellers said privately that Rossmore was the most extraordinary
character he had ever met--a man just made out of the condensed milk of
human kindness, yet with the ability to totally hide the fact from any
but the most practised character-reader; a man whose whole being was
sweetness, patience and charity, yet with a cunning so profound, an
ability so marvelous in the acting of a double part, that many a person
of considerable intelligence might live with him for centuries and never
suspect the presence in him of these characteristics.
Finally there was a quiet wedding at the Towers, instead of a big one at
the British embassy, with the militia and the fire brigades and the
temperance organizations on hand in torchlight procession, as at first
proposed by one of the earls. The art-firm and Barrow were present at
the wedding, and the tinner and Puss had been invited, but the tinner was
ill and Puss was nursing him--for they were engaged.
The Sellerses were to go to England with their new allies for a brief
visit, but when it was time to take the train from Washington,
the colonel was missing.
Hawkins was going as far as New York with the party, and said he would
explain the matter on the road.
The explanation was in a letter left by the colonel in Hawkins's hands.
In it he promised to join Mrs. Sellers later, in England, and then went
on to say:
The truth is, my dear Hawkins, a mighty idea has been born to me within
the hour, and I must not even stop to say goodbye to my dear ones.
A man's highest duty takes precedence of all minor ones, and must be
attended to with his best promptness and energy, at whatsoever cost to
his affections or his convenience. And first of all a man's duties is
his duty to his own honor--he must keep that spotless. Mine is
threatened. When I was feeling sure of my imminent future solidity,
I forwarded to the Czar of Russia--perhaps prematurely--an offer for the
purchase of Siberia, naming a vast sum. Since then an episode has warned
me that the method by which I was expecting to acquire this money--
materialization upon a scale of limitless magnitude--is marred by a taint
of temporary uncertainty. His imperial majesty may accept my offer at
any moment. If this should occur now, I should find myself painfully
embarrassed, in fact financially inadequate. I could not take Siberia.
This would become known, and my credit would suffer.
Recently my private hours have been dark indeed, but the sun shines main,
now; I see my way; I shall be able to meet my obligation, and without
having to ask an extension of the stipulated time, I think. This grand
new idea of mine--the sublimest I have ever conceived, will save me
whole, I am sure. I am leaving for San Francisco this moment, to test
it, by the help of the great Lick telescope. Like all of my more notable
discoveries and inventions, it is based upon hard, practical scientific
laws; all other bases are unsound and hence untrustworthy. In brief,
then, I have conceived the stupendous idea of reorganizing the climates
of the earth according to the desire of the populations interested.
That is to say, I will furnish climates to order, for cash or negotiable
paper, taking the old climates in part payment, of course, at a fair
discount, where they are in condition to be repaired at small cost and
let out for hire to poor and remote communities not able to afford a good
climate and not caring for an expensive one for mere display. My studies
have convinced me that the regulation of climates and the breeding of new
varieties at will from the old stock is a feasible thing. Indeed I am
convinced that it has been done before; done in prehistoric times by now
forgotten and unrecorded civilizations. Everywhere I find hoary
evidences of artificial manipulation of climates in bygone times. Take
the glacial period. Was that produced by accident? Not at all; it was
done for money. I have a thousand proofs of it, and will some day reveal
them.
I will confide to you an outline of my idea. It is to utilize the spots
on the sun--get control of them, you understand, and apply the stupendous
energies which they wield to beneficent purposes in the reorganizing of
our climates. At present they merely make trouble and do harm in the
evoking of cyclones and other kinds of electric storms; but once under
humane and intelligent control this will cease and they will become a
boon to man.
I have my plan all mapped out, whereby I hope and expect to acquire
complete and perfect control of the sun-spots, also details of the method
whereby I shall employ the same commercially; but I will not venture to
go into particulars before the patents shall have been issued. I shall
hope and expect to sell shop-rights to the minor countries at a
reasonable figure and supply a good business article of climate to the
great empires at special rates, together with fancy brands for
coronations, battles and other great and particular occasions. There are
billions of money in this enterprise, no expensive plant is required, and
I shall begin to realize in a few days--in a few weeks at furthest.
I shall stand ready to pay cash for Siberia the moment it is delivered,
and thus save my honor and my credit. I am confident of this.
I would like you to provide a proper outfit and start north as soon as I
telegraph you, be it night or be it day. I wish you to take up all the
country stretching away from the north pole on all sides for many degrees
south, and buy Greenland and Iceland at the best figure you can get now
while they are cheap. It is my intention to move one of the tropics up
there and transfer the frigid zone to the equator. I will have the
entire Arctic Circle in the market as a summer resort next year, and will
use the surplusage of the old climate, over and above what can be
utilized on the equator, to reduce the temperature of opposition resorts.
But I have said enough to give you an idea of the prodigious nature of my
scheme and the feasible and enormously profitable character of it.
I shall join all you happy people in England as soon as I shall have sold
out some of my principal climates and arranged with the Czar about
Siberia.
Meantime, watch for a sign from me. Eight days from now, we shall be
wide asunder; for I shall be on the border of the Pacific, and you far
out on the Atlantic, approaching England. That day, if I am alive and my
sublime discovery is proved and established, I will send you greeting,
and my messenger shall deliver it where you are, in the solitudes of the
sea; for I will waft a vast sun-spot across the disk like drifting smoke,
and you will know it for my love-sign, and will say "Mulberry Sellers
throws us a kiss across the universe."
APPENDIX.
WEATHER FOR USE IN THIS BOOK.
Selected from the Best Authorities.
A brief though violent thunderstorm which had raged over the city was
passing away; but still, though the rain had ceased more than an hour
before, wild piles of dark and coppery clouds, in which a fierce and
rayless glow was laboring, gigantically overhung the grotesque and
huddled vista of dwarf houses, while in the distance, sheeting high over
the low, misty confusion of gables and chimneys, spread a pall of dead,
leprous blue, suffused with blotches of dull, glistening yellow, and with
black plague-spots of vapor floating and faint lightnings crinkling on
its surface. Thunder, still muttering in the close and sultry air, kept
the scared dwellers in the street within, behind their closed shutters;
and all deserted, cowed, dejected, squalid, like poor, stupid, top-heavy
things that had felt the wrath of the summer tempest, stood the drenched
structures on either side of the narrow and crooked way, ghastly and
picturesque, under the giant canopy. Rain dripped wretchedly in slow
drops of melancholy sound from their projecting eaves upon the broken
flagging, lay there in pools or trickled into the swollen drains, where
the fallen torrent sullenly gurgled on its way to the river.
"The Brazen Android."-W. D. O'Connor.
The fiery mid-March sun a moment hung
Above the bleak Judean wilderness;
Then darkness swept upon us, and 't was night.
"Easter-Eve at Kerak-Moab."--Clinton Scollard.
The quick-coming winter twilight was already at hand. Snow was again
falling, sifting delicately down, incidentally as it were.
"Felicia." Fanny N. D. Murfree.
Merciful heavens! The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a
fierce light, and next instant the earth reels and quivers with the awful
shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery. It is the signal for the
Fury to spring--for a thousand demons to scream and shriek--for
innumerable serpents of fire to writhe and light up the blackness.
Now the rain falls--now the wind is let loose with a terrible shriek--now
the lightning is so constant that the eyes burn, and the thunder-claps
merge into an awful roar, as did the 800 cannon at Gettysburg. Crash!
Crash! Crash! It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth. Shriek!
Shriek! Shriek! It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting
even the blades of grass. Shock! Shock! Shock! It is the Fury
flinging his fiery bolts into the bosom of the earth.--
"The Demon and the Fury." M. Quad.
Away up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of
endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining
azure heavens. The sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here
and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint.--
"In the Stranger's Country." Charles Egbert Craddock.
There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone
brilliantly. The hot wind had become wild and rampant. It was whipping
up the sandy coating of the plain in every direction. High in the air
were seen whirling spires and cones of sand--a curious effect against the
deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in
every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen.
These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the
larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds
of sand were becoming more and more the rule.
Alfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the
boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the
hut well. It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that,
from this point of the track. He also knew these dust-storms of old;
Bindarra was notorious for them: Without thinking twice, Alfred put
spurs to his horse and headed for the hut. Before he had ridden half the
distance the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense
whirlwind, and it was only owing to his horse's instinct that he did not
ride wide of the hut altogether; for during the last half-mile he never
saw the hut, until its outline loomed suddenly over his horse's ears; and
by then the sun was invisible.--
"A Bride from the Bush."
It rained forty days and forty nights.--Genesis.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Claimant
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY
Translated from the original MS.
by Mark Twain
[NOTE.--I translated a portion of this diary some years ago, and
a friend of mine printed a few copies in an incomplete form, but
the public never got them. Since then I have deciphered some more
of Adam's hieroglyphics, and think he has now become sufficiently
important as a public character to justify this publication.--M. T.]
Monday
This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way.
It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like
this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the
other animals. Cloudy to-day, wind in the east; think we shall
have rain.... Where did I get that word?... I remember now
--the new creature uses it.
Tuesday
Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the
estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls--why,
I am sure I do not know. Says it looks like Niagara Falls. That
is not a reason; it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no
chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything
that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And always that
same pretext is offered--it looks like the thing. There is the
dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at
a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to keep that
name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no
good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.
Wednesday
Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to
myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put
it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it
away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of
the other animals make when they are in distress. I wish it would
not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a cheap fling
at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. I have never
heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound
intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming
solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new
sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my
ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only
to sounds that are more or less distant from me.
Friday
The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I
had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty
--GARDEN-OF-EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not
any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and
rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden.
Says it looks like a park, and does not look like anything but a
park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named
--NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to
me. And already there is a sign up:
KEEP OFF
THE GRASS
My life is not as happy as it was.
Saturday
The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short,
most likely. "We" again--that is its word; mine too, now, from
hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go
out in the fog myself. The new creature does. It goes out in
all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. And talks.
It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.
Sunday
Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying.
It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I
already had six of them per week, before. This morning found the
new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.
Monday
The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have
no objections. Says it is to call it by when I want it to come.
I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in
its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word, and will bear
repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. This is probably
doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me
if she would but go by herself and not talk.
Tuesday
She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive
signs:
THIS WAY TO THE WHIRLPOOL.
THIS WAY TO GOAT ISLAND.
CAVE OF THE WINDS THIS WAY.
She says this park would make a tidy summer resort, if there was
any custom for it. Summer resort--another invention of hers--just
words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is
best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.
Friday
She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What
harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why. I have
always done it--always liked the plunge, and the excitement, and
the coolness. I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They
have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for
something. She says they were only made for scenery--like the
rhinoceros and the mastodon.
I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. Went
over in a tub--still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the
Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious
complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here.
What I need is change of scene.
Saturday
I escaped last Tuesday night, and travelled two days, and built
me another shelter, in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks
as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which
she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise
again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.
I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,
when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things:
among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and
tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of
teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each
other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each
other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called
"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the
Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.
Sunday
Pulled through.
Monday
I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest
up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea.... She
has been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. She
said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient
justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that.
The word justification moved her admiration--and envy too, I
thought. It is a good word.
Thursday
She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. This
is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed
any rib.... She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says
grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks
it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must get
along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot overturn
the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.
Saturday
She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself
in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said
it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures
which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to
fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when
they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to
her, as she is such a numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them
out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep
warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day, and I don't
see that they are any happier there than they were before, only
quieter. When night comes I shall throw them out-doors. I will
not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant
to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.
Sunday
Pulled through.
Tuesday
She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad,
for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;
and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to
get a rest.
Friday
She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of that tree, and
says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I
told her there would be another result, too--it would introduce
death into the world. That was a mistake--it had been better to
keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea--she could
save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent
lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She
said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.
Wednesday
I have had a variegated time. I escaped that night, and rode a
horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear out of
the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should
begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after sunup, as I was
riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were
grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their
wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises,
and in one moment the plain was in a frantic commotion and every
beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant--Eve had
eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world.... The
tigers ate my horse, paying no attention when I ordered them to
desist, and they would even have eaten me if I had stayed--which
I didn't, but went away in much haste.... I found this place,
outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but
she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place
Tonawanda--says it looks like that. In fact, I was not sorry she
came, for there are but meagre pickings here, and she brought some
of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It
was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real
force except when one is well fed.... She came curtained in
boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant
by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she
tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter and blush
before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. She said I
would soon know how it was myself. This was correct. Hungry as
I was, I laid down the apple half eaten--certainly the best one I
ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--and arrayed
myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her
with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not
make such a spectacle of herself. She did it, and after this we
crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected
some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper
for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but
stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. ... I find
she is a good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and
depressed without her, now that I have lost my property. Another
thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter.
She will be useful. I will superintend.
Ten Days Later
She accuses me of being the cause of our disaster! She says, with
apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured her that
the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said I
was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said
the Serpent informed her that "chestnut" was a figurative term
meaning an aged and mouldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I
have made many jokes to pass the weary time, and some of them could
have been of that sort, though I had honestly supposed that they
were new when I made them. She asked me if I had made one just
at the time of the catastrophe. I was obliged to admit that I had
made one to myself, though not aloud. It was this. I was thinking
about the Falls, and I said to myself, "How wonderful it is to see
that vast body of water tumble down there!" Then in an instant a
bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it fly, saying, "It
would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble up there!"--and I
was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when all nature
broke loose in war and death, and I had to flee for my life.
"There," she said, with triumph, "that is just it; the Serpent
mentioned that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and
said it was coeval with the creation." Alas, I am indeed to blame.
Would that I were not witty; oh, would that I had never had that
radiant thought!
Next Year
We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country
trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber
a couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four,
she isn't certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may
be a relation. That is what she thinks, but this is an error,
in my judgment. The difference in size warrants the conclusion
that it is a different and new kind of animal--a fish, perhaps,
though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged
in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the
experiment to determine the matter. I still think it is a fish,
but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have
it to try. I do not understand this. The coming of the creature
seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable
about experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of
the other animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is
disordered--everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish
in her arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to
the water. At such times the water comes out of the places in
her face that she looks out of, and she pats the fish on the back
and makes soft sounds with her mouth to soothe it, and betrays
sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways. I have never seen her
do like this with any other fish, and it troubles me greatly. She
used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with them,
before we lost our property; but it was only play; she never took
on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them.
Sunday
She doesn't work Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and likes
to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to
amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh.
I have not seen a fish before that could laugh. This makes me
doubt.... I have come to like Sunday myself. Superintending
all the week tires a body so. There ought to be more Sundays.
In the old days they were tough, but now they come handy.
Wednesday
It isn't a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It makes
curious, devilish noises when not satisfied, and says "goo-goo"
when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not
a bird, for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop;
it is not a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a
fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim
or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its
feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said
I believed it was an enigma, but she only admired the word without
understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some
kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its
arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.
Three Months Later
The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I sleep but little.
It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on its four legs
now. Yet it differs from the other four-legged animals in that
its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the
main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air,
and this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but its
method of travelling shows that it is not of our breed. The short
front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo
family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the
true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does. Still, it is a
curious and interesting variety, and has not been catalogued before.
As I discovered it, I have felt justified in securing the credit
of the discovery by attaching my name to it, and hence have called
it Kangaroorum Adamiensis.... It must have been a young one
when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since. It must be five
times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented is able
to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made
at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary
effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles
it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously
told it she wouldn't give it. As already observed, I was not at
home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods.
It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so,
for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another
one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for
surely then it would be quieter, and we could tame it more easily.
But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no
tracks. It has to live on the ground, it cannot help itself;
therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track? I have
set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I catch all small animals
except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of
curiosity, I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never
drink it.
Three Months Later
The kangaroo still continues to grow, which is very strange and
perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its growth.
It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly
like our hair, except that it is much finer and softer, and instead
of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious
and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak.
If I could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new
variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true
kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome,
would rather have that for company than have no kin at all, or any
animal it could feel a nearness to or get sympathy from in its
forlorn condition here among strangers who do not know its ways
or habits, or what to do to make it feel that it is among friends;
but it was a mistake--it went into such fits at the sight of the
kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen one before. I
pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing I can do
to make it happy. If I could tame it--but that is out of the
question; the more I try, the worse I seem to make it. It grieves
me to the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and
passion. I wanted to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. That
seemed cruel and not like her; and yet she may be right. It might
be lonelier than ever; for since I cannot find another one, how
could it?
Five Months Later
It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports itself by holding to
her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and then
falls down. It is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has
no tail--as yet--and no fur, except on its head. It still keeps
on growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their
growth earlier than this. Bears are dangerous--since our
catastrophe--and I shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling
about the place much longer without a muzzle on. I have offered
to get her a kangaroo if she would let this one go, but it did no
good--she is determined to run us into all sorts of foolish risks,
I think. She was not like this before she lost her mind.
A Fortnight Later
I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet; it has only one
tooth. It has no tail yet. It makes more noise now than it ever
did before--and mainly at night. I have moved out. But I shall
go over, mornings, to breakfast, and to see if it has more teeth.
If it gets a mouthful of teeth, it will be time for it to go, tail
or no tail, for a bear does not need a tail in order to be
dangerous.
Four Months Later
I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that
she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is because there
are not any buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned to
paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa"
and "momma." It is certainly a new species. This resemblance to
words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose
or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and
is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech,
taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of
tail, sufficiently indicates that this is a new kind of bear. The
further study of it will be exceedingly interesting. Meantime I
will go off on a far expedition among the forests of the North and
make an exhaustive search. There must certainly be another one
somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it has company
of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle this
one first.
Three Months Later
It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no success. In
the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she has
caught another one! I never saw such luck. I might have hunted
these woods a hundred years, I never should have run across that
thing.
Next Day
I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it is
perfectly plain that they are the same breed. I was going to stuff
one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it
for some reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though
I think it is a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science
if they should get away. The old one is tamer than it was, and
can laugh and talk like the parrot, having learned this, no doubt,
from being with the parrot so much, and having the imitative faculty
in a highly developed degree. I shall be astonished if it turns
out to be a new kind of parrot, and yet I ought not to be astonished,
for it has already been everything else it could think of, since
those first days when it was a fish. The new one is as ugly now
as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She
calls it Abel.
Ten Years Later
They are boys; we found it out long ago. It was their coming in
that small, immature shape that puzzled us; we were not used to it.
There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain had
stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years,
I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better
to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.
At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry
to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed
be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to
know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Extracts From Adam's Diary
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
by Mark Twain
I
I have committed sins, of course; but I have not committed enough of them
to entitle me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water of
ordinary literature during six years when I might have been living on the
fat diet spread for the righteous in Professor Dowden's Life of Shelley,
if I had been justly dealt with.
During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance.
I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and that
that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive honor
by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter. This was
all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of it
were in this book, and that this book's verdict is accepted in the girls'
colleges of America and its view taught in their literary classes.
In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country have
arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multitudes
unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one
may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then, I
address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical
fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning it may
interest them.
First, as to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several
ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites
anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly
popular with them. It is a competition in elegant deportment. They hire
a hall and bank the spectators' seats in rising tiers along the two
sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is
provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of
experts in deportment is appointed to award it. Sometimes there are as
many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators.
One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in
what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the
vacant central space and back again with that multitude of critical eyes
on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws
into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws
into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise: watch-
chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy
handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new
stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may
have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind,
and she may add other helps, according to her judgment. When the review
by individual detail is over, a grand review of all the contestants in
procession follows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and
smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of experts to
make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a verdict. The successful
competitor gets the prize which I have before mentioned, and an abundance
of applause and envy along with it. The negroes have a name for this
grave deportment-tournament; a name taken from the prize contended for.
They call it a Cakewalk.
This Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk. The ordinary forms of
speech are absent from it. All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by
sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny
and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is
rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the
book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known
afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: "Mary was
herself not unlearned in the lore of pain"--meaning by that that she had
not always traveled on asphalt; or, as some authorities would frame it,
that she had "been there herself," a form which, while preferable to the
book's form, is still not to be recommended. If the book wishes to tell
us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets
turned into a dancing-master, who does his professional bow before us in
pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat
under the other, thus: "The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to her
babe was marred in Shelley's eyes by the introduction into his house of a
hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest office."
This is perhaps the strangest book that has seen the light since
Frankenstein. Indeed, it is a Frankenstein itself; a Frankenstein with
the original infirmity supplemented by a new one; a Frankenstein with the
reasoning faculty wanting. Yet it believes it can reason, and is always
trying. It is not content to leave a mountain of fact standing in the
clear sunshine, where the simplest reader can perceive its form, its
details, and its relation to the rest of the landscape, but thinks it
must help him examine it and understand it; so its drifting mind settles
upon it with that intent, but always with one and the same result: there
is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a fog. Every time
it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in
store for the reader. It is strangely nearsighted, cross-eyed, and
purblind. Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision
it takes it for a rat; at other times it does not see it at all.
The materials of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry.
They are connected together and harmonized by the help of suggestion,
conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression.
The fable has a distinct object in view, but this object is not
acknowledged in set words. Percy Bysshe Shelley has done something which
in the case of other men is called a grave crime; it must be shown that
in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do
about these things.
Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist is serious? Having proved
that a crime is not a crime, was it worth while to go on and fasten the
responsibility of a crime which was not a crime upon somebody else? What
is the use of hunting down and holding to bitter account people who are
responsible for other people's innocent acts?
Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do that. In his view
Shelley's first wife, Harriet, free of all offense as far as we have
historical facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably responsible for
her husband's innocent act in deserting her and taking up with another
woman.
Any one will suspect that this task has its difficulties. Any one will
divine that nice work is necessary here, cautious work, wily work, and
that there is entertainment to be had in watching the magician do it.
There is indeed entertainment in watching him. He arranges his facts,
his rumors, and his poems on his table in full view of the house, and
shows you that everything is there--no deception, everything fair and
above board. And this is apparently true, yet there is a defect, for
some of his best stock is hid in an appendix-basket behind the door, and
you do not come upon it until the exhibition is over and the enchantment
of your mind accomplished--as the magician thinks.
There is an insistent atmosphere of candor and fairness about this book
which is engaging at first, then a little burdensome, then a trifle
fatiguing, then progressively suspicious, annoying, irritating, and
oppressive. It takes one some little time to find out that phrases which
seem intended to guide the reader aright are there to mislead him; that
phrases which seem intended to throw light are there to throw darkness;
that phrases which seem intended to interpret a fact are there to
misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice
are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in
disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt
in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty
and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical
misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's
shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet
Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by
calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation,
and innuendo he destroys her character and rehabilitates Shelley's--as he
believes. And in truth his unheroic work has not been barren of the
results he aimed at; as witness the assertion made to me that girls in
the colleges of America are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain upon
her husband's honor, and that that was what stung him into repurifying
himself by deserting her and his child and entering into scandalous
relations with a school-girl acquaintance of his.
If that assertion is true, they probably use a reduction of this work in
those colleges, maybe only a sketch outlined from it. Such a thing as
that could be harmful and misleading. They ought to cast it out and put
the whole book in its place. It would not deceive. It would not deceive
the janitor.
All of this book is interesting on account of the sorcerer's methods and
the attractiveness of some of his characters and the repulsiveness of the
rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he
tries to think he thinks he sets forth the causes which led to Shelley's
desertion of his wife in 1814.
Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen years old. Shelley was
teeming with advanced thought. He believed that Christianity was a
degrading and selfish superstition, and he had a deep and sincere desire
to rescue one of his sisters from it. Harriet was impressed by his
various philosophies and looked upon him as an intellectual wonder--
which indeed he was. He had an idea that she could give him valuable
help in his scheme regarding his sister; therefore he asked her to
correspond with him. She was quite willing. Shelley was not thinking of
love, for he was just getting over a passion for his cousin, Harriet
Grove, and just getting well steeped in one for Miss Hitchener, a school-
teacher. What might happen to Harriet Westbrook before the letter-
writing was ended did not enter his mind. Yet an older person could have
made a good guess at it, for in person Shelley was as beautiful as an
angel, he was frank, sweet, winning, unassuming, and so rich in
unselfishness, generosities, and magnanimities that he made his whole
generation seem poor in these great qualities by comparison. Besides,
he was in distress. His college had expelled him for writing an
atheistical pamphlet and afflicting the reverend heads of the university
with it, his rich father and grandfather had closed their purses against
him, his friends were cold. Necessarily, Harriet fell in love with him;
and so deeply, indeed, that there was no way for Shelley to save her from
suicide but to marry her. He believed himself to blame for this state of
things, so the marriage took place. He was pretty fairly in love with
Harriet, although he loved Miss Hitchener better. He wrote and explained
the case to Miss Hitchener after the wedding, and he could not have been
franker or more naive and less stirred up about the circumstance if the
matter in issue had been a commercial transaction involving thirty-five
dollars.
Shelley was nineteen. He was not a youth, but a man. He had never had
any youth. He was an erratic and fantastic child during eighteen years,
then he stepped into manhood, as one steps over a door-sill. He was
curiously mature at nineteen in his ability to do independent thinking
on the deep questions of life and to arrive at sharply definite decisions
regarding them, and stick to them--stick to them and stand by them at
cost of bread, friendships, esteem, respect, and approbation.
For the sake of his opinions he was willing to sacrifice all these
valuable things, and did sacrifice them; and went on doing it, too, when
he could at any moment have made himself rich and supplied himself with
friends and esteem by compromising with his father, at the moderate
expense of throwing overboard one or two indifferent details of his cargo
of principles.
He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got married. They took lodgings in
Edinburgh of a sort answerable to their purse, which was about empty, and
there their life was a happy, one and grew daily more so. They had only
themselves for company, but they needed no additions to it. They were as
cozy and contented as birds in a nest. Harriet sang evenings or read
aloud; also she studied and tried to improve her mind, her husband
instructing her in Latin. She was very beautiful, she was modest, quiet,
genuine, and, according to her husband's testimony, she had no fine lady
airs or aspirations about her. In Matthew Arnold's judgment, she was
"a pleasing figure."
The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh, and then took lodgings in
York, where Shelley's college mate, Hogg, lived. Shelley presently ran
down to London, and Hogg took this opportunity to make love to the young
wife. She repulsed him, and reported the fact to her husband when he got
back. It seems a pity that Shelley did not copy this creditable conduct
of hers some time or other when under temptation, so that we might have
seen the author of his biography hang the miracle in the skies and squirt
rainbows at it.
At the end of the first year of marriage--the most trying year for any
young couple, for then the mutual failings are coming one by one to
light, and the necessary adjustments are being made in pain and
tribulation--Shelley was able to recognize that his marriage venture had
been a safe one. As we have seen, his love for his wife had begun in a
rather shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep
and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may
admit. He addresses a long and loving poem to her, in which both passion
and worship appear:
Exhibit A
"O thou
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled,
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . wilt thou not turn
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me.
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven
And Heaven is Earth?
. . . . . . . .
Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,
But ours shall not be mortal."
Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in
celebration of her birthday:
Exhibit B
"Ever as now with hove and Virtue's glow
May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow
Which force from mine such quick and warm return."
Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy? We may conjecture
that she was.
That was the year 1812. Another year passed still happily, still
successfully--a child was born in June, 1813, and in September, three
months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, Ianthe, in which he
points out just when the little creature is most particularly dear to
him:
Exhibit C
"Dearest when most thy tender traits express
The image of thy mother's loveliness."
Up to this point the fabulist counsel for Shelley and prosecutor of his
young wife has had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins, for Shelley
is getting ready to make some unpleasant history for himself, and it will
be necessary to put the blame of it on the wife.
Shelley had made the acquaintance of a charming gray-haired, young-
hearted Mrs. Boinville, whose face "retained a certain youthful beauty";
she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia Turner,
who was equipped with many fascinations. Apparently these people were
sufficiently sentimental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville:
"The greater part of her associates were odious. I generally
found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an
eminently philosophical tinker, and several very
unsophisticated medical practitioners or medical students, all
of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners. They sighed,
turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was,"
etc.
Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27th (this is still 1813) purposely to
be near this unwholesome prairie-dogs' nest. The fabulist says: "It was
the entrance into a world more amiable and exquisite than he had yet
known."
"In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual"--and presently it grew
to be very mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they
got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, "responding like a
tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment," had his
chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to begin
to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July; on the 31st he
wrote a sonnet to Harriet in which "one detects already the little rift
in the lover's lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped
at all when the later and happier sonnet to Ianthe was written"--in
September, we remember:
Exhibit D
"EVENING. TO HARRIET
"O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line
Of western distance that sublime descendest,
And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
Thy million hues to every vapor lendest,
And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream
Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright,
Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;
What gazer now with astronomic eye
Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
And turning senseless from thy warm caress
Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness."
I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be there. What the poem seems to
say is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to
count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great,
satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a "little rift which had seemed to
be healed, or never to have gaped at all." That is, "one detects" a
little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that?
How does one see the invisible? It is the fabulist's secret; he knows
how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not
seeable; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet
Shelley's deep damage.
"As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley's happiness it was no
more than a speck"--meaning the one which one detects where "it may never
have gaped at all"--"nor had Harriet cause for discontent."
Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. "From a teacher he
had now become a pupil." Mrs. Boinville and her young married daughter
Cornelia were teaching him Italian poetry; a fact which warns one to
receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no
"cause for discontent."
Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in Latin, as before mentioned.
The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and
the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but
were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there
that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For
instance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a
pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument
to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is
dog-tired when he gets home, and he can't teach his wife Latin; it would
be unreasonable to expect it.
Up to this time we have submitted to having Mrs. Boinville pushed upon
us as ostensibly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer
drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia "perhaps" is sole teacher.
Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melancholy, arising from
causes purely imaginary; she required consolation, and found it in
Petrarch. He also says, "Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and
caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest
melancholy, as every true poet ought."
Then the author of the book interlards a most stately and fine compliment
to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well
"in later years." It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt
deserved it in her "later years," when she had for generations ceased to
be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting
young husbands and sowing sorrow for young wives. But why is that
compliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the
reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young,
sentimental husband? The biographer's device was not well planned. That
old person was not present--it was her other self that was there, her
young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet
times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.
"In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and
Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and
discrimination." That is the fabulist's opinion--Harriet Shelley's is
not reported.
Early in August, Shelley was in London trying to raise money. In
September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from. In
the first week of October Shelley and family went to Warwick, then
to Edinburgh, arriving there about the middle of the month.
"Harriet was happy." Why? The author furnishes a reason, but hides from
us whether it is history or conjecture; it is because "the babe had borne
the journey well." It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices--
flung in in his favorite casual way--the way he has when he wants to draw
one's attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle
that is less obvious but more useful--in a history like this. The
obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory
between her husband and Cornelia Turner now; and because the perilous
Italian lessons were taking a rest; and because, if there chanced to be
any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or
of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of
them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the
fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by
Hogg, who also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she might hope to
persuade him to stay away from it permanently; and because she might also
hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and
both brain and heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be
a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see
that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and
loved by the man that had promised these things, and so be made happy and
kept so. And because, also--may we conjecture this?--we may hope for
the privilege of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that used to be
so pleasant, and brought us so near together--so near, indeed, that often
our heads touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons; and our hands
met in casual and unintentional, but still most delicious and thrilling
little contacts and momentary clasps, just as they inevitably do over
Italian lessons. Suppose one should say to any young wife: "I find that
your husband is poring over the Italian poets and being instructed in the
beautiful Italian language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson"--would that
cozy picture fail to rise before her mind? would its possibilities fail
to suggest themselves to her? would there be a pang in her heart and a
blush on her face? or, on the contrary, would the remark give her
pleasure, make her joyous and gay? Why, one needs only to make the
experiment--the result will not be uncertain.
However, we learn--by authority of deeply reasoned and searching
conjecture--that the baby bore the journey well, and that that was why
the young wife was happy. That accounts for two per cent. of the
happiness, but it was not right to imply that it accounted for the other
ninety-eight also.
Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the Shelleys, was of their party
when they went away. He used to laugh at the Boinville menagerie, and
"was not a favorite." One of the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said,
"The Shelleys have made an addition to their party in the person of a
cold scholar, who, I think, has neither taste nor feeling. This, Shelley
will perceive sooner or later, for his warm nature craves sympathy."
True, and Shelley will fight his way back there to get it--there will be
no way to head him off.
Towards the end of November it was necessary for Shelley to pay a
business visit to London, and he conceived the project of leaving Harriet
and the baby in Edinburgh with Harriet's sister, Eliza Westbrook,
a sensible, practical maiden lady about thirty years old, who had spent
a great part of her time with the family since the marriage. She was
an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like
her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of
Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with
the Newtons--members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas,
when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially
blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left
destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my
duty to supply one. I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who
interfered with that game. I think she tried to do what she could
towards modifying the Boinville connection, in the interest of her young
sister's peace and honor.
If it was she who blocked that game, she was not strong enough to block
the next one. Before the month and year were out--no date given, let us
call it Christmas--Shelley and family were nested in a furnished house in
Windsor, "at no great distance from the Boinvilles"--these decoys still
residing at Bracknell.
What we need, now, is a misleading conjecture. We get it with
characteristic promptness and depravity:
"But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras, the friend of
his boyhood, in any wanderings to Windsor. Dr. Lind had died
a year since, and with his death Windsor must have lost, for
Shelley, its chief attraction."
Still, not to mention Shelley's wife, there was Bracknell, at any rate.
While Bracknell remains, all solace is not lost. Shelley is represented
by this biographer as doing a great many careless things, but to my mind
this hiring a furnished house for three months in order to be with a man
who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels for
him--that is but natural, and does us honor besides--yet one is vexed,
for all that. He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras
before taking the house. He may not have had the address, but that is
nothing--any postman would know the aged Zonoras; a dead postman would
remember a name like that.
And yet, why throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it
seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey
escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it
merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it
lying. Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras; he was pointed for
Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature was craving
sympathy.
II
The year 1813 is just ended now, and we step into 1814.
To recapitulate, how much of Cornelia's society has Shelley had, thus
far? Portions of August and September, and four days of July. That is
to say, he has had opportunity to enjoy it, more or less, during that
brief period. Did he want some more of it? We must fall back upon
history, and then go to conjecturing.
"In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a frequent
visitor at Bracknell."
"Frequent" is a cautious word, in this author's mouth; the very
cautiousness of it, the vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes one
suspect that this frequency was more frequent than the mere common
everyday kinds of frequency which one is in the habit of averaging up
with the unassuming term "frequent." I think so because they fixed up a
bedroom for him in the Boinville house. One doesn't need a bedroom if
one is only going to run over now and then in a disconnected way to
respond like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of
sentiment and rub up one's Italian poetry a little.
The young wife was not invited, perhaps. If she was, she most certainly
did not come, or she would have straightened the room up; the most
ignorant of us knows that a wife would not endure a room in the condition
in which Hogg found this one when he occupied it one night. Shelley was
away--why, nobody can divine. Clothes were scattered about, there were
books on every side: "Wherever a book could be laid was an open book
turned down on its face to keep its place." It seems plain that the wife
was not invited. No, not that; I think she was invited, but said to
herself that she could not bear to go there and see another young woman
touching heads with her husband over an Italian book and making thrilling
hand-contacts with him accidentally.
As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there, "where he found an easeful
resting-place in the house of Mrs. Boinville--the white-haired Maimuna--
and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner." The aged Zonoras was deceased, but
the white-haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see. "Three charming
ladies entertained the mocker (Hogg) with cups of tea, late hours,
Wieland's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the celestial manna of refined
sentiment."
"Such," says Hogg, "were the delights of Shelley's paradise in
Bracknell."
The white-haired Maimuna presently writes to Hogg:
"I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures. Shelley is
making a trial of them with us--"
A trial of them. It may be called that. It was March 11, and he had
been in the house a month. She continues:
Shelley "likes then so well that he is resolved to leave off
rambling--"
But he has already left it off. He has been there a month.
"And begin a course of them himself."
But he has already begun it. He has been at it a month. He likes it so
well that he has forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his
reveals.
"Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest."
Yet he has been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and
manna of sentiment, and late hours, and every restful thing a young
husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore
conscience, and a nagging sense of shabbiness and treachery.
"His journeys after what he has never found have racked his
purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved to take a little
care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and
shall second with all, my might."
But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely
yonder, wants another woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so
much inflamed interest on her husband or not. That young wife is always
silent--we are never allowed to hear from her. She must have opinions
about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approving or
disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed--even to-day and
from her grave she would, if she could, I think--but we get only the
other side, they keep her silent always.
"He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy
he must have made you feel what we now feel for him. He is
seeking a house close to us--"
Ah! he is not close enough yet, it seems--
"and if he succeeds we shall have an additional motive to
induce you to come among us in the summer."
The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's
comment upon the above letter. It is this:
"These sound like words of s considerate and judicious friend."
That is what he thinks. That is, it is what he thinks he thinks. No,
that is not quite it: it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particularly
and unspeakably dull reader into thinking it is what he thinks. He makes
that comment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this woman's
daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these two that
Shelley has deserted his wife--for this month, considering all the
circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time,
amounted to desertion; that is its rightful name. We cannot know how the
wife regarded it and felt about it; but if she could have read the letter
which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess
her thought and how she felt. Hear him:
. . . . . . .
"I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month;
I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and
friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself."
It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed.
"They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life.
I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing
of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the
view of that necessity which will quickly divide me from the
delightful tranquillity of this happy home--for it has become
my home.
. . . . . . .
"Eliza is still with us--not here!--but will be with me when
the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart."
Eliza is she who blocked that game--the game in London--the one where we
were purposing to dine every night with one of the "three charming
ladies" who fed tea and manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell.
Shelley could send Eliza away, of course; could have cleared her out long
ago if so minded, just as he had previously done with a predecessor of
hers whom he had first worshipped and then turned against; but perhaps
she was useful there as a thin excuse for staying away himself.
"I am now but little inclined to contest this point.
I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul . . . .
"It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of
disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor little Ianthe,
in whom I may hereafter find the consolation of sympathy.
I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the
overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable
wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm,
that cannot see to sting.
"I have begun to learn Italian again . . . . Cornelia
assists me in this language. Did I not once tell you that I
thought her cold and reserved? She is the reverse of this, as
she is the reverse of everything bad. She inherits all the
divinity of her mother . . . . I have sometimes forgotten
that I am not an inmate of this delightful home--that a time
will come which will cast me again into the boundless ocean of
abhorred society.
"I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning,
and that I have only written in thought:
"Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;
Thy gentle words stir poison there;
Thou hast disturbed the only rest
That was the portion of despair.
Subdued to duty's hard control,
I could have borne my wayward lot:
The chains that bind this rained soul
Had cankered then, but crushed it not.
"This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which
passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing
excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than
the color of an autumnal sunset."
Then it did not refer to his wife. That is plain; otherwise he would
have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for
if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the
way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the
person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and
ruddy Italian poets during a month.
The biography observes that portions of this letter "read like the tired
moaning of a wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of the wound are
permissible; we will hazard one.
Read by the light of Shelley's previous history, his letter seems to be
the cry of a tortured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience
that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of
one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an
ungenerous, or cruel, or treacherous thing, but was now doing all of
these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shelley had been
master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as
nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk now,
with a debasing passion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his
previous history that is in character with the Shelley of this letter.
He had done boyish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never
a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at,
but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself;
you could not laugh at the motive back of it--that was high, that was
noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them
which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem
profanation and quenched it; quenched it, and changed the impulse to
homage.
Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay--
treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing--baseness
was new to him; he had never done an unkind thing that also was new to
him.
This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his
young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house
which had become a "home" to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly
because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is mainly
for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the house?
No, in his life he had never attached importance to such things. Then
the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed down to a person--to the
person whose "dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing
words had "stirred poison there."
He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him. He was the
slave of a degrading love; he was drunk with his passion, the real
Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This is the verdict which his previous
history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.
One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when
trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many
misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.
We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and
perplexities are going to be greater than any we have yet met with--
where, indeed, the finger-boards are multitudinous, and the most of them
pointing diligently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by the
biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with
Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs
and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet
and industrious enticements; no, it was because "his happiness in his
home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."
It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way:
1st. Harriet persuaded him to set up a carriage.
2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and
studying.
3d. Harriet's walks with Hogg "commonly conducted us to some fashionable
bonnet-shop."
4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.
5th. When an operation was being performed upon the baby, "Harriet stood
by, narrowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the
operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."
6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.
The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in; there is no more. Upon
these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband
into that sty at Bracknell; and this crime, by these helps, the
biographical prosecuting attorney has set himself the task of proving
upon her.
Does the biographer call himself the attorney for the prosecution?
No, only to himself, privately; publicly he is the passionless,
disinterested, impartial judge on the bench. He holds up his judicial
scales before the world, that all may see; and it all tries to look so
fair that a blind person would sometimes fail to see him slip the false
weights in.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage.
I cannot discover that any evidence is offered that she asked him to set
up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence? Was it
unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have committed
it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days; possibly he
set up the carriage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do
such things. When Shelley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this
girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses
down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge
finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money--
necessarily by borrowing, there was no other way--to pay her father's
debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and
imprisoned for his own debts; yet the good judge finds no fault with her
even for this.
First and last, Shelley emptied into that rapacious mendicant's lap a sum
which cost him--for he borrowed it at ruinous rates--from eighty to one
hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the
supplications were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's
strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode
in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, "by one of the best
makers in Bond Street," yet the good judge makes not even a passing
comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. 1 against Harriet
Shelley as being far-fetched, and frivolous.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, secondly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled away to nothing,
Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them." At what time was
this? It was when Harriet "had fully recovered from the fatigue of her
first effort of maternity . . . and was now in full force, vigor, and
effect." Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June.
It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect;
this brings us to July 27th and the deadly Cornelia. If a wife of
eighteen is studying with her husband and he gets smitten with another
woman, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's studies for that
reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish
for the same reason? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers
sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a
mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with
Shelley's re-encounter with Cornelia; and we are allowed to gather from
that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that
person's society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the
indictment against Harriet.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, thirdly, because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly led to some
fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer no palliation; I only ask why the
dispassionate, impartial judge did not offer one himself--merely, I mean,
to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran
away with Harriet's husband was the shopper. There are several occasions
where she interested herself with shopping--among them being walks which
ended at the bonnet-shop--yet in none of these cases does she get a word
of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed
with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to find
easement for her mind, her child having died.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fourthly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse. The wet-nurse
was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after
Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which
broke up his wife's studies and destroyed his personal interest in them.
Why, by this time, nothing that Shelley's wife could do would have been
satisfactory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never
going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been
still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would
care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed.
Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voicing itself now, Shelley's conscience
was assuredly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley
needed excuses for his altered attitude towards his wife; Providence
pitied him and sent the wet-nurse. If Providence had sent him a cotton
doughnut it would have answered just as well; all he wanted was something
to find fault with.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation
which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment of
the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his
operation, she betrayed "not the smallest sign of emotion." The author
of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander.
He was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into
his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and
veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at
the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, "We may
not infer from this that Harriet did not feel"--why put it in, then?--
"but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and
insensible." Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He hated
her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course that
is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse? She
does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of them.
"Those about her" are reduced to one person--her husband. Who reports
the circumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was there--we do not know.
But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as it was the
operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not
given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have
said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but
after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. "Among those who were
about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish
all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not called, and not
callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the
oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons--the
baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would
not do us any good--a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious
"if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of
judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety.
The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and
motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her
firstborn child." That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands
proved--and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader
a chance to infer that there isn't any extant evidence but words, and
that he doesn't take much stock in them. How seldom he shows his hand!
He is always lurking behind a non-committal "if" or something of that
kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison
here and there and everywhere, but always leaving himself in a position
to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and
examined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to
make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin--but it is
in the general view that this is revealed, not in the details. His
insidious literature is like blue water; you know what it is that makes
it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of
microscopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary can dip up a
glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it; and
he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is
white, and prove it to any one's eye--and yet that lake was blue and you
can swear it. This book is blue--with slander in solution.
Let the reader examine, for example, the paragraph of comment which
immediately follows the letter containing Shelley's self-exposure which
we have been considering. This is it. One should inspect the individual
sentences as they go by, then pass them in procession and review the
cake-walk as a whole:
"Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from this
pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken; it is evident,
also, that he knew where duty lay; he felt that his part was to
take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it
henceforth with the quietness of despair. But we can perceive
that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful
for success in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself
was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of
blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household; for
gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not
fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which
could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly
exclude from his imagination."
That paragraph commits the author in no way. Taken sentence by sentence
it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of anybody, pleads for
nobody, accuses nobody. Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as
moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader;
its intent is to remove the feeling which the letter must leave with him
if let alone, and put a different one in its place--to remove a feeling
justified by the letter and substitute one not justified by it. The
letter itself gives you no uncertain picture--no lecturer is needed to
stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain
what they mean. The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful
picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself; an
angel who beats his soiled wings and cries, who complains to the woman
who enticed him that he could have borne his wayward lot, he could have
stood by his duty if it had not been for her beguilements; an angel who
rails at the "boundless ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his poor
judicious sister-in-law. If there is any dignity about this spectacle it
will escape most people.
Yet when the paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is
full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble
spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered;
tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle
coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at
any peril of life or limb. Curtain--slow music.
Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take the bad taste of Shelley's
letter out of the reader's mouth? If that was not it, good ink was
wasted; without that, it has no relevancy--the multiplication table would
have padded the space as rationally.
We have inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a
man of conspicuous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and
iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved
and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell.
These are six infinitely little reasons; but there were six colossal
ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley
persists in not considering very important.
Moreover, the colossal six preceded the little six and had done the
mischief before they were born. Let us double-column the twelve; then we
shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a
retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insignificant:
1. Harriet sets up carriage. 1. CORNELIA TURNER.
2. Harriet stops studying. 2. CORNELIA TURNER.
3. Harriet goes to bonnet-shop. 3. CORNELIA TURNER.
4. Harriet takes a wet-nurse. 4. CORNELIA TURNER.
5. Harriet has too much nerve. 5. CORNELIA TURNER.
6. Detested sister-in-law 6. CORNELIA TURNER.
As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia Turner and the Italian lessons
happened before the little six had been discovered to be grievances,
we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and
bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on
Harriet. Shelley and Cornelia are the responsible persons, and we cannot
in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the
unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste
time and tears over six sentimental justifications of an offence which
the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist in justifying.
Six? There were seven; but in charity to the biographer the seventh
ought not to be exposed. Still, he hung it out himself, and not only
hung it out, but thought it was a good point in Shelley's favor. For two
years Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food and all that at home;
there was enough for spiritual and mental support, but not enough for
luxury; and so, at the end of the contented two years, this latter detail
justifies him in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia Turner and
supplying the rest of his need in the way of surplus sympathy and
intellectual pie unlawfully. By the same reasoning a man in merely
comfortable circumstances may rob a bank without sin.
III
It is 1814, it is the 16th of March, Shelley has, written his letter, he
has been in the Boinville paradise a month, his deserted wife is in her
husbandless home. Mischief had been wrought. It is the biographer who
concedes this. We greatly need some light on Harriet's side of the case
now; we need to know how she enjoyed the month, but there is no way to
inform ourselves; there seems to be a strange absence of documents and
letters and diaries on that side. Shelley kept a diary, the approaching
Mary Godwin kept a diary, her father kept one, her half-sister by
marriage, adoption, and the dispensation of God kept one, and the entire
tribe and all its friends wrote and received letters, and the letters
were kept and are producible when this biography needs them; but there
are only three or four scraps of Harriet's writing, and no diary.
Harriet wrote plenty of letters to her husband--nobody knows where they
are, I suppose; she wrote plenty of letters to other people--apparently
they have disappeared, too. Peacock says she wrote good letters, but
apparently interested people had sagacity enough to mislay them in time.
After all her industry she went down into her grave and lies silent
there--silent, when she has so much need to speak. We can only wonder at
this mystery, not account for it.
No, there is no way of finding out what Harriet's state of feeling was
during the month that Shelley was disporting himself in the Bracknell
paradise. We have to fall back upon conjecture, as our fabulist does
when he has nothing more substantial to work with. Then we easily
conjecture that as the days dragged by Harriet's heart grew heavier and
heavier under its two burdens--shame and resentment: the shame of being
pointed at and gossiped about as a deserted wife, and resentment against
the woman who had beguiled her husband from her and now kept him in a
disreputable captivity. Deserted wives--deserted whether for cause or
without cause--find small charity among the virtuous and the discreet.
We conjecture that one after another the neighbors ceased to call; that
one after another they got to being "engaged" when Harriet called; that
finally they one after the other cut her dead on the street; that after
that she stayed in the house daytimes, and brooded over her sorrows, and
nighttimes did the same, there being nothing else to do with the heavy
hours and the silence and solitude and the dreary intervals which sleep
should have charitably bridged, but didn't.
Yes, mischief had been wrought. The biographer arrives at this
conclusion, and it is a most just one. Then, just as you begin to half
hope he is going to discover the cause of it and launch hot bolts of
wrath at the guilty manufacturers of it, you have to turn away
disappointed. You are disappointed, and you sigh. This is what he says
--the italics [''] are mine:
"However the mischief may have been wrought--'and at this day
no one can wish to heap blame an any buried head'--"
So it is poor Harriet, after all. Stern justice must take its course--
justice tempered with delicacy, justice tempered with compassion, justice
that pities a forlorn dead girl and refuses to strike her. Except in the
back. Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing, but only insinuate
it. Stern justice knows about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the
bonnet-shop and the other dark things that caused this sad mischief, and
may not, must not blink them; so it delivers judgment where judgment
belongs, but softens the blow by not seeming to deliver judgment at all.
To resume--the italics are mine:
"However the mischief may have been wrought--and at this day no
one can wish to heap blame on any buried head--'it is certain
that some cause or causes of deep division between Shelley and
his wife were in operation during the early part of the year
1814'."
This shows penetration. No deduction could be more accurate than this.
There were indeed some causes of deep division. But next comes another
disappointing sentence:
"To guess at the precise nature of these cafes, in the absence
of definite statement, were useless."
Why, he has already been guessing at them for several pages, and we have
been trying to outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is tired of it
and won't play any more. It is not quite fair to us. However, he will
get over this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and
has to be guessed out of it at Harriet's expense.
"We may rest content with Shelley's own words"--in a Chancery paper drawn
up by him three years later. They were these: "Delicacy forbids me to
say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."
As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with anything of
the sort. It is not a very definite statement. It does not necessarily
mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the tedious
details of those family quarrels. Delicacy could quite properly excuse
him from saying, "I was in love with Cornelia all that time; my wife kept
crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging me to cut
myself free from a connection which was wronging her and disgracing us
both; and I being stung by these reproaches retorted with fierce and
bitter speeches--for it is my nature to do that when I am stirred,
especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly loved and
respected before, as witness my various attitudes towards Miss Hitchener,
the Gisbornes, Harriet's sister, and others--and finally I did not
improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a whole
month with the woman who had infatuated me."
No, he could not go into those details, and we excuse him; but,
nevertheless, we do not rest content with this bland proposition to puff
away that whole long disreputable episode with a single mean, meaningless
remark of Shelley's.
We do admit that "it is certain that some cause or causes of deep
division were in operation." We would admit it just the same if the
grammar of the statement were as straight as a string, for we drift into
pretty indifferent grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in historical
work; but we have to decline to admit that we cannot guess those cause or
causes.
But guessing is not really necessary. There is evidence attainable--
evidence from the batch discredited by the biographer and set out at the
back door in his appendix-basket; and yet a court of law would think
twice before throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy person who
would venture to offer in such a place a good part of the material which
is placed before the readers of this book as "evidence," and so treated
by this daring biographer. Among some letters (in the appendix-basket)
from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the Godwinian share in the Shelleyan events
of 1814, she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and her husband,
agitated and weeping, to implore them to forbid Shelley the house, and
prevent his seeing Mary Godwin.
"She related that last November he had fallen in love with Mrs.
Turner and paid her such marked attentions Mr. Turner, the
husband, had carried off his wife to Devonshire."
The biographer finds a technical fault in this; "the Shelleys were in
Edinburgh in November." What of that? The woman is recalling a
conversation which is more than two months old; besides, she was probably
more intent upon the central and important fact of it than upon its
unimportant date. Harriet's quoted statement has some sense in it; for
that reason, if for no other, it ought to have been put in the body of
the book. Still, that would not have answered; even the biographer's
enemy could not be cruel enough to ask him to let this real grievance,
this compact and substantial and picturesque figure, this rawhead-and-
bloody-bones, come striding in there among those pale shams, those
rickety spectres labeled WET-NURSE, BONNET-SHOP, and so on--no, the
father of all malice could not ask the biographer to expose his pathetic
goblins to a competition like that.
The fabulist finds fault with the statement because it has a technical
error in it; and he does this at the moment that he is furnishing us an
error himself, and of a graver sort. He says:
"If Turner carried off his wife to Devonshire he brought her
back and Shelley was staying with her and her mother on terms
of cordial intimacy in March, 1814."
We accept the "cordial intimacy"--it was the very thing Harriet was
complaining of--but there is nothing to show that it was Turner who
brought his wife back. The statement is thrown in as if it were not only
true, but was proof that Turner was not uneasy. Turner's movements are
proof of nothing. Nothing but a statement from Turner's mouth would have
any value here, and he made none.
Six days after writing his letter Shelley and his wife were together
again for a moment--to get remarried according to the rites of the
English Church.
Within three weeks the new husband and wife were apart again, and the
former was back in his odorous paradise. This time it is the wife who
does the deserting. She finds Cornelia too strong for her, probably.
At any rate, she goes away with her baby and sister, and we have a
playful fling at her from good Mrs. Boinville, the "mysterious spinner
Maimuna"; she whose "face was as a damsel's face, and yet her hair was
gray"; she of whom the biographer has said, "Shelley was indeed caught in
an almost invisible thread spun around him, but unconsciously, by this
subtle and benignant enchantress." The subtle and benignant enchantress
writes to Hogg, April 18: "Shelley is again a widower; his beauteous half
went to town on Thursday."
Then Shelley writes a poem--a chant of grief over the hard fate which
obliges him now to leave his paradise and take up with his wife again.
It seems to intimate that the paradise is cooling towards him; that he is
warned off by acclamation; that he must not even venture to tempt with
one last tear his friend Cornelia's ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed
and cold and dares not entreat her lover to stay:
Exhibit E
"Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!'
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood;
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy
stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude."
Back to the solitude of his now empty home, that is!
"Away! away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth."
. . . . . . . .
But he will have rest in the grave by-and-by. Until that time comes,
the charms of Bracknell will remain in his memory, along with Mrs.
Boinville's voice and Cornelia Turner's smile:
"Thou in the grave shalt rest--yet, till the phantoms flee
Which that house and hearth and garden made dear to thee ere while,
Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile."
We cannot wonder that Harriet could not stand it. Any of us would have
left. We would not even stay with a cat that was in this condition.
Even the Boinvilles could not endure it; and so, as we have seen, they
gave this one notice.
"Early in May, Shelley was in London. He did not yet despair
of reconciliation with Harriet, nor had he ceased to love her."
Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble to his biographer. They are
constantly inserted as "evidence," and they make much confusion. As soon
as one of them has proved one thing, another one follows and proves quite
a different thing. The poem just quoted shows that he was in love with
Cornelia, but a month later he is in love with Harriet again, and there
is a poem to prove it.
"In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he has now no
grief but one--the grief of having known and lost his wife's
love."
Exhibit F
"Thy look of love has power to calm
The stormiest passion of my soul."
But without doubt she had been reserving her looks of love a good part of
the time for ten months, now--ever since he began to lavish his own on
Cornelia Turner at the end of the previous July. He does really seem to
have already forgotten Cornelia's merits in one brief month, for he
eulogizes Harriet in a way which rules all competition out:
"Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
Amid a world of hate."
He complains of her hardness, and begs her to make the concession of
a "slight endurance"--of his waywardness, perhaps--for the sake of
"a fellow-being's lasting weal." But the main force of his appeal is
in his closing stanza, and is strongly worded:
"O tract for once no erring guide!
Bid the remorseless feeling flee;
'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,
'Tis anything but thee;
I deign a nobler pride to prove,
And pity if thou canst not love."
This is in May--apparently towards the end of it. Harriet and Shelley
were corresponding all the time. Harriet got the poem--a copy exists in
her own handwriting; she being the only gentle and kind person amid a
world of hate, according to Shelley's own testimony in the poem, we are
permitted to think that the daily letters would presently have melted
that kind and gentle heart and brought about the reconciliation, if there
had been time but there wasn't; for in a very few days--in fact, before
the 8th of June--Shelley was in love with another woman.
And so--perhaps while Harriet was walking the floor nights, trying to get
her poem by heart--her husband was doing a fresh one--for the other girl
--Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin--with sentiments like these in it:
Exhibit G
To spend years thus and be rewarded,
As thou, sweet love, requited me
When none were near.
. . . thy lips did meet
Mine tremblingly; . . ,
"Gentle and good and mild thou art,
Nor can I live if thou appear
Aught but thyself." . . .
And so on. "Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and
Shelley that each was inexpressibly dear to the other." Yes, Shelley had
found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in
the graveyard. But that is nothing; it was better than wooing her in her
nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other children.
However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her
masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. If she had occupied
the only kind and gentle Harriet's place in March it would have been a
thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boinville rookery and read the
riot act. That holiday of Shelley's would have been of short duration,
and Cornelia's hair would have been as gray as her mother's when the
services were over.
Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner Street with Shelley on that
8th of June. They passed through Godwin's little debt-factory of a book-
shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor. Nobody there.
Shelley strode about the room impatiently, making its crazy floor quake
under him. Then a door "was partially and softly opened. A thrilling
voice called 'Shelley!' A thrilling voice answered, 'Mary!' And he
darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting
King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale, indeed, and with
a piercing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at
that time, had called him out of the room."
This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg. The thrill of the voices
shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a fortnight
old; therefore it had been born within the month of May--born while
Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think. I must not
be asked how I know so much about that thrill; it is my secret. The
biographer and I have private ways of finding out things when it is
necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail.
Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days. The biographer
conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It would
be just like him. To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two
women at once. He was more in love with Miss Hitchener when he married
Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple and
unostentatious candor. He was more in love with Cornelia than he was
with Harriet in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814, yet he
supplied both of them with love poems of an equal temperature meantime;
he loved Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting ready to run off
with the one, it is conjectured that he put in his odd time trying to get
reconciled to the other; by-and-by, while still in love with Mary, he
will make love to her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the
visitation of God, through the medium of clandestine letters, and she
will answer with letters that are for no eye but his own.
When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin he was looking around for another
paradise. He had, tastes of his own, and there were features about the
Godwin establishment that strongly recommended it. Godwin was an
advanced thinker and an able writer. One of his romances is still read,
but his philosophical works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue now;
their authority was already declining when Shelley made his acquaintance
--that is, it was declining with the public, but not with Shelley. They
had been his moral and political Bible, and they were that yet. Shelley
the infidel would himself have claimed to be less a work of God than a
work of Godwin. Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind and interwoven
themselves into it and become a part of its texture; he regarded himself
as Godwin's spiritual son. Godwin was not without self-appreciation;
indeed, it may be conjectured that from his point of view the last
syllable of his name was surplusage. He lived serene in his lofty world
of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men,
and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms to
pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him. Several of his
principles were out of the ordinary. For example, he was opposed to
marriage. He was not aware that his preachings from this text were but
theory and wind; he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to
live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working
model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the
principle in his own family; the matter took a different and surprising
aspect then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in
Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of the sense of humor. This
episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's attention.
But we have said enough about the head of the new paradise. Mrs. Godwin
is described as being in several ways a terror; and even when her soul
was in repose she wore green spectacles. But I suspect that her main
unattractiveness was born of the fact that she wrote the letters that are
out in the appendix-basket in the back yard--letters which are an outrage
and wholly untrustworthy, for they say some kind things about poor
Harriet and tell some disagreeable truths about her husband; and these
things make the fabulist grit his teeth a good deal.
Next we have Fanny Godwin--a Godwin by courtesy only; she was Mrs.
Godwin's natural daughter by a former friend. She was a sweet and
winning girl, but she presently wearied of the Godwin paradise, and
poisoned herself.
Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she preferred to call herself)
Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was very
young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what she could
to make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off with her part-sister
Mary, she became the guest of the pair, and contributed a natural child
to their nursery--Allegra. Lord Byron was the father.
We have named the several members and advantages of the new paradise in
Skinner Street, with its crazy book-shop underneath. Shelley was all
right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway,
and more different kinds of fragrance. One could turn out poetry here
without any trouble at all.
The way the new love-match came about was this:
Shelley told Mary all his aggravations and sorrows and griefs, and about
the wet-nurse and the bonnetshop and the surgeon and the carriage, and
the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and
her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making so
much of him; and how he had deserted Harriet and then Harriet had
deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet
getting her poem by heart; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied
him, for she had had trouble herself. But I am not satisfied with this.
It reads too much like statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and is
too earthy and business-like. It has the sordid look of a trades-union
procession out on strike. That is not the right form for it. The book
does it better; we will fall back on the book and have a cake-walk:
"It was easy to divine that some restless grief possessed him;
Mary herself was not unlearned in the lore of pain. His
generous zeal in her father's behalf, his spiritual sonship to
Godwin, his reverence for her mother's memory, were guarantees
with Mary of his excellence.--[What she was after was
guarantees of his excellence. That he stood ready to desert
his wife and child was one of them, apparently.]--The new
friends could not lack subjects of discourse, and underneath
their words about Mary's mother, and 'Political Justice,' and
'Rights of Woman,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards
the other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direction of
the other. The desire to assuage the suffering of one whose
happiness has grown precious to us may become a hunger of the
spirit as keen as any other, and this hunger now possessed
Mary's heart; when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was
with a look full of the ardor of a 'soothing pity.'"
Yes, that is better and has more composure. That is just the way it
happened. He told her about the wet-nurse, she told him about political
justice; he told her about the deadly sister-in-law, she told him about
her mother; he told her about the bonnet-shop, she murmured back about
the rights of woman; then he assuaged her, then she assuaged him; then he
assuaged her some more, next she assuaged him some more; then they both
assuaged one another simultaneously; and so they went on by the hour
assuaging and assuaging and assuaging, until at last what was the result?
They were in love. It will happen so every time.
"He had married a woman who, as he now persuaded himself, had
never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank,
and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery."
I think that that is not quite fair to Harriet. We have no certainty
that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house. He went back to
Cornelia, and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her as
ever. Still, it was judicious to begin to lay on the whitewash, for
Shelley is going to need many a coat of it now, and the sooner the reader
becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get
reconciled to it and stop fretting about it.
After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Harriet at Bath--8th of June to
18th--"it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth
join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner."
Nothing could be handier than this; things will swim along now.
"Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded
union with Harriet was a thing of the past, he had not ceased
to regard her with affectionate consideration; he wrote to her
frequently, and kept her informed of his whereabouts."
We must not get impatient over these curious inharmoniousnesses and
irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character. You can see by the
biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable
about them. Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young
creatures happy: he was regarding the one with affectionate consideration
by mail, and he was assuaging the other one at home.
"Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps never desired
that the breach between herself and her husband should be
irreparable and complete."
I find no fault with that sentence except that the "perhaps" is not
strictly warranted. It should have been left out. In support--or shall
we say extenuation?--of this opinion I submit that there is not
sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies. The
only "evidence" offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out
against a reconciliation is a poem--the poem in which Shelley beseeches
her to "bid the remorseless feeling flee" and "pity" if she "cannot
love." We have just that as "evidence," and out of its meagre materials
the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coliseum;
conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to
fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.
Shelley's love-poems may be very good evidence, but we know well that
they are "good for this day and train only." We are able to believe that
they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience that
they could not be depended on to speak it the next. The very
supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so
suddenly by the poet's plunge into an adoring passion for Mary Godwin
that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy
person could have gotten to the bank with it.
Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness--these may sometimes reside
in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged against
Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right to insert them
into her character on such shadowy "evidence" as that. Peacock knew
Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look, as painted by
him:
"Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such
manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature that to be once
in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her
husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes.
If they mixed in society, she adorned it; if they lived in
retirement, she was satisfied; if they travelled, she enjoyed
the change of scene."
"Perhaps" she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and
complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at
all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went before the
altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each
other until death--and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation
itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet went away, and
the sister-in-law removed herself from her society. That was in April.
Shelley wrote his "appeal" in May, but the corresponding went right along
afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a
"reconciliation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to be
reconciled and that her husband was trying to persuade her to it--as the
biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of
conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry. For we have
"evidence" now--not poetry and conjecture. When Shelley had been dining
daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the
love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier,
he forgot to write Harriet; forgot it the next day and the next. During
four days Harriet got no letter from him. Then her fright and anxiety
rose to expression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shelley's publisher
which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her had been the
customary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no
appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to:
"BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).
"MY DEAR SIR,--You will greatly oblige me by giving the
enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, but it is
now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an
age. Will you write by return of post and tell me what has
become of him? as I always fancy something dreadful has
happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is
well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you
or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful
state of suspense. You are his friend and you can feel for me.
"I remain yours truly,
"H. S."
Even without Peacock's testimony that "her whole aspect and demeanor were
manifest emanations of a pure and truthful nature," we should hold this
to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter; it bears
those marks; I think it is also the letter of a person accustomed to
receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have been of
a welcome and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back--ever since the
solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely.
The biographer follows Harriet's letter with a conjecture.
He conjectures that she "would now gladly have retraced her steps."
Which means that it is proven that she had steps to retrace--proven by
the poem. Well, if the poem is better evidence than the letter, we must
let it stand at that.
Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shelley's honor--by authority of
random and unverified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose
very names make a person shudder: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her
part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron; Godwin, the philosophical
tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow--that is to say, from a
person whom he shirks out of naming. Yet the biographer dignifies this
sorry rubbish with the name of "evidence."
Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person
professing to know is offered among this precious "evidence."
1. "Shelley believed" so and so.
2. Byron's discarded mistress says that Shelley told Mary Godwin so and
so, and Mary told her.
3. "Shelley said" so and so--and later "admitted over and over again
that he had been in error."
4. The unspeakable Godwin "wrote to Mr. Baxter" that he knew so and so
"from unquestionable authority"--name not furnished.
How-any man in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave of
a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these baseless
fabrications, this manufactured filth, is inconceivable. How any man, in
his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to persuade
anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything
but scoff at it and deride it, is astonishing.
The charge insinuated by these odious slanders is one of the most
difficult of all offences to prove; it is also one which no man has a
right to mention even in a whisper about any woman, living or dead,
unless he knows it to be true, and not even then unless he can also prove
it to be true. There is no justification for the abomination of putting
this stuff in the book.
Against Harriet Shelley's good name there is not one scrap of tarnishing
evidence, and not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes from a source
that entitles it to a hearing.
On the credit side of the account we have strong opinions from the people
who knew her best. Peacock says:
"I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most
decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as
true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such
conduct are held most in honor."
Thornton Hunt, who had picked and published slight flaws in Harriet's
character, says, as regards this alleged large one:
"There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal
against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley."
Trelawney says:
"I was assured by the evidence of the few friends who knew both
Shelley and his wife--Hookham, Hogg, Peacock, and one of the
Godwins--that Harriet was perfectly innocent of all offence."
What excuse was there for raking up a parcel of foul rumors from
malicious and discredited sources and flinging them at this dead girl's
head? Her very defencelessness should have been her protection. The
fact that all letters to her or about her, with almost every scrap of her
own writing, had been diligently mislaid, leaving her case destitute of a
voice, while every pen-stroke which could help her husband's side had
been as diligently preserved, should have excused her from being brought
to trial. Her witnesses have all disappeared, yet we see her summoned in
her grave-clothes to plead for the life of her character, without the
help of an advocate, before a disqualified judge and a packed jury.
Harriet Shelley wrote her distressed letter on the 7th of July. On the
28th her husband ran away with Mary Godwin and her part-sister Claire to
the Continent. He deserted his wife when her confinement was
approaching. She bore him a child at the end of November, his mistress
bore him another one something over two months later. The truants were
back in London before either of these events occurred.
On one occasion, presently, Shelley was so pressed for money to support
his mistress with that he went to his wife and got some money of his that
was in her hands--twenty pounds. Yet the mistress was not moved to
gratitude; for later, when the wife was troubled to meet her engagements,
the mistress makes this entry in her diary:
"Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman. Now we shall
have to change our lodgings."
The deserted wife bore the bitterness and obloquy of her situation two
years and a quarter; then she gave up, and drowned herself. A month
afterwards the body was found in the water. Three weeks later Shelley
married his mistress.
I must here be allowed to italicize a remark of the biographer's
concerning Harriet Shelley:
"That no act of Shelley's during the two years which
immediately preceded her death tended to cause the rash act
which brought her life to its close seems certain."
Yet her husband had deserted her and her children, and was living with a
concubine all that time! Why should a person attempt to write biography
when the simplest facts have no meaning to him? This book is littered
with as crass stupidities as that one--deductions by the page which bear
no discoverable kinship to their premises.
The biographer throws off that extraordinary remark without any
perceptible disturbance to his serenity; for he follows it with a
sentimental justification of Shelley's conduct which has not a pang of
conscience in it, but is silky and smooth and undulating and pious--
a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at their best. There may be
people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful.
Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise
worshipfully noble and beautiful. It even stands out indestructibly
gracious and lovely from the ruck of these disastrous pages, in spite of
the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his
forsaken wife's pitiful fate--a responsibility which he himself tacitly
admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his taking up
with Mary Godwin as an act which Eliza "might excusably regard as the
cause of her sister's ruin."
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Defense of Harriet Shelley
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
by Mark Twain
The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer stand at the head of Cooper's
novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works
which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and
scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with
either of them as a finished whole.
The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight.
They were pure works of art.--Prof. Lounsbury.
The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.
. . . One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty
Bumppo . . . .
The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the
delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his
youth up.--Prof. Brander Matthews.
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction
yet produced by America.--Wilkie Collins.
It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English
Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and
Wilkie Collies to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having
read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent
and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the
restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences
against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic
fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of
them. These eighteen require:
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the
Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.
2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of
the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is
not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes
have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to
develop.
3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in
the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the
corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in
the Deerslayer tale.
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also
has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation,
the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings
would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a
discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of
relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be
interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the
people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has
been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.
6. They require that when the author describes the character of a
personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage
shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention
in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.
7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated,
gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering
in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel
in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the
Deerslayer tale.
8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by
either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is
persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.
9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves
to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle,
the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and
reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.
10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad
ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in
it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned
together.
11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly
defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given
emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.
In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These
require that the author shall:
12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.
Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer
tale.
Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such
as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and
indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of
stage properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices
for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with,
and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things
and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread
in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail.
Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick.
Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently
was his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his
effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book
of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds
and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is
in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure
to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on,
but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and
find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the
Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.
I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the
delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the
other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples.
Cooper was a sailor--a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a
vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a
particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there
which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure
woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For
several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought
to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either
buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet
or so--and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place
he loses some "females"--as he always calls women--in the edge of a wood
near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to
show off the delicate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid
people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannonblast, and a
cannon-ball presently comes rolling into the wood and stops at their
feet. To the females this suggests nothing. The case is very different
with the admirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he
doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball
across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a
daisy? If Cooper had any real knowledge of Nature's ways of doing
things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For
instance: one of his acute Indian experts, Chingachgook (pronounced
Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through
the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor
I could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different
with Chicago. Chicago was not stumped for long. He turned a running
stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were
that person's moccasin-tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it
would have done in all other like cases--no, even the eternal laws of
Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of
woodcraft on the reader.
We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's
books "reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention." As a rule, I am
quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud
his lucid and graceful phrasing of them; but that particular statement
needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper
hadn't any more invention than a horse; and I don't mean a high-class
horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be very difficult to
find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and still more
difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to render absurd by
his handling of it. Look at the episodes of "the caves"; and at the
celebrated scuffle between Maqua and those others on the table-land a few
days later; and at Hurry Harry's queer water-transit from the castle to
the ark; and at Deerslayer's half-hour with his first corpse; and at the
quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; and at--but choose for
yourself; you can't go amiss.
If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked
better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly.
Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably
from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was
splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw
nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who
cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working
at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation." In the
Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it
flows out of a lake; it presently narrows to twenty as it meanders along
for no given reason; and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be
required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the
brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become
"the narrowest part of the stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for.
The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks
and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If
Cooper had been a nice and punctilious observer he would have noticed
that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.
Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place,
for no particular reason; in the second place, he narrowed it to less
than twenty to accommodate some Indians. He bends a "sapling" to the
form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its
foliage. They are "laying" for a settler's scow or ark which is coming
up the stream on its way to the lake; it is being hauled against the
stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake; its
rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes
the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimensions "it was
little more than a modern canal-boat." Let us guess, then, that it was
about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of "greater breadth than
common." Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This
leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long as
itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space
to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle.
A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two-thirds of the ark's length"--a
dwelling ninety feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us say a kind of
vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms--each forty-five feet long
and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the
Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime,
at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's
exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to
accommodate the Indians--say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on
each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to
be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by
climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when
the ark scraped by? No, other Indians would have noticed these things,
but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are
marvelous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error
about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them.
The ark is one hundred and forty feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet
long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the
arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the
rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a
minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a
minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would
take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it
up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their
chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian,
warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he
had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he
judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house! That is actually
what he did. He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow.
It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there
unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have
made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the
construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.
There still remained in the roost five Indians.
The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain
what the five did--you would not be able to reason it out for yourself.
No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No.
2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it.
Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then
No, 4. jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then
even No. 5 made a jump for the boat--for he was a Cooper Indian. In the
matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the
Indian that stands in front of the cigarshop is not spacious. The scow
episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill,
because the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of
fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's
inadequacy as an observer.
The reader will find some examples of Cooper's high talent for inaccurate
observation in the account of the shooting-match in The Pathfinder.
"A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its
head having been first touched with paint."
The color of the paint is not stated--an important omission, but Cooper
deals freely in important omissions. No, after all, it was not an
important omission; for this nail-head is a hundred yards from the
marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what
its color might be.
How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards? It
is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that cannot see a house-fly that is
a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nailhead at that distance,
for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see
a fly or a nailhead at fifty yards--one hundred and fifty feet. Can the
reader do it?
The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the
Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge
off the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into
the target--and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far
enough now? Not to suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is
to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer Hawkeye--Long-Rifle-Leather-Stocking-
Pathfinder-Bumppo before the ladies.
"'Be all ready to clench it, boys I' cried out Pathfinder,
stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant.
'Never mind a new nail; I can see that, though the paint is
gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though
it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench!'
"The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was
buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead."
There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a
ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us.
The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is
not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made
Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle; and not only that,
but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He
had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not
only made it, but did it with absolute confidence, saying, "Be ready to
clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken that same feat
with a brickbat, and with Cooper to help he would have achieved it, too.
Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very
first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was
standing with the group of marksmen, observing--a hundred yards from the
target, mind; one jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the
bull's-eye. Then the Quartermaster fired. The target exhibited no
result this time. There was a laugh. "It's a dead miss," said Major
Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two; then said, in
that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, "No, Major, he has
covered jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble
to examine the target."
Wasn't it remarkable! How could he see that little pellet fly through
the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did; for
nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have
any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply
sanity, and these were all Cooper people.
"The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his 'quickness and
accuracy of sight'" (the italics [''] are mine) "was so
profound and general, that the instant he made this declaration
the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a
dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact.
There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's
bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that,
too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be
certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly
established by discovering one bullet over the other in the
stump against which the target was placed."
They made a "minute" examination; but never mind, how could they know
that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one
out? for neither probe nor eyesight could prove the presence of any more
than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the
Pathfinder's turn now; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and
fires.
But, alas! here is a disappointment; an incredible, an unimaginable
disappointment--for the target's aspect is unchanged; there is nothing
there but that same old bullet-hole!
"'If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, 'I
should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target!'"
As nobody had missed it yet, the "also" was not necessary; but never mind
about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
"'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, 'that would be a risky
declaration. I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was
in it; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving
down those of the Quartermaster and Jasper, else is not my name
Pathfinder.'
"A shout from the target announced the truth of this
assertion."
Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder
speaks again, as he "now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by
the females":
"'That's not all, boys, that's not all; if you find the target
touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quartermaster cut the
wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger."
The miracle is at last complete. He knew--doubtless saw--at the distance
of a hundred yards--that his bullet had passed into the hole without
fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole--three
bullets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the
target. Everybody knew this--somehow or other--and yet nobody had dug
any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is
interesting. He is certainly always that, no matter what happens. And
he is more interesting when he is not noticing what he is about than when
he is. This is a considerable merit.
The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern
ears. To believe that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths
would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a
person who thought he had something to say; when it was the custom to
spread a two-minute remark out to ten; when a man's mouth was a
rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs
of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by
attenuation; when subjects were seldom faithfully stuck to, but the talk
wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conversations consisted
mainly of irrelevancies, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy
with an embarrassed look, as not being able to explain how it got there.
Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue.
Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many
other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who
talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the
seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets
Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other
times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him
if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic
answer:
"'She's in the forest-hanging from the boughs of the trees, in
a soft rain--in the dew on the open grass--the clouds that
float about in the blue heavens--the birds that sing in the
woods--the sweet springs where I slake my thirst--and in all
the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!'"
And he preceded that, a little before, with this:
"'It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a
fri'nd.'"
And this is another of his remarks:
"'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in
the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or
if my inimy had only been a bear'"--and so on.
We cannot imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief
comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but
Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the
French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort:
"'Point de quartier aux coquins!' cried an eager pursuer, who
seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.
"'Stand firm and be ready, my gallant Goths!' suddenly
exclaimed a voice above them; wait to see the enemy; fire low,
and sweep the glacis.'
"'Father? father!' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist;
it is I! Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!'
"'Hold!' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of
parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and
rolling back in solemn echo. ''Tis she! God has restored me my
children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, Goths, to
the field! pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive
off these dogs of France with your steel!'"
Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear
for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He
keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor
ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you
perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he
doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear
was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some
circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are
gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses
"verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for
"marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for
"primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked," for "subdued";
"dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact,"
for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for
"determine"; "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for
"factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for
"deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for
"enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped";
"softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for
"condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for
"unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious";
"mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight";
"counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies."
There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could
write English, but they are all dead now--all dead but Lounsbury.
I don't remember that Lounsbury makes the claim in so many words, still
he makes it, for he says that Deerslayer is a "pure work of art."
Pure, in that connection, means faultless--faultless in all details and
language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's
English with the English which he writes himself--but it is plain that he
didn't; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's
is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my
heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our
language, and that the English of Deerslayer is the very worst that even
Cooper ever wrote.
I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslayer is not a work
of art in any sense; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every
detail that goes to the making of a work of art; in truth, it seems to me
that Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.
A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence,
or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of
reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words
they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that
they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations
are--oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime
against the language.
Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offences
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
ESSAYS ON PAUL BOURGET
by Mark Twain
CONTENTS:
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much
does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who
were his parents? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon
us--advertisedly in our own special interest--a natural apprehension
moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?
I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chapters, for I know by the
newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a
whole education out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that
our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon
the land.
"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and well
timed."
"He gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully and
profitably studied."
These well-considered and important verdicts were of a nature to restore
public confidence, which had been disquieted by questionings as to
whether so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as
70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse as America, and
pull it through without assistance.
I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament,
and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly
tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that
there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I
became more disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up
in my mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his
equipment? What was his method?
He had gotten his equipment in France.
Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations that he was an
Observer, and had a System that used by naturalists and other scientists.
The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and
studies their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently
able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families
by nice shadings of differences observable in their characters. Then he
labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group
names, and is now happy, for his great work is completed, and as a result
he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out.
It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer
about it if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant
System, but subject to error.
The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a
Generalizer, a Psychologizer; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to
be all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often
able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad
observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is
then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's
chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no
more than a naturalist's chance of being able to teach it any new ways
which it will prefer to its own.
To return to that first question. M. Bourget, as teacher, would simply
be France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark
--almost Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing
France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about
railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in
that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of
Fulton's date--1809. Postal service? No. France is a back number
there. Telegraphy? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism? No.
Magazining? No, that is our own specialty. Government? No; Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery the system is too
variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our
climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to enrich ourselves.
Novel-writing? No. M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and
when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.
I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment?
But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction,
except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as
well as they can. They confess their happiness to the interviewer. They
feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent recognition that
they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar.
And true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was
sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a
gravelly taste; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have
been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are
pleased; not noisily so, but pleased; invaded, or streaked, as one may
say, with little recurrent shivers of joy--subdued joy, so to speak, not
the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each
other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and
thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar
and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other, and to the
interviewer: "It was severe--yes, it was bitterly severe; but oh, how
true it was; and it will do us so much good!"
If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed
to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know
ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be
an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should
understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself--that would
be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to
himself. But to explain the bug to the bug--that is quite a different
matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself
better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.
A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior--its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a
knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
or six--absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years and
years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
its adorations--of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the national
name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples
through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the
life of a people and make a valuable report--the native novelist. This
expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have fifteen
conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time. This
native specialist is not qualified to begin work until he has been
absorbing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is
derived from conscious "observation"? The amount is so slight that it
counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital
of the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation
--absorption. The native expert's intentional observation of manners,
speech, character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows
what they mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be
astonished to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the
elusive shades of these subtle things. Even the native novelist becomes
a foreigner, with a foreigner's limitations, when he steps from the State
whose life is familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived.
Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious
absorption, and put both of them into his tales alive. But when he came
from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from
study-conscious observation--his failure was absolutely monumental.
Newport is a disastrous place for the unacclimated observer, evidently.
To return to novel-building. Does the native novelist try to generalize
the nation? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life
of a few people grouped in a certain place--his own place--and that is
one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and
the people of the whole nation--the life of a group in a New England
village; in a New York village; in a Texan village; in an Oregon village;
in villages in fifty States and Territories; then the farm-life in fifty
States and Territories; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in
a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to;
and the cowboys; and the gold and silver miners; and the negroes; and the
Idiots and Congressmen; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the
Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the
Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the
Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the
Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists,
the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners.
And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the
soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and
not anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character,
manners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.
"'The nature of a people' is always of a similar shade in its
vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor.
'It is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover',
and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the
church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the
suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite
sure that this 'American soul', the principal interest and the
great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of
Newport for those who choose to see it."--M. Paul Bourget.
[The italics ('') are mine.] It is a large contract which he has
undertaken. "Records" is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use
of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is 'fastes'.
I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he expected to find the great
"American soul" secreted behind the ostentatious of Newport; and that he
was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and
psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: "the
nature of the people" of the United States of America. We have been
accused of being a nation addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust
that we shall be allowed to retire to second place now.
There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labeled
"American." There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend,
or drift of thought, or peculiarity of education, or code of principles,
or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a
particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or
face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or
disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can
rationally be generalized as "American."
Whenever you have found what seems to be an "American" peculiarity, you
have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social
scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can cross the
Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious drift, or
sporting drift, or conversational style or complexion, or cut of face,
but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west,
where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with everything
else which one might propose to call "American." M. Bourget thinks he
has found the American Coquette. If he had really found her he would
also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in
other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the
same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette;
I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels,
and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours.
He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was a
Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her,
and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls
"types," and labeled them in his usual scientific way with "formulas"
--brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes,
they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are pretty far-fetched,
but that is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel
admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his efforts have
called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of the
coquette variants which he has grouped and labeled:
THE COLLECTOR.
THE EQUILIBREE.
THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
THE BLUFFER.
THE GIRL-BOY.
If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been
obliged to believe that they exist; that they exist, and that he has seen
them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further
and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also
light-throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his
note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the
world with a candor and simplicity which show that he believed them
genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the
native the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make
that novel and captivating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any
American can tell him--any American to whom he will show his anecdotes.
It was "put up" on him, as we say. It was a jest--to be plain, it was a
series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and
contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is; they
have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies.
M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely discovered a
type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for
these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is
always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a
rule, and always the spirit of treachery.
In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted
to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little
frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the
situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.
But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a quite
unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in
his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he wanted
was "significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the
source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of
conspiracy against him almost from the start--a conspiracy to freight him
up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed brains could
invent.
The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they
did not excite his. Consider this:
"There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
statue."
If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a
little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present
observer do? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with
this innocent comment:
"This small fact is strangely significant."
It does seem to me that this kind of observing is defective.
Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present
of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber of his
suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for
strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it.
If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters:
"If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he
is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in
a tribute."
Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised;
one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be
ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a "tribute." I think a
little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this:
A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be
ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not
like to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this
formula: the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain-of
argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for
suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed,
and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.
I feel persuaded that in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at
half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies
and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the
charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will
explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn
for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants
answered.
It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are.
Perhaps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and
German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American
temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two
--the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in
other countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal
with us, but that is the case in some other countries. We have no
monopoly of it; it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a
single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide
name "American." That is the national devotion to ice-water. All
Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither
of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand
alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves. When we have
been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell
the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more. Yet we hardly
touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for
it. The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized
yet. I drop the hint and say no more.
It is my belief that there are some "national" traits and things
scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have
lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the
dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever
since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If
people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our
women, and psychologize every little thing they do, and try to teach them
how to behave, and how to cultivate themselves up to where one cannot
tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those
missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into
this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let
fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it:
"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied
to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all
the weaknesses of the French soul."
You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul; a profession;
a science; the serious business of life, so to speak, in our high
Parisian existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if
it can be taught with profit in our country, except, of course, to those
pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the
education which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene
summits of our high Parisian life.
I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have
been parading the world as facts this long time. For instance, consider
the Dollar. The world seems to think that the love of money is
"American"; and that the mad desire to get suddenly rich is "American."
I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not
American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations,
for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has
existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying
to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising
efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out
of all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this
opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after
another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic
coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on
tolerably long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and
reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he
gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no
matter what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or
China if he had had the same chance.
In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble
worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money
risked in a stock deal; and that person promptly took that risk, no
matter what his or her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.
But these opportunities have not been plenty in our Southern States; so
there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is
almost an unknown thing--and has been, from the beginning.
Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry; but
when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between
European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of
the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720--time of Law and the Mississippi
Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any
madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely
comparable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a
cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and satisfy nearly
anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more "American" than
it is French. And if I could furnish an American opportunity to staid
Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.
But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions.
When M. Bourget is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is
peculiarly and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when
he encounters a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person
would merely examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it
go; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget: he always wants to know
why that thing exists, he wants to know how it came to happen; and he
will not let go of it until he has found out. And in every instance he
will find that reason where no one but himself would have thought of
looking for it. He does not seem to care for a reason that is not
picturesquely located; one might almost say picturesquely and impossibly
located.
He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married
women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have
told him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of
the country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a
trustfulness as regards men and facts which is fine and unusual; he is
not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the
character and standing of the fact itself; but when it comes to pounding
out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but
himself.
In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women
are not pursued by the corruptor; and here was the question: What is it
that protects her?
It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties
to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to
M. Bourget: "Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that
a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the
beginning, have been made for love; and where love is there is no room
for the corruptor."
Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went
at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column--three
columns--and with artillery.
"Two reasons of a very different kind explain"--that fact.
And now that I have got so far, I am almost afraid to say what his two
reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not
retreat now; I will condense them and print them, giving my word that I
am honest and not trying to deceive any one.
1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer
in New England and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created
by a Puritan law of two hundred years ago, which for a while punished
adultery with death.
2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are
protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for divorce.
If I have not lost my mind I have accurately conveyed those two Vesuvian
irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chapter IV. of
'Outre-Mer', and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing
Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.
1. This universality of "protection" has existed in our country from the
beginning; before the death penalty existed in New England, and during
all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.
2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that
any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet
been thought of.
Let us suppose that the first easy divorce law went into effect forty
years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business
thirty-five years ago, when we had, say, 25,000,000 of white population.
Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young married women were
"protected" by the surviving shudder of that ancient Puritan scare--what
is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000?
They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy
divorce law to protect them.
Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking--hunting for
it in out-of-the-way places--was new; but that was an error. I remember
that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other
astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion
which M. Bourget employs in his seasonings about American social facts
and their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way
was caused by gaseous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo,
which, ascending to an altitude determinable by their own specific
gravity, became luminous through the development and exposure--by the
natural processes of animal decay--of the phosphorus contained in them.
This theory was warmly complimented by Ptolemy, who, however, after much
thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His
own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning bugs;
and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that
the locusts do like that in Egypt.
Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important
contribution to astronomical science, and was at first inclined to regard
it as conclusive; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced
against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a
detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in 'suspenso
suspensorum' by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join
their several constellations; a proposition for which he was afterwards
burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.
These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received
with enthusiasm by the scientific world; but when a New England farmer,
who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to
account for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that
the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it was
because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly
flat.
As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a
scientific one. He says, "Above all, I do not believe much in
anecdotes."
Why? "In history they are all false"--a sufficiently broad statement
--"in literature all libelous"--also a sufficiently sweeping statement,
coming from a critic who notes that we are "a people who are peculiarly
extravagant in our language--" and when it is a matter of social life,
"almost all biased." It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He
has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes--
mainly "biased" ones, I suppose; and, as they occur "in literature,"
furnished by his pen, they must be "all libelous." Or did he mean not in
literature or anecdotes about literature or literary people? I am not
able to answer that. Perhaps the original would be clearer, but I have
only the translation of this installment by me. I think the remark had
an intention; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that
either in the hurry of the remark's departure it got left, or in the
confusion of changing cars at the translator's frontier it got
side-tracked.
"But on the other hand I believe in statistics; and those on divorces
appear to me to be most conclusive." And he sets himself the task of
explaining--in a couple of columns--the process by which Easy-Divorce
conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an
empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. IN 40 YEARS.
No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics
he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.
I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns,
but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was.
I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to
gradually dissolve and flow off into other matters. I followed it with
interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery
in America, but I was disappointed; I have no idea yet how it did it.
I only know it didn't. But that is not valuable; I knew it before.
Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute
it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and
resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so,
when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I broke
all up. I remember exploding its American countermine once, under that
grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was
Consul-General--for the United States, of course; but we were very
intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that.
One day something offered the opening, and he said:
"Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an
American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his
time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his
grandfather was!"
I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was
back at him as quick as a flash--"Right, your Excellency! But I reckon
a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too; because when
all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out who
his father was!"
Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on!
He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says:
"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good! I'George, I never heard it
said so good in my life before! Say it again."
So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and
then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it,
and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same.
In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those
dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of
a fresh sort of original way.
But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is
the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was
coming to Paris, I read 'La Terre'.
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
[The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review
in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max
O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that
article. It is possible that the position assumed here--that
M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself--is untenable.]
You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation,
if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may
say it without hurt--and certainly I mean no offence--I believe you would
have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at
home; it is your natural weapon; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm,
persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect
when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the
above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of
practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it
lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that
it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it
wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any
more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I
have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack
of practice in dictating.
Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you
had not dictated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and
definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the
reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific
invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an
intrusion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into
a private dispute between friends, unasked.
Those simple and definite facts were these: I had published an article in
this magazine, with you for my subject; just you yourself; I stuck
strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one,
of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your authorized
representative. I asked some questions--asked them of myself.
I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages long, and all
devoted to you; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of
guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one
page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and
our ways; two or three pages of criticism of your method, and of certain
results which it furnished you; two or three pages of attempts to show
the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of
slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary
workmanship, of extracts from your 'Outre-Mer' and comments upon them;
then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat--for certain reasons--that I
closed with an anecdote.
When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a "reply" to
that article of mine, I said "yes," and waited in Paris for the
proof-sheets of the "reply" to come. I already knew, by the cablegram,
that the "reply" would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew
it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at
liberty to assume your championship in a private dispute, unasked, in
view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your
matters of that sort yourself and are not in need of any one's help. No,
a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest.
Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No,
he could not venture it. It would look too much like anxiety to get in
at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could
not get in at all, except by the back way, and with a false key; that is
to say, a pretext--a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into
my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from
their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to
get in? No; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a
certainty that you dictated the Reply yourself. I knew you did it to
save yourself manual labor.
And you had the right, as I have already said and I am content--perfectly
content.
Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me,
if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.
Because then it would have replied--and that is really what a Reply is
for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute--as you will easily
concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of:
he has a chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the
refutation. This would have happened if you had written it out instead
of dictating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcentrate the dictator's
mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into using
one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set.
Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSATION BETWEEN A
SHOUTER AND A DEAF PERSON--as in the present case--when he ought to
employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DISCUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The
great foundation-rule and basic principle of discussion with a
fault-finder is relevancy and concentration upon the subject; whereas
the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation
between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent
desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by
quoting example IV., section from chapter ix. of "Revised Rules for
Conducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will
assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets
of rules:
Shouter. Did you say his name is WETHERBY?
Deaf Person. Change? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear
off I--
Shouter. It's his NAME I want--his NAME.
Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so; but it will only be a shower, I think.
Shouter. No, no, no!--you have quite misunderSTOOD me. If--
Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again,
and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.
You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is
really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours;
in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand.
I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your
doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of
nonexistent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your
disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe
statistics and far facts that lack a pedigree; and you turn around and
come back at me with eight pages of weather.
I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with
change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own
article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons
on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with
a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is
weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you
discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:
"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior;"--[And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed
six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting
down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part,
I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native
opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean 'how the country
struck the foreigner.'"]--which is a quite clear way of saying that a
foreigner's report is only valuable when it restricts itself to
impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing
way, but it leaves me nothing to combat. You should give me something to
deny and refute; I would do as much for you.
It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of
your books seriously.--[When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I
wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan: "If ever you should insist in
seeing in this little volume a serious study of your country and of your
countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be
exploded."]--Because I used to do that cunning thing myself in earlier
days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom Sawyer.
NOTICE.
Persons attempting to find a motive in
this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it
will be banished; persons attempting to
find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.
The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see--the public must
not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the
life-principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have
you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But is leaves me
nothing to combat; and that is damage to me.
Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget?
If so, I must modify that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a
general answer to my inquiry as to what France through you--can teach us.
--["What could France teach America!" exclaims Mark Twain. France can
teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic
feeling and refinement in a street of French workingmen than in many
avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not
perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy.
She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that
money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that
wives are not expensive toys, but useful partners, friends, and
confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by
their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness.
These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not angular
and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by
whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards,
and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot even so much as stain them.
I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his
club would immediately see his name canceled from membership. A man who
had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would
be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown
his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark
Twain remark to this: 'An American is not such a fool: when a creditor
stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following
day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from
business?']--It is a good answer.
It relates to manners, customs, and morals--three things concerning which
we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the
verdicts delivered upon them must always lack conclusiveness and be
subject to revision; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly
as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a
detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay
evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly
facts?--facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute.
I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself
pretty wide open, there; and I thought I was handsomely generous, too,
when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes
which distribute the burden with a nearer approach to perfect fairness
than is the case in any other land; and she can teach us the wisest and
surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to
elect a President in a sane way; and also how to do it without throwing
the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass
business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful
people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us--but
enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us?
She can teach us all the fine arts--and does. She throws open her
hospitable art academies, and says to us, "Come"--and we come, troops and
troops of our young and gifted; and she sets over us the ablest masters
in the world and bearing the greatest names; and she, teaches us all that
we are capable of learning, and persuades us and encourages us with
prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own; and
when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home
and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come
with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill--there is nothing
to pay. And in return for this imperial generosity, what does America
do? She charges a duty on French works of art!
I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth
talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue,
something to refute--but you persistently won't. You leave good chances
unutilized and spend your strength in proving and establishing
unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these
eight facts here following--a good score as to number, but not worth
while:
Mark Twain is--
1. "Insulting."
2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humor, 1st."
3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
4. Has uttered "an ill-natured sneer."
5. Is "nasty."
6. Needs a "lesson in politeness and good manners."
7. Has published a "nasty article."
8. Has made remarks "unworthy of a gentleman."--["It is more funny than
his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."]
A quoted remark of mine "is a gross insult to a nation friendly to
America."
"He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."
"When Mark Twain visits a garden . . . he goes in the far-away corner
where the soil is prepared."
"Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them" (the
Frenchwomen).
"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is unkind, unfair, bitter,
nasty."
"But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.
"Mark might certainly have derived from it" (M. Bourget's book) "a lesson
in politeness and good manners."
A quoted remark of mine is "unworthy of a gentleman."--
These are all true, but really they are not valuable; no one cares much
for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress
them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that
exhibitions of temper in public are not good form except in the very
young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name
them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and
arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think
that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly
strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your
proof-sheets to France closed thus--for your protection:
"It is needless to ask you to avoid anything that he might consider as
personal."
It was well enough, as a measure of precaution, but really it was not
needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget; I shall never call you
any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your
unoffending and dearest ones present.
Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you
would consider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like
that one of yours to a lady for a small fault--or a large one.--[When M.
Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the
Americans, "who can always get away with a few years' trying to find out
who their grandfathers were,"] he merely makes an allusion to an American
foible; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is
when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards! How the
Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in
their name!
Snobbery . . . . I could give Mark Twain an example of the American
specimen. It is a piquant story. I never published it because I feared
my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of
American character instead of a rare exception.
I was once booked by my manager to give a causerie in the drawing-room of
a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like
private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causerie was to be
given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to
arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a
postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of
after-thoughts, and the most important part of their letters is generally
to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I
suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture."
I fairly shorted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, indulging myself in
a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash:
"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had
the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy
of France. I have also many times had the pleasure of being entertained
by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest
you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being
entertained by royalty; but my ambition has never been so wild as to
expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New
York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to
expect me to entertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to
keep the engagement."
Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort,
adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York 'chronique
scandaleuse', on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the
gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not!
[But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do
it.]--We should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have
associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to
crush her with it and make her ashamed of her lowlier walk in life; for
we have a saying, "Who humiliates my mother includes his own."
Do I seriously imagine you to be the author of that strange letter,
M. Bourget? Indeed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously
inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it
with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your
article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve
you when you see it. I also think he interlarded many other things which
you will disapprove of when you see them. I am certain that all the
harsh names discharged at me come from him, not you. No doubt you could
have proved me entitled to them with as little trouble as it has cost him
to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a
higher quality.
Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent
information about Balzac and those others.--["Now the style of M.
Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to
Mark Twain; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian,
Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read
Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave
for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre
Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac? Has he read Victor Hugo's
'Les Miserables' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'? Has he read or heard the
plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of
modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world
for hundreds of years to come? He has read La Terre--this kind-hearted,
refined humorist! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the
violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle? No, he goes in the
far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: 'I wish M.
Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only
way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to
Paris I read La Terre.'"]--All this in simple justice to you--and to me;
for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong
your head and heart, and at the same time convict myself of being
equipped with a vacancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.
And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which
the Reply grew--the anecdote which closed my recent article--and consider
how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions.
If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that
anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hundreds of
times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back
way. But I accuse you of nothing--nothing but error. When you say that
I "retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error. And
not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything
resembling it. Moreover, the magazine would not have allowed me to use
so gross a word as that.
You told an anecdote. A funny one--I admit that. It hit a foible of our
American aristocracy, and it stung me--I admit that; it stung me sharply.
It was like this: You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the
gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said:
"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is the portrait of his grandfather?"
That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
Now that hits only a few of us, I grant--just the upper crust only--but
it hits exceedingly hard.
I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your
chapters I found this chance:
"In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts
and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of
the French soul."
You see? Your "higher Parisian" class--not everybody, not the nation,
but only the top crust of the Ovation--applies to debauchery all the
powers of its soul.
I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an
anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bonaparte say to me
--but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed)
in paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not
like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great
French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist
we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking
a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]
For example:
See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:
"I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because
whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can
always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather
was."
Hear the answer:
"I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too;
because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't
find out who his father was."
The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery.
I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a
gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark
unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,
a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark
Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it
is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to
you.
If Mark Twain was hard up in search of, a French "chestnut," I might have
told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and
would have been less insulting: Two little street boys are abusing each
other. "Ah, hold your tongue," says one, "you ain't got no father."
"Ain't got no father!" replies the other; "I've got more fathers than
you."
Now, then, your anecdote about the grandfathers hurt me. Why? Because
it had a point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point. You
wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.
My anecdote has hurt you. Why? Because it had point, I suppose. It
wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark
about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it
would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had
struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the
entire nation; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and
if you think it punctures them all, I have to yield to your judgment.
But you are to blame, your own self. Your remark misled me. I supposed
the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.
Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can
to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do
anything that will help; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.
I will tell you what I think will be the very thing.
We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I
will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of
France:
"Ha, ha! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your
grandfathers were?"
They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can
trace their lineage back through centuries.
And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation,
saying:
"And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers
were." They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because
they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.
Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point,
you see; and when we swap them around that way, they haven't any.
That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am glad I thought of it.
I am very glad indeed, M. Bourget; for it was just that little wee thing
that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your
amanuensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so.
And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with
another one--on the give-and-take principle, you know--which is American.
I didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you
didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again,
and fixed both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I
know you will forgive me.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays on Paul Bourget
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
TOM SAWYER ABROAD
CHAPTER I. TOM SEEKS NEW ADVENTURES
DO you reckon Tom Sawyer was satisfied after all them adventures? I mean
the adventures we had down the river, and the time we set the darky Jim
free and Tom got shot in the leg. No, he wasn't. It only just p'isoned
him for more. That was all the effect it had. You see, when we three came
back up the river in glory, as you may say, from that long travel, and
the village received us with a torchlight procession and speeches, and
everybody hurrah'd and shouted, it made us heroes, and that was what Tom
Sawyer had always been hankering to be.
For a while he WAS satisfied. Everybody made much of him, and he tilted
up his nose and stepped around the town as though he owned it. Some
called him Tom Sawyer the Traveler, and that just swelled him up fit to
bust. You see he laid over me and Jim considerable, because we only went
down the river on a raft and came back by the steamboat, but Tom went by
the steamboat both ways. The boys envied me and Jim a good deal, but
land! they just knuckled to the dirt before TOM.
Well, I don't know; maybe he might have been satisfied if it hadn't been
for old Nat Parsons, which was postmaster, and powerful long and slim,
and kind o' good-hearted and silly, and bald-headed, on account of his
age, and about the talkiest old cretur I ever see. For as much as thirty
years he'd been the only man in the village that had a reputation--I mean
a reputation for being a traveler, and of course he was mortal proud of
it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that thirty years he had
told about that journey over a million times and enjoyed it every time.
And now comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody admiring
and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give the poor old man the high
strikes. It made him sick to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say
"My land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes alive!" and all such
things; but he couldn't pull away from it, any more than a fly that's got
its hind leg fast in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a rest,
the poor old cretur would chip in on HIS same old travels and work them
for all they were worth; but they were pretty faded, and didn't go for
much, and it was pitiful to see. And then Tom would take another innings,
and then the old man again--and so on, and so on, for an hour and more,
each trying to beat out the other.
You see, Parsons' travels happened like this: When he first got to be
postmaster and was green in the business, there come a letter for
somebody he didn't know, and there wasn't any such person in the village.
Well, he didn't know what to do, nor how to act, and there the letter
stayed and stayed, week in and week out, till the bare sight of it gave
him a conniption. The postage wasn't paid on it, and that was another
thing to worry about. There wasn't any way to collect that ten cents, and
he reckon'd the gov'ment would hold him responsible for it and maybe turn
him out besides, when they found he hadn't collected it. Well, at last he
couldn't stand it any longer. He couldn't sleep nights, he couldn't eat,
he was thinned down to a shadder, yet he da'sn't ask anybody's advice,
for the very person he asked for advice might go back on him and let the
gov'ment know about the letter. He had the letter buried under the floor,
but that did no good; if he happened to see a person standing over the
place it'd give him the cold shivers, and loaded him up with suspicions,
and he would sit up that night till the town was still and dark, and then
he would sneak there and get it out and bury it in another place. Of
course, people got to avoiding him and shaking their heads and
whispering, because, the way he was looking and acting, they judged he
had killed somebody or done something terrible, they didn't know what,
and if he had been a stranger they would've lynched him.
Well, as I was saying, it got so he couldn't stand it any longer; so he
made up his mind to pull out for Washington, and just go to the President
of the United States and make a clean breast of the whole thing, not
keeping back an atom, and then fetch the letter out and lay it before the
whole gov'ment, and say, "Now, there she is--do with me what you're a
mind to; though as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man and not
deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind me a family
that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it, which is the
whole truth and I can swear to it."
So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some
stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took
him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of
villages and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never
was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels
made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about;
and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and
from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him--and there
they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it.
Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest traveler;
some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed that Nat
had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that whatever Tom
was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and climate. It was
about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their dangerous
adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That bullet-wound in Tom's leg
was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he bucked the best
he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didn't set still as he'd
orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered around and worked
his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that HE had in
Washington; for Tom never let go that limp when his leg got well, but
practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right along.
Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got
it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he DID
know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd turn
pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and girls
got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as near
as I can remember:
He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to
the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President
was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia--not a
minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him
so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But just
then along comes a darky driving an old ramshackly hack, and he see his
chance. He rushes out and shouts: "A half a dollar if you git me to the
Capitol in half an hour, and a quarter extra if you do it in twenty
minutes!"
"Done!" says the darky.
Nat he jumped in and slammed the door, and away they went a-ripping and
a-tearing over the roughest road a body ever see, and the racket of it
was something awful. Nat passed his arms through the loops and hung on
for life and death, but pretty soon the hack hit a rock and flew up in
the air, and the bottom fell out, and when it come down Nat's feet was on
the ground, and he see he was in the most desperate danger if he couldn't
keep up with the hack. He was horrible scared, but he laid into his work
for all he was worth, and hung tight to the arm-loops and made his legs
fairly fly. He yelled and shouted to the driver to stop, and so did the
crowds along the street, for they could see his legs spinning along under
the coach, and his head and shoulders bobbing inside through the windows,
and he was in awful danger; but the more they all shouted the more the
nigger whooped and yelled and lashed the horses and shouted, "Don't you
fret, I'se gwine to git you dah in time, boss; I's gwine to do it, sho'!"
for you see he thought they were all hurrying him up, and, of course, he
couldn't hear anything for the racket he was making. And so they went
ripping along, and everybody just petrified to see it; and when they got
to the Capitol at last it was the quickest trip that ever was made, and
everybody said so. The horses laid down, and Nat dropped, all tuckered
out, and he was all dust and rags and barefooted; but he was in time and
just in time, and caught the President and give him the letter, and
everything was all right, and the President give him a free pardon on the
spot, and Nat give the nigger two extra quarters instead of one, because
he could see that if he hadn't had the hack he wouldn't'a' got there in
time, nor anywhere near it.
It WAS a powerful good adventure, and Tom Sawyer had to work his
bullet-wound mighty lively to hold his own against it.
Well, by and by Tom's glory got to paling down gradu'ly, on account of
other things turning up for the people to talk about--first a horse-race,
and on top of that a house afire, and on top of that the circus, and on
top of that the eclipse; and that started a revival, same as it always
does, and by that time there wasn't any more talk about Tom, so to speak,
and you never see a person so sick and disgusted.
Pretty soon he got to worrying and fretting right along day in and day
out, and when I asked him what WAS he in such a state about, he said it
'most broke his heart to think how time was slipping away, and him
getting older and older, and no wars breaking out and no way of making a
name for himself that he could see. Now that is the way boys is always
thinking, but he was the first one I ever heard come out and say it.
So then he set to work to get up a plan to make him celebrated; and
pretty soon he struck it, and offered to take me and Jim in. Tom Sawyer
was always free and generous that way. There's a-plenty of boys that's
mighty good and friendly when YOU'VE got a good thing, but when a good
thing happens to come their way they don't say a word to you, and try to
hog it all. That warn't ever Tom Sawyer's way, I can say that for him.
There's plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you
when you've got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they've
got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a
core one time, they say thank you 'most to death, but there ain't a-going
to be no core. But I notice they always git come up with; all you got to
do is to wait.
Well, we went out in the woods on the hill, and Tom told us what it was.
It was a crusade.
"What's a crusade?" I says.
He looked scornful, the way he's always done when he was ashamed of a
person, and says:
"Huck Finn, do you mean to tell me you don't know what a crusade is?"
"No," says I, "I don't. And I don't care to, nuther. I've lived till now
and done without it, and had my health, too. But as soon as you tell me,
I'll know, and that's soon enough. I don't see any use in finding out
things and clogging up my head with them when I mayn't ever have any
occasion to use 'em. There was Lance Williams, he learned how to talk
Choctaw here till one come and dug his grave for him. Now, then, what's a
crusade? But I can tell you one thing before you begin; if it's a
patent-right, there's no money in it. Bill Thompson he--"
"Patent-right!" says he. "I never see such an idiot. Why, a crusade is a
kind of war."
I thought he must be losing his mind. But no, he was in real earnest, and
went right on, perfectly ca'm.
"A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."
"Which Holy Land?"
"Why, the Holy Land--there ain't but one."
"What do we want of it?"
"Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our
duty to take it away from them."
"How did we come to let them git hold of it?"
"We didn't come to let them git hold of it. They always had it."
"Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"
"Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"
I studied over it, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I
says:
"It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and
another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"
"Oh, shucks! you don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn.
It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They
own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they DO own; but it was
our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they
haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame, and we ought
not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away
from them."
"Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now, if
I had a farm and another person--"
"Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is
business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you
can say for it; but this is higher, this is religious, and totally
different."
"Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"
"Certainly; it's always been considered so."
Jim he shook his head, and says:
"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake about it somers--dey mos' sholy is.
I's religious myself, en I knows plenty religious people, but I hain't
run across none dat acts like dat."
It made Tom hot, and he says:
"Well, it's enough to make a body sick, such mullet-headed ignorance! If
either of you'd read anything about history, you'd know that Richard Cur
de Loon, and the Pope, and Godfrey de Bulleyn, and lots more of the most
noble-hearted and pious people in the world, hacked and hammered at the
paynims for more than two hundred years trying to take their land away
from them, and swum neck-deep in blood the whole time--and yet here's a
couple of sap-headed country yahoos out in the backwoods of Missouri
setting themselves up to know more about the rights and wrongs of it than
they did! Talk about cheek!"
Well, of course, that put a more different light on it, and me and Jim
felt pretty cheap and ignorant, and wished we hadn't been quite so
chipper. I couldn't say nothing, and Jim he couldn't for a while; then he
says:
"Well, den, I reckon it's all right; beca'se ef dey didn't know, dey
ain't no use for po' ignorant folks like us to be trying to know; en so,
ef it's our duty, we got to go en tackle it en do de bes' we can. Same
time, I feel as sorry for dem paynims as Mars Tom. De hard part gwine to
be to kill folks dat a body hain't been 'quainted wid and dat hain't done
him no harm. Dat's it, you see. Ef we wuz to go 'mongst 'em, jist we
three, en say we's hungry, en ast 'em for a bite to eat, why, maybe dey's
jist like yuther people. Don't you reckon dey is? Why, DEY'D give it, I
know dey would, en den--"
"Then what?"
"Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain't no use, we CAN'T kill dem
po' strangers dat ain't doin' us no harm, till we've had practice--I
knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom--'deed I knows it perfectly well. But
ef we takes a' axe or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de
river to-night arter de moon's gone down, en kills dat sick fam'ly dat's
over on the Sny, en burns dey house down, en--"
"Oh, you make me tired!" says Tom. "I don't want to argue any more with
people like you and Huck Finn, that's always wandering from the subject,
and ain't got any more sense than to try to reason out a thing that's
pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!"
Now that's just where Tom Sawyer warn't fair. Jim didn't mean no harm,
and I didn't mean no harm. We knowed well enough that he was right and we
was wrong, and all we was after was to get at the HOW of it, and that was
all; and the only reason he couldn't explain it so we could understand it
was because we was ignorant--yes, and pretty dull, too, I ain't denying
that; but, land! that ain't no crime, I should think.
But he wouldn't hear no more about it--just said if we had tackled the
thing in the proper spirit, he would 'a' raised a couple of thousand
knights and put them in steel armor from head to heel, and made me a
lieutenant and Jim a sutler, and took the command himself and brushed the
whole paynim outfit into the sea like flies and come back across the
world in a glory like sunset. But he said we didn't know enough to take
the chance when we had it, and he wouldn't ever offer it again. And he
didn't. When he once got set, you couldn't budge him.
But I didn't care much. I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people
that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I
was, and we would let it stand at that.
Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was
always reading. And it WAS a wild notion, because in my opinion he never
could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got
licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could
make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a
mighty rocky time of it.
CHAPTER II. THE BALLOON ASCENSION
WELL, Tom got up one thing after another, but they all had tender spots
about 'em somewheres, and he had to shove 'em aside. So at last he was
about in despair. Then the St. Louis papers begun to talk a good deal
about the balloon that was going to sail to Europe, and Tom sort of
thought he wanted to go down and see what it looked like, but couldn't
make up his mind. But the papers went on talking, and so he allowed that
maybe if he didn't go he mightn't ever have another chance to see a
balloon; and next, he found out that Nat Parsons was going down to see
it, and that decided him, of course. He wasn't going to have Nat Parsons
coming back bragging about seeing the balloon, and him having to listen
to it and keep quiet. So he wanted me and Jim to go too, and we went.
It was a noble big balloon, and had wings and fans and all sorts of
things, and wasn't like any balloon you see in pictures. It was away out
toward the edge of town, in a vacant lot, corner of Twelfth street; and
there was a big crowd around it, making fun of it, and making fun of the
man,--a lean pale feller with that soft kind of moonlight in his eyes,
you know,--and they kept saying it wouldn't go. It made him hot to hear
them, and he would turn on them and shake his fist and say they was
animals and blind, but some day they would find they had stood face to
face with one of the men that lifts up nations and makes civilizations,
and was too dull to know it; and right here on this spot their own
children and grandchildren would build a monument to him that would
outlast a thousand years, but his name would outlast the monument. And
then the crowd would burst out in a laugh again, and yell at him, and ask
him what was his name before he was married, and what he would take to
not do it, and what was his sister's cat's grandmother's name, and all
the things that a crowd says when they've got hold of a feller that they
see they can plague. Well, some things they said WAS funny,--yes, and
mighty witty too, I ain't denying that,--but all the same it warn't fair
nor brave, all them people pitching on one, and they so glib and sharp,
and him without any gift of talk to answer back with. But, good land!
what did he want to sass back for? You see, it couldn't do him no good,
and it was just nuts for them. They HAD him, you know. But that was his
way. I reckon he couldn't help it; he was made so, I judge. He was a good
enough sort of cretur, and hadn't no harm in him, and was just a genius,
as the papers said, which wasn't his fault. We can't all be sound: we've
got to be the way we're made. As near as I can make out, geniuses think
they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go
their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and
that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to
learn, it would be better for them.
The part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and
had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in,
and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We went aboard,
and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old
Nat Parsons was there, too. The professor kept fussing around getting
ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old
Nat he was the last. Of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind
US. We mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves.
But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big
shout, and turned around--the city was dropping from under us like a
shot! It made me sick all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and
couldn't say a word, and Tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. The
city went on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be
doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got
smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and
closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling
around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of
melted together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big
scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and
down the river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so
much. By and by the earth was a ball--just a round ball, of a dull color,
with shiny stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was
rivers. The Widder Douglas always told me the earth was round like a
ball, but I never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers,
and of course I paid no attention to that one, because I could see myself
that the world was the shape of a plate, and flat. I used to go up on the
hill, and take a look around and prove it for myself, because I reckon
the best way to get a sure thing on a fact is to go and examine for
yourself, and not take anybody's say-so. But I had to give in now that
the widder was right. That is, she was right as to the rest of the world,
but she warn't right about the part our village is in; that part is the
shape of a plate, and flat, I take my oath!
The professor had been quiet all this time, as if he was asleep; but he
broke loose now, and he was mighty bitter. He says something like this:
"Idiots! They said it wouldn't go; and they wanted to examine it, and spy
around and get the secret of it out of me. But I beat them. Nobody knows
the secret but me. Nobody knows what makes it move but me; and it's a new
power--a new power, and a thousand times the strongest in the earth!
Steam's foolishness to it! They said I couldn't go to Europe. To Europe!
Why, there's power aboard to last five years, and feed for three months.
They are fools! What do they know about it? Yes, and they said my
air-ship was flimsy. Why, she's good for fifty years! I can sail the
skies all my life if I want to, and steer where I please, though they
laughed at that, and said I couldn't. Couldn't steer! Come here, boy;
we'll see. You press these buttons as I tell you."
He made Tom steer the ship all about and every which way, and learnt him
the whole thing in nearly no time; and Tom said it was perfectly easy. He
made him fetch the ship down 'most to the earth, and had him spin her
along so close to the Illinois prairies that a body could talk to the
farmers, and hear everything they said perfectly plain; and he flung out
printed bills to them that told about the balloon, and said it was going
to Europe. Tom got so he could steer straight for a tree till he got
nearly to it, and then dart up and skin right along over the top of it.
Yes, and he showed Tom how to land her; and he done it first-rate, too,
and set her down in the prairies as soft as wool. But the minute we
started to skip out the professor says, "No, you don't!" and shot her up
in the air again. It was awful. I begun to beg, and so did Jim; but it
only give his temper a rise, and he begun to rage around and look wild
out of his eyes, and I was scared of him.
Well, then he got on to his troubles again, and mourned and grumbled
about the way he was treated, and couldn't seem to git over it, and
especially people's saying his ship was flimsy. He scoffed at that, and
at their saying she warn't simple and would be always getting out of
order. Get out of order! That graveled him; he said that she couldn't any
more get out of order than the solar sister.
He got worse and worse, and I never see a person take on so. It give me
the cold shivers to see him, and so it did Jim. By and by he got to
yelling and screaming, and then he swore the world shouldn't ever have
his secret at all now, it had treated him so mean. He said he would sail
his balloon around the globe just to show what he could do, and then he
would sink it in the sea, and sink us all along with it, too. Well, it
was the awfulest fix to be in, and here was night coming on!
He give us something to eat, and made us go to the other end of the boat,
and he laid down on a locker, where he could boss all the works, and put
his old pepper-box revolver under his head, and said if anybody come
fooling around there trying to land her, he would kill him.
We set scrunched up together, and thought considerable, but didn't say
much--only just a word once in a while when a body had to say something
or bust, we was so scared and worried. The night dragged along slow and
lonesome. We was pretty low down, and the moonshine made everything soft
and pretty, and the farmhouses looked snug and homeful, and we could hear
the farm sounds, and wished we could be down there; but, laws! we just
slipped along over them like a ghost, and never left a track.
Away in the night, when all the sounds was late sounds, and the air had a
late feel, and a late smell, too--about a two-o'clock feel, as near as I
could make out--Tom said the professor was so quiet this time he must be
asleep, and we'd better--
"Better what?" I says in a whisper, and feeling sick all over, because I
knowed what he was thinking about.
"Better slip back there and tie him, and land the ship," he says.
I says: "No, sir! Don' you budge, Tom Sawyer."
And Jim--well, Jim was kind o' gasping, he was so scared. He says:
"Oh, Mars Tom, DON'T! Ef you teches him, we's gone--we's gone sho'! I
ain't gwine anear him, not for nothin' in dis worl'. Mars Tom, he's plumb
crazy."
Tom whispers and says--"That's WHY we've got to do something. If he
wasn't crazy I wouldn't give shucks to be anywhere but here; you couldn't
hire me to get out--now that I've got used to this balloon and over the
scare of being cut loose from the solid ground--if he was in his right
mind. But it's no good politics, sailing around like this with a person
that's out of his head, and says he's going round the world and then
drown us all. We've GOT to do something, I tell you, and do it before he
wakes up, too, or we mayn't ever get another chance. Come!"
But it made us turn cold and creepy just to think of it, and we said we
wouldn't budge. So Tom was for slipping back there by himself to see if
he couldn't get at the steering-gear and land the ship. We begged and
begged him not to, but it warn't no use; so he got down on his hands and
knees, and begun to crawl an inch at a time, we a-holding our breath and
watching. After he got to the middle of the boat he crept slower than
ever, and it did seem like years to me. But at last we see him get to the
professor's head, and sort of raise up soft and look a good spell in his
face and listen. Then we see him begin to inch along again toward the
professor's feet where the steering-buttons was. Well, he got there all
safe, and was reaching slow and steady toward the buttons, but he knocked
down something that made a noise, and we see him slump down flat an' soft
in the bottom, and lay still. The professor stirred, and says, "What's
that?" But everybody kept dead still and quiet, and he begun to mutter
and mumble and nestle, like a person that's going to wake up, and I
thought I was going to die, I was so worried and scared.
Then a cloud slid over the moon, and I 'most cried, I was so glad. She
buried herself deeper and deeper into the cloud, and it got so dark we
couldn't see Tom. Then it began to sprinkle rain, and we could hear the
professor fussing at his ropes and things and abusing the weather. We was
afraid every minute he would touch Tom, and then we would be goners, and
no help; but Tom was already on his way back, and when we felt his hands
on our knees my breath stopped sudden, and my heart fell down 'mongst my
other works, because I couldn't tell in the dark but it might be the
professor! which I thought it WAS.
Dear! I was so glad to have him back that I was just as near happy as a
person could be that was up in the air that way with a deranged man. You
can't land a balloon in the dark, and so I hoped it would keep on
raining, for I didn't want Tom to go meddling any more and make us so
awful uncomfortable. Well, I got my wish. It drizzled and drizzled along
the rest of the night, which wasn't long, though it did seem so; and at
daybreak it cleared, and the world looked mighty soft and gray and
pretty, and the forests and fields so good to see again, and the horses
and cattle standing sober and thinking. Next, the sun come a-blazing up
gay and splendid, and then we began to feel rusty and stretchy, and first
we knowed we was all asleep.
CHAPTER III. TOM EXPLAINS
WE went to sleep about four o'clock, and woke up about eight. The
professor was setting back there at his end, looking glum. He pitched us
some breakfast, but he told us not to come abaft the midship compass.
That was about the middle of the boat. Well, when you are sharp-set, and
you eat and satisfy yourself, everything looks pretty different from what
it done before. It makes a body feel pretty near comfortable, even when
he is up in a balloon with a genius. We got to talking together.
There was one thing that kept bothering me, and by and by I says:
"Tom, didn't we start east?"
"Yes."
"How fast have we been going?"
"Well, you heard what the professor said when he was raging round.
Sometimes, he said, we was making fifty miles an hour, sometimes ninety,
sometimes a hundred; said that with a gale to help he could make three
hundred any time, and said if he wanted the gale, and wanted it blowing
the right direction, he only had to go up higher or down lower to find
it."
"Well, then, it's just as I reckoned. The professor lied."
"Why?"
"Because if we was going so fast we ought to be past Illinois, oughtn't
we?"
"Certainly."
"Well, we ain't."
"What's the reason we ain't?"
"I know by the color. We're right over Illinois yet. And you can see for
yourself that Indiana ain't in sight."
"I wonder what's the matter with you, Huck. You know by the COLOR?"
"Yes, of course I do."
"What's the color got to do with it?"
"It's got everything to do with it. Illinois is green, Indiana is pink.
You show me any pink down here, if you can. No, sir; it's green."
"Indiana PINK? Why, what a lie!"
"It ain't no lie; I've seen it on the map, and it's pink."
You never see a person so aggravated and disgusted. He says:
"Well, if I was such a numbskull as you, Huck Finn, I would jump over.
Seen it on the map! Huck Finn, did you reckon the States was the same
color out-of-doors as they are on the map?"
"Tom Sawyer, what's a map for? Ain't it to learn you facts?"
"Of course."
"Well, then, how's it going to do that if it tells lies? That's what I
want to know."
"Shucks, you muggins! It don't tell lies."
"It don't, don't it?"
"No, it don't."
"All right, then; if it don't, there ain't no two States the same color.
You git around THAT if you can, Tom Sawyer."
He see I had him, and Jim see it too; and I tell you, I felt pretty good,
for Tom Sawyer was always a hard person to git ahead of. Jim slapped his
leg and says:
"I tell YOU! dat's smart, dat's right down smart. Ain't no use, Mars Tom;
he got you DIS time, sho'!" He slapped his leg again, and says, "My LAN',
but it was smart one!"
I never felt so good in my life; and yet I didn't know I was saying
anything much till it was out. I was just mooning along, perfectly
careless, and not expecting anything was going to happen, and never
THINKING of such a thing at all, when, all of a sudden, out it came. Why,
it was just as much a surprise to me as it was to any of them. It was
just the same way it is when a person is munching along on a hunk of
corn-pone, and not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden bites
into a di'mond. Now all that HE knows first off is that it's some kind of
gravel he's bit into; but he don't find out it's a di'mond till he gits
it out and brushes off the sand and crumbs and one thing or another, and
has a look at it, and then he's surprised and glad--yes, and proud too;
though when you come to look the thing straight in the eye, he ain't
entitled to as much credit as he would 'a' been if he'd been HUNTING
di'monds. You can see the difference easy if you think it over. You see,
an accident, that way, ain't fairly as big a thing as a thing that's done
a-purpose. Anybody could find that di'mond in that corn-pone; but mind
you, it's got to be somebody that's got THAT KIND OF A CORN-PONE. That's
where that feller's credit comes in, you see; and that's where mine comes
in. I don't claim no great things--I don't reckon I could 'a' done it
again--but I done it that time; that's all I claim. And I hadn't no more
idea I could do such a thing, and warn't any more thinking about it or
trying to, than you be this minute. Why, I was just as ca'm, a body
couldn't be any ca'mer, and yet, all of a sudden, out it come. I've often
thought of that time, and I can remember just the way everything looked,
same as if it was only last week. I can see it all: beautiful rolling
country with woods and fields and lakes for hundreds and hundreds of
miles all around, and towns and villages scattered everywheres under us,
here and there and yonder; and the professor mooning over a chart on his
little table, and Tom's cap flopping in the rigging where it was hung up
to dry. And one thing in particular was a bird right alongside, not ten
foot off, going our way and trying to keep up, but losing ground all the
time; and a railroad train doing the same thing down there, sliding among
the trees and farms, and pouring out a long cloud of black smoke and now
and then a little puff of white; and when the white was gone so long you
had almost forgot it, you would hear a little faint toot, and that was
the whistle. And we left the bird and the train both behind, 'WAY behind,
and done it easy, too.
But Tom he was huffy, and said me and Jim was a couple of ignorant
blatherskites, and then he says:
"Suppose there's a brown calf and a big brown dog, and an artist is
making a picture of them. What is the MAIN thing that that artist has got
to do? He has got to paint them so you can tell them apart the minute you
look at them, hain't he? Of course. Well, then, do you want him to go and
paint BOTH of them brown? Certainly you don't. He paints one of them
blue, and then you can't make no mistake. It's just the same with the
maps. That's why they make every State a different color; it ain't to
deceive you, it's to keep you from deceiving yourself."
But I couldn't see no argument about that, and neither could Jim. Jim
shook his head, and says:
"Why, Mars Tom, if you knowed what chuckle-heads dem painters is, you'd
wait a long time before you'd fetch one er DEM in to back up a fac'. I's
gwine to tell you, den you kin see for you'self. I see one of 'em
a-paintin' away, one day, down in ole Hank Wilson's back lot, en I went
down to see, en he was paintin' dat old brindle cow wid de near horn
gone--you knows de one I means. En I ast him what he's paintin' her for,
en he say when he git her painted, de picture's wuth a hundred dollars.
Mars Tom, he could a got de cow fer fifteen, en I tole him so. Well, sah,
if you'll b'lieve me, he jes' shuck his head, dat painter did, en went on
a-dobbin'. Bless you, Mars Tom, DEY don't know nothin'."
Tom lost his temper. I notice a person 'most always does that's got laid
out in an argument. He told us to shut up, and maybe we'd feel better.
Then he see a town clock away off down yonder, and he took up the glass
and looked at it, and then looked at his silver turnip, and then at the
clock, and then at the turnip again, and says:
"That's funny! That clock's near about an hour fast."
So he put up his turnip. Then he see another clock, and took a look, and
it was an hour fast too. That puzzled him.
"That's a mighty curious thing," he says. "I don't understand it."
Then he took the glass and hunted up another clock, and sure enough it
was an hour fast too. Then his eyes began to spread and his breath to
come out kinder gaspy like, and he says:
"Ger-reat Scott, it's the LONGITUDE!"
I says, considerably scared:
"Well, what's been and gone and happened now?"
"Why, the thing that's happened is that this old bladder has slid over
Illinois and Indiana and Ohio like nothing, and this is the east end of
Pennsylvania or New York, or somewheres around there."
"Tom Sawyer, you don't mean it!"
"Yes, I do, and it's dead sure. We've covered about fifteen degrees of
longitude since we left St. Louis yesterday afternoon, and them clocks
are right. We've come close on to eight hundred miles."
I didn't believe it, but it made the cold streaks trickle down my back
just the same. In my experience I knowed it wouldn't take much short of
two weeks to do it down the Mississippi on a raft. Jim was working his
mind and studying. Pretty soon he says:
"Mars Tom, did you say dem clocks uz right?"
"Yes, they're right."
"Ain't yo' watch right, too?"
"She's right for St. Louis, but she's an hour wrong for here."
"Mars Tom, is you tryin' to let on dat de time ain't de SAME
everywheres?"
"No, it ain't the same everywheres, by a long shot."
Jim looked distressed, and says:
"It grieves me to hear you talk like dat, Mars Tom; I's right down
ashamed to hear you talk like dat, arter de way you's been raised.
Yassir, it'd break yo' Aunt Polly's heart to hear you."
Tom was astonished. He looked Jim over wondering, and didn't say nothing,
and Jim went on:
"Mars Tom, who put de people out yonder in St. Louis? De Lord done it.
Who put de people here whar we is? De Lord done it. Ain' dey bofe his
children? 'Cose dey is. WELL, den! is he gwine to SCRIMINATE 'twixt 'em?"
"Scriminate! I never heard such ignorance. There ain't no discriminating
about it. When he makes you and some more of his children black, and
makes the rest of us white, what do you call that?"
Jim see the p'int. He was stuck. He couldn't answer. Tom says:
"He does discriminate, you see, when he wants to; but this case HERE
ain't no discrimination of his, it's man's. The Lord made the day, and he
made the night; but he didn't invent the hours, and he didn't distribute
them around. Man did that."
"Mars Tom, is dat so? Man done it?"
"Certainly."
"Who tole him he could?"
"Nobody. He never asked."
Jim studied a minute, and says:
"Well, dat do beat me. I wouldn't 'a' tuck no sich resk. But some people
ain't scared o' nothin'. Dey bangs right ahead; DEY don't care what
happens. So den dey's allays an hour's diff'unce everywhah, Mars Tom?"
"An hour? No! It's four minutes difference for every degree of longitude,
you know. Fifteen of 'em's an hour, thirty of 'em's two hours, and so on.
When it's one clock Tuesday morning in England, it's eight o'clock the
night before in New York."
Jim moved a little way along the locker, and you could see he was
insulted. He kept shaking his head and muttering, and so I slid along to
him and patted him on the leg, and petted him up, and got him over the
worst of his feelings, and then he says:
"Mars Tom talkin' sich talk as dat! Choosday in one place en Monday in
t'other, bofe in the same day! Huck, dis ain't no place to joke--up here
whah we is. Two days in one day! How you gwine to get two days inter one
day? Can't git two hours inter one hour, kin you? Can't git two niggers
inter one nigger skin, kin you? Can't git two gallons of whisky inter a
one-gallon jug, kin you? No, sir, 'twould strain de jug. Yes, en even den
you couldn't, I don't believe. Why, looky here, Huck, s'posen de Choosday
was New Year's--now den! is you gwine to tell me it's dis year in one
place en las' year in t'other, bofe in de identical same minute? It's de
beatenest rubbage! I can't stan' it--I can't stan' to hear tell 'bout
it." Then he begun to shiver and turn gray, and Tom says:
"NOW what's the matter? What's the trouble?"
Jim could hardly speak, but he says:
"Mars Tom, you ain't jokin', en it's SO?"
"No, I'm not, and it is so."
Jim shivered again, and says:
"Den dat Monday could be de las' day, en dey wouldn't be no las' day in
England, en de dead wouldn't be called. We mustn't go over dah, Mars Tom.
Please git him to turn back; I wants to be whah--"
All of a sudden we see something, and all jumped up, and forgot
everything and begun to gaze. Tom says:
"Ain't that the--" He catched his breath, then says: "It IS, sure as you
live! It's the ocean!"
That made me and Jim catch our breath, too. Then we all stood petrified
but happy, for none of us had ever seen an ocean, or ever expected to.
Tom kept muttering:
"Atlantic Ocean--Atlantic. Land, don't it sound great! And that's IT--and
WE are looking at it--we! Why, it's just too splendid to believe!"
Then we see a big bank of black smoke; and when we got nearer, it was a
city--and a monster she was, too, with a thick fringe of ships around one
edge; and we wondered if it was New York, and begun to jaw and dispute
about it, and, first we knowed, it slid from under us and went flying
behind, and here we was, out over the very ocean itself, and going like a
cyclone. Then we woke up, I tell you!
We made a break aft and raised a wail, and begun to beg the professor to
turn back and land us, but he jerked out his pistol and motioned us back,
and we went, but nobody will ever know how bad we felt.
The land was gone, all but a little streak, like a snake, away off on the
edge of the water, and down under us was just ocean, ocean,
ocean--millions of miles of it, heaving and pitching and squirming, and
white sprays blowing from the wave-tops, and only a few ships in sight,
wallowing around and laying over, first on one side and then on t'other,
and sticking their bows under and then their sterns; and before long
there warn't no ships at all, and we had the sky and the whole ocean all
to ourselves, and the roomiest place I ever see and the lonesomest.
CHAPTER IV. STORM
AND it got lonesomer and lonesomer. There was the big sky up there, empty
and awful deep; and the ocean down there without a thing on it but just
the waves. All around us was a ring, where the sky and the water come
together; yes, a monstrous big ring it was, and we right in the dead
center of it--plumb in the center. We was racing along like a prairie
fire, but it never made any difference, we couldn't seem to git past that
center no way. I couldn't see that we ever gained an inch on that ring.
It made a body feel creepy, it was so curious and unaccountable.
Well, everything was so awful still that we got to talking in a very low
voice, and kept on getting creepier and lonesomer and less and less
talky, till at last the talk ran dry altogether, and we just set there
and "thunk," as Jim calls it, and never said a word the longest time.
The professor never stirred till the sun was overhead, then he stood up
and put a kind of triangle to his eye, and Tom said it was a sextant and
he was taking the sun to see whereabouts the balloon was. Then he
ciphered a little and looked in a book, and then he begun to carry on
again. He said lots of wild things, and, among others, he said he would
keep up this hundred-mile gait till the middle of to-morrow afternoon,
and then he'd land in London.
We said we would be humbly thankful.
He was turning away, but he whirled around when we said that, and give us
a long look of his blackest kind--one of the maliciousest and
suspiciousest looks I ever see. Then he says:
"You want to leave me. Don't try to deny it."
We didn't know what to say, so we held in and didn't say nothing at all.
He went aft and set down, but he couldn't seem to git that thing out of
his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try
to make us answer him, but we dasn't.
It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I
couldn't stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By and
by Tom pinched me and whispers:
"Look!"
I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle.
I didn't like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, and
pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and
stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to
mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether
it was awful. It got so black we couldn't see him any more, and wished we
couldn't hear him, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn't still
ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his
noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash
of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell
down. We heard him scream out in the dark:
"They don't want to go to England. All right, I'll change the course.
They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall--and NOW!"
I 'most died when he said that. Then he was still again--still so long I
couldn't bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn't EVER come
again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his
hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was
terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, "Overboard YOU go!" but it
was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn't see whether he got him or
not, and Tom didn't make a sound.
There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I see
Tom's head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the
rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor
let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark
again, and Jim groaned out, "Po' Mars Tom, he's a goner!" and made a jump
for the professor, but the professor warn't there.
Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud,
and then another that was 'way below, and you could only JUST hear it;
and I heard Jim say, "Po' Mars Tom!"
Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could 'a' counted four
thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees,
with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was
crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I
was glad, because I didn't want to see. But when the next flash come, I
was watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the
ladder, and it was Tom!
"Come up!" I shouts; "come up, Tom!"
His voice was so weak, and the wind roared so, I couldn't make out what
he said, but I thought he asked was the professor up there. I shouts:
"No, he's down in the ocean! Come up! Can we help you?"
Of course, all this in the dark.
"Huck, who is you hollerin' at?"
"I'm hollerin' at Tom."
"Oh, Huck, how kin you act so, when you know po' Mars Tom--" Then he let
off an awful scream, and flung his head and his arms back and let off
another one, because there was a white glare just then, and he had raised
up his face just in time to see Tom's, as white as snow, rise above the
gunnel and look him right in the eye. He thought it was Tom's ghost, you
see.
Tom clumb aboard, and when Jim found it WAS him, and not his ghost, he
hugged him, and called him all sorts of loving names, and carried on like
he was gone crazy, he was so glad. Says I:
"What did you wait for, Tom? Why didn't you come up at first?"
"I dasn't, Huck. I knowed somebody plunged down past me, but I didn't
know who it was in the dark. It could 'a' been you, it could 'a' been
Jim."
That was the way with Tom Sawyer--always sound. He warn't coming up till
he knowed where the professor was.
The storm let go about this time with all its might; and it was dreadful
the way the thunder boomed and tore, and the lightning glared out, and
the wind sung and screamed in the rigging, and the rain come down. One
second you couldn't see your hand before you, and the next you could
count the threads in your coat-sleeve, and see a whole wide desert of
waves pitching and tossing through a kind of veil of rain. A storm like
that is the loveliest thing there is, but it ain't at its best when you
are up in the sky and lost, and it's wet and lonesome, and there's just
been a death in the family.
We set there huddled up in the bow, and talked low about the poor
professor; and everybody was sorry for him, and sorry the world had made
fun of him and treated him so harsh, when he was doing the best he could,
and hadn't a friend nor nobody to encourage him and keep him from
brooding his mind away and going deranged. There was plenty of clothes
and blankets and everything at the other end, but we thought we'd ruther
take the rain than go meddling back there.
CHAPTER V. LAND
WE tried to make some plans, but we couldn't come to no agreement. Me and
Jim was for turning around and going back home, but Tom allowed that by
the time daylight come, so we could see our way, we would be so far
toward England that we might as well go there, and come back in a ship,
and have the glory of saying we done it.
About midnight the storm quit and the moon come out and lit up the ocean,
and we begun to feel comfortable and drowsy; so we stretched out on the
lockers and went to sleep, and never woke up again till sun-up. The sea
was sparkling like di'monds, and it was nice weather, and pretty soon our
things was all dry again.
We went aft to find some breakfast, and the first thing we noticed was
that there was a dim light burning in a compass back there under a hood.
Then Tom was disturbed. He says:
"You know what that means, easy enough. It means that somebody has got to
stay on watch and steer this thing the same as he would a ship, or she'll
wander around and go wherever the wind wants her to."
"Well," I says, "what's she been doing since--er--since we had the
accident?"
"Wandering," he says, kinder troubled--"wandering, without any doubt.
She's in a wind now that's blowing her south of east. We don't know how
long that's been going on, either."
So then he p'inted her east, and said he would hold her there till we
rousted out the breakfast. The professor had laid in everything a body
could want; he couldn't 'a' been better fixed. There wasn't no milk for
the coffee, but there was water, and everything else you could want, and
a charcoal stove and the fixings for it, and pipes and cigars and
matches; and wine and liquor, which warn't in our line; and books, and
maps, and charts, and an accordion; and furs, and blankets, and no end of
rubbish, like brass beads and brass jewelry, which Tom said was a sure
sign that he had an idea of visiting among savages. There was money, too.
Yes, the professor was well enough fixed.
After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all
up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was
out I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and
wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had
happened to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and
folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it,
and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE
ERRONORT," and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when
it come along in the mail. I says:
"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon."
"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?"
"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway."
"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin."
"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?"
I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his mind,
but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say:
"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a mighty
good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe
there's ANY that does."
"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN?--that's the p'int."
"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses
for--for--well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to
keep a person warm, do they?"
"Course they don't."
"But they put them ON, don't they?"
"Yes."
"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the
ruffle on it."
I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.
"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's
sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it,
nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey
wouldn't stay ef you did."
"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know something
about."
"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts,
when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence--"
"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only--"
"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter--"
"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a
metaphor."
That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says--rather timid,
because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:
"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?"
"A metaphor's a--well, it's a--a--a metaphor's an illustration." He see
THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather
flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying--"
"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no feathers
dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you
catches dem birds together, you'll--"
"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through your
thick skull. Now don't bother me any more."
Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for
catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he
was a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put
together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and
that's the way to find out about birds. That's the way people does that
writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and
tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it.
Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer
myself, because I always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to
learn how to be one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree,
singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I
thought I fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the
limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked him up and he was dead,
and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and
that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his
eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! I
couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and I hain't never murdered no
creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't going to.
But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the
subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when
a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people
made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of them
ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high.
Well, that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That
pleased Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says:
"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't
know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make
it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it."
He said an erronort was a person who sailed around in balloons; and said
it was a mighty sight finer to be Tom Sawyer the Erronort than to be Tom
Sawyer the Traveler, and we would be heard of all round the world, if we
pulled through all right, and so he wouldn't give shucks to be a traveler
now.
Toward the middle of the afternoon we got everything ready to land, and
we felt pretty good, too, and proud; and we kept watching with the
glasses, like Columbus discovering America. But we couldn't see nothing
but ocean. The afternoon wasted out and the sun shut down, and still
there warn't no land anywheres. We wondered what was the matter, but
reckoned it would come out all right, so we went on steering east, but
went up on a higher level so we wouldn't hit any steeples or mountains in
the dark.
It was my watch till midnight, and then it was Jim's; but Tom stayed up,
because he said ship captains done that when they was making the land,
and didn't stand no regular watch.
Well, when daylight come, Jim give a shout, and we jumped up and looked
over, and there was the land sure enough--land all around, as far as you
could see, and perfectly level and yaller. We didn't know how long we'd
been over it. There warn't no trees, nor hills, nor rocks, nor towns, and
Tom and Jim had took it for the sea. They took it for the sea in a dead
ca'm; but we was so high up, anyway, that if it had been the sea and
rough, it would 'a' looked smooth, all the same, in the night, that way.
We was all in a powerful excitement now, and grabbed the glasses and
hunted everywheres for London, but couldn't find hair nor hide of it, nor
any other settlement--nor any sign of a lake or a river, either. Tom was
clean beat. He said it warn't his notion of England; he thought England
looked like America, and always had that idea. So he said we better have
breakfast, and then drop down and inquire the quickest way to London. We
cut the breakfast pretty short, we was so impatient. As we slanted along
down, the weather began to moderate, and pretty soon we shed our furs.
But it kept ON moderating, and in a precious little while it was 'most
too moderate. We was close down now, and just blistering!
We settled down to within thirty foot of the land--that is, it was land
if sand is land; for this wasn't anything but pure sand. Tom and me clumb
down the ladder and took a run to stretch our legs, and it felt amazing
good--that is, the stretching did, but the sand scorched our feet like
hot embers. Next, we see somebody coming, and started to meet him; but we
heard Jim shout, and looked around and he was fairly dancing, and making
signs, and yelling. We couldn't make out what he said, but we was scared
anyway, and begun to heel it back to the balloon. When we got close
enough, we understood the words, and they made me sick:
"Run! Run fo' yo' life! Hit's a lion; I kin see him thoo de glass! Run,
boys; do please heel it de bes' you kin. He's bu'sted outen de menagerie,
en dey ain't nobody to stop him!"
It made Tom fly, but it took the stiffening all out of my legs. I could
only just gasp along the way you do in a dream when there's a ghost
gaining on you.
Tom got to the ladder and shinned up it a piece and waited for me; and as
soon as I got a foothold on it he shouted to Jim to soar away. But Jim
had clean lost his head, and said he had forgot how. So Tom shinned along
up and told me to follow; but the lion was arriving, fetching a most
ghastly roar with every lope, and my legs shook so I dasn't try to take
one of them out of the rounds for fear the other one would give way under
me.
But Tom was aboard by this time, and he started the balloon up a little,
and stopped it again as soon as the end of the ladder was ten or twelve
feet above ground. And there was the lion, a-ripping around under me, and
roaring and springing up in the air at the ladder, and only missing it
about a quarter of an inch, it seemed to me. It was delicious to be out
of his reach, perfectly delicious, and made me feel good and thankful all
up one side; but I was hanging there helpless and couldn't climb, and
that made me feel perfectly wretched and miserable all down the other. It
is most seldom that a person feels so mixed like that; and it is not to
be recommended, either.
Tom asked me what he'd better do, but I didn't know. He asked me if I
could hold on whilst he sailed away to a safe place and left the lion
behind. I said I could if he didn't go no higher than he was now; but if
he went higher I would lose my head and fall, sure. So he said, "Take a
good grip," and he started.
"Don't go so fast," I shouted. "It makes my head swim."
He had started like a lightning express. He slowed down, and we glided
over the sand slower, but still in a kind of sickening way; for it IS
uncomfortable to see things sliding and gliding under you like that, and
not a sound.
But pretty soon there was plenty of sound, for the lion was catching up.
His noise fetched others. You could see them coming on the lope from
every direction, and pretty soon there was a couple of dozen of them
under me, jumping up at the ladder and snarling and snapping at each
other; and so we went skimming along over the sand, and these fellers
doing what they could to help us to not forgit the occasion; and then
some other beasts come, without an invite, and they started a regular
riot down there.
We see this plan was a mistake. We couldn't ever git away from them at
this gait, and I couldn't hold on forever. So Tom took a think, and
struck another idea. That was, to kill a lion with the pepper-box
revolver, and then sail away while the others stopped to fight over the
carcass. So he stopped the balloon still, and done it, and then we sailed
off while the fuss was going on, and come down a quarter of a mile off,
and they helped me aboard; but by the time we was out of reach again,
that gang was on hand once more. And when they see we was really gone and
they couldn't get us, they sat down on their hams and looked up at us so
kind of disappointed that it was as much as a person could do not to see
THEIR side of the matter.
CHAPTER VI. IT'S A CARAVAN
I WAS so weak that the only thing I wanted was a chance to lay down, so I
made straight for my locker-bunk, and stretched myself out there. But a
body couldn't get back his strength in no such oven as that, so Tom give
the command to soar, and Jim started her aloft.
We had to go up a mile before we struck comfortable weather where it was
breezy and pleasant and just right, and pretty soon I was all straight
again. Tom had been setting quiet and thinking; but now he jumps up and
says:
"I bet you a thousand to one I know where we are. We're in the Great
Sahara, as sure as guns!"
He was so excited he couldn't hold still; but I wasn't. I says:
"Well, then, where's the Great Sahara? In England or in Scotland?"
"'Tain't in either; it's in Africa."
Jim's eyes bugged out, and he begun to stare down with no end of
interest, because that was where his originals come from; but I didn't
more than half believe it. I couldn't, you know; it seemed too awful far
away for us to have traveled.
But Tom was full of his discovery, as he called it, and said the lions
and the sand meant the Great Desert, sure. He said he could 'a' found
out, before we sighted land, that we was crowding the land somewheres, if
he had thought of one thing; and when we asked him what, he said:
"These clocks. They're chronometers. You always read about them in sea
voyages. One of them is keeping Grinnage time, and the other is keeping
St. Louis time, like my watch. When we left St. Louis it was four in the
afternoon by my watch and this clock, and it was ten at night by this
Grinnage clock. Well, at this time of the year the sun sets at about
seven o'clock. Now I noticed the time yesterday evening when the sun went
down, and it was half-past five o'clock by the Grinnage clock, and half
past 11 A.M. by my watch and the other clock. You see, the sun rose and
set by my watch in St. Louis, and the Grinnage clock was six hours fast;
but we've come so far east that it comes within less than half an hour of
setting by the Grinnage clock now, and I'm away out--more than four
hours and a half out. You see, that meant that we was closing up on the
longitude of Ireland, and would strike it before long if we was p'inted
right--which we wasn't. No, sir, we've been a-wandering--wandering 'way
down south of east, and it's my opinion we are in Africa. Look at this
map. You see how the shoulder of Africa sticks out to the west. Think how
fast we've traveled; if we had gone straight east we would be long past
England by this time. You watch for noon, all of you, and we'll stand up,
and when we can't cast a shadow we'll find that this Grinnage clock is
coming mighty close to marking twelve. Yes, sir, I think we're in Africa;
and it's just bully."
Jim was gazing down with the glass. He shook his head and says:
"Mars Tom, I reckon dey's a mistake som'er's, hain't seen no niggers
yit."
"That's nothing; they don't live in the desert. What is that, 'way off
yonder? Gimme a glass."
He took a long look, and said it was like a black string stretched across
the sand, but he couldn't guess what it was.
"Well," I says, "I reckon maybe you've got a chance now to find out
whereabouts this balloon is, because as like as not that is one of these
lines here, that's on the map, that you call meridians of longitude, and
we can drop down and look at its number, and--"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, I never see such a lunkhead as you. Did you
s'pose there's meridians of longitude on the EARTH?"
"Tom Sawyer, they're set down on the map, and you know it perfectly well,
and here they are, and you can see for yourself."
"Of course they're on the map, but that's nothing; there ain't any on the
GROUND."
"Tom, do you know that to be so?"
"Certainly I do."
"Well, then, that map's a liar again. I never see such a liar as that
map."
He fired up at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his
opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument,
if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac
and sing out:
"Camels!--Camels!"
So I grabbed a glass and Jim, too, and took a look, but I was
disappointed, and says:
"Camels your granny; they're spiders."
"Spiders in a desert, you shad? Spiders walking in a procession? You
don't ever reflect, Huck Finn, and I reckon you really haven't got
anything to reflect WITH. Don't you know we're as much as a mile up in
the air, and that that string of crawlers is two or three miles away?
Spiders, good land! Spiders as big as a cow? Perhaps you'd like to go
down and milk one of 'em. But they're camels, just the same. It's a
caravan, that's what it is, and it's a mile long."
"Well, then, let's go down and look at it. I don't believe in it, and
ain't going to till I see it and know it."
"All right," he says, and give the command:
"Lower away."
As we come slanting down into the hot weather, we could see that it was
camels, sure enough, plodding along, an everlasting string of them, with
bales strapped to them, and several hundred men in long white robes, and
a thing like a shawl bound over their heads and hanging down with tassels
and fringes; and some of the men had long guns and some hadn't, and some
was riding and some was walking. And the weather--well, it was just
roasting. And how slow they did creep along! We swooped down now, all of
a sudden, and stopped about a hundred yards over their heads.
The men all set up a yell, and some of them fell flat on their stomachs,
some begun to fire their guns at us, and the rest broke and scampered
every which way, and so did the camels.
We see that we was making trouble, so we went up again about a mile, to
the cool weather, and watched them from there. It took them an hour to
get together and form the procession again; then they started along, but
we could see by the glasses that they wasn't paying much attention to
anything but us. We poked along, looking down at them with the glasses,
and by and by we see a big sand mound, and something like people the
other side of it, and there was something like a man laying on top of the
mound that raised his head up every now and then, and seemed to be
watching the caravan or us, we didn't know which. As the caravan got
nearer, he sneaked down on the other side and rushed to the other men and
horses--for that is what they was--and we see them mount in a hurry; and
next, here they come, like a house afire, some with lances and some with
long guns, and all of them yelling the best they could.
They come a-tearing down on to the caravan, and the next minute both
sides crashed together and was all mixed up, and there was such another
popping of guns as you never heard, and the air got so full of smoke you
could only catch glimpses of them struggling together. There must 'a'
been six hundred men in that battle, and it was terrible to see. Then
they broke up into gangs and groups, fighting tooth and nail, and
scurrying and scampering around, and laying into each other like
everything; and whenever the smoke cleared a little you could see dead
and wounded people and camels scattered far and wide and all about, and
camels racing off in every direction.
At last the robbers see they couldn't win, so their chief sounded a
signal, and all that was left of them broke away and went scampering
across the plain. The last man to go snatched up a child and carried it
off in front of him on his horse, and a woman run screaming and begging
after him, and followed him away off across the plain till she was
separated a long ways from her people; but it warn't no use, and she had
to give it up, and we see her sink down on the sand and cover her face
with her hands. Then Tom took the hellum, and started for that yahoo, and
we come a-whizzing down and made a swoop, and knocked him out of the
saddle, child and all; and he was jarred considerable, but the child
wasn't hurt, but laid there working its hands and legs in the air like a
tumble-bug that's on its back and can't turn over. The man went
staggering off to overtake his horse, and didn't know what had hit him,
for we was three or four hundred yards up in the air by this time.
We judged the woman would go and get the child now; but she didn't. We
could see her, through the glass, still setting there, with her head
bowed down on her knees; so of course she hadn't seen the performance,
and thought her child was clean gone with the man. She was nearly a half
a mile from her people, so we thought we might go down to the child,
which was about a quarter of a mile beyond her, and snake it to her
before the caravan people could git to us to do us any harm; and besides,
we reckoned they had enough business on their hands for one while,
anyway, with the wounded. We thought we'd chance it, and we did. We
swooped down and stopped, and Jim shinned down the ladder and fetched up
the kid, which was a nice fat little thing, and in a noble good humor,
too, considering it was just out of a battle and been tumbled off of a
horse; and then we started for the mother, and stopped back of her and
tolerable near by, and Jim slipped down and crept up easy, and when he
was close back of her the child goo-goo'd, the way a child does, and she
heard it, and whirled and fetched a shriek of joy, and made a jump for
the kid and snatched it and hugged it, and dropped it and hugged Jim, and
then snatched off a gold chain and hung it around Jim's neck, and hugged
him again, and jerked up the child again, a-sobbing and glorifying all
the time; and Jim he shoved for the ladder and up it, and in a minute we
was back up in the sky and the woman was staring up, with the back of her
head between her shoulders and the child with its arms locked around her
neck. And there she stood, as long as we was in sight a-sailing away in
the sky.
CHAPTER VII. TOM RESPECTS THE FLEA
"NOON!" says Tom, and so it was. His shadder was just a blot around his
feet. We looked, and the Grinnage clock was so close to twelve the
difference didn't amount to nothing. So Tom said London was right north
of us or right south of us, one or t'other, and he reckoned by the
weather and the sand and the camels it was north; and a good many miles
north, too; as many as from New York to the city of Mexico, he guessed.
Jim said he reckoned a balloon was a good deal the fastest thing in the
world, unless it might be some kinds of birds--a wild pigeon, maybe, or a
railroad.
But Tom said he had read about railroads in England going nearly a
hundred miles an hour for a little ways, and there never was a bird in
the world that could do that--except one, and that was a flea.
"A flea? Why, Mars Tom, in de fust place he ain't a bird, strickly
speakin'--"
"He ain't a bird, eh? Well, then, what is he?"
"I don't rightly know, Mars Tom, but I speck he's only jist a' animal.
No, I reckon dat won't do, nuther, he ain't big enough for a' animal. He
mus' be a bug. Yassir, dat's what he is, he's a bug."
"I bet he ain't, but let it go. What's your second place?"
"Well, in de second place, birds is creturs dat goes a long ways, but a
flea don't."
"He don't, don't he? Come, now, what IS a long distance, if you know?"
"Why, it's miles, and lots of 'em--anybody knows dat."
"Can't a man walk miles?"
"Yassir, he kin."
"As many as a railroad?"
"Yassir, if you give him time."
"Can't a flea?"
"Well--I s'pose so--ef you gives him heaps of time."
"Now you begin to see, don't you, that DISTANCE ain't the thing to judge
by, at all; it's the time it takes to go the distance IN that COUNTS,
ain't it?"
"Well, hit do look sorter so, but I wouldn't 'a' b'lieved it, Mars Tom."
"It's a matter of PROPORTION, that's what it is; and when you come to
gauge a thing's speed by its size, where's your bird and your man and
your railroad, alongside of a flea? The fastest man can't run more than
about ten miles in an hour--not much over ten thousand times his own
length. But all the books says any common ordinary third-class flea can
jump a hundred and fifty times his own length; yes, and he can make five
jumps a second too--seven hundred and fifty times his own length, in one
little second--for he don't fool away any time stopping and starting--he
does them both at the same time; you'll see, if you try to put your
finger on him. Now that's a common, ordinary, third-class flea's gait;
but you take an Eyetalian FIRST-class, that's been the pet of the
nobility all his life, and hasn't ever knowed what want or sickness or
exposure was, and he can jump more than three hundred times his own
length, and keep it up all day, five such jumps every second, which is
fifteen hundred times his own length. Well, suppose a man could go
fifteen hundred times his own length in a second--say, a mile and a half.
It's ninety miles a minute; it's considerable more than five thousand
miles an hour. Where's your man NOW?--yes, and your bird, and your
railroad, and your balloon? Laws, they don't amount to shucks 'longside
of a flea. A flea is just a comet b'iled down small."
Jim was a good deal astonished, and so was I. Jim said:
"Is dem figgers jist edjackly true, en no jokin' en no lies, Mars Tom?"
"Yes, they are; they're perfectly true."
"Well, den, honey, a body's got to respec' a flea. I ain't had no respec'
for um befo', sca'sely, but dey ain't no gittin' roun' it, dey do deserve
it, dat's certain."
"Well, I bet they do. They've got ever so much more sense, and brains,
and brightness, in proportion to their size, than any other cretur in the
world. A person can learn them 'most anything; and they learn it quicker
than any other cretur, too. They've been learnt to haul little carriages
in harness, and go this way and that way and t'other way according to
their orders; yes, and to march and drill like soldiers, doing it as
exact, according to orders, as soldiers does it. They've been learnt to
do all sorts of hard and troublesome things. S'pose you could cultivate a
flea up to the size of a man, and keep his natural smartness a-growing
and a-growing right along up, bigger and bigger, and keener and keener,
in the same proportion--where'd the human race be, do you reckon? That
flea would be President of the United States, and you couldn't any more
prevent it than you can prevent lightning."
"My lan', Mars Tom, I never knowed dey was so much TO de beas'. No, sir,
I never had no idea of it, and dat's de fac'."
"There's more to him, by a long sight, than there is to any other cretur,
man or beast, in proportion to size. He's the interestingest of them all.
People have so much to say about an ant's strength, and an elephant's,
and a locomotive's. Shucks, they don't begin with a flea. He can lift two
or three hundred times his own weight. And none of them can come anywhere
near it. And, moreover, he has got notions of his own, and is very
particular, and you can't fool him; his instinct, or his judgment, or
whatever it is, is perfectly sound and clear, and don't ever make a
mistake. People think all humans are alike to a flea. It ain't so.
There's folks that he won't go near, hungry or not hungry, and I'm one of
them. I've never had one of them on me in my life."
"Mars Tom!"
"It's so; I ain't joking."
"Well, sah, I hain't ever heard de likes o' dat befo'." Jim couldn't
believe it, and I couldn't; so we had to drop down to the sand and git a
supply and see. Tom was right. They went for me and Jim by the thousand,
but not a one of them lit on Tom. There warn't no explaining it, but
there it was and there warn't no getting around it. He said it had always
been just so, and he'd just as soon be where there was a million of them
as not; they'd never touch him nor bother him.
We went up to the cold weather to freeze 'em out, and stayed a little
spell, and then come back to the comfortable weather and went lazying
along twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, the way we'd been doing for
the last few hours. The reason was, that the longer we was in that
solemn, peaceful desert, the more the hurry and fuss got kind of soothed
down in us, and the more happier and contented and satisfied we got to
feeling, and the more we got to liking the desert, and then loving it. So
we had cramped the speed down, as I was saying, and was having a most
noble good lazy time, sometimes watching through the glasses, sometimes
stretched out on the lockers reading, sometimes taking a nap.
It didn't seem like we was the same lot that was in such a state to find
land and git ashore, but it was. But we had got over that--clean over it.
We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want
to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as
if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And
always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering
of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and
sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making
me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want
to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something
else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up
here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to
eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and
no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I
warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of
the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter
with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel
bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over
the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and
it's such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate
letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles
on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the
darlingest place there is.
We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see.
The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see
a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it
seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of
ink. That's the kind of moonlight to have.
Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it
was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened;
so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't
anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has
talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel,
and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:
"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"
And the man says:
"Was he blind in his left eye?"
"Yes."
"Had he lost an upper front tooth?"
"Yes."
"Was his off hind leg lame?"
"Yes."
"Was he loaded with millet-seed on one side and honey on the other?"
"Yes, but you needn't go into no more details--that's the one, and I'm
in a hurry. Where did you see him?"
"I hain't seen him at all," the man says.
"Hain't seen him at all? How can you describe him so close, then?"
"Because when a person knows how to use his eyes, everything has got a
meaning to it; but most people's eyes ain't any good to them. I knowed a
camel had been along, because I seen his track. I knowed he was lame in
his off hind leg because he had favored that foot and trod light on it,
and his track showed it. I knowed he was blind on his left side because
he only nibbled the grass on the right side of the trail. I knowed he had
lost an upper front tooth because where he bit into the sod his
teeth-print showed it. The millet-seed sifted out on one side--the ants
told me that; the honey leaked out on the other--the flies told me that.
I know all about your camel, but I hain't seen him."
Jim says:
"Go on, Mars Tom, hit's a mighty good tale, and powerful interestin'."
"That's all," Tom says.
"ALL?" says Jim, astonished. "What 'come o' de camel?"
"I don't know."
"Mars Tom, don't de tale say?"
"No."
Jim puzzled a minute, then he says:
"Well! Ef dat ain't de beatenes' tale ever I struck. Jist gits to de
place whah de intrust is gittin' red-hot, en down she breaks. Why, Mars
Tom, dey ain't no SENSE in a tale dat acts like dat. Hain't you got no
IDEA whether de man got de camel back er not?"
"No, I haven't."
I see myself there warn't no sense in the tale, to chop square off that
way before it come to anything, but I warn't going to say so, because I
could see Tom was souring up pretty fast over the way it flatted out and
the way Jim had popped on to the weak place in it, and I don't think it's
fair for everybody to pile on to a feller when he's down. But Tom he
whirls on me and says:
"What do YOU think of the tale?"
Of course, then, I had to come out and make a clean breast and say it did
seem to me, too, same as it did to Jim, that as long as the tale stopped
square in the middle and never got to no place, it really warn't worth
the trouble of telling.
Tom's chin dropped on his breast, and 'stead of being mad, as I reckoned
he'd be, to hear me scoff at his tale that way, he seemed to be only sad;
and he says:
"Some people can see, and some can't--just as that man said. Let alone a
camel, if a cyclone had gone by, YOU duffers wouldn't 'a' noticed the
track."
I don't know what he meant by that, and he didn't say; it was just one of
his irrulevances, I reckon--he was full of them, sometimes, when he was
in a close place and couldn't see no other way out--but I didn't mind.
We'd spotted the soft place in that tale sharp enough, he couldn't git
away from that little fact. It graveled him like the nation, too, I
reckon, much as he tried not to let on.
CHAPTER VIII. THE DISAPPEARING LAKE
WE had an early breakfast in the morning, and set looking down on the
desert, and the weather was ever so bammy and lovely, although we warn't
high up. You have to come down lower and lower after sundown in the
desert, because it cools off so fast; and so, by the time it is getting
toward dawn, you are skimming along only a little ways above the sand.
We was watching the shadder of the balloon slide along the ground, and
now and then gazing off across the desert to see if anything was
stirring, and then down on the shadder again, when all of a sudden almost
right under us we see a lot of men and camels laying scattered about,
perfectly quiet, like they was asleep.
We shut off the power, and backed up and stood over them, and then we see
that they was all dead. It give us the cold shivers. And it made us hush
down, too, and talk low, like people at a funeral. We dropped down slow
and stopped, and me and Tom clumb down and went among them. There was
men, and women, and children. They was dried by the sun and dark and
shriveled and leathery, like the pictures of mummies you see in books.
And yet they looked just as human, you wouldn't 'a' believed it; just
like they was asleep.
Some of the people and animals was partly covered with sand, but most of
them not, for the sand was thin there, and the bed was gravel and hard.
Most of the clothes had rotted away; and when you took hold of a rag, it
tore with a touch, like spiderweb. Tom reckoned they had been laying
there for years.
Some of the men had rusty guns by them, some had swords on and had shawl
belts with long, silver-mounted pistols stuck in them. All the camels had
their loads on yet, but the packs had busted or rotted and spilt the
freight out on the ground. We didn't reckon the swords was any good to
the dead people any more, so we took one apiece, and some pistols. We
took a small box, too, because it was so handsome and inlaid so fine; and
then we wanted to bury the people; but there warn't no way to do it that
we could think of, and nothing to do it with but sand, and that would
blow away again, of course.
Then we mounted high and sailed away, and pretty soon that black spot on
the sand was out of sight, and we wouldn't ever see them poor people
again in this world. We wondered, and reasoned, and tried to guess how
they come to be there, and how it all happened to them, but we couldn't
make it out. First we thought maybe they got lost, and wandered around
and about till their food and water give out and they starved to death;
but Tom said no wild animals nor vultures hadn't meddled with them, and
so that guess wouldn't do. So at last we give it up, and judged we
wouldn't think about it no more, because it made us low-spirited.
Then we opened the box, and it had gems and jewels in it, quite a pile,
and some little veils of the kind the dead women had on, with fringes
made out of curious gold money that we warn't acquainted with. We
wondered if we better go and try to find them again and give it back; but
Tom thought it over and said no, it was a country that was full of
robbers, and they would come and steal it; and then the sin would be on
us for putting the temptation in their way. So we went on; but I wished
we had took all they had, so there wouldn't 'a' been no temptation at all
left.
We had had two hours of that blazing weather down there, and was dreadful
thirsty when we got aboard again. We went straight for the water, but it
was spoiled and bitter, besides being pretty near hot enough to scald
your mouth. We couldn't drink it. It was Mississippi river water, the
best in the world, and we stirred up the mud in it to see if that would
help, but no, the mud wasn't any better than the water. Well, we hadn't
been so very, very thirsty before, while we was interested in the lost
people, but we was now, and as soon as we found we couldn't have a drink,
we was more than thirty-five times as thirsty as we was a quarter of a
minute before. Why, in a little while we wanted to hold our mouths open
and pant like a dog.
Tom said to keep a sharp lookout, all around, everywheres, because we'd
got to find an oasis or there warn't no telling what would happen. So we
done it. We kept the glasses gliding around all the time, till our arms
got so tired we couldn't hold them any more. Two hours--three hours--just
gazing and gazing, and nothing but sand, sand, SAND, and you could see
the quivering heat-shimmer playing over it. Dear, dear, a body don't know
what real misery is till he is thirsty all the way through and is certain
he ain't ever going to come to any water any more. At last I couldn't
stand it to look around on them baking plains; I laid down on the locker,
and give it up.
But by and by Tom raised a whoop, and there she was! A lake, wide and
shiny, with pa'm-trees leaning over it asleep, and their shadders in the
water just as soft and delicate as ever you see. I never see anything
look so good. It was a long ways off, but that warn't anything to us; we
just slapped on a hundred-mile gait, and calculated to be there in seven
minutes; but she stayed the same old distance away, all the time; we
couldn't seem to gain on her; yes, sir, just as far, and shiny, and like
a dream; but we couldn't get no nearer; and at last, all of a sudden, she
was gone!
Tom's eyes took a spread, and he says:
"Boys, it was a MYridge!" Said it like he was glad. I didn't see nothing
to be glad about. I says:
"Maybe. I don't care nothing about its name, the thing I want to know is,
what's become of it?"
Jim was trembling all over, and so scared he couldn't speak, but he
wanted to ask that question himself if he could 'a' done it. Tom says:
"What's BECOME of it? Why, you see yourself it's gone."
"Yes, I know; but where's it gone TO?"
He looked me over and says:
"Well, now, Huck Finn, where WOULD it go to! Don't you know what a
myridge is?"
"No, I don't. What is it?"
"It ain't anything but imagination. There ain't anything TO it."
It warmed me up a little to hear him talk like that, and I says:
"What's the use you talking that kind of stuff, Tom Sawyer? Didn't I see
the lake?"
"Yes--you think you did."
"I don't think nothing about it, I DID see it."
"I tell you you DIDN'T see it either--because it warn't there to see."
It astonished Jim to hear him talk so, and he broke in and says, kind of
pleading and distressed:
"Mars Tom, PLEASE don't say sich things in sich an awful time as dis. You
ain't only reskin' yo' own self, but you's reskin' us--same way like Anna
Nias en Siffra. De lake WUZ dah--I seen it jis' as plain as I sees you en
Huck dis minute."
I says:
"Why, he seen it himself! He was the very one that seen it first. NOW,
then!"
"Yes, Mars Tom, hit's so--you can't deny it. We all seen it, en dat PROVE
it was dah."
"Proves it! How does it prove it?"
"Same way it does in de courts en everywheres, Mars Tom. One pusson might
be drunk, or dreamy or suthin', en he could be mistaken; en two might,
maybe; but I tell you, sah, when three sees a thing, drunk er sober, it's
SO. Dey ain't no gittin' aroun' dat, en you knows it, Mars Tom."
"I don't know nothing of the kind. There used to be forty thousand
million people that seen the sun move from one side of the sky to the
other every day. Did that prove that the sun DONE it?"
"Course it did. En besides, dey warn't no 'casion to prove it. A body
'at's got any sense ain't gwine to doubt it. Dah she is now--a sailin'
thoo de sky, like she allays done."
Tom turned on me, then, and says:
"What do YOU say--is the sun standing still?"
"Tom Sawyer, what's the use to ask such a jackass question? Anybody that
ain't blind can see it don't stand still."
"Well," he says, "I'm lost in the sky with no company but a passel of
low-down animals that don't know no more than the head boss of a
university did three or four hundred years ago."
It warn't fair play, and I let him know it. I says:
"Throwin' mud ain't arguin', Tom Sawyer."
"Oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness gracious, dah's de lake agi'n!" yelled
Jim, just then. "NOW, Mars Tom, what you gwine to say?"
Yes, sir, there was the lake again, away yonder across the desert,
perfectly plain, trees and all, just the same as it was before. I says:
"I reckon you're satisfied now, Tom Sawyer."
But he says, perfectly ca'm:
"Yes, satisfied there ain't no lake there."
Jim says:
"DON'T talk so, Mars Tom--it sk'yers me to hear you. It's so hot, en
you's so thirsty, dat you ain't in yo' right mine, Mars Tom. Oh, but
don't she look good! 'clah I doan' know how I's gwine to wait tell we
gits dah, I's SO thirsty."
"Well, you'll have to wait; and it won't do you no good, either, because
there ain't no lake there, I tell you."
I says:
"Jim, don't you take your eye off of it, and I won't, either."
"'Deed I won't; en bless you, honey, I couldn't ef I wanted to."
We went a-tearing along toward it, piling the miles behind us like
nothing, but never gaining an inch on it--and all of a sudden it was
gone again! Jim staggered, and 'most fell down. When he got his breath he
says, gasping like a fish:
"Mars Tom, hit's a GHOS', dat's what it is, en I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de
ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de
danger we's in."
"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I--gimme the glass!"
He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.
"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business--maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to
starboard!--Port your hellum! Hard down! There--ease up--steady, as you
go."
We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out
after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and
when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:
"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the
birds."
Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was
most crying, and says:
"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to die,
'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."
He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because I
knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then
I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and
go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of
these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it
for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that
knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they
are.
So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy. By
and by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:
"NOW get up and look, you sapheads."
We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!--clear,
and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest
sight that ever was. And all about it was grassy banks, and flowers, and
shady groves of big trees, looped together with vines, and all looking so
peaceful and comfortable--enough to make a body cry, it was so
beautiful.
Jim DID cry, and rip and dance and carry on, he was so thankful and out
of his mind for joy. It was my watch, so I had to stay by the works, but
Tom and Jim clumb down and drunk a barrel apiece, and fetched me up a
lot, and I've tasted a many a good thing in my life, but nothing that
ever begun with that water.
Then we went down and had a swim, and then Tom came up and spelled me,
and me and Jim had a swim, and then Jim spelled Tom, and me and Tom had a
foot-race and a boxing-mill, and I don't reckon I ever had such a good
time in my life. It warn't so very hot, because it was close on to
evening, and we hadn't any clothes on, anyway. Clothes is well enough in
school, and in towns, and at balls, too, but there ain't no sense in them
when there ain't no civilization nor other kinds of bothers and fussiness
around.
"Lions a-comin'!--lions! Quick, Mars Tom! Jump for yo' life, Huck!"
Oh, and didn't we! We never stopped for clothes, but waltzed up the
ladder just so. Jim lost his head straight off--he always done it
whenever he got excited and scared; and so now, 'stead of just easing the
ladder up from the ground a little, so the animals couldn't reach it, he
turned on a raft of power, and we went whizzing up and was dangling in
the sky before he got his wits together and seen what a foolish thing he
was doing. Then he stopped her, but he had clean forgot what to do next;
so there we was, so high that the lions looked like pups, and we was
drifting off on the wind.
But Tom he shinned up and went for the works and begun to slant her down,
and back toward the lake, where the animals was gathering like a
camp-meeting, and I judged he had lost HIS head, too; for he knowed I was
too scared to climb, and did he want to dump me among the tigers and
things?
But no, his head was level, he knowed what he was about. He swooped down
to within thirty or forty feet of the lake, and stopped right over the
center, and sung out:
"Leggo, and drop!"
I done it, and shot down, feet first, and seemed to go about a mile
toward the bottom; and when I come up, he says:
"Now lay on your back and float till you're rested and got your pluck
back, then I'll dip the ladder in the water and you can climb aboard."
I done it. Now that was ever so smart in Tom, because if he had started
off somewheres else to drop down on the sand, the menagerie would 'a'
come along, too, and might 'a' kept us hunting a safe place till I got
tuckered out and fell.
And all this time the lions and tigers was sorting out the clothes, and
trying to divide them up so there would be some for all, but there was a
misunderstanding about it somewheres, on account of some of them trying
to hog more than their share; so there was another insurrection, and you
never see anything like it in the world. There must 'a' been fifty of
them, all mixed up together, snorting and roaring and snapping and biting
and tearing, legs and tails in the air, and you couldn't tell which was
which, and the sand and fur a-flying. And when they got done, some was
dead and some was limping off crippled, and the rest was setting around
on the battlefield, some of them licking their sore places and the others
looking up at us and seemed to be kind of inviting us to come down and
have some fun, but which we didn't want any.
As for the clothes, they warn't any, any more. Every last rag of them was
inside of the animals; and not agreeing with them very well, I don't
reckon, for there was considerable many brass buttons on them, and there
was knives in the pockets, too, and smoking tobacco, and nails and chalk
and marbles and fishhooks and things. But I wasn't caring. All that was
bothering me was, that all we had now was the professor's clothes, a big
enough assortment, but not suitable to go into company with, if we came
across any, because the britches was as long as tunnels, and the coats
and things according. Still, there was everything a tailor needed, and
Jim was a kind of jack legged tailor, and he allowed he could soon trim a
suit or two down for us that would answer.
CHAPTER IX. TOM DISCOURSES ON THE DESERT
STILL, we thought we would drop down there a minute, but on another
errand. Most of the professor's cargo of food was put up in cans, in the
new way that somebody had just invented; the rest was fresh. When you
fetch Missouri beefsteak to the Great Sahara, you want to be particular
and stay up in the coolish weather. So we reckoned we would drop down
into the lion market and see how we could make out there.
We hauled in the ladder and dropped down till we was just above the reach
of the animals, then we let down a rope with a slip-knot in it and hauled
up a dead lion, a small tender one, then yanked up a cub tiger. We had to
keep the congregation off with the revolver, or they would 'a' took a
hand in the proceedings and helped.
We carved off a supply from both, and saved the skins, and hove the rest
overboard. Then we baited some of the professor's hooks with the fresh
meat and went a-fishing. We stood over the lake just a convenient
distance above the water, and catched a lot of the nicest fish you ever
see. It was a most amazing good supper we had; lion steak, tiger steak,
fried fish, and hot corn-pone. I don't want nothing better than that.
We had some fruit to finish off with. We got it out of the top of a
monstrous tall tree. It was a very slim tree that hadn't a branch on it
from the bottom plumb to the top, and there it bursted out like a
feather-duster. It was a pa'm-tree, of course; anybody knows a pa'm-tree
the minute he see it, by the pictures. We went for cocoanuts in this one,
but there warn't none. There was only big loose bunches of things like
oversized grapes, and Tom allowed they was dates, because he said they
answered the description in the Arabian Nights and the other books. Of
course they mightn't be, and they might be poison; so we had to wait a
spell, and watch and see if the birds et them. They done it; so we done
it, too, and they was most amazing good.
By this time monstrous big birds begun to come and settle on the dead
animals. They was plucky creturs; they would tackle one end of a lion
that was being gnawed at the other end by another lion. If the lion drove
the bird away, it didn't do no good; he was back again the minute the
lion was busy.
The big birds come out of every part of the sky--you could make them out
with the glass while they was still so far away you couldn't see them
with your naked eye. Tom said the birds didn't find out the meat was
there by the smell; they had to find it out by seeing it. Oh, but ain't
that an eye for you! Tom said at the distance of five mile a patch of
dead lions couldn't look any bigger than a person's finger-nail, and he
couldn't imagine how the birds could notice such a little thing so far
off.
It was strange and unnatural to see lion eat lion, and we thought maybe
they warn't kin. But Jim said that didn't make no difference. He said a
hog was fond of her own children, and so was a spider, and he reckoned
maybe a lion was pretty near as unprincipled though maybe not quite. He
thought likely a lion wouldn't eat his own father, if he knowed which was
him, but reckoned he would eat his brother-in-law if he was uncommon
hungry, and eat his mother-in-law any time. But RECKONING don't settle
nothing. You can reckon till the cows come home, but that don't fetch you
to no decision. So we give it up and let it drop.
Generly it was very still in the Desert nights, but this time there was
music. A lot of other animals come to dinner; sneaking yelpers that Tom
allowed was jackals, and roached-backed ones that he said was hyenas; and
all the whole biling of them kept up a racket all the time. They made a
picture in the moonlight that was more different than any picture I ever
see. We had a line out and made fast to the top of a tree, and didn't
stand no watch, but all turned in and slept; but I was up two or three
times to look down at the animals and hear the music. It was like having
a front seat at a menagerie for nothing, which I hadn't ever had before,
and so it seemed foolish to sleep and not make the most of it; I mightn't
ever have such a chance again.
We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day
in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that
none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for
dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but couldn't, it was too
lovely.
The day after, when we rose up toward the sky and sailed off eastward, we
looked back and watched that place till it warn't nothing but just a
speck in the Desert, and I tell you it was like saying good-bye to a
friend that you ain't ever going to see any more.
Jim was thinking to himself, and at last he says:
"Mars Tom, we's mos' to de end er de Desert now, I speck."
"Why?"
"Well, hit stan' to reason we is. You knows how long we's been a-skimmin'
over it. Mus' be mos' out o' san'. Hit's a wonder to me dat it's hilt out
as long as it has."
"Shucks, there's plenty sand, you needn't worry."
"Oh, I ain't a-worryin', Mars Tom, only wonderin', dat's all. De Lord's
got plenty san', I ain't doubtin' dat; but nemmine, He ain't gwyne to
WAS'E it jist on dat account; en I allows dat dis Desert's plenty big
enough now, jist de way she is, en you can't spread her out no mo' 'dout
was'in' san'."
"Oh, go 'long! we ain't much more than fairly STARTED across this Desert
yet. The United States is a pretty big country, ain't it? Ain't it,
Huck?"
"Yes," I says, "there ain't no bigger one, I don't reckon."
"Well," he says, "this Desert is about the shape of the United States,
and if you was to lay it down on top of the United States, it would cover
the land of the free out of sight like a blanket. There'd be a little
corner sticking out, up at Maine and away up northwest, and Florida
sticking out like a turtle's tail, and that's all. We've took California
away from the Mexicans two or three years ago, so that part of the
Pacific coast is ours now, and if you laid the Great Sahara down with her
edge on the Pacific, she would cover the United States and stick out past
New York six hundred miles into the Atlantic ocean."
I say:
"Good land! have you got the documents for that, Tom Sawyer?"
"Yes, and they're right here, and I've been studying them. You can look
for yourself. From New York to the Pacific is 2,600 miles. From one end
of the Great Desert to the other is 3,200. The United States contains
3,600,000 square miles, the Desert contains 4,162,000. With the Desert's
bulk you could cover up every last inch of the United States, and in
under where the edges projected out, you could tuck England, Scotland,
Ireland, France, Denmark, and all Germany. Yes, sir, you could hide the
home of the brave and all of them countries clean out of sight under the
Great Sahara, and you would still have 2,000 square miles of sand left."
"Well," I says, "it clean beats me. Why, Tom, it shows that the Lord took
as much pains makin' this Desert as makin' the United States and all them
other countries."
Jim says: "Huck, dat don' stan' to reason. I reckon dis Desert wa'n't
made at all. Now you take en look at it like dis--you look at it, and see
ef I's right. What's a desert good for? 'Taint good for nuthin'. Dey
ain't no way to make it pay. Hain't dat so, Huck?"
"Yes, I reckon."
"Hain't it so, Mars Tom?"
"I guess so. Go on."
"Ef a thing ain't no good, it's made in vain, ain't it?"
"Yes."
"NOW, den! Do de Lord make anything in vain? You answer me dat."
"Well--no, He don't."
"Den how come He make a desert?"
"Well, go on. How DID He come to make it?"
"Mars Tom, I b'lieve it uz jes like when you's buildin' a house; dey's
allays a lot o' truck en rubbish lef' over. What does you do wid it?
Doan' you take en k'yart it off en dump it into a ole vacant back lot?
'Course. Now, den, it's my opinion hit was jes like dat--dat de Great
Sahara warn't made at all, she jes HAPPEN'."
I said it was a real good argument, and I believed it was the best one
Jim ever made. Tom he said the same, but said the trouble about arguments
is, they ain't nothing but THEORIES, after all, and theories don't prove
nothing, they only give you a place to rest on, a spell, when you are
tuckered out butting around and around trying to find out something there
ain't no way TO find out. And he says:
"There's another trouble about theories: there's always a hole in them
somewheres, sure, if you look close enough. It's just so with this one of
Jim's. Look what billions and billions of stars there is. How does it
come that there was just exactly enough star-stuff, and none left over?
How does it come there ain't no sand-pile up there?"
But Jim was fixed for him and says:
"What's de Milky Way?--dat's what I want to know. What's de Milky Way?
Answer me dat!"
In my opinion it was just a sockdologer. It's only an opinion, it's only
MY opinion and others may think different; but I said it then and I stand
to it now--it was a sockdologer. And moreover, besides, it landed Tom
Sawyer. He couldn't say a word. He had that stunned look of a person
that's been shot in the back with a kag of nails. All he said was, as for
people like me and Jim, he'd just as soon have intellectual intercourse
with a catfish. But anybody can say that--and I notice they always do,
when somebody has fetched them a lifter. Tom Sawyer was tired of that end
of the subject.
So we got back to talking about the size of the Desert again, and the
more we compared it with this and that and t'other thing, the more nobler
and bigger and grander it got to look right along. And so, hunting among
the figgers, Tom found, by and by, that it was just the same size as the
Empire of China. Then he showed us the spread the Empire of China made on
the map, and the room she took up in the world. Well, it was wonderful to
think of, and I says:
"Why, I've heard talk about this Desert plenty of times, but I never
knowed before how important she was."
Then Tom says:
"Important! Sahara important! That's just the way with some people. If a
thing's big, it's important. That's all the sense they've got. All they
can see is SIZE. Why, look at England. It's the most important country in
the world; and yet you could put it in China's vest-pocket; and not only
that, but you'd have the dickens's own time to find it again the next
time you wanted it. And look at Russia. It spreads all around and
everywhere, and yet ain't no more important in this world than Rhode
Island is, and hasn't got half as much in it that's worth saving."
Away off now we see a little hill, a-standing up just on the edge of the
world. Tom broke off his talk, and reached for a glass very much excited,
and took a look, and says:
"That's it--it's the one I've been looking for, sure. If I'm right, it's
the one the dervish took the man into and showed him all the treasures."
So we begun to gaze, and he begun to tell about it out of the Arabian
Nights.
CHAPTER X. THE TREASURE-HILL
TOM said it happened like this.
A dervish was stumping it along through the Desert, on foot, one blazing
hot day, and he had come a thousand miles and was pretty poor, and
hungry, and ornery and tired, and along about where we are now he run
across a camel-driver with a hundred camels, and asked him for some a'ms.
But the cameldriver he asked to be excused. The dervish said:
"Don't you own these camels?"
"Yes, they're mine."
"Are you in debt?"
"Who--me? No."
"Well, a man that owns a hundred camels and ain't in debt is rich--and
not only rich, but very rich. Ain't it so?"
The camel-driver owned up that it was so. Then the dervish says:
"God has made you rich, and He has made me poor. He has His reasons, and
they are wise, blessed be His name. But He has willed that His rich shall
help His poor, and you have turned away from me, your brother, in my
need, and He will remember this, and you will lose by it."
That made the camel-driver feel shaky, but all the same he was born
hoggish after money and didn't like to let go a cent; so he begun to
whine and explain, and said times was hard, and although he had took a
full freight down to Balsora and got a fat rate for it, he couldn't git
no return freight, and so he warn't making no great things out of his
trip. So the dervish starts along again, and says:
"All right, if you want to take the risk; but I reckon you've made a
mistake this time, and missed a chance."
Of course the camel-driver wanted to know what kind of a chance he had
missed, because maybe there was money in it; so he run after the dervish,
and begged him so hard and earnest to take pity on him that at last the
dervish gave in, and says:
"Do you see that hill yonder? Well, in that hill is all the treasures of
the earth, and I was looking around for a man with a particular good kind
heart and a noble, generous disposition, because if I could find just
that man, I've got a kind of a salve I could put on his eyes and he could
see the treasures and get them out."
So then the camel-driver was in a sweat; and he cried, and begged, and
took on, and went down on his knees, and said he was just that kind of a
man, and said he could fetch a thousand people that would say he wasn't
ever described so exact before.
"Well, then," says the dervish, "all right. If we load the hundred
camels, can I have half of them?"
The driver was so glad he couldn't hardly hold in, and says:
"Now you're shouting."
So they shook hands on the bargain, and the dervish got out his box and
rubbed the salve on the driver's right eye, and the hill opened and he
went in, and there, sure enough, was piles and piles of gold and jewels
sparkling like all the stars in heaven had fell down.
So him and the dervish laid into it, and they loaded every camel till he
couldn't carry no more; then they said good-bye, and each of them started
off with his fifty. But pretty soon the camel-driver come a-running and
overtook the dervish and says:
"You ain't in society, you know, and you don't really need all you've
got. Won't you be good, and let me have ten of your camels?"
"Well," the dervish says, "I don't know but what you say is reasonable
enough."
So he done it, and they separated and the dervish started off again with
his forty. But pretty soon here comes the camel-driver bawling after him
again, and whines and slobbers around and begs another ten off of him,
saying thirty camel loads of treasures was enough to see a dervish
through, because they live very simple, you know, and don't keep house,
but board around and give their note.
But that warn't the end yet. That ornery hound kept coming and coming
till he had begged back all the camels and had the whole hundred. Then he
was satisfied, and ever so grateful, and said he wouldn't ever forgit the
dervish as long as he lived, and nobody hadn't been so good to him
before, and liberal. So they shook hands good-bye, and separated and
started off again.
But do you know, it warn't ten minutes till the camel-driver was
unsatisfied again--he was the lowdownest reptyle in seven counties--and
he come a-running again. And this time the thing he wanted was to get the
dervish to rub some of the salve on his other eye.
"Why?" said the dervish.
"Oh, you know," says the driver.
"Know what?"
"Well, you can't fool me," says the driver. "You're trying to keep back
something from me, you know it mighty well. You know, I reckon, that if I
had the salve on the other eye I could see a lot more things that's
valuable. Come--please put it on."
The dervish says:
"I wasn't keeping anything back from you. I don't mind telling you what
would happen if I put it on. You'd never see again. You'd be stone-blind
the rest of your days."
But do you know that beat wouldn't believe him. No, he begged and begged,
and whined and cried, till at last the dervish opened his box and told
him to put it on, if he wanted to. So the man done it, and sure enough he
was as blind as a bat in a minute.
Then the dervish laughed at him and mocked at him and made fun of him;
and says:
"Good-bye--a man that's blind hain't got no use for jewelry."
And he cleared out with the hundred camels, and left that man to wander
around poor and miserable and friendless the rest of his days in the
Desert.
Jim said he'd bet it was a lesson to him.
"Yes," Tom says, "and like a considerable many lessons a body gets. They
ain't no account, because the thing don't ever happen the same way
again--and can't. The time Hen Scovil fell down the chimbly and crippled
his back for life, everybody said it would be a lesson to him. What kind
of a lesson? How was he going to use it? He couldn't climb chimblies no
more, and he hadn't no more backs to break."
"All de same, Mars Tom, dey IS sich a thing as learnin' by expe'ence. De
Good Book say de burnt chile shun de fire."
"Well, I ain't denying that a thing's a lesson if it's a thing that can
happen twice just the same way. There's lots of such things, and THEY
educate a person, that's what Uncle Abner always said; but there's forty
MILLION lots of the other kind--the kind that don't happen the same way
twice--and they ain't no real use, they ain't no more instructive than
the small-pox. When you've got it, it ain't no good to find out you ought
to been vaccinated, and it ain't no good to git vaccinated afterward,
because the small-pox don't come but once. But, on the other hand, Uncle
Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had
learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a
person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting
knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever
going to grow dim or doubtful. But I can tell you, Jim, Uncle Abner was
down on them people that's all the time trying to dig a lesson out of
everything that happens, no matter whether--"
But Jim was asleep. Tom looked kind of ashamed, because you know a person
always feels bad when he is talking uncommon fine and thinks the other
person is admiring, and that other person goes to sleep that way. Of
course he oughtn't to go to sleep, because it's shabby; but the finer a
person talks the certainer it is to make you sleep, and so when you come
to look at it it ain't nobody's fault in particular; both of them's to
blame.
Jim begun to snore--soft and blubbery at first, then a long rasp, then a
stronger one, then a half a dozen horrible ones like the last water
sucking down the plug-hole of a bath-tub, then the same with more power
to it, and some big coughs and snorts flung in, the way a cow does that
is choking to death; and when the person has got to that point he is at
his level best, and can wake up a man that is in the next block with a
dipperful of loddanum in him, but can't wake himself up although all that
awful noise of his'n ain't but three inches from his own ears. And that
is the curiosest thing in the world, seems to me. But you rake a match to
light the candle, and that little bit of a noise will fetch him. I wish I
knowed what was the reason of that, but there don't seem to be no way to
find out. Now there was Jim alarming the whole Desert, and yanking the
animals out, for miles and miles around, to see what in the nation was
going on up there; there warn't nobody nor nothing that was as close to
the noise as HE was, and yet he was the only cretur that wasn't disturbed
by it. We yelled at him and whooped at him, it never done no good; but
the first time there come a little wee noise that wasn't of a usual kind
it woke him up. No, sir, I've thought it all over, and so has Tom, and
there ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore.
Jim said he hadn't been asleep; he just shut his eyes so he could listen
better.
Tom said nobody warn't accusing him.
That made him look like he wished he hadn't said anything. And he wanted
to git away from the subject, I reckon, because he begun to abuse the
camel-driver, just the way a person does when he has got catched in
something and wants to take it out of somebody else. He let into the
camel-driver the hardest he knowed how, and I had to agree with him; and
he praised up the dervish the highest he could, and I had to agree with
him there, too. But Tom says:
"I ain't so sure. You call that dervish so dreadful liberal and good and
unselfish, but I don't quite see it. He didn't hunt up another poor
dervish, did he? No, he didn't. If he was so unselfish, why didn't he go
in there himself and take a pocketful of jewels and go along and be
satisfied? No, sir, the person he was hunting for was a man with a
hundred camels. He wanted to get away with all the treasure he could."
"Why, Mars Tom, he was willin' to divide, fair and square; he only struck
for fifty camels."
"Because he knowed how he was going to get all of them by and by."
"Mars Tom, he TOLE de man de truck would make him bline."
"Yes, because he knowed the man's character. It was just the kind of a
man he was hunting for--a man that never believes in anybody's word or
anybody's honorableness, because he ain't got none of his own. I reckon
there's lots of people like that dervish. They swindle, right and left,
but they always make the other person SEEM to swindle himself. They keep
inside of the letter of the law all the time, and there ain't no way to
git hold of them. THEY don't put the salve on--oh, no, that would be
sin; but they know how to fool YOU into putting it on, then it's you that
blinds yourself. I reckon the dervish and the camel-driver was just a
pair--a fine, smart, brainy rascal, and a dull, coarse, ignorant one, but
both of them rascals, just the same."
"Mars Tom, does you reckon dey's any o' dat kind o' salve in de worl'
now?"
"Yes, Uncle Abner says there is. He says they've got it in New York, and
they put it on country people's eyes and show them all the railroads in
the world, and they go in and git them, and then when they rub the salve
on the other eye the other man bids them goodbye and goes off with their
railroads. Here's the treasure-hill now. Lower away!"
We landed, but it warn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be,
because we couldn't find the place where they went in to git the
treasure. Still, it was plenty interesting enough, just to see the mere
hill itself where such a wonderful thing happened. Jim said he wou'dn't
'a' missed it for three dollars, and I felt the same way.
And to me and Jim, as wonderful a thing as any was the way Tom could come
into a strange big country like this and go straight and find a little
hump like that and tell it in a minute from a million other humps that
was almost just like it, and nothing to help him but only his own
learning and his own natural smartness. We talked and talked it over
together, but couldn't make out how he done it. He had the best head on
him I ever see; and all he lacked was age, to make a name for himself
equal to Captain Kidd or George Washington. I bet you it would 'a'
crowded either of THEM to find that hill, with all their gifts, but it
warn't nothing to Tom Sawyer; he went across Sahara and put his finger on
it as easy as you could pick a nigger out of a bunch of angels.
We found a pond of salt water close by and scraped up a raft of salt
around the edges, and loaded up the lion's skin and the tiger's so as
they would keep till Jim could tan them.
CHAPTER XI. THE SAND-STORM
WE went a-fooling along for a day or two, and then just as the full moon
was touching the ground on the other side of the desert, we see a string
of little black figgers moving across its big silver face. You could see
them as plain as if they was painted on the moon with ink. It was another
caravan. We cooled down our speed and tagged along after it, just to have
company, though it warn't going our way. It was a rattler, that caravan,
and a most bully sight to look at next morning when the sun come
a-streaming across the desert and flung the long shadders of the camels
on the gold sand like a thousand grand-daddy-long-legses marching in
procession. We never went very near it, because we knowed better now than
to act like that and scare people's camels and break up their caravans.
It was the gayest outfit you ever see, for rich clothes and nobby style.
Some of the chiefs rode on dromedaries, the first we ever see, and very
tall, and they go plunging along like they was on stilts, and they rock
the man that is on them pretty violent and churn up his dinner
considerable, I bet you, but they make noble good time, and a camel ain't
nowheres with them for speed.
The caravan camped, during the middle part of the day, and then started
again about the middle of the afternoon. Before long the sun begun to
look very curious. First it kind of turned to brass, and then to copper,
and after that it begun to look like a blood-red ball, and the air got
hot and close, and pretty soon all the sky in the west darkened up and
looked thick and foggy, but fiery and dreadful--like it looks through a
piece of red glass, you know. We looked down and see a big confusion
going on in the caravan, and a rushing every which way like they was
scared; and then they all flopped down flat in the sand and laid there
perfectly still.
Pretty soon we see something coming that stood up like an amazing wide
wall, and reached from the Desert up into the sky and hid the sun, and it
was coming like the nation, too. Then a little faint breeze struck us,
and then it come harder, and grains of sand begun to sift against our
faces and sting like fire, and Tom sung out:
"It's a sand-storm--turn your backs to it!"
We done it; and in another minute it was blowing a gale, and the sand
beat against us by the shovelful, and the air was so thick with it we
couldn't see a thing. In five minutes the boat was level full, and we was
setting on the lockers buried up to the chin in sand, and only our heads
out and could hardly breathe.
Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off
across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you. We dug ourselves out and
looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but
just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and
camels was smothered and dead and buried--buried under ten foot of sand,
we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered
them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of
that caravan. Tom said:
"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."
Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't fit
to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as a
person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken; this
last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder. You see,
the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling acquainted
with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that was watching
the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We was huvvering
around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had got to feeling
real friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found out that there
ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than
to travel with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked them from the
start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. The longer we
traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways, the better
and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was that we run
across them. We had come to know some of them so well that we called them
by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so familiar and
sociable that we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just used their
plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite, but just
the right thing. Of course, it wasn't their own names, but names we give
them. There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline Robinson, and
Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss Harryet McDougal, and Judge Jeremiah
Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs mostly that
wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like the Grand
Mogul, and their families. But as soon as we come to know them good, and
like them very much, it warn't Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing, any more,
but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry, and Buck, and
so on.
And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their
sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we warn't
cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right down
friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything that was going,
and the caravan could depend on us to be on hand every time, it didn't
make no difference what it was.
When they camped, we camped right over them, ten or twelve hundred feet
up in the air. When they et a meal, we et ourn, and it made it ever so
much home-liker to have their company. When they had a wedding that
night, and Buck and Addy got married, we got ourselves up in the very
starchiest of the professor's duds for the blow-out, and when they danced
we jined in and shook a foot up there.
But it is sorrow and trouble that brings you the nearest, and it was a
funeral that done it with us. It was next morning, just in the still
dawn. We didn't know the diseased, and he warn't in our set, but that
never made no difference; he belonged to the caravan, and that was
enough, and there warn't no more sincerer tears shed over him than the
ones we dripped on him from up there eleven hundred foot on high.
Yes, parting with this caravan was much more bitterer than it was to part
with them others, which was comparative strangers, and been dead so long,
anyway. We had knowed these in their lives, and was fond of them, too,
and now to have death snatch them from right before our faces while we
was looking, and leave us so lonesome and friendless in the middle of
that big desert, it did hurt so, and we wished we mightn't ever make any
more friends on that voyage if we was going to lose them again like that.
We couldn't keep from talking about them, and they was all the time
coming up in our memory, and looking just the way they looked when we was
all alive and happy together. We could see the line marching, and the
shiny spearheads a-winking in the sun; we could see the dromedaries
lumbering along; we could see the wedding and the funeral; and more
oftener than anything else we could see them praying, because they don't
allow nothing to prevent that; whenever the call come, several times a
day, they would stop right there, and stand up and face to the east, and
lift back their heads, and spread out their arms and begin, and four or
five times they would go down on their knees, and then fall forward and
touch their forehead to the ground.
Well, it warn't good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in
their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it
didn't do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going
to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a
better world; and Tom kept still and didn't tell him they was only
Mohammedans; it warn't no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad
enough just as it was.
When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had
had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed
there is, and I don't see why people that can afford it don't have it
more. And it's terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so
steady before.
Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with
it; it was good sand, and it didn't seem good sense to throw it away. Jim
says:
"Mars Tom, can't we tote it back home en sell it? How long'll it take?"
"Depends on the way we go."
"Well, sah, she's wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I reckon
we's got as much as twenty loads, hain't we? How much would dat be?"
"Five dollars."
"By jings, Mars Tom, le's shove for home right on de spot! Hit's more'n a
dollar en a half apiece, hain't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, ef dat ain't makin' money de easiest ever I struck! She jes'
rained in--never cos' us a lick o' work. Le's mosey right along, Mars
Tom."
But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never
heard him. Pretty soon he says:
"Five dollars--sho! Look here, this sand's worth--worth--why, it's worth
no end of money."
"How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!"
"Well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne
Desert of Sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold
of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a
curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all
over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We've got
all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat."
Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout
whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:
"And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and
fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole
Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any
opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent."
"My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creosote, won't we, Tom?"
"Yes--Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little
hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over
the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the
driver."
"Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?"
"Well, I don't know yet. It's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the
easiest job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of
sand at ten cents a vial."
Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook
his head and says:
"Mars Tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials--a king couldn't. We better not
try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'."
Tom's excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account of
the vials, but it wasn't. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer,
and at last he says:
"Boys, it won't work; we got to give it up."
"Why, Tom?"
"On account of the duties."
I couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:
"What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can't git around it, why can't we
just DO it? People often has to."
But he says:
"Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you
strike a frontier--that's the border of a country, you know--you find a
custom-house there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among
your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's
their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll
hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody,
it's just hogging, and that's all it is. Now if we try to carry this sand
home the way we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git
tired--just frontier after frontier--Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, and so
on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we
CAN'T go THAT road."
"Why, Tom," I says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how are
THEY going to stop us?"
He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:
"Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?"
I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on:
"Well, we're shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we've
come, there's the New York custom-house, and that is worse than all of
them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got."
"Why?"
"Well, they can't raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and when they
can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per
cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it."
"There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer."
"Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn? You
wait till I say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me of
saying it."
"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on."
Jim says:
"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can't raise in America,
en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?"
"Yes, that's what they do."
"Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?"
"Yes, it is."
"Don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?"
"Yes."
"Whah do it come from?"
"From heaven."
"Yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey--it come from heaven, en
dat's a foreign country. NOW, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?"
"No, they don't."
"Course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, Mars Tom.
Dey wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't
'bleeged to have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody
can't git along widout."
Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn't budge.
He tried to wiggle out by saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but
they'd be sure to remember about it, next session of Congress, and then
they'd put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. He
said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one,
and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be
consistent was the first law of politics. So he stuck to it that they'd
left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix it
before they got caught and laughed at.
But I didn't feel no more interest in such things, as long as we couldn't
git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim the same. Tom
he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another speculation
for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but it didn't
do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty
hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a' bought a
country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and now we
was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. The
sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and the
feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now I couldn't bear the
sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn't ever
feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I didn't have it there
no more to remind us of what we had been and what we had got degraded
down to. The others was feeling the same way about it that I was. I
knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute I says le's throw this
truck overboard.
Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so
Tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and
him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths. Jim
he didn't quite like that arrangement. He says:
"Course I's de stronges', en I's willin' to do a share accordin', but by
jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole Jim, Mars Tom, hain't you?"
"Well, I didn't think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and
let's see."
So Jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and Tom done a
TENTH apiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then
he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara to the
westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where we come from. Then he
turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was
satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.
So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for
Jim, and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference there
was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was
powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first
arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there was
more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.
Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to
move up into cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. Me and Tom took
turn about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't nobody
to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africa damp, he
sweated so. We couldn't work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he
kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep
making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions,
but they done well enough, Jim didn't see through them. At last when we
got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. By and
by Jim was 'most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and
spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the
gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to
a poor old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. He was always the
gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He
was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be.
CHAPTER XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE
THE next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference
when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat,
anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as
far as I can see.
Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a northeast
course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see
three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:
"It's the pyramids of Egypt."
It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a
picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to
come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, 'stead of
imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. It's a
curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully
thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and
gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing
solid to it. It's just so with George Washington, and the same with them
pyramids.
And moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me
to be stretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and
had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid
covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep
mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up
in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen acres, you see,
for just one building; it's a farm. If it hadn't been in Sunday-school, I
would 'a' judged it was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And he
said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with
candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a
large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would
find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. I said
to myself, then, if that ain't a lie I will eat that king if they will
fetch him, for even Methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it.
As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a
long straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge,
a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it,
and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile
was another thing that wasn't real to me. Now I can tell you one thing
which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles
of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water
to look at it, and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it,
the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will
make your eyes water AGAIN.
It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.
And when Jim got so he could believe it WAS the land of Egypt he was
looking at, he wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees
and took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor
nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph
and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a most
deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, too, he said. He was all
stirred up, and says:
"Hit's de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egypt, en I's 'lowed to look at it
wid my own eyes! En dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en I's looking
at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en
de locus', en de hail, en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de
Lord come by in de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de
lan' o' Egypt. Ole Jim ain't worthy to see dis day!"
And then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. So between him
and Tom there was talk enough, Jim being excited because the land was so
full of history--Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushers, Jacob
coming down into Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all
them interesting things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land
was so full of history that was in HIS line, about Noureddin, and
Bedreddin, and such like monstrous giants, that made Jim's wool rise, and
a raft of other Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never done
the things they let on they done, I don't believe.
Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs
started up, and it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we
would go by Egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass
straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted
out, and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep
a sharp lookout. Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor,
and Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and
watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very
fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim
and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low
and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say:
"Highst her a p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot
or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with
people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and
stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could
gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him
off. By and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we
a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a
little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare:
"Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant
outen de 'Rabian Nights a-comin' for us!" and he went over backwards in
the boat.
Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's
face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a
house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a' been
clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to, and
Tom had hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was
holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got
a good long look up at that awful face.
Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a
begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took
only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:
"He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!"
I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the
giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not
dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of
sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. It
was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give
it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that.
We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just
grand. It was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a
hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple
between its front paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for
hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand
away and found that little temple. It took a power of sand to bury that
cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, I reckon.
We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protect him,
it being a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other
distance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and
proportions, and Jim he done the best he could, striking all the
different kinds of attitudes and positions he could study up, but
standing on his head and working his legs the way a frog does was the
best. The further we got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the
Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might
say. That's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, Tom
said; he said Julus Cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was
too close to him.
Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see Jim at all
any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out
over the Nile Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little
shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and
gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet,
which was the sand.
That was the right place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-looking
and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made
us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over
that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to
itself for thousands of years, and nobody can't find out what they are to
this day.
At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering
around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's
back, and then I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom
to look. He done it, and says:
"They're bugs. No--hold on; they--why, I believe they're men. Yes, it's
men--men and horses both. They're hauling a long ladder up onto the
Sphinx's back--now ain't that odd? And now they're trying to lean it up
a--there's some more puffs of smoke--it's guns! Huck, they're after Jim."
We clapped on the power, and went for them a-biling. We was there in no
time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered
every which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim let go
all holts and fell. We soared up and found him laying on top of the head
panting and most tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly
from scare. He had been standing a siege a long time--a week, HE said,
but it warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding
him so. They had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but
he warn't hit, and when they found he wouldn't stand up and the bullets
couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder,
and then he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick.
Tom was very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and
command them to GIT, in the name of the United States. Jim said he done
it, but they never paid no attention. Tom said he would have this thing
looked into at Washington, and says:
"You'll see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and
pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off THAT easy."
Jim says:
"What's an indemnity, Mars Tom?"
"It's cash, that's what it is."
"Who gits it, Mars Tom?"
"Why, WE do."
"En who gits de apology?"
"The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take the
apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money."
"How much money will it be, Mars Tom?"
"Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three
dollars apiece, and I don't know but more."
"Well, den, we'll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de 'pology. Hain't dat
yo' notion, too? En hain't it yourn, Huck?"
We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as
any, so we agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I
asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he
says:
"Yes; the little ones does."
We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared
up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just
like what the man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs of
stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together
in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way
you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and
you have to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids warn't far
away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs
crawling, we was so high above them.
Tom he couldn't hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and
astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped
history from every pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn't scarcely
believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from
on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody
give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could
git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the
world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land
wherever he wanted to.
When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences
that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you
feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the
subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and
before you can pull your mind together and DO something, that silence has
got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he
was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. Well, Tom he
glowered at me a minute, and says:
"Come, out with it. What do you think?"
I says:
"Tom Sawyer, YOU don't believe that, yourself."
"What's the reason I don't? What's to hender me?"
"There's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all."
"What's the reason it couldn't happen?"
"You tell me the reason it COULD happen."
"This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon."
"WHY is it?"
"WHY is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain't this balloon and the bronze
horse the same thing under different names?"
"No, they're not. One is a balloon and the other's a horse. It's very
different. Next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing."
"By Jackson, Huck's got him ag'in! Dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!"
"Shut your head, Jim; you don't know what you're talking about. And Huck
don't. Look here, Huck, I'll make it plain to you, so you can understand.
You see, it ain't the mere FORM that's got anything to do with their
being similar or unsimilar, it's the PRINCIPLE involved; and the
principle is the same in both. Don't you see, now?"
I turned it over in my mind, and says:
"Tom, it ain't no use. Principles is all very well, but they don't git
around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no
sort of proof of what a horse can do."
"Shucks, Huck, you don't get the idea at all. Now look here a
minute--it's perfectly plain. Don't we fly through the air?"
"Yes."
"Very well. Don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?"
"Yes."
"Don't we steer whichever way we want to?"
"Yes."
"And don't we land when and where we please?"
"Yes."
"How do we move the balloon and steer it?"
"By touching the buttons."
"NOW I reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other case the
moving and steering was done by turning a peg. We touch a button, the
prince turned a peg. There ain't an atom of difference, you see. I knowed
I could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough."
He felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and Jim was silent, so he
broke off surprised, and says:
"Looky here, Huck Finn, don't you see it YET?"
I says:
"Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions."
"Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen.
"As I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg--the
rest ain't of no consequence. A button is one shape, a peg is another
shape, but that ain't any matter?"
"No, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power."
"All right, then. What is the power that's in a candle and in a match?"
"It's the fire."
"It's the same in both, then?"
"Yes, just the same in both."
"All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what
will happen to that carpenter shop?"
"She'll burn up."
"And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle--will she burn up?"
"Of course she won't."
"All right. Now the fire's the same, both times. WHY does the shop burn,
and the pyramid don't?"
"Because the pyramid CAN'T burn."
"Aha! and A HORSE CAN'T FLY!"
"My lan', ef Huck ain't got him ag'in! Huck's landed him high en dry dis
time, I tell you! Hit's de smartes' trap I ever see a body walk inter--en
ef I--"
But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn't go on, and
Tom was that mad to see how neat I had floored him, and turned his own
argument ag'in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that
all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard me and Jim try to
argue it made him ashamed of the human race. I never said nothing; I was
feeling pretty well satisfied. When I have got the best of a person that
way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people
does, for I consider that if I was in his place I wouldn't wish him to
crow over me. It's better to be generous, that's what I think.
CHAPTER XIII. GOING FOR TOM'S PIPE:
BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the
pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and
went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of
the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to
keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday-school said; but he was
gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn't take no interest in the
place, because there could be ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones,
but I don't like no kind.
So then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and
then went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to
Cairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as
ever I see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked children
everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong and
handsome. And the city was a curiosity. Such narrow streets--why, they
were just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women with
veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sorts
of colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by each
other in such narrow little cracks, but they done it--a perfect jam, you
see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn't big enough to turn around in,
but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his
counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where he could
reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, for the
camel-loads brushed him as they went by.
Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men
running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod
that didn't get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultan
riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath
away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his
stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller helped me to remember.
He was one that had a rod and run in front.
There was churches, but they don't know enough to keep Sunday; they keep
Friday and break the Sabbath. You have to take off your shoes when you go
in. There was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on
the stone floor and making no end of noise--getting their lessons by
heart, Tom said, out of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and
people that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never see such a
big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you
dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it;
if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box.
What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested in dervishes
on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. So we
found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves Whirling
Dervishes; and they did whirl, too. I never see anything like it. They
had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun
and spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats stood out on a
slant, and it was the prettiest thing I ever see, and made me drunk to
look at it. They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a
Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a Presbyterian. So there
is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn't know it before.
We didn't see half there was to see in Cairo, because Tom was in such a
sweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. We had a most
tiresome time to find the granary where Joseph stored up the grain before
the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to look at, being
such an old tumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss
over it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. How he ever found
that place was too many for me. We passed as much as forty just like it
before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but
just the right one would suit him; I never see anybody so particular as
Tom Sawyer. The minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy
as I would reconnize my other shirt if I had one, but how he done it he
couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself.
Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned
the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said
it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it
when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop,
and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that
knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could go straight to the
place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would
answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I
ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of years ago--every last rag
of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a person wouldn't ever believe
that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before
could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but Tom Sawyer
done it. I know he done it, because I see him do it. I was right by his
very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize
it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Is it knowledge, or is it
instink?
Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it
their own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion
that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The
reason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with
his name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and
put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know
the difference--but there was a difference, you see. I think that settles
it--it's mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him where the exact
PLACE is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place
it's in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not instink,
he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seen
it--which he didn't. So it shows that for all the brag you hear about
knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for
real unerringness. Jim says the same.
When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young
man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket
and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that
could talk English and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to Mecca
and Medina and Central Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day
and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power, and by
the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the Israelites
crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by
the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good look at the place, and it
done Jim good to see it. He said he could see it all, now, just the way
it happened; he could see the Israelites walking along between the walls
of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all
they could, and see them start in as the Israelites went out, and then
when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last
man of them. Then we piled on the power again and rushed away and
huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Moses broke the tables
of stone, and where the children of Israel camped in the plain and
worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could
be, and the guide knowed every place as well as I knowed the village at
home.
But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a
standstill. Tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and
warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding the
strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he didn't know
WHAT to do. The professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't anything but
a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows it lays a
long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can't git him
to smoke any other. He wouldn't take mine, I couldn't persuade him. So
there he was.
He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could
roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries,
but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. So Tom
was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got
the idea and knowed what to do. He says:
"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly
new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at
home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me
and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back."
"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe,
'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur
Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."
That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:
"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your
compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United
States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike
the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it, bulge
right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida coast, and in
an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the Mississippi--at
the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high up in the air
that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter like a washbowl turned
upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which
way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the Mississippi
without any trouble. Then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour
and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; then you want to look
sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to your left you'll see
another thread coming in--that's the Missouri and is a little above St.
Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as
you spin along. You'll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen
minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it--and if you don't, you
can yell down and ask."
"Ef it's dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it--yassir, I knows we
kin."
The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand
his watch in a little while.
"Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," Tom said. "This
balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe."
Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and
says:
"To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It's only about seven
thousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as
far." Then he says to the guide, "I want you both to watch the tell-tale
all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles
an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current that's
going your way. There's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing without
any wind to help. There's two-hundred-mile gales to be found, any time
you want to hunt for them."
"We'll hunt for them, sir."
"See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and
it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good
deal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone--that's the ticket for you!
You'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these
latitudes; and they travel low, too."
Then he ciphered on the time, and says--
"Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour--you can make the trip
in a day--twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you'll be back here
Saturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and
books and things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. There
ain't no occasion to fool around--I want a smoke, and the quicker you
fetch that pipe the better."
All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out
and the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and
Tom gave his last orders:
"It's 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hours you'll be
home, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. When you strike the
village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of
sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in the
post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over
your face so they won't know you. Then you go and slip in the back way to
the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen
table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git
away, and don't let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else.
Then you jump for the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai three hundred
miles an hour. You won't have lost more than an hour. You'll start back
at 7 or 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3
P.M., Mount Sinai time."
Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it:
"THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erro-nort
sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai
where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she
will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." *
[* This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck's error, not
Tom's.--M.T.]
"That'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. Then he
says:
"Stand by! One--two--three--away you go!"
And away she DID go! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second.
Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big
plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe.
The balloon come hack all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly had
catched Jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened:
she sent for Tom. So Jim he says:
"Mars Tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' for
you, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of
you. Dey's gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, 'deed dey is."
So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither.
END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON
by Mark Twain
A WHISPER TO THE READER
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed
by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance:
his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the
humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of
feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make
mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so I
was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without
first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by
a trained barrister--if that is what they are called. These chapters are
right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate
eye of William Hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest
Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to Florence for
his health and is still helping for exercise and board in Macaroni
Vermicelli's horse-feed shed, which is up the back alley as you turn
around the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just beyond the house where
that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into
the wall when he let on to be watching them build Giotto's campanile and
yet always got tired looking as Beatrice passed along on her way to get a
chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a Ghibelline
outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell
the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was
then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty
on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal
chapters are right and straight, now. He told me so himself.
Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa
Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the
hills--the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found
on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to
be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in
the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and
other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me, as they
used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my
family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but
spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it
will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.
Mark Twain.
CHAPTER 1
Pudd'nhead Wins His Name
Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the
Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat,
below St. Louis.
In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame
dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight
by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories.
Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white
palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots,
prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the
windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants
and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of
intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad
house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge
outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny
weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry
belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was
complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world
by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and
a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat--may be a perfect
home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick
sidewalks, stood locust trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and
these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrancer in spring, when
the clusters of buds came forth. The main street, one block back from
the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street.
It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores,
three stories high, towered above interjected bunches of little frame
shops. Swinging signs creaked in the wind the street's whole length.
The candy-striped pole, which indicates nobility proud and ancient along
the palace-bordered canals of Venice, indicated merely the humble
barbershop along the main street of Dawson's Landing. On a chief corner
stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots
and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when
the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner.
The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its
body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward
border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about its base line of
the hills; the hills rose high, enclosing the town in a half-moon curve,
clothed with forests from foot to summit.
Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. Those belonging to the
little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always stopped; the big
Orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight;
and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients."
These latter came out of a dozen rivers--the Illinois, the Missouri, the
Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red
River, the White River, and so on--and were bound every whither and
stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity, which the
Mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St.
Anthony down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans.
Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain
and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and
contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly--very slowly,
in fact, but still it was growing.
The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old,
judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian
ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately
manners, he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous.
To be a gentleman--a gentleman without stain or blemish--was his only
religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed,
and beloved by all of the community. He was well off, and was gradually
adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not
quite, for they had no children. The longing for the treasure of a child
had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the
blessing never came--and was never to come.
With this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and
she also was childless--childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not
to be comforted. The women were good and commonplace people, and did
their duty, and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's
approbation. They were Presbyterians, the judge was a freethinker.
Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged almost forty, was another old
Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families. He was a
fine, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements
of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the "code",
and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if
any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and
explain it with any weapon you might prefer from bradawls to artillery.
He was very popular with the people, and was the judge's dearest friend.
Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F.F.V. of formidable
caliber--however, with him we have no concern.
Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he
by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his
hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup, and
scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective
antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. He was a prosperous
man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. On
the first of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house; one to
him, one to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name. Roxana was twenty
years old. She was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for
she was tending both babes.
Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week. Roxy remained in charge of the
children. She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in
his speculations and left her to her own devices.
In that same month of February, Dawson's Landing gained a new citizen.
This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage. He had
wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the
State of New York, to seek his fortune. He was twenty-five years old,
college bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern law
school a couple of years before.
He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent
blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of
a pleasant sort. But for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt
have entered at once upon a successful career at Dawson's Landing. But he
made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it
"gaged" him. He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens
when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself
very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as
one who is thinking aloud:
"I wish I owned half of that dog."
"Why?" somebody asked.
"Because I would kill my half."
The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found
no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from
him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. One
said:
"'Pears to be a fool."
"'Pears?" said another. "_Is,_ I reckon you better say."
"Said he wished he owned _half_ of the dog, the idiot," said a third.
"What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half?
Do you reckon he thought it would live?"
"Why, he must have thought it, unless he IS the downrightest fool in the
world; because if he hadn't thought it, he would have wanted to own the
whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he
would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that
half instead of his own. Don't it look that way to you, gents?"
"Yes, it does. If he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so;
if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it
would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if
you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell
whose half it was; but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could
kill his end of it and--"
"No, he couldn't either; he couldn't and not be responsible if the other
end died, which it would. In my opinion that man ain't in his right
mind."
"In my opinion he hain't _got_ any mind."
No. 3 said: "Well, he's a lummox, anyway."
"That's what he is;" said No. 4. "He's a labrick--just a Simon-pure
labrick, if there was one."
"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool. That's the way I put him up," said No. 5.
"Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments."
"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6. "Perfect jackass--yes, and it
ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead,
I ain't no judge, that's all."
Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and
gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first
name; Pudd'nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well
liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it
stayed. That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to
get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry
any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was
to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.
CHAPTER 2
Driscoll Spares His Slaves
Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for
the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake
was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a
small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and
Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence
dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in
the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it:
D A V I D W I L S O N
ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW
SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.
But his deadly remark had ruined his chance--at least in the law. No
clients came. He took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his
own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his
services now in the humble capacities of land surveyor and expert
accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and
then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience
and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into
the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could foresee that it was going to
take him such a weary long time to do it.
He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his
hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into
the universe of ideas, and studied it, and experimented upon it at his
house. One of his pet fads was palmistry. To another one he gave no
name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but
merely said it was an amusement. In fact, he had found that his fads
added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; there, he was growing chary of
being too communicative about them. The fad without a name was one which
dealt with people's finger marks. He carried in his coat pocket a
shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five
inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip
was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands
through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the
natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it
with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row
of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of white
paper--thus:
JOHN SMITH, right hand--
and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's left hand on
another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." The
strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among
what Wilson called his "records."
He often studied his records, examining and poring over them with
absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there--if
he found anything--he revealed to no one. Sometimes he copied on paper
the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of the finger, and
then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its
web of curving lines with ease and convenience.
One sweltering afternoon--it was the first day of July, 1830--he was at
work over a set of tangled account books in his workroom, which looked
westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside
disturbed him. It was carried on in yells, which showed that the people
engaged in it were not close together.
"Say, Roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" This from the distant voice.
"Fust-rate. How does _you_ come on, Jasper?" This yell was from close
by.
"Oh, I's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of, I's gwine to come
a-court'n you bimeby, Roxy."
"_You_ is, you black mud cat! Yah--yah--yah! I got somep'n' better to
do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is. Is ole Miss Cooper's
Nancy done give you de mitten?" Roxy followed this sally with another
discharge of carefree laughter.
"You's jealous, Roxy, dat's what's de matter wid you, you
hussy--yah--yah--yah! Dat's de time I got you!"
"Oh, yes, _you_ got me, hain't you. 'Clah to goodness if dat conceit o'
yo'n strikes in, Jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'. If you b'longed to
me, I'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. Fust time I
runs acrost yo' marster, I's gwine to tell him so."
This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the
friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit
exchanged--for wit they considered it.
Wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not work
while their chatter continued. Over in the vacant lots was Jasper,
young, coal black, and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in
the pelting sun--at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only
preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning. In front of
Wilson's porch stood Roxy, with a local handmade baby wagon, in which sat
her two charges--one at each end and facing each other. From Roxy's
manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she
was not. Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not
show. She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing
and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble
and stately grace. Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of
vigorous health in her cheeks, her face was full of character and
expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of
fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent
because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the
hair was concealed under it. Her face was shapely, intelligent, and
comely--even beautiful. She had an easy, independent carriage--when she
was among her own caste--and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of
course she was meek and humble enough where white people were.
To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one
sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and
made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was
thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law
and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white
comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the
children apart--little as he had commerce with them--by their clothes;
for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while
the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to
its knees, and no jewelry.
The white child's name was Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was
Valet de Chambre: no surname--slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had
heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear,
and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling.
It soon got shorted to "Chambers," of course.
Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wits begun to play out,
he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. Jasper went to work
energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. Wilson
inspected the children and asked:
"How old are they, Roxy?"
"Bofe de same age, sir--five months. Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary."
"They're handsome little chaps. One's just as handsome as the other,
too."
A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said:
"Bless yo' soul, Misto Wilson, it's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat,
'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger. Mighty prime little nigger, _I_
al'ays says, but dat's 'ca'se it's mine, o' course."
"How do you tell them apart, Roxy, when they haven't any clothes on?"
Roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said:
"Oh, _I_ kin tell 'em 'part, Misto Wilson, but I bet Marse Percy
couldn't, not to save his life."
Wilson chatted along for awhile, and presently got Roxy's fingerprints
for his collection--right hand and left--on a couple of his glass strips;
then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both children, and
labeled and dated them also.
Two months later, on the third of September, he took this trio of finger
marks again. He liked to have a "series," two or three "takings" at
intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed at
intervals of several years.
The next day--that is to say, on the fourth of September--something
occurred which profoundly impressed Roxana. Mr. Driscoll missed another
small sum of money--which is a way of saying that this was not a new
thing, but had happened before. In truth, it had happened three times
before. Driscoll's patience was exhausted. He was a fairly humane man
toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward
the erring of his own race. Theft he could not abide, and plainly there
was a thief in his house. Necessarily the thief must be one of his
Negros. Sharp measures must be taken. He called his servants before him.
There were three of these, besides Roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy
twelve years old. They were not related. Mr. Driscoll said:
"You have all been warned before. It has done no good. This time I will
teach you a lesson. I will sell the thief. Which of you is the guilty
one?"
They all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a
new one was likely to be a change for the worse. The denial was general.
None had stolen anything--not money, anyway--a little sugar, or cake, or
honey, or something like that, that "Marse Percy wouldn't mind or miss"
but not money--never a cent of money. They were eloquent in their
protestations, but Mr. Driscoll was not moved by them. He answered each
in turn with a stern "Name the thief!"
The truth was, all were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others
were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. She was horrified to
think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved
in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a
fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very
next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was
fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master
left a couple dollars unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that
temptation when she was polishing around with a dustrag. She looked at
the money awhile with a steady rising resentment, then she burst out
with:
"Dad blame dat revival, I wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till tomorrow!"
Then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the
kitchen cabinet got it. She made this sacrifice as a matter of religious
etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested
into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she
would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in
the cold would find a comforter--and she could name the comforter.
Was she bad? Was she worse than the general run of her race? No. They
had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take
military advantage of the enemy--in a small way; in a small way, but not
in a large one. They would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever
they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery bag,
or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small
articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and so far
were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to
church and shout and pray the loudest and sincerest with their plunder in
their pockets. A farm smokehouse had to be kept heavily padlocked, or
even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when Providence
showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome,
and longed for someone to love. But with a hundred hanging before him,
the deacon would not take two--that is, on the same night. On frosty
nights the humane Negro prowler would warm the end of the plank and put
it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy hen
would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her gratitude,
and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his stomach,
perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who daily robbed
him of an inestimable treasure--his liberty--he was not committing any
sin that God would remember against him in the Last Great Day.
"Name the thief!"
For the fourth time Mr. Driscoll had said it, and always in the same hard
tone. And now he added these words of awful import:
"I give you one minute." He took out his watch. "If at the end of that
time, you have not confessed, I will not only sell all four of you,
BUT--I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!"
It was equivalent to condemning them to hell! No Missouri Negro doubted
this. Roxy reeled in her tracks, and the color vanished out of her face;
the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed
from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came
in the one instant.
"I done it!"
"I done it!"
"I done it!--have mercy, marster--Lord have mercy on us po' niggers!"
"Very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "I will sell you
_here_ though you don't deserve it. You ought to be sold down the
river."
The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and
kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and
never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. They were sincere, for
like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of
hell against them. He knew, himself, that he had done a noble and
gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and
that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might
read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and
humanity himself.
CHAPTER 3
Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a
debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.
He brought death into the world.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Percy Driscoll slept well the night he saved his house minions from
going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited Roxy's eyes. A
profound terror had taken possession of her. Her child could grow up and
be sold down the river! The thought crazed her with horror. If she dozed
and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet flying
to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. Then she would gather
it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy of kisses,
moaning, crying, and saying, "Dey sha'n't, oh, dey _sha'nt'!'_--yo' po'
mammy will kill you fust!"
Once, when she was tucking him back in its cradle again, the other child
nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. She went and stood
over it a long time communing with herself.
"What has my po' baby done, dat he couldn't have yo' luck? He hain't done
nuth'n. God was good to you; why warn't he good to him? Dey can't sell
_you_ down de river. I hates yo' pappy; he hain't got no heart--for
niggers, he hain't, anyways. I hates him, en I could kill him!" She
paused awhile, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and
turned away, saying, "Oh, I got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther
way--killin' _him_ wouldn't save de chile fum goin' down de river. Oh, I
got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey." She
gathered her baby to her bosom now, and began to smother it with
caresses. "Mammy's got to kill you--how _kin_ I do it! But yo' mammy
ain't gwine to desert you--no, no, _dah_, don't cry--she gwine _wid_
you, she gwine to kill herself too. Come along, honey, come along wid
mammy; we gwine to jump in de river, den troubles o' dis worl' is all
over--dey don't sell po' niggers down the river over _yonder_."
She stared toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway
she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown--a
cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic
figures. She surveyed it wistfully, longingly.
"Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it's just lovely." Then she
nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "No, I ain't
gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole
linsey-woolsey."
She put down the child and made the change. She looked in the glass and
was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death toilet
perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy
wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather
lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she
threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day,
which was of a blazing red complexion. Then she was ready for the tomb.
She gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its
miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast
between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic eruption of infernal
splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed.
"No, dolling mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. De angels is gwine to
'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy. Ain't gwine to have 'em
putt'n dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to David and Goliah en dem
yuther prophets, 'Dat chile is dress' to indelicate fo' dis place.'"
By this time she had stripped off the shirt. Now she clothed the naked
little creature in one of Thomas `a Becket's snowy, long baby gowns, with
its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles.
"Dah--now you's fixed." She propped the child in a chair and stood off
to inspect it. Straightway her eyes begun to widen with astonishment and
admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "Why, it do beat
all! I _never_ knowed you was so lovely. Marse Tommy ain't a bit
puttier--not a single bit."
She stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance
back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house. Now a strange
light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. She
seemed in a trance; when she came out of it, she muttered, "When I 'uz
a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, he own pappy asked me which of 'em was
his'n."
She began to move around like one in a dream. She undressed Thomas `a
Becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen shirt on him.
She put his coral necklace on her own child's neck. Then she placed the
children side by side, and after earnest inspection she muttered:
"Now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat? Dog my cats if it
ain't all _I_ kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone his pappy."
She put her cub in Tommy's elegant cradle and said:
"You's young Marse _Tom_ fum dis out, en I got to practice and git used
to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or I's gwine to make a mistake
sometime en git us bofe into trouble. Dah--now you lay still en don't
fret no mo', Marse Tom. Oh, thank de lord in heaven, you's saved, you's
saved! Dey ain't no man kin ever sell mammy's po' little honey down de
river now!"
She put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle,
and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily:
"I's sorry for you, honey; I's sorry, God knows I is--but what _kin_ I
do, what _could_ I do? Yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, sometime,
en den he'd go down de river, sho', en I couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_
stan' it."
She flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss and think.
By and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting thought had flown
through her worried mind--
"'T ain't no sin--_white_ folks has done it! It ain't no sin, glory to
goodness it ain't no sin! _Dey's_ done it--yes, en dey was de biggest
quality in de whole bilin', too--_kings!"_
She began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory the dim
particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other. At last she
said--
"Now I's got it; now I 'member. It was dat ole nigger preacher dat tole
it, de time he come over here fum Illinois en preached in de nigger
church. He said dey ain't nobody kin save his own self--can't do it by
faith, can't do it by works, can't do it no way at all. Free grace is de
_on'y_ way, en dat don't come fum nobody but jis' de Lord; en _he_ kin
give it to anybody He please, saint or sinner--_he_ don't kyer. He do
jis' as He's a mineter. He s'lect out anybody dat suit Him, en put
another one in his place, and make de fust one happy forever en leave t'
other one to burn wid Satan. De preacher said it was jist like dey done
in Englan' one time, long time ago. De queen she lef' her baby layin'
aroun' one day, en went out callin'; an one 'o de niggers roun'bout de
place dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en
tuck en put her own chile's clo's on de queen's chile, en put de queen's
chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile layin' aroun',
en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de nigger quarter, en nobody
ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king bimeby, en sole de queen's
chile down de river one time when dey had to settle up de estate. Dah,
now--de preacher said it his own self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white
folks done it. DEY done it--yes, DEY done it; en not on'y jis' common
white folks nuther, but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'.
_Oh_, I's _so_ glad I 'member 'bout dat!"
She got lighthearted and happy, and went to the cradles, and spent what
was left of the night "practicing." She would give her own child a light
pat and say humbly, "Lay still, Marse Tom," then give the real Tom a pat
and say with severity, "Lay _still_, Chambers! Does you want me to take
somep'n _to_ you?"
As she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see how
steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent and her
manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself to her
speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy she was
becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and
peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of
Driscoll.
She took occasional rests from practicing, and absorbed herself in
calculating her chances.
"Dey'll sell dese niggers today fo' stealin' de money, den dey'll buy
some mo' dat don't now de chillen--so _dat's_ all right. When I takes de
chillen out to git de air, de minute I's roun' de corner I's gwine to
gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den dey can't _nobody_ notice dey's
changed. Yes, I gwine ter do dat till I's safe, if it's a year.
"Dey ain't but one man dat I's afeard of, en dat's dat Pudd'nhead Wilson.
Dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he's a fool. My lan, dat man ain't
no mo' fool den I is! He's de smartes' man in dis town, lessn' it's
Jedge Driscoll or maybe Pem Howard. Blame dat man, he worries me wid dem
ornery glasses o' his'n; _I_ b'lieve he's a witch. But nemmine, I's gwine
to happen aroun' dah one o' dese days en let on dat I reckon he wants to
print a chillen's fingers ag'in; en if HE don't notice dey's changed, I
bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den I's safe, sho'. But I
reckon I'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch work."
The new Negros gave Roxy no trouble, of course. The master gave her
none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so
occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all
Roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came
about; then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was
gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures resumed a
human aspect.
Within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious that Mr.
Percy went away with his brother, the judge, to see what could be done
with it. It was a land speculation as usual, and it had gotten
complicated with a lawsuit. The men were gone seven weeks. Before they
got back, Roxy had paid her visit to Wilson, and was satisfied. Wilson
took the fingerprints, labeled them with the names and with the date
--October the first--put them carefully away, and continued his chat with
Roxy, who seemed very anxious that he should admire the great advance in
flesh and beauty which the babes had made since he took their
fingerprints a month before. He complimented their improvement to her
contentment; and as they were without any disguise of jam or other stain,
she trembled all the while and was miserably frightened lest at any
moment he--
But he didn't. He discovered nothing; and she went home jubilant, and
dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of her mind.
CHAPTER 4
The Ways of the Changelings
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they
escaped teething.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
There is this trouble about special providences--namely, there is so
often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In
the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more
real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they
got the children.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which
Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and the
usurping little slave, "Thomas `a Becket"--shortening this latter name to
"Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did.
"Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would
cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without
notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then
climax the thing with "holding his breath"--that frightful specialty of
the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its
lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and
kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and
the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth
set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling
stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never
return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face,
and--presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell,
or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it
into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one. The
baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound
anybody he could reach with his rattle. He would scream for water until
he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more.
He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and
exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted,
particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache.
When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken
words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more
consummate pest than ever. Roxy got no rest while he was awake. He would
call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying, "Awnt it!" (want
it), which was a command. When it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and
motioning it away with his hands, "Don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and the
moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "Awnt it! awnt it!" and
Roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back to him again
before he could get time to carry out his intention of going into
convulsions about it.
What he preferred above all other things was the tongs. This was because
his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and
furniture with them. The moment Roxy's back was turned he would toddle
to the presence of the tongs and say, "Like it!" and cock his eye to one
side or see if Roxy was observed; then, "Awnt it!" and cock his eye
again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive glace; and finally, "Take
it!"--and the prize was his. The next moment the heavy implement was
raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was
off on three legs to meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the
lamp or a window went to irremediable smash.
Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies,
Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence
Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't. Tom was "fractious," as Roxy
called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile.
With all her splendid common sense and practical everyday ability, Roxy
was a doting fool of a mother. She was this toward her child--and she
was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself, he was
become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly
and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the
recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in
practicing these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into
habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result
followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew
practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real
reverence, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of
separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and
widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one--and on one side of it
stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her
child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized
master. He was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in
her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been.
In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers unrebuked, and
Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it,
the advantage all lay with the former policy. The few times that his
persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had
cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of Roxy, for if she
ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgett'n' who his young
marster was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on
the ear. No, Percy Driscoll was the person. He told Chambers that under
no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his
little master. Chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three
such convincing canings from the man who was his father and didn't know
it, that he took Tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no
more experiments.
Outside the house the two boys were together all through their boyhood.
Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because
he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter
because Tom furnished him plenty of practice--on white boys whom he
hated and was afraid of. Chambers was his constant bodyguard, to and
from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his
charge. He fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by,
that Tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like
Sir Kay in Launcelot's armor.
He was good at games of skill, too. Tom staked him with marbles to play
"keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. In the winter
season Chambers was on hand, in Tom's worn-out clothes, with "holy" red
mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to
drag a sled up the hill for Tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he
never got a ride himself. He built snowmen and snow fortifications under
Tom's directions. He was Tom's patient target when Tom wanted to do some
snowballing, but the target couldn't fire back. Chambers carried Tom's
skates to the river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after
him on the ice, so as to be on hand when he wanted; but he wasn't ever
asked to try the skates himself.
In summer the pet pastime of the boys of Dawson's Landing was to steal
apples, peaches, and melons from the farmer's fruit wagons--mainly on
account of the risk they ran of getting their heads laid open with the
butt of the farmer's whip. Tom was a distinguished adept at these
thefts--by proxy. Chambers did his stealing, and got the peach stones,
apple cores, and melon rinds for his share.
Tom always made Chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a
protection. When Tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in
Chamber's shirt, dip the knots in the water and make them hard to undo,
then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged
at the stubborn knots with his teeth.
Tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native
viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of
physique and pluck, and for his manifold cleverness. Tom couldn't dive,
for it gave him splitting headaches. Chambers could dive without
inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. He excited so much admiration,
one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from
the stern of a canoe, that it wearied Tom's spirit, and at last he shoved
the canoe underneath Chambers while he was in the air--so he came down on
his head in the canoe bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of
Tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was
come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with Chamber's
best help he was hardly able to drag himself home afterward.
When the boys was fifteen and upward, Tom was "showing off" in the river
one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. It was a
common trick with the boys--particularly if a stranger was present--to
pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger came tearing
hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on struggling and
howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl with a sarcastic
smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys assailed the dupe with a
volley of jeers and laughter. Tom had never tried this joke as yet, but
was supposed to be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but
Chambers believed his master was in earnest; therefore, he swam out, and
arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his life.
This was the last feather. Tom had managed to endure everything else,
but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation
as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers--this was too
much. He heaped insults upon Chambers for "pretending" to think he was in
earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a blockheaded
nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone.
Tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their
opinions quite freely. The laughed at him, and called him coward, liar,
sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call
Chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town--"Tom
Driscoll's nigger pappy,"--to signify that he had had a second birth into
this life, and that Chambers was the author of his new being. Tom grew
frantic under these taunts, and shouted:
"Knock their heads off, Chambers! Knock their heads off! What do you
stand there with your hands in your pockets for?"
Chambers expostulated, and said, "But, Marse Tom, dey's too many of
'em--dey's--"
"Do you hear me?"
"Please, Marse Tom, don't make me! Dey's so many of 'em dat--"
Tom sprang at him and drove his pocketknife into him two or three times
before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance
to escape. He was considerably hurt, but not seriously. If the blade had
been a little longer, his career would have ended there.
Tom had long ago taught Roxy "her place." It had been many a day now
since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter.
Such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been
warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. She saw her
darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw THAT detail perish
utterly; all that was left was master--master, pure and simple, and it
was not a gentle mastership, either. She saw herself sink from the
sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery,
the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. She was
merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and
helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious
temper and vicious nature.
Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue,
because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy.
She would mumble and mutter to herself:
"He struck me en I warn't no way to blame--struck me in de face, right
before folks. En he's al'ays callin' me nigger wench, en hussy, en all
dem mean names, when I's doin' de very bes' I kin. Oh, Lord, I done so
much for him--I lif' him away up to what he is--en dis is what I git for
it."
Sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the
heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied
spectacle of his exposure to the world as an imposter and a slave; but in
the midst of these joys fear would strike her; she had made him too
strong; she could prove nothing, and--heavens, she might get sold down
the river for her pains! So her schemes always went for nothing, and she
laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself
for playing the fool on that fatal September day in not providing herself
with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be needed for
the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart.
And yet the moment Tom happened to be good to her, and kind--and this
occurred every now and then--all her sore places were healed, and she was
happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son, lording it
among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against her race.
There were two grand funerals in Dawson's Landing that fall--the fall of
1845. One was that of Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, the other that of
Percy Driscoll.
On his deathbed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized
ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the judge, and
his wife. Those childless people were glad to get him. Childless people
are not difficult to please.
Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and
bought Chambers. He had heard that Tom had been trying to get his father
to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the scandal--for
public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating family servants
for light cause or for no cause.
Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great
speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. He was hardly
in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his envied young devil of
an heir a pauper. But that was nothing; his uncle told him he should be
his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so Tom was comforted.
Roxy had no home now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to her
friends and then clear out and see the world--that is to say, she would
go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race and
sex.
Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper. She found him chopping
Pudd'nhead Wilson's winter provision of wood.
Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived. He asked her how she
could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly
offered to copy off a series of their fingerprints, reaching up to their
twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment,
wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she didn't
want them. Wilson said to himself, "The drop of black blood in her is
superstitious; she thinks there's some devilry, some witch business about
my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old horseshoe
in her hand; it could have been an accident, but I doubt it."
CHAPTER 5
The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower
is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat
toadstools that think they are truffles.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize,
Tom--bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but bliss
nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless sister,
Mrs. Pratt, continued this bliss-business at the old stand. Tom was
petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content--or nearly that.
This went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to Yale. He went
handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object
of distinction there. He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up
the struggle. He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had
lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and
smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech,
and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a
good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him
from getting into trouble. He was as indolent as ever and showed no very
strenuous desire to hunt up an occupation. People argued from this that
he preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should
become vacant. He brought back one or two new habits with him, one of
which he rather openly practiced--tippling--but concealed another, which
was gambling. It would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of
it; he knew that quite well.
Tom's Eastern polish was not popular among the young people. They could
have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves,
and that they couldn't stand, and wouldn't; so he was mainly without
society. He brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite
style and cut in fashion--Eastern fashion, city fashion--that it filled
everybody with anguish and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront.
He enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene
and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night,
and when Tom started out on his parade next morning, he found the old
deformed Negro bell ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a
flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his
fancy Eastern graces as well as he could.
Tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion. But
the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his acquaintanceship
with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and more so. He began to
make little trips to St. Louis for refreshment. There he found
companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste, along with more
freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home. So, during the
next two years, his visits to the city grew in frequency and his
tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration.
He was getting into deep waters. He was taking chances, privately, which
might get him into trouble some day--in fact, _did_.
Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business
activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years. He was
president of the Freethinkers' Society, and Pudd'nhead Wilson was the
other member. The society's weekly discussions were now the old lawyer's
main interest in life. Pudd'nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the
bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he
had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog.
Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the
average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed
to modify the public opinion. Or rather, that was one of the reason why
it failed, but there was another and better one. If the judge had stopped
with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made
the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had
been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement--a
calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical
form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and
fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful
of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. But
irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for
it. They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided
without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson
was a pudd'nhead--which there hadn't--this revelation removed that doubt
for good and all. That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly
ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete
the thing and make it perfect. After this the judge felt tenderer than
ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.
Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in society
because he was the person of most consequence to the community, and
therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions.
The other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty
because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody
attached any importance to what he thought or did. He was liked, he was
welcome enough all around, but he simply didn't count for anything.
The Widow Cooper--affectionately called "Aunt Patsy" by everybody--lived
in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter Rowena, who was nineteen,
romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence.
Rowena had a couple of young brothers--also of no consequence.
The widow had a large spare room, which she let to a lodger, with board,
when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now, to
her sorrow. Her income was only sufficient for the family support, and
she needed the lodging money for trifling luxuries. But now, at last, on
a flaming June day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended;
her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a village
applicant, no, no!--this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great
world to the North; it was from St. Louis. She sat on her porch gazing
out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty
Mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune. Indeed it was
specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead of one.
She had read the letter to the family, and Rowena had danced away to see
to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman, Nancy, and the
boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was a
matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased
if not informed. Presently Rowena returned, all ablush with joyous
excitement, and begged for a rereading of the letter. It was framed thus:
HONORED MADAM: My brother and I have seen your advertisement, by chance,
and beg leave to take the room you offer. We are twenty-four years of
age and twins. We are Italians by birth, but have lived long in the
various countries of Europe, and several years in the United States. Our
names are Luigi and Angelo Capello. You desire but one guest; but, dear
madam, if you will allow us to pay for two, we will not incommode you.
We shall be down Thursday.
"Italians! How romantic! Just think, Ma--there's never been one in this
town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and they're all OURS!
Think of that!"
"Yes, I reckon they'll make a grand stir."
"Oh, indeed they will. The whole town will be on its head!
Think--they've been in Europe and everywhere! There's never been a
traveler in this town before, Ma, I shouldn't wonder if they've seen
kings!"
"Well, a body can't tell, but they'll make stir enough, without that."
"Yes, that's of course. Luigi--Angelo. They're lovely names; and so
grand and foreign--not like Jones and Robinson and such. Thursday they
are coming, and this is only Tuesday; it's a cruel long time to wait.
Here comes Judge Driscoll in at the gate. He's heard about it. I'll go
and open the door."
The judge was full of congratulations and curiosity. The letter was read
and discussed. Soon Justice Robinson arrived with more congratulations,
and there was a new reading and a new discussion. This was the beginning.
Neighbor after neighbor, of both sexes, followed, and the procession
drifted in and out all day and evening and all Wednesday and Thursday.
The letter was read and reread until it was nearly worn out; everybody
admired its courtly and gracious tone, and smooth and practiced style,
everybody was sympathetic and excited, and the Coopers were steeped in
happiness all the while.
The boats were very uncertain in low water in these primitive times. This
time the Thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night--so the people
had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their
homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious
foreigners.
Eleven o'clock came; and the Cooper house was the only one in the town
that still had lights burning. The rain and thunder were booming yet,
and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping. At last there
was a knock at the door, and the family jumped to open it. Two Negro men
entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded upstairs toward the guest
room. Then entered the twins--the handsomest, the best dressed, the most
distinguished-looking pair of young fellows the West had ever seen. One
was a little fairer than the other, but otherwise they were exact
duplicates.
CHAPTER 6
Swimming in Glory
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker
will be sorry.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but
coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
At breakfast in the morning, the twins' charm of manner and easy and
polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. All
constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling
succeeded. Aunt Patsy called them by their Christian names almost from
the beginning. She was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and
showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her
greatly. It presently appeared that in their early youth they had known
poverty and hardship. As the talk wandered along, the old lady watched
for the right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter,
and when she found it, she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the
biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested:
"If it ain't asking what I ought not to ask, Mr. Angelo, how did you come
to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were little? Do you mind
telling? But don't, if you do."
"Oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely
misfortune, and nobody's fault. Our parents were well to do, there in
Italy, and we were their only child. We were of the old Florentine
nobility"--Rowena's heart gave a great bound, her nostrils expanded, and
a fine light played in her eyes--"and when the war broke out, my father
was on the losing side and had to fly for his life. His estates were
confiscated, his personal property seized, and there we were, in Germany,
strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers. My brother and I were ten
years old, and well educated for that age, very studious, very fond of
our books, and well grounded in the German, French, Spanish, and English
languages. Also, we were marvelous musical prodigies--if you will allow
me to say it, it being only the truth.
"Our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon
followed him, and we were alone in the world. Our parents could have
made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had many
and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and they said
they would starve and die first. But what they wouldn't consent to do,
we had to do without the formality of consent. We were seized for the
debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals, and placed among
the attractions of a cheap museum in Berlin to earn the liquidation
money. It took us two years to get out of that slavery. We traveled all
about Germany, receiving no wages, and not even our keep. We had to be
exhibited for nothing, and beg our bread.
"Well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence. When we escaped from
that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men.
Experience had taught us some valuable things; among others, how to take
care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks and sharpers, and how
to conduct our own business for our own profit and without other people's
help. We traveled everywhere--years and years--picking up smatterings
of strange tongues, familiarizing ourselves with strange sights and
strange customs, accumulating an education of a wide and varied and
curious sort. It was a pleasant life. We went to Venice--to London,
Paris, Russia, India, China, Japan--"
At this point Nancy, the slave woman, thrust her head in at the door and
exclaimed:
"Ole Missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey's jes
a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lemen!" She indicated the twins with a nod of
her head, and tucked it back out of sight again.
It was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself high
satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her neighbors
and friends--simple folk who had hardly ever seen a foreigner of any
kind, and never one of any distinction or style. Yet her feeling was
moderate indeed when contrasted with Rowena's. Rowena was in the clouds,
she walked on air; this was to be the greatest day, the most romantic
episode in the colorless history of that dull country town. She was to
be familiarly near the source of its glory and feel the full flood of it
pour over her and about her; the other girls could only gaze and envy,
not partake.
The widow was ready, Rowena was ready, so also were the foreigners.
The party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and entered the
open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of conversation. The twins took
a position near the door, the widow stood at Luigi's side, Rowena stood
beside Angelo, and the march-past and the introductions began. The widow
was all smiles and contentment. She received the procession and passed
it on to Rowena.
"Good mornin', Sister Cooper"--handshake.
"Good morning, Brother Higgins--Count Luigi Capello, Mr. Higgins"
--handshake, followed by a devouring stare and "I'm glad to see ye,"
on the part of Higgins, and a courteous inclination of the head and a
pleasant "Most happy!" on the part of Count Luigi.
"Good mornin', Roweny"--handshake.
"Good morning, Mr. Higgins--present you to Count Angelo Capello."
Handshake, admiring stare, "Glad to see ye"--courteous nod, smily "Most
happy!" and Higgins passes on.
None of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they didn't
pretend to be. None of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of
nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently
the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught
them unprepared. A few tried to rise to the emergency, and got out an
awkward "My lord," or "Your lordship," or something of that sort, but the
great majority were overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and
awful associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed
kingship, so they only fumbled through the handshake and passed on,
speechless. Now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a
more than ordinary friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it
waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how
long they were going to stay, and if their family was well, and dragged
in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all that sort of
thing, so as to be able to say, when he got home, "I had quite a long
talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of a regrettable kind,
and so the great affair went through to the end in a creditable and
satisfactory fashion.
General conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from group to
group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval, compelling
admiration and achieving favor from all. The widow followed their
conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and then Rowena said to
herself with deep satisfaction, "And to think they are ours--all ours!"
There were no idle moments for mother or daughter. Eager inquiries
concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears all the time;
each was the constant center of a group of breathless listeners; each
recognized that she knew now for the first time the real meaning of that
great word Glory, and perceived the stupendous value of it, and
understood why men in all ages had been willing to throw away meaner
happiness, treasure, life itself, to get a taste of its sublime and
supreme joy. Napoleon and all his kind stood accounted for--and
justified.
When Rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the parlor,
she went upstairs to satisfy the longings of an overflow meeting there,
for the parlor was not big enough to hold all the comers. Again she was
besieged by eager questioners, and again she swam in sunset seas of
glory. When the forenoon was nearly gone, she recognized with a pang
that this most splendid episode of her life was almost over, that nothing
could prolong it, that nothing quite its equal could ever fall to her
fortune again. But never mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand
occasion had moved on an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble
and memorable success. If the twins could but do some crowning act now
to climax it, something usual, something startling, something to
concentrate upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something
in the nature of an electric surprise--
Here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody rushed down
to see. It was the twins, knocking out a classic four-handed piece on
the piano in great style. Rowena was satisfied--satisfied down to the
bottom of her heart.
The young strangers were kept long at the piano. The villagers were
astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance, and
could not bear to have them stop. All the music that they had ever heard
before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace and charm when
compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound. They realized
that for once in their lives they were hearing masters.
CHAPTER 7
The Unknown Nymph
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a
cat has only nine lives.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several
homes, chatting with vivacity and all agreeing that it would be many a
long day before Dawson's Landing would see the equal of this one again.
The twins had accepted several invitations while the reception was in
progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at an amateur
entertainment for the benefit of a local charity. Society was eager to
receive them to its bosom. Judge Driscoll had the good fortune to secure
them for an immediate drive, and to be the first to display them in
public. They entered his buggy with him and were paraded down the main
street, everybody flocking to the windows and sidewalks to see.
The judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail, and where
the richest man lived, and the Freemasons' hall, and the Methodist
church, and the Presbyterian church, and where the Baptist church was
going to be when they got some money to build it with, and showed them
the town hall and the slaughterhouse, and got out of the independent fire
company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary fire; then he let
them inspect the muskets of the militia company, and poured out an
exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed
very well satisfied with the responses he got, for the twins admired his
admiration, and paid him back the best they could, though they could have
done better if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous
experiences of this sort in various countries had not already rubbed off
a considerable part of the novelty in it.
The judge laid himself out hospitality to make them have a good time, and
if there was a defect anywhere, it was not his fault. He told them a good
many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always
able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and
they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before. And he told them
all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and
the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature,
and was now president of the Society of Freethinkers. He said the
society had been in existence four years, and already had two members,
and was firmly established. He would call for the brothers in the
evening, if they would like to attend a meeting of it.
Accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about
Pudd'nhead Wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression of
him in advance and be prepared to like him. This scheme succeeded--the
favorable impression was achieved. Later it was confirmed and solidified
when Wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers the usual
topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon ordinary
subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and good-fellowship--a
proposition which was put to vote and carried.
The hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended, the
lonesome and neglected Wilson was richer by two friends than he had been
when it began. He invited the twins to look in at his lodgings
presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement, and they
accepted with pleasure.
Toward the middle of the evening, they found themselves on the road to
his house. Pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and putting in his
time puzzling over a thing which had come under his notice that morning.
The matter was this: He happened to be up very early--at dawn, in fact;
and he crossed the hall, which divided his cottage through the center,
and entered a room to get something there. The window of the room had no
curtains, for that side of the house had long been unoccupied, and
through this window he caught sight of something which surprised and
interested him. It was a young woman--a young woman where properly no
young woman belonged; for she was in Judge Driscoll's house, and in the
bedroom over the judge's private study or sitting room. This was young
Tom Driscoll's bedroom. He and the judge, the judge's widowed sister Mrs.
Pratt, and three Negro servants were the only people who belonged in the
house. Who, then, might this young lady be? The two houses were
separated by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its
middle from the street in front to the lane in the rear. The distance
was not great, and Wilson was able to see the girl very well, the window
shades of the room she was in being up, and the window also. The girl had
on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad stripes of pink and
white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink veil. She was practicing
steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she was doing the thing
gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her work. Who could she be, and
how came she to be in young Tom Driscoll's room?
Wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch the girl
without running much risk of being seen by her, and he remained there
hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face. But she
disappointed him. After a matter of twenty minutes she disappeared and
although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more.
Toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with Mrs. Pratt about
the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at
Aunt Patsy Cooper's. He asked after her nephew Tom, and she said he was
on his way home and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before
night, and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his
letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably--at
which Wilson winked to himself privately. Wilson did not ask if there was
a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought
light-throwing answers as to that matter if Mrs. Pratt had had any light
to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that were
going on in her house of which she herself was not aware.
He was now awaiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the problem of
who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that young fellow's
room at daybreak in the morning.
CHAPTER 8
Marse Tom Tramples His Chance
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June
bug than an old bird of paradise.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
It is necessary now to hunt up Roxy.
At the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she was
thirty-five. She got a berth as second chambermaid on a Cincinnati boat
in the New Orleans trade, the _Grand Mogul_. A couple of trips made her
wonted and easygoing at the work, and infatuated her with the stir and
adventure and independence of steamboat life. Then she was promoted and
become head chambermaid. She was a favorite with the officers, and
exceedingly proud of their joking and friendly way with her.
During eight years she served three parts of the year on that boat, and
the winters on a Vicksburg packet. But now for two months, she had had
rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the washtub alone. So she
resigned. But she was well fixed--rich, as she would have described it;
for she had lived a steady life, and had banked four dollars every month
in New Orleans as a provision for her old age. She said in the start
that she had "put shoes on one bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with,"
and that one mistake like that was enough; she would be independent of
the human race thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could
accomplish it. When the boat touched the levee at New Orleans she bade
good-by to her comrades on the _Grand Mogul_ and moved her kit ashore.
But she was back in a hour. The bank had gone to smash and carried her
four hundred dollars with it. She was a pauper and homeless. Also
disabled bodily, at least for the present. The officers were full of
sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a little purse for her. She
resolved to go to her birthplace; she had friends there among the Negros,
and the unfortunate always help the unfortunate, she was well aware of
that; those lowly comrades of her youth would not let her starve.
She took the little local packet at Cairo, and now she was on the
homestretch. Time had worn away her bitterness against her son, and she
was able to think of him with serenity. She put the vile side of him out
of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his occasional acts of
kindness to her. She gilded and otherwise decorated these, and made them
very pleasant to contemplate. She began to long to see him. She would go
and fawn upon him slavelike--for this would have to be her attitude, of
course--and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he
would be glad to see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently.
That would be lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her
poverty.
Her poverty! That thought inspired her to add another castle to her
dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then--maybe a dollar,
once a month, say; any little thing like that would help, oh, ever so
much.
By the time she reached Dawson's Landing, she was her old self again; her
blues were gone, she was in high feather. She would get along, surely;
there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with
her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry
home--or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer
just as well. And there was the church. She was a more rabid and devoted
Methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and
sincere. Yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the
amen corner in her possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at
peace thenceforward to the end.
She went to Judge Driscoll's kitchen first of all. She was received
there in great form and with vast enthusiasm. Her wonderful travels, and
the strange countries she had seen, and the adventures she had had, made
her a marvel and a heroine of romance. The Negros hung enchanted upon a
great story of her experiences, interrupting her all along with eager
questions, with laughter, exclamations of delight, and expressions of
applause; and she was obliged to confess to herself that if there was
anything better in this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be
got by telling about it. The audience loaded her stomach with their
dinners, and then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket.
Tom was in St. Louis. The servants said he had spent the best part of
his time there during the previous two years. Roxy came every day, and
had many talks about the family and its affairs. Once she asked why Tom
was away so much. The ostensible "Chambers" said:
"De fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young marster's away
den he kin when he's in de town; yes, en he love him better, too; so he
gives him fifty dollahs a month--"
"No, is dat so? Chambers, you's a-jokin', ain't you?"
"'Clah to goodness I ain't, Mammy; Marse Tom tole me so his own self. But
nemmine, 'tain't enough."
"My lan', what de reason 'tain't enough?"
"Well, I's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, Mammy. De reason it
ain't enough is 'ca'se Marse Tom gambles."
Roxy threw up her hands in astonishment, and Chambers went on:
"Ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hundred dollahs for
Marse Tom's gamblin' debts, en dat's true, Mammy, jes as dead certain as
you's bawn."
"Two--hund'd dollahs! Why, what is you talkin' 'bout?
Two--hund'd--dollahs. Sakes alive, it's 'mos' enough to buy a tol'able
good secondhand nigger wid. En you ain't lyin', honey? You wouldn't lie
to you' old Mammy?"
"It's God's own truth, jes as I tell you--two hund'd dollahs--I wisht I
may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so. En, oh, my lan', ole Marse
was jes a-hoppin'! He was b'ilin' mad, I tell you! He tuck 'n'
dissenhurrit him."
"Disen_whiched_ him?"
"Dissenhurrit him."
"What's dat? What do you mean?"
"Means he bu'sted de will."
"Bu's--ted de will! He wouldn't _ever_ treat him so! Take it back, you
mis'able imitation nigger dat I bore in sorrow en tribbilation."
Roxy's pet castle--an occasional dollar from Tom's pocket--was tumbling
to ruin before her eyes. She could not abide such a disaster as that;
she couldn't endure the thought of it. Her remark amused Chambers.
"Yah-yah-yah! Jes listen to dat! If I's imitation, what is you? Bofe of
us is imitation _white_--dat's what we is--en pow'ful good imitation,
too. Yah-yah-yah! We don't 'mount to noth'n as imitation _niggers_; en
as for--"
"Shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' I knock you side de head, en tell me 'bout de
will. Tell me 'tain't bu'sted--do, honey, en I'll never forgit you."
"Well, _'tain't_--'ca'se dey's a new one made, en Marse Tom's all right
ag'in. But what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for, Mammy? 'Tain't
none o' your business I don't reckon."
"'Tain't none o' my business? Whose business is it den, I'd like to
know? Wuz I his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wusn't I?--you
answer me dat. En you speck I could see him turned out po' and ornery on
de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it? I reckon if you'd ever be'n a
mother yo'self, Valet de Chambers, you wouldn't talk sich foolishness as
dat."
"Well, den, ole Marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in--do dat
satisfy you?"
Yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental over it. She
kept coming daily, and at last she was told that Tom had come home. She
began to tremble with emotion, and straightway sent to beg him to let his
"po' ole nigger Mammy have jes one sight of him en die for joy."
Tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when Chambers brought the
petition. Time had not modified his ancient detestation of the humble
drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still bitter and
uncompromising. He sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the face of the
young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using and whose family
rights he was enjoying. He maintained the gaze until the victim of it
had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said:
"What does the old rip want with me?"
The petition was meekly repeated.
"Who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social
attentions of niggers?"
Tom had risen. The other young man was trembling now, visibly. He saw
what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to
shield it. Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no
word: the victim received each blow with a beseeching, "Please, Marse
Tom!--oh, please, Marse Tom!" Seven blows--then Tom said, "Face the
door--march!" He followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks. The
last one helped the pure-white slave over the door-sill, and he limped
away mopping his eyes with his old, ragged sleeve. Tom shouted after
him, "Send her in!"
Then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the
remark, "He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the brim with
bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. How refreshing it was!
I feel better."
Tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her
son with all the wheedling and supplication servilities that fear and
interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. She
stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations
over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm under
his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa back in order to look properly
indifferent.
"My lan', how you is growed, honey! 'Clah to goodness, I wouldn't
a-knowed you, Marse Tom! 'Deed I wouldn't! Look at me good; does you
'member old Roxy? Does you know yo' old nigger mammy, honey? Well now, I
kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se I'se seed--"
"Cut it short, Goddamn it, cut it short! What is it you want?"
"You heah dat? Jes the same old Marse Tom, al'ays so gay and funnin' wid
de ole mammy. I'uz jes as shore--"
"Cut it short, I tell you, and get along! What do you want?"
This was a bitter disappointment. Roxy had for so many days nourished
and fondled and petted her notion that Tom would be glad to see his old
nurse, and would make her proud and happy to the marrow with a cordial
word or two, that it took two rebuffs to convince her that he was not
funning, and that her beautiful dream was a fond and foolish variety, a
shabby and pitiful mistake. She was hurt to the heart, and so ashamed
that for a moment she did not quite know what to do or how to act. Then
her breast began to heave, the tears came, and in her forlornness she was
moved to try that other dream of hers--an appeal to her boy's charity;
and so, upon the impulse, and without reflection, she offered her
supplication:
"Oh, Marse Tom, de po' ole mammy is in sich hard luck dese days; en she's
kinder crippled in de arms and can't work, en if you could gimme a
dollah--on'y jes one little dol--"
Tom was on his feet so suddenly that the supplicant was startled into a
jump herself.
"A dollar!--give you a dollar! I've a notion to strangle you! Is _that_
your errand here? Clear out! And be quick about it!"
Roxy backed slowly toward the door. When she was halfway she stopped,
and said mournfully:
"Marse Tom, I nussed you when you was a little baby, en I raised you all
by myself tell you was 'most a young man; en now you is young en rich, en
I is po' en gitt'n ole, en I come heah b'leavin' dat you would he'p de
ole mammy 'long down de little road dat's lef' 'twix' her en de grave,
en--"
Tom relished this tune less than any that he preceded it, for it began to
wake up a sort of echo in his conscience; so he interrupted and said with
decision, though without asperity, that he was not in a situation to help
her, and wasn't going to do it.
"Ain't you ever gwine to he'p me, Marse Tom?"
"No! Now go away and don't bother me any more."
Roxy's head was down, in an attitude of humility. But now the fires of
her old wrongs flamed up in her breast and began to burn fiercely. She
raised her head slowly, till it was well up, and at the same time her
great frame unconsciously assumed an erect and masterful attitude, with
all the majesty and grace of her vanished youth in it. She raised her
finger and punctuated with it.
"You has said de word. You has had yo' chance, en you has trompled it
under yo' foot. When you git another one, you'll git down on yo' knees
en _beg_ for it!"
A cold chill went to Tom's heart, he didn't know why; for he did not
reflect that such words, from such an incongruous source, and so solemnly
delivered, could not easily fail of that effect. However, he did the
natural thing: he replied with bluster and mockery.
"_You'll_ give me a chance--_you_! Perhaps I'd better get down on my
knees now! But in case I don't--just for argument's sake--what's going
to happen, pray?"
"Dis is what is gwine to happen, I's gwine as straight to yo' uncle as I
kin walk, en tell him every las' thing I knows 'bout you."
Tom's cheek blenched, and she saw it. Disturbing thoughts began to chase
each other through his head. "How can she know? And yet she must have
found out--she looks it. I've had the will back only three months, and
am already deep in debt again, and moving heaven and earth to save myself
from exposure and destruction, with a reasonably fair show of getting the
thing covered up if I'm let alone, and now this fiend has gone and found
me out somehow or other. I wonder how much she knows? Oh, oh, oh, it's
enough to break a body's heart! But I've got to humor her--there's no
other way."
Then he worked up a rather sickly sample of a gay laugh and a hollow
chipperness of manner, and said:
"Well, well, Roxy dear, old friends like you and me mustn't quarrel.
Here's your dollar--now tell me what you know."
He held out the wildcat bill; she stood as she was, and made no movement.
It was her turn to scorn persuasive foolery now, and she did not waste
it. She said, with a grim implacability in voice and manner which made
Tom almost realize that even a former slave can remember for ten minutes
insults and injuries returned for compliments and flatteries received,
and can also enjoy taking revenge for them when the opportunity offers:
"What does I know? I'll tell you what I knows, I knows enough to bu'st
dat will to flinders--en more, mind you, _more!_"
Tom was aghast.
"More?" he said, "What do you call more? Where's there any room for
more?"
Roxy laughed a mocking laugh, and said scoffingly, with a toss of her
head, and her hands on her hips:
"Yes!--oh, I reckon! _co'se_ you'd like to know--wid yo' po' little ole
rag dollah. What you reckon I's gwine to tell _you_ for?--you ain't got
no money. I's gwine to tell yo' uncle--en I'll do it dis minute,
too--he'll gimme FIVE dollahs for de news, en mighty glad, too."
She swung herself around disdainfully, and started away. Tom was in a
panic. He seized her skirts, and implored her to wait. She turned and
said, loftily:
"Look-a-heah, what 'uz it I tole you?"
"You--you--I don't remember anything. What was it you told me?"
"I tole you dat de next time I give you a chance you'd git down on yo'
knees en beg for it."
Tom was stupefied for a moment. He was panting with excitement. Then he
said:
"Oh, Roxy, you wouldn't require your young master to do such a horrible
thing. You can't mean it."
"I'll let you know mighty quick whether I means it or not! You call me
names, en as good as spit on me when I comes here, po' en ornery en
'umble, to praise you for bein' growed up so fine and handsome, en tell
you how I used to nuss you en tend you en watch you when you 'uz sick en
hadn't no mother but me in de whole worl', en beg you to give de po' ole
nigger a dollah for to get her som'n' to eat, en you call me
names--_names_, dad blame you! Yassir, I gives you jes one chance mo',
and dat's _now_, en it las' on'y half a second--you hear?"
Tom slumped to his knees and began to beg, saying:
"You see I'm begging, and it's honest begging, too! Now tell me, Roxy,
tell me."
The heir of two centuries of unatoned insult and outrage looked down on
him and seemed to drink in deep draughts of satisfaction. Then she said:
"Fine nice young white gen'l'man kneelin' down to a nigger wench! I's
wanted to see dat jes once befo' I's called. Now, Gabr'el, blow de hawn,
I's ready . . . Git up!"
Tom did it. He said, humbly:
"Now, Roxy, don't punish me any more. I deserved what I've got, but be
good and let me off with that. Don't go to uncle. Tell me--I'll give
you the five dollars."
"Yes, I bet you will; en you won't stop dah, nuther. But I ain't gwine
to tell you heah--"
"Good gracious, no!"
"Is you 'feared o' de ha'nted house?"
"N-no."
"Well, den, you come to de ha'nted house 'bout ten or 'leven tonight, en
climb up de ladder, 'ca'se de sta'rsteps is broke down, en you'll find
me. I's a-roostin' in de ha'nted house 'ca'se I can't 'ford to roos'
nowher's else." She started toward the door, but stopped and said,
"Gimme de dollah bill!" He gave it to her. She examined it and said,
"H'm--like enough de bank's bu'sted." She started again, but halted
again. "Has you got any whisky?"
"Yes, a little."
"Fetch it!"
He ran to his room overhead and brought down a bottle which was
two-thirds full. She tilted it up and took a drink. Her eyes sparkled
with satisfaction, and she tucked the bottle under her shawl, saying,
"It's prime. I'll take it along."
Tom humbly held the door for her, and she marched out as grim and erect
as a grenadier.
CHAPTER 9
Tom Practices Sycophancy
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained
that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Tom flung himself on the sofa, and put his throbbing head in his hands,
and rested his elbows on his knees. He rocked himself back and forth and
moaned.
"I've knelt to a nigger wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the
deepest depths of degradation before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to
this. . . . Well, there is one consolation, such as it is--I've struck
bottom this time; there's nothing lower."
But that was a hasty conclusion.
At ten that night he climbed the ladder in the haunted house, pale, weak,
and wretched. Roxy was standing in the door of one of the rooms,
waiting, for she had heard him.
This was a two-story log house which had acquired the reputation a few
years ago of being haunted, and that was the end of its usefulness.
Nobody would live in it afterward, or go near it by night, and most
people even gave it a wide berth in the daytime. As it had no
competition, it was called _the_ haunted house. It was getting crazy and
ruinous now, from long neglect. It stood three hundred yards beyond
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, with nothing between but vacancy. It was the
last house in the town at that end.
Tom followed Roxy into the room. She had a pile of clean straw in the
corner for a bed, some cheap but well-kept clothing was hanging on the
wall, there was a tin lantern freckling the floor with little spots of
light, and there were various soap and candle boxes scattered about,
which served for chairs. The two sat down. Roxy said:
"Now den, I'll tell you straight off, en I'll begin to k'leck de money
later on; I ain't in no hurry. What does you reckon I's gwine to tell
you?"
"Well, you--you--oh, Roxy, don't make it too hard for me! Come right out
and tell me you've found out somehow what a shape I'm in on account of
dissipation and foolishness."
"Disposition en foolishness! NO sir, dat ain't it. Dat jist ain't
nothin' at all, 'longside o' what _I_ knows."
Tom stared at her, and said:
"Why, Roxy, what do you mean?"
She rose, and gloomed above him like a Fate.
"I means dis--en it's de Lord's truth. You ain't no more kin to ole
Marse Driscoll den I is! _dat's_ what I means!" and her eyes flamed
with triumph.
"What?"
"Yassir, en _dat_ ain't all! You's a _nigger!_--_bawn_ a nigger and a
_slave!_--en you's a nigger en a slave dis minute; en if I opens my mouf
ole Marse Driscoll'll sell you down de river befo' you is two days older
den what you is now!"
"It's a thundering lie, you miserable old blatherskite!"
"It ain't no lie, nuther. It's just de truth, en nothin' _but_ de truth,
so he'p me. Yassir--you's my _son_--"
"You devil!"
"En dat po' boy dat you's be'n a-kickin' en a-cuffin' today is Percy
Driscoll's son en yo' _marster_--"
"You beast!"
"En _his_ name is Tom Driscoll, en _yo's_ name's Valet de Chambers, en
you ain't GOT no fambly name, beca'se niggers don't _have_ em!"
Tom sprang up and seized a billet of wood and raised it, but his mother
only laughed at him, and said:
"Set down, you pup! Does you think you kin skyer me? It ain't in you,
nor de likes of you. I reckon you'd shoot me in de back, maybe, if you
got a chance, for dat's jist yo' style--_I_ knows you, throo en
throo--but I don't mind gitt'n killed, beca'se all dis is down in writin'
and it's in safe hands, too, en de man dat's got it knows whah to look
for de right man when I gits killed. Oh, bless yo' soul, if you puts yo'
mother up for as big a fool as _you_ is, you's pow'ful mistaken, I kin
tell you! Now den, you set still en behave yo'self; en don't you git up
ag'in till I tell you!"
Tom fretted and chafed awhile in a whirlwind of disorganizing sensations
and emotions, and finally said, with something like settled conviction:
"The whole thing is moonshine; now then, go ahead and do your worst; I'm
done with you."
Roxy made no answer. She took the lantern and started for the door. Tom
was in a cold panic in a moment.
"Come back, come back!" he wailed. "I didn't mean it, Roxy; I take it
all back, and I'll never say it again! Please come back, Roxy!"
The woman stood a moment, then she said gravely:
"Dat's one thing you's got to stop, Valet de Chambers. You can't call me
_Roxy_, same as if you was my equal. Chillen don't speak to dey mammies
like dat. You'll call me ma or mammy, dat's what you'll call
me--leastways when de ain't nobody aroun'. _Say_ it!"
It cost Tom a struggle, but he got it out.
"Dat's all right, don't you ever forgit it ag'in, if you knows what's
good for you. Now den, you had said you wouldn't ever call it lies en
moonshine ag'in. I'll tell you dis, for a warnin': if you ever does say
it ag'in, it's de LAS' time you'll ever say it to me; I'll tramp as
straight to de judge as I kin walk, en tell him who you is, en _prove_
it. Does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"
"Oh," groaned Tom, "I more than believe it; I _know_ it."
Roxy knew her conquest was complete. She could have proved nothing to
anybody, and her threat of writings was a lie; but she knew the person
she was dealing with, and had made both statements without any doubt as
to the effect they would produce.
She went and sat down on her candle box, and the pride and pomp of her
victorious attitude made it a throne. She said:
"Now den, Chambers, we's gwine to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be
no mo' foolishness. In de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month;
you's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma. Plank it out!"
But Tom had only six dollars in the world. He gave her that, and
promised to start fair on next month's pension.
"Chambers, how much is you in debt?"
Tom shuddered, and said:
"Nearly three hundred dollars."
"How is you gwine to pay it?"
Tom groaned out: "Oh, I don't know; don't ask me such awful questions."
But she stuck to her point until she wearied a confession out of him: he
had been prowling about in disguise, stealing small valuables from
private houses; in fact, he made a good deal of a raid on his fellow
villagers a fortnight before, when he was supposed to be in St. Louis;
but he doubted if he had sent away enough stuff to realize the required
amount, and was afraid to make a further venture in the present excited
state of the town. His mother approved of his conduct, and offered to
help, but this frightened him. He tremblingly ventured to say that if
she would retire from the town he should feel better and safer, and could
hold his head higher--and was going on to make an argument, but she
interrupted and surprised him pleasantly by saying she was ready; it
didn't make any difference to her where she stayed, so that she got her
share of the pension regularly. She said she would not go far, and would
call at the haunted house once a month for her money. Then she said:
"I don't hate you so much now, but I've hated you a many a year--and
anybody would. Didn't I change you off, en give you a good fambly en a
good name, en made you a white gen'l'man en rich, wid store clothes
on--en what did I git for it? You despised me all de time, en was al'ays
sayin' mean hard things to me befo' folks, en wouldn't ever let me forgit
I's a nigger--en--en--"
She fell to sobbing, and broke down. Tom said: "But you know I didn't
know you were my mother; and besides--"
"Well, nemmine 'bout dat, now; let it go. I's gwine to fo'git it." Then
she added fiercely, "En don't ever make me remember it ag'in, or you'll
be sorry, _I_ tell you."
When they were parting, Tom said, in the most persuasive way he could
command:
"Ma, would you mind telling me who was my father?"
He had supposed he was asking an embarrassing question. He was mistaken.
Roxy drew herself up with a proud toss of her head, and said:
"Does I mine tellin' you? No, dat I don't! You ain't got no 'casion to
be shame' o' yo' father, _I_ kin tell you. He wuz de highest quality in
dis whole town--ole Virginny stock. Fust famblies, he wuz. Jes as good
stock as de Driscolls en de Howards, de bes' day dey ever seed." She put
on a little prouder air, if possible, and added impressively: "Does you
'member Cunnel Cecil Burleigh Essex, dat died de same year yo' young
Marse Tom Driscoll's pappy died, en all de Masons en Odd Fellers en
Churches turned out en give him de bigges' funeral dis town ever seed?
Dat's de man."
Under the inspiration of her soaring complacency the departed graces of
her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a
dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings
had been a little more in keeping with it.
"Dey ain't another nigger in dis town dat's as highbawn as you is. Now
den, go 'long! En jes you hold yo' head up as high as you want to--you
has de right, en dat I kin swah."
CHAPTER 10
The Nymph Revealed
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Every now and then, after Tom went to bed, he had sudden wakings out of
his sleep, and his first thought was, "Oh, joy, it was all a dream!"
Then he laid himself heavily down again, with a groan and the muttered
words, "A nigger! I am a nigger! Oh, I wish I was dead!"
He woke at dawn with one more repetition of this horror, and then he
resolved to meddle no more with that treacherous sleep. He began to
think. Sufficiently bitter thinkings they were. They wandered along
something after this fashion:
"Why were niggers _and_ whites made? What crime did the uncreated first
nigger commit that the curse of birth was decreed for him? And why is
this awful difference made between white and black? . . . How hard the
nigger's fate seems, this morning!--yet until last night such a thought
never entered my head."
He sighed and groaned an hour or more away. Then "Chambers" came humbly
in to say that breakfast was nearly ready. "Tom" blushed scarlet to see
this aristocratic white youth cringe to him, a nigger, and call him
"Young Marster." He said roughly:
"Get out of my sight!" and when the youth was gone, he muttered, "He has
done me no harm, poor wretch, but he is an eyesore to me now, for he is
Driscoll, the young gentleman, and I am a--oh, I wish I was dead!"
A gigantic eruption, like that of Krakatoa a few years ago, with the
accompanying earthquakes, tidal waves, and clouds of volcanic dust,
changes the face of the surrounding landscape beyond recognition,
bringing down the high lands, elevating the low, making fair lakes where
deserts had been, and deserts where green prairies had smiled before.
The tremendous catastrophe which had befallen Tom had changed his moral
landscape in much the same way. Some of his low places he found lifted to
ideals, some of his ideas had sunk to the valleys, and lay there with the
sackcloth and ashes of pumice stone and sulphur on their ruined heads.
For days he wandered in lonely places, thinking, thinking, thinking
--trying to get his bearings. It was new work. If he met a friend, he
found that the habit of a lifetime had in some mysterious way vanished
--his arm hung limp, instead of involuntarily extending the hand for a
shake. It was the "nigger" in him asserting its humility, and he blushed
and was abashed. And the "nigger" in him was surprised when the white
friend put out his hand for a shake with him. He found the "nigger" in
him involuntarily giving the road, on the sidewalk, to a white rowdy and
loafer. When Rowena, the dearest thing his heart knew, the idol of his
secret worship, invited him in, the "nigger" in him made an embarrassed
excuse and was afraid to enter and sit with the dread white folks on
equal terms. The "nigger" in him went shrinking and skulking here and
there and yonder, and fancying it saw suspicion and maybe detection in
all faces, tones, and gestures. So strange and uncharacteristic was
Tom's conduct that people noticed it, and turned to look after him when
he passed on; and when he glanced back--as he could not help doing, in
spite of his best resistance--and caught that puzzled expression in a
person's face, it gave him a sick feeling, and he took himself out of
view as quickly as he could. He presently came to have a hunted sense
and a hunted look, and then he fled away to the hilltops and the
solitudes. He said to himself that the curse of Ham was upon him.
He dreaded his meals; the "nigger" in him was ashamed to sit at the white
folk's table, and feared discovery all the time; and once when Judge
Driscoll said, "What's the matter with you? You look as meek as a
nigger," he felt as secret murderers are said to feel when the accuser
says, "Thou art the man!" Tom said he was not well, and left the table.
His ostensible "aunt's" solicitudes and endearments were become a terror
to him, and he avoided them.
And all the time, hatred of his ostensible "uncle" was steadily growing
in his heart; for he said to himself, "He is white; and I am his chattel,
his property, his goods, and he can sell me, just as he could his dog."
For as much as a week after this, Tom imagined that his character had
undergone a pretty radical change. But that was because he did not know
himself.
In several ways his opinions were totally changed, and would never go
back to what they were before, but the main structure of his character
was not changed, and could not be changed. One or two very important
features of it were altered, and in time effects would result from this,
if opportunity offered--effects of a quite serious nature, too. Under the
influence of a great mental and moral upheaval, his character and his
habits had taken on the appearance of complete change, but after a while
with the subsidence of the storm, both began to settle toward their
former places. He dropped gradually back into his old frivolous and
easygoing ways and conditions of feeling and manner of speech, and no
familiar of his could have detected anything in him that differentiated
him from the weak and careless Tom of other days.
The theft raid which he had made upon the village turned out better than
he had ventured to hope. It produced the sum necessary to pay his gaming
debts, and saved him from exposure to his uncle and another smashing of
the will. He and his mother learned to like each other fairly well. She
couldn't love him, as yet, because there "warn't nothing _to_ him," as
she expressed it, but her nature needed something or somebody to rule
over, and he was better than nothing. Her strong character and
aggressive and commanding ways compelled Tom's admiration in spite of the
fact that he got more illustrations of them than he needed for his
comfort. However, as a rule her conversation was made up of racy tales
about the privacies of the chief families of the town (for she went
harvesting among their kitchens every time she came to the village), and
Tom enjoyed this. It was just in his line. She always collected her
half of his pension punctually, and he was always at the haunted house to
have a chat with her on these occasions. Every now and then, she paid
him a visit there on between-days also.
Occasions he would run up to St. Louis for a few weeks, and at last
temptation caught him again. He won a lot of money, but lost it, and
with it a deal more besides, which he promised to raise as soon as
possible.
For this purpose he projected a new raid on his town. He never meddled
with any other town, for he was afraid to venture into houses whose ins
and outs he did not know and the habits of whose households he was not
acquainted with. He arrived at the haunted house in disguise on the
Wednesday before the advent of the twins--after writing his Aunt Pratt
that he would not arrive until two days after--and laying in hiding there
with his mother until toward daylight Friday morning, when he went to his
uncle's house and entered by the back way with his own key, and slipped
up to his room where he could have the use of the mirror and toilet
articles. He had a suit of girl's clothes with him in a bundle as a
disguise for his raid, and was wearing a suit of his mother's clothing,
with black gloves and veil. By dawn he was tricked out for his raid, but
he caught a glimpse of Pudd'nhead Wilson through the window over the way,
and knew that Pudd'nhead had caught a glimpse of him. So he entertained
Wilson with some airs and graces and attitudes for a while, then stepped
out of sight and resumed the other disguise, and by and by went down and
out the back way and started downtown to reconnoiter the scene of his
intended labors.
But he was ill at ease. He had changed back to Roxy's dress, with the
stoop of age added to the disguise, so that Wilson would not bother
himself about a humble old women leaving a neighbor's house by the back
way in the early morning, in case he was still spying. But supposing
Wilson had seen him leave, and had thought it suspicious, and had also
followed him? The thought made Tom cold. He gave up the raid for the
day, and hurried back to the haunted house by the obscurest route he
knew. His mother was gone; but she came back, by and by, with the news of
the grand reception at Patsy Cooper's, and soon persuaded him that the
opportunity was like a special Providence, it was so inviting and
perfect. So he went raiding, after all, and made a nice success of it
while everybody was gone to Patsy Cooper's. Success gave him nerve and
even actual intrepidity; insomuch, indeed, that after he had conveyed his
harvest to his mother in a back alley, he went to the reception himself,
and added several of the valuables of that house to his takings.
After this long digression we have now arrived once more at the point
where Pudd'nhead Wilson, while waiting for the arrival of the twins on
that same Friday evening, sat puzzling over the strange apparition of
that morning--a girl in young Tom Driscoll's bedroom; fretting, and
guessing, and puzzling over it, and wondering who the shameless creature
might be.
CHAPTER 11
Pudd'nhead's Thrilling Discovery
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three
form a rising scale of compliment: 1--to tell him you have read one of
his books; 2--to tell him you have read all of his books; 3--to ask him
to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you
to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you
clear into his heart.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The twins arrived presently, and talk began. It flowed along chattily
and sociably, and under its influence the new friendship gathered ease
and strength. Wilson got out his Calendar, by request, and read a
passage or two from it, which the twins praised quite cordially. This
pleased the author so much that he complied gladly when they asked him to
lend them a batch of the work to read at home. In the course of their
wide travels, they had found out that there are three sure ways of
pleasing an author; they were now working the best of the three.
There was an interruption now. Young Driscoll appeared, and joined the
party. He pretended to be seeing the distinguished strangers for the
first time when they rose to shake hands; but this was only a blind, as
he had already had a glimpse of them, at the reception, while robbing the
house. The twins made mental note that he was smooth-faced and rather
handsome, and smooth and undulatory in his movements--graceful, in fact.
Angelo thought he had a good eye; Luigi thought there was something
veiled and sly about it. Angelo thought he had a pleasant free-and-easy
way of talking; Luigi thought it was more so than was agreeable. Angelo
thought he was a sufficiently nice young man; Luigi reserved his
decision. Tom's first contribution to the conversation was a question
which he had put to Wilson a hundred times before. It was always cheerily
and good-natured put, and always inflicted a little pang, for it touched
a secret sore; but this time the pang was sharp, since strangers were
present.
"Well, how does the law come on? Had a case yet?"
Wilson bit his lip, but answered, "No--not yet," with as much
indifference as he could assume. Judge Driscoll had generously left the
law feature out of Wilson's biography which he had furnished to the
twins. Young Tom laughed pleasantly, and said:
"Wilson's a lawyer, gentlemen, but he doesn't practice now."
The sarcasm bit, but Wilson kept himself under control, and said without
passion:
"I don't practice, it is true. It is true that I have never had a case,
and have had to earn a poor living for twenty years as an expert
accountant in a town where I can't get a hold of a set of books to
untangle as often as I should like. But it is also true that I did
myself well for the practice of the law. By the time I was your age,
Tom, I had chosen a profession, and was soon competent to enter upon it."
Tom winced. "I never got a chance to try my hand at it, and I may never
get a chance; and yet if I ever do get it, I shall be found ready, for I
have kept up my law studies all these years."
"That's it; that's good grit! I like to see it. I've a notion to throw
all my business your way. My business and your law practice ought to
make a pretty gay team, Dave," and the young fellow laughed again.
"If you will throw--" Wilson had thought of the girl in Tom's bedroom,
and was going to say, "If you will throw the surreptitious and
disreputable part of your business my way, it may amount to something,"
but thought better of it and said,
"However, this matter doesn't fit well in a general conversation."
"All right, we'll change the subject; I guess you were about to give me
another dig, anyway, so I'm willing to change. How's the Awful Mystery
flourishing these days? Wilson's got a scheme for driving plain window
glass panes out of the market by decorating it with greasy finger marks,
and getting rich by selling it at famine prices to the crowned heads over
in Europe to outfit their palaces with. Fetch it out, Dave."
Wilson brought three of his glass strips, and said:
"I get the subject to pass the fingers of his right hand through his hair,
so as to get a little coating of the natural oil on them, and then press
the balls of them on the glass. A fine and delicate print of the lines
in the skin results, and is permanent, if it doesn't come in contact with
something able to rub it off. You begin, Tom."
"Why, I think you took my finger marks once or twice before."
"Yes, but you were a little boy the last time, only about twelve years
old."
"That's so. Of course, I've changed entirely since then, and variety is
what the crowned heads want, I guess."
He passed his fingers through his crop of short hair, and pressed them
one at a time on the glass. Angelo made a print of his fingers on
another glass, and Luigi followed with a third. Wilson marked the
glasses with names and dates, and put them away. Tom gave one of his
little laughs, and said:
"I thought I wouldn't say anything, but if variety is what you are after,
you have wasted a piece of glass. The hand print of one twin is the same
as the hand print of the fellow twin."
"Well, it's done now, and I like to have them both, anyway," said Wilson,
returned to his place.
"But look here, Dave," said Tom, "you used to tell people's fortunes, too,
when you took their finger marks. Dave's just an all-round genius--a
genius of the first water, gentlemen; a great scientist running to seed
here in this village, a prophet with the kind of honor that prophets
generally get at home--for here they don't give shucks for his
scientifics, and they call his skull a notion factory--hey, Dave, ain't
it so? But never mind, he'll make his mark someday--finger mark, you
know, he-he! But really, you want to let him take a shy at your palms
once; it's worth twice the price of admission or your money's returned at
the door. Why, he'll read your wrinkles as easy as a book, and not only
tell you fifty or sixty things that's going to happen to you, but fifty
or sixty thousand that ain't. Come, Dave, show the gentlemen what an
inspired jack-at-all-science we've got in this town, and don't know it."
Wilson winced under this nagging and not very courteous chaff, and the
twins suffered with him and for him. They rightly judged, now, that the
best way to relieve him would be to take the thing in earnest and
treat it with respect, ignoring Tom's rather overdone raillery; so Luigi
said:
"We have seen something of palmistry in our wanderings, and know very
well what astonishing things it can do. If it isn't a science, and one
of the greatest of them too, I don't know what its other name ought to
be. In the Orient--"
Tom looked surprised and incredulous. He said:
"That juggling a science? But really, you ain't serious, are you?"
"Yes, entirely so. Four years ago we had our hands read out to us as if
our plans had been covered with print."
"Well, do you mean to say there was actually anything in it?" asked Tom,
his incredulity beginning to weaken a little.
"There was this much in it," said Angelo: "what was told us of our
characters was minutely exact--we could have not have bettered it
ourselves. Next, two or three memorable things that have happened to us
were laid bare--things which no one present but ourselves could have
known about."
"Why, it's rank sorcery!" exclaimed Tom, who was now becoming very much
interested. "And how did they make out with what was going to happen to
you in the future?"
"On the whole, quite fairly," said Luigi. "Two or three of the most
striking things foretold have happened since; much the most striking one
of all happened within that same year. Some of the minor prophesies have
come true; some of the minor and some of the major ones have not been
fulfilled yet, and of course may never be: still, I should be more
surprised if they failed to arrive than if they didn't."
Tom was entirely sobered, and profoundly impressed. He said,
apologetically:
"Dave, I wasn't meaning to belittle that science; I was only chaffing
--chattering, I reckon I'd better say. I wish you would look at their
palms. Come, won't you?"
"Why certainly, if you want me to; but you know I've had no chance to
become an expert, and don't claim to be one. When a past event is
somewhat prominently recorded in the palm, I can generally detect that,
but minor ones often escape me--not always, of course, but often--but I
haven't much confidence in myself when it comes to reading the future. I
am talking as if palmistry was a daily study with me, but that is not so.
I haven't examined half a dozen hands in the last half dozen years; you
see, the people got to joking about it, and I stopped to let the talk die
down. I'll tell you what we'll do, Count Luigi: I'll make a try at your
past, and if I have any success there--no, on the whole, I'll let the
future alone; that's really the affair of an expert."
He took Luigi's hand. Tom said:
"Wait--don't look yet, Dave! Count Luigi, here's paper and pencil. Set
down that thing that you said was the most striking one that was foretold
to you, and happened less than a year afterward, and give it to me so I
can see if Dave finds it in your hand."
Luigi wrote a line privately, and folded up the piece of paper, and
handed it to Tom, saying:
"I'll tell you when to look at it, if he finds it."
Wilson began to study Luigi's palm, tracing life lines, heart lines, head
lines, and so on, and noting carefully their relations with the cobweb of
finer and more delicate marks and lines that enmeshed them on all sides;
he felt of the fleshy cushion at the base of the thumb and noted its
shape; he felt of the fleshy side of the hand between the wrist and the
base of the little finger and noted its shape also; he painstakingly
examined the fingers, observing their form, proportions, and natural
manner of disposing themselves when in repose. All this process was
watched by the three spectators with absorbing interest, their heads bent
together over Luigi's palm, and nobody disturbing the stillness with a
word. Wilson now entered upon a close survey of the palm again, and his
revelations began.
He mapped out Luigi's character and disposition, his tastes, aversions,
proclivities, ambitions, and eccentricities in a way which sometimes made
Luigi wince and the others laugh, but both twins declared that the chart
was artistically drawn and was correct.
Next, Wilson took up Luigi's history. He proceeded cautiously and with
hesitation now, moving his finger slowly along the great lines of the
palm, and now and then halting it at a "star" or some such landmark, and
examining that neighborhood minutely. He proclaimed one or two past
events, Luigi confirmed his correctness, and the search went on.
Presently Wilson glanced up suddenly with a surprised expression.
"Here is a record of an incident which you would perhaps not wish me
to--"
"Bring it out," said Luigi, good-naturedly. "I promise you sha'n't
embarrass me."
But Wilson still hesitated, and did not seem quite to know what to do.
Then he said:
"I think it is too delicate a matter to--to--I believe I would rather
write it or whisper it to you, and let you decide for yourself whether
you want it talked out or not."
"That will answer," said Luigi. "Write it."
Wilson wrote something on a slip of paper and handed it to Luigi, who
read it to himself and said to Tom:
"Unfold your slip and read it, Mr. Driscoll."
Tom said:
"'IT WAS PROPHESIED THAT I WOULD KILL A MAN. IT CAME TRUE BEFORE THE
YEAR WAS OUT.'"
Tom added, "Great Scott!"
Luigi handed Wilson's paper to Tom, and said:
"Now read this one."
Tom read:
"'YOU HAVE KILLED SOMEONE, BUT WHETHER MAN, WOMAN, OR CHILD, I DO NOT
MAKE OUT.'"
"Caesar's ghost!" commented Tom, with astonishment. "It beats anything
that was ever heard of! Why, a man's own hand is his deadliest enemy!
Just think of that--a man's own hand keeps a record of the deepest and
fatalest secrets of his life, and is treacherously ready to expose
himself to any black-magic stranger that comes along. But what do you
let a person look at your hand for, with that awful thing printed on it?"
"Oh," said Luigi, reposefully, "I don't mind it. I killed the man for
good reasons, and I don't regret it."
"What were the reasons?"
"Well, he needed killing."
"I'll tell you why he did it, since he won't say himself," said Angelo,
warmly. "He did it to save my life, that's what he did it for. So it was
a noble act, and not a thing to be hid in the dark."
"So it was, so it was," said Wilson. "To do such a thing to save a
brother's life is a great and fine action."
"Now come," said Luigi, "it is very pleasant to hear you say these
things, but for unselfishness, or heroism, or magnanimity, the
circumstances won't stand scrutiny. You overlook one detail; suppose I
hadn't saved Angelo's life, what would have become of mine? If I had let
the man kill him, wouldn't he have killed me, too? I saved my own life,
you see."
"Yes, that is your way of talking," said Angelo, "but I know you--I
don't believe you thought of yourself at all. I keep that weapon yet
that Luigi killed the man with, and I'll show it to you sometime. That
incident makes it interesting, and it had a history before it came into
Luigi's hands which adds to its interest. It was given to Luigi by a
great Indian prince, the Gaikowar of Baroda, and it had been in his
family two or three centuries. It killed a good many disagreeable people
who troubled the hearthstone at one time or another. It isn't much too
look at, except it isn't shaped like other knives, or dirks, or whatever
it may be called--here, I'll draw it for you." He took a sheet of paper
and made a rapid sketch. "There it is--a broad and murderous blade, with
edges like a razor for sharpness. The devices engraved on it are the
ciphers or names of its long line of possessors--I had Luigi's name added
in Roman letters myself with our coat of arms, as you see. You notice
what a curious handle the thing has. It is solid ivory, polished like a
mirror, and is four or five inches long--round, and as thick as a large
man's wrist, with the end squared off flat, for your thumb to rest on;
for you grasp it, with your thumb resting on the blunt end--so--and lift
it along and strike downward. The Gaikowar showed us how the thing was
done when he gave it to Luigi, and before that night was ended, Luigi had
used the knife, and the Gaikowar was a man short by reason of it. The
sheath is magnificently ornamented with gems of great value. You will
find a sheath more worth looking at than the knife itself, of course."
Tom said to himself:
"It's lucky I came here. I would have sold that knife for a song; I
supposed the jewels were glass."
"But go on; don't stop," said Wilson. "Our curiosity is up now, to hear
about the homicide. Tell us about that."
"Well, briefly, the knife was to blame for that, all around. A native
servant slipped into our room in the palace in the night, to kill us and
steal the knife on account of the fortune encrusted on its sheath,
without a doubt. Luigi had it under his pillow; we were in bed together.
There was a dim night-light burning. I was asleep, but Luigi was awake,
and he thought he detected a vague form nearing the bed. He slipped the
knife out of the sheath and was ready and unembarrassed by hampering
bedclothes, for the weather was hot and we hadn't any. Suddenly that
native rose at the bedside, and bent over me with his right hand lifted
and a dirk in it aimed at my throat; but Luigi grabbed his wrist, pulled
him downward, and drove his own knife into the man's neck. That is the
whole story."
Wilson and Tom drew deep breaths, and after some general chat about the
tragedy, Pudd'nhead said, taking Tom's hand:
"Now, Tom, I've never had a look at your palms, as it happens; perhaps
you've got some little questionable privacies that need--hel-lo!"
Tom had snatched away his hand, and was looking a good deal confused.
"Why, he's blushing!" said Luigi.
Tom darted an ugly look at him, and said sharply:
"Well, if I am, it ain't because I'm a murderer!" Luigi's dark face
flushed, but before he could speak or move, Tom added with anxious haste:
"Oh, I beg a thousand pardons. I didn't mean that; it was out before I
thought, and I'm very, very sorry--you must forgive me!"
Wilson came to the rescue, and smoothed things down as well as he could;
and in fact was entirely successful as far as the twins were concerned,
for they felt sorrier for the affront put upon him by his guest's
outburst of ill manners than for the insult offered to Luigi. But the
success was not so pronounced with the offender. Tom tried to seem at
his ease, and he went through the motions fairly well, but at bottom he
felt resentful toward all the three witnesses of his exhibition; in fact,
he felt so annoyed at them for having witnessed it and noticed it that he
almost forgot to feel annoyed at himself for placing it before them.
However, something presently happened which made him almost comfortable,
and brought him nearly back to a state of charity and friendliness. This
was a little spat between the twins; not much of a spat, but still a
spat; and before they got far with it, they were in a decided condition
of irritation while pretending to be actuated by more respectable
motives. By his help the fire got warmed up to the blazing point, and he
might have had the happiness of seeing the flames show up in another
moment, but for the interruption of a knock on the door--an interruption
which fretted him as much as it gratified Wilson. Wilson opened the
door.
The visitor was a good-natured, ignorant, energetic middle-aged Irishman
named John Buckstone, who was a great politician in a small way, and
always took a large share in public matters of every sort. One of the
town's chief excitements, just now, was over the matter of rum. There
was a strong rum party and a strong anti-rum party. Buckstone was
training with the rum party, and he had been sent to hunt up the twins
and invite them to attend a mass meeting of that faction. He delivered
his errand, and said the clans were already gathering in the big hall
over the market house. Luigi accepted the invitation cordially. Angelo
less cordially, since he disliked crowds, and did not drink the powerful
intoxicants of America. In fact, he was even a teetotaler sometimes
--when it was judicious to be one.
The twins left with Buckstone, and Tom Driscoll joined the company with
them uninvited.
In the distance, one could see a long wavering line of torches drifting
down the main street, and could hear the throbbing of the bass drum, the
clash of cymbals, the squeaking of a fife or two, and the faint roar of
remote hurrahs. The tail end of this procession was climbing the market
house stairs when the twins arrived in its neighborhood; when they
reached the hall, it was full of people, torches, smoke, noise, and
enthusiasm. They were conducted to the platform by Buckstone--Tom
Driscoll still following--and were delivered to the chairman in the midst
of a prodigious explosion of welcome. When the noise had moderated a
little, the chair proposed that "our illustrious guests be at once
elected, by complimentary acclamation, to membership in our ever-glorious
organization, the paradise of the free and the perdition of the slave."
This eloquent discharge opened the floodgates of enthusiasm again, and
the election was carried with thundering unanimity. Then arose a storm
of cries:
"Wet them down! Wet them down! Give them a drink!"
Glasses of whisky were handed to the twins. Luigi waves his aloft, then
brought it to his lips; but Angelo set his down. There was another storm
of cries.
"What's the matter with the other one?" "What is the blond one going
back on us for?" "Explain! Explain!"
The chairman inquired, and then reported:
"We have made an unfortunate mistake, gentlemen. I find that the Count
Angelo Capello is opposed to our creed--is a teetotaler, in fact, and was
not intending to apply for membership with us. He desires that we
reconsider the vote by which he was elected. What is the pleasure of the
house?"
There was a general burst of laughter, plentifully accented with
whistlings and catcalls, but the energetic use of the gavel presently
restored something like order. Then a man spoke from the crowd, and said
that while he was very sorry that the mistake had been made, it would not
be possible to rectify it at the present meeting. According to the
bylaws, it must go over to the next regular meeting for action. He would
not offer a motion, as none was required. He desired to apologize to the
gentlemen in the name of the house, and begged to assure him that as far
as it might lie in the power of the Sons of Liberty, his temporary
membership in the order would be made pleasant to him.
This speech was received with great applause, mixed with cries of:
"That's the talk!" "He's a good fellow, anyway, if he _is_ a teetotaler!"
"Drink his health!" "Give him a rouser, and no heeltaps!"
Glasses were handed around, and everybody on the platform drank Angelo's
health, while the house bellowed forth in song:
For he's a jolly good fel-low,
For he's a jolly good fel-low,
For he's a jolly good fe-el-low,
Which nobody can deny.
Tom Driscoll drank. It was his second glass, for he had drunk Angelo's
the moment that Angelo had set it down. The two drinks made him very
merry--almost idiotically so, and he began to take a most lively and
prominent part in the proceedings, particularly in the music and catcalls
and side remarks.
The chairman was still standing at the front, the twins at his side. The
extraordinarily close resemblance of the brothers to each other suggested
a witticism to Tom Driscoll, and just as the chairman began a speech he
skipped forward and said, with an air of tipsy confidence, to the
audience:
"Boys, I move that he keeps still and lets this human philopena snip you
out a speech."
The descriptive aptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty
burst of laughter followed.
Luigi's southern blood leaped to the boiling point in a moment under the
sharp humiliation of this insult delivered in the presence of four
hundred strangers. It was not in the young man's nature to let the
matter pass, or to delay the squaring of the account. He took a couple of
strides and halted behind the unsuspecting joker. Then he drew back and
delivered a kick of such titanic vigor that it lifted Tom clear over the
footlights and landed him on the heads of the front row of the Sons of
Liberty.
Even a sober person does not like to have a human being emptied on him
when he is not going any harm; a person who is not sober cannot endure
such an attention at all. The nest of Sons of Liberty that Driscoll
landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an
entirely sober one in the auditorium. Driscoll was promptly and
indignantly flung on the heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons
passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the
front row Sons who had passed him to them. This course was strictly
followed by bench after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and
airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever-lengthening
wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went
group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter
of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose
the paralyzing cry of "_fire!_"
The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly
defined moment, there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the
tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and
energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and
that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and
gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass.
The fireboys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no
distance to go this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the
market house, There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company.
Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies,
after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the
frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters
to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red
shirts and helmets on--they never stirred officially in unofficial
costume--and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of
windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were
ready for them with a powerful stream of water, which washed some of them
off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. But water was preferable to
fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the
pitiless drenching assailed it until the building was empty; then the
fireboys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to
annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village
fire company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does
get a chance, it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village as
were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did not insure against
fire; they insured against the fire company.
CHAPTER 12
The Shame of Judge Driscoll
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.
Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is
brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the
flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance
of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack
you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him
as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both
day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the
immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man
who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten
centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who
"didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and put him
at the head of the procession.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Judge Driscoll was in bed and asleep by ten o'clock on Friday night, and
he was up and gone a-fishing before daylight in the morning with his
friend Pembroke Howard. These two had been boys together in Virginia
when that state still ranked as the chief and most imposing member of the
Union, and they still coupled the proud and affectionate adjective "old"
with her name when they spoke of her. In Missouri a recognized
superiority attached to any person who hailed from Old Virginia; and this
superiority was exalted to supremacy when a person of such nativity could
also prove descent from the First Families of that great commonwealth.
The Howards and Driscolls were of this aristocracy. In their eyes, it
was a nobility. It had its unwritten laws, and they were as clearly
defined and as strict as any that could be found among the printed
statues of the land. The F.F.V. was born a gentleman; his highest duty in
life was to watch over that great inheritance and keep it unsmirched. He
must keep his honor spotless. Those laws were his chart; his course was
marked out on it; if he swerved from it by so much as half a point of the
compass, it meant shipwreck to his honor; that is to say, degradation
from his rank as a gentleman. These laws required certain things of him
which his religion might forbid: then his religion must yield--the laws
could not be relaxed to accommodate religions or anything else. Honor
stood first; and the laws defined what it was and wherein it differed in
certain details from honor as defined by church creeds and by the social
laws and customs of some of the minor divisions of the globe that had got
crowded out when the sacred boundaries of Virginia were staked out.
If Judge Driscoll was the recognized first citizen of Dawson's Landing,
Pembroke Howard was easily its recognized second citizen. He was called
"the great lawyer"--an earned title. He and Driscoll were of the same
age--a year or two past sixty.
Although Driscoll was a freethinker and Howard a strong and determined
Presbyterian, their warm intimacy suffered no impairment in consequence.
They were men whose opinions were their own property and not subject to
revision and amendment, suggestion or criticism, by anybody, even their
friends.
The day's fishing finished, they came floating downstream in their skiff,
talking national politics and other high matters, and presently met a
skiff coming up from town, with a man in it who said:
"I reckon you know one of the new twins gave your nephew a kicking last
night, Judge?"
"Did WHAT?"
"Gave him a kicking."
The old judge's lips paled, and his eyes began to flame. He choked with
anger for a moment, then he got out what he was trying to say:
"Well--well--go on! Give me the details!"
The man did it. At the finish the judge was silent a minute, turning
over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom's flight over the
footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud,
"H'm--I don't understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn't wake me.
Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon."
His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with
a cheery complacency, "I like that--it's the true old blood--hey,
Pembroke?"
Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. Then the
news-bringer spoke again.
"But Tom beat the twin on the trial."
The judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said:
"The trial? What trial?"
"Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery."
The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death
stroke. Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took
him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. He sprinkled
water in his face, and said to the startled visitor:
"Go, now--don't let him come to and find you here. You see what an
effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more
considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that."
"I'm right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn't have done
it if I had thought; but it ain't slander; it's perfectly true, just as I
told him."
He rowed away. Presently the old judge came out of his faint and looked
up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him.
"Say it ain't true, Pembroke; tell me it ain't true!" he said in a weak
voice.
There was nothing weak in the deep organ tones that responded:
"You know it's a lie as well as I do, old friend. He is of the best
blood of the Old Dominion."
"God bless you for saying it!" said the old gentleman, fervently. "Ah,
Pembroke, it was such a blow!"
Howard stayed by his friend, and saw him home, and entered the house with
him. It was dark, and past supper-time, but the judge was not thinking
of supper; he was eager to hear the slander refuted from headquarters,
and as eager to have Howard hear it, too. Tom was sent for, and he came
immediately. He was bruised and lame, and was not a happy-looking
object. His uncle made him sit down, and said:
"We have been hearing about your adventure, Tom, with a handsome lie
added for embellishment. Now pulverize that lie to dust! What measures
have you taken? How does the thing stand?"
Tom answered guilelessly: "It don't stand at all; it's all over. I had
him up in court and beat him. Pudd'nhead Wilson defended him--first
case he ever had, and lost it. The judge fined the miserable hound five
dollars for the assault."
Howard and the judge sprang to their feet with the opening sentence
--why, neither knew; then they stood gazing vacantly at each other.
Howard stood a moment, then sat mournfully down without saying anything.
The judge's wrath began to kindle, and he burst out:
"You cur! You scum! You vermin! Do you mean to tell me that blood of
my race has suffered a blow and crawled to a court of law about it?
Answer me!"
Tom's head drooped, and he answered with an eloquent silence. His uncle
stared at him with a mixed expression of amazement and shame and
incredulity that was sorrowful to see. At last he said:
"Which of the twins was it?"
"Count Luigi."
"You have challenged him?"
"N--no," hesitated Tom, turning pale.
"You will challenge him tonight. Howard will carry it."
Tom began to turn sick, and to show it. He turned his hat round and
round in his hand, his uncle glowering blacker and blacker upon him as
the heavy seconds drifted by; then at last he began to stammer, and said
piteously:
"Oh, please, don't ask me to do it, uncle! He is a murderous devil--I
never could--I--I'm afraid of him!"
Old Driscoll's mouth opened and closed three times before he could get it
to perform its office; then he stormed out:
"A coward in my family! A Driscoll a coward! Oh, what have I done to
deserve this infamy!" He tottered to his secretary in the corner,
repeated that lament again and again in heartbreaking tones, and got out
of a drawer a paper, which he slowly tore to bits, scattering the bits
absently in his track as he walked up and down the room, still grieving
and lamenting. At last he said:
"There it is, shreds and fragments once more--my will. Once more you
have forced me to disinherit you, you base son of a most noble father!
Leave my sight! Go--before I spit on you!"
The young man did not tarry. Then the judge turned to Howard:
"You will be my second, old friend?"
"Of course."
"There is pen and paper. Draft the cartel, and lose no time."
"The Count shall have it in his hands in fifteen minutes," said Howard.
Tom was very heavyhearted. His appetite was gone with his property and
his self-respect. He went out the back way and wandered down the obscure
lane grieving, and wondering if any course of future conduct, however
discreet and carefully perfected and watched over, could win back his
uncle's favor and persuade him to reconstruct once more that generous
will which had just gone to ruin before his eyes. He finally concluded
that it could. He said to himself that he had accomplished this sort of
triumph once already, and that what had been done once could be done
again. He would set about it. He would bend every energy to the task,
and he would score that triumph once more, cost what it might to his
convenience, limit as it might his frivolous and liberty-loving life.
"To begin," he says to himself, "I'll square up with the proceeds of my
raid, and then gambling has got to be stopped--and stopped short off.
It's the worst vice I've got--from my standpoint, anyway, because it's
the one he can most easily find out, through the impatience of my
creditors. He thought it expensive to have to pay two hundred dollars to
them for me once. Expensive--_that!_ Why, it cost me the whole of his
fortune--but, of course, he never thought of that; some people can't
think of any but their own side of a case. If he had known how deep I am
in now, the will would have gone to pot without waiting for a duel to
help. Three hundred dollars! It's a pile! But he'll never hear of it,
I'm thankful to say. The minute I've cleared it off, I'm safe; and I'll
never touch a card again. Anyway, I won't while he lives, I make oath to
that. I'm entering on my last reform--I know it--yes, and I'll win; but
after that, if I ever slip again I'm gone."
CHAPTER 13
Tom Stares at Ruin
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have
gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in
stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November,
May, March, June, December, August, and February.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Thus mournfully communing with himself, Tom moped along the lane past
Pudd'nhead Wilson's house, and still on and on between fences enclosing
vacant country on each hand till he neared the haunted house, then he
came moping back again, with many sighs and heavy with trouble. He sorely
wanted cheerful company. Rowena! His heart gave a bound at the thought,
but the next thought quieted it--the detested twins would be there.
He was on the inhabited side of Wilson's house, and now as he approached
it, he noticed that the sitting room was lighted. This would do; others
made him feel unwelcome sometimes, but Wilson never failed in courtesy
toward him, and a kindly courtesy does at least save one's feelings, even
if it is not professing to stand for a welcome. Wilson heard footsteps at
his threshold, then the clearing of a throat.
"It's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose--poor devil, he find
friends pretty scarce today, likely, after the disgrace of carrying a
personal assault case into a law-court."
A dejected knock. "Come in!"
Tom entered, and dropped into a chair, without saying anything. Wilson
said kindly:
"Why, my boy, you look desolate. Don't take it so hard. Try and forget
you have been kicked."
"Oh, dear," said Tom, wretchedly, "it's not that, Pudd'nhead--it's not
that. It's a thousand times worse than that--oh, yes, a million times
worse."
"Why, Tom, what do you mean? Has Rowena--"
"Flung me? _No_, but the old man has."
Wilson said to himself, "Aha!" and thought of the mysterious girl in the
bedroom. "The Driscolls have been making discoveries!" Then he said
aloud, gravely:
"Tom, there are some kinds of dissipation which--"
"Oh, shucks, this hasn't got anything to do with dissipation. He wanted
me to challenge that derned Italian savage, and I wouldn't do it."
"Yes, of course he would do that," said Wilson in a meditative
matter-of-course way, "but the thing that puzzled me was, why he didn't
look to that last night, for one thing, and why he let you carry such a
matter into a court of law at all, either before the duel or after it.
It's no place for it. It was not like him. I couldn't understand it.
How did it happen?"
"It happened because he didn't know anything about it. He was asleep
when I got home last night."
"And you didn't wake him? Tom, is that possible?"
Tom was not getting much comfort here. He fidgeted a moment, then said:
"I didn't choose to tell him--that's all. He was going a-fishing before
dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins into the common
calaboose--and I thought sure I could--I never dreamed of their slipping
out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense--well, once in the
calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle wouldn't want any duels with
that sort of characters, and wouldn't allow any.
"Tom, I am ashamed of you! I don't see how you could treat your good old
uncle so. I am a better friend of his than you are; for if I had known
the circumstances I would have kept that case out of court until I got
word to him and let him have the gentleman's chance."
"You would?" exclaimed Tom, with lively surprise. "And it your first
case! And you know perfectly well there never would have _been_ any case
if he had got that chance, don't you? And you'd have finished your days
a pauper nobody, instead of being an actually launched and recognized
lawyer today. And you would really have done that, would you?"
"Certainly."
Tom looked at him a moment or two, then shook his head sorrowfully and
said:
"I believe you--upon my word I do. I don't know why I do, but I do.
Pudd'nhead Wilson, I think you're the biggest fool I ever saw."
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
"Well, he has been requiring you to fight the Italian, and you have
refused. You degenerate remnant of an honorable line! I'm thoroughly
ashamed of you, Tom!"
"Oh, that's nothing! I don't care for anything, now that the will's torn
up again."
"Tom, tell me squarely--didn't he find any fault with you for anything
but those two things--carrying the case into court and refusing to
fight?"
He watched the young fellow's face narrowly, but it was entirely
reposeful, and so also was the voice that answered:
"No, he didn't find any other fault with me. If he had had any to find,
he would have begun yesterday, for he was just in the humor for it. He
drove that jack-pair around town and showed them the sights, and when he
came home he couldn't find his father's old silver watch that don't keep
time and he thinks so much of, and couldn't remember what he did with it
three or four days ago when he saw it last, and when I suggested that it
probably wasn't lost but stolen, it put him in a regular passion, and he
said I was a fool--which convinced me, without any trouble, that that
was just what he was afraid _had_ happened, himself, but did not want to
believe it, because lost things stand a better chance of being found
again than stolen ones."
"Whe-ew!" whistled Wilson. "Score another one the list."
"Another what?"
"Another theft!"
"Theft?"
"Yes, theft. That watch isn't lost, it's stolen. There's been another
raid on the town--and just the same old mysterious sort of thing that has
happened once before, as you remember."
"You don't mean it!"
"It's as sure as you are born! Have you missed anything yourself?"
"No. That is, I did miss a silver pencil case that Aunt Mary Pratt gave
me last birthday--"
"You'll find it stolen--that's what you'll find."
"No, I sha'n't; for when I suggested theft about the watch and got such a
rap, I went and examined my room, and the pencil case was missing, but it
was only mislaid, and I found it again."
"You are sure you missed nothing else?"
"Well, nothing of consequence. I missed a small plain gold ring worth
two or three dollars, but that will turn up. I'll look again."
"In my opinion you'll not find it. There's been a raid, I tell you. Come
_in!_"
Mr. Justice Robinson entered, followed by Buckstone and the town
constable, Jim Blake. They sat down, and after some wandering and
aimless weather-conversation Wilson said:
"By the way, We've just added another to the list of thefts, maybe two.
Judge Driscoll's old silver watch is gone, and Tom here has missed a gold
ring."
"Well, it is a bad business," said the justice, "and gets worse the
further it goes. The Hankses, the Dobsons, the Pilligrews, the Ortons,
the Grangers, the Hales, the Fullers, the Holcombs, in fact everybody
that lives around about Patsy Cooper's had been robbed of little things
like trinkets and teaspoons and suchlike small valuables that are easily
carried off. It's perfectly plain that the thief took advantage of the
reception at Patsy Cooper's when all the neighbors were in her house and
all their niggers hanging around her fence for a look at the show, to
raid the vacant houses undisturbed. Patsy is miserable about it;
miserable on account of the neighbors, and particularly miserable on
account of her foreigners, of course; so miserable on their account that
she hasn't any room to worry about her own little losses."
"It's the same old raider," said Wilson. "I suppose there isn't any
doubt about that."
"Constable Blake doesn't think so."
"No, you're wrong there," said Blake. "The other times it was a man;
there was plenty of signs of that, as we know, in the profession, thought
we never got hands on him; but this time it's a woman."
Wilson thought of the mysterious girl straight off. She was always in
his mind now. But she failed him again. Blake continued:
"She's a stoop-shouldered old woman with a covered basket on her arm, in
a black veil, dressed in mourning. I saw her going aboard the ferryboat
yesterday. Lives in Illinois, I reckon; but I don't care where she
lives, I'm going to get her--she can make herself sure of that."
"What makes you think she's the thief?"
"Well, there ain't any other, for one thing; and for another, some nigger
draymen that happened to be driving along saw her coming out of or going
into houses, and told me so--and it just happens that they was _robbed_,
every time."
It was granted that this was plenty good enough circumstantial evidence.
A pensive silence followed, which lasted some moments, then Wilson said:
"There's one good thing, anyway. She can't either pawn or sell Count
Luigi's costly Indian dagger."
"My!" said Tom. "Is _that_ gone?"
"Yes."
"Well, that was a haul! But why can't she pawn it or sell it?"
"Because when the twins went home from the Sons of Liberty meeting last
night, news of the raid was sifting in from everywhere, and Aunt Patsy
was in distress to know if they had lost anything. They found that the
dagger was gone, and they notified the police and pawnbrokers everywhere.
It was a great haul, yes, but the old woman won't get anything out of it,
because she'll get caught."
"Did they offer a reward?" asked Buckstone.
"Yes, five hundred dollars for the knife, and five hundred more for the
thief."
"What a leather-headed idea!" exclaimed the constable. "The thief das'n't
go near them, nor send anybody. Whoever goes is going to get himself
nabbed, for their ain't any pawnbroker that's going to lose the chance
to--"
If anybody had noticed Tom's face at that time, the gray-green color of
it might have provoked curiosity; but nobody did. He said to himself:
"I'm gone! I never can square up; the rest of the plunder won't pawn or
sell for half of the bill. Oh, I know it--I'm gone, I'm gone--and this
time it's for good. Oh, this is awful--I don't know what to do, nor
which way to turn!"
"Softly, softly," said Wilson to Blake. "I planned their scheme for them
at midnight last night, and it was all finished up shipshape by two this
morning. They'll get their dagger back, and then I'll explain to you how
the thing was done."
There were strong signs of a general curiosity, and Buckstone said:
"Well, you have whetted us up pretty sharp. Wilson, and I'm free to say
that if you don't mind telling us in confidence--"
"Oh, I'd as soon tell as not, Buckstone, but as long as the twins and I
agreed to say nothing about it, we must let it stand so. But you can take
my word for it, you won't be kept waiting three days. Somebody will apply
for that reward pretty promptly, and I'll show you the thief and the
dagger both very soon afterward."
The constable was disappointed, and also perplexed. He said:
"It may all be--yes, and I hope it will, but I'm blamed if I can see my
way through it. It's too many for yours truly."
The subject seemed about talked out. Nobody seemed to have anything
further to offer. After a silence the justice of the peace informed
Wilson that he and Buckstone and the constable had come as a committee,
on the part of the Democratic party, to ask him to run for mayor--for the
little town was about to become a city and the first charter election was
approaching. It was the first attention which Wilson had ever received
at the hands of any party; it was a sufficiently humble one, but it was a
recognition of his debut into the town's life and activities at last; it
was a step upward, and he was deeply gratified. He accepted, and the
committee departed, followed by young Tom.
CHAPTER 14
Roxana Insists Upon Reform
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned
with commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the
grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he
knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve
took: we know it because she repented.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
About the time that Wilson was bowing the committee out, Pembroke Howard
was entering the next house to report. He found the old judge sitting
grim and straight in his chair, waiting.
"Well, Howard--the news?"
"The best in the world."
"Accepts, does he?" and the light of battle gleamed joyously in the
Judge's eye.
"Accepts? Why he jumped at it."
"Did, did he? Now that's fine--that's very fine. I like that. When is
it to be?"
"Now! Straight off! Tonight! An admirable fellow--admirable!"
"Admirable? He's a darling! Why, it's an honor as well as a pleasure to
stand up before such a man. Come--off with you! Go and arrange
everything--and give him my heartiest compliments. A rare fellow, indeed;
an admirable fellow, as you have said!"
"I'll have him in the vacant stretch between Wilson's and the haunted
house within the hour, and I'll bring my own pistols."
Judge Driscoll began to walk the floor in a state of pleased excitement;
but presently he stopped, and began to think--began to think of Tom.
Twice he moved toward the secretary, and twice he turned away again; but
finally he said:
"This may be my last night in the world--I must not take the chance. He
is worthless and unworthy, but it is largely my fault. He was entrusted
to me by my brother on his dying bed, and I have indulged him to his
hurt, instead of training him up severely, and making a man of him, I
have violated my trust, and I must not add the sin of desertion to that.
I have forgiven him once already, and would subject him to a long and
hard trial before forgiving him again, if I could live; but I must not
run that risk. No, I must restore the will. But if I survive the duel, I
will hide it away, and he will not know, and I will not tell him until he
reforms, and I see that his reformation is going to be permanent."
He redrew the will, and his ostensible nephew was heir to a fortune
again. As he was finishing his task, Tom, wearied with another brooding
tramp, entered the house and went tiptoeing past the sitting room door.
He glanced in, and hurried on, for the sight of his uncle was nothing but
terrors for him tonight. But his uncle was writing! That was unusual at
this late hour. What could he be writing? A chill of anxiety settled
down upon Tom's heart. Did that writing concern him? He was afraid so.
He reflected that when ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles,
but in showers. He said he would get a glimpse of that document or know
the reason why. He heard someone coming, and stepped out of sight and
hearing. It was Pembroke Howard. What could be hatching?
Howard said, with great satisfaction:
"Everything's right and ready. He's gone to the battleground with his
second and the surgeon--also with his brother. I've arranged it all with
Wilson--Wilson's his second. We are to have three shots apiece."
"Good! How is the moon?"
"Bright as day, nearly. Perfect, for the distance--fifteen yards. No
wind--not a breath; hot and still."
"All good; all first-rate. Here, Pembroke, read this, and witness it."
Pembroke read and witnessed the will, then gave the old man's hand a
hearty shake and said:
"Now that's right, York--but I knew you would do it. You couldn't leave
that poor chap to fight along without means or profession, with certain
defeat before him, and I knew you wouldn't, for his father's sake if not
for his own."
"For his dead father's sake, I couldn't, I know; for poor Percy--but you
know what Percy was to me. But mind--Tom is not to know of this unless I
fall tonight."
"I understand. I'll keep the secret."
The judge put the will away, and the two started for the battleground. In
another minute the will was in Tom's hands. His misery vanished, his
feelings underwent a tremendous revulsion. He put the will carefully back
in its place, and spread his mouth and swung his hat once, twice, three
times around his head, in imitation of three rousing huzzahs, no sound
issuing from his lips. He fell to communing with himself excitedly and
joyously, but every now and then he let off another volley of dumb
hurrahs.
He said to himself: "I've got the fortune again, but I'll not let on
that I know about it. And this time I'm gong to hang on to it. I take no
more risks. I'll gamble no more, I'll drink no more, because--well,
because I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on,
again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way; I might have thought of
that sooner--well, yes, if I had wanted to. But now--dear me, I've had a
scare this time, and I'll take no more chances. Not a single chance
more. Land! I persuaded myself this evening that I could fetch him
around without any great amount of effort, but I've been getting more and
more heavyhearted and doubtful straight along, ever since. If he tells
me about this thing, all right; but if he doesn't, I sha'n't let on.
I--well, I'd like to tell Pudd'nhead Wilson, but--no, I'll think about
that; perhaps I won't." He whirled off another dead huzzah, and said,
"I'm reformed, and this time I'll stay so, sure!"
He was about to close with a final grand silent demonstration, when he
suddenly recollected that Wilson had put it out of his power to pawn or
sell the Indian knife, and that he was once more in awful peril of
exposure by his creditors for that reason. His joy collapsed utterly, and
he turned away and moped toward the door moaning and lamenting over the
bitterness of his luck. He dragged himself upstairs, and brooded in his
room a long time, disconsolate and forlorn, with Luigi's Indian knife for
a text. At last he sighed and said:
"When I supposed these stones were glass and this ivory bone, the thing
hadn't any interest for me because it hadn't any value, and couldn't help
me out of my trouble. But now--why, now it is full of interest; yes, and
of a sort to break a body's heart. It's a bag of gold that has turned to
dirt and ashes in my hands. It could save me, and save me so easily, and
yet I've got to go to ruin. It's like drowning with a life preserver in
my reach. All the hard luck comes to me, and all the good luck goes to
other people--Pudd'nhead Wilson, for instance; even his career has got a
sort of a little start at last, and what has he done to deserve it, I
should like to know? Yes, he has opened his own road, but he isn't
content with that, but must block mine. It's a sordid, selfish world, and
I wish I was out of it." He allowed the light of the candle to play upon
the jewels of the sheath, but the flashings and sparklings had no charm
for his eye; they were only just so many pangs to his heart. "I must not
say anything to Roxy about this thing," he said. "She is too daring. She
would be for digging these stones out and selling them, and then--why,
she would be arrested and the stones traced, and then--" The thought made
him quake, and he hid the knife away, trembling all over and glancing
furtively about, like a criminal who fancies that the accuser is already
at hand.
Should he try to sleep? Oh, no, sleep was not for him; his trouble was
too haunting, too afflicting for that. He must have somebody to mourn
with. He would carry his despair to Roxy.
He had heard several distant gunshots, but that sort of thing was not
uncommon, and they had made no impression upon him. He went out at the
back door, and turned westward. He passed Wilson's house and proceeded
along the lane, and presently saw several figures approaching Wilson's
place through the vacant lots. These were the duelists returning from the
fight; he thought he recognized them, but as he had no desire for white
people's company, he stooped down behind the fence until they were out of
his way.
Roxy was feeling fine. She said:
"Whah was you, child? Warn't you in it?"
"In what?"
"In de duel."
"Duel? Has there been a duel?"
"Co'se dey has. De ole Jedge has be'n havin' a duel wid one o' dem
twins."
"Great Scott!" Then he added to himself: "That's what made him remake
the will; he thought he might get killed, and it softened him toward me.
And that's what he and Howard were so busy about. . . . Oh dear, if the
twin had only killed him, I should be out of my--"
"What is you mumblin' 'bout, Chambers? Whah was you? Didn't you know dey
was gwine to be a duel?"
"No, I didn't. The old man tried to get me to fight one with Count
Luigi, but he didn't succeed, so I reckon he concluded to patch up the
family honor himself."
He laughed at the idea, and went rambling on with a detailed account of
his talk with the judge, and how shocked and ashamed the judge was to
find that he had a coward in his family. He glanced up at last, and got
a shock himself. Roxana's bosom was heaving with suppressed passion, and
she was glowering down upon him with measureless contempt written in her
face.
"En you refuse' to fight a man dat kicked you, 'stid o' jumpin' at de
chance! En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat
fetched sich a po' lowdown ornery rabbit into de worl'! Pah! it make me
sick! It's de nigger in you, dat's what it is. Thirty-one parts o' you
is white, en on'y one part nigger, en dat po' little one part is yo'
_soul_. 'Tain't wuth savin'; 'tain't wuth totin' out on a shovel en
throwin' en de gutter. You has disgraced yo' birth. What would yo' pa
think o' you? It's enough to make him turn in his grave."
The last three sentences stung Tom into a fury, and he said to himself
that if his father were only alive and in reach of assassination his
mother would soon find that he had a very clear notion of the size of his
indebtedness to that man, and was willing to pay it up in full, and would
do it too, even at risk of his life; but he kept this thought to himself;
that was safest in his mother's present state.
"Whatever has come o' yo' Essex blood? Dat's what I can't understan'.
En it ain't on'y jist Essex blood dat's in you, not by a long
sight--'deed it ain't! My great-great-great-gran'father en yo'
great-great-great-great-gran'father was Ole Cap'n John Smith, de highest
blood dat Ole Virginny ever turned out, en _his_ great-great-gran'mother,
or somers along back dah, was Pocahontas de Injun queen, en her husbun'
was a nigger king outen Africa--en yit here you is, a slinkin' outen a
duel en disgracin' our whole line like a ornery lowdown hound! Yes, it's
de nigger in you!"
She sat down on her candle box and fell into a reverie. Tom did not
disturb her; he sometimes lacked prudence, but it was not in
circumstances of this kind, Roxana's storm went gradually down, but it
died hard, and even when it seemed to be quite gone, it would now and
then break out in a distant rumble, so to speak, in the form of muttered
ejaculations. One of these was, "Ain't nigger enough in him to show in
his fingernails, en dat takes mighty little--yit dey's enough to pain
his soul."
Presently she muttered. "Yassir, enough to paint a whole thimbleful of
'em." At last her ramblings ceased altogether, and her countenance began
to clear--a welcome sight to Tom, who had learned her moods, and knew she
was on the threshold of good humor now. He noticed that from time to time
she unconsciously carried her finger to the end of her nose. He looked
closer and said:
"Why, Mammy, the end of your nose is skinned. How did that come?"
She sent out the sort of wholehearted peal of laughter which God had
vouchsafed in its perfection to none but the happy angels in heaven and
the bruised and broken black slave on the earth, and said:
"Dad fetch dat duel, I be'n in it myself."
"Gracious! did a bullet to that?"
"Yassir, you bet it did!"
"Well, I declare! Why, how did that happen?"
"Happened dis-away. I 'uz a-sett'n' here kinder dozin' in de dark, en
_che-bang!_ goes a gun, right out dah. I skips along out towards t'other
end o' de house to see what's gwine on, en stops by de ole winder on de
side towards Pudd'nhead Wilson's house dat ain't got no sash in it--but
dey ain't none of 'em got any sashes, for as dat's concerned--en I stood
dah in de dark en look out, en dar in the moonlight, right down under me
'uz one o' de twins a-cussin'--not much, but jist a-cussin' soft--it 'uz
de brown one dat 'uz cussin,' 'ca'se he 'uz hit in de shoulder. En
Doctor Claypool he 'uz a-workin' at him, en Pudd'nhead Wilson he 'uz
a-he'pin', en ole Jedge Driscoll en Pem Howard 'uz a-standin' out yonder
a little piece waitin' for 'em to get ready agin. En treckly dey squared
off en give de word, en _bang-bang_ went de pistols, en de twin he say,
'Ouch!'--hit him on de han' dis time--en I hear dat same bullet go
_spat!_ ag'in de logs under de winder; en de nex' time dey shoot, de twin
say, 'Ouch!' ag'in, en I done it too, 'ca'se de bullet glance' on his
cheekbone en skip up here en glance' on de side o' de winder en whiz
right acrost my face en tuck de hide off'n my nose--why, if I'd 'a'
be'n jist a inch or a inch en a half furder 't would 'a' tuck de whole
nose en disfiggered me. Here's de bullet; I hunted her up."
"Did you stand there all the time?"
"Dat's a question to ask, ain't it! What else would I do? Does I git a
chance to see a duel every day?"
"Why, you were right in range! Weren't you afraid?"
The woman gave a sniff of scorn.
"'Fraid! De Smith-Pocahontases ain't 'fraid o' nothin', let alone
bullets."
"They've got pluck enough, I suppose; what they lack is judgment. _I_
wouldn't have stood there."
"Nobody's accusin' you!"
"Did anybody else get hurt?"
"Yes, we all got hit 'cep' de blon' twin en de doctor en de seconds. De
Jedge didn't git hurt, but I hear Pudd'nhead say de bullet snip some o'
his ha'r off."
"'George!" said Tom to himself, "to come so near being out of my trouble,
and miss it by an inch. Oh dear, dear, he will live to find me out and
sell me to some nigger trader yet--yes, and he would do it in a minute."
Then he said aloud, in a grave tone:
"Mother, we are in an awful fix."
Roxana caught her breath with a spasm, and said:
"Chile! What you hit a body so sudden for, like dat? What's be'n en gone
en happen'?"
"Well, there's one thing I didn't tell you. When I wouldn't fight, he
tore up the will again, and--"
Roxana's face turned a dead white, and she said:
"Now you's _done!_--done forever! Dat's de end. Bofe un us is gwine to
starve to--"
"Wait and hear me through, can't you! I reckon that when he resolved to
fight, himself, he thought he might get killed and not have a chance to
forgive me any more in this life, so he made the will again, and I've
seen it, and it's all right. But--"
"Oh, thank goodness, den we's safe ag'in!--safe! en so what did you want
to come here en talk sich dreadful--"
"Hold ON, I tell you, and let me finish. The swag I gathered won't half
square me up, and the first thing we know, my creditors--well, you know
what'll happen."
Roxana dropped her chin, and told her son to leave her alone--she must
think this matter out. Presently she said impressively:
"You got to go mighty keerful now, I tell you! En here's what you got to
do. He didn't git killed, en if you gives him de least reason, he'll
bust de will ag'in, en dat's de _las'_ time, now you hear me! So--you's
got to show him what you kin do in de nex' few days. You got to be pison
good, en let him see it; you got to do everything dat'll make him b'lieve
in you, en you got to sweeten aroun' ole Aunt Pratt, too--she's pow'ful
strong with de Jedge, en de bes' frien' you got. Nex', you'll go 'long
away to Sent Louis, en dat'll _keep_ him in yo' favor. Den you go en make
a bargain wid dem people. You tell 'em he ain't gwine to live long--en
dat's de fac', too--en tell 'em you'll pay 'em intrust, en big intrust,
too--ten per--what you call it?"
"Ten percent a month?"
"Dat's it. Den you take and sell yo' truck aroun', a little at a time,
en pay de intrust. How long will it las'?"
"I think there's enough to pay the interest five or six months." "Den
you's all right. If he don't die in six months, dat don't make no
diff'rence--Providence'll provide. You's gwine to be safe--if you
behaves." She bent an austere eye on him and added, "En you IS gwine to
behave--does you know dat?"
He laughed and said he was going to try, anyway. She did not unbend. She
said gravely:
"Tryin' ain't de thing. You's gwine to _do_ it. You ain't gwine to
steal a pin--'ca'se it ain't safe no mo'; en you ain't gwine into no bad
comp'ny--not even once, you understand; en you ain't gwine to drink a
drop--nary a single drop; en you ain't gwine to gamble one single
gamble--not one! Dis ain't what you's gwine to try to do, it's what
you's gwine to DO. En I'll tell you how I knows it. Dis is how. I's
gwine to foller along to Sent Louis my own self; en you's gwine to come
to me every day o' your life, en I'll look you over; en if you fails in
one single one o' dem things--jist _one_--I take my oath I'll come
straight down to dis town en tell de Jedge you's a nigger en a slave--en
_prove_ it!" She paused to let her words sink home. Then she added,
"Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"
Tom was sober enough now. There was no levity in his voice when he
answered:
"Yes, Mother, I know, now, that I am reformed--and permanently.
Permanently--and beyond the reach of any human temptation."
"Den g'long home en begin!"
CHAPTER 15
The Robber Robbed
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"
--which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your
attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket
and--_watch that basket!_"
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
What a time of it Dawson's Landing was having! All its life it had been
asleep, but now it hardly got a chance for a nod, so swiftly did big
events and crashing surprises come along in one another's wake: Friday
morning, first glimpse of Real Nobility, also grand reception at Aunt
Patsy Cooper's, also great robber raid; Friday evening, dramatic kicking
of the heir of the chief citizen in presence of four hundred people;
Saturday morning, emergence as practicing lawyer of the long-submerged
Pudd'nhead Wilson; Saturday night, duel between chief citizen and titled
stranger.
The people took more pride in the duel than in all the other events put
together, perhaps. It was a glory to their town to have such a thing
happen there. In their eyes the principals had reached the summit of
human honor. Everybody paid homage to their names; their praises were in
all mouths. Even the duelists' subordinates came in for a handsome share
of the public approbation: wherefore Pudd'nhead Wilson was suddenly
become a man of consequence. When asked to run for the mayoralty Saturday
night, he was risking defeat, but Sunday morning found him a made man and
his success assured.
The twins were prodigiously great now; the town took them to its bosom
with enthusiasm. Day after day, and night after night, they went dining
and visiting from house to house, making friends, enlarging and
solidifying their popularity, and charming and surprising all with their
musical prodigies, and now and then heightening the effects with samples
of what they could do in other directions, out of their stock of rare and
curious accomplishments. They were so pleased that they gave the
regulation thirty days' notice, the required preparation for citizenship,
and resolved to finish their days in this pleasant place. That was the
climax. The delighted community rose as one man and applauded; and when
the twins were asked to stand for seats in the forthcoming aldermanic
board, and consented, the public contentment was rounded and complete.
Tom Driscoll was not happy over these things; they sunk deep, and hurt
all the way down. He hated the one twin for kicking him, and the other
one for being the kicker's brother.
Now and then the people wondered why nothing was heard of the raider, or
of the stolen knife or the other plunder, but nobody was able to throw
any light on that matter. Nearly a week had drifted by, and still the
thing remained a vexed mystery.
On Sunday Constable Blake and Pudd'nhead Wilson met on the street, and
Tom Driscoll joined them in time to open their conversation for them. He
said to Blake: "You are not looking well, Blake; you seem to be annoyed
about something. Has anything gone wrong in the detective business? I
believe you fairly and justifiably claim to have a pretty good reputation
in that line, isn't it so?"--which made Blake feel good, and look it;
but Tom added, "for a country detective"--which made Blake feel the other
way, and not only look it, but betray it in his voice.
"Yes, sir, I _have_ got a reputation; and it's as good as anybody's in
the profession, too, country or no country."
"Oh, I beg pardon; I didn't mean any offense. What I started out to ask
was only about the old woman that raided the town--the stoop-shouldered
old woman, you know, that you said you were going to catch; and I knew
you would, too, because you have the reputation of never boasting,
and--well, you--you've caught the old woman?"
"Damn the old woman!"
"Why, sho! you don't mean to say you haven't caught her?"
"No, I haven't caught her. If anybody could have caught her, I could;
but nobody couldn't, I don't care who he is."
I am sorry, real sorry--for your sake; because, when it gets around that
a detective has expressed himself confidently, and then--"
"Don't you worry, that's all--don't you worry; and as for the town, the
town needn't worry either. She's my meat--make yourself easy about that.
I'm on her track; I've got clues that--"
"That's good! Now if you could get an old veteran detective down from
St. Louis to help you find out what the clues mean, and where they lead
to, and then--"
"I'm plenty veteran enough myself, and I don't need anybody's help. I'll
have her inside of a we--inside of a month. That I'll swear to!"
Tom said carelessly:
"I suppose that will answer--yes, that will answer. But I reckon she is
pretty old, and old people don't often outlive the cautious pace of the
professional detective when he has got his clues together and is out on
his still-hunt."
Blake's dull face flushed under this gibe, but before he could set his
retort in order Tom had turned to Wilson, and was saying, with placid
indifference of manner and voice:
"Who got the reward, Pudd'nhead?"
Wilson winced slightly, and saw that his own turn was come.
"What reward?"
"Why, the reward for the thief, and the other one for the knife."
Wilson answered--and rather uncomfortably, to judge by his hesitating
fashion of delivering himself:
"Well, the--well, in face, nobody has claimed it yet."
Tom seemed surprised.
"Why, is that so?"
Wilson showed a trifle of irritation when he replied:
"Yes, it's so. And what of it?"
"Oh, nothing. Only I thought you had struck out a new idea, and invented
a scheme that was going to revolutionize the timeworn and ineffectual
methods of the--" He stopped, and turned to Blake, who was happy now
that another had taken his place on the gridiron. "Blake, didn't you
understand him to intimate that it wouldn't be necessary for you to hunt
the old woman down?"
"'B'George, he said he'd have thief and swag both inside of three days
--he did, by hokey! and that's just about a week ago. Why, I said at the
time that no thief and no thief's pal was going to try to pawn or sell a
thing where he knowed the pawnbroker could get both rewards by taking HIM
into camp _with_ the swag. It was the blessedest idea that ever I
struck!"
"You'd change your mind," said Wilson, with irritated bluntness, "if you
knew the entire scheme instead of only part of it."
"Well," said the constable, pensively, "I had the idea that it wouldn't
work, and up to now I'm right anyway."
"Very well, then, let it stand at that, and give it a further show. It
has worked at least as well as your own methods, you perceive."
The constable hadn't anything handy to hit back with, so he discharged a
discontented sniff, and said nothing.
After the night that Wilson had partly revealed his scheme at his house,
Tom had tried for several days to guess out the secret of the rest of it,
but had failed. Then it occurred to him to give Roxana's smarter head a
chance at it. He made up a supposititious case, and laid it before
her. She thought it over, and delivered her verdict upon it. Tom said
to himself, "She's hit it, sure!" He thought he would test that verdict
now, and watch Wilson's face; so he said reflectively:
"Wilson, you're not a fool--a fact of recent discovery. Whatever your
scheme was, it had sense in it, Blake's opinion to the contrary
notwithstanding. I don't ask you to reveal it, but I will suppose a
case--a case which you will answer as a starting point for the real thing
I am going to come at, and that's all I want. You offered five hundred
dollars for the knife, and five hundred for the thief. We will suppose,
for argument's sake, that the first reward is _advertised_ and the second
offered by _private letter_ to pawnbrokers and--"
Blake slapped his thigh, and cried out:
"By Jackson, he's got you, Pudd'nhead! Now why couldn't I or _any_ fool
have thought of that?"
Wilson said to himself, "Anybody with a reasonably good head would have
thought of it. I am not surprised that Blake didn't detect it; I am only
surprised that Tom did. There is more to him than I supposed." He said
nothing aloud, and Tom went on:
"Very well. The thief would not suspect that there was a trap, and he
would bring or send the knife, and say he bought it for a song, or found
it in the road, or something like that, and try to collect the reward,
and be arrested--wouldn't he?"
"Yes," said Wilson.
"I think so," said Tom. "There can't be any doubt of it. Have you ever
seen that knife?"
"No."
"Has any friend of yours?"
"Not that I know of."
"Well, I begin to think I understand why your scheme failed."
"What do you mean, Tom? What are you driving at?" asked Wilson, with a
dawning sense of discomfort.
"Why, that there _isn't_ any such knife."
"Look here, Wilson," said Blake, "Tom Driscoll's right, for a thousand
dollars--if I had it."
Wilson's blood warmed a little, and he wondered if he had been played
upon by those strangers; it certainly had something of that look. But
what could they gain by it? He threw out that suggestion. Tom replied:
"Gain? Oh, nothing that you would value, maybe. But they are strangers
making their way in a new community. Is it nothing to them to appear as
pets of an Oriental prince--at no expense? Is it nothing to them to be
able to dazzle this poor town with thousand-dollar rewards--at no
expense? Wilson, there isn't any such knife, or your scheme would have
fetched it to light. Or if there is any such knife, they've got it yet.
I believe, myself, that they've seen such a knife, for Angelo pictured it
out with his pencil too swiftly and handily for him to have been
inventing it, and of course I can't swear that they've never had it; but
this I'll go bail for--if they had it when they came to this town,
they've got it yet."
Blake said:
"It looks mighty reasonable, the way Tom puts it; it most certainly
does."
Tom responded, turning to leave:
"You find the old woman, Blake, and if she can't furnish the knife, go
and search the twins!"
Tom sauntered away. Wilson felt a good deal depressed. He hardly knew
what to think. He was loath to withdraw his faith from the twins, and
was resolved not to do it on the present indecisive evidence; but--well,
he would think, and then decide how to act.
"Blake, what do you think of this matter?"
"Well, Pudd'nhead, I'm bound to say I put it up the way Tom does. They
hadn't the knife; or if they had it, they've got it yet."
The men parted. Wilson said to himself:
"I believe they had it; if it had been stolen, the scheme would have
restored it, that is certain. And so I believe they've got it."
Tom had no purpose in his mind when he encountered those two men. When he
began his talk he hoped to be able to gall them a little and get a trifle
of malicious entertainment out of it. But when he left, he left in great
spirits, for he perceived that just by pure luck and no troublesome labor
he had accomplished several delightful things: he had touched both men
on a raw spot and seen them squirm; he had modified Wilson's sweetness
for the twins with one small bitter taste that he wouldn't be able to get
out of his mouth right away; and, best of all, he had taken the hated
twins down a peg with the community; for Blake would gossip around
freely, after the manner of detectives, and within a week the town would
be laughing at them in its sleeve for offering a gaudy reward for a
bauble which they either never possessed or hadn't lost. Tom was very
well satisfied with himself.
Tom's behavior at home had been perfect during the entire week. His uncle
and aunt had seen nothing like it before. They could find no fault with
him anywhere.
Saturday evening he said to the Judge:
"I've had something preying on my mind, uncle, and as I am going away,
and might never see you again, I can't bear it any longer. I made you
believe I was afraid to fight that Italian adventurer. I had to get out
of it on some pretext or other, and maybe I chose badly, being taken
unawares, but no honorable person could consent to meet him in the field,
knowing what I knew about him."
"Indeed? What was that?"
"Count Luigi is a confessed assassin."
"Incredible."
"It's perfectly true. Wilson detected it in his hand, by palmistry, and
charged him with it, and cornered him up so close that he had to confess;
but both twins begged us on their knees to keep the secret, and swore
they would lead straight lives here; and it was all so pitiful that we
gave our word of honor never to expose them while they kept the promise.
You would have done it yourself, uncle."
"You are right, my boy; I would. A man's secret is still his own
property, and sacred, when it has been surprised out of him like that.
You did well, and I am proud of you." Then he added mournfully, "But I
wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the
field on honor."
"It couldn't be helped, uncle. If I had known you were going to
challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in
order to stop it, but Wilson couldn't be expected to do otherwise than
keep silent."
"Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. Tom, Tom, you have
lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very soul when I
seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family."
"You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle."
"Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it. And I can understand how much it
has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. But it is
all right now, and no harm is done. You have restored my comfort of
mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough."
The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a
satisfied light in his eye, and said: "That this assassin should have
put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as
if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle--but not
now. I will not shoot him until after election. I see a way to ruin them
both before; I will attend to that first. Neither of them shall be
elected, that I promise. You are sure that the fact that he is an
assassin has not got abroad?"
"Perfectly certain of it, sir."
"It will be a good card. I will fling a hint at it from the stump on the
polling day. It will sweep the ground from under both of them."
"There's not a doubt of it. It will finish them."
"That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. I want you
to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and
bobtail. You shall spend money among them; I will furnish it."
Another point scored against the detested twins! Really it was a great
day for Tom. He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the
same target, and did it.
"You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making
such a to-do about? Well, there's no track or trace of it yet; so the
town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. Half the people believe
they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and
have got it still. I've heard twenty people talking like that today."
Yes, Tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and
uncle.
His mother was satisfied with him, too. Privately, she believed she was
coming to love him, but she did not say so. She told him to go along to
St. Louis now, and she would get ready and follow. Then she smashed her
whisky bottle and said:
"Dah now! I's a-gwine to make you walk as straight as a string,
Chambers, en so I's bown, you ain't gwine to git no bad example out o'
yo' mammy. I tole you you couldn't go into no bad comp'ny. Well, you's
gwine into my comp'ny, en I's gwine to fill de bill. Now, den, trot
along, trot along!"
Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that night with his heavy
satchel of miscellaneous plunder, and slept the sleep of the unjust,
which is serener and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the
hanging-eve history of a million rascals. But when he got up in the
morning, luck was against him again: a brother thief had robbed him while
he slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.
CHAPTER 16
Sold Down the River
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair and misery that
her heart was touched and her motherhood rose up strong in her. He was
ruined past hope now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and he
would be an outcast and friendless. That was reason enough for a mother
to love a child; so she loved him, and told him so. It made him wince,
secretly--for she was a "nigger." That he was one himself was far from
reconciling him to that despised race.
Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he responded
uncomfortably, but as well as he could. And she tried to comfort him, but
that was not possible. These intimacies quickly became horrible to him,
and within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough to tell her
so, and require that they be discontinued or very considerably modified.
But he was afraid of her; and besides, there came a lull now, for she had
begun to think. She was trying to invent a saving plan. Finally she
started up, and said she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated
by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said:
"Here is de plan, en she'll win, sure. I's a nigger, en nobody ain't
gwine to doubt it dat hears me talk. I's wuth six hund'd dollahs. Take
en sell me, en pay off dese gamblers."
Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright. He was dumb for a
moment; then he said:
"Do you mean that you would be sold into slavery to save me?"
"Ain't you my chile? En does you know anything dat a mother won't do for
her chile? Day ain't nothin' a white mother won't do for her chile. Who
made 'em so? De Lord done it. En who made de niggers? De Lord made 'em.
In de inside, mothers is all de same. De good lord he made 'em so. I's
gwine to be sole into slavery, en in a year you's gwine to buy yo' ole
mammy free ag'in. I'll show you how. Dat's de plan."
Tom's hopes began to rise, and his spirits along with them. He said:
"It's lovely of you, Mammy--it's just--"
"Say it ag'in! En keep on sayin' it! It's all de pay a body kin want in
dis worl', en it's mo' den enough. Laws bless you, honey, when I's slav'
aroun', en dey 'buses me, if I knows you's a-sayin' dat, 'way off yonder
somers, it'll heal up all de sore places, en I kin stan' 'em."
"I DO say it again, Mammy, and I'll keep on saying it, too. But how am I
going to sell you? You're free, you know."
"Much diff'rence dat make! White folks ain't partic'lar. De law kin sell
me now if dey tell me to leave de state in six months en I don't go. You
draw up a paper--bill o' sale--en put it 'way off yonder, down in de
middle o' Kaintuck somers, en sign some names to it, en say you'll sell
me cheap 'ca'se you's hard up; you'll find you ain't gwine to have no
trouble. You take me up de country a piece, en sell me on a farm; dem
people ain't gwine to ask no questions if I's a bargain."
Tom forged a bill of sale and sold his mother to an Arkansas cotton
planter for a trifle over six hundred dollars. He did not want to commit
this treachery, but luck threw the man in his way, and this saved him the
necessity of going up-country to hunt up a purchaser, with the added risk
of having to answer a lot of questions, whereas this planter was so
pleased with Roxy that he asked next to none at all. Besides, the
planter insisted that Roxy wouldn't know where she was, at first, and
that by the time she found out she would already have been contented.
So Tom argued with himself that it was an immense advantaged for Roxy to
have a master who was pleased with her, as this planter manifestly was.
In almost no time his flowing reasonings carried him to the point of even
half believing he was doing Roxy a splendid surreptitious service in
selling her "down the river." And then he kept diligently saying to
himself all the time: "It's for only a year. In a year I buy her free
again; she'll keep that in mind, and it'll reconcile her." Yes; the
little deception could do no harm, and everything would come out right
and pleasant in the end, anyway. By agreement, the conversation in
Roxy's presence was all about the man's "up-country" farm, and how
pleasant a place it was, and how happy the slaves were there; so poor
Roxy was entirely deceived; and easily, for she was not dreaming that her
own son could be guilty of treason to a mother who, in voluntarily going
into slavery--slavery of any kind, mild or severe, or of any duration,
brief or long--was making a sacrifice for him compared with which death
would have been a poor and commonplace one. She lavished tears and
loving caresses upon him privately, and then went away with her owner
--went away brokenhearted, and yet proud to do it.
Tom scored his accounts, and resolved to keep to the very letter of his
reform, and never to put that will in jeopardy again. He had three
hundred dollars left. According to his mother's plan, he was to put that
safely away, and add her half of his pension to it monthly. In one year
this fund would buy her free again.
For a whole week he was not able to sleep well, so much the villainy
which he had played upon his trusting mother preyed upon his rag of
conscience; but after that he began to get comfortable again, and was
presently able to sleep like any other miscreant.
The boat bore Roxy away from St. Louis at four in the afternoon, and she
stood on the lower guard abaft the paddle box and watched Tom through a
blur of tears until he melted into the throng of people and disappeared;
then she looked no more, but sat there on a coil of cable crying till far
into the night. When she went to her foul steerage bunk at last, between
the clashing engines, it was not to sleep, but only to wait for the
morning, and, waiting, grieve.
It had been imagined that she "would not know," and would think she was
traveling upstream. She! Why, she had been steamboating for years. At
dawn she got up and went listlessly and sat down on the cable coil again.
She passed many a snag whose "break" could have told her a thing to break
her heart, for it showed a current moving in the same direction that the
boat was going; but her thoughts were elsewhere, and she did not notice.
But at last the roar of a bigger and nearer break than usual brought her
out of her torpor, and she looked up, and her practiced eye fell upon
that telltale rush of water. For one moment her petrified gaze fixed
itself there. Then her head dropped upon her breast, and she said:
"Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po' sinful me--I'S SOLE DOWN DE
RIVER!"
CHAPTER 17
The Judge Utters Dire Prophesy
Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full
of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by, you only regret that
you didn't see him do it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
JULY 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all
the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left
in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country
has grown so.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The summer weeks dragged by, and then the political campaign opened
--opened in pretty warm fashion, and waxed hotter and hotter daily. The
twins threw themselves into it with their whole heart, for their
self-love was engaged. Their popularity, so general at first, had
suffered afterward; mainly because they had been TOO popular, and so a
natural reaction had followed. Besides, it had been diligently whispered
around that it was curious--indeed, VERY curious--that that wonderful
knife of theirs did not turn up--IF it was so valuable, or IF it had ever
existed. And with the whisperings went chucklings and nudgings and winks,
and such things have an effect. The twins considered that success in the
election would reinstate them, and that defeat would work them
irreparable damage. Therefore they worked hard, but not harder than
Judge Driscoll and Tom worked against them in the closing days of the
canvass. Tom's conduct had remained so letter-perfect during two whole
months now, that his uncle not only trusted him with money with which to
persuade voters, but trusted him to go and get it himself out of the safe
in the private sitting room.
The closing speech of the campaign was made by Judge Driscoll, and he
made it against both of the foreigners. It was disastrously effective.
He poured out rivers of ridicule upon them, and forced the big mass
meeting to laugh and applaud. He scoffed at them as adventures,
mountebanks, sideshow riffraff, dime museum freaks; he assailed their
showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley
barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as
gentlemen, organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey. At last he
stopped and stood still. He waited until the place had become absolutely
silent and expectant, then he delivered his deadliest shot; delivered it
with ice-cold seriousness and deliberation, with a significant emphasis
upon the closing words: he said he believed that the reward offered for
the lost knife was humbug and bunkum, and that its owner would know where
to find it whenever he should have occasion TO ASSASSINATE SOMEBODY.
Then he stepped from the stand, leaving a startled and impressive hush
behind him instead of the customary explosion of cheers and party cries.
The strange remark flew far and wide over the town and made an
extraordinary sensation. Everybody was asking, "What could he mean by
that?" And everybody went on asking that question, but in vain; for the
judge only said he knew what he was talking about, and stopped there; Tom
said he hadn't any idea what his uncle meant, and Wilson, whenever he was
asked what he thought it meant, parried the question by asking the
questioner what HE thought it meant.
Wilson was elected, the twins were defeated--crushed, in fact, and left
forlorn and substantially friendless. Tom went back to St. Louis happy.
Dawson's Landing had a week of repose now, and it needed it. But it was
in an expectant state, for the air was full of rumors of a new duel.
Judge Driscoll's election labors had prostrated him, but it was said that
as soon as he was well enough to entertain a challenge he would get one
from Count Luigi.
The brothers withdrew entirely from society, and nursed their humiliation
in privacy. They avoided the people, and went out for exercise only late
at night, when the streets were deserted.
CHAPTER 18
Roxana Commands
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same
procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the
band and the gaudy officials have gone by.--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
THANKSGIVING DAY. Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks
now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys;
they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The Friday after the election was a rainy one in St. Louis. It rained
all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that
soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding. Toward midnight
Tom Driscoll arrived at his lodgings from the theater in the heavy
downpour, and closed his umbrella and let himself in; but when he would
have shut the door, he found that there was another person
entering--doubtless another lodger; this person closed the door and
tramped upstairs behind Tom. Tom found his door in the dark, and entered
it, and turned up the gas. When he faced about, lightly whistling, he
saw the back of a man. The man was closing and locking his door from
him. His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. The man turned around, a
wreck of shabby old clothes, sodden with rain and all a-drip, and showed
a black face under an old slouch hat. Tom was frightened. He tried to
order the man out, but the words refused to come, and the other man got
the start. He said, in a low voice:
"Keep still--I's yo' mother!"
Tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out:
"It was mean of me, and base--I know it; but I meant it for the best, I
did indeed--I can swear it."
Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he writhed in shame
and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations mixed with pitiful
attempts at explanation and palliation of his crime; then she seated
herself and took off her hat, and her unkept masses of long brown hair
tumbled down about her shoulders.
"It warn't no fault o' yo'n dat dat ain't gray," she said sadly, noticing
the hair.
"I know it, I know it! I'm a scoundrel. But I swear I meant it for the
best. It was a mistake, of course, but I thought it was for the best, I
truly did."
Roxana began to cry softly, and presently words began to find their way
out between her sobs. They were uttered lamentingly, rather than
angrily.
"Sell a pusson down de river--DOWN DE RIVER!--for de bes'! I wouldn't
treat a dog so! I is all broke down en wore out now, en so I reckon
it ain't in me to storm aroun' no mo', like I used to when I 'uz trompled
on en 'bused. I don't know--but maybe it's so. Leastways, I's suffered
so much dat mournin' seem to come mo' handy to me now den stormin'."
These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did, that
effect was obliterated by a stronger one--one which removed the heavy
weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his crushed spirit a most
grateful rebound, and filled all his small soul with a deep sense of
relief. But he kept prudently still, and ventured no comment. There was
a voiceless interval of some duration now, in which no sounds were heard
but the beating of the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining
of the winds, and now and then a muffled sob from Roxana. The sobs became
more and more infrequent, and at last ceased. Then the refugee began to
talk again.
"Shet down dat light a little. More. More yit. A pusson dat is hunted
don't like de light. Dah--dat'll do. I kin see whah you is, en dat's
enough. I's gwine to tell you de tale, en cut it jes as short as I kin,
en den I'll tell you what you's got to do. Dat man dat bought me ain't a
bad man; he's good enough, as planters goes; en if he could 'a' had his
way I'd 'a' be'n a house servant in his fambly en be'n comfortable: but
his wife she was a Yank, en not right down good lookin', en she riz up
agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter 'mongst de
common fiel' han's. Dat woman warn't satisfied even wid dat, but she
worked up de overseer ag'in' me, she 'uz dat jealous en hateful; so de
overseer he had me out befo' day in de mawnin's en worked me de whole
long day as long as dey'uz any light to see by; en many's de lashin's I
got 'ca'se I couldn't come up to de work o' de stronges'. Dat overseer
wuz a Yank too, outen New Englan', en anybody down South kin tell you
what dat mean. DEY knows how to work a nigger to death, en dey knows how
to whale 'em too--whale 'em till dey backs is welted like a washboard.
'Long at fust my marster say de good word for me to de overseer, but dat
'uz bad for me; for de mistis she fine it out, en arter dat I jist
ketched it at every turn--dey warn't no mercy for me no mo'."
Tom's heart was fired--with fury against the planter's wife; and he said
to himself, "But for that meddlesome fool, everything would have gone all
right." He added a deep and bitter curse against her.
The expression of this sentiment was fiercely written in his face, and
stood thus revealed to Roxana by a white glare of lightning which turned
the somber dusk of the room into dazzling day at that moment. She was
pleased--pleased and grateful; for did not that expression show that her
child was capable of grieving for his mother's wrongs and a feeling
resentment toward her persecutors?--a thing which she had been doubting.
But her flash of happiness was only a flash, and went out again and left
her spirit dark; for she said to herself, "He sole me down de river--he
can't feel for a body long; dis'll pass en go." Then she took up her tale
again.
"'Bout ten days ago I 'uz sayin' to myself dat I couldn't las' many mo'
weeks I 'uz so wore out wid de awful work en de lashin's, en so
downhearted en misable. En I didn't care no mo', nuther--life warn't
wuth noth'n' to me, if I got to go on like dat. Well, when a body is in
a frame o' mine like dat, what do a body care what a body do? Dey was a
little sickly nigger wench 'bout ten year ole dat 'uz good to me, en
hadn't no mammy, po' thing, en I loved her en she loved me; en she come
out whah I 'uz workin' en she had a roasted tater, en tried to slip it to
me--robbin' herself, you see, 'ca'se she knowed de overseer didn't give
me enough to eat--en he ketched her at it, en giver her a lick acrost de
back wid his stick, which 'uz as thick as a broom handle, en she drop'
screamin' on de groun', en squirmin' en wallerin' aroun' in de dust like
a spider dat's got crippled. I couldn't stan' it. All de hellfire dat
'uz ever in my heart flame' up, en I snatch de stick outen his han' en
laid him flat. He laid dah moanin' en cussin', en all out of his head,
you know, en de niggers 'uz plumb sk'yred to death. Dey gathered roun'
him to he'p him, en I jumped on his hoss en took out for de river as
tight as I could go. I knowed what dey would do wid me. Soon as he got
well he would start in en work me to death if marster let him; en if dey
didn't do dat, they'd sell me furder down de river, en dat's de same
thing, so I 'lowed to drown myself en git out o' my troubles. It 'uz
gitt'n' towards dark. I 'uz at de river in two minutes. Den I see a
canoe, en I says dey ain't no use to drown myself tell I got to; so I
ties de hoss in de edge o' de timber en shove out down de river, keepin'
in under de shelter o' de bluff bank en prayin' for de dark to shet down
quick. I had a pow'ful good start, 'ca'se de big house 'uz three mile
back f'om de river en on'y de work mules to ride dah on, en on'y niggers
ride 'em, en DEY warn't gwine to hurry--dey'd gimme all de chance dey
could. Befo' a body could go to de house en back it would be long pas'
dark, en dey couldn't track de hoss en fine out which way I went tell
mawnin', en de niggers would tell 'em all de lies dey could 'bout it.
"Well, de dark come, en I went on a-spinnin' down de river. I paddled
mo'n two hours, den I warn't worried no mo', so I quit paddlin' en
floated down de current, considerin' what I 'uz gwine to do if I didn't
have to drown myself. I made up some plans, en floated along, turnin'
'em over in my mine. Well, when it 'uz a little pas' midnight, as I
reckoned, en I had come fifteen or twenty mile, I see de lights o' a
steamboat layin' at de bank, whah dey warn't no town en no woodyard, en
putty soon I ketched de shape o' de chimbly tops ag'in' de stars, en den
good gracious me, I 'most jumped out o' my skin for joy! It 'uz de GRAN'
MOGUL--I 'uz chambermaid on her for eight seasons in de Cincinnati en
Orleans trade. I slid 'long pas'--don't see nobody stirrin' nowhah--hear
'em a-hammerin' away in de engine room, den I knowed what de matter
was--some o' de machinery's broke. I got asho' below de boat and turn'
de canoe loose, den I goes 'long up, en dey 'uz jes one plank out, en I
step' 'board de boat. It 'uz pow'ful hot, deckhan's en roustabouts 'uz
sprawled aroun' asleep on de fo'cas'l', de second mate, Jim Bangs, he sot
dah on de bitts wid his head down, asleep--'ca'se dat's de way de second
mate stan' de cap'n's watch!--en de ole watchman, Billy Hatch, he 'uz
a-noddin' on de companionway;--en I knowed 'em all; en, lan', but dey did
look good! I says to myself, I wished old marster'd come along NOW en
try to take me--bless yo' heart, I's 'mong frien's, I is. So I tromped
right along 'mongst 'em, en went up on de b'iler deck en 'way back aft to
de ladies' cabin guard, en sot down dah in de same cheer dat I'd sot in
'mos' a hund'd million times, I reckon; en it 'uz jist home ag'in, I tell
you!
"In 'bout an hour I heard de ready bell jingle, en den de racket begin.
Putty soon I hear de gong strike. 'Set her back on de outside,' I says
to myself. 'I reckon I knows dat music!' I hear de gong ag'in. 'Come
ahead on de inside,' I says. Gong ag'in. 'Stop de outside.' gong ag'in.
'Come ahead on de outside--now we's pinted for Sent Louis, en I's outer
de woods en ain't got to drown myself at all.' I knowed de MOGUL 'uz in
de Sent Louis trade now, you see. It 'uz jes fair daylight when we
passed our plantation, en I seed a gang o' niggers en white folks huntin'
up en down de sho', en troublin' deyselves a good deal 'bout me; but I
warn't troublin' myself none 'bout dem.
"'Bout dat time Sally Jackson, dat used to be my second chambermaid en
'uz head chambermaid now, she come out on de guard, en 'uz pow'ful glad
to see me, en so 'uz all de officers; en I tole 'em I'd got kidnapped en
sole down de river, en dey made me up twenty dollahs en give it to me, en
Sally she rigged me out wid good clo'es, en when I got here I went
straight to whah you used to wuz, en den I come to dis house, en dey say
you's away but 'spected back every day; so I didn't dast to go down de
river to Dawson's, 'ca'se I might miss you.
"Well, las' Monday I 'uz pass'n by one o' dem places in fourth street
whah deh sticks up runaway nigger bills, en he'ps to ketch 'em, en I seed
my marster! I 'mos' flopped down on de groun', I felt so gone. He had
his back to me, en 'uz talkin' to de man en givin' him some bills--nigger
bills, I reckon, en I's de nigger. He's offerin' a reward--dat's it.
Ain't I right, don't you reckon?"
Tom had been gradually sinking into a state of ghastly terror, and he
said to himself, now: "I'm lost, no matter what turn things take! This
man has said to me that he thinks there was something suspicious about
that sale; he said he had a letter from a passenger on the GRAND MOGUL
saying that Roxy came here on that boat and that everybody on board knew
all about the case; so he says that her coming here instead of flying to
a free state looks bad for me, and that if I don't find her for him, and
that pretty soon, he will make trouble for me. I never believed that
story; I couldn't believe she would be so dead to all motherly instincts
as to come here, knowing the risk she would run of getting me into
irremediable trouble. And after all, here she is! And I stupidly swore
I would help find her, thinking it was a perfectly safe thing to promise.
If I venture to deliver her up, she--she--but how can I help myself?
I've got to do that or pay the money, and where's the money to come from?
I--I--well, I should think that if he would swear to treat her kindly
hereafter--and she says, herself, that he is a good man--and if he would
swear to never allow her to be overworked, or ill fed, or--"
A flash of lightning exposed Tom's pallid face, drawn and rigid with
these worrying thoughts. Roxana spoke up sharply now, and there was
apprehension in her voice.
"Turn up dat light! I want to see yo' face better. Dah now--lemme look
at you. Chambers, you's as white as yo' shirt! Has you see dat man? Has
he be'n to see you?"
"Ye-s."
"When?"
"Monday noon."
"Monday noon! Was he on my track?"
"He--well, he thought he was. That is, he hoped he was. This is the bill
you saw." He took it out of his pocket.
"Read it to me!"
She was panting with excitement, and there was a dusky glow in her eyes
that Tom could not translate with certainty, but there seemed to be
something threatening about it. The handbill had the usual rude woodcut
of a turbaned Negro woman running, with the customary bundle on a stick
over her shoulder, and the heading in bold type, "$100 REWARD." Tom read
the bill aloud--at least the part that described Roxana and named the
master and his St. Louis address and the address of the Fourth street
agency; but he left out the item that applicants for the reward might
also apply to Mr. Thomas Driscoll.
"Gimme de bill!"
Tom had folded it and was putting it in his pocket. He felt a chilly
streak creeping down his back, but said as carelessly as he could:
"The bill? Why, it isn't any use to you, you can't read it. What do you
want with it?"
"Gimme de bill!" Tom gave it to her, but with a reluctance which he
could not entirely disguise. "Did you read it ALL to me?"
"Certainly I did."
"Hole up yo' han' en swah to it."
Tom did it. Roxana put the bill carefully away in her pocket, with her
eyes fixed upon Tom's face all the while; then she said:
"Yo's lyin'!"
"What would I want to lie about it for?"
"I don't know--but you is. Dat's my opinion, anyways. But nemmine 'bout
dat. When I seed dat man I 'uz dat sk'yerd dat I could sca'cely wobble
home. Den I give a nigger man a dollar for dese clo'es, en I ain't be'in
in a house sence, night ner day, till now. I blacked my face en laid hid
in de cellar of a ole house dat's burnt down, daytimes, en robbed de
sugar hogsheads en grain sacks on de wharf, nights, to git somethin' to
eat, en never dast to try to buy noth'n', en I's 'mos' starved. En I
never dast to come near dis place till dis rainy night, when dey ain't no
people roun' sca'cely. But tonight I be'n a-stanin' in de dark alley
ever sence night come, waitin' for you to go by. En here I is."
She fell to thinking. Presently she said:
"You seed dat man at noon, las' Monday?"
"Yes."
"I seed him de middle o' dat arternoon. He hunted you up, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"Did he give you de bill dat time?"
"No, he hadn't got it printed yet."
Roxana darted a suspicious glance at him.
"Did you he'p him fix up de bill?"
Tom cursed himself for making that stupid blunder, and tried to rectify
it by saying he remember now that it WAS at noon Monday that the man gave
him the bill. Roxana said:
"You's lyin' ag'in, sho." Then she straightened up and raised her
finger:
"Now den! I's gwine to ask you a question, en I wants to know how you's
gwine to git aroun' it. You knowed he 'uz arter me; en if you run off,
'stid o' stayin' here to he'p him, he'd know dey 'uz somethin' wrong
'bout dis business, en den he would inquire 'bout you, en dat would take
him to yo' uncle, en yo' uncle would read de bill en see dat you be'n
sellin' a free nigger down de river, en you know HIM, I reckon! He'd
t'ar up de will en kick you outen de house. Now, den, you answer me dis
question: hain't you tole dat man dat I would be sho' to come here, en
den you would fix it so he could set a trap en ketch me?"
Tom recognized that neither lies nor arguments could help him any
longer--he was in a vise, with the screw turned on, and out of it there
was no budging. His face began to take on an ugly look, and presently he
said, with a snarl:
"Well, what could I do? You see, yourself, that I was in his grip and
couldn't get out."
Roxy scorched him with a scornful gaze awhile, then she said:
"What could you do? You could be Judas to yo' own mother to save yo'
wuthless hide! Would anybody b'lieve it? No--a dog couldn't! You is de
lowdownest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl'--en I's
'sponsible for it!"--and she spat on him.
He made no effort to resent this. Roxy reflected a moment, then she
said:
"Now I'll tell you what you's gwine to do. You's gwine to give dat man
de money dat you's got laid up, en make him wait till you kin go to de
judge en git de res' en buy me free agin."
"Thunder! What are you thinking of? Go and ask him for three hundred
dollars and odd? What would I tell him I want it for, pray?"
Roxy's answer was delivered in a serene and level voice.
"You'll tell him you's sole me to pay yo' gamblin' debts en dat you lied
to me en was a villain, en dat I 'quires you to git dat money en buy me
back ag'in."
"Why, you've gone stark mad! He would tear the will to shreds in a
minute--don't you know that?"
"Yes, I does."
"Then you don't believe I'm idiot enough to go to him, do you?"
"I don't b'lieve nothin' 'bout it--I KNOWS you's a-goin'. I knows it
'ca'se you knows dat if you don't raise dat money I'll go to him myself,
en den he'll sell YOU down de river, en you kin see how you like it!"
Tom rose, trembling and excited, and there was an evil light in his eye.
He strode to the door and said he must get out of this suffocating place
for a moment and clear his brain in the fresh air so that he could
determine what to do. The door wouldn't open. Roxy smiled grimly, and
said:
"I's got the key, honey--set down. You needn't cle'r up yo' brain none
to fine out what you gwine to do--_I_ knows what you's gwine to do." Tom
sat down and began to pass his hands through his hair with a helpless and
desperate air. Roxy said, "Is dat man in dis house?"
Tom glanced up with a surprised expression, and asked:
"What gave you such an idea?"
"You done it. Gwine out to cle'r yo' brain! In de fust place you ain't
got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye tole on you.
You's de lowdownest hound dat ever--but I done told you dat befo'. Now
den, dis is Friday. You kin fix it up wid dat man, en tell him you's
gwine away to git de res' o' de money, en dat you'll be back wid it nex'
Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday. You understan'?"
Tom answered sullenly: "Yes."
"En when you gits de new bill o' sale dat sells me to my own self, take
en send it in de mail to Mr. Pudd'nhead Wilson, en write on de back dat
he's to keep it tell I come. You understan'?"
"Yes."
"Dat's all den. Take yo' umbreller, en put on yo' hat."
"Why?"
"Beca'se you's gwine to see me home to de wharf. You see dis knife? I's
toted it aroun' sence de day I seed dat man en bought dese clo'es en it.
If he ketch me, I's gwine to kill myself wid it. Now start along, en go
sof', en lead de way; en if you gives a sign in dis house, or if anybody
comes up to you in de street, I's gwine to jam it right into you.
Chambers, does you b'lieve me when I says dat?"
"It's no use to bother me with that question. I know your word's good."
"Yes, it's diff'rent from yo'n! Shet de light out en move along--here's
de key."
They were not followed. Tom trembled every time a late straggler brushed
by them on the street, and half expected to feel the cold steel in his
back. Roxy was right at his heels and always in reach. After tramping a
mile they reached a wide vacancy on the deserted wharves, and in this
dark and rainy desert they parted.
As Tom trudged home his mind was full of dreary thoughts and wild plans;
but at last he said to himself, wearily:
"There is but the one way out. I must follow her plan. But with a
variation--I will not ask for the money and ruin myself; I will ROB the
old skinflint."
CHAPTER 19
The Prophesy Realized
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse races.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Dawson's Landing was comfortably finishing its season of dull repose and
waiting patiently for the duel. Count Luigi was waiting, too; but not
patiently, rumor said. Sunday came, and Luigi insisted on having his
challenge conveyed. Wilson carried it. Judge Driscoll declined to fight
with an assassin--"that is," he added significantly, "in the field of
honor."
Elsewhere, of course, he would be ready. Wilson tried to convince him
that if he had been present himself when Angelo told him about the
homicide committed by Luigi, he would not have considered the act
discreditable to Luigi; but the obstinate old man was not to be moved.
Wilson went back to his principal and reported the failure of his
mission. Luigi was incensed, and asked how it could be that the old
gentleman, who was by no means dull-witted, held his trifling nephew's
evidence in inferences to be of more value than Wilson's. But Wilson
laughed, and said:
"That is quite simple; that is easily explicable. I am not his doll--his
baby--his infatuation: his nature is. The judge and his late wife never
had any children. The judge and his wife were past middle age when this
treasure fell into their lap. One must make allowances for a parental
instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is
famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely
satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it
can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is
measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil
adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through
thick and thin. Tom is this old man's angel; he is infatuated with him.
Tom can persuade him into things which other people can't--not all
things; I don't mean that, but a good many--particularly one class of
things: the things that create or abolish personal partialities or
prejudices in the old man's mind. The old man liked both of you. Tom
conceived a hatred for you. That was enough; it turned the old man
around at once. The oldest and strongest friendship must go to the ground
when one of these late-adopted darlings throws a brick at it."
"It's a curious philosophy," said Luigi.
"It ain't philosophy at all--it's a fact. And there is something
pathetic and beautiful about it, too. I think there is nothing more
pathetic than to see one of these poor old childless couples taking a
menagerie of yelping little worthless dogs to their hearts; and then
adding some cursing and squawking parrots and a jackass-voiced macaw; and
next a couple of hundred screeching songbirds, and presently some fetid
guinea pigs and rabbits, and a howling colony of cats. It is all a
groping and ignorant effort to construct out of base metal and brass
filings, so to speak, something to take the place of that golden treasure
denied them by Nature, a child. But this is a digression. The unwritten
law of this region requires you to kill Judge Driscoll on sight, and he
and the community will expect that attention at your hands--though of
course your own death by his bullet will answer every purpose. Look out
for him! Are you healed--that is, fixed?"
"Yes, he shall have his opportunity. If he attacks me, I will respond."
As Wilson was leaving, he said:
"The judge is still a little used up by his campaign work, and will not
get out for a day or so; but when he does get out, you want to be on the
alert."
About eleven at night the twins went out for exercise, and started on a
long stroll in the veiled moonlight.
Tom Driscoll had landed at Hackett's Store, two miles below Dawson's,
just about half an hour earlier, the only passenger for that lonely spot,
and had walked up the shore road and entered Judge Driscoll's house
without having encountered anyone either on the road or under the roof.
He pulled down his window blinds and lighted his candle. He laid off his
coat and hat and began his preparations. He unlocked his trunk and got
his suit of girl's clothes out from under the male attire in it, and laid
it by. Then he blacked his face with burnt cork and put the cork in his
pocket. His plan was to slip down to his uncle's private sitting room
below, pass into the bedroom, steal the safe key from the old gentleman's
clothes, and then go back and rob the safe. He took up his candle to
start. His courage and confidence were high, up to this point, but both
began to waver a little now. Suppose he should make a noise, by some
accident, and get caught--say, in the act of opening the safe? Perhaps
it would be well to go armed. He took the Indian knife from its hiding
place, and felt a pleasant return of his wandering courage. He slipped
stealthily down the narrow stair, his hair rising and his pulses halting
at the slightest creak. When he was halfway down, he was disturbed to
perceive that the landing below was touched by a faint glow of light.
What could that mean? Was his uncle still up? No, that was not likely;
he must have left his night taper there when he went to bed. Tom crept
on down, pausing at every step to listen. He found the door standing
open, and glanced it. What he saw pleased him beyond measure. His uncle
was asleep on the sofa; on a small table at the head of the sofa a lamp
was burning low, and by it stood the old man's small cashbox, closed.
Near the box was a pile of bank notes and a piece of paper covered with
figured in pencil. The safe door was not open. Evidently the sleeper had
wearied himself with work upon his finances, and was taking a rest.
Tom set his candle on the stairs, and began to make his way toward the
pile of notes, stooping low as he went. When he was passing his uncle,
the old man stirred in his sleep, and Tom stopped instantly--stopped, and
softly drew the knife from its sheath, with his heart thumping, and his
eyes fastened upon his benefactor's face. After a moment or two he
ventured forward again--one step--reached for his prize and seized it,
dropping the knife sheath. Then he felt the old man's strong grip upon
him, and a wild cry of "Help! help!" rang in his ear. Without hesitation
he drove the knife home--and was free. Some of the notes escaped from his
left hand and fell in the blood on the floor. He dropped the knife and
snatched them up and started to fly; transferred them to his left hand,
and seized the knife again, in his fright and confusion, but remembered
himself and flung it from him, as being a dangerous witness to carry away
with him.
He jumped for the stair-foot, and closed the door behind him; and as he
snatched his candle and fled upward, the stillness of the night was
broken by the sound of urgent footsteps approaching the house. In another
moment he was in his room, and the twins were standing aghast over the
body of the murdered man!
Tom put on his coat, buttoned his hat under it, threw on his suit of
girl's clothes, dropped the veil, blew out his light, locked the room
door by which he had just entered, taking the key, passed through his
other door into the black hall, locked that door and kept the key, then
worked his way along in the dark and descended the black stairs. He was
not expecting to meet anybody, for all interest was centered in the other
part of the house now; his calculation proved correct. By the time he
was passing through the backyard, Mrs. Pratt, her servants, and a dozen
half-dressed neighbors had joined the twins and the dead, and accessions
were still arriving at the front door.
As Tom, quaking as with a palsy, passed out at the gate, three women came
flying from the house on the opposite side of the lane. They rushed by
him and in at the gate, asking him what the trouble was there, but not
waiting for an answer. Tom said to himself, "Those old maids waited to
dress--they did the same thing the night Stevens's house burned down next
door." In a few minutes he was in the haunted house. He lighted a candle
and took off his girl-clothes. There was blood on him all down his left
side, and his right hand was red with the stains of the blood-soaked
notes which he has crushed in it; but otherwise he was free from this
sort of evidence. He cleansed his hand on the straw, and cleaned most of
the smut from his face. Then he burned the male and female attire to
ashes, scattered the ashes, and put on a disguise proper for a tramp. He
blew out his light, went below, and was soon loafing down the river road
with the intent to borrow and use one of Roxy's devices. He found a
canoe and paddled down downstream, setting the canoe adrift as dawn
approached, and making his way by land to the next village, where he kept
out of sight till a transient steamer came along, and then took deck
passage for St. Louis. He was ill at ease Dawson's Landing was behind
him; then he said to himself, "All the detectives on earth couldn't trace
me now; there's not a vestige of a clue left in the world; that homicide
will take its place with the permanent mysteries, and people won't get
done trying to guess out the secret of it for fifty years."
In St. Louis, next morning, he read this brief telegram in the
papers--dated at Dawson's Landing:
Judge Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated
here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or a
barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent
election. The assassin will probably be lynched.
"One of the twins!" soliloquized Tom. "How lucky! It is the knife that
has done him this grace. We never know when fortune is trying to favor
us. I actually cursed Pudd'nhead Wilson in my heart for putting it out
of my power to sell that knife. I take it back now."
Tom was now rich and independent. He arranged with the planter, and
mailed to Wilson the new bill of sale which sold Roxana to herself; then
he telegraphed his Aunt Pratt:
Have seen the awful news in the papers and am almost
prostrated with grief. Shall start by packet today. Try to
bear up till I come.
When Wilson reached the house of mourning and had gathered such details
as Mrs. Pratt and the rest of the crowd could tell him, he took command
as mayor, and gave orthat nothing should be touched, but everything
left as it was until Justice Robinson should arrive and take the proper
measures as coroner. He cleared everybody out of the room but the twins
and himself. The sheriff soon arrived and took the twins away to jail.
Wilson told them to keep heart, and promised to do it best in their
defense when the case should come to trial. Justice Robinson came
presently, and with him Constable Blake. They examined the room
thoroughly. They found the knife and the sheath. Wilson noticed that
there were fingerprints on the knife's handle. That pleased him, for the
twins had required the earliest comers to make a scrutiny of their hands
and clothes, and neither these people nor Wilson himself had found any
bloodstains upon them. Could there be a possibility that the twins had
spoken the truth when they had said they found the man dead when they ran
into the house in answer to the cry for help? He thought of that
mysterious girl at once. But this was not the sort of work for a girl to
be engaged in. No matter; Tom Driscoll's room must be examined.
After the coroner's jury had viewed the body and its surroundings, Wilson
suggested a search upstairs, and he went along. The jury forced an
entrance to Tom's room, but found nothing, of course.
The coroner's jury found that the homicide was committed by Luigi, and
that Angelo was accessory to it.
The town was bitter against he misfortunates, and for the first few days
after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched. The
grand jury presently indicted Luigi for murder in the first degree, and
Angelo as accessory before the fact. The twins were transferred from the
city jail to the county prison to await trial.
Wilson examined the finger marks on the knife handle and said to himself,
"Neither of the twins made those marks. Then manifestly there was
another person concerned, either in his own interest or as hired
assassin."
But who could it be? That, he must try to find out. The safe was not
opened, the cashbox was closed, and had three thousand dollars in it.
Then robbery was not the motive, and revenge was. Where had the murdered
man an enemy except Luigi? There was but that one person in the world
with a deep grudge against him.
The mysterious girl! The girl was a great trial to Wilson. If the motive
had been robbery, the girl might answer; but there wasn't any girl that
would want to take this old man's life for revenge. He had no quarrels
with girls; he was a gentleman.
Wilson had perfect tracings of the finger marks of the knife handle; and
among his glass records he had a great array of fingerprints of women and
girls, collected during the last fifteen or eighteen years, but he
scanned them in vain, they successfully withstood every test; among them
were no duplicates of the prints on the knife.
The presence of the knife on the stage of the murder was a worrying
circumstance for Wilson. A week previously he had as good as admitted to
himself that he believed Luigi had possessed such a knife, and that he
still possessed it notwithstanding his pretense that it had been stolen.
And now here was the knife, and with it the twins. Half the town had
said the twins were humbugging when they claimed they had lost their
knife, and now these people were joyful, and said, "I told you so!"
If their fingerprints had been on the handle--but useless to bother any
further about that; the fingerprints on the handle were NOT theirs--that
he knew perfectly.
Wilson refused to suspect Tom; for first, Tom couldn't murder anybody--he
hadn't character enough; secondly, if he could murder a person he
wouldn't select his doting benefactor and nearest relative; thirdly,
self-interest was in the way; for while the uncle lived, Tom was sure of
a free support and a chance to get the destroyed will revived again, but
with the uncle gone, that chance was gone too. It was true the will had
really been revived, as was now discovered, but Tom could not have been
aware of it, or he would have spoken of it, in his native talky,
unsecretive way. Finally, Tom was in St. Louis when the murder was done,
and got the news out of the morning journals, as was shown by his
telegram to his aunt. These speculations were unemphasized sensations
rather than articulated thoughts, for Wilson would have laughed at the
idea of seriously connecting Tom with the murder.
Wilson regarded the case of the twins as desperate--in fact, about
hopeless. For he argued that if a confederate was not found, an
enlightened Missouri jury would hang them; sure; if a confederate was
found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more
person for the sheriff to hang. Nothing could save the twins but the
discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account--an
undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. Still, the
person who made the fingerprints must be sought. The twins might have no
case WITH them, but they certainly would have none without him.
So Wilson mooned around, thinking, thinking, guessing, guessing, day and
night, and arriving nowhere. Whenever he ran across a girl or a woman he
was not acquainted with, he got her fingerprints, on one pretext or
another; and they always cost him a sigh when he got home, for they never
tallied with the finger marks on the knife handle.
As to the mysterious girl, Tom swore he knew no such girl, and did not
remember ever seeing a girl wearing a dress like the one described by
Wilson. He admitted that he did not always lock his room, and that
sometimes the servants forgot to lock the house doors; still, in his
opinion the girl must have made but few visits or she would have been
discovered. When Wilson tried to connect her with the stealing raid, and
thought she might have been the old woman's confederate, if not the very
thief disguised as an old woman, Tom seemed stuck, and also much
interested, and said he would keep a sharp eye out for this person or
persons, although he was afraid that she or they would be too smart to
venture again into a town where everybody would now be on the watch for a
good while to come.
Everybody was pitying Tom, he looked so quiet and sorrowful, and seemed
to feel his great loss so deeply. He was playing a part, but it was not
all a part. The picture of his alleged uncle, as he had last seen him,
was before him in the dark pretty frequently, when he was away, and
called again in his dreams, when he was asleep. He wouldn't go into the
room where the tragedy had happened. This charmed the doting Mrs. Pratt,
who realized now, "as she had never done before," she said, what a
sensitive and delicate nature her darling had, and how he adored his poor
uncle.
CHAPTER 20
The Murderer Chuckles
Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to
be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great
caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you
have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take
simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The weeks dragged along, no friend visiting the jailed twins but their
counsel and Aunt Patsy Cooper, and the day of trial came at last--the
heaviest day in Wilson's life; for with all his tireless diligence he had
discovered no sign or trace of the missing confederate. "Confederate"
was the term he had long ago privately accepted for that person--not as
being unquestionably the right term, but as being the least possibly the
right one, though he was never able to understand why the twins did not
vanish and escape, as the confederate had done, instead of remaining by
the murdered man and getting caught there.
The courthouse was crowded, of course, and would remain so to the finish,
for not only in the town itself, but in the country for miles around, the
trial was the one topic of conversation among the people. Mrs. Pratt, in
deep mourning, and Tom with a weed on his hat, had seats near Pembroke
Howard, the public prosecutor, and back of them sat a great array of
friends of the family. The twins had but one friend present to keep
their counsel in countenance, their poor old sorrowing landlady. She sat
near Wilson, and looked her friendliest. In the "nigger corner" sat
Chambers; also Roxy, with good clothes on, and her bill of sale in her
pocket. It was her most precious possession, and she never parted with
it, day or night. Tom had allowed her thirty-five dollars a month ever
since he came into his property, and had said that he and she ought to be
grateful to the twins for making them rich; but had roused such a temper
in her by this speech that he did not repeat the argument afterward. She
said the old judge had treated her child a thousand times better than he
deserved, and had never done her an unkindness in his life; so she hated
these outlandish devils for killing him, and shouldn't ever sleep
satisfied till she saw them hanged for it. She was here to watch the
trial now, and was going to lift up just one "hooraw" over it if the
county judge put her in jail a year for it. She gave her turbaned head a
toss and said, "When dat verdic' comes, I's gwine to lif' dat ROOF, now,
I TELL you."
Pembroke Howard briefly sketched the state's case. He said he would show
by a chain of circumstantial evidence without break or fault in it
anywhere, that the principal prisoner at the bar committed the murder;
that the motive was partly revenge, and partly a desire to take his own
life out of jeopardy, and that his brother, by his presence, was a
consenting accessory to the crime; a crime which was the basest known to
the calendar of human misdeeds--assassination; that it was conceived by
the blackest of hearts and consummated by the cowardliest of hands; a
crime which had broken a loving sister's heart, blighted the happiness of
a young nephew who was as dear as a son, brought inconsolable grief to
many friends, and sorrow and loss to the whole community. The utmost
penalty of the outraged law would be exacted, and upon the accused, now
present at the bar, that penalty would unquestionably be executed. He
would reserve further remark until his closing speech.
He was strongly moved, and so also was the whole house; Mrs. Pratt and
several other women were weeping when he sat down, and many an eye that
was full of hate was riveted upon the unhappy prisoners.
Witness after witness was called by the state, and questioned at length;
but the cross questioning was brief. Wilson knew they could furnish
nothing valuable for his side. People were sorry for Pudd'nhead Wilson;
his budding career would get hurt by this trial.
Several witnesses swore they heard Judge Driscoll say in his public
speech that the twins would be able to find their lost knife again when
they needed it to assassinate somebody with. This was not news, but now
it was seen to have been sorrowfully prophetic, and a profound sensation
quivered through the hushed courtroom when those dismal words were
repeated.
The public prosecutor rose and said that it was within his knowledge,
through a conversation held with Judge Driscoll on the last day of his
life, that counsel for the defense had brought him a challenge from the
person charged at the bar with murder; that he had refused to fight with
a confessed assassin--"that is, on the field of honor," but had added
significantly, that he would be ready for him elsewhere. Presumably
the person here charged with murder was warned that he must kill or be
killed the first time he should meet Judge Driscoll. If counsel for the
defense chose to let the statement stand so, he would not call him to the
witness stand. Mr. Wilson said he would offer no denial. [Murmurs in the
house: "It is getting worse and worse for Wilson's case."]
Mrs. Pratt testified that she heard no outcry, and did not know what woke
her up, unless it was the sound of rapid footsteps approaching the front
door. She jumped up and ran out in the hall just as she was, and heard
the footsteps flying up the front steps and then following behind her as
she ran to the sitting room. There she found the accused standing over
her murdered brother. [Here she broke down and sobbed. Sensation in the
court.] Resuming, she said the persons entered behind her were Mr. Rogers
and Mr. Buckstone.
Cross-examined by Wilson, she said the twins proclaimed their innocence;
declared that they had been taking a walk, and had hurried to the house
in response to a cry for help which was so loud and strong that they had
heard it at a considerable distance; that they begged her and the
gentlemen just mentioned to examine their hands and clothes--which was
done, and no blood stains found.
Confirmatory evidence followed from Rogers and Buckstone.
The finding of the knife was verified, the advertisement minutely
describing it and offering a reward for it was put in evidence, and its
exact correspondence with that description proved. Then followed a few
minor details, and the case for the state was closed.
Wilson said that he had three witnesses, the Misses Clarkson, who would
testify that they met a veiled young woman leaving Judge Driscoll's
premises by the back gate a few minutes after the cries for help were
heard, and that their evidence, taken with certain circumstantial
evidence which he would call the court's attention to, would in his
opinion convince the court that there was still one person concerned in
this crime who had not yet been found, and also that a stay of
proceedings ought to be granted, in justice to his clients, until that
person should be discovered. As it was late, he would ask leave to defer
the examination of his three witnesses until the next morning.
The crowd poured out of the place and went flocking away in excited
groups and couples, taking the events of the session over with vivacity
and consuming interest, and everybody seemed to have had a satisfactory
and enjoyable day except the accused, their counsel, and their old lady
friend. There was no cheer among these, and no substantial hope.
In parting with the twins Aunt Patsy did attempt a good-night with a gay
pretense of hope and cheer in it, but broke down without finishing.
Absolutely secure as Tom considered himself to be, the opening
solemnities of the trial had nevertheless oppressed him with a vague
uneasiness, his being a nature sensitive to even the smallest alarms; but
from the moment that the poverty and weakness of Wilson's case lay
exposed to the court, he was comfortable once more, even jubilant. He
left the courtroom sarcastically sorry for Wilson. "The Clarksons met an
unknown woman in the back lane," he said to himself, "THAT is his case!
I'll give him a century to find her in--a couple of them if he likes. A
woman who doesn't exist any longer, and the clothes that gave her her sex
burnt up and the ashes thrown away--oh, certainly, he'll find HER easy
enough!" This reflection set him to admiring, for the hundredth time,
the shrewd ingenuities by which he had insured himself against
detection--more, against even suspicion.
"Nearly always in cases like this there is some little detail or other
overlooked, some wee little track or trace left behind, and detection
follows; but here there's not even the faintest suggestion of a trace
left. No more than a bird leaves when it flies through the air--yes,
through the night, you may say. The man that can track a bird through the
air in the dark and find that bird is the man to track me out and find
the judge's assassin--no other need apply. And that is the job that has
been laid out for poor Pudd'nhead Wilson, of all people in the world!
Lord, it will be pathetically funny to see him grubbing and groping after
that woman that don't exist, and the right person sitting under his very
nose all the time!" The more he thought the situation over, the more the
humor of it struck him. Finally he said, "I'll never let him hear the
last of that woman. Every time I catch him in company, to his dying day,
I'll ask him in the guileless affectionate way that used to gravel him so
when I inquired how his unborn law business was coming along, 'Got on her
track yet--hey, Pudd'nhead?'" He wanted to laugh, but that would not
have answered; there were people about, and he was mourning for his
uncle. He made up his mind that it would be good entertainment to look
in on Wilson that night and watch him worry over his barren law case and
goad him with an exasperating word or two of sympathy and commiseration
now and then.
Wilson wanted no supper, he had no appetite. He got out all the
fingerprints of girls and women in his collection of records and pored
gloomily over them an hour or more, trying to convince himself that that
troublesome girl's marks were there somewhere and had been overlooked.
But it was not so. He drew back his chair, clasped his hands over his
head, and gave himself up to dull and arid musings.
Tom Driscoll dropped in, an hour after dark, and said with a pleasant
laugh as he took a seat:
"Hello, we've gone back to the amusements of our days of neglect and
obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one of the glass
strips and held it against the light to inspect it. "Come, cheer up, old
man; there's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's
play merely because this big sunspot is drifting across your shiny new
disk. It'll pass, and you'll be all right again"--and he laid the glass
down. "Did you think you could win always?"
"Oh, no," said Wilson, with a sigh, "I didn't expect that, but I can't
believe Luigi killed your uncle, and I feel very sorry for him. It makes
me blue. And you would feel as I do, Tom, if you were not prejudiced
against those young fellows."
"I don't know about that," and Tom's countenance darkened, for his memory
reverted to his kicking. "I owe them no good will, considering the
brunet one's treatment of me that night. Prejudice or no prejudice,
Pudd'nhead, I don't like them, and when they get their deserts you're not
going to find me sitting on the mourner's bench."
He took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed:
"Why, here's old Roxy's label! Are you going to ornament the royal
palaces with nigger paw marks, too? By the date here, I was seven months
old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub.
There's a line straight across her thumbprint. How comes that?" and Tom
held out the piece of glass to Wilson.
"That is common," said the bored man, wearily. "Scar of a cut or a
scratch, usually"--and he took the strip of glass indifferently, and
raised it toward the lamp.
All the blood sank suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked, and he
gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare of a
corpse.
"Great heavens, what's the matter with you, Wilson? Are you going to
faint?"
Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson shrank
shuddering from him and said:
"No, no!--take it away!" His breast was rising and falling, and he moved
his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a person who had been
stunned. Presently he said, "I shall feel better when I get to bed; I
have been overwrought today; yes, and overworked for many days."
"Then I'll leave you and let you get to your rest. Good night, old man."
But as Tom went out he couldn't deny himself a small parting gibe:
"Don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you'll hang somebody
yet."
Wilson muttered to himself, "It is no lie to say I am sorry I have to
begin with you, miserable dog though you are!"
He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again.
He did not compare the new finger marks unintentionally left by Tom a few
minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the
knife handle, there being no need for that (for his trained eye), but
busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "Idiot
that I was!--Nothing but a GIRL would do me--a man in girl's clothes
never occurred to me." First, he hunted out the plate containing the
fingerprints made by Tom when he was twelve years old, and laid it by
itself; then he brought forth the marks made by Tom's baby fingers when
he was a suckling of seven months, and placed these two plates with the
one containing this subject's newly (and unconsciously) made record.
"Now the series is complete," he said with satisfaction, and sat down to
inspect these things and enjoy them.
But his enjoyment was brief. He stared a considerable time at the three
strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. At last he put them down
and said, "I can't make it out at all--hang it, the baby's don't tally
with the others!"
He walked the floor for half an hour puzzling over his enigma, then he
hunted out the other glass plates.
He sat down and puzzled over these things a good while, but kept
muttering, "It's no use; I can't understand it. They don't tally right,
and yet I'll swear the names and dates are right, and so of course they
OUGHT to tally. I never labeled one of these thing carelessly in my
life. There is a most extraordinary mystery here."
He was tired out now, and his brains were beginning to clog. He said he
would sleep himself fresh, and then see what he could do with this
riddle. He slept through a troubled and unrestful hour, then
unconsciousness began to shred away, and presently he rose drowsily to a
sitting posture. "Now what was that dream?" he said, trying to recall
it. "What was that dream? It seemed to unravel that puz--"
He landed in the middle of the floor at a bound, without finishing the
sentence, and ran and turned up his light and seized his "records." He
took a single swift glance at them and cried out:
"It's so! Heavens, what a revelation! And for twenty-three years no man
has ever suspected it!"
CHAPTER 21
Doom
He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring
the cabbages.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
APRIL 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on
the other three hundred and sixty-four.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went to work
under a high pressure of steam. He was awake all over. All sense of
weariness had been swept away by the invigorating refreshment of the
great and hopeful discovery which he had made. He made fine and accurate
reproductions of a number of his "records," and then enlarged them on a
scale of ten to one with his pantograph. He did these pantograph
enlargements on sheets of white cardboard, and made each individual line
of the bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which consisted of
the "pattern" of a "record" stand out bold and black by reinforcing it
with ink. To the untrained eye the collection of delicate originals made
by the human finger on the glass plates looked about alike; but when
enlarged ten times they resembled the markings of a block of wood that
has been sawed across the grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a
glance, and at a distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were
alike. When Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work,
he arranged his results according to a plan in which a progressive order
and sequence was a principal feature; then he added to the batch several
pantograph enlargements which he had made from time to time in bygone
years.
The night was spent and the day well advanced now. By the time he had
snatched a trifle of breakfast, it was nine o'clock, and the court was
ready to begin its sitting. He was in his place twelve minutes later
with his "records."
Tom Driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records, and nudged his
nearest friend and said, with a wink, "Pudd'nhead's got a rare eye to
business--thinks that as long as he can't win his case it's at least a
noble good chance to advertise his window palace decorations without any
expense." Wilson was informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but
would arrive presently; but he rose and said he should probably not have
occasion to make use of their testimony. [An amused murmur ran through
the room: "It's a clean backdown! he gives up without hitting a lick!"]
Wilson continued: "I have other testimony--and better. [This compelled
interest, and evoked murmurs of surprise that had a detectable ingredient
of disappointment in them.] If I seem to be springing this evidence upon
the court, I offer as my justification for this, that I did not discover
its existence until late last night, and have been engaged in examining
and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago. I shall offer it
presently; but first I wish to say a few preliminary words.
"May it please the court, the claim given the front place, the claim most
persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and I may even say
aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the prosecution is this--that
the person whose hand left the bloodstained fingerprints upon the handle
of the Indian knife is the person who committed the murder." Wilson
paused, during several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was
about to say, and then added tranquilly, "WE GRANT THAT CLAIM."
It was an electrical surprise. No one was prepared for such an
admission. A buzz of astonishment rose on all sides, and people were
heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had lost his mind. Even the
veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal ambushes and masked
batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure that his ears were not
deceiving him, and asked counsel what it was he had said. Howard's
impassive face betrayed no sign, but his attitude and bearing lost
something of their careless confidence for a moment. Wilson resumed:
"We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and strongly endorse it.
Leaving that matter for the present, we will now proceed to consider
other points in the case which we propose to establish by evidence, and
shall include that one in the chain in its proper place."
He had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in mapping out his
theory of the origin and motive of the murder--guesses designed to fill
up gaps in it--guesses which could help if they hit, and would probably
do no harm if they didn't.
"To my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the court seem to
suggest a motive for the homicide quite different from the one insisted
on by the state. It is my conviction that the motive was not revenge,
but robbery. It has been urged that the presence of the accused brothers
in that fatal room, just after notification that one of them must take
the life of Judge Driscoll or lose his own the moment the parties should
meet, clearly signifies that the natural instinct of self-preservation
moved my clients to go there secretly and save Count Luigi by destroying
his adversary.
"Then why did they stay there, after the deed was done? Mrs. Pratt had
time, although she did not hear the cry for help, but woke up some
moments later, to run to that room--and there she found these men
standing and making no effort to escape. If they were guilty, they ought
to have been running out of the house at the same time that she was
running to that room. If they had had such a strong instinct toward
self-preservation as to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had
become of it now, when it should have been more alert than ever. Would
any of us have remained there? Let us not slander our intelligence to
that degree.
"Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused offered a very
large reward for the knife with which this murder was done; that no thief
came forward to claim that extraordinary reward; that the latter fact was
good circumstantial evidence that the claim that the knife had been
stolen was a vanity and a fraud; that these details taken in connection
with the memorable and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased
concerning that knife, and the finally discovery of that very knife in
the fatal room where no living person was found present with the
slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form an
indestructible chain of evidence which fixed the crime upon those
unfortunate strangers.
"But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify that there was
a large reward offered for the THIEF, also; and it was offered secretly
and not advertised; that this fact was indiscreetly mentioned--or at
least tacitly admitted--in what was supposed to be safe circumstances,
but may NOT have been. The thief may have been present himself. [Tom
Driscoll had been looking at the speaker, but dropped his eyes at this
point.] In that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not
daring to offer it for sale, or for pledge in a pawnshop. [There was a
nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this was not
a bad stroke.] I shall prove to the satisfaction of the jury that there
WAS a person in Judge Driscoll's room several minutes before the accused
entered it. [This produced a strong sensation; the last drowsy head in
the courtroom roused up now, and made preparation to listen.] If it
shall seem necessary, I will prove by the Misses Clarkson that they met a
veiled person--ostensibly a woman--coming out of the back gate a few
minutes after the cry for help was heard. This person was not a woman,
but a man dressed in woman's clothes." Another sensation. Wilson had his
eye on Tom when he hazarded this guess, to see what effect it would
produce. He was satisfied with the result, and said to himself, "It was
a success--he's hit!"
The object of that person in that house was robbery, not murder. It is
true that the safe was not open, but there was an ordinary cashbox on the
table, with three thousand dollars in it. It is easily supposable that
the thief was concealed in the house; that he knew of this box, and of
its owner's habit of counting its contents and arranging his accounts at
night--if he had that habit, which I do not assert, of course--that he
tried to take the box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was
seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture; and that
he fled without his booty because he heard help coming.
"I have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the evidences by
which I propose to try to prove its soundness." Wilson took up several of
his strips of glass. When the audience recognized these familiar
mementos of Pudd'nhead's old time childish "puttering" and folly, the
tense and funereal interest vanished out of their faces, and the house
burst into volleys of relieving and refreshing laughter, and Tom chirked
up and joined in the fun himself; but Wilson was apparently not
disturbed. He arranged his records on the table before him, and said:
"I beg the indulgence of the court while I make a few remarks in
explanation of some evidence which I am about to introduce, and which I
shall presently ask to be allowed to verify under oath on the witness
stand. Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave
certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which
he can always be identified--and that without shade of doubt or question.
These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak,
and this autograph can not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or
hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of
time. This signature is not his face--age can change that beyond
recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his
height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates
of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own--there
is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! [The
audience were interested once more.]
"This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which
Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet. If you
will look at the balls of your fingers--you that have very sharp
eyesight--you will observe that these dainty curving lines lie close
together, like those that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and
that they form various clearly defined patterns, such as arches, circles,
long curves, whorls, etc., and that these patterns differ on the different
fingers. [Every man in the room had his hand up to the light now, and
his head canted to one side, and was minutely scrutinizing the balls of
his fingers; there were whispered ejaculations of "Why, it's so--I never
noticed that before!"] The patterns on the right hand are not the same as
those on the left. [Ejaculations of "Why, that's so, too!"] Taken finger
for finger, your patterns differ from your neighbor's. [Comparisons were
made all over the house--even the judge and jury were absorbed in this
curious work.] The patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as
those on his left. One twin's patters are never the same as his fellow
twin's patters--the jury will find that the patterns upon the finger
balls of the twins' hands follow this rule. [An examination of the
twins' hands was begun at once.] You have often heard of twins who were
so exactly alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell
them apart. Yet there was never a twin born in to this world that did not
carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and
marvelous natal autograph. That once known to you, his fellow twin could
never personate him and deceive you."
Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death
when a speaker does that. The stillness gives warning that something is
coming. All palms and finger balls went down now, all slouching forms
straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon Wilson's
face. He waited yet one, two, three moments, to let his pause complete
and perfect its spell upon the house; then, when through the profound
hush he could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his
hand and took the Indian knife by the blade and held it aloft where all
could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle; then he said, in a
level and passionless voice:
"Upon this haft stands the assassin's natal autograph, written in the
blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who loved you and whom you
all loved. There is but one man in the whole earth whose hand can
duplicate that crimson sign"--he paused and raised his eyes to the
pendulum swinging back and forth--"and please God we will produce that
man in this room before the clock strikes noon!"
Stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the house half
rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at the door, and a
breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place. "Order in the
court!--sit down!" This from the sheriff. He was obeyed, and quiet
reigned again. Wilson stole a glance at Tom, and said to himself, "He is
flying signals of distress now; even people who despise him are pitying
him; they think this is a hard ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his
benefactor by so cruel a stroke--and they are right." He resumed his
speech:
"For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory leisure with
collecting these curious physical signatures in this town. At my house I
have hundreds upon hundreds of them. Each and every one is labeled with
name and date; not labeled the next day or even the next hour, but in the
very minute that the impression was taken. When I go upon the witness
stand I will repeat under oath the things which I am now saying. I have
the fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury.
There is hardly a person in this room, white or black, whose natal
signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can so disguise himself
that I cannot pick him out from a multitude of his fellow creatures and
unerringly identify him by his hands. And if he and I should live to be a
hundred I could still do it. [The interest of the audience was steadily
deepening now.]
"I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know them as well
as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his oldest customer. While I
turn my back now, I beg that several persons will be so good as to pass
their fingers through their hair, and then press them upon one of the
panes of the window near the jury, and that among them the accused may
set THEIR finger marks. Also, I beg that these experimenters, or others,
will set their fingers upon another pane, and add again the marks of the
accused, but not placing them in the same order or relation to the other
signatures as before--for, by one chance in a million, a person might
happen upon the right marks by pure guesswork, ONCE, therefore I wish to
be tested twice."
He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered with
delicately lined oval spots, but visible only to such persons as could
get a dark background for them--the foliage of a tree, outside, for
instance. Then upon call, Wilson went to the window, made his
examination, and said:
"This is Count Luigi's right hand; this one, three signatures below, is
his left. Here is Count Angelo's right; down here is his left. Now for
the other pane: here and here are Count Luigi's, here and here are his
brother's." He faced about. "Am I right?"
A deafening explosion of applause was the answer. The bench said:
"This certainly approaches the miraculous!"
Wilson turned to the window again and remarked, pointing with his finger:
"This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson. [Applause.] This, of
Constable Blake. [Applause.] This of John Mason, juryman. [Applause.]
This, of the sheriff. [Applause.] I cannot name the others, but I have
them all at home, named and dated, and could identify them all by my
fingerprint records."
He moved to his place through a storm of applause--which the sheriff
stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were all standing
and struggling to see, of course. Court, jury, sheriff, and everybody
had been too absorbed in observing Wilson's performance to attend to the
audience earlier.
"Now then," said Wilson, "I have here the natal autographs of the two
children--thrown up to ten times the natural size by the pantograph, so
that anyone who can see at all can tell the markings apart at a glance.
We will call the children A and B. Here are A's finger marks, taken at
the age of five months. Here they are again taken at seven months. [Tom
started.] They are alike, you see. Here are B's at five months, and also
at seven months. They, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns
are quite different from A's, you observe. I shall refer to these again
presently, but we will turn them face down now.
"Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the two persons
who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll. I made these
pantograph copies last night, and will so swear when I go upon the
witness stand. I ask the jury to compare them with the finger marks of
the accused upon the windowpanes, and tell the court if they are the
same."
He passed a powerful magnifying glass to the foreman.
One juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass and made the
comparison. Then the foreman said to the judge:
"Your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical."
Wilson said to the foreman:
"Please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one, and compare it
searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal signature upon the knife
handle, and report your finding to the court."
Again the jury made minute examinations, and again reported:
"We find them to be exactly identical, your honor."
Wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution, and there was a
clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice when he said:
"May it please the court, the state has claimed, strenuously and
persistently, that the bloodstained fingerprints upon that knife handle
were left there by the assassin of Judge Driscoll. You have heard us
grant that claim, and welcome it." He turned to the jury: "Compare the
fingerprints of the accused with the fingerprints left by the
assassin--and report."
The comparison began. As it proceeded, all movement and all sound
ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting suspense settled
upon the house; and when at last the words came, "THEY DO NOT EVEN
RESEMBLE," a thundercrash of applause followed and the house sprang to
its feet, but was quickly repressed by official force and brought to
order again. Tom was altering his position every few minutes now, but
none of his changes brought repose nor any small trifle of comfort. When
the house's attention was become fixed once more, Wilson said gravely,
indicating the twins with a gesture:
"These men are innocent--I have no further concern with them. [Another
outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.] We will now
proceed to find the guilty. [Tom's eyes were starting from their
sockets--yes, it was a cruel day for the bereaved youth, everybody
thought.] We will return to the infant autographs of A and B. I will
ask the jury to take these large pantograph facsimilies of A's marked
five months and seven months. Do they tally?"
The foreman responded: "Perfectly."
"Now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months, and also marked A.
Does it tally with the other two?"
The surprised response was:
"NO--THEY DIFFER WIDELY!"
"You are quite right. Now take these two pantographs of B's autograph,
marked five months and seven months. Do they tally with each other?"
"Yes--perfectly."
"Take this third pantograph marked B, eight months. Does it tally with
B's other two?"
"BY NO MEANS!"
"Do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies? I will tell
you. For a purpose unknown to us, but probably a selfish one, somebody
changed those children in the cradle."
This produced a vast sensation, naturally; Roxana was astonished at this
admirable guess, but not disturbed by it. To guess the exchange was one
thing, to guess who did it quite another. Pudd'nhead Wilson could do
wonderful things, no doubt, but he couldn't do impossible ones. Safe?
She was perfectly safe. She smiled privately.
"Between the ages of seven months and eight months those children were
changed in the cradle"--he made one of this effect--collecting pauses,
and added--"and the person who did it is in this house!"
Roxy's pulses stood still! The house was thrilled as with an electric
shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a glimpse of the person who
had made that exchange. Tom was growing limp; the life seemed oozing out
of him. Wilson resumed:
"A was put into B's cradle in the nursery; B was transferred to the
kitchen and became a Negro and a slave [Sensation--confusion of angry
ejaculations]--but within a quarter of an hour he will stand before you
white and free! [Burst of applause, checked by the officers.] From
seven months onward until now, A has still been a usurper, and in my
finger record he bears B's name. Here is his pantograph at the age of
twelve. Compare it with the assassin's signature upon the knife handle.
Do they tally?"
The foreman answered:
"TO THE MINUTEST DETAIL!"
Wilson said, solemnly:
"The murderer of your friend and mine--York Driscoll of the generous hand
and the kindly spirit--sits in among you. Valet de Chambre, Negro and
slave--falsely called Thomas a Becket Driscoll--make upon the window the
fingerprints that will hang you!"
Tom turned his ashen face imploring toward the speaker, made some
impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and lifeless to
the floor.
Wilson broke the awed silence with the words:
"There is no need. He has confessed."
Roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her hands, and
out through her sobs the words struggled:
"De Lord have mercy on me, po' misasble sinner dat I is!"
The clock struck twelve.
The court rose; the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed.
CONCLUSION
It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the
best judge of one.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
OCTOBER 12, THE DISCOVERY. It was wonderful to find America, but it
would have been more wonderful to miss it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of the day and
swap guesses as to when Tom's trial would begin. Troop after troop of
citizens came to serenade Wilson, and require a speech, and shout
themselves hoarse over every sentence that fell from his lips--for all
his sentences were golden, now, all were marvelous. His long fight
against hard luck and prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good.
And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away, some
remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his voice and say:
"And this is the man the likes of us have called a pudd'nhead for more
than twenty years. He has resigned from that position, friends."
"Yes, but it isn't vacant--we're elected."
The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with rehabilitated
reputations. But they were weary of Western adventure, and straightway
retired to Europe.
Roxy's heart was broken. The young fellow upon whom she had inflicted
twenty-three years of slavery continued the false heir's pension of
thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her hurts were too deep for money
to heal; the spirit in her eye was quenched, her martial bearing departed
with it, and the voice of her laughter ceased in the land. In her church
and its affairs she found her only solace.
The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a most
embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write, and his speech
was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter. His gait, his attitudes, his
gestures, his bearing, his laugh--all were vulgar and uncouth; his
manners were the manners of a slave. Money and fine clothes could not
mend these defects or cover them up; they only made them more glaring and
the more pathetic. The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the
white man's parlor, and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the
kitchen. The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter
into the solacing refuge of the "nigger gallery"--that was closed to him
for good and all. But we cannot follow his curious fate further--that
would be a long story.
The false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to imprisonment
for life. But now a complication came up. The Percy Driscoll estate was
in such a crippled shape when its owner died that it could pay only sixty
percent of its great indebtedness, and was settled at that rate. But the
creditors came forward now, and complained that inasmuch as through an
error for which THEY were in no way to blame the false heir was not
inventoried at the time with the rest of the property, great wrong and
loss had thereby been inflicted upon them. They rightly claimed that
"Tom" was lawfully their property and had been so for eight years; that
they had already lost sufficiently in being deprived of his services
during that long period, and ought not to be required to add anything to
that loss; that if he had been delivered up to them in the first place,
they would have sold him and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll;
therefore it was not that he had really committed the murder, the guilt
lay with the erroneous inventory. Everybody saw that there was reason in
this. Everybody granted that if "Tom" were white and free it would be
unquestionably right to punish him--it would be no loss to anybody; but
to shut up a valuable slave for life--that was quite another matter.
As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once, and
the creditors sold him down the river.
Author's Note to THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS
A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time
of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He
has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has
some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he
trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting
results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought
which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little
tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he
is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as
it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on
till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has
happened to me so many times.
And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into the
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case
of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and fantastic
sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of
its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book. Much
the same thing happened with PUDD'NHEAD WILSON. I had a sufficiently
hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a farce to a
tragedy while I was going along with it--a most embarrassing
circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one
story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and
interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and
annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid
it would unseat the reader's reason, I did not know what was the matter
with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one.
It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back
and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied
over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had
no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and
left the other--a kind of literary Caesarean operation.
Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works; won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jackleg does it?
Originally the story was called THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS. I meant to
make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian
"freak"--or "freaks"--which was--or which were--on exhibition in our
cities--a combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a
single body and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an
extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for
hero--or heroes--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and
two boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and
their doings, of course. But the take kept spreading along and spreading
along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more
and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a
stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and woman named Roxana; and presently
the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named
Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background.
Before the book was half finished those three were taking things almost
entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale as a private
venture of their own--a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by
rights.
When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had
become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,
Aunt Betsy Hale, and two boys, and Rowena the lightweight heroine--they
were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or
other. I hunted about and found them--found them stranded, idle,
forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward
all around, but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there
was a love match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted
the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a
quite dramatic love quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her
betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had
happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the
usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and brokenhearted; for
she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that is was not he, but
the other of the freak that had drunk the liquor that made him drunk;
that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in his
life, and altogether tight as a brick three days in the week, was wholly
innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing all he
could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any
satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him.
Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing
her poor torn heart.
I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody
could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was
sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere.
I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do. After spreading
her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be
absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and
thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw
plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the
grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so
much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding
things and was so nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done. So
at the top of Chapter XVII I put a "Calendar" remark concerning July the
Fourth, and began the chapter with this statistic:
"Rowena went out in the backyard after supper to see the fireworks and
fell down the well and got drowned."
It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it,
because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it
loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way,
and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out
people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those
others; so I hunted up the two boys and said, "They went out back one
night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned." Next I
searched around and found old Aunt Patsy and Aunt Betsy Hale where they
were around, and said, "They went out back one night to visit the sick
and fell down the well and got drowned." I was going to drown some
others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if I kept
that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those people,
and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any more
anyway.
Still the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who
were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to
the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a
great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and
fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must
search it out and cure it.
The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories in
one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the
tragedy. This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as
characters. Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth
drowning; so I removed that detail. Also I took the twins apart and made
two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign names now,
but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I left them
christened as they were and made no explanation.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS
by Mark Twain
A man who is born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of
it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has
no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some
people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He knows
these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts that he can
plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he
goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes
later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale; a
very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not
acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes
along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it
spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened
to me so many times.
And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into the
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the case
of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and fantastic
sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of
its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out into a book.
Much the same thing happened with "Pudd'nhead Wilson." I had a
sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself from a
farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it--a most embarrassing
circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it was not one
story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed and
interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion and
annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was afraid
it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the matter
with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one.
It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript back
and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read it and studied
over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the difficulty lay. I had
no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories out by the roots, and
left the other one--a kind of literary Caesarean operation.
Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jack-leg does it?
Originally the story was called "Those Extraordinary Twins." I meant to
make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian "freak"
or "freaks" which was--or which were--on exhibition in our cities--a
combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single body
and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an extravagantly
fantastic little story with this freak of nature for hero--or heroes
--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and two boys for the
minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and their doings, of
course. But the tale kept spreading along, and spreading along, and
other people got to intruding themselves and taking up more and more room
with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a stranger named
Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and presently the doings of
these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll,
whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book
was half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into
their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their
own--a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights.
When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had
become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,
Aunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine--they
were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time or
other. I hunted about and found them found them stranded, idle,
forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward
all around; but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there
was a love-match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted
the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a
quite dramatic love-quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her
betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had
happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the
usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and broken-hearted; for
she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that it was not he, but
the other half of the freak, that had drunk the liquor that made him
drunk; that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in
his life, and, although tight as a brick three days in the week, was
wholly innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing
all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any
satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him.
Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing
her poor torn heart.
I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody
could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was
sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere.
I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do. After spreading
her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be
absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and
thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw
plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the
grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so
much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding she
was such an ass and said such stupid irritating things and was so
nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done. So, at the top of
Chapter XVII, I put in a "Calendar" remark concerning July Fourth, and
began the chapter with this statistic:
"Rowena went out in the back yard after supper to see the fireworks and
fell down the well and got drowned."
It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it,
because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it
loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way,
and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding out
people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those
others; so I hunted up the two boys and said "they went out back one
night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned." Next I
searched around and found old Aunt Patsy Cooper and Aunt Betsy Hale where
they were aground, and said "they went out back one night to visit the
sick and fell down the well and got drowned." I was going to drown some
of the others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if
I kept that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those
people, and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any
more anyway.
Still the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who
were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to
the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a
great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and
fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must
search it out and cure it.
The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories in
one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the
tragedy. This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as
characters. Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth
drowning; so I removed that detail. Also I took those twins apart and
made two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign
names now, but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I
left them christened as they were and made no explanation.
CHAPTER I
THE TWINS AS THEY REALLY WERE
The conglomerate twins were brought on the the stage in Chapter I of the
original extravaganza. Aunt Patsy Cooper has received their letter
applying for board and lodging, and Rowena, her daughter, insane with
joy, is begging for a hearing of it:
"Well, set down then, and be quiet a minute and don't fly around so; it
fairly makes me tired to see you. It starts off so: 'HONORED MADAM'--"
"I like that, ma, don't you? It shows they're high-bred."
"Yes, I noticed that when I first read it. 'My brother and I have seen
your advertisement, by chance, in a copy of your local journal--'
"It's so beautiful and smooth, ma-don't you think so?"
"Yes, seems so to me--'and beg leave to take the room you offer. We are
twenty-four years of age, and twins--'"
"Twins! How sweet! I do hope they are handsome, and I just know they
are! Don't you hope they are, ma?"
"Land, I ain't particular. 'We are Italians by birth--'"
"It's so romantic! Just think there's never been one in this town, and
everybody will want to see them, and they're all ours! Think of that!"
"--'but have lived long in the various countries of Europe, and several
years in the United States.'"
"Oh, just think what wonders they've seen, ma! Won't it be good to hear
them talk?"
"I reckon so; yes, I reckon so. 'Our names are Luigi and Angelo
Capello--'"
"Beautiful, perfectly beautiful! Not like Jones and Robinson and those
horrible names."
"'You desire but one guest, but dear madam, if you will allow us to pay
for two we will not discommode you. We will sleep together in the same
bed. We have always been used to this, and prefer it. And then he goes
on to say they will be down Thursday."
"And this is Tuesday--I don't know how I'm ever going to wait, ma! The
time does drag along so, and I'm so dying to see them! Which of them do
you reckon is the tallest, ma?"
"How do you s'pose I can tell, child? Mostly they are the same
size-twins are."
"'Well then, which do you reckon is the best looking?"
"Goodness knows--I don't."
"I think Angelo is; it's the prettiest name, anyway. Don't you think
it's a sweet name, ma?"
"Yes, it's well enough. I'd like both of them better if I knew the way
to pronounce them--the Eyetalian way, I mean. The Missouri way and the
Eyetalian way is different, I judge."
"Maybe--yes. It's Luigi that writes the letter. What do you reckon is
the reason Angelo didn't write it?"
"Why, how can I tell? What's the difference who writes it, so long as
it's done?"
"Oh, I hope it wasn't because he is sick! You don't think he is sick, do
you, ma?"
"Sick your granny; what's to make him sick?"
"Oh, there's never any telling. These foreigners with that kind of names
are so delicate, and of course that kind of names are not suited to our
climate--you wouldn't expect it."
[And so-on and so-on, no end. The time drags along; Thursday comes: the
boat arrives in a pouring storm toward midnight.]
At last there was a knock at the door and the anxious family jumped to
open it. Two negro men entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded
upstairs toward the guest-room. Then followed a stupefying apparition
--a double-headed human creature with four arms, one body, and a single
pair of legs! It--or they, as you please--bowed with elaborate foreign
formality, but the Coopers could not respond immediately; they were
paralyzed. At this moment there came from the rear of the group a
fervent ejaculation--"My lan'!"--followed by a crash of crockery, and the
slave-wench Nancy stood petrified and staring, with a tray of wrecked
tea-things at her feet. The incident broke the spell, and brought the
family to consciousness. The beautiful heads of the new-comer bowed
again, and one of them said with easy grace and dignity:
"I crave the honor, madam and miss, to introduce to you my brother, Count
Luigi Capello," (the other head bowed) "and myself--Count Angelo; and at
the same time offer sincere apologies for the lateness of our coming,
which was unavoidable," and both heads bowed again.
The poor old lady was in a whirl of amazement and confusion, but she
managed to stammer out:
"I'm sure I'm glad to make your acquaintance, sir--I mean, gentlemen.
As for the delay, it is nothing, don't mention it. This is my daughter
Rowena, sir--gentlemen. Please step into the parlor and sit down and
have a bite and sup; you are dreadful wet and must be uncomfortable
--both of you, I mean."
But to the old lady's relief they courteously excused themselves, saying
it would be wrong to keep the family out of their beds longer; then each
head bowed in turn and uttered a friendly good night, and the singular
figure moved away in the wake of Rowena's small brothers, who bore
candles, and disappeared up the stairs.
The widow tottered into the parlor and sank into a chair with a gasp,
and Rowena followed, tongue-tied and dazed. The two sat silent in the
throbbing summer heat unconscious of the million-voiced music of the
mosquitoes, unconscious of the roaring gale, the lashing and thrashing of
the rain along the windows and the roof, the white glare of the
lightning, the tumultuous booming and bellowing of the thunder; conscious
of nothing but that prodigy, that uncanny apparition that had come and
gone so suddenly--that weird strange thing that was so soft-spoken and so
gentle of manner and yet had shaken them up like an earthquake with the
shock of its gruesome aspect. At last a cold little shudder quivered
along down the widow's meager frame and she said in a weak voice:
"Ugh, it was awful just the mere look of that phillipene!"
Rowena did not answer. Her faculties were still caked; she had not yet
found her voice. Presently the widow said, a little resentfully:
"Always been used to sleeping together--in-fact, prefer it. And I was
thinking it was to accommodate me. I thought it was very good of them,
whereas a person situated as that young man is--"
"Ma, you oughtn't to begin by getting up a prejudice against him.
I'm sure he is good-hearted and means well. Both of his faces show it."
"I'm not so certain about that. The one on the left--I mean the one on
it's left--hasn't near as good a face, in my opinion, as its brother."
"That's Luigi."
"Yes, Luigi; anyway it's the dark-skinned one; the one that was west of
his brother when they stood in the door. Up to all kinds of mischief and
disobedience when he was a boy, I'll be bound. I lay his mother had
trouble to lay her hand on him when she wanted him. But the one on the
right is as good as gold, I can see that."
"That's Angelo."
"Yes, Angelo, I reckon, though I can't tell t'other from which by their
names, yet awhile. But it's the right-hand one--the blond one. He has
such kind blue eyes, and curly copper hair and fresh complexion--"
"And such a noble face!--oh, it is a noble face, ma, just royal, you may
say! And beautiful deary me, how beautiful! But both are that; the dark
one's as beautiful as--a picture. There's no such wonderful faces and
handsome heads in this town none that even begin. And such hands,
especially Angelo's--so shapely and--"
"Stuff, how could you tell which they belonged to?--they had gloves on."
"Why, didn't I see them take off their hats?"
"That don't signify. They might have taken off each other's hats.
Nobody could tell. There was just a wormy squirming of arms in the air
--seemed to be a couple of dozen of them, all writhing at once, and it
just made me dizzy to see them go."
"Why, ma, I hadn't any difficulty. There's two arms on each shoulder--"
"There, now. One arm on each shoulder belongs to each of the creatures,
don't it? For a person to have two arms on one shoulder wouldn't do him
any good, would it? Of course not. Each has an arm on each shoulder.
Now then, you tell me which of them belongs to which, if you can. They
don't know, themselves--they just work whichever arm comes handy. Of
course they do; especially if they are in a hurry and can't stop to think
which belongs to which."
The mother seemed to have the rights of the argument, so the daughter
abandoned the struggle. Presently the widow rose with a yawn and said:
"Poor thing, I hope it won't catch cold; it was powerful wet, just
drenched, you may say. I hope it has left its boots outside, so they can
be dried."
Then she gave a little start, and looked perplexed.
"Now I remember I heard one of them ask Joe to call him at half after
seven--I think it was the one on the left--no, it was the one to the east
of the other one--but I didn't hear the other one say any thing. I
wonder if he wants to be called too. Do you reckon it's too late to
ask?"
"Why, ma, it's not necessary. Calling one is calling both. If one gets
up, the other's got to."
"Sho, of course; I never thought of that. Well, come along, maybe we can
get some sleep, but I don't know, I'm so shook up with what we've been
through."
The stranger had made an impression on the boys, too. They had a word of
talk as they were getting to bed. Henry, the gentle, the humane, said:
"I feel ever so sorry for it, don't you, Joe?"
But Joe was a boy of this world, active, enterprising, and had a
theatrical side to him:
"Sorry? Why, how you talk! It can't stir a step without attracting
attention. It's just grand!"
Henry said, reproachfully:
"Instead of pitying it, Joe, you talk as if--"
"Talk as if what? I know one thing mighty certain: if you can fix me so
I can eat for two and only have to stub toes for one, I ain't going to
fool away no such chance just for sentiment."
The twins were wet and tired, and they proceeded to undress without-any
preliminary remarks. The abundance of sleeve made the partnership coat
hard to get off, for it was like skinning a tarantula; but it came at
last, after much tugging and perspiring. The mutual vest followed. Then
the brothers stood up before the glass, and each took off his own cravat
and collar. The collars were of the standing kind, and came high up
under the ears, like the sides of a wheelbarrow, as required by the
fashion of the day. The cravats were as broad as a bank-bill, with
fringed ends which stood far out to right and left like the wings of a
dragon-fly, and this also was strictly in accordance with the fashion of
the time. Each cravat, as to color, was in perfect taste, so far as its
owner's complexion was concerned--a delicate pink, in the case of the
blond brother, a violent scarlet in the case of the brunette--but as a
combination they broke all the laws of taste known to civilization.
Nothing more fiendish and irreconcilable than those shrieking and
blaspheming colors could have been contrived, The wet boots gave no end
of trouble--to Luigi. When they were off at last, Angelo said, with
bitterness:
"I wish you wouldn't wear such tight boots, they hurt my feet."
Luigi answered with indifference:
"My friend, when I am in command of our body, I choose my apparel
according to my own convenience, as I have remarked more than several
times already. When you are in command, I beg you will do as you
please."
Angelo was hurt, and the tears came into his eyes. There was gentle
reproach in his voice, but, not anger, when he replied:
"Luigi, I often consult your wishes, but you never consult mine. When I
am in command I treat you as a guest; I try to make you feel at home;
when you are in command you treat me as an intruder, you make me feel
unwelcome. It embarrasses me cruelly in company, for I can, see that
people notice it and comment on it."
"Oh, damn the people," responded the brother languidly, and with the air
of one who is tired of the subject.
A slight shudder shook the frame of Angelo, but he said nothing and the
conversation ceased. Each buttoned his own share of the nightshirt in
silence; then Luigi, with Paine's Age of Reason in his hand, sat down in
one chair and put his feet in another and lit his pipe, while Angelo took
his Whole Duty of Man, and both began to read. Angelo presently began to
cough; his coughing increased and became mixed with gaspings for breath,
and he was finally obliged to make an appeal to his brother's humanity:
"Luigi, if you would only smoke a little milder tobacco, I am sure I
could learn not to mind it in time, but this is so strong, and the pipe
is so rank that--"
"Angelo, I wouldn't be such a baby! I have learned to smoke in a week,
and the trouble is already over with me; if you would try, you could
learn too, and then you would stop spoiling my comfort with your
everlasting complaints."
"Ah, brother, that is a strong word--everlasting--and isn't quite fair.
I only complain when I suffocate; you know I don't complain when we are
in the open air."
"Well, anyway, you could learn to smoke yourself."
"But my principles, Luigi, you forget my principles. You would not have
me do a thing which I regard as a sin?"
"Oh, bosh!"
The conversation ceased again, for Angelo was sick and discouraged and
strangling; but after some time he closed his book and asked Luigi to
sing "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" with him, but he would not, and
when he tried to sing by himself Luigi did his best to drown his
plaintive tenor with a rude and rollicking song delivered in a thundering
bass.
After the singing there was silence, and neither brother was happy.
Before blowing the light out Luigi swallowed half a tumbler of whisky,
and Angelo, whose sensitive organization could not endure intoxicants of
any kind, took a pill to keep it from giving him the headache.
CHAPTER II
MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP
The family sat in the breakfast-room waiting for the twins to come down.
The widow was quiet, the daughter was alive with happy excitement. She
said:
"Ah, they're a boon, ma, just a boon! on't you think so?"
"Laws, I hope so, I don't know."
"Why, ma, yes you do. They're so fine and handsome, and high-bred and
polite, so every way superior to our gawks here in this village; why,
they'll make life different from what it was--so humdrum and commonplace,
you know--oh, you may be sure they're full of accomplishments, and
knowledge of the world, and all that, that will be an immense advantage
to society here. Don't you think so, ma?"
"Mercy on me, how should I know, and I've hardly set eyes on them yet."
After a pause she added, "They made considerable noise after they went
up."
"Noise? Why, ma, they were singing! And it was beautiful, too."
"Oh, it was well enough, but too mixed-up, seemed to me."
"Now, ma, honor bright, did you ever hear 'Greenland's Icy Mountains'
sung sweeter--now did you?"
"If it had been sung by itself, it would have been uncommon sweet, I
don't deny it; but what they wanted to mix it up with 'Old Bob Ridley'
for, I can't make out. Why, they don't go together, at all. They are
not of the same nature. 'Bob Ridley' is a common rackety slam-bang
secular song, one of the rippingest and rantingest and noisiest there is.
I am no judge of music, and I don't claim it, but in my opinion nobody
can make those two songs go together right."
"Why, ma, I thought--"
"It don't make any difference what you thought, it can't be done. They
tried it, and to my mind it was a failure. I never heard such a crazy
uproar; seemed to me, sometimes, the roof would come off; and as for the
cats--well, I've lived a many a year, and seen cats aggravated in more
ways than one, but I've never seen cats take on the way they took on last
night."
"Well, I don't think that that goes for anything, ma, because it is the
nature of cats that any sound that is unusual--"
"Unusual! You may well call it so. Now if they are going to sing duets
every night, I do hope they will both sing the same tune at the same
time, for in my opinion a duet that is made up of two different tunes is
a mistake; especially when the tunes ain't any kin to one another, that
way."
"But, ma, I think it must be a foreign custom; and it must be right too;
and the best way, because they have had every opportunity to know what is
right, and it don't stand to reason that with their education they would
do anything but what the highest musical authorities have sanctioned.
You can't help but admit that, ma."
The argument was formidably strong; the old lady could not find any way
around it; so, after thinking it over awhile she gave in with a sigh of
discontent, and admitted that the daughter's position was probably
correct. Being vanquished, she had no mind to continue the topic at that
disadvantage, and was about to seek a change when a change came of
itself. A footstep was heard on the stairs, and she said:
"There-he's coming!"
"They, ma--you ought to say they--it's nearer right."
The new lodger, rather shoutingly dressed but looking superbly handsome,
stepped with courtly carnage into the trim little breakfast-room and put
out all his cordial arms at once, like one of those pocket-knives with a
multiplicity of blades, and shook hands with the whole family
simultaneously. He was so easy and pleasant and hearty that all
embarrassment presently thawed away and disappeared, and a cheery feeling
of friendliness and comradeship took its place. He--or preferably they
--were asked to occupy the seat of honor at the foot of the table. They
consented with thanks, and carved the beefsteak with one set of their
hands while they distributed it at the same time with the other set.
"Will you have coffee, gentlemen, or tea?"
"Coffee for Luigi, if you please, madam, tea for me."
"Cream and sugar?"
"For me, yes, madam; Luigi takes his coffee, black. Our natures differ a
good deal from each other, and our tastes also."
The first time the negro girl Nancy appeared in the door and saw the two
heads turned in opposite directions and both talking at once, then saw
the commingling arms feed potatoes into one mouth and coffee into the
other at the same time, she had to pause and pull herself out of a
faintness that came over her; but after that she held her grip and was
able to wait on the table with fair courage.
Conversation fell naturally into the customary grooves. It was a little
jerky, at first, because none of the family could get smoothly through a
sentence without a wabble in it here and a break there, caused by some
new surprise in the way of attitude or gesture on the part of the twins.
The weather suffered the most. The weather was all finished up and
disposed of, as a subject, before the simple Missourians had gotten
sufficiently wonted to the spectacle of one body feeding two heads to
feel composed and reconciled in the presence of so bizarre a miracle.
And even after everybody's mind became tranquilized there was still one
slight distraction left: the hand that picked up a biscuit carried it to
the wrong head, as often as any other way, and the wrong mouth devoured
it. This was a puzzling thing, and marred the talk a little. It
bothered the widow to such a degree that she presently dropped out of the
conversation without knowing it, and fell to watching and guessing and
talking to herself:
"Now that hand is going to take that coffee to no, it's gone to the other
mouth; I can't understand it; and how, here is the dark-complected hand
with a potato in its fork, I'll see what goes with it--there, the
light-complected head's got it, as sure as I live!"
Finally Rowena said:
"Ma, what is the matter with you? Are you dreaming about something?"
The old lady came to herself and blushed; then she explained with the
first random thing that came into her mind: "I saw Mr. Angelo take up Mr.
Luigi's coffee, and I thought maybe he--sha'n't I give you a cup, Mr.
Angelo?"
"Oh no, madam, I am very much obliged, but I never drink coffee, much as
I would like to. You did see me take up Luigi's cup, it is true, but if
you noticed, I didn't carry it to my mouth, but to his."
"Y-es, I thought you did: Did you mean to?"
"How?"
The widow was a little embarrassed again. She said:
"I don't know but what I'm foolish, and you mustn't mind; but you see,
he got the coffee I was expecting to see you drink, and you got a potato
that I thought he was going to get. So I thought it might be a mistake
all around, and everybody getting what wasn't intended for him."
Both twins laughed and Luigi said:
"Dear madam, there wasn't any mistake. We are always helping each other
that way. It is a great economy for us both; it saves time and labor.
We have a system of signs which nobody can notice or understand but
ourselves. If I am using both my hands and want some coffee, I make the
sign and Angelo furnishes it to me; and you saw that when he needed a
potato I delivered it."
"How convenient!"
"Yes, and often of the extremest value. Take the Mississippi boats, for
instance. They are always overcrowded. There is table-room for only
half of the passengers, therefore they have to set a second table for the
second half. The stewards rush both parties, they give them no time to
eat a satisfying meal, both divisions leave the table hungry. It isn't
so with us. Angelo books himself for the one table, I book myself for
the other. Neither of us eats anything at the other's table, but just
simply works--works. Thus, you see there are four hands to feed Angelo,
and the same four to feed me. Each of us eats two meals."
The old lady was dazed with admiration, and kept saying, "It is perfectly
wonderful, perfectly wonderful" and the boy Joe licked his chops
enviously, but said nothing--at least aloud.
"Yes," continued Luigi, "our construction may have its disadvantages--in
fact, has but it also has its compensations of one sort and another. Take
travel, for instance. Travel is enormously expensive, in all countries;
we have been obliged to do a vast deal of it--come, Angelo, don't put any
more sugar in your tea, I'm just over one indigestion and don't want
another right away--been obliged to do a deal of it, as I was saying.
Well, we always travel as one person, since we occupy but one seat; so we
save half the fare."
"How romantic!" interjected Rowena, with effusion.
"Yes, my dear young lady, and how practical too, and economical. In
Europe, beds in the hotels are not charged with the board, but
separately--another saving, for we stood to our rights and paid for the
one bed only. The landlords often insisted that as both of us occupied
the bed we ought--"
"No, they didn't," said Angelo. "They did it only twice, and in both
cases it was a double bed--a rare thing in Europe--and the double bed
gave them some excuse. Be fair to the landlords; twice doesn't
constitute 'often.'"
"Well, that depends--that depends. I knew a man who fell down a well
twice. He said he didn't mind the first time, but he thought the second
time was once too often. Have I misused that word, Mrs. Cooper?"
"To tell the truth, I was afraid you had, but it seems to look, now, like
you hadn't." She stopped, and was evidently struggling with the
difficult problem a moment, then she added in the tone of one who is
convinced without being converted, "It seems so, but I can't somehow tell
why."
Rowena thought Luigi's retort was wonderfully quick and bright, and she
remarked to herself with satisfaction that there wasn't any young native
of Dawson's Landing that could have risen to the occasion like that.
Luigi detected the applause in her face, and expressed his pleasure and
his thanks with his eyes; and so eloquently withal, that the girl was
proud and pleased, and hung out the delicate sign of it on her cheeks.
Luigi went on, with animation:
"Both of us get a bath for one ticket, theater seat for one ticket,
pew-rent is on the same basis, but at peep-shows we pay double."
"We have much to' be thankful for," said Angelo, impressively, with a
reverent light in his eye and a reminiscent tone in his voice, "we have
been greatly blessed. As a rule, what one of us has lacked, the other,
by the bounty of Providence, has been able to supply. My brother is
hardy, I am not; he is very masculine, assertive, aggressive; I am much
less so. I am subject to illness, he is never ill. I cannot abide
medicines, and cannot take them, but he has no prejudice against them,
and--"
"Why, goodness gracious," interrupted the widow, "when you are sick, does
he take the medicine for you?"
"Always, madam."
"Why, I never heard such a thing in my life! I think it's beautiful of
you."
"Oh, madam, it's nothing, don't mention it, it's really nothing at all."
"But I say it's beautiful, and I stick to it!" cried the widow, with a
speaking moisture in her eye.
"A well brother to take the medicine for his poor sick brother--I wish I
had such a son," and she glanced reproachfully at her boys. "I declare
I'll never rest till I've shook you by the hand," and she scrambled out
of her chair in a fever of generous enthusiasm, and made for the twins,
blind with her tears, and began to shake. The boy Joe corrected her:
"You're shaking the wrong one, ma."
This flurried her, but she made a swift change and went on shaking.
"Got the wrong one again, ma," said the boy.
"Oh, shut up, can't you!" said the widow, embarrassed and irritated.
"Give me all your hands, I want to shake them all; for I know you are
both just as good as you can be."
It was a victorious thought, a master-stroke of diplomacy, though that
never occurred to her and she cared nothing for diplomacy. She shook the
four hands in turn cordially, and went back to her place in a state of
high and fine exultation that made her look young and handsome.
"Indeed I owe everything to Luigi," said Angelo, affectionately.
"But for him I could not have survived our boyhood days, when we were
friendless and poor--ah, so poor! We lived from hand to mouth-lived on
the coarse fare of unwilling charity, and for weeks and weeks together
not a morsel of food passed my lips, for its character revolted me and I
could not eat it. But for Luigi I should have died. He ate for us
both."
"How noble!" sighed Rowena.
"Do you hear that?" said the widow, severely, to her boys. "Let it be an
example to you--I mean you, Joe."
Joe gave his head a barely perceptible disparaging toss and said: "Et for
both. It ain't anything I'd 'a' done it."
"Hush, if you haven't got any better manners than that. You don't see
the point at all. It wasn't good food."
"I don't care--it was food, and I'd 'a' et it if it was rotten."
"Shame! Such language! Can't you understand? They were starving
--actually starving--and he ate for both, and--"
"Shucks! you gimme a chance and I'll--"
"There, now--close your head! and don't you open it again till you're
asked."
[Angelo goes on and tells how his parents the Count and Countess had
to fly from Florence for political reasons, and died poor in Berlin
bereft of their great property by confiscation; and how he and Luigi
had to travel with a freak-show during two years and suffer
semi-starvation.]
"That hateful black-bread; but I seldom ate anything during that time;
that was poor Luigi's affair--"
"I'll never Mister him again!" cried the widow, with strong emotion,
"he's Luigi to me, from this out!"
"Thank you a thousand times, madam, a thousand times! though in truth I
don't deserve it."
"Ah, Luigi is always the fortunate one when honors are showering," said
Angelo, plaintively; "now what have I done, Mrs. Cooper, that you leave
me out? Come, you must strain a point in my favor."
"Call you Angelo? Why, certainly I will; what are you thinking of! In
the case of twins, why--"
"But, ma, you're breaking up the story--do let him go on."
"You keep still, Rowena Cooper, and he can go on all the better, I
reckon. One interruption don't hurt, it's two that makes the trouble."
"But you've added one, now, and that is three."
"Rowena! I will not allow you to talk back at me when you have got
nothing rational to say."
CHAPTER III
ANGELO IS BLUE
[After breakfast the whole village crowded in, and there was a grand
reception in honor of the twins; and at the close of it the gifted
"freak" captured everybody's admiration by sitting down at the piano and
knocking out a classic four-handed piece in great style. Then the judge
took it--or them--driving in his buggy and showed off his village.]
All along the streets the people crowded the windows and stared at the
amazing twins. Troops of small boys flocked after the buggy, excited and
yelling. At first the dogs showed no interest. They thought they merely
saw three men in a buggy--a matter of no consequence; but when they found
out the facts of the case, they altered their opinion pretty radically,
and joined the boys, expressing their minds as they came. Other dogs got
interested; indeed, all the dogs. It was a spirited sight to see them
come leaping fences, tearing around corners, swarming out of every
bystreet and alley. The noise they made was something beyond belief
--or praise. They did not seem to be moved by malice but only by
prejudice, the common human prejudice against lack of conformity. If the
twins turned their heads, they broke and fled in every direction, but
stopped at a safe distance and faced about; and then formed and came on
again as soon as the strangers showed them their back. Negroes and
farmers' wives took to the woods when the buggy came upon them suddenly,
and altogether the drive was pleasant and animated, and a refreshment all
around.
[It was a long and lively drive. Angelo was a Methodist, Luigi was
a Free-thinker. The judge was very proud of his Freethinkers'
Society, which was flourishing along in a most prosperous way and
already had two members--himself and the obscure and neglected
Pudd'nhead Wilson. It was to meet that evening, and he invited
Luigi to join; a thing which Luigi was glad to do, partly because it
would please himself, and partly because it would gravel Angelo.]
They had now arrived at the widow's gate, and the excursion was ended.
The twins politely expressed their obligations for the pleasant outing
which had been afforded them; to which the judge bowed his thanks,
and then said he would now go and arrange for the Free-thinkers' meeting,
and would call for Count Luigi in the evening.
"For you also, dear sir," he added hastily, turning to Angelo and bowing.
"In addressing myself particularly to your brother, I was not meaning to
leave you out. It was an unintentional rudeness, I assure you, and due
wholly to accident--accident and preoccupation. I beg you to forgive
me."
His quick eye had seen the sensitive blood mount into Angelo's face,
betraying the wound that had been inflicted. The sting of the slight had
gone deep, but the apology was so prompt, and so evidently sincere, that
the hurt was almost immediately healed, and a forgiving smile testified
to the kindly judge that all was well again.
Concealed behind Angelo's modest and unassuming exterior, and unsuspected
by any but his intimates, was a lofty pride, a pride of almost abnormal
proportions, indeed, and this rendered him ever the prey of slights; and
although they were almost always imaginary ones, they hurt none the less
on that account. By ill fortune judge Driscoll had happened to touch his
sorest point, i.e., his conviction that his brother's presence was
welcomer everywhere than his own; that he was often invited, out of mere
courtesy, where only his brother was wanted, and that in a majority of
cases he would not be included in an invitation if he could be left out
without offense. A sensitive nature like this is necessarily subject to
moods; moods which traverse the whole gamut of feeling; moods which know
all the climes of emotion, from the sunny heights of joy to the black
abysses of despair. At times, in his seasons of deepest depressions,
Angelo almost wished that he and his brother might become segregated from
each other and be separate individuals, like other men. But of course as
soon as his mind cleared and these diseased imaginings passed away, he
shuddered at the repulsive thought, and earnestly prayed that it might
visit him no more. To be separate, and as other men are! How awkward it
would seem; how unendurable. What would he do with his hands, his arms?
How would his legs feel? How odd, and strange, and grotesque every
action, attitude, movement, gesture would be. To sleep by himself, eat
by himself, walk by himself--how lonely, how unspeakably lonely! No, no,
any fate but that. In every way and from every point, the idea was
revolting.
This was of course natural; to have felt otherwise would have been
unnatural. He had known no life but a combined one; he had been familiar
with it from his birth; he was not able to conceive of any other as being
agreeable, or even bearable. To him, in the privacy of his secret
thoughts, all other men were monsters, deformities: and during
three-fourths of his life their aspect had filled him with what promised
to be an unconquerable aversion. But at eighteen his eye began to take
note of female beauty; and little by little, undefined longings grew up
in his heart, under whose softening influences the old stubborn aversion
gradually diminished, and finally disappeared. Men were still
monstrosities to him, still deformities, and in his sober moments he had
no desire to be like them, but their strange and unsocial and uncanny
construction was no longer offensive to him.
This had been a hard day for him, physically and mentally. He had been
called in the morning before he had quite slept off the effects of the
liquor which Luigi had drunk; and so, for the first half-hour had had the
seedy feeling, and languor, the brooding depression, the cobwebby mouth
and druggy taste that come of dissipation and are so ill a preparation
for bodily or intellectual activities; the long violent strain of the
reception had followed; and this had been followed, in turn, by the
dreary sight-seeing, the judge's wearying explanations and laudations of
the sights, and the stupefying clamor of the dogs. As a congruous
conclusion, a fitting end, his feelings had been hurt, a slight had been
put upon him. He would have been glad to forego dinner and betake
himself to rest and sleep, but he held his peace and said no word, for he
knew his brother, Luigi, was fresh, unweary, full of life, spirit,
energy; he would have scoffed at the idea of wasting valuable time on a
bed or a sofa, and would have refused permission.
CHAPTER IV
SUPERNATURAL CHRONOMETRY
Rowena was dining out, Joe and Harry were belated at play, there
were but three chairs and four persons that noon at the home
dinner-table--the twins, the widow, and her chum, Aunt Betsy Hale. The
widow soon perceived that Angelo's spirits were as low as Luigi's were
high, and also that he had a jaded look. Her motherly solicitude was
aroused, and she tried to get him interested in the talk and win him
to a happier frame of mind, but the cloud of sadness remained on his
countenance. Luigi lent his help, too. He used a form and a phrase which
he was always accustomed to employ in these circumstances. He gave his
brother an affectionate slap on the shoulder and said, encouragingly:
"Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!"
But this did no good. It never did. If anything, it made the matter
worse, as a rule, because it irritated Angelo. This made it a favorite
with Luigi. By and by the widow said:
"Angelo, you are tired, you've overdone yourself; you go right to bed
after dinner, and get a good nap and a rest, then you'll be all right."
"Indeed, I would give anything if I could do that, madam."
"And what's to hender, I'd like to know? Land, the room's yours to do
what you please with! The idea that you can't do what you like with your
own!"
"But, you see, there's one prime essential--an essential of the very
first importance--which isn't my own."
"What is that?"
"My body."
The old ladies looked puzzled, and Aunt Betsy Hale said:
"Why bless your heart, how is that?"
"It's my brother's."
"Your brother's! I don't quite understand. I supposed it belonged to
both of you."
"So it does. But not to both at the same time."
"That is mighty curious; I don't see how it can be. I shouldn't think it
could be managed that way."
"Oh, it's a good enough arrangement, and goes very well; in fact, it
wouldn't do to have it otherwise. I find that the teetotalers and the
anti-teetotalers hire the use of the same hall for their meetings. Both
parties don't use it at the same time, do they?"
"You bet they don't!" said both old ladies in a breath.
"And, moreover," said Aunt Betsy, "the Freethinkers and the Baptist Bible
class use the same room over the Market house, but you can take my word
for it they don't mush up together and use it at the same time.'
"Very well," said Angelo, "you understand it now. And it stands to
reason that the arrangement couldn't be improved. I'll prove it to you.
If our legs tried to obey two wills, how could we ever get anywhere?
I would start one way, Luigi would start another, at the same moment
--the result would be a standstill, wouldn't it?"
"As sure as you are born! Now ain't that wonderful! A body would never
have thought of it."
"We should always be arguing and fussing and disputing over the merest
trifles. We should lose worlds of time, for we couldn't go down-stairs
or up, couldn't go to bed, couldn't rise, couldn't wash, couldn't dress,
couldn't stand up, couldn't sit down, couldn't even cross our legs,
without calling a meeting first and explaining the case and passing
resolutions, and getting consent. It wouldn't ever do--now would it?"
"Do? Why, it would wear a person out in a week! Did you ever hear
anything like it, Patsy Cooper?"
"Oh, you'll find there's more than one thing about them that ain't
commonplace," said the widow, with the complacent air of a person with a
property right in a novelty that is under admiring scrutiny.
"Well, now, how ever do you manage it? I don't mind saying I'm suffering
to know."
"He who made us," said Angelo reverently, "and with us this difficulty,
also provided a way out of it. By a mysterious law of our being, each of
us has utter and indisputable command of our body a week at a time, turn
and turn about."
"Well, I never! Now ain't that beautiful!"
"Yes, it is beautiful and infinitely wise and just. The week ends every
Saturday at midnight to the minute, to the second, to the last shade of
a fraction of a second, infallibly, unerringly, and in that instant the
one brother's power over the body vanishes and the other brother takes
possession, asleep or awake."
"How marvelous are His ways, and past finding out!"
Luigi said: "So exactly to the instant does the change come, that during
our stay in many of the great cities of the world, the public clocks were
regulated by it; and as hundreds of thousands of private clocks and
watches were set and corrected in accordance with the public clocks, we
really furnished the standard time for the entire city."
"Don't tell me that He don't do miracles any more! Blowing down the
walls of Jericho with rams' horns wa'n't as difficult, in my opinion."
"And that is not all," said Angelo. "A thing that is even more
marvelous, perhaps, is the fact that the change takes note of longitude
and fits itself to the meridian we are on. Luigi is in command this
week. Now, if on Saturday night at a moment before midnight we could fly
in an instant to a point fifteen degrees west of here, he would hold
possession of the power another hour, for the change observes local time
and no other."
Betsy Hale was deeply impressed, and said with solemnity:
"Patsy Cooper, for detail it lays over the Passage of the Red Sea."
"Now, I shouldn't go as far as that," said Aunt Patsy, "but if you've a
mind to say Sodom and Gomorrah, I am with you, Betsy Hale."
"I am agreeable, then, though I do think I was right, and I believe
Parson Maltby would say the same. Well, now, there's another thing.
Suppose one of you wants to borrow the legs a minute from the one that's
got them, could he let him?"
"Yes, but we hardly ever do that. There were disagreeable results,
several times, and so we very seldom ask or grant the privilege,
nowadays, and we never even think of such a thing unless the case is
extremely urgent. Besides, a week's possession at a time seems so little
that we can't bear to spare a minute of it. People who have the use of
their legs all the time never think of what a blessing it is, of course.
It never occurs to them; it's just their natural ordinary condition,
and so it does not excite them at all. But when I wake up, on Sunday
morning, and it's my week and I feel the power all through me, oh, such a
wave of exultation and thanksgiving goes surging over me, and I want to
shout 'I can walk! I can walk!' Madam, do you ever, at your uprising,
want to shout 'I can walk! I can walk!'?"
"No, you poor unfortunate cretur', but I'll never get out of my bed again
without doing it! Laws, to think I've had this unspeakable blessing all
my long life and never had the grace to thank the good Lord that gave it
to me!"
Tears stood in the eyes of both the old ladies and the widow said,
softly:
"Betsy Hale, we have learned something, you and me."
The conversation now drifted wide, but by and by floated back once more
to that admired detail, the rigid and beautiful impartiality with which
the possession of power had been distributed, between the twins. Aunt
Betsy saw in it a far finer justice than human law exhibits in related
cases. She said:
"In my opinion it ain't right no, and never has been right, the way a
twin born a quarter of a minute sooner than the other one gets all the
land and grandeurs and nobilities in the old countries and his brother
has to go bare and be a nobody. Which of you was born first?"
Angelo's head was resting against Luigi's; weariness had overcome him,
and for the past five minutes he had been peacefully sleeping. The old
ladies had dropped their voices to a lulling drone, to help him to steal
the rest his brother wouldn't take him up-stairs to get. Luigi listened
a moment to Angelo's regular breathing, then said in a voice barely
audible:
"We were both born at the same time, but I am six months older than he
is."
"For the land's sake!"
"'Sh! on't wake him up; he wouldn't like my telling this. It has
always been kept secret till now."
"But how in the world can it be? If you were both born at the same time,
how can one of you be older than the other?"
"It is very simple, and I assure you it is true. I was born with a full
crop of hair, he was as bald as an egg for six months. I could walk six
months before he could make a step. I finished teething six months ahead
of him. I began to take solids six months before he left the breast.
I began to talk six months before he could say a word. Last, and
absolutely unassailable proof, the sutures in my skull closed six months
ahead of his. Always just that six months' difference to a day. Was
that accident? Nobody is going to claim that, I'm sure. It was ordained
it was law it had its meaning, and we know what that meaning was. Now
what does this overwhelming body of evidence establish? It establishes
just one thing, and that thing it establishes beyond any peradventure
whatever. Friends, we would not have it known for the world, and I must
beg you to keep it strictly to yourselves, but the truth is, we are no
more twins than you are."
The two old ladies were stunned, paralyzed-petrified, one may almost say
--and could only sit and gaze vacantly at each other for some moments;
then Aunt Betsy Hale said impressively:
"There's no getting around proof like that. I do believe it's the most
amazing thing I ever heard of." She sat silent a moment or two and
breathing hard with excitement, then she looked up and surveyed the
strangers steadfastly a little while, and added: "Well, it does beat me,
but I would have took you for twins anywhere."
"So would I, so would I," said Aunt Patsy with the emphasis of a
certainty that is not impaired by any shade of doubt.
"Anybody would-anybody in the world, I don't care who he is," said Aunt
Betsy with decision.
"You won't tell," said Luigi, appealingly.
"Oh, dear, no!" answered both ladies promptly, "you can trust us, don't
you be afraid."
"That is good of you, and kind. Never let on; treat us always as if we
were twins."
"You can depend on us," said Aunt Betsy, "but it won't be easy, because
now that I know you ain't you don't seem so."
Luigi muttered to himself with satisfaction: "That swindle has gone
through without change of cars."
It was not very kind of him to load the poor things up with a secret like
that, which would be always flying to their tongues' ends every time they
heard any one speak of the strangers as twins, and would become harder
and harder to hang on to with every recurrence of the temptation to tell
it, while the torture of retaining it would increase with every new
strain that was applied; but he never thought of that, and probably would
not have worried much about it if he had.
A visitor was announced--some one to see the twins. They withdrew to the
parlor, and the two old ladies began to discuss with interest the strange
things which they had been listening to. When they had finished the
matter to their satisfaction, and Aunt Betsy rose to go, she stopped to
ask a question:
"How does things come on between Roweny and Tom Driscoll?"
"Well, about the same. He writes tolerable often, and she answers
tolerable seldom."
"Where is he?"
"In St. Louis, I believe, though he's such a gadabout that a body can't
be very certain of him, I reckon."
"Don't Roweny know?"
"Oh, yes, like enough. I haven't asked her lately."
"Do you know how him and the judge are getting along now?"
"First rate, I believe. Mrs. Pratt says so; and being right in the
house, and sister to the one and aunt to t'other, of course she ought to
know. She says the judge is real fond of him when he's away; but frets
when he's around and is vexed with his ways, and not sorry to have him go
again. He has been gone three weeks this time--a pleasant thing for both
of them, I reckon."
"Tom's rather harum-scarum, but there ain't anything bad in him, I
guess."
"Oh, no, he's just young, that's all. Still, twenty-three is old, in one
way. A young man ought to be earning his living by that time. If Tom
were doing that, or was even trying to do it, the judge would be a heap
better satisfied with him. Tom's always going to begin, but somehow he
can't seem to find just the opening he likes."
"Well, now, it's partly the judge's own fault. Promising the boy his
property wasn't the way to set him to earning a fortune of his own. But
what do you think is Roweny beginning to lean any toward him, or ain't
she?"
Aunt Patsy had a secret in her bosom; she wanted to keep it there, but
nature was too strong for her. She drew Aunt Betsy aside, and said in
her most confidential and mysterious manner:
"Don't you breathe a syllable to a soul--I'm going to tell you something.
In my opinion Tom Driscoll's chances were considerable better yesterday
than they are to-day."
"Patsy Cooper, what do you mean?"
"It's so, as sure as you're born. I wish you could 'a' been at breakfast
and seen for yourself."
"You don't mean it!"
"Well, if I'm any judge, there's a leaning--there's a leaning, sure."
"My land! Which one of 'em is it?"
"I can't say for certain, but I think it's the youngest one--Anjy."
Then there were hand-shakings, and congratulations, and hopes, and so on,
and the old ladies parted, perfectly happy--the one in knowing something
which the rest of the town didn't, and the other in having been the sole
person able to furnish that knowledge.
The visitor who had called to see the twins was the Rev. Mr. Hotchkiss,
pastor of the Baptist church. At the reception Angelo had told him he
had lately experienced a change in his religious views, and was now
desirous of becoming a Baptist, and would immediately join Mr.
Hotchkiss's church. There was no time to say more, and the brief talk
ended at that point. The minister was much gratified, and had dropped in
for a moment now, to invite the twins to attend his Bible class at eight
that evening. Angelo accepted, and was expecting Luigi to decline, but
he did not, because he knew that the Bible class and the Freethinkers met
in the same room, and he wanted to treat his brother to the embarrassment
of being caught in free-thinking company.
CHAPTER V
GUILT AND INNOCENCE FINELY BLENT
[A long and vigorous quarrel follows, between the twins. And there is
plenty to quarrel about, for Angelo was always seeking truth, and this
obliged him to change and improve his religion with frequency, which
wearied Luigi, and annoyed him too; for he had to be present at each new
enlistment--which placed him in the false position of seeming to indorse
and approve his brother's fickleness; moreover, he had to go to Angelo's
prohibition meetings, and he hated them. On the other hand, when it was
his week to command the legs he gave Angelo just cause of complaint, for
he took him to circuses and horse-races and fandangoes, exposing him to
all sorts of censure and criticism; and he drank, too; and whatever he
drank went to Angelo's head instead of his own and made him act
disgracefully. When the evening was come, the two attended the
Free-thinkers' meeting, where Angelo was sad and silent; then came the
Bible class and looked upon him coldly, finding him in such company.
Then they went to Wilson's house and Chapter XI of Pudd'nhead Wilson
follows, which tells of the girl seen in Tom Driscoll's room; and closes
with the kicking of Tom by Luigi at the anti-temperance mass-meeting of
the Sons of Liberty; with the addition of some account of Roxy's
adventures as a chamber-maid on a Mississippi boat. Her exchange of the
children had been flippantly and farcically described in an earlier
chapter.]
Next morning all the town was a-buzz with great news; Pudd'nhead Wilson
had a law case! The, public astonishment was so great and the public
curiosity so intense, that when the justice of the peace opened his
court, the place was packed with people and even the windows were full.
Everybody was, flushed and perspiring; the summer heat was almost
unendurable.
Tom Driscoll had brought a charge of assault and battery against the
twins. Robert Allen was retained by Driscoll, David Wilson by the
defense. Tom, his native cheerfulness unannihilated by his back-breaking
and bone-bruising passage across the massed heads of the Sons of Liberty
the previous night, laughed his little customary laugh, and said to
Wilson:
"I've kept my promise, you see; I'm throwing my business your way.
Sooner than I was expecting, too."
"It's very good of you--particularly if you mean to keep it up."
"Well, I can't tell about that yet. But we'll see. If I find you
deserve it I'll take you under my protection and make your fame and
fortune for you."
"I'll try to deserve it, Tom."
A jury was sworn in; then Mr. Allen said:
"We will detain your honor but a moment with this case. It is not one
where any doubt of the fact of the assault can enter in. These
gentlemen--the accused--kicked my client at the Market Hall last night;
they kicked him with violence; with extraordinary violence; with even
unprecedented violence, I may say; insomuch that he was lifted entirely
off his feet and discharged into the midst of the audience. We can prove
this by four hundred witnesses--we shall call but three. Mr. Harkness
will take the stand."
Mr. Harkness, being sworn, testified that he was chairman upon the
occasion mentioned; that he was close at hand and saw the defendants in
this action kick the plaintiff into the air and saw him descend among the
audience.
"Take the witness," said Allen.
"Mr. Harkness," said Wilson, "you say you saw these gentlemen, my
clients, kick the plaintiff. Are you sure--and please remember that you
are on oath--are you perfectly sure that you saw both of them kick him,
or only one? Now be careful."
A bewildered look began to spread itself over the witness's face. He
hesitated, stammered, but got out nothing. His eyes wandered to the
twins and fixed themselves there with a vacant gaze.
"Please answer, Mr. Harkness, you are keeping the court waiting. It is
a very simple question."
Counsel for the prosecution broke in with impatience:
"Your honor, the question is an irrelevant triviality. Necessarily, they
both kicked him, for they have but the one pair of legs, and both are
responsible for them."
Wilson said, sarcastically:
"Will your honor permit this new witness to be sworn? He seems to
possess knowledge which can be of the utmost value just at this moment
--knowledge which would at once dispose of what every one must see is a
very difficult question in this case. Brother Allen, will you take the
stand?"
"Go on with your case!" said Allen, petulantly. The audience laughed,
and got a warning from the court.
"Now, Mr. Harkness," said Wilson, insinuatingly, "we shall have to insist
upon an answer to that question."
"I--er--well, of course, I do not absolutely know, but in my opinion--"
"Never mind your opinion, sir--answer the question."
"I--why, I can't answer it."
"That will do, Mr. Harkness. Stand down."
The audience tittered, and the discomfited witness retired in a state of
great embarrassment.
Mr. Wakeman took the stand and swore that he saw the twins kick the
plaintiff off the platform.
The defense took the witness.
"Mr. Wakeman, you have sworn that you saw these gentlemen kick the
plaintiff. Do I understand you to swear that you saw them both do it?"
"Yes, sir,"--with derision.
"How do you know that both did it?"
"Because I saw them do it."
The audience laughed, and got another warning from the court.
"But by what means do you know that both, and not one, did it?"
"Well, in the first place, the insult was given to both of them equally,
for they were called a pair of scissors. Of course they would both want
to resent it, and so--"
"Wait! You are theorizing now. Stick to facts--counsel will attend to
the arguments. Go on."
"Well, they both went over there--that I saw."
"Very good. Go on."
"And they both kicked him--I swear to it."
"Mr. Wakeman, was Count Luigi, here, willing to join the Sons of Liberty
last night?"
"Yes, sir, he was. He did join, too, and drank a glass or two of whisky,
like a man."
"Was his brother willing to join?"
"No, sir, he wasn't. He is a teetotaler, and was elected through a
mistake."
"Was he given a glass of whisky?"
"Yes, sir, but of course that was another mistake, and not intentional.
He wouldn't drink it. He set it down." A slight pause, then he added,
casually and quite simply: "The plaintiff reached for it and hogged it."
There was a fine outburst of laughter, but as the justice was caught out
himself, his reprimand was not very vigorous.
Mr. Allen jumped up and exclaimed: "I protest against these foolish
irrelevancies. What have they to do with the case?"
Wilson said: "Calm yourself, brother, it was only an experiment. Now,
Mr. Wakeman, if one of these gentlemen chooses to join an association and
the other doesn't; and if one of them enjoys whisky and the other
doesn't, but sets it aside and leaves it unprotected" (titter from the
audience), "it seems to show that they have independent minds, and
tastes, and preferences, and that one of them is able to approve of a
thing at the very moment that the other is heartily disapproving of it.
Doesn't it seem so to you?"
"Certainly it does. It's perfectly plain."
"Now, then, it might be--I only say it might be--that one of these
brothers wanted to kick the plaintiff last night, and that the other
didn't want that humiliating punishment inflicted upon him in that public
way and before all those people. Isn't that possible?"
"Of course it is. It's more than possible. I don't believe the blond
one would kick anybody. It was the other one that--"
"Silence!" shouted the plaintiff's counsel, and went on with an angry
sentence which was lost in the wave of laughter that swept the house.
"That will do, Mr. Wakeman," said Wilson, "you may stand down."
The third witness was called. He had seen the twins kick the plaintiff.
Mr. Wilson took the witness.
"Mr. Rogers, you say you saw these accused gentlemen kick the plaintiff?"
"Yes, sir."
"Both of them?"
"Yes, sir."
"Which of them kicked him first?"
"Why--they--they both kicked him at the same time.
"Are you perfectly sure of that?"
"Yes, sir."
"What makes you sure of it?"
"Why, I stood right behind them, and saw them do it."
"How many kicks were delivered?"
"Only one."
"If two men kick, the result should be two kicks, shouldn't it?"
"Why--why yes, as a rule."
"Then what do you think went with the other kick?"
"I--well--the fact is, I wasn't thinking of two being necessary, this
time."
"What do you think now?"
"Well, I--I'm sure I don't quite know what to think, but I reckon that
one of them did half of the kick and the other one did the other half."
Somebody in the crowd sung out: "It's the first sane thing that any of
them has said."
The audience applauded. The judge said: "Silence! or I will clear the
court."
Mr. Allen looked pleased, but Wilson did not seem disturbed. He said:
"Mr. Rogers, you have favored us with what you think and what you reckon,
but as thinking and reckoning are not evidence, I will now give you a
chance to come out with something positive, one way or the other, and
shall require you to produce it. I will ask the accused to stand up and
repeat the phenomenal kick of last night." The twins stood up. "Now,
Mr. Rogers, please stand behind them."
A Voice: "No, stand in front!" (Laughter. Silenced by the court.)
Another Voice: "No, give Tommy another highst!" (Laughter. Sharply
rebuked by the court.)
"Now, then, Mr. Rogers, two kicks shall be delivered, one after the
other, and I give you my word that at least one of the two shall be
delivered by one of the twins alone, without the slightest assistance
from his brother. Watch sharply, for you have of to render a decision
without any if's and ands it." Rogers bent himself behind the twins with
palms just above his knees, in the modern attitude of the catcher at a
baseball match, and riveted eyes on the pair of legs in front of him.
"Are you ready, Mr. Rogers?"
"Ready sir."
The kick, launched.
"Have you got that one classified, Mr. Rogers?"
"Let me study a minute, sir."
"Take as much time as you please. Let me know when you are ready."
For as much as a minute Rogers pondered, with all eyes and a breathless
interest fastened upon him. Then he gave the word: "Ready, sir."
"Kick!"
The kick that followed was an exact duplicate of the first one.
"Now, then, Mr. Rogers, one of those kicks was an individual kick, not a
mutual one. You will now state positively which was the mutual one."
The witness said, with a crestfallen look:
"I've got to give it up. There ain't any man in the world that could
tell t'other from which, sir."
"Do you still assert that last night's kick was a mutual kick?"
"Indeed, I don't, sir."
"That will do, Mr. Rogers. If my brother Allen desires to address the
court, your honor, very well; but as far as I am concerned I am ready to
let the case be at once delivered into the hands of this intelligent jury
without comment."
Mr. Justice Robinson had been in office only two months, and in that
short time had not had many cases to try, of course. He had no knowledge
of laws and courts except what he had picked up since he came into
office. He was a sore trouble to the lawyers, for his rulings were
pretty eccentric sometimes, and he stood by them with Roman simplicity
and fortitude; but the people were well satisfied with him, for they saw
that his intentions were always right, that he was entirely impartial,
and that he usually made up in good sense what he lacked in technique,
so to speak. He now perceived that there was likely to be a miscarriage
of justice here, and he rose to the occasion.
"Wait a moment, gentlemen," he said, "it is plain that an assault has
been committed it is plain to anybody; but the way things are going, the
guilty will certainly escape conviction. I can not allow this. Now---"
"But, your honor!" said Wilson, interrupting him, earnestly but
respectfully, "you are deciding the case yourself, whereas the jury--"
"Never mind the jury, Mr. Wilson; the jury will have a chance when there
is a reasonable doubt for them to take hold of--which there isn't,
so far. There is no doubt whatever that an assault has been committed.
The attempt to show that both of the accused committed it has failed.
Are they both to escape justice on that account? Not in this court,
if I can prevent it. It appears to have been a mistake to bring the
charge against them as a corporation; each should have been charged in
his capacity as an individual, and--"
"But, your honor!" said Wilson, "in fairness to my clients I must insist
that inasmuch as the prosecution 'd not separate the--"
"No wrong will be done your clients, sir--they will be protected;
also the public and the offended laws. Mr. Allen, you will amend your
pleadings, and put one of the accused on trial at a time."
Wilson broke in: "But, your honor! this is wholly unprecedented!
To imperil an accused person by arbitrarily altering and widening the
charge against him in order to compass his conviction when the charge as
originally brought promises to fail to convict, is a thing unheard of
before."
"Unheard of where?"
"In the courts of this or any other state."
The judge said with dignity: "I am not acquainted with the customs of
other courts, and am not concerned to know what they are. I am
responsible for this court, and I cannot conscientiously allow my
judgment to be warped and my judicial liberty hampered by trying to
conform to the caprices of other courts, be they--"
"But, your honor, the oldest and highest courts in Europe--"
"This court is not run on the European plan, Mr. Wilson; it is not run on
any plan but its own. It has a plan of its own; and that plan is,
to find justice for both State and accused, no matter what happens to be
practice and custom in Europe or anywhere else." (Great applause.)
"Silence! It has not been the custom of this court to imitate other
courts; it has not been the custom of this court to take shelter behind
the decisions of other courts, and we will not begin now. We will do the
best we can by the light that God has given us, and while this 'court
continues to have His approval, it will remain indifferent to what other
organizations may think of it." (Applause.) "Gentlemen, I must have
order!--quiet yourselves! Mr. Allen, you will now proceed against the
prisoners one at a time. Go on with the case."
Allen was not at his ease. However, after whispering a moment with his
client and with one or two other people, he rose and said:
"Your honor, I find it to be reported and believed that the accused are
able to act independently in many ways, but that this independence does
not extend to their legs, authority over their legs being vested
exclusively in the one brother during a specific term of days, and then
passing to the other brother for a like term, and so on, by regular
alternation. I could call witnesses who would prove that the accused had
revealed to them the existence of this extraordinary fact, and had also
made known which of them was in possession of the legs yesterday--and
this would, of course, indicate where the guilt of the assault belongs
--but as this would be mere hearsay evidence, these revelations not
having been made under oath"
"Never mind about that, Mr. Allen. It may not all be hearsay. We shall
see. It may at least help to put us on the right track. Call the
witnesses."
"Then I will call Mr. John Buckstone, who is now present, and I beg that
Mrs. Patsy Cooper may be sent for. Take the stand, Mr. Buckstone."
Buckstone took the oath, and then testified that on the previous evening
the Count Angelo Capello had protested against going to the hall, and had
called all present to witness that he was going by compulsion and would
not go if he could help himself. Also, that the Count Luigi had replied
sharply that he would go, just the same, and that he, Count Luigi, would
see to that himself. Also, that upon Count Angelo's complaining about
being kept on his legs so long, Count Luigi retorted with apparent
surprise, "Your legs!--I like your impudence!"
"Now we are getting at the kernel of the thing," observed the judge, with
grave and earnest satisfaction. "It looks as if the Count Luigi was in
possession of the battery at the time of the assault."
Nothing further was elicited from Mr. Buckstone on direct examination.
Mr. Wilson took the witness.
"Mr. Buckstone, about what time was it that that conversation took
place?"
"Toward nine yesterday evening, sir."
"Did you then proceed directly to the hall?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long did it take you to go there?"
"Well, we walked; and as it was from the extreme edge of the town, and
there was no hurry, I judge it took us about twenty minutes, maybe a
trifle more."
"About what hour was the kick delivered?"
"About thirteen minutes and a half to ten."
"Admirable! You are a pattern witness, Mr. Buckstone. How did you
happen to look at your watch at that particular moment?"
"I always do it when I see an assault. It's likely I shall be called as
a witness, and it's a good point to have."
"It would be well if others were as thoughtful. Was anything said,
between the conversation at my house and the assault, upon the detail
which we are now examining into?"
"No, sir."
"If power over the mutual legs was in the possession of one brother at
nine, and passed into the possession of the other one during the next
thirty or forty minutes, do you think you could have detected the
change?"
"By no means!"
"That is all, Mr. Buckstone."
Mrs. Patsy Cooper was called. The crowd made way for her, and she came
smiling and bowing through the narrow human lane, with Betsy Hale, as
escort and support, smiling and bowing in her wake, the audience breaking
into welcoming cheers as the old favorites filed along. The judge did
not check this kindly demonstration of homage and affection, but let it
run its course unrebuked.
The old ladies stopped and shook hands with the twins with effusion, then
gave the judge a friendly nod, and bustled into the seats provided for
them. They immediately began to deliver a volley of eager questions at
the friends around them: "What is this thing for?" "What is that thing
for?" "Who is that young man that's writing at the desk? Why, I
declare, it's Jack Bunce! I thought he was sick." "Which is the jury?
Why, is that the jury? Billy Price and Job Turner, and Jack Lounsbury,
and--well, I never!" "Now who would ever 'a' thought--"
But they were gently called to order at this point, and asked not to talk
in court. Their tongues fell silent, but the radiant interest in their
faces remained, and their gratitude for the blessing of a new sensation
and a novel experience still beamed undimmed from their eyes. Aunt Patsy
stood up and took the oath, and Mr. Allen explained the point in issue,
and asked her to go on now, in her own way, and throw as much light upon
it as she could. She toyed with her reticule a moment or two, as if
considering where to begin, then she said:
"Well, the way of it is this. They are Luigi's legs a week at a time,
and then they are Angelo's, and he can do whatever he wants to with
them."
"You are making a mistake, Aunt Patsy Cooper," said the judge. "You
shouldn't state that as a fact, because you don't know it to be a fact."
"What's the reason I don't?" said Aunt Patsy, bridling a little.
"What is the reason that you do know it?"
"The best in the world because they told me."
"That isn't a reason."
"Well, for the land's sake! Betsy Hale, do you hear that?"
"Hear it? I should think so," said Aunt Betsy, rising and facing the
court. "Why, Judge, I was there and heard it myself. Luigi says to
Angelo--no, it was Angelo said it to--"
"Come, come, Mrs. Hale, pray sit down, and--"
"Certainly, it's all right, I'm going to sit down presently, but not
until I've--"
"But you must sit down!"
"Must! Well, upon my word if things ain't getting to a pretty pass
when--"
The house broke into laughter, but was promptly brought to order, and
meantime Mr. Allen persuaded the old lady to take her seat. Aunt Patsy
continued:
"Yes, they told me that, and I know it's true. They're Luigi's legs this
week, but--"
"Ah, they told you that, did they?" said the Justice, with interest.
"Well, no, I don't know that they told me, but that's neither here nor
there. I know, without that, that at dinner yesterday, Angelo was as
tired as a dog, and yet Luigi wouldn't lend him the legs to go up-stairs
and take a nap with."
"Did he ask for them?"
"Let me see--it seems to me, somehow, that--that--Aunt Betsy, do you
remember whether he--"
"Never mind about what Aunt Betsy remembers--she is not a witness; we
only want to know what you remember yourself," said the judge.
"Well, it does seem to, me that you are most cantankerously particular
about a little thing, Sim Robinson. Why, when I can't remember a thing
myself, I always--"
"Ah, please go on!"
"Now how can she when you keep fussing at her all the time?" said Aunt
Betsy. "Why, with a person pecking at me that way, I should get that
fuzzled and fuddled that--"
She was on her feet again, but Allen coaxed her into her seat once more,
while the court squelched the mirth of the house. Then the judge said:
"Madam, do you know--do you absolutely know, independently of anything
these gentlemen have told you--that the power over their legs passes from
the one to the other regularly every week?"
"Regularly? Bless your heart, regularly ain't any name for the exactness
of it! All the big cities in Europe used to set the clocks by it."
(Laughter, suppressed by the court.)
"How do you know? That is the question. Please answer it plainly and
squarely."
"Don't you talk to me like that, Sim Robinson--I won't have it. How do
I know, indeed! How do you know what you know? Because somebody told
you. You didn't invent it out of your own head, did you? Why, these
twins are the truthfulest people in the world; and I don't think it
becomes you to sit up there and throw slurs at them when they haven't
been doing anything to you. And they are orphans besides--both of them.
All--"
But Aunt Betsy was up again now, and both old ladies were talking at once
and with all their might; but as the house was weltering in a storm of
laughter, and the judge was hammering his desk with an iron paper-weight,
one could only see them talk, not hear them. At last, when quiet was
restored, the court said:
"Let the ladies retire."
"But, your honor, I have the right, in the interest of my clients,--to
cross-exam--"
"You'll not need to exercise it, Mr. Wilson--the evidence is thrown out."
"Thrown out!" said Aunt Patsy, ruffled; "and what's it thrown out for,
I'd like to know."
"And so would I, Patsy Cooper. It seems to me that if we can save these
poor persecuted strangers, it is our bounden duty to stand up here and
talk for them till--"
"There, there, there, do sit down!"
It cost some trouble and a good deal of coaxing, but they were got into
their seats at last. The trial was soon ended now. The twins themselves
became witnesses in their own defense. They established the fact, upon
oath, that the leg-power passed from one to the other every Saturday
night at twelve o'clock sharp. But or cross-examination their counsel
would not allow them to tell whose week of power the current week was.
The judge insisted upon their answering, and proposed to compel them, but
even the prosecution took fright and came to the rescue then, and helped
stay the sturdy jurist's revolutionary hand. So the case had to go to
the jury with that important point hanging in the air. They were out an
hour and brought in this verdict:
"We the jury do find: 1, that an assault was committed, as charged;
2, that it was committed by one of the persons accused, he having been
seen to do it by several credible witnesses; 3, but that his identity is
so merged in his brother's that we have not been able to tell which was
him. We cannot convict both, for only one is guilty. We cannot acquit
both, for only one is innocent. Our verdict is that justice has been
defeated by the dispensation of God, and ask to be discharged from
further duty."
This was read aloud in court and brought out a burst of hearty applause.
The old ladies made a spring at the twins, to shake and congratulate, but
were gently disengaged by Mr. Wilson and softly crowded back into their
places.
The judge rose in his little tribune, laid aside his silver-bowed
spectacles, roached his gray hair up with his fingers, and said, with
dignity and solemnity, and even with a certain pathos:
"In all my experience on the bench, I have not seen justice bow her
head in shame in this court until this day. You little realize what
far-reaching harm has just been wrought here under the fickle forms of law.
Imitation is the bane of courts--I thank God that this one is free from
the contamination of that vice--and in no long time you will see the
fatal work of this hour seized upon by profligate so-called guardians of
justice in all the wide circumstance of this planet and perpetuated in
their pernicious decisions. I wash my hands of this iniquity. I would
have compelled these culprits to expose their guilt, but support failed
me where I had most right to expect aid and encouragement. And I was
confronted by a law made in the interest of crime, which protects the
criminal from testifying against himself. Yet I had precedents of my own
whereby I had set aside that law on two different occasions and thus
succeeded in convicting criminals to whose crimes there were no witnesses
but themselves. What have you accomplished this day? Do you realize it?
You have set adrift, unadmonished, in this community, two men endowed
with an awful and mysterious gift, a hidden and grisly power for evil
--a power by which each in his turn may commit crime after crime of the
most heinous character, and no man be able to tell which is the guilty or
which the innocent party in any case of them all. Look to your homes
look to your property look to your lives for you have need!
"Prisoners at the bar, stand up. Through suppression of evidence, a jury
of your--our--countrymen have been obliged to deliver a verdict
concerning your case which stinks to heaven with the rankness of its
injustice. By its terms you, the guilty one, go free with the innocent.
Depart in peace, and come no more! The costs devolve upon the outraged
plaintiff--another iniquity. The court stands dissolved."
Almost everybody crowded forward to overwhelm the twins and their counsel
with congratulations; but presently the two old aunties dug the
duplicates out and bore them away in triumph through the hurrahing crowd,
while lots of new friends carried Pudd'nhead Wilson off tavernward to
feast him and "wet down" his great and victorious entry into the legal
arena. To Wilson, so long familiar with neglect and depreciation, this
strange new incense of popularity and admiration was as a fragrance blown
from the fields of paradise. A happy man was Wilson.
CHAPTER VI
THE AMAZING DUEL
A deputation came in the evening and conferred upon Wilson the
welcome honor of a nomination for mayor; for the village has just
been converted into a city by charter. Tom skulks out of
challenging the twins. Judge Driscoll thereupon challenges Angelo
(accused by Tom of doing the kicking); he declines, but Luigi
accepts in his place against Angelo's timid protest.
It was late Saturday night nearing eleven.
The judge and his second found the rest of the war party at the further
end of the vacant ground, near the haunted house. Pudd'nhead Wilson
advanced to meet them, and said anxiously:
"I must say a word in behalf of my principal's proxy, Count Luigi, to
whom you have kindly granted the privilege of fighting my principal's
battle for him. It is growing late, and Count Luigi is in great trouble
lest midnight shall strike before the finish."
"It is another testimony," said Howard, approvingly. "That young man is
fine all through. He wishes to save his brother the sorrow of fighting
on the Sabbath, and he is right; it is the right and manly feeling and
does him credit. We will make all possible haste."
Wilson said: "There is also another reason--a consideration, in fact,
which deeply concerns Count Luigi himself. These twins have command of
their mutual legs turn about. Count Luigi is in command now; but at
midnight, possession will pass to my principal, Count Angelo, and--well,
you can foresee what will happen. He will march straight off the field,
and carry Luigi with him."
"Why! sure enough!" cried the judge, "we have heard something about that
extraordinary law of their being, already--nothing very definite, it is
true, as regards dates and durations of power, but I see it is definite
enough as regards to-night. Of course we must give Luigi every chance.
Omit all the ceremonial possible, gentlemen, and place us in position."
The seconds at once tossed up a coin; Howard won the choice. He placed
the judge sixty feet from the haunted house and facing it; Wilson placed
the twins within fifteen feet of the house and facing the judge
--necessarily. The pistol-case was opened and the long slim tubes taken
out; when the moonlight glinted from them a shiver went through Angelo.
The doctor was a fool, but a thoroughly well-meaning one, with a kind
heart and a sincere disposition to oblige, but along with it an absence
of tact which often hurt its effectiveness. He brought his box of lint
and bandages, and asked Angelo to feel and see how soft and comfortable
they were. Angelo's head fell over against Luigi's in a faint, and
precious time was lost in bringing him to; which provoked Luigi into
expressing his mind to the doctor with a good deal of vigor and
frankness. After Angelo came to he was still so weak that Luigi was
obliged to drink a stiff horn of brandy to brace him up.
The seconds now stepped at once to their posts, halfway between the
combatants, one of them on each side of the line of fire. Wilson was to
count, very deliberately, "One-two-three-fire!--stop!" and the duelists
could bang away at any time they chose during that recitation, but not
after the last word. Angelo grew very nervous when he saw Wilson's hand
rising slowly into the air as a sign to make ready, and he leaned his
head against Luigi's and said:
"Oh, please take me away from here, I can't stay, I know I can't!"
"What in the world are you doing? Straighten up! What's the matter with
you?--you're in no danger--nobody's going to shoot at you. Straighten
up, I tell you!"
Angelo obeyed, just in time to hear:
"One--!"
"Bang!" Just one report, and a little tuft of white hair floated slowly
to the judge's feet in the moonlight. The judge did not swerve; he still
stood erect and motionless, like a statue, with his pistol-arm hanging
straight down at his side. He was reserving his fire.
"Two--!"
"Three--"!
"Fire--!"
Up came the pistol-arm instantly-Angelo dodged with the report. He said
"Ouch!" and fainted again.
The doctor examined and bandaged the wound.
It was of no consequence, he said--bullet through fleshy part of arm--no
bones broken the gentleman was still able to fight let the duel proceed.
Next time Angelo jumped just as Luigi fired, which disordered his aim and
caused him to cut a chip off of Howard's ear. The judge took his time
again, and when he fired Angelo jumped and got a knuckle skinned. The
doctor inspected and dressed the wounds. Angelo now spoke out and said
he was content with the satisfaction he had got, and if the judge--but
Luigi shut him roughly up, and asked him not to make an ass of himself;
adding:
"And I want you to stop dodging. You take a great deal too prominent a
part in this thing for a person who has got nothing to do with it. You
should remember that you are here only by courtesy, and are without
official recognition; officially you are not here at all; officially you
do not even exist. To all intents and purposes you are absent from this
place, and you ought for your own modesty's sake to reflect that it
cannot become a person who is not present here to be taking this sort of
public and indecent prominence in a matter in which he is not in the
slightest degree concerned. Now, don't dodge again; the bullets are not
for you, they are for me; if I want them dodged I will attend to it
myself. I never saw a person act so."
Angelo saw the reasonableness of what his brother had said, and he did
try to reform, but it was of no use; both pistols went off at the same
instant, and he jumped once more; he got a sharp scrape along his cheek
from the judge's bullet, and so deflected Luigi's aim that his ball went
wide and chipped flake of skin from Pudd'nhead Wilson's chin. The doctor
attended to the wounded.
By the terms, the duel was over. But Luigi was entirely out of patience,
and begged for one exchange of shots, insisting that he had had no fair
chance, on account of his brother's indelicate behavior. Howard was
opposed to granting so unusual a privilege, but the judge took Luigi's
part, and added that indeed he himself might fairly be considered
entitled to another trial, because although the proxy on the other side
was in no way to blame for his (the judge's) humiliatingly resultless
work, the gentleman with whom he was fighting this duel was to blame for
it, since if he had played no advantages and had held his head still, his
proxy would have been disposed of early. He added:
"Count Luigi's request for another exchange is another proof that he is a
brave and chivalrous gentleman, and I beg that the courtesy he asks may
be accorded him."
"I thank you most sincerely for this generosity, Judge Driscoll," said
Luigi, with a polite bow, and moving to his place. Then he added to
Angelo, "Now hold your grip, hold your grip, I tell you, and I'll land
him sure!"
The men stood erect, their pistol-arms at their sides, the two seconds
stood at their official posts, the doctor stood five paces in Wilson's
rear with his instruments and bandages in his hands. The deep stillness,
the peaceful moonlight, the motionless figures, made an impressive
picture and the impending fatal possibilities augmented this
impressiveness solemnity. Wilson's hand began to rise--slowly--still
higher--still higher--in another moment:
"Boom!" the first stroke of midnight swung up out of the distance;
Angelo was off like a deer!
"Oh, you unspeakable traitor!" wailed his brother, as they went soaring
over the fence.
The others stood astonished and gazing; and so stood, watching that
strange spectacle until distance dissolved it and swept it from their
view. Then they rubbed their eyes like people waking out of a dream,
"Well, I've never seen anything like that before!" said the judge.
"Wilson, I am going to confess now, that I wasn't quite able to believe
in that leg business, and had a suspicion that it was a put-up
convenience between those twins; and when Count Angelo fainted I thought
I saw the whole scheme--thought it was pretext No. 2, and would be
followed by others till twelve o'clock should arrive, and Luigi would get
off with all the credit of seeming to want to fight and yet not have to
fight, after all. But I was mistaken. His pluck proved it. He's a
brave fellow and did want to fight."
"There isn't any doubt about that," said Howard, and added, in a grieved
tone, "but what an unworthy sort of Christian that Angelo is--I hope and
believe there are not many like him. It is not right to engage in a duel
on the Sabbath--I could not approve of that myself; but to finish one
that has been begun--that is a duty, let the day be what it may."
They strolled along, still wondering, still talking.
"It is a curious circumstance," remarked the surgeon, halting Wilson a
moment to paste so more court-plaster on his chin, which had gone to
leaking blood again, "that in this duel neither of the parties who
handled the pistols lost blood while nearly all the persons present in
the mere capacity of guests got hit. I have not heard of such a thing
before. Don't you think it unusual?"
"Yes," said the Judge, "it has struck me as peculiar. Peculiar and
unfortunate. I was annoyed at it, all the time. In the case of Angelo
it made no great difference, because he was in a measure concerned,
though not officially; but it troubled me to see the seconds compromised,
and yet I knew no way to mend the matter.
"There was no way to mend it," said Howard, whose ear was being
readjusted now by the doctor; "the code fixes our place, and it would not
have been lawful to change it. If we could have stood at your side, or
behind you, or in front of you, it--but it would not have been legitimate
and the other parties would have had a just right to complain of our
trying to protect ourselves from danger; infractions of the code are
certainly not permissible in any case whatever."
Wilson offered no remarks. It seemed to him that there was very little
place here for so much solemnity, but he judged that if a duel where
nobody was in danger or got crippled but the seconds and the outsiders
had nothing ridiculous about it for these gentlemen, his pointing out
that feature would probably not help them to see it.
He invited them in to take a nightcap, and Howard and the judge accepted,
but the doctor said he would have to go and see how Angelo's principal
wound was getting on.
[It was now Sunday, and in the afternoon Angelo was to be received
into the Baptist communion by immersion--a doubtful prospect, the
doctor feared.]
CHAPTER VII
LUIGI DEFIES GALEN
When the doctor arrived at Aunt Patsy Cooper's house, he found the lights
going and everybody up and dressed and in a great state of solicitude and
excitement. The twins were stretched on a sofa in the sitting-room, Aunt
Patsy was fussing at Angelo's arm, Nancy was flying around under her
commands, the two young boys were trying to keep out of the way and
always getting in it, in order to see and wonder, Rowena stood apart,
helpless with apprehension and emotion, and Luigi was growling in
unappeasable fury over Angelo's shameful flight.
As has been reported before, the doctor was a fool--a kind-hearted and
well-meaning one, but with no tact; and as he was by long odds the most
learned physician in the town, and was quite well aware of it, and could
talk his learning with ease and precision, and liked to show off when he
had an audience, he was sometimes tempted into revealing more of a case
than was good for the patient.
He examined Angelo's wound, and was really minded to say nothing for
once; but Aunt Patsy was so anxious and so pressing that he allowed his
caution to be overcome, and proceeded to empty himself as follows, with
scientific relish:
"Without going too much into detail, madam--for you would probably not
understand it, anyway--I concede that great care is going to be necessary
here; otherwise exudation of the esophagus is nearly sure to ensue, and
this will be followed by ossification and extradition of the maxillaris
superioris, which must decompose the granular surfaces of the great
infusorial ganglionic system, thus obstructing the action of the
posterior varioloid arteries, and precipitating compound strangulated
sorosis of the valvular tissues, and ending unavoidably in the dispersion
and combustion of the marsupial fluxes and the consequent embrocation of
the bicuspid populo redax referendum rotulorum."
A miserable silence followed. Aunt Patsy's heart sank, the pallor of
despair invaded her face, she was not able to speak; poor Rowena wrung
her hands in privacy and silence, and said to herself in the bitterness
of her young grief, "There is no hope--it is plain there is no hope"; the
good-hearted negro wench, Nancy, paled to chocolate, then to orange, then
to amber, and thought to herself with yearning sympathy and sorrow, "Po'
thing, he ain' gwyne to las' throo de half o' dat"; small Henry choked
up, and turned his head away to hide his rising tears, and his brother
Joe said to himself, with a sense of loss, "The baptizing's busted,
that's sure." Luigi was the only person who had any heart to speak. He
said, a little bit sharply, to the doctor:
"Well, well, there's nothing to be gained by wasting precious time; give
him a barrel of pills--I'll take them for him."
"You?" asked the doctor.
"Yes. Did you suppose he was going to take them himself?"
"Why, of course."
"Well, it's a mistake. He never took a dose of medicine in his life. He
can't."
"Well, upon my word, it's the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of!"
"Oh," said Aunt Patsy, as pleased as a mother whose child is being
admired and wondered at; "you'll find that there's more about them that's
wonderful than their just being made in the image of God like the rest of
His creatures, now you can depend on that, I tell you," and she wagged
her complacent head like one who could reveal marvelous things if she
chose.
The boy Joe began:
"Why, ma, they ain't made in the im--"
"You shut up, and wait till you're asked, Joe. I'll let you know when I
want help. Are you looking for something, doctor?"
The doctor asked for a few sheets of paper and a pen, and said he would
write a prescription; which he did. It was one of Galen's; in fact, it
was Galen's favorite, and had been slaying people for sixteen thousand
years. Galen used it for everything, applied it to everything, said it
would remove everything, from warts all the way through to lungs and it
generally did. Galen was still the only medical authority recognized in
Missouri; his practice was the only practice known to the Missouri
doctors, and his prescriptions were the only ammunition they carried when
they went out for game.
By and by Dr. Claypool laid down his pen and read the result of his
labors aloud, carefully and deliberately, for this battery must be
constructed on the premises by the family, and mistakes could occur;
for he wrote a doctor's hand the hand which from the beginning of time
has been so disastrous to the apothecary and so profitable to the
undertaker:
"Take of afarabocca, henbane, corpobalsamum, each two drams and a half:
of cloves, opium, myrrh, cyperus, each two drams; of opobalsamum, Indian
leaf, cinnamon, zedoary, ginger, coftus, coral, cassia, euphorbium, gum
tragacanth, frankincense, styrax calamita, Celtic, nard, spignel,
hartwort, mustard, saxifrage, dill, anise, each one dram; of xylaloes,
rheum ponticum, alipta, moschata, castor, spikenard, galangals, opoponax,
anacardium, mastich, brimstone, peony, eringo, pulp of dates, red and
white hermodactyls, roses, thyme, acorns, pennyroyal, gentian, the bark
of the root of mandrake, germander, valerian, bishop's-weed, bayberries,
long and white pepper, xylobalsamum, carnabadium, macedonian, parsley
seeds, lovage, the seeds of rue, and sinon, of each a dram and a half; of
pure gold, pure silver, pearls not perforated, the blatta byzantina, the
bone of the stag's heart, of each the quantity of fourteen grains of
wheat; of sapphire, emerald and jasper stones, each one dram; of
hazel-nuts, two drams; of pellitory of Spain, shavings of ivory, calamus
odoratus, each the quantity of twenty-nine grains of wheat; of honey or
sugar a sufficient quantity. Boil down and skim off."
"There," he said, "that will fix the patient; give his brother a
dipperful every three-quarters of an hour--"
"--while he survives," muttered Luigi--
"--and see that the room is kept wholesomely hot, and the doors and
windows closed tight. Keep Count Angelo nicely covered up with six or
seven blankets, and when he is thirsty--which will be frequently--moisten
a 'rag in the vapor of the tea kettle and let his brother suck it. When
he is hungry--which will also be frequently he must not be humored
oftener than every seven or eight hours; then toast part of a cracker
until it begins to brown, and give it to his brother."
"That is all very well, as far as Angelo is concerned," said Luigi, "but
what am I to eat?"
"I do not see that there is anything the matter with you," the doctor
answered, "you may, of course, eat what you please."
"And also drink what I please, I suppose?"
"Oh, certainly--at present. When the violent and continuous perspiring
has reduced your strength, I shall have to reduce your diet, of course,
and also bleed you, but there is no occasion for that yet awhile." He
turned to Aunt Patsy and said: "He must be put to bed, and sat up with,
and tended with the greatest care, and not allowed to stir for several
days and nights."
"For one, I'm sacredly thankful for that," said Luigi, "it postpones the
funeral--I'm not to be drowned to-day, anyhow."
Angelo said quietly to the doctor:
"I will cheerfully submit to all your requirements, sir, up to two
o'clock this afternoon, and will resume them after three, but cannot be
confined to the house during that intermediate hour."
"Why, may I ask?"
"Because I have entered the Baptist communion, and by appointment am to
be baptised in the river at that hour."
"Oh, insanity!--it cannot be allowed!"
Angelo answered with placid firmness:
"Nothing shall prevent it, if I am alive."
"Why, consider, my dear sir, in your condition it might prove fatal."
A tender and ecstatic smile beamed from Angelo's eyes, and he broke forth
in a tone of joyous fervency:
"Ah, how blessed it would be to die for such a cause--it would be
martyrdom!"
"But your brother--consider your brother; you would be risking his life,
too."
"He risked mine an hour ago," responded Angelo, gloomily; "did he
consider me?" A thought swept through his mind that made him shudder.
"If I had not run, I might have been killed in a duel on the Sabbath day,
and my soul would have been lost--lost."
"Oh, don't fret, it wasn't in any danger," said Luigi, irritably; "they
wouldn't waste it for a little thing like that; there's a glass case all
ready for it in the heavenly museum, and a pin to stick it up with."
Aunt Patsy was shocked, and said:
"Looy, Looy!--don't talk so, dear!"
Rowena's soft heart was pierced by Luigi's unfeeling words, and she
murmured to herself, "Oh, if I but had the dear privilege of protecting
and defending him with my weak voice!--but alas! this sweet boon is
denied me by the cruel conventions of social intercourse."
"Get their bed ready," said Aunt Patsy to Nancy, "and shut up the windows
and doors, and light their candles, and see that you drive all the
mosquitoes out of their bar, and make up a good fire in their stove, and
carry up some bags of hot ashes to lay to his feet--"
"--and a shovel of fire for his head, and a mustard plaster for his neck,
and some gum shoes for his ears," Luigi interrupted, with temper; and
added, to himself, "Damnation, I'm going to be roasted alive, I just know
it!"
"Why, Looy! Do be quiet; I never saw such a fractious thing. A body
would think you didn't care for your brother."
"I don't--to that extent, Aunt Patsy. I was glad the drowning was
postponed a minute ago, but I'm not now. No, that is all gone by; I want
to be drowned."
"You'll bring a judgment on yourself just as sure as you live, if you go
on like that. Why, I never heard the beat of it. Now, there--there!
you've said enough. Not another word out of you--I won't have it!"
"But, Aunt Patsy--"
"Luigi! Didn't you hear what I told you?"
"But, Aunt Patsy, I--why, I'm not going to set my heart and lungs afloat
in that pail of sewage which this criminal here has been prescri--"
"Yes, you are, too. You are going to be good, and do everything I tell
you, like a dear," and she tapped his cheek affectionately with her
finger. "Rowena, take the prescription and go in the kitchen and hunt up
the things and lay them out for me. I'll sit up with my patient the rest
of the night, doctor; I can't trust Nancy, she couldn't make Luigi take
the medicine. Of course, you'll drop in again during the day. Have you
got any more directions?"
"No, I believe not, Aunt Patsy. If I don't get in earlier, I'll be along
by early candle-light, anyway. Meantime, don't allow him to get out of
his bed."
Angelo said, with calm determination:
"I shall be baptized at two o'clock. Nothing but death shall prevent
me."
The doctor said nothing aloud, but to himself he said:
"Why, this chap's got a manly side, after all! Physically he's a coward,
but morally he's a lion. I'll go and tell the others about this; it will
raise him a good deal in their estimation--and the public will follow
their lead, of course."
Privately, Aunt Patsy applauded too, and was proud of Angelo's courage in
the moral field as she was of Luigi's in the field of honor.
The boy Henry was troubled, but the boy Joe said, inaudibly, and
gratefully, "We're all honky, after all; and no postponement on account
of the weather."
CHAPTER VIII
BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF
By nine o'clock the town was humming with the news of the midnight duel,
and there were but two opinions about it: one, that Luigi's pluck in the
field was most praiseworthy and Angela's flight most scandalous; the
other, that Angelo's courage in flying the field for conscience' sake was
as fine and creditable as was Luigi's in holding the field in the face of
the bullets. The one opinion was held by half of the town, the other one
was maintained by the other half. The division was clean and exact, and
it made two parties, an Angela party and a Luigi party. The twins had
suddenly become popular idols along with Pudd'nhead Wilson, and haloed
with a glory as intense as his. The children talked the duel all the way
to Sunday-school, their elders talked it all the way to church, the choir
discussed it behind their red curtain, it usurped the place of pious
thought in the "nigger gallery."
By noon the doctor had added the news, and spread it, that Count Angelo,
in spite of his wound and all warnings and supplications, was resolute in
his determination to be baptized at the hour appointed. This swept the
town like wildfire, and mightily reinforced the enthusiasm of the Angelo
faction, who said, "If any doubted that it was moral courage that took
him from the field, what have they to say now!"
Still the excitement grew. All the morning it was traveling countryward,
toward all points of the compass; so, whereas before only the farmers and
their wives were intending to come and witness the remarkable baptism,
a general holiday was now proclaimed and the children and negroes
admitted to the privileges of the occasion. All the farms for ten miles
around were vacated, all the converging roads emptied long processions of
wagons, horses, and yeomanry into the town. The pack and cram of people
vastly exceeded any that had ever been seen in that sleepy region before.
The only thing that had ever even approached it, was the time long gone
by, but never forgotten, nor even referred to without wonder and pride,
when two circuses and a Fourth of July fell together. But the glory of
that occasion was extinguished now for good. It was but a freshet to
this deluge.
The great invasion massed itself on the river-bank and waited hungrily
for the immense event. Waited, and wondered if it would really happen,
or if the twin who was not a "professor" would stand out and prevent it.
But they were not to be disappointed. Angela was as good as his word.
He came attended by an escort of honor composed of several hundred of the
best citizens, all of the Angelo party; and when the immersion was
finished they escorted him back home and would even have carried him on
their shoulders, but that people might think they were carrying Luigi.
Far into the night the citizens continued to discuss and wonder over the
strangely mated pair of incidents that had distinguished and exalted the
past twenty-four hours above any other twenty-four in the history of
their town for picturesqueness and splendid interest; and long before the
lights were out and burghers asleep it had been decided on all hands that
in capturing these twins Dawson's Landing had drawn a prize in the great
lottery of municipal fortune.
At midnight Angelo was sleeping peacefully. His immersion had not harmed
him, it had merely made him wholesomely drowsy, and he had been dead
asleep many hours now. It had made Luigi drowsy, too, but he had got
only brief naps, on account of his having to take the medicine every
three-quarters of an hour-and Aunt Betsy Hale was there to see that he
did it. When he complained and resisted, she was quietly firm with him,
and said in a low voice:
"No-no, that won't do; you mustn't talk, and you mustn't retch and gag
that way, either--you'll wake up your poor brother."
"Well, what of it, Aunt Betsy, he--"
"'Sh-h! Don't make a noise, dear. You mustn't: forget that your poor
brother is sick and--"
"Sick, is he? Well, I wish I--"
"'Sh-h-h! Will you be quiet, Luigi! Here, now, take the rest of it
--don't keep me holding the dipper all night. I declare if you haven't
left a good fourth of it in the bottom! Come-that's a good--
"Aunt Betsy, don't make me! I feel like I've swallowed a cemetery; I do,
indeed. Do let me rest a little--just a little; I can't take any more of
the devilish stuff now."
"Luigi! Using such language here, and him just baptized! Do you want
the roof to fall on you?"
"I wish to goodness it would!"
"Why, you dreadful thing! I've a good notion to--let that blanket alone;
do you want your, brother to catch his death?"
"Aunt Betsy, I've got to have it off, I'm being roasted alive; nobody
could stand it--you couldn't yourself."
"Now, then, you're sneezing again--I just expected it."
"Because I've caught a cold in my head. I always do, when I go in the
water with my clothes on. And it takes me weeks to get over it, too.
I think it was a shame to serve me so."
"Luigi, you are unreasonable; you know very well they couldn't baptize
him dry. I should think you would be willing to undergo a little
inconvenience for your brother's sake."
"Inconvenience! Now how you talk, Aunt Betsy. I came as near as
anything to getting drowned you saw that yourself; and do you call this
inconvenience?--the room shut up as tight as a drum, and so hot the
mosquitoes are trying to get out; and a cold in the head, and dying for
sleep and no chance to get any--on account of this infamous medicine that
that assassin prescri--"
"There, you're sneezing again. I'm going down and mix some more of this
truck for you, dear."
CHAPTER IX
THE DRINKLESS DRUNK
During Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but
then the doctor was summoned South to attend his mother's funeral, and
they got well in forty-eight hours. They appeared on the street on
Friday, and were welcomed with enthusiasm by the new-born parties, the
Luigi and Angelo factions. The Luigi faction carried its strength into
the Democratic party, the Angelo faction entered into a combination with
the Whigs. The Democrats nominated Luigi for alderman under the new city
government, and the Whigs put up Angelo against him. The Democrats
nominated Pudd'nhead Wilson for mayor, and he was left alone in this
glory, for the Whigs had no man who was willing to enter the lists
against such a formidable opponent. No politician had scored such a
compliment as this before in the history of the Mississippi Valley.
The political campaign in Dawson's Landing opened in a pretty warm
fashion, and waned hotter every week. Luigi's whole heart was in it,
and even Angelo developed a surprising amount of interest-which was
natural, because he was not merely representing Whigism, a matter of no
consequence to him; but he was representing something immensely finer and
greater--to wit, Reform. In him was centered the hopes of the whole
reform element of the town; he was the chosen and admired champion of
every clique that had a pet reform of any sort or kind at heart. He was
president of the great Teetotalers' Union, its chiefest prophet and
mouthpiece.
But as the canvass went on, troubles began to spring up all around
--troubles for the twins, and through them for all the parties and
segments and factions of parties. Whenever Luigi had possession of the
legs, he carried Angelo to balls, rum shops, Sons of Liberty parades,
horse-races, campaign riots, and everywhere else that could damage him
with his party and the church; and when it was Angelo's week he carried
Luigi diligently to all manner of moral and religious gatherings, doing
his best to regain the ground he had lost before. As a result of these
double performances, there was a storm blowing all the time, an
ever-rising storm, too--a storm of frantic criticism of the twins,
and rage over their extravagant, incomprehensible conduct.
Luigi had the final chance. The legs were his for the closing week of
the canvass. He led his brother a fearful dance.
But he saved his best card for the very eve of the election. There was
to be a grand turnout of the Teetotalers' Union that day, and Angelo was
to march at the head of the procession and deliver a great oration
afterward. Luigi drank a couple of glasses of whisky--which steadied his
nerves and clarified his mind, but made Angelo drunk. Everybody who saw
the march, saw that the Champion of the Teetotalers was half seas over,
and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions to
extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober. This eloquent fact
could not be unfruitful at the end of a hot political canvass. At the
mass-meeting Angelo tried to make his great temperance oration, but was
so discommoded--by hiccoughs and thickness of tongue that he had to give
it up; then drowsiness overtook him and his head drooped against Luigi's
and he went to sleep. Luigi apologized for him, and was going on to
improve his opportunity with an appeal for a moderation of what he called
"the prevailing teetotal madness," but persons in the audience began to
howl and throw things at him, and then the meeting rose in wrath and
chased him home.
This episode was a crusher for Angelo in another way. It destroyed his
chances with Rowena. Those chances had been growing, right along, for
two months. Rowena had partly confessed that she loved him, but wanted
time to consider. Now the tender dream was ended, and she told him so
the moment he was sober enough to understand. She said she would never
marry a man who drank.
"But I don't drink," he pleaded.
"That is nothing to the point," she said, coldly, "you get drunk, and
that is worse."
[There was a long and sufficiently idiotic discussion here, which ended
as reported in a previous note.]
CHAPTER X
SO THEY HANGED LUIGI
Dawson's Landing had a week of repose, after the election, and it needed
it, for the frantic and variegated nightmare which had tormented it all
through the preceding week had left it limp, haggard, and exhausted at
the end. It got the week of repose because Angelo had the legs, and was
in too subdued a condition to want to go out and mingle with an irritated
community that had come to disgust and detest him because there was such
a lack of harmony between his morals, which were confessedly excellent,
and his methods of illustrating them, which were distinctly damnable.
The new city officers were sworn in on the following Monday--at least all
but Luigi. There was a complication in his case. His election was
conceded, but he could not sit in the board of aldermen without his
brother, and his brother could not sit there because he was not a member.
There seemed to be no way out of the difficulty but to carry the matter
into the courts, so this was resolved upon.
The case was set for the Monday fortnight. In due course the time
arrived. In the mean time the city government had been at a standstill,
because with out Luigi there was a tie in the board of aldermen, whereas
with him the liquor interest--the richest in the political field--would
have one majority. But the court decided that Angelo could not sit in
the board with him, either in public or executive sessions, and at the
same time forbade the board to deny admission to Luigi, a fairly and
legally chosen alderman. The case was carried up and up from court to
court, yet still the same old original decision was confirmed every time.
As a result, the city government not only stood still, with its hands
tied, but everything it was created to protect and care for went a steady
gait toward rack and ruin. There was no way to levy a tax, so the minor
officials had to resign or starve; therefore they resigned. There being
no city money, the enormous legal expenses on both sides had to be
defrayed by private subscription. But at last the people came to their
senses, and said:
"Pudd'nhead was right at the start--we ought to have hired the official
half of that human phillipene to resign; but it's too late now; some of
us haven't got anything left to hire him with."
"Yes, we have," said another citizen, "we've got this"--and he produced a
halter.
Many shouted: "That's the ticket." But others said: "No--Count Angelo is
innocent; we mustn't hang him."
"Who said anything about hanging him? We are only going to hang the
other one."
"Then that is all right--there is no objection to that."
So they hanged Luigi. And so ends the history of "Those Extraordinary
Twins."
FINAL REMARKS
As you see, it was an extravagant sort of a tale, and had no purpose but
to exhibit that monstrous "freak" in all sorts of grotesque lights. But
when Roxy wandered into the tale she had to be furnished with something
to do; so she changed the children in the cradle; this necessitated the
invention of a reason for it; this, in turn, resulted in making the
children prominent personages--nothing could prevent it of course. Their
career began to take a tragic aspect, and some one had to be brought in
to help work the machinery; so Pudd'nhead Wilson was introduced and taken
on trial. By this time the whole show was being run by the new people
and in their interest, and the original show was become side-tracked and
forgotten; the twin-monster, and the heroine, and the lads, and the old
ladies had dwindled to inconsequentialities and were merely in the way.
Their story was one story, the new people's story was another story, and
there was no connection between them, no interdependence, no kinship.
It is not practicable or rational to try to tell two stories at the same
time; so I dug out the farce and left the tragedy.
The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows now how the other
kind do it.
MARK TWAIN.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Those Extraordinary Twins
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
VOLUME 1
by Mark Twain
Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of
human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex,
who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a
nation at the age of seventeen
LOUIS KOSSUTH.
Contents
Translator's Preface
A Peculiarity of Joan of Arc's History
The Sieur Louis de Conte
Book I -- IN DOMREMY
1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
3 All Aflame with Love of France
4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
6 Joan and Archangel Michael
7 She Delivers the Divine Command
8 Why the Scorners Relented
Book II -- IN COURT AND CAMP
1 Joan Says Good-By
2 The Governor Speeds Joan
3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
6 Joan Convinces the King
7 Our Paladin in His Glory
8 Joan Persuades the Inquisitors
9 She Is Made General-in-Chief
10 The Maid's Sword and Banner
11 The War March Is Begun
12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army
13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise
14 What the English Answered
15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
16 The Finding of the Dwarf
17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth
18 Joan's First Battle-Field
19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts
20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
22 The Fate of France Decided
23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King
24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility
25 At Last--Forward!
26 The Last Doubts Scattered
27 How Joan Took Jargeau
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
(her page and secretary)
In Two Volumes
Volume 1.
Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English
from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives
of France
by JEAN FRANCOIS ALDEN
Authorities examined in verification of the truthfulness of this
narrative:
J. E. J. QUICHERAT, Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc.
J. FABRE, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc.
H. A. WALLON, Jeanne d'Arc.
M. SEPET, Jeanne d'Arc.
J. MICHELET, Jeanne d'Arc.
BERRIAT DE SAINT-PRIX, La Famille de Jeanne d'Arc.
La Comtesse A. DE CHABANNES, La Vierge Lorraine.
Monseigneur RICARD, Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable.
Lord RONALD GOWER, F.S.A., Joan of Arc. JOHN O'HAGAN, Joan of Arc.
JANET TUCKEY, Joan of Arc the Maid.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must
judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards
of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of
their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no
illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet
the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It
can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or
apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, it is still
flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest
place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached
by any other mere mortal.
When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the
rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at
the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her
and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful
when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was
become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a
promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great
thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves
upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine,
and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal;
she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was
steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had
forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when
men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly
true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal
dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a
dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of
her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the
highest places was foul in both--she was all these things in an age when
crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest
personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era
and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black
with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.
She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a
place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can
be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her King from
his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered
rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing.
All she would take for herself--if the King would grant it--was leave to
go back to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel her
mother's arms about her, and be her housemaid and helper. The
selfishness of this unspoiled general of victorious armies, companion of
princes, and idol of an applauding and grateful nation, reached but that
far and no farther.
The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking any
recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it
was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal.
Caesar carried conquests far, but he did it with the trained and
confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; and
Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a
trained soldier, and the began his work with patriot battalions inflamed
and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed upon
them by the Revolution--eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of
war, not old and broken men-at-arms, despairing survivors of an age-long
accumulation of monotonous defeats; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in
years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without
influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless
under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers
disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the
hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage
and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to
fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse,
and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she
turned back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the
English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE,
which she bears to this day.
And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine
and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most
innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and
burned her alive at the stake.
A PECULIARITY OF JOAN OF ARC'S HISTORY
The details of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography which is unique
among the world's biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a
human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us
from the witness-stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431,
and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later,
are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish
with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other
life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the
comprehensiveness that attaches to hers.
The Sieur Louis de Conte is faithful to her official history in his
Personal Recollections, and thus far his trustworthiness is
unimpeachable; but his mass of added particulars must depend for credit
upon his word alone.
THE TRANSLATOR.
THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
To his Great-Great-Grand Nephews and Nieces
This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am
going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a
youth.
In all the tales and songs and histories of Joan of Arc, which you and
the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in
the late invented art of printing, mention is made of me, the Sieur
Louis de Conte--I was her page and secretary, I was with her from the
beginning until the end.
I was reared in the same village with her. I played with her every day,
when we were little children together, just as you play with your mates.
Now that we perceive how great she was, now that her name fills the
whole world, it seems strange that what I am saying is true; for it is
as if a perishable paltry candle should speak of the eternal sun riding
in the heavens and say, "He was gossip and housemate to me when we were
candles together." And yet it is true, just as I say. I was her
playmate, and I fought at her side in the wars; to this day I carry in
my mind, fine and clear, the picture of that dear little figure, with
breast bent to the flying horse's neck, charging at the head of the
armies of France, her hair streaming back, her silver mail plowing
steadily deeper and deeper into the thick of the battle, sometimes
nearly drowned from sight by tossing heads of horses, uplifted
sword-arms, wind-blow plumes, and intercepting shields. I was with her
to the end; and when that black day came whose accusing shadow will lie
always upon the memory of the mitered French slaves of England who were
her assassins, and upon France who stood idle and essayed no rescue, my
hand was the last she touched in life.
As the years and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the
marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France and
its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and
deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and
divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for
what she was--the most noble life that was ever born into this world
save only One.
BOOK I IN DOMREMY
Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
I, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on the 6th of
January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was
born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the
neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics
they were Armagnacs--patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy
and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English,
had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my
father's small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it
in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there
was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of
comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies,
madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life
safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly,
sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon
wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here,
there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped
naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the
courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and
create plagues.
And plagues they did create. Epidemics swept away the people like flies,
and the burials were conducted secretly and by night, for public
funerals were not allowed, lest the revelation of the magnitude of the
plague's work unman the people and plunge them into despair. Then came,
finally, the bitterest winter which had visited France in five hundred
years. Famine, pestilence, slaughter, ice, snow--Paris had all these at
once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the
city in daylight and devoured them.
Ah, France had fallen low--so low! For more than three quarters of a
century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had
her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and
accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a
French one to flight.
When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon
France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he
left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions
in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came
raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning
roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder
brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while they
begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and
mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When
the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the
burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead
and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden themselves.
I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose housekeeper became a loving
mother to me. The priest, in the course of time, taught me to read and
write, and he and I were the only persons in the village who possessed
this learning.
At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte, became
my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the village church, and
the small garden of Joan's parents was behind the church. As to that
family there were Jacques d'Arc the father, his wife Isabel Romee; three
sons--Jacques, ten years old, Pierre, eight, and Jean, seven; Joan,
four, and her baby sister Catherine, about a year old. I had these
children for playmates from the beginning. I had some other playmates
besides--particularly four boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, Noel
Rainguesson, and Edmond Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time;
also two girls, about Joan's age, who by and by became her favorites;
one was named Haumetter, the other was called Little Mengette. These
girls were common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew
up, both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough, you
see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing stranger,
howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his reverence to those
to humble old women who had been honored in their youth by the
friendship of Joan of Arc.
These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not
bright, of course--you would not expect that--but good-hearted and
companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they
grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got
at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and
without examination also--which goes without saying. Their religion was
inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find
fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody's faith; and when
the split came, when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once,
nobody in Domremy was worried about how to choose among them--the Pope
of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all.
Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac--a patriot--and if
we children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate
the English and Burgundian name and polity in that way.
Chapter 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time
and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and
sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The
houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows--that is, holes
in the walls which served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there
was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main
industry; all the young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery
plain extended in a wide sweep to the river--the Meuse; from the rear
edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was
the great oak forest--a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and
full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it
by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons
that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their
homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time.
It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and
scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a
cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know
what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said
who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a
brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it,
therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was
not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when
there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any
bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber
and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an
opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time,
and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I
always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for
that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a
little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre
Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell.
It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be
and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the
earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and
get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest
had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it
in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners,
and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it
was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the
smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell
again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other--and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism,
but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be
so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward
Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and
a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on
summer days the children went there--oh, every summer for more than five
hundred years--went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours
together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it
was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild
flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the
fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as
keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness
between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years--tradition said a thousand--but only the warmest affection and the
most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there
to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the
tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the
reason it was known that the fairies did it was this--that it was made
all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the
Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a
mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this
world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond
the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose
soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree--if all was well with his
soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways:
once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul
was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate
winter aspect--then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If
repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time
summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the
vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still
others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear
reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts
like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the
comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through
the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one
keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he
cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it--and there
is profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a
far land, then--if they be at peace with God--they turn their longing
eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud
that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree,
clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping
away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and
sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades
and passes--but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared twice
--to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it. Probably
because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most
things at second hand in this world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two
apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one
saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly
fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, "Ah, he
is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at
the thought and whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree."
Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put aside
with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative
evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer to being proof
all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day become
authority--and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared
announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was
the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases only
a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul's
redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long
before, and with them peace--peace that might no more be disturbed--the
eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for
I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and
danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song,
the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet
air--a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming
spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and
carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can know
or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to
exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries
foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us,
and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the
water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:
"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of
thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!"
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the
Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows
it, yes, you will grant that:
L'ARBRE FEE DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healed, rose a leaf.
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young--
A thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw
them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had
held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being
blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then he
warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more
immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good
friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest
would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends. The
children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an agreement
among themselves that they would always continue to hang flower-wreaths
on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved
and remembered, though lost to sight.
But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's mother
passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking
anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild
happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey
which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey
stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms
holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a
great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and
spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite
distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from the
ground in perfect abandon and hilarity--oh, the very maddest and
witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures
discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and
terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their
eyes and crying; and so disappeared.
The heartless woman--no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but
only thoughtless--went straight home and told the neighbors all about it,
whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting
the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to
be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody
knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing
the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying and
begging--and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most
kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and
said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they
ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened at
the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out of
her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and
persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, "Joan, wake!
Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies--come
and save them; only you can do it!"
But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we
meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever
lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must
go, and never come back any more.
It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function
under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that
any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be
content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it
made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and
occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at
them to prevent that.
The great tree--l'Arbre Fee do Bourlemont was its beautiful name--was
never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was
always dear; is dear to me yet when I got there now, once a year in my
old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth
and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears and
break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same
afterward. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies'
protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and
coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished
serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a
torment and have remained so to this day.
When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her
illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she
could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so
little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up before
him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it
not so?"
"Yes, that was it, dear."
"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person
is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is
showing himself to that man?"
"Well--no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he
said it.
"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"
Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew here to his
side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but
her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but
buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:
"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit
one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little
creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the saw was against
the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend
to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away
from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!"
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking
are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for
your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there,
don't cry--nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend--don't cry,
dear."
"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an
act?"
Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him
laugh, and said:
"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on
sackcloth and ashes; there--are you satisfied?"
Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man
through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
"Yes, that will do--if it will clear you."
Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not
remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable
one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan
watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and
was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to
him, and he said:
"Would you mind helping me, dear?"
"How, father?"
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One
can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any
other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his
side and said:
"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father."
"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"
"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must
forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, gather,
won't you?"
"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your
forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not become
me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little
head."
The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry
again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own
head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and
suffocations:
"There--now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."
The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and
said:
"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort
presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I
testify."
Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face
and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and
ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side
again, and said:
"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the
other children; is it not so?"
That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up
and catch me in something--just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a
person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is
traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I
knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:
"Yes, father."
"Did you hang them on the tree?"
"No, father."
"Didn't hang them there?"
"No."
"Why didn't you?"
"I--well, I didn't wish to."
"Didn't wish to?"
"No, father."
"What did you do with them?"
"I hung them in the church."
"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?"
"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that
it was sinful to show them honor."
"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"
"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."
"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin
to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other
children, couldn't they?"
"I suppose so--yes, I think so."
He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he
did. He said:
"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful
origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a
rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong
to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it.
In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?"
How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have
boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all
right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal
way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of
a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which
merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he
never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only
way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other
person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and
set a trap for himself--that was all he had accomplished.
The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the
indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an energy
and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish me, for I knew he
had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax.
"Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?"
"God and the King."
"Not Satan?"
"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High--Satan owns no
handful of its soil."
"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them
in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there
all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of
God's approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again
in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out
that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God
gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their
home--theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a
right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that
children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five
long centuries, and never any hurt or harm; and the children loved them,
and now they mourn for them, and there is no healing for their grief. And
what had the children done that they should suffer this cruel stroke? The
poor fairies could have been dangerous company for the children? Yes, but
never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of the Fiend? What of
it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had; and children have
rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would have spoken--I
would have begged for the children and the fiends, and stayed your hand
and saved them all. But now--oh, now, all is lost; everything is lost,
and there is no help more!"
Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the
Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and friendship
because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very
reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing
they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them
by accident of birth and no fault of their own. "Poor little creatures!"
she said. "What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a
Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand
times more needs it!"
She had torn loose from Pere Fronte, and was crying, with her knuckles in
her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and now she burst out of
the place and was gone before we could gather our senses together out of
this storm of words and this whirlwind of passion.
The Pere had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood there
passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a person who is
dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered toward the door of his
little workroom, and as he passed through it I heard him murmur
sorrowfully:
"Ah, me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said
true--I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame."
When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set a
trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I seemed
to feel encouraged, and wondered if mayhap I might get him into one; but
upon reflection my heart went down, for this was not my gift.
Chapter 3 All Aflame with Love of France
SPEAKING of this matter reminds me of many incidents, many things that I
could tell, but I think I will not try to do it now. It will be more to
my present humor to call back a little glimpse of the simple and
colorless good times we used to have in our village homes in those
peaceful days--especially in the winter. In the summer we children were
out on the breezy uplands with the flocks from dawn till night, and then
there was noisy frolicking and all that; but winter was the cozy time,
winter was the snug time. Often we gathered in old Jacques d'Arc's big
dirt-floored apartment, with a great fire going, and played games, and
sang songs, and told fortunes, and listened to the old villagers tell
tales and histories and lies and one thing and another till twelve
o'clock at night.
One winter's night we were gathered there--it was the winter that for
years afterward they called the hard winter--and that particular night
was a sharp one. It blew a gale outside, and the screaming of the wind
was a stirring sound, and I think I may say it was beautiful, for I think
it is great and fine and beautiful to hear the wind rage and storm and
blow its clarions like that, when you are inside and comfortable. And we
were. We had a roaring fire, and the pleasant spit-spit of the snow and
sleet falling in it down the chimney, and the yarning and laughing and
singing went on at a noble rate till about ten o'clock, and then we had a
supper of hot porridge and beans, and meal cakes with butter, and
appetites to match.
Little Joan sat on a box apart, and had her bowl and bread on another
one, and her pets around her helping. She had more than was usual of them
or economical, because all the outcast cats came and took up with her,
and homeless or unlovable animals of other kinds heard about it and came,
and these spread the matter to the other creatures, and they came also;
and as the birds and the other timid wild things of the woods were not
afraid of her, but always had an idea she was a friend when they came
across her, and generally struck up an acquaintance with her to get
invited to the house, she always had samples of those breeds in stock.
She was hospitable to them all, for an animal was an animal to her, and
dear by mere reason of being an animal, no matter about its sort or
social station; and as she would allow of no cages, no collars, no
fetters, but left the creatures free to come and go as they liked, that
contented them, and they came; but they didn't go, to any extent, and so
they were a marvelous nuisance, and made Jacques d'Arc swear a good deal;
but his wife said God gave the child the instinct, and knew what He was
doing when He did it, therefore it must have its course; it would be no
sound prudence to meddle with His affairs when no invitation had been
extended. So the pets were left in peace, and here they were, as I have
said, rabbits, birds, squirrels, cats, and other reptiles, all around the
child, and full of interest in her supper, and helping what they could.
There was a very small squirrel on her shoulder, sitting up, as those
creatures do, and turning a rocky fragment of prehistoric chestnut-cake
over and over in its knotty hands, and hunting for the less indurated
places, and giving its elevated bushy tail a flirt and its pointed ears a
toss when it found one--signifying thankfulness and surprise--and then it
filed that place off with those two slender front teeth which a squirrel
carries for that purpose and not for ornament, for ornamental they never
could be, as any will admit that have noticed them.
Everything was going fine and breezy and hilarious, but then there came
an interruption, for somebody hammered on the door. It was one of those
ragged road-stragglers--the eternal wars kept the country full of them.
He came in, all over snow, and stamped his feet, and shook, and brushed
himself, and shut the door, and took off his limp ruin of a hat, and
slapped it once or twice against his leg to knock off its fleece of snow,
and then glanced around on the company with a pleased look upon his thin
face, and a most yearning and famished one in his eye when it fell upon
the victuals, and then he gave us a humble and conciliatory salutation,
and said it was a blessed thing to have a fire like that on such a night,
and a roof overhead like this, and that rich food to eat, and loving
friends to talk with--ah, yes, this was true, and God help the homeless,
and such as must trudge the roads in this weather.
Nobody said anything. The embarrassed poor creature stood there and
appealed to one face after the other with his eyes, and found no welcome
in any, the smile on his own face flickering and fading and perishing,
meanwhile; then he dropped his gaze, the muscles of his face began to
twitch, and he put up his hand to cover this womanish sign of weakness.
"Sit down!"
This thunder-blast was from old Jacques d'Arc, and Joan was the object of
it. The stranger was startled, and took his hand away, and there was Joan
standing before him offering him her bowl of porridge. The man said:
"God Almighty bless you, my darling!" and then the tears came, and ran
down his cheeks, but he was afraid to take the bowl.
"Do you hear me? Sit down, I say!"
There could not be a child more easy to persuade than Joan, but this was
not the way. Her father had not the art; neither could he learn it. Joan
said:
"Father, he is hungry; I can see it."
"Let him work for food, then. We are being eaten out of house and home by
his like, and I have said I would endure it no more, and will keep my
word. He has the face of a rascal anyhow, and a villain. Sit down, I tell
you!"
"I know not if he is a rascal or no, but he is hungry, father, and shall
have my porridge--I do not need it."
"If you don't obey me I'll-- Rascals are not entitled to help from honest
people, and no bite nor sup shall they have in this house. Joan!"
She set her bowl down on the box and came over and stood before her
scowling father, and said:
"Father, if you will not let me, then it must be as you say; but I would
that you would think--then you would see that it is not right to punish
one part of him for what the other part has done; for it is that poor
stranger's head that does the evil things, but it is not his head that is
hungry, it is his stomach, and it has done no harm to anybody, but is
without blame, and innocent, not having any way to do a wrong, even if it
was minded to it. Please let--"
"What an idea! It is the most idiotic speech I ever heard."
But Aubrey, the maire, broke in, he being fond of an argument, and having
a pretty gift in that regard, as all acknowledged. Rising in his place
and leaning his knuckles upon the table and looking about him with easy
dignity, after the manner of such as be orators, he began, smooth and
persuasive:
"I will differ with you there, gossip, and will undertake to show the
company"--here he looked around upon us and nodded his head in a
confident way--"that there is a grain of sense in what the child has
said; for look you, it is of a certainty most true and demonstrable that
it is a man's head that is master and supreme ruler over his whole body.
Is that granted? Will any deny it?" He glanced around again; everybody
indicated assent. "Very well, then; that being the case, no part of the
body is responsible for the result when it carries out an order delivered
to it by the head; ergo, the head is alone responsible for crimes done by
a man's hands or feet or stomach--do you get the idea? am I right thus
far?" Everybody said yes, and said it with enthusiasm, and some said, one
to another, that the maire was in great form to-night and at his very
best--which pleased the maire exceedingly and made his eyes sparkle with
pleasure, for he overheard these things; so he went on in the same
fertile and brilliant way. "Now, then, we will consider what the term
responsibility means, and how it affects the case in point.
Responsibility makes a man responsible for only those things for which he
is properly responsible"--and he waved his spoon around in a wide sweep
to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of responsibilities
which render people responsible, and several exclaimed, admiringly, "He
is right!--he has put that whole tangled thing into a nutshell--it is
wonderful!" After a little pause to give the interest opportunity to
gather and grow, he went on: "Very good. Let us suppose the case of a
pair of tongs that falls upon a man's foot, causing a cruel hurt. Will
you claim that the tongs are punishable for that? The question is
answered; I see by your faces that you would call such a claim absurd.
Now, why is it absurd? It is absurd because, there being no reasoning
faculty--that is to say, no faculty of personal command--in a pair of
togs, personal responsibility for the acts of the tongs is wholly absent
from the tongs; and, therefore, responsibility being absent, punishment
cannot ensue. Am I right?" A hearty burst of applause was his answer.
"Now, then, we arrive at a man's stomach. Consider how exactly, how
marvelously, indeed, its situation corresponds to that of a pair of
tongs. Listen--and take careful note, I beg you. Can a man's stomach plan
a murder? No. Can it plan a theft? No. Can it plan an incendiary fire?
No. Now answer me--can a pair of tongs?" (There were admiring shouts of
"No!" and "The cases are just exact!" and "Don't he do it splendid!")
"Now, then, friends and neighbors, a stomach which cannot plan a crime
cannot be a principal in the commission of it--that is plain, as you see.
The matter is narrowed down by that much; we will narrow it further. Can
a stomach, of its own motion, assist at a crime? The answer is no,
because command is absent, the reasoning faculty is absent, volition is
absent--as in the case of the tongs. We perceive now, do we not, that the
stomach is totally irresponsible for crimes committed, either in whole or
in part, by it?" He got a rousing cheer for response. "Then what do we
arrive at as our verdict? Clearly this: that there is no such thing in
this world as a guilty stomach; that in the body of the veriest rascal
resides a pure and innocent stomach; that, whatever it's owner may do, it
at least should be sacred in our eyes; and that while God gives us minds
to think just and charitable and honorable thoughts, it should be, and
is, our privilege, as well as our duty, not only to feed the hungry
stomach that resides in a rascal, having pity for its sorrow and its
need, but to do it gladly, gratefully, in recognition of its sturdy and
loyal maintenance of its purity and innocence in the midst of temptation
and in company so repugnant to its better feelings. I am done."
Well, you never saw such an effect! They rose--the whole house rose--an
clapped, and cheered, and praised him to the skies; and one after
another, still clapping and shouting, they crowded forward, some with
moisture in their eyes, and wrung his hands, and said such glorious
things to him that he was clear overcome with pride and happiness, and
couldn't say a word, for his voice would have broken, sure. It was
splendid to see; and everybody said he had never come up to that speech
in his life before, and never could do it again. Eloquence is a power,
there is no question of that. Even old Jacques d'Arc was carried away,
for once in his life, and shouted out:
"It's all right, Joan--give him the porridge!"
She was embarrassed, and did not seem to know what to say, and so didn't
say anything. It was because she had given the man the porridge long ago
and he had already eaten it all up. When she was asked why she had not
waited until a decision was arrived at, she said the man's stomach was
very hungry, and it would not have been wise to wait, since she could not
tell what the decision would be. Now that was a good and thoughtful idea
for a child.
The man was not a rascal at all. He was a very good fellow, only he was
out of luck, and surely that was no crime at that time in France. Now
that his stomach was proved to be innocent, it was allowed to make itself
at home; and as soon as it was well filled and needed nothing more, the
man unwound his tongue and turned it loose, and it was really a noble one
to go. He had been in the wars for years, and the things he told and the
way he told them fired everybody's patriotism away up high, and set all
hearts to thumping and all pulses to leaping; then, before anybody
rightly knew how the change was made, he was leading us a sublime march
through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw the titanic
forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the past and face
their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts sweeping down to
shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb and flow, and
waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each detail pass
before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most adored and
glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and yonder,
across that vast field of the dead and dying, we saw this and that and
the other paladin dealing his prodigious blows with weary arm and failing
strength, and one by one we saw them fall, till only one remained--he
that was without peer, he whose name gives name to the Song of Songs, the
song which no Frenchman can hear and keep his feelings down and his pride
of country cool; then, grandest and pitifulest scene of all, we saw his
own pathetic death; and out stillness, as we sat with parted lips and
breathless, hanging upon this man's words, gave us a sense of the awful
stillness that reigned in that field of slaughter when that last
surviving soul had passed.
And now, in this solemn hush, the stranger gave Joan a pat or two on the
head and said:
"Little maid--whom God keep!--you have brought me from death to life this
night; now listen: here is your reward," and at that supreme time for
such a heart-melting, soul-rousing surprise, without another word he
lifted up the most noble and pathetic voice that was ever heard, and
began to pour out the great Song of Roland!
Think of that, with a French audience all stirred up and ready. Oh, where
was your spoken eloquence now! what was it to this! How fine he looked,
how stately, how inspired, as he stood there with that mighty chant
welling from his lips and his heart, his whole body transfigured, and his
rags along with it.
Everybody rose and stood while he sang, and their faces glowed and their
eyes burned; and the tears came and flowed don their cheeks and their
forms began to sway unconsciously to the swing of the song, and their
bosoms to heave and pant; and moanings broke out, and deep ejaculations;
and when the last verse was reached, and Roland lay dying, all alone,
with his face to the field and to his slain, lying there in heaps and
winrows, and took off and held up his gauntlet to God with his failing
hand, and breathed his beautiful prayer with his paling pips, all burst
out in sobs and wailings. But when the final great note died out and the
song was done, they all flung themselves in a body at the singer, stark
mad with love of him and love of France and pride in her great deeds and
old renown, and smothered him with their embracings; but Joan was there
first, hugged close to his breast, and covering his face with idolatrous
kisses.
The storm raged on outside, but that was no matter; this was the
stranger's home now, for as long as he might please.
Chapter 4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
ALL CHILDREN have nicknames, and we had ours. We got one apiece early,
and they stuck to us; but Joan was richer in this matter, for, as time
went on, she earned a second, and then a third, and so on, and we gave
them to her. First and last she had as many as half a dozen. Several of
these she never lost. Peasant-girls are bashful naturally; but she
surpassed the rule so far, and colored so easily, and was so easily
embarrassed in the presence of strangers, that we nicknamed her the
Bashful. We were all patriots, but she was called the Patriot, because
our warmest feeling for our country was cold beside hers. Also she was
called the Beautiful; and this was not merely because of the
extraordinary beauty of her face and form, but because of the loveliness
of her character. These names she kept, and one other--the Brave.
We grew along up, in that plodding and peaceful region, and got to be
good-sized boys and girls--big enough, in fact, to begin to know as much
about the wars raging perpetually to the west and north of us as our
elders, and also to feel as stirred up over the occasional news from
these red fields as they did. I remember certain of these days very
clearly. One Tuesday a crowd of us were romping and singing around the
Fairy Tree, and hanging garlands on it in memory of our lost little fairy
friends, when Little Mengette cried out:
"Look! What is that?"
When one exclaims like that in a way that shows astonishment and
apprehension, he gets attention. All the panting breasts and flushed
faces flocked together, and all the eager eyes were turned in one
direction--down the slope, toward the village.
"It's a black flag."
"A black flag! No--is it?"
"You can see for yourself that it is nothing else."
"It is a black flag, sure! Now, has any ever seen the like of that
before?"
"What can it mean?"
"Mean? It means something dreadful--what else?"
"That is nothing to the point; anybody knows that without the telling.
But what?--that is the question."
"It is a chance that he that bears it can answer as well as any that are
here, if you contain yourself till he comes."
"He runs well. Who is it?"
Some named one, some another; but presently all saw that it was Etienne
Roze, called the Sunflower, because he had yellow hair and a round
pock-marked face. His ancestors had been Germans some centuries ago. He
came straining up the slope, now and then projecting his flag-stick aloft
and giving his black symbol of woe a wave in the air, whilst all eyes
watched him, all tongues discussed him, and every heart beat faster and
faster with impatience to know his news. At last he sprang among us, and
struck his flag-stick into the ground, saying:
"There! Stand there and represent France while I get my breath. She needs
no other flag now."
All the giddy chatter stopped. It was as if one had announced a death. In
that chilly hush there was no sound audible but the panting of the
breath-blown boy. When he was presently able to speak, he said:
"Black news is come. A treaty has been made at Troyes between France and
the English and Burgundians. By it France is betrayed and delivered over,
tied hand and foot, to the enemy. It is the work of the Duke of Burgundy
and that she-devil, the Queen of France. It marries Henry of England to
Catharine of France--"
"Is not this a lie? Marries the daughter of France to the Butcher of
Agincourt? It is not to be believed. You have not heard aright."
"If you cannot believe that, Jacques d'Arc, then you have a difficult
task indeed before you, for worse is to come. Any child that is born of
that marriage--if even a girl--is to inherit the thrones of both England
and France, and this double ownership is to remain with its posterity
forever!"
"Now that is certainly a lie, for it runs counter to our Salic law, and
so is not legal and cannot have effect," said Edmond Aubrey, called the
Paladin, because of the armies he was always going to eat up some day. He
would have said more, but he was drowned out by the clamors of the
others, who all burst into a fury over this feature of the treaty, all
talking at once and nobody hearing anybody, until presently Haumette
persuaded them to be still, saying:
"It is not fair to break him up so in his tale; pray let him go on. You
find fault with his history because it seems to be lies. That were reason
for satisfaction--that kind of lies--not discontent. Tell the rest,
Etienne."
"There is but this to tell: Our King, Charles VI., is to reign until he
dies, then Henry V. of England is to be Regent of France until a child of
his shall be old enough to--"
"That man is to reign over us--the Butcher? It is lies! all lies!" cried
the Paladin. "Besides, look you--what becomes of our Dauphin? What says
the treaty about him?"
"Nothing. It takes away his throne and makes him an outcast."
Then everybody shouted at once and said the news was a lie; and all began
to get cheerful again, saying, "Our King would have to sign the treaty to
make it good; and that he would not do, seeing how it serves his own
son."
But the Sunflower said: "I will ask you this: Would the Queen sign a
treaty disinheriting her son?"
"That viper? Certainly. Nobody is talking of her. Nobody expects better
of her. There is no villainy she will stick at, if it feed her spite; and
she hates her son. Her signing it is of no consequence. The King must
sign."
"I will ask you another thing. What is the King's condition? Mad, isn't
he?"
"Yes, and his people love him all the more for it. It brings him near to
them by his sufferings; and pitying him makes them love him."
"You say right, Jacques d'Arc. Well, what would you of one that is mad?
Does he know what he does? No. Does he do what others make him do? Yes.
Now, then, I tell you he has signed the treaty."
"Who made him do it?"
"You know, without my telling. The Queen."
Then there was another uproar--everybody talking at once, and all heaping
execrations upon the Queen's head. Finally Jacques d'Arc said:
"But many reports come that are not true. Nothing so shameful as this has
ever come before, nothing that cuts so deep, nothing that has dragged
France so low; therefore there is hope that this tale is but another idle
rumor. Where did you get it?"
The color went out of his sister Joan's face. She dreaded the answer; and
her instinct was right.
"The cur, of Maxey brought it."
There was a general gasp. We knew him, you see, for a trusty man.
"Did he believe it?"
The hearts almost stopped beating. Then came the answer:
"He did. And that is not all. He said he knew it to be true."
Some of the girls began to sob; the boys were struck silent. The distress
in Joan's face was like that which one sees in the face of a dumb animal
that has received a mortal hurt. The animal bears it, making no
complaint; she bore it also, saying no word. Her brother Jacques put his
hand on her head and caressed her hair to indicate his sympathy, and she
gathered the hand to her lips and kissed it for thanks, not saying
anything. Presently the reaction came, and the boys began to talk. Noel
Rainguesson said:
"Oh, are we never going to be men! We do grow along so slowly, and France
never needed soldiers as she needs them now, to wipe out this black
insult."
"I hate youth!" said Pierre Morel, called the Dragon-fly because his eyes
stuck out so. "You've always got to wait, and wait, and wait--and here
are the great wars wasting away for a hundred years, and you never get a
chance. If I could only be a soldier now!"
"As for me, I'm not going to wait much longer," said the Paladin; "and
when I do start you'll hear from me, I promise you that. There are some
who, in storming a castle, prefer to be in the rear; but as for me, give
me the front or none; I will have none in front of me but the officers."
Even the girls got the war spirit, and Marie Dupont said:
"I would I were a man; I would start this minute!" and looked very proud
of herself, and glanced about for applause.
"So would I," said Cecile Letellier, sniffing the air like a war-horse
that smells the battle; "I warrant you I would not turn back from the
field though all England were in front of me."
"Pooh!" said the Paladin; "girls can brag, but that's all they are good
for. Let a thousand of them come face to face with a handful of soldiers
once, if you want to see what running is like. Here's little Joan--next
she'll be threatening to go for a soldier!"
The idea was so funny, and got such a good laugh, that the Paladin gave
it another trial, and said: "Why you can just see her!--see her plunge
into battle like any old veteran. Yes, indeed; and not a poor shabby
common soldier like us, but an officer--an officer, mind you, with armor
on, and the bars of a steel helmet to blush behind and hide her
embarrassment when she finds an army in front of her that she hasn't been
introduced to. An officer? Why, she'll be a captain! A captain, I tell
you, with a hundred men at her back--or maybe girls. Oh, no
common-soldier business for her! And, dear me, when she starts for that
other army, you'll think there's a hurricane blowing it away!"
Well, he kept it up like that till he made their sides ache with
laughing; which was quite natural, for certainly it was a very funny
idea--at that time--I mean, the idea of that gentle little creature, that
wouldn't hurt a fly, and couldn't bear the sight of blood, and was so
girlish and shrinking in all ways, rushing into battle with a gang of
soldiers at her back. Poor thing, she sat there confused and ashamed to
be so laughed at; and yet at that very minute there was something about
to happen which would change the aspect of things, and make those young
people see that when it comes to laughing, the person that laughs last
has the best chance. For just then a face which we all knew and all
feared projected itself from behind the Fairy Tree, and the thought that
shot through us all was, crazy Benoist has gotten loose from his cage,
and we are as good as dead! This ragged and hairy and horrible creature
glided out from behind the tree, and raised an ax as he came. We all
broke and fled, this way and that, the girls screaming and crying. No,
not all; all but Joan. She stood up and faced the man, and remained so.
As we reached the wood that borders the grassy clearing and jumped into
its shelter, two or three of us glanced back to see if Benoist was
gaining on us, and that is what we saw--Joan standing, and the maniac
gliding stealthily toward her with his ax lifted. The sight was
sickening. We stood where we were, trembling and not able to move. I did
not want to see the murder done, and yet I could not take my eyes away.
Now I saw Joan step forward to meet the man, though I believed my eyes
must be deceiving me. Then I saw him stop. He threatened her with his ax,
as if to warn her not to come further, but she paid no heed, but went
steadily on, until she was right in front of him--right under his ax.
Then she stopped, and seemed to begin to talk with him. It made me sick,
yes, giddy, and everything swam around me, and I could not see anything
for a time--whether long or brief I do not know. When this passed and I
looked again, Joan was walking by the man's side toward the village,
holding him by his hand. The ax was in her other hand.
One by one the boys and girls crept out, and we stood there gazing,
open-mouthed, till those two entered the village and were hid from sight.
It was then that we named her the Brave.
We left the black flag there to continue its mournful office, for we had
other matter to think of now. We started for the village on a run, to
give warning, and get Joan out of her peril; though for one, after seeing
what I had seen, it seemed to me that while Joan had the ax the man's
chance was not the best of the two. When we arrived the danger was past,
the madman was in custody. All the people were flocking to the little
square in front of the church to talk and exclaim and wonder over the
event, and it even made the town forget the black news of the treaty for
two or three hours.
All the women kept hugging and kissing Joan, and praising her, and
crying, and the men patted her on the head and said they wished she was a
man, they would send her to the wars and never doubt but that she would
strike some blows that would be heard of. She had to tear herself away
and go and hide, this glory was so trying to her diffidence.
Of course the people began to ask us for the particulars. I was so
ashamed that I made an excuse to the first comer, and got privately away
and went back to the Fairy Tree, to get relief from the embarrassment of
those questionings. There I found Joan, but she was there to get relief
from the embarrassment of glory. One by one the others shirked the
inquirers and joined us in our refuge. Then we gathered around Joan, and
asked her how she had dared to do that thing. She was very modest about
it, and said:
"You make a great thing of it, but you mistake; it was not a great
matter. It was not as if I had been a stranger to the man. I know him,
and have known him long; and he knows me, and likes me. I have fed him
through the bars of his cage many times; and last December, when they
chopped off two of his fingers to remind him to stop seizing and wounding
people passing by, I dressed his hand every day till it was well again."
"That is all well enough," said Little Mengette, "but he is a madman,
dear, and so his likings and his gratitude and friendliness go for
nothing when his rage is up. You did a perilous thing."
"Of course you did," said the Sunflower. "Didn't he threaten to kill you
with the ax?"
"Yes."
"Didn't he threaten you more than once?"
"Yes."
"Didn't you feel afraid?"
"No--at least not much--very little."
"Why didn't you?"
She thought a moment, then said, quite simply:
"I don't know."
It made everybody laugh. Then the Sunflower said it was like a lamb
trying to think out how it had come to eat a wolf, but had to give it up.
Cecile Letellier asked, "Why didn't you run when we did?"
"Because it was necessary to get him to his cage; else he would kill some
one. Then he would come to the like harm himself."
It is noticeable that this remark, which implies that Joan was entirely
forgetful of herself and her own danger, and had thought and wrought for
the preservation of other people alone, was not challenged, or
criticized, or commented upon by anybody there, but was taken by all as
matter of course and true. It shows how clearly her character was
defined, and how well it was known and established.
There was silence for a time, and perhaps we were all thinking of the
same thing--namely, what a poor figure we had cut in that adventure as
contrasted with Joan's performance. I tried to think up some good way of
explaining why I had run away and left a little girl at the mercy of a
maniac armed with an ax, but all of the explanations that offered
themselves to me seemed so cheap and shabby that I gave the matter up and
remained still. But others were less wise. Noel Rainguesson fidgeted
awhile, then broke out with a remark which showed what his mind had been
running on:
"The fact is, I was taken by surprise. That is the reason. If I had had a
moment to think, I would no more have thought of running that I would
think of running from a baby. For, after all, what is Theophile Benoist,
that I should seem to be afraid of him? Pooh! the idea of being afraid of
that poor thing! I only wish he would come along now--I'd show you!"
"So do I!" cried Pierre Morel. "If I wouldn't make him climb this tree
quicker than--well, you'd see what I would do! Taking a person by
surprise, that way--why, I never meant to run; not in earnest, I mean. I
never thought of running in earnest; I only wanted to have some fun, and
when I saw Joan standing there, and him threatening her, it was all I
could do to restrain myself from going there and just tearing the livers
and lights out of him. I wanted to do it bad enough, and if it was to do
over again, I would! If ever he comes fooling around me again, I'll--"
"Oh, hush!" said the Paladin, breaking in with an air of disdain; "the
way you people talk, a person would think there's something heroic about
standing up and facing down that poor remnant of a man. Why, it's
nothing! There's small glory to be got in facing him down, I should say.
Why, I wouldn't want any better fun than to face down a hundred like him.
If he was to come along here now, I would walk up to him just as I am
now--I wouldn't care if he had a thousand axes--and say--"
And so he went on and on, telling the brave things he would say and the
wonders he would do; and the others put in a word from time to time,
describing over again the gory marvels they would do if ever that madman
ventured to cross their path again, for next time they would be ready for
him, and would soon teach him that if he thought he could surprise them
twice because he had surprised them once, he would find himself very
seriously mistaken, that's all.
And so, in the end, they all got back their self-respect; yes, and even
added somewhat to it; indeed when the sitting broke up they had a finer
opinion of themselves than they had ever had before.
Chapter 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
THEY WERE peaceful and pleasant, those young and smoothly flowing days of
ours; that is, that was the case as a rule, we being remote from the seat
of war; but at intervals roving bands approached near enough for us to
see the flush in the sky at night which marked where they were burning
some farmstead or village, and we all knew, or at least felt, that some
day they would come yet nearer, and we should have our turn. This dull
dread lay upon our spirits like a physical weight. It was greatly
augmented a couple of years after the Treaty of Troyes.
It was truly a dismal year for France. One day we had been over to have
one of our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys of
the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our side
of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell
ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square we
found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by
smoking and flaring torches.
On the steps of the church stood a stranger, a Burgundian priest, who was
telling the people new which made them weep, and rave, and rage, and
curse, by turns. He said our old mad King was dead, and that now we and
France and the crown were the property of an English baby lying in his
cradle in London. And he urged us to give that child our allegiance, and
be its faithful servants and well-wishers; and said we should now have a
strong and stable government at last, and that in a little time the
English armies would start on their last march, and it would be a brief
one, for all that it would need to do would be to conquer what odds and
ends of our country yet remained under that rare and almost forgotten
rag, the banner of France.
The people stormed and raged at him, and you could see dozens of them
stretch their fists above the sea of torch-lighted faces and shake them
at him; and it was all a wild picture, and stirring to look at; and the
priest was a first-rate part of it, too, for he stood there in the strong
glare and looked down on those angry people in the blandest and most
indifferent way, so that while you wanted to burn him at the stake, you
still admired the aggravating coolness of him. And his winding-up was the
coolest thing of all. For he told them how, at the funeral of our old
King, the French King-at-Arms had broken his staff of office over the
coffin of "Charles VI. and his dynasty," at the same time saying, in a
loud voice, "Good grant long life to Henry, King of France and England,
our sovereign lord!" and then he asked them to join him in a hearty Amen
to that! The people were white with wrath, and it tied their tongues for
the moment, and they could not speak. But Joan was standing close by, and
she looked up in his face, and said in her sober, earnest way:
"I would I might see thy head struck from thy body!"--then, after a
pause, and crossing herself--"if it were the will of God."
This is worth remembering, and I will tell you why: it is the only harsh
speech Joan ever uttered in her life. When I shall have revealed to you
the storms she went through, and the wrongs and persecutions, then you
will see that it was wonderful that she said but one bitter thing while
she lived.
From the day that that dreary news came we had one scare after another,
the marauders coming almost to our doors every now and then; so that we
lived in ever-increasing apprehension, and yet were somehow mercifully
spared from actual attack. But at last our turn did really come. This was
in the spring of '28. The Burgundians swarmed in with a great noise, in
the middle of a dark night, and we had to jump up and fly for our lives.
We took the road to Neufchateau, and rushed along in the wildest
disorder, everybody trying to get ahead, and thus the movements of all
were impeded; but Joan had a cool head--the only cool head there--and she
took command and brought order out of that chaos. She did her work
quickly and with decision and despatch, and soon turned the panic flight
into a quite steady-going march. You will grant that for so young a
person, and a girl at that, this was a good piece of work.
She was sixteen now, shapely and graceful, and of a beauty so
extraordinary that I might allow myself any extravagance of language in
describing it and yet have no fear of going beyond the truth. There was
in her face a sweetness and serenity and purity that justly reflected her
spiritual nature. She was deeply religious, and this is a thing which
sometimes gives a melancholy cast to a person's countenance, but it was
not so in her case. Her religion made her inwardly content and joyous;
and if she was troubled at times, and showed the pain of it in her face
and bearing, it came of distress for her country; no part of it was
chargeable to her religion.
A considerable part of our village was destroyed, and when it became safe
for us to venture back there we realized what other people had been
suffering in all the various quarters of France for many years--yes,
decades of years. For the first time we saw wrecked and smoke-blackened
homes, and in the lanes and alleys carcasses of dumb creatures that had
been slaughtered in pure wantonness--among them calves and lambs that had
been pets of the children; and it was pity to see the children lament
over them.
And then, the taxes, the taxes! Everybody thought of that. That burden
would fall heavy now in the commune's crippled condition, and all faces
grew long with the thought of it. Joan said:
"Paying taxes with naught to pay them with is what the rest of France has
been doing these many years, but we never knew the bitterness of that
before. We shall know it now."
And so she went on talking about it and growing more and more troubled
about it, until one could see that it was filling all her mind.
At last we came upon a dreadful object. It was the madman--hacked and
stabbed to death in his iron cage in the corner of the square. It was a
bloody and dreadful sight. Hardly any of us young people had ever seen a
man before who had lost his life by violence; so this cadaver had an
awful fascination for us; we could not take our eyes from it. I mean, it
had that sort of fascination for all of us but one. That one was Joan.
She turned away in horror, and could not be persuaded to go near it
again. There--it is a striking reminder that we are but creatures of use
and custom; yes, and it is a reminder, too, of how harshly and unfairly
fate deals with us sometimes. For it was so ordered that the very ones
among us who were most fascinated with mutilated and bloody death were to
live their lives in peace, while that other, who had a native and deep
horror of it, must presently go forth and have it as a familiar spectacle
every day on the field of battle.
You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since the
raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that had
really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants may
have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous
occurrences that had filtered from the world's history dimly into their
minds, the truth is that they hadn't. One biting little fact, visible to
their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became at once
more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the world's
history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It amuses me
now when I recall how our elders talked then. The fumed and fretted in a
fine fashion.
"Ah, yes," said old Jacques d'Arc, "things are come to a pretty pass,
indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from
idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business." He meant our
young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII.
"You way well," said the maire. "He should be informed, and that at once.
It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are not
safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made known,
indeed it shall--all France shall hear of it!"
To hear them talk, one would have imagined that all the previous ten
thousand sackings and burnings in France had been but fables, and this
one the only fact. It is always the way; words will answer as long as it
is only a person's neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets
into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something.
The big event filled us young people with talk, too. We let it flow in a
steady stream while we tended the flocks. We were beginning to feel
pretty important now, for I was eighteen and the other youths were from
one to four years older--young men, in fact. One day the Paladin was
arrogantly criticizing the patriot generals of France and said:
"Look at Dunois, Bastard of Orleans--call him a general! Just put me in
his place once--never mind what I would do, it is not for me to say, I
have no stomach for talk, my way is to act and let others do the
talking--but just put me in his place once, that's all! And look at
Saintrailles--pooh! and that blustering La Hire, now what a general that
is!"
It shocked everybody to hear these great names so flippantly handled, for
to us these renowned soldiers were almost gods. In their far-off splendor
they rose upon our imaginations dim and huge, shadowy and awful, and it
was a fearful thing to hear them spoken of as if they were mere men, and
their acts open to comment and criticism. The color rose in Joan's face,
and she said:
"I know not how any can be so hardy as to use such words regarding these
sublime men, who are the very pillars of the French state, supporting it
with their strength and preserving it at daily cost of their blood. As
for me, I could count myself honored past all deserving if I might be
allowed but the privilege of looking upon them once--at a distance, I
mean, for it would not become one of my degree to approach them too
near."
The Paladin was disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around him
that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled his
complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan's brother Jean
said:
"If you don't like what our generals do, why don't you go to the great
wars yourself and better their work? You are always talking about going
to the wars, but you don't go."
"Look you," said the Paladin, "it is easy to say that. Now I will tell
you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my
reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I
am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private
soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise
from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one
moment. I can save France--ah, you may laugh, but I know what is in me, I
know what is hid under this peasant cap. I can save France, and I stand
ready to do it, but not under these present conditions. If they want me,
let them send for me; otherwise, let them take the consequences; I shall
not budge but as an officer."
"Alas, poor France--France is lost!" said Pierre d'Arc.
"Since you sniff so at others, why don't you go to the wars yourself,
Pierre d'Arc?"
"Oh, I haven't been sent for, either. I am no more a gentleman than you.
Yet I will go; I promise to go. I promise to go as a private under your
orders--when you are sent for."
They all laughed, and the Dragon-fly said:
"So soon? Then you need to begin to get ready; you might be called for in
five years--who knows? Yes, in my opinion you'll march for the wars in
five years."
"He will go sooner," said Joan. She said it in a low voice and musingly,
but several heard it.
"How do you know that, Joan?" said the Dragon-fly, with a surprised look.
But Jean d'Arc broke in and said:
"I want to go myself, but as I am rather young yet, I also will wait, and
march when the Paladin is sent for."
"No," said Joan, "he will go with Pierre."
She said it as one who talks to himself aloud without knowing it, and
none heard it but me. I glanced at her and saw that her knitting-needles
were idle in her hands, and that her face had a dreamy and absent look in
it. There were fleeting movements of her lips as if she might be
occasionally saying parts of sentences to herself. But there was no
sound, for I was the nearest person to her and I heard nothing. But I set
my ears open, for those two speeches had affected me uncannily, I being
superstitious and easily troubled by any little thing of a strange and
unusual sort.
Noel Rainguesson said:
"There is one way to let France have a chance for her salvation. We've
got one gentleman in the commune, at any rate. Why can't the Scholar
change name and condition with the Paladin? Then he can be an officer.
France will send for him then, and he will sweep these English and
Burgundian armies into the sea like flies."
I was the Scholar. That was my nickname, because I could read and write.
There was a chorus of approval, and the Sunflower said:
"That is the very thing--it settles every difficulty. The Sieur de Conte
will easily agree to that. Yes, he will march at the back of Captain
Paladin and die early, covered with common-soldier glory."
"He will march with Jean and Pierre, and live till these wars are
forgotten," Joan muttered; "and at the eleventh hour Noel and the Paladin
will join these, but not of their own desire." The voice was so low that
I was not perfectly sure that these were the words, but they seemed to
be. It makes one feel creepy to hear such things.
"Come, now," Noel continued, "it's all arranged; there's nothing to do
but organize under the Paladin's banner and go forth and rescue France.
You'll all join?"
All said yes, except Jacques d'Arc, who said:
"I'll ask you to excuse me. It is pleasant to talk war, and I am with you
there, and I've always thought I should go soldiering about this time,
but the look of our wrecked village and that carved-up and bloody madman
have taught me that I am not made for such work and such sights. I could
never be at home in that trade. Face swords and the big guns and death?
It isn't in me. No, no; count me out. And besides, I'm the eldest son,
and deputy prop and protector of the family. Since you are going to carry
Jean and Pierre to the wars, somebody must be left behind to take care of
our Joan and her sister. I shall stay at home, and grow old in peace and
tranquillity."
"He will stay at home, but not grow old," murmured Joan.
The talk rattled on in the gay and careless fashion privileged to youth,
and we got the Paladin to map out his campaigns and fight his battles and
win his victories and extinguish the English and put our King upon his
throne and set his crown upon his head. Then we asked him what he was
going to answer when the King should require him to name his reward. The
Paladin had it all arranged in his head, and brought it out promptly:
"He shall give me a dukedom, name me premier peer, and make me Hereditary
Lord High Constable of France."
"And marry you to a princess--you're not going to leave that out, are
you?"
The Paladin colored a trifle, and said, brusquely:
"He may keep his princesses--I can marry more to my taste."
Meaning Joan, though nobody suspected it at that time. If any had, the
Paladin would have been finely ridiculed for his vanity. There was no fit
mate in that village for Joan of Arc. Every one would have said that.
In turn, each person present was required to say what reward he would
demand of the King if he could change places with the Paladin and do the
wonders the Paladin was going to do. The answers were given in fun, and
each of us tried to outdo his predecessors in the extravagance of the
reward he would claim; but when it came to Joan's turn, and they rallied
her out of her dreams and asked her to testify, they had to explain to
her what the question was, for her thought had been absent, and she had
heard none of this latter part of our talk. She supposed they wanted a
serious answer, and she gave it. She sat considering some moments, then
she said:
"If the Dauphin, out of his grace and nobleness, should say to me, 'Now
that I am rich and am come to my own again, choose and have,' I should
kneel and ask him to give command that our village should nevermore be
taxed."
It was so simple and out of her heart that it touched us and we did not
laugh, but fell to thinking. We did not laugh; but there came a day when
we remembered that speech with a mournful pride, and were glad that we
had not laughed, perceiving then how honest her words had been, and
seeing how faithfully she made them good when the time came, asking just
that boon of the King and refusing to take even any least thing for
herself.
Chapter 6 Joan and Archangel Michael
ALL THROUGH her childhood and up to the middle of her fourteenth year,
Joan had been the most light-hearted creature and the merriest in the
village, with a hop-skip-and-jump gait and a happy and catching laugh;
and this disposition, supplemented by her warm and sympathetic nature and
frank and winning ways, had made her everybody's pet. She had been a hot
patriot all this time, and sometimes the war news had sobered her spirits
and wrung her heart and made her acquainted with tears, but always when
these interruptions had run their course her spirits rose and she was her
old self again.
But now for a whole year and a half she had been mainly grave; not
melancholy, but given to thought, abstraction, dreams. She was carrying
France upon her heart, and she found the burden not light. I knew that
this was her trouble, but others attributed her abstraction to religious
ecstasy, for she did not share her thinkings with the village at large,
yet gave me glimpses of them, and so I knew, better than the rest, what
was absorbing her interest. Many a time the idea crossed my mind that she
had a secret--a secret which she was keeping wholly to herself, as well
from me as from the others. This idea had come to me because several
times she had cut a sentence in two and changed the subject when
apparently she was on the verge of a revelation of some sort. I was to
find this secret out, but not just yet.
The day after the conversation which I have been reporting we were
together in the pastures and fell to talking about France, as usual. For
her sake I had always talked hopefully before, but that was mere lying,
for really there was not anything to hang a rag of hope for France upon.
Now it was such a pain to lie to her, and cost me such shame to offer
this treachery to one so snow-pure from lying and treachery, and even
from suspicion of such baseness in others, as she was, that I was
resolved to face about now and begin over again, and never insult her
more with deception. I started on the new policy by saying--still opening
up with a small lie, of course, for habit is habit, and not to be flung
out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time:
"Joan, I have been thinking the thing all over last night, and have
concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the case of
France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since Agincourt; and
that to-day it is more than desperate, it is hopeless."
I did not look her in the face while I was saying it; it could not be
expected of a person. To break her heart, to crush her hope with a so
frankly brutal speech as that, without one charitable soft place in
it--it seemed a shameful thing, and it was. But when it was out, the
weight gone, and my conscience rising to the surface, I glanced at her
face to see the result.
There was none to see. At least none that I was expecting. There was a
barely perceptible suggestion of wonder in her serious eyes, but that was
all; and she said, in her simple and placid way:
"The case of France hopeless? Why should you think that? Tell me."
It is a most pleasant thing to find that what you thought would inflict a
hurt upon one whom you honor, has not done it. I was relieved now, and
could say all my say without any furtivenesses and without embarrassment.
So I began:
"Let us put sentiment and patriotic illusions aside, and look at the
facts in the face. What do they say? They speak as plainly as the figures
in a merchant's account-book. One has only to add the two columns up to
see that the French house is bankrupt, that one-half of its property is
already in the English sheriff's hands and the other half in
nobody's--except those of irresponsible raiders and robbers confessing
allegiance to nobody. Our King is shut up with his favorites and fools in
inglorious idleness and poverty in a narrow little patch of the
kingdom--a sort of back lot, as one may say--and has no authority there
or anywhere else, hasn't a farthing to his name, nor a regiment of
soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not intending to fight, he means to
make no further resistance; in truth, there is but one thing that he is
intending to do--give the whole thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer,
and run away to Scotland. There are the facts. Are they correct?"
"Yes, they are correct."
"Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in order
to realize what they mean."
She asked, in an ordinary, level tone:
"What--that the case of France is hopeless?"
"Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible."
"How can you say that? How can you feel like that?"
"How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the
circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you
really any hope for France--really and actually?"
"Hope--oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep it. Do
not doubt it."
It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded to-day.
It must be so, or she would see that those figures could mean only one
thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would see. So I said:
"Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head. You are
not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here--I want to make a
picture of them, her eon the ground with a stick. Now, this rough outline
is France. Through its middle, east and west, I draw a river."
"Yes, the Loire."
"Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight grip
of the English."
"Yes."
"And this whole southern half is really in nobody's hands at all--as our
King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign land.
England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume full
possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France is gone,
France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What was France is
now but a British province. Is this true?"
Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct:
"Yes, it is true."
"Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is complete:
When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch soldiers, under the
French flag, have won a barren fight or two a few years back, but I am
speaking of French ones. Since eight thousand Englishmen nearly
annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen a dozen years ago at Agincourt,
French courage has been paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day
that if you confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the
French will run."
"It is a pity, but even these things are true."
"Then certainly the day for hoping is past."
I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could not
fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that there was
no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and disappointed also.
She said, without any doubt in her tone:
"France will rise again. You shall see."
"Rise?--with this burden of English armies on her back!"
"She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!" This with spirit.
"Without soldiers to fight with?"
"The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will march."
"March to the rear, as usual?"
"No; to the front--ever to the front--always to the front! You shall
see."
"And the pauper King?"
"He will mount his throne--he will wear his crown."
"Well, of a truth this makes one's head dizzy. Why, if I could believe
that in thirty years from now the English domination would be broken and
the French monarch's head find itself hooped with a real crown of
sovereignty--"
"Both will have happened before two years are sped."
"Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime impossibilities?"
"God."
It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.
What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question kept
running in my mind during two or three days. It was inevitable that I
should think of madness. What other way was there to account for such
things? Grieving and brooding over the woes of France had weakened that
strong mind, and filled it with fantastic phantoms--yes, that must be it.
But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was clear
and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the point. No,
there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still the soundest in
the village and the best. She went on thinking for others, planning for
others, sacrificing herself for others, just as always before. She went
on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to give
the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was a
secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it. This was plain.
Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it
happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter which
I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an eyewitness talk of it
before.
I was coming from over the ridge, one day--it was the 15th of May,
'28--and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to step
out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech tree
stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first--then I took a step
backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For I
had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of playful
surprise for her. Think of it--that trivial conceit was neighbor, with
but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event destined
to endure forever in histories and songs.
The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree stood
lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed by gnarled
great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one reposing in the
other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward the ground, and her
air was that of one who is lost to thought, steeped in dreams, and not
conscious of herself or of the world. And now I saw a most strange thing,
for I saw a white shadow come slowly gliding along the grass toward the
Tree. It was of grand proportions--a robed form, with wings--and the
whiteness of this shadow was not like any other whiteness that we know
of, except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even the lightnings are
not so intense as it was, for one cal look at them without hurt, whereas
this brilliancy was so blinding that in pained my eyes and brought the
water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving that I was in the
presence of something not of this world. My breath grew faint and
difficult, because of the terror and the awe that possessed me.
Another strange thing. The wood had been silent--smitten with that deep
stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest, and the wild
creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the birds burst forth
into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it was beyond belief;
and was so eloquent and so moving, withal, that it was plain it was an
act of worship. With the first note of those birds Joan cast herself upon
her knees, and bent her head low and crossed her hands upon her breast.
She had not seen the shadow yet. Had the song of the birds told her it
was coming? It had that look to me. Then the like of this must have
happened before. Yes, there might be no doubt of that.
The shadow approached Joan slowly; the extremity of it reached her,
flowed over her, clothed her in its awful splendor. In that immortal
light her face, only humanly beautiful before, became divine; flooded
with that transforming glory her mean peasant habit was become like to
the raiment of the sun-clothed children of God as we see them thronging
the terraces of the Throne in our dreams and imaginings.
Presently she rose and stood, with her head still bowed a little, and
with her arms down and the ends of her fingers lightly laced together in
front of her; and standing so, all drenched with that wonderful light,
and yet apparently not knowing it, she seemed to listen--but I heard
nothing. After a little she raised her head, and looked up as one might
look up toward the face of a giant, and then clasped her hands and lifted
them high, imploringly, and began to plead. I heard some of the words. I
heard her say:
"But I am so young! oh, so young to leave my mother and my home and go
out into the strange world to undertake a thing so great! Ah, how can I
talk with men, be comrade with men?--soldiers! It would give me over to
insult, and rude usage, and contempt. How can I go to the great wars, and
lead armies?--I a girl, and ignorant of such things, knowing nothing of
arms, nor how to mount a horse, nor ride it. . . . Yet--if it is
commanded--"
Her voice sank a little, and was broken by sobs, and I made out no more
of her words. Then I came to myself. I reflected that I had been
intruding upon a mystery of God--and what might my punishment be? I was
afraid, and went deeper into the wood. Then I carved a mark in the bark
of a tree, saying to myself, it may be that I am dreaming and have not
seen this vision at all. I will come again, when I know that I am awake
and not dreaming, and see if this mark is still here; then I shall know.
Chapter 7 She Delivers the Divine Command
I HEARD my name called. It was Joan's voice. It startled me, for how
could she know I was there? I said to myself, it is part of the dream; it
is all dream--voice, vision and all; the fairies have done this. So I
crossed myself and pronounced the name of God, to break the enchantment.
I knew I was awake now and free from the spell, for no spell can
withstand this exorcism. Then I heard my name called again, and I stepped
at once from under cover, and there indeed was Joan, but not looking as
she had looked in the dream. For she was not crying now, but was looking
as she had used to look a year and a half before, when her heart was
light and her spirits high. Her old-time energy and fire were back, and a
something like exaltation showed itself in her face and bearing. It was
almost as if she had been in a trance all that time and had come awake
again. Really, it was just as if she had been away and lost, and was come
back to us at last; and I was so glad that I felt like running to call
everybody and have them flock around her and give her welcome. I ran to
her excited and said:
"Ah, Joan, I've got such a wonderful thing to tell you about! You would
never imagine it. I've had a dream, and in the dream I saw you right here
where you are standing now, and--"
But she put up her hand and said:
"It was not a dream."
It gave me a shock, and I began to feel afraid again.
"Not a dream?" I said, "how can you know about it, Joan?"
"Are you dreaming now?"
"I--I suppose not. I think I am not."
"Indeed you are not. I know you are not. And yow were not dreaming when
you cut the mark in the tree."
I felt myself turning cold with fright, for now I knew of a certainty
that I had not been dreaming, but had really been in the presence of a
dread something not of this world. Then I remembered that my sinful feet
were upon holy ground--the ground where that celestial shadow had rested.
I moved quickly away, smitten to the bones with fear. Joan followed, and
said:
"Do not be afraid; indeed there is no need. Come with me. We will sit by
the spring and I will tell you all my secret."
When she was ready to begin, I checked her and said:
"First tell me this. You could not see me in the wood; how did you know I
cut a mark in the tree?"
"Wait a little; I will soon come to that; then you will see."
"But tell me one thing now; what was that awful shadow that I saw?"
"I will tell you, but do not be disturbed; you are not in danger. It was
the shadow of an archangel--Michael, the chief and lord of the armies of
heaven."
I could but cross myself and tremble for having polluted that ground with
my feet.
"You were not afraid, Joan? Did you see his face--did you see his form?"
"Yes; I was not afraid, because this was not the first time. I was afraid
the first time."
"When was that, Joan?"
"It is nearly three years ago now."
"So long? Have you seen him many times?"
"Yes, many times."
"It is this, then, that has changed you; it was this that made you
thoughtful and not as you were before. I see it now. Why did you not tell
us about it?"
"It was not permitted. It is permitted now, and soon I shall tell all.
But only you, now. It must remain a secret for a few days still."
"Has none seen that white shadow before but me?"
"No one. It has fallen upon me before when you and others were present,
but none could see it. To-day it has been otherwise, and I was told why;
but it will not be visible again to any."
"It was a sign to me, then--and a sign with a meaning of some kind?"
"Yes, but I may not speak of that."
"Strange--that that dazzling light could rest upon an object before one's
eyes and not be visible."
"With it comes speech, also. Several saints come, attended by myriads of
angels, and they speak to me; I hear their voices, but others do not.
They are very dear to me--my Voices; that is what I call them to myself."
"Joan, what do they tell you?"
"All manner of things--about France, I mean."
"What things have they been used to tell you?"
She sighed, and said:
"Disasters--only disasters, and misfortunes, and humiliation. There was
naught else to foretell."
"They spoke of them to you beforehand?" "Yes. So that I knew what was
going to happen before it happened. It made me grave--as you saw. It
could not be otherwise. But always there was a word of hope, too. More
than that: France was to be rescued, and made great and free again. But
how and by whom--that was not told. Not until to-day." As she said those
last words a sudden deep glow shone in her eyes, which I was to see there
many times in after-days when the bugles sounded the charge and learn to
call it the battle-light. Her breast heaved, and the color rose in her
face. "But to-day I know. God has chosen the meanest of His creatures for
this work; and by His command, and in His protection, and by His
strength, not mine, I am to lead His armies, and win back France, and set
the crown upon the head of His servant that is Dauphin and shall be
King."
I was amazed, and said:
"You, Joan? You, a child, lead armies?"
"Yes. For one little moment or two the thought crushed me; for it is as
you say--I am only a child; a child and ignorant--ignorant of everything
that pertains to war, and not fitted for the rough life of camps and the
companionship of soldiers. But those weak moments passed; they will not
come again. I am enlisted, I will not turn back, God helping me, till the
English grip is loosed from the throat of France. My Voices have never
told me lies, they have not lied to-day. They say I am to go to Robert de
Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs, and he will give me men-at-arms for
escort and send me to the King. A year from now a blow will be struck
which will be the beginning of the end, and the end will follow swiftly."
"Where will it be struck?"
"My Voices have not said; nor what will happen this present year, before
it is struck. It is appointed me to strike it, that is all I know; and
follow it with others, sharp and swift, undoing in ten weeks England's
long years of costly labor, and setting the crown upon the Dauphin's
head--for such is God's will; my Voices have said it, and shall I doubt
it? No; it will be as they have said, for they say only that which is
true."
These were tremendous sayings. They were impossibilities to my reason,
but to my heart they rang true; and so, while my reason doubted, my heart
believed--believed, and held fast to the belief from that day. Presently
I said:
"Joan, I believe the things which you have said, and now I am glad that I
am to march with you to the great wars--that is, if it is with you I am
to march when I go."
She looked surprised, and said:
"It is true that you will be with me when I go to the wars, but how did
you know?"
"I shall march with you, and so also will Jean and Pierre, but not
Jacques."
"All true--it is so ordered, as was revealed to me lately, but I did not
know until to-day that the marching would be with me, or that I should
march at all. How did you know these things?"
I told her when it was that she had said them. But she did not remember
about it. So then I knew that she had been asleep, or in a trance or an
ecstasy of some kind, at that time. She bade me keep these and the other
revelations to myself for the present, and I said I would, and kept the
faith I promised.
None who met Joan that day failed to notice the change that had come over
her. She moved and spoke with energy and decision; there was a strange
new fire in her eye, and also a something wholly new and remarkable in
her carriage and in the set of her head. This new light in the eye and
this new bearing were born of the authority and leadership which had this
day been vested in her by the decree of God, and they asserted that
authority as plainly as speech could have done it, yet without
ostentation or bravado. This calm consciousness of command, and calm
unconscious outward expression of it, remained with her thenceforth until
her mission was accomplished.
Like the other villagers, she had always accorded me the deference due my
rank; but now, without word said on either side, she and I changed
places; she gave orders, not suggestions. I received them with the
deference due a superior, and obeyed them without comment. In the evening
she said to me:
"I leave before dawn. No one will know it but you. I go to speak with the
governor of Vaucouleurs as commanded, who will despise me and treat me
rudely, and perhaps refuse my prayer at this time. I go first to Burey,
to persuade my uncle Laxart to go with me, it not being meet that I go
alone. I may need you in Vaucouleurs; for if the governor will not
receive me I will dictate a letter to him, and so must have some one by
me who knows the art of how to write and spell the words. You will go
from here to-morrow in the afternoon, and remain in Vaucouleurs until I
need you."
I said I would obey, and she went her way. You see how clear a head she
had, and what a just and level judgment. She did not order me to go with
her; no, she would not subject her good name to gossiping remark. She
knew that the governor, being a noble, would grant me, another noble,
audience; but no, you see, she would not have that, either. A poor
peasant-girl presenting a petition through a young nobleman--how would
that look? She always protected her modesty from hurt; and so, for
reward, she carried her good name unsmirched to the end. I knew what I
must do now, if I would have her approval: go to Vaucouleurs, keep out of
her sight, and be ready when wanted.
I went the next afternoon, and took an obscure lodging; the next day I
called at the castle and paid my respects to the governor, who invited me
to dine with him at noon of the following day. He was an ideal soldier of
the time; tall, brawny, gray-headed, rough, full of strange oaths
acquired here and there and yonder in the wars and treasured as if they
were decorations. He had been used to the camp all his life, and to his
notion war was God's best gift to man. He had his steel cuirass on, and
wore boots that came above his knees, and was equipped with a huge sword;
and when I looked at this martial figure, and heard the marvelous oaths,
and guessed how little of poetry and sentiment might be looked for in
this quarter, I hoped the little peasant-girl would not get the privilege
of confronting this battery, but would have to content herself with the
dictated letter.
I came again to the castle the next day at noon, and was conducted to the
great dining-hall and seated by the side of the governor at a small table
which was raised a couple of steps higher than the general table. At the
small table sat several other guests besides myself, and at the general
table sat the chief officers of the garrison. At the entrance door stood
a guard of halberdiers, in morion and breastplate.
As for talk, there was but one topic, of course--the desperate situation
of France. There was a rumor, some one said, that Salisbury was making
preparations to march against Orleans. It raised a turmoil of excited
conversation, and opinions fell thick and fast. Some believed he would
march at once, others that he could not accomplish the investment before
fall, others that the siege would be long, and bravely contested; but
upon one thing all voices agreed: that Orleans must eventually fall, and
with it France. With that, the prolonged discussion ended, and there was
silence. Every man seemed to sink himself in his own thoughts, and to
forget where he was. This sudden and profound stillness, where before had
been so much animation, was impressive and solemn. Now came a servant and
whispered something to the governor, who said:
"Would talk with me?"
"Yes, your Excellency."
"H'm! A strange idea, certainly. Bring them in."
It was Joan and her uncle Laxart. At the spectacle of the great people
the courage oozed out of the poor old peasant and he stopped midway and
would come no further, but remained there with his red nightcap crushed
in his hands and bowing humbly here, there, and everywhere, stupefied
with embarrassment and fear. But Joan came steadily forward, erect and
self-possessed, and stood before the governor. She recognized me, but in
no way indicated it. There was a buzz of admiration, even the governor
contributing to it, for I heard him mutter, "By God's grace, it is a
beautiful creature!" He inspected her critically a moment or two, then
said:
"Well, what is your errand, my child?"
"My message is to you, Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs,
and it is this: that you will send and tell the Dauphin to wait and not
give battle to his enemies, for God will presently send him help."
This strange speech amazed the company, and many murmured, "The poor
young thing is demented." The governor scowled, and said:
"What nonsense is this? The King--or the Dauphin, as you call him--needs
no message of that sort. He will wait, give yourself no uneasiness as to
that. What further do you desire to say to me?"
"This. To beg that you will give me an escort of men-at-arms and send me
to the Dauphin."
"What for?"
"That he may make me his general, for it is appointed that I shall drive
the English out of France, and set the crown upon his head."
"What--you? Why, you are but a child!"
"Yet am I appointed to do it, nevertheless."
"Indeed! And when will all this happen?"
"Next year he will be crowned, and after that will remain master of
France."
There was a great and general burst of laughter, and when it had subsided
the governor said:
"Who has sent you with these extravagant messages?"
"My Lord."
"What Lord?"
"The King of Heaven."
Many murmured, "Ah, poor thing, poor thing!" and others, "Ah, her mind is
but a wreck!" The governor hailed Laxart, and said:
"Harkye!--take this mad child home and whip her soundly. That is the best
cure for her ailment."
As Joan was moving away she turned and said, with simplicity:
"You refuse me the soldiers, I know not why, for it is my Lord that has
commanded you. Yes, it is He that has made the command; therefore I must
come again, and yet again; then I shall have the men-at-arms."
There was a great deal of wondering talk, after she was gone; and the
guards and servants passed the talk to the town, the town passed it to
the country; Domremy was already buzzing with it when we got back.
Chapter 8 Why the Scorners Relented
HUMAN NATURE is the same everywhere: it defies success, it has nothing
but scorn for defeat. The village considered that Joan had disgraced it
with her grotesque performance and its ridiculous failure; so all the
tongues were busy with the matter, and as bilious and bitter as they were
busy; insomuch that if the tongues had been teeth she would not have
survived her persecutions. Those persons who did not scold did what was
worse and harder to bear; for they ridiculed her, and mocked at her, and
ceased neither day nor night from their witticisms and jeerings and
laughter. Haumette and Little Mengette and I stood by her, but the storm
was too strong for her other friends, and they avoided her, being ashamed
to be seen with her because she was so unpopular, and because of the
sting of the taunts that assailed them on her account. She shed tears in
secret, but none in public. In public she carried herself with serenity,
and showed no distress, nor any resentment--conduct which should have
softened the feeling against her, but it did not. Her father was so
incensed that he could not talk in measured terms about her wild project
of going to the wars like a man. He had dreamed of her doing such a
thing, some time before, and now he remembered that dream with
apprehension and anger, and said that rather than see her unsex herself
and go away with the armies, he would require her brothers to drown her;
and that if they should refuse, he would do it with his own hands.
But none of these things shook her purpose in the least. Her parents kept
a strict watch upon her to keep her from leaving the village, but she
said her time was not yet; that when the time to go was come she should
know it, and then the keepers would watch in vain.
The summer wasted along; and when it was seen that her purpose continued
steadfast, the parents were glad of a chance which finally offered itself
for bringing her projects to an end through marriage. The Paladin had the
effrontery to pretend that she had engaged herself to him several years
before, and now he claimed a ratification of the engagement.
She said his statement was not true, and refused to marry him. She was
cited to appear before the ecclesiastical court at Toul to answer for her
perversity; when she declined to have counsel, and elected to conduct her
case herself, her parents and all her ill-wishers rejoiced, and looked
upon her as already defeated. And that was natural enough; for who would
expect that an ignorant peasant-girl of sixteen would be otherwise than
frightened and tongue-tied when standing for the first time in presence
of the practised doctors of the law, and surrounded by the cold
solemnities of a court? Yet all these people were mistaken. They flocked
to Toul to see and enjoy this fright and embarrassment and defeat, and
they had their trouble for their pains. She was modest, tranquil, and
quite at her ease. She called no witnesses, saying she would content
herself with examining the witnesses for the prosecution. When they had
testified, she rose and reviewed their testimony in a few words,
pronounced it vague, confused, and of no force, then she placed the
Paladin again on the stand and began to search him. His previous
testimony went rag by rag to ruin under her ingenious hands, until at
last he stood bare, so to speak, he that had come so richly clothed in
fraud and falsehood. His counsel began an argument, but the court
declined to hear it, and threw out the case, adding a few words of grave
compliment for Joan, and referring to her as "this marvelous child."
After this victory, with this high praise from so imposing a source
added, the fickle village turned again, and gave Joan countenance,
compliment, and peace. Her mother took her back to her heart, and even
her father relented and said he was proud of her. But the time hung heavy
on her hands, nevertheless, for the siege of Orleans was begun, the
clouds lowered darker and darker over France, and still her Voices said
wait, and gave her no direct commands. The winter set in, and wore
tediously along; but at last there was a change.
BOOK II IN COURT AND CAMP
Chapter 1 Joan Says Good-By
THE 5th of January, 1429, Joan came to me with her uncle Laxart, and
said:
"The time is come. My Voices are not vague now, but clear, and they have
told me what to do. In two months I shall be with the Dauphin."
Her spirits were high, and her bearing martial. I caught the infection
and felt a great impulse stirring in me that was like what one feels when
he hears the roll of the drums and the tramp of marching men.
"I believe it," I said.
"I also believe it," said Laxart. "If she had told me before, that she
was commanded of God to rescue France, I should not have believed; I
should have let her seek the governor by her own ways and held myself
clear of meddling in the matter, not doubting she was mad. But I have
seen her stand before those nobles and might men unafraid, and say her
say; and she had not been able to do that but by the help of God. That I
know. Therefore with all humbleness I am at her command, to do with me as
she will."
"My uncle is very good to me," Joan said. "I sent and asked him to come
and persuade my mother to let him take me home with him to tend his wife,
who is not well. It is arranged, and we go at dawn to-morrow. From his
house I shall go soon to Vaucouleurs, and wait and strive until my prayer
is granted. Who were the two cavaliers who sat to your left at the
governor's table that day?"
"One was the Sieur Jean de Novelonpont de Metz, the other the Sieur
Bertrand de Poulengy."
"Good metal--good metal, both. I marked them for men of mine. . . . What
is it I see in your face? Doubt?"
I was teaching myself to speak the truth to her, not trimming it or
polishing it; so I said:
"They considered you out of your head, and said so. It is true they
pitied you for being in such misfortune, but still they held you to be
mad."
This did not seem to trouble her in any way or wound her. She only said:
"The wise change their minds when they perceive that they have been in
error. These will. They will march with me. I shall see them presently. .
. . You seem to doubt again? Do you doubt?"
"N-no. Not now. I was remembering that it was a year ago, and that they
did not belong here, but only chanced to stop a day on their journey."
"They will come again. But as to matters now in hand; I came to leave
with you some instructions. You will follow me in a few days. Order your
affairs, for you will be absent long."
"Will Jean and Pierre go with me?"
"No; they would refuse now, but presently they will come, and with them
they will bring my parents' blessing, and likewise their consent that I
take up my mission. I shall be stronger, then--stronger for that; for
lack of it I am weak now." She paused a little while, and the tears
gathered in her eyes; then she went on: "I would say good-by to Little
Mengette. Bring her outside the village at dawn; she must go with me a
little of the way--"
"And Haumette?"
She broke down and began to cry, saying:
"No, oh, no--she is too dear to me, I could not bear it, knowing I should
never look upon her face again."
Next morning I brought Mengette, and we four walked along the road in the
cold dawn till the village was far behind; then the two girls said their
good-bys, clinging about each other's neck, and pouring out their grief
in loving words and tears, a pitiful sight to see. And Joan took one long
look back upon the distant village, and the Fairy Tree, and the oak
forest, and the flowery plain, and the river, as if she was trying to
print these scenes on her memory so that they would abide there always
and not fade, for she knew she would not see them any more in this life;
then she turned, and went from us, sobbing bitterly. It was her birthday
and mine. She was seventeen years old.
Chapter 2 The Governor Speeds Joan
After a few days, Laxart took Joan to Vaucouleurs, and found lodging and
guardianship for her with Catherine Royer, a wheelwright's wife, an
honest and good woman. Joan went to mass regularly, she helped do the
housework, earning her keep in that way, and if any wished to talk with
her about her mission--and many did--she talked freely, making no
concealments regarding the matter now. I was soon housed near by, and
witnessed the effects which followed. At once the tidings spread that a
young girl was come who was appointed of God to save France. The common
people flocked in crowds to look at her and speak with her, and her fair
young loveliness won the half of their belief, and her deep earnestness
and transparent sincerity won the other half. The well-to-do remained
away and scoffed, but that is their way.
Next, a prophecy of Merlin's, more than eight hundred years old, was
called to mind, which said that in a far future time France would be lost
by a woman and restored by a woman. France was now, for the first time,
lost--and by a woman, Isabel of Bavaria, her base Queen; doubtless this
fair and pure young girl was commissioned of Heaven to complete the
prophecy.
This gave the growing interest a new and powerful impulse; the excitement
rose higher and higher, and hope and faith along with it; and so from
Vaucouleurs wave after wave of this inspiring enthusiasm flowed out over
the land, far and wide, invading all the villages and refreshing and
revivifying the perishing children of France; and from these villages
came people who wanted to see for themselves, hear for themselves; and
they did see and hear, and believe. They filled the town; they more than
filled it; inns and lodgings were packed, and yet half of the inflow had
to go without shelter. And still they came, winter as it was, for when a
man's soul is starving, what does he care for meat and roof so he can but
get that nobler hunger fed? Day after day, and still day after day the
great tide rose. Domremy was dazed, amazed, stupefied, and said to
itself, "Was this world-wonder in our familiar midst all these years and
we too dull to see it?" Jean and Pierre went out from the village, stared
at and envied like the great and fortunate of the earth, and their
progress to Vaucouleurs was like a triumph, all the country-side flocking
to see and salute the brothers of one with whom angels had spoken face to
face, and into whose hands by command of God they had delivered the
destinies of France.
The brothers brought the parents' blessing and godspeed to Joan, and
their promise to bring it to her in person later; and so, with this
culminating happiness in her heart and the high hope it inspired, she
went and confronted the governor again. But he was no more tractable than
he had been before. He refused to send her to the King. She was
disappointed, but in no degree discouraged. She said:
"I must still come to you until I get the men-at-arms; for so it is
commanded, and I may not disobey. I must go to the Dauphin, though I go
on my knees."
I and the two brothers were with Joan daily, to see the people that came
and hear what they said; and one day, sure enough, the Sieur Jean de Metz
came. He talked with her in a petting and playful way, as one talks with
children, and said:
"What are you doing here, my little maid? Will they drive the King out of
France, and shall we all turn English?"
She answered him in her tranquil, serious way:
"I am come to bid Robert de Baudricourt take or send me to the King, but
he does not heed my words."
"Ah, you have an admirable persistence, truly; a whole year has not
turned you from your wish. I saw you when you came before."
Joan said, as tranquilly as before:
"It is not a wish, it is a purpose. He will grant it. I can wait."
"Ah, perhaps it will not be wise to make too sure of that, my child.
These governors are stubborn people to deal with. In case he shall not
grant your prayer--"
"He will grant it. He must. It is not a matter of choice."
The gentleman's playful mood began to disappear--one could see that, by
his face. Joan's earnestness was affecting him. It always happened that
people who began in jest with her ended by being in earnest. They soon
began to perceive depths in her that they had not suspected; and then her
manifest sincerity and the rocklike steadfastness of her convictions were
forces which cowed levity, and it could not maintain its self-respect in
their presence. The Sieur de Metz was thoughtful for a moment or two,
then he began, quite soberly:
"Is it necessary that you go to the King soon?--that is, I mean--"
"Before Mid-Lent, even though I wear away my legs to the knees!"
She said it with that sort of repressed fieriness that means so much when
a person's heart is in a thing. You could see the response in that
nobleman's face; you could see his eye light up; there was sympathy
there. He said, most earnestly:
"God knows I think you should have the men-at-arms, and that somewhat
would come of it. What is it that you would do? What is your hope and
purpose?"
"To rescue France. And it is appointed that I shall do it. For no one
else in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, no any other, can recover
the kingdom of France, and there is no help but in me."
The words had a pleading and pathetic sound, and they touched that good
nobleman. I saw it plainly. Joan dropped her voice a little, and said:
"But indeed I would rather spin with my poor mother, for this is not my
calling; but I must go and do it, for it is my Lord's will."
"Who is your Lord?"
"He is God."
Then the Sieur de Metz, following the impressive old feudal fashion,
knelt and laid his hands within Joan's in sign of fealty, and made oath
that by God's help he himself would take her to the king.
The next day came the Sieur Bertrand de Poulengy, and he also pledged his
oath and knightly honor to abide with her and follower witherosever she
might lead.
This day, too, toward evening, a great rumor went flying abroad through
the town--namely, that the very governor himself was going to visit the
young girl in her humble lodgings. So in the morning the streets and
lanes were packed with people waiting to see if this strange thing would
indeed happen. And happen it did. The governor rode in state, attended by
his guards, and the news of it went everywhere, and made a great
sensation, and modified the scoffings of the people of quality and raised
Joan's credit higher than ever.
The governor had made up his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch
or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was. So he brought a priest
with him to exorcise the devil that was in her in case there was one
there. The priest performed his office, but found no devil. He merely
hurt Joan's feelings and offended her piety without need, for he had
already confessed her before this, and should have known, if he knew
anything, that devils cannot abide the confessional, but utter cries of
anguish and the most profane and furious cursings whenever they are
confronted with that holy office.
The governor went away troubled and full of thought, and not knowing what
to do. And while he pondered and studied, several days went by and the
14th of February was come. Then Joan went to the castle and said:
"In God's name, Robert de Baudricourt, you are too slow about sending me,
and have caused damage thereby, for this day the Dauphin's cause has lost
a battle near Orleans, and will suffer yet greater injury if you do not
send me to him soon."
The governor was perplexed by this speech, and said:
"To-day, child, to-day? How can you know what has happened in that region
to-day? It would take eight or ten days for the word to come."
"My Voices have brought the word to me, and it is true. A battle was lost
to-day, and you are in fault to delay me so."
The governor walked the floor awhile, talking within himself, but letting
a great oath fall outside now and then; and finally he said:
"Harkye! go in peace, and wait. If it shall turn out as you say, I will
give you the letter and send you to the King, and not otherwise."
Joan said with fervor:
"Now God be thanked, these waiting days are almost done. In nine days you
will fetch me the letter."
Already the people of Vaucouleurs had given her a horse and had armed and
equipped her as a soldier. She got no chance to try the horse and see if
she could ride it, for her great first duty was to abide at her post and
lift up the hopes and spirits of all who would come to talk with her, and
prepare them to help in the rescue and regeneration of the kingdom. This
occupied every waking moment she had. But it was no matter. There was
nothing she could not learn--and in the briefest time, too. Her horse
would find this out in the first hour. Meantime the brothers and I took
the horse in turn and began to learn to ride. And we had teaching in the
use of the sword and other arms also.
On the 20th Joan called her small army together--the two knights and her
two brothers and me--for a private council of war. No, it was not a
council, that is not the right name, for she did not consult with us, she
merely gave us orders. She mapped out the course she would travel toward
the King, and did it like a person perfectly versed in geography; and
this itinerary of daily marches was so arranged as to avoid here and
there peculiarly dangerous regions by flank movements--which showed that
she knew her political geography as intimately as she knew her physical
geography; yet she had never had a day's schooling, of course, and was
without education. I was astonished, but thought her Voices must have
taught her. But upon reflection I saw that this was not so. By her
references to what this and that and the other person had told her, I
perceived that she had been diligently questioning those crowds of
visiting strangers, and that out of them she had patiently dug all this
mass of invaluable knowledge. The two knights were filled with wonder at
her good sense and sagacity.
She commanded us to make preparations to travel by night and sleep by day
in concealment, as almost the whole of our long journey would be through
the enemy's country.
Also, she commanded that we should keep the date of our departure a
secret, since she meant to get away unobserved. Otherwise we should be
sent off with a grand demonstration which would advertise us to the
enemy, and we should be ambushed and captured somewhere. Finally she
said:
"Nothing remains, now, but that I confide to you the date of our
departure, so that you may make all needful preparation in time, leaving
nothing to be done in haste and badly at the last moment. We march the
23d, at eleven of the clock at night."
Then we were dismissed. The two knights were startled--yes, and troubled;
and the Sieur Bertrand said:
"Even if the governor shall really furnish the letter and the escort, he
still may not do it in time to meet the date she has chosen. Then how can
she venture to name that date? It is a great risk--a great risk to select
and decide upon the date, in this state of uncertainty."
I said:
"Since she has named the 23d, we may trust her. The Voices have told her,
I think. We shall do best to obey."
We did obey. Joan's parents were notified to come before the 23d, but
prudence forbade that they be told why this limit was named.
All day, the 23d, she glanced up wistfully whenever new bodies of
strangers entered the house, but her parents did not appear. Still she
was not discouraged, but hoped on. But when night fell at last, her hopes
perished, and the tears came; however, she dashed them away, and said:
"It was to be so, no doubt; no doubt it was so ordered; I must bear it,
and will."
De Metz tried to comfort her by saying:
"The governor sends no word; it may be that they will come to-morrow,
and--"
He got no further, for she interrupted him, saying:
"To what good end? We start at eleven to-night."
And it was so. At ten the governor came, with his guard and arms, with
horses and equipment for me and for the brothers, and gave Joan a letter
to the King. Then he took off his sword, and belted it about her waist
with his own hands, and said:
"You said true, child. The battle was lost, on the day you said. So I
have kept my word. Now go--come of it what may."
Joan gave him thanks, and he went his way.
The lost battle was the famous disaster that is called in history the
Battle of the Herrings.
All the lights in the house were at once put out, and a little while
after, when the streets had become dark and still, we crept stealthily
through them and out at the western gate and rode away under whip and
spur.
Chapter 3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
WE WERE twenty-five strong, and well equipped. We rode in double file,
Joan and her brothers in the center of the column, with Jean de Metz at
the head of it and the Sieur Bertrand at its extreme rear. In two or
three hours we should be in the enemy's country, and then none would
venture to desert. By and by we began to hear groans and sobs and
execrations from different points along the line, and upon inquiry found
that six of our men were peasants who had never ridden a horse before,
and were finding it very difficult to stay in their saddles, and moreover
were now beginning to suffer considerable bodily torture. They had been
seized by the governor at the last moment and pressed into the service to
make up the tale, and he had placed a veteran alongside of each with
orders to help him stick to the saddle, and kill him if he tried to
desert.
These poor devils had kept quiet as long as they could, but their
physical miseries were become so sharp by this time that they were
obliged to give them vent. But we were within the enemy's country now, so
there was no help for them, they must continue the march, though Joan
said that if they chose to take the risk they might depart. They
preferred to stay with us. We modified our pace now, and moved
cautiously, and the new men were warned to keep their sorrows to
themselves and not get the command into danger with their curses and
lamentations.
Toward dawn we rode deep into a forest, and soon all but the sentries
were sound asleep in spite of the cold ground and the frosty air.
I woke at noon out of such a solid and stupefying sleep that at first my
wits were all astray, and I did not know where I was nor what had been
happening. Then my senses cleared, and I remembered. As I lay there
thinking over the strange events of the past month or two the thought
came into my mind, greatly surprising me, that one of Joan's prophecies
had failed; for where were Noel and the Paladin, who were to join us at
the eleventh hour? By this time, you see, I had gotten used to expecting
everything Joan said to come true. So, being disturbed and troubled by
these thoughts, I opened my eyes. Well, there stood the Paladin leaning
against a tree and looking down on me! How often that happens; you think
of a person, or speak of a person, and there he stands before you, and
you not dreaming he is near. It looks as if his being near is really the
thing that makes you think of him, and not just an accident, as people
imagine. Well, be that as it may, there was the Paladin, anyway, looking
down in my face and waiting for me to wake. I was ever so glad to see
him, and jumped up and shook him by the hand, and led him a little way
from the camp--he limping like a cripple--and told him to sit down, and
said:
"Now, where have you dropped down from? And how did you happen to light
in this place? And what do the soldier-clothes mean? Tell me all about
it."
He answered:
"I marched with you last night."
"No!" (To myself I said, "The prophecy has not all failed--half of it has
come true.") "Yes, I did. I hurried up from Domremy to join, and was
within a half a minute of being too late. In fact, I was too late, but I
begged so hard that the governor was touched by my brave devotion to my
country's cause--those are the words he used--and so he yielded, and
allowed me to come."
I thought to myself, this is a lie, he is one of those six the governor
recruited by force at the last moment; I know it, for Joan's prophecy
said he would join at the eleventh hour, but not by his own desire. Then
I said aloud:
"I am glad you came; it is a noble cause, and one should not sit at home
in times like these."
"Sit at home! I could no more do it than the thunderstone could stay hid
in the clouds when the storm calls it."
"That is the right talk. It sounds like you."
That pleased him.
"I'm glad you know me. Some don't. But they will, presently. They will
know me well enough before I get done with this war."
"That is what I think. I believe that wherever danger confronts you you
will make yourself conspicuous."
He was charmed with this speech, and it swelled him up like a bladder. He
said:
"If I know myself--and I think I do--my performances in this campaign
will give you occasion more than once to remember those words."
"I were a fool to doubt it. That I know."
"I shall not be at my best, being but a common soldier; still, the
country will hear of me. If I were where I belong; if I were in the place
of La Hire, or Saintrailles, or the Bastard of Orleans--well, I say
nothing. I am not of the talking kind, like Noel Rainguesson and his
sort, I thank God. But it will be something, I take it--a novelty in this
world, I should say--to raise the fame of a private soldier above theirs,
and extinguish the glory of their names with its shadow."
"Why, look here, my friend," I said, "do you know that you have hit out a
most remarkable idea there? Do you realize the gigantic proportions of
it? For look you; to be a general of vast renown, what is that?
Nothing--history is clogged and confused with them; one cannot keep their
names in his memory, there are so many. But a common soldier of supreme
renown--why, he would stand alone! He would the be one moon in a
firmament of mustard-seed stars; his name would outlast the human race!
My friend, who gave you that idea?"
He was ready to burst with happiness, but he suppressed betrayal of it as
well as he could. He simply waved the compliment aside with his hand and
said, with complacency:
"It is nothing. I have them often--ideas like that--and even greater
ones. I do not consider this one much."
"You astonish me; you do, indeed. So it is really your own?"
"Quite. And there is plenty more where it came from"--tapping his head
with his finger, and taking occasion at the same time to cant his morion
over his right ear, which gave him a very self-satisfied air--"I do not
need to borrow my ideas, like Noel Rainguesson."
"Speaking of Noel, when did you see him last?"
"Half an hour ago. He is sleeping yonder like a corpse. Rode with us last
night."
I felt a great upleap in my heart, and said to myself, now I am at rest
and glad; I will never doubt her prophecies again. Then I said aloud:
"It gives me joy. It makes me proud of our village. There is not keeping
our lion-hearts at home in these great times, I see that."
"Lion-heart! Who--that baby? Why, he begged like a dog to be let off.
Cried, and said he wanted to go to his mother. Him a lion-heart!--that
tumble-bug!"
"Dear me, why I supposed he volunteered, of course. Didn't he?"
"Oh, yes, he volunteered the way people do to the headsman. Why, when he
found I was coming up from Domremy to volunteer, he asked me to let him
come along in my protection, and see the crowds and the excitement. Well,
we arrived and saw the torches filing out at the Castle, and ran there,
and the governor had him seized, along with four more, and he begged to
be let off, and I begged for his place, and at last the governor allowed
me to join, but wouldn't let Noel off, because he was disgusted with him,
he was such a cry-baby. Yes, and much good he'll do the King's service;
he'll eat for six and run for sixteen. I hate a pygmy with half a heart
and nine stomachs!"
"Why, this is very surprising news to me, and I am sorry and disappointed
to hear it. I thought he was a very manly fellow."
The Paladin gave me an outraged look, and said:
"I don't see how you can talk like that, I'm sure I don't. I don't see
how you could have got such a notion. I don't dislike him, and I'm not
saying these things out of prejudice, for I don't allow myself to have
prejudices against people. I like him, and have always comraded with him
from the cradle, but he must allow me to speak my mind about his faults,
and I am willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true
enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they'll bear inspection--I have that
idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail
and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn't the saddle
hurt me? Pooh--I was as much at home in it as if I had been born there.
And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. All those old
soldiers admired my riding; they said they had never seen anything like
it. But him--why, they had to hold him on, all the time."
An odor as of breakfast came stealing through the wood; the Paladin
unconsciously inflated his nostrils in lustful response, and got up and
limped painfully away, saying he must go and look to his horse.
At bottom he was all right and a good-hearted giant, without any harm in
him, for it is no harm to bark, if one stops there and does not bite, and
it is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick. If
this vast structure of brawn and muscle and vanity and foolishness seemed
to have a libelous tongue, what of it? There was no malice behind it; and
besides, the defect was not of his own creation; it was the work of Noel
Rainguesson, who had nurtured it, fostered it, built it up and perfected
it, for the entertainment he got out of it. His careless light heart had
to have somebody to nag and chaff and make fun of, the Paladin had only
needed development in order to meet its requirements, consequently the
development was taken in hand and diligently attended to and looked
after, gnat-and-bull fashion, for years, to the neglect and damage of far
more important concerns. The result was an unqualified success. Noel
prized the society of the Paladin above everybody else's; the Paladin
preferred anybody's to Noel's. The big fellow was often seen with the
little fellow, but it was for the same reason that the bull is often seen
with the gnat.
With the first opportunity, I had a talk with Noel. I welcomed him to our
expedition, and said:
"It was fine and brave of you to volunteer, Noel."
His eye twinkled, and he answered:
"Yes, it was rather fine, I think. Still, the credit doesn't all belong
to me; I had help."
"Who helped you?"
"The governor."
"How?"
"Well, I'll tell you the whole thing. I came up from Domremy to see the
crowds and the general show, for I hadn't ever had any experience of such
things, of course, and this was a great opportunity; but I hadn't any
mind to volunteer. I overtook the Paladin on the road and let him have my
company the rest of the way, although he did not want it and said so; and
while we were gawking and blinking in the glare of the governor's torches
they seized us and four more and added us to the escort, and that is
really how I came to volunteer. But, after all, I wasn't sorry,
remembering how dull life would have been in the village without the
Paladin."
"How did he feel about it? Was he satisfied?"
"I think he was glad."
"Why?"
"Because he said he wasn't. He was taken by surprise, you see, and it is
not likely that he could tell the truth without preparation. Not that he
would have prepared, if he had had the chance, for I do not think he
would. I am not charging him with that. In the same space of time that he
could prepare to speak the truth, he could also prepare to lie; besides,
his judgment would be cool then, and would warn him against fooling with
new methods in an emergency. No, I am sure he was glad, because he said
he wasn't."
"Do you think he was very glad?"
"Yes, I know he was. He begged like a slave, and bawled for his mother.
He said his health was delicate, and he didn't know how to ride a horse,
and he knew he couldn't outlive the first march. But really he wasn't
looking as delicate as he was feeling. There was a cask of wine there, a
proper lift for four men. The governor's temper got afire, and he
delivered an oath at him that knocked up the dust where it struck the
ground, and told him to shoulder that cask or he would carve him to
cutlets and send him home in a basket. The Paladin did it, and that
secured his promotion to a privacy in the escort without any further
debate."
"Yes, you seem to make it quite plain that he was glad to join--that is,
if your premises are right that you start from. How did he stand the
march last night?"
"About as I did. If he made the more noise, it was the privilege of his
bulk. We stayed in our saddles because we had help. We are equally lame
to-day, and if he likes to sit down, let him; I prefer to stand."
Chapter 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
WE WERE called to quarters and subjected to a searching inspection by
Joan. Then she made a short little talk in which she said that even the
rude business of war could be conducted better without profanity and
other brutalities of speech than with them, and that she should strictly
require us to remember and apply this admonition. She ordered half an
hour's horsemanship drill for the novices then, and appointed one of the
veterans to conduct it. It was a ridiculous exhibition, but we learned
something, and Joan was satisfied and complimented us. She did not take
any instruction herself or go through the evolutions and manoeuvres, but
merely sat her horse like a martial little statue and looked on. That was
sufficient for her, you see. She would not miss or forget a detail of the
lesson, she would take it all in with her eye and her mind, and apply it
afterward with as much certainty and confidence as if she had already
practised it.
We now made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues each,
riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving band of Free
Companions. Country-folk were glad to have that sort of people go by
without stopping. Still, they were very wearying marches, and not
comfortable, for the bridges were few and the streams many, and as we had
to ford them we found the water dismally cold, and afterward had to bed
ourselves, still wet, on the frosty or snowy ground, and get warm as we
might and sleep if we could, for it would not have been prudent to build
fires. Our energies languished under these hardships and deadly fatigues,
but Joan's did not. Her step kept its spring and firmness and her eye its
fire. We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it.
But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the five
nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing, the baths as
cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in addition, and lost two
novices and three veterans in the resulting fights. The news had leaked
out and gone abroad that the inspired Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making
for the King with an escort, and all the roads were being watched now.
These five nights disheartened the command a good deal. This was
aggravated by a discovery which Noel made, and which he promptly made
known at headquarters. Some of the men had been trying to understand why
Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and confident while the strongest
men in the company were fagged with the heavy marches and exposure and
were become morose and irritable. There, it shows you how men can have
eyes and yet not see. All their lives those men had seen their own
women-folks hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields
while the men did the driving. They had also seen other evidences that
women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than men--but
what good had their seeing these things been to them? None. It had taught
them nothing. They were still surprised to see a girl of seventeen bear
the fatigues of war better than trained veterans of the army. Moreover,
they did not reflect that a great soul, with a great purpose, can make a
weak body strong and keep it so; and here was the greatest soul in the
universe; but how could they know that, those dumb creatures? No, they
knew nothing, and their reasonings were of a piece with their ignorance.
They argued and discussed among themselves, with Noel listening, and
arrived at the decision that Joan was a witch, and had her strange pluck
and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to watch for a safe
opportunity to take her life.
To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a very
serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan's permission to
hang the plotters, but she refused without hesitancy. She said:
"Neither these men nor any others can take my life before my mission is
accomplished, therefore why should I have their blood upon my hands? I
will inform them of this, and also admonish them. Call them before me."
When the came she made that statement to them in a plain matter-of-fact
way, and just as if the thought never entered her mind that any one could
doubt it after she had given her word that it was true. The men were
evidently amazed and impressed to hear her say such a thing in such a
sure and confident way, for prophecies boldly uttered never fall barren
on superstitious ears. Yes, this speech certainly impressed them, but her
closing remark impressed them still more. It was for the ringleader, and
Joan said it sorrowfully:
"It is a pity that you should plot another's death when you own is so
close at hand."
That man's horse stumbled and fell on him in the first ford which we
crossed that night, and he was drowned before we could help him. We had
no more conspiracies.
This night was harassed with ambuscades, but we got through without
having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile
frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with a good
deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less reluctant to
start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in the fords and
persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient to get under way
and have it over, although there was promise of more and harder fighting
than any of the previous nights had furnished. Moreover, in front of us
about three leagues there was a deep stream with a frail wooden bridge
over it, and as a cold rain mixed with snow had been falling steadily all
day we were anxious to find out whether we were in a trap or not. If the
swollen stream had washed away the bridge, we might properly consider
ourselves trapped and cut off from escape.
As soon as it was dark we filed out from the depth of the forest where we
had been hidden and began the march. From the time that we had begun to
encounter ambushes Joan had ridden at the head of the column, and she
took this post now. By the time we had gone a league the rain and snow
had turned to sleet, and under the impulse of the storm-wind it lashed my
face like whips, and I envied Joan and the knights, who could close their
visors and shut up their heads in their helmets as in a box. Now, out of
the pitchy darkness and close at hand, came the sharp command:
"Halt!"
We obeyed. I made out a dim mass in front of us which might be a body of
horsemen, but one could not be sure. A man rode up and said to Joan in a
tone of reproof:
"Well, you have taken your time, truly. And what have you found out? Is
she still behind us, or in front?"
Joan answered in a level voice:
"She is still behind."
This news softened the stranger's tone. He said:
"If you know that to be true, you have not lost your time, Captain. But
are you sure? How do you know?"
"Because I have seen her."
"Seen her! Seen the Virgin herself?"
"Yes, I have been in her camp."
"Is it possible! Captain Raymond, I ask you to pardon me for speaking in
that tone just now. You have performed a daring and admirable service.
Where was she camped?"
"In the forest, not more than a league from here."
"Good! I was afraid we might be still behind her, but now that we know
she is behind us, everything is safe. She is our game. We will hang her.
You shall hang her yourself. No one has so well earned the privilege of
abolishing this pestilent limb of Satan."
"I do not know how to thank you sufficiently. If we catch her, I--"
"If! I will take care of that; give yourself no uneasiness. All I want is
just a look at her, to see what the imp is like that has been able to
make all this noise, then you and the halter may have her. How many men
has she?"
"I counted but eighteen, but she may have had two or three pickets out."
"Is that all? It won't be a mouthful for my force. Is it true that she is
only a girl?"
"Yes; she is not more than seventeen."
"It passes belief! Is she robust, or slender?"
"Slender."
The officer pondered a moment or two, then he said:
"Was she preparing to break camp?"
"Not when I had my last glimpse of her."
"What was she doing?"
"She was talking quietly with an officer."
"Quietly? Not giving orders?"
"No, talking as quietly as we are now."
"That is good. She is feeling a false security. She would have been
restless and fussy else--it is the way of her sex when danger is about.
As she was making no preparation to break camp--"
"She certainly was not when I saw her last."
"--and was chatting quietly and at her ease, it means that this weather
is not to her taste. Night-marching in sleet and wind is not for chits of
seventeen. No; she will stay where she is. She has my thanks. We will
camp, ourselves; here is as good a place as any. Let us get about it."
"If you command it--certainly. But she has two knights with her. They
might force her to march, particularly if the weather should improve."
I was scared, and impatient to be getting out of this peril, and it
distressed and worried me to have Joan apparently set herself to work to
make delay and increase the danger--still, I thought she probably knew
better than I what to do. The officer said:
"Well, in that case we are here to block the way."
"Yes, if they come this way. But if they should send out spies, and find
out enough to make them want to try for the bridge through the woods? Is
it best to allow the bridge to stand?"
It made me shiver to hear her.
The officer considered awhile, then said:
"It might be well enough to send a force to destroy the bridge. I was
intending to occupy it with the whole command, but that is not necessary
now."
Joan said, tranquilly:
"With your permission, I will go and destroy it myself."
Ah, now I saw her idea, and was glad she had had the cleverness to invent
it and the ability to keep her head cool and think of it in that tight
place. The officer replied:
"You have it, Captain, and my thanks. With you to do it, it will be well
done; I could send another in your place, but not a better."
They saluted, and we moved forward. I breathed freer. A dozen times I had
imagined I heard the hoofbeats of the real Captain Raymond's troop
arriving behind us, and had been sitting on pins and needles all the
while that that conversation was dragging along. I breathed freer, but
was still not comfortable, for Joan had given only the simple command,
"Forward!" Consequently we moved in a walk. Moved in a dead walk past a
dim and lengthening column of enemies at our side. The suspense was
exhausting, yet it lasted but a short while, for when the enemy's bugles
sang the "Dismount!" Joan gave the word to trot, and that was a great
relief to me. She was always at herself, you see. Before the command to
dismount had been given, somebody might have wanted the countersign
somewhere along that line if we came flying by at speed, but now wee
seemed to be on our way to our allotted camping position, so we were
allowed to pass unchallenged. The further we went the more formidable was
the strength revealed by the hostile force. Perhaps it was only a hundred
or two, but to me it seemed a thousand. When we passed the last of these
people I was thankful, and the deeper we plowed into the darkness beyond
them the better I felt. I came nearer and nearer to feeling good, for an
hour; then we found the bridge still standing, and I felt entirely good.
We crossed it and destroyed it, and then I felt--but I cannot describe
what I felt. One has to feel it himself in order to know what it is like.
We had expected to hear the rush of a pursuing force behind us, for we
thought that the real Captain Raymond would arrive and suggest that
perhaps the troop that had been mistaken for his belonged to the Virgin
of Vaucouleurs; but he must have been delayed seriously, for when we
resumed our march beyond the river there were no sounds behind us except
those which the storm was furnishing.
I said that Joan had harvested a good many compliments intended for
Captain Raymond, and that he would find nothing of a crop left but a dry
stubble of reprimands when he got back, and a commander just in the humor
to superintend the gathering of it in.
Joan said:
"It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop for
granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have camped without
sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had been left unadvised, and
none are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy
of blame themselves."
The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her
advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was
saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he
went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had
not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, and she
said:
"I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for that
would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him, perhaps that made
them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I knew if I have done wrong."
She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and
necessities of war deceptions that help one's own cause and hurt the
enemy's were always permissible; but she was not quite satisfied with
that, and thought that even when a great cause was in danger one ought to
have the privilege of trying honorable ways first. Jean said:
"Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart's to
nurse his wife, but you didn't say you were going further, yet you did go
on to Vaucouleurs. There!"
"I see now," said Joan, sorrowfully. "I told no lie, yet I deceived. I
had tried all other ways first, but I could not get away, and I had to
get away. My mission required it. I did wrong, I think, and am to blame."
She was silent a moment, turning the matter over in her mind, then she
added, with quiet decision, "But the thing itself was right, and I would
do it again."
It seemed an over-nice distinction, but nobody said anything. I few had
known her as well as she knew herself, and as her later history revealed
her to us, we should have perceived that she had a clear meaning there,
and that her position was not identical with ours, as we were supposing,
but occupied a higher plane. She would sacrifice herself--and her best
self; that is, her truthfulness--to save her cause; but only that; she
would not buy her life at that cost; whereas our war-ethics permitted the
purchase of our lives, or any mere military advantage, small or great, by
deception. Her saying seemed a commonplace at the time, the essence of
its meaning escaping us; but one sees now that it contained a principle
which lifted it above that and made it great and fine.
Presently the wind died down, the sleet stopped falling, and the cold was
less severe. The road was become a bog, and the horses labored through it
at a walk--they could do no better. As the heavy time wore on, exhaustion
overcame us, and we slept in our saddles. Not even the dangers that
threatened us could keep us awake.
This tenth night seemed longer than any of the others, and of course it
was the hardest, because we had been accumulating fatigue from the
beginning, and had more of it on hand now than at any previous time. But
we were not molested again. When the dull dawn came at last we saw a
river before us and we knew it was the Loire; we entered the town of
Gien, and knew we were in a friendly land, with the hostiles all behind
us. That was a glad morning for us.
We were a worn and bedraggled and shabby-looking troop; and still, as
always, Joan was the freshest of us all, in both body and spirits. We had
averaged above thirteen leagues a night, by tortuous and wretched roads.
It was a remarkable march, and shows what men can do when they have a
leader with a determined purpose and a resolution that never flags.
Chapter 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
WE RESTED and otherwise refreshed ourselves two or three hours at Gien,
but by that time the news was abroad that the young girl commissioned of
God to deliver France was come; wherefore, such a press of people flocked
to our quarters to get sight of her that it seemed best to seek a quieter
place; so we pushed on and halted at a small village called Fierbois.
We were now within six leagues of the King, who was a the Castle of
Chinon. Joan dictated a letter to him at once, and I wrote it. In it she
said she had come a hundred and fifty leagues to bring him good news, and
begged the privilege of delivering it in person. She added that although
she had never seen him she would know him in any disguise and would point
him out.
The two knights rode away at once with the letter. The troop slept all
the afternoon, and after supper we felt pretty fresh and fine, especially
our little group of young Domremians. We had the comfortable tap-room of
the village inn to ourselves, and for the first time in ten unspeakably
long days were exempt from bodings and terrors and hardships and
fatiguing labors. The Paladin was suddenly become his ancient self again,
and was swaggering up and down, a very monument of self-complacency. Noel
Rainguesson said:
"I think it is wonderful, the way he has brought us through."
"Who?" asked Jean.
"Why, the Paladin."
The Paladin seemed not to hear.
"What had he to do with it?" asked Pierre d'Arc.
"Everything. It was nothing but Joan's confidence in his discretion that
enabled her to keep up her heart. She could depend on us and on herself
for valor, but discretion is the winning thing in war, after all;
discretion is the rarest and loftiest of qualities, and he has got more
of it than any other man in France--more of it, perhaps, than any other
sixty men in France."
"Now you are getting ready to make a fool of yourself, Noel Rainguesson,"
said the Paladin, "and you want to coil some of that long tongue of yours
around your neck and stick the end of it in your ear, then you'll be the
less likely to get into trouble."
"I didn't know he had more discretion than other people," said Pierre,
"for discretion argues brains, and he hasn't any more brains than the
rest of us, in my opinion."
"No, you are wrong there. Discretion hasn't anything to do with brains;
brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels.
Perfect discretion means absence of brains. Discretion is a quality of
the heart--solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through
feeling. We know this because if it were an intellectual quality it would
only perceive a danger, for instance, where a danger exists; whereas--"
"Hear him twaddle--the damned idiot!" muttered the Paladin.
"--whereas, it being purely a quality of the heart, and proceeding by
feeling, not reason, its reach is correspondingly wider and sublimer,
enabling it to perceive and avoid dangers that haven't any existence at
all; as, for instance, that night in the fog, when the Paladin took his
horse's ears for hostile lances and got off and climbed a tree--"
"It's a lie! a lie without shadow of foundation, and I call upon you all
to beware you give credence to the malicious inventions of this
ramshackle slander-mill that has been doing its best to destroy my
character for years, and will grind up your own reputations for you next.
I got off to tighten my saddle-girth--I wish I may die in my tracks if it
isn't so--and whoever wants to believe it can, and whoever don't can let
it alone."
"There, that is the way with him, you see; he never can discuss a theme
temperately, but always flies off the handle and becomes disagreeable.
And you notice his defect of memory. He remembers getting off his horse,
but forgets all the rest, even the tree. But that is natural; he would
remember getting off the horse because he was so used to doing it. He
always did it when there was an alarm and the clash of arms at the
front."
"Why did he choose that time for it?" asked Jean.
"I don't know. To tighten up his girth, he thinks, to climb a tree, I
think; I saw him climb nine trees in a single night."
"You saw nothing of the kind! A person that can lie like that deserves no
one's respect. I ask you all to answer me. Do you believe what this
reptile has said?"
All seemed embarrassed, and only Pierre replied. He said, hesitatingly:
"I--well, I hardly know what to say. It is a delicate situation. It seems
offensive to me to refuse to believe a person when he makes so direct a
statement, and yet I am obliged to say, rude as it may appear, that I am
not able to believe the whole of it--no, I am not able to believe that
you climbed nine trees."
"There!" cried the Paladin; "now what do you think of yourself, Noel
Rainguesson? How many do you believe I climbed, Pierre?"
"Only eight."
The laughter that followed inflamed the Paladin's anger to white heat,
and he said:
"I bide my time--I bide my time. I will reckon with you all, I promise
you that!"
"Don't get him started," Noel pleaded; "he is a perfect lion when he gets
started. I saw enough to teach me that, after the third skirmish. After
it was over I saw him come out of the bushes and attack a dead man
single-handed."
"It is another lie; and I give you fair warning that you are going too
far. You will see me attack a live one if you are not careful."
"Meaning me, of course. This wounds me more than any number of injurious
and unkind speeches could do. In gratitude to one's benefactor--"
"Benefactor? What do I owe you, I should like to know?"
"You owe me your life. I stood between the trees and the foe, and kept
hundreds and thousands of the enemy at bay when they were thirsting for
your blood. And I did not do it to display my daring. I did it because I
loved you and could not live without you."
"There--you have said enough! I will not stay here to listen to these
infamies. I can endure your lies, but not your love. Keep that corruption
for somebody with a stronger stomach than mine. And I want to say this,
before I go. That you people's small performances might appear the better
and win you the more glory, I hid my own deeds through all the march. I
went always to the front, where the fighting was thickest, to be remote
from you in order that you might not see and be discouraged by the things
I did to the enemy. It was my purpose to keep this a secret in my own
breast, but you force me to reveal it. If you ask for my witnesses,
yonder they lie, on the road we have come. I found that road mud, I paved
it with corpses. I found that country sterile, I fertilized it with
blood. Time and again I was urged to go to the rear because the command
could not proceed on account of my dead. And yet you, you miscreant,
accuse me of climbing trees! Pah!"
And he strode out, with a lofty air, for the recital of his imaginary
deeds had already set him up again and made him feel good.
Next day we mounted and faced toward Chinon. Orleans was at our back now,
and close by, lying in the strangling grip of the English; soon, please
God, we would face about and go to their relief. From Gien the news had
spread to Orleans that the peasant Maid of Vaucouleurs was on her way,
divinely commissioned to raise the siege. The news made a great
excitement and raised a great hope--the first breath of hope those poor
souls had breathed in five months. They sent commissioners at once to the
King to beg him to consider this matter, and not throw this help lightly
away. These commissioners were already at Chinon by this time.
When we were half-way to Chinon we happened upon yet one more squad of
enemies. They burst suddenly out of the woods, and in considerable force,
too; but we were not the apprentices we were ten or twelve days before;
no, we were seasoned to this kind of adventure now; our hearts did not
jump into our throats and our weapons tremble in our hands. We had
learned to be always in battle array, always alert, and always ready to
deal with any emergency that might turn up. We were no more dismayed by
the sight of those people than our commander was. Before they could form,
Joan had delivered the order, "Forward!" and we were down upon them with
a rush. They stood no chance; they turned tail and scattered, we plowing
through them as if they had been men of straw. That was our last
ambuscade, and it was probably laid for us by that treacherous rascal,
the King's own minister and favorite, De la Tremouille.
We housed ourselves in an inn, and soon the town came flocking to get a
glimpse of the Maid.
Ah, the tedious King and his tedious people! Our two good knights came
presently, their patience well wearied, and reported. They and we
reverently stood--as becomes persons who are in the presence of kings and
the superiors of kings--until Joan, troubled by this mark of homage and
respect, and not content with it nor yet used to it, although we had not
permitted ourselves to do otherwise since the day she prophesied that
wretched traitor's death and he was straightway drowned, thus confirming
many previous signs that she was indeed an ambassador commissioned of
God, commanded us to sit; then the Sieur de Metz said to Joan:
"The King has got the letter, but they will not let us have speech with
him."
"Who is it that forbids?"
"None forbids, but there be three or four that are nearest his
person--schemers and traitors every one--that put obstructions in the
way, and seek all ways, by lies and pretexts, to make delay. Chiefest of
these are Georges de la Tremouille and that plotting fox, the Archbishop
of Rheims. While they keep the King idle and in bondage to his sports and
follies, they are great and their importance grows; whereas if ever he
assert himself and rise and strike for crown and country like a man,
their reign is done. So they but thrive, they care not if the crown go to
destruction and the King with it."
"You have spoken with others besides these?"
"Not of the Court, no--the Court are the meek slaves of those reptiles,
and watch their mouths and their actions, acting as they act, thinking as
they think, saying as they say; wherefore they are cold to us, and turn
aside and go another way when we appear. But we have spoken with the
commissioners from Orleans. They said with heat: 'It is a marvel that any
man in such desperate case as is the King can moon around in this torpid
way, and see his all go to ruin without lifting a finger to stay the
disaster. What a most strange spectacle it is! Here he is, shut up in
this wee corner of the realm like a rat in a trap; his royal shelter this
huge gloomy tomb of a castle, with wormy rags for upholstery and crippled
furniture for use, a very house of desolation; in his treasure forty
francs, and not a farthing more, God be witness! no army, nor any shadow
of one; and by contrast with his hungry poverty you behold this crownless
pauper and his shoals of fools and favorites tricked out in the gaudiest
silks and velvets you shall find in any Court in Christendom. And look
you, he knows that when our city falls--as fall it surely will except
succor come swiftly--France falls; he knows that when that day comes he
will be an outlaw and a fugitive, and that behind him the English flag
will float unchallenged over every acre of his great heritage; he knows
these things, he knows that our faithful city is fighting all solitary
and alone against disease, starvation, and the sword to stay this awful
calamity, yet he will not strike one blow to save her, he will not hear
our prayers, he will not even look upon our faces.' That is what the
commissioners said, and they are in despair."
Joan said, gently:
"It is pity, but they must not despair. The Dauphin will hear them
presently. Tell them so."
She almost always called the King the Dauphin. To her mind he was not
King yet, not being crowned.
"We will tell them so, and it will content them, for they believe you
come from God. The Archbishop and his confederate have for backer that
veteran soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Grand Master of the Palace, a worthy
man, but simply a soldier, with no head for any greater matter. He cannot
make out to see how a country-girl, ignorant of war, can take a sword in
her small hand and win victories where the trained generals of France
have looked for defeats only, for fifty years--and always found them. And
so he lifts his frosty mustache and scoffs."
"When God fights it is but small matter whether the hand that bears His
sword is big or little. He will perceive this in time. Is there none in
that Castle of Chinon who favors us?"
"Yes, the King's mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, who is wise and
good. She spoke with the Sieur Bertrand."
"She favors us, and she hates those others, the King's beguilers," said
Bertrand. "She was full of interest, and asked a thousand questions, all
of which I answered according to my ability. Then she sat thinking over
these replies until I thought she was lost in a dream and would wake no
more. But it was not so. At last she said, slowly, and as if she were
talking to herself: 'A child of seventeen--a girl--country-bred
--untaught--ignorant of war, the use of arms, and the conduct of battles
--modest, gentle, shrinking--yet throws away her shepherd's crook and
clothes herself in steel, and fights her way through a hundred and fifty
leagues of fear, and comes--she to whom a king must be a dread and awful
presence--and will stand up before such an one and say, Be not afraid,
God has sent me to save you! Ah, whence could come a courage and
conviction so sublime as this but from very God Himself!' She was silent
again awhile, thinking and making up her mind; then she said, 'And
whether she comes of God or no, there is that in her heart that raises
her above men--high above all men that breathe in France to-day--for in
her is that mysterious something that puts heart into soldiers, and
turns mobs of cowards into armies of fighters that forget what fear is
when they are in that presence --fighters who go into battle with joy in
their eyes and songs on their lips, and sweep over the field like a
storm --that is the spirit that can save France, and that alone, come it
whence it may! It is in her, I do truly believe, for what else could
have borne up that child on that great march, and made her despise its
dangers and fatigues? The King must see her face to face--and shall!'
She dismissed me with those good words, and I know her promise will be
kept. They will delay her all they can--those animals--but she will not
fail in the end."
"Would she were King!" said the other knight, fervently. "For there is
little hope that the King himself can be stirred out of his lethargy. He
is wholly without hope, and is only thinking of throwing away everything
and flying to some foreign land. The commissioners say there is a spell
upon him that makes him hopeless--yes, and that it is shut up in a
mystery which they cannot fathom."
"I know the mystery," said Joan, with quiet confidence; "I know it, and
he knows it, but no other but God. When I see him I will tell him a
secret that will drive away his trouble, then he will hold up his head
again."
I was miserable with curiosity to know what it was that she would tell
him, but she did not say, and I did not expect she would. She was but a
child, it is true; but she was not a chatterer to tell great matters and
make herself important to little people; no, she was reserved, and kept
things to herself, as the truly great always do.
The next day Queen Yolande got one victory over the King's keepers, for,
in spite of their protestations and obstructions, she procured an
audience for our two knights, and they made the most they could out of
their opportunity. They told the King what a spotless and beautiful
character Joan was, and how great and noble a spirit animated her, and
they implored him to trust in her, believe in her, and have faith that
she was sent to save France. They begged him to consent to see her. He
was strongly moved to do this, and promised that he would not drop the
matter out of his mind, but would consult with his council about it. This
began to look encouraging. Two hours later there was a great stir below,
and the innkeeper came flying up to say a commission of illustrious
ecclesiastics was come from the King--from the King his very self,
understand!--think of this vast honor to his humble little hostelry!--and
he was so overcome with the glory of it that he could hardly find breath
enough in his excited body to put the facts into words. They were come
from the King to speak with the Maid of Vaucouleurs. Then he flew
downstairs, and presently appeared again, backing into the room, and
bowing to the ground with every step, in front of four imposing and
austere bishops and their train of servants.
Joan rose, and we all stood. The bishops took seats, and for a while no
word was said, for it was their prerogative to speak first, and they were
so astonished to see what a child it was that was making such a noise in
the world and degrading personages of their dignity to the base function
of ambassadors to her in her plebeian tavern, that they could not find
any words to say at first. Then presently their spokesman told Joan they
were aware that she had a message for the King, wherefore she was now
commanded to put it into words, briefly and without waste of time or
embroideries of speech.
As for me, I could hardly contain my joy--our message was to reach the
King at last! And there was the same joy and pride and exultation in the
faces of our knights, too, and in those of Joan's brothers. And I knew
that they were all praying--as I was--that the awe which we felt in the
presence of these great dignitaries, and which would have tied our
tongues and locked our jaws, would not affect her in the like degree, but
that she would be enabled to word her message well, and with little
stumbling, and so make a favorable impression here, where it would be so
valuable and so important.
Ah, dear, how little we were expecting what happened then! We were aghast
to hear her say what she said. She was standing in a reverent attitude,
with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her; for she was
always reverent toward the consecrated servants of God. When the
spokesman had finished, she raised her head and set her calm eye on those
faces, not any more disturbed by their state and grandeur than a princess
would have been, and said, with all her ordinary simplicity and modesty
of voice and manner:
"Ye will forgive me, reverend sirs, but I have no message save for the
King's ear alone."
Those surprised men were dumb for a moment, and their faces flushed
darkly; then the spokesman said:
"Hark ye, to you fling the King's command in his face and refuse to
deliver this message of yours to his servants appointed to receive it?"
"God has appointed me to receive it, and another's commandment may not
take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for his grace the
Dauphin."
"Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and waste no
more time about it."
"You err indeed, most reverend fathers in God, and it is not well. I am
not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the Dauphin to
his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his head."
"Is that the message you send to the King?"
But Joan only said, in the simple fashion which was her wont:
"Ye will pardon me for reminding you again--but I have no message to send
to any one."
The King's messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the place
without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they passed.
Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster. Our
precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan's
conduct, she who had ben so wise until this fatal hour. At last the Sieur
Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this great chance to
get her message to the King go by.
"Who sent them here?" she asked.
"The King."
"Who moved the King to send them?" She waited for an answer; none came,
for we began to see what was in her mind--so she answered herself: "The
Dauphin's council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the
Dauphin's weal, or are they friends?"
"Enemies," answered the Sieur Bertrand.
"If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose
traitors and tricksters to send it by?"
I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none
found anything to say. Then she went on:
"They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my
message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its
purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this--to move the
Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me to
the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact words,
and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and
supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make
them live, where were the value of that argument--whom could it convince?
Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear."
The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to
himself:
"She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is said."
It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was
the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think
how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to
penetrate the cunning devices of a King's trained advisers and defeat
them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and spoke
no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage, fortitude,
endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties--in all things,
indeed, that make a good and trusty soldier and perfect him for his post;
now we were beginning to feel that maybe there were greatnesses in her
brain that were even greater than these great qualities of the heart. It
set us thinking.
What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was
obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her own and
stand her ground like that, and he asserted himself sufficiently to put
his respect into an act instead of into polite and empty words. He moved
Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her, with us her servants, in the
Castle of Courdray, personally confiding her to the care of Madame de
Bellier, wife of old Raoul de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course,
this royal attention had an immediate result: all the great lords and
ladies of the Court began to flock there to see and listen to the
wonderful girl-soldier that all the world was talking about, and who had
answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed
them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious
eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that
there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was
not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the
mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame. She
always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the low
could come within the sound of her voice and the sight of her face and go
out from her presence indifferent.
Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King
WELL, anything to make delay. The King's council advised him against
arriving at a decision in our matter too precipitately. He arrive at a
decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of priests--always
priests--into Lorraine to inquire into Joan's character and history--a
matter which would consume several weeks, of course. You see how
fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the fire
when a man's house was burning down, and they waited till they could send
into another country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or
not, before letting him try.
So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways, but not
in all, for we had one great anticipation in front of us; we had never
seen a king, and now some day we should have that prodigious spectacle to
see and to treasure in our memories all our lives; so we were on the
lookout, and always eager and watching for the chance. The others were
doomed to wait longer than I, as it turned out. One day great news
came--the Orleans commissioners, with Yolande and our knights, had at
last turned the council's position and persuaded the King to see Joan.
Joan received the immense news gratefully but without losing her head,
but with us others it was otherwise; we could not eat or sleep or do any
rational thing for the excitement and the glory of it. During two days
our pair of noble knights were in distress and trepidation on Joan's
account, for the audience was to be at night, and they were afraid that
Joan would be so paralyzed by the glare of light from the long files of
torches, the solemn pomps and ceremonies, the great concourse of renowned
personages, the brilliant costumes, and the other splendors of the Court,
that she, a simple country-maid, and all unused to such things, would be
overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure.
No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would
Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its
small King and his butterfly dukelets?--she who had spoken face to face
with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue
of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon
myriads, like a measureless fan of light, a glory like the glory of the
sun streaming from each of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance
filling the deeps of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not.
Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression upon the
King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her clothed in the
richest stuffs, wrought upon the princeliest pattern, and set off with
jewels; but in that she had to be disappointed, of course, Joan not being
persuadable to it, but begging to be simply and sincerely dressed, as
became a servant of God, and one sent upon a mission of a serious sort
and grave political import. So then the gracious Queen imagined and
contrived that simple and witching costume which I have described to you
so many times, and which I cannot think of even now in my dull age
without being moved just as rhythmical and exquisite music moves one; for
that was music, that dress--that is what it was--music that one saw with
a the eyes and felt in the heart. Yes, she was a poem, she was a dream,
she was a spirit when she was clothed in that.
She kept that raiment always, and wore it several times upon occasions of
state, and it is preserved to this day in the Treasury of Orleans, with
two of her swords, and her banner, and other things now sacred because
they had belonged to her.
At the appointed time the Count of Vendome, a great lord of the court,
came richly clothed, with his train of servants and assistants, to
conduct Joan to the King, and the two knights and I went with her, being
entitled to this privilege by reason of our official positions near her
person.
When we entered the great audience-hall, there it all was just as I have
already painted it. Here were ranks of guards in shining armor and with
polished halberds; two sides of the hall were like flower-gardens for
variety of color and the magnificence of the costumes; light streamed
upon these masses of color from two hundred and fifty flambeaux. There
was a wide free space down the middle of the hall, and at the end of it
was a throne royally canopied, and upon it sat a crowned and sceptered
figure nobly clothed and blazing with jewels.
It is true that Joan had been hindered and put off a good while, but now
that she was admitted to an audience at last, she was received with
honors granted to only the greatest personages. At the entrance door
stood four heralds in a row, in splendid tabards, with long slender
silver trumpets at their mouths, with square silken banners depending
from them embroidered with the arms of France. As Joan and the Count
passed by, these trumpets gave forth in unison one long rich note, and as
we moved down the hall under the pictured and gilded vaulting, this was
repeated at every fifty feet of our progress--six times in all. It made
our good knights proud and happy, and they held themselves erect, and
stiffened their stride, and looked fine and soldierly. They were not
expecting this beautiful and honorable tribute to our little
country-maid.
Joan walked two yards behind the Count, we three walked two yards behind
Joan. Our solemn march ended when we were as yet some eight or ten steps
from the throne. The Count made a deep obeisance, pronounced Joan's name,
then bowed again and moved to his place among a group of officials near
the throne. I was devouring the crowned personage with all my eyes, and
my heart almost stood still with awe.
The eyes of all others were fixed upon Joan in a gaze of wonder which was
half worship, and which seemed to say, "How sweet--how lovely--how
divine!" All lips were parted and motionless, which was a sure sign that
those people, who seldom forget themselves, had forgotten themselves now,
and were not conscious of anything but the one object they were gazing
upon. They had the look of people who are under the enchantment of a
vision.
Then they presently began to come to life again, rousing themselves out
of the spell and shaking it off as one drives away little by little a
clinging drowsiness or intoxication. Now they fixed their attention upon
Joan with a strong new interest of another sort; they were full of
curiosity to see what she would do--they having a secret and particular
reason for this curiosity. So they watched. This is what they saw:
She made no obeisance, nor even any slight inclination of her head, but
stood looking toward the throne in silence. That was all there was to see
at present.
I glanced up at De Metz, and was shocked at the paleness of his face. I
whispered and said:
"What is it, man, what is it?"
His answering whisper was so weak I could hardly catch it:
"They have taken advantage of the hint in her letter to play a trick upon
her! She will err, and they will laugh at her. That is not the King that
sits there."
Then I glanced at Joan. She was still gazing steadfastly toward the
throne, and I had the curious fancy that even her shoulders and the back
of her head expressed bewilderment. Now she turned her head slowly, and
her eye wandered along the lines of standing courtiers till it fell upon
a young man who was very quietly dressed; then her face lighted joyously,
and she ran and threw herself at his feet, and clasped his knees,
exclaiming in that soft melodious voice which was her birthright and was
now charged with deep and tender feeling:
"God of his grace give you long life, O dear and gentle Dauphin!"
In his astonishment and exultation De Metz cried out:
"By the shadow of God, it is an amazing thing!" Then he mashed all the
bones of my hand in his grateful grip, and added, with a proud shake of
his mane, "Now, what have these painted infidels to say!"
Meantime the young person in the plain clothes was saying to Joan:
"Ah, you mistake, my child, I am not the King. There he is," and he
pointed to the throne.
The knight's face clouded, and he muttered in grief and indignation:
"Ah, it is a shame to use her so. But for this lie she had gone through
safe. I will go and proclaim to all the house what--"
"Stay where you are!" whispered I and the Sieur Bertrand in a breath, and
made him stop in his place.
Joan did not stir from her knees, but still lifted her happy face toward
the King, and said:
"No, gracious liege, you are he, and none other."
De Metz's troubles vanished away, and he said:
"Verily, she was not guessing, she knew. Now, how could she know? It is a
miracle. I am content, and will meddle no more, for I perceive that she
is equal to her occasions, having that in her head that cannot profitably
be helped by the vacancy that is in mine."
This interruption of his lost me a remark or two of the other talk;
however, I caught the King's next question:
"But tell me who you are, and what would you?"
"I am called Joan the Maid, and am sent to say that the King of Heaven
wills that you be crowned and consecrated in your good city of Rheims,
and be thereafter Lieutenant of the Lord of Heaven, who is King of
France. And He willeth also that you set me at my appointed work and give
me men-at-arms." After a slight pause she added, her eye lighting at the
sound of her words, "For then will I raise the siege of Orleans and break
the English power!"
The young monarch's amused face sobered a little when this martial speech
fell upon that sick air like a breath blown from embattled camps and
fields of war, and this trifling smile presently faded wholly away and
disappeared. He was grave now, and thoughtful. After a little he waved
his hand lightly, and all the people fell away and left those two by
themselves in a vacant space. The knights and I moved to the opposite
side of the hall and stood there. We saw Joan rise at a sign, then she
and the King talked privately together.
All that host had been consumed with curiosity to see what Joan would do.
Well, they had seen, and now they were full of astonishment to see that
she had really performed that strange miracle according to the promise in
her letter; and they were fully as much astonished to find that she was
not overcome by the pomps and splendors about her, but was even more
tranquil and at her ease in holding speech with a monarch than ever they
themselves had been, with all their practice and experience.
As for our two knights, they were inflated beyond measure with pride in
Joan, but nearly dumb, as to speech, they not being able to think out any
way to account for her managing to carry herself through this imposing
ordeal without ever a mistake or an awkwardness of any kind to mar the
grace and credit of her great performance.
The talk between Joan and the King was long and earnest, and held in low
voices. We could not hear, but we had our eyes and could note effects;
and presently we and all the house noted one effect which was memorable
and striking, and has been set down in memoirs and histories and in
testimony at the Process of Rehabilitation by some who witnessed it; for
all knew it was big with meaning, though none knew what that meaning was
at that time, of course. For suddenly we saw the King shake off his
indolent attitude and straighten up like a man, and at the same time look
immeasurably astonished. It was as if Joan had told him something almost
too wonderful for belief, and yet of a most uplifting and welcome nature.
It was long before we found out the secret of this conversation, but we
know it now, and all the world knows it. That part of the talk was like
this--as one may read in all histories. The perplexed King asked Joan for
a sign. He wanted to believe in her and her mission, and that her Voices
were supernatural and endowed with knowledge hidden from mortals, but how
could he do this unless these Voices could prove their claim in some
absolutely unassailable way? It was then that Joan said:
"I will give you a sign, and you shall no more doubt. There is a secret
trouble in your heart which you speak of to none--a doubt which wastes
away your courage, and makes you dream of throwing all away and fleeing
from your realm. Within this little while you have been praying, in your
own breast, that God of his grace would resolve that doubt, even if the
doing of it must show you that no kingly right is lodged in you."
It was that that amazed the King, for it was as she had said: his prayer
was the secret of his own breast, and none but God could know about it.
So he said:
"The sign is sufficient. I know now that these Voices are of God. They
have said true in this matter; if they have said more, tell it me--I will
believe."
"They have resolved that doubt, and I bring their very words, which are
these: Thou art lawful heir to the King thy father, and true heir of
France. God has spoken it. Now lift up they head, and doubt no more, but
give me men-at-arms and let me get about my work."
Telling him he was of lawful birth was what straightened him up and made
a man of him for a moment, removing his doubts upon that head and
convincing him of his royal right; and if any could have hanged his
hindering and pestiferous council and set him free, he would have
answered Joan's prayer and set her in the field. But no, those creatures
were only checked, not checkmated; they could invent some more delays.
We had been made proud by the honors which had so distinguished Joan's
entrance into that place--honors restricted to personages of very high
rank and worth--but that pride was as nothing compared with the pride we
had in the honor done her upon leaving it. For whereas those first honors
were shown only to the great, these last, up to this time, had been shown
only to the royal. The King himself led Joan by the hand down the great
hall to the door, the glittering multitude standing and making reverence
as they passed, and the silver trumpets sounding those rich notes of
theirs. Then he dismissed her with gracious words, bending low over her
hand and kissing it. Always--from all companies, high or low--she went
forth richer in honor and esteem than when she came.
And the King did another handsome thing by Joan, for he sent us back to
Courdray Castle torch-lighted and in state, under escort of his own
troop--his guard of honor--the only soldiers he had; and finely equipped
and bedizened they were, too, though they hadn't seen the color of their
wages since they were children, as a body might say. The wonders which
Joan had been performing before the King had been carried all around by
this time, so the road was so packed with people who wanted to get a
sight of her that we could hardly dig through; and as for talking
together, we couldn't, all attempts at talk being drowned in the storm of
shoutings and huzzas that broke out all along as we passed, and kept
abreast of us like a wave the whole way.
Chapter 7 Our Paladin in His Glory
WE WERE doomed to suffer tedious waits and delays, and we settled
ourselves down to our fate and bore it with a dreary patience, counting
the slow hours and the dull days and hoping for a turn when God should
please to send it. The Paladin was the only exception--that is to say, he
was the only one who was happy and had no heavy times. This was partly
owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at
second hand--a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with
flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks,
short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier,
and all that--a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great
frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off
duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his
rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody stopped
to look and admire; and well they might, for he was a fine and stately
contrast to the small French gentlemen of the day squeezed into the
trivial French costume of the time.
He was king bee of the little village that snuggled under the shelter of
the frowning towers and bastions of Courdray Castle, and acknowledged
lord of the tap-room of the inn. When he opened his mouth there, he got a
hearing. Those simple artisans and peasants listened with deep and
wondering interest; for he was a traveler and had seen the world--all of
it that lay between Chinon and Domremy, at any rate--and that was a wide
stretch more of it than they might ever hope to see; and he had been in
battle, and knew how to paint its shock and struggle, its perils and
surprised, with an art that was all his own. He was cock of that walk,
hero of that hostelry; he drew custom as honey draws flies; so he was the
pet of the innkeeper, and of his wife and daughter, and they were his
obliged and willing servants.
Most people who have the narrative gift--that great and rare
endowment--have with it the defect of telling their choice things over
the same way every time, and this injures them and causes them to sound
stale and wearisome after several repetitions; but it was not so with the
Paladin, whose art was of a finer sort; it was more stirring and
interesting to hear him tell about a battle the tenth time than it was
the first time, because he did not tell it twice the same way, but always
made a new battle of it and a better one, with more casualties on the
enemy's side each time, and more general wreck and disaster all around,
and more widows and orphans and suffering in the neighborhood where it
happened. He could not tell his battles apart himself, except by their
names; and by the time he had told one of then ten times it had grown so
that there wasn't room enough in France for it any more, but was lapping
over the edges. But up to that point the audience would not allow him to
substitute a new battle, knowing that the old ones were the best, and
sure to improve as long as France could hold them; and so, instead of
saying to him as they would have said to another, "Give us something
fresh, we are fatigued with that old thing," they would say, with one
voice and with a strong interest, "Tell about the surprise at Beaulieu
again--tell in three or four times!" That is a compliment which few
narrative experts have heard in their lifetime.
At first when the Paladin heard us tell about the glories of the Royal
Audience he was broken-hearted because he was not taken with us to it;
next, his talk was full of what he would have done if he had been there;
and within two days he was telling what he did do when he was there. His
mill was fairly started, now, and could be trusted to take care of its
affair. Within three nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest,
for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the
great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and
so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could
not have gotten it.
Noel Rainguesson hid himself and heard it, and came and told me, and
after that we went together to listen, bribing the inn hostess to let us
have her little private parlor, where we could stand at the wickets in
the door and see and hear.
The tap-room was large, yet had a snug and cozy look, with its inviting
little tables and chairs scattered irregularly over its red brick floor,
and its great fire flaming and crackling in the wide chimney. It was a
comfortable place to be in on such chilly and blustering March nights as
these, and a goodly company had taken shelter there, and were sipping
their wine in contentment and gossiping one with another in a neighborly
way while they waited for the historian. The host, the hostess, and their
pretty daughter were flying here and there and yonder among the tables
and doing their best to keep up with the orders. The room was about forty
feet square, and a space or aisle down the center of it had been kept
vacant and reserved for the Paladin's needs. At the end of it was a
platform ten or twelve feet wide, with a big chair and a small table on
it, and three steps leading up to it.
Among the wine-sippers were many familiar faces: the cobbler, the
farrier, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the armorer, the maltster, the
weaver, the backer, the miller's man with his dusty coat, and so on; and
conscious and important, as a matter of course, was the barber-surgeon,
for he is that in all villages. As he has to pull everybody's teeth and
purge and bleed all the grown people once a month to keep their health
sound, he knows everybody, and by constant contact with all sorts of folk
becomes a master of etiquette and manners and a conversationalist of
large facility. There were plenty of carriers, drovers, and their sort,
and journeymen artisans.
When the Paladin presently came sauntering indolently in, he was received
with a cheer, and the barber hustled forward and greeted him with several
low and most graceful and courtly bows, also taking his hand an touching
his lips to it. Then he called in a loud voice for a stoup of wine for
the Paladin, and when the host's daughter brought it up on the platform
and dropped her courtesy and departed, the barber called after her, and
told her to add the wine to his score. This won him ejaculations of
approval, which pleased him very much and made his little rat-eyes shine;
and such applause is right and proper, for when we do a liberal and
gallant thing it is but natural that we should wish to see notice taken
of it.
The barber called upon the people to rise and drink the Paladin's health,
and they did it with alacrity and affectionate heartiness, clashing their
metal flagons together with a simultaneous crash, and heightening the
effect with a resounding cheer. It was a fine thing to see how that young
swashbuckler had made himself so popular in a strange land in so little a
while, and without other helps to his advancement than just his tongue
and the talent to use it given him by God--a talent which was but one
talent in the beginning, but was now become ten through husbandry and the
increment and usufruct that do naturally follow that and reward it as by
a law.
The people sat down and began to hammer on the tables with their flagons
and call for "the King's Audience!--the King's Audience! --the King's
Audience!" The Paladin stood there in one of his best attitudes, with his
plumed great hat tipped over to the left, the folds of his short cloak
drooping from his shoulder, and the one hand resting upon the hilt of his
rapier and the other lifting his beaker. As the noise died down he made a
stately sort of a bow, which he had picked up somewhere, then fetched his
beaker with a sweep to his lips and tilted his head back and rained it to
the bottom. The barber jumped for it and set it upon the Paladin's table.
Then the Paladin began to walk up and down his platform with a great deal
of dignity and quite at his ease; and as he walked he talked, and every
little while stopped and stood facing his house and so standing continued
his talk.
We went three nights in succession. It was plain that there was a charm
about the performance that was apart from the mere interest which
attaches to lying. It was presently discoverable that this charm lay in
the Paladin's sincerity. He was not lying consciously; he believed what
he was saying. To him, his initial statements were facts, and whenever he
enlarged a statement, the enlargement became a fact too. He put his heart
into his extravagant narrative, just as a poet puts his heart into a
heroic fiction, and his earnestness disarmed criticism--disarmed it as
far as he himself was concerned. Nobody believed his narrative, but all
believed that he believed it.
He made his enlargements without flourish, without emphasis, and so
casually that often one failed to notice that a change had been made. He
spoke of the governor of Vaucouleurs, the first night, simply as the
governor of Vaucouleurs; he spoke of him the second night as his uncle
the governor of Vaucouleurs; the third night he was his father. He did
not seem to know that he was making these extraordinary changes; they
dropped from his lips in a quite natural and effortless way. By his first
night's account the governor merely attached him to the Maid's military
escort in a general and unofficial way; the second night his uncle the
governor sent him with the Maid as lieutenant of her rear guard; the
third night his father the governor put the whole command, Maid and all,
in his special charge. The first night the governor spoke of his as a
youth without name or ancestry, but "destined to achieve both"; the
second night his uncle the governor spoke of him as the latest and
worthiest lineal descendent of the chiefest and noblest of the Twelve
Paladins of Charlemagne; the third night he spoke of his as the lineal
descendent of the whole dozen. In three nights he promoted the Count of
Vendome from a fresh acquaintance to a schoolmate, and then
brother-in-law.
At the King's Audience everything grew, in the same way. First the four
silver trumpets were twelve, then thirty-five, finally ninety-six; and by
that time he had thrown in so many drums and cymbals that he had to
lengthen the hall from five hundred feet to nine hundred to accommodate
them. Under his hand the people present multiplied in the same large way.
The first two nights he contented himself with merely describing and
exaggerating the chief dramatic incident of the Audience, but the third
night he added illustration to description. He throned the barber in his
own high chair to represent the sham King; then he told how the Court
watched the Maid with intense interest and suppressed merriment,
expecting to see her fooled by the deception and get herself swept
permanently out of credit by the storm of scornful laughter which would
follow. He worked this scene up till he got his house in a burning fever
of excitement and anticipation, then came his climax. Turning to the
barber, he said:
"But mark you what she did. She gazed steadfastly upon that sham's
villain face as I now gaze upon yours--this being her noble and simple
attitude, just as I stand now--then turned she--thus--to me, and
stretching her arm out--so--and pointing with her finger, she said, in
that firm, calm tone which she was used to use in directing the conduct
of a battle, 'Pluck me this false knave from the throne!' I, striding
forward as I do now, took him by the collar and lifted him out and held
him aloft--thus--as it he had been but a child." (The house rose,
shouting, stamping, and banging with their flagons, and went fairly mad
over this magnificent exhibition of strength--and there was not the
shadow of a laugh anywhere, though the spectacle of the limp but proud
barber hanging there in the air like a puppy held by the scruff of its
neck was a thing that had nothing of solemnity about it.) "Then I set him
down upon his feet--thus--being minded to get him by a better hold and
heave him out of the window, but she bid me forbear, so by that error he
escaped with his life.
"Then she turned her about and viewed the throng with those eyes of hers,
which are the clear-shining windows whence her immortal wisdom looketh
out upon the world, resolving its falsities and coming at the kernel of
truth that is hid within them, and presently they fell upon a young man
modestly clothed, and him she proclaimed for what he truly was, saying,
'I am thy servant--thou art the King!' Then all were astonished, and a
great shout went up, the whole six thousand joining in it, so that the
walls rocked with the volume and the tumult of it."
He made a fine and picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience,
augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities;
then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head
which the head ostler at the castle had given him that morning, and made
his conclusion--thus:
"Then the King dismissed the Maid most graciously--as indeed was her
desert--and, turning to me, said, 'Take this signet-ring, son of the
Paladins, and command me with it in your day of need; and look you,' said
he, touching my temple, 'preserve this brain, France has use for it; and
look well to its casket also, for I foresee that it will be hooped with a
ducal coronet one day.' I took the ring, and knelt and kissed his hand,
saying, 'Sire, where glory calls, there will I be found; where danger and
death are thickest, that is my native air; when France and the throne
need help--well, I say nothing, for I am not of the talking sort--let my
deeds speak for me, it is all I ask.'
"So ended the most fortunate and memorable episode, so big with future
weal for the crown and the nation, and unto God be the thanks! Rise! Fill
you flagons! Now--to France and the King--drink!"
They emptied them to the bottom, then burst into cheers and huzzas, and
kept it up as much as two minutes, the Paladin standing at stately ease
the while and smiling benignantly from his platform.
Chapter 8 Joan Persuades Her Inquisitors
WHEN JOAN told the King what that deep secret was that was torturing his
heart, his doubts were cleared away; he believed she was sent of God, and
if he had been let alone he would have set her upon her great mission at
once. But he was not let alone. Tremouille and the holy fox of Rheims
knew their man. All they needed to say was this--and they said it:
"Your Highness says her Voices have revealed to you, by her mouth, a
secret known only to yourself and God. How can you know that her Voices
are not of Satan, and she his mouthpiece?--for does not Satan know the
secrets of men and use his knowledge for the destruction of their souls?
It is a dangerous business, and your Highness will do well not to proceed
in it without probing the matter to the bottom."
That was enough. It shriveled up the King's little soul like a raisin,
with terrors and apprehensions, and straightway he privately appointed a
commission of bishops to visit and question Joan daily until they should
find out whether her supernatural helps hailed from heaven or from hell.
The King's relative, the Duke of Alencon, three years prisoner of war to
the English, was in these days released from captivity through promise of
a great ransom; and the name and fame of the Maid having reached him--for
the same filled all mouths now, and penetrated to all parts--he came to
Chinon to see with his own eyes what manner of creature she might be. The
King sent for Joan and introduced her to the Duke. She said, in her
simple fashion:
"You are welcome; the more of the blood of France that is joined to this
cause, the better for the cause and it."
Then the two talked together, and there was just the usual result: when
they departed, the Duke was her friend and advocate.
Joan attended the King's mass the next day, and afterward dined with the
King and the Duke. The King was learning to prize her company and value
her conversation; and that might well be, for, like other kings, he was
used to getting nothing out of people's talk but guarded phrases,
colorless and non-committal, or carefully tinted to tally with the color
of what he said himself; and so this kind of conversation only vexes and
bores, and is wearisome; but Joan's talk was fresh and free, sincere and
honest, and unmarred by timorous self-watching and constraint. She said
the very thing that was in her mind, and said it in a plain,
straightforward way. One can believe that to the King this must have been
like fresh cold water from the mountains to parched lips used to the
water of the sun-baked puddles of the plain.
After dinner Joan so charmed the Duke with her horsemanship and lance
practice in the meadows by the Castle of Chinon whither the King also had
come to look on, that he made her a present of a great black war-steed.
Every day the commission of bishops came and questioned Joan about her
Voices and her mission, and then went to the King with their report.
These pryings accomplished but little. She told as much as she considered
advisable, and kept the rest to herself. Both threats and trickeries were
wasted upon her. She did not care for the threats, and the traps caught
nothing. She was perfectly frank and childlike about these things. She
knew the bishops were sent by the King, that their questions were the
King's questions, and that by all law and custom a King's questions must
be answered; yet she told the King in her naive way at his own table one
day that she answered only such of those questions as suited her.
The bishops finally concluded that they couldn't tell whether Joan was
sent by God or not. They were cautious, you see. There were two powerful
parties at Court; therefore to make a decision either way would
infallibly embroil them with one of those parties; so it seemed to them
wisest to roost on the fence and shift the burden to other shoulders. And
that is what they did. They made final report that Joan's case was beyond
their powers, and recommended that it be put into the hands of the
learned and illustrious doctors of the University of Poitiers. Then they
retired from the field, leaving behind them this little item of
testimony, wrung from them by Joan's wise reticence: they said she was a
"gentle and simple little shepherdess, very candid, but not given to
talking."
It was quite true--in their case. But if they could have looked back and
seen her with us in the happy pastures of Domremy, they would have
perceived that she had a tongue that could go fast enough when no harm
could come of her words.
So we traveled to Poitiers, to endure there three weeks of tedious delay
while this poor child was being daily questioned and badgered before a
great bench of--what? Military experts?--since what she had come to apply
for was an army and the privilege of leading it to battle against the
enemies of France. Oh no; it was a great bench of priests and
monks--profoundly leaned and astute casuists--renowned professors of
theology! Instead of setting a military commission to find out if this
valorous little soldier could win victories, they set a company of holy
hair-splitters and phrase-mongers to work to find out if the soldier was
sound in her piety and had no doctrinal leaks. The rats were devouring
the house, but instead of examining the cat's teeth and claws, they only
concerned themselves to find out if it was a holy cat. If it was a pious
cat, a moral cat, all right, never mind about the other capacities, they
were of no consequence.
Joan was as sweetly self-possessed and tranquil before this grim
tribunal, with its robed celebrities, its solemn state and imposing
ceremonials, as if she were but a spectator and not herself on trial. She
sat there, solitary on her bench, untroubled, and disconcerted the
science of the sages with her sublime ignorance--an ignorance which was a
fortress; arts, wiles, the learning drawn from books, and all like
missiles rebounded from its unconscious masonry and fell to the ground
harmless; they could not dislodge the garrison which was within--Joan's
serene great heart and spirit, the guards and keepers of her mission.
She answered all questions frankly, and she told all the story of her
visions and of her experiences with the angels and what they said to her;
and the manner of the telling was so unaffected, and so earnest and
sincere, and made it all seem so lifelike and real, that even that hard
practical court forgot itself and sat motionless and mute, listening with
a charmed and wondering interest to the end. And if you would have other
testimony than mine, look in the histories and you will find where an
eyewitness, giving sworn testimony in the Rehabilitation process, says
that she told that tale "with a noble dignity and simplicity," and as to
its effect, says in substance what I have said. Seventeen, she
was--seventeen, and all alone on her bench by herself; yet was not
afraid, but faced that great company of erudite doctors of law ant
theology, and by the help of no art learned in the schools, but using
only the enchantments which were hers by nature, of youth, sincerity, a
voice soft and musical, and an eloquence whose source was the heart, not
the head, she laid that spell upon them. Now was not that a beautiful
thing to see? If I could, I would put it before you just as I saw it;
then I know what you would say.
As I have told you, she could not read. "One day they harried and
pestered her with arguments, reasonings, objections, and other windy and
wordy trivialities, gathered out of the works of this and that and the
other great theological authority, until at last her patience vanished,
and she turned upon them sharply and said:
"I don't know A from B; but I know this: that I am come by command of the
Lord of Heaven to deliver Orleans from the English power and crown the
King of Rheims, and the matters ye are puttering over are of no
consequence!"
Necessarily those were trying days for her, and wearing for everybody
that took part; but her share was the hardest, for she had no holidays,
but must be always on hand and stay the long hours through, whereas this,
that, and the other inquisitor could absent himself and rest up from his
fatigues when he got worn out. And yet she showed no wear, no weariness,
and but seldom let fly her temper. As a rule she put her day through
calm, alert, patient, fencing with those veteran masters of scholarly
sword-play and coming out always without a scratch.
One day a Dominican sprung upon her a question which made everybody cock
up his ears with interest; as for me, I trembled, and said to myself she
is done this time, poor Joan, for there is no way of answering this. The
sly Dominican began in this way--in a sort of indolent fashion, as if the
thing he was about was a matter of no moment:
"You assert that God has willed to deliver France from this English
bondage?"
"Yes, He has willed it."
"You wish for men-at-arms, so that you may go to the relief of Orleans, I
believe?"
"Yes--and the sooner the better."
"God is all-powerful, and able to do whatsoever thing He wills to do, is
it not so?"
"Most surely. None doubts it."
The Dominican lifted his head suddenly, and sprung that question I have
spoken of, with exultation:
"Then answer me this. If He has willed to deliver France, and is able to
do whatsoever He wills, where is the need for men-at-arms?"
There was a fine stir and commotion when he said that, and a sudden
thrusting forward of heads and putting up of hands to ears to catch the
answer; and the Dominican wagged his head with satisfaction, and looked
about him collecting his applause, for it shone in every face. But Joan
was not disturbed. There was no note of disquiet in her voice when she
answered:
"He helps who help themselves. The sons of France will fight the battles,
but He will give the victory!"
You could see a light of admiration sweep the house from face to face
like a ray from the sun. Even the Dominican himself looked pleased, to
see his master-stroke so neatly parried, and I heard a venerable bishop
mutter, in the phrasing common to priest and people in that robust time,
"By God, the child has said true. He willed that Goliath should be slain,
and He sent a child like this to do it!"
Another day, when the inquisition had dragged along until everybody
looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology
at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to
plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin
French--for he was from Limoges. Finally he said:
"How is it that you understand those angels? What language did they
speak?"
"French."
"In-deed! How pleasant to know that our language is so honored! Good
French?"
"Yes--perfect."
"Perfect, eh? Well, certainly you ought to know. It was even better than
your own, eh?"
"As to that, I--I believe I cannot say," said she, and was going on, but
stopped. Then she added, almost as if she were saying it to herself,
"Still, it was an improvement on yours!"
I knew there was a chuckle back of her eyes, for all their innocence.
Everybody shouted. Brother Seguin was nettled, and asked brusquely:
"Do you believe in God?"
Joan answered with an irritating nonchalance:
"Oh, well, yes--better than you, it is likely."
Brother Seguin lost his patience, and heaped sarcasm after sarcasm upon
her, and finally burst out in angry earnest, exclaiming:
"Very well, I can tell you this, you whose believe in God is so great:
God has not willed that any shall believe in you without a sign. Where is
your sign?--show it!"
This roused Joan, and she was on her feet in a moment, and flung out her
retort with spirit:
"I have not come to Poitiers to show signs and do miracles. Send me to
Orleans and you shall have signs enough. Give me men-at-arms--few or
many--and let me go!"
The fire was leaping from her eyes--ah, the heroic little figure! can't
you see her? There was a great burst of acclamations, and she sat down
blushing, for it was not in her delicate nature to like being
conspicuous.
This speech and that episode about the French language scored two points
against Brother Seguin, while he scored nothing against Joan; yet, sour
man as he was, he was a manly man, and honest, as you can see by the
histories; for at the Rehabilitation he could have hidden those unlucky
incidents if he had chosen, but he didn't do it, but spoke them right out
in his evidence.
On one of the latter days of that three-weeks session the gowned scholars
and professors made one grand assault all along the line, fairly
overwhelming Joan with objections and arguments culled from the writings
of every ancient and illustrious authority of the Roman Church. She was
well-nigh smothered; but at last she shook herself free and struck back,
crying out:
"Listen! The Book of God is worth more than all these ye cite, and I
stand upon it. And I tell ye there are things in that Book that not one
among ye can read, with all your learning!"
From the first she was the guest, by invitation, of the dame De Rabateau,
wife of a councilor of the Parliament of Poitiers; and to that house the
great ladies of the city came nightly to see Joan and talk with her; and
not these only, but the old lawyers, councilors and scholars of the
Parliament and the University. And these grave men, accustomed to weigh
every strange and questionable thing, and cautiously consider it, and
turn it about this way and that and still doubt it, came night after
night, and night after night, falling ever deeper and deeper under the
influence of that mysterious something, that spell, that elusive and
unwordable fascination, which was the supremest endowment of Joan of Arc,
that winning and persuasive and convincing something which high and low
alike recognized and felt, but which neither high nor low could explain
or describe, and one by one they all surrendered, saying, "This child is
sent of God."
All day long Joan, in the great court and subject to its rigid rules of
procedure, was at a disadvantage; her judges had things their own way;
but at night she held court herself, and matters were reversed, she
presiding, with her tongue free and her same judges there before her.
There could not be but one result: all the objections and hindrances they
could build around her with their hard labors of the day she would charm
away at night. In the end, she carried her judges with her in a mass, and
got her great verdict without a dissenting voice.
The court was a sight to see when the president of it read it from his
throne, for all the great people of the town were there who could get
admission and find room. First there were some solemn ceremonies, proper
and usual at such times; then, when there was silence again, the reading
followed, penetrating the deep hush so that every word was heard in even
the remotest parts of the house:
"It is found, and is hereby declared, that Joan of Arc, called the Maid,
is a good Christian and a good Catholic; that there is nothing in her
person or her words contrary to the faith; and that the King may and
ought to accept the succor she offers; for to repel it would be to offend
the Holy Spirit, and render him unworthy of the air of God."
The court rose, and then the storm of plaudits burst forth unrebuked,
dying down and bursting forth again and again, and I lost sight of Joan,
for she was swallowed up in a great tide of people who rushed to
congratulate her and pour out benedictions upon her and upon the cause of
France, now solemnly and irrevocably delivered into her little hands.
Chapter 9 She Is Made General-in-Chief
IT WAS indeed a great day, and a stirring thing to see.
She had won! It was a mistake of Tremouille and her other ill-wishers to
let her hold court those nights.
The commission of priests sent to Lorraine ostensibly to inquire into
Joan's character--in fact to weary her with delays and wear out her
purpose and make her give it up--arrived back and reported her character
perfect. Our affairs were in full career now, you see.
The verdict made a prodigious stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life,
wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and
cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to
them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid
of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the
drums filled all the air. I remembered now what she had said, that time
there in our village when I proved by facts and statistics that France's
case was hopeless, and nothing could ever rouse the people from their
lethargy:
"They will hear the drums--and they will answer, they will march!"
It has been said that misfortunes never come one at a time, but in a
body. In our case it was the same with good luck. Having got a start, it
came flooding in, tide after tide. Our next wave of it was of this sort.
There had been grave doubts among the priests as to whether the Church
ought to permit a female soldier to dress like a man. But now came a
verdict on that head. Two of the greatest scholars and theologians of the
time--one of whom had been Chancellor of the University of
Paris--rendered it. They decided that since Joan "must do the work of a
man and a soldier, it is just and legitimate that her apparel should
conform to the situation."
It was a great point gained, the Church's authority to dress as a man.
Oh, yes, wave on wave the good luck came sweeping in. Never mind about
the smaller waves, let us come to the largest one of all, the wave that
swept us small fry quite off our feet and almost drowned us with joy. The
day of the great verdict, couriers had been despatched to the King with
it, and the next morning bright and early the clear notes of a bugle came
floating to us on the crisp air, and we pricked up our ears and began to
count them. One--two--three; pause; one--two; pause; one--two--three,
again--and out we skipped and went flying; for that formula was used only
when the King's herald-at-arms would deliver a proclamation to the
people. As we hurried along, people came racing out of every street and
house and alley, men, women, and children, all flushed, excited, and
throwing lacking articles of clothing on as they ran; still those clear
notes pealed out, and still the rush of people increased till the whole
town was abroad and streaming along the principal street. At last we
reached the square, which was now packed with citizens, and there, high
on the pedestal of the great cross, we saw the herald in his brilliant
costume, with his servitors about him. The next moment he began his
delivery in the powerful voice proper to his office:
"Know all men, and take heed therefore, that the most high, the most
illustrious Charles, by the grace of God King of France, hath been
pleased to confer upon his well-beloved servant Joan of Arc, called the
Maid, the title, emoluments, authorities, and dignity of General-in-Chief
of the Armies of France--"
Here a thousand caps flew in the air, and the multitude burst into a
hurricane of cheers that raged and raged till it seemed as if it would
never come to an end; but at last it did; then the herald went on and
finished:
--"and hath appointed to be her lieutenant and chief of staff a prince of
his royal house, his grace the Duke of Alencon!"
That was the end, and the hurricane began again, and was split up into
innumerable strips by the blowers of it and wafted through all the lanes
and streets of the town.
General of the Armies of France, with a prince of the blood for
subordinate! Yesterday she was nothing--to-day she was this. Yesterday
she was not even a sergeant, not even a corporal, not even a
private--to-day, with one step, she was at the top. Yesterday she was
less than nobody to the newest recruit--to-day her command was law to La
Hire, Saintrailles, the Bastard of Orleans, and all those others,
veterans of old renown, illustrious masters of the trade of war. These
were the thoughts I was thinking; I was trying to realize this strange
and wonderful thing that had happened, you see.
My mind went travelling back, and presently lighted upon a picture--a
picture which was still so new and fresh in my memory that it seemed a
matter of only yesterday--and indeed its date was no further back than
the first days of January. This is what it was. A peasant-girl in a
far-off village, her seventeenth year not yet quite completed, and
herself and her village as unknown as if they had been on the other side
of the globe. She had picked up a friendless wanderer somewhere and
brought it home--a small gray kitten in a forlorn and starving
condition--and had fed it and comforted it and got its confidence and
made it believe in her, and now it was curled up in her lap asleep, and
she was knitting a coarse stocking and thinking--dreaming--about what,
one may never know. And now--the kitten had hardly had time to become a
cat, and yet already the girl is General of the Armies of France, with a
prince of the blood to give orders to, and out of her village obscurity
her name has climbed up like the sun and is visible from all corners of
the land! It made me dizzy to think of these things, they were so out of
the common order, and seemed so impossible.
Chapter 10 The Maid's Sword and Banner
JOAN'S first official act was to dictate a letter to the English
commanders at Orleans, summoning them to deliver up all strongholds in
their possession and depart out of France. She must have been thinking it
all out before and arranging it in her mind, it flowed from her lips so
smoothly, and framed itself into such vivacious and forcible language.
Still, it might not have been so; she always had a quick mind and a
capable tongue, and her faculties were constantly developing in these
latter weeks. This letter was to be forwarded presently from Blois. Men,
provisions, and money were offering in plenty now, and Joan appointed
Blois as a recruiting-station and depot of supplies, and ordered up La
Hire from the front to take charge.
The Great Bastard--him of the ducal house, and governor of Orleans--had
been clamoring for weeks for Joan to be sent to him, and now came another
messenger, old D'Aulon, a veteran officer, a trusty man and fine and
honest. The King kept him, and gave him to Joan to be chief of her
household, and commanded her to appoint the rest of her people herself,
making their number and dignity accord with the greatness of her office;
and at the same time he gave order that they should be properly equipped
with arms, clothing, and horses.
Meantime the King was having a complete suit of armor made for her at
Tours. It was of the finest steel, heavily plated with silver, richly
ornamented with engraved designs, and polished like a mirror.
Joan's Voices had told her that there was an ancient sword hidden
somewhere behind the altar of St. Catherine's at Fierbois, and she sent
De Metz to get it. The priests knew of no such sword, but a search was
made, and sure enough it was found in that place, buried a little way
under the ground. It had no sheath and was very rusty, but the priests
polished it up and sent it to Tours, whither we were now to come. They
also had a sheath of crimson velvet made for it, and the people of Tours
equipped it with another, made of cloth-of-gold. But Joan meant to carry
this sword always in battle; so she laid the showy sheaths away and got
one made of leather. It was generally believed that his sword had
belonged to Charlemagne, but that was only a matter of opinion. I wanted
to sharpen that old blade, but she said it was not necessary, as she
should never kill anybody, and should carry it only as a symbol of
authority.
At Tours she designed her Standard, and a Scotch painter named James
Power made it. It was of the most delicate white boucassin, with fringes
of silk. For device it bore the image of God the Father throned in the
clouds and holding the world in His hand; two angels knelt at His feet,
presenting lilies; inscription, JESUS, MARIA; on the reverse the crown of
France supported by two angels.
She also caused a smaller standard or pennon to be made, whereon was
represented an angel offering a lily to the Holy Virgin.
Everything was humming there at Tours. Every now and then one heard the
bray and crash of military music, every little while one heard the
measured tramp of marching men--squads of recruits leaving for Blois;
songs and shoutings and huzzas filled the air night and day, the town was
full of strangers, the streets and inns were thronged, the bustle of
preparation was everywhere, and everybody carried a glad and cheerful
face. Around Joan's headquarters a crowd of people was always massed,
hoping for a glimpse of the new General, and when they got it, they went
wild; but they seldom got it, for she was busy planning her campaign,
receiving reports, giving orders, despatching couriers, and giving what
odd moments she could spare to the companies of great folk waiting in the
drawing-rooms. As for us boys, we hardly saw her at all, she was so
occupied.
We were in a mixed state of mind--sometimes hopeful, sometimes not;
mostly not. She had not appointed her household yet--that was our
trouble. We knew she was being overrun with applications for places in
it, and that these applications were backed by great names and weighty
influence, whereas we had nothing of the sort to recommend us. She could
fill her humblest places with titled folk--folk whose relationships would
be a bulwark for her and a valuable support at all times. In these
circumstances would policy allow her to consider us? We were not as
cheerful as the rest of the town, but were inclined to be depressed and
worried. Sometimes we discussed our slim chances and gave them as good an
appearance as we could. But the very mention of the subject was anguish
to the Paladin; for whereas we had some little hope, he had none at all.
As a rule Noel Rainguesson was quite with Hireing to let the dismal
matter alone; but not when the Paladin was present. Once we were talking
the thing over, when Noel said:
"Cheer up, Paladin, I had a dream last night, and you were the only one
among us that got an appointment. It wasn't a high one, but it was an
appointment, anyway--some kind of a lackey or body-servant, or something
of that kind."
The Paladin roused up and looked almost cheerful; for he was a believer
in dreams, and in anything and everything of a superstitious sort, in
fact. He said, with a rising hopefulness:
"I wish it might come true. Do you think it will come true?"
"Certainly; I might almost say I know it will, for my dreams hardly ever
fail."
"Noel, I could hug you if that dream could come true, I could, indeed! To
be servant of the first General of France and have all the world hear of
it, and the news go back to the village and make those gawks stare that
always said I wouldn't ever amount to anything--wouldn't it be great! Do
you think it will come true, Noel? Don't you believe it will?"
"I do. There's my hand on it."
"Noel, if it comes true I'll never forget you--shake again! I should be
dressed in a noble livery, and the news would go to the village, and
those animals would say, 'Him, lackey to the General-in-Chief, with the
eyes of the whole world on him, admiring--well, he has shot up into the
sky now, hasn't he!"
He began to walk the floor and pile castles in the air so fast and so
high that we could hardly keep up with him. Then all of a sudden all the
joy went out of his face and misery took its place, and he said:
"Oh, dear, it is all a mistake, it will never come true. I forgot that
foolish business at Toul. I have kept out of her sight as much as I
could, all these weeks, hoping she would forget that and forgive it --but
I know she never will. She can't, of course. And, after all, I wasn't to
blame. I did say she promised to marry me, but they put me up to it and
persuaded me. I swear they did!" The vast creature was almost crying.
Then he pulled himself together and said, remorsefully, "It was the only
lie I've ever told, and--"
He was drowned out with a chorus of groans and outraged exclamations; and
before he could begin again, one of D'Aulon's liveried servants appeared
and said we were required at headquarters. We rose, and Noel said:
"There--what did I tell you? I have a presentiment--the spirit of
prophecy is upon me. She is going to appoint him, and we are to go there
and do him homage. Come along!"
But the Paladin was afraid to go, so we left him.
When we presently stood in the presence, in front of a crowd of
glittering officers of the army, Joan greeted us with a winning smile,
and said she appointed all of us to places in her household, for she
wanted her old friends by her. It was a beautiful surprise to have
ourselves honored like this when she could have had people of birth and
consequence instead, but we couldn't find our tongues to say so, she was
become so great and so high above us now. One at a time we stepped
forward and each received his warrant from the hand of our chief,
D'Aulon. All of us had honorable places; the two knights stood highest;
then Joan's two brothers; I was first page and secretary, a young
gentleman named Raimond was second page; Noel was her messenger; she had
two heralds, and also a chaplain and almoner, whose name was Jean
Pasquerel. She had previously appointed a maitre d'hotel and a number of
domestics. Now she looked around and said:
"But where is the Paladin?"
The Sieur Bertrand said:
"He thought he was not sent for, your Excellency."
"Now that is not well. Let him be called."
The Paladin entered humbly enough. He ventured no farther than just
within the door. He stopped there, looking embarrassed and afraid. Then
Joan spoke pleasantly, and said:
"I watched you on the road. You began badly, but improved. Of old you
were a fantastic talker, but there is a man in you, and I will bring it
out." It was fine to see the Paladin's face light up when she said that.
"Will you follow where I lead?"
"Into the fire!" he said; and I said to myself, "By the ring of that, I
think she has turned this braggart into a hero. It is another of her
miracles, I make no doubt of it."
"I believe you," said Joan. "Here--take my banner. You will ride with me
in every field, and when France is saved, you will give it me back."
He took the banner, which is now the most precious of the memorials that
remain of Joan of Arc, and his voice was unsteady with emotion when he
said:
"If I ever disgrace this trust, my comrades here will know how to do a
friend's office upon my body, and this charge I lay upon them, as knowing
they will not fail me."
Chapter 11 The War March Is Begun
NO L and I went back together--silent at first, and impressed.
Finally Noel came up out of his thinkings and said:
"The first shall be last and the last first--there's authority for this
surprise. But at the same time wasn't it a lofty hoist for our big bull!"
"It truly was; I am not over being stunned yet. It was the greatest place
in her gift."
"Yes, it was. There are many generals, and she can create more; but there
is only one Standard-Bearer."
"True. It is the most conspicuous place in the army, after her own."
"And the most coveted and honorable. Sons of two dukes tried to get it,
as we know. And of all people in the world, this majestic windmill
carries it off. Well, isn't it a gigantic promotion, when you come to
look at it!"
"There's no doubt about it. It's a kind of copy of Joan's own in
miniature."
"I don't know how to account for it--do you?"
"Yes--without any trouble at all--that is, I think I do."
Noel was surprised at that, and glanced up quickly, as if to see if I was
in earnest. He said:
"I thought you couldn't be in earnest, but I see you are. If you can make
me understand this puzzle, do it. Tell me what the explanation is."
"I believe I can. You have noticed that our chief knight says a good many
wise things and has a thoughtful head on his shoulders. One day, riding
along, we were talking about Joan's great talents, and he said, 'But,
greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.' I said, like an
unthinking fool, 'The seeing eye?--I shouldn't count on that for much--I
suppose we all have it.' 'No,' he said; 'very few have it.' Then he
explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only
the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces
through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which
the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye
couldn't detect. He said the mightiest military genius must fail and come
to nothing if it have not the seeing eye--that is to say, if it cannot
read men and select its subordinates with an infallible judgment. It sees
as by intuition that this man is good for strategy, that one for dash and
daredevil assault, the other for patient bulldog persistence, and it
appoints each to his right place and wins, while the commander without
the seeing eye would give to each the other's place and lose. He was
right about Joan, and I saw it. When she was a child and the tramp came
one night, her father and all of us took him for a rascal, but she saw
the honest man through the rags. When I dined with the governor of
Vaucouleurs so long ago, I saw nothing in our two knights, though I sat
with them and talked with them two hours; Joan was there five minutes,
and neither spoke with them nor heard them speak, yet she marked them for
men of worth and fidelity, and they have confirmed her judgment. Whom has
she sent for to take charge of this thundering rabble of new recruits at
Blois, made up of old disbanded Armagnac raiders, unspeakable hellions,
every one? Why, she has sent for Satan himself--that is to say, La
Hire--that military hurricane, that godless swashbuckler, that lurid
conflagration of blasphemy, that Vesuvius of profanity, forever in
eruption. Does he know how to deal with that mob of roaring devils?
Better than any man that lives; for he is the head devil of this world
his own self, he is the match of the whole of them combined, and probably
the father of most of them. She places him in temporary command until she
can get to Blois herself--and then! Why, then she will certainly take
them in hand personally, or I don't know her as well as I ought to, after
all these years of intimacy. That will be a sight to see--that fair
spirit in her white armor, delivering her will to that muck-heap, that
rag-pile, that abandoned refuse of perdition."
"La Hire!" cried Noel, "our hero of all these years--I do want to see
that man!"
"I too. His name stirs me just as it did when I was a little boy."
"I want to hear him swear."
"Of course, I would rather hear him swear than another man pray. He is
the frankest man there is, and the naivest. Once when he was rebuked for
pillaging on his raids, he said it was nothing. Said he, 'If God the
Father were a soldier, He would rob.' I judge he is the right man to take
temporary charge there at Blois. Joan has cast the seeing eye upon him,
you see."
"Which brings us back to where we started. I have an honest affection for
the Paladin, and not merely because he is a good fellow, but because he
is my child--I made him what he is, the windiest blusterer and most
catholic liar in the kingdom. I'm glad of his luck, but I hadn't the
seeing eye. I shouldn't have chosen him for the most dangerous post in
the army. I should have placed him in the rear to kill the wounded and
violate the dead."
"Well, we shall see. Joan probably knows what is in him better than we
do. And I'll give you another idea. When a person in Joan of Arc's
position tells a man he is brave, he believes it; and believing it is
enough; in fact, to believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one
only essential thing."
"Now you've hit it!" cried Noel. "She's got the creating mouth as well as
the seeing eye! Ah, yes, that is the thing. France was cowed and a
coward; Joan of Arc has spoken, and France is marching, with her head
up!"
I was summoned now to write a letter from Joan's dictation. During the
next day and night our several uniforms were made by the tailors, and our
new armor provided. We were beautiful to look upon now, whether clothed
for peace or war. Clothed for peace, in costly stuffs and rich colors,
the Paladin was a tower dyed with the glories of the sunset; plumed and
sashed and iron-clad for war, he was a still statelier thing to look at.
Orders had been issued for the march toward Blois. It was a clear, sharp,
beautiful morning. As our showy great company trotted out in column,
riding two and two, Joan and the Duke of Alencon in the lead, D'Aulon and
the big standard-bearer next, and so on, we made a handsome spectacle, as
you may well imagine; and as we plowed through the cheering crowds, with
Joan bowing her plumed head to left and right and the sun glinting from
her silver mail, the spectators realized that the curtain was rolling up
before their eyes upon the first act of a prodigious drama, and their
rising hopes were expressed in an enthusiasm that increased with each
moment, until at last one seemed to even physically feel the concussion
of the huzzas as well as hear them. Far down the street we heard the
softened strains of wind-blown music, and saw a cloud of lancers moving,
the sun glowing with a subdued light upon the massed armor, but striking
bright upon the soaring lance-heads--a vaguely luminous nebula, so to
speak, with a constellation twinkling above it--and that was our guard of
honor. It joined us, the procession was complete, the first war-march of
Joan of Arc was begun, the curtain was up.
Chapter 12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army
WE WERE at Blois three days. Oh, that camp, it is one of the treasures of
my memory! Order? There was no more order among those brigands than there
is among the wolves and the hyenas. They went roaring and drinking about,
whooping, shouting, swearing, and entertaining themselves with all manner
of rude and riotous horse-play; and the place was full of loud and lewd
women, and they were no whit behind the men for romps and noise and
fantastics.
It was in the midst of this wild mob that Noel and I had our first
glimpse of La Hire. He answered to our dearest dreams. He was of great
size and of martial bearing, he was cased in mail from head to heel, with
a bushel of swishing plumes on his helmet, and at his side the vast sword
of the time.
He was on his way to pay his respects in state to Joan, and as he passed
through the camp he was restoring order, and proclaiming that the Maid
had come, and he would have no such spectacle as this exposed to the head
of the army. His way of creating order was his own, not borrowed. He did
it with his great fists. As he moved along swearing and admonishing, he
let drive this way, that way, and the other, and wherever his blow
landed, a man went down.
"Damn you!" he said, "staggering and cursing around like this, and the
Commander-in-Chief in the camp! Straighten up!" and he laid the man flat.
What his idea of straightening up was, was his own secret.
We followed the veteran to headquarters, listening, observing,
admiring--yes, devouring, you may say, the pet hero of the boys of France
from our cradles up to that happy day, and their idol and ours. I called
to mind how Joan had once rebuked the Paladin, there in the pastures of
Domremy, for uttering lightly those mighty names, La Hire and the Bastard
of Orleans, and how she said that if she could but be permitted to stand
afar off and let her eyes rest once upon those great men, she would hold
it a privilege. They were to her and the other girls just what they were
to the boys. Well, here was one of them at last--and what was his errand?
It was hard to realize it, and yet it was true; he was coming to uncover
his head before her and take her orders.
While he was quieting a considerable group of his brigands in his
soothing way, near headquarters, we stepped on ahead and got a glimpse of
Joan's military family, the great chiefs of the army, for they had all
arrived now. There they were, six officers of wide renown, handsome men
in beautiful armor, but the Lord High Admiral of France was the
handsomest of them all and had the most gallant bearing.
When La Hire entered, one could see the surprise in his face at Joan's
beauty and extreme youth, and one could see, too, by Joan's glad smile,
that it made her happy to get sight of this hero of her childhood at
last. La Hire bowed low, with his helmet in his gauntleted hand, and made
a bluff but handsome little speech with hardly an oath in it, and one
could see that those two took to each other on the spot.
The visit of ceremony was soon over, and the others went away; but La
Hire stayed, and he and Joan sat there, and he sipped her wine, and they
talked and laughed together like old friends. And presently she gave him
some instructions, in his quality as master of the camp, which made his
breath stand still. For, to begin with, she said that all those loose
women must pack out of the place at once, she wouldn't allow one of them
to remain. Next, the rough carousing must stop, drinking must be brought
within proper and strictly defined limits, and discipline must take the
place of disorder. And finally she climaxed the list of surprises with
this--which nearly lifted him out of his armor:
"Every man who joins my standard must confess before the priest and
absolve himself from sin; and all accepted recruits must be present at
divine service twice a day."
La Hire could not say a word for a good part of a minute, then he said,
in deep dejection:
"Oh, sweet child, they were littered in hell, these poor darlings of
mine! Attend mass? Why, dear heart, they'll see us both damned first!"
And he went on, pouring out a most pathetic stream of arguments and
blasphemy, which broke Joan all up, and made her laugh as she had not
laughed since she played in the Domremy pastures. It was good to hear.
But she stuck to her point; so the soldier yielded, and said all right,
if such were the orders he must obey, and would do the best that was in
him; then he refreshed himself with a lurid explosion of oaths, and said
that if any man in the camp refused to renounce sin and lead a pious
life, he would knock his head off. That started Joan off again; she was
really having a good time, you see. But she would not consent to that
form of conversions. She said they must be voluntary.
La Hire said that that was all right, he wasn't going to kill the
voluntary ones, but only the others.
No matter, none of them must be killed--Joan couldn't have it. She said
that to give a man a chance to volunteer, on pain of death if he didn't,
left him more or less trammeled, and she wanted him to be entirely free.
So the soldier sighed and said he would advertise the mass, but said he
doubted if there was a man in camp that was any more likely to go to it
than he was himself. Then there was another surprise for him, for Joan
said:
"But, dear man, you are going!"
"I? Impossible! Oh, this is lunacy!"
"Oh, no, it isn't. You are going to the service--twice a day."
"Oh, am I dreaming? Am I drunk--or is my hearing playing me false? Why, I
would rather go to--"
"Never mind where. In the morning you are going to begin, and after that
it will come easy. Now don't look downhearted like that. Soon you won't
mind it."
La Hire tried to cheer up, but he was not able to do it. He sighed like a
zephyr, and presently said:
"Well, I'll do it for you, but before I would do it for another, I swear
I--"
"But don't swear. Break it off."
"Break it off? It is impossible! I beg you to--to-- Why--oh, my General,
it is my native speech!"
He begged so hard for grace for his impediment, that Joan left him one
fragment of it; she said he might swear by his bfton, the symbol of his
generalship.
He promised that he would swear only by his bfton when in her presence,
and would try to modify himself elsewhere, but doubted he could manage
it, now that it was so old and stubborn a habit, and such a solace and
support to his declining years.
That tough old lion went away from there a good deal tamed and
civilized--not to say softened and sweetened, for perhaps those
expressions would hardly fit him. Noel and I believed that when he was
away from Joan's influence his old aversions would come up so strong in
him that he could not master them, and so wouldn't go to mass. But we got
up early in the morning to see.
Satan was converted, you see. Well, the rest followed. Joan rode up and
down that camp, and wherever that fair young form appeared in its shining
armor, with that sweet face to grace the vision and perfect it, the rude
host seemed to think they saw the god of war in person, descended out of
the clouds; and first they wondered, then they worshiped. After that, she
could do with them what she would.
In three days it was a clean camp and orderly, and those barbarians were
herding to divine service twice a day like good children. The women were
gone. La Hire was stunned by these marvels; he could not understand them.
He went outside the camp when he wanted to swear. He was that sort of a
man--sinful by nature and habit, but full of superstitious respect for
holy places.
The enthusiasm of the reformed army for Joan, its devotion to her, and
the hot desire had aroused in it to be led against the enemy, exceeded
any manifestations of this sort which La Hire had ever seen before in his
long career. His admiration of it all, and his wonder over the mystery
and miracle of it, were beyond his power to put into words. He had held
this army cheap before, but his pride and confidence in it knew no limits
now. He said:
"Two or three days ago it was afraid of a hen-roost; one could storm the
gates of hell with it now."
Joan and he were inseparable, and a quaint and pleasant contrast they
made. He was so big, she so little; he was so gray and so far along in
his pilgrimage of life, she so youthful; his face was so bronzed and
scarred, hers so fair and pink, so fresh and smooth; she was so gracious,
and he so stern; she was so pure, so innocent, he such a cyclopedia of
sin. In her eye was stored all charity and compassion, in his lightnings;
when her glance fell upon you it seemed to bring benediction and the
peace of God, but with his it was different, generally.
They rode through the camp a dozen times a day, visiting every corner of
it, observing, inspecting, perfecting; and wherever they appeared the
enthusiasm broke forth. They rode side by side, he a great figure of
brawn and muscle, she a little masterwork of roundness and grace; he a
fortress of rusty iron, she a shining statuette of silver; and when the
reformed raiders and bandits caught sight of them they spoke out, with
affection and welcome in their voices, and said:
"There they come--Satan and the Page of Christ!"
All the three days that we were in Blois, Joan worked earnestly and
tirelessly to bring La Hire to God--to rescue him from the bondage of
sin--to breathe into his stormy hear the serenity and peace of religion.
She urged, she begged, she implored him to pray. He stood out, three days
of our stay, begging about piteously to be let off--to be let off from
just that one thing, that impossible thing; he would do anything
else--anything--command, and he would obey--he would go through the fire
for her if she said the word--but spare him this, only this, for he
couldn't pray, had never prayed, he was ignorant of how to frame a
prayer, he had no words to put it in.
And yet--can any believe it?--she carried even that point, she won that
incredible victory. She made La Hire pray. It shows, I think, that
nothing was impossible to Joan of Arc. Yes, he stood there before her and
put up his mailed hands and made a prayer. And it was not borrowed, but
was his very own; he had none to help him frame it, he made it out of his
own head--saying:
"Fair Sir God, I pray you to do by La Hire as he would do by you if you
were La Hire and he were God." [1]
Then he put on his helmet and marched out of Joan's tent as satisfied
with himself as any one might be who had arranged a perplexed and
difficult business to the content and admiration of all the parties
concerned in the matter.
If I had know that he had been praying, I could have understood why he
was feeling so superior, but of course I could not know that.
I was coming to the tent at that moment, and saw him come out, and saw
him march away in that large fashion, and indeed it was fine and
beautiful to see. But when I got to the tent door I stopped and stepped
back, grieved and shocked, for I heard Joan crying, as I mistakenly
thought--crying as if she could not contain nor endure the anguish of her
soul, crying as if she would die. But it was not so, she was
laughing--laughing at La Hire's prayer.
It was not until six-and-thirty years afterward that I found that out,
and then--oh, then I only cried when that picture of young care-free
mirth rose before me out of the blur and mists of that long-vanished
time; for there had come a day between, when God's good gift of laughter
had gone out from me to come again no more in this life.
[1] This prayer has been stolen many times and by many nations in the
past four hundred and sixty years, but it originated with La Hire, and
the fact is of official record in the National Archives of France. We
have the authority of Michelet for this. --TRANSLATOR
Chapter 13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise
WE MARCHED out in great strength and splendor, and took the road toward
Orleans. The initial part of Joan's great dream was realizing itself at
last. It was the first time that any of us youngsters had ever seen an
army, and it was a most stately and imposing spectacle to us. It was
indeed an inspiring sight, that interminable column, stretching away into
the fading distances, and curving itself in and out of the crookedness of
the road like a mighty serpent. Joan rode at the head of it with her
personal staff; then came a body of priests singing the Veni Creator, the
banner of the Cross rising out of their midst; after these the glinting
forest of spears. The several divisions were commanded by the great
Armagnac generals, La Hire, and Marshal de Boussac, the Sire de Retz,
Florent d'Illiers, and Poton de Saintrailles.
Each in his degree was tough, and there were three degrees--tough,
tougher, toughest--and La Hire was the last by a shade, but only a shade.
They were just illustrious official brigands, the whole party; and by
long habits of lawlessness they had lost all acquaintanceship with
obedience, if they had ever had any.
But what was the good of saying that? These independent birds knew no
law. They seldom obeyed the King; they never obeyed him when it didn't
suit them to do it. Would they obey the Maid? In the first place they
wouldn't know how to obey her or anybody else, and in the second place it
was of course not possible for them to take her military character
seriously--that country-girl of seventeen who had been trained for the
complex and terrible business of war--how? By tending sheep.
They had no idea of obeying her except in cases where their veteran
military knowledge and experience showed them that the thing she required
was sound and right when gauged by the regular military standards. Were
they to blame for this attitude? I should think not. Old war-worn
captains are hard-headed, practical men. They do not easily believe in
the ability of ignorant children to plan campaigns and command armies. No
general that ever lived could have taken Joan seriously (militarily)
before she raised the siege of Orleans and followed it with the great
campaign of the Loire.
Did they consider Joan valueless? Far from it. They valued her as the
fruitful earth values the sun--they fully believed she could produce the
crop, but that it was in their line of business, not hers, to take it
off. They had a deep and superstitious reverence for her as being endowed
with a mysterious supernatural something that was able to do a mighty
thing which they were powerless to do--blow the breath of life and valor
into the dead corpses of cowed armies and turn them into heroes.
To their minds they were everything with her, but nothing without her.
She could inspire the soldiers and fit them for battle--but fight the
battle herself? Oh, nonsense--that was their function. They, the
generals, would fight the battles, Joan would give the victory. That was
their idea--an unconscious paraphrase of Joan's reply to the Dominican.
So they began by playing a deception upon her. She had a clear idea of
how she meant to proceed. It was her purpose to march boldly upon Orleans
by the north bank of the Loire. She gave that order to her generals. They
said to themselves, "The idea is insane--it is blunder No. 1; it is what
might have been expected of this child who is ignorant of war." They
privately sent the word to the Bastard of Orleans. He also recognized the
insanity of it--at least he though he did--and privately advised the
generals to get around the order in some way.
They did it by deceiving Joan. She trusted those people, she was not
expecting this sort of treatment, and was not on the lookout for it. It
was a lesson to her; she saw to it that the game was not played a second
time.
Why was Joan's idea insane, from the generals' point of view, but not
from hers? Because her plan was to raise the siege immediately, by
fighting, while theirs was to besiege the besiegers and starve them out
by closing their communications--a plan which would require months in the
consummation.
The English had built a fence of strong fortresses called bastilles
around Orleans--fortresses which closed all the gates of the city but
one. To the French generals the idea of trying to fight their way past
those fortresses and lead the army into Orleans was preposterous; they
believed that the result would be the army's destruction. One may not
doubt that their opinion was militarily sound--no, would have been, but
for one circumstance which they overlooked. That was this: the English
soldiers were in a demoralized condition of superstitious terror; they
had become satisfied that the Maid was in league with Satan. By reason of
this a good deal of their courage had oozed out and vanished. On the
other hand, the Maid'' soldiers were full of courage, enthusiasm, and
zeal.
Joan could have marched by the English forts. However, it was not to be.
She had been cheated out of her first chance to strike a heavy blow for
her country.
In camp that night she slept in her armor on the ground. It was a cold
night, and she was nearly as stiff as her armor itself when we resumed
the march in the morning, for iron is not good material for a blanket.
However, her joy in being now so far on her way to the theater of her
mission was fire enough to warm her, and it soon did it.
Her enthusiasm and impatience rose higher and higher with every mile of
progress; but at last we reached Olivet, and down it went, and
indignation took its place. For she saw the trick that had been played
upon her--the river lay between us and Orleans.
She was for attacking one of the three bastilles that were on our side of
the river and forcing access to the bridge which it guarded (a project
which, if successful, would raise the siege instantly), but the
long-ingrained fear of the English came upon her generals and they
implored her not to make the attempt. The soldiers wanted to attack, but
had to suffer disappointment. So we moved on and came to a halt at a
point opposite Checy, six miles above Orleans.
Dunois, Bastard of Orleans, with a body of knights and citizens, came up
from the city to welcome Joan. Joan was still burning with resentment
over the trick that had been put upon her, and was not in the mood for
soft speeches, even to reversed military idols of her childhood. She
said:
"Are you the bastard?"
"Yes, I am he, and am right glad of your coming."
"And did you advise that I be brought by this side of the river instead
of straight to Talbot and the English?"
Her high manner abashed him, and he was not able to answer with anything
like a confident promptness, but with many hesitations and partial
excuses he managed to get out the confession that for what he and the
council had regarded as imperative military reasons they so advised.
"In God's name," said Joan, "my Lord's counsel is safer and wiser than
yours. You thought to deceive me, but you have deceived yourselves, for I
bring you the best help that ever knight or city had; for it is God's
help, not sent for love of me, but by God's pleasure. At the prayer of
St. Louis and St. Charlemagne He has had pity on Orleans, and will not
suffer the enemy to have both the Duke of Orleans and his city. The
provisions to save the starving people are here, the boats are below the
city, the wind is contrary, they cannot come up hither. Now then, tell
me, in God's name, you who are so wise, what that council of yours was
thinking about, to invent this foolish difficulty."
Dunois and the rest fumbled around the matter a moment, then gave in and
conceded that a blunder had been made.
"Yes, a blunder has been made," said Joan, "and except God take your
proper work upon Himself and change the wind and correct your blunder for
you, there is none else that can devise a remedy."
Some of these people began to perceive that with all her technical
ignorance she had practical good sense, and that with all her native
sweetness and charm she was not the right kind of a person to play with.
Presently God did take the blunder in hand, and by His grace the wind did
change. So the fleet of boats came up and went away loaded with
provisions and cattle, and conveyed that welcome succor to the hungry
city, managing the matter successfully under protection of a sortie from
the walls against the bastille of St. Loup. Then Joan began on the
Bastard again:
"You see here the army?"
"Yes."
"It is here on this side by advice of your council?"
"Yes."
"Now, in God's name, can that wise council explain why it is better to
have it here than it would be to have it in the bottom of the sea?"
Dunois made some wandering attempts to explain the inexplicable and
excuse the inexcusable, but Joan cut him short and said:
"Answer me this, good sir--has the army any value on this side of the
river?"
The Bastard confessed that it hadn't--that is, in view of the plan of
campaign which she had devised and decreed.
"And yet, knowing this, you had the hardihood to disobey my orders. Since
the army's place is on the other side, will you explain to me how it is
to get there?"
The whole size of the needless muddle was apparent. Evasions were of no
use; therefore Dunois admitted that there was no way to correct the
blunder but to send the army all the way back to Blois, and let it begin
over again and come up on the other side this time, according to Joan's
original plan.
Any other girl, after winning such a triumph as this over a veteran
soldier of old renown, might have exulted a little and been excusable for
it, but Joan showed no disposition of this sort. She dropped a word or
two of grief over the precious time that must be lost, then began at once
to issue commands for the march back. She sorrowed to see her army go;
for she said its heart was great and its enthusiasm high, and that with
it at her back she did not fear to face all the might of England.
All arrangements having been completed for the return of the main body of
the army, she took the Bastard and La Hire and a thousand men and went
down to Orleans, where all the town was in a fever of impatience to have
sight of her face. It was eight in the evening when she and the troops
rode in at the Burgundy gate, with the Paladin preceding her with her
standard. She was riding a white horse, and she carried in her hand the
sacred sword of Fierbois. You should have seen Orleans then. What a
picture it was! Such black seas of people, such a starry firmament of
torches, such roaring whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and
thundering of cannon! It was as if the world was come to an end.
Everywhere in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned
white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears
running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her
mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue.
The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their
tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one
who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk,
and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed
their fingers.
Nothing that Joan did escaped notice; everything she did was commented
upon and applauded. You could hear the remarks going all the time.
"There--she's smiling--see!"
"Now she's taking her little plumed cap off to somebody--ah, it's fine
and graceful!"
"She's patting that woman on the head with her gauntlet."
"Oh, she was born on a horse--see her turn in her saddle, and kiss the
hilt of her sword to the ladies in the window that threw the flowers
down."
"Now there's a poor woman lifting up a child--she's kissed it--oh, she's
divine!"
"What a dainty little figure it is, and what a lovely face--and such
color and animation!"
Joan's slender long banner streaming backward had an accident--the fringe
caught fire from a torch. She leaned forward and crushed the flame in her
hand.
"She's not afraid of fire nor anything!" they shouted, and delivered a
storm of admiring applause that made everything quake.
She rode to the cathedral and gave thanks to God, and the people crammed
the place and added their devotions to hers; then she took up her march
again and picked her slow way through the crowds and the wilderness of
torches to the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of
Orleans, where she was to be the guest of his wife as long as she stayed
in the city, and have his young daughter for comrade and room-mate. The
delirium of the people went on the rest of the night, and with it the
clamor of the joy-bells and the welcoming cannon.
Joan of Arc had stepped upon her stage at last, and was ready to begin.
Chapter 14 What the English Answered
SHE WAS ready, but must sit down and wait until there was an army to work
with.
Next morning, Saturday, April 30, 1429, she set about inquiring after the
messenger who carried her proclamation to the English from Blois--the one
which she had dictated at Poitiers. Here is a copy of it. It is a
remarkable document, for several reasons: for its matter-of-fact
directness, for its high spirit and forcible diction, and for its naive
confidence in her ability to achieve the prodigious task which she had
laid upon herself, or which had been laid upon her--which you please. All
through it you seem to see the pomps of war and hear the rumbling of the
drums. In it Joan's warrior soul is revealed, and for the moment the soft
little shepherdess has disappeared from your view. This untaught
country-damsel, unused to dictating anything at all to anybody, much less
documents of state to kings and generals, poured out this procession of
vigorous sentences as fluently as if this sort of work had been her trade
from childhood:
JESUS MARIA King of England and you Duke of Bedford who call yourself
Regent of France; William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; and you Thomas
Lord Scales, who style yourselves lieutenants of the said Bedford--do
right to the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid who is sent by God the
keys of all the good towns you have taken and violated in France. She is
sent hither by God, to restore the blood royal. She is very ready to make
peace if you will do her right by giving up France and paying for what
you have held. And you archers, companions of war, noble and otherwise,
who are before the good city of Orleans, begone into your own land in
God's name, or expect news from the Maid who will shortly go to see you
to your very great hurt. King of England, if you do not so, I am chief of
war, and whenever I shall find your people in France, I will drive them
out, willing or not willing; and if they do not obey I will slay them
all, but if they obey, I will have them to mercy. I am come hither by
God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to put you our of France, in
spite of those who would work treason and mischief against the kingdom.
Think not you shall ever hold the kingdom from the King of Heaven, the
Son of the Blessed Mary; King Charles shall hold it, for God wills it so,
and has revealed it to him by the Maid. If you believe not the news sent
by God through the Maid, wherever we shall met you we will strike boldly
and make such a noise as has not been in France these thousand years. Be
sure that God can send more strength to the Maid than you can bring to
any assault against her and her good men-at-arms; and then we shall see
who has the better right, the King of Heaven, or you. Duke of Bedford,
the Maid prays you not to bring about your own destruction. If you do her
right, you may yet go in her company where the French shall do the finest
deed that has been done in Christendom, and if you do not, you shall be
reminded shortly of your great wrongs.
In that closing sentence she invites them to go on crusade with her to
rescue the Holy Sepulcher. No answer had been returned to this
proclamation, and the messenger himself had not come back.
So now she sent her two heralds with a new letter warning the English to
raise the siege and requiring them to restore that missing messenger. The
heralds came back without him. All they brought was notice from the
English to Joan that they would presently catch her and burn her if she
did not clear out now while she had a chance, and "go back to her proper
trade of minding cows."
She held her peace, only saying it was a pity that the English would
persist in inviting present disaster and eventual destruction when she
was "doing all she could to get them out of the country with their lives
still in their bodies."
Presently she thought of an arrangement that might be acceptable, and
said to the heralds, "Go back and say to Lord Talbot this, from me: 'Come
out of your bastilles with your host, and I will come with mine; if I
beat you, go in peace out of France; if you beat me, burn me, according
to your desire.'"
I did not hear this, but Dunois did, and spoke of it. The challenge was
refused.
Sunday morning her Voices or some instinct gave her a warning, and she
sent Dunois to Blois to take command of the army and hurry it to Orleans.
It was a wise move, for he found Regnault de Chartres and some more of
the King's pet rascals there trying their best to disperse the army, and
crippling all the efforts of Joan's generals to head it for Orleans. They
were a fine lot, those miscreants. They turned their attention to Dunois
now, but he had balked Joan once, with unpleasant results to himself, and
was not minded to meddle in that way again. He soon had the army moving.
Chapter 15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
WE OF the personal staff were in fairyland now, during the few days that
we waited for the return of the army. We went into society. To our two
knights this was not a novelty, but to us young villagers it was a new
and wonderful life. Any position of any sort near the person of the Maid
of Vaucouleurs conferred high distinction upon the holder and caused his
society to be courted; and so the D'Arc brothers, and Noel, and the
Paladin, humble peasants at home, were gentlemen here, personages of
weight and influence. It was fine to see how soon their country
diffidences and awkwardnesses melted away under this pleasant sun of
deference and disappeared, and how lightly and easily they took to their
new atmosphere. The Paladin was as happy as it was possible for any one
in this earth to be. His tongue went all the time, and daily he got new
delight out of hearing himself talk. He began to enlarge his ancestry and
spread it out all around, and ennoble it right and left, and it was not
long until it consisted almost entirely of dukes. He worked up his old
battles and tricked them out with fresh splendors; also with new terrors,
for he added artillery now. We had seen cannon for the first time at
Blois--a few pieces--here there was plenty of it, and now and then we had
the impressive spectacle of a huge English bastille hidden from sight in
a mountain of smoke from its own guns, with lances of red flame darting
through it; and this grand picture, along with the quaking thunders
pounding away in the heart of it, inflamed the Paladin's imagination and
enabled him to dress out those ambuscade-skirmishes of ours with a
sublimity which made it impossible for any to recognize them at all
except people who had not been there.
You may suspect that there was a special inspiration for these great
efforts of the Paladin's, and there was. It was the daughter of the
house, Catherine Boucher, who was eighteen, and gentle and lovely in her
ways, and very beautiful. I think she might have been as beautiful as
Joan herself, if she had had Joan's eyes. But that could never be. There
was never but that one pair, there will never be another. Joan's eyes
were deep and rich and wonderful beyond anything merely earthly. They
spoke all the languages--they had no need of words. They produced all
effects--and just by a glance, just a single glance; a glance that could
convict a liar of his lie and make him confess it; that could bring down
a proud man's pride and make him humble; that could put courage into a
coward and strike dead the courage of the bravest; that could appease
resentments and real hatreds; that could make the doubter believe and the
hopeless hope again; that could purify the impure mind; that could
persuade--ah, there it is--persuasion! that is the word; what or who is
it that it couldn't persuade? The maniac of Domremy--the fairy-banishing
priest--the reverend tribunal of Toul--the doubting and superstitious
Laxart--the obstinate veteran of Vaucouleurs--the characterless heir of
France--the sages and scholars of the Parliament and University of
Poitiers--the darling of Satan, La Hire--the masterless Bastard of
Orleans, accustomed to acknowledge no way as right and rational but his
own--these were the trophies of that great gift that made her the wonder
and mystery that she was.
We mingled companionably with the great folk who flocked to the big house
to make Joan's acquaintance, and they made much of us and we lived in the
clouds, so to speak. But what we preferred even to this happiness was the
quieter occasions, when the formal guests were gone and the family and a
few dozen of its familiar friends were gathered together for a social
good time. It was then that we did our best, we five youngsters, with
such fascinations as we had, and the chief object of them was Catherine.
None of us had ever been in love been in love before, and now we had the
misfortune to all fall in love with the same person at the same
time--which was the first moment we saw her. She was a merry heart, and
full of life, and I still remember tenderly those few evenings that I was
permitted to have my share of her dear society and of comradeship with
that little company of charming people.
The Paladin made us all jealous the first night, for when he got fairly
started on those battles of his he had everything to himself, and there
was no use in anybody else's trying to get any attention. Those people
had been living in the midst of real war for seven months; and to hear
this windy giant lay out his imaginary campaigns and fairly swim in blood
and spatter it all around, entertained them to the verge of the grave.
Catherine was like to die, for pure enjoyment. She didn't laugh loud--we,
of course, wished she would--but kept in the shelter of a fan, and shook
until there was danger that she would unhitch her ribs from her spine.
Then when the Paladin had got done with a battle and we began to feel
thankful and hope for a change, she would speak up in a way that was so
sweet and persuasive that it rankled in me, and ask him about some detail
or other in the early part of his battle which she said had greatly
interested her, and would he be so good as to describe that part again
and with a little more particularity?--which of course precipitated the
whole battle on us, again, with a hundred lies added that had been
overlooked before.
I do not know how to make you realize the pain I suffered. I had never
been jealous before, and it seemed intolerable that this creature should
have this good fortune which he was so ill entitled to, and I have to sit
and see myself neglected when I was so longing for the least little
attention out of the thousand that this beloved girl was lavishing on
him. I was near her, and tried two or three times to get started on some
of the things that I had done in those battles--and I felt ashamed of
myself, too, for stooping to such a business--but she cared for nothing
but his battles, and could not be got to listen; and presently when one
of my attempts caused her to lose some precious rag or other of his
mendacities and she asked him to repeat, thus bringing on a new
engagement, of course, and increasing the havoc and carnage tenfold, I
felt so humiliated by this pitiful miscarriage of mine that I gave up and
tried no more.
The others were as outraged by the Paladin's selfish conduct as I
was--and by his grand luck, too, of course--perhaps, indeed, that was the
main hurt. We talked our trouble over together, which was natural, for
rivals become brothers when a common affliction assails them and a common
enemy bears off the victory.
Each of us could do things that would please and get notice if it were
not for this person, who occupied all the time and gave others no chance.
I had made a poem, taking a whole night to it--a poem in which I most
happily and delicately celebrated that sweet girl's charms, without
mentioning her name, but any one could see who was meant; for the bare
title--"The Rose of Orleans"--would reveal that, as it seemed to me. It
pictured this pure and dainty white rose as growing up out of the rude
soil of war and looking abroad out of its tender eyes upon the horrid
machinery of death, and then--note this conceit--it blushes for the
sinful nature of man, and turns red in a single night. Becomes a red
rose, you see--a rose that was white before. The idea was my own, and
quite new. Then it sent its sweet perfume out over the embattled city,
and when the beleaguering forces smelt it they laid down their arms and
wept. This was also my own idea, and new. That closed that part of the
poem; then I put her into the similitude of the firmament--not the whole
of it, but only part. That is to say, she was the moon, and all the
constellations were following her about, their hearts in flames for love
of her, but she would not halt, she would not listen, for 'twas thought
she loved another. 'Twas thought she loved a poor unworthy suppliant who
was upon the earth, facing danger, death, and possible mutilation in the
bloody field, waging relentless war against a heartless foe to save her
from an all too early grave, and her city from destruction. And when the
sad pursuing constellations came to know and realize the bitter sorrow
that was come upon them --note this idea--their hearts broke and their
tears gushed forth, filling the vault of heaven with a fiery splendor,
for those tears were falling stars. It was a rash idea, but beautiful;
beautiful and pathetic; wonderfully pathetic, the way I had it, with the
rhyme and all to help. At the end of each verse there was a two-line
refrain pitying the poor earthly lover separated so far, and perhaps
forever, from her he loved so well, and growing always paler and weaker
and thinner in his agony as he neared the cruel grave--the most touching
thing--even the boys themselves could hardly keep back their tears, the
way Noel said those lines. There were eight four-line stanzas in the
first end of the poem--the end about the rose, the horticultural end, as
you may say, if that is not too large a name for such a little poem--and
eight in the astronomical end--sixteen stanzas altogether, and I could
have made it a hundred and fifty if I had wanted to, I was so inspired
and so all swelled up with beautiful thoughts and fancies; but that would
have been too many to sing or recite before a company that way, whereas
sixteen was just right, and could be done over again if desired. The boys
were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and
so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to
anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a
single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it
was not.
That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a
thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we
needed was something to turn up that would call for it. Indeed, it was
always so without family. My grandfather had a cancer, and they never
knew what was the matter with him till he died, and he didn't know
himself. It is wonderful how gifts and diseases can be concealed in that
way. All that was necessary in my case was for this lovely and inspiring
girl to cross my path, and out came the poem, and no more trouble to me
to word it and rhyme it and perfect it than it is to stone a dog. No, I
should have said it was not in me; but it was.
The boys couldn't say enough about it, they were so charmed and
astonished. The thing that pleased them the most was the way it would do
the Paladin's business for him. They forgot everything in their anxiety
to get him shelved and silenced. Noel Rainguesson was clear beside
himself with admiration of the poem, and wished he could do such a thing,
but it was out of his line, and he couldn't, of course. He had it by
heart in half an hour, and there was never anything so pathetic and
beautiful as the way he recited it. For that was just his gift--that and
mimicry. He could recite anything better than anybody in the world, and
he could take of La Hire to the very life--or anybody else, for that
matter. Now I never could recite worth a farthing; and when I tried with
this poem the boys wouldn't let me finish; they would nave nobody but
Noel. So then, as I wanted the poem to make the best possible impression
on Catherine and the company, I told Noel he might do the reciting. Never
was anybody so delighted. He could hardly believe that I was in earnest,
but I was. I said that to have them know that I was the author of it
would be enough for me. The boys were full of exultation, and Noel said
if he could just get one chance at those people it would be all he would
ask; he would make them realize that there was something higher and finer
than war-lies to be had here.
But how to get the opportunity--that was the difficulty. We invented
several schemes that promised fairly, and at last we hit upon one that
was sure. That was, to let the Paladin get a good start in a manufactured
battle, and then send in a false call for him, and as soon as he was out
of the room, have Noel take his place and finish the battle himself in
the Paladin's own style, imitated to a shade. That would get great
applause, and win the house's favor and put it in the right mood to hear
the poem. The two triumphs together with finish the
Standard-Bearer--modify him, anyway, to a certainty, and give the rest of
us a chance for the future.
So the next night I kept out of the way until the Paladin had got his
start and was sweeping down upon the enemy like a whirlwind at the head
of his corps, then I stepped within the door in my official uniform and
announced that a messenger from General La Hire's quarters desired speech
with the Standard-Bearer. He left the room, and Noel took his place and
said that the interruption was to be deplored, but that fortunately he
was personally acquainted with the details of the battle himself, and if
permitted would be glad to state them to the company. Then without
waiting for the permission he turned himself to the Paladin--a dwarfed
Paladin, of course--with manner, tones, gestures, attitudes, everything
exact, and went right on with the battle, and it would be impossible to
imagine a more perfectly and minutely ridiculous imitation than he
furnished to those shrieking people. They went into spasms, convulsions,
frenzies of laughter, and the tears flowed down their cheeks in rivulets.
The more they laughed, the more inspires Noel grew with his theme and the
greater marvels he worked, till really the laughter was not properly
laughing any more, but screaming. Blessedest feature of all, Catherine
Boucher was dying with ecstasies, and presently there was little left of
her but gasps and suffocations. Victory? It was a perfect Agincourt.
The Paladin was gone only a couple of minutes; he found out at once that
a trick had been played on him, so he came back. When he approached the
door he heard Noel ranting in there and recognized the state of the case;
so he remained near the door but out of sight, and heard the performance
through to the end. The applause Noel got when he finished was wonderful;
and they kept it up and kept it up, clapping their hands like mad, and
shouting to him to do it over again.
But Noel was clever. He knew the very best background for a poem of deep
and refined sentiment and pathetic melancholy was one where great and
satisfying merriment had prepared the spirit for the powerful contrast.
So he paused until all was quiet, then his face grew grave and assumed an
impressive aspect, and at once all faces sobered in sympathy and took on
a look of wondering and expectant interest. Now he began in a low but
distinct voice the opening verses of The Rose. As he breathed the
rhythmic measures forth, and one gracious line after another fell upon
those enchanted ears in that deep hush, one could catch, on every hand,
half-audible ejaculations of "How lovely--how beautiful--how exquisite!"
By this time the Paladin, who had gone away for a moment with the opening
of the poem, was back again, and had stepped within the door. He stood
there now, resting his great frame against the wall and gazing toward the
reciter like one entranced. When Noel got to the second part, and that
heart-breaking refrain began to melt and move all listeners, the Paladin
began to wipe away tears with the back of first one hand and then the
other. The next time the refrain was repeated he got to snuffling, and
sort of half sobbing, and went to wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his
doublet. He was so conspicuous that he embarrassed Noel a little, and
also had an ill effect upon the audience. With the next repetition he
broke quite down and began to cry like a calf, which ruined all the
effect and started many to the audience to laughing. Then he went on from
bad to worse, until I never saw such a spectacle; for he fetched out a
towel from under his doublet and began to swab his eyes with it and let
go the most infernal bellowings mixed up with sobbings and groanings and
retchings and barkings and coughings and snortings and screamings and
howlings --and he twisted himself about on his heels and squirmed this
way and that, still pouring out that brutal clamor and flourishing his
towel in the air and swabbing again and wringing it out. Hear? You
couldn't hear yourself think. Noel was wholly drowned out and silenced,
and those people were laughing the very lungs out of themselves. It was
the most degrading sight that ever was. Now I heard the clankety-clank
that plate-armor makes when the man that is in it is running, and then
alongside my head there burst out the most inhuman explosion of laughter
that ever rent the drum of a person's ear, and I looked, and it was La
Hire; and the stood there with his gauntlets on his hips and his head
tilted back and his jaws spread to that degree to let out his hurricanes
and his thunders that it amounted to indecent exposure, for you could see
everything that was in him. Only one thing more and worse could happen,
and it happened: at the other door I saw the flurry and bustle and
bowings and scrapings of officials and flunkeys which means that some
great personage is coming--then Joan of Arc stepped in, and the house
rose! Yes, and tried to shut its indecorous mouth and make itself grave
and proper; but when it saw the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked
God for this mercy and the earthquake that followed.
Such things make a life of bitterness, and I do not wish to dwell upon
them. The effect of the poem was spoiled.
Chapter 16 The Finding of the Dwarf
THIS EPISODE disagreed with me and I was not able to leave my bed the
next day. The others were in the same condition. But for this, one or
another of us might have had the good luck that fell to the Paladin's
share that day; but it is observable that God in His compassion sends the
good luck to such as are ill equipped with gifts, as compensation for
their defect, but requires such as are more fortunately endowed to get by
labor and talent what those others get by chance. It was Noel who said
this, and it seemed to me to be well and justly thought.
The Paladin, going about the town all the day in order to be followed and
admired and overhear the people say in an awed voice, "'Ssh! --look, it
is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of Arc!" had speech with all sorts and
conditions of folk, and he learned from some boatmen that there was a
stir of some kind going on in the bastilles on the other side of the
river; and in the evening, seeking further, he found a deserter from the
fortress called the "Augustins," who said that the English were going to
send me over to strengthen the garrisons on our side during the darkness
of the night, and were exulting greatly, for they meant to spring upon
Dunois and the army when it was passing the bastilles and destroy it; a
thing quite easy to do, since the "Witch" would not be there, and without
her presence the army would do like the French armies of these many years
past--drop their weapons and run when they saw an English face.
It was ten at night when the Paladin brought this news and asked leave to
speak to Joan, and I was up and on duty then. It was a bitter stroke to
me to see what a chance I had lost. Joan made searching inquiries, and
satisfied herself that the word was true, then she made this annoying
remark:
"You have done well, and you have my thanks. It may be that you have
prevented a disaster. Your name and service shall receive official
mention."
Then he bowed low, and when he rose he was eleven feet high. As he
swelled out past me he covertly pulled down the corner of his eye with
his finger and muttered part of that defiled refrain, "Oh, tears, ah,
tears, oh, sad sweet tears!--name in General Orders--personal mention to
the King, you see!"
I wished Joan could have seen his conduct, but she was busy thinking what
she would do. Then she had me fetch the knight Jean de Metz, and in a
minute he was off for La Hire's quarters with orders for him and the Lord
de Villars and Florent d'Illiers to report to her at five o'clock next
morning with five hundred picked men well mounted. The histories say half
past four, but it is not true, I heard the order given.
We were on our way at five to the minute, and encountered the head of the
arriving column between six and seven, a couple of leagues from the city.
Dunois was pleased, for the army had begun to get restive and show
uneasiness now that it was getting so near to the dreaded bastilles. But
that all disappeared now, as the word ran down the line, with a huzza
that swept along the length of it like a wave, that the Maid was come.
Dunois asked her to halt and let the column pass in review, so that the
men could be sure that the reports of her presence was not a ruse to
revive their courage. So she took position at the side of the road with
her staff, and the battalions swung by with a martial stride, huzzaing.
Joan was armed, except her head. She was wearing the cunning little
velvet cap with the mass of curved white ostrich plumes tumbling over its
edges which the city of Orleans had given her the night she arrived--the
one that is in the picture that hangs in the H"tel de Ville at Rouen. She
was looking about fifteen. The sight of soldiers always set her blood to
leaping, and lit the fires in her eyes and brought the warm rich color to
her cheeks; it was then that you saw that she was too beautiful to be of
the earth, or at any rate that there was a subtle something somewhere
about her beauty that differed it from the human types of your experience
and exalted it above them.
In the train of wains laden with supplies a man lay on top of the goods.
He was stretched out on his back, and his hands were tied together with
ropes, and also his ankles. Joan signed to the officer in charge of that
division of the train to come to her, and he rode up and saluted.
"What is he that is bound there?" she asked.
"A prisoner, General."
"What is his offense?"
"He is a deserter."
"What is to be done with him?"
"He will be hanged, but it was not convenient on the march, and there was
no hurry."
"Tell me about him."
"He is a good soldier, but he asked leave to go and see his wife who was
dying, he said, but it could not be granted; so he went without leave.
Meanwhile the march began, and he only overtook us yesterday evening."
"Overtook you? Did he come of his own will?"
"Yes, it was of his own will."
"He a deserter! Name of God! Bring him to me."
The officer rode forward and loosed the man's feet and brought him back
with his hands still tied. What a figure he was--a good seven feet high,
and built for business! He had a strong face; he had an unkempt shock of
black hair which showed up a striking way when the officer removed his
morion for him; for weapon he had a big ax in his broad leathern belt.
Standing by Joan's horse, he made Joan look littler than ever, for his
head was about on a level with her own. His face was profoundly
melancholy; all interest in life seemed to be dead in the man. Joan said:
"Hold up your hands."
The man's head was down. He lifted it when he heard that soft friendly
voice, and there was a wistful something in his face which made one think
that there had been music in it for him and that he would like to hear it
again. When he raised his hands Joan laid her sword to his bonds, but the
officer said with apprehension:
"Ah, madam--my General!"
"What is it?" she said.
"He is under sentence!"
"Yes, I know. I am responsible for him"; and she cut the bonds. They had
lacerated his wrists, and they were bleeding. "Ah, pitiful!" she said;
"blood--I do not like it"; and she shrank from the sight. But only for a
moment. "Give me something, somebody, to bandage his wrists with."
The officer said:
"Ah, my General! it is not fitting. Let me bring another to do it."
"Another? De par le Dieu! You would seek far to find one that can do it
better than I, for I learned it long ago among both men and beasts. And I
can tie better than those that did this; if I had tied him the ropes had
not cut his flesh."
The man looked on silent, while he was being bandaged, stealing a furtive
glance at Joan's face occasionally, such as an animal might that is
receiving a kindness form an unexpected quarter and is gropingly trying
to reconcile the act with its source. All the staff had forgotten the
huzzaing army drifting by in its rolling clouds of dust, to crane their
necks and watch the bandaging as if it was the most interesting and
absorbing novelty that ever was. I have often seen people do like
that--get entirely lost in the simplest trifle, when it is something that
is out of their line. Now there in Poitiers, once, I saw two bishops and
a dozen of those grave and famous scholars grouped together watching a
man paint a sign on a shop; they didn't breathe, they were as good as
dead; and when it began to sprinkle they didn't know it at first; then
they noticed it, and each man hove a deep sigh, and glanced up with a
surprised look as wondering to see the others there, and how he came to
be there himself--but that is the way with people, as I have said. There
is no way of accounting for people. You have to take them as they are.
"There," said Joan at last, pleased with her success; "another could have
done it no better--not as well, I think. Tell me--what is it you did?
Tell me all."
The giant said:
"It was this way, my angel. My mother died, then my three little
children, one after the other, all in two years. It was the famine;
others fared so--it was God's will. I saw them die; I had that grace; and
I buried them. Then when my poor wife's fate was come, I begged for leave
to go to her--she who was so dear to me--she who was all I had; I begged
on my knees. But they would not let me. Could I let her die, friendless
and alone? Could I let her die believing I would not come? Would she let
me die and she not come--with her feet free to do it if she would, and no
cost upon it but only her life? Ah, she would come--she would come
through the fire! So I went. I saw her. She died in my arms. I buried
her. Then the army was gone. I had trouble to overtake it, but my legs
are long and there are many hours in a day; I overtook it last night."
Joan said, musingly, as if she were thinking aloud:
"It sounds true. If true, it were no great harm to suspend the law this
one time--any would say that. It may not be true, but if it is true--"
She turned suddenly to the man and said, "I would see your eyes--look
up!" The eyes of the two met, and Joan said to the officer, "This man is
pardoned. Give you good day; you may go." Then she said to the man, "Did
you know it was death to come back to the army?"
"Yes," he said, "I knew it."
"Then why did you do it?"
The man said, quite simply:
"Because it was death. She was all I had. There was nothing left to
love."
"Ah, yes, there was--France! The children of France have always their
mother--they cannot be left with nothing to love. You shall live--and you
shall serve France--"
"I will serve you!"
--"you shall fight for France--"
"I will fight for you!"
"You shall be France's soldier--"
"I will be your soldier!"
--"you shall give all your heart to France--"
"I will give all my heart to you--and all my soul, if I have one--and all
my strength, which is great--for I was dead and am alive again; I had
nothing to live for, but now I have! You are France for me. You are my
France, and I will have no other."
Joan smiled, and was touched and pleased at the man's grave
enthusiasm--solemn enthusiasm, one may call it, for the manner of it was
deeper than mere gravity--and she said:
"Well, it shall be as you will. What are you called?"
The man answered with unsmiling simplicity:
"They call me the Dwarf, but I think it is more in jest than otherwise."
It made Joan laugh, and she said:
"It has something of that look truly! What is the office of that vast
ax?"
The soldier replied with the same gravity--which must have been born to
him, it sat upon him so naturally:
"It is to persuade persons to respect France."
Joan laughed again, and said:
"Have you given many lessons?"
"Ah, indeed, yes--many."
"The pupils behaved to suit you, afterward?"
"Yes; it made them quiet--quite pleasant and quiet."
"I should think it would happen so. Would you like to be my
man-at-arms?--orderly, sentinel, or something like that?"
"If I may!"
"Then you shall. You shall have proper armor, and shall go on teaching
your art. Take one of those led horses there, and follow the staff when
we move."
That is how we came by the Dwarf; and a good fellow he was. Joan picked
him out on sight, but it wasn't a mistake; no one could be faithfuler
than he was, and he was a devil and the son of a devil when he turned
himself loose with his ax. He was so big that he made the Paladin look
like an ordinary man. He liked to like people, therefore people liked
him. He liked us boys from the start; and he liked the knights, and liked
pretty much everybody he came across; but he thought more of a paring of
Joan's finger-nail than he did of all the rest of the world put together.
Yes, that is where we got him--stretched on the wain, going to his death,
poor chap, and nobody to say a good word for him. He was a good find.
Why, the knights treated him almost like an equal--it is the honest
truth; that is the sort of a man he was. They called him the Bastille
sometimes, and sometimes they called him Hellfire, which was on account
of his warm and sumptuous style in battle, and you know they wouldn't
have given him pet names if they hadn't had a good deal of affection for
him.
To the Dwarf, Joan was France, the spirit of France made flesh--he never
got away from that idea that he had started with; and God knows it was
the true one. That was a humble eye to see so great a truth where some
others failed. To me that seems quite remarkable. And yet, after all, it
was, in a way, just what nations do. When they love a great and noble
thing, they embody it--they want it so that they can see it with their
eyes; like liberty, for instance. They are not content with the cloudy
abstract idea, they make a beautiful statue of it, and then their beloved
idea is substantial and they can look at it and worship it. And so it is
as I say; to the Dwarf, Joan was our country embodied, our country made
visible flesh cast in a gracious form. When she stood before others, they
saw Joan of Arc, but he saw France.
Sometimes he would speak of her by that name. It shows you how the idea
was embedded in his mind, and how real it was to him. The world has
called our kings by it, but I know of none of them who has had so good a
right as she to that sublime title.
When the march past was finished, Joan returned to the front and rode at
the head of the column. When we began to file past those grim bastilles
and could glimpse the men within, standing to their guns and ready to
empty death into our ranks, such a faintness came over me and such a
sickness that all things seemed to turn dim and swim before my eyes; and
the other boys looked droopy, too, I thought--including the Paladin,
although I do not know this for certain, because he was ahead of me and I
had to keep my eyes out toward the bastille side, because I could wince
better when I saw what to wince at.
But Joan was at home--in Paradise, I might say. She sat up straight, and
I could see that she was feeling different from me. The awfulest thing
was the silence; there wasn't a sound but the screaking of the saddles,
the measured tramplings, and the sneezing of the horses, afflicted by the
smothering dust-clouds which they kicked up. I wanted to sneeze myself,
but it seemed to me that I would rather go unsneezed, or suffer even a
bitterer torture, if there is one, than attract attention to myself.
I was not of a rank to make suggestions, or I would have suggested that
if we went faster we should get by sooner. It seemed to me that it was an
ill-judged time to be taking a walk. Just as we were drifting in that
suffocating stillness past a great cannon that stood just within a raised
portcullis, with nothing between me and it but the moat, a most uncommon
jackass in there split the world with his bray, and I fell out of the
saddle. Sir Bertrand grabbed me as I went, which was well, for if I had
gone to the ground in my armor I could not have gotten up again by
myself. The English warders on the battlements laughed a coarse laugh,
forgetting that every one must begin, and that there had been a time when
they themselves would have fared no better when shot by a jackass.
The English never uttered a challenge nor fired a shot. It was said
afterward that when their men saw the Maid riding at the front and saw
how lovely she was, their eager courage cooled down in many cases and
vanished in the rest, they feeling certain that the creature was not
mortal, but the very child of Satan, and so the officers were prudent and
did not try to make them fight. It was said also that some of the
officers were affected by the same superstitious fears. Well, in any
case, they never offered to molest us, and we poked by all the grisly
fortresses in peace. During the march I caught up on my devotions, which
were in arrears; so it was not all loss and no profit for me after all.
It was on this march that the histories say Dunois told Joan that the
English were expecting reinforcements under the command of Sir John
Fastolfe, and that she turned upon him and said:
"Bastard, Bastard, in God's name I warn you to let me know of his coming
as soon as you hear of it; for if he passes without my knowledge you
shall lose your head!"
It may be so; I don't deny it; but I didn't her it. If she really said it
I think she only meant she would take off his official head --degrade him
from his command. It was not like her to threaten a comrade's life. She
did have her doubts of her generals, and was entitled to them, for she
was all for storm and assault, and they were for holding still and tiring
the English out. Since they did not believe in her way and were
experienced old soldiers, it would be natural for them to prefer their
own and try to get around carrying hers out.
But I did hear something that the histories didn't mention and don't know
about. I heard Joan say that now that the garrisons on the other wide had
been weakened to strengthen those on our side, the most effective point
of operations had shifted to the south shore; so she meant to go over
there and storm the forts which held the bridge end, and that would open
up communication with our own dominions and raise the siege. The generals
began to balk, privately, right away, but they only baffled and delayed
her, and that for only four days.
All Orleans met the army at the gate and huzzaed it through the bannered
streets to its various quarters, but nobody had to rock it to sleep; it
slumped down dog-tired, for Dunois had rushed it without mercy, and for
the next twenty-four hours it would be quiet, all but the snoring.
Chapter 17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth
WHEN WE got home, breakfast for us minor fry was waiting in our mess-room
and the family honored us by coming in to eat it with us. The nice old
treasurer, and in fact all three were flatteringly eager to hear about
our adventures. Nobody asked the Paladin to begin, but he did begin,
because now that his specially ordained and peculiar military rank set
him above everybody on the personal staff but old D'Aulon, who didn't eat
with us, he didn't care a farthing for the knights' nobility no mine, but
took precedence in the talk whenever it suited him, which was all the
time, because he was born that way. He said:
"God be thanked, we found the army in admirable condition I think I have
never seen a finer body of animals."
"Animals!" said Miss Catherine.
"I will explain to you what he means," said Noel. "He--"
"I will trouble you not to trouble yourself to explain anything for me,"
said the Paladin, loftily. "I have reason to think--"
"That is his way," said Noel; "always when he thinks he has reason to
think, he thinks he does think, but this is an error. He didn't see the
army. I noticed him, and he didn't see it. He was troubled by his old
complaint."
"What s his old complaint?" Catherine asked.
"Prudence," I said, seeing my chance to help.
But it was not a fortunate remark, for the Paladin said:
"It probably isn't your turn to criticize people's prudence--you who fall
out of the saddle when a donkey brays."
They all laughed, and I was ashamed of myself for my hasty smartness. I
said:
"It isn't quite fair for you to say I fell out on account of the donkey's
braying. It was emotion, just ordinary emotion."
"Very well, if you want to call it that, I am not objecting. What would
you call it, Sir Bertrand?"
"Well, it--well, whatever it was, it was excusable, I think. All of you
have learned how to behave in hot hand-to-hand engagements, and you don't
need to be ashamed of your record in that matter; but to walk along in
front of death, with one's hands idle, and no noise, no music, and
nothing going on, is a very trying situation. If I were you, De Conte, I
would name the emotion; it's nothing to be ashamed of."
It was as straight and sensible a speech as ever I heard, and I was
grateful for the opening it gave me; so I came out and said:
"It was fear--and thank you for the honest idea, too."
"It was the cleanest and best way out," said the old treasurer; "you've
done well, my lad."
That made me comfortable, and when Miss Catherine said, "It's what I
think, too," I was grateful to myself for getting into that scrape.
Sir Jean de Metz said:
"We were all in a body together when the donkey brayed, and it was
dismally still at the time. I don't see how any young campaigner could
escape some little touch of that emotion."
He looked about him with a pleasant expression of inquiry on his good
face, and as each pair of eyes in turn met his head they were in nodded a
confession. Even the Paladin delivered his nod. That surprised everybody,
and saved the Standard-Bearer's credit. It was clever of him; nobody
believed he could tell the truth that way without practice, or would tell
that particular sort of a truth either with or without practice. I
suppose he judged it would favorably impress the family. Then the old
treasurer said:
"Passing the forts in that trying way required the same sort of nerve
that a person must have when ghosts are about him in the dark, I should
think. What does the Standard-Bearer think?"
"Well, I don't quite know about that, sir. I've often thought I would
like to see a ghost if I--"
"Would you?" exclaimed the young lady. "We've got one! Would you try that
one? Will you?"
She was so eager and pretty that the Paladin said straight out that he
would; and then as none of the rest had bravery enough to expose the fear
that was in him, one volunteered after the other with a prompt mouth and
a sick heart till all were shipped for the voyage; then the girl clapped
her hands in glee, and the parents were gratified, too, saying that the
ghosts of their house had been a dread and a misery to them and their
forebears for generations, and nobody had ever been found yet who was
willing to confront them and find out what their trouble was, so that the
family could heal it and content the poor specters and beguile them to
tranquillity and peace.
Chapter 18 Joan's First Battle-Field
ABOUT NOON I was chatting with Madame Boucher; nothing was going on, all
was quiet, when Catherine Boucher suddenly entered in great excitement,
and said:
"Fly, sir, fly! The Maid was doing in her chair in my room, when she
sprang up and cried out, 'French blood is flowing!--my arms, give me my
arms!' Her giant was on guard at the door, and he brought D'Aulon, who
began to arm her, and I and the giant have been warning the staff.
Fly!--and stay by her; and if there really is a battle, keep her out of
it--don't let her risk herself--there is no need--if the men know she is
near and looking on, it is all that is necessary. Keep her out of the
fight--don't fail of this!"
I started on a run, saying, sarcastically--for I was always fond of
sarcasm, and it was said that I had a most neat gift that way:
"Oh, yes, nothing easier than that--I'll attend to it!"
At the furthest end of the house I met Joan, fully armed, hurrying toward
the door, and she said:
"Ah, French blood is being spilt, and you did not tell me."
"Indeed I did not know it," I said; "there are no sounds of war;
everything is quiet, your Excellency."
"You will hear war-sounds enough in a moment," she said, and was gone.
It was true. Before one could count five there broke upon the stillness
the swelling rush and tramp of an approaching multitude of men and
horses, with hoarse cries of command; and then out of the distance came
the muffled deep boom!--boom-boom!--boom! of cannon, and straightway that
rushing multitude was roaring by the house like a hurricane.
Our knights and all our staff came flying, armed, but with no horses
ready, and we burst out after Joan in a body, the Paladin in the lead
with the banner. The surging crowd was made up half of citizens and half
of soldiers, and had no recognized leader. When Joan was seen a huzza
went up, and she shouted:
"A horse--a horse!"
A dozen saddles were at her disposal in a moment. She mounted, a hundred
people shouting:
"Way, there--way for the MAID OF ORLEANS!" The first time that that
immortal name was ever uttered--and I, praise God, was there to hear it!
The mass divided itself like the waters of the Red Sea, and down this
lane Joan went skimming like a bird, crying, "Forward, French
hearts--follow me!" and we came winging in her wake on the rest of the
borrowed horses, the holy standard streaming above us, and the lane
closing together in our rear.
This was a different thing from the ghastly march past the dismal
bastilles. No, we felt fine, now, and all awhirl with enthusiasm. The
explanation of this sudden uprising was this. The city and the little
garrison, so long hopeless and afraid, had gone wild over Joan's coming,
and could no longer restrain their desire to get at the enemy; so,
without orders from anybody, a few hundred soldiers and citizens had
plunged out at the Burgundy gate on a sudden impulse and made a charge on
one of Lord Talbot's most formidable fortresses--St. Loup--and were
getting the worst of it. The news of this had swept through the city and
started this new crowd that we were with.
As we poured out at the gate we met a force bringing in the wounded from
the front. The sight moved Joan, and she said:
"Ah, French blood; it makes my hair rise to see it!"
We were soon on the field, soon in the midst of the turmoil. Joan was
seeing her first real battle, and so were we.
It was a battle in the open field; for the garrison of St. Loup had
sallied confidently out to meet the attack, being used to victories when
"witches" were not around. The sally had been reinforced by troops from
the "Paris" bastille, and when we approached the French were getting
whipped and were falling back. But when Joan came charging through the
disorder with her banner displayed, crying "Forward, men--follow me!"
there was a change; the French turned about and surged forward like a
solid wave of the sea, and swept the English before them, hacking and
slashing, and being hacked and slashed, in a way that was terrible to
see.
In the field the Dwarf had no assignment; that is to say, he was not
under orders to occupy any particular place, therefore he chose his place
for himself, and went ahead of Joan and made a road for her. It was
horrible to see the iron helmets fly into fragments under his dreadful
ax. He called it cracking nuts, and it looked like that. He made a good
road, and paved it well with flesh and iron. Joan and the rest of us
followed it so briskly that we outspeeded our forces and had the English
behind us as well as before. The knights commanded us to face outward
around Joan, which we did, and then there was work done that was fine to
see. One was obliged to respect the Paladin, now. Being right under
Joan's exalting and transforming eye, he forgot his native prudence, he
forgot his diffidence in the presence of danger, he forgot what fear was,
and he never laid about him in his imaginary battles in a more tremendous
way that he did in this real one; and wherever he struck there was an
enemy the less.
We were in that close place only a few minutes; then our forces to the
rear broke through with a great shout and joined us, and then the English
fought a retreating fight, but in a fine and gallant way, and we drove
them to their fortress foot by foot, they facing us all the time, and
their reserves on the walls raining showers of arrows, cross-bow bolts,
and stone cannon-balls upon us.
The bulk of the enemy got safely within the works and left us outside
with piles of French and English dead and wounded for company--a
sickening sight, an awful sight to us youngsters, for our little ambush
fights in February had been in the night, and the blood and the
mutilations and the dead faces were mercifully dim, whereas we saw these
things now for the first time in all their naked ghastliness.
Now arrived Dunois from the city, and plunged through the battle on his
foam-flecked horse and galloped up to Joan, saluting, and uttering
handsome compliments as he came. He waved his hand toward the distant
walls of the city, where a multitude of flags were flaunting gaily in the
wind, and said the populace were up there observing her fortunate
performance and rejoicing over it, and added that she and the forces
would have a great reception now.
"Now? Hardly now, Bastard. Not yet!"
"Why not yet? Is there more to be done?"
"More, Bastard? We have but begun! We will take this fortress."
"Ah, you can't be serious! We can't take this place; let me urge you not
to make the attempt; it is too desperate. Let me order the forces back."
Joan's heart was overflowing with the joys and enthusiasms of war, and it
made her impatient to hear such talk. She cried out:
"Bastard, Bastard, will ye play always with these English? Now verily I
tell you we will not budge until this place is ours. We will carry it by
storm. Sound the charge!"
"Ah, my General--"
"Waste no more time, man--let the bugles sound the assault!" and we saw
that strange deep light in her eye which we named the battle-light, and
learned to know so well in later fields.
The martial notes pealed out, the troops answered with a yell, and down
they came against that formidable work, whose outlines were lost in its
own cannon-smoke, and whose sides were spouting flame and thunder.
We suffered repulse after repulse, but Joan was here and there and
everywhere encouraging the men, and she kept them to their work. During
three hours the tide ebbed and flowed, flowed and ebbed; but at last La
Hire, who was now come, made a final and resistless charge, and the
bastille St. Loup was ours. We gutted it, taking all its stores and
artillery, and then destroyed it.
When all our host was shouting itself hoarse with rejoicings, and there
went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify
her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and
when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of
corpses, with her face in her hands, crying--for she was a young girl,
you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity
and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the
mothers of those dead friends and enemies.
Among the prisoners were a number of priests, and Joan took these under
her protection and saved their lives. It was urged that they were most
probably combatants in disguise, but she said:
"As to that, how can any tell? They wear the livery of God, and if even
one of these wears it rightfully, surely it were better that all the
guilty should escape than that we have upon our hands the blood of that
innocent man. I will lodge them where I lodge, and feed them, and sent
them away in safety."
We marched back to the city with our crop of cannon and prisoners on view
and our banners displayed. Here was the first substantial bit of war-work
the imprisoned people had seen in the seven months that the siege had
endured, the first chance they had had to rejoice over a French exploit.
You may guess that they made good use of it. They and the bells went mad.
Joan was their darling now, and the press of people struggling and
shouldering each other to get a glimpse of her was so great that we could
hardly push our way through the streets at all. Her new name had gone all
about, and was on everybody's lips. The Holy Maid of Vaucouleurs was a
forgotten title; the city had claimed her for its own, and she was the
MAID OF ORLEANS now. It is a happiness to me to remember that I heard
that name the first time it was ever uttered. Between that first
utterance and the last time it will be uttered on this earth--ah, think
how many moldering ages will lie in that gap!
The Boucher family welcomed her back as if she had been a child of the
house, and saved from death against all hope or probability. They chided
her for going into the battle and exposing herself to danger during all
those hours. They could not realize that she had meant to carry her
warriorship so far, and asked her if it had really been her purpose to go
right into the turmoil of the fight, or hadn't she got swept into it by
accident and the rush of the troops? They begged her to be more careful
another time. It was good advice, maybe, but it fell upon pretty
unfruitful soil.
Chapter 19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts
BEING WORN out with the long fight, we all slept the rest of the
afternoon away and two or three hours into the night. Then we got up
refreshed, and had supper. As for me, I could have been willing to let
the matter of the ghost drop; and the others were of a like mind, no
doubt, for they talked diligently of the battle and said nothing of that
other thing. And indeed it was fine and stirring to hear the Paladin
rehearse his deeds and see him pile his dead, fifteen here, eighteen
there, and thirty-five yonder; but this only postponed the trouble; it
could not do more. He could not go on forever; when he had carried the
bastille by assault and eaten up the garrison there was nothing for it
but to stop, unless Catherine Boucher would give him a new start and have
it all done over again--as we hoped she would, this time--but she was
otherwise minded. As soon as there was a good opening and a fair chance,
she brought up her unwelcome subject, and we faced it the best we could.
We followed her and her parents to the haunted room at eleven o'clock,
with candles, and also with torches to place in the sockets on the walls.
It was a big house, with very thick walls, and this room was in a remote
part of it which had been left unoccupied for nobody knew how many years,
because of its evil repute.
This was a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of
enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and the
tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty cobwebs
under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business for a
century.
Catherine said:
"Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen--they have merely
been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it is now,
and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time to make and
fence off a narrow room there. There is no communication anywhere with
that narrow room, and if it exists--and of that there is no reasonable
doubt--it has no light and no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where
you are, and take note of what happens."
That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls had
died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny
silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute march
past the bastilles. We sat looking vacantly at each other, and it was
easy to see that no one there was comfortable. The longer we sat so, the
more deadly still that stillness got to be; and when the wind began to
moan around the house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and I
wished I had been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed it is
no proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the living
are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which made the
matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in the room with us
at that moment--we could not know. I felt airy touches on my shoulders
and my hair, and I shrank from them and cringed, and was not ashamed to
show this fear, for I saw the others doing the like, and knew that they
were feeling those faint contacts too. As this went on--oh, eternities it
seemed, the time dragged so drearily--all those faces became as wax, and
I seemed sitting with a congress of the dead.
At last, faint and far and weird and slow, came a
"boom!--boom!--boom!"--a distant bell tolling midnight. When the last
stroke died, that depressing stillness followed again, and as before I
was staring at those waxen faces and feeling those airy touches on my
hair and my shoulders once more.
One minute--two minutes--three minutes of this, then we heard a long deep
groan, and everybody sprang up and stood, with his legs quaking. It came
from that little dungeon. There was a pause, then we herd muffled
sobbings, mixed with pitiful ejaculations. Then there was a second voice,
low and not distinct, and the one seemed trying to comfort the other; and
so the two voices went on, with moanings, and soft sobbings, and, ah, the
tones were so full of compassion and sorry and despair! Indeed, it made
one's heart sore to hear it.
But those sounds were so real and so human and so moving that the idea of
ghosts passed straight out of our minds, and Sir Jean de Metz spoke out
and said:
"Come! we will smash that wall and set those poor captives free. Here,
with your ax!"
The Dwarf jumped forward, swinging his great ax with both hands, and
others sprang for torches and brought them.
Bang!--whang!--slam!--smash went the ancient bricks, and there was a hole
an ox could pass through. We plunged within and held up the torches.
Nothing there but vacancy! On the floor lay a rusty sword and a rotten
fan.
Now you know all that I know. Take the pathetic relics, and weave about
them the romance of the dungeon's long-vanished inmates as best you can.
Chapter 20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
THE NEXT day Joan wanted to go against the enemy again, but it was the
feast of the Ascension, and the holy council of bandit generals were too
pious to be willing to profane it with bloodshed. But privately they
profaned it with plottings, a sort of industry just in their line. They
decided to do the only thing proper to do now in the new circumstances of
the case--feign an attack on the most important bastille on the Orleans
side, and then, if the English weakened the far more important fortresses
on the other side of the river to come to its help, cross in force and
capture those works. This would give them the bridge and free
communication with the Sologne, which was French territory. They decided
to keep this latter part of the program secret from Joan.
Joan intruded and took them by surprise. She asked them what they were
about and what they had resolved upon. They said they had resolved to
attack the most important of the English bastilles on the Orleans side
next morning--and there the spokesman stopped. Joan said:
"Well, go on."
"There is nothing more. That is all."
"Am I to believe this? That is to say, am I to believe that you have lost
your wits?" She turned to Dunois, and said, "Bastard, you have sense,
answer me this: if this attack is made and the bastille taken, how much
better off would we be than we are now?"
The Bastard hesitated, and then began some rambling talk not quite
germane to the question. Joan interrupted him and said:
"That will not do, good Bastard, you have answered. Since the Bastard is
not able to mention any advantage to be gained by taking that bastille
and stopping there, it is not likely that any of you could better the
matter. You waste much time here in inventing plans that lead to nothing,
and making delays that are a damage. Are you concealing something from
me? Bastard, this council has a general plan, I take it; without going
into details, what is it?"
"It is the same it was in the beginning, seven months ago--to get
provisions for a long siege, then sit down and tire the English out."
"In the name of God! As if seven months was not enough, you want to
provide for a year of it. Now ye shall drop these pusillanimous
dreams--the English shall go in three days!"
Several exclaimed:
"Ah, General, General, be prudent!"
"Be prudent and starve? Do ye call that war? I tell you this, if you do
not already know it: The new circumstances have changed the face of
matters. The true point of attack has shifted; it is on the other side of
the river now. One must take the fortifications that command the bridge.
The English know that if we are not fools and cowards we will try to do
that. They are grateful for your piety in wasting this day. They will
reinforce the bridge forts from this side to-night, knowing what ought to
happen to-morrow. You have but lost a day and made our task harder, for
we will cross and take the bridge forts. Bastard, tell me the truth--does
not this council know that there is no other course for us than the one I
am speaking of?"
Dunois conceded that the council did know it to be the most desirable,
but considered it impracticable; and he excused the council as well as he
could by saying that inasmuch as nothing was really and rationally to be
hoped for but a long continuance of the siege and wearying out of the
English, they were naturally a little afraid of Joan's impetuous notions.
He said:
"You see, we are sure that the waiting game is the best, whereas you
would carry everything by storm."
"That I would!--and moreover that I will! You have my orders--here and
now. We will move upon the forts of the south bank to-morrow at dawn."
"And carry them by storm?"
"Yes, carry them by storm!"
La Hire came clanking in, and heard the last remark. He cried out:
"By my baton, that is the music I love to hear! Yes, that is the right
time and the beautiful words, my General--we will carry them by storm!"
He saluted in his large way and came up and shook Joan by the hand.
Some member of the council was heard to say:
"It follows, then, that we must begin with the bastille St. John, and
that will give the English time to--"
Joan turned and said:
"Give yourselves no uneasiness about the bastille St. John. The English
will know enough to retire from it and fall back on the bridge bastilles
when they see us coming." She added, with a touch of sarcasm, "Even a
war-council would know enough to do that itself."
Then she took her leave. La Hire made this general remark to the council:
"She is a child, and that is all ye seem to see. Keep to that
superstition if you must, but you perceive that this child understands
this complex game of war as well as any of you; and if you want my
opinion without the trouble of asking for it, here you have it without
ruffles or embroidery--by God, I think she can teach the best of you how
to play it!"
Joan had spoken truly; the sagacious English saw that the policy of the
French had undergone a revolution; that the policy of paltering and
dawdling was ended; that in place of taking blows, blows were ready to be
struck now; therefore they made ready for the new state of things by
transferring heavy reinforcements to the bastilles of the south bank from
those of the north.
The city learned the great news that once more in French history, after
all these humiliating years, France was going to take the offensive; that
France, so used to retreating, was going to advance; that France, so long
accustomed to skulking, was going to face about and strike. The joy of
the people passed all bounds. The city walls were black with them to see
the army march out in the morning in that strange new position--its
front, not its tail, toward an English camp. You shall imagine for
yourselves what the excitement was like and how it expressed itself, when
Joan rode out at the head of the host with her banner floating above her.
We crossed the five in strong force, and a tedious long job it was, for
the boats were small and not numerous. Our landing on the island of St.
Aignan was not disputed. We threw a bridge of a few boats across the
narrow channel thence to the south shore and took up our march in good
order and unmolested; for although there was a fortress there--St.
John--the English vacated and destroyed it and fell back on the bridge
forts below as soon as our first boats were seen to leave the Orleans
shore; which was what Joan had said would happen, when she was disputing
with the council.
We moved down the shore and Joan planted her standard before the bastille
of the Augustins, the first of the formidable works that protected the
end of the bridge. The trumpets sounded the assault, and two charges
followed in handsome style; but we were too weak, as yet, for our main
body was still lagging behind. Before we could gather for a third assault
the garrison of St. Prive were seen coming up to reinforce the big
bastille. They came on a run, and the Augustins sallied out, and both
forces came against us with a rush, and sent our small army flying in a
panic, and followed us, slashing and slaying, and shouting jeers and
insults at us.
Joan was doing her best to rally the men, but their wits were gone, their
hearts were dominated for the moment by the old-time dread of the
English. Joan's temper flamed up, and she halted and commanded the
trumpets to sound the advance. Then she wheeled about and cried out:
"If there is but a dozen of you that are not cowards, it is
enough--follow me!"
Away she went, and after her a few dozen who had heard her words and been
inspired by them. The pursuing force was astonished to see her sweeping
down upon them with this handful of men, and it was their turn now to
experience a grisly fright--surely this is a witch, this is a child of
Satan! That was their thought--and without stopping to analyze the matter
they turned and fled in a panic.
Our flying squadrons heard the bugle and turned to look; and when they
saw the Maid's banner speeding in the other direction and the enemy
scrambling ahead of it in disorder, their courage returned and they came
scouring after us.
La Hire heard it and hurried his force forward and caught up with us just
as we were planting our banner again before the ramparts of the
Augustins. We were strong enough now. We had a long and tough piece of
work before us, but we carried it through before night, Joan keeping us
hard at it, and she and La Hire saying we were able to take that big
bastille, and must. The English fought like--well, they fought like the
English; when that is said, there is no more to say. We made assault
after assault, through the smoke and flame and the deafening
cannon-blasts, and at last as the sun was sinking we carried the place
with a rush, and planted our standard on its walls.
The Augustins was ours. The Tourelles must be ours, too, if we would free
the bridge and raise the siege. We had achieved one great undertaking,
Joan was determined to accomplish the other. We must lie on our arms
where we were, hold fast to what we had got, and be ready for business in
the morning. So Joan was not minded to let the men be demoralized by
pillage and riot and carousings; she had the Augustins burned, with all
its stores in it, excepting the artillery and ammunition.
Everybody was tired out with this long day's hard work, and of course
this was the case with Joan; still, she wanted to stay with the army
before the Tourelles, to be ready for the assault in the morning. The
chiefs argued with her, and at last persuaded her to go home and prepare
for the great work by taking proper rest, and also by having a leech look
to a wound which she had received in her foot. So we crossed with them
and went home.
Just as usual, we found the town in a fury of joy, all the bells
clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out
or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of
these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had
been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past
seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the more
relish on that account.
Chapter 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
TO GET away from the usual crowd of visitors and have a rest, Joan went
with Catherine straight to the apartment which the two occupied together,
and there they took their supper and there the wound was dressed. But
then, instead of going to bed, Joan, weary as she was, sent the Dwarf for
me, in spite of Catherine's protests and persuasions. She said she had
something on her mind, and must send a courier to Domremy with a letter
for our old Pere Fronte to read to her mother. I came, and she began to
dictate. After some loving words and greetings to her mother and family,
came this:
"But the thing which moves me to write now, is to say that when you
presently hear that I am wounded, you shall give yourself no concern
about it, and refuse faith to any that shall try to make you believe it
is serious."
She was going on, when Catherine spoke up and said:
"Ah, but it will fright her so to read these words. Strike them out,
Joan, strike them out, and wait only one day--two days at most--then
write and say your foot was wounded but is well again--for it surely be
well then, or very near it. Don't distress her, Joan; do as I say."
A laugh like the laugh of the old days, the impulsive free laugh of an
untroubled spirit, a laugh like a chime of bells, was Joan's answer; then
she said:
"My foot? Why should I write about such a scratch as that? I was not
thinking of it, dear heart."
"Child, have you another wound and a worse, and have not spoken of it?
What have you been dreaming about, that you--"
She had jumped up, full of vague fears, to have the leech called back at
once, but Joan laid her hand upon her arm and made her sit down again,
saying:
"There, now, be tranquil, there is no other wound, as yet; I am writing
about one which I shall get when we storm that bastille tomorrow."
Catherine had the look of one who is trying to understand a puzzling
proposition but cannot quite do it. She said, in a distraught fashion:
"A wound which you are going to get? But--but why grieve your mother when
it--when it may not happen?"
"May not? Why, it will."
The puzzle was a puzzle still. Catherine said in that same abstracted way
as before:
"Will. It is a strong word. I cannot seem to--my mind is not able to take
hold of this. Oh, Joan, such a presentiment is a dreadful thing--it takes
one's peace and courage all away. Cast it from you!--drive it out! It
will make your whole night miserable, and to no good; for we will hope--"
"But it isn't a presentiment--it is a fact. And it will not make me
miserable. It is uncertainties that do that, but this is not an
uncertainty."
"Joan, do you know it is going to happen?"
"Yes, I know it. My Voices told me."
"Ah," said Catherine, resignedly, "if they told you-- But are you sure it
was they?--quite sure?"
"Yes, quite. It will happen--there is no doubt."
"It is dreadful! Since when have you know it?"
"Since--I think it is several weeks." Joan turned to me. "Louis, you will
remember. How long is it?"
"Your Excellency spoke of it first to the King, in Chinon," I answered;
"that was as much as seven weeks ago. You spoke of it again the 20th of
April, and also the 22d, two weeks ago, as I see by my record here."
These marvels disturbed Catherine profoundly, but I had long ceased to be
surprised at them. One can get used to anything in this world. Catherine
said:
"And it is to happen to-morrow?--always to-morrow? Is it the same date
always? There has been no mistake, and no confusion?"
"No," Joan said, "the 7th of May is the date--there is no other."
"Then you shall not go a step out of this house till that awful day is
gone by! You will not dream of it, Joan, will you?--promise that you will
stay with us."
But Joan was not persuaded. She said:
"It would not help the matter, dear good friend. The wound is to come,
and come to-morrow. If I do not seek it, it will seek me. My duty calls
me to that place to-morrow; I should have to go if my death were waiting
for me there; shall I stay away for only a wound? Oh, no, we must try to
do better than that."
"Then you are determined to go?"
"Of a certainty, yes. There is only one thing that I can do for
France--hearten her soldiers for battle and victory." She thought a
moment, then added, "However, one should not be unreasonable, and I would
do much to please you, who are so good to me. Do you love France?"
I wondered what she might be contriving now, but I saw no clue. Catherine
said, reproachfully:
"Ah, what have I done to deserve this question?"
"Then you do love France. I had not doubted it, dear. Do not be hurt, but
answer me--have you ever told a lie?"
"In my life I have not wilfully told a lie--fibs, but no lies."
"That is sufficient. You love France and do not tell lies; therefore I
will trust you. I will go or I will stay, as you shall decide."
"Oh, I thank you from my heart, Joan! How good and dear it is of you to
do this for me! Oh, you shall stay, and not go!"
In her delight she flung her arms about Joan's neck and squandered
endearments upon her the least of which would have made me rich, but, as
it was, they only made me realize how poor I was--how miserably poor in
what I would most have prized in this world. Joan said:
"Then you will send word to my headquarters that I am not going?"
"Oh, gladly. Leave that to me."
"It is good of you. And how will you word it?--for it must have proper
official form. Shall I word it for you?"
"Oh, do--for you know about these solemn procedures and stately
proprieties, and I have had no experience."
"Then word it like this: 'The chief of staff is commanded to make known
to the King's forces in garrison and in the field, that the
General-in-Chief of the Armies of France will not face the English on the
morrow, she being afraid she may get hurt. Signed, JOAN OF ARC, by the
hand of CATHERINE BOUCHER, who loves France.'"
There was a pause--a silence of the sort that tortures one into stealing
a glance to see how the situation looks, and I did that. There was a
loving smile on Joan's face, but the color was mounting in crimson waves
into Catherine's, and her lips were quivering and the tears gathering;
then she said:
"Oh, I am so ashamed of myself!--and you are so noble and brave and wise,
and I am so paltry--so paltry and such a fool!" and she broke down and
began to cry, and I did so want to take her in my arms and comfort her,
but Joan did it, and of course I said nothing. Joan did it well, and most
sweetly and tenderly, but I could have done it as well, though I knew it
would be foolish and out of place to suggest such a thing, and might make
an awkwardness, too, and be embarrassing to us all, so I did not offer,
and I hope I did right and for the best, though I could not know, and was
many times tortured with doubts afterward as having perhaps let a chance
pass which might have changed all my life and made it happier and more
beautiful than, alas, it turned out to be. For this reason I grieve yet,
when I think of that scene, and do not like to call it up out of the
deeps of my memory because of the pangs it brings.
Well, well, a good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this
world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from
souring. To set that little trap for Catherine was as good and effective
a way as any to show her what a grotesque thing she was asking of Joan.
It was a funny idea now, wasn't it, when you look at it all around? Even
Catherine dried up her tears and laughed when she thought of the English
getting hold of the French Commander-in-Chief's reason for staying out of
a battle. She granted that they could have a good time over a thing like
that.
We got to work on the letter again, and of course did not have to strike
out the passage about the wound. Joan was in fine spirits; but when she
got to sending messages to this, that, and the other playmate and friend,
it brought our village and the Fairy Tree and the flowery plain and the
browsing sheep and all the peaceful beauty of our old humble home-place
back, and the familiar names began to tremble on her lips; and when she
got to Haumette and Little Mengette it was no use, her voice broke and
she couldn't go on. She waited a moment, then said:
"Give them my love--my warm love--my deep love--oh, out of my heart of
hearts! I shall never see our home any more."
Now came Pasquerel, Joan's confessor, and introduced a gallant knight,
the Sire de Rais, who had been sent with a message. He said he was
instructed to say that the council had decided that enough had been done
for the present; that it would be safest and best to be content with what
God had already done; that the city was now well victualed and able to
stand a long siege; that the wise course must necessarily be to withdraw
the troops from the other side of the river and resume the
defensive--therefore they had decided accordingly.
"The incurable cowards!" exclaimed Joan. "So it was to get me away from
my men that they pretended so much solicitude about my fatigue. Take this
message back, not to the council--I have no speeches for those disguised
ladies' maids--but to the Bastard and La Hire, who are men. Tell them the
army is to remain where it is, and I hold them responsible if this
command miscarries. And say the offensive will be resumed in the morning.
You may go, good sir."
Then she said to her priest:
"Rise early, and be by me all the day. There will be much work on my
hands, and I shall be hurt between my neck and my shoulder."
Chapter 22 The Fate of France Decided
WE WERE up at dawn, and after mass we started. In the hall we met the
master of the house, who was grieved, good man, to see Joan going
breakfastless to such a day's work, and begged her to wait and eat, but
she couldn't afford the time--that is to say, she couldn't afford the
patience, she being in such a blaze of anxiety to get at that last
remaining bastille which stood between her and the completion of the
first great step in the rescue and redemption of France. Boucher put in
another plea:
"But think--we poor beleaguered citizens who have hardly known the flavor
of fish for these many months, have spoil of that sort again, and we owe
it to you. There's a noble shad for breakfast; wait--be persuaded."
Joan said:
"Oh, there's going to be fish in plenty; when this day's work is done the
whole river-front will be yours to do as you please with."
"Ah, your Excellency will do well, that I know; but we don't require
quite that much, even of you; you shall have a month for it in place of a
day. Now be beguiled--wait and eat. There's a saying that he that would
cross a river twice in the same day in a boat, will do well to eat fish
for luck, lest he have an accident."
"That doesn't fit my case, for to-day I cross but once in a boat."
"Oh, don't say that. Aren't you coming back to us?"
"Yes, but not in a boat."
"How, then?"
"By the bridge."
"Listen to that--by the bridge! Now stop this jesting, dear General, and
do as I would have done you. It's a noble fish."
"Be good then, and save me some for supper; and I will bring one of those
Englishmen with me and he shall have his share."
"Ah, well, have your way if you must. But he that fasts must attempt but
little and stop early. When shall you be back?"
"When we've raised the siege of Orleans. FORWARD!"
We were off. The streets were full of citizens and of groups and squads
of soldiers, but the spectacle was melancholy. There was not a smile
anywhere, but only universal gloom. It was as if some vast calamity had
smitten all hope and cheer dead. We were not used to this, and were
astonished. But when they saw the Maid, there was an immediate stir, and
the eager question flew from mouth to mouth.
"Where is she going? Whither is she bound?"
Joan heard it, and called out:
"Whither would ye suppose? I am going to take the Tourelles."
It would not be possible for any to describe how those few words turned
that mourning into joy--into exaltation--into frenzy; and how a storm of
huzzas burst out and swept down the streets in every direction and woke
those corpse-like multitudes to vivid life and action and turmoil in a
moment. The soldiers broke from the crowd and came flocking to our
standard, and many of the citizens ran and got pikes and halberds and
joined us. As we moved on, our numbers increased steadily, and the
hurrahing continued--yes, we moved through a solid cloud of noise, as you
may say, and all the windows on both sides contributed to it, for they
were filled with excited people.
You see, the council had closed the Burgundy gate and placed a strong
force there, under that stout soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Bailly of
Orleans, with orders to prevent Joan from getting out and resuming the
attack on the Tourelles, and this shameful thing had plunged the city
into sorrow and despair. But that feeling was gone now. They believed the
Maid was a match for the council, and they were right.
When we reached the gate, Joan told Gaucourt to open it and let her pass.
He said it would be impossible to do this, for his orders were from the
council and were strict. Joan said:
"There is no authority above mine but the King's. If you have an order
from the King, produce it."
"I cannot claim to have an order from him, General."
"Then make way, or take the consequences!"
He began to argue the case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always
ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan
interrupted with the terse order:
"Charge!"
We came with a rush, and brief work we made of that small job. It was
good to see the Bailly's surprise. He was not used to this unsentimental
promptness. He said afterward that he was cut off in the midst of what he
was saying--in the midst of an argument by which he could have proved
that he could not let Joan pass--an argument which Joan could not have
answered.
"Still, it appears she did answer it," said the person he was talking to.
We swung through the gate in great style, with a vast accession of noise,
the most of which was laughter, and soon our van was over the river and
moving down against the Tourelles.
First we must take a supporting work called a boulevard, and which was
otherwise nameless, before we could assault the great bastille. Its rear
communicated with the bastille by a drawbridge, under which ran a swift
and deep strip of the Loire. The boulevard was strong, and Dunois doubted
our ability to take it, but Joan had no such doubt. She pounded it with
artillery all the forenoon, then about noon she ordered an assault and
led it herself. We poured into the fosse through the smoke and a tempest
of missiles, and Joan, shouting encouragements to her men, started to
climb a scaling-ladder, when that misfortune happened which we knew was
to happen--the iron bolt from an arbaquest struck between her neck and
her shoulder, and tore its way down through her armor. When she felt the
sharp pain and saw her blood gushing over her breast, she was frightened,
poor girl, and as she sank to the ground she began to cry bitterly.
The English sent up a glad shout and came surging down in strong force to
take her, and then for a few minutes the might of both adversaries was
concentrated upon that spot. Over her and above her, English and French
fought with desperation--for she stood for France, indeed she was France
to both sides--whichever won her won France, and could keep it forever.
Right there in that small spot, and in ten minutes by the clock, the fate
of France, for all time, was to be decided, and was decided.
If the English had captured Joan then, Charles VII. would have flown the
country, the Treaty of Troyes would have held good, and France, already
English property, would have become, without further dispute, an English
province, to so remain until Judgment Day. A nationality and a kingdom
were at stake there, and no more time to decide it in than it takes to
hard-boil an egg. It was the most momentous ten minutes that the clock
has ever ticked in France, or ever will. Whenever you read in histories
about hours or days or weeks in which the fate of one or another nation
hung in the balance, do not you fail to remember, nor your French hearts
to beat the quicker for the remembrance, the ten minutes that France,
called otherwise Joan of Arc, lay bleeding in the fosse that day, with
two nations struggling over her for her possession.
And you will not forget the Dwarf. For he stood over her, and did the
work of any six of the others. He swung his ax with both hands; whenever
it came down, he said those two words, "For France!" and a splintered
helmet flew like eggshells, and the skull that carried it had learned its
manners and would offend the French no more. He piled a bulwark of
iron-clad dead in front of him and fought from behind it; and at last
when the victory was ours we closed about him, shielding him, and he ran
up a ladder with Joan as easily as another man would carry a child, and
bore her out of the battle, a great crowd following and anxious, for she
was drenched with blood to her feet, half of it her own and the other
half English, for bodies had fallen across her as she lay and had poured
their red life-streams over her. One couldn't see the white armor now,
with that awful dressing over it.
The iron bolt was still in the wound--some say it projected out behind
the shoulder. It may be--I did not wish to see, and did not try to. It
was pulled out, and the pain made Joan cry again, poor thing. Some say
she pulled it out herself because others refused, saying they could not
bear to hurt her. As to this I do not know; I only know it was pulled
out, and that the wound was treated with oil and properly dressed.
Joan lay on the grass, weak and suffering, hour after hour, but still
insisting that the fight go on. Which it did, but not to much purpose,
for it was only under her eye that men were heroes and not afraid. They
were like the Paladin; I think he was afraid of his shadow--I mean in the
afternoon, when it was very big and long; but when he was under Joan's
eye and the inspiration of her great spirit, what was he afraid of?
Nothing in this world--and that is just the truth.
Toward night Dunois gave it up. Joan heard the bugles.
"What!" she cried. "Sounding the retreat!"
Her wound was forgotten in a moment. She countermanded the order, and
sent another, to the officer in command of a battery, to stand ready to
fire five shots in quick succession. This was a signal to the force on
the Orleans side of the river under La Hire, who was not, as some of the
histories say, with us. It was to be given whenever Joan should feel sure
the boulevard was about to fall into her hands--then that force must make
a counter-attack on the Tourelles by way of the bridge.
Joan mounted her horse now, with her staff about her, and when our people
saw us coming they raised a great shout, and were at once eager for
another assault on the boulevard. Joan rode straight to the fosse where
she had received her wound, and standing there in the rain of bolts and
arrows, she ordered the Paladin to let her long standard blow free, and
to note when its fringes should touch the fortress. Presently he said:
"It touches."
"Now, then," said Joan to the waiting battalions, "the place is
yours--enter in! Bugles, sound the assault! Now, then--all together--go!"
And go it was. You never saw anything like it. We swarmed up the ladders
and over the battlements like a wave--and the place was our property.
Why, one might live a thousand years and never see so gorgeous a thing as
that again. There, hand to hand, we fought like wild beasts, for there
was no give-up to those English--there was no way to convince one of
those people but to kill him, and even then he doubted. At least so it
was thought, in those days, and maintained by many.
We were busy and never heard the five cannon-shots fired, but they were
fired a moment after Joan had ordered the assault; and so, while we were
hammering and being hammered in the smaller fortress, the reserve on the
Orleans side poured across the bridge and attacked the Tourelles from
that side. A fire-boat was brought down and moored under the drawbridge
which connected the Tourelles with our boulevard; wherefore, when at last
we drove our English ahead of us and they tried to cross that drawbridge
and join their friends in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way
under them and emptied them in a mass into the river in their heavy
armor--and a pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as
that.
"Ah, God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful spectacle.
She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate tears although
one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her with a coarse name
three days before, when she had sent him a message asking him to
surrender. That was their leader, Sir Williams Glasdale, a most valorous
knight. He was clothed all in steel; so he plunged under water like a
lance, and of course came up no more.
We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves against the
last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans from friends and
supplies. Before the sun was quite down, Joan's forever memorable day's
work was finished, her banner floated from the fortress of the Tourelles,
her promise was fulfilled, she had raised the siege of Orleans!
The seven months' beleaguerment was ended, the thing which the first
generals of France had called impossible was accomplished; in spite of
all that the King's ministers and war-councils could do to prevent it,
this little country-maid at seventeen had carried her immortal task
through, and had done it in four days!
Good news travels fast, sometimes, as well as bad. By the time we were
ready to start homeward by the bridge the whole city of Orleans was one
red flame of bonfires, and the heavens blushed with satisfaction to see
it; and the booming and bellowing of cannon and the banging of bells
surpassed by great odds anything that even Orleans had attempted before
in the way of noise.
When we arrived--well, there is no describing that. Why, those acres of
people that we plowed through shed tears enough to raise the river; there
was not a face in the glare of those fires that hadn't tears streaming
down it; and if Joan's feet had not been protected by iron they would
have kissed them off of her. "Welcome! welcome to the Maid of Orleans!"
That was the cry; I heard it a hundred thousand times. "Welcome to our
Maid!" some of them worded it.
No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as
Joan of Arc reached that day. And do you think it turned her head, and
that she sat up to enjoy that delicious music of homage and applause? No;
another girl would have done that, but not this one. That was the
greatest heart and the simplest that ever beat. She went straight to bed
and to sleep, like any tired child; and when the people found she was
wounded and would rest, they shut off all passage and traffic in that
region and stood guard themselves the whole night through, to see that he
slumbers were not disturbed. They said, "She has given us peace, she
shall have peace herself."
All knew that that region would be empty of English next day, and all
said that neither the present citizens nor their posterity would ever
cease to hold that day sacred to the memory of Joan of Arc. That word has
been true for more than sixty years; it will continue so always. Orleans
will never forget the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is
Joan of Arc's day--and holy. [1]
[1] It is still celebrated every year with civic and military pomps and
solemnities. -- TRANSLATOR.
Chapter 23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King
IN THE earliest dawn of morning, Talbot and his English forces evacuated
their bastilles and marched away, not stopping to burn, destroy, or carry
off anything, but leaving their fortresses just as they were,
provisioned, armed, and equipped for a long siege. It was difficult for
the people to believe that this great thing had really happened; that
they were actually free once more, and might go and come through any gate
they pleased, with none to molest or forbid; that the terrible Talbot,
that scourge of the French, that man whose mere name had been able to
annul the effectiveness of French armies, was gone, vanished,
retreating--driven away by a girl.
The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the crowds poured. They
swarmed about the English bastilles like an invasion of ants, but noisier
than those creatures, and carried off the artillery and stores, then
turned all those dozen fortresses into monster bonfires, imitation
volcanoes whose lofty columns of thick smoke seemed supporting the arch
of the sky.
The delight of the children took another form. To some of the younger
ones seven months was a sort of lifetime. They had forgotten what grass
was like, and the velvety green meadows seemed paradise to their
surprised and happy eyes after the long habit of seeing nothing but dirty
lanes and streets. It was a wonder to them--those spacious reaches of
open country to run and dance and tumble and frolic in, after their dull
and joyless captivity; so they scampered far and wide over the fair
regions on both sides of the river, and came back at eventide weary, but
laden with flowers and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh
country air and the vigorous exercise.
After the burnings, the grown folk followed Joan from church to church
and put in the day in thanksgivings for the city's deliverance, and at
night they feted her and her generals and illuminated the town, and high
and low gave themselves up to festivities and rejoicings. By the time the
populace were fairly in bed, toward dawn, we were in the saddle and away
toward Tours to report to the King.
That was a march which would have turned any one's head but Joan's. We
moved between emotional ranks of grateful country-people all the way.
They crowded about Joan to touch her feet, her horse, her armor, and they
even knelt in the road and kissed her horse's hoof-prints.
The land was full of her praises. The most illustrious chiefs of the
church wrote to the King extolling the Maid, comparing her to the saints
and heroes of the Bible, and warning him not to let "unbelief,
ingratitude, or other injustice" hinder or impair the divine help sent
through her. One might think there was a touch of prophecy in that, and
we will let it go at that; but to my mind it had its inspiration in those
great men's accurate knowledge of the King's trivial and treacherous
character.
The King had come to Tours to meet Joan. At the present day this poor
thing is called Charles the Victorious, on account of victories which
other people won for him, but in our time we had a private name for him
which described him better, and was sanctified to him by personal
deserving--Charles the Base. When we entered the presence he sat throned,
with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him. He looked like a forked
carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore
shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up
to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape
that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt thing
like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a
pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush of stiff hair
stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the bottom, so that the
cap and the hair together made the head like a shuttlecock. All the
materials of his dress were rich, and all the colors brilliant. In his
lap he cuddled a miniature greyhound that snarled, lifting its lip and
showing its white teeth whenever any slight movement disturbed it. The
King's dandies were dressed in about the same fashion as himself, and
when I remembered that Joan had called the war-council of Orleans
"disguised ladies' maids," it reminded me of people who squander all
their money on a trifle and then haven't anything to invest when they
come across a better chance; that name ought to have been saved for these
creatures.
Joan fell on her knees before the majesty of France, and the other
frivolous animal in his lap--a sight which it pained me to see. What had
that man done for his country or for anybody in it, that she or any other
person should kneel to him? But she--she had just done the only great
deed that had been done for France in fifty years, and had consecrated it
with the libation of her blood. The positions should have been reversed.
However, to be fair, one must grant that Charles acquitted himself very
well for the most part, on that occasion--very much better than he was in
the habit of doing. He passed his pup to a courtier, and took off his cap
to Joan as if she had been a queen. Then he stepped from his throne and
raised her, and showed quite a spirited and manly joy and gratitude in
welcoming her and thanking her for her extraordinary achievement in his
service. My prejudices are of a later date than that. If he had continued
as he was at that moment, I should not have acquired them.
He acted handsomely. He said:
"You shall not kneel to me, my matchless General; you have wrought
royally, and royal courtesies are your due." Noticing that she was pale,
he said, "But you must not stand; you have lost blood for France, and
your wound is yet green--come." He led her to a seat and sat down by her.
"Now, then, speak out frankly, as to one who owes you much and freely
confesses it before all this courtly assemblage. What shall be your
reward? Name it."
I was ashamed of him. And yet that was not fair, for how could he be
expected to know this marvelous child in these few weeks, when we who
thought we had known her all her life were daily seeing the clouds
uncover some new altitudes of her character whose existence was not
suspected by us before? But we are all that way: when we know a thing we
have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it. And I was
ashamed of these courtiers, too, for the way they licked their chops, so
to speak, as envying Joan her great chance, they not knowing her any
better than the King did. A blush began to rise in Joan's cheeks at the
thought that she was working for her country for pay, and she dropped her
head and tried to hide her face, as girls always do when they find
themselves blushing; no one knows why they do, but they do, and the more
they blush the more they fail to get reconciled to it, and the more they
can't bear to have people look at them when they are doing it. The King
made it a great deal worse by calling attention to it, which is the
unkindest thing a person can do when a girl is blushing; sometimes, when
there is a big crowd of strangers, it is even likely to make her cry if
she is as young as Joan was. God knows the reason for this, it is hidden
from men. As for me, I would as soon blush as sneeze; in fact, I would
rather. However, these meditations are not of consequence: I will go on
with what I was saying. The King rallied her for blushing, and this
brought up the rest of the blood and turned her face to fire. Then he was
sorry, seeing what he had done, and tried to make her comfortable by
saying the blush was exceeding becoming to her and not to mind it--which
caused even the dog to notice it now, so of course the red in Joan's face
turned to purple, and the tears overflowed and ran down--I could have
told anybody that that would happen. The King was distressed, and saw
that the best thing to do would be to get away from this subject, so he
began to say the finest kind of things about Joan's capture of the
Tourelles, and presently when she was more composed he mentioned the
reward again and pressed her to name it. Everybody listened with anxious
interest to hear what her claim was going to be, but when her answer came
their faces showed that the thing she asked for was not what they had
been expecting.
"Oh, dear and gracious Dauphin, I have but one desire--only one. If--"
"Do not be afraid, my child--name it."
"That you will not delay a day. My army is strong and valiant, and eager
to finish its work--march with me to Rheims and receive your crown." You
could see the indolent King shrink, in his butterfly clothes.
"To Rheims--oh, impossible, my General! We march through the heart of
England's power?"
Could those be French faces there? Not one of them lighted in response to
the girl's brave proposition, but all promptly showed satisfaction in the
King's objection. Leave this silken idleness for the rude contact of war?
None of these butterflies desired that. They passed their jeweled
comfit-boxes one to another and whispered their content in the head
butterfly's practical prudence. Joan pleaded with the King, saying:
"Ah, I pray you do not throw away this perfect opportunity. Everything is
favorable--everything. It is as if the circumstances were specially made
for it. The spirits of our army are exalted with victory, those of the
English forces depressed by defeat. Delay will change this. Seeing us
hesitate to follow up our advantage, our men will wonder, doubt, lose
confidence, and the English will wonder, gather courage, and be bold
again. Now is the time--pritheee let us march!"
The King shook his head, and La Tremouille, being asked for an opinion,
eagerly furnished it:
"Sire, all prudence is against it. Think of the English strongholds along
the Loire; think of those that lie between us and Rheims!"
He was going on, but Joan cut him short, and said, turning to him:
"If we wait, they will all be strengthened, reinforced. Will that
advantage us?"
"Why--no."
"Then what is your suggestion?--what is it that you would propose to do?"
"My judgment is to wait."
"Wait for what?"
The minister was obliged to hesitate, for he knew of no explanation that
would sound well. Moreover, he was not used to being catechized in this
fashion, with the eyes of a crowd of people on him, so he was irritated,
and said:
"Matters of state are not proper matters for public discussion."
Joan said placidly:
"I have to beg your pardon. My trespass came of ignorance. I did not know
that matters connected with your department of the government were
matters of state."
The minister lifted his brows in amused surprise, and said, with a touch
of sarcasm:
"I am the King's chief minister, and yet you had the impression that
matters connected with my department are not matters of state? Pray, how
is that?"
Joan replied, indifferently:
"Because there is no state."
"No state!"
"No, sir, there is no state, and no use for a minister. France is shrunk
to a couple of acres of ground; a sheriff's constable could take care of
it; its affairs are not matters of state. The term is too large."
The King did not blush, but burst into a hearty, careless laugh, and the
court laughed too, but prudently turned its head and did it silently. La
Tremouille was angry, and opened his mouth to speak, but the King put up
his hand, and said:
"There--I take her under the royal protection. She has spoken the truth,
the ungilded truth--how seldom I hear it! With all this tinsel on me and
all this tinsel about me, I am but a sheriff after all--a poor shabby
two-acre sheriff--and you are but a constable," and he laughed his
cordial laugh again. "Joan, my frank, honest General, will you name your
reward? I would ennoble you. You shall quarter the crown and the lilies
of France for blazon, and with them your victorious sword to defend
them--speak the word."
It made an eager buzz of surprise and envy in the assemblage, but Joan
shook her head and said:
"Ah, I cannot, dear and noble Dauphin. To be allowed to work for France,
to spend one's self for France, is itself so supreme a reward that
nothing can add to it--nothing. Give me the one reward I ask, the dearest
of all rewards, the highest in your gift--march with me to Rheims and
receive your crown. I will beg it on my knees."
But the King put his hand on her arm, and there was a really brave
awakening in his voice and a manly fire in his eye when he said:
"No, sit. You have conquered me--it shall be as you--"
But a warning sign from his minister halted him, and he added, to the
relief of the court:
"Well, well, we will think of it, we will think it over and see. Does
that content you, impulsive little soldier?"
The first part of the speech sent a glow of delight to Joan's face, but
the end of it quenched it and she looked sad, and the tears gathered in
her eyes. After a moment she spoke out with what seemed a sort of
terrified impulse, and said:
"Oh, use me; I beseech you, use me--there is but little time!"
"But little time?"
"Only a year--I shall last only a year."
"Why, child, there are fifty good years in that compact little body yet."
"Oh, you err, indeed you do. In one little year the end will come. Ah,
the time is so short, so short; the moments are flying, and so much to be
done. Oh, use me, and quickly--it is life or death for France."
Even those insects were sobered by her impassioned words. The King looked
very grave--grave, and strongly impressed. His eyes lit suddenly with an
eloquent fire, and he rose and drew his sword and raised it aloft; then
he brought it slowly down upon Joan's shoulder and said:
"Ah, thou art so simple, so true, so great, so noble--and by this
accolade I join thee to the nobility of France, thy fitting place! And
for thy sake I do hereby ennoble all thy family and all thy kin; and all
their descendants born in wedlock, not only in the male but also in the
female line. And more!--more! To distinguish thy house and honor it above
all others, we add a privilege never accorded to any before in the
history of these dominions: the females of thy line shall have and hold
the right to ennoble their husbands when these shall be of inferior
degree." [Astonishment and envy flared up in every countenance when the
words were uttered which conferred this extraordinary grace. The King
paused and looked around upon these signs with quite evident
satisfaction.] "Rise, Joan of Arc, now and henceforth surnamed Du Lis, in
grateful acknowledgment of the good blow which you have struck for the
lilies of France; and they, and the royal crown, and your own victorious
sword, fit and fair company for each other, shall be grouped in you
escutcheon and be and remain the symbol of your high nobility forever."
As my Lady Du Lis rose, the gilded children of privilege pressed forward
to welcome her to their sacred ranks and call her by her new name; but
she was troubled, and said these honors were not meet for one of her
lowly birth and station, and by their kind grace she would remain simple
Joan of Arc, nothing more--and so be called.
Nothing more! As if there could be anything more, anything higher,
anything greater. My Lady Du Lis--why, it was tinsel, petty, perishable.
But, JOAN OF ARC! The mere sound of it sets one's pulses leaping.
Chapter 24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility
IT WAS vexatious to see what a to-do the whole town, and next the whole
country, made over the news. Joan of Arc ennobled by the King! People
went dizzy with wonder and delight over it. You cannot imagine how she
was gaped at, stared at, envied. Why, one would have supposed that some
great and fortunate thing had happened to her. But we did not think any
great things of it. To our minds no mere human hand could add a glory to
Joan of Arc. To us she was the sun soaring in the heavens, and her new
nobility a candle atop of it; to us it was swallowed up and lost in her
own light. And she was as indifferent to it and as unconscious of it as
the other sun would have been.
But it was different with her brothers. They were proud and happy in
their new dignity, which was quite natural. And Joan was glad it had been
conferred, when she saw how pleased they were. It was a clever thought in
the King to outflank her scruples by marching on them under shelter of
her love for her family and her kin.
Jean and Pierre sported their coats-of-arms right away; and their society
was courted by everybody, the nobles and commons alike. The
Standard-Bearer said, with some touch of bitterness, that he could see
that they just felt good to be alive, they were so soaked with the
comfort of their glory; and didn't like to sleep at all, because when
they were asleep they didn't know they were noble, and so sleep was a
clean loss of time. And then he said:
"They can't take precedence of me in military functions and state
ceremonies, but when it comes to civil ones and society affairs I judge
they'll cuddle coolly in behind you and the knights, and Noel and I will
have to walk behind them--hey?"
"Yes," I said, "I think you are right."
"I was just afraid of it--just afraid of it," said the Standard-Bearer,
with a sigh. "Afraid of it? I'm talking like a fool; of course I knew it.
Yes, I was talking like a fool."
Noel Rainguesson said, musingly:
"Yes, I noticed something natural about the tone of it."
We others laughed.
"Oh, you did, did you? You think you are very clever, don't you? I'll
take and wring your neck for you one of these days, Noel Rainguesson."
The Sieur de Metz said:
"Paladin, your fears haven't reached the top notch. They are away below
the grand possibilities. Didn't it occur to you that in civil and society
functions they will take precedence of all the rest of the personal
staff--every one of us?"
"Oh, come!"
"You'll find it's so. Look at their escutcheon. Its chiefest feature is
the lilies of France. It's royal, man, royal--do you understand the size
of that? The lilies are there by authority of the King--do you understand
the size of that? Though not in detail and in entirety, they do
nevertheless substantially quarter the arms of France in their coat.
Imagine it! consider it! measure the magnitude of it! We walk in front of
those boys? Bless you, we've done that for the last time. In my opinion
there isn't a lay lord in this whole region that can walk in front of
them, except the Duke d'Alencon, prince of the blood."
You could have knocked the Paladin down with a feather. He seemed to
actually turn pale. He worked his lips a moment without getting anything
out; then it came:
"I didn't know that, nor the half of it; how could I? I've been an idiot.
I see it now--I've been an idiot. I met them this morning, and sung out
hello to them just as I would to anybody. I didn't mean to be
ill-mannered, but I didn't know the half of this that you've been
telling. I've been an ass. Yes, that is all there is to it--I've been an
ass."
Noel Rainguesson said, in a kind of weary way:
"Yes, that is likely enough; but I don't see why you should seem
surprised at it."
"You don't, don't you? Well, why don't you?"
"Because I don't see any novelty about it. With some people it is a
condition which is present all the time. Now you take a condition which
is present all the time, and the results of that condition will be
uniform; this uniformity of result will in time become monotonous;
monotonousness, by the law of its being, is fatiguing. If you had
manifested fatigue upon noticing that you had been an ass, that would
have been logical, that would have been rational; whereas it seems to me
that to manifest surprise was to be again an ass, because the condition
of intellect that can enable a person to be surprised and stirred by
inert monotonousness is a--"
"Now that is enough, Noel Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get
yourself into trouble. And don't bother me any more for some days or a
week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack."
"Come, I like that! I didn't want to talk. I tried to get out of talking.
If you didn't want to hear my clack, what did you keep intruding your
conversation on me for?"
"I? I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Well, you did it, anyway. And I have a right to feel hurt, and I do feel
hurt, to have you treat me so. It seems to me that when a person goads,
and crowds, and in a manner forces another person to talk, it is neither
very fair nor very good-mannered to call what he says clack."
"Oh, snuffle--do! and break your heart, you poor thing. Somebody fetch
this sick doll a sugar-rag. Look you, Sir Jean de Metz, do you feel
absolutely certain about that thing?"
"What thing?"
"Why, that Jean and Pierre are going to take precedence of all the lay
noblesse hereabouts except the Duke d'Alencon?"
"I think there is not a doubt of it."
The Standard-Bearer was deep in thoughts and dreams a few moments, then
the silk-and-velvet expanse of his vast breast rose and fell with a sigh,
and he said:
"Dear, dear, what a lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I
don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident--I shouldn't value
it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural
merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to
reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up
there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything--in
fact, the only thing. All else is dross."
Just then the bugles blew the assembly, and that cut our talk short.
Chapter 25 At Last--Forward!
THE DAYS began to waste away--and nothing decided, nothing done. The army
was full of zeal, but it was also hungry. It got no pay, the treasury was
getting empty, it was becoming impossible to feed it; under pressure of
privation it began to fall apart and disperse--which pleased the trifling
court exceedingly. Joan's distress was pitiful to see. She was obliged to
stand helpless while her victorious army dissolved away until hardly the
skeleton of it was left.
At last one day she went to the Castle of Loches, where the King was
idling. She found him consulting with three of his councilors, Robert le
Ma‡on, a former Chancellor of France, Christophe d'Harcourt, and Gerard
Machet. The Bastard of Orleans was present also, and it is through him
that we know what happened. Joan threw herself at the King's feet and
embraced his knees, saying:
"Noble Dauphin, prithee hold no more of these long and numerous councils,
but come, and come quickly, to Rheims and receive your crown."
Christophe d'Harcourt asked:
"Is it your Voices that command you to say that to the King?"
"Yes, and urgently."
"Then will you not tell us in the King's presence in what way the Voices
communicate with you?"
It was another sly attempt to trap Joan into indiscreet admissions and
dangerous pretensions. But nothing came of it. Joan's answer was simple
and straightforward, and the smooth Bishop was not able to find any fault
with it. She said that when she met with people who doubted the truth of
her mission she went aside and prayed, complaining of the distrust of
these, and then the comforting Voices were heard at her ear saying, soft
and low, "Go forward, Daughter of God, and I will help thee." Then she
added, "When I hear that, the joy in my heart, oh, it is insupportable!"
The Bastard said that when she said these words her face lit up as with a
flame, and she was like one in an ecstasy.
Joan pleaded, persuaded, reasoned; gaining ground little by little, but
opposed step by step by the council. She begged, she implored, leave to
march. When they could answer nothing further, they granted that perhaps
it had been a mistake to let the army waste away, but how could we help
it now? how could we march without an army?
"Raise one!" said Joan.
"But it will take six weeks."
"No matter--begin! let us begin!"
"It is too late. Without doubt the Duke of Bedford has been gathering
troops to push to the succor of his strongholds on the Loire."
"Yes, while we have been disbanding ours--and pity 'tis. But we must
throw away no more time; we must bestir ourselves."
The King objected that he could not venture toward Rheims with those
strong places on the Loire in his path. But Joan said:
"We will break them up. Then you can march."
With that plan the King was willing to venture assent. He could sit
around out of danger while the road was being cleared.
Joan came back in great spirits. Straightway everything was stirring.
Proclamations were issued calling for men, a recruiting-camp was
established at Selles in Berry, and the commons and the nobles began to
flock to it with enthusiasm.
A deal of the month of May had been wasted; and yet by the 6th of June
Joan had swept together a new army and was ready to march. She had eight
thousand men. Think of that. Think of gathering together such a body as
that in that little region. And these were veteran soldiers, too. In
fact, most of the men in France were soldiers, when you came to that; for
the wars had lasted generations now. Yes, most Frenchmen were soldiers;
and admirable runners, too, both by practice and inheritance; they had
done next to nothing but run for near a century. But that was not their
fault. They had had no fair and proper leadership--at least leaders with
a fair and proper chance. Away back, King and Court got the habit of
being treacherous to the leaders; then the leaders easily got the habit
of disobeying the King and going their own way, each for himself and
nobody for the lot. Nobody could win victories that way. Hence, running
became the habit of the French troops, and no wonder. Yet all that those
troops needed in order to be good fighters was a leader who would attend
strictly to business--a leader with all authority in his hands in place
of a tenth of it along with nine other generals equipped with an equal
tenth apiece. They had a leader rightly clothed with authority now, and
with a head and heart bent on war of the most intensely businesslike and
earnest sort--and there would be results. No doubt of that. They had Joan
of Arc; and under that leadership their legs would lose the art and
mystery of running.
Yes, Joan was in great spirits. She was here and there and everywhere,
all over the camp, by day and by night, pushing things. And wherever she
came charging down the lines, reviewing the troops, it was good to hear
them break out and cheer. And nobody could help cheering, she was such a
vision of young bloom and beauty and grace, and such an incarnation of
pluck and life and go! she was growing more and more ideally beautiful
every day, as was plain to be seen--and these were days of development;
for she was well past seventeen now--in fact, she was getting close upon
seventeen and a half--indeed, just a little woman, as you may say.
The two young Counts de Laval arrived one day--fine young fellows allied
to the greatest and most illustrious houses of France; and they could not
rest till they had seen Joan of Arc. So the King sent for them and
presented them to her, and you may believe she filled the bill of their
expectations. When they heard that rich voice of hers they must have
thought it was a flute; and when they saw her deep eyes and her face, and
the soul that looked out of that face, you could see that the sight of
her stirred them like a poem, like lofty eloquence, like martial music.
One of them wrote home to his people, and in his letter he said, "It
seemed something divine to see her and hear her." Ah, yes, and it was a
true word. Truer word was never spoken.
He saw her when she was ready to begin her march and open the campaign,
and this is what he said about it:
"She was clothed all in white armor save her head, and in her hand she
carried a little battle-ax; and when she was ready to mount her great
black horse he reared and plunged and would not let her. Then she said,
'Lead him to the cross.' This cross was in front of the church close by.
So they led him there. Then she mounted, and he never budged, any more
than if he had been tied. Then she turned toward the door of the church
and said, in her soft womanly voice, 'You, priests and people of the
Church, make processions and pray to God for us!' Then she spurred away,
under her standard, with her little ax in her hand, crying
'Forward--march!' One of her brothers, who came eight days ago, departed
with her; and he also was clad all in white armor."
I was there, and I saw it, too; saw it all, just as he pictures it. And I
see it yet--the little battle-ax, the dainty plumed cap, the white
armor--all in the soft June afternoon; I see it just as if it were
yesterday. And I rode with the staff--the personal staff--the staff of
Joan of Arc.
That young count was dying to go, too, but the King held him back for the
present. But Joan had made him a promise. In his letter he said:
"She told me that when the King starts for Rheims I shall go with him.
But God grant I may not have to wait till then, but may have a part in
the battles!"
She made him that promise when she was taking leave of my lady the
Duchess d'Alencon. The duchess was exacting a promise, so it seemed a
proper time for others to do the like. The duchess was troubled for her
husband, for she foresaw desperate fighting; and she held Joan to her
breast, and stroked her hair lovingly, and said:
"You must watch over him, dear, and take care of him, and send him back
to me safe. I require it of you; I will not let you go till you promise."
Joan said:
"I give you the promise with all my heart; and it is not just words, it
is a promise; you shall have him back without a hurt. Do you believe? And
are you satisfied with me now?"
The duchess could not speak, but she kissed Joan on the forehead; and so
they parted.
We left on the 6th and stopped over at Romorantin; then on the 9th Joan
entered Orleans in state, under triumphal arches, with the welcoming
cannon thundering and seas of welcoming flags fluttering in the breeze.
The Grand Staff rode with her, clothed in shining splendors of costume
and decorations: the Duke d'Alencon; the Bastard of Orleans; the Sire de
Boussac, Marshal of France; the Lord de Granville, Master of the
Crossbowmen; the Sire de Culan, Admiral of France; Ambroise de Lor;
Etienne de Vignoles, called La Hire; Gautier de Brusac, and other
illustrious captains.
It was grand times; the usual shoutings and packed multitudes, the usual
crush to get sight of Joan; but at last we crowded through to our old
lodgings, and I saw old Boucher and the wife and that dear Catherine
gather Joan to their hearts and smother her with kisses--and my heart
ached for her so! for I could have kissed Catherine better than anybody,
and more and longer; yet was not thought of for that office, and I so
famished for it. Ah, she was so beautiful, and oh, so sweet! I had loved
her the first day I ever saw her, and from that day forth she was sacred
to me. I have carried her image in my heart for sixty-three years--all
lonely thee, yes, solitary, for it never has had company--and I am grown
so old, so old; but it, oh, it is as fresh and young and merry and
mischievous and lovely and sweet and pure and witching and divine as it
was when it crept in there, bringing benediction and peace to its
habitation so long ago, so long ago--for it has not aged a day!
Chapter 26 The Last Doubts Scattered
THIS TIME, as before, the King's last command to the generals was this:
"See to it that you do nothing without the sanction of the Maid." And
this time the command was obeyed; and would continue to be obeyed all
through the coming great days of the Loire campaign.
That was a change! That was new! It broke the traditions. It shows you
what sort of a reputation as a commander-in-chief the child had made for
herself in ten days in the field. It was a conquering of men's doubts and
suspicions and a capturing and solidifying of men's belief and confidence
such as the grayest veteran on the Grand Staff had not been able to
achieve in thirty years. Don't you remember that when at sixteen Joan
conducted her own case in a grim court of law and won it, the old judge
spoke of her as "this marvelous child"? It was the right name, you see.
These veterans were not going to branch out and do things without the
sanction of the Maid--that is true; and it was a great gain. But at the
same time there were some among them who still trembled at her new and
dashing war tactics and earnestly desired to modify them. And so, during
the 10th, while Joan was slaving away at her plans and issuing order
after order with tireless industry, the old-time consultations and
arguings and speechifyings were going on among certain of the generals.
In the afternoon of that day they came in a body to hold one of these
councils of war; and while they waited for Joan to join them they
discussed the situation. Now this discussion is not set down in the
histories; but I was there, and I will speak of it, as knowing you will
trust me, I not being given to beguiling you with lies.
Gautier de Brusac was spokesman for the timid ones; Joan's side was
resolutely upheld by d'Alencon, the Bastard, La Hire, the Admiral of
France, the Marshal de Boussac, and all the other really important
chiefs.
De Brusac argued that the situation was very grave; that Jargeau, the
first point of attack, was formidably strong; its imposing walls
bristling with artillery; with seven thousand picked English veterans
behind them, and at their head the great Earl of Suffolk and his two
redoubtable brothers, the De la Poles. It seemed to him that the proposal
of Joan of Arc to try to take such a place by storm was a most rash and
over-daring idea, and she ought to be persuaded to relinquish it in favor
of the soberer and safer procedure of investment by regular siege. It
seemed to him that this fiery and furious new fashion of hurling masses
of men against impregnable walls of stone, in defiance of the established
laws and usages of war, was--
But he got no further. La Hire gave his plumed helm an impatient toss and
burst out with:
"By God, she knows her trade, and none can teach it her!"
And before he could get out anything more, D'Alencon was on his feet, and
the Bastard of Orleans, and a half a dozen others, all thundering at
once, and pouring out their indignant displeasure upon any and all that
mid hold, secretly or publicly, distrust of the wisdom of the
Commander-in-Chief. And when they had said their say, La Hire took a
chance again, and said:
"There are some that never know how to change. Circumstances may change,
but those people are never able to see that they have got to change too,
to meet those circumstances. All that they know is the one beaten track
that their fathers and grandfathers have followed and that they
themselves have followed in their turn. If an earthquake come and rip the
land to chaos, and that beaten track now lead over precipices and into
morasses, those people can't learn that they must strike out a new
road--no; they will march stupidly along and follow the old one, to death
and perdition. Men, there's a new state of things; and a surpassing
military genius has perceived it with her clear eye. And a new road is
required, and that same clear eye has noted where it must go, and has
marked it out for us. The man does not live, never has lived, never will
live, that can improve upon it! The old state of things was defeat,
defeat, defeat--and by consequence we had troops with no dash, no heart,
no hope. Would you assault stone walls with such? No--there was but one
way with that kind: sit down before a place and wait, wait--starve it
out, if you could. The new case is the very opposite; it is this: men all
on fire with pluck and dash and vim and fury and energy--a restrained
conflagration! What would you do with it? Hold it down and let it smolder
and perish and go out? What would Joan of Arc do with it? Turn it loose,
by the Lord God of heaven and earth, and let it swallow up the foe in the
whirlwind of its fires! Nothing shows the splendor and wisdom of her
military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the change
which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and only
right way to take advantage of it. With her is no sitting down and
starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing,
and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm!
storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his
hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm! And
that is my sort! Jargeau? What of Jargeau, with its battlements and
towers, its devastating artillery, its seven thousand picked veterans?
Joan of Arc is to the fore, and by the splendor of God its fate is
sealed!"
Oh, he carried them. There was not another word said about persuading
Joan to change her tactics. They sat talking comfortably enough after
that.
By and by Joan entered, and they rose and saluted with their swords, and
she asked what their pleasure might be. La Hire said:
"It is settled, my General. The matter concerned Jargeau. There were some
who thought we could not take the place."
Joan laughed her pleasant laugh, her merry, carefree laugh; the laugh
that rippled so buoyantly from her lips and made old people feel young
again to hear it; and she said to the company:
"Have no fears--indeed, there is no need nor any occasion for them. We
will strike the English boldly by assault, and you will see." Then a
faraway look came into her eyes, and I think that a picture of her home
drifted across the vision of her mind; for she said very gently, and as
one who muses, "But that I know God guides us and will give us success, I
had liefer keep sheep than endure these perils."
We had a homelike farewell supper that evening--just the personal staff
and the family. Joan had to miss it; for the city had given a banquet in
her honor, and she had gone there in state with the Grand Staff, through
a riot of joy-bells and a sparkling Milky Way of illuminations.
After supper some lively young folk whom we knew came in, and we
presently forgot that we were soldiers, and only remembered that we were
boys and girls and full of animal spirits and long-pent fun; and so there
was dancing, and games, and romps, and screams of laughter--just as
extravagant and innocent and noisy a good time as ever I had in my life.
Dear, dear, how long ago it was!--and I was young then. And outside, all
the while, was the measured tramp of marching battalions, belated odds
and ends of the French power gathering for the morrow's tragedy on the
grim stage of war. Yes, in those days we had those contrasts side by
side. And as I passed along to bed there was another one: the big Dwarf,
in brave new armor, sat sentry at Joan's door--the stern Spirit of War
made flesh, as it were--and on his ample shoulder was curled a kitten
asleep.
Chapter 27 How Joan Took Jargeau
WE MADE a gallant show next day when we filed out through the frowning
gates of Orleans, with banners flying and Joan and the Grand Staff in the
van of the long column. Those two young De Lavals were come now, and were
joined to the Grand Staff. Which was well; war being their proper trade,
for they were grandsons of that illustrious fighter Bertrand du Guesclin,
Constable of France in earlier days. Louis de Bourbon, the Marshal de
Rais, and the Vidame de Chartres were added also. We had a right to feel
a little uneasy, for we knew that a force of five thousand men was on its
way under Sir John Fastolfe to reinforce Jargeau, but I think we were not
uneasy, nevertheless. In truth, that force was not yet in our
neighborhood. Sir John was loitering; for some reason or other he was not
hurrying. He was losing precious time--four days at Etampes, and four
more at Janville.
We reached Jargeau and began business at once. Joan sent forward a heavy
force which hurled itself against the outworks in handsome style, and
gained a footing and fought hard to keep it; but it presently began to
fall back before a sortie from the city. Seeing this, Joan raised her
battle-cry and led a new assault herself under a furious artillery fire.
The Paladin was struck down at her side wounded, but she snatched her
standard from his failing hand and plunged on through the ruck of flying
missiles, cheering her men with encouraging cries; and then for a good
time one had turmoil, and clash of steel, and collision and confusion of
struggling multitudes, and the hoarse bellowing of the guns; and then the
hiding of it all under a rolling firmament of smoke--a firmament through
which veiled vacancies appeared for a moment now and then, giving fitful
dim glimpses of the wild tragedy enacting beyond; and always at these
times one caught sight of that slight figure in white mail which was the
center and soul of our hope and trust, and whenever we saw that, with its
back to us and its face to the fight, we knew that all was well. At last
a great shout went up--a joyous roar of shoutings, in fact--and that was
sign sufficient that the faubourgs were ours.
Yes, they were ours; the enemy had been driven back within the walls. On
the ground which Joan had won we camped; for night was coming on.
Joan sent a summons to the English, promising that if they surrendered
she would allow them to go in peace and take their horses with them.
Nobody knew that she could take that strong place, but she knew it --knew
it well; yet she offered that grace--offered it in a time when such a
thing was unknown in war; in a time when it was custom and usage to
massacre the garrison and the inhabitants of captured cities without pity
or compunction--yes, even to the harmless women and children sometimes.
There are neighbors all about you who well remember the unspeakable
atrocities which Charles the Bold inflicted upon the men and women and
children of Dinant when he took that place some years ago. It was a
unique and kindly grace which Joan offered that garrison; but that was
her way, that was her loving and merciful nature--she always did her best
to save her enemy's life and his soldierly pride when she had the mastery
of him.
The English asked fifteen days' armistice to consider the proposal in.
And Fastolfe coming with five thousand men! Joan said no. But she offered
another grace: they might take both their horses and their side-arms--but
they must go within the hour.
Well, those bronzed English veterans were pretty hard-headed folk. They
declined again. Then Joan gave command that her army be made ready to
move to the assault at nine in the morning. Considering the deal of
marching and fighting which the men had done that day, D'Alencon thought
the hour rather early; but Joan said it was best so, and so must be
obeyed. Then she burst out with one of those enthusiasms which were
always burning in her when battle was imminent, and said:
"Work! work! and God will work with us!"
Yes, one might say that her motto was "Work! stick to it; keep on
working!" for in war she never knew what indolence was. And whoever will
take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed. There's many a way
to win in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard
work back out of it.
I think we should have lost our big Standard-Bearer that day, if our
bigger Dwarf had not been at hand to bring him out of the melee when he
was wounded. He was unconscious, and would have been trampled to death by
our own horse, if the Dwarf had not promptly rescued him and haled him to
the rear and safety. He recovered, and was himself again after two or
three hours; and then he was happy and proud, and made the most of his
wound, and went swaggering around in his bandages showing off like an
innocent big-child--which was just what he was. He was prouder of being
wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But there
was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he was hit by a
stone from a catapult--a stone the size of a man's head. But the stone
grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was claiming that the
enemy had flung a building at him.
"Let him alone," said Noel Rainguesson. "Don't interrupt his processes.
To-morrow it will be a cathedral."
He said that privately. And, sure enough, to-morrow it was a cathedral. I
never saw anybody with such an abandoned imagination.
Joan was abroad at the crack of dawn, galloping here and there and
yonder, examining the situation minutely, and choosing what she
considered the most effective positions for her artillery; and with such
accurate judgment did she place her guns that her Lieutenant-General's
admiration of it still survived in his memory when his testimony was
taken at the Rehabilitation, a quarter of a century later.
In this testimony the Duke d'Alencon said that at Jargeau that morning of
the 12th of June she made her dispositions not like a novice, but "with
the sure and clear judgment of a trained general of twenty or thirty
years' experience."
The veteran captains of the armies of France said she was great in war in
all ways, but greatest of all in her genius for posting and handling
artillery.
Who taught the shepherd-girl to do these marvels--she who could not read,
and had had no opportunity to study the complex arts of war? I do not
know any way to solve such a baffling riddle as that, there being no
precedent for it, nothing in history to compare it with and examine it
by. For in history there is no great general, however gifted, who arrived
at success otherwise than through able teaching and hard study and some
experience. It is a riddle which will never be guessed. I think these
vast powers and capacities were born in her, and that she applied them by
an intuition which could not err.
At eight o'clock all movement ceased, and with it all sounds, all noise.
A mute expectancy reigned. The stillness was something awful --because it
meant so much. There was no air stirring. The flags on the towers and
ramparts hung straight down like tassels. Wherever one saw a person, that
person had stopped what he was doing, and was in a waiting attitude, a
listening attitude. We were on a commanding spot, clustered around Joan.
Not far from us, on every hand, were the lanes and humble dwellings of
these outlying suburbs. Many people were visible--all were listening, not
one was moving. A man had placed a nail; he was about to fasten something
with it to the door-post of his shop--but he had stopped. There was his
hand reaching up holding the nail; and there was his other hand n the act
of striking with the hammer; but he had forgotten everything--his head
was turned aside listening. Even children unconsciously stopped in their
play; I saw a little boy with his hoop-stick pointed slanting toward the
ground in the act of steering the hoop around the corner; and so he had
stopped and was listening--the hoop was rolling away, doing its own
steering. I saw a young girl prettily framed in an open window, a
watering-pot in her hand and window-boxes of red flowers under its
spout--but the water had ceased to flow; the girl was listening.
Everywhere were these impressive petrified forms; and everywhere was
suspended movement and that awful stillness.
Joan of Arc raised her sword in the air. At the signal, the silence was
torn to rags; cannon after cannon vomited flames and smoke and delivered
its quaking thunders; and we saw answering tongues of fire dart from the
towers and walls of the city, accompanied by answering deep thunders, and
in a minute the walls and the towers disappeared, and in their place
stood vast banks and pyramids of snowy smoke, motionless in the dead air.
The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands
together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair
body.
The great artillery duel went on, each side hammering away with all its
might; and it was splendid for smoke and noise, and most exalting to
one's spirits. The poor little town around about us suffered cruelly. The
cannon-balls tore through its slight buildings, wrecking them as if they
had been built of cards; and every moment or two one would see a huge
rock come curving through the upper air above the smoke-clouds and go
plunging down through the roofs. Fire broke out, and columns of flame and
smoke rose toward the sky.
Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather. The sky became
overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke that hid the
English fortresses.
Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and
streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white smoke in
long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against the deep leaden
background of the sky; and then the whizzing missiles began to knock up
the dirt all around us, and I felt no more interest in the scenery. There
was one English gun that was getting our position down finer and finer
all the time. Presently Joan pointed to it and said:
"Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you."
The Duke d'Alencon did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude rashly took
his place, and that cannon tore his head off in a moment.
Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault. At
last, about nine o'clock, she cried out:
"Now--to the assault!" and the buglers blew the charge.
Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this service
move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire of our guns had
crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall to ruins; we saw this
force descend into the ditch and begin to plant the scaling-ladders. We
were soon with them. The Lieutenant-General thought the assault
premature. But Joan said:
"Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I have promised to
send you home safe?"
It was warm work in the ditches. The walls were crowded with men, and
they poured avalanches of stones down upon us. There was one gigantic
Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen of his brethren. He always
dominated the places easiest of assault, and flung down exceedingly
troublesome big stones which smashed men and ladders both --then he would
near burst himself with laughing over what he had done. But the duke
settled accounts with him. He went and found the famous cannoneer, Jean
le Lorrain, and said:
"Train your gun--kill me this demon."
He did it with the first shot. He hit the Englishman fair in the breast
and knocked him backward into the city.
The enemy's resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our people
began to show signs of doubt and dismay. Seeing this, Joan raised her
inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself, the Dwarf
helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side with the
standard. She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone flung from
above came crashing down upon her helmet and stretched her, wounded and
stunned, upon the ground. But only for a moment. The Dwarf stood her upon
her feet, and straightway she started up the ladder again, crying:
"To the assault, friends, to the assault--the English are ours! It is the
appointed hour!"
There was a grand rush, and a fierce roar of war-cries, and we swarmed
over the ramparts like ants. The garrison fled, we pursued; Jargeau was
ours!
The Earl of Suffolk was hemmed in and surrounded, and the Duke d'Alencon
and the Bastard of Orleans demanded that he surrender himself. But he was
a proud nobleman and came of a proud race. He refused to yield his sword
to subordinates, saying:
"I will die rather. I will surrender to the Maid of Orleans alone, and to
no other."
And so he did; and was courteously and honorably used by her.
His two brothers retreated, fighting step by step, toward the bridge, we
pressing their despairing forces and cutting them down by scores. Arrived
on the bridge, the slaughter still continued. Alexander de la Pole was
pushed overboard or fell over, and was drowned. Eleven hundred men had
fallen; John de la Pole decided to give up the struggle. But he was
nearly as proud and particular as his brother of Suffolk as to whom he
would surrender to. The French officer nearest at hand was Guillaume
Renault, who was pressing him closely. Sir John said to him:
"Are you a gentleman?"
"Yes."
"And a knight?"
"No."
Then Sir John knighted him himself there on the bridge, giving him the
accolade with English coolness and tranquillity in the midst of that
storm of slaughter and mutilation; and then bowing with high courtesy
took the sword by the blade and laid the hilt of it in the man's hand in
token of surrender. Ah, yes, a proud tribe, those De la Poles.
It was a grand day, a memorable day, a most splendid victory. We had a
crowd of prisoners, but Joan would not allow them to be hurt. We took
them with us and marched into Orleans next day through the usual tempest
of welcome and joy.
And this time there was a new tribute to our leader. From everywhere in
the packed streets the new recruits squeezed their way to her side to
touch the sword of Joan of Arc and draw from it somewhat of that
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,
Volume 1, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC VOL. 2
by Mark Twain
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
(her page and secretary)
In Two Volumes
Volume 2.
Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English
from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives
of France
Contents
Book II -- IN COURT AND CAMP Continued
28 Joan Foretells Her Doom
29 Fierce Talbot Reconsiders
30 The Red Field of Patay
31 France Begins to Live Again
32 The Joyous News Flies Fast
33 Joan's Five Great Deeds
34 The Jests of the Burgundians
35 The Heir of France is Crowned
36 Joan Hears News from Home
37 Again to Arms
38 The King Cries "Forward!"
39 We Win, but the King Balks
40 Treachery Conquers Joan
41 The Maid Will March No More
Book III -- TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM
1 The Maid in Chains
2 Joan Sold to the English
3 Weaving the Net About Her
4 All Ready to Condemn
5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice
6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors
7 Craft That Was in Vain
8 Joan Tells of Her Visions
9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold
10 The Inquisitors at Their Wit's End
11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination
12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted
13 The Third Trial Fails
14 Joan Struggles with Her Twelve Lies
15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning
16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack
17 Supreme in Direst Peril
18 Condemned Yet Unafraid
19 Our Last Hopes of Rescue Fail
20 The Betrayal
21 Respited Only for Torture
22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer
23 The Time Is at Hand
24 Joan the Martyr
Conclusion
Chapter 28 Joan Foretells Her Doom
THE TROOPS must have a rest. Two days would be allowed for this.
The morning of the 14th I was writing from Joan's dictation in a small
room which she sometimes used as a private office when she wanted to get
away from officials and their interruptions. Catherine Boucher came in
and sat down and said:
"Joan, dear, I want you to talk to me."
"Indeed, I am not sorry for that, but glad. What is in your mind?"
"This. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking of the dangers you are
running. The Paladin told me how you made the duke stand out of the way
when the cannon-balls were flying all about, and so saved his life."
"Well, that was right, wasn't it?"
"Right? Yes; but you stayed there yourself. Why will you do like that? It
seems such a wanton risk."
"Oh, no, it was not so. I was not in any danger."
"How can you say that, Joan, with those deadly things flying all about
you?"
Joan laughed, and tried to turn the subject, but Catherine persisted. She
said:
"It was horribly dangerous, and it could not be necessary to stay in such
a place. And you led an assault again. Joan, it is tempting Providence. I
want you to make me a promise. I want you to promise me that you will let
others lead the assaults, if there must be assaults, and that you will
take better care of yourself in those dreadful battles. Will you?"
But Joan fought away from the promise and did not give it. Catherine sat
troubled and discontented awhile, then she said:
"Joan, are you going to be a soldier always? These wars are so long--so
long. They last forever and ever and ever."
There was a glad flash in Joan's eye as she cried:
"This campaign will do all the really hard work that is in front of it in
the next four days. The rest of it will be gentler--oh, far less bloody.
Yes, in four days France will gather another trophy like the redemption
of Orleans and make her second long step toward freedom!"
Catherine started (and do did I); then she gazed long at Joan like one in
a trance, murmuring "four days--four days," as if to herself and
unconsciously. Finally she asked, in a low voice that had something of
awe in it:
"Joan, tell me--how is it that you know that? For you do know it, I
think."
"Yes," said Joan, dreamily, "I know--I know. I shall strike--and strike
again. And before the fourth day is finished I shall strike yet again."
She became silent. We sat wondering and still. This was for a whole
minute, she looking at the floor and her lips moving but uttering
nothing. Then came these words, but hardly audible: "And in a thousand
years the English power in France will not rise up from that blow."
It made my flesh creep. It was uncanny. She was in a trance again--I
could see it--just as she was that day in the pastures of Domremy when
she prophesied about us boys in the war and afterward did not know that
she had done it. She was not conscious now; but Catherine did not know
that, and so she said, in a happy voice:
"Oh, I believe it, I believe it, and I am so glad! Then you will come
back and bide with us all your life long, and we will love you so, and
honor you!"
A scarcely perceptible spasm flitted across Joan's face, and the dreamy
voice muttered:
"Before two years are sped I shall die a cruel death!"
I sprang forward with a warning hand up. That is why Catherine did not
scream. She was going to do that--I saw it plainly. Then I whispered her
to slip out of the place, and say nothing of what had happened. I said
Joan was asleep--asleep and dreaming. Catherine whispered back, and said:
"Oh, I am so grateful that it is only a dream! It sounded like prophecy."
And she was gone.
Like prophecy! I knew it was prophecy; and I sat down crying, as knowing
we should lose her. Soon she started, shivering slightly, and came to
herself, and looked around and saw me crying there, and jumped out of her
chair and ran to me all in a whirl of sympathy and compassion, and put
her hand on my head, and said:
"My poor boy! What is it? Look up and tell me."
I had to tell her a lie; I grieved to do it, but there was no other way.
I picked up an old letter from my table, written by Heaven knows who,
about some matter Heaven knows what, and told her I had just gotten it
from Pere Fronte, and that in it it said the children's Fairy Tree had
been chopped down by some miscreant or other, and-- I got no further. She
snatched the letter from my hand and searched it up and down and all
over, turning it this way and that, and sobbing great sobs, and the tears
flowing down her cheeks, and ejaculating all the time, "Oh, cruel, cruel!
how could any be so heartless? Ah, poor Arbre Fee de Bourlemont gone--and
we children loved it so! Show me the place where it says it!"
And I, still lying, showed her the pretended fatal words on the pretended
fatal page, and she gazed at them through her tears, and said she could
see herself that they were hateful, ugly words--they "had the very look
of it."
Then we heard a strong voice down the corridor announcing:
"His majesty's messenger--with despatches for her Excellency the
Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of France!"
29 Fierce Talbot Reconsiders
I KNEW she had seen the wisdom of the Tree. But when? I could not know.
Doubtless before she had lately told the King to use her, for that she
had but one year left to work in. It had not occurred to me at the time,
but the conviction came upon me now that at that time she had already
seen the Tree. It had brought her a welcome message; that was plain,
otherwise she could not have been so joyous and light-hearted as she had
been these latter days. The death-warning had nothing dismal about it for
her; no, it was remission of exile, it was leave to come home.
Yes, she had seen the Tree. No one had taken the prophecy to heart which
she made to the King; and for a good reason, no doubt; no one wanted to
take it to heart; all wanted to banish it away and forget it. And all had
succeeded, and would go on to the end placid and comfortable. All but me
alone. I must carry my awful secret without any to help me. A heavy load,
a bitter burden; and would cost me a daily heartbreak. She was to die;
and so soon. I had never dreamed of that. How could I, and she so strong
and fresh and young, and every day earning a new right to a peaceful and
honored old age? For at that time I though old age valuable. I do not
know why, but I thought so. All young people think it, I believe, they
being ignorant and full of superstitions. She had seen the Tree. All that
miserable night those ancient verses went floating back and forth through
my brain:
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
But at dawn the bugles and the drums burst through the dreamy hush of the
morning, and it was turn out all! mount and ride. For there was red work
to be done.
We marched to Meung without halting. There we carried the bridge by
assault, and left a force to hold it, the rest of the army marching away
next morning toward Beaugency, where the lion Talbot, the terror of the
French, was in command. When we arrived at that place, the English
retired into the castle and we sat down in the abandoned town.
Talbot was not at the moment present in person, for he had gone away to
watch for and welcome Fastolfe and his reinforcement of five thousand
men.
Joan placed her batteries and bombarded the castle till night. Then some
news came: Richemont, Constable of France, this long time in disgrace
with the King, largely because of the evil machinations of La Tremouille
and his party, was approaching with a large body of men to offer his
services to Joan--and very much she needed them, now that Fastolfe was so
close by. Richemont had wanted to join us before, when we first marched
on Orleans; but the foolish King, slave of those paltry advisers of his,
warned him to keep his distance and refused all reconciliation with him.
I go into these details because they are important. Important because
they lead up to the exhibition of a new gift in Joan's extraordinary
mental make-up--statesmanship. It is a sufficiently strange thing to find
that great quality in an ignorant country-girl of seventeen and a half,
but she had it.
Joan was for receiving Richemont cordially, and so was La Hire and the
two young Lavals and other chiefs, but the Lieutenant-General, d'Alencon,
strenuously and stubbornly opposed it. He said he had absolute orders
from the King to deny and defy Richemont, and that if they were
overridden he would leave the army. This would have been a heavy
disaster, indeed. But Joan set herself the task of persuading him that
the salvation of France took precedence of all minor things--even the
commands of a sceptered ass; and she accomplished it. She persuaded him
to disobey the King in the interest of the nation, and to be reconciled
to Count Richemont and welcome him. That was statesmanship; and of the
highest and soundest sort. Whatever thing men call great, look for it in
Joan of Arc, and there you will find it.
In the early morning, June 17th, the scouts reported the approach of
Talbot and Fastolfe with Fastolfe's succoring force. Then the drums beat
to arms; and we set forth to meet the English, leaving Richemont and his
troops behind to watch the castle of Beaugency and keep its garrison at
home. By and by we came in sight of the enemy. Fastolfe had tried to
convince Talbot that it would be wisest to retreat and not risk a battle
with Joan at this time, but distribute the new levies among the English
strongholds of the Loire, thus securing them against capture; then be
patient and wait--wait for more levies from Paris; let Joan exhaust her
army with fruitless daily skirmishing; then at the right time fall upon
her in resistless mass and annihilate her. He was a wise old experienced
general, was Fastolfe. But that fierce Talbot would hear of no delay. He
was in a rage over the punishment which the Maid had inflicted upon him
at Orleans and since, and he swore by God and Saint George that he would
have it out with her if he had to fight her all alone. So Fastolfe
yielded, though he said they were now risking the loss of everything
which the English had gained by so many years' work and so many hard
knocks.
The enemy had taken up a strong position, and were waiting, in order of
battle, with their archers to the front and a stockade before them.
Night was coming on. A messenger came from the English with a rude
defiance and an offer of battle. But Joan's dignity was not ruffled, her
bearing was not discomposed. She said to the herald:
"Go back and say it is too late to meet to-night; but to-morrow, please
God and our Lady, we will come to close quarters."
The night fell dark and rainy. It was that sort of light steady rain
which falls so softly and brings to one's spirit such serenity and peace.
About ten o'clock D'Alencon, the Bastard of Orleans, La Hire, Pothon of
Saintrailles, and two or three other generals came to our headquarters
tent, and sat down to discuss matters with Joan. Some thought it was a
pity that Joan had declined battle, some thought not. Then Pothon asked
her why she had declined it. She said:
"There was more than one reason. These English are ours--they cannot get
away from us. Wherefore there is no need to take risks, as at other
times. The day was far spent. It is good to have much time and the fair
light of day when one's force is in a weakened state--nine hundred of us
yonder keeping the bridge of Meung under the Marshal de Rais, fifteen
hundred with the Constable of France keeping the bridge and watching the
castle of Beaugency."
Dunois said:
"I grieve for this decision, Excellency, but it cannot be helped. And the
case will be the same the morrow, as to that."
Joan was walking up and down just then. She laughed her affectionate,
comrady laugh, and stopping before that old war-tiger she put her small
hand above his head and touched one of his plumes, saying:
"Now tell me, wise man, which feather is it that I touch?"
"In sooth, Excellency, that I cannot."
"Name of God, Bastard, Bastard! you cannot tell me this small thing, yet
are bold to name a large one--telling us what is in the stomach of the
unborn morrow: that we shall not have those men. Now it is my thought
that they will be with us."
That made a stir. All wanted to know why she thought that. But La Hire
took the word and said:
"Let be. If she thinks it, that is enough. It will happen."
Then Pothon of Santrailles said:
"There were other reasons for declining battle, according to the saying
of your Excellency?"
"Yes. One was that we being weak and the day far gone, the battle might
not be decisive. When it is fought it must be decisive. And it shall be."
"God grant it, and amen. There were still other reasons?"
"One other--yes." She hesitated a moment, then said: "This was not the
day. To-morrow is the day. It is so written."
They were going to assail her with eager questionings, but she put up her
hand and prevented them. Then she said:
"It will be the most noble and beneficent victory that God has vouchsafed
for France at any time. I pray you question me not as to whence or how I
know this thing, but be content that it is so."
There was pleasure in every face, and conviction and high confidence. A
murmur of conversation broke out, but that was interrupted by a messenger
from the outposts who brought news--namely, that for an hour there had
been stir and movement in the English camp of a sort unusual at such a
time and with a resting army, he said. Spies had been sent under cover of
the rain and darkness to inquire into it. They had just come back and
reported that large bodies of men had been dimly made out who were
slipping stealthily away in the direction of Meung.
The generals were very much surprised, as any might tell from their
faces.
"It is a retreat," said Joan.
"It has that look," said D'Alencon.
"It certainly has," observed the Bastard and La Hire.
"It was not to be expected," said Louis de Bourbon, "but one can divine
the purpose of it."
"Yes," responded Joan. "Talbot has reflected. His rash brain has cooled.
He thinks to take the bridge of Meung and escape to the other side of the
river. He knows that this leaves his garrison of Beaugency at the mercy
of fortune, to escape our hands if it can; but there is no other course
if he would avoid this battle, and that he also knows. But he shall not
get the bridge. We will see to that."
"Yes," said D'Alencon, "we must follow him, and take care of that matter.
What of Beaugency?"
"Leave Beaugency to me, gentle duke; I will have it in two hours, and at
no cost of blood."
"It is true, Excellency. You will but need to deliver this news there and
receive the surrender."
"Yes. And I will be with you at Meung with the dawn, fetching the
Constable and his fifteen hundred; and when Talbot knows that Beaugency
has fallen it will have an effect upon him."
"By the mass, yes!" cried La Hire. "He will join his Meung garrison to
his army and break for Paris. Then we shall have our bridge force with us
again, along with our Beaugency watchers, and be stronger for our great
day's work by four-and-twenty hundred able soldiers, as was here promised
within the hour. Verily this Englishman is doing our errands for us and
saving us much blood and trouble. Orders, Excellency--give us orders!"
"They are simple. Let the men rest three hours longer. At one o'clock the
advance-guard will march, under our command, with Pothon of Saintrailles
as second; the second division will follow at two under the
Lieutenant-General. Keep well in the rear of the enemy, and see to it
that you avoid an engagement. I will ride under guard to Beaugency and
make so quick work there that Ii and the Constable of France will join
you before dawn with his men."
She kept her word. Her guard mounted and we rode off through the
puttering rain, taking with us a captured English officer to confirm
Joan's news. We soon covered the journey and summoned the castle. Richard
Guetin, Talbot's lieutenant, being convinced that he and his five hundred
men were left helpless, conceded that it would be useless to try to hold
out. He could not expect easy terms, yet Joan granted them nevertheless.
His garrison could keep their horses and arms, and carry away property to
the value of a silver mark per man. They could go whither they pleased,
but must not take arms against France again under ten days.
Before dawn we were with our army again, and with us the Constable and
nearly all his men, for we left only a small garrison in Beaugency
castle. We heard the dull booming of cannon to the front, and knew that
Talbot was beginning his attack on the bridge. But some time before it
was yet light the sound ceased and we heard it no more.
Guetin had sent a messenger through our lines under a safe-conduct given
by Joan, to tell Talbot of the surrender. Of course this poursuivant had
arrived ahead of us. Talbot had held it wisdom to turn now and retreat
upon Paris. When daylight came he had disappeared; and with him Lord
Scales and the garrison of Meung.
What a harvest of English strongholds we had reaped in those three
days!--strongholds which had defied France with quite cool confidence and
plenty of it until we came.
30 The Red Field of Patay
WHEN THE morning broke at last on that forever memorable 18th of June,
thee was no enemy discoverable anywhere, as I have said. But that did not
trouble me. I knew we should find him, and that we should strike him;
strike him the promised blow--the one from which the English power in
France would not rise up in a thousand years, as Joan had said in her
trance.
The enemy had plunged into the wide plains of La Beauce--a roadless waste
covered with bushes, with here and there bodies of forest trees--a region
where an army would be hidden from view in a very little while. We found
the trail in the soft wet earth and followed it. It indicated an orderly
march; no confusion, no panic.
But we had to be cautious. In such a piece of country we could walk into
an ambush without any trouble. Therefore Joan sent bodies of cavalry
ahead under La Hire, Pothon, and other captains, to feel the way. Some of
the other officers began to show uneasiness; this sort of
hide-and-go-seek business troubled them and made their confidence a
little shaky. Joan divined their state of mind and cried out impetuously:
"Name of God, what would you? We must smite these English, and we will.
They shall not escape us. Though they were hung to the clouds we would
get them!"
By and by we were nearing Patay; it was about a league away. Now at this
time our reconnaissance, feeling its way in the bush, frightened a deer,
and it went bounding away and was out of sight in a moment. Then hardly a
minute later a dull great shout went up in the distance toward Patay. It
was the English soldiery. They had been shut up in a garrison so long on
moldy food that they could not keep their delight to themselves when this
fine fresh meat came springing into their midst. Poor creature, it had
wrought damage to a nation which loved it well. For the French knew where
the English were now, whereas the English had no suspicion of where the
French were.
La Hire halted where he was, and sent back the tidings. Joan was radiant
with joy. The Duke d'Alencon said to her:
"Very well, we have found them; shall we fight them?"
"Have you good spurs, prince?"
"Why? Will they make us run away?"
"Nenni, en nom de Dieu! These English are ours--they are lost. They will
fly. Who overtakes them will need good spurs. Forward--close up!"
By the time we had come up with La Hire the English had discovered our
presence. Talbot's force was marching in three bodies. First his
advance-guard; then his artillery; then his battle-corps a good way in
the rear. He was now out of the bush and in a fair open country. He at
once posted his artillery, his advance-guard, and five hundred picked
archers along some hedges where the French would be obliged to pass, and
hoped to hold this position till his battle-corps could come up. Sir John
Fastolfe urged the battle-corps into a gallop. Joan saw her opportunity
and ordered La Hire to advance--which La Hire promptly did, launching his
wild riders like a storm-wind, his customary fashion.
The duke and the Bastard wanted to follow, but Joan said:
"Not yet--wait."
So they waited--impatiently, and fidgeting in their saddles. But she was
ready--gazing straight before her, measuring, weighing, calculating--by
shades, minutes, fractions of minutes, seconds--with all her great soul
present, in eye, and set of head, and noble pose of body--but patient,
steady, master of herself--master of herself and of the situation.
And yonder, receding, receding, plumes lifting and falling, lifting and
falling, streamed the thundering charge of La Hire's godless crew, La
Hire's great figure dominating it and his sword stretched aloft like a
flagstaff.
"Oh, Satan and his Hellions, see them go!" Somebody muttered it in deep
admiration.
And now he was closing up--closing up on Fastolfe's rushing corps.
And now he struck it--struck it hard, and broke its order. It lifted the
duke and the Bastard in their saddles to see it; and they turned,
trembling with excitement, to Joan, saying:
"Now!"
But she put up her hand, still gazing, weighing, calculating, and said
again:
"Wait--not yet."
Fastolfe's hard-driven battle-corps raged on like an avalanche toward the
waiting advance-guard. Suddenly these conceived the idea that it was
flying in panic before Joan; and so in that instant it broke and swarmed
away in a mad panic itself, with Talbot storming and cursing after it.
Now was the golden time. Joan drove her spurs home and waved the advance
with her sword. "Follow me!" she cried, and bent her head to her horse's
neck and sped away like the wind!
We went down into the confusion of that flying rout, and for three long
hours we cut and hacked and stabbed. At last the bugles sang "Halt!"
The Battle of Patay was won.
Joan of Arc dismounted, and stood surveying that awful field, lost in
thought. Presently she said:
"The praise is to God. He has smitten with a heavy hand this day." After
a little she lifted her face, and looking afar off, said, with the manner
of one who is thinking aloud, "In a thousand years--a thousand years--the
English power in France will not rise up from this blow." She stood again
a time thinking, then she turned toward her grouped generals, and there
was a glory in her face and a noble light in her eye; and she said:
"Oh, friends, friends, do you know?--do you comprehend? France is on the
way to be free!"
"And had never been, but for Joan of Arc!" said La Hire, passing before
her and bowing low, the other following and doing likewise; he muttering
as he went, "I will say it though I be damned for it." Then battalion
after battalion of our victorious army swung by, wildly cheering. And
they shouted, "Live forever, Maid of Orleans, live forever!" while Joan,
smiling, stood at the salute with her sword.
This was not the last time I saw the Maid of Orleans on the red field of
Patay. Toward the end of the day I came upon her where the dead and dying
lay stretched all about in heaps and winrows; our men had mortally
wounded an English prisoner who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from a
distance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to the
place and sent for a priest, and now she was holding the head of her
dying enemy in her lap, and easing him to his death with comforting soft
words, just as his sister might have done; and the womanly tears running
down her face all the time. [1]
[1] Lord Ronald Gower (Joan of Arc, p. 82) says: "Michelet discovered
this story in the deposition of Joan of Arc's page, Louis de Conte, who
was probably an eye-witness of the scene." This is true. It was a part of
the testimony of the author of these "Personal Recollections of Joan of
Arc," given by him in the Rehabilitation proceedings of 1456.
--TRANSLATOR.
31 France Begins to Live Again
JOAN HAD said true: France was on the way to be free.
The war called the Hundred Years' War was very sick to-day. Sick on its
English side--for the very first time since its birth, ninety-one years
gone by.
Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and the ruin wrought? Or
shall we not rather judge them by the results which flowed from them? Any
one will say that a battle is only truly great or small according to its
results. Yes, any one will grant that, for it is the truth.
Judged by results, Patay's place is with the few supremely great and
imposing battles that have been fought since the peoples of the world
first resorted to arms for the settlement of their quarrels. So judged,
it is even possible that Patay has no peer among that few just mentioned,
but stand alone, as the supremest of historic conflicts. For when it
began France lay gasping out the remnant of an exhausted life, her case
wholly hopeless in the view of all political physicians; when it ended,
three hours later, she was convalescent. Convalescent, and nothing
requisite but time and ordinary nursing to bring her back to perfect
health. The dullest physician of them all could see this, and there was
none to deny it.
Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a series of
battles, a procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts
stretching over years, but only one has reached it in a single day and by
a single battle. That nation is France, and that battle Patay.
Remember it and be proud of it; for you are French, and it is the
stateliest fact in the long annals of your country. There it stands, with
its head in the clouds! And when you grow up you will go on pilgrimage to
the field of Patay, and stand uncovered in the presence of--what? A
monument with its head in the clouds? Yes. For all nations in all times
have built monuments on their battle-fields to keep green the memory of
the perishable deed that was wrought there and of the perishable name of
him who wrought it; and will France neglect Patay and Joan of Arc? Not
for long. And will she build a monument scaled to their rank as compared
with the world's other fields and heroes? Perhaps--if there be room for
it under the arch of the sky.
But let us look back a little, and consider certain strange and
impressive facts. The Hundred Years' War began in 1337. It raged on and
on, year after year and year after year; and at last England stretched
France prone with that fearful blow at Crecy. But she rose and struggled
on, year after year, and at last again she went down under another
devastating blow--Poitiers. She gathered her crippled strength once more,
and the war raged on, and on, and still on, year after year, decade after
decade. Children were born, grew up, married, died--the war raged on;
their children in turn grew up, married, died--the war raged on; their
children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time under the
incredible disaster of Agincourt--and still the war raged on, year after
year, and in time these children married in their turn.
France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. The half of it belonged to
England, with none to dispute or deny the truth; the other half belonged
to nobody--in three months would be flying the English flag; the French
King was making ready to throw away his crown and flee beyond the seas.
Now came the ignorant country-maid out of her remote village and
confronted this hoary war, this all-consuming conflagration that had
swept the land for three generations. Then began the briefest and most
amazing campaign that is recorded in history. In seven weeks it was
finished. In seven weeks she hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that
was ninety-one years old. At Orleans she struck it a staggering blow; on
the field of Patay she broke its back.
Think of it. Yes, one can do that; but understand it? Ah, that is another
matter; none will ever be able to comprehend that stupefying marvel.
Seven weeks--with her and there a little bloodshed. Perhaps the most of
it, in any single fight, at Patay, where the English began six thousand
strong and left two thousand dead upon the field. It is said and believed
that in three battles alone--Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt--near a
hundred thousand Frenchmen fell, without counting the thousand other
fights of that long war. The dead of that war make a mournful long
list--an interminable list. Of men slain in the field the count goes by
tens of thousands; of innocent women and children slain by bitter
hardship and hunger it goes by that appalling term, millions.
It was an ogre, that war; an ogre that went about for near a hundred
years, crunching men and dripping blood from its jaws. And with her
little hand that child of seventeen struck him down; and yonder he lies
stretched on the field of Patay, and will not get up any more while this
old world lasts.
32 The Joyous News Flies Fast
THE GREAT news of Patay was carried over the whole of France in twenty
hours, people said. I do not know as to that; but one thing is sure,
anyway: the moment a man got it he flew shouting and glorifying God and
told his neighbor; and that neighbor flew with it to the next homestead;
and so on and so on without resting the word traveled; and when a man got
it in the night, at what hour soever, he jumped out of his bed and bore
the blessed message along. And the joy that went with it was like the
light that flows across the land when an eclipse is receding from the
face of the sun; and, indeed, you may say that France had lain in an
eclipse this long time; yes, buried in a black gloom which these
beneficent tidings were sweeping away now before the onrush of their
white splendor.
The news beat the flying enemy to Yeuville, and the town rose against its
English masters and shut the gates against their brethren. It flew to
Mont Pipeau, to Saint Simon, and to this, that, and the other English
fortress; and straightway the garrison applied the torch and took to the
fields and the woods. A detachment of our army occupied Meung and
pillaged it.
When we reached Orleans that tow was as much as fifty times insaner with
joy than we had ever seen it before--which is saying much. Night had just
fallen, and the illuminations were on so wonderful a scale that we seemed
to plow through seas of fire; and as to the noise--the hoarse cheering of
the multitude, the thundering of cannon, the clash of bells--indeed,
there was never anything like it. And everywhere rose a new cry that
burst upon us like a storm when the column entered the gates, and
nevermore ceased: "Welcome to Joan of Arc--way for the SAVIOR OF FRANCE!"
And there was another cry: "Crecy is avenged! Poitiers is avenged!
Agincourt is avenged!--Patay shall live forever!"
Mad? Why, you never could imagine it in the world. The prisoners were in
the center of the column. When that came along and the people caught
sight of their masterful old enemy Talbot, that had made them dance so
long to his grim war-music, you may imagine what the uproar was like if
you can, for I can not describe it. They were so glad to see him that
presently they wanted to have him out and hang him; so Joan had him
brought up to the front to ride in her protection. They made a striking
pair.
33 Joan's Five Great Deeds
YES, ORLEANS was in a delirium of felicity. She invited the King, and
made sumptuous preparations to receive him, but--he didn't come. He was
simply a serf at that time, and La Tremouille was his master. Master and
serf were visiting together at the master's castle of Sully-sur-Loire.
At Beaugency Joan had engaged to bring about a reconciliation between the
Constable Richemont and the King. She took Richemont to Sully-sur-Loire
and made her promise good.
The great deeds of Joan of Arc are five:
1. The Raising of the Siege.
2. The Victory of Patay.
3. The Reconciliation at Sully-sur-Loire.
4. The Coronation of the King.
5. The Bloodless March.
We shall come to the Bloodless March presently (and the Coronation). It
was the victorious long march which Joan made through the enemy's country
from Gien to Rheims, and thence to the gates of Paris, capturing every
English town and fortress that barred the road, from the beginning of the
journey to the end of it; and this by the mere force of her name, and
without shedding a drop of blood--perhaps the most extraordinary campaign
in this regard in history--this is the most glorious of her military
exploits.
The Reconciliation was one of Joan's most important achievements. No one
else could have accomplished it; and, in fact, no one else of high
consequence had any disposition to try. In brains, in scientific warfare,
and in statesmanship the Constable Richemont was the ablest man in
France. His loyalty was sincere; his probity was above suspicion--(and it
made him sufficiently conspicuous in that trivial and conscienceless
Court).
In restoring Richemont to France, Joan made thoroughly secure the
successful completion of the great work which she had begun. She had
never seen Richemont until he came to her with his little army. Was it
not wonderful that at a glance she should know him for the one man who
could finish and perfect her work and establish it in perpetuity? How was
it that that child was able to do this? It was because she had the
"seeing eye," as one of our knights had once said. Yes, she had that
great gift--almost the highest and rarest that has been granted to man.
Nothing of an extraordinary sort was still to be done, yet the remaining
work could not safely be left to the King's idiots; for it would require
wise statesmanship and long and patient though desultory hammering of the
enemy. Now and then, for a quarter of a century yet, there would be a
little fighting to do, and a handy man could carry that on with small
disturbance to the rest of the country; and little by little, and with
progressive certainty, the English would disappear from France.
And that happened. Under the influence of Richemont the King became at a
later time a man--a man, a king, a brave and capable and determined
soldier. Within six years after Patay he was leading storming parties
himself; fighting in fortress ditches up to his waist in water, and
climbing scaling-ladders under a furious fire with a pluck that would
have satisfied even Joan of Arc. In time he and Richemont cleared away
all the English; even from regions where the people had been under their
mastership for three hundred years. In such regions wise and careful work
was necessary, for the English rule had been fair and kindly; and men who
have been ruled in that way are not always anxious for a change.
Which of Joan's five chief deeds shall we call the chiefest? It is my
thought that each in its turn was that. This is saying that, taken as a
whole, they equalized each other, and neither was then greater than its
mate.
Do you perceive? Each was a stage in an ascent. To leave out one of them
would defeat the journey; to achieve one of them at the wrong time and in
the wrong place would have the same effect.
Consider the Coronation. As a masterpiece of diplomacy, where can you
find its superior in our history? Did the King suspect its vast
importance? No. Did his ministers? No. Did the astute Bedford,
representative of the English crown? No. An advantage of incalculable
importance was here under the eyes of the King and of Bedford; the King
could get it by a bold stroke, Bedford could get it without an effort;
but, being ignorant of its value, neither of them put forth his hand. Of
all the wise people in high office in France, only one knew the priceless
worth of this neglected prize--the untaught child of seventeen, Joan of
Arc--and she had known it from the beginning as an essential detail of
her mission.
How did she know it? It was simple: she was a peasant. That tells the
whole story. She was of the people and knew the people; those others
moved in a loftier sphere and knew nothing much about them. We make
little account of that vague, formless, inert mass, that mighty
underlying force which we call "the people"--an epithet which carries
contempt with it. It is a strange attitude; for at bottom we know that
the throne which the people support stands, and that when that support is
removed nothing in this world can save it.
Now, then, consider this fact, and observe its importance. Whatever the
parish priest believes his flock believes; they love him, they revere
him; he is their unfailing friend, their dauntless protector, their
comforter in sorrow, their helper in their day of need; he has their
whole confidence; what he tells them to do, that they will do, with a
blind and affectionate obedience, let it cost what it may. Add these
facts thoughtfully together, and what is the sum? This: The parish priest
governs the nation. What is the King, then, if the parish priest
withdraws his support and deny his authority? Merely a shadow and no
King; let him resign.
Do you get that idea? Then let us proceed. A priest is consecrated to his
office by the awful hand of God, laid upon him by his appointed
representative on earth. That consecration is final; nothing can undo it,
nothing can remove it. Neither the Pope nor any other power can strip the
priest of his office; God gave it, and it is forever sacred and secure.
The dull parish knows all this. To priest and parish, whatsoever is
anointed of God bears an office whose authority can no longer be disputed
or assailed. To the parish priest, and to his subjects the nation, an
uncrowned king is a similitude of a person who has been named for holy
orders but has not been consecrated; he has no office, he has not been
ordained, another may be appointed to his place. In a word, an uncrowned
king is a doubtful king; but if God appoint him and His servant the
Bishop anoint him, the doubt is annihilated; the priest and the parish
are his loyal subjects straightway, and while he lives they will
recognize no king but him.
To Joan of Arc, the peasant-girl, Charles VII. was no King until he was
crowned; to her he was only the Dauphin; that is to say, the heir. If I
have ever made her call him King, it was a mistake; she called him the
Dauphin, and nothing else until after the Coronation. It shows you as in
a mirror--for Joan was a mirror in which the lowly hosts of France were
clearly reflected--that to all that vast underlying force called "the
people," he was no King but only Dauphin before his crowning, and was
indisputably and irrevocably King after it.
Now you understand what a colossal move on the political chess-board the
Coronation was. Bedford realized this by and by, and tried to patch up
his mistake by crowning his King; but what good could that do? None in
the world.
Speaking of chess, Joan's great acts may be likened to that game. Each
move was made in its proper order, and it as great and effective because
it was made in its proper order and not out of it. Each, at the time
made, seemed the greatest move; but the final result made them all
recognizable as equally essential and equally important. This is the
game, as played:
1. Joan moves to Orleans and Patay--check.
2. Then moves the Reconciliation--but does not proclaim check, it being a
move for position, and to take effect later.
3. Next she moves the Coronation--check.
4. Next, the Bloodless March--check.
5. Final move (after her death), the reconciled Constable Richemont to
the French King's elbow--checkmate.
34 The Jests of the Burgundians
THE CAMPAIGN of the Loire had as good as opened the road to Rheims. There
was no sufficient reason now why the Coronation should not take place.
The Coronation would complete the mission which Joan had received from
heaven, and then she would be forever done with war, and would fly home
to her mother and her sheep, and never stir from the hearthstone and
happiness any more. That was her dream; and she could not rest, she was
so impatient to see it fulfilled. She became so possessed with this
matter that I began to lose faith in her two prophecies of her early
death--and, of course, when I found that faith wavering I encouraged it
to waver all the more.
The King was afraid to start to Rheims, because the road was mile-posted
with English fortresses, so to speak. Joan held them in light esteem and
not things to be afraid of in the existing modified condition of English
confidence.
And she was right. As it turned out, the march to Rheims was nothing but
a holiday excursion: Joan did not even take any artillery along, she was
so sure it would not be necessary. We marched from Gien twelve thousand
strong. This was the 29th of June. The Maid rode by the side of the King;
on his other side was the Duke d'Alencon. After the duke followed three
other princes of the blood. After these followed the Bastard of Orleans,
the Marshal de Boussac, and the Admiral of France. After these came La
Hire, Saintrailles, Tremouille, and a long procession of knights and
nobles.
We rested three days before Auxerre. The city provisioned the army, and a
deputation waited upon the King, but we did not enter the place.
Saint-Florentin opened its gates to the King.
On the 4th of July we reached Saint-Fal, and yonder lay Troyes before
us--a town which had a burning interest for us boys; for we remembered
how seven years before, in the pastures of Domremy, the Sunflower came
with his black flag and brought us the shameful news of the Treaty of
Troyes--that treaty which gave France to England, and a daughter of our
royal line in marriage to the Butcher of Agincourt. That poor town was
not to blame, of course; yet we flushed hot with that old memory, and
hoped there would be a misunderstanding here, for we dearly wanted to
storm the place and burn it. It was powerfully garrisoned by English and
Burgundian soldiery, and was expecting reinforcements from Paris. Before
night we camped before its gates and made rough work with a sortie which
marched out against us.
Joan summoned Troyes to surrender. Its commandant, seeing that she had no
artillery, scoffed at the idea, and sent her a grossly insulting reply.
Five days we consulted and negotiated. No result. The King was about to
turn back now and give up. He was afraid to go on, leaving this strong
place in his rear. Then La Hire put in a word, with a slap in it for some
of his Majesty's advisers:
"The Maid of Orleans undertook this expedition of her own motion; and it
is my mind that it is her judgment that should be followed here, and not
that of any other, let him be of whatsoever breed and standing he may."
There was wisdom and righteousness in that. So the King sent for the
Maid, and asked her how she thought the prospect looked. She said,
without any tone of doubt or question in her voice:
"In three days' time the place is ours."
The smug Chancellor put in a word now:
"If we were sure of it we would wait her six days."
"Six days, forsooth! Name of God, man, we will enter the gates
to-morrow!"
Then she mounted, and rode her lines, crying out:
"Make preparation--to your work, friends, to your work! We assault at
dawn!"
She worked hard that night, slaving away with her own hands like a common
soldier. She ordered fascines and fagots to be prepared and thrown into
the fosse, thereby to bridge it; and in this rough labor she took a man's
share.
At dawn she took her place at the head of the storming force and the
bugles blew the assault. At that moment a flag of truce was flung to the
breeze from the walls, and Troyes surrendered without firing a shot.
The next day the King with Joan at his side and the Paladin bearing her
banner entered the town in state at the head of the army. And a goodly
army it was now, for it had been growing ever bigger and bigger from the
first.
And now a curious thing happened. By the terms of the treaty made with
the town the garrison of English and Burgundian soldiery were to be
allowed to carry away their "goods" with them. This was well, for
otherwise how would they buy the wherewithal to live? Very well; these
people were all to go out by the one gate, and at the time set for them
to depart we young fellows went to that gate, along with the Dwarf, to
see the march-out. Presently here they came in an interminable file, the
foot-soldiers in the lead. As they approached one could see that each
bore a burden of a bulk and weight to sorely tax his strength; and we
said among ourselves, truly these folk are well off for poor common
soldiers. When they were come nearer, what do you think? Every rascal of
them had a French prisoner on his back! They were carrying away their
"goods," you see--their property--strictly according to the permission
granted by the treaty.
Now think how clever that was, how ingenious. What could a body say? what
could a body do? For certainly these people were within their right.
These prisoners were property; nobody could deny that. My dears, if those
had been English captives, conceive of the richness of that booty! For
English prisoners had been scarce and precious for a hundred years;
whereas it was a different matter with French prisoners. They had been
over-abundant for a century. The possessor of a French prisoner did not
hold him long for ransom, as a rule, but presently killed him to save the
cost of his keep. This shows you how small was the value of such a
possession in those times. When we took Troyes a calf was worth thirty
francs, a sheep sixteen, a French prisoner eight. It was an enormous
price for those other animals--a price which naturally seems incredible
to you. It was the war, you see. It worked two ways: it made meat dear
and prisoners cheap.
Well, here were these poor Frenchmen being carried off. What could we do?
Very little of a permanent sort, but we did what we could. We sent a
messenger flying to Joan, and we and the French guards halted the
procession for a parley--to gain time, you see. A big Burgundian lost his
temper and swore a great oath that none should stop him; he would go, and
would take his prisoner with him. But we blocked him off, and he saw that
he was mistaken about going--he couldn't do it. He exploded into the
maddest cursings and revilings, then, and, unlashing his prisoner from
his back, stood him up, all bound and helpless; then drew his knife, and
said to us with a light of sarcasting triumph in his eye:
"I may not carry him away, you say--yet he is mine, none will dispute it.
Since I may not convey him hence, this property of mine, there is another
way. Yes, I can kill him; not even the dullest among you will question
that right. Ah, you had not thought of that--vermin!"
That poor starved fellow begged us with his piteous eyes to save him;
then spoke, and said he had a wife and little children at home. Think how
it wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do? The Burgundian was
within his right. We could only beg and plead for the prisoner. Which we
did. And the Burgundian enjoyed it. He stayed his hand to hear more of
it, and laugh at it. That stung. Then the Dwarf said:
"Prithee, young sirs, let me beguile him; for when a matter requiring
permission is to the fore, I have indeed a gift in that sort, as any will
tell you that know me well. You smile; and that is punishment for my
vanity; and fairly earned, I grant you. Still, if I may toy a little,
just a little--" saying which he stepped to the Burgundian and began a
fair soft speech, all of goodly and gentle tenor; and in the midst he
mentioned the Maid; and was going on to say how she out of her good heart
would prize and praise this compassionate deed which he was about to-- It
was as far as he got. The Burgundian burst into his smooth oration with
an insult leveled at Joan of Arc. We sprang forward, but the Dwarf, his
face all livid, brushed us aside and said, in a most grave and earnest
way:
"I crave your patience. Am not I her guard of honor? This is my affair."
And saying this he suddenly shot his right hand out and gripped the great
Burgundian by the throat, and so held him upright on his feet. "You have
insulted the Maid," he said; "and the Maid is France. The tongue that
does that earns a long furlough."
One heard the muffled cracking of bones. The Burgundian's eyes began to
protrude from their sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy.
The color deepened in his face and became an opaque purple. His hands
hung down limp, his body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed
its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf took away his hand
and the column of inert mortality sank mushily to the ground.
We struck the bonds from the prisoner and told him he was free. His
crawling humbleness changed to frantic joy in a moment, and his ghastly
fear to a childish rage. He flew at that dead corpse and kicked it, spat
in its face, danced upon it, crammed mud into its mouth, laughing,
jeering, cursing, and volleying forth indecencies and bestialities like a
drunken fiend. It was a thing to be expected; soldiering makes few
saints. Many of the onlookers laughed, others were indifferent, none was
surprised. But presently in his mad caperings the freed man capered
within reach of the waiting file, and another Burgundian promptly slipped
a knife through his neck, and down he went with a death-shriek, his
brilliant artery blood spurting ten feet as straight and bright as a ray
of light. There was a great burst of jolly laughter all around from
friend and foe alike; and thus closed one of the pleasantest incidents of
my checkered military life.
And now came Joan hurrying, and deeply troubled. She considered the claim
of the garrison, then said:
"You have right upon your side. It is plain. It was a careless word to
put in the treaty, and covers too much. But ye may not take these poor
men away. They are French, and I will not have it. The King shall ransom
them, every one. Wait till I send you word from him; and hurt no hair of
their heads; for I tell you, I who speak, that that would cost you very
dear."
That settled it. The prisoners were safe for one while, anyway. Then she
rode back eagerly and required that thing of the King, and would listen
to no paltering and no excuses. So the King told her to have her way, and
she rode straight back and bought the captives free in his name and let
them go.
35 The Heir of France is Crowned
IT WAS here hat we saw again the Grand Master of the King's Household, in
whose castle Joan was guest when she tarried at Chinon in those first
days of her coming out of her own country. She made him Bailiff of Troyes
now by the King's permission.
And now we marched again; Chalons surrendered to us; and there by Chalons
in a talk, Joan, being asked if she had no fears for the future, said
yes, one--treachery. Who would believe it? who could dream it? And yet in
a sense it was prophecy. Truly, man is a pitiful animal.
We marched, marched, kept on marching; and at last, on the 16th of July,
we came in sight of our goal, and saw the great cathedraled towers of
Rheims rise out of the distance! Huzza after huzza swept the army from
van to rear; and as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse
gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a
deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was not flesh, she was a
spirit! Her sublime mission was closing--closing in flawless triumph.
To-morrow she could say, "It is finished--let me go free."
We camped, and the hurry and rush and turmoil of the grand preparations
began. The Archbishop and a great deputation arrived; and after these
came flock after flock, crowd after crowd, of citizens and country-folk,
hurrahing, in, with banners and music, and flowed over the camp, one
rejoicing inundation after another, everybody drunk with happiness. And
all night long Rheims was hard at work, hammering away, decorating the
town, building triumphal arches and clothing the ancient cathedral within
and without in a glory of opulent splendors.
We moved betimes in the morning; the coronation ceremonies would begin at
nine and last five hours. We were aware that the garrison of English and
Burgundian soldiers had given up all thought of resisting the Maid, and
that we should find the gates standing hospitably open and the whole city
ready to welcome us with enthusiasm.
It was a delicious morning, brilliant with sunshine, but cool and fresh
and inspiring. The army was in great form, and fine to see, as it
uncoiled from its lair fold by fold, and stretched away on the final
march of the peaceful Coronation Campaign.
Joan, on her black horse, with the Lieutenant-General and the personal
staff grouped about her, took post for a final review and a good-by; for
she was not expecting to ever be a soldier again, or ever serve with
these or any other soldiers any more after this day. The army knew this,
and believed it was looking for the last time upon the girlish face of
its invincible little Chief, its pet, its pride, its darling, whom it had
ennobled in its private heart with nobilities of its own creation, call
her "Daughter of God," "Savior of France," "Victory's Sweetheart," "The
Page of Christ," together with still softer titles which were simply
naive and frank endearments such as men are used to confer upon children
whom they love. And so one saw a new thing now; a thing bred of the
emotion that was present there on both sides. Always before, in the
march-past, the battalions had gone swinging by in a storm of cheers,
heads up and eyes flashing, the drums rolling, the bands braying p'ans of
victory; but now there was nothing of that. But for one impressive sound,
one could have closed his eyes and imagined himself in a world of the
dead. That one sound was all that visited the ear in the summer
stillness--just that one sound--the muffled tread of the marching host.
As the serried masses drifted by, the men put their right hands up to
their temples, palms to the front, in military salute, turning their eyes
upon Joan's face in mute God-bless-you and farewell, and keeping them
there while they could. They still kept their hands up in reverent salute
many steps after they had passed by. Every time Joan put her handkerchief
to her eyes you could see a little quiver of emotion crinkle along the
faces of the files.
The march-past after a victory is a thing to drive the heart mad with
jubilation; but this one was a thing to break it.
We rode now to the King's lodgings, which was the Archbishop's country
palace; and he was presently ready, and we galloped off and took position
at the head of the army. By this time the country-people were arriving in
multitudes from every direction and massing themselves on both sides of
the road to get sight of Joan--just as had been done every day since our
first day's march began. Our march now lay through the grassy plain, and
those peasants made a dividing double border for that plain. They
stretched right down through it, a broad belt of bright colors on each
side of the road; for every peasant girl and woman in it had a white
jacket on her body and a crimson skirt on the rest of her. Endless
borders made of poppies and lilies stretching away in front of us--that
is what it looked like. And that is the kind of lane we had been marching
through all these days. Not a lane between multitudinous flowers standing
upright on their stems--no, these flowers were always kneeling; kneeling,
these human flowers, with their hands and faces lifted toward Joan of
Arc, and the grateful tears streaming down. And all along, those closest
to the road hugged her feet and kissed them and laid their wet cheeks
fondly against them. I never, during all those days, saw any of either
sex stand while she passed, nor any man keep his head covered. Afterward
in the Great Trial these touching scenes were used as a weapon against
her. She had been made an object of adoration by the people, and this was
proof that she was a heretic--so claimed that unjust court.
As we drew near the city the curving long sweep of ramparts and towers
was gay with fluttering flags and black with masses of people; and all
the air was vibrant with the crash of artillery and gloomed with drifting
clouds of smoke. We entered the gates in state and moved in procession
through the city, with all the guilds and industries in holiday costume
marching in our rear with their banners; and all the route was hedged
with a huzzaing crush of people, and all the windows were full and all
the roofs; and from the balconies hung costly stuffs of rich colors; and
the waving of handkerchiefs, seen in perspective through a long vista,
was like a snowstorm.
Joan's name had been introduced into the prayers of the Church--an honor
theretofore restricted to royalty. But she had a dearer honor and an
honor more to be proud of, from a humbler source: the common people had
had leaden medals struck which bore her effigy and her escutcheon, and
these they wore as charms. One saw them everywhere.
From the Archbishop's Palace, where we halted, and where the King and
Joan were to lodge, the King sent to the Abbey Church of St. Remi, which
was over toward the gate by which we had entered the city, for the Sainte
Ampoule, or flask of holy oil. This oil was not earthly oil; it was made
in heaven; the flask also. The flask, with the oil in it, was brought
down from heaven by a dove. It was sent down to St. Remi just as he was
going to baptize King Clovis, who had become a Christian. I know this to
be true. I had known it long before; for Pere Fronte told me in Domremy.
I cannot tell you how strange and awful it made me feel when I saw that
flask and knew I was looking with my own eyes upon a thing which had
actually been in heave, a thing which had been seen by angels, perhaps;
and by God Himself of a certainty, for He sent it. And I was looking upon
it--I. At one time I could have touched it. But I was afraid; for I could
not know but that God had touched it. It is most probable that He had.
From this flask Clovis had been anointed; and from it all the kings of
France had been anointed since. Yes, ever since the time of Clovis, and
that was nine hundred years. And so, as I have said, that flask of holy
oil was sent for, while we waited. A coronation without that would not
have been a coronation at all, in my belief.
Now in order to get the flask, a most ancient ceremonial had to be gone
through with; otherwise the Abb, of St. Remi, hereditary guardian in
perpetuity of the oil, would not deliver it. So, in accordance with
custom, the King deputed five great nobles to ride in solemn state and
richly armed and accoutered, they and their steeds, to the Abbey Church
as a guard of honor to the Archbishop of Rheims and his canons, who were
to bear the King's demand for the oil. When the five great lords were
ready to start, they knelt in a row and put up their mailed hands before
their faces, palm joined to palm, and swore upon their lives to conduct
the sacred vessel safely, and safely restore it again to the Church of
St. Remi after the anointing of the King. The Archbishop and his
subordinates, thus nobly escorted, took their way to St. Remi. The
Archbishop was in grand costume, with his miter on his head and his cross
in his hand. At the door of St. Remi they halted and formed, to receive
the holy vial. Soon one heard the deep tones of the organ and of chanting
men; then one saw a long file of lights approaching through the dim
church. And so came the Abbot, in his sacerdotal panoply, bearing the
vial, with his people following after. He delivered it, with solemn
ceremonies, to the Archbishop; then the march back began, and it was most
impressive; for it moved, the whole way, between two multitudes of men
and women who lay flat upon their faces and prayed in dumb silence and in
dread while that awful thing went by that had been in heaven.
This August company arrived at the great west door of the cathedral; and
as the Archbishop entered a noble anthem rose and filled the vast
building. The cathedral was packed with people--people in thousands. Only
a wide space down the center had been kept free. Down this space walked
the Archbishop and his canons, and after them followed those five stately
figures in splendid harness, each bearing his feudal banner--and riding!
Oh, that was a magnificent thing to see. Riding down the cavernous
vastness of the building through the rich lights streaming in long rays
from the pictured windows--oh, there was never anything so grand!
They rode clear to the choir--as much as four hundred feet from the door,
it was said. Then the Archbishop dismissed them, and they made deep
obeisance till their plumes touched their horses' necks, then made those
proud prancing and mincing and dancing creatures go backward all the way
to the door--which was pretty to see, and graceful; then they stood them
on their hind-feet and spun them around and plunged away and disappeared.
For some minutes there was a deep hush, a waiting pause; a silence so
profound that it was as if all those packed thousands there were steeped
in dreamless slumber--why, you could even notice the faintest sounds,
like the drowsy buzzing of insects; then came a mighty flood of rich
strains from four hundred silver trumpets, and then, framed in the
pointed archway of the great west door, appeared Joan and the King. They
advanced slowly, side by side, through a tempest of welcome--explosion
after explosion of cheers and cries, mingled with the deep thunders of
the organ and rolling tides of triumphant song from chanting choirs.
Behind Joan and the King came the Paladin and the Banner displayed; and a
majestic figure he was, and most proud and lofty in his bearing, for he
knew that the people were marking him and taking note of the gorgeous
state dress which covered his armor.
At his side was the Sire d'Albret, proxy for the Constable of France,
bearing the Sword of State.
After these, in order of rank, came a body royally attired representing
the lay peers of France; it consisted of three princes of the blood, and
La Tremouille and the young De Laval brothers.
These were followed by the representatives of the ecclesiastical
peers--the Archbishop of Rheims, and the Bishops of Laon, Chalons,
Orleans, and one other.
Behind these came the Grand Staff, all our great generals and famous
names, and everybody was eager to get a sight of them. Through all the
din one could hear shouts all along that told you where two of them were:
"Live the Bastard of Orleans!" "Satan La Hire forever!"
The August procession reached its appointed place in time, and the
solemnities of the Coronation began. They were long and imposing--with
prayers, and anthems, and sermons, and everything that is right for such
occasions; and Joan was at the King's side all these hours, with her
Standard in her hand. But at last came the grand act: the King took the
oath, he was anointed with the sacred oil; a splendid personage, followed
by train-bearers and other attendants, approached, bearing the Crown of
France upon a cushion, and kneeling offered it. The King seemed to
hesitate--in fact, did hesitate; for he put out his hand and then stopped
with it there in the air over the crown, the fingers in the attitude of
taking hold of it. But that was for only a moment--though a moment is a
notable something when it stops the heartbeat of twenty thousand people
and makes them catch their breath. Yes, only a moment; then he caught
Joan's eye, and she gave him a look with all the joy of her thankful
great soul in it; then he smiled, and took the Crown of France in his
hand, and right finely and right royally lifted it up and set it upon his
head.
Then what a crash there was! All about us cries and cheers, and the
chanting of the choirs and groaning of the organ; and outside the
clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon. The fantastic
dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the peasant-child
stood fulfilled; the English power was broken, the Heir of France was
crowned.
She was like one transfigured, so divine was the joy that shone in her
face as she sank to her knees at the King's feet and looked up at him
through her tears. Her lips were quivering, and her words came soft and
low and broken:
"Now, O gentle King, is the pleasure of God accomplished according to His
command that you should come to Rheims and receive the crown that
belongeth of right to you, and unto none other. My work which was given
me to do is finished; give me your peace, and let me go back to my
mother, who is poor and old, and has need of me."
The King raised her up, and there before all that host he praised her
great deeds in most noble terms; and there he confirmed her nobility and
titles, making her the equal of a count in rank, and also appointed a
household and officers for her according to her dignity; and then he
said:
"You have saved the crown. Speak--require--demand; and whatsoever grace
you ask it shall be granted, though it make the kingdom poor to meet it."
Now that was fine, that was royal. Joan was on her knees again
straightway, and said:
"Then, O gentle King, if out of your compassion you will speak the word,
I pray you give commandment that my village, poor and hard pressed by
reason of war, may have its taxes remitted."
"It is so commanded. Say on."
"That is all."
"All? Nothing but that?"
"It is all. I have no other desire."
"But that is nothing--less than nothing. Ask--do not be afraid."
"Indeed, I cannot, gentle King. Do not press me. I will not have aught
else, but only this alone."
The King seemed nonplussed, and stood still a moment, as if trying to
comprehend and realize the full stature of this strange unselfishness.
Then he raised his head and said:
"Who has won a kingdom and crowned its King; and all she asks and all she
will take is this poor grace--and even this is for others, not for
herself. And it is well; her act being proportioned to the dignity of one
who carries in her head and heart riches which outvalue any that any King
could add, though he gave his all. She shall have her way. Now,
therefore, it is decreed that from this day forth Domremy, natal village
of Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France, called the Maid of Orleans, is freed
from all taxation forever." Whereat the silver horns blew a jubilant
blast.
There, you see, she had had a vision of this very scene the time she was
in a trance in the pastures of Domremy and we asked her to name to boon
she would demand of the King if he should ever chance to tell her she
might claim one. But whether she had the vision or not, this act showed
that after all the dizzy grandeurs that had come upon her, she was still
the same simple, unselfish creature that she was that day.
Yes, Charles VII. remitted those taxes "forever." Often the gratitude of
kings and nations fades and their promises are forgotten or deliberately
violated; but you, who are children of France, should remember with pride
that France has kept this one faithfully. Sixty-three years have gone by
since that day. The taxes of the region wherein Domremy lies have been
collected sixty-three times since then, and all the villages of that
region have paid except that one--Domremy. The tax-gatherer never visits
Domremy. Domremy has long ago forgotten what that dread sorrow-sowing
apparition is like. Sixty-three tax-books have been filed meantime, and
they lie yonder with the other public records, and any may see them that
desire it. At the top of every page in the sixty-three books stands the
name of a village, and below that name its weary burden of taxation is
figured out and displayed; in the case of all save one. It is true, just
as I tell you. In each of the sixty-three books there is a page headed
"Domremi," but under that name not a figure appears. Where the figures
should be, there are three words written; and the same words have been
written every year for all these years; yes, it is a blank page, with
always those grateful words lettered across the face of it--a touching
memorial. Thus:
__________________________________ | | | DOMREMI | | | |
RIEN--LA PUCELLE | |__________________________________|
"NOTHING--THE MAID OF ORLEANS."
How brief it is; yet how much it says! It is the nation speaking. You
have the spectacle of that unsentimental thing, a Government, making
reverence to that name and saying to its agent, "Uncover, and pass on; it
is France that commands." Yes, the promise has been kept; it will be kept
always; "forever" was the King's word. [1] At two o'clock in the
afternoon the ceremonies of the Coronation came at last to an end; then
the procession formed once more, with Joan and the King at its head, and
took up its solemn march through the midst of the church, all instruments
and all people making such clamor of rejoicing noises as was, indeed, a
marvel to hear. An so ended the third of the great days of Joan's life.
And how close together they stand--May 8th, June 18th, July 17th!
[1] IT was faithfully kept during three hundred and sixty years and more;
then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During the tumult
of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the grace
withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never asked to be
remembered, but France has remembered her with an inextinguishable love
and reverence; Joan never asked for a statue, but France has lavished
them upon her; Joan never asked for a church for Domremy, but France is
building one; Joan never asked for saintship, but even that is impending.
Everything which Joan of Arc did not ask for has been given her, and with
a noble profusion; but the one humble little thing which she did ask for
and get has been taken away from her. There is something infinitely
pathetic about this. France owes Domremy a hundred years of taxes, and
could hardly find a citizen within her borders who would vote against the
payment of the debt. -- NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
36 Joan Hears News from Home
WE MOUNTED and rode, a spectacle to remember, a most noble display of
rich vestments and nodding plumes, and as we moved between the banked
multitudes they sank down all along abreast of us as we advanced, like
grain before the reaper, and kneeling hailed with a rousing welcome the
consecrated King and his companion the Deliverer of France. But by and by
when we had paraded about the chief parts of the city and were come near
to the end of our course, we being now approaching the Archbishop's
palace, one saw on the right, hard by the inn that is called the Zebra, a
strange t--two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the front rank
of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in
the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang at
them in a fury to teach them better manners; but just as they seized them
Joan cried out "Forbear!" and slid from her saddle and flung her arms
about one of those peasants, calling him by all manner of endearing
names, and sobbing. For it was her father; and the other was her uncle,
Laxart.
The news flew everywhere, and shouts of welcome were raised, and in just
one little moment those two despised and unknown plebeians were become
famous and popular and envied, and everybody was in a fever to get sight
of them and be able to say, all their lives long, that they had seen the
father of Joan of Arc and the brother of her mother. How easy it was for
her to do miracles like to this! She was like the sun; on whatsoever dim
and humble object her rays fell, that thing was straightway drowned in
glory.
All graciously the King said:
"Bring them to me."
And she brought them; she radiant with happiness and affection, they
trembling and scared, with their caps in their shaking hands; and there
before all the world the King gave them his hand to kiss, while the
people gazed in envy and admiration; and he said to old D'Arc:
"Give God thanks for that you are father to this child, this dispenser of
immortalities. You who bear a name that will still live in the mouths of
men when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is not meet that
you bare your head before the fleeting fames and dignities of a
day--cover yourself!" And truly he looked right fine and princely when he
said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of Rheims be brought; and
when he was come, and stood bent low and bare, the King said to him,
"These two are guests of France;" and bade him use them hospitably.
I may as well say now as later, that Papa D'Arc and Laxart were stopping
in that little Zebra inn, and that there they remained. Finer quarters
were offered them by the Bailly, also public distinctions and brave
entertainment; but they were frightened at these projects, they being
only humble and ignorant peasants; so they begged off, and had peace.
They could not have enjoyed such things. Poor souls, they did not even
know what to do with their hands, and it took all their attention to keep
from treading on them. The Bailly did the best he could in the
circumstances. He made the innkeeper place a whole floor at their
disposal, and told him to provide everything they might desire, and
charge all to the city. Also the Bailly gave them a horse apiece and
furnishings; which so overwhelmed them with pride and delight and
astonishment that they couldn't speak a word; for in their lives they had
never dreamed of wealth like this, and could not believe, at first, that
the horses were real and would not dissolve to a mist and blow away. They
could not unglue their minds from those grandeurs, and were always
wrenching the conversation out of its groove and dragging the matter of
animals into it, so that they could say "my horse" here, and "my horse"
there and yonder and all around, and taste the words and lick their chops
over them, and spread their legs and hitch their thumbs in their armpits,
and feel as the good God feels when He looks out on His fleets of
constellations plowing the awful deeps of space and reflects with
satisfaction that they are His--all His. Well, they were the happiest old
children one ever saw, and the simplest.
The city gave a grand banquet to the King and Joan in mid-afternoon, and
to the Court and the Grand Staff; and about the middle of it Pere D'Arc
and Laxart were sent for, but would not venture until it was promised
that they might sit in a gallery and be all by themselves and see all
that was to be seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there and
looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and were moved till the tears
ran down their cheeks to see the unbelievable honors that were paid to
their small darling, and how naively serene and unafraid she sat there
with those consuming glories beating upon her.
But at last her serenity was broken up. Yes, it stood the strain of the
King's gracious speech; and of D'Alencon's praiseful words, and the
Bastard's; and even La Hire's thunder-blast, which took the place by
storm; but at last, as I have said, they brought a force to bear which
was too strong for her. For at the close the King put up his hand to
command silence, and so waited, with his hand up, till every sound was
dead and it was as if one could almost the stillness, so profound it
was. Then out of some remote corner of that vast place there rose a
plaintive voice, and in tones most tender and sweet and rich came
floating through that enchanted hush our poor old simple song "L'Arbre
Fee Bourlemont!" and then Joan broke down and put her face in her hands
and cried. Yes, you see, all in a moment the pomps and grandeurs
dissolved away and she was a little child again herding her sheep with
the tranquil pastures stretched about her, and war and wounds and blood
and death and the mad frenzy and turmoil of battle a dream. Ah, that
shows you the power of music, that magician of magicians, who lifts his
wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the
phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.
That was the King's invention, that sweet and dear surprise. Indeed, he
had fine things hidden away in his nature, though one seldom got a
glimpse of them, with that scheming Tremouille and those others always
standing in the light, and he so indolently content to save himself fuss
and argument and let them have their way.
At the fall of night we the Domremy contingent of the personal staff were
with the father and uncle at the inn, in their private parlor, brewing
generous drinks and breaking ground for a homely talk about Domremy and
the neighbors, when a large parcel arrived from Joan to be kept till she
came; and soon she came herself and sent her guard away, saying she would
take one of her father's rooms and sleep under his roof, and so be at
home again. We of the staff rose and stood, as was meet, until she made
us sit. Then she turned and saw that the two old men had gotten up too,
and were standing in an embarrassed and unmilitary way; which made her
want to laugh, but she kept it in, as not wishing to hurt them; and got
them to their seats and snuggled down between them, and took a hand of
each of them upon her knees and nestled her own hands in them, and said:
"Now we will nave no more ceremony, but be kin and playmates as in other
times; for I am done with the great wars now, and you two will take me
home with you, and I shall see--" She stopped, and for a moment her happy
face sobered, as if a doubt or a presentiment had flitted through her
mind; then it cleared again, and she said, with a passionate yearning,
"Oh, if the day were but come and we could start!"
The old father was surprised, and said:
"Why, child, are you in earnest? Would you leave doing these wonders that
make you to be praised by everybody while there is still so much glory to
be won; and would you go out from this grand comradeship with princes and
generals to be a drudging villager again and a nobody? It is not
rational."
"No," said the uncle, Laxart, "it is amazing to hear, and indeed not
understandable. It is a stranger thing to hear her say she will stop the
soldiering that it was to hear her say she would begin it; and I who
speak to you can say in all truth that that was the strangest word that
ever I had heard till this day and hour. I would it could be explained."
"It is not difficult," said Joan. "I was not ever fond of wounds and
suffering, nor fitted by my nature to inflict them; and quarrelings did
always distress me, and noise and tumult were against my liking, my
disposition being toward peace and quietness, and love for all things
that have life; and being made like this, how could I bear to think of
wars and blood, and the pain that goes with them, and the sorrow and
mourning that follow after? But by his angels God laid His great commands
upon me, and could I disobey? I did as I was bid. Did He command me to do
many things? No; only two: to raise the siege of Orleans, and crown the
King at Rheims. The task is finished, and I am free. Has ever a poor
soldier fallen in my sight, whether friend or foe, and I not felt the
pain in my own body, and the grief of his home-mates in my own heart? No,
not one; and, oh, it is such bliss to know that my release is won, and
that I shall not any more see these cruel things or suffer these tortures
of the mind again! Then why should I not go to my village and be as I was
before? It is heaven! and ye wonder that I desire it. Ah, ye are
men--just men! My mother would understand."
They didn't quite know what to say; so they sat still awhile, looking
pretty vacant. Then old D'Arc said:
"Yes, your mother--that is true. I never saw such a woman. She worries,
and worries, and worries; and wakes nights, and lies so, thinking--that
is, worrying; worrying about you. And when the night storms go raging
along, she moans and says, 'Ah, God pity her, she is out in this with her
poor wet soldiers.' And when the lightning glares and the thunder crashes
she wrings her hands and trembles, saying, 'It is like the awful cannon
and the flash, and yonder somewhere she is riding down upon the spouting
guns and I not there to protect her."
"Ah, poor mother, it is pity, it is pity!"
"Yes, a most strange woman, as I have noticed a many times. When there is
news of a victory and all the village goes mad with pride and joy, she
rushes here and there in a maniacal frenzy till she finds out the one
only thing she cares to know--that you are safe; then down she goes on
her knees in the dirt and praises God as long as there is any breath left
in her body; and all on your account, for she never mentions the battle
once. And always she says, 'Now it is over--now France is saved--now she
will come home'--and always is disappointed and goes about mourning."
"Don't, father! it breaks my heart. I will be so good to her when I get
home. I will do her work for her, and be her comfort, and she shall not
suffer any more through me."
There was some more talk of this sort, then Uncle Laxart said:
"You have done the will of God, dear, and are quits; it is true, and none
may deny it; but what of the King? You are his best soldier; what if he
command you to stay?"
That was a crusher--and sudden! It took Joan a moment or two to recover
from the shock of it; then she said, quite simply and resignedly:
"The King is my Lord; I am his servant." She was silent and thoughtful a
little while, then she brightened up and said, cheerily, "But let us
drive such thoughts away--this is no time for them. Tell me about home."
So the two old gossips talked and talked; talked about everything and
everybody in the village; and it was good to hear. Joan out of her
kindness tried to get us into the conversation, but that failed, of
course. She was the Commander-in-Chief, we were nobodies; her name was
the mightiest in France, we were invisible atoms; she was the comrade of
princes and heroes, we of the humble and obscure; she held rank above all
Personages and all Puissances whatsoever in the whole earth, by right of
baring her commission direct from God. To put it in one word, she was
JOAN OF ARC--and when that is said, all is said. To us she was divine.
Between her and us lay the bridgeless abyss which that word implies. We
could not be familiar with her. No, you can see yourselves that that
would have been impossible.
And yet she was so human, too, and so good and kind and dear and loving
and cheery and charming and unspoiled and unaffected! Those are all the
words I think of now, but they are not enough; no, they are too few and
colorless and meager to tell it all, or tell the half. Those simple old
men didn't realize her; they couldn't; they had never known any people
but human beings, and so they had no other standard to measure her by. To
them, after their first little shyness had worn off, she was just a
girl--that was all. It was amazing. It made one shiver, sometimes, to see
how calm and easy and comfortable they were in her presence, and hear
them talk to her exactly as they would have talked to any other girl in
France.
Why, that simple old Laxart sat up there and droned out the most tedious
and empty tale one ever heard, and neither he nor Papa D'Arc ever gave a
thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or ever suspected that
that foolish tale was anything but dignified and valuable history. There
was not an atom of value in it; and whilst they thought it distressing
and pathetic, it was in fact not pathetic at all, but actually
ridiculous. At least it seemed so to me, and it seems so yet. Indeed, I
know it was, because it made Joan laugh; and the more sorrowful it got
the more it made her laugh; and the Paladin said that he could have
laughed himself if she had not been there, and Noel Rainguesson said the
same. It was about old Laxart going to a funeral there at Domremy two or
three weeks back. He had spots all over his face and hands, and he got
Joan to rub some healing ointment on them, and while she was doing it,
and comforting him, and trying to say pitying things to him, he told her
how it happened. And first he asked her if she remembered that black bull
calf that she left behind when she came away, and she said indeed she
did, and he was a dear, and she loved him so, and was he well?--and just
drowned him in questions about that creature. And he said it was a young
bull now, and very frisky; and he was to bear a principal hand at a
funeral; and she said, "The bull?" and he said, "No, myself"; but said
the bull did take a hand, but not because of his being invited, for he
wasn't; but anyway he was away over beyond the Fairy Tree, and fell
asleep on the grass with his Sunday funeral clothes on, and a long black
rag on his hat and hanging down his back; and when he woke he saw by the
sun how late it was, and not a moment to lose; and jumped up terribly
worried, and saw the young bull grazing there, and thought maybe he could
ride part way on him and gain time; so he tied a rope around the bull's
body to hold on by, and put a halter on him to steer with, and jumped on
and started; but it was all new to the bull, and he was discontented with
it, and scurried around and bellowed and reared and pranced, and Uncle
Laxart was satisfied, and wanted to get off and go by the next bull or
some other way that was quieter, but he didn't dare try; and it was
getting very warm for him, too, and disturbing and wearisome, and not
proper for Sunday; but by and by the bull lost all his temper, and went
tearing down the slope with his tail in the air and blowing in the most
awful way; and just in the edge of the village he knocked down some
beehives, and the bees turned out and joined the excursion, and soared
along in a black cloud that nearly hid those other two from sight, and
prodded them both, and jabbed them and speared them and spiked them, and
made them bellow and shriek, and shriek and bellow; and here they came
roaring through the village like a hurricane, and took the funeral
procession right in the center, and sent that section of it sprawling,
and galloped over it, and the rest scattered apart and fled screeching in
every direction, every person with a layer of bees on him, and not a rag
of that funeral left but the corpse; and finally the bull broke for the
river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle Laxart out he was nearly
drowned, and his face looked like a pudding with raisins in it. And then
he turned around, this old simpleton, and looked a long time in a dazed
way at Joan where she had her face in a cushion, dying, apparently, and
says:
"What do you reckon she is laughing at?"
And old D'Arc stood looking at her the same way, sort of absently
scratching his head; but had to give it up, and said he didn't
know--"must have been something that happened when we weren't noticing."
Yes, both of those old people thought that that tale was pathetic;
whereas to my mind it was purely ridiculous, and not in any way valuable
to any one. It seemed so to me then, and it seems so to me yet. And as
for history, it does not resemble history; for the office of history is
to furnish serious and important facts that teach; whereas this strange
and useless event teaches nothing; nothing that I can see, except not to
ride a bull to a funeral; and surely no reflecting person needs to be
taught that.
37 Again to Arms
NOW THESE were nobles, you know, by decree of the King!--these precious
old infants. But they did not realize it; they could not be called
conscious of it; it was an abstraction, a phantom; to them it had no
substance; their minds could not take hold of it. No, they did not bother
about their nobility; they lived in their horses. The horses were solid;
they were visible facts, and would make a mighty stir in Domremy.
Presently something was said about the Coronation, and old D'Arc said it
was going to be a grand thing to be able to say, when they got home, that
they were present in the very town itself when it happened. Joan looked
troubled, and said:
"Ah, that reminds me. You were here and you didn't send me word. In the
town, indeed! Why, you could have sat with the other nobles, and ben
welcome; and could have looked upon the crowning itself, and carried that
home to tell. Ah, why did you use me so, and send me no word?"
The old father was embarrassed, now, quite visibly embarrassed, and had
the air of one who does not quite know what to say. But Joan was looking
up in his face, her hands upon his shoulders--waiting. He had to speak;
so presently he drew her to his breast, which was heaving with emotion;
and he said, getting out his words with difficulty:
"There, hide your face, child, and let your old father humble himself and
make his confession. I--I--don't you see, don't you understand?--I could
not know that these grandeurs would not turn your young head--it would be
only natural. I might shame you before these great per--"
"Father!"
"And then I was afraid, as remembering that cruel thing I said once in my
sinful anger. Oh, appointed of God to be a soldier, and the greatest in
the land! and in my ignorant anger I said I would drown you with my own
hands if you unsexed yourself and brought shame to your name and family.
Ah, how could I ever have said it, and you so good and dear and innocent!
I was afraid; for I was guilty. You understand it now, my child, and you
forgive?"
Do you see? Even that poor groping old land-crab, with his skull full of
pulp, had pride. Isn't it wonderful? And more--he had conscience; he had
a sense of right and wrong, such as it was; he was able to find remorse.
It looks impossible, it looks incredible, but it is not. I believe that
some day it will be found out that peasants are people. Yes, beings in a
great many respects like ourselves. And I believe that some day they will
find this out, too--and then! Well, then I think they will rise up and
demand to be regarded as part of the race, and that by consequence there
will be trouble. Whenever one sees in a book or in a king's proclamation
those words "the nation," they bring before us the upper classes; only
those; we know no other "nation"; for us and the kings no other "nation"
exists. But from the day that I saw old D'Arc the peasant acting and
feeling just as I should have acted and felt myself, I have carried the
conviction in my heart that our peasants are not merely animals, beasts
of burden put here by the good God to produce food and comfort for the
"nation," but something more and better. You look incredulous. Well, that
is your training; it is the training of everybody; but as for me, I thank
that incident for giving me a better light, and I have never forgotten
it.
Let me see--where was I? One's mind wanders around here and there and
yonder, when one is old. I think I said Joan comforted him. Certainly,
that is what she would do--there was no need to say that. She coaxed him
and petted him and caressed him, and laid the memory of that old hard
speech of his to rest. Laid it to rest until she should be dead. Then he
would remember it again--yes, yes! Lord, how those things sting, and
burn, and gnaw--the things which we did against the innocent dead! And we
say in our anguish, "If they could only come back!" Which is all very
well to say, but, as far as I can see, it doesn't profit anything. In my
opinion the best way is not to do the thing in the first place. And I am
not alone in this; I have heard our two knights say the same thing; and a
man there in Orleans--no, I believe it was at Beaugency, or one of those
places--it seems more as if it was at Beaugency than the others--this man
said the same thing exactly; almost the same words; a dark man with a
cast in his eye and one leg shorter than the other. His name was--was--it
is singular that I can't call that man's name; I had it in my mind only a
moment ago, and I know it begins with--no, I don't remember what it
begins with; but never mind, let it go; I will think of it presently, and
then I will tell you.
Well, pretty soon the old father wanted to know how Joan felt when she
was in the thick of a battle, with the bright blades hacking and flashing
all around her, and the blows rapping and slatting on her shield, and
blood gushing on her from the cloven ghastly face and broken teeth of the
neighbor at her elbow, and the perilous sudden back surge of massed
horses upon a person when the front ranks give way before a heavy rush of
the enemy, and men tumble limp and groaning out of saddles all around,
and battle-flags falling from dead hands wipe across one's face and hide
the tossing turmoil a moment, and in the reeling and swaying and laboring
jumble one's horse's hoofs sink into soft substances and shrieks of pain
respond, and presently--panic! rush! swarm! flight! and death and hell
following after! And the old fellow got ever so much excited; and strode
up and down, his tongue going like a mill, asking question after question
and never waiting for an answer; and finally he stood Joan up in the
middle of the room and stepped off and scanned her critically, and said:
"No--I don't understand it. You are so little. So little and slender.
When you had your armor on, to-day, it gave one a sort of notion of it;
but in these pretty silks and velvets, you are only a dainty page, not a
league-striding war-colossus, moving in clouds and darkness and breathing
smoke and thunder. I would God I might see you at it and go tell your
mother! That would help her sleep, poor thing! Here--teach me the arts of
the soldier, that I may explain them to her."
And she did it. She gave him a pike, and put him through the manual of
arms; and made him do the steps, too. His marching was incredibly awkward
and slovenly, and so was his drill with the pike; but he didn't know it,
and was wonderfully pleased with himself, and mightily excited and
charmed with the ringing, crisp words of command. I am obliged to say
that if looking proud and happy when one is marching were sufficient, he
would have been the perfect soldier.
And he wanted a lesson in sword-play, and got it. But of course that was
beyond him; he was too old. It was beautiful to see Joan handle the
foils, but the old man was a bad failure. He was afraid of the things,
and skipped and dodged and scrambled around like a woman who has lost her
mind on account of the arrival of a bat. He was of no good as an
exhibition. But if La Hire had only come in, that would have been another
matter. Those two fenced often; I saw them many times. True, Joan was
easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for La Hire was
a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would see her
standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her
head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other--the old general
opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil
advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring
straight into hers--and all of a sudden she would give a spring forward,
and back again; and there she was, with the foil arched over her head as
before. La Hire had been hit, but all that the spectator saw of it was a
something like a thin flash of light in the air, but nothing distinct,
nothing definite.
We kept the drinkables moving, for that would please the Bailly and the
landlord; and old Laxart and D'Arc got to feeling quite comfortable, but
without being what you could call tipsy. They got out the presents which
they had been buying to carry home--humble things and cheap, but they
would be fine there, and welcome. And they gave to Joan a present from
Pere Fronte and one from her mother--the one a little leaden image of the
Holy Virgin, the other half a yard of blue silk ribbon; and she was as
pleased as a child; and touched, too, as one could see plainly enough.
Yes, she kissed those poor things over and over again, as if they had
been something costly and wonderful; and she pinned the Virgin on her
doublet, and sent for her helmet and tied the ribbon on that; first one
way, then another; then a new way, then another new way; and with each
effort perching the helmet on her hand and holding it off this way and
that, and canting her head to one side and then the other, examining the
effect, as a bird does when it has got a new bug. And she said she could
almost wish she was going to the wars again; for then she would fight
with the better courage, as having always with her something which her
mother's touch had blessed.
Old Laxart said he hoped she would go to the wars again, but home first,
for that all the people there were cruel anxious to see her--and so he
went on:
"They are proud of you, dear. Yes, prouder than any village ever was of
anybody before. And indeed it is right and rational; for it is the first
time a village has ever had anybody like you to be proud of and call its
own. And it is strange and beautiful how they try to give your name to
every creature that has a sex that is convenient. It is but half a year
since you began to be spoken of and left us, and so it is surprising to
see how many babies there are already in that region that are named for
you. First it was just Joan; then it was Joan-Orleans; then
Joan-Orleans-Beaugency-Patay; and now the next ones will have a lot of
towns and the Coronation added, of course. Yes, and the animals the same.
They know how you love animals, and so they try to do you honor and show
their love for you by naming all those creatures after you; insomuch that
if a body should step out and call "Joan of Arc--come!" there would be a
landslide of cats and all such things, each supposing it was the one
wanted, and all willing to take the benefit of the doubt, anyway, for the
sake of the food that might be on delivery. The kitten you left
behind--the last stray you fetched home--bears you name, now, and belongs
to Pere Fronte, and is the pet and pride of the village; and people have
come miles to look at it and pet it and stare at it and wonder over it
because it was Joan of Arc's cat. Everybody will tell you that; and one
day when a stranger threw a stone at it, not knowing it was your cat, the
village rose against him as one man and hanged him! And but for Pere
Fronte--"
There was an interruption. It was a messenger from the King, bearing a
note for Joan, which I read to her, saying he had reflected, and had
consulted his other generals, and was obliged to ask her to remain at the
head of the army and withdraw her resignation. Also, would she come
immediately and attend a council of war? Straightway, at a little
distance, military commands and the rumble of drums broke on the still
night, and we knew that her guard was approaching.
Deep disappointment clouded her face for just one moment and no more--it
passed, and with it the homesick girl, and she was Joan of Arc,
Commander-in-Chief again, and ready for duty.
38 The King Cries "Forward!"
IN MY double quality of page and secretary I followed Joan to the
council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved goddess.
What was become of the volatile child that so lately was enchanted with a
ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress of a foolish
peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a bee-stung bull? One
may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no sign. She moved
straight to the council-table, and stood. Her glance swept from face to
face there, and where it fell, these lit it as with a torch, those it
scorched as with a brand. She knew where to strike. She indicated the
generals with a nod, and said:
"My business is not with you. You have not craved a council of war." Then
she turned toward the King's privy council, and continued: "No; it is
with you. A council of war! It is amazing. There is but one thing to do,
and only one, and lo, ye call a council of war! Councils of war have no
value but to decide between two or several doubtful courses. But a
council of war when there is only one course? Conceive of a man in a boat
and his family in the water, and he goes out among his friends to ask
what he would better do? A council of war, name of God! To determine
what?"
She stopped, and turned till her eyes rested upon the face of La
Tremouille; and so she stood, silent, measuring him, the excitement in
all faces burning steadily higher and higher, and all pulses beating
faster and faster; then she said, with deliberation:
"Every sane man--whose loyalty is to his King and not a show and a
pretense--knows that there is but one rational thing before us--the march
upon Paris!"
Down came the fist of La Hire with an approving crash upon the table. La
Tremouille turned white with anger, but he pulled himself firmly together
and held his peace. The King's lazy blood was stirred and his eye kindled
finely, for the spirit of war was away down in him somewhere, and a
frank, bold speech always found it and made it tingle gladsomely. Joan
waited to see if the chief minister might wish to defend his position;
but he was experienced and wise, and not a man to waste his forces where
the current was against him. He would wait; the King's private ear would
be at his disposal by and by.
That pious fox the Chancellor of France took the word now. He washed his
soft hands together, smiling persuasively, and said to Joan:
"Would it be courteous, your Excellency, to move abruptly from here
without waiting for an answer from the Duke of Burgundy? You may not know
that we are negotiating with his Highness, and that there is likely to be
a fortnight's truce between us; and on his part a pledge to deliver Paris
into our hands without the cost of a blow or the fatigue of a march
thither."
Joan turned to him and said, gravely:
"This is not a confessional, my lord. You were not obliged to expose that
shame here."
The Chancellor's face reddened, and he retorted:
"Shame? What is there shameful about it?"
Joan answered in level, passionless tones:
"One may describe it without hunting far for words. I knew of this poor
comedy, my lord, although it was not intended that I should know. It is
to the credit of the devisers of it that they tried to conceal it--this
comedy whose text and impulse are describable in two words."
The Chancellor spoke up with a fine irony in his manner:
"Indeed? And will your Excellency be good enough to utter them?"
"Cowardice and treachery!"
The fists of all the generals came down this time, and again the King's
eye sparkled with pleasure. The Chancellor sprang to his feet and
appealed to his Majesty:
"Sire, I claim your protection."
But the King waved him to his seat again, saying:
"Peace. She had a right to be consulted before that thing was undertaken,
since it concerned war as well as politics. It is but just that she be
heard upon it now."
The Chancellor sat down trembling with indignation, and remarked to Joan:
"Out of charity I will consider that you did not know who devised this
measure which you condemn in so candid language."
"Save your charity for another occasion, my lord," said Joan, as calmly
as before. "Whenever anything is done to injure the interests and degrade
the honor of France, all but the dead know how to name the two
conspirators-in-chief--"
"Sir, sire! this insinuation--"
"It is not an insinuation, my lord," said Joan, placidly, "it is a
charge. I bring it against the King's chief minister and his Chancellor."
Both men were on their feet now, insisting that the King modify Joan's
frankness; but he was not minded to do it. His ordinary councils were
stale water--his spirit was drinking wine, now, and the taste of it was
good. He said:
"Sit--and be patient. What is fair for one must in fairness be allowed
the other. Consider--and be just. When have you two spared her? What dark
charges and harsh names have you withheld when you spoke of her?" Then he
added, with a veiled twinkle in his eyes, "If these are offenses I see no
particular difference between them, except that she says her hard things
to your faces, whereas you say yours behind her back."
He was pleased with that neat shot and the way it shriveled those two
people up, and made La Hire laugh out loud and the other generals softly
quake and chuckle. Joan tranquilly resumed:
"From the first, we have been hindered by this policy of shilly-shally;
this fashion of counseling and counseling and counseling where no
counseling is needed, but only fighting. We took Orleans on the 8th of
May, and could have cleared the region round about in three days and
saved the slaughter of Patay. We could have been in Rheims six weeks ago,
and in Paris now; and would see the last Englishman pass out of France in
half a year. But we struck no blow after Orleans, but went off into the
country--what for? Ostensibly to hold councils; really to give Bedford
time to send reinforcements to Talbot--which he did; and Patay had to be
fought. After Patay, more counseling, more waste of precious time. Oh, my
King, I would that you would be persuaded!" She began to warm up, now.
"Once more we have our opportunity. If we rise and strike, all is well.
Bid me march upon Paris. In twenty days it shall be yours, and in six
months all France! Here is half a year's work before us; if this chance
be wasted, I give you twenty years to do it in. Speak the word, O gentle
King--speak but the one--"
"I cry you mercy!" interrupted the Chancellor, who saw a dangerous
enthusiasm rising in the King's face. "March upon Paris? Does your
Excellency forget that the way bristles with English strongholds?"
"That for your English strongholds!" and Joan snapped her fingers
scornfully. "Whence have we marched in these last days? From Gien. And
whither? To Rheims. What bristled between? English strongholds. What are
they now? French ones--and they never cost a blow!" Here applause broke
out from the group of generals, and Joan had to pause a moment to let it
subside. "Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now French ones
bristle behind us. What is the argument? A child can read it. The
strongholds between us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed of
English, but by the same breed as those others--with the same fears, the
same questionings, the same weaknesses, the same disposition to see the
heavy hand of God descending upon them. We have but to march!--on the
instant--and they are ours, Paris is ours, France is ours! Give the word,
O my King, command your servant to--"
"Stay!" cried the Chancellor. "It would be madness to put our affront
upon his Highness the Duke of Burgundy. By the treaty which we have every
hope to make with him--"
"Oh, the treaty which we hope to make with him! He has scorned you for
years, and defied you. Is it your subtle persuasions that have softened
his manners and beguiled him to listen to proposals? No; it was
blows!--the blows which we gave him! That is the only teaching that that
sturdy rebel can understand. What does he care for wind? The treaty which
we hope to make with him--alack! He deliver Paris! There is no pauper in
the land that is less able to do it. He deliver Paris! Ah, but that would
make great Bedford smile! Oh, the pitiful pretext! the blind can see that
this thin pour-parler with its fifteen-day truce has no purpose but to
give Bedford time to hurry forward his forces against us. More
treachery--always treachery! We call a council of war--with nothing to
council about; but Bedford calls no council to teach him what our course
is. He knows what he would do in our place. He would hang his traitors
and march upon Paris! O gentle King, rouse! The way is open, Paris
beckons, France implores, Speak and we--"
"Sire, it is madness, sheer madness! Your Excellency, we cannot, we must
not go back from what we have done; we have proposed to treat, we must
treat with the Duke of Burgundy."
"And we will!" said Joan.
"Ah? How?"
"At the point of the lance!"
The house rose, to a man--all that had French hearts--and let go a crack
of applause--and kept it up; and in the midst of it one heard La Hire
growl out: "At the point of the lance! By God, that is music!" The King
was up, too, and drew his sword, and took it by the blade and strode to
Joan and delivered the hilt of it into her hand, saying:
"There, the King surrenders. Carry it to Paris."
And so the applause burst out again, and the historical council of war
that has bred so many legends was over.
Chapter 39 We Win, But the King Balks
IT WAS away past midnight, and had been a tremendous day in the matter of
excitement and fatigue, but that was no matter to Joan when there was
business on hand. She did not think of bed. The generals followed her to
her official quarters, and she delivered her orders to them as fast as
she could talk, and they sent them off to their different commands as
fast as delivered; wherefore the messengers galloping hither and thither
raised a world of clatter and racket in the still streets; and soon were
added to this the music of distant bugles and the roll of drums--notes of
preparation; for the vanguard would break camp at dawn.
The generals were soon dismissed, but I wasn't; nor Joan; for it was my
turn to work, now. Joan walked the floor and dictated a summons to the
Duke of Burgundy to lay down his arms and make peace and exchange pardons
with the King; or, if he must fight, go fight the Saracens.
"Pardonnez-vous l'un ... l'autre de bon coeligeur, entierement, ainsi que
doivent faire loyaux chretiens, et, s'il vous plait de guerroyer, allez
contre les Sarrasins." It was long, but it was good, and had the sterling
ring to it. It is my opinion that it was as fine and simple and
straightforward and eloquent a state paper as she ever uttered.
It was delivered into the hands of a courier, and he galloped away with
it. The Joan dismissed me, and told me to go to the inn and stay, and in
the morning give to her father the parcel which she had left there. It
contained presents for the Domremy relatives and friends and a peasant
dress which she had bought for herself. She said she would say good-by to
her father and uncle in the morning if it should still be their purpose
to go, instead of tarrying awhile to see the city.
I didn't say anything, of course, but I could have said that wild horses
couldn't keep those men in that town half a day. They waste the glory of
being the first to carry the great news to Domremy--the taxes remitted
forever!--and hear the bells clang and clatter, and the people cheer and
shout? Oh, not they. Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events
which in a vague way these men understood to be colossal; but they were
colossal mists, films, abstractions; this was a gigantic reality!
When I got there, do you suppose they were abed! Quite the reverse. They
and the rest were as mellow as mellow could be; and the Paladin was doing
his battles in great style, and the old peasants were endangering the
building with their applause. He was doing Patay now; and was bending his
big frame forward and laying out the positions and movements with a rake
here and a rake there of his formidable sword on the floor, and the
peasants were stooped over with their hands on their spread knees
observing with excited eyes and ripping out ejaculations of wonder and
admiration all along:
"Yes, here we were, waiting--waiting for the word; our horses fidgeting
and snorting and dancing to get away, we lying back on the bridles till
our bodies fairly slanted to the rear; the word rang out at last--'Go!'
and we went!
"Went? There was nothing like it ever seen! Where we swept by squads of
scampering English, the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in piles
and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of Fastolfe's frantic
battle-corps and tore through it like a hurricane, leaving a causeway of
the dead stretching far behind; no tarrying, no slacking rein, but on!
on! on! far yonder in the distance lay our prey--Talbot and his host
looming vast and dark like a storm-cloud brooding on the sea! Down we
swooped upon them, glooming all the air with a quivering pall of dead
leaves flung up by the whirlwind of our flight. In another moment we
should have struck them as world strikes world when disorbited
constellations crash into the Milky way, but by misfortune and the
inscrutable dispensation of God I was recognized! Talbot turned white,
and shouting, 'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of
Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the middle of his horse's
entrails, and fled the field with his billowing multitudes at his back! I
could have cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw reproach in
the eyes of her Excellency, and was bitterly ashamed. I had caused what
seemed an irreparable disaster. Another might have gone aside to grieve,
as not seeing any way to mend it; but I thank God I am not of those.
Great occasions only summon as with a trumpet-call the slumbering
reserves of my intellect. I saw my opportunity in an instant--in the next
I was away! Through the woods I vanished--fst!--like an extinguished
light! Away around through the curtaining forest I sped, as if on wings,
none knowing what was become of me, none suspecting my design. Minute
after minute passed, on and on I flew; on, and still on; and at last with
a great cheer I flung my Banner to the breeze and burst out in front of
Talbot! Oh, it was a mighty thought! That weltering chaos of distracted
men whirled and surged backward like a tidal wave which has struck a
continent, and the day was ours! Poor helpless creatures, they were in a
trap; they were surrounded; they could not escape to the rear, for there
was our army; they could not escape to the front, for there was I. Their
hearts shriveled in their bodies, their hands fell listless at their
sides. They stood still, and at our leisure we slaughtered them to a man;
all except Talbot and Fastolfe, whom I saved and brought away, one under
each arm."
Well, there is no denying it, the Paladin was in great form that night.
Such style! such noble grace of gesture, such grandeur of attitude, such
energy when he got going! such steady rise, on such sure wing, such
nicely graduated expenditures of voice according to the weight of the
matter, such skilfully calculated approaches to his surprises and
explosions, such belief-compelling sincerity of tone and manner, such a
climaxing peal from his brazen lungs, and such a lightning-vivid picture
of his mailed form and flaunting banner when he burst out before that
despairing army! And oh, the gentle art of the last half of his last
sentence--delivered in the careless and indolent tone of one who has
finished his real story, and only adds a colorless and inconsequential
detail because it has happened to occur to him in a lazy way.
It was a marvel to see those innocent peasants. Why, they went all to
pieces with enthusiasm, and roared out applauses fit to raise the roof
and wake the dead. When they had cooled down at last and there was
silence but for the heaving and panting, old Laxart said, admiringly:
"As it seems to me, you are an army in your single person."
"Yes, that is what he is," said Noel Rainguesson, convincingly. "He is a
terror; and not just in this vicinity. His mere name carries a shudder
with it to distant lands--just he mere name; and when he frowns, the
shadow of it falls as far as Rome, and the chickens go to roost an hour
before schedule time. Yes; and some say--"
"Noel Rainguesson, you are preparing yourself for trouble. I will say
just one word to you, and it will be to your advantage to--"
I saw that the usual thing had got a start. No man could prophesy when it
would end. So I delivered Joan's message and went off to bed.
Joan made her good-byes to those old fellows in the morning, with loving
embraces and many tears, and with a packed multitude for sympathizers,
and they rode proudly away on their precious horses to carry their great
news home. I had seen better riders, some will say that; for horsemanship
was a new art to them.
The vanguard moved out at dawn and took the road, with bands braying and
banners flying; the second division followed at eight. Then came the
Burgundian ambassadors, and lost us the rest of that day and the whole of
the next. But Joan was on hand, and so they had their journey for their
pains. The rest of us took the road at dawn, next morning, July 20th. And
got how far? Six leagues. Tremouille was getting in his sly work with the
vacillating King, you see. The King stopped at St. Marcoul and prayed
three days. Precious time lost--for us; precious time gained for Bedford.
He would know how to use it.
We could not go on without the King; that would be to leave him in the
conspirators' camp. Joan argued, reasoned, implored; and at last we got
under way again.
Joan's prediction was verified. It was not a campaign, it was only
another holiday excursion. English strongholds lined our route; they
surrendered without a blow; we garrisoned them with Frenchmen and passed
on. Bedford was on the march against us with his new army by this time,
and on the 25th of July the hostile forces faced each other and made
preparation for battle; but Bedford's good judgment prevailed, and he
turned and retreated toward Paris. Now was our chance. Our men were in
great spirits.
Will you believe it? Our poor stick of a King allowed his worthless
advisers to persuade him to start back for Gien, whence he had set out
when we first marched for Rheims and the Coronation! And we actually did
start back. The fifteen-day truce had just been concluded with the Duke
of Burgundy, and we would go and tarry at Gien until he should deliver
Paris to us without a fight.
We marched to Bray; then the King changed his mind once more, and with it
his face toward Paris. Joan dictated a letter to the citizens of Rheims
to encourage them to keep heart in spite of the truce, and promising to
stand by them. She furnished them the news herself that the Kin had made
this truce; and in speaking of it she was her usual frank self. She said
she was not satisfied with it, and didn't know whether she would keep it
or not; that if she kept it, it would be solely out of tenderness for the
King's honor. All French children know those famous words. How naive they
are! "De cette treve qui a ete faite, je ne suis pas contente, et je ne
sais si je la tiendrai. Si je la tiens, ce sera seulement pour garder
l'honneur du roi." But in any case, she said, she would not allow the
blood royal to be abused, and would keep the army in good order and ready
for work at the end of the truce.
Poor child, to have to fight England, Burgundy, and a French conspiracy
all at the same time--it was too bad. She was a match for the others, but
a conspiracy--ah, nobody is a match for that, when the victim that is to
be injured is weak and willing. It grieved her, these troubled days, to
be so hindered and delayed and baffled, and at times she was sad and the
tears lay near the surface. Once, talking with her good old faithful
friend and servant, the Bastard of Orleans, she said:
"Ah, if it might but please God to let me put off this steel raiment and
go back to my father and my mother, and tend my sheep again with my
sister and my brothers, who would be so glad to see me!"
By the 12th of August we were camped near Dampmartin. Later we had a
brush with Bedford's rear-guard, and had hopes of a big battle on the
morrow, but Bedford and all his force got away in the night and went on
toward Paris.
Charles sent heralds and received the submission of Beauvais. The Bishop
Pierre Cauchon, that faithful friend and slave of the English, was not
able to prevent it, though he did his best. He was obscure then, but his
name was to travel round the globe presently, and live forever in the
curses of France! Bear with me now, while I spit in fancy upon his grave.
Compiegne surrendered, and hauled down the English flag. On the 14th we
camped two leagues from Senlis. Bedford turned and approached, and took
up a strong position. We went against him, but all our efforts to beguile
him out from his intrenchments failed, though he had promised us a duel
in the open field. Night shut down. Let him look our for the morning! But
in the morning he was gone again.
We entered Compiegne the 18th of August, turning out the English garrison
and hoisting our own flag.
On the 23d Joan gave command to move upon Paris. The King and the clique
were not satisfied with this, and retired sulking to Senlis, which had
just surrendered. Within a few days many strong places submitted--Creil,
Pont-Saint-Maxence, Choisy, Gournay-sur-Aronde, Remy, Le
Neufville-en-Hez, Moguay, Chantilly, Saintines. The English power was
tumbling, crash after crash! And still the King sulked and disapproved,
and was afraid of our movement against the capital.
On the 26th of August, 1429, Joan camped at St. Denis; in effect, under
the walls of Paris.
And still the King hung back and was afraid. If we could but have had him
there to back us with his authority! Bedford had lost heart and decided
to waive resistance and go an concentrate his strength in the best and
loyalest province remaining to him--Normandy. Ah, if we could only have
persuaded the King to come and countenance us with his presence and
approval at this supreme moment!
40 Treachery Conquers Joan
COURIER after courier was despatched to the King, and he promised to
come, but didn't. The Duke d'Alencon went to him and got his promise
again, which he broke again. Nine days were lost thus; then he came,
arriving at St. Denis September 7th.
Meantime the enemy had begun to take heart: the spiritless conduct of the
King could have no other result. Preparations had now been made to defend
the city. Joan's chances had been diminished, but she and her generals
considered them plenty good enough yet. Joan ordered the attack for eight
o'clock next morning, and at that hour it began.
Joan placed her artillery and began to pound a strong work which
protected the gate St. Honor,. When it was sufficiently crippled the
assault was sounded at noon, and it was carried by storm. Then we moved
forward to storm the gate itself, and hurled ourselves against it again
and again, Joan in the lead with her standard at her side, the smoke
enveloping us in choking clouds, and the missiles flying over us and
through us as thick as hail.
In the midst of our last assault, which would have carried the gate sure
and given us Paris and in effect France, Joan was struck down by a
crossbow bolt, and our men fell back instantly and almost in a panic--for
what were they without her? She was the army, herself.
Although disabled, she refused to retire, and begged that a new assault
be made, saying it must win; and adding, with the battle-light rising in
her eyes, "I will take Paris now or die!" She had to be carried away by
force, and this was done by Gaucourt and the Duke d'Alencon.
But her spirits were at the very top notch, now. She was brimming with
enthusiasm. She said she would be carried before the gate in the morning,
and in half an hour Paris would be ours without any question. She could
have kept her word. About this there was no doubt. But she forgot one
factor--the King, shadow of that substance named La Tremouille. The King
forbade the attempt!
You see, a new Embassy had just come from the Duke of Burgundy, and
another sham private trade of some sort was on foot.
You would know, without my telling you, that Joan's heart was nearly
broken. Because of the pain of her wound and the pain at her heart she
slept little that night. Several times the watchers heard muffled sobs
from the dark room where she lay at St. Denis, and many times the
grieving words, "It could have been taken!--it could have been taken!"
which were the only ones she said.
She dragged herself out of bed a day later with a new hope. D'Alencon had
thrown a bridge across the Seine near St. Denis. Might she not cross by
that and assault Paris at another point? But the King got wind of it and
broke the bridge down! And more--he declared the campaign ended! And more
still--he had made a new truce and a long one, in which he had agreed to
leave Paris unthreatened and unmolested, and go back to the Loire whence
he had come!
Joan of Arc, who had never been defeated by the enemy, was defeated by
her own King. She had said once that all she feared for her cause was
treachery. It had struck its first blow now. She hung up her white armor
in the royal basilica of St. Denis, and went and asked the King to
relieve her of her functions and let her go home. As usual, she was wise.
Grand combinations, far-reaching great military moves were at an end,
now; for the future, when the truce should end, the war would be merely a
war of random and idle skirmishes, apparently; work suitable for
subalterns, and not requiring the supervision of a sublime military
genius. But the King would not let her go. The truce did not embrace all
France; there were French strongholds to be watched and preserved; he
would need her. Really, you see, Tremouille wanted to keep her where he
could balk and hinder her.
Now came her Voices again. They said, "Remain at St. Denis." There was no
explanation. They did not say why. That was the voice of God; it took
precedence of the command of the King; Joan resolved to stay. But that
filled La Tremouille with dread. She was too tremendous a force to be
left to herself; she would surely defeat all his plans. He beguiled the
King to use compulsion. Joan had to submit--because she was wounded and
helpless. In the Great Trial she said she was carried away against her
will; and that if she had not been wounded it could not have been
accomplished. Ah, she had a spirit, that slender girl! a spirit to brave
all earthly powers and defy them. We shall never know why the Voices
ordered her to stay. We only know this; that if she could have obeyed,
the history of France would not be as it now stands written in the books.
Yes, well we know that.
On the 13th of September the army, sad and spiritless, turned its face
toward the Loire, and marched--without music! Yes, one noted that detail.
It was a funeral march; that is what it was. A long, dreary funeral
march, with never a shout or a cheer; friends looking on in tears, all
the way, enemies laughing. We reached Gien at last--that place whence we
had set out on our splendid march toward Rheims less than three months
before, with flags flying, bands playing, the victory-flush of Patay
glowing in our faces, and the massed multitudes shouting and praising and
giving us godspeed. There was a dull rain falling now, the day was dark,
the heavens mourned, the spectators were few, we had no welcome but the
welcome of silence, and pity, and tears.
Then the King disbanded that noble army of heroes; it furled its flags,
it stored its arms: the disgrace of France was complete. La Tremouille
wore the victor's crown; Joan of Arc, the unconquerable, was conquered.
41 The Maid Will March No More
YES, IT was as I have said: Joan had Paris and France in her grip, and
the Hundred Years' War under her heel, and the King made her open her
fist and take away her foot.
Now followed about eight months of drifting about with the King and his
council, and his gay and showy and dancing and flirting and hawking and
frolicking and serenading and dissipating court--drifting from town to
town and from castle to castle--a life which was pleasant to us of the
personal staff, but not to Joan. However, she only saw it, she didn't
live it. The King did his sincerest best to make her happy, and showed a
most kind and constant anxiety in this matter.
All others had to go loaded with the chains of an exacting court
etiquette, but she was free, she was privileged. So that she paid her
duty to the King once a day and passed the pleasant word, nothing further
was required of her. Naturally, then, she made herself a hermit, and
grieved the weary days through in her own apartments, with her thoughts
and devotions for company, and the planning of now forever unrealizable
military combinations for entertainment. In fancy she moved bodies of men
from this and that and the other point, so calculating the distances to
be covered, the time required for each body, and the nature of the
country to be traversed, as to have them appear in sight of each other on
a given day or at a given hour and concentrate for battle. It was her
only game, her only relief from her burden of sorrow and inaction. She
played it hour after hour, as others play chess; and lost herself in it,
and so got repose for her mind and healing for her heart.
She never complained, of course. It was not her way. She was the sort
that endure in silence.
But--she was a caged eagle just the same, and pined for the free air and
the alpine heights and the fierce joys of the storm.
France was full of rovers--disbanded soldiers ready for anything that
might turn up. Several times, at intervals, when Joan's dull captivity
grew too heavy to bear, she was allowed to gather a troop of cavalry and
make a health-restoring dash against the enemy. These things were a bath
to her spirits.
It was like old times, there at Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, to see her lead
assault after assault, be driven back again and again, but always rally
and charge anew, all in a blaze of eagerness and delight; till at last
the tempest of missiles rained so intolerably thick that old D'Aulon, who
was wounded, sounded the retreat (for the King had charged him on his
head to let no harm come to Joan); and away everybody rushed after
him--as he supposed; but when he turned and looked, there were we of the
staff still hammering away; wherefore he rode back and urged her to come,
saying she was mad to stay there with only a dozen men. Her eye danced
merrily, and she turned upon him crying out:
"A dozen men! name of God, I have fifty-thousand, and will never budge
till this place is taken!
"Sound the charge!"
Which he did, and over the walls we went, and the fortress was ours. Old
D'Aulon thought her mind was wandering; but all she meant was, that she
felt the might of fifty thousand men surging in her heart. It was a
fanciful expression; but, to my thinking, truer word was never said.
Then there was the affair near Lagny, where we charged the intrenched
Burgundians through the open field four times, the last time
victoriously; the best prize of it Franquet d'Arras, the free-booter and
pitiless scourge of the region roundabout.
Now and then other such affairs; and at last, away toward the end of May,
1430, we were in the neighborhood of Compiegne, and Joan resolved to go
to the help of that place, which was being besieged by the Duke of
Burgundy.
I had been wounded lately, and was not able to ride without help; but the
good Dwarf took me on behind him, and I held on to him and was safe
enough. We started at midnight, in a sullen downpour of warm rain, and
went slowly and softly and in dead silence, for we had to slip through
the enemy's lines. We were challenged only once; we made no answer, but
held our breath and crept steadily and stealthily along, and got through
without any accident. About three or half past we reached Compiegne, just
as the gray dawn was breaking in the east.
Joan set to work at once, and concerted a plan with Guillaume de Flavy,
captain of the city--a plan for a sortie toward evening against the
enemy, who was posted in three bodies on the other side of the Oise, in
the level plain. From our side one of the city gates communicated with a
bridge. The end of this bridge was defended on the other side of the
river by one of those fortresses called a boulevard; and this boulevard
also commanded a raised road, which stretched from its front across the
plain to the village of Marguy. A force of Burgundians occupied Marguy;
another was camped at Clairoix, a couple of miles above the raised road;
and a body of English was holding Venette, a mile and a half below it. A
kind of bow-and-arrow arrangement, you see; the causeway the arrow, the
boulevard at the feather-end of it, Marguy at the barb, Venette at one
end of the bow, Clairoix at the other.
Joan's plan was to go straight per causeway against Marguy, carry it by
assault, then turn swiftly upon Clairoix, up to the right, and capture
that camp in the same way, then face to the rear and be ready for heavy
work, for the Duke of Burgundy lay behind Clairoix with a reserve.
Flavy's lieutenant, with archers and the artillery of the boulevard, was
to keep the English troops from coming up from below and seizing the
causeway and cutting off Joan's retreat in case she should have to make
one. Also, a fleet of covered boats was to be stationed near the
boulevard as an additional help in case a retreat should become
necessary.
It was the 24th of May. At four in the afternoon Joan moved out at the
head of six hundred cavalry--on her last march in this life!
It breaks my heart. I had got myself helped up onto the walls, and from
there I saw much that happened, the rest was told me long afterward by
our two knights and other eye-witnesses. Joan crossed the bridge, and
soon left the boulevard behind her and went skimming away over the raised
road with her horsemen clattering at her heels. She had on a brilliant
silver-gilt cape over her armor, and I could see it flap and flare and
rise and fall like a little patch of white flame.
It was a bright day, and one could see far and wide over that plain. Soon
we saw the English force advancing, swiftly and in handsome order, the
sunlight flashing from its arms.
Joan crashed into the Burgundians at Marguy and was repulsed. Then she
saw the other Burgundians moving down from Clairoix. Joan rallied her men
and charged again, and was again rolled back. Two assaults occupy a good
deal of time--and time was precious here. The English were approaching
the road now from Venette, but the boulevard opened fire on them and they
were checked. Joan heartened her men with inspiring words and led them to
the charge again in great style. This time she carried Marguy with a
hurrah. Then she turned at once to the right and plunged into the plan
and struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving; then there was
heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each other backward
turn about and about, and victory inclining first to the one, then to the
other. Now all of a sudden thee was a panic on our side. Some say one
thing caused it, some another. Some say the cannonade made our front
ranks think retreat was being cut off by the English, some say the rear
ranks got the idea that Joan was killed. Anyway our men broke, and went
flying in a wild rout for the causeway. Joan tried to rally them and face
them around, crying to them that victory was sure, but it did no good,
they divided and swept by her like a wave. Old D'Aulon begged her to
retreat while there was yet a chance for safety, but she refused; so he
seized her horse's bridle and bore her along with the wreck and ruin in
spite of herself. And so along the causeway they came swarming, that wild
confusion of frenzied men and horses--and the artillery had to stop
firing, of course; consequently the English and Burgundians closed in in
safety, the former in front, the latter behind their prey. Clear to the
boulevard the French were washed in this enveloping inundation; and
there, cornered in an angle formed by the flank of the boulevard and the
slope of the causeway, they bravely fought a hopeless fight, and sank
down one by one.
Flavy, watching from the city wall, ordered the gate to be closed and the
drawbridge raised. This shut Joan out.
The little personal guard around her thinned swiftly. Both of our good
knights went down disabled; Joan's two brothers fell wounded; then Noel
Rainguesson--all wounded while loyally sheltering Joan from blows aimed
at her. When only the Dwarf and the Paladin were left, they would not
give up, but stood their ground stoutly, a pair of steel towers streaked
and splashed with blood; and where the ax of one fell, and the sword of
the other, an enemy gasped and died.
And so fighting, and loyal to their duty to the last, good simple souls,
they came to their honorable end. Peace to their memories! they were very
dear to me.
Then there was a cheer and a rush, and Joan, still defiant, still laying
about her with her sword, was seized by her cape and dragged from her
horse. She was borne away a prisoner to the Duke of Burgundy's camp, and
after her followed the victorious army roaring its joy.
The awful news started instantly on its round; from lip to lip it flew;
and wherever it came it struck the people as with a sort of paralysis;
and they murmured over and over again, as if they were talking to
themselves, or in their sleep, "The Maid of Orleans taken! . . . Joan of
Arc a prisoner! . . . the savior of France lost to us!"--and would keep
saying that over, as if they couldn't understand how it could be, or how
God could permit it, poor creatures!
You know what a city is like when it is hung from eaves to pavement with
rustling black? Then you know what Rouse was like, and some other cities.
But can any man tell you what the mourning in the hearts of the peasantry
of France was like? No, nobody can tell you that, and, poor dumb things,
they could not have told you themselves, but it was there--indeed, yes.
Why, it was the spirit of a whole nation hung with crape!
The 24th of May. We will draw down the curtain now upon the most strange,
and pathetic, and wonderful military drama that has been played upon the
stage of the world. Joan of Arc will march no more.
BOOK III TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM
1 The Maid in Chains
I CANNOT bear to dwell at great length upon the shameful history of the
summer and winter following the capture. For a while I was not much
troubled, for I was expecting every day to hear that Joan had been put to
ransom, and that the King--no, not the King, but grateful France--had
come eagerly forward to pay it. By the laws of war she could not be
denied the privilege of ransom. She was not a rebel; she was a
legitimately constituted soldier, head of the armies of France by her
King's appointment, and guilty of no crime known to military law;
therefore she could not be detained upon any pretext, if ransom were
proffered.
But day after day dragged by and no ransom was offered! It seems
incredible, but it is true. Was that reptile Tremouille busy at the
King's ear? All we know is, that the King was silent, and made no offer
and no effort in behalf of this poor girl who had done so much for him.
But, unhappily, there was alacrity enough in another quarter. The news of
the capture reached Paris the day after it happened, and the glad English
and Burgundians deafened the world all the day and all the night with the
clamor of their joy-bells and the thankful thunder of their artillery,
and the next day the Vicar-General of the Inquisition sent a message to
the Duke of Burgundy requiring the delivery of the prisoner into the
hands of the Church to be tried as an idolater.
The English had seen their opportunity, and it was the English power that
was really acting, not the Church. The Church was being used as a blind,
a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church was not only able to
take the life of Joan of Arc, but to blight her influence and the
valor-breeding inspiration of her name, whereas the English power could
but kill her body; that would not diminish or destroy the influence of
her name; it would magnify it and make it permanent. Joan of Arc was the
only power in France that the English did not despise, the only power in
France that they considered formidable. If the Church could be brought to
take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a heretic, a witch, sent
from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that the English supremacy
could be at once reinstated.
The Duke of Burgundy listened--but waited. He could not doubt that the
French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a
higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a strong
fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French prince,
and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with all his
waiting no offer came to him from the French side.
One day Joan played a cunning truck on her jailer, and not only slipped
out of her prison, but locked him up in it. But as she fled away she was
seen by a sentinel, and was caught and brought back.
Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle. This was early in
August, and she had been in captivity more than two months now. Here she
was shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet high. She ate her
heart there for another long stretch--about three months and a half. And
she was aware, all these weary five months of captivity, that the
English, under cover of the Church, were dickering for her as one would
dicker for a horse or a slave, and that France was silent, the King
silent, all her friends the same. Yes, it was pitiful.
And yet when she heard at last that Compiegne was being closely besieged
and likely to be captured, and that the enemy had declared that no
inhabitant of it should escape massacre, not even children of seven years
of age, she was in a fever at once to fly to our rescue. So she tore her
bedclothes to strips and tied them together and descended this frail rope
in the night, and it broke, and she fell and was badly bruised, and
remained three days insensible, meantime neither eating nor drinking.
And now came relief to us, led by the Count of Vend"me, and Compiegne was
saved and the siege raised. This was a disaster to the Duke of Burgundy.
He had to save money now. It was a good time for a new bid to be made for
Joan of Arc. The English at once sent a French bishop--that forever
infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais. He was partly promised the
Archbishopric of Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed. He
claimed the right to preside over Joan's ecclesiastical trial because the
battle-ground where she was taken was within his diocese. By the military
usage of the time the ransom of a royal prince was 10,000 livres of gold,
which is 61,125 francs--a fixed sum, you see. It must be accepted when
offered; it could not be refused.
Cauchon brought the offer of this very sum from the English--a royal
prince's ransom for the poor little peasant-girl of Domremy. It shows in
a striking way the English idea of her formidable importance. It was
accepted. For that sum Joan of Arc, the Savior of France, was sold; sold
to her enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies who had lashed and
thrashed and thumped and trounced France for a century and made holiday
sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and years ago, what a
Frenchman's face was like, so used were they to seeing nothing but his
back; enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had cowed, whom she had
taught to respect French valor, new-born in her nation by the breath of
her spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being the only puissance
able to stand between English triumph and French degradation. Sold to a
French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the French
nation standing thankless by and saying nothing.
And she--what did she say? Nothing. Not a reproach passed her lips. She
was too great for that--she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said, all
is said.
As a soldier, her record was spotless. She could not be called to account
for anything under that head. A subterfuge must be found, and, as we have
seen, was found. She must be tried by priests for crimes against
religion. If none could be discovered, some must be invented. Let the
miscreant Cauchon alone to contrive those.
Rouen was chosen as the scene of the trial. It was in the heart of the
English power; its population had been under English dominion so many
generations that they were hardly French now, save in language. The place
was strongly garrisoned. Joan was taken there near the end of December,
1430, and flung into a dungeon. Yes, and clothed in chains, that free
spirit!
Still France made no move. How do I account for this? I think there is
only one way. You will remember that whenever Joan was not at the front,
the French held back and ventured nothing; that whenever she led, they
swept everything before them, so long as they could see her white armor
or her banner; that every time she fell wounded or was reported
killed--as at Compiegne--they broke in panic and fled like sheep. I argue
from this that they had undergone no real transformation as yet; that at
bottom they were still under the spell of a timorousness born of
generations of unsuccess, and a lack of confidence in each other and in
their leaders born of old and bitter experience in the way of treacheries
of all sorts--for their kings had been treacherous to their great vassals
and to their generals, and these in turn were treacherous to the head of
the state and to each other. The soldiery found that they could depend
utterly on Joan, and upon her alone. With her gone, everything was gone.
She was the sun that melted the frozen torrents and set them boiling;
with that sun removed, they froze again, and the army and all France
became what they had been before, mere dead corpses--that and nothing
more; incapable of thought, hope, ambition, or motion.
2 Joan Sold to the English
MY WOUND gave me a great deal of trouble clear into the first part of
October; then the fresher weather renewed my life and strength. All this
time there were reports drifting about that the King was going to ransom
Joan. I believed these, for I was young and had not yet found out the
littleness and meanness of our poor human race, which brags about itself
so much, and thinks it is better and higher than the other animals.
In October I was well enough to go out with two sorties, and in the
second one, on the 23d, I was wounded again. My luck had turned, you see.
On the night of the 25th the besiegers decamped, and in the disorder and
confusion one of their prisoners escaped and got safe into Compiegne, and
hobble into my room as pallid and pathetic an object as you would wish to
see.
"What? Alive? Noel Rainguesson!"
It was indeed he. It was a most joyful meeting, that you will easily
know; and also as sad as it was joyful. We could not speak Joan's name.
One's voice would have broken down. We knew who was meant when she was
mentioned; we could say "she" and "her," but we could not speak the name.
We talked of the personal staff. Old D'Aulon, wounded and a prisoner, was
still with Joan and serving her, by permission of the Duke of Burgundy.
Joan was being treated with respect due to her rank and to her character
as a prisoner of war taken in honorable conflict. And this was
continued--as we learned later--until she fell into the hands of that
bastard of Satan, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais.
Noel was full of noble and affectionate praises and appreciations of our
old boastful big Standard-Bearer, now gone silent forever, his real and
imaginary battles all fought, his work done, his life honorably closed
and completed.
"And think of his luck!" burst out Noel, with his eyes full of tears.
"Always the pet child of luck!
"See how it followed him and stayed by him, from his first step all
through, in the field or out of it; always a splendid figure in the
public eye, courted and envied everywhere; always having a chance to do
fine things and always doing them; in the beginning called the Paladin in
joke, and called it afterward in earnest because he magnificently made
the title good; and at last--supremest luck of all--died in the field!
died with his harness on; died faithful to his charge the Standard in his
hand; died--oh, think of it--with the approving eye of Joan of Arc upon
him!
"He drained the cup of glory to the last drop, and went jubilant to his
peace, blessedly spared all part in the disaster which was to follow.
What luck, what luck! And we? What was our sin that we are still here, we
who have also earned our place with the happy dead?"
And presently he said:
"They tore the sacred Standard from his dead hand and carried it away,
their most precious prize after its captured owner. But they haven't it
now. A month ago we put our lives upon the risk--our two good knights, my
fellow-prisoners, and I--and stole it, and got it smuggled by trusty
hands to Orleans, and there it is now, safe for all time in the
Treasury."
I was glad and grateful to learn that. I have seen it often since, when I
have gone to Orleans on the 8th of May to be the petted old guest of the
city and hold the first place of honor at the banquets and in the
processions--I mean since Joan's brothers passed from this life. It will
still be there, sacredly guarded by French love, a thousand years from
now--yes, as long as any shred of it hangs together. [1] Two or three
weeks after this talk came the tremendous news like a thunder-clap, and
we were aghast--Joan of Arc sold to the English!
Not for a moment had we ever dreamed of such a thing. We were young, you
see, and did not know the human race, as I have said before. We had been
so proud of our country, so sure of her nobleness, her magnanimity, her
gratitude. We had expected little of the King, but of France we had
expected everything. Everybody knew that in various towns patriot priests
had been marching in procession urging the people to sacrifice money,
property, everything, and buy the freedom of their heaven-sent deliverer.
That the money would be raised we had not thought of doubting.
But it was all over now, all over. It was a bitter time for us. The
heavens seemed hung with black; all cheer went out from our hearts. Was
this comrade here at my bedside really Noel Rainguesson, that
light-hearted creature whose whole life was but one long joke, and who
used up more breath in laughter than in keeping his body alive? No, no;
that Noel I was to see no more. This one's heart was broken. He moved
grieving about, and absently, like one in a dream; the stream of his
laughter was dried at its source.
Well, that was best. It was my own mood. We were company for each other.
He nursed me patiently through the dull long weeks, and at last, in
January, I was strong enough to go about again. Then he said:
"Shall we go now?"
"Yes."
There was no need to explain. Our hearts were in Rouen; we would carry
our bodies there. All that we cared for in this life was shut up in that
fortress. We could not help her, but it would be some solace to us to be
near her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and look daily upon the
stone walls that hid her. What if we should be made prisoners there?
Well, we could but do our best, and let luck and fate decide what should
happen.
And so we started. We could not realize the change which had come upon
the country. We seemed able to choose our own route and go whenever we
pleased, unchallenged and unmolested. When Joan of Arc was in the field
there was a sort of panic of fear everywhere; but now that she was out of
the way, fear had vanished. Nobody was troubled about you or afraid of
you, nobody was curious about you or your business, everybody was
indifferent.
We presently saw that we could take to the Seine, and not weary ourselves
out with land travel.
So we did it, and were carried in a boat to within a league of Rouen.
Then we got ashore; not on the hilly side, but on the other, where it is
as level as a floor. Nobody could enter or leave the city without
explaining himself. It was because they feared attempts at a rescue of
Joan.
We had no trouble. We stopped in the plain with a family of peasants and
stayed a week, helping them with their work for board and lodging, and
making friends of them. We got clothes like theirs, and wore them. When
we had worked our way through their reserves and gotten their confidence,
we found that they secretly harbored French hearts in their bodies. Then
we came out frankly and told them everything, and found them ready to do
anything they could to help us.
Our plan was soon made, and was quite simple. It was to help them drive a
flock of sheep to the market of the city. One morning early we made the
venture in a melancholy drizzle of rain, and passed through the frowning
gates unmolested. Our friends had friends living over a humble wine shop
in a quaint tall building situated in one of the narrow lanes that run
down from the cathedral to the river, and with these they bestowed us;
and the next day they smuggled our own proper clothing and other
belongings to us. The family that lodged us--the Pieroons--were French in
sympathy, and we needed to have no secrets from them.
[1] It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was
destroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap,
several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob in
the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is
known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously
guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being guided
by a clerk or her secretary, Louis de Conte. A boulder exists from which
she is known to have mounted her horse when she was once setting out upon
a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago there was a single hair from
her head still in existence. It was drawn through the wax of a seal
attached to the parchment of a state document. It was surreptitiously
snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal relic-hunter, and carried off.
Doubtless it still exists, but only the thief knows where. -- TRANSLATOR.
3 Weaving the Net About Her
IT WAS necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noel and
myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the applied
to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with a good
priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial
of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position for me--clerk
to the recorder--and dangerous if my sympathies and the late employment
should be found out. But there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom
friendly to Joan and would not betray me; and my name would not, for I
had discarded my surname and retained only my given one, like a person of
low degree.
I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and into
February, and was often in the citadel with him--in the very fortress
where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where she was
confined, and so did not see her, of course.
Manchon told me everything that had been happening before my coming. Ever
since the purchase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy packing his jury for
the destruction of the Maid--weeks and weeks he had spent in this bad
industry. The University of Paris had sent him a number of learned and
able and trusty ecclesiastics of the stripe he wanted; and he had scraped
together a clergyman of like stripe and great fame here and there and
yonder, until he was able to construct a formidable court numbering half
a hundred distinguished names. French names they were, but their
interests and sympathies were English.
A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent from Paris for the
accused must be tried by the forms of the Inquisition; but this was a
brave and righteous man, and he said squarely that this court had no
power to try the case, wherefore he refused to act; and the same honest
talk was uttered by two or three others.
The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resurrected against Joan had
already been tried long ago at Poitiers, and decided in her favor. Yes,
and by a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of it was an
Archbishop--he of Rheims--Cauchon's own metropolitan. So here, you see, a
lower court was impudently preparing to try and redecide a cause which
had already been decided by its superior, a court of higher authority.
Imagine it! No, the case could not properly be tried again. Cauchon could
not properly preside in this new court, for more than one reason:
Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her domicile,
which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed judge was the
prisoner's outspoken enemy, and therefore he was incompetent to try her.
Yet all these large difficulties were gotten rid of. The territorial
Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial letters to Cauchon--though
only after a struggle and under compulsion. Force was also applied to the
Inquisitor, and he was obliged to submit.
So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally
delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this reservation: if
the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her back again! Ah,
dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and friendless child?
Friendless, indeed--it is the right word. For she was in a black dungeon,
with half a dozen brutal common soldiers keeping guard night and day in
the room where her cage was--for she was in a cage; an iron cage, and
chained to her bed by neck and hands and feet. Never a person near her
whom she had ever seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this was,
indeed, friendlessness.
Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan and
Compiegne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Yet this
very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to go and show his face to Joan
in her cage. He came with two English earls, Warwick and Stafford. He was
a poor reptile. He told her he would get her set free if she would
promise not to fight the English any more. She had been in that cage a
long time now, but not long enough to break her spirit. She retorted
scornfully:
"Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the power nor
the will to do it."
He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan, and
she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash, saying:
"See these! They know more than you, an can prophesy better. I know that
the English are going to kill me, for they think that when I am dead they
can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.
"Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never get it."
This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he--now think of it--he a free,
strong man, she a chained and helpless girl--he drew his dagger and flung
himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him back.
Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven stainless
and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the whole
nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the
inspiration of her spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than
that.
Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than two
months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for any odds and
ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that might be usable against
Joan, and carefully suppressing all evidence that came to hand in her
favor. He had limitless ways and means and powers at his disposal for
preparing and strengthening the case for the prosecution, and he used
them all.
But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut up in
those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help. And as for
witnesses, she could not call a single one in her defense; they were all
far away, under the French flag, and this was an English court; they
would have been seized and hanged if they had shown their faces at the
gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner must be the sole witness--witness for
the prosecution, witness for the defense; and with a verdict of death
resolved upon before the doors were opened for the court's first sitting.
When she learned that the court was made up of ecclesiastics in the
interest of the English, she begged that in fairness an equal number of
priests of the French party should be added to these.
Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not even deign to answer it.
By the law of the Church--she being a minor under twenty-one--it was her
right to have counsel to conduct her case, advise her how to answer when
questioned, and protect her from falling into traps set by cunning
devices of the prosecution. She probably did not know that this was her
right, and that she could demand it and require it, for there was none to
tell her that; but she begged for this help, at any rate. Cauchon refused
it. She urged and implored, pleading her youth and her ignorance of the
complexities and intricacies of the law and of legal procedure. Cauchon
refused again, and said she must get along with her case as best she
might by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone.
Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will simplify that by calling it
the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against
her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of
suspicions and public rumors--those were the words used. It was merely
charged that she was suspected of having been guilty of heresies,
witchcraft, and other such offenses against religion.
Now by the law of the Church, a trial of that sort could not be begun
until a searching inquiry had been made into the history and character of
the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be
added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that
was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it
again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about the
neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history and
character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The
searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what
he "would like his own sister's character to be." Just about the same
report that was brought back to Poitiers, you see. Joan's was a character
which could endure the minutest examination.
This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will say. Yes, it would
have been if it could have seen the light; but Cauchon was awake, and it
disappeared from the proces verbal before the trial. People were prudent
enough not to inquire what became of it.
One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to begin the trial by this time.
But no, he devised one more scheme for poor Joan's destruction, and it
promised to be a deadly one.
One of the great personages picked out and sent down by the University of
Paris was an ecclesiastic named Nicolas Loyseleur. He was tall, handsome,
grave, of smooth, soft speech and courteous and winning manners. There
was no seeming of treachery or hypocrisy about him, yet he was full of
both. He was admitted to Joan's prison by night, disguised as a cobbler;
he pretended to be from her own country; he professed to be secretly a
patriot; he revealed the fact that he was a priest. She was filled with
gladness to see one from the hills and plains that were so dear to her;
happier still to look upon a priest and disburden her heart in
confession, for the offices of the Church were the bread of life, the
breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been long forced to pine for
them in vain. She opened her whole innocent heart to this creature, and
in return he gave her advice concerning her trial which could have
destroyed her if her deep native wisdom had not protected her against
following it.
You will ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets of the
confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True--but suppose another
person should overhear them? That person is not bound to keep the secret.
Well, that is what happened. Cauchon had previously caused a hole to be
bored through the wall; and he stood with his ear to that hole and heard
all. It is pitiful to think of these things. One wonders how they could
treat that poor child so. She had not done them any harm.
4 All Ready to Condemn
ON TUESDAY, the 20th of February, while I sat at my master's work in the
evening, he came in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to begin
the trial at eight o'clock the next morning, and I must get ready to
assist him.
Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no
matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling
like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining
that at the last moment something would happen, something that would stop
this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates with his
hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and stretch forth
His mighty hand. But now--now there was no hope.
The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be public.
So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be there early
and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again upon the
face which we so revered and which was so precious to us. All the way,
both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and rejoicing
multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French citizens. There
was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard the remark,
accompanied by a pitiless laugh:
"The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he will
lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one."
But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and it
was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they
admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit.
In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the vast
fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others gathering.
The chapel was already full and the way barred against further admissions
of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places. Throned on high sat
the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in his grand robes, and
before him in rows sat his robed court--fifty distinguished
ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of clear-cut
intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in strategy and
casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds and unwary feet.
When I looked around upon this army of masters of legal fence, gathered
here to find just one verdict and no other, and remembered that Joan must
fight for her good name and her life single-handed against them, I asked
myself what chance an ignorant poor country-girl of nineteen could have
in such an unequal conflict; and my heart sank down low, very low. When I
looked again at that obese president, puffing and wheezing there, his
great belly distending and receding with each breath, and noted his three
chins, fold above fold, and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple
and splotchy complexion, and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold
and malignant eyes--a brute, every detail of him--my heart sank lower
still. And when I noted that all were afraid of this man, and shrank and
fidgeted in their seats when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of
hope dissolved away and wholly disappeared.
There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and only one. It was over
against the wall, in view of every one. It was a little wooden bench
without a back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of dais. Tall
men-at-arms in morion, breastplate, and steel gauntlets stood as stiff as
their own halberds on each side of this dais, but no other creature was
near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was, for I knew whom it was
for; and the sight of it carried my mind back to the great court at
Poitiers, where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought her cunning
fight with the astonished doctors of the Church and Parliament, and rose
from it victorious and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the world
with the glory of her name.
What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle and innocent, how
winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of her seventeen years! Those
were grand days. And so recent--for she was just nineteen now--and how
much she had seen since, and what wonders she had accomplished!
But now--oh, all was changed now. She had been languishing in dungeons,
away from light and air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly
three-quarters of a year--she, born child of the sun, natural comrade of
the birds and of all happy free creatures. She would be weary now, and
worn with this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent, perhaps,
as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all was changed.
All this time there had been a muffled hum of conversation, and rustling
of robes and scraping of feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises
which filled all the place. Suddenly:
"Produce the accused!"
It made me catch my breath. My heart began to thump like a hammer. But
there was silence now--silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and it
was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the stillness grew
oppressive; it was like a weight upon one. All faces were turned toward
the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people
there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in actual
flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied prodigy, a
word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name.
The stillness continued. Then, far down the stone-paved corridors, one
heard a vague slow sound approaching: clank . . . clink . . . clank--Joan
of Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains!
My head swam; all things whirled and spun about me. Ah, I was realizing,
too.
5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice
I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the
facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly,
detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the
official record of the court, and just as one may read them in the
printed histories.
There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with you
shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and explain them as I
go along, so that you can understand them better; also, I shall throw in
trifles which came under our eyes and have a certain interest for you and
me, but were not important enough to go into the official record. [1] To
take up my story now where I left off. We heard the clanking of Joan's
chains down the corridors; she was approaching.
Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard deep
breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short distance to the
rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she being weak
and her irons heavy. She had on men's attire--all black; a soft woolen
stuff, intensely black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color
in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of this same black
stuff lay in radiating folds upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves
of her doublet were full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her
manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains
on her ankles.
Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light fell
slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another thrill!--it
was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming snow set in
vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber unmitigated black. It
was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely sad
and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge of those untamed eyes fell
upon that judge, and the droop vanished from her form and it straightened
up soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I said, all is well,
all is well--they have not broken her, they have not conquered her, she
is Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now that there was one
spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell nor make afraid.
She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her
bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white
hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there
who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed and brawny English soldier,
standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators, did
now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give her
the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and returned
it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause, which the
judge sternly silence.
Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began.
Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice!
The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public reports
and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to kneel
and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all
questions asked her.
Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous possibilities
might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand. She
answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy's best-laid
plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said:
"No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me
things which I would not tell you."
This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry
exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began
to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could
hardly get his words out. He said:
"With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these
proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands
upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall
be asked you!" and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his
official table.
Joan said, with composure:
"As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things I
have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as
regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have
forbidden me to confide them to any save my King--"
Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and much
movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise to
subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened up and
fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice that had
the old ring to it:
--"and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!"
Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The
judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking
their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once,
so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several
minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew madder
and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of the
old-time mischief in her eye and manner:
"Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of
you."
At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath, the
situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an
unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any
except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical
change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they were
hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of haggard
look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and
reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired.
The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments'
duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with bitterness
in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion. Joan sunk
at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the Gospels, that
big English soldier set free his mind:
"By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another half
a second!"
It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what a
stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and
French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase in
the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring
city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched
upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a man and humble him--burn
themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is burned into
mine.
After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was
born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She
answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had.
"I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the
Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother."
Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable time.
Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to
rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape from prison,
upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of heresy--singular logic!
She answered simply:
"I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not
reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not."
Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that they
might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that dungeon and there
was no need of them. But the Bishop refused, and reminded her that she
had broken out of prison twice before. Joan of Arc was too proud to
insist. She only said, as she rose to go with the guard:
"It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape." Then she
added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think, "It is the
right of every prisoner."
And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness,
which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of those
pathetic chains.
What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out of it.
She saw Noel and me there when she first took her seat on the bench, and
we flushed to the forehead with excitement and emotion, but her face
showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that
day, but they passed on and there was never any ray of recognition in
them. Another would have started upon seeing us, and then--why, then
there could have been trouble for us, of course.
We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief and saying
not a word.
[1] He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to be
in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history.
--TRANSLATOR.
6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors
THAT NIGHT Manchon told me that all through the day's proceedings Cauchon
had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who were to
make a special report garbling Joan's answers and twisting them from
their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the most
shameless that has lived in this world. But his scheme failed. Those
clerks had human hearts in them, and their base work revolted them, and
they turned to and boldly made a straight report, whereupon Cauchon curse
them and ordered them out of his presence with a threat of drowning,
which was his favorite and most frequent menace. The matter had gotten
abroad and was making great and unpleasant talk, and Cauchon would not
try to repeat this shabby game right away. It comforted me to hear that.
When we arrived at the citadel next morning, we found that a change had
been made. The chapel had been found too small. The court had now removed
to a noble chamber situated at the end of the great hall of the castle.
The number of judges was increased to sixty-two--one ignorant girl
against such odds, and none to help her.
The prisoner was brought in. She was as white as ever, but she was
looking no whit worse than she looked when she had first appeared the day
before. Isn't it a strange thing? Yesterday she had sat five hours on
that backless bench with her chains in her lap, baited, badgered,
persecuted by that unholy crew, without even the refreshment of a cup of
water--for she was never offered anything, and if I have made you know
her by this time you will know without my telling you that she was not a
person likely to ask favors of those people. And she had spent the night
caged in her wintry dungeon with her chains upon her; yet here she was,
as I say, collected, unworn, and ready for the conflict; yes, and the
only person there who showed no signs of the wear and worry of yesterday.
And her eyes--ah, you should have seen them and broken your hearts. Have
you seen that veiled deep glow, that pathetic hurt dignity, that
unsubdued and unsubduable spirit that burns and smolders in the eye of a
caged eagle and makes you feel mean and shabby under the burden of its
mute reproach? Her eyes were like that. How capable they were, and how
wonderful! Yes, at all times and in all circumstances they could express
as by print every shade of the wide range of her moods. In them were
hidden floods of gay sunshine, the softest and peacefulest twilights, and
devastating storms and lightnings. Not in this world have there been
others that were comparable to them. Such is my opinion, and none that
had the privilege to see them would say otherwise than this which I have
said concerning them.
The seance began. And how did it begin, should you think? Exactly as it
began before--with that same tedious thing which had been settled once,
after so much wrangling. The Bishop opened thus:
"You are required now, to take the oath pure and simple, to answer truly
all questions asked you."
Joan replied placidly:
"I have made oath yesterday, my lord; let that suffice."
The Bishop insisted and insisted, with rising temper; Joan but shook her
head and remained silent. At last she said:
"I made oath yesterday; it is sufficient." Then she sighed and said, "Of
a truth, you do burden me too much."
The Bishop still insisted, still commanded, but he could not move her. At
last he gave it up and turned her over for the day's inquest to an old
hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities--Beaupere, a doctor
of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist's first
remark--flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any
unwatchful person off his guard:
"Now, Joan, the matter is very simple; just speak up and frankly and
truly answer the questions which I am going to ask you, as you have sworn
to do."
It was a failure. Joan was not asleep. She saw the artifice. She said:
"No. You could ask me things which I could not tell you--and would not."
Then, reflecting upon how profane and out of character it was for these
ministers of God to be prying into matters which had proceeded from His
hands under the awful seal of His secrecy, she added, with a warning note
in her tone, "If you were well informed concerning me you would wish me
out of your hands. I have done nothing but by revelation."
Beaupere changed his attack, and began an approach from another quarter.
He would slip upon her, you see, under cover of innocent and unimportant
questions.
"Did you learn any trade at home?"
"Yes, to sew and to spin." Then the invincible soldier, victor of Patay,
conqueror of the lion Talbot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king's
crown, commander-in-chief of a nation's armies, straightened herself
proudly up, gave her head a little toss, and said with naive complacency,
"And when it comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched against any
woman in Rouen!"
The crowd of spectators broke out with applause--which pleased Joan--and
there was many a friendly and petting smile to be seen. But Cauchon
stormed at the people and warned them to keep still and mind their
manners.
Beaupere asked other questions. Then:
"Had you other occupations at home?"
"Yes. I helped my mother in the household work and went to the pastures
with the sheep and the cattle."
Her voice trembled a little, but one could hardly notice it. As for me,
it brought those old enchanted days flooding back to me, and I could not
see what I was writing for a little while.
Beaupere cautiously edged along up with other questions toward the
forbidden ground, and finally repeated a question which she had refused
to answer a little while back--as to whether she had received the
Eucharist in those days at other festivals than that of Easter. Joan
merely said:
"Passez outre." Or, as one might say, "Pass on to matters which you are
privileged to pry into."
I heard a member of the court say to a neighbor:
"As a rule, witnesses are but dull creatures, and an easy prey--yes, and
easily embarrassed, easily frightened--but truly one can neither scare
this child nor find her dozing."
Presently the house pricked up its ears and began to listen eagerly, for
Beaupere began to touch upon Joan's Voices, a matter of consuming
interest and curiosity to everybody. His purpose was to trick her into
heedless sayings that could indicate that the Voices had sometimes given
her evil advice--hence that they had come from Satan, you see. To have
dealing with the devil--well, that would send her to the stake in brief
order, and that was the deliberate end and aim of this trial.
"When did you first hear these Voices?"
"I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to
live well. I was frightened. It came at midday, in my father's garden in
the summer."
"Had you been fasting?"
"Yes."
"The day before?"
"No."
"From what direction did it come?"
"From the right--from toward the church."
"Did it come with a bright light?"
"Oh, indeed yes. It was brilliant. When I came into France I often heard
the Voices very loud."
"What did the Voice sound like?"
"It was a noble Voice, and I thought it was sent to me from God. The
third time I heard it I recognized it as being an angel's."
"You could understand it?"
"Quite easily. It was always clear."
"What advice did it give you as to the salvation of your soul?"
"It told me to live rightly, and be regular in attendance upon the
services of the Church. And it told me that I must go to France."
"In what species of form did the Voice appear?"
Joan looked suspiciously at he priest a moment, then said, tranquilly:
"As to that, I will not tell you."
"Did the Voice seek you often?"
"Yes. Twice or three times a week, saying, 'Leave your village and go to
France.'"
"Did you father know about your departure?"
"No. The Voice said, 'Go to France'; therefore I could not abide at home
any longer."
"What else did it say?"
"That I should raise the siege of Orleans."
"Was that all?"
"No, I was to go to Vaucouleurs, and Robert de Baudricourt would give me
soldiers to go with me to France; and I answered, saying that I was a
poor girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight."
Then she told how she was balked and interrupted at Vaucouleurs, but
finally got her soldiers, and began her march.
"How were you dressed?"
The court of Poitiers had distinctly decided and decreed that as God had
appointed her to do a man's work, it was meet and no scandal to religion
that she should dress as a man; but no matter, this court was ready to
use any and all weapons against Joan, even broken and discredited ones,
and much was going to be made of this one before this trial should end.
"I wore a man's dress, also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt gave me,
but no other weapon."
"Who was it that advised you to wear the dress of a man?"
Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer.
The question was repeated.
She refused again.
"Answer. It is a command!"
"Passez outre," was all she said.
So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present.
"What did Baudricourt say to you when you left?"
"He made them that were to go with me promise to take charge of me, and
to me he said, 'Go, and let happen what may!'" (Advienne que pourra!)
After a good deal of questioning upon other matters she was asked again
about her attire. She said it was necessary for her to dress as a man.
"Did your Voice advise it?"
Joan merely answered placidly:
"I believe my Voice gave me good advice."
It was all that could be got out of her, so the questions wandered to
other matters, and finally to her first meeting with the King at Chinon.
She said she chose out the King, who was unknown to her, by the
revelation of her Voices. All that happened at that time was gone over.
Finally:
"Do you still hear those Voices?"
"They come to me every day."
"What do you ask of them?"
"I have never asked of them any recompense but the salvation of my soul."
"Did the Voice always urge you to follow the army?"
He is creeping upon her again. She answered:
"It required me to remain behind at St. Denis. I would have obeyed if I
had been free, but I was helpless by my wound, and the knights carried me
away by force."
"When were you wounded?"
"I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault."
The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to:
"Was it a feast-day?"
You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would hardly advise
or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day.
Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day.
"Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on
such a day?"
This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had
suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in the court and
intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disappointed the house.
She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one brushes
away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference:
"Passez outre."
Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there, and
several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and laboriously
prepared; it fell, and was empty.
The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most of
the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless inquiries
about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan's first
proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff had really
been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately escaped them
all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon ignorance and
innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of her best and
surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of her
extraordinary mind.
Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a
captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time--dignified sport, a
kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!--and I may as well
tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first day to
the last. When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of a century,
the Pope called together that great court which was to re-examine her
history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious name from every
spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct of our Rouen
tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations. Manchon and several
of the judges who had been members of our court were among the witnesses
who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation. Recalling these
miserable proceedings which I have been telling you about, Manchon
testified thus:--here you have it, all in fair print in the unofficial
history:
When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost every
word. They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories upon all
sorts of things. Almost every day the interrogatories of the morning
lasted three or four hours; then from these morning interrogatories they
extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served
as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three
hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet in
spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and memory.
She often corrected the judges, saying, "But I have already answered that
once before--ask the recorder," referring them to me.
And here is the testimony of one of Joan's judges. Remember, these
witnesses are not talking about two or three days, they are talking about
a tedious long procession of days:
They asked her profound questions, but she extricated herself quite well.
Sometimes the questioners changed suddenly and passed on to another
subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They burdened her
with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which the judges
themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which she was beset
the expertest man in the world could not have extricated himself but with
difficulty. She gave her responses with great prudence; indeed to such a
degree that during three weeks I believed she was inspired.
Ah, had she a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests
say under oath--picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible
court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and
practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They
make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of
the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it so? They from the University of
Paris, she from the sheepfold and the cow-stable!
Ah, yes, she was great, she was wonderful. It took six thousand years to
produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty
thousand. Such is my opinion.
7 Craft That Was in Vain
THE THIRD meeting of the court was in that same spacious chamber, next
day, 24th of February.
How did it begin? In just the same old way. When the preparations were
ended, the robed sixty-two massed in their chairs and the guards and
order-keepers distributed to their stations, Cauchon spoke from his
throne and commanded Joan to lay her hands upon the Gospels and swear to
tell the truth concerning everything asked her!
Joan's eyes kindled, and she rose; rose and stood, fine and noble, and
faced toward the Bishop and said:
"Take care what you do, my lord, you who are my judge, for you take a
terrible responsibility on yourself and you presume too far."
It made a great stir, and Cauchon burst out upon her with an awful
threat--the threat of instant condemnation unless she obeyed. That made
the very bones of my body turn cold, and I saw cheeks about me
blanch--for it meant fire and the stake! But Joan, still standing,
answered him back, proud and undismayed:
"Not all the clergy in Paris and Rouen could condemn me, lacking the
right!"
This made a great tumult, and part of it was applause from the
spectators. Joan resumed her seat.
The Bishop still insisted. Joan said:
"I have already made oath. It is enough."
The Bishop shouted:
"In refusing to swear, you place yourself under suspicion!"
"Let be. I have sword already. It is enough."
The Bishop continued to insist. Joan answered that "she would tell what
she knew--but not all that she knew."
The Bishop plagued her straight along, till at last she said, in a weary
tone:
"I came from God; I have nothing more to do here. Return me to God, from
whom I came."
It was piteous to hear; it was the same as saying, "You only want my
life; take it and let me be at peace."
The Bishop stormed out again:
"Once more I command you to--"
Joan cut in with a nonchalant "Passez outre," and Cauchon retired from
the struggle; but he retired with some credit this time, for he offered a
compromise, and Joan, always clear-headed, saw protection for herself in
it and promptly and willingly accepted it. She was to swear to tell the
truth "as touching the matters et down in the proces verbal." They could
not sail her outside of definite limits, now; her course was over a
charted sea, henceforth. The Bishop had granted more than he had
intended, and more than he would honestly try to abide by.
By command, Beaupere resumed his examination of the accused. It being
Lent, there might be a chance to catch her neglecting some detail of her
religious duties. I could have told him he would fail there. Why,
religion was her life!
"Since when have you eaten or drunk?"
If the least thing had passed her lips in the nature of sustenance,
neither her youth nor the fact that she was being half starved in her
prison could save her from dangerous suspicion of contempt for the
commandments of the Church.
"I have done neither since yesterday at noon."
The priest shifted to the Voices again.
"When have you heard your Voice?"
"Yesterday and to-day."
"At what time?"
"Yesterday it was in the morning."
"What were you doing then?"
"I was asleep and it woke me."
"By touching your arm?"
"No, without touching me."
"Did you thank it? Did you kneel?"
He had Satan in his mind, you see; and was hoping, perhaps, that by and
by it could be shown that she had rendered homage to the arch enemy of
God and man.
"Yes, I thanked it; and knelt in my bed where I was chained, and joined
my hands and begged it to implore God's help for me so that I might have
light and instruction as touching the answers I should give here."
"Then what did the Voice say?"
"It told me to answer boldly, and God would help me." Then she turned
toward Cauchon and said, "You say that you are my judge; now I tell you
again, take care what you do, for in truth I am sent of God and you are
putting yourself in great danger."
Beaupere asked her if the Voice's counsels were not fickle and variable.
"No. It never contradicts itself. This very day it has told me again to
answer boldly."
"Has it forbidden you to answer only part of what is asked you?"
"I will tell you nothing as to that. I have revelations touching the King
my master, and those I will not tell you." Then she was stirred by a
great emotion, and the tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke out as with
strong conviction, saying:
"I believe wholly--as wholly as I believe the Christian faith and that
God has redeemed us from the fires of hell, that God speaks to me by that
Voice!"
Being questioned further concerning the Voice, she said she was not at
liberty to tell all she knew.
"Do you think God would be displeased at your telling the whole truth?"
"The Voice has commanded me to tell the King certain things, and not
you--and some very lately--even last night; things which I would he knew.
He would be more easy at his dinner."
"Why doesn't the Voice speak to the King itself, as it did when you were
with him? Would it not if you asked it?"
"I do not know if it be the wish of God." She was pensive a moment or
two, busy with her thoughts and far away, no doubt; then she added a
remark in which Beaupere, always watchful, always alert, detected a
possible opening--a chance to set a trap. Do you think he jumped at it
instantly, betraying the joy he had in his mind, as a young hand at craft
and artifice would do?
No, oh, no, you could not tell that he had noticed the remark at all. He
slid indifferently away from it at once, and began to ask idle questions
about other things, so as to slip around and spring on it from behind, so
to speak: tedious and empty questions as to whether the Voice had told
her she would escape from this prison; and if it had furnished answers to
be used by her in to-day's seance; if it was accompanied with a glory of
light; if it had eyes, etc. That risky remark of Joan's was this:
"Without the Grace of God I could do nothing."
The court saw the priest's game, and watched his play with a cruel
eagerness. Poor Joan was grown dreamy and absent; possibly she was tired.
Her life was in imminent danger, and she did not suspect it. The time was
ripe now, and Beaupere quietly and stealthily sprang his trap:
"Are you in a state of Grace?"
Ah, we had two or three honorable brave men in that pack of judges; and
Jean Lefevre was one of them. He sprang to his feet and cried out:
"It is a terrible question! The accused is not obliged to answer it!"
Cauchon's face flushed black with anger to see this plank flung to the
perishing child, and he shouted:
"Silence! and take your seat. The accused will answer the question!"
There was no hope, no way out of the dilemma; for whether she said yes or
whether she said no, it would be all the same--a disastrous answer, for
the Scriptures had said one cannot know this thing. Think what hard
hearts they were to set this fatal snare for that ignorant young girl and
be proud of such work and happy in it. It was a miserable moment for me
while we waited; it seemed a year. All the house showed excitement; and
mainly it was glad excitement. Joan looked out upon these hungering faces
with innocent, untroubled eyes, and then humbly and gently she brought
out that immortal answer which brushed the formidable snare away as it
had been but a cobweb:
"If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in
it, I pray God keep me so."
Ah, you will never see an effect like that; no, not while you live. For a
space there was the silence of the grave. Men looked wondering into each
other's faces, and some were awed and crossed themselves; and I heard
Lefevre mutter:
"It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that answer. Whence comes this
child's amazing inspirations?"
Beaupere presently took up his work again, but the humiliation of his
defeat weighed upon him, and he made but a rambling and dreary business
of it, he not being able to put any heart in it.
He asked Joan a thousand questions about her childhood and about the oak
wood, and the fairies, and the children's games and romps under our dear
Arbre Fee Bourlemont, and this stirring up of old memories broke her
voice and made her cry a little, but she bore up as well as she could,
and answered everything.
Then the priest finished by touching again upon the matter of her
apparel--a matter which was never to be lost sight of in this still-hunt
for this innocent creature's life, but kept always hanging over her, a
menace charged with mournful possibilities:
"Would you like a woman's dress?"
"Indeed yes, if I may go out from this prison--but here, no."
8 Joan Tells of Her Visions
THE COURT met next on Monday the 27th. Would you believe it? The Bishop
ignored the contract limiting the examination to matters set down in the
proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take the oath without
reservations. She said:
"You should be content I have sworn enough."
She stood her ground, and Cauchon had to yield.
The examination was resumed, concerning Joan's Voices.
"You have said that you recognized them as being the voices of angels the
third time that you heard them. What angels were they?"
"St. Catherine and St. Marguerite."
"How did you know that it was those two saints? How could you tell the
one from the other?"
"I know it was they; and I know how to distinguish them."
"By what sign?"
"By their manner of saluting me. I have been these seven years under
their direction, and I knew who they were because they told me."
"Whose was the first Voice that came to you when you were thirteen years
old?"
"It was the Voice of St. Michael. I saw him before my eyes; and he was
not alone, but attended by a cloud of angels."
"Did you see the archangel and the attendant angels in the body, or in
the spirit?"
"I saw them with the eyes of my body, just as I see you; and when they
went away I cried because they did not take me with them."
It made me see that awful shadow again that fell dazzling white upon her
that day under l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont, and it made me shiver again,
though it was so long ago. It was really not very long gone by, but it
seemed so, because so much had happened since.
"In what shape and form did St. Michael appear?"
"As to that, I have not received permission to speak."
"What did the archangel say to you that first time?"
"I cannot answer you to-day."
Meaning, I think, that she would have to get permission of her Voices
first.
Presently, after some more questions as to the revelations which had been
conveyed through her to the King, she complained of the unnecessity of
all this, and said:
"I will say again, as I have said before many times in these sittings,
that I answered all questions of this sort before the court at Poitiers,
and I would hat you wold bring here the record of that court and read
from that. Prithee, send for that book."
There was no answer. It was a subject that had to be got around and put
aside. That book had wisely been gotten out of the way, for it contained
things which would be very awkward here.
Among them was a decision that Joan's mission was from God, whereas it
was the intention of this inferior court to show that it was from the
devil; also a decision permitting Joan to wear male attire, whereas it
was the purpose of this court to make the male attire do hurtful work
against her.
"How was it that you were moved to come into France--by your own desire?"
"Yes, and by command of God. But that it was His will I would note have
come. I would sooner have had my body torn in sunder by horses than come,
lacking that."
Beaupere shifted once more to the matter of the male attire, now, and
proceeded to make a solemn talk about it. That tried Joan's patience; and
presently she interrupted and said:
"It is a trifling thing and of no consequence. And I did not put it on by
counsel of any man, but by command of God."
"Robert de Baudricourt did not order you to wear it?"
"No."
"Did you think you did well in taking the dress of a man?"
"I did well to do whatsoever thing God commanded me to do."
"But in this particular case do you think you did well in taking the
dress of a man?"
"I have done nothing but by command of God."
Beaupere made various attempts to lead her into contradictions of
herself; also to put her words and acts in disaccord with the Scriptures.
But it was lost time. He did not succeed. He returned to her visions, the
light which shone about them, her relations with the King, and so on.
"Was there an angel above the King's head the first time you saw him?"
"By the Blessed Mary!--"
She forced her impatience down, and finished her sentence with
tranquillity: "If there was one I did not see it."
"Was there light?"
"There were more than three thousand soldiers there, and five hundred
torches, without taking account of spiritual light."
"What made the King believe in the revelations which you brought him?"
"He had signs; also the counsel of the clergy."
"What revelations were made to the King?"
"You will not get that out of me this year."
Presently she added: "During three weeks I was questioned by the clergy
at Chinon and Poitiers. The King had a sign before he would believe; and
the clergy were of opinion that my acts were good and not evil."
The subject was dropped now for a while, and Beaupere took up the matter
of the miraculous sword of Fierbois to see if he could not find a chance
there to fix the crime of sorcery upon Joan.
"How did you know that there was an ancient sword buried in the ground
under the rear of the altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois?"
Joan had no concealments to make as to this:
"I knew the sword was there because my Voices told me so; and I sent to
ask that it be given to me to carry in the wars. It seemed to me that it
was not very deep in the ground. The clergy of the church caused it to be
sought for and dug up; and they polished it, and the rust fell easily off
from it."
"Were you wearing it when you were taken in battle at Compiegne?"
"No. But I wore it constantly until I left St. Denis after the attack
upon Paris."
This sword, so mysteriously discovered and so long and so constantly
victorious, was suspected of being under the protection of enchantment.
"Was that sword blest? What blessing had been invoked upon it?"
"None. I loved it because it was found in the church of St. Catherine,
for I loved that church very dearly."
She loved it because it had been built in honor of one of her angels.
"Didn't you lay it upon the altar, to the end that it might be lucky?"
(The altar of St. Denis.) "No."
"Didn't you pray that it might be made lucky?"
"Truly it were no harm to wish that my harness might be fortunate."
"Then it was not that sword which you wore in the field of Compiegne?
What sword did you wear there?"
"The sword of the Burgundian Franquet d'Arras, whom I took prisoner in
the engagement at Lagny. I kept it because it was a good war-sword--good
to lay on stout thumps and blows with."
She said that quite simply; and the contrast between her delicate little
self and the grim soldier words which she dropped with such easy
familiarity from her lips made many spectators smile.
"What is become of the other sword? Where is it now?"
"Is that in the proces verbal?"
Beaupere did not answer.
"Which do you love best, your banner or your sword?"
Her eye lighted gladly at the mention of her banner, and she cried out:
"I love my banner best--oh, forty times more than the sword! Sometimes I
carried it myself when I charged the enemy, to avoid killing any one."
Then she added, naively, and with again that curious contrast between her
girlish little personality and her subject, "I have never killed anyone."
It made a great many smile; and no wonder, when you consider what a
gentle and innocent little thing she looked. One could hardly believe she
had ever even seen men slaughtered, she look so little fitted for such
things.
"In the final assault at Orleans did you tell your soldiers that the
arrows shot by the enemy and the stones discharged from their catapults
would not strike any one but you?"
"No. And the proof its, that more than a hundred of my men were struck. I
told them to have no doubts and no fears; that they would raise the
siege. I was wounded in the neck by an arrow in the assault upon the
bastille that commanded the bridge, but St. Catherine comforted me and I
was cured in fifteen days without having to quit the saddle and leave my
work."
"Did you know that you were going to be wounded?"
"Yes; and I had told it to the King beforehand. I had it from my Voices."
"When you took Jargeau, why did you not put its commandant to ransom?"
"I offered him leave to go out unhurt from the place, with all his
garrison; and if he would not I would take it by storm."
"And you did, I believe."
"Yes."
"Had your Voices counseled you to take it by storm?"
"As to that, I do not remember."
Thus closed a weary long sitting, without result. Every device that could
be contrived to trap Joan into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty
to the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or later, had been
tried, and none of them had succeeded. She had come unscathed through the
ordeal.
Was the court discouraged? No. Naturally it was very much surprised, very
much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of
simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold,
fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array
nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other
surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the
thousand traps set for her.
And had the court made no progress during these seemingly resultless
sittings? Yes. It had been feeling its way, groping here, groping there,
and had found one or two vague trails which might freshen by and by and
lead to something. The male attire, for instance, and the visions and
Voices. Of course no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings
and been spoken to and advised by them. And of course no one doubted that
by supernatural help miracles had been done by Joan, such as choosing out
the King in a crowd when she had never seen him before, and her discovery
of the sword buried under the altar. It would have been foolish to doubt
these things, for we all know that the air is full of devils and angels
that are visible to traffickers in magic on the one hand and to the
stainlessly holy on the other; but what many and perhaps most did doubt
was, that Joan's visions, Voices, and miracles came from God. It was
hoped that in time they could be proven to have been of satanic origin.
Therefore, as you see, the court's persistent fashion of coming back to
that subject every little while and spooking around it and prying into it
was not to pass the time--it had a strictly business end in view.
9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold
THE NEXT sitting opened on Thursday the first of March. Fifty-eight
judges present--the others resting.
As usual, Joan was required to take an oath without reservations. She
showed no temper this time. She considered herself well buttressed by the
proces verbal compromise which Cauchon was so anxious to repudiate and
creep out of; so she merely refused, distinctly and decidedly; and added,
in a spirit of fairness and candor:
"But as to matters set down in the proces verbal, I will freely tell the
whole truth--yes, as freely and fully as if I were before the Pope."
Here was a chance! We had two or three Popes, then; only one of them
could be the true Pope, of course. Everybody judiciously shirked the
question of which was the true Pope and refrained from naming him, it
being clearly dangerous to go into particulars in this matter. Here was
an opportunity to trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into
peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking advantage of it. He
asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way:
"Which one do you consider to be the true Pope?"
The house took an attitude of deep attention, and so waited to hear the
answer and see the prey walk into the trap. But when the answer came it
covered the judge with confusion, and you could see many people covertly
chuckling. For Joan asked in a voice and manner which almost deceived
even me, so innocent it seemed:
"Are there two?"
One of the ablest priests in that body and one of the best swearers
there, spoke right out so that half the house heard him, and said:
"By God, it was a master stroke!"
As soon as the judge was better of his embarrassment he came back to the
charge, but was prudent and passed by Joan's question:
"Is it true that you received a letter from the Count of Armagnac asking
you which of the three Popes he ought to obey?"
"Yes, and answered it."
Copies of both letters were produced and read. Joan said that hers had
not been quite strictly copied. She said she had received the Count's
letter when she was just mounting her horse; and added:
"So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I would try to answer him
from Paris or somewhere where I could be at rest."
She was asked again which Pope she had considered the right one.
"I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac as to which one he
ought to obey"; then she added, with a frank fearlessness which sounded
fresh and wholesome in that den of trimmers and shufflers, "but as for
me, I hold that we are bound to obey our Lord the Pope who is at Rome."
The matter was dropped. They produced and read a copy of Joan's first
effort at dictating--her proclamation summoning the English to retire
from the siege of Orleans and vacate France--truly a great and fine
production for an unpractised girl of seventeen.
"Do you acknowledge as your own the document which has just been read?"
"Yes, except that there are errors in it--words which make me give myself
too much importance." I saw what was coming; I was troubled and ashamed.
"For instance, I did not say 'Deliver up to the Maid' (rendez au la
Pucelle); I said 'Deliver up to the King' (rendez au Roi); and I did not
call myself 'Commander-in-Chief' (chef de guerre). All those are words
which my secretary substituted; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I
said."
She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that
embarrassment. I hadn't misheard her at all, and hadn't forgotten. I
changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and
entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and who
was going to surrender anything to the King?--at that time a stick, a
cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of
Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck a
blow.
Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there,
if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that
piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present--and not only
present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at
a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into
it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal infamy!
"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?"
"I do."
"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?"
Ah, then she was indignant!
"No! Not even these chains"--and she shook them--"not even these chains
can chill the hopes that I uttered there. And more!"--she rose, and stood
a moment with a divine strange light kindling in her face, then her words
burst forth as in a flood--"I warn you now that before seven years a
disaster will smite the English, oh, many fold greater than the fall of
Orleans! and--"
"Silence! Sit down!"
"--and then, soon after, they will lose all France!"
Now consider these things. The French armies no longer existed. The
French cause was standing still, our King was standing still, there was
no hint that by and by the Constable Richemont would come forward and
take up the great work of Joan of Arc and finish it. In face of all this,
Joan made that prophecy--made it with perfect confidence--and it came
true. For within five years Paris fell--1436--and our King marched into
it flying the victor's flag. So the first part of the prophecy was then
fulfilled--in fact, almost the entire prophecy; for, with Paris in our
hands, the fulfilment of the rest of it was assured.
Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a single town--Calais.
Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of Joan's. At the time
that she wanted to take Paris and could have done it with ease if our
King had but consented, she said that that was the golden time; that,
with Paris ours, all France would be ours in six months. But if this
golden opportunity to recover France was wasted, said she, "I give you
twenty years to do it in."
She was right. After Paris fell, in 1436, the rest of the work had to be
done city by city, castle by castle, and it took twenty years to finish
it.
Yes, it was the first day of March, 1431, there in the court, that she
stood in the view of everybody and uttered that strange and incredible
prediction. Now and then, in this world, somebody's prophecy turns up
correct, but when you come to look into it there is sure to be
considerable room for suspicion that the prophecy was made after the
fact. But here the matter is different. There in that court Joan's
prophecy was set down in the official record at the hour and moment of
its utterance, years before the fulfilment, and there you may read it to
this day.
Twenty-five years after Joan's death the record was produced in the great
Court of the Rehabilitation and verified under oath by Manchon and me,
and surviving judges of our court confirmed the exactness of the record
in their testimony.
Joan' startling utterance on that now so celebrated first of March
stirred up a great turmoil, and it was some time before it quieted down
again. Naturally, everybody was troubled, for a prophecy is a grisly and
awful thing, whether one thinks it ascends from hell or comes down from
heaven.
All that these people felt sure of was, that the inspiration back of it
was genuine and puissant.
They would have given their right hands to know the source of it.
At last the questions began again.
"How do you know that those things are going to happen?"
"I know it by revelation. And I know it as surely as I know that you sit
here before me."
This sort of answer was not going to allay the spreading uneasiness.
Therefore, after some further dallying the judge got the subject out of
the way and took up one which he could enjoy more.
"What languages do your Voices speak?"
"French."
"St. Marguerite, too?"
"Verily; why not? She is on our side, not on the English!"
Saints and angels who did not condescend to speak English is a grave
affront. They could not be brought into court and punished for contempt,
but the tribunal could take silent note of Joan's remark and remember it
against her; which they did. It might be useful by and by.
"Do your saints and angels wear jewelry?--crowns, rings, earrings?"
To Joan, questions like these were profane frivolities and not worthy of
serious notice; she answered indifferently. But the question brought to
her mind another matter, and she turned upon Cauchon and said:
"I had two rings. They have been taken away from me during my captivity.
You have one of them. It is the gift of my brother. Give it back to me.
If not to me, then I pray that it be given to the Church."
The judges conceived the idea that maybe these rings were for the working
of enchantments.
Perhaps they could be made to do Joan a damage.
"Where is the other ring?"
"The Burgundians have it."
"Where did you get it?"
"My father and mother gave it to me."
"Describe it."
"It is plain and simple and has 'Jesus and Mary' engraved upon it."
Everybody could see that that was not a valuable equipment to do devil's
work with. So that trail was not worth following. Still, to make sure,
one of the judges asked Joan if she had ever cured sick people by
touching them with the ring. She said no.
"Now as concerning the fairies, that were used to abide near by Domremy
whereof there are many reports and traditions. It is said that your
godmother surprised these creatures on a summer's night dancing under the
tree called l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont. Is it not possible that your
pretended saints and angles are but those fairies?"
"Is that in your proces?"
She made no other answer.
"Have you not conversed with St. Marguerite and St. Catherine under that
tree?"
"I do not know."
"Or by the fountain near the tree?"
"Yes, sometimes."
"What promises did they make you?"
"None but such as they had God's warrant for."
"But what promises did they make?"
"That is not in your proces; yet I will say this much: they told me that
the King would become master of his kingdom in spite of his enemies."
"And what else?"
There was a pause; then she said humbly:
"They promised to lead me to Paradise."
If faces do really betray what is passing in men's minds, a fear came
upon many in that house, at this time, that maybe, after all, a chosen
servant and herald of God was here being hunted to her death. The
interest deepened. Movements and whisperings ceased: the stillness became
almost painful.
Have you noticed that almost from the beginning the nature of the
questions asked Joan showed that in some way or other the questioner very
often already knew his fact before he asked his question? Have you
noticed that somehow or other the questioners usually knew just how and
were to search for Joan's secrets; that they really knew the bulk of her
privacies--a fact not suspected by her--and that they had no task before
them but to trick her into exposing those secrets?
Do you remember Loyseleur, the hypocrite, the treacherous priest, tool of
Cauchon? Do you remember that under the sacred seal of the confessional
Joan freely and trustingly revealed to him everything concerning her
history save only a few things regarding her supernatural revelations
which her Voices had forbidden her to tell to any one--and that the
unjust judge, Cauchon, was a hidden listener all the time?
Now you understand how the inquisitors were able to devise that long
array of minutely prying questions; questions whose subtlety and
ingenuity and penetration are astonishing until we come to remember
Loyseleur's performance and recognize their source. Ah, Bishop of
Beauvais, you are now lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in
hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to your help. There is but one
among the redeemed that would do it; and it is futile to hope that that
one has not already done it--Joan of Arc.
We will return to the questionings.
"Did they make you still another promise?"
"Yes, but that is not in your proces. I will not tell it now, but before
three months I will tell it you."
The judge seems to know the matter he is asking about, already; one gets
this idea from his next question.
"Did your Voices tell you that you would be liberated before three
months?"
Joan often showed a little flash of surprise at the good guessing of the
judges, and she showed one this time. I was frequently in terror to find
my mind (which I could not control) criticizing the Voices and saying,
"They counsel her to speak boldly--a thing which she would do without any
suggestion from them or anybody else--but when it comes to telling her
any useful thing, such as how these conspirators manage to guess their
way so skilfully into her affairs, they are always off attending to some
other business."
I am reverent by nature; and when such thoughts swept through my head
they made me cold with fear, and if there was a storm and thunder at the
time, I was so ill that I could but with difficulty abide at my post and
do my work.
Joan answered:
"That is not in your proces. I do not know when I shall be set free, but
some who wish me out of this world will go from it before me."
It made some of them shiver.
"Have your Voices told you that you will be delivered from this prison?"
Without a doubt they had, and the judge knew it before he asked the
question.
"Ask me again in three months and I will tell you." She said it with such
a happy look, the tired prisoner! And I? And Noel Rainguesson, drooping
yonder?--why, the floods of joy went streaming through us from crown to
sole! It was all that we could do to hold still and keep from making
fatal exposure of our feelings.
She was to be set free in three months. That was what she meant; we saw
it. The Voices had told her so, and told her true--true to the very
day--May 30th. But we know now that they had mercifully hidden from her
how she was to be set free, but left her in ignorance. Home again!
That day was our understanding of it--Noel's and mine; that was our
dream; and now we would count the days, the hours, the minutes. They
would fly lightly along; they would soon be over.
Yes, we would carry our idol home; and there, far from the pomps and
tumults of the world, we would take up our happy life again and live it
out as we had begun it, in the free air and the sunshine, with the
friendly sheep and the friendly people for comrades, and the grace and
charm of the meadows, the woods, and the river always before our eyes and
their deep peace in our hearts. Yes, that was our dream, the dream that
carried us bravely through that three months to an exact and awful
fulfilment, the though of which would have killed us, I think, if we had
foreknown it and been obliged to bear the burden of it upon our hearts
the half of those weary days.
Our reading of the prophecy was this: We believed the King's soul was
going to be smitten with remorse; and that he would privately plan a
rescue with Joan's old lieutenants, D'Alencon and the Bastard and La
Hire, and that this rescue would take place at the end of the three
months. So we made up our minds to be ready and take a hand in it.
In the present and also in later sittings Joan was urged to name the
exact day of her deliverance; but she could not do that. She had not the
permission of her Voices. Moreover, the Voices themselves did not name
the precise day. Ever since the fulfilment of the prophecy, I have
believed that Joan had the idea that her deliverance was going to dome in
the form of death. But not that death! Divine as she was, dauntless as
she was in battle, she was human also. She was not solely a saint, an
angel, she was a clay-made girl also--as human a girl as any in the
world, and full of a human girl's sensitiveness and tenderness and
delicacies. And so, that death! No, she could not have lived the three
months with that one before her, I think. You remember that the first
time she was wounded she was frightened, and cried, just as any other
girl of seventeen would have done, although she had known for eighteen
days that she was going to be wounded on that very day. No, she was not
afraid of any ordinary death, and an ordinary death was what she believed
the prophecy of deliverance meant, I think, for her face showed
happiness, not horror, when she uttered it.
Now I will explain why I think as I do. Five weeks before she was
captured in the battle of Compiegne, her Voices told her what was coming.
They did not tell her the day or the place, but said she would be taken
prisoner and that it would be before the feast of St. John. She begged
that death, certain and swift, should be her fate, and the captivity
brief; for she was a free spirit, and dreaded the confinement. The Voices
made no promise, but only told her to bear whatever came. Now as they did
not refuse the swift death, a hopeful young thing like Joan would
naturally cherish that fact and make the most of it, allowing it to grow
and establish itself in her mind. And so now that she was told she was to
be "delivered" in three months, I think she believed it meant that she
would die in her bed in the prison, and that that was why she looked
happy and content--the gates of Paradise standing open for her, the time
so short, you see, her troubles so soon to be over, her reward so close
at hand. Yes, that would make her look happy, that would make her patient
and bold, and able to fight her fight out like a soldier. Save herself if
she could, of course, and try for the best, for that was the way she was
made; but die with her face to the front if die she must.
Then later, when she charged Cauchon with trying to kill her with a
poisoned fish, her notion that she was to be "delivered" by death in the
prison--if she had it, and I believe she had--would naturally be greatly
strengthened, you see.
But I am wandering from the trial. Joan was asked to definitely name the
time that she would be delivered from prison.
"I have always said that I was not permitted to tell you everything. I am
to be set free, and I desire to ask leave of my Voices to tell you the
day. That is why I wish for delay."
"Do your Voices forbid you to tell the truth?"
"Is it that you wish to know matters concerning the King of France? I
tell you again that he will regain his kingdom, and that I know it as
well as I know that you sit here before me in this tribunal." She sighed
and, after a little pause, added: "I should be dead but for this
revelation, which comforts me always."
Some trivial questions were asked her about St. Michael's dress and
appearance. She answered them with dignity, but one saw that they gave
her pain. After a little she said:
"I have great joy in seeing him, for when I see him I have the feeling
that I am not in mortal sin."
She added, "Sometimes St. Marguerite and St. Catherine have allowed me to
confess myself to them."
Here was a possible chance to set a successful snare for her innocence.
"When you confessed were you in mortal sin, do you think?"
But her reply did her no hurt. So the inquiry was shifted once more to
the revelations made to the King--secrets which the court had tried again
and again to force out of Joan, but without success.
"Now as to the sign given to the King--"
"I have already told you that I will tell you nothing about it."
"Do you know what the sign was?"
"As to that, you will not find out from me."
All this refers to Joan's secret interview with the King--held apart,
though two or three others were present. It was known--through Loyseleur,
of course--that this sign was a crown and was a pledge of the verity of
Joan's mission. But that is all a mystery until this day--the nature of
the crown, I mean--and will remain a mystery to the end of time. We can
never know whether a real crown descended upon the King's head, or only a
symbol, the mystic fabric of a vision.
"Did you see a crown upon the King's head when he received the
revelation?"
"I cannot tell you as to that, without perjury."
"Did the King have that crown at Rheims?"
"I think the King put upon his head a crown which he found there; but a
much richer one was brought him afterward."
"Have you seen that one?"
"I cannot tell you, without perjury. But whether I have seen it or not, I
have heard say that it was rich and magnificent."
They went on and pestered her to weariness about that mysterious crown,
but they got nothing more out of her. The sitting closed. A long, hard
day for all of us.
10 The Inquisitors at Their Wits' End
THE COURT rested a day, then took up work again on Saturday, the third of
March.
This was one of our stormiest sessions. The whole court was out of
patience; and with good reason. These threescore distinguished churchmen,
illustrious tacticians, veteran legal gladiators, had left important
posts where their supervision was needed, to journey hither from various
regions and accomplish a most simple and easy matter--condemn and send to
death a country-lass of nineteen who could neither read nor write, knew
nothing of the wiles and perplexities of legal procedure, could not call
a single witness in her defense, was allowed no advocate or adviser, and
must conduct her case by herself against a hostile judge and a packed
jury. In two hours she would be hopelessly entangled, routed, defeated,
convicted. Nothing could be more certain that this--so they thought. But
it was a mistake. The two hours had strung out into days; what promised
to be a skirmish had expanded into a siege; the thing which had looked so
easy had proven to be surprisingly difficult; the light victim who was to
have been puffed away like a feather remained planted like a rock; and on
top of all this, if anybody had a right to laugh it was the country-lass
and not the court.
She was not doing that, for that was not her spirit; but others were
doing it. The whole town was laughing in its sleeve, and the court knew
it, and its dignity was deeply hurt. The members could not hide their
annoyance.
And so, as I have said, the session was stormy. It was easy to see that
these men had made up their minds to force words from Joan to-day which
should shorten up her case and bring it to a prompt conclusion. It shows
that after all their experience with her they did not know her yet.
They went into the battle with energy. They did not leave the questioning
to a particular member; no, everybody helped. They volleyed questions at
Joan from all over the house, and sometimes so many were talking at once
that she had to ask them to deliver their fire one at a time and not by
platoons. The beginning was as usual:
"You are once more required to take the oath pure and simple."
"I will answer to what is in the proces verbal. When I do more, I will
choose the occasion for myself."
That old ground was debated and fought over inch by inch with great
bitterness and many threats. But Joan remained steadfast, and the
questionings had to shift to other matters. Half an hour was spent over
Joan's apparitions--their dress, hair, general appearance, and so on--in
the hope of fishing something of a damaging sort out of the replies; but
with no result.
Next, the male attire was reverted to, of course. After many well-worn
questions had been re-asked, one or two new ones were put forward.
"Did not the King or the Queen sometimes ask you to quit the male dress?"
"That is not in your proces."
"Do you think you would have sinned if you had taken the dress of your
sex?"
"I have done best to serve and obey my sovereign Lord and Master."
After a while the matter of Joan's Standard was taken up, in the hope of
connecting magic and witchcraft with it.
"Did not your men copy your banner in their pennons?"
"The lancers of my guard did it. It was to distinguish them from the rest
of the forces. It was their own idea."
"Were they often renewed?"
"Yes. When the lances were broken they were renewed."
The purpose of the question unveils itself in the next one.
"Did you not say to your men that pennons made like your banner would be
lucky?"
The soldier-spirit in Joan was offended at this puerility. She drew
herself up, and said with dignity and fire: "What I said to them was,
'Ride those English down!' and I did it myself."
Whenever she flung out a scornful speech like that at these French
menials in English livery it lashed them into a rage; and that is what
happened this time. There were ten, twenty, sometimes even thirty of them
on their feet at a time, storming at the prisoner minute after minute,
but Joan was not disturbed.
By and by there was peace, and the inquiry was resumed.
It was now sought to turn against Joan the thousand loving honors which
had been done her when she was raising France out of the dirt and shame
of a century of slavery and castigation.
"Did you not cause paintings and images of yourself to be made?"
"No. At Arras I saw a painting of myself kneeling in armor before the
King and delivering him a letter; but I caused no such things to be
made."
"Were not masses and prayers said in your honor?"
"If it was done it was not by my command. But if any prayed for me I
think it was no harm."
"Did the French people believe you were sent of God?"
"As to that, I know not; but whether they believed it or not, I was not
the less sent of God."
"If they thought you were sent of God, do you think it was well thought?"
"If they believed it, their trust was not abused."
"What impulse was it, think you, that moved the people to kiss your
hands, your feet, and your vestments?"
"They were glad to see me, and so they did those things; and I could not
have prevented them if I had had the heart. Those poor people came
lovingly to me because I had not done them any hurt, but had done the
best I could for them according to my strength."
See what modest little words she uses to describe that touching
spectacle, her marches about France walled in on both sides by the
adoring multitudes: "They were glad to see me." Glad?
Why they were transported with joy to see her. When they could not kiss
her hands or her feet, they knelt in the mire and kissed the hoof-prints
of her horse. They worshiped her; and that is what these priests were
trying to prove. It was nothing to them that she was not to blame for
what other people did. No, if she was worshiped, it was enough; she was
guilty of mortal sin.
Curious logic, one must say.
"Did you not stand sponsor for some children baptized at Rheims?"
"At Troyes I did, and at St. Denis; and I named the boys Charles, in
honor of the King, and the girls I named Joan."
"Did not women touch their rings to those which you wore?"
"Yes, many did, but I did not know their reason for it."
"At Rheims was your Standard carried into the church? Did you stand at
the altar with it in your hand at the Coronation?"
"Yes."
"In passing through the country did you confess yourself in the Churches
and receive the sacrament?"
"Yes."
"In the dress of a man?"
"Yes. But I do not remember that I was in armor."
It was almost a concession! almost a half-surrender of the permission
granted her by the Church at Poitiers to dress as a man. The wily court
shifted to another matter: to pursue this one at this time might call
Joan's attention to her small mistake, and by her native cleverness she
might recover her lost ground. The tempestuous session had worn her and
drowsed her alertness.
"It is reported that you brought a dead child to life in the church at
Lagny. Was that in answer to your prayers?"
"As to that, I have no knowledge. Other young girls were praying for the
child, and I joined them and prayed also, doing no more than they."
"Continue."
"While we prayed it came to life, and cried. It had been dead three days,
and was as black as my doublet. It was straight way baptized, then it
passed from life again and was buried in holy ground."
"Why did you jump from the tower of Beaurevoir by night and try to
escape?"
"I would go to the succor of Compiegne."
It was insinuated that this was an attempt to commit the deep crime of
suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the English.
"Did you not say that you would rather die than be delivered into the
power of the English?"
Joan answered frankly; without perceiving the trap:
"Yes; my words were, that I would rather that my soul be returned unto
God than that I should fall into the hands of the English."
It was now insinuated that when she came to, after jumping from the
tower, she was angry and blasphemed the name of God; and that she did it
again when she heard of the defection of the Commandant of Soissons. She
was hurt and indignant at this, and said:
"It is not true. I have never cursed. It is not my custom to swear."
11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination
A HALT was called. It was time. Cauchon was losing ground in the fight,
Joan was gaining it.
There were signs that here and there in the court a judge was being
softened toward Joan by her courage, her presence of mind, her fortitude,
her constancy, her piety, her simplicity and candor, her manifest purity,
the nobility of her character, her fine intelligence, and the good brave
fight she was making, all friendless and alone, against unfair odds, and
there was grave room for fear that this softening process would spread
further and presently bring Cauchon's plans in danger.
Something must be done, and it was done. Cauchon was not distinguished
for compassion, but he now gave proof that he had it in his character. He
thought it pity to subject so many judges to the prostrating fatigues of
this trial when it could be conducted plenty well enough by a handful of
them. Oh, gentle judge! But he did not remember to modify the fatigues
for the little captive.
He would let all the judges but a handful go, but he would select the
handful himself, and he did.
He chose tigers. If a lamb or two got in, it was by oversight, not
intention; and he knew what to do with lambs when discovered.
He called a small council now, and during five days they sifted the huge
bulk of answers thus far gathered from Joan. They winnowed it of all
chaff, all useless matter--that is, all matter favorable to Joan; they
saved up all matter which could be twisted to her hurt, and out of this
they constructed a basis for a new trial which should have the semblance
of a continuation of the old one. Another change. It was plain that the
public trial had wrought damage: its proceedings had been discussed all
over the town and had moved many to pity the abused prisoner. There
should be no more of that. The sittings should be secret hereafter, and
no spectators admitted. So Noel could come no more. I sent this news to
him. I had not the heart to carry it myself. I would give the pain a
chance to modify before I should see him in the evening.
On the 10th of March the secret trial began. A week had passed since I
had seen Joan. Her appearance gave me a great shock. She looked tired and
weak. She was listless and far away, and her answers showed that she was
dazed and not able to keep perfect run of all that was done and said.
Another court would not have taken advantage of her state, seeing that
her life was at stake here, but would have adjourned and spared her. Did
this one? No; it worried her for hours, and with a glad and eager
ferocity, making all it could out of this great chance, the first one it
had had.
She was tortured into confusing herself concerning the "sign" which had
been given the King, and the next day this was continued hour after hour.
As a result, she made partial revealments of particulars forbidden by her
Voices; and seemed to me to state as facts things which were but
allegories and visions mixed with facts.
The third day she was brighter, and looked less worn. She was almost her
normal self again, and did her work well. Many attempts were made to
beguile her into saying indiscreet things, but she saw the purpose in
view and answered with tact and wisdom.
"Do you know if St. Catherine and St. Marguerite hate the English?"
"They love whom Our Lord loves, and hate whom He hates."
"Does God hate the English?"
"Of the love or the hatred of God toward the English I know nothing."
Then she spoke up with the old martial ring in her voice and the old
audacity in her words, and added, "But I know this--that God will send
victory to the French, and that all the English will be flung out of
France but the dead ones!"
"Was God on the side of the English when they were prosperous in France?"
"I do not know if God hates the French, but I think that He allowed them
to be chastised for their sins."
It was a sufficiently naive way to account for a chastisement which had
now strung out for ninety-six years. But nobody found fault with it.
There was nobody there who would not punish a sinner ninety-six years if
he could, nor anybody there who would ever dream of such a thing as the
Lord's being any shade less stringent than men.
"Have you ever embraced St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?"
"Yes, both of them."
The evil face of Cauchon betrayed satisfaction when she said that.
"When you hung garlands upon L'Arbre Fee Bourlemont, did you do it in
honor of your apparitions?"
"No."
Satisfaction again. No doubt Cauchon would take it for granted that she
hung them there out of sinful love for the fairies.
"When the saints appeared to you did you bow, did you make reverence, did
you kneel?"
"Yes; I did them the most honor and reverence that I could."
A good point for Cauchon if he could eventually make it appear that these
were no saints to whom she had done reverence, but devils in disguise.
Now there was the matter of Joan's keeping her supernatural commerce a
secret from her parents. Much might be made of that. In fact, particular
emphasis had been given to it in a private remark written in the margin
of the proces: "She concealed her visions from her parents and from every
one." Possibly this disloyalty to her parents might itself be the sign of
the satanic source of her mission.
"Do you think it was right to go away to the wars without getting your
parents' leave? It is written one must honor his father and his mother."
"I have obeyed them in all things but that. And for that I have begged
their forgiveness in a letter and gotten it."
"Ah, you asked their pardon? So you knew you were guilty of sin in going
without their leave!"
Joan was stirred. Her eyes flashed, and she exclaimed:
"I was commanded of God, and it was right to go! If I had had a hundred
fathers and mothers and been a king's daughter to boot I would have
gone."
"Did you never ask your Voices if you might tell your parents?"
"They were willing that I should tell them, but I would not for anything
have given my parents that pain."
To the minds of the questioners this headstrong conduct savored of pride.
That sort of pride would move one to see sacrilegious adorations.
"Did not your Voices call you Daughter of God?"
Joan answered with simplicity, and unsuspiciously:
"Yes; before the siege of Orleans and since, they have several times
called me Daughter of God."
Further indications of pride and vanity were sought.
"What horse were you riding when you were captured? Who gave it you?"
"The King."
"You had other things--riches--of the King?"
"For myself I had horses and arms, and money to pay the service in my
household."
"Had you not a treasury?"
"Yes. Ten or twelve thousand crowns." Then she said with naivete "It was
not a great sum to carry on a war with."
"You have it yet?"
"No. It is the King's money. My brothers hold it for him."
"What were the arms which you left as an offering in the church of St.
Denis?"
"My suit of silver mail and a sword."
"Did you put them there in order that they might be adored?"
"No. It was but an act of devotion. And it is the custom of men of war
who have been wounded to make such offering there. I had been wounded
before Paris."
Nothing appealed to these stony hearts, those dull imaginations--not even
this pretty picture, so simply drawn, of the wounded girl-soldier hanging
her toy harness there in curious companionship with the grim and dusty
iron mail of the historic defenders of France. No, there was nothing in
it for them; nothing, unless evil and injury for that innocent creature
could be gotten out of it somehow.
"Which aided most--you the Standard, or the Standard you?"
"Whether it was the Standard or whether it was I, is nothing--the
victories came from God."
"But did you base your hopes of victory in yourself or in your Standard?"
"In neither. In God, and not otherwise."
"Was not your Standard waved around the King's head at the Coronation?"
"No. It was not."
"Why was it that your Standard had place at the crowning of the King in
the Cathedral of Rheims, rather than those of the other captains?"
Then, soft and low, came that touching speech which will live as long as
language lives, and pass into all tongues, and move all gentle hearts
wheresoever it shall come, down to the latest day:
"It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor." [1] How simple it is,
and how beautiful. And how it beggars the studies eloquence of the
masters of oratory. Eloquence was a native gift of Joan of Arc; it came
from her lips without effort and without preparation. Her words were as
sublime as her deeds, as sublime as her character; they had their source
in a great heart and were coined in a great brain.
[1] What she said has been many times translated, but never with success.
There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes all efforts to
convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and escapes in the
transmission. Her words were these:
"Il avait ,t, a la peine, c'etait bien raison qu'il fut a l'honneur."
Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Aix,
finely speaks of it (Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable, page 197) as "that
sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings like the cry
of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in its patriotism and
its faith." -- TRANSLATOR.
12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted
NOW, as a next move, this small secret court of holy assassins did a
thing so base that even at this day, in my old age, it is hard to speak
of it with patience.
In the beginning of her commerce with her Voices there at Domremy, the
child Joan solemnly devoted her life to God, vowing her pure body and her
pure soul to His service. You will remember that her parents tried to
stop her from going to the wars by haling her to the court at Toul to
compel her to make a marriage which she had never promised to make--a
marriage with our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting, and most dear
and lamented comrade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable battle
and sleeps with God these sixty years, peace to his ashes! And you will
remember how Joan, sixteen years old, stood up in that venerable court
and conducted her case all by herself, and tore the poor Paladin's case
to rags and blew it away with a breath; and how the astonished old judge
on the bench spoke of her as "this marvelous child."
You remember all that. Then think what I felt, to see these false
priests, here in the tribunal wherein Joan had fought a fourth lone fight
in three years, deliberately twist that matter entirely around and try to
make out that Joan haled the Paladin into court and pretended that he had
promised to marry her, and was bent on making him do it.
Certainly there was no baseness that those people were ashamed to stoop
to in their hunt for that friendless girl's life. What they wanted to
show was this--that she had committed the sin of relapsing from her vow
and trying to violate it.
Joan detailed the true history of the case, but lost her temper as she
went along, and finished with some words for Cauchon which he remembers
yet, whether he is fanning himself in the world he belongs in or has
swindled his way into the other.
The rest of this day and part of the next the court labored upon the old
theme--the male attire. It was shabby work for those grave men to be
engaged in; for they well knew one of Joan's reasons for clinging to the
male dress was, that soldiers of the guard were always present in her
room whether she was asleep or awake, and that the male dress was a
better protection for her modesty than the other.
The court knew that one of Joan's purposes had been the deliverance of
the exiled Duke of Orleans, and they were curious to know how she had
intended to manage it. Her plan was characteristically businesslike, and
her statement of it as characteristically simple and straightforward:
"I would have taken English prisoners enough in France for his ransom;
and failing that, I would have invaded England and brought him out by
force."
That was just her way. If a thing was to be done, it was love first, and
hammer and tongs to follow; but no shilly-shallying between. She added
with a little sigh:
"If I had had my freedom three years, I would have delivered him."
"Have you the permission of your Voices to break out of prison whenever
you can?"
"I have asked their leave several times, but they have not given it."
I think it is as I have said, she expected the deliverance of death, and
within the prison walls, before the three months should expire.
"Would you escape if you saw the doors open?"
She spoke up frankly and said:
"Yes--for I should see in that the permission of Our Lord. God helps who
help themselves, the proverb says. But except I thought I had permission,
I would not go."
Now, then, at this point, something occurred which convinces me, every
time I think of it--and it struck me so at the time--that for a moment,
at least, her hopes wandered to the King, and put into her mind the same
notion about her deliverance which Noel and I had settled upon--a rescue
by her old soldiers. I think the idea of the rescue did occur to her, but
only as a passing thought, and that it quickly passed away.
Some remark of the Bishop of Beauvais moved her to remind him once more
that he was an unfair judge, and had no right to preside there, and that
he was putting himself in great danger.
"What danger?" he asked.
"I do not know. St. Catherine has promised me help, but I do not know the
form of it. I do not know whether I am to be delivered from this prison
or whether when you sent me to the scaffold there will happen a trouble
by which I shall be set free. Without much thought as to this matter, I
am of the opinion that it may be one or the other." After a pause she
added these words, memorable forever--words whose meaning she may have
miscaught, misunderstood; as to that we can never know; words which she
may have rightly understood, as to that, also, we can never know; but
words whose mystery fell away from them many a year ago and revealed
their meaning to all the world:
"But what my Voices have said clearest is, that I shall be delivered by a
great victory." She paused, my heart was beating fast, for to me that
great victory meant the sudden bursting in of our old soldiers with the
war-cry and clash of steel at the last moment and the carrying off of
Joan of Arc in triumph. But, oh, that thought had such a short life! For
now she raised her head and finished, with those solemn words which men
still so often quote and dwell upon--words which filled me with fear,
they sounded so like a prediction. "And always they say 'Submit to
whatever comes; do not grieve for your martyrdom; from it you will ascend
into the Kingdom of Paradise."
Was she thinking of fire and the stake? I think not. I thought of it
myself, but I believe she was only thinking of this slow and cruel
martyrdom of chains and captivity and insult. Surely, martyrdom was the
right name for it.
It was Jean de la Fontaine who was asking the questions. He was willing
to make the most he could out of what she had said:
"As the Voices have told you you are going to Paradise, you feel certain
that that will happen and that you will not be damned in hell. Is that
so?"
"I believe what they told me. I know that I shall be saved."
"It is a weighty answer."
"To me the knowledge that I shall be saved is a great treasure."
"Do you think that after that revelation you could be able to commit
mortal sin?"
"As to that, I do not know. My hope for salvation is in holding fast to
my oath to keep by body and my soul pure."
"Since you know you are to be saved, do you think it necessary to go to
confession?"
The snare was ingeniously devised, but Joan's simple and humble answer
left it empty:
"One cannot keep his conscience too clean."
We were now arriving at the last day of this new trial. Joan had come
through the ordeal well. It had been a long and wearisome struggle for
all concerned. All ways had been tried to convict the accused, and all
had failed, thus far. The inquisitors were thoroughly vexed and
dissatisfied.
However, they resolved to make one more effort, put in one more day's
work. This was done--March 17th. Early in the sitting a notable trap was
set for Joan:
"Will you submit to the determination of the Church all your words and
deeds, whether good or bad?"
That was well planned. Joan was in imminent peril now. If she should
heedlessly say yes, it would put her mission itself upon trial, and one
would know how to decide its source and character promptly. If she should
say no, she would render herself chargeable with the crime of heresy.
But she was equal to the occasion. She drew a distinct line of separation
between the Church's authority over her as a subject member, and the
matter of her mission. She said she loved the Church and was ready to
support the Christian faith with all her strength; but as to the works
done under her mission, those must be judged by God alone, who had
commanded them to be done.
The judge still insisted that she submit them to the decision of the
Church. She said:
"I will submit them to Our Lord who sent me. It would seem to me that He
and His Church are one, and that there should be no difficulty about this
matter." Then she turned upon the judge and said, "Why do you make a
difficulty when there is no room for any?"
Then Jean de la Fontaine corrected her notion that there was but one
Church. There were two--the Church Triumphant, which is God, the saints,
the angels, and the redeemed, and has its seat in heave; and the Church
Militant, which is our Holy Father the Pope, Vicar of God, the prelates,
the clergy and all good Christians and Catholics, the which Church has
its seat in the earth, is governed by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err.
"Will you not submit those matters to the Church Militant?"
"I am come to the King of France from the Church Triumphant on high by
its commandant, and to that Church I will submit all those things which I
have done. For the Church Militant I have no other answer now."
The court took note of this straitly worded refusal, and would hope to
get profit out of it; but the matter was dropped for the present, and a
long chase was then made over the old hunting-ground--the fairies, the
visions, the male attire, and all that.
In the afternoon the satanic Bishop himself took the chair and presided
over the closing scenes of the trial. Along toward the finish, this
question was asked by one of the judges:
"You have said to my lord the Bishop that you would answer him as you
would answer before our Holy Father the Pope, and yet there are several
questions which you continually refuse to answer. Would you not answer
the Pope more fully than you have answered before my lord of Beauvais?
Would you not feel obliged to answer the Pope, who is the Vicar of God,
more fully?"
Now a thunder-clap fell out of a clear sky:
"Take me to the Pope. I will answer to everything that I ought to."
It made the Bishop's purple face fairly blanch with consternation. If
Joan had only known, if she had only know! She had lodged a mine under
this black conspiracy able to blow the Bishop's schemes to the four winds
of heaven, and she didn't know it. She had made that speech by mere
instinct, not suspecting what tremendous forces were hidden in it, and
there was none to tell her what she had done. I knew, and Manchon knew;
and if she had known how to read writing we could have hoped to get the
knowledge to her somehow; but speech was the only way, and none was
allowed to approach her near enough for that. So there she sat, once more
Joan of Arc the Victorious, but all unconscious of it. She was miserably
worn and tired, by the long day's struggle and by illness, or she must
have noticed the effect of that speech and divined the reason of it.
She had made many master-strokes, but this was the master-stroke. It was
an appeal to Rome. It was her clear right; and if she had persisted in it
Cauchon's plot would have tumbled about his ears like a house of cards,
and he would have gone from that place the worst-beaten man of the
century. He was daring, but he was not daring enough to stand up against
that demand if Joan had urged it. But no, she was ignorant, poor thing,
and did not know what a blow she had struck for life and liberty.
France was not the Church. Rome had no interest in the destruction of
this messenger of God.
Rome would have given her a fair trial, and that was all that her cause
needed. From that trial she would have gone forth free, and honored, and
blessed.
But it was not so fated. Cauchon at once diverted the questions to other
matters and hurried the trial quickly to an end.
As Joan moved feebly away, dragging her chains, I felt stunned and dazed,
and kept saying to myself, "Such a little while ago she said the saving
word and could have gone free; and now, there she goes to her death; yes,
it is to her death, I know it, I feel it. They will double the guards;
they will never let any come near her now between this and her
condemnation, lest she get a hint and speak that word again. This is the
bitterest day that has come to me in all this miserable time."
13 The Third Trial Fails
SO THE SECOND trial in the prison was over. Over, and no definite result.
The character of it I have described to you. It was baser in one
particular than the previous one; for this time the charges had not been
communicated to Joan, therefore she had been obliged to fight in the
dark.
There was no opportunity to do any thinking beforehand; there was no
foreseeing what traps might be set, and no way to prepare for them. Truly
it was a shabby advantage to take of a girl situated as this one was. One
day, during the course of it, an able lawyer of Normandy, Maetre Lohier,
happened to be in Rouen, and I will give you his opinion of that trial,
so that you may see that I have been honest with you, and that my
partisanship has not made me deceive you as to its unfair and illegal
character. Cauchon showed Lohier the proces and asked his opinion about
the trial. Now this was the opinion which he gave to Cauchon. He said
that the whole thing was null and void; for these reasons: 1, because the
trial was secret, and full freedom of speech and action on the part of
those present not possible; 2, because the trial touched the honor of the
King of France, yet he was not summoned to defend himself, nor any one
appointed to represent him; 3, because the charges against the prisoner
were not communicated to her; 4, because the accused, although young and
simple, had been forced to defend her cause without help of counsel,
notwithstanding she had so much at stake.
Did that please Bishop Cauchon? It did not. He burst out upon Lohier with
the most savage cursings, and swore he would have him drowned. Lohier
escaped from Rouen and got out of France with all speed, and so saved his
life.
Well, as I have said, the second trial was over, without definite result.
But Cauchon did not give up. He could trump up another. And still another
and another, if necessary. He had the half-promise of an enormous
prize--the Archbishopric of Rouen--if he should succeed in burning the
body and damning to hell the soul of this young girl who had never done
him any harm; and such a prize as that, to a man like the Bishop of
Beauvais, was worth the burning and damning of fifty harmless girls, let
alone one.
So he set to work again straight off next day; and with high confidence,
too, intimating with brutal cheerfulness that he should succeed this
time. It took him and the other scavengers nine days to dig matter enough
out of Joan's testimony and their own inventions to build up the new mass
of charges. And it was a formidable mass indeed, for it numbered
sixty-six articles.
This huge document was carried to the castle the next day, March 27th;
and there, before a dozen carefully selected judges, the new trial was
begun.
Opinions were taken, and the tribunal decided that Joan should hear the
articles read this time.
Maybe that was on account of Lohier's remark upon that head; or maybe it
was hoped that the reading would kill the prisoner with fatigue--for, as
it turned out, this reading occupied several days. It was also decided
that Joan should be required to answer squarely to every article, and
that if she refused she should be considered convicted. You see, Cauchon
was managing to narrow her chances more and more all the time; he was
drawing the toils closer and closer.
Joan was brought in, and the Bishop of Beauvais opened with a speech to
her which ought to have made even himself blush, so laden it was with
hypocrisy and lies. He said that this court was composed of holy and
pious churchmen whose hearts were full of benevolence and compassion
toward her, and that they had no wish to hurt her body, but only a desire
to instruct her and lead her into the way of truth and salvation.
Why, this man was born a devil; now think of his describing himself and
those hardened slaves of his in such language as that.
And yet, worse was to come. For now having in mind another of Lovier's
hints, he had the cold effrontery to make to Joan a proposition which, I
think, will surprise you when you hear it. He said that this court,
recognizing her untaught estate and her inability to deal with the
complex and difficult matters which were about to be considered, had
determined, out of their pity and their mercifulness, to allow her to
choose one or more persons out of their own number to help her with
counsel and advice!
Think of that--a court made up of Loyseleur and his breed of reptiles. It
was granting leave to a lamb to ask help of a wolf. Joan looked up to see
if he was serious, and perceiving that he was at least pretending to be,
she declined, of course.
The Bishop was not expecting any other reply. He had made a show of
fairness and could have it entered on the minutes, therefore he was
satisfied.
Then he commanded Joan to answer straitly to every accusation; and
threatened to cut her off from the Church if she failed to do that or
delayed her answers beyond a given length of time.
Yes, he was narrowing her chances down, step by step.
Thomas de Courcelles began the reading of that interminable document,
article by article. Joan answered to each article in its turn; sometimes
merely denying its truth, sometimes by saying her answer would be found
in the records of the previous trials.
What a strange document that was, and what an exhibition and exposure of
the heart of man, the one creature authorized to boast that he is made in
the image of God. To know Joan of Arc was to know one who was wholly
noble, pure, truthful, brave, compassionate, generous, pious, unselfish,
modest, blameless as the very flowers in the fields--a nature fine and
beautiful, a character supremely great. To know her from that document
would be to know her as the exact reverse of all that. Nothing that she
was appears in it, everything that she was not appears there in detail.
Consider some of the things it charges against her, and remember who it
is it is speaking of. It calls her a sorceress, a false prophet, an
invoker and companion of evil spirits, a dealer in magic, a person
ignorant of the Catholic faith, a schismatic; she is sacrilegious, an
idolater, an apostate, a blasphemer of God and His saints, scandalous,
seditious, a disturber of the peace; she incites men to war, and to the
spilling of human blood; she discards the decencies and proprieties of
her sex, irreverently assuming the dress of a man and the vocation of a
soldier; she beguiles both princes and people; she usurps divine honors,
and has caused herself to be adored and venerated, offering her hands and
her vestments to be kissed.
There it is--every fact of her life distorted, perverted, reversed. As a
child she had loved the fairies, she had spoken a pitying word for them
when they were banished from their home, she had played under their tree
and around their fountain--hence she was a comrade of evil spirits.
She had lifted France out of the mud and moved her to strike for freedom,
and led her to victory after victory--hence she was a disturber of the
peace--as indeed she was, and a provoker of war--as indeed she was again!
and France will be proud of it and grateful for it for many a century to
come. And she had been adored--as if she could help that, poor thing, or
was in any way to blame for it. The cowed veteran and the wavering
recruit had drunk the spirit of war from her eyes and touched her sword
with theirs and moved forward invincible--hence she was a sorceress.
And so the document went on, detail by detail, turning these waters of
life to poison, this gold to dross, these proofs of a noble and beautiful
life to evidences of a foul and odious one.
Of course, the sixty-six articles were just a rehash of the things which
had come up in the course of the previous trials, so I will touch upon
this new trial but lightly. In fact, Joan went but little into detail
herself, usually merely saying, "That is not true--passez outre"; or, "I
have answered that before--let the clerk read it in his record," or
saying some other brief thing.
She refused to have her mission examined and tried by the earthly Church.
The refusal was taken note of.
She denied the accusation of idolatry and that she had sought men's
homage. She said:
"If any kissed my hands and my vestments it was not by my desire, and I
did what I could to prevent it."
She had the pluck to say to that deadly tribunal that she did not know
the fairies to be evil beings. She knew it was a perilous thing to say,
but it was not in her nature to speak anything but the truth when she
spoke at all. Danger had no weight with her in such things. Note was
taken of her remark.
She refused, as always before, when asked if she would put off the male
attire if she were given permission to commune. And she added this:
"When one receives the sacrament, the manner of his dress is a small
thing and of no value in the eyes of Our Lord."
She was charge with being so stubborn in clinging to her male dress that
she would not lay it off even to get the blessed privilege of hearing
mass. She spoke out with spirit and said:
"I would rather die than be untrue to my oath to God."
She was reproached with doing man's work in the wars and thus deserting
the industries proper to her sex. She answered, with some little touch of
soldierly disdain:
"As to the matter of women's work, there's plenty to do it."
It was always a comfort to me to see the soldier spirit crop up in her.
While that remained in her she would be Joan of Arc, and able to look
trouble and fate in the face.
"It appears that this mission of yours which you claim you had from God,
was to make war and pour out human blood."
Joan replied quite simply, contenting herself with explaining that war
was not her first move, but her second:
"To begin with, I demanded that peace should be made. If it was refused,
then I would fight."
The judge mixed the Burgundians and English together in speaking of the
enemy which Joan had come to make war upon. But she showed that she made
a distinction between them by act and word, the Burgundians being
Frenchmen and therefore entitled to less brusque treatment than the
English. She said:
"As to the Duke of Burgundy, I required of him, both by letters and by
his ambassadors, that he make peace with the King. As to the English, the
only peace for them was that they leave the country and go home."
Then she said that even with the English she had shown a pacific
disposition, since she had warned them away by proclamation before
attacking them.
"If they had listened to me," said she, "they would have done wisely." At
this point she uttered her prophecy again, saying with emphasis, "Before
seven years they will see it themselves."
Then they presently began to pester her again about her male costume, and
tried to persuade her to voluntarily promise to discard it. I was never
deep, so I think it no wonder that I was puzzled by their persistency in
what seemed a thing of no consequence, and could not make out what their
reason could be. But we all know now. We all know now that it was another
of their treacherous projects. Yes, if they could but succeed in getting
her to formally discard it they could play a game upon her which would
quickly destroy her. So they kept at their evil work until at last she
broke out and said:
"Peace! Without the permission of God I will not lay it off though you
cut off my head!"
At one point she corrected the proces verbal, saying:
"It makes me say that everything which I have done was done by the
counsel of Our Lord. I did not say that, I said 'all which I have well
done.'"
Doubt was cast upon the authenticity of her mission because of the
ignorance and simplicity of the messenger chosen. Joan smiled at that.
She could have reminded these people that Our Lord, who is no respecter
of persons, had chosen the lowly for his high purposes even oftener than
he had chosen bishops and cardinals; but she phrased her rebuke in
simpler terms:
"It is the prerogative of Our Lord to choose His instruments where He
will."
She was asked what form of prayer she used in invoking counsel from on
high. She said the form was brief and simple; then she lifted her pallid
face and repeated it, clasping her chained hands:
"Most dear God, in honor of your holy passion I beseech you, if you love
me, that you will reveal to me what I am to answer to these churchmen. As
concerns my dress, I know by what command I have put it on, but I know
not in what manner I am to lay it off. I pray you tell me what to do."
She was charged with having dared, against the precepts of God and His
saints, to assume empire over men and make herself Commander-in-Chief.
That touched the soldier in her. She had a deep reverence for priests,
but the soldier in her had but small reverence for a priest's opinions
about war; so, in her answer to this charge she did not condescend to go
into any explanations or excuses, but delivered herself with bland
indifference and military brevity.
"If I was Commander-in-Chief, it was to thrash the English."
Death was staring her in the face here all the time, but no matter; she
dearly loved to make these English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and whenever
they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her sting into it. She got
great refreshment out of these little episodes. Her days were a desert;
these were the oases in it.
Her being in the wars with men was charged against her as an indelicacy.
She said:
"I had a woman with me when I could--in towns and lodgings. In the field
I always slept in my armor."
That she and her family had been ennobled by the King was charged against
her as evidence that the source of her deeds were sordid self-seeking.
She answered that she had not asked this grace of the King; it was his
own act.
This third trial was ended at last. And once again there was no definite
result.
Possibly a fourth trial might succeed in defeating this apparently
unconquerable girl. So the malignant Bishop set himself to work to plan
it.
He appointed a commission to reduce the substance of the sixty-six
articles to twelve compact lies, as a basis for the new attempt. This was
done. It took several days.
Meantime Cauchon went to Joan's cell one day, with Manchon and two of the
judges, Isambard de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenue, to see if he could not
manage somehow to beguile Joan into submitting her mission to the
examination and decision of the Church Militant--that is to say, to that
part of the Church Militant which was represented by himself and his
creatures.
Joan once more positively refused. Isambard de la Pierre had a heart in
his body, and he so pitied this persecuted poor girl that he ventured to
do a very daring thing; for he asked her if she would be willing to have
her case go before the Council of Basel, and said it contained as many
priests of her party as of the English party.
Joan cried out that she would gladly go before so fairly constructed a
tribunal as that; but before Isambard could say another word Cauchon
turned savagely upon him and exclaimed:
"Shut up, in the devil's name!"
Then Manchon ventured to do a brave thing, too, though he did it in great
fear for his life. He asked Cauchon if he should enter Joan's submission
to the Council of Basel upon the minutes.
"No! It is not necessary."
"Ah," said poor Joan, reproachfully, "you set down everything that is
against me, but you will not set down what is for me."
It was piteous. It would have touched the heart of a brute. But Cauchon
was more than that.
14 Joan Struggles with Her Twelve Lies
WE WERE now in the first days of April. Joan was ill. She had fallen ill
the 29th of March, the day after the close of the third trial, and was
growing worse when the scene which I have just described occurred in her
cell. It was just like Cauchon to go there and try to get some advantage
out of her weakened state.
Let us note some of the particulars in the new indictment--the Twelve
Lies.
Part of the first one says Joan asserts that she has found her salvation.
She never said anything of the kind. It also says she refuses to submit
herself to the Church. Not true. She was willing to submit all her acts
to this Rouen tribunal except those done by the command of God in
fulfilment of her mission. Those she reserved for the judgment of God.
She refused to recognize Cauchon and his serfs as the Church, but was
willing to go before the Pope or the Council of Basel.
A clause of another of the Twelve says she admits having threatened with
death those who would not obey her. Distinctly false. Another clause says
she declares that all she has done has been done by command of God. What
she really said was, all that she had done well--a correction made by
herself as you have already seen.
Another of the Twelve says she claims that she has never committed any
sin. She never made any such claim.
Another makes the wearing of the male dress a sin. If it was, she had
high Catholic authority for committing it--that of the Archbishop of
Rheims and the tribunal of Poitiers.
The Tenth Article was resentful against her for "pretending" that St.
Catherine and St.
Marguerite spoke French and not English, and were French in their
politics.
The Twelve were to be submitted first to the learned doctors of theology
of the University of Paris for approval. They were copied out and ready
by the night of April 4th. Then Manchon did another bold thing: he wrote
in the margin that many of the Twelve put statements in Joan's mouth
which were the exact opposite of what she had said. That fact would not
be considered important by the University of Paris, and would not
influence its decision or stir its humanity, in case it had any--which it
hadn't when acting in a political capacity, as at present--but it was a
brave thing for that good Manchon to do, all the same.
The Twelve were sent to Paris next day, April 5th. That afternoon there
was a great tumult in Rouen, and excited crowds were flocking through all
the chief streets, chattering and seeking for news; for a report had gone
abroad that Joan of Arc was sick until death. In truth, these long
seances had worn her out, and she was ill indeed. The heads of the
English party were in a state of consternation; for if Joan should die
uncondemned by the Church and go to the grave unsmirched, the pity and
the love of the people would turn her wrongs and sufferings and death
into a holy martyrdom, and she would be even a mightier power in France
dead than she had been when alive.
The Earl of Warwick and the English Cardinal (Winchester) hurried to the
castle and sent messengers flying for physicians. Warwick was a hard man,
a rude, coarse man, a man without compassion. There lay the sick girl
stretched in her chains in her iron cage--not an object to move man to
ungentle speech, one would think; yet Warwick spoke right out in her
hearing and said to the physicians:
"Mind you take good care of her. The King of England has no mind to have
her die a natural death. She is dear to him, for he bought her dear, and
he does not want her to die, save at the stake. Now then, mind you cure
her."
The doctors asked Joan what had made her ill. She said the Bishop of
Beauvais had sent her a fish and she thought it was that.
Then Jean d'Estivet burst out on her, and called her names and abused
her. He understood Joan to be charging the Bishop with poisoning her, you
see; and that was not pleasing to him, for he was one of Cauchon's most
loving and conscienceless slaves, and it outraged him to have Joan injure
his master in the eyes of these great English chiefs, these being men who
could ruin Cauchon and would promptly do it if they got the conviction
that he was capable of saving Joan from the stake by poisoning her and
thus cheating the English out of all the real value gainable by her
purchase from the Duke of Burgundy.
Joan had a high fever, and the doctors proposed to bleed her. Warwick
said:
"Be careful about that; she is smart and is capable of killing herself."
He meant that to escape the stake she might undo the bandage and let
herself bleed to death.
But the doctors bled her anyway, and then she was better.
Not for long, though. Jean d'Estivet could not hold still, he was so
worried and angry about the suspicion of poisoning which Joan had hinted
at; so he came back in the evening and stormed at her till he brought the
fever all back again.
When Warwick heard of this he was in a fine temper, you may be sure, for
here was his prey threatening to escape again, and all through the
over-zeal of this meddling fool. Warwick gave D'Estivet a quite admirable
cursing--admirable as to strength, I mean, for it was said by persons of
culture that the art of it was not good--and after that the meddler kept
still.
Joan remained ill more than two weeks; then she grew better. She was
still very weak, but she could bear a little persecution now without much
danger to her life. It seemed to Cauchon a good time to furnish it. So he
called together some of his doctors of theology and went to her dungeon.
Manchon and I went along to keep the record--that is, to set down what
might be useful to Cauchon, and leave out the rest.
The sight of Joan gave me a shock. Why, she was but a shadow! It was
difficult for me to realize that this frail little creature with the sad
face and drooping form was the same Joan of Arc that I had so often seen,
all fire and enthusiasm, charging through a hail of death and the
lightning and thunder of the guns at the head of her battalions. It wrung
my heart to see her looking like this.
But Cauchon was not touched. He made another of those conscienceless
speeches of his, all dripping with hypocrisy and guile. He told Joan that
among her answers had been some which had seemed to endanger religion;
and as she was ignorant and without knowledge of the Scriptures, he had
brought some good and wise men to instruct her, if she desired it. Said
he, "We are churchmen, and disposed by our good will as well as by our
vocation to procure for you the salvation of your soul and your body, in
every way in our power, just as we would do the like for our nearest kin
or for ourselves. In this we but follow the example of Holy Church, who
never closes the refuge of her bosom against any that are willing to
return."
Joan thanked him for these sayings and said:
"I seem to be in danger of death from this malady; if it be the pleasure
of God that I die here, I beg that I may be heard in confession and also
receive my Saviour; and that I may be buried in consecrated ground."
Cauchon thought he saw his opportunity at last; this weakened body had
the fear of an unblessed death before it and the pains of hell to follow.
This stubborn spirit would surrender now. So he spoke out and said:
"Then if you want the Sacraments, you must do as all good Catholics do,
and submit to the Church."
He was eager for her answer; but when it came there was no surrender in
it, she still stood to her guns. She turned her head away and said
wearily:
"I have nothing more to say."
Cauchon's temper was stirred, and he raised his voice threateningly and
said that the more she was in danger of death the more she ought to amend
her life; and again he refused the things she begged for unless she would
submit to the Church. Joan said:
"If I die in this prison I beg you to have me buried in holy ground; if
you will not, I cast myself upon my Saviour."
There was some more conversation of the like sort, then Cauchon demanded
again, and imperiously, that she submit herself and all her deeds to the
Church. His threatening and storming went for nothing. That body was
weak, but the spirit in it was the spirit of Joan of Arc; and out of that
came the steadfast answer which these people were already so familiar
with and detested so sincerely:
"Let come what may. I will neither do nor say any otherwise than I have
said already in your tribunals."
Then the good theologians took turn about and worried her with reasonings
and arguments and Scriptures; and always they held the lure of the
Sacraments before her famishing soul, and tried to bribe her with them to
surrender her mission to the Church's judgment--that is to their
judgment--as if they were the Church! But it availed nothing. I could
have told them that beforehand, if they had asked me. But they never
asked me anything; I was too humble a creature for their notice.
Then the interview closed with a threat; a threat of fearful import; a
threat calculated to make a Catholic Christian feel as if the ground were
sinking from under him:
"The Church calls upon you to submit; disobey, and she will abandon you
as if you were a pagan!"
Think of being abandoned by the Church!--that August Power in whose hands
is lodged the fate of the human race; whose scepter stretches beyond the
furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky; whose authority is over
millions that live and over the billions that wait trembling in purgatory
for ransom or doom; whose smile opens the gates of heaven to you, whose
frown delivers you to the fires of everlasting hell; a Power whose
dominion overshadows and belittles the pomps and shows of a village. To
be abandoned by one's King--yes, that is death, and death is much; but to
be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the Church! Ah, death is nothing
to that, for that is consignment to endless life--and such a life!
I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I could
see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle and
sink and rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw, while
she paused musing; and I believed that she must yield now, and in truth I
hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good and
deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in their
natures to do it.
But I was foolish to think that thought and hope that hope. Joan of Arc
was not made as others are made. Fidelity to principle, fidelity to
truth, fidelity to her word, all these were in her bone and in her
flesh--they were parts of her. She could not change, she could not cast
them out. She was the very genius of Fidelity; she was Steadfastness
incarnated. Where she had taken her stand and planted her foot, there she
would abide; hell itself could not move her from that place.
Her Voices had not given her permission to make the sort of submission
that was required, therefore she would stand fast. She would wait, in
perfect obedience, let come what might.
My heart was like lead in my body when I went out from that dungeon; but
she--she was serene, she was not troubled. She had done what she believed
to be her duty, and that was sufficient; the consequences were not her
affair. The last thing she said that time was full of this serenity, full
of contented repose:
"I am a good Christian born and baptized, and a good Christian I will
die."
15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning
TWO WEEKS went by; the second of May was come, the chill was departed out
of the air, the wild flowers were springing in the glades and glens, the
birds were piping in the woods, all nature was brilliant with sunshine,
all spirits were renewed and refreshed, all hearts glad, the world was
alive with hope and cheer, the plain beyond the Seine stretched away soft
and rich and green, the river was limpid and lovely, the leafy islands
were dainty to see, and flung still daintier reflections of themselves
upon the shining water; and from the tall bluffs above the bridge Rouen
was become again a delight to the eye, the most exquisite and satisfying
picture of a town that nestles under the arch of heaven anywhere.
When I say that all hearts were glad and hopeful, I mean it in a general
sense. There were exceptions--we who were the friends of Joan of Arc,
also Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in that frowning
stretch of mighty walls and towers: brooding in darkness, so close to the
flooding downpour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it; so
longing for any little glimpse of it, yet so implacably denied it by
those wolves in the black gowns who were plotting her death and the
blackening of her good name.
Cauchon was ready to go on with his miserable work. He had a new scheme
to try now. He would see what persuasion could do--argument, eloquence,
poured out upon the incorrigible captive from the mouth of a trained
expert. That was his plan. But the reading of the Twelve Articles to her
was not a part of it. No, even Cauchon was ashamed to lay that
monstrosity before her; even he had a remnant of shame in him, away down
deep, a million fathoms deep, and that remnant asserted itself now and
prevailed.
On this fair second of May, then, the black company gathered itself
together in the spacious chamber at the end of the great hall of the
castle--the Bishop of Beauvais on his throne, and sixty-two minor judges
massed before him, with the guards and recorders at their stations and
the orator at his desk.
Then we heard the far clank of chains, and presently Joan entered with
her keepers and took her seat upon her isolated bench. She was looking
well now, and most fair and beautiful after her fortnight's rest from
wordy persecution.
She glanced about and noted the orator. Doubtless she divined the
situation.
The orator had written his speech all out, and had it in his hand, though
he held it back of him out of sight. It was so thick that it resembled a
book. He began flowing, but in the midst of a flowery period his memory
failed him and he had to snatch a furtive glance at his manuscript--which
much injured the effect. Again this happened, and then a third time. The
poor man's face was red with embarrassment, the whole great house was
pitying him, which made the matter worse; then Joan dropped in a remark
which completed the trouble. She said:
"Read your book--and then I will answer you!"
Why, it was almost cruel the way those moldy veterans laughed; and as for
the orator, he looked so flustered and helpless that almost anybody would
have pitied him, and I had difficulty to keep from doing it myself. Yes,
Joan was feeling very well after her rest, and the native mischief that
was in her lay near the surface. It did not show when she made the
remark, but I knew it was close in there back of the words.
When the orator had gotten back his composure he did a wise thing; for he
followed Joan's advice: he made no more attempts at sham impromptu
oratory, but read his speech straight from his "book." In the speech he
compressed the Twelve Articles into six, and made these his text.
Every now and then he stopped and asked questions, and Joan replied. The
nature of the Church Militant was explained, and once more Joan was asked
to submit herself to it.
She gave her usual answer.
Then she was asked:
"Do you believe the Church can err?"
"I believe it cannot err; but for those deeds and words of mine which
were done and uttered by command of God, I will answer to Him alone."
"Will you say that you have no judge upon earth? Is not our Holy Father
the Pope your judge?"
"I will say nothing about it. I have a good Master who is our Lord, and
to Him I will submit all."
Then came these terrible words:
"If you do not submit to the Church you will be pronounced a heretic by
these judges here present and burned at the stake!"
Ah, that would have smitten you or me dead with fright, but it only
roused the lion heart of Joan of Arc, and in her answer rang that martial
note which had used to stir her soldiers like a bugle-call:
"I will not say otherwise than I have said already; and if I saw the fire
before me I would say it again!"
It was uplifting to hear her battle-voice once more and see the
battle-light burn in her eye. Many there were stirred; every man that was
a man was stirred, whether friend or foe; and Manchon risked his life
again, good soul, for he wrote in the margin of the record in good plain
letters these brave words: "Superba responsio!" and there they have
remained these sixty years, and there you may read them to this day.
"Superba responsio!" Yes, it was just that. For this "superb answer" came
from the lips of a girl of nineteen with death and hell staring her in
the face.
Of course, the matter of the male attire was gone over again; and as
usual at wearisome length; also, as usual, the customary bribe was
offered: if she would discard that dress voluntarily they would let her
hear mass. But she answered as she had often answered before:
"I will go in a woman's robe to all services of the Church if I may be
permitted, but I will resume the other dress when I return to my cell."
They set several traps for her in a tentative form; that is to say, they
placed suppositious propositions before her and cunningly tried to commit
her to one end of the propositions without committing themselves to the
other. But she always saw the game and spoiled it. The trap was in this
form:
"Would you be willing to do so and so if we should give you leave?"
Her answer was always in this form or to this effect:
"When you give me leave, then you will know."
Yes, Joan was at her best that second of May. She had all her wits about
her, and they could not catch her anywhere. It was a long, long session,
and all the old ground was fought over again, foot by foot, and the
orator-expert worked all his persuasions, all his eloquence; but the
result was the familiar one--a drawn battle, the sixty-two retiring upon
their base, the solitary enemy holding her original position within her
original lines.
16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack
THE BRILLIANT weather, the heavenly weather, the bewitching weather made
everybody's heart to sing, as I have told you; yes, Rouen was feeling
light-hearted and gay, and most willing and ready to break out and laugh
upon the least occasion; and so when the news went around that the young
girl in the tower had scored another defeat against Bishop Cauchon there
was abundant laughter--abundant laughter among the citizens of both
parties, for they all hated the Bishop. It is true, the English-hearted
majority of the people wanted Joan burned, but that did not keep them
from laughing at the man they hated. It would have been perilous for
anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the majority of Cauchon's
assistant judges, but to laugh at Cauchon or D'Estivet and Loyseleur was
safe--nobody would report it.
The difference between Cauchon and cochon [1] was not noticeable in
speech, and so there was plenty of opportunity for puns; the
opportunities were not thrown away.
Some of the jokes got well worn in the course of two or three months,
from repeated use; for every time Cauchon started a new trial the folk
said "The sow has littered [2] again"; and every time the trial failed
they said it over again, with its other meaning, "The hog has made a mess
of it."
And so, on the third of May, Noel and I, drifting about the town, heard
many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and then move tot
he next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it off again:
"'Od's blood, the sow has littered five times, and five times has made a
mess of it!"
And now and then one was bold enough to say--but he said it softly:
"Sixty-three and the might of England against a girl, and she camps on
the field five times!"
Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was guarded
by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark night but the
walls showed next morning that the rude joker had been there with his
paint and brush. Yes, he had been thee, and had smeared the sacred walls
with pictures of hogs in all attitudes except flattering ones; hogs
clothed in a Bishop's vestments and wearing a Bishop's miter irreverently
cocked on the side of their heads.
Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence during seven
says; then he conceived a new scheme. You shall see what it was; for you
have not cruel hearts, and you would never guess it.
On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Manchon and I got out
materials together and started. But this time we were to go to one of the
other towers--not the one which was Joan's prison. It was round and grim
and massive, and built of the plainest and thickest and solidest
masonry--a dismal and forbidding structure. [3] We entered the circular
room on the ground floor, and I saw what turned me sick--the instruments
of torture and the executioners standing ready! Here you have the black
heart of Cauchon at the blackest, here you have the proof that in his
nature there was no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever knew his
mother or ever had a sister.
Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St.
Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur. The guards
were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner
and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their
bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the rack,
her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red
giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets.
It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear
apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the
merciful Jesus could sit there and look so placid and indifferent.
After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack, she
saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been seeing must
have risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed, do you think she
shuddered? No, there was no sign of that sort. She straightened herself
up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about her lip; but as for fear,
she showed not a vestige of it.
This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all the
list. When Joan had taken her seat a r,sum, of her "crimes" was read to
her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. It in he said that in the course
of her several trials Joan had refused to answer some of the questions
and had answered others with lies, but that now he was going to have the
truth out of her, and the whole of it.
Her manner was full of confidence this time; he was sure he had found a
way at last to break this child's stubborn spirit and make her beg and
cry. He would score a victory this time and stop the mouths of the jokers
of Rouen. You see, he was only just a man after all, and couldn't stand
ridicule any better than other people. He talked high, and his splotchy
face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil
pleasure and promised triumph--purple, yellow, red, green--they were all
there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the
uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion and
said:
"There is the rack, and there are its ministers! You will reveal all now
or be put to the torture.
"Speak."
Then she made that great answer which will live forever; made it without
fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound of it:
"I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if you
tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say something
otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the torture that
spoke and not I."
There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon. Defeated
again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it said the next
day, around the town, that he had a full confession all written out, in
his pocket and all ready for Joan to sign. I do not know that that was
true, but it probably was, for her mark signed at the bottom of a
confession would be the kind of evidence (for effect with the public)
which Cauchon and his people were particularly value, you know.
No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no beclouding that clear mind.
Consider the depth, the wisdom of that answer, coming from an ignorant
girl. Why, there were not six men in the world who had ever reflected
that words forced out of a person by horrible tortures were not
necessarily words of verity and truth, yet this unlettered peasant-girl
put her finger upon that flaw with an unerring instinct. I had always
supposed that torture brought out the truth--everybody supposed it; and
when Joan came out with those simple common-sense words they seemed to
flood the place with light. It was like a lightning-flash at midnight
which suddenly reveals a fair valley sprinkled over with silver streams
and gleaming villages and farmsteads where was only an impenetrable world
of darkness before. Manchon stole a sidewise look at me, and his face was
full of surprise; and there was the like to be seen in other faces there.
Consider--they were old, and deeply cultured, yet here was a village maid
able to teach them something which they had not known before. I heard one
of them mutter:
"Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid her hand upon an
accepted truth that is as old as the world, and it has crumbled to dust
and rubbish under her touch. Now whence got she that marvelous insight?"
The judges laid their heads together and began to talk now. It was plain,
from chance words which one caught now and then, that Cauchon and
Loyseleur were insisting upon the application of the torture, and that
most of the others were urgently objecting.
Finally Cauchon broke out with a good deal of asperity in his voice and
ordered Joan back to her dungeon. That was a happy surprise for me. I was
not expecting that the Bishop would yield.
When Manchon came home that night he said he had found out why the
torture was not applied.
There were two reasons. One was, a fear that Joan might die under the
torture, which would not suit the English at all; the other was, that the
torture would effect nothing if Joan was going to take back everything
she said under its pains; and as to putting her mark to a confession, it
was believed that not even the rack would ever make her do that.
So all Rouen laughed again, and kept it up for three days, saying:
"The sow has littered six times, and made six messes of it."
And the palace walls got a new decoration--a mitered hog carrying a
discarded rack home on its shoulder, and Loyseleur weeping in its wake.
Many rewards were offered for the capture of these painters, but nobody
applied. Even the English guard feigned blindness and would not see the
artists at work.
The Bishop's anger was very high now. He could not reconcile himself to
the idea of giving up the torture. It was the pleasantest idea he had
invented yet, and he would not cast it by. So he called in some of his
satellites on the twelfth, and urged the torture again. But it was a
failure.
With some, Joan's speech had wrought an effect; others feared she might
die under torture; others did not believe that any amount of suffering
could make her put her mark to a lying confession. There were fourteen
men present, including the Bishop. Eleven of them voted dead against the
torture, and stood their ground in spite of Cauchon's abuse. Two voted
with the Bishop and insisted upon the torture. These two were Loyseleur
and the orator--the man whom Joan had bidden to "read his book"--Thomas
de Courcelles, the renowned pleader and master of eloquence.
Age has taught me charity of speech; but it fails me when I think of
those three names--Cauchon, Courcelles, Loyseleur.
[1] Hog, pig.
[2] Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, "to make a mess of"!
[3] The lower half of it remains to-day just as it was then; the upper
half is of a later date. -- TRANSLATOR.
17 Supreme in Direst Peril
ANOTHER ten days' wait. The great theologians of that treasury of all
valuable knowledge and all wisdom, the University of Paris, were still
weighing and considering and discussing the Twelve Lies.
I had had but little to do these ten days, so I spent them mainly in
walks about the town with Noel. But there was no pleasure in them, our
spirits being so burdened with cares, and the outlook for Joan growing
steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted
our circumstances with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her darkness
and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely estate; our alleviations of
one sort and another, with her destitution in all. She was used to
liberty, but now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature
and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an
animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom
where all objects about her were dim and spectral; she was used to the
thousand various sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy life, but
now she heard only the monotonous footfall of the sentry pacing his
watch; she had been fond of talking with her mates, but now there was no
one to talk to; she had had an easy laugh, but it was gone dumb now; she
had been born for comradeship, and blithe and busy work, and all manner
of joyous activities, but here were only dreariness, and leaden hours,
and weary inaction, and brooding stillness, and thoughts that travel by
day and night and night and day round and round in the same circle, and
wear the brain and break the heart with weariness. It was death in life;
yes, death in life, that is what it must have been. And there was another
hard thing about it all. A young girl in trouble needs the soothing
solace and support and sympathy of persons of her own sex, and the
delicate offices and gentle ministries which only these can furnish; yet
in all these months of gloomy captivity in her dungeon Joan never saw the
face of a girl or a woman. Think how her heart would have leaped to see
such a face.
Consider. If you would realize how great Joan of Arc was, remember that
it was out of such a place and such circumstances that she came week
after week and month after month and confronted the master intellects of
France single-handed, and baffled their cunningest schemes, defeated
their ablest plans, detected and avoided their secretest traps and
pitfalls, broke their lines, repelled their assaults, and camped on the
field after every engagement; steadfast always, true to her faith and her
ideals; defying torture, defying the stake, and answering threats of
eternal death and the pains of hell with a simple "Let come what may,
here I take my stand and will abide."
Yes, if you would realize how great was the soul, how profound the
wisdom, and how luminous the intellect of Joan of Arc, you must study her
there, where she fought out that long fight all alone--and not merely
against the subtlest brains and deepest learning of France, but against
the ignoble deceits, the meanest treacheries, and the hardest hearts to
be found in any land, pagan or Christian.
She was great in battle--we all know that; great in foresight; great in
loyalty and patriotism; great in persuading discontented chiefs and
reconciling conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability to
discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden; great in picturesque
and eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of
hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into
heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with
songs on their lips. But all these are exalting activities; they keep
hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work; there is the joy of
achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which
hails success; the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the
faculties are at white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia--these do
not exist.
Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere, but she was greatest
in the Rouen trials.
There she rose above the limitations and infirmities of our human nature,
and accomplished under blighting and unnerving and hopeless conditions
all that her splendid equipment of moral and intellectual forces could
have accomplished if they had been supplemented by the mighty helps of
hope and cheer and light, the presence of friendly faces, and a fair and
equal fight, with the great world looking on and wondering.
18 Condemned Yet Unafraid
TOWARD THE END of the ten-day interval the University of Paris rendered
its decision concerning the Twelve Articles. By this finding, Joan was
guilty upon all the counts: she must renounce her errors and make
satisfaction, or be abandoned to the secular arm for punishment.
The University's mind was probably already made up before the Articles
were laid before it; yet it took it from the fifth to the eighteenth to
produce its verdict. I think the delay may have been caused by temporary
difficulties concerning two points:
1. As to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan's Voices; 2. As
to whether her saints spoke French only.
You understand, the University decided emphatically that it was fiends
who spoke in those Voices; it would need to prove that, and it did. It
found out who those fiends were, and named them in the verdict: Belial,
Satan, and Behemoth. This has always seemed a doubtful thing to me, and
not entitled to much credit. I think so for this reason: if the
University had actually known it was those three, it would for very
consistency's sake have told how it knew it, and not stopped with the
mere assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she knew they were not
fiends. Does not that seem reasonable? To my mind the University's
position was weak, and I will tell you why. It had claimed that Joan's
angels were devils in disguise, and we all know that devils do disguise
themselves as angels; up to that point the University's position was
strong; but you see yourself that it eats its own argument when it turns
around and pretends that it can tell who such apparitions are, while
denying the like ability to a person with as good a head on her shoulders
as the best one the University could produce.
The doctors of the University had to see those creatures in order to
know; and if Joan was deceived, it is argument that they in their turn
could also be deceived, for their insight and judgment were surely not
clearer than hers.
As to the other point which I have thought may have proved a difficulty
and cost the University delay, I will touch but a moment upon that, and
pass on. The University decided that it was blasphemy for Joan to say
that her saints spoke French and not English, and were on the French side
in political sympathies. I think that the thing which troubled the
doctors of theology was this: they had decided that the three Voices were
Satan and two other devils; but they had also decided that these Voices
were not on the French side--thereby tacitly asserting that they were on
the English side; and if on the English side, then they must be angels
and not devils. Otherwise, the situation was embarrassing. You see, the
University being the wisest and deepest and most erudite body in the
world, it would like to be logical if it could, for the sake of its
reputation; therefore it would study and study, days and days, trying to
find some good common-sense reason for proving the Voices to be devils in
Article No. 1 and proving them to be angels in Article No. 10. However,
they had to give it up. They found no way out; and so, to this day, the
University's verdict remains just so--devils in No. 1, angels in No. 10;
and no way to reconcile the discrepancy.
The envoys brought the verdict to Rouen, and with it a letter for Cauchon
which was full of fervid praise. The University complimented him on his
zeal in hunting down this woman "whose venom had infected the faithful of
the whole West," and as recompense it as good as promised him "a crown of
imperishable glory in heaven." Only that!--a crown in heaven; a
promissory note and no indorser; always something away off yonder; not a
word about the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was the thing Cauchon was
destroying his soul for. A crown in heaven; it must have sounded like a
sarcasm to him, after all his hard work. What should he do in heaven? he
did not know anybody there.
On the nineteenth of May a court of fifty judges sat in the
archiepiscopal palace to discuss Joan's fate. A few wanted her delivered
over to the secular arm at once for punishment, but the rest insisted
that she be once more "charitably admonished" first.
So the same court met in the castle on the twenty-third, and Joan was
brought to the bar. Pierre Maurice, a canon of Rouen, made a speech to
Joan in which he admonished her to save her life and her soul by
renouncing her errors and surrendering to the Church. He finished with a
stern threat: if she remained obstinate the damnation of her soul was
certain, the destruction of her body probable. But Joan was immovable.
She said:
"If I were under sentence, and saw the fire before me, and the
executioner ready to light it--more, if I were in the fire itself, I
would say none but the things which I have said in these trials; and I
would abide by them till I died."
A deep silence followed now, which endured some moments. It lay upon me
like a weight. I knew it for an omen. Then Cauchon, grave and solemn,
turned to Pierre Maurice:
"Have you anything further to say?"
The priest bowed low, and said:
"Nothing, my lord."
"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything further to say?"
"Nothing."
"Then the debate is closed. To-morrow, sentence will be pronounced.
Remove the prisoner."
She seemed to go from the place erect and noble. But I do not know; my
sight was dim with tears.
To-morrow--twenty-fourth of May! Exactly a year since I saw her go
speeding across the plain at the head of her troops, her silver helmet
shining, her silvery cape fluttering in the wind, her white plumes
flowing, her sword held aloft; saw her charge the Burgundian camp three
times, and carry it; saw her wheel to the right and spur for the duke's
reserves; saws her fling herself against it in the last assault she was
ever to make. And now that fatal day was come again--and see what it was
bringing!
19 Our Last Hopes of Rescue Fail
JOAN HAD been adjudged guilty of heresy, sorcery, and all the other
terrible crimes set forth in the Twelve Articles, and her life was in
Cauchon's hands at last. He could send her to the stake at once. His work
was finished now, you think? He was satisfied? Not at all. What would his
Archbishopric be worth if the people should get the idea into their heads
that this faction of interested priests, slaving under the English lash,
had wrongly condemned and burned Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France? That
would be to make of her a holy martyr. Then her spirit would rise from
her body's ashes, a thousandfold reinforced, and sweep the English
domination into the sea, and Cauchon along with it. No, the victory was
not complete yet. Joan's guilt must be established by evidence which
would satisfy the people. Where was that evidence to be found? There was
only one person in the world who could furnish it--Joan of Arc herself.
She must condemn herself, and in public--at least she must seem to do it.
But how was this to be managed? Weeks had been spent already in trying to
get her to surrender--time wholly wasted; what was to persuade her now?
Torture had been threatened, the fire had been threatened; what was left?
Illness, deadly fatigue, and the sight of the fire, the presence of the
fire! That was left.
Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a girl after all, and, under
illness and exhaustion, subject to a girl's weaknesses.
Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly said herself that under the
bitter pains of the rack they would be able to extort a false confession
from her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it was remembered.
She had furnished another hint at the same time: that as soon as the
pains were gone, she would retract the confession. That hint was also
remembered.
She had herself taught them what to do, you see. First, they must wear
out her strength, then frighten her with the fire. Second, while the
fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper.
But she would demand a reading of the paper. They could not venture to
refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that during the
reading her courage should return?--she would refuse to sign then. Very
well, even that difficulty could be got over. They could read a short
paper of no importance, then slip a long and deadly one into its place
and trick her into signing that.
Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to
abjure, that would free her from the death-penalty. They could keep her
in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her.
That would not answer; for only her death would content the English.
Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had escaped from
two prisons already.
But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make promises to
her; in return she would promise to leave off the male dress. He would
violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would not be
able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the
stake would be ready.
These were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make them,
each in its order, and the game was won. One might almost name the day
that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France and the
noblest, would go to her pitiful death.
The world knows now that Cauchon's plan was as I have sketched it to you,
but the world did not know it at that time. There are sufficient
indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the
highest one--the Cardinal of Winchester--were not let into the secret,
also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the French side, knew the
scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the
whole of it at first. However, if any did, it was these two.
It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace,
but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumors of
the time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character
of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he
spent some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right an righteous
thing"--submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then
she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and
be transferred to the Church's prison, where she would be honorably used
and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew
how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English
guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised something which she
interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to
burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work
which she had been commissioned of Heaven to do. Also there was that
other thing: if her failing body could be further weakened by loss of
rest and sleep now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the
morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions, threats,
and the sight of the stake, and also be purblind to traps and snares
which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate.
I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night. Nor
for Noel. We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall, with a
hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of Joan's Voices which
seemed to promise a rescue by force at the last moment. The immense news
had flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc was condemned,
and would be sentenced and burned alive on the morrow; and so crowds of
people were flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being refused
admission by the soldiery; these being people who brought doubtful passes
or none at all. We scanned these crowds eagerly, but thee was nothing
about them to indicate that they were our old war-comrades in disguise,
and certainly there were no familiar faces among them. And so, when the
gate was closed at last, we turned away grieved, and more disappointed
than we cared to admit, either in speech or thought.
The streets were surging tides of excited men. It was difficult to make
one's way. Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to the
neighborhood of the beautiful church of St. Ouen, and there all was
bustle and work. The square was a wilderness of torches and people; and
through a guarded passage dividing the pack, laborers were carrying
planks and timbers and disappearing with them through the gate of the
churchyard. We asked what was going forward; the answer was:
"Scaffolds and the stake. Don't you know that the French witch is to be
burned in the morning?"
Then we went away. We had no heart for that place.
At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time with a hope which our
wearied bodies and fevered minds magnified into a large probability. We
had heard a report that the Abbot of Jumieges with all his monks was
coming to witness the burning. Our desire, abetted by our imagination,
turned those nine hundred monks into Joan's old campaigners, and their
Abbot into La Hire or the Bastard or D'Alencon; and we watched them file
in, unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering
while they passed, with our hearts in our throats and our eyes swimming
with tears of joy and pride and exultation; and we tried to catch
glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to give signal
to any recognized face that we were Joan's men and ready and eager to
kill and be killed in the good cause. How foolish we were!
But we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things, believeth all
things.
20 The Betrayal
IN THE MORNING I was at my official post. It was on a platform raised the
height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of St. Ouen. On this
same platform was a crowd of priests and important citizens, and several
lawyers. Abreast it, with a small space between, was another and larger
platform, handsomely canopied against sun and rain, and richly carpeted;
also it was furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were
more sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level. One
of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of England, his
Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by Cauchon, Bishop of
Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat three bishops, the
Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars and lawyers who
had sat as Joan's judges in her late trials.
Twenty steps in front of the platforms was another--a table-topped
pyramid of stone, built up in retreating courses, thus forming steps. Out
of this rose that grisly thing, the stake; about the stake bundles of
fagots and firewood were piled. On the ground at the base of the pyramid
stood three crimson figures, the executioner and his assistants. At their
feet lay what had been a goodly heap of brands, but was now a smokeless
nest of ruddy coals; a foot or two from this was a supplemental supply of
wood and fagots compacted into a pile shoulder-high and containing as
much as six packhorse loads. Think of that. We seem so delicately made,
so destructible, so insubstantial; yet it is easier to reduce a granite
statue to ashes than it is to do that with a man's body.
The sight of the stake sent physical pains tingling down the nerves of my
body; and yet, turn as I would, my eyes would keep coming back t it, such
fascination has the gruesome and the terrible for us.
The space occupied by the platforms and the stake was kept open by a wall
of English soldiery, standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures,
fine and sightly in their polished steel; while from behind them on every
hand stretched far away a level plain of human heads; and there was no
window and no housetop within our view, howsoever distant, but was black
with patches and masses of people.
But there was no noise, no stir; it was as if the world was dead. The
impressiveness of this silence and solemnity was deepened by a leaden
twilight, for the sky was hidden by a pall of low-hanging storm-clouds;
and above the remote horizon faint winkings of heat-lightning played, and
now and then one caught the dull mutterings and complainings of distant
thunder.
At last the stillness was broken. From beyond the square rose an
indistinct sound, but familiar--court, crisp phrases of command; next I
saw the plain of heads dividing, and the steady swing of a marching host
was glimpsed between. My heart leaped for a moment. Was it La Hire and
his hellions? No--that was not their gait. No, it was the prisoner and
her escort; it was Joan of Arc, under guard, that was coming; my spirits
sank as low as they had been before. Weak as she was they made her walk;
they would increase her weakness all they could. The distance was not
great--it was but a few hundred yards--but short as it was it was a heavy
tax upon one who had been lying chained in one spot for months, and whose
feet had lost their powers from inaction. Yes, and for a year Joan had
known only the cool damps of a dungeon, and now she was dragging herself
through this sultry summer heat, this airless and suffocating void. As
she entered the gate, drooping with exhaustion, there was that creature
Loyseleur at her side with his head bent to her ear. We knew afterward
that he had been with her again this morning in the prison wearying her
with his persuasions and enticing her with false promises, and that he
was now still at the same work at the gate, imploring her to yield
everything that would be required of her, and assuring her that if she
would do this all would be well with her: she would be rid of the dreaded
English and find safety in the powerful shelter and protection of the
Church. A miserable man, a stony-hearted man!
The moment Joan was seated on the platform she closed her eyes and
allowed her chin to fall; and so sat, with her hands nestling in her lap,
indifferent to everything, caring for nothing but rest. And she was so
white again--white as alabaster.
How the faces of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest,
and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how
natural it was; for these people realized that at last they were looking
upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see; a person whose
name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names and all other
renowns insignificant by comparisons; Joan of Arc, the wonder of the
time, and destined to be the wonder of all times!
And I could read as by print, in their marveling countenances, the words
that were drifting through their minds: "Can it be true, is it
believable, that it is this little creature, this girl, this child with
the good face, the sweet face, the beautiful face, the dear and bonny
face, that has carried fortresses by storm, charged at the head of
victorious armies, blown the might of England out of her path with a
breath, and fought a long campaign, solitary and alone, against the
massed brains and learning of France--and had won it if the fight had
been fair!"
Evidently Cauchon had grown afraid of Manchon because of his pretty
apparent leanings toward Joan, for another recorder was in the chief
place here, which left my master and me nothing to do but sit idle and
look on.
Well, I suppose that everything had been done which could be thought of
to tire Joan's body and mind, but it was a mistake; one more device had
been invented. This was to preach a long sermon to her in that oppressive
heat.
When the preacher began, she cast up one distressed and disappointed
look, then dropped her head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard, an
oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the Twelve Lies. He emptied
upon Joan al the calumnies in detail that had been bottled up in that
mass of venom, and called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were
labeled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury as he went on; but
his labors were wasted, she seemed lost in dreams, she made no sign, she
did not seem to hear. At last he launched this apostrophe:
"O France, how hast thou been abused! Thou hast always been the home of
Christianity; but now, Charles, who calls himself thy King and governor,
indorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is, the words and deeds
of a worthless and infamous woman!" Joan raised her head, and her eyes
began to burn and flash. The preacher turned to her: "It is to you, Joan,
that I speak, and I tell you that your King is schismatic and a heretic!"
Ah, he might abuse her to his heart's content; she could endure that; but
to her dying moment she could never hear in patience a word against that
ingrate, that treacherous dog our King, whose proper place was here, at
this moment, sword in hand, routing these reptiles and saving this most
noble servant that ever King had in this world--and he would have been
there if he had not been what I have called him. Joan's loyal soul was
outraged, and she turned upon the preacher and flung out a few words with
a spirit which the crowd recognized as being in accordance with the Joan
of Arc traditions:
"By my faith, sir! I make bold to say and swear, on pain of death, that
he is the most noble Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of
the faith and the Church!"
There was an explosion of applause from the crowd--which angered the
preacher, for he had been aching long to hear an expression like this,
and now that it was come at last it had fallen to the wrong person: he
had done all the work; the other had carried off all the spoil. He
stamped his foot and shouted to the sheriff:
"Make her shut up!"
That made the crowd laugh.
A mob has small respect for a grown man who has to call on a sheriff to
protect him from a sick girl.
Joan had damaged the preacher's cause more with one sentence than he had
helped it with a hundred; so he was much put out, and had trouble to get
a good start again. But he needn't have bothered; thee was no occasion.
It was mainly an English-feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our
nature--an irresistible law--to enjoy and applaud a spirited and promptly
delivered retort, no matter who makes it. The mob was with the preacher;
it had been beguiled for a moment, but only that; it would soon return.
It was there to see this girl burnt; so that it got that
satisfaction--without too much delay--it would be content.
Presently the preacher formally summoned Joan to submit to the Church. He
made the demand with confidence, for he had gotten the idea from
Loyseleur and Beaupere that she was worn to the bone, exhausted, and
would not be able to put forth any more resistance; and, indeed, to look
at her it seemed that they must be right. Nevertheless, she made one more
effort to hold her ground, and said, wearily:
"As to that matter, I have answered my judges before. I have told them to
report all that I have said and done to our Holy Father the Pope--to
whom, and to God first, I appeal."
Again, out of her native wisdom, she had brought those words of
tremendous import, but was ignorant of their value. But they could have
availed her nothing in any case, now, with the stake there and these
thousands of enemies about her. Yet they made every churchman there
blench, and the preacher changed the subject with all haste. Well might
those criminals blench, for Joan's appeal of her case to the Pope
stripped Cauchon at once of jurisdiction over it, and annulled all that
he and his judges had already done in the matter and all that they should
do in it henceforth.
Joan went on presently to reiterate, after some further talk, that she
had acted by command of God in her deeds and utterances; then, when an
attempt was made to implicate the King, and friends of hers and his, she
stopped that. She said:
"I charge my deeds and words upon no one, neither upon my King nor any
other. If there is any fault in them, I am responsible and no other."
She was asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which
had been pronounced evil by her judges. Here answer made confusion and
damage again:
"I submit them to God and the Pope."
The Pope once more! It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was
asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents--offers
to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How
was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable answer as that?
The worried judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and
discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling
conclusion--but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they
said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him
anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to
deal with the present case, and were in effect "the Church" to that
extent. At another time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not
now; they were not comfortable enough now.
The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning to put on a threatening
aspect; it was tired of standing, tired of the scorching heat; and the
thunder was coming nearer, the lightning was flashing brighter. It was
necessary to hurry this matter to a close. Erard showed Joan a written
form, which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked
her to abjure.
"Abjure? What is abjure?"
She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Massieu. She tried
to understand, but she was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could not
gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words.
In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry:
"I appeal to the Church universal whether I ought to abjure or not!"
Erard exclaimed:
"You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be burnt!"
She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the
stake and the mass of red coals--redder and angrier than ever now under
the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of
her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the
people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he
dreams, and does not know where he is.
The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper, there were
many voices beseeching and urging her at once, there was great turmoil
and shouting and excitement among the populace and everywhere.
"Sign! sign!" from the priests; "sign--sign and be saved!" And Loyseleur
was urging at her ear, "Do as I told you--do not destroy yourself!"
Joan said plaintively to these people:
"Ah, you do not do well to seduce me."
The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their
hearts melted, and they said:
"O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver
you up to punishment."
And now there was another voice--it was from the other platform--pealing
solemnly above the din: Cauchon's--reading the sentence of death!
Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a
bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her
head and said:
"I submit."
They gave her no time to reconsider--they knew the peril of that. The
moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the
abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically,
unconsciously--and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some
happier world.
Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of
many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her
mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to
write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of
that defect; he guided her hand with his own, and wrote her
name--Jehanne.
The great crime was accomplished. She had signed--what? She did not
know--but the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a
sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphermer of God and His
angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked,
commissioned of Satan; and this signature of hers bound her to resume the
dress of a woman.
There were other promises, but that one would answer, without the others;
and that one could be made to destroy her.
Loyseleur pressed forward and praised her for having done "such a good
day's work."
But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard.
Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dissolved the excommunication and
restored her to her beloved Church, with all the dear privileges of
worship. Ah, she heard that! You could see it in the deep gratitude that
rose in her face and transfigured it with joy.
But how transient was that happiness! For Cauchon, without a tremor of
pity in his voice, added these crushing words:
"And that she may repent of her crimes and repeat them no more, she is
sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the
water of anguish!"
Perpetual imprisonment! She had never dreamed of that--such a thing had
never been hinted to her by Loyseleur or by any other. Loyseleur had
distinctly said and promised that "all would be well with her." And the
very last words spoken to her by Erard, on that very platform, when he
was urging her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promised--that if
she would do it she should go free from captivity.
She stood stunned and speechless a moment; then she remembered, with such
solacement as the thought could furnish, that by another clear promise
made by Cauchon himself--she would at least be the Church's captive, and
have women about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So she turned
to the body of priests and said, with a sad resignation:
"Now, you men of the Church, take me to your prison, and leave me no
longer in the hands of the English"; and she gathered up her chains and
prepared to move.
But alas! now came these shameful words from Cauchon--and with them a
mocking laugh:
"Take her to the prison whence she came!"
Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten, paralyzed. It was pitiful to
see. She had been beguiled, lied to, betrayed; she saw it all now.
The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness, and for just one moment
she thought of the glorious deliverance promised by her Voices--I read it
in the rapture that lit her face; then she saw what it was--her prison
escort--and that light faded, never to revive again. And now her head
began a piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly, this way and that, as is
the way when one is suffering unwordable pain, or when one's heart is
broken; then drearily she went from us, with her face in her hands, and
sobbing bitterly.
21 Respited Only for Torture
THERE IS no certainty that any one in all Rouen was in the secret of the
deep game which Cauchon was playing except the Cardinal of Winchester.
Then you can imagine the astonishment and stupefaction of that vast mob
gathered there and those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two
platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away, alive and
whole--slipping out of their grip at last, after all this tedious
waiting, all this tantalizing expectancy.
Nobody was able to stir or speak for a while, so paralyzing was the
universal astonishment, so unbelievable the fact that the stake was
actually standing there unoccupied and its prey gone.
Then suddenly everybody broke into a fury of rage; maledictions and
charges of treachery began to fly freely; yes, and even stones: a stone
came near killing the Cardinal of Winchester--it just missed his head.
But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he was excited, and a
person who is excited never can throw straight.
The tumult was very great, indeed, for a while. In the midst of it a
chaplain of the Cardinal even forgot the proprieties so far as to
oppobriously assail the August Bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking his
fist in his face and shouting:
"By God, you are a traitor!"
"You lie!" responded the Bishop.
He a traitor! Oh, far from it; he certainly was the last Frenchman that
any Briton had a right to bring that charge against.
The Early of Warwick lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but
when it came to the intellectuals--when it came to delicate chicane, and
scheming, and trickery--he couldn't see any further through a millstone
than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore
that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of
Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered
comfort into his ear:
"Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord; we shall soon have her again."
Perhaps the like tidings found their way all around, for good news
travels fast as well as bad. At any rate, the ragings presently quieted
down, and the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared. And thus we
reached the noon of that fearful Thursday.
We two youths were happy; happier than any words can tell--for we were
not in the secret any more than the rest. Joan's life was saved. We knew
that, and that was enough. France would hear of this day's infamous
work--and then! Why, then her gallant sons would flock to her standard by
thousands and thousands, multitudes upon multitudes, and their wrath
would be like the wrath of the ocean when the storm-winds sweep it; and
they would hurl themselves against this doomed city and overwhelm it like
the resistless tides of that ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again!
In six days--seven days--one short week--noble France, grateful France,
indignant France, would be thundering at these gates--let us count the
hours, let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds! O happy day, O
day of ecstasy, how our hearts sang in our bosoms!
For we were young then, yes, we were very young.
Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed to rest and sleep after
she had spent the small remnant of her strength in dragging her tired
body back to the dungeon?
No, there was no rest for her, with those sleuth-hounds on her track.
Cauchon and some of his people followed her to her lair straightway; they
found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical forces in a state of
prostration. They told her she had abjured; that she had made certain
promises--among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and that if she
relapsed, the Church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the
words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has
taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging,
dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the
persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully
recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon
and his people had brought; and would come to herself by and by, and have
at first but a dim idea as to when and how the change had come about.
Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan had resumed woman's dress
without protest; also she had been formally warned against relapsing. He
had witnesses to these facts. How could matters be better?
But suppose she should not relapse?
Why, then she must be forced to do it.
Did Cauchon hint to the English guards that thenceforth if they chose to
make their prisoner's captivity crueler and bitterer than ever, no
official notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so; since the guards did
begin that policy at once, and no official notice was taken of it. Yes,
from that moment Joan's life in that dungeon was made almost unendurable.
Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will not do it.
22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer
FRIDAY and Saturday were happy days for Noel and me. Our minds were full
of our splendid dream of France aroused--France shaking her mane--France
on the march--France at the gates--Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our
imagination was on fire; we were delirious with pride and joy. For we
were very young, as I have said.
We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon in the
yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and been taken
back into the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was being gently used
now, and her captivity made as pleasant and comfortable for her as the
circumstances would allow. So, in high contentment, we planned out our
share in the great rescue, and fought our part of the fight over and over
again during those two happy days--as happy days as ever I have known.
Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy weather, and
thinking. Thinking of the rescue--what else? I had no other thought now.
I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happiness of it.
I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and soon it came nearer,
and I caught the words:
"Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time has come!"
It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice. That was more than sixty
years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my memory to-day as
it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer morning. We are so strangely
made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories
that break our hearts that abide.
Soon other voices took up that cry--tens, scores, hundreds of voices; all
the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And there were other
clamors--the clatter of rushing feet, merry congratulations, bursts of
coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the boom and crash of distant
bands profaning the sacred day with the music of victory and
thanksgiving.
About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Manchon and me to go
to Joan's dungeon--a summons from Cauchon. But by that time distrust had
already taken possession of the English and their soldiery again, and all
Rouen was in an angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty of
evidences of this from our own windows--fist-shaking, black looks,
tumultuous tides of furious men billowing by along the street.
And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly,
indeed; that there was a great mob gathered there who considered the
relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many half-drunk
English soldiers. Moreover, these people had gone beyond words. They had
laid hands upon a number of churchmen who were trying to enter the
castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them and save their
lives.
And so Manchon refused to go. He said he would not go a step without a
safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of
soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown peacefuler meantime,
but worse. The soldiers protected us from bodily damage, but as we passed
through the great mob at the castle we were assailed with insults and
shameful epithets. I bore it well enough, though, and said to myself,
with secret satisfaction, "In three or four short days, my lads, you will
be employing your tongues in a different sort from this--and I shall be
there to hear."
To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them would still
be alive after the rescue that was coming? Not more than enough to amuse
the executioner a short half-hour, certainly.
It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was
sitting there in her chains, clothed again in her male attire.
She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character to hold
a servant to account for what his master had made him do, and her mind
had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage which had been taken of
her the previous morning had its origin, not in the subordinate but in
the master--Cauchon.
Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in the early morning of
Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her male
attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other dress, but the
guards refused to give it back. She protested, and said she was forbidden
to wear the male dress. But they continued to refuse. She had to have
clothing, for modesty's sake; moreover, she saw that she could not save
her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this; so she
put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be. She was
weary of the struggle, poor thing.
We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the Vice-Inquisitor, and the
others--six or eight--and when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent,
forlorn, and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her situation
so different, I did not know what to make of it. The shock was very
great. I had doubted the relapse perhaps; possibly I had believed in it,
but had not realized it.
Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a harassed and irritated and
disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone now, and
contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple face was full of
tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing his robes and stood
grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than
a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight of this poor ruined
creature, who had won so lofty a place for him in the service of the meek
and merciful Jesus, Saviour of the World, Lord of the Universe--in case
England kept her promise to him, who kept no promises himself.
Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named
Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon
Joan's change of clothing, and said:
"There is something suspicious about this. How could it have come about
without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even something worse?"
"Thousand devils!" screamed Cauchon, in a fury. "Will you shut your
mouth?"
"Armagnac! Traitor!" shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a rush for
Marguerie with their lances leveled. It was with the greatest difficulty
that he was saved from being run through the body. He made no more
attempts to help the inquiry, poor man. The other judges proceeded with
the questionings.
"Why have you resumed this male habit?"
I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier's halberd
slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash; but I
thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her own
motion.
"But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to it."
I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question; and when it
came it was just what I was expecting. She said--quiet quietly:
"I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I would not
resume it."
There--I had been sure, all along, that she did not know what she was
doing and saying on the platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was
proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to add this:
"But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me have not
been kept--promises that I should be allowed to go to mass and receive
the communion, and that I should be freed from the bondage of these
chains--but they are still upon me, as you see."
"Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have especially promised to return
no more to the dress of a man."
Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully toward these unfeeling
men and said:
"I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and
if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a
woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good to you
that I do."
Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the compact which he and his
had made with her?
Fulfil its conditions? What need of that? Conditions had been a good
thing to concede, temporarily, and for advantage; but they have served
their turn--let something of a fresher sort and of more consequence be
considered. The resumption of the male dress was sufficient for all
practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to
that fatal crime. So Cauchon asked her if her Voices had spoken to her
since Thursday--and he reminded her of her abjuration.
"Yes," she answered; and then it came out that the Voices had talked with
her about the abjuration--told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly
reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did it with the
untroubled mien of one who was not conscious that she had ever knowingly
repudiated it. So I was convinced once more that she had had no notion of
what she was doing that Thursday morning on the platform. Finally she
said, "My Voices told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done
was not well." Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, "But it was the
fear of the fire that made me do so."
That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she
had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her Voices
and by testimony of her persecutors.
She was sane now and not exhausted; her courage had come back, and with
it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking
it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire
which had such terrors for her.
That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from
concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was
pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he
wrote in the margin abreast of it:
"RESPONSIO MORTIFERA."
Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer.
Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers
of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, "All is
over."
Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to
clinch this matter and make it final, put this question:
"Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St.
Catherine?"
"Yes--and that they come from God."
"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?"
Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any
intention to deny them; and that if--I noted the if--"if she had made
some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the
fire, and it was a violation of the truth."
There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was she had
done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people
and by her Voices.
And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there
was a weary note in them that was pathetic:
"I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot endure
captivity any longer."
The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it
would take it in any form, even that.
Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and
sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we
found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news.
As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted--laughing--think of a man
destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at
it:
"Make yourselves comfortable--it's all over with her!"
23 The Time Is at Hand
THE YOUNG can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel
and me now; but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it
was so with ours. We called back that vague promise of the Voices, and
said the one to the other that the glorious release was to happen at "the
last moment"--"that other time was not the last moment, but this is; it
will happen now; the King will come, La Hire will come, and with them our
veterans, and behind them all France!" And so we were full of heart
again, and could already hear, in fancy, that stirring music the clash of
steel and the war-cries and the uproar of the onset, and in fancy see our
prisoner free, her chains gone, her sword in her hand.
But this dream was to pass also, and come to nothing. Late at night, when
Manchon came in, he said:
"I am come from the dungeon, and I have a message for you from that poor
child."
A message to me! If he had been noticing I think he would have discovered
me--discovered that my indifference concerning the prisoner was a
pretense; for I was caught off my guard, and was so moved and so exalted
to be so honored by her that I must have shown my feeling in my face and
manner.
"A message for me, your reverence?"
"Yes. It is something she wishes done. She said she had noticed the young
man who helps me, and that he had a good face; and did I think he would
do a kindness for her? I said I knew you would, and asked her what it
was, and she said a letter--would you write a letter to her mother?
"And I said you would. But I said I would do it myself, and gladly; but
she said no, that my labors were heavy, and she thought the young man
would not mind the doing of this service for one not able to do it for
herself, she not knowing how to write. Then I would have sent for you,
and at that the sadness vanished out of her face. Why, it was as if she
was going to see a friend, poor friendless thing. But I was not
permitted. I did my best, but the orders remain as strict as ever, the
doors are closed against all but officials; as before, none but officials
may speak to her. So I went back and told her, and she sighed, and was
sad again. Now this is what she begs you to write to her mother. It is
partly a strange message, and to me means nothing, but she said her
mother would understand. You will 'convey her adoring love to her family
and her village friends, and say there will be no rescue, for that this
night--and it is the third time in the twelvemonth, and is final--she has
seen the Vision of the Tree.'"
"How strange!"
"Yes, it is strange, but that is what she said; and said her parents
would understand. And for a little time she was lost in dreams and
thinkings, and her lips moved, and I caught in her muttering these lines,
which she said over two or three times, and they seemed to bring peace
and contentment to her. I set them down, thinking they might have some
connection with her letter and be useful; but it was not so; they were a
mere memory, floating idly in a tired mind, and they have no meaning, at
least no relevancy."
I took the piece of paper, and found what I knew I should find:
And when in exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
There was no hope any more. I knew it now. I knew that Joan's letter was
a message to Noel and me, as well as to her family, and that its object
was to banish vain hopes from our minds and tell us from her own mouth of
the blow that was going to fall upon us, so that we, being her soldiers,
would know it for a command to bear it as became us and her, and so
submit to the will of God; and in thus obeying, find assuagement of our
grief. It was like her, for she was always thinking of others, not of
herself. Yes, her heart was sore for us; she could find time to think of
us, the humblest of her servants, and try to soften our pain, lighten the
burden of our troubles--she that was drinking of the bitter waters; she
that was walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
I wrote the letter. You will know what it cost me, without my telling
you. I wrote it with the same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment
the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc--that high summons to the
English to vacate France, two years past, when she was a lass of
seventeen; it had now set down the last ones which she was ever to
dictate. Then I broke it. For the pen that had served Joan of Arc could
not serve any that would come after her in this earth without abasement.
The next day, May 29th, Cauchon summoned his serfs, and forty-two
responded. It is charitable to believe that the other twenty were ashamed
to come. The forty-two pronounced her a relapsed heretic, and condemned
her to be delivered over to the secular arm. Cauchon thanked them.
Then he sent orders that Joan of Arc be conveyed the next morning to the
place known as the Old Market; and that she be then delivered to the
civil judge, and by the civil judge to the executioner. That meant she
would be burnt.
All the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, the 29th, the news was flying,
and the people of the country-side flocking to Rouen to see the
tragedy--all, at least, who could prove their English sympathies and
count upon admission. The press grew thicker and thicker in the streets,
the excitement grew higher and higher. And now a thing was noticeable
again which had been noticeable more than once before--that there was
pity for Joan in the hearts of many of these people. Whenever she had
been in great danger it had manifested itself, and now it was apparent
again--manifest in a pathetic dumb sorrow which was visible in many
faces.
Early the next morning, Wednesday, Martin Ladvenu and another friar were
sent to Joan to prepare her for death; and Manchon and I went with
them--a hard service for me. We tramped through the dim corridors,
winding this way and that, and piercing ever deeper and deeper into that
vast heart of stone, and at last we stood before Joan. But she did not
know it. She sat with her hands in her lap and her head bowed, thinking,
and her face was very sad. One might not know what she was thinking of.
Of her home, and the peaceful pastures, and the friends she was no more
to see? Of her wrongs, and her forsaken estate, and the cruelties which
had been put upon her? Or was it of death--the death which she had longed
for, and which was now so close?
Or was it of the kind of death she must suffer? I hoped not; for she
feared only one kind, and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I
believed she so feared that one that with her strong will she would shut
the thought of it wholly out of her mind, and hope and believe that God
would take pity on her and grant her an easier one; and so it might
chance that the awful news which we were bringing might come as a
surprise to her at last.
We stood silent awhile, but she was still unconscious of us, still deep
in her sad musings and far away. Then Martin Ladvenu said, softly:
"Joan."
She looked up then, with a little start and a wan smile, and said:
"Speak. Have you a message for me?"
"Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it?"
"Yes"--very softly, and her head drooped again.
"I am come to prepare you for death."
A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body. There was a pause. In
the stillness we could hear our breathings. Then she said, still in that
low voice:
"When will it be?"
The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the
distance.
"Now. The time is at hand."
That slight shiver passed again.
"It is so soon--ah, it is so soon!"
There was a long silence. The distant throbbings of the bell pulsed
through it, and we stood motionless and listening. But it was broken at
last:
"What death is it?"
"By fire!"
"Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" She sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her
hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and
mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one and then another of
us, and search our faces beseechingly, as hoping she might find help and
friendliness there, poor thing--she that had never denied these to any
creature, even her wounded enemy on the battle-field.
"Oh, cruel, cruel, to treat me so! And must my body, that has never been
defiled, be consumed today and turned to ashes? Ah, sooner would I that
my head were cut off seven times than suffer this woeful death. I had the
promise of the Church's prison when I submitted, and if I had but been
there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this miserable fate
had not befallen me.
"Oh, I appeal to God the Great Judge, against the injustice which has
been done me."
There was none there that could endure it. They turned away, with the
tears running down their faces. In a moment I was on my knees at her
feet. At once she thought only of my danger, and bent and whispered in my
hear: "Up!--do not peril yourself, good heart. There--God bless you
always!" and I felt the quick clasp of her hand. Mine was the last hand
she touched with hers in life. None saw it; history does not know of it
or tell of it, yet it is true, just as I have told it. The next moment
she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and stood before him and reproached
him, saying:
"Bishop, it is by you that I die!"
He was not shamed, not touched; but said, smoothly:
"Ah, be patient, Joan. You die because you have not kept your promise,
but have returned to your sins."
"Alas," she said, "if you had put me in the Church's prison, and given me
right and proper keepers, as you promised, this would not have happened.
And for this I summon you to answer before God!"
Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly content than before, and he
turned him about and went away.
Joan stood awhile musing. She grew calmer, but occasionally she wiped her
eyes, and now and then sobs shook her body; but their violence was
modifying now, and the intervals between them were growing longer.
Finally she looked up and saw Pierre Maurice, who had come in with the
Bishop, and she said to him:
"Master Peter, where shall I be this night?"
"Have you not good hope in God?"
"Yes--and by His grace I shall be in Paradise."
Now Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession; then she begged for the
sacrament. But how grant the communion to one who had been publicly cut
off from the Church, and was now no more entitled to its privileges than
an unbaptized pagan? The brother could not do this, but he sent to
Cauchon to inquire what he must do. All laws, human and divine, were
alike to that man--he respected none of them. He sent back orders to
grant Joan whatever she wished. Her last speech to him had reached his
fears, perhaps; it could not reach his heart, for he had none.
The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul that had yearned for it
with such unutterable longing all these desolate months. It was a solemn
moment. While we had been in the deeps of the prison, the public courts
of the castle had been filling up with crowds of the humbler sort of men
and women, who had learned what was going on in Joan's cell, and had come
with softened hearts to do--they knew not what; to hear--they knew not
what. We knew nothing of this, for they were out of our view. And there
were other great crowds of the like caste gathered in masses outside the
castle gates. And when the lights and the other accompaniments of the
Sacrament passed by, coming to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes
kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept; and when the
solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan's cell, out of the
distance a moving sound was borne moaning to our ears--it was those
invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul.
The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of Arc now, to come again
no more, except for one fleeting instant--then it would pass, and
serenity and courage would take its place and abide till the end.
24 Joan the Martyr
AT NINE o'clock the Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, went forth in
the grace of her innocence and her youth to lay down her life for the
country she loved with such devotion, and for the King that had abandoned
her. She sat in the cart that is used only for felons. In one respect she
was treated worse than a felon; for whereas she was on her way to be
sentenced by the civil arm, she already bore her judgment inscribed in
advance upon a miter-shaped cap which she wore:
HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER
In the cart with her sat the friar Martin Ladvenu and Maetre Jean
Massieu. She looked girlishly fair and sweet and saintly in her long
white robe, and when a gush of sunlight flooded her as she emerged from
the gloom of the prison and was yet for a moment still framed in the arch
of the somber gate, the massed multitudes of poor folk murmured "A
vision! a vision!" and sank to their knees praying, and many of the women
weeping; and the moving invocation for the dying arose again, and was
taken up and borne along, a majestic wave of sound, which accompanied the
doomed, solacing and blessing her, all the sorrowful way to the place of
death. "Christ have pity! Saint Margaret have pity! Pray for her, all ye
saints, archangels, and blessed martyrs, pray for her! Saints and angels
intercede for her! From thy wrath, good Lord, deliver her! O Lord God,
save her! Have mercy on her, we beseech Thee, good Lord!"
It is just and true what one of the histories has said: "The poor and the
helpless had nothing but their prayers to give Joan of Arc; but these we
may believe were not unavailing. There are few more pathetic events
recorded in history than this weeping, helpless, praying crowd, holding
their lighted candles and kneeling on the pavement beneath the prison
walls of the old fortress."
And it was so all the way: thousands upon thousands massed upon their
knees and stretching far down the distances, thick-sown with the faint
yellow candle-flames, like a field starred with golden flowers.
But there were some that did not kneel; these were the English soldiers.
They stood elbow to elbow, on each side of Joan's road, and walled it in
all the way; and behind these living walls knelt the multitudes.
By and by a frantic man in priest's garb came wailing and lamenting, and
tore through the crowd and the barriers of soldiers and flung himself on
his knees by Joan's cart and put up his hands in supplication, crying
out:
"O forgive, forgive!"
It was Loyseleur!
And Joan forgave him; forgave him out of a heart that knew nothing but
forgiveness, nothing but compassion, nothing but pity for all that
suffer, let their offense be what it might. And she had no word of
reproach for this poor wretch who had wrought day and night with deceits
and treacheries and hypocrisies to betray her to her death.
The soldiers would have killed him, but the Earl of Warwick saved his
life. What became of him is not known. He hid himself from the world
somewhere, to endure his remorse as he might.
In the square of the Old Market stood the two platforms and the stake
that had stood before in the churchyard of St. Ouen. The platforms were
occupied as before, the one by Joan and her judges, the other by great
dignitaries, the principal being Cauchon and the English
Cardinal--Winchester. The square was packed with people, the windows and
roofs of the blocks of buildings surrounding it were black with them.
When the preparations had been finished, all noise and movement gradually
ceased, and a waiting stillness followed which was solemn and impressive.
And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic named Nicholas Midi
preached a sermon, wherein he explained that when a branch of the
vine--which is the Church--becomes diseased and corrupt, it must be cut
away or it will corrupt and destroy the whole vine. He made it appear
that Joan, through her wickedness, was a menace and a peril to the
Church's purity and holiness, and her death therefore necessary. When he
was come to the end of his discourse he turned toward her and paused a
moment, then he said:
"Joan, the Church can no longer protect you. Go in peace!"
Joan had been placed wholly apart and conspicuous, to signify the
Church's abandonment of her, and she sat there in her loneliness, waiting
in patience and resignation for the end. Cauchon addressed her now. He
had been advised to read the form of her abjuration to her, and had
brought it with him; but he changed his mind, fearing that she would
proclaim the truth--that she had never knowingly abjured--and so bring
shame upon him and eternal infamy. He contented himself with admonishing
her to keep in mind her wickednesses, and repent of them, and think of
her salvation. Then he solemnly pronounced her excommunicate and cut off
from the body of the Church. With a final word he delivered her over to
the secular arm for judgment and sentence.
Joan, weeping, knelt and began to pray. For whom? Herself? Oh, no--for
the King of France. Her voice rose sweet and clear, and penetrated all
hearts with its passionate pathos. She never thought of his treacheries
to her, she never thought of his desertion of her, she never remembered
that it was because he was an ingrate that she was here to die a
miserable death; she remembered only that he was her King, that she was
his loyal and loving subject, and that his enemies had undermined his
cause with evil reports and false charges, and he not by to defend
himself. And so, in the very presence of death, she forgot her own
troubles to implore all in her hearing to be just to him; to believe that
he was good and noble and sincere, and not in any way to blame for any
acts of hers, neither advising them nor urging them, but being wholly
clear and free of all responsibility for them. Then, closing, she begged
in humble and touching words that all here present would pray for her and
would pardon her, both her enemies and such as might look friendly upon
her and feel pity for her in their hearts.
There was hardly one heart there that was not touched--even the English,
even the judges showed it, and there was many a lip that trembled and
many an eye that was blurred with tears; yes, even the English
Cardinal's--that man with a political heart of stone but a human heart of
flesh.
The secular judge who should have delivered judgment and pronounced
sentence was himself so disturbed that he forgot his duty, and Joan went
to her death unsentenced--thus completing with an illegality what had
begun illegally and had so continued to the end. He only said--to the
guards:
"Take her"; and to the executioner, "Do your duty."
Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish one. But an English
soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied them
together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good heart that
was in him; and she kissed it and put it in her bosom. Then Isambard de
la Pierre went to the church near by and brought her a consecrated one;
and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to her bosom with rapture,
and then kissed it again and again, covering it with tears and pouring
out her gratitude to God and the saints.
And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the cruel
steps to the face of the stake, with the friar Isambard at her side. Then
she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that was built around
the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with her back against the
stake, and the world gazing up at her breathless. The executioner
ascended to her side and wound chains around her slender body, and so
fastened her to the stake. Then he descended to finish his dreadful
office; and there she remained alone--she that had had so many friends in
the days when she was free, and had been so loved and so dear.
All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears; but I could
bear no more. I continued in my place, but what I shall deliver to you
now I got by others' eyes and others' mouths. Tragic sounds there were
that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I sat there, but it is as I
tell you: the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour
was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and
that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days.
Now I will go on.
If any thought that now, in that solemn hour when all transgressors
repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her great
deeds had been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their source, they
erred. No such thought was in her blameless mind. She was not thinking of
herself and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that might befall
them. And so, turning her grieving eyes about her, where rose the towers
and spires of that fair city, she said:
"Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must you be my tomb? Ah, Rouen,
Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my death."
A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment terror
seized her and she cried out, "Water! Give me holy water!" but the next
moment her fears were gone, and they came no more to torture her.
She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately distress for a
fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of her. It was the
friar Isambard. She had given him her cross and begged him to raise it
toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it
till she was entered into the peace of God. She made him go out from the
danger of the fire. Then she was satisfied, and said:
"Now keep it always in my sight until the end."
Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without shame, endure to let her die
in peace, but went toward her, all black with crimes and sins as he was,
and cried out:
"I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last time to repent and seek the
pardon of God."
"I die through you," she said, and these were the last words she spoke to
any upon earth.
Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up
in a thick volume and hid her from sight; and from the heart of this
darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by
moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled
glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully swift
tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that face any more nor that
form, and the voice was still.
Yes, she was gone from us: JOAN OF ARC! What little words they are, to
tell of a rich world made empty and poor!
CONCLUSION
JOAN'S BROTHER Jacques died in Domremy during the Great Trial at Rouen.
This was according to the prophecy which Joan made that day in the
pastures the time that she said the rest of us would go to the great
wars.
When her poor old father heard of the martyrdom it broke his heart, and
he died.
The mother was granted a pension by the city of Orleans, and upon this
she lived out her days, which were many. Twenty-four years after her
illustrious child's death she traveled all the way to Paris in the
winter-time and was present at the opening of the discussion in the
Cathedral of Notre Dame which was the first step in the Rehabilitation.
Paris was crowded with people, from all about France, who came to get
sight of the venerable dame, and it was a touching spectacle when she
moved through these reverent wet-eyed multitudes on her way to the grand
honors awaiting her at the cathedral. With her were Jean and Pierre, no
longer the light-hearted youths who marched with us from Vaucouleurs, but
war-torn veterans with hair beginning to show frost.
After the martyrdom Noel and I went back to Domremy, but presently when
the Constable Richemont superseded La Tremouille as the King's chief
adviser and began the completion of Joan's great work, we put on our
harness and returned to the field and fought for the King all through the
wars and skirmishes until France was freed of the English. It was what
Joan would have desired of us; and, dead or alive, her desire was law for
us. All the survivors of the personal staff were faithful to her memory
and fought for the King to the end. Mainly we were well scattered, but
when Paris fell we happened to be together. It was a great day and a
joyous; but it was a sad one at the same time, because Joan was not there
to march into the captured capital with us.
Noel and I remained always together, and I was by his side when death
claimed him. It was in the last great battle of the war. In that battle
fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot. He was eighty-five years old,
and had spent his whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was, with his
flowing white mane and his tameless spirit; yes, and his indestructible
energy as well; for he fought as knightly and vigorous a fight that day
as the best man there.
La Hire survived the martyrdom thirteen years; and always fighting, of
course, for that was all he enjoyed in life. I did not see him in all
that time, for we were far apart, but one was always hearing of him.
The Bastard of Orleans and D'Alencon and D'Aulon lived to see France
free, and to testify with Jean and Pierre d'Arc and Pasquerel and me at
the Rehabilitation. But they are all at rest now, these many years. I
alone am left of those who fought at the side of Joan of Arc in the great
wars.
She said I would live until those wars were forgotten--a prophecy which
failed. If I should live a thousand years it would still fail. For
whatsoever had touch with Joan of Arc, that thing is immortal.
Members of Joan's family married, and they have left descendants. Their
descendants are of the nobility, but their family name and blood bring
them honors which no other nobles receive or may hope for. You have seen
how everybody along the way uncovered when those children came yesterday
to pay their duty to me. It was not because they are noble, it is because
they are grandchildren of the brothers of Joan of Arc.
Now as to the Rehabilitation. Joan crowned the King at Rheims. For reward
he allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to
save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to
her memory; indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a
damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had
done in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to the fact that France
was ashamed, and longed to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored.
Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to
have justice for poor Joan himself. Why? Had he become grateful at last?
Had remorse attacked his hard heart? No, he had a better reason--a better
one for his sort of man. This better reason was that, now that the
English had been finally expelled from the country, they were beginning
to call attention to the fact that this King had gotten his crown by the
hands of a person proven by the priests to have been in league with Satan
and burned for it by them as a sorceress--therefore, of what value or
authority was such a Kingship as that? Of no value at all; no nation
could afford to allow such a king to remain on the throne.
It was high time to stir now, and the King did it. That is how Charles
VII. came to be smitten with anxiety to have justice done the memory of
his benefactress.
He appealed to the Pope, and the Pope appointed a great commission of
churchmen to examine into the facts of Joan's life and award judgment.
The Commission sat at Paris, at Domremy, at Rouen, at Orleans, and at
several other places, and continued its work during several months. It
examined the records of Joan's trials, it examined the Bastard of
Orleans, and the Duke d'Alencon, and D'Aulon, and Pasquerel, and
Courcelles, and Isambard de la Pierre, and Manchon, and me, and many
others whose names I have made familiar to you; also they examined more
than a hundred witnesses whose names are less familiar to you--the
friends of Joan in Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Orleans, and other places, and a
number of judges and other people who had assisted at the Rouen trials,
the abjuration, and the martyrdom. And out of this exhaustive examination
Joan's character and history came spotless and perfect, and this verdict
was placed upon record, to remain forever.
I was present upon most of these occasions, and saw again many faces
which I have not seen for a quarter of a century; among them some
well-beloved faces--those of our generals and that of Catherine Boucher
(married, alas!), and also among them certain other faces that filled me
with bitterness--those of Beaupere and Courcelles and a number of their
fellow-fiends. I saw Haumette and Little Mengette--edging along toward
fifty now, and mothers of many children. I saw Noel's father, and the
parents of the Paladin and the Sunflower.
It was beautiful to hear the Duke d'Alencon praise Joan's splendid
capacities as a general, and to hear the Bastard indorse these praises
with his eloquent tongue and then go on and tell how sweet and good Joan
was, and how full of pluck and fire and impetuosity, and mischief, and
mirthfulness, and tenderness, and compassion, and everything that was
pure and fine and noble and lovely. He made her live again before me, and
wrung my heart.
I have finished my story of Joan of Arc, that wonderful child, that
sublime personality, that spirit which in one regard has had no peer and
will have none--this: its purity from all alloy of self-seeking,
self-interest, personal ambition. In it no trace of these motives can be
found, search as you may, and this cannot be said of any other person
whose name appears in profane history.
With Joan of Arc love of country was more than a sentiment--it was a
passion. She was the Genius of Patriotism--she was Patriotism embodied,
concreted, made flesh, and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye.
Love, Mercy, Charity, Fortitude, War, Peace, Poetry, Music--these may be
symbolized as any shall prefer: by figures of either sex and of any age;
but a slender girl in her first young bloom, with the martyr's crown upon
her head, and in her hand the sword that severed her country's
bonds--shall not this, and no other, stand for PATRIOTISM through all the
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,
Volume 2, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
[Footnote: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not
inventions, but facts--even to the public confession of the accused. I
take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and
transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a
couple of them are important ones. -- M. T.]
WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger
Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on
Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the
ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer
onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next
mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away
it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick
to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets
him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter
with him, he don't know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and
mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the
hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the
big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points
where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and
everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and
gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.
Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of
it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what
it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it
so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away
from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired
of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a
wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where
everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do
that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN
go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it
warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he
said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front
steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt
Polly with a letter in her hand and says:
"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw--your aunt
Sally wants you."
I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his
aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a
rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so
foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose
it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he
set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't
know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:
"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to
be excused--for the present."
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of
it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this
gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and
throwing it away?"
But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:
"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why,
she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and
dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You
lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her."
Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was
always right--the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and
ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly
was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:
"You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all
my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off
and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what
you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse you--with a
hickory!"
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on
to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged
me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going
traveling. And he says:
"Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know
any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride won't let
her take it back."
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would
finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and
sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle
in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all
up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went
down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We
set down, and she says:
"They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and
Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them--'comfort,' they say. Much of
that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor
named Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three
months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he
COULDN'T; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I
reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for
they've tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on
the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around
anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?"
"They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly--all the
farmers live about a mile apart down there--and Brace Dunlap is a long
sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers.
He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud
of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I
judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking,
and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get
Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and
lovely as--well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas--why, it's
pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way--so hard pushed and poor, and
yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother."
"What a name--Jubiter! Where'd he get it?"
"It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long
before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first
time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown
mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little
bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of
Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they
got to calling him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall, and lazy,
and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured,
and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and Brace
boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and
despises him. Jubiter is a twin."
"What's t'other twin like?"
"Just exactly like Jubiter--so they say; used to was, anyway, but he
hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen
or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away--up North
here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and
then, but that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they
say. They don't hear about him any more."
"What was his name?"
"Jake."
There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady
was thinking. At last she says:
"The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that
that man Jubiter gets your uncle into."
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
"Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn't know he HAD any
temper."
"Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as
if he would really hit the man, sometimes."
"Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he's just as gentle
as mush."
"Well, she's worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed
man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it,
and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher
and hain't got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to
go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool
toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was."
"Well, ain't it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind
and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable--why, he was
just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?"
CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler
from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse
rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the
Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm
in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very
much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old
folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was
four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so
much. But it warn't dull--couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of
course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in
the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there
by the waiters. By and by we asked about it--Tom did and the waiter said
it was a man, but he didn't look sick.
"Well, but AIN'T he sick?"
"I don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or
other--don't you reckon he would? Well, this one don't. At least he don't
ever pull off his boots, anyway."
"The mischief he don't! Not even when he goes to bed?"
"No."
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer--a mystery was. If you'd lay out a
mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take your
choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature
I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to
mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to
the waiter:
"What's the man's name?"
"Phillips."
"Where'd he come aboard?"
"I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line."
"What do you reckon he's a-playing?"
"I hain't any notion--I never thought of it."
I says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie.
"Anything peculiar about him?--the way he acts or talks?"
"No--nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night
and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens the
door a crack and sees who it is."
"By jimminy, it's int'resting! I'd like to get a look at him. Say--the
next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread the
door and--"
"No, indeedy! He's always behind it. He would block that game."
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
"Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in
the morning. I'll give you a quarter."
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn't mind.
Tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head
steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with
aperns on and toting vittles.
He didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out
the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about
it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the
facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts
and wasting ammunition? I didn't lose no sleep. I wouldn't give a dern
to know what's the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.
Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of
truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and
then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of
him, we 'most dropped the trays! and Tom says:
"Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where'd YOU come from?"
Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he
didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally
he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at
first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking together
while he et his breakfast. And he says:
"But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I'd just as soon tell you who I am, though,
if you'll swear to keep mum, for I ain't no Phillips, either."
Tom says:
"We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you
ain't Jubiter Dunlap."
"Why?"
"Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake. You're the spit'n
image of Jubiter."
"Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?"
Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle Silas's
last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his
folks--or him either, for that matter--that we didn't know, he opened out
and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his
own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned
he'd be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a
dangerous life, and--He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a
person that's listening. We didn't say anything, and so it was very
still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of
the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how
Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny
and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and
Uncle Silas quarreling all the time--and then he let go and laughed.
"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and
does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard any. How do
they talk about me these days?"
"Who?"
"The farmers--and the family."
"Why, they don't talk about you at all--at least only just a mention,
once in a long time."
"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?"
"Because they think you are dead long ago."
"No! Are you speaking true?--honor bright, now." He jumped up, excited.
"Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive."
"Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide me and save
my life. You keep mum. Swear you'll keep mum--swear you'll never, never
tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day
and night, and dasn't show his face! I've never done you any harm; I'll
never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me
and help me save my life."
We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he couldn't
love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he
could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it,
and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn
again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue
goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you
ever see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked us if he
looked like his brother Jubiter, now.
"No," Tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the
long hair."
"All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I get there;
then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as being
a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. What do you
think?"
Tom he studied awhile, then he says:
"Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you
don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk--it
ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. I mean, if you talk, won't people
notice that your voice is just like Jubiter's; and mightn't it make them
think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all
this time under another name?"
"By George," he says, "you're a sharp one! You're perfectly right. I've
got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. If I'd a
struck for home and forgot that little detail--However, I wasn't striking
for home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away from these
fellows that are after me; then I was going to put on this disguise and
get some different clothes, and--"
He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened,
pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:
"Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!"
Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat
off of his face.
CHAPTER III. A DIAMOND ROBBERY
FROM that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and one or
t'other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome,
and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to
in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but
Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop
into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he
would get suspicious and shet up his shell. It turned out just so. It
warn't no trouble to see that he WANTED to talk about it, but always
along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge
of it, and go to talking about something else. The way it come about was
this: He got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers
down on deck. We told him about them. But he warn't satisfied; we warn't
particular enough. He told us to describe them better. Tom done it. At
last, when Tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he
gave a shiver and a gasp and says:
"Oh, lordy, that's one of them! They're aboard sure--I just knowed it.
I sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on."
Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he
give that shiver again and says:
"That's him!--that's the other one. If it would only come a good black
stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they've got spies on me.
They've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard,
and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me--porter
or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me,
they would know it inside of an hour."
So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was
telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come
to that place he went right along. He says:
"It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St. Louis.
What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as
hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine,
and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di'monds sent
to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining
them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and THEM was the things that
went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite fine enough for
twelve thousand dollars."
"Twelve-thousand-dollars!" Tom says. "Was they really worth all that
money, do you reckon?"
"Every cent of it."
"And you fellows got away with them?"
"As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery people know they've been
robbed yet. But it wouldn't be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of
course, so we considered where we'd go. One was for going one way, one
another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi won.
We done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in
the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us
have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went
down town, each by his own self--because I reckon maybe we all had the
same notion. I don't know for certain, but I reckon maybe we had."
"What notion?" Tom says.
"To rob the others."
"What--one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?"
"Cert'nly."
It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest
thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn't unusual in the
profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to
look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for
him. And then he went on. He says:
"You see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two di'monds amongst
three. If there'd been three--But never mind about that, there warn't
three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I
says to myself, I'll hog them di'monds the first chance I get, and I'll
have a disguise all ready, and I'll give the boys the slip, and when I'm
safe away I'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I
got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of
clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand-bag; and when I was
passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, I got a glimpse of
one of my pals through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, you
bet. I says to myself, I'll see what he buys. So I kept shady, and
watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?"
"Whiskers?" said I.
"No."
"Goggles?"
"No."
"Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can't you, you're only just hendering all you
can. What WAS it he bought, Jake?"
"You'd never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver--just a
wee little bit of a screwdriver."
"Well, I declare! What did he want with that?"
"That's what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me. I says to
myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I stood
back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop-shop and
see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes--just the
ones he's got on now, as you've described. Then I went down to the wharf
and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and
then started back and had another streak of luck. I seen our other pal
lay in HIS stock of old rusty second-handers. We got the di'monds and
went aboard the boat.
"But now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. We had to set up
and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain
on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks
back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway, seeing
there was only two di'monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, and
then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight;
then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked
in the piece of paper to see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it
on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and
by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he
dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was
likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, Hal
Clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the outside door,
and I understood. I reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and
waited perfectly still; Bud never stirred; I turned the key of the
outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and
we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and
gentle.
"There warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along,
swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. We never
said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back
aft, and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us knowed what
that meant, without having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would
wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't
afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain't. He would come, and we
would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. It made me shiver,
because I ain't as brave as some people, but if I showed the white
feather--well, I knowed better than do that. I kind of hoped the boat
would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk
of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an upper-river tub
and there warn't no real chance of that.
"Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! Why,
it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come.
'Thunder,' I says, 'what do you make out of this?--ain't it suspicious?'
'Land!' Hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us?--open the paper!' I
done it, and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of
little pieces of loaf-sugar! THAT'S the reason he could set there and
snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them
two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of
t'other right under our noses.
"We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a
plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was,
and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and
let on WE didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was
a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by
him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search
him, and get the di'monds; and DO for him, too, if it warn't too risky.
If we got the swag, we'd GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down and
do for us, sure. But I didn't have no real hope. I knowed we could get
him drunk--he was always ready for that--but what's the good of it? You
might search him a year and never find--Well, right there I catched my
breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping through my head
that tore my brains to rags--and land, but I felt gay and good! You see,
I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then I took up one
of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel-bottom, and it
just took my breath away. You remember about that puzzlesome little
screwdriver?"
"You bet I do," says Tom, all excited.
"Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went
smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the di'monds! You
look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and
the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a screw
about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a
screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why."
"Huck, ain't it bully!" says Tom.
"Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the
paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to
listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but I
didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from
under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took
me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at
last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color
of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of
your little finger, and I says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest
you've come from. Before long I spied out the plug's mate.
"Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up that
scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and
done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there and
took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and
stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we would
steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get
drownded, and by George it's just what we done! I think it was powerful
smart."
"You bet your life it was!" says Tom, just full of admiration.
CHAPTER IV. THE THREE SLEEPERS
WELL, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it
was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell
you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up
toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a
cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the
dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and
the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. We had up a lot of whisky,
and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky
begun to take hold of Bud we stopped drinking, but we didn't let him
stop. We loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring.
"We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off, and
his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him
around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my
boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. Then we stripped him
and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of
his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any
di'monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, 'What do you reckon he
wanted with that?' I said I didn't know; but when he wasn't looking I
hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got
to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says:
"'There's one place we hain't searched.'
"'What place is that?' he says.
"'His stomach.'
"'By gracious, I never thought of that! NOW we're on the homestretch, to
a dead moral certainty. How'll we manage?'
"'Well,' I says, 'just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug
store, and I reckon I'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired
of the company they're keeping.'
"He said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid
myself into Bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They
was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than
being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and
in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river road
at a five-mile gait.
"And not feeling so very bad, neither--walking on di'monds don't have no
such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there's
more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man
back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I
says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now.
Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind
me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I
says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty
minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the
di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never
let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new
tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up.
"Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I
jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and
waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't
feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I
surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.
"Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this
stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly
safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this
stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house--to
watch, though I didn't reckon there was any need of it. I set there and
played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but
she didn't. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn't know
anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats.
"Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and
long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I see
a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton's, and it made
me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I'm aboard this boat,
he's got me like a rat in a trap. All he's got to do is to have me
watched, and wait--wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand
miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me
give up the di'monds, and then he'll--oh, I know what he'll do! Ain't it
awful--awful! And now to think the OTHER one's aboard, too! Oh, ain't it
hard luck, boys--ain't it hard! But you'll help save me, WON'T you?--oh,
boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death, and save
me--I'll worship the very ground you walk on!"
We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and
help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling
kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his
di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the
light struck into them they WAS beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind
of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the same I judged he was
a fool. If I had been him I would a handed the di'monds to them pals and
got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But he was made different. He
said it was a whole fortune and he couldn't bear the idea.
Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the
night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But the
third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up at a
country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas's place a little
after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. So Jake
he laid for a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty soon
the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of course
every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way
they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for Jake, and he
slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just like
the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of
the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got
our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it wasn't for
long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them
two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted
ashore and was gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to come back,
and kept hoping they would, but they never did. We was awful sorry and
low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had got such a start that
they couldn't get on his track, and he would get to his brother's and
hide there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace and
Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about
sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of
sycamores right back of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river
road, a lonesome place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was all
right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't
likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they
would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him
when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.
CHAPTER V. A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
WE didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the
afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we
never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as
we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we
could go to Brace's and find out how things was there. It was getting
pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and
panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of
us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard two
or three terrible screams for help. "Poor Jake is killed, sure," we says.
We was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker field and
hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we
skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the bunch
they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up the road as
tight as they could go, two chasing two.
We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but
didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking
of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like
being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon
come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and
bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars,
and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was
miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All
of a sudden Tom whispers:
"Look!--what's that?"
"Don't!" I says. "Don't take a person by surprise that way. I'm 'most
ready to die, anyway, without you doing that."
"Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of the sycamores."
"Don't, Tom!"
"It's terrible tall!"
"Oh, lordy-lordy! let's--"
"Keep still--it's a-coming this way."
He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I had to
look. I couldn't help it. So now we was both on our knees with our chins
on a fence rail and gazing--yes, and gasping too. It was coming down the
road--coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good;
not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch
of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks--it was Jake Dunlap's
ghost! That was what we said to ourselves.
We couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone We talked about it
in low voices. Tom says:
"They're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of fog, but this
one wasn't."
"No," I says; "I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain."
"Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes--plaid
breeches, green and black--"
"Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares--"
"Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them
hanging unbottoned--"
"Yes, and that hat--"
"What a hat for a ghost to wear!"
You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind--a black
stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top--just
like a sugar-loaf.
"Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?"
"No--seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn't."
"I didn't either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that."
"So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?"
"Sho! I wouldn't be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn.
Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They've got to have their
things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned
to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too?
Of course it done it."
That was reasonable. I couldn't find no fault with it. Bill Withers and
his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:
"What do you reckon he was toting?"
"I dunno; but it was pretty heavy."
"Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I
judged."
"So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn't let on to see him."
"That's me, too."
Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how
unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn't 'a' let a
nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him.
We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder,
and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim
Lane says:
"Who?--Jubiter Dunlap?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I don't know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground along
about an hour ago, just before sundown--him and the parson. Said he
guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted
him."
"Too tired, I reckon."
"Yes--works so hard!"
"Oh, you bet!"
They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and
tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be
comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, and
got home all right.
That night was the second of September--a Saturday. I sha'n't ever forget
it. You'll see why, pretty soon.
CHAPTER VI. PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
WE tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back stile where
old Jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free,
and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the
lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to
climb over, but Tom says:
"Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!"
"What's the matter?" says I.
"Matter enough!" he says. "Wasn't you expecting we would be the first to
tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the sycamores, and
all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've
smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of
being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?"
"Why, of course. It wouldn't be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was to let such
a chance go by. I reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of
paint," I says, "when you start in to scollop the facts."
"Well, now," he says, perfectly ca'm, "what would you say if I was to
tell you I ain't going to start in at all?"
I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says:
"I'd say it's a lie. You ain't in earnest, Tom Sawyer?"
"You'll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?"
"No, it wasn't. What of it?"
"You wait--I'll show you what. Did it have its boots on?"
"Yes. I seen them plain."
"Swear it?"
"Yes, I swear it."
"So do I. Now do you know what that means?"
"No. What does it mean?"
"Means that them thieves DIDN'T GET THE DI'MONDS."
"Jimminy! What makes you think that?"
"I don't only think it, I know it. Didn't the breeches and goggles and
whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?
Everything it had on turned, didn't it? It shows that the reason its
boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go
ha'nting around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't
get the boots, I'd like to know what you'd CALL proof."
Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had
eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But Tom
Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its
hind legs and TALKED to him--told him everything it knowed. I never see
such a head.
"Tom Sawyer," I says, "I'll say it again as I've said it a many a time
before: I ain't fitten to black your boots. But that's all right--that's
neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He gives eyes
that's blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it ain't
none of our lookout what He done it for; it's all right, or He'd 'a'
fixed it some other way. Go on--I see plenty plain enough, now, that them
thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. Why didn't they, do you
reckon?"
"Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could
pull the boots off of the corpse."
"That's so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain't we to go and
tell about it?"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can't you see? Look at it. What's a-going to
happen? There's going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men will
tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save
the stranger. Then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and
finally they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted
over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of
God. And after they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to
pay the expenses, and then's OUR chance." "How, Tom?"
"Buy the boots for two dollars!"
Well, it 'most took my breath.
"My land! Why, Tom, WE'LL get the di'monds!"
"You bet. Some day there'll be a big reward offered for them--a thousand
dollars, sure. That's our money! Now we'll trot in and see the folks.
And mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds, or
any thieves--don't you forget that."
I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I'd 'a' SOLD
them di'monds--yes, sir--for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn't say
anything. It wouldn't done any good. I says:
"But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long
getting down here from the village, Tom?"
"Oh, I'll leave that to you," he says. "I reckon you can explain it
somehow."
He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie
himself.
We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing
that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to
the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen
part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was,
even to Uncle Silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to
it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like
somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and
walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and
the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in
the other and praying for help in time of need. She jumped for us with
joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the
ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just
couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she
says:
"Where HAVE you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been
that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been
here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so
as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is
just plumb wore out, and I declare I--I--why I could skin you alive! You
must be starving, poor things!--set down, set down, everybody; don't lose
no more time."
It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and
spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old
Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as
many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the
slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so
long. When our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked
me, and I says:
"Well, you see,--er--Mizzes--"
"Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of
cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took
you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told
me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton?
Call me Aunt Sally--like you always done."
So I done it. And I says:
"Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of
the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to
go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter
Dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute--"
"Where did they see him?" says the old man; and when I looked up to see
how HE come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was
just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of
throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:
"It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards
sundown or along there."
He only said, "Um," in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn't take no
more intrust. So I went on. I says:
"Well, then, as I was a-saying--"
"That'll do, you needn't go no furder." It was Aunt Sally. She was boring
right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. "Huck Finn," she says,
"how'd them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in
September--in THIS region?"
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn't say a word. She waited, still
a-gazing at me, then she says:
"And how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying
in the night?"
"Well, m'm, they--er--they told us they had a lantern, and--"
"Oh, SHET up--do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a dog?--hunt
blackberries with it?"
"I think, m'm, they--"
"Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing YOUR mouth to
contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out--and I warn you before you
begin, that I don't believe a word of it. You and Huck's been up to
something you no business to--I know it perfectly well; I know you, BOTH
of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern,
and the rest of that rot--and mind you talk as straight as a string--do
you hear?"
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:
"It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a
little bit of a mistake that anybody could make."
"What mistake has he made?"
"Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant
strawberries."
"Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I'll--"
"Aunt Sally, without knowing it--and of course without intending it--you
are in the wrong. If you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you
ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in
Arkansaw they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dog--and a lantern--"
But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him
under. She was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough, and
she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer
was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave
her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated
with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let
anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and
had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm:
"And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally--"
"Shet up!" she says, "I don't want to hear another word out of you."
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about
that delay. Tom done it elegant.
CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT'S VIGIL
BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then;
but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt
Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good
humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and
so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he
didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done
a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to
see him so sad and troubled and worried.
By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door
and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and
scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his
brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse
Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so
sharp and fractious before. He says:
"Am I his brother's keeper?" And then he kind of wilted together, and
looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very gentle:
"But you needn't say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, and I
ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. Tell him he ain't
here."
And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards
and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands
through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she
whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed
him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles
come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was
about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his
sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered
around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched
him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she
reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She said
Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said Benny
appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him
alone.
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and
by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up to
his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked
with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and
so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded
him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and it was
uncommon pretty to see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by
it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and
fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of
talk. And Tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all Jubiter's fault, and
he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and
if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas to
turn him off.
And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours,
and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and
dark, and everybody gone to bed.
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize
work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn,
and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn't
sleep. We found we couldn't, neither. So we set up a long time, and
smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted.
We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy
and crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late
sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I done
it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't know
just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him
good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon
came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and
we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom says:
"He's a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and
see where he's going to. There, he's turned down by the tobacker-field.
Out of sight now. It's a dreadful pity he can't rest no better."
We waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or if he did he
come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to
sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was
awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and
the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the
trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the
gullies was running rivers. Tom says:
"Looky here, Huck, I'll tell you one thing that's mighty curious. Up to
the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about Jake Dunlap
being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away
would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that
heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try
to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don't have such a big thing
as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it's mighty strange; I don't
understand it."
So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out
and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything
about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and
shocked.
We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day
then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and
stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the
folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none
of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no
mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find
that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. Said
he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the
thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe
they all killed each other, and so there wasn't anybody left to tell.
First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores.
The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn't budge another step,
for all Tom's persuading. But he couldn't hold in; he'd GOT to see if the
boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in--and the next minute out
he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says:
"Huck, it's gone!"
I WAS astonished! I says:
"Tom, you don't mean it."
"It's gone, sure. There ain't a sign of it. The ground is trampled
some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm, for
it's all puddles and slush in there."
At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as
Tom said--there wasn't a sign of a corpse.
"Dern it," I says, "the di'monds is gone. Don't you reckon the thieves
slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?"
"Looks like it. It just does. Now where'd they hide him, do you
reckon?"
"I don't know," I says, disgusted, "and what's more I don't care.
They've got the boots, and that's all I cared about. He'll lay around
these woods a long time before I hunt him up."
Tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know
what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and it wouldn't
be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.
We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and
disappointed and swindled. I warn't ever so down on a corpse before.
CHAPTER VIII. TALKING WITH THE GHOST
IT warn't very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and
tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't seem
to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and Tom had a
plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn't
had much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a
look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as
for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him
knowing they was there, I reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all
the time, and never said a word and never et a bite.
By and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked in at the
door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy about
Marse Jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would Marse Silas please
--He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of
his words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and steadied
himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his
eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other
hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words
started, and says:
"Does he--does he--think--WHAT does he think! Tell him--tell him--" Then
he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly
hear him: "Go away--go away!"
The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt--well, I don't
know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and
his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could
budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and
stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun
to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and
we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there.
Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how
different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and
everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of
Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd'n-headed
and good--and now look at him. If he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck
short of it. That was what we allowed.
It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further
and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and
lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange
and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this.
And then all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom's arm, and
all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs.
"There it is!" I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and Tom
says:
"'Sh!--don't make a noise."
It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking.
I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and I dasn't budge by
myself. He said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one, and he
was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked
too, though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he HAD to talk, but he
talked low. He says:
"Poor Jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he would. NOW
you see what we wasn't certain about--its hair. It's not long now the way
it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would.
Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what It does."
"Nor I neither," I says; "I'd recognize it anywheres."
"So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done
before it died."
So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:
"Huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't you know?
IT oughtn't to be going around in the daytime."
"That's so, Tom--I never heard the like of it before."
"No, sir, they don't ever come out only at night--and then not till
after twelve. There's something wrong about this one, now you mark my
words. I don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime.
But don't it look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so
the neighbors wouldn't know his voice. Do you reckon it would do that if
we was to holler at it?"
"Lordy, Tom, don't talk so! If you was to holler at it I'd die in my
tracks."
"Don't you worry, I ain't going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it's
a-scratching its head--don't you see?"
"Well, what of it?"
"Why, this. What's the sense of it scratching its head? There ain't
anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like
that, and can't itch. A fog can't itch; any fool knows that."
"Well, then, if it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it
scratching it for? Ain't it just habit, don't you reckon?"
"No, sir, I don't. I ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts.
I've a blame good notion it's a bogus one--I have, as sure as I'm
a-sitting here. Because, if it--Huck!"
"Well, what's the matter now?"
"YOU CAN'T SEE THE BUSHES THROUGH IT!"
"Why, Tom, it's so, sure! It's as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to
think--"
"Huck, it's biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, THEY don't
chaw--they hain't got anything to chaw WITH. Huck!"
"I'm a-listening."
"It ain't a ghost at all. It's Jake Dunlap his own self!"
"Oh your granny!" I says.
"Huck Finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?"
"No."
"Or any sign of one?"
"No."
"Mighty good reason. Hadn't ever been any corpse there."
"Why, Tom, you know we heard--"
"Yes, we did--heard a howl or two. Does that prove anybody was killed?
Course it don't. And we seen four men run, then this one come walking out
and we took it for a ghost. No more ghost than you are. It was Jake
Dunlap his own self, and it's Jake Dunlap now. He's been and got his
hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he's playing himself for a
stranger, just the same as he said he would. Ghost? Hum!--he's as sound
as a nut."
Then I see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. I was
powerful glad he didn't get killed, and so was Tom, and we wondered which
he would like the best--for us to never let on to know him, or how? Tom
reckoned the best way would be to go and ask him. So he started; but I
kept a little behind, because I didn't know but it might be a ghost,
after all. When Tom got to where he was, he says:
"Me and Huck's mighty glad to see you again, and you needn't be afeared
we'll tell. And if you think it'll be safer for you if we don't let on
to know you when we run across you, say the word and you'll see you can
depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than get you into the
least little bit of danger."
First off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but
as Tom went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and
nodded his head several times, and made signs with his hands, and says:
"Goo-goo--goo-goo," the way deef and dummies does.
Just then we see some of Steve Nickerson's people coming that lived
t'other side of the prairie, so Tom says:
"You do it elegant; I never see anybody do it better. You're right; play
it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it'll keep you in
practice and prevent you making blunders. We'll keep away from you and
let on we don't know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let
us know."
Then we loafed along past the Nickersons, and of course they asked if
that was the new stranger yonder, and where'd he come from, and what was
his name, and which communion was he, Babtis' or Methodis', and which
politics, Whig or Democrat, and how long is he staying, and all them
other questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and
animals does, too. But Tom said he warn't able to make anything out of
deef and dumb signs, and the same with goo-gooing. Then we watched them
go and bullyrag Jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it
would take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef and dummy
sometimes, and speak out before he thought. When we had watched long
enough to see that Jake was getting along all right and working his signs
very good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse
about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp.
I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row in the
sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed, that I couldn't seem
to get over it, and Tom he felt the same, but said if we was in Jake's
fix we would want to go careful and keep still and not take any chances.
The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good
time all through recess. Coming to school the Henderson boys had come
across the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was
chuck full of him and couldn't talk about anything else, and was in a
sweat to get a sight of him because they hadn't ever seen a deef and
dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful excitement.
Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if
we could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still
more heroic to keep mum, there warn't two boys in a million could do it.
That was Tom Sawyer's idea about it, and reckoned there warn't anybody
could better it.
CHAPTER IX. FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP
IN the next two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He
went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him,
and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. They had him
to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept
him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn't ever tired staring at him
and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him, he was so
uncommon and romantic. His signs warn't no good; people couldn't
understand them and he prob'ly couldn't himself, but he done a sight of
goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear him go
it. He toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote
questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn't anybody could read
his writing but Brace Dunlap. Brace said he couldn't read it very good,
but he could manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. He said
Dummy said he belonged away off somers and used to be well off, but got
busted by swindlers which he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn't
any way to make a living.
Everybody praised Brace Dunlap for being so good to that stranger. He
let him have a little log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers take
care of it, and fetch him all the vittles he wanted.
Dummy was at our house some, because old Uncle Silas was so afflicted
himself, these days, that anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort
to him. Me and Tom didn't let on that we had knowed him before, and he
didn't let on that he had knowed us before. The family talked their
troubles out before him the same as if he wasn't there, but we reckoned
it wasn't any harm for him to hear what they said. Generly he didn't seem
to notice, but sometimes he did.
Well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy
about Jubiter Dunlap. Everybody was asking everybody if they had any
idea what had become of him. No, they hadn't, they said: and they shook
their heads and said there was something powerful strange about it.
Another and another day went by; then there was a report got around that
praps he was murdered. You bet it made a big stir! Everybody's tongue
was clacking away after that. Saturday two or three gangs turned out and
hunted the woods to see if they could run across his remainders. Me and
Tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. Tom he was so
brimful of it he couldn't eat nor rest. He said if we could find that
corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked about than if we got
drownded.
The others got tired and give it up; but not Tom Sawyer--that warn't his
style. Saturday night he didn't sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a
plan; and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. He snaked me out
of bed and was all excited, and says:
"Quick, Huck, snatch on your clothes--I've got it! Bloodhound!"
In two minutes we was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the
village. Old Jeff Hooker had a bloodhound, and Tom was going to borrow
him. I says:
"The trail's too old, Tom--and besides, it's rained, you know."
"It don't make any difference, Huck. If the body's hid in the woods
anywhere around the hound will find it. If he's been murdered and buried,
they wouldn't bury him deep, it ain't likely, and if the dog goes over
the spot he'll scent him, sure. Huck, we're going to be celebrated, sure
as you're born!"
He was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to
get afire all over. That was the way this time. In two minutes he had
got it all ciphered out, and wasn't only just going to find the
corpse--no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer and hunt
HIM down, too; and not only that, but he was going to stick to him till
--"Well," I says, "you better find the corpse first; I reckon that's
a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, there AIN'T any corpse and nobody
hain't been murdered. That cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been
killed at all."
That graveled him, and he says:
"Huck Finn, I never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything.
As long as YOU can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let
anybody else. What good can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse
and get up that selfish theory that there ain't been any murder? None in
the world. I don't see how you can act so. I wouldn't treat you like
that, and you know it. Here we've got a noble good opportunity to make a
ruputation, and--"
"Oh, go ahead," I says. "I'm sorry, and I take it all back. I didn't
mean nothing. Fix it any way you want it. HE ain't any consequence to
me. If he's killed, I'm as glad of it as you are; and if he--"
"I never said anything about being glad; I only--"
"Well, then, I'm as SORRY as you are. Any way you druther have it, that
is the way I druther have it. He--"
"There ain't any druthers ABOUT it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about
druthers. And as for--"
He forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, studying. He begun to
get excited again, and pretty soon he says:
"Huck, it'll be the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the body
after everybody else has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt up the
murderer. It won't only be an honor to us, but it'll be an honor to
Uncle Silas because it was us that done it. It'll set him up again, you
see if it don't."
But Old Jeff Hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we
got to his blacksmith shop and told him what we come for.
"You can take the dog," he says, "but you ain't a-going to find any
corpse, because there ain't any corpse to find. Everybody's quit looking,
and they're right. Soon as they come to think, they knowed there warn't
no corpse. And I'll tell you for why. What does a person kill another
person for, Tom Sawyer?--answer me that."
"Why, he--er--"
"Answer up! You ain't no fool. What does he kill him FOR?"
"Well, sometimes it's for revenge, and--"
"Wait. One thing at a time. Revenge, says you; and right you are. Now
who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account? Who do you
reckon would want to kill HIM?--that rabbit!"
Tom was stuck. I reckon he hadn't thought of a person having to have a
REASON for killing a person before, and now he sees it warn't likely
anybody would have that much of a grudge against a lamb like Jubiter
Dunlap. The blacksmith says, by and by:
"The revenge idea won't work, you see. Well, then, what's next? Robbery?
B'gosh, that must 'a' been it, Tom! Yes, sirree, I reckon we've struck it
this time. Some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and so he--"
But it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing and
laughing and laughing till he was 'most dead, and Tom looked so put out
and cheap that I knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished he
hadn't. But old Hooker never let up on him. He raked up everything a
person ever could want to kill another person about, and any fool could
see they didn't any of them fit this case, and he just made no end of fun
of the whole business and of the people that had been hunting the body;
and he said:
"If they'd had any sense they'd 'a' knowed the lazy cuss slid out because
he wanted a loafing spell after all this work. He'll come pottering back
in a couple of weeks, and then how'll you fellers feel? But, laws bless
you, take the dog, and go and hunt his remainders. Do, Tom."
Then he busted out, and had another of them forty-rod laughs of hisn.
Tom couldn't back down after all this, so he said, "All right, unchain
him;" and the blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that old
man laughing yet.
It was a lovely dog. There ain't any dog that's got a lovelier
disposition than a bloodhound, and this one knowed us and liked us. He
capered and raced around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free
and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut up he couldn't take any intrust in
him, and said he wished he'd stopped and thought a minute before he ever
started on such a fool errand. He said old Jeff Hooker would tell
everybody, and we'd never hear the last of it.
So we loafed along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and not
talking. When we was passing the far corner of our tobacker field we
heard the dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the place and
he was scratching the ground with all his might, and every now and then
canting up his head sideways and fetching another howl.
It was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink
down and show the shape. The minute we come and stood there we looked at
one another and never said a word. When the dog had dug down only a few
inches he grabbed something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a
sleeve. Tom kind of gasped out, and says:
"Come away, Huck--it's found."
I just felt awful. We struck for the road and fetched the first men that
come along. They got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you
never see such an excitement. You couldn't make anything out of the
face, but you didn't need to. Everybody said:
"Poor Jubiter; it's his clothes, to the last rag!"
Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and
have an inquest, and me and Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire
and 'most out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle Silas and
Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom sung out:
"Me and Huck's found Jubiter Dunlap's corpse all by ourselves with a
bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and if
it hadn't a been for us it never WOULD 'a' been found; and he WAS
murdered too--they done it with a club or something like that; and I'm
going to start in and find the murderer, next, and I bet I'll do it!"
Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas fell
right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out:
"Oh, my God, you've found him NOW!"
CHAPTER X. THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
THEM awful words froze us solid. We couldn't move hand or foot for as
much as half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man
up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and
tried to comfort him, and poor old Aunt Sally she done the same; but,
poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their
right minds that they didn't hardly know what they was about. With Tom
it was awful; it 'most petrified him to think maybe he had got his uncle
into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn't ever
happened if he hadn't been so ambitious to get celebrated, and let the
corpse alone the way the others done. But pretty soon he sort of come to
himself again and says:
"Uncle Silas, don't you say another word like that. It's dangerous, and
there ain't a shadder of truth in it."
Aunt Sally and Benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the
same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the
tears run down his face, and he says;
"No--I done it; poor Jubiter, I done it!"
It was dreadful to hear him say it. Then he went on and told about it,
and said it happened the day me and Tom come--along about sundown. He
said Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just
sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head
with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was scared
and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and begged
him to speak and say he wasn't dead; and before long he come to, and when
he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was 'most scared to
death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was gone. So
he hoped he wasn't hurt bad.
"But laws," he says, "it was only just fear that gave him that last
little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid
down in the bush, and there wasn't anybody to help him, and he died."
Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the
mark of Cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going to
be found out and hung. But Tom said:
"No, you ain't going to be found out. You DIDN'T kill him. ONE lick
wouldn't kill him. Somebody else done it."
"Oh, yes," he says, "I done it--nobody else. Who else had anything
against him? Who else COULD have anything against him?"
He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that
could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of course it
warn't no use--he HAD us; we couldn't say a word. He noticed that, and
he saddened down again, and I never see a face so miserable and so
pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says:
"But hold on!--somebody BURIED him. Now who--"
He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders
when he said them words, because right away I remembered about us seeing
Uncle Silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in the night
that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, too, because she was talking
about it one day. The minute Tom shut off he changed the subject and
went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us done the
same, and said he MUST, and said it wasn't his business to tell on
himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it was found
out and any harm come to him it would break the family's hearts and kill
them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he promised. We was
all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old
man. We told him all he'd got to do was to keep still, and it wouldn't
be long till the whole thing would blow over and be forgot. We all said
there wouldn't anybody ever suspect Uncle Silas, nor ever dream of such a
thing, he being so good and kind, and having such a good character; and
Tom says, cordial and hearty, he says:
"Why, just look at it a minute; just consider. Here is Uncle Silas, all
these years a preacher--at his own expense; all these years doing good
with all his might and every way he can think of--at his own expense, all
the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always been
peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this whole
deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. Suspect HIM? Why,
it ain't any more possible than--"
"By authority of the State of Arkansaw, I arrest you for the murder of
Jubiter Dunlap!" shouts the sheriff at the door.
It was awful. Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves at Uncle Silas,
screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and Aunt Sally said
go away, she wouldn't ever give him up, they shouldn't have him, and the
niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and--well, I couldn't
stand it; it was enough to break a person's heart; so I got out.
They took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we all
went along to tell him good-bye; and Tom was feeling elegant, and says to
me, "We'll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some dark
night getting him out of there, Huck, and it'll be talked about
everywheres and we will be celebrated;" but the old man busted that
scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. He said no, it was his
duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to the
jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn't no door to it. It
disappointed Tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up with
it.
But he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle Silas free; and he
told Aunt Sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to
turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas
out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said she
knowed he would do his very best. And she told us to help Benny take
care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry all
around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with the
jailer's wife a month till the trial in October.
CHAPTER XI. TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS
WELL, that was a hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best
she could, and me and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the
house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. It was the same
up at the jail. We went up every day to see the old people, but it was
awful dreary, because the old man warn't sleeping much, and was walking
in his sleep considerable and so he got to looking fagged and miserable,
and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles would break
him down and kill him. And whenever we tried to persuade him to feel
cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only knowed what it was
to carry around a murderer's load in your heart we wouldn't talk that
way. Tom and all of us kept telling him it WASN'T murder, but just
accidental killing! but it never made any difference--it was murder, and
he wouldn't have it any other way. He actu'ly begun to come out plain
and square towards trial time and acknowledge that he TRIED to kill the
man. Why, that was awful, you know. It made things seem fifty times as
dreadful, and there warn't no more comfort for Aunt Sally and Benny. But
he promised he wouldn't say a word about his murder when others was
around, and we was glad of that.
Tom Sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan
some way out for Uncle Silas, and many's the night he kept me up 'most
all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn't seem to get on
the right track no way. As for me, I reckoned a body might as well give
it up, it all looked so blue and I was so downhearted; but he wouldn't.
He stuck to the business right along, and went on planning and thinking
and ransacking his head.
So at last the trial come on, towards the middle of October, and we was
all in the court. The place was jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle
Silas, he looked more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so
hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. Benny she set on one side
of him and Aunt Sally on the other, and they had veils on, and was full
of trouble. But Tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in
everywheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge let him. He
'most took the business out of the lawyer's hands sometimes; which was
well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement
lawyer and didn't know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying is.
They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up
and begun. He made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him
moan and groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way HE told about
the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old
man's tale. He said he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was SEEN to
kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it deliberate, and
SAID he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him with the club;
and they seen him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that Jubiter
was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and lugged Jubiter down
into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. And said Uncle Silas
turned out, away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen him at
it.
I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because he
reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn't bear to break Aunt Sally's heart
and Benny's; and right he was: as for me, I would 'a' lied the same way,
and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such misery and
sorrow which THEY warn't no ways responsible for. Well, it made our
lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for a little
spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't worried--but I
knowed he WAS, all the same. And the people--my, but it made a stir
amongst them!
And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to
prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses.
First, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt
Uncle Silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle
Silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got
worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got
afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain Uncle
Silas would up and kill him some time or another.
Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they
stuck to what they said.
Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into my
mind, then, how Lem and Jim Lane had come along talking, that time, about
borrowing a dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap; and that brought up the
blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up Bill and Jack Withers,
and how they passed by, talking about a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's
corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come along about the same
time and scared us so--and here HE was too, and a privileged character,
on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed
him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his legs and be
comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so they couldn't
hardly breathe. So it all come back to me just the way it was that day;
and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to then, and how
miserable ever since.
LEM BEEBE, sworn, said--"I was a-coming along, that day,
second of September, and Jim Lane was with me, and it was
towards sundown, and we heard loud talk, like quarrelling,
and we was very close, only the hazel bushes between (that's
along the fence); and we heard a voice say, 'I've told you
more'n once I'd kill you,' and knowed it was this prisoner's
voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes and
down out of sight again, and heard a smashing thump and then
a groan or two: and then we crope soft to where we could
see, and there laid Jupiter Dunlap dead, and this prisoner
standing over him with the club; and the next he hauled the
dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we
stooped low, to be cut of sight, and got away."
Well, it was awful. It kind of froze everybody's blood to hear it, and
the house was 'most as still whilst he was telling it as if there warn't
nobody in it. And when he was done, you could hear them gasp and sigh,
all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say, "Ain't it
perfectly terrible--ain't it awful!"
Now happened a thing that astonished me. All the time the first
witnesses was proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, Tom
Sawyer was alive and laying for them; and the minute they was through, he
went for them, and done his level best to catch them in lies and spile
their testimony. But now, how different. When Lem first begun to talk,
and never said anything about speaking to Jubiter or trying to borrow a
dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for Lem, and you could see he
was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty soon, and then I
judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard
him and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at Tom I got the cold
shivers. Why, he was in the brownest study you ever see--miles and miles
away. He warn't hearing a word Lem Beebe was saying; and when he got
through he was still in that brown-study, just the same. Our lawyer
joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and says, "Take the witness
if you want him. Lemme alone--I want to think."
Well, that beat me. I couldn't understand it. And Benny and her
mother--oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their
veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and I
couldn't get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the witness,
but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.
Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again,
exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and
thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and
come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution
looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was
just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law
for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom
had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it
and you could see the judge didn't like it much. All that the mud-turtle
got out of Lem and Jim was this: he asked them:
"Why didn't you go and tell what you saw?"
"We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just
starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon
as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then
we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it."
"When was that?"
"Saturday night, September 9th."
The judge he spoke up and says:
"Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being
accessionary after the fact to the murder."
The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says:
"Your honor! I protest against this extraordi--"
"Set down!" says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his
pulpit. "I beg you to respect the Court."
So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers.
BILL WITHERS, sworn, said: "I was coming along about sundown,
Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner's field, and my
brother Jack was with me and we seen a man toting off
something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger
stealing corn; we couldn't see distinct; next we made out that
it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind
of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the
man's walk we said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had
found Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying
to reform him, and was toting him out of danger."
It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle Silas toting off the
diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug up the
body, but there warn't much sympathy around amongst the faces, and I
heard one cuss say "'Tis the coldest blooded work I ever struck, lugging
a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and
him a preacher at that."
Tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the
witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough.
Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like
Bill done.
And after him comes Brace Dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and
most crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody
got ready to listen, and lost of the women folks said, "Poor cretur, poor
cretur," and you could see a many of them wiping their eyes.
BRACE DUNLAP, sworn, said: "I was in considerable trouble a
long time about my poor brother, but I reckoned things warn't
near so bad as he made out, and I couldn't make myself believe
anybody would have the heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur
like that"--[by jings, I was sure I seen Tom give a kind of a
faint little start, and then look disappointed again]--"and
you know I COULDN'T think a preacher would hurt him--it warn't
natural to think such an onlikely thing--so I never paid much
attention, and now I sha'n't ever, ever forgive myself; for if
I had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this
day, and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless." He
kind of broke down there and choked up, and waited to get his
voice; and people all around said the most pitiful things, and
women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn, and
old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so
everybody heard him. Then Brace he went on, "Saturday,
September 2d, he didn't come home to supper. By-and-by I got a
little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this
prisoner's place, but come back and said he warn't there. So
I got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn't rest. I went to
bed, but I couldn't sleep; and turned out, away late in the
night, and went wandering over to this prisoner's place and
all around about there a good while, hoping I would run across
my poor brother, and never knowing he was out of his troubles
and gone to a better shore--" So he broke down and choked up
again, and most all the women was crying now. Pretty soon he
got another start and says: "But it warn't no use; so at last
I went home and tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. Well,
in a day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking
about this prisoner's threats, and took to the idea, which I
didn't take no stock in, that my brother was murdered so they
hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn't and
give it up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers to have
a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles
was kind of healed. But late Saturday night, the 9th, Lem
Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and told me all--told me
the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. And THEN
I remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the
time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking
in his sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence,
not knowing what he was about. I will tell you what that
thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful
Saturday night when I was wandering around about this
prisoner's place, grieving and troubled, I was down by the
corner of the tobacker-field and I heard a sound like digging
in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the
vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner
SHOVELING--shoveling with a long-handled shovel--heaving earth
into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me,
but it was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green
baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of
the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball. HE WAS
BURYING THE MAN HE'D MURDERED!"
And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most everybody
in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, "Oh, it's
awful--awful--horrible! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and
you couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps
old Uncle Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out:
"IT'S TRUE, EVERY WORD--I MURDERED HIM IN COLD BLOOD!"
By Jackson, it petrified them! People rose up wild all over the house,
straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was
hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling "Order--order in the
court--order!"
And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes
a-burning, and not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging
to him and begging him to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands
and saying he WOULD clear his black soul from crime, he WOULD heave off
this load that was more than he could bear, and he WOULDN'T bear it
another hour! And then he raged right along with his awful tale,
everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and
Benny and Aunt Sally crying their hearts out. And by George, Tom Sawyer
never looked at him once! Never once--just set there gazing with all his
eyes at something else, I couldn't tell what. And so the old man raged
right along, pouring his words out like a stream of fire:
"I killed him! I am guilty! But I never had the notion in my life to hurt
him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him, till
the very minute I raised the club--then my heart went cold!--then the
pity all went out of it, and I struck to kill! In that one moment all my
wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that that man and the scoundrel
his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in together to
ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and DRIVE me to some
deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn't ever done THEM no
harm, so help me God! And they done it in a mean revenge--for why?
Because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn't marry that rich,
insolent, ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who's been sniveling here over a
brother he never cared a brass farthing for--"[I see Tom give a jump and
look glad THIS time, to a dead certainty]"--and in that moment I've told
you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my heart's bitterness, God
forgive me, and I struck to kill. In one second I was miserably
sorry--oh, filled with remorse; but I thought of my poor family, and I
MUST hide what I'd done for their sakes; and I did hide that corpse in
the bushes; and presently I carried it to the tobacker field; and in the
deep night I went with my shovel and buried it where--"
Up jumps Tom and shouts:
"NOW, I've got it!" and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy,
towards the old man, and says:
"Set down! A murder WAS done, but you never had no hand in it!"
Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down
kind of bewildered in his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn't know it,
because they was so astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths open
and not knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same. I
never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain't ever seen
eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom says,
perfectly ca'm:
"Your honor, may I speak?"
"For God's sake, yes--go on!" says the judge, so astonished and mixed up
he didn't know what he was about hardly.
Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two--that was for to work
up an "effect," as he calls it--then he started in just as ca'm as ever,
and says:
"For about two weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front
of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of
big di'monds--stole at St. Louis. Them di'monds is worth twelve thousand
dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it. Now about this
murder. I will tell you all about it--how it happened--who done it--every
DEtail."
You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was
worth.
"This man here, Brace Dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead
brother that YOU know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that
young girl there, and she wouldn't have him. So he told Uncle Silas he
would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how
little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried,
and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to
be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm
and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter
done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and
fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt,
so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody
turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it
graduly broke his heart--yes, and he was so worried and distressed that
often he warn't hardly in his right mind.
"Well, on that Saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of
these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle
Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work--and that much of what they've said
is true, the rest is lies. They didn't hear Uncle Silas say he would kill
Jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck; they didn't see no dead man,
and they didn't see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look at them
now--how they set there, wishing they hadn't been so handy with their
tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before I get done.
"That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers DID see one man lugging
off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is
lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's
corn--you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody
overheard them say that. That's because they found out by and by who it
was that was doing the lugging, and THEY know best why they swore here
that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait--which it WASN'T, and they
knowed it when they swore to that lie.
"A man out in the moonlight DID see a murdered person put under ground in
the tobacker field--but it wasn't Uncle Silas that done the burying. He
was in his bed at that very time.
"Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you've ever noticed
this: that people, when they're thinking deep, or when they're worried,
are most always doing something with their hands, and they don't know it,
and don't notice what it is their hands are doing, some stroke their
chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up UNDER their chin with
their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there's some
that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or
under their chin or on their under lip. That's MY way. When I'm
restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V's on my cheek or
on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything BUT capital V's--and
half the time I don't notice it and don't know I'm doing it."
That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see
people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean "THAT's
so."
"Now, then, I'll go on. That same Saturday--no, it was the night
before--there was a steamboat laying at Flagler's Landing, forty miles
above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And there
was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di'monds that's advertised
out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag
and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could
get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals aboard the
boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance
they got and take the di'monds; because all three stole them, and then
this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
"Well, he hadn't been gone more'n ten minutes before his pals found it
out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob'ly they burnt
matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all
day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to
the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas's field, and he went in there
to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed
himself here in the town--and mind you he done that just a little after
the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a
club--for he DID hit him.
"But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of
sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him.
"They fell on him and clubbed him to death.
"Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him,
but clubbed him to death. And two men that was running along the road
heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca-i more
bunch--which was where they was bound for, anyway--and when the pals saw
them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight
as they could go. But only a minute or two--then these two new men
slipped back very quiet into the sycamores.
"THEN what did they do? I will tell you what they done. They found where
the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one
of them strips and puts on that disguise."
Tom waited a little here, for some more "effect"--then he says, very
deliberate:
"The man that put on that dead man's disguise was--JUBITER DUNLAP!"
"Great Scott!" everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle Silas
he looked perfectly astonished.
"Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off
the dead man's boots and put Jubiter Dunlap's old ragged shoes on the
corpse and put the corpse's boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter Dunlap
stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the
twilight; and after midnight he went to Uncle Silas's house, and took his
old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage
betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the
long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and buried
the murdered man."
He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then--"And who do you reckon the
murdered man WAS? It was--JAKE Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!"
"Great Scott!"
"And the man that buried him was--BRACE Dunlap, his brother!"
"Great Scott!"
"And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that's letting on all
these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? It's--JUBITER Dunlap!"
My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of
that excitement since the day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for
Jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was
the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! And Aunt Sally
and Benny they went to hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old
Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and confused and mushed up
in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying considerable.
And next, people begun to yell:
"Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom
Sawyer!"
Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to be
a public character that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was
all quiet, he says:
"There ain't much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap,
had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he
plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a
club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to hide,
and I reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave
the country. Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas killed
him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and drive
HIM out of the country--hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found
their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was
so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise BOTH and bury
Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter's clothes, and
hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to swear to some handy
lies--which they done. And there they set, now, and I told them they
would be looking sick before I got done, and that is the way they're
looking now.
"Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves,
and the dead one told us all about the di'monds, and said the others
would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all
we could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him
in there; but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and
allowed nobody hadn't been killed, after all. And when we see Jubiter
Dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise Jake told us HE
was going to wear, we thought it was Jake his own self--and he was
goo-gooing deef and dumb, and THAT was according to agreement.
"Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit,
and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy
by telling us HE killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we found the
body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas's neck if we could; and it was
going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn't let us break him out of
prison the way we done with our old nigger Jim.
"I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save
Uncle Silas, but I couldn't strike a thing. So when we come into court
to-day I come empty, and couldn't see no chance anywheres. But by and by
I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking--just a little wee
glimpse--only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking
hard--and WATCHING, when I was only letting on to think; and by and by,
sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about HIM killing
Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I jumped up
and shut down the proceedings, because I KNOWED Jubiter Dunlap was
a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I seen him
do--and I remembered it. I'd seen him do it when I was here a year ago."
He stopped then, and studied a minute--laying for an "effect"--I knowed
it perfectly well. Then he turned off like he was going to leave the
platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent:
"Well, I believe that is all."
Why, you never heard such a howl!--and it come from the whole house:
"What WAS it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil! You
think you are going to work a body up till his mouth's a-watering and
stop there? What WAS it he done?"
That was it, you see--he just done it to get an "effect"; you couldn't
'a' pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen.
"Oh, it wasn't anything much," he says. "I seen him looking a little
excited when he found Uncle Silas was actuly fixing to hang himself for a
murder that warn't ever done; and he got more and more nervous and
worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him--and all
of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left
crept up and HIS FINGER DRAWED A CROSS ON HIS CHEEK, and then I HAD him!"
Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands
till Tom Sawyer was that proud and happy he didn't know what to do with
himself.
And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says:
"My boy, did you SEE all the various details of this strange conspiracy
and tragedy that you've been describing?"
"No, your honor, I didn't see any of them."
"Didn't see any of them! Why, you've told the whole history straight
through, just the same as if you'd seen it with your eyes. How did you
manage that?"
Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable:
"Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your
honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a'
done it."
"Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could 'a' done it. You are a
very remarkable boy."
Then they let go and give Tom another smashing round, and he--well, he
wouldn't 'a' sold out for a silver mine. Then the judge says:
"But are you certain you've got this curious history straight?"
"Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap--let him deny his share of
it if he wants to take the chance; I'll engage to make him wish he hadn't
said anything...... Well, you see HE'S pretty quiet. And his brother's
pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got paid for it,
they're pretty quiet. And as for Uncle Silas, it ain't any use for him
to put in his oar, I wouldn't believe him under oath!"
Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and
laughed. Tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done
laughing he looks up at the judge and says:
"Your honor, there's a thief in this house."
"A thief?"
"Yes, sir. And he's got them twelve-thousand-dollar di'monds on him."
By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting:
"Which is him? which is him? p'int him out!"
And the judge says:
"Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?"
Tom says:
"This late dead man here--Jubiter Dunlap."
Then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement;
but Jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly
putrified with astonishment this time. And he spoke up, about half
crying, and says:
"Now THAT'S a lie. Your honor, it ain't fair; I'm plenty bad enough
without that. I done the other things--Brace he put me up to it, and
persuaded me, and promised he'd make me rich, some day, and I done it,
and I'm sorry I done it, and I wisht I hadn't; but I hain't stole no
di'monds, and I hain't GOT no di'monds; I wisht I may never stir if it
ain't so. The sheriff can search me and see."
Tom says:
"Your honor, it wasn't right to call him a thief, and I'll let up on that
a little. He did steal the di'monds, but he didn't know it. He stole
them from his brother Jake when he was laying dead, after Jake had stole
them from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn't know he was stealing
them; and he's been swelling around here with them a month; yes, sir,
twelve thousand dollars' worth of di'monds on him--all that riches, and
going around here every day just like a poor man. Yes, your honor, he's
got them on him now."
The judge spoke up and says:
"Search him, sheriff."
Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere:
searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything--and Tom he stood there
quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff
he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and Jubiter says:
"There, now! what'd I tell you?"
And the judge says:
"It appears you were mistaken this time, my boy."
Then Tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might,
and scratching his head. Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and
says:
"Oh, now I've got it! I'd forgot."
Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says:
"Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver?
There was one in your brother's hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter. but
I reckon you didn't fetch it with you."
"No, I didn't. I didn't want it, and I give it away."
"That's because you didn't know what it was for."
Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted was
passed over the people's heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter:
"Put up your foot on this chair." And he kneeled down and begun to
unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big
di'mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze
and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody's breath; and
Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. And
when Tom held up the other di'mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land! he
was thinking how he would 'a' skipped out and been rich and independent
in a foreign land if he'd only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver
was in the carpet-bag for.
Well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and Tom got cords
of glory. The judge took the di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and
cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says:
"I'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them it
will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for
you've earned the money--yes, and you've earned the deepest and most
sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and
innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable
man from a felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment
of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!"
Well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out some music, then, it
would 'a' been just the perfectest thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer he
said the same.
Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his crowd, and by and by next
month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And
everybody crowded back to Uncle Silas's little old church, and was ever
so loving and kind to him and the family and couldn't do enough for them;
and Uncle Silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons
you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you couldn't find your way
home in daylight; but the people never let on but what they thought it
was the clearest and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was; and
they would set there and cry, for love and pity; but, by George, they
give me the jim-jams and the fan-tods and caked up what brains I had, and
turned them solid; but by and by they loved the old man's intellects back
into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as ever he was, which
ain't no flattery, I reckon. And so the whole family was as happy as
birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to
Tom Sawyer; and the same to me, though I hadn't done nothing. And when
the two thousand dollars come, Tom give half of it to me, and never told
anybody so, which didn't surprise me, because I knowed him.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Sawyer, Detective
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
FOLLOWING
THE EQUATOR
A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
BY
MARK TWAIN
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
THIS BOOK
Is affectionately inscribed to
MY YOUNG FRIEND
HARRY ROGERS
WITH RECOGNITION
OF WHAT HE IS, AND APPREHENSION OF WHAT HE MAY BECOME
UNLESS HE FORM HIMSELF A LITTLE MORE CLOSELY
UPON THE MODEL OF
THE AUTHOR.
THE PUDD'NHEAD MAXIMS.
THESE WISDOMS ARE FOR THE LURING OF YOUTH TOWARD
HIGH MORAL ALTITUDES. THE AUTHOR DID NOT
GATHER THEM FROM PRACTICE, BUT FROM
OBSERVATION. TO BE GOOD IS NOBLE;
BUT TO SHOW OTHERS HOW
TO BE GOOD IS NOBLER
AND NO TROUBLE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
The Party--Across America to Vancouver--On Board the Warrimo--Steamer
Chairs-The Captain-Going Home under a Cloud--A Gritty Purser--The
Brightest Passenger--Remedy for Bad Habits--The Doctor and the Lumbago
--A Moral Pauper--Limited Smoking--Remittance-men.
CHAPTER II.
Change of Costume--Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories--Tests of Memory
--A Brahmin Expert--General Grant's Memory--A Delicately Improper Tale
CHAPTER III.
Honolulu--Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands--King Liholiho and His
Royal Equipment--The Tabu--The Population of the Island--A Kanaka Diver
--Cholera at Honolulu--Honolulu; Past and Present--The Leper Colony
CHAPTER IV.
Leaving Honolulu--Flying-fish--Approaching the Equator--Why the Ship Went
Slow--The Front Yard of the Ship--Crossing the Equator--Horse Billiards
or Shovel Board--The Waterbury Watch--Washing Decks--Ship Painters--The
Great Meridian--The Loss of a Day--A Babe without a Birthday
CHAPTER V.
A lesson in Pronunciation--Reverence for Robert Burns--The Southern
Cross--Troublesome Constellations--Victoria for a Name--Islands on the
Map--Alofa and Fortuna--Recruiting for the Queensland Plantations
--Captain Warren's NoteBook--Recruiting not thoroughly Popular
CHAPTER VI.
Missionaries Obstruct Business--The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka--The
Planter's View--Civilizing the Kanaka The Missionary's View--The Result
--Repentant Kanakas--Wrinkles--The Death Rate in Queensland
CHAPTER VII.
The Fiji Islands--Suva--The Ship from Duluth--Going Ashore--Midwinter in
Fiji--Seeing the Governor--Why Fiji was Ceded to England--Old time
Fijians--Convicts among the Fijians--A Case Where Marriage was a Failure
Immortality with Limitations
CHAPTER VIII.
A Wilderness of Islands--Two Men without a Country--A Naturalist from New
Zealand--The Fauna of Australasia--Animals, Insects, and Birds--The
Ornithorhynchus--Poetry and Plagiarism
CHAPTER IX.
Close to Australia--Porpoises at Night--Entrance to Sydney Harbor--The
Loss of the Duncan Dunbar--The Harbor--The City of Sydney--Spring-time in
Australia--The Climate--Information for Travelers--The Size of Australia
--A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind
CHAPTER X.
The Discovery of Australia--Transportation of Convicts--Discipline
--English Laws, Ancient and Modern--Flogging Prisoners to Death--Arrival of
Settlers--New South Wales Corps--Rum Currency--Intemperance Everywhere
$100,000 for One Gallon of Rum--Development of the Country--Immense
Resources
CHAPTER XI.
Hospitality of English-speaking People--Writers and their Gratitude--Mr.
Gane and the Panegyrics--Population of Sydney An English City with
American Trimming--"Squatters"--Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms--Wool and
Mutton--Australians and Americans--Costermonger Pronunciation--England is
"Home"--Table Talk--English and Colonial Audiences 124
CHAPTER XII.
Mr. X., a Missionary--Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India--A
Large Dream--Hindoo Miracles and Legends--Sampson and Hanuman--The
Sandstone Ridge--Where are the Gates?
CHAPTER XIII.
Public Works in Australasia--Botanical Garden of Sydney--Four Special
Socialties--The Government House--A Governor and His Functions--The
Admiralty House--The Tour of the Harbor--Shark Fishing--Cecil Rhodes'
Shark and his First Fortune--Free Board for Sharks.
CHAPTER XIV.
Bad Health--To Melbourne by Rail--Maps Defective--The Colony of Victoria
--A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney--Change Cars, from Wide to Narrow
Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury--Customs-fences--"My Word"--The Blue
Mountains--Rabbit Piles--Government R. R. Restaurants--Duchesses for
Waiters--"Sheep-dip"--Railroad Coffee--Things Seen and Not Seen
CHAPTER XV.
Wagga-Wagga--The Tichborne Claimant--A Stock Mystery--The Plan of the
Romance--The Realization--The Henry Bascom Mystery--Bascom Hall--The
Author's Death and Funeral
CHAPTER XVI.
Melbourne and its Attractions--The Melbourne Cup Races--Cup Day--Great
Crowds--Clothes Regardless of Cost--The Australian Larrikin--Is He Dead?
Australian Hospitality--Melbourne Wool-brokers--The Museums--The Palaces
--The Origin of Melbourne
CHAPTER XVII.
The British Empire--Its Exports and Imports--The Trade of Australia--To
Adelaide--Broken Hill Silver Mine--A Roundabout road--The Scrub and its
Possibilities for the Novelist--The Aboriginal Tracker--A Test Case--How
Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another?
CHAPTER XVIII.
Gum Trees--Unsociable Trees--Gorse and Broom--A universal Defect--An
Adventurer--Wanted L200, got L20,000,000--A Vast Land Scheme--The
Smash-up--The Corpse Got Up and Danced--A Unique Business by One Man
--Buying the Kangaroo Skin--The Approach to Adelaide--Everything Comes to
Him who Waits--A Healthy Religious sphere--What is the Matter with the
Specter?
CHAPTER XIX.
The Botanical Gardens--Contributions from all Countries--The
Zoological Gardens of Adelaide--The Laughing Jackass--The Dingo--A
Misnamed Province--Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco--A Mania
for Holidays--The Temperature--The Death Rate--Celebration of the
Reading of the Proclamation of 1836--Some old Settlers at the
Commemoration--Their Staying Powers--The Intelligence of the Aboriginal
--The Antiquity of the Boomerang
CHAPTER XX.
A Caller--A Talk about Old Times--The Fox Hunt--An Accurate Judgment of
an Idiot--How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy
CHAPTER XXI.
The "Weet-Weet"--Keeping down the Population--Victoria--Killing the
Aboriginals--Pioneer Days in Queensland--Material for a Drama--The Bush
--Pudding with Arsenic Revenge--A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method--Death of
Donga Billy
CHAPTER XXII.
Continued Description of Aboriginals--Manly Qualities--Dodging Balls
--Feats of Spring--Jumping--Where the Kangaroo Learned its Art 'Well
Digging--Endurance--Surgery--Artistic Abilities--Fennimore Cooper's Last
Chance--Australian Slang
CHAPTER XXIII.
To Horsham (Colony of Victoria)--Description of Horsham--At the Hotel
--Pepper Tree-The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils--High Temperature
--Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc.--The Bird with a Forgettable
Name--The Magpie and the Lady--Fruit Trees--Soils--Sheep Shearing--To Stawell
--Gold Mining Country--$75,000 per Month Income and able to Keep House
--Fine Grapes and Wine--The Dryest Community on Earth--The Three Sisters
--Gum Trees and Water
CHAPTER XXIV.
Road to Ballarat--The City--Great Gold Strike, 1851--Rush for Australia
--"Great Nuggets"--Taxation--Revolt and Victory--Peter Lalor and the
Eureka Stockade--"Pencil Mark"--Fine Statuary at Ballarat--Population
--Ballarat English
CHAPTER XXV.
Bound for Bendigo--The Priest at Castlemaine--Time Saved by Walking
--Description of Bendigo--A Valuable Nugget--Perseverence and Success
--Mr. Blank and His Influence--Conveyance of an Idea--I Had to Like the
Irishman--Corrigan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club--My Bascom Mystery
Solved
CHAPTER XXVI.
Where New Zealand Is--But Few Know--Things People Think They Know--The
Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The South Pole Swell--Tasmania--Extermination of the Natives--The Picture
Proclamation--The Conciliator--The Formidable Sixteen
CHAPTER XXVIII.
When the Moment Comes the Man Appears--Why Ed. Jackson called on
Commodore Vanderbilt--Their Interview--Welcome to the Child of His Friend
--A Big Time but under Inspection--Sent on Important Business--A Visit to
the Boys on the Boat
CHAPTER XXIX:
Tasmania, Early Days--Description of the Town of Hobart--An Englishman's
Love of Home Surroundings--Neatest City on Earth--The Museum--A Parrot
with an Acquired Taste--Glass Arrow Beads--Refuge for the Indigent too
healthy
CHAPTER XXX.
Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.--Where the Rabbit Plague Began--The Natural Enemy
of the Rabbit--Dunedin--A Lovely Town--Visit to Dr. Hockin--His Museum
--A Liquified Caterpillar--The Unperfected Tape Worm--The Public Museum and
Picture
CHAPTER XXXI. The Express Train--"A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough"
--Clocks and Bells--Railroad Service.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Description of the Town of Christ Church--A Fine Museum--Jade-stone
Trinkets--The Great Man--The First Maori in New Zealand--Women Voters
--"Person" in New Zealand Law Includes Woman--Taming an Ornithorhynchus
--A Voyage in the 'Flora' from Lyttelton--Cattle Stalls for Everybody
--A Wonderful Time.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Town of Nelson--"The Mongatapu Murders," the Great Event of the Town
--Burgess' Confession--Summit of Mount Eden--Rotorua and the Hot Lakes
and Geysers--Thermal Springs District--Kauri Gum--Tangariwa Mountains
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Bay of Gisborne--Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm--The Green
Ballarat Fly--False Teeth--From Napier to Hastings by the Ballarat Fly
Train--Kauri Trees--A Case of Mental Telegraphy
CHAPTER XXXV.
Fifty Miles in Four Hours--Comfortable Cars--Town of Wauganui--Plenty of
Maoris--On the Increase--Compliments to the Maoris--The Missionary Ways
all Wrong--The Tabu among the Maoris--A Mysterious Sign--Curious
War-monuments--Wellington
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Poems of Mrs. Moore--The Sad Fate of William Upson--A Fellow Traveler
Imitating the Prince of Wales--A Would-be Dude--Arrival at Sydney
--Curious Town Names with Poem
CHAPTER XXXVII.
From Sydney for Ceylon--A Lascar Crew--A Fine Ship--Three Cats and a
Basket of Kittens--Dinner Conversations--Veuve Cliquot Wine--At Anchor in
King George's Sound Albany Harbor--More Cats--A Vulture on Board--Nearing
the Equator again--Dressing for Dinner--Ceylon, Hotel Bristol--Servant
Brampy--A Feminine Man--Japanese Jinriksha or Cart--Scenes in Ceylon--A
Missionary School--Insincerity of Clothes
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Steamer Rosettes to Bombay--Limes 14 cents a Barrel--Bombay, a Bewitching
City--Descriptions of People and Dress--Woman as a Road Decoration
--India, the Land of Dreams and Romance--Fourteen Porters to Carry Baggage
--Correcting a Servant--Killing a Slave--Arranging a Bedroom--Three Hours'
Work and a Terrible Racket--The Bird of Birds, the Indian Crow
CHAPTER XXXIX.
God Vishnu, 108 Names--Change of Titles or Hunting for an Heir--Bombay as
a Kaleidoscope--The Native's Man Servant--Servants' Recommendations--How
Manuel got his Name and his English--Satan--A Visit from God
CHAPTER XL.
The Government House at Malabar Point--Mansion of Kumar Shri Samatsin Hji
Bahadur--The Indian Princess--A Difficult Game--Wardrobe and Jewels
--Ceremonials--Decorations when Leaving--The Towers of Silence--A Funeral
CHAPTER XLI.
Jain Temple--Mr. Roychand's Bungalow--A Decorated Six-Gun Prince--Human
Fireworks--European Dress, Past and Present--Complexions--Advantages with
the Zulu--Festivities at the Bungalow-Nautch Dancers--Entrance of the
Prince--Address to the Prince
CHAPTER XLII.
A Hindoo Betrothal, midnight, Sleepers on the ground, Home of the Bride
of Twelve Years Dressed as a Boy--Illumination Nautch Girls--Imitating
Snakes--Later--Illuminated Porch Filled with Sleepers--The Plague
CHAPTER XLIII
Murder Trial in Bombay--Confidence Swindlers--Some Specialities of India
--The Plague, Juggernaut, Suttee, etc.--Everything on Gigantic Scale
--India First in Everything--80 States, more Custom Houses than Cats--Rich
Ground for Thug Society
CHAPTER XLIV.
Thug Book--Supplies for Traveling, Bedding, and other Freight--Scene at
Railway Station--Making Way for White Man--Waiting Passengers, High and
Low Caste, Touch in the cars--Our Car--Beds made up--Dreaming of Thugs
--Baroda--Meet Friends--Indian Well--The Old Town--Narrow Streets--A Mad
Elephant
CHAPTER XLV.
Elephant Riding--Howdahs--The New Palace--The Prince's Excursion--Gold
and Silver Artillery--A Vice-royal Visit--Remarkable Dog--The Bench Show
--Augustin Daly's Back Door--Fakeer
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Thugs--Government Efforts to Exterminate them--Choking a Victim A
Fakeer Spared--Thief Strangled
CHAPTER XLVII.
Thugs, Continued--Record of Murders--A Joy of Hunting and Killing Men
--Gordon Gumming--Killing an Elephant--Family Affection among Thugs
--Burial Places
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Starting for Allahabad--Lower Berths in Sleepers--Elderly Ladies have
Preference of Berths--An American Lady Takes One Anyhow--How Smythe Lost
his Berth--How He Got Even--The Suttee
CHAPTER XLIX.
Pyjamas--Day Scene in India--Clothed in a Turban and a Pocket
Handkerchief--Land Parceled Out--Established Village Servants--Witches in
Families--Hereditary Midwifery--Destruction of Girl Babies--Wedding
Display--Tiger-Persuader--Hailstorm Discourages--The Tyranny of the
Sweeper--Elephant Driver--Water Carrier--Curious Rivers--Arrival at
Allahabad--English Quarter--Lecture Hall Like a Snowstorm--Private
Carriages--A Milliner--Early Morning--The Squatting Servant--A Religious
Fair
CHAPTER L.
On the Road to Benares--Dust and Waiting--The Bejeweled Crowd--A Native
Prince and his Guard--Zenana Lady--The Extremes of Fashion--The Hotel at
Benares--An Annex a Mile Away--Doors in India--The Peepul Tree--Warning
against Cold Baths--A Strange Fruit--Description of Benares--The
Beginning of Creation--Pilgrims to Benares--A Priest with a Good Business
Stand--Protestant Missionary--The Trinity Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu
--Religion the Business at Benares
CHAPTER LI.
Benares a Religious Temple--A Guide for Pilgrims to Save Time in Securing
Salvation
CHAPTER LII.
A Curious Way to Secure Salvation--The Banks of the Ganges--Architecture
Represents Piety--A Trip on the River--Bathers and their Costumes
--Drinking the Water--A Scientific Test of the Nasty Purifier--Hindoo Faith
in the Ganges--A Cremation--Remembrances of the Suttee--All Life Sacred
Except Human Life--The Goddess Bhowanee, and the Sacrificers--Sacred
Monkeys--Ugly Idols Everywhere--Two White Minarets--A Great View with a
Monkey in it--A Picture on the Water
CHAPTER LIII.
Still in Benares--Another Living God--Why Things are Wonderful--Sri 108
Utterly Perfect--How He Came so--Our Visit to Sri--A Friendly Deity
Exchanging Autographs and Books--Sri's Pupil--An Interesting Man
--Reverence and Irreverence--Dancing in a Sepulchre
CHAPTER LIV.
Rail to Calcutta--Population--The "City of Palaces"--A Fluted
Candle-stick--Ochterlony--Newspaper Correspondence--Average Knowledge of
Countries--A Wrong Idea of Chicago--Calcutta and the Black Hole
--Description of the Horrors--Those Who Lived--The Botanical Gardens--The
Afternoon Turnout--Grand Review--Military Tournament--Excursion on the
Hoogly--The Museum--What Winter Means Calcutta
CHAPTER LV
On the Road Again--Flannels in Order--Across Country--From Greenland's
Icy Mountain--Swapping Civilization--No Field women in India--How it is
in Other Countries--Canvas-covered Cars--The Tiger Country--My First Hunt
Some Elephants Get Away--The Plains of India--The Ghurkas--Women for
Pack-Horses--A Substitute for a Cab--Darjeeling--The Hotel--The Highest
Thing in the Himalayas--The Club--Kinchinjunga and Mt. Everest
--Thibetans--The Prayer Wheel--People Going to the Bazar
CHAPTER LVI.
On the Road Again--The Hand-Car--A Thirty-five-mile Slide--The Banyan
Tree--A Dramatic Performance--The Railroad--The Half-way House--The Brain
Fever Bird--The Coppersmith Bird--Nightingales and Cue Owls
CHAPTER LVII.
India the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth--Nothing Forgotten--The
Land of Wonders--Annual Statistics Everywhere about Violence--Tiger vs.
Man--A Handsome Fight--Annual Man Killing and Tiger Killing--Other
Animals--Snakes--Insurance and Snake Tables--The Cobra Bite--Muzaffurpore
--Dinapore--A Train that Stopped for Gossip--Six Hours for Thirty-five
Miles--A Rupee to the Engineer--Ninety Miles an Hour--Again to Benares,
the Piety Hive To Lucknow
CHAPTER LVIII.
The Great Mutiny--The Massacre in Cawnpore--Terrible Scenes in Lucknow
--The Residency--The Siege
CHAPTER LIX.
A Visit to the Residency--Cawnpore--The Adjutant Bird and the Hindoo
Corpse--The Tai Mahal--The True Conception--The Ice Storm--True Gems
--Syrian Fountains--An Exaggerated Niagara
CHAPTER LX.
To Lahore--The Governor's Elephant--Taking a Ride-No Danger from
Collision--Rawal Pindi--Back to Delhi--An Orientalized Englishman
--Monkeys and the Paint-pot--Monkey Crying over my Note-book--Arrival at
Jeypore--In Rajputana--Watching Servants--The Jeypore Hotel--Our Old and
New Satan--Satan as a Liar--The Museum--A Street Show--Blocks of Houses
--A Religious Procession
CHAPTER LXI.
Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums--Methods in the Public Schools
--A Letter from a youth in Punjab--Highly Educated Service--A Damage to
the Country--A Little Book from Calcutta--Writing Poor English
--Embarrassed by a Beggar Girl--A Specimen Letter--An Application for
Employment--A Calcutta School Examination--Two Samples of
Literature
CHAPTER LXII.
Sail from Calcutta to Madras--Thence to Ceylon--Thence for Mauritius
--The Indian Ocean--Our Captain's Peculiarity The Scot Has one too--The
Flying-fish that Went Hunting in the Field--Fined for Smuggling--Lots of
pets on Board--The Color of the Sea--The Most Important Member of
Nature's Family--The Captain's Story of Cold Weather--Omissions in the
Ship's Library--Washing Decks--Pyjamas on Deck--The Cat's Toilet--No
Interest in the Bulletin--Perfect Rest--The Milky Way and the Magellan
Clouds--Mauritius--Port Louis--A Hot Country--Under French Control
--A Variety of People and Complexions--Train to Curepipe--A Wonderful
Office-holder--The Wooden Peg Ornament--The Prominent Historical Event of
Mauritius--"Paul and Virginia"--One of Virginia's Wedding Gifts--Heaven
Copied after Mauritius--Early History of Mauritius--Quarantines
--Population of all Kinds--What the World Consists of--Where Russia and
Germany are--A Picture of Milan Cathedral--Newspapers--The Language--Best
Sugar in the World--Literature of Mauritius
CHAPTER LXIII.
Port Louis--Matches no Good--Good Roads--Death Notices--Why European
Nations Rob Each Other--What Immigrants to Mauritius Do--Population
--Labor Wages--The Camaron--The Palmiste and other Eatables--Monkeys--The
Cyclone of 1892--Mauritius a Sunday Landscape
CHAPTER LXIV.
The Steamer "Arundel Castle"--Poor Beds in Ships--The Beds in Noah's Ark
--Getting a Rest in Europe--Ship in Sight--Mozambique Channel--The
Engineer and the Band--Thackeray's "Madagascar"--Africanders Going Home
--Singing on the After Deck--An Out-of-Place Story--Dynamite Explosion in
Johannesburg--Entering Delagoa Bay--Ashore--A Hot Winter--Small Town--No
Sights--No Carriages--Working Women--Barnum's Purchase of Shakespeare's
Birthplace, Jumbo, and the Nelson Monument--Arrival at Durban
CHAPTER LXV.
Royal Hotel Durban--Bells that Did not Ring--Early Inquiries for Comforts
--Change of Temperature after Sunset-Rickhaws--The Hotel Chameleon
--Natives not out after the Bell--Preponderance of Blacks in Natal--Hair
Fashions in Natal--Zulus for Police--A Drive round the Berea--The Cactus
and other Trees--Religion a Vital Matter--Peculiar Views about Babies
--Zulu Kings--A Trappist Monastery--Transvaal Politics--Reasons why the
Trouble came About
CHAPTER LXVI.
Jameson over the Border--His Defeat and Capture--Sent to England for
Trial--Arrest of Citizens by the Boers--Commuted sentences--Final Release
of all but Two--Interesting Days for a Stranger--Hard to Understand
Either Side--What the Reformers Expected to Accomplish--How They Proposed
to do it--Testimonies a Year Later--A "Woman's Part"--The Truth of the
South African Situation--"Jameson's Ride"--A Poem
CHAPTER LXVIL
Jameson's Raid--The Reform Committee's Difficult Task--Possible Plans
--Advice that Jameson Ought to Have--The War of 1881 and its Lessons
--Statistics of Losses of the Combatants--Jameson's Battles--Losses on Both
Sides--The Military Errors--How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on
to Be Successful
CHAPTER LXVIII.
Judicious Mr. Rhodes--What South Africa Consists of--Johannesburg--The
Gold Mines--The Heaven of American Engineers--What the Author Knows about
Mining--Description of the Boer--What Should be Expected of Him--What Was
A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes--Taxes--Rhodesian Method of Reducing Native
Population--Journeying in Cape Colony--The Cars--The Country--The
Weather--Tamed Blacks--Familiar Figures in King William's Town--Boer
Dress--Boer Country Life--Sleeping Accommodations--The Reformers in Boer
Prison--Torturing a Black Prisoner
CHAPTER LXIX.
An Absorbing Novelty--The Kimberley Diamond Mines--Discovery of Diamonds
--The Wronged Stranger--Where the Gems Are--A Judicious Change of
Boundary--Modern Machinery and Appliances--Thrilling Excitement in
Finding a Diamond--Testing a Diamond--Fences--Deep Mining by Natives in
the Compound--Stealing--Reward for the Biggest Diamond--A Fortune in
Wine--The Great Diamond--Office of the De Beer Co.--Sorting the Gems
--Cape Town--The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces--Various Reasons
for his Supremacy--How He Makes Friends
CONCLUSION.
Table Rock--Table Bay--The Castle--Government and Parliament--The Club
--Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--Dr. John Barry and his Doings--On
the Ship Norman--Madeira--Arrived in Southampton
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
CHAPTER I.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.
We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took
but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a
carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is
out of place in a dictionary.
We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage
the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the
way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon
and Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke
at the seaboard, where we were obliged awhile for our ship. She had been
getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and
repaired.
We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,
which had lasted forty days.
We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and summer sea; an
enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all
on board; it certainly was to the distressful dustings and smokings and
swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks
holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in
front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable. The
city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-cloud,
and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat
down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to
wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the
passengers. They had been furnished by the largest furniture-dealing
house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen, though
they had cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian
Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without,
just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times--those Dark Ages of sea
travel.
Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare
--plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil.
The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere
in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged
for tropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for ships
which ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but
this is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas--at
least such as have been long in service. Our young captain was a very
handsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up a
smart uniform's best effects. He was a man of the best intentions and
was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and
finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in
seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had
no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not
swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make
puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above
the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave an
order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his
officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and
shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He
had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and
effect the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and
opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric lights burned there
as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not
allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws
on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and
one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain
explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the
smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not
see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin
were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides
there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort
in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even
imaginary smoke can convey damage.
The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral
and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and
autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.
He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble,
and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and
difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he
had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks.
A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it
ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain
had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had
acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner
court would examine the case in Sydney--the Court of Directors, the lords
of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of
years. This was his first voyage as captain.
The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and
they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass
the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure
excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was
equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked
it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue his
spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all
appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not
talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a
person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly
sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the
attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood
on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp
agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity
the next day as if nothing had happened.
The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and
felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the
whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have
had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if
he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it,
so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken
the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of
unwisdom can do for a man--for a man with anything short of an iron will.
The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root of the
trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare
war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and
reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.
I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble,
and I venture to repeat that. The root is not the drinking, but the
desire to drink. These are very different things. The one merely
requires will--and a great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying
capacity--the other merely requires watchfulness--and for no long time.
The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one's first
attention; it can do but little good to refuse the act over and over
again, always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will
continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in the long
run. When the desire intrudes, it should be at once banished out of the
mind. One should be on the watch for it all the time--otherwise it will
get in. It must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A
desire constantly repulsed for a fortnight should die, then. That should
cure the drinking habit. The system of refusing the mere act of
drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war
tactics, it seems to me. I used to take pledges--and soon violate them.
My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in
any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in
his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when I finally ceased from
taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an
injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire and the
habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five
days I drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch
after that; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke again. At
the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and
presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go. I tried a
smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty. It did. I
smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months;
finished the book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and
another book had to be begun.
I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without
discomfort or inconvenience. I think that the Dr. Tanners and those
others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out
the desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the
desire is discouraged and comes no more.
Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my
bed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally the
doctor said,--
"My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight,
besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don't you?"
"Yes."
"You take coffee immoderately?"
"Yes."
"And some tea?"
"Yes."
"You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with each other's
company?"
"Yes."
"You drink two hot Scotches every night?"
"Yes."
"Very well, there you see what I have to contend against. We can't make
progress the way the matter stands. You must make a reduction in these
things; you must cut down your consumption of them considerably for some
days."
"I can't, doctor."
"Why can't you."
"I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, but I can't merely
moderate them."
He said that that would answer, and said he would come around in
twenty-four hours and begin work again. He was taken ill himself and
could not come; but I did not need him. I cut off all those things for
two days and nights; in fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all
drinks except water, and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago
was discouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took
to those delicacies again.
It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She
had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where
medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I
could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled
her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So
I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for
four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have
happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing,
and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So
there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that
they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to
fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw
over lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could
have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have
acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people
though reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It
seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it. These things ought to
be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease
come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with.
When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges, and do my best to
keep them, but I never could, because I didn't strike at the root of the
habit--the desire; I generally broke down within the month. Once I tried
limiting a habit. That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledged
myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until
bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me
every day and all day long; so, within the week I found myself hunting
for larger cigars than I had been used to smoke; then larger ones still,
and still larger ones. Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made
for me--on a yet larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size.
Within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions that I could have
used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar limit was no
real protection to a person, so I knocked my pledge on the head and
resumed my liberty.
To go back to that young Canadian. He was a "remittance man," the first
one I had ever seen or heard of. Passengers explained the term to me.
They said that dissipated ne'er-do-wells belonging to important families
in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was
any hope of reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, the
ne'er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He was shipped
off with just enough money in his pocket--no, in the purser's pocket--for
the needs of the voyage--and when he reached his destined port he would
find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but just enough
to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter.
It was the remittance-man's custom to pay his month's board and lodging
straightway--a duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget--then
spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope
and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic
life.
We had other remittance-men on board, it was said. At least they said
they were R. M.'s. There were two. But they did not resemble the
Canadian; they lacked his tidiness, and his brains, and his gentlemanly
ways, and his resolute spirit, and his humanities and generosities. One
of them was a lad of nineteen or twenty, and he was a good deal of a
ruin, as to clothes, and morals, and general aspect. He said he was a
scion of a ducal house in England, and had been shipped to Canada for the
house's relief, that he had fallen into trouble there, and was now being
shipped to Australia. He said he had no title. Beyond this remark he
was economical of the truth. The first thing he did in Australia was to
get into the lockup, and the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an
earl in the police court in the morning and fail to prove it.
CHAPTER II.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all
the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we
crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the
officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white
linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence
of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and
cheerful and picnicky aspect.
From my diary:
There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can
never escape altogether, let him journey as far as he will. One escapes
from one breed of an ill only to encounter another breed of it. We have
come far from the snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and
peace in the thought; but now we have reached the realm of the boomerang
liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a man
try to escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent
his boomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree; then it
turned, descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen
this thing done to two men, behind two trees--and by the one arrow. This
being received with a large silence that suggested doubt, he buttressed
it with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerang kill a bird
away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower. But these are ills
which must be borne. There is no other way.
The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams--usually a fruitful subject,
afloat or ashore--but this time the output was poor. Then it passed to
instances of extraordinary memory--with better results. Blind Tom, the
negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately
play any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, after hearing it
once; and that six months later he could accurately play it again,
without having touched it in the interval. One of the most striking of
the stories told was furnished by a gentleman who had served on the staff
of the Viceroy of India. He read the details from his note-book, and
explained that he had written them down, right after the consummation of
the incident which they described, because he thought that if he did not
put them down in black and white he might presently come to think he had
dreamed them or invented them.
The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the
Maharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition.
The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the
memory-expert, a high-caste Brahmin, was brought in and seated on the
floor in front of them. He said he knew but two languages, the English
and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to
be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program
--a sufficiently extraordinary one. He proposed that one gentleman
should give him one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in
the sentence. He was furnished with the French word 'est', and was told
it was second in a sentence of three words. The next, gentleman gave him
the German word 'verloren' and said it was the third in a sentence of
four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in
addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for
single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them.
Intermediates gave him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin,
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their
places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished him a
single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went
over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was
told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He
went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts
of the sums and all the parts of the sentences--and all in disorder, of
course, not in their proper rotation. This had occupied two hours.
The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then began and repeated
all the sentences, placing the words in their proper order, and untangled
the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers to them
all.
In the beginning he had asked the company to throw almonds at him during
the two hours, he to remember how many each gentleman had thrown; but
none were thrown, for the Viceroy said that the test would be a
sufficiently severe strain without adding that burden to it.
General Grant had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even
names and faces, and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had
thought of it. The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term
as President. I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a
stranger and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing the White
House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada. He asked
me if I would like to see the President. I said I should be very glad;
so we entered. I supposed that the President would be in the midst of a
crowd, and that I could look at him in peace and security from a
distance, as another stray cat might look at another king. But it was in
the morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office which I
had not heard of--the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's
working hours. Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence,
and there was none there but we three. General Grant got slowly up from
his table, put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron expression
of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to
smile for another seven. He looked me steadily in the eyes--mine lost
confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was
in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:--
"Mr. President, may I have the privilege of introducing Mr. Clemens?"
The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it. He did
not say a word but just stood. In my trouble I could not think of
anything to say, I merely wanted to resign. There was an awkward pause,
a dreary pause, a horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and
looked up into that unyielding face, and said timidly:--
"Mr. President, I--I am embarrassed. Are you?"
His face broke--just a little--a wee glimmer, the momentary flicker of a
summer-lightning smile, seven years ahead of time--and I was out and gone
as soon as it was.
Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I was
become better known; and was one of the people appointed to respond to
toasts at the banquet given to General Grant in Chicago--by the Army of
the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world. I
arrived late at night and got up late in the morning. All the corridors
of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a glimpse of General
Grant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review the great
procession. I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and at
the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy
platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and
saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets, and other
millions caked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops
around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic
explosions and cheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, and
I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far
up the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way
through the huzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most martial
figure of the War, riding at its head in the dress uniform of a
Lieutenant-General.
And now General Grant, arm-in-arm with Major Carter Harrison, stepped out
on the platform, followed two and two by the badged and uniformed
reception committee. General Grant was looking exactly as he had looked
upon that trying occasion of ten years before--all iron and bronze
self-possession. Mr. Harrison came over and led me to the General and
formally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper remark,
General Grant said--
"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"--and that little
seven-year smile twinkled across his face again.
Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, in New York, the
streets are a crush of people who are there to honor the remains of the
great soldier as they pass to their final resting-place under the
monument; and the air is heavy with dirges and the boom of artillery, and
all the millions of America are thinking of the man who restored the
Union and the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of
life, and, as we may hope and do believe, a permanent place among the
beneficent institutions of men.
We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer--at least it was
at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from
the day's monotonies and dullnesses. It was the completing of
non-complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story
except the finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out of
their own invention. When every one who wanted a chance had had it, the
man who had introduced the story would give it its original ending--then
you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be
better than the old one. But the story which called out the most
persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no
ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with.
The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain
point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read
it in a volume of `sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted
before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty dollars who
would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by
ourselves. We appointed a jury and wrestled with the tale. We invented
plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right.
It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed
satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like to
know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's
strength is in its middle, and that there is apparently no way to
transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance
the storiette was as follows:
John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a
quiet village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian
Sunday-school. It was but a humble distinction; still, it was his only
official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work
and its interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized
by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good
impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help
when it was needed, and for bashfulness both when it was needed and when
it wasn't.
Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and
person beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in
all to her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been
in opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too; he could
see it. She was being touched by his warm interest in her two
charity-proteges and by his contributions toward their support. These
were two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely
place up a cross road four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the
sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little violent, but not often.
At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his
courage together and resolved to make it. He would take along a
contribution of double the usual size, and win the mother over; with her
opposition annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt.
He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the
soft Missourian summer, and he was equipped properly for his mission. He
was clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he
had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the
livery stable could furnish. The lap robe was of white linen, it was
new, and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that
region for beauty and elaboration.
When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse
over a wooden bridge, his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek, and
floated down and lodged against a bar. He did not quite know what to do.
He must have the hat, that was manifest; but how was he to get it?
Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes, he
would risk it. He led the horse to the roadside and set it to cropping
the grass; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the
horse a moment to secure its compassion and its loyalty, then hurried to
the stream. He swam out and soon had the hat. When he got to the top of
the bank the horse was gone!
His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely
along the road. Brown trotted after it, saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a
good fellow;" but whenever he got near enough to chance a jump for the
buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him. And so
this went on, the naked man perishing with anxiety, and expecting every
moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring the
horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was
closing up on the Taylor premises; then at last he was successful, and
got into the buggy. He flung on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat;
then reached for--but he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up
the lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the gate--a woman; he
thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the
cross-road. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but
there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was very
grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down
to a walk, and reached for his tr---- too late again.
He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary.
They were on foot, and seemed tired and excited. They came at once to
the buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said eagerly and
earnestly, how glad they were that he was come, and how fortunate it was.
And Mrs. Enderby said, impressively:
"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one
profane it with such a name; he was sent--sent from on high."
They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice:
"Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no
accident, it is a special Providence. He was sent. He is an angel--an
angel as truly as ever angel was--an angel of deliverance. I say angel,
Sarah Enderby, and will have no other word. Don't let any one ever say
to me again, that there's no such thing as special Providences; for if
this isn't one, let them account for it that can."
"I know it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently. "John Brown, I could
worship you; I could go down on my knees to you. Didn't something tell
you?--didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of your
laprobe."
He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs.
Taylor went on:
"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see the
hand of Providence in it. Here at noon what do we see? We see the smoke
rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.'
Didn't I, Julia Glossop?"
"The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am
now, and I heard them. You may have said hut instead of cabin, but in
substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too."
"Pale? I was that pale that if--why, you just compare it with this
laprobe. Then the next thing I said was, 'Mary Taylor, tell the hired
man to rig up the team-we'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother,
don't you know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay
over Sunday?' And it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it.
'Then,' said I, 'we'll go afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah
Enderby on the road."
"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. "And found the cabin set
fire to and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old
and feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place
and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way
to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house.
And I spoke up and said--now what did I say? Didn't I say, 'Providence
will provide'?"
"Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it."
"So had I," said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said
it. Now wasn't that remarkable?"
"Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all
of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork; and then we
came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mile--and
Providence has provided. You see it yourselves"
They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in
unison:
"It's per-fectly wonderful."
"And then," said Mrs. Glossop, "what do you think we had better do let
Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put
both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?"
Brown gasped.
"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are all
tired out, and any way we fix it it's going to be difficult. For if Mr.
Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must, go back to help him,
for he can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless."
"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. "It doesn't look-oh, how would this do?
--one of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to
my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can
lift one of the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house
and----
"But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We
musn't leave her there in the woods alone, you know--especially the crazy
one. There and back is eight miles, you see."
They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now,
trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and
struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby
brightened and said:
"I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more. Think
what we've done: four miles there, two to Moseley's, is six, then back to
here--nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat; I declare I don't see
how we've done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's
got to go back, to help Mr. Brown--there's no getting mound that; but
whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of us to
ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of
the Old People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you
all to go now to Nancy's and rest and wait; then one of you drive back
and get the other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk."
"Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will do--that will answer
perfectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for
planning, in the company; and they said that they wondered that they
hadn't thought of this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take
back the compliment, good simple souls, and didn't know they had done it.
After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back
with Brown, she being entitled to the distinction because she had
invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and
settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their
gowns, and three of them started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on
the buggy-step and was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of
his voice and gasped out--
"Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back--I am very weak; I can't walk, I
can't, indeed."
"Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I
didn't notice it sooner. Come back-all of you! Mr. Brown is not well.
Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown?--I'm real sorry. Are you
in pain?"
"No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak--lately; not
long, but just lately."
The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations,
and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was.
And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by
far the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see
to Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and
while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would
take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of
themselves with the other one, and----
By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and
were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown
found his voice again and saved himself. He said--
"But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan
impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains
behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you
comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and
three can't come home in it."
They all exclaimed, "Why, sure-ly, that is so!" and they were, all
perplexed again.
"Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop; "it is the most
mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and
things-- Oh, dear, they are nothing to it."
They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads
for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her
first effort. She said:
"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our
house, and give him help--you see how plainly he needs it. I will go
back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes.
You can go on and do what you first started to do--wait on the main road
at our house until somebody comes along with a wagon; then send and bring
away the three of us. You won't have to wait long; the farmers will soon
be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered
up--the crazy one doesn't need it."
This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be
done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting
discouraged by this time.
Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the
main road and he would find a way to escape.
Then Mrs. Taylor said:
"The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old
burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with
you, dear."
"Very well, Mother, I will."
She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it----
That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when
he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at
that point--the train jumped off a bridge.
At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to
work with confidence; but it soon began to appear that it was not a
simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Brown's
character--great generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual
shyness and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies. There
was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet secure--just in a
condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and
no mistakes made, no offense given. And there was the mother wavering,
half willing-by adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or
perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in
the woods waiting-their fate and Brown's happiness to be determined by
what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for
the lap-robe; Brown must decide-there was no time to be lost.
Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the
jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his
behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self
sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their
benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all
their tongues.
We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and
irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow
him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and
it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward
the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly
because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If
asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the
truth, and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of
contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem
until three in the morning.
Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and
decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to
determine for himself how the thing came out.
CHAPTER III.
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
On the seventh day out we saw a dim vast bulk standing up out of the
wastes of the Pacific and knew that that spectral promontory was Diamond
Head, a piece of this world which I had not seen before for twenty-nine
years. So we were nearing Honolulu, the capital city of the Sandwich
Islands--those islands which to me were Paradise; a Paradise which I had
been longing all those years to see again. Not any other thing in the
world could have stirred me as the sight of that great rock did.
In the night we anchored a mile from shore. Through my port I could see
the twinkling lights of Honolulu and the dark bulk of the mountain-range
that stretched away right and left. I could not make out the beautiful
Nuuana valley, but I knew where it lay, and remembered how it used to
look in the old times. We used to ride up it on horseback in those days
--we young people--and branch off and gather bones in a sandy region
where one of the first Kamehameha's battles was fought. He was a
remarkable man, for a king; and he was also a remarkable man for a
savage. He was a mere kinglet and of little or no consequence at the
time of Captain Cook's arrival in 1788; but about four years afterward he
conceived the idea of enlarging his sphere of influence. That is a
courteous modern phrase which means robbing your neighbor--for your
neighbor's benefit; and the great theater of its benevolences is Africa.
Kamehameha went to war, and in the course of ten years he whipped out all
the other kings and made himself master of every one of the nine or ten
islands that form the group. But he did more than that. He bought
ships, freighted them with sandal wood and other native products, and
sent them as far as South America and China; he sold to his savages the
foreign stuffs and tools and utensils which came back in these ships, and
started the march of civilization. It is doubtful if the match to this
extraordinary thing is to be found in the history of any other savage.
Savages are eager to learn from the white man any new way to kill each
other, but it is not their habit to seize with avidity and apply with
energy the larger and nobler ideas which he offers them. The details of
Kamehameha's history show that he was always hospitably ready to examine
the white man's ideas, and that he exercised a tidy discrimination in
making his selections from the samples placed on view.
A shrewder discrimination than was exhibited by his son and successor,
Liholiho, I think. Liholiho could have qualified as a reformer, perhaps,
but as a king he was a mistake. A mistake because he tried to be both
king and reformer. This is mixing fire and gunpowder together. A king
has no proper business with reforming. His best policy is to keep things
as they are; and if he can't do that, he ought to try to make them worse
than they are. This is not guesswork; I have thought over this matter a
good deal, so that if I should ever have a chance to become a king I
would know how to conduct the business in the best way.
When Liholiho succeeded his father he found himself possessed of an
equipment of royal tools and safeguards which a wiser king would have
known how to husband, and judiciously employ, and make profitable. The
entire country was under the one scepter, and his was that scepter.
There was an Established Church, and he was the head of it. There was a
Standing Army, and he was the head of that; an Army of 114 privates under
command of 27 Generals and a Field Marshal. There was a proud and
ancient Hereditary Nobility. There was still one other asset. This was
the tabu--an agent endowed with a mysterious and stupendous power, an
agent not found among the properties of any European monarch, a tool of
inestimable value in the business. Liholiho was headmaster of the tabu.
The tabu was the most ingenious and effective of all the inventions that
has ever been devised for keeping a people's privileges satisfactorily
restricted.
It required the sexes to live in separate houses. It did not allow
people to eat in either house; they must eat in another place. It did
not allow a man's woman-folk to enter his house. It did not allow the
sexes to eat together; the men must eat first, and the women must wait on
them. Then the women could eat what was left--if anything was left--and
wait on themselves. I mean, if anything of a coarse or unpalatable sort
was left, the women could have it. But not the good things, the fine
things, the choice things, such as pork, poultry, bananas, cocoanuts, the
choicer varieties of fish, and so on. By the tabu, all these were sacred
to the men; the women spent their lives longing for them and wondering
what they might taste like; and they died without finding out.
These rules, as you see, were quite simple and clear. It was easy to
remember them; and useful. For the penalty for infringing any rule in
the whole list was death. Those women easily learned to put up with
shark and taro and dog for a diet when the other things were so
expensive.
It was death for any one to walk upon tabu'd ground; or defile a tabu'd
thing with his touch; or fail in due servility to a chief; or step upon
the king's shadow. The nobles and the King and the priests were always
suspending little rags here and there and yonder, to give notice to the
people that the decorated spot or thing was tabu, and death lurking near.
The struggle for life was difficult and chancy in the islands in those
days.
Thus advantageously was the new king situated. Will it be believed that
the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and
branch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a
prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was
a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always
trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in
sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, it
terrorized them, it made them slaves to its priests, and through the
priests to the king. It was the best friend a king could have, and the
most dependable. To a professional reformer who should annihilate so
frightful and so devastating a power as this Church, reverence and praise
would be due; but to a king who should do it, could properly be due
nothing but reproach; reproach softened by sorrow; sorrow for his
unfitness for his position.
He destroyed his Established Church, and his kingdom is a republic today,
in consequence of that act.
When he destroyed the Church and burned the idols he did a mighty thing
for civilization and for his people's weal--but it was not "business."
It was unkingly, it was inartistic. It made trouble for his line. The
American missionaries arrived while the burned idols were still smoking.
They found the nation without a religion, and they repaired the defect.
They offered their own religion and it was gladly received. But it was
no support to arbitrary kingship, and so the kingly power began to weaken
from that day. Forty-seven years later, when I was in the islands,
Kainehameha V. was trying to repair Liholiho's blunder, and not
succeeding. He had set up an Established Church and made himself the
head of it. But it was only a pinchbeck thing, an imitation, a bauble,
an empty show. It had no power, no value for a king. It could not harry
or burn or slay, it in no way resembled the admirable machine which
Liholiho destroyed. It was an Established Church without an
Establishment; all the people were Dissenters.
Long before that, the kingship had itself become but a name, a show. At
an early day the missionaries had turned it into something very much like
a republic; and here lately the business whites have turned it into
something exactly like it.
In Captain Cook's time (1778), the native population of the islands was
estimated at 400,000; in 1836 at something short of 200,000, in 1866 at
50,000; it is to-day, per census, 25,000. All intelligent people praise
Kamehameha I. and Liholiho for conferring upon their people the great
boon of civilization. I would do it myself, but my intelligence is out
of repair, now, from over-work.
When I was in the islands nearly a generation ago, I was acquainted with
a young American couple who had among their belongings an attractive
little son of the age of seven--attractive but not practicably
companionable with me, because he knew no English. He had played from
his birth with the little Kanakas on his father's plantation, and had
preferred their language and would learn no other. The family removed to
America a month after I arrived in the islands, and straightway the boy
began to lose his Kanaka and pick up English. By the time he was twelve
be hadn't a word of Kanaka left; the language had wholly departed from
his tongue and from his comprehension. Nine years later, when he was
twenty-one, I came upon the family in one of the lake towns of New York,
and the mother told me about an adventure which her son had been having.
By trade he was now a professional diver. A passenger boat had been
caught in a storm on the lake, and had gone down, carrying her people
with her. A few days later the young diver descended, with his armor on,
and entered the berth-saloon of the boat, and stood at the foot of the
companionway, with his hand on the rail, peering through the dim water.
Presently something touched him on the shoulder, and he turned and found
a dead man swaying and bobbing about him and seemingly inspecting him
inquiringly. He was paralyzed with fright. His entry had disturbed the
water, and now he discerned a number of dim corpses making for him and
wagging their heads and swaying their bodies like sleepy people trying to
dance. His senses forsook him, and in that condition he was drawn to the
surface. He was put to bed at home, and was soon very ill. During some
days he had seasons of delirium which lasted several hours at a time; and
while they lasted he talked Kanaka incessantly and glibly; and Kanaka
only. He was still very ill, and he talked to me in that tongue; but I
did not understand it, of course. The doctor-books tell us that cases
like this are not uncommon. Then the doctors ought to study the cases
and find out how to multiply them. Many languages and things get mislaid
in a person's head, and stay mislaid for lack of this remedy.
Many memories of my former visit to the islands came up in my mind while
we lay at anchor in front of Honolulu that night. And pictures--pictures
pictures--an enchanting procession of them! I was impatient for the
morning to come.
When it came it brought disappointment, of course. Cholera had broken
out in the town, and we were not allowed to have any communication with
the shore. Thus suddenly did my dream of twenty-nine years go to ruin.
Messages came from friends, but the friends themselves I was not to have
any sight of. My lecture-hall was ready, but I was not to see that,
either.
Several of our passengers belonged in Honolulu, and these were sent
ashore; but nobody could go ashore and return. There were people on
shore who were booked to go with us to Australia, but we could not
receive them; to do it would cost us a quarantine-term in Sydney. They
could have escaped the day before, by ship to San Francisco; but the bars
had been put up, now, and they might have to wait weeks before any ship
could venture to give them a passage any whither. And there were
hardships for others. An elderly lady and her son, recreation-seekers
from Massachusetts, had wandered westward, further and further from home,
always intending to take the return track, but always concluding to go
still a little further; and now here they were at anchor before Honolulu
positively their last westward-bound indulgence--they had made up their
minds to that--but where is the use in making up your mind in this world?
It is usually a waste of time to do it. These two would have to stay
with us as far as Australia. Then they could go on around the world, or
go back the way they had come; the distance and the accommodations and
outlay of time would be just the same, whichever of the two routes they
might elect to take. Think of it: a projected excursion of five hundred
miles gradually enlarged, without any elaborate degree of intention, to a
possible twenty-four thousand. However, they were used to extensions by
this time, and did not mind this new one much.
And we had with us a lawyer from Victoria, who had been sent out by the
Government on an international matter, and he had brought his wife with
him and left the children at home with the servants and now what was to
be done? Go ashore amongst the cholera and take the risks? Most
certainly not. They decided to go on, to the Fiji islands, wait there a
fortnight for the next ship, and then sail for home. They couldn't
foresee that they wouldn't see a homeward-bound ship again for six weeks,
and that no word could come to them from the children, and no word go
from them to the children in all that time. It is easy to make plans in
this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote
oceans it is noticeable that a cat's plans and a man's are worth about
the same. There is much the same shrinkage in both, in the matter of
values.
There was nothing for us to do but sit about the decks in the shade of
the awnings and look at the distant shore. We lay in luminous blue
water; shoreward the water was green-green and brilliant; at the shore
itself it broke in a long white ruffle, and with no crash, no sound that
we could hear. The town was buried under a mat of foliage that looked
like a cushion of moss. The silky mountains were clothed in soft, rich
splendors of melting color, and some of the cliffs were veiled in
slanting mists. I recognized it all. It was just as I had seen it long
before, with nothing of its beauty lost, nothing of its charm wanting.
A change had come, but that was political, and not visible from the ship.
The monarchy of my day was gone, and a republic was sitting in its seat.
It was not a material change. The old imitation pomps, the fuss and
feathers, have departed, and the royal trademark--that is about all that
one could miss, I suppose. That imitation monarchy, was grotesque
enough, in my time; if it had held on another thirty years it would have
been a monarchy without subjects of the king's race.
We had a sunset of a very fine sort. The vast plain of the sea was
marked off in bands of sharply-contrasted colors: great stretches of dark
blue, others of purple, others of polished bronze; the billowy mountains
showed all sorts of dainty browns and greens, blues and purples and
blacks, and the rounded velvety backs of certain of them made one want to
stroke them, as one would the sleek back of a cat. The long, sloping
promontory projecting into the sea at the west turned dim and leaden and
spectral, then became suffused with pink--dissolved itself in a pink
dream, so to speak, it seemed so airy and unreal. Presently the
cloud-rack was flooded with fiery splendors, and these were copied on the
surface of the sea, and it made one drunk with delight to look upon it.
From talks with certain of our passengers whose home was Honolulu, and
from a sketch by Mrs. Mary H. Krout, I was able to perceive what the
Honolulu of to-day is, as compared with the Honolulu of my time. In my
time it was a beautiful little town, made up of snow-white wooden
cottages deliciously smothered in tropical vines and flowers and trees
and shrubs; and its coral roads and streets were hard and smooth, and as
white as the houses. The outside aspects of the place suggested the
presence of a modest and comfortable prosperity--a general prosperity
--perhaps one might strengthen the term and say universal. There were no
fine houses, no fine furniture. There were no decorations. Tallow
candles furnished the light for the bedrooms, a whale-oil lamp furnished
it for the parlor. Native matting served as carpeting. In the parlor
one would find two or three lithographs on the walls--portraits as a
rule: Kamehameha IV., Louis Kossuth, Jenny Lind; and may be an engraving
or two: Rebecca at the Well, Moses smiting the rock, Joseph's servants
finding the cup in Benjamin's sack. There would be a center table, with
books of a tranquil sort on it: The Whole Duty of Man, Baxter's Saints'
Rest, Fox's Martyrs, Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy, bound copies of The
Missionary Herald and of Father Damon's Seaman's Friend. A melodeon; a
music stand, with 'Willie, We have Missed You', 'Star of the Evening',
'Roll on Silver Moon', 'Are We Most There', 'I Would not Live Alway', and
other songs of love and sentiment, together with an assortment of hymns.
A what-not with semi-globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature
pictures of ships, New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells
with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's
tooth with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing reminiscent
of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad. Trips were made to San
Francisco, but that could not be called going abroad. Comprehensively
speaking, nobody traveled.
But Honolulu has grown wealthy since then, and of course wealth has
introduced changes; some of the old simplicities have disappeared. Here
is a modern house, as pictured by Mrs. Krout:
"Almost every house is surrounded by extensive lawns and gardens
enclosed by walls of volcanic stone or by thick hedges of the
brilliant hibiscus.
"The houses are most tastefully and comfortably furnished; the
floors are either of hard wood covered with rugs or with fine Indian
matting, while there is a preference, as in most warm countries, for
rattan or bamboo furniture; there are the usual accessories of
bric-a-brac, pictures, books, and curios from all parts of the world,
for these island dwellers are indefatigable travelers.
"Nearly every house has what is called a lanai. It is a large
apartment, roofed, floored, open on three sides, with a door or a
draped archway opening into the drawing-room. Frequently the roof
is formed by the thick interlacing boughs of the hou tree,
impervious to the sun and even to the rain, except in violent
storms. Vines are trained about the sides--the stephanotis or some
one of the countless fragrant and blossoming trailers which abound
in the islands. There are also curtains of matting that may be
drawn to exclude the sun or rain. The floor is bare for coolness,
or partially covered with rugs, and the lanai is prettily furnished
with comfortable chairs, sofas, and tables loaded with flowers, or
wonderful ferns in pots.
"The lanai is the favorite reception room, and here at any social
function the musical program is given and cakes and ices are served;
here morning callers are received, or gay riding parties, the ladies
in pretty divided skirts, worn for convenience in riding astride,
--the universal mode adopted by Europeans and Americans, as well as
by the natives.
"The comfort and luxury of such an apartment, especially at a
seashore villa, can hardly be imagined. The soft breezes sweep
across it, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenia, and
through the swaying boughs of palm and mimosa there are glimpses of
rugged mountains, their summits veiled in clouds, of purple sea with
the white surf beating eternally against the reefs, whiter still in
the yellow sunlight or the magical moonlight of the tropics."
There: rugs, ices, pictures, lanais, worldly books, sinful bric-a-brac
fetched from everywhere. And the ladies riding astride. These are
changes, indeed. In my time the native women rode astride, but the white
ones lacked the courage to adopt their wise custom. In my time ice was
seldom seen in Honolulu. It sometimes came in sailing vessels from New
England as ballast; and then, if there happened to be a man-of-war in
port and balls and suppers raging by consequence, the ballast was worth
six hundred dollars a ton, as is evidenced by reputable tradition. But
the ice-machine has traveled all over the world, now, and brought ice
within everybody's reach. In Lapland and Spitzbergen no one uses native
ice in our day, except the bears and the walruses.
The bicycle is not mentioned. It was not necessary. We know that it is
there, without inquiring. It is everywhere. But for it, people could
never have had summer homes on the summit of Mont Blanc; before its day,
property up there had but a nominal value. The ladies of the Hawaiian
capital learned too late the right way to occupy a horse--too late to get
much benefit from it. The riding-horse is retiring from business
everywhere in the world. In Honolulu a few years from now he will be
only a tradition.
We all know about Father Damien, the French priest who voluntarily
forsook the world and went to the leper island of Molokai to labor among
its population of sorrowful exiles who wait there, in slow-consuming
misery, for death to cone and release them from their troubles; and we
know that the thing which he knew beforehand would happen, did happen:
that he became a leper himself, and died of that horrible disease. There
was still another case of self-sacrifice, it appears. I asked after
"Billy" Ragsdale, interpreter to the Parliament in my time--a half-white.
He was a brilliant young fellow, and very popular. As an interpreter he
would have been hard to match anywhere. He used to stand up in the
Parliament and turn the English speeches into Hawaiian and the Hawaiian
speeches into English with a readiness and a volubility that were
astonishing. I asked after him, and was told that his prosperous career
was cut short in a sudden and unexpected way, just as he was about to
marry a beautiful half-caste girl. He discovered, by some nearly
invisible sign about his skin, that the poison of leprosy was in him.
The secret was his own, and might be kept concealed for years; but he
would not be treacherous to the girl that loved him; he would not marry
her to a doom like his. And so he put his affairs in order, and went
around to all his friends and bade them good-bye, and sailed in the leper
ship to Molokai. There he died the loathsome and lingering death that
all lepers die.
In this place let me insert a paragraph or two from "The Paradise of
the Pacific" (Rev. H. H. Gowen)--
"Poor lepers! It is easy for those who have no relatives or friends
among them to enforce the decree of segregation to the letter, but
who can write of the terrible, the heart-breaking scenes which that
enforcement has brought about?
"A man upon Hawaii was suddenly taken away after a summary arrest,
leaving behind him a helpless wife about to give birth to a babe.
The devoted wife with great pain and risk came the whole journey to
Honolulu, and pleaded until the authorities were unable to resist
her entreaty that she might go and live like a leper with her leper
husband.
"A woman in the prime of life and activity is condemned as an
incipient leper, suddenly removed from her home, and her husband
returns to find his two helpless babes moaning for their lost
mother.
"Imagine it! The case of the babies is hard, but its bitterness is
a trifle--less than a trifle--less than nothing--compared to what
the mother must suffer; and suffer minute by minute, hour by hour,
day by day, month by month, year by year, without respite, relief,
or any abatement of her pain till she dies.
"One woman, Luka Kaaukau, has been living with her leper husband in
the settlement for twelve years. The man has scarcely a joint left,
his limbs are only distorted ulcerated stumps, for four years his
wife has put every particle of food into his mouth. He wanted his
wife to abandon his wretched carcass long ago, as she herself was
sound and well, but Luka said that she was content to remain and
wait on the man she loved till the spirit should be freed from its
burden.
"I myself have known hard cases enough:--of a girl, apparently in
full health, decorating the church with me at Easter, who before
Christmas is taken away as a confirmed leper; of a mother hiding her
child in the mountains for years so that not even her dearest
friends knew that she had a child alive, that he might not be taken
away; of a respectable white man taken away from his wife and
family, and compelled to become a dweller in the Leper Settlement,
where he is counted dead, even by the insurance companies."
And one great pity of it all is, that these poor sufferers are innocent.
The leprosy does not come of sins which they committed, but of sins
committed by their ancestors, who escaped the curse of leprosy!
Mr. Gowan has made record of a certain very striking circumstance. Would
you expect to find in that awful Leper Settlement a custom worthy to be
transplanted to your own country? They have one such, and it is
inexpressibly touching and beautiful. When death sets open the
prison-door of life there, the band salutes the freed soul with a burst
of glad music!
CHAPTER IV.
A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic
compliment.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Sailed from Honolulu.--From diary:
Sept. 2. Flocks of flying fish-slim, shapely, graceful, and intensely
white. With the sun on them they look like a flight of silver
fruit-knives. They are able to fly a hundred yards.
Sept. 3. In 9 deg. 50' north latitude, at breakfast. Approaching the
equator on a long slant. Those of us who have never seen the equator are
a good deal excited. I think I would rather see it than any other thing
in the world. We entered the "doldrums" last night--variable winds,
bursts of rain, intervals of calm, with chopping seas and a wobbly and
drunken motion to the ship--a condition of things findable in
other regions sometimes, but present in the doldrums always. The
globe-girdling belt called the doldrums is 20 degrees wide, and the
thread called the equator lies along the middle of it.
Sept. 4. Total eclipse of the moon last night. At 1.30 it began to go
off. At total--or about that--it was like a rich rosy cloud with a
tumbled surface framed in the circle and projecting from it--a bulge of
strawberry-ice, so to speak. At half-eclipse the moon was like a gilded
acorn in its cup.
Sept. 5. Closing in on the equator this noon. A sailor explained to a
young girl that the ship's speed is poor because we are climbing up the
bulge toward the center of the globe; but that when we should once get
over, at the equator, and start down-hill, we should fly. When she asked
him the other day what the fore-yard was, he said it was the front yard,
the open area in the front end of the ship. That man has a good deal of
learning stored up, and the girl is likely to get it all.
Afternoon. Crossed the equator. In the distance it looked like a blue
ribbon stretched across the ocean. Several passengers kodak'd it. We
had no fool ceremonies, no fantastics, no horse play. All that sort of
thing has gone out. In old times a sailor, dressed as Neptune, used to
come in over the bows, with his suite, and lather up and shave everybody
who was crossing the equator for the first time, and then cleanse these
unfortunates by swinging them from the yard-arm and ducking them three
times in the sea. This was considered funny. Nobody knows why. No, that
is not true. We do know why. Such a thing could never be funny on land;
no part of the old-time grotesque performances gotten up on shipboard to
celebrate the passage of the line would ever be funny on shore--they
would seem dreary and less to shore people. But the shore people would
change their minds about it at sea, on a long voyage. On such a voyage,
with its eternal monotonies, people's intellects deteriorate; the owners
of the intellects soon reach a point where they almost seem to prefer
childish things to things of a maturer degree. One is often surprised at
the juvenilities which grown people indulge in at sea, and the interest
they take in them, and the consuming enjoyment they get out of them.
This is on long voyages only. The mind gradually becomes inert, dull,
blunted; it loses its accustomed interest in intellectual things; nothing
but horse-play can rouse it, nothing but wild and foolish grotesqueries
can entertain it. On short voyages it makes no such exposure of itself;
it hasn't time to slump down to this sorrowful level.
The short-voyage passenger gets his chief physical exercise out of
"horse-billiards"--shovel-board. It is a good game. We play it in this
ship. A quartermaster chalks off a diagram like this-on the deck.
The player uses a cue that is like a broom-handle with a quarter-moon of
wood fastened to the end of it. With this he shoves wooden disks the
size of a saucer--he gives the disk a vigorous shove and sends it fifteen
or twenty feet along the deck and lands it in one of the squares if he
can. If it stays there till the inning is played out, it will count as
many points in the game as the figure in the square it has stopped in
represents. The adversary plays to knock that disk out and leave his own
in its place--particularly if it rests upon the 9 or 10 or some other of
the high numbers; but if it rests in the "10off" he backs it up--lands
his disk behind it a foot or two, to make it difficult for its owner to
knock it out of that damaging place and improve his record. When the
inning is played out it may be found that each adversary has placed his
four disks where they count; it may be found that some of them are
touching chalk lines and not counting; and very often it will be found
that there has been a general wreckage, and that not a disk has been left
within the diagram. Anyway, the result is recorded, whatever it is, and
the game goes on. The game is 100 points, and it takes from twenty
minutes to forty to play it, according to luck and the condition of the
sea. It is an exciting game, and the crowd of spectators furnish
abundance of applause for fortunate shots and plenty of laughter for the
other kind. It is a game of skill, but at the same time the uneasy
motion of the ship is constantly interfering with skill; this makes it a
chancy game, and the element of luck comes largely in.
We had a couple of grand tournaments, to determine who should be
"Champion of the Pacific"; they included among the participants nearly
all the passengers, of both sexes, and the officers of the ship, and they
afforded many days of stupendous interest and excitement, and murderous
exercise--for horse-billiards is a physically violent game.
The figures in the following record of some of the closing games in the
first tournament will show, better than any description, how very chancy
the game is. The losers here represented had all been winners in the
previous games of the series, some of them by fine majorities:
Chase,102 Mrs. D.,57 Mortimer, 105 The Surgeon, 92
Miss C.,105 Mrs. T.,9 Clemens, 101 Taylor,92
Taylor,109 Davies,95 Miss C., 108 Mortimer,55
Thomas,102 Roper,76 Clemens, 111 Miss C.,89
Coomber, 106 Chase,98
And so on; until but three couples of winners were left. Then I beat my
man, young Smith beat his man, and Thomas beat his. This reduced the
combatants to three. Smith and I took the deck, and I led off. At the
close of the first inning I was 10 worse than nothing and Smith had
scored 7. The luck continued against me. When I was 57, Smith was 97
--within 3 of out. The luck changed then. He picked up a 10-off or so,
and couldn't recover. I beat him.
The next game would end tournament No. 1.
Mr. Thomas and I were the contestants. He won the lead and went to the
bat--so to speak. And there he stood, with the crotch of his cue resting
against his disk while the ship rose slowly up, sank slowly down, rose
again, sank again. She never seemed to rise to suit him exactly. She
started up once more; and when she was nearly ready for the turn, he let
drive and landed his disk just within the left-hand end of the 10.
(Applause). The umpire proclaimed "a good 10," and the game-keeper set
it down. I played: my disk grazed the edge of Mr. Thomas's disk, and
went out of the diagram. (No applause.)
Mr. Thomas played again--and landed his second disk alongside of the
first, and almost touching its right-hand side. "Good 10." (Great
applause.)
I played, and missed both of them. (No applause.)
Mr. Thomas delivered his third shot and landed his disk just at the right
of the other two. "Good 10." (Immense applause.)
There they lay, side by side, the three in a row. It did not seem
possible that anybody could miss them. Still I did it. (Immense
silence.)
Mr. Thomas played his last disk. It seems incredible, but he actually
landed that disk alongside of the others, and just to the right of them-a
straight solid row of 4 disks. (Tumultuous and long-continued applause.)
Then I played my last disk. Again it did not seem possible that anybody
could miss that row--a row which would have been 14 inches long if the
disks had been clamped together; whereas, with the spaces separating them
they made a longer row than that. But I did it. It may be that I was
getting nervous.
I think it unlikely that that innings has ever had its parallel in the
history of horse-billiards. To place the four disks side by side in the
10 was an extraordinary feat; indeed, it was a kind of miracle. To miss
them was another miracle. It will take a century to produce another man
who can place the four disks in the 10; and longer than that to find a
man who can't knock them out. I was ashamed of my performance at the
time, but now that I reflect upon it I see that it was rather fine and
difficult.
Mr. Thomas kept his luck, and won the game, and later the championship.
In a minor tournament I won the prize, which was a Waterbury watch. I
put it in my trunk. In Pretoria, South Africa, nine months afterward, my
proper watch broke down and I took the Waterbury out, wound it, set it by
the great clock on the Parliament House (8.05), then went back to my room
and went to bed, tired from a long railway journey. The parliamentary
clock had a peculiarity which I was not aware of at the time
--a peculiarity which exists in no other clock, and would not exist in that
one if it had been made by a sane person; on the half-hour it strikes the
succeeding hour, then strikes the hour again, at the proper time. I lay
reading and smoking awhile; then, when I could hold my eyes open no
longer and was about to put out the light, the great clock began to boom,
and I counted ten. I reached for the Waterbury to see how it was getting
along. It was marking 9.30. It seemed rather poor speed for a
three-dollar watch, but I supposed that the climate was affecting it. I
shoved it half an hour ahead; and took to my book and waited to see what
would happen. At 10 the great clock struck ten again. I looked--the
Waterbury was marking half-past 10. This was too much speed for the
money, and it troubled me. I pushed the hands back a half hour, and
waited once more; I had to, for I was vexed and restless now, and my
sleepiness was gone. By and by the great clock struck 11. The Waterbury
was marking 10.30. I pushed it ahead half an hour, with some show of
temper. By and by the great clock struck 11 again. The Waterbury showed
up 11.30, now, and I beat her brains out against the bedstead. I was
sorry next day, when I found out.
To return to the ship.
The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn't that,
he is a practical joker. The result to the other person concerned is
about the same: that is, he is made to suffer. The washing down of the
decks begins at a very early hour in all ships; in but few ships are any
measures taken to protect the passengers, either by waking or warning
them, or by sending a steward to close their ports. And so the
deckwashers have their opportunity, and they use it. They send a bucket
of water slashing along the side of the ship and into the ports,
drenching the passenger's clothes, and often the passenger himself. This
good old custom prevailed in this ship, and under unusually favorable
circumstances, for in the blazing tropical regions a removable zinc thing
like a sugarshovel projects from the port to catch the wind and bring it
in; this thing catches the wash-water and brings it in, too--and in
flooding abundance. Mrs. L, an invalid, had to sleep on the locker--sofa
under her port, and every time she over-slept and thus failed to take
care of herself, the deck-washers drowned her out.
And the painters, what a good time they had! This ship would be going
into dock for a month in Sydney for repairs; but no matter, painting was
going on all the time somewhere or other. The ladies' dresses were
constantly getting ruined, nevertheless protests and supplications went
for nothing. Sometimes a lady, taking an afternoon nap on deck near a
ventilator or some other thing that didn't need painting, would wake up
by and by and find that the humorous painter had been noiselessly daubing
that thing and had splattered her white gown all over with little greasy
yellow spots.
The blame for this untimely painting did not lie with the ship's
officers, but with custom. As far back as Noah's time it became law that
ships must be constantly painted and fussed at when at sea; custom grew
out of the law, and at sea custom knows no death; this custom will
continue until the sea goes dry.
Sept. 8.--Sunday. We are moving so nearly south that we cross only about
two meridians of longitude a day. This morning we were in longitude 178
west from Greenwich, and 57 degrees west from San Francisco. To-morrow
we shall be close to the center of the globe--the 180th degree of west
longitude and 180th degree of east longitude.
And then we must drop out a day-lose a day out of our lives, a day never
to be found again. We shall all die one day earlier than from the
beginning of time we were foreordained to die. We shall be a day
behindhand all through eternity. We shall always be saying to the other
angels, "Fine day today," and they will be always retorting, "But it
isn't to-day, it's tomorrow." We shall be in a state of confusion all the
time and shall never know what true happiness is.
Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. Yesterday it was September 8,
Sunday; to-day, per the bulletin-board at the head of the companionway,
it is September 10, Tuesday. There is something uncanny about it. And
uncomfortable. In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable,
when one comes to consider it. While we were crossing the 180th meridian
it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my family were, and Tuesday
in the bow where I was. They were there eating the half of a fresh apple
on the 8th, and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the
10th--and I could notice how stale it was, already. The family were the
same age that they were when I had left them five minutes before, but I
was a day older now than I was then. The day they were living in
stretched behind them half way round the globe, across the Pacific Ocean
and America and Europe; the day I was living in stretched in front of me
around the other half to meet it. They were stupendous days for bulk and
stretch; apparently much larger days than we had ever been in before.
All previous days had been but shrunk-up little things by comparison.
The difference in temperature between the two days was very marked, their
day being hotter than mine because it was closer to the equator.
Along about the moment that we were crossing the Great Meridian a child
was born in the steerage, and now there is no way to tell which day it
was born on. The nurse thinks it was Sunday, the surgeon thinks it was
Tuesday. The child will never know its own birthday. It will always be
choosing first one and then the other, and will never be able to make up
its mind permanently. This will breed vacillation and uncertainty in its
opinions about religion, and politics, and business, and sweethearts, and
everything, and will undermine its principles, and rot them away, and
make the poor thing characterless, and its success in life impossible.
Every one in the ship says so. And this is not all--in fact, not the
worst. For there is an enormously rich brewer in the ship who said as
much as ten days ago, that if the child was born on his birthday he would
give it ten thousand dollars to start its little life with. His birthday
was Monday, the 9th of September.
If the ships all moved in the one direction--westward, I mean--the world
would suffer a prodigious loss--in the matter of valuable time, through
the dumping overboard on the Great Meridian of such multitudes of days by
ships crews and passengers. But fortunately the ships do not all sail
west, half of them sail east. So there is no real loss. These latter
pick up all the discarded days and add them to the world's stock again;
and about as good as new, too; for of course the salt water preserves
them.
CHAPTER V.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as
if she had laid an asteroid.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment.
We do not as a rule get out of them sound and whole, but sometimes we do.
At dinner yesterday evening-present, a mixture of Scotch, English,
American, Canadian, and Australasian folk--a discussion broke out about
the pronunciation of certain Scottish words. This was private ground,
and the non-Scotch nationalities, with one exception, discreetly kept
still. But I am not discreet, and I took a hand. I didn't know anything
about the subject, but I took a hand just to have something to do. At
that moment the word in dispute was the word three. One Scotchman was
claiming that the peasantry of Scotland pronounced it three, his
adversaries claimed that they didn't--that they pronounced it 'thraw'.
The solitary Scot was having a sultry time of it, so I thought I would
enrich him with my help. In my position I was necessarily quite
impartial, and was equally as well and as ill equipped to fight on the
one side as on the other. So I spoke up and said the peasantry
pronounced the word three, not thraw. It was an error of judgment.
There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence, then weather
ensued. The storm rose and spread in a surprising way, and I was snowed
under in a very few minutes. It was a bad defeat for me--a kind of
Waterloo. It promised to remain so, and I wished I had had better sense
than to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a
saving thought--at least a thought that offered a chance. While the
storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and then spoke up and
said:
"Very well, don't say any more. I confess defeat. I thought I knew, but
I see my mistake. I was deceived by one of your Scotch poets."
"A Scotch poet! O come! Name him."
"Robert Burns."
It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked doubtful--but
paralyzed, all the same. They were quite silent for a moment; then one
of them said--with the reverence in his voice which is always present in
a Scotchman's tone when he utters the name.
"Does Robbie Burns say--what does he say?"
"This is what he says:
'There were nae bairns but only three
--Ane at the breast, twa at the knee.'"
It ended the discussion. There was no man there profane enough, disloyal
enough, to say any word against a thing which Robert Burns had settled.
I shall always honor that great name for the salvation it brought me in
this time of my sore need.
It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with
confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. There are people who think
that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there
are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.
We are moving steadily southward-getting further and further down under
the projecting paunch of the globe. Yesterday evening we saw the Big
Dipper and the north star sink below the horizon and disappear from our
world. No, not "we," but they. They saw it--somebody saw it--and told
me about it. But it is no matter, I was not caring for those things, I
am tired of them, any way. I think they are well enough, but one doesn't
want them always hanging around. My interest was all in the Southern
Cross. I had never seen that. I had heard about it all my life, and it
was but natural that I should be burning to see it. No other
constellation makes so much talk. I had nothing against the Big Dipper
--and naturally couldn't have anything against it, since it is a citizen of
our own sky, and the property of the United States--but I did want it to
move out of the way and give this foreigner a chance. Judging by the
size of the talk which the Southern Cross had made, I supposed it would
need a sky all to itself.
But that was a mistake. We saw the Cross to-night, and it is not large.
Not large, and not strikingly bright. But it was low down toward the
horizon, and it may improve when it gets up higher in the sky. It is
ingeniously named, for it looks just as a cross would look if it looked
like something else. But that description does not describe; it is too
vague, too general, too indefinite. It does after a fashion suggest a
cross across that is out of repair--or out of drawing; not correctly
shaped. It is long, with a short cross-bar, and the cross-bar is canted
out of the straight line.
It consists of four large stars and one little one. The little one is
out of line and further damages the shape. It should have been placed at
the intersection of the stem and the cross-bar. If you do not draw an
imaginary line from star to star it does not suggest a cross--nor
anything in particular.
One must ignore the little star, and leave it out of the combination--it
confuses everything. If you leave it out, then you can make out of the
four stars a sort of cross--out of true; or a sort of kite--out of true;
or a sort of coffin-out of true.
Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give
one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it
will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.
Ultimately, to satisfy the public, the fanciful name has to be discarded
for a common-sense one, a manifestly descriptive one. The Great Bear
remained the Great Bear--and unrecognizable as such--for thousands of
years; and people complained about it all the time, and quite properly;
but as soon as it became the property of the United States, Congress
changed it to the Big Dipper, and now every body is satisfied, and there
is no more talk about riots. I would not change the Southern Cross to
the Southern Coffin, I would change it to the Southern Kite; for up there
in the general emptiness is the proper home of a kite, but not for
coffins and crosses and dippers. In a little while, now--I cannot
tell exactly how long it will be--the globe will belong to the
English-speaking race; and of course the skies also. Then the
constellations will be re-organized, and polished up, and re-named--the
most of them "Victoria," I reckon, but this one will sail thereafter as
the Southern Kite, or go out of business. Several towns and things, here
and there, have been named for Her Majesty already.
In these past few days we are plowing through a mighty Milky Way of
islands. They are so thick on the map that one would hardly expect to
find room between them for a canoe; yet we seldom glimpse one. Once we
saw the dim bulk of a couple of them, far away, spectral and dreamy
things; members of the Horne-Alofa and Fortuna. On the larger one are
two rival native kings--and they have a time together. They are
Catholics; so are their people. The missionaries there are French
priests.
From the multitudinous islands in these regions the "recruits" for the
Queensland plantations were formerly drawn; are still drawn from them, I
believe. Vessels fitted up like old-time slavers came here and carried
off the natives to serve as laborers in the great Australian province.
In the beginning it was plain, simple man-stealing, as per testimony of
the missionaries. This has been denied, but not disproven. Afterward it
was forbidden by law to "recruit" a native without his consent, and
governmental agents were sent in all recruiting vessels to see that the
law was obeyed--which they did, according to the recruiting people; and
which they sometimes didn't, according to the missionaries. A man could
be lawfully recruited for a three-years term of service; he could
volunteer for another term if he so chose; when his time was up he could
return to his island. And would also have the means to do it; for the
government required the employer to put money in its hands for this
purpose before the recruit was delivered to him.
Captain Wawn was a recruiting ship-master during many years. From his
pleasant book one gets the idea that the recruiting business was quite
popular with the islanders, as a rule. And yet that did not make the
business wholly dull and uninteresting; for one finds rather frequent
little breaks in the monotony of it--like this, for instance:
"The afternoon of our arrival at Leper Island the schooner was lying
almost becalmed under the lee of the lofty central portion of the
island, about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. The boats
were in sight at some distance. The recruiter-boat had run into a
small nook on the rocky coast, under a high bank, above which stood
a solitary hut backed by dense forest. The government agent and
mate in the second boat lay about 400 yards to the westward.
"Suddenly we heard the sound of firing, followed by yells from the
natives on shore, and then we saw the recruiter-boat push out with a
seemingly diminished crew. The mate's boat pulled quickly up, took
her in tow, and presently brought her alongside, all her own crew
being more or less hurt. It seems the natives had called them into
the place on pretence of friendship. A crowd gathered about the
stern of the boat, and several fellows even got into her. All of a
sudden our men were attacked with clubs and tomahawks. The
recruiter escaped the first blows aimed at him, making play with his
fists until he had an opportunity to draw his revolver. 'Tom
Sayers,' a Mare man, received a tomahawk blow on the head which laid
the scalp open but did not penetrate his skull, fortunately. 'Bobby
Towns,' another Mare boatman, had both his thumbs cut in warding off
blows, one of them being so nearly severed from the hand that the
doctors had to finish the operation. Lihu, a Lifu boy, the
recruiter's special attendant, was cut and pricked in various
places, but nowhere seriously. Jack, an unlucky Tanna recruit, who
had been engaged to act as boatman, received an arrow through his
forearm, the head of which--apiece of bone seven or eight inches
long--was still in the limb, protruding from both sides, when the
boats returned. The recruiter himself would have got off scot-free
had not an arrow pinned one of his fingers to the loom of the
steering-oar just as they were getting off. The fight had been
short but sharp. The enemy lost two men, both shot dead."
The truth is, Captain Wawn furnishes such a crowd of instances of fatal
encounters between natives and French and English recruiting-crews (for
the French are in the business for the plantations of New Caledonia),
that one is almost persuaded that recruiting is not thoroughly popular
among the islanders; else why this bristling string of attacks and
bloodcurdling slaughter? The captain lays it all to "Exeter Hall
influence." But for the meddling philanthropists, the native fathers and
mothers would be fond of seeing their children carted into exile and now
and then the grave, instead of weeping about it and trying to kill the
kind recruiters.
CHAPTER VI.
He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Captain Wawn is crystal-clear on one point: He does not approve of
missionaries. They obstruct his business. They make "Recruiting," as he
calls it ("Slave-Catching," as they call it in their frank way) a trouble
when it ought to be just a picnic and a pleasure excursion. The
missionaries have their opinion about the manner in which the Labor
Traffic is conducted, and about the recruiter's evasions of the law of
the Traffic, and about the traffic itself--and it is distinctly
uncomplimentary to the Traffic and to everything connected with it,
including the law for its regulation. Captain Wawn's book is of very
recent date; I have by me a pamphlet of still later date--hot from the
press, in fact--by Rev. Wm. Gray, a missionary; and the book and the
pamphlet taken together make exceedingly interesting reading, to my mind.
Interesting, and easy to understand--except in one detail, which I will
mention presently. It is easy to understand why the Queensland sugar
planter should want the Kanaka recruit: he is cheap. Very cheap, in
fact. These are the figures paid by the planter: L20 to the recruiter
for getting the Kanaka or "catching" him, as the missionary phrase goes;
L3 to the Queensland government for "superintending" the importation; L5
deposited with the Government for the Kanaka's passage home when his
three years are up, in case he shall live that long; about L25 to the
Kanaka himself for three years' wages and clothing; total payment for the
use of a man three years, L53; or, including diet, L60. Altogether, a
hundred dollars a year. One can understand why the recruiter is fond of
the business; the recruit costs him a few cheap presents (given to the
recruit's relatives, not himself), and the recruit is worth L20 to the
recruiter when delivered in Queensland. All this is clear enough; but
the thing that is not clear is, what there is about it all to persuade
the recruit. He is young and brisk; life at home in his beautiful island
is one lazy, long holiday to him; or if he wants to work he can turn out
a couple of bags of copra per week and sell it for four or five shillings
a bag. In Queensland he must get up at dawn and work from eight to
twelve hours a day in the canefields--in a much hotter climate than he is
used to--and get less than four shillings a week for it.
I cannot understand his willingness to go to Queensland. It is a deep
puzzle to me. Here is the explanation, from the planter's point of view;
at least I gather from the missionary's pamphlet that it is the
planter's:
"When he comes from his home he is a savage, pure and simple. He
feels no shame at his nakedness and want of adornment. When he
returns home he does so well dressed, sporting a Waterbury watch,
collars, cuffs, boots, and jewelry. He takes with him one or more
boxes--["Box" is English for trunk.]--well filled with clothing, a
musical instrument or two, and perfumery and other articles of
luxury he has learned to appreciate."
For just one moment we have a seeming flash of comprehension of, the
Kanaka's reason for exiling himself: he goes away to acquire
civilization. Yes, he was naked and not ashamed, now he is clothed and
knows how to be ashamed; he was unenlightened; now he has a Waterbury
watch; he was unrefined, now he has jewelry, and something to make him
smell good; he was a nobody, a provincial, now he has been to far
countries and can show off.
It all looks plausible--for a moment. Then the missionary takes hold of
this explanation and pulls it to pieces, and dances on it, and damages it
beyond recognition.
"Admitting that the foregoing description is the average one, the
average sequel is this: The cuffs and collars, if used at all, are
carried off by youngsters, who fasten them round the leg, just below
the knee, as ornaments. The Waterbury, broken and dirty, finds its
way to the trader, who gives a trifle for it; or the inside is taken
out, the wheels strung on a thread and hung round the neck. Knives,
axes, calico, and handkerchiefs are divided among friends, and there
is hardly one of these apiece. The boxes, the keys often lost on
the road home, can be bought for 2s. 6d. They are to be seen
rotting outside in almost any shore village on Tanna. (I speak of
what I have seen.) A returned Kanaka has been furiously angry with
me because I would not buy his trousers, which he declared were just
my fit. He sold them afterwards to one of my Aniwan teachers for
9d. worth of tobacco--a pair of trousers that probably cost him 8s.
or 10s. in Queensland. A coat or shirt is handy for cold weather.
The white handkerchiefs, the 'senet' (perfumery), the umbrella, and
perhaps the hat, are kept. The boots have to take their chance, if
they do not happen to fit the copra trader. 'Senet' on the hair,
streaks of paint on the face, a dirty white handkerchief round the
neck, strips of turtle shell in the ears, a belt, a sheath and
knife, and an umbrella constitute the rig of returned Kanaka at home
the day after landing."
A hat, an umbrella, a belt, a neckerchief. Otherwise stark naked. All
in a day the hard-earned "civilization" has melted away to this. And
even these perishable things must presently go. Indeed, there is but a
single detail of his civilization that can be depended on to stay by him:
according to the missionary, he has learned to swear. This is art, and
art is long, as the poet says.
In all countries the laws throw light upon the past. The Queensland law
for the regulation of the Labor Traffic is a confession. It is a
confession that the evils charged by the missionaries upon the traffic
had existed in the past, and that they still existed when the law was
made. The missionaries make a further charge: that the law is evaded by
the recruiters, and that the Government Agent sometimes helps them to do
it. Regulation 31 reveals two things: that sometimes a young fool of a
recruit gets his senses back, after being persuaded to sign away his
liberty for three years, and dearly wants to get out of the engagement
and stay at home with his own people; and that threats, intimidation, and
force are used to keep him on board the recruiting-ship, and to hold him
to his contract. Regulation 31 forbids these coercions. The law
requires that he shall be allowed to go free; and another clause of it
requires the recruiter to set him ashore--per boat, because of the
prevalence of sharks. Testimony from Rev. Mr. Gray:
"There are 'wrinkles' for taking the penitent Kanaka. My first
experience of the Traffic was a case of this kind in 1884. A vessel
anchored just out of sight of our station, word was brought to me
that some boys were stolen, and the relatives wished me to go and
get them back. The facts were, as I found, that six boys had
recruited, had rushed into the boat, the Government Agent informed
me. They had all 'signed'; and, said the Government Agent, 'on
board they shall remain.' I was assured that the six boys were of
age and willing to go. Yet on getting ready to leave the ship I
found four of the lads ready to come ashore in the boat! This I
forbade. One of them jumped into the water and persisted in coming
ashore in my boat. When appealed to, the Government Agent suggested
that we go and leave him to be picked up by the ship's boat, a
quarter mile distant at the time!"
The law and the missionaries feel for the repentant recruit--and
properly, one may be permitted to think, for he is only a youth and
ignorant and persuadable to his hurt--but sympathy for him is not kept in
stock by the recruiter. Rev. Mr. Gray says:
"A captain many years in the traffic explained to me how a penitent
could betaken. 'When a boy jumps overboard we just take a boat and
pull ahead of him, then lie between him and the shore. If he has
not tired himself swimming, and passes the boat, keep on heading him
in this way. The dodge rarely fails. The boy generally tires of
swimming, gets into the boat of his own accord, and goes quietly on
board."
Yes, exhaustion is likely to make a boy quiet. If the distressed boy had
been the speaker's son, and the captors savages, the speaker would have
been surprised to see how differently the thing looked from the new point
of view; however, it is not our custom to put ourselves in the other
person's place. Somehow there is something pathetic about that
disappointed young savage's resignation. I must explain, here, that in
the traffic dialect, "boy" does not always mean boy; it means a youth
above sixteen years of age. That is by Queensland law the age of
consent, though it is held that recruiters allow themselves some latitude
in guessing at ages.
Captain Wawn of the free spirit chafes under the annoyance of "cast-iron
regulations." They and the missionaries have poisoned his life. He
grieves for the good old days, vanished to come no more. See him weep;
hear him cuss between the lines!
"For a long time we were allowed to apprehend and detain all
deserters who had signed the agreement on board ship, but the
'cast-iron' regulations of the Act of 1884 put a stop to that,
allowing the Kanaka to sign the agreement for three years' service,
travel about in the ship in receipt of the regular rations, cadge
all he could, and leave when he thought fit, so long as he did not
extend his pleasure trip to Queensland."
Rev. Mr. Gray calls this same restrictive cast-iron law a "farce." "There
is as much cruelty and injustice done to natives by acts that are legal
as by deeds unlawful. The regulations that exist are unjust and
inadequate--unjust and inadequate they must ever be." He furnishes his
reasons for his position, but they are too long for reproduction here.
However, if the most a Kanaka advantages himself by a three-years course
in civilization in Queensland, is a necklace and an umbrella and a showy
imperfection in the art of swearing, it must be that all the profit of
the traffic goes to the white man. This could be twisted into a
plausible argument that the traffic ought to be squarely abolished.
However, there is reason for hope that that can be left alone to achieve
itself. It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate its sources of
supply within the next twenty or thirty years. Queensland is a very
healthy place for white people--death-rate 12 in 1,000 of the population
--but the Kanaka death-rate is away above that. The vital statistics for
1893 place it at 52; for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six
months of the Kanaka's exile are peculiarly perilous for him because of
the rigors of the new climate. The death-rate among the new men has
reached as high as 180 in the 1,000. In the Kanaka's native home his
death-rate is 12 in time of peace, and 15 in time of war. Thus exile to
Queensland--with the opportunity to acquire civilization, an umbrella,
and a pretty poor quality of profanity--is twelve times as deadly for him
as war. Common Christian charity, common humanity, does seem to require,
not only that these people be returned to their homes, but that war,
pestilence, and famine be introduced among them for their preservation.
Concerning these Pacific isles and their peoples an eloquent prophet
spoke long years ago--five and fifty years ago. In fact, he spoke a
little too early. Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of
risks. This prophet was the Right Rev. M. Russell, LL.D., D.C.L., of
Edinburgh:
"Is the tide of civilization to roll only to the foot of the Rocky
Mountains, and is the sun of knowledge to set at last in the waves
of the Pacific? No; the mighty day of four thousand years is
drawing to its close; the sun of humanity has performed its destined
course; but long ere its setting rays are extinguished in the west,
its ascending beams have glittered on the isles of the eastern seas
. . . . And now we see the race of Japhet setting forth to
people the isles, and the seeds of another Europe and a second
England sown in the regions of the sun. But mark the words of the
prophecy: 'He shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be
his servant.' It is not said Canaan shall be his slave. To the
Anglo-Saxon race is given the scepter of the globe, but there is not
given either the lash of the slave-driver or the rack of the
executioner. The East will not be stained with the same atrocities
as the West; the frightful gangrene of an enthralled race is not to
mar the destinies of the family of Japhet in the Oriental world;
humanizing, not destroying, as they advance; uniting with, not
enslaving, the inhabitants with whom they dwell, the British race
may," etc., etc.
And he closes his vision with an invocation from Thomson:
"Come, bright Improvement! on the car of Time,
And rule the spacious world from clime to clime."
Very well, Bright Improvement has arrived, you see, with her
civilization, and her Waterbury, and her umbrella, and her third-quality
profanity, and her humanizing-not-destroying machinery, and her
hundred-and-eighty death-rate, and everything is going along just as
handsome!
But the prophet that speaks last has an advantage over the pioneer in the
business. Rev. Mr. Gray says:
"What I am concerned about is that we as a Christian nation should
wipe out these races to enrich ourselves."
And he closes his pamphlet with a grim Indictment which is as eloquent in
its flowerless straightforward English as is the hand-painted rhapsody of
the early prophet:
"My indictment of the Queensland-Kanaka Labor Traffic is this
"1. It generally demoralizes and always impoverishes the Kanaka,
deprives him of his citizenship, and depopulates the islands fitted
to his home.
"2. It is felt to lower the dignity of the white agricultural
laborer in Queensland, and beyond a doubt it lowers his wages there.
"3. The whole system is fraught with danger to Australia and the
islands on the score of health.
"4. On social and political grounds the continuance of the
Queensland Kanaka Labor Traffic must be a barrier to the true
federation of the Australian colonies.
"5. The Regulations under which the Traffic exists in Queensland are
inadequate to prevent abuses, and in the nature of things they must
remain so.
"6. The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak,
but the Kanaka is fleeced and trodden down.
"7. The bed-rock of this Traffic is that the life and liberty of a
black man are of less value than those of a white man. And a
Traffic that has grown out of 'slave-hunting' will certainly remain
to the end not unlike its origin."
CHAPTER VII.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
From Diary:--For a day or two we have been plowing among an invisible
vast wilderness of islands, catching now and then a shadowy glimpse of a
member of it. There does seem to be a prodigious lot of islands this
year; the map of this region is freckled and fly-specked all over with
them. Their number would seem to be uncountable. We are moving among
the Fijis now--224 islands and islets in the group. In front of us, to
the west, the wilderness stretches toward Australia, then curves upward
to New Guinea, and still up and up to Japan; behind us, to the east, the
wilderness stretches sixty degrees across the wastes of the Pacific;
south of us is New Zealand. Somewhere or other among these myriads Samoa
is concealed, and not discoverable on the map. Still, if you wish to go
there, you will have no trouble about finding it if you follow the
directions given by Robert Louis Stevenson to Dr. Conan Doyle and to Mr.
J. M. Barrie. "You go to America, cross the continent to San Francisco,
and then it's the second turning to the left." To get the full flavor of
the joke one must take a glance at the map.
Wednesday, September 11.--Yesterday we passed close to an island or so,
and recognized the published Fiji characteristics: a broad belt of clean
white coral sand around the island; back of it a graceful fringe of
leaning palms, with native huts nestling cosily among the shrubbery at
their bases; back of these a stretch of level land clothed in tropic
vegetation; back of that, rugged and picturesque mountains. A detail
of the immediate foreground: a mouldering ship perched high up on a
reef-bench. This completes the composition, and makes the picture
artistically perfect.
In the afternoon we sighted Suva, the capital of the group, and threaded
our way into the secluded little harbor--a placid basin of brilliant blue
and green water tucked snugly in among the sheltering hills. A few ships
rode at anchor in it--one of them a sailing vessel flying the American
flag; and they said she came from Duluth! There's a journey! Duluth is
several thousand miles from the sea, and yet she is entitled to the proud
name of Mistress of the Commercial Marine of the United States of
America. There is only one free, independent, unsubsidized American ship
sailing the foreign seas, and Duluth owns it. All by itself that ship is
the American fleet. All by itself it causes the American name and power
to be respected in the far regions of the globe. All by itself it
certifies to the world that the most populous civilized nation, in the
earth has a just pride in her stupendous stretch of sea-front, and is
determined to assert and maintain her rightful place as one of the Great
Maritime Powers of the Planet. All by itself it is making foreign eyes
familiar with a Flag which they have not seen before for forty years,
outside of the museum. For what Duluth has done, in building, equipping,
and maintaining at her sole expense the American Foreign Commercial
Fleet, and in thus rescuing the American name from shame and lifting it
high for the homage of the nations, we owe her a debt of gratitude which
our hearts shall confess with quickened beats whenever her name is named
henceforth. Many national toasts will die in the lapse of time, but
while the flag flies and the Republic survives, they who live under their
shelter will still drink this one, standing and uncovered: Health and
prosperity to Thee, O Duluth, American Queen of the Alien Seas!
Row-boats began to flock from the shore; their crews were the first
natives we had seen. These men carried no overplus of clothing, and this
was wise, for the weather was hot. Handsome, great dusky men they were,
muscular, clean-limbed, and with faces full of character and
intelligence. It would be hard to find their superiors anywhere among
the dark races, I should think.
Everybody went ashore to look around, and spy out the land, and have that
luxury of luxuries to sea-voyagers--a land-dinner. And there we saw more
natives: Wrinkled old women, with their flat mammals flung over their
shoulders, or hanging down in front like the cold-weather drip from the
molasses-faucet; plump and smily young girls, blithe and content, easy
and graceful, a pleasure to look at; young matrons, tall, straight,
comely, nobly built, sweeping by with chin up, and a gait incomparable
for unconscious stateliness and dignity; majestic young men athletes for
build and muscle clothed in a loose arrangement of dazzling white, with
bronze breast and bronze legs naked, and the head a cannon-swab of solid
hair combed straight out from the skull and dyed a rich brick-red. Only
sixty years ago they were sunk in darkness; now they have the bicycle.
We strolled about the streets of the white folks' little town, and around
over the hills by paths and roads among European dwellings and gardens
and plantations, and past clumps of hibiscus that made a body blink, the
great blossoms were so intensely red; and by and by we stopped to ask an
elderly English colonist a question or two, and to sympathize with him
concerning the torrid weather; but he was surprised, and said:
"This? This is not hot. You ought to be here in the summer time once."
"We supposed that this was summer; it has the ear-marks of it. You could
take it to almost any country and deceive people with it. But if it
isn't summer, what does it lack?"
"It lacks half a year. This is mid-winter."
I had been suffering from colds for several months, and a sudden change
of season, like this, could hardly fail to do me hurt. It brought on
another cold. It is odd, these sudden jumps from season to season. A
fortnight ago we left America in mid-summer, now it is midwinter; about a
week hence we shall arrive in Australia in the spring.
After dinner I found in the billiard-room a resident whom I had known
somewhere else in the world, and presently made, some new friends and
drove with them out into the country to visit his Excellency the head of
the State, who was occupying his country residence, to escape the rigors
of the winter weather, I suppose, for it was on breezy high ground and
much more comfortable than the lower regions, where the town is, and
where the winter has full swing, and often sets a person's hair afire
when he takes off his hat to bow. There is a noble and beautiful view of
ocean and islands and castellated peaks from the governor's high-placed
house, and its immediate surroundings lie drowsing in that dreamy repose
and serenity which are the charm of life in the Pacific Islands.
One of the new friends who went out there with me was a large man, and I
had been admiring his size all the way. I was still admiring it as he
stood by the governor on the veranda, talking; then the Fijian butler
stepped out there to announce tea, and dwarfed him. Maybe he did not
quite dwarf him, but at any rate the contrast was quite striking.
Perhaps that dark giant was a king in a condition of political
suspension. I think that in the talk there on the veranda it was said
that in Fiji, as in the Sandwich Islands, native kings and chiefs are of
much grander size and build than the commoners. This man was clothed in
flowing white vestments, and they were just the thing for him; they
comported well with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity.
European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace. I
know that, because they do that with everybody that wears them.
It was said that the old-time devotion to chiefs and reverence for their
persons still survive in the native commoner, and in great force. The
educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the
region about the capital dresses in the fashion of high-class European
gentlemen, but even his clothes cannot damn him in the reverence of his
people. Their pride in his lofty rank and ancient lineage lives on, in
spite of his lost authority and the evil magic of his tailor. He has no
need to defile himself with work, or trouble his heart with the sordid
cares of life; the tribe will see to it that he shall not want, and that
he shall hold up his head and live like a gentleman. I had a glimpse of
him down in the town. Perhaps he is a descendant of the last king--the
king with the difficult name whose memory is preserved by a notable
monument of cut-stone which one sees in the enclosure in the middle of
the town. Thakombau--I remember, now; that is the name. It is easier to
preserve it on a granite block than in your head.
Fiji was ceded to England by this king in 1858. One of the gentlemen
present at the governor's quoted a remark made by the king at the time of
the session--a neat retort, and with a touch of pathos in it, too. The
English Commissioner had offered a crumb of comfort to Thakombau by
saying that the transfer of the kingdom to Great Britain was merely "a
sort of hermit-crab formality, you know." "Yes," said poor Thakombau,
"but with this difference--the crab moves into an unoccupied shell, but
mine isn't."
However, as far as I can make out from the books, the King was between
the devil and the deep sea at the time, and hadn't much choice. He owed
the United States a large debt--a debt which he could pay if allowed
time, but time was denied him. He must pay up right away or the warships
would be upon him. To protect his people from this disaster he ceded his
country to Britain, with a clause in the contract providing for the
ultimate payment of the American debt.
In old times the Fijians were fierce fighters; they were very religious,
and worshiped idols; the big chiefs were proud and haughty, and they were
men of great style in many ways; all chiefs had several wives, the
biggest chiefs sometimes had as many as fifty; when a chief was dead and
ready for burial, four or five of his wives were strangled and put into
the grave with him. In 1804 twenty-seven British convicts escaped from
Australia to Fiji, and brought guns and ammunition with them. Consider
what a power they were, armed like that, and what an opportunity they
had. If they had been energetic men and sober, and had had brains and
known how to use them, they could have achieved the sovereignty of the
archipelago twenty-seven kings and each with eight or nine islands under
his scepter. But nothing came of this chance. They lived worthless
lives of sin and luxury, and died without honor--in most cases by
violence. Only one of them had any ambition; he was an Irishman named
Connor. He tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored
forty-eight. He died lamenting his failure. It was a foolish sort
of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough with forty.
It is a fine race, the Fijians, with brains in their heads, and an
inquiring turn of mind. It appears that their savage ancestors had a
doctrine of immortality in their scheme of religion--with limitations.
That is to say, their dead friend would go to a happy hereafter if he
could be accumulated, but not otherwise. They drew the line; they
thought that the missionary's doctrine was too sweeping, too
comprehensive. They called his attention to certain facts. For
instance, many of their friends had been devoured by sharks; the sharks,
in their turn, were caught and eaten by other men; later, these men were
captured in war, and eaten by the enemy. The original persons had
entered into the composition of the sharks; next, they and the sharks had
become part of the flesh and blood and bone of the cannibals. How, then,
could the particles of the original men be searched out from the final
conglomerate and put together again? The inquirers were full of doubts,
and considered that the missionary had not examined the matter with--the
gravity and attention which so serious a thing deserved.
The missionary taught these exacting savages many valuable things, and
got from them one--a very dainty and poetical idea: Those wild and
ignorant poor children of Nature believed that the flowers, after they
perish, rise on the winds and float away to the fair fields of heaven,
and flourish there forever in immortal beauty!
CHAPTER VIII.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no
distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
When one glances at the map the members of the stupendous island
wilderness of the Pacific seem to crowd upon each other; but no, there is
no crowding, even in the center of a group; and between groups there are
lonely wide deserts of sea. Not everything is known about the islands,
their peoples and their languages. A startling reminder of this is
furnished by the fact that in Fiji, twenty years ago, were living two
strange and solitary beings who came from an unknown country and spoke an
unknown language. "They were picked up by a passing vessel many hundreds
of miles from any known land, floating in the same tiny canoe in which
they had been blown out to sea. When found they were but skin and bone.
No one could understand what they said, and they have never named their
country; or, if they have, the name does not correspond with that of any
island on any chart. They are now fat and sleek, and as happy as the day
is long. In the ship's log there is an entry of the latitude and
longitude in which they were found, and this is probably all the clue
they will ever have to their lost homes."--[Forbes's "Two Years in
Fiji."]
What a strange and romantic episode it is; and how one is tortured with
curiosity to know whence those mysterious creatures came, those Men
Without a Country, errant waifs who cannot name their lost home,
wandering Children of Nowhere.
Indeed, the Island Wilderness is the very home of romance and dreams and
mystery. The loneliness, the solemnity, the beauty, and the deep repose
of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own for the bruised
spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle for life in the
great world; and for men who have been hunted out of the great world for
crime; and for other men who love an easy and indolent existence; and for
others who love a roving free life, and stir and change and adventure;
and for yet others who love an easy and comfortable career of trading and
money-getting, mixed with plenty of loose matrimony by purchase, divorce
without trial or expense, and limitless spreeing thrown in to make life
ideally perfect.
We sailed again, refreshed.
The most cultivated person in the ship was a young English, man whose
home was in New Zealand. He was a naturalist. His learning in his
specialty was deep and thorough, his interest in his subject amounted to
a passion, he had an easy gift of speech; and so, when he talked about
animals it was a pleasure to listen to him. And profitable, too, though
he was sometimes difficult to understand because now and then he used
scientific technicalities which were above the reach of some of us. They
were pretty sure to be above my reach, but as he was quite willing to
explain them I always made it a point to get him to do it. I had a fair
knowledge of his subject--layman's knowledge--to begin with, but it was
his teachings which crystalized it into scientific form and clarity--in a
word, gave it value.
His special interest was the fauna of Australasia, and his knowledge of
the matter was as exhaustive as it was accurate. I already knew a good
deal about the rabbits in Australasia and their marvelous fecundity, but
in my talks with him I found that my estimate of the great hindrance and
obstruction inflicted by the rabbit pest upon traffic and travel was far
short of the facts. He told me that the first pair of rabbits imported
into Australasia bred so wonderfully that within six months rabbits were
so thick in the land that people had to dig trenches through them to get
from town to town.
He told me a great deal about worms, and the kangaroo, and other
coleoptera, and said he knew the history and ways of all such
pachydermata. He said the kangaroo had pockets, and carried its young in
them when it couldn't get apples. And he said that the emu was as big as
an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an amorphous appetite and would
eat bricks. Also, that the dingo was not a dingo at all, but just a wild
dog; and that the only difference between a dingo and a dodo was that
neither of them barked; otherwise they were just the same. He said that
the only game-bird in Australia was the wombat, and the only song-bird
the larrikin, and that both were protected by government. The most
beautiful of the native birds was the bird of Paradise. Next came the
two kinds of lyres; not spelt the same. He said the one kind was dying
out, the other thickening up. He explained that the "Sundowner" was not
a bird it was a man; sundowner was merely the Australian equivalent of
our word, tramp. He is a loafer, a hard drinker, and a sponge. He
tramps across the country in the sheep-shearing season, pretending to
look for work; but he always times himself to arrive at a sheep-run just
at sundown, when the day's labor ends; all he wants is whisky and supper
and bed and breakfast; he gets them and then disappears. The naturalist
spoke of the bell bird, the creature that at short intervals all day
rings out its mellow and exquisite peal from the deeps of the forest. It
is the favorite and best friend of the weary and thirsty sundowner; for
he knows that wherever the bell bird is, there is water; and he goes
somewhere else. The naturalist said that the oddest bird in Australasia
was the, Laughing Jackass, and the biggest the now extinct Great Moa.
The Moa stood thirteen feet high, and could step over an ordinary man's
head or kick his hat off; and his head, too, for that matter. He said it
was wingless, but a swift runner. The natives used to ride it. It could
make forty miles an hour, and keep it up for four hundred miles and come
out reasonably fresh. It was still in existence when the railway was
introduced into New Zealand; still in existence, and carrying the mails.
The railroad began with the same schedule it has now: two expresses a
week-time, twenty miles an hour. The company exterminated the moa to get
the mails.
Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist
said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was
remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws
governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's
fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that
curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler,
quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus--grotesquest of
animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of
character and make-up. Said he:
"You can call it anything you want to, and be right. It is a fish,
for it lives in the river half the time; it is a land animal, for it
resides on the land half the time; it is an amphibian, since it
likes both and does not know which it prefers; it is a hybernian,
for when times are dull and nothing much going on it buries itself
under the mud at the bottom of a puddle and hybernates there a
couple of weeks at a time; it is a kind of duck, for it has a
duck-bill and four webbed paddles; it is a fish and quadruped
together, for in the water it swims with the paddles and on shore it
paws itself across country with them; it is a kind of seal, for it
has a seal's fur; it is carnivorous, herbivorous, insectivorous, and
vermifuginous, for it eats fish and grass and butterflies, and in
the season digs worms out of the mud and devours them; it is clearly
a bird, for it lays eggs, and hatches them; it is clearly a mammal,
for it nurses its young; and it is manifestly a kind of Christian,
for it keeps the Sabbath when there is anybody around, and when
there isn't, doesn't. It has all the tastes there are except
refined ones, it has all the habits there are except good ones.
"It is a survival--a survival of the fittest. Mr. Darwin invented
the theory that goes by that name, but the Ornithorhynchus was the
first to put it to actual experiment and prove that it could be
done. Hence it should have as much of the credit as Mr. Darwin.
It was never in the Ark; you will find no mention of it there; it
nobly stayed out and worked the theory. Of all creatures in the
world it was the only one properly equipped for the test. The Ark
was thirteen months afloat, and all the globe submerged; no land
visible above the flood, no vegetation, no food for a mammal to eat,
nor water for a mammal to drink; for all mammal food was destroyed,
and when the pure floods from heaven and the salt oceans of the
earth mingled their waters and rose above the mountain tops, the
result was a drink which no bird or beast of ordinary construction
could use and live. But this combination was nuts for the
Ornithorhynchus, if I may use a term like that without offense.
Its river home had always been salted by the flood-tides of the sea.
On the face of the Noachian deluge innumerable forest trees were
floating. Upon these the Ornithorhynchus voyaged in peace; voyaged
from clime to clime, from hemisphere to hemisphere, in contentment
and comfort, in virile interest in the constant change Of scene, in
humble thankfulness for its privileges, in ever-increasing
enthusiasm in the development of the great theory upon whose
validity it had staked its life, its fortunes, and its sacred honor,
if I may use such expressions without impropriety in connection with
an episode of this nature.
"It lived the tranquil and luxurious life of a creature of
independent means. Of things actually necessary to its existence
and its happiness not a detail was wanting. When it wished to walk,
it scrambled along the tree-trunk; it mused in the shade of the
leaves by day, it slept in their shelter by night; when it wanted
the refreshment of a swim, it had it; it ate leaves when it wanted a
vegetable diet, it dug under the bark for worms and grubs; when it
wanted fish it caught them, when it wanted eggs it laid them. If
the grubs gave out in one tree it swam to another; and as for fish,
the very opulence of the supply was an embarrassment. And finally,
when it was thirsty it smacked its chops in gratitude over a blend
that would have slain a crocodile.
"When at last, after thirteen months of travel and research in all
the Zones it went aground on a mountain-summit, it strode ashore,
saying in its heart, 'Let them that come after me invent theories
and dream dreams about the Survival of the Fittest if they like, but
I am the first that has done it!
"This wonderful creature dates back like the kangaroo and many other
Australian hydrocephalous invertebrates, to an age long anterior to
the advent of man upon the earth; they date back, indeed, to a time
when a causeway hundreds of miles wide, and thousands of miles long,
joined Australia to Africa, and the animals of the two countries
were alike, and all belonged to that remote geological epoch known
to science as the Old Red Grindstone Post-Pleosaurian. Later the
causeway sank under the sea; subterranean convulsions lifted the
African continent a thousand feet higher than it was before, but
Australia kept her old level. In Africa's new climate the animals
necessarily began to develop and shade off into new forms and
families and species, but the animals of Australia as necessarily
remained stationary, and have so remained until this day. In the
course of some millions of years the African Ornithorhynchus
developed and developed and developed, and sluffed off detail after
detail of its make-up until at last the creature became wholly
disintegrated and scattered. Whenever you see a bird or a beast or
a seal or an otter in Africa you know that he is merely a sorry
surviving fragment of that sublime original of whom I have been
speaking--that creature which was everything in general and nothing
in particular--the opulently endowed 'e pluribus unum' of the animal
world.
"Such is the history of the most hoary, the most ancient, the most
venerable creature that exists in the earth today--Ornithorhynchus
Platypus Extraordinariensis--whom God preserve!"
When he was strongly moved he could rise and soar like that with ease.
And not only in the prose form, but in the poetical as well. He had
written many pieces of poetry in his time, and these manuscripts he lent
around among the passengers, and was willing to let them be copied. It
seemed to me that the least technical one in the series, and the one
which reached the loftiest note, perhaps, was his:
INVOCATION.
"Come forth from thy oozy couch,
O Ornithorhynchus dear!
And greet with a cordial claw
The stranger that longs to hear
"From thy own own lips the tale
Of thy origin all unknown:
Thy misplaced bone where flesh should be
And flesh where should be bone;
"And fishy fin where should be paw,
And beaver-trowel tail,
And snout of beast equip'd with teeth
Where gills ought to prevail.
"Come, Kangaroo, the good and true
Foreshortened as to legs,
And body tapered like a churn,
And sack marsupial, i' fegs,
"And tells us why you linger here,
Thou relic of a vanished time,
When all your friends as fossils sleep,
Immortalized in lime!"
Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist; but there seems to be warrant
for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an
unconscious one. The above verses are indeed beautiful, and, in a way,
touching; but there is a haunting something about them which unavoidably
suggests the Sweet Singer of Michigan. It can hardly be doubted that the
author had read the works of that poet and been impressed by them. It is
not apparent that he has borrowed from them any word or yet any phrase,
but the style and swing and mastery and melody of the Sweet Singer all
are there. Compare this Invocation with "Frank Dutton"--particularly
stanzas first and seventeenth--and I think the reader will feel convinced
that he who wrote the one had read the other:
I.
"Frank Dutton was as fine a lad
As ever you wish to see,
And he was drowned in Pine Island Lake
On earth no more will he be,
His age was near fifteen years,
And he was a motherless boy,
He was living with his grandmother
When he was drowned, poor boy."
XVII.
"He was drowned on Tuesday afternoon,
On Sunday he was found,
And the tidings of that drowned boy
Was heard for miles around.
His form was laid by his mother's side,
Beneath the cold, cold ground,
His friends for him will drop a tear
When they view his little mound."
The Sentimental Song Book. By Mrs. Julia Moore, p. 36.
CHAPTER IX.
It is your human environment that makes climate.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Sept. 15--Night. Close to Australia now. Sydney 50 miles distant.
That note recalls an experience. The passengers were sent for, to come
up in the bow and see a fine sight. It was very dark. One could not
follow with the eye the surface of the sea more than fifty yards in any
direction it dimmed away and became lost to sight at about that distance
from us. But if you patiently gazed into the darkness a little while,
there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you
would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water--a flash
so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch
your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and
take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent,
with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its
head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor
of living fire. And my, but it was coming at a lightning gait! Almost
before you could think, this monster of light, fifty feet long, would go
flaming and storming by, and suddenly disappear. And out in the distance
whence he came you would see another flash; and another and another and
another, and see them turn into sea-serpents on the instant; and once
sixteen flashed up at the same time and came tearing towards us, a swarm
of wiggling curves, a moving conflagration, a vision of bewildering
beauty, a spectacle of fire and energy whose equal the most of those
people will not see again until after they are dead.
It was porpoises--porpoises aglow with phosphorescent light. They
presently collected in a wild and magnificent jumble under the bows, and
there they played for an hour, leaping and frollicking and carrying on,
turning summersaults in front of the stem or across it and never getting
hit, never making a miscalculation, though the stem missed them only
about an inch, as a rule. They were porpoises of the ordinary length
--eight or ten feet--but every twist of their bodies sent a long
procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was
an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one
cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the
kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing
but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until
that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been
drinking.
By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of
Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those
lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a
great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword
of light.
Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like
a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger. It has a break
in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed
by it without seeing it. Near by that break is a false break which
resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in
the early days before the place was lighted. It caused the memorable
disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the
history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea. The ship was a sailing
vessel; a fine and favorite passenger packet, commanded by a popular
captain of high reputation. She was due from England, and Sydney was
waiting, and counting the hours; counting the hours, and making ready to
give her a heart-stirring welcome; for she was bringing back a great
company of mothers and daughters, the long-missed light and bloom of life
of Sydney homes; daughters that had been years absent at school, and
mothers that had been with them all that time watching over them. Of all
the world only India and Australasia have by custom freighted ships and
fleets with their hearts, and know the tremendous meaning of that phrase;
only they know what the waiting is like when this freightage is entrusted
to the fickle winds, not steam, and what the joy is like when the ship
that is returning this treasure comes safe to port and the long dread is
over.
On board the Duncan Dunbar, flying toward Sydney Heads in the waning
afternoon, the happy home-comers made busy preparation, for it was not
doubted that they would be in the arms of their friends before the day
was done; they put away their sea-going clothes and put on clothes meeter
for the meeting, their richest and their loveliest, these poor brides of
the grave. But the wind lost force, or there was a miscalculation, and
before the Heads were sighted the darkness came on. It was said that
ordinarily the captain would have made a safe offing and waited for the
morning; but this was no ordinary occasion; all about him were appealing
faces, faces pathetic with disappointment. So his sympathy moved him to
try the dangerous passage in the dark. He had entered the Heads
seventeen times, and believed he knew the ground. So he steered straight
for the false opening, mistaking it for the true one. He did not find
out that he was wrong until it was too late. There was no saving the
ship. The great seas swept her in and crushed her to splinters and
rubbish upon the rock tushes at the base of the precipice. Not one of
all that fair and gracious company was ever seen again alive. The tale
is told to every stranger that passes the spot, and it will continue to
be told to all that come, for generations; but it will never grow old,
custom cannot stale it, the heart-break that is in it can never perish
out of it.
There were two hundred persons in the ship, and but one survived the
disaster. He was a sailor. A huge sea flung him up the face of the
precipice and stretched him on a narrow shelf of rock midway between the
top and the bottom, and there he lay all night. At any other time he
would have lain there for the rest of his life, without chance of
discovery; but the next morning the ghastly news swept through Sydney
that the Duncan Dunbar had gone down in sight of home, and straightway
the walls of the Heads were black with mourners; and one of these,
stretching himself out over the precipice to spy out what might be seen
below, discovered this miraculously preserved relic of the wreck. Ropes
were brought and the nearly impossible feat of rescuing the man was
accomplished. He was a person with a practical turn of mind, and he
hired a hall in Sydney and exhibited himself at sixpence a head till he
exhausted the output of the gold fields for that year.
We entered and cast anchor, and in the morning went oh-ing and ah-ing in
admiration up through the crooks and turns of the spacious and beautiful
harbor--a harbor which is the darling of Sydney and the wonder of the
world. It is not surprising that the people are proud of it, nor that
they put their enthusiasm into eloquent words. A returning citizen asked
me what I thought of it, and I testified with a cordiality which I judged
would be up to the market rate. I said it was beautiful--superbly
beautiful. Then by a natural impulse I gave God the praise. The citizen
did not seem altogether satisfied. He said:
"It is beautiful, of course it's beautiful--the Harbor; but that isn't
all of it, it's only half of it; Sydney's the other half, and it takes
both of them together to ring the supremacy-bell. God made the Harbor,
and that's all right; but Satan made Sydney."
Of course I made an apology; and asked him to convey it to his friend.
He was right about Sydney being half of it. It would be beautiful
without Sydney, but not above half as beautiful as it is now, with Sydney
added. It is shaped somewhat like an oak-leaf-a roomy sheet of lovely
blue water, with narrow off-shoots of water running up into the country
on both sides between long fingers of land, high wooden ridges with sides
sloped like graves. Handsome villas are perched here and there on these
ridges, snuggling amongst the foliage, and one catches alluring glimpses
of them as the ship swims by toward the city. The city clothes a cluster
of hills and a ruffle of neighboring ridges with its undulating masses of
masonry, and out of these masses spring towers and spires and other
architectural dignities and grandeurs that break the flowing lines and
give picturesqueness to the general effect.
The narrow inlets which I have mentioned go wandering out into the land
everywhere and hiding themselves in it, and pleasure-launches are always
exploring them with picnic parties on board. It is said by trustworthy
people that if you explore them all you will find that you have covered
700 miles of water passage. But there are liars everywhere this year,
and they will double that when their works are in good going order.
October was close at hand, spring was come. It was really spring
--everybody said so; but you could have sold it for summer in Canada, and
nobody would have suspected. It was the very weather that makes our home
summers the perfection of climatic luxury; I mean, when you are out in
the wood or by the sea. But these people said it was cool, now--a person
ought to see Sydney in the summer time if he wanted to know what warm
weather is; and he ought to go north ten or fifteen hundred miles if he
wanted to know what hot weather is. They said that away up there toward
the equator the hens laid fried eggs. Sydney is the place to go to get
information about other people's climates. It seems to me that the
occupation of Unbiased Traveler Seeking Information is the pleasantest
and most irresponsible trade there is. The traveler can always find out
anything he wants to, merely by asking. He can get at all the facts, and
more. Everybody helps him, nobody hinders him. Anybody who has an old
fact in stock that is no longer negotiable in the domestic market will
let him have it at his own price. An accumulation of such goods is
easily and quickly made. They cost almost nothing and they bring par in
the foreign market. Travelers who come to America always freight up with
the same old nursery tales that their predecessors selected, and they
carry them back and always work them off without any trouble in the home
market.
If the climates of the world were determined by parallels of latitude,
then we could know a place's climate by its position on the map; and so
we should know that the climate of Sydney was the counterpart of the
climate of Columbia, S. C., and of Little Rock, Arkansas, since Sydney is
about the same distance south of the equator that those other towns are
north of-it-thirty-four degrees. But no, climate disregards the
parallels of latitude. In Arkansas they have a winter; in Sydney they
have the name of it, but not the thing itself. I have seen the ice in
the Mississippi floating past the mouth of the Arkansas river; and at
Memphis, but a little way above, the Mississippi has been frozen over,
from bank to bank. But they have never had a cold spell in Sydney which
brought the mercury down to freezing point. Once in a mid-winter day
there, in the month of July, the mercury went down to 36 deg., and that
remains the memorable "cold day" in the history of the town. No doubt
Little Rock has seen it below zero. Once, in Sydney, in mid-summer,
about New Year's Day, the mercury went up to 106 deg. in the shade, and
that is Sydney's memorable hot day. That would about tally with Little
Rock's hottest day also, I imagine. My Sydney figures are taken from a
government report, and are trustworthy. In the matter of summer weather
Arkansas has no advantage over Sydney, perhaps, but when it comes to
winter weather, that is another affair. You could cut up an Arkansas
winter into a hundred Sydney winters and have enough left for Arkansas
and the poor.
The whole narrow, hilly belt of the Pacific side of New South Wales has
the climate of its capital--a mean winter temperature of 54 deg. and a
mean summer one of 71 deg. It is a climate which cannot be improved upon
for healthfulness. But the experts say that 90 deg. in New South Wales
is harder to bear than 112 deg. in the neighboring colony of Victoria,
because the atmosphere of the former is humid, and of the latter dry.
The mean temperature of the southernmost point of New South Wales is the
same as that of Nice--60 deg.--yet Nice is further from the equator by
460 miles than is the former.
But Nature is always stingy of perfect climates; stingier in the case of
Australia than usual. Apparently this vast continent has a really good
climate nowhere but around the edges.
If we look at a map of the world we are surprised to see how big
Australia is. It is about two-thirds as large as the United States was
before we added Alaska.
But where as one finds a sufficiently good climate and fertile land
almost everywhere in the United States, it seems settled that inside of
the Australian border-belt one finds many deserts and in spots a climate
which nothing can stand except a few of the hardier kinds of rocks. In
effect, Australia is as yet unoccupied. If you take a map of the United
States and leave the Atlantic sea-board States in their places; also the
fringe of Southern States from Florida west to the Mouth of the
Mississippi; also a narrow, inhabited streak up the Mississippi half-way
to its head waters; also a narrow, inhabited border along the Pacific
coast: then take a brushful of paint and obliterate the whole remaining
mighty stretch of country that lies between the Atlantic States and the
Pacific-coast strip, your map will look like the latest map of Australia.
This stupendous blank is hot, not to say torrid; a part of it is fertile,
the rest is desert; it is not liberally watered; it has no towns. One
has only to cross the mountains of New South Wales and descend into the
westward-lying regions to find that he has left the choice climate behind
him, and found a new one of a quite different character. In fact, he
would not know by the thermometer that he was not in the blistering
Plains of India. Captain Sturt, the great explorer, gives us a sample of
the heat.
"The wind, which had been blowing all the morning from the N.E.,
increased to a heavy gale, and I shall never forget its withering
effect. I sought shelter behind a large gum-tree, but the blasts of
heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take
fire. This really was nothing ideal: everything both animate and
inanimate gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to
the wind and their noses to the ground, without the muscular
strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves
of the trees under which we were sitting fell like a snow shower
around us. At noon I took a thermometer graded to 127 deg., out of
my box, and observed that the mercury was up to 125. Thinking that
it had been unduly influenced, I put it in the fork of a tree close
to me, sheltered alike from the wind and the sun. I went to examine
it about an hour afterwards, when I found the mercury had risen to
the-top of the instrument and had burst the bulb, a circumstance
that I believe no traveler has ever before had to record. I cannot
find language to convey to the reader's mind an idea of the intense
and oppressive nature of the heat that prevailed."
That hot wind sweeps over Sydney sometimes, and brings with it what is
called a "dust-storm." It is said that most Australian towns are
acquainted with the dust-storm. I think I know what it is like, for the
following description by Mr. Gape tallies very well with the alkali
duststorm of Nevada, if you leave out the "shovel" part. Still the
shovel part is a pretty important part, and seems to indicate that my
Nevada storm is but a poor thing, after all.
"As we proceeded the altitude became less, and the heat
proportionately greater until we reached Dubbo, which is only 600
feet above sea-level. It is a pretty town, built on an extensive
plain . . . . After the effects of a shower of rain have passed
away the surface of the ground crumbles into a thick layer of dust,
and occasionally, when the wind is in a particular quarter, it is
lifted bodily from the ground in one long opaque cloud. In the
midst of such a storm nothing can be seen a few yards ahead, and the
unlucky person who happens to be out at the time is compelled to
seek the nearest retreat at hand. When the thrifty housewife sees
in the distance the dark column advancing in a steady whirl towards
her house, she closes the doors and windows with all expedition. A
drawing-room, the window of which has been carelessly left open
during a dust-storm, is indeed an extraordinary sight. A lady who
has resided in Dubbo for some years says that the dust lies so thick
on the carpet that it is necessary to use a shovel to remove it."
And probably a wagon. I was mistaken; I have not seen a proper
duststorm. To my mind the exterior aspects and character of Australia
are fascinating things to look at and think about, they are so strange,
so weird, so new, so uncommonplace, such a startling and interesting
contrast to the other sections of the planet, the sections that are known
to us all, familiar to us all. In the matter of particulars--a detail
here, a detail there--we have had the choice climate of New South Wales'
seacoast; we have had the Australian heat as furnished by Captain Sturt;
we have had the wonderful dust-storm; and we have considered the
phenomenon of an almost empty hot wilderness half as big as the United
States, with a narrow belt of civilization, population, and good climate
around it.
CHAPTER X.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not
joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
Captain Cook found Australia in 1770, and eighteen years later the
British Government began to transport convicts to it. Altogether, New
South Wales received 83,000 in 53 years. The convicts wore heavy chains;
they were ill-fed and badly treated by the officers set over them; they
were heavily punished for even slight infractions of the rules; "the
cruelest discipline ever known" is one historian's description of their
life.--[The Story of Australasia. J. S. Laurie.]
English law was hard-hearted in those days. For trifling offenses which
in our day would be punished by a small fine or a few days' confinement,
men, women, and boys were sent to this other end of the earth to serve
terms of seven and fourteen years; and for serious crimes they were
transported for life. Children were sent to the penal colonies for seven
years for stealing a rabbit!
When I was in London twenty-three years ago there was a new penalty in
force for diminishing garroting and wife-beating--25 lashes on the bare
back with the cat-o'-nine-tails. It was said that this terrible
punishment was able to bring the stubbornest ruffians to terms; and that
no man had been found with grit enough to keep his emotions to himself
beyond the ninth blow; as a rule the man shrieked earlier. That penalty
had a great and wholesome effect upon the garroters and wife-beaters; but
humane modern London could not endure it; it got its law rescinded. Many
a bruised and battered English wife has since had occasion to deplore
that cruel achievement of sentimental "humanity."
Twenty-five lashes! In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty
for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add
fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could
endure the torture and live. In Tasmania I read the entry, in an old
manuscript official record, of a case where a convict was given three
hundred lashes--for stealing some silver spoons. And men got more than
that, sometimes. Who handled the cat? Often it was another convict;
sometimes it was the culprit's dearest comrade; and he had to lay on with
all his might; otherwise he would get a flogging himself for his mercy
--for he was under watch--and yet not do his friend any good: the friend
would be attended to by another hand and suffer no lack in the matter of
full punishment.
The convict life in Tasmania was so unendurable, and suicide so difficult
to accomplish that once or twice despairing men got together and drew
straws to determine which of them should kill another of the group--this
murder to secure death to the perpetrator and to the witnesses of it by
the hand of the hangman!
The incidents quoted above are mere hints, mere suggestions of what
convict life was like--they are but a couple of details tossed into view
out of a shoreless sea of such; or, to change the figure, they are but a
pair of flaming steeples photographed from a point which hides from sight
the burning city which stretches away from their bases on every hand.
Some of the convicts--indeed, a good many of them--were very bad people,
even for that day; but the most of them were probably not noticeably
worse than the average of the people they left behind them at home. We
must believe this; we cannot avoid it. We are obliged to believe that a
nation that could look on, unmoved, and see starving or freezing women
hanged for stealing twenty-six cents' worth of bacon or rags, and boys
snatched from their mothers, and men from their families, and sent to the
other side of the world for long terms of years for similar trifling
offenses, was a nation to whom the term "civilized" could not in any
large way be applied. And we must also believe that a nation that knew,
during more than forty years, what was happening to those exiles and was
still content with it, was not advancing in any showy way toward a higher
grade of civilization.
If we look into the characters and conduct of the officers and gentlemen
who had charge of the convicts and attended to their backs and stomachs,
we must grant again that as between the convict and his masters, and
between both and the nation at home, there was a quite noticeable
monotony of sameness.
Four years had gone by, and many convicts had come. Respectable settlers
were beginning to arrive. These two classes of colonists had to be
protected, in case of trouble among themselves or with the natives. It
is proper to mention the natives, though they could hardly count they
were so scarce. At a time when they had not as yet begun to be much
disturbed--not as yet being in the way--it was estimated that in New
South Wales there was but one native to 45,000 acres of territory.
People had to be protected. Officers of the regular army did not want
this service--away off there where neither honor nor distinction was to
be gained. So England recruited and officered a kind of militia force of
1,000 uniformed civilians called the "New South Wales Corps" and shipped
it.
This was the worst blow of all. The colony fairly staggered under it.
The Corps was an object-lesson of the moral condition of England outside
of the jails. The colonists trembled. It was feared that next there
would be an importation of the nobility.
In those early days the colony was non-supporting. All the necessaries
of life--food, clothing, and all--were sent out from England, and kept in
great government store-houses, and given to the convicts and sold to the
settlers--sold at a trifling advance upon cost. The Corps saw its
opportunity. Its officers went into commerce, and in a most lawless way.
They went to importing rum, and also to manufacturing it in private
stills, in defiance of the government's commands and protests. They
leagued themselves together and ruled the market; they boycotted the
government and the other dealers; they established a close monopoly and
kept it strictly in their own hands. When a vessel arrived with spirits,
they allowed nobody to buy but themselves, and they forced the owner to
sell to them at a price named by themselves--and it was always low
enough. They bought rum at an average of two dollars a gallon and sold
it at an average of ten. They made rum the currency of the country--for
there was little or no money--and they maintained their devastating hold
and kept the colony under their heel for eighteen or twenty years before
they were finally conquered and routed by the government.
Meantime, they had spread intemperance everywhere. And they had squeezed
farm after farm out of the settlers hands for rum, and thus had
bountifully enriched themselves. When a farmer was caught in the last
agonies of thirst they took advantage of him and sweated him for a drink.
In one instance they sold a man a gallon of rum worth two dollars for a
piece of property which was sold some years later for $100,000.
When the colony was about eighteen or twenty years old it was discovered
that the land was specially fitted for the wool-culture. Prosperity
followed, commerce with the world began, by and by rich mines of the
noble metals were opened, immigrants flowed in, capital likewise. The
result is the great and wealthy and enlightened commonwealth of New South
Wales.
It is a country that is rich in mines, wool ranches, trams, railways,
steamship lines, schools, newspapers, botanical gardens, art galleries,
libraries, museums, hospitals, learned societies; it is the hospitable
home of every species of culture and of every species of material
enterprise, and there is a, church at every man's door, and a race-track
over the way.
CHAPTER XI.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again--and that is
well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
All English-speaking colonies are made up of lavishly hospitable people,
and New South Wales and its capital are like the rest in this. The
English-speaking colony of the United States of America is always
called lavishly hospitable by the English traveler. As to the other
English-speaking colonies throughout the world from Canada all around, I
know by experience that the description fits them. I will not go more
particularly into this matter, for I find that when writers try to
distribute their gratitude here and there and yonder by detail they run
across difficulties and do some ungraceful stumbling.
Mr. Gane ("New South Wales and Victoria in 1885 "), tried to distribute
his gratitude, and was not lucky:
"The inhabitants of Sydney are renowned for their hospitality. The
treatment which we experienced at the hands of this generous-hearted
people will help more than anything else to make us recollect with
pleasure our stay amongst them. In the character of hosts and
hostesses they excel. The 'new chum' needs only the
acquaintanceship of one of their number, and he becomes at once the
happy recipient of numerous complimentary invitations and thoughtful
kindnesses. Of the towns it has been our good fortune to visit,
none have portrayed home so faithfully as Sydney."
Nobody could say it finer than that. If he had put in his cork then, and
stayed away from Dubbo----but no; heedless man, he pulled it again.
Pulled it when he was away along in his book, and his memory of what he
had said about Sydney had grown dim:
"We cannot quit the promising town of Dubbo without testifying, in
warm praise, to the kind-hearted and hospitable usages of its
inhabitants. Sydney, though well deserving the character it bears
of its kindly treatment of strangers, possesses a little formality
and reserve. In Dubbo, on the contrary, though the same congenial
manners prevail, there is a pleasing degree of respectful
familiarity which gives the town a homely comfort not often met with
elsewhere. In laying on one side our pen we feel contented in
having been able, though so late in this work, to bestow a
panegyric, however unpretentious, on a town which, though possessing
no picturesque natural surroundings, nor interesting architectural
productions, has yet a body of citizens whose hearts cannot but
obtain for their town a reputation for benevolence and
kind-heartedness."
I wonder what soured him on Sydney. It seems strange that a pleasing
degree of three or four fingers of respectful familiarity should fill a
man up and give him the panegyrics so bad. For he has them, the worst
way--any one can see that. A man who is perfectly at himself does not
throw cold detraction at people's architectural productions and
picturesque surroundings, and let on that what he prefers is a Dubbonese
dust-storm and a pleasing degree of respectful familiarity, No, these are
old, old symptoms; and when they appear we know that the man has got the
panegyrics.
Sydney has a population of 400,000. When a stranger from America steps
ashore there, the first thing that strikes him is that the place is eight
or nine times as large as he was expecting it to be; and the next thing
that strikes him is that it is an English city with American trimmings.
Later on, in Melbourne, he will find the American trimmings still more in
evidence; there, even the architecture will often suggest America; a
photograph of its stateliest business street might be passed upon him for
a picture of the finest street in a large American city. I was told that
the most of the fine residences were the city residences of squatters.
The name seemed out of focus somehow. When the explanation came, it
offered a new instance of the curious changes which words, as well as
animals, undergo through change of habitat and climate. With us, when
you speak of a squatter you are always supposed to be speaking of a poor
man, but in Australia when you speak of a squatter you are supposed to be
speaking of a millionaire; in America the word indicates the possessor of
a few acres and a doubtful title, in Australia it indicates a man whose
landfront is as long as a railroad, and whose title has been perfected in
one way or another; in America the word indicates a man who owns a dozen
head of live stock, in Australia a man who owns anywhere from fifty
thousand up to half a million head; in America the word indicates a man
who is obscure and not important, in Australia a man who is prominent and
of the first importance; in America you take off your hat to no squatter,
in Australia you do; in America if your uncle is a squatter you keep it
dark, in Australia you advertise it; in America if your friend is a
squatter nothing comes of it, but with a squatter for your friend in
Australia you may sup with kings if there are any around.
In Australia it takes about two acres and a half of pastureland (some
people say twice as many), to support a sheep; and when the squatter has
half a million sheep his private domain is about as large as Rhode
Island, to speak in general terms. His annual wool crop may be worth a
quarter or a half million dollars.
He will live in a palace in Melbourne or Sydney or some other of the
large cities, and make occasional trips to his sheep-kingdom several
hundred miles away in the great plains to look after his battalions of
riders and shepherds and other hands. He has a commodious dwelling out
there, and if he approve of you he will invite you to spend a week in it,
and will make you at home and comfortable, and let you see the great
industry in all its details, and feed you and slake you and smoke you
with the best that money can buy.
On at least one of these vast estates there is a considerable town, with
all the various businesses and occupations that go to make an important
town; and the town and the land it stands upon are the property of the
squatters. I have seen that town, and it is not unlikely that there are
other squatter-owned towns in Australia.
Australia supplies the world not only with fine wool, but with mutton
also. The modern invention of cold storage and its application in ships
has created this great trade. In Sydney I visited a huge establishment
where they kill and clean and solidly freeze a thousand sheep a day, for
shipment to England.
The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans,
either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general
appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English
origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's
attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning
--from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American.
To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English
shyness and self-consciousness left out.
Now and then--but this is rare--one hears such words as piper for paper,
lydy for lady, and tyble for table fall from lips whence one would not
expect such pronunciations to come. There is a superstition prevalent in
Sydney that this pronunciation is an Australianism, but people who have
been "home"--as the native reverently and lovingly calls England--know
better. It is "costermonger." All over Australasia this pronunciation
is nearly as common among servants as it is in London among the
uneducated and the partially educated of all sorts and conditions of
people. That mislaid 'y' is rather striking when a person gets enough of
it into a short sentence to enable it to show up. In the hotel in Sydney
the chambermaid said, one morning:
"The tyble is set, and here is the piper; and if the lydy is ready I'll
tell the wyter to bring up the breakfast."
I have made passing mention, a moment ago, of the native Australasian's
custom of speaking of England as "home." It was always pretty to hear
it, and often it was said in an unconsciously caressing way that made it
touching; in a way which transmuted a sentiment into an embodiment, and
made one seem to see Australasia as a young girl stroking mother
England's old gray head.
In the Australasian home the table-talk is vivacious and unembarrassed;
it is without stiffness or restraint. This does not remind one of
England so much as it does of America. But Australasia is strictly
democratic, and reserves and restraints are things that are bred by
differences of rank.
English and colonial audiences are phenomenally alert and responsive.
Where masses of people are gathered together in England, caste is
submerged, and with it the English reserve; equality exists for the
moment, and every individual is free; so free from any consciousness of
fetters, indeed, that the Englishman's habit of watching himself and
guarding himself against any injudicious exposure of his feelings is
forgotten, and falls into abeyance--and to such a degree indeed, that he
will bravely applaud all by himself if he wants to--an exhibition of
daring which is unusual elsewhere in the world.
But it is hard to move a new English acquaintance when he is by himself,
or when the company present is small and new to him. He is on his guard
then, and his natural reserve is to the fore. This has given him the
false reputation of being without humor and without the appreciation of
humor.
Americans are not Englishmen, and American humor is not English humor;
but both the American and his humor had their origin in England, and have
merely undergone changes brought about by changed conditions and a new
environment. About the best humorous speeches I have yet heard were a
couple that were made in Australia at club suppers--one of them by an
Englishman, the other by an Australian.
CHAPTER XII.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you
know ain't so."
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
In Sydney I had a large dream, and in the course of talk I told it to a
missionary from India who was on his way to visit some relatives in New
Zealand. I dreamed that the visible universe is the physical person of
God; that the vast worlds that we see twinkling millions of miles apart
in the fields of space are the blood corpuscles in His veins; and that we
and the other creatures are the microbes that charge with multitudinous
life the corpuscles.
Mr. X., the missionary, considered the dream awhile, then said:
"It is not surpassable for magnitude, since its metes and bounds are
the metes and bounds of the universe itself; and it seems to me that
it almost accounts for a thing which is otherwise nearly
unaccountable--the origin of the sacred legends of the Hindoos.
Perhaps they dream them, and then honestly believe them to be divine
revelations of fact. It looks like that, for the legends are built
on so vast a scale that it does not seem reasonable that plodding
priests would happen upon such colossal fancies when awake."
He told some of the legends, and said that they were implicitly believed
by all classes of Hindoos, including those of high social position and
intelligence; and he said that this universal credulity was a great
hindrance to the missionary in his work. Then he said something like
this:
"At home, people wonder why Christianity does not make faster
progress in India. They hear that the Indians believe easily, and
that they have a natural trust in miracles and give them a
hospitable reception. Then they argue like this: since the Indian
believes easily, place Christianity before them and they must
believe; confirm its truths by the biblical miracles, and they will
no longer doubt, The natural deduction is, that as Christianity
makes but indifferent progress in India, the fault is with us: we
are not fortunate in presenting the doctrines and the miracles.
"But the truth is, we are not by any means so well equipped as they
think. We have not the easy task that they imagine. To use a
military figure, we are sent against the enemy with good powder in
our guns, but only wads for bullets; that is to say, our miracles
are not effective; the Hindoos do not care for them; they have more
extraordinary ones of their own. All the details of their own
religion are proven and established by miracles; the details of ours
must be proven in the same way. When I first began my work in India
I greatly underestimated the difficulties thus put upon my task. A
correction was not long in coming. I thought as our friends think
at home--that to prepare my childlike wonder-lovers to listen with
favor to my grave message I only needed to charm the way to it with
wonders, marvels, miracles. With full confidence I told the wonders
performed by Samson, the strongest man that had ever lived--for so I
called him.
"At first I saw lively anticipation and strong interest in the faces
of my people, but as I moved along from incident to incident of the
great story, I was distressed to see that I was steadily losing the
sympathy of my audience. I could not understand it. It was a
surprise to me, and a disappointment. Before I was through, the
fading sympathy had paled to indifference. Thence to the end the
indifference remained; I was not able to make any impression upon
it.
"A good old Hindoo gentleman told me where my trouble lay. He said
'We Hindoos recognize a god by the work of his hands--we accept no
other testimony. Apparently, this is also the rule with you
Christians. And we know when a man has his power from a god by the
fact that he does things which he could not do, as a man, with the
mere powers of a man. Plainly, this is the Christian's way also, of
knowing when a man is working by a god's power and not by his own.
You saw that there was a supernatural property in the hair of
Samson; for you perceived that when his hair was gone he was as
other men. It is our way, as I have said. There are many nations
in the world, and each group of nations has its own gods, and will
pay no worship to the gods of the others. Each group believes its
own gods to be strongest, and it will not exchange them except for
gods that shall be proven to be their superiors in power. Man is
but a weak creature, and needs the help of gods--he cannot do
without it. Shall he place his fate in the hands of weak gods when
there may be stronger ones to be found? That would be foolish. No,
if he hear of gods that are stronger than his own, he should not
turn a deaf ear, for it is not a light matter that is at stake. How
then shall he determine which gods are the stronger, his own or
those that preside over the concerns of other nations? By comparing
the known works of his own gods with the works of those others;
there is no other way. Now, when we make this comparison, we are
not drawn towards the gods of any other nation. Our gods are shown
by their works to be the strongest, the most powerful. The
Christians have but few gods, and they are new--new, and not strong;
as it seems to us. They will increase in number, it is true, for
this has happened with all gods, but that time is far away, many
ages and decades of ages away, for gods multiply slowly, as is meet
for beings to whom a thousand years is but a single moment. Our own
gods have been born millions of years apart. The process is slow,
the gathering of strength and power is similarly slow. In the slow
lapse of the ages the steadily accumulating power of our gods has at
last become prodigious. We have a thousand proofs of this in the
colossal character of their personal acts and the acts of ordinary
men to whom they have given supernatural qualities. To your Samson
was given supernatural power, and when he broke the withes, and slew
the thousands with the jawbone of an ass, and carried away the
gate's of the city upon his shoulders, you were amazed--and also
awed, for you recognized the divine source of his strength. But it
could not profit to place these things before your Hindoo
congregation and invite their wonder; for they would compare them
with the deed done by Hanuman, when our gods infused their divine
strength into his muscles; and they would be indifferent to them--as
you saw. In the old, old times, ages and ages gone by, when our god
Rama was warring with the demon god of Ceylon, Rama bethought him to
bridge the sea and connect Ceylon with India, so that his armies
might pass easily over; and he sent his general, Hanuman, inspired
like your own Samson with divine strength, to bring the materials
for the bridge. In two days Hanuman strode fifteen hundred miles,
to the Himalayas, and took upon his shoulder a range of those lofty
mountains two hundred miles long, and started with it toward Ceylon.
It was in the night; and, as he passed along the plain, the people
of Govardhun heard the thunder of his tread and felt the earth
rocking under it, and they ran out, and there, with their snowy
summits piled to heaven, they saw the Himalayas passing by. And as
this huge continent swept along overshadowing the earth, upon its
slopes they discerned the twinkling lights of a thousand sleeping
villages, and it was as if the constellations were filing in
procession through the sky. While they were looking, Hanuman
stumbled, and a small ridge of red sandstone twenty miles long was
jolted loose and fell. Half of its length has wasted away in the
course of the ages, but the other ten miles of it remain in the
plain by Govardhun to this day as proof of the might of the
inspiration of our gods. You must know, yourself, that Hanuman
could not have carried those mountains to Ceylon except by the
strength of the gods. You know that it was not done by his own
strength, therefore, you know that it was done by the strength of
the gods, just as you know that Samson carried the gates by the
divine strength and not by his own. I think you must concede two
things: First, That in carrying the gates of the city upon his
shoulders, Samson did not establish the superiority of his gods over
ours; secondly, That his feat is not supported by any but verbal
evidence, while Hanuman's is not only supported by verbal evidence,
but this evidence is confirmed, established, proven, by visible,
tangible evidence, which is the strongest of all testimony. We have
the sandstone ridge, and while it remains we cannot doubt, and shall
not. Have you the gates?'"
CHAPTER XIII.
The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man
strikes for double value and compromises on par.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
One is sure to be struck by the liberal way in which Australasia spends
money upon public works--such as legislative buildings, town halls,
hospitals, asylums, parks, and botanical gardens. I should say that
where minor towns in America spend a hundred dollars on the town hall and
on public parks and gardens, the like towns in Australasia spend a
thousand. And I think that this ratio will hold good in the matter of
hospitals, also. I have seen a costly and well-equipped, and
architecturally handsome hospital in an Australian village of fifteen
hundred inhabitants. It was built by private funds furnished by the
villagers and the neighboring planters, and its running expenses were
drawn from the same sources. I suppose it would be hard to match this in
any country. This village was about to close a contract for lighting its
streets with the electric light, when I was there. That is ahead of
London. London is still obscured by gas--gas pretty widely scattered,
too, in some of the districts; so widely indeed, that except on moonlight
nights it is difficult to find the gas lamps.
The botanical garden of Sydney covers thirty-eight acres, beautifully
laid out and rich with the spoil of all the lands and all the climes of
the world. The garden is on high ground in the middle of the town,
overlooking the great harbor, and it adjoins the spacious grounds of
Government House--fifty-six acres; and at hand also, is a recreation
ground containing eighty-two acres. In addition, there are the
zoological gardens, the race-course, and the great cricket-grounds where
the international matches are played. Therefore there is plenty of room
for reposeful lazying and lounging, and for exercise too, for such as
like that kind of work.
There are four specialties attainable in the way of social pleasure. If
you enter your name on the Visitor's Book at Government House you will
receive an invitation to the next ball that takes place there, if nothing
can be proven against you. And it will be very pleasant; for you will
see everybody except the Governor, and add a number of acquaintances and
several friends to your list. The Governor will be in England. He
always is. The continent has four or five governors, and I do not know
how many it takes to govern the outlying archipelago; but anyway you will
not see them. When they are appointed they come out from England and get
inaugurated, and give a ball, and help pray for rain, and get aboard ship
and go back home. And so the Lieutenant-Governor has to do all the work.
I was in Australasia three months and a half, and saw only one Governor.
The others were at home.
The Australasian Governor would not be so restless, perhaps, if he had a
war, or a veto, or something like that to call for his reserve-energies,
but he hasn't. There isn't any war, and there isn't any veto in his
hands. And so there is really little or nothing doing in his line. The
country governs itself, and prefers to do it; and is so strenuous about
it and so jealous of its independence that it grows restive if even the
Imperial Government at home proposes to help; and so the Imperial veto,
while a fact, is yet mainly a name.
Thus the Governor's functions are much more limited than are a Governor's
functions with us. And therefore more fatiguing. He is the apparent
head of the State, he is the real head of Society. He represents
culture, refinement, elevated sentiment, polite life, religion; and by
his example he propagates these, and they spread and flourish and bear
good fruit. He creates the fashion, and leads it. His ball is the ball
of balls, and his countenance makes the horse-race thrive.
He is usually a lord, and this is well; for his position compels him to
lead an expensive life, and an English lord is generally well equipped
for that.
Another of Sydney's social pleasures is the visit to the Admiralty House;
which is nobly situated on high ground overlooking the water. The trim
boats of the service convey the guests thither; and there, or on board
the flag-ship, they have the duplicate of the hospitalities of Government
House. The Admiral commanding a station in British waters is a magnate
of the first degree, and he is sumptuously housed, as becomes the dignity
of his office.
Third in the list of special pleasures is the tour of the harbor in a
fine steam pleasure-launch. Your richer friends own boats of this kind,
and they will invite you, and the joys of the trip will make a long day
seem short.
And finally comes the shark-fishing. Sydney Harbor is populous with the
finest breeds of man-eating sharks in the world. Some people make their
living catching them; for the Government pays a cash bounty on them. The
larger the shark the larger the bounty, and some of the sharks are twenty
feet long. You not only get the bounty, but everything that is in the
shark belongs to you. Sometimes the contents are quite valuable.
The shark is the swiftest fish that swims. The speed of the fastest
steamer afloat is poor compared to his. And he is a great gad-about, and
roams far and wide in the oceans, and visits the shores of all of them,
ultimately, in the course of his restless excursions. I have a tale to
tell now, which has not as yet been in print. In 1870 a young stranger
arrived in Sydney, and set about finding something to do; but he knew no
one, and brought no recommendations, and the result was that he got no
employment. He had aimed high, at first, but as time and his money
wasted away he grew less and less exacting, until at last he was willing
to serve in the humblest capacities if so he might get bread and shelter.
But luck was still against him; he could find no opening of any sort.
Finally his money was all gone. He walked the streets all day, thinking;
he walked them all night, thinking, thinking, and growing hungrier and
hungrier. At dawn he found himself well away from the town and drifting
aimlessly along the harbor shore. As he was passing by a nodding
shark-fisher the man looked up and said----
"Say, young fellow, take my line a spell, and change my luck for me."
"How do you know I won't make it worse?"
"Because you can't. It has been at its worst all night. If you can't
change it, no harm's done; if you do change it, it's for the better,
of course. Come."
"All right, what will you give?"
"I'll give you the shark, if you catch one."
"And I will eat it, bones and all. Give me the line."
"Here you are. I will get away, now, for awhile, so that my luck won't
spoil yours; for many and many a time I've noticed that if----there, pull
in, pull in, man, you've got a bite! I knew how it would be. Why, I
knew you for a born son of luck the minute I saw you. All right--he's
landed."
It was an unusually large shark--"a full nineteen-footer," the fisherman
said, as he laid the creature open with his knife.
"Now you rob him, young man, while I step to my hamper for a fresh bait.
There's generally something in them worth going for. You've changed my
luck, you see. But my goodness, I hope you haven't changed your own."
"Oh, it wouldn't matter; don't worry about that. Get your bait. I'll
rob him."
When the fisherman got back the young man had just finished washing his
hands in the bay, and was starting away.
"What, you are not going?"
"Yes. Good-bye."
"But what about your shark?"
"The shark? Why, what use is he to me?"
"What use is he? I like that. Don't you know that we can go and report
him to Government, and you'll get a clean solid eighty shillings bounty?
Hard cash, you know. What do you think about it now?"
"Oh, well, you can collect it."
"And keep it? Is that what you mean?"
"Yes."
"Well, this is odd. You're one of those sort they call eccentrics, I
judge. The saying is, you mustn't judge a man by his clothes, and I'm
believing it now. Why yours are looking just ratty, don't you know; and
yet you must be rich."
"I am."
The young man walked slowly back to the town, deeply musing as he went.
He halted a moment in front of the best restaurant, then glanced at his
clothes and passed on, and got his breakfast at a "stand-up." There was
a good deal of it, and it cost five shillings. He tendered a sovereign,
got his change, glanced at his silver, muttered to himself, "There isn't
enough to buy clothes with," and went his way.
At half-past nine the richest wool-broker in Sydney was sitting in his
morning-room at home, settling his breakfast with the morning paper. A
servant put his head in and said:
"There's a sundowner at the door wants to see you, sir."
"What do you bring that kind of a message here for? Send him about his
business."
"He won't go, sir. I've tried."
"He won't go? That's--why, that's unusual. He's one of two things,
then: he's a remarkable person, or he's crazy. Is he crazy?"
"No, sir. He don't look it."
"Then he's remarkable. What does he say he wants?"
"He won't tell, sir; only says it's very important."
"And won't go. Does he say he won't go?"
"Says he'll stand there till he sees you, sir, if it's all day."
"And yet isn't crazy. Show him up."
The sundowner was shown in. The broker said to himself, "No, he's not
crazy; that is easy to see; so he must be the other thing."
Then aloud, "Well, my good fellow, be quick about it; don't waste any
words; what is it you want?"
"I want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds."
"Scott! (It's a mistake; he is crazy . . . . No--he can't be--not
with that eye.) Why, you take my breath away. Come, who are you?"
"Nobody that you know."
"What is your name?"
"Cecil Rhodes."
"No, I don't remember hearing the name before. Now then--just for
curiosity's sake--what has sent you to me on this extraordinary errand?"
"The intention to make a hundred thousand pounds for you and as much for
myself within the next sixty days."
"Well, well, well. It is the most extraordinary idea that--sit down--you
interest me. And somehow you--well, you fascinate me; I think that that
is about the word. And it isn't your proposition--no, that doesn't
fascinate me; it's something else, I don't quite know what; something
that's born in you and oozes out of you, I suppose. Now then just for
curiosity's sake again, nothing more: as I understand it, it is your
desire to bor----"
"I said intention."
"Pardon, so you did. I thought it was an unheedful use of the word--an
unheedful valuing of its strength, you know."
"I knew its strength."
"Well, I must say--but look here, let me walk the floor a little, my mind
is getting into a sort of whirl, though you don't seem disturbed any.
(Plainly this young fellow isn't crazy; but as to his being remarkable
--well, really he amounts to that, and something over.) Now then, I
believe I am beyond the reach of further astonishment. Strike, and spare
not. What is your scheme?"
"To buy the wool crop--deliverable in sixty days."
"What, the whole of it?"
"The whole of it."
"No, I was not quite out of the reach of surprises, after all. Why, how
you talk! Do you know what our crop is going to foot up?"
"Two and a half million sterling--maybe a little more."
"Well, you've got your statistics right, any way. Now, then, do you know
what the margins would foot up, to buy it at sixty days?"
"The hundred thousand pounds I came here to get."
"Right, once more. Well, dear me, just to see what would happen, I wish
you had the money. And if you had it, what would you do with it?"
"I shall make two hundred thousand pounds out of it in sixty days."
"You mean, of course, that you might make it if----"
"I said 'shall'."
"Yes, by George, you did say 'shall'! You are the most definite devil I
ever saw, in the matter of language. Dear, dear, dear, look here!
Definite speech means clarity of mind. Upon my word I believe you've got
what you believe to be a rational reason, for venturing into this house,
an entire stranger, on this wild scheme of buying the wool crop of an
entire colony on speculation. Bring it out--I am prepared--acclimatized,
if I may use the word. Why would you buy the crop, and why would you
make that sum out of it? That is to say, what makes you think you----"
"I don't think--I know."
"Definite again. How do you know?"
"Because France has declared war against Germany, and wool has gone up
fourteen per cent. in London and is still rising."
"Oh, in-deed? Now then, I've got you! Such a thunderbolt as you have
just let fly ought to have made me jump out of my chair, but it didn't
stir me the least little bit, you see. And for a very simple reason: I
have read the morning paper. You can look at it if you want to. The
fastest ship in the service arrived at eleven o'clock last night, fifty
days out from London. All her news is printed here. There are no
war-clouds anywhere; and as for wool, why, it is the low-spiritedest
commodity in the English market. It is your turn to jump, now . . . .
Well, why, don't you jump? Why do you sit there in that placid fashion,
when----"
"Because I have later news."
"Later news? Oh, come--later news than fifty days, brought steaming hot
from London by the----"
"My news is only ten days old."
"Oh, Mun-chausen, hear the maniac talk! Where did you get it?"
"Got it out of a shark."
"Oh, oh, oh, this is too much! Front! call the police bring the gun
--raise the town! All the asylums in Christendom have broken loose in the
single person of----"
"Sit down! And collect yourself. Where is the use in getting excited?
Am I excited? There is nothing to get excited about. When I make a
statement which I cannot prove, it will be time enough for you to begin
to offer hospitality to damaging fancies about me and my sanity."
"Oh, a thousand, thousand pardons! I ought to be ashamed of myself, and 